"James Gunn"

25:12you know and I think so I love the idea that you at the center of it you have a superhero who not to spend too much time on Superman I know but just that that was important to you oh yeah it was very important and I think it's really you know I think that was why I struggled with the character because I've normally written these characters that are sort of the opposite of that in some ways characters like you know Rocket from Rocket Raccoon from those movies and Star-Lord and Peacemaker who are these blustery, angry individuals who, you know, at their heart, they're good, but it takes this work to get to who they are.

25:54Right. And that's what the stories are about. And I think that's what my life was about up until that point because I was like that. But I think that this comes to me at a certain different point in my life where I am more okay with just being kind. You know, it's so funny. Isn't that funny? Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, talk about Instagram. No, I was on Instagram.

26:16You saw something fun. We're having a real conversation. Talk about the thing you saw on Instagram. No, because it is so left. So keep going with yours. Keep going with yours. Because I'd love to double back just on what the button is in the bottom right-hand corner. But when we get there... I was going to say... No, I was going to... Yeah, go ahead. In my Instagram feed... I want you two to fight so bad. In my Instagram feed, of course, is my algorithm. But a video came up the other day about you and the movie and about whether you should put tights on Superman or not. Oh, no. No, it's the shorts.

26:49It's the shorts. Yeah, the shorts or whatever it is. The shorts. Yeah, it's the trunks. I thought it was hilarious that there was this whole conversation about, should he have trunks, should he not have trunks? Oh, you don't even understand. Walk us through. We got time. Somebody, I am sure that somebody would kill somebody else over the fight over whether Superman should have trunks or not. That's what I'm saying. So I wasn't aware of this conversation until I came onto the movie and I started trying to design the Superman suit. And the truth is, Superman always had trunks in the comics. Do they make sense?

27:25I mean, sort of. They existed because when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first created the character, he was like a wrestling guy or a circus strongman. So he has these trunks on over his costume. But then Zack Snyder came in, and that was like the dark, more mean, cool version of Superman. And he didn't have trunks. He took away the trunks. And so when Zack took away the trunks, there were tons of fans that were outraged. Sure. There are people that spend all the—you know, we think our world is divided in terms of Republicans and Democrats. And that everybody's fighting about that stuff. About trunks.

28:03That's because you don't, there are whole factions of people that don't even know, barely know who Donald Trump is. And all they care about is whether Superman has trunks or not. Can I tell you, I had a small taste of that over the years when I did the voice for Lego Batman and the Lego movies and the Lego Batman movies. This is an actor. Oh, what a dark figure. He's a really great character. Sorry. Inside joke, James. Just bear with us. It's terrible. I get it. I tried to do Lego Batman in the back of the theater as the dude. But I remember I got dragged in over the last sort of 10, whatever it's been since I first did it, 10 years.

28:45And all these, and I get, speaking of Instagram, tagged in these arguments about who's the best Batman. And I'm telling you, it's twice a week, huge, and thousands of opinions and things about things and specific things. I'm like, it's a whole. It means something. Yeah, it means something to people. It means something. It's everything. Yeah, it is. It's crazy. It's like a religion to some people. Yeah. I mean, that, it may not be the healthiest thing for a person. So, I mean, but it's an issue. And so, yeah, people keep arguing about the trunks. And then I came out and our Superman has trunks because, and I really couldn't decide, but David Koren Sweat was like, you know what?

29:24This is a guy who can fly around. David Koren Sweat plays Superman. He can fly around. He shoots beams out of his eyes. He can do all these scary things. because he's an alien from outer space, but he really wants kids to like him. So he's going to wear this, you know, sort of garish, colorful costume. Kids love short shorts. Kids love shorts. They aren't that short. They're trunks. They're trunks. Isn't it born from kind of a practical purpose to kind of keep things somewhat discreet on our superhero? Because he's wearing some clingy outfits there, one clingy outfit, and he needs another layer.

