‘Michael’ Wants to Start Something It Can’t Finish. Plus: ‘Mother Mary’ With David Lowery!

20:58Sean Fennessey:Well, I would like to talk about that with you guys because there's so many things. There's so many competing forces of motivation, I think, behind the film. On the surface, it's very easy to say, one, this is an act of brand management by the estate to generate more cash flow against what we all know and love about Michael Jackson, which is his music, his performances, his history. Right. We've seen a bunch of movies. You've appeared on podcasts with us. there are a lot of movies like this now that are just like Queen happened Elton John happened this great artist happened I do think Freddie Mercury did come to haunt Rami Malek because as you know right after he won the Oscar he fell right off the stage and I think Freddie pushed him that may be true but it also won him an Academy Award but I think Freddie pushed him right after I'm just saying and the career after has not been giving yeah in addition to that the amateur you know it's just not what we wanted it didn't work out third hour of Oppenheimer I mean he was in Oppenheimer stacking up Freddie Freddie Mercury up in heaven like this.

21:53Sean Fennessey:Well, the film did achieve great success. He has a clipboard in a basement somewhere. The second thing this movie wants to do is it wants to at least tell you that it's going to psychologize why Michael Jackson was the way that he was. It wants to show you the origin stories. It wants to show you his relationship to his father. his quick rise to fame, the way that he felt unbeautiful, unaccepted, misunderstood, and how that led him to so many different pathways through his life. But it also wants to shield the audience completely from everything that we think we know about Michael Jackson that is ugly, sad, or scary.

22:34Sean Fennessey:And that includes allegations of pedophilia. It includes allegations of drug abuse. It includes allegations of a bizarre series of surgeries and a strange lifestyle. There's no one, to your point about him being the most famous person, there's no one more covered, more explored in our culture than Michael Jackson. And so we all come to the table, assuming you're, I guess, above the age of 15, with a ton of preconceived feelings about this person. And so the movie also wants to kind of like beat them back or ignore them, but also show you why they happened at the same time. And also provide their answer to it.

23:14You know, there's the there's a scene where Michael Jackson is like is in an onstage accident and he's very badly burned and they have the Michael character saying, I don't want drugs no matter how much pain I am in. And because the doctor is suggesting Demerol, which. Demerol has really helped me through some tough times. But listen. Shout out Demerol. If nobody got me, Demerol got me. Huge win for Demerol. You give birth. And then tell me whether you don't want some Demerol. But it's getting it. Parts of the movie are also trying to get ahead of some of those things that we know. And Booth, explain how they happened, but also maybe shift blame slightly.

24:00They're trying to be like, hurt people, hurt people. Yes. For sure.

24:03Sean Fennessey:Which is true. Of course, yes. Like, I think it's actually okay to acknowledge that the American success tragedy of Michael Jackson is not the story of an individuated person who hurt people. There's – it's a link in a dynastic chain of pain. I totally agree. And that's – it's okay to understand that, but it's not okay to not clarify with nuance. That's what it is. It's not okay to flatten it into, like, the most basic airplane. plain also I think but to your point that we were saying earlier how there was or did we not bring this up on mic yet sorry if we haven't that there was a third hour of this film yeah we should talk about that does change the hurt people hurt people it to me it gives it a little bit more like reason to exist if they were leading up to doing something with it yeah forgive me for being glib about this, but the, this film ends in, I guess, 1987 or 1988, 89.

24:58Yeah.

24:59Sean Fennessey:And after bad. And there's a suggestion that his story will continue. That's quite literally what the last card says. It says his story will continue. And I'll tell you what I thought of after that was Wicked and Wicked Part 2. Because everybody said when Wicked came out, this is the good half. And then what's coming is not going to be as good. And that's kind of Michael in a nutshell too, where we pretty much, we saw obviously some very challenging stuff in his childhood where he's abused by his father, which then leads to a lot of his feelings and actions. I mean, Joseph Jackson, Joe Jackson is the main villain, quote unquote, of this.

25:32Also a little cartoonish villain. I'm like, if hurt people hurt people, it applies to everybody. Well, that's the thing is there's no psychology of Joe Jackson. We don't understand him. Why did he become like this? I had the same thought, Yassi.

25:43Sean Fennessey:I think that's important to talk about that because you can't lean on those ideas and only make Michael Jackson this sort of centerpiece of light without understanding everybody else around him. And the movie doesn't really make an effort to understand anybody else around him. Zero real figures except for his best friend. Bubbles. Bubbles. Yeah. We got some of Bubbles' psychology. Really emotive CGI acting. A lot of Bubbles. It does turn into a Planet of the Apes movie for like eight minutes, which is a very strange choice. Really made Better Man be like Fellini, to be honest. And I'm a Better Man truther.

26:13I know Jack Sanders is his brother. I think it's a great movie, but like in comparison listen to this CGI monkey movie, it's like Steve McQueen.

26:22Sean Fennessey:Music biopic monkey movies? Yes, I'll give you that. Which, that is a movie you've been on this podcast for. That's like pretty good. And it's also a biopic-ish movie that you've been on this podcast for that does not feature people writing important thematic ideas in a notebook and then double underlining them. And double underlining them, which they did like three times. Which happened again in this movie after the Springsteen movie. I was like, I cannot believe this. There are a number of moments throughout this film that commit a few walk-hard sins. Yeah. And some of them are also just illogical steps in the story of Michael Jackson that if you care about his history, they'll just like pop out to you.

26:58Sean Fennessey:There was, there's a moment early on in the movie when the Jackson 5 have signed with Motown and Michael is recording alone in a studio. His brothers are watching him in the control room. It's his brothers and his father and Barry Gordy, played by Lorenz Tate, is sitting at the engineers, you know, at the table, in front of the board. And it looks like Barry Gordy is running the session and there's no one else in the room and he's like pushing all the buttons and it's like did Barry Gordy run the session for the Jackson 5? He's like Michael you can't move your feet while you're singing. There's no engineer present that day.

27:30Sean Fennessey:Shout out Laurence Tate that's still so hot. Good for you sir. Very handsome. I actually hurt my heart a little bit when I saw him. I was like oh you got Laurence Tate and Nia Long in this Michael Jackson movie? God damn. I want to Laura Harrier's part. Like she's just like showed up to be hot and smokes eggs. Well she's Suzanne De Pass who's a very important person in the Michael Jackson story in the Motown story. Not according to that film. Where she has five lines. She smokes it. She's just a gal who says that's natural born talent. She does look very beautiful. She is. She's very beautiful.

27:55Sean Fennessey:She like every other actor in this movie with the exception of Coleman Domingo and the two actors who play Michael Jackson don't really have any depth whatsoever. But it does feel like it does feel I felt at times like the movie was almost taunting us with the things that we know about Michael Jackson. There are several scenes where Michael Jackson is just with children in the movie. Yeah. And it's obviously trying to say well he felt a connection to and a warmth towards and a love for kids. Yeah. You know, he felt like a kid himself. The movie circles back to this many times. There are many cutaways to the book Peter Pan and his relationship to the idea of Peter Pan.

28:25Sean Fennessey:So many, too many. Also, just not even just to the book Peter Pan, but to the specific page welcoming you to Neverland. Yes. There is, you know, there are little Easter eggs of, oh, you know, you think you know this about Michael Jackson. Well, you know, here is like a tiny little stuffed chimpanzee before Bubbles does actually show up on the scene. So it's crazy. And, you know, the movie believes it is doing something that is helping us better understand this person. But it's impossible to watch those moments and not think about the other way that you can perceive what's on screen. And that ugly and terrible feeling, given what at least has been reported and very credible people have come forward and talked about over the years.

29:09So the whole thing is just a mess.

29:15Sean Fennessey:Like, it's just an emotional mess on screen. It totally is. Can we talk a little bit about what Yassi alluded to, which is that there was an ending that does address some of the allegations that was filmed. And so the movie was made with a different ending. and then because of legal reasons that entire third act of the film was scrapped um they did reshoots like a whole new ending so i can't tell whether what the scenes that you're talking about and all the easter eggs which i agree are just like kind of galling um as you're watching them and certainly completely like this juxtaposed juxtaposed against just like the very fun performances of Michael Jackson on stage are like, you get real whiplash.

30:05Sean Fennessey:It pulls you right out of the movie. But I can't tell whether those were put there because they're written for a different ending. I think that's reasonable to assume. I would assume so. It makes me wonder about the ending and what they think they're setting up. They are legally barred from... Reportedly, there was a lot about allegations and settlements that were made in the movie and that Michael is portrayed as having overcome these challenges in the third act of what was meant to be, I think more like a three-hour mega biopic. Okay. The challenges of the... Of those allegations. Allegations.

