Bonus: The Oscars

at Fox News that brought down CEO Roger Ailes. The movie is up for several awards, Best Actress for Charlie's Thren, Best Supporting Actress from Margot Robbie, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. I got to speak to the screenwriter, Charles Randolph, about how the movie came into existence and about his views on the awards process in general and the complicated politics that surround them. Charles, thank you so much for being here. This is a thrill for me. Gladly, Gladly, I want

to star. Are talking about the process that led you to write the screenplay for Bombshell? Okay, and take us back. You had just maybe it was right when you had just won your Academy Award for Big Short, or maybe it was before that. What was the timing in relationship? It was not long after, you know, so you're you're at the top of your career, You've just won an Academy award, and you're thinking, what project do I do next? How did you gravitate to the Fox News harassment story? Wow?

What a good question. You know it's a great story, right. The fact that a story of feminist determination came from these conservative women was really interesting and complicated. And what you're always looking for is you're looking for strong characters with strong internal conflicts. We think of a movie being made about your life as an award that Hollywood gives you,

but that's not the case. We are always looking for stories where people have a rich and unusual and you need both in conflict that will drive the story forward. And Megan and Gretchen both had that. Megan Kelly, Gretchen Carls said, everybody know there knows their names and first names are appropriate, but we should say it at least once exactly. So that's that's what was the appeal, like, this is a fascinating story with strong characters, was strong conflicts. Also,

I mean I am a bit of a contrarian. So the idea that this moment preme too moment with such illustrative power in our society came from inside Fox News was sort of fascinating, although me too hadn't happened yet when you sat down to write this. Now it had. We'll get to that more in a second, but I just want to go back to this question of the conflicts, right. I mean, to see the film is to believe you, because you wrote them as characters with extraordinary conflicence. It's

one of the reasons it's such a skillful script. But what conflicts did you see as it were before you started? I mean, when I hear that story, I don't think to myself, oh my goodness, what cont this is? Maybe why I'm not a scamwriter. What made you think there were conflicts there? Did you know in advance there had to have been conflict? Megan Kelly was quiet for ten days? Why right, this thing happens. It's in everyone's interests to go out and say, Roger's fine, these things, these things

never happened all that. But she was silent, right, So what happened in that time? And that's where you start. You start with this thing of hmm, that's really interesting. She was quiet, so so you really are starting from that, You're starting from m there's a tell there. Let me ask a follow out a question about to tell. One of the remarkable things that you do is you tell stories that are true stories, right, but you're still in some way fictionalizing them for the screen. And that's an

incredibly delicate dance in its own way. It's much harder than doing a pure truth documentary or pure made up fiction. It's it's just a higher degree of difficulty, as it were on the dive. Right. So you imagined that those ten days embodied a conflict, right, and you made a movie where those ten days do embody a conflict. Would it matter to you if, in fact the ten days were you know, she called her lawyers and they were like,

let's see how this plays out. You know, we have a goal of getting more money at the end of the day, and if it didn't reflect some internal conflict,

would that matter or would it? Would it would? You know, she's watched the film and she's come out and said that my portrayal of that internal conflict is too harsh in some ways against her, because she was always a strong advocate of women, and we have one character accuse her in her silence of having you know, perpetuated the culture of harassment, and then she reacts quite defensively in the film, you know, in that sort of classic Megan Kelly way of saying, Hey, that's how it is, snowflake

kind of thing. But so at the end of the day, yeah, I want the conflict to reflect a real internal dynamic that's going on in that human being, and in this case it did. She even says, you know, I have to say, I don't know if you saw the video of her watching the film, and she she says, you don't have to say. I do feel like I could have done more so while my expression of it didn't please her, the underlying fact of it I think was appropriate,

and she admits that. And so, yeah, so I'm always hoping that those things that you arrive at, those internal emotional conflicts that you arrive at, that they're true and that they will resonate, because if they are, this is a place where the truth will lead you to something that you can't really make up as effectively or efficiently. And so, you know, I always hope that, yes, that those portrayals and Strue Gretchen as well, reflect an underlying reality.

Is that because you think it's as you said, more efficient from an artistic perspective, or is it an ethical concern? I mean I have in my mind the famous, maybe fictional exchange between Gertrude Stein and Picasso, when you know, she looks at her his portrait of her, and she sends him a note saying it doesn't look like me, right, and he sends her back a note saying it will. So.

