The “Should I See It in a Movie Theater?” Test: ‘Tron: Ares,’ ‘Roofman,’ and ‘After the Hunt.’ Plus, the Magic of ‘Mr. Scorsese.’

27:12Right. I hate movies like that. I fucking hate when they're like, okay, so just so you know, we named this character this because this is the definition of this character's name. Bad stuff. Can I do a science corner real quick? Please. Draw an airs. Welcome to Amanda Dobbins' science corner.

27:32They're looking for the permanence code because they can bring AI to the real world, but it only lasts for 29 minutes before it disintegrates. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. And so at some point, one of the characters, they're testing whether they found the permanence code and they create like an AI orange tree. Yes, an orange tree. Out of nothing, which is pretty cool. It's a nice orange tree. In an Arctic setting. I've always wanted to have like that lush of an orange tree. Okay. Maybe you should move to California. I did. And my citrus situation is just, it's dire. But so then Greta Lee's character, I don't remember her name.

28:10She's not Tess. Her sister is Tess. Anyway, she picks an orange. Her name's Houston's in Pasadena. What do you think her order is? I gotta be crispy chicken sandwich. Yeah, I mean, it's really the only way to go. Okay. Now I want one. So she's holding the orange. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, oh, what if she eats the orange and then it decomposes inside her? What happens? What do you think happens? I forget the point of science, Cordner. Is it that you are answering the questions or just asking them? You know, it's a vigorous discussion, you know?

28:52You know, I don't know the answer to your question. What do you think happens? I, particle physics, not really anything I studied at I think at college. Sure, or AI particle. Like, and if there's like some 3D printing involved, I think. There is. Well, that's more on the Evan Peters side, yeah. But they 3D print this AI orange tree. So, is it AI? Is it, what would like AI food? Well, the tree is alive, but it doesn't think. So, it's not artificial intelligence. It's just. It's just 3D printed. It's just created. It's just, yeah, it's just generated. Okay. But so, could she even eat it? you know they completely sidestep this question she does hold it she holds it but I was like are you gonna peel it are you gonna eat it what's gonna happen I don't think they have that locked down this is the number one podcast in America for stupid questions about movies and I just want everyone to know that it's very important that we put a big red circle around that Tron Aries would you recommend it no let's talk about Roofman I'm so glad to talk about this me too I had a very different movie going experience with this movie I went in the middle of the day on Monday.

29:56Yes. No, Tuesday at 2.30 to a movie theater in a mall, the Burbank Town Center 8. Ah, Jack's favorite. Sold out. Oh, it's not? Six. Because they have the recliners. The six is good. I like the six. I'll go into the six tonight. Where's the town eight? The eight's in the mall. Inside the mall. Inside of the mall. There are three AMCs within 0.2 miles in Burbank. The 16, the 8, and the 6. The 16 is where the real gods go. Yeah, that's where I saw after the hunt. Yes, the 8 is where you go when you have to go to Sears. The 6 is where you go when you want to get good parking and get in those recliners.

30:35The 6 is where I saw Bo is Afraid and someone was just like rolling calls on their laptop in the back of the 6. Yeah, that sucks. So, you know, we can experience it all in Burbank. Just so everybody knows, there are 30 movie screens within 0.2 miles of Burbank. Is that necessary? It is also where a lot of studio people live. That's true. And this is what this episode is about. It is also like the, you know, the billboards strategically placed in everyone's neighborhoods. Someone very high up in FX lives near where I live. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Roofman. Yeah. Sold out 2.30 p.m. screening on a Tuesday.

31:12Okay, awesome. So this is the new movie from Derek Cienfrance. It's his first movie in some years. It's the first movie that he's made that we are able to talk about on this show. It's written by Cienfrance and Kurt Gunn. It's based on a true story. It's about a man named Jeffrey Manchester who is an army veteran who is also a struggling father. And he turns to robbing McDonald's to pay for his family's lifestyle. And he gets this nickname, Roof Man. Lifestyle makes it sound like he's too... Well, he buys a house. He's throwing birthday parties. Well, sure. He can't afford to buy her a birthday present the first time.

31:42Yes. Let's, you know. That's very sad. Yeah. He gets caught. He goes to prison. He escapes prison. Yeah. And then he tries to start a new life. And then new people begin to come into his life. So this movie stars Channing Tatum, your girl Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melanie Diaz, Uzo Aduba. Great cast in this movie. What did you think of Roofman? For the first hour, I was absolutely grooving. Okay. And it's hard to end movies like this, but I would like to discuss the last part where I think it falls apart. The conclusion of the film? The conclusion of the film.

32:19Yeah, which is, I guess, also I'd like to discuss life and how it regularly falls apart. This is a beautiful film. This is a film that we should be supporting on this show. So you know what we are going to do? This is not just about Roofman, but several other movies that some we've discussed, some to be released. Yeah. So we are going to have a Girl Dad Summit at the end of the year. That sounds great. And we're going to interrogate all the Girl Dads and you. This is just a great Girl Dad movie. There's something going on right now in the culture. I know. I don't know what it is. But it's like, and it keeps going.

32:50There are more coming. I don't even know if Darkseem France has a daughter, but he's very tapped in on the energy, as is Channing Tatum. You know, this movie is a big, like, 70s-style character study showcased for Channing Tatum. It's like, what is Channing Tatum good at? He's good at blending very carefully kind of, like, losery, anguished guys who have incredible charm, who utilizes his, like, innate athletic handsomeness, but also his kind of, like, dopey Florida boy regularness, and mashes those two things together. He's a really good star. Yeah. And he has not had a lot of star opportunities in the last five or six years.

33:27I think this movie really gets Channing Tatum and what he's good at. It kind of lets him play. It's very loose. Totally. It's a little shambolic, the movie. You know, it kind of takes its time on unraveling its story. And maybe that might be where you tripped a little bit. No, actually, I was going to say, I agree with you that this movie understands what is great about him and is built around him. and also built around the fact that you are going to like this guy despite what he is doing, which like it starts with an armed robbery and a McDonald's. And he is stealing, lying, holding things up.

34:08Very flawed guy, making a lot of mistakes in this movie. But he's also dancing around at Toys R Us at night because what happens is once he escapes prison, he is he takes up residence in Toys R Us and you know and that part is like you know fun survival and genius how's he gonna get the M &M's and what's he gonna eat and all that's very crafty I think what it understands about Channing Tatum and his appeal is ultimately the flaw in the movie for me as well because I don't think I think there's Channing Tatum and I think there's this character and it does not totally bridge the gap between the two.

34:48And it's pretty complicated. And the movie is sort of suggesting that he's both doing bad things and that it's flawed, but it doesn't examine really the connection between the nice side of him and this compulsion that he seems to have. Let's talk about that. I'm really interested in what you're saying because the movie that I thought about while watching this movie is very different but has many of the same hallmarks. Catch Me If You Can. Catch Me If You Can is a movie that is about a very similar kind of like grifter, huckster criminal who's got a lot of innate charm. That movie is more globetrotting.

35:29It's more kind of epic in its filmmaking style. It's not as grounded as this movie. But it actually does do what you're saying, which is it kind of locates this, you know, disconnection from family in the Frank Abagnale character and like this circling back to the father figure and the Christopher Walken and the guy who'd never really kind of quite got what he deserved and that like psychologizes Abagnale. I think that that's appropriate for that movie. In this movie, I actually think it's okay to just be like, this is a guy who went to the service, got out, didn't really have any, you know, skills that poured it over and just kind of found himself with a kid and shit out of luck in terms of his prospects.

