‘Backrooms’ Is the Future of Movies, With Kane Parsons!

I'm Sean Fantasy and this is the big picture and conversation show about back rooms. CR is here to help us talk about this new horror sensation. I got a little chair. The middle chit well. You guys are a real like you really played it up the middle with Van when he was asking about that. Just take hold on. We'll get there. We'll get there. I promise you. We'll take you to the back rooms of the big picture later in this episode. I will be joined by Kane Parsons. He is the 20 year old filmmaker behind back rooms. One of the most anticipated debut features I think fair to say in the history of movies. Kane told me all about his early days as a maker of short films uploading to YouTube. How he utilized and learned from the platform. How he made this movie starring Chiu Hotel as you for and we're not a rinds of a stick around for that conversation. I don't think I'm overstating up by saying he is remarkably wise and thoughtful for a 20 year old. But first, let's talk about a little bit of movie news right after this. Okay, let's talk a little news first. When's the last time this trio talk movie news? It's been a minute. It's been a minute. I'm trying to remember when the last time the three of us potted together because I got invited to a mega draft again and I'm like, I can't remember the last time it's just us three. Oh, you're just talking shop. Wow. This is like a little bit of an emotional bid for third-chair like let's just get the trio back together. Okay. I'm a busy guy. You guys want to know when you need me. Amanda. Did you see obsession yet? I did. I saw it yesterday. Do you want to talk about it right now? Yeah. Because there's news about Curry Barker who is the writer and director of obsession. You got this sight unseen eight figure offer for his next film because the movie is just a rocket ship. Let's just get a woman's POV. I think that fucking loved it. I would say of the two movies and the like, you know, new horror waves that we are going to discuss in this episode, I'm obsession is Amanda's flavor as opposed to backrooms even though I like very much admire backrooms. But yeah, as you teased me sort of, but on the last episode, it is romantic comedy. I thought it was really funny. I was maybe the only person laughing in my screaming, but I loved obviously the performance of what's her name? Help me with her name. Indy never ready. Indy never ready. Yeah. And I was engaged. There was one jump scare that actually made me jump and that I thought was very funny. And I would watch a lot of these. So I'm into it. Yeah. Do you feel like laughter in the coping mechanism for like sometimes like not being comfortable with like pure horror? Like when you are confronted with something that's like, I don't know, Texas chainsaw massacre or something like that, but like do you find it easier if you have like a couple of release valves throughout the movie? I guess so though I think what I was laughing at at this movie was the observational comedy about relationships, which I thought, you know, I thought it was a good script. I thought it was insightful and amusing. And so I was laughing at the bad speeches or like, I guess there's a, well, spoil parts of obsession now if you haven't seen it, even though it seems like everyone in America has. And she's frozen and he tells her not to move and she stays right where she is and then she peas herself. I thought that was funny, you know, but like that's not gross, that's not me laughing because I'm uncomfortable. No, I just was amused by that. We should make a mashup of Zach telling Amanda that it's almost equal season. No, no, no, no, why are you ruining this night? It'd be a probably relatable to you in any way, um, I'm glad you liked it. I had a feeling you would like it because it is, it's, um, it's a little bit more traditional and I think the movie is obviously getting characterized alongside Cain's movie, which we'll talk about momentarily because they're both so young, they both have this YouTube experience and because they're both sensations. Yes. And they're both so huge. And there've been a lot of people who have come out of this over the last 10 years. I wrote about it a little bit in the newsletter today. But I think there's something about the, the duality of these two things. The movie that is really funny and a big audience experience and one that is very internal and like really of the internet and really about lore and construction and then kind of operating side by side is really fun. Curry, I think is going to go on to make fairly conventional movies and in a way that I like, but like his next movie is a true horror comedy about ghosts, you know, and then he's going to do Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then maybe even before that, he'll do whatever this eight figure offer movie is if this is even a real story. I don't know how to verify. Like, how does somebody get an offer for $10 million before they've done it? Yeah. I think that's a really good way of looking at the two directors. I think the person seems to be the culmination of a shared aesthetic across multiple platforms across what we're going to talk a lot about is influences. And Barker seems to be a little bit more like I found not the loophole or cheap, cheap code, but I am a product of this new way of distributing your work that allowed me to get like a foothold in traditional Hollywood. Yeah. I mean, one is also there's one is a technical, you know, marvel and achievement, the aesthetic that you're talking about. And the other is, I think, has humans in it and then, but both are examples of how a younger generation is going to figure out how not just like how to get their movies attributed, but how to make movies in the first place. You know, they're doing the training in real time on YouTube. Well, and while we've come, we're coming out of like a period of time where I think like the cost of making a movie has become almost crippling to the movie industry. These guys are kind of going back to like the OG, like, you can make something fast and cheap that looks good and a lot of people want to go see it. That's not a barrier entry. Yeah. There's something interesting about the timing of the release of the prime time trailer or two that is correlated to all of this stuff. Three years ago, I had Lance Oppenheim on the show for a series of, to talk about the documentaries that he's been making for the last seven or eight years. He was 27 then. He's 30 now. He's ancient by comparison to Kane, but he's also incredibly young and is making his movie is also about Chris Hanson and to catch a predator and played by Robert Pattinson and screens and the way that they influence us and the kind of like, I would say manufactured reality of non-fiction television in a way, which kind of intersects with all of these other things that we're talking about here in YouTube and what's real and what's not real. And I'm just feeling very buoyant about the future of movies that I feel like there is like the cavalry is like kind of on the way here. And we still have like Denis Villeneuve and Nolan and you know, Greta Gerwig, all these like iconic brand name figures as a Spielberg movie coming out in a couple of weeks. All that stuff is still happening. It's great. It will probably be the primary focus of this show as long as we're doing it. But I actually do kind of feel like something for real is happening where there's like, it's not three people. It's now like nine people who have made widely distributed films who were born out of this experience, which is very different than I went to USC film school and then I made a short film and then that short film played a film festival and then I made an independently made film and that film played a film festival and it was acquired by a streamer and now I'm trying to make my hundred million dollar IP movie like that was 15 years of the growth cycle in Hollywood. And now something different can happen. It's also auspicious for YouTube and the internet, which is these people got really big on the internet. And instead of like launching a skincare brand, they are making movies and they want to bring them to theaters. Yeah. You know, like that they have embraced a medium that we care about and are bringing a different generation and audience with them is positive. Maybe they can also make a skincare brand. What do you think about the fact that horror seems to be the primary genre on ramp for them though? I'm not concerned trolling. I'm just saying. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense because so much of horror as I understand it is based on the technical ability to set up the aesthetics and the jump scares and the scaringness and so that you have in YouTube specifically a testing run where you can try stuff out and actually, you know, see what works, what doesn't kind of learn on the fly, learn without studios breathing down your neck and millions of dollars on the line. And you can't, you know, or romantic comedy is a lot more dependent on writing among other things. Yeah. And so you can and you can and performance and also frankly production design and like money and so you can't try those in the same way. So it's a good match. There's a lot of genres that are not suitable to this mode, you know, especially because pure drama is a hard thing to sell people on nowadays. Everything else necessitates a different kind of external component part that creates a barrier to entry, I think. And so horror and like load of the ground sci-fi is just much easier to pull off. And also it just more easily gets the attention of executives who are willing to put in one million dollars into the pot, you know, like it's hard to sell this cute girl and this cute guy me, you know, like there's just like a more resistance to it clearly. It's not actually. It's just that it's in book form, you know, and so it's calling Hoover and it's all of the, and it's whoever wrote the house made, whose name escapes me and all of the, you know, rooming, but yeah, because I think it's cool that that's happening now too. And I don't know how many of those movies you've actually watched, but we've been talking about them a lot over the last 12 months. I didn't see the mic on my row one, but I saw the other two shame on you for ignoring her. Um, I, I only like it when she's been pursued by deep, but those movies have more in common with horror movies than they do Nora F from movies because there's always some dramatic Incident that is like car crash or it's like like a curse of some kind, you know, there's a murder involved like there There's something about the stakes in that kind of storytelling like Their comms and and your general teen comedy and even your like romantic drama Those movies don't have the same life or death qualities that all these other movies do and I think that there's something to that too That that's the only thing that can kind of get butts in seats right now is like what's on the line here? Which does feel different than when we were teenagers and going to see movies or it was just like yeah, this is about a 17-year-old kid who fucks a pie, you know like that's the whole movie Well, then that would just be a YouTube video That's right, you know and the thing that it was really exciting to me about back rooms in particular is we talk so much about How all movies now have to have meme culture and have to exist outside of themselves of movies in order to sell and to be Recognized and to have any chance of surviving But this took a meme and made it into like a real-ass movie and I just that's hard to do yeah And it's essential I guess to getting people to the movie, but I was impressed was like hey you did it You made internet culture in to actual cinema. Let's use that as our our transition to back rooms Um, I guess spoilers for back rooms. I don't you know I'm not sure that it's really a film that can be spoiled. It's a film if you're conversant in the actual Projects has been spoiled already. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay on YouTube. So the film is directed by Kane as I mentioned It's written by Will Sudic who I think is the second screenwriter who came on to work on the movie and we can talk about how the screenplay of the movie operates versus the rest of the production It is based on back rooms the web series that Kane Parsons aka Kane pixels started publishing years ago now Five years ago six years ago. Yeah It is produced in part by some very notable people including Horror Maestro's James one and Oscar Perkins as well as Sean Levy It starts to tell as you for Renata Ryan's of a Mark II + Finn Bennett and Lucita Maxwell The log line is a therapist enters another dimension to find her lost patient And I guess that is what the movie is about in some respects. Mm-hmm Chris What did you think of this movie? It's just thrilling. It's like a really exciting time to be to be like at the ground floor of this for this director and To see it realized I mean, I was like aware of and I'd watched some of back rooms on on YouTube And I was aware that back rooms is a concept of something that had sort of organically grown out of creepypasta and read it and that it was in some ways like closer to like folk art than it is like a single author statement to see Him make something so assured that so perfectly distills some of the liminal horror some of the sort of modern urban legend or folk horror ideas and Blow it out on this level and just on a personal level like I just Find watching this stuff to be like taking a floor buffer to my brain And I would I was honestly watch like nine hours of this I've watched nine hours of like slow tracking shots through these rooms So it was deeply pleasurable the movie part of it like the more traditional conventional stuff I thought it was like a little less Unique or a little less like fully realized, but like that didn't wind up diminishing my appreciation for the movie itself Yeah, what did you think if this isn't your flavor? What did you mean? Yeah, I so I think I admired the parts that thrilled Chris and then Couldn't get my arms around the movie part as much which is why I personally Go to the movies, but I will say I knew nothing about back rooms. I mean, I knew it was like a internet I knew it was an internet thing. I knew that Chiuatalan G4 and Radarans were going to be in it But I didn't see anything ahead of time. I tried to go in like a blank slate and It worked for me in the room You know my brain smooths a little bit in different ways when I see tracking shots into rooms for like three hours But that's okay, you know like what is thrilling to one is meditative to the other But you still can't deny the like the production design and and the vibe and it is fully realized and I didn't quote Get it in the creepy pasta sense, but also I got it in the I understand this movie is communicating to me What it is trying to do and it's working and it's achieving it the more that I've since done my research The more I learned the like the less I'm the less I'm connected with it I really found it more as just a singular going to the movies experience Which I think is a testament to Came persons pulling something off standalone as opposed to relying on all of the history and lore and everything that goes along with it That may just be because as soon as you say lore like I run for the hills, but You don't need it actually in in the movie Yeah, he and I talked about this a little bit and I was I don't know if I was careful to not ask him about it But I know that he has said I was not interested in doing too much of the lore in this film That there is a ton of lore in my mind and that I have explored in other aspects of telling the story on YouTube And they're pro this is the very beginning of something that probably is going to be very big for a long time Like it's probably is going to take on a lot of different forms You know he talked about the idea of exploring television while their films like there's clearly just a ton that has come out of this And I liked what you said Chris which is that this is kind of like a fable now It's like it's an adaptation. It's an adaptation of an anonymous forechan post describing a space And what that space conjured in this anonymous poster's mind and then Cain read that And use that as a launch pad for this whole world that he made I completely agree with both of you guys the stuff that doesn't really work in the movie is any of the Orthodoxy of normal movie stuff. It's like characterization dialogue. That stuff is fine. It's okay. Yeah, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, it's fun. It's you know, and it's sometimes it's a little amusing to imagine A 20-year-old being like, okay, so what I really need to do is explore the inner lives of these 40-year-olds Yeah, in like middle age in like 1990 in you know, wherever that where are they middle of the consumer? I don't you know furniture store. Yeah, I think that that stuff is obviously fundamental to making a narrative feature film And you've got two really really good actors, right? So you're kind of just lean on their natural charisma to carry a story The concept of like him having a therapist is like incredibly economical for communicating the interior lives of the two main characters It very much is and then you know, it's almost like sort of a like a two strangers walk into a bar joke It's like it's a therapist in an architect and they're exploring a mind-how-less, you know what I mean? Yeah, okay, like you know, and I think that it being that on the nose as An exploration of the psyche and kind of like what we do with our past and what we don't do what goes away that we can't see anymore and what Kind of stays above the surface that like lingers in our memory. I think he's doing things visually the storytelling They're like I don't want to overstate this, but I'm like this is very rare air for a 20 something to be doing sure Yeah, and of course I again, this is not this is probably unfair to him But talking to him I was like this is a little like Kubrickian for me where like he has really thought through this and has a very mature understanding of what he's accomplishing and Doesn't have any arrogance about it and doesn't have and he's he just like has an idea Season in his mind and then wants to put it on screen and before he was doing a software and now he's doing with the production As I was like I've been watching these Curry Barker You had a great interview with Curry Barker for obsession it like his description of using these 3d Imaging apps that you can use on your phone until like essentially like design a set put animated actors in it to do your blocking Film it with a virtual camera and then cut it so that you can basically All a Hitchcock be like all we're doing is doing exactly what's on this piece of paper today Not only is that efficient, but that also allows you to like really think through The rhythm of the movie the look of the movie the feel of the movie and I know that Parsons is obviously like really I mean those early back rooms videos are essentially animated Just to see somebody who's like bringing this technology along in a way that isn't big gym style where it's like only a few people have access to Peter Jackson toy box like This is sort of like what I thought was gonna happen when when Sean Baker and Steven Soderberg were like we make movies on iPhones now Right, but now it's like happening now. It's like you could do this with like open-source software and an iPhone you could make something with your friends and you know when you can use that material To envision the world and kind of break the boundaries of our normal world and say like what if something looked like this Yeah, and then you're able to kind of manifest it visually and then give it to artisans to then build that world and And change it like I say Kubrickin cuz like Kubrick did did do this in 2001 in a clockwork orange in the shining where he's kind of creating these surreal landscapes and placing humanity inside of them and Parsons is trying to do something somewhat similar. He's trying to place Human emotion in an unreal world, which is something that I just it's a kind of storytelling that I always really liked But I was really impressed with it and I there was a part of me watching the movie where when I was getting lost inside of what he was doing When he's giving us this first person perspective or when you're seeing it through the eyes of a DV camp or a you know Just a video camera where I was like keep going keep going in this direction Don't worry about going back to what the story is right, you know, like I'll go along with you on the right And I know that that's kind of antithetical to like what you're kind of most primal experience of joy is at a movie, but I also am like, we can't continue to evolve movies if we don't break them. Like this is something that's like getting to the point of almost breaking it, which I really, really admire. I don't disagree with you. It's just that, you know, your mileage may vary on how far you want to go down the or how long it will hold your attention, you know? And that's not that's not to say that it's not amazing filmmaking or that it's not like a anesthetic that works and communicates something. It's just, and also to your point, like, yes, you do have to break things in order to make something new. But, you know, I don't know whether the trip down that hallway was like the brand, you know, brand new thing to me. We're like on our direction and on the way we can see it. But clearly many people disagree because they watched all of the back rooms videos, which are just, they're only the hallways. Very cool experience over the weekend, I think, I'm sure you guys, you guys do do this and me and Andy do this on the watch where we sort of bemoan the death of monoculture and the idea that there is like this thing that everyone is experiencing at the same time and having the same conversation or about or different conversations, but a conversation about. And I was hanging out with my wife's best friends, daughters this weekend, and they were so excited for back rooms like they're all teenagers. And first of all, you look at the numbers on these videos and they're talking 15, 50 million, you know, like millions and millions of people have watched this. And they were so invested in it as an idea and were nervous about the movie part. When you say they were invested in it as an idea, like because I don't think they make a distinction between this and like check out this like static shot of an abandoned pizza hut. Like I think that there is like an appreciation or an interest in vibes, you know, and certain like motifs online that people just passed the time. And I didn't know that you can play back rooms on Roblox. I didn't know that there were so many like video games that take place in back rooms. And it really is kind of like an open source like people can mess around with this. And this is his iteration of it. That's why I say it's like a fable. It's like anybody can adopt this. But they were like fully unaware of what the mythology of it was. Okay. So they're into back rooms, the universe. Yes. Okay. But I was like fascinated to be like, oh, you're not worried about whether or not, like back rooms makes any sense. You're worried about whether to what's an algebra for and Ronaldo Rines would make any sense inside of your experience of back rooms, which and everyone will have a more or less different experience of it. And maybe if that even if there isn't accepted lore, you don't have you don't have that's the other thing is just for anybody's listening at home who's just like there you guys keep talking about what 16 year olds want. You don't have to know anything to enjoy the movie. You know, you don't have to have seen any of the YouTube videos. You don't have to know who made the movie. Like Amanda, I kind of I kind of wish I hadn't now. Because I think the experience of the film, the thing that they got so right is there is never really a moment where they're like, this is what this is. Yes. And this is how it works. They get right up to it and then he stops. Yes. Yeah. We can talk about that later. No, I think because I didn't know anything about the lore and I was and again, so you do not have to know the lore and you do not have to like know, you know, and understand 16 year olds to go see and enjoy this movie. But because of that, I got to actually experience the the movie and the filmmaking as filmmaking. Rather and then and all of the aesthetic decisions and the world that he was creating and the vibe that you talk about, but not having to worry about whether it was faithful to whatever was on the internet before or what I had seen. So I guess in some ways, this is like the gen alpha version of a video game adaptation, but in the sense that it's like some lived worlds and medium that they're very familiar with that I don't have any familiarity with and then how will it translate into a new medium and what choices do you have to make to get one fit into the other? Yeah, I think it's a movie that's really easy for me to situate in the history of movie making because there are actually a lot of movies like this that, you know, what you can call like a liminal storytelling. And I'm always eager to be like, I was like David Lynch, like any fucking nerdy cinephile, but like it's not really like David Lynch. It has like maybe some hallmarks, but I mean, you'll hear Cain say like he's just not a cinephile. He's seen a lot of movies, but he's not somebody who is pouring over the creative decisions. It actually would it feels more like to me is a much more recent vintage of movie that I know you've seen a lot of these movies like cube and pulse and session nine and Lake Mungo and triangle, which I just saw for the first time recently, where their movies were characters enter worlds in which the unreality kind of like becomes terrifying and starts to take over. And that's a pretty common horror construct. Those movies I think are often very reliant on how good or not good they are communicating like why something is happening. And the ones that don't explain it tend to work better than the ones that do explain it. Yeah, there's also been over the last 10 years like a bunch of found footage movies that are like wouldn't it be cool if these influencers went Chernobyl or would it be cool if these influencers went to an abandoned casino. But they're all like essentially a bad version of the Halloween movie that was set in a reality big brother house. Like the Buster Rhymes one. Yeah, they're all kind of around. They're being made by like 50 year olds, you know, and like they're not this definitely felt like those are products we're describing. It's close to like again, I don't want to glaze this guy too much, but it reminds me of when Tarantino came on the scene and he was like my set of influences are completely broken. This is exactly what I wrote about. This is exactly what I wrote about today in the news that I was like what it's like when you're watching Kill Bill and he's showing you all this stuff. But I don't know the name of the actress who stars