Eric Roth

[Music] And now I don't want to make this whole thing about death. I just thought of like, you know, which I'll repeat, but that comment my mother made as she was dying when who's a lifetime atheist and a communist and didn't believe in anything passes and I asked her, are you afraid when she was kind of at the end and she said she was curious. And I thought, well that was a good place to start with something, you know. And then you sent me that beautiful poem about that when we're not watching ourselves maybe somebody else is watching us as we move move through something else, you know. And I loved your book by the way I have it right behind me here. It'll stay here now forever. Thank you so much. We're so glad you like it. That was beautifully architecture and then you know in always and always. All stories good for the same reason. I think they might be because I think you get to unleash, to use the words into ideas, trying to put the, as a writer trying to put the best word in front of the other. Some people are way better at it than others, you know. Just to relate to well-known artists writer named Dennis Johnson, who I think was one of the great American writers wrote a short story called Jesus Son that is pretty well recognized as one of the great short stories. And then more recently I've been friendly with George Saunders, who's a wonderful combination of words and science. You know I tried to sort of compete with them in emails. It's like a joke. That's like talking to a poet. But I think it's how they've learned as the great writers have or great artists same thing as painting or something being able to put one breaststroke in front of another too, you know, to communicate an idea. So in that sense I think all storytelling is the same and that's just how good you're able to do it. But I think it's a cliche probably, but probably true that everybody does have a story to tell. It's like I always please everybody. There's somebody for everybody. Same kind of thing. Do stories need a structure and do they need the same structure? I would say neither is true. I think that's the, that's up to the artist. It's how of their best communicate. I mean you know that better than anybody with me. That somebody will make just a sound and that sound will be everlasting and someone else will do it a different way. I'm pretty traditional in my structure for a Shakespearean, you know, not that I'm Shakespeare, but even I think Shakespeare said the two greatest lines in the English language, exit ghost. You can think about that for a while. But yeah I think you need that. It was scaring me with AI a little bit. It's now learned to, it learns dramatic function of Shakespeare. So he knows about catharsis and act structure and it and that will then use that to obviously you know increase its ability to tell stories. But I think people can tell stories anywhere they can. I think you just do what you think is comfortable. I think one thing I've learned that I think I learned this oddly a little bit from Bob Dylan just by osmosis that anything's culturally appropriate and the sense that you can use anybody else's work to if it encourages you it creates for you something that you hadn't thought about. And then it becomes a wide kind of mass of what bubbles over in you. Something maybe beautiful or corny you know or that I remember was writing something and there was a emeloo Harris do it with like they think lefty for zealous. I thought he you know and it was like it was always very moving to me and it always kind of just stuck with me. But it helped me to then use that to appropriate that to not a particular song with that sound whatever that felt like to be able to try to articulate that. So I think there's you know hikers and there's I wrote a movie a long time ago for and I haven't told this story so not much that much. For Kurosawa and he had asked me to help make an an Anglo character in his movie called Rapsy in August and we had we talked here a translator but he'd sent me the script which was translated and it was like a haiku I mean it was just so beautiful just an ant on an ant hill and however he was describing things and it was really really quite lovely and then I realized I wrote in this kind of Jewish intellectual psychiatric kind of prosy you know and it was so so different from what the beautiful way he was explaining things and and you know any artist will do things differently than another and but I think they all kind of have to borrow from each other and also have to learn through some experience you know so you don't get to be kandanski or something without spending the time you know learning to be kandanski and you don't get to be rick ruban without learning how to be you. On the psychological note have you ever done therapy? I have some not much I had done it individually for a while and like I was like late 60s early 70s I found myself kind of straining with my married life let's put it that way and I did a lot of loose genics all kinds you know with privately and also with like people like Jerry Garcia and stuff I mean in other words lots lots lots of you know acid tests and everything else and so yeah I had once a psychiatrist I found was very enlightening let's put it that way and my problem is I get to hung up on kind of the style of the of the psychiatrist but they've been incredibly helpful and then it became psychologist obviously when they started just describing drugs she was pretty amazing yes she was not she wasn't intrusive at all very sensitive and what I thought she led us in red areas yeah so that's psychiatry to me. How did you connect with a police psychologist? Somebody made a recommendation just her being really strong and yeah I mean she was really unobtrusive and let us kind of fight it out you know where we had to and love it out where we could and it was important yeah she was a great facilitator that way have you done much psychiatry at all? done a lot of therapy different kinds yeah yeah yeah I love that yeah and I think it's important yeah been helpful yeah I think that's part of what when I sort of introduce myself to you that I want to go back to that in some form or fashion whether it's with orthodox rabbi or you know a shaman you know what motivated you to reach out in the first place oh well oh no this is why because I've been having these kind of incredible I called them the porch sessions you know these guy during I don't know why right before I guess more during the pandemic people just started coming over on sit on the porch and talk and we could talk six feet away and I don't know I think it's more they were like old man Roth you know what does he have to say and all these people just started showing up you know it's like sometimes announced sometimes not announced and they've always been I'm sorry I didn't tape them even though I understand since we have a ring camera they're all on there and I was I was talking to Jed Apatow who we both know together and a couple other people too who love you James Gray and a few other people and and really kind people and I was saying I'm just a bit enjoying this enlightening conversation about things that I wouldn't miss a serially normally think about you know and how does it affect my work and my children and everything and everybody said Rick Rubin and so it was pretty easy you know and then I thought I figured when I text you you would just never text back and I thought that was cool too you know that'd be fine but you've been very generous with your time tell me about the first time you took a loose and the genetic drug um wow first time I was with a group of people in the hate aspect very truthfully it was sounds kind of corny and someone said try this and I'm always willing to try you know and I've had some pretty scary things but not I mean we're I never minded like the floor opening up you know or all of a sudden I was you know sitting in a cloud or I think I had once a experience of feeling like I was having in a fair with time magazine which was pretty interesting you know I don't know what that was all about but I never felt that I was going to become psychotic you know but I could see how it could become psychotic for somebody who has really tremendous fear you know and unresolved things and but I think you know from just playing with marijuana and stuff you know and having a lovely time through the whatever you know the eroticism of it or just the taste of a brown or some nonsense you know but that I always felt the way it's expansive to my mind I was never I never like cocaine though I just don't like that feeling I mean I guess I'm more toured I'm not advocating this anyway but heroin so I'm saying you know more masculine then or, you know. But I mean, I think drugs have your purpose, you know, and I guess it's, I've always been interested in trying to find out what's the limits of what I'm trying to think about, you know, and where else comes from. I mean, to me, the greatest story where I said to Bob Dylan, what to Bob Dylan thing was that in his book called Chronicles, he talks about, he was at the time with Daniel and Waw, who I'm sure you knew or know, well, I think he's gone now, but he was struggling creatively. Bob Dylan, he took a trip out to like the buy you because they were, I think, working in New Orleans or something and they went out to Lafayette. He said he had walked into a, in his book, he said he'd walked into a gift shop, and he sort of found the secret to everything. It was a card that said world's greatest grandpa. And so that somehow put together whatever he was struggling with, you know. And I thought, yeah, sometimes it's the most simple thing. Yeah. Do you feel like you're the same person now as you were before you took any hallucinogens? No, not at all. I think the same person's in there, but I think it's been re-informed in a way, you know, that at least it opened up the possibilities of things. But I don't want to emphasize this because my life hasn't been, you know, particularly about that. I mean, I think that's a nice afterthought in a sense. I mean, I'm way more interested in, for me, for the creative process is really important. And these things, I mentioned earlier about, what are my, what are the sources of my taking this from? What I do as a screenwriter is kind of a bastardized form of, it's more of a craft than an art. You can be artful at it. But it's not a novel, you know, it's not a Philip page up, a lot of ellipses and half-thoughts, but strong visuals, you know, and, but it's a former writing, you know, and it's like I've been lucky enough to, people have appreciated, I think some of the things I had to impart, you know? One of my proudest was more recently with the actor Josh Brolan. I had written a play of high-noons we were considering, that he was considering, and he was very close, and I wrote a play of high-noons. 