Justin Simien • Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein #251

Look out. It's only films to be buried with. Hello, and welcome to films to be buried with. My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer, director, a chapter and I love films. As Renata Suzuki once said, there is an ocean of silence between us, and I am drowning in it. Have you seen Charlie Chaplin City Lights, no sound and it's fucking devastating at the end.

Yeah.

True. Every week I invite a special guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life through the films that meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, himesh Patel, Mark Frost, Sharon Stone, Jamila Jamil and even Bled Gambles. But this week it's the writer, director, producer, and showrunner, the brilliant mister Justin Simeon. You can watch all of Ted Lasso seasons one to three on Apple tv plus now all of it all there.

He is?

It's just a zibby.

That's gonna be my ringtoel.

No, that's gonna be my alarm because if I heard that about myself every morning, I feel great.

Man, Thank you Jesus, Hey man, I don't know all those things, you're all those nice to be.

You A big fan, huge fan, huge fan, man, a huge, huge fan.

So much to talk about. You made, write, directed, produced, Dear White People, and then you did all the TV show of that? Is that right?

I did? I did. I'm very masochistic.

Oh four seasons?

Mm hmmm, that's right.

Did you show you directed all of them? Or how did that work?

Oh? No, oh god, no, oh my god.

Okay, that would be that would be a very yeah.

I mean I wish, but no, that would have killed me. No, I am.

I show ran it for for Simpsons, and I'd say it was the primary director. So I directed a lot of the episodes and I wrote a lot of the episodes. But there were a lot of great filmmakers that came in, people like Cheryl Dunier, people like Barry Jenkins, people you know, like jen Nick Sa Bravo came in and directed incredible episodes.

So it was definitely a team effort.

I rewatched Dear White People this morning in preparation for this, and oh my god, is it brilliant And it holds up so interesting because it's so like specific to its time, yeah, and completely timeless, you know what I mean, Like it's such a sort of unique thing.

I'm really that's so nice.

I can't watch my own work, but like every you know, five or ten years, so that's very nice to hear.

Thank you.

Yeah, And it's particularly interesting given everything that sort of happened afterwards that it's it was made during Obama's presidency.

I know, we had this nasty habit with the movie and the show. We keep predicting these horrible things would happen, and then they do.

It's very unfortunate.

You need to stop making stuff, I know. I think this is an intervention that.

Might be the lesson.

Actually, my second movie is about assentient hair weave, so you know, fingers Crossed we're.

Going to be okay, I don't know, just being.

Honest, hang on, I do want to know about this because you did four years this very big show that you were show running, and you were you know, it's your baby that grew and grew and grew. Yeah, did you leave it in a way that you were like, I'm done and I feel happy and sad? Did you? Were you sad?

Like?

How was the end of that whole massive probably ten years of your life, was it?

Yeah, that's a really hard question, unpacked, if I'm being completely honest.

The funny thing about like trying.

To like make art and entertainment about systemic injustice is that you've become like acutely aware.

Of it in all aspects of your everyday life.

And it might shock you to find out that, in fact, in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry, there are all sorts of kinds of systemic injustice. And so it was really I'm not gonna lie, it was really painful. It was really painful to make that show, and yet it was my joy and it was my reason for being.

So I'm not gonna lie.

I have some ambivalence. I'm still I'm still getting over some of the PC of it.

If I'm not.

If I'm I respect it, I appreciate it. But when change a thing, I don't know how much you're allowed to say. I oh, I'll tell you anything. I don't work for them no more.

Let's go. Yes, I did the.

Exacts the people in you know, the money people, the Netflix people. Did that change over the four years?

Very much? Show? Right? Yeah? Very much show? Very much so?

And did the sort of rules change for you?

You know, the rules did change, but they changed short of for everybody. Like I'll say that the longer we went there was you know, the thing about Netflix is the turnover rate there is kind of high. So, like, we had this amazing executive, Tara Duncan, who sort of shepherded us in and then around our season two she

That kind of thing.

Uh, that the emphasis on that change pretty much every season, and so it was kind of like a it was a little bit of a moving target because the thing about Netflix, and I think probably a lot of places right now, like I think this is just streaming in general, is that, like you really you don't really know if you're gonna come back, not even for like months after the season finale airs, and a show like ours is so meticulously built, but we had to build it in

It each season just in case.

So there's there's this tension that you kind of feel, and that I think we just sort of solved by just literally treating each season like it's a it's a whole new show. It's the same characters, the same premise, the same message, but like this time we want to do a screwball comedy, or this time we want to do a musical, or this time we want to do.

This, you know, to kind of make up for that I don't know this and maybe this uncomfortable question, and if it is, we don't include it.

But did it all so comfortable?

Brut like was it was it canceled? Or did it? Did it end when you wanted it to end?

Like?

Did you want to do more?

It ended when I wanted it to end.

Yeah, both the sort of like because the show's ambitious, man like, Yeah, those especially those first seasons, like we're making these episodes for under too mil you know what I'm saying, We're making them feel like as cinematic and big and ambitious as possible.

So that's that takes a lot out of you.

And I definitely felt like, you know, if it was gonna go if it was faded to go on past four seasons, and one should be so lucky in the streaming era, but if it was faded to go on past that, it might have had to go on, you know, with somebody else.

To be honest, what was the buddy on the original film? Because that looks very big. I was watching that like, this looks like an expensive film.

Under a million.

I made it in nineteen days. I had two weeks of prap. It was impossible.

You're you're magnificent. That's amazing. That looks like a big fucking film.

Thank you.

Thank That was that was certainly the goal, you know, but we didn't have very many coins.

That's impressive.

Yeah, basically I made that movie. I started by making a concept trailer. I got a tax return in twenty twelve, which was the only like play money I could earn in my twenties, and I basically like using a couple thousand bucks, just like got equipment, got some people. We literally stole UCLA's campus out here. We were not allowed to shoot there. We got shot down a few times, and we would like hide in the classrooms and then.

Come back out when the security left.

All of this to say, we eventually officially shot on the UCLA campus for the show, and they did charge us for this trailer. So I'm not getting in trouble by saying this, but.

We've stolen straight up a concept trailer and I put that online.

And the point was to be like, what if this was a real movie, Like what if we had smart, weird, art housey black shit in theaters right now?

Wouldn't that be dope? That was the whole premise.

And so, you know, making things look more cinematic and more expensive than they actually were is kind of in the DNA.

A Dear White people, you know.

Quick question. I thought that and maybe it was addressed in the show, and if it was, I apologize. Have you ever run into a cross pass with Tyler Perry?

Yes?

Actually, yes I have and it was a very pleasant and lovely conversation. I have to say, there's there's a character that I actually play in the third season that's not not based on Tyler and Sam White, who is sort of you know, she is the provocateur, you know, she hates she hates that kind of stuff.

In the show.

