Speaker 1: Pushkin him Malcolm, Hi, how are you feeling.
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 3: You have a new podcast, a new series in your podcast,
Speaker 3: it's called Development. Hell. Why did you want to make
Speaker 3: this in this moment? Because Hollywood has just had a
Speaker 3: pretty traumatic year with the double labor strikings, both with
Speaker 3: Sagan and the WGA. It's not in the best of shape.
Speaker 3: I would say, why this series in this moment?
Speaker 4: I've forgotten how we came up with the idea was
Speaker 4: some combination. I think it was Neil Lawrence, who is
Speaker 4: the producer of the series. But we were sitting around
Speaker 4: and chatting and we came to the conclusion that failure
Speaker 4: is more interesting than in success in many ways. And
Speaker 4: I don't think we were thinking of the kind of
Speaker 4: macro situation of Hollywood, but maybe in the back of
Speaker 4: our minds that Hollywood is going he is doing more
Speaker 4: failing than succeeding at the moment. And there was something
Speaker 4: incredibly poignant and fascinating about telling the story about the
Speaker 4: movies that never made it. So that was just a seed,
Speaker 4: and then we had no idea what would get And
Speaker 4: then we went out and started talking to people and
Speaker 4: we're surprised. I think at how amazing the stories we
Speaker 4: heard were.
Speaker 3: In terms of failure being more interesting than success. In
Speaker 3: the early two thousands, there was a period where you
Speaker 3: believed your book Blink was going to be turned into
Speaker 3: a movie. Did you regard that period in the film
Speaker 3: not being made as a failure.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, although it hurts a lot more if you're
Speaker 4: the screenwriter or if you're the director wants to direct it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's that's your world. It's not really my world.
Speaker 4: So I was simply really selling the rights to to
Speaker 4: a story that I'd written and to in this case
Speaker 4: of book, and I was pitching some ideas for the screenplay,
Speaker 4: So I wasn't really it wasn't like Front and Central
Speaker 4: for me the way it would be for somebody who
Speaker 4: was actually involved with making the movie.
Speaker 3: So take us back when the book was sold and
Speaker 3: you go out to Hollywood where there's interest. What was
Speaker 3: that week like when you're trying to.
Speaker 4: Make Retell in the book in the in the episode,
Speaker 4: it was nuts.
Speaker 2: I mean, we got it.
Speaker 4: We got what everyone wants, which is a bidding war.
Speaker 1: This is the early two thousandsarly two.
Speaker 4: Thousands, at a time when Hollywood was in one of
Speaker 4: its moments of overpaying for everything, and so we rode
Speaker 4: the bubble and we went from studio to studio. We
Speaker 4: had a meeting at every studio. I mean, I have
Speaker 4: to say, the pitch was just amazing.
Speaker 1: What was the pitch?
Speaker 4: Basically what Steve Gagan did was he read my book Blink. Indeed,
Speaker 4: there was particularly there's a chapter there about whether you
Speaker 4: can tell when someone's lying to you, who's good at it?
Speaker 2: What are the clues?
Speaker 4: And so he had conceived of this idea of a
Speaker 4: movie about someone who had this gift and how they
Speaker 4: would use it. Now, this was before there were all
Speaker 4: these TV shows in the early aughts that were one
Speaker 4: called Lied to Me and there was another one. This
Speaker 4: was before all that they were all picking up on
Speaker 4: the same thing. So this was at the time, was
Speaker 4: this kind of the notion that there might be somebody
Speaker 4: out there who's a kind of super detector of truth.
Speaker 4: Right was brand new, a human light detector dust, human
Speaker 4: light detect us. So we craft Steve crafted this story
Speaker 4: around someone with this ability, who's a boy, whose young man,
Speaker 4: who has a very rich father who he's desperate to impress,
Speaker 4: and we worked out our kind of pattern. Steve Geigen
Speaker 4: is incredibly charismatic, and.
Speaker 3: By then he had written the film Traffic.
Speaker 2: Traffic Syriana. He just finished the movie Siriana, so he
Speaker 2: was in high demand.
Speaker 4: He was in high demand. Oscar winner, this handsome and sandy,
Speaker 4: charismatic man with this kick story. I was along for
Speaker 4: the ride. We attached Leo DiCaprio. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: just kind of it was the dream. It was a
Speaker 4: beautiful triumvirate. We just drove around from studio to studio,
Speaker 4: fielding calls from our agents as the bidding got higher
Speaker 4: and higher and higher.
Speaker 5: It was just amazing.
Speaker 4: It was like everyone's kind of like one of the
Speaker 4: most fun two days of my life.
Speaker 3: Did you always regard those two days as someone the
Speaker 3: most fun or did you sort of like fall back
Speaker 3: in love with them as you made this episode for
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 4: Well, I hadn't thought about it in a long time.
Speaker 4: It's twenty years ago. So we decided through the story
Speaker 4: and then I realized, oh, I have one of those stories,
Speaker 4: and then we thought we'd kick off the series with
Speaker 4: me calling up Steve Gagan and reliving those two days
Speaker 4: years ago. And in the course of that he told
Speaker 4: me the reason which I did not know about why
Speaker 4: the movie never got made, which is hard. It's a
Speaker 4: heart I'm not rooting it. It's totally heartbreaking. In fact,
Speaker 4: it made We were in all the tabloids the next
Speaker 4: day after the show dropped because it was such a
Speaker 4: kind of like jaw dropping reason why got made.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I forgot about it.
Speaker 4: I kind of like I was looking back on it,
Speaker 4: I was like, you know, something happened to me that
Speaker 4: almost never happens. The number of kind of bidding wars
Speaker 4: in Hollywood is vanishingly small. The number people who couldn't
Speaker 4: get a bidding war in their first time out is vanishing,
Speaker 4: you know, even smaller. I had this kind of miracle,
Speaker 4: hilarious miracle.
Speaker 3: Did you know it was a miracle in the moment
Speaker 3: A little? I mean, I gotta say, Steve Gigan, DiCaprio,
Speaker 3: and Glad Well, I feel like that's that feels.
Speaker 4: Like a less miraculous, a little dream team. DiCaprio is,
Speaker 4: you know, just beginning his post post Titanic. I mean,
Speaker 4: he's really really hot. Steve had just won an Oscar.
Speaker 4: I mean, so yeah, we had several advantages. I subsequently
Speaker 4: became very good friends with one of the studio chiefs
Speaker 4: that we pitched, and he would always tell me that
Speaker 4: was insane, like the kind of fervor over the screenplay.
Speaker 4: So bidding war, Yeah, the bidding war, but you know
Speaker 4: the kind of is that so much the money, It's
Speaker 4: the it's the excitement. It's you know when an idea
Speaker 4: grabs a bunch of people simultaneously and you realize you're
Speaker 4: onto something.
Speaker 3: That's why when I write notes, you always look down
Speaker 3: right when I'm writing.
Speaker 1: You're seeing what I'm writing.
Speaker 2: Can't help it.
Speaker 3: It says a failure more interesting than success. And it
Speaker 3: was me trying to write the word original until I
Speaker 3: saw you watching me write the word original. It's not
Speaker 3: just about the bidding war, it's about what they were
Speaker 3: bidding on, which in that period were a lot of
Speaker 3: creative new voices that were producing original screenplays. This was
Speaker 3: before the Marvel boom, this was before the kind of
Speaker 3: endless fascination and fixation with ten polls. And throughout this
Speaker 3: series it does seem like you keep coming back to
Speaker 3: a period in the industry where they prioritized artists more.
