Ari Aster on making ‘Eddington’ feel like the internet

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0:30Shake it, don't break it. It's The Treatment, which you can also hear at kcow.com slash the treatment. I think when I was just telling my guest writer-director Ari Aster that I first heard about him when I was teaching at AFI, and the film everybody told me that I had to see was The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. He's going to make such films as Hereditary, Midsommar, his newest film, which I really do think is an intersection between A Serious Man and Raising Arizona, among other things, is Eddington, which I saw at this year's Con Film Festival. Ari, first of all, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me.

1:03There is an aspect of the Coen films that are also kind of like old EC horror comics. And there's an aspect of your film that does that too, but the kind of horror that makes you laugh and gasp at the same time. And so much of what you do is geared toward getting people to, I want to haste to use the word engaged, but I think give in to the movies in a way that people don't anymore. Right. Right. Look, I'm a genre filmmaker, right? So that means I'm working in a space that comes with a lot of expectations and familiarity and people know what to expect. And I enjoy that because then I can upend those expectations.

1:44And so I am always looking for ways to play with, you know, a language that's already kind of established. I'm just thinking, going back to the strange thing about the Johnsons, I mean, that room is so claustrophobic. That bedroom that you start the film off. We should say it's about a father-son relationship that in many of the cases of your film takes a turn. but it's interesting because also it's a film about an African American family and you see a film like that at a place like AFI, you have certain expectations about that anyway. Right. Made by me, right? And so that film was a subject of controversy while I was there.

2:26You told me that they showed it to you when you first... I asked, well, I was told I had to see it, so I asked to see it. Well, it's so funny. It's so funny how things changed because it was the movie that they, I think, wanted to... I think people know me. I told you the movies that were connected to it were David Lynch's Short of a Razorhead and then Marty Breast's Hot Tomorrows, the Short of that. All of which were like these things that were incredibly controversial at the time. But recognition that there's a point of view that is not what places certain film schools tend to, I think, promote.

2:59From that moment on, I was excited just because I can't think of anybody who does what you do with creating anxiety in space, in spaces. especially with people getting too close to each other physically, which is something that I think you have a particular affinity for, don't you? Right, right. Well, speaking of COVID, right? Yeah, that's the world of this new film. One of the worlds of the new film. But so much of these films are about the anxiety of proximity. Bo was afraid it was about that anxiety. And, you know, the beginning of, I hate to keep going back to your short, but Father Meeley gets too close.

3:35He violates a space and these violations of space and what that does to us, I think, in really subconscious ways is the one one of the threats that clearly run through your films. That's such an interesting way of putting it. And I think true. The strange thing with the Johnsons was also kind of a was something of a reaction to just the system at AFI, which was really I loved AFI and it was huge for me and so helpful. And it's where I learned to really direct because it was the first time that I was working with people who were working in their own disciplines. And, you know, instead of, you know, like in film school, you usually have to drag your friends into not helping you, you know, just standing there as you do all the work.

4:19And so that was the first time that I was able to really work with the crew. And so it was great. But AFI also is like the industry school. And I remember when they first showed us the films they were proudest of during orientation and they were calling cards and they were, you know, kind of saying all the things you're supposed to say. And they were kind of like, you know, fitting into all the boxes that you're supposed to fit into. And I just thought, you know, what's the worst thing that I could make here? And that's where that's and that's where the Johnsons came from. I think, though, again, I want to talk to you about proximity, just because for me that's where so much, I think, anxiety is about, especially in the Western world, about people getting too close or being afraid of people getting too close.

5:04Distance, you play with that so beautifully, and Bo is afraid. And here, just that people can't connect with each other physically, there's a constant state of anxiety about that. And I think for a lot, you probably heard the word triggering about Eddington, not for many of the other reasons, But the fact that I think the subtextual thing about space and not being able to get close to people and what that created, I mean, that to me is one of the real horrors of the film. But people can't actually really touch. Right. And not just physical proximity. But, you know, it's a film that's about people who are all living in different realities, even though they're, you know, on the same plane and they're living together.

5:47They're not reachable to each other. it's our situation right now and i think the film just came out of this need to somehow this need to grapple with this new world we're living in it feels like covid was the last link to like whatever old world we were living in was cut and it wasn't the beginning of anything it was it was the inflection point and we're still living in it and i feel like we haven't really been able to metabolize what happened in 2020. It's still happening, but I wanted to make a film that was about the environment that we're living in while also making something that is, you know, fun and, and, and, and functions as a, as a genre film, as a Western, as an action film, You know, it's so it's it's not it's not spinach, you know.

