Commercial Vs. Arthouse, Going Marvel, and Notes From Spielberg With ‘Hamnet’ Director Chloé Zhao

0:00This episode is brought to you by Netflix, presenting Beef, from creator, writer, and director Lee Sung-jin. The new installment of the eight-time Emmy-winning anthology series features powerhouse performances from Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Kaylee Spaney, and legendary Korean actors Yoon Yeo-jung and Song Kang-ho. Esquire raves its hands-down the best TV show of the year, and IGN hails it a masterpiece. Lee Sung-jin's series remains an untouchable force. for your Emmy Awards consideration. Adobe Firefly is the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video editing for today's creative process.

0:40Built for creators of every kind, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the asks aren't getting smaller, the budgets aren't getting bigger, and the timelines, oh yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life, Unlock a better way to make with Adobe Firefly. It is Friday, November 28th. If you don't know Chloe Zhao, she's the Oscar-winning writer-director of Nomadland. She also made The Writer, Eternal. She's working on a Buffy reboot. And she also made Hamlet, about William Shakespeare and his family and the tragedy that led him to write Hamlet.

1:18It's very good. One of the frontrunners in this year's Oscar race. We recorded this conversation at Puck's Stories of the Season Awards event earlier this month. It was very fun. We talked about her unique style, how she casts her movies, the dance parties she has on set. She called me spicy at one point. It's a fun chat. So today it's Chloe Zhao from The Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.

1:45Okay, this is going to be fun. I have heard you are fun. You do very serious interviews and you make very serious movies, but I have heard that you are fun. I have heard that you're a bit spicy. you can say jerk it's okay um no spicy is great spicy is okay yes um well thank you for doing this thank you for coming the film is excellent and i i just wanted to start with getting a sense of some of your influences because you have a very distinct visual style in your filmmaking and um you know when you are watching one of your movies if it's on tv and you're in the room you You can kind of tell. So where did you develop that sort of emotional and kind of contemplative style?

2:28I think when I first started making films, I had very little. So I would say limitations was the first influence because we just didn't have money to build or, you know, or even just to create my own vision because we had nothing. But we did have the natural world, which is free. And we did have the sunset, and it's free. And we also had people whose depth is not completely free. But those are the only things I could rely on and to survive on as a filmmaker. So it was out of necessity. So you're drawn to these kind of Western-style landscapes out of necessity? There's nothing inside of you that said, I relate to that or I feel a connection to that?

3:24I think all the Northern Chinese have some Mongolian blood in us. You know, there's a lot of exchanging. And I just know growing up, whenever I hear Mongolian music, I start crying. And so I always yearn for the planes and horses and living in Beijing, you know, yearning for that. So I had the same yearning living in New York for the American planes. Interesting. So what is it about this movie, Hamnet, that chose you? Well, I had a midlife crisis. I did too. I bought a golf cart. There you go. Yeah. Yours is a little different than mine. Yeah. I did some other stuff, but I won't share here. Feel free.

4:10Feel free. Later. so after Nomad and Eternals it was a very intense well really intense 10 years when I made those four films and then 40 is about a time you know if you're lucky it starts and I had four years of you know if you look at my earlier film it's about chasing as many horizons as possible I feel like a pioneer just wanted to capture all the treasures You know, my, my, my, I like this. I like this, I like this. This is exciting. But I was running. I was running for myself. I was afraid to stay still. And after those four years, I was really like, I was thrown into the underworld, which is another way for individuation is to go into the underworld and meet all your shadows, the part of you that you're most afraid.

5:06You hid since you're a little kid and you're afraid that you're shamed. but also your greatest desire and yearning that you have now looked at. And swim in that deluge for four years and then slowly climb myself up. And doing that process is when Hamnet came to me. And I think one of the most difficult shadow that we have, we could have is the wound around the mother. you know I think not only many of us you know what I'm talking about but also collectively as a species I think we have a collective mother wound just because the feminine consciousness has been repressed for thousands of years so in my earlier films the mother character the kind of strength that come from this almost like strength as strong as the ocean, that kind of loving mother, unconditionally witnessing mother figure doesn't exist.

