Ep70 - Aaron Katz / "Gemini"

This is playback your Speed fan. I love Speed. Um, it's funny. I'm so used to seeing Speed. We have an ex rental copy and a clamshell. Uh. And so you my copy of Speed like sticks out farther because it's as it should because it's a larger case. And uh, I always look. I love getting rental copies because you get more trailers on the rentals. Oh yeah, I guess, um, like the cell through stuff would just go to the

movie usually. Yeah. Like h So I feel like on rental copies, some especially like Mirormax and Dimension films from the nineties have so many trailers. Remember I watched I watched Swingers the other day, and it's got like all the dimension slate, all the trailers. It's fun because half the movies are things start like fun things you've heard of, and half it's like, what the hell is this? Some of it makes me want to go find it? Definitely,

I think we're set. Let's dive in. Okay, everybody, I'm here with Aaron Katz, the writer and direct an editor actually and editor of Gemini. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I've invited Aaron into my den of excess. I guess there's a lot to look at the air episode. Uh, As I said, Aaron directed a film called Gemini, which is in theaters right now. You can check it out. I wanted to make sure we got him in here while it's still in theaters because

I love it. And if there is an air of familiarity about this episode, that will be because Aaron and I go back. We were in college together. So yeah, man, thanks for coming on the show. How you doing doing pretty good? I mean, come on, give me more than that. Well,

I'm doing great. Looking at your VHS collection, it's just appreciating your copy of Sliver, which has a special significance to Gemini because just a few days before we started shooting Lola Cark, who who's the star of Gemini, and uh Andrew Reid, our director of photography, who also went to school with us in North Carolina, we all watched Sliver together. None of us had seen it before, but we thought it would be a good one to watch to just kind of immerse ourselves in the mindset of

eighties and nineties. Esther House thriller world. You've read his book? No, I've never read it. I that's high on the list. Hang on a minute, I'm gonna leave this on the show alright, just so everyone understands. What do we got? I know, Dead Silence works on on radio very well. Oh yeah, I mean Esther House hates Hollywood. Um, question is do you No? I don't hate Hollywood. I mean there's a lot to hate in Hollywood, a lot of things that are depressing, but there's a lot of wonderful things.

I mean, one of the reasons to make this movie is to confront my conflicted feelings about it and too sort of live in the tradition of of movies and books that both celebrate and have a lot of trepidation about Hollywood, but I think it's much more in the tradition of something like do every What makes Sammy Run by Budgetood, which is very very cynical about Hollywood, but

also very uh loving towards it as well. And I would say that Gemini is less in the tradition of movies like um The Player or State in Maine, which just seemed to despise Hollywood and the entire purposes to satirize it. I look at those filmmakers Moment and Altman not exactly Hollywood types, not that you are, but yeah,

you're right. Yeah, it's interesting though I've grown to appreciate more of the artistry of Hollywood filmmaking and and uh, not to get in too deep on on our past, but we were in a screenwriting class together and our tastes differed pretty wildly at that time, and uh, as time has gone on, I've grown to appreciate more of the things. I think you probably would have liked and appreciate it at that time. And you know, looking back

at the things that inspired Gemini. You know, I already mentioned Esther House, but all so, you know, more broadly, eighties and nineties thrillers like Curtis Hanson stuff. I'm talking pre l a confidential stuff like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Bad Influence, and those films at the time were regarded as I don't not exactly be pictures, but movies that weren't to be taken seriously as art.

And looking back at them, I think many of those movies are elegant and like just as good as anything and should be should get perhaps more respect than they do as as um really great artists working. I think the industry term for those might be an entertainment, you know, just dismissively, that's just an entertainment. Yeah, But I think that I think that's just the wrong way to think

about it. And maybe it's hard to see in the moment, you know, when you know critics are grinding through their weekly slate of stuff, it's hard to see that like Bad Influence, which is of course shot by Robert Ellswoit, as where many of the Hanson films of that era, is like a beautiful, restrained esthetic exercise and has a credit rely fun performances from James Spader and Rob Low,

