Guillermo del Toro

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello. This is, guys, this is really up there. Monica, she declared favorite of all time. I believe it to be favorite episode of all time. Yeah. And he's in, you know, definitely a three-way tie for me. I mean, this is the most incredible human we've got to sit with. It's crazy. Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro is an award-winning filmmaker. That's an understatement. He's won a bazillion Academy Awards and every other kind of award. Frankenstein, movie of the year last year, Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth. We are here to talk about Pan's Labyrinth, and this is so awesome. He has completely redone the whole movie with all these different technologies that now exist. And we will all be able to see it now in 3D among many different formats. Cannot wait to see it in 3D. This is among the most special human beings on planet Earth. Please enjoy. Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro. 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Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel any time. Let's get into today's episode. He's an Armchair Expert. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Barry. Hi, Adam. Nice to meet you. Welcome. You're right there. Thank you. Can I offer you a water? Liquid death. Let's go. I just took the last one. Right on. Topo Chico. It is. I just took the last Topo Chico, which you know there's a shortage. I am painfully aware. You are? Do you love Topo Chico? No, but it's news in the Mexican great. Oh, right. Yeah, that's true. They have to do the well, but they pull it out, right? Yeah. Well, it's good. It just increased the value. Now that's worth a lot of money. Now he's wasting a lot of money there. Could sell it on eBay. I'm always curious about what books are those. Well, some of them are past guest books. But. Some of them are just decorative. Some of them are by foot or by color. Yeah, exactly. Linear foot. Linear foot, yeah. Well, like you said, decoration, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to start by saying I've been wanting to meet you for 20 years because I worked with perhaps one of my favorite people I've ever worked with was Guillermo Navarro. Yes, of course. Are you guys still friendly? Of course. What a great guy. Oh, what a beautiful man. Beautiful man, beautiful everything. I mean, he's so full of talent and fire. And he doesn't put up with anything. Sure. Is he an actor? He's a DP. Oh, a DP. Was he the DP on Devil's Backbone? On Pants Labyrinth. He won the Oscar for Pants. Wow. Was the first Mexican cinematographer to win in the history of. Oh, really? Yeah, of our filmography. Yeah. There has to have been some sense, right? Checo was originally a steadicam operator and then he became a DP, but Rodrigo Prieto, Chibo. Chibo, that's who I'm thinking of. Yeah, Chibo, yeah. Yes. No, he's a great guy. What's your theory on this? There was this huge explosion of talent that came out of Mexico. I remember when I was working with Guillermo Navarro, he was telling me like, oh, he's from Guadalajara, right? No, he's from Mexico. I'm from Guadalajara. Oh. Now we look alike. The other day I was, I saw a photograph and I said, boy, Navarro looks really haggard. I realized it was me. People might accidentally, same name, same look. People might accidentally hire him to direct something thinking they've hired you. Or me to do the cinematography. Yes. Who do you think would do better at each other's job? Two things I forgot, everything about cinematography, which I used to do on my super eights and even on other 16 and all that, and algebra. Algebra, I was a whiz kid for a year and now I don't know even what it means. You have two daughters? Yeah. Did you have to help them with math and go, wait, hold on, I'm supposed to be good at this now? No, because I think each generation does less and less of those operational things. And like math, when I was a kid, it was a huge breakthrough when they allowed your calculator in the classroom. Oh, sure. For like trigonometry or something? They said, oh, that's cheating. I remember I had a Texas instrument. Yes. Sure. It's big boy too, right? Big boy, yeah. Yeah. The bigger, the better. It was a huge debate. There was no internet or it would have been a huge point. Well, my kids are in sixth and eighth grade. And so now of course the big debate is when and where can they use AI, it'd be kind of interesting to think they shouldn't become adept at using it because it'll be a tool they will use. But it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. When and where? Well, I think the debate for me is not what happens to the technology, but what happens to the human brain. Mm-hmm. While using it, right? Well, for example, I'll give you one thing we all live, GPS. You live in LA for 20, 30 years, whatever, and if you start relying on GPS to go home, you should stop. That's me. I can't get anywhere. I can't get to his house and I live right down there. I can't get anywhere without it. I need it. The other day when, in the opening of the Lucas Museum, George very pointedly said, I want the name of the work, the medium of the work, the author, and the year. That's it. It's because now we walk with context on our pocket. You want to know more, I don't have to tell you if it's a good piece of art or a bad piece of art, or you judge it and you want context, pull out your phone. I mean, that's good for me. Can we foster thought, not results, thought? Yes. And I think we underestimate the joy there was to be had when you were trying to figure something out. Well, you know, like I brought my notes for Pan's Labyrinth, because I think the process is what's worth it, not the result. If we understand that, we understand that the shortcut is not giving you something, it's robbing you of something. I'm talking purely as what makes us human. Anytime you skip the process, you are not cheating. You're not cheating on someone, you're cheating on yourself. You really are robbing yourself of it. You know, the difference between winning the lottery and having created a widget. My dad won the lottery. I know. I'm planting that seed. Six million dollars. In 1969. Hold on. We'll earmark that. I do want to tell you, I did reach out to Josh Brolin to ask him about you, and do you know what he told me? He said his favorite thing about you is having gotten to look at your journals. One of those. Yeah. So I feel very excited. This is incredible. I don't even know how popular they are. This is a relic. That's a reward page. In case I lose it. Yeah. Oh, my God. I have to hold this up. Wait, you drew this? Yeah. That's. Oh. Oh, my. How much time is in these two pages, if you had to say? Well, not much. Maybe three, four hours, but they can happen three weeks or four months apart. Oh. I only write when there's something worth to consigning. And after The Hobbit, I stopped carrying them because I couldn't lose notes on The Hobbit. Oh, my gosh. I'm holding this up. Yeah. I feel. Yeah. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much I would pay to own this. I was about to say. I was about to say. I feel like we shouldn't be holding it. I know. We're not worthy of this. I thought it would be nice to bring it. Oh, it's beautiful. Oh, my gosh, Monica. I want you to feel the pages, too. Oh, my goodness. Did you draw this? Yes, of course. Years before pirates, I must say. I cannot believe this. Level of talent. Oh, my Lord. That was a note for Mountains of Madness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I can't believe this. Oh, my goodness. This was going to be a question at the very end, but I need to ask it now. Are you friendly at all with Tim Burton? No, we've never met. You've never met. We've never met. I mean, I know his influences. He comes from Edward Gorey, Charles Adams. I mean, I can trace his roots. I can't believe you've never met him. No, actually, I think that is very risky to meet someone that you have X in common. I've had that, like people that you have 90% in common and 70% in common. Where you disagree, you're going to hate each other. Sure, sure, sure. Where you disagree, you're going to go, "No, there's no conciliation." We had an expert on the other day. know this because you love fantasy but did you know c.s lewis and tolkien hated each other yeah well for a period at cambridge they disliked each other they were too close one was an atheist one was a christian and a christian that took great pains to get there i may have i mean bent over backwards yeah he had to convince himself yeah contorted himself yeah so you know it's like when you took years to convince yourself of something yeah you don't give it up that easily yeah yeah well it's now part of your identity and it feels threatening to your your world will explode yeah but to find out that they also hated and loved opposite poets and then i think it was c.s lewis hosted a norse mythology reading session oh my god yes and then tolkien attended and then they fell in love and they both encouraged each other to pursue that i was gonna say later they did coalesce into one and look the high bound nature of academia is brutal it's catty yeah yeah right here are actors comedians magicians yeah and scholars all very catty like i'm friends with a lot of magicians there's not a single magician that has ever spoken highly of another magician or comedians well if they die they can they can like houdini not a threat they don't have a show opening they don't have to share any attention with them yeah but academia is very catty but you know i'll say an exception to that which is stand-ups you're right stand-up comedians are brutal i did stand up for a while but sketch comedians that's where i'm from that's different we do love each other because a lot of it is writing it's writing it's relying on one another it's eating shit together it's succeeding in a writer's room together it starts communal it is and i think that you find in academia for example i love reading nabokov's writing i disagree with 90 percent of his opinions but i think it's a good thing because it's a good thing because you don't have to agree with that because it's what you did with what you were given as a legacy like burton i can see the gory the edward gory in him or the charles adams in him right but what he did with that or the dr zeus or the way he transmogrifies that yes it's interesting but it would be very different than the way you metabolize and it becomes part of your being i just know this particular part of your workflow is also very similar to his right he's just endlessly drawing and writing even while engaging with people it became less so for me the most copious notes i took is before i could make movies the more you have a team the more you say well guy davis draws a hundred times better than i do or francisco ruiz or you learn to rely on the people that you work with right every movie has a book like this it started with whole books for each movie and then it went into 50 pages for each movie and then three pages because the more you have a team right yeah i mean like i do a thing called the submarine which is six to nine months before the movie starts i hired three or four almost always the same designers and we go deep before we hire production design before we hire custom design we dive deep into the shapes the colors of this and that and then i draw less really quick what is the the end product of that session is it storyboard yeah no it's mostly the main concepts the main tenants of the movie like shapes for example the rules the rules and then you hire people and if they want to break them you say why because i thought about it not that you don't foster dissent you do yeah but you say you got to really convince me yeah because we thought this through i think that like when i go to a set and i see something is not done properly i say you thought i wouldn't notice yeah you know and like when i was 30 no less when i was 28 or 27 i jim cameron we became friends instantly i don't know why he said why don't you come over we're editing true lies and i need to take out 25 minutes was the inroad to this relationship were you doing the special effects stuff you had worked in some capacity for him no no no no ron perlman who was in chronos had done a tv series called beauty and the beast with linda hamilton so he said why don't you come to the barbecue on the fourth of july i went and jim was there yes and jim sat down and he said so i hear you made a really expensive mexican movie i said well yeah i'm more than my house he said you know you may lose it because we only hear the stories of the people that donate a kidney and succeed but there are a lot of people that donate a kidney and the movie doesn't open yeah yeah i go that's absolutely true yeah he says will you show it to me i said sure and he arrived to the screening at the chaplain theater on raleigh studios and he said if i get a phone call i may need to leave i said sure i understand and then he saw the whole movie and he said the phone call was bullshit that was a good if the movie wasn't bad i would send this oh my god like it's a bad date or something yeah he said i can stay for 20 minutes on the beginning and then we stayed for four hours and we liked each other very much he came from special effects i could do all special effects i knew rotoscope tracking so we started geeking out yes okay i was gonna say i had the rare experience to go on a motorcycle ride i didn't know who was going to be at breakfast and i get there and all that yeah i was like oh my god i'm gonna go to raleigh studios with arnold and then he's there what year 2004 oh yes and who's the great puppeteer the oh stan winston stan winston is there he was a writer incredible and so he naturally has zero interest in the 30 year old that's there yeah but he starts talking about the 3d technology he's inventing and i happen to say oh so it's like bilateral stereoscopic vision and he then goes he's like he hones in on me he goes why do you know about bilateral stereoscopic vision and i go oh i was an anthropology major and then i got all of his attention among all these people he's not just pretty he knows yes so i imagine for you that was the same thing i think if he figures out somebody knows about his neat kinks he's just very drawn to you i'd imagine he said to me one day there are x number of filmmakers then there are x number of writer directors that's less there are even less producer writer directors and he said uh then there are even less designer producer writer directors i said and then world builders he says you can count with one hand and when you encounter somebody you can talk about the whole thing how much it's gonna cost why is it gonna cost how do we make it better bigger and cheaper and our global view he said you immediately are interested because it's a very nurturing and rare i think because we have that commonality on effects because i can sculpt a puppet i can mechanize a puppet i can mold a puppet so i know molding chemistry you know all these things you liked it i know how do you know all this stuff so let's go in order a little bit and you already started it first of all you're from guadalajara yes and mom and dad are spanish and i'm curious first mexican yeah when did the family come from spain like what generation are you i have zero interest in my genealogy i know my grandfather was a virus it was guillermo gomez o'culligan i know the kinship with the irish because when i went to ireland i said why do i feel straight at home immediately but the side of my father split into puerto rico and mexico that much i know now my father had a very precarious upbringing they didn't have money his father was a gambler which my dad was a gambler but he sort of controlled himself sort of so how does he win this lottery he married my mom we were living in a little middle-class home he always bought from the same he won two times no yeah he won the six million and then he won a quarter of a million a few years later oh my goodness with the same stop playing same bender really yes oh my