‘Sentimental Value’ director Joachim Trier is begging Netflix to embrace movie theaters

From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters and this is the business. Writer/director Jo Kim Trier's award-winning film, Sentimental Value, delves into the fractured lives of a Norwegian family whose members have long worked on stage and screen. If you've seen it, you know that the film also has something to say about a certain streamer. Everyone thinks, "Oh, you're criticizing Netflix!" And my point is that Ted Sarando's and his team are actually making some really good films and works in good filmmakers, at least. You know, I don't want to be the guy that throws out hate towards Netflix. I'm just like, "Come on, everyone. We love the movies and theaters. Come on, you know?" Trier breaks down how he finances films in a way that allows him to keep creative control and work with long shooting schedules and still have his investors come out ahead. He also reveals that he broke his own "No Begging the Talent" rule when he pleaded with Stellan Skarsgard to join the project. As you may have seen, Skarsgard just picked up a Golden Globe for his performance. But first, we banter. It's the business from KCRW. I am joined by my partner in banter, Melanie Hello, Matt. Hi there. So, I'm going to confess that due to certain circumstances, I didn't actually get to see much of the Golden Globes. But apparently, that is an experience I share with many Americans. The ratings were down 7%. And the reviews were not good. There was a lot of complaining that Hollywood looked like it was in its own bubble. And then there was just some general tackiness. Well, the Globes have always been a little tacky. But I think adding gambling odds to kairons that showed during the show and encouraging people to gamble on the award show is pretty tacky. And that was a new element of the show. And don't forget the David Ellison Special of the UFC thing that I didn't see, but I guess they were playing security guards or something. Apparently, it was all very ham-fisted and a corporate promotion for UFC being on CBS, which David Ellison now owns paid $7.7 billion for the rights. So he probably said, "Let's promote that." Gotta get your money's worth. Tiffeting to David Ellison's other endless project, the attempted acquisition of Warner Brothers. They have now filed their lawsuit, Paramount, saying that Warner's is not sharing information properly about the process, basically because what they're saying is our offer is better, and yet you favor Netflix. So like, show us the time when you email back and forth saying, "Forget David Ellison, I like Tess or I don't do this." So that lawsuit is pending. And at the same time, Netflix is now apparently on the brink of making their offer all cash. I don't know if you and I are in the same page. I feel like that makes the Netflix bid more attractive, but you seem to think somehow that the Ellisons are going to pull it off. >> Well, this is long term. I still believe the Ellisons are going to raise the dollar amount eventually on what they are willing to pay, but this is not that. In fact, this is the opposite of that. They're suing to ask Warner Brothers to justify the decision to go with Netflix and show us the numbers that you guys use to calculate the value of the, quote unquote, "stub" networks. These cable networks like CNN and TNT, that they are valuing-- >> Yeah, which the Ellison say is zero. >> Right. >> The Paramount side is valuing at zero, but the Warner side and Netflix are valuing at about $3 a share, which is a big difference, could be about $10 billion in difference in value, and they want to see the numbers. Now, to me, this is a kind of show lawsuit. They're trying to ultimately appeal to the shareholders of Warner Discovery and get them to look at this deal and say, "Well, wait a second. Why did we agree to the Netflix deal if the Paramount deal is going to be worth more to us?" And will that work? Not sure, but that's, I think, the strategy there. >> Yeah. Initially, Netflix was like a lot of cash, but then some stock. They are now potentially going to change that as the Ellison campus repeatedly pointed out. Their deal is all cash for the whole company, including those networks. However, the financing is very complicated, and certainly Warner's has said they're not comfortable with that. Whether that's a pretext, I don't know. >> Yeah, I mean, Larry Ellison, who is backstopping this entire 80 plus billion or 100 billion, if you believe them, deal. He's actually only putting in about $12 billion, himself. The rest of it is coming from banks and also from these Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, which has caused Warner's to be a little bit nervous about that. >> Not just Warner's, you know, the other people bring it up too. >> Yeah, that's true, but Netflix is much bigger and much more successful company. But the Netflix stock is not where it once was. It's down about 30%, 25%, since October, and that was when the rumblings of this first started to appear. The Netflix shareholders clearly don't like the uncertainty here. And I think maybe that's what they're trying to do here. It's eliminate some of the uncertainty about this deal by just saying, listen, we're willing to do all cash to make this other suitor go away. Because otherwise, it just seems like they're negotiating against themselves. I mean, they already have a signed deal for this company, and now they're kind of altering that. I think it's to eliminate any of the uncertainty and make these shareholders