Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk Easy. I'm standing for GOSO. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today. I'm joined by writer, director, and
Speaker 1: actor Britt Marlin. For the past fifteen years, Marling has
Speaker 1: made her mark by telling daring, ambitious stories, often set
Speaker 1: in the near future, that reveals something or frankly many
Speaker 1: things about our disquieting present. From film Almost Like Sound
Speaker 1: in My Voice and Another Earth to the Netflix original
Speaker 1: series Thea, She's explored everything from capitalism and climate change
Speaker 1: to the apocalypse in the Afterlife. She's done this primarily
Speaker 1: with director and co conspirator zahl Moongolish. The two met
Speaker 1: at Georgetown back in two thousand and one and have
Speaker 1: worked together ever since. Their latest collaboration is for FX,
Speaker 1: entitled A Murder at the End of the World. It
Speaker 1: stars Emcorn as Darby Hart, a gen z amateur detective
Speaker 1: who's been invited to a remote retreat by a reclusive
Speaker 1: tech billionaire played by Clive Owen. Once at the symposium,
Speaker 1: Darby stumbles upon a deceased guest, quickly snapping into action
Speaker 1: to prove there was foul play. This is a clip
Speaker 1: for A Murder at the End of the World.
Speaker 2: Welcome, It's so exciting to see you all.
Speaker 3: Hear you know him a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Everyone I've invited here has something extraordinary to off for
Speaker 2: the group.
Speaker 4: Did you know Ellie Times called her gen Z Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 5: We don't know who did this, We don't know why,
Speaker 5: and we don't know if they aren't done.
Speaker 1: You're afraid, terrified.
Speaker 5: There's something going on that we don't fully understand.
Speaker 3: Just another guest in a retreat. So long as you
Speaker 3: play the part.
Speaker 2: The thing about getting close in a case, careful girl,
Speaker 2: is it you start to.
Speaker 5: Burn and the only way to put out the fire
Speaker 5: is to solve it.
Speaker 3: To finding a way out.
Speaker 1: That was from FX's a Murder at the End of
Speaker 1: the World. New episodes are available to stream every Tuesday
Speaker 1: on Hulu through December nineteenth. In the spirit of those
Speaker 1: classic Agatha Christie novels, the show is a tried and
Speaker 1: true murder mystery, and yet Marlin and Company can't help
Speaker 1: but be a little bit prescient, especially around the future
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence, which plays a big role both in
Speaker 1: the show and in this conversation. I talked to Britt
Speaker 1: in front of a live audience at this year's On
Speaker 1: AirFest at CACRW and to be honest. Like our first
Speaker 1: episode on the show back in twenty nineteen, we kind
Speaker 1: of talk about everything, her early years as an actor
Speaker 1: before she found writing, the public outcry that followed the
Speaker 1: cancellation of the OA, the state and future of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: her debut as a director on this excellent new show,
Speaker 1: and the power of collective action and artistic collaboration. That's
Speaker 1: all coming up next with our guest, the one and
Speaker 1: only Krit Marlin.
Speaker 5: With a further ado.
Speaker 1: He's welcome, Sam and Grit.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: Everyone welcome, Brit. How are you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm good Sam.
Speaker 1: The last time we did this, it was in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: you were just about to put out Part two of
Speaker 1: the Oay.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: A lot's happened since then, I mean, like a lot,
Speaker 1: And I thought there are so many places to begin,
Speaker 1: but I figured we start with the passage from Rebecca
Speaker 1: soln It's twenty twenty memoir Recollections of My Non Existence.
Speaker 1: In it, she writes, becoming a writer formalized ites a
Speaker 1: task that faces us all in making a life. To
Speaker 1: become conscious of what the overarching stories are and whether
Speaker 1: or not they serve you, and how to then compose
Speaker 1: those versions with room for who you are and what
Speaker 1: you value.
Speaker 3: And I feel like that's a mic drop moment to
Speaker 3: even say.
Speaker 1: Honestly, thanks for coming out tonight. I think we're good.
Speaker 1: In the four years since we sat down, as you
Speaker 1: and Zaul began to embark on this new show, what
Speaker 1: were those overarching stories that you wanted to tell and
Speaker 1: where do you and your values fit into them?
Speaker 5: Sam always goes so deep right from the start. It's like,
Speaker 5: but it's good, it's so good.
Speaker 1: Welcome to talk easy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to talk easy. WI should be talk hard?
Speaker 1: Actually, do you want to rebrand it?
Speaker 3: I think maybe we'll talk to Malcolm afterwards. We'll talk
Speaker 3: to Malcolm.
Speaker 5: I guess around that time I had written this like
Speaker 5: op ed for the New York Times called I Don't
Speaker 5: Want to be the strong female Lead, which was a
Speaker 5: kind of complicated phrasing, but was really just an essay
Speaker 5: trying to wrestle with the idea of what to do
Speaker 5: about female protagonism. And I guess one of my answers
Speaker 5: had been to kind of, as a storyteller, operate in
Speaker 5: a space a little bit outside reality, because if you
Speaker 5: deal with reality head on and female protagonism you're just
Speaker 5: constantly dealing with some measure of oppression or being an
Speaker 5: oppressed character. And it felt like with science fiction and
Speaker 5: fantasy it was this way to get a bit outside Adrian.
Speaker 5: Marie Brown has this really beautiful term I've heard her use.
Speaker 3: She's an activist and a writer.
Speaker 5: She says she calls it resistance fiction, this idea that,
Speaker 5: like all fiction, either reinforces the status quo or rebels
Speaker 5: against it. And so I felt like I was always
Speaker 5: operating in this space of science fiction and fantasy as
Speaker 5: resistance fiction, like trying to figure out ways to call
Speaker 5: something else that isn't quite reality in. And then I
Speaker 5: think part of what started to form with the idea
Speaker 5: of a murder at the end of the world was
Speaker 5: maybe braiding some of that calling something in, but also
Speaker 5: trying to make something more in the world as we
Speaker 5: know it present day and contend with the realities of
Speaker 5: violence against women and not show it on screen in
Speaker 5: a way that perpetuated it, but just deal with the
Speaker 5: echoes of it. And somewhere in that stew you know,
Speaker 5: and Rebecca Soulna, I'm sure is actually a huge part
Speaker 5: of this, because I used to have long conversations with Rebecca.
Speaker 3: We'd walk up and.
Speaker 5: Down the beach in San Francisco and we talk about
Speaker 5: a lot of these ideas of this struggle as a
Speaker 5: woman to realize yourself when you can't often find yourself
Speaker 5: mirrored back to yourself in fiction. And this idea of
Speaker 5: this character just sprung forth. Darby Hart, the coroner's daughter
Speaker 5: who grew up on crime scenes and her you know,
Speaker 5: she was in a morgue from the time she was
Speaker 5: like a kid, and her coming of age moment was
Speaker 5: when she was a little girl over the body of
Speaker 5: a Jane Doe, you know, the bones of this Jane
Speaker 5: Doe who was never going to be identified. And her
Speaker 5: coming of age moment is a having to contend with
Speaker 5: the potential of violence being in her future as a
Speaker 5: as a woman coming of age, and how that might
Speaker 5: not defeat her, but how that might make her strong
Speaker 5: and flinty and compel her to solve some of these
Speaker 5: cold cases. And so those were like the early feelings,
Speaker 5: and then of course it got braided with a lot
Speaker 5: of other stuff, including Iceland and tech billionaires and secret
Speaker 5: of retreats and robots, and you know, it gets I
Speaker 5: never know how to stop once I get started as
Speaker 5: the problem Sam.