and like hard to Do It Better. You can't make that kind of film any better in my opinion, And uh, I don't know if I bet, I've got a lot of two and a half star reviews at that time. Yeah, uh, this movie, Jem and I I loved it. It's probably my favorite one you've made so far. What struck me about it? What I wanted to talk to you about? You kind of just started to get into it a little bit. There's more style, more swagger in this movie

than your previous movies. Certainly it's a movie with the d n A of you, uh just in terms of, you know, the interactions between your two actresses and stuff like that. There's a very real world feel to it. But there's also just you know, just from that opening shot of upside down palm trees, which I thought was kind of amazing, just an easy, simple idea that put you on edge immediately and kind of put you in

a frame of mind. Along with this kind of swinging not swinging, but like the score from Kegan de Witt is like this jazzy, uh cool, you know vibe, and obviously that adds to the atmosphere. So what what I want, what I wanted to talk to you about was what brought that on I guess, I mean, what brought the intent to put more style into this movie than maybe

you have in other films. I've gotten very interested in making films that have this sort of h bigger scope of of of visual elegance, I hope is what we achieve, and it really has to do with the fact that I, as I was alluding to earlier, I've come to appreciate this, this style of studio filmmaking, and I really enjoy the structures, the rhythms, the look of some of those movies, and so on this one, what I wanted to do was use a lot of that and really celebrate the tradition

of that, and then populated with characters who h have a foot in the world of the you know, the narrative that's from that structure, and a foot in the world of some of my past movies, which allow more space to you know, examine who these people are and treat them as people who are um, you know, real living people alive in the here and now and and um not just engines for the narrative. You said you

guys took a look at Sliver. I mean, do you tend to take a look at another movie do you in terms of establishing like a visual aesthetic, do you look at artwork or anything like that to help dictate, like specifically on this one, what was driving the aesthetic you had in mind inspirationally, I don't know if there was any one movie, but we were pretty immersed in watching h maybe starting with the early eighties. I really think of like Body Heat and American Juggalo was kicking

off a new era, new style of thriller. You look at the stuff from the late seventies and it has a really different vibe, and I feel like these sort of um uh yeah, I think people would say in some ways more commercial uh types of thrillers uh started around that time. But I really we were just watching a ton of those movies, um, blow Out as another one, and you know, even stuff you know through the mid to late nineties like Wild Things and Poison Ivy. I

guess that's ninety two. Uh cruel intentions like obviously those are a bit more on the salacious end of the spectrum, but we really, I would say, we're just immersing ourselves in this world, and a lot of those movies have have a very um, glossy aesthetic. Uh, And so we wanted to have fun with that um and yeah, it

felt pretty inspired by that. And then also I would say a little bit by like early Hong Kong action cinema, and especially A Better Tomorrow, which you know, John Wu came to be known for such excess and Better Tomorrow definitely is indulgent, but it's very restrained, and I think it's just a great film about a city at night.

And so in some ways we wanted to make our own great film about a city at night and felt inspired to do that maybe more than like, you know, taking looking at an aesthetic and trying to recreate it. Sure that idea though, of watching a bunch of movies immersing yourself and that do you do you feel like reticent at all in the midst of that, that you might subconsciously even start to lift this or that in

ways that maybe you didn't want to. You know, I asked this question a lot, what what drove, what inspired the look or whatever? Did you look at films? And a lot of time filmmakers are quick to say I didn't want to watch another movie because I didn't want to, you know, which sometimes I think is kind of bullshit. I get what they're saying, like, I wasn't out to copy somebody, but I think that being inspired by movies

is part of the game, right. So But that having said, that's my question, do you feel any kind of trepidation about that? I don't really. I enjoy watching movies so uh, and I enjoy sort of immersing myself in a world. And I feel like if you're broad enough about it, like you watch a lot of movies from a certain genre, then it tends to all just be more general inspiration rather than let's lift this shot. And I think that, you know, it's funny. I think the only time we've

ever lifted a shot directly was on Cold Weather. And it's not even a shot from a movie's cold cold weathers movie, you know, two movies ago and um, what's that Jason Statha movie where he is like a driver for like a bank heist? Uh now, I don't remember what this movie is called. It's like a very classy Stathum picture. Um, the bank job, the bank job, the bank job, the bank job. I think that's what it thinks,