36:13so that all makes a lot of sense to me it's as the movie goes on and really the resolution of the movie and when things get out of control for him again a second time and there are a couple leaps of logic and a leaps of i guess this is what he did in real life but you know suddenly he's just out living a full life with no, and has basically taken on a second family, which is complicated in its own way, you know? And is presented in this is just kind of like, yeah, but he just like loves families. Well, I think it's that he's seeking connection. Sure. You know, that he's a lost person. But, and maybe it's more that like the way that Channing Tatum, there is nothing, damaged about what's going on with Channing Tatum besides that he really loves his family.

37:09There's like nothing weird going on. And so as the movie continues, he makes a couple erratic decisions. There are a couple of things that are going on. This is a person that you're definitely rooting for, but is also not thinking smart. And it's not just because he is as a, like someone on the news says like a genius moron. Yeah. There is something weird that I don't think Channing Tatum communicates. Yeah, you're, I mean, you're right, but I like that about it. Like I, to me, it's like, that's what Dog Day Afternoon is. I'm not saying this is nearly as good as Dog Day Afternoon, but it's like fuck-ups making big mistakes.

37:47Right. But having an undeniable emotional connection to the character is a strain of filmmaking I love. Which I totally did. I think it also probably just like takes a little too long. first the end and so it's like restraining credulity but for me the you know i knew it was real and i didn't know how it ended so oh my god that was another thing the scene like the voice over at the end when spoiler alert i guess for roof if you don't want roofman yeah which is a movie that's out and then also is based on a true story um so he is arrested again yeah because uh His girlfriend, played by Kirsten Nunz, like figures it out and calls it in.

38:32And then he's imprisoned and he like gives a whole like incarceration is great for me speech and I'm where I need to be and everything, which I thought was completely insane and was offended by. And no, he was lying. He was lying. Yeah, that's the whole point, because he break in the aftercard. It talks about how he broke out two more times. No, but like, so, and then it goes to the aftercard and he breaks out two more times. But the way that it is shot and the way that Channing Tatum is communicating that is not lying. It's not threatening. It's not like there's something going on here. It's not Still Waters Run Deep to me.

39:05I don't think, to me, I read it differently. And I really, really bumped on it. I read it differently. I just read it as he is a helpless grifter. Like he cannot stop scheming. because it's like the only thing he's actually good at is these like plots and these plans and this observational stuff that he's talking about at the beginning. And so he knows if he answers yes to that question when it's posed to him about, do you still think about breaking out, that they're going to tighten the vice grip on him? No, it's the voiceover. It's when he's like, and maybe he's lying in that too, but he's literally giving a voiceover and it's a montage of like everything.

39:40But doesn't a guy ask him, or what does a guy ask him at the end? Yeah, at the end, he's asked point blank by one of his fellow inmates when they're in that therapy circle. Doesn't he say to him, like, do you still think about breaking out? Yeah. Or does he say, did you ever see Lee again? It's one of those two things. He definitely asks, did you ever see Lee again? And maybe in the voiceover, he's like, and I don't really think about breaking out anymore and all those sorts of things. I guess I just saw that as kind of like the informant, you know, where it's just like, this is an unreliable narrator.

40:05Yeah, well, like, Channing Tatum is a Matt Damon, you know, and that's kind of what I really like him. I thought he was very charming, but like at some point, the performance and the casting of Channing Tatum does not, to me, communicate everything that's going on under the surface. I get it. I respect that. So I was a little confused by the end. Did you like Kirsten Dunst in the film? I thought she was great. Yeah. I mean, I like her. She's just basically the girlfriend, but she gets to do a little bit more. I would have been really pissed if someone bought my kid a car without asking me, let alone driving.

40:39But that's when she seems to things... It's an interesting scene. I thought Lily Kalias, who plays the older daughter, was very good. But she was in Good One last year, which is a good film. Yeah, I think that one of the things that helps this movie is that it's just dotted with all of these insanely talented actors and pretty small roles. I mean, the Ben Mendelsohn stuff is elite. Ben Mendelsohn, Peter Dinklage is the manager of the Toys R Us. Lakeith Stanfield as his, like, flunky army buddy. Right. Juno Temple as his flunky army buddy's girlfriend hairdresser. No, it's really fun. There's a lot of, like, little—it just felt like a movie from 30 years ago.

41:14Totally. And I was like, I love movies like this. Every single set piece, for lack of a better term. But the escape, everything that he is doing to make a life in Toys R Us is very real and exciting. And in film really well, there's a scene where he's trying to get out of a truck. And I was very stressed out. And it's one wide shot and the blocking. And again, Channing Tatum's physicality. A lot of it is really, really good. I just really bumped on the ending. So Sea in France has made a lot of very angsty, emotional movies about families breaking down. Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, my beloved.

41:52Yeah, sure. The Light Between Oceans. Those movies, I think, are all good and all accomplished. I have a huge place in my heart for the second of the three. They all, though, are very like kind of trying to put on somebody else's jacket sometimes. Yeah. and you can really feel the weight of influence a thing I like about this movie is even though it feels like an old movie I don't feel like it is him making somebody else's movie no it felt like he felt very it felt very comfortable in its own skin and I just I feel it is my job to celebrate to like lift up a movie like this totally I think it is what's interesting to me about it is I think that my like resistance or the thing that didn't compute about the movie for me is also what makes it hard to sell.

42:39Totally. And, and you expect one thing, you associate one thing with Channing Tatum and this is a movie that's been marketed like around Channing Tatum. He is on the poster. Yeah. Yeah. So there he is. Yeah, there he is. You know, and it's like pretty funny. Um, but so I, I'm, I'm in one, one mode in my head when I'm going in to see it. And I don't know if he quite gets to the other place that the movie needs to get him to. But also if you go in expecting, I don't know, it's confusing. What are you telling someone, like a random person who's not us, what this is? Well, let's talk about the components then.

43:19Wow, FOMO factor. I'm trying to create a FOMO factor by talking about my enthusiasm for the movie, but I don't think that that exists in the movie. It's just not that kind of a movie. It is a smaller film. It's not tiny or anything like that. It is still very famous people. and it's got a fairly expansive crime story to it. But you're not like missing out by not going to this movie. The communal factor played really well in the room that I was in. People were laughing. They were emotional. It seemed like it was clicking. I, again, I also saw this weekday afternoon. I saw it right after Tron Aries and there were more people in my screening than Tron Aries, but it was quiet.

43:56That's so interesting that this movie seems to be doing okay. I mean, by more, I mean like five as opposed to one. Well, it's also, it's, you know, And ultimately, like one of the very, can it end up being one of the last releases of the Paramount previous regime? You know, the Redstone era of Paramount, which is now changing hands. And it's the kind of movie that like, I don't know if it would even be made at many other major studios. So, okay, is this different at home factor? Now, C.N. Francis, the last thing that he did was a TV miniseries for HBO. And you could make the case that this is something that would play perfectly well at home.

