‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ With Bill Simmons, Steven Spielberg, and Sean Fennessey

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to the Ruaatchmulls.

I'm Bill Simmons. This is a special one.

“It's gonna actually be a special summer for us.”

We're gonna do a from Hellgimmick. We're gonna rip through a bunch of my favorite. That's that from Hells. We're talking about the roommate from hell. We're talking about the tenant from hell.

We're talking about the little kid from hell. The nanny from hell. These are some of my favorite movies. They're ridiculous. They're just perfect for the Ruaatchmulls.

We can make fun of them. We could admire them. We could talk about how camping they are. We could talk about what they did right and wrong. And we're gonna do a lot of them.

And guess what? Almost all of them are gonna be on Netflix. So keep an eye out for it. Next week, we're going to be doing single-way female, which is on Netflix.

But a bunch of them will be on Netflix. We're gonna be from Hell at least through June and in part of July as well. So stay tuned for that. Coming up, me and Sean Fantasy got to do

an entire Ruaatchmulls episode with the greatest living director we have, Steven Spielberg. Yeah, it's the three of us. It's me, Sean, and Steven Spielberg.

And we're gonna talk about 2001 as Space Odyssey. I can cram it into the From Hell gimmick. Just by saying this is how the computer from hell. It's a little bit of a reach. But to kick off from hell, we'll do it that way.

Anyway, this is really one of the great podcasts I've ever been a part of.

Steven Spielberg was incredible.

Can't wait for you to listen to it. Here it is. The Ruaatchmulls, 2001, a Space Odyssey. The Ruaatchmulls brought to you by the ringer podcast network. We can find the big picture with Sean Fantasy.

He's right. Steven Spielberg, not on ringer podcast network. You, this is like your second podcast ever, right? Much second podcast where there's a couple of cameras around. Never.

What do you think of this whole new world? Well, it's, I guess what, radio's back. We're going to talk about when you're a favorite movie's ever, 2001 Space Odyssey,

“which is the oldest movie I think we've ever done the Ruaatchmulls.”

By one year, yeah. And it's... stress and development helps you to understand how it works. Dark for Dark, Schritt for Schritt. Start now with GAMIN.

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and with 17-Sorten Café for every match. Aléba Premium Café is already at its place in Europe. And that's the Cuba-Capsule Machine in Diner Chiba-Fiiale and of Chiba-Dee. Thanks. Alright, so this movie is released April 2nd, 1968.

What are you doing? I'm in school. I believe I'm at Long Beach State in April of that year. Some measures coming to an end. Everybody's talking about this movie that is a drug trip.

So the ward around campus early surrounded my circles and I'm a T-Tover.

I've never done any of that at all.

I spoke to the rest for a year.

“That was the worst thing I didn't call it.”

For one year? Yeah, I quit. One year. And I quit. But everybody was talking about this kind of like Roger Corman's the trip.

And so the scuttle but on campus was, this is trippy. This is going to be like the trip. This is going to be like a really trippy film. So everybody was getting ready to get into a car and go down to, I believe it was the pantages theater to see the film.

So I think I saw the film probably the first week it opened. And I went with three or four of my college friends. We all piled into a car, drove into Hollywood. And correct me if I'm wrong, it might have been the pantages. It might have been another one of those big movie palaces in 1968.

But we parked like nine blocks to get to the theater. I got into a line because in those days there was no such thing as buying your tickets ahead of time. And so we waited and lined for a long time. And everybody was being, I looked around.

Nobody was smoking grass because there were cops up and down.

All of a sudden. But when I walked into that theater. And people started filling it up. It was filled with smoke. It was just filled with smoke.

Was that common?

I had never been to a movie where I smelled marijuana.

As thick as a London fog inside that movie palace. But everybody was in the theater. A lot of guys, not as many women, more men. Everybody with long hair. Everybody making a lot of noise.

I thought I wouldn't be able to hear the dialogue. First of all, I didn't realize because the movie hadn't started yet. It was going to be very little dialogue, but it didn't matter. I was worried that there wasn't going to be room to hear the dialogue. Because everybody's making so much noise in the theater.

And then when the movie started, and thus spoke to our stustra started. And it hits that tremendous cord. It shut everybody the f up. Everyone just got completely quiet.

So as the music was decaying after that big explosive cord,

I was aware that everyone was still. It was kind of in itself before the film started mind blowing.

“And then what again, I think from a lot of people in that theater,”

was a religious experience. Fueled by whatever they were on. And for me, it was not so much a religious experience. But one of the most audacious films I had ever watched in my life. The audacity and I, of course, we all knew Kubrick and we all knew he was audacious.

But the audacity and the risks he took, telling that story. If you could even call this story, set me back. And I think, you know, just rock my world, for sure. Because you're talking to my cinema world. Your career started next year.

Yeah, I got my contract to be a TV director in a rehearsal the next year. Pretty good start.

And it really is like a before and after with movies, this 68, right?

It feels like, I remember you said it in some interviews, even, that you thought this was like the big bang theory for a whole generation of film makers. But what was that before and after? It's like that year is planned at the Apes Rosemary's Baby. Bullet, my handful of other, like all-time classics.

I've seen a couple. Yeah. I've seen them all. Yeah.

“Did you feel it in the moment did you feel like something is changing about this thing that I love?”

Yeah, I did. I didn't feel that way until after Stargate. And which we'll get to. But after Stargate, I felt that nothing would ever be the same. Especially as you're watching people run out of that theater from death.

But I'm watching, I'm watching the movie completely in a state of, you know, intoxication because Stanley intoxicated me. What perhaps I was getting a contact. I would have told the spoken of the room. But I was completely intoxicated by what I experienced.

And it wasn't a film. It was an experience. It was the most experiential thing I had ever seen. Since I was a little kid and got scared to death by the greater show on earth. And then later, by Bambi.

And then again, by Snow White. And in, in, in our re-issues. Well, it was crazy. It's it's 58 years old now. It's still kind of banging.

Like when you think of like some of the other movies from back then, feel like they happened in the 60s. Yeah. This is like, you know, it's obviously it's slow by today's standards and things like that. But for the most part, the special effects, the feeling of like being in space.

Just like, is this what it's actually like to be in space? Like that kind of existed in a movie before.

“Also, you have to remember how big the screen was.”

The screen was so big. During Stargate, I just have to say that a person in the theater, several people in the theater, got up and started walking into the screen. And that was by the way, you can probably look it up in the L.A. Times. It was reported that people were walking into the screen.

And those days, at least in that theater, the screens were like lovers. They were vertical strips of reflected, you know, reflective material. And a couple of the people on the film during Stargate were reported to have walked actually into the screen and disappeared backstage.