the bank job. Well, anyway, at the post, I get it confused with the wasn't there like the Italian Job. You can get confused with that. Yes, the Bank the Bank Job, the Bank Job ten years ago, so ten years ago. Yeah. The Bank Job has a really great poster which is just Jason Statham sitting in a car like looking over his shoulder, and it's so evocative of like waiting for the heist to happen, you know, with the title and that picture, it's like you don't see

much beyond you know, just this guy's face. But it's a really amazing poster. So that's the only time we've ever that I've never seen that poster. It's you've ever seen like the DVD poster you talk about this, right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's got a throw that's really cool. Uh. And so

that's the only thing we've ever lifted directly. There's a shot in Cold Weather where um, one of the actor's trist is like waiting for someone to come out, and we were like, let's let's do the Bank Job poster because I think that movie was, you know, just a year or two old at that time, and people were like, let's let's do that. But other than that, uh, And I feel like that's a weird enough one that I

don't mind admitting it. I know exactly. Yeah, no one's going to accuse me of stealing anything, but uh yeah, I I really feel like the other part of it is that, um, Andrew Reader, director of photography, and I tend to have these I wouldn't say conflicting ideas, but strong ideas about what we're gonna do. Uh that often we get into a place and start talking about it, and it's sort of naturally becomes this other idea, this third idea that neither of us had on our own.

And so that tends to if anyone is overly um, thinking of something that already exists, we tend to evolve that into something else. Uh. Speaking of Andrew, you guys have been working together the whole time, right, Yeah, well four out of four out of the five. So he was actually still he graduated two years after than me, even though he's maybe a year older. But so he was the gaffer on Dance part of USA in my first film, not the DP, but ever since then he is.

I mean I spoke to him for Quiet City. Actually I loved that movie. There was a great shot in that movie that I talked to him about that year. Uh, that's two thousand and seven. By the way, how does that feel You've been making movies for more than a decade? Aarond, it's pretty strange to, yeah, have made five movies and to have been doing it for this long. Um, I don't know, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you. I'm gonna come back to that with

a different question. But let's start with Andrew. How's that evolution been working with him? I mean I thought his work was a considerable step up on this movie. I mentioned the opening sequence and stuff. But you know, just talk about the evolution of working with this guy, and and and is it important for you to maintain consistency with the DP It is? I mean, in general, I like maintaining consistency and having creative relationships that extend over

multiple movies. Um. And I think that it allows us to have this sort of common language with each other and shorthand and we know how each other work. Uh. And so you know we've evolved together over four movies, the first one of which you mentioned, Quiet City. Um, you know, we made that movie for two thousand dollars with no resources at all. We shot that on the h v X two hundred. Uh and I think there's things about that movie that look good. I think the

it's the appropriate aesthetic for that movie. But it's very rough and tumble and and and low fi. And uh, you know, we we made the best of the resources we had. And and but as we've gone on we've had we've figured out how to uh, well a have more resources because the budgets have gotten bigger, but be really utilized those resources and really figure out how to

make the most of them. Um. So yeah, we just on each film have tried to challenge ourselves and if we ever feel like something is too easy, we know

there's something wrong. And especially in this case, when we were you know, wanting to live in the tradition I've been talking about of those thrillers from the eighties and nineties, really wanted to live up to how great we think some of those films are shot and to find ways to be really expressive about Los Angeles, a city that's been shot you know, more times maybe than any other city. Book to do it our way, to show how we saw the city, and to find visual ways that were

striking and unique. Drill down on that, how do you see the city? Well? I guess it started maybe with that idea of a color palette, which is, when driving around Los Angeles at night, there's this contrast between the sera orangey glow of the street lights and and often there's clear, clear skies and a kind of a white blue glow from the moon. So that was our sort of star paraty aesthetic. And you see that a little bit,

especially what we shot right around here. Uh So the characters go to an Italian restaurant right at the beginning of the movie, and there's a driving sequence after that,