She and I and I am playing him have this sort of back and forth exchange rivalry in season three. And the reason for that is because you know, the first words of my teaser trailer and I'm I don't know if I'm embarrassed to say this or not, but it is what it is. Our fuck Tyler Perry.

Okay.

Yeah.

And one day he called me and was like, Yo, this is Tyler Perry.

Do we have beef?

And I was like, oh my god, and I and I was able to tell him something that I realized soon after making this, which is that like the system is sort of designed so that we sort of like fight each other. When I say us, I mean black folks because there's especially at that time, there really is.

It's too glib, it's too that.

I was like, Oh, so suddenly suddenly the coach is me, you know, It's like it really was like, Oh, that's like the price you pay of entrance. And I was able to apply oologized to him for that because I didn't think it was fair to attack his work, which frankly opens a door for me when it really wasn't his decision that he should be the only, you know, person able to make content about black people at that time.

The Lord's work by like going after his stuff like that.

So yeah, because of that wonderful conversation, you know, I got a lot of love for Tyler, truly.

That's fucking great. I'm asked that question, that's like, good, lovely answer. Well, God, I've got so many more questions about all of this, but maybe we have to move on one day.

We don't answer.

I'm always interested in, like, shy runner as a job is, it's hard. It's fucking big in your sort of managing so much. It is managing people and people's emotional states and stuff. Who how did you cut that?

I don't even know, honestly, because.

The director is one thing, and then the showrunner is like five times that.

A lot of us honestly got a lot, a lot of therapy. Like when I say a lot of therapy, because you're right, you're sort of you are. Everyone is sort of projecting onto you as the showrunner and and everyone. It's not just the cast, it's not just your department hits, but it's also like the executives on one And we had a network and a studio, so we had the Lions gay folks on one side, we had the Netflix

It's a it's a crucible.

Like you know, anything I'd ever I'd ever experienced before. But I have to say it was really good training.

I just made. I just made a big old Disney movie.

And it was like the longest shoot I ever had, the most people I ever had to deal I mean, and I never and even though I was, you know, the director of that project, I could not have been prepared for that without the experience of show running and carrying that many expectations on your shoulders at once, even though we had a lot longer to shoot it and a lot of the bigger budget than I had ever on Deer White People. Just the sheer volume of attitudes and egos and subterfuge and into politics.

And all that crap, like it just.

For that yeah, you know, And I'm a straightforward person, like I really, there's usually not anything up my sleeve.

I pretty much tell you how it is.

And so when I encountered this thing in Hollywood where, like you know, people tell you ever think, but the thing they need to tell you it just takes even longer to process.

You know, are you good at like you seem? Listen, I've spent fifteen minutes of view and you seem lovely. And you also I have heard from people who work with you. Do you're lovely? However? Are you good at?

So?

If for example, you want something a certain way, everyone is telling you it can't be that way. It shouldn't be that way. They don't want it that way. Like, how do you hold your place? Are you good at conflict? Do you do it charmingly? Do you lose your temper?

Like? How do you I'll do anything that work?

Do you feel bad?

Yes? I have? I have a Okay.

So, first of all, I'm a gay black man who grew up in the South. So I'm really good at being polite.

I'm very charming.

I'm really good at being charming.

And I also I am really good at like hiding certain aspects of my truth for moments when it is more convenient to share such things. So yeah, I tend to lean on diplomacy before I lean on like yelling. Yelling I find really hard to do. In fact, sometimes like I need a push to be.

Like just you just might need to just be forceful.

About this particular situation, But it takes me a while to get there. It's not that I avoid conflict, It's just that I like to be tactical about it because I'm also aware that the way I approach conflict it might undermine my ability to achieve what I ultimately want, especially in Hollywood, and especially when there's a lot of folks projecting a lot of things onto you. So I will honestly say I've done all of the things that you mentioned, but I tend to lead with diplomacy. I

Oh that's the issue. Okay, how do I deal with that thing over there? I don't know. So I don't know. I'm all over the place, but.

I want, I think the most important thing when I'm directing or show Rennie, my job is to create a space. My job is to create a space for people to do their absolute best work. I want people to bring their genius, their fire to the project, and everyone is made to feel comfortable, particularly artists in slightly different ways.

What did you mean by if you engage in the conflict, I think say but that it would undermine what you're trying to do because of how people see it.

Well, as I've mention, you know, being a black gay man, there are certain I'll say this when I get a little upset, people tend to think I'm furious, Like people say there is a tension around me getting upset that I just feel like my white counter points don't necessarily have because.

Look, I've been in the industry for a minute.

Okay, I see how directors are, I see how shorewounders are.

I've met, you know, a lot of prominent people.

I've heard a lot of stories about what goes down on very and I know that I am nowhere near some of the things that are pretty regular from some people.

But it's just funny when I when I get a little, when I get a little upset, people are just there.

I don't know, there's like an angry black Man situation of bruin. I can feel that terror in some people, and unfortunately for me, and I've seen this happen to some of my peers that can get that can get you exited from the room if I'm just being on it.

So there is this sort of double edged shword.

There's a double consciousness, especially in Hollywood, in terms of how to not the artistry on one side and you know, the business on the other. I've never been able to avoid it.

Fascinating, is it? Yeah? This is really interesting.

I hope so I get something out of it because I'm tired.

You know what, you know what, I can't tell you the thing I left the one thing I've learned from where they give you notes and you're like, these are fucking stupid. This is stupid. And my initial instinct is to just go I would just stare at them and eventually go, so what would you do, and like let them sort of panic so.

You can't write it, you can't.

Yeah, But I realized that isn't the best way to do it and in fairness, to be honest with you like it, in fairness in the hindsight what I have learned, and I learned this I won't say on what job, but actually, when you get a note that you think is really stupid, to be fair, regardless of what their solution is for that note, it means that the thing that I think is very clear is not clear because

Do you know me? Yes? Absolutely. The thing that messes me.

Up, though, however, is sometimes, and not all the time, maybe like a third of the time, maybe a short but sometimes they really truly don't know what they're talking. Like sometimes the thing that's bothering them about something is that maybe they read it on an airplane in like five minutes before they had to get in an uber and before this phone call started.

And they literally didn't read it clearly.

Sometimes there's that and trying to know sometimes knowing in the moment is this something that can help me or not is really the hardest thing to do.

And I've learned to just.

Say, especially if I don't get it, to just say.

Thank you so much. I'll take care of it and just process.

It later, because you know, maybe there because anytime there's any reason to go back into the work, you have an opportunity to make it better. Unfortunately for all of the people like you and I who hate taking very annoying notes, no matter what the reason is, if you go back in and you look closely, you'll probably find

But I don't think it. I don't think it's ever been any other way. I really don't.

I've never spoken to anyone who's made a film or a TV show who's ever said, yeah, it was a breeze. Yeah no, no, no, we just sound true. It was nothing. No, absolutely tell me this. And now you have moved to which I really do. I am genuinely excited about because I'm a fan of the riding ab You're now you've now made Disney's Hunted mentioned Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, honestly say that a huge step in a very different direction. How did it happen? How do you feel about it?

About any day now? No, it's it's done.

It's sort of you know, there's a there's massive amounts of special effects and uh sort of finishing to be done on it.

But but the movie is done by and large.

It's we've scored it, we've picture locked it, all those great things. And the way it came to be was, you know, I was at the end of Dear White People, and I was after at the end of the run of my second film, Bad Here, and I one I've always dreamt of doing something really big, commercial, but you know powerful, I sort of grew up on those kind

Frankly, when those movies come to.

Me, it's kind of hit or miss whether or not I'll actually get the shot to do it. And I was so blown away by the script. This movie had no business being this well written, like you just did it.

Like when I.

First got it, I was like, Okay, we're doing Honted Mansion again. Okay, all right, let me just open this and see if I can give it a quick pass.

And instead I.

Stayed up really all night laughing and crying over this story that was, yes, about the hunted Mansion, and yes, it gives you all the candy that you expect from like a big blockbustery, you know, movie like that. But at the core, it's about a man who is learning to feel his feelings of grief and who is learning to sort of put this found family together.

Out of people that really irritate him.

And I don't know if it was because I was just coming off of making a TV show or not, but I really related to that. Also, like during COVID this is after sort of the George Floyd protests. I mean, shit was really really heavy, and to have this piece in my lap that sort of it didn't shy away from that. It's really funny, it's really sarcastic, it's really shady like I am, and has a very kind of dark,

And it just took me by.

Such surprise, and yet at the same time, I knew how to make that movie. I was like, this is an ensemble comedy. At the end of the day. It's got many things. It's got genre flourishes, and it's got scares, and it's got this and set pieces, but it's I have to put the right funny, intelligent, great people together and sort of give the audience them in different variations. And that's what I do on Dear White People, And so I felt like I knew how to do that.

But when something like fantasy.

Or horror like gives you a reason to show something that like otherwise you would never show, I just get really excited. And the last thing is that my family, my mother's side of the family, there all from Louisiana, and I love the Hunted Mansion and I love disney stuff. I actually worked at Disneyland in college. I know that's crazy. Yeah, first I worked at Disneyland. I was a ride host operator. I couldn't have a beard, so I'm two years old.

Man, this is fucking great, this is exciting.

Yeah, I was. I was really jazzed to get it.

I wonder if you can answer this, knowing it's a big, big, big film in Disney and everything, how much do you feel that it is the film you wanted to make it? How much you know? Could you give a percentage? Or is it?

Oh gosh, I don't know, because you know, I can't because I didn't necessarily go into it with a me versus them attitude. I understood that, like, there are some movies that I do make for people, but primarily for myself, and then I share it with other people who are just as weird.

As I am.

And there are some things that I make in collaboration with people, and we have to have some shared goal. So there were some things about the movie that really I didn't even want to argue with. It's like, yes, it has to be four quadrant and it has to you know, sort of be for this kind of audience and people should feel this way. At there were some things that like, as an artist, they weren't really up to me, and I didn't demand that they be up to me.

That said, I think that I achieved the assignment. I really do.

I made a movie that I genuinely love. Two pieces, and if I saw it and didn't make it and didn't know the people who made it, I would be like, WHOA, Okay, it gives me the same feelings, the same goosebumps that I felt when I first read that script.

So I got myself.

I know that it's extremely subversive and funny and does things that Disney movies usually aren't supposed to do.

So you know that that also makes me.

Very happy, But it also makes audiences happy, and that's not something I've always been able to do with my work.

You know, my first test screening of Dear White.

People did not go as well as my test screens for Oh my God, No for how to Imagine?

So I'm having a ball.

Man.

It's like, I don't know.

I don't think that the purely justin Simeon anything would be appropriate at.

This budget level from the Walt Disney Corporation. But this is the movie.

I've watched, is the movie I love making, and I'm super proud of.

I'm really glad to hear that, and I'm very excited to see it, and I appreciate you, and the the problem is I forgot to tell you something. Oh sure, we've been talking for a while. I fucking should have told you at the beginning. What an idiot, man, I fucking I should I really should have told you this upfront. I say, okay, you you've died, You're dead dead?

Oh okay, yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah. Honestly I suspected. I suspected as much.

How did you die?

Public? Spontaneous combustion? You know? I I would to.

Get it back.

I kind of I want to feel like I was giving a speech, so I hope it was public and I and I hope it was unrelated to what I was saying. Like I want to be mid sentence saying something very dull and then I just explode everywhere.

That's the way to go for me. Okay, bright, I hope you can deal with that.

I love it. Where where were you giving this speech? And why was it dull? It doesn't sound like you.

This was the Academy Awards.

Also doesn't sound like me, because I've never I've never been offered an.

Award there or or Mike time. But I went in this world. I was there receiving lifetime achievement.

That's why they've forgotten to yes that they give it leads of us, yes.

Yes, because of dear white people, bad hair in the Haunted Mansion for reasons unknown to me.

At this time, I was receiving.

The Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academy Awards when I spontaneously combusted.

Wow, you know what it is iconic spontaneously convested that he was. I'm glad you're bringing it back.

I want people to see it. It's a thing that happens. This is my advocacy.

It would really jazz out the oscars as well. That's a great idea. Do you worry about death?

Oh, my God, constantly, although less so now when I was a kid.

So I grew up with a lot of death.

Actually I say that so flippantly and easily, but this is the therapy. But my dad died when I was six years old, and for me it was really it was really sudden.

He died of Lukearrick's disease. He had als and.

I knew that, you know, like he had a weak arm, that's what we called it. And I didn't quite you know, I didn't understand that this was like a fatal thing.

When I was a kid. It was just my dad. My dad had a weak arm.

Right, And you know, I remember sort of asking where he was, and for a bunch of reasons, my mom and him didn't really decide to sort of walk me through what to expect, and so for me, it was a pretty big blow. And if I'm being honest with you, it's probably like the source of a lot.

Of my shit.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Yeah, And then you know, I was my grandmother was in the home when she passed, and my mother is the youngest of nine kids, and so a lot of my uncles and aunts, you know.

Through the years have passed. I've had best friends that have passed.

And I remember when my dad died, I was it was I couldn't go to sleep in night because I

Things, do you have any connection as in spiritually, did you did you do you ever feel his presence? Do you have a how does that work for you? May I ask?

It's funny you should ask that, because I didn't feel his presence until pretty recently actually, and as a kid, I always.

Wondered where he was because the.

Other thing about my family being from Louisiana is that we all I mean ghosts and spirits on the other side was not really a question like it was just a matter of fact, and whether it was my grandmother or my aunt Virgie, or even I had a best

And my dad. I never had an experience like that until.

I actually met Okay, we're doing it, we're doing it.

I actually met a half sister that I had.

Never met before but who had sort of followed my life and we connected.

Did you know you had this house, sister, or you didn't?

I I knew that she was out there, but we had never actually communicated, and we talked about my dad or our dad, and she had one of those moments after he passed, and it just kind of lit me up to know that someone had that moment with him after he passed.

And he left me.

A bunch of stuff, a bunch of trinkets and stuff and bonds and things like that when you passed, and my mom was holding onto this envelope and inside of it was for two dollar bills and double two's. For whatever reason, started to become like kind of a symbol for my dad being with me or around me, and things that I did not know at the time but that I know now. So my husband's name is Rick. He was born on the twenty second of June. I had a half brother that I did know when I

It could be like the dates, you know.

The date we got married was actually our anniversary date, Rick and I, which is February twentieth, two thousand and twenty.

So this is all twos, I.

Mean, you know, yeah, it just sort of it's such a weird thing to see a pair of double two's.

That when I see it it makes me stop.

And it usually tends to be of importance, and it tends to be about being a man and maturing in some kind of way.

It's the thing I.

Never felt like I grew up and was able to have, and so to kind of have it now, even if it's you know, in my mind or my imagination, I'm not sure special, but it took me a lot to have that, that sense that he was here.

I appreciate it. Thank you, you know, thank you, thank you appreciate it of course. One well, so do you think when you die as a heaven, as a hell, there's a another place? How do you see it?

I don't know, I don't know.

I think we all have to be open to the possibility that there's nothing, because otherwise, you know, life, you don't focus on the present, you know, if it can just go on forever. I think, for no other reason, death is actually really important. This is the idea that things are limited and that time is limited. But like I said, the story I told you about my father is probably the least weird of the stories about people passing and so can you.

Tell me man? Oh gosh. One of the weirdest is my my friend Deontae.

He left a voice memo for me that I erased from my phone, and the day I found out that he died, it came back to my phone and the voice message was like, Hey, Justin, I just want to tell you I've always loved you. Your friendship means the world to me. It was like a goodbye message.

Oh my god, that's making me cry.

That was absolutely deleted.

When my my aunt Vergie passed, I remember the day after her funeral, feeling her presence and then looking over to a clock and the minute hand was stuck on the on the V and it wouldn't move past, you know, the V and I took a picture in a video of it and eventually it just you know, kept going, but like in that exact moment that's.

When it hovered over the V.

My uncle Will passed and everyone at the casino one my family is big gamblers, were Catholic Louisiana.

It's a whole thing.

Everyone was at the casino when he passed because everyone thought he'd be fine. We had just sort of visited him at the hospital when he passed. Suddenly everybody, my mother and two other cousins win a jackpot. Like it's weird shit, like you know, weird woo woo stuff that, like it's hard to put so many incidents of that

You know, data, But it's all there all the time.

It's all the possibilities are available, and so for me that it's sort of it kind of explains how somebody who has passed, how it's possible for them to even communicate in these different, subtle, imaginative ways with different people all at the same time everywhere. I don't know what it is. I don't know what the experiences or what it looks like. I assume it's something like the end

So I hope that that's true at depth too. Yeah.

But yeah, my new theory on it, because I think maybe I've said this in the previous episode's apologies, but my new theory is that because I always think about reincarnation, I believe in reincarnation, but I'm always like it's quite inefficient because we forget it would be. Yeah, you come back in your space to improve, but you completely forget. But then you don't completely forget because there are things sort of inbuilt in you.

I think.

But what you're talking about, this narrow field is like the human body, this receptacle for all yourselves, everything, everything, everywhere, all at once, is kind of a primitive machine that can't it can't process every It's too much stuff for this little brain to process. So that's why you end up with this narrow view. And when you die again, you're released into it gets broader, you can handle everything.

Then I really.

Lean towards that way of thinking because the other thing I know is there's just some stuff about me that was true before I understood who I was, Like my love of film was here already, like it was my path to tell stories, particularly like image based stories, was a part of me before I could even conceive of something like the film director. It was just there, and it was there since before I could talk.

They had to have come from something else, you know. I don't know how that could have just happened in the womb or through early experiences. It was too clear.

And so that makes me that certainly opens me up to this life is just I don't know. It's like a very concentrated dream or something.

I don't know.

Yeah, I tend to lean into those kind of philosophies for sure.

Well I've got news for you. There's a heaven. Okay, oh god, there's a heaven.

Okay, So okay, great, great, okay, So we're good.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. And it's feeled me. The favorite thing. What's your favorite thing right now?

It's starbus jelly beans.

Stub bust jelly beans. Okay, have you had them?

No?

I have had dangerous Yeah, they.

Don't have them. They are dangerous, but in heaven. In heaven, I assume diabetes doesn't exist.

So no diabetes.

No, oh god, every day all the time.

So there's stub bus jelly bean's whoa to woa the United bchs. Then now jelly beety best.

Yeah, and oh this sounds right.

Okay, there's giant jelly jelly starbus jelly beans walking around with trays of star bus jelly beans. Oh, don't be scared of them. They're very friendly.

Are they sentient because I might want to eat them? Yeah?

No, they're they're like, yeah, that's a good point. But jelly beans everywhere, and then and they're looking at you as you eat them and they go stop eat, they scream, don't eat us, and you keep oh.

My god, this is heaven, everything I would want.

But they're all very excited to see you the starbus jelly beans, and they want to know about your life through film. The first thing we've been talking for solo. This is the longest episode ever. But I'd say that's a good sign because this has been fascinating. And I'm annoyed after that talk about films because I want to keep talking about all the summers. The first thing they ask me, I'll.

Come back Brad if you if you have, I'll just have to resurrection.

Yes, what is the first film you remember saying? Justin see it?

It is the Whiz. It's the Whiz. Oh wow? And I remember. I literally this is part of what I mean. I was. This is a memory that is pre talking. I could not talk.

I was watching our television set The Wiz was on.

It was the part where and I didn't know what was happening.

I was like a infant. But it's the part where they meet Richard Pryor on the rooftop and they discover that in fact, it isn't this massive, powerful wizard. It's just Richard Pryor and this very weird, sort of attic thing. And I remember sort of being amazed by some aspect of it and turning to my mom and trying to talk to her, but I couldn't use English words, and I got very frustrated about this. And that literally is the first memory I have of seeing a movie.

And so imagine, imagine my surprise.

I am my surprise when I encountered the Wizard of Oz because I was like, they made a white version of the Whiz, Like I didn't know. I truly did not know there was a different version, Like I thought that was the verse.

It would make sense that way, right, So do you remember, Well, that's if you were pre pre language. To have a memory pre language is pretty impressive.

Yeah, and I and I've watched the movie, you know, after Language and many many, many many times.

And this is sort of all black cinematic.

Quincy Jones scored World kind of does describe sort of the place I always want to be, Like that's probably my true heaven, to be honest with the Whiz.

So it makes sense.

Yeah, just the just the black Oz you know, with all those people and all that wonderful music, and maybe not as much poverty and drug use, but more good parts.

Replacing puverty and drug use with stops.

Jennibeates, exactly, exactly, there's the balance. Yeah, that's my heaven.

What is the film that scared you the most? You've just made haunted mention. Do you like being scared?

I do?

And the weird thing about me is that I was exposed to horror movies at far too young an age, so they never really ever scared me. I watched Nightmare on Elm Street, I think maybe five or six years old, maybe younger. So I had to learn that Freddy Krueger was bad. I just thought he was cool. He was he equips, he had that hat, he had like the fingers. I thought he was dope.

He's kind of the hair.

He was annoyed by the same you know, white teenagers that I was watching the film, and I just I got him, like he and I connected. So it had to be explained to me to be afraid of him and things like him. The first movie that really really scared me is probably Fire in the Sky, which I don't know. I don't know if that movie is still good or not.

But as a kid, I was like, this is.

A documentary about what happens with Alias and I that scared the shit out of me. I also, like, I grew up in Houston, Texas, so like anytime a plane flew over. For weeks after that film, like I was just convinced that like this was it, like I was getting abducted. I would be anally probed and like syrup, you know, dripping off the table would freak.

Me out for the rest of my life. That movie really truly messed with me.

It really did firing. This guy is never talked about that, he's ever come up on this podcast. I saw it. I remember it so well. It was weird. Was it eighties? Late eighties?

It was like if it was late eighties, are early It was like the first movie we bought on when you had the digital box and you could get pay per view.

I remember that it was the first.

Movie we bought on pay per view at our house, So it was it had to be early nineties.

It's a proper based on the true story of an alien abduction film. It's the kind of film you don't get at the cinema. You just don't get like you know what I mean, Like that's any film like that now would be direct to TV would be a yeah. And this was like a high end and I remember the interviews of it were like it's true, and I was really I was really into it. That film.

It was like proto found footage horror movies, like because it wasn't found footage, but it was the first one where like you went to the theater like this actually happened. And of course reading the story, I mean like you know, I don't know that that's exactly how it happened in retrospect turns out, but you know, as a very impressionable.

Kid, I was like this, this is about life right now, This could happen at any moment.

Yeah, great, rights. What about crying? Are you a crier? What's the film that made you cry?

You know?

I wasn't until my thirties and the therapy that I mentioned began and now I can't stop right.

Yeah, it was it was Coco. It was the Pixar movie Coco. That movie. It was absolutely not.

I left the theater in tatters, okay, like it.

Oh my gosh.

First of all, Coco, the grandmother herself spitting image of my grandmother, like spitting image of my grandmother, And every time I saw her face, I would start crying. And every time they would play that damn song, I would start crying. And I remember when the credits came on and the song is blasting. I'm not kidding you, like I'm sobbing. I'm like dry heating and sobbing at the

How's it going, goose?

And I'm just like a mess in public sobbing. That movie I can't It's so good. I can't ever watch it because, yeah, I just lose I lose function seeing that film. It's just it's devastating, but wonderful movie.

It did change my feelings on death a bit. That film you did as in I thought it was. I loved that film and I cried a lot, and I can never watch it again. But I did like ever again, I did like the sort of idea of you live as long as you're remembered, and that they the importance of. But then I'm alsto, like, so what happens when you're forgotten?

Then?

What what's the next bit o?

I know that's the saddest bar well I started keeping, and I started keeping an altar of my family. I really did like, Yeah, there's like pictures now with my dad and my grandmother and stuff I keep around because of that movie.

But never, I can't ever watch it again. Ever.

I've seen all the pixil films once and never again.

Never I it must takes too long to put myself back together.

Yeah, really picks out of abusive paper, Let's be honest.

Slash, those are the kind of movies I want to make, so fin I mentioned July twenty eighth.

Is it gonna make me cry?

Oh?

God, maybe not as much, but that little laughter and tears ain't never hurt nobody. Yeah, okay, you know, just a couple couple of little sweaty eyebalts.

What is the film that you love? People don't like it? It's definitely not critically acclaimed, but you love it unconditionally. Justin Simeon, this.

Is going to be a shot fired spider Man three the same Raimi.

That is very cool of you.

Fight me, fight me.

I know people really have a hard time digesting camp and superheroesm at the same time. I get that, But at the same time, it is absolutely ridiculous what you were watching. When you're watching a superhero movie, they are in right colored spandex and they are doing and saying very homo erotic things, and they are prancing around the city time to music. You're watching camp everyone. And what I love about spider Man three is that Sam Raimi goes full camp and I don't know what was happening

Spider Man two is top taste.

Spider Man two is great, and I feel like he had to fight so many battles with the studio or whatever that by the time you've gotten spider Man three, he was like listen, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want to do, and no one is going to say no, no limits, no notes. And he made Spider Man three, and there is something very off the rails, rambunctious, wild and campy about that movie that I an anarchic about that movie that I just really appreciate. I can't

I love that movie. I go so hard for it.

It's a very very good argument. Can I ask a question of you? Because I hear this first, I think I've used this word, and I think I don't fully understand what the word, What the exact definition of camp is?

Oh?

Like, I think I sort of get it, But I'm always like, am I saying it right? What do we be?

I mean? For I guess it can mean a bunch of different things.

But for me, camp is like when you're sort of playing into norms, particularly heteronormative kind of concepts and ideas, and you're blowing them up to such operatic and ridiculous proportions that you can't help but laugh at them. Nipples on the batsuit would be a really good example of a very campy choice. The dance sequence in the Spider Man movie that I'm referring to is an incredibly campy choice.

Kind of genre, because genre is about the extremes, you know.

So I like when a superhero movie admits that its basic premise is absolutely absurd.

I mean, like, I could see your crotch, sir, Like I can see the outline.

You're highlighting it. You're highlighting it with a different color underwear. And yet this is supposed to be masculine and macho. Okay, okay, okay, all right.

You know what, at the other end of the scale, as wonderful as the Batman the Dark Knight trilogy are, and I think they're incredible, Batman begins incredible. He works so hard to justify in a real and serious way why he becomes Batman that he spent so long on it that by the time he becomes Batman, I found myself having never asked this in all my life. Guid, it's a bit weird that he dresses up as a bat Why is that happening?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, it lent in so hard that it made me then go yeah, hang on, that is with instead of explaining it.

Different strukets with different folks. Dark Knight is a masterpiece. Not knocking those movies at all, but I agree the premise is the only way for you to fight crime is to is to wear eyeliner and skin tight latex that showcases your body, okay, your anatomic prowess, and fight people in the Darken Knight, usually in a fancy car, usually with sidekigs.

I'm sorry, Like, what are we doing? It's absurd.

So it can only exist in a universe that is also a little off kilter, and so I like when directors. I think what makes people uncomfortable is that a lot of folks find their like masculinity and their manliness and their whatever in some of these characters, and to realize that what they're watching aren't far from drag Queen's I think maybe disturb some people, but I live for it when a film or a filmmaker acknowledges like the central Conceitus is pretty campy, fantastic.

What is a film that you used to love but you've watched again recently and you've thought, I don't like this anymore, probably because you've changed.

This makes me sad, but my favorite film growing up is absolutely unwatchable. I watched Pippy The Adventures of Pippy long Stockings a lot of times in theaters.

Okay, did you really No, I'm not.

I never started the cinema, but we've got to. Me and my sister got it on VHS all the time, like it's in the original Swedish film.

Oh not the Swedish one, it was the very it was the American remake that they did in the late eighties. It's The Adventures of Pippy long Stocking or the new It's the New Adventures of Pippy long Stocking And uh, I don't remember what year it came out, but I was really really young and I rented the VHS so

Yeah.

None of it, like literally none of it holds up. Like none of it holds up.

I watched this recently and was just like, what does this say about my psychology as a child.

That I love this so much?

But yeah, that that movie had me in a choke hold for the first five ten years of my life?

Did it?

Did they have a song?

Did that? But like a thing Long Stockings is coming into.

Your red headed girl, you know, you know, Yeah, I don't think I understand anymore.

All I can say is I've really tried to get through.

It in recent in the recent times, and uh, and I can't make it all the way through.

I've yet to make it.

Captain in it had like a little monkey.

I think it's the neighbors.

I hate the neighbor kids a lot as an adult for some reason, the one that she's bringing joy to, just like, leave Pippy along, let her be magical by herself.

I don't know. I have trauma, Brett, but for reasons it doesn't work for me anymore.

Fucking fucking therapies stuffing for you, I knew what what is the film that means the mice to you? Not necessarily the film itself is any good, but the experience you had around seeing the film will always make it special to you.

Justin Simeon, Oh wow, I think probably I am not your Negro.

And it is a great film. It's a great film.

And the film itself is actually a masterpiece, and it's about you know, James Balwin, incredible genius. But it also, in his words kind of it puts forth his sort of philosophy on life and particularly how racism operates in America. But he as this very articulate gay black man sort of gets you to see it in a way that it doesn't devastate me. It sort of just it makes me feel really awake and really engaged to be a part of the change. And I saw this in theaters

Life and my work and my career.

So that, for whatever reason that one comes to mind, I just there's lots of movies where you know, we left changed or I left changed or whatever, but that one I'd never I'd never sort of had my own personal revolution.

Quite as rapidly as I had watching that film.

It's great fucking film. I think it was. I think it was before George Floyd. I think it was that the year before.

Yeah, it might have been the year before, but just the way he connects things that are so easily obscured, particularly the image of a white cowboy, you know, the white cowboy that we all sort of understand of the West, and how that kind of of already buries the involvement of black folks in the expansion out west, and why it is that we sort of in our framework so young before anyone tells it to us, we see the enemy as people of color and indigenous people, and we see the heroes as white.

And how that.

Stuff is communicated before anyone intends to communicate it.

It's fascinating to me. You know, Cinema is a really powerful thing we invented. It really cuts through.

Your thinking and gets right to your sub conscious and starts communicating with you right away, and oftentimes in ways that the people who make films, including us, don't expect. I mean, that's what everyone says. There's a movie that you're right, there's a movie you filmed, there's a movie that you edit, but you can't ever control the movie that people see and what it.

Does out in the world.

A great movie is a relationship between people and the movie. And to understand the ways in which particularly systemic racism, pression of all kind sort of operates inside of this really amazing thing we created.

I'm endlessly fascinated by that.

Yeah, and you're right of the thing of I always think about like in a different way, but like fight Club, I don't think the result of Fight Club was what I assume David Fincher wanted, you know.

What I mean? Really in what way?

Well as in it's a great film, and I think he's very intelligent, it's very well made. But the fact that it that it became a sort of beacon for sort of alt right sort of men to go, that's what I want, rather than this is a satire. This is that this was aspirational and and I think a lot of people sort of kind of took messages from it that I don't know were intended, you know what I mean?

Sure, Yeah, No, that's that's really real.

I mean the thing is, like I think, what's really hard about making movies and TV shows? Yes, of the art versus commerce, but that's too simple. Movies and TV shows are dreams. They are big public dreams that we share. They operate the way dreams work, which is there's like a literal examination of what's happening.

There's the plot there's this is about this.

And this and that, But then there's this other part that's like totally subconscious and symbolic and speaks to a part of us that we can't always even articulate into words. And so there is this dance between what a movie is supposed to be about and what the intention is and what it actually the conversation that that thing starts

Yeah, do you try to keep that in mind?

Are you good at listen? Dave Lynch is one of my favorites, right, and he doesn't explain anything. He will never, ever, ever, ever ever say well, this is what it's actually about, Well this is what I think it's about. Like he just leaves you to dream. It's like he's the dream you dream however you want to dream it. I'm never

I can?

I can, And part of me even saying this is to remind myself how little control I have. I do think that an artist's intention is worth considering when watching something. So I both appreciate David Lynch and Stanley Kuberg and directors that don't want to say anything, but those are also filmmakers who you know, to lean in when you're watching a David Lynch film, you know, to sort of have a dialectic with that movie that is not a movie you just put on and sort of expect it

Really feel like always I get that benefit.

I don't always feel like, especially when I first started audiences, and also because I tend to make comedies and not dramas. I tend to talk about very serious things, but in like horror camp or social satire or giant blockbuster comedy or you know, these sort of I don't know these genres, I really don't get looked at as if there's something extra going on, and so I have at times felt the need to explain myself and let people know what my intention is, but I don't feel great about it.

But not everybody watches things that way, you know.

I always I think there's a reality of how much stuff that is in the world and how I totally get the I don't think it's a bad thing if you're presenting your thing and it will probably get one shot to be seen, that you're allowed to say his his, like the lens through which to watch this thing.

Right, yes, yes, And so I try to find a balance there, you know. But he ultimately is not something that's really up to me. I'm channeling something. At the end of the day, I am.

What is the film you must relate to?

Okay?

It's a movie that's hard to pronounce. It's called Symbio Psycho Toxicplasm.

Okay, and it is.

By a filmmaker named William Greeves. It came out in nineteen sixty eight. He is a black documentary filmmaker who, in my opinion, created reality TV five years before American Family, which is often cited as the documentary project that creates

I cannot stress enough the year that this was made.

Is making a very provocative social satire and what you're watching, or what you're told that you're watching, is a documentary about the making of that film. And the film itself you never really see. You kind of see him and these actors working on a scene, and it's a very provocative,

And these people who love him.

And would never ever, ever, ever admit to themselves that they are influenced by his race in any way, shape or form, slowly second guess him and think less of him totally because of their unconscious bias around his race and his ability to lead them and to do what he is doing. But they'll never admit that to themselves, and they can't even admit it to him. It's just something that you as the audience, get to see kind of outside of the moment, and it is a profoundly

Them in the movie. They thought he was making that other movie.

Was he never really making the other movie.

No, he was always making the movie about making the movie.

So the other movie doesn't exist.

The other movie doesn't exist.

Wow, it's just like this wild script where it's it's like, it literally is wild.

It's let's hope that movie ever, but.

It's I don't know, it's it was one of those movies I was so mad I never got to see in the film school because when I saw it, I was like, oh, oh yeah, that's what I experienced.

Oh my god, I'm not insane.

Okay, cool, Okay, I'm not crazy, all right, got it?

Okay? Cool?

What's it code against?

It's called Symbio Psycho toxy Plasm.

Wow. Yeah, I know it's the hardest movie to find, but it's out there.

William Greeb's genius, genius, genius, genius and heralded genius.

Wow.

Justin Saimy, what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? Please?

Starship Troopers. The shower scene.

I mean, I believe I five stars.

I came into my own.

I came into my own watching that shower scene and watching it over and over again too.

Can't argue with it. I know Pulverjo got naked himself so that the actors couldn't complain about being naked.

Yes, which I don't think what is that today? Yeah, I don't know that would be appropriate.

But I'm grateful for the work, you know, I'm grateful for the ambition, the point of view as it were, very grateful.

There's a sub category to this question, traveling is worrying why it does film you've found.

Okay to I have to give you two answers. So one is Nightmare on Elm Street. Two because that is literally my gay awakening. I'm sorry. I should not have watched that movie at the age that I watched it, and that is probably why I didn't quite understand that what was happening was bad. Because when he ends up in the locker room and the gym coach and stuff starts to happening, and then he runs into the gay bar, all that felt really exciting to me.

As a child. I don't I couldn't tell you why at the time. I can now.

And then the other one is also a horror movie, Ganja in Hesse, which is you know, it's this nineteen seventy three black it's called black exploitation. I would call it black experimental horror movie. And it treats like vampirism, almost like a drug addiction. And you see Bill Gunn who's the director of the film, and.

Dwayne Jones, who is the lead.

In Night of a Living Dead, and they are often like shirtless, covered in blood and like wandering around in a haze. And I've somehow that really works for me.

They both are giving, like bougie black daddy but doesn't shave energy, and that's just not something that I get in a lot of places.

It's something that I don't really see in films.

And so even though what's happening on screen is very shocking and beautiful and terrifying and whatever, I'm kind of like, Okay.

You like your you like your med. Boogie Daddy's covered in blood.

Boogie Dad is covered in but and they had you know, when black men have body hair, chest hair, we sometimes call it taco meat because it curls up you know, it's like little balls and there's a lot of taco meat going on in that movie, and I just really appreciate that. You know, it's nineteen seventy three. It was a different vibe, it was a different style. Yeah, it worked for me, works for me still, so fantastic. I would not have said that unless you asked.

I'm protty.

Those are my understandswers. Thank you.

What is objectively the greatest film of all time might not be your favorite, but it's the greatest film of all time.

Two thousand and one in Space. Honestly, Yeah, you can have it period.

You know, it's interesting filmmakers that have on here. Filmmakers often say that doesn't come up. Almost no one else says it. But the people who said it consistently are directors.

Yeah, it's because it You can't say it's the best story. You can't say it's the best dialogue. There's a bunch of things you can't say about it that we typically understand to be involved in great films. But for me, the thing it does something that very few films do consistently, which is, for me, it creates a religious experience through images alone, and it communicates really deeply existenteal philosophically complicated observations about life in the universe, and it does so

I was like, where, Yeah, what are we doing here?

We're just going to stay in this one shot of the of the shuttle like being slowly dropped down, you know.

So.

But once I actually like gave into that movie, I watch it all of the time.

It is it's like going to movie Church for me.

That movie you can have it? What is what is the film that you could or have? What's the mist Iver? Diver get?

Okay Jackson's American Family Dream? Do you know this movie?

I died that?

This movie?

What is that?

It is a TV movie that chronicles Little Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five all the way up through to Michael Jackson's Motown twenty five performance. It stars Angela Bassett and a variety of other people playing a variety of Jackson's at a variety of ages.

And I could watch this movie on a loop forever.

It has absolutely everything that I'm interested in in a story. It has pop ambition, It has black people, It has Jerry Curls, It has Afros, It has Little Michael Jackson, teenage Michael Jackson, Big Michael Jackson, Angela Bassa's speeches about various children needing to go to bed immediately before she spanks them.

It is so good.

And I mean this both ironically and unironically. I really genuinely loved this movie. And there was a moment there was like probably ten years in my life when VH one was just always playing it, and whenever it was on, I had to just I stopped whatever I was doing and I would finish it from whatever.

And this is like like a four hour long movie.

You know, it was broken up into two parts originally and aired over two nights.

It doesn't matter if I.

Meet Michael, you know in Motown Era, I gotta I gotta stick with them all the way through, all the way through the thriller.

You know. The ship was like my bible. It was like the mythology of my of my life.

At times, no, i'd they starts coming from two thousand and one to.

Jackson's Jackson's truly that honestly, that sums me up the filmmaker, I think pretty well.

That was smash those things together.

And you never know if you're gonna like what you get, but it is what you're gonna get.

Now, I don't like to be negative done about you, so we'll do it fairly quick. What's the worst for me?

Ever? So Birth of a Nation? Fuck that movie.

You could do that on that, you could do that love.

Look, it's first of all, it doesn't even have sound. Okay, it's not a.

No, it's I mean, it's like it's it's uh. I mean, it is just this racist fever dream. And it is so overrated. I mean to say that it is overrated. Yeah, it's such an understatement because yes, of course it brings a lot of innovations into cinema, but at the time it came out it was overrated. It was like the President of the United States, like, this is truth written lightning, and it's just that's all it is.

Minstraal. See, it's just black face, blackface.

And and Shenanigans and racism and the beginning of like the resurgence of the KKK in America. I mean, it's this horrible thing that nobody at the time who was involved in writing the history of cinema could see was a racist piece of shit, like like it took way too long for us to have that kind of like widespread understanding of the film. And even now, like in film school, like we are all still taught this movie and it's not and I don't I don't believe in centering it.

Like I think people should see the movie, and I think that it does innovate.

A lot of things, but it's sort of I don't know. It's also just not as great as people say it.

I agree. I agree.

It was taught at my university and I remember being it is weird how it was. I think it was kind of sort of pitched like I can't remember, but but it wasn't like it was like, yeah, it's a bit racist, but it's one of the greatest films ever made, so so it's on the list, and it isn't very good. It isn't the way when you watch I don't know, Chaplain.

Or Metropolis Sunset.

Or you're like, this is really good and then you watch bad magics. I think this is ship aside from being.

And it was extremely popular, and that's worth unpacking.

Why the first giant blockbuster movie that got people in the habit of watching feature like movies, Why that movie is also so horribly racist, Like I think that is worth talking about, but especially the way it's pitched.

Yes, it's like, this is a great movie. It's a little race. I remember, like, No, the.

Most important thing to understand about this movie is how horribly egregiously racist it is.

I'm so sorry, it's out right.

It is a hard book because you're just sort of like, it's weird that you're right that it wasn't you know, twenty years ago it was still like, yeah, it's on the list to greatest physical time with a little caveat a little caveat.

Yeah, there was a there.

Was a whole controversy at my film school, like a couple of years ago about this film's poster and.

Role in the curriculum. But I understand that d W.

Griffith, this is an important director for a lot of technical reasons, but for my money, yeah, there are other there are other films that era worth talking about.

I think that's it. It is when it's like, I agree with you, there's enough other options to look at.

Or at least a contextualize.

Yeah, yeah, but what is You're in comedy? You've made ship tons of comedy. You's done a lot of comedy. They're very funny. What's the film that made you laugh? The mist?

Okay, this movie was not meant to be a comedy. Okay, but do you remember the movie Obsessed starring Idris Elba, Beyonce and Ali Larder.

Oh my god, it's like an erotic thriller.

Sure, uh huh? Yeah, actually, no, it is. It is. It is an erotic thriller. Basically, Ali Larder is a white woman who works.

I believe that Idris Elba's job, and it's trying to still Beyonce's man. And I also, I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that the working title of this movie is oh No, she didn't. And I saw this movie at nighttime at a theater in what's called the Grove in Los Angeles, and this movie theater was filled with drunk homosexuals, black people who love Beyonce and like a smattering of general audience who truly didn't get that we were all in a very

You're like, oh my god, is she gonna fall through the roof?

Like can she like continue to wield that axe like on these stilettos.

And I remember someone screaming.

To the left, to the left, and the entire theater like explodes in left, and there was somebody else like there was like a couple I believe to my right who like really were not understanding what we were all asking about it were really upset that we were ruining this movie for them, But it was the whole theater.

It was like this.

Spontaneous, magical moment of you know, going back to what you said, Camp, just the experience of the shared experience of what horrible crazy things an audience can get up to with your movie, you know.

Go way beyond anything you imagined.

And there are plenty of great funny movies that mean to be but that never have I had a more enjoyable, group communal experience watching a movie than that.

It truly was.

My question is I get it and I hear you? And I'm genuinely curious if the filmmakers did did because that was my understanding of Camp. When you say Camp is a film like that, and I kind of go, they know, right, they know, you.

Know, watching that movie.

Sometimes some people seem to Ali Larder seems to.

Know what movie she's in. Yes, And there.

Are some scenes where I feel like I knows in some scenes where he does not know. So it's hard to really say honest exactly, but if somebody knew at some point it was it might have been the editor, it might have.

Been the director.

But there were just some sequences that were just so this one in particular, whether we keep cutting to the shoes, you know, not since Brian de Palma has there been such attention paid to women's shoes at a climactic moment in a movie. And it all had to do with the height of the stilettos, and I was like, that's.

That's all.

That's an outrageous choice to make right now. And I'm so glad that they made it.

I really am. I adore that film.

Right justin Yes, sir, my god, my god, you've been wonderful, You've been silent, You've been wonderful, wonderful. I've really loved this. However, you were at the Academy Awards and you were given Lifetime Achievement Award because they were like, fucking hell, we should have given him an Oscar for doing white people.

You stayed.

You started talking about statistics, You started talking about the tax tax situation in America. You were you started, you were going the numbers. You were talking about whether you could have been an accountant. You started talking about revolution again, you were so boring. People were stood and then the orchestra started playing the music like maybe we need to get them up, and they went people long stuck it. But then you kept talking, kept talking, and you stared

Combat all over their faces.

Everyone Meryl streep Den to Washington, Ah. Everyone covered, covered in good and on the upside from from people thinking this was the most boring moment in Oscar history turned into well this would probably be the thing most remembered, and it's even topped Will Smith And I'm not the Oscars wasn't invited, but I'm like hovering around outside of the coffin, you know what I'm like, and I go, what was that noise? It's handed like a bomb went off, and I put my head in, I go, where's the job?

I love it.

So I put you on in the coffin. But it's still You've got bits of people's jewelry around. There's no room in this coffin. And I've I've also seen.

I touched everyone and.

Halle Berry you had a bit on jayl I was like sorry, Ben was like Jesus Christ. Matt David was there, Jack Nick was in coming. Anyway, I get you in the coffin. There's no room in this coffin. There's only enough room to slip one DVD inside for you to take across to the other side. What film are you taking to show the Starbucks? The star Banks star Banks, jelly Starbucks, Starbucks star what do we call it? You're jelly bean star Bucks Stop.

Oh right, the star birs burst star bursts. What star burst jelly beans people that I'm eating?

Yeah, starburst jelly beans. What are you tearing there telling me not to when it's your movie night? As they scream every time I e. Heaven Paris is burning? Wow?

Obviously, yeah, right, the clear Because if they don't, if they don't understand what reading is, and that shade came from reading, what are we doing in heaven?

Like if we don't know how to yeah, you can't be in heaven.

We all know how to.

Pull together the drags and put on a good show.

Then what's the point We're gonna be up there for a really long time? Okay, we need to learn how to entertain ourselves.

So obviously I don't even know why it is obvious.

Sure, I'm sure that's I'm sure everyone.

Yeah, you'd be amazed. I'm not gonna take it that.

Yeah, I don't even You probably wouldn't even need to include that because I'm sure it's just so repeated.

Just after guests, justin.

What a delight?

Yeah?

Is there anything people should watch for other than the Haunted Mansion, which I guess is coming soon? When does it come out?

July twenty eighth, will be in theaters Disney Plus at some point after that, I don't know. And then probably after that, the next thing you'll see is Hollywood Black. It's a documentary project I'm making about black cinema history, so that might be the next thing we'll see.

Yeah, well, Joy, this has been so great. I've loved this. I thank you for doing it. I have a wonderful death.

Yeah, I thank you, man, genuine fan of yours.

Oh Man.

Honestly, if this is what it's like, this is what it's like, I'm up for it.

Let's do it. I'm down.

Good day to you. So that was episode two hundred and fifty one. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com. Forward slash break Goldstein for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secrets and video with Justin. Remember to watch Ted Lasso and Shrinking on Apple tv plus. Go to Apple Podcasts. Give us a five star rating. But right about the film that means the most of you and why it's a lovely thing to read. My neighbor Marien loves it always makes her cry. Thank you to