'Cause they'd never had a drum on Broadway, a Western drum on Broadway. I was told that Josh was telling people about, he decided not to do it, but that his philosophy at the time, at least more recently was a, of Scott's Cheryl's story. More of an essay to a extent about life and death than us in that, and he was telling people about, it turned out I had written it. It was from when I did Benjamin Button, and I'd written a speech toward the end of it, and it was actually a speech that Nora Efron asked me, who was planning her funeral, asking me if I she couldn't use it. But it's funny how they attribute it to Scott to Cheryl's who I couldn't hold a candle to. You know, but in this one instance, it's pretty powerful, I think, about just, about life and about how, there's no rules or anything. You know, as long as you're not hurting anybody else, and if you're not succeeding at what you want to, you can just stop and change it, you know? It was easier said than done, obviously, but at least you can have, if you have the courage to go and try something else. - Yeah, you're a Western on Broadway, it's a really cool idea, I like that. - Thank you, yeah, I think the pretty powerful play that the play itself is very powerful. It's about the blacklist, really, and the movie was, and Gary Cooper and all, and sort of American iconography of the whole thing. And it's about guns, and, you know, but I think I made it, and hopefully a contemporary way, I mean, you'd appreciate this, since you're, you're metier anyway, is trying to put some contemporary music in it, so the fields, and the songs are all apt. I mean, there's a, that right-cuders song across the borderline, and then somebody you know quite well, and I actually know earlier than you, Johnny Cash's song, which was from Nick Lowe, the Beast and Me, which he used on the sopranos. - Yeah, when I was younger, I was asked by the Cabaret department at William Morris, I was a client at William Morris, and I was pretty young, to travel with a bunch of artists, and they were all just kind of basically jerking off, wanting these little video ideas, you know. There was no MTV then, or anything, and so I wrote on the buses of Johnny, was the Cash family, and that was really interesting. And then Van Morrison was singing with us back to the audience at that point, and then of course, great Jerry Garcia, you know. - So, how much do your experiences work their way into your work? - Well, I think they do, but I try to make it, what I think is more about what the feeling is, and the experience itself necessarily. I mean, the best kind of writing, which I still don't think I've mastered in any way, is a subtextual writing, which is probably true about music too, or certainly about filmmakers, I know. I think Marty Scorsese is a great subtextual filmmaker, because even in a taxi driver, all of a sudden there'd be some graffiti on a wall, that he decided to show you, but the graffiti didn't say anything of any value. It was just a sense, this is an art, and this is part of the city, you know. So he expressed a lot that way, but the worst kind of writing is kind of earning the explainer, you know, it's like the morning Mr. Water Commissioner, that kind of writing. So you want to try to find a way to have someone articulate what their most intimate concerns are, through some other story about something, you know, if you're creating a finer, if it's a true story, it's comes from life, and that says the same thing without having to do this, kind of thing with big headlines. It's a hard thing to do, I think the great musicians do it. I mean, I think they do it through the lyrics, because it's spectacular, you know, where they don't necessarily talk about what they're talking about, but you know what they're talking about. As nutrition science advanced through the mid-20th century, researchers began to understand that modern eating patterns, limited variety, processed foods, and time constraints, could leave small but meaningful gaps in daily micronutrient intake. 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But I think it also gives you a sense of what you're very smart about as to what you're not going to use, because you can start coalescing things into where one dramatic moment takes care of four or five. Now, I always warn the author that it might not seem akin to what you wrote that it will be. In other words, so I hope you know, I hope it will make it better if it's possible, or at least it's just a different form, 'cause I guess my calling is a madrometrist, I guess, right? Hopefully some humor won't long away, but that if I'm able to somehow express the human condition in an honest way, and somebody could take something from it, just even in entertainment, something as far as cycles, far as comfort or something, you know? Which was silly at its heart, but there's something was constant about it. And then there I think some more sophisticated movies, like The Insider that I did in a few hours. So I think articulated things that were important to society. Tell me the story of the insider. The insider was a guy who wanted to basically get his pension. That's all it was. He was going to retire. His wife was a daughter of a tobacco farmer. He was a very complicated man because he was scientist, legitimate scientist, PhD, and so many chemistry or something. But you wonder what he was thinking. He was working for the tobacco company. So he was sort of advocating the poison that they were putting out there. And he knew all about it and knew what was wrong. He could tell you in a second about the blood brain barrier. And I haven't smoked at the time, so I was aware of it. I couldn't talk to him now because he was under a kind of a hold from the government. He wasn't allowed to talk. So we had to create kind of a guy in whole cloth, the main who was this man. But the first thing I remember saying, what kind of guy is a tobacco scientist? And he didn't want really very much. He just wanted to retire. I wanted his pension wasn't even very much. But when they said we're not going to give you your pensiony, so I'm going to start talking about what's wrong with this industry. And he was pretty brave. He was pretty brave guy. He was a very prickly guy. But I finally did get to meet him. Anyway, that was a story. And in a dovetail with 60 minutes, the television show, they did a report on him. And then he squelched it because tobacco companies didn't want it. But also the government was kind of involved. And it became very complicated with the personalities, Michael, as the interviewer, the great journalist. Because I think he was a great journalist. He was very, he was unfrained. And so they tried to not run the story. And which made the producer nuts and said, what about the integrity of CBS? And so it became a lot about honorability. And I remember Michael was calling me journalist. There was a man named Lowell Bergman who was story. It was he was a producer of the thing. He was very brave. And he was a great reporter. And he cares yelling at me, Michael, as well. What makes moral, what makes Lowell Bergman the moral fucking arbiter and so on that. So I just wrote it down. So it's in the movie. Wow, that's great. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't have said it. Couldn't have said any better. How often does that happen where real life works its way into the story? If you have real life people, and this happened in this killer's the flower moon, where we imagine various things that we wanted the Osage to say. And then there was no way I could say it as well, or Marty or anybody else could say as well as the real people. I mean, we can give them, we could give them sort of the ideas we want, maybe them to express. And then they turned it into what was affecting them as human beings and their life stories, you know. So I could have never written that. We could have from Brooklyn, you know. I have no clue. The only other instance that comes right off the top of my head, it would be on Star is Born. I said to Lady Gaga, let's just sit down here and talk. And I'll write dialogue for you from what you're telling me. You know, so if you see, and Bradley did the same thing, a Cooper and like the scene in the parking lot where they're sitting for a bullshitting, well that most of that's written. But it made her comfortable, you know. So when the real person shows up, they have, you know, either limitations or abilities that you don't even know. And she's an interesting human being because the thing that was so striking about her, we were doing a read through. And the songs were in there. There was no need for anybody to sing them. Bradley Cooper would just sort of talk them through. But she started singing and God showed up, you know. I'm sure you know that. She has something amazing. Yeah, that you can't. So you have to work with, I think, who the person is. I mean, old story. Russell Crowe was not, he didn't understand certain the thing about his character and the insiders. Michael Mann had me fly down to Louisville. He said he won't come out of his trailer all that nonsense. So I went in there and did Rick Rubin with the Thiffman said, "Is there a way we can find a happy medium here?" And I explained the scene again to him and he said, "I'll try it." Eventually. And Michael, the director is just trying to avoid having a continuing fight with him, you know. Which wouldn't have been very productive. Let's use that case as an example. When there's a log jam like that, what's really going on? What's it really about? I think he had fear. He was afraid. In other words, and if the actor feels he doesn't understand it, whether he's right or wrong, I mean, you need to find a way to articulate to them what you intended. And that doesn't mean you end up with the exact same thing. The insider again, I got a call one morning from Al Pacino saying, I had written a page and a half monologue and Al said I could do this with one look. And I said, let me ask Michael, I have no problem. And so Michael said, "Let's shoot it both ways." And they left the look in. All the words I wrote were out the window, you know, 'cause he could do it without necessarily. And I said, "That's fine." As a writer, that's something that you can't account for, or prepare for an actor. You can get the story across without saying the words. There's no way to prepare for that. There's no way to write for that. No, except for I think after a while, you get the experience of that. Certainly less is more if you can, you know. Even I think there's some great monologues. And then as some directors just go like this, you know, cut, we'll take it out 'cause I had a thing recently. And I think a pretty particularly beautiful movie that I just finished called Here. We'll see if it works. It might be a disaster. It's all set in one room over 100 years in a house. And the camera's locked off, so there's no coverage. It's just one angle. But the stories are beautiful of what the people live there. And so you don't know a tent as a page, you know. But I feel a storytelling is very solid. How did that come about? Bob Zemeckis, the director of Forest Company, and I have a nice relationship over the years, and I've done some other work for him. And he called me, he felt, it's a graphic novel called Here. And the artist grew everything from this point of view. Everything was one way through a window. Well, not through a window, but you see a window in the back. So he said, you have the right melancholy for it. So maybe I do. But I also have a sense of my mortality, which is what it's about eventually. So I could write that. And then he put in some-- he's very humorous and kind of farcical and lovely. But it's about everything, because a dinosaur has walked through, because anything that happened in that property, Marshburge, and it's quite beautiful. I will see. Maybe it won't work. I think the tone is right. I start crying like a baby in the first five minutes, but I think it was because a Rachel Portman used to go sound like that was really beautiful. So I don't know. But we'll see. How do most projects originate? Does it usually start with you getting a call from a director? Or what are the different ways that a project will happen? I think there's everyone you could imagine. We did one recently. I did with my son called Walt Grace. He's from a John Mayer song, an old John Mayer. I don't know if you know the song. John loves it. And I didn't know John. But my son asked me, you think this is a good idea for a movie. I said, it's great. It's about a guy who is kind of trapped in life, doesn't have a great relationship with his wife. He has one kid that does love him. One kid doesn't. Or doesn't have a good relationship with him. And he has kind of a groundhog day life. He designs wings for like Lockheed. It's supposed to be set in 1967. And he decides to build a submarine in the basement, which I don't know. He's going to get it out of there. But in ours, it's like an outbuilding of garage. And sure enough, he takes off in a homemade submarine where he's got-- pillars are made of fans. And from the ceiling, he's gone to the junkyard. And it's spectacular. So there's also a feeling of yellow submarine with it, I think. But it's quite lovely, I think. We have some people who seem to want to do it actually now. So we'll see. And John Mayer will do the music, I guess. But so that's one way it came. Things come. Others are just books sent to me, what I'd be interested in. They're truly about the subject. And then directors, Dan Evil, and you've asked me to rewrite Arrival, which I did. And then he asked me to do Dune. So we had a relationship. And Dune was a little complicated for me, because it wasn't my favorite book ever written. But it was an interesting assignment to say how to make this the best and try. It's one that's been attempted many times over the years. And it's a frosty history. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tricky. I think you did a good job. I think it's my problem with the Wasm being a little too honest, probably, but there's a character named Dunkin' Eye to Ho in it. Now, this isn't a translation. I mean, we're supposed to be millions and millions. I said, where's his name come from? I understand the translation of whatever you want. Jambo Jacket. But it's not. But I think it's a prodigious book that he had been in the glossary, geography, and everything else. And it was a surprise. I mean, I think Star's Born was the most important movie in the more recent times, not because it's a great movie. I think it is a good movie. And certainly, I loved the fact that it could put me more in touch with young people, because young people really seem to enjoy it, even though it's an old story. story, but it made me feel vital, you know. And so I was in my 70s, so I said, "Hmm, you can still write that." I think gave me, you know, I'm not saying I was done, but it did so well, and then also they figured, "I know something's still," and it was just ridiculous. >>Different writing for theatrical release versus something that's going to be watched on a streaming service. >>Well, that's a great question, because I have tremendous guilt about, I began House of Cards. So Fincher, who's my best friend, I guess, in the world, one of the more loyal people you would ever meet, and I hope you have a time to meet him. He decided to do with me, and I had actually been aware of it from earlier when we had seen the English version that Pacino and I and Michael Mann were going to make it as a movie, because it's just Richard III, it's like, you know, I think these guys are so tough, watch me go on a stream and fuck them, and then he'd go on to run the fuck them. >>How's the English version? I've never seen it. >>It's the same thing, basically. It's just that the guy is not, he never wants to go past the station in life he is, which is sort of the whip of the party. In other words, and he's going to just manipulate everybody, you know, it's succession in that way, I guess, or the succession is that, you know. But it caught on, I wanted to sell it to HBO, figuring we just get water cooler conversation like the sopranos or something, but people started bitching it, you know, and all of a sudden these eyeballs became available, and I'm not happy about particularly the results, you know. I still force me to get to write movies that are, that doesn't mean they don't go right on streaming, but they start at least with the idea of, but the only one I think, if there hadn't been a pandemic, I think Dune would have played for quite a while, but with the pandemic, you know, people just sat and watch it. >>Is there any benefit in that idea of binge watching or episodes that you can tell the story over six hours, ten hours, season after season, as opposed to having to get it into a two-hour film? >>I've just been presented with that, and I'm not sure the answer. It's the same Dennis Johnson. I thought, how come they haven't done a movie about the guys who've come home from war, right? Because every other era has done the best years of our lives, a movie called The Men that Marlon Brando was in, coming home, of course, famous one about Vietnam. So they haven't done that for this war. These wars, they have gas and Iraq stuff, you know, and the guys are obviously in bad shape. So I was going to write that, and Spielberg came to me with something else, and I started conflict, and the head of the studio said, "Why don't you just sell it HBO?" So I did, and he said, "Who do you want to write us?" Dennis Johnson, they didn't know who he was, and I said, "I'm getting him." And he wrote five of the most amazing scripts that are called unarmed. Everybody in it's an amputeer, a burn victim, and the only triumph of it is one guy to walk across the street to leave. And it is so spectacular, and it's all written, as I say, in the subtextual way, and we're close now, a Catherine Bigelow might do it, but it's important, I think, and we get to use all, we would have all disabled actors and disabled veterans and disabled civilians, and I think it would be pretty incredible. I mean, years ago, I was going to do kukuznest, and my agent said, "They'll never make it. Black Nicholson was not involved." And I was friends with Michael Douglas, really good friends, and so I went off to do a movie called "Union Field." But then they got Jack Nicholson, and I went, "Oh my God, I fucked the dog here, man." But I did come back and do rewriting, which was nice. But that has the same tenor of this to black humor and anger, you know, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this. We'll see. So much of today's life happens on the web. Square space is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Square Space's best in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus, so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Square Space has everything you need to succeed online. 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We went away from that and Marty did his work and saw the movie. He always tried together to get the culpability of everybody that people would just walk over dead bodies. In other words, what is that all about? There's even a great trailer about saying, who is the wolf? That's the metaphor. You can spot the wolf. Don't worry. I think they leaned into it the right way and so that the movie doesn't have that sense of having to do what's the white guy saving everybody. It's not done in a kind of, I don't want to put her down, Rachel Maddo, but it's not done with headlines. It's done with great taste. I think Marty's an extraordinary artist. I would work with him when we're going to work again together. I work to the end of the time with him. But he's not always faithful to what you did. You have to have a pretty strong ego. Well, that's what I wanted to ask about, about not being faithful. Are you ever surprised by the direction it takes and do you ever come around to think, "Oh, this is actually better than what I had originally envisioned?" For sure. For sure. And I also think things have gone where they haven't gone as well as they could have. For sure. I did a movie called Lucky You that I never understood. I found out why later on that the director had Alzheimer's. But I never understood why he wanted to do it. I figured, "Oh, he's going to come in and do something." But it's about love story set in Las Vegas, the poker player, and Drew Barrymore and Eric Bonna. I thought it was pretty good. I actually took it from. There was a movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Warren Beatty called The Only Game in Town. That was about her playing basically a hooker. They didn't call it that then. He's just a degenerate gambler. At the end of the movie is quite beautiful. He's sitting on the curb and water is running down the curb. You figure he just did rope, man. He's got nothing left. She comes to his beside him and he sort of says, "That's the way it goes." She's going to be a gambler and he starts taking out $100 bills and making him into little boats. The river, right? So, guess it worked out. That was supposed to be the feeling of it. What is luck and all that? And it didn't work. That was just no good. So, I don't know. I guess it was disappointed, but I think you have to rely on the director. It's going to realize something. You have to hope they have something. I mean, I have a sort of philosophy that. And I've worked with everybody that you have to take a third way. There's your way. There's a director's way. The director's always going to win. One of the stories I tell occasionally is I did a movie called. This was the onion field, actually. And I wrote a great scene in the director kept sitting. It's not working. And I said, "Yeah, it's really great. You just shoot it." And he said, "You know what? I'm going to go the other way. I'm leaving the script and not shoot it." And that was the end of that conversation. It wasn't very kind. And I don't think it was very brave of them. But that's the way it goes. So, you got to figure out a way to be part of what they need to articulate what their vision is. And they're the boss. And when it says a film, I don't think it's bullshit. I think it's their film. It's like a musician and it doesn't go any other way. I think, you know, did a movie called "Mank," which was about the guy fighting for credit with Orson Wells, you know, on "Citizen Kane." And he set the ball. No question, he set the boat off with the right architecture and the right journey. But directors got to take it there, you know? And if you don't get there and get to the right place, you're not worth seeing. Do you do a lot of research for the project's tremendous amount? I like every god is in the details. You know that. Yeah, I do. But everything, I think everything I read at that point is all gris for the mill. You know, and that's why I'm back to the '78 particularly. What are the things they're going to define? So I'm doing a thing called rendezvous with Ramo, which is an old Arthur Clark book that they've made two, it's not that they made 2000. And one of the others was written around the same time. Same philosophy. And I have an astronaut that's been helping me. And he said when he went out of those spacecraft, he just laid back like he was in a bath and looked at the stars. You know, and so I said, okay. So if I can get that feeling because I think the feeling that's particularly peace really dovetails to the things I've been thinking about that, the thing that comes and interrupts these people's world doesn't have to have a reason. It might just be God. And some of the people who are religious believe in this 2130 that Jesus showed up sent by God from the planets. And he just showed up in Palestine or Israel