in Lady Snowblood. And then you see Lady Snowblood 20 years later and you're like, oh, but the way that maybe these filmmakers and this goes for Curry too, I think like he was like I was inspired by the Treehouse of Horror Simpsons episode that had The Monkey's Paw. It's like the Monkey's Paw was written in the 1800s, but he doesn't know he didn't read The Monkey's Paw. He's on episode of The Simpsons and so it's this downstream effect where like maybe Kane Parsons has seen the Halloween drive. Maybe he hasn't, but the vibe that like dreadlady sound design where you're like, why is there a humming noise throughout this entire movie? Like he's got that. He figured that and maybe he heard it in the video game portal. Maybe he didn't hear it in a David Lynch movie, but the guy who made portal probably saw Mulholland Drive and was like, you know what you got to do is you got to create the sense of doom by applying these tools. So to me, like all this kind of mixed up influence is really exciting and fun. And I like to pull it apart and maybe you can over read it by doing that. Well, we get pretty like maybe overaliant on being like, this is like if Jagged Edge was bad like this, you know, or like, it's like Paul Mesersky meets, you know, Wes Praver. And it's like, I'm I'm very ready. I think now for someone to be like, it's actually old VHS footage of this abandoned mall and and maybe a little bit of Mulholland driver maybe a Simpson's episode or whatever it is, but the the integers are really interesting. Like I really, I really like whatever the equation is, I like the sort of numbers he's playing with. How does it feel that Skinner Maureenk, one of the one of the origin points of one of CR's best voice adaptations is now like kind of secretly among you know, like in a way, it's like a little bit of the velvet underground of movies right now to me where, you know, like it launched the thousand ships. And there's been a bunch of movies like this recently like OutWaters was like this. My beloved nighthouse, which I watched the night my daughter was born, you know, very normal in the chair. We're all going to the world's fair. Yeah. And Jane Schoenbrun's work. Yeah. I thought a lot about I saw the TV glow while watching this for the the recreations of 80s 90s media within and the media within the media. Yes. And also seemingly media that is outside the generational reference point of the filmmaker making it. Yes. Just fascinating. Yeah. I mean, Kane is so young even younger than Jane. And so yeah, he, let's talk about 1990 and like why that's the time when this is set and what it means. And there's something about the visual signifiers from that period in our life. So we were alive at that time. We saw this stuff in real time. We were in those furniture stores. You know, we were in those, those empty parking lots like why is it set at that time? Is it an effective period piece in that way? I mean, I think that there's a lower answers for that. But from an aesthetic point of view, I think it's just a time when handheld media was available to a mass audience and they could take, you know, not uncommon to go to parties and go to hang out with your friends and if somebody had a camcorder going. Right. But also necessarily before cell phones were the handheld media in question and also could call someone from the other side to just be like, hey, can you check out what's going on here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me pin my location. So I remember where I parked. You get back in a different dimension. This film has an answering machine that is utilized, which is a very different, different form of communication. I think it's an interesting choice. I didn't, I haven't read about specifically the lore answers for this, but it's interesting. Something very significant happens during the 1989. and say just go Earthquake. - Right, something's open. - It opens it up, right? - It opens it up, yeah. - Yeah, well, it fires it up, yeah. - Oh, it was there, but it fires it up. - Yeah, Ivan has been working on it for a while with some magnetic stuff, but the- - So it's existed forever, but the portal. - Yeah, I mean, I am not in any way a PhD in this. I just was in my, I was funny, 'cause like you can do back rooms as just back rooms on YouTube, and then there is a whole industry of back rooms explainers. So it's almost like thrones where you can just watch thrones or you can watch the three hour explainer about the episode you just saw. - Yeah, I mean, it does have a little bit of this energy even as you're watching it. It's like, okay, like my children are really excited about something, and now they're telling me about their whole world. It's just done at such an aesthetically advanced level that you kind of have to- - That you're absolutely right. - You let you hand it over. And I will say again, as a standalone movie, before I learned all about the 1999 earthquake and the portals, it works as a movie. It isn't as born down with what did the portal exist forever. But many science corners could be done. - Yeah, I mean, if you wanna do an impromptu one, I don't know, is there anything specific that you wanna explore about how it manifests? - Yeah. - So that's the theory that that's furniture store is on a fault line, and so then it just, and that's, it had snared to a tell? - Yeah, I mean, there's like- - I mean, it doesn't the text of the film suggest to us that he was ready, you know, and because he didn't have his life together, and so he had to go into the back rooms where he was ready, right? - It was definitely his reason for not being like, oh shit, that seems dangerous. I'm not going back in there. I mean, he's like, I'm obsessed with this. - Yeah, I think that explains maybe his decision-making, but I think also the movie is very clearly like a snapshot of mental health too, where you're like, when you reach a kind of breaking point, when you cross a line in terms of what is real and unreal. So the movie is like kind of having its cake and eating it too. It is a very metaphorical movie about lost places and trying to go to those lost places and like the danger that is inside of those lost places in your mind, and then it's also a spooky movie about finding an invisible door that takes you to another land, and there are a lot of movies like that, a lot of like kids movies that are about going to ride a unicorn somewhere, and this is about manifesting your worst trauma and having it meet you in a way. Like if you were to go into the back room. - Oh my god, I was waiting for this. - What would be, well, first of all, how would you do? How would you go? - How would I do so? Do the back rooms look like that? Are the back rooms customizable? - There are many different, like my favorite part of back rooms is that I've watched is Red City. Like when this person comes across basically, like a red illuminated city that's out a window and is just like holy shit, but for the most part, they are that kind of 90s abandoned office park. - No windows. - But decorated, designed in part by like your manifestations of your own visual experiences, right? Like the things that appear in those spaces, so like is this mom's house at Christmas time in Georgia in 1993, you know, like that's the kind of like what comes up, what or what things below in the back room of your mind, but also in the real back room. - Is there an option where there's just nothing, where like the back room is like a wall? - Is there an option where it's tuskeny? (laughing) - I don't know, I don't totally know the camera. - If it was the Mediterranean, everybody would go to the back rooms, the point is, but what if there's, what if, can back rooms be void? Can back rooms just be like nothing? What if there's nothing below the surface? - This is the reason that I'm asking you and I want to ask you, and I want to hear about the Wukovia Center and everything that you see there. But I, - What if it's nothing? - But you are trying to turn it off, but this place won't let you turn it off. - I don't know, I don't know. - It would let you to tell edge of it or turn it off. Okay? - Or not, maybe not stronger. - Well, that, that, that is an interesting question too, you know, can it be resisted? We don't know, we only see really four characters into this space. - Yeah, and the question is to whether or not she is equally at a breaking point, and equally open to the idea that there's something out there that's just coming from a therapist or a book called The Window Within, I believe, sure. - But also who has some tough mommy issues of her own and carries around a cement block, but seemingly of her hand print, not her mother's. - Just based on the size you think that was hers, but is that meant to represent her holding on to her childhood or to never forget what was inflicted upon her? - I think it's weighing her down, but she can let it go. - Until she utilizes it. - Yes. - Yeah. - Yeah. - See what they did there. - Did you think that there was any chance that her mom had seen the back rooms? - I think there was an indication that she's trapped. - Can we, can we move into spoiler territory a little bit? So what you've already mentioned that Mark II class is in the film. Mark II class shows up, and he like works at the company that's like, sure, of course, async. Yeah, and they're, and they're researching. - Yeah, well, they're an MRI company who is stumbled upon this space. And so they're exploring it. - Okay, but so he says that he went to the back rooms and then made it out and is now exploring it. So that would suggest, which I thought was the weakest part, and I was sort of annoyed, but again, that is just kind of, you need a conventional narrative arc in a movie and some sort of explanation. Anyway, it seemed like he was maybe slightly resistant. - To the back rooms, to the, at least that he could remove himself and then operate in a research capacity. - He's trying to stay in the real world, whereas both were not a reins of it, and to tell you, for our characters are more vulnerable. - And to tell you if we're, goes in and out. - Yeah, yeah, but he's able, and he's able to kind of exist inside that space for an extended period of time. And the way that we don't see other characters do it, and he's not wearing a hazmat suit or anything like the other, presumably the MRI scientists are doing. - Right, right, right, right. - And he like corrupts him over time, sure. - Definitely, yeah. - And like every time he comes out, he's a little weaker. - Yes. - And it's slurping him in slowly. - It is, I mean, I agree with you that I think that that stuff just doesn't really work, and I wish that there wasn't as much of it in there. I know why it's there, and I think it will probably be a useful handholding device for the parents who are taking their teenagers to go see this movie, but I. - I think it'll, yeah, it'll be for the parents, not for the team. - That's what I mean. - The teams, I think, will probably bristle at some of that stuff. - I'm the parent in this analogy, and I also bristled at it. And I was like, I don't. - Yeah, but you like good art. And like, to me, it felt like a producer note. That's some of that stuff feels like a producer note. - Maybe that would be. - Yeah. - Before you go, it's like a museum, a never-ending museum of great art. - But it haunts me. - By the way, no shots at Mark II plus my friend who I love. Like, he's great. And this is another example of like him signing on to like a young person just being like, I'm just trying to like realize my vision. It's more just like whatever they're trying to communicate there, like you could have not done it. - I also thought that his vibe and his warmth is a nice, wrong foot, wrong foot's the audience because it's supposed to be the scientist for me tea or something. And instead he's like, I can't believe like you've had this experience. Please share with me what's been happening. And then it has a sort of ambiguous ending. But I, I didn't mind it. I was aware of like the async thing going in. - Sure, yeah, I've learned, yeah. And those guys have a lot of, a lot of stuff happens to him over the course of the YouTube videos. - Yeah, I want to, I kind of just want to look at Cane and be like, keep going, like keep kind of breaking the paradigm of what a movie like this is supposed to be. And then I will say there are also a couple of things that are more traditional that do work as well. Like there are a couple of scares in the movie that I think are very effective that use traditional horror strategies. There are a couple of jump scares, startle scares used at Weewoods. I saw you get startled watching the movie. You got really shocked by something. And there's a scene in the movie where we're going kind of like into the third realm of the back rooms and we enter a red lit room that is illuminated by a Christmas tree. And I was at that moment in the movie where I was like, "Oh, okay, like we are, he's done it." You know, like I've slipped into the movie. And I'm scared and I'm excited. And I can't wait to see what's around the corner. And what I wasn't asking myself was like, why is this happening? I was just letting it happen. Which is what I think what is the success of the movie ultimately is that I'm not too worried about like why. - At that exact moment, I thought to myself another tough beat for Christmas, you know? But what? - Christmas is scary. - It did communicate to me that it was a tough beat for Christmas and I wasn't like, what does this have to say about the birth of baby Jesus? - I'll also say that. - She's like, I was just like, "Oh, my favorite