The Interviews (ft. Brett Goldstein & Ol Parker; Ben Gibbard; Travis Knight)

27:26And Lynn called me up or emailed me and said, hey, I'm working on this thing. We want to meet and talk about it. So that was my first foray into it. I don't think it's a skill set that I'm particularly good at. But I feel like I would like to think that the work fits the film. But as far as scoring, composing, that's not really my wheelhouse. But I, you know, I try to get through this, I get emotional because I love Lynn so much, but I loved her so much. But Lynn had this ability, working with her and watching how she motivated people, she motivated people by making them feel that their presence was extremely vital to the process.

28:13and she if she was giving me a suggestion or wanted me to move in a certain direction it was with this just unbounding positivity and cheerleading and it's like at the end of the day what I wanted more than anything was to make Lynn happy and I don't recall working with anybody in any other capacity that I wanted to please like I wanted to please Lynn. And, you know, I wasn't in romantic love with Lynn, but I was in love with Lynn. Yeah. And everybody that worked with her fell in love with her in that way, where they just, she just was such a radiant person. Yeah. And I think one of, you know, everybody lost people during COVID.

29:05At least almost everybody I know lost somebody. But one of the elements of that time that I feel so, I'm still very regretful of is that we were not given a proper opportunity to say goodbye. And during COVID, after she passed, there was a number of her friends in Seattle, her longtime producer, Megan Griffiths, and a number of other people who'd worked with her. because Lynn, I really believe that this might be not the best person to reference now, but Lynn Shelton did for Seattle what Woody Allen did for New York. Right. And it was very important to her that she represent the city and the region properly to the extent which, in Laggies, for example, there is a scene where they leave a Mexican restaurant, a bar, and they go back to the main character's house.

30:07and I used to live in that neighborhood and I knew that that bar was two blocks away from that house and I commented like, that's kind of amazing that you chose to have these, you know, in movies, obviously you walk down one street, you turn left and you're five miles away, right? The way locations are determined are not based on geography but Lynn had, it was important to Lynn that, well, people from Seattle are going to see this film and they're going to know that this Mexican restaurant is not actually two blocks away from this house So we needed to find a house that was two blocks away, right?

30:40And she was very conscious of that. And, you know, we had to break, like, COVID protocols to do a proper memorial for her. So we all met at Gaswork Parks in Seattle. And, you know, it was this thing where, like, we weren't supposed to be doing this. I mean, everybody was six feet away on blankets, but there were hundreds of people there. and we knew at some point some authority figure was going to come and break this up. Right, right. And the parks department, we saw, sorry, I feel like I choked up, but we saw the parks department van pull up. We could see him pulling along the lawn for quite a while and they pulled up and Megan was like, I'm going to go talk to him.

31:24And she went over and you could see they were talking and the guy was like, okay, and drove away and she's like, we have a half hour left. Like they gave us a half hour. They were there to break it up. But once she explained who this was for, why we were here, they were like, okay, cool. You guys can have a half hour, but after that, you guys got to go. But yeah, I mean, a number of people in LA that had worked with Lynn for a long time, like the Duplass brothers, other people, we were all sitting Shiva on Zoom. It was just so disappointing because someone of her stature and her legacy she was so important to so many people and it was really unfortunate to say the least we need a stronger word than that that we weren't able to give her a proper memorial because she was deserving of so much more yeah such a disservice I mean you just see it in those performances as well you see what she's capable of doing with a collaboration in those films I wish we had better access to them over here please do seek them out if you can but yeah I wanted to talk more about Seattle.

32:33Seattle is your city. What are some other films that sort of really get to the heart of that city for you? To this day, I was talking to a friend about this film recently. I live not so far away from the building that Singles was filmed at. I live, you know, half a mile away from there. So I walk past it, I drive past it, I run past it all the time. and uh that film was really important to us as teenagers because you know it was right at the height of it it was filmed before the explosion of nirvana and pearl jam and soundgarden it was it was filmed and i think in in i believe it was filmed in in the first half of 91 so it was before any of this stuff really blew up so the fact that eddie vedder is in the film was not as it was he wasn't cast because he was a rock star you know he was just in this new band with the guys from other love bone right um and to me that i watched that film not so long ago it filled me with a great sense of nostalgia for the seattle that i remember in the early 90s when i was a teenager and the city has just changed so much i mean you know amazon google facebook all these companies have really overrun the city the city's become the population city has exploded um we should have known that seattle is too great a city to remain a secret for that long um but i i watched it and i i saw it again and i it was it was rather uh arresting to see neighborhoods in seattle that are that now looked entirely different um and areas of town that where there weren't a lot of people in the film but now are are like overpopulated but i guess that that is just the march of time and progress and that's part of getting older the things that you love change and yeah so that's a movie that I've always I loved it because I love Cameron Crowe and because you know it documented that time in Seattle another film that I love from relatively the same era is a documentary called Hype and my brain fog is not a lot I think Doug Prey was the director and this is a movie that was made about the Seattle music scene.

