Riz Ahmed and James McAvoy, Live from TIFF

23:32Little Gold Men Hosts:You've worked in the independent film space and studio film space. This is an indie, first one under your belt. Would you be interested in directing bigger studio films or do you feel more comfortable in the indie space? I think I feel comfortable directing something where the story is good and where I care about the story and I think the script is tight and I've got characters that I care about. So I think if that's in the indie space, then yeah, I feel comfortable. And if that's in the studio space, then yeah, I feel comfortable. I've been offered a couple of things to direct, particularly on stage where I've gone, do you know what, I don't think my experience is going to naturally lend itself to this yet.

24:18Little Gold Men Hosts:But with a story, it just felt right. I think I'll know when it feels right. I've always done that as an actor. It's more about how I feel, and it's more about, you know, if you've got the ideas sparking. And when you get those ideas sparking, and shots, ideas for shots are coming into your head, and idea for movement, idea for colour, idea for just, like, narrative progression and cuts or augmentation start to come. When you start to feel that, you're like, I'm already working on it. and it's my first read, that's when I think I'll know. So if a studio film comes along and they want to do that and I get that kind of response, then yeah, absolutely.

24:52Little Gold Men Hosts:I've had great times working in the studio system on the bigger budgets. I've had bad times doing that too, but equally in the smaller independent market, I've had great times, but I've done shit movies that were independent or I've had low budgets that are great and low budgets that are an absolute mess. I've had huge budgets that are great and I've had huge budgets which are like, how can we not have time when we've got hundreds of millions of dollars and there's never enough time, there's never enough money, no matter what. You can have a$2 million budget, you can have a$200 million budget, you're still going like, oh my God, we didn't make the date.

25:32Little Gold Men Hosts:And you're like, how? So it's just, you know, filmmaking is, you've got to care, you've got to be connected to it because it's just too hard and it's too brilliant and it's too much of a melange of people and ideas and it's a true like I honestly think it's like a miracle of collaboration that any film gets made and if you don't have people leaning in and who are passionate and who are engaged in the material I think like that's when you get those movies that was like how did we screw this up we made so much money and so much time so yeah if I care about it if I'm engaged if I'm passionate it doesn't matter or what the script is or who's making it or where it's from or what the style of the film is, I'll know it when it comes.

26:16James McAvoy:Do you think you'll be directing often? I know you're balancing, obviously, an acting career with this, but do you think it'll take up more space in your life than acting at one point?

26:26Little Gold Men Hosts:It could do, yeah. I mean, if the acting work dries up, I will definitely be directing lots more. You know, I am aware that I've spent three years working on this and I've spent a good year and a bit now physically working on it. And so there is a part of me that's like, I need to make some money. And I need to do some acting. And I do love acting. I do want to get back on stage and I do want to be an actor and portray people. And it's such an electrifying feeling when you feel like you are carrying a story and you are imparting part of yourself and communicating with other humans through the sort of medium of acting.

27:06Little Gold Men Hosts:But as a director, definitely want to do it again. It will take up more of my time going forward, I'm sure, unless this comes out and everybody goes like, meh, director's jail for that guy.

27:17James McAvoy:I think you're going to be okay having seen the film. We're going to do a couple audience questions. Just a reminder, lgmlive at vf.com if you want to send one in. All right, so are you ready? You're ready. Okay, the first one. There's a fake it till you make it theme in the film. Can you remember a time when you've done that?

27:37Little Gold Men Hosts:Oh, man. That's a good question. Yeah. Upstaging us. I don't know if she likes it when I tell this story, but my British agent, Ruth Young, who's not here, is she here today? Is she coming tomorrow? There was a production company in the north of England. I can't remember what they're called. I think it was Red Productions. And she went, there's this great part, TV show, go up there and give it a go. the only thing is they only want to see people from the local area they want authentic northerners like Mancunians and I was like ah okay so I go up and I'm sitting in the waiting room and I'm like I'm doing this accent just like chatting to other actors and all that kind of stuff but like sweating because I'm like they're going to know these guys are going to be able to tell and Tom Hardy walked into the room and we'd done my last day of Band of Brothers was his first day of Band of Brothers and we overlapped and we spent the day together and we were chatty and friendly.