I mean, you know that's the case here. Your depiction of this story is the one that everyone will remember, right, not just Megan Kelly, but her children and her grandchildren and the whole world. She herself will probably come to remember it, and in this way, because that's the power of the film like this, of a successful, widely viewed film. Yeah, I take that responsibility very seriously. I do. Yeah, And it is it is largely an ethical concern to get

it right. You know, there are things you have to cheat. Timeframes get truncated, for sure, Dialogue is infitted, without doubts, the emotional flavor of individual scenes changes. But I want, I want the struggles that these human beings go through in this world to be as true as possible. Let me ask you about again the background to that sort of remarkable video where you see Megan Kelly responding to the film right, in which she is a character. Right,

very obviously she did not know what was coming. Yeah, she had no say in your script none. Technically, how does that happen? Is it that her story was sufficiently in the public domain that neither you nor the producers had to go to her to get any permission or any right to use her story? Yeah, I mean, it's not the dominant part of the narrative, right, and the narrative is broader than just her story. Sure, So part

of it's that. Part of it is she is a public figure who's you know, influenced our culture in big ways, and our laws are structured to you know, shield anyone who wants to comment on her presence, you know, in a way. So a lot of this is you know, obviously fair use. So technically it's it's not a problem

as long as you're being as truthful as possible. Also, we're we're using beats and moments that she's discussed a lot she wrote a book about that also have appeared in other media narratives It's not you know, and and appeared prior to her book as well. So, and and you know, obviously I'm talking to more than her, I'm interring you know, twenty people at Fox. So some of these perspectives on scenes with her or from people who you know, are in the room with her, as opposed

to coming from her directly. So she's just pretty lucky that, you know, she gets a depiction that is she may not have thought it was sufficiently sympathetic, but it is in certain respect sympathetic to her, I mean part of it. No, there's a there's a bigger issue here, which is that film is inherently humanizing. You know, the critique that a film about someone will normalize them, will platform them, isn't is true? It does. It inherently does that the worst

person depicted on film will somehow be comprehensible. And if to understand all, isn't maybe to forgive all at least to humanize. Yeah, exactly, So, even someone like Roger gets humanized. And this is also I remember having in the shadow of a hyperpowers and culture where so many of our narratives are dreaming driven by media that with which have been twitterized to the degree we have a strong emotional, you know, reaction to these human beings already we think

we know, and so contrasting that is not difficult. Let's be clear, right, because there's been such vitification of parties on both sides of the aisle, any kind of normal human discourse that's short of odious often feels very humanizing, you know. Strangely enough, that's assuming that it's short short of odious. Right to go about your ethical point, that also must be partly your choice, Yeah, to humanize because

that makes it greater art. Yeah, I'm a big believer that in this particular moment, especially that the art complicates so part of it is in the shadow of partisanship. Any kind of portrayal of a real human being feels grounded and humanizing in a way. And it seems particularly significant because that human is Roger Ales, who is held responsible by so many people, rightly or wrongly, for our culture of vilification. Yeah, exactly, that's the irony. I mean,

that really is. I mean, that's like irony with you know, with the bright red let capital letters. Absolutely right. Yeah, so we are we are hopefully extending to mister Ale something he didn't extend to the rest of the world, right,

And and that's okay. Because you know, I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm being empowered and by a massive amount of money and a massive distribution network that will distribute my vision of these human beings around the planet, and so certainly that comes with an obligation to hopefully

be as as judicious and human as possible. One thing about humanizing sexual harasser, though, which I think is actually underlooked in the public discourse around this, is, of course we're all eager to condemn everyone who engages in sexual harass rise evil, right, But if you think that it's only the most extreme evil people who engage in the sexual harassment, then it's really hard to explain why there's

so much of it out there in the world. And most of it is realizing that lots of people who don't think they're such terrible people, and who might in other domains that their lives not be so terrible, could still do this. Absolutely so, the guy twirling his mustache, you know, is not the one who's going to create

the most emotional damage in a woman's life. It's the person she considers a friend who on the business trip suddenly you know, says, hey, let's go to the hotel bar and then goes out from there, or the or the man she considers a mentor you know, those are the situations where you get the most in trouble. So so with Roger, part of it was creating a portrait of him that allowed us to sympathize with him to

