The Interviews (Theo James, John Waters, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett)

0:00My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about$10 ,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed. We had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.

0:46GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe.

1:14Hello, pod.

1:15Chris Hewitt:I'm Chris Hewitt, and welcome to another episode of The Interviews, the show that rounds up our chats with the cream of the cinematic crop. Fuse, with a said, is the latest film by David McKenzie, also with a said, the British filmmaker behind the likes of Young Adam, Hell or High Water, The Outlaw King, and last year's thriller Relay. He's staying firmly in high-concept thriller territory with Fuse, which follows an army bomb disposal expert, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as he tries to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb found on a London building site. and a gang of thieves led by Theo James who used the chaos engineered by the bomb to attempt to pull off an audacious heist.

1:57Chris Hewitt:And when James came into the pod booth recently I jumped at the chance to speak to him. The English actor has been consistently impressive over the years in the likes of the Divergent movies, The Gentleman, the second season of The White Lotus and The Monkey. And I asked him about some of those as well as Fuse which is an interesting film and that is very hard to talk about without going into spoiler territory. It also gives us very little information or backstory intentionally about his character Corallus. So bear that in mind as you listen to this interview. So here you go, Theo James talking about Fuse, which is in cinemas as of tomorrow.

2:35Chris Hewitt:Enjoy. Theo James, star of Fuse, welcome to the Empire Podcast. How are you? Good, thanks for having me. Oh no, pleasure to have you here and this is a strange film to talk about. It's a cracking thriller, but it is so twisty and turny that I'm worried we may not be able to talk about it at all. Or even, yeah. It's a kind of film about deception in many ways. David McKenzie, the director, always liked the idea of doing something hard-boiled, which is a genre of tough on the outside, a little softer on the inside. That's where the phrase comes from. Obviously, I'm sure you know. Like a hard-boiled egg, like my face.

3:23Chris Hewitt:It's your face famously like a hard-boiled egg. People say that about you. That's all they say. But yeah, he kind of had a concept, and then they had a script, but David really wanted to work on it and mold it and change it. So it evolved. The essential plot lines remained intact, but many of the detail changed and evolved as we were doing it. Where the character's from, how they reacted, what kind of people they were. Really? Yeah. Okay. So when you started, how locked in was your character? And your accent as well? Yeah, not very locked in. That was kind of David and I. His original version of him was a little unclear and I wanted to just make him as fully rounded as he can be in a movie where it's about unknowable people in a way.

4:17Absolutely, yeah. I liked the idea of, I mean, there's the blood diamond thing, obviously, but there are these guys who, these South African guys who've been in the military, then they kind of leave the military and are brought into nefarious kind of gray areas of morality and then start getting sucked into even darker areas of morality. I kind of like the idea of that, the Diamond Heist mix for someone who had experience. It just felt real to me. Plus, you know, for me, accents are quite useful. They really ground a character. And, you know, I really like the kind of specificity of South African.

5:02and it's kind of percussive, it's quite confident, but then there's something charming about it at the same time. It feels kind of really international to me, which sounds like a stupid thing today. But yeah, that was kind of the beginning of the process.

5:20Chris Hewitt:I love that you can still drop into it. Because I imagine some actors, when they have an accent, they just dispose of it, and they don't necessarily have it in the toolkit again? Yeah, it's funny. Some are like that. and then some really stick forever. It's a bit like those plays I did when I was 20, and pieces of monologue will still be in my head, whereas most films I've ever done evaporate into the oblivion. So, yeah, it's funny. What did you do when you were 20? What plays did you do back then? What's sticking in your head right now? Back then, I was at Nottingham University doing an undergrad in philosophy, and it was a great, it was called The New Theatre.

6:03It was like a theatre run by students and you kind of got to put on almost anything you like. But I remember doing Patrick Marber's Closer. Oh my God, right. And it's a good, you know, I'm sure, if I watched it now, I'm sure I'd be vomiting with cringe. But I just remember thinking I enjoyed its kind of complexities and the moral inexactitude of all these characters. And I think that's what I find interesting in this film. These people, Sam's character, certainly, and Aaron's character, there's no black or white. These are kind of likable-ish people, but also people with fairly lucid morality, should we say.

