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Is an award winning writer and director whose new film is called Civil War.
Please welcome, Alex Garland. I know it.
Thank you for coming. I loved your film. The whole thing is intense. There was a lot of assumptions about the film just based on the trailer. You wrote it, you directed it. What do you want to tell us about Civil War?
You mean, how do I want to say that?
People heard Civil War and they saw the trailer and they immediately went, you know it, it's this, and it's this.
And all right.
What I wanted to do just make something compelling and exciting and engaging and all that stuff, but also lead to some kind of conversation, have a thought process. Not all films do that, Not all films have to do that. That's that's fine, But that's what this one is aiming for. And it's you know, it's set in a world where division and polarized politics have led to some really strange authoritarian state and the country's disintegrated.
And I believe you're purposely vague about how we got here, who's fighting?
Who was that? Was that? On purpose? Am I right to assume that.
Sort of?
Yes? And no, I think I got for sort of.
Yeah.
It is very vague about some stuff, and it is very very specific about other stuff. And I think because it's vague about some things, it creates an assumption that there's an overall vagueness.
But actually it's quite on point in some areas. You know that that itself is a vague statement.
Well, yeah, you answered it. You know.
One of the things that I felt so much in this film was was so many of these American places that I love born and raised in America. Is the golf course, is the football stadium. And that scene we just saw, I mean, here's a sniper trying to take someone out on a golf course while Christmas music is playing in the background.
I mean, it's like, holy shit. As an American, I said, I don't want this to happen. I don't want us to.
Be You shouldn't want it to happen, right, I don't, right, right, I don't want it to happen either.
I have to say.
Also, seeing as we talk about it, seeing as I appear to be on a television show right now, I want to say, you are exactly It's not it really isn't just America it's set in America, but this situation exists in my country and in many European countries, the Middle East and Asia and South America. And I chose America because everybody looks to America, right, But of things it's talking about are quite global.
As a brit was it a little bit fun watching America crush itself?
Okay?
No, honestly I hate it. Yeah, I know.
I by the way, to be serious, nobody on the planet, apart from psychopaths, needs disintegration in this country.
They don't.
Nobody on the planet wants division in this country. They want stability and decency. And yeah, for sure.
I think.
Sometimes when you're sitting on your couch at home on Twitter and we've got our political identities and there's kind of this cute idea of all, we're going to a civil war.
But when you.
Watch your film, it's terrifying, dude, and it's.
Like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, we should be having these conversations. One scene comes to mind, in particular, the Lincoln Memorial, right, I mean, it's in the trailer, so I don't want to it gets exploded.
Yeah, and don't blow it up.
It's a good thing, Yeah, exactly.
And honestly it went there as a seventh grader with my middle school and I just was like, holy shit, how would I feel if this happened. Of all the places you could have blown up in this film, and a lot of places to do blow but the Lincoln Memorial, I mean, tell me why that was important to you?
Well, actually, because, particularly towards the end of the film, I wanted the audience, having gone through hopefully a compelling, engaging story, to suddenly feel a really strong sense of aversion, yes, like a really deep instinctive sense of sort of being appalled.
Yes.
And although it was written before January the sixth, there was something about January the sixth that it was a disgrace. Right, It was various things, but one of the things was it was a disgrace, and it provoked to feeling of whatever is happening, This shouldn't be happening. This just has a has like a deep wrongness, and this is this is a kind this is that writ large, I suppose.
And I guess it says a lot about you that you take great pleasure in giving us these things that should not be happening.
There's no pleasure in it.
No, no, no, it's it's just humility in my job that leads me to do these things.
We haven't spoken about the role of the press in this film, and it's in the clip as well, but.
I mean, that's the center character, is its.
Present because on a personal level, I'm completely over, completely over this demonization and villainization of the press.
It's been happening a lot.
Yeah, yeah, it's it comes from politicians, and it comes from within social media, which is this weird public discourse space that doesn't really relate to how people talk to each other at all. We all know that, right, and in some places it happens within the press.
But whatever it is, we need.
Journalists, we need trusted journalists in it, pretty much exactly the same way we need doctors. So I'm done with this thing. And I thought, I when I was setting out to make it, someone said, don't make it about journalists. Everybody hates journalists, and I thought, this is just nuts, just nuts.
I mean, is that a leap for me to say, if we gut journalism, we lead to civil war?
You know what?
