January 14, 2025 • 24 mins
Description:
Aaron is writing an A24 book. There is a Kickstarter campaign that is in progress right now, and this is the first episode of the accompanying podcast. This episode will appear in all podcast player apps soon, and is always available here on the website and on our YouTube channel. We are very excited about the book and looking forward to your support!
Links:
Follow Us:
Cinejourneys - YouTube Channel | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Instagram | Letterboxd | BlueSky | Threads
Jill Blake - BlueSky
Aaron West - BlueSky | Letterboxd
Aaron is writing an A24 book. There is a Kickstarter campaign that is in progress right now, and this is the first episode of the accompanying podcast. This episode will appear in all podcast player apps soon, and is always available here on the website and on our YouTube channel. We are very excited about the book and looking forward to your support!
Links:
Follow Us:
Cinejourneys - YouTube Channel | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Instagram | Letterboxd | BlueSky | Threads
Jill Blake - BlueSky
Aaron West - BlueSky | Letterboxd
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the A
twenty four new Wave podcast. So my name is Aaron
West and this is the accompaniment podcast to my book.
(00:20):
Maybe I should say the accompanying. I don't know. We'll
figure that out, but we have a lot of episodes
to talk about it. So first off, as you can see, well,
if you're watching on video, you can see me with
my hat on and a little bit of scruff. I'm
growing my hair out to be more like academics. So
hopefully the hat will only be with me, maybe a
month or two longer, and yeah, then I'll look a
(00:43):
little more presentable and a little more hip. Maybe I
don't know, It'll take a lot to make me look hip,
but yeah, I'm writing a book and for this first episode,
I figured i'd just talk you through it. So we
have a Kickstarter campaign going on right now, and so
it's not easy to podcast by yourself, so I pretend
that this book is my partner. So yeah, if you
(01:08):
are hearing this, please you know you can probably get
a lot of it from audio, but the video will
link will be in the comments here or the show
notes if you want to watch the video, because I
am going to be scrolling through the book and talking
about the book and also talking about the podcast. But
first off, this is a book that it says from
Aaron West and Jill Blake. Jill Blake, of course, is
(01:31):
most people who know me, is my partner in crime.
She is my co owner of Sin Journeys, and she
is technically the editor of the book. And in fact,
I'm going to scroll to the very bottom of the
kickstarter or actually I'm sorry, I'm sorry for that's fest. Well,
I'm going to scroll over to the faq. Who is
Jill and why is she on the cover? So and
(01:53):
I say here most nonfiction books do not feature an
editor on the cover. But Jill is more than an editor.
Talk about her work, her involvement here at Center Journeys,
and also how we work together. And Jill is very
much a part of this story and collaborating to make
this a really, really good book. So she's more than
(02:14):
an editor. She will tell me and she can't tell
me if something is terrible, So and she will, but
that's a joke. She'll give developmental advice, say hey, maybe
this needs to be broken up and this needs to
go here. Maybe you should talk about this film or
this filmmaker here, or hey, how about this film movement
(02:37):
that you didn't mention. So yeah, as you can see
here just on the Kickstarter we have thirteen twenty pledged
of three thousand with forty four days to go, so
we are very much on pace to meet our goal
and then some. And that's a good thing. Twenty eight backers.
We would like more, but we're getting a good bit
(02:58):
of bang for our backers. Buck, thank you very much
for the contributions of the twenty eight. Now it is
really expensive to make a book. So here is This
is the cover you're seeing right now. This is actually
a video but without that is just the cover. And
in fact i'll scroll down you can see the cover here.
(03:20):
This of course does not have the title, which would
be at the top. So obviously this image is an
homage to Moonlight. And so this is the front right
cover right here on the right half, and it will
say the a twenty four New Wave by Aaron West,
edited by Jill Blake, and her name will be on
(03:41):
the cover. Then they'll be binding here. In fact, I
might post an image that shows the actual binding and
so you can kind of envision what it looks like
as a book cover. This is actually designed towards the
specs of how to print the book, so it's very
important that this shape is very important. So yeah, as
I said, here, we have this awesome book and we
(04:02):
want to get into your hands. So that involves designing
the book, which is not just the cover but also
inside the cover. And hopefully you'll get to I'll get
to talk about talk with the gentleman that is doing
the layout for the cover. He's awesome and in fact,
he is responsible for a couple of graphics below. This
a big thing if you do support us. We can't
(04:25):
stress this enough. You will not be asked a shipping
fee because that is well, we don't want to overcharge you,
actually mostly, but we also don't don't want to undercharge.
I think a lot of when I back kickstarters. And
by the way, I'm back to seventy three as you
can see, so I'm very well versed. It's my turn,
(04:45):
my turn to do the kickstarter. Oh here this image
has the binding, so you get an idea what this
will look like. So you can see that just how
that came to life. But you know, I sometimes you
spend fifteen twenty dollars for shipping, and when you know,
when we ship buy, we buy things, sell things, so
that feels like a lot. And I just don't want
(05:08):
to overcharge people. But if I under charge, if it
really is fifteen twenty dollars for some you know, a
lot of items, then I don't want to be paying
for that out of my own pocket. That defeats the
purpose of crowdfunding. So so yes, this is by Caitlin Coowold.