6:50Chris Hewitt:Yeah, one of the things I really liked about it was that sort of elusive quality. about it as well. Your character Corrales and, you know, Aaron's Taylor. Aaron's Taylor? Aaron's character. Aaron's Taylor. Aaron's Taylor, because he is very well tailored in this. He is. Aaron's character. Like, we are not given a lot of backstory. We're not given a lot of information. You know, things are doled out in pieces. So you have to kind of latch on to characters and really not knowing a lot about them. And I thought it was fascinating that the movie is as tense as it is, given that. Because usually there's a lot of backstory.

7:21Chris Hewitt:You get invested emotionally in characters. but it feels to me like this is a real genre exercise for David that he wanted to see how little you can know about characters and still get infested in them. I think you're right. It was definitely a genre exercise for him. He wanted to do a kind of, you know, a mishmash and explosive genre of two things, right? It's kind of the war movie Hurt Locker meets a kind of classic 70s heist movie. And again, it goes back to the hard-boiled thing. I think you just wanted it to be hard-boiled. Don't explain the characters too much. And I agreed. I was always trying to strip back.

7:59Because in the process, naturally people go, oh, but do you need to explain more about that character? And I think ultimately a film like this is supposed to be about just the experience and then the payoff at the end. You don't need to have every detail kind of spelled out for you.

8:18Chris Hewitt:Yeah, no, I really like that about it. And also, I'm just fascinated by the idea that, I mean, you barely speak for the first, I think, the first 30, 40 minutes of the movie. So is that something that you're doing as well? Are you stripping back? Are you literally taking land to dialogue out the script like Eastwood used to do or Mel Gibson used to do? Yeah, I mean, and with David, to be honest, we just, I think the, you know, I tried making him a little bit more, because I wanted him, once we get to know him, to have a roguish kind of quick-fire quality. And I think, in a way, I tried that at the beginning, but it made the character lose a bit of power, really.

8:57So the idea was to bring it back to very little. And all the guys in the crew, really, just kind of communicating in very stripped-back ways, so you know very little about them. But then the way it's shot as well, Well, David likes big fat close-ups, I think. He likes to be thinking, which I actually like too. I like them as an actor and I like them cinematically. I like watching them because what is great about screen is the ability to come in on someone's eyes and read into their thoughts or have the audience project their own assumptions onto the character. That's what's great about screen.

9:36So anyway, using that kind of filmmaking allows you into these characters a little bit, but you're removed enough because you don't know a lot about them.

9:46Chris Hewitt:How in control are you as an actor in terms of a close-up? So obviously you're acting, you're in the moment, you're going to be responding to your scene partner or partners. How much control do you have over your facial expressions? How much control do you have over where your eyes go, over the way your lips may move or your nose may move? Those little tells, little signifiers that give things away. none because I think as soon as you start thinking that you're not in a way when I first started working the biggest thing I found as an actor is to be able to look in someone's eyes and just be listening in the moment and that is the most important thing if you know what I mean if you're at a point where you're thinking consciously about what your face is doing then that isn't reality and it's not naturalism.

10:40You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess my point is that no. I mean, I think some actors can do that and can do it successfully, but to me I can't think about any of that because it feels self-conscious. You like to surprise yourself as well or be surprised at the moment. I just think it's more like me and you talking. If I'm looking at you... There's a tight descriptor, Theo. But there's no part of me that's thinking about how I look because as soon as you do that, you are removed from naturalism and reality in a way.

11:09Chris Hewitt:Is that something that you, your journey as an actor, is that something that has always been there for you, you know, starting out back in the day? No, no, I definitely had to learn that. I mean, I love film. I always watch films with big family, lots of kids. My brother did film. He was the eldest of five. He did film at UCSD and we used to make films together and he used to show me, that sounds kind of... snuff movies I think I'm I think I'm I think I'm I think I'm you know it's plausible deniability they're not snuff movies that's good but as a you know anyway I was very interested but then I went to I did a lot of theatre and then I went to the old Vic where it's all about yeah stagecraft and Jacobean it's all about how you project your voice it's about resonance all those kind of things which is interesting and it's about I am big pentameter and all of that stuff but when I came to you know being actually trying to get work uh it was a quite quick learning curve because obviously it's a very it is a very different skill set um and i had to adjust definitely i remember doing i think my very first audition was for um like a character in thor like the first thought oh right okay i remember i was just like smashing it out there like i was on stage and And they're like, yeah, I think you want to bring that down a little bit.