holiday, damn that." - So much of the thrill of the YouTube videos is that they're found footage or that they're shot by the people who are walking around and brought a camera with them or something. And this film is like a real leap forward for him in terms of composition, in terms of how to pace a scene beyond just someone walking down a hallway. And lastly, which I fucking love, but it's like not gonna be everybody's cup of tea, but to emerge on the Christmas scene and find the other characters there and to the stuff of, I think stuff sinking into the sand of the carpeting is a relatively new phenomenon. I didn't see a ton of it in the YouTube videos. So, you know, I just thought it would have been enough for him to just be like, here is a big screen version of a found footage of my paranormal activity or whatever. And instead, I think he's leveled up. He leveled up. - Yeah. - And the design, I think calling it a hallway is reductive because it's really more there. or just a never ending Warren of rooms. And the design effectively communicates to you where not where you are in relationship to things, but this sense of space and your sense of confusion and there's something around this way and that it is very convoluted and that you don't understand where you're going, but it's hard to communicate like that actuality, especially when you're really physically building it. - Yes, yeah. - I mean, there's stuff in there that's like, it taps into a feeling of playing video games, it taps into a feeling of like certain levels of video games where it's very puzzle oriented or the entire point is that you're lost in amazes. But it also taps into like a childlike thing where you're like that weird experience of like you're the amount of time it takes to get somewhere is always slower than the amount of time it takes to get back sometimes. So you know what I mean? Like once you know the route, you're like, oh, it's not that bad, but like the first time you make a walk through the park, you're like, did I make a wrong turn somewhere here? Whatever and it gets at some like really a neat kind of childlike wonder at these things in childlike fears too, I think. - No, it's all amygdala as they say, you know, like everything that's happening there is not about like logic and problem solving. It's about the sensation that is created when you're seeing the things that are in that space. And I think that I genuinely kind of don't know how they did a lot of this too, which is something that usually impresses me where just like designing those spaces, like where they're using one set and then striking it every time to shoot into a new room, where they're building like these entire, you know, use the word war and like is this like an office building where it does also have that experience to the 1990 period piece idea of like being in one of those office buildings, which all had that kind of yellowing quality and that kind of rickety furniture, you know, this the particle board line when edgy for like breaks the chair early in the room where everything kind of felt like it was made of that, you know, breakable, disruptable material like. - Pure one kind of vibe, yeah. - Yeah, where it's like it looks nice and then you touch it and you're like, this is fake. And I'm just kind of kind of bold over by it, you know? Like even in its, in its failures or its weaknesses, I'm like very few movies get me in the headspace that this movie got me in. So I'm just a lighter one. - Yeah, college freshman dorm was brought to you exclusively by the West Lebanon New Hampshire Pier One. - Wow, what did you have in there? - I think my mom dropped me off and then was upset with the sparseness of the room. So, you know, and we'd bought like the usual sheets and everything that was on the list. But a lot of throw pillows, you know, like a lamp. - No, that wasn't the vibe. They were going for that season at Pier One. Fall 2003 was more of like a, um, a Moroccan vibe, you know? - What about like a ship's wheel? Do you have a ship's wheel in there? - No, again, I was a different coastal reference point. - It's very tense. - Yeah, it's the smell of spices in the air. - Why aren't you listening to her? - Well, now I know what's in your back room. I'm glad we asked. - What's in your back room? - I think it looks like a pizza hut. - Okay. - Yeah, I really find the lighting in those to be really pleasing. There's a bar in a Boston called AnchoVee's that mimics it. - Sure. - And been there with you. - Yeah. - But is it, is it so as back rooms, is it supposed to be a happy memory? - No, I think it's supposed to be. - That's why I said we'll go to the center. - Like I personally, I'm trying to think of the, that's where the six place. - I like a band in malls. - Can we have the sixers intervention later? - What are you talking about? The patient's dead. - Okay, good. I know, but can we, let's not do it again next year, you know? - Oh, like not watch. - Yeah. - To the team? - Yeah. - Let's say, let's set ourselves free. - Funny room on the bandwagon. - That won't be happening. I assure you. - I'm not, I'm not taking sides. - Welcome all comers. - But your bandwagon is too full. Let me assure you. - Okay. - I'm just, just think about it. - Okay, I'll think about not watching the sixers. - 'Cause I just, I can't do another February of this shit. - That's what I'm saying is like in years is, you know, and be jerseys, you know, like there's like, there's, there's. - I mean, mine too, it's just like 18 and beads in different states of injury. - In different heights. - Yeah, in different positions. - It sounds palsy. - Exactly. - Exactly. - How do you feel like, okay, so the movie's gonna be a huge success, right? It's already tracking for well over $15 million. This might be like a $75 million movie this weekend, which is pretty crazy. It will instantaneously become the biggest A24 movie of all time. Feels like a big generational change where 16 year olds are powering this. And we are like, we are latching onto the bandwagon in many ways. Do you think that this is a profound change that we are at the forefront of? Or is this just a blip, borne of a handful of kind of coincidences in like a three or four year window? - To quote Tracy Lads, I reject the tyranny of your questions. Like, well, can it be somewhere in the middle? I think that it is part of, I don't, I guess it's profound the change, but it does seem like we are at seeing a new wave of generational filmmakers focused specifically on horror. But, you know, they all learned on the internet. It is connecting with new audiences. It changes the way that we're making movies and that many audiences are seeing movies. So I think it is historically significant. Can I add one person to that list that somewhat complicates this? Ava Victor is also a part of this wave as like a primarily online content creator. - Red actress. - Who then went into the world of narrative filmmaking. And I, I think Ava is also kind of instructive for like the ways that you can use the medium and the tools. And like, the other thing we haven't talked about is looking at feedback. Like what people are saying about what you're making. And then iterating on that and not being as precious about your creations that I think is also really interesting. Can you talk to about the Discord server, his Discord server and what is happening there and how people are iterating on what he makes? Well, he didn't say anything negative about it, but he was like, - Oh, they're like, I'm taking what you made in. Here's my version of it. - Yes. - So which is the thing of other level of life. - So much optimism, which is not in any way really different than the five years after reservoir dogs where everybody was like, what if my friends wore suits and put guns at each other? Like that was amongst friends and all the movies that kind of came out after that. In some ways, just like riffing on a core text. But you know, the thing that I think I was most nervous about over the last couple of years when I would watch specifically TV, but I think it was starting to invade movies. Like I would even not, I enjoyed this movie, but anyone but you is like a good example of this where it's like drone shot scene doesn't last more than 90 seconds. Like five needle drops every two minutes. Like there is like a ADHD style of filmmaking that I was like, I just don't know if I'm gonna be able to hang with this. And I saw a lot in TV, you're seeing a lot of like if something doesn't happen in the first three pages of a script, it gets thrown in a trash. It again, stuffed to the gills with music. Scenes don't last that long. And I was really worried that the sort of language and the almost a grammar of movies was getting broken and over the course of like people watching all this short form video stuff. And so to come across somebody who, and come across teenagers who are like, I actually like watching 40 minutes of a foggy highway while a screw-in-shop version of Brian Adams's "Rundie You Plays." I'm like, you're watching "Fuckin' Stand Brackage." Like this is incredible. Like we might have-- - I've heard down man Ray in here. I'm like, we're in a kind of surrealist territory with the filmmaking, yeah. - And so that is actually also in the mix if we can introduce like some real like, like wrenches in the works of challenging durational stuff that makes you really either pay attention or just give yourself over where you're not even intellectualizing anywhere. You're just letting a piece of our wash over you, which is very powerful and is, it's indirect contrast to obsession, which to me is like anyone but you, but made by somebody who knows how to do it. Like anyone but you is an older filmmaker trying to use contemporary methods to appeal to young people. I like Will Gluck, it's no shot at him, but that movie feels like it's trying to like, it's trying to address the short attention span as opposed to Curry Barker, who is like, I am of the short attention span. Like I've been making things that are catching people in the first three seconds for five years. Like I know how to catch someone. And even though obsession to me doesn't feel like sloppy or haphazard in its editing, it's tight. Like every sequence you're like, this sequence has an intention. It's trying to get you to a certain place with these two characters and what's going on between them. And it's going to get there in under five minutes and then we're going to move on to the next incident. And they're two sides of the same coin. You know, it's, it's so convenient that these two movies are both coming out in May because they represent like two different paradigms, both of which feel like they are, and a lot of ways the future. Like I really do think that it's not going to change what their Dune Part Three is good. You know, like that level of filmmaking is probably always going to exist. Are you excited for Dune Part Three? - I am. - Yeah. It'd be really, that'd be crazy if you had like an Arrakis back rooms. - Arrakis, yeah. I don't know if that would be the planet that, or is that, yeah, Arrakis is the desert. - Isn't it? - What's the water one? Where, where is Timmy from originally? You know, we're Oscar Isaac. - Oh, we're treaties is from, yeah. - I forget the name. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Jack. - It was into that. - Camden, is it Call of Dan? - Call of Dan, is that Call of Dan? - Call of Dan. - I think that's right. - I think you pronounced it wrong because you could pretend like you didn't immediately know. - Yeah. Like you've been churning Frank Herbert's progress through the stories. - Sort of a Pacific Northwest vibe there. - It does. It does a little foggy. we'll mist off the ocean, copycat potential. I feel like maybe the downside of this is we're gonna see a lot of stuff like this, right? When this movie takes off. - Yeah, I'm sure every other studio producer is just in watching the YouTube reaction videos looking for other stuff, seeing what they can Xerox and rush out as quickly as possible. I mean, people were joking about it online over the last couple of days, but I'm sure that folks will start looking at creepypasta to see like what's another, like kind of, I don't even know what the IP rules are for stuff like this. - No, this one is such an interesting test case. I mean, they tried this already. Like we did get a slender man movie, but it was just kind of made in the traditional modes of a Hollywood horror movie. It didn't give you the sensation of sitting in your room alone, reading something and feeling freaked out. - No. - That's like what Jane Schoenbrun was trying to do and rug onto the world's fair. Like that's the closest iteration we've seen to that kind of experience, but that movie isn't traditionally commercial, you know, like it's gonna be, it would be hard to get a lot of people to go out and see that. So kind of what's in the middle ground, like anybody replicate what Parsons is doing. I think it's gonna be really hard. It's more like how he made it and what he was using to make things before he started making Hollywood movies that to me feels like the shift, you know, where it's like you use blender. Like I think blender's the same software that was used for flow. The animated film that came out a couple of years ago that was nominated for some Academy Awards, like an Academy. - Yeah. - And so it's just like a-- - It's a sh-- - It's like a sh-- - It's just like a shrinking down of the production process for movies. It's like it is reducing the barriers. So it's really cool. - Do you want to see more stuff set in this world? - Yeah, but