44:33However, I do think you would miss a lot if you were like, had your phone out. Well, that's always true. And you're like distracted. Yeah. But part of its charm, I think, is in like this like subtle character quietness where like if you put your head down for a second, you don't see that he's like going around the corner to do another thing. Or like what he grabbed off the shelf at Toys R Us. By the way, Toys R Us. Mm-hmm. Did you have one where you grew up? Of course. What'd you think of Toys R Us? it was i tried to go there all the time it's the most important yeah like exactly yes i was like i would like to be there again yeah um that's definitely where i bought the tamagotchi i mean i remember where it was located it was next to the old navy okay like right where you got on like georgia 400 which my atl people will know so that was my local toys r us man it just kicked ass going in there.

45:23That feeling, that rush. A real issue now is that I have to locate a Jeffrey the Giraffe, like a life-size one. Toys R Us has been out of business for like two decades. I haven't deep dived the eBay, but if anyone knows where I can get a Jeffrey the Giraffe life-size costume that someone, probably Chris Ryan, can wear to my child's birthday party, please let me know. Toys R Us. Jeffrey the Giraffe, eBay. Okay, costume. The store is closed in 2018. Okay. So that'll be interesting. I wish you luck. Jeffrey the Giraffe, good mascot? Knox takes a side? He wants to give him a hug. So I guess it's good.

46:01Cool. That's nice. Yeah. I liked Roof Man a lot. Okay. I liked it and I was pretty baffled by the, wow,$1 ,000 on eBay for this costume. And it's not even Jeffrey. It's Gigi. I guess that's why it's$1 ,000. It's Gigi, like his female companion? Yeah. She's the Mrs. Met. You can now watch The Big Picture on Spotify and The Ringer's first ever television channel, available exclusively on Samsung TV +, the subscription-free streaming destination, bringing you the best of TV. Rewatch some of our greatest hits, like the 1999 Movie Draft, the best horror movies of the decade, and more on the new all-day Ringer channel.

46:40You can also settle in and catch up with your other Ringer favorites, including The Rewatchables, The Ringerverse, and Higher Learning. To watch, open the Samsung TV Plus app on your Samsung TV or Galaxy mobile device, Navigate to the Ringer channel and boom, you're in. Let's speak about After the Hunt. After the Hunt is the new film directed by Luca Guadagnino. Yeah. Boy, we love Luca on this show. Love him. We're two of his biggest fans. This new movie is written by Nora Garrett. It stars Julia Roberts, another actor we love. Io Debrey is also in this movie. Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbar, Chloe Sevigny.

47:17Not sure if there's a cooler collection of actors. All our guys and gals. That's a lot of great stuff. This score is done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Sure is. You know what? This movie was shot by Malik Hassan Saeed, who has not shot a movie in 27 years. But the last movie he shot was one of my favorite movies of all time, Belly. He also shot a number of Spike Lee movies in the 90s. He's well known for his music videos, including Beyonce's Formation. One of the greatest eyes in the world. Right. Should this be the greatest movie of all time? Probably. It probably should. but unfortunately it's not that.

47:50It is not. So I famously to me saw what I now know to be about 70 % of this movie at the Venice Film Festival. And then I had to leave because it started late. Won't say whose fault that was. And then I had to get to another screening. I've now seen the whole film. Turns out I left at the perfect moment for this to be a good movie. I see. And then I saw the other 30%. Okay. Well, let's talk about it. But this movie hasn't been seen by a ton of people, so it's hard to get in the weeds too much. But I have to get in the weeds as much as I can. It's been a few weeks since I've seen this, so you can help hold my hand through some of it.

48:28But it's a film about a college professor who's forced to grapple with her own secretive past after when one of her colleagues is faced with a sexual assault accusation. Right. So in the film, Julia Roberts plays, I guess, a middle-aged teacher going for tenure. Wow, that's rude. Is she not middle-aged? But like this way you said, like middle-aged teacher. She plays a professor, a philosophy professor at Yale. She's a lady who's older. No, she's an esteemed woman. Why is she not a tenure? I don't fully understand that. She's in her 50s. She had to take some time off because she has a mysterious illness and she keeps vomiting.

49:07That's right. Are you defending Julia or the character? I'm defending middle-aged women who wear blazers, okay? like once you saw it did you notice the similarity did you wear this on purpose yeah of course I did yes but this is my Julia outfit but like did I have many to choose from I sure did she styled impeccably I know but did you also see why like did you see the Amanda similarities in the outfits I think that's something only you see okay wow that's so rude okay it was just a good line I think so she plays this this professor who's up for tenure her friend. And it seems like maybe he was a mentee.

49:47It's unclear given the age difference. Maybe there's like a 10 or 12 year age difference. Andrew Garfield's character is also going up for tenure. It seems like maybe they've like co-written papers together. They're in the same department. They're in the philosophy department. They're close colleagues. They have what seems to be a kind of history between them, but it's unspoken. Right. And you pick up on that history because Andrew Garfield, much like at the Golden Globes, only has two buttons on his shirt buttoned and is wearing a pendant and is just absolutely shooting lasers everywhere at all times.

50:22This is Andrew Garfield in Overdrive, I would say, performance-wise. Totally. Perhaps too much so. Okay. Iowa Debris is essentially Julia Roberts' character's TA and she worships her. And we see her and the young cohort of students and grad students who worship these two professors and the discourse. And we also see this generational clash between how these younger students view the world and how the elders view the world and the kind of cynicism that has grown inside of the older folks and the rejection of the more progressive ideas emanating off of the younger folks. This should be a very contemporary movie, right?

51:01This is a thing we joke about that this sort of stuff on the show all the time. It's obviously in the culture wars all over the place regarding any number of issues, not just sexual assault, but world conflict and, you know, pay gaps. And there's a million things you can make a movie like this about. But this one very quickly becomes a story about he said, she said sexual encounter between an older professor who visits the home of a younger student and something happens. We don't see what happens. The film very purposefully hides the event in question. And then it becomes a sort of like somewhere between a detective story trying to ascertain the truth of what's happened, but more specifically how this event affects this woman who is not the primary participant in the incident, but is like her knowledge of the people and the event looms large.

51:56And sort of like what is the responsibility of someone with knowledge in these spaces? so that's like a very oblique setup for a direct kind of idea and while the film looks good and I think Julia Roberts is actually excellent in this movie I think this is like legitimately one of her best performances in some time she's really good um I thought this movie was like I actually have no idea what it was trying to do no clue what its script was trying to say it's very confusing um I found the ending to be baffling. Yes. The baffling. I thought Io Debrey, an actress I really like, to be way in over her head in this movie.

52:34Though I did wonder whether that was a purposeful choice, like a performance choice. Possibly, but she just does not have the gravitas in a couple of moments where she's expected to deliver some might on the other end of her speeches. And I don't know if that's the direction. I don't know what it is. I did not think she was kind of up to this kind of material. And I think that the material was not up to its ideas. Yeah. The one thing that you left out from the description that I think is pretty central both to the movie itself and then also perhaps its failure is that this is very much a campus politics movie too.

53:11Like it's, you know, it opens honestly with a title card and the Woody Allen font saying it happened at Yale. And then there's like a little montage of campus life in Woody Allen's house, which again, I thought this was funny. Parts of this to me are amusing. I thought it was going to be much more wry about these ideas because of that setup. Totally. But so, and so it's campus politics. It is set not just like on a campus, on a college campus, but in the philosophy department of Yale. And so, and there is a lot of, along with the campus politics debate, like a lot of intergenerational stuff. and you know much of it is older generation being like what's wrong with these younger people but also maybe they're right but what's wrong with them and so that is just always kind of a dead end as a as a story you know yes and even it's a debate it's not a movie right but and and so it tries to infuse that and basically like what is sort of a a cranky New York Times op-ed um with like very, very soapy plot stylings that like, sorry, you can't make tenure that soapy even if you want to.