gosh so one day i were living there and one day we move into a house that was just out of the shanty i would run my bicycle like that in the shining but he always raised us i remember the immortal lines he said to my brother he says why do i have to do this if we have money and my dad said i have money yeah you don't yeah and he would say you want that microphone for your camera you're gonna go to the dealership and wash all the cars then you go to the spare parts warehouse and you have to clean all the boxes and then i'll buy you your microphone for your super 8 camera well so that was my other curiosity about your father because i'm from detroit and my whole family was automotive industry i too worked for gm for years it says he was an automotive entrepreneur what does that mean first he dealt with packards then he dealt with chrysler and then nissan and chrysler did he have a dealership many dealerships many dealerships in the 60s and 70s and all that he was really the worst boss i've ever had i worked with him five years and i said dad i'm quitting because i don't want to stop loving you i never did anything right i had always had to chase him for every penny so it sounds like he took the money he won and he was successful at growing that through his business oh yeah no no he was very smart he was very funny uh-huh he was very personal he was a little remote at home this is my father too so i only saw him every other weekend but he was a car salesman and when i moved through the world with him it's like he knew everyone at the hardware store and then he knew all the waiters and waitresses and it was like 100 i just wasn't kind of enamored with it also my dad was a motorcycle racing champion no and he used to ride motorcycles instead of a bicycle he would buy us a mini bike yeah yeah yeah So I was on a bike at age six or seven. I was riding my bike. You had the childhood I wanted. I still, of course. You have to break some stuff. Oh, God, yeah. You hear that? Keep it connected for the remainder of the interview. I have a bunch of scars from motocross. Of course. Parenting in the 60s would be actionable now. Of course. Sure. He would take me on his BMW bike, and he would go for ice cream. I was in the back. No helmets, of course. Of course. He said, you want an iron horse? I go, sure. And he would do an iron horse with me in the back. Sure. Seven. Yeah, yeah. Wait, so how old were you when he won the lottery? 69, so I was five. And do you remember, like, the day your dad comes home and is like, guess what? Yeah, the night before we went to the church party, I remember that I won a fire truck, a plastic fire truck. You're a lucky family. Everybody said, well, congratulations on the raffle. I said, yeah, we got a red truck. Yeah. I thought that was the time we're celebrating. Everybody loves my red truck. Everybody wants my red truck. No, but my dad gave me the discipline. He said, you have to work for everything you need. And he said, it's for your own good. We inherited each other's clothes. How many siblings? One brother older than me who passed away, a younger brother and a younger sister. Okay. So you're a middle, you're the middle boy. I'm the second, which is a hard position. And do you fit the stereotype as a middle child? Yes. You have to become the negotiator, the peacekeeper, the sane one, supposedly. Yeah. And then also, would you agree as the middle child, you can really disappear a lot? Because in my case, there was like a teenager who was crazy. And then there was a baby on the scene. So it was like between the energy they took up, I could be in my room for days and no one would have wondered. I tell you the parenting thing. I could disappear for a week and they would not ask where I was. Not even curious. If I had enough gas on the tank, I would go to San Antonio, to Texas to buy super eight equipment. I would come back. Four days later, no one was there. No one asked anything. Oh, wow. All I knew there was cold meat and cold beans on the fridge. Who made them? I had no idea. You also described that, you know, when you're like a seven year old boy, most kids are outside playing football and you're like reading voraciously. Oh my God. Yes. And then you're also a hypochondriac. A complete hypochondriac. Yeah. Where do we think that started? Started when my dad won the lottery. He bought a lot. He bought a library because somebody told him you have to have a library because you're a gentleman now. So he got a huge desk. That sounds like they could have told him anything. Oh, a library in the house. In the house. Okay. Okay. Okay. He bought three encyclopedias. He bought an encyclopedia of art, which I read complete when I was very young. He bought an encyclopedia for youth and one of them was the encyclopedia of health. Oh, okay. And I memorized it. I thought, oh, I have trichinosis. I have high blood pressure. You thought you had pancreatic cancer. At one point, I can talk to you. That is in my movies. All the biology, all this and that, that has been with me since I was a kid. And did you shake it at some point? Yeah, yeah. My dad was a hypochondriac. His hobby was to be sick. Actually, I became fully fluent. English is my second language, but at age seven or eight, he would make me travel with him to translate to doctors in Houston. Oh, really? I have glaucoma. Tell him that these are my symptoms and I would speak to the doctor in English and he said, what did he say? Do you think because of the Catholic guilt, there was some sense that, well, with this great fortune we were given, there must be some price to pay and it'll be my health? I don't know how complex my dad was. But did you have any sense like that? Like something bad will happen to us because this is suspiciously good. I have. I have. Yeah. Yeah. Same, same, same. Yeah, yeah. My parents won the money. One of the first things they tried to travel a lot to Europe, to this and that, and we would be left behind. And I stay with what I call my grandmother. She was like Piper, Laurie, and Carrie. She would instill in me the sense of doom. Oh. Every day at the end of the day, I would call her and she would say, if I wake up tomorrow, I will see you. And if I die tonight, I want you to know that I loved you. Oh my God. Every day. Okay. So I would sleep rigid in the bed feeling, I'm sure she's dead. And when I slept in her house, I would sleep in a little cot at the foot of her bed and I would spend the night hearing. Oh, and if she stopped, I would go, she's dead. Yeah. Now it happened that for a decade at least. And then I was an altar boy. I was the spokesperson for the Virgin Mary. I was raised very, very Catholic. And this is the time when I was reading multiple books a day. I taught myself to do ultra fast reading. And to this day, I can read a page about a second, two seconds. I get a page. Oh my gosh. Okay. I know this about you. You're going to mass at eight in the morning, but you're coming home and you see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein in the juxtaposition, yet also the parallel. Yeah. It's the same to me. This is completely true. My spiritual life is forged by movies, fairy tales, and religion. They become the same. Pan's Labyrinth, Hands in the Shape of Water, Frankenstein. To me, they are parables or fairy tales. You know, they became effortlessly one. So my grandmother. And I never agreed, but she would buy me the comic books on Tuesdays. On Tuesday, you went to the comic book stand in the corner and I would buy everything. Archie, Little Lulu, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, and some brown and white Mexican horror comics that were the most salacious, grotesque thing ever created. I still have a whole collection. Like with Make Robert Crumb blush? Oh my God. They started, it was called Traditional Legends of Mexico, right? It was the name of the comic book. And it started very altruistic. Eventually, they started doing Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, whatever. And then at the end, they were just, let's put a ruffing corpse and a scantily clad lady. And let's call it a day. My mother threw most of my comic books, like everybody. But I kept some. And your obsession with the monster, of course, makes total sense, which is. I'm not perfect. I'm flawed. I am in some way despicable, right? I have some sense that I am like defective in a way others are not. Especially because you're the second child. Yes. Yes. Like I'm not my brother. Who's like a stud in the disco. And I'm not, yeah, you're sort of in the middle. But also you can be pretty brutal with yourself and truth, meaning you don't have to be perfect, but you don't have to stay either. You have to give yourself the license to say, look, this is who I am. And this is what I need. And it's truthful, whether we like it or not. And monsters always are truthful. They step into the room. You know what they are. Right. And that's one thing I carry to design. When I design, I say everything designed needs to have a history. And I said, and this morning I was talking about a cistern, a Roman cistern we're designing for a stop motion movie we're making. And I said, the bricks on the floor are too small. And he said, why? I said, because they use larger slabs. So the water would slide. This I know. And it's not that you want to make it more prettier. This is truthful. Yeah, it's the truth. You understand the design because it came out of a need. Same with the personality. Like we dress, we're expressing something. Wardrobe is personality declaring. Trying to give you a shortcut. Into who you are. Yeah. What do you own? What car do you drive? If you are wealthy, but you have a 2010 car, I know who you are. Right. A little bit. Yeah. Warren Buffett driving the old Cherokee famously. For 30 years. He tells you that. Oh, okay. I really get it. It's not about the money. Or somebody wearing skitchers. Uh-huh. A wealthy man. You go, well, he's going for comfort. Right, right. Like one day I visited a very famous filmmaker, a friend of mine. And he was very excited. What are you driving? He says, my car. He says, a sensible ride. And that's what it is. It's a sensible ride. It was a Chrysler 2012. Okay. I still have it. Okay. I love it. Wonderful. Because in Mexico, you love your car. And once you get it, that's your car. Loyal. You don't have many cars. You're like, that's my car. Yeah. You go down to Mexico and you see all these incredible 80s full-size pickup trucks that are like flawless. Mm-hmm. I call them el guapo. Oh, yeah. My car. I say, hey, guapo, let's go. I talk to the car, like the Japanese. I believe objects have a personality and a soul. Uh-huh. I cook. My favorite frying pan is the cheesiest frying pan. But I know exactly how it's going to heat. How it's going to cook. How it's going to cook the rice. Yeah, yeah. Since you feel a sense that they have some meaning to them, are you a major collector then? I was. And I will say was because I'm quite pointedly donating, gifting, and auctioning most of what I own. Because I think if you are still accumulating after 55, there's something not quite there. Unless you are going to, like what George did, which I adore, open it to the public. If it's for you after 55, it's like wearing. Short pants. I mean, look, everybody has a sense of fashion. Sure. I personally wouldn't subject people to me on short pants and a backwards baseball cap. Oh, I almost wore a backwards baseball cap. Woo! Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking if the movie is sold out before you show up. You drove across town. found parking, got in line, and now the person behind the counter is giving you that look. Sold out. Guess you're watching whatever starts in 10 minutes. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We get support from our presenting sponsor, YouTube Premium. Now you already know I'm a big YouTube person. It's incredible on its own, but Premium makes the whole experience feel enhanced. Like you don't realize how much better it can get until you try it. The biggest game changer for me, background play. I love long two hour deep dives. You name it. Motorcycles, travel, cars. Cooking shows for me. Cooking. 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Foundeo is available by prescription only in 0.8mg, 2.5mg, 5.5mg, 9mg, 14.5mg, and 17.2mg tablets. Learn more at foundeo.lilly.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundeo. Well, how do we explain the obsession with the macabre? Like, what makes a little kid Catholic? It is a death-heavy endeavor. The way Philippines and Mexican Catholicism, the inroad into the popularity of the culture, the friars noticed, the gorier the picture, the more people were like, this is interesting. So Mexican Catholicism is really gory. Yeah, there's blood. On the crucifixion, you get some blood. And you get exposed bones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get that mortified flesh. Yeah, you go hard. And Filipino Catholicism is just as hard. And Filipinos, I've got to work with a ton of them in Detroit. They all believe in ghosts, too. Culturally, everyone believes in ghosts. Almost everyone has a ghost story or multiple. Same. In a Mexican dinner, if somebody starts telling a story, a ghost story, you say, yeah, pass the salsa. Yeah, yeah, you're all ears. And everybody has one. Even my grandma, who hated everything supernatural, she had ghost stories. At bedtime, they don't tell you about Snow White. They said there was this white presence in the house I lived in. No wonder you're a hypochondriac. And I'm going to die tonight. Hypochondriac, yeah. Because when I'm done telling you this story, I'm likely to pass. My analyst says it's what is called a counterphobic reaction, meaning I was so scared as a kid that I learned to love and get really intimate with what I feared, which is a coping mechanism. Well, that's like the same as when you role play with your trauma, right? Like if you've had sexual trauma, but you're into BDSM as a way to interact with it. Whatever rein in you have for that. Because then if you become. The initiator, the controller, then there's some measure of control. I mean, when I was first scared that I remember as a kid, it was so profound. And my brother then scared me further that night. So, you know, I started seeing things in my bedroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Presence. I would wake up with lucid dreaming in which these things were actually in my brain. They were there. So you have to learn. And I tell this story. People think it's a cute story. People think I make it up. It is completely true. I used to pee myself because I didn't want to get out of the crib because I saw a thing in the closet and fingers and waving at me in the rug. And I got up and I said, if you let me go to the bathroom, I will be your friend forever. Yeah. I told the monsters and they withdrew. Oh, my gosh. And this is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was able to go to the bathroom. But to this day, in my grandmother's house, there was a corridor, which I thought was incredibly long on the road to the bathroom. And I always thought, what if I see something standing at the end of the corridor, which is in Devil's Backbone? Uh-huh. A few years ago, I went to that house. Uh-huh. It's two feet long. It's two feet long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in my mind, it was a gauntlet. Like the horrors. Yeah, yeah. OK, so to speed through some things, you start messing with Dad's Super 8 camera. When you're about eight years old, this fascination takes you to ultimately the University of Guadalajara. You study cinema. We founded the school. Oh, you did? Oh, yeah. And we were both. We were both the founders and the alumni. Oh, really? There was no school in Mexico in Guadalajara for that, only in Mexico City. Oh, OK. So we founded two things, a festival, which is still going on, and the school, which is still going on under another name, but the same university. Was any part of your artistic endeavor, like, an attempt to have control over this whole thing? I guess. I mean, I. I'm now your analyst. No, no, no. When you