Speaker 1: By the way, the best problem to have in this
Speaker 1: new program. We're going to watch a clip in a second.
Speaker 1: There is this white tech billionaire obsessed with space travel,
Speaker 1: and I just I have two questions, just normal ones.
Speaker 1: Has Elon Musk seen the show? And how grateful is
Speaker 1: he that someone as attractive as Climo when is playing him?
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny. When we went to write
Speaker 3: this character, and I'm curious what Clive would say about this, we.
Speaker 5: Were actually thinking a lot about, like, how can we
Speaker 5: make somebody who feels three dimensional, who like has qualities
Speaker 5: and characteristics we admire even as writers, a kind of
Speaker 5: like daring do and an ability to imagine stuff that
Speaker 5: doesn't exist yet and then.
Speaker 3: Like will it into reality.
Speaker 5: That is also complicated by the fact that, you know,
Speaker 5: Andy Rohnson, this character has like real fears and vulnerabilities,
Speaker 5: and those fears and vulnerabilities lead him sometimes.
Speaker 3: In dangerous directions. And so but he was.
Speaker 5: An amazing care character to write, and I think the
Speaker 5: most challenging one to write, and I think Clive Owen
Speaker 5: actually did a lot.
Speaker 3: Of the writing.
Speaker 5: I was always at a Clive that, like the best
Speaker 5: actors are also writers, and he'd be like, oh, brit
Speaker 5: you know that's fun. But I really think it's true because.
Speaker 1: Is that his accent you just did.
Speaker 3: I can't do his accent? Can you do it?
Speaker 1: No, I'm not the actor.
Speaker 3: You could say, I feel like you could do it.
Speaker 1: Are you not going to do it? Because you're on
Speaker 1: strike right now?
Speaker 3: I am. I'm acting.
Speaker 5: I'm totally on strike, so I can do no acting
Speaker 5: right now. I can only be here as a writer
Speaker 5: and director.
Speaker 1: We can talk about the abstract idea of acting, I think, right.
Speaker 3: As long as it's like super abstract.
Speaker 1: This clip that we're about to watch and do you
Speaker 1: want to set it up for us?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So this is in the beginning of chapter one, and
Speaker 5: Darby Hart, our young amateur sleuth, has received a mysterious
Speaker 5: invitation in the middle of the night. She wakes up
Speaker 5: to it on her computer and it's Andy Ronson, This
Speaker 5: tech billionaire who's like very famous, has sent her a
Speaker 5: text being like, I'd like to send you an invitation.
Speaker 5: Downloads this thing on her phone and opens it and
Speaker 5: this augmented reality app enters on her phone, and then
Speaker 5: this scene comes right after that. So this is her
Speaker 5: first interaction with Andy Ronson's world and the augmented reality
Speaker 5: that he's designed.
Speaker 1: This is from chapter one of The Murder at the
Speaker 1: End of the World.
Speaker 2: I'm here on Andy Ronson's behalf to invite you to
Speaker 2: his twenty twenty three retreat, A small gathering of minds,
Speaker 2: a symposium to discuss technology's rule in ensuring a human future.
Speaker 2: All expenses paid, flight, lodging, food, whatever you should need.
Speaker 2: The plane departs in two weeks and returns the week after.
Speaker 2: Would you care to join us, Darby.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, it's just.
Speaker 1: I don't really.
Speaker 3: Have the words.
Speaker 2: That's quite all right. Andy's introduced me to things that
Speaker 2: have left me speechless too, Yeah, like what Vivaldi's spring
Speaker 2: Beyonce the collected works of the television program The Simpsons.
Speaker 1: I love The Simpsons.
Speaker 3: I binged it when I got my wisdom.
Speaker 2: Teito, you felt a kinship to Lisa. It's hard being
Speaker 2: the smartest person in most rooms, so lonely. Yes, you
Speaker 2: won't be lonely on the retreat. It's an impressive gathering.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you'll find the other attendees of the retreat
Speaker 2: just as fascinating as Lisa Simpson.
Speaker 3: Will Lee Anderson be there.
Speaker 2: Of course your work is a great interest to both
Speaker 2: Lee and Andy. What do you say, Darby, will you
Speaker 2: join us?
Speaker 1: At what point did you put Beyonce on that short list?
Speaker 5: Right from the beginning, I thought, I was like, Beyonces,
Speaker 5: Lisa Simpson, those are some of the best things. But
Speaker 5: actually we took this scene and we had early access
Speaker 5: to chat GPT before it was released to the public through.
Speaker 3: Front of Ours.
Speaker 5: He was a programmer and we actually like played with
Speaker 5: it and we input this idea of this scene, and
Speaker 5: what the AI spat back to us was this idea
Speaker 5: of like, oh, well, Lisa Simpson will also be on
Speaker 5: the retreat, because, of course chat GPT three thought Lisa
Speaker 5: Simpson was just a gal from you know, down the street,
Speaker 5: a luminary who might come on a retreat. And it
Speaker 5: was fun to really play with, like an important to
Speaker 5: us to tell a story where we embedded the limitations
Speaker 5: of technology and the humor and the awkwardness and the yeah.
Speaker 1: In the show The Retreat the express purpose of it
Speaker 1: is to understand technologies role in our future. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious because you started writing the program in like twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen and in the four or five years since
Speaker 1: what was science fiction is now very much science present
Speaker 1: in some way, How is your relationship changed with it,
Speaker 1: and how do you make sense of it in this moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre to write something where in
Speaker 5: the beginning we would have to explain to people so
Speaker 5: many of the things. People would read the scripts and
Speaker 5: we'd have to explain what a deep fake was, or
Speaker 5: explain how large language models work.
Speaker 3: And then as you're editing it.
Speaker 5: You know, we were editing the show and we needed
Speaker 5: some additional dialogue recording from Clive, and normally you just.
Speaker 3: Sort of type in subtitles as you're editing.
Speaker 5: For what the actor will eventually do, and then you
Speaker 5: call the actor in and they record all this dialogue
Speaker 5: and you lay it on top of picture.
Speaker 3: Well, we didn't have Clive for a while, so one
Speaker 3: of our.
Speaker 5: Editors just used deep fake and deep faked Clives. So
Speaker 5: when Clive came in to do his adr recording, he
Speaker 5: was like listening to some of it and he's like, God,
Speaker 5: I don't remember saying that line, and we were like, that's.
Speaker 3: Because you didn't. A deep fake said it for you.
Speaker 3: And so that was crazy.