54:33And like they really do try. And then it completely like abandons all of the soapy plot lines as well. Like everything is just kind of fine. So it doesn't commit to any of the things that it is trying to do. To your point about the Woody Allen, font at the beginning of the film. The film that this is most indebted to is Crimes and Misdemeanors. Crimes and Misdemeanors, interesting movie to kind of unpack because it's two tales tied together about people whose lives cross over. In the one film, in the one story, you've got Martin Landau having an affair with Angelica Houston and then afraid to be kind of caught in this affair and he attempts to have her killed.

55:14Right. Very serious, kind of mordant character piece about the failures of masculinity, right? And then on the flip side, you've got Woody Allen and Mia Farrow as this couple who are like, he's a filmmaker and she's working with Alan Alda who's a more successful filmmaker and kind of a blowhard and it's got a little bit more of that like classical Woody Allen comedy energy. And you've got these two worlds kind of colliding and rubbing up against each other. One's pretty funny. Alan Alda's hilarious in that movie. One's really deathly serious in this kind of moral dilemma film. so 11's the two sides This movie, especially in the final 75 minutes, is just like deathly serious.

55:56Like there's no sense of humor about it at all. It just slams on the brake. Which is, for Luca, I'm just so surprised. It's really weird. I find that all of his movies, even his very serious films, have like a kind of knowing sensibility about them. You know, a kind of like, I'm making my cannibal romance movie, but I'm making it kind of funny. You know, even though it's gross, there's something kind of arch. So the first hour, though, and it was very funny because the second time I saw it, it was after you'd seen it. Everyone else, the reviews have been incredibly unkind. It's been getting pilloried.

56:30Yeah. And it's a pretty limited distribution, especially for a movie that stars Julia Roberts. So I went in and the first hour, and again, I'm Luca Pilt. That is my personality. But I was like, wow, he's kind of cooking. This is kind of fun. And the first hour, you know, and part of it is it's like it's absurdly beautiful. The apartment is like where she lives. My new dream apartment. It's amazing. And, you know, and well observed and the costumes and the details and the way they speak to each other. And like the scene with Chloe Sevigny in Three Sheets, the bar funny about this mess. You know, I was like, oh, OK, so I know who we're speaking to.

57:10We're speaking to to me. To older. Yes. To older people. Yes. This is not a movie for 22-year-olds. It's a movie for 45-year-olds. Yes. So there is like a knowingness to the way that he's making it. I know, but the script can't live up to that. I agree with you. I agree that it doesn't. I completely agree that it falls flat on its face. But the Luca-ness is there. And then it goes away. Yeah, he can't help but bring his sense of production design and the way that the film is lit is quite interesting where everything is kind of like, even in these lush, like cream colored environments, there's something kind of like washed out.

57:51Like Julie Roberts looks like she just woke up or just threw up like the entire film. Right. Even though, you know, she's such a striking star. She's doing a really physical performance in this movie that's very effective. And, you know, he's on this interesting progression now. You like, if you look at Challengers and Queer and this film, it's almost like he's trying to strip out everything that like all of the energy from his movies. Queer is also the similarly kind of like ambling road movie that's like a psychological fantasia. And this is like a much more practical movie, like an in the weeds movie.

58:25Especially like there's a, near the end, there's a very tense confrontation between Roberts' character and Adebri's character where they're talking outside, in a parking lot, outside of an apartment. I saw you were going to talk about the tar scene when it is Julia in a blazer just absolutely excoriating students for their... Yeah. Well, which is not well written. It's very overwritten. By the way, philosophy is the foundation of civilization and also really stupid. So that's kind of what I took away from that. Philosophy corner. But when she finishes it, she's just like, Marcus is here! Julia Roberts is still really funny and good in this movie.

59:03And there is like a sense of humor to at least what she and Luca are doing. Again, the script and the other performances don't live up to. Let's try to put another spoiler warning about this because maybe you can help me understand what you thought the ending was because I really don't get it. And if you haven't seen it or don't want or you don't intend to see it, you can keep listening. But we're going to talk about the ending of the movie here. So at the end of the movie, we learn a couple of things. We learn, one, that Robert's character and Garfield's character did have an affair, that they were together at a certain point, which is very clearly insinuated in that first bar scene where she has a kind of longing towards him.

59:45We then learn that because of the physical way that he treats her when she finds him sleeping in her second apartment, that he probably did commit an assault. that it's more than likely, maybe almost certainly, that he is responsible for this incident that he's accused of. As Io Devery's character says, like he crossed a line. Right. Yeah. She is fired because she steals a script, a prescription page. Yeah, I was going to say, very different. Yes, I wish someone would steal this script, but she steals a prescription page from Chloe Sevigny's character's office. She's a therapist and professor.

1:00:26And she gets pills. She's a psychiatrist because she can prescribe medication, which she does. Psychiatrist. But Julia, it's a controlled substance. Yes. Because Julia Roberts is like having unexplained pain-like attacks and barfing a lot throughout the movie. And so she needs the quote-unquote good stuff. Right. But the prescription is flagged because it's, you know. And so she gets caught. Chloe Sevigny reports her tenure is... She's not fired, but tenure... Tenure's off the table. is paused indefinitely. Yes, she will not be getting tenure. She is then identified as not an ally to a Devery's character who then goes to Rolling Stone magazine for the second time to give her side of this story of sexual assault, which is then, I guess, written in like a long feature in Rolling Stone magazine, which feels like a very obvious nod to A Rape on Campus.

1:01:22Yes. The since debunked feature story that ran, I think, in 2014 in the magazine about a person claiming to be raped that was, I believe, entirely invented, right? I don't totally remember. So let's just say that it was... There were falsehoods. Yes. But in this case, that story is meant to be true. So it's supposed to conjure this idea of something that transpired that we know about and then make us further question the environment and what is the truth of these events. Right. And then we then finally learn that Roberts' character, in fact, many years ago, as a teenage girl, had an affair with one of her father's best friends.

1:02:07And she was in love with this person. And he broke her heart because he left her for a woman who was more age-appropriate. And then she went to the press and told the press... Well, did she go to the press or she reported? Okay. You know. I guess, I don't know. Is that what they say? We don't know. We don't actually know because... We see a newspaper clipping. Yeah, because Iodabri goes to the bathroom at a lovely party and then is just rooting around in the cabinets. She's looking for toilet paper, but then she's like looking up under the taping of the thing. What the fuck is that? I mean, I agree.

1:02:43100 % agree. So bizarre. What kind of movie bullshit is that scene? Quite lazy. I was also like, wow, good hiding place. So... It is a good hiding place, but like, why are you even... Like, you have a second apartment. Why is that stuff not just in your second apartment? It's a great point because then at some point, Julia Roberts burns everything else, but it seems like she has like a second and she burns a photo of the guy, but then she has a second photo at the Wharf apartment, which once again, like this movie would love to, you know, someone watched Tar and then was like, let me try this.

1:03:15But - I think that's generous. I mean, I think - Well, but just like in the actual structural there, she has the second apartment where all of the things happen in Tar. There is a scene in a blazer where someone of the younger generation is excoriated for having incorrect opinions about, you know, progressive politics. Yeah, there's definitely similarities to it. I just I think its aims are slightly different. And I so we learned that she had this relationship. And here's how we learn that is that because she has like another attack and she's hospitalized. And that's... While being confronted by the woke mob, quote unquote, outside of the campus.

