The 10 Most Intriguing Movies at the Cannes Film Festival. Plus: ‘Warfare’ Is Hell, With Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza.

24:36I feel you. That might be part of why I'm feeling this way. Because they're all... We're looking at stuff that's just like, this is clicking. Electric. Yeah. And then, because we have a perfect taste. And then we go watch like the... I'm going to see... What's the Jason Statham movie? A Working Man. Don't go see it. It's on VOD on Tuesday. See, that's what happened in the movies. Oh, it's on VOD. Well, I have... And that'll be before... We record, yeah. Oh, that's great for me. But see, that's the problem too. That opens up my whole Thursday. You know? Okay. Well, thank you so much for that. Yeah, you're welcome.

25:08But, you know, and then I'm doing the amateur tomorrow. It was just like a real slog fest. In IMAX? No, I was thinking about just going to my beloved landmark Pasadena. They seem very excited that it's going to be an IMAX movie. Every poster is like, IMAX. Yeah, and I'm happy for the people at IMAX. Sinners in IMAX is a must. I am seeing it in IMAX. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. I got it off my chest. I'm good. I'm probably not going to do that. and honestly it's going to be the summer and I'm going to be like it's very important that I cover every summer movie yeah like we're taking time off in August but now there are all these weird movies but you're going to see every single one of them what do you mean in August they've started dating everything I know well let's thank you for bringing that up you're welcome we are going to take a little bit of a break in August as we always do but now I'm kind of nervous about it because what's happening in August I'm not going anywhere for the naked gun or weapons I'll be covering both of those movies just putting that out there for you Nobody 2 I don't really care about that Eden, Ron Howard's movie with Sidney Sweeney.

26:07Sure. Which Vertical Entertainment acquired. Yeah. Not the best sign. You know what? Shout out Ron Howard for his episode of the studio, which was very funny. He was very funny. And also Anthony Mackie. That was the Anthony Mackie, Seth Rogen. Just really, really good stuff. Great show. I agree. I'm enjoying it as well. Lurker, which is a movie I have not seen, which was at the Sundance Film Festival that I'm very excited about. Another movie acquisition. Okay. They're making moves, man. and then Caught Stealing Aronofsky and Austin Butler and then The Roses which is the Jay Roach reimagining remake of The War of the Roses starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman so there's some cool stuff in August yeah I want to go to Hawaii that's what I really want to do I know you do so hopefully that'll happen I'm going East Coast and then hopefully Europe I gotta figure that out I wish you well thank you I haven't been on like a real actual vacation it doesn't involve like going to see my family in like six years.

27:03So it's been a long time. Yeah. Had plenty of nice work trips. I have a lot of nice work trips. We had one non-family work trip that also had some fun elements. I guess I haven't really either now that you put it like that. COVID and children. Yeah. I mean, maybe those were the real issues. It's not the movies. It's our choices. It's certainly a factor. You know, the last little bit of it too is like it got so fun to be a parent. It was so hard to be a parent. And now that it got fun, I was like, do I have to see the amateur? Is this really something I should be doing? So I'll come back to this.

27:39But thank you for hearing me out. You're welcome. I appreciate your open-mindedness. You have been on a trip, not for work and not without your family in the last five years. And it was the first time you went golfing? Yes. That was physical work, though. Right. That was very physically taxing. And it's about to be physically taxing again. Okay. You in shape? You went on the treadmill while we were watching movies? No, I'm not in shape. What are you going to do? I'm not in shape at all. I don't know. When was the last time that you watched a film while walking on the treadmill? And what was the film?

28:10I did two weeks ago. What was the film? I don't remember. It might have been in 25 for 25. Oh, like a new one? No, no, no. No, like one of the movies that we were revisiting. Oh, okay. Like it might have been The Handmaiden. Interesting. I don't think that's very respectful to Park Chan-wook, but that's... What do you mean? It's actually even better because I have no devices near me. I can't, I'm like locked in. Okay. Are you walking or running? Where else am I going to look? Like hard walking. Okay. Incline? Sometimes. It's hard with my hip. Oh, that's right. I forgot. We're in the physical therapy realm as well.

28:41Yeah. That's why I'm concerned about Gal. Sure. But thank you for asking. Okay. People just want to know what level incline you're doing. I mean, what an absolute nightmare to be complaining about my amazing life and all these wonderful things that I have to only then pivot to a conversation about warfare, which is one of the most upsetting movies, really, of the 21st century. so I acknowledge that I'm the problem with society okay I know it about myself okay I can't escape yeah this fortress of of your own pain that I built but it is what it is I hope you've enjoyed it thanks for indulging me of course um see what can okay let's go to Chris Ryan

29:22so excited to have the ice boy back Chris Ryan CR thank you for rejoining me of course man good to see you When's the last time you were here? In this room with you, you mean? Yeah. A couple weeks, like maybe the week before we went to Boston for the rewatchables. What did we talk about? Did we draft something? I don't think I've been on like a normal pod in a while. Do you think that was purposeful? No, I think you guys have been really busy though. I've been really enjoying 25 for 25. Thanks. Idiosyncratic yet comprehensive is my review. Appreciate your thoughts. Yeah. We've been getting a lot of thoughts about it.

29:54I'll have you know. Did you hear my thoughts about television? I sure did. What do you think? You know, you're kind of constant. The idea that there needs to only be one, like that TV or movies are in this battle with each other. Jedi or Sith. I don't really agree with that part. But I thought as recently as like last fall and winter, you were like, it's like TV sucks. I can't watch it. Why would I watch an eight hour or 10 hour show when I can just watch four movies and like just keep experiencing visual storytelling the way I want? and then you bending the knee to Adolescence and Noah Wiley and Severance was pretty shocking.

30:33Do you want to address the Letterboxd legions and tell them how you feel? I saw Adolescence is available to be logged on Letterboxd. Not only that, I logged it. I'll just say to all of the movie fans out there, hold. We are holding in the month of April, and that is an elegant segue to where we're going today. As a great man once said, be cool. Be cool, yes. No tariff talk today, I promise you. We will talk about foreign policy, though, and the way that foreign policy impacts our lives and the lives of American citizens, because you're here to talk about Warfare. Yes. Which is the new film from Alex Garland and first-time director Ray Mendoza, who's been working on movies for some time now, but this is his first time in the co-director's chair.

31:16It's a very straightforward movie. it is a very bracing and intense movie but it is a movie that is made as they said from the memories of the men who participated in this surveillance mission in 2006 during the Iraq war and Ramadi and basically what happens in what feels like roughly a 10 or 12 hour window across that day and it is tightly focused on the men who were there that day and does not have a lead character and it shifts perspectives pretty consistently across this, I guess, pair of teams, this pair of SEAL teams. Stars DeFaro Wunatai, who you are a huge fan of from Reservation Dogs.