I could not give her enough credit, and hopefully she'll
be on here to talk about this as well. But
(05:29):
Caitlin did an amazing job on the cover. She worked
quickly too, And we had this sketch a couple of
weeks ago. And this is not easy. This is a
full color illustration. This is not AI. In fact, this
is an example of why AI is not really viable
for a project like this. It would just look grotesque.
I could try it. I don't even want to. It
(05:51):
would just look too ugly. So Caitlin is amazing. If
you haven't seen her work, she designed our Sinner Journey's website,
so that's a big, big thing. But she's designed lots
of covers for Blu Rays. She's just a really tremendous illustrator.
This is actually what Carl worked on these images here.
So hopefully we'll talk to Carl, and this is what
(06:12):
you get when you support, you'll get actually the accompanying
podcast episodes. That's what I'm recording right here, interviews with
people involved. The goal is that as I talk to
people for this book, you know, say I since Moonlight,
Say Barry Jenkins, you know, we'll probably talk for I
would guess an hour hopefully if he has that much time,
(06:35):
and hopefully I would have about ten minutes or maybe
twenty or thirty. You know, it depends on him. Because
I know Barry Jenkins loves to talk and he and
I have a lot of similar tastes. I could imagine
we could talk for hours, but he probably doesn't have
that much time. But when we have interviews for the book,
we would like to get them on the podcast, and
then we'll occasionally put out episodes with people that just friends,
(06:58):
you know, academics. We talk to critics regularly, so would
love to get their input on on actually the A
twenty four New Wave, which is a premise that not
everybody will agree with, and that's fine. In the book,
I do make the argument that we are in a
new Ave movement, and I do compare the current movement
(07:19):
to prior movements. They're listed here French New Ave, American
New Wave, the indie movement of the nineties, and actually,
I would say the other indie movements of the two thousands.
A lot of people would call some of those mumblecore,
and I do talk about that at length in the book.
People don't like that word, the filmmakers don't like that word,
but it's kind of had to be accepted. So there
(07:42):
is going to be a little bit about mumblecore here.
The big thing is we're talking about the filmmakers. You know,
A twenty four How it began, how it went, how
It's going covers the history of a twenty four project
by project, a ward by award, a tour by a tour,
and I'm just going to go down to the tape contents. Yeah,
and the big thing is award season right now. A
(08:04):
Nora and The Brutalist are candidates for major awards. We'll see.
You know, there's a lot of a lot of films out,
but there are a lot of a twenty four films
in the mix now and Noor is not an a
twenty four film. It was distributed by Neon. But Sean
Baker has been with A twenty four at for the
(08:25):
Florida Project and for Red Rocket, and he is very
much a fan of probably The Brutalist. Actually, he's probably
a big fan of that. He loves movies. I've had
the luxury of interviewing him twice previously and hopefully I
will again for this project. Here is the May Queen.
We are going to be having some designs. Actually, Caitlin
(08:45):
is working on the May Queen right now, so that
will be available shirt totes, art prints. I will Actually
you can see behind me, I have a van Go print.
I think the May Queen might replace that once once
the I fulfilled my own order. So we do have
stretch goals coming. This is the big thing. Another book.
(09:07):
I'm writing two books at once. I can't really talk
about that much at all, but but I will at
some point. Well, that will be when we meet our
goal and when we need to get to stretch goals too.
Fun of that other book. Because it is expensive to
put one book out, it's even more expensive to put too.
But our hope is that we can at least put
it out digitally or online. So and that's where the
(09:29):
Sinner Journey's website access. People pledgers get access at a discount.
We'll also have we have instructors, we have online classes.
This is a great group of people. We already have.
Derek is teaching Japanese New Wave and Imagen is teaching
Palin Pressburg. And then we have others that are coming
(09:50):
on and they will be launching their topics very soon.
So let me go to the table of contents. This
is a very very tentative table of contents. Word this
means somebody else will write it a special guest. I
have a couple ideas in mind of who I want
to write the forward, and you know, probably anybody that
(10:10):
knows me could probably guess, but it really depends on
who has something to say, who's willing to do it.
That is a big deal. Also, you know, somebody's opinion
of the book itself. So then there's the prologue I
will talk about I say, will I have talked about it?
Most of this stuff has already written. I talk about
(10:31):
really what prompted me to watch this? So the very
very first words in the book you'll see are about
me going to the theaters and having an experience, and
it hit in me that we are in a new
wave movement because I saw other filmmakers in modern mainstream
works and including their own some of their artistic work.
So some of them have been through with A twenty four.
(10:55):
And then I go into an origin story. So this
is kind of the beginning of the his that they
formed into twenty twelve. I'll tell you right now. A
twenty four is named after a sign in Italy. A
lot of people know that, but maybe not everybody. But
they came from, you know, from the industry. We'll say
they came from different different independent labels. They had been
(11:17):
in the business, and there was some funding from Googaeime,
So if people know the museum or the family, there
is some funding there. And yeah, there was more of
that later, which I'm not going to get ahead of myself.