29:59Am I wrong? I mean, otherwise we're going to see his religion. Well, I think that you could design the pants so that they don't outline the ball sack. I don't know, Jay. I don't know. It's difficult. JB, you're worried that kids are going to see the super package. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, the guy's got a real pronounced helmet. You've got an issue. Wow. Guys, these are things you've got to consider in pre-production with the costume fitting, okay? I think it's a smart move. You just attracted an entire new audience. By the way, we're talking about these people in the abstract. These people who have an opinion.

30:30Sean says, I see it. the reason it came up in his algorithm is because Sean, and Sean is on their verge, Sean and his husband, Scotty, are like super nerds and these are the kind of conversations that they have over dinner. Like, I could see that you guys going, like, did you hear that? We actually really do. Like, in between Bryce and Slotby Joe, the trunks, he's not going to do the trunks. We do, sometimes we do about Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and stuff like that. We do have conversations like that. I know. All right, so wait. Thank God you found each other. Can I just say that? I know, by the way.

31:01I know. God, who could handle any of this? We're going to have dinner tonight, by the way. Sean and Scotty and I. Is that on? Yeah, it's on. But can I just make this one? Just no cosplay. Can we just say that tonight? Because I don't want one of you showing up to C3PO or some shit. It's going to be boring. So wait, so James, you had this like, you know, Scooby-Doo, then the sequel and Slither and all these things. And then do you feel like Guardians was, how did that come about? And do you feel like that was the thing that kind of launched you to the next level? Oh, I mean, without a doubt, it was like I had actually told my agents that I didn't want to focus on film anymore.

31:41Actually, this relates to some of the stuff we were talking about in the beginning. I said, you know, it's like no movies are taken seriously. They aren't a part of the cultural conversation unless it's like a Hulk movie or a Marvel movie or something. I'm making these lower budget films like they just aren't resonating. You know, I had just signed a deal to do another TV pilot, which I had always done. And I was like, you know, it seems like the really creative space for writers these days and even directors is in television. That's where you kind of do what you want. Television has taken the place of the art film in a lot of ways.

32:16Yeah, for sure. So I said I am going to just focus on television. I had also just done a video game, which I had a lot of fun doing. I'm going to focus on creating TV and video games. and it was then that Marvel called and said, we want you to come in and meet about this thing. And I was like, I have to drive down. They were in Manhattan Beach at the time. I was in Studio City. I'm like, oh my God, I got to drive through this terrible traffic. It's such a great LA response. You should, by the way, next time you got a big drive, next time you got a big drive, go to Jason's Instagram and he'll give you an update.

32:50He's got the Instagram page with the cool traffic site. This is before the Zoom revolution of COVID, right? Yeah. Yeah, this was before Zoom. Exactly. You showed up in person, yeah. And so I'm like, I don't even want to go. I had met with them before about stuff, so it wasn't like I was getting the call. And so I went in there, and I sat down, and they told me about Guardians of the Galaxy, and they showed me this pre-art they had done, and it looked to me like Bugs Bunny in the middle of the Avengers. And I'm like, I don't know about this. So it's like, I was like, I don't know. And I was driving home in the traffic.

33:35Yeah. So maybe I should be grateful. And now it's worse. Yeah, now it's late afternoon. It's traffic. You got to go over the 4-0, go over there. Yeah, yeah. I had to think and listen to music because there was no Instagram where I couldn't Instagram myself doing it. And I was going, you know what? But, you know, okay, so you're thinking that this raccoon is a drawback. But what if this raccoon was real? Like, how would this raccoon come to be? You need to, like, get fucking Bradley Cooper or something like that, you know, make it happen. So I imagine, like, what if this raccoon was real? And I'm like, oh, my God, this raccoon would be the saddest creature in the universe.

34:15He's created in a petri dish, basically. He doesn't, you know, has nothing like him in the universe. He's completely alone. And so that was sort of the soul of the movie. And then I started thinking how much I loved Star Wars when I was a little kid and what Star Wars meant to me. And I thought that I could create that not by mimicking Star Wars but making Star Wars for what would work with kids today. So bringing some of the color back. What would, you know, when I walked into the supermarket and saw C-3PO and Chewbacca on the cover of People magazine, I was like, oh, my God, who are those guys?