Did you find anybody was not feeling it or walking out? Because there was reports of it being divisive when it was released. Because everybody else saw the movie with that day. We're all probably under 35 years old. So I don't know anyone that I wasn't, I was unaware of it.

Look, half the audience could have walked out.

And I would not have noticed.

Right.

“I looked dead center, dead left to center, dead right of center.”

Because that was my field of vision. And I was completely, you know, I was completely magnetized by what was happening. Yeah, because there was a story when it had its big premiere. They were counting how many people walked out.

And it was like 241 people in the right. Arthur Clark was there who worked on it with them. And he was like, this is a disaster. This is devastating. But young people were what saved this movie.

Yeah, listen. A lot of people walked out of the sneak preview of good fellows. One of the greatest films I've ever seen. And one of the greatest ones, Marty's ever made. And yet I didn't go to the preview, but Brian Obama was there.

And he just said, we're a lot of walkouts. And that because of the violence, but the movie went on to become a piece of our collective history. So you said, nobody could shoot a picture better in history than Kubrick. Well, what context did I say that?

I don't know. Okay. I don't want to say, you said it. If I said it, I'm sure there was a context of for saying it. I'm not sure it was a declarative statement.

Well, explain the shooting part. Like what made him so special. Like as you saw, his different catalog.

“Well, I think because Stanley, in all the films,”

for one thing, he started out as a, as a still photographer for look magazine. So he had, he had an audacious, rampantious, ambitious eye. And his compositions and his choices of what to show, what pictures to take, already set up a part. I mean, if he wanted to become a war correspondent,

like Bob Cabra, Robert Capra, he could have become that too. But he turned that still eye into 24 frames of stills the second and became one of the greatest, I think, professors we've ever had.

My generation that always looked up to him as one of our greatest teachers.

And what made him that way was he knew how to tell a story. He knew how to tell a story unconventionally. He knew how to shock the audience. And he knew how to make them laugh. He made, he, Dr. Stragelove is one of the greatest black comedies ever,

ever created for the screen.

“And with 2000 one of the space audience, he was also, he was also a wizard,”

technologically, he was almost an engineer. His mind had a kind of OCD quality where when he focused in on something, he was doing it for himself and we were the beneficiaries. So whatever reason he was creating these incredibly advanced spacecraft, the no one had ever seen before in anybody else's films.

Those spacecraft alone were kind of works of art, I always felt. And those spacecraft, especially the Jupiter missioncraft, is what inspired Ralph McCquarie and myself to create the mother ship and close encounters. Inspired George Lucas with the Imperial Starship Destroyer. And included and certainly, certainly inspired really Scott in creating the space-trader

Nostromo. These wouldn't have existed unless Stanley came ahead come first. It seems like the lesson is, if you're going to do this, we're going all out. Like even in the research where they told him it would take him like 13 years to, to basically create this universe and have people do the paintings.

Like, well, I'll get 13 people and I'll take one year each, it'll be done in a year. And it was just, I don't know who else was even like that in the 60s.

It seemed like he had incredible patience and spent four years developing writing

and then making the movie, long period of editing, which there's not a lot of information about the period of time when he was editing the film together and what it ultimately became. If you read about him first reaching out to Arthur C. Clark and the idea that he has for the movie, it changes a lot.

Yeah, in the progression. It does. And I knew Arthur, I had the honor of meeting and having one for the Arthur C. Clark when I was shooting Indiana Jones to the Temple of Doom. We stopped, we were shooting in Candy, Sri Lanka.

And we stopped in Clumbo before changing airplanes to fly back to the UK to continue shooting the film. And he lived in the botanical gardens. We were David Leander, shot bridge in the river choir. And he invited us all to lunch at his house. And I had a great conversation with him about 2000, one of his base artists.

Wow. So he had the kind of filmmaking where he might take five years before he made his next movie.

Yes.

You're a more prolific than that. Is that there's two type of director? I wouldn't call it a prolific. I'm more impatient. It's totally prolific.

I was impatient. I just loved telling stories and I'd love, I'd just, if I get a story and it gets into my, into my bananas, I just have to, make, I just have to tell the story. I got to get it out. I got to exercise.

So you never could have had the type of career where you would have spent four years between projects.

You know, I've got nuts. No, I've spent three years between two projects. And I went a little nuts, but the great thing about that. I went and went a little bit nuts, not directing. But I was raising a family and that was keeping me completely preoccupied.

So it was okay. Yeah. So you didn't actually talk to him until 1980. I met him on the set of on the set of the signing in 1980 when they had just finished trusting the big overlook hotel.

Grand Grand with it with the double staircase and the fireplace and the table with the typewriter on it. What's the restaurant for us met him?

“Did he invite you to the set, what led you to going?”

Yeah. And no, what happened was I was about to make Raiders Lost Ark and I was going to build the well, the souls on the same set that he had had already built the overlook hotel. Yeah. And I was scheduled to move when he struck his set when he was done shooting with it.

We were going to build our set. And so I was going to scout the set anyway. But Stanley happened to be there doing his still photographs. And he had a camera with a periscope lens. And he had a tabletop model of the set that he was actually standing in when I first met

him and Doug Doug was 20. Our production manager brought me over at Stanley's, at Stanley's. Why asked to meet Stanley? And Stanley said, yeah, he'd meet me. And when I met Stanley, I was surprised he knew anything I had done.

And he just wanted to talk about dual. The movie I paid. The TV movie I made with Dennis Weaver. It was us. Truck chasing the car.

Thank you.

“And that's what he wanted to talk about.”

And then we didn't talk for long because he was busy. But he said, why didn't we talk more? Come over to the house for dinner tonight. And so I got a chance to meet Cristian and Yon Harlan and Vivian and his daughters. And that was the beginning of our relationship.

Sean, you never claim him as a New Yorker.

Think most people mistakenly think he was doing three years. He's a big voice. Totally wrong. He sounds like a WFA and caller. He's an unusual thing because he's obviously is looms over film history as this great intellectual

and dynamic powerhouse. But he really just is fast talking New Yorker. Yeah. Yeah. What was the biggest thing you learned during all of your conversations with them?

Just about him as a talent. Well, what I learned was he was human being. And I also learned he was not a recluse as he's so often been recluse. Yeah. And I think it's the most unfair thing about Stanley's reputation is that people think he's like

Howard Hughes. He never, you know, he never left his house. Didn't speak to people, didn't go out anywhere. Stanley used the telephone and Stanley used all kinds of means of communication. Stanley had been born now.

He would have reinvented the ipad in the iphone to his need. He would have bent it toward his very needs. I mean, you could argue he invented it in the movie. But he was really good at it. He sort of did.

You know, but Stanley really, really was social in the sense that if you'd like somebody's movie, he would surprise a director and call him and just say hi. It's it's done a Kubrick here. I just saw your picture. I loved it.

“Well, where'd you get the idea and start a conversation?”