So we start out with the spring Breakers. So if
you know Harmony Krinn, he's quite an artist. I think
(11:39):
he's amazing. But I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Now,
part of this is there's a little bit of a
joke in that I shouldn't say a joke. But the
reality is A twenty four gets people in theaters to
watch artistic films, and sometimes that doesn't go well. So
in this chapter, the which I actually quoted my mother
(12:02):
in law who called this the worst movie in the
world or she'd ever seen. And that's because the Witch
is not for my mother in law, and that is
no offense to her. She's amazing woman, but she is
not the target audience, so she got pulled. And I
don't think that it's in A twenty four's business model
to fool people into seeing art house movies. They are
(12:25):
just trying to get their movies out to as wide
an audience as possible, and they have actually exposed a
lot of people to art house cinema indie cinema through
these practices. So a lot of these films here, maybe
not as many in the beginning, although spring Break did
make money and earned earned box office. So just scrolling down,
we have Denny bill Eneuve, we have Jonathan Glazier. Jenny
(12:49):
Slat is a stand up comedian. So you know, I
talk about a tour, and if you don't know what
a tour means, that just means basically an author of cinema.
So oftentimes the aw tour theory and they call the
director of the author usually and in fact, everybody here
but Jenny Slat are directors. Now, the it's a bit
(13:11):
of a stretch to call Jenny Slaate an a tour
because she is a comedian, she's a writer, she's a
voice actor. She's very very funny, and she has she
does great voice work. She's done it on a lot
of TV shows, Bob's Burgers, that sort of thing. But
she starred an Obvious Child and she helped make the
movie Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. So that's that
(13:34):
was a really fun chapter to write. Now again I
had to make the argument. I say argument. It's not
like I'm that persuasive, but I'm kind of lumping Jenny
Slat in with a tours because it really, it literally
is her voice in the movies. Now, of course, it
takes a village. There are a lot of people behind
these these films, so don't ever want to minimize that.
(13:57):
If you could think of it tours director, they have
their vision, but they're also kind of like managers. So
I try to highlight the others on the production as
much as possible, especially writers. So of course Tusk. I
was just talking to somebody earlier that surprised the Tusk
was out on a twenty four. This was a fun
chapter to write. I loved this one. This is a
(14:18):
bonkers movie, but it was very, very huge for a
twenty four then. So speaking of writers, Alex Garland is
really a writer director. There's a lot of that, you know,
the people that write their own material and direct it.
Robert Eggers as well. Robert Eggers is very meticulous. He
had been a production designer before and then he was
the perfect fit for a director because he's so meticulous
(14:41):
with his with where he wants everything. He wants everything
to be pure and appropriate. In fact, if you listen
to an interview or watch a commentary with him, he's
very critical of himself. I can tell he's a perfectionist
and I would love to talk to him. Same with
Alex Garland. So ex Machina is a big film, but
you probably seen other Annihilation was not an a twenty four,
(15:04):
but that was a big movie for him. Men was
a twenty four and was a very controversial movie, to
say the least. I don't know that many people saw it,
but interesting to say the least. Then last last Year's
Civil War was a big movie and one of the
biggest of box office movies for A twenty four. Now
(15:24):
that one was controversial. Most likely Alex Garland will be
divided into early and late because he has yet another
movie coming out. So that's the one thing about A
twenty four in this book, they're not stopping. They have
they put out fifteen movies or I think sixteen movies.
So then here the first awards year. This is really
twenty sixteen, and this is when Room became a big
(15:49):
award sensation and other films too. But Room won their
first Room and Amy, I guess Amy Technic because of
his earlier in the show was their first Oscar Actually
xbok on one Best Cinematography as well, and then Krisha.
If you see the the beginning of the Kickstarter I
mentioned that Trey Edward Schultz he wrote or he funded
(16:13):
this film and when he was a film student through Kickstarter,
And it was great to find that because there's a
lot of commonality, and I'll be honest, he was not
somebody that was going to write a chapter about initially.
In fact, there are other filmmakers that have been made
A twenty four films that are not part of the book,
but I'll probably write chapters for that'll be for online
(16:35):
or update access that just because of the confines of
printing a book, you know, it's you don't want it
to do, you know, we don't want to make an
eight hundred page tone first off, shipping would just be
massive out the out of the gate. But he is somebody,
he's really interesting. He's very young too, I want to
say he's thirty eight now, so his story will be
(16:56):
very fascinating. Speaking of fascinating, Yorgos Lanthemos, so again somebody
who has graduated A twenty four. He has two films
at A twenty four. So when I say I'm covering
the Lobster, I'm actually covering the lobster, the killing of
a sacred deer, and I'm going to get to Poor Things,
which is really his last maybe kinds of Kindness, even
(17:16):
though that's not A twenty four, probably not kinds of kindness,
So it'll probably stop right before poor Things, kind of
like Villeneuve, I actually stopped before Dune because nobody this
is not the book to read about Dune, so of
course Moonlight Barry Jenkins, and this will be their first
Best Picture. So if you spoiler alert, Moonlight won Best Picture,
(17:38):
it was quite an event. And so that is actually
a big chapter, and that will actually cover the Oscars
for that year. Then we have early horror. Now, as
I mentioned, Tusk is arguably the first horror film. Some
people actually will say it was under the Skin, which
is here Jonathan Glazer. This is a good chapter too.
