Damien Chazelle / "First Man"

Damien Chazelle. His new film First Man with Ryan Gosling, launched into the Oscar season last month at Festivals in Venice, Tell You Right in Toronto, we talked about his approach to bringing Astro not Neil Armstrong's story to the screen, and take a look back at that crazy La La Land Moonlight Academy Awards moment two years ago, among other things. So sit tight, this is playback. UM, London, then Florida, Florida, keep canaveral. That makes sense that an interesting I gotta

hit Florida, lots of press down. Yeah, the calls, you gotta hit that that. UM, then New York then d Or then d C or the New York Inn d C, then like Atlanta, Denver. I don't know. I don't come back here for three weeks, are you ready? I only recently realized that the three week part, Like when I I had this ideam I had that I was coming back for a day or so after Europe, and then I only then I happened to Actually, it's the problem

is not looking at my calendar. Yeah. Yeah. Then I looked at the calendar and went, oh no, there's no l A in here, all right for three weeks. So yeah, I'm good, all right, all right, man, I can see you again. Yeah you too. I was the rest to tell you what it was awesome? Yeah, it always is it always? Are you able to really enjoy it? Yeah? I tell you right, this is like one of the few that I'm able to enjoy. Yeah, you can actually see movies. Yeah, it would be a little more Christmas

do your own. I did. I think everyone had funny of your party. You know, one drink is all you need when you're that high up, and you were I was. I was talking to justin a lot of actually yeah, okay, got it, And we're already up and running. So let's dive in here with Damian Chazelle, the Oscar winning director of First Man. Thanks for coming back on the show. Thanks for one of our How many repeat guests have we had? Now? I think just you and Able d

Verney might be the only guest so far. We're to try to, like, you know, have some some return some returning champs if you will. You don't tend to have people come back. It's just they don't like me. That's it's the one and done kind of. I don't want to do that one again. The flag it we tried, you know, for a while, we tried to just kind of, you know, if they have something, let's not do it the next year again, Let's do it every other year if anything. But now it's like, screw it, Let's just

have some regulars, you know, be a regular name. I'm happy, too happy to be a regular. This movie is awesome. We've talked about it a lot already. Actually, and tell you're right, uh, you know the story of Neil Armstrong, you know, the Apollo eleven mission, it's really all of Apollo. You handled more of Apollo in this movie than I kind of thought you would, well and and and geminate.

And we tried to basically start right when Neil entered Nasa, so sixty one and uh or well you know, officially sixty two, and take it up till was that like the immediate, like this is this is where we should begin, Like what was the journey of finding where you should start a story with Neil Armstrong. I guess I think it was, um, well, it was always through the perspective of the moon landing. For me, that was that was the just that accomplishment. Um, obviously it's the most famous

thing about him. But but but but it also just seemed like for such a famous event, an event that could use some demystifying, you know, um, maybe de romanticizing, it felt like there was a lot left to sort of unpack in that event, and certainly would lead up

to it. So it seemed like, you know, even if this weren't a movie about Neil Armstrong, it felt like a proper place to begin would be roughly when Kennedy made his famous announcement, you know, about landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade that was sixty one, and you know, and then we would sort of set that as the as the gambit, the opening gambit, and then uh and then end with with

that being turned into a reality. Um. But you know, it's certain certainly coincides nicely with Niel's Neil's life, because those were the years that he I mean he he he joined up NASA right around the same time that that this sort of moon shot became a national goal right at the top of the decade. And you know, so some of the Mercury missions had happened. Obviously Americans had been in space already, but um, but just to

a small degree. And uh so trying to kind of see both through his eyes and through the program's eyes as a whole. Um, you know, how you go from there to there? How you go from that sort of uh, those first beginnings of space exploration to traveling not in Earth orbit, but thirty times thirty two times the distance of Earth from Earth, or the size of Earth from Earth all the way to the Moon and back. Um, how you do that in the span of basically eight

or nine years. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, when you look at it that way, it's certainly it struck me as insane. And when I looked at the geograph or thing, you know, you actually kind of look at the diagram of of you know, to scale of Earth to the Moon, and it strikes you on a primal level. Even more so, it just seems like, you know, for such a again, such a famous event, it's almost like we we we

take for granted how insane it was. Yeah, when we had you on the show two years ago actually, which is that's crazy too, by the way that that's been two years. But you had this quote that that I've been using a lot, which was just you. You wanted to put us in the mindset of this thing that hasn't happened yet, and it's gonna happen, and everyone's coming together to do it, and it's the craziest thing anyone's tried to do. And it's like, it's the truth of it.