Was he the number one holy shit this guy likes by movie director? And I'll tell you the story. It's quickly as Albert Brooks was a friend of mine called me up. And he said, did you give Stanley my phone number? And I said, yep, yeah, because he asked for it.

Why? Because he called me a three o'clock in the morning to tell me how much he loved lost in America. And then Stanley and Albert began to relate. We got a friendship from that moment.

Do you imagine getting a call from him a three in the morning? Was it three in the morning though? Because he was an England and he was calling LA.

He was never aware of times.

He called me at the strangest hour. He just didn't have that kind of, I mean, I'll never understand Stanley. I don't have to. I was not in his family circle. But I feel this Stanley allowed me to be a colleague.

And the greatest honor he afforded me was he let me into his professional circle. And he treated me like a colleague. And he was very generous with his compliments when he saw a movie I made and liked it. And we had a real rapport and talk off and on the phone. I mean, he basically handed a eye over to you.

Well, he asked me to direct it for him to produce.

Then after that didn't work out only because Stanley really wound up directin...

Directing it with a lot of memos. He was sending me. He was sending me many faxes about you know, hey, it'd be great if you put the camera here. Here's a couple of storyboards. And I I probably have for six months.

But Stanley, let's reverse roles. I'll co-produce it with you. Yeah. And you direct it because this is your baby. This is this is your vision.

And and he agreed and then he got distracted by eyes wide shut. And then sadly, tragically in 1999, he passed. Well, when you were talking to him about that movie that he's seen. Very clear link between 2001 and AI.

We never he never made the link there.

He did he did we did a couple of times. The only link he made was was the clear and present danger. He thought it was a cautionary tape a tale about. Unrest strict as I'm a machine sentience. He was really, really concerned about machine learning and machine teaching machines to teach machines.

“And that was that was I think the main link between 2001 and his version of AI.”

I mean, you could argue 2026 is the most relevant year we've had for this movie since 1968. If these are all the conversations everyone's having right now. What happens if the machines learn too much? And these are things that have been in movies now for six decades. Sean, can you think of anybody who could have gone.

Strangeloved 2001, Clockwork, Orange, Barry, Lyndon, all in a row, ten years. No, I mean, obviously that's the thing I think that continues to attract. Film fans, especially young film fans, to him, is that each movie feels so dramatically different. And so you start trying to comprehend how one person can bounce around between genre, style, time period. The other thing is that all the movies, once you've seen them, I think multiple times you realize they are all,

sort of the same in some ways, too. Even this movie, which is a little bit quieter than some of this films, they're all about controlled chaos.

There's always something very intense and dangerous and manic happening inside the middle of the story.

Even if this film is a little more leisurely or quieter, there's not as much dialogue as you said. But I'm, you know, his flexibility and versatility.

“I think maybe accounts for those long stretches of time, too, between projects where he's trying to figure out what can I do.”

It would interest me maybe for a five-year period if I'm really going to spend this much time developing something. But I don't know. I'm not my experience with him is the same as, like, I think millions of movie freaks, which is that you're 13 years old and you find one of these films. You usually see there this one, Clockwork Orange or the Shining, and then you just launch yourself into his entire filmography, which feels very conquerable to you.

Hopefully it's not as much shit at 13 years old. No, no, no. You never know. That wasn't around when I was 13. I saw the Shining when I was 10.

My dad took me probably a wee bit too early for me, but wholly macro. And that became everybody I think has their entry point with his career. And that was mine. Yeah, I think I think everybody does. And I think the thing that Stanley does to all of us is if we're just surf from the channels and we come across

Stanley, one of Stanley's movies 30 minutes in, I dare anybody to switch it off. Even if you have a meeting at seven o'clock the next morning and it's already midnight, I don't know how you get your finger on that off-switch. I don't know how you do that. Yeah.

And don't care what the movie is. You know, from, you know, from Killer's kiss to Ice White Shot. Whether you love these films more than others of his or not, you completely become, you know, in it, you become a zombie. Right, come at Stanley's zombie.

And you, you walked straight ahead and you sit there and you wait till it's over.

Do you remember the first one of his that you saw?

“I think the first movie I saw was, I know the first movie I saw.”

And a movie theater was Dr. Strange Love. That was the first one. The other films I saw were in our houses later in my life. For instance, you know, Killer's kiss. And, you know, those past glory I saw on television actually for the first time.

But I caught up, I caught up with Stanley in terms of going, and a regular basis to his films right around, I would think clockwork, Orange. What do you think the equivalent is in 2026 of this movie coming out? Like a movie where the people watching it could just walk into the movie. Yeah, I don't even know, like some of the effects that he has in here,

we're so far ahead of it in the house, and I don't even know how to wrap my head around it. I don't know if it's a movie so much. It may be the sphere in Las Vegas. Maybe the equivalent of 2001 or space out of C. Oh, that's a good call.

Just went for the first time. It was fascinating. Were there were there together?

I mean, I mean, Stanley Kubrick with 2001 created, I think the first 3D exper...

First, not a 3D in terms of, you know, of interocular, but I'm talking about wrap around three dimensional sight and sound.

And even though the screen did have its boundaries and you could look off to screen top bottom left right. It didn't matter because it had enough of a fold around the audience that the audience was really enrapped and by the experience in 2000, one was the perfect film for it. And also, a 2001 also does something with suspense. The middle part of that film is as suspenseful as anything after Hitchcock ever made.

I feel that film is the most suspenseful movie Stanley ever made. The whole section with Bowman and Pool going out to replace the A.E. 35, you know, antenna unit. And what happens to pool, and then what Bowman has to do when how to side is that the human beings are too flawed, to really successfully carry this mission through to completion, and has to take over the command of that ship.

When you first saw it, did you feel like you grasped all of these details and the construction that he was building,

“or did you, was it repeated viewings and trying to study it to understand what he was doing?”

Because it's a film that can be confusing on first viewing. It was really, I absolutely repeated viewings. I mean, I've seen 2001 countless times, I can't tell you how many times I sat there beginning to end. When I, I finally saw it for the first time in 70 millimeter in New York City in 2001, when it was reissued on that special year.

But I can watch it over and over again, and I don't claim to have understood it metaphysically, or philosophically, or even completely, when I first saw it. But it kept bringing me back, and the layers continue to expose themselves to me. And then when I got to meet Stanley, I got to talk to Stanley about the film. I knew enough about it at that point that I didn't sound like a clown talking to him about his own work.

But the thing about the picture is, it's an anti-emotional film that's truly a deeply empathic picture. But it's kind of anti-emotional. A pool and Bowman, Gary Lockwood and Carol Julia, are a plant like, you know, they don't laugh. They don't smile. There's nothing, you know. You know, pool is getting a little, he's on the sun deck, you know,

and in an adjustable kind of bed, and he's getting some rays of good vitamin C. And a recording comes from his mother and father wishing him a happy birthday, and he takes it in a stride. He doesn't smile, he doesn't blink, he does not warm, he just listens. And he asks how to adjust the chair.