30:41Sean Fennessey:Okay. And the hit on his public reputation and so on and so forth. And him being exonerated in the public eye. And what the filmmakers did not know is that there was a clause in the settlements that identified that those settlements and those people who participated could not be portrayed in any kind of dramatized scenario. Brilliant legal work on their lawyers. So that's obviously a nightmarish fiasco for the studio, for the filmmakers, and they had to junk all of this stuff. So what this movie is now is effectively like a two-hour prequel for the trials of Michael Jackson. Right. And then the second film will be so much of the ugliness.

31:19Sean Fennessey:Now there's some ugliness in this first part of his life, obviously. he's got these really devastating issues with his father and he catches fire at one point. None of the ugliness comes from him. That's right. That's the problem. That's right. And I would imagine that most of it won't be quote coming from him in the second half assuming we get a second movie and based on how well this movie is likely to do I would imagine a second movie is going to happen. This movie is already not being very well received kind of critically but I do think by fans of Michael Jackson of which there are still millions and many of whom who do not care about those allegations.

31:54Sean Fennessey:Right. And either do not believe or disinterest in it. It's an A minus cinema score. So, you know, people are... To your point, like, the performances and the songs are incredible. Listen, the whole time I was thinking, I was like, man, could have just strung together 12 music videos and I would have come to the theater and seen it and felt emotionally exactly the same way without laughing. Yeah, well, you said that all this stuff is still on YouTube. You could have just run another documentary and it wouldn't have generated as much money, but it would have been a similarly like exuberant movie going experience.

32:26Sean Fennessey:Cause there is like, there's just real exuberance, you know, watching him, you know, watching the young actor who portrays young Michael singing Jackson five songs. I'm like, I turned to you, whatever, 20 minutes in. I was like, these are just the best songs of all time. Wallaball beggars. Just absolutely. Also like shout out Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins put some respect on their name. They're not mentioned. They were the costume designers from Michael Jackson for 25 years and created all those iconic looks that I was so excited to see on screen because they're crazy good. What's the implication, by the way, that the glove comes from the vitiligo?

32:58Like, he started wearing the glove because he had the vitiligo? I believe so. And the movie does

33:03Sean Fennessey:really make a point of that as he sits down for his first nose job that he also speaks to a nurse about the vitiligo that he's been diagnosed with, which leads to his skin coloration changing and that's another thing that's like, okay, I guess we just have to accept that. Maybe there was more about that later in the second, third hour when he gets whiter in skin tone. Right. They do have him in the moment where he asks to be put on MTV more and it's explained to him, was that Mike Myers? It was Mike Myers. He was playing Walter Yetnikoff. I did not recognize that. Well, it's kind of an homage to Bohemian Rhapsody where he played the same character, not the same character, but, you know, a studio chief.

33:51And it's explained that MTV just won't play a black artist. That's actually pretty accurate. It's true. And the way it was done by him is actually pretty accurate. You know, they have a point of having Michael Jackson say, like, I'm a proud black artist and it's very important to me that, you know, I be on MTV. Anyway, so the nose job scene was interesting because that was really the only time where anything was coming from the Michael character. They have the doctor come in and say, like, are you sure you want this? You're a pretty handsome guy. And he's like, no, I need symmetry. I need to be perfect.

34:25And that is really kind of the only characterization I can think of besides he loves animals. He wants to be his own man. Yeah. The entire script, one third of the script is him saying that. That's one of the things he underlines in The Notebook. I think that there's, he's such a wide open field of human psychology.

34:50Sean Fennessey:That there's so many things that you could explore and that we assume, and we don't know because you didn't talk about these things. But, you know, masculinity, daddy issues, male beauty, being a black American, being a famous person. His relationship to sex and romance. most famous person. All of these things. I mean, he is the lodestar for all of these ideas in America over the last 75 years. He's one of the first examples of like excessive celebrity plastic surgery. Like, I can't think before that. I mean, Jocelyn Wildson seeing the cat lady, but like, someone who was that famous that you watched go from one person to a completely different person.

35:34And it was happening in real time. It wasn't like, it was during the heyday of his success. Yes. So not kind of after the effect. The movie did a good job, I think, even though they were very subtle. This is one of the only things they were very subtle about. His nose did keep changing. And his skin keeps changing, too. But I was like, nobody in your family? There's not one scene where Tito is like, bro, you look kind of crazy.

35:56Sean Fennessey:Well, the one thing I really liked was there's one moment in particular later in the film where Michael is being pressured to do the victory tour with the Jacksons by his father. And his father obviously does not have his best intentions at heart. But he says to him, do you really want to live in a world where no one ever doesn't say anything other than yes to you? And that was a really sincere moment where you're like, oh, you know, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Yes. Joe Jackson. And, you know, he's kind of psychologically manipulating his son by saying something that he knows will resonate with him, which then eventually leads to, of course, the victory tour transpiring.

36:28Sean Fennessey:Way more time spent on the victory tour in this movie than I ever would have guessed. But it is portrayed as this kind of pivotal moment in his young adult life. You know, there's a couple of other people who get some screen time that you pointed out had maybe a bigger role than we expected. There's a man named Bill Bray. Sure. Bill Bray is the third lead of this film. He really is. He's in almost every scene, just in the background like this. And every once in a while, he gets like a concerned close-up because he's meant to communicate that there is at least someone looking out for Michael. someone who understands this special person and the impossible situation he's been put in.

37:06It gives me the sense that he was like the omniscient narrator somehow because he was always kind of there. And I asked you during the time, I was like, because a lot of that stuff, who knows what happened in those rooms? Did it come from that man?

37:23Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I don't believe it was actually based on his autobiography or anything. He passed away in 2005. Michael spoke about Bill Bray as though he were his second father he was his real protector he was the person who for I think probably more than 20 years was at his side all the time and so there is something interesting about there being one person who is proximate to all of this craziness I like that idea the movie is just like it becomes like a Mr. Show sketch at a certain point where like the camera keeps like zooming in on Bill Bray's reaction as to what's going on I couldn't stop watching I'd be like oh there he is in the mirror But also, it does answer one of your mid-movie questions, which is who drove him home from the nose job.

38:01That's true. It was Bill Bray. It was Bill Bray. Because he just walked in the door and I was like, you can't drive after a nose job, sir. Is it a same-day procedure? Yes. You can go home afterwards? Yeah. Oh, cool. I haven't had one. I haven't had one either. I haven't had one either. It doesn't cross my mind. Yeah. No, you have a nice nose. Well, it's nice of you to say. What do you think? I could use a nose job? No, not at all. Is that what you were thinking?

38:18Sean Fennessey:I actually don't think anybody should get plastic surgery ever. Oh, I don't know about that. Okay, yeah. Well, it's okay. Good job. I think we're all beautiful. That's exciting. And I don't think people should be judged on the way that they look. Okay. He says on Netflix. Well, I would prefer to not be judged if I can help it. You talk about Hollywood for a living. But I try to not do that. I actually don't. Not to stand on my soapbox. If someone looks good, I like to say that they look good. But if somebody doesn't look good, I try to not talk about that. Because I find it's counterproductive.

38:47Much like Michael Jackson, you're a bit of a saint. as was portrayed in this movie. That's what really got my gall, I gotta say, where I was like, he's, are we trying to canonize him? Because I think he, But we already did, like a hundred times over. With the real story of his life is enough for him to be one of the most important and mythical figures of all time. And in fact, far more interesting and compelling if they showed another side to him.

39:17Sean Fennessey:What do you think that could have been though? Because, you know, the Paul Schrader biopic of Michael Jackson, I, of course, would love to see. No one's going to let that happen in the Michael Jackson estate. No one's going to let any of this happen, guys. You don't get the music if you show a blemish of him. This is total image rehabilitation. The estate allowed them to do this as a partner in it and gave them the music. And so you have to follow what the estate says. It wouldn't have been a blockbuster, but I would generally have watched a musicless version where they grapple with his actual psyche.

39:48Sean Fennessey:like Jimmy by Your Side, that movie starring Andre 3000 where there were no Jimi Hendrix songs, but we watch him kind of have a relationship in 1967. I missed that one. That one, there's a reason nobody watched it. There were no Hendrix songs in it. You can't do that. I know. It's rough. The music, I don't think, I just keep thinking back. I'm like, Nico 1988, which no one has seen on Earth. I haven't seen it. It's so good because they show a real person. They show every part of this person who was complicated and challenging and I know we're never going to get that. I understand. I'm not stupid, but I wish there's some, it seems like they wanted to try.