feel a little bit better. >> Yeah, we've come a long way from when we thought Netflix might just be kicking the tires. They seem to be really, really interested in this. And it makes me wonder what they see in their future of casting that makes them feel they must have this. >> Yeah, it's interesting because obviously the one thing that YouTube doesn't have, and YouTube is a big competitor to Netflix now, is franchises. And that's what Netflix believes they can get out of this Warner deal. It also gives them a new business in theatrical. And Ted Saranda continues to insist that they do care about theatrical releases from Warner Brothers. And it gives them all the HBO subscribers and that great brand, which they can use to bundle with Netflix and potentially reduce the churn rates of both of those services. >> Yeah, so we'll see, but the might of Netflix is kind of, I would lean that that works out in the end, but I could be completely wrong. Thank you, Matt. >> Thank you. >> That's Matt Bellany, he and I are partners, that puck news. Jo Kim Trier comes from a multi-generational film family. His grandfather was a director whose movie The Hunt played at Cannes in 1960, and his father was a sound designer. So for the Danish Norwegian writer-director, the idea of a career in cinema seemed natural. Over the past two decades, Trier and his longtime co-writer, Eskil Vogt, have made intimate character-driven films, reprise, Oslo August 31st, and louder than bombs among others. They typically work with European financing, which allows Trier time for extensive prep and long shoots, all while keeping final cut. In 2021, Trier's film The Worst Person in the World won the Palm Door at Cannes. This year, he took home the festival's Grand Prix for directing sentimental value. The film explores the troubled relationships of a father and two daughters. The father, played by Selen Skarsgaard, is an honored filmmaker who has largely been an absent parent. Now he's returned, working on a project that seems to come very close to home. The father wrote the film, helping his eldest daughter, played by Renata Reinsfet with Star. She refuses, so he casts fictional American actress Rachel Kemp, played by Elle Fanning, but she finds herself struggling. Her sadness is. it's such an overwhelming part of her. It's a beautiful thing. But I can't tell if that's just the cause of everything, or is it. I don't know, some symptom of something deeper. I feel like your films, they're sort of like novels in a way. You watch them, particularly this one in The Worst Person in the World. You feel like you need to then go back and start again to see everything leading in the direction. Does this make sense? No, no, it's the idea of recontextualizing things when we're trying to build scenes at best that have several layers. I'm a bit of a. call it a humanist in the sense that I'm interested in character work. And I'm interested that everyone has their reason. And therefore, you could hopefully go back and look at the scenes from a different character's perspective and it would still have an added layer, hopefully. That's how we write at Eskilfuk tonight. Well, I'm interested in this writing process that you have. It seems like you sort of improvise your way to a script. I guess all writers do inside their head, whereas we do it verbally in the space between us kind of more, I guess, in the sense that we have a very clear structure every day. Nine o'clock we meet, we have a cup of coffee, and we start that day's work. In the first couple of months, we just discuss a lot of different ideas. And then we land on something, and then we focus on that for about four or five months. And then by that time, we've structured out characters, scenes, the order of things. And then Eskilfuk quite quickly actually just writes it out. And I leave the room, and we meet again in the evening, or he sends me things. And suddenly we have a screenplay. And then we do actually two weeks of redrafting, where it's very intense. Where we read every day, and rewrite, and read the next day and so forth. So finally, we have what we pretend as a first draft, which is actually very often like the 15th. So where did you meet each other? We met at a Norwegian television game show where we have like a Saturday job when we were in our teens of being cable dashers like behind the camera on live TV on Saturday night the big shows that everyone used to watch You know and in this case it was a show called all or nothing where you know you could talk about Greek mythology or Walt Disney You were an expert and you you won money and you could say I take the money and go or I get a harder question So we would be in a green room waiting before the show with excited people with Mickey Mouse ties on You wanted to be a Disney expert so you're like some weird classical music expert or something So anyway, we were in the pecking order of things We were the guys who made sure the cameras didn't run into the cables during live television and we started talking Yeah, it wasn't the any it was just because we we could have a Saturday and a job and we were in high school So we could make some money, but we started talking about movies so it was falling in love with movies since our childhood and meeting in our teens and thinking hey we have this shared passion That's going on That's amazing So then you decide we can do a movie Well I had been filming since my childhood remember like I have my grandfather Eric Lerke was a filmmaker He was it's a to make a long story short he had a bit of a special experience