Speaker 3: Where they were they were more interested in discovering and
Speaker 3: producing new artists.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's true, that there is. I mean
Speaker 4: every generation has a kind of golden age that it
Speaker 4: refers to. For my generation, or if I were a
Speaker 4: screenwriter of my vintage, the golden era would be that
Speaker 4: period in the kind of early aughts where you're right,
Speaker 4: there is it's pre all this kind of formulaic Superman,
Speaker 4: Spider Man, Marvel ye stuff.
Speaker 1: Are you a big Marvel guy? I'm not.
Speaker 4: No, I don't you could tell. I pause there trying
Speaker 4: to figure out what what what do you call these creatures?
Speaker 4: I've forgotten. I was never even as a kid, I
Speaker 4: would like I would only ever ask for a comic
Speaker 4: book when I was home from school sick, and I
Speaker 4: would didn't be at a loss as to what comic
Speaker 4: book to ask my mom to get me from the
Speaker 4: drug star.
Speaker 3: So in Canada, some kids were reading Captain America. You
Speaker 3: were reading Chomsky.
Speaker 4: No, No, I was not in Jopsky my mom. I
Speaker 4: believe I think we always default into the archie. So
Speaker 4: I wasn't even doing the superheroes. I didn't understand them.
Speaker 3: So when they started making these movies in the mid
Speaker 3: two thousands, pretty much after Iron Man, this happened. Did
Speaker 3: it make sense to.
Speaker 4: You well, it's only dimly aware, you know. My part
Speaker 4: of the reason why my experience with Blink was so
Speaker 4: fun is that I didn't have a stake in it.
Speaker 4: My self esteem did not rest on turning Blink into
Speaker 4: a movie.
Speaker 3: It didn't know because the book was the best seller
Speaker 3: by that point, the.
Speaker 4: Book had done very well. I was someone who wrote books.
Speaker 4: I have always you know, over the years, I've dabbled
Speaker 4: with writing screenplays. It's always ended in disaster, and I've
Speaker 4: never taken it personally. I've just accepted the fact that
Speaker 4: a I'm not very good at it, although I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Why do you think you're not good at it?
Speaker 4: It's a completely differences like asking, you know, a tennis
Speaker 4: player why they're not good at catching a football.
Speaker 3: I mean, and Steph Curry can play basketball and golf.
Speaker 3: Steph Curry, you're Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: Steph Curry.
Speaker 4: By the way, although he's a good golfer, he's not
Speaker 4: a PGA level. He's not winning the Masters.
Speaker 1: I think when he retires there's a.
Speaker 4: Chance, it's a chance, there's a okay, but you know
Speaker 4: that I did.
Speaker 1: Just compare to Stuff Curage, Yes, which.
Speaker 2: Is very unfair.
Speaker 4: To stuff, curry to be loved with me in any capacity.
Speaker 1: Hey, he didn't write David and Goliath.
Speaker 4: No, it's these are different. These are profoundly different skill sets.
Speaker 3: When you say the screenplay has ended in disaster, what
Speaker 3: did that look like.
Speaker 4: I wrote a screenplay many years later about three African
Speaker 4: American siblings living in Atlanta whose father is in jail,
Speaker 4: and the eldest of them, a woman, is a brilliant
Speaker 4: medical researcher and she gets embroiled in a little bit
Speaker 4: of medical fraud with large scale implications. But it's all
Speaker 4: about the intersector. Was called Druid Hills, which is an
Speaker 4: area of Atlanta where Emory University is. I was really
Speaker 4: interested in the intersection of white and black Atlanta and
Speaker 4: about what it would mean for someone from the South Side,
Speaker 4: you know, the black part of Atlanta, trying to make
Speaker 4: it in Druid Hills, which is all white money, and
Speaker 4: someone an outsider trying to make it in the world
Speaker 4: of scientific research. Anyway, it was sort of a rich topic.
Speaker 4: I sold the idea to HBO, and I went through
Speaker 4: seventeen million rewrites and then it just hit a wall.
Speaker 1: That was a disaster.
Speaker 4: No, I enjoyed it of it. My point was, wasn't
Speaker 4: a disaster because at no point, like I said, did
Speaker 4: I did myself esteem rests on this thing being made
Speaker 4: into a movie. I was a lark, I had some
Speaker 4: time on my hands, and I.
Speaker 2: Really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: And I do believe that the experience of writing a
Speaker 4: screenplay for the first time made me a better writer.
Speaker 4: Just makes you much more aware of pacing of character.
Speaker 4: I mean, writing a screenplay is an insanely a good
Speaker 4: one is insanely difficult. So it's like you get a
Speaker 4: kind of intensive lesson in what it means to tell
Speaker 4: a story. You know, that's just useful in life. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think I still kind of benefit the lessons I
Speaker 4: learned in that period when I was trying to write
Speaker 4: the screenplay.
Speaker 3: The script that you wrote that you were just talking about,
Speaker 3: the one that ended in disaster. It sounded on the
Speaker 3: surface and purely thematically and racially like the script your
Speaker 3: friend was writing in the episode called the Birthday Party.
Speaker 3: Perhaps you want to talk about that one and why
Speaker 3: you want to tell some of that story.
Speaker 4: My best friend, Charles Randolph, is a screenwriter, tells the
Speaker 4: story of trying to adapt a book, a memoir written
Speaker 4: by a guy, young lawyer in New York City, relatively
Speaker 4: young white guy who is abducted true story by three
Speaker 4: young black teenagers who are incredibly naive and who think
Speaker 4: that he's rich and that they can simply go to
Speaker 4: his emptiest bank accounts. They don't understand any of the
Speaker 4: kind of things about how Hetm's work and how eventually
Speaker 4: they kind of give up and let him go. And
Speaker 4: Charles was great interest in his book, and Holli but
Speaker 4: and Charles was the one who asked to adapt it.
Speaker 3: Charles has worked with Adam McKay. I think he wrote
Speaker 3: the Big Short.
Speaker 4: Won the Oscar for the Big Short. He's wrote The Birthday,
Speaker 4: I wrote the Interpreter, Love Another Drugs.
Speaker 1: Underrat a movie.
Speaker 2: Great movie. I think that's great.
Speaker 4: One really could the screenplay, by the way, I'm of
Speaker 4: the opinion, having read the screenplay and then the shooting script,
Speaker 4: the original screenplay that Charles wrote is even better. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just fantastic anyway. So he was asked to write it,
Speaker 4: and his episode is all about why you can't turn
Speaker 4: that into a movie.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't he tell that story?
Speaker 4: Well, you have a dynamic where you have a educated,
Speaker 4: privileged white person who has been abducted by three young,
Speaker 4: very naive black kids. They're sixteen fifteen, who are living
Speaker 4: in a kind of this is all the real details,
Speaker 4: living in a position of squalor, who are violent, who
Speaker 4: are profane, who are having sex in front of him
Speaker 4: with prostitutes.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a real story.
Speaker 4: That's the real that's the story Charles was given, that
Speaker 4: was in the book. That was the book that the
Speaker 4: guy who who was abducted writes a memoir. He describes,
Speaker 4: this is what happened to Yeah, so he's adapting it.
