John C. Reilly / "The Sisters Brothers"

We're already up and running. So I'm gonna dive in here today with John c Riley, the star of us The Sisters Brothers, a few movies actually The Sisters Brothers, which is gonna be premiering at the Venice Film Festival. Also Ralph Breaks the Internet. We're gonna get Ralph too, and also the four movies actually coming out. Yeah, what's the one I'm missing? Sherlock Holmes's Will Ferrell. Yeah, Holmes

and Watson. It's called you like staying busy. I like relaxing actually, but when when the sun shining, you gotta make hey right, I hear you. Oh, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it um before we get into the movies. I kind of wanted to dive back a little bit. You know, when you started your career, you started with Casualties of War Bryan to Palmer. Also, We're No Angels and Days of Thunder its Neil Jordan

and Tony Scott. So these kind of cinema titans. I'm curious what you like, What were the last My whole career has been cinemat It seems like like one top the next. And I realized when I got that first job, because you know, at that point, I was twenty two years old coming out of Chicago. I've never been in

an airplane before, let alone in a movie. And uh, after I did Casualties and I met this amazing guy, Sean Penn and Brian to Palmer, I realized, like, oh, okay, well I've gotten off to a pretty good start here. I should try to like have everything top the next if I can, you know, like um, because I was just so thrilled to be working on anything, literally anything.

I was taking auditions in Chicago while I was doing theater there when I was just out of college, and I just wanted to make a buck, you know what, I mean, I was just trying to get out of the South Side of Chicago and then um, and then it just occurred to me, you like. I think part of it was that I somehow didn't believe that you

could really have a career in movies. Like when I was a kid, I thought of movie actors as like the real that was what they really were, Like, I couldn't even I had reference points for theater in my life. I had done a lot of theater since I was a little kid, and so I understood like that life what it means to be like an actor doing plays.

But movie guys like I remember, just like watching Gene Hackin in French Connection in the theater and going, Wow, what a cool guy, Like I just thought that's who he was. I didn't. I didn't put it together that actors were people somehow, movie actors anyway, because they seem so much bigger than life. But um, But once I started to get going and I had some great mentors earlier on Sean Penn was a great mentor of mine. I wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for Sean Penn.

Because Sean advocated for me on that first movie. I was originally cast in Causualties of War as a day player at just one scene where I get my arm blown off, and then the casting changed while I when I got over to Thailand, they recast a couple of different parts and I ended up moving into one of the leads in the movie. UM. I think partially because or maybe entirely, because Sean Penn believed in me, and

he told you it's a big risk. I had never been in a movie before, literally not never been on film before, so for a big Hollywood movie, that's a considerable risk to take. And I think I mean Sean and I actually have never talked about it, even though I've known him now for so long and I feel so close to him and his whole family. Um, we never talked about it, but I know that behind the scenes he must have said to Brian, like Brian to Palmer, like,

don't worry, this kid can do it. Because we've done a lot of rehearsing for that movie, where I was started reading utility roles for the characters that weren't there, and I was coming at it from a theatrical perspective, which is like you just it doesn't matter if you think you're an eighty year old Vietnamese man. That's what you're being asked to do, so you have to throw

yourself into it. And so um, like, for instance, there was an eighty year old Vietnamese man and one of these scenes and the we didn't have someone there when we're rehearsing, so they were like, yeah, John, you you read that part. Like So, I think I just impressed Sean early on with my enthusiasm and my willingness to just like let go of my ego and do whatever it was that needed to be done to tell the story that day. And there was a there was a

lot of ego in that room. You know, a lot of young actors who were feeling like, uh, you know, they needed to kind of go toe to toe with Sean or something or prove that they were as tough as him or whatever. And I was like, I'm an actor man like Shaun could kick my ass. I don't. I don't need to prove myself in that way. Check this out window, what you're going to buy? I wonder if you can see me? Can you see me? Anyway?