You know, you know, four, and four reclines. His parents say not be birthday to him, badly. And so the most emotional, and we all heard this spoken, but it's true. The most emotional character is how 9,000.

“That was built in 1992, and I believe Urban Illinois.”

Yeah. And that was the most emotional character in the entire piece. The movie begins with a pretty good character played by William Sebester. You know, he would Floyd, he would R Floyd. And he's warm, and he's he's commanding and you listen to him.

He's got that great scene in the kind of Hilton, the space station. Next to what the wall says Hilton five, and he's meeting with a Russian delegation. Yeah, that he knows. I think the Russian's name is Schmiernoff, Schmiernoff, possibly. I don't really know.

Talking about, you know, one of their, one of their landers was denied. Landing rights at Clavius Moonbase. And he wants to know why, and there's a rumor the Russians hear that there's some kind of an epidemic. But that, of course, is the cover story, which I immediately stole when I make close encounters. And use 5 Jean gas says the cover story to clear the civilians away from Devil's Tower.

So they could have this first communion between an off-world civilization and the human race.

“So how many movies did this directly influence you think?”

Because you, I've received our words, you're moving in like every film. It's funny like grown up with it because, you know, the theme of the movie, if you're a kid,

Is computers are going to take over.

Computer someday, watch out, watch out the moment they get too much. That's true. You know, and it's like, all right. And then in the 80s that we start getting the home computers, like, this is nice. This is great.

And the internet comes in the 90s. This is fun. I can talk to my family and now we're in this stage. Yeah. And so, oh, do we go too far?

No.

“And you remember the great movie that Walter Parks made called War Games?”

Oh, yeah. And before that, it was Colossus, the Forbidden Project. Yeah. Were computers, you know, machines were threatening to take over the world. Now that's an old sci-fi trope and it's fine because all science fiction eventually comes true.

Yeah. It just does. Yeah. One thing that struck me thinking very hard about this movie was there are dozens, maybe hundreds of sci-fi movies that come before this, but almost all of them, and especially the American

films are all about what will happen when either an alien species or robots come to earth. And this is not that. This is a kind of post earth exploration of life. You know, it's about something completely different.

And just to conceive that very small but critical thing makes the movie feel so different,

then everything that came before it.

“2001 made me feel as big as a grain of sand.”

You know, I felt, I felt no more. When I was done seeing the film for the first time, I was no more important than any of the stars in that sky that would by the way hand-painted by Doug Trumble on his team. It made me feel really small in a good way because you know, you can look up at the night sky and feel pretty small.

And many of you don't have the contamination of a big city spoiling your view, but if you get out into the desert, into the country where there's no city lights and you really see that awesome. Visually see the entire our entire Milky Way. You can get the same feeling every single time you watch 2001 the Space Odyssey.

Stanley created that. And when you, when you think about some of his concepts, they found a model that

buried on the moon and had been buried there for 4 million years.

Right away that makes us all feel like a greater intelligence before we ever had evolved into, you know, a race of homo sapiens had already been here once. And possibly had seated the planet with the life that we claim is generated for whatever your belief system is.

“And so 2001, even if you've seen it 50 times, the movie can still, I think, shock you.”

What does he like? Do I thought I could have had to get to you? No, I love that. No, I'm not going to have in the best time ever. This is yeah.

Well, it feels like there's two types of people, right? There's the people who are like, I really want to know what's out there. You know, what? Like, tell me more, like, let's talk it. And then there's the other people are like, I'm afraid to know what's out there.

And I think I'm in that camp. The latter. This really.

Yeah, the sci-fi stuff has always kind of freaked me out.

Wow. And especially this movie, I think I've only seen it twice before I started preparing it for this one because it brings things into my brain that I don't even know if I'm 100% ready for. Like, you're talking about Donovan all the way through where are we going. What happens to this guy at the end?

Yeah. Does he get sent back as like the superhero? Or is he just dead and he saw the end of his life? You think of this stuff? And you can, I don't know, go crazy.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the next 2010. Yeah, because I, I was, I really wanted to be left to my imagination when the start child turns. And looks at the planet Earth. I wanted to leave it at that. I just wanted to be able to have that image exist without any possible film follow-up.

It's so interesting though because, you know, obviously Clark wrote a novel in while they were making this film. Yes. And in the novel, there's all kinds of explanations about why the monolithic exists who put it there, the meaning of the star child. Right.

Yeah. All this discussion about sort of exploding the nuclear weapons and orbit and the intentions of the film. And I didn't learn about that until after I'd seen the movie many times. And it is a little bit of a let down to learn the details of intention. Yeah. I think it's Monday. It's for me that's that's mundane because it's a mundane thing to start to explain and start to throughout other plot lines.

Because in the abstract, when the start child turns and those eyes are moving...

You know, it's just a moment that let sort of Stanley sing, we need to start looking within ourselves. Yeah.

We can always be looking to the stars and ambition and exploration is great, but aren't we missing us?

Shouldn't we start all of us looking more inward?

“And that's what that said to me, not the first time I saw the film, not the 25th time I saw the film.”

But eventually it started to make it try to become very clear to me. Is that something you think about when you talk about intention for movies you've made? Because some directors like Tarantino will never tell us what's in the briefcase, right? He's probably the only one that knows about fiction. And then there's other directors and writers of stuff.

Oh, here's what I'm in. Here's what I think. I like the mystery, but where do you stand on this? I like the mystery too. I don't think I've made enough movies with enough mystery for anybody. But when you should really mean everybody sees my movies and says, "I get it, okay. What are you doing that?" That's not true.

What is the most, what's the most kind of confused people were after one of your movies? Where they were like, "Ah, I wonder." I think they were really confused in a good way. And I think they were kind of confused at the end of Munich. Interesting.

Because I showed the Twin Towers in the last shot. And I think they made a big link. And it wasn't, it shouldn't.

They could have been confused. I intended the link to what the never ending cycle of violence.

“The seemingly unsolvable cycle of violence is going to eventually lead to.”

So there's a lot of people talking about the end of that movie. A.I. where David gets his mom back from dawn till nightfall. And that's it. And what happens to David is he just going to sit in that bed until his batteries run down with Teddy. And then what happens to him is he going to be,

is he going to become a deity for all the machines that found him. The supermecca that people often confusingly think are aliens. They are not. They are the result of many iterations and generations of machine-built entities. Sentient, but completely built by other machines is David going to become a kind of deity or or Oracle for them.