Speaker 5: Because when we'd written the script like three years prior,
Speaker 5: you just didn't have any of those abilities. So a
Speaker 5: lot of things like leapt into the present moment, and
Speaker 5: what we wrote as science fiction became sort of just
Speaker 5: science present. And I think fundamentally it's a story that
Speaker 5: wrestles with how a lot of this stuff is happening
Speaker 5: so fast, and how it's shaping things and shaping us
Speaker 5: so intensely. Like I think about this just in terms
Speaker 5: of my own ability to imagine, Like when I'm writing,
Speaker 5: I used to be able to sit really still in
Speaker 5: a chair and like go into my imagination for like
Speaker 5: hours at a time, And now my thinking is a
Speaker 5: lot more fractured, like I've been. My cell phone has
Speaker 5: sort of fragmented my ability to focus. I'm used to
Speaker 5: these pings and dings and like dopamine rushes that come
Speaker 5: with them, and my concentration is different in a way,
Speaker 5: And so I think there are just all these unintended
Speaker 5: side effects, and there's also these beautiful things. I mean,
Speaker 5: part of this story is really a love story about,
Speaker 5: you know, an outsider girl who's like going to her
Speaker 5: high school smelting like formaldehyde from the morgue.
Speaker 3: You know, a real outcast and meet.
Speaker 5: Somebody on the internet, you know, in the amateur sleuthing forums.
Speaker 5: So she felt in love with and they go on
Speaker 5: this like bad Lands, you know, trip through the American
Speaker 5: West trying to solve this cold case.
Speaker 3: That's a relationship that could.
Speaker 5: Only have come from the Internet, and her amateur sleuthing
Speaker 5: prowess is something that could only have come from the Internet.
Speaker 5: I mean, the fact that she can go on this
Speaker 5: retreat and sort of authorize herself to be the detective
Speaker 5: to solve a crime that happens there is only possible
Speaker 5: because Darby Hart has logged ten thousand hours as an
Speaker 5: amateur sleuth in her like early twenties.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you just get Nancy Drew.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: But we're trying to tell a story where she's a
Speaker 5: credible detective, and it's only possible because she's also a
Speaker 5: child of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Also only possible because of your imagination. And I think
Speaker 1: I want to go back to when it was less
Speaker 1: distracted and where storytelling kind of began for you, which
Speaker 1: I believe happened as a kid when your parents sent
Speaker 1: you to summer camp in the Florida Everglade. Sam who
Speaker 1: have you been talking to your mother. She's so lovely.
Speaker 3: Sam did meet my mother once, she called her before this.
Speaker 1: She gave her number out right when I met her.
Speaker 3: Sounds like my mother the Everglades. Yeah, I got kicked
Speaker 3: out of that camp. I got kicked out of that camp.
Speaker 1: Because why did you get kicked out?
Speaker 5: Well, Sam, I was trying to be a good girl scout.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not why you got kicked out.
Speaker 3: No, it is why. It was a girl Scout camp.
Speaker 1: And what does one do at girls Scout camp?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess sell cookies. But I wasn't
Speaker 3: any good at that, and it was a sleep away camp.
Speaker 1: You're selling cookies on the sleep away camp.
Speaker 5: Well, you rebally like learn how to sell them, or
Speaker 5: you get badges or I don't know. The point is, Sam,
Speaker 5: I didn't have a lot of badges. I wasn't good
Speaker 5: at being a girl Scout, and I was trying to make.
Speaker 1: Friends, you know, And how did you make friends?
Speaker 5: I started telling these ghost stories at night, and there
Speaker 5: were these knots in the wood. They were these like
Speaker 5: really bad wood cabins, and there were these like knots
Speaker 5: in the wood.
Speaker 3: And I made up as all the.
Speaker 5: Girls were asleep at night in their bunk, I would
Speaker 5: tell them the story out loud about how they were
Speaker 5: the eyes of ghosts.
Speaker 1: Was that the first line of it.
Speaker 5: Yes, basically that they were ghosts that were watching from
Speaker 5: the past.
Speaker 3: And it got pretty scary the story.
Speaker 5: So the girls started calling their parents crying the next
Speaker 5: day and asked to be brought home. So instead of
Speaker 5: sending all the other girls home, my parents came and
Speaker 5: picked me up. I was never allowed to go back
Speaker 5: to the girl Scout camp again.
Speaker 3: So glad you brought this up.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to pinpoint the origin. I let me
Speaker 1: ask you, like, you're on the ride home with your parents, yes,
Speaker 1: are they saying like, wow, you have a real gift
Speaker 1: for storytelling.
Speaker 5: I don't think they loved like driving. I realize now
Speaker 5: that the idea behind camp is that you send your
Speaker 5: children away for a period, like that's the big con.
Speaker 5: You get them excited about like pictures in the brochure,
Speaker 5: but really it's like get out of here for eight
Speaker 5: weeks so we can have a life again. So no,
Speaker 5: they were not pleased about having to drive like three
Speaker 5: hours into the Everglades to pick me up from the
Speaker 5: edge of the swamp because like so many children were
Speaker 5: calling and being like.
Speaker 3: This girl's stories are too dark and she's eight.
Speaker 1: But that's a compliment of how skilled of a storytelling
Speaker 1: you were.
Speaker 5: I mean, I thought so, I thought I was waving
Speaker 5: a really exciting yarn.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: But you clearly have this pinship for storytelling. But your
Speaker 1: parents both worked in real estate, and so you didn't
Speaker 1: really have a template for what a career in the
Speaker 1: arts would look like. In fact, your mom said to
Speaker 1: you explicitly as a child, to be a free woman,
Speaker 1: you have to be a financially independent woman. I wonder
Speaker 1: when you look back now, well, how much do you
Speaker 1: think her advice shaped the way you imagined your own future.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess it shaped it in a lot,
Speaker 5: and it shaped it a lot of ways in the
Speaker 5: sense that like, I went to school and I studied economics,
Speaker 5: and I went to you know, be a summer analyst
Speaker 5: at a bank, and I really thought I was going
Speaker 5: to have that career.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure in large part because I thought, you.
Speaker 5: Know, my mom is like saying to me, this is
Speaker 5: important to have resources so you can make your own
Speaker 5: decisions as a woman.
Speaker 1: That was Georgetown and Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 5: That, yeah, that was that, and then I, you know,
Speaker 5: dropped out of school and didn't take the job offer.
Speaker 5: And in the end, I think a lot of what
Speaker 5: I think she really influenced They both influenced me in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways. And I think it was this
Speaker 5: idea that to be a filmmaker you have to be
Speaker 5: an entrepreneur, especially now you know it's it's like things
Speaker 5: have gotten so hard, it's so hard to make art anymore,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 3: You have to find that you have to run.
Speaker 5: A business as much as you are trying to make
Speaker 5: in art, trying to make subversive, interesting stories inside that.
Speaker 5: And so I think I really owe a lot to
Speaker 5: them for that sense of I used to think that
Speaker 5: what they did was so far outside of what I
Speaker 5: was doing, But really, as people who were working in
Speaker 5: real estate, they would come to a place where there
Speaker 5: was nothing, just like land, and then they would imagine
Speaker 5: something there, and then they'd draw blueprints, and then they
Speaker 5: would build people, build it with a team of people,
Speaker 5: and then where there was nothing, there was suddenly something.
Speaker 5: And in some ways, mounting these endeavors of making what
Speaker 5: are basically like these sort.
Speaker 3: Of eight hour movies is really like that.