All right, I will be very serious. I know it's a comedy show. I'm not very good, are you kidding me? I mean, I haven't. I haven't told the joke in the first two accents. So here's the thing. There's a system of checks and balances. Government has checks and balances, executive, judiciary, legislature.
And then there's the fourth estate.
There's journalists watching that. That's a system of checks and balances, which is not arbitrary.
It's for a reason.
It's guarding against something. It's guarding against something real. If you erode it, if you erode government, if you erode the people watching the government, the thing you're guarding against me, just turn up and what is that thing?
Actually?
In Europe we know exactly what it looks like because fascism there came out of democracy, and a lot of fascists don't know their fascists. They kind of know it's a bad word. They don't identify as fascists. It's not a thing they know. Some do, but most don't, right, And it's actually really a state of mind that people drift into, as opposed to, you know, following some kind of swastika flag. It's not really that, and it is actually a danger.
It's easy for to watch this film and the Girl America watch out America.
This civil war can.
Be your But really, I think you briefly stated this isn't just the United States.
We had a we had a prime minister, a guy called Boris Johnson.
Sure, it was interesting thing. He was manifestly a liar. It was.
It was completely obvious he was a liar. And journalists would point this out, but they didn't have any traction.
It didn't do anything.
It just sort of bounced off him that that was that was weird. So your country, my country, many other countries.
I I wish I had a joke up my sleeve.
No, you don't need a joke, I think, but you.
You you swore right this is this is actually up. But it is dangerous, dude.
I watched your film and then I got in a cab in Manhattan and I was like, I want to get the I want to go to the country right now, and just like, I mean, it is very powerful. It's an anti war film for sure. And is there a lesson I should be taking. Should I be having more conversations with people that ideologically I'm different than his?
My feeding Most people are not extremists. Most people just are not.
They don't really have a voice.
Extremists have occupied noise, and I think the key thing to be.
Thank you, thank you for coming to chat with us, Thank you for your film. It's it's tremendous. I hope everybody sees it. Civil War is in theaters in Imax nationwide April twelfth.
Alan start and you take a quick break. I'll be right back after this.
You don't read a job, We're gonna rap.
My guest Tonight is a cultural critic, poet, and best selling author whose new book is called There's Always This Year on Basketball and ascension.
Please welcome, Amnith abdu RAKEI.
What are that?
Unbelievable?
This There's Always This Year? This is a beautiful book.
It's been said ball is life, but you have written a book about basketball, poetry, meditation, music, lebron.
Was your intention to do ball as life?
Right here? Everything? Yes?
And in some ways I think I failed, But in other ways I think I succeeded. My hope was to write a book where anyone could see their own interest in it. You know, it's like walking to a body of water, looking in and seeing what you most want reflect it back to you. So if you are in this book saying I want to find a basketball book.
You will.
If you're in this book saying I want to meditate on grief or place or home, you will. If you are someone who wants to see a complicated relationship with lineage and parentage reflected back to you, you will. So in that way, I.
You tell the story of seeing your dad shoot.
A basketball once one time.
And this book reminded me of how much I love basketball, and also how much I watched with my dad, and I wonder it's not often described this way.
Is basketball a family sport?
It feels like at least a family sport from the standpoint of witness. I grew up in a house of Knicks fans largely, and I remember my mother loving Charles Smith, and you know, the dislike for the Bulls, so, you know, was strange for me. I can't love Michael Jordan because you know so in some ways basketball is in a
family that loves basketball, it gets passed down. Like so many other things, you learn to love the game through the people you witness loving the game, and that, I think is a beautiful thing.
My dad loved the floater, oh yeah, the best shot, and you describe it in here, you know, and I just have Do you mind if I read some your words to you?
Really?
Isn't that strange?
An honor but strange?
Yeah, so it's gotta be a weird The floater the most romantic shot in the game. When done right, it's almost obsessed with drama, almost pausing in the air to make sure.
You get its good side before it begins to twirl downward. I thought of my dad when I read that.
Really you did that? You read that beautiful. I'll tell you, I'm in the second half of my book tour. You should take over for that.
I can take over.
But it's just one example of the things you described so well. You said you're a Knicks fan, so you're familiar with there's always next year. But the significance, the significance of there's always this.