the degree that those scenes could have real power. You know, we reach the point of the conversation where you know, two white guys are now talking about sexual harassment. We can hear the little voice you know in our in our ears saying what's wrong with this picture? And it won't be sufficient to answer to say, well, white guys do most of the sexual harassments, or why shouldn't we

be the ones to speak about it? In this contemporary era where we're all very focused and concerned appropriately on agency, it seems like a violation of agency for the two of us to sit here and talk about sexual harassment from the standpoint as it were, of the harasser, right when there are human beings women being harassed and you want to have the agency to speak about this topic. So I just want to ask you for your thoughts of starting with the critique that simply says, you know,

why why you yeah. Well, I wrote the script before the Me Too movement began in its most populous form, so prior to the Harvey Weinstein I've actually finished about three well two months before the Harvey case broke. That was fast worry. Yeah, yeah, So I wrote it over that, you know, just after the election, over that spring, So in a way, there was no one telling that story at the time. Had Harvey's situation occurred, I probably would not have written it, probably would not have sold it.

I'd have probably thought, oh, this issue is getting enough traction that I don't have to So part of this is just, you know, this feeling that no one was saying telling the story and it needed to be told. And that's, by the way, something that the public just isn't that aware of. They see a film coming out now a couple of years after Me Too, and they think, oh, this was a me too movie, not realizing it just takes a long time to put together a film like

that take forever. I mean, contracts alone take eight months, you know, plus legal vetting on a film like this, it just takes forever. So part of your answer is when you started doing it, there wasn't in Me Too. Yeah, But but but but that's you know, that's a cop out of us. I think there's a you know, let's let's address the real problem is should men be telling

these stories? And I go back and forth myself. Right, Partly, yes, there, you know, I'm also writing men in these situations and getting that right, getting that accurately matters for helping us understand this. And certainly the other thing is my greatest desire is to put men in those rooms, like the situation in the film between Margot Robbie's character Kayla and Roger Ailes, because if I can put men in those rooms, they can see how these situations are a extremely complicated

and can be utterly life changing. I have found in my own life a tendency when these narratives pop up to be a little dismissive in an almost instinctual way. It's almost as though, you know, the minute I hear one of these stories, I have this Darwinian thing to say, yeah, but you know she went into that office, Well, like I'm immediately have that thing that comes up, that voice in my head, that masculine protective, that sort of gender defensiveness.

And so I wanted to I wanted to interrogate that part of myself. You know, as I say, I wanted to drag my own prejudices through, you know, a gauntlet of real lives and sort of sort of examine on them. And so I guess I hope that in showing those situations two men around the world, I am doing the greater good, and that I am willing to accept the critique that there probably is someone who could have told this story better, who is a woman, but you know, she had not yet emerged, and so I did what

I could. So it's interesting. They're they're sort of two strands. One is the educative part, yeah, and strands too, I thought, was the internal part, the part where every artist is to some extent grappling with his or her own internal

voices and internal demons. And I think what you say is, I think it's true surely of the great majority of men, and very possibly of just about all men, that they will, instinctively, even if their consciousness has been raised, identify with other men or want to deny the depth and extremity of

you know, what reality tells us. I mean, my version of that would be just time after time during the me two process, saying that guy, that guy, now that guy, you know, and just thinking to myself at a certain point I realized, you know, you know, no, you just don't know what man a capable, right, you know, you just you know, maybe you have your own superrego has developed in a certain kind of way, a certain kind of guilt consciousness. But maybe not everybody is, you know.

But the point is just a recognition that I share that that same kind of gender protective instinct. I think we have it right. I think though, that the left critique from a strong feminist would go after both of these things by saying, well, education is great, but couldn't you have picked another story to do it all right? Or you know, why does this have to men educating men using the story of women as their instruments. And then on the personal thing, they would say, well, that's it.

They accept that, they would accept that art always involves some self exploration, right, but they want to see the film that would emerge if that self exploration was from the women's perspective rather than the men's. And then they would point to the industry and say, well, maybe no one had emerged, but maybe that's because women were denied the opportunity you know, for their voices to emerge, and they would be right right on both counts in my book, right, Yeah.