I mean, it's just you watch it and you're in awe of the accomplishment. I also felt like, and I'm gonna get this out of the way at the top. You've probably been asked about it plenty by now, but I can't believe anyone could watch this film and not feel a sense of American pride as well. And you know there's been this this this whatever Faul controversy about the fact that you've it and depict the planting of

the flag. What you and I have talked about you when once you get to the moon in this movie, it's very reflective of what you've done the whole film, which is your staying subjective when the alarm strong and that event was kneel and buzzed together, and you're showing Neil at this creator and there's something very personal was happening in his life at the time. So have you been kind of just surprised that this snowballed as a quote controversy. Uh well, uh, yeah, to a certain extent.

But you know, it's also um this it's it's a very important moment, just the moon landing as a whole, and so you kind of expect people to have a very sort of profound emotional associations with it, um, whether they lived through it or didn't, you know, um and uh, certainly it's it's one of those defining moments for America as a country. You know. It's it's so much of American identity, um is wrapped up in a really beautiful way. I think, um, um, certainly the past fifty years of

American identity wrapped up in that event. So you I think, uh, one should expect that you know that that um there's you know, people are gonna have powerful associations with it, and uh and so you're always aware, I mean, not with just this event, but with any kind of any time you're doing. I mean, this was my first time

doing a movie based on historical, historical events. But you know, if you're doing a movie about an iconic event or an iconic series of events or an iconic character, there canna be things that that you uh, that you want to show and things that you don't have time to show and uh, and you have to set a sort of a sort of guideline of rules for yourself at

the outset. So I think for us, for me, for Josh Senger, for Ryan, as we were making this movie, it was just about, let's whenever we can, uh, let's show the things that people didn't see. Uh. Let's show the things that people didn't know about Neil, about Geminy, about Apollo. Um. Let's focus on that on told story. And let that be basically what dictates what we show

and what we uh and what we don't show. Yeah, And for Neil, it's there's a very personal, tragic thing that happens to him at the beginning of the film, and I'm that that threat is played out all the way through the end of the film and something that happens on the moon and I don't want to, like, I guess I don't want to talk about it in terms of spoilers, but I do want to ask the moment that happens on the moon regarding him and something very personal that happened to him felt such like a

narrative sense of closure that it was. It kind of felt like it was too perfect. So the question is was it embellished? Was it made up? Uh? It was? It's uh No, it wasn't made up, but it was. But it's it's unlike certain events in the movie, it's not something that we can confirm with absolute confidence actually happened. Yeah, it's for me. It was such a moment when I saw it in the movie and that the emotion really

got me there. It's it's it's uh, well, it's kind of how I felt when I first uh, when Josh and I first heard of it. Uh. It's a conjecture basically too. It was a conjecture by Niel's biographer, his a storian, Jim Hanson. It was a conjecture that was then backed up um uh, or at least sort of suggested as well by Neil's sister June, who Ryan and I got to spend some time with um uh and uh it was I found a very beautiful conjecture hypothesis.

Neil himself never confirmed or denied. He basically never talked about, refused to talk about or disclose, um, you know what he might have done on the you know what we're talking about while on the moon. But uh so, again, we don't have an absolute confirmation that had happened, but I'd like to think it did, and certainly people who were very close to Neil um I like to think it did. So that's where we got there. It wasn't an idea that we came up with, but it was.