So yeah, so Sean was an early advocate of mine, and I really do oh my life in movies to him and Brian to Palmer and Art Linson. Those are the first three people who you know, just threw caution to the wind and gave me that first shot. So cool. Well, I forgot what you asked me, but I started off with Titans of the Cinema. I think it was your question. Yeah, and Tony Scott, Neil Jordan. I'm just curious what you what you learned early on from guys like that. Tony

Scott was actually my fourth movie. The first one was cast he was Brian to Palma, then was Neil Jordan, and Where No Angels and then State of Grace with Pilano. Yeah, all three with Sean. But I should point out just as a point of pride because it's something that I've done through my whole life. As much as I admire Sean and appreciate everything that he did for me, I had to earn every one of those spots. It wasn't like Sean was saying, you have to cast this guy.

I like him. He was saying, this kid's good, give him a chance. And then all three of those movies I had to audition extensively for and show the director that I actually had the goods. Um. So, yeah, so there's no free lunch. I guess that's what I'm saying. Uh. Brian's obviously very singular filmmaker. Um, you know, did I keep coming back to the question like what what what

do you what did you learn from from him? From from a Tony Scott, from Neil Jordan's from you know, just early on when you're first getting your start, where you're scared starting to become a screen actor. Uh well I wasn't especially scared, I think mostly because I was sort of ignorant about what well how big of an opportunity it was to me. I mean initially I was so blown away by that first part I got that date, just that day player role, like one just any part

in the movie. I was like, oh my god, I'm They're gonna fly me into Thailand, Like it's insane. So it's already in a place of extreme gratitude and wonderment. But in terms of being nervous, like I've been acting since I was eight years old, so I knew, like why I know how to do this? I'm sure there's a lot of technical stuff that I don't understand, and to this day, there's quite a bit of technical stuff

that I don't understand. But what's most important for actors in front of the camera is just lose yourself and to be confident and to just completely submerge yourself into the material so that I knew I already knew I could do. I do remember a couple of moments on that movie, though, where I remember once I had seen Sean, I think, asked for another take. You know, he can

do another one. I want to do another one. I have something else I want to do, which is something like with seniority, it's pretty common among actors on movies. But then I thought, like, you know, we're doing a scene and I was like, Brian, can can I do one more? You know? And he was like everyone, John Riley wants another take, so we're going to do another take. And I remember looking at him in this kind of guileless way, like what is that? Is that a problem?

Like Shahn did it? Like I didn't understand it was this big deal. I thought like, don't you want the best for me? Like like give me another crack at it? Like um, So I realized early on, like all this kind of deference to famous people and and treating directors like these legends or these screen titans. It was there was no future in that. It was just that's not that's not what they wanted, and it's not what was gonna help me accomplish what I needed to do every day.

I needed to just look at the people I was working with as partners and as peers and as people that I was working together with in collaboration with. Not these people I was lucky to be around, you know, I understood I was lucky to be around them, But that's not the way you have to know you can behave in those two Actually your working Yeah, did you have a roadmap at all in those early stages, like what you wanted your career to be, what how you

wanted to get in there, any idea whatsoever? No, not at all. Really, Like, like I said, I didn't really have any reference points in my life. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and very Irish Catholic kind of upbringing, and there was just nobody. There were barely any people that were doing theater, you know, let alone movies, like it just seemed like this crazy thing.

So I didn't have a roadmap. But then I started to create um, not so much a roadmap, because you know, whenever I hear actors talk about like, well, my goals are this, and I'm gonna do this, and I'm going to do that. Like the truth is an actor's life is one of like hitching your wagon to other people's momentum.

You know, So this idea that you're planning something like most of the time, especially when you're starting out, you're just looking for opportunities that other people are bringing to you, not you know, looking for you know, trying to accomplish some some specific goal or some kind of role or whatever. UM. But you know that said, I did sort of develop like a point of view about um quality control. And

Sean really taught me that early on. He was like listen because I remember we were doing our second film together, We're New Angels, and I had been offered this other sort of it was a good movie to actually um.

It was this movie Memphis Bell. I remember I had been offered this role in Memphis Bell and and I was trying to decide between doing Memphis Bell or doing State of Grace with Sean, and uh, I was really struggling with it because I felt really beholden to Sean because he had had already like taught me so much, and I was I took him aside and I was like, hey man, I'm trying to figure out what to do here.

