Filmmaker Matt Shakman on introducing ‘The Fantastic Four’ to the MCU

22:51I do think that Sue works really hard as a kind of, maybe she's the most emotionally intelligent person if he's the most scientifically intelligent. And she works really hard to kind of pull that group together and be the glue that keeps that family together and also tries to do the same for the city and the world. But, you know, each of them has a role within a kind of community. Ben has this community on Yancey Street. And clearly he loves going down there. He likes to be reminded of his past. He likes to kind of feel connected to that. So I think they are sort of trying to balance that sense of community with also, you know, looking for whatever that private space is that they can have.

23:26That's something interesting about the way these people move physically. I mean, by the end, Ben is comfortable with a coffee cup in the kitchen. I mean, it's really small things that sort of show us what we want to see, which is a sense of them getting some control over these things that have taken over them. Because again, for me, the fantastic horror always resonates as kind of a body horror thing. And having these things, the worst parts of you, these almost like unnamed fears, be realized in some way. And it's all sort of thing with Wanda, too. The episode before the last episode, there's always this sense of calm.

24:03And part of it is sort of calm before the storm because who knows what's going to be coming up in subsequent films. But also this sort of sense of the character taking a breath. And because what you've done is you've made these things really breathless until almost halfway into the last act, so to speak, when the characters get moments to reflect and understand what they are, don't they? They do, yeah. I mean, Ben's most heroic thing that he does is go to the synagogue to say hi to Rachel, played by Natasha Lyonne. I mean, he's on a very simple journey just to have the bravery to kind of connect with someone.

24:37And, you know, he is, you know, very common to his character throughout the issues. Is he the only one who can't turn his power on and off? The others are in control of that to a degree. And so is he a man? Is he a monster? That's, you know, his constant struggle. And we wanted to have that be a little bit there, but it was more about, you know, how does he connect to the world? You know, that was part of it. You know, he's very good about letting Reed off the hook and saying, don't worry about your guilty. You're not responsible for this. I'm who I am and I'm okay with it. But secretly we know he's not, you know, and his relationship with Rachel in the movie is really just about taking that little first step into intimacy, you know, outside of his family.

25:18There's a sort of sense of the tortured scientist in Reed, which we'd never really have had before. I mean, he's always sort of been treated as this guy who looks in the comics or even the other movies in the world as abstractions and that can't connect with people. But here he feels too much. I mean, it's an interesting 180 to give that character. Yeah. I mean, he's an interesting character and you know him well. I mean, he has different aspects that are put front and center depending on who's writing him. And so over the years, you do get a lot of the kind of scientists locked in his lab. You do get person of action, you know, leader, kind of classic sort of Marvel superhero.

25:53You get the family side of things. But I was trying to encompass all of those things. And I wanted to have elements of Oppenheimer in there. You know, I wanted the person who weighs with the struggles of, you know, creating these things that are ultimately as dangerous as they are redemptive. They can destroy the world and they can save the world, the things he's working on. But I also wanted a bit of Robert Moses in there. Here's this person who's shaping New York City in a way and trying to push it into the future for all of the good and bad of Robert Moses. But anyway, but Steve Jobs, a person who has a vision of how technology, which is very much of the era, the sense of the right technology, the right heart, the right mind can solve any problem, can conquer the unknown.

26:34That's the ethos of the 60s. That's Reed. So he is. He contains multitudes. And he also loves his wife and loves his child and loves his friend and loves his nephew. And, you know, he's got many different aspects of him. And to create a well-rounded read was one of the biggest challenges, but also the number one on the list. Interesting, too, because you mentioned Oppenheimer. I thought about the Chris Nolan thing was the protagonist is often the person who sort of creates a situation to which he has to respond. Yeah. And that's kind of the tragedy of the Reep, which is character here, that he's responsible for this in some ways, probably by creating the accident that got them into space in the first place, even responsible for the summoning of Galactus.

27:18We did toy around with that, you know, the idea that he was directly responsible. For a while, we had, you know, one of his experiments got the attention of Galactus, you know, and then he felt incredible guilt about that. But ultimately, it felt like we didn't need to underline it because, as you say, it's there. It feels implicit. Yeah, it feels implicit. And Galactus is coming anyway. He's coming to munch on every tasty planet. Well, I guess we have to ask you back. Finally, good to get you here somewhere outside of, you know, schoolyards. My guest is Matt Shackman. He is the director of many things Marvel, but most recently Fantastic Four First Steps.