28:37Little Gold Men Hosts:Chatty. And I'm sweating doing this, I'm speaking like a Mancunian and all that, you know what I mean? And I look up and I see Tom Walker and he just looks at me, eyeballs me and he goes, all right. We're like, all right. And I go into the audition and it was just like, they're like, where are you from? I'm like, fuck me, the first question. Within Hume, I don't know, I like making up shit as I went along. and that was pretty tough. And then the other, I did it once to get out of an audition as well where I went up for, Ruth also doesn't like it when I tell this story. She's not here. She's not here, take it.

29:16Little Gold Men Hosts:I went up for We Will, was it We Will Rock You? No, was it We Will Rock You? No, the Queen musical. Bohemian Rhapsody? No, not the movie, the stage show. I think Tom Cruise ended up making that. He was in the film version of it.

29:28James McAvoy:Rock of Ages, thank you. Rock of Ages, thank you.

29:31Little Gold Men Hosts:and see that's how much I wanted to be in that show and I go for the audition and like I say I've never really responded to musicals and I had to prepare a song, play the guitar and I had to like do that and I was just standing in this room, I think it was at Spotlight in London and it was classic as well there was like three people sitting at a big table quite far back and I'm way down here and I was like I don't want to be in a musical and I'm about to start singing like Hey Jude or something like that and I just go, I need to get out of here. And so I started acting and I started crying. I was like, I'm so sorry.

30:06Little Gold Men Hosts:My friend on the way here, he got hit by a bus and I got into the hospital and then I rushed here. I just don't think that I'm in a place to do this right now. And they were like, no, go, go, please. Be with your friend. Let us know how he's getting on. And I was like, all right, brilliant. So the next day, Ruth's like, oh, what the hell? What happened? Are you all right? And I'm like, yeah, here's the deal. and she was raging with me. So yeah, she was like, I'm never putting you up for a musical again. I'm open for musicals, by the way. Can't turn down anything. Some of them are good. I do like some musicals.

30:41Little Gold Men Hosts:What musicals do you like? Les Mis. I've been in a couple. I was in West Side Story very young, played riff. I was in, it's not really a musical, it's a song with plays. It's a play with songs called Privates on Parade, in which my privates were on parade.

31:00James McAvoy:All right, I've got another question for you here. What advice would you give a first-time director?

31:08Little Gold Men Hosts:That thing that I said earlier, like, do your prep. Like, you make the film in prep. And look, it's rich coming from me. I'm an actor of 30 years who's suddenly a director. A lot of directors who are making their first movie have worked in crews, have worked their way up. They have gone to film school. They've already made stuff. they've done this that like it's rich maybe me telling that but nonetheless I've worked with a lot of directors who aren't prepared and um I don't know why because you make the film in prep to the point where sometimes I find it slightly unsatisfying on set where I go like all right we were eight weeks ago we came here we said we're going to put the cameras here we're going to wait for that time of day we're going to get that light we're going to change the script like this he's going to say that she's going to say this we're going to hopefully kind of try and subvert the script a little bit, undercut the sadness of this moment with some humour and then hopefully it will get done in time so that we can grab this extra scene that I'm thinking about and then you get there on the day and you just do all that and you're kind of going like, where's the magic of the moment?

32:11Little Gold Men Hosts:I almost found it unsatisfying sometimes because you've made the film in prep and then you're just kind of going through the motions a little bit on the day I'm massively exaggerating here it's still like you're going hell for leather you're sweating blood, you're not sure if you're going to get it all and then you get the days where everything goes out the window and like nothing's working and then you're relying on the maelstrom, you're relying on the tornado and you're trying to pick the things in the tornado that are going to work for you that day and that was like oh now it feels like directing by the seat of your pants but really you want to be in a position where you're not directing by the seat of your pants you want it to be this sounds bad man maybe some directors don't want this but like our best stuff in the film is when we did what we planned.

32:57Little Gold Men Hosts:When it's intentional, do you know what I mean? Of course there's always moments that you didn't expect to get and you're like, wow, that person did something we never planned and that's going to make the movie amazing. But it's the thing that carries the movie and makes a movie work narratively and sustain for 90 minutes to two hours. Hopefully I'll never make a movie longer than two hours. Is the stuff that you planned.

33:19James McAvoy:Alright, we're going to wrap it up. One more question from the audience. This is from Barry. Even though musicals aren't your thing, would you consider doing one on stage if Jamie Lloyd was directing? Maybe Che if he takes Zabita to Broadway.