31:59Reservation Dogs. Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Kit Conner, Finn Bennett, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Aiden Bradley, Noah Centineo. It is kind of a who's who of young male Hollywood. Very reminiscent of the Black Hawk Down cast where you could say it's like the class picture of an acting generation in some ways. And I would probably, you'd make good money betting on like half a dozen of these guys to be in movies for the next 15, 20 years. And I was trying to determine, even in talking to Alex and Ray, whether there was some sort of strategy involved there with how they found these guys and who they chose to be in the movie.

32:35And they talked about that a little bit when we talked later in the show. But this is candidly about as upsetting a horror, excuse me, it is a horror movie. but as upsetting a war movie as I've seen in some time, what did you make of Warfare? You'll get your head scooped out by a melon baller by this one. I mean, the sort of what you walk out of that theater feeling, I think comes first. And then what you think of the movie comes second. So when you walk out of the movie theater, when I walked out of the movie theater with you, I think I just felt beaten up. I felt kind of hollowed out. And I was trying to get like basically my hearing back, both like literally because it's one of the most like impressively and bombastically sound design films I've ever seen.

33:26But also like, okay, I have to reorient, get my balance back after that experience, which I think is ultimately the intention. I think ultimately the intention is to communicate to all of your senses what it was like to the best that these guys can remember to be in this situation. what you think of the movie I think not unlike Civil War there's going to be like a lot of divisive thought about like why did you make this movie what is this movie trying to communicate obviously as it comes up a lot of times is this film anti-war or is it sufficiently anti-war so it's a really rich text but it is very sparse and minimal in terms of like giving you direction in where you should be thinking what you should be thinking and how you should be feeling.

34:14I feel like it's twinned very nicely with Civil War in some ways, which is a movie that a lot of people loved and a lot of people did not love. And I think some people didn't like it for reasons that it didn't necessarily align or clearly communicate enough about what their politics were. Other people felt like maybe it was a little bit like flimsy or sitting on the fence. You and I were huge fans. It was your favorite movie of 2024. And that movie was a movie that was about the search of the truth in, you know, aggressive conflict through the eyes of journalists. and... And perhaps the fallacy of that mission.

34:46Yes. And how, whether there is truth in that way. Right. And I think the ending of that movie in particular, the kind of like borderline winky punk rock ending of that movie that kind of upends the entire experience of it all the way through, I found to be a fascinating end note. This movie is also about a kind of truth that is sought through a memory of experience, which as Garland and Mendoza said, is like, this idea of fragmentation feels like a really important part of it, whereas Civil War is sort of like a road movie, a narrative about three or four people on a journey across the country trying to get somewhere and find something.

35:22This is a movie about people locked in one place for a given period of time who are experiencing wild physical and emotional trauma. And so there are like blacked out periods for some of those people. And so the movie shifts pretty dramatically from one character to another. You know, DeFaro, when a tie, I didn't even really realize he was a stand in for Ray Mendoza. He is literally playing Ray Mendoza in the film. And B, the main character, essentially, there really is not a protagonist, but it's not until you get to the end of the film that you really realize that that is essentially the lens through which the story is shot.

35:57Yeah. But because of how confusing and traumatic this experience is, like it necessarily has to jump from guy to guy, moment to moment, because this is what it's like. Specifically what Mendoza said is sort of like the first time and the way that your aperture widens on these experiences, the more kind of firefights you're in or the more kind of like forward actions you're in. Sure. Because the first time it happens, you're so disoriented. And that is what the movie is like a little bit. Well, there's a character, I guess we can, we get into sort of talking a little bit about specifics, but Will Poulter's character, I think is concussed multiple times in this film.

36:32And at some point is like, I'm all fucked up. Like I can't make decisions and characters are passing out. Characters are not necessarily in rooms with each other, but Mendoza and Garland, I'm sure they talked to you about this, like had a very strict methodology in terms of building the script out of, if it, if it wasn't something that someone was like, and then this happened, like it didn't, they never added anything that was like, well, this will be convenient because we need to get these three guys into this alley. So we just need to cause a reason for that to happen and we'll make up for it later.

37:04It was, everything is essentially an act of reportage. So do you think that's a valuable way to communicate this experience? Because the movie from Garland's perspective to me, I mean this in a non-critical way, it feels like an exercise. And for Mendoza, it's the most personal thing in the world. Yeah. And so you put these two perspectives together, and they're very different. And I think they see the movie even differently, even though they made it together. For you as a viewer, did you feel like you learned something? You had a new perspective on how you feel about this kind of conflict? Or even these guys who sign up to be a part of these things?

37:38I think that your reaction to war films and anti-war films and movies about this kind of thing differs at different points in your life. I think that when I was very young, obviously, I was like a lizard brain kid who played soldiers and was just sort of fascinated by stories I heard about my grandfather's generation fighting in World War II. My parents were heavily shaped by Vietnam and like their reactions to Vietnam. And when we were growing up, obviously, we were getting films like Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. And we came of age during W, really, you know. and I think have a very, very healthy cynicism about American foreign interventionist policies from that era and beyond.

38:30So I didn't necessarily come out of this being like, now I'm against war or this has changed my feelings about the Iraq war. But I don't think that's why they made this movie. I think they made this movie as a stone to put in the ground to be like, this happened and now we remember. and so it's really crucial to know that the character that Cosmo Jarvis is playing is this character Elliot Elliot the film is dedicated to Elliot and it is essentially like giving Elliot his memory back now you could well here's what I want to ask you like let's say you and I are in a car accident and I lose consciousness and I don't have any memory of this car accident like is just making me remember and having some sort of act of memorializing like that moment between us like a reason to reenact the car crash and especially if we're not coming out and saying this is why transit safety is really important you know like i don't i don't want to minimize your metaphor yeah it's not a great one but i know what you mean but i think there is a difference which is that when you are a part of a group like this when you enlist and especially if you're like a seal and you're on a team, literally.

39:42There's just a bond that is incredibly powerful that is very unemotional in its communication. I think it's probably useful to talk about the experience under which we saw the movie. Because we saw it at the American Legion Theater here in Los Angeles. And that is a space that is run by veterans. And the majority of the people who were in the room when we saw it were vets. After the screening, we watched a Q &A with Ray and Alex and some of the actors, including some of the men who were there that day, the events that are portrayed in the film. Guys who, like, they were just being brought into the filmmaking process at that point.

40:17There were a few guys who were just like, I was there, but like, I wasn't part of making the movie, but I came to see it and now they've brought me on stage to talk about it. It was pretty mind-blowing. Fascinating. Kind of a hard, it's a perfect example, I think, of how, you know, like, there's no such thing as objective criticism where it's like, you watch the movie and then you watch people talk about what they lived through that day, and then the way that Mendoza kind of filtered that perspective into a story. and I don't, you just naturally have empathy for the people. You know, there are people on stage who've gone through something that is so powerful.