He was captured during the second world war as he was in their sisters and he was a more camp which affected him tremendously a very traumatized man But I think he tried to survive through making first music he was a jazz musician and then through making movies And he made a film called a hunt we went to can in 1960 and he kind of called it a jazz movie And people were in France called it new wave and he was very proud and he wasn't any infrastructure so he struggled to make a lot of more movies And both my parents were in movies as well so when I was a kid I filmed a lot and I don't know how to do anything else And I'm very grateful that I'm allowed to do professionally now Yeah it's a good thing it worked out right because there are a lot of people who just doesn't you know the financing is always the issue Especially for independent type films art house type films I don't know did worst person in the world change things when it was so successful it can Yes I mean thinks of kept building I am my the first film I did 20 years ago called reprise was actually distributed in the US by Miramax And Scott Root and stepped on as an executive producer so I don't know he was lovely and supportive of that film And then you are in the beneficiary of a very rare moment but I've heard those I've read about other experiences other people have had I need to speak about my experience that's fine He was very supportive he saw what we were playing around with with character work and kind of playful narrative structures and stuff And he helped the film get out in the US and other places were great to see him I mean that's not the issue he doesn't know what's good No no I at least I've seen my him at that point And I but it also opened up the door to meeting a lot of wonderful American producers and I went to studios but I also realized that I had kind of grown up And I'm still working in a financing system which is between the US and the European in the sense that we have always been fortunate And now you know we're working with Neon as an American distributor which is a great experience they're very skilled But at the same time we also have a great French distributor the region you know what we do or rather the producers Maria Ekerhoft and Andrea Altmar are doing Is that they're putting together 30 financing entities some soft money some European funding some pre sales a lot of things And we make it all go on screen above the line costs are quite low we don't get very rich but what happens is that I get to shoot for 64 days I shoot on 35 I get to have a long prep I have final cut not one studio or one financing entity has everything at risk It's a collective thing and everyone recoups in a very complicated waterfall that system is kind of awesome to me And the film costs around 15 million dollars which to me is a lot but for 15 million dollars in the US I presume without being an expert that you wouldn't get to shoot 60 days A lot of other places so we have good deals with the unions and we pay everyone okay but above the line costs are lower And I think that's what makes that possible for people to make their money back on a film like this and now it's doing very well around the world in cinemas open tremendously in France and Spain And in the US now we're doing well so I'm just touch wood I'm grateful that this the show still on the road and I'm allowed to do this stuff It seems like it's gonna stay there for a while Yeah the thing is that I'm a third generation filmmaker I care about everything in a process I was gonna say because there are directors who were like I don't know that that talked to my producer No to be honest I adore my producers I try to support them I try to be a sounding board without taking a real producer I'm an executive but really supporting them in their wonderful work and trying to be smart about economy Believing that you save money off planning as a director yes I ask for a lot of resources being put into pre-production Particularly casting I have a tremendous casting you know meeting someone like Inga Abe Stolte Lila also plays the young younger sister Who's now getting a lot of domination for awards and stuff She's fantastic but also finding people like that you maybe you need to meet a couple of hundred people And in a small country like Norway I found a lot like we're not the Rinesway her first role in any movie was in a film we did I understand Nelson Lee who's played in Oslo August 31st and now also plays in these two last films It takes resources but at the end of the day when we get on set we know what we're doing And we can play and have fun and feel that we end every day right on time and no messing around Discipline must be maintained Yeah to be free it's a paradox as we're talking about there in the writing room feeling that you can do anything And then actually being really structured in your days and the same on set pretending that you're free And that the actors feel you have all the time in the world yet saying to my ad team remember when the actors are out between setups We're changing wheels on a formula one car here like everyone needs to know what they're doing so that dialectic I think is what film people do is what we find fun is to try to make things really efficient yet free Not everybody Well well that's what I believe And I to be honest with you I feel that I'm not achieving it every day you know some days are better than others But this is my aim and at the end of the day of course I'll keep everyone a couple hours that over if we haven't got it But most of the time that