33:30Little Gold Men Hosts:I'm pretty sure he's asked me to do a musical before and I've said no. Yeah, I would totally consider doing a musical. I have not spent 30 years working on my tool, my voice tool, so I don't know. I wouldn't want to take work away from a proper hoofer or a proper bitwer. You're ready to get naked and be covered in blood. If you're in a Jamie Lloyd musical, you're ending in your underwear and you're covered in blood. I don't think I've been naked for Jamie, but I have 100 % been covered in blood by Jamie. In fact, the last time I was covered in blood by Jamie, it was sugar blood. It tastes like cane sugar, like cane candy.

34:19Little Gold Men Hosts:and he'd rigged up this sort of sprinkler system so that when I get killed as Macbeth by Macduff, the sprinklers go off. And it was such a fine mist. You didn't see the rain, but we just suddenly, slowly started to just bleed all over our bodies, which is amazing. And then the blood would get squeegeed off stage at the end of the show and sort of put back into this cyclical system, right? Because it's sugar blood, it has a sell-by date and it goes off and it spoils. so by the end of two weeks we'd have to replace it all because it was starting to smell but it would never get done in time and we were getting rained on by something that smelled like puke and I'm meant to be like dead on the floor but I'm like it was pretty brutal but yeah I've done a lot of not naked yet but semi-naked and covered in blood already for Jamie it's a motif

35:19James McAvoy:I think we gotta end on that note because that's the best place yeah we can't top that California Scheming premieres tomorrow at TIFF and thank you James for joining us

35:27Little Gold Men Hosts:guys thank you very much been very kind thank you so much for coming cheers

35:35James McAvoy:more of our Little Gold Men live event from Toronto after this quick break

35:42James McAvoy:I may not hold a diamond but I do hold a few opinions about Bravo I'm Sarah Galli, certified Bravo-holic and host of Andy's Girls, the only Bravo podcast that takes housewives as seriously as they take themselves. Recorded straight from my closet office, or as I lovingly refer to it, the cloffice, this show offers a psychological deep dive into the drama on and off screen. Not to recap, per se, but to understand what's really going on. Think of it as C-SPAN meets Ayanla Fix My Life. a little stream of consciousness, a little emotional autopsy, and a whole lot of nuance. From housewives themselves to culture writers, comedians, and everyday Bravo-holics, I'm joined by rotating guests to explore the psychology behind Bravo's most fascinating personalities.

36:32James McAvoy:Because when someone storms out of a reunion or rewrites their own history mid-season, we don't just ask what happened, we ask why. So if you're looking for something different than a recap, and deeper than a soundbite, you're in the right place. New episodes of Andy's Girls drop every week, streaming from the Clawfist to wherever you get your podcasts. C 'est bon, c 'est bon.

37:11James McAvoy:Welcome back to Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair. Here's more of our Little Gold Men event live from the St. Regis at TIFF. Riz, come on down. He's coming, he's coming. Here he comes. Please give him a round of applause.

37:33Hey, everyone.

37:35James McAvoy:Hi. I got to see Hamlet at Telluride, so I fell in love with it, got to see you with an audience, and I'm so glad you're doing this with us. For those who haven't seen it, it's a modern set, Hamlet, played by Riz, and it's really incredibly done. feels very fresh, very energetic. But I'd love to, if you could take me back to when the idea first came to you that you wanted to do a Hamlet like this.

38:01Riz Ahmed:You know, I see that Derek San Franci has got a film playing here. And I remember going to, I'm a big fan of his, and I remember going to a London screening of Blue Valentine, and someone told me, it took him 10 years to make this. And I thought, what an idiot. Who's going to stick to a film for 10 years? That's crazy, I'm never doing that. so I had first had the idea for Hamlet when I was 16 really so jokes on me in the end I was at high school I was you know as a teenager like a lot of us do at that time I was going through a very rough raw kind of turbulent patch in my life and I had this incredible teacher called Mr.

38:40Riz Ahmed:Roseblade who took me under his wing and gave me this play and I found this character that was feeling kind of how I was feeling at the time. Because at his heart, Hamlet is about a character who's grieving. He's grieving his father, yes. But I think that means two things. I think he's grieving the way he thought the world was and coming into contact with actually how unfair it is. And that's how I felt at that time. And I think the other thing he's kind of grieving is having any kind of clear roadmap about how to be a man. as a young man I was like what is it how what are you supposed to do are you supposed to turn the other cheek are you supposed to fight back I was kind of in a kind of crisis of masculinity and I feel like those two things that drew me to the play then are just as resonant if not more so right now I think we're all grieving the illusions of living in a just world it's becoming so flagrant right in front of our eyes the world is so messed up and we feel kind of powerless in the face of it we feel gaslit about it and we feel complicit in it and that's Hamlet you know and and I think men are just as messed up now as we used to be then as well so I think we're I think those two those are the two things that drew me to it that I was wrestling with and that's why I kind of feel like it's it's come about now because those themes feel so resonant right now and I know

40:04James McAvoy:at Telluride you called it a labor of love and and now I hear it's been quite a journey to get there but when did it become possible that it was actually going to be made a film and what took so long to get it made?