I got these two offers. I really want to do this thing with you, but there's other great part two. I'm not sure what I should do. And he's like, well, what do you want to do? Like, wow, I don't know. My agents are saying that I should do this other thing. And he's like who. I was like, my agent said, he's like your agent. I was like yeah, he's like that's the last person you should be listening to for advice about what you should do. And it was so

counterintuitive to me at the time. I thought agents were the gatekeepers of everything you know, and Sean really including in early on, like those people have an agenda and it's not your agenda. They're looking for ten percent of the most amount of money that you can get. Yeah, so you have to just ignore everyone. But that inner voice of the of yourself as an artist, what is what is it that you're drawn to do? What you know? What do you you know? What do you see yourself

doing your best work? At so. Needless to say, I passed on Memphis Spell, although I love that movie. I thought was really good. And uh, I love a World War two story where Gary Olman last year talking about State of Grace on the show Here. That's why Gary was in a wild place at that time in his life. Man. I wonder what he said about it, because he was talking about how, you know, just finding the character. The

smallest thing could help him find the character. Like he was trying on a jacket and he flipped his hair and suddenly he saw that he had the character. I remember that hair flip. I saw him do that in the movie. It's like this kind of chip on his shoulder psychological gesture. Yeah, that was just wild. Let's remember like a nineteen year old or twenty year old Uma Thurman just wafting up onto the set to visit Gary. At that moment, I was like, oh my god, Like

this what happens when you're famous movie star? Like people like that just show up to visit you. Yeah. Well, you know, along the way, you know, he kind of made this transition eventually to comedy, started working with you know, jud Apatao and Kasden and Adam A long, long time after the movies we're talking about now. But I'm just it's it's interesting to me to have that kind of shift in the in the middle of your career. Uh and and you're so great at your natural at it.

You know, some of the stuff you did with Paul Thomas Anderson had inherent comedy to it as well. So just what was that about? Was that a conscious decision with what was going on? Well, like I like I was just saying about afters having goals. You know, it's like you're just you're trying to stay in the groove, you know, like you're trying to like not get in your way and not put preconceptions on things. So when things, good opportunities come your way, you have to follow your

your instincts. And my instincts were then and still are, like look for inspired people that you think are funny or challenging or and more intelligent than you or whatever it is, people that are gonna challenge you and bring it to a new place than you've already been. So I met um Will Ferrell through Molly Shannon and then Um and Will and I just had right away this sort of sympatico feeling towards each other, and we almost did Anchorman together but that didn't work out. So I

was working on something. But when luckily, when those guys did their next movie, they came to me again for Tell Dagon Nights, and um, I realized then, like, it doesn't it's not for me. Like there's this great, great quote that I always think about, which is, um, what other people think of you is none of your business. So this idea that like, well, I'm a dramatic actor or I'm a comedian guy. It's like, just never mind

about what other people are saying about you. Just do your work, you know, and work with people that inspire you, and and go towards material that you think is inspired and and well done. And I had done a lot of improvisation already with Paul Thomas Anderson for his films, and and Adam McKay and Will Ferrell saw that I was like really down to improvise, and that's like the sort of lifeblood of what they do together. So it's

just it was a real no brainer. I mean, I suppose if you were trying to create some profile that you're serious actor, you would avoid doing comedy. But that just seems stupid to me, like, if you can do it, I mean, that's sort of my mantra for my whole life. Do whatever you can, you know, if it's sing a song or write a poem, or being a comedy or a drama or whatever it is, like, you should do it. You should. You should. Don't let some uh perceived box

keep you from exploring artistic avenues for yourself. By the way, why has it been twenty years since you and Paul Thomas Anderson made a movie together, which I can both been very busy. I'm still very close friends with Paul. We see each other all the time. So but that was always sort of our agreement, you know, as we did three movies together in a row, and you know, after the first one, I said to him, listen, only

put me in a movie. If you see that there's a role for me, don't do it because you're my friend. It goes back to this kind of arrangement. I have a sean on those first few movies, like I don't want to be in I don't want these opportunities if their favors from you. I want these opportunities because I'm the right guy for the job. So that's sort of what I said to Paul too after that first movie, like, look, don't feel like you have to do anything. You're an

artist and you have a vision for your story. And if I'm the right guy, I'm the right guy. No no harm, no foul, you know what I mean, Like, no no offense if you need to go a different way or whatever. And so he took that to heart. After my third movie, Well, I'll speak for a lot of people, would love to see you guys work together again. I mean that was yeah, I'm sure we will. I'm sure we will. I just don't know what Knights Magnolia was in film school in collaboration was pretty big deal