Speaker 4: But the setup, the premise, how do you do that
Speaker 4: without being seen as condescending, dismissive. For the screenplay to
Speaker 4: work the way Charles describes it is so much better
Speaker 4: than I am. I can, but like, you've got to
Speaker 4: give the kids something more right. They have to be
Speaker 4: more consequential. They can't just be these kind of kids
Speaker 4: we look down on, where we dismiss or we loathe
Speaker 4: or which requires in turn, for the protagonist, the guy
Speaker 4: who's abducted, he has to have a real emotional engagement
Speaker 4: both with the kids and with himself about how he's
Speaker 4: thinking about them and treating them in words. In order
Speaker 4: to tell the story for the screen, you've got to
Speaker 4: change the story to the point where, among other things,
Speaker 4: the protagonist, the lawyer who was ab that became profoundly
Speaker 4: unhappy with the movie that was being made out of
Speaker 4: his life story, right because he didn't do any of
Speaker 4: those things. You know, he was a guy abducted by
Speaker 4: three thugs. You know, that's how his perspective.
Speaker 3: And there's the added complication that Charles, your friend is white.
Speaker 4: What Although we talked about this, you know, it's one
Speaker 4: of the most interesting parts of the interview. That's fine
Speaker 4: in the sense that it's not like a white person
Speaker 4: telling a black story or a black person telling a
Speaker 4: white story. This is a story that's black and white.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have two sets of characters at the
Speaker 4: center of it, three black kids and a white guy.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's not off limits to a white screenwriter.
Speaker 4: On the contrary, we're as interested in seeing this through
Speaker 4: the eyes of someone who's white as we are to
Speaker 4: the guys of someone who's black. It's just that the
Speaker 4: dynamic in the story requires some kind of attention for
Speaker 4: it to rise to the level of a movie we
Speaker 4: want to see is going to commit to seeing an
Speaker 4: our forty minute movie where they just dismiss the people
Speaker 4: driving the plot as being not worthy of their attention
Speaker 4: or sympathy or right. So that's like, in many ways,
Speaker 4: the thing that makes the story kind of so dramatic
Speaker 4: and horrifying on the page limits its potential as a movie.
Speaker 3: The other element is that you say there's a separate
Speaker 3: advantage from being someone who doesn't belong in either of
Speaker 3: these worlds that comes from the outside. I think you're
Speaker 3: making the case. I think it's the fair case that Hollywood,
Speaker 3: especially in twenty twenty four where we started this conversation,
Speaker 3: seems less and less interested to encourage outside voices to
Speaker 3: tell stories that may not be their lived experience.
Speaker 4: Yes, we got into this as well as this something
Speaker 4: I've talked about long many times with Charles. Both of
Speaker 4: us are of the opinion that we have become kind
Speaker 4: of overly obsessed with the problem of representation. You can't
Speaker 4: just have stories about black people that can only be
Speaker 4: told by black people, or stories about Asians that can
Speaker 4: only be told by Asians, or you can't limit the
Speaker 4: human imagination in that way. And sometimes the most interesting
Speaker 4: perspectives on one group come from someone who's not of
Speaker 4: that group. We all benefit from it, and it doesn't
Speaker 4: have to be their perspective, does not have to be
Speaker 4: congruent with the thing that they're describing.
Speaker 3: As my point, if Hollywood let this happen more often,
Speaker 3: I think we would get movies that would illuminate and
Speaker 3: we would get movies that would enrage either. I think,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, I'm probably yours is a good thing.
Speaker 3: I think anything that produces a real response, that tries
Speaker 3: to push the bounder, that tries to be interesting, is
Speaker 3: worthy of our time and attention. I suppose the argument
Speaker 3: is the people who've been permitted to tell the stories
Speaker 3: that are not their own have for the history of cinema.
Speaker 2: All beIN white guys. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: No, Hollywood walked into this problem, but they created for themselves.
Speaker 4: They're like, you know, we could do one hundred years
Speaker 4: of white guys making movies about everybody else and then
Speaker 4: make an argument Hollywood had a long history of inviting
Speaker 4: an outsiders. If the director of Gone with the Wind
Speaker 4: would was a black woman from the South, First of all,
Speaker 4: how much more interesting is Gone with the Wind through
Speaker 4: the eyes of a black woman from the South.
Speaker 3: I would then want a biopic made about that woman.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: So if they've been doing that forever, we would obviously
Speaker 4: feel very differently. They this is an own goal by
Speaker 4: Hollywood through their reluctance to open the doors. They invited
Speaker 4: this problem on themselves, right, So now they're stuck.
Speaker 3: Big picture and thinking about the industry in this moment,
Speaker 3: it's fixation with representation. Do you see the industry moving
Speaker 3: away from that or do you think we have a
Speaker 3: long ways to go in that regard.
Speaker 4: Well, we are in a periative correction where after years
Speaker 4: and years and years are having white guys tell everyone's story.
Speaker 4: Now we say, okay, if you're going to tell the
Speaker 4: story of someone who's not a white guy, you can't
Speaker 4: be a white guy. As a correct I think that's
Speaker 4: really really important. You got to like write the ship,
Speaker 4: bring in some outside voices, and if that's the fastest
Speaker 4: and most efficacious way to do it, God bless right.
Speaker 4: I would eventually like to get to the stage where
Speaker 4: we were all allowed to tell whatever stories we want
Speaker 4: to tell.
Speaker 3: Sooner than later. Yeah, before we play this episode with
Speaker 3: you and m Night Shamalan, Part of the story he's
Speaker 3: going to tell is around the period that you sold Blink,
Speaker 3: Like this really exciting time where there were constant bidding
Speaker 3: wars for scripts and an investment in original voices. Why
Speaker 3: did you want to talk to m Night Shamuan?
Speaker 4: I met him once and he's incredibly charming, and that's one,
Speaker 4: probably the least important the reasons. But the second reason
Speaker 4: is what he's done is I think really extraordinary, which
Speaker 4: is that he's set up a successful studio outside of Hollywood.
Speaker 4: He makes all the movies he wants to make, He
Speaker 4: writes them, he directs them.
Speaker 2: Do you do a heart?
Speaker 4: That is to do like In addition to being creatively brilliant,
Speaker 4: he's also managed to master the kind of business side
Speaker 4: of it in a way that almost no of them,
Speaker 4: I mean, Woody Allen and his Heyday is the only one.
Speaker 3: Who kind of Tyler Perry does some of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's a very very short list. It's
Speaker 4: very hard to do. He's sitting in Philadelphia and he's
Speaker 4: making movies that millions of people are watching, like.
Speaker 1: Sounds like the Dream.
Speaker 4: I just have enormous respect for anyone who can do that,
Speaker 4: And so I was just curious, I called. I got
Speaker 4: his number and called him up and asked him, do
Speaker 4: you have a story?
Speaker 1: You called them up out of the blue? Cold call?
Speaker 4: Well, I texted him because I'd met him before, and
Speaker 4: so I said, night, you know remember me?
Speaker 2: We met years ago?
Speaker 4: And then he sent me back the picture that was
Speaker 4: taken HI when we met, so I knew that he
Speaker 4: remembered it. It was with Elton Brand, who was the
Speaker 4: you know, the general manager of the Sixers. Night is
Speaker 4: a huge basketball.
Speaker 3: Former duke player drafted by the Bulls. I was raised
Speaker 3: and Chicago loved him.
Speaker 2: Oh right, right, right, right, right right, great player.
Speaker 1: Brand was great player.