Speaker 1: Well, the first time you mounted that endeavor, it was
Speaker 1: with Zahl and Mike Cale, and there were students, There
Speaker 1: were classmates of yours at Georgetown, and they came up
Speaker 1: to New York City while you were interning at Gold
Speaker 1: and Sachs, and they tried to enlist you in a
Speaker 1: forty eight hour film festival, which they wanted to shoot
Speaker 1: conveniently in your uncle's apartment.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they were already there.
Speaker 1: What was the first film? And why were so many tables? Damn?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, God that this is all sounding so dark?
Speaker 5: Sam Okay, So we did this film for the forty
Speaker 5: Hour Film Festival. I at the time was the summer analyst,
Speaker 5: but I happened to be for some reason. I was
Speaker 5: a summer analyst on two companies that were having IPOs
Speaker 5: at the same time, and I was like the only analyst.
Speaker 5: So I was like underwater at work. And they wanted
Speaker 5: to do this forty eight hour film festival, and I
Speaker 5: was like, y'all are insane. No, But then they were like,
Speaker 5: we're at your uncle's place already, so we're at least
Speaker 5: shooting here. So I agreed to be in it. We
Speaker 5: stayed up for two days straight making this movie.
Speaker 1: And who were your castmates?
Speaker 3: Nick Kroll was in it. Nick rolls in front of
Speaker 3: us from Georgetown.
Speaker 5: It was a home invasion movie about people who break
Speaker 5: into the house and then this couple has to contend
Speaker 5: with it, and we basically broke a lot of my
Speaker 5: uncle's furniture.
Speaker 1: Were the police involved that anyway?
Speaker 5: The cop We were so loud that I think the
Speaker 5: neighbors called the cops and they came, but we just
Speaker 5: kept shooting because we were like, this is production value.
Speaker 1: So they're in the short film.
Speaker 5: The cops are in the short film Wow, busting up
Speaker 5: the party that Nick, Carol and I were having. Basically,
Speaker 5: we did not win the film festival, and it is
Speaker 5: a very bad movie.
Speaker 3: But what I felt from the experience.
Speaker 1: Was actually before you said that, we actually have it
Speaker 1: here and I'm joking, no, we don't. We don't have.
Speaker 5: You know. Sam told me earlier He's like, I have
Speaker 5: something else I'm going to show and I was like,
Speaker 5: I don't even know how he could.
Speaker 1: Have got that. You die. I've known you for ten years.
Speaker 1: I've never seen you look more scared.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was just thinking to myself I was like, God,
Speaker 5: did he contact the Free to Our Film Festival and
Speaker 5: get it from their archives?
Speaker 1: That'll be the next one. Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: If the film wasn't particularly good, it wasn't the experience
Speaker 1: of it must have done something to stir something inside
Speaker 1: you that made you think, oh, this is something, this
Speaker 1: is something that's not Goldman Sachs Well, I.
Speaker 5: Felt like whether I was a Goldman or I was
Speaker 5: doing the film, either way, I wasn't sleeping, you know,
Speaker 5: like it was just this experience of being awake.
Speaker 3: And like drinking a lot of red bull.
Speaker 5: But I felt that I really loved what we did,
Speaker 5: and it kind of even didn't matter that it wasn't
Speaker 5: good because we enjoyed making it so much and that
Speaker 5: there was this incredible energy about everyone coming together and
Speaker 5: being scrappy, not having many resources, begging, borrowing and stealing
Speaker 5: everything and making something. I think that that experience taught
Speaker 5: me to be really into the process and not the results.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to.
Speaker 5: Get into the idea of individual authorship for me, like
Speaker 5: I get so much pleasure, maybe because I was a
Speaker 5: lonely kid that by myself that's you know, getting kicked
Speaker 5: out of summer camp. I get so much pleasure of
Speaker 5: telling stories with other people and the idea of choral authorship,
Speaker 5: Like what can happen when a group of people come
Speaker 5: together and believe in something, believe in this story for
Speaker 5: a period, and believe in it so much that you
Speaker 5: work fourteen fifteen hour days and all you think about
Speaker 5: from the moment your way till the moment you sleep
Speaker 5: is how to make this story even better than it
Speaker 5: is on the page. And there's some beautiful pathos and
Speaker 5: energy about that, and I think the people in the
Speaker 5: filmmaking community all become sort of addicted to that feeling
Speaker 5: of the intensity of that camaraderie and the you really
Speaker 5: don't feel alone in those spaces, like you feel very
Speaker 5: held by the story altogether. And that's an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: You three took that to the most, I think, like extreme.
Speaker 1: I mean, the three of you move cross country in
Speaker 1: a station wagon. You land in Los Angeles, like no contacts,
Speaker 1: no friends, no sense of what this place is, and
Speaker 1: you start going out for like these auditions. The one
Speaker 1: thing you did have was like backstage magazine, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they had like open casting calls. Yeah, And do
Speaker 1: you remember any of those roles that you went out.
Speaker 5: For like Babe two and blonde girl in a bikini.
Speaker 5: Like I mean, it's very hard to just show up
Speaker 5: if you're not in the union and you're not you know,
Speaker 5: I hadn't even been in a commercial, Like, I didn't
Speaker 5: have a reel or anything, so I was really starting
Speaker 5: from scratch.
Speaker 3: I would just show up at these things.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, someone told me when I showed up
Speaker 5: to the first one in like jeans and a T shirt,
Speaker 5: and they were like, baby, that ain't gonna cut it.
Speaker 3: And then someone told me how to like.
Speaker 5: Curl my eyelashes, and like they were like, get a
Speaker 5: pair of heels, and I went out on a couple
Speaker 5: of those, and then I was like, you know, this
Speaker 5: just doesn't feel that good. And I think that's when
Speaker 5: I realized that the only way I could figure out
Speaker 5: my way as an actor was to try to teach
Speaker 5: myself to write and become a writer.
Speaker 3: And then I just didn't stop doing that.
Speaker 1: Was that daunting to go like I'm not taking this path,
Speaker 1: I'm not taking this actor's path. I'm going to write
Speaker 1: an opposition.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess it was daunting. I also wasn't
Speaker 5: booking any of the parts anyway. And I think also
Speaker 5: I was reading stuff it wasn't very inspired that felt
Speaker 5: like even if I got the part, I'd kind of
Speaker 5: be sad to do it. You know. There was this
Speaker 5: idea in town that like, you had to wade through
Speaker 5: this swamp to get to a place where you could
Speaker 5: do the stuff that was meaningful to you or felt good,
Speaker 5: and you.
Speaker 1: Had to play Bikini number seven.
Speaker 5: You had to do that a couple times at least,
Speaker 5: and I didn't quite know how to do it, and
Speaker 5: it felt like, Okay.
Speaker 3: I got to learn how to write. I got to
Speaker 3: learn how to write in a way that like.
