December 6, 2023 • 49 mins
LOOK OUT! It’s only Films To Be Buried With!
Join your host Brett Goldstein as he talks life, death, love and the universe with legendary writer, director and producer ED ZWICK!
You will have seen Ed's work at some point in your life. Whether or not you saw the first hand movies and series he was behind, you will have most certainly seen the after effects and ripples of his work in a huge amount of media that has followed. From Thirtysomething onwards, to Blood Diamond, and SO many more, plenty of which you will have heard cited on this very podcast, Ed has had a part to play in a huge amount of popular works. It's a treat to listen in on so many gems and jewels he has to offer, and - how you might say - "soak up game" from this awesome chat with Ed and Brett. Enjoy and share! And definitely check his book HITS, FLOPS & OTHER ILLUSIONS at your nearest convenience for further goodness.
Video and extra audio available on Brett's Patreon!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look out. It's only films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to Films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer,
(00:20):
a director, a PA announcement and I love films. As
the great Taylor Swift once said, anytime someone tells me
that I can't do something, I want to do it more.
My mum said I couldn't watch The Exorcist, so I
watched it in secret three times in one night. I'm
proper hardcore. I am wow cool Taylor Swift. Well done.
Every week I'm a special guest over. I tell them
(00:41):
they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life
through the films that meant the most of them. Previous
guests include Barry Jenkins, Sharon Stone, HIMESH Patel, and even
for their Plant was But this week it's the Brilliant writer, producer,
creator and director Ed Swick. Head over to the Patreon
at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you
get extra twenty minutes of chat with Ed, You get
(01:01):
a secret from him, you get us talking about beginnings
and endings. You also get the whole episode, uncut and
ad free check out all that extra stuff over at
patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Godstein Edswick. Edswick is
an incredible director who makes proper excellent narrative Hollywood films
like About Last Night, Glory, Courage, under Fire, Legends of
(01:23):
the Full Blood, Diamond, amongst many other excellent films in
very different genres. He also co created the hugely influential
and groundbreaking TV show thirty Something, which is arguably one
of the most influential TV shows of all time. He's
basically a low key legend. He's also written a brand
new book which is a part memoir, part films called
All Excellent, called Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, and it's
(01:46):
bloody excellent. You should all read it. I'd never met
ed before, but we did this on Zoom a couple
of weeks ago. He was so brilliant. We went deep.
He was very open about so many things. I think
this is one of my old time favorites, and I
think you're going to love it. That is it for now.
I very much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and
seventy seven of Films to Be Buried with Hello and
(02:17):
welcome to Films to Be buried with It is I
Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a writer,
a creator, a producer, a showrunner, an award winner, an
Oscar winner, a legend of the full, a hero of
the many, and a glorious man in his thirties and above.
(02:40):
He's here. I can't believe it. You can't believe it.
Everything he's made is very, very good. It's him, it's
the man. He's also now a writer of a book.
Please welcome to the show. He's finally here. It's Edswick. Hello,
ed Can we stop now? Yeah, we can do that.
How are you? What's a pleasure to have you on
(03:02):
the podcast? And you and Edswick? You're brilliant. You're brilliant.
I was so excited you wanted to do this. You're
I was thinking about you. I think you are one
of those filmmakers that, perhaps because you've made so many
excellent films, but you've also made so many excellent films
in very different genres. I think it's that weird thing
where I don't think you get talked enough about as
(03:25):
an aute because you're not making the same film. There
isn't a massive theme other than I'd say, but they're
all very good and all very emotional. You do very
good stuff. Anyway. Congratulations, I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I listen, I have no complaints. Let's start there. I
think it's I've always wanted to be a bit of
a moving target, you know. I just I think that
was part of it. But also I think my training.
I actually was trained in the repertory theater, and that's
you know, so that one day we would be doing
Strimberg and the next day we would be doing you know,
(04:00):
Sam Shephard. One day it would be Shakespeare, in the
next day would be some ridiculous knock about you know, farce.
And and and I love and I I just always
I was cotton to things that that challenged me. And
I like being a little bit uncomfortable with trying new things.
And I think if if you do the same thing twice,
(04:20):
the second time you do it and the third time
you do it, it's inevitably going to be you're going
to be imitating yourself in some way. And and and
the originality is that I prize a lot.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's interesting. But you also made like a Semino TV
show that is something that goes on for a long time.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, yeah, you're right. And you know this as well
as I do that that you know that the TV
show is like it's a little bit more like Scrimshaw.
It's it's like lapidary. You're in very subtle movements. You're
doing variations on a theme, and so you're you're you're
expanding the universe bit by bit and it grows and
it grows, but finally the increments are smaller. Yeah, and
(05:00):
so it's a very different a very different focus. I
think obviously when I've done movies, a lot of them
have been written large in some way, and this is
much more about, you know, very nuanced behavior and themes.
I do believe that you're doing the same thing that
you're trying to write things that are epic, even if
it's epic Kale, you know, the epic lives that you
(05:22):
do on a TELEVI show, they accrue to that.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yes, thirty something. I was very young when that something
was on, but my parents watched it, so I saw
it Like, in hindsight, I'm like that was way ahead
of its time, right, that was like, well why was there? Yeah,
you changed things.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think what you have to understand about that moment,
particularly television, particularly in America, but I think in England too,
that everybody was either a doctor or a lawyer or
a policeman, and everything was a franchise, and what was
most important was the plot, and the characters revolved around
that plot, but they were You were not serving the
(06:02):
characters really as much as you were serving that were
current plot of the crime is solved, or the the saved,
or whatever, the doctor, the medical crisis has averted, whatever
it is, that that was paramount. And I had a wonderful,
wonderful teacher who once said to me, actually it was
Sidney Pollack who said to me, the plot is the
(06:25):
meat that the burglar throws the dogs as he's climbing
over the wall to get the jewels. Which are the characters.
And and that's what we realized is that there had
been in film already a couple of movies that were
generationally important. There had been there had been Larry Kasten's
movie with a Big Show, and there had been John
(06:45):
Sales movie The Trial of the Scacca Seven, and they
were trying to look at a group of people just
for what their issues were in their lives. But nobody
had done it in television. And what we did was
to say, all right, there are these people and what
they face is worthy of examination, like that the examined
(07:06):
life is worth examining. And what's funny now, of course,
is that every TV show seems to take that as
the premise and just find an excuse to put a
different group of people together. Yeah that's what that's, you know,
And and the genre things and the franchise things seem
to have faded into the background, and there are a
hundred different ways that they have found to do a
(07:28):
version of I think what we were trying to do.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I agree. I agree. I do think the thing with
TV that maybe film can't do, because I you know,
I really really love film. But weirdly, someone a writer
I'm working with is watching ear for the first time
and they're like pacing through it and they're watching with it.
And I watched The Weekly and loved it when I
was young. And something I realized, like in hindsight talking
(07:52):
to her because she's experiencing it for the first time,
is that Mark Green, the character in the when he died,
I had spent nine years with him. Yes, yeah, like
I grieve Mark Green like he was family. I still
grieve him. You know because of the sheer amount of
time I spent with him, Like it's an amazing thing.
(08:14):
Where you go, I saw his life.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
My wife's mother was not a particularly sophisticated woman, but
she was very involved with her television. When everyone would
go to she would watch television. And I remember once
she was talking about her TV friends.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Right, Yeah, if they lived with her in the house
and they would meet and have a beer and eat
some pretzels, and they were her that was part of
her family.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, it's it's quite something anyway. You So you have
written a book which I have not sent sent yesterday,
and I'm really annoyed about it because I've read as
much as I can in the space of time I
have and it's really really exciting and interesting, but I
haven't got to I've only read a few chapters and
I love it, but I was curious about sort of
(09:02):
looking back over everything. I really like in your introduction
you say something like you tell us, but you say,
I really want to tell the truth, but I am
a storyteller and I can't help. And it's also been
this many years, so who knows. But I'm doing my best,
and I think that that's a really interesting way of
putting it. But what I'm curious with all the films
you've done, they are so different. You know, you have
(09:23):
a kind of sex comedy, you have a war movie,
you have adventure, you have and they're all in different
countries and different sort of environments. And I was curious, like,
is any of it planned? Or is it like the
thing that came to you in that moment and was
the most together was the next project? Like what takes you?
(09:44):
What makes you go I want to do Blood Diamond?
Like what sparked that as your next film? For example?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean, I think my knowledge about life is very
broad and very shallow. I am promiscuous in my interest
and in my reading, but I am easily sort of
diverted in my attention from one things to the other.
And that's finally served me because it's when I then
(10:13):
fix on something, when it strikes me as to have
within it the stuff of drama, the shape of drama,
the stakes of drama or comedy, and if it sort
of raises the hair on my arms in this kind
of galvanic skin response and something happens, if it can
happen to me, can I elicit that? Then in an audience.
(10:37):
I have to trust that my instincts, as just as
an audience, are acute. But it's also trying to be
aware of what might lie beneath. If you mind this thing,
what else can it also be about? Not only what
it's about, because inevitably, when you then decide what a
movie's going to be, you're digging into your own psyche.
(10:57):
You're touching those old fascinations or fetishes or fears that
drive you, and you inevitably invest that in a character
or in a relationship or whatever. So it is the
thing that you find or that strikes you, or it's
your response to it that then leads you even someplace else.