34:53That's so cool. I knew that I could do that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you did it. And you like, what a mission accomplished times 10. And by the way, Jason, you mentioned the music. I mean, I read that you, James, of course, like a lot of directors, you chose all the music. But not only you choose the music for your movies, the soundtracks became like huge hits as albums. Yeah. Like platinum-selling albums. JB, did you know this? Yeah, I have platinum albums up in my house. It's so weird. Yeah, exactly. Like introducing sort of a new level of intrigue and draw to what was typically Marvel's sort of like, well, we're going to throw a bunch of effects at it and it's going to be really exciting CGI.

35:31But you're putting in this subversive element too that exists with the music and with lighting and editorial pace and all that stuff. Like you really kind of, you cooled it up and you hipped it up and it became a whole different lane in Marvel. It became a different thing, yeah. I think it was like, and with the music, it was really like I'm creating this space opera with all these characters that people don't know. And it's totally wacky and weird. So how do you ground this in the, you know, coolest way possible? And I'm like, well, 70s AM pop would work perfectly over somebody dancing through, you know, an alien graveyard.

36:05Can I just tell you, just apropos of nothing, how excited I was? Because I love Chris Pratt. And I have for a long time. This guy. This guy. He's a bravo. What a bravo. He's amazing. I love him. The character is a guy. He's an Italian guy. He's in the back of the theater, James. And I'm sorry. It's funny to only the three of us. So, and I remember when Pratt first did Parks and Rec, I remember the first season. and I was like, and he was a recurring character and I was like, this dude is so fucking funny. I just love them from a moment when. So then when all of a sudden he was doing this, I remember when he got the film, the first Guardians movie, and I just thought like, yes, the world's not gonna know what to do with Chris Pratt because this dude is so funny, so talented.

36:58He can't even help. He's one of those guys, he can't help being funny. Do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. I text him all the time because, you know, I'm doing all sorts of press junket stuff and things like that. And I love doing press junkets with the guys I'm doing it with, with the Superman cast and with John Cena from Peacemaker and all that. Which I want to get into. Yeah, yeah. Chris and I used to have such a great time on those things. Would you guys pair yourselves together? All the time. Yeah. Yeah, but it just became these giggle fest where we should really sing. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

37:33It's so, yeah, I had the luxury of doing press check-ins for a couple of years on the Lego stuff with Chris, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in showbiz. It was actually doing press tours because we laughed our asses off. He'll drop the dirtiest joke, like the dirtiest bomb. I mean, you're like, wait, what? It makes me laugh so hard. So, so good. So you mentioned the Peacemaker. So you're directing all these movies, and then you're going back for it, and now you're co-chairman and CEO of DC Studios, And then you're directing the new Superman movie, which is, as we all know, directing of it, just take the years and the hours and the time and the life and blah, blah, blah.

38:10And in there, you created this show, The Peacemaker, with John Cena, which you wrote a bunch of episodes. Well, I wrote, I created Peacemaker two years ago. So Peacemaker, or whatever, four years ago, Peacemaker originated on HBO Max a few years ago. It was the number one show on HBO Max ever. And then I committed to a second season. And so it's my favorite cast, and I love these guys. And so I was supposed to do a second season. Then I got the job as the head of DC Studios. I was halfway through doing this animated show called Creature Commandos. And so, like, in a space of, I had to get into Superman first.

38:55So my second call after, you know, right before I got the job was announced was to John Cena saying, I'm going to do Peacemaker, but I just have to hold a beat because I got to get Superman right. And so, yeah, in a year I wrote 650 pages of material. And then the next year I produced and directed 650 pages of material. And this year we're releasing 650 pages of material. Tell us what your day is like. What time do you get up typically in the morning, truthfully? 10 o 'clock. No, no, that's not true. But I get up pretty, I don't get up that early. It just. So you stay up late. I stay up late, but my times fluctuate wildly.