doesn't happen because everyone knows what we're doing And we do the morning meetings and we do the pep talk and everyone's a part of this So you have two little ones I don't know if that informed the subject of this film which is intergenerational dynamics and trauma Absolutely Yeah Absolutely I'm at a place in my life where I've made a lot of films when I was younger about maybe young people's existential questioning of What is it to create a bourgeois life or how do we grapple with what our parents data did not give us and now I'm a parent And I could for the first time my life tell a story both of two sisters who are seeing their father as someone who let them down But I also have to have their responsibility to look from the father's perspective And thereby hopefully creating something more complex And I'm asking those questions having been both on my Danish side from Jewish ancestry and my Norwegian side With a grandfather who experienced deep trauma during the Sanctuary World War and barely survived What of that grief and sorrow was transferred to my parents and onto me and what will I transfer onto my children Genuinely feeling that we don't have a language to talk about that sense of Believing as you call it transfer and psychological terms and what is that stuff we carry that no one ever talked about Maybe exactly those things that were talked about because they were too tough and that still informs me emotionally Even though I'm a third generation after the event and I this film is in an it's not it's not up front But it's the kind of baseline underneath everything in this film is that you have to ask yourself the question about your parents What was their childhood like and all the stuff they weren't able to convey to you? How did that inform everything and is that ultimately the place for forgiveness and not forgiveness in the cheesy way where you talk it out But kind of accepting and understanding what wasn't what wasn't you know That's the that sense of how could we make a story about a type of reconciliation that wasn't kind of selling out the subject matter But trying to find a real way to do that. That was our aim at least and someone said to me the other day Which I think is the best compliment we got is you actually made a film with a happy ending but without it being cheesy I said thank you that's I hope some people feel that Coming up after the break you'll keep true your imagines a very special theater lovers Christmas Carol You're listening to the business from KCRW This is the business and I'm Kim Masters I'm talking with writer director Joaquin Trier about sentimental value a film that braids together's lives of artists and unhappy family relationships shaped by generational trauma Trier says that while he doesn't usually pursue stars casting Stalin's guards guard was an exception That's a great exception. I'd like for Adam to let you say that you never begged and he said that you never begged. But you had to have him, and which is also mirrored in the film. No, it's true. That old process, Stellan, it's remarkable. He's done more than 150 films. And that's not even counting his amazing stage work in Sweden. You know, he worked with Ingmar Bergman. I mean, he's a clown. Where I come from, he's one of the greatest actors of all time. Obviously, you know, he's the one who come from. Yeah, no, I feel that. I feel that in America, two people are really seeing and have seen for a long time. Who's Stellan is? He's a remarkable actor. And going between lead roles, drama roles, comedy, singing, and Mamma Mia. But also playing villains. You know, Denis Villeneuve, who's a wonderful director, cost him as Harkonnen in Dune. So, Stellan's done everything, and he does it with a smile and a precision that just is extraordinary. So, I went to Sweden while writing to say to him, "Listen, dude, I don't know how to do this one without you. We're writing it for you." And he was in his own charming way, kind of giving me a hint that, "Yeah, well, he was pretty keen to do it." So, you know, we kept writing. And I owed it to him to show him the real script. And he made your stuff boring come alive. You know, you're not afraid to use narrators. And some people see that as a sign of weakness, I think, in a story. But you embrace it. Yeah, I look at it like this. Narrators, if they're not using the wrong way, can liberate images at times to be freer. I would rather sometimes play around with a narrator. Maybe not a narrator that tells the truth. Maybe it's like in this film, and we don't quite know who the narrator is. Right. It's some of these little pieces of essays. Is it the house? Is it the grandmother? Like, I want it to be open. And it only comes in to tell seemingly unimportant things. 