I mean, and it's worked so many different ways. There
(11:19):
are things that have taken me years and years because
they've been personal obsessions forever, and that I've just banged
away at, whether at screenplays or at financiers or at
actors or somebody to join me in this ridiculous pursuit,
you know. And that's just the kind of cussed grit
and determination to get these things on. And then they
(11:43):
are the things that just sort of rise up. I mean,
I'll give you one for instance, and I don't know
if you know the movie or not. There's a movie
I made called Defiance, which was about the part of
the Jewish partisans in the woods of Belarus during World
War Two who lived in this winter for three years
and ended up vibing, saving thousands of people, but fought
the Germans and all. But we wrote a draft of
(12:06):
it ten years before we made the movie, and every
year I say, what is this and why doesn't it work?
And why doesn't it work? And then one day I
was snowshoeing in Colorado and my binding broke and it
was getting dark. There was no danger really of dying,
but some fear took hold of me, and my hands
began to feel really frozen, and it hurt as I
(12:26):
tried to work on the binding, And suddenly I realized
that I had written a kind of pageant, a kind
of history of this thing, when indeed the key was
to write something visceral and intimate and small. And I
went back and threw it all out and did it
all again. But it took ten years, now, did it?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And then?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
But when I wrote, I fucking rewrote it in ten days.
Now the question is did that take.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Me ten years?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
To write or did it take me ten days to
write ten years?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It took you ten years? Because I believe these things
have that time, and it was it. I really believe.
Sometimes you have an idea and it isn't read, It
isn't the time for it yet, but it will. It's
time will come right, and that you needed that. It's
so fascinating. I love that story.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know it happens in life too. I mean,
when are you ready to have a family?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
When?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Why do you fall in love when you do? Was
it the death of a parent that then had to
happen before you were freed to look at life in
a different way? I mean, all these things, were you sick?
Did somebody?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
All of that just has this effect on you as
a as an artist too.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
May I ask what was the thing that made you
ready to have a family?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
If you have the interviewer strikes.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You, broughte it up. I did you just see the
You don't have to answer it, Oh.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
No, I will. No. I think that I was about
thirty and within a very very short time I fell
in love. Really for the time that the important one,
and that has lasted very shortly thereafter my mother was
killed in a car accident.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh Jesus, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Within the same weeks, wow, very short time. Thereafter, we
had our first child, and suddenly I, as this callow,
live figure, was confronted with some real exigencies of life
and it changed everything. I mean, I had been a
(14:28):
mimic and a not not I've been glib, and I
had a certain facility, but I had no depth and
no heart and nothing that I was willing to confront
in my writing, which then life forced me to confront.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Wow. Wow, that's fucking intense. And did you trust me?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It was fucking intense?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did you? Wow? Man? I have many questions about it.
I assume that was a real kind of well wind
of trauma and everything. And was that moment's way you
were like, how is this my life? Suddenly? Like it's
such a change, everything completely different.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's exactly it. And to say, oh, by the way,
that's what thirty something came out of, came out of
literally saying all right, these moments in life are worthy
of thinking about and recognizing as pivots or as passages
you or a crucial that you have to go through.
And when life starts coming at you really fast and
(15:27):
how do how do you react? And that has to
do with success, It has to do with, you know,
with failure. It has to do so many different things
which somehow all arrived simultaneously. I think in a lot
of lives it did for me. Yes, I actually wrote
a chapter in the book which I called it the
Year of Loving Dangerously.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Right. Wow, that's so interesting. And so one question that's
far less heavy is that if your brain works out this,
you're interested in this, you're interested in this, you you
get drawn to new ideas stories when you're making a
when you're actually making a film, which is often a
year minimum pre production to everything. When you're in it,
(16:07):
are you just fully in it or still within that
process that you like at the same time. That's an
interesting story. I'd like to do that sometime, you know
what I mean? Do you stay focused on the one
thing or does your brain still go.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It's I mean, that's that's a really good question because
I think I think it's it's actually a relief to
me to have a thing to focus.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
On, right right, I think I think.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
It My mind gets a little more still when I can,
in fact focus, I'm not just being distracted in some way.
I'm very capable of that, and I and it it
becomes obsessive, you know, in the way that you have
to be. But I find that pleasurable and also have
this theory that if it can interest me for two years,
(16:48):
that it's possibly going to be able to interest people
in the theater for two hours.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah. Great. One other questions that you've worked with everyone
in terms of access you've worked with. You look at
your list of films, the biggest, you've worked with, the
A List, everyone on the A List, You have worked
with all the big big stars. Is your experience that
the way to work with actors is different with every
(17:13):
single actor. There's no kind of unifying thing or is
there a thing that you feel you're good at with them?
Like how would you describe by that?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
In some way? That is probably the secondary theme in
the whole book, because that is that has been the challenge,
and each challenge is different and the same. I mean,
if I would say there are lessons learned, there are several.
One certainly is to not try to bullshit or handle
(17:43):
a movie star because their detectors for that kind of
crap are so so fine. They've along been sucked up
to and being coddled and fluffed and whatever that they're
aware of that immediately, and so I've tried to as
(18:04):
best I can to be honest. At the same time,
they want to be coggled and fluffed up and handled
and complimented and made and all those things, because that's
their due. It's become their comfort zone and and their
and everything else. And so it's a very interesting dance
between those two polls and and and and it has
(18:28):
to do a little bit, I'm sure in England. I mean,
I don't know if you've worked have you worked with
anyone who is titled or you know, or you know,
like I.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Said, like I said, yeah, you know, I don't think
I've worked.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, it's a very interesting and it's a very it's
it's actually particularly particular English phenomenon where you know, oh,
just call me by my first name. Oh, it's nothing.
But if you dare even for a moment, forget what
that means, uh, you do at your own peril.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So that's so that's part of it, I say.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
But another part of it is you really have to
understand that everybody began at the same moment, particularly actors
that They are brave, beautiful and magical, terrified creatures who
came from a place at a very early moment and
never totally are able to divest themselves of those things
that brought them to this dance, and that has to
(19:21):
be understood, and that they are. I think of it
sometimes as a they're out on a spacewalk, you know,
on a tether, out there at zero gravity, floating around,
and you're in the capsule drinking a cappuccino, you know,
while they're out there at risk and exposed utterly, and
be mindful of that, I think, and you have to
respect that and admire it. The thing I think is
(19:45):
there's a temptation, because some actors don't have the same language,
because they don't necessarily approach things from an intellectual level.
There's a temptation sometime to think of them to be
a little bit patronizing. And then you then discuss that
their instincts about what a scene is, what a theme is,
what a moment is, far exceed yours or certainly certainly
(20:08):
our rival to your role as a director. And I
cannot tell you the number of times that an actor
has revealed to me what I was doing when I
was writing something utterly unaware of what I was writing
or why I was writing it. And yet they see it,
and they say by saying I can act that I
(20:28):
don't need that. That's too clear, That's not clear enough.
I mean, you know their examination comes from a place
that is really meaningful. And I mean I think people
have become movie stars for several reasons, one of which
is just the play of shadow and light on a
face and how it works and what the camera see
is of course, but there's an inner life that the
(20:50):
camera also is interested in and it wants to see,
wants to get inside of. And I think you feel
it as a director. That's why you want to be
with him. And you never lose that fanboy reason that
you wanted to be in the movies and a what
a movie star meant and what you felt about them.
And it's your job to try to perpetuate that illusion
(21:13):
or that feeling to the rest of the audience. If
you lose it, how can you then carry it on
or be the purveyor of it? And only one more thing.
I'm sorry, I'm going on here.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I love this sign so very much, you can please
all right.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Well, I would say that there is something a little
a little spiritual I think, or a little woo woo
in an emotional exchange that happens between a director and
an actor. I think that you don't always talk about it,
but I think it's communicated. I think that how I
feel about a scene is somehow communicated in the way
(21:49):
that I step out from behind that camera or stand
next to them, or describe something or that if there's
a moment or even when you're having dinner together or
you've done research together or whatever, it is that something
is taken, is there's something that they unknow what you're
going for. It's not like you're going to go all
the way into the emotional place that they're going to. Yeah,
(22:11):
but they know that that's where you want them to
go because they feel it inside you.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I love it. I agree, and I love it, and
I think I totally believe in that of it. I
haven't done much directing, but I did. In fact, I
made it shot many many years ago, and in the
shot it was all you could hear their thoughts. So
there was no dialogue, it was all their thoughts. It
was it was like the aftermath of a one night stand.
They've had sex, and then it's what they're thinking is
(22:36):
they're lying in the bed and this kind of awkward
interchange of them trying to communicate anyway. So I was
filming them doing nothing and thinking, and I knew just
watching their eyes when they were thinking it and when
they weren't. And I remember, and I remember just thinking,
that's interesting. There was this actor and she we did
a take, and we did it a couple of times,
(22:57):
and then one time I said, you weren't. You weren't
thinking it? And she was like, how did you know that?
Because I'm reading their eyes. I can read it, you know,
when you feel it and when you're not. Yeah, I
find it interesting. But also I heard a story from
a I think it was a friend of mine who
was like, maybe they were even a background artist on
a on a set that Robert de Niro was on.
And I don't remember the film, I know nothing, no
other details about it, but what they observed was that
(23:20):
the director was intimidated, so intimidated by Robert DeNiro that
they never really spoke to him. So he'd do a
take and he'd called cut, and then Robersnier woul kind
of stand on his own and my friend felt and
this is all you know, projection, but felt like he
wanted notes, he wanted to be involved, like he's still
an actor, he wants to work, he wants but the
director was kind of so, you know, you're you know best,
(23:42):
I won't say anything, and I think that he felt like, no,
talk to me. I want I'm still an actor, I
want to work.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I mean, it's it's it sounds like a little bit oversimplified,
but I think it's not a bad axiom to think
about treating movie stars as actors and treating actors as
movie stars.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Oh hey, doctor Dosie.