27:57Please come back again. It'd be great to have you. Love to. Thank you so much for having me. Director Matt Shackman finally gives Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Ever-Lovin' Thing the screen treatment they deserve in the movie Fantastic Four First Steps. Matt's film is now in theaters. Stories that deserve hearing at the archive, kcrw.com slash the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. There's more to come.

28:46KCW sponsors include Netflix, presenting The Diplomat, nominated for seven Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. Variety lauds it, the finest chapter of The Diplomat to date, and AFI hails it, the TV program of the year. starring Emmy nominee and actor award winner Kerry Russell, alongside dynamic performances from Emmy nominees, lead actor Rufus Sewell, supporting actress Allison Janney, and guest actor Bradley Whitford, with Emmy-nominated writing from Deborah Kahn. Decider calls The Diplomat a masterclass in storytelling. It's The Treatment, which you can also hear at kcrw.com slash the treatment.

29:21I'm Elvis Mitchell. I can't think of any of a filmmaker whose work has ranged from showing us Arthur Russell to Steve Bannon. But his films are specifically, I think, about people who have a point of view about the world that they want to share, be it Arthur Russell or Marion Stokes or the people we see in The Stroll, which is about a world in itself, the meatpacking district of the 70s and 80s. His newest film, which is nominated for five Emmys, Pee Wee as himself, my guest is the director, Matt Wolfe. First of all, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I think what I really like about your work is that we see the willfulness of the people that you select.

30:01And no more evident is that than in this HBO documentary on Paul Rubens, whose willfulness becomes a character in and of itself in a film, doesn't it?

30:13Matt Wolf:Yeah, you know, I met my match with Paul Rubens. I think Paul and I had a lot in common sensibility wise and sometimes personality wise, but he was from a different generation and was a cultural icon. So there was a big difference there. But, you know, the second I met Paul over Zoom during the peak of the COVID lockdowns, he said, I want to make a documentary about myself and everybody's advising me against it and I don't understand why. And I said, well, I'm here to talk to you about making the documentary about your life. So maybe we could conceive of a process and you could get to know me.

30:45Matt Wolf:So from the beginning, there was a certain power struggle that only would grow through the process of making the film. But I was attracted to Paul's confidence and his willfulness, to use your word. He knew what he wanted, but also didn't fully know what he wanted. And I like to kind of get into that space of ambivalence, of feeling multiple things at once, of feeling a lot of different ways. Paul would always say, I'm all over the map. And I said, that's fine. That's what's interesting. Be there. I thought about the connections for me between him and Arthur Russell, who in some ways are the same way, you know, who expressed themselves through their art.

31:27And when they weren't offering up that portrait of themselves as artists, didn't quite know what to do with themselves and weren't interested in exposing themselves in that way.

31:35Matt Wolf:I think Arthur Russell, the musician I made my first film about, was somebody obsessed with the process of making music and had trouble finishing it. I don't know if we could say that about Paul because he was so prolific during the kind of heyday of Pee Wee. But later in life, Paul was somebody who would get really wrapped up in the minutiae of a process. He would be very focused on so many small details that sometimes the bigger picture would get lost. And as the documentary filmmaker, I often was reminding Paul to, in my words, keep the eye on the prize. Like, what is the bigger goal and purpose of telling your story?

32:12Matt Wolf:And what are the broader strokes of that? Not just the itty bitty details about the wallpaper on your childhood bedroom walls. So it's interesting you bring up Arthur Russell because Paul says in the movie that he doesn't like any of my films except one. That was the one that he liked. It was this film wild combination. Which is an extraordinary piece. Thank you. Yeah. It was my first film. I made it when I was really young. And in a lot of ways, I feel like Pee-wee as himself is coming full circle with that film. But you talked about before you got started that you're interested in world builders.

32:45And that's, for me, what really connects these two is that they also sort of took these things that people had never really used to be autobiographical. Nobody had ever done a child's TV show. that was that deliberate, over-deliberate, in fact, but also wanted to evoke a sense of joy. And I felt the same thing in Arthur, the way he worked too. He wanted to create or evoke joy for people. And that, to me, is the power in these two pieces.

33:16Matt Wolf:I was saying to you the kind of artists that I appreciate are world builders, but the kind of art that I'm drawn to operates primarily on the emotional level. And I think that is very much true of Arthur Russell's music and of Pee Wee's Playhouse. They were both kind of releasing their ids through their work. Yeah. And that there's a big range of emotions from tenderness to brattiness, but that there is a sort of deeper emotional through line that makes these very different interests and references all cohere. And I think with Pee Wee's Playhouse, it's not Pee Wee as an alter ego isn't the thread.