40:26Sean Fennessey:Well, there's something so fascinating about the Bruce movie being such a failure too because the Bruce movie is a real effort to like show wounds, you know, to say, here's why I'm fucked up and here's how I used art to work through it and I'm flawed and I made mistakes and, you know, I left this girl behind. Kind of, but I left this composite girl behind. I agree. I was going to say the movie's got a lot of flaws. It's like an effort to do that. But still managed. And Springsteen was a part of it. And what is told is told even, you know, like how much depression can we go through and like how much weakness and when are you allowed to look sad and when are you allowed to, you know, be handsome and Bruce.

41:06You know, when they're involved.

41:07Sean Fennessey:Everything is managed though. I know that. Like how do we get to a place? We're never going to get to this place, I guess, is the point. Is that we're never going to get to a place where the same feeling that near the end of the film when Human Nature is performed and all three of us are like, oh my God. Shout out Steve Porcaro of Toto. Do you know that, sorry, not to bandsplain for a second, but this is actually so interesting. Steve Porcaro of Toto also inadvertently invented the drum machine by suggesting to the engineer who created the Linn drum machine that like has live drum sounds that he should make that and then he went and made it and has like one guy playing real drums on it and it's on Thriller.

41:42Sean Fennessey:Interesting. Very interesting. I would say a lot of the people who were participants in writing the music on Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. Get erased from. Rod Temperton's name is mentioned in the movie, but we don't really see him. We see Quincy Jones mostly just genuflecting before Michael's talent from inside of a booth somewhere. We don't see his contribution. How about my girl who we don't see who doesn't exist at all. Janet Jackson is not present in this movie. It's Janet if you're nasty. And she's like, it's nothing in this film, babe, that I'm sorry for you or I'm happy for you, but I'm not reading all that.

42:16Sean Fennessey:Didn't you assume she just asked to be not included in this narrative? I actually heard a rumor that they did initially include her and they had to cut her out. Interesting. Because she saw the film and was like, fuck out of here. Asked or told absolutely not to through her own lawyers, which I hope more power to her. An unusual amount of LaToya in the movie. And weirdly no Janet Jackson. And we know Michael and Janet were very close. Quincy Jones is also no longer with us. So I wonder how much his estate had to say. His estate probably pretty powerful, I guess. I think it's interesting that he was effectively not present for anything that wasn't about creativity.

42:47Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Which I think probably makes sense from his estate's perspective.

42:53Sean Fennessey:I'd love to know what Miles Teller was thinking. I do too. I find this to be an odd choice for a person who is like legitimately famous. And like a really good actor. And now we've learned, congratulations to Miles Teller, on the sale of, what's it, high drink? Long drink. Long drink. Yeah, he made a huge amount of money. That did make it into my news cycle. $325 million. So some years ago, Amanda and Bobby Wagner came to my garage and we did a movie star liquor taste test. Not on video, just audio. And one Friday afternoon, we got super drunk on the pod. We were medium drunk. We got medium drunk on the pod.

43:30Sean Fennessey:I evaded jury duty on that podcast and we tasted long drink and you know what I loved it what is it I thought it was great it was sort of it was not that different than a hard seltzer but better it's kind of like a it's a Finnish drink it's a Finnish company okay is it I want to say like it's not tangerine it's not cantaloupe it's like it's like Nordic White Claw or something yeah sort of to me it tasted like like Fresca but hard Fresca love Fresca yeah who doesn't very enjoyable anyhow I imagine if he had sold the company before this movie went into production, he wouldn't have done this movie.

44:03Sean Fennessey:Probably not. And I'm sure he went in feeling like, I love Michael Jackson. Or maybe, this is what I'm saying, maybe he's a major Michael Jackson. Totally. I'd love to be a part of this. I get that, but he has like 11 lines of dialogue in the movie and mostly just like looks confidently at Michael Jackson. Are they allowed to read the script before they say yes to the part? I think so. Okay, well then that's a questionable choice. I was thinking about this with every single actor in the movie because the script did change. And so what do you do when they're like, oh, well, sorry guys, can't use the third hour.

44:28Now you're going to have to reshoot this. There's still any, some of that script is so ham-fisted,

44:33Sean Fennessey:so over the top. Okay, so this is an interesting thing. So we haven't talked about the fact that John Logan wrote this movie, who wrote Gladiator, and Antoine Fuqua, who has directed many hugely successful movies, including Training Day, directed this movie. I think for the most part, the movie actually has like surprisingly solid pacing and I didn't, you said it felt very long to you. I didn't feel like it felt very long. I think because every six minutes, they're like, you like this song? And so it had a similar feeling of Bohemian Rhapsody where I was like, this is actively terrible, but I don't want to leave.

45:06Sean Fennessey:And that's a unique brand of movie. You're waiting for the next song. Everything that happens in between the songs or the montages of them recording songs. And by the way, a lot of silly things happen in those montages, but they're set to amazing music. But anything that is musicless and just dialogue and two quote unquote characters speaking to each other to advance the quote unquote plot is really dire. There are three lines in this movie that are repeated in different ways. You're either a winner or you're a loser. You got to be perfect. And I want to cut my own path. You have to let him cut his own path.

45:43You can't cut your own path. That's the entire script.

45:46Sean Fennessey:I just need more for Neil Long. Really one of my first faves. She was good. She's doing her best. I mean another person with no agency or character like she just likes to watch old movies with her son that's her whole character still alive Michael Jackman's mother didn't realize that they called her mother that was a little jarring for me yeah big Mike Pence vibes there yeah it's a tricky one I um what else do you want to say I mean we can talk through every single song performance if you want to I think just one thing I want to say and I don't want to get ahead of going into the next film but I do think like one through line for me is that like fame is a mental illness.

46:23I couldn't believe this more by each passing day. Fame should be in the DSM-5. It is, you cannot overcome it. Yeah. Even with the modicum of fame I have, you recognize at the AMC, which makes a lot of sense. I'm mentally ill from it. I have brain damage from the like 2 % famous podcaster that I am. Yeah. It's not okay.

46:44Sean Fennessey:It's not, it's definitely not healthy in whatever low-grade version of it we experience. We're suffering as well. clearly has damaged all of us. And so I'm sure you are. Thanks for the Negronis, everyone. Yeah, I love the free stuff. Don't stop sending the free stuff. I think it's not hard to feel empathy for eight-year-old Michael Jackson being thrust into a world that he doesn't want to have any part of. I can feel empathy for adult Michael Jackson being so psychologically twisted that he makes whatever the questionable choices were that he does questionable things. I am willing to actually extend that level of grace because I think that that's a very true thing and it would ring true to people and especially his fans.

47:29Sean Fennessey:I know, but by the same token, you can't equalize the whitewashing reputationally of the accusers of the allegations and how they would be feeling watching Michael Jackson's star once again be elevated onto 3 ,500 screens and people like us having chills watching him perform music. The whole thing is it's impossible to just like settle it in your mind. Did you see the documentary? Leaving Neverland. Yes. That I thought was brilliant in how it handled it. It left you being like, oh, you know, like it wasn't like it didn't have a point of view that it was shoving down your throat. It was so good at kind of doing what I wish this film had done, which I guess I know they would never do that.

48:13But like you walked away and you're like, I don't know what to think, you know, like in some ways.

48:17Sean Fennessey:I feel like that film is pretty definitive at times. Yeah. But here's the thing. After I saw that movie, which I found to be extremely powerful, incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I thought to myself, I'll never have the same relationship to Michael Jackson again. But the truth is that when I listen to these songs and when I watch sequences in this movie, I still feel like the kid who was eight years old who loved listening to bad and who loved watching those music videos. And there's something about this unbreakable connection to culture that we make at a young age that like it can't change no matter what we learn.

48:50Sean Fennessey:Like, you know, to this day, people, you know, ask me about Kanye West because like I spent time with Kanye West in the 2000s and I loved his music more than anything. And they're like, well, how do you feel now, asshole? And I'm like, I can't change how I felt at that time about him. Well, you get asked about Woody Allen. To be definitively clear, I didn't say I don't know what to think as I don't believe the accusers. That's not what I meant. It just was more that it was like you see, you kind of are like, oh, God, I feel bad also for Michael Jackson. The whole thing is just a nightmare. Well, so what we're talking about, at least in terms of Michael Jackson's music and all the other complicated relationships, it's the classic separating the art and the artist, which is very difficult.

49:33And can you do it? I don't know. And we'll continue. We will certainly wrestle with it on this podcast. It's a personal choice. Yeah, but listen, that's something that you work on as a consumer of art. But that's not what this movie is asking us to do. this movie is about the artist. Yeah. And it's the artist creating the art, but this is quite literally a biopic about the artist. So it's just kind of, it's glaring. It's not even the elephant in the room. It is just, it is completely omitted. And we know that actually from the making of the film itself, it's just a whole chapter of his life that is just missing.