But it was something that as soon as we heard it felt felt like a beautiful place to try to. It sort of helped dictate, Okay, if that's sort of the the that's the light at the end of the tunnel, if that's the station that the train needs to pull into at the end, how can we best sort of

lay the lay the pipe to get there. That's good enough for me, and frankly I came to the conclusion if you if it had been made up, that it would have been fined by me because you're telling a story, you know, and that that happens to close the story

nicely and all, Yeah, all of that's good enough. For me, I mean, it's just again such a profound moment and really interesting because the movie for me is it's it's filmed in a kind of claustrophobic way at times, It's filmed in a kind of languid, almost removed way at times, which I came to feel reflected him is a very calculated, uh you know, I don't want to call him emotionless, but everything is buried and the guy, and I kind of felt like the filmmaking reflected that there's not you're

not cutting outside of the spacecraft whenever you're doing all the various missions and everything's right there with them, and then when you get this moment on the moon, that release happens. I kind of feel like some people that work for and other people maybe the vibe of the film up until then just maybe maybe they checked out or something. I don't know, because I've just heard interesting

varying takes on this. I just wanted to ask you about that, like, how did you come to approach this material with with film language, because it's so different from Whiplash and La La Lalla Land, which are you know, kind of I guess frenetic by comparison, but just talk about that a little bit. I guess uh yeah, I mean I think, um, from the outset, I think it was just about trying to uh uh trying to make

everything feel as real as possible. Um. And so for me, I think that started with the archival footage that you know, there's just which of which there's so much, um you know of of all the the the the Apollo and Jimny missions, uh you know, NASA on the ground. Um. Also obviously the Life magazine photographs of the ass or not in their families. Um. So basically just the documentary

visual material that exists of those people at that time. UM. I just kind of fell in love with how all of that felt and and um uh that I think dictated, uh to a large degree, the look of the film. Uh, the sort of uh uh super sixteen or or thirty

five two perf kind of grainy um handheld look um. Um. But it also I think, you know, sort of want of dictating dictating the style in the sense that you you know, if you're trying to make the movie as though you're a documentary crew kind of on the ground, um, following these astronauts around or sort of slipping into the spacecraft with them or into their house with them. Um, you can get very physically close to them, but there's also always going to be a certain distance that you have.

There's a certain distance in any verite cinema, verite filmmaking that um um, because you don't have the sort of the you don't have the trappings that fiction filmmaking give you to sort of plunge into a character. So it became this kind of balance and this challenge for for Ryan and Claire and and all the actors, and and and for us to figure out that balance of how where we're where were we going to kind of slip into their subjectivity in a way the documentary filmmaking doesn't

allow you to do uh. Traditional verite filmmaking, you know, wouldn't allow you to do uh. And when we're we going to be really faithful to okay, we're truly a fly on the wall here and not intervening, observing being wires and just kind of uh peeking over people's shoulders to see what's going on, but not necessarily interacting with it.

And that was sort of just the newsreel versus the uh, the more kind of you know, subjectively emotional approach, and we tried to try to sort of, yeah, slide in and out of of one kind of mode, but try to keep it feeling the same. Well as those the aim at least some of that, like it grounds them in situating the domestic, the domesticity of it. All. These guys are superheroes, so like the contrast that is really

interest thing too. Yeah. Um, last time you were on, I had asked you how how did the kind of tour, if you will, of La La Land compare with Whiplash, meaning specifically the festival reveals of these films you had Whiplash and some Man you had La La Land in Venice. Talk about first Man and how this experience so far we're talking earlier in the game than we did last time, but how this experience so far is uh compared to last time? I mean, were you were you reticent to

open Venice again? Uh? Well, you know, I in in in some I mean yeah, in some ways I think, but it had more to do with just, uh, you know, the schedule we were sort of confronted with, Um, but that that in a way actually was sort of regardless of of of Venice. It was just you know, we knew we had to finish the movie by a certain point in time. It was less time than we had had to addit La La land um, which which in some ways, uh well, in all ways was an easier

film to edit. Um uh, less footage and more wonders and more just kind of predesigned, whereas this was sort of a lot of this was discovered on set and then discovered in the cutting room like a documentary would be. So so that plus the technical challenges on this, we're sort of another you know, kind of a just of