Year, it presents a real urgency. I mean, so much of this book is also about the passage of time, in making peace with the passage of time, which I think a lot of people. I turned forty last year. I think a lot of people as they age think first about what is being taken from them, instead of thinking about the many versions of themselves there are to come, and to present a kind of urgency and an affection around the time you have and put it in the
immediate moment. For me to structure a book around that was a real generosity to myself.
Well, yeah, in the book, you know it's yeah, And you know he's not just saying that. It's actually divided into orders and timeouts, and there's clocks, there's a countdown, you know, And is that to give me the reader a sense of like time is limited?
Enjoy this page?
I mean, in some ways, to put a literal stop clock, little countdown clock in a book is to say you the reader and me the writer, because so much of the process of the book was to make us feel like we are in this together and understanding what time is, how much we have left, how much we don't have left. But some of the language I was attempting was to slow you down and say, for example, we are all certainly going to die, but we are not dead yet. And so since we are not dead yet, have you
ever considered the sunset? And you haven't really considered the sunset? Because there are infinite sunsets on infinite days as long as you're alive, and so that urges people to slow down a bit.
You know, I was in Cleveland this past weekend reading both the book and the audio. You know, so I'm walking around Cleveland and you're writing about Cleveland. Yes, a lot a lot here, And I had forgotten how good Lebron.
James is a basketball Can you believe it?
Can you believe that?
I know, I know why.
I'm too busy watching the tennis channel. But you know, there's a lot of Lebron James. But why why is he an important backdrop for you to tell a story of your life?
For two reasons. One, I got very interested in this idea of Lebron James as an immortal figure, someone who we believe will play forever, because it does seem right now as though he might play forever. But of course we also know immortality is a lie. You know, time is undefeated. As I say, time will get the best of us eventually. However, in a moment where it feels like I could focus in on the idea of immortality, the idea of living forever, yep, it was interesting to me.
But also because for much of my life, Lebron James did seem like a far away star in the background
of my living. You know, I write about being homeless and walking through the streets of downtown Columbus and hearing a Cavs game on the background in bars that I could not get into, And so, in a very real literal way, Lebron James is in the background of my life in ways I could not access, and in any book that analyzed my living and my survival, it felt as though I should render it, effectively, render what was in the background that helped me get to the forefront.
Well, and that leads to my next question, which is home.
Yes, I believe you moved back to Columbus six or seven years ago. You talked about everyone getting something from this here I am. I feel like we might have had different childhoods. And man, your description of going back home to Ohio reminds me of when I go home to Michigan. Of did I have to leave Michigan to be successful in comedy? Do we have to leave? What is ascension? All of this was hitting me in the face. What is home to you? And did you need to leave it?
I don't think I need. I mean, one, it's good to talk to another MIDWESTERND Yeah, for sure, I will say for me, I never felt the need to leave home. I think this book is also trying to realign a consideration of what making it is. Ascension not necessarily is something that sends you upward, but anything that moves you from the place you were to the place you're going. And sometimes that place geographically is the same, but it
is emotionally different. It's mentally different all of these things. And for me, if you have a place you love in a place where you can do your work, and a place where your name will be cemented for years after you're gone, for anything you have done, you've made it. Even if what you know, my mother passed away when I was thirteen. When my mother passed away, there were grocery workers and postal workers who mourned her passing because of how kind and generous she was to the people
in her orbit. And therefore her kindness is a part of that legacy. And so my mother made it right. I love, So you know your legacy is right.
I need help. I need your help.
You wrote that nostalgia is a relentless hustler.
Truly, please educate me.
Okay.
I know you did it in here, but I needed help with.
You need help with Okay, So there is a useful way to say, if we sit back and talk about the good old days of our Midwestern youth, that's a lot of fun, and we could do that, but it actually doesn't do anything to inform the way we can live thoughtfully and generously. Now. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, it's great, but there's a difference between, say, a porch conversation and a page conversation. A page conversation has to use nostalgia as a way to move your actual present life forward,
I think, which I'm not. You know, porch conversation is fine and fun, but also you know, I'm not that interested. We're all getting older in the way that, for example, I play basketball now is different, you know. Yeah, you know, I can't play the way I did when I was twenty or even thirty. And it doesn't really serve me to sit back and say, man, in the good days, I could run up down the court and to do
all this other stuff. But it serves me more to say I cannot do that anymore, but I can still do this other series of things that align with what I know about the game and what I love about the game, and what my body is still capable of, and when I do those things, I'm unstoppable for a little while.
I love that, honey. Thank you.
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