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each year at Rebecca. Last year, I was lucky enough to sit down with director Guillermo Del Toro, and I'm pleased to present that conversation to my Here's the Thing audience, take a listen to Rebecca Film Festival's new podcast, Tribeca Talks. This is Tribeca Talks, our favorite conversations recorded live at the Tribeca Film Festival. I'm le SRB. Academy Award winning director Guillermo del Toro sat down with acclaimed actor Alec Baldwin as part of our twenty nineteen Director See These.

Here's Tribeca CEO and co founder Jane Rosenthal with the introduction. It's my great honor tonight to introduce to you too. Amazing Cinophiles who are both masters at their craft. Giamma del Toro, as you know and many of you are fans of his work from Crimson Peak, Pacific, rim Hell Boy Pants, lambre Laid to Devil's Backbone, Chronos, and of

course the Academy Award winning The Shape of Water. Joining him in conversation is a great friend of Tribeca and extraordinary actor producer, someone who I personally had the privilege of of watching him work up close when de Niro directed him in The Good Shepherd. Lately, the two have been collaborating on S and L in case you haven't seen that anyway, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Alec Baldwin and Gialla del Toro. M If I break the chair,

which has happened, please help me get up. I was gonna say, if I break the chair which has happened, don't help me up. I'm gonna lay here and take a nap. You know. It happened then online television h until I came in with a three old time Alice and I said in the pool horrible and it's kind of flimsy. Well, um, it was amazing. Who's that guy with Marvin Davis was a guy. He was a big guy.

And I came to an event once. It was some big fundraiser at the Beverly Hills Hotel years ago, and these guys came in with a big chair like a throne. It was this massive wooden carved chair with ornate faver I said, what's this. This is Mr Davis chair that he travels with everywhere. And they put the chair there at the table and he sat down, and I thought, man, that sounds like a great idea. I should have my

own share. People carry around from it and believe it or not, is the first thing I look at because sometimes I don't fit them. I fit like a muffin, kind of like spilling. There's when I come to the edge of my kids aren't because they would put butter on you and eat you, right they I'm a good guy to travel for the and that plane. Now, now, speaking of affording your own chair, I think that you

know your career is going so miserably lately. It's just so terrible what's been happening for you, and that maybe you can't afford your own chair it. I want to go back with you, and I want to go back because I was so ignorant about film education and how you begin a career like yours. And and apparently you took this with your father's Super eight camera when you

were child, Right now I was. I was about eight, and my dad I used to get like he had a car dealership and sometimes people gave him technology as payment. This is Mexican the sixties and this you know, and and they gave him this camera and this projector. And I didn't know anything, but I started buying Super eight reels. They would condense a movie into one reel. So I bought the Crimson Altar with Boris Karlov, and I bought Night of the Demon, and I was projecting them and

then I said what is the camera from? They said, that's what you make movies with. And before that I thought movies were something that happened and and somebody was there to record it something. Yeah, but they were things that happened. The people so just left on the look that Johan reptile destroying the city. And and and I started shooting. I started shooting those super aids. And where would you get the films? Like? What was the marketing? In?

No Internet? They came in cartridges. And then you took that cartridge to the pharmacy and you deposited in the pharmacy and they said come back in seven days and they would send it to Mexico City. I lived in Wallahara, which is the second We were like an and and and they sent it on seven days later it came.

And I tell you this, the the greatest drill I've ever had was the day I projected that first real because there was displacement I I said, I did, Dad, that is in the screen where I see the Crimson altar and I don't. And there was a magical moment. There's a there's a great story by Harlan Ellison called The Cheese stands Alone, and it's like that goes to a little antique shop and a guys tells him what

is He says, what isn't that little box? And he says, if you open it, you'll know you'll relieve your greatest moment. If I'll be there years from now, or it may have already happened, I think that's my greatest moment. And he opens it and it's a home run. When he's seven and he knows now that he'll never never and that that rejecting of that super But but no cutting, no editing. You had to shoot you like Hitchcock with rope. You exactly one shot. That's what I was thinking. Yeah right, No,

I was. I was just shooting my my toys and my actual toys killing each other. And I would throw I would make a plastics and guy fill it with ketchup and we'll do the roof and throw it and it would explode on the when when I was, when I was a kid, when my my neighbors had a camera, we were little boys, and one of them used to subscribe to it. I'm sure you remember this, because if you're famous, Monster is a film land magazine, and you could get the creature of the black lagoon hands and

the head and everything. Yeah, I'm sure you did. I'm sure you had every one of them in here. No, No, I saved enough. I have the gorilla hands and the wolfman mask, which was not entirely accurate, but it worked. And then I bought you were mingling the species even and I had I I bought the gorilla feet, which made no sense, but they looked good, but I love them. They were done by don't don't post who was a

great mask maker. But that in Famous Monsters and Mad Magazine is where I learned English, with a dictionary on the side and and watching in Sundays they would show Universal monster movies and I would listen to what they said and read the subtitles. And that's how I started. At seven, I was fluent in English thanks to Famous Monsters, Famous Monsters of Film Laine magazine. We would do these things in my and I would have the dracula drag on and the fangs, and of course it was silent.

There was no sound and there was no cuttings. You see me holding the woman, which is like the girl who lived next door. She was like, you know, seven years old. And you see my friend like off camera, he's only bite around the neck because you see me go what and he's like, bide around. I'm like, oh, we ah. You know, if you guys go to Google and google for a moment, there's a photo of me

with fangs and eyes drinking my sister's blood. And you remember the fires in California and recently my entire I have a collection of strange crap and it's two houses a strange crap with secret passages and the fires came very very close, and I escaped and the next day I came back and I picked up that photograph. This is what I want to say everyone to say. So when you started, uh, and you were a kid, did

you Uh? You're doing this and you're experimenting, and of course you enjoy it, which I guess it's the one foundation of directing is you have to enjoy directing so hard and it's such a difficult and require so much patients. But when did you start to seriously right when you sort of write down? I already was right when I started the Super Eights. I was writing short horror stories,

not very good, and recording them on a cassette. I would record a radio play because I was born in sixty four, so I when TV ended around nine thirty o'clock at night, we would lay on the on the kitchen and listen to radio novellas. You know. We would listen to radio plays. And there was one called the Turn Off the Light and listen, and there was another one called the Mad Monk, and this and that, and

I would listen to this horror stories. So I said, I'm gonna write them and make them in little cassettes. And you know what happened is as a kid, I wanted to be this was my definition of her career. I wanted to be a marine biologist that lived by the sea, studied, studied the creatures of the sea, and wrote horror stories. And I when I found directly and said that tops it. It's better. I'm gonna do that. But but I started. I remember trying to emulate styles

when I was a kid. Well, and it's always had this dichotomy. For English. I was fascinated when I was young by the precise adjectives that Bradbury would use no as a young reader. And in Spanish, for me, the two guys that captured the language in a way that is musical for me is one root for and Hogel Louis Borgez, where both they were tremendous when I was a kid, a big influence. But it's it took me so many years. When I write a screenplay in English.