39:40So like when I'm writing, I try to have as little schedule as possible because it's just the writings in my brain all the time. So during that 650 pages, when I'm just writing out of pure panic in a lot of ways. Yeah. but then when I get to the page it's working you know and then I step outside of the page and I'm terrified step back into the page and it's working step outside of the page and I'm terrified and so I just had to keep writing and writing and writing and that was going on constantly you know and I that was actually the busiest time was the writing of it because you know when you're shooting it's much more structured and then I have to go into post-production and all that stuff yeah we'll be right back

40:22And now back to the show. You obviously love the creative process so much because you're so deeply involved in it and doing so much of it. What was it like when you got that call to have one of the most prestigious elite jobs you could ever imagine? Partly running one of the biggest studios in the history of it. So that's an executive job. And for the listener, like, it's wildly different to be the people that push the button that make it all happen versus the people that are on the set that actually make it. And so you're doing both. How did that land for you? It was cool. I was happy. It wasn't as pure of a joy as, say, when I got the first Guardians movie because that was me doing something I knew how to do.

41:17Right. This was kind of creating a new job that hasn't existed. because there hasn't ever been a creative in the position of studio head. Which is insane. Which is insane. If you think about it, right? That sentence that you just uttered is quite crazy. Yeah. It's crazy, meaning that it hasn't happened yet because you would want a creative person to be the oversight person of the creative process. Right, right, right. Yeah, I guess, yeah. But also you do need to manage a lot of stuff so there's part of it. And that's what I would never do the job without Peter Safran. Yeah, but I mean, to the extent that like, and JB going off what you just said, which is I remember years ago being, and this is on a much, much smaller scale, but being in a meeting, in a casting meeting for a TV show with a bunch of executives from a TV studio that does from back then, this is 25 years ago.

42:11And I was in, I was, I'd already been cast in the thing and I go in and we read a bunch of people for this other part. and one of the people who runs the studio, one of the executives, after the person leaves, is like, yeah, yeah, I think he's good. And he's having this conversation. He's driving the conversation about the creative of this casting of this actor and this guy literally was a fucking bean counter. Quite literally had been an accountant and he's the one making the decision on the thing. That's lunacy. Yeah, that's why most things aren't good. Yeah, there used to be something called the Creative Committee at Marvel.

42:51And it was, you know, comic book people and toy people and all these people that would chime in with their notes on scripts. And I think that's fine that, you know, they give notes because, you know, one of the things that you hear all these people being afraid of notes all the time. But you don't usually you don't have to use them. You just have to listen to them. And people are usually happy if you just listen. If you listen and then you say, I don't know because of this, they're usually okay. But they were a little bit acted as if they were, you know, the authority on everything. And so Kevin and I would, you know, we'd be working on Guardians of the Galaxy and we'd have that, you know, final screenplay.

43:36And then all of a sudden we'd get these lists of things that needed to be changed. changed and it always felt to me like I was watching that show The Nick at the time when they used to do, you know, operations and they'd have the audience members there. And it felt like a couple of brain surgeons performing brain surgery and having a bunch of podiatrists around telling them how to do it. And it was just like, you know, I mean, they told me to take the songs out, you know, when they saw the first cut and Bradley was doing Rocket's voice as a character. They're like, why do we pay all this money without, you know, he doesn't sound like Bradley Cooper.

44:10I'm like, yeah, he's playing a character. He's an actor. That's what the guy does. That's why we hired him. And it was just a list of things that they just had nothing to do with storytelling, nothing to do with what would capture people's imaginations. And just whatever their peculiarities were. So you thought with this opportunity maybe would come not a sea change in what the executive ranks would look like, but at least you would be able to influence this studio in a direction that made a little bit more sense? I thought it gave me an opportunity. First of all, I thought it was cool because DC was breaking off from Warner Brothers and becoming its own studio, which was awesome.

44:49That had never been done. You know, Marvel is still under Disney. And then secondly, I thought it was an opportunity to try something that had never been done before, which was to create a cohesive universe, but also a cohesive brand that was about quality. and I only am going to be on this earth for so long. So why does, you know, might as well put everything into it. It's an opportunity that just has never existed for anyone ever. So how could I say no to that? My wife wishes I had, but you know, how could I say no to that? But did you, but that presupposes that you're able to have a certain amount of authority and influence.