Because humans actually had their hands on David and created David. So David is the first iteration of who they have now become. That's one of the major reasons I ask you about the link between 2001 and A.I. because it's so it's such an echo of the apes touching the monolith and the astronauts approaching the monolith. You know, it's like you just so mad at a fact of it.

Do that. It worked. Yeah. Close the counter. Definitely leaves you with some questions.

It does. Especially like Richard Jeffes's character. I'm going to. But I have a normal day. I'm going to enjoy.

Richard Jeffes came back down to make all of it. Yeah. With all you hunters. So we're sequels for the most part. I shot an I about that thing.

Pro sequels when it's like we like these characters. Yeah. It's like Raiders is a great example. It's like I get to hang out with Indiana Jones. Yeah.

Awesome. But then there's other ones like jaws too. Like you didn't. You didn't necessarily want to be in jaws too. I want this to end.

You never saw it. I didn't see it for 20 years. We did rewatchables on. Yeah. I think we blew the shark up guys.

We blew the shark up. It's not makeable. Shark up blown up. This is where there's other sharks. There are no other sharks.

26 feet long. Only jaws. You know, we've had this podcast since 2017. And we were trying to figure out these different structures. Formats with it.

And jaws was ironically the one that we were kind of like. We did we've been doing it for nine months. Me and Sean and Chris Ryan did.

And it was like the first one we were like, this is the podcast.

This is what it is. This is what it is. This is what it is. And one of the things that we loved to talk about like the. The Robert Shaw store is.

And what he was like on the set and him daring. Dreyfist to climb up to the top. Yeah. So that is that story true. Yeah.

I offered a money. But Richard didn't do it for the money. Richard did it because Robert dared him and Richard is a very courageous person. And Richard is going to do it. I mean, he's Richard stood up to Robert.

Right.

“I think there's a lot of exaggeration that's happened over the years over the 52 years.”

Richard and Robert admire each other.

They respect each other as actors.

And they respect each other as people. But they had a routine like like Steve Martin and Marty Short where they go on the road.

They're always acting like their rivals and they're teasing each other and making jokes about each other.

And they had a comedy act in a way. I think it's kind of push. Robert pushed Richard a bit to the brink. Yeah. And sometimes Richard put push Robert to the brink.

But you don't do that. Two other people unless underneath it is an enduring admiration. Right. And respect.

“And I think that's what gets overlooked after all these years.”

They really didn't like each other. That's not true. But it really serves the movie. But it serves the movie. And I was happy about it.

Yeah. Because when they got in front of the camera, they knew they're business. They knew who they were to each other as Cooper and Quint. It probably also almost served a heart attack for you when you find a driver. So it's going to climb up 50 feet up.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Richard. It's funny when Steve was talking about catching a Kubrick movie 30 minutes in and not being able

to turn it off, which is literally the premise of this show. Yeah. It's definitely one of those movies for us and for Chris for millions of people where

“it doesn't if you're in the eighth minute or the 90th minute.”

You know, like, I just got it. I got to get to the end. I got to get to the Indianapolis. I got to get to, you know, I got to see that the shark popping out. Like I just have to get to those moments.

That's very. It's hard though to to make something where you can go back. Not two times or five times. But 50 times. Like this movie.

They were talking about. It kind of demands. Several viewing. Like he was like you don't even see it a couple of times beforehand. But if you like watch it at different stages of your life, it tells you something different.

You learn more about yourself when you watch it. You notice different things, different themes. It's it's true.

And you also get kind of seduced by the amazing musical choices.

You know, he hired his composer when Stanley directed Spartacus. Alex North, one of the greatest Hollywood film composers ever. Composer brilliant score for Spartacus. And the greatest scores ever written for a film, especially the main title that Alex North did. And so Stanley employed Alex to write the score a film score for 2001 in the Space Odyssey.

And very quickly threw it out because it turned his movie too much into a movie. And so he went and did what he did best, Stanley, which his needle drops. But look who he went to. And to Aaron Cachitorian, he went to Pindereki. He went to Jorge Legetti or Legetti.

Yeah. And and and he went to this he went to both Strauss composers. And so you've got the blue dan you playing. When you suddenly go from a proto-human taking a bone and throwing it in the air. And the camera follows the bone into the air.

And on its descent the bone be transitioned into a space shuttle in the year 2011. It's unbelievably audacious. And then suddenly you hear the blue dan you ball's playing. And it completely relaxes you into accepting the possibility of a future like this one.

“Also, the most New York thing he did was just use the music and didn't tell some of those people right then that became I think an issue for a couple of them.”

They were like wait a second, my music's at this. I'm seeing the Kubrick, I'm gonna use your music. Well, there's something out there. I couldn't think of another example of a movie before this. That just transitions so radically, not just to the future, but to a completely seemingly unconnected phase of the movie.

It just feels like it's a, you know, we've changed the tone, the style, the color, the location. Everything is just different and you're expected to not only accept it, but understand what he's trying to tell you. Yeah, well, wrote down the timing of the movie. So it launches the modern sci-fi boom, right?

There's science fiction movies, but they're all cheap and they're just, they're making them for less than a million bucks.

This is the first one where somebody's like, I'm spending real money. Put the series coin, it's like one of the apes released five days before this movie, though, which is very interesting. Oh my god, that they are so twin together and they both prominently feature apes on. But didn't plan to the age outgrow's 2001? It did, but I may be not over time, ultimately.

Well, maybe not over time. But the those two movies I see as very connected. It's a year before Apollo 13 and Neil Armstrong, everything. Yep. It's hitting the psychedelic late sixties, like, perfectly.

This is like right as this whole generation, this counterculture thing happening. Whole generation of young filmmakers, including yourself, all witty to be influenced by movies like this. So you have that. If the 70 millimeter, just like the big awesome. This is like the perfect thing to go, which is now, by the way, I don't know if you've heard, but it's now made a comeback.

Yeah, we're going to movie theaters and seeing eye max and awesome different ...

It's made for a wrote down nerds, philosophers and movie junkies.

But somehow became massive. And then, uh, and then what we talked about earlier about life in the next century, what's going to happen. Like that 2001 is 33 years after they make this movie. But when you watch it, it feels like it's 133 years after 1968. And the movies already outlived some of the sponsors, Pan American Airlines.

Yeah, long time. Everybody's no longer exists. Um, the other thing, belt telephone. Yeah. Right.

No longer exist.

“Yeah, that's still around. I think that's still around in spotty, but still around.”

But, um, you've got a lot of things that don't exist anymore where the film is out, out, out, lived the, uh, some of what I think Stanley assumed would be, uh, around for millennia. And he's like bedrock corporations. Yeah. I think you assume those are bedrock corporations.

Yeah. So when you're watching this and you're thinking, said, they have to make movies. And then you're seeing the special effects in this movie. Like, what is, what's going through your brain?

Well, I didn't, when I first saw the movie, I didn't notice the special effects.