for a lot of us. So we'd we'd love to see you back. Well, I hope Paul's listening. He's very busy. I loved it. I was loved it. I mean I was somewhat mystified by the lack of industry support, in particular awards for that movie, although it was rewarded in

some ways. I thought, how can you look at a movie that is that it's like the lead up to the Oscars because it got the Best Picture nomination, right, they got nominated, but like it's something so I just thought I should have swept, you know what I mean. Paul not only wrote and directed that movie, he shot that movie. He was the director of photography and the camera operator, and it was Daniel day Lewis in front

of the camera. Was like not like a walk in the park, you know, like Daniel is a demanding actor who who demands your attention, Like he's as demanding with everyone around him as he is with himself. He's a brilliant, brilliant actor. So the idea that Paul was like having to take care of all these technical aspects and be in this relationship with Daniel, I thought that was just

a stunning display of virtuosic filmmaking. Um and I also thought the film was really funny and you know, deeply, uh just really well observed about relationships and and what goes on between men and women and what esthetics mean, why aesthetics are so important to some people anyway. Yeah, right, that's what I thought of that fancy thread. You're a fan. Before I get into the new movie, I just want

to start. I did want to talk about the Thin Red Line also, just because anybody that was in the Thin Red Line I want to know they're gonna have to get to the Jacquo the yard at some point, but we're gonna get there. But I just, you know, it was a larger part like many people, and it's a good problem to have, like a lot of movies

that that people want to talk about. But tell me about your experience working with Malick and and uh, you know, were you heartbroken at at the part getting whittled down like the number of the other and not at all? I was, uh, you know, I quickly realized I was

doing a play in Chicago. I was doing a streetcar named Desire in Chicago at the Stepmo Theater at the time when I auditioned for that movie, and I was just like I was such a huge fan of bad Lands and Days of Heaven that I was like, I got to at least be I want this guy to know that I exist. I just wanted to see an audition of mine. That's that was like, that was as

much as I was hoping for it, you know. So I made this audition tape for him, and there was this I remember the whole sequence where I was I auditioned for a few different parts in that movie, and I remember I auditioned for Elias Koteas as part at one point, and there's this all its intense scenes where he's in a foxhole and he's communicating by radio to Nicknolty's character and he's getting these orders that he's disobeying and it's this super intense while they're being fired on scene,

and I remember, like, well, it's gotta I can't, like, I can't have the casting person be feeding these these intense lines off camera, like they're the cues aren't gonna be there and it's not gonna have the intensity that

needs to have. So I figured out this brilliant thing I thought, which would take a micro cassette recorder, and I recorded all of the other lines on the micro cassette and I held it like a radio, so I would I would say my line and then I pressed play and you'd hear the response come over the cassette recorder. And it worked really well. I got a part in the movie, which not that part, but I got a

part in the movie. But anyway, to answer your question about whether I was heartbroken up about the amount of my role that was cut down from the film, I quickly realized once I got there that Terry. In my mind, Terry is more of a philosopher than a filmmaker. In a lot of ways, He's not. He doesn't have the same concerns on a set that other directors I've worked with have had. Terry, it seemed to me, was just someone who was looking for the truth every day. He

was looking for honesty and looking for the truth. And if he could find that truth and a bird flying by or in the drops of dew, on a piece of grass, or on an extra, or on Sean Penn or on Nick and Nolty, like that's what he was going to film that day. I'm often at Golden hour,

you know, or magic hour at the end of the day. Um. So I realized, like, we're just you know, I said to Terry one day, like I was reading the book again, Terry, because my character that I that I was given was actually the voice piece of James Jones, who wrote the book. It was kind of like his worldview came through in that character. So I thought, cool, I'm like the voice

of the author and this is the great part. Um. But then I realized, like when I said to Terry, you know, Terry is reading the book again today and he's like, oh, you read a book, John, And I was like yeah. And he's like, you read the whole thing. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I read the whole thing. He's like, oh, I haven't, he said, I haven't read a book all the way through in many, many years. I was like, what are you talking about, Terry, what