Speaker 4: No, So I just asked him do you have one
Speaker 4: of these stories? And he said he said, I actually
Speaker 4: do I have one. The story you're about to hear
Speaker 4: is him talking about I think I think it's better
Speaker 4: to say it's not just the movie he hasn't made.
Speaker 4: It's the movie he can't make. He can't bring himself
Speaker 4: to make it. And what's fascinating about the interview is
Speaker 4: the extent to which Shyamalan, who is by every indication
Speaker 4: an extraordinarily insightful person, particularly about himself, is unwilling to
Speaker 4: kind of dig into the reasons why he can't make
Speaker 4: this movie. It's like a he admits it one point
Speaker 4: in the point in the in the in the interview
Speaker 4: where he goes my favorite point, only he goes Malcolm,
Speaker 4: I'm shutting down the movie is the idea is so
Speaker 4: central to some part of his psyche.
Speaker 3: The episode play is like a therapy session where the
Speaker 3: subject is on the verge of a revelation and kind
Speaker 3: of knows what it is but can't quite bring himself.
Speaker 4: And I'm not good enough of a therapist to get
Speaker 4: them to put it on the table.
Speaker 1: I'll take a crack out it next time.
Speaker 4: I cannot express how much I love night Shyamalan. I
Speaker 4: just thought he was amazing.
Speaker 3: As people are about to hear, this is the thing
Speaker 3: you most love about him, the fact that even after
Speaker 3: all the movies he's made, even at the age that
Speaker 3: he's at, he remains I think a little bit like you,
Speaker 3: a dreamer, still willing to dream, still willing to risk
Speaker 3: some of himself to dream. Is that the part you
Speaker 3: most sort of identified what they were removed by.
Speaker 4: Well, I think he's a lot more creatively courageous.
Speaker 2: Than I am.
Speaker 4: The thing that actually One of the things, paradoxically that
Speaker 4: appeals to him the most is that he has failed.
Speaker 4: If you look at his career and he's made like
Speaker 4: what say, he's made ten movies, some number of those
Speaker 4: are maybe say four or critical successes, six are commercial successes,
Speaker 4: and the last four are like just not right, they're duds.
Speaker 4: He just gets up after one of those and goes
Speaker 4: up back again, and more than half the time the
Speaker 4: next one works again. I just I love that kind
Speaker 4: of resilience, that willingness to learn from, and also the
Speaker 4: understanding that anyone who is in the creative world understands
Speaker 4: that's the way it is. If you think you can
Speaker 4: do ten movies and every one of them is Godfather,
Speaker 4: you're out of your fucking mind. And the only way
Speaker 4: you can make ten movies is you accept the fact
Speaker 4: that along the way something's not going to work. And
Speaker 4: my job is to learn from that and move on
Speaker 4: and not get destroyed by it. And he's not destroyed
Speaker 4: by it. Between that and the fact that he's set
Speaker 4: up his own world just makes him out there in Philly,
Speaker 4: makes him a hero of me.
Speaker 3: Failure it's more interesting than success. Yes, absolutely, this is
Speaker 3: Malcolm Gladwell and I'm Night Shaplin.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Sam.
Speaker 6: I've had such a exceptionally curated career. Every movie I've
Speaker 6: ever written since eighteen has been greenlit to be made
Speaker 6: into a movie. You've seen everything I've written, you know,
Speaker 6: except for this one that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 6: So it's an interesting always a twist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Welcome back to Development Hell, our mini series about
Speaker 4: the lost scripts of Hollywood. Today, I'm talking with m
Speaker 4: Night Shamalan, one of the best known filmmakers of the
Speaker 4: past generation. Suspense thrillers, the Supernatural, Psychodrone, you know whose
Speaker 4: movies I'm sure, Unbreakable, the Sixth Sense, Split Glass, something
Speaker 4: like fifteen films in the last thirty years which collectively
Speaker 4: have grossed billions of dollars. M Night Shyamalan's stories have
Speaker 4: haunted a lot of people over the years. This episode
Speaker 4: is about the story that haunted m Night Shauma. We've
Speaker 4: talked a lot so far in this series about movies
Speaker 4: that never got made because there was something wrong with
Speaker 4: the story, or because someone on the outside had a
Speaker 4: problem with the script. This episode is about none of
Speaker 4: those things. There is nothing at all wrong with the story.
Speaker 4: Shamalan has never told, and maybe that's why he never told.
Speaker 6: There was the first real script that I found, kind
Speaker 6: of lightning bolt inspiration that came to me. I was
Speaker 6: twenty too, and i'd just been married, just got married,
Speaker 6: and I wrote a kind of a love story and
Speaker 6: it's called Labor of Love.
Speaker 7: And I was writing it, and I wrote.
Speaker 6: It because I almost remember everywhere I wrote it, because
Speaker 6: it was such a special experience of writing. By that time,
Speaker 6: that was my third third feature that I had written.
Speaker 6: I had made made a movie already in India.
Speaker 4: Tell me, tell me this a little bit about the story.
Speaker 4: What was Labor of Love about?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: Labor of Love is essentially a story about an older
Speaker 6: couple and the wife saying, hey, it's an anniversary and
Speaker 6: he forgets and all of this stuff and they've been
Speaker 6: together a long time, and she's just like, you know,
Speaker 6: essentially expresses I do all these little things for you
Speaker 6: our whole life, and you don't and I'm not sure
Speaker 6: what you want from you know, I'm not sure you
Speaker 6: love me.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not one hundred percent sure. And that's
Speaker 7: not a.
Speaker 6: Great feeling, you know, And he's baffled, right as all
Speaker 6: guys are, just baffled at this.
Speaker 7: And and and uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you mean?
Speaker 7: I mean, I mean, what do you want me? I love?
Speaker 1: You goes to work every morning?
Speaker 2: Who goes to What are you doing that for? Okay? Good, good,
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 6: She I don't want to say too much of it
Speaker 6: because I tend to think of these things as magic.
Speaker 6: And yeah, and she she passes away unexpectedly, very tragically.
Speaker 6: And before she died, she said, he said, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: what do you want me to do to prove my
Speaker 6: love to you? You want me to, you know, swim
Speaker 6: across an ocean or climb a mountain or walk across
Speaker 6: the United States?
Speaker 7: What do you want me to do?
Speaker 6: She's like, just walk to the store and get me
Speaker 6: something on your own, because you were thinking, you know,
Speaker 6: something small like that.
Speaker 7: Anyway, she passes away. He's an older man.
Speaker 6: He's in a you know, late sixties seventies kind of thing,
Speaker 6: out of shape, and he's so devastated he makes a
Speaker 6: crazy decision to start walking across the United States for
Speaker 6: nothing else but just to show his wife who's passed away,
Speaker 6: in case she can see. And this isn't I wrote
Speaker 6: this in nineteen ninety four, right, so no cell phones,
Speaker 6: no nothing, no internet, and he just begins this track
Speaker 6: and it's it's a kind of like a vision quest
Speaker 6: a little bit. He starts to think about his life
Speaker 6: and his time with his wife and from when they
Speaker 6: were kids, and he's physically in threat as he's doing this,
Speaker 6: and slowly the country starts to get to hear about
Speaker 6: this guy, and they're trying to urge him do it
Speaker 6: to get there and it's so crazy, why are you
Speaker 6: doing this?
Speaker 7: Why are you doing this?
Speaker 6: And then the country kind of gets on board with
Speaker 6: the feeling of doing something irrational to show your love
Speaker 6: for the person that you care about.