don't have a social life, when I say other kids. When I say other kids were playing football, I could not understand. I felt 70 at age seven. You were in your study. I've been growing younger. Ah. Like now, I feel younger. Yeah. Benjamin. You're abandoning this life. Benjamin Del Toro. If I only had looked like Brad Pitt at any stage. If any of us could. I would take it. But I felt old. What I think is a way to. I mean, we are constantly finding balance. When people say, I had a bad day. Well, you're going to have a bad day. You're going to have a good one. I had a good day. Well, you're going to have a bad one. Yeah. Right, right, right. End of story. Like, the nature of the flow is the yin and the yang. In meditation, you remember nothing's permanent. Everything's going to peak and it's going to pass. Whether you're the most happy person in the world. It ebbs and flows. And I think writing, creating. Yeah. You want it so bad. That you create it. That you create it. And the world does not cater to that. To permanence. No, no, no. To permanence or to what you want. But is it cultural? Because I feel like in America, we are obsessed with happiness. With achieving it. And then we assume we just have that for the rest of our lives. But I do know in other cultures, you just know that that's not something you get and you have. That it is temporary. My dad has a real estate company. And he said, before you go into this doomed movie career, you should work for me. So I worked five years for that. And what I remember is payday on Friday, everybody was a prince. And everybody knew that Monday comes. You're going to have to show up and start working again. You get two days of. You get two days of being. Being a king. A largesse. Yeah. Buying drinks for friends. Yeah. Like you put a clean shirt. Yeah. And you went dancing. By Sunday night, you're like, we're fine. I got to go back tomorrow. Why did I do that? But the thing that is funny for me is when the culture is all focused on secondary gains. And it pays no attention to primary gain. Please define those two. Secondary gains. Secondary gains. Secondary gains. The things that you have to replenish constantly. Attention. Money. Approval. Wealth. When you meet somebody that is very rich or very famous, and they are worried about how will the movie open? This review was bad. I lost X amount of money. The primary is the person that hugs you and loves you exactly as you are. Right. That's a primary gain. Win or lose. Yeah. For me, the most intense primary gain moment is when your kids are four or five and you are Ultraman. Yeah. And they run because you're home. Yeah. That's pure primary gain. And those never go away. They're bedrock. And I find it worrisome that more and more we are veering towards secondary tertiary gain. If you're not careful, you are hollow. Yeah. I went to a Latino funeral recently in Carson. It was an overwhelming experience. This person who had passed was not famous. They weren't a boss of many people. And the turnout and the experience the friends and the family, the depth of that grief. Yes. And the sharing of it. And I just looked at kind of the white culture I came from. If you went to a funeral and there was more than 12 people there, that would be crazy. That other thing was really on display. And I was like, oh, man, we're really missing the boat in a lot of ways. There's not such a thing as a better culture or a worse culture. I think that all of them have incredible positives, incredible negatives. It's just what stays with you. I'll give you a difference. For example, in many cultures, when you're in grief, somebody says, I'm about a phone call away. If you need me, call me. In Latin culture, in Mexican culture, you show up with a bucket of food. You say, hey, I heard. And you're already there. You don't say, look, all you have to do is call me. No, you just show up and you're there in the good and the bad. But there are so many others. I mean, nothing is perfect. Yes, but there are aspects that are aspirational. And what I observed was this man who I adore watching him grieve. What I realized is we were all there to help take it on. And we all experienced it with him. I was in shambles. Everyone was. And I thought, what a beautiful thing. We're helping him carry this thing. You know, a culture, by the way, it deals with is more vulnerable, the elders and death. Yeah. Those three are markers of a culture that are, you know, incredibly important. I'm going to add one more. I was in Miami not long ago, and I was out at a very nice restaurant. The traditional white version is you get a babysitter and you go to this really nice restaurant and you have this romantic experience. Well, that was happening at many tables. The white people were there with the mom and dad. And this is 11 o'clock at night. All of the Latino tables was like, all the kids were there. Brothers and sisters were there. Yeah, yeah. And that's just different. And I think it's aspirational. The fascination for me, it's just what stays with you. We all make massive mistakes. I've caused pain. I've been caused pain. And you continue to do it. But the fact is the balance, the ultimate balance, the invoice comes in the last three minutes of your life. When you have no illusions of being, what do you do for a living? Well, in three minutes, nothing. Yeah, exactly. There's no other thing. No other thing. Who are you? In three minutes, nothing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the moment the systems, Yeah, yeah. The DMTs release. Yeah, yeah. That's ideally what you should have accumulated in life. What you should have accumulated in life is, well, yeah, I fucked up royally over here, but I did this other thing. Yeah. And it all comes incredibly clear. For some reason, it may be biochemical. That's why I say experiential is human. It's not that I'm a luddite. I'm not a guy that says, well, you know, we should not use technology. No, no, no. It's just, look, at the end of the day, the invoice is what did you live to achieve? Whatever it is. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. I was a good brother. What a gift to have at the end. What a gift to say that. Yes. I was a good father or I was a good son. Good son, yeah. You don't have to be all of that. I was a good friend. That's why I just say, please, just let's be careful for a second about how we launch into. The next incarnation of our humanity. I'm not saying don't do this or do that. Always balance it against this other. Just pay attention. Pursue. So, okay. Your first, I think, professional job, right, is you write five episodes and you direct four episodes of this. No, before that, even, I mean, I was doing my super eights and people started to say, oh, you know how to do makeup effects. Would you do them on my short film or my indie film? And I started to do effects for other people while I wrote and directed my own. And I was doing my short. And I said, well, when I quit real estate, I said, I'll try to make a living this other way. And I founded my company with my partner and my then wife called Necropia. Necropia. That's a good name. I assume in Spanish, this is still the base Latin of necro. The place where the dead dwell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But the thing I'm curious about is before you did your first big movie, you had been working for three years. Three years building puppets. Building the machine, the little Kronos device. What I said is 10 years before. And funny enough, I studied under Dick Smith, who was the Oscar winning makeup effects man that did Amadeus, that did Godfather, The Exorcist, Altered States. He accepted me into his makeup effects course and the Academy bought part of his estate and they found my first letter. Oh, really? To him. No way. And I found it remarkable. I'm still the same guy. Yeah. What I say, what I say I am, what I think of the genre, how I think it can be a parable. It's the same. I said, oh, I like this gift. That's a gift. Well, you had an incredible gift, which is you kind of knew what you were about pretty young. When I was very, very young. Yeah. That's, I guess, of all the gifts one can have in life, I think that's the one. I'll ask Amy at the Academy if she wants to share it with you. Oh, yes. It's the letterhead from Necropia. And I basically say in my second or third letter, I say, look, I'm not going to do this for a living. I just want to make my first movie. And there's no one in my country that makes makeup effects. So I have to found a company, work for a few years into having the equipment and then make my first movie. But I'm referring to, didn't you create for a stop motion film you were intending on making? Yeah, I was going to do that. A hundred puppets. Yeah. And the studio was broken. It was broken into and everything was vandalized and destroyed. Destroyed and they smeared poop in the walls. Okay. No! Okay. It's called, in Mexico, they call it foxing. Oh, it's a tradition. Yeah. Well, that's like toilet paper in here. That type of burglary, they call it mesorearon. Okay. Meaning somebody peed and pooed everywhere. Oh my God. Sure. They went ape in there. No, what it means is they didn't find anything worth stealing. So they got pissed. So they got revenge. But how did you recoup? How did you recoup from having spent that much time working and focusing on something and having to say goodbye to that? A friend of mine said to me, the key to life is huge windshield, small rear view mirror. That's nice. I like that. I think that's a very succinct, like I remember, and you may remember when computers started, I started writing on a word processor and you could save three pages at once. And I was like, this is, who can do this? Who can do anything better? Yeah. Then computers came and I was 20 something writing a book on Alfred Hitchcock, which got published by the university. But I had done 130 pages or something like that. And I erased the desk and I immediately, immediately went, okay, page one. But okay. Page one, new project or page one, the same one, same one. That's a constitution. That's hard. That's a personality trait. I don't know that you can teach that. No, no. You have to sort of have it. You know, it came from crashing motorcycles. I remember this when I was in motocross, I would take a dune the wrong way. And I was on a 300 enduro motorcycle, which is too heavy for motocross. And in the air, I was thinking, okay, I'm going to die or break my bones. And then something went wrong. And I said, okay, I didn't die. I broke my bones. How do I get up? How do I push the bike off of me? Like immediately it was like, okay, next step. Solution, solution, solution. Which by the way, eventually as a person, there's a lot of you that you don't process. And one day you're crossing the street and you have a panic attack or something. And that's that thing from 20 years ago. That I didn't process 15 years ago. Okay. So you do Kronos. So I found the company. I do all the special effects. I do commercials, 15 movies, blah, blah, blah. And then I have the tools. Then I make Kronos, which is incredibly hard to do. Incredibly against the grain. Incredibly unpopular with the financiers and the government. And then I make Kronos, which is incredibly hard to do. And then it wins at Cannes. That's in two seconds, an eight year journey. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. What film opens up the door to Mimic? Well, Mimic, which it was a trap door. As we're about to learn. At Miramax, they loved Kronos, supposedly. Turns out they didn't. Yeah. They probably didn't even see it. But at any rate, we developed, they wanted to do a three or four anthology movie with Brian Sagan. A singer, myself, I think four directors. And they said, develop a short story. And I had read Mimic. And I said, well, we can do this one as a short, 30 minutes. I showed them the tests. And they said, we are going to do it as a feature. And I go, I don't think there's a feature in there. Right. I've been unemployed. Kronos is 91, 92. We finished shooting. It comes out in 93. I owe a lot of money. I owe a quarter of a million dollars at 28. It's not great for creativity. And I said, well, I got to pay that. By the way, that money, whatever I make on Mimic, I put into paying the ransom for my father. This is all I'm presuming 97. My dad is kidnapped 98. But this period, I'm presuming, is one of the hardest chapters of your life. Between directing this movie, we must say that this movie is a miserable experience for you. Oh, my God. No more than that. Let me put it this way. That movie is the worst experience I've ever had. Really? Including everything. Yeah. Because nothing made sense. You are giving someone what time will prove that it doesn't matter if it's good or not. You're giving them your money. You're a hundred percent. You're giving them images and moments and episodes in the film that are great. And they hate them. They fucked with you on casting, ultimately editing. They fired you at one point or tried to. They actually fired me on a Friday and I was rehired on a Monday. Yeah. That same Monday. And Brolin was in this movie. Yeah. That's why I called him. I loved Brolin. He was in a rough period for himself. As he told me, he's like, I was drinking a lot on that. He was drinking and he was reading a lot. And we would have these deep, deep, super deep discussions. Too deep and unproductive. What I love about Brolin, there's certain people that have the soul of a poet and the pain of a soul of a poet. Yeah. He had that. Yeah. And whether they're actor, directors, writers, you love them for the purity of their pain. Yeah. A hundred percent. Which I think is a huge gift. It's an asset. If your pain is pure, your song is clearer. You sing in a louder, clearer voice in this world. This is so out of school, but I have said it when I interviewed his ex. But I was around Heath Ledger several times in important ways. And I could feel the weight on him. That was much more severe than the weight I've experienced. It was palpable. Yeah. And heartbreaking. And also why he was just so brilliant and riveting. What he does with that. Exactly. Yes. But you can philosophize all you want. The experiencing of it is never altruistic. But I happen to think that with it. With age, you learn mechanisms that are more truthful to the way the world works. And you learn to declare your worst self without fear. The moment of freedom is not when you are at your best. It's when you are at your worst and you say, and that's me. It's the only clarity you're going to aspire to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had this the other day where I had to present an award. This bit went wrong. It was ill-conceived. Terrible task. The whole thing was terrible. And when I was driving home, I was like. Oh, yeah, I like myself just as much. And it was a moment for me. I was like, oh, we've arrived somewhere that that doesn't matter what just happened. There's a great mechanism. It's very simple, very simple in therapy. When the question you have to ask of anything is, and I crashed my car. And well, I'm going to take it to repair and it's going to come back. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I lost a million dollars. And right. Yeah, we stop. We don't model out the whole thing. We stop at the part we hated. Or the part we loved. Shame. Oh, yeah. I met someone great. And? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just met them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I've got to, you know, everybody takes the trash on Tuesdays. Yeah, they have two kids they haven't seen in three years. Oh, okay. That is also cultural. The tragedy of certain cultures is to tell you that one day you'll get there. Yeah, exactly. What is there? I just wrote a scene in a movie that we're going to shoot in stop motion and all that where they have to face death, which is apparently my favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the guy says, is this it? And that says, what else were you expecting? Okay, so there's two things that are happening on the same zone. Your father gets kidnapped and you've had this insanely terrible experience on mimic. And both of these things end up involving James Cameron in this very sweet way that I want to shine a light on. Very sweet. First of all, he said, don't do it. Don't do the movie. Yeah, we were sitting in his garden. I mean, by this time, we're brothers. And Jim is my brother. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were sitting in his garden. Any trouble, I'll call Jim. We've gone through everything together. He's a good big brother, too. He's a great big brother. Yeah. Yeah. I highly recommend. I highly recommend. Good choice. Yeah. But he's one of the guys that shows up. Yeah. He shows up with lasagna. Yeah. He says, I'm here. I think he's Mexican. But he says, don't make the movie. You're going to get none of the budget and all of the pain. He has warned me two times. Wow. I'll keep the other one secret. I agree. I agree. Next interview. But both times, he was right. Interesting. Yeah. And I made the movie. I go through it. He almost gets into a fist fight with Harvey Weinstein at the Oscars. Monica, you must know this story. What? He has won his 25th Oscar of the night for Titanic. He's holding the editing, I believe, Oscar. I think it's the editing. He's coming back to his seat. It's in commercial. And Harvey Weinstein decides this is a great opportunity to come up to him and he said, you know, why don't you work at Miramax? We're a filmmaker friendly studio. And Jim fucking goes. No, do you mean like the way you do? He treated my friend Guillermo and he lets it rip on the floor of the Academy Awards. People have to intervene. James is like, he almost got belted in the head with this Oscar. Jim said, I was almost going to belt him with the Oscar. And the thing is, what people don't understand back then, the public image of these guys was that they were patrons of the arts. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Miramax was independent. And Artie. And they badmouthed me everywhere. Oh, my God. For five years, I couldn't work. For five years between Mimic and Devil's Backbone, I was unhirable, basically. Oh, my. You know, so everybody has heard I couldn't create images. They had to come in. And what I did, and this is, again, the same mechanism, I said, I don't need to make movies there. Yeah. I'll make a movie in Spain. Yes, exactly. I don't need them. When you mourn something you have, celebrate everything else that you could have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't be focused on this thing that you wanted and you lost because you can no longer focus on what's. Well, it's like mourning, the risk of mourning, if you lose somebody close to you. There's a syndrome where you stop paying attention to everybody else that was left for you. That's true. Yeah. Like you lose a son or you lose a brother while you have other siblings. I'm not being glib. Yeah. You stop paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same in life. The reaction to losing a loved one should be, fuck, I got to double cherish the ones in front of me. But the reverse happens sometimes. Pedro Almodovar had said to me, if we can produce a movie for you, let us know. And during the kidnapping of my dad, three things happened. One is the negotiator, which Jim Cameron hired. So Jim said, let me. His father was kidnapped for 72 days. First phone call is we want 3 million in three days, 5 million in five days, or we chop his head off. That was the first phone call. And first third of the kidnapping, I go and hide in a closet, cover my ears, cannot talk, while they're talking. Last third of the kidnapping, I negotiate. So somewhere in the middle, you change, my beard comes off, I have no hair in my face. And it arrives. It arrives. Oh my goodness. My mother loses all her hair during the 72 days, all the hair, eyebrows, hair, everything. But this guy comes in, Jim hires him. People say, oh, he paid the ransom. No, we paid the ransom, but he paid for the negotiator. And he offered to pay the ransom, right? He did. He said, I'll get it in cash and a helicopter. I said, Jim. And I'll be the negotiator. I'll be flying the helicopter. I'll go in with Navy SEALs. I said, Jim. Oh my God. Slow down, slow down, slow down. He is such a good big brother. That makes me. Degraded. I mean, I obviously like respect him so much, but that really makes me respect him. As a person. Although we were in tragedy, I said, look, I don't want you to solve it. We have to solve it. Yeah. But what happens is, in the first 72 hours, they call back and we say, I think we were able to gather, because my father never gave any of us access to the money. Nor I'm sure told anyone where it's all at. It was his money, but we couldn't access it at all. Not even. And so I put whatever I had left of Mimic, which was very little because I had paid the debt from Kronos. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we had. So three days later, before the negotiator arrives, we say, I think we can gather about $100,000. And they hung up and we said, oh, and the negotiator arrives and said, what did you say? $100,000. The negotiator says that same day, it's going to stay between 70 and 75 days. And you screwed up. He said, because if you can get $100,000 in three days, you can get a million, and so they're going to squeeze you. Brutal to know that, but that's the way the experience was. Can I ask, and maybe this is too personal, is there the moment at the end from a movie where he walks out of somewhere and the money has been placed somewhere? Well, that's a whole hour. And it's incredibly harrowing, but when people say, oh, you had a great career, I said, no, I don't have a career. It's a brutal biography, but people always think where you are is where you've always been. Sure, sure. But of course it isn't. And the kidnapping was the same. Many days you would wake up and say, what if he doesn't return? Well, the protective part of your brain has to be actively also preparing you for that to save you. When we talk about people that are similar as directors, some visual, some this, or that, the difference is in your experience. I am acutely aware of. The spiritual, and I'm acutely aware of pain. That makes a difference. Your images are charged in a different way and they help you through this. The negotiator says that he says, what do you do? Each of us. And I say, I'm a writer director. He says, right. Every day. Right. For three to four hours every day. I want you. He's kidnapped. Not you. You're going to discipline yourself into sitting down. This person's so special. Oh, well, he was an English agent. He had worked for the secret service in England. Fascinating guy. Yeah. But he says, you're not kidnapped. He is. You're a writer. Right. And what you will be assigned in the fifth, this first part is you will transfer all the phone calls into dialogue and in English and in Spanish. Wow. Okay. He kept you busy. Well, he makes you do what you do. And that helps you find a center. But the other thing that happens, then I started writing two things. Monte Cristo, which is about revenge and the devil's backbone. Oh my gosh. For Pedro. Yeah. Yeah. And he visits me and I said, here's what I'm writing. And he says, these are like three movies in one. I said, no, no, no. He told me. Hello, The Devil's Backbone and Monte Cristo while my dad is kidnapped. Were you talking to your dad? Like, how did you know? Very few times. We talked to him only one time as proof of life. His first line is, why are you taking so long? Because you know it tells where the money is, motherfucker. And by the way, we already paid once. And now we have to pay again. They said, now we have enough money, we can wait. Oh, my God. So they keep him another 30-something days. I'm 62. And now I'm the only one that remembers that my mother is gone, my dad is gone, my brother is gone. Do you draw on that often? Only in whatever little tools you get philosophically to come with that. But, you know, that's when somebody talks about, oh, you know, you're an artist and you're privileged. And you say, I'm more than that. Well, you're the sum of everything. Don't judge anyone by where they are. Judge how did they get there? What did they learn in the process? What did you go through? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. So now you go on a run. The Devil's Backbone is incredible. But even that, for example, comes out 9-10. The next day, 9-11. Oh. And you learn, OK, whatever joy you achieved in Toronto Film Festival that day, and you feel like a winner, then life tells you. Talk about impermanence. Yes. There's all this cosmic stuff. You learn at a visceral level how connected all our fates are. I mean, that's the impossible thing for me is how we have been individualized by machines that have basically worked as narcissistic mirrors. And we are now incapable of understanding that we are all a single cell unit, whether we like it or not. When you only think of yourself, it's cancer. We have cancer. The key to happiness. Sartre said, hell is the others. Heaven is also the others. If you have kids and you say, I just want their good, you are immediately happy. You know, yes, I'm going through this, but my kids are good. You can always say that. It's like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. It could be worse. It could be raining. Yeah. There's always that permutation. Yeah. OK, I just want to get to pans now, because we do Blade 2 and then Hellboy. Blade 2. Hellboy is a blast. I would imagine. Wesley, he's an enigma to me. He's an enigma to me. Well, at one point, he said to me, I am unknowable. Oh, really? Absolutely agree. I wanted to prove how I could handle big action, because part of the myth on Mimic, the Weinsteins were saying, well, he cannot do big movies. And I go, oh, I can't? I'll show you. Yes. And Blade was done for about 34, 35, 40. 30 million plus Wesley's salary. But it was a relatively small movie. Yes. And I wanted it to look big and the action to be very innovative and all that. And he said to me, I have a few rules. He says, I don't do over shoulders. Oh. I'll give you three setups a day, four setups a day. And the rest you do with my body double. Oh, wow. I don't care. Yeah, yeah. OK. And he said, and blah, blah, blah. And I said, I can do all that. Why? Because I know how to shoot makeup effects. So I can shoot a full shot. Like, there's a close-up in the movie. That is not Wesley. Oh, my God. You're kidding me. It's his body double. Wow. And that's a close-up. I need to rewatch that too. The whole scene is not Wesley. And I remember Wesley in the ADR. I'm shocked he came to ADR. He came to ADR. If he don't do overs. We actually enjoyed each other at the end. We had a couple of big moments. How do you do with confrontation in general? If it's private, I negotiate. If it's public, I go the whole way. Very fast. Oh, OK. If it's in front of everybody. Oh, my God. It's like, OK. Now, you're not giving me that space. I'm going to go all the way with you. OK. I am actually good with confrontation. It comes from being Mexican. Yeah, yeah. Privately and with friends, it's really hard. If you love somebody, then I'm paralyzed. But if you're a star or you're a head of a studio, I go all the way. I don't mind. But privately, I really like to find a point of comfort for both of us. Yeah. Compromise. OK. So, 2006. Pan's Labyrinth. And that's what we're here to talk about. Because it is, A, the 20-year anniversary. Yes. And it's coming out again. Yeah. And it's coming out in a bunch of different new formats. I have color-timed it 20 times in the last few months. Oh, my goodness. I have color-timed it for 3D, color-timed it for Barco, color-timed it for Dolby Digital, color-timed it for 4K. Wow. What's your stamina through that? In the last five, you have about six neural points in color. Where you go, are the highlights clean? Are the blacks saturated and clean? Black or white in an image, the highest point of contrast and the lowest, are easily contaminated. It's very hard to achieve pure whites or pure blacks. Or pure black. Yeah. So, you have, this is a magenta black. This is a cyan white. I went to a really cool test when I was coloring for a movie I directed. And they were showing us, people are enamored with 4K, 6K, 8K. Then they show you. They show you, what's the difference when you control the blacks? That's it. Right? Like, you could be in 2K with really controlled blacks versus 8K. And it's like, oh, well, this looks so much more beautiful. I mean, look, I tell you, Dolby Digital laser projection is just so incredibly beautiful. Mind-blowing. Because you can control those so well. Well, the whites are pure. The blacks are pure. For example, saturation and color. The more you saturate, the richer the black, right? So, if you have good blacks, you have perfect color, saturation, ideal. And then you have. You have to be careful. And I work with two colors in the spectrum that are very hard. Gold and cyan. Incredibly hard. Why? Both gold and cyan become green really easy. As you start manipulating them? Cyan, but you sneeze and it's blue. And cyan, you sneeze and it's green. Oh, wow. And gold, you sneeze and it's red. Oh, wow. And you sneeze and it's yellow. Yeah. So, you have to constantly be footing that. So, when you're coloring, you're prioritizing your two colors the most? You say, these are the six colors. These are the six points in the movie that I need to make sure are good. And then you do a full timing one or two times. Okay. Normally, I have to do it because I'm available and I'm right there. And then you have to make sure the audience is experiencing that. This is the most perfect the movie has ever been. Yeah. So, what is it like for you 20 years later to see now visually a version that. I finally like it. Oh, wow. Oh, because you were unsatisfied? I was always. And there's still one image. That drives you nuts? Which is horrible. I call it a Seinfeld. I don't do establishing shots. This is establishing shot. So, every time it pops up, I go. I hate it. I hate it. You can hear Kramer walking in the door. What happens is it's front lit. It was the only time. We always like when Navarro, you map out the location and you say, we can shoot here because the sun is behind us, right? Or lateral. You never want to shoot with the sun in front. Because everything's flat, right? It's flat, horrible. There's no, yeah. So, the sun is frontal on this establishing. And this. Establishing. Establishing, which you don't like. I want to add this. This is interesting. A lot of times also your failures, your inconveniences can give birth to something very special. So, this is true, right? That in Mimic, they fucked with you in the edit so much that you, being clever, were like, from now on, my shots are going to be very long and constructed. So, it's impossible to get into them. Yeah. And that, or Neville's back when my editor called me and said, could you please shut up? Count to three before saying cut? Oh. Because I used to say cut. Oh. Right to the frame. Yeah. I said cut. Because I didn't want anyone else coming and editing it. Oh. But this is a weirdly a gift for you, right? That's interesting. I have now relaxed. Bradley Cooper helped me relax. He did. Oh, in what way? He was like, no one's going to fuck with you. Every day. Heresy. I'm going to say heresy. What if we, I would jive. Yeah. I said, I can jive. The more you can surf and not just play chess. Yeah. The more both of those disciplines feed on each other. Yeah. I think that is really good to be rigorous in order to be flexible. Yeah. Like know it perfectly so you can throw it away. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is there something better in the day? If there is, don't be so uptight that you don't see it, but don't be unprepared because you will lose it. A conversation is working if both sides are listening. Yes. Right. And sometimes people show up with a preconceived notion, whether it's an actor or a director. And I've talked to people that have worked or were friends with Kubrick. And yes, he knew most of what he wanted, but then the accident and the lack of importance in delivering a line, he courted and he had to extract through process. You know, I think it's the same with every perfectionist. There's a point where you have to have the accident. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, it'll start feeling like AI made it. That's the point. It's not chemistry. It's alchemy. The key to alchemy, both philosophically and chemically, is you take what is called the vile matter and you transform it into sublime matter. If you only juxtapose and permutate, which is what a search engine does, things that already happened, your crisscrossing information, you achieve straight onto the middle. You bullseye the average. You never achieve the 1% over there. Yeah. It's actually incapable. It's not built to do that. You're reacting with everything you are. You were beaten as a child. You lost. You were a mother when you were 12. You suffered tragedy. You suffered joy. You got drunk at school. At 15, you'd crash the car. All this is inside of you taking that decision that day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that is in there. It's magic. It's magic. Let's call it what it is. It's art. Yeah. That's right. Everything produces something that didn't vibrate with any experience, no matter how many, because it's not a model. We are part of a living, breathing, cosmic experience. And I'm not going woo-woo. This is true of every one of us. And then you vibrate with others. And, you know, the way you achieve one solution, the way you stutter in one take and you go, that's the good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry I stuttered. That's what made it work. We all live that excitement. Yeah. It's a sport. It's a contact sport. Scorsese is a lovely example of this for us, right? He will often use flawed shots. And his own flaws. Yeah, so prioritize what he saw in that performance at that moment, right? And that's why many people, people I respect, are one take, two takes. I visited Steven in Tushuni in Bridge of Spies. And it informed everything I felt about Shape of Water. Everything. And the couple of days I visited. Really? He would orchestrate a shot. He said, do you like it? I go, it's glorious. He says, wait a second. Can I get better? And he goes in and he changes one vector. You enter through the right, you stop right there, and instantly it's better. And he says, better? I said, much better. But three takes. I always was like, oh, I do 12. 12 takes. I started to say, I got to be able to shoot it. I got to let it go. Now, when you get the feeling, life is like water, right? Like, if you are like this, how much water are you holding? Yeah, exactly. And if you are like this, how much water are you holding? And I think the key to art is you have to feel when you have to do that and when you have to do that. My life experience of that was I had bought an engagement ring for my wife. I had it for a while. I was going to. I was going to go to a restaurant or as the first place I ever said, I love you. It was going to be around a certain day. That was like a month out. And then it's Christmas night and we're sitting in bed and there's this emotional thing happening. And I just went, oh, I'm going to try to recreate this in a month at a restaurant, but it's now. Yeah. And I went and got the wedding ring then, you know, and it was like, all right, no, it's happening now. Recognize when it's happening. Einstein said the imagination is better. More important than knowledge, right? More important than knowledge. And also living the moment as it wants to be, because it wants to be that is wisdom. It's more important than any of the other things. And the problem is we preconceive so much that we're living in not with a living animal, but a piece of taxidermy or life becomes taxidermy. Oh, if I don't get this, then it's not. No, no. Life is so alive. Well, it's not domesticated. It is what it wants to be. Same with a movie. By the way, I say when people think I'm all you, you, woo, woo, when I say the movie tells you what it wants to be. I paint model kids on Sundays and there's a point in the coloring where the color tells you, you say, I'm going to paint it white and then you end up purple. And how it happens is you let the model and the color talk to you. It's a conversation. It's a conversation. Yeah. Same with life. But it requires context. It requires confidence. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. To let go. I think that requires I'll be fine. It'll be fine. Things will be fine if I let go. Well, there's a great mantra. No matter what, I'll be okay. Because it's a decision to be okay. I did a 10 day silent retreat. Oh, wow. Completely silent. You couldn't make eye contact. You couldn't talk, blah, blah, blah. It was all about meditation. And there was a point where I had my first panic attack. Actually, the key is you. You are in the panic attack. I never had it for decades. I never had it. And I go, I couldn't recognize it. Yes. But you stay on it and you come out. Whatever you're going through, stay on it. Exactly. The good, the bad, whatever, because it's going to go. Yeah. Panic attacks are interesting. I used to get them too. Often? Yeah. I used to get them often. But I learned like what creates the panic is like, when's it going to end? When's it going to end? And when you just start to realize like it's going to, but you don't get to decide, then it goes away. It goes away. It's this fear of it never ending. It's the Buddhist. The discomfort is the craving for a different state of being. That's where the discomfort is. Just acceptance of it. Yeah. This is me right now. The problem is not the lacking, it's the wanting. Yes. Exactly. Yes. I don't have, that's a problem. Not the having. But you know what you're describing? Exactly. That's life. When is it going to end? It will. Yeah. Just give it time. Not on your time schedule probably. You know, everybody that dies had the laundry to pick up. Everybody that dies went, oh, I was going to go to the dentist. Not anymore, buddy. I have a question about Pan's Labyrinth because it was quite celebrated, obviously. You were nominated for six Oscars. You won three. You got a 22 minute standing ovation, which is the longest in history at Cannes. At Cannes, it still holds the record. Yes. In international festivals, it got broken this year. In Venice, it got 25, one film. But in Cannes, it still holds. It was really surprising. I mean, they programmed us the last day of the festival. Most journalists have gone. Oh, wow. We were expecting the movie to just play. And in France, the audiences are very silent. At the end, like if a movie is not playing, you hear the seats. Because they make it a point to get up and make the seat. They want you to know I'm walking out. Yeah, yeah. But they don't react to the movie. Like American audiences are, whoa, don't get in there. Get out. Run. Yeah, yeah. Mexican audiences also. Very silent. But in France, all of a sudden, in the middle of the movie, people starting to ooh and ah. And when she cuts his mouth in the middle of the movie, they gave it a huge ovation. And I thought, this is landing differently. I have many questions about this. When I imagine being in this situation, I think I would love the first three minutes. Yes. I would feel so validated and loved. And then at about the five-minute marker, I might think. You don't know what to do. When is this going to end? And everyone's looking at me. And to know that there was 17 more minutes back to Seinfeld. This is an episode of Seinfeld. Yeah, it is a commute. What? Literally. What goes through? What's the real-time visceral experience? Like, do you get self-conscious? Then do you move past that? Are there waves of accepting it and rejecting it? It's very uncomfortable at some point. Alfonso Cuaron, who, no matter what I tell him, it's not necessary, Alfonso, to tell the truth all the time. But Alfonso is like, 100% true. Yeah, he does it. Yeah. He's brutal. Yeah, yeah. And he noticed. And he said, let it in. Oh. Take it in, pal. Don't fight it. It would be hard not to fight. I'm not very good with too much praise. Yeah. Alfonso said that. And I was able to. It was also surreal. And then it didn't show up almost anywhere because most people had left. So it was like, if I treat you. He falls in the forest. But then eventually it trickled out. And Thierry, the head of the festival, said he'd got the longest standing ovation in the history of the festival. And that got picked up. But the first review was not a good review. Really? I think the headline, I may be wrong, it was like, this ain't Blade II. Oh, my. Okay, that's a take. Well, it can go either way. We need to know how that person feels about Blade II to begin with. For example, when Alejandro Alfonso and I are going to open a movie, there's always trepidation. We always. We always say, look, Alfonso is very, very wise. And he's very worldly in certain ways. But he's tough. But he says, if you make a bad movie and you win a few awards, is it not a bad movie anymore? I said, and if you make a good movie and you don't get any awards, is it a bad movie? We live and die by our latest record in this industry. And then, you know, the best place to be is when you say, whatever happens, I'll be okay. Like, I don't need any more reaffirmation. The only thing you do is, did I do it my way? Do you like it? Did I get the thing in my head out in the way I'm proud of? That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. Did I make the thing I wanted to see? That's it. I mean, they always say, well, either you choose the movie. I say, the one nobody else would do is the one I do. Even if it's Blade II or Hellboy. Your career is definitely defined by that. I think it's so exciting because so many people have not seen Pan's Labyrinth 20 years ago. On screen, certainly. Right. And then now, so not only. Obviously, the visual of it has changed in ways. What are you finding for you that's shocking about, let's say, watching it in 3D? Like, what is new or exciting to you? Well, when I did Pacific Rim, I quite pointedly, my first thought was really silly. I said, I wish I could go back and do Pan's in 3D. Oh, no kidding. Because the posterization was so good and I felt I could make the fantasy world. A little deeper and the real world a little more shallow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, I didn't own the movie. I couldn't control it. I couldn't spend the money to do it. Nobody would. So I thought, well, out of my head. Then it took me 15 years to buy Pan's Labyrinth back. Whoa. I got it back. And the first thing is, I want to try and do it in 3D. Yes. So cool. I'm so excited to see that. Me too. The thing with 3D, if you use it creatively, if you actually are supplementing the story with that, and the experience is deeper, then it's worth it. And we did it very pointedly with the same company that we did Pacific Rim and we did it by the same manual human method. I mean, there are shortcuts now with AI and all this. And I said, it's my money. I want to spend more money and do it with a person making that decision than a machine or an algorithm. I just want to do four minutes on Frankenstein because I had the most glorious experience with Frankenstein, which is unfortunately, I think Jacob Elordi overshadowed what I, you, I didn't know you made that movie. I knew there was a Frankenstein movie coming out with Jacob Elordi. Oh, thank God. We were at friend's house and they're like, let's watch this. I heard it was good. And I'm like, okay, I'll give it a shot. And from the second it starts, I go, Oh, someone very special is behind this movie. The imagery immediately is so overwhelming that I went, this has to be Guillermo. Like I didn't even know that was you, but just it's such a, it makes me emotional what you achieve visually with that movie. It's so mind-blowing that I wanted to ask you, do you think you're a painter? What do we think? How do I how do I understand why you're able to create images in the way you do? I'm visually extremely disciplined, but by this, I also say I am joyful in the creation of images. I think 80% of the communication with an audience is not verbal, meaning we have the play. That's one thing, the screen play, but we have the audio visual screen play and that you code in colors, shapes, light is nonverbal. And most of the movie is submerged in that. But the pleasure of consuming the image, it's, it's very rare that you are aware of the pleasure you're receiving, just looking at this composition. Yeah. It's so powerful and soothing. It comes from painting. Yeah. It comes from me studying the painters as a kid with that encyclopedia of art and learning what a difference it made when the romantic school of painting, what is it trying to achieve the symbolists? What are they trying to achieve? Why is it important to a small painting like the origin of the world? Why is it important to paint peasants eating potatoes, which was not academically acceptable before and understanding that from my really early age, you became what you ate, but also in a way that favors communication where you say, I love Jack Kirby, right? I love Steve Ditko. I love all the comic book artists, but I also love Manon. I love the name, Monique, and having the same value. So you say, okay, I'm going to entertain and surprise, but also it's a pulse. Every image either relaxes you or takes you to a wow. Gives you tension. If you make every image equally important, you're not doing your job right. You have to know when you want people to lean in and when you want them to lean back. Yeah. Back to the ebb and flow of life. The ebb and flow has to exist in this thing. So you design it like a symphony. You have an overture. We slow down and we take a breath. We regroup. You have to have an allegro, an allegro non troppo. You have to make it symphonic because the aspiration of a movie is to be like music, to transport you. Music has this miraculous quality, which is, it seems to enter you. It's the highest art form, in my opinion, music. And when any of the other forms achieves a little bit that musical magic, I mean, I always say, look, Orpheus. Did he say out because he was a musician? Almost cut her out. He didn't. He failed at the end. But I'm saying if he was a movie director, both would be in hell from the start. He would say, listen to me, I need 120 people and a few million dollars to show you my art. And the musician just grabs an instrument and even no instrument and just the human voice. This is what you come at the end of the discussion about art. The only treasure we have is a voice. And each of us have a voice. Yeah. Each of us have one song, one song you sing. And when you hear the right voice, sing the right song. Like what is language? Language is this tool we use to get this thought in my head into your head. And then music somehow is this fast pass of like, let me give you the emotion in my heart. Let me open my mouth and let this noise out and you can feel my emotion. That's like such magic. But even when you talk about language, that's the magical thing about language. I write, English is my second language. Which is mind blowing. To me, I can only imagine how smart you sound in Spanish. Which means that by the time I talk to you, I already thought it, proved it, converted it, checked the syntax. I can't believe it. And then said it in less than a second. So I value the language so much. I value the precision of the term. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the next to right word is the difference between the lighting bug and lining. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is so much music in the language, the alliterations, the rhythm of the consonants, the way consonants are music. And when the voice is right, I mean, they can say Orson Welles. Right. Who cares what he's saying? Who cares? It's like I used to joke about the guy in the trailers ordering a pizza. I want a double pepperoni, and now. But that's the thing. We all have the human voice. Please let's not lose it. That's all I have to say about art. Please don't make it about an image or a sound. It's the human voice. Can we understand that if we lose our voice, we all are something not human? I mean, whatever the hell will stand in our future in two legs, if we lose a human voice, that thing, no matter how wealthy, no matter how full of comfort, that thing is not going to be a human being. We all understand the stakes. Don't short things that can divide us. That's the magic of the human voice. Okay. Last thing I promise on Frankenstein. I want to applaud him publicly. I think the Oscar Isaac performance is among the most vanity free performances I've ever seen. I agree with you. It's so beautifully unvain. I don't know what else to say. Unselfconscious. Unselfconscious. Total lack of vanity. And I want to know. Did you guys work like that? Did you guys work to be that? What happened there? That's so special. First of all, thank you. And I'm going to say actors is like magicians or comedians. You know, when you did the pause at the right place, right? Yeah. But you also know when you did not filter it through vanity, when you were completely in danger. Let me show you the ugliest version of myself. The most vulnerable. I mean, that performance is a incredibly hard to deliver. Yes. It's perfectly delivered. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It does what it needs you to experience. It's a master doing it. It is. A master performance from this guy. We had a great talk. He is my brother. He's one of my brothers in life. I adore him. I said to him, look, I've been Victor and I've been the creature. And I said, I've been the worst and I've been the most vulnerable. And the fact that we are paradoxical beings, if you're the actor and I'm the visionary director. I can't deliver this movie. I said, you have to be a flawed motherfucker. I have to come to you and say, I don't know. And I have to come in and say, we are fucked up. We got to figure this out. I said, so the next few months, I got to tell you everything I've done wrong in life. And you have to tell me everything you've done wrong in life. And we have to come in as imperfect as we can to this movie because the rest I already took care of. Everything visually has been. You and I are going to have to flip the page. I'm going to have to flip the page. And we achieved something that made us very vulnerable. And there was a moment in that movie where my entire bottom as a human being felt through. We were connected. I could see him from the other side of the room and I would go. And he goes. Oh, amazing. What an experience you got to share with a human on earth. Incredible. It's incredible. So I'm going to have to flip the page. And I'm going to have to flip the page. She's riveting. She's riveting because I never knew what was going to happen in the thing. But she's real. The two realest actors I've worked with are Sally Hawkins and her. What you didn't know. And all of a sudden you were, cut. And I'm guessing too, you don't even want to be a part of whatever's happening. Like just, I don't ever want to fuck up this thing that's happening. I remember, for example, in the scene between her and him, we have the butterfly on the table. And in the third take, she drops down and talks to the butterfly. She decided that. I had her holding it like Hamlet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she just dropped down to the level of the butterfly. And the next take, I went down with the camera. I said, let's be prepared. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I opened myself. I said, I have to know a little. But the first day, I said, well, this is your mark. And I'm very precise with the camera normally. Yes. I said, this is your mark. You're going to stop here. And I'm going to do it. And she's like, what is a mini master? And she says, what is a mini master? And why do I have to stand there? I knew this was coming from purity. Yeah, not ego. Not an ego. And she said, why don't we shoot it and see what happens? And I go, yeah, why not? Oh, good for you. There was a countdown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went, yeah, why not? Yeah. Okay, when does Pans come out? Pans Laverne. Comes out on my birthday, October 9th. Happy birthday. Okay, wonderful. I will be watching it in 3D. Me too. Isn't it an enormous honor to get to chat with you for two hours? I just really feel lucky. Sometimes we have singers who come in and they'll sing. And sometimes we're like, how is this our job to be here? Yeah, Marcus Mumford sitting there screaming at us with his guitar. Yes, and being in the zone with them. And like, that's how I feel getting to look at that. Me too. And being in front of you. But isn't that amazing? What's happiness? We do what we love in whatever moment. And it doesn't have to be the moment of acting or the moment of directing. But our life is. Our lives are lined up with our joy. Yeah, that's a special. That's a blessing. Yeah, it is. Oh, well, what a blast. Yes, thank you. Everyone, go see it. And I didn't drink the liquid death. Oh, no. You can take it with you. There's a great rule to directing. If you drink, you pee. If you pee, you leave. Oh. Never leave the set. I like that. All right, well, be well. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Bye-bye, guys. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. You've got to let him have the facts. I just peed. And my underwear's on backwards, so. Backwards? Yep. Not inside out? Nope. Backwards. Aren't your underwear generally bigger in front than in back? Uh-huh. Don't you really notice the front having, apparently not? Apparently not. Did you correct it or you're like, this is working? No, I didn't have time. So I left it. I see. You were sitting on the commode. And you looked down and you're like, oh, those are backwards. Exactly. And then you're like, but fucking who has the time? What am I to take off my shoes, my pants? I have a belt on. I don't know that you'd have to take your shoes off to take your pants off. Trust me. I could, but it would take a lot of thought. Okay. And they're slippery shoes. It would come off anyway. Wow, you committed. There's no physical discomfort, though. No. I mean, it's a comfy, it's a thong. Uh-huh. Sure. So now it's. But it's not a string. Okay. It's not a string. What do they call that even? I don't even know what that's called anymore. A string bikini. G-string. G-string. It's not a G-string. I would notice if it was a G-string. Okay, right. And it was, yeah. Maybe the, I also think maybe these are a little stretched out. Okay. The elasticity is some better days. So like, it's probably covering up more than it should. Okay. Okay. You're right. This leads me to. But the back doesn't feel like cumbersome and bound up. Like, you don't feel like you have a bunch of fabric back there? No. Because it's still a small amount of fabric in the front, you know? Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. So this leads me to the fact that I did not fast math. Well, maybe I did fast math, which is why it was. Too fast math. Incorrect. Yes. Where I thought I was starting my period this past Monday. It's Wednesday. We had, in fact, we had a guest that's coming out. I know. Where a good chunk of the interview is talking about your different phases. And you were completely on. You're talking out of your ass on that one. I was. In retrospect. I was. And I, and I, maybe we were in the same. I don't even know. Yeah. But I thought I was about to start my period. And I'm not. It's this upcoming Monday. Would you ever use like the app I now have flow? I had it for a little bit. And you're like, yeah, I have an open mind since that plane ride, if I'm being honest. I should. Since that plane ride? When I first started using it. When I discovered I had already made the meal I was supposed to make. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Day one of having the app. Well, you can tell people they don't know what's going on. It's not out yet. Okay, yes. You have flow. Yes, I have flow for partners. So I, in theory, know what my partner is going through. Yeah, I actually, I think that's so, for one, like smart. Yeah. Two, it's very sweet. It's that you care to know what's going on with your partner. Yeah. I recommend this for people in partnerships. Yeah, yeah. I do too. I would have asked if you, if like there was an ability, like a Google calendar where you had a lot of people. So you had your partner, you have, you have Kristen. You have both of your teenage girls. You have me. All the women you have to deal with on a daily basis. That's what I need. I actually need like the AI version. That's like, you should make up a reason to go out of town these 36 hours. That's never how it should be used. Nope. No, stick around and enjoy. It's just like make us all dinner on our days. That's a good way. That'd be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so I think the backwards underwear has to do with my face. Impending period. Yeah. Okay. But I was so bummed. Well, you're also very chipper though. I know, but now I'm, I thought that. I was like, have I done bad math again? Is it two weeks away? Because normally I'm not in so great of a mood. I have pretty bad PMDD. That's an intense version of PMS. And I think I have. Double Virgo. Yeah. Double D's. Yeah, double D's. Double Virgo. You like things in doubles. I do, I do, I do. So I'm normally, I can tell because I'm very easily agitated. Yeah. Well, though, and I don't want this to sound insulting. Let me back up and say, do you remember the great guests we had that 30% of all medical issues are psychosomatic, right? That we learned that 30% of people with seizures don't have epilepsy, 30% of people with heart attacks don't have heart disease. that it's kind of a standard. So just acknowledging we're very, very prone to psychosomatic conditions. Do you think any element of it is psychosomatic? So you didn't need to say that. Oh, cause I was going to say that. Oh, okay. Oh, here it is. Oh no, because I was going to say, well, two things. One, I am in a good mood for the most part. Chipper, I'd say. Spring to your step. And that worries me a little that I'm not doing math. Yeah. I'm not doing math correctly, but also what it did tell me was that, yeah, some of it might be in your head cause you're expecting it, but I was in a very good mood last week. Right. And I, I, I said to myself, I'm like, I'm, I don't have that anymore. Right. So you're, you're ready to, you're happy to shed it. Yeah. I was like, oh, I must not have, that's gone away. Yeah. Um, but I did have a few other things. Like my back was hurting. These are all, you know. I think this is the way in which it could manifest itself psychosomatically, which is you have a bit of irritability and then you go, oh, here we go. Right. Like, oh, it's here. Whereas that might've just been an acute moment of irritability, but certainly if you, if you're like, here we go, I do think you're then really noticing. Yeah. You're, uh, things that are irritating you perhaps. But then the, um, you know, the backwards underwear is very prepared. Yeah. You're dropping stuff. I don't understand. I spill a lot. Clumsy. Get real clumsy. P-M-S-C-C. P-M-S clumsy, clumsy. Yeah. Clumsy, clumsy. Crazy clumsy. Yeah. So, um, that's what's going on with me. I went to a concert last night. Oh my God. C-C. Yeah. How was it? Yeah. And I try not to name drop, but this feels like. It would be insane not to name drop. How was it? I went to see Jack White with Jack Black. No way. How great is that? That's great. Are they best friends? Well, did you see the SNL that they did last year? It's among the most impressive things I've ever seen. Why? It's Jack Black. He's hosting SNL and Jack White is the musician that night. I love this. So he does a version of. Seven Nation Army, but walking through the green room, talking to cast members, then comes out on stage, then collides with Jack White, and then they let it fucking rip. It's like impressive on 20 levels. Wow. The comedy is happening. The improv is happening. The synchrony, uh, synchronicity of the song is how it's. Wow. There's a couple people in the world that can do what Jack Black did. He's so talented. So fucking talented. If you miss that episode, go back in the archives. We did interview him. Great app. Um, so then Wabi Wabi was nice enough to connect me with tickets. Great. So I then reach out to Jack Black. Now. this is the second time this has happened in my life so one time as you might recall I invited Matthew McConaughey to a stand-up performance at this arena on a date basically Andrew Schultz yeah Andrew Schultz and we went and it was embarrassing because like I had gotten tickets but of course like he had built the arena like he had helped design the arena so then he's like well yeah we could totally do your thing or we could go sit in this box blah blah so it's just kind of funny like I invited him and that's nice yeah yeah yeah so similar thing happened which is I was like oh I know Jack likes Jack White I have two tickets um I don't know who to go with on Tuesday night so I invited him and he was like uh yeah okay great let's um we'll ride there so he rides an electric motorcycle which is fantastic so he showed the I mean maybe the highlight of the night was him and I riding around on motorcycles to go to this show just chatting at every stoplight it was so fun but of course like and again major blessings to Wabiwab he had hooked me up I was going to get very nice treatment but then I arrived with Jack Black and then it was like as we're coming in the parking lot it's just like everyone there knows to instruct him to go there he goes to shows there all the time he has a special parking spot we don't nothing like you just go anywhere you want you want to sit on Jack White's lap like you name it so so you didn't end up sitting in the seats you got no and I got to sit on the stage with Jack Black on the stage he had just staged right like where the guitar tech is working on the guitars backstage side stage yes stage right and then also I get to meet Jack White because I'm with Jack Black oh fun it was so fun it was so fun and then as Wabiwab and I were just discussing it Jack White is so worth seeing in your lifetime what he does with this guitar is almost really beyond description he's doing something much much different than just he's like he's forming a piece of metal into something he's like he's at war with this guitar and he just manhandles it in this way that is just really wild I don't think I've ever anyone's seen anyone live play guitar like he was doing wow that's awesome he's from Michigan you know John C. Reilly is in the video for Archbishop one of my favorite songs okay one album ago what's the name of that song Wabiwab Archbishop Harold Holmes Harold Holmes Archbishop Harold Holmes and it's about a preacher right and I didn't even know this but John C. Reilly I had seen the video John C. Reilly did a video of him in a church as a preacher to that song okay well John C. Reilly was there last night and then I found out from him he just made that video that wasn't like a request oh fun he just want he loved the song so much he wanted to make a video yeah so he was right there in his garb from the video preacher's garb yes yes well this cute top hat and stuff sure I don't know if you're not supposed to call it that but yeah yeah but I know what you mean wait is this a top hat well no I'm saying because whatever he's wearing is not yeah it's not a top yeah he's not he didn't look like Abe Lincoln to me it's more of a chef's hat looking stovepipe hat maybe they call it maybe okay anyways it was a lot of fun fun yeah it was a lot of fun you were out in the world I was out in the world and I really um I really like that Jack Black so much he's such a sweet boy yeah I like him a lot okay my other story oh oh back to back two stories oh my god well I'm happy to hear another one of your stories you go and I have more but nothing oh tell me yours tell me yours okay well so um we don't have any air conditioning like a period everything has been ripped out of the house yeah this is and and for people who don't know it's still very hot in LA oh in the 90s it's we're in a heat wave and it's getting even worse this week it's getting Whoa, did you get a flight? A nap? Listen, there's bugs everywhere. And now you're scratching your elbow kind of uncontrollably. We'll get to this. Okay, okay. Go on. So we have no air conditioning. Belle is in Paris. And the girls and I go to bed night one with no air conditioning. And we're on the second floor. And it's warm. It's warm up there. Yeah. It's very warm. Yep. And so we all start in my room. And I'm just laying, you know, with pajama bottom pants, no shirt, no sheet, anything. I'm just laying. Is your underwear on correctly or backwards? I'm in my pajama pants. Oh, so you don't know what you're wearing. You don't wear underwear with your pajama pants. Oh. I find that disgusting. You don't. Okay. I don't think anybody does that. Of course. No, that's what jammy. I don't think men wear underwear with their jammy bottoms. Are you serious? Yes, Rob. Yeah, I wear underwear under it. Okay. You're a fucking prude. No, I think he's in the majority. What, are you afraid you're going to get a boner in the middle of the night? I also never wear pajama pants, so. Right. Well, that's different. When I didn't wear pajama pants, I wore boxers to bed. Yeah. Oh. But if you wore pajama pants, you'd put fucking underwear on under them? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because you're throwing it on if it's like cold. Do you leave your underwear on in a massage? Yeah. A lot of people do. Okay. Listen. I was told I'm supposed to by my mom. No, recently. She's like, leave your underwear on. Listen, I also leave. I'm 50-50 on leaving underwear on in a massage. I sometimes do. I sometimes don't. Okay. But also, I wear pajama pants all the time. Constantly. And I'm wearing underwear. But your underwear are way smaller than my underwear. Although your nighttime underwear might be better. You've never seen my underwear. My nighttime underwear is huge. Diaper. They're knickers. Yeah. My nixies. Where was I? Okay. So. It was hot. Lincoln's particularly hot. And I think she gets it in her head. She's not going to be able to sleep. And she's like me, right? So she's a little bit prone to. This psychosomatic. Yeah. Whatever you call it. Insomnia. Right. She had a real bad year. She got over it. Thank God. I thought she was never going to get over it. But anyway, she got over it. But I could just feel that she got in in her head that she was not going to be able to sleep. So she's already on pins and needles. I do. I do fall asleep. And then I hear, dad, stop snoring. I'm like, am I not? Am I? And I'm, of course, I'm like, I bet I'm not. I bet like she's so. But you probably were. Easily. I did it because you already can't go to sleep. But didn't you say you've been snoring lately and that's why you're doing the sleep test and stuff? Yeah. But now I have a spray I'm using that I thought, you know, I am not a trustworthy witness because I have, I didn't witness it. Yeah. I was asleep. You're unreliable. All to say, though, OK, I'm sorry, I'll sleep on my side. I don't know. How does one not snore? It's not like I chose to snore in the first place. That's why snoring is so. Now I've been woken up and now it takes me another 15 minutes to fall back asleep. And then as soon as I get to sleep, it's like, dad, brother. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't. There's no. What are we going to do? I'm like, OK, mind you, we were in my room because it was the coolest of the three options. Yes. So I go, fine, I'll leave. I'll leave. So now I'm like crumbling. I go into Delta's room, which is like 750 degrees. And I lay down on that bed and. It takes me about 45 minutes to fall asleep in there. So now we're at about midnight. I'd say that I'm going to bed. I wake up at six one thirty a.m. because unbeknownst to me. And I don't know if Lincoln now Delta's story was bothering her or she just was like, it's too hot in here. She went out to the guest. House smart. Yes, because that does have air conditioning. I don't know why you guys. We should have started. Yeah, but absolutely stupid. OK, so she's left. Delta was asleep when I left. So Delta wakes up at one thirty in the morning. Nobody's in the room. Sure. Additionally, a couple of spooky things happened by Delta's Delta got convinced earlier when we were just in Delta's room and we were listening to a book on tape. Uh huh. She went in the hallway and Frank wasn't in his little bed. The dog and she got convinced that someone had moved Frank out of his bed onto the hallway. And I said, well, hon, Frank would have barked of a stranger, but she added in her mind a little bit that something spooky was already happening. Oh, no. Then she wakes up in a room and no one's there anymore. She hated that. So at one thirty in the morning after I finally fall asleep, all of a sudden lights full blast are on in her bedroom and now I'm up. She's crying for you guys. Oh, she's crying. She's scared. She's like she woke up in her room. And no one's there. She went to bed. There were people there. There's a ghost in the house moving Frank. And so I'm like, oh, my God, this is badness. Now it's one thirty and we lay there for forty five minutes and it's just too hot in that room now. And I said, do you want to go back? And all to say, by the time we got in my bedroom and we went to sleep, it was like three a.m. It was madness. It was total chaos from nine p.m. to three in the morning was crazy. Bad. Yeah. Barely made it through yesterday. But you did. And then when it's time to go see the concert, I'm like, oh, I should be so excited to see the concert. But I would love to go to sleep right now. But I rallied. And you're happy about it. I'm happy about it. Speaking of sleep, you know, I am convinced there's a bug in my ear. OK. And I got in there in the night. OK. And I can't get him out because my ear is so itchy. Uh huh. It's in a strange way, like very, very, very itchy. I used a Q-tip. tip to to see if i could get any legs out um and it i think just pushed him further in or something okay okay also likely potentially when i was like itching a ton i irritated it and so now it's just itching because it's all irritated sounds highly likely oh but also but then so i was like is it possible but i really don't want to go to urgent care i don't want to like go deal with this i just want him to come out you know can you put a little food on the um no yeah put a little food on the edge of your earlobe to draw him out to eat a little piece of cheese yeah whatever they eat maybe another dead maybe a dead gnat glue it to your earlobe to lure him out to feast on it and then he'll get stuck in the glue there's like there's six or seven there's a ton of bugs all over your ear and then you wouldn't know if they just came from around the room or out of your ear i wouldn't you'd probably end up attracting something to live in your ear i know yeah oh god what about light does light do anything like could you shine a light at night i can't i don't think you have nothing's coming out and um but once you think something's in your ear it is really it's a racket it is it's like crazy making yeah um and i and that's blood over to your elbow is that what you're about to say oh no there's just mosquitoes all over this fucking city and i'm all bit i i hate that oh but you know it was fun so i went this is not gonna i always i praise cara i love cara cara does sometimes have mosquitoes well it's outdoor oh i'm talking about inside okay i think i don't remember a water feature in there that they're breathing in or something not inside but right outside there is a little there is outdoor eating so many people the doors are opening yeah i do so much i think doors are opening and closing there is a water feature outside that i wish they'd take out um they're doing their best but for some reason there's one of those kudos um and last year this is a thing this isn't just this year and so last year all those bracelets oh yeah bug repellent yeah i used to keep them in my car and then i would just cover myself well this is actually a advertisement for car because if it's you know if you have to deal with mosquitoes and you still want to go it's a testament to what a great place it is it really is yeah but this year i bought a spray uh because i did research and it said that deet the pop the the chemically popular one that is fine i'm fine i want to use it like i but i read in an article that it does have the same effectiveness as this other thing that's like more natural which i don't trust but it said percentage wise it's the same as deep okay so i got that yeah and i've been bringing that with me to car and spraying it all over like you're going camping yeah it is i was spraying it and it's strong like it smells really strong one time i was with anna and i was like you need this and i just sprayed it at her and she hate she really mosquito that's what you found out i never even thought about that yeah she might be part mosquito oh my god okay this is a good way for me to test yeah it's like vampires yeah put garlic everywhere and see if they react poorly she was more upset because she thought maybe it got in her martini what i'm allergic to garlic and you stay up a lot at night prefer oh oh my god how do you like the taste of blood fine i don't know anyway um so yesterday i was at car editing and i had my mosquito spray and this is hilarious to bring mosquito spray to a restaurant it really is something i sprayed it all over um and what if they had it next to the toothpicks at like the host stand no so they he the bartender did come up to me before i took my spray out and he said just see if you want any of this mosquito spray he said it can get really but he's like it's been kind of people have been getting bit so i bought this and i was like well not to worry i have my own i know this isn't a great endorsement but it it as you said when we went to a restaurant and they said would you like bear spray because sometimes bears are in the restaurant they do come in sometimes listen okay this gets a little crazier so i spray it all over and then i look over someone's come in and it's still early ish uh and it's leslie bibb oh great who i've never met yeah not a friend of the pod yet she should be yes um her partner is exactly so she's sitting next to me and i never do this i don't i again not really in keeping with my pms pmdd but i was feeling friendly yeah frisky yeah and i was like hey i have this mosquito spray um if you want it because there are a ton of i said because there are there are mosquitoes in here and she was like wait what of course she's like there are and then she was like why what's happening in los angeles butterflies instead like that would be way better oh i know replace them with butterflies um she's like what's going on with los angeles and mosquito and i was like i know it's horrible but just so you know if you want it and so i put it there she she sprayed it on herself um and she was like thank you and i and i said i'm monica and she said oh hi i'm leslie and i said i i do armchair expert yeah i said i i do armchair expert with with dax we interviewed your sweet partner and she was like oh my god yes she was like i know you she was like and then she brought up something i specifically said on that episode which was which was sam rockwell for people who don't remember uh talked about how he went on safari you guys were talking about going on safari yeah yeah and he said you know like you were both so alert and aware of all the animals man eaters everywhere yeah you you guys were so aware and he was like laughing because she was like leslie leslie's just sitting there so calm not not thinking twice and i said yeah because she lives in a world where she's used to predators you don't and he told her that when he got home he was like i've been thinking about this and and and so she brought that up and she thought it was really good nice um so i liked that and anyway we started chatting for so long and so i love her and i want to invite her on the pod okay did either of you buy each other's meal no okay she was about to have a meet like a um meeting a meeting so we just chatted until her did you eavesdrop on the meeting no project she's about to do i wanted to but yeah of course i had work to do okay so my headphones were in sure stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare it was a fun meet cute yeah all because of mosquitoes really this makes me think kristen was just on a flight home i don't think i should out them because i don't know if it's public knowledge but she was on a flight home from paris and she saw a mutual friend oh friend of the pod oh who is flying home from white lotus max yeah is that public knowledge yeah no it's public knowledge he's in white lotus oh then max i don't know i don't want to do anything yeah i got so happy he's gonna be on the oh you didn't know i didn't know that it's a big it's so exciting yeah i don't really follow much casting news i guess yeah can't wait love max i can't wait for the next season obviously he should come on no i'd like to be on white lotus me too yeah let's we've said it here you've heard it here from our lips to the you could because you're friends with or you know mike white you've worked with him i have worked with mike white i don't think that gives me an edge but i have worked with there is i love mike white i'll say that i love him yeah i don't know if he loves me but i love him i love him listen i'm really i'm not jealous of you of anything uh-huh but i'm jealous of you for that getting to work with him oh yeah yeah yeah but it was in an actor to actor capacity it wasn't something he had written that would be different oh right yeah yeah it was just two actors oh i thought oh i must be thinking of something then i'm not jealous yeah there you go oh anywho so speaking of white men oh right white lotus white man max is white yes um attractive speaking of attractive white man that's better no and it is part of this so i started watching traitors which i don't know about traitors i traitors is a big deal okay it's it's very i apologize that i don't know okay thank you um it's it's highly watched reality tv and won the emmy yeah we watch it you watch it Yeah, we love Traders. It's so good. I feel way less bad that it's a remake. reality show i don't watch a ton of reality but you like you know survivor you don't watch it but i know of it yeah that's true so you need to just know about traders because it's yeah um but anyway i've never watched it yet i've known people love it and stuff but it hasn't been i also don't watch reality tv so i don't think it's gonna be for me but then gotta be in my bonnet and i decided to start and so there's a new season out now so i started with this new season yeah and i caught up to where it's week to week so i caught up i i'm invested so it's a real life werewolves and villagers slash mafia which i think most people have played one of those two games right and this season is in quotes normal people but the other seasons are celebrities but a lot of these celebrities are also from the reality tv world so they're from survivor real housewives or anyway it's so fun so i watched this new one and then i went back and i watched the last season i watched this whole thing uh-huh and i love it but i was getting so mad because of the spoiler yeah well yeah there's so much deception and a spoiler so if anyone is gonna go back and watch listen to watch season four skip ahead okay or pause no i think you gotta skip ahead pause again you hate when i deliver you right back where you the winner is this guy from love island rob r okay so he's a traitor from the beginning rob r is so hot okay he is insanely hot yes yeah and what makes him hot i want to hear the breakdown well do you want to see a rob do you want to put up a picture no i want to hear what you think is hot okay physically he's just so hot his face is gorgeous how's his physique do you care i think his physique is good although that's not sticking out as one of the main thing but i think he seems he seems tall-ish from what i can tell yeah um got