I was in that story. Right. Part of that experience. So I wasn't picking it apart. I went back to see the movie two weeks later.

And I went back to see the movie a week after that. So I saw the movie about four times in a month. And it was the second and third and fourth times that started just marvelling it out. How do they get that on the screen? How do they do that?

And who are these people? Who is Wally Beavers? Who is, who is Douglas Trumble? Who is Colin Campwell? I mean, who are these people?

And because they all got kind of a special effects supervisor credits on single cards. And I just wanted to get to know them.

So of course, I went to Doug Trumble when I made close encounters with the third kind.

So then 14 years later, you have little kids right in their bike in the air. And it's like the greatest moment of every kid's generation. It's basically the same thing. Like, oh my god, how did they do that?

“This has this movie has a lot of how did they do that?”

How do they do that? I mean, how do they how do they create weightlessness when he had to back? He had to back the rover backwards with the exploding bolt door against the pod bay. And then he had to get, you know, he had to basically hold his breath. You know, blow up the first ball.

He mechanically manually opened the pod bay doors because how wouldn't do it. And then he had to turn the entire pod around and he had to back the pod up to the entryway. And he had to wait for the detonation. And when it occurred, he blew toward camera completely weightless. And what I didn't realize until much later was he was on a wire.

But the wire was coming from the camera because they didn't have wire removal. They didn't have digital wire removal on those days. Before it did just a wire removal, we just put the special effects guys would put a little vastly blur where the wire was to make it harder for the audience to see the wires. Films like war or the world's towards Palfield, we see the wires on the on the triangle or, you know, you know, you know, Martian chips.

But in this case, because the wire was came right from the middle point of the lens. Almost right to the side of the lens.

“It looked like he was completely weightless and bouncing around like on a bungee inside that place.”

And when Stanley built an entire set. To set turn 360, but the actors just walked. It wasn't that flat. That's why it doesn't. They actually rotated the entire set.

I got the idea and poltergeist when I produced and had co-written poltergeist. I wrote the story. I wrote the screenplay. I wanted Joe Beth Williams, the character to kind of weightlessly fly around a room. We built an entire bedroom, put it on the same kind of vertical carousel.

And we we just started revolving it and Joe Beth just had to go like she and Kelly did in Royal wedding when he danced on the walls and the floor in the ceiling. Joe Beth just had to understand where she what down was where up was where down was. So she could struggle and traverse the entire room from the wall to the ceiling to the wall back to the floor again, which is exactly how Stanley also got the guy's jogging in the ship. Right.

With the with the cafeteria music plane when they were jogging all around for exercise. Even some of the shots I'd feel like because I have drifted into other movies. Like the when when the thing you just mentioned about him flying around bounce around. It's a little like castaway with hanks when the plane blows up and he gets sent back. Yeah.

But I thought of that when I was watching him. Heard to lead and not enjoy shooting that sequence.

I can imagine he only did it twice and he said he said that.

He did not enjoy it.

So here's what Kubrick said about the ending in a 1980 phone interview with journalist.

I read this. But go ahead. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken by God like entities. Creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him.

And his whole life passes from that point on in that room and he has no sense of time. And then maybe he's transformed into some kind of super being and send back to earth. We'll only have to guess what happens when he comes back. So he makes it seem like he doesn't die. That's completely logical but it's not very fun to think about.

Like I it's this is an interesting thing where I'm also very interested in directorial intent.

“Like what did the person who made this think about it? Why did they do it?”

I spent the last 10 years asking filmmakers like why did you do this? However, with certain movies this being one of them. I do not want an explanation of that. I wish I did not read that. I wish I did not.

I'm actually quite surprised that he shared that. It seemed like he shared that maybe shortly after the film would come out. And he was not as concerned maybe about being so mysterious at this particular period of time. Maybe it's what 30 it's 12 years after he made the movie. Do you get like you make a movie you sent out on the world after 10 years?

Like, ah fuck it, I'll tell you what happened. I like to think the Stanley said that because that's exactly what the movie doesn't mean.

What Stanley never intended.

And he's growing the world. That's the I love that. So he can keep. He can keep the truth a little more.

“I think he's playing with chess with him.”

He was a great chess player. You know, the best gift I ever gave Stanley for his birthday was the first computer chess game. Oh, because Stanley, I played chess and Stanley played chess. I would never play with Stanley because I could only make four moves and he'd made me check me. But what I found out that in the 80s, he had made a little table top electric computer chess game.

I said to the Stanley and Stanley called me back a week later. And he said, couldn't you have sent me a smarter one? That's a real careful. You wish for him. Yeah.

So you're giving what happens in a movie. You sent me a smarter chess chess. Electronic chess game because you kept beating it. The playoffs are here and you can predict all the action. All the way to the finals with fan dual predicts.

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Which is a little way.

“I think if they're making this movie now they're probably like you got to figure out if gasoline can do it or whatever.”

Cooperative and white big name stars. He wanted like anonymous faces and anonymous expression. That's right. And yet, like if Steve McQueen is in this movie, does it feel different or does he take you out of it? It would take me out of it if Steve McQueen were in 2001. It's based on us.

Yeah. Because I would have two much baggage to unpack from all the movies I've seen. Right. You know, from basically from, you know, the blob to bullet came out that year. So he's bringing the Steve McQueen IMDB baggage with them.

Yeah, I, I thought it was really smart to hire Gary Lockwood and carefully. A care of course was brilliant Frank Frank and Eleanor Perry's David Lisa and he had a wonderful career. And Gary Lockwood did some great stuff too. I really admired both of them. But they were, they were more like, they were like astronauts who were a little more,

there's more anonymity in casting them. And nobody, nobody of us of Esther was an American living in England working on stage. And nobody had seen him in American movies. And because you went, you went both ways with this because like in Raiders, every new hair, support was, you know, you could have gone somebody more anonymous.

But in ET, it's basically people I didn't have a history with.

So like, I'd never seen Henry Thomas.

I'd never seen D. Y. D. Walsett scene because she'd been a couple things. But you know what I mean? Like, you could have put big stars in that and you didn't. No, not really. I couldn't have put big stars in ET because there were no, I mean, true bearer, where it became a big star about two months after ET opened. And Henry did had a great career.

Henry Thomas D's great.

But I wondered, the same kind of anonymity, you know, I wanted the movie to be known. And I wanted them to be the characters that would become known.

Because if the, look, I never thought ET would work.

I thought ET was going to be. I couldn't believe that they gave me $10 million to make the movie because I didn't think it would make any money back. Really? Yeah, I thought it was going to be. The parents were going to have to, you know,

“drop their kids off and say, you should go see ET.”

It's healthy. It's good for you. I didn't know. I could take off the way it did. I had no idea. Well, it's a done ET on the show. Just like, have you really?