And I would like to think that our film is moving the ball down the field, right, and that someone else can come along and say, Okay, here's this film. It was made for thirty he's going to make you know, fifty sixty million worldwide. So there is you know, there's a door open there that we can prove these stories.

There's an audience for these stories, and so that so that we are you know, we are delicately laying the foundation for you know, the quintessential me too movie to come along, you know, three four or five, six years from now, totally done by women. Right, And when someone writes the Harvey Weinstein biopic, it will be a woman. Yeah. And I and I think I think the two people that are hired for that picture. I think they're two projects are both women too. You know that makes sense.

I was speaking abstractly, but but in real life, I guess that's already happening. Yeah. Plan B's got one, and I think there's another one out there too, right. And there's also a film, an indie film coming out about assistant in Harvey's life. So so there are other things coming, for sure, you know, And it's but it's part of a you know, it's part of this broader conversation about how we are going to reach some version of parody behind the camera, and how can we do that as ruthlessly,

efficiently and quickly as possible. You see that playing out, you know, in the Oscar you know conversation right now. But you know, I'm more than willing to take whatever criticism comes by virtue of of of just wanting to do whatever we can to help the situation. Were there other critiques beyond the gender identity one that struck you as meaningful ones, Well, what you what we get a lot of is frustration that the film does not take Megan to task more for her complicity in the broader culture.

I say, fox right, And that's a little difficult because what I wanted to avoid was making it sound as though right wing ideology creates necessarily a context for harassment, because we know that's not true. This is happening in every office around the country, right. I think really, at the end of the day, a lot of people wanted the race issue to be addressed, and I struggle with this. You know, I had early drafts where, you know, I

tried to address it. There's a you know, sort of a famous bookkeeping office where things got pretty dark over at Fox, and there were a couple of lawsuits of race based harassment. I tried to have Roger walk into one of them one at one point. You know, all this, and it's just it never worked. It felt like we were undermining the issue of her rassment itself. Until I came up with this thing. I was convinced was genius. And here's how I was going to solve this problem.

Four or five six times in the film, an African American individual with wandering frame and they would see the camera, they would have sort of privileged gaze of the sort of context of production, so to speak, and they go,

oh sorry and back out right. And so the idea with it, anytime an African American person was introduced into the frame, they would be, oh, oh sorry, just leave the frame right to suggest that this is subtly and comedically a not very subtly comedically a environment absolutely hostile to that perspective. Now, in saying that you already know what I discovered it in the editing room with Jay,

which is this was a very bad idea. Made it look like they were saying that the movie was a white people's movie rather than that Fox News was a white people's environment. It was hard to read the intent, but the fact you're asking the audience to read the intent at the moment already suggest problems, right, you know.

And it was one of those things that was either confusing or just it just felt like it was the disease it purported to cure, you know, yes, and so so at the end of the day, both the structural things I tried to do it to address race at Fox and the playful things I tried to do just didn't work, right, So that's you know, you do what you can. Thankfully, it's a you know, it's a medium, that's it's slow, but but we have the ability to

correct our mistakes. And we just took that out and and you know, now you can, as critics do, complain about their address addressing the race issue. So you mentioned the Oscar context, right, and I think that's a great topic to talk about here. Um, is there a revenge or reaction or blowback moment coming from the men in the Oscar nomination process. I think you're seeing that now, right. I think this this season is very mail driven, with a lot of films address seeing sort of male identity

and revisiting male identity. And part of that, I think is the fact that a certain core group of filmmakers who obviously make movies about strongly male issues are making their films. But yeah, I think I think we're in a little bit of a broader cultural blowback against me too, and I think the film season this year reflects that in some ways. Yeah, I want to talk about it some concrete cases, like why didn't Gredit Groway get nominated

for Best Director for Little Women? I mean, I thought that Little Women was a terrific movie, But more importantly, I perceived, maybe wrongly, that what made it distinctive and different from all the other Little Women's that are out there was the kind of direct hand of the director, you know, the sense that the director had a vision,

was going a certain way. The presentation was distinctive, the outcomes were distinctive, and I was genuinely surprised in my ignorance that it didn't yield to a Best Director nomination. Explain to me what I'm what I'm missing because I think I am missing. Yeah, several things. Well, those of the of us in the industry were not as surprised because it had not won any of the precursor awards

that you normally get. I think the broader most interesting thing for me to say about this stuff is, we are in the Academy attempting to become reach gender parody and to some degree inclusion on of of ethnicity, but that is coming with greater internationalization. Explain that. So that sounds really interesting, So that, for example, in the director's branch, the people we are inviting, the women we are inviting in to join the Academy exactly tend to be international.