I'm not the, I'm not like I need the TV show now and I need all the lore and I wanna see a hundred more iterations. Like I do like this as an individual movie. And that's still my favorite thing. - Yes. - And it's gonna be impossible for him to not make back rooms too, like they're just, they're gonna throw us so much fucking money at him to make it 'cause this movie's gonna make so much money. But I, I would love to see like a side door. I don't want, I definitely don't wanna see to a trilogy for "Ranada Ryan's Band" the movie again. And there are no shots to them. I love them too. - Sure. - But it's like take, go, go. - Do you wanna speak at all about their individual arcs and/or performances? - I think he's like one of the great living actors and it's cool to see him do something like this. And I think he's been a little underserved in the last 10 years but he always takes on really challenging parts. This is a hard part. I think he gives me a tremendous amount of credibility because- - He also just gives it like you have to bleed through a wall and then be like, I believe this. - Right. - Yeah. - They're not make it look hokey. - Yeah. - Her, you know, we love her on the show. We were just talking about how great she is and fjord. I think she's a slightly miscast in the movie and there's something confusing about her accent that took me out of it a little bit. She does get to run though. - She does get to run. I mean, she's a great screen presence but like, I think also some of the weaknesses of the screen player revealed in her performance, especially where like she's playing a therapist who is escaping her own trauma and has created like this kind of idea system to navigate the stuff. - Yeah. - But also self-help. - But like, she didn't seem like a real person to me. I'll say, Edge of Force character seemed like a real guy who was having a really hard time. - And. - Yeah. Well, some of that is just because you spend more time in the back rooms of his own mind. - Sure. - So his character is fleshed out. I thought the construct of the therapist and the architect patient as like a send up of therapy culture was kind of funny. I don't know if that was the intention though, or I don't know whether that was just kind of the execution of the script and of her not-or-indexy performance. Whereas like, oh, this is, that's not how they talked in therapy in 1990. You know, that at least where I was a very, very modern and never-inistic. - It's a very good point. - But that's okay. And as someone who thinks there's too much therapy in movies, I thought it was funny. But I agree that it was maybe not intentional. - I liked the ad for her book content. - Yeah. - You know, I read that that was all, all that stuff was a very late ad to the movie. That that whole notion of her like having this like, self-help kind of text and all that was not a part of the original script. And that's the other interesting thing is like, he invented this world, which is inspired by something that previously existed. But then worked with screenwriters to shape the story and give it some of that traditional shape. And that's really the stuff that I was bumping on. - I'm just glad you had your traditional shapes though. - They allowed some of the like, the loose threads to dangle there. Like I, I like thinbed it and look at him actually, I don't have a ton to do in this movie. But there's a moment, are we doing details? We can say detail. - Sure. - There's a moment where finbede is exploring the back rooms and comes across his own clothes, which is never really interrogated very much. - It's into apartheid t-shirt, yeah. - And I just love shit like that. Like you do not have to cross every tee. - Agreed. I just wanted to just make a quick note on A24. - 'Cause now- - Turn it around. - Like they just did. - Yeah. - Like they kind of just do this. - Now what I mean, here's what I'm afraid of. - There was news last week that IMAX was up for sale and it's up for sale 'cause IMAX has been killing it for the last five years, 'cause everybody only wants to put their movies on IMAX. So now it's like, well, we better sell. The Iron Todd. I really hope A24 doesn't sell, 'cause now, when you look at the drama- - Yeah. - And you look at Marty's Supreme and you look at Civil War and you look at, what was the other decilient song film. - Materialists. - There's a materialist, like they have figured something out that no other studio really knows how to do and they don't make $500 million movies but they make $150 million movies now, which seemed impossible five years ago that they could consistently make movies like this. But this movie is probably going to $150 million if not more. And that is like the robust health of the middle class of movies that we actually are like, have winched about for a long time. Now they have the A24 flavor, right? - But if you had to guess of that $150 million box office, how much of it comes from people who self-identify as A24 fans? - Versus how many people self-identify as back rooms fans? - Or as Zendaya fans, or as Civil War fans. - I don't think it's an A24 thing. This would be. - I think that people who have been raised by A24 and consider themselves to A24 boys will like know about back rooms and I'm gonna go see it 'cause they're committed to their project. But I think more of it is because, you know, this is A24's version of a franchise movie, right? Like they figured out IP and they have the fan base to come with it. - Yeah, and I think that's super savvy and it's honestly the same thing is-- - But also they let it be good, which, you know, or they let it be good and they manage to make it good. - Yes, so good at marketing. I was watching that the trailer for this this morning and I was like, are they cut this like an alien movie and it really isn't? - No. - You know? - No, but that's something they keep doing is they keep wrong footing your expectations in the movies, but they're not making people mad. Like they might be frustrated that the Selene Song film is not, when Harry Medzali too, but-- - And you think about the Tiger Walk that was required from the drama and then trying to promote that movie and like-- - It's the craziest things happen this year. - Let everyone know, like you actually do have to come see this right now because otherwise your friends are gonna be talking about it. - We ran into somebody on the streets at Cannes who is talking about how they did not ultimately participate in the drama and what the kind of sense around that movie was in the industry and how difficult it would be to sell it to an audience because school shooting and quotation marks. And that's just like that is a taboo that cannot be crossed and cannot be addressed in a widely released piece of culture. And not only did they do it, but they made it like their third biggest movie ever. And obviously you have huge stars and this really savvy marketing machine, but I'm bringing this up around backrooms because this is now, they did, the thing that we did discuss two years ago, they are actually starting to be able to accomplish. And I'm very impressed, you know? I traditionally really liked the studio and what they've been making, but the fact that they're now mainstreaming with their own brand of stuff. - Right. - Is also a fascinating turning point. - Right, because they tried to kind of open up the tent and start making different variations of what a quote unquote A24 movie is. And frankly, like a bigger, more expensive A24 movies and it took a minute, but now they've figured out. You know, and so the drama is an A24 romcom. I mean, it is. It's pretty structurally a romcom and this is their IP horror movie. But you know, they are also both very weird, idiosyncratic and potentially alienating movies that they somehow managed to sell to billions of people. - Marty Suprem is their sports drama. - Yeah. - You know? - They're doing as they're a word of the rings. - Yes. - Yeah. - And their video game adaptation. - Anyway. - It's interesting that obsession comes through the Blum house. - It doesn't. - It doesn't. - Independently financed. - Oh. - And acquired out of a festival. - Okay. - And this movie is also-- - Wait, what, is Jason an exact producer on obsession? - Only because they acquired him. - I see. - And Blum is also involved in this film, along with a cadre of other Peter Turner figures. - Yeah, exactly, like a lot of people, a lot of very experienced successful people got in on the ground of this and helped to make it. So, which does, I mean, is necessary sometimes, you know? Like, that's also true of Star Wars. Like, that you just kind of do, do you need these kind of benefactors to come through and allow for something to scale up in this way? The question is always like how much do they get in the middle of the creativity? Um, and this feels like it doesn't feel trampled upon, which is what part of what's so cool about it. Closing thoughts. Did you have favorite sequence in this film? I mean, it's hard to separate them because they take place in such a kind of similar world, but, um, I think the moment when he goes into the basement after the lights turn off while he's watching television, and he sees the lip thin shaft of light that reveals that there's something there that he can walk into, um, is very sophisticated piece of sci-fi filmmaking, uh, when she goes into the very vertical room with the vertical, you know, stairs, and it's just a wholly different version of scale. And, and, and a real like, how did you do that? And it looks amazing. And, I mean, you know, it was very gondry. Yeah. Um, very cool. I love to bunch of them. I actually thought the execution of the monster was fantastic and, and legitimately terrifying and practical. Also, uh, he's done videos that you can see him kind of like are his blueprint for that monster. They're not actually back rooms videos. I don't think they're just like him messing around or doing something about a giant. And it really works. But I love when he first brings, um, the kids into the world and is just like, there's a pool like, you know, like, there's that. I kind of was like, this could go on for 20 minutes. Like, I just want to see all these different places. And his performance is so good because you don't know is he actually trying to do the research to prove that he's not crazy? Is he actually treating them more like bait for this world? You know, like, what is his intention? Yeah, it's one of the things that he's like, you have to go down there because you have the camera. Right. Right. What can not is this? And it's like, did the back rooms tell him to do that? And like, how much of this is malevolence versus him kind of losing a grip on his own sanity? Cool stuff. Um, all right. Well, we got one guys. Yeah. Let's let's go now to my conversation with Kane Parsons. Well, Kane Parsons is here here to talk about back rooms. And I'm very excited to chat with you. Um, I wanted to start with this King. In addition to congratulations, I've been thinking about what is the first thing that you can remember seeing that made you want to create, not make a movie necessarily, but then made you say, I want to make something of my own. Uh, it would be incredible if I could give you a specific material example. Um, I think it's a tendency that traces back farther than my memory will really carry me. Uh, I think realistically, it's sort of a tendency that did not get shut down in the early years of my life. Like in the, you know, first three years, somehow some driver there that I don't have my head around kicked off into gear. And I've kept been like trying to find versions of that over and over again at different points in my life. And I think I can look to early examples of things, I suppose. And and I guess in, in that I would say, um, it was sort of, I wasn't really into, like I, I would watch movies growing. I think we had a DVD collection and like we'd go camping and I would like, I didn't really understand what I was watching over the, because I was a tiny little, is it, does it make sense for me to go and be going this far back in time? It gets really abstract. I want you to go wherever you can go. Yeah. I mean, like we had like all the early seasons of the Simpsons on DVD. And I think those got in my brain. I mean, Star Wars, all, you know, everything that was out at the time in like 2007, I ingested, although I wouldn't like, you know, I think those had a, I wouldn't consider myself like a longstanding, like huge, huge Star Wars fan, but like, you know, growing up, I think that definitely was probably one of the early influences of science fiction. Like materially, I start getting like really outwardly excited about stuff. Like I, I started a trend of like, I guess I've actually had this my whole life, but, but I get really obsessed about specific things. Like I find a thing, I latch on to it and then it's my thing for like, X amount of time. And then now at this point, like when I was younger, it was like phases and I would grow out of them, but now it's just like anything I get obsessed about, I kind of just hold on to it indefinitely. And they just build and do a big pile. So I know portal was kind of like when I when I played that for the first time, because I wasn't like, I wouldn't consider myself a big gamer. I wasn't growing up, but like, partially just because I wasn't, I mean, I was restricted in one of those what I had access to, but I know everyone my age, he was like a right of passage to be playing Minecraft. And so that was like kind of a baseline, a luxury I couldn't afford exactly. Like I didn't have any devices. And so I would