another level than than anything I dealt with before. So it was just a scramble too, or felt like a scramble to kind of get all the pieces in line and uh and feel like we you know, had had had a handle on things in time, and luckily it all came together. But you know, it wasn't without a lot of a lot of sort of sweating and hair pulling and hard work from the from from the Tom Cross and and and the sound team and the effects

team and everyone. You seem to be kind of thankful for that when it came to Whiplash, kind of getting it together. Ironically, the ironically this felt closer to Whiplash than than it did to La La Land in terms of the in terms at least of the post production of it having so much time to second guess what you're doing and stuff like that, which is what you

did on La La Land. Yeah, yeah, whereas here it was kind of yeah, there was a little less of that, and uh, we had Yeah, we had more time than we did on Whiplash, but more, but we also had more footage and a bigger story and bigger technical challenges. So so it felt, you know, it felt like a similar pace. Um. And then I guess in some ways that pace just sort of is unrelenting until the moment

you lock. Uh, and then like the moment we finished, I hopped on a plane to to you know, to Venice, and we were premiering the next day, so it was I didn't really have time to sort of have that kind of which in some ways it is probably good for me to have that sort of post finishing, pre premiering sort of stress. It just kind of one rolled right into the other. Um. I wanted to ask you, like, well,

first let's talk about the score. You know, I talked to Justin Herwitz and tell you write a lot about this. The score is phenomenal. Um. Sometimes it has this kind of metronome ticking, kind of propulsive quality. Sometimes it's very emotional and sweeping, and it's way what was I guess the the initially? You know, I always asked this kind of question, but just the colonel, what was the idea of, Okay, the musical identity of this film should convey X? What

what was that? I think it was more than anything trying to convey the loss of a child, trying to convey a parent, um, a parent's grief over the loss of a child, and and and uh. So I think it's started with not not so much trying to convey you know, what's what's the what's the you know, how do you score the moon landing? Or how do you score uh, you know, space missions. It was more what what's what's what's the central emotion of the movie? Um,

the emotion that sort of guides everything? And and and uh and what is a melody that can sort of communicate that? Um? And so so it started there. It started with Justin at the piano trying to find that melody UM, and then trying to find sort of subs beames around it once we landed on a central melody we liked and and uh and then only after that, um, did it become a matter of okay, now, what are the sounds that that that best best sort of tie Earth to the moon, so to speak in the movie.

You know that that can be grounded when we need them to be intimate when we need them to be, but also can suggest the infinite expanse of space. Um. And uh yeah, and I think um that that took a long time. I remember, I mean actually even before almost even before there, they were kind of you know, back when we were when we were in early stages of the script, Just and I were talking about what what the sounds might be. We knew it wouldn't be

completely traditionally orchestral. We also knew we didn't want it to be completely um non orchestral or completely electronic. Um, you guys did some trippy stuff it needed. Yeah, we just needed We knew it needed to be in some kind of you know, in between zone. Um. But it took a while to you know, fin fine tune that the movie has a definite like sonic signature. Just you know, the the sound design is amazing. What was like the kind of the biggest technical uh hurdle or whatever with

this film. I mean, I've heard some interesting things about taking some of the archival footage. I think that you you did something with the visual effects to expand on or something like that, and you know, just different things like that. What was like just the biggest challenge technically speaking to to get what you wanted to to to

convey the vision that you wanted to convey here. I guess, uh, well, you know the I guess one of the big challenges was was what once you try to sort of set parameters around around something like in this case, Okay, everything needs to feel like a you know, Super sixteen documentary

and we're sort of expanding from there. Then uh, it sort of puts even more of a burden I think on on visual effects or sound design, uh you know those crafts people who uh in a different kind of movie, I think you can get away with stuff being a little more obviously synthetic, you know, if you have a movie that's sort of fantastical from the get go. Um, I think there's a lot more allowance for things to either uh to either look computer generated or to sound

uh heightened or whatever. You sort of you sort of go with it. Um and uh, but here we knew we weren't we weren't going to have that sort of facility that um that that stuff that was fake would really look and sound fake. Um, it would be like