12:28I'm like, ah, I see, I see. Okay, gotcha. But it's a constant learning experience. I don't think it's something you ever like, you know, you think you've mastered it and then you start the next job and you go, no, I haven't. It's an evolution. And I think that's how all actors should be. Absolutely. You know, I think. You just stagnate otherwise, right?

12:53Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. when was the last time you auditioned I imagine it was quite some time ago that's a good question I don't know if you have to think that's usually I'd usually mean to us it was quite a while ago maybe the White Lotus I think White Lotus yeah what about you 25 years ago for a theater production of amateur theater production of The Crucible The Crucible oh nice where was that University what University Yorks and Johns yeah Yeah. What were you studying? Film and TV. Oh, okay. So you're here legit. Yeah, tangentially, I've ended up around the industry. But I didn't get the role I was going for.

13:36Chris Hewitt:I imagine you got the role you were going for in Glaser. Well, that, but I often didn't. Yeah. Yeah, I remember at the old Vic, they had a Romeo and Juliet. And I was like, do you know Tybalt or something? and they're like, you're going to be Peter the maid. I know, I was very cross. But then you threw yourself into that role with gusto. I did, I did. I fully method it up. That's the way to go. Yeah, you mentioned The White Lotus. I mean, that obviously had a huge impact on your career, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, great writing. freedom in, you know, he trusts his actors once he's cast them.

14:28It's Mike White, yeah. Mike White, to kind of experiment and go big or small, which I think is a really good environment. Yeah. Trust in, once you've, because in a way, I've heard this, lots of directors say, in a way, you get a casting right, then you should kind of let it roll. I think if you don't, then actors start second-guessing and performances lack naturalism, if that makes sense.

14:55Chris Hewitt:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So great writing with the ability for a bit of freedom is the best, you know, for any actor, really. That's what Mike does. They've just announced a cast for season four. Ooh. Season three was last year, of course. Do you watch on with a sense of, oh, I'd quite like to be... No, no. Are you happy that your experience was done? No, honestly, I don't. I enjoy watching the third season. And I think they're designed in a way to have new people and new energy injected into them. And, you know, I'm a little bit of a psychopath in that way. Like, generally, once something is over, whatever that thing may be, I'm kind of moving forward, which my wife often tells me awful.

15:40Chris Hewitt:Unless it's a South African accent, in which case it's always in the pocket. Only because it's useful. In what circumstances is it useful? I don't know. It's funny. My wife tells me off because somehow, I don't know why, but in public situations, if something's happening and I want to call it out, for some reason I'll put an Irish accent on. Because I think it's more disarming than an English accent. Oh, it's very charming. Do you know what I mean? Like an English accent, you're like, excuse me. An Irish accent, I think you get away with more. But she's like, what the fuck are you doing? Please stop doing that.

16:18It's embarrassing to me. How specific is your Irish accent with you? I'm not going to do it because my wife, if she hears this podcast, will crucify me. But no, I had to do it once for a film with Jim Sheridan. And it was terrifying because it was years ago, it was 10 years ago. But I remember going to the read-through and me and Rooney Mara were the only non-Irish. And there's a big table really full of Irish people. And then suddenly you're trying to do it in front of proper Irish people. I found it pretty hard

16:50Chris Hewitt:let's see oh my god that was amazing I've got where to go but I just want to ask one last question I love The Monkey and you mentioned table reads there and was there a table read for that and what was that like given that you were playing two very very different roles good question about the table role there wasn't actually I imagine yeah Oz doesn't strike me as a table read guy no no he's not and I like him a lot We had known, we actually developed something together during lockdown, something else. So we'd known each other. And then he was talking, he was going to do The Monkey. And I was obviously, you know, very up for it because I know how talented he is.