where he'd like and did what he did. And then they crucified him and went back up to the planets. And that he's still doing that. So everybody adapts to whatever their ear is. But I think this overriding sense, and I don't think you can escape it. You get a particular age. Because I mean, you have to dwell on it toward and mobilizes you. But I think it spans your horizons, you know. And that's a good way to say it, I guess. When you're writing, let's say a monologue for character, how important is the content of what they're saying versus this is a great line? I mean, you would like to be, say, presidentially that you just want to put the-- No, no, I know. But I'm sure you-- There's no right answer. I mean, there's only your answer. I think they're my-- I get you. But I mean, I think it's kind of narcissistic to only dwell on what you think will last, you know. Maybe the whole speech will last. And it's more important that way. But I don't know if I really think about it either way. I mean, I think I try to write with human. Is this what I do? Someone called me a SAPI dog heart. I try to write that will be remembered. I like the fact that I built a legacy of things that I think I chose pretty well, you know. Not always. We've had some master failures, but I think pretty well. And I still think that continued to choose pretty well. And I mean, I have other issues. So it gets more complicated. So my mother was very tough on giving love. And so I always felt I needed some validation, right? And I still do in my wife's sister. She's eight years old. You feel like you need validation. You need an Oscar nominee. I saw him. I said, I don't want to. But it's like, I want to go call my mom. So look at my report card. I'm saying. So there's just psychiatry again. It's like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know if I'm getting over it or not. I don't know. I'd like to. That's an interesting thing that when our parents pass away, who do you call? When you get good news, you don't have that feeling. No, no, you don't have that thing. You could just share. You really love sharing. Yeah, I think that's true. I guess I think they do with my wife, maybe. She's a doctor and she's pretty supportive. But she doesn't quite get this world I'm in. She's just different. She relies strictly on science. Whatever you say, it's got to be accurate. And I'm saying, you can't just make it up. I remember Fincher being angry at me because in Benjamin Button, I had some silly speech about with Brad Pitt in the middle of the hotel. I gave her some bullshit about how you have the steep T and this and that. David said, this is such nonsense. And he left it in. Have you ever had a mystical experience? I think one-- it ended up pleasant. It wasn't pleasant. I had cancer a couple of times in my life. I've been very sick a lot. But I cancer twice. In the first time, I was just 32. And it was directly from my grandfather, Colin Cancer. And in those days, they just bombarded you. I mean, they just didn't really quite know. And I'm only laying in bed. And I'm not religious. And I'm certainly not Catholic and an angel showed up and sort of form of a nonkind of-- and she's this time to go. And I said, I don't really want to go yet. And I love my wife. And I love my kids. And can we just forest all this? And she thought about it and said, OK. So I don't know. That was my wishful film on Chino. But it felt real. It felt real. Beautiful. And the other side of it, the bad side of it is when I think when I get afraid-- or I don't want to see certain things I imagine rats are going around. I see a rat run across the ceiling or something. Something weird like that. That's about a mystical. I haven't got-- I think I feel more mystical on writing than I can feel what imbues me, you know? What makes me soar and at least makes me feel like I'm soaring. And I don't know. I wish I could say I did mystical stuff. I'm not sure. I completely believe in magic. So I wish I did. So I think that's what I'd like to learn how to honestly. When you've had that feeling of soaring while you're writing, is it just that the lines are coming? And it's like, oh, this is good. This is good. This is good. Describe it. It feels like you-- I love to go swimming in a lake in the summer, where it's just cold and feels like you're coming alive, you know? And that's what it feels like. And you don't have to judge it. And you don't even know. Because it's so corny the way I do it, I say, I allow the dialogue and the worst acting known to man, the voice has never changed, you know, not any of that. And yet, you feel like, wait a minute, you're not Mozart. This isn't coming right to you. You only have to erase a bucket note, you know? But you do feel like you're imbued with something. I don't know what it is. And I guess that's a creative spirit that you-- and if the work is great. Even if it doesn't work, if you can try it out, why not? Do you always write dialogue out loud? Pretty much. Say, just character is so bad, it's embarrassing. So you'll basically act it out for yourself? It's less acting. I sort of almost whisper it, you know, like to see-- I don't know why, just to see if it feels right, I guess. And I also learned a long time ago that was a director Michael Chimino. And he had prepared a wallet for Mickey Rorke. So Mickey Rorke knew where he came from. I'm sure Mickey Rorke never looked at the wallet. But it had a fortune from a fortune cookie and their picture of his daughter is draft card and this and that. And his point was that every single character has to have their own voice. Every single character has to have their own psychological makeup that they came from something. They're going to go somewhere. And I took that to heart. So I think that's a big key about how-- with the dialogue kind of thing, that everybody sounds different and interesting and doesn't have a follow-up bee and says something off the cuff. And in other words, where you try to make it as real as possible. Do you know all of that about the characters before you start or does their character come into focus as you're writing? When I was in writing pretty much, unless there's something so defined for them in a book or something where you don't want to make the audience go crazy, you know? No, I think like this one, I'm writing with this rendezvous with Rahm Lutz, I think it's called that. That I've slowly kind of made this commander, the ship, into somebody that was not really there and whatever I felt he should be, you know? And you just start describing things like, I think I wrote that he has-- he's very tacit or anybody has a great sense of irony or something, you know? So wherever that took me, you know? That was my first impression of him. And a lot of it's just for-- what I will say is that, I think every movie I wrote except from Munich began and end with the exact same scene I wrote. Almost everyone, yeah. And do you start with the beginning and the ending? Is that typical? Typical, I always want to know where I am to begin with and where I end the middle is a big mess. I have no clue which is I think part of the fun. You get to take a journey, you know, and discover people and things and things you'd never expect. You do it well, great. If you don't do it so well, it's not so pretty. But it's, yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful. And then I'll find that I'll really struggle over the first, like, 25, 30 pages or 20 pages. And think I'm just not going to get through this and all of a sudden on page 70. You know what I'm saying? And then you're done. Something unlocks, something. And I never fight it, which I think is what happens with people with, like, when they get to sphere of continuing on the blank page and all that stuff, writers block. I just change the weather. You know, there's make it rain or snow when I'll send you a look at it differently, you know. Do you always change the weather for a story or do you ever do something to change your condition to allow that change? I think I do both. Yeah, I think that will lead me to do something differently. Yeah. Like might you go for a drive or, you know, do something different instead of just sitting at the desk? That's exactly right. Now that's exactly right. I'm very high bound and kind of this has to do with, I think, with being born in the late 40s and being a 50s and 60s kid and that look at as a job in that way. I mean, I formally go to work. I get up, you know, whatever time. All same days it's gotten earlier. I've gotten older and try to do the Martian McCluen things, stretch out the amount of hours available. But this came for a little bit from John Chiever who I'd read. Got up at 7 or 630, got dressed, put his hat on his tie on his suit on, took the commuter train into New York at Renate a small basement, I think basement, a boiler room, place under apartment building where it worked from, took his pants off, folded them really neatly, sat in his underwear, took his hat off, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, 12 o'clock, Chime went off, got up, went and had a three-martini lunch, came back, wrote till four, put the seat back on, went to the computer, took the computer train home, and so he felt that was a job. I mean, there's a lot, I get a lot of artists do that a lot, don't, you know, so I don't think there's no rule for it. Same way you ask about how do you approach these things and what would you, you know, is everybody's different how they did it. I think I'm sure you find every musician you work with this different, you know. Can you work on more than one project at a time? Try not to, but the good news would be if they started dub-tailing where you're rewriting one and starting another. I have the next year pretty well laid out after that we'll see, you know. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise, athletic nicotine, not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters, not the aggressive buzz that leaves you jittery, but a careful calibration of clean energy and focused clarity, athletic nicotine, the lowest dose tobacco-free nicotine available made entirely in the USA. No artificial sweetness, just pure, purposeful elevation. Athletic nicotine is a performance new troubling. Athletic nicotine is a tool for shifting mindsets. Athletic nicotine is a partner in pursuit of excellence. Slow release, low dose, gradual lift, sustained energy, soft landing, inspired results. Athletic nicotine, more focus, less static, athletic nicotine, more clarity, less noise, athletic nicotine, more accuracy, less anxiety, athletic nicotine, from top athletes pushing their limits to artists pursuing their vision. Athletic nicotine offers the lift you've been looking for. Learn more at athletic nicotine.com/statua and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. nicotine is an addictive chemical. Does the breakthrough moment happen at the beginning of a project? Like, let's say you're asked to adapt a book. You read the book and as soon as you have an idea of this is my way in, is that the big breakthrough or does it happen later? It can do either. Like, I read a book called Damation Spring. I just look into the book that I assumed there was going to be something that quite wasn't, but I'm going to make it about what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be about Moby Dick with the Redwood trees. It's about a logger and his sort of contanker kind of guy and cutting down trees, cutting down trees. It's not quite the story and I wanted to make this guy be tall as Redwood as his