6:48I mean, I can't think of anybody else who's made a film that's really been about kind of anxiety that we don't talk about, which is the fact that we don't have physical contact anymore. Ideas are transmitted to us through through screens. The fact that you there was a time you could sit across somebody and say, well, no, I don't agree with you. I mean, it's harder to do that in a screen. And when you do, it doesn't register in the same way. And again, this astonishing subtextual thing about losing contact and the only contact becomes assaultive literally and then psychologically as it does in Eddington.

7:21I mean, that to me is, I think, really the sort of the true modern terror that the film is built around. Yeah. I mean, we've all been kind of fortressed off, you know, it's what's happening to the country. It's what's happening all around the world. There's this fortressing off, but it happened to us first, you know, and the fact that we that it is. so impossible to like reach each other it's not the innocent result of social media i feel like people talk about social media so much but it's like it's social media was harnessed by people who had a plan to like divide people and so the film is about that really i mean among other things it's about a sheriff who wants to be mayor but it's also about a data center that's being built just outside of this town.

8:09And it's a peripheral detail that is actually central to the film. Again, we were talking to the filmmaker, the writer-director Ari Aster. His new film is writer-director. He's editing to this The Treatment. There is a kind of a boredom with the status quo that you're responding to that's evident in your work. Oh, good. That sounds good. Yeah, the status quo is horrible. How do we get away from it? Especially with movies, I mean, what's worse than sitting down in a theater and getting everything you expect? What is that saying? Don't give people what they want. They'll never forgive you for it.

8:47So many horror films are about this fear of sort of being touched and being infected by something. And your movie is kind of about the first people already infected by what's in the air, but they don't get to touch anymore. I mean, it's this fascinating reversal of that. That's interesting. Yeah, they're already infected, but they could always get more infected. Could always get worse. Yeah, I mean, the infection that they have, they don't see. I mean, I guess I'm just really struck by the fact that people, some people watching screens in this thing. Yeah, we were calling it Screens the Movie on set.

9:17You have a literal virus that everybody's afraid of. At the beginning of the film isn't in this town, which is the point that Joaquin Phoenix's character is making. And then you have, with the data center, you have this other crisis that's sort of incubating in a lab that is waiting to be unleashed on the world. And then you have all these people kind of fighting to go viral, right? To use that word virus again. To have their voice kind of reach more and more people, infect more and more people. I guess I was thinking in this about performance in your movies. I mean, these performances, they say it's about all your films.

10:03and what have you talked about casting because it's amazing to me i've been really lucky with all my casts but this one especially i mean this is my second time working with joaquin and and i i love working with him he's obviously such an amazing actor but also working with him changed my my process from the first two films well i i uh i was somebody who you know i mean i still over-prepare. But on the first two films, I was very afraid to kind of deviate from my plan. So, you know, I would block those films out and shot list them long before I started even working with the actors, which I think was probably, you know, stifling for them in some ways.

10:47And it leads to, you know, kind of executing a plan, but it never got away from me. And with Joaquin, I kind of knew that I wasn't going to be able to really work that way, that I was going to have to give him a certain amount of freedom and have to kind of react and that doesn't mean that the script ever changes it really doesn't we talk through the script a lot but it's just it's just that that you know on set there's like a new goal which is kind of to just uh make sure that it's alive and not just wrote or going according to some stiff plan that's been a really great change and my process and then, you know, the rest of the cast, you know, Emma Stone is somebody that I had been wanting to work with for so long and we're friends and I love her and was just thrilled to work with her.

11:37And she's so great, really as great as you would think. Pedro Pascal is great and his chemistry with Joaquin was like really exciting and kind of surprising. Why are you saying that? Well, you just never know when two people will really work together and connect and feed each other. And that was just exciting to see. Those were really fun scenes to shoot and they really loved each other. And Austin Butler has a small but important part in the film. I think a crucial part, I mean, yeah. Very crucial. Kind of, it's almost right in the middle of the film that he kind of shows up and kind of changes the film's DNA almost.