40:16Riz Ahmed:What took so long is that, when I say a labor of love, what that means is no one was paying us to do it. So our incredible writer, Mike Leslie, he actually did the Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Curzel Macbeth, and he's just a full-blown genius. And I went to university with him and we did a Shakespeare tour of Japan at the end of our third year. We toured Julius Caesar and I got to know him on that. And so, you know, we leave university. Five years later, it's 2010. I said, hey man, do you want to meet up? The reason I want to meet up with him is because Mike Leslie has staged a prequel to Hamlet and he's written it in iambic pentameter in Shakespeare's original verse.

41:02Riz Ahmed:I'm like, this guy's a bigger genius than I could have ever imagined. I meet up with him, I say, so you're clearly obsessed with this play so am I I've always had this dream of doing a modern version of it and he fell in love with the idea and we worked on it for a long time and to be honest I think the reason it didn't happen is because we couldn't quite crack it we we loved and revered the play too much to be we were radical with it but we couldn't be as radical as a Neil Carrey our director could be because he came in and he's like well I don't like Shakespeare He was like, Shakespeare's not for me.

41:36Riz Ahmed:And I said, well, great. We want to make something for people who feel like they're on the outside of the establishment, who are outside of Shakespeare.

41:42Little Gold Men Hosts:But what didn't he like about it?

41:44Riz Ahmed:He just felt like a lot of us do that, like, it's just really stuffy and intellectual. And it's kind of been kidnapped by the establishment. And we were really adamant to make a version of Hamlet that is the opposite of that. There's not an intellectual exercise. We didn't want to do a version of Hamlet that's performed. We wanted to do a version that's experienced. and Anil has such a visceral immediate style. He saw the script. He said, I see what this is. This is a propulsive thriller. And he just got rid of every scene that Hamlet isn't in. I was like, are you sure? And he was like, yeah, we need to experience this with him in real time.

42:19Riz Ahmed:And he kind of unlocked it, you know. So I think it required his outside eye to come in and be even more radical than we were trying to be. We thought we were radical. He came along and he really showed us the way forwards. and that really unlocked all this energy and all this possibility and a really fresh way of doing it.

42:36Little Gold Men Hosts:This is an angsty Hamlet, I felt. Have you ever met a chill-down one? I feel like what I've seen, a more depressed Hamlet, and this was a more revenge, angsty, it reminded me a little of the Baz Luhrmann, Romeo and Juliet, like he's got a mission. can you talk a little bit about playing that it's a very intense emotion angst to play throughout the entire film and i think you do an incredible job of it and it's very like you said it's very

43:12Riz Ahmed:visceral uh when you're watching yes interesting because there's the play and there's a text and that's open to all of our interpretation if everyone here read it we'd have a different idea about what certain things mean and then there's a traditional way of doing hamlet and you're right in the the traditional way of doing hamlet it falls into certain patterns right he he's yeah he's kind of philosophizing he's procrastinating that's but there's a very strong um kind of lineage of kind of literary criticism that says hamlet isn't procrastinating i mean if your dead dad turned up as a ghost and said kill your uncle you'd want to make sure that checks out yeah do you know i mean and so hamlet is constantly trying to work it out trying to gather evidence trying to maneuver making sure he doesn't get found out he's in constant motion that's always been my interpretation of the play and so we wanted to honor that and i think the best example

44:12Little Gold Men Hosts:of it is to be or not to be oh that was my next question right well i think it sums it sums up

44:18Riz Ahmed:for me because it boils down to how you see the play so everyone knows to be or not to be right Everyone knows it, right? And the traditional way of doing it is Hamlet comes out on stage holding a skull and saying, man, life is so hard. Should I carry on living or should I kill myself? But that's not what the text says, in my humble opinion. My Shakespeare teacher, Rob Clare, he said, look at the text. What the text says is, should you carry on towing the line, living under oppression and just take it? Or do you fight back knowing that you will be killed for fighting back? That's a completely different question, right?