The thing that I be labored the most, and I think I finally got it right on Ship of Water was dialogue. Other than that, I finally you've got it rhinally, Yeah, because it's it's very it's very it's very it's very difficult. I understand. When I was writing Ship but Water, I was watching this beautiful documentary Salesman, which is in the sixties Bible sales I'm going to door to door because I wanted to get the rhythm of the language back then.

And it's it's really it's music. And English is very percussive, and Spanish is very melodic. We say ten words and you guys say two or three. You know, we we say my wife or my wife is so stain and it could be very percussive to some that's like work for I'm afraid that's concussive. Concussive. It hurts, so I know it hurts. Sometimes it hurts like hell no, it's it's a different rhythm. No, no, no, Well, I mean I love scripture. People will send me a script. I was.

I read a script recently that my uh my partner. I have a little kind of micro budget company. We produced a film and the writer director we we left at this opportunity because he did not have an equivalency of everybody's voice and the muscularity of their language. People who were simple spoke simply. There's other people who were very very intellectual. He was very kind of kind of ten dollar words and stuf forth and he and he gave a very specific voice in language to everybody, which

I love. The writing dialogue is very difficult, for that is the that is the drama. I think dramaturgy is full of many structural things that you can learn, but the ear to make each person speak as a character completely formed and used, the idiosyncrasies and the mistakes or the charming or the overwrought, is really really the art. So when does your formal education down there, like when you're there? I mean, I hate to say this, but you know, in the United States, especially in my youth.

I'm a lot older now, but in my youth, there was still the kind of you know, gleaming idea of Hollywood going up to Los Angeles. And now there's the diaspora of film production all over the United States. Now you know, in Atlanta and all this craziness. But when were in Mexico, what was the in Mexico? I was I was born and raising Wallahara, so there was no there's always in Mexico. When I was growing up, it was the capital Mexico City have everything we have to

go there to learn. We have yeah, and they have the festivals blaa. So at one point a group of people in Wallahara we got together and we said, there's no school, let's create one. There's no festival, let's create one. That festival, which we created thirty five years ago, is now one of the biggest film festivals in Ina. And and uh the school, the schools still running and uh

and that festival. The first year, I was one of the directors with a short film called on Alope, and I was the ticket salesman, the projections and the driver and pressure. And I think that I remember I told you no better on that popcorn, by the way, disappointed, I would do that, I would And I think the beauty of that. I learned to project. We had a center back then, you have no no video cassettes. So we had a Revival Club which every Saturday and Sunday

we would project. We would organize a cycle of movies of Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunel uh. And for about eight years that was a big film education. But I'm an avid reader and n avid watcher, so I read anything I could.

Under puberty hit and then my interests changed a little and I read a little less now when you when you're in film school, you attended the film school, Well, we created it and from what we did is the first jarity on film, so so you can get into the I was both the first year we brought teachers from Mexico mostly and the second year we were teaching. I thought I got film language, and I think, I love teaching. I do this day. I love teaching. I love explaining time for that, you know, I do it

now and then I grew. I still do it now and then I have right now my focus is animation and I still go to Galalajara and I have we're creating an animation workshop for stop motion, and I created a couple of scholarships, and I still got to the animators and I tell them how to structure a screenplay. And I love when you explain something, you really learn it. When you directed your first feature, which was Chronos, you directed Chronos, you shot in Mexico City, Yeah, yeah, there was.

There was. What what I would have liked as a career, I would have ambitioned and I would have loved was to be a weird guy in Wallallahara doing weird movies in genres in Wallallahara. So I wanted to do noir film, noir in my in my streets. I wanted to do horror in my streets. So Chronos came out of that. I wanted my I lived with my grandmother many many years. She was very, very Catholic and exercised me twice and I I we had a blamer, do you no, No, I would have done the same. I wish she had

controlled my car intape. You know she didn't. She gave me a friend chicken, the least provocation for breakfasts on level. The thing is, I felt I wanted to tell a story of a grandfather and a granddaughter, and the grandfather was a vampire, and the granddaughter loved him no matter what. Basically all my movie are about loving someone no matter what. All of that and and and uh, and I thought I'll write it for the province, and then we just

moved into Mexico City. That was a very difficult movie to make. What did you learn when you're on the set making your first feature and you have some resources, maybe not as the kind of resources you would eventually have to make, It's all the same. I was gonna say, what was what were the things that with the big learning curve for you in the practical experience of your first home, the thing that you get a horrible, horrible lesson early on, because Coronas told me about eight years

to get me. And I remember there was a beautiful scene which is not in the movie where he comes back if any of you saw it. The guy restorects and comes back and he cannot wake up his wife because she thinks he's dead. He's living in the attic and a toy box, you know. So he went to see her and he wanted to touch her but he couldn't, and he wanted to lay next to her but he couldn't. Then he laid on the floor and I had a top shot of him laying on the floor. It was

like a beautiful, little tender scene. And it was one of the scenes that I made the movie for Lah Lah Lah. And it came and things happened, and it went wrong and it went away, and you never forget that. You really, as a direct doesn't no, but you you need to know that what you're doing is and you're orchestrating an accident and you only get one chance of

really getting it and then you moved past it. To this day, I have only re shot something one in Pan's Laverne an additional shooting to three days on on Pacific rink, because you prepare so extensive. I prepare because I say, this is what it's gonna go away, the fear, or what it's gonna wear. You know how people dream that they go to school and they're on their pajamas.