which we actually shot on the very last day. We were returning the equipment from we had shot some palm trees around my house and we're returning the equipment driving down Colorado and and um shooting shooting had the camera pointed out the window and shooting the parks and businesses at night, and yeah, you get this collection of neon lights and street lights and then the you know, when you hit a street that you're looking down, you know this this glow of the moon. And so that was

kind of our starting place. And also it had to do with choosing the right locations and really choosing locations that spans an experience that we wanted to portray in Los Angeles, like, Los Angeles is a city that has a million different experiences, a million different neighborhoods that you know, I've lived here for five years, You've lived here, I think for like twelve thirteen years. And I think I could live here for fifty more years and I would still find a pocket of Los Angeles that I knew

nothing about, didn't even know existed. And so we wanted to express some of the horizontal nature of Los Angeles and how driving is so important to the city and how a person can span all the way from you know, Eagle Rock to the Hollywood Hills and Korea Town in between in the course of a night, which feels like a very Los Angeles experience as opposed to, for example, in New York, it's a much more vertical experience. Everyone stacked on top of each other. Here, it's all stretched out.

How did those visual ideas about the city, did they inform or were informed by it all? Theme in the film, Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, we also chose to shoot in a two three nine aspect ratio to to kind of highlight the horizontal expansiveness of the city, and it's a city where, Um, I'm trying to think. I don't want to reveal too much for those people who haven't seen the movie yet. UM, but I will talk about the last shot, which pans away from our main action and

into a wide city scape of the city. And I think that's our way of expressing something that we feel about Los Angeles, which is that it's a city with a million stories and like everyone's intersecting, uh, and that this is just one of them. In a way. It's like the the you know, the Naked Naked City about TV show and movie, which has the voice over that's like, that's a million stories in the nightked city, that's just

one of them. And I really I felt like that about this view of Los Angeles, that we're happening to interact with these characters for this limited period of time. We're going to get this view into their lives, but that there's just one very small piece of the fabric of the city. By the way, let's drop in like a synopsis here for anyone who has probably confusing people. What's your elevator pitch on Jim and I Now elevator pitch is that it is a movie about a personal

assistant to a celebrity. And there let me back up to say that this relationship is something that I encountered

in Los Angeles and became very interested in. It's the reason why I wrote the movie because this relationship, the lines between personal and professional are very blurry and it's not clear like where the job begins and ends being a personal assistant, and I thought that was such an interesting starting place for a thriller, someone who's in some ways taken on the identity as an extension of the identity of the person that they're working for. So that's

where we start out the film. And as the film goes on, Heather, who played by Zoey Kravitz, who's the celebrity, uh, is uh concerned that there's a lot of people who are angry at her, and she borrows a gun from Jill played by Lola Kirk, her assistant, And I'm maybe gonna leave it at that, but let's just say the guns introduced an act one tend to go off later there you go. Uh. Speaking of which, by the way, one of my friends was Mickey Rourke's personal assistant during

Iron Man Too. That guy has stories I'm yeah, uh, it's something I think people feel like. I saw this mentioned I certainly thought about it. Was anything about Bergman or persona in your mind here it's funny. No, I we didn't think about that, but it has come up since then. Um No, I mean, if anything, I was thinking more of like you know, single white female or something of that, which which had some you know, blurry

identity situations. You don't really go there, they're like you kind of you're expecting it to sort of go in like not like a sixty direction and like that, but just an even more dangerous direction. Did you willfully stay away from that? Or was that I wanted to, Yeah, certainly set the movie in those in the tradition of those movies, but also have it feel like life. Like I really wanted it to feel like what if something like this really happened to us? Like what would you know?

What would an ordinary person deal with this? And so in some ways I wanted it to feel heightened and in others I wanted it to feel believe of the bowl and the sense the sense of like, Okay, this is a person who's like alive. This isn't like this is you've seen an aesthetic of movies, but you're seeing behavior that feels like real life. Yeah, that gets back to what I was saying. I think it's has the DNA of view and that's why it's such an interesting mixture.