are you doing. He's like, oh, I just opened a book to whatever page it is, and then I read as long as I'm interested. And so I realized like, Okay, this guy is not thinking in a linear way. He wrote the script and it's based on this book, and it does have this linear threat to the script, but we're not doing that. That was just the excuse to all get us all here, and now he's gonna try to find some truth. So by the time post production happened, you know, Terry was very gracious and called me and

said it was the greatest line. He's like, he's like, John, I just want him to give you heads up, um, and everyone does it. Terry matter compression. By the way he was working on them, I felt that some parts of the picture were like ice flows that's separated from the main and so some of your scenes well, John, they floated off and I was like, that's all right, Terry, and like that was that was, That's always been always I've said that so many directors. This which is, I

just provide the coal, you know, you turn them into diamonds. Man, Like, I'm not precious about this piece of coal or that piece of coal. I just I just throw everything I have at it and then good luck in the editing room. Is how I feel about film. Film is the director's medium, you know, not an actor's medium. So you can't get too hung up on or too precious about any little moment. You know. Well, the result is you're in one of the finest films ever made. So thanks there you are.

Let's talk about The Sisters Brothers again. I say, I think this is one of your best performances. I loved your interplay with Joaquin. And this is Jack Odyard, the director of A prophet Um again, one of my favorite movies of recent times. I'm curious about, you know, do you feel comfortable working in a Western kind of slipping into that cadence the language. Yeah, I mean for lack of a I mean, if there's one thing that's true about my career and around. I I'm talking to variety today,

But that is the one thing about my career. It has variety. Like I wish in some some days when I'm really tired and having to reinvent the wheel yet again for another role another movie. I wish like I was the type of actor that just had a sort of persona and did the same thing within reason in different films. But just the way it is with me, I do different things. So Western was one of the few things that I hadn't done, and I loved working outdoors.

I've been craving, especially after I had just done standin Ali, where I was encased in a fat suit and prosthetics and indoors and theaters filled with fake smoke for three months. I was really anxious to get outside and and live that kind of like cowboy life. So uh yeah, I mean, look, you know what it's like to be a little kid. Every little boy wants to be a soldier and a cowboy and a spaceman and you know all these things. Like so I'm no different. Like, for sure, I wanted

to be a cowboy. Um, but I've been offered Westerns in the past and passed on them because I thought they were really cliche or they were sort of trafficking in this nostalgia about the West as opposed to what was actually going on in the West in the eighteen fifties. So when I read Patrick DeWitt's book, which I bought the rights to after I read it, um, I thought

he just had an amazingly original take on the genre. Where, I mean, the most striking thing about Patrick's book and I think Jacques film is that, unlike most movie cowboys and we're not really cowboys, we don't rustle cattle, we don't handle and we just ride horses. So I guess

that's cowboyish, but we kill people and we use guns. Yeah, but um, we're not really how Poke says it where But anyway, what really struck me about Patrick's book was the characters have this emotional availability, as opposed to like a clinic Swood movie where it's almost like this opaque quality to the character. You can't you're the whole time. It's wonderful to watch because you're wondering what is he thinking, what is he what's he gonna do? What does he?

How does he feel about this? Like and when you read the book, the sisters brothers. You were right there about what it feels like to kill somebody? What does it feel like to be trapped in this symbiotic relationship with your brother uh? And what does it feel like to to look at a toothbrush and not know what it is? You know? Like so all these amazingly original

takes on on the time period in Patrick's book. So when this came about, I knew, like, oh, this is it like even hoping to do a Western, and this is it like um, And I'm glad that you responded to the film, And I'm glad that you liked my working in because I've worked harder on this film than and anything I've ever done. You know, from the pre production phase when my wife and I got the rights and developed it into a script with Patrick de Witt, to the to meeting Jacques. It was my wife, Alison

Dickie's idea to go to Jock. By the way she was, I was, I'm sort of a I'm a fan of Jacks and I knew his films, but I wasn't tracking them in real time like my wife was. My wife was seeing each film as it came out and saying, oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god. So she had already strung all of the Jacques films together in this way that I hadn't yet. But you know, like like anybody, you see the Prophet, you're like, oh my god, this guy is one of the best in

the whole world. Like. So yeah, So I worked really hard with my wife putting this film together, and there were many many moments of um, you know, it seemed like the whole thing was going to blow up on our faces and fall apart. There's there's language difference between France and America. There's all these cultural differences. There's different ways of making films. There's different ways of thinking about film. You know, the French you think about film like like

really like one of the arts. If you're film director in France, you treated like Picasso, you know, you treated like a fine artist, which really is what it is as at its highest aspirations, like film is a true art form like that. So anyway, there were many many moments along the way where it was just like just seem like insurmountable to get this big crew of people from France to to work with these you know, Americans, and then we shot in Spain and Romania and France.