a sore thumb. Uh and so uh so yeah, So so that sort of dictated a lot of what the workflow was going to be that we were gonna try to do as much of the visual effects and camera, try to do as much of the visual effects uh before shooting, so to speak, and kind put them on led screens in terms of what you were seeing outside the spacecraft and so uh and film those led screens through the windows of the spacecrafts and film all that on on film Super sixteen or thirty five, and try

to bake everything into a look that would that that hopefully would harmonize everything so that at the end of the day, whether it's a miniature or a piece of computer generated imagery or or totally sort of in camera practical, uh, it hopefully would all um speak the same language. Um, it would all be put through the same filter, so to speak. Um. And I guess sound was sort of a similar similar deal um uh you know, we we uh.

Mary Ellis was our recording sound on set UM and was just meticulous about every you know sort of uh uh every uh you know, like in Michigan, trol Mike in every single desk, you know, twenty four separate channels there in the in the space crafts, making uh different elements of those crafts separately, making sure we were always getting even if we knew it would be rough, always getting production sound, even if it was just at the

gimbal motion control sort of systems on these crafts. UM that then created a groundwork for A Langley and uh uh and and Frank Montano and and and Milly Yatramorgan uh to to uh to sort of create their templates and post sound wise, and they wound up going to launches and uh you know, recording the Falcon X and recording launch tests and recording rocket tests in Texas and Florida, getting space suits and putting mikes inside with helmet you know,

putting mikes inside the helmets and inside the sort of nozzles to get airflow and um so basically just trying to get as much real stuff as possible. Um. And then finally, you know, you have this bedding of I guess you call it reality. Uh, and then you try to figure out where you need to augment that, where you want to augment it, where you want to have fun with it. And that's where that's where you could

get really creative. And so that's where I know, like I I laying in in um in post, you know, started uh playing around with various animal sounds and uh sounds of warfare, tank sounds, gunfire sounds. Uh. You know, stuff that normally would not be would not realistically be in this world of you know, spacecrafts, but um, but could sort of bleed into it and augmented and heighten it and also give another worldly quality to it when

we needed it to um um. And and then John Taylor, uh another one of our mixers, you know, he sort of his job sort at the end was kind of to to colaid everything and to sort of pull everything together and and hum again make it all sound of a piece. So you want it all to look a

a piece and sound of a piece. And it just it takes some you know, some back and forth to get that biggest technical challenge of your career so far or yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah, justin says, he keeps his oscars on his piano where you keeping your worse he's his oscars on his piano. No, actually, I think that's right. The thing he doesn't tell you is that he's nowhere else to put them because his apartment has no furniture so or no drawers or no anything. It's

just the bare bones. You go in and it's like an empty room with a piano. So the only place to pook that would be on the um I minor in a like up in a drawer and a spare room, in a drawer in a spare room, or or well they're they're on a drawer, so they're not they're not like hidden, but they're not in my face. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to be staring at them, as I think Justin probably likes the challenge of it. I like them to just be out of sight, out of mind.

That's funny. Well, I want to ask you because you know, uh, we talked two years ago, a year and a half ago, right after the oscars. I'm gonna ask Barry this question in two weeks too, so you're not on the spot, but just after, after the whirlwind of that night we spoke the next morning, just the afterglow of all of that, Like, what what do you think when you look back at at that night in that crazy moment would be you know,

the mishap with the envelope and just all of that. Uh, it all feels a little bit like, uh, like like something out of a movie, which I guess is appropriate. You know, it feels very surreal. Um, but you know, it's sort of I don't know, it was there was something kind of fun about it because it's uh, you know, the Hollywood, the Oscars, all that stuff is sort of can be has the potential to be absurd enough on its own. Uh. So it felt like that whole uh,

that whole episode was maybe a way of underlying underlying that. Um, but it was certainly nice to be able to I saw Barry in Toronto actually when uh we were just there, um it was about to premiere his film, I think, and and um, um yeah, it's it's a it's a surreal memory. As I told you both at the time, nobody else is going to have that memory. I mean, you know that's presumably that won't ever happen again. So you get that interesting spot in the record books. I