Speaker 5: Everyone wants to stay in the cabin, they don't like
Speaker 5: call their parents and ask to go home, Like got
Speaker 5: to have to figure out how to make put those
Speaker 5: feelings in a compelling narrative that invites you in. And
Speaker 5: so I spent a lot of time in the library
Speaker 5: downtown here just reading screenwriting books and reading plays and
Speaker 5: reading scripts. I think I read Silence of the Lambs
Speaker 5: like one hundred and twenty times. I read Antigony cause
Speaker 5: I think I was looking for female characters that felt
Speaker 5: authentic and alive and like the women I know in
Speaker 5: my life, like women that were like my mom or
Speaker 5: my grandmother or some of my friends, like Jodie Foster
Speaker 5: in Silence of the Lambs was so yeah, she was
Speaker 5: never and I know she was FBI in training, but
Speaker 5: she was never asking anyone for permission. She believed in
Speaker 5: herself and then we the audience believed in her or
Speaker 5: Antigony reading Antigony and just thinking now, of course Antigony
Speaker 5: for being so bold and so brilliant as a young
Speaker 5: woman has to die in the narrative. So I kept
Speaker 5: thinking like, well, is there any way we can write
Speaker 5: women like this who don't die?
Speaker 3: Can they live?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Can they get to the end?
Speaker 1: And I think that's It's.
Speaker 3: A sad but simple question. I think we asked ourselves
Speaker 3: that a lot.
Speaker 5: With writing Darby Hart, it was like really just thinking
Speaker 5: about the crime scene that happens in every movie where
Speaker 5: the detectives come up to the scene of the crime
Speaker 5: and they have the badge and they have their authority,
Speaker 5: and they're over usually the body of a dead young
Speaker 5: woman who's usually mutilated or naked, and it's an erotic charge,
Speaker 5: dark image, and that image, or the desire to solve
Speaker 5: that is what sort of sends you on the thrust
Speaker 5: of this, and it felt like, can we put some
Speaker 5: clothes on that woman on the ground there? Can we
Speaker 5: stand her up and give her a history? Can she
Speaker 5: be the person who, from just her own self belief
Speaker 5: authorizes herself to solve the mystery not just the mystery
Speaker 5: of this crime scene, but the mysteries of the world
Speaker 5: right now, like the big questions of like who done it?
Speaker 5: Like how did we get to this place? So, yeah,
Speaker 5: I think that's where some of that came from.
Speaker 1: After the break more from britt Marlin stay with us.
Speaker 1: The way you went about answering those questions. You're in
Speaker 1: a Silver Lake apartment. In the mornings, you write with
Speaker 1: Mike upstairs. In the afternoons you would walk downstairs and
Speaker 1: write with Zohl. That process of spending the morning like that,
Speaker 1: afternoons like that, working with your friends that you made
Speaker 1: in college, trying to answer those questions you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Is that how Another Earth and sound of my voice
Speaker 1: those first two movies? Is that how those happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean to be honest, I don't know if I
Speaker 5: was asking all those questions then I think I was
Speaker 5: doing things from a much more unconscious place then, but
Speaker 5: I did feel this incredible energy to try to do it,
Speaker 5: to try to figure out how to take ideas, big
Speaker 5: ideas and put them into movies, which is not that
Speaker 5: much real estate in terms of storytelling.
Speaker 3: It's like ninety minutes, it's so short. How do you.
Speaker 5: Communicate in like an economy of images most nearly what
Speaker 5: you've feel or mean?
Speaker 3: And Mike and Zahal and I had been making movies.
Speaker 5: Since we were kids at Georgetown together, and we lived
Speaker 5: together because we didn't know anybody else out in La
Speaker 5: you know, and so we just had what kind of
Speaker 5: felt like an eternal summer camp where we would make
Speaker 5: money during the day making this docu reality series for
Speaker 5: MTV called True Life, and then at night we were
Speaker 5: just you know, be writing, and what we were really
Speaker 5: trying to do was figure out how to make movies.
Speaker 5: And of course, as we wrote these scripts, I mean,
Speaker 5: nobody was going to give us money to make them.
Speaker 5: Like I was an actress that hadn't even been in
Speaker 5: a car commercial or anything, so like there was nothing
Speaker 5: to point to for why anybody should finance these things.
Speaker 5: So eventually we just decided we'd make them ourselves.
Speaker 1: And probably you make both of these movies, they place
Speaker 1: on Dance, they get picked up and distributed. How did
Speaker 1: you make sense of what came after and what did
Speaker 1: you want after all that.
Speaker 3: I don't think we knew what to want.
Speaker 5: I think we were still just getting over the phone
Speaker 5: call of somebody calling and being and like, these movies
Speaker 5: are going to play at Sundance, both of them, and
Speaker 5: we were just like what we had game played the
Speaker 5: scenario of like, oh, one of them gets in, the
Speaker 5: other one doesn't, then that's awkward, you know, bute We'd
Speaker 5: never occurred to us that they could both get in,
Speaker 5: and so after that.
Speaker 3: It was just a bit of a whirlwind.
Speaker 5: But I think what I really understood was that, like
Speaker 5: we were the same people, that nobody would return our calls,
Speaker 5: like literally twenty four hours before and then these films
Speaker 5: premiered at Sundance, and then everybody would return our calls.
Speaker 5: And I think I really got in that moment like, Okay,
Speaker 5: you're the same person before that moment and after your
Speaker 5: level of talent and ability hasn't changed. And so it's like,
Speaker 5: how do you stay grounded and rooted in that reality?
Speaker 5: Because the energy and the tension of the town is
Speaker 5: going to come and go. It's like a heat seeking missile,
Speaker 5: but it's not real.
Speaker 1: We started with those overarching stories and the values in
Speaker 1: this new one. Look back now in those early works,
Speaker 1: how would you describe what those stories are and what
Speaker 1: those values were as someone in their late twenties early
Speaker 1: thirties making them?
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I mean, I guess some of them were
Speaker 5: there in the sense that, like when we made Sound
Speaker 5: in My Voice, it was a story about a couple
Speaker 5: with small cameras infiltrating a cult that was meeting in
Speaker 5: the basement in the San Fernando Valley, and it was
Speaker 5: the woman leading a cult, you know, claimed to be
Speaker 5: a time traveler. And at that time, there weren't other
Speaker 5: movies with women leading cults that you could go watch
Speaker 5: as a reference. So I guess in retrospect, we were
Speaker 5: always trying to write women that we hadn't seen on
Speaker 5: screen before. And I may be the same as true
Speaker 5: of Another Earth, But I think what's really interesting about
Speaker 5: the work that you make from being an amateur? And
Speaker 5: I love the word amateur because the root of amateur's ama,
Speaker 5: which is for love. You know, when you make something
Speaker 5: from love, and no one's paying you for it, and
Speaker 5: nobody thinks you can do it, and nobody's going to
Speaker 5: give you the professional name of being a filmmaker or
Speaker 5: writer an actor. Like you just have to believe in
Speaker 5: yourself that you can do this thing. When you make
Speaker 5: something from that place, it all is really unconscious. And
Speaker 5: I think later on, when you are somewhat established and
Speaker 5: names and things do get put on you, you know, reviews, ideas, critiques, opinion.
Speaker 5: I think the real thing is to just try as
Speaker 5: best you can to bat all of that away and
Speaker 5: get back to the feeling you had when you made
Speaker 5: something just from the love of it, without any validation
Speaker 5: or acknowledgment, just believing that the story and the people
Speaker 5: you were telling it with mattered.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: It makes so much sense that you actually did do
Speaker 1: the thing you're talking about in the abstract and real.