So every time there was like it was like a virtual tower of Babel trying to get all these different people to to work in concert together. But we eventually did, and I think the film really speaks to that. It reflects the film reflects the reality of the West at that time, which was that there were Chinese people in French people in Hungarians and Russians and all these people coming from all over the world and this mad search

for gold or for opportunity or for a freer life. Um. So what seems counterintuitive at first when you think, like, oh, a Frenchman to direct the Western, when you actually look at what was going on in San Francisco in the Pacific Northwest in the eighteen fifties, you're like, oh, no, what better person than someone from Europe who understands what

that initial impulse impulse of all those people was. Um. And that's you know, that's in a larger way, I think the film really captures a lot of that, and then in a more internal way, like all of us brought very personal parts of our lives to the story. I have brothers, Um and everyone involved in the film, whether it's Shock or Joaquin or riz or Jacob. Everyone brings some kind of family history with them to the story.

And I think when I watched the film, uh, I feel like it's a really personal film for everybody, and that was our main and I'm really that's immensely gratifying, because our main concern when we're looking for a director originally was we wanted someone to make a film the way Paul Thomas Anderson makes a film, or the way Martin Scort saysn't he makes a film, or the way it term smell like, makes a film where it's a

personal thing, it's a personal story. We didn't want to hire someone who could make a good western, you know. We wanted to find someone who has has moved by the book and the characters as we were, and then we want to hand the whole thing to that person and say, do what you will and make a story

that resonates for you personally. And so I think at first Jock couldn't believe that we were just sort of dumping this opportunity in his lap, you know, like like like most people in the film business, that you get used to looking out for con jobs where people are to be aware of gifts that come you know, uninvited, but he eventually came around and and all of us ended up really putting our heart and souls into this movie. Was that part of the drive to film in Europe

as well? I think that was more driven. Number one, you can't really find um exterior locations uh in America that you're allowed to shoot in, like like we were in the version we were in the Spain's version of like Yosemite, which you know, good luck shooting in Yosemite here, or even finding these kind of landscapes without um telephone wires and billboards and that kind of thing. So I think it was a good idea for that reason, first of all, because we could find these wild locations that

really felt like the time. And but I think Jack's impetus for wanting to shoot there was he was very wary of coming outside of his comfort zone as a filmmaker. He didn't want to suddenly be like selling out to Hollywood or whatever you wanna call it. He didn't want to just be He didn't want to have to be absorbed into an American system of filmmaking. He wanted to make his films the way he makes them, which are

brilliant you know. Um, so once they realized, like, wait, we could find that they did a location scout here in America, in Canada. Um. But at the end of the day, I think once they started to see these pictures coming in from Spain and Romania, They're like, oh wow, like we have it right here in our back door.

And then they could use their crew and they could you know, just the spirit of the film like would be more familiar for for Jacques than it would be if he had just completely plopped himself into the middle of an American production. Let's touch briefly on Stanin Alie. You know Laurel and Hardy. You and Steve Coogan, Yeah, big fan growing up of huge. Laurel and Hardy are like the fountain head of it all for me, you know, like I think for a lot of actors. Um. Anyway,

people old enough to know Loyal and Hardy are I think? Um? I mean Samuel Beckett was an enormous fan of Laurel and Hardy. By way of our director on Laurylan of the standin Aali movie. I've just heard that Martin Scorre says he really loved the film and he grew up watching Loyland Hardy and so anyone with any brains knows that Lauren Hardy are very very special and unique and and uh and they were the biggest movie stars in the world for a while there. Um, so sorry, what

was the question talk about? Just talk about it because I haven't seen it yet unfortunately, But yeah, we're gonna be um, we we're gonna get We're hopefully gonna get a North American distributor out of Toronto at the Toronto Film Festival. But yeah, we're gonna close the London Film Festival, but we're hoping hoping to get a distribute distributor here before that. Um, anyway, you're rocking out of fat suit you said for that obviously, yeah, fat student protects by