6:12Mother figure pretty much doesn't exist in my films until Hamnet. And I initially said no to Hamnet. Yeah, I read that. And why was that? Just because you didn't feel it was right? I was scared. Because to tell this story, I'm going to have to look at my own mother wound. And that's painful. That's probably the most primal wound you can have. But I knew if we don't deal with that, it's going to get you anyways at some point. And so I was ready after four years. I thought, you know, might as well go all in because this is a whole lot of mother here. Did you feel this movie was a sense of therapy for yourself?

6:55It was. I think all the films, most of us create because if we don't, we're not going to make it. So it is coming from that place. And this one, what I mean by it chooses me because I was ready to excavate that part of myself and bring it out and flesh out the wound and do all that necessary healing. But also when the right project saying like, you're chosen, you're the one, then the amount of synchronicity that were happening. And Jesse was very much Jesse Buckley on a similar path as me. You know, and Paul came in a way and just they're starting having so many little gifts and helpers. And then you go, ah, OK, this is me.

7:44I got to do this. Steven Spielberg is a producer on this project. Amblin had optioned the book. Did you have conversations like this with him in advance? What was his input or what was his role in this personally? Yeah, I do have these kind of, not often, but he is very, he knows that we're very different, very different kinds of filmmakers. And he, and Sam, you know, Mendes, they were great at giving me advice, advice knowing who i am and what kind of filmmaker i am so can you share a piece of advice that spielberg gave you sure um for example when he i won't go into details if you haven't seen the film but when he read our first draft and he he said i think you're missing a scene between father and son and that turned out to be the one and maybe you got a glimpse of it when when he picks up Hamlet.

8:41Will you be brave? Things like that. That's good advice. Also, in the edit, he would say, Chloe, I just promise you, I know you love those things. It's too slow. You've got to speed this part up. Oh, really? Please. Oh, no. He knows how to get an audience. I know. I think he's, yeah. I listen. And no spoilers, because I know a lot of people haven't seen the film yet. I don't think you can spoil this film. No spoilers. No, I don't think you can. No, you can. But I don't want to say, but you had said on a panel that I went to when I saw the film that you completely changed the ending of this film.

9:16And without saying what you did, but why did you do that? And is that something you often do? I would be terrified to just change the ending of a script that everybody had kind of agreed this is what we're shooting. I realized during this press tour, I might have reviewed too much. So the next time when I try to get a script greenlit, the studio is going to be like, so we heard from your podcast. It's only November. This is going to be going for three more months. We know this ending doesn't work. So what's your real plan? I never went into making a film knowing how it's going to end. I knew the endings on the page reads pretty good.

9:59I'm going to get it greenlit, but it's not going to work. You just decided that. I think most filmmakers read the script and go, how are you going to do that?

10:16It's part of this holding the tension between knowing and not knowing. Also, I think if you want to use masculine feminine terms, And I think I'm a quite feminine storyteller in the sense of it has nothing to do with gender, just energy. The masculine energy is very linear. It's about getting from here to here. And it's like a beam of light, powerful, unstoppable. And then the feminine energy is like the black hole. It's a spiral. And it spirals down. and so the thing is when you're on a spiral you don't really quite know when the end is going to happen. It's going to stop when the momentum stops.

11:05So you just have to trust and lucky for us in Hamnet this was a close call. It was four days before we robbed production. We were in the Globe Theater and we shot the ending. Which you had rebuilt. You built your own Globe Theater. Yes. Part of it and then CG because we couldn't afford it. the whole thing and and so on that day there were two people on that set knew that we had no film and it was me and jesse buckley if your actor is really present they would know i remember her looking at me going this is the ending that i went through all of this this is it i was like yeah it was great with a high-pitched voice so we avoided each other that that day all day that's funny and we both without giving it away we both had a really intense catharsis because the tension we were holding and and then because what we went through the ending emerged interesting you mentioned this spielberg note about speeding it up when you're making films do you have a sense of what might be commercial what might be popular and does that factor into what you're doing Yeah, it does.