Speaker 7: And I'm not going to tell you the ending, but.
Speaker 6: It's really poignant, the idea of just doing something so
Speaker 6: the other person can hear you.
Speaker 4: So you're twenty two, you're very much you love. You've
Speaker 4: just married your wife who you've known for how long
Speaker 4: at that point?
Speaker 6: I met when I was eighteen, so we owner for
Speaker 6: four years at that point.
Speaker 4: So the and in this period of love struck youth,
Speaker 4: when you are, you know, in love with your young wife,
Speaker 4: you write a story about an older couple, Yes, where
Speaker 4: the question of the man's devotion to the to his
Speaker 4: wife is in doubt?
Speaker 7: Yes, and he had.
Speaker 2: Now there was I thought you were.
Speaker 4: Going to say, I wrote this at twenty two. I
Speaker 4: was just married a mention love. It's about this young
Speaker 4: couple who embark you. You jump back, you jump forward
Speaker 4: forty years and you start looking back.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 7: So yeah, in the period where you are.
Speaker 4: Of greatest infatuation, your impulse is to go to the
Speaker 4: end of the relationship and work backwards.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think I've always been driven by familial.
Speaker 7: Nightmares.
Speaker 6: I think, you know, the sanctity of the family being jeopardized.
Speaker 6: You know, later it changed into aliens and ghosts and
Speaker 6: you name it. But ultimately it's still about families and
Speaker 6: whether whether they can survive.
Speaker 4: What is it about you at a period of young love,
Speaker 4: when you're already thinking about the kind of not the
Speaker 4: dissolution of love, but the final stage of it. You
Speaker 4: why would you jump ahead? What's it?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 6: I guess I guess you're thinking about your life and
Speaker 6: what you wanted to be and where it could go wrong.
Speaker 7: And maybe I was thinking about what is it? What
Speaker 7: is it? What do I want this to be at the.
Speaker 6: End of the journey, You know, forty years from now,
Speaker 6: fifty years from now. I hope, I hope I've lived
Speaker 6: the life the right way, and of course there's going
Speaker 6: to be a lot of mistakes along the way. But
Speaker 6: I don't have fears like the other people have fears
Speaker 6: in the sense of like I was going to marry
Speaker 6: the second I met her, you know, like those things.
Speaker 6: I fear getting a call that something bad happened, you know,
Speaker 6: And that's very prevalent and still thirty years later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you're asking yourself the question of what is
Speaker 4: the most tragic outcome of young love? Is that what
Speaker 4: is what you've described is that one one party loves
Speaker 4: and the other party doesn't realize they're being loved. You
Speaker 4: put your finger on something that's like it does a
Speaker 4: deeply resonant anxiety.
Speaker 6: It is I probably from the dynamic of me and
Speaker 6: my wife that you know, she married a dreamer, someone
Speaker 6: who's completely content to stare out in an empty room
Speaker 6: and just do that all day long and think about
Speaker 6: an imaginary world with imaginary people and feel fulfilled.
Speaker 7: And she's like, well, I'm right here, you know.
Speaker 6: What about what about the real life you're we're living,
Speaker 6: you know, And.
Speaker 7: And so the struggle has been.
Speaker 6: You know, I've heard all of those stories of you know,
Speaker 6: from you know, f Scott Fitzgerald to you name it,
Speaker 6: you know, all our heroes and how they struggled with
Speaker 6: their personal life versus their artistry. Is is it a
Speaker 6: one or the other equation? We sometimes it feels that way,
Speaker 6: and for a lot of people it feels that way.
Speaker 6: I've tried to see if they can be feed each
Speaker 6: other and it feeds the movies the feeling of love
Speaker 6: for your wife or for your kids or you know,
Speaker 6: and what does that mean?
Speaker 7: How can you imbue it?
Speaker 6: And you guys feel it when you see the movies
Speaker 6: and really the stories that I mean.
Speaker 4: And the hardest thing to explain to your spouse in
Speaker 4: that instance is that to them you seem inaccessible that
Speaker 4: in that dreaming. But from your perspective, I'm putting words
Speaker 4: in your mouth. But there's a certain amount of menality
Speaker 4: between the way I approached as to whether you do what.
Speaker 4: What's hard to explain is that we're not being inaccessible
Speaker 4: and in fact, the relationship we have with our loved
Speaker 4: one is what makes our dreaming possible.
Speaker 7: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Right there. They're the engine of it. They're not outside
Speaker 4: of it. It's their presence and support and structure and
Speaker 4: love and whatever that permits us to wander off and
Speaker 4: in our imagination and feel find comfort and joy and
Speaker 4: all of that. I don't know, it's like that. It's
Speaker 4: a very hard thing to to explain to someone that
Speaker 4: they're that our inner lives are contingent on someone from
Speaker 4: the out on the outside.
Speaker 7: Yes, you know.
Speaker 6: So finding love and then building a career from there
Speaker 6: felt felt the right the right building blocks, and so
Speaker 6: that movie was the beginning of that. You know, when
Speaker 6: writing this movie Labor of Love, it was it was
Speaker 6: coming from such an interesting place, and I was writing
Speaker 6: ahead of my abilities at that point.
Speaker 7: It was just kind of going by this inspiration of love.
Speaker 4: I think, what do you mean by writing ahead of
Speaker 4: your abilities?
Speaker 7: You know, I didn't have as much craft at that time.
Speaker 6: This is oftentimes your career is an equation of craft
Speaker 6: and inspiration, and so lacking in craft and at twenty two,
Speaker 6: but the inspiration was out of ten, you know, that
Speaker 6: feeling when I was writing it, what this feels beautiful,
Speaker 6: This feels this feels lovely. You know, I love this
Speaker 6: feeling how it's coming out and how I can see
Speaker 6: the characters, and in retrospect now thirty years later, can
Speaker 6: see that, you know, I was really listening to the characters,
Speaker 6: almost like a novelist, and following it. And so the
Speaker 6: end result is I wrote the screenplay that ended up
Speaker 6: becoming a bidding war from my parents' guest bedroom where
Speaker 6: me and my wife were living in the guest bedroom.
Speaker 6: The best bedroom was pink. It was for my sister.
Speaker 6: Was it was just, you know, we had to get
Speaker 6: out of here kind of feeling. And this script went
Speaker 6: out and there was a bidding war and someone offered
Speaker 6: this amount of money and then that amount of money,
Speaker 6: and it was crazy and I was a kidnap'd run
Speaker 6: down and I'd be like, mom, they offered this amount
Speaker 6: of money.
Speaker 7: It's crazy.
Speaker 6: And but I only directed this little movie in India,
Speaker 6: and they saw it as a big, big movie.
Speaker 7: And this was.
Speaker 6: Back in an era of Hollywood where the entire system
Speaker 6: was geared at original movies. The system was built to
Speaker 6: nurture original movies, and the spec screenplay markets. Screenplay is
Speaker 6: done on speculation was the kind of gold rush, and
Speaker 6: so if there was an incredible screenplay that came out,
Speaker 6: everyone would read it immediately and it would go in
Speaker 6: this bidding war because that was the food that was
Speaker 6: feeding the engine at that time to the movie theaters.
Speaker 6: And so I was luckily kind of grew up in
Speaker 6: an era where what I love to.
Speaker 7: Do, which is original movies, was really.