Oh, we've done, you're the leader in, in directors. We've done nine Spielberg movies. Yeah. You're the, you're in the leader in the club. I love the close encounters one. Oh, thank you. That was great.

Yeah. Yeah, you're the, you guys got it. We, we still have got it. Nice. Nice to hear. That is nice to hear. Yeah, we still have some left in your catalog.

Great. We see it. Well, ET and, and this film too, like the star of the films. ET and how's that in thousand? And Charles is the star of Charles and. And Roy Shrider was the star.

He had done French connection and stuff. And Richard had done American graffiti and Richard had done,

the apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which was a huge critical hit.

And, and Robert Shaw had done man for all seasons and he was well known. He had done the sting before it.

“Big hit movie when the Oscar for Best Picture.”

But it was about three anonymous guys that that devastated themselves of who they were to all of us publicly and became those characters. I mean, that's the whole thing about good actors. Maybe even Steve McQueen or thought was a really good actor. I knew Steve pretty well.

Maybe Steve could have done two thousand one. I mean, a good actor is supposed to become an anonymous character. Right. Based on what the writer and the director have, have, have offered us. So I'm going to take that back.

I'm going to back. I'm going to kind of back it up a little bit by saying. I said, I talked to you into it. You did. You can you can use movie stars in the film.

And if the movie is compelling enough, you forget the filmography of the character. And the reason I thought of him was he was. And we've talked about this. This is a big Tarantino point about how. We don't have enough McQueen's now.

People that didn't really need dialogue, but just seem like stars. They just, you could read their faces and something about them. You're like, oh, that guy's a movie star. Well, it's also for such a film with so little dialogue. Right.

You need somebody. On the other hand though, like he obviously is encouraging these actors to kind of Drain some of their inherent charisma. And McQueen could so effortlessly communicate charisma. So maybe that isn't what he would.

Maybe that one or the ass. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go back to your point. You're right.

But he doesn't want to space out of the scene. Yeah. But maybe hack but could have done it. Yeah. So he was a legendary million takes guy.

Who's that Kubrick? Yes. What's where are you in the?

Because we have like, you always hear stories about like Clint Eastwoods.

Like two takes. Let's move on to the thing. Where are you in that in that scale? I'm six to eight. I'll be six to eight takes.

What do you try to accomplish in the six to eight? What are you trying to find out from the actors? Well, I'm it varies because the number it takes. I make depends on whether I feel that it is all the actors are going to be able to contribute.

“Or is it all I want or need the actors to contribute?”

I have to make that determination on every takes. So I've done 30 takes before. I've done 30 takes with with with certain actors. But I've also done two takes with certain actors. Right. It all depends. Anthony Hopkins on Amistod came over to me before we shot the movie.

And he said, I'm going to give you a little insight into how I work. Take one. I'm just getting a feeling of about how it's sounding and how it's feeling to me. Take two. I'm going to nail it. Take three.

You can use parts of it. But after take three, you're not going to want to use any of those takes. And he told me ahead of time that he's good for about three. Take two. Take two.

We did a couple more takes and that's something he did five, six takes. But Tony is one of the most intuitive actors. And his choices are almost gifts. I don't know where it comes from, but when he makes a choice. And he finds a moment.

The moment is not a moment that he has thought about a lot. It's a moment that comes to him. It's intuitive. It's right. It's it fits the shoes of the character. He's walking in. And then that's it.

He's giving you his best. I have a shit like this. Like our favorite one ever is Nicholson and a few good men. When they did all the Colonel Jessup courtroom scenes and he was done. And they're like, you can.

All right, now you can go. We can use a stand in. We're going to get the other one. He's like, no, no, I'm going to stay. I'm going to keep just keep doing this over and over again.

And I'm like, really, it's like, yeah, I love it.

He loves the act.

Also, it's fun.

“You get actors that have done, you know, 300, 400 performances on stage.”

They want to do a lot of takes.

Right. You know, because every night they bring something else to the theater. They bring something else to the character. They find other ways of expressing things that don't throw the other characters off. That aren't going to sabotage the company.

Because they suddenly come up with a better idea than the playwright. They're not going to do that. Or some of them, most of them are not going to do that. But I find that if an actor has had a lot of stage experience, you really desires more takes.

And I'm fine. And if an actor comes in being says, I want, when I work with Leo, Leo likes to watch his own takes when I did cash, me, if you can, with the caprio. He likes to go to the monitor after every take and look at the take back.

And he, and it gives him ideas.

And he says, let me have one more. Let me have one more. So I might, I might do nine, ten, eleven takes. Because Leo feels he hasn't explored it sufficiently. So I have a wait for Leo to tell me when he thinks he's got it.

I'm not going to be a big overseer. You know, as a director and say, no,

“I think it was great on tape for where we're moving on.”

If I got a schedule problem, if I'm losing the light and racing the light, yeah, I'm going to be a little more cut, come on. I hope you felt that enough because we're not doing it again. But, but short of that, I'm going to let it actor tell me when they think they've given me their best, their best take.

Leo, grinds tape, who knew? Not surprised.

Grinding tape, like a quarter mask.

It's a catcher bones. And other people are just like whatever Steven, let's, I trust you. I sometimes, I have to, especially in the, in this later area of my career, I've got to sometimes go to an actor and say,

you know, if you want another take, you can ask me for another take, because I'm expressing joy that I love what you just did. It doesn't mean that there was something I haven't seen yet that you, that you know, you haven't given yet. So if you, so I have to go to the actors and say, don't be intimidated,

you know, because I made ET tell me that you, and you know, and you're childhood was informed by it. Tell me if you think you have more to give. Don't take cut print as an answer. I don't know if our guy Stanley was doing that.

Seems like he had a different manner. Yeah, in terms of approaching actors. Make you the movie we mentioned. He spent five years developing it. Got involved with Arthur C. Clark kept doing it.

And I'll say, I'll say, people, there's a lot of great research on this. There's been documentaries, multiple books. Yeah. But he, the most interesting thing of all that stuff, the cook notes. Clark had the book ready to go, and he's like, you can't do it until the movie comes out.

And he's like paying him on the side because he was banking on the money from the book. So now I don't know. You got to wait until the movie comes out. And then movie came out releases the book. But that's, that's a lot of trust you got to do.

So they worked on the script together. And seemed a little tumultuous in the research. Like that. Yeah, like working on the script and stuff. I don't know if it was perfect.

But it got to where I needed to get to it. I don't know anything about their working relationship. But they were, they were both. They were not hive minds. They were not hive minded.

They were single minded visionaries who I'm sure had alternative points of view. And common points of view. But whatever the magic was between Clark and Kubrick, man, we're so grateful to both of them.

“Have you ever had somebody like that that you were just like partners on this thing?”