(17:58):
I really enjoyed what writing that. The thing about a
twenty four is often they get thought of as horror
of distributors, but as you can see down here Ladybird
and there at Florida Project, those are not horror films
and they kind of found their footing. So as I mentioned,
there's mumblecore, there's also something called mumble Goore that goes
(18:21):
into those early twenty four horrors, and there's a big
dividing line. It's really here with ari Astor and Hereditary
is highly recommended, but there's also Midsommar and of course
bo Is Afraid, which was very divisive, which is the
case for a lot of these good time the Safty Brothers.
(18:41):
There's also Uncut Gems, David Lowry, the Green Knight. Oh
and I'm forgetting ghost Story is a big one of his,
the first one of his and Daniels the directing duo
that did everything everywhere, all at once. So that is
the second best picture and counting for A twenty four,
(19:01):
and their first film with A twenty four was Swiss
Army Man. Then we get to late A twenty four,
so here is Ty West and the ex trilogy. We
get to Darren Aronofski. Now he is really retrofitted into
A twenty four with the movie Pie, and so far
they have delved into I guess i'd say history, film history,
(19:23):
other odd tours. So in the A twenty four documentaries,
there's also a Talking Heads release of Stop Making Sense,
which A twenty four did distribute theatrically and also on
Blu ray. I think maybe even four K. I can't remember.
Same with Pie. Pie was nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine,
I think I think it was nineteen ninety eight. So,
(19:46):
but the thing is Darren Ovski, Darren DARRENOFSKYI Darren Aronofsky
really feels like an A twenty four kind of director.
You know, somebody that influenced all these people. And so
I will talk about I'll write a chapter about him.
I haven't written that one yet, but Pi. It'll focus
around Pie because that's the early work for him, and
I'll talk about his other films and how they influence
(20:09):
all these tours, just kind of finishing up here. Representation.
So a big thing about A twenty four is and
I don't know if this is part of their mission
statement or if this is intentional, but they are very
good about getting a lot of different voices on the screen,
So lots of representation from a male, female, gender, sexuality,
(20:32):
politic I shouldn't say politics, there's really there are some politics,
but race is a big one, even immigration. It's not
just black white. So for example, Minari is an immigration's
story of an Asian family, and there's a lot of that.
And the one thing I don't want to tokenize these groups,
(20:53):
so I will talk about the representation. I can't talk
about every single film they released. It's a long list
and it would be a long book, but I'm going
to talk a good bit about how they've represented different
places in this chapter. Then Late twenty four Horror. There's
a lot of films here. In fact, there's going to
be some overlap because A twenty four in the filmmakers
(21:13):
that they work with, they use horror often as a
way to explain representation and what the world looks like.
Sometimes it's very scary, So sometimes the art horror, you know,
kind of manifests as a representative, representative portrait of somebody
(21:33):
and how in their lived experience. So finally, the A
twenty four new waves. It's a little bit ambitious to
say that A twenty four is responsible solely for a
new wave movement. I mean, it's really the credit goes
to the filmmakers, but there is a type so a
lot of people will say, I want to make an
A twenty four type film, So there are a lot
(21:55):
of films that are parallel to A twenty four. Of course,
I'm thinking of Coryle LeFarge or Farge Fargette. There's a
little bit of tea at the and I struggle with
her pronunciation, but this year she's has an Oscar Oscar
buzz for the substance, and she also made Revenge. And
there's others like Julie du Cournew as well with Titan Raw.
(22:20):
Those feel like A twenty four. So I'll kind of
talk about some of the films that seem like A
twenty four and may have been inspired by some of
the films of A twenty four. In fact, that Julie
Ducornew is making a film with A twenty four. I
believe it's in production right now, I'm not certain. And
then finally wrapping up, so A twenty four has gotten
into TV. Beef was a huge hit for them, won
(22:42):
them a lot of awards. A twenty four has also
gotten into comedy, and then the epilogue little play onwards
here twenty A twenty four. That's because twenty twenty four
is a big year for them, and we'll see how
that pans out in terms of awards. But that's gonna
end book. And the risk and challenges are I want
(23:04):
to be transparent with these, they are that it's tough
to stay up to date. A twenty four is going
to keep putting out films. In fact, even this year,
I'm seeing the films that are going to be released,
so I know that the day that this hits print,
it's going to be outdated. So we actually have a
digital access access option, so we'll keep on updating the
(23:26):
book and we'll probably put out reprints maybe every couple
of years or so. But this, this Kickstarter, it really
will allow us to continue with updates. Outside of the
printed book and this podcast our website, you'll be able
to hear about here and read about some of these
different projects. So that's it for the first episode of
(23:47):
the twenty four New Waves, So twenty three minutes by myself.