40:43I think the difference between the car accident note is that when you are part of a team and you've bonded with people and then you go through something together, it is different. And so I believe Mendoza, when he says he made it for those men, I don't think Garland did that. I think he did it for different reasons. And I think some of his reasons might be that he is anti-war and he thinks it's important to show the actual toll upon these guys. And the film is as much defined by what is on the screen as what is not. There's no political context in the movie. They could have not given you the year or the country in which it was taking place.

41:19They shot it in London. You know, it's not, it's evocative of combat and it's evocative of probably what it was like to have those kinds of like highly urban, high density firefights. Obviously, it's probably the most accurate depiction we'll ever see on a mainstream Hollywood film. But you know nothing about why they're there, what they're looking for. You can read about what was going on in Iraq in 06 and the Civil War and different things that were happening. But you don't come out of this being like, well, no, I feel differently about that whole thing. Right. I think for most people of our generation, to your point about the cynicism that we had at the time, there's a pretty strong understanding that this was just like an unjust and very strange war that felt very motivated by previous administrations familial ties all this other stuff you know oil all of these other things the movie is not interested in that specifically it's not even really necessarily it's interested in the men's humanity but not in the men themselves there's not really strong characterization there's no super story so there's no um like kind of homeric level we're reuniting this guy with his last, we have to get this brother home because the other brothers have died.

42:35Or, you know, we must escape from this prison camp. Or we, you know, I am the narrator, Chris, from Platoon. And I am like meeting all these people. And through this group of guys is a microcosm of the people who were involved in the Vietnam War and all that stuff. And there's also like good and evil with Defoe and Behringer. It's like, this was, this is literally a completely process based film that is told, I guess we haven't even said this, in an astonishing way. Like when. It's an amazing movie in many ways. I've never seen a war movie like this. I don't even know if you would ever need to make another war movie.

43:13I'll say that. Like, you know, and I've had that feeling a couple of times in my life, like after Black Hawk, after Saving Private Ryan, I've been like, why? Like, what could you think you could add to war movies after making this? like yeah I think it's very rare for a movie within an established genre to not just sort of like delimit the future of the genre but to do something that hasn't been done before yeah a huge part of this is that it's it dispensing with this schematic archetypal character journeys for all these guys you know the hothead the the the leader the the coward the reluctant hero none of that is There are people who do things that could fit into those molds, but taking all of those things away and just leaving you with the experience of the people who are there.

43:59And then being just a little, just ever so slightly Cheshire Cat about what role we as a country played in this experience near the end of the film. It's almost entirely shot through the lens of these guys. and then right at the end of the movie without necessarily spoiling the movie there is this acknowledgement of what has happened in this place and how the men who were in this place left and again it reminded me a lot of Civil War that there's like you can do a lot with a little in movie story time well I think you could walk out of this movie and I think here's how I chose to read it I don't know why they were there I don't know who was fighting, who they were fighting they didn't really know who they were fighting.

44:44They literally never explained the mission. They're in the middle of a civil war that their country has essentially caused in some ways, in many ways. And then they leave. And what they leave is blood and smoke, which is a line from the movie where they're like, look for the blood and smoke when they're trying to find, like one group's trying to find the other. And that's, I think, what you're supposed to take from it. That's the political commentary. that's the social commentary that's the world's historic commentary is what a waste of life and what a tragic experience. I don't know if that's why Ray Mendoza made the movie.

45:24I think Ray Mendoza probably made the movie to the extent that we can assign authorial intention to memorialize an event that shaped his life. When he and I spoke he said something I thought that was very direct which is this to me was about what and not why and that there are a lot of places you can go if you want why And I think that there will be some people who see the movie and are like, why is this not about why? Shouldn't we be talking more about why? It's debatable. It's his story. You know, it's the movie that he and Garland wanted to make. I'll also say that just for the sake of conversation, you know, we're talking a little bit about the what not why.

45:58And we're talking about how they eschew like most classical, like here's the, like you said, the hothead, the leader, the funny guy. within the film itself there is a lot of like intention and obstacle dramatic writing it's just happening while so much is concussing you and so much is coming at you but there's a lot of like I need to take a piss but I can't I need to try and give this guy morphine but we don't have anymore there is these things that each character has to kind of overcome to get through the day but I almost struggle to remember the details of it. It's actually pretty helpful to watch the trailer because the trailer is essentially like, it's not hiding anything.

46:45Like this is what happened. Like this is what happens in the film is essentially like exactly what you were going to expect to have happen. It's just, I don't think anybody's ready for what it's going to feel like. It is really abstract in a way though too. Like it is a movie about a mission and the whole movie is the mission or sort of how the mission goes awry. It's also this like very odd Torkovskyan quest for like what is purpose and meaning. Garland's been thrown around dogma references. Yeah. And I think that the idea of kind of like leaning deeply into the practical aspects of this experience while also circling bigger themes is something that he does really, really well and just makes this utterly unique.

47:28I really just cannot think of another movie that is like this that tries to do this. It's so hard to, a lot of times people are like, well, what was the movie? good? I'm like, it worked. You know, like it worked. It did what it wanted to do. Yeah, so there's an interesting period when it begins where you're kind of sort of trying to find your way. I mean, obviously, everybody's wearing helmets. They're all dressed the same. Like, even though you can differentiate if you've followed like Will Poulter or Joseph Quinton's career, like, yeah, there he is. But they are not having dramatic conversations.

48:01There's essentially like a 20-minute period of these guys sitting on a floor staring out of scopes and looking at maps. And they're talking and they're talking in jargon and there's a couple of amusing moments, but there is nothing. It almost feels like completely untouched. It doesn't feel like anyone came through and like, let's just do a pass and like make this guy's character a little bit more like this so that we then feel worse when this guy experiences that. There's nothing like that. There's nothing like that. It's just like, these are these guys and you can see, you can kind of detect where it's like I bet Elliot was like Cosmo Jarvis was just doing what he knows Elliot was like you know what I mean there's no the only thing that you remember is that he needs to pack a dip you know and then like that's like the defining element of his character yeah followed by what happens to his character in the film yeah I think I'm just impressed that they did something I haven't seen before and it's also like another film from Garland specifically Mendoza worked on Civil War, it is amazing to just see the responses be either five-star masterpiece or this movie should go to hell.

49:12Yeah. And I guess I'm kind of like, just like, I'm so... Has anyone who's seen the movie felt that way? That's the one thing I'm wondering about. I mean, on Letterboxd, it seems that that's the case. But, you know, I think there are some woeful misreadings of this. Like, this is not like playing Call of Duty. There's nothing about this movie that's like... And I'm very susceptible. anybody who's heard me talk about lioness I was going to ask you about that how it compares in this state I just think I'm able to compartmentalize and like I don't want to go fight in a war like that's not why I watch this stuff I watch it because I find it to be A.

