Julio Torres spins immigrant stress into satire

Today's guest, Julio Torres, is a comic actor director and writer.

“You may have encountered him in several different venues.”

His comedy specials on HBO and Comedy Central. The short films he used to do on Saturday Night Live. His bits is a correspondent on the tonight show. And as a writer and actor on the HBO series, Lose of Spookies. In 2023, he made his debut as a movie director with problemista, the satirical film he

also wrote and in which he starred. In 2024, Julio Torres wrote directed and starred in Phantasmus, an absurdist comedy series on HBO Max. And now, Torres has a new TV special called Color Theories, which premiered last week on HBO Max.

In the fall of 2025, Torres performed color theories as a one-man off Broadway show.

The Hollywood Reporter called it a TED Talk masquerading as absurdist stand-up. Here's an early scene from Color Theories, in which Torres defines a particular shade of the primary color blue. Navy blue is the color of law and order. Navy blue is the color of having to create an account.

Navy blue is the color of people that demand that you RSVP through the website, even though verbally you're already told them that you're coming.

“It's like, well, are you coming? You know, you have to create an account and do it through”

the website. Okay, well, this is no longer feels like a party, right? This is a census.

Navy blue is the color of airports, often literally, because that is the airports way of saying

whatever your deal is, not here. Terry Gross spoke to Julio Torres in 2024 when his film "Problemista" was released. Here she is to set things up. "Problemista" draws on Torres' own experiences as an immigrant from El Salvador trying to overcome the financial and bureaucratic obstacles of the U.S. immigration system.

Torres plays an immigrant from El Salvador whose visa is running out and needs a job someone to sponsor him and money for the lawyers and fees that the renewal requires. Till to Swinton plays Elizabeth, a potential problem solver because she offers to sponsor him if he's able to get a museum or gallery show and sell the work of her late husband which he needs to pay his leftover bills.

But she's also a problem creator demanding the impossible and arguing with everyone. She keeps assigning more impossible tasks for Alejandro, he's also facing the many problems created by the immigration system. One day with little time left on his visa, he goes to an ATM and finds his bank account is worse than empty.

He actually owes the bank money a fee because he's overdrawn. Here he is in a scene with the customer service rep from the bank. Okay, that's just not the amount I should have, according to my calculation side is not the amount I should have in my account. What balance were you expecting?

Well, I don't know, 6.0 would be great, just get me to see her out. Again, every time you overdraft, the bank must impose a penalty of $35. So what?

“Like an 8 dollar sandwich, which becomes a $45 sandwich?”

$43. Again, that's the policy Mr. Martinez. It makes absolutely no sense. I distinctly recall making a cash deposit. And that deposit was flagged as potentially fraudulent, so it's on hold now for your protection.

Right, but then that hold made me overdrawn. For your protection. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but do I seem protected right now? Why would you let this happen? Why not just have my card get the client?

That's not the way things work. But that is the way things should work. Otherwise, the bank has just benefited from my misfortune, from the misfortune of people who can't afford to make it in mistakes, from people who have no margin of error. It's policy, it is what it is.

No, no, look at me, just look at me. I know that you can hear me. I know that you can hear my voice when I tell you that I know that this is on your fault. You didn't do this, the bank did this, and there is no reason for you to be defending them to me. Please, please, at this point, I'm not even asking for my money back.

I'm just asking for you to tell me that you agree with me because I know that you do. I know that there's still a person in there, and I know that she can hear me. Please.

Okay, Julio Torres, welcome to Fresher, I love the movie. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. You like magic realism, and what's happening in the scene, the scene kind of switches from reality to what's happening in his mind, like how he is experiencing the scene, and

he's actually being kind of choked between the arms of a monster, while she's telling

him that it's the bank policy, and then, finally, shoot him.

So it felt keeps kind of alternating between what's happening in reality, and what Alejandro is actually experiencing, so I take it you like magic realism, or fairy tales, because it's also like a fairy tale, the kind of fairy tale where there's horrible things happening. Yeah, I mean, it just happens to be the way that I am comfortable and feel able to explain feeling, and just sort of get to the truth of my experience.

I don't sit down, I think I want to write something that's fantastical, and in fact, I tend to want to write something that's very grounded in reality, and these flourishes just sort of come out as a way of explaining that. What's the closest you've come to the experience in the scene that we just heard?

The obstacles you run into in the immigration bureaucracy that you thought was particularly absurd.

I mean, all the catch-22s of the immigration system, the needing to pay for a visa, but

“not being allowed to work for it, which implies you should have had the money from somewhere”

else that isn't working, even though the reality of so many people in this country and especially immigrants in this country is a living paycheck to paycheck, you know? It's like the fact that I would have $6,000 saved somewhere is just laughable, and- That's what it takes to renew the visa. I mean, when I was doing it, yeah, I don't doubt that it's more expensive now.

In my experience, there are $6,000 which includes the government fees, but also the fees for the lawyer that because it's such a complex system, you don't want to get rejected because you feel something wrong, and they certainly make it so you're dependent on lawyers. So the film takes place during the time of me transitioning from a student visa to a work visa, but even when I was moving on from a work visa to an artist visa, which is the

last visa I had, part of the requirement was to show that I had a established career in the US that wanted an artist visa, but at the same time I had to throw the needle of not making it seem like I had been working and making money as an artist because that would have been illegal because I didn't have an artist visa yet. You had a student visa?

Originally I came to the US with a student visa and then I had a work visa and then I had to go from a work visa to an artist visa because under the work visa I wasn't able to earn money as a as a standard comedian or writer or anything or anything creative because that's not what the work visa is for. Well that is that does seem to be a catch, twenty-two, how did you get around that?

By showing a wealth of experience that had come for free, that had come from earning

“no money, which is sort of like the only way that you can thread that needle.”

What did you do for no money? Oh I mean the irony of that is it's not hard to establish a reputable career as an artist for no money. That's how I started to look radio even. It's not that big of a issue to show that you've done hundreds of shows for free because

that is the truth of pursuing something creative. By that point I had done enough stand up that getting the artist visa was not that difficult.

What was difficult was again getting the money for it and that was the second time that

I was trying to get money for a visa but this time around I had made so many friends who actually encouraged me to make a go fund me, which I found to be humiliating. I did not like the idea but then...

“Wait but they did it funny so that made it good I think.”

They did it funny. Yes. They made a video called Legalize Julio and they make a plea on your behalf that you should be able to stay in the U.S. and you need money to do it so he'll help him. Yes, yeah and it was solved within a matter of hours.

This girl fund me got me where I needed to be with in two or three hours.

realized that I love making our and all kinds of work in community and and with friends

“and that's why so many of my really close friends are in this movie and we'll continue”

to be in everything that I do. So when people think of immigrants from El Salvador right now they think of like escaping gangs and poverty and danger, did that figure at all into you leaving and what year did you come to the U.S.? I came to the U.S. in 2009 and no, no, to be honest my experience is radically different

than the crisis we're all seeing in the news. The crisis is very present in New York City right now but you know the thing about me and

the character that I play in this movie is that it wasn't really the story of someone

escaping for survival, it was a story of it's a story of someone just escaping or leaving

“to for a greater ambition to to find himself and that is that is what I think makes”

the story very very specific. So I want to get to the title of your movie which is problemista and I thought like I'm not sure if that's a real word or if it's a word that you made up because it's a great word. I actually looked it up in a few places and what it said was that it's a word for somebody

who creates problems or solves problems and it's especially used in chess. But I was talking to you about this right before the interview started and you said you didn't even know it was a word, you kind of made it up because it sounded like this is something would be a word and it described a lot of your movie so tell me about problemista from your perspective.

Yeah, I mean to brothers at the road to finding a title for the movie was long, it had many titles during many different points and none of them felt completely right and then at one point we were toying with the idea of calling it problem which is just literally means problem and then I just and I don't know I just felt dread calling this movie problem because it just felt so dreary and that's not the tone of the movie at all.

So then I was trying to find something a little bit more playful and I was thinking of what you would call someone in an artistic movement in Spanish like a surrealist is a surrealista and then I thought well then maybe someone who creates art from problems is a problemista. So I just sort of I just sort of made it up and it sounds like it almost sounds like the kind of thing that you'd make up in slang and in all Salvador sort of in the way that

like you know you hear about people being fashionistas or Maxineistas and it's like oh a problemista is someone who is attracted to problems or thrives within problems. So Alejandro is both a problem creator and a problem solver, although there's a whole lot he doesn't know how to do and he just kind of makes his way through. Since this movie is about problem solvers and problem creators and people who make art out

of problems where are you in that spectrum. I am someone who is certainly attracted to problems and ends up making work inspired by those problems. Give me an example. Well this movie was the problem.

I mean obviously the bigger problem that was solved by the time I made this movie was the visa problem and how that ended up not being a hurdle that I had to overcome to then move on and make work that ended up being the thing that I made the work about. And just sort of the joy that I found in dealing with that problem you know this movie

“is a deals with a problem of immigration but I think if it is a very silly happy and joyful”

movie that just sort of it's almost like the bureaucracy becomes this bouncy castle that the characters just get to play and laugh about and there's also just like the fact that

it gets my first movie and I made something that is so ordnate for like a better word.

I was like oh okay so this is why people's first movie are usually smaller. That's right, because you have like animation you have like special effects designed a little world that you've designed and monsters that you've created.

It's a lot. I really didn't.

Oh and you have some real stars in it too.

Yes. Yeah I mean thank god they're none of them are high maintenance people but to be completely on is now that I look back on it. I think that I didn't take for granted the access that I felt was granted to me by making a movie and I didn't take for granted the fact that I would ever be able to make another

one. So I was like why would I make a little preview of what I could do? Why not just go all in? Um so continuing with the theme of problemista they tell to switten characters a real problem creator her only way of relating is through arguing and making accusation.

“Her approach to life is to get what you want become a problem and part of her philosophy”

is always send back the food so I want to play a scene where your character is in a

restaurant with her and this is at the point where she's throwing all these problems at her to get a show for her late husband's paintings and these are often insurmountable problems so they're meeting at a restaurant she's not going to sponsor him until he succeeds. So meanwhile the waiter comes in and you both order salads it's a goat cheese salad and you ask for it without the cheese and then you're finishing your salads when the waiter

comes back and that's where we pick up and here's Tilda Swinton starting off. What's the same thing wrong with your salad, Alejandro? Oh no no no it's fine. It's just I can't help noticing that they neglected to hold the cheese as we specifically asked them to.

Oh I don't think you said no cheese I'm sorry. We did and this young gentleman can't eat it's it's it's fine. Can you tell him I'm I'm vegan is allergic to goat cheese or everything oh I apologize well we'll we find the salad well that's not what we want oh okay I just don't know what else I could do I can't go back to somebody else and say something different I'll

get my supervisor. Oh you're going to hold his hostage now okay so get my supervisor or don't those are the choices either get him or or I don't get him okay so there's something so quintessentially New York but Tilda Swinton's character and I was wondering like

“did you know people like her in El Salvador was this a new kind of creature for you?”

Oh I had actually never thought of that no I don't think I ever really encountered this

kind of as you put it creature and in El Salvador no or or at the very least I was never in the receiving end of this kind of creature in El Salvador and in New York. And in New York boy I I was tell me more I mean she's an amalgamation of so many um people that I met I think that it's it's almost like the artist right of passage in New York City at least to wind up being the assistant to so many people who are just

so flustered by the fact that they haven't figured out so much and I was short-term assistant for so many people and I okay so another part of me also identifying as a problemista is that I am very attracted to difficult people I don't see difficult people as nightmares to escape I'm I'm really drawn to them like a mouth to a flame and then there are more than a few that I came to really really really empathize with and

“and appreciate and I think that till this character is rooted in that and also to be”

completely fair about it whenever I was an assistant it was in the receiving end of the wrath of these art world egos I also acknowledge that I was a very incompetent assistant I have zero attention to detail and I can barely keep my own life on track so the fact that I was ever tasked with doing that for someone else is just a recipe for disaster what do you think you're attracted to difficult people I don't know the why yet I

haven't gotten that far in therapy who the author is speaking to Terry Gross about his 2023 film problemista he has a new special on HBO Max called color theories adapted from his one man off Broadway show after a break will continue their conversation and film critic Justin Chang reviews the new film the drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson I'm David Ian Kooley and this is fresh air when we left off Taurus admitted to being attracted

difficult himself that made me think of this clip from his 2017 comedy central stand up special I am sorry if I seem a little bit distracted I I just got my lab results back and just as every doctor's expected I'm simply too much I think that hilarious I had completely forgotten about that okay so what what makes you think that people think that you're simply too much I think that I often feel like I don't know how to do the very basic

“things that you need to do and so sometimes I feel like I'm this like exotic animal that needs”

like very particular things in order to to survive and like won't eat the food that you give him but beyond that being a vegan who can't cook being a vegan food is not a self-sustaining vegan and then like recently another another wall that I've encountered

that I put there but now has become almost like pillar of my being is that I have never had a

credit card so I don't credit really yeah and I just don't want one I aspire to never have a credit card and I aspire to never have credit or rely on credit for anything I'm terrified of the idea of owning anything to anyone I it would make me really uncomfortable to buy a home and feeling like I it would make me feel like I'm in trouble all the time yeah I don't think I understand that

“yeah and and I think that makes this or maybe I'll probably never own a home but I'm sort of a piece”

with that um so continuing with the theme of problemista I just want to get back to the Tilda Swinton character that character who creates a lot of problems and whose default mode is

anger and bitterness and arguing you've basically designed the character almost as if it was

a clown or some kind of rag doll her hair is this kind of like wild and scraggly like fiery orange red her cheeks have like so much blush on them they look like her cheeks were painted on and she's wearing like really eccentric uh loud clothes um and all of this matches her like crazy mood and mood swings um so what was your inspiration for her look because Tilda Swinton usually

“looks kind of ethereal on screen there's something almost like translucent about her the hair was”

one of the very first conversations we had talking about her hair was almost like the icebreaker between Tilda and I and just became the road to becoming friends it like discussing the hair first we talked color and we decided that um she should have the kind of red hair that you see in the streets but you rarely see in film because it's not a shade of red that anyone aims to get it's the shade of red that um something wrong happened and then you ended up with that shade of red

it's like almost like a little purply and then her hair cut the idea was that her hair cut would be at odds with her hair texture so that her hair was just constantly in a fight with itself and that really gave Tilda the the fuel for the character of just imagining that every time the elisabeth sees her reflection in the mirror she's adjusting her bangs she's adjusting the size of her fringes and and she gets so angry about the hairdresser who promised her that she would look

exactly like a photo she showed her in a magazine we made this whole fantasy of like she walked the way from the hair salon with all these products that she's supposed to use every day but of course she doesn't and then the look we really wanted to capture that um woman in the art scene

lorry side with a hint of like groupie who has good taste but there's always something that's

like a little off the mother in the film seems just like wonderful she and the elisabeth character your character live in the countryside in El Salvador and she builds like a fort for him I should mention here that your actual mother is a designer and architect so you grew up probably in a very visual world which certainly serves you well as a filmmaker and as a comic yeah so um early

and she creates this little like castle which is interesting that you use the word fort because that is sort of the intention of it is to like keep him safe and sound in a way from danger and this like sort of magical little structure that's in the movie was designed by my mother by my real mother and I you know I I love having a piece of her in what I do um and she's still in El Salvador yes yeah my whole family so that's beautiful that you were able to emigrate to the

u.s but you have a project together yeah and we we always have a project together whether it's like

coming up with a coat rack for my apartment or I have like an event that I need clothes for and then I send her sketches of what I'm thinking of of having made and she gives me her feedback or like she shows me the back that she's making for herself we always have a back and forth of collaboration and then I have really come to find that same joy and filmmaking because that's what being a director is a director isn't an all-knowing oracle creator who can create a single

handedly a world from the ground up a director relies on on collaboration and getting to work with people who can physically do things that I can't and having them feel excited and seen by what we're

“doing is I think a testament to the way I grew up in the movie the mother you know builds this”

like castle or forward or whatever as an alternate reality where the sun could be as a child but

it's also it's it's a protected world it's a world on like basically in the back yard and

she worries that one her son is an adult and leaves to emigrate to the u.s that the safe world that she had created for him with something he felt he had to escape and now all of the problems of the world that she protected him from he is endangered by and I'm wondering if your appearance experience that that they created this like safe world for you and a beautiful world with all their designs and then you go out to like New York City you so do you think that they worry that

like you were out of their protected world and you're going to be exposed to all these dangers completely yeah they were encouraging but very nervous about me going off on my own and trying to find a life in an environment that was completely foreign to us in a field that it was utterly foreign to them you know there's no picking up the phone and saying hey my son is interested

in being a writer director we we I had never met all right anyone who who who does what I do and

“so yeah no they were oh my god I mean the the first I think two years every time I spoke to my”

mother on the phone which was often she would tell me to look both ways before across the street as if you know that when occurred to me but I was definitely very very protected but I felt like I had a driving me that I wasn't ever going to be able to explore within the confines of their safety well also I'm wondering like you started as a stand-up comic right is there much stand-up comedy in El Salvador no at least not in the time when I was growing up there so how were you

exposed to it I wasn't so I came to the US wanting to be a writer wanting to be specifically a writer for TV and film but very much like in the movie my my visa was running out and I and I didn't know how long I'd be able to stay here and and I kept aspiring to find a day job that would make

“me so that I was able to stay here and then I remember being one of these day jobs one day like”

working a co-check and like thinking well why am I here am I in New York just so that I can afford being in New York is the goal of living in New York to make writing here because that is is that all there is and then I I remember the original goal that brought me here the the wanting to be a writer and I had no idea how to write a script that would ever get made and then it just popped into my head that stand up comedy was something that was available to me in New York City for free meaning

I didn't have to take any classes I didn't have to know anyone in the business and I could just

of every single open mic in New York City for free so I started going to them as a way of showcasing my

writing and the very first time I did it was sort of like means to an end the end being being a professional

TV and film writer and then I fell in love with performance I fell in love with the world I accidentally wandered into and I made a lot of friends in that world and then the stand up became a calling card for what I do now Julio Torres speaking to Terry Gross in 2024 more after a break this is fresh air if you're a super fan of fresh air with Terry Gross we have exciting news double UHYY has launched a fresh air society a leadership group dedicated to ensuring fresh air's legacy for over 50 years

this program has brought you fascinating interviews with favorite authors artists actors and more as a member of the fresh air society you'll receive special benefits on recognition learn more at

“whYY.org/fresh air society you know I think that maybe not having a template for comedy because you”

didn't really grow up with stand up um help you find a very original voice because it's not like you were imitating somebody since yeah I will say that the very very first time I did an open

mic in New York City uh so one thing that I think that people who have never done a comedy open

mic don't realize is that the audience in the open mic is just other comedians waiting to go up there's no real audience it's almost like a workshop and at the good open mics everyone is very engaged in listening to each other and like cheering each other on the very bleak ones everyone's on their phone just killing time till they get to go up and be ignored and and the the latter is the the first ones I ever did and in waiting to go up I was just sort of like observing

“how people did it and I was like okay okay you have six more people before you have to go up”

you better learn how to make this fast and then the first time I I performed I was sort of doing

my impression of what I thought a a stand-up comedian should be and that didn't feel right so then I just decided to ignore it after that and um I think it's a learning curve with any discipline that you pick up where like the first couple of attempts at least in my case are crude impersonations of what you think that medium should be and then I quickly give that up and just do the thing that I feel more comfortable in doing a lot of your stand-up

comedy is based on like giving personalities to objects and talking about like colors and shapes this is not your standard stand-up material it's not about sex it's not about neurosis you impersonate a brit of filter and in one of your bits and I actually want to play another clip and in this you're talking about toys and stuff and I'm gonna give away one of the punchlines

“because I think it's gonna be a little hard to hear and you're not seeing it so I'm just gonna”

help out a little bit by saying this is about one of the um happy meal toys that that you saw and how it makes no sense to you so um here's a clip from my guest Julio Torres doing stand-up do you remember the Disney animated film the punch back of nordadame it wasn't a hit but it was there it's just sort of what we got that year sometimes we get lions sometimes we get genies sometimes we get a tender parisian drama for the children

but apart about that movie that really really stayed with me was it's feeling there's weathering possibly closet a deeply troubled little man named moncinear cloud furlough and during the peak of his narrative arc moncinear cloud furlough sings into the roaring flames of the fire about his lust before the gypsie girl Esmeralda and in that moment we see him turn lust into misogyny into essentially genocide

so while some children were playing with like a ninja turtle or a transformer oh there's where like oh yeah mine is this sort of like medieval court justice he's morally bankrupt there's a lot of self-hate in him that combined with power just makes him lash out and really toxic and scary ways and sometimes I don't know I put him in a little car and in the TV special this is from a 2019 HBO comedy special called my favorite shapes

you see the little figure and he looks like he's singing in an Italian opera oh yes really evil figure and recently you know this this moncinear who's really evil so it's it's it's really funny you seem to love miniatures and objects and do you tribute that to like your mother being an architect and designer and your father being a civil engineer so that they inhabited the world of design and objects that must be it but I also think

that the creative exercise of attributing personality and stories to inanimate objects is something that most of us have in childhood I mean that is literally what what playing with a toy

“is feeling for them making up stories for them and I think that most people lose that”

somewhere in in adolescence it is just sort of gone by adulthood and I think that I really

disliked adolescence and adulthood so much that I just retained it that I just like never

should get away so I don't really think I'm doing something that no one does I think I never stopped doing the thing that we all do. Julio Torres it has been great talking with you thank you so much for coming on our show. Thank you for having me. Julio Torres speaking to Terry Gross in 2024 his new show is called color theories now streaming on HBO Max. Coming up film critic Justin Chang reviews the new film The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. This is fresh air.

Support for fresh air comes from WHY presenting the pulse a weekly podcast about health and science each episode is full of great stories and big ideas fueled by curiosity and wonder can you learn to listen to your intuition? What should electric cars sound like? Why can it be so hard to get an accurate diagnosis? How do fungi communicate? Check out the pulse available where you get your podcasts. In the new movie titled The Drama Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play an

“engaged couple whose happiness is derailed by a secret from the past. It's the latest from the”

Norwegian filmmaker Christopher Borgley who previously directed Nicholas Cage in the 2023 dark comedy Dream scenario. The drama opens in theaters this week. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. In the drama Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play Charlie and Emma a Boston couple whose wedding day is fast approaching. The writer director Kristoffer Borgley cleverly recaps their romance as a series of happy memories. Some of which they planned to share with their friends and family

members at the upcoming reception. One such memory is the first time they met in a bustling cafe.

It involved a misunderstanding plus a white lie and a bit of stalkerish behavior from Charlie. It wasn't too funny at the time but two years later they can laugh about it.

“Humor plays an important role in their relationship. In this scene Charlie, who works as a curator”

for a Cambridge art museum, is complaining about a potentially problematic retrospective when Emma breaks the tension as she often does by pulling down his pants. I did. I said if everyone knows he's a piece of shit and while we're doing a retrospective in the fast ways it's said it's

so incredibly irresponsible. No one ever cares until it's too late and then it always ends up

back firing on me. Emma, I'm being serious. It's not funny. No, I agree with you. This is not funny at all. It's very serious. And you're laughing. I love how you always find a way to tell my drama into a comedy.

One night, while Charlie and Emma are hanging out with their married friends, Rachel and Mike,

“they all wind up playing a boozy game of "What's the worst thing you've ever done?"”

Emma's answer is a doozy and it's the big twist on which the drama hinges. I won't give it away, but let's just say that it involves not something terrible that she did, but something terrible that she almost did, but decided against at the last minute. Emma's disclosure stops the merriment dead and throws her friends and her fiancee for a loop. Rachel responds with particular outrage. She's played by Elana Heim in a much more ferocious

performance than her star-making turn in licorice pizza. And Pattinson is very good as Charlie, a loving groom to be, who suddenly engulfed by anxiety. In the days that follow, as the wedding count down accelerates, Charlie finds himself wondering how well he truly knows the woman he's marrying. The problem with the drama is that it doesn't quite seem to know

“what to make of Emma either, even as it tries to account for how she could have come so close”

to doing what she didn't ultimately do. We see flashbacks featuring another actor, Jordan Kirit,

as a 15-year-old Emma, who experiences her share of depression and loneliness. But these scenes, which could be a mix of Emma's unreliable memories, and Charlie's even less reliable hallucinations, feel like paint by numbers psychoanalysis. And all those in day as performance is skillful and empathetic. It's hard to connect her Emma to the younger version of the character. The movie's premise seldom feels like more than just a premise. I didn't believe

that Emma could be capable, or even almost capable, of the horrific act in question. Borgly previously made the 2023 film Dream's scenario, which starred Nicholas Cage as a nebishi university professor, who inexplicably began haunting the dreams of those around him.

“Like the drama, it was a darkly amusing, yet conceptually half-baked comedy about the power of”

suggestion, and the ease of villainizing someone for something they didn't actually do. You could say both of these movies are loosely about cancel culture, something of which Borgly

may have some first-hand knowledge. In 2012, he wrote an essay for Norwegian magazine about his

relationship with a teenage girl who was 10 years his junior, in which he sought to grapple with a longstanding taboo, and defend his actions. That essay recently resurfaced online before the rollout of the drama, unsurprisingly stirring fresh waves of outrage. His humanity capable of authentic change, or redemption, in a way, Borgly sidesteps that question. His great skill is for ringing tension, dread, and squirm-inducing comedy from ugly situations, and the drama is most successful,

not as a character study, or a moral inquiry, but as a wedding stress movie. It's about the horrors of having to worry about DJs, photographers, and florists, when you're not even sure you're going to have a marriage at the end of the day. In a way, Borgly is trying to skewer the empty flash and pump of certain social rituals, which serve only to keep us from really talking about the things that actually matter.

He ends the movie on a faintly hopeful note that Charlie and Emma will ultimately move past

this crisis, though he doesn't rule out the possibility that they might look back at their marriage and see it as the actual worst thing they've ever done. Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed the drama now out in theaters. On Monday's show, Arsenio Hall, the late night host who gave hip-hop its first home on television, sat with Magic Johnson as Magic told the world he had HIV, and helped propel Bill Clinton to the

White House with one saxophone performance. It opens up about why he walked away from the biggest dream of his life. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at npr-freshair. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests behind the scene shorts and iconic interviews from the archive.

Freshair's executive producer, Sam Brieger, our senior producer today, is Thaea Challener. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Leeerman and Julian Hertzville. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited

Susan Yacundi, Annabellman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bean Coolie.