That's not bad. So I'm going to say goodbye. The
link to the campaign is in the show notes, So
please support us. We literally can't do it without you.
Even though we have a three thousand goal, it's costs
a lot more than that to make this book. So
thanks again and I appreciate you going on this journey
(24:08):
with us.
You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the A
twenty four new Wave podcast. So my name is Aaron
West and this is the accompaniment podcast to my book.
(00:20):
Maybe I should say the accompanying. I don't know. We'll
figure that out, but we have a lot of episodes
to talk about it. So first off, as you can see, well,
if you're watching on video, you can see me with
my hat on and a little bit of scruff. I'm
growing my hair out to be more like academics. So
hopefully the hat will only be with me, maybe a
month or two longer, and yeah, then I'll look a
(00:43):
little more presentable and a little more hip. Maybe I
don't know, It'll take a lot to make me look hip,
but yeah, I'm writing a book and for this first episode,
I figured i'd just talk you through it. So we
have a Kickstarter campaign going on right now, and so
it's not easy to podcast by yourself, so I pretend
that this book is my partner. So yeah, if you
(01:08):
are hearing this, please you know you can probably get
a lot of it from audio, but the video will
link will be in the comments here or the show
notes if you want to watch the video, because I
am going to be scrolling through the book and talking
about the book and also talking about the podcast. But
first off, this is a book that it says from
Aaron West and Jill Blake. Jill Blake, of course, is
(01:31):
most people who know me, is my partner in crime.
She is my co owner of Sin Journeys, and she
is technically the editor of the book. And in fact,
I'm going to scroll to the very bottom of the
kickstarter or actually I'm sorry, I'm sorry for that's fest. Well,
I'm going to scroll over to the faq. Who is
Jill and why is she on the cover? So and
(01:53):
I say here most nonfiction books do not feature an
editor on the cover. But Jill is more than an editor.
Talk about her work, her involvement here at Center Journeys,
and also how we work together. And Jill is very
much a part of this story and collaborating to make
this a really, really good book. So she's more than
(02:14):
an editor. She will tell me and she can't tell
me if something is terrible, So and she will, but
that's a joke. She'll give developmental advice, say hey, maybe
this needs to be broken up and this needs to
go here. Maybe you should talk about this film or
this filmmaker here, or hey, how about this film movement
(02:37):
that you didn't mention. So yeah, as you can see
here just on the Kickstarter we have thirteen twenty pledged
of three thousand with forty four days to go, so
we are very much on pace to meet our goal
and then some. And that's a good thing. Twenty eight backers.
We would like more, but we're getting a good bit
(02:58):
of bang for our backers. Buck, thank you very much
for the contributions of the twenty eight. Now it is
really expensive to make a book. So here is This
is the cover you're seeing right now. This is actually
a video but without that is just the cover. And
in fact i'll scroll down you can see the cover here.
(03:20):
This of course does not have the title, which would
be at the top. So obviously this image is an
homage to Moonlight. And so this is the front right
cover right here on the right half, and it will
say the a twenty four New Wave by Aaron West,
edited by Jill Blake, and her name will be on
(03:41):
the cover. Then they'll be binding here. In fact, I
might post an image that shows the actual binding and
so you can kind of envision what it looks like
as a book cover. This is actually designed towards the
specs of how to print the book, so it's very
important that this shape is very important. So yeah, as
I said, here, we have this awesome book and we
(04:02):
want to get into your hands. So that involves designing
the book, which is not just the cover but also
inside the cover. And hopefully you'll get to I'll get
to talk about talk with the gentleman that is doing
the layout for the cover. He's awesome and in fact,
he is responsible for a couple of graphics below. This
a big thing if you do support us. We can't
(04:25):
stress this enough. You will not be asked a shipping
fee because that is well, we don't want to overcharge you,
actually mostly, but we also don't don't want to undercharge.
I think a lot of when I back kickstarters. And
by the way, I'm back to seventy three as you
can see, so I'm very well versed. It's my turn,
(04:45):
my turn to do the kickstarter. Oh here this image
has the binding, so you get an idea what this
will look like. So you can see that just how
that came to life. But you know, I sometimes you
spend fifteen twenty dollars for shipping, and when you know,
when we ship buy, we buy things, sell things, so
that feels like a lot. And I just don't want
(05:08):
to overcharge people. But if I under charge, if it
really is fifteen twenty dollars for some you know, a
lot of items, then I don't want to be paying
for that out of my own pocket. That defeats the
purpose of crowdfunding. So so yes, this is by Caitlin Coowold.
I could not give her enough credit, and hopefully she'll
be on here to talk about this as well. But
(05:29):
Caitlin did an amazing job on the cover. She worked
quickly too, And we had this sketch a couple of
weeks ago. And this is not easy. This is a
full color illustration. This is not AI. In fact, this
is an example of why AI is not really viable
for a project like this. It would just look grotesque.