49:49like exciting but B. also like an interesting window through which to look at like the world but also like what is the person writing this and making this piece of content or storytelling think about this stuff and I appreciate it when it's like highly stylized and incredibly like individualistic and I also appreciate it when it's like this where it's like it's pretty flat. You know, you can't really find a signature in here other than like Garland's more recent period of bombast, of like widescreen bombast is like I guess the definitional thing that we're talking about stylistically. It's so fascinating that he's like kind of wiping his hands of filmmaking.

50:32right now? I'll believe that. We talked about it a little bit and I, you know, I nudged him on it as much as I could, but he's now, he's kind of figured something out in terms of sound design, cutting style, and frankly, like that kind of spare characterization that feels like this really bare bones, gritty, impressive. It's like a really good mechanic who you just know knows how to fix your car every time. Like it takes a long time sometimes to figure out the tools part because he's obviously an incredibly inventive writer and loves like big worlds with complicated ideas. Oh, one of the great like elevator pitch people I can think of.

51:11Yes. Like when you, if I just tell you like, hey, there's this Alex Garland movie and it's about this. You're like, oh God, I got to see that. Yes, he's great. He's clearly great at that stuff and has nailed that as both a screenwriter and a filmmaker. But now I can kind of feel him getting like really good. Just part of what's so great about Civil War is experientially, it's one of the loudest and most immersive movies you can see. Even if you struggle with the story, which we didn't. So for him to kind of like close the door for a while with this, which is this like very tight, restrained, political, but removed kind of a story feels like an interesting step.

51:47And now he's, you know, he's writing the new 28 years later movie and the one after that. And, you know, it's kind of gone back. I was thinking about how this movie fits in with, you know, there was obviously a lot of contemporaneous cinema about World War II. We talked a bit about that when we did the episode about Blitz with Rob last year. And then there's tons of it about Vietnam. Brian Raftery hosted that great series on the Big Picture feed a few years ago. And a lot of those movies in the 70s, especially into the early 80s and Oliver Stone, found ways to be both emotional and culturally and politically critical.

52:21And in some ways, I think kind of moved the needle on our perspective. That's the perfect way of putting it. And Iraq and Afghanistan and 21st century conflict has been more miasmic the way we understand them. You know, they're not like traditional land wars. They're not like bombing escapades like the introduction of drone strikes and the way that we understand how those governments are managed and what defines them and the sort of like intersectional warfare that's happening alongside of the U.S. interventionism. is very complicated. I think the elevation of special operators above grunts kind of has been notable over the last 10 years especially.

53:08I think of the films made about 21st century conflict specifically, but even I would go as far as to say the war films of this century are more defined by their technological filmmaking innovation than they are about whether or not they have changed the way we think about war as a society. So I think that as filmmakers are becoming more and more able to capture almost literally what it's probably like to be in a firefight and to be in a conflict, it's strange that we've gotten almost away from political filmmaking in some ways. And I think that most of the movies that are coming to mind as like, oh, yeah, I'll probably, I would say like, Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

54:03I would say Black Hawk Down. I would say, honestly, Warfare. I think of them as either films that have changed the, like the, basically the response to those films or the dialogue about those films has changed very much since their release because of our access to more information and more ideas about what happened in those conflicts. I mean, Zero Doc 30 is a perfectly good example of this where when it came out pretty much categorically lauded as a masterpiece and is now thought of as deeply flawed and probably cinematically is due for revival, but I think intellectually and politically is...

54:48Yeah, I think what's characterized as the truth in that movie is not true. And that it was sold as a piece of like, you know, this is... Verite, yes. I think there's examples in both directions outside of those movies that are interesting to think about. And kind of like how war is represented in them. You know, like the version of war in Zero Dark Thirty, and even in The Hurt Locker, is shrunk down. You know, they're not firefights. In The Hurt Locker, you've got specialists and technicians defusing. In Zero Dark Thirty, you've got essentially torture and specialists. analyzing. American Sniper is like kind of a relevant revival, I think, of an old school style.

55:30I think the movie is a little bit more sophisticated than the credit it gets, but not as good as the other half will tell you. You know what I mean? It's really somewhere in the middle. And you know, it gets made fun of a lot for the baby and all that. But that movie being a massive hit at the tail end of Obama 2.0 is one of those like sometimes you got to listen to what's coming around the corner in this country. And I think of that movie as very important to the story of war movies that like we're not yet done with this thing, even though sometimes it feels like we've progressed beyond. Because, you know, if you read the original New Yorker feature about Chris Kyle, you're like, well, that's just one of the most devastating tragedies in the history of America.

56:11Like that is this is such a sad and complicated story. And then to watch that movie and to see people like crying and sort of like moved and patriotic at that film, which is like some of its intention, but not all of its intention, I think is such a fascinating, prismatic movie watching, movie collecting experience. Because if you saw The Hurt Locker or Green Zone, is what I think about sometimes, you know, where Green Zone was an attempt to accurately capture this very problematic era of US interventionism, but did it in a way that was like almost confusing. Yeah. Which I think is what warfare is in the lineage of but maybe does better.

56:50I see. I think warfare is in the lineage of Restrepo. You know, like I think of warfare more as an effort to bring documentary filmmaking techniques to a narrative film and working primarily on like what is the granular experience of people who were there and why is it important that we remember that? Yeah, I think that's right. There have been other movies that have tried to do that without the documentary style. Like, I haven't seen this movie in a while, but Kimberly Pierce's Stop Loss. Yeah. Which is very soon after a lot of the events in particular. I think that the movie is in 2008, which was sold as a very important movie that year and did not really connect.

57:32And is a little bit lost the time. Another example of a movie I think was like... I've watched it recently and it kind of has some really great parts and then it has some utterly shit parts is Jarhead. Yeah. That's about the 90s Iraq War, but it could also apply to the 2000s. But it's fascinating. I think that the war films that will probably be remembered from this era are all movies about World War II. It's Dunkirk, it's Inglourious Bastards, 1917 about the First World War. But I think that there's just more of a comfort with the lines of that era. Yeah, I agree with you. it makes me wonder how warfare is going to do for lack of a better phrase.