Speaker 6: Celebrated and promoted, and so everyone bit on it and
Speaker 6: we sold the Tunch in Fox. You know, I was
Speaker 6: attached to direct, and then I flew out and I
Speaker 6: put on my graduation suit, which I didn't because I
Speaker 6: didn't have many suits, so I wore my old suit
Speaker 6: and then they listened to me about how I would
Speaker 6: direct the movie, and then they subsequently fired me off
Speaker 6: the movie.
Speaker 7: So it was devastated. Just absolutely What did you do wrong.
Speaker 2: In your pitch to be a Directoritch?
Speaker 6: That's really interesting a question I would say. I wasn't
Speaker 6: a director yet. I had more practice at writing than directing.
Speaker 6: And of course, sitting in a room telling a chairman
Speaker 6: of a studio how you'd make a film, and they're
Speaker 6: asking certain questions, and you know, I don't know if
Speaker 6: I had a chance at all, you know, before I
Speaker 6: walked in there.
Speaker 7: In retrospect night, you're.
Speaker 4: Now Hull fifty three. Yeah, you look at fifty three,
Speaker 4: you looked at thirty. At twenty two, you must have
Speaker 4: looked twelve.
Speaker 7: Your absolutely correct, You're absolutely correct.
Speaker 4: You know what's going to give you fifty million dollars
Speaker 4: to direct a movie when you look like a twelve
Speaker 4: year old?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: And I'm in this ill fitting suit which makes me
Speaker 6: even look younger because you're like, oo, is you wear
Speaker 6: your your big brother's suit or whatever it was.
Speaker 7: I remember the feeling.
Speaker 6: I can remember the feeling pitching it to the chairman
Speaker 6: and the heads of the studio and going, I'm not
Speaker 6: I don't I don't believe what I'm saying, and I'm guessing.
Speaker 7: I was like basically, I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna learn, you know as I do this, because
Speaker 6: I can see it in my head, you know, so
Speaker 6: I'll I'll learn.
Speaker 7: And they took me. I was very painful.
Speaker 6: Then I ended up, you know, they talked me into
Speaker 6: kind of pay rewrite it for some other A list
Speaker 6: directors of that time.
Speaker 7: So I had a chance to be in the room
Speaker 7: with some you.
Speaker 6: Know at that time, the top directors, and they would
Speaker 6: say do this, do that, and I just couldn't. I
Speaker 6: would rewrite it and it would get worse in retrospect,
Speaker 6: some kind of Joe curse I put on it, and uh,
Speaker 6: it could never get it never, it could never.
Speaker 7: Bloom into fruish.
Speaker 6: So there was lots of directors that tryed, two or
Speaker 6: three directors that tried. So what was really weird about
Speaker 6: this movie? It represented some kind of you know, connection
Speaker 6: with the universe. And I think for a little bit
Speaker 6: I thought that was a one off and that that's
Speaker 6: never going to happen again.
Speaker 7: And that was the fear.
Speaker 6: That screenplay just became something of a mythic thing for me, like, oh,
Speaker 6: I'll never get that back again.
Speaker 4: M night. Shyamalan writes his masterpiece and then he's haunted.
Speaker 2: By it more after the break.
Speaker 4: Wait, so what's the next stage in the saga of
Speaker 4: Labor of Love?
Speaker 6: So six sense happens, right? I wrote it, you know
Speaker 6: a few years later and wonderful outcome. Everyone wanted to
Speaker 6: make movies with me, and I said to Fox I
Speaker 6: would love to have that screen light back. They said, oh,
Speaker 6: do you want to make Labor of Love? And I said, well, no,
Speaker 6: I'm thinking about making another movie, which was Unbreakable that
Speaker 6: I was writing at that time about comic books even
Speaker 6: though no one is making comic book movies, and I
Speaker 6: thought no one would ever see this movie. But it
Speaker 6: was something that interest me, and I said, you know,
Speaker 6: I was really into genre now. I was like, okay,
Speaker 6: genre is my way. Labor of Love is very it's
Speaker 6: a very emotional movie. I think I have that as
Speaker 6: my base, tendency to be emotional, and I think until
Speaker 6: I found genre to balance it, I was too much
Speaker 6: for people because like I start at a nine, like
Speaker 6: at emotion. If you and I are talking over drinks
Speaker 6: about time I'll be, I'll be like, I'll be already
Speaker 6: emotionally to be you know there. And I think genre
Speaker 6: helped me balance that. You know, you have to meet
Speaker 6: the audience where they are. This is something I learned
Speaker 6: in my mid twenties. When you're telling a story, meet
Speaker 6: them where they are and don't lecture them and demand
Speaker 6: that they come to you. You come to them, so
Speaker 6: you start tonally where they are. So it's a tough
Speaker 6: world and we have a little we have cynicism. That's
Speaker 6: how we get through our lives, you know, we balance
Speaker 6: that to protect our software parts.
Speaker 7: And genre does that.
Speaker 6: It comes in and it balances I have this feeling
Speaker 6: about movie making, our art that it has to have
Speaker 6: the right balance of light and dark, and that's when
Speaker 6: it rings true. The love of a mother to a
Speaker 6: child has a selfish component, you have to have, you know,
Speaker 6: a controlling component, then it rings true. There's also the beauty,
Speaker 6: the pure love you know, of a parent to a child.
Speaker 6: But if I can get both things in there, then
Speaker 6: it rings true and you start to see yourself in it.
Speaker 6: I think genre allows me to show you that the
Speaker 6: light side, you know, because of that, I can go
Speaker 6: very dark. I mean I've killed off more protagonist than anybody.
Speaker 6: This is like dark stuff, and but that's because underneath,
Speaker 6: I do feel the universe is a benevolent place. I
Speaker 6: feel that from that. So genre has helped me balance things.
Speaker 4: Is it fair to say that genre, particularly horror or supernatural,
Speaker 4: it lowers the stakes in a certain way? What does
Speaker 4: it allow you to what's what's the best way is
Speaker 4: to describe the way.
Speaker 6: It's It's protective when you get really down to it,
Speaker 6: I'm just this sentimental dude that's overly earnest.
Speaker 7: When I speak to people, they think it's gamesmanship. It's not.
Speaker 6: There's no game at all. I'm I love it, I
Speaker 6: hate it. I I'm terrified. I'll tell you open you
Speaker 6: know everything, And when we do things like comedy and
Speaker 6: all this stuff, those are ways to protect ourselves, which
Speaker 6: I understand and I can use as well. And genre
Speaker 6: is if I can show you edgy dark things and
Speaker 6: show you because I do have an edgy dark side
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 7: I just deploy it at the right times.
Speaker 6: That allows me in the in the balance of things
Speaker 6: in the audience's eyes and their emotional journey.
Speaker 7: It's earned. Then when I do the car scene in
Speaker 7: sixth sense with the mom and the child, you know I've.
Speaker 6: Earned it by by by titillating them and scaring them
Speaker 6: in a certain way. There's a balancing act that goes
Speaker 6: on which I think is important for me to acknowledge
Speaker 6: that this is a conversation with the audience, that it's
Speaker 6: not just the lecture.
Speaker 4: Yeah, labor of love is are you saying there's there's
Speaker 4: no supernatural It is a straight.
Speaker 7: Pretty much? Yeah, just a straight you say, pretty much?
Speaker 7: So pretty much pretty much.