Speaker 1: You make these movies, like I said, they got picked up,
Speaker 1: they played Sundance, et cetera. And I want to go
Speaker 1: to twenty thirteen where you're asked to give a commencement
Speaker 1: speech to Georgetown University. This is not as embarrassing as
Speaker 1: the haunted stories of YEA and I just want to
Speaker 1: play this clip from it, because this through line of collaboration,
Speaker 1: the way you articulated here, I think is worth holding
Speaker 1: at this moment.
Speaker 5: The truth is that we need each other, probably now
Speaker 5: more than ever. We need collectives of young economists who
Speaker 5: will pioneer ecological economics, who will get the prices of
Speaker 5: things water, paper, gas to reflect the true social cost
Speaker 5: of things disappearing for us polluted aquifers, war's wage, loss
Speaker 5: of human life. We need bands of young engineers who
Speaker 5: will reimagine what our cities will look like. How are
Speaker 5: we going to move around? What is a future free
Speaker 5: of traffic jams and fossil.
Speaker 3: Fuels look like.
Speaker 5: We need artists of morality. We need architects of community.
Speaker 5: We need biologists of culture. We live in a time
Speaker 5: that is more complex than our parents' time or our parents' parents' time,
Speaker 5: and that also means that it is a time that
Speaker 5: is unusually saturated with meaning. There is so much to reinvent,
Speaker 5: so much to make better than it is. The two
Speaker 5: coolest things about Georgetown are this one, it's a kind
Speaker 5: of school that let mikens all in. That's important. They
Speaker 5: were not necessarily obvious candidates on paper. And two, Georgetown
Speaker 5: makes you take the problem of God, notice not the
Speaker 5: problem of you.
Speaker 3: At Georgetown, you have been taught to think.
Speaker 5: Grand, elliptical thoughts that have no answers alongside narrow, linear
Speaker 5: thoughts that result in right answers. You have been forced
Speaker 5: to contemplate infinity. You have gotten outside of yourself. If
Speaker 5: you can stay there, stay there and bring other people
Speaker 5: with you, hold onto your tribe, dream possible things, and
Speaker 5: then go forward and do them because you absolutely can.
Speaker 3: Together.
Speaker 1: Thanks, that was pretty good.
Speaker 3: I forgot about that one.
Speaker 1: Where does that land with you? Because I watched and thought,
Speaker 1: what a difference a decade makes? Yeah, that was twenty thirteen. Wow.
Speaker 5: I mean the thing I was thinking watching it was like,
Speaker 5: I'm glad I haven't lost.
Speaker 3: Like I watch that, I'm like, she's idealistic.
Speaker 5: But then I'm like, I still have that in me,
Speaker 5: which I'm sort of amazed by because the decade, with
Speaker 5: things the way they are right now, can really beat
Speaker 5: it out of you. But I still really do believe
Speaker 5: in people, and I still really believe in storytelling as
Speaker 5: this way of you go into a dark of a theater,
Speaker 5: even if you're watching at home, and a story enters
Speaker 5: you and it unpacks and you're moved, like emotionally moved,
Speaker 5: and something in you changes, and your perspective changes, and
Speaker 5: there's something of value in that. In some ways, stories
Speaker 5: are more important than ever before because we need so
Speaker 5: much for our values to shift. We're sort of stuck
Speaker 5: right now. And I think we're stuck because our values
Speaker 5: have remained in a weird place, especially here in the
Speaker 5: Western world, stuck in the individual. And I really think that, like,
Speaker 5: we're not actually that capable as individuals, Like it takes
Speaker 5: full groups of people to like achieve anything towards making
Speaker 5: a different world. And that's like our resistance movements are
Speaker 5: so important to think of as collectives and not like
Speaker 5: single charismatic leaders. That's vulnerable. But a collective is powerful.
Speaker 5: A collective, a collective can really do anything.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the collective that formed in response
Speaker 1: to the OA being canceled.
Speaker 3: I love that collective.
Speaker 1: I think some of them are here.
Speaker 3: Best collective, man, fucking best collective.
Speaker 1: So like that news I know must have been crushing
Speaker 1: to get in the aftermath of that. Did your belief
Speaker 1: in the collective? Was it fortified by the people who
Speaker 1: created this petition for it to have another season that
Speaker 1: has over one hundred thousand signatures for it to continue. Like,
Speaker 1: what did that base do? I don't know. Did it
Speaker 1: help you keep going?
Speaker 5: It did?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it completely did. It was so painful
Speaker 3: to end early.
Speaker 5: It was so painful to end early because I don't
Speaker 5: think it had to. I mean, tens of millions of
Speaker 5: people watch that show. It's an enormous number. In almost
Speaker 5: any other business model, at almost any other time, that's
Speaker 5: just a runaway while at success. But it was coming
Speaker 5: at a moment when Netflix was changing its business models,
Speaker 5: Streaming was changing the entire landscape, and it just fell
Speaker 5: in that gap. And so that's what do you mean
Speaker 5: that gap, that gap between them. It's what the strikes
Speaker 5: have been about. You know, it's this like vertical integration.
Speaker 5: It's like everything being under a couple of major corporate
Speaker 5: conglomerates and tech disruption coming into an industry and operating
Speaker 5: at a loss for so long, and that being a
Speaker 5: part of how tech disruption functions.
Speaker 3: The companies operate at a.
Speaker 5: Loss, they capture all the market share with that kind
Speaker 5: of predatory pricing, and then at some point Wall Street's like,
Speaker 5: we got to start making money, honey, and then things change,
Speaker 5: you know, and the strikes are about contending with that,
Speaker 5: you know. And yeah, it was so painful. I think
Speaker 5: it would have been less painful if it hadn't been
Speaker 5: so beloved by so many people. I think when something
Speaker 5: doesn't quite work, I think as a storyteller, you're just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 5: that was ahead of its time, or that didn't We
Speaker 5: didn't quite figure out how to tell that one right,
Speaker 5: you know. But it was hard to let go of
Speaker 5: something that was such a success. But I sometimes think
Speaker 5: that the audience started to author it themselves. Speaking of
Speaker 5: collective authorship, I think the authorship left us and it
Speaker 5: went into them, and that was so beautiful.
Speaker 1: What did that look like for people maybe don't know?
Speaker 3: It looked like people.
Speaker 5: So the OA had these series of movements in it,
Speaker 5: and one of the big ideas behind the OA was
Speaker 5: we were thinking about how violence is uniquely cinematic. You know,
Speaker 5: you can write a violent passage in a novel and
Speaker 5: you read it and you're like, oh, that's scary, But
Speaker 5: when you see violence on screen, it like enters you viscerally.
Speaker 3: You can't shake the imagery.
Speaker 5: And we were thinking, like, okay, what's something that's also
Speaker 5: what's as cinematic as violence but could function as an
Speaker 5: antidote to violence, And our answer to the at the
Speaker 5: time that was movement or dance or collective movement, whatever
Speaker 5: you want to call it. So we wrote this story
Speaker 5: around the idea that a young woman who has been
Speaker 5: held in captivity escapes. She comes to this group of
Speaker 5: teenage boys who were on the cusp of coming of
Speaker 5: age and coming into the being men, and they don't
Speaker 5: know how or how to do this in a place
Speaker 5: where like they're underfed by the public education system, they're
Speaker 5: underfed by their parents, they're underfed by the culture around them.