have to go to friends houses and stuff for that. And eventually I did get it. I had a PlayStation 3 that one of our family friends gave us. And then I got a little big planet. And then I got portal because I played it at a friend's house one time. I got portal two. And that's what sort of, I think drove me absolutely insane. And that's what I'm going to just keep signing portal and portal two is the thing because I love it so much. And in terms of childhood, it was a big focal point. But did those things when you were consuming them from the Simpsons to portal two, did they make you think that you could make things or are they just things that you slipped into and fell into their worlds? Yeah, I kind of beat around the bush there on the question. I think, I think I started understanding or at least processing with more clarity that I could make things. Shit, I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to give like an honest, not like salesman you answer about it because I want to say that it was something like, oh, when I started using YouTube, I would watch all these YouTube channels. And they would show you behind the scenes and stuff. And that made it seem also so viable and whatnot. But at the same time, like years before I had any YouTube access when I was like three or like four, I guess like four or five is probably more accurate to say. I was technically picking up a family camera and obsessively running around the house with it. I still have the files like we found the SD cards and put them on a drive just like a couple months ago. And so, and not all of it's unwatchable. It's not like filmmaking in a true or like meaningful sense. But like I was I guess my already assuming things could be made. And so like there was kind of two vectors moving. I like, I think it was just like a, I think I've always really like just experience curation outside of like the context of any one medium. I think that's kind of what it is. I would do like theater growing up. I, you know, was the kind of person who would generally just try to, you know, a bit of an annoying kid in that I would like try to do like silly like magic tricks or like prank things or like set up an elaborate like Scooby Doo trap or something like like Rube Goldberg machine things. Like I really like schemes and stuff like that. And all for the effect of like getting some kind of reaction from people. And so I think that mutated to like a really distilled version. So I would like, I loved the I for a long time. I was like, I just want to make like haunted houses or just like walk like it's walking through experiences stuff like that. Like that was really compelling. And then film kind of just started to take shape. I think because I would like was getting into editing a little bit because I would like edit little trailers and music videos and stuff from just random things that I was into and edit little means and whatnot. And then I just started slowly filming my own little clips and it just kind of started turning into like YouTube ship posts which turned into little short films and then I drifted further and further until I was just like applying all of my like without like I think I find a humor in everything I do. But like I tried to do it a little more seriously probably around the time I was 10 or so. Do you find that you are historically a very quick study that you can master something quickly? I don't know about master. I think I can get excited about something and I think what I found with everything I've done in any field because I you know I like to jump around to a few different mediums just because I I enjoy it personally. It's not too much about the result for me. I find that I've had a hard time getting discouraged and I don't know what I would really I think it's probably a blend of a million different things. Again, like that's the boring answer. It's like probably stuff that I got from my parents because they're lovely people and probably stuff that I got from just my general upbringing subconsciously and maybe some of it's beyond that. But like I generally have sort of I think growing up I wrote a curve of like every time I would learn something objectively now I can look back and recognize it as pretty like if I did a short film. It doesn't look great. The VFX don't look great but at the time it was like pretty mind-blowing and really satisfying and it would kind of just always be writing the curve where I'm never self-aware and self-critical enough of the thing I'm making to actually be I guess dismissive of it to a degree that makes me want to shut the whole thing down and give it up. So it's like always constantly fun and satisfying. I think I've only just now started to that curve kind of plateaus and now there's such an extreme degree of like being technically meticulous over it that you have to live with one thing for so long that it you know you start to feel what it's like to stay with a project for an uncomfortable amount of time. I have some questions for you about that because it's just like your amazing prolific nature as a young person and then entering a system that is so deliberate and takes so much time that it must have felt somewhat like creative whiplash to be transitioning to that style of creation. Not really because I I think that for me, that transition started more in around 2021, or like, when I started the backroom series on YouTube, I think I think I was kind of, unfortunately, it's not the right word, just because it was, you know, a deliberate movement, but I coming from, like, you know, a lot of my influences did come from YouTube and whatnot, and I spent a lot of time in my teenage years, or, you know, after the, the, when I started getting internet access, my influences were very much derived from people who were making these indie projects online that are like very meticulous, like, a lot of attention to detail, lots of things to dig into, lots of channels who are maybe just even hallucinating information out of something that was never meant to be dug into. Yeah. And so all of that kind of created this mindset of like, okay, if you're going to do an indie project, especially if it's mystery or, or sci-fi, which are, you know, all what I want to be doing, you've got to be prepared to give people detail at every single level, and they're going to dig into everything, and they're going to take the entire series, play it forwards, and then play it entirely backwards in reverse, and they're going to overlap, and then at these exact moments, events need to line up and create a second message, sort of like the stuff people go crazy with, with, you know, dissecting the shining and stuff, just applied to everything. And so I think that I just got a new habit of really trying to bring that level of meticulous art direction to what I was doing on YouTube, and so when we are, you know, scaling to this film, again, that was a gradual process of, for all of like the grandiose spectacle around, like the way this could be described, or is being described in the media and whatnot, it's like, from my perspective, I've been doing this thing pretty solo for a while online. When we reach out, I start talking to them over Zoom, I never meet them in person. We're just talking like usually once a week or so, or every now and then, some scripts start getting made. I start talking to the writer, have like a couple hour phone calls every couple weeks. We try a few different versions. We try working with another writer, same process, like stay on the phone for a couple hours, and then we're building, it goes off writes a script, we get a draft, phone call, notes, and other draft, people like that, we want to start green lighting it. When I go to Vancouver, it's just, I mean, that's a big move, unlike I am physically going there, and it's just a bunch of people who have been able to text with a little bit so far, but it's like eight main people, I mean, there's a lot of people, but it's like, you know, really just like a single smallish room full of people who are just kind of on a similar wavelength to what I was already doing, so I just walk into the room and we just talk about things and we just talk about what we want to do with the film, not in like a, just in like a literal context, we're able to jump to it right away, and I think it became a very, when I say it's I've said it seem less than other interviews and stuff, and I guess I really do mean that it was just me, the biggest transition point was just taking what is usually nonverbal work, and then just verbalizing it to other people and trusting, or putting the right level of trust in certain parts of that, and so again, like I think I wanted to make sure I had every piece of, if I can picture the final thing perfectly, I just have to be able to articulate how we can get there to the right people, and then they apply themselves, and they get a great job. I want to ask you more about the production and the conception of the film, but one last thing about, you know, your more early days, I was curious if you could remember the moment when you decided you wanted to start uploading the things that you were doing, because that feels like kind of a critical decision to make, even if you were 10 years old when you started doing it, but just this idea of how much of it is driven by the need for attention, the like a sense of pride, you know, just just trying to have a test experience to see what it would be like, like can you kind of communicate like what, what, where that came from, and then how that becomes ultimately like, I think a turning point for a lot of young artists now. Yeah, I mean, for me again, it was April of 2015, I believe, and that's when I created my YouTube channel, and the first like material sort of version of a short film that I was doing repeatedly at the time, like the thing I was into was like Lego stop motion, and so that's what I first posted on YouTube, it was technically a first video on my channel but that's not true whatsoever. That was, I guess actually, it feels like forever. That was 2015, that feels like a million years apart from 2015, but there's like, I think 200 private videos before that one. I posted a lot in that time, and like the early stuff was just, you know, like very short little snippets, no audio, because I didn't know how to edit. I didn't know how to do anything other than just use, I think I used a software called Hue animation or something on, like either the family computer, I don't know if I had a laptop at that time, and I didn't have like a phone or a tablet or anything yet at that point, so I think I was just using like a family computer. And I think it was probably like, I had watched, YouTube was like the main thing I chose to watch when I had the time, and I think it was just an aspect of, I don't know what it was at that point. I think it, I'm sure an element of what I do comes out of wanting, like it's, you know, it's seeking some form of validation socially, of course. It's not like in a very clear way, like you don't look at art, or you know, I don't think what I've been doing really has that appearance overly. Like it's being done for attention, but I think that like, you know, that's kind of the social contract that I made in my childhood with like, okay, if I'm a bit of an in-doorsy person who is not like the most socially interactive or is not the most on the same wavelength, there's a lot of my peers, like I will make up for that by, you know, overrelying on these technical trades that I can then exercise to an impressive degree, hopefully, and then the conversation can just be about that rather than anything else. And I think that's kind of worked out, but I think if I had to guess, that's kind of subconsciously what the deeper psychology there was to a certain degree. But I also just, I found it really satisfying. It was just kind of like a really high dopamine reward from doing it. Like I, more of making the thing, I think the uploading was just either part of what I just said or a desire to, I'm sure this more to it, I woke up early. No, no, it's insightful and I'm really curious about it because they're, you know, you're part of a generation of filmmakers now, which I'm sure you're being told over and over again in these last three months of your life. But like, they're having, they're exposing their ideas in different ways than what was the previous dogma, the previous methodology. And so the fact that there is all of this extant work that you have made before a certain age that is publicly available is so interesting. And like you, I really like how you explained how you knew going into the making of this movie. And even in the web series that like people would watch it backwards and forwards and they would be looking for hidden meanings and secret truths. And I'm curious like what that process was like when you were working with the writers on the scripts, like were those the things that you were hunting for? How do you know that the story is the right story that you want to tell when you're working in that way? I think it's a, it was, it was a mixture of like, because what I had on YouTube was something that it's the same like narrative edge and like it's at least the world is still there. It's like this film is all ended up in a place where it's the same canon. And that was always the hope. So I think it was, you know, finding finding like what is a interesting like like jedi when they compelling not just for people who have already followed the project, but like what is a like a eyebrow raising just intro film to that concept that does not like entrench