great hair oh great just a beautiful face yeah it's and he wears kind of fun outfits like oh like ryan hansen no like like he wear he wore like a sweater vest with nothing under it that's a normally a very douchey move i think he could be he's on love island like no shirt cardigan is i loved it that's great well no i had like hearts on it like it was almost like when you wore the sweater that penne gave you yeah yeah but it's almost like feminine yeah okay and and it's like showed confidence okay yeah it's just no shirt underneath that's like generally i know it can be a bit of a trigger when you vintage shirt once and it was kind of tight and so he is a traitor and at first when i first meet him i'm like oh love island i'm like this guy and he said okay yeah yeah there he is being angular features real strong chin yep exactly he's real defined nose not not bulbous like mine it's not he doesn't have like a clown's um horn on the end of his that's not delta got to squeeze it in the other day and it was like she was just got way too it like it became one of her fucking stuffies or fidgets you know yeah and i just remember this trick you would do in junior high where you would ask someone to hold the tip of their nose i forget the premise but you can really easily turn the whole tip of your nose purple oh okay so then i had to tell her i'm like hon you can squeeze any part of my face just not the tip of my nose i'm afraid it's gonna be a big purple bruise and she was having a hard time of course resisting yeah because it's just a clown's honk honk no because you said it specifically so then for her of course she she just was she just found her way to the tip is the most fun part to squeeze yeah mine is definitely meaty you know you get a even me i can get all five fingers you know they're not touching each other when i hold it it's like the size of a racquetball no it's fine it's great okay yeah whatever yeah i'm not complaining okay so rob r is is classically attracted classically trained yeah in the art of luxury trained level of attraction yeah yeah and effortless but so for me normally that is not my type because i'm i do i'm like okay like you're too pretty boy there's no way you have a personality yeah and he's from love island so i'm definitely like yeah fuck boy yeah okay but then he's like nice to people and and like soft kind of soft-spoken and then he makes friends with people that i like but like in a real way like he says like i don't want to kick this person off yeah yeah yeah he's got a heart of gold yeah and he keeps he's like pretending he he's from alabama and he's like kind of playing this like i'm in this dumb guy and he's not because he's also playing chess the whole time so i'm like oh and he's a traitor he's bad right and this whole group of people get so fucking played by rob r and it is shocking to watch i mean it's shocking and that is just like charisma it's just so obvious like it's so real that this hot tall kind kind in quotes that's right he is tricking everyone this is always my issue with well he's not acting like he's like yeah although he did stick up for his um he's stuck up for his best friend in the house who's gay okay um and it was hot yeah and like so anyway i'm just then i'm starting to get furious right because then you felt betrayed well even though i knew the whole time he was a traitor you did okay so it's not a mystery to you yes that's what's fun about the show you know the whole time so you're seeing people like yeah you know you're kind of like no and like very very smart people the smartest people in the house are like it could never be robbed like they're saying it that's happening on million dollar secret the one show i do like but i would argue none of them are very good at like as soon as they have the million dollar secret they're like oh my god i'm so good at like as soon as they have the million dollars they crumble they could be like so convincing when they're but it's like the amount of pressure once you have the million is pretty funny well yeah and then so rob r turns on a fellow trader pretty early and i that i was like fuck you that's you're having a real ride over there i hated that and then he did it again to the other trader and i was like this but you still fuck him right he has a girlfriend oh anyway you're single yes the girl at the end with him too okay so that's the main betrayal so he has this buddy who's also from love island a different season or whatever or whatever so they like bond and she's this like gorgeous girl more moira moira okay moira i think you smell something because i don't know if it's mara or more oh yeah that's a hard mora i think it's mora yes she's irish she's in a full leather cat suit yeah she is great fashion and style and she's very hot and so they are best buddies in the house and um poor girl just getting laid she got played and it was so sad because she kept saying like it's so hard for me to let my guard down i've been cheated on so many times my truck i don't it's very hard for me to trust people she's saying this throughout and yet she refuses to see rob as a possible trader at towards the ends end of the season people are like i think it's rob people are starting to say it and she's like she's going down with the ship it can't be and he makes her pinky promise something and oh no and he betrays her well he had to to win the game the point is to win the game right isn't that the point so i think i haven't imagined the point is to win the game i don't enter a game like that if you're not okay i hate it do you still like him or no no i'm oh you're mad well i just don't know what to think anymore you don't trust him but you kind of love him i i hated what he did to mora okay she was so fragile and then i then i felt so bad because i was like she has to watch this and watch herself these shows probably have a little more ptsd than people might guess i think so i think so anyway it's a great show okay i'll check it out but it sounds like the kids would like it yeah yeah yeah calvin loves it okay great okay some facts some facts i think my favorite guest we've ever had on i've talked about it to everyone he is dude i did back to the jack black thing i did i made him listen to 20 minutes about guillermo del toro yesterday at the concert like you told him about i was like oh my god i interviewed guillermo del toro and i just couldn't stop telling him fascinating things about him he has seen his notebooks oh yes yes i could not he has the same feeling we did he's like each page needs to be taken out surgically and like framed yes and protected put in the smithsonian yes yes i i could not believe we got to see those and hold it and hold it like hold his heart yeah that's what it felt like his brain and his heart and his heart which are one thing like he's so pure and we put a table and your feet were up like this and i got real panicky i did too i moved it very quickly i saw it was too close for a second i was like really feeling don't be cocky dax don't overestimate your athletic prowess here yeah it was just such a beautiful episode he's i i couldn't he gave us so many nuggets of wisdom oh it's incredible it's incredible he's a philosopher he's an artist he's a painter he's a writer i just one of the best directors that ever lived I know. I can't think of anyone that's ever been better than him visually. I mean, Tim Burton is, you know, he's in that same space. But, like, the visuals of fucking Frankenstein are impossible. The world building. Because it's also, like, the visuals are unbelievable, but his stories are also so beautiful and moving and deep. I cannot wait to see it in 3D. I know. Same. Yeah. Same. Okay. So that was just very special. I don't think I've felt like that after we left an interview in a very long, maybe Kee Kee Kwan was maybe the last one. Yeah. The way I said it is Bill Gates' holistic understanding of everything on planet Earth is something that I've never observed in anyone else. Like, it's just the totality of his knowledge is so impossible. It's, like, really hard to comprehend. And I feel this exact same way about Guillermo. Me too. And it's. It's not specifically Bill's thing. It's not knowledge. It's, like. Well, it's also knowledge. That's true. Like, the amount he knows about art and fucking writing. But that's not what's shining through. What's shining through is a holistic view of the universe. Humanity. Humanity. Yeah. Yes. Yes. A deep, deep, intrinsic understanding of humanity. Yeah. Yeah. He's outrageously special. Yeah. I too. I think we text each other afterwards, which we haven't done in a while. It's just like, whoa, that was a. That was. Mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah. So lucky. Mm-hmm. So lucky. We didn't sit on this for too long, which is fine. But when he said that when he had that experience when he was a kid and he saw monsters and he needed to go to the bathroom and he told them, if you let me go to the bathroom, I'll be your friends forever. Yeah. And he is. He is. He is. He is a friend of the monsters. He literally is. Yeah. It's so moving. It is. It is. I can't really handle it. You just picture him as a little boy and you're like. It must have been hard to have that enormous brain. I know. Well, he said so. And aptitude. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Reading in the encyclopedias. Yes. In his father's library. Yeah. Okay. You said that Warren Buffett drove an old Cherokee? Yeah. Jeep Cherokee with wood grain on the side. I don't know why my Google doesn't know about that. Okay. It should. There's a. Your Google should know that there's a profile of him. On 60 Minutes in the 90s. And there's many shots of him driving that old clunker. Okay. Yeah. Because this is saying Cadillac XTS, Cadillac DTS. He may in the mid 2020s or mid. I don't know how you say that. The 2010s. He might have. That Cherokee might have died. But he still lives in the same like 3000 square foot brick ranch. Yes. That is. Well. He's driving a very old Cherokee in that segment. All right. Well. I don't know what to say. I never forget a car. I. That's true. Yeah. That is true. That's one of your gifts. It's like Molly and the outfits. Molly McNerney and the outfits. That's right. Okay. I looked up. What are the most family oriented cultures? Cultures that are deeply family oriented, typically prioritize collective well-being, multi-generational living, and lifelong financial or social interdependence over individual autonomy. Um, regions and countries noted for strong family ties, South and Southeast Asia. I can, I can say that's true. Latin America. Yeah. It's a Southern Europe, Italy, Spain, and the Middle East and North Africa. So really everyone, but, um, Northern white Europeans. No, it doesn't have China. Like it doesn't have. Well, it said Asia and South Asia. South and South Africa. Southeast Asia, India, the Philippines, Indonesia. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, so yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, I was looking up, um, longest standing ovations at film festivals. Uh-huh. Longest recorded standing ovation at a major film festival belongs to NASA, which directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zohr, which received a 25 minute ovation this year at the Venice Film Festival. Okay. 25. And he was 22, right? Yeah. Historically, Cannes held the longest standing benchmarks for the endurance clapping. Endurance clapping is what they call it. No kidding. Your fucking hands must kill after 15 minutes of clapping. That's really funny. Uh, led for two decades by Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. 22 minutes. Third is Fahrenheit 9-11, Michael Moore. Okay. At Cannes, 20 minutes, 2004. Sentimental value. Oh, we love that movie. We love that movie. Yeah. Cannes, 2025. 19 minutes. Ooh. How do people know when to stop? I don't know. They don't. Clearly, they don't. That's weird. Like, if you've gone 19, how don't, how aren't we going three hours? Do you think people are timing so they do know, like, I want to give this one the most? Or, like, almost the most? Do you think there's, there might be a timer? I can't imagine there is. Well. I mean, someone's timing it for sure. Someone's timing it, yeah. But I don't think there's a big clock on display, no. Okay. Well, I find. I find this interesting. Unfortunately. What if it was, like, an analog dial, like a watch face, and then it had, along the way, different movies as the, like, not. Oh, that's. Yeah. Like, the pressure's rising. And then maybe they're like, I don't want it to be longer than Pan's Labyrinth. That's right. Yeah. And then right before it, someone goes, you know, Finney, or whatever they say. Finney. Finney. Finney. I think it's just Fin. Fin. Fin. Finney. I think, I think it's just F-I-N. Okay. Fin. Fin. I think. Okay. I, you know, I went to Cannes, not obviously, I think just because I've talked about it a lot. I went to Cannes Study Abroad, 2008. Yes, you and Callie. Nope. Me and Anthony. No, you and Callie were in London at a premiere. Yeah. We went to the breakup. We didn't go to the premiere. We stood outside. But you stood outside. Yeah, yeah. But no, I went to Cannes for Study Abroad, and that was in 2008. And, you know, we had to beg for tickets to get inside. It was super fun. So, I was looking to see if any of the ones I went to got up there, but. Were you a part of any standing ovations? Yeah. There's almost always a standing ovation. Man, I couldn't go. I couldn't go. This isn't my issue with concerts and encores. Like, any kind of whatever. I love encores. I've said enough about the brothers. Joy. I hate encores. You need to. Okay. It's pageantry. It's fine. Okay. Okay. I mean, Guillermo deserves it, but. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. The notion that this band, you know, they're going to play two more songs, but you have to beg them to come out to play the two more songs is like, just play the two, just play all the songs. Okay. Okay. Now, unfortunately, I wasn't part of any of these tops, which is upsetting. Yeah. But I'm just double checking. Okay. Real quick. Dotting your eyes and crossing your teeth. That was, I saw Matt Damon at, he was there for a. I think Che, was he in Che? Yeah, he was. He was, right? Yeah, it was small. Yeah. He played Che. No. And I, so that was so exciting because I got in that one. So I was just sitting amongst him. High up. Yeah. That was a long movie. It was like five hours. I saw so many movies, obviously, over the course of that. How many hours was Che? It was a two-parter, so I think it was like five. I probably only saw one part. And Benicio Del Toro plays Che, is that? Mm-hmm. Benicio the Bull. All of those movies really blur. Like, I don't remember anything because I was just seeing like three movies a day. Yeah, it's too many. It was a lot. Okay, yeah. Well, I didn't get to experience a 20-minute one. Better that you got to sit in a room with Guillermo for two hours. Much better. Than 22 minutes of clapping. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Oh, man, when he talked about how the people stole his puppets and then put poop everywhere, and then you said, oh, they went ape. Now I understand ape shit. Mm-hmm. Throwing shit everywhere. Yeah, going. Tonka. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never thought about that before. Oh, you haven't? Okay. You knew that? Yeah. Oh. My favorite is when they chuck it at viewers at the zoo. Yeah. Because a lot of people don't know about chimp behavior, and when you're at the Chimps of the Mahali here at the LA Zoo. You'll see one shit in his hand, and I know time to get behind something, but other people don't. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't mind that because I'm like, this is what you get, kind of. Oh, yeah. I don't mind that they do it. They should. Yeah. If I was- A chimp in a zoo, you'd do it. If I was incarcerated at a zoo, I would throw my shit every chance I got. Exactly. I agree. All right. That is all. Okay. Wonderful. That is all. What a blessing. I agree. I agree. Couldn't agree more. All right. Love you. Love you. you