I dreamed that I come to said and and something goes wrong, and I said, it's not radio, and I have to and I prepare really well because then there's room for him now. And as you said, the arc is the same, so that now in your career where you have this huge career making films, and the budgets are of course so much more significant, but the methodology is the same to you. There's always there is now. Well, let me let me put it this way. I have made movies for one point nine million, and I have

made movies for a handred million. Oh, I know the procedures. The procedure is exactly the same, because as a director is your duty to your responsibly always exceed the scope, exceed the budget. But we talked about you always other in other words. In other words, if you have enough time and enough money, you're sucking up you you you you have wrong. I may be fat here, but I'm not fat here. So you know here is like a

six pag on the you know here chisel. But but it's do do give me On a Campbell Shape of Water, it's nineteen point three million and the scope is much bigger. And I remember on the first Hellboy, Uh, they came in and I have all these things, and they said you have to call what was it, You have to call seven million? And I said, okay, I'll add on actions in yeah, to screw you all of actions. So I I added the scene where the pendulum destroys the bridge.

It was not in the original budget, and we ended up on their budget. Still Shape of Water we ended up two hundred dollars under budget. But that is the most amazing thing in the ark of my work in films to go now to these super micro budgets where it's like, you know, if I do uh, you know, like a small row in like mision impossible. And then I go to another movie and I'm on the set of a movie where I'm saying the entire budget for this movie. Is the budget for Tick tax on Mission Impossible?

You know, I mean they like Mission Impossibly, Like you can't believe how much money they have. But you have to keep going back and forth. Yeah I do. I mean you're doing cardion muscles, you know you're doing You're doing different exercises when I go up to a smaller movie. That's why I used to do an American movie on a movie in Spanish as director, because I wanted to force myself to go back to tighten the muscles. Because those muscles and this ones and and and and uh

and what is beautiful about it is you realize. I mean, have you ever been on a movie where you go, we have enough time to get this in right? There's always you always is an oppressed I had. I had a friend who wrote me into not racial sage from He asked me to a film, good script, good director. And we go to shoot the film and we're shooting the big action scene as a like a shootout with the cops on this bad guy and uh. And we

go to Griffith Park and we're gonna shoot. We're gonna do night shooting on the shortest night of the year. So we have like less time, and when I'm going, okay, Phillis, it's the shortest night of the year and we want

to kind of get these shots. So we're sitting at a picnic table and I said, so we do have video playback, and the guy goes, now, we don't have video playback and I and I said, I said, I don't want video playback every day, but for this one day of action, I said, you don't have video playback. And it was a low budget film where they paid me x and they got and then guy goes, we don't we don't have any video money for video playback,

because they pointed at me, and I go what. He goes, well, we gave you all the money we had and we don't have any money, and like, you don't have any money to shoot the fucking film, you know. But I've learned about that meeting, why I will do films now and I'll say, don't pay me this, pay me less. So we haven't so we have at least a chance to make a good movie. Well, I'm happy, Tom, I'm

happy for the year. You'll say that you don't gonna because then there's other movies where we hold their head underwater. By the way that they we gave a financial talk, dont come not because I'm the same way I put all my salary and shape of water, uh entirely. And I said, how the way the way I see it is, I say, I call it guard and I want that on my wall. So I'm gonna pay for it, like I would pay for a painting. So why don't I pay for an extra day? Why don't I pay for

an extra little piece of set I wanted? And I mean, I think, uh, I've always find that the rewards are bigger when emotionally and existentially when you do that, I think I've never done it any other way. I put my money on Pacific Red. I said, I put my money on the first helm boy, blah blah blah. Sometimes they give it back. Sometimes it's pretty. That's that's a sign of how the business has changed. I used to play chicken with them. They'd say, well, you know the

director's assistant. The directors say, I can't bring Jeff. They don't want to pay him. And I really, it's really hurted me to do the movie without Jeff. And I call the producer and said, I'll pay for Jeff. Take Jeff's salary out of my salary. They do that want and then the old days, I said that you'd embarrass them and they go, no, no, no, no, very kind of you. Thank you, but we and they want to be embarrassed. They pay for Jeff. How about starting like

a ten years ago. They go, okay, sure you pay for Jeff. We're under thank you. We're so sweet. We're on the same phase of our sal This week, I wasn't negotiating this and that on something and I said, I was talking to the studio on the phone and I said, just so you know, my salary is contingency that I can execute at will. So we this week. That's a conversation because if I need the next two day or I need for the night box, because these

moments don't come back. They don't come back. If a naturalist on the zone and you need that, we're all under pressure anyway, because to direct is hostage negotiations with reality. What it is, that is what it is. Directly you can be cubric couple, You're gonna be anyone. The sound

still rises at six thirty for everyone. Everyone. The winter says the weak of the whatever you have a reality and I think some people think of directing as control, and I think is about the wisdom of identifying the opportunity in the crisis and not not not taking it

with fear, but saying we're gonna do it. There's a scene in the Shape of Water, Uh where we were shooting the scene where Michael is torturing the Russian spy in a sand pit, and we were getting huge wind that was throwing the sand into the camera into our flesh. The rain was freezing, blah blah, and we lost half a day. And we shot that scene on a technic crane and me by the side of the techno in the rain, directly the actors, and we've finished right when

the sun was rising. And I love that. That's the sport, that's the sport, the challenge, that's that's why we that's why we played the day I go on and say I have a nice Studay, something's wrong, something's wrong. You have do not have enough. I think that real art and real freedom exists only with boundaries, because it's not a bounder, is a structure. If you don't have structure,

you go mad. When you made your earlier films, and there I mean, obviously they're and admittedly they're they're lower budget films. They were early for about right. But but but at some point, I mean, I'm not just saying

this to be kind. One of the only reasons I wanted to do this with you is because you were known as someone and I say this, I mean it really kind of moves me in a certain way because you are someone who in a business in which the commercial is, you know, chiseling away at a lot of considerations, and so many companies are are continuing to stalk the risk free product to the risk free, which is impossible. The risk free artistic enterprise is impossible. They must risk

their all pretended they won't. Studios, TV networks, they still wake up every day that we're gonna go out there and find that risk free movie. Fellas you know, and uh and and and and and that you are someone who the whole world worships and admires you for your artistic soul. You are an artist, You are a great lens well and when did when did you in that way that like the films are doing you and then one day you start doing them and you really have

the control. What is your artistic sensibility is it painting books. There's such a richness and the tapestry to well, where does that come from? I think when when I was, when I was very very young, I was, I just found the newspaper clippings of this uh in my mother's house for many years, I thought there were only three photographs of my childhood. And my mother, God bless her, who is never communicative, I said, And I said, I saved the photograph when I'm the vampire drinking a lot