Speaker 6: The reason I say pretty much is there's a tiny
Speaker 6: bit of spirituality and love and so that I do
Speaker 6: represent that in there, that things are bound a bit
Speaker 6: that there's some inspirational, magical things that happen sometimes, you know,
Speaker 6: that's related to love. So that's all, But there is
Speaker 6: no genre in it that's weird. It this opportunity came,
Speaker 6: I would say, you know, fifteen years later where I
Speaker 6: could make that movie with literally the best actor in
Speaker 6: the world and the person that I would want to
Speaker 6: make a movie with more than anybody. It was being
Speaker 6: squeezed between another movie that I was making for a
Speaker 6: big studio, and I made the wrong decision and I
Speaker 6: didn't make it.
Speaker 7: And when I think back on it.
Speaker 6: Now, knowing me and who is the actor, Well, I
Speaker 6: don't want to say just because just because, but because
Speaker 6: it's more about the emotional stuff that we're talking about
Speaker 6: rather than the kind of the titillation of it, of
Speaker 6: the names and things like that, if we can, because.
Speaker 7: Just because, you know, it meant so much to me
Speaker 7: and him, and I.
Speaker 6: Didn't do it, And it was literally because I just
Speaker 6: wasn't in the right place and I was making destructive
Speaker 6: decisions at that time. In retrospect and now having gone
Speaker 6: through you know, iteration after iteration of who I am
Speaker 6: in front of the public eye, I with absolute certainty
Speaker 6: can tell you.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you I should have made it at that time.
Speaker 4: Dig into a little bit more why you didn't. Is
Speaker 4: it on some level terrifying to actually make a make
Speaker 4: real something that you think of as being so perfect
Speaker 4: or something that if something comes in a lightning bolt,
Speaker 4: is it scary?
Speaker 7: It was a no.
Speaker 6: I wish I could say it was something that defendable.
Speaker 6: It was literally I think I wanted so much to
Speaker 6: be accepted. I was in a phase of my life
Speaker 6: where I was willing to, I think, give away the
Speaker 6: things that were prescious to me to be accepted. And
Speaker 6: I was so tired of fighting the fight all the time,
Speaker 6: these original movies and you know.
Speaker 7: Doing things.
Speaker 6: And then I didn't have the protection of genre with
Speaker 6: that movie. It would just be me and this incredible actor.
Speaker 6: And at that time, I felt like that's a very
Speaker 6: vulnerable thing, and that it's just an emotional movie and
Speaker 6: the world's going to just shit trash me and trash us,
Speaker 6: and and that's that was the fears. But I was
Speaker 6: perhaps scared of giving up what I had had not
Speaker 6: very admirable reasons. They were coming from wanting to be accepted,
Speaker 6: from wanting money, you know, you know, in other forms
Speaker 6: or needing money or whatever it is. And so you know,
Speaker 6: I failed it because I was impure. That's how I
Speaker 6: feel about it, and should have one hundred percent done it.
Speaker 6: This particular actor was, you know, sad by the decision.
Speaker 6: I would say, maybe another eight years later it came
Speaker 6: up again, and then this time I was the one
Speaker 6: that said, hey, let's go make this, and the same
Speaker 6: actor wanted to do it, and then went off and
Speaker 6: did another piece, a big kind of thing that they
Speaker 6: were a part of, and it was successful the thing
Speaker 6: they did. But a little bit of it was we
Speaker 6: missed each other, you know, we missed our moment, you know,
Speaker 6: a little bit.
Speaker 4: But the movie wasn't done with m Night Shyamalan yet
Speaker 4: not at all back with more after the break? How
Speaker 4: does the way you relate to the movie, How has
Speaker 4: it changed over the years? You're now if thirty years
Speaker 4: have gone by, Yeah, do you look at it and
Speaker 4: think about it and see it differently now than you
Speaker 4: did when you were twenty two?
Speaker 6: Right now, I wouldn't change anything about it, and we'd
Speaker 6: make it as a period piece in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6: The music the more is the time, you know, which
Speaker 6: sadly feels incredibly innocent. It almost feels like, you know,
Speaker 6: let's take a stroll around the garden. You know, say, oh,
Speaker 6: I'm so tired from the stroll, let's lie out. It's like,
Speaker 6: you know, we will see a period piece, We're like, wow,
Speaker 6: that really were you out to go walk.
Speaker 7: Around the garden?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And that's how we feel about like nineteen ninety four. Oh,
Speaker 6: we would thought we were really being really bad when
Speaker 6: we did this. You were just talking with your boys
Speaker 6: in the basement. How sweet, and you were just all
Speaker 6: of you just talking about girls because you love God,
Speaker 6: you know, how sweet. You know, like it feels that way,
Speaker 6: and I when I think about it, it's very nostalgic
Speaker 6: of a time gone by now and a way people
Speaker 6: might have reacted.
Speaker 4: Oh that because the way as the hero goes on
Speaker 4: his journey, as he's walking across the country, the country
Speaker 4: is responding to him in a way they wouldn't respond today.
Speaker 4: Is that your point that in a kind of internet
Speaker 4: age it would be different.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's so hard now to unwind it and think
Speaker 6: of a moment when you didn't have access to every
Speaker 6: piece of information in the history of man.
Speaker 7: You don't know where your your.
Speaker 6: Cousin is and where your uncle is and where your
Speaker 6: sister is right now. No, you don't write, you know,
Speaker 6: ninety four we didn't know where anybody was right and
Speaker 6: and you get a letter or you would if something happened.
Speaker 6: It would take a while for you to find out
Speaker 6: all of those ideas of being present. Primarily, it's gone.
Speaker 6: Our understanding of what it is to be a human
Speaker 6: being is almost gone because we're never just here anymore.
Speaker 6: And this phone that's sitting near me as I'm doing
Speaker 6: this podcast is pulling me right now.
Speaker 7: I can feel it.
Speaker 6: It's pulling me, so I'm partly here with you, but
Speaker 6: it's stolen my soul a little bit, you know. And
Speaker 6: that was just a different era, and that's all part
Speaker 6: of them, that time period. When I you know, when
Speaker 6: I try to rewrite it, when I'm trying to make
Speaker 6: it better, I'm scarring it. It came out in one
Speaker 6: thing like that, you know, as this kid was just
Speaker 6: feeling something.
Speaker 4: When was the last time you read it?
Speaker 6: I probably read it. It came out a third time
Speaker 6: with this with this particular actor. A third time. It
Speaker 6: was four years ago, So I read it four years ago,
Speaker 6: four years ago when we talked about.
Speaker 2: It again, what do the eyes you'll actually do it.
Speaker 7: I'm just a strange creature, bro.
Speaker 6: So if I say to you absolutely never, as soon
Speaker 6: as a week click off here, I'll probably go make
Speaker 6: it right.
Speaker 7: I've thought about it a lot.
Speaker 6: Do you do it more as a as a ritual
Speaker 6: almost to honor that part of you in all of
Speaker 6: us that came from a pure place, regardless of its success,
Speaker 6: regardless of.
Speaker 7: What would happen.
Speaker 6: There is a kind of a wise warning about labor
Speaker 6: of love, that there's something where you're blind about the labor. Oh,
Speaker 6: I always wanted to make that movie about blah blah
Speaker 6: blah whatever it is, or I always wanted to write
Speaker 6: that thing.
Speaker 7: It's a labor of love for me.
Speaker 6: That on med automatically means you're blind a little bit.