I think with a film like Greta's what ended up happening is that international cohort probably did not respond to the film as powerfully as you did, because it is very Mary's a very American story, sure, you know, and it has classic American apps well, and it has a kind of Christmas morning cheeriness to a lot of the scenes that I think, for literally, yes, for for some you know, for some directors outside of this country, seems

just very American, you know. So there's that, and that's the situation in which I think that internationalization maybe worked against a film, but I think in terms of the performances it helped. So SAG, for example, did not nominate any of the screenacers screenacers GID for their awards, to not nominate any of the women from UH for Ensengwe.

I don't think for any of the individual awards either. However, the acting branch of the Academy did, so that group felt those performances were worthy of recognition in a way that the more exclusively American group, which you know, that's what SAG does is they have a committee of people that sort of I think it's by lottery that that nominates, so so you know there are going to be good

and bad things that come with that. On the whole, of course, it's great that we're becoming an international academy. What aspect of your experience both in writing your film, writing Bombshell, and also in pitching it to the world and talking about it, do you wish someone had asked you to speak about that? No one has asked you about if any Maybe every question has been asked and you've said everything you want to say, But is there something that hasn't been asked or that you would like

to say about it. I mean, I think the thing that's gone under theorized is how we are going to deal with the fact that men, particularly older men, but men in the academy and in the filmmaking business, have risen on the power of believing in their taste, believing that their gut instinct matters. And you see this in Stephen King's recent tweet about the fact that he doesn't use diversity when making artistic evaluations and judgments about excellence, right,

and he got beat up for them. And he is, in a sense the ultimate model of a person who's whatever his instincts are, somebody's buying them. Right. I saw recently a list of American authors and how many books are purchased, might have been worldwide authors, and he was just towering over people who sell millions of copies, towered over all of them. Anyway, So go on. So he's got he's got that well honed instinct which he privileges

as part of his core, part of his identity. Right now, we want to come along and say, unfortunately, that instinct it's not misogynistic. I think that's I think it's wrong. We use that phrase. It's more, you know, androcentric, I suppose is the word I'm looking for, a sort of male centered. But we have to get people like that to engage with the idea that diversity doesn't mean necessarily throwing out you know that gut, but rather just doing

a series of checks. And we've got to find a way to just somehow to introduce to diversity in the discussion around diversity without this sort of naming and shaming and really get people to think through Okay, here's a film like Little Women, Yes, that beautiful scene where so someone talks about you know, I am so sick of being women being defined for who they love yet I

want love. It's like a beautiful, beautiful moment, right. That's not going to resonate with a lot of guys, but we have to get them in a position where they can see its power, right, And I just feel like we do not have a good way to do that yet. One of the things I think we could do which would help is we could expand the best director category from five films to ten films, and the way that

rank voting works that would inherently be more inclusive. And since that's already been done in the past for other categories, but it was done for a Best Picture. It seems like a no brainer. Yeah. What's so interesting about the example of the awards is that the awards are symbolic, and if they were only symbolica, we wouldn't spend so

much time worrying about them. But as I under tend it, in your industry, winning those awards translates into people sitting in the seat in the movie theater, which therefore translates into money. So winning the awards is actually a crucial component of how power gets deployed, and in that sense, it's super different from the way awards work into many other domains of life. You're absolutely right. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

And to answer your question is I feel like I feel like the one conversation I'm not hearing as I've done the press for this film is a more honest conversation about gender politics and how gender politics influence our choices and how we can sort of arrive at solutions.

I feel like what I'm getting a lot of is people wanting to evoke the problem, wanting to say this, but no one really wanting to kind of go through and not no one but not enough people wanting to go through and and have a candid conversation about what's possible and what's not possible. Well, thank you for having that candid conversation with me. I'm really grateful to you for bringing this perspective. Thank you so much, Thank you, thank you for having me. Deep Background is brought to

you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia gene Coott, with studio recording by Joseph Friedman and mastering by Jason Gambrell and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbn. Our theme music is composed by Luis Garat special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background