50:08It's an incomplete movie. It's not even about the art, which is, I think, what that also got me. The whole time I was like, I want to know more than fine, then tell me more about why what's behind these songs why did you choose these looks like what was your thinking around your presentation around the songs you chose around what you were trying to communicate when you wrote these lyrics like I would have there's none of that in the film either except that he's like I like to have the gang members teach me how to dance this is a seawall I forgot about that until just now because that was so crazy remember

50:39Sean Fennessey:I mean that's based in fact I don't know if it actually played out the way that it plays out in the movie So he's alone in the studio working on the track list for Thriller. And then he looks up to see a breaking news local segment about the gang violence in Los Angeles, learns about that, and then is led to hold this summit. Which, you know, maybe that's how he was learning about things. You know, he did live a pretty... He didn't have X.com. It's true. He was not like out in the world a lot. It was a series of rules for him. He was at home playing Twister with Bubbles as we saw. Oh, that was sad.

51:18It was actually really sad.

51:21Sean Fennessey:I want to talk about one thing that I found interesting about Michael Jackson when I was younger and that I still am interested in in his music that is in direct contrast to his public persona and the way that he spoke in interviews, which is that his music, especially from Thriller on, was extremely attitudinal and aggressive. Totally. And it was very, his vocal inflections, the phrasing and the lyric writing, the energy that he communicated as a vocalist was, could be angry, could be like arrogant, could be very different from the very soft voiced man who you saw who just talked about healing the world.

52:02Sean Fennessey:And my favorite Michael Jackson song by far is Leave Me Alone, which is, I think it's the last song on Bad. It might be one of the last songs on Bad. And I was always fascinated by that video, which, you know. The bonus track. The bonus track. Featured the bones of the elephant man and the sort of like animation of moving through the circus mind of Michael Jackson. This kind of hall of mirrors that he has to endure as a famous person. It was written in response to all the wacko jacko stuff and his relationship to Bubbles. And it's one of the clearest evocations we have of his psychology and the way that he was responding to becoming a famous person.

52:38Sean Fennessey:Leave Me Alone is not in the movie. No. and that whole persona even the persona that you find in in Beat It or in Billie Jean where there's like just this rage and this swagger and all of this stuff that was endemic to his music is not in the movie is not explored about him as a person and maybe he only used his art to explore those things maybe that was the only place where you found it but as a fan of his like you could have the same attitude towards the world by loving his music that you could by listening to Nirvana he actually was like a very singular personal artist who wrote about how he was feeling about things and explored them in a musical style in addition to also just being somebody who made 300 million people happy with the universality of his music and there's also none of that in this movie there's no there's no like where did billy gene come from so i'm saying where is that if he got angry which he clearly had every cause to be yes why don't we never see him get angry he only is sad and scared he's sad he's scared he's sad He's scared.

53:40And then he gets on stage. And then he gets on stage and says, I'm not doing this anymore. Well, but for, I mean, his, you know, his dancing and the choreography is also equally, like, forceful. Yes, exactly. Like, a complete contrast with the person that he is offstage, which is interesting. But once again, this movie is not interested in tension because it was made with legal handcuffs.

54:01Sean Fennessey:It's, it's, I, I'm, I knew I would be a little bit flummoxed by this. Like, I knew the movie was likely to be not, quote unquote, not good. Right. That there were going to be dramatic sequences that were cringeworthy, that there was going to be performances that seemed over the top, that it was only going to be serving at the altar of Michael's hagiography. But it's so much more challenging to me than Bohemian Rhapsody or Deliver Me From Nowhere because of the paradox of Michael Jackson. Exactly. Because of the incredible wonder that he instills and the anguish, I think, that he represents for a lot of people.

54:36I mean, I had the chills during the movie. I'm just like, even being transported back to that place is really special. So we'll sing, I guess, if you like Michael Jackson. It's a very relevant cultural artifact of modern Hollywood, for sure. You can remember what it was like when we had that level of pop star that moved that many people.

54:53Sean Fennessey:Is there any other thing you would have wanted to see? A song, a performance, a moment from his career that is not represented here? Obviously, pre-1990. well that's hard because you know that cuts off Dangerous and also the Free Willy song which listen yeah was that Heal the World no that's Will You Be There oh yeah with the choir come on it's 91 but I would have wanted to see him attend the Oscars with Madonna because Brooke Shields not included in this film you know a handful of the the girlfriends the friends the people who attended things with him are not present in this it really is like the boy in the bubble with bubbles like that's how he's portrayed in the movie I do think he was like an extremely lonely person and they didn't get that across and those were largely like I think press op people but could have seen them This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT &T.

55:46Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source, your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio fitness, and more, then unpack all the information in the health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out more at apple.com slash health. Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. Okay.

56:16Sean Fennessey:Should we pivot away from Michael? Yeah. Let's talk about Mother Mary. Fascinating movie. As you say, sort of similarly related in its portrayal of a major pop star going through a crisis with where we have some understanding of the origins of that crisis. This is the new movie from David Lowery starring Anne Hathaway, Michaela Cole, Hunter Schaefer, FK, Twigs, a whole host of people, including my girl, Kaia Gerber. We'll get to that in a minute. The log line of the movie is long buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer on the eve of her comeback performance.

56:52Sean Fennessey:What did you think of this, Amanda? I like pop star movies and this very much is and I appreciated the attention to detail of creating this pop star world, which is, you know, what the movie is about. And Hathaway plays a pop star named Mother Mary, who has some Gaga, some Beyonce, a lot of Madonna for sure. I mean, obviously, it's, you know, right there in the in the title. and she has had a falling out with her creative director, essentially played by Michaela Cole. And it has all of those people, but it's really like a two-hander about how you create something and ownership and the creative partnership.

57:38And I thought maybe just also about relationships and breakups in general. You know, there is something archetypal about what's going on here. But all of the pop star recreations, the performances, the songs, the dresses, the world that they create was really credible. And I thought interesting. And I thought about how much time Anne Hathaway must have spent preparing for this. Because it is, again, she is performing. She can obviously sing, but there is choreography. there is some even like non-performance choreography that she has to do that's amazing so I you know I like it when people go all in on something a little strange and also something

58:25Sean Fennessey:that is in my interest set yeah what did you think you're a chronicler of modern pop and rock iconography I loved it I love this movie is like very Yossi core or I'm like I love a movie where I get to have my own inputs on what it means. I think that that is a... If you're a person who likes a movie, explained in detail for you what they're saying, this is not a movie for you. Also, if you're a person who hates women, not a movie. You guys remember the Bechdel test? Yes. There's not a single man in this film. I don't think... Or if there is, they're not ever... They're not a character. I don't think there's a single man.

59:04I don't think I've ever in my life... And I'm sure there are examples and I'm sure you know them off the top of your head. But me personally, I don't think I've ever seen a film in my life that doesn't have one single man in it. Not to put my pink pussy hat right back on for the big picture. I haven't thought about it that way,

59:19Sean Fennessey:but that obviously is a big part of it. I think, and it's interesting too because it is not a rah-rah feminism movie in any way. No, it's not about that. It is much more about, I think, what Amanda is circling, which is like the nature of these creative relationships and partnerships and maybe even love relationships. Totally. And the ways in which they break and come back together. But then also the movie is this phantasmagoric kind of ghost story in the second half and sort of like what is underpinning creativity and where are ideas coming from and what happens to people like, can you be spent?

59:50Sean Fennessey:Can you be haunted by something? And it allows you to not go forward with your creativity. When I talked to David at the video screening, which you guys were both at, I was basically like, and I never do this. I was like, what's this movie about? Because I did, I did, I agree with what you're saying about there being different inputs and different ways to read into it. And what I just said is like, that's my reading of it. But other people might see it as something different. Like, is this a queer romance? Is this like an existential dread movie about like being at the end of your life or the end of your, you know, vitality?

1:00:16Sean Fennessey:Like there's a lot of different ways to read it. And it staged pretty cool as well. It was just so beautiful and fun to watch. Like so lush and gorgeous. And I loved like all the textures because it's partially about fashion. And like Michaela Cole is cutting fabric and they have actually good stuff. And we sit through so many movies about this world where, and just about worlds where visual representation is very important, which by the way is what cinema is. And people take shortcuts and this felt really lived in. You mentioned that the costume designers from Michael Jackson are sort of like not mentioned in the Michael movie.

1:00:55Sean Fennessey:And this movie obviously is about how there's always someone or many people behind these icons that we love. That's one of my central preoccupations. So that's another reason I think I really like the movie. Like the idea of being working in the service of another person's creativity, because even though that is her creativity, the costume designer played by Michaela Cole, it is in the service of Mother Mary. Right. And what kind of person you have to be to be OK with that, because you won't get the credit. You never really a manager, a publicist and, you know, a choreographer. These people are all in the service of someone else's light.