12:23And then Dee Dee O 'Connell, who plays Emma Stone's mother, is incredible. I saw her on Broadway in a play called Dana H. And I was like, it's one of the best performances I've seen by anybody. And she's just so wonderful. You're talking about the control you're having and just wanting things to be the way they were. And the first films are all about, there's a kind of a claustrophobia. You know, a finger wall is getting closer and closer to people. either literally or figuratively. I mean, not literally in Midsommar, but certainly the world is closing in around her. Right. And it's closing in around everybody.

13:01It even happens here, but it's interesting because it's in wide open spaces and it feels like you're trusting character more in this one. Yeah. You want to be tightening the screws, but you can tighten them very slowly so that you almost don't even notice that the walls are kind of shrinking. I mean I think about films like like the wages of fear right like if you didn't have that first half establishing those people and their relationships then the second half wouldn't work in the way that it does and this is definitely a film that you know there are so many moving pieces the edit on this was really really hard because we we kept trying to take things out just to tighten the film and we found that by taking one thing out it wasn't supported anymore the pace by actually by being accelerated it the film actually felt slower because you you didn't have access in the way that you needed some characters you you have limited access kind of on purpose like emma stone is somebody her character is somebody who's kind of at a at a remove from us she's at she's at this distance from us because she's not really understood by her husband and that's who we're with.

14:13We're with, you know, we're in the point of view of, of Joaquin's character. It's the treatment, I guess, is Arias. His new film is writer-director. You'll see it as Antington's in theaters very soon. Stick with us more to come.

14:38It's the treatment, I guess. Arias is still here. Thank goodness he hasn't left yet. We're talking about proximity and how that relates to his films. His newest film as our director is Addington. You can hear the show at kcow.com slash the treatment. A lot of the interior scenes play like farce, but as soon as somebody walks into a room and slams a door, it changes the chemistry and the heat and temperature of the room. I was really taken with that because this is a much bigger and different film. I'm being a little reductive here, and I don't mean to be, but this is a bigger and different film than anything you've done before.

15:08Right. just in terms of scale, in terms of the number of people, in terms of the number of speaking parts, in terms of the enormous shifts in tone that happen from one section to another. But they're really nuanced. They happen so slowly. It's like the film is being infected by this thing. So by the end, when it does turn into an action film, it's completely shocking. And you use sound and noise to really put that shock across. I mean, this could be Michael Mann's heat. The gun battles are so loud in it As compared to the almost conspiratorial whispers in some of the earlier other stuff. And I think that's why this film really feels so engrossing to me because there's so many shifts of tone, so many things happening.

15:48How long did it take to construct this? I started writing it in 2020. I was in New Mexico at the time. I was raised in New Mexico. Well, I spent my adolescence there. Is that why this whole thing about space is that what happens to you? because the difference between New York and New Mexico in terms of the way people relate to each other spatially. Oh, yeah, people are very isolated out there. Exactly. I mean, people don't get as close to each other in New Mexico. In Manhattan, you're next to other people all the time. Yeah. This explains a lot about you. It probably does. Big open spaces. I was raised in a small family.

16:27I'm used to solitude, and I like it. I had wanted to make a film about New Mexico for a long time because I spent almost 20 years of my life there. And it's an odd place because there are so many different points of view. You think it's going to be one thing? And the movie's really about that, isn't it? About how many different points of view there are in New Mexico. And of course, it sort of functions as a bit of a microcosm for the rest of the country. But New Mexico is such a specific place. And the politics of New Mexico are so specific. and I had wanted to talk about it for a long time and just sort of throw my hat in the ring and make you know make my western but about that world in particular and and after I finished with Bo and I I'd sort of written a couple drafts of this you know of of the script for Eddington I drove around New Mexico and I went to different small towns I went to Pueblos and I I talked to you know mayors, sheriffs, police chiefs, public officials, and just tried to get as broad a picture of just of the climate, the political climate in New Mexico.

17:41And I learned so much. And that's where the film also started to get away from me again in a good way, where I started to model a lot of these characters on people I was meeting. For instance, there's, I'm not going to say his name just to protect his anonymity, but there's a sheriff of a small town who's about 70 years old who was really so interesting. And I knew that Joaquin was going to find him very interesting. And with Joaquin, you can't just put one person in front of him because he'll resist it. But I introduced him to a few people that I liked on my journeys. And Joaquin really kind of fixed on this guy in a way that I had a feeling would happen because i because it happened to me where i got really he kind of was the character that i'd already written um oh my gosh and he he was this very old-fashioned guy he's a guy who who had seen it all he'd worked in albuquerque for a long time as a cop and he was like we probably hated that didn't he he hated it and uh and then he ended up you know becoming sheriff of this small county and was kind of in this like ideological war with the mayor of this small town, which was about an hour outside of Albuquerque.