45:32What kind of, to the extent you're comfortable sharing, were you given assurances that made you think, well, there's a possibility I could actually do this. Oh, I knew that we could. Yeah, yeah, because the only person we answer to is David Zaslav. And David Zaslav has, he tells us if he likes something or he doesn't like something, but he doesn't have any sort of say or interest in saying, it's not that he doesn't have any say. If he wanted to, I guess he could, but he doesn't have any interest in saying the story A and story, he's the opposite of the guy Will was talking about. Yes, he's very deferential to the creatives.

46:04Yeah. We love David. Zas gets it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he's not, you know, he doesn't think that he knows how to do that, you know? Right. One of the most terrifying calls ever was, you know, I had done the screen test with David Cornswit and Rachel Brosnahan, and, you know, and they were so freaking good together, and I loved them, and Peter loved them, and Chantal, our executive producer, loved them, and I sent the tape off to Dave, and I said, here's our two choices. Yeah. Here's what we want to do, and David called me up and he goes, and he sounds really dour and he goes, you know, I have to preface this by saying, this isn't what I do.

46:47This isn't what I, I know, you know, I'm not a movie business guy and I'm, you know, movie creator. I'm not a storyteller like you are. I just, this is just coming from a place of me as a person. And then he stopped and he goes, I fucking love it. And it was, that was, that's great. That's so good. Like you were an asshole. What a cool dude. What a cool dude. So then James, now just to kind of switch gears a little bit. So you're doing all this stuff. And of course, we're all kind of, all of our ships are pointed into the headwind of AI and what kind of effect it's going to have on the future of film and stuff.

47:28And we've kind of been asking everybody a little bit. But you guys must be at the sort of the tip of the spear when it comes to filmmaking and, you know, where it intersects with AI and how we can use it and what we need to look out for and what you think the future might hold for films. I hated when we were going through all the guild dispute stuff and AI was the big part of it because we're just not quite there at that point yet with writing and acting. And so, like, there were all these important issues that we needed to talk about. and it's like AI, the splashy thing is making all the headlines.

48:02All my friends online are getting upset about AI stuff and I'm like, guys, really, look at what's happening. This isn't a real thing in this moment. You know, I have a stunty friend who's like, they're gonna use my body and they have the rights to my body. I'm like, they don't want your body. They want the body of the guy, the actor that you play. Right, yeah. But I do, I think it's in the moment it's a problem for the low-level jobs, which is where I feel the most compassion by, say, with VFX, all the people that do all the rotoscoping and all these sort of more tedious jobs, that is going to be replaced by AI in the next couple of years, almost certainly.

48:51And I don't think there's anything we can do about that. I don't think there's any way that a studio is going to say, yeah, let's spend an extra$40 million on this movie. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think just setting aside the actual replacement of jobs and people, et cetera, the actual end product is different in our case. And each one is unique. Each sort of, you know, entertainment is going to be what you actually consume, which is what you want to consume original entertainment. that has the potential to be created by AI, JB. I think that's my sort of question. Yeah, but I mean, it is a little bit of ways right now.

49:33So you've got to do a lot of stuff. I mean, the things that you're watching are eight-second clips of things, and even then, if you get into a cab, you're suddenly getting into the front seat of the cab. Right, right. So there is artistry and work behind AI. I've played with it a lot. It's fun to play with. And, but, so I don't really know. I'm not the fucking fortune teller, but I do, I am very aware of what the present problems are. Wait a second. I thought we were. I thought you were a fucking fortune teller. Carnac. The other, but the other problem, for me, kind of the bigger problem, especially in the VFX industry, is that all the people that do the jobs that are going to remain, you know, the, you know, a lot of the animators are actually like almost like technical actors.

50:22because they're creating the actions of these characters, the way they move. And the training ground for those jobs is gone now. So how do you learn how to be those people? How does the next generation of people come about? And I think that's pretty much going to be true in every industry. So the double problem is where do all these people go that have these other jobs in a world that already doesn't have enough jobs? And then how do the people train to get to the next level, doesn't that mean that we're instantly going to have more ill-trained people at the top, next level? Yeah, I do think, though, that there's probably going to be a big audience that doesn't care about, I'm sorry, talking about writers, there's going to be great writers, and there's going to be a huge part of the audience that doesn't care about the beginning, middle, and end so much, just as long as there is one, it doesn't matter how good it is, as long as there's car chases and explosions, they'll show up, even if the whole thing is totally AI.