You were talking about a specific shot. There's another shot that I thought was kind of amazing. Whenever you can see a shot like this in a movie that you've never seen before in l A, it's really fascinating, which is the motorcycle shot, uh, winding around the Cannon canyon. Oh. Yeah, it's just this this perspective. I don't know where you

went or how you even found this perspective. Maybe this has shown up in movies before and I've never noticed it, but it was just such an interesting way to get so much in the frame. So that brings me to just location scouting, Like, what was that vibe like for a movie like this where Los Angeles has been so

picked over in terms of locations. Well, it started really with the script, and I wrote a lot of specific locations in the script, places that I've been, places that I've liked, a lot of places in my neighborhoo it uh. Now some of those ended up in the movie. Others for logistical reasons. Uh, we're not in the movie. Uh. And but we really tried to dig in deep and find places that had a history and felt like they

were part of the DNA of Los Angeles. I'm gonna go off on a tangent here, uh talk about something that's like very off to the side, but I'll relate it back to m I, but it might take me a minute. Uh. And that is that. UM. I was listening to a podcast or k CRW show called Good Food and they had some people on recently who had done a rogue nine nine Essential restaurants. I don't know

if you've heard about this. We're like, so the l A Weekly traditionally does central restaurants, but they've moved in a Oh what you mean the are you talking about the top one? That's Jonathan Gold l A Times on a radio thing. I'm sorry. So the l A Weekly used to imprint do Uh, this is the most convoluted story I used to imprint do this cential restaurants that

went in a direction that people were unhappy with. So these two women decided critic former critics for The l A Weekly decided to um do their own a Rogue ninety nine, which they did on a site called l a Taco and then came on Case RW to talk about it, and what they were saying is that they chose restaurants, not that we're the ninety nine best restaurants, but ninety nine restaurants that captured the DNA at the diversity of Los Angeles and captured the fabric of the city.

And so that really made me think about what we were trying to do and choosing locations, which was try and capture something about the fabric of the city. And people always talk about how, um, you know, Los Angeles is a city with no history, and that's what I thought growing up in Oregon, never having visited California as you know, until he was twenty two. Uh but Los Angeles, the city was a lot of history, just all happens to be twentieth century history. And so I wanted to

route the movie and the locations in that end. Uh So, when we're looking for places, we all when we looked at so many places before finding, you know, the right kind of spot like and sometimes it ended up shifting away from the original intent of the location, but it felt like it spoke to something of Los Angeles, and so we went with it. And an example of that is one scene where Reeve Kearney isn't in the movie. He plays the ex boyfriend of z He Cravitz. His character.

He was supposed to be in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel when we see him, so we for logistical reasons practical concerns, we couldn't shoot there, and uh, we started looking at other hotel lobbies. Nothing was feeling quite right, and then we started looking at bars, and finally our location scout was like, what about Tonga Hut, which is a tiki bar in North Hollywood. Are really old from

the nineteen fifties tiki bar? And initially I was like, I don't know, that's like so different from a hotel. But then as I started thinking about it, I started thinking about all the history of place like that had.

How it actually like the idea that this guy who's but you don't know exactly what he has, but seemingly some you know, like an actor or something, um, he would hang out to place like that's just the kind of place that he would hang out with and there's hang out at And also Lola Kirk has this line where she says, hey, this is my place, like you can't come, like why are you here? This is my place?

And I thought that was so perfect for a place like Tonga Hut, and perhaps even more so than a place like the Roosevelt Hotel, which obviously anyone could think of. That was a very long story that it's perfect. That's what we want here. Um, you, like I said, you've been making movies for ten years now, you want an independent Spirit Award a few years ago for land ho Uh back to back with Chad Yeah, back to that and Brett Haley broke the streak the best did break

the streak? Sorry, uh, but you know, I just wanted to talk to you about the state of independent cinema. I think you're qualified to discuss that. So, so, how does it feel out there? What? What? What does this environment and the netflix of it all? And I know you have strong feelings about that, you go as deep on that as you want. But what do you think