58:15Like that's a kind of movie it reminds me a little bit of

58:23viewers getting wrong footed on horror movies where a horror movie is sold one way. Yes. And you're like this is going to be this. This is going to be a crazy killer clown movie. Yeah. And then it's just like a very quiet analysis of inner trauma. I've been there on a Saturday night where the entire day has been building towards like watching this thing and it's like Maren Ireland taking care of her dad for two hours and then like he turns into a ghost at the end like that's I think like and when Saving Private Ryan came out to the point you were making at the beginning of the conversation like I think there was a sense that it was going to be upsetting but also this powerful tribute and it is both of those things but the movie is remembered as this like legendary war movie ode to the men who served warfare is absolutely an ode to the men who served that day but you don't walk out feeling a tear in your heart you feel like shaken i think that the people who were there in the theater there's with us that day were pretty shaken as well i i agree it was for what it's worth like i think it was very solemnly and respectfully received but i was not like it wasn't like a bunch of people like leapt up and were like fuck yeah what did you make of that um i think because it's a horrifying thing to experience and i think that a lot of I would imagine that this like filled in the blanks on a lot of people's memories even though you know I in some ways the lack of specificity in terms of um context around why they're there what they're doing what like where they're going it could be a lot of different conflicts it could be I'm sure for anybody who served it's probably fills in a lot of a lot of gaps I was I mean do you think it's difficult to talk about like individual performances in this film like did Did you walk out of this movie being necessarily impressed by any given actor?

1:00:11I was not a, I haven't watched Reservation Dogs beyond like the first two episodes. So DeFaro is not somebody I was familiar with, but I found him to be like utterly captivating in this movie because of the kind of role he takes on as the film goes on. And I thought it was an amazing contrast to who he is as a person because he was on stage talking during the interview and was just like such a sweet, lighthearted guy. But like it seems like a kid who might be hanging out outside of Braindead or something. You know, yeah. Just like a hipster kid from L.A. is what he seemed like. And I do think that, you know, there's a sequence in the film where Charles Milton sort of arrives.

1:00:45Uh-huh. And I was like, this is stardom. Like this is star power. And if you watch May, December, you can see he just kind of has the thing. Charisma is different from performance. I don't know that I was like, wow, Charles Milton is the next Marlon Brando. But he just, he clicks. I completely know what you mean. I had a similar reaction when Finn Bennett's character takes on a larger role in the movie and people may have seen him in True Detective Night Country you just feel like he has something you know like you kind of there's a lot of faces that you're like oh he kind of looks like that guy and then Finn Bennett shows up and even though he kind of looks like a bunch of guys he has like a way of moving through the movie that I found very engaging and magnetic and I'll also just shout out Michael Gandolfini who I thought was excellent in this movie and Cosmo Jarvis.

1:01:30I mean, like, they're all really good. It's all people that you want to spend time with that in many ways, like, Hollywood's kind of banking on these nine guys to carry us into fucking Fantastic Four and whatever other movies they're all going to be cast in, but they're not really asked to do much of what they would be asked to do in any other movie, and yet the movie still really works and hangs together. It's only 93 minutes. I would recommend it. I saw a quote from Will Poulter where he was talking about how he had really, really, really wanted to be to work for Alex Garland, that he was a huge fan and he really wanted to be in something.

1:02:03And he finally got this call and he was like, shit, I'm a pacifist. I, you know, like, of all the things that I could do. But he goes and does the meeting and he's like, and they fully convinced me. So, I don't know what that says about the ultimate project. I think what it means to me is that you could have your beliefs about, like, what these guys are doing and you can still see this film and it can still mean a lot to you. I completely agree. With that in mind, let's go to my conversation now with Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza.

1:02:40Very happy to have Alex Garland back on the show and for the first time Ray Mendoza. We're talking about the film that they co-directed together, Warfare. Alex, in the past when we've spoken, we've talked a little bit about department heads and folks that you've worked with on making your films. I know you and Ray worked together on Civil War. could you help me understand how you hire someone for the role that Ray had on that film in particular? I didn't hire Ray. It was Jeff Dash, or Dash as he's known, a very, very experienced stunt coordinator, sort of legendary stunt coordinator. And I guess you'd worked with Dash before.

1:03:20And Ray, when you are coming onto a set like that and you're being hired by somebody like that, How do you communicate, make a relationship with a filmmaker in that environment? Yeah, I mean, if you know just like how the stunts work in the department, typically I'm brought in by the stunt coordinator and I work either through him or by him. I almost like a bilateral kind of relationship there. And so I often, I don't speak to the director unless the director wants to speak. It's just more of an etiquette, respect thing. and so you know oftentimes I on some movies I don't speak to the director at all I work directly through the stunt coordinator and I just design these gunfights and I work with the stunt guys and we do stunts and special effects and all these other things but on this one yeah I think Alex I would sit in on a lot of production meetings and I think once we started getting to the White House piece I started to kind of be a little more vocal he was like hey anybody have any notes or any like any input and I was like I got something.

1:04:22So I think when that started, as I started to raise my hand a little bit more, I think something maybe, but then you can speak on it, but maybe piqued his interest and we started to have a little bit more conversations on not just the tactics, but just kind of like this world, these combat zones and what they would look like and feel like. So yeah, so some directors, like I said, some don't talk to me at all. I'm just there as a check in the box and they don't, they could care less what I have to say. But in this case, yeah, it was a very, very in-depth, a lot of involvement on this Civil War.

1:04:58I know you've been working in Hollywood for over 10 years, Ray. I'm curious if when you were a kid or in the service, if you wanted to make movies, wanted to be in Hollywood back then. No, but I like, yeah, I mean, I grew up in the 80s. So I just, I can go on some of the best movies ever. in my opinion made we're in the 80s so huge influence a lot by those movies but no never it had a lot of influence on you know me joining the military for sure uh i i think um but no no no thoughts of joy of being in the movies at all um not really until i did act of valor which is like in 2009 when we started filming that is where i was exposed to it and The Lone Survivor is where I got hooked on it.

1:05:47I was like, I think this may be something I may want to do when I get out of the military. My dad is a police officer. And when I was growing up, he always found it somewhat difficult to watch movies and television about cops because of the strain and credulity or the storytelling or just inaccuracies in general. And it was kind of interesting growing up watching him comment on that. did you have that experience like after you joined up and maybe you went back and watched the movies that you liked from the 1980s? Oh yeah, absolutely. And I watched them through a different lens, like Commando, for example.

1:06:22As a kid, I loved it. Like the guy who wore the chain mail, I thought he was the most scariest dude on the planet. And when I watched it later, I was like yeah, no. But now they're funny as like cash lines we use on patrol you know stick around and they you know we use them as taglines and punchlines now but um but yeah you know i look at a lot of those movies and i uh it's the culture right it's it's misrepresenting the culture which is i think what your dad is related to like like they kind of get in it but they are they're they're just misrepresenting it and it's um yeah but you only know if you're a cop you only know if you've been in combat so you have you're having these artists paint a picture which they probably shouldn't be painting.