1:01:32And I thought that was dealt with really interesting. I thought the meta, using the red, actually, it's really funny because there's a line that I just remembered where I think Anne Hathaway is like, this is too many metaphors. And I was like, that's very funny that he put that in there. But like that red piece of silk or cloth or whatever. I believe it was a puppet.

1:01:51Sean Fennessey:It is a puppet. David. David Lowery. What's up to my puppet crew? He's a puppet boy, just like me. it's gotta move you'd rather a CGI Bubbles? no we want a puppet it's a movie about pageantry more puppets than 2026 but I found it like again a place that you can put anything I was like oh this could be resentment and it's leaving one person's body and going into this can be ego you know depending on your own idea of the world like you were saying or what you're interested in it left a lot of room for you to play with it without being like I didn't walk away being like that movie didn't mean anything.

1:02:30Yeah.

1:02:30Sean Fennessey:Which is a risk, right? It is. And look, I think the movie's been very divisive, critically. There are people who are like, this is a huge miss. Which I find with all of David's movies, they're super rewarding on second watch. Because you're not trying to figure out what's going on anymore and you're kind of accepting it on its own terms. I had a chance to see this movie a long time ago and then I saw it again a second time in video. And I really enjoyed it even more the second time. Because I wasn't trying to like, because the first half of the film is very talky between these two characters.

1:02:57Sean Fennessey:It's a chamber piece. We don't really know their history. They're sort of like explicating without over-enunciating their history. Right. And it's hard to get your bearings a little bit. You know, it's a very stormy movie at first. And then it takes this huge leap in terms of the kind of gothic ghost story elements in the second half. So it's a lot to take in. But I very much agree with you. I mean, it's also true that I think in all of Lowry's movies, like, he asks a lot of his actors, he kind of asked them to put their ass on the line with really deep weird dramatic stuff like I thought I thought a lot about Rooney Mara in A Ghost Story in this movie which is also a very brave and odd performance in a very sad movie this is also a very sad movie Casey Affleck in Ain't Them Body Saints Dev Patel in The Green Knight like he kind of he asks actors to really expose themselves and Anne Hathaway has to be kind of ridiculous in this movie she's incredible and she's amazing she's one of the few big stars who's like up for this kind of a thing So yeah, I really enjoyed it.

1:03:57And I think it's quite an accomplishment

1:04:00Sean Fennessey:to be able to pull off that scale at what I imagine was not the biggest budget in the world. You think about a movie like Michael relative to a small movie like this. I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Yeah, and stage it. Because they do stage a lot of the work in addition to that sort of chamber piece, first half of it. Also, I obviously love religious themes. Which you can't get around because the pop star is a religious coded pop star. But that is, I mean, that is our idolatry now too, right? Is like, is Taylor Swift. That's our religion. 100%. And just being committed to those figures and worshiping at their altar.

1:04:31But it also is so interesting to like, back to what Amanda was saying. It's like, I don't know if he meant to do this, but I feel like he did. Is like, you also harkens back to like Madonna, who is, I know I'm a little bit Madonna-brained right now, but she was kind of arguably the first major pop star in this lineage. Like every pop star that we have now has come from her. In her wake. Yeah. From her vagina. But she, her whole thing was all the Catholic imagery and grappling with Catholicism and God and guilt and stuff. So like having it echoed in this pop star. But then you can be like, I don't know, would that fly now?

1:05:10You know?

1:05:12Sean Fennessey:I don't know if you could be successful in that same way. That was the one place I couldn't suspend disbelief. where I was like, a pop star couldn't fill a stadium with these songs about the Holy Spirit. You're right. It's not that it wouldn't fly. It's that it would not be the level of controversy and attention that Madonna got. Like, we all remember like a prayer, you know? Yeah. Who's the most successful pop star who pursues taboos? I guess it probably used to be Lady Gaga. Right. Maybe now Lana, although her taboos are kind of different. She's not a stadium artist, though. No. you know like in the stadium or I mean you know I guess Beyonce does does do some some transgressive things you know but but I think it's back to the Michael thing it's you we don't have that anymore because the value proposition of pop stars now is I'm just like you you know whereas it used to be it's not just pop stars I am everything so much parasociality you can never I am my I am a look at me look at my jacket look at how I can moonwalk across I am an alien I am an angel you know I do miss that I like that I like Larger Than Life.

1:06:15Sean Fennessey:I'm really interested in that. It inspires weeping people in the crowd. And I guess people do probably weep at Taylor Swift. I think they definitely do, but it does feel different. It does feel... They also, you know, do friendship bracelets in between themselves and then take pictures. I didn't go. Everyone said it was a nice time. Yeah, and David talked about how the Reputation? It was the Aeros tour, I think. The Aeros tour. No, no, no, but it's the Reputation film. The concert film. That was a huge inspiration for how they shot a lot of the pop star sequences. It's her darkest album. Is that true?

1:06:46Yeah. I'm not aware. I thought Michaela Cole was exceptional. Yeah. I love her. I want to see her more all the time. I love Chewing Gum. I think she's just like so talented.

1:06:55Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Check out the Christophers, right? We just talked about the Christophers too. It's weird. I felt like she was just not in a movie for several years. And now she's in two movies in back-to-back weeks, which is quite fascinating. I think she's really interesting too. And she has a kind of flinty performance style that is very well suited to the repartee between the two of them. Yeah. A bit like a play. Again, I love movies that the dialogue is like a play. That's a very Yossi quote. Very much. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band tease. But on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've got.

1:07:25Sean Fennessey:You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, an original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love, with no artificial sweeteners and three grams of prebiotic fiber. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, unbelievably Pepsi. Would you like to talk about your photo with Kaia Gerber?

1:08:07Yeah, let's talk about it. Okay.

1:08:08Sean Fennessey:What would you like to know? I know everything. You maybe want to address people who are like, what's going on here? Sure. So the three of us went to Vidiot's one night to watch Mother Mary and I spoke to David afterwards. Beforehand, Vidiot's, which is a wonderful nonprofit located in Eagle Rock, they do a photograph with the filmmaker in the video store, which is attached to the movie theater. Yeah, it's good Instagram content. It's great Instagram content. Shout out to Vidiot's. so there was going to be a photograph with David and they said Sean we want you to be a part of that photograph and that's obviously a tradition that we've been doing here on this show where we take a photograph with the filmmaker I was like sure that sounds like a good idea and they were like well David's ready for you in the video store come on back so I walked back to the video store familiar space for me somewhere I go frequently I was just there Sunday with my daughter and David's there and I spotted him and some folks who work in PR I'm just chit-chatting with and start walking towards David and then right to his left Kaya Gerber who were you starstruck?

1:09:07It's as as one of our as someone on one of our group chats, probably Rob Mahoney, but I can't remember said about the photo. It's the most I don't know what to do with my hands pose of all time from Sean Fennessey. Just totally taken aback, right? Yeah, speechless. You never see him speechless. She

1:09:28Sean Fennessey:she is luminous. Yes. She's an international supermodel. Sure, that is our word that communicates light. I think luminous is probably better. You're not awestruck by the beauty of women like myself and Amanda. It's only interesting. I think you are both beautiful. Save it. Thank you.

1:09:52Sean Fennessey:It goes beyond there's a hot girl. You can see that she has a unique thing. That's her job. She's a professional model. She has the greatest genes in the universe. The bigger challenge was the surprise. You know, like, I'm very comfortable. What would you have done to prepare a beta blocker? I would have not gone. I would have not put myself in that situation. Nevertheless, she said, hey, Kaya, I'm... She said, hey, Sean, I'm Kaya. You're back in that space right now, and you can't speak at your tongue. I'm all nervous. I know. I'm feeling I'm close to Kaya. And she was very kind, and then they were like, let's take a photo.

1:10:23Sean Fennessey:And I was like, Kaya's going to be in the photo. I have to be in the photo at the same time. And then the decision had to be made. Do you touch kaya gerber and i decided no yeah oh you don't want to be floating hands the classic floating backhand you haven't seen the photo is really funny you know i didn't even notice i screenshotted you and kaya really big to make my phone i'm in action figure posts because i'm like i don't know what to do right i panicked you know and uh you know what in your defense that happens most of the time that a photo is taken of you that's true and i'm just trying to but i'm like i don't you know you're an ally that's right yeah i don't want to do is violate in any way and she gave a lovely introduction with David before the film.

1:10:59And she was great

1:10:59Sean Fennessey:and chit-chatting with her was lovely. She was super cool and you know, I wish her all the best and I hope we cross paths again one day but not in photographic form. I thought the casting of the tertiary characters was for lack of a better word extremely cunty and I loved it. It was. It was FK, Twigs, Hunter Schaefer, Kai Gerber, there's more. Who else is in it? Alba Baptista is the Taylor Swift character as Sean Woodens. What is her last name? Sean Clifford. Clifford who I love from Fleabag fame, the sister from Playback with the bad haircut. Yes, Jessica Brown Finley from Downton Abbey. Incredible backing cast.

1:11:33Really good stuff.

1:11:34Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I think you're right that there's not a single man in this movie. And I'm sorry to have been struck. I literally just was like, I walked out and I was like, Bechdel test? Passed, bitch. Great job. Bechdel test found dead in a ditch after this film. Any other closing thoughts? No, you could just... Michael, Mother Mary. Okay, let's go to my conversation with David Lowery.

1:11:58Sean Fennessey:Hi, everyone. What'd you think?

1:12:05Sean Fennessey:Very easy movie to understand. Please help me in welcoming writer-director David Lowery.

1:12:19We like to let the credits play so that you can kind of decompress a little bit.

1:12:23Sean Fennessey:Yeah, yeah. This is my second time seeing it, and I wish I had more time to decompress, actually. So you mentioned you started writing this movie seven years ago. Yeah. What was happening in your life that this came out of you? I was on the set of The Green Knight in Ireland, and there were a bunch of things. I had shot a scene with Dev Patel and Sean Harris and was like, huh, doing a scene with two actors in one room is really fun. I hadn't really done much of that. and I was kind of thinking about just where I was like as a filmmaker like what I wanted to do what I had done what I was anticipating doing having a couple long nights of the soul dark nights of the soul and then I also just got really really really sick and I felt like my body like my body was breaking open in weird ways not to get too graphic and I was like I'm just gonna rather than like lay awake I couldn't sleep and I was like what rather than lay awake in bed and not and just stare at the ceiling when to start writing about this and I wrote it as a dialogue sort of between just me having a conversation with myself but very almost immediately I'd been wanting to make a pop star movie for a long time I was like okay this is the perfect vehicle for my pop star movie and and so I wrote the scene where mother Mary comes and asked Michaela for a dress and then it went off in other directions.

1:13:55And over the ensuing years and working on other movies, it gradually became, it's still autobiographical, but became separate for me and became what ultimately manifested over the course of however long it took to make this, which was a long time as well.

1:14:12Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I want to hear about that. Your previous two films are very large in scale. Yeah. And was there a conscious decision to say, I want to do something that feels more achievable, like more modest? Yeah, I was really excited about doing something simple. And, but yet I'm always, I mean, when I made a ghost story, it was also like one location, we're never going to leave. And I was like, but what if you went into the past? And that was a much smaller movie than this, but still like we wound up having these huge, like wet effects came into all these digital CG cityscapes for us. and with this one I really wanted to I'd really fallen in love like with that scene with Dev and Sean Harris with like working really intensely with actors which was something I've always loved doing but my movies are had up to that point been there were other things that took priority for me and when I made Peter Pan and Wendy which was really big and a really challenging movie in all sorts of ways there's one scene in that movie that was again it was Jude Law and Everett Anderson And I was like, we spent two days in one limited location and it was such a treat.

1:15:21And I just wanted to spend a few more days doing that. And didn't really think about how, you know, two days is great, but if you're doing it for 40 days, it starts to turn into something. Weird things start to occur. You start to live the movie in a really interesting way. and then it as my movies tend to do like they just I reached a point in the script where it could have stopped it could have been the end it could have been over but I was like I haven't seen this through all the way yet I need to keep pushing and and that's where it got

1:15:54Sean Fennessey:a little bit more maximalist you said you'd always wanted to make a pop star movie were there inspiration points were there people who you saw at certain stages of your life who you thought that's a movie star as well as a pop star? That's a great question. I really hadn't been to a stadium tour show up until when Lorde was on tour with Melodrama. And that was when I realized I love stadium shows. It had a huge impact on me. What was it you liked about them? Just being surrounded by that many people. I'd, you know, I'd been to see like Rob Zombie in high school, Hellbilly Deluxe Tour. I'd been to stadium shows before, but something about...

1:16:50This is kind of a living dead girl movie, actually. Yes, yes, exactly. Something about going to see that type of spectacle surrounded by that many people and specifically that type of music was really transformative for me prior to that i'd you know made movies that dealt with folk music or had sort of a more of a an old-fashioned classic americana sensibility to them but as i was making those i was secretly also discovering that i really love pop music and when we made ain't the body saints i can't i can't say this we hid a certain song in the movie as many times as we could by compressing it into the gunshots that you hear in the movie.

1:17:41Just because I was like, you know, I've been listening to this song a lot. I really want to, it's infecting me and I want to pay tribute so we secreted it away into the movie.

1:17:52Sean Fennessey:And that song is called? I'm never going to say it. Okay. How do you research a movie like this? Because it is very much about a pop star and about a person who feels somewhat reflective of some of the big icons that we see. But it's also about the flip side, the support system, the creative shadow of someone like that. And I don't know a lot about that world, but it does feel realized. It does feel true when I watch it. So how did you come to understand how that world works? It started with watching a lot of documentaries. And I'd say the two that were really instrumental to me were McQueen, the Alexander McQueen documentary.

1:18:32And it's not touched on that much in that film, but his relationship with Lady Gaga was something I had in mind, even Madonna and Gaultier. But that pairing of a performer and a designer was really potent to me. And then just watching every music documentary basically and seeing, just getting just the idea of what it means to go on tour something i've i could never dream of doing i my hats off to anyone who is capable of that because it is a true it's it's superhuman feat and i think the first one maybe when we were shooting the green knight beyonce's homecoming documentary came out and watching that was really really impactful and and then the taylor swift reputation documentary, which is as a cinematic spectacle, really something else.

1:19:28Like I really love the way that was shot and we could barely scratch the surface of that scale with this film, but that was something we looked at a lot too. But just even watching all of those, you just get the sense. And then talking to musicians, like talking to people who do this and trying to get a sense of it, trying to understand what it's like and not just the ardor and joy and, of getting to go do this night after night, but also the creative collaborations that beget something like a stadium tour.

1:19:59Sean Fennessey:Who was cast first, Michaela Cole or Anne Hathaway? I sent it to Michaela first, but we wound up meeting after I'd already met Anne. So Anne was cast first. So by the time I met with Michaela, we didn't really talk about, you know I try to be agnostic when I'm casting movies and I just like to send the script and see what people think of them and and I honestly think there's an incredible version of this movie where the roles are reversed it would be just a completely different dynamic but I did cast Anne first and so then when I met Michaela and we were talking about it and we weren't even talking necessarily about her playing Sam we were just talking about the script and talking about what she found meaningful in it, which was really a big, like I was so starstruck because I'm such a huge fan of hers.

1:20:51And to know that she found value in something I'd written, I was like, what's going on here? But as we were speaking, as we were talking about personal experiences that she could relate to within the script and the things that where it came from for me, I really started to hear Sam's dialogue and her voice. And almost instantly I was like, this has to happen. It has to be her.

1:21:14Sean Fennessey:You were saying you like the idea of working with two actors and if there's no chemistry between the two people that you cast, a movie like this can't work and there's such a toxic chemistry between these two people. How do you make that happen in a movie without it making everybody go insane? We might've gone insane. I mean, it's there in the script. So you know what you're signing up for. and I was very confident that no matter what the chemistry was, like A, they're professional actors and we're going to come here and we're going to perform these scenes as they're written and we're going to explore them and extrapolate from them and expand upon them and something will emerge from that.

1:21:56But also like, I just want to see the two of them in a room together and it could have been anything and I would have been, we can work with this. I would have known we could work with it. But it really was like a really interesting process of, I mean, you hear about this with other movies, but like you start living it. You really becomes every day you're going there and we shot not entirely in sequence, but we tried at least for the first three weeks we were in sequence. And we were really, I think had a plan and we knew what we were doing. We had rehearsed the first act of the movie very, very thoroughly and we were sticking to that plan and it was all working according to plan.

1:22:35And then at a certain point, We started to feel things more deeply. And there are fewer words in the movie at a certain point. You start exploring in a different way. And at that point, it really became an almost supernatural experience making this. And I don't know if that comes through in the movie, but we felt while we were making it, we were like, what are we conjuring here? This is so... It felt sometimes incredibly beautiful, sometimes incredibly painful, sometimes it felt evil. like we were summoning something terrible and we were like oh no what's going to happen at the end of the day

1:23:11Sean Fennessey:tell me a moment when you were conjuring something evil there was a moment after Anne has told her story and they're sitting there and she asks no after Mother Mary's told her story and she asks Sam if she believes her and Sam clearly doesn't but knows she needs to address this and is going to invite her up and remeasure her. And I remember Anne saying, I'm afraid to speak the words right now because there's something inside of me that might come out when I open my mouth and it might hurt all of us. And maybe that was a metaphor. This is a movie full of metaphors. Maybe it was literal. And Michaela knelt down at her side.