Speaker 5: And they meet this weird girl in on the edge
Speaker 5: of town and she starts telling them this wild story
Speaker 5: and teaching them these movements, you know, and then these
Speaker 5: movements actually in a way help them come of age.
Speaker 5: And part of that might just be that one of
Speaker 5: the ways to work through trauma is to actually go
Speaker 5: to dance or movement or they've done all this research
Speaker 5: now doing work with veterans of war and how we're
Speaker 5: covering from PTSD actually is much easier if you incorporate
Speaker 5: movement on some level. So she's doing this with them,
Speaker 5: and they meet with a moment of violence in their
Speaker 5: own lives and her story and the resilience, I think
Speaker 5: that she taught them and those movements become meaningful to
Speaker 5: them in that moment.
Speaker 3: And when the.
Speaker 5: Show was canceled, people just started posting these videos all
Speaker 5: over the Internet of them doing the movements, like, you know,
Speaker 5: fifty people just like in a square in Europe, or
Speaker 5: a bunch of people in a nightclub, you know, somewhere,
Speaker 5: or one video that I will never forget. A young
Speaker 5: man is filming his grandmother and she's out in the
Speaker 5: backyard and the sun is setting and it's hitting her
Speaker 5: face and she's like doing the movements out to the.
Speaker 3: Sun and she's so committed and so in it.
Speaker 5: And her grandson calls from the porch she's filming, or
Speaker 5: he's like, grandma, what.
Speaker 3: The fuck are you doing?
Speaker 5: And she, with complete belief, is like, I'm going somewhere
Speaker 5: and she meant it.
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget that video.
Speaker 5: And so in some ways it's like, yeah, we were
Speaker 5: authoring that story. We told sixteen amazing hours of it.
Speaker 5: Thank god Netflix took those risks, Like bless them for
Speaker 5: making something so far out in original and letting an
Speaker 5: audience meet it, and then they got to author it
Speaker 5: back at us, you know, and the audience gave us
Speaker 5: our belief. We put some they out in the world
Speaker 5: and they mirrored it back even better than we did,
Speaker 5: I think in many ways. And also twin Peaks came
Speaker 5: back after a decade, so who knows, right, stranger things
Speaker 5: have happened?
Speaker 1: Was that a stranger things joke?
Speaker 3: Okay, strangers just genuinely stranger things have happened.
Speaker 1: You like to speak in code.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm not speaking in any code.
Speaker 1: Darby's apartment here is whom four oh one. I don't
Speaker 1: even know. It's like an error code. I never know.
Speaker 1: Talk about amateur sleuth them, thea reddit I feel like.
Speaker 5: Inspired USA Reddit inspired us in many ways to write
Speaker 5: about amateur sleuth them and the idea that collectives of
Speaker 5: people can find each other on the Internet and they
Speaker 5: can basically solve anything that they put their minds to.
Speaker 1: The thing that's nagging me that I can't I'm reluctant
Speaker 1: to go here, but I feel like we have to
Speaker 1: do it because you've talked about the larger economic forces
Speaker 1: that are animating this moment. Reason we can't talk about
Speaker 1: you acting when you describe a piece of art that
Speaker 1: has touched someone the way it touched those people, my
Speaker 1: first question is, how could that not survive on Netflix?
Speaker 1: And if it can't survive there, where can it survive?
Speaker 5: This is such a good question, and I think this
Speaker 5: is kind of where we're at in the world on
Speaker 5: so many levels, which is like, I think we've just
Speaker 5: become too obsessed with economies of scale, and I think
Speaker 5: that problem is literally destroying every industry. It's like everything
Speaker 5: you scale up and make industrial, you destroy, whether that's
Speaker 5: agriculture and food and how we get our food, and
Speaker 5: like what's being sucked out of the soils and what's
Speaker 5: being put into it, and like the fact that most
Speaker 5: of our grocery stores are just filled with things that
Speaker 5: have like all kinds of toxic chemicals in it that
Speaker 5: were invented initially for like war, and are now like
Speaker 5: in our food supply. I mean, everything about this system
Speaker 5: always wants to get bigger and on an industrial level,
Speaker 5: and I think that that has happened with stories. I
Speaker 5: think part of what's going on, part of this pushback,
Speaker 5: that this community of artists is pushing back against the
Speaker 5: system and being like, we don't like what economies of
Speaker 5: scale is doing to storytelling? Like a story that appeals
Speaker 5: to tens of millions of people should be able to
Speaker 5: operate at a profit reaching its audience and should be sustainable.
Speaker 5: It shouldn't have to appeal to one hundred million people
Speaker 5: to function, And in fact, I think it's quite dangerous
Speaker 5: when you're trying to make narratives that will appeal to
Speaker 5: one hundred million plus people, you can start to reach
Speaker 5: a place where you're getting to the lowest common denominator
Speaker 5: and you're only telling stories that reinforce the status quo
Speaker 5: and not stories that challenge us to think about how
Speaker 5: we might build a sustainable, functional future.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, we started this conversation talking about artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: alternative intelligence as described in your show make the case here, Like,
Speaker 1: how does AI not accelerate and exacerbate all the problems
Speaker 1: you've just described.
Speaker 3: I think it does.
Speaker 1: I think it does. I think, well, look, is there
Speaker 1: a glass half full and a glass half empty version
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think Touch Young did an interview recently
Speaker 5: where he described AI as a force multiplier for capitalism,
Speaker 5: and I think that that's really accurate. None of these
Speaker 5: things inside technology are bad inherently in and of themselves.
Speaker 5: It's just like in what systems are they being developed
Speaker 5: by whom and to what end? And if everyone's constantly
Speaker 5: racing to beat each other to the marketplace to capture
Speaker 5: the market share first, like, are we really thinking these
Speaker 5: things through properly? You know?
Speaker 3: I mean my fear right now about.
Speaker 5: Thinking about storytelling inside AI or replacing actors or whatever,
Speaker 5: is that we're already in a place where we're moving
Speaker 5: towards a complete commodification of stories. It's very hard to
Speaker 5: make original ideas anymore as a force that can very
Speaker 5: easily potentially just further commodify it. And what that then
Speaker 5: means is that, you know, large language models, they're not
Speaker 5: drawing from the future, they're drawing from the past. You know,
Speaker 5: their data sets are just everything that came from before,
Speaker 5: including all the racism, all the misogyny, all the ideas
Speaker 5: that have brought us to the present moment, and then
Speaker 5: the AI recycles those ideas and repackages them out into
Speaker 5: like new narratives that carry things. So for me, when
Speaker 5: I think about it, it's like we're already at a
Speaker 5: place where we're dangerously commodified. And then you add AI
Speaker 5: and you reach a place where you're just taking whatever
Speaker 5: is still left that is human inside stories, and you're
Speaker 5: like pulling that humanity away.
Speaker 1: So you find hope in the future where.
Speaker 5: And this in you, like you make talk easy. You
Speaker 5: sit down and you do so much research. You call
Speaker 5: my mother and we have a deep, meaningful conversation. We
Speaker 5: get to have conversations all the folks that are here tonight, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: things are so dark right now, they really they're really dark.
Speaker 5: But I still have a lot of faith in like
Speaker 5: in people, individual people, and in those of us who
Speaker 5: are fighting to remain human in the face of all
Speaker 5: these forces that would rather we all just become products
Speaker 5: or numbers. You know, Like, I think anything is still
Speaker 5: really possible, and sometimes technology can be part of that.