45:03Riz Ahmed:It's not like, do I give up or do I keep going? It's like, do I just keep my mouth shut and cooperate or do I fight back knowing they will kill me and I will lose everything? That's a very urgent contemporary question, I feel like. And that is what he is saying in my point of view. And so when you read the play with that kind of energy, with that kind of feel to it, it just follows the performance, the scene, the staging becomes different. And so our to be or not to be is a game of chicken. And so it's staged as a game of chicken. He's driving his car 100 miles an hour towards a truck. Because to me, that's what the text is saying, you know?

45:41Little Gold Men Hosts:Yeah, it also felt a little bit of a comment on masculinity. Did it, like, little Fast and Furious vibes were getting there? Was that a conscious decision?

45:51Riz Ahmed:I think whether you want to or not, like, you know, Hamlet is about the absent father. Yeah. And literally or archetypally, that's what we're suffering from right now. You know, the archetypal father, the presence that will protect us and will provide for us. We don't have that in our society right now. That's why masculinity is in crisis, you know, that are kind of like our male authority figures in our society are the ones that are kind of robbing us and persecuting us. So the idea of the absent father, the idea of unmoored masculinity is really in the play already. So it just kind of comes up.

46:24Riz Ahmed:We weren't sitting there going, how do we make this about masculinity? Shakespeare's written it in there, you know, for us to explore. It was just for us bringing out the kind of raw, radical nature of this text and kind of blowing the dust off of the traditional way of doing it, which I feel kind of isn't true to the text. you know.

46:45James McAvoy:The story's set in London and centres on this British, South Asian family, which I think allowed for a real cultural specificity. I can't say that word. Specificity. I thought the memorial, Hamlet's father's memorial, was especially beautiful in the beginning of the film. How important was it for you to sort of open that story in this way?

47:08Riz Ahmed:The kind of intellectual exercise of Shakespeare is something we wanted to get away from. So it was the word that you used, visceral. I think that's Anil's style. That was our aim for this. Like I said, don't want it to be performed, want it to be experienced. So we wanted to start off with something very tactile, you know, touching a dead body, taking turmeric and yogurt and pasting over the corpse of your dead body as the Hindu ritual asks you to as a son. The difficulty of making that skin contact, the heat of the cremation, as you see the coffin go in. I think my hope is that it really kind of grounds us in his experience.

47:48Riz Ahmed:It's interesting, I was watching an interview with Denis Villeneuve's editor on Dune. He was talking about rooting, sensory rooting kind of shots. So you see all these moments where characters in Dune are like just picking up the sand and letting it run through their fingers. You know, you're just having these little moments that kind of like bed you into this sensory experience. so it's not a poetry recital. So it felt really important for us that throughout the whole thing, you're hearing and feeling and sensing and smelling these things that just kind of ground you in a raw physical experience.

48:22Riz Ahmed:We wanted this to be a physical and emotional Hamlet, not an intellectual one.

48:27Little Gold Men Hosts:Are there other classical texts or plays that you're interested in adapting in this type of format?

48:35Riz Ahmed:What do you mean outside of this?

48:38Little Gold Men Hosts:outside of Hamlet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

48:39Riz Ahmed:I just did this one, bro. You want me to do another one again? You're done, okay. It's someone else's turn, isn't it? Jesus Christ. But, you know.

48:47Little Gold Men Hosts:Well, you have such a fresh take on it. I feel like you do such a good job of modernizing it but keeping it true to the text.

48:56Riz Ahmed:Do you know, one of the really interesting things was this is like, you touched on the South Asian thing, right? Part of it was just like, we want it to feel real. So if I'm playing Hamlet, probably my parents would also be South Asian. It was just as basic as that. But when you start doing things like that, it opens up all these other realizations about how universal this story is in like ways you wouldn't expect. So I'll give you an example. When I was at high school and Mr. Roseblade said, here, you need to read this, mate. You know, my English teacher. What I didn't expect was to find so many story points in Shakespeare's Hamlet that were true to my lived experience as a British South Asian.