Moby Dick. Eventually, I don't want to give it away, but what I think he does with this. I also like to, as I say, God's in the details, I love to go off in tangents. I want to do what a light of the tree is and why the tree survived nuclear holocaust and how the trees have their roots joined together and all these things we just don't see or know about. There's a book called Over Stories, spectacular that way about sort of like short stories about trees and things you never thought about. So I love that. So that's part of the excitement of doing something new. Then there are other times you just kind of found her along and all of a sudden something just hits you and you get it. At least you think you get it. You don't know till it's all said and done and then you have to give it to somebody else and all that stuff. But once you write fade out and you just feel pretty good for about an hour and then you think you fucked all the thing out and you think you could do it all over you know. What's typical link of time that you'll work on a script? I used to work about a year. I've cut that down just because I really want to get more things accomplished with limited time. So I think it's like five, six months now probably and that's probably shorter than I would rather but I think I have to and then I made the script shorter too. I used to do really long like 180, 90, 200 page scripts. Do you think in going from a year to five or six months for a script that the scripts have gotten better or worse? I think it's the material. Probably some of it's better because I think I've learned how to, if through experience, where it had to say things which I before try to say in 17 different words and now could say twice and also have a certain, obviously technique about how to tell who people are and identify their personality. But every single thing I write does sort of give the same problem. How are you going to articulate this best possible way and how you can tell the story and the story going to mean anything? I want to mean something not to just fill up space you know. Is every great movie about something bigger than what the story of the movie is? I think so. I think so. I think it's something that's lasting. Yeah. I think you've done something of value. I think that's true. I hope that's true. Is the theme of the movie the same as the moral of the story? Well that's interesting. Well I happen to write toward theme and I think theme is most important rather than story. Most people complete a confused story with theme. But I think you all set, but you have to know what the thing is eventually going to be about. Tell me what the theme is this way of asking. Is the theme the moral? I would say that's a little fast. So I think it's more than that. I think it's what makes something profound and not profound. It's not for me to judge what's profound. You know, I'd rather prove to their lives to look at that. But I know on Killers of Flower Moon, Marty wanted to do this culpability about people being culpable with this destruction of these people. And how do we do that? And so it's really interesting to figure out how to do that. And I knew that made this thematically more than just this murder mystery kind of thing. This made it about the sort of sadness and destruction and quality of what human beings do to one another, the worst part and what could be the best. You know, it's justice and all that. I mean, in other words, so I think it becomes where you'd like to make a feel profound. I mean, that's a pretty arrogant make you think you know what that is. But at least to yourself, you feel like I've really said something here. You know, can the theme always be reduced to a couple of sentences? Should. Should best of all. Yeah, I think should. Yeah, I guess that's another thing I've really learned was, you know, everybody's kid about less is more, less is more, less is more. I think, and I would like to learn more about that. You know, I think still I probably overload my life and things I do, but maybe sitting and being quiet is fine too, you know. My wife says that, you know, she says, don't take somebody not answering you on a text, meeting anything. She's just silence, you know, and she's great that way. And I think I wish I could get that. You know, that's it goes back to that validation. What the hell it in the answer be back, you know. And the silence is what I'd love to get to, you know, I think that's that's what I think I'd like to lead to. And maybe that seems a little cliche about wanting how you want to end things, but I'd rather end quiet, you know, in a certain way. Otherwise, a sista fucking noise man just seems too much. Do you watch a lot of movies? Yeah, I watch like every day almost, and I like I'm going to go today, go like once or twice a week. Yeah, I love them. I mean, even if I don't like my like something about it, I like sitting at theater, big screen, I like something, you know, 40 feet. I mean, it's not that I don't watch movies on television, my phone like anybody else, but yeah, I love to I love that moment where something really moves you or a sound. I remember in all quiet in the Western Front last year, it was a sound of just a music. I'm sure it was music as they were going to battle or something. It was so profound. I mean, it was a profound use too much, but it was it just soaked into your inside you and your vertebrae, you know, it's like that sound was so powerful. I mean, I'm such a wish. I guess if I had two things that I didn't do in life, I wish I'd become a novelist, but I was always afraid. And I wish I had the ability to do music because I think I think musicians, which I said to Greg, are the most non-judgmental people. I don't know if you feel that. Hey, but non-judgmental carry their art with them. Don't really care much mostly about race of anybody. Just want to want that music to sound. You know, when it's just transcendent to me, I don't know really how to just I wish I could describe, but you know, Thank you. - You know how? - There's always a grass, there's always green there. I know that actors always wish they were musicians and most musicians wish that they were actors. - Really? Is that true? I didn't know that about musicians. I knew I've never knew a musician. It wasn't basically except for whatever their problems with drugs or whatever else, trying to recreate experiences and get that feeling all the time. I never knew they wanted to be actors. I thought they were pretty happy with what they did. If they're successful, if you're not successful, it's a whole different world. Have you ever been asked to work on an adaptation and read the book and just felt like, I don't see a way into this? - Well, I've done it slightly differently. I started it and I realized I can't do it and I sent the money back. I've done that like five, six times. And not because the quality book, I just thought I saw something in it that I just didn't ever see. And then I never thought it went where I'd like it to go, I guess, which might be just my arrogance, not the books. - And then the other way around, are there ever times where you'll see something that you think if it's either not good or doesn't have much potential and then it turns into something really great without your involvement? - Yeah, most times actually. But the famous quotes are bad books and bad plays make great movies. So yeah, 'cause they're sort of, sort of people ignored them. And I would get far as gumped that. I mean, the book to me, I mean, Rest is Soul, a man who wrote it. But it's just far as simple, you know, sort of silly. And I'm not sure I made anything more than silly, but at least it had a heart to it, you know. - Was it a popular book before the movie? - No, not much. And how did you come to the book? - I came to the book through, I worked with Tom Hanks on a, but turned out to be a really bad movie that we had a whole different approach to, which was called The Postman, which was a post-apocalypse thing that I tried to do as can deed, what he had form youals, and he said, they were called John George Ringo and I don't know, Sarah, you know, saying, and it was funny. It was supposed to be sort of like, Liliput, it was like Gulliver, and he's in this, you know, dystopian world, and he's supposed to be an ex-postman. And so it had this kind of whole tongue and she looked to it and also, I liked it. I don't know if it was any good, but then 10 years down the line, but Kevin Costner made a very serious movie out of it. I want to razzy, which means you made the worst year and moved over the year. (laughing) So yeah, I don't think you can quite know, you know, but it has to, I mean, to me, and especially now, it really has to speak to me and some way that I feel like it can be additive to it, you know, there's no point just retiping it. - So did Tom bring you the book? Is that how it started? - No, the woman who had the book of the postman also owned Forest Gump, and they had tried a couple scripts with the author and somebody else, or one of the studios, and she says, what do you think of this? And I said, well, I liked the way it transports you over the years and his kind of constant belief in God, the girl Jenny and his mother, you know, it's kind of interesting, and he'd been challenged, which we couldn't do anymore. But I thought maybe I could say some things about how I felt about where I grew up and how I grew up, and what the turmoil was in the world. And then the directors stick in your eye kind of guy, but equal opportunities stick in your eye, and he doesn't care if you're a Democrat progress. So he puts, you know, Nailman rose picture in the bathroom on the white house, that kind of thing with the candidates, and he just didn't care, you know, and the thing struck a nerve, though, and even though I don't think, it's funny how that movie lasted, boy, it's kind of amazing, you know. People really grew to that, but you don't know, you don't know. But as long as it occupies, it occupies sort of the most important part of your life in that way, I mean, equal with your children and wife and everything, that's that, when you get up, you can't wait to go. I like to be able to know what I'm going to write the next day, so not to be anxious about it. So I won't write that, but I'll just sort of, you know, sort of scrap it out and then be ready to write it next day. So I know I have something to start with, you know. - Yeah, I have almost the opposite, I think. I like having a schedule where I'm showing up to do something, but if I think too much about what it is that I'm doing, then I'm already working on it before I get there, and then it undermines it. - Wow, that's interesting. - But keep a distance from the work when I'm not in the moment. - Nice, I love that. I mean, I would be afraid of that. I would be afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into it or something, I don't know, that wouldn't carry over. - Yeah, I like that feeling of coming to it new. - I love that. - But every day, like I've never seen it or heard it before. - Wow, but I do, see, I'm so hidebound that I'm opposite to you completely, is that I read from page one every day. - I think there's something to that though, because context really is everything. And if you understand the flow of the information, I imagine it would be easier to continue it than to just pick it up way left off. - Yeah, so it's like, I just was looking here that, I want him, I'm gonna put into this particular rama thing that I want him, his opening line to be, I am a navigator, so