12:24I prefer this, but the audience will want that. It might not always show up that way, but I do think about it a lot because I was the producers on my earlier films. And I always think about even just going to a festival. I never take it for granted that someone would just want to watch your film. People's time is precious. If they open this festival catalog and there are hundreds of films, why should they see mine? and so I think about has this been done before? have these images been shown before? has this story been told this way before? and then even just one image you put on the screen to represent your film are there enough paradox or contradiction in there that you go this is interesting I think about this all the time in terms of Hamnet if you read the logline of the story it's not the most commercial story but then I thought yeah but the IP is strong though Maggie O 'Farrill's book is incredible and it's Shakespeare it's like Shakespeare is pretty strong IP it's strong IP people know what it is yes so I figured you squint a little you think it's Hamlet yeah exactly and then you know and then I make many traces along the way to think how can we enhance how can we make us more relevant you have to think about these things because you can't take it for granted It.

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14:54Do you follow industry stuff? Do you follow industry news? Are you aware? Or do you like sort of float blissfully above all that? I wish I could lie and said I watch yours religiously, but I do not it's okay I will not be offended no I not not so much um medium rare yes yeah but you but you do pay attention I mean I ask because obviously you did a marvel film which is the sort of pinnacle of commercial filmmaking yes and like they've worked with a number of quote unquote indie filmmakers but what drew you to a marvel project and vice versa like what was that call like so for those 10 years when I was going around America and learning new ways of lives and having a relationship with nature I never did there was something bubbling inside really intensely and volcano reference again erupted and that was in the form of Eternals because Eternals at its heart is a story about a pantheon of gods having discussions about the nature of humanity and whether even we are worth surviving.

16:06And so we are worth it. And it was my way of trying to process all the questions I was having in those 10 years of making the first three films. So it was the content. And also I love allegorical storytelling. I love mythology building story. I grew up in manga and anime. So it was really amazing to be able to play in that world. And so they called you and you said, I'm interested? No, I called them. You called them and said, this property in particular? It might be a mutual calling. Okay, that's fine. But I went in at first for Black Widow, and then there was a scheduling conflict. And then when Nate Moore, my producer for Eternals, showed me the treatment of this, I go, oh, wow, I get to have all these like immortals, like a Greek play to discuss humanity.

17:03And then I get to create monsters and space gods. Right. Dinosaurs. Yeah. Did it scare you a little that the stakes would be so much higher for something this commercial driven? It probably should have scared me. I don't know. I don't I don't I tend to jump before I know how to. So you do another Marvel movie? I would. Yeah. With the right story. If it chooses me. If it chooses you. Last year I asked Denis Villeneuve if he would do Star Wars. Is there any other IP out there that you'd like to do? Besides Buffy. We know you're doing a Buffy TV pilot. How's that going, by the way? Great. We shot it already.

17:44It's done. So you're happy with it? I'm happy with it. Are you going to work on it going forward or just the pilot? Well, my company is part of the producing team. So I will be involved as a producer. but now as a director very cool um is there any other ip out there that you look at and you're like oh i could do something with that what are you doing you can just drop something this is how this listen drop the hint here you'll get a call tomorrow i know well i'm waiting i'm listening but i am uh very excited about the idea of if you're talking about ip's manga yeah so let's talk about that because you just did a deal with the the is it kadansh kadansha kadansha studios which is a big anime company um you mentioned that you grew up on that you're interested in that what do you plan to do with this i just did an episode of this last week you can listen to that if um i did oh you did listen to that on my way here i'm going to but after this i'm gonna listen to his show okay yeah and now i'm thinking what did i say did i say anything offensive you should tell me like the most spicy episode i'll listen to that one there's some spicy ones i'll give you i'll give you some episodes yeah um the ones that have the little e next to them explicit language yeah those are the ones oh i like yeah can we make this uh can we make this well you could you could drop some f-bombs if you want we're not we're all adults here this is fucking great uh there we go we're getting the e i'll tell craig we're getting the e um so tell me about what you plan to do in the anime universe well i have always my my whole life has been a it's always been a dream to be able to create and foster more connection and understanding between the east and the west it's very meaningful to me and to be able to be a bridge between the japanese authors and the international filmmakers because there has been traditionally some difficulties in adapting Japanese manga anime into life action.