34:50They were filming it in 93, I believe, maybe in early 94, and it came out in 96, I think. But as a teenager, I remember they were filming shows for this documentary, and there was this general attitude about these people from out of town, they're not going to get it. They don't understand what the city is. They don't understand what the bands are that are important to us, And as teenagers, we were becoming rather territorial about the things that we loved. But Seattle also has always been rather, at least at that time, was very leery of outsiders. And you can kind of see that if you go back and look at the culture of, you know, quote-unquote grunge music.

35:33There was this distrust of people coming from out of town and trying to exploit this scene. and I and my high school friends are in the crowd somewhere in some of these shoots but the documentaries actually turned out to be a rather accurate depiction of what was going on in Seattle that wasn't just Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains. So it was actually a really good documentation of what was happening in the underground and I think that anybody who wants to get a sense of what Seattle was like at that time, that film would be a good place to start. Oh, fantastic. I'm definitely looking that up.

36:13Yeah, it's on YouTube. You can, I mean, it's probably on some, it's buried in some other streaming site, but I found it on YouTube just like a week ago. Like, oh, Hype's on YouTube. I'm going to watch that again. Amazing. You've spoke very funny of Kelly Reichardt. I just wanted to know what you love about her sensibilities and then who else is exciting you today as a filmmaker? Kelly Reichardt is my, yeah. is arguably, in my opinion, the greatest filmmaker going today with the next, that does not name P.T. Anderson. I've loved her films for, since Old Joy. And I, I love the style of filmmaking that involves minimal casts and central emotional, framework.

37:10And I love films that are able to do accomplish a lot with an economy of set and effects and that just allow the actors to really bring the scripts to the forefront. And even though, I've said this on numerous occasions how much I'd love to work with Kelly Reichardt, But the reality is she doesn't have a lot of music in her films. And that's honestly, I think, works to their benefit. Very, very little music. If you watch her films, there's not a lot in there. And I also really love how she's handled. She's even great at period pieces. I mean, something like Meek's Cutoff. It's just very, very small cast.

38:05Yeah. and when I'm watching this film which takes place you know in the Oregon Trail I guess I might be getting that a little bit wrong but and there's just a couple wagons you know a small very small wagon train and as I'm watching this film I can almost see how you've got these two wagons or three wagons and you know a couple dozen actors and then on the other side of that film is like a highway or something like that you know and they're just they're able and how she's able to take us into another period with so little I think is just really evocative and I absolutely adored The Mastermind oh yeah absolutely loved it I loved how I loved that it's a heist film in which the overwhelming majority of the screen time is just being on the lam yeah it's just the mundanity of being on the lam.

39:05Yeah. And just how, and the slow realization that this can't be the rest of this guy's life, you know? It's gonna be until he gets caught. But this was a pointless venture, you know, to steal these paintings and then just be by himself for the rest of his life as it unfolds. Yeah. The closing sequence, I won't give it away for listeners, but the closing sequence is just what she was able to do if that was wonderful and there's this sequence where Joshua Connors just trying to get the paintings up incredible and it's like Chaplin it's fantastic and it's hilarious it doesn't read as a comedy in a lot of the previews but it's one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time and again I just adore her work I think that and she has a similar relationship seemingly to Portland Oregon that Lynn Shelton had to Seattle yeah and I think that might be another reason I love her film so much is that she chose to you know to really present Portland in this very authentic way and movies like Wendy and Lucy it's like authentically Portland yeah and I could talk to you about movies all day but I'm thank you so much for your time and coming and speaking with us today and the album's out in a couple of months here and and wonderful thank you of course thanks for having me thanks

40:32Chris Hewitt:I have to say, I love it when we stray slightly out of our lane on The Emperor Podcast, which reminds me, I never did set up that interview with the former Scotland manager, Alex McLeish. Alex, if you're listening, DM me. Let's make this happen. anyway that was Beth Webb talking to Ben Gibbard about music and movies and more and the new Death Cab for Cutie album I Built You A Tower is out now on whatever format you prefer as long as it exists of course and Death Cab will be on tour from July first in the States and then from September they'll be coming to the UK and Ireland followed by Europe Japan and Australia for more details and tickets head to deathcabforcutie.com.