the amazing Mark Coulier and who. Yeah, so we decided to tell you know, we decided on that movie. Well, you can watch the films, so there's no point in recreating the films because they already exist in their utter brilliance and they're widely available. And and I developed the script with Steve Coogan and John Baird and um, Jeff Pope, and as we're crafting the story and what we were going to focus on for those two guys, because it was originally kind of by the numbers sort of biopics

script that we had. And then as we went along, I was like, guys, anyone with a phone, which is everyone now can Google or Wikipedia this information. I think anything you can find out on Wikipedia, we shouldn't do in the movie because everyone can. Anyone who wants to know anything about Laurel and Hardy can just instantly access that. And that's just a feature of our world now that people, you know, if they want to, if you want to become educated about something, you can just tap right into it.

And so to me, the most interesting part of their relationship was what was going on behind the scenes, like what was their friendship like, and that is very very little,

um candid footage of them. There's been many books written about them, and they spoke about their relationship, but it's not widely known and um and then this idea that the film always had this plot of moving through their theatrical tours, that they were their last theatrical tour, which is something that they had to do because unlike Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin Harold Lloyd, they had no back

end on their movies. They were like worldwide movie stars for six years there or something, but they had no back end. There was salary and employees gets hal Roach put them together. So they had to do these theatrical tours because they were broke when they were old. When they could no longer get movie work, they decided to just go back to this sort of music hall background

that they both had. And uh and they say in their book, and you know, when you hear them talk about their life, they said like that is when they actually became very close personally. That when they were working together in their heyday, they were sort of like um co workers. You know, there were very different personalities. You know.

Babe Hardy was like very into you know, the pleasures of life, you know, eating and drinking and and playing golf and you know, just living the highlights everything that was offered, you know out here in Hollywood at that time. And stand was a workaholic. He was this NonStop writing who was sort of shadow directing most of their movies, coming up with a lot of the gags and that

kind of thing. So when they would work, you know, the work day would end and they just split and go, you know, Stanley go home and work, and Oliver would go and drinking party and play golf. Apparently was like a savant golfer and he would gamble on golfing and

win lots of money. But anyway, so then they, you know, when they started to do these tours, they had to be together all of the time and from the train to the hotel to the stage, backstage waiting, so they spent all this time together and we all decided, like that is a very rich vein because no one knows

what really happened backstage between the two of them. Yeah, so there's a chance to really to really look at what does it mean to be in a in a creative partnership with someone that you're that close to, that you're that tied to, that you have that much love for. And it ends up being a very emotional story. I

hope people enjoyed as much as I did. And then touch on wreck it Ralph, you know, just be being able to front this big Disney animated enterprise like this, Well it's our second one, so I'm getting used to it.

But it goes back to improvisation. Really why I love working on those these Record Ralph movies so much because unlike every other kind of filmmaking, when you're in the recording studio, there's no concern about daylight, there's no even concerned about time really because you're always ahead of the animators. So you can just goof around and improvise and throw ideas back and forth with the writer and the director and it's happening there in real time. You can try anything.

So there's a incredible amount of freedom, uh involved, And I love that. And you end up when you're given that kind of freedom and you were given the ability to improvise, what ends up happening is you short of channel a lot of your own personal heart into it.

And that was one of my main concerns going into the first Record Ralph movie, was like, Yeah, we can make this big, shiny, exciting, dynamic distract action for kids, but we should never forget like this is a real opportunity to speak to kids all over the whole world, Like let's put some heart in it, Like let's put something that let's make our overall mission one of something more than just entertainment, you know, like let's connect to people emotionally. So I feel like we did that in

the first one, and man, I was just what. I was just doing a d R the other day because the sequel is nearly done and I was weeping, like just watching this short little scene. Um, I feel like we accomplished it again on this in this sequel, a lot, a lot of heart. I have a son this time, so I can't wait to show them that good Well these uh check check out all these movies. Sisters, Brothers, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Stan and Ali and the Sherlock

Holmes come What's that called again? Homes? The Man's busy and he needs to take a more partnership. Movies coming out like the JOHNS. Riley. Thanks for doing the show Man really appreciate. Thank you,