about the state of independent cinema right now? Well? I think I need to be careful what I say here because I do have some strong opinions that may not be uh best for my health and my future health as a filmmaker. Um. Well, okay, so first of all, I think it's worth breaking it down to me as a filmmaker and me as a person who likes watching movies,

which I think are connected but kind of different. Maybe I'll start with me as just a person who likes watching movies, and to say that over the last tend to you know, whatever tended fifteen years, movies had gone from something where I like, really uh held in high regard these physical objects, you know, at first tapes in the nineties and then DVDs, that I had this idea that I would like build a library and it really

mattered to me. It felt really important to me, and I feel like the interaction with those physical objects meant so much to me, whether I owned them or whether I was renting them from a video store. And over the course of that you tend to fifteen years, they went from that to basically, in my mind, as of like maybe seven years ago, essentially worthless. Um. And it

made me really sad. And I realized that even though we have access to everything at all times now that that over the course of the next few years, I came back to the feeling that like physical objects are important and going to physical places to get those objects it's important, and that I, you know, hadn't gone to a video store for a very long time before I started going to Video Tech in South Pasadena about two years ago, and realizing that browsing on streaming platforms makes

me very depressed and makes me not want to watch movies because I just I feel like I'm stuck in an endless loop of nothing. Whereas browsing at a video store, you're looking at a shelf that you know, you came to check out, whatever shelf you came to check out, but then you know, look at this, it's like Cuban cinema from the sixties right next year, Like that's really interesting, Like I wonder what this is, And you started pulling stuff out, and maybe the person next you says, I've

seen that film. That's a great film. You should check that out. And that just doesn't happen on online. And I feel like there's a cultural robustness that is really missing from the streaming experience. And and and not only that, but the the idea that that things come out and we all have a chance to talk about them, to gather and and see them in a place, a physical place with your friends, you know. So as an audience member, I feel a lot of concern about where that's heading.

And for me, I enjoy watching movies with people in movie theaters. I enjoy checking videos out from a from a video store, and I don't so much enjoy watching things streaming, even though there's obviously a lot of great content there. Even the fact that I'm calling it content. You never go into a video store and say, what content do you have for me today? Uh, what's the

new content this week? I mean, I feel like it it's it's a small thing, but I feel like that word kind of speaks to the how everything is like a tech company that offers a service, not as not the service itself, and everyone is just sort of like a middleman, like like we're just providing the platform and hey,

whatever's on here, you know, it's like like that's less important. Um. Now the filmmaker, Uh, you know, I think I've been quite lucky, Like for example, with Gemini, we got to make the movie, we want to make people believed in us to make it. They didn't interfere um. Um. I should mention, by the way, one of your producers is a daily Romansky who just won the oscar from Moonlight a year and a half ago. Yeah, so I just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah that probably that

probably helps, and people do not want to interfere. But I do feel like by having made really small movies completely too, you know, with my own devices and built kind of slowly, that I have proved that if we are allowed to make the movie, we want to make that that that people know what they're going to get, and that's a movie that you know, they can see like what that looks like. And so we have, as the budgets have grown over time, have that opportunity again

now in terms of uh, people connecting with it. I mean, so Neon is our distributor, and I could not possibly be more happy with working with them. It's been the best process I've ever had with any distributor. And I'm so proud of our materials are trailer poster and yeah, it's really it's a great poster. And and Tom Tom Quinn, who's who runs the place, said something that I thought was really important, which is we shouldn't stop working on this poster until until we all want it hanging on

our wall. And I feel like that's a really incredible attitude to have. You think that's so obvious, But that's not an attitude that you always get. It's also not an attitude that means, how can we best sell right this movie. It's an attitude this is how can we best produce something that represents this movie that we're proud of? And I think their belief is that representing the movie that we're all really proud of does help sell the movie.