41:19Chris Hewitt:OK, one last interview this week, and it is with the director of Masters of the Universe, the live-action adaptation of the 1980s cartoon that opened in cinemas at the weekend. That director is, of course, Travis Knight, the stop-motion animation legend, who every now and again takes a break from duties at Laika to direct films like Masters of the Universe and Bumblebee, which we Laika, a lot. Oh, God. what you're about to hear is an extended excerpt from my spoiler special interview with travis in which we delve deep into key moments in the movie so if you have not seen masters of the universe the new one not the 1987 movie head to a cinema immediately and do so if the cinema's closed just wait then listen to this okay right here's travis knight on excellent form talking to me who was not enjoy we are delighted to be joined on this emperor podcast spoiler special for masters of universe by the film's director travis knight how are you sir i am very well thank you good good good uh we always start the spoiler special travis with the the big question the one that's in everyone's lips and that is quite simply how did you get away with give him head ram man uh well yeah um there's one of that's one of a few lines in the uh film.

42:42Chris Hewitt:There's a lot of fisting in this movie. I'm very proud of. My contribution to the great world of cinema. It's right up there with the tops. No, look, there is something that I would say. There's something inherently silly and goofy about Master of the Universe. There's also something that I think many of us acknowledge. There is sort of a sexual component to some of this stuff. I never noticed that. Well, it's certainly something I've found over the years that people have told me their own stories about Mass of the Universe. And so in a very kind of silly, cheeky, playful way, we acknowledge that.

43:20Chris Hewitt:Yes, yes. Were there alts for that? There's so many ridiculous alts. There's so many things around the cutting room that we'll never see the light. You can only imagine how far we went if that's the one that made the cut. Yeah, there's some bad stuff that we'll never see in the light of day. That was us using restraint. Okay, there's not an NC-17 cut of this movie. No, alas, no. That would be interesting. But I love that in the movie, names like Ram Man and Fisto, they all come from a very genuine place for Adam. Yeah. Which is that as a kid, he was stranded from Eternia and he made these names up for these great heroes.

44:00Chris Hewitt:And for him, they weren't ridiculous because he was what, 12 years old, something like that? 10 years old? He was 10 years old. Yeah. Yeah, so he was at an age, around the age where many of us, myself included, discovered Masters for the first time. So in a lot of ways, it was a way for us to come up with a rationale for these admittedly ridiculous names of some of these characters. The way that made sense, because he looked at the world through a child's eyes. Just as so many of us did when we discovered Masters of the Universe when we were kids. I was eight years old when I was introduced to it, and I loved it.

44:34And at the time, I don't know that I appreciated how ridiculous some of these things were and how silly they were. As a grown man, I certainly do. And it was a way for us to make it kind of grounded and sincere while also acknowledging the silliness.

44:47Chris Hewitt:Yes. As someone, I think Ram Man was the first action figure I owned. Was he? Yeah. Right. And I love that he gets his due, so to speak, in this movie. Yeah. He's got the springy legs. I think one of the most fun things was coming up with action scenes and fight scenes that really utilize these characters' ridiculous abilities. Because I wanted the action scenes in the movie to feel like what it was like when we were kids playing with these toys. And they all had distinctive things that they could do. And I wanted to incorporate that into the fight scenes. And it gives me no small amount of delight to see them all use their special abilities.

45:29Chris Hewitt:What's your favorite moment in particular? My favorite moment in the movie? Yeah, in terms of the action scenes. Oh, in terms of the action scenes. Kind of playing in the sandpit with the figures. There's a couple of action scenes that actually mean more to me than just that. I mean, I love doing that, and that was fun. I figured if we were going to do action scenes, we had to lean into that aspect of it. Didn't want to make it kind of just generic punching and kicking. um the one of the goofiest action sequences in the movie the one that that i that i find kind of most emotionally satisfying is the very first action scene where where adam becomes he-man and he's fighting as he-man and so he has on the bridge yes on the bridge and so he has the strength of he-man but he doesn't have any the abilities of someone who can you know fight well he's still just adam but he's adam you know super strong and so you know to be able to use trap jaw who had that Swiss Army knife arm that could transform it, all these different sorts of things.

46:23And to see him utilize that in an action scene and to see how Adam reacts to it and how he ultimately prevails, to me, I find that a very joyful experience to watch and to put together.