I could try it. I don't even want to. It
(05:51):
would just look too ugly. So Caitlin is amazing. If
you haven't seen her work, she designed our Sinner Journey's website,
so that's a big, big thing. But she's designed lots
of covers for Blu Rays. She's just a really tremendous illustrator.
This is actually what Carl worked on these images here.
So hopefully we'll talk to Carl, and this is what
(06:12):
you get when you support, you'll get actually the accompanying
podcast episodes. That's what I'm recording right here, interviews with
people involved. The goal is that as I talk to
people for this book, you know, say I since Moonlight,
Say Barry Jenkins, you know, we'll probably talk for I
would guess an hour hopefully if he has that much time,
(06:35):
and hopefully I would have about ten minutes or maybe
twenty or thirty. You know, it depends on him. Because
I know Barry Jenkins loves to talk and he and
I have a lot of similar tastes. I could imagine
we could talk for hours, but he probably doesn't have
that much time. But when we have interviews for the book,
we would like to get them on the podcast, and
then we'll occasionally put out episodes with people that just friends,
(06:58):
you know, academics. We talk to critics regularly, so would
love to get their input on on actually the A
twenty four New Wave, which is a premise that not
everybody will agree with, and that's fine. In the book,
I do make the argument that we are in a
new Ave movement, and I do compare the current movement
(07:19):
to prior movements. They're listed here French New Ave, American
New Wave, the indie movement of the nineties, and actually,
I would say the other indie movements of the two thousands.
A lot of people would call some of those mumblecore,
and I do talk about that at length in the book.
People don't like that word, the filmmakers don't like that word,
but it's kind of had to be accepted. So there
(07:42):
is going to be a little bit about mumblecore here.
The big thing is we're talking about the filmmakers. You know,
A twenty four How it began, how it went, how
It's going covers the history of a twenty four project
by project, a ward by award, a tour by a tour,
and I'm just going to go down to the tape contents. Yeah,
and the big thing is award season right now. A
(08:04):
Nora and The Brutalist are candidates for major awards. We'll see.
You know, there's a lot of a lot of films out,
but there are a lot of a twenty four films
in the mix now and Noor is not an a
twenty four film. It was distributed by Neon. But Sean
Baker has been with A twenty four at for the
(08:25):
Florida Project and for Red Rocket, and he is very
much a fan of probably The Brutalist. Actually, he's probably
a big fan of that. He loves movies. I've had
the luxury of interviewing him twice previously and hopefully I
will again for this project. Here is the May Queen.
We are going to be having some designs. Actually, Caitlin
(08:45):
is working on the May Queen right now, so that
will be available shirt totes, art prints. I will Actually
you can see behind me, I have a van Go print.
I think the May Queen might replace that once once
the I fulfilled my own order. So we do have
stretch goals coming. This is the big thing. Another book.
(09:07):
I'm writing two books at once. I can't really talk
about that much at all, but but I will at
some point. Well, that will be when we meet our
goal and when we need to get to stretch goals too.
Fun of that other book. Because it is expensive to
put one book out, it's even more expensive to put too.
But our hope is that we can at least put
it out digitally or online. So and that's where the
(09:29):
Sinner Journey's website access. People pledgers get access at a discount.
We'll also have we have instructors, we have online classes.
This is a great group of people. We already have.
Derek is teaching Japanese New Wave and Imagen is teaching
Palin Pressburg. And then we have others that are coming
(09:50):
on and they will be launching their topics very soon.
So let me go to the table of contents. This
is a very very tentative table of contents. Word this
means somebody else will write it a special guest. I
have a couple ideas in mind of who I want
to write the forward, and you know, probably anybody that
(10:10):
knows me could probably guess, but it really depends on
who has something to say, who's willing to do it.
That is a big deal. Also, you know, somebody's opinion
of the book itself. So then there's the prologue I
will talk about I say, will I have talked about it?
Most of this stuff has already written. I talk about
(10:31):
really what prompted me to watch this? So the very
very first words in the book you'll see are about
me going to the theaters and having an experience, and
it hit in me that we are in a new
wave movement because I saw other filmmakers in modern mainstream
works and including their own some of their artistic work.
So some of them have been through with A twenty four.
(10:55):
And then I go into an origin story. So this
is kind of the beginning of the his that they
formed into twenty twelve. I'll tell you right now. A
twenty four is named after a sign in Italy. A
lot of people know that, but maybe not everybody. But
they came from, you know, from the industry. We'll say
they came from different different independent labels. They had been
(11:17):
in the business, and there was some funding from Googaeime,
So if people know the museum or the family, there
is some funding there. And yeah, there was more of
that later, which I'm not going to get ahead of myself.