'Cause that's how it's fun. But then also the images can then be quite free to do other stuff. And there needs to be a dynamic between them. Oh, there's layers. Yeah. Trying, trying, yeah. Layers. Do you audition narrators? Or how do you. So, that goes back to what we talked about previously. In my grandfather's film from 1960, The Hunt. There was a young actress at the time called Ben Tabushum, who's now in her early 90s. And I've always felt connected to her as an actor because, you know, she worked with my grandfather. And there's that sense of grief in me about what he never was able to achieve. So I invited her to do a test for the narrator. I didn't want to put pressure on her. And we said, like, could you try to read something? She's an old lady, but she's very sharp. She's still very present. And she did a beautiful job. And so she's the narrator in the film. Yeah, that's another underscore of the connection that, if you know, you know. The house is very central. And again, I think you're calling on your fast and your grandfather. His house was. I had to be sold, is that what happened? Yeah, so what happened? It was my. It was actually my grandmother's grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, who built a house in Oslo, quite similar to the house in the film. And it had to be sold during the writing process. So quite late in the story, the idea of the house. We were working a lot with characters and the dynamics between them and all that in the writing room. And I had to leave the writing room a lot to talk to my mom. It was a bit sad that we didn't get what we hoped for the house. And we had to take it off market again. Because it was valuable to us in terms of sentimental value. But it didn't necessarily reflect the market right now. And so we thought about the ambivalence about getting rid of a place that contains the 20th century and the memories of family life. The liberation of letting it go. But also the melancholy of those places disappearing out of the family. Netflix is put to use. I love the moment where the father character says, like, why would my movie not be in theaters? Like, what world are we in? Good question. Yeah, that's very good. And I read this fantastic thing when you talked about your wish that Ted Sarandos. And of course, this is much more freighted now, probably than when you said this, because of the battle for Warner's. Yeah. Your wish that it would be like a version of the Christmas Carol, Ted's version of the Christmas Carol. Can you tell me? Yeah, no, it's just because everyone thinks, oh, you're criticizing Netflix. And my point is that Ted Sarandos and his team are actually making some really good films. A lot of the time. But it's just, yeah, some. And it works as a good filmmaker's, at least, also. And why the hell don't they show it in the cinema? Come on, man. They could do it. So I was just saying in an interview last year before Christmas that I wish there was kind of a Christmas Carol, you know, that he would have, like, be-be-be-haunted by Bristle and Goddard. Shapline, croissant. Shapline, croissant. Like, you know, some great guy. And they would convince him so we'd wake up for New Year's and say, listen, everyone, we're buying cinema chains, we're doing the big screen. And then we go to stream, which I think he could do. So it's not, you know, I don't want to be the guy that throws out hate towards Netflix. I'm just like, come on, everyone. We're not alone. We love the movies. Come on, you know. For some reason, Ted brings out a cheeky part of me. Just can never let it be. And I wrote this column about how he, you know, grew up watching the video store. And he watched that, obviously, on a small screen. And he thought that was a fine experience. And so why should anybody be so obsessed with the biggest screen? And then I looked and found this quote where he-this is so classically right for this conversation where he said that there was so much chaos in his childhood home that the only respite and relief was the little box for the TV. And I said, was it possible that his parents TV was his rosebud? Oh, wow. Because he didn't want this. No, but I guess for the rest, for many of us, I think the rosebud was being in the- In the cinema. In the big dark room with strangers and feeling that we could watch stories that we could try and laugh. And those strangers became our friends in that moment. But I also say, for the experience just technically and emotionally, and emotionally, of watching close-ups on a big screen, we never see the human face like on a big screen, not in reality. You can try to close one eye and look at your partner as close as you can. It's not the same. You can look at human beings, the behavior, the emotionality, and at best have empathy with the face of another in the cinema in a unique way. And that's what we need right now. I mean, it's a little presumptuous to psychoanalyze somebody else, but I feel like there's some part of him that feels like he wasn't seen as a serious person because he did have the background, but he just got a different way on television instead of big screens. And when you ask about it, which I've done like everybody else, he always says it's not our model. Interesting. I remember watching Stolker by Tarkovsky for those who are into Russian cinema here on VHS. And for the first time, it was hard to see. And then I saw it again and again at cinema techs or big screen opportunities. And this is what we do with Kubrick. You know, this is what we do with the greats. It's that barrel end and there's a new printout. And it's like going to see a band live, you know, or something. It's the event of sharing something. And it's just so important right now to share things. And to believe that we can meet around things that are not about nationality or ideology, but the free space. And this is where cinema is wonderful. Joakim Trier is the director, co-writer, and executive producer of "Sanimental Value." The film is in theaters now. Thank you for coming into our studio. Thanks for a good talk. And that's the business. Joshua Farnham produced and edited today's program with help this week from Michael Stark, Hope, Brush, and Mario Savedra, who mixed the show. You can stream the business as well as other great KCRW shows on KCRW.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kim Masters. We'll see you next week on The Business.