51:21I kind of wish Scotty would walk by in the background right now. I think maybe that's true. I mean, I don't know, though. I mean, it depends on how developed it gets, you know, because remember, AI is eating its own tail. That's right. It's not feeding. It can't create something new. It's really just creating amalgamations. But I'm saying there's an audience for that. They don't care. Where it will be in the next few years, I don't think that's true. I think that what you get out of that is you get a Hallmark movie. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. There's an audience for Hallmark movies. Oh, yeah, yeah.

51:59There's an audience for Hallmark movies, but you can't make a billion dollars at the box office with a Hallmark movie. And you can't really afford to make movies no matter what. Hopefully there's a benefit from that entry-level part of the process that may become automated. Hopefully that will potentially save enough money for the industry that it will then be reinvested into the industry and help the financial health of the industry get stood up again. because right now there's a bit of a constraint going on in our industry, right? There's a lack of work, there's a lack of product. Studios are making less films because it's becoming more and more expensive to sell them and make them.

52:46Hopefully this will allow that financial health to come back to the industry and then put all these people back to work again, maybe in some other job, but maybe there'll be more product being made. I mean, maybe that's Pollyanna, but hopefully it will. I don't think, I mean, I think that your basic point is absolutely true. I mean, that you can make bigger feeling movies cheaper. I mean, a movie like Superman is, you know, nearly half of its budget is in VFX. Yeah, right. That's a lot. It's a big budget film. It's not as big as, you know, Guardians 3 or, you know, these other things. But a lot of that's the actors, you know.

53:27I think, JB, I think you're right. It's either that is true or the opposite. and we're doomed and it's all crashing into a fire. Look at the automotive industry. I don't know the numbers, but I feel like it's a healthy industry. The music industry with all of that, that big digital change that happened, I think that's a healthy industry. I think the music industry got kind of screwed. They're fucked. They got screwed because, yeah, the music industry had no awareness this streaming change was coming and they just, they got screwed out of everything. So the writers, songwriters got screwed out of everything, you know.

54:07So like one of the things I do in my spare time is I've written songs. And, you know, I have songs that have like 40 million hits, you know, 40 million plays on Spotify. I've never noticed a dollar coming in from that. And I probably have made a few thousand dollars. But that's a few thousand dollars. Wow. That's a huge song. Yeah, it's a huge number. It's like, you know, people make money from today from touring, which is great that the live music industry is thriving. But in terms of musicians making money like how they used to from album sales and songs, you know, it's not there. Well, I was going to say that the touring is, and here for me, that is an indicator that what people still crave is the human connection.

54:57and I think that is going to be a thing that pushes back against things like AI. That's going to be the biggest commodity. Right, and I talked to, by the way, I had all these teenagers, my sons had their friends over all weekend and I was asking all these guys, I was like, what do you guys think you're going to do when you grow up and we're having these long conversations? And one of them said, oh, I want to get into sports and I want to get into analytics and the numbers and stuff. I go, that's gone. I would pick something new because all that will be crunched by AI. I'm serious. Like, if you talk about a vocation that's not going to exist.

55:25But I do think the one thing is going to be the desire for real human connection. That is going to be a commodity that is going to become even more exclusive. And people will pay a premium to have a real experience, a one-on-one, a live, whatever that is, experience. And that's the good. So you'll show up. You'll dance for someone, right? If you get sent the right dollar amount. I'm going to do like OnlyFans, but an in-person OnlyFans private dance. That makes sense. Private dance room, dancing for money, any old music will do. In Superman's trunks. You'll do it. We've fallen on bad times. I do think that a film or a television show or something that's a novel, they're all artistic expressions and they're all a form of communication.

56:14They're all a form of one, you know, either person or group of people communicating to other people. And I think that if people feel that communication aspect is not there, that's going to be a drawback for a lot of people because there is that feeling when you're seeing a movie or watching a TV show. But do you think that there'll be a lane of films not too dissimilar from animation, right? It's a huge section of our entertainment industry, Disney animation and Pixar and the like. What kind of films, JB? Are there new ones coming out in the next one? Ah, here, yeah. But those aren't actors. Those are drawn figures.