46:33Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. For all the, as you say, inherent silliness in the concept, there is something on your mind and something on the film's mind as well with Adam and with his journey. I love, for example, that he has this, he's been couched in HR language and he knows conflict resolution and it's through dialogue, not through punching things. That's right. And that is something that is brought to bear in the final fight with Skeletor. Where did that come from, that idea that you'd be exploring toxic masculinity almost in a way? We're definitely exploring masculinity and kind of asking and exploring the question, what does it mean to be a man?

47:12What does it mean to be a man growing up in the 80s? What does it mean now? Those are two very, very different things. as a child of the 80s who had a father that was born in the 30s. Those were very, very different. And then as a father of sons now and see what they're experiencing, life is very, very different for young men or boys who are becoming men. So it was a way for us to kind of explore those things in a fun and playful and empathetic way, a topic that really doesn't get talked about a lot and is worthwhile exploring. Now, He-Man, back in the Filmation days, he was always kind of a noble empath, really.

47:52He was someone who, you know, he was this big muscle-bound dude with, you know, biceps that looked like glazed hams. He was huge. He was jacked. But his first instinct when confronted with conflict was not to throw a punch. It was, you know, he was talking about kindness. He was talking about finding common ground. Kind of a lot of cases, the worst he would do was, like, throw a guy into a mud puddle. He was just, his instinct was not to fight. His instinct was to try to use diplomacy. Yeah. And so the whole thing, and so when we meet Adam at the beginning of the movie, we can see that he doesn't quite fit in in this really macho society as a kid.

48:26And he is a sensitive soul. We see, you know, kind of growing up on Earth, how he's found his way into working in HR, which is kind of works to his natural disposition, which is he does want to find common ground. Even in this, you know, he works in this corporate place that, you know, they rolls their eyes at this stuff. But he actually sincerely believes in this stuff. And so it was a way for us to kind of incorporate that. That's a core part of his character anyway and where he would find himself, you know, if he did grow up here on Earth. He goes back to Eternia carrying some of those skills with him that oftentimes don't work particularly well in a place like that.

49:00But he tries. And that's the important thing.

49:03Chris Hewitt:I admire that he tries with Skeletor. He does try. Yeah. In spite of all the horrible, horrible things that Skeletor has done to him and to people he loves, Adam's instinct is still to try to find a way out by talking things through. And I think that's a noble thing. You know, that said, sometimes people just deserve a punch in the face. And Skeletor, look, he gets a chance. He gets a chance at something resembling redemption, and he doesn't take it. So, okay, fair enough. and now you've just pissed off the most powerful man in the universe. You get what's coming to you, buddy. But I love that about Skeletor as well because, you know, I've been doing this job for a long time now, Travis, and I've spoken to a lot of people over the years who've been playing bad guys and I say, what's it like playing the bad guy?

49:49Chris Hewitt:And they go, well, I don't really see my character as the bad guy. But Skeletor sees himself as the bad guy. He proclaims proudly at the end that he is a villain. He does. And he steps into that role. And of course, you know, gets his head punched off for a result. But it's a lovely thing to embrace, I think. It is a lovely thing. You know, I like to try to find complexity and nuance in people who are, you know, villainous. But Skeletor, he's just not that complex. He's just a bad guy. He's a dick. And he's someone who just, who desperately wants power, who wants to be seen. He does have insecurities.

50:25And we kind of see some of that. And we find that a lot in the real world as well. Some of these despots or would-be despots. Oftentimes, it's something that is masking some deep-seated insecurity. So there is vulnerability there that every now and then just slowly kind of creeps out. But he covers it up very, very quickly. He, you know, he's a showman. He wants attention. There's this kind of theatricality to how he behaves. When he doesn't get the attention he wants, he lashes out.

50:51Chris Hewitt:Yes. So I think we've all seen or know people kind of like that. But in the end, he fully embraces who he is and given the chance to change. He doesn't want to change. He's pretty happy with who he is. Absolutely. I want to talk about Adam's journey, but we're talking about Skeletor, so I think that actually leads us to the final conflict. Where did that idea come from to almost go through, I'm guessing, Adam's memories? A lot of the battle takes place inside his mind. Yeah, it was a thing where Skeletor loves to exploit his enemy's weaknesses. He's a sorcerer, so he has the ability to do this kind of crazy Vulcan mind meld thing.