1:07:12Alex, I'm curious for you where the idea of accuracy lands, not specifically with warfare, but in your work prior to this, because you're working in genre, you're working in science fiction, but when you have someone like Ray on a team who has this level of experience and then you're bringing it to a movie like Civil War, is that something you put a lot of time and thought into in terms of writing the stories and even how the movies feel? oh yeah definitely i i mean but but that time and thought and the focus of the time and thought could shift movie to movie i mean to be honest uh it's it's a very it's a it's an interesting subject and i i bet we could talk about it for two hours quite easily um uh you know you could say that fiction can have a very good relationship with truth um a fictional story can say something very true and depict something very true and uh so that's that's why and i and i would agree with that um uh you can also have a story which is ostensibly non-fiction so it has the writer at the beginning this is a true story or this is based on a true story that's actually extremely misleading and we all know that um in fact the thing you said about your dad or or then ray talking about being bumped by sort of depictions of military i think non-police non-military we kind of know that's the case we know when we see a film that somebody who does know about this will be getting bumped by it um we know that characters are made into composite characters and time compressions are introduced because it keeps things bouncing along and then and then so living with this stuff and also living let's just say to give an example the history the cinema history of war films and how how war is presented how music is used in war films how uh how every every cinematic device is employed in a war film what what does that lead one to understand or not understand or be misled about in war and so then you could and that's this is what we did is just take a simple premise, which is, okay, so here's this genre.

1:09:25It's very well established. It's been going on for a really, really long time through the history of cinema. What would happen if we just attempted total fidelity, absolute forensic attempt to recreate something that really happened? What would be the product of that? That was the starting point of this. And then you encounter to something else which now this is where you could easily talk for more than two hours which is a sort of what is truth thing because because unless someone was filming it at the time you're never really going to know what the truth is what you're going to know is what people believe the truth is or what their in other words what their memory of something is and then memory of course is open to the passage of time and stress and trauma and concussion and and also it's even just open to someone else telling you the same story slightly differently and then you fold their version into yours and so so it's it's it becomes super complicated but but what we did was we just left ourself this very simple goal and tried to stick to it and uh and had a kind of generalized faith that that there is some important bit of information that can come out of the attempt to be truthful.

1:10:42That doesn't even allow for it is truthful. Just in trying to do it, something will flow from that. Ray, I'd like to hear you talk about this too, this idea that the film is based on memory, as Alex is describing, and that that is a potentially faulty thing. Maybe you could talk about, since it's so much of your experience and people that you know so well, how you went back and rebuilt those memories and gathered, and specifically what you would do when things conflicted and how you made that make sense in the movie yeah i mean i think just to back up a second i think how why memory is so important i mean everybody can relate to you know your first firefight and i like i spoke with like rangers who have way more combat experience than i have grieve rays i have friends and all all soft components and we know we always talk about like like man like what was your first firefight like and our answer is usually all the same which I don't ever remember.

1:11:40Because you're so scared. It's your first one. You're so scared. And obviously you get acclimated. And the straw, the subtle straw starts to turn into a toilet paper tube. And eventually you just see everything. You hear everything. You see more colors. You're able to identify specific people and so on and so forth. So that aperture starts to expand. And we've all gone through that evolution. And so depicting that in the film, in regards to just memories, I think it would be a greater appreciation for the understanding that there is a lack of memory, that it is fragmented and the guys deal with combat in different ways yeah so for me I think having that fragmentation it was going to rely on everyone else and that's how it is really in the military too, when we do our after actions we're very critical of ourselves and that's how we grow and get better so we don't make the same mistakes.

1:12:40But yeah, even as we are having these after-action discussions or these debriefs and it's like, hey, you did that. No, no, I wasn't there. I was actually on the roof at that time. And so we do it internally with ourselves anyways. And we did it for this event. But we didn't really talk about the emotional components of it, the emotional components of, hey, I was afraid, guys, and I had to overcome fear. it's just things we don't talk about we only talk about just you know it's very factual like uh you know i came in i but i looked left uh you know bob went right uh there was a shooter at the at the stairs and so on so forth uh but you don't like to talk about your your emotions and so i think that was like the most um not interesting part but critical part that i was going to need to convey or we were going to need to pass on to the actors um that was going to get us like across the goal line.

1:13:33I think other films have taken that up all the way up. I think to get it past the goal line is the best way I can describe it. It was going to require us digging in those emotions of how they were feeling. We did have conflicting memories. Yeah, we did. How we handled those was just a matter of cross-examining very detective-like work forensically uh one person would be like a tiebreaker if i had the same you know memory as another person for example put it on a tourniquet and another person like well i i know i put the tourniquet on and then there'd be someone like uh a third person to say no this is what happened and then okay cool problem solved next one um but say every time you interview another person who would solve a memory issue that either was a conflict uh his memories would have gaps and so like okay well now we have to solve that one and then we interview another person who would solve that issue and then his memories and so on and so forth so eventually we're just kind of like cross-examining each other's memories and i'm observing him he's observing me um and so it's just kind of like i said very very forensic approach to cross-canceling out you know all the gaps and memories well it's forensic whilst also having a sort of concurrent understanding and acceptance that if it had been filmed, there were GoPros all over the house, what we made would not precisely correlate with what actually happened.

1:15:07And so hence, the film says at the beginning, this is based on memories to sort of acknowledge that, because I think, again, going back to your dad, we all know that there's this gap between cinematic representations and the way drama works. I think we also all know that memory is not that trustworthy. It is incredibly trustworthy in selective areas. It's particularly trustworthy on what it felt to be that person at that time. But the actual sequence of events or some specifics, not great. As one of the SEALs said very accurately and very helpfully, I don't have video. I've got photographs. I've got snapshots in my mind.

1:15:58Not a lovely, neat sequence that we can just dip in and dip out of. And it's very interesting. It makes you think hard about this stuff. And then, yeah, we just did our best. Yeah, in some ways it feels a little bit like an inadvertent sequel or prequel to the last film too, Alex, because that's a movie about journalism and gathering information as best you can, but invariably there is skewed perspective on anything that's presented to you. Yeah, I was very aware of the debate surrounding that film to do with context and agendas and messaging and stuff like that. And I had an argument within it to myself, perhaps, which was about the nature of journalism.

1:16:39And this film was actually well underway by that point. I went off that. But the last time we spoke, actually, like two weeks later, I was then on this film set in pre-production doing the rehearsals and stuff like that. So it wasn't that this film was informed by the response to Civil War, but it was a response to making Civil War and thinking, what does neutrality in an account look like? How close can you get to neutrality and what is the consequence of neutrality? And so I absolutely agree that there are extensions of the same thought process and then actually working with one of the same people on Civil War as well in order to achieve that.

1:17:29Ray, one thing I found fascinating about the film is the way that the perspective shifts from character to character in kind of like a seamless way. It doesn't really feel like the film has a lead character per se. And I didn't even know until I was at the screening where you guys spoke afterwards that DeFaro's character was based on you and your experience. And he sort of becomes at the center of the story as time goes by. But it really feels like it is elegantly moving from one guy to the next one moment to the next one room to the next one sort of team within the team. Why did you guys choose to do it that way?