33:54Matt Wolf:It's really the bigger emotional experience of acceptance and nonconformity and creativity. Those are visceral emotions that I associate with that show. And now that this documentary has come out, I realize how many people felt that, but haven't necessarily had the opportunity to look back and reflect on how formative those emotions were as they watched that show. It's the truth. We're talking about world building with my guests, whose film was nominated for five Emmys, including Best Director, by the way. Congratulations, Matt. Thank you. Matt Wolfe, his film is Pee-wee as himself on HBO. But as you were talking about that, I think what fascinates me about that, too, is there's a kind of a wild streak of energy that you're attracted to.

34:37You're talking about world buildings, like the energy it takes to create a world for the world to coalesce and the kind of collateral damage that creating those worlds can build. And that runs through your work, too. The excessiveness of these people who are determined to build these things, and people will marvel at them and despise them for it at the same time.

34:57Matt Wolf:Yeah, I think there are consequences for having an avant-garde sensibility and attempting to bring that into the mainstream. That's something that's been a thread in my work. But the other thing on a more nuts and bolts level that's been true of my work is I'm attracted to subjects who have monumental archives. And I don't even know they have monumental archives until I start to forge a relationship with them. So I think that reflects the personality type and the sensibility of the people I make films about. But when I approached Paul, obviously, many people had approached him and taken interest in making a documentary about Peewee.

35:32Matt Wolf:I did not know that he had 1000 hours of archival footage stored in his temperature controlled bedroom. He was an avid home video maker. He had every single home video camera since the beginning of that technology. He's the one that shot Super 8 at the Groundlings. Incredibly rare footage. Very few people understand that there is no footage of CalArts in the 1970s, but Paul saved Portapak videos of it. So it's in a way, the people I am attracted to are collectors and they're archivists in their own right, but sort of like outsider archivists. One of the things I really felt by the end of it is the exhaustion it took for him to connect it with live audiences for so long.

36:13And that's one of the reasons that he did have to go into retreat because as you were talking about, going back to his days of Kyle Larkin, before that, in high school as a kid, this sort of constancy and this eye on the audience, this understanding of what audiences wanted. And by the time he was done with Pee Wee's Playhouse, there's a level of exhaustion in him. I think a depletion in him. I think he was never able

36:34Matt Wolf:to really refill in some ways. I wouldn't say that's about audience. I would say that's about self. the energy it is required to divide yourself into two, to have a private anonymous life and to have a public facing alter ego. I think it would be very exhausting to have to compartmentalize like that. And on Paul's level, there was a lot of poignant turmoil associated with it because he was in the closet, but also being Pee Wee Herman allowed him to deal with celebrity in a unique way. The film is in some ways about the traps of celebrity, but I think that being a public-facing figure is exhausting.

37:14Matt Wolf:Being a public-facing figure as an alter ego who's distinctly separated from yourself takes a whole nother level of emotional and mental energy. I guess I said audiences just because for so long in his life, he's dealt with live audiences and treated Pee Wee's Playhouse, in fact, as if it was still the midnight show he did. And that was an exhausting show. If you attended it and sort of saw how much audience physical contact he had, which is unusual, we have to say. All the things you're saying, I would agree with 100%. But I think there's also a psychic toll it takes on just, you have to pull away from people because that's been so much of his life.

37:51And maybe the first 35 years of his life, that was a constant.

37:55Matt Wolf:Yeah. I mean, he was a theater performer. He was an improviser. He was definitely somebody who was kind of dealing with live audiences and making them laugh in ways that weren't through jokes. You know, he had to engage growing and growing crowds on his own terms. And that did not involve pandering to them through jokes. It was a different kind of physical comedy. But I would say the other exhausting thing was the heavy responsibility of speaking to children, of knowing how influential and meaningful what you were doing would be and taking that responsibility so seriously. And I know that Paul took that responsibility so, so, so seriously.

38:36Matt Wolf:That can be exhausting too, I'm sure. I've never been in that position, but I can only imagine besides his attention to detail and his artistry and his desire to maintain the quality of his groundbreaking show, just the pure responsibility of shaping the minds of children, I mean, that would be exhausting. I'd just say, Matt, this felt to me, of all the stuff of yours I've seen, the most emotional. You'd be using that word a couple of times here. And I really felt that, certainly because you're in it. But also, I think because of the wellspring of affection and complication of affection through making this film, we're experiencing that emotion with you.