51:31and so it gave us an opportunity for us to kind of go through Adam's experiences in in what many in what he would perceive and we would all a lot of us perceive as kind of as some of his failures and just how he just he's never able to he was never able to fit whether he was on attorney or when he was on earth and then when he's back an attorney he never fit in and so Eskelator essentially wants to rub his nose and on all his failures before he destroys him he wants him to feel terrible about himself. And it kind of works until it doesn't. It's when Adam really kind of fundamentally realizes that all these things, all these failings in his life just gave him a perspective that he carries with him.

52:12And that is part of how he views the world and it makes him empathetic to other people. And so it was one of these things where, you know, Skeletor in trying to exploit his enemy's biggest weakness, his self-doubt, it ultimately ends up kind of backfiring and Adam understands that all those things made him who he is. And now that kind of allows him to kind of heal those parts of him.

52:32Chris Hewitt:In terms of shooting it as well, it's really funny because locations we haven't seen for a long time because they're back on Earth, suddenly you're seeing them again, but with added Skeletor. So shooting those scenes, was it very much like, okay, we've shot the early part of the movie now with Nicholas. Okay, bring in Skeletor. Pretty much, pretty much, yeah. Yeah. And we had a funny debate early on where we kind of asked ourselves, okay, Skeletor is going through Adam's memories. So how is Skeletor going to visually be represented in Adam's memories in these scenarios? And I remember at one point I thought, wouldn't that be kind of funny if he was just like wearing appropriate clothing in each one of these environments, like wearing his corporate HR outfit, wearing his gym clothes.

53:17And then so we kind of played around with a couple of designs. I'm like, I don't know, is that going to be ridiculous? But it made us laugh, so we did it. I love seeing Skeletor in workout gear. I think it's very funny. And he's all dapper at the restaurant. So, yeah, basically that's exactly the way we did it. We shot the scenes in Adam's normal life, and then bring in Skeletor. Let's do it the other way with him in it.

53:42Chris Hewitt:Amazing. There's a lot to be said for it makes us laugh, so do it. Was that, in a way, a guiding principle for you on the movie? Yeah, it wasn't just make us laugh because, I mean, I think the film does pull a lot of levers. You know, the fundamental thing is I think that was most important for me to get right was that I really wanted the film to have a strong beating heart at the center of it. And that if we can do that, that allowed us to go in a lot of different directions. So we could play the comedy, play the drama, the keenly felt emotion, we could do the action. And so we want people to have this kind of nice, joyous ride over the course of the thing.

54:13but if something is if we're leaning into the comedy in a certain scene or sequence that if it made us laugh then yeah it pretty much went in.

54:23Chris Hewitt:Give him head run man Again it's something I'm so so proud of It'll be etched in my tombstone if there's any justice in this world Going back to Adam's journey though in terms of developing the film how much discussion did you have internally or otherwise about the split between Eternia and Earth. So we start on Eternia. We then see Adam on Earth. And he's very much a fish out of water in that the last Mass of the Universe movie largely took place on Earth, of course. For budgetary reasons. For budgetary reasons. You could afford to go back to Eternia. We could. Did that split change as the film developed in terms of Eternia, Earth, Eternia?

55:12No. We always, ever since I was involved in the project, it always started on Eternia, went to Earth for a little bit, and then came back to Eternia for most of the rest of the movie. And that accomplished a couple things for us. It allowed us to kind of get introduced to this world and these characters to see where they're at. We wanted to end on a very provocative way and then send Adam off. So then when he comes back, it's a very different world than what he left. It also allowed us to kind of find a way in for people who weren't au fait with attorney or master's law and all that kind of stuff.

55:47It's a weird world. It's a really strange world. I mean, it's kind of like this bizarre, coked-up 80s excess in cartoon form. It's out there. I mean, the characters are so weird. The world is so weird. The vehicles are weird. and so it's a lot if you don't know anything about it it's a lot to just absorb and so in addition to some of the character stuff that it did for us it also allowed us to give the uninitiated an easier way in so they when we come back to Eternia that they they were kind of grounded in something they understood

56:25Chris Hewitt:there you go folks that was Travis Knight our Masters of the Universe spoiler special featuring that entire interview and a discussion of the film featuring me Helen O 'Hara Amon Warman and Dan Jolin is up now for all our Spoiler Special subscribers. If you don't subscribe already and you fancy a bit of that action along with over 500 other Spoiler Specials then frankly who can blame you? Go to empirespoilerspecials.com for more info and to sign up for less than the price of a cup of coffee every month. And on that note that is it for this episode of the interviews. I'm reminded that the regular Empire Podcast is up this Friday featuring an interview with the great David Koepp writer of the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day.

57:09Chris Hewitt:In the meantime thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye bye.