Speaker 5: You know. It's like these kids that are some of
Speaker 5: the stories that inspired making a murder at the end
Speaker 5: of the World. It's like these are punk kids on
Speaker 5: the internet who are uniting with like a retired teacher
Speaker 5: in Florida and then like a disbarred cop in Louisiana,
Speaker 5: and they're all on the internet at night solving cases that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, the police force hasn't been able to solve
Speaker 5: for decades. So there are ways in which people are
Speaker 5: finding each other and like knitting something together and doing
Speaker 5: things that haven't been possible before, and I think we
Speaker 5: can lean into that.
Speaker 1: So the existence of this show is somewhat of an
Speaker 1: answer to the question.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know, Sam, you have to finish the
Speaker 5: show and call me and tell me if you think
Speaker 5: it's true.
Speaker 1: This is the first time I will do that, by
Speaker 1: the way, Okay, yeah, yeah, this is the first time
Speaker 1: you've directed. Yeah, And I was thinking if that was
Speaker 1: something you had ever wanted to do. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: let me go back to the first time that we
Speaker 1: did an interview, and I pulled it up and I
Speaker 1: was nineteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say, he's burying the lead.
Speaker 3: He was nineteen when he interviewed me.
Speaker 1: This sob the phone. I remembered very well. I was
Speaker 1: like pacing around in my dorm room trying to sound smart.
Speaker 1: You were probably in a hotel room, trapped on a
Speaker 1: press day, and I asked you this question, do you
Speaker 1: want to direct?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god? What did I say?
Speaker 1: You said, you know, maybe at some point, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm ready for it this moment, and then,
Speaker 1: in typical britt Marling fashion, you proceeded to quote a
Speaker 1: passage from directing about directing from Kislowski, demonstrating that you
Speaker 1: were definitely ready to do it. And I actually have
Speaker 1: that passage here if you'd like to read it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it don't sound so scared highlighted.
Speaker 5: There's another thing, and it's slightly embarrassing. Everybody's got something
Speaker 5: on set. The cameraman's got a camera and a light meter,
Speaker 5: and the sound man's got a microphone. The electricians have
Speaker 5: got lights and so on. I haven't got anything. I
Speaker 5: had my screenplay over to the script girls straight away
Speaker 5: in the morning and walk around with empty hands. It
Speaker 5: gives the impression otherwise quite right, that I haven't got
Speaker 5: anything to do. Of course, I direct, I talk to
Speaker 5: the cameraman, I say something to the actors, I give
Speaker 5: some orders, I change something.
Speaker 3: In the dialogue.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I even think of something, but I've got nothing
Speaker 5: in my hand. I was recently working with an elderly
Speaker 5: Polish cameraman. I was making decalogue with him. He watched me.
Speaker 5: We were working together for the first time and it
Speaker 5: was going well. He once said, the director is a
Speaker 5: guy who helps everyone.
Speaker 3: I like that simple definition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I liked it too. I like it too soon
Speaker 1: As a director, I was thinking, like, it's such a
Speaker 1: simple definition, and yet it's like also such a simple
Speaker 1: ask that is being made in this moment and is
Speaker 1: illustrated in that quote. We are in a moment striking
Speaker 1: where we're just asking for camera men and gender notwithstanding
Speaker 1: here within the quote cameramen to hold a camera, sound
Speaker 1: man to hold a boom, which is so annoying and
Speaker 1: if you've ever done it, you're sore afterward. For everyone
Speaker 1: to do there job, to make something creative in collaboration,
Speaker 1: that is all that is being asked.
Speaker 3: It really is all that's being asked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess my last question for you is
Speaker 1: does your heart still want to do that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Be a human being on set, Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 3: Like it's funny.
Speaker 5: This last story was so hard to tell. We told
Speaker 5: it in the height of the pandemic and waves of
Speaker 5: people getting sick and things inside the climate crisis. Storms
Speaker 5: that were bigger magnitude coming from directions they'd never come
Speaker 5: from before, dust storms, snowstorms, all these different things. But
Speaker 5: still it's just amazing to me what can be achieved
Speaker 5: by people like and the kindness that comes out of people,
Speaker 5: even under crazy dress, when people haven't slept and they
Speaker 5: haven't eaten what they wanted to eat and they're on
Speaker 5: their own in some.
Speaker 3: Frigid remote location.
Speaker 5: The incredible kindness that comes out of people, and the
Speaker 5: inventiveness to make things work when they shouldn't work. I
Speaker 5: remember shooting one of the scenes that's a really important
Speaker 5: scene in the end of chapter one and I murder
Speaker 5: at the End of the World, and there.
Speaker 3: Were forty mile an hour wind gus.
Speaker 5: The lights that we had set up were tumbling down
Speaker 5: the mountain like flaming tumbleweeds through the set. The actors
Speaker 5: were crying because it was so cold, thedit tent blew away,
Speaker 5: and still like twenty of us were just out there
Speaker 5: on this frozen tundra, huddled together, gonna make this damn
Speaker 5: scene come together no matter what. And it's a great scene,
Speaker 5: and it has so much It has all the feeling
Speaker 5: of that perseverance in it, And that's why I love
Speaker 5: filmmaking so much. It reminds you all the time of
Speaker 5: how amazing it is to be human, and a huge
Speaker 5: part of that is your vulnerability in the face of
Speaker 5: the elements and then like, what is possible with a
Speaker 5: group of people in the face of that. I'll never
Speaker 5: get over it. I think it's great. I love this quote.
Speaker 5: The director is just there to help.
Speaker 1: Britt Marlin. Thank you very much, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys, and that's our show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us
Speaker 1: five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening,
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Speaker 1: new listeners find the show. I want to give a
Speaker 1: special thanks this week to Brenna Rifkin and Daniel Day
Speaker 1: at Narrative PR, the team at FX, and of course,
Speaker 1: our guest Britt Marlin. Our conversation today was taped live
Speaker 1: from on AirFest at KCRW in Santa Monica. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the Audio Festival, visit our show notes at
Speaker 1: talk easypod dot com. There, we'll also include a link
Speaker 1: to watch the first two episodes of A Murder at
Speaker 1: the End of the World. You can stream new episodes
Speaker 1: of the show every Tuesday on Hulu through December nineteenth.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy today's conversation, I'd recommend my talks with
Speaker 1: Michelle Williams, Natasha Leone, Tom Hanks, Margaret Atwood, Quinta Brunson,
Speaker 1: Bill Hayter, and Oscar Isaac. To hear those and more
Speaker 1: Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
Speaker 1: like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
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Speaker 1: You can also purchase one of our mugs at com
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Speaker 1: fran Leibowitz at Talk easypond dot com slash shop Talk
Speaker 1: Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Jenni Sa Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's
Speaker 1: talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by
Speaker 1: Trish Showy, Video and graphics by Ian Chang Derek gaberzak,
Speaker 1: Ian Jones, and Ethan Seneca. Photographs today are by Julius Chu.
Speaker 1: I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Kerrie Brody, Heather Fane,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Cura Posey, Tera Machado, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 1: Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you
Speaker 1: back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay
Speaker 1: safe and so long.