of my sister, because I have only three photos. And my mother goes, oh, no, we have a couple of boxes in the back. I'm fifty four. He had never told me that. So I go. He was gonna sell them a mix of money. I go and get all that, and I find this moment, this newspaper. My father won the lottery in nineteen sixty nine, and he wants six million dollars. What's you want? Now? He be my father to think about it for a minute. He raised those really, it was very strict about the way he raises. He said,

you want that work, you know. But he won and and and so he bought a big house, and he bought things that he wanted and what he bought because somebody advised him to buy a lie library, because a gentleman has a library, right, And he bought a library, and I read it, and from then on I never I mean, he had an encyclopedia about human health, and encyclopedia of literature for kids, and encyclopedia of the of

fine arts. So I learned at the same time I was learning about the gay money money del ball as I was learning about Jack qb. Or Bernie writes on or Stanley or. It was the same formative years so to me. And I was reading uh O nivorously, I would read but a lot of but a lot of people are led to that water, but they don't drink. You admit that you it's in the nate thing you it is. I tell you this. I didn't get this size by being measured your passion. I'm i'm I'm insatiable

about images. I love them. I go through museums at the I think that you learned from architecture. You don't learn film from film. You learned part of film from that. When you learn film from the other arts from life, you know, I think traveling uh learning. You learn composition in painting, and it applies to film except is changing. You know, you learn how to stage on on theater. Your films, to me are people would say to me, I should I take should take this to my my wife.

My wife is not a big movie goer, and she would say to me, you know, what is it? What is it about films that you love? And I said, you know, like a film like The Godfather. You know, without picking such a cliche example, I said, in terms of the composition, the lighting, the set design, the costumes, the music that pays. I said that the thing is, you know, a work of art as closest to a work of art and cinema as we're ever going to

have in in history. I mean, The Godfather is a work of art from the first frame to the last fame there was a god. And your films are the same. You remind me of the richness inside the frame. Tell me a thing. When we first met many we at the first time in eight or nine, and you said something to me that I still use. You said to

me you were about mimic of all things. You said you were getting dressed, and you sat by the in the bed with one sogain and one soga in your hair, and because Mimic was on TV and you said, that's a great image, and you started loving the images, and I think all art I was DECI known with a friend, the painter Julian Schnabel, and we were talking and the best definition I've heard he gave today about what art

is something that you feel. It's a universe you you want to live in, or a universe that is complete. So when you see an image you it's not real, it's something else. It's not a mirror. It's a universe complete in itself, and you know the person there is obsessing. For example, we're preparing a movie we're gonna shoot in September. Yesterday I spend part of my afternoon in antique shops, buying the things that are going into a suitcase that

the character is gonna be logging around. I bought a wallet, I bought money from two I bought a shaving kid that would fit in the bag. I started feeling it and I do that for months. And with Sally Hawkins for Shape of Water, we went shopping and we found the egg timer in the movie and the dog that she uses to brush her shoes. We were antiquing and we I said, let's find a brush, let's find something that your character, because to me, it's real when a when a movie comes to my head, I can write.

I do write the biography of the characters, eight to ten pages for the actor. I tell them what the character eats, drinks, listens to, watches, likes, dislikes, and I give them a thing that is called I give them a secret that they cannot share with the rest of the That is, you and I are the only ones that know this secret. And and and some macros take it, some microls aren't. Uh. For example, Richard Jenkins on Shape of Water said, this is great. I'm not gonna use it. Really, yeah?

Really is that? I don't I don't know what I'm gonna do from and take to the next I want to be there. I don't want to think about it. And what you know, I would I would be the opposite at the releast, I would pretend that I wanted to. Well, that is so I'll cherish it always, yeah, but or other things in twenty in twenty five years, the only thing that I I've learned is that the relationship with

Jean's actor. Each actor is unique, you know, and it really is, and when it works without naming names, because first of all, clap, just give me one second. Clap here. If you are in now or are studying to be in the film industry, m clap. If you're in the shoe industry, why good clap, clap, clap. If you want to be a director, that makes sense. Man I clap. I don't clap because I don't want to be a director. Can I tell tell something? As everyone is in Miami

Blues if you haven't seen, clap. If you haven't seen Miami Blue, thank you, thank you anyway, So, um, that's a movie I made back in the plis to see an era of my career. But but the now, the the But when you in terms of actors, because this is instructive for people who are directors, and even if you're working directors or student directors, you know, I say, uh, but you know, actors they really do want to be directed. They want so badly to be directed. But in the

right way. Well, they want you to say something meaning it's your movie. Tell me what movie you want to make the decision to make your film. Um, we kind of discerned that early on. If you tell me I want to make a movie about this, and I go, oh, I don't think I want to do that. Then I say, thank you. What I tell my agent just passed whatever. And if you get to a meeting with somebody and

you know you you want that clarity. And if you sit with someone and they describe the kind of film that you want to make, you want them to just tell me what you want me to do? You know, I mean you've you've hired me like Nichols. Like Mike Nichols was like he cast they always take great directing. Half of its casting well, and he bring people in and he believed you could do what you that you could achieve what he wanted to do achieve, but evenetheless

told you to what to do. I think you should do this, and you find when it works with actors what happens, and what it doesn't work with actors, what happens. Well, I've only the worst mistake I made. I made in chronicles and I didn't I cast someone that brought a very different thing to the table, and I couldn't process it. And I think what you're do is you take what they can do and you work with that. If you if you if you are too to understand the essence

because of directing is casting. If you cast well, you're a good actors director. And the way I cast is the eyes because film is made of ice. Film is made of a gaze. Either somebody looking yeah, is there life in those eyes? Is their intelligence? Is their cruelty, is their compassion? And that you get in the first meeting, and then you get then you get the essence. And the way I see it is a symphony of ice.

I can have surgery on my eyes, make you believe more in my acting are very specific, very specific, and I think the for example, to me, the eyes of Octavia Spencer, the eyes of of Sally Hawkins, the eyes of Richard Jenkins, very different, each of them. And it's a symphony because film is symphonic. Film is symphonic. Everything is is perco say blah blah blah, but there is there is the actor. If the essence of the character exists there, it has to it has to be done

that way the casting, and then what do you do? Well? I learned. I learned a few things that are essentially true. Most directors are afraid of actors. I really a lot of them are a lot of both but here's the deal. The best thing that can happen to a director is to act, and the best thing that can happen to an actor is to direct, because then you understand that

those are the two loneliest positions in the set. And what you need to understand is that most actors feel completely alone if they don't know you are there for them, watching them and understanding what they're trying and what they're bringing. And then, for example, Richard Jenkins, you go four or five takes before you win because he's trying things, and

you understand this another actor. Some actors will dry you with a bad day to see if you say good and then they don't trust your random fast they would you would go that's great, and then he would say, okay, I'm alow to lose. I'm alone, I'm alone to lose. Yeah. Uh, And you learn all these things. Some actors need a friend, so micros need a pal, a dad, a brother, a besque master sometime mentor yeah. And you is each actor.