56:55And so it will be a lane, perhaps, of AI films that live next to animated films, that live next to live-action films, that maybe they'll be a different price point, maybe? I don't know. Maybe, but I think it's also, what are you talking about as AI films? Are you meaning 100 % generated by AI from start to finish? I don't know, but whatever animation is, I mean, you have real actors that are giving the voice actors behind it. So there'll be a combination, I bet. It's going to affect animation almost certainly. I mean, it definitely will. So you're in a band. Do you still play? No. I'm not in a band now.

57:32I don't play. Oh, I thought you were. I mean, I was in a band. Oh, I didn't know if you still played. No, I still play. I still play some piano, but I still write music at various times. You know, like Rhett Miller and I wrote songs together for the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special. Yeah, right. And I wrote a song with Tyler Bates for Guardians 2. I wrote stuff for Scooby-Doo. What about scoring a film? For me, I could never do, I'm not that, I'm a punk rock kid. What if you say, what if you say, yeah, I mean, from time to time, I'm writing with you. Johnny Greenwood can do it. You can do it.

58:04Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I couldn't. I couldn't do it. All right. All right. Listen, James Gunn, we could talk to you, honestly, we say this sometimes, but we could just keep going, but we've taken up way too much time. We're already over. Oh, my goodness. It's so fascinating. We're so excited. The Peacemaker comes out this summer, right? That Peacemaker is live on August 21st on HBO Max, and there is a podcast inspired by Smartless, solely, with me and Jennifer Holland, who plays Harcourt, who also happens to be my wife, and Steve Agee, who plays Economos, and then many guest stars from Daniel Brooks and John Cena and so forth.

58:48Oh, nice. And that takes place twice a week up until the release that we go over every single episode of Peacemaker. That's great. Oh, that's fun. That's great. All right, so that's available now. The podcast is available now. What's the podcast called? I believe it's called Peacemaker, the official podcast with James Gunn. It's a wonderful podcast. And how'd you guys come up with that? I don't know. A creative committee of sorts came up with it by AI. Please tell Jennifer I say hello. It was so nice meeting her when I saw her. Oh, I will. Absolutely, Sean. Yeah, she loved you and Scott. And Scott, same to Scott, by the way.

59:21I will, I will, yeah. Well, fantastic. Well, continued success. We're so happy that we have a creative like you at the helm of at least one of the studios. And you're just doing an awesome job. And we're all, I'm such a fan. I'm going to say, I know we all are. And it's just been such a joy to have you. Me too. Pleasure to meet you. Say hi to Peter, too. I will. Thanks, guys. Nice meeting you, Jason. Have a great day. Take care, guys. Pleasure. You too, pal. Thank you, James. Bye, buddy. Bye. Very nice. How cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, we had Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdeon a while ago over there at Warner Brothers as well.

59:59That's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah, I love talking about the different opinions of people in our business where they think it's going to go because of AI. Everybody has a different kind of take or angle. These guys have their hand on the lever too. They'll tell you exactly where it's going. My favorite quote from today's episode is Jason going, I don't know for sure, but I feel like the auto industry is doing well. Well, isn't it? Just pure speculation. And I said that about music too, and he's like, yeah, no. I was like, okay, sorry. What do I know? I feel like it's doing okay. I see a bunch of cars on the road, James.

1:00:46I'm hearing music. I can't stop noticing cars. I was in a car today. You don't want to come to us for what's going on. No, no, no. He was great, though. I love his stuff. I didn't know Supergirl was a thing. I didn't know that. He's got that coming out after Superman. I'll watch both of those. Don't you think it should be Superwoman, though? Anyway. Oh, yeah, instead of Superboy. Fucking get online and start fighting with people. Yeah, but it should be. But Willie, so I'm going to see you tonight for dinner for sure? Yeah. All right, so I'm going to see you there for a quick bye. Bye. Bye. Tonight.

1:01:30That's not where I was going, but sure, that's good. Bye, 7 o 'clock. That's what it was. Smart. Smart.

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