49:39Riz Ahmed:So, for example, Hamlet can't marry Ophelia. She's from the wrong family. I've heard that. People I've grown up with have had that presented to them. Okay. Your dad's spirit has come to see you, and he's pissed. I've heard and experienced versions of that. You know, that's part of our lived experience. The spiritual realm is real and tangible to us in our community. and most interestingly there's actually a cultural tradition in the south asian communities where if your brother dies and you are unmarried you marry your sister-in-law to protect the orphans i've grown up with someone who's had to do that after his brother died in a car crash like that's a thing so all these ways in which i felt like so on the outside of this story and i I was like, man, this belongs to me.

50:28Riz Ahmed:This belongs to all of us. So it was interesting when we, just the simple decision of new people, new perspectives coming into a work, brings it to life in new ways. And the most mind-blowing thing to me was, I'm not Hindu, right? My family's Muslim. Anil's family's Hindu. So we were like, right, let's do the funeral rites. So we go, okay, start off with the funeral, as you say. so then the priest starts reciting these sanskrit ancient texts so i go what's he what is he saying he goes the bhagavad-gita is the central hindu ancient text let me read a translation of what he's saying he's reading a story about a man who's paralyzed with inaction on the battlefield wondering whether he should fight his uncles and cousins on the other side should he have loyalty to his blood or to do the right thing i'm like those are the first words you hear in our adaptation and it just kind of goes to prove I hope, it's not why we made it but I hope there's a statement in this that stories like this belong to everyone they're drawn from myth and that is drawn from the commonwealth of humanity so there was something about just trying to be honest that made it fresh in all these ways that even surprised us

51:44James McAvoy:You've talked a lot about how Hamlet was so influential on you early on were there other plays or classic texts that sort of inspired you as an actor in the early days? You know, I think that this is one in particular

52:01Riz Ahmed:that had such a grip on my imagination. And I think if you look around right now, it's having a grip on the culture right now. I mean, we just came from Telluride. There were three Hamlet movies at Telluride. That's what they say about London buses. You wait hours for a London bus and then three come along at once. But I'm so pleased. I'm so glad. I did a panel at Telluride with like, it was me, Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott and Oscar Isaac. And we were all just talking about playing Hamlet. I think there's a reason why the collective unconscious wants this play right now. You've got Oscar's beautiful documentary about playing Hamlet on Broadway.

52:34Riz Ahmed:You've got Hamnet. You've got our Hamlet. Tom York from Radiohead is staging an interpretive dance version of Hamlet right now in the UK. LA just did their own gumshoe noir kind of private detective version of Hamlet. We need this story. We need this story about what it is to kind of let go of the illusions of the society you thought you lived in and confront the injustices of the one that you do live in. To feel powerless in it, to feel gaslit by it, to be complicit in it. And to kind of work out what are we doing as men? Like, what do we, who do we be? You know, there's these themes that are just bubbling to the top right now.

53:11Riz Ahmed:And it's never really let go of me, to be honest. So I would never put, I couldn't put anything else on a pedestal with this on the same level. the one thing that I was also obsessed with was Greek myth and legend. And in particular, the Minotaur story. The story of the Minotaur, I always thought was great, but that requires a lot of CGI. Yeah. So, yeah.

53:33James McAvoy:So the budget's a little bigger.

53:34Riz Ahmed:Yeah, but budget wasn't, we wanted to do that. That was first choice.

53:37Little Gold Men Hosts:Well, you spend a lot of time in the independent film world. Is that a space that you feel more comfortable in? what's your relationship with the studio system right now and the parts that are being offered to you as compared to getting to do something like this i think as an actor you know you think

53:59Riz Ahmed:about those things in a very it's a very secondary way you know i mean i feel lucky to be able to do a range of different kinds of things i think it is a different experience if i'm honest working on bigger studio movies. There's something crazy about the intimacy and the carnage and the chaos of working in the indie world. You know, there's something magical about going like, we're losing the light. We will definitely not have the budget for reshoes. You get one take at this soliloquy. Let's go. Drive the car. You know, stuff like that is, it just creates a kind of urgency and a magic to it. Sometimes when you know you can come back again and again and again, it's like, there's not as much pressure.

54:41Riz Ahmed:you know what I mean I was a kid who like did their homework an hour before it was due so I think there's something about having those constraints, those parameters that kind of forces you to be more creative I think there's that, on the other side how many indie films have we made I know I have, I want to go man I wish we just had one more day to shoot that I wish we had one more day to rehearse that, so you know The grass is always greener on the other side. I've really enjoyed kind of being able to jump between both sides of the fence and just continue to be challenged in different ways in different situations.