Some actors get great on take three, another one in dake one, and you need to go, how do I make this? Well? You? You? You? You? You also realize that you know the great. The beautiful thing where time allows is to let it kind of happen, you know. I mean, Warren Batty is a great movie stari is one of the greatest movie stars that ever lived. And I went and did Rules Don't Apply his his last song he did with Lily Collins and so forth. And I had a small part in there. And I'm doing

a scene and they had two sets. We're doing a phone call and I'm on once that he's on the other. And he would sit and feeding my lines and they'd shoot my half, and then he would move the cameras through beyond the wall. He was right ten feet from me, and they shoot him and on his side, I mean on my side. When he was off camera, he was very subtle and very sinecere. And then you go back and watched the playback and he's directing the film. Then

movie we came on his side. I mean, he did a scene he's watching this TV show and he starts convulsing and crying and sobbing, like I never could expect that the depth of his performer. He was so into it and and just keening in this scene. And we all go to the monitor and we're all watching on the playback, and he's standing behind us. I looked up at him and I was like, oh my god, that was amazing. He looks he goes every now and then,

every now and then. And I thought to myself, this is Warren Beatty, who is famous for doing like a thirty four and he takes but to work with someone who looks at you at the beginning, says, let's take our time. Maybe you're gonna get there take four. Maybe you're gonna get there. You don't get there by take ten or twelve. Maybe we should move on or you know whatever. But and and some directors wait for it to happen, but we dont wants to be like like

looking at the watch. You know that's I tell you, that's that's a duty that I can And that's a rule that I can impart here and now do anyone interested in directing, And it's a rule. Your job is no matter. Why do you have half a day to shoot a really important to see whatever it is you need to create the feeling on your cast and your group. That is enough, That is plenty, That is really great. You know that that you're gonna take this moment and

it's yours and there's no hurry. Sure you gotta get out of there at three pm and in one thirty. Still I always tell I always tell the stupidest story over and over again. I do my first movie, The Alice with Woody Allen in nineteen nine one or nineteen nine, and in that way, I'm younger, I'm kind of new to making films. I've only been making films for a few years. I'm doing this small part with Mia and Uh and they said to you, basically, don't talk to Woody and wood he's not going to talk to you.

And he's the director. He's saying, they're going he's the director and he's not going to talk to you, and don't you talk to him. I'm like, okay, okay, God. And so in that way, like where do you get the direction from somebody? Carlo de Palma, who was the DP, wound up giving me some kind of air sets directing, which was difficult because he spoke cardi any English. So my favorite story was I told this to the dj A one time or the the I think it was

the dj A some award show. I said, we would be there and Carlo de Parma will walk up to me go ale you mi a delight comes a da like a you very good and it's so good. But you know me, I go uh, I start to read his mind and I go, you don't me to lean forward in the check because they're like coming through the window like a sim he's so good luck still very good.

We get to another take. He goes, I like you the couch and no like and I say, I'm a ghost, so I shouldn't sit on the chair because the body of a ghost wouldn't make a dent in the fabric. Croup the chair. He goes, c C C, I le say you are still very good and you are starry. Well it works that that particular day maybe, But but you go on the set as an actor and you

really do want the collaboration. You want you want them to get what they want because because when you say your your your your statement here and now I want to say here and now for actress, is that if you're a good actor, you realize the director is making the movie, not you. You better get in the same

frequency the director or your fun. Well what what you what you have to thank is as a director, I'm the guy that turns on the light before anyone shows up, and I'm the guy that turns off the light after everybody leaves, and Walter wall and what I'm I'm watching it's im sake. So that day you're blue, next day you're purple, next day you're red, and you are red or purple or and you are just in that state.

But I can tell you right now in this this may be a good take if we were a minute ten of the movie, but this is minute day, be five, go faster or anything like. And the second thing that

I find is very useful is when you're young. Uh. That biography that we were talking about, I wrote them from chronos on and I would go and talk to the actor about this is the moment when you remember that you were a child, and all these introspections, and I finally realized that they don't want something to think, they want something to do. They need an action. You need an action. You need to know where you are

to be present. Because they answaid that about Brandy. He said he started to talk to like five or six words in Brandy were kind of mumbling not and walk away because we need it was the first five or six words you go in and if you if your direction needs more than a minute, is the wrong direction. Whatever. And it took him in and said, look, try this. For example, I'll tell you listen to her lines, and only when she says this, look at her in the eyes.

That changes the dynamic because you're ruffling paper, but it's an action. And then you look at her and there's contract or. In Shape of Water, for example, there's a scene with Richard Jenkins and and Sally where she's explaining to him how she feels when the creature looks at her and sees her for what she is. And they love that scene, and they rehearsed it over and over and over and over again, and the day we did it, it was dead because they had rehearsed it so much.

So there was a moment where she grabbed him and I said, slap him really hard, and I didn't tell him she was lapping him really hard, and you can see he was only alive. And I think you do things, you don't instructor simulate things, and that shakes the things very nicely. Nicholson told me that. I said, what was it like to do Chinatown with? Obviously Polanski, the legendary director directing. And there's John Houston in the cast, who's

the legendary director. And Nicholson said that Houston called would refer to Polanski's Roman Roman. You called him Roman and and he said that, uh, Polanski would hold forth and say all these things, and Houston would say, now, Roman, there really are only two directions, a little more and a little less. Fact this is John Houston. I'm I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna take that under advisement. There's something, there's something I think that as you, as you continue

your craft, simplicitly reveals itself to be the way. Yeah in best cases, and the younger you are, the more you think the most baroque solution is the good one, and sometimes it is, but you learn to identify it. So before we talk about Shape Reporters specifically, which is your latest triumph, I want to say that whenever I want to have I'm gonna say something very very personal now, and I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I can't

help it with you here. I say, you know, whatever, I want to have sex with my wife, I go like this, and I go like this, you do. And we have four kids in four and a half years. It works like a charm. I just don't it's actually like this down and she saw the movie with me. She's like, oh, okay, they're gi Gamo so um. The the described to me because obviously this is a great triumph for you. The genesis of that film, well, I was.