1:24:01I didn't quite know what to say. I was like, this has never happened to me. And then Michaela knelt down at her side and just took her hand and said, I love you and I trust you. And you can say the words. And that was one of those moments was just like in that moment, it sounds almost like something I wrote, but it also like describing, it doesn't really capture like how intense that moment was. And I remember the crew was all gathering around being like watching us as we're all just working through this moment. they're like what is happening and then the other thing when they're in that circle it was you know there's the scene where they do this breathing exercise and they just breathe and it's one of my favorite things in movies is just to watch people breathe and fall into that pattern and we would do that before every single take and really get ourselves into that space and it really felt like we were entering some weird zone for, and we, that scene was scheduled for, I think two days and we probably shot it for seven days, which is an insane thing to say out loud because we just kept, I really wanted this to be a film where if anyone felt that something was wrong or that we were going down the wrong path, we would stop and course correct.

1:25:15And, and that sequence, we were, we were always refining it, trying to find for them the, the performance, like where they were, where the characters were. For me, that's one of the most visually, there's a lot going on visually in that sequence and finding the right visual language for it. And we, you know, we're constantly exploring within the parameters of this tiny little circle on the floor.

1:25:38Sean Fennessey:I remember vividly you talking about completely re-editing the green night during COVID and just changing the tempo and even maybe some of the meaning of that movie by having free time on your hands and changing it. It seems like this movie similarly had a kind of ongoing redefinition. I would, if it wasn't opening next week, I would still probably be like doing stuff. But the, like with The Green Knight, it wasn't that I recut, like I didn't change what the movie was. I just gave myself time to take some time away from it and then was able to tease out that meaning more effectively. And that really didn't involve changing the tempo.

1:26:20That was the big thing, just changing the pace of it. And with this movie, I watched it December 31st of last year, or of 2024, and was like, this is the best thing I'll ever do. I'm done. Not going to touch it. And then showed it to some people and realized, okay, maybe I'm not done. And that happened repeatedly. I'd be like, okay, I've crushed it. And then I'd watch it with an audience and be like, oh, it's not, it's not, they're not getting what I want them to get out of it. And then a lot of it was me just consistently, because I edited it as well. It was just like, what else can I do? And that's the same thing I do with the writing.

1:27:04Like this movie could have ended at various points. Like the Michaela's monologue was at one point, the ending of the movie where she talks about that final performance. And I was like, no, there's more to find. There's more to extract. There's more to dig out of this. and with the editing process it was the same thing where I was always like I don't know what it is but there's more I'm not through with this yet there's more I can get out of it and because of delays with strikes and and other things we had the luxury of continuously just digging back in and and pushing it's something that makes filmmaking such a unique

1:27:40Sean Fennessey:art form to me, which is that unlike a painter or even a songwriter, you can kind of show a work in progress and take notes and feedback and change it based on things that people say to you. And I feel like you have to really evacuate your own ego to let that happen. Like, is that something that you would do on every movie where you really want to hear what people think of what you've done so far? I wish that I could just be like, I made the movie I want and I'm done. And maybe I should try that. I don't know. But I would still go through that process on my own. I love hearing what people think of it.

1:28:16And I love showing it to people because I believe that the movie's a living thing and it really needs to engage with the organism that is the audience. But I want... So much of it is self-imposed where I just like, I hear what people say, then I have to not look at it for a while because I don't want to just answer those notes. I want to hear those notes, let those notes sort of like simmer and, and, and on a very low boil and then take what I need from them. But it really is informative for me to just like, am I achieving what I set out to do? And sometimes I have like, you know, kind of an idea of what I set out to do with a movie like this, like 10 years from now, I'll still be trying to figure out what I was trying to do.

1:28:55Like, I know what I was trying to do, but I'm going to learn more about it as I discuss it now, as it's, as it makes its way out into the world.

1:29:01Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I know better, but there is a part of me that wants to just look you in the eyes and say, what does this movie mean? I'm not going to say it because I want everyone to just go see the movie again. Okay. But Michaela literally says what the movie's about in the first 20 minutes. Like she like lays it very like clearly on the table and that's what the movie's about. Yeah. I also was thinking about, you know, this is the second time I've seen it now and thinking about who are you between the two of them and you indicated that you're both of them, that it's a conversation between yourself. But I'm wondering if maybe you had relationships creatively where you were Sam or you were Mother Mary and kind of how that informs some of the dynamic that you created between the two characters.

1:29:42I haven't had specifically those relationships, but I have seen the way, because I work with the same people over and over again, and you see the way in which relationships can ebb and flow from one project to the next, and the way in which those collaborations can be really, really intense in a way that can sometimes almost seem dangerous. and that's a beautiful thing. I really love that. I've thankfully never had one that has gone this way, but I could see, I could project and imagine what would happen. It definitely was also though, like there was a scene in the movie at one point where they explicitly referenced Disney movies.

1:30:24And I was like, I love making Disney movies. That's one of my favorite things. And I also love making movies like a ghost story or like this. And it's like every now and then, most of the time, those two sides of me live in perfect harmony. But every now and then I'm just like, what the heck is going on? And when I started writing this, I was having one of those moments.

1:30:44Sean Fennessey:The biggest potential pitfall for a movie like this is just getting the music wrong. Like if you get the music wrong, also the movie will not work. And I find the songs in the movie to be very credible. And they're like living in a weird liminal range between a bunch of different active and past pop stars. So how do you know that you're getting the right songs? How do you cast the right people to write those songs to make this a legible world? Charlie was the first person I met. And I had been a fan of her music and her documentary. But I had not been thinking about her specifically while writing this.

1:31:23But the thing that I knew was that the music I listened to while writing this movie was one thing. That was the tone of the movie. but the character of mother Mary needed to be something very different. And talking to Charlie was like, Oh, like you could bring that to this film. And you're brilliant. You're amazing. Please, please bring that to this film. And then collaborating with Jack and her to create the songs was a real learning experience for me. Like I've never been lucky enough to sit. I've known a lot of musicians, but to just sit and watch

1:31:56these, it was like alchemy, like watching them conjure it out of thin air. It was incredible. And I have to give an immense amount of credit then to Annie who had to perform them. We had written a couple of the songs early on and I shared them with her and she liked them, but she was like, I don't know how to make these mine. And I was like, well, of course, these have to be yours. You have to go on stage and sing them as if you wrote them. they have to feel like they're coming from you and that process i think was what really took them to the next level because the songs were great they were always great the rough demos were incredible but the thing that really made them hum in that ineffable way was what annie brought to it and she just we know she can sing she's an incredible singer but to sing in this way was really it was a new muscle for her to learn and so she would go into the studio over and over and over again and just re-record these songs and was just constantly trying to get them a little better in a way that I couldn't even hear sometimes.

1:32:57I would be like, it sounds great. I love it. Top 10 hit, here we come. And she's like, no, we're not. We don't quite have it. And sometimes it was changing lyrics. Sometimes it was things that would work better for her, but more often it was just a feeling and a vibe and she just kept pushing at it. And I owe so much to all of them, but also to her for not letting it rest.

1:33:17Sean Fennessey:There's also something in her performance that really jumps out, which is both when she's on stage performing and also when she's just in the kind of chamber setting, which is a very explicit posture and personal choreography, the way that her hands move, the way that her body moves. And I'm curious how much of that is written in the script, how much when she's making hand gestures to communicate with her lack of language in that sequence with Michaela, is that all there? Is that something you guys are figuring out when you're working on the scene? Some of it, like the hand gestures was all there.

1:33:49That was something in the script that, um, long story, but due to my love of Anna Karenina, it's like a vague, I stole it from, and I didn't even steal it. It's like, anyway, love Anna Karenina. Um, not, I love the movie too, but the book novel, um, the novel, apparently the, but she came to set with so much of that already worked out. And that was truly one of those, I remember when we made Ain't the Body Saints, Rooney didn't want to let me hear her accent until day one. And I was nervous because it's a thing. And then she did. I was like, oh, this is perfect. Why was I scared? You're an incredible actor.

1:34:28You're going to nail this. And with Annie, she had done so much work in the physicality, not just of the performance stuff, which was a whole other thing, but just the way that she carries herself, the way that she holds things within, the way she uses her hands, and the few times where she would let the pop star flare pop through, like when she snaps her fingers, like every now and then that would pop through in a very calibrated sense. But everything else was so, she'd worked through like, I think every gesture in advance. And it was so incredible to see. Because again, we'd rehearsed it, but it wasn't until we got to set that I really saw how much thought she had given to the physicality.