the viewer in all of this this either feeling of being alienated by a mythology that's been going on for years. And there's like how can we make sure that like you're not going into the film and then when you don't get it, people are hounding you with the criticism that like it's for the fans or you were supposed to have watched the whole series first. And I just, I personally don't really enjoy that. I like being able to, especially because back rooms the way I've constructed it is usually a little bit in a bit of an anthology type is, you know, it's told out of order and it's more of putting together a broader shape of a tree rather than, you know, or that's how I've been constructing it so far. I'd love to do like a TV series. And like I think with as soon as you're picking like an episode and I consider this film an episode, then then you can tell that in order and make sure you're completing that story. But like I don't think each individual piece needs to be lined up in this one precise way. And so the hope was always this is a branch on the tree. It is not like the fundamental thread that ties the whole thing together and it's not the ending. It's not even the beginning, it's just a piece in the middle that is hopefully going to be so focused on the fundamental sort of physical details that overwhelm a character with finding this place, that there's not even time in the movie to get entrenched in like the more underlying who is this mysterious individual, who is the vice director of this research institute. And what does he have going on in his life? and what happened in 1972 and whatnot like all that stuff. is is in the YouTube series, but you know, so I guess I guess to answer the question it was sort of as simple as finding a compelling I think a less is more sort of mundane approach to letting a character interact with the mechanic of the back rooms in a way that really just foregrounds a simple relationship there because I would love to you know I'd love to go harder with a lot of things in future projects but I do think that to a certain extent I'm trying to be careful with my own ability to scale properly like there's such a thing is moving too fast and and this has already been moving at light speeds so I wanted to at least work on something that I think would be manageable and I didn't want the worst thing that I would be afraid of doing is like jumping the shark I suppose so I I wanted to make sure that we could have a stable viable version of a film that is not going to you know risk falling into a into a bit of a insane contrived or conflicted territory I'm curious about the three tracks of the movie the way that I see it the one is just the pure narrative storytelling of the characters that you're portraying the second is this sort of lore and mythology that you've explored in the web series and that you're obviously very conversant in as an idea and then the third is thematic and I feel like thematically the movie is very rich and but I haven't heard you talk about it as much and I don't know how much you are even thinking about your storytelling in that specific way I think it's easy to over rely on symbolism and you know the thematics of a project I I don't I do it immensely so so the answer the quick answer is yes it's all I have a version of it that great thing about thematics is that people are probably going to have a many many different interpretations of it and and so that's why that's actually the bit I like to speak to the least probably I mean you can probably just if you were to comb over all the interviews all the press I've done you could probably get like a flavor of the way I think about this project but I do think that that's the least interesting thing I could prescribe to people like I if it was up to me I like I like trying to in a perfect world I I guess I mainly I'm just fatigued with seeing creators you know after the project ends or you know after the project ends like going on and talking about what it all means in a way that is somehow like if it's not clear in the product then I don't know you could try again or like I want it to be on the screen and and this film is not supposed to be like you're not supposed to get like a hard read out of it exactly in terms of like this is precisely what it means in very exact explicit terms but it is there and I'm seeing enough people arriving to the same sort of conversational talking points that I was hoping they would that obviously aren't mentioned in the film anywhere so I feel like that works I feel good with the work that was done there yeah I try not to try not to verbalize exactly what it should be though yeah I think I'm just curious about how much time you spend on it because I find that with a lot of projects like this the lore tends to overwhelm the other components and I don't see that in this case at all but it it's helpful and you know I there's a lot of illusions to to David Lynch with your work and you know he very famously sort of refused to explore his any of his thematic intents I'm not encouraging you to do that in either direction whatever you want to do you should do I'm probably going to keep up doing it this way but yeah I mean I mean I think I think there's a lot that people can look at and I like to when I work and I've been doing this for years now in backgrounds and any other projects I I kind of don't do anything else so I think a lot of it kind of comes from like a very forced sort of just drowning in a mindset or a set of ideas that just become I guess it's just like the way the way subconsciously a culture can sort of encode so much just the way information is transmitted in the way it's framed in little ways that's not even aware of I think I think most of those thematic choices I'm kind of trusting myself conscious to do a lot of that work after I've kind of fed it so much stuff for so long and that kind of has seemed to be the case so far what about the mechanics of horror movies that's something I'm quite interested in because you do have some moments in the movie that are like classical scares you know that I have like some of the traditional strategies yeah yeah yeah and so is that something that you studied and thought about is that something that you knew what was necessary in a you know in a in a work of art and a commercial work of art like this how much did you think about that I think I mean I've never like looked at it from a technical or clinical standpoint I think mostly throughout Moses I haven't watched a lot of horror movies I think it also can't be understated the the role in which that the Greg or editor had on the project like I wish people talked about Greg more because he's a wizard and he do you know it's because it was lovely working with him for so long you know and and I think that like I I think there's a few places in the film where you're right there's definitely a reliance on the sort of you know build up release of a I don't want to say jump scare I don't personally I don't think anyone is too sentimental about jump scares so so I don't think I need to run the risk of sounding like a like a jump scare supporter but there's certainly a few moments where we startle the viewer I think I'm willing to live with those I think I think I think I stand by them to like a 90% degree and I would say that like I think I think those are just we're wanting to set a very specific cadence where we are like showing that we can you know we can bring up the tension we can bring up the the you know the sudden surge of noise or adrenaline or whatever we're looking for there there can be things do happen here but then the longer we go without something happening and then would be a sort of like are able to subvert that sort of like I think it you know kind of breaks that language a little bit and you know leaves us kind of brings the tempo way down for like a long period before it very subtle you get like a silent jump scare just like a shadow moves and you get a you know slightly different kind of release so I don't have it in academic terms there's actually something I think I rely more on intuition for than anything else I'm sure what I'm planning on doing this summer is watching a whole lot of stuff and trying to do just that because it's about about two years working on this film that's a lot of time for someone who still has a developing brain and wants to be trying to feed it more stuff yeah and during that whole time I haven't really been able to consume anything so I am dying to actually get a better academic handle on this stuff that's funny I mean I you know you should definitely do what you want to do but one of the things that I really really admired about the movie is while it does have some of those core components of a scary movie which is a genre that I really really care about and it's been a lot of time watching a lot of movies like that and study them to whatever extent that matters the movie is working best for me when it is not only subverting but sort of like ignoring the orthodoxy of narrative feature film and I you know I hear you when you say that that's intuitive but they're there's something very precise about your willingness to sit in moments and to not explain and my instinct as an older person than you is to tell you like well that must be coming from YouTube and whatever you've consumed there that allows you to reject these traditional modes but I don't actually know like I'm actually very genuinely curious and did you find that you had to like fight for those kinds of moments in the film or to allow for that we did it wasn't like vicious fights they're very manageable but there are certainly conversations I guess I can say I think I would say that like that stuff mostly comes from the same place where I drive pretty much all of my excitement for projects which is this is cliche and this is cheesy and this is technically where all of art is sourced from because there's nowhere else to source art from but just you know nonfiction the real world my life I think I never had a moment growing up where I went to the theater and you know suddenly fell in love with movies because I was at the theater and it was so profound and beautiful and it really got to me I think if anything I've sort of you know I like to think of a better I have a better way of looking at it now but like when I was younger I had like an admittedly kind of like a pretentious view of it which was like I don't really want to be making films about my perception of reality as prescribed by someone else making a film like already it feels like it's like you're deluding reality further and further if your inspirations are only nonfiction and I was just like I don't really want to do that I want to experience as much of life as possible like if I were to have like like a dream career would be equal parts trying to just see as much of life as possible and trying to actually like meet people and talk to people from different like as many different walks of life as possible and and just have lived experience that I can actually draw from personally on a personal level coated with my own life experience and emotion and tonality and then you know I mean that's a sprawling that's the entirety of life like that that accounts for everything and then just use film as a way to process that and sort of summarize basically here's what I learned in the form of a weird bizarre fictional you know anything it could be a movie it could be a game it could be a TV show it could be music but like I think that's kind of the way that I framed making stuff when I was younger and I you know maybe there's not that potentials I mean I think there's a very healthy way to do that I think that's you know So what I'm doing now is what I enjoy. So, yeah, you did mention that you like to jump around mediums. I mean, do you see yourself working in the mode as a filmmaker for a long short time? I do. Because that what you're going to be doing. I think I don't know where things will settle like 40 years from now, but I do, you know, currently very much desire to just keep doing the kind. I would say that the balance I have currently is the one I would like to keep. There might be all sorts of strange bizarre economic hallucinations with the industry and like, you know, strange new trends starts and, you know, there'll be a few new technologies in the coming decades that will certainly derail or change or open up new avenues. And I think, you know, that's why I kind of broadly I'm interested in the whole sort of width of of what it can be. But I, with the caveat that I personally have no desire to be non-generative AI for any of my art, just have to say that. Thank you for saying that. But I, I, you know, I, I think that I just really enjoy the experience of like I said, it's experience curation. That's what I like. I like sort of taking the things that feel potent from lived reality and then just kind of cranking them up to 10 in a way that you can sort of repeat the emotion, sort of in an easily sampleable way. So hopefully you can, you know, gain something from an experience if you're self. So, you know, do you find that you encountered any genuine limitations to working in like a traditional film production style as opposed to like software? Yeah, I think, I think there's limitations in what you can ask of people reasonably, like the level of a session that can be required for like, there's an example would be on on my discord server. There are many, many people who are on there all the time and they are probably around my age. Some, some of them even on the younger side and they are far more