The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman has The Treat

0:00Matt Shackman has lived many lives, first as an actor, then as a director whose filmography includes such hits as the Fantastic Four First Steps. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treat. And Shackman treats us to an early step in his life, a film noir that's a kind of origin story for three incredible talents, a novelist, a director, and an actor.

0:29I'm Matt Shackman, and this is The Treat.

0:36the movie that was most inspiring to me is the third man carol reed's movie orson welles joseph cotton i found it as a kid i must have been 12 i was a orson welles fanatic and so like everyone when I started with Citizen Kane, but then I found Third Man and became obsessed with the photography, the location, shooting, the way that the narrative was designed. It was so surprising, the idea that Rosenwells doesn't come on to the picture until sort of halfway through the movie. Everything about it felt incredibly bold, but what I loved so much was that each of the characters were so well drawn. Will you help me?

1:21I wish I could. But you know, I'm an Austrian. I have to be careful with the police. I'm afraid I can't help you. Except with advice, of course. The members of Harry Lime's group of friends like the Baron and Mr. Popescu and all of these characters that came in and they had such vivid scenes, so beautifully written, so well acted. And I thought, well, this is how you do it, right? You have to make a big narrative that works and is surprising and has all the best espionage elements that you would expect from Graham Greene. And then it would also have these almost theater-like, play-like moments between characters as they were very real and relatable and distinctive.

2:08And the performances are all great. Now, I'll tell you what, Mr. Martins, on Wednesday night at our institute, we're having a little lecture on the contemporary novel. Thought perhaps you'd like to speak. Oh, they wouldn't know me. Oh, nonsense. Your novels are very popular here, aren't they, Sergeant? Very popular, sir. Very popular. Are you staying long? And I think one thing that's kind of fun about it, because I just did Fantastic Four, and we paid homage to the Corman Four, the original Corman movie, Fantastic Four, that he made that was never released, starred Alex Hyde White. And he came up to me when we were filming with him, and he said, oh, I hear your favorite movie is The Third Man.

2:42Well, my dad was in it. And he ran the literary society, or he was in charge of, you know, the literary cultural events for the army and he recruits holly martin joseph cotton to come in and and give a speech about the modern novel of which he is completely ill-equipped to do because he writes westerns look down there would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever if i offered you 20 000 pounds for every dot that stopped would you really old man tell me to keep my money or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare free of income tax It's interesting, right, because the famous Ferris wheel scene, they get up top and they look down on the world perspective, right?

3:24They have that kind of proscenium view. How many of those little ants can disappear, Holly? So I love that movie, and I think it's had a big impact on the kinds of movies I want to make and how to go about making good ones.

3:47The Zither Strains of director Carol Reed's international noir, The Third Man. The Treat from Matt Shackman, director of The Fantastic Four, First Steps. Fantastic treats abound at the archive. KCRW.com slash The Treat. The Treat is produced by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treat.

4:17Thank you.