Speaker 6: Some massive you know, blind spot exists there. There is
Speaker 6: that wisdom acumen to be care full of your labor
Speaker 6: of loves That meant that you were you were kind
Speaker 6: of obsessed in a way about something. I don't know
Speaker 6: if that's the case here. I feel even as we
Speaker 6: talk about it, like you know, I could go do
Speaker 6: this in another year and do exactly the way I
Speaker 6: said it.
Speaker 7: It's funny.
Speaker 6: I had this conversation with someone in my office about it.
Speaker 6: I said, I don't know if the world even wants
Speaker 6: to remember feeling this way anymore. It's painful to remember
Speaker 6: that we used to feel this way and it was.
Speaker 7: It was. It was okay and wonderful and celebrated and calm.
Speaker 4: When you say feel this way, you mean get swept
Speaker 4: up in what that man was doing.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, this amount of the expression of love, you know,
Speaker 6: whereas today it's our relationship to our emotions is so
Speaker 6: being attacked. We're not supposed to have our own feeling anymore.
Speaker 6: We're being manipulated by our algorithms constantly and distraction, and
Speaker 6: so the AI world is already deciding how we live
Speaker 6: and experience our lives.
Speaker 7: And maybe that's the absolute reason to make it. I
Speaker 7: don't know.
Speaker 6: As I'm talking to you, this is probably the deepest
Speaker 6: conversation I've had about it, because it is it is
Speaker 6: a kind of like, are we still are you still
Speaker 6: torching yourself about this movie?
Speaker 7: Bro? After thirty years?
Speaker 6: This odyssey is that there's been opportunities and there is
Speaker 6: one now of a wonderful filmmaker that wants to make
Speaker 6: it themselves, the same story.
Speaker 7: And whether I'm okay with.
Speaker 2: That, are you, bro?
Speaker 7: I don't know. I don't know. That feels like I
Speaker 7: don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm almost shutting down when you're asking me that question,
Speaker 6: and I haven't. Actually I've actually shut down in that
Speaker 6: process too.
Speaker 7: So you know, somebody.
Speaker 4: Someone just called you up and said someone famous calls
Speaker 4: you up and says night, I've read, I've read the
Speaker 4: secret screenplay. Yes, how did how did this person get
Speaker 4: a hold of it? They just heard through the great thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's happened before. It's happened before. Somebody wants
Speaker 6: to make its. Every few years, somebody wants to make it.
Speaker 6: And I could just let it go, just let it
Speaker 6: go and and and let someone put their point of
Speaker 6: view on love. So it's this screenplay that represents the
Speaker 6: purest version of me that's on a page, and it
Speaker 6: has been chasing me like a ghost or haunting me.
Speaker 6: It started my career and I got to do all
Speaker 6: these amazing things. I continue to just have these incredible opportunities.
Speaker 6: And really it's like a part of me that I
Speaker 6: betrayed at one point, and now I can make it now,
Speaker 6: I mean today, I can make it right now, and I.
Speaker 7: Think probably with the same actor.
Speaker 6: And even as you and I are sitting here, I
Speaker 6: have all these reasons that are holding me back. So
Speaker 6: it's so I don't know what this, this screenplay is
Speaker 6: to me, and what this movie is to me. Maybe
Speaker 6: it's the softest part of me and so scared to
Speaker 6: show you guys that you.
Speaker 4: Said that your great fear at the time when you
Speaker 4: wrote it was that you would never have anything by
Speaker 4: anything so pure again, but listening to you, my fear
Speaker 4: about it is that had you made it, then what
Speaker 4: followed may not have happened. In other words, having as
Speaker 4: one of your very first screenplay is something so perfect,
Speaker 4: like fueled all of this extraordinary productivity that came afterwards,
Speaker 4: And that had you made it and had it been
Speaker 4: a big success, maybe you would have been kind of
Speaker 4: paralyzed by that. Like the fact that it's it's unrealized
Speaker 4: allows you to keep going and right if it's think
Speaker 4: about the what is the curse of the one hit wonder?
Speaker 4: The curse of the one hit wonder is someone who
Speaker 4: is unlucky enough to have written their greatest song first.
Speaker 4: It's just bad luck, and everyone looks at the second
Speaker 4: and the third ones and says it's over for you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not over for you.
Speaker 4: It's just out of order, right, Whereas the same the
Speaker 4: same thing only put the one hit Wonders breakthrough hit
Speaker 4: ten years into their career, and we think, oh, what
Speaker 4: a progression right towards Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, for me, I keep you know,
Speaker 6: maybe you're right, The unfinished nature of that is keep
Speaker 6: driving me. You know, the movie I just editing now
Speaker 6: and finishing. When I think of it, I have a
Speaker 6: little bit of magic feeling about it, and I'm like, oh, this.
Speaker 7: Is reminding me of labor of love.
Speaker 6: When it's feeling effortless and right, You're going, well, where
Speaker 6: did that come from?
Speaker 7: How do you do that? And you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 7: that's how it felt to twenty two.
Speaker 4: But then here's the other fear I have that what
Speaker 4: if you made it and it wasn't magical, then you
Speaker 4: wouldn't have You would also have destroyed this thing that
Speaker 4: you've been able to look at throughout your entire career.
Speaker 6: Well, I can tell you if I at twenty two,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't have made it a particularly great movie at
Speaker 6: that moment. I think you've been you know, up and down,
Speaker 6: flawed and this and that, and then when we jumped
Speaker 6: forward to the first time with that the most incredible actor,
Speaker 6: I wasn't in the right emotional space to have made
Speaker 6: it properly. Now that we're really getting serious about it, yeah,
Speaker 6: so that wouldn't have worked out either, because I just
Speaker 6: was not where I am right now.
Speaker 4: One last question, what is your What does your wife say?
Speaker 4: She was president at the creation?
Speaker 6: That's a great question, I would. I think she's seen
Speaker 6: me torture myself for thirty years about this in her mind.
Speaker 6: You know, for a while she kept asking me why
Speaker 6: do you keep killing off the wife? You know, like
Speaker 6: in signs, And She's like, why.
Speaker 7: Do you keep killing off the wives?
Speaker 6: And I'm like, no, no, no, it's because I'm so
Speaker 6: scared to lose you. You know, she knows I wrote
Speaker 6: it for her. So it's kind of already in our lives?
Speaker 6: Is it already happened? It already existed and was made
Speaker 6: and was so lovely. You know. I have this check
Speaker 6: from back when we used to get checks and from
Speaker 6: twentieth century Fox, and it was my first check that
Speaker 6: I got, And I have it framed. It's in my office,
Speaker 6: so it's if you come to my office, which you will,
Speaker 6: and it's there. And then if you go into the cafeteria,
Speaker 6: there's a poster of a mock up of a poster
Speaker 6: twenty century Fox made for Labor of Love, and that's hanging.
Speaker 2: On my wall.
Speaker 6: So on my walls all the movies I made and
Speaker 6: a movie that wasn't made.
Speaker 4: It's your own ghost. You've you've created your own ghost.
Speaker 2: Night.
Speaker 4: This has been so much fun. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: I really really really enjoyed this.
Speaker 7: You're so lovely. Thank you for having me on. I
Speaker 7: was learning something about myself too as we were talking.
Speaker 7: You're a good therapist, man. I was starting to get there.
Speaker 4: This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence, and Tali Emlin,
Speaker 4: with Ben at Alphaffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original scoring
Speaker 4: by Luis Kara, Engineering by Eco Mountain. Our executive producer
Speaker 4: is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Glamo.