Were you had to sketch out this whole thing and spending, you know, months and months and years. Absolutely. I have, I have a deep partnership with Tony Kushner. And I have an equally deep partnership with David Kepp. And it has been just, just I'm just lucky that they're on this planet to tell stories with me.

Can you talk about the relationship that you have with a writer like that? You're like that who you've returned to over and over again. And what happens when they have an idea that you don't like or how do you come to a common ground? Well, if there's, it depends. I mean, I mean, both, they're two completely different people.

Number one. Tony Kushner is a, is a Tony award winning Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. And, and academy, multiple Academy Award nominated screenwriter. And David Kepp is one of the most commercial screenwriters in Hollywood history. Yeah.

And they both have different ways of working, which I really love. And I've got to be the flexible one here. I have to be the chameleon that doesn't, I'm not asking them to conform to the way I work. I will conform to what makes them great writers. And so I have to listen more than I talk sometimes.

It's, it's just, when you, I've always said, look, I've always said that Jake...

He said it best. He said the play is the thing. And without a screenplay, I'm nothing. I'll just take my iPhone and take a lot of really, really nice, still photographs. But without a screenplay, I absolutely am lost.

“And so for me, the writer is the most important person in my life.”

Interesting. This is a funny one too, though, because you and Kubrick are somewhat alike in this way. All of his movies are based on something.

He's always on the hunted sounds like for material, for something that could make for a good story.

But then you have to shape the story. In this case, he approaches Clark, and he has the original idea. But the Clark story, the Sentinel, is a huge inspiration for the idea that he has. And so they take parts of an pre-existing story, and then they fold it into one section of this smaller movie. It says really unique version of story synthesis.

But again, I was trying to find some other examples of a movie like this. There's not any other movies like this. Yeah, there, there are, there are. Can you actually be this, did Arthur Clark's book, "Ronda Vue with Rama?" Happened before?

I think it follows one of his followers. I think it's 73. Okay, because that had some earthenames. Yeah. So, yeah.

When they were working, then Kubrick wrote the Clark's agent about his workload, because they weren't getting along. And he said, "I get up at 7 a.m. Hit the studio about 815. Begin a day that generally ends around 830 p.m.

I go home, say good night to the children have dinner, work on the novel, and go to bed around midnight. I do this seven days a week." [laughter] Who said that one?

Kubrick. He said that one. He went into pots. You watched it. The entire Kubrick catalog.

You're ready. Oh my God. He really sounded demanding, and was just, that was it.

“He's working on something that's what he's doing.”

Interesting. Now, Polanski asked him to feed every taking drugs.

And Stanley said, "I never had an, I never will."

Not because he had a problem getting high, but because he didn't know the source of his creative gift and didn't want to fuck with it. Oh. I love that.

I love the acknowledges he had to create a gift. Yeah. I mean, a lot of filmmakers just shy about even confessing that they have any gift at all. Those who have been really successful.

I don't know anybody in my circle. I mean, I paint models with directors at Guillermo del Toro's house every weekend. And not once during those model painting and making sessions that's anybody, refer to themselves as "kipped."

[laughter] Well, it's interesting that he knew he had something. And probably didn't want to veer from it, both in the structure of his day-to-day life. Maybe he drank some wine.

I don't know. I don't really sound it. We talk about, I mean, we talk about, we certainly talk about stuff we've done and how much fun it is to make movies and cook up stuff

that would never existed five seconds ago

and suddenly get an idea of where that idea come from. What came from being born and living and experiencing everything. And that's where your ideas come from. Yeah, but we never, we never look at each other like

“where I think Guillermo del Toro is a genius,”

but Guillermo will never refer to him that way. Nor will I ever say to Guillermo, you're a genius because it's gonna make all of us blush. I mean, that's something that we don't talk about. We don't think of ourselves any of us that way.

We think of ourselves as people that love doing what we do but it's the hardest thing we've ever done. There is nothing harder, I can imagine, except raising children. And in my profession, there's nothing harder than directing a movie.

On the apps that I tell Sean, I'm a genius all the time. That's actually true. Yeah, I've been telling you that for over 15 years. So they do the premiere for this movie and it goes badly.

And Kubrick's wife said, Stanley was tearing himself to shreds. He's saying, oh my God, they really hated it. He was heartbroken. He couldn't sleep.

Couldn't do anything with shattered, felt terrible. And then what we talked about, the young people started to come out. Did you ever have an experience like that when you released the movie and you were like, oh my God, they hated it. And just wouldn't know as viral.

No, I've never gone into a spiral. Usually when I have a movie that opens, I go away somewhere where nobody can find me. And where I can read anything. I try to go away.

I go up because it's my excuse for taking the vacation. The film gets released and then I go somewhere. And it's been really therapeutic and it's good. And I know if something's not going well. Of course, I know when something's hidden.

I didn't before the internet. It was harder to find out before the internet. You had to have somebody call you. And the person that calls you and says, your film is a bomb. It's not a person you're going to want to have dinner with the next week.

But now, if your film is a huge success or is a middleing success

Or isn't the success at all, it gets you.

It just ausmoses through the current,

“you know, the current, the social state of the art”

that they're all enveloped in. And but I still can get away. And so I don't have to stress out. There's some. This is a little bit of a confusing one with 2001 because

critically, it's very split. And there are some extremely sharp elbowed kind of NAS. Have a couple of those. Yeah. I think that a fan very tough.

And then there's some that are very lot of story right out of the gate. Yes.

And then the movie it seems like in the first week,

it does okay business. Yes. It's not a bomb. But it just does okay. And then it seems like you said like it seemed like people caught on one weekend.

Something else really helped that movie catch on. The marketing department and MGM. And I want to give Stanley credit for this. I don't think Stanley actually came up with this slogan. But the market department at MGM put on all the posters,

and all the billboards. 2001 is space audicy. The ultimate trip. And appeal to the psychedelic generation. Did he anticipate though that this was going to be a drug trip movie

when he was making it? I asked him that question. And he actually said he doesn't think the movie is a drug trip movie. And he sort of is. I'm not saying he's in denial of that because I don't really know.

You know, if that's the reason it eventually did so well and people saw it.

“I think it's I think drugs not was standing.”

The film itself is a drug. You don't need to smoke marijuana to get off on two thousand space audicy. And like me who's ever taken drugs. I went to that movie and that was a drug. And to this day it continues to be something that every year I need a little bit of

a 2001 fix. And me.

Well he wins his only Oscar that he won for a movie, which was visual effects.

Dominated for director screenplay. Art direction. Yes. Do you remember who wins that year? For best picture?

In 68? Yeah. No. Oliver with an exclamation point. Oh, Oliver.

Oliver. Yes, Oliver. You mean we did it in the 60s. We did it in the 60s. You mean we did it in the 60s.