19:07And those two people, the mayor and the sheriff of that small town became, they became like really, really strong models for for us and you know Joaquin's look his character's name is Joe Cross you know his wardrobe is the wardrobe oh my god of this sheriff I guess I'm so fascinated by this movie because nobody's listening to anybody else right finally that's a real heartbreak to me of it is that by the end I mean it's you like kind of almost laughing through your tears at it I mean it feels really more of a melodrama than anything else you've done. If that makes any sense to you. I wanted all of these people to be kind of distinguished by like a kind of yearning for this dream they have of America.

20:00And I feel like, you know, every character here cares deeply about the world. They just aren't living in the same world. and and they're all very paranoid and and they all know that something is wrong the way we all know something is wrong we just can't agree on what that thing is and you know kind of one of the tricks of the film is that the film itself becomes kind of paranoid by the end and kind of gets gripped by their different convictions right and so the film should kind of function a little bit as like a Rorschach test, depending on what bubble you're living in, which it's hard not to be.

20:43I'm living in my own bubble. And so I don't know. I hope that there can be some bizarre solidarity in collectively kind of pulling back and just seeing the absurdity and the insanity of this moment in this atmosphere where, you know, we're all living in different realities and nobody can agree on what's happening. You know, like what does an olive branch look like? I don't know. We're talking about communication with, I guess. Sorry, yes. There's a new film as a writer-director is Eddington. It played, if I can't film, from the last one I saw it. This is The Treatment. You can hear it at kcow.com slash The Treatment.

21:25The other film's been about people kind of fighting this thing that's coming over them. and this is a movie about people fighting with themselves I mean I'm so struck by and I remember jotting this down in the theater just nobody is listening to anybody I mean nobody's listening to anybody and it's just this thing where things weirdly cartoonishly get worse and worse so it's like old game telephone when nobody's heard what was said to them so that by the end there has to be this literal explosion which doesn't clear the air by the way and there's something that's so precarious about this that i can't imagine what you would have taken out when you talking about trying to remove things because every piece is a linchpin that kind of holds something together and without that it's just a free-floating hinge yeah and it also still it speaks to me about the kind of the claustrophobia that exists with these people who because there's so many people in these rooms i mean there are lots of people in these rooms that you have aren't there all of these people are living in the internet like we're all just living there now you know that's the and and i wanted the film to feel like the internet i i would have included more characters if i could have you know i wanted to get as close to like yeah it's you you know i'm trying to make a film about this incoherent miasma and i'm just trying to do it without sacrificing coherence right and and and while still telling a story so the the trick was like how far back can i pull and how many how many instruments in the cacophony can i include before it just becomes incoherent but yeah the the movie is it's about the internet i mean i think there's a sort of fundament where we are now that you're talking about the internet which is a constancy of misinterpretation yeah well that's that's absolutely right you know and and it is about people who are all living in different versions of reality and who you know they they all start bumping against each other and it's about the logic that kind of comes out of that and it's about how that that that logic kind of comes to possess them all and uh and push them into deeper convictions and beliefs that that block each other off even more and so you know and and how that at least in this film leads to violence because there's nothing in the ether connecting them anymore there's no like central story that they're all being told that they can stand on.

23:52I mean, we should say the film is a lot of fun, but there's a lot to laugh at. I mean, there's a lot of sort of disentanglement that we're doing that makes it sound... I hope so. This is a lot more epistemological than I think. Yeah, the movie's a comedy. It is. It's an action comedy. But I think so often what you do is comedy that people don't know how to interpret just because people aren't used to comedy offering complication. Right. It's a comedy of menace. Well, comedy's binary for them. It either does this thing that's funny or it's not. It can't be funny and touching and scary. It can be funny and scary, be funny and touching.

24:23It can't do three things. You know what I mean? Right. I think this does like 10. I think it's supposed to be funny. It's supposed to be sad. It's supposed to be scary. And it's supposed to be exciting. You know, it's all moving towards a big sustained action set piece. I think when doing those things, it doesn't do them in alternation. It does them all simultaneously. Yeah. And again, that starts for me with, it takes us back to Johnson, which is a lot happening in the very first scene, including a violation of a door opening and closing in that kind of farcical way. I'm not trying to, again, to be reductive about it, but I'm fascinated by how you take these elements that you've used and you further them with each of these successive films.