19:54There's a lot of loss in translation. Well, I actually asked this on the show. I said, why aren't these movies being made by American studios? If the market is clearly there, they're relying on bringing over these movies already made. Like, make them here. That question is as if you're asking why the East and West can't harmonize perfectly. I mean, that is a timeless question. And we just have to case by case. You know, it's like being a matchmaker, making sure we understand what the sense is true intention. And, you know, when they're in their little studios and drawing manga, it's survival for these authors.

20:35You know, it's sometimes the only way for them to connect with the world. And so we need to understand where the humanity in that. And then we match that up with the international filmmakers who understand where that comes from, where the story comes from. And then casting 80 % of the time is about finding the right match. And then it's about creating a garden away from the storms of the industry to allow them to communicate. and for the seedlings to have some roots and some strength before we go into the studios and before the rest, you know, both the beauty and the brutality comes in. I think that's a very nice way of saying Hollywood would fuck it up.

21:25No, no, no. Well, you know, it's, again, the paradox, right? The brightest, the most beautiful trees is next to the lava field. There's extremity. the weather is extreme out here and it is beautiful it's it's the natural world nature don't romanticize nature yeah it's extremely brutal and so we just wanted to make sure when it's already delicate you're talking about trying to have two very different perspectives coming together we wanted to give it a bit of a greenhouse before it come out into the world that makes sense yeah um before we wrap up i gotta ask you so on the one to ten that shit crazy scale tell me where the 2021 covid oscars ranks you were the big winner that night medium rare it was the the train station oscars i've heard some stories about that night and i mean what was it like from your perspective it's like that volcano field you know it's like There are moments that are just, I will never forget.

22:31But there's also moments that I will never forget. I mean, here you are, the pinnacle of your career. You're winning best picture. And yet there are protocols. You're not allowed to touch anyone. You're not allowed to be within four steps of them. And you brought the nomads with you to the show. And it's got to just be this surreal experience. I would say on a more serious note, the need for connection. you know and this is why I do this as a little as a young girl I was very lonely so I wrote fan fiction and put them on the internet and so I can read the comments because it feels like I'm connected to someone so even though in the room we can't touch each other we can't but the the more we can't touch each other the more we can feel the energy of the yearning to be with each other.

23:20Here goes the paradox again. So we are in a business. It can be cynical sometimes. We could joke about it, but this work is sacred. This work has been there since the beginning to help us survive more than ever. So I'm grateful for the work you all do. You as well. I appreciate that. Thank you. And we are out of time. I just wanted to thank Chloe for doing this. Thank you to everyone for being here. We are back with the call sheet. Craig, have you seen Zootopia, the original? I have. I really like it. Oh, you've seen it. See, I would have thought that would have come out in like a kind of dead zone for you in animated movies, 2016.

24:03I know. So that was like almost 10 years ago. Yeah, I was basically 21 years old. I don't know why I saw it. You and the college bros just like set out for some Zootopia action? I think I saw it at home with my family or something like that and I ended up really liking it. I think it kind of feels like an old school animated movie where there's actually a decent amount of adult humor in it as well. Totally. It's good. It's one of my favorite of the Disney animation side. It's very smart. Of the Disney empire. Yeah. Bateman's great. So Zootopia 2 is looking like it's going to be huge this weekend.

24:33The tracking on this is 130 according to NRG. Some have it a little lower than that. That is obviously a huge step up from the original, which opened to 75. That one was different because it Open during March, I believe. This is$130 or$125 for the five-day. But I got to take the over on this one, right? Yeah, I think so. First of all, a little accountability corner from last week. We hit on Wicked. We had the over on$125 for Wicked, and we hit that by like$25 million. So way over last weekend. And I think that's going to keep going this weekend. I do too. Reviews are great. It seems like people think the sequel is just as good as the original.