So we start out with the spring Breakers. So if
you know Harmony Krinn, he's quite an artist. I think
(11:39):
he's amazing. But I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Now,
part of this is there's a little bit of a
joke in that I shouldn't say a joke. But the
reality is A twenty four gets people in theaters to
watch artistic films, and sometimes that doesn't go well. So
in this chapter, the which I actually quoted my mother
(12:02):
in law who called this the worst movie in the
world or she'd ever seen. And that's because the Witch
is not for my mother in law, and that is
no offense to her. She's amazing woman, but she is
not the target audience, so she got pulled. And I
don't think that it's in A twenty four's business model
to fool people into seeing art house movies. They are
(12:25):
just trying to get their movies out to as wide
an audience as possible, and they have actually exposed a
lot of people to art house cinema indie cinema through
these practices. So a lot of these films here, maybe
not as many in the beginning, although spring Break did
make money and earned earned box office. So just scrolling down,
we have Denny bill Eneuve, we have Jonathan Glazier. Jenny
(12:49):
Slat is a stand up comedian. So you know, I
talk about a tour, and if you don't know what
a tour means, that just means basically an author of cinema.
So oftentimes the aw tour theory and they call the
director of the author usually and in fact, everybody here
but Jenny Slat are directors. Now, the it's a bit
(13:11):
of a stretch to call Jenny Slaate an a tour
because she is a comedian, she's a writer, she's a
voice actor. She's very very funny, and she has she
does great voice work. She's done it on a lot
of TV shows, Bob's Burgers, that sort of thing. But
she starred an Obvious Child and she helped make the
movie Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. So that's that
(13:34):
was a really fun chapter to write. Now again I
had to make the argument. I say argument. It's not
like I'm that persuasive, but I'm kind of lumping Jenny
Slat in with a tours because it really, it literally
is her voice in the movies. Now, of course, it
takes a village. There are a lot of people behind
these these films, so don't ever want to minimize that.
(13:57):
If you could think of it tours director, they have
their vision, but they're also kind of like managers. So
I try to highlight the others on the production as
much as possible, especially writers. So of course Tusk. I
was just talking to somebody earlier that surprised the Tusk
was out on a twenty four. This was a fun
chapter to write. I loved this one. This is a
(14:18):
bonkers movie, but it was very, very huge for a
twenty four then. So speaking of writers, Alex Garland is
really a writer director. There's a lot of that, you know,
the people that write their own material and direct it.
Robert Eggers as well. Robert Eggers is very meticulous. He
had been a production designer before and then he was
the perfect fit for a director because he's so meticulous
(14:41):
with his with where he wants everything. He wants everything
to be pure and appropriate. In fact, if you listen
to an interview or watch a commentary with him, he's
very critical of himself. I can tell he's a perfectionist
and I would love to talk to him. Same with
Alex Garland. So ex Machina is a big film, but
you probably seen other Annihilation was not an a twenty four,
(15:04):
but that was a big movie for him. Men was
a twenty four and was a very controversial movie, to
say the least. I don't know that many people saw it,
but interesting to say the least. Then last last Year's
Civil War was a big movie and one of the
biggest of box office movies for A twenty four. Now
(15:24):
that one was controversial. Most likely Alex Garland will be
divided into early and late because he has yet another
movie coming out. So that's the one thing about A
twenty four in this book, they're not stopping. They have
they put out fifteen movies or I think sixteen movies.
So then here the first awards year. This is really
twenty sixteen, and this is when Room became a big
(15:49):
award sensation and other films too. But Room won their
first Room and Amy, I guess Amy Technic because of
his earlier in the show was their first Oscar Actually
xbok on one Best Cinematography as well, and then Krisha.
If you see the the beginning of the Kickstarter I
mentioned that Trey Edward Schultz he wrote or he funded
(16:13):
this film and when he was a film student through Kickstarter,
And it was great to find that because there's a
lot of commonality, and I'll be honest, he was not
somebody that was going to write a chapter about initially.
In fact, there are other filmmakers that have been made
A twenty four films that are not part of the book,
but I'll probably write chapters for that'll be for online
(16:35):
or update access that just because of the confines of
printing a book, you know, it's you don't want it
to do, you know, we don't want to make an
eight hundred page tone first off, shipping would just be
massive out the out of the gate. But he is somebody,
he's really interesting. He's very young too, I want to
say he's thirty eight now, so his story will be
(16:56):
very fascinating. Speaking of fascinating, Yorgos Lanthemos, so again somebody
who has graduated A twenty four. He has two films
at A twenty four. So when I say I'm covering
the Lobster, I'm actually covering the lobster, the killing of
a sacred deer, and I'm going to get to Poor Things,
which is really his last maybe kinds of Kindness, even
(17:16):
though that's not A twenty four, probably not kinds of kindness,
So it'll probably stop right before poor Things, kind of
like Villeneuve, I actually stopped before Dune because nobody this
is not the book to read about Dune, so of
course Moonlight Barry Jenkins, and this will be their first
Best Picture. So if you spoiler alert, Moonlight won Best Picture,
(17:38):
it was quite an event. And so that is actually
a big chapter, and that will actually cover the Oscars
for that year. Then we have early horror. Now, as
I mentioned, Tusk is arguably the first horror film. Some
people actually will say it was under the Skin, which
is here Jonathan Glazer. This is a good chapter too.