I'm always one of the things that I've always believed is that you should not make the movies you need, but the movies that need you that they wouldn't exist if you didn't make that, you know. I think that's that's where your boys really resides, in doing the things that you want to see but no one is doing, you know. I find it completely terrifying when people say, well, we're doing this because this other movie was successful. That's terrifying.

And I fell in love with the Creature from the Black Lagoon when I was a very small kid, and something happened because I saw the creature swimming under Julie Adams and I thought, this is this is poetry. I was a little kid, and I felt this standal syndrome exstasis, you know, of the pure beauty. And then later I was watching The Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe and Marilyn Monroe comes out of seeing creature from the lack lagoon and says, the creature just needed a little love.

And I fell in love with Marilyn and those that collision so that I thought, I've always loved monsters, and I always wanted why because I think I think that what we were freedom. No. Well, the we live in a world that right now also tends to and I think this is a very narcissistic trade, tends to do what I caught on me between black or white, and nobody is black or white. Everybody, all of us, exists in between. We are, we have the right to be polychrome and have any color we need. At ten am

and a motherfucker a dwell, I'm a saint. At one thirty, I'm a boogie dancer, a three fifty. We are. We are complex creatures, and I find that monsters give you. You call my wife right now, I'll say it's it's gonna booty here. I'm a polychrome. I'm a polychrome. So we are, and I think monsters, we we live right now in a in a way where media tells us two to be perfect in so many ways. The traditional ones you have, you have to have perfect hair, perfect Keith.

Never let them see you sweat. No, no, no, no, no, let me sweat, motherfucker. Let me let me have crooked teeth, let me having perfect hair. I don't give a funk. I want to be a good human being. There's no commercials for that, you know. And and I really think, I really think that monsters, monsters allow imperfection to be scentified. We, as I said once and I repeated, is imperfection is a goal that we can all aspire to, and it's

all inclusive. If we all agree, if we right now is a world we agree that we're all fucked up in some way. Now we're all imperfect, we would get along better and there would not be this in the tyranny of perfection is repulsive. A certain embody type, a certain lifestyle, a certain goal is torture, is absolute mental torture. These things. No one can live in those standards, whereas

in standards of imperfection, everybody can live. And I find these monsters so moving because they embody that For me, they embodied the other in a way that nothing else does. So what was the beginning of shape of for the beginning was I wanted. I wanted to tell the story of a b monster movie told as a love story, directed by Douglas Sirk. I wanted to make a movie about the love of movies, musicals and about how love

is not about change. I find this fable of beauty and to be so terrifying, and it's so tortuous because it means you meet somebody and they have to transform once you love them. Fuck that. I think the key is that you identify imperfections or or you identify an essence and you connect with that essence and it wants and I wanted somebody in my in my version of the movie, she's always been not human, She's always been an amphibian of some sort, and she sees him and

recognizes an essence. To me, that's a lot you co wrote, yeah with with Vanessa and and I thought that was very moving. And of course the first budget we did was thirty five million. And I went to say, would you like to mega Creature from the Lack Lagoon as directed by Douglas and in black and white originally? And Sarchily said in black and white fifteen million, in color nine five and I said I'll take color and and and and uh, and I started it took a while

to crack it. But buts of the writer, Yeah, because my next strive for people that are directors as well. What's that processing you've written how many screenplayers? Or cover twenty eight? You are a writer director of the the highest order. When you're co writing with somebody, do you just have a natural battery with him? But do you sometimes have from contact with him? But I don't know what I say. I always started by writing an outline that is between seventy pages, and that's the outline. And

then or it's almost the first draft. Then I gave it to them and say, do whatever you want, whatever you want, don't tell me what's wrong, don't call me, just do whatever you want. We can always undo. But if I don't give you this freedom, I'll never know what you want on adults really feah, you will be executing what I want. So the co writer whatever they want. Then it comes back and I either love it or hate it. Yes, yeah, But then then I go it should have been this other thing, or I go, this

is fantastic. I would have never thought about it, and and and and there is sometimes um. For example, I write twenty thirty pages, just a beat cheap. And then they do the first draft and then I react. I mean it varies, Kathy, I do I write for actors? I write this. You see actors in the in the in the in the in the in the constellation. I kept just hold on, is that you, sweetie? I'm on stage right now. Hold on, gear Molto Toro is gonna

tell you something very important right now? Hey, therey good? Maybe an alec is polychrome. It will explain one against home and got better. I'll say good, but I'll get howey. I'm on stage in front of hundreds of people, and I just gave to all the cash I had in my pocket for first. I'm a polychrome, Honey, Okay, I'm a polycrol. I gotta call you back over, okay, Sweete, I gotta claim it. Uh in about half an hour by um do hand. I'm okay. I thought I could

become a producer on your next movie. But but they're a little back in. But you know the process for me. But do you see if you always gonna say before we were so rudely interrupted, was that do you see like this pantheon of actors? I think you want to work with, and you go and you write for them. Yeah. I saw Sally Hawkins and I thought, this is the most powerful presence I've seen in ages, so empathetics, it's amazing, and I thought, I'm gonna write for her. I didn't know.

She's fantastic, and I love when she says she doesn't say perfume. She says, I remember, but she she's so specific. She's for me a genius. And I wrote it for her, And then if it doesn't happen with them, I don't make the movie. I really don't see the point of doing. You do somebody else, Michael Shannon. Shannon wrote it for Shannon because I think Shannon is one of the top five actors working today, and he has an amazing he has. He has such a control, uh the smallest gesture, and

he's incredibly precise. You know, he's the opposite like he he always matches everything, which I had work, but but he he also gives you different colors. And so Octavia, every every actor I write for, I've been doing that since Chronos. I wrote hell Boy specifically for Rom Brahman and and and we waited eight years. Everybody said no, no, no, they said who was the star Ron Brahman. No, and and I knew he was the only guy that could

do it. And he was your al pacino. Yes, yes, he is my compatrio man and and and uh and what you were talking about the video When we were shooting Chronos, he says, you have video assists? I don't know. And then one day we finished take three or four and says, oh, can we do one more? I said no, we're out of what I said film, literally, you don't have any more real I love Shannon because you know, enacting this, you see people who and and they have

the gift, they have the ability. I don't want to name names, but they stay in a certain genre because that's what works, and that's what they can pay to doo and uh. But then when they deviate, sometimes you see uh, you know, startling results when they kind of get off their their normal tracks. And Shannon, when he plays the negative value, he still realizes that it's it's

it's it's storytelling. I don't see a bad guy, but he's I think he is the rare guy that to me, okay, he brings vulnerability to the bad guys and menace to ye. And what I love. Uh. When I was talking to him on the beginning, he said, is this a bad guy? He said, no, I think to me, he is the most the loneliest character in the film, right. I think in fact, for me, in Shape of Water, he is the only lonely character in the movie. He's He's completely the loneliest and that gave him the key. It's like