guess you will. Yeah, some people have you know, walking on the moon. Other people have mistaken that's great. You never know you might get to the moon. Um, last year, I just kinda want to talk about last year because you're working on your movie. But you know, while Land was two years ago, so last year you presumably were able to see some movies. You wrote about dunk Kirk for us. I know you were a Dunkirk fan, So just curious what you thought of last year's kind of

awards season slate of films. We have stuff like Shape of Water and get Out and Three Billboards and dun Kirk, which I was a huge fan of Dunkerk. It was great.

It felt like a great year. Um, but uh but it also was you know, I definitely always enjoy the years more when when when I don't have you know, when you don't have something, I don't have a movie out, and you know, I could just sort of uh take a step back and uh, um watch stuff, you know, uh the way I used to as a kid, you know, and you just sort of, um, you get to have a little more untainted view. But actually felt like a

great year. I loved Call me about your Name and Phantom Thread and Ladybird and Get Out and dunk Kirk. I mean it was it was. Yeah, this year is pretty good too. Years Oh yeah, yeah, Phantom Thread too. Remember Phantom Thread last year? Yeah, yeah, I just mentioned that. Yeah, I have my list of movies because literally I forget them like two months later, I'm like, what was What were the movies we were just watching for six months?

And that's really sad. But it's just like it's because you're so crammed for like, you know, six months than the one the ones that I guess, the ones that matter sort of they kind of float back your conscious. It always plays it back, but immediately afterwards, it's like you justized cramming for a test and completely goes away the day after, and then a few nuggets will remain

in the years later. Yeah, it's true. It's a healthy thing to remember when when you're kind of in the in the both as a filmmaker and I assume on your side, just when you're in the crux of it all for how fleeting it all can be. Absolutely, we had Nolan on the show speaking of dunk Kirk, which was like a huge bludder. I mean, I know, you guys. I don't know if your pals or what, but like I know, you guys respect each other's work, and yeah,

spoken of each other's work. So no, he's I mean, yeah, and I got We talked a lot about you know, obviously Imax and um. Uh. He sort of helped helped help me know what to expect UMU my first time shooting shooting on Imax stock uh and um the moon stuff by the way, everyone is the Imax material. Um. But but also I just I really love and respect his approach to big canvas uh cinema, this sort of in and in camera old school kind of approach. I I was lucky enough to work with Nathan Crawley on

this movie, who's basically Nolan's go to production designer. I mean obviously works with many other directors as well, but um, but he had just finished Dunkirk essentially when um, when I first met with him, Uh, it hadn't come out yet when I first met with him about this um and uh, and he was you know, completely not just on board, but helped spearhead the whole kind of principle of of you know, practical effects and in camera work that that Lena's my DP and I were we're trying

to foster um and and say with the Vffects team, and so you know, you kind of have to have everyone on board with that that okay, where everything's gonna be real. We're gonna ever, We're not gonna you know, digitally put in the visors later. We're gonna have real visors in there, which means they have to be breathing, uh, you know, real oxygen and having cooling tubes and all

that has to be functional inside their suits. And then the crafts, those are actually gonna close up and be you know, we're not gonna make them bigger for camera, We're gonna make them what they actually were. Size wise. You've got to figure out your angle holes and uh, when it moves, it's gonna actually move. When there's fire outside the window, it's gonna be fired. You know, all

these things just uh uh, it takes planning. But I was really lucky and especially thanks to some of these you know, kind of people at the top spear heading it, like Nathan, to just have a group of people who were gung ho for that sort of approach. Yeah, from the big canvas to a smaller one. I wanted to talk to you about working with the streaming companies, Working with Apple on a project, working with Netflix. I think you'd wrected two episodes of The Eddie for Netflix, right, Well,