So many questions. But there's a thing I forgot to
tell you that I should have told you earlier, and
it's meant to.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Which is I think the fact that I'm dead.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You're dead? Oh I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Oh no, I read I got your letter.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I know.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Oh you did die.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Oh. I thought I'm trying to tell you I'm speaking
to you from the beyond, from the beyond, from the
great What he relaxed about it?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Okay? Cool? Oh thank god. I thought I thought that
was gonna be really awkward. Uh, how did you die?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Oh? I think I had a stroke while on set,
yelling at an actor for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Wow, okay, how far into the shop were you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
It always feels like you're nowhere, you know, if you
get always get happy, and there's still there's still another
halfway to go. No, I mean, I think I think
I died in harness whatever wherever it was it was,
you know, in some distant location, just trying to know
that I didn't have enough sleep and hadn't drunk enough
water and hadn't sat down and you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Heartbreaking, But I guess you died doing something you loved,
chatting at that. Yeah, you do? You worry about death?
Some do you worry about? Yeah? I do?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And I and I was. I was once very very sick.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Am.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I ended up having chemotherapy and had that very vivid,
very real encounter with all those thoughts. So yeah, I've been.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Through that, my God, And how do you feel now?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
What do you think? Are you any more at peace
with it? Do you feel? What do you think happens
when you die?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
You've just asked me six questions in one am I,
how did it affect me? Am? I? What happens when
you die? And I'll just give you. I'll give you
a two sentenced answer to that one. Is that what
you want.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
As long as you need?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
I mean, you know, Look, everything changes your life. You know,
falling in love changes your life, Having children changes your life.
Success changes your life. Failure and confronting illness changes your
life too. It doesn't define me, but it absolutely has
been taken in as part of my worldview. And it's
always there.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yes, And do you do you believe there's enough to life? No? Well,
I got news for you. There is.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, it's obviously there is, because I'm now speaking to you.
Yet I've been wrong before. I was wrong in the seventies.
Once you know, it's won't be the first.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Time, for the second time in your life, you are wrong.
There is a heaven and it's filled with your favorite thing.
What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
God? Oh, I'm tempted to say work, but I think
i'd better say my wife and children.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Okay, it's filled with your wife and children. Who as
you walk into having a guy, we had you you
said work you got no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.
And they're very happy to see everyone's happy to see
you and having their own date and they want to
talk to you about your life, but they want to
talk to you about your life through film. And the
first thing I ask, what's the first film you remember
(27:08):
seeing it? Sweet?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Well, I mean, I'm sure that it was like a
you know, a road Runner cartoon or or some sort
of a you know, a Looney Tunes cartoon, because I
loved them. But I think the film that I remember.
And by the way, these were great, great, great questions
because they did lead me to think about a lot
of things that I may not have ever thought about,
one of which I put in the damn book, which
we'll get to, I'm sure. But my father used to
(27:32):
take me to the movies, and I remember seeing a
movie called The Buccaneer. It was with Yule Brinner and
and Charlton Heston, and it was a it was a
great historical story about Jean Lafitte and the Battle of
New Orleans, and I vividly remember sitting in the theater.
I remember how the theater smelled, and I remember, you
know what it was, and I think maybe maybe he
(27:53):
took me out of school to go see it or something,
but it was it was one of those very memorable experiences.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Did you did you think I know I want to
be in on this.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
No, but I would play with my toy soldiers.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I mean it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
It was of a very interesting fascination with history and
with battle and heroism and all of that.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So yes, instant. What about being scared? What is the
film that scared you the most? And do you like
being scared?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Well, I don't like being scared.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
You haven't horror. It's one of the few things like that.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think it's the one thing I haven't done because
it scares the ship out of me, and I tend
not to watch them as much as as others do.
I mean, I'm not I'm not a horror you know, Maven.
I remember and I actually looked this up. I was
five when The Wizard of Oz aired on television and
I remember the flying monkeys and boy that that really
(28:50):
scared me. You know, dump the dump duh. It was
just really terrifying. And that's that that scarred me, I think.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And that was the last scary film. Yeah, that was it.
That's it. What about crying? You're in a mice now, man?
Do you like crying? Is there? What's the film that
made you cry? The mice?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think it was old yeller.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Fuck.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Oh yes, I was nice, thank you, I was fought.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Oh my god, Jesus five was a big year. You
had flying monkeys and a dead dog. See I was, I.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Was, I was opening up to the world. But but
it was I mean, I I loved my dog, and
the idea of losing a dog was so thick. But
the catharsis of crying in a movie is very important
to me because I know that that's one measure way
by which I've measured a lot of my films, and
that it's better than applause, the fact that you've reached
(29:46):
an audience and you've elicited that from them, that if
you're standing in the back of the theater and you
start hearing that that sniffling thing, and like, oh, I'm
them now, and you know, and that's what it is,
what you want, Because I do think that's one of
the reasons we go to the movies. We go to
the movies to cathart because it's hard for life to
do that, and it's sometimes very hard to get past
(30:09):
your own defenses in a relationship or in public, but
in private, in the dark, you can do that. And
you and and we're we're weeping for our those characters,
but we're weeping for ourselves, weeping for our own griefs.
We we touch places that are so important to get out.
And I think that's absolutely one of the reasons that
(30:29):
I that I make movies is to try to reach
that place, you know in it.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I like that lot. Yeah. I mean, if you're not
making a comedy, any other sounds you can get is
it's sniffing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, the comedy. The comedy is it's not easy. I mean,
obviously comedy is so fucking hard. But I can know
if I'm gonna be in the like in the lobby
and the time of the movement, it's like what one, two, bang,
and then you know the laugh is coming. And if
you you know, it's not that you're technical and how
you've done it, but once you see how it works,
(31:04):
it's the same way. You know how to play that.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, what is a film that you love unconditionally? It
is not, but you love this was this was hard.
This is a little bit harder. But I actually thought
of one. There's a movie that Sandy Bullock did called Miscongeniality.
That's a great movie. It's it's a great, great movie.
Michael Caine, it's amazing in it.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
But Sandy Bullock, Sandy Bullock in that moment, she is
in her glory. It is such a generous, self abnegating,
just goofy wonderful performance that it kills me.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
But I cannot tell you a number of times when I've
tried to talk about that movie among a certain group
of very snobby filmmakers and they give me this look,
say the fuck.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
You know, it's a great movie. Great movie, Okay. On
the other end of the scale, a film that you
still love, you loved very much, but you voiced it
recently and you do not like it no more.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Uh, well, you know you what happens when you have
kids they get to a certain age. You want to
show them movies that were important to you, and you
really want them to love it, and then sometimes they
just look at you like like what the fuck. There
was a movie that used to play in Cambridge at
the Arsonovel Theater at midnight called The King of Hearts,
which is a Philippe de Brooke a movie. It's it's
it's Alm Bates and Genevieve Boujould and it's this man
(32:27):
in World War One, he gets put into an asylum,
and the premise is that, oh, well, really, the crazy
people are outside fighting and the same people are in
the asylum, which, somehow, when you're really high and you're
eighteen years old, absolutely solves all the problems in the world.
And I remember showing it to.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
My son, who looks at me.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, the the you know, the
crazy people are in the are outside.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
It's like it was. It was.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
My daughter sometimes used to call the Duh channel you.
But I will also admit that I watched The Searchers
recently again and I've seen it times, and that is
harold it to be maybe one of the great movies.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Of all time.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But it's also full of some really ridiculous stuff. Some
of the songs and some of those moments are just
as corny as corny can possibly be. And I think
it fell a little bit down from my perch at
that moment.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Do you look back at your films, like, do you
watch films from twenty years ago that you've made or
do you not?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, no, I'd never done I never did that, and
I did it for this book, and it was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
How often we like I fucking love it. How often
did you remember? I always wanted this bit I didn't
get to do, like nobody do that.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Nobody gives a harsher review of their own work than
a director. I think when you look at it for
so long, first of all, you get so sick of
it because you've gone through the post production process and
the previews and all of that. But no you see
the clunky exposition, or a moment that didn't quite work
as you wished, or a camera move that was awkward,
or the one hundred of those things. But I think
(33:59):
the reason I wrote the book is because what I
did look at were those people with whom I was
so close, and the intimacy and the deep relationships and
the collaborations and how important we were to each other,
and how I've not ever seen some of them again
and may never see some of them again. What did
that mean to have had that kind of intensity and
(34:21):
intimacy and then to have it be gone? And so
I really was thinking about so many of the relationships
with the actors, but also you know, with the director
of photography, with a costumer, with you know, the man
who drove me to work every day, and I learned
about his family, children and that this was the sum
of a life. And I was looking at the sum
of my life, at these relationships, and it led me
(34:43):
into very interesting places thinking about what I chose to
do and why and what this kind of work means
to all of us and who we are and why
we do it. And so the answer is yes, I
did look back at it, and it was very confrontive.
I think finally important, but but it was it was unexpected.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
How often did you watch saying that you were like,
this is amazing. I don't really remember this, like this
is such a good Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I look at things and saying who did that?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, you know, I mean the ambition of some of it,
or the audacity of some of it. How dare I.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That I could do that?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Because when some of it I was able to pull off,
and I go, what led you to possibly think that
you could do this? You know, this movie on on
three continents with thousands of extras, and you know you
know all this. Oh no, that that also was a takeaway.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
That's great? What is the film that means the mice
to you? It might not be a good film, but
the experience you had around seeing it will always make
it special to you. Edswick.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I was thinking about this. I mean, I don't know it.