1:17:59Was that the best way to kind of collate all these memories together? What informed that? Well, for me, though, there wasn't any other way because a lot of guys did a lot of amazing things that day besides myself. It's not my story. And, you know, just coming from the community that I come from, it's not about me. And it would be disrespectful to even suggest that it's about me. Because without those other guys sacrificing themselves to move to our position, it took a home team for all of us to get out of that day. And I just, I'm not going to make a movie and not highlight what those guys did and how they felt.

1:18:41Because this Elliot doesn't remember. And he should know what guys did to save him that day. And that was super important to me. And he would want to know that. You know, he doesn't want to know what my perspective is. It's for him. And so out of respect, because they're, yeah, like I said, a lot of amazing, brave things that day. And it's about that. It's about, and it reminds me of how, you know, a lot of things are done concurrently. We said this in the past, like they were kind of almost like a play. And we just decided if, you know, I'll use this analogy a lot too, where if you walk into a party, everyone's talking, you know, and if you just sit there, it's white noise.

1:19:26But if you wanted to focus on a specific conversation, you know, you'll look and maybe you'll start to read the lips and you start to understand what they're saying. And then you can pull back and shift over and see what those people are talking about. So then you can become a little more isolating on what you wanted to focus on. So some of these things are kind of like that. There's a lot of things concurrently happening. There's Michael Gandolfini applying to Elliot. There's me talking on the radio. There's Will talking to Charles Melton, who's an OP away. So it's happening constantly. Even when the other guys are on camera, they're still going through it.

1:20:01So it's a very kind of immersive 10-minute kind of scene. It's also a product of not editorializing. Because if you're acquiring a bunch of memories and you're, in effect, treating them equally once they're verifiable, that will take you away from the normal narrative structure, whether it's a film or a book, which is you have a protagonist who's leading you through this. And in this instance, someone who you might early think is the protagonist gets badly concussed and is no longer able to function in the way they were previously. And so other people take ascendancy. That is a life narrative, a real life narrative, rather than a film narrative.

1:20:49And what film would normally do is they would then take actions from other people and hand them to the protagonist in order to maintain that through line. One of the things that interests me in this film is the different ways different audience members then take that. Some of them actually respond to that and it gives the narrative a kind of electricity because they feel they can rely on the thing they're being shown. and then to others in a way the old-fashioned studio note gets borne out where they say uh i am uh less left distanced by the lack of characterization or the lack of a protagonist or or uh going back to the previous thing the lack of messaging or whatever it happens to be so it becomes just what different audience members take in and what what they're able to find interesting um uh but but the lack of editorializing i think is connected to what your question stated.

1:21:47There's one other external force that's related to that that is interesting to me, which is you've got this great cast of relative newcomer actors, many of whom have been tabbed, at least within the industry, maybe outside of your production as like, they're going to be stars. You know, many of them are like attached to big movies in the future, or they've just come off of a big movie or something like that. And so that thing that you're describing, Alex, where you assume that a character is going to be a protagonist and the person that we're following, the film is kind of consistently wrong-footing you by not necessarily putting the person who you think is the biggest star in the position to be the hero or even at the center of the film.

1:22:24I don't know how much of that was intentional on your parts. How much of you even care about what status the actors have? It wasn't. That wasn't intentional. There was some prerequisites. Ray talks very well about the sort of attitude that was required. One thing was just a practical consideration. We needed a kind of absolute creative freedom in this. The creative freedom being no one kind of movie can intrude on the recollections of the people that were there. Nothing can be asserted over that. That meant we had to make it cheaply. Freedom comes from making things cheaply in this industry. And that meant we had to shoot it very, very quickly.

1:23:14uh this was shot in five weeks it was uh the the pace of the shooting day many of the shots you you see then cut together you you're seeing that there would be one take of that thing sometimes two uh um very rarely more than two on occasion there would be something we were really hammering to try and get right but usually it's one or two takes so so we wanted an experienced cast uh At the very beginning of the process, we did talk about finding unknowns and there is that other route one can take. It's not just discoveries, maybe actually casting directly from the military as an option. But because of the technical requirements, it became clear that that that would be dangerous.

1:24:05I mean, Andrew Arnold might say, no, no, you just chicken. But I which which I'd sort of understand is perfectly fair point. But because of the schedule and some of the pressures on the film on a production level, we went with established people. The interesting thing, I think, is watching these guys removed from status and vanity. How this, I don't know how else to put this, but in a way, how small the parts might be. How glancing in, again, in the terms of traditional cinema. and what it says of those actors, their willingness to do them under these circumstances. It says something about them as individuals, I would say.

1:24:50Ray, related to that, I'm curious when you were in the director's chair, what surprised you the most about doing the job? Because obviously you understand specifically the events that you're trying to capture the experience and you have all this experience as an advisor with the sequences like this. But what about actually directing actors, making sure that the sequences are working, especially if you only have one or two takes? I would say surprise. I mean, I wouldn't say I was surprised. I'm impressed. I was impressed by a lot of things. Surprise, I mean, coming from what I, not many things surprise me.

1:25:21So it would be something pretty mind-blowing to surprise me. But I was impressed. I think what I was impressed by was some, you know, I mean, these guys are like, I don't know. I mean, I'm good at conveying to actors, like, well, what my emotions and what I want them to do. And it's a huge tasking. And I think to say, like, all right, here's this scenario where my friend's legs are blown off. And here's what I'm feeling. Here's what this other actor is feeling. and they need to take that without using a lot of dialogue and just um convey that feeling of fear um and the person that i was uh impressed by um i would say i hate to say the most because they're all different but it's kit so kit kit connor who's playing tommy's it's kind of playing i was using him as like this um like what the internal narrative of like everyone was and so So he represented fear.

1:26:29He represented overcoming fear. So if you see Tommy very erratic and kind of scared and trying to gather his bearings of what was going on, that's kind of what we're all feeling. And he's provided that overtone for the film. And we check in with him every now and then. And so it was just like, here's kind of where you're at now. And his ability to do that with just emoting through just his facial expressions and his posture with his shoulders and doing what he's doing to go from complete confusion, fear, to ultimately accepting his fate and being a man. It's like, all right, well, if we're going to die, we're going to die with our boots on and our guns up.

1:27:13And so him doing that and watching it, I was just like, that's probably some of the most impressive. I do a lot of action films. So a lot of, you know, the acting is not the biggest component. But, um, yeah, seeing that, uh, from someone that, that young, uh, was impressive and they, they all did a little bit of that as well. Like really taking that inhabiting it and, you know, doing what they do. That's what's great. You know, they, they did a lot of that heavy lifting for me. They're actors are great actors. and uh i just had a it's in the word direct direct them in the right direction they know what to do i just provided them the context and the assets and the direction they needed to go and they collect not only on an individual basis but collectively working together they're helping each other out they they really brought it all home so that was impressive they had no helpful dialogue because the dialogue is all situational it's so so what someone is feeling is not really stated unless you count someone screaming as i suppose that that's stating but but kit or taylor or any number of them uh it was what they were doing with their face that the the dialogue is so technical and we never made any attempt to introduce other kinds of dialogue or to soften the dialogue sort of to take the technical verbiage out of it um a lot of what uh ray's describing Kit did would just be here and transmitted by expression and empathy states with the audience.