55:22James McAvoy:You're a producer on this. You've been a producer on quite a few of your more recent films. When did you realize that that was a role you wanted to take on and have that control in that way?

55:33Riz Ahmed:I think it was just born out of necessity and curiosity. you know I think sometimes you just have ideas and you want to bring it into reality you don't just like sit on the idea and wait for someone else to have it I've just always had ideas and been excited about them and wanted to take them to people so um so I think it's just a kind of a natural part of who I am or try to be I try and bring something to the table bring some ideas to the table you know um and sometimes there's stories that other people won't tell you know I don't know if another you know group of filmmakers would have the confidence to take Hamlet and set it in this community and bring all the freshness I mean that's on me to bring that into the world you know what I mean so just trying to take initiative really

56:20Little Gold Men Hosts:what is the hardest part about getting movies like this made today?

56:27Riz Ahmed:everything

56:27Little Gold Men Hosts:everything it would be easier if we made it as a TikTok do you think?

56:33Riz Ahmed:probably yeah wouldn't need as much lighting. No, go on. In your entire career, I want to hear from where you guys are at. What's your take?

56:40Little Gold Men Hosts:In my entire career, I think I always hear, it's really hard to find financing. It's really hard to find financing. It's really hard to find financing. What have you found in the last couple of years that has changed for you as a producer in order to get projects like this off the ground?

56:58Riz Ahmed:Well, the funny thing about this is because we've worked on it for 13 years. we've gone through every different version of it we've gone like pre-streamer we were doing it then the streamers blew up then like everyone wanted to buy up everything and everyone was trying to throw money at this then netflix's stock price crashed and then no one wanted to have anything to do with anything then everything started you know it's just so it's it's interesting and i think the most i think that honestly the hardest thing about making anything is maintaining your own passion for it. Because the seasons change.

57:34Riz Ahmed:It's never easy to make a movie. It's just the reasons that it's difficult keep changing.

57:40James McAvoy:What keeps you sort of optimistic or excited about movie making in Hollywood today? I guess it feels more global than ever.

57:50Riz Ahmed:That's true. Don't you think? Yeah. Like seeing what goes in for Best Picture, seeing Ed Berger's film go in, seeing Parasite go in, seeing, I mean, I just saw the Jaffa Panahi movie. Have you guys seen it? Do me a favor. If you haven't read anything about it, don't read a single thing. Just go and watch it. Pure cinema. You know, like we're living in a world now where that could go in for Best Picture. I hope it does. You know, there's something interesting about that. And people were scared of subtitles. Now it's like, I watch everything with subtitles. I don't know how, when, why that happened, but we all started doing it, right?

58:26Riz Ahmed:well it was the Netflix effect it was and also arguably that came from social media first you know videos on Instagram is subtitled and I remember when we did Sound of Metal we made a conscious decision to burn subtitles into every theatrical print of the movie and wake up the next day everyone's doing we're like we did that no it wasn't you that was TikTok and Instagram but that has opened things up you know Squid Games being in the biggest show in the world. You know, it's interesting. Or even like the Liverpool accents in adolescence would have been alien. I remember when we showed Four Lions to people, we had to show it with subtitles because they've got Northern accents.

59:08Riz Ahmed:Now it's not a thing. So there's something about those, the global nature of it, the barriers being broken down, the way we can take a window into other people's worlds without feeling that distance. That is the most exciting thing to me.

59:22James McAvoy:I think we got to jump to audience questions. this one's from Charlene how do you think film festivals need to evolve in order to support filmmakers you've been to one or two of these before I guess

59:37Riz Ahmed:from where I'm sat what I'm really enjoying seeing is such a wide range of different kinds of films from different countries and different levels of filmmaker at a festival like TIFF you know I met these guys just yesterday who were like they were producers on joyland which was a film that we produced it was the first pakistani film at can and it won the independent spirit award like one of the producers on that has just directed her first short that's over here at tiff you know there are people over here that are making that are bringing their proof of concept as short films to the marketplace to try and get financing at the same time you got these huge movies and these huge film stars over here i i really love that range you know it's maybe not for every festival maybe tiff is is a big festival so it can hold all of that but i don't know i think there's something really interesting about that it's uh putting the quote unquote experienced in uh alongside the fresh energy just as an artist i think that that is exciting because when you meet these younger filmmakers when you meet these younger artists they force you to interrogate a lot of your assumptions you know they kind of wake you up oh wow no one cares about that anymore okay wow that's that's a totally fresh way in like as an artist selfishly speaking i buzz off that you know at telluride one of my favorite things at telluride is speaking to the afi students it's just you know And I think that sense of community, mentorship, that kind of multi-generational kind of stew, I think we all gain so much from it.