1:35:09We put so much emphasis on the dancing. She had a pop star bootcamp. Our choreographer was working with her three months before we started shooting. And then for a year afterwards, because we shot most of the concert sequences much later, and it was incredible to see her, not only her commitment, but the way in which that commitment paid off and what she found that she was able to do. And so we were always focused on that. We were focused on the dance, focused on the expressiveness that she could summon up. But then all of the stuff that was less expressive was what was a beautiful surprise to me on set.

1:35:49Sean Fennessey:How did you execute the concert sequences and make them seem as though they were happening in a stadium environment? I'm sure there's a million ways to do this. And what we kind of figure it out for us was that we just had to put on a stadium concert show tour, like not tour, just one, five nights, five nights of mother Mary. And we did it in Bonn, Germany, where we could get a stadium for a week or two or three weeks. And we, I mean, hired people who do this for a living. And I was like, this is a whole art form unto itself that I would, I have no idea how, like I I can talk about how to light a set, how to light a stadium is insane.

1:36:37And thankfully, Rena Yang, who was one of the cinematographers of this film, she had a lot of experience with that. So she kind of held my hand through all that. But just putting that on, we, you know, Danny, our choreographer, was really instrumental in helping us make it feel real. Our production designer, Francesca, did tons of research into how to do this. But we were really just like, this is not a movie anymore. We're just putting on a concert and filming it. And we would just play the same song, you know, 30 times every night. But it was like, that was, and we had, you know, 500 people, which in a stadium is nothing.

1:37:11That's, you know, the front row. But it was enough for Annie to be able to communicate with the crowd and to feel like she was performing to someone and to engage with them. And I will, my hat's off to all of our incredible background talent in Germany because they gave it their all every single night.

1:37:27Sean Fennessey:I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about the phantasmagoric aspects of the story. Was it always an essential part of the story or did this start as something that was more stripped down between two people and then evolve into something that became more ghostly and spiritual? I would say that it always started with a sense, like it was from the very beginning, had this gothic quality to it. Whether it's, you know, I was definitely thinking about Rebecca when she pulls up to the house, you know, and... Literal thunder and lightning crash. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And then as I tend to do, I just like remove the tethers of reality and start to explore the themes in a more phantasmagoric way.

1:38:16and I tried to hold back for as long as I could because I didn't want to just like instantly plunge headfirst into that but at a certain point, you know, early on in the writing I knew it was going to go in that direction and I didn't know how far or what form it was going to take but I'm really into phenomenology and I really wanted this movie to feel like a phenomenological exchange between these characters And I wanted the ghost, which we tried to not even refer to too often as a ghost, to be just energy and emotion exchange between two people that takes form. That takes not human form, it takes some sort of form.

1:38:57And I like the idea of someone who sees something that they know is not literally real, but it feels real. and that's what phenomenology is you you have to assess it on the base of the emotional truth that the subject is experiencing and so these are two people who are experiencing the same phenomenon that they know is probably not real and yet it's real to them and they have to reconcile that and and yeah and so there's a ghost the the um reference that i gave when we were trying to figure out what it would look like was the t1000 at the end of terminator 2 when it falls in the lava because I love the idea of something that can't figure out what it needs to be.

1:39:38Like it doesn't know what it needs to be. And that I kept showing that sequence where it's like, look, he's turning into all the different forms. And so we tried to find our own version of that. And the, you know, I've made a movie with a fabric ghost before and it wasn't, I wasn't, it wasn't intentionally setting out to do that, but it just made sense for this film.

1:39:57Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And this is like an elegant elevation of a ghost story in a way. Yes. You used puppets? We got some puppets. You know, you're a puppet guy. I love puppets. Yeah. Talk about it. How'd you figure it out? So we had, I knew it was going to start with this weird sort of mass of bloody tissue. The whole tooth thing happened to me, but not the part with the ghost crawling out of my gums. I did have a wisdom tooth crack open. And that was a rod puppet. So we had like two or three rod puppets. I built it out of clay or made some clay maquettes. And then my friend Anel, who did the ghost from a ghost story, she made these little rod puppets with like bellows that make it breathe for when Sam first sees it on the floor.

1:40:41And then I knew it needed to transform. And we went through so many iterations of what it would transform into, all involving fabric. But some of them were costumes. Some of them were more like sculptures. And then I was looking, I was trying to just figure out a way to make this unique and truly like something that I had never seen before. and I was just looking at YouTube and saw this artist named Daniel Wurzel who does these sculptures with wind and fabric they're just incredibly beautiful they feel like they're choreographed but they're not it's just fabric moving he has this custom air table that he uses and so we reached out to him and asked him if he could collaborate with us and creating and he does it like at scale like these huge things and we did a couple of those we did some that were smaller we used all sorts of different fabric we had fabric that was like covered in gore but just all these different forms and and then film photographed all of that and then composited that into the into the other footage we'd already shot and it was it was really incredible to just sit there for five we did spend five days um with a vfx unit just filming fabric in the breeze and it was really hypnotic.

1:41:54Sean Fennessey:Can you tell me what quantum entanglement is? It's, I mean, we can go really deep on this. It's when two particles share properties across time and space. So you could have like a, let's just say an atom. It's usually, it could be smaller, an atom that is blue, let's say, and blue in a very specific way. And another atom on the other side of the universe has exactly that same color blue and they're virtually identical and yet they have no sense of connection in a spatial way. And it's a phenomenon that was theorized and then eventually proven and it is one of the best metaphors for a relationship you could possibly hope to find.

1:42:37Sean Fennessey:And did you stumble upon it while writing this? Like why did it become a hallmark for it? I had known about it for a while because I love quantum physics. I was working on, at one point, I was working on the Joe Dante movie Explorers. I was working on a TV show adaptation of that and completely destroyed my brain trying to research every aspect of quantum physics. And that show never happened, but it did give me a deep love for something I cannot wrap my head around. I cannot explain it. I don't understand it. I'm terrible at math, but I love it. And so it worked its way in here very, very quickly.

1:43:26Sean Fennessey:I love how unpredictable your movies are. I literally could never imagine what you're going to do next. But I do like asking you, do you know what, I think, have you started writing something or have you already made something? I'm going to knock on wood because we just were, we're in prep right now. So ideally this one will happen, you know, this one is, God, I'm going to just shoot myself in the foot. I'm like, this is a small film. I'm just going to make a small film. Mother Mary 2? Yeah, exactly. It's a very small film. But yeah, we'll be, we're underway on that right now. Okay. David, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen?

1:44:06Sean Fennessey:You are a true cinephile. Yes. The last great thing I saw was the Alamo Drafthouse showed Melancholia about two weeks ago and I hadn't seen it in about 10 years and it is, it's long been my favorite Von Trier movie but it's better now than I was like, how have I been sleeping on this movie for 10 years? This is utterly incredible. I know you covered it last year. We did, yeah. 25 for 25 and I was so happy to just see it on the big screen. And then I also want to give it, that's an old movie, a new movie that I saw last year but also repeatedly watched this year is The Testament of Anne Lee which I just can't get enough of.

1:44:50absolutely breathtaking movie. I can't stop listening to the soundtrack. It is a movie that is quickly rising as one of my all-time favorites.

1:44:58Sean Fennessey:They would make an incredible double feature with Mother Mary, too. I mean, they're a match made in heaven. I had not even thought about it, but I'd love to go see that double feature. Everybody give it up for David Lowery. Thank you, everybody.

1:45:14Sean Fennessey:Thank you to David Lowery. Thanks to our friends at Viddy. It's thanks to Yassi Salik. Hey, you gonna come back for a truly great movie next time? I would hope so. I mean, I love this tradition of you sending me off to the theater to see sort of difficult to stomach. Yeah, Paw Patrol 2 next for you? What do you want to do? Yeah, what's on your radar? Madonna's career. I've not been. Is Madonna going to be in a film anytime soon? No, she, her biopic. Thank God. Will not happen, but it will be portrayed as if it were real in the studio season two. Because God is good. Because we don't need anyone destroying her legacy like that.

1:45:48Sean Fennessey:Take it up with Julia Garner. I'll take a look at the coming releases. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his production work on this episode and that live event. Thanks to Lucas Cavanaugh for his production support. Next week, we are drafting again. We've actually already recorded it. It's a Star Wars movie draft. It was totally normal. And I had a perfect draft. Yes, Amanda did very well. I yelled at Amanda. She yelled at me. Everybody else was chill. We'll see you then.

1:46:19Thank you.