17:35I've been watching him since Black Coat's Daughter. But I think originally there were going to be two different characters. but me and Oz, I think it'd be interesting if they were familial and they were basically twins. So I kind of loved it because the fun of that movie was to be able to play polar opposites. You know, you get a kind of introverted, sarcastic, and quite controlled person mixed with a kind of maniac. And Oz was like Mike in the way you can swing and he lets you, you know, because I always heard that thing about Al Pacino, right? He says, I'm going to butcher the quote, but he said something about, you know, when I go for it, it's like an opera singer, right?

18:26Sometimes I go for it and I hit the note and it's great and sometimes I go for the note and it cracks. So like, i.e. the ability to like try things is important, I think, because otherwise it becomes an exercise in like looking sexy and saying stuff in a croaky voice. Yeah, I can see that.

18:46Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. On that note, Theo James, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming in. Thank you, sir. My name is Mackenzie, and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about$10 ,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed.

19:31We had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe.

19:51Chris Hewitt:All right, that was Theo James. And Fuse, with this ad, is out in cinemas with an S from Friday, April 3rd. Okay, now we've lit the fuse on the show. Who's ready for some trash? And who better to talk trash than the man dubbed affectionately the Pope of Trash? Yes, it's John Waters, the legendary American director of low-budget, low-taste classics, two of which, Pink Flamingos and Multiple Maniacs, both of which star Waters' great friend and muse Divine, are playing at a new season at the BFI South Bank in London entitled, yes, you've guessed it, Trash, Subtitled, The Wildest Films You've Ever Seen It's on right now and it runs until the 30th of April And as well as films by Waters It features screens of cult films from the likes of Herschel Gordon-Lewis, Ed Wood and Russ Mayer As well as special intros and on Friday, April 10th, a cabaret evening with Mink Stoll and Peaches Christ Now Waters himself was kind enough to take time out from his busy schedule to jump onto Zoom this week to talk trash to the Empire podcast with our very own Jamie Graham.

21:05Chris Hewitt:Here it is. Enjoy. So, Mr. John Waters, welcome to the Empire podcast. A delight to have you today. Thank you for having me. Not at all. Not at all. So I want to start by asking, because trash cinema, I mean, there's so much that can be said about it, but what does it mean to you? If you're describing it to the listeners out there who may not be familiar with trash cinema, what are the characteristics? What are the aesthetics? What can you tell us about it? I think trash cinema really became a term when sexploitation and exploitation films met art films together. And they they made a joke about censorship and what you could get away with.

21:52And a new genre was born from this with movies that were incredibly original, that were not always a hit when they first came out, but have been treasured by a few. And luckily, new people learn about them every year. Yeah, yeah, very much so. And I'm sure the BFICs and many more people will learn about them. Now, you obviously, you started in the 60s. 60s you did several short films and you made mondo trash show in 1969 but trash cinema goes way back doesn't it goes back to the 1930s so when you were growing up did you have influences did you have particular films or filmmakers you looked up to certainly not from the 30s and i don't think you could call those films trash that was a different thing because then it was i don't know i i was breaking the haze code and all that kind of yeah that's a whole different thing i I think these films were started to compete.

22:51The Hollywood system could not show certain things. And these films played with that and made fun of that and, and snuck things in. I mean, I mean, George and Mike Kuchar's brother, Sins of the Flesh Apos was one of the first underground movies I ever saw. And it was a huge influence on me. It took Douglas Sirk and put him together with a shot of a turd and a toilet. Nobody had ever done that before. and even doris wishman whose film on here another day another man i don't think even i have ever seen this one but uh she was an outsider artist really i think she was a totally like a jewish grandmother who made neck nudie exploitation films with titles like nude on the moon is there a better title than that ever i don't think so no that is absolutely marvelous now i know for a fact i see your list at the end of every year you do a top 10 films list and you have all kinds of cinema on there you like highbrow cinema art cinema trash cinema everything's there now do you feel you need to understand the rules of kind of mainstream cinema and even highbrow art cinema in order to break the rules and subvert the rules in trash cinema well i always said that to know to make to use bad taste and change people's opinion you'd have to know the rules of good taste right i think my my top 10 is usually just no middle brow you know i i uh i love final destination part two and i loved eddington one was in a crazy art movie that goes off the rails in a beautiful way and final destination was the fourth fourth i think uh part of the of an exploitation uh series movies that it's actually absolutely done to perfection so i believe that lowbrow can be high art if it's done well yeah yeah very much so now i want to talk about multiple maniacs which was your second movie in 1970 now this film it's got cop killing it's got a sex act with rosary beads it's got divine being sexually assorted by a giant lobster now i just wonder do you think it's kind of now even more scandalous than it was then because we now live in such a pc world yes i think pink flamingos definitely is you can't say happy birthday fatso anymore there's lines in there i always said you can say the f word on american network television but you can't say fat on public tv very true things things have changed multiple maniacs was made in an homage kind of to herschel gordon lewis who's also in this series he made a movie called 2000 maniacs yeah and i just love the title uh it is a movie that was made to offend hippies for a hippie audience which as i've always done made fun of whatever political correctness was at this time this is making fun of hippie correctness it was the peace and love years and we had a movie that ludicrously, you know, worshipped crazy violence.