Michael Madison and Free Willie. You think of Michael Madison in this pure jerky through you. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. He's torturing people in Tarantino movie. When you watch you, oh, this is perfect, it's beautiful, you know, to bring that color. I'm very I was very attracted to making a story. Uh. I've always fascinated. I'm fascinated by the bad guys. For me, for example, Crimson Peak, I made it because of the

bad guys. Jessica's the staining his character and Thomas Charp, which is uh a beautiful, flawed characters that I feel the tragedy of them. I think the writing for an actress specifically, I wrote for Jessica, you know, and it was very specific. She was the pillar for that project. When you have great when guys commit and they play those parts. I mean there's a lot of bad guys in some of your films, and then they play those parts.

It's just so thrilling to me. You know, like like even a movie that's an insane you know, car crash, like the Human Centipede. Oh my god, but you see the guy who's the bad guy on that and you're like watching the movie and the guys like you say, a cor broke down, You are here and no one knows you are here in this area. Yes corbody you want to come in and use the phone, and there like yes, yes, because please come in. And this guy you can't take your eyes off. Hitchcock had that maxim

which is true. The better the battle guy, the better the film. Yeah, you know, and I think Robert Walker, Robert Walker, you amazing and he he brought, as I mentioned, to the character Bruno, a sickness to that guy. Storyboarding you. Yeah.

But but but when about your storyboarding my storyboarding, I said, I would imagine I draw myself, and I what I do is I hire someone to do nice story was for the budgeting for BFx companies, but the real story was on my doodles and the morning, I wake up early, early, early, early, and I put my earphones and play movie music and storyboard.

Played movie music, movie music and storyboard, and then I read example of the movie music that takes you depends on the For example, with the with the Shape of Water, it was George de LaRue and Nino Rota and all those and and punched on Glove. Those were the soundtracks I would listen to. And and then I arrived to the set an hour and a half before anyone, not

my VP. And I walked the set and I grab a little uh staircase and I climb a little because through the years what happened to me is the still photographer after the day were over, you would look at the stil photography and they had better angles than you, and you go, why am I so lazy that I didn't see this? So I arrived now an hour and a half early, and I make sure I get better

angles and the still and I walk along. I walked up to the still talking about just don't tell anybody, but if you were to shoot this scene that, how weren't Yeah? And then it's just that and then the storyboards. What I do is I I I do thirty forty setups on the storyboards and then I ended, I literally ended on the storyboards. I can cut a scene there. I know what frame I mean, and I know which story was what I call meat and which is story was a gravy. I got this one can go and

doesn't affect this one. And what I do is every day, every day I got the day before. So if you come in on Monday, the fourth week of my shoot, you will see the entire movie, the four weeks edited completely. I want to ask you about that, about the sacred moment of the actual editit. You know when you say that about uh, like, in whatever way I can or cannot influence, you know what happens on the set. In terms of the way we're going to do the scene.

That thing you just said about me and gravy, I'll say to people, let's do the scene at three speeds. Yeah, through this at the pace that we we feel it. We're feeling our way through it. Let's do it a little faster than Let's really really give this scene the stick of like a racehorse analogy. We're gonna give the horse the stick all the way to the actually just bite the cues, take out the pause, really pace it up, because and then when we're shooting, I'll say, you can't

love every scene. We can like him. But but let's let's if if the script says Bob pulls up in a taxi runs up the stairs to the hotel. Wannt we just pull the car up and walk into the hotel. If everything is a complete meal, yeah, you let's get that over so we can luxury and on the other stas now, I mean, obviously I hate the shots that I called the signfelds, which are an establishing I tried to avoid signfields I have. I have two signfields on Ben's Labyrinth. I want to do a movie with you

one day, and I want to stand behind him. I but but what what what you were doing about is this is important? The rewards are there. So you have everything planned, and now you work with your actors, and now you improvise, and now you're discovered because you have a back complant. You know, you said, look, this is the way I know what happens. That morning I'm alone an hour and a half a board La la la,

the DP comes in. I say, this is the way we're blocking, And I think the actors come in and we block, and then somebody will say, what if I sit down in the middle of this line. You know, that's a great idea or that's a terrible idea. Because of this, No, no, no. Also, I got a couple more questions because I don't know if we're gonna take

questions from the audience. But I want, I want to say that that that the uh I mean obviously in the in the in the ark of your career where you're at this fantastic place over the last many years and doing all these really really very exotic films on a cinematic level. I mean, I mean very very You must have your choice of the directors of photography around the world. Do you do you what's your definition of like? Have you say, made films the same people eas over

the years? Yeah, I repeat a lot. I with the DP is very simple. The relationship is very simple. I say, I choose the lens, the composition and the movement and the equipment, and you you do the light. You do whatever you want with the light because I trust your light. And now and then if they have an idea, we dis cause it. But but very muscular about yeah, very much, because to me, UH is a valet between the camera and the actors, because the camera is the eyes of

the audience. Now, as Houston said, there are only two things. You can go closer or you can go away. And you can go up or you can go down. Those are simple choices. But when you for example, UH, I can tell you because it's music and symphony, a passage with a camera can be a largo or staccato or I remember, beauty. There's a beautiful shot in the first Math, Max George Miller did. He presents your mac cleaning preparing,

and it's all close up. You don't see the guy, you see details, you know, and it's very very Prussian bam bam, you know. And then the car's crashed and Max this out of the car and he walks and the camera goes to him, pushes in and gives up and he removes his glasses. Looks better than this and wants that. And it's such a glorious, symphonic, balletic moment which you're revealed. And I always say the camera should never be accidental, should never be on. It looks good. No,

what is it telling you? Is it taking you closer? You want to you know what actors, Brando used to say, right, if you want, if you want them to pay attention on whisper, and you do the same with the camera. Do you wanna do you want to listen a little? And I always keep the camera curious, like somebody that he is trying to get a better look at the scene.