39:15But all I think your films have an emotional content to them. You've been saying that. This one felt like I told you at certain times to me, harrowing to watch.

39:23Matt Wolf:You're talking and I feel like I could cry. I mean, I've been talking about the movie for a while now and it's been out and it's still the most emotionally intense experience of my life. My relationship with Paul was fraught. It was obviously thrilling. He's somebody I idolized as a kid. It's somebody I have just tremendous amount of respect for. And as I said, there was a power struggle from the moment we met. and I'm also a willful person. And so every conversation was tricky. Paul had a lot of anxiety about being the subject of a documentary, and I had a lot of concern about losing control of my process and wanting to maintain my editorial independence.

40:04Matt Wolf:And so that conflict between Paul and I was very real. And the film shows that. I had reservations about showing it at first. After Paul passed away, I didn't know if it would be in poor taste to do that. But I always told Paul, you need to embrace your complexity. People know you're complicated. They're not going to think you're sugary sweet and just simple guy, you know, like be complicated. All interesting people are complicated. And I had to take my own advice by both showing him in his full complexity, but also kind of recognizing how complex our relationship is and how that is part of the story of the film.

40:41Matt Wolf:Not because anyone wants to know about me, Matt Wolfe, but because Paul's conflict with me was really about him wrestling with himself, about how much he wanted to share with the world. Especially in that old CalArts footage, he moves the world like a star. And one of the things that made evident to me, especially watching it the second time, is that, and I know this from just talking to him, when you talk to him, especially when you're in physical contact with him, oh, as you were saying, he's a really charismatic guy. There's a reason that he was able to be a public figure for as long as he was.

41:16And the fact is that after the awful circumstance of that theater, people got past that and wanted to see him again. And there were, as you know, he had a number of complications about deciding how much of himself he wanted to show after that moment.

41:31Matt Wolf:Paul was the funniest and probably one of the smartest people I've ever met. You would just be locked in when he was talking. He was profoundly compelling. that's just on a personal level but as a performer he used the term mugging which i never heard anybody else use but for him it meant he could make a small facial expression and everyone would look away from the action and just stare at him he would do it with me sometimes his face would morph into different shapes he looked like buster keaton uh then he looked like peewee then he looked like a different character and this he just had these tiny modifications of his face and he would say nothing.

42:07Matt Wolf:So he had the kind of charisma and readability of a silent film star, really. Well, I think the thing you're attracted to as well is people whose points of view are so specific that those points of view change the world. In addition to everything else they do, the fact is that they are these charismatic zealots in many ways. These people who are extraordinary people in and of themselves. I mean, it's that, that there are stars in real life, so to speak, is something that I think you gravitate towards as well. The celebrity component of Paul kind of faded away quickly for me. You know, I was starstruck the second I met him, and then it sort of just went away because he was so different from the character he is.

42:50Matt Wolf:And for me, it's really kind of easy to separate the artist from the art, you know, But the word I often use is, or the words, is unconventional visionaries. So rather than a star, I would think a visionary. And Paul just happened to be the most iconic visionary I've ever dealt with before. But he was so different than his creation that he sort of was like a hidden history, like most of the other people I make films about. These people who are so unconventional in their vision that they're sort of under the radar or beg for reappraisal. And Pee Wee was an icon, but Paul was an artist hidden in plain sight.

43:33I say the star is in their own right because of those women in the stroll. That could be a high fashion catwalk. That's the stroll in fashion terms, in style terms. Certainly Arthur Russell or any of these people, they all are so incredibly charismatic. For me, it's about the democratization of charisma that is not just in these places. I mean, Paul happens to be the most famous person and the most famous example of that. But for me, he falls into this line of people to whom you're attracted because they do seize the world by the way they enter the world.

44:06Matt Wolf:A hundred percent. And I'm interested in, I don't know, identifying what is extraordinary about people who are seemingly ordinary. I think that's what all documentary filmmakers do, really. It's true of my work, but I think a lot of what we do is we not just scan the room, but like move through the world as we lock into a person and are able to identify pretty quickly what is extraordinary and unique about that person and to tap into their wisdom so that it can come across. And for me, it's also to tap into the emotional substance of their experience and to draw that out of them so that it's translatable to a viewer.