It helps communicate what kind of movie this is bringing the kind of people who want to see that movie. Now, having said that, you know, you look around at a box office in general, and a lot of movies that have great materials that are maybe great movies have a difficult time connecting and especially uh, I mean, I'm gonna

make myself sound old. I'm only thirty six, But it feels like younger people that are a little bit younger than us, and especially people who are like teenagers are in their early twenties going to the movies in the same way that we went to the movies. Um, it's a big, bigger step for them or not everyone is interested in that. It feels like it's very challenging to communicate with that group of people who may well enjoy the experience. Were they too, I feel like, were they

to take that step? So I think one of the biggest missing pieces right now is how how to let people know who are let's say, under twenty five that like going to the movies is fun and like that. Uh, I don't know, I'm making myself no, no, no no, you're right. I mean the theatrical business is obviously get more and more, uh, moving more and more towards the big event thing like the The Avengers, the the Marvel of it all, the

Star Wars of it all. You go to the movie theaters see those movies, not necessarily a Gemini or something so like that kind of is what you're talking about. Yeah, and rewiring that I just for me. I think there should and could be a very broad spectrum of what's on offer at the theater, and there is, but it's so heavily weighted towards the franchise part of it. And you know, you think of Disney, who's by far the most successful studio in this age, and what they're marketing

isn't really even movies. It's brands, and some of those brands happened to involved some really great movies. Uh, and there's some really great directors working within those. And I just wish that that was a part of the industry that was robust and healthy, that there was then another part of the industry that was robot and healthy that was non branded, exciting, you know, just um, great movies. I actually haven't seen it yet, but um, A quiet

Place is that the right title? Um? You know, I think that's a really interesting example where it has reputation

for quality, it's not part of any brand. Uh, and it did you know that dollar dollars and so I think dollar budget and exactly now it'll be a franchise now of course that that's the thing is that everyone wants to turn that into a franchise, which is fine, I guess, But like, I feel like there's lots of examples where if you bring quality movie to theaters, you communicate with people the right message that like you're gonna

love this movie. Uh, that can work. And you know, I think that Dannyville News movies, Arrival and Cicario are two other examples of that. Nightcrawlers another example of that. We could keep naming movies, but those are you know, we're kind of naming the exceptions here. Uh, it's the mid budget draw is that no one wants to make anymore because it's either a million dollar budget or a

hundred million dollar budget and anything in between is a risk. Yeah, it is, I mean, and that's you know, people have lost their shirt on on those that scale of movies. So in some ways I understand, but I also feel like it's this like horrible, like self fulfilling cycle where you don't or a lot of studios don't want to back movies that don't have a brand, that are those mid level movies, and so those become more and more scarce, and there becomes less of an ecosystem for those movies

to succeed. And you know, I'm looking again at your VHS shelf, and I'm looking at so many movies that you know, like Basic Instinct was an original concept that I believe at the time the script sold for like more what's those millions? It was like three million or something, so like that just wouldn't happen today, And I like wonder if, I mean, I don't think Basic Instinct would exist today. But that's a great film. It's it's um

it's part of the filmography of a great director. And I like, think of all the movie these that we're not seeing, you know, all the people who don't have an opportunity to make stuff that allows them to express something beyond like still within the studio system, but beyond the scope of a world like Marvel or Star Wars

that has these like really finite parameters. Um. And I just kind of I feel maybe going back to an audience member, I feel a little like robbed of like getting to see what that is and and looking at you know, opening up the this is again speaking to maybe what happened to then, and he's like cracking open the newspaper like the Entertainment weekly, like what's coming this season and be like, oh, that sounds neat, like never

heard of that before. Um, that's a real rarity. And then as a filmmaker like those are the honestly the

kind of movies that I want to make. I am most interested in making studio elegant genre movies that just don't we were born ten years too later, I know, I know, I mean, I mean I'm thinking, like, to me, one of the you know, one of the things that I look to that's like, this is what I aspire to is like Talented Mr. Ripley, which works as a genre film perfectly and also has incredible performances in it is directed with such like gentleness and attention to detail,

and I think that has the single greatest shot in all of cinema, the piano reflection shot. The piano reflection shots amazing to me, just thematically potent. I love it anyway, I've written about it like before, people have probably seen that. Yeah, so that you know, it's hard to it's hard to pick.