I haven't yet. That's next year, You're you're going to For some reason, I thought you had already done those. And then Apple, You're you're that prolific. Come on, man, you're slacking off the Apple. You're doing the whole thing. You're writing and directing the whole deal. I believe there's some mystery around what that is. Well, working working with a writer on it, um uh and I, uh yeah, it's it's come. It's still very early days. We don't

there's there's nothing I can tell you. There's nothing yet. There's no script, there's no there's there's uh, there's ideas. Um the the Eddie, the Netflix thing. That's that's something that's been sort of brewing for longer. That's something that Jack Thorne, a great, great writer, um uh wrote And uh so I'll be uh yeah, I'll be directing the just the first two episodes in Paris. Obviously, no ambivalence, reticence or whatever for you regarding these companies regarding this

kind of media. Uh. You know, Mr Nolan has some strong feelings about Netflix, for instance, So you seem to be fully on board and happy to do this kind of stuff, right, yeah, I mean, uh, yes, um, you know, but also it's it's uh, you know these are these are TV projects or you know, you know that that Eddie is a television series and h the Apple thing is another long form um, long form uh piece of material.

So I I, um, I'm not I'm not going into those uh expecting a you know, sort of theatrical presentation necessary early. Um. So I think I think what Nolan is talking about is a little more not to put words in his mouth, was a little more specifically regarding how about theatrical feature films, how about like the the kind of what's the word, uh, I don't want to say dominance, but you know, the company like Netflix is really taken off and really uh kind of rubbing against

the grain for a lot of people. So regarding theatrical versus a movie like Roma, which is going to Netflix, and some people are like, oh, this should be on three thousand screens and you know, just do you have strong feelings about all that kind of stuff? Well, I think they are planning on doing it, really, I mean, I don't know three thousand screens, but you know they're gonna do something. Uh. And first of all, the movie like it would never be on three thousand screens, you know,

so uh you know. So it's also I think there's there's um if they do a real you know, as much a theatrical for Roma as as would happen for um, you know, for for say, you know, for for that same movie ten years ago or something, then that's uh, then I'm all, I'm all for that. Um. Um, I do think theatrical, Yeah, I mean I I remain a

fervent believer in theatrical for sure. There's nothing quite can replace that, even and honestly, even if it's just the sort of first step, and you know, everything winds up on home video these days, so it's not you know, sometimes there's this kind of this straw man argument formed that that that it's like an either or kind of thing that people who argue for theatrical are arguing against home video or something, you know, and it's really not.

All they're arguing for is for theatrical to remain the option, to be an option, you know, the same thing with digital versus film, although that that debate kind of yeah, no, that that's that's that that that debate at least felt you know earlier kind of similar, you know, in the sense of that sort of these things don't have to be exclusionary, so um, but sometimes they're pitted out as though they have to be. So I guess that's more where I where I come down. Um, but I think,

um uh, but you know, I don't know. At the end of the day, good good uh. You know, good storytelling is good storytelling and and uh, and it's also not necessarily a bad thing. I think the same applies to you know, more traditional TV. When it's good, it's not necessarily a bad thing to to have. Uh. You know,

real competition for for for for smart discerning eyeballs. Um that that that you know, that the studios have to deal with, and it's always hopefully it sort of inspires them to to you know, make more, you know, take more risks, make more interesting films. I know that's not always the case, but you know, I always say, the first time I saw two thousand one was on VHS. So yeah, it's like, by the way, congrats on the engagement. I just wanted to mention that was last year. You

haven't got married yet, right since? Uh well yeah, no, well dight in the future. We we we uh we technically gotten there. We eloped um um back in the back in the Christmas you know, Christmas holiday, back around the winter holiday. Um. Uh we're having we're having like you know, we're doing uh ceremony, you know, uh celebration. Awesome, but we're to send the invitation U s Yeah, Brandon right here in person, tell her hello for me. Actually, Livia's right here. We can do it. We can do

it right here. Let's do it. The PMC team here, the research guys to to to be the Witnesses. Movies called First Man. It opens October. Well, and you should see it. It's fantastic. I think it's amazing. And as I tell Damien all the time, I'm very angry with him for being thirty three years old and this talented. But congrats with everything man you're doing. So thanks for coming on the show. Thanks