It's always I would make films with I mean, I had the great fortune to work with some of the greatest cinematographers in history and make these films with ball House and all these famous people attack Fujimoto and Wanderuis and Gia and stuff with great, great dps, too many to name. And we were John Tole and I found that, you know, many actors wanted to avail themselves of this kind of education on the set of the film over many years, to learn about lenses and cutting, crossing the line,

and I was the opposite. They would say to me, you want to come and look through the lens and we want to show you. And I would look at them and go, I really don't care what you do. Uh, it's not gonna have any effect on what I do. I'm gonna do And I was like, you guys are the science departments, and I'm the acting department, and I did want to become self conscious about that, about acting for the camera in that kept it that way all

this year, all my life. I've never changed. I just I just sit there and and go fellas you know, you want. Who gives a ship. So I'm gonna say I love you Mary, or bang you're dead, or what I'm gonna do. I just gotta focus on that. You focus on that. I'm going to focus on that. You know, I think that I think that the important thing for me with me, Well, no, I think that, uh, if that works for you, that will works for you and worked at me. Well, I I think I met with

one of the great actors I think working today. I won't say the pain, but he said something I've launched that was very curious. We were having launched talking about how we work. I said, well, I like sometimes the camera leads, sometimes you lead. And we'll talk about and he said, I find that I do some of my best work my back to the camera. Very interesting. Yeah, you know, but but it actually I actually understood it.

I Mean some of the some of the real emotion he could generate was when the camera was entered the frame, or that's savvy with the I mean, I've told the story before, so I forgive you. But that's savvy with the camera. I didn't movie with Tony Hopkins and the director at Lee Tammahy, he'd say, all right, not great, do this movie. We do this movie the Edge. We love that fire from water were fired from my expo from so so Tony happens there and Lee Tammer Howy says.

He says, all right, Tony, you men are lost in the forest. He's from New Zealand. You're there. It's starving. You've got to try to find you out and find some sticks, make a fire, find something to eat. You're here, lost in the forest, Tony, would you have in mind?

And literally Tony happened goes He says, I thought my character would walk over here and stand blue amongst his standard Douglas Firs, if the glacier fed stream spilling over my shoulder, heard of cariboo with the distance, and Tony would pick the spot that was the most picturesque spot

and his character would walk over to that spot. On the scene of stand there, and Lee Tammer tamer Away we go Fantastic nine sizes aren't Tony over here quick pop of Alec time permitting over there nine cameras are Tony the glacier fed stream, the herd of Cariboo. Day two. All right, Tony you lost in the forest. You and

Alec what do you hapen? One? And I thought I would will be here, stand on this massive grittic outcropping the gratia behind my shoulder, and you were fantastic crick pop of alectime permitting eighteen cameras on turning out here and he knew like that the set like what's the night? The juiciest most which looking part of the set. I think that you learned from every I mean when people say how do you learn directing? You learning every day

from everything. Yeah. I think that's a discipline that comes from theater because your composition is your movement on the proscenium, and you do have the tendency where the where that the camera is like the proscenium where you're triangulating in the theater. I'm talking to you, but I'm kind of talking in the triumph to open up to them and you know what they're looking at, Yeah, the way you know how it looks. I think that I've I've developed

video games, I have commanded animated series. I have because you learn from everything. Learning how to direct the attention the player on a video game gives you so many more verbs and solutions that you don't get. And as an actor is the same thing. I mean we are. We are basically spies that are socially inept, and we're observing everything and putting it in our pocket two use later.

Like we're spies looking at how humans behave, what they do, what they don't do, where real drama comes from, and we put in a little pocket for later use. And when are you gonna learn a great moment? It can happen in a lightstop, you know, when you're looking at someone putting their makeup really quick or eating a sandwich and chain in the dial. It can happen at the dentist. Stuff is and you have to be always aware that

nothing is alien to your craft. When people say I get bored on a line or waiting at the doctors, then you're not a director. You shouldn't give you more. You should be always watching someone in the wings. It is look at me, going shut the fuck up. Shut. We've run out of time. But I wanted to just two last quick questions. One is uh cridatile, but so so, I want to say, quickly, so you write and create

your own stuff. And everybody talks about the Universal Library is going to come out again, the Horror Library if we do remixt you never want to do a remake of a famous harm of it, you know version I did. I tried. I actually pitched the love story of the Shape of Water basically from Creature. I went to university, I said, and they and then they screwed there with God, can we validate your parkings? There? No goodbye? But I

was trying for many, many years. And I have an idea, of course, to do Frankenstein and Bribe in a particular way. But I don't think it's gonna happen. Look, I really believe that the things the movies I do most all the time, I do them because the premise is so absolutely bonkers. It's like I go, I say, I want to do a faery anti fascist fairy tale said against the backgroup of the Civil War in Spain. Yeah, it's a bloodbuster. I want to do a dogless, third directed

sexual story about the creature. Yeah. Yeah. The the ideas to me is the combination of those flavors. And I don't think I can do a regular movie. I don't think I can. I mean everything, I don't, even the most commercially viable ones. You know, they have some weirdness in them. And I always try things that should not be done, and you do them because I do think this.

When you're in a set and you have absorbed a hundred years of cinema, which you you you can and you are no matter what you your first instinct, the ray year or instinct is the wrong instinct. You have to stop and say, Okay, that's the way it would normally happen in that movie. What can we do that is different? And you stop yourself. You have to stop yourself. And the older you get, the more you want to

go different. So I'm not sure that they willn't trust me with any legacy months maybe they want any more supportant. But let me just say this first of all, I've enjoyed doing this with you in measure because let's face text may never gonna invite me. That man I tell them, I mean, if you haven't seen him, is the greatest host, but he's also the greatest guest I highly recommend his episode of all of all episodes and comedians and cars get thank you, Thank you Legacy. I mean, but I

want to finish. I want to finish by saying that in my lifetime there are four or five directors who bring a as I said, the artistic soul you know, Copple is certainly one. I mean what they the gifts they have, the God given gifts, they have, their training, their experience, uh, their dedication, all these things. This ineffable thing, this this magical thing, this soul of the artist that has found its way to express itself at the highest

level of filmmaking. Ladies and gentlemen, give go job. The Tribeca Film Festival takes place every year in New York City. To learn more about all of our programs, visit Tribeca Film dot com. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing.