Eric Roth

And now I don't want to make this whole thing about death.

But I just thought to like, you know, which I'll repeat, but that comment, my mother made as she was dying when, who's a lifetime atheist and communist and didn't believe in anything passes and I asked her, are you afraid when she was kind of at the end and she said she was curious. And I thought, well, that was a good place to start with something, you know, and then you sent me that beautiful poem about, that when we're not watching ourselves, maybe somebody else's

watching us as we move through something else, you know. And I loved your book by the way, I have it right behind me, here up, it'll stay here now forever. And thank you so much, so it's so glad you like it. That was beautifully architectured and then, you know, in all ways, in all ways,

“are all stories good for the same reason. I think they might be because I think you get to unleash”

these words into ideas, trying to put the writer, trying to put the best word in front of the other. Some people are way better at it than others, you know, just to relate to well-known artists, writer named Dennis Johnson, who I think was one of the great American writers wrote a short, short story called "Jesus Sonner," that is pretty well recognized as one of the great short stories. And then more recently, I've been friendly with George Saunders, who is a wonderful

combination of words and science. And I try to sort of compete with them in emails. It's like a joke. That's like talking to a poet. But I think it's how they've learned as the great writers have or great artists, same as painting or something, being able to put one breaststroke in front of

“another too, you know, to communicate an idea. So in that sense, I think all story telling is the same.”

And that's just how good you're able to do it. But I think it's a cliche probably,

probably true that everybody does have a story to tell. It's like I always please everybody,

but there's somebody for everybody, same kind of thing. Do stories need a structure and do they need the same structure. I would say neither's true. I think that's up to the artists, tell of their best communicate. I mean, you know that better than anybody with me is like that there's somebody who'll make just a sound and a sound will be everlasting. And someone else will do it a different way. I'm pretty traditional in my structure for a Shakespearean, you know,

not that I'm Shakespeare, but even I think Shakespeare said the two greatest lines in the English

“language, exit ghost. You can think about that for a while. But yeah, I think you need that.”

So it was scaring me with AI a little bit. It's now learned to, it learns dramatic function of Shakespeare. So he knows about catharsis and ax structure and it. And that will then use that too, obviously, increase its ability to tell stories. But I think people can tell stories anywhere they can. I think you just do what you think is comfortable. I think one thing I've learned and I think I learned as I leave a little bit from Bob Dylan just by osmosis that anything's culturally appropriate

and to sense that you can use anybody else's work to if it encourages you, it creates for you something that you hadn't thought about. And then it becomes a wide kind of mass of what bubbles over and you something maybe beautiful or corny, you know, or that I remember was writing something and there was Emily Lu Harris do that with, I think, lefty for Zellers and I thought he

you know and it was like it was always very moving to me and it always kind of just stuck with me.

But it helped me to then use that to appropriate that to not the particular song with that sound, whatever that felt like to be able to try to articulate that. So I think there's, you know, Hiku's and there's a, I wrote a movie a long time ago for, and I haven't told the story. That might that much for Kura Sawa and he had asked me to help make an Anglo character and his movie called Rhapsody in August and we had, we talked through a translator but he sent me the

script which was translated and it was like a Hiku. I mean it was just a so beautiful just an ant on an ant hill and however he was describing things and it was really, really quite lovely and

and it was so different from what the beautiful way he was explaining things and you know any artist

“will do things differently than another and I think they all kind of have to borrow from each other”

and also have to learn through some experience, you know. So you don't get to be kind and skier something without spending the time, you know, learning to be kind and skier and you don't get to be regrouping without learning how to be on the psychological note have you ever done in therapy? I have some not much, I had done it individually for a while and like like late '60s, early '70s I found myself kind of strange with my married life, let's put it that way.

And I did a lot of loose genics, all kinds, you know, with privately and also with like people like Jerry Garcia and stuff. I mean in other words, lots, lots, lots of, you know, acid tests and everything else. So yeah, I had one psychiatrist I found was very enlightening. Let's put it that way and my problem is I get to hung up on kind of the style of the, of the psychiatrist. But they've been incredibly helpful and then it became psychologist obviously when

they started just describing drugs. She was pretty amazing. Yes, she was not, she wasn't intrusive at all. It was very sensitive and I thought she let us in great areas. Yeah, so that's psychiatry to me. How did you connect with the police psychologists? Somebody made a recommendation just her being really strong. And yeah, I mean she was really an intrusive and let us kind of fight it out, you know, where we had to and love it out where we could. And it was important. Yeah. She was a great

facilitator that way. Have you done much psychiatry at all? I've done a lot of there to be different

“kinds. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I think it's important. Yeah, been helpful. Yeah.”

I think that's part of what when I sort of introduce myself to you that I want to go back to that in some form or fashion, whether it's with the orthodox rabbi here, you know, a shaman, you know, what motivated you to reach out in the first place? Oh, well, oh, no, this is why because I've been having these kind of incredible, I called them the pork sessions, you know. These guys, during, I don't know why, right before, I guess more during the pandemic, people just started

coming over when I sit on the porch and talk and we could talk six feet away. And I don't know, I think it's more, they were like, old man, Roth, you know, what does he have to say? And all these people just started showing up, you know, it's like sometimes announced, sometimes not announced.

And they've always been, I'm sorry, I didn't tape them. Even though I understand, since we

have a ring camera, they're all on there. And I was, I was talking to Jed Appetail, who we both know, together, and a couple other people to who love you. James Gray and a few other people,

“and, and really kind of people in life is saying, you know, I've just been enjoying this”

enlightening conversation about things that I wouldn't necessarily normally think about, you know, and how does it affect my work and my children and everything, and everybody said Rick Ruben. And so it was pretty easy, you know. And then I thought, I figured when I text you, you would just never text back and I thought that was cool to look, you know, never be fine, but you've been very generous with your time. Tell me about the first time you took the

hallucinogenic drug. Um, wow, first time I was with a group of people in the hate Ashbury

truthfully, it was sounds kind of corny. Um, and someone said try this, and I, I'm always willing to try,

you know, and I've had some pretty scary things, but not, I mean, we're, I never minded like the floor opening up in a couple, or I always said, and I was, you know, sitting in a cloud, or I think I had once a experience of feeling like I was having an affair with time magazine, which was pretty interesting. You know, I don't know what that was all about, but uh, I never felt that I was going to become psychotic, you know, but I could see how it could

become psychotic for somebody who has really tremendous, uh, fear, uh, you know, and, and resolve things, and, but I think, you know, from just playing with marijuana and stuff, you know, and having a lovely time through whatever, you know, the rauticism of it, or just the

taste of a brown, you're some nonsense, you know, but that, I always felt it was expansive to my mind.

I was never, I never like cocaine, though. I just don't like that feeling. I mean, I get some more toward, I'm not advocating this anymore, but heroin, or something, you know, more masculine than there, you know. But, I mean, I think drugs have a purpose, you know, and I guess it's, uh,

about, you know, where it always comes from. I mean, to me, the greatest story where I said

to Bob Billet with the Bob Dylan thing was that in his book called Chronicles, uh, he talks about,

“um, he was at the time, uh, with Daniel and Ma, who I'm sure you knew or know what, well, I think”

he's gone out. But, um, uh, he was struggling creatively, Bob Billet and he took a trip out to, like, the buy you, because they were, I think, working in New Orleans or something, and they went out to Lafayette. He said he had walked into a, and his book, he said he'd walked into a gift shop, and he sort of found the secret to everything. He was a card that said world's greatest grandpa. And so, that somehow put together whatever he was struggling with, you know, and I thought,

yeah, sometimes it's the most simple thing. Yeah. Do you feel like you're the same person now, as you were before you took any hallucinogens? No, not at all. I think the same person's in there, but I think it's been, uh, it's been, um, and re-informed in a way, you know, that at least it did open up to possibilities of things. But I don't want to emphasize this because my life hasn't

“been, you know, particularly about that. I mean, I think that's a nice, afterthought, in a sense.”

I mean, I'm way more interested in, um, uh, for me, for the creative process is really important. And these things, I mentioned earlier about, what are my, what are the sources of my taking in this from? What I do as a screenwriter is kind of a bastardized form of, it's more of a craft than an art. You can be artful at it. But it's, uh, it's not an novel, you know, to fill a page up, a lot of ellipses and half thoughts, but uh, strong visuals, you know, and, uh, but it's a former

writing, you know, and it's like I've been lucky enough to, um, people have appreciated, I think, some of the things that I had to impart, you know, one of my proudest was more recently with, uh, the actor Josh Brolin, um, I had written a play of high noon. We were considering that he was considering and it was very close and I wrote a play of both high noon and see what, because they

had never had a drama on Broadway, a Western, on Broadway. And I was told that Josh was telling

people about, he decided not to do it, but that his philosophy at the time, at least, more recently, was, uh, of Scott this Sherald story, more of an essay to a extent about life and death than this and that and he was telling people about it. It turned out I had written it. It was from when I did then you've been buttoned and I had written speech toward the end of it, and it was actually a speech that, uh, Nora Efron asked me to, who is planning a funeral asked me to fight, she can use it,

but it's funny how they attribute a depth of Scott this Sherald who I couldn't hold a candle to,

“you know, but in this one instance is pretty, it's pretty powerful. I think about just, uh,”

about life and about how you have this no rules or anything, you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody else and you can, and if you're not, if you're not succeeding at what you want to, you can just stop and change it, you know, uh, it's easier said than that, obviously, but at least you can have to, if you have the courage to go and try something else. Yeah, the idea of a Western

non-Broadways, it's a really cool idea, I like that. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a pretty powerful

play that I, the play itself is very powerful. It's about the blacklist really, and uh, and the movie was, and Gary Cooper and all, and sort of American iconography of the whole thing, and uh, it's about a god and it's, you know, but uh, I think I, I made it, and hopefully a contemporary way, and I mean, you'd appreciate to essentially, this is your metia anyway, uh, is, uh, trying to put some contemporary music in it. So the feels, uh, and that songs are all, uh, apt. I mean, there's, uh,

that right, Kooter song across the borderline, and then, uh, somebody you know quite well, and I actually know, earlier than you, Johnny Cash song, which was from Nick Low, the, um, Beast in me, which he used on the soprano. Yeah, when I was younger, I was asked by the cabaret department to William Morris, I was a client of William Morris, and I was pretty young to travel with a bunch of artists, and they were all just kind of basically jerking off, uh, wanting, uh, these little

video ideas, you know, there was no MTV then or anything, and so I wrote on the buses with Johnny, he was the cash family, and I was really interesting, and then, uh, Ben Morris, and was seen with his back to the audience at that point, and then of course, great cherry Garcia, you know, so how much do your experiences work their way into your work? Well, I think they do, but I try to make it what I think is more about what the feeling is and the experience itself

necessarily. Um, I mean, it's the best kind of writing, which I still don't think I've mastered

I know, I think Maurice Garcia is a great subtextual filmmaker, because he, even in like, uh,

taxi driver, all of a sudden there'd be some graffiti on a wall that he decided to show you, but the graffiti didn't say anything of any value, was this a sense? This is an art, and this is part of the city, you know, so he expressed a lot that way, but, uh, you know, the worst kind of writing is kind of, or any of the explainery, you know, it's like the Maurice Mr. Water Commissioner, not kind of writing, so you want to try to find a way to have someone articulate with their

most intimate concerns or through some other story about something, you know, if you're creating a finer, if it's a true story, it's comes from life and, uh, that says the same thing without having

“to do this kind of thing with big headlines. It's, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to do. I think”

that, I think the, I think the great musicians do it. I mean, I think they do it, uh, through the lyrics, they're just, it's spectacular, you know, where they, they don't necessarily talk about what they're talking about, but you know what they're talking about, you know what they're talking about. As nutrition science advanced through the mid-20th century, researchers began to understand that modern eating patterns, limited variety, processed foods, and time constraints could leave

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“and what you can let go of? I think a great question, because every book that was been given to me,”

I sit and I read it right and I start underlining what I think this could be dramatically interestingness, and all of a sudden the whole book literally is underlined. So now from how what do I do? But I think it gives you a sense of what you're very smart about as to what you're not going to use, because you can start coalescing things into where one dramatic moment takes care

of four or five. Now, I always warn the author that it might not seem akin to what you wrote,

but it will be, in other words, so I hope you know, I hope it will make it better if it's possible, or at least, it's just a different form, because I guess my calling is a madromatist, I guess, right? Hopefully some humor won't long away. But if I'm able to somehow express the human condition in an honest way, and somebody could take something from it, just even at an entertainment, something as far as sparkles, far as gumper, something, you know, which was silly, it's hard,

“but there's something was constant about it. And then there are, I think, some more sophisticated”

movies like the Insider that I did, and a few others, I think are particularly things that were important, you know, society. I tell me the story of the Insider. The Insider was a guy who

daughter of a tobacco farmer. He was a very complicated man, because he was scientists,

“legitimate scientists, had a PhD in Sunday Chemistry or something, but you wonder what he was thinking,”

he was working for the tobacco company, so he was sort of advocating, you know, the poison that they were putting out there, and he knew all about it and knew what was wrong. He could tell you

in a second about the blood-brain barrier, and I have the smoke at the time, so I was aware of it.

I couldn't talk to him now, because he was under a kind of a hole from the government. He wasn't allowed to talk. So we had to create kind of a guy in whole cloth, the main who was a man, and but the first thing I remember saying what kind of guy is a tobacco scientist, and he didn't want really very much. He just wanted to retire, and wanted his pension wasn't even very much, but when they said we're not going to give you your pensiony, so I'm going to start talking about what's

wrong with this industry, you know, and he was pretty brave. He was pretty brave guy. He was a very prickly guy. I found it to get to meet him. Anyway, that was a story, and in a dev-tailed with

60 minutes, the television show, they did a report on him, and then he squelched it, because the

tobacco companies didn't want it, but also the government was kind of involved, and it became very complicated with the personalities, microallists, the interviewer, or the great journalist,

“because I think he was a great journalist. He was on a trade, and so they tried to not”

run the story, and was made the producer nuts, and said what about the integrity of CBS, so if he came a lot about honorability, you know, and I remember Mike Wallace calling me journalist, there was a man named Loll Bergman who was a story. He was a producer of the thing he was very brave and he was a great reporter, and he cares yelling at me, Mike Wallace, well, what makes Moral, when it makes Loll Bergman the Moral fucking arbiter, and it's in that,

so I just wrote it down, so it's in the movie. Wow, that's great. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't have said it. It couldn't have said any better, you know? Yeah, how often does that happen where real life works its way into the story? If you have real life people, and this happened in this killer's to the flower moon where we imagine various things that we wanted the o-sage to say, you know, and then there was no way I could say it as well or Marty or anybody else could

say it as well as the real people. I mean, we can give them, we could give them, sort of the ideas we want, maybe then to express, and then they turned it into what was affecting them as human beings,

and their life stories, you know? So I could have never written them, I could from Brooklyn, you know,

I have no clue. Uh, Ellen, the other instance comes right off the top of my head, it would be on Star's Born, I said to Lady Gaga, let's just sit down here and talk and I'll write dialogue for you from what you're telling me, you know? So if you see, and Bradley did the same thing, a Cooper and like the scene in the parking lot where they were sitting for a bullshitting, well that most of that's written, but it made her comfortable, you know? So when the real person shows up, uh, they have,

you know, either limitations or abilities that you don't even know. And she's uh, she's an interesting human being. We could have the thing that was so striking about her. We were doing a read through and the songs were in there. There was no need for anybody to sing them, uh, Bradley Cooper would just sort of talk them through it. She started singing, "God showed up." You know, I'm sure you know

“that, uh, she has something to do. Yeah, that you can't, uh, so you have to work with, I think”

who the person is. I mean, old story, Russell Crowe was not, he didn't understand certain it's the thing about his character and the insider, so Michael Mann had me fly down to Louisville. He said he won't come out of his trailer all that nonsense. And so I went in there and did Rick Ruben with the Thiffman said is there a way we can find a happy medium here and I explained the scene again to him and he said, "I'll try it." You know, eventually. And Michael, the director

is just trying to avoid having a continuing fight with him. You know, which wouldn't have been very productive. Let's use that case as an example. When there's a log jam like that, what's really going on? What's it really about? I think he had fear. He was afraid, you know, in other words, and if an actor feels he doesn't understand it, whether he's right or wrong, I mean, you need to find a way to articulate to them what you intended. And it doesn't mean you wound up with the exact same

thing. For the insider again, I got a call one morning from Al Pacino saying, I had written a page and it has a monologue. And Al said I could do this with one look. And I said, let me ask Michael,

look in. All the words are outward out the window, you know, because he could do it without, you know,

that's fine. As a writer, that's something that you can't account for or prepare for. And actor can get the story across without saying the words. There's no way to prepare for that. There's no way

“to write for that. No, except for I think after a while, you get the experience of that.”

Certainly less is more if you can, you know, even I think there's some great monologues. And then as some directors just go like this, you know, cut, we'll take it out because I had a thing recently. And I think they're pretty particularly beautiful movies that I just finished called here. We'll see if it works. It might be a disaster. It's all set in one room over a hundred years in a house. And the camera's locked

off. So there's no coverage. It's just one angle. But the stories are beautiful of what the people that live there. And so you don't know a tent is a page, you know. But I know, I feel a story telling is very solid. How did that come about? Bob Zemeckis, the director of Forest Company, have a nice relationship over the years. And I've done some other work for him. And he called me, he felt, it's a graphic novel called here. And the artist grew everything from this point of view,

everything was one way through a window. Well, not through a window, but you see a window in the back. So he said, you have the right melancholy for it. So maybe I do. I don't know. But I also have a sense of my mortality, which is what it's about eventually. You know? So I could write that. And then he put in some, he's very humorous and kind of forceful and lovely. And but it's about everything because a dinosaur is walked through because anything that happened in that property, marsh birds and it's

“quite beautiful. I will see. Maybe it won't work. I think the tone is right. I start crying like a”

baby in the first five minutes, but I think it's because of Rachel Portman's music. So I don't know.

But we'll see. How do most projects originate? Does it usually start with you getting a call from a director or what are the different ways that a project will happen? I think there's everyone you can imagine. You know, like we did one recently, I did with my son called Walt Grace, it's from a John Mayer song, an old John Mayer. I don't know if you know the song, John loves it. And I didn't know John, but my son asked me to think this a good idea for a movie.

I said, it's great. It's about a guy who is kind of trapped in life. It doesn't have a great relationship with his wife. He has one kid that does love him. One kid doesn't or that doesn't have a relationship with them. And he has kind of a groundhog day life. He designs wings for like Lockheed, the supposed to be set in 1967. And he decides to build a submarine in the basement, which I don't know, is going to get it out of there. But in ours, it's like an outbuilding a garage.

And sure enough, he takes off and a homemade submarine where he's got, you know, pillars are made of fans. And from the ceiling, he's gone to the junkyard. And it's spectacular.

“So there's also a feeling yellow submarine with it, I think. But it's quite lovely, I think.”

We have some people who seem to want to do it actually now. So we'll see. And John Mereau didn't music, oh, yes. But so that's one way of games, things come. There's just books sent to me, you know, what I would be interested in. It's really about the subject. And then directors, Danny Villeneuve asked me to rewrite a rival, which I did. And then he asked me to do and you know, so we had a relationship. And Dune was a little complicated for me because it was my favorite book ever written.

But it was an interesting assignment to us to have to make this the best and to try it. You know, it's one that's been attempted many times over the years. And yeah, it's been quite watery. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tricky. I think you did a good job. I think it's my problem with the was on being a little too honest, probably, but there's a character named Duncan I to ho in it. Now, this isn't a translation. I mean, we're supposed to be milking some

pills. I said, where is this name? I'm from. And I understand as a translation of whatever you want

jammo jack-a, but it's not so I always go. But I think it's a prodigious book because he had been

in the glossary, you know, geography and everything else. And it was a surprise. I mean, I think Star's born was the most important movie in the more recent times, not because it's a great movie. I think it is a good movie. And certainly I love the fact that to put me more in touch with the young people, because young people really seem to enjoy it, even though it's an old story. But it made me feel vital, you know. And so I was in my 70s, so I said, you can still write that,

you know. That I think gave me a, you know, I'm not saying I was done, but it did so well. And then I also didn't figure out, you know, something still. And for it just ridiculous. There's a different

Well, that's a great question, because I have tremendous guilt about, I began house of cards. So Fincher, who's my best friend, I guess, in the world, one of the more loyal people you were ever meet. And I hope you have a time to meet him. He decided to do with me. And I had actually been aware of it from earlier when we had seen the English version, that Pacino and I and Michael Man were going to make, make it as a movie because it's just Richard III. It's like, you know,

you think these guys are so tough. Watch me go on the show and then he'd go on the room and

fuck him. How's the English version I've never seen it? It's the same thing, basically. It's just,

but the guy is not, he never wants to go past the station in life he is, which is sort of the whip of the party. In other words, and he's going to just manipulate everybody. You know, it's the succession in that way, I guess, or the succession is that, you know. But it caught on. I wanted to sell it to HBO, figuring we just get water cooler conversation like the sopranos or something, but people started mentioning that you know, and all of a sudden these eyeballs became available.

I'm not happy about particularly the results. I still forcing it to write movies that are

this doesn't mean they don't go right on streaming, but they start at least with the idea to

“but the only one, I think, if there hadn't been a pandemic, I think Dune would have played for quite”

a while, but with the pandemic, you know, people just had to watch it. And there's any benefit in that idea of binge watching or episodes that you can tell the story over six hours, 10 hours, season after season, as opposed to having to get it into a two-hour film. I've just been presented with that, and I'm not sure the answer. It's the same Dennis Johnson. I thought, how come they haven't done a movie about the guys who've come home from war, right? Because every other era has done the

best years for our lives and we call them men that Marlon Brando is in coming home, of course, famous one about Vietnam. So they haven't done that for this war, these wars, they have cast and I rack stuff, you know, and the guys are obviously even bad shape. And so I was going to write that, and Spielberg came to me with something else, and I started conflict, and the head of the studio said, "Why don't you sell HBO?" So I did, and he said, "Who do you want to write this?"

Dennis Johnson, I said, "They didn't know who he was," and I said, "I'm getting him." And he wrote five of the most amazing scripts are called unarmed. Everybody in, it's an amputee or a burn victim, and the only triumph of it is one guy to walk across the street to leave. And it is so spectacular, and it's all written, as I say, in the subtextual way, and we're close now, a Katherine Bigelow might

“do at home, but it's important, I think, and we get to use all, we would have all disabled actors,”

disabled veterans, and disabled civilians, and I think it would be pretty incredible. I mean,

years ago, I was going to do Kukus Nest, and my agent said, "Don't never make it.

Jack Nicholson was not involved." And so, and I was friends with Michael Douglas, really good friends, and so I went off to do a movie called The Onion Field, but then they got Jack Nicholson, and I went all my God, I fucked the dog here, man. But I did come back and do rewriting, which was nice, but that has the same tenor of this to black humor, and anger, you know, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this, we'll see, you know.

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From the time you finish a script and you're happy with it, how different might the movie be than what you're visualizing when you're writing? They're all very, I think sometimes events take over. I'd say the movie is different

“from what the original was, the killers of flower moon. I think it might be a more important movie.”

I had leaned into the western nature of it and then the inaugural decided he didn't want to play the hero when he was right because he was worried that I'm going to be the great-wide hope here. You know, saving the Native Americans and that's what the book was and since that was the fact.

But so we went away from that and they did that Marty did his work and saw the movie. He always was,

we always tried together to get the culpability of everybody that people would just walk over dead bodies. You know, in other words, what is that all about? I mean, there's even a great trailer about saying, who is the wolf? You know, and that's the metaphor, right? You can spot the wolf. Don't worry. And I think they leaned into it the right way and so that the movie doesn't have that sense of having to do what's sort of the white guy saving everybody. But it's not done in a kind of,

I don't want to put her down. Rachel Maddo, but it's just not done with headlines. You know, it's it's done with the great taste. I think Marty's, he's an extraordinary artist. And I would work with him when we're going to work again together or to the end of the time with him, you know?

“But he's not always faithful to what you did so you have to have pretty strong ego over him.”

Yeah. Well, that's what I want to ask about about not being faithful. Are you ever surprised by the direction it takes and do you ever come around to think, oh, this is actually better than what I had originally envisioned? For sure, for sure. And I also think things have gotten where they haven't gotten as well as they could have shown.

I did a movie called "Luck You" that I never understood. I found out why later on that the director had Alzheimer's.

But I never understood why he wanted to do it. I figured, oh, he's going to come in and do something, but it's about a love story set in Las Vegas, a poker player and Drew Barrymore and Eric Bonner. And I thought it's pretty good. And I actually took it from there was a movie that Elizabeth Taylor did a horror and baby called the only game in town. And that was about her playing basically a hooker, even though they don't call it, they didn't call it that then.

And he's just a degenerate gambler. And at the end of the movie, he's quite beautiful. Where he's sitting on the curb and water's running down the curb and you figure he's just dead broke man. He's got nothing left and she comes sits beside him and he sort of says that's the way it goes. If you're going to be a gambler and he starts taking out $100 bills and making him into little boats and I have to have a river right. So guess it worked out. But that was supposed to be the feeling

of it, you know, what is lock and you know, all that. And it didn't work. That was just no good.

“So I don't know. I guess I was just appointed, but I think you have to rely on the director.”

It's going to realize something, you know, you have to hope they have something. I mean, I have a sort of philosophy that and I've worked with everybody that you have to take a third way,

you know, there's your way, there's a director's way, and the director's always going to win.

One of the stories that telecasely as I did a movie called, this was the onion field actually. And I wrote a, I thought a great scene in the director kept saying, I'm, it's not working. And I said, yeah, it's really great. You're just shooting. He said, you know what I'm going to go the other way. I'll even the script and not shoot it. And that was the end of that conversation. It wasn't very kind and I don't think it was very brave of them, but that's the way it goes, you know.

So you got to figure out a way to be part of what they need to articulate what their vision is, you know, and they're the boss. And when it says a film, but I don't think it's bullshit. I think it's their film. It's like a musician and it doesn't go any other way. I think, you know, did a movie called "Mank," which was about the guy fighting for credit with Orson Wells, you know, on citizen Kane. And he said the ball, no question. He said the boat off with the right architecture and the

right journey, but directors got to take it there, you know. And if you don't get there and get to the right place, you're, it's not worth saying. Do you do a lot of research for the projects tremendous amount? I like every, God is in the details. You know that. Yeah, I do. But everything, I think everything, I read at that point, is all Chris for the mill. You know, and that's why I'm back to at 78, particularly, what are the things you're going to find? So I'm doing a thing called

Ron Devil with Rama, which is an old Arthur Clark book that they've made too, that's not that they

astronaut that's been helping me. And he said when he went out of the space craft, he just laid back

like he was in a bath and looked at the stars, you know. And so I said, okay. So if I can get that feeling, because I think the feeling, this particular piece really dovetails to the things I've been thinking about, that the thing that comes and interrupts these people's world doesn't have to have a reason. It might just be God. And some of the people who are like kind of religious belief in this 2130, that Jesus showed up sent by God from the planets. And he just showed up in, you know,

Palestine or Israel wherever you'd like. And did what he did, and then they crucified me when back up to the planets, you know. And that he's still there with that. So everybody adapts, you know, to whatever their ear is. But I think this overriding sense, and I don't think you can escape,

“but you get a particular age. Because I mean, you have to dwell on it toward, and mobilize as you,”

but I think it spans your horizons, you know. And that's a good way to say it, I guess. When you're writing, let's say a monologue for character, how important is the content of what they're saying versus this is a great line. I mean, you would like to be, say, presententially that you just want to put the, no, no, I know. But I'm sure you just know what I'm saying. I mean, there's only your answer. I think there might, I get you. But I mean,

I think it's kind of narcissistic to only dwell on what you think will last, you know, maybe the whole speech will last, and it's more important that way. But I don't know if I really think about it either way. I mean, I think I try to write with human, it's just what I do. Someone called me a sappy dog heart. I try to write that will be remembered. I like the fact that

“I built a legacy of things that I think I chose pretty well. You know, not always. We've had”

some master failures, but I think pretty well. And I still think that continued to choose pretty well. And I mean, I have other issues. So it gets more complicated. So my mother was very tough on

giving love. And so I always felt I needed some validation, right? And I still do in my wife's sister.

I mean, 80 years old, you feel like you need validation. You need like an Oscar nominee. So I said, I don't want to. But it's like I want to go home. My mom said, "Look, my report car." I'm saying. So there's just psychiatry again. It's like, yeah, I don't know if I'm getting over it or not. I don't know. I'd like to. That's an interesting thing that when our parents pass away, who do you call? You know, when you get good news, you don't have that feeling.

“And no, no, you don't have that thing. You can just share. You know, it really loves sharing, you know?”

Yeah, I think that's true. I guess I think they do with my wife, baby. You know, she's a doctor, and she's pretty supportive. But she doesn't quite get this world, I mean, you know, she's a different. You know, she relies strictly on science. Whatever you say, it's got to be accurate. You know, I'm saying, you can't just make it up. I remember Fincher being angry at me because I had been to him, but I had some silly speech about a red pit in the middle of night at the

hotel. I gave her some bullshit about how you have the steep tea and that's in that, you know, David said this is such nonsense, you know, and he loves it. Have you ever had a mystical experience? I think one, it ended up pleasant. It wasn't pleasant. I had to have cancer a couple times in my life.

I've been very sick a lot. But I can't sit twice in the first time. I was just 32, and it was

directly from my grandfather, colon cancer. And in those days, they just bombarded you. I mean, they just didn't really need to quite know, you know, and I'm mirror laying in bed and, and I'm not really interested. I'm certainly not Catholic and an angel showed up and sort of form of a non-kind of him. And she's just time to go. And I said, I don't really want to go yet, and I love my wife, I love my kids, and can we just force all this, you know, and she thought about, so it's okay.

So I don't know. That was my waste of film, and she knows, but it felt real, it felt real. Beautiful. I mean, the other side of it, the bad side of it is when I, I think when I get afraid or I don't want to see certain things, I imagine rats are going around. I see a rat run across a ceiling or something, you know, something weird like that. That's about as mystical. I haven't got, I think I feel more mystical on writing that I can feel would abuse me, you know, um, what makes

mystical. So I'm not sure. I completely believe in magic. So I wish I did. So I mean, I think that's I'd like to learn how to honestly. When you've had that feeling of soaring while you're writing, is it just that the lines are coming? That's like, oh, this is good, this is good, this is good, describe it. If feels like you, I love to go swimming in a lake in the summer, where it's just cold,

“and feels like you're coming alive, you know, and that's what it feels like. And you don't have”

to judge it. And you don't even know, because it's so corny the way I do it, I say out loud,

the dialogue, and the worst acting known to man, the voice has never changed, you know, and like any

of that. And yet, you feel like, wait a minute, you're not Mozart. This is coming right to you, you know, you only have to race a fucking note, you know. But you do feel like you're imbued with something. I don't know what it is, and I guess that's a creative spirit that you, and if the work is great, even if it doesn't work, if you can try it out, why not? You know, do you always write dialogue out loud? Pretty much. I have this, I say you just characters it's so bad, it's embarrassing.

So you'll basically act it out for yourself. It's less acting, I sort of almost whisper it, you know, like, I don't know why, just to see if it feels right, I guess. And I also learned a long time ago that was a director, Michael Chumino, and he had prepared a wallet for Mickey Rork, so Mickey

Rork knew where he came from. I'm sure Mickey Rork never looked into wallet. But it had

a fortune from a fortune cookie, and their picture was daughter, his draft card, and this and that. And his point was that every single character has to have their own voice. Every single character has to have their own psychological makeup that they came from something, they're going to go somewhere,

“and I took that to heart, so I think that's a big key about how, with the dialogue kind of thing,”

that everybody sounds different and interesting, and doesn't have a follow-up be and says something off the cuff, and I mean, in other words, where you try to make it as real as possible. Do you know all of that about the characters before you start or does their character come into focus as you're writing? When the resume writing pretty much, unless there's something so to find for them in a book or something where you don't want to make the audience go crazy, you know? No, I think like this one I'm

writing with this rendezvous with Romance, I think it's called that, that I've slowly kind of made this commander, the ship into somebody that was not really there, and whatever I felt he should be, you know? And you just start describing things like, you know, I think I wrote that he has he's very tacit or somebody has a great sense of irony or something, you know? So wherever that took me, you know, that was of my first impression of him, and a lot of it's just what I will say is that

“almost, I think every movie I wrote except for Munich began an end with the exact same scene I wrote.”

Almost everyone, yeah. And you start with the beginning in the ending, is that typical?

Typical always want to know where I am to begin with and where I am to the middle of a big mess

have no clue which I think part of the fun you get to take a journey, you know, and discover people and things and things you never expect. If you do it well, great, if you don't do it so well, it's not so pretty. But it's yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful and then I'll find that I'll really struggle over the first like 25, 30 pages or 20 pages and think I'm just not going to get through this and all of a sudden on page 70, you know, saying then you're done.

It's something unlocks something and I never fight it, which I think is what happens with people with like, when they get this fear of continuing on the blank page and all that stuff, the priders block, I just change the weather. I'll just make it rain or snow and I'll send you looking at it differently, you know. Do you always change the weather for a story or do you ever do something to change your condition to allow that? I think I do both. Yeah, I think that will

lead me to do something differently. Yeah. Like might you go for a drive or you know, do something different instead of just sitting at the desk? That's exactly right. Now that's exactly right. I'm very high bound and kind of this has to do with I think with being born in the late 40s and being at 50s and 60s kid and that look at it as a job in that way. I mean, I normally go to work. I get up, you know, whatever time I'll same days has gotten earlier. I've got holder and try to

do the Martian McLuhan thing, stretch out the amount of hours available. But it's this came for a little bit from John Chiever who I'd read. Got up at 7 or 630, got dressed, put his hat on his tie on his suit on. Took the commuter train into New York at Rena de Small Basement. I think Basement to boiler kind of room, place under apartment building where it worked from. Took his pants off,

Chiever went off, got up, went and had a three martini lunch, came back, wrote till four,

put the seat back on, went to the computer, took the computer train home. And so he felt that was a job. I mean, there's a lot, I could cloud artists do that a lot, don't, you know, so I don't think there's no rule for a same way you ask about how do you approach these things and what would you,

“you know, as everybody's different, how they did. I think I'm sure you find every musician,”

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Does the breakthrough moment happen at the beginning of a project? Let's say you're asked to

adopt a book, you read the book, and as soon as you have an idea of, this is my way in. Is that the big breakthrough or does it happen later? It can do either. Like, I read a book called "Damination Spring." I was just looking to book that I assumed it was going to be about something that quite wasn't, but I'm going to make it about what I thought was going to be. I thought about, yeah, I thought it was going to be about Moby Dick with the redwood trees.

It's about, it's about a logger and his sort of entankers kind of guy and cutting down trees, cutting down trees, and it's not quite the story, and I wanted to make this guy be tallest redwood as his Moby Dick, you know, and eventually, I don't want to give it away, but what I think he does with this. But I also like to, as I say, God's in the details, I love to go off and tangents, like I want to do what I like from a tree is and why the trees survive, nuclear,

Holocaust, and how the trees, how their roots joined together, and all these things we just don't see or know about, you know, there's a book called "Over Stories," but I tackle that way about

sort of like short stories about trees, and things you never thought about, and so I love that.

So that's part of the excitement of doing something new. And then there are other times you just kind of found or along, and all of a sudden something just hits you and you get it, you know, and at least you think you get it. Well, you know, you don't know till it's all said and done,

“and then you have to give it to somebody else and all that stuff. But once you write fade out,”

you just feel pretty good for about an hour, and then you think you fucked the whole thing, and you think you could do it all over it, you know. What's typical length of time that you'll work on a script? I used to work about a year, I've cut that down just because I really want to get more things accomplished with limit time. So I think it's like five, six months now, probably, and it's probably shorter than I would rather, but I think I have to. And then I made the script

shorter, too. I used to do really long, like 180, 90, 200 page scripts. Now, you think in going from a year to five or six months for a script that the scripts have gotten better or worse. I think it's the material. You know, probably some of this is better, because I think I've learned a few experience where it had to say things, which I before try to say in 17 different words, and now could say twice, and also have a certain, obviously technique about how to

give the same problem, how are you going to articulate this best possible way, and how you can tell the story and the story going to mean anything. I want to mean something not to just fill up space,

“you know? Is every great movie about something bigger than what the story of the movie is?”

I think so. I think so. I think it's something that's last. Yeah, I think you've done something about you. I think that's true. I hope that's true. Is the theme of the movie the same as the moral of the story? Well, that's interesting. Well, I happened to write toward theme, and I think

theme is most important rather than story. Most people can completely confuse story with theme.

But I think you also have to know what the things are eventually going to be about. Tell me what the theme is, the swam asking. Is the theme the moral? I would say that's a little faster. I think it's more than that. I think it's what makes something profound and not profound. It's not for me to judge as profound. You know, I'd rather pursue their lives to look at that, you know? But I know on Killers of Flower Moon, Marty wanted to do this culpability about people being culpable

with this destruction of these people. And how do we do that? And so it's really interesting to figure out how to do that. And I knew that made this thematically more than just this murder mystery kind of thing. It's made it about the sort of sadness and the destruction and the quality of what human beings do to one another, the worst part and what could be the best. You know,

“what's justice and all that. I mean, in other words, so I think it becomes where you'd like”

to make a feel profound. I mean, that's a pretty arrogant thing. And make you think you know what that is. But at least to yourself, you feel like I've really said something here, you know?

Can the theme always be reduced to a couple of sentences? Should? Should best of all, yeah, I think

should. Yeah, I guess that's another thing I've really learned was, you know, everybody's kid about less is more less is more less is more less is more. You know, I think and I would like to learn more about that. You know, I think still I probably overload my life and things I do, but maybe sitting being quiet is fine, too. You know, my wife says that, you know, she says, don't take somebody not answering you on a text, meaning anything. She says, just silence, you know, and she's

great that way. And I think I wish I could get that, you know, that's it goes back to that validation, what the hell it and the answer to you back, you know? And the silence is what I'd

“love to get to. You know, I think that's what I think I'd like to lead to and maybe that seems a little”

cliche about wanting how you want to end things, but I'd rather end quiet, you know, in a certain way. Otherwise, a sister fucking noise, man, it just seems too much. Do you watch a lot of movies? Yeah, I watch like every day, almost. And I like, I'm going to go over today, I go like one through twice a week. Yeah, I love them. I mean, even if I don't like my like something about, I like sitting at theater, big screen, I like some, you know, 40 feet. I mean, not that I don't watch movie on television,

my phone, like anybody else. But yeah, I love to, I love that moment where something really moves you or a sound. I mean, I remember in all quiet in the western front last year, it was a sound of just music. I'm sure it was music as they were going to battle or something. It was super found. I mean, it was a propality used too much, but it was, it just soaked into your inside, into your vertebra. You know, it's like, that sound was so powerful. I mean, I'm such a wish,

I guess if I had two things that I didn't do in life, I wish had become a novelist, but I was always afraid. And I wish I had the ability to do music. I think, I think musicians, as I said to Greg, are the most non-judgmental people. I don't know if you feel that, hey, but non-judgmental, carry their art with them. Don't really care much mostly about race of anybody. I just want to make a lot of that music to sound. You know, when it's just transcendent to me, I don't know really

how to wish I could describe it, but you know. And you know, you know, how? There's always a grass that's always green there. I know that actors always wish they were musicians and most musicians or stuff. They were actors. Really? That's true. I didn't know that about musicians.

I never, I knew I've never knew a musician. It wasn't basically except for whatever their,

you know, problems with drugs or whatever else trying to recreate experiences and get that feeling all the time. I never knew they wanted to be actors. I thought they were pretty happy with what they did. You know, if they're successful, if you're not successful, it's a whole different world. Have you ever been asked to work on an adaptation and read the book and just felt like, I don't see a way into this.

sent the money back. I've done it like five, six times. And not because of the quality of the book,

it just didn't. I just thought I saw something in it that I just didn't ever see. And then I never

thought it went, went where I'd like it to go, I guess, which might be just my arrogance, not the books. Yeah. And then the other way around, they're ever times where you'll see something that you think, if you see they're not good, it doesn't have much potential in minutes, it turns into something really great without your involvement. Yeah, most times, actually, but the theme is quotes are bad books and bad plays make great movies. So yeah, because they're

sort of, you know, sort of people ignored them. And I would get far as gumped that. I mean, the book to me, I mean, rest as old man or wrote it down. But it's just far so cool, you know, sort of silly. And I'm not sure it makes anything more than silly, but at least it had a hard to, you know,

“was it a popular book before the movie? No, not much. And how did you come to the book?”

I came to the book through, um, I worked with Tom Hanks on a, but turned out to be a really bad movie that we were had a whole different approach to, which was called the Postman, which was a post-apocalypse thing that, uh, I tried to do is can't deed what he had four murals. And he said, they were called John George Ringo and, I don't know, Sarah. You know, so Hank, and, uh, and it was funny. It was, uh, it was supposed to be sort of like little

of put, it was like gullver. And he's in this, you know, just hoping in world. And he's supposed to be an ex postman. And so it had this kind of whole tongue and she looked to it and also, I liked it. I don't know if it was any good, but uh, then 10 years down the line, um, um, Kevin Costner made a very serious movie out of it. And you know, I want to raise it. Which means you made the worst year movie the year. So, uh, yeah, I don't think you can quite know, you know, but, uh,

it has to, I mean, to me, especially now, it really has to speak to me in some way that I feel like it can be additive to, which, you know, there's no point just, uh, retyping it. So, did Tom bring you the book? Is that how it started? No, um, the woman who, uh, had the book of the postman, also on far as gum, and they had tried a couple of scripts with the author and somebody else, who one of the studios. And she says, "What do you think of this?" And I said,

"Well, I like the way it transports you over the years and his kind of constant belief in God, the girl Jenny and his mother." You know, it's kind of interesting. And it's him being challenged, which we couldn't do anymore. But, uh, I thought maybe I could say some things about how I felt about where I grew up and how I grew up and what the turmoil was in the world. And then the directors, uh, a stick in your eye kind of guy, but equal opportunity stick in your eye and he doesn't

care if you're Democrat, progressive, he puts, you know, now I'm in rose picture in the bathroom

“of white hats, that kind of thing with the candidates. And he just didn't care, you know, and I think”

the things struck the nerve though, and even though I don't think, uh, it's, it's funny how that movie lasted boy. It's kind of amazing, you know, people really, uh, really grew to that. But you

don't know, you don't know. But as long as I'd occupies, I'd occupies sort of the most important

part of your life in that way. I mean, equal with your children and life and everything. That's when you get up, you can't wait to go. I like to, um, I like to be able to know what I'm going to write the next day. So I'm not to be anxious about it. So I, I won't write that. But I'll just sort of, you know, sort of scrap it out and then be ready to write it the next day. So I know, I have something to start with. You know, yeah, I have almost the opposite. I think I'd

like having a schedule where I'm showing up to do something. But if I think too much about what it is that I'm doing, then I'm already working on it before I get there and then it undermines it. Wow. That's interesting. So I was scared to keep a distance from the work when I'm not in the moment with it. Nice. I love that. I mean, I would be afraid of that. I would be afraid. I wouldn't be able to get back into it or something. I don't know that wouldn't carry over. Yeah. I like that feeling of coming

to it new. I love that. Well, every day like I've never seen it or heard it before. Wow. But I do.

See, I'm so hidebound that I'm opposite to you completely is that I read from page one every

“day. Well, I think there's something to that though because context really is everything. And if you”

understand the flow of the information, I imagine it would be easier to continue it than to just pick it up where you left off. Yeah. So it's like I just was looking here that I want him, I'm going to put into this particular Rama thing that I want him his opening line to be, I am a navigator. So I love that. What that, what that could mean. It's a great line. Yeah. I haven't thought about it.

sky wants to do. And I have a thing with him where his wife's probably had died. He went back in the service. And but people live, they can live to 140 and such is supposed to be 2130. But anyway, she said, you'll see me in your dreams. And he hasn't seen her in his dream. Until he gets into a person, certain part of this alien ship they get into that has a water feature to it. And he gets in a water and all of a sudden it opens up all these other things like an hallucinogenic kind of thing where

“he starts seeing her. And I think it can be beautiful. I think it'd be beautiful. I like also someone”

saying you'll see me in your dreams this beautiful. Yeah, I said, somebody said that in a song, I think, I think I think in a song. Yeah. Yeah, I get a lot from the music. One of the ones I took was, I don't know the group's name. You probably know where he says over and over, I can't take my eyes off of you. I just love that. It's a standard. So there's so many different versions of it. I'm not sure which is like the. Oh, okay. You're a channel. This one was not somebody group I knew,

but he says it like 30 times in her whole, you know. And I used that in this thing I did with Tom

Hanks and Robin Wright where he first time you look serious as I can't take my eyes off of you.

So I know that's a good romance line. How does poetry work its way into your work? Well, I'm really well read and I'm really interested in what the words are one from the other. You know how to keep wider people put these in this order and some are so much better at it. And others, you know, in that the poetry to me, I think is a sense of feeling that it's the same sort of soaring you get and then starting to believe that maybe this is actually his poetry.

I don't know if it is, but you start feeling like it could be, you know, it's just pretty freeing that you're now writing something. And but that can either dovetail or can conflict with the director. Some love you to try to be as expansive as you can be with prose and poetry and others don't like it. I mean, they feel like it inhibits their process. And for instance, David Fincher is, as I say, I think he's a subant and some kind. He's just a genius, but he likes things

“really logical. He wants to be the folly and like that and you have to explain to him why it isn't.”

And I like that too. I mean, I think that that really presses you into rethinking what you thought you could just sort of willy nilly throw out there, you know, to the universe and for him, he needs to understand it and that that it makes some sense what you put. And it adds to something else. While others are much more gracious and saying, go for it, you know, Marty, Marty's that way. Marty let you keep feeling on right to moving backwards just so let's try it.

You know, let's try it. Yeah. The directors are interesting people. Tell me about the different styles of the directors you've gotten to work with. How different are they? What do they expect from you? And what they're like to work with? Well, Marty is Marty's very generous during the writing process. A little more reclusive when he's about to go make it. So he then takes over. I think he inhabits the movie. Then that I think it's part of my job to have them understand the movie that

they're going to make oddly. You know, in other words, this is what I can tell you. I think it is and

whatever you can add to that would be amazing. You know, if you have a point of view,

Fincher's rough. We argue like crazy. But he has he has something in mind that I want to try to get to for him. Tell me about an argument. What's the kind of thing you would argue about? He would say to me, he'd read it back to me. So this makes no sense. And I said, what do you think everything you say

“to make sense? You know, he'd get that's how he'd have an argument. And he says, well, that's just”

your writer and you thinking you're going to bring out words that are going to, you know, somehow contribute back to you. Me give a personal. He also, I know he knows he knows things about me with the validation stuff. He said, oh, you want to win an Oscar. Whatever it is. But no, we would, uh, I'd sat behind him during manking. He would turn around. What do you think? And I'd say, well, I don't know a day of it, of it, of it, of it. And he said, well, you're wrong about that. You know, but we

signified it out and get to where we, I mean, we always love each other. Most loyal man, I know,

what's loyal man, I know. So he's that way. Um, Denise is very visionary. He said that he felt that I was the kind of the spiritual quality of doing, you know, because I, I got that hallucinogenic, you know, that whole tribal thing. Um, and early I worked with a man named Bob Mulligan who did kill a mockingbird. He was very generous guy. Those guys in that era were very, um, sort of playhouse 90. If you remember that or television. Yes. That's what they were steeped in. Uh, and I'm not talking

telling drama, dramatic stories from stage plays in a way through their television shows. Stewart

Rosenberg was another one, um, uh, he did cool handling. And, uh, he, he was an introduced kind of Paul Newman who I became friends with for a lot of, I was like, I walked on the set when I was like 19 or 20 with my, they need to rewriting and went down to Lafayette, Louisiana. And I bought a new pair of quarterways. And I had a new briefcase and Paul said our Savior's here. I don't think so. But we were friends for life. And, you know, and I, I stay friends with a lot of these people. I like to

“maintain relationships with them. I think, uh, they all, uh, expand my universe. I think, you know,”

and, uh, in my, in a main, a few little toxic. You, you were saying about scripted versus Adlib in earlier when you were talking about, um, star's born. And in a way, it sounds like it's stemmed from an Adlib. You got them to talk to you. I meant you organized it and refined it. But it starts with an Adlib. No, you're 100% right. And I think it started more with Bradley Cooper,

first directing assignment, and not really, I'm not saying he doesn't know music, but it's not

his life. He wanted to, um, portray a character that he created, uh, what's, I suggested him, he should use Sam Elliott's voice. That's the, the huskyness that he kind of has there. So I think I was going along. I, I rewrote that. I mean, because what they gave me, I just didn't like. And I said, I have to start from scratch. And I said, I'll do it really fast, but we'll do it together. So in three in the morning, we were changing, you know, but there was that Adlib stuff you're right.

It was or the improvisation would probably be better than Adlib, uh, improvisational quality of it,

“but also it had an accuracy, because Lady Gaga knows what that life is. Bradley maybe doesn't know it”

to that extent. I was going to say other than the dialogue, how much descriptive writing do you do

in a script? A lot, a lot. Probably too much. Probably too much, but I think it, some directors like it, because it's down with the tone. It gives kind of wonderful, I think, visual possibilities. I just wrote, I realized I was reading a thing I'd written about, um, James Cook, the navigator, the explorer. And I was writing something about that he had docked his ship somewhere in the Antarctic and letting the men have, uh, uh, Christmas Eve celebration. And they got cold and they

went down below. And he stayed up and he sang, he started singing Silent Night by himself. But I thought, I love that. But I said, I don't know if I have the boat writing, so I don't look at the boats. And I forgot they have those, uh, oil lamps. So they put the oil lamps in, you know, and they're rock-bracking. And I said, that somehow refers to it. And then we cut from that to the spaceship in 2129, that's, uh, kind of a junky ship. It's supposed to be a work ship. But it's very sterile,

um, and the people inside are very sterile. And they're like monkeys, almost, because they go for seven months without doing anything. And there's supposed to be putting these beacons up on asteroids to warn people about the asteroids coming. Anyway, uh, it's quite different than the oil lantern. Um, so I love that. Yeah. So I do put a lot of, uh, put a lot of, uh, pros in there. But I think it's my, uh, my downfall in the sense of, because I want to be a novelist. So there's a way I can do it.

People still let me do it. They don't let most other writers do it anymore. But I think it, it does impart to the director what I think it's going to look like, some get a no, I'd say, why do you have just talks so much? So I said, okay.

“In an adaptation of how close do you feel like you need to stay to the original material?”

Fans, I think how good I think the original material is, you know, and then then there's the other side of, um, what does your audience expect? And I don't know that. Somebody's there. Somebody's, you're looking at somebody. No, I thought I saw, I saw a feather out the window, strange. Oh, I love that. It's like, I thought of that. That's not strange. That's far as gump. It was a bird, but it was just a feather. So maybe it was a bird holding a feather,

but I couldn't see what I could just see the feather. It's like, that's strange. That's interesting. I like that. It was beautiful. Yeah. I just put up a hummingbird feeder yesterday. I'm a big hummingbird person. Beautiful. And yeah, I put, I had out my window at the where I lived in Malibu, um, on the colony there. I had a window that I didn't look at the beach, because that's too distracting to me. I was looking at a tree in, uh, these hummingbirds just kept coming and

coming in. My parents died that particular year, and somehow my mother somehow related to me, hummingbird. And I put it in Benjamin Button where David let it stay, where Brad pits on the sea, like the Atlantic Ocean, and he just been, who's the, on the tugbotten that crashed by a submarine,

He saw a hummingbird come up out of the sea. And he said, "How did that get here?" And I know how to got there. It's like a Robert Hunter lyric, right? Like where did that come from? So, uh, yeah, that's the, um, adaptation part of the, yeah. Are you superstitious? I am to a certain extent. Are

“you? I don't think so. I think I am. I may have been at times. I don't think I am right now.”

But most people don't think they're superstitious, even though they're superstitious about things. It's got to funny. They, they think that's science in some way. I like to gamble. So, I play horses. So, I'm superstitious about that. Do you go to the track on a regular basis? So, once a week, and I sit with guys who are 800 years old. What's the first time you went to the track? My grandfather, Little Russian man, barely spoke English, spoke Yiddish, and I spoke Yiddish at the time.

And, uh, he would take me here four loves in his life. He loved boxing, which I did, I thought, and, uh, he loved the horses. I'd go with him when I was like six, seven years old. He loved baseball. We'd go stand on an apple box, had it had it's field. And he loved fishing. And I still love fishing. So, did you grow up on the East Coast? Yeah, Brooklyn. I wasn't fishing. I thought you grew up on the West Coast. That first time, until a certain extent, then I went to high school.

Has there ever been a window where you've stepped away from horse racing? Or has it been a

“continuance since six or seven years old? I think I stayed with it the whole time.”

It's amazing. Yeah, but I like, I like, um, but that would that would be superstitious stuff.

I like all sports, I guess. So, um, but I, I think I am superstitious to a certain extent about some things. I'm not OCD about it. If I won't count steps backwards or anything. But I think I am, yeah, I'm interested that you're not that's kind of interesting, but I hope to know what you think of magic and stuff. You know, it's just close to superstition. Well, I believe in magic. So, I don't know. Yeah, I think you might. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know what, uh, so I, some, someone, you know, remember who told me this, believes in, I think, a manifestation that if you manifest things, you can make them come true. And maybe that's true. Well, I think we do. Yeah. I guess we do. We envision these lives and they've appeared and it's unbelievable. It doesn't make sense. No, it makes no sense, but you're able to inhabit them, you know.

“And that's how I feel about characters I write, I'm able to inhabit them, even though I may not know”

much about them except for this psychological thing that everybody has as different, you know, and some things I don't understand because I don't understand the person, but, uh, I try to make him not understandable and to some extent, but then you find that the character may understand himself better than you think you did. That's kind of things. I think there's a reality writing these things, you know. Is it harder to write for women? Probably is, but I haven't found

it to be. I mean, I think they all have the same properties. I mean, I don't know. Then we get into a little sexual conversations with scenes and, I don't know if men are women. I don't think an inner women are the same that way, particularly. But I think I've written a lot of good women. I mean, I think that the, you know, I think I wrote a beautiful character with, uh, Kate Blanchett and Benjamin Button where she's a ballerina. You know, I thought it was pretty lovely.

And but I always infuse these things with, uh, time, like in that, was like sort of the sliding doors

idea where if something didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, then she wouldn't have been hit by a cab, you know, that kind of thing. And I love that. I love the randomness of things. And I did the same thing for his company, you know, is he just flying around and or is it destiny? I don't know the answer to any of that. So maybe I will even imagine if you're probably right, you know. Yeah. I remember in the first come, I don't know if they would reenactments

or actual old footage use. Do you remember? Those are old footage. Yeah. Did you write it in the script that we're going to use this footage from this event? In some cases, I didn't sum my, they they researched what would that what would happen. Like I had for instance, his, uh, he's supposed to have been an all-american and, uh, with the University of Alabama and they won the National Title or something. And, uh, so he went visit a Kennedy, you know, and I haven't been visiting

John, uh, a Lyndon Johnson as a veteran from Vietnam. And he, he got shot in the butt. And Lyndon Johnson makes a joke out of it. The interesting thing about that was that, um, that was all brand new technique. The only one who had done anything like it was, uh, Woody Allen and Zellig. So Bob, did we sum back this, sir, perfected this. But if you look at it now, it's so rudimentary. It's

still silly, you know. But he's always, that this thing here has a whole longer conversation

for us about the basic about AI, but this first, this deep fake stuff, um, where the, the movie will have Tom and, uh, Robin Wright of stage, say, hi, mom and dad. This is Margaret and he'll walk

right at a big and she'll look like she had, uh, Princess Bride. So I don't, I don't know, the morality of all that gets real tricky. Um, I don't know how the, I'm also curious how this

“will affect music. How do you sing, Zellig, and realized I can use this technique and for a scum?”

It's a really radical idea. This guy can be in these different places and we can use actual footage. Yeah, I'm pretty visual and I thought, well, I think we can do this. Yeah, I think if someone knows how to do it, um, yeah, we can put him in that scene and even worse, I know what it's quite

done it, but I could put words and people's mouths and never said. So John Kenney could have said,

I love Hitler, you know, I'm saying to him, whisper to him. Um, and it's obviously, you're taking liberty sick, but, uh, you know, we had whatever he said, any laughs, and that's not so they, they, they linked it to something that was part of another all American ceremony and then they just put him in there, you know. Yeah, I don't know how I envision that. It just happened, you know, just something that came out of the blue. It's a radical idea. And I think it's as significant

in the long term success of the movie as anything else about it. Oh, no question. No question. Yeah. Oh, I think so. And that's magical again. So we just had never seen anything like it

before and that idea of seeing a fictitious character in a familiar real world situation is very

interesting. Yeah. It's very odd. And there was a, do you remember the comedian on the radio Phil Henry? Yes. Yes. He did all those kind of different voices. He was comes on nasty little racist,

“but somebody called me and said, you need to listen to Phil Henry tonight. So I said, he's announcing”

Far's Compass Dad. So, so I said, I joined in and I said hi. I'm the writer, Far's company. I were sad to say. And I see Quentin Tarantino just said that with once upon a time on Hollywood, the character that Leonardo played, he said was dead. He did he died. So sometimes he has confusing what's real. What is, and what are your all-time favorite movies as a fan? I love a movie called

Amar Cord that Felini made. It's like a dream. 2001 is probably my most favorite. Godfather to

probably the ones that are traditionally, you know, that most people would. I was talking yesterday with somebody. I used to when I was young and much younger. I loved the movie giant. I thought that just summed everything up for big movies and I watched it again as not very good, you know. But there's that James Dean being heroic and climbing up and getting oil and Elizabeth Taylor and there's something very American about it. I'm very American in my own way. I love things about

“America, what that are. I think it's very moving about people who put their lives into”

property and then there's an ideal that we used to have and I hope we still have. I don't know. We have a very rural place in Montana and I'll talk to these guys and we have completely different points of view and fortunately I will get over them, you know, just so we can have other things to talk about. But it's just a shame that country is so divided about the things that we all care about. I don't know what that's all, I don't know what's happened, you know. It's a so much hatred and racism

everything else, you know. Are there any things that you firmly believed when you were young but now you've gone 180 on? Yeah, I think, well my parents were both died in the world communist. I was a red diaper baby. I can't tell you the number of times we stood in the rain to free the Rosembergs and I think their intentions were all a good but they they forgave the same fall to those people that you know you had to forgive all sorts of things and my dad was a communist until

it's dying day, you know, and he thought even Stalin was pretty great, you know. So those are those are things that just don't resonate anymore that way. I think as American communist party members, they probably had some good beliefs about sort of socialism, you know, that, you know, how can you help people? And I think that was good. The other thing is since I've had cancer and stuff, I'm not afraid of dying but I am so interested in what I thought was kind of constant

and they're not it's not anymore about as you get older, what, what are these things that come toward the end of things and what can you expect and what you can't. And I think I probably earlier I felt well, you know, maybe it's X, Y, Z. I even thought the other day we were in London outside of London in a just beautiful cathedral, 19th century or something and I said, what if was all true? That's maybe all this was, it was a geez. I mean, maybe that, maybe I remember

but what if some of it's true? I mean, maybe it could be. So why not open your mind? I remember Tom Hanks once yelling at me, we were having, he was a evangelical I think early on in his life and we were talking about religion and I was saying something kind of atheistic and kind of adamant about it and he said, how do you know? And I said, I don't know, I don't know why I think I know. And I think that's the big difference, you know, you assume you know so much and then all that's

your ego, narcissism and all and then you find out you are wrong about many things. It's like, you know, I used to love to, this was before T.S.A. and all, but I followed John Ditty and in the sense of I was actually friendly with her and John, but she was sitting airports and right about

“people as they came off a plane, so that's how she would design characters and I did that for a little”

bit and then you realize, well, you're wrong about these people, you know, you said you have certain

ideas of fantasy. Yeah, it's fun to do, but you just always surprise, you're judging a book by

its cover and you figure this tattooed beast and then all of a sudden they start talking about Keats or something. I was like, what the hell? I love that. I remember we were too poxicure came into actually read for far as come to play Bubba. I didn't, I didn't know who he was and he then he was renting a house in the colony and he was sitting on this stoop and he said, Mr. Roth, I said, I came over and I said, how are you? And I knew he was too poxicure at that time and

he said, you don't remember, I tried to have for that. So why would you try out for that? I said, I don't know, I want to try something different, I want to find out who I was and this and that. And there you go, book by the cover, you know, and then here's this great artist, you know, great great artist, yeah. Do you ever see unforgiving? Oh, yeah, I love that movie. Yeah, I love the

writer David Peoples. He wrote about Blade Runner also. He's amazing writer and then I rewrote him

on a Munich and I know him quite well. He's about my age. He's incredible writer. There used to be a whole world of screenwriters that were only screenwriters, not writer directors. So there's very few left. But Beau Goldman was probably one of the better writer's ever. He wanted Oscar for Harold and Melvin and for Cuckoo's Nest. We called by both sides of the plate. Yeah. What are the things that was interesting I remember when I saw him for given I bring it up because up until then

in a Western you expected the good guy was a clear cut good guy and all of the attributes he had was noble. And the bad guy was the bad guy and he was evil. And unforgiving broke that mold. Well, certainly. Yeah. And it feels like maybe everything changed since then that idea of just the good guy versus the bad guy. Maybe that became obsolete with that movie. I think probably did. I mean, to some extent except for their big acts, super action heroes and you know, so I don't

know, you know, those are the black hat and the white hat. You wear the white hat. You're the hero of black hat. You're not. I tried to write a movie for Clint East Western. His last Western and

“Bradley Cooper got me involved and he said the only thing I don't want is you to do a sequel to”

unforgiving. And I said I get that. So what I did was invent him as a X Outlaw that this supposed to be 1906 that San Francisco earthquake and he's a kind of policeman and encode China down for that era. And somebody comes back because he had been an outlaw in the olden days who he's supposed to kill the person's father and he came back and stabs him and this and that and then he says he's dying. They have this whole journey to take him home and what happens along the way. These people

on Bradley Cooper play this son, but the big point of it was he's who's completely full of shit.

He'd never been an outlaw and he created this whole myth from itself. And so when you have to

when he had to get in trouble kind of at the end of this, he got himself out of it by being brave and he didn't have to make up a story. But I love the whole idea. I said to Clint, he said, oh my god, the idea is just attending your somebody and everybody giving you, you know, your props to that and turns out to be a feet of clay, you know. But it turns around. It's beautiful. Yeah, that's what I did at the end. I turned it around for a man. Yeah. Who would you say every

“story is a love story? Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, I think what is the only thing we can't”

define? Love. I mean, it's probably the most primordial important thing there is. Probably right. I don't know if you can't define. I can't define it. Maybe other people can. How far can you stray from the archetypical Hollywood

Well, I think you can break any rule. But I think you always will end up oddly with the same

Shakespeare structure. Like the perfect example is Pulph fiction. He told the story backwards and forwards and but he still had to have a beginning. A middle that has a beginning that states the

“problem, the middle that exacerbates it has a catharsis which leads you to the ending. And so I think”

it's harder to do that. But I think as we modernize things like the great Charlie Kaufman would do things like adaptation where he's adapting the adaptation and making it part of his life and his brother's life or an imagined brother or I mean so it's wonderful complications or sunshine of the end when spotless mind all that. But you still have this I always found at least even in those I can tell you the structure of them you know. So I think that's a constant I guess it has to be.

Maybe it has to be. But the ending stuff I think the only truth about I think in love stories that you should end where things are not resolved that whether they feel either broken-hearted, very rarely or happy love stories. You want to have a bit of sweet ending or somebody can't resolve it and you can't bring it to fruition whether someone dies or someone leaves or you want to sort of wish fulfillment hoping that they in another world. I also believe so here's magic. I believe that Francis Copeland

when I told we're talking about this that great movies this continued great books plays music whatever and habit you and this like they live on the other side of the moon and they're all continuing their lives. So the Godfather people are all out doing whatever they do and whatever movies you love

and they're there and you can always just go pick them up and put them back in your pocket you know

and I love that idea. It's beautiful. I started I was once going to it didn't work out to help but I did cat in the hat and I started that he was one of these kind of magical creatures that lived on the other side of the moon and what he had a phone call we need your help

“kind of thing you know but the only thing I loved about that script was I think it was a good”

script all together but I rhymed every word like a suit book you know I love it was it going to be animated or no no no it's live action and they ended up doing a really I thought bad movie which him carry just over the top stuff but what I made it was primal that the mother was pregnant and the children were very jealous and afraid of what was coming into the house and so the thing one and thing two you know all this stuff the thing wasn't all that it's kind of great yeah

it's kind of fun tell me about the whole piece in the York experimental film world oh I love that I was very part of that I was going in while you film school and I gravitated down to oh actually as an English major to begin with a Columbia but gravitated down to this everything was an alphabet city you know below a St. Mark's place and Bob Downey Jr. Adam Schweiler all these people doing these things and the place called a millennium film workshop where you could just move around rooms

and was this in the sixties a like 68 67 65 yeah that all era and you are whole you know some of his people are there I knew some of them I know morey already and a few other people but I knew Bob Downey I worked for like four movies they were all insane Bob Downey senior and but all these really interesting artists but it's interesting how they just disappeared I don't know

“some just got old obviously but there were a continuation I think a lot about from you know jack”

carewack and all that has a beat mix yeah yeah beat mix basically that's like Bob's in here as mother was a beat mix you know Schweiler was black and that whole thing how has the movie business changed over the course of your life well the loss of theaters I mean the idea that not to watch

a movie and theater is the most important thing after that it would be there used to be personal

relationships you mean I mean like the people but you sort of knew everybody it was a lot less content providers there were probably seven or the big studios were was it just a smaller business overall smaller world felt like a high school but down's a big high school you sort of knew your place in it what you wanted to get to all that but you know if I just now had this happen recently that if somebody decided not to do a project of years saying I'm gonna pass on this right

they would call you up and tell you why you know and or it's just not for me it's not my

know that kind of thing now you never hear from anybody it's just your age and says they're not

“gonna do it you know the person out that's me that's how I felt I mean it feels like less of a human”

business yeah exactly more commerce than yeah and she come even the rallying cry which is a sad is that everybody says nothing matters and that's a tragedy to me I'm sorry I think it's should matter you know what you're doing what you're saying even if it's not my cup of tea it doesn't matter you know right the best action movie right the best star wars whatever you want to do it's just I don't know I don't know what I don't know about the hunger people

the way I wish I'd find my son young he's a he's a director now and my other son's a wonderful writer and they have different looks at things yeah when you're ready a character do you typically have an actor in mind to play it not mostly I don't know I don't like to do that too much sometimes I mean it's part and parcel of the deal like I knew Tom Anx was gonna be forest ground so

“he was great because he could go in and pitch the thing he said I'm sitting on a bench and no”

do all that stuff as an actor I would prefer I have a general idea general idea and then you got to get more is that common thing for an actor and a writer to get together and put something together and then pitch that as opposed to coming from a director it feels to me like it is I don't know anymore you know yeah I think it I think it is yeah but I still don't like me when we're done here I'm gonna zoom with Jeremy Strong that actor and we have I think a pretty great idea

but maybe we'll figure it out with him I'll be glad to do it with him you know but it's more unusual with actors actors are good because they're only busy for like four months out of the year or you know and then they have time directors are impossible because they you know it's a year and a half of their lives or whatever two years and so if you don't get it done you ain't seeing them for two years so be just out now you know yeah and it also seems like they're so in for two

years on a project that after it it's like they're not even themselves no that's absolutely right it's I mean I mean I had opportunities to direct when I was younger and I made a decision I'd rather

“stay with my children you know that's not this I'm so heroic but that's what I decide because”

you're gone you're just gone you're missing their lives and they know it but something else

more important do you always want to be a writer from the beginning pretty much yeah yeah I mean

I've I've toyed with one point I said I think there won't be a doctor which is ridiculous I can't even add six and eight and so I think I'll go back to school and take all those course they're organic chemisties all that and then go to some bad medical school like Grenada or Yankton or something you know I meant what I admire about your life it's little as I know about you is that you release your experiencing so many things and I wish I'd experienced more than well

I am now I didn't for the majority of my life you didn't know sat in the dark room for 18 hours a day for 30 years oh my god I'm sorry or I'm not sorry whatever you'd probably learned a lot from

that yeah I would never have that discipline no this is a new adventure I realized I can do my

work anywhere anywhere and I might as well do it in a beautiful place and I first had that revelation when I started working in Los Angeles versus New York because even though I would still work all day it felt like I was on vacation compared to being in New York you I got you well well my sort of regret is so like juveniles like romantic right I wish I had had that romantic year in Paris with whoever you know or just on my own or you know I never did

those things or you know London whatever you know Ireland and it's not going to happen you know so all of a sudden it can I mean it would just be a different one it would be the different version of a romantic year in Paris you can do that yeah now you're right you're right now you're so right I sort of wish I had done what it's 30 you know I'm saying I don't know why it's just what I had to my experiences I always wanted my life to be like a jack London fly leaf of of his

novel is said he was a you know a fisherman and whatever else he went to the as last and all that stuff you know and that's creating a person I guess I'm not you know it all worked out but all worked out exactly if I I would just get that in my head and you know because it's too many small things it's like my mother would say to me don't sweat the small stuff you know and she's so right and I sweat the stuff still always like I wish I could stop this nonsense

some of the things that don't matter you know I'm a little better with it I'm a little better with it

about something and I realized this is so fucked stupid but in the world and then you get in

“yourself into a situation where I was mad at somebody and then they texted me and should I go”

stem and all that whole thing you know it's like so petty so juvenile oh so juvenile so I did

and it's amazing for the moment for the moment that's okay

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