sophisticated like blender than I possibly could be and they work at it constantly. And if, and for a piece of fan art, like after a trailer from the film comes out, they go and they model every single thing in the trailer with full, like they find the props, the exact props from the exact props shops and they model those objects and they even like on the underside of tables and Ottomans, they include the little manufacturing label in full 4K resolution and it's all there and then they just share those assets around and then they remake everything one for one. So, it's like this feeling of like, if that could be leverage, that's incredible and there's like such an intense focus and it's so maybe not professional and etiquette, but so incredibly meticulous and professional in the production quality and I see that constantly, but like that's not something that you can just kind of inject by asking for it. It's something that kind of has to grow incidentally and so maybe there'll be a way to lean on some of that in the future. I really enjoy working with people who are obsessed with what they do and we did have a lot of that on this film, but I think it is such a diverse aside, diversified project that's, you know, the certainly places where it is hard. I'm working on this, this, and this and so this one thing maybe doesn't get the same level of like obsessive detail baked into it and on YouTube that would be fine because I can just take as much time as I need and I can go do that and I think it's part of the time factor that I run up against on this film and then I'd say also the, you know, the way, I guess the two other things would be the script, like the way, you know, I was 16 when this script was, what was in this project started and then, you know, it was a couple years of making, but like I don't think that I had the most creative leverage at the very start of this project and I think it grew with time. So I think there's certainly ways in which I wish there, like I think there are choices that I wish we could have spent more time deliberating over in the early phases before we just wanted to try to, you know, it was green that I think at a time when could have benefited from a bit more like analysis and going back and forth a bit more, which is all stuff we did while we were in CREP and while we were going through the film. So I think it was that and then I would say it's just generally, and this isn't a restraint, this is actually liberating in some ways, but like the difference between YouTube as the medium or as the place where people are going to go view it and then going to a theater and viewing it on a projector screen is going to obviously change so much of how people are perceiving it. The fact that this is a large budget production versus something that they just clicked on a YouTube channel to find is mentally doing a lot of lifting in different directions for people and I actually find that to be like one of the most interesting sort of paintbrushes available to like choose the medium and I, I think you have to pick, I think backgrounds was tricky because it took a lot of work to bend certain elements to make sure it was constantly working for this other direction for a 90 minute film. I think a television series is always where it's kind of made the most sense to drift to. That's, I mean, I've said that from the beginning, but I think that's so interesting that the medium, because I feel like one of the things that is so effective about the movie and I realize you're not a person who's sort of raised in the deep glow of the big screen, but you know I've still watched, I've watched a good amount. But, but, you know, there's something about being captured in a dark room that is still effective for this story and that you can't get up and pause it and you can't, you know, look at your phone and there's something very specific like in the DNA of the creation that makes it effective in that space and maybe not for the story that you want to tell, but I don't know, you know, I don't, I don't, it's not happy. I think it's more effective. I think it's more effective for that. I think what I'm speaking to is maybe a distinction between a project like this and there's some projects I've done on YouTube where episodes of this, of a given series might be like 10-minute long screen recordings from a video game that was made in 2003 and you're, it's kind of compressed and it's supposed to feel like you're just viewing messy files and you have the freedom to click around and download files from the description and there's like metadata in the file. So like ARG stuff really. And so it's just a medium switch there where I think things are framed a little bit better there. And if you try to throw those on to a theater screen, I think, I think honestly maybe I don't know. Maybe this is just somewhat uncharted territory and maybe the next thing I should do is literally just try to see how scalable some of those things that seem unscathed a lot because if they're not, I mean, or if they are scalable, then and that would be pretty cool. There's some stuff to be done with that, I think. I mean, as an observer, I think it's just incredibly intriguing the idea of just kind of breaking the form a little bit and delivering things in a slightly different way than we are used to receiving them. But I want to, I'm curious about if you are able to do this, take stock of this exact moment. I mean, we're speaking hours before the movie will be released widely. And there's obviously a big frenzy and you've been, people have been watching your work and mass for a long period of time. But this is a scale, at least in terms of the way that the media communicates about something. It is very, very different. Like how close do you feel to it? How much do you feel like you understand it? How are you feeling about it? I feel close to it. I don't feel particularly like, well, I guess I feel, I feel very weak then. I am checking and, you know, I despise Twitter. I do not enjoy using Twitter in the slightest. I am checking Twitter though. And it's, I can, I am only more firm in my, in my desire to never go back on there outside of this. But that's more for just like seeing what, what like stuff is leaked so far from the theater recordings and whatnot, just to, you know, just seeing what information is traveling where. And I, so I feel like I've got a good finger on the pulse right now. I think most of, I mean, I've just come off like a pretty hefty press tour. So I'm a little mentally drained from talking about, which is why I appreciate this conversation, which is not about the normal talking points. Because, you know, I'm very thoroughly done with a lot of that personally. I've been trying to avoid them for your sake in mind. I enjoy, I've enjoyed the experience, but at a certain point, I think everything that I have to say has kind of been said. I think I always maybe do have more to say, but like, I think you need time to incubate and like find those new things. And, and when you're doing it back to back, you kind of run out of new options. So I think, I think right now, I'm kind of just, I mean, I, every now and then, I do get a moment of, like, I'm kind of done with this and I'll get a video on Instagram of myself just talking it. I'll click the not interested button. Just so I don't have to get more clips of myself. It's a back room Z and move by you. Yeah. I, you know, I, it feels good. Like, again, like I, we talked about it when I first got on the call. I just got back home to, to, you know, my childhood home where my family is and my brother's dropping up high school right now. He graduates next week and I am just kind of going, I'm just letting my nervous system kind of reset to where it was before I did all this, I think, because it was very much, I've been at home my whole life. And then I go to Vancouver. I do this film. Don't leave Vancouver the whole time. And then now, I'm immediately coming back in this kind of like, everything that happened with this movie from beginning of prep to release. it's just kind of an insulated event that I kind of want to be able to just keep going to different places and repeating. So although I do love Vancouver, I'll probably do more stuff there. But I don't know. It feels like it feels like I don't want it to turn into a whirlwind that never ends because that would drive me completely insane. Like you need the sort of, you know, the brakes to find what's actually meaningful to go towards next. So I'm trying to do that now. Welcome back to your life. Kane, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Now, you said it's been hard for you to see things, but you also have this very wide-ranging sense of what is seen. It doesn't have to be a movie, but it's something that you've looked at that you loved. This isn't like a firm like IP experience as much as it is a combination of being on the plane back to back with this press tour everywhere. Just looking out the window and there's a mixture of like reading and audio book, just going through like all of Ted Chang's short stories. This is what I'm currently on a Ted Chang kick. And so I don't know if this is an accepted answer, but I think it's just like I'm really enjoying the head space that that's put me in just going through tales of your life or stories of your life and others and exhalation and just looking out the window for hours and hours and hours and the sun rises and falls and it's just like that's kind of been like the mountains, the sea, everything you see when you fly around the planet in a plane. I think it's just been all of those things have kind of just bled together into a single kind of hum, just like a tone that I think is less interesting to sort of describe in intellectual terms than it is to just kind of say that it's really a peaceful and I think just feels like a very like a place that I just want to keep living in. It feels like a comfortable sort of little bubble I guess. That's a perfect answer. Kane, congratulations. This is a truly unique moment. I hope you are able to appreciate it back home. I'm enjoying it. All right. Thanks for doing sure for a hike. See out. Get outside. Thanks to Kane. Thanks to CR. Thanks for producing Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Cabinoff for production support. We'll be back next week to talk about 10 movies we missed in May. 10. Yeah. Just about close to there. What's on the list? So sheep detectives. You guys didn't do a sheep detectives because it can't because it can't. Billy Eilish hit me hard hit me soft live in 3D or whatever it's called. What you're going to try to go see pressure. Yeah. The World War 2 film. I'm going to try to see passenger, the horror movie that's out this weekend. Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat 2. What else is on the list? I love boosters. I love boosters, of course. What else have you been watching? Anything you want to hear us address? Nothing movie wise that you guys have not either hit or are about to hit. It's all TV stuff. Cool. Anything you want to raise your hand for any last final movie? Something else that you want to add? I was just googling it, but I mean, that's a lot. Anything. I'm trying to think all the canned movies are listed. AI is useless. Did you guys do ready or not too? I watched that. Yes. I did address it. I didn't love it. What did you think? I didn't. I didn't love it as much as the first one. The first one is great. Yeah. All right. Well, hey, Chris, thanks for coming on this journey. I like and contribute. It's always really a joy for me. Well, okay. Last licks here since Van just did this. Where did you add out with third chair? I think that it was interesting. You know, John Corden, a four-term senator in Texas just lost his primary to Ken Paxton. I know. And that must have been so hard for you. And he immediately invoked it to Corden. And I just thought, I'd like to see that kind of commitment from you guys. You know, commitment to party, commitment to, and you put it yourself up for bidding and for auction and just be like, I am just the watcher. I can't, you know, I can't wait. I think I made a fairly cogent defense of the work that you've done last time this was discussed. So I'm on the record as being very pro-CR. But you said it was the friends we've made along the way. What about the friends we've had for a long time? No? No, I, uh, I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying the bands, you know, do you? I'm almost caught up with all of the Tracy material that you recorded in May that Rand Motley are in Ken. Yeah. It's, it's good. Yeah, I took a couple shots that I did. I'm not, I'll wait and yeah, respond to it later. Mostly from you. Yeah, Tracy always comes to my defense. So really my problems with you. Yeah. Well, honestly, if someone wants to come for first chair, I welcome it. I welcome the challenge. Because you want to have the gladiator fight or you're waiting for someone to kill you. I'm looking for an opportunity to reveal what really goes into making this show. That's why I want to be able to do. You know, looks easy, doesn't it? I didn't say that. I have to run my own shop. You know, I know what, what happens. Uh, in your, your, your, your safe here with us. Keep touching me. You're safe. You're safe here. Um, you want to hold second chair? Yeah. I'm, listen, people can try. But I just, it's really, it's a, it's a one-of-one situation. No one can, no one can do what I'm doing. I won't, I will not take that away from you. I promise. I'm mine, Palace, all your own. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.