There's a question you asked me later about about what
changed your life in some way. It wouldn't be this,
but but I remember seeing zephyrrelli is Romeo and Juliet
with my girlfriend at sixteen, and I was driving for
the first time and we saw that movie and we
went back to her basement and it was significant, and
(36:13):
and later even they released an album of that movie
with you know that that's from it. But I remember
her turning to me as were des Abi in the
basement in flagrante or whatever, and saying to me, listen, listen, listen, listen,
(36:33):
I can hear their hearts beating. Well, clearly I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Did you lose your opportunity to write Virgiliot? Or was
this waylight? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I think that was That was probably the precipitating event.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, I'm so happy for you. Thank you for that.
I mean, I need to understand what is the film
you must relate to, you know, I was.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Thinking about the eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I
was thinking about memory and its role in my life
and the fragmentation of it and yet my fascination with
it sadness and loss but also romance and joy that
that movie, to me, it captures something of the process
(37:26):
of mind that is so beautiful and so touching. So
there's one that would be that one.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I think that film I want to stay again the
other day for something. It's fucking phenomenal. And it also
is like I love the sort of message that like
they're going to do it again, Like you can't.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
You have to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You have to go through what you have to go for,
you can't if you're raise it, you're going to do
it again.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah. Well, there's there's a there's an expression from the
from the seats seats from Latin called a'mor faci, which
is to love fate and to own those things that
have happened to you and to know that they are
your creation and and and that you have to give
yourself over to them and love them. And I think
that movie is about that too.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, I love it. Edwick, what's the sexiest film you've
ever seen?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Well, I was thinking of I had a thing for
Isabella Johnny when I was growing up. You're right in
the human and and I think it might have been
Queen Margot, you know that blood and sex and death
and sex and and just that it was just it
(38:37):
was like it was opera to some degree, but so
passionate and so turbulent, and and she was so just delectable.
And then I just you know, I met her once
and I was just incapable of speech.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
That's nice. There's a sub category. I'm sure you know
this traveling bow and is worrying why ones a filmy
found arousing?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You went, yeah, it's a great well, but mine is
so I mean, you would think that that that that
that question is to say that as a grown man,
that I've looked at, you know, a fourteen year old
girl and and and had and had a heart on.
But in fact, what I remember is something opposite, which
is I remember seeing the parent Trap when I was
(39:23):
a little boy, and seeing Marino Hara in these these
the tight sweaters and and and her just just bluptious, beauty, radiant,
and and and she probably was my mother's age. And
it was really really really just disturbing that I would
be attracted to this woman.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I love that You're supposed to be into Hailey Mills,
and you're like get out of the way, Twins, I
won't see the mouth.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
There wasn't Hailey Mills at that moment.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
No, yeah, that's very nice. That's very nice. What is
objectively the greatest film of all time? Might not be
your favorite, but it is objectively the best. Oh, it's
actually easy.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I think it's the seventh Samurai. Oh great, you can
have that, I think. I mean, I'm a narrative filmmaker,
I guess, and it is the most beautiful example of storytelling,
but also of exposition, of characterization, of economy of action,
of it's a jewel. There's every bit of it is perfect.
(40:27):
And I think if I were to try to teach filmmaking,
if I were to say, look at one film to
learn everything there is to know, that's not a bad
place to start.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Excellent choice, excellent choice. What is the film that you
could or have? What's the mised ivan ivory? Again?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Well, they're always there's always that thing that happens, and
it's you know, you've turned on Sports Center and then
it's over and you don't want to go to bed
and you're just flipping through the channels and some movie
comes on and it's ten twenty five at night and
suddenly you realize it's now one O thought, because you've
just couldn't it off. And that's just it's still The
Godfather one and two.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Fair enough. I thought you were going to say good Fellas,
but you know, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It has it has its full I do love Good
Fellows of a movie, and I think about her a
lot for different reasons. But it's just there's something the
Godfather in the mythic quality of it and the familials.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I just I just I just love it. I don't
like to be negative, don't know about you, but very quickly,
what's the worst film you've ever seen? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I was, I was.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
That was a hard one because because I'm sure there
are those that are that are that are much worse.
And actually, the funny thing is that in two films
you said which one is the worst film and which
ones make you laugh the most? And the same actresses
in both of them. So I'm gonna say, and she's
a friend, and I think the worst movie I ever
saw might have been perfect?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
What's perfect?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
They work out? The aerobics film? Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Supposedly is about this Rolling Stone journalist play by John Travolta,
and I'd been a journalist for Rolling Stone for a while,
and and Jan Winner is in it, who's just having
this ridiculous sort of performance as himself, and and and
Aaron Latham wrote it wasn't a screenwriter, and Jim Bridges
is barely a director, and it's just and it is.
(42:18):
It is so embarrassing as a movie because it's trying
to make something out of a culture that didn't really
quite exist and and and try to celebrate It was
just it was just a movie that I just remember
being so visible as to just saying, why these are
all hugely talented people that are doing this silly thing,
you know. I mean, look, think of the great work
(42:40):
that Travolta has done. And then you get to j
Meely Curtis And that's the next thing you're gonna ask me,
is what made you laugh the most?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And it's possibly that movie.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I'm sorry when when Ken when the dogs die one
at a time, or when swallows the fish, I'm sorry,
it's just I pee my pants.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
I do That's a great maybe.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
And I love slapstick and I've never that's something I
would love to do. Never found the occasion to do it.
But oh do I love it?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
That's hot, and and and and the only one there was.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Other one of the scenes that occurred to me from
a different movie, and that's that it was Bowfinger when
I love Eddie Murphy's trying to cross the street. I'm
just maybe you have to live in LA to really appreciate.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It, advising that it's really impressive that secreence as well.
And yeah, and now you go do it again. Fuck yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
But anyway, you know, I had George a Mee Lee
and her work, and but and and and everybody was
doing their best.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
But boy, ed Zwick, you have been a joy. I
have loved this so much. However, oh you were you
were directing on set and you were shouting at an
access and I we're over to name the actor, but
I think we all know who it was. And you
you were shouting at them so much. And in the
middle of it, he suddenly were like, oh, what's that feeling?
(44:03):
And you had a stroke. It happened first and you
immediately fell to the ground. Everyone stood around went what
what what's happening? And the first day he says, I
think he's conflict a verse. He didn't like that they
were having argument. So he's playing dead and then they
check and they go, no, I think he is dead.
And then I'm walking around with a coffin. I've just
come for a set visit, you know what I'm like,
(44:25):
And I'm like, is edy around? I'd love to see
how he's getting on, and go I think he's just dying.
And they're like, what, everything's chaos? I go, is he's
dead on the set And we're in a very far
away location in the desert, and he's now melting into
the sand. Yeah he is. Oh God, help me, guys.
So we get some spades. We start digging you out
of the sand, but your skin is melted into things.
(44:46):
I'm having to get clumps of sand anyway. I get
all of you in the coffin, but there's more of
you than I was expecting, what with all the sand
and stuff. It's jammed in there. There's really only enough
room in this coffin for me to slip one DVD
into the side for you to take a cry to
the other side. And on the other side, it's maybe
night every night. What film are you taking to tell
your wife and children in heaven? When it is your
(45:07):
movie night. On the other side, mister Edswick guy, couldn't.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I have taken some home video footage and have it
transfer to DVD so I have? That? Is that cheating?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Let me take the rules. Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
There's a movie by a Taurus Scola called We All
Loved each Other So very Much and it's about a
group of friends and what their lives turn.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Out to be. And I don't know that would be
the one. I want to say that that sounds right
on my street. Ed's Wick, what's it? Pleasure? I've loved
this so much. Thank you so much for doing this.
Is there anything you would like to tell people to
look out for or to watch or to read your book? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Well, I mean it's I mean, obviously I'm out there
pimping my own book.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
I wrote the book for obviously a personal reason, because
it was it is memoir, and it's somebody said that
to write a memoir is to get to eat the
same wonderful meal twice, you know, and and and and
that's why I did it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
But I wrote it for I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
I think first, obviously, there are those people who liked
the work that I've done, and and and and been
generous about it. And I think they will like the
book because it is a bit of inside baseball to
see just so much more that was, you know, not there,
and and that they will inform the work that they
may have liked. But the other reason, frankly is very
young filmmaker. I think that there was there was a
(46:29):
book for me that was really important that that Bill
Goldman wrote called Adventures in the Screen Trade, And and
it was a wonderful book and important to me because
it was about his joy of the process, and he
was funny about the process, and he was honest about
the process, and I think it gave me at least
some comfort Over the years I go back and think
(46:50):
of what he was talking about and as I learned it,
And and I think that I wrote this book thinking
that there will be some young filmmakers some point who
will have taken something from what I wrote, which isn't
just about dishy inside Hollywood stories about movie stars, but
about certain values about why we make movies and what
(47:10):
they're really about and why they're important in our lives,
and that this might have touched him or her.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, you've got at the end of each chapter, you
have like ten lessons right, yeah, I looked at mye
of them then they're really really good. Oh good, it's excellent,
ex Wick. Thank you for your time. What's a pleasure.
I would like to continue reading your book, and I'm
guarding to you. Please do.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And I hope that sometimes we get to meet in
a way that's less virtual and more real.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Not recorded. I would like that very much. All right,
thank you, Ed. I have a wonderful death. Good day
to see you. Thank you. So that was episode two
hundred and seventy seven. Head over to the Patreon at
patreon dot com, Forward slash Back. I was tamed for
the Extra Secrets chat and videos with Ed. Go to
Apple Podcast. Give us a five star writing, but don't
(47:59):
writ about the pub us right about the film that
means the most to you and why it's a lovely
thing to read. People like it maybe more in cries
and we love it. Thank you very much. Thank you
everyone for listening. Thank you to Ed for being so
great and for giving me his time and for being
so open. Thanks to Scrubyus Pippin that destructs some Pieces Network.
Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia
and Will Ferrell's Big Money Plan Network for hosting it.
(48:20):
Thanks to Adam Richardson Photographics at least Alight Them for
the excellent photography. That is it for now. I see
you next week. We have a fucking banger of our guest.
In the meantime, have a lovely week and please, now
more than ever, be excellent to each other at Brody
(49:01):
Bastack Coors.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Outcast by backs, bass back, broad bass back Pors Outcast
by back, back back
Look out. It's only films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to Films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer,
(00:20):
a director, a PA announcement and I love films. As
the great Taylor Swift once said, anytime someone tells me
that I can't do something, I want to do it more.
My mum said I couldn't watch The Exorcist, so I
watched it in secret three times in one night. I'm
proper hardcore. I am wow cool Taylor Swift. Well done.
Every week I'm a special guest over. I tell them
(00:41):
they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life
through the films that meant the most of them. Previous
guests include Barry Jenkins, Sharon Stone, HIMESH Patel, and even
for their Plant was But this week it's the Brilliant writer, producer,
creator and director Ed Swick. Head over to the Patreon
at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you
get extra twenty minutes of chat with Ed, You get
(01:01):
a secret from him, you get us talking about beginnings
and endings. You also get the whole episode, uncut and
ad free check out all that extra stuff over at
patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Godstein Edswick. Edswick is
an incredible director who makes proper excellent narrative Hollywood films
like About Last Night, Glory, Courage, under Fire, Legends of
(01:23):
the Full Blood, Diamond, amongst many other excellent films in
very different genres. He also co created the hugely influential
and groundbreaking TV show thirty Something, which is arguably one
of the most influential TV shows of all time. He's
basically a low key legend. He's also written a brand
new book which is a part memoir, part films called
All Excellent, called Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, and it's
(01:46):
bloody excellent. You should all read it. I'd never met
ed before, but we did this on Zoom a couple
of weeks ago. He was so brilliant. We went deep.
He was very open about so many things. I think
this is one of my old time favorites, and I
think you're going to love it. That is it for now.
I very much hope you enjoy episode two hundred and
seventy seven of Films to Be Buried with Hello and
(02:17):
welcome to Films to Be buried with It is I
Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a writer,
a creator, a producer, a showrunner, an award winner, an
Oscar winner, a legend of the full, a hero of
the many, and a glorious man in his thirties and above.
(02:40):
He's here. I can't believe it. You can't believe it.
Everything he's made is very, very good. It's him, it's
the man. He's also now a writer of a book.
Please welcome to the show. He's finally here. It's Edswick. Hello,
ed Can we stop now? Yeah, we can do that.
How are you? What's a pleasure to have you on
(03:02):
the podcast? And you and Edswick? You're brilliant. You're brilliant.
I was so excited you wanted to do this. You're
I was thinking about you. I think you are one
of those filmmakers that, perhaps because you've made so many
excellent films, but you've also made so many excellent films
in very different genres. I think it's that weird thing
where I don't think you get talked enough about as
(03:25):
an aute because you're not making the same film. There
isn't a massive theme other than I'd say, but they're
all very good and all very emotional. You do very
good stuff. Anyway. Congratulations, I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I listen, I have no complaints. Let's start there. I
think it's I've always wanted to be a bit of
a moving target, you know. I just I think that
was part of it. But also I think my training.
I actually was trained in the repertory theater, and that's
you know, so that one day we would be doing
Strimberg and the next day we would be doing you know,
(04:00):
Sam Shephard. One day it would be Shakespeare, in the
next day would be some ridiculous knock about you know, farce.
And and and I love and I I just always
I was cotton to things that that challenged me. And
I like being a little bit uncomfortable with trying new things.
And I think if if you do the same thing twice,
(04:20):
the second time you do it and the third time
you do it, it's inevitably going to be you're going
to be imitating yourself in some way. And and and
the originality is that I prize a lot.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's interesting. But you also made like a Semino TV
show that is something that goes on for a long time.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, yeah, you're right. And you know this as well
as I do that that you know that the TV
show is like it's a little bit more like Scrimshaw.
It's it's like lapidary. You're in very subtle movements. You're
doing variations on a theme, and so you're you're you're
expanding the universe bit by bit and it grows and
it grows, but finally the increments are smaller. Yeah, and
(05:00):
so it's a very different a very different focus. I
think obviously when I've done movies, a lot of them
have been written large in some way, and this is
much more about, you know, very nuanced behavior and themes.
I do believe that you're doing the same thing that
you're trying to write things that are epic, even if
it's epic Kale, you know, the epic lives that you
(05:22):
do on a TELEVI show, they accrue to that.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yes, thirty something. I was very young when that something
was on, but my parents watched it, so I saw
it Like, in hindsight, I'm like that was way ahead
of its time, right, that was like, well why was there? Yeah,
you changed things.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think what you have to understand about that moment,
particularly television, particularly in America, but I think in England too,
that everybody was either a doctor or a lawyer or
a policeman, and everything was a franchise, and what was
most important was the plot, and the characters revolved around
that plot, but they were You were not serving the
(06:02):
characters really as much as you were serving that were
current plot of the crime is solved, or the the saved,
or whatever, the doctor, the medical crisis has averted, whatever
it is, that that was paramount. And I had a wonderful,
wonderful teacher who once said to me, actually it was
Sidney Pollack who said to me, the plot is the
(06:25):
meat that the burglar throws the dogs as he's climbing
over the wall to get the jewels. Which are the characters.
And and that's what we realized is that there had
been in film already a couple of movies that were
generationally important. There had been there had been Larry Kasten's
movie with a Big Show, and there had been John
(06:45):
Sales movie The Trial of the Scacca Seven, and they
were trying to look at a group of people just
for what their issues were in their lives. But nobody
had done it in television. And what we did was
to say, all right, there are these people and what
they face is worthy of examination, like that the examined
(07:06):
life is worth examining. And what's funny now, of course,
is that every TV show seems to take that as
the premise and just find an excuse to put a
different group of people together. Yeah that's what that's, you know,
And and the genre things and the franchise things seem
to have faded into the background, and there are a
hundred different ways that they have found to do a
(07:28):
version of I think what we were trying to do.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I agree. I agree. I do think the thing with
TV that maybe film can't do, because I you know,
I really really love film. But weirdly, someone a writer
I'm working with is watching ear for the first time
and they're like pacing through it and they're watching with it.
And I watched The Weekly and loved it when I
was young. And something I realized, like in hindsight talking
(07:52):
to her because she's experiencing it for the first time,
is that Mark Green, the character in the when he died,
I had spent nine years with him. Yes, yeah, like
I grieve Mark Green like he was family. I still
grieve him. You know because of the sheer amount of
time I spent with him, Like it's an amazing thing.
(08:14):
Where you go, I saw his life.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
My wife's mother was not a particularly sophisticated woman, but
she was very involved with her television. When everyone would
go to she would watch television. And I remember once
she was talking about her TV friends.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Right, Yeah, if they lived with her in the house
and they would meet and have a beer and eat
some pretzels, and they were her that was part of
her family.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, it's it's quite something anyway. You So you have
written a book which I have not sent sent yesterday,
and I'm really annoyed about it because I've read as
much as I can in the space of time I
have and it's really really exciting and interesting, but I
haven't got to I've only read a few chapters and
I love it, but I was curious about sort of
(09:02):
looking back over everything. I really like in your introduction
you say something like you tell us, but you say,
I really want to tell the truth, but I am
a storyteller and I can't help. And it's also been
this many years, so who knows. But I'm doing my best,
and I think that that's a really interesting way of
putting it. But what I'm curious with all the films
you've done, they are so different. You know, you have
(09:23):
a kind of sex comedy, you have a war movie,
you have adventure, you have and they're all in different
countries and different sort of environments. And I was curious, like,
is any of it planned? Or is it like the
thing that came to you in that moment and was
the most together was the next project? Like what takes you?
(09:44):
What makes you go I want to do Blood Diamond?
Like what sparked that as your next film? For example?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I mean, I think my knowledge about life is very
broad and very shallow. I am promiscuous in my interest
and in my reading, but I am easily sort of
diverted in my attention from one things to the other.
And that's finally served me because it's when I then
(10:13):
fix on something, when it strikes me as to have
within it the stuff of drama, the shape of drama,
the stakes of drama or comedy, and if it sort
of raises the hair on my arms in this kind
of galvanic skin response and something happens, if it can
happen to me, can I elicit that? Then in an audience.
(10:37):
I have to trust that my instincts, as just as
an audience, are acute. But it's also trying to be
aware of what might lie beneath. If you mind this thing,
what else can it also be about? Not only what
it's about, because inevitably, when you then decide what a
movie's going to be, you're digging into your own psyche.
(10:57):
You're touching those old fascinations or fetishes or fears that
drive you, and you inevitably invest that in a character
or in a relationship or whatever. So it is the
thing that you find or that strikes you, or it's
your response to it that then leads you even someplace else.
I mean, and it's worked so many different ways. There
(11:19):
are things that have taken me years and years because
they've been personal obsessions forever, and that I've just banged
away at, whether at screenplays or at financiers or at
actors or somebody to join me in this ridiculous pursuit,
you know. And that's just the kind of cussed grit
and determination to get these things on. And then they
(11:43):
are the things that just sort of rise up. I mean,
I'll give you one for instance, and I don't know
if you know the movie or not. There's a movie
I made called Defiance, which was about the part of
the Jewish partisans in the woods of Belarus during World
War Two who lived in this winter for three years
and ended up vibing, saving thousands of people, but fought
the Germans and all. But we wrote a draft of
(12:06):
it ten years before we made the movie, and every
year I say, what is this and why doesn't it work?