(17:58):
I really enjoyed what writing that. The thing about a
twenty four is often they get thought of as horror
of distributors, but as you can see down here Ladybird
and there at Florida Project, those are not horror films
and they kind of found their footing. So as I mentioned,
there's mumblecore, there's also something called mumble Goore that goes
(18:21):
into those early twenty four horrors, and there's a big
dividing line. It's really here with ari Astor and Hereditary
is highly recommended, but there's also Midsommar and of course
bo Is Afraid, which was very divisive, which is the
case for a lot of these good time the Safty Brothers.
(18:41):
There's also Uncut Gems, David Lowry, the Green Knight. Oh
and I'm forgetting ghost Story is a big one of his,
the first one of his and Daniels the directing duo
that did everything everywhere, all at once. So that is
the second best picture and counting for A twenty four,
(19:01):
and their first film with A twenty four was Swiss
Army Man. Then we get to late A twenty four,
so here is Ty West and the ex trilogy. We
get to Darren Aronofski. Now he is really retrofitted into
A twenty four with the movie Pie, and so far
they have delved into I guess i'd say history, film history,
(19:23):
other odd tours. So in the A twenty four documentaries,
there's also a Talking Heads release of Stop Making Sense,
which A twenty four did distribute theatrically and also on
Blu ray. I think maybe even four K. I can't remember.
Same with Pie. Pie was nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine,
I think I think it was nineteen ninety eight. So,
(19:46):
but the thing is Darren Ovski, Darren DARRENOFSKYI Darren Aronofsky
really feels like an A twenty four kind of director.
You know, somebody that influenced all these people. And so
I will talk about I'll write a chapter about him.
I haven't written that one yet, but Pi. It'll focus
around Pie because that's the early work for him, and
I'll talk about his other films and how they influence
(20:09):
all these tours, just kind of finishing up here. Representation.
So a big thing about A twenty four is and
I don't know if this is part of their mission
statement or if this is intentional, but they are very
good about getting a lot of different voices on the screen,
So lots of representation from a male, female, gender, sexuality,
(20:32):
politic I shouldn't say politics, there's really there are some politics,
but race is a big one, even immigration. It's not
just black white. So for example, Minari is an immigration's
story of an Asian family, and there's a lot of that.
And the one thing I don't want to tokenize these groups,
(20:53):
so I will talk about the representation. I can't talk
about every single film they released. It's a long list
and it would be a long book, but I'm going
to talk a good bit about how they've represented different
places in this chapter. Then Late twenty four Horror. There's
a lot of films here. In fact, there's going to
be some overlap because A twenty four in the filmmakers
(21:13):
that they work with, they use horror often as a
way to explain representation and what the world looks like.
Sometimes it's very scary, So sometimes the art horror, you know,
kind of manifests as a representative, representative portrait of somebody
(21:33):
and how in their lived experience. So finally, the A
twenty four new waves. It's a little bit ambitious to
say that A twenty four is responsible solely for a
new wave movement. I mean, it's really the credit goes
to the filmmakers, but there is a type so a
lot of people will say, I want to make an
A twenty four type film, So there are a lot
(21:55):
of films that are parallel to A twenty four. Of course,
I'm thinking of Coryle LeFarge or Farge Fargette. There's a
little bit of tea at the and I struggle with
her pronunciation, but this year she's has an Oscar Oscar
buzz for the substance, and she also made Revenge. And
there's others like Julie du Cournew as well with Titan Raw.
(22:20):
Those feel like A twenty four. So I'll kind of
talk about some of the films that seem like A
twenty four and may have been inspired by some of
the films of A twenty four. In fact, that Julie
Ducornew is making a film with A twenty four. I
believe it's in production right now, I'm not certain. And
then finally wrapping up, so A twenty four has gotten
into TV. Beef was a huge hit for them, won
(22:42):
them a lot of awards. A twenty four has also
gotten into comedy, and then the epilogue little play onwards
here twenty A twenty four. That's because twenty twenty four
is a big year for them, and we'll see how
that pans out in terms of awards. But that's gonna
end book. And the risk and challenges are I want
(23:04):
to be transparent with these, they are that it's tough
to stay up to date. A twenty four is going
to keep putting out films. In fact, even this year,
I'm seeing the films that are going to be released,
so I know that the day that this hits print,
it's going to be outdated. So we actually have a
digital access access option, so we'll keep on updating the
(23:26):
book and we'll probably put out reprints maybe every couple
of years or so. But this, this Kickstarter, it really
will allow us to continue with updates. Outside of the
printed book and this podcast our website, you'll be able
to hear about here and read about some of these
different projects. So that's it for the first episode of
(23:47):
the twenty four New Waves, So twenty three minutes by myself.
That's not bad. So I'm going to say goodbye. The
link to the campaign is in the show notes, So
please support us. We literally can't do it without you.
Even though we have a three thousand goal, it's costs
a lot more than that to make this book. So
thanks again and I appreciate you going on this journey
(24:08):
with us.
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