1:28:54So it was pretty impressive, definitely. This film feels like a fascinating step in a long discussed topic of war movies, which is that there is a sentiment that any movie that depicts war cannot necessarily be anti-war. And you talked about that a little bit, Alex, some of the kind of glamorization or even just the cinematic tools that are applied to a war movie. You know, I came out of this film not having served, just being just very unnerved, you know, rattled really by it. And, you know, a lot of that is what is depicted and the truth of it that you're trying to capture. A lot of it is like the sound design and watching someone in tremendous pain, you know, dramatized.

1:29:36Is that something that you guys talk about the idea of whether a film can or cannot be pro or anti-war in this specific way understanding that you're trying to not editorialize these events with this movie we did um it is a sort of complicated discussion um uh and it would go at a certain point it would go back to the neutrality state uh that the film takes so there's the truffo truism or war films you can't have an anti-war or whatever the true quote is. I always think it's a little bit unfair on him because I'm not sure he meant all parts of glory had already come out. I think that's an anti-war film and come and see.

1:30:19I'm sure that got discussed last time we spoke very clearly. I think broadly, you can't have an accurate account of war, which isn't in some ways anti-war. It's just not possible. Whether that's the loudest thing that comes through because there's heroism and music or drama or romance or something seductive in some ways, whether that's the strongest thing that comes through. But any fair account of war will be anti, which I would just say is different from being pacifist. Like a pacifist says no war ever. And anti-war says war is a last resort. And I think that to me, therefore, and Ray can have a different position on this to me it is inevitably anti-war because you see the trauma physical and otherwise exacted on uh military people and civilians and uh children um so where are you supposed to go with that except it would be better if this didn't happen um to me it's anti-war but Ray, you should speak to this because you know.

1:31:26It wasn't intended to be anti-war. I wasn't too much concerned about the why. Why war is more what war is. There's been a lot of movies about why. But failed attempts on what it is. If you want to know why, then yeah, go do some research. There's lots of reasons why wars happen. It just wasn't my focus. If we were to focus on the why, I think the movie would have been what it is because now you have to explain you have to have a position on it you gotta you know lead people yeah you have to take a stance and then prove that stance and then uh so yeah i didn't want to get involved in that but um yeah i mean i think if you watch this and you say like i want to go to war then uh you know all right but if that's what it does for you then um well wait for the next one and see if we feel the same after um you know if you do get to go to war.

1:32:24But yeah, I don't really have a stance on it. I don't really care. I mean, I care, but it wasn't my intent. It's not my focus. It's more about what it is. If you want to talk about what war is, we could talk about that all day. Ray, I'm curious what you're going to do next, given the tremendously personal nature of this movie. I assume you want to continue making films. I think there's a lot of stories. Just the veteran community in general, we're coming. We're coming. We're moving in. So there's a lot of great writers. There's people that put their time in, just like myself. This didn't happen overnight.

1:33:04This has been almost 15 years to get to this point. It's been a journey. There's a lot of other veterans who have lots of stories to tell that can write great characters, not just military genre characters. and so uh yeah i want you know i'm teaming up with with different veterans to tell different types of stories um because i feel we have a story to tell not just again not just military you know stories but just i think characters that uh relate to us and our experiences and um yeah i just want to go down that path a little bit more um you know i can say warfare is a kind of it's a tee up for something i want to do next which is like the coming home of the story you know how are the veterans being taken care of things like that so in that kind of in that genre are some of the things that I'm looking at telling me Alex last time we spoke you seemed very unsure of directing another film after this one with Ray has your stance changed on that at all no not really I wrote a couple of scripts for other directors for Danny Boyle and Nir DaCosta and did this film with Ray where my role was so different from anything I've ever done before in so many ways.

1:34:20You know, not just because I was sort of recused, I suppose, or recused myself from some of the areas to do with, say, interaction with actors and production designers and costume and hair and makeup and so many of the things that are day-to-day part of a director's working life was was Ray because he was the possessor of information about these things. And I have to say I enjoyed it. It's a funny word to use in relation to this film. That diminished role really suited me. And I actually, I really loved working with Ray. I found it completely fascinating. Very educational because I'm learning about something, but also just rewarding on an interesting, on a day-to-day level.

1:35:05There's a film I'm sort of half, like, it's like a long throw. it's unshootable for at least a year. And so maybe that, in the sort of never say never state, but right now and for at least a year, it suits me and this period has suited me. I also liked writing for other directors. It's interesting. Now I know that other role in a more intimate way, seeing that gap, that change between screenplay and a directed thing and much more changes than people think, not least dialogue and scenes disappear and new ones arrive and you're like, oh, right, interesting. And no, nothing's changed. Okay. I'll take you as much of your word as I can.

1:35:56I look forward to you and Danny being back together soon, though. Dude, that's around the corner. I know. Alex has heard this question before, but Ray, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen have you seen anything that you've really liked lately yeah my memory is trash it's a movie with Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis the king of comedy yes my friend is a big indie guy we watched that together and yeah that was like that was a mind blowing performance by both those guys I didn't know that movie existed until my friend showed it to me but yeah that was the last great thing I've seen it was great to me I don't know how it was criticized or not it has become a classic for sure fantastic a lot of relatable components to that stuff Alex anything for you that you've seen recently?

1:36:57I was thinking oh good I'm off the hook that's a fast one okay and now interesting I do know the film but I blanked on it. It's the Bob Fosse, Roy Scheider. What the hell is it? All that jazz. I watched that about a year ago and then I watched it again a few months ago. I found it just incredibly interesting. So I might have answered the same thing if you asked me a year ago, because there's a particular thing about it that's stuck in my brain and I can't get shot of it, which is why I had to rewatch it. But I also am now talking too much. I know I'm talk too much, I apologize, but I'm trying to think like this year, because I always try and it's good to come up with something contemporary, and I'm going to say The Brutalist, I thought was extremely impressive, extremely interesting.

1:37:51I love, I just really like being treated as an adult by films. I really appreciate it. So I'll say The Brutalist. Okay, that was my favorite of last year. Good choice. Alex Ray, congratulations on Warfare. Thanks so much for taking some time with me. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thanks to Alex and Ray. Thanks to CR. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. We'll be back Tuesday with a new movie draft. We'll see you then.

1:38:34Thank you.