1:03:54Sure, literally. She's surrounded and then she collapses. And then, so it's perforated ulcers. And her therapist husband, her analyst husband... Yes, played by Michael Stuhlbar, who's just having a grand old time. Absolutely conducting John Adams and cooking. Just a ridiculous performance that I really enjoyed. I don't know what movie he's in. Very funny. me. And then so she in like in the hospital bed tells him the story. And she's like, I made it up. I loved him. And he in the text is like, no, he was older. No matter what you think, it's his responsibility. Like you actually were assaulted.

1:04:40And then she and then all she says is I loved him. And then he says, I love you. Cool. Right. Great ideas. We have that philosophy, ladies and gentlemen. That scene is not good. What's only worse than that scene is the epilogue, which is some years later. Five years later. And in this epilogue, Debra's character and Roberts' character meet up at the same restaurant where Roberts and Garfield's character had had a very tense discussion early on in the film. a real like standby in New Haven. Okay. So. And made me want Indian food. At this point, we've learned that Roberts' character has become the dean of another school.

1:05:21No, I think she's become the dean at, she's at another school? She's the dean at Yale? That sure looks like the office of the other guy. Maybe, maybe, maybe that's what it is. She's the dean of Yale after not being a tenured professor? she's the dean of humanities. Okay. Which is presented earlier in the movie as an administration job and not as fun as thinking. Listen, I'm not in charge. The point stands either way. I don't work on campus. And also she's watching a news report about the LA fires from January because it's January 2025, just to let you know. It's January 9th. Not ideal. I don't even know what that's a comment on.

1:06:00I don't either. She's just watching it and she's just like, wow, this is terrible. And then they meet for this lunch and they have this discussion even though they've had this world colossal falling out, these two people, and Debra Marie's character admits that she was in love with her. You didn't mention that there's a second Rolling Stone piece that Io's character writes that is like about how I had like a bad mentor. And it's just excoriating the Julia Roberts character. That was the one that I was referring to. Oh, no. Because that's the one that really spins out. Oh, sure. Okay. Spins out Roberts' character.

1:06:32Yeah, yeah, yeah. and it turns out that like they're gonna let bygones be bygones and like very briefly discuss the events of the film and talk about how like it actually worked out well for both of them because now Roberts' character is the dean and Debra is successful in her own way it's insane I think that it's psychotic what the fuck is that I think this is this is the part where I always miscast and it's just because I think that there is supposed to be something suggested there's supposed to be like a lot of work under the under the text I mean I still that still doesn't justify it but like that's not happening she was both sexually assaulted and is also a sociopath I guess so or is that does it communicate somehow that she's dressed totally differently it's so it's so muddled because it's like did this event energize her to then become more hard bitten is it that this was always this way and that she had this kind of talented Mr.

1:07:30Ripley thing going on with Roberts' character. Like, it's totally unclear. The psychology is so messy. I have no idea what it's supposed to do. And not smart, man. No, I agree. And then Julia's playing it, like, complicated. But, yeah, so is life. But there's this hint of, like, you know what? We knew all along. Like, us gals, we got to stick together so that we can ride out this crazy moment in history. I'm like, what the fuck is this trying to say? I really don't know. I didn't like it. Yeah. I didn't like it. I thought there was cool things about it. I liked the first hour. Yeah. Kind of despite myself.

1:08:05I was like, oh, spicy. And then it was really very silly. It's not doing very well. Yeah. However, and there is clearly no FOMO factor whatsoever with this movie, right? Because it's not even like a car crash because it's Luca Guadagnino. So like it looks good. Music is good. It's got style. That striped couch, man. I need it. I need the striped couch in Stuhlbarg's office. I need the whole kitchen. We'll get on it. We'll figure it out. Should I be wearing like a white jacket like she's wearing at the party, you know? You might have to dye your hair blonde if you want to do that. I know. She has like really like 40s style.

1:08:41I can't really do that. Communal factor. I saw this at a press screening. Okay. Wasn't a ton of energy in the room. I saw it at the Venice Film Festival and everyone was really pissed off because we waited in the rain for a long time. And then I saw this midday, Burbank 16, where the real heads go. I would say everyone was pretty quiet. Yes. The is this different at home factor. I kind of want to watch this again so that I can see if I can figure out what the hell's going on. Okay. I feel that I'm fairly good at understanding, if not plot mechanics specifically, psychological intention of characters.

1:09:13Like I actually think that that is something I am pretty good at when it comes to reading movies. Yeah. And I don't really know what this movie is trying to say. I don't either. So maybe one more viewing at home. Sure. What am I going to do? Because I don't really want to own this movie. What happens to the Lucas stack? That's between you and your demons. You're going to buy it. Are they going to release it? It's Amazon MGM. So I don't know. Right. We shall see. Yeah, it's not a success. Yeah. And we got to get Julia W., you know? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. She's fine. She's fine. She seems happy.

1:09:54She's still very beautiful, you know? should we talk about Mr. Scorsese briefly before Rebecca Miller so this was made over five years started during COVID um Miller told me she just had the idea after making the film about her father like what would you want to spend some time digging into next um she told me the first Marty movie she ever saw was Goodfellas and that she was not like an allegiant of his until much later she her husband of course has worked with him Daniel Day-Lewis um I thought this did a couple things really really well one shockingly intimate yeah I've been following Scorsese's career extremely closely since I was a teenager there's a bunch of stuff in this movie I've never heard or seen before then in addition to that and I don't want to spoil what that is for people who haven't seen it yet the second thing is that she gets basically everyone except Joe Pesci to talk yeah right almost there were a couple but yes basically all of the major characters Isabella Rossellini incredible the star of the documentary like who he was married to just like being quite severe about him at times no but also lovely very loving but very like you know this is a short man you know let us not forget I believe she used the word minuscule the other part the best part is when she was like you know I remember asking Marty one day you know do you really just think about like are we good are we bad what are we here for all the time is that what's going on in your head and he's like yes what's going on in your head she's like what happened for lunch it was great it was very good Robbie Robertson who's since passed appears in the film he's considered you know one of his closest friends and somebody who was with him during some really dark times in the 70s and 80s Jay Cox who many people know as his actual best friend you know Time magazine journalist and film critic and then later screenwriter and he's like kind of the keystone of the movie in a lot of ways like every time Miller's like how do I pivot it out of here.

1:11:54She just cuts to Jay Cox and be like, and then this needed to happen. Yeah. Which works really well. And then just my favorite thing of all time, which is movie documentaries about filmmakers specifically analyzing their work and how it correlates to their personal life. Right. Right. There's like some examples of this, like De Palma, the De Palma doc does this really well, but that movie's like a hundred minutes. This is five hours. Yeah, it's awesome. And so, and it goes through the career and it does also, it not only analyzes the, like it understands the work so deeply that like the editing and what it's pulling together and just what you're seeing in real time you know there is like a film school it's made by a real filmmaker so um you're understanding and he is very open to talking about what's going on in his life how it connects to the work the people who are around him at that time are also giving their you know their perspective and then it is bringing together not just the movie in question but other films from the career and you know whether it's like recurring shots or recurring themes it is beautifully edited and really knowledgeable yes anything else that you wanted to cite that you liked about it?