1:01:23So I personally would love to see more of that.

1:01:27James McAvoy:Okay. What's been your favorite character to play so far? I don't think we can say Hamlet. You've got to pick something else. I kind of think, I mean this in the nicest possible way,

1:01:40Riz Ahmed:but on some level you hate playing all of them. You know? I feel like every character you play ideally is like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who this is. I'm working. I mean, how easily could you step outside of yourself and go, this is who I am. I'm the color green and the number seven. It's like, nah, you're just, everyone's a mess. And so working out that mess from the inside generally is not, I wouldn't say it's like a hilariously fun experience. I feel like it's addictive and it's obsessive and it's a rabbit hole that you go down. But it's weird. I don't feel like I'm loving it, you know, as I'm doing it.

1:02:29Riz Ahmed:That isn't what it is. And I was saying this on that panel the other day, it's like even the idea of Hamlet, it's like, I'm going to play Hamlet. Yeah, this is my dream. since I was 16 years old. It ain't fun, man. It's not a fun thing to do. It's a privilege. It's a gift. We're lucky to do it, but there's always something. There's the other thing I find. There's always something that happens in your life. This is the mystical power of story, I think. Always something happens in your life that comes like, hits you like a car from sideways in the middle of filming something. And at the time you're thinking, if only this thing could stop I could focus on playing a character but the gift and the curse are the same thing the thing that you think is the obstacle is actually the key and for filming Hamlet I'd just become a father I was not sleeping at all and we had night shoots and Neil had just had a kid as well he wasn't sleeping as well we lost our goddamn minds we were turning up two, three hours sleep going, all right, yeah, so this is one of the biggest speeches in the English language.

1:03:39Riz Ahmed:You've got to go and do this now. And we don't have like two hours to film it. We've got 45 minutes. There's just something. And looking back, I was like, if only I could get some sleep, I'll be able to do a decent job. Looking back, you're like, that's what unlocked the madness. I mean, you just see me fucking losing it. That's not acting. You know, that's insomnia, you know, is what that's called. Sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation, man. It's real. So this weird thing where I look back and I go, wow, who was I to think I could tell a story about fatherhood and not have to experience the reality of fatherhood?

1:04:15James McAvoy:All right, we're going to wrap it up with one more here. It's obvious that you think deeply about the films you're in and what they say. Do you believe that artists must have a role to play in changing society or is it okay to just make art?

1:04:30Riz Ahmed:I think that question is misunderstanding from my point of view what art is because art by its very nature is transformational it's not just transformational for me as an actor I step into Hamlet's shoes if we've done a half decent job when you're watching it you step into Hamlet's shoes as well it's transformative for you it's this insane mystical body swap technology It's the original Tom Hanks Big. You know what I mean? You're just in the... Suddenly I'm watching it and I'm like, wow, I am Dame Judi Dench right now. I feel what it is to be her. And how did that happen? That's what story is.

1:05:09Riz Ahmed:So it is by its very nature transformational. It's by its very nature forcing us to step outside of ourselves and into someone else's point of view. It's by its very nature, compassionate and empathic and it stretches our idea of who we are. some people call that political. I just call it transformational. And I think that's what the purpose of art and story is. So if you're not doing that, I don't know what you're doing.

1:05:37James McAvoy:Well, thank you so much for joining us. Hamlet is playing at the festival, so please check it out. And let's give one more round of applause for Riz.

1:05:49James McAvoy:Thanks for tuning in to Little Gold Men. We'll be back on Thursday to catch up on all the fall festivals and share some Emmy nomination predictions. If you liked this episode and would be interested in attending a live recording, please follow us to hear about upcoming events. You can also email us with any questions you have about festivals, upcoming premieres, or award season at littlegoldmen at vf.com. Little Gold Men is produced by Hiba El-Urbani with mixing by Amar Lal. Chris Bannon is Kande Nass' Global Head of Audio. Special thanks to everyone who made this event possible, including John Ross, Nicole Spagnola, Lorna Shirley, Jamie Kohler, Joshua Perkins, Kathleen Maloney, Brad Wolf, Mira Raja, Elsie Swank, and the great team at St.

1:06:33James McAvoy:Regis Toronto.

1:06:51Thank you.