And why doesn't it work? And then one day I
was snowshoeing in Colorado and my binding broke and it
was getting dark. There was no danger really of dying,
but some fear took hold of me, and my hands
began to feel really frozen, and it hurt as I
(12:26):
tried to work on the binding, And suddenly I realized
that I had written a kind of pageant, a kind
of history of this thing, when indeed the key was
to write something visceral and intimate and small. And I
went back and threw it all out and did it
all again. But it took ten years, now, did it?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And then?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
But when I wrote, I fucking rewrote it in ten days.
Now the question is did that take.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Me ten years?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
To write or did it take me ten days to
write ten years?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It took you ten years? Because I believe these things
have that time, and it was it. I really believe.
Sometimes you have an idea and it isn't read, It
isn't the time for it yet, but it will. It's
time will come right, and that you needed that. It's
so fascinating. I love that story.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know it happens in life too. I mean,
when are you ready to have a family?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
When?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Why do you fall in love when you do? Was
it the death of a parent that then had to
happen before you were freed to look at life in
a different way? I mean, all these things, were you sick?
Did somebody?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
All of that just has this effect on you as
a as an artist too.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
May I ask what was the thing that made you
ready to have a family?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
If you have the interviewer strikes.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You, broughte it up. I did you just see the
You don't have to answer it, Oh.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
No, I will. No. I think that I was about
thirty and within a very very short time I fell
in love. Really for the time that the important one,
and that has lasted very shortly thereafter my mother was
killed in a car accident.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh Jesus, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Within the same weeks, wow, very short time. Thereafter, we
had our first child, and suddenly I, as this callow,
live figure, was confronted with some real exigencies of life
and it changed everything. I mean, I had been a
(14:28):
mimic and a not not I've been glib, and I
had a certain facility, but I had no depth and
no heart and nothing that I was willing to confront
in my writing, which then life forced me to confront.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Wow. Wow, that's fucking intense. And did you trust me?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It was fucking intense?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did you? Wow? Man? I have many questions about it.
I assume that was a real kind of well wind
of trauma and everything. And was that moment's way you
were like, how is this my life? Suddenly? Like it's
such a change, everything completely different.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's exactly it. And to say, oh, by the way,
that's what thirty something came out of, came out of
literally saying all right, these moments in life are worthy
of thinking about and recognizing as pivots or as passages
you or a crucial that you have to go through.
And when life starts coming at you really fast and
(15:27):
how do how do you react? And that has to
do with success, It has to do with, you know,
with failure. It has to do so many different things
which somehow all arrived simultaneously. I think in a lot
of lives it did for me. Yes, I actually wrote
a chapter in the book which I called it the
Year of Loving Dangerously.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Right. Wow, that's so interesting. And so one question that's
far less heavy is that if your brain works out this,
you're interested in this, you're interested in this, you you
get drawn to new ideas stories when you're making a
when you're actually making a film, which is often a
year minimum pre production to everything. When you're in it,
(16:07):
are you just fully in it or still within that
process that you like at the same time. That's an
interesting story. I'd like to do that sometime, you know
what I mean? Do you stay focused on the one
thing or does your brain still go.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It's I mean, that's that's a really good question because
I think I think it's it's actually a relief to
me to have a thing to focus.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
On, right right, I think I think.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
It My mind gets a little more still when I can,
in fact focus, I'm not just being distracted in some way.
I'm very capable of that, and I and it it
becomes obsessive, you know, in the way that you have
to be. But I find that pleasurable and also have
this theory that if it can interest me for two years,
(16:48):
that it's possibly going to be able to interest people
in the theater for two hours.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah. Great. One other questions that you've worked with everyone
in terms of access you've worked with. You look at
your list of films, the biggest, you've worked with, the
A List, everyone on the A List, You have worked
with all the big big stars. Is your experience that
the way to work with actors is different with every
(17:13):
single actor. There's no kind of unifying thing or is
there a thing that you feel you're good at with them?
Like how would you describe by that?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
In some way? That is probably the secondary theme in
the whole book, because that is that has been the challenge,
and each challenge is different and the same. I mean,
if I would say there are lessons learned, there are several.
One certainly is to not try to bullshit or handle
(17:43):
a movie star because their detectors for that kind of
crap are so so fine. They've along been sucked up
to and being coddled and fluffed and whatever that they're
aware of that immediately, and so I've tried to as
(18:04):
best I can to be honest. At the same time,
they want to be coggled and fluffed up and handled
and complimented and made and all those things, because that's
their due. It's become their comfort zone and and their
and everything else. And so it's a very interesting dance
between those two polls and and and and it has
(18:28):
to do a little bit, I'm sure in England. I mean,
I don't know if you've worked have you worked with
anyone who is titled or you know, or you know,
like I.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Said, like I said, yeah, you know, I don't think
I've worked.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, it's a very interesting and it's a very it's
it's actually particularly particular English phenomenon where you know, oh,
just call me by my first name. Oh, it's nothing.
But if you dare even for a moment, forget what
that means, uh, you do at your own peril.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So that's so that's part of it, I say.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
But another part of it is you really have to
understand that everybody began at the same moment, particularly actors
that They are brave, beautiful and magical, terrified creatures who
came from a place at a very early moment and
never totally are able to divest themselves of those things
that brought them to this dance, and that has to
(19:21):
be understood, and that they are. I think of it
sometimes as a they're out on a spacewalk, you know,
on a tether, out there at zero gravity, floating around,
and you're in the capsule drinking a cappuccino, you know,
while they're out there at risk and exposed utterly, and
be mindful of that, I think, and you have to
respect that and admire it. The thing I think is
(19:45):
there's a temptation, because some actors don't have the same language,
because they don't necessarily approach things from an intellectual level.
There's a temptation sometime to think of them to be
a little bit patronizing. And then you then discuss that
their instincts about what a scene is, what a theme is,
what a moment is, far exceed yours or certainly certainly
(20:08):
our rival to your role as a director. And I
cannot tell you the number of times that an actor
has revealed to me what I was doing when I
was writing something utterly unaware of what I was writing
or why I was writing it. And yet they see it,
and they say by saying I can act that I
(20:28):
don't need that. That's too clear, That's not clear enough.
I mean, you know their examination comes from a place
that is really meaningful. And I mean I think people
have become movie stars for several reasons, one of which
is just the play of shadow and light on a
face and how it works and what the camera see
is of course, but there's an inner life that the
(20:50):
camera also is interested in and it wants to see,
wants to get inside of. And I think you feel
it as a director. That's why you want to be
with him. And you never lose that fanboy reason that
you wanted to be in the movies and a what
a movie star meant and what you felt about them.
And it's your job to try to perpetuate that illusion
(21:13):
or that feeling to the rest of the audience. If
you lose it, how can you then carry it on
or be the purveyor of it? And only one more thing.
I'm sorry, I'm going on here.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I love this sign so very much, you can please
all right.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Well, I would say that there is something a little
a little spiritual I think, or a little woo woo
in an emotional exchange that happens between a director and
an actor. I think that you don't always talk about it,
but I think it's communicated. I think that how I
feel about a scene is somehow communicated in the way
(21:49):
that I step out from behind that camera or stand
next to them, or describe something or that if there's
a moment or even when you're having dinner together or
you've done research together or whatever, it is that something
is taken, is there's something that they unknow what you're
going for. It's not like you're going to go all
the way into the emotional place that they're going to. Yeah,
(22:11):
but they know that that's where you want them to
go because they feel it inside you.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I love it. I agree, and I love it, and
I think I totally believe in that of it. I
haven't done much directing, but I did. In fact, I
made it shot many many years ago, and in the
shot it was all you could hear their thoughts. So
there was no dialogue, it was all their thoughts. It
was it was like the aftermath of a one night stand.
They've had sex, and then it's what they're thinking is
(22:36):
they're lying in the bed and this kind of awkward
interchange of them trying to communicate anyway. So I was
filming them doing nothing and thinking, and I knew just
watching their eyes when they were thinking it and when
they weren't. And I remember, and I remember just thinking,
that's interesting. There was this actor and she we did
a take, and we did it a couple of times,
(22:57):
and then one time I said, you weren't. You weren't
thinking it? And she was like, how did you know that?
Because I'm reading their eyes. I can read it, you know,
when you feel it and when you're not. Yeah, I
find it interesting. But also I heard a story from
a I think it was a friend of mine who
was like, maybe they were even a background artist on
a on a set that Robert de Niro was on.
And I don't remember the film, I know nothing, no
other details about it, but what they observed was that
(23:20):
the director was intimidated, so intimidated by Robert DeNiro that
they never really spoke to him. So he'd do a
take and he'd called cut, and then Robersnier woul kind
of stand on his own and my friend felt and
this is all you know, projection, but felt like he
wanted notes, he wanted to be involved, like he's still
an actor, he wants to work, he wants but the
director was kind of so, you know, you're you know best,
(23:42):
I won't say anything, and I think that he felt like, no,
talk to me. I want I'm still an actor, I
want to work.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I mean, it's it's it sounds like a little bit oversimplified,
but I think it's not a bad axiom to think
about treating movie stars as actors and treating actors as
movie stars.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Oh hey, doctor Dosie.
So many questions. But there's a thing I forgot to
tell you that I should have told you earlier, and
it's meant to.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Which is I think the fact that I'm dead.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You're dead? Oh I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Oh no, I read I got your letter.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I know.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Oh you did die.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Oh. I thought I'm trying to tell you I'm speaking
to you from the beyond, from the beyond, from the
great What he relaxed about it?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Okay? Cool? Oh thank god. I thought I thought that
was gonna be really awkward. Uh, how did you die?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Oh? I think I had a stroke while on set,
yelling at an actor for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Wow, okay, how far into the shop were you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
It always feels like you're nowhere, you know, if you
get always get happy, and there's still there's still another
halfway to go. No, I mean, I think I think
I died in harness whatever wherever it was it was,
you know, in some distant location, just trying to know
that I didn't have enough sleep and hadn't drunk enough
water and hadn't sat down and you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Heartbreaking, But I guess you died doing something you loved,
chatting at that. Yeah, you do? You worry about death?