I mean, maybe that finds a place. But like for every five of those there used to be, now there's you know one if you're lucky, and you know another film which I wonder if we would even get made today, Alien, which I think is perhaps the greatest pop movie ever made. Uh, you know, it's it's an original concept that's very elevated, very restrained in many ways, and very pure, and I

hope there's still space for movies like that. Well, what's interesting is I don't know if you you should pick up this book that just came out Ben Fritz, The Big Picture. It's great distillation of where we're at in the business. Right now, and he makes this other point

that I'm gonna make. It's just that when you see people like Amy Pascal, who was the head of Sony Pictures or the or Jeff Robinov who was over at Warner Brothers, who loved these kind of movies we're talking about and championed these kind of movies, and then kind of the fiscal reality caught up with them and they were moved on out. But then they become producers. Amy Pascal as a producer, she produced The Post last year.

Uh Robinov as a producer now too, And and you know they're trying in their way now to make these movies that they were passionate about once upon a time. And we'll see how that kind of I guess, Era and Away happens. These these formal moguls who are now producers with deals at studios and stuff, trying to get things. Man. I mean, we'll see if that kind of thing helps. But yeah, there's just this big, big, this mid budget thing that we just don't get any more. A movie

we both like which is over here on the shelf. Speed. I don't think Speed would be made today now. I don't think so, certainly not the way it was made, you know, practically, And I mean, I think this is part of why people reflect on how there's not movie stars the way there used to be movie stars. And I think part of this is that there's not the right kind of movie to mint movie stars. Now. Of course, Kana Reeves had already you know, been uh you know,

we've seen him at Point Break, etcetera, etcetera. But I feel like Speed kind of accelerated him to like the next level of movie star and introduced us to Sandra Bullock. I'm right about that, right, more or less, more or less right, but like it made her a movie star. And I would say Demolian Man was the year before, also on the shelf, also on the shelf. Um, And I can see this for the year before because you have the chronologically arranged here. Um. But you know we

don't have this, you know, we don't have uh. I mean I feel like we just sound like to to to, We sound like beyond our years, bemoaning the state of things. Um. But like you know, you're thinking of like, you know, thinking films like Clueless, which made Alicia Silverstone a star, or All the Right Moves, which made Tom Cruise star or risky business first? Um was risky business first? Maybe

risky business. The point stands though, that like these kind of movies and those are even less in evidence now, these kind of like like sincere kind of pop dramas, I mean really just almost doesn't exist anymore. And it's just it feels like there's not the machine to make new movie stars to then elevate them with like something

like speed. And then you know, there's a lot of great actors right now, but it's you know, you're I think we're very hard pressed to find people that are, you know, like Denzel or like Tom Cruise that are just like these like charismatic guys elevated by a movie that comes out of nowhere. By the way, they wanted, Uh, they were really mad at Keanu for shaving his hair. Oh speed. Yeah, they thought it was going to dial

down his charismas movie star charisma. Obviously it worked out, it did work out, but looks great in that movie. We could probably talk forever. We're going a little long, but uh yeah, this entire subject we're on now could could be and I feel like we could easily spend three hours talking about this. Not that anyone wants to listen to that. We should get you in here and then get like Kevin Foggy next to you and just have a chat. Maybe get Ted Surrandas over here. Yeah.

I mean, I just I yeah. Again, not to dwell on it too much, but I just you know, we love we both love movies. We want the industry to be healthy. Like I think there's a place for big budget stuff. There's a place for franchises. There's like I hope the studios continue on and I hope we don't see studios going out of business. Um, But I fear that we're in uh you know what I said about the home media of platforms. So I I fear that we're in an era of brands and platforms and not

of the movies themselves. And I just hope that the ends of that story isn't that um, isn't something dystopian. Yeah. I don't think either one of us wants those things to go away either. Like I love the Marvel movies.

I go to the Marvel movies. I just wish we lived in an era still where those were actually tent poles, which meaning they prop up all the other projects are It's interesting sort of dig into what that term actually means, that it props up all the rest of the slate, and we don't have that anywhere, so don't anyway, movies called Jim and I. You should all go see. It should be in theaters near you somewhere. So so thanks for coming on the show. Are and really appreciate it. Thanks for having me