1:13:06the kids I think this was another thing that made me think about Girl Dads and because he has daughters and his daughters are in it and it is a really interesting portrait of parenthood across generations across generations being an artist you know I noticed to me all of the stars of the documentary of the sitting besides Mr. Scorsese himself were women and you know so I think Rebecca Miller really like figured something out around him but also how to talk to them it's just very smart to lean on Thelma Schoonmaker in the movie but then she has like the editing bay and is just showing you that's so smart it's really cool yeah I loved even just seeing him storyboarding at like 10 years old and being like, I have the movie in my head.

1:13:54Totally. And he's like, I still do this shot and then it cuts to all the shots. That stuff is just amazing. Yeah, it's so cool. Okay, well, people should check this out. It's very worth your time if you love movies. And pretty rare for something about an artist like this to be this expansive. You know, usually it's usually much tighter. So if you want to hear more about it, let's go now to my conversation with Rebecca Miller.

1:14:18Rebecca Miller is here. We're here to talk about Mr. Scorsese. Rebecca, I thought we could start by hearing about the first Martin Scorsese film that you ever saw. Do you remember what it was? For someone actually that I remember seeing is actually Goodfellas. So it wasn't one of the early films. I had to go back and experience earlier films after that. Interesting. So was there like a reason that you didn't check out his work in the 70s or 80s or just just happenstance? You know, I don't know. I don't know why. I think I was a painter at that time. I was drawn to other kinds of films. I didn't, you know, I'm not really sure what happened.

1:15:01But then I wasn't open to them in some way. And then when I once I opened that door, I was just kind of blown away by them and and got, you know, watch them again and again. And then Age of Innocence was also a really important film for me. Raging Bull was huge for me and so on and so on. And then, you know, I've watched them all. Tell me about developing the idea to make a film. I know you originally wanted to make what you thought would be a regular feature length doc that has become this very expansive piece. You know, where did it start? How do you even broker a conversation? Martin Scorsese, I'd like to make a film about you.

1:15:39Can you talk me through some of the actual, you know, details of getting this thing off the ground? Well, I had this weird instinct that I should make a film about him. I had a conversation with my producing partner, Damon Cardassianus, and I said, like, I'd like to make another documentary. I really like the practice of making documentary and sort of alongside preparing features. and um then he said who would be your person that you'd want to do and I just had this I just said Martin Scorsese and you know Marty and I had a kind of relationship where we had this you know a slightly social relationship back when they were making gangs of New York and uh but we didn't have like an ongoing social relationship but he had recommended some voiceover films for me to watch from the like the 1940s English films because I was going to make Personal Velocity, which had a lot of voiceover and I was very nervous about that film.

1:16:38And so I asked him for advice and he loves to give that kind of advice. So he gave me some films, you know, to look at. And then I showed him the film and he gave me a little bit of notes. Like he gave me, well, one really good note. So then he, I somehow, he ended up watching other films of mine and giving me notes. And that became our relationship. I didn't have much of a social issue, but he knew me sort of very well through my films. And then it turned out he'd read my books. So that was already in the background when I said that. And I thought like, I feel like I could maybe have an insight into him because I also had a feeling like I was really curious about his spiritual life and how it, what role it had to play in his movies, which it wasn't obvious.

1:17:25I just thought it'd be really nice to, to be able to, explore that with him. You mentioned that he has this encyclopedic knowledge of film history and could give you reference points. Did he have a point of view on the director portrait? You know, this is a kind of a type of documentary and there are not actually a ton of great ones, especially not made about filmmakers while they're still alive. Like, did you talk about that form at all with him? We didn't talk about how he just was always saying like, I don't know what you're doing. It was just sort of like, he didn't want to know kind of, and, and, and actually in the beginning, it started as a feature and then started to grow.

1:18:04And it, you know, when I first interviewed Brian De Palma, who was one of the first people I interviewed apart from Marty, I said, you know, he said, you know, you can't do this in a feature film. And at that time I said, yeah, no, I could, I think I can do it. I, I have a sense of how I can do it. And of course, a year later, he was like, no, you're going to get to taxi driver. You cannot do the whole thing. And he was completely right. Of course, you know, like I totally couldn't do it. And luckily I was able to change tack and they allowed me to make it five hours instead of like an hour and a half or two hours.

1:18:34But, um, so, so I didn't really talk to him because I also didn't know exactly what I was going to do. I mean, I wrote him a letter when I first proposed it, I wrote him a letter. I proposed it to his doc producer who I knew, um, Margaret Bodie. And so she talked to him and he said, let her write a letter. So I wrote a letter. And basically in the letter, I just said, I want to take an approach, like a cubist approach, right? Like just looking at you from all different angles, like different, you know, both collaborators, family, all the different angles to make a human portrait. And that was kind of my, but of course that's pretty vague.

1:19:10So that's where I began. And I didn't really know, and I didn't know exactly who was going to be in it either. It seemed like you had a number of sit downs with him. I know you were been working on this for a number of years. Like how did you even determine what was the right order to talk to people in? Like as a journalist, you sometimes don't necessarily want to speak to the primary subject first. You might want to talk to a bunch of people first and then sit down with them. How did you kind of strategize around when was the right time to have sit downs with him? Well, I definitely started with him and there were, you know, more than it looks like because each sort of outfit that he's wearing represents two very long interviews.

1:19:47So there were about 20 hours of interviews altogether over this five-year period. So, and we would, we started on my porch outside because it was the beginning of the pandemic. And then, you know, we gradually, you know, graduated to his office and then eventually to his inner sanctum, his buddy, which was my, which was my goal. And, um, so, um, I, but, but yeah, so I, I really wanted to kind of like, I was fascinated by the geometry of his first family, like his original family, you know, the mother to, to son, to brother, to father, et cetera, the neighborhood. Then I started to get these ideas about, okay, so early on, I thought, well, it would be really great to get the friends because I could tell that the friends were essential to how he had become an artist and the voices.

1:20:37And I thought we've got to hear those voices somehow. So getting in touch with the friends was an immense, for me, it was like maybe the most exciting thing. It's one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I'm so fascinated by that choice. I mean, do you even have to broker that with Martin and say, I want your childhood closest friends who know you from your most vulnerable moments as a young person to speak openly about this? Like, I assume that's how you would go about approaching it. I did. I talked to him. I said, I would, cause of course I didn't have any numbers. So I mean, like, you know, apart from Salvatore, like Sally Gaga, I, nobody had his number and that was a complete accident, but everybody else he was, you know, he was still in touch with.

1:21:14There was one guy that Robert De Niro brought. Marty was actually delighted by that. I think because he's such an anthropologist by nature that he liked the idea of preserving the neighbor and preserving these people almost as a historical thing. And he was like, can I have, he wanted some of the footage just for himself to have it as, as because the people, the way these people talk and their memories are really history by this point. And, you know, times have changed. And so it's rare, it's rare already. And, but he had a very strong sense of like, there were two going to be two sit downs. One was in a cafe Roma and one was in a restaurant that, you know, and there were different people and they, those different people, you know, not everybody went with everybody else.