Some do you worry about? Yeah? I do?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And I and I was. I was once very very sick.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Am.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I ended up having chemotherapy and had that very vivid,
very real encounter with all those thoughts. So yeah, I've been.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Through that, my God, And how do you feel now?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
What do you think? Are you any more at peace
with it? Do you feel? What do you think happens
when you die?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
You've just asked me six questions in one am I,
how did it affect me? Am? I? What happens when
you die? And I'll just give you. I'll give you
a two sentenced answer to that one. Is that what
you want.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
As long as you need?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
I mean, you know, Look, everything changes your life. You know,
falling in love changes your life, Having children changes your life.
Success changes your life. Failure and confronting illness changes your
life too. It doesn't define me, but it absolutely has
been taken in as part of my worldview. And it's
always there.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yes, And do you do you believe there's enough to life? No? Well,
I got news for you. There is.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, it's obviously there is, because I'm now speaking to you.
Yet I've been wrong before. I was wrong in the seventies.
Once you know, it's won't be the first.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Time, for the second time in your life, you are wrong.
There is a heaven and it's filled with your favorite thing.
What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
God? Oh, I'm tempted to say work, but I think
i'd better say my wife and children.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Okay, it's filled with your wife and children. Who as
you walk into having a guy, we had you you
said work you got no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.
And they're very happy to see everyone's happy to see
you and having their own date and they want to
talk to you about your life, but they want to
talk to you about your life through film. And the
first thing I ask, what's the first film you remember
(27:08):
seeing it? Sweet?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Well, I mean, I'm sure that it was like a
you know, a road Runner cartoon or or some sort
of a you know, a Looney Tunes cartoon, because I
loved them. But I think the film that I remember.
And by the way, these were great, great, great questions
because they did lead me to think about a lot
of things that I may not have ever thought about,
one of which I put in the damn book, which
we'll get to, I'm sure. But my father used to
(27:32):
take me to the movies, and I remember seeing a
movie called The Buccaneer. It was with Yule Brinner and
and Charlton Heston, and it was a it was a
great historical story about Jean Lafitte and the Battle of
New Orleans, and I vividly remember sitting in the theater.
I remember how the theater smelled, and I remember, you
know what it was, and I think maybe maybe he
(27:53):
took me out of school to go see it or something,
but it was it was one of those very memorable experiences.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Did you did you think I know I want to
be in on this.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
No, but I would play with my toy soldiers.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I mean it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
It was of a very interesting fascination with history and
with battle and heroism and all of that.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So yes, instant. What about being scared? What is the
film that scared you the most? And do you like
being scared?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Well, I don't like being scared.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
You haven't horror. It's one of the few things like that.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think it's the one thing I haven't done because
it scares the ship out of me, and I tend
not to watch them as much as as others do.
I mean, I'm not I'm not a horror you know, Maven.
I remember and I actually looked this up. I was
five when The Wizard of Oz aired on television and
I remember the flying monkeys and boy that that really
(28:50):
scared me. You know, dump the dump duh. It was
just really terrifying. And that's that that scarred me, I think.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And that was the last scary film. Yeah, that was it.
That's it. What about crying? You're in a mice now, man?
Do you like crying? Is there? What's the film that
made you cry? The mice?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think it was old yeller.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Fuck.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Oh yes, I was nice, thank you, I was fought.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Oh my god, Jesus five was a big year. You
had flying monkeys and a dead dog. See I was, I.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Was, I was opening up to the world. But but
it was I mean, I I loved my dog, and
the idea of losing a dog was so thick. But
the catharsis of crying in a movie is very important
to me because I know that that's one measure way
by which I've measured a lot of my films, and
that it's better than applause, the fact that you've reached
(29:46):
an audience and you've elicited that from them, that if
you're standing in the back of the theater and you
start hearing that that sniffling thing, and like, oh, I'm
them now, and you know, and that's what it is,
what you want, Because I do think that's one of
the reasons we go to the movies. We go to
the movies to cathart because it's hard for life to
do that, and it's sometimes very hard to get past
(30:09):
your own defenses in a relationship or in public, but
in private, in the dark, you can do that. And
you and and we're we're weeping for our those characters,
but we're weeping for ourselves, weeping for our own griefs.
We we touch places that are so important to get out.
And I think that's absolutely one of the reasons that
(30:29):
I that I make movies is to try to reach
that place, you know in it.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I like that lot. Yeah. I mean, if you're not
making a comedy, any other sounds you can get is
it's sniffing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, the comedy. The comedy is it's not easy. I mean,
obviously comedy is so fucking hard. But I can know
if I'm gonna be in the like in the lobby
and the time of the movement, it's like what one, two, bang,
and then you know the laugh is coming. And if
you you know, it's not that you're technical and how
you've done it, but once you see how it works,
(31:04):
it's the same way. You know how to play that.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, what is a film that you love unconditionally? It
is not, but you love this was this was hard.
This is a little bit harder. But I actually thought
of one. There's a movie that Sandy Bullock did called Miscongeniality.
That's a great movie. It's it's a great, great movie.
Michael Caine, it's amazing in it.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
But Sandy Bullock, Sandy Bullock in that moment, she is
in her glory. It is such a generous, self abnegating,
just goofy wonderful performance that it kills me.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
But I cannot tell you a number of times when I've
tried to talk about that movie among a certain group
of very snobby filmmakers and they give me this look,
say the fuck.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
You know, it's a great movie. Great movie, Okay. On
the other end of the scale, a film that you
still love, you loved very much, but you voiced it
recently and you do not like it no more.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Uh, well, you know you what happens when you have
kids they get to a certain age. You want to
show them movies that were important to you, and you
really want them to love it, and then sometimes they
just look at you like like what the fuck. There
was a movie that used to play in Cambridge at
the Arsonovel Theater at midnight called The King of Hearts,
which is a Philippe de Brooke a movie. It's it's
it's Alm Bates and Genevieve Boujould and it's this man
(32:27):
in World War One, he gets put into an asylum,
and the premise is that, oh, well, really, the crazy
people are outside fighting and the same people are in
the asylum, which, somehow, when you're really high and you're
eighteen years old, absolutely solves all the problems in the world.
And I remember showing it to.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
My son, who looks at me.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, the the you know, the
crazy people are in the are outside.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
It's like it was. It was.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
My daughter sometimes used to call the Duh channel you.
But I will also admit that I watched The Searchers
recently again and I've seen it times, and that is
harold it to be maybe one of the great movies.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Of all time.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But it's also full of some really ridiculous stuff. Some
of the songs and some of those moments are just
as corny as corny can possibly be. And I think
it fell a little bit down from my perch at
that moment.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Do you look back at your films, like, do you
watch films from twenty years ago that you've made or
do you not?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, no, I'd never done I never did that, and
I did it for this book, and it was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
How often we like I fucking love it. How often
did you remember? I always wanted this bit I didn't
get to do, like nobody do that.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Nobody gives a harsher review of their own work than
a director. I think when you look at it for
so long, first of all, you get so sick of
it because you've gone through the post production process and
the previews and all of that. But no you see
the clunky exposition, or a moment that didn't quite work
as you wished, or a camera move that was awkward,
or the one hundred of those things. But I think
(33:59):
the reason I wrote the book is because what I
did look at were those people with whom I was
so close, and the intimacy and the deep relationships and
the collaborations and how important we were to each other,
and how I've not ever seen some of them again
and may never see some of them again. What did
that mean to have had that kind of intensity and
(34:21):
intimacy and then to have it be gone? And so
I really was thinking about so many of the relationships
with the actors, but also you know, with the director
of photography, with a costumer, with you know, the man
who drove me to work every day, and I learned
about his family, children and that this was the sum
of a life. And I was looking at the sum
of my life, at these relationships, and it led me
(34:43):
into very interesting places thinking about what I chose to
do and why and what this kind of work means
to all of us and who we are and why
we do it. And so the answer is yes, I
did look back at it, and it was very confrontive.
I think finally important, but but it was it was unexpected.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
How often did you watch saying that you were like,
this is amazing. I don't really remember this, like this
is such a good Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I look at things and saying who did that?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, you know, I mean the ambition of some of it,
or the audacity of some of it. How dare I.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That I could do that?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Because when some of it I was able to pull off,
and I go, what led you to possibly think that
you could do this? You know, this movie on on
three continents with thousands of extras, and you know you
know all this. Oh no, that that also was a takeaway.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
That's great? What is the film that means the mice
to you? It might not be a good film, but
the experience you had around seeing it will always make
it special to you. Edswick.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I was thinking about this. I mean, I don't know it.
There's a question you asked me later about about what
changed your life in some way. It wouldn't be this,
but but I remember seeing zephyrrelli is Romeo and Juliet
with my girlfriend at sixteen, and I was driving for
the first time and we saw that movie and we
went back to her basement and it was significant, and
(36:13):
and later even they released an album of that movie
with you know that that's from it. But I remember
her turning to me as were des Abi in the
basement in flagrante or whatever, and saying to me, listen, listen, listen, listen,
(36:33):
I can hear their hearts beating. Well, clearly I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Did you lose your opportunity to write Virgiliot? Or was
this waylight? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I think that was That was probably the precipitating event.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, I'm so happy for you. Thank you for that.