25:10Yeah. And I mean, so much of that is just intuitive. Like, I don't really know, you know. Really? Well, I think so. Yeah, I think for the most part, I'm just following what interests me. I'm doing everything I can to not be strategic, you know, which is what, which is, I think, what gets you into trouble. And when things get disingenuous. I get that. I'm not trying to say you're being over deliberate and setting a place for yourself, building this niche out for yourself. And I'm not trying to say you're a reactionary, but I do think a lot of your work is reacting to things you've seen. and also seeing what's not there, but also bringing these things that mean something to you.

25:51I mean, and it's not just empty homage. Well, you know, I think it's the role of the artist to reflect the time that he lives in, that they live in. And this film came out of an impulse to just really pull back as far as I could and give a picture of where we are as I see it, you know? And of course my vantage point is limited because I'm in the f***ing soup with everybody else. Excuse my language. And, you know, again, I'm a genre filmmaker, so I also, you know, want it to be a good time. I want it to be fun. I think that's principally what motivates you. But also I just think there's an instinctive thing in you that says, well, this can't be what you think it's going to be, or else you're going to be bored by just even thinking about it.

26:55And what you do is you so take your time in each one of these stories that people kind of lose sight of what it is you're doing. And I think that's a really interesting thing to just sort of play with expectations by not delivering. And I think part of the trick here also is that this is a film that is about the landscape. And so I wanted my politics to be, at least for a little while, hard to parse. Because that's not what the film is about, right? That's too narrow, given what the project here was for me. and so you know it should be it should be unclear for a little while where I stand and you know hopefully you know my own feelings are kind of just there in the DNA of the film and I think that they are well yeah I'll leave it there okay I guess I'll leave it there too my guest is Ari Aster's new film as writer director is Eddington there's no better way to describe than say it's a new film by Ari Aster please come back and do the show again Thanks so much.

28:01Thanks for having me. Writer-director Ari Aster's newest mix of genres is the film Eddington, starring Academy Award winners Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, among others. It's now in theaters. Looks at movies and books and all kinds of things at the archive, kcrw.com slash thetreatment. More to come. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

28:47KCRW sponsors include Prime Video, presenting Bait, starring Riz Ahmed, now nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a limited series. The Guardian says it's funny, surreal, and provocative. Riz Ahmed is superb. Bait is available for Television Academy members at ConsiderAmazon.com and streaming now on Prime Video. It's The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com. Yes, you may know Kenneth Tran as a film critic. I suppose that's something he's done in his life. I like to think of him as being a cultural historian. And certainly we've had him on for his books, dealing with the culture.

29:25his book from Sundance to Sarajevo, and one of my favorite books of his, Free For All, on the history of Joe Papp and the public theater. His newest book, yes, is The W.B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, The Whole Equation. See, because somebody has the equation of filmmaking in his head. That person would be Kenneth Turan, the author of this book. First of all, Kenny, thanks so much for doing this. Elvis, it's always a treat to talk to you. I'm looking forward to it. I think what connects me to this book and all your books that you tend to take these things and turn them into these, I think these sort of tableaus that are about a movement and a fixed period in time.

30:04And certainly there is a period in time for Mayer and Thalberg. But it's also you, and as you mentioned, it's incredibly the sort of the afterword with all the books you use is almost as big as a book itself. But I think what you've done with this that's so much fun is that you've given, you turn this into a world with characters in it. And everybody matters. And there's an impact. All these sort of characters colliding off each other, isn't there? I think so. I mean, telling a story, telling an involving story with involving characters. I mean, that's why I got interested in the subject in the first place.

30:40I just thought these people are interesting. And the more I researched and the more I came across some of the other people in the story, that intensified. It's a famous line from James M. Cain where he said, if your novel doesn't keep you up at night, it's not going to keep anyone else up at night. So I really wanted to have a story that was involving. It involved me for the three, four years it took me to write. I never got up saying, God damn it, I've got to deal with these guys again. They fascinated me, and they still do. Well, I kind of feel like there was sort of a kinship between Mayer and Joe Papp, that they're both these guys who kind of reinvent themselves, but felt really comfortable with what kind of communities of artists, but basically wanted people to know who ran the show.