44:46My guess is Matt Wolfe, his Emmy-nominated film, the latest in a series of great films, is Pee-wee as himself. Matt Wolfe, thanks so much for doing that. Thanks so much, Elvis. Come in and pull yourself up a chair. Jury, let the fun begin. It's time to let down your hands. Director of Matt Wolfe's latest documentary on performer Paul Rubens is Pee-wee as himself. It was nominated for five Emmys, including Outstanding Direction. It's now on HBO Max. An unusual perspective on director David Lynch from director Eli Roth. It's The Treat, and it's next. Unusual perspectives on life's pleasures abound.

45:29At the archive, kcrw.com slash the treat.

45:44Matt Wolf:Magic Freaks. KCW sponsors include Netflix presenting The Diplomat, nominated for seven Emmy Awards including Outstanding Drama Series. Variety lauds it, the finest chapter of The Diplomat to date, and AFI hails it, the TV program of the year. Starring Emmy nominee and actor award winner Kerry Russell, alongside dynamic performances from Emmy nominees lead actor Rufus Sewell, supporting actress Alison Janney, and guest actor Bradley Whitford. With Emmy-nominated writing from Deborah Kahn. Decider calls The Diplomat a masterclass in storytelling. Director Eli Roth thinks outside the box. He's an actor, a director whose films include Hostel and Thanksgiving, and he's also an entrepreneur.

46:30He found guidance in those pursuits from a mentor. I'm Elvis Mitchell, and it's The Treat from Eli Roth. Hi, I'm Eli Roth, and this is The Treat.

46:47Today, I'd like to talk about my old friend, David Lynch.

46:56I was very close with David. He was really, him and Tarantino were the closest I ever had to a mentor. But I met David when I was 20 years old, and I was at NYU in the film school, and I was working for a theater producer and film producer named Fred Zolo. and David wanted to do a project for Broadway about the scientist Nikola Tesla.

47:24Fred arranges this lunch for us because David needed research and I'll never forget it. We went to Sardi's, which is like the theater restaurant on 44th Street. I'm like 20 years old or 21, probably junior, maybe senior at NYU. And I sit down and there's David Lynch.

47:45I'm giddy because Twin Peaks is my favorite thing. And I saw Blue Velvet when I was 14 and it changed the way I saw movies. And then, of course, Eraserhead and even Dune and Elephant Man. There's everything about David Lynch I was completely obsessed with. So I told him, I said, you know, I'll put together this team of researchers. I'm sure any NYU student would jump with the chance to work for you, but we can't say your name. So I said, we're going to call you Mr. X. He's like, Mr. X, beautiful. So we became the X team. And then when I finally moved out to L.A. in 1999, you know, he said, Eli, come over to my house and we'll have a chat and a cup of joe.

48:21And, you know, we'll tell you what we're up to.

48:27I sat down with him and he goes, David Lynch dot com. It's going to be beautiful. We're going on the net. And, you know, you're so organized. Maybe you could, you know, help me out with some things. So I wound up going to his house every day and just filming the craziest, craziest things you can imagine. Basically, any idea that David Lynch had, we'd just shoot it. We didn't even question it.

48:55So there's one that we put on that's out on YouTube now called Pierre and Sonny Jim with us doing puppet shows. And my God, we'd be quoting Stanley Kubrick. If he needed cable, he's like, feed me, Mandrake. Like we're quoting, you know, Dr. Strangelove. It was just, he was so funny, David.

49:19Before I went to make Cabin Fever, I said, okay, David, it's my first film. Like, is there one piece of advice that I should take on set? He said, yes, keep your eye on the donut, not the hole. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you know, the donut, that's the information recorded in front of those 24 squares per second. Obviously, that was film. The hole is all the other bulls**t. And it's like a vacuum. And you'll just get sucked right in it. So, you know, your job as the director is to make sure you keep your eye on the donut, not the hole. And I took it on all my films.

49:55I tell everyone at the beginning, like, that's our mantra. Eye on the donut, not the hole. I was all right. For a while, I could smile for a while. It's still hard to talk about him, thinking of him in the past tense, because he was such an important force in my life. And I love him dearly, and I miss him every day. Oh, you wish me well, you couldn't tell That I've been crying over you Crying over you Actor, director, and producer Eli Roth on actor, director, and producer David Lynch. Actor Jason Segel had his life defined by a mentor. Hear that story and others at the archive kcrw.com slash the treat.

50:56Moments that change the shapes of creators' lives, be it mentors who showed them the way, or a piece of music or a book or a painting or an afternoon in a garden. Inspirations we call The Treat. The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. This week, there was help from Sue Margulies and Laura Gondaragia. To better days, everyone. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.

51:31For you don't love me And I'll always be Over you Over you

52:01illuminates the universal experience of seeking connection.