I mean, I need to understand what is the film
you must relate to, you know, I was.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Thinking about the eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I
was thinking about memory and its role in my life
and the fragmentation of it and yet my fascination with
it sadness and loss but also romance and joy that
that movie, to me, it captures something of the process
(37:26):
of mind that is so beautiful and so touching. So
there's one that would be that one.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I think that film I want to stay again the
other day for something. It's fucking phenomenal. And it also
is like I love the sort of message that like
they're going to do it again, Like you can't.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
You have to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You have to go through what you have to go for,
you can't if you're raise it, you're going to do
it again.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah. Well, there's there's a there's an expression from the
from the seats seats from Latin called a'mor faci, which
is to love fate and to own those things that
have happened to you and to know that they are
your creation and and and that you have to give
yourself over to them and love them. And I think
that movie is about that too.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, I love it. Edwick, what's the sexiest film you've
ever seen?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Well, I was thinking of I had a thing for
Isabella Johnny when I was growing up. You're right in
the human and and I think it might have been
Queen Margot, you know that blood and sex and death
and sex and and just that it was just it
(38:37):
was like it was opera to some degree, but so
passionate and so turbulent, and and she was so just delectable.
And then I just you know, I met her once
and I was just incapable of speech.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
That's nice. There's a sub category. I'm sure you know
this traveling bow and is worrying why ones a filmy
found arousing?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
You went, yeah, it's a great well, but mine is
so I mean, you would think that that that that
that question is to say that as a grown man,
that I've looked at, you know, a fourteen year old
girl and and and had and had a heart on.
But in fact, what I remember is something opposite, which
is I remember seeing the parent Trap when I was
(39:23):
a little boy, and seeing Marino Hara in these these
the tight sweaters and and and her just just bluptious, beauty, radiant,
and and and she probably was my mother's age. And
it was really really really just disturbing that I would
be attracted to this woman.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I love that You're supposed to be into Hailey Mills,
and you're like get out of the way, Twins, I
won't see the mouth.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
There wasn't Hailey Mills at that moment.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
No, yeah, that's very nice. That's very nice. What is
objectively the greatest film of all time? Might not be
your favorite, but it is objectively the best. Oh, it's
actually easy.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I think it's the seventh Samurai. Oh great, you can
have that, I think. I mean, I'm a narrative filmmaker,
I guess, and it is the most beautiful example of storytelling,
but also of exposition, of characterization, of economy of action,
of it's a jewel. There's every bit of it is perfect.
(40:27):
And I think if I were to try to teach filmmaking,
if I were to say, look at one film to
learn everything there is to know, that's not a bad
place to start.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Excellent choice, excellent choice. What is the film that you
could or have? What's the mised ivan ivory? Again?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Well, they're always there's always that thing that happens, and
it's you know, you've turned on Sports Center and then
it's over and you don't want to go to bed
and you're just flipping through the channels and some movie
comes on and it's ten twenty five at night and
suddenly you realize it's now one O thought, because you've
just couldn't it off. And that's just it's still The
Godfather one and two.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Fair enough. I thought you were going to say good Fellas,
but you know, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It has it has its full I do love Good
Fellows of a movie, and I think about her a
lot for different reasons. But it's just there's something the
Godfather in the mythic quality of it and the familials.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I just I just I just love it. I don't
like to be negative, don't know about you, but very quickly,
what's the worst film you've ever seen? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I was, I was.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
That was a hard one because because I'm sure there
are those that are that are that are much worse.
And actually, the funny thing is that in two films
you said which one is the worst film and which
ones make you laugh the most? And the same actresses
in both of them. So I'm gonna say, and she's
a friend, and I think the worst movie I ever
saw might have been perfect?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
What's perfect?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
They work out? The aerobics film? Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Supposedly is about this Rolling Stone journalist play by John Travolta,
and I'd been a journalist for Rolling Stone for a while,
and and Jan Winner is in it, who's just having
this ridiculous sort of performance as himself, and and and
Aaron Latham wrote it wasn't a screenwriter, and Jim Bridges
is barely a director, and it's just and it is.
(42:18):
It is so embarrassing as a movie because it's trying
to make something out of a culture that didn't really
quite exist and and and try to celebrate It was
just it was just a movie that I just remember
being so visible as to just saying, why these are
all hugely talented people that are doing this silly thing,
you know. I mean, look, think of the great work
(42:40):
that Travolta has done. And then you get to j
Meely Curtis And that's the next thing you're gonna ask me,
is what made you laugh the most?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And it's possibly that movie.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I'm sorry when when Ken when the dogs die one
at a time, or when swallows the fish, I'm sorry,
it's just I pee my pants.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
I do That's a great maybe.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
And I love slapstick and I've never that's something I
would love to do. Never found the occasion to do it.
But oh do I love it?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
That's hot, and and and and the only one there was.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Other one of the scenes that occurred to me from
a different movie, and that's that it was Bowfinger when
I love Eddie Murphy's trying to cross the street. I'm
just maybe you have to live in LA to really appreciate.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It, advising that it's really impressive that secreence as well.
And yeah, and now you go do it again. Fuck yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
But anyway, you know, I had George a Mee Lee
and her work, and but and and and everybody was
doing their best.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
But boy, ed Zwick, you have been a joy. I
have loved this so much. However, oh you were you
were directing on set and you were shouting at an
access and I we're over to name the actor, but
I think we all know who it was. And you
you were shouting at them so much. And in the
middle of it, he suddenly were like, oh, what's that feeling?
(44:03):
And you had a stroke. It happened first and you
immediately fell to the ground. Everyone stood around went what
what what's happening? And the first day he says, I
think he's conflict a verse. He didn't like that they
were having argument. So he's playing dead and then they
check and they go, no, I think he is dead.
And then I'm walking around with a coffin. I've just
come for a set visit, you know what I'm like,
(44:25):
And I'm like, is edy around? I'd love to see
how he's getting on, and go I think he's just dying.
And they're like, what, everything's chaos? I go, is he's
dead on the set And we're in a very far
away location in the desert, and he's now melting into
the sand. Yeah he is. Oh God, help me, guys.
So we get some spades. We start digging you out
of the sand, but your skin is melted into things.
(44:46):
I'm having to get clumps of sand anyway. I get
all of you in the coffin, but there's more of
you than I was expecting, what with all the sand
and stuff. It's jammed in there. There's really only enough
room in this coffin for me to slip one DVD
into the side for you to take a cry to
the other side. And on the other side, it's maybe
night every night. What film are you taking to tell
your wife and children in heaven? When it is your
(45:07):
movie night. On the other side, mister Edswick guy, couldn't.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I have taken some home video footage and have it
transfer to DVD so I have? That? Is that cheating?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Let me take the rules. Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
There's a movie by a Taurus Scola called We All
Loved each Other So very Much and it's about a
group of friends and what their lives turn.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Out to be. And I don't know that would be
the one. I want to say that that sounds right
on my street. Ed's Wick, what's it? Pleasure? I've loved
this so much. Thank you so much for doing this.
Is there anything you would like to tell people to
look out for or to watch or to read your book? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Well, I mean it's I mean, obviously I'm out there
pimping my own book.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
I wrote the book for obviously a personal reason, because
it was it is memoir, and it's somebody said that
to write a memoir is to get to eat the
same wonderful meal twice, you know, and and and and
that's why I did it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
But I wrote it for I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
I think first, obviously, there are those people who liked
the work that I've done, and and and and been
generous about it. And I think they will like the
book because it is a bit of inside baseball to
see just so much more that was, you know, not there,
and and that they will inform the work that they
may have liked. But the other reason, frankly is very
young filmmaker. I think that there was there was a
(46:29):
book for me that was really important that that Bill
Goldman wrote called Adventures in the Screen Trade, And and
it was a wonderful book and important to me because
it was about his joy of the process, and he
was funny about the process, and he was honest about
the process, and I think it gave me at least
some comfort Over the years I go back and think
(46:50):
of what he was talking about and as I learned it,
And and I think that I wrote this book thinking
that there will be some young filmmakers some point who
will have taken something from what I wrote, which isn't
just about dishy inside Hollywood stories about movie stars, but
about certain values about why we make movies and what
(47:10):
they're really about and why they're important in our lives,
and that this might have touched him or her.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, you've got at the end of each chapter, you
have like ten lessons right, yeah, I looked at mye
of them then they're really really good. Oh good, it's excellent,
ex Wick. Thank you for your time. What's a pleasure.
I would like to continue reading your book, and I'm
guarding to you. Please do.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And I hope that sometimes we get to meet in
a way that's less virtual and more real.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Not recorded. I would like that very much. All right,
thank you, Ed. I have a wonderful death. Good day
to see you. Thank you. So that was episode two
hundred and seventy seven. Head over to the Patreon at
patreon dot com, Forward slash Back. I was tamed for
the Extra Secrets chat and videos with Ed. Go to
Apple Podcast. Give us a five star writing, but don't
(47:59):
writ about the pub us right about the film that
means the most to you and why it's a lovely
thing to read. People like it maybe more in cries
and we love it. Thank you very much. Thank you
everyone for listening. Thank you to Ed for being so
great and for giving me his time and for being
so open. Thanks to Scrubyus Pippin that destructs some Pieces Network.
Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia
and Will Ferrell's Big Money Plan Network for hosting it.
(48:20):
Thanks to Adam Richardson Photographics at least Alight Them for
the excellent photography. That is it for now. I see
you next week. We have a fucking banger of our guest.
In the meantime, have a lovely week and please, now
more than ever, be excellent to each other at Brody
(49:01):
Bastack Coors.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Outcast by backs, bass back, broad bass back Pors Outcast
by back, back back
Host
Brett Goldstein
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