1:21:56And he was very, you know, he was clear about that, about who should be sitting with who and so on. And the conversations and, uh, kind of stemmed were, were wonderful. And part of the reason was that I think he had kind of curated that. So he wanted, and then I went to Florida to go and, uh, interview, um, Robert Uricola and John Bavona and then Salvatore. you know his personal life is has not always been neat and tidy and this is a tremendously revealing portrait of him i have a huge fan of his work and have been studying him closely just as a fan for years and years and you hear like faint whispers of aspects of crazy times in his life or his relationships but it's extraordinary how comfortable it seems he is talking about a lot of this stuff people he was in relationships with extremely close friends did you feel like there was a moment where like a wall came down or there was a sense that there was not the guard was not going to be up around some of the more sensitive aspects of his life definitely it was a gradual relationship that was built between us you know because so much of this is it's really a conversation I didn't know like you were saying I really don't know very much about his personal life I knew about I had studied by this time the films very closely I felt like I knew them well And I had studied the films that I thought were relevant to his films and so on, you know, the influences.

1:23:21But there was a lot I didn't know. So all the questions I'm asking him are genuine questions. Like, you know, I think that once he decided to go with me, he made a decision that he was going to be pretty honest. I think that there was an initial decision. And then as time went on, there was a trust that was built and he just decided, you know, but he'd also, like I said, he knew my work, he knew my previous documentary. So it was like, that's, I think what informed his decision. um i you know and then other people too like somehow he's got infected by his honesty i think a little bit and sensed because of the way i was talking about what he had talked to me about they knew oh okay so he's done that he's talked to her about this stuff so then they were talking to me also about it yeah you had your credibility stamped through that yeah yeah yeah because everybody wouldn't want to you know insult him or or transgress you know but then once they realize that, oh, this is a different kind of situation, then it changed.

1:24:27So Scorsese's work, you know, it's a convergence of a lot of big ideas. You mentioned faith already and guilt and violence and passion and repression and all of this heavyweight stuff. America, a lot of big ideas. Was there something that spoke to you about his work that you felt was unexplored or that you wanted to be a big focus of the piece? Well, initially I was really interested in faith and violence, how a Catholic, somebody who's still, you know, looking at things through a Catholic lens is approaching these things. How does that work? What was the relationship to the sinner, you know, and like those, those questions, like, and I, and, and that was the, my, my initial road in because I thought, well, I don't, I haven't really seen that explored deeply, you know, as far as I know.

1:25:16I mean, not that I've seen absolutely everything and read absolutely everything, but I just felt like there was, there were, you know, and then I was interested in his, you know, in the females in his life, you know, I was really interested in his mother. His mother is a essential character who, thank God, was captured in his documentary. And then there's another, you know, additional one that was taken, done in the nineties of him and his mother and his father, that voice, that personality, I feel like is really key. Her, the, the, the, she's a larger than life figure and really has, I think, the personality of an artist.

1:25:48You know, like she's just an electric figure. Yeah, there's something wonderful about her being a painter in Goodfellas, you know, that she is a person who makes art. You know, it seems to be him almost like communicating to us that he's getting something from her in that part of the movie. Absolutely. I think he really did get a lot of the artist part of him from his mother. I was fascinated by Jay Cox in the movie. It feels like he's almost like the bullshit detector. Like every time you need somebody to be like, here's what's really going on. You used him in such interesting ways. Tell me a little bit about, you know, the idea of a friend like him over periods of time and the way that they can speak to his, not just who he is as a person, but his work in such critical terms.

1:26:35Well, you know, I knew that Jay was really his best friend. You know, Joe Morale was his best friend as growing up as a kid. And he's so wonderful. He's the one with the sort of tinted glasses with the bar. He's like so frank. And then there's Jay, who's like, saw him through everything. And I also knew Jay, had come to know Jay because I was writing something with him. So I knew him as a person quite well. And so there was a certain rapport there between us. And I felt like, and yeah, he's just, I wanted to kind of almost like reenact, like recreate scenes for the audience, like to really be there, to really be in the hospital with De Niro and him, to really be like there with, you know, Cassavetes and all these big moments.

1:27:25but to somehow like make people feel like they had actually experienced it. It's hard because like in documentaries, especially when somebody who's like 50 years on talking about something, it's like, it's, it's hard to get back into a feeling of like visceral experience. That's really what I'm curious about the other side of that coin too, which is the truth. Like how much do you feel you're getting the truth? Because as time passes and especially in show business, myth-making is a part of this. Like, how do you navigate whether you feel like you're getting what actually happened, what's been massaged?

1:27:57You know what I mean? Yeah, of course. I mean, but, you know, well, what is the truth anyway? The truth is that there's so many shades of truth. My truth about what happened, somebody else's truth, it slightly shifts, right, because of point of view. And one of the things, the reasons I called it a portrait is I wanted to be clear that this is my portrait of him. There isn't like an angel that did some kind of like absolute piece of work. It's my truth as I understood it. But the thing about Marty is like he is the most self-honest person that I've ever met. Like he's really honest with himself.

1:28:32He's not pretending to himself to be other than he is. And that's an extraordinary thing. And I've learned a lot from that, I think. You know, like just and I think you can see it in his work. like the mercilessness of his work to some degree comes from his own honesty to himself. And, you know, so the answer to that question, I guess, is like you just try, first of all, to have an honest conversation with your main subject, but also get these points of view from different vantage points And then hope that you're creating something that's close to the truth as far as truth can exist. Who was the most difficult person to nail down for this?

1:29:17Because you definitely got a few people that you don't see sitting for a lot of documentaries. My husband was not that easy. I was happy to see him in it. It was not a slam dunk. He was like, yeah, only because he's just like, you know, he doesn't really love doing that kind of thing. He doesn't he he feels that, you know, that he can't add anything. It's like a whole thing. But I'm so glad that he did it. He was tricky, you know, as you can see, like Joe Pesci didn't actually sit down for an interview. But the nice thing is that there were some really great interviews of some of these people earlier.

1:30:02And in some ways, it's nice, you know, to just have it more in the period that they're in. And so when there was something like Ellen Burstyn, for example, like there were these wonderful interviews that were done really on set for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. And I just feel like I don't need more than that. Like how wonderful that she sat for that interview, you know? Yeah, there's a couple of them. like Father Principe, I feel like is one, two, or just having that. And I don't know, it's interesting. I almost feel like he has built his own mythologies in some ways because he has all these skeleton key figures over the years.

1:30:33You got to speak to Robbie Robertson before he passed away, it seems like. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit too, since they were quite a pair for a long period of time. Well, that was another one where, I think as I began to explain to him what I knew about Marty, what he had already spoken about, he became more open about talking about the time that they lived together and stuff. And yeah, it was a song. I mean, he seemed so well. I couldn't believe that shortly thereafter, like he died, like not that far after that. I don't know if it was his last interview, but probably among the last ones.

1:31:06Yeah, that was a great interview. I mean, you know, the last Waltz sequence in the film is one of my favorite sequences because it's just so pure. You know, the purity of his impulse. He's shooting New York, New York. And I love that. I love that line that Robbie says is like the one thing Marty says, the one thing that big studios don't like when you're shooting a big studio picture is to go away and shoot another picture. And yet like he couldn't stop himself. That's sort of like that chapter of like all this film is filming, isn't healthy. And he really paints a portrait. And then there's that wonderful footage of them together in the seventies, which is just, you know, irreplaceable and precious.