25:14And I don't think they'll cancel. So, I mean, last year we had Moana 2 and the first Wicked on the same weekend and both did great. It was a record weekend. So, record Thanksgiving. So, I think that this will be a repeat of that. I'm not sure it's going to get to those heights because Zootopia is not Moana, but Zootopia is pretty good and the reviews have been good so far. Also, there's just a lot of pent up interest for children's movies. I mean, you talk about it all the time. How long has it been since there's been a good children's movie in theaters? It's crazy. I mean, Wicked kind of counts, but this is the first full on all audience animated tentpole since I think since Bad Guys 2 in like August.

25:51It's amazing. Yeah. So that build up has to pay off in some way. Yeah. Yeah. The big question for this one, the first Zootopia got to a billion and it did almost 200 million in China. Chinese people love Zootopia. I don't know what it is about it, but they have a theme land in the park there in Shanghai now. So Zootopia 2 is opening in China too, right? Oh, it is. Yes. It is. but the question is you know the china box office is not what it was in 2016 so what's it going to be in china and if it doesn't do 100 150 in china can it get to a billion i don't know why is the chinese box office not what it was is that a covet thing it's just the entire chinese market is not as welcoming to outside movies they have their own industry now and they're right i know that like their own movies are starting to overtake american movies but isn't zootopia separate from not because it's a beloved franchise.

26:40Maybe. Maybe it is. I mean, Fast and Furious did okay there. Some movies do okay there. Avatar will probably do great there. But will it do 200 million great? I don't know. I think the way that it's been described to me is, Zootopia is a story of like a small town rabbit going to the big city. And that appealed to a lot of Chinese people that live in these second and third tier cities in China and kind of have dreams of going to the big city. and it really appealed in the multiplexes that have really been built out in these areas of China. So if it does that again, then I think Disney's in great situation.

27:16But if it doesn't, we'll see. And can they make it up elsewhere? I think it can get to a billion. If it does 300 million this weekend and opening weekend, it can. But it's going to be close. Question for you. A lot of the Pixar movies, I know Zootopia is not Pixar, but a lot of Pixar movies, a lot of animated films in general take a long time between the first and the second one. I mean, it's 10 years between the Zootopias. I think it was like 14 years between the Incredible, or maybe even more than that, between the Incredibles 1 and 2. But then you look at like Illumination films, like Despicable Me, it's like two, three years between the sequels.

27:49Is that just the difficulty of the animation? Is it waiting for the right story? Is AI going to speed up the amount of sequels that can come out? Like, why do you think some studios take so much longer than others? Is that just a creative thing? Or is that just it takes a long time to animate? Right. Disney would tell you that Illumination just poops them out as fast as they can. And they're not of the same quality. They're not of the same ambition. They don't have the same type of artistry associated with it. I think if we had Chris Melodandre from Illumination in here, he'd probably say that's BS.

28:18And they all sit around and compliment each other and have their committee meetings and their development hell and all of the stuff that doesn't really matter. And he does it just more efficiently. I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that it It often takes a lot longer for Disney movies to get made than it does the Illumination movies. And maybe AI will solve that. I mean, I think it's kind of got to. If the box office expectations for these movies are coming down, then the costs necessarily have to come down. And that's a lot of the cost is the process. Also, I think the bet that or the argument that, oh, we take our time and make good movies.

28:54It's like, well, you look at Illumination now. Minions and Despicable Me makes a ton of money. Super Mario's, the second one's coming out soon. That's going to make a ton of money. The argument of like the longer you wait, the better the return is not necessarily working anymore. No. I mean, we can get into a quality discussion, but certainly from a financial perspective, Illumination has the model that seems to work the best. But if you look at the franchises, I would say that Disney has the best animated franchises still. Other than Minions, they've got, you know, a million of them and some that they've created in the last 20 years.

29:25So we'll see. It'd be fun to put them up against each other. All right, that's the show today. I want to thank my guest, Chloe Zhao, and everyone who came out to the Puck Awards season event. I want to thank producer Craig Horlbeck, our editor Jesse Lopez, and I want to thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll see you next week. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver.

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