26:00But it was a comedy. That's the whole thing. And even the rosary job, the most sacrilegious thing. I was raised Catholic, and I'm always thinking of Bunuel and all the other people that have used Catholic scenes to try to get it out of your system. It's impossible. Even the rosary job still made me feel glad I was Catholic because sex will always be dirty. Yeah, yeah, very much so. And then Pink Flamingos, which is obviously a part of this season. I mean, it's infamously got the singing anus. It's got divine eating dog turd. It was banned in certain territories. Mainstream critics, a lot of them dismissed it.

26:39But audiences really took to it. It did really well. Were you surprised by the success of it in that way? I was not surprised at the success. The world premiere was in Baltimore. I rented a university hall. we had three shows for three nights friday saturday and sunday at 8 10 and midnight every show was sold out and the audience went insane i knew that even if you hated the movie you had to talk about it yeah so i was not surprised it was a hit uh i was thrilled i never knew it would play 10 years at midnight cinema i never knew i'd still be talking about it half a century later or whatever how many years it's been but uh still i i'm proud of that and yes Pink Flamingos is even worse today than it was then.

27:24However, it got named by the American government as a great American film. Variety, who gave it the meanest review ever, wrote a kind of apology and then picked it as one of the best hundred film comedies ever up there with Charlie Chapsule and the Marx Brothers. So I feel just delight about it all. I don't feel I don't want revenge. the bad review variety gave me helped me more than this new good thing in a way it was nice to get the new good yeah but the negative reviews at the time i built a career off of i was going to say that its reputation has only grown over the years that i think now along with plan nine from outer space by edward it's it's probably regarded as a kind of citizen cane of trash isn't it well yes maybe, and I'm compliment and thank you, but I think the movies are very, very different.

28:15I don't think Ed Wood ever made any movie to be funny. He never made anything to be so bad. It was good. He was trying the best he could. Pink Flamingos, I knew what I was doing. I knew that I was making fun of exploitations and censorship and everything. Ed Wood was another almost outsider artist that was driven and made these movies outside the system. But I don't think he ever thought ever used the word camp or thought they were yeah yeah very much that's why they're so good if you try to be campy it doesn't work the real meaning of camp a word i never use anymore is basically so bad it's good without the knowledge and you you have you can't say it later like showgirls the director says now he made it to be funny i don't believe him yeah that's why it's so good yeah yeah yeah i think you're right on that one so something we need to touch upon is there's a very kind of serious intent to a lot of trash cinema that beneath the shock tactics beneath the rough and ready aesthetics it does i mean it can be political it can be transgressive it deals it subverts with ideas of gender and sexuality i mean how important is all of that side of it well i think sometimes you can read a little too much in it russ myer was trying to make money he didn't give a crap about feminist politics at the time even though he made a classic of it yeah i i think you can read too much into it some of these films were made totally just to make money and uh it didn't matter they they had an accidental masterpiece i mean you look at blood feast it's hardly a work of art but it is the first movie where they distributed vomit bags it is one of the most hilarious crazy movies i remember seeing it at the drive-in and in the old days at the drive-in in america whenever you saw tits or gore you honked your horn so this movie the horns were honking through the whole movie how old were you when you first saw movies like herschel gordon lewis's blood feast probably well i don't remember I got my license at 16 and the first place I went is the drive-in.