1:31:43And, um, uh, so yeah. I love when Thelma Schoonmaker comes into the film too. It does feel like she also has this kind of sense of what is really going on with Scorsese's work, you know, because she's side by side with him for so long. And it's basically been forced to look at more of what he has made than almost anybody. But even just that transition that you make in the film from his work on Woodstock, her coming into his life, even the style of filmmaking that you deploy, where it sort of feels like you're looking at Woodstock in that time is so interesting. What was it like, you know, chatting with her about working with him for 50 years?

1:32:27Well, I'm so glad that I shot her at the editing bay. I mean, I'm so happy with myself, you know, that she's just sitting there. She's able, because there's something about the way she watches when she's stopping it and talking about it. It's like a hawk, her eyes. I mean, it's really special to watch how she is, you know, and the level of intimacy that she has with the work, with him, having watched him through all these periods, just such a, it really is a beautiful testament to the collaborative nature of film. I mean, that you really, you know, there, Marty was, I do believe like, it's a word I don't like very much, but I do think he was born like a genius.

1:33:05I do think that's true. But that alone would not have accounted for what happened. I mean, he needed to encounter these, what I think of as these angels in his life. And she's definitely one of those people, you know, that he could trust and that helped him make the work. De Niro is definitely one of them. DiCaprio becomes one of them. And then some of the people that actually allowed him get the money to do these things, you know, because you can't do it alone. And that's one of the more interesting things about it is I really wanted that sort of macro micro. There's him and his talent and his life, but there's also the larger, the people who help him and then the larger culture that's developing and changing in the country as time goes on.

1:33:49You gave a significant amount of time to almost every film that he made, which is part of just the absolute joy of watching this is hearing the stories, hearing the mechanics of how it's made. You mentioned De Palma earlier. There's a really interesting documentary about him that is much shorter. and there are so many movies that I wish they had spent more time on in the De Palma doc. Was there anything in your movie that you wish you could have lingered on more or you felt like you had so much material but you just couldn't find a way to make the time for it? Not for this movie if you know what I mean because this movie really is I mean yes there's a couple of places where oh I'm like oh should we should is there a way we could have sort of shoe here and something in that we took out.

1:34:32But basically this movie lives and dies on how the life is affecting the art and the art is affecting the life. It's like this tango that goes back and forth. And when we ran that, there's a certain, and there's only so much life, you know, there's like, and there's, and it was like the films that really had the biggest effect on him, or which life most affected are the ones that are most effective in the film, if you know what I mean. So if like, sometimes it's surprising, like Shutter Island becomes a very important film because he has this sort of semi breakdown and it's a kind of hinge to the rest of his life.

1:35:05I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're, you know, so, you know, we do discuss deeply 32 films, which is a lot of films, but the man has made even more films. So, but, but we basically, I do feel that we, we thank God we got into a lot of them. And there is a sequence, like, for example, about how he kind of rescued Michael Powell and the love story between Thelma Schumacher and Michael Powell, which is a beautiful little, but it became almost like a little film in itself that was like a cul-de-sac. So I was like, I still want to actually put that out somehow as its own little film. That's an example of, it just couldn't, you know, it just didn't fit into this film.

1:35:51Right. I still would take a 10 hour version of this, if I'm being totally honest with you. The other thing is that you're able to show this incredible aspect of his personal life near the end of the film, which is something that maybe you hear about, but we've never really seen and is incredibly intimate and is such a humanizing capstone on the piece. And I'm kind of amazed just as a longtime fan that he was willing to open up his world in that way. And I was hoping you could kind of talk about how you decided to do that, how you were able to spend time in his home at this stage of his life. His family was all, they were all very willing and open to talk, including Helen, his wife, and wanted to be part of it.

1:36:39And I think that they wanted to be seen, you know, because it's so important. And I really thought it was so important because, you know, And you can't really understand a person just on their own, you know, in their office with their work. It doesn't work like that. People are rounded figures, you know. And it was hugely important to me that you see the arc of his life. and his life now that you're describing and that's sort of like in the film is so important. And I think he somehow knew that, but also that desire to be in the film came also from Helen. You know, so it just sort of unfolded that way.

1:37:26That's how the whole thing unfolded. Like none of it was preordained. It kind of like, I didn't know where we were going. I just had this really strong instinct that I had to make this film. And thank God he agreed with me. And then we just walked into the dark together. I mean, really, like, just, I followed the breadcrumbs. It's very beautiful what you've done at the end. By the time you finished, what was the most surprising thing you learned about him or his work or really anything in that world? So hard for me to answer the question because it's almost endless, the things that I learned. I mean, it's like I don't even remember what I was like before I started the film.

1:38:02because I learned so many things about filmmaking, about like thinking about how to shoot a sequence, about working with actors, you know, about the influences, the turning points, how many times he was really almost left for dead by the industry or really didn't look like he was ever going to break in or, you know, thought that he'd finally broken in and then was sort of told that what he had done was really worthless. And then he had to start again, I mean, fired from his first, you know, film, there were so many things that, that, that I didn't, you know, know, and also was fascinated by the development of his relationships, you know, the, how the, how different he is now in some ways, like, I think in some ways he's exactly the boy that he was when he was seven and going, you know, going to these movie theaters because he could breathe in Manhattan when it was so hot and no air conditioning.

1:39:00And that person is still there. But then you look at some of these, his persona and how dark he was in some ways, you know, there's a real difference. And it's very interesting as a protagonist. Somebody yesterday talked about him as a protagonist, like just looking at it as a film, you know, just saying it's a film, like nevermind a documentary. He's a fascinating protagonist. He has all these trials that we know a lot about, but then there's a whole host of others that we don't. One of the other things that I love is just essentially seeing that he was storyboarding movies at such a young age that like at seven years old, he has this camera brain that like perfectly unfolds a story, which to me is just completely, that's just madness, you know, that somebody can think in that way.

1:39:45And that's where I say that that's genius. I mean, that's like, what the hell is that? You know, because he understood film language and could think in that dimension. And it's so it's wonderful that one of my first things I thought when we were first sitting there, he's looking at his little storyboards, you know, that he'd done when he was little. And he's like, I'm still trying to do that. The shot. I have to animate these. Because, like, is that, you know, and then you see all the times he's still doing it. And it's like, my God, you know, he was kind of born fully formed in some ways and just had to take his whole life to realize a vision that really was born as in his childhood.

1:40:25It's really special. Rebecca, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing they have seen. I know you've been watching a lot of Scorsese over the last five years, so I assume it was not a Scorsese movie. Have you seen anything else good recently? I thought Marty Supreme was really good. Yeah. Were you there on Monday? Yeah. It was so fun, wasn't it? What did you like about it without spoiling it for the folks who haven't seen it yet? I love the energy. I felt like it was very, it had the energy of the person who made it like deep inside. And I really, and I also really liked the message about masculinity.

1:40:59I thought it was kind of beautiful. But, you know, like, I love that. I couldn't agree more. Rebecca Miller, congrats. Thanks so much for doing the show. Thank you. So nice to meet you.

1:41:15Thanks to Rebecca Miller. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to Amanda. Amanda, you will not be on the next episode because it's about the Black Phone 2. Sick. And the best horror movies of the year. You've seen a few of them. You saw Weapons. I did. You saw Sinners. I did. You wrote Final Destination Bloodlines. I did. I have seen one scene from it. Oh yeah, you did. That's right. And I was the science corner consultant for that. That's right. Everything having to do with magnetic fields. Yes. And that's why it's so accurate. So realistic to what would actually happen.

1:41:47CR will be joining me for that episode and we will see you then.

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