I love that, what that could mean, you know. - It's a great line. - Yeah, I haven't thought about it, you know, and then all of a sudden, I said, well, that unlocks a bunch of things, you know, what the sky wants to do. And I have a thing with him where his wife's probably had died, and he went back in the service, and but people lived, they can live to 140, and such is supposed to be 21, 30. But anyway, she said, you'll see me in your dreams, and he hasn't seen her in his dream, until he gets into a certain part of this alien ship they get into that has a water feature to it, and he gets in the water and all of a sudden, that it opens up all these other things, like an hallucinogenic kind of thing, where he starts seeing her, and I think it can be beautiful, I think it'd be beautiful. - That sounds great. - I like also someone saying, you'll see me in your dreams, this beautiful. - Yeah, I saw, I said, somebody said that in a song, I think, I think in a song, yeah. Yeah, I get a lot from the music. One of the ones I took was, I don't know the group's name, you probably know, where he says over and over, I can't take my eyes off of you. - Yeah, it's a really good song. - I just love that. It's a standard, so there's so many different versions of it, I'm not sure which is like the original. - This one was not somebody, group I knew, but he says it like 30 times in a row, you know, and I use that in this thing I did with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, where he first time he looked at me, says, I can't take my eyes off of you, so I know that's a good romance line. How does poetry work its way into your work? Well, I'm really well read, and I'm really interested in what the words are one front of the other, you know, how do people, why do people put these in this order? And some are so much better at it than others, you know? And the poetry to me, I think, is a sense of feeling that it's the same sort of soaring you get, and then starting to believe that maybe this actually is poetry. I don't know if it is, but you start feeling like it could be, you know, it's just pretty freeing that you're now writing something, and but that can either dovetail or can conflict with the director. Some love you to try to be as expansive as you can be with prose and poetry, and others don't like it. I mean, they feel like it inhibits their process. And for instance, David Fincher is, as I say, I think he's a subant and some kind. He's a genius, but he likes things really logical. He wants to be the following, and like that, and you have to explain to him why it isn't. And I like that too. I mean, I think that really presses you into rethinking what you thought you could just sort of willy-nilly throw out there, you know, to the universe. And for him, he needs to understand it, and that it makes some sense what you put and adds to something else. While others are much more gracious and saying, go for it, you know, Marty, Marty's that way. Marty let you, if you want to write a movie backwards, just let's try it, you know. Let's try it, yeah. The directors are interesting people. Tell me about the different styles of the directors you've gotten to work with, how different are they, what do they expect from you, and what they're like to work with. Well, Marty is, Marty's very generous during the writing process, a little more reclusive when he's about to go make it. So he then takes over, I think he and have us to movie, then that I think it's part of my job to have them understand the movie that they're going to make, oddly. You know, in other words, this is what I can tell you. I think it is, and whatever you can add to that, it'd be amazing, you know, if you have a point of view. Fincher's rough, we argue like crazy, but he has something in mind that I want to try to get to for him. Tell me about an argument, like, what's the kind of thing you would argue about? He would say to me, he'd read it back to me, so this makes no sense. And I said, what do you think? Everything you say to make sense, you know, it gets, that's how we'd have an argument. And he says, well, that's just your writer and your thinking, you're going to bring out words that are going to, you know, somehow go, "Sure, you're back to you." Me, he gave me a very personal. He also, I know he knows, he knows things about me with the validation stuff, and he said, "Oh, you want to win an Oscar?" Whatever he did. But no, we would, I sat behind him during "Mank," and he would turn around. What do you think? And I say, well, I-- I don't know, David, and he said, "Well, you're wrong about that." But we signed a fight it out and get to where we. I mean, we always love each other. He's the most loyal man I know. Most loyal man I know. He's that way. Denise is very visionary. He said that he felt that I was the spiritual quality of Dune, because I got that hallucinogenic whole tribal thing. Early I worked with a man named Bob Mulligan who did Killamockingbird. He was a very generous guy. Those guys in that era were very sort of playhouse 90, if you remember that, or television. Yes. That's what they were steeped in. I'm not talking about deep theater. I'm not talking about glass miniaturism or something, but they got telling dramatic stories from stage plays in a way through their television shows. Stuart Rosenberg was another one. He did Cool Handle-Luke. He was an introducing him Paul Newman, who I became friends with for life. I walked on the set when I was like 19 or 20 with my. They needed rewriting and went down to Lafayette, Louisiana, and I bought a new pair of quarter-oys and I had a new briefcase and Paul said, "Our Savior's here." I don't think so. But we were friends for life then, you know? And I stay friends with a lot of these people. I like to maintain relationships with them. I think they all expand my universe, I think, you know? In a main, a few are a little toxic. You were saying about scripted versus ad libbing earlier when you were talking about Star's Born. And in a way, it sounds like it stemmed from an ad lib. You got them to talk to you. And then you organized it and refined it, but it starts with an ad lib. No, you're 100% right. And I think it started more with Bradley Cooper, first directing assignment and not really. I'm not saying he doesn't know music, but it's not his life. He wanted to portray a character that he created. What I suggested him, he should use Sam Elliott's voice. That's the huskiness that he kind of has there. So I think I was going along, I rewrote that. I mean, because what they gave me, I just didn't like it. I said, "I have to start from scratch." And I said, "I'll do it really fast." But we all did together. So in three in the morning, we were changing. But there was that ad lib stuff, you're right. Or the improvisation of private better than ad lib. Improvisational quality of it, but also it had an accuracy. Because Lady Gaga knows what that life is. Bradley maybe doesn't know it to that extent. I was going to say other than the dialogue, how much descriptive writing do you do in a script? A lot, probably too much, probably too much. But I think some directors like it because it establishes a tone. It gives kind of wonderful, I think, visual possibilities. I just wrote, I realized I was reading a thing I'd written about. James Cook, the navigator, the explorer. And I was writing something about that he had docked his ship somewhere in the Antarctic. Letting the men have Christmas Eve celebration. And they got cold and they went down below. And he stayed up and he sang. He started singing Silent Night by himself. But I thought, "I love that." But I said, "I don't know if I have the boat right." And so I looked at the boats and I forgot they have those oil lamps. So they put the oil lamps in, and they were rocking. And I said, "That somehow refers to it." And then we cut from that to the spaceship in 2129. It's kind of a junky ship, it's supposed to be a work of it. But it's very sterile. And the people inside are very sterile. And they're like monkeys, almost, because they go for seven months without doing anything. And they're supposed to be putting these beacons up on asteroids to warn people about the asteroids coming. Anyway, it's quite different than the oil lanterns. So I love that. Yeah, so I do put a lot of pros in there. But I think it's my downfall in the sense of it, because I want to be novelist, so there's a way I can do it. People still let me do it. They don't let most other writers do it anymore. But I think it does impart to the director what I think it's going to look like. Some get annoyed, say, "Why?" He just talks so much. So I said, "Okay." And the adaptation of how close deep you like you need to stay to the original material. Depends on how good I think the original material is, you know? And then there's the other side of what does the audience expect? And I don't know that. Somebody's there. Somebody's, you're looking at somebody. No, I thought I saw a feather out the window. Strange. Oh, I love that. It's like I thought of that. That's strange. That's far as gump. It was a bird. But it was just a feather. So maybe it was a bird holding a feather, but I couldn't see the bird. I could just see the feather. It's like that's strange. That's interesting. I like that. It was beautiful. I just put up a hummingbird feeder yesterday. I'm a big hummingbird person. Beautiful. And yeah, I put. I had my window at the where I lived in Malibu in the colony. There I had a window that I didn't look at the beach because that's too distracting to me. I was looking at a tree and these hummingbirds just kept humming and humming. My parents died that particular year and somehow my mother somehow related to me hummingbird. And then I put it in Benjuan Button where David let it stay where Brad pits on the sea like the Atlantic Ocean. And he's just been. He was on a tugboat and got crashed by a submarine, which was true story. And he was on now like a boat that he was safe and he looked down. He said hummingbird come up out of the sea. And he said, "How did that get here?" And I know how it got there. It's like a Robert Hunter lyric, right? Like where that comes from. So yeah, that's the adaptation part of it. Yeah. Are you superstitious? I am. To a certain extent. Are you? I don't think so. I think I am. I think I am. I may have been at times. I don't think I am right now. But most people don't think they're superstitious even though they're superstitious about things. It's got a funny. I think that science is some way. I like to gamble. So I play horses. So I'm superstitious. Subtract that a little. You go to the track on a regular basis. Yeah, once a week. And I sit with guys who are 800 years old. What's the first time you went to the track? My grandfather, little Russian man, barely spoke English, spoke Yiddish. And I spoke Yiddish at the time. He would take me here for a loves in his life. He loved boxing, which I did. I fought. And he loved the horses. I'd go with him. I was like six, seven years old. He loved baseball. We'd go stand on an apple box at the Abbots field. And he loved fishing. And I still love fishing. So did you grow up on the East Coast? Yeah, Brooklyn. I wasn't. That's what I was. That's what I was. And I thought you grew up on the West Coast. Bedford's Tivest. Till a certain extent. Then I went to high school out here. Has there ever been a window where you've stepped away from horse racing or has it been a continuance since six or seven years old? I think I stayed with it the whole time. It's amazing. But I like that would that would be superstitious stuff. I like all sports, I guess. So, but I think I am superstitious to a certain extent about some things. I'm not OCD about this. I won't count steps backwards or anything. But I think I am. Yeah, I'm interested that you're not. That's kind of interesting. But I hope to know what you think of magic and stuff. You know, it's as close to superstition. Well, I believe in magic. So I don't know. Yeah, I think you might. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what. So someone, you can't remember who told me this, believes in, they call manifestation that if you manifest things, you can make them come true. And maybe that's true. Well, I think we do. Yeah, I guess we do. We envision these lives and they've appeared and it's unbelievable. Doesn't make sense. No, it makes no sense, but you're able to inhabit them, you know. And that's how I feel about characters I write. I'm able to inhabit them, even though I may not know much about them. Except for the psychological thing that everybody has is different. You know, and some things I don't understand because I don't understand the person, but I try to make him not understandable. And to some extent, but then you find that the character may understand himself better than you think you did. Those kind of things. I think there's a reality to writing these things, you know. Is it harder to write for women? Probably is, but I haven't found it to be. I mean, I think they all have the same properties. I mean, I don't know, then we get into the whole sexual conversations with scenes and I don't know if men or women, I don't think men or women the same that way, particularly. But I think I've written a lot of good women. I mean, I think that they, you know, I think I wrote a beautiful character with Kate Blanchett and Benjamin Butler, where she's a ballerina, you know, I thought it was pretty lovely. But I always infuse these things with time. Like in that was like sort of the sliding door's idea where if something didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, then she wouldn't have been hit by a cab, you know, that kind of thing. And I love that. I love the randomness of things. And I did the same thing for us, come, you know, is he just flying around or is a destiny? I don't know the answer to any of that. So maybe I believe imagine it probably right, you know. Yeah. I remember in Varscombe, I don't know if they were real actments or actual old footage, do you remember? Those are old footage, yeah. And do you write it in the script that we're going to use this footage from this event? In some cases, I didn't, they researched what would happen. Like I had for instance, he's supposed to have been an all-American and with the youth. University of Alabama, they won the National Title or something. So he went and visited Kennedy. And I have him visit him, John, a Lyndon Johnson as a veteran from Vietnam. And he gets shot in the butt. And Lyndon Johnson makes a joke out of it. The interesting thing about that was that that was all brand new technique. The only one who had done anything like it was Woody Allen and Zellig. So Bob, it was a mech that sort of perfected this. But if you look at it now, it's so rudimentary. It's still silly, you know. But he's always, this thing here has a whole longer conversation for us about, basically about AI, but this deep fake stuff, where the movie will have Tom and Robin Wright offstage say, hi, mom and dad, this is Margaret, and they'll walk into the living room. And they'll be 22 years old. Tom will look like he's right out of big and she'll look like she had a Princess bride. So I don't know, the morality of all that gets really tricky. I don't know how the, I'm also curious how this will affect music. How do you see Zellig and realized I can use this technique in far as gum? It's a really radical idea. This guy can be in these different places and we can use actual footage. Yeah, I'm pretty visual. And I thought, well, I think we can do this. Yeah, I think if someone knows how to do it, yeah, we can put him in that scene and even worse. I know what it's quite done at, but I could put words in people's mouths and never said. So John Kennedy could have said, I love Hitler. I'm saying to him, whisper it to him. And it's obviously you're taking liberty set, but we had whatever he said, and he laughs and that. So they linked it to something that was part of another all-American ceremony and then they just put him in there. Yeah, I don't know how I envisioned that. It just happened, you know, just something that came out of the blue. It's a radical idea and I think it's as significant in the long-term success of the movie as anything else about it. Oh, no question. No question. Yeah. Oh, I think so. And that's magical again. So we just had never seen anything like it before in that idea of seeing a fictitious character in a familiar real world situation is very interesting. Yes, very odd. And there was a-- do you remember the comedian on the radio Phil Henry? Yes. Yes, he did all those kind of different voices. He was kind of so nasty, a little racist. But somebody called me and said, you need to listen to Phil Henry tonight. So he said he's announcing far as dumb as dead. So I said, I joined in and I said, hi, I'm the writer of far as dumb, and yeah, we're sad to say. And I see Quentin Tarantino just that with once upon a time on Hollywood, the character that Leonardo played, he said, was dead. He died. So sometimes he has confusing what's real what is. What are your all-time favorite movies as a fan? I love a movie called Amar Cored that Felini made. So that's a dream. 2001 is probably my most favorite. Godfather too, probably the ones that are traditionally that most people would-- I was talking yesterday with somebody. I used to when I was much younger. I loved the movie Giant. I thought that just summed everything up for big movies. And I watched it again. It's not very good. But there's that James Dean being heroic and climbing up and getting oil and Elizabeth Taylor. And there's something very American about it. I'm very American in my own way. I love things about America. I think it's very moving about people who put their lives in jeopardy. And then there's an ideal that we used to have. And I hope we still had. I don't know. We have a very rural place in Montana. I'll talk to these guys. And we have completely different points of view. And forcing the label to get over them, just so we can have other things to talk about. But it's a shame that the country is so divided about the things that we all care about. I don't know what that's all-- I don't know what's happened. It's so much hatred and racism and everything else. Are there any things that you firmly believed when you were young, that now you've gone 180 on? Yeah, I think, well, my parents were both died in the wool communist. I was a red diaper baby. I can't tell you the number. Sometimes we stood in the rain to free the Rosenbergs. And I think their intentions were all really good, but they forgave the same fault to those people that you had to forgive all sorts of things. And my dad was a communist till his dying day. And he thought even Stalin was pretty great. So those are things that just don't resonate anymore that way. I think as American communist party members, they probably had some good beliefs about sort of socialism. You know that, you know, how can you help people? And I think that was good. The other thing is, since I've had cancer and stuff, I'm not afraid of dying. But I am so interested in what I thought was kind of constant. And it's not anymore about, as you get older, what are these things that come toward the end of things? And what can you expect and what you can't? And I think I probably earlier on felt, well, maybe it's X, Y or Z. I even thought the other day we were in London, outside of London in a just beautiful cathedral in the ancient century or something. And I said, what if it was all true? That's maybe all this was-- there was a G's. I mean, maybe that never mind that. Maybe all Buddhism's to whatever it is that all what we think is just made up mythology. But what if some of it's true? I mean, maybe it could be. So why not open your mind? I remember Tom Hanks once yelling at me. We were having-- he was a evangelical, I think, early on in his life. And we were talking about religion. And I was saying something kind of atheistic and kind of adamant about it. And he said, how do you know? And I said, I don't know. I don't know why I think I know. And I think that's the big difference. You assume you know so much. And then all of that's your ego, narcissism, and all. And then you find out you are wrong about many things. It's like, you know, I used to love to-- this was before TSA and all, but I followed Joan Didian in the sense that I was actually friendly with her and Don. But she would sit in airports and write about people as they came off a plane. So that's how she would design characters. And I did that for a little bit. And then you realize, well, you're wrong about these people. You know, you have certain ideas you have to create. Yeah, it's a fantasy. Yeah. It's fun to do. But you're just always surprised. You're judging a book by its cover. And you figure this tattooed beast. And then all of a sudden they start talking about Keats or something. And I was like, what the hell? I love that. I remember we were-- Tupac Shakur came into-- actually read for Forest Guump to play Bubba. I didn't know who he was. And then he was renting a house in the colony. And he was sitting on this stoop. And he said, Mr. Roth. I said, I came over and I said, how are you? And I knew he was Tupac Shakur at that time. And he said, you don't remember I tried to-- I said, why would you try out for that? I said, I don't know. I want to try something different. And I want to find out who I was and this and that. And there you go, book by the cover. And then here's this great artist. Yeah. Great, great artist. Yeah. Did you ever see unforgiven-- Oh, yeah, I love that movie. Yeah, I love the writer. David Peoples. He wrote Blade Runner also. He's a amazing writer. And then I rewrote him on Munich. And I know him quite well. He's about my age. He's incredible writer. There used to be a whole world of screen writers. We're only screen writers, not writer directors. So there's very few left. But Bo Goldman was probably one of the better writers ever. He wanted Oscar for Harold and Melvin and for Kuku's Nest. We called Bice, both sides of the plate. One of the things that was interesting, I remember when I saw unforgiven, I bring it up. Because up until then, in a Western, you expected, the good guy was a clear cut good guy. And all of the attributes he had was noble. And the bad guy was the bad guy. And he was evil. And unforgiven broke that mold. We clearly. And it feels like maybe everything changed since then. That idea of just the good guy versus the bad guy. Maybe that became obsolete with that movie. I think it probably did. I mean, to some extent, except for the big action heroes. And so I don't know. Those are the black hat and the white hat. You wear the white hat. You're the hero of black hat. You're not. I tried to write a movie for Clint East, a Western, his last Western. And Bradley Cooper got me involved. And he said, the only thing I don't want is you to do a sequel to unforgiven. And I said, I get that. So what I did was invent him as an ex-outlaw that this was supposed to be 1906 at San Francisco, earthquake. And he's a kind of policeman in quote Chinatown for that era. And somebody comes back because he had been an outlaw in the olden days who he supposedly killed the person's father. And he came back and stabs him in the sand. And then he says he's dying. And they have this whole journey to take him home and what happens along the way. These people and Bradley Cooper plays his son. But the big point of it was he's completely full of shit. It never been. an album and he created this whole myth for himself. And so when you have to, when he had to get in trouble kind of at the end of this, he got himself out of it by being brave. And he didn't have to make up a story. But I love the, I love the whole idea. I saw his clents. He said, Oh my God, the idea of just attending your somebody and everybody giving you, you know, your props to that and turns out to be feed of clay, you know. Yeah, but it turns around. It's beautiful. Yeah, that's what I did at the end. I turned it around for a man. Yeah. Yeah. Who would you say? Every story is a love story. Yes. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think what is the only thing we can't define love? I mean, it's probably the most primordial important thing there is probably right? I don't know if you can define, I can't define it. Maybe other people can. How far can you stray from the archetypical Hollywood movies, happy ending, romantic tension conflict? Are those rules to follow or can you break those rules? Well, I think you can break any rule. But I think you always will end up oddly with the same Shakespearean structure. Like the perfect example is Pulp Fiction. He told the story backwards and forwards. But he still had to have an beginning, a middle that has a beginning that states the problem, the middle that exacerbates it as a catharsis, which leads you to the ending. And so I think it's harder to do that. But I think as we modernize things like the great Charlie Kaufman would do things like adaptation where he's adapting the adaptation and making it part of his life and his brother's life or an imagined brother. I mean, so it's wonderful complications or sunshine or the endless spotless mind all that. But you still have this I always found, at least even in those, I could tell you the structure of them. So I think that's a constant. I guess it has to be. Maybe it has to be. But the ending stuff, I think the only truth about, I think in love stories that you should end where things are not resolved, that whether they feel either brokenhearted, very rarely are happy love stories. You want to have a bittersweet ending or somebody can't resolve it and you can't bring it to fruition, whether someone dies or someone leaves or you want to sort of wishfulfill in hoping that they in another world. I also believe, so here's magic. I believe that Francis Coppola, when I were talking about this, that great movies, this continue, great books, plays, music, whatever inhabit you in this like they live on the other side of the moon. And they're all continuing their lives that the Godfather, people are all out doing whatever they do and whatever movies you love. And they're there. And you can always just go pick them up and put them back in your pocket, you know? And I love that idea. It's beautiful. I started. I was once going to, it didn't work out too well, but I did cat in the hat. And I started that he was one of these kind of magical creatures that lived on the other side of the moon. And what do you get a phone call? We need your help kind of thing, you know? But the only thing I loved about that script was, I think it was a good script altogether, but I rhymed every word because by like a suicide book, I love it. Was it going to be animated or no? No, no, no, it was live action. And they ended up doing a really, I thought bad movie with Jim Kerry just over the top stuff. But what I made it was primal that the mother was pregnant and the children were very jealous and afraid of what was coming into the house. And so the thing won and thing too, you know, all this stuff, the thing won and all that. It's kind of great. Yeah, it's got to be. Tell me about the old days in New York, the experimental film world. Oh, I love that. I was really part of that. I was going to NYU Film School and I gravitated down to, oh, actually, as an English major to begin with, Columbia, but gravitated down to this, everything was an alphabet city, you know, below St. Mark's place and Bob Downey, Judy or Ed M. Schwiler, all these people doing these things in a place called Millennium Film Workshop where you could just move around rooms and was this in the 60s? Like 68, 67, 65. Yeah, that all era. Andy Warhol, you know, some of his people were there. I knew some of them. I know Moriarty and a few other people. But I knew Bob Downey, I worked for in like four movies. They were all insane. Bob Downey, senior. And, but all these really interesting artists, but it's interesting how they just disappeared. I don't know. I just got old, obviously, but there were continuation, I think, a lot about from Jack Kerawak and all I can say. Beatniks. Yeah. Yeah. Beatniks, basically. That's like Bob's and he or his mother was a beatnik. You know, sure, always wore black and that whole thing. How has the movie business changed over the course of your life? Well, the loss of theaters. I mean, the idea that not to watch a movie in a theater is the most important thing. After that would be, there used to be personal relationships. I mean, I like the people, but you sort of knew everybody. There was a lot less content providers. There were probably seven or whatever the big studios were. Was it just a smaller business overall? Smaller world felt like a high school. That's a big high school. You sort of knew your place in it. What you wanted to get to all that. But you know, if I just had this happen recently, if somebody decided not to do a project of yours saying, I'm going to pass on this, right? They would call you up and tell you why, you know, or it's just not for me. Even if that's simple, it might not my cup of tea without dough. But we appreciate you trying that kind of thing. Now you never hear from anybody. It's just to your age and says, they're not going to do it. The person out, that's me. That's how I felt. I mean, it feels like less of a human business. Yeah, exactly. More commerce than relationship. Yeah. And even the rallying cry, which is a sad, is that everybody says nothing matters. And that's a tragedy to me. I'm sorry. I think it should matter. You know, what you're doing, what you're saying, even if it's not my cup of tea, it doesn't matter. You know, right to best action movie, right to best star wars, whatever you want to do. It's just, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know about the younger people the way I wish. I mean, my son's young. He's a, what, he's a director now and my other son's a wonderful writer and they have different looks at things. When you're writing a character, do you typically have an actor in mind to play it? Not mostly. I don't know. I don't like to do that too much. Sometimes I mean, it's part and parcel of the deal. I knew Tom Angst was going to be far has gone. So he was great because he could go in and pitch the thing. He said, I'm sitting on a bench and I'll do all that stuff as an actor. I would prefer, I have a general idea, general idea. And then you got to get more. Is that a common thing for an actor and a writer to get together and put something together and then pitch that as opposed to coming from a director? It feels to me like it is. I don't know anymore. You know, yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Yeah. But I've still done like me for when we're done here, I'm going to assume with Jeremy strong that actor. And we have I think a pretty great idea. I'm able to figure it out with him. I'll be glad to do it with him, you know, but it's more unusual with actors. Actors are good because they're only busy for like four months out of the year or you know, and then they have time. Directors are impossible because they, you know, it's a year and a half of their lives at whatever two years. And so if you don't get it done, you ain't see them for two years. So we just outnels, you know. Yeah. And it also seems like they're so in for two years on a project that after it, it's like they're not even themselves. No, that's absolutely right. I mean, I mean, I had opportunities to direct when I was younger and I made a decision. I'd rather stay with my children, you know, that's not this so heroic, but that's what I decided because you're gone. You're just gone. You're missing their lives and they know it, but something else more important to them. Did you always want to be a writer from the beginning? Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've I've toyed with one point. I said, I think there ought to be doctor, which is ridiculous. I can't even add six and eight. And said, I think I'll go back to school and take all those courses. The organic chemistry is all that and then go to some bad medical school like Grenada or Yankton or something, you know. I mean, what I admire about your life is little as I know about you is that you at least are experiencing so many things and I wish I'd experience more than well. I am now. I didn't for the majority of my life. Oh, you didn't know. I was at the dark room for 18 hours a day for 30 years. Oh my god. I'm sorry. Or I'm not sorry. I learned a lot from that. Yeah. I would never have that discipline. No, this is a new adventure. I realized I can do my work anywhere anywhere. And I might as well do it in a beautiful place. And I first had that revelation when I started working in Los Angeles versus New York, because even though I would still work all day, it felt like I was on vacation compared to being in New York. I got you. Wow. Well, my sort of regret is so like juveniles like romantic, right? I wish I had had that romantic year in Paris with whoever, you know, or just on my own or, you know, I never did did those things or, you know, London, whatever, you know, Ireland and it's not gonna happen, you know, so all of a sudden. - It can. I mean, it would just be a different one. - It would be the different version of a romantic year in Paris. You can do that. - Yeah, no you're right, you're right. You're so right. I sort of wish I had done was 30, you know, saying, I don't know why. It was just what I had to my experience. I always wanted my life to be like a Jack London fly leaf of his novel, he said he was a fisherman and whatever else. He went to the Alaska and all that stuff, you know. And that's creating a personality, I guess I'm not, you know. It'll work out. - It'll work out. Exactly a pipe. I would just get that in my head, you know. Because there's too many small things. It's like my mother would say to me, don't sweat the small stuff, you know. And she's so right. And I sweat the small stuff still though. It's like I wish I could stop this nonsense about things that don't matter, you know. I'm a little better with it, I'm a little better with it. I had a whole thing I won't mention what it was with this whole weekend. I was like kind of upset about something. And I realized this is so fucking stupid, but in the world. And then you get in yourself into a situation where I was mad at somebody and then they texted me and should I ghost them and all that whole thing, you know, it's like so petty. - So juvenile. - Oh, so gif. So I did. 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