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Episode: "Denis Villeneuve"

Author: Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett
Duration: 01:02:01

Episode Shownotes

Life is in session right now, with Denis Villeneuve. Twilight anesthesia, addiction to power, teenage dreams… and Paddles still makes it to dinner. We are not a medical podcast; it’s an all-new SmartLess. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week

early.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_04
I want you guys to know, I hope you're rolling on this. You ready? Here we go. I want you guys to know that this morning, this is the most serious goal to open. Yes.

00:00:12 Speaker_04
I've been in a rough place, and this really... I feel like I've shared a lot in the last year I've been in a rough place, but I have been. A lot going on. And this saved me this morning. After a few days.

00:00:21 Speaker_02
I love that. You say you might not have made it. You might not have made it to lunchtime. No, I would have made it.

00:00:25 Speaker_04
I wasn't going to take my own life, but I was in a pretty bad place. And knowing that I was coming here and then getting on and seeing you guys, this has just made my day. That's it.

00:00:34 Speaker_02
No joke. Is that nice? And is that why you took a little shower, a little self-care, combed your hair, put on a nice top?

00:00:40 Speaker_04
I wanted to look nice for you guys, you know? I wanted to show up here and be respectful of the process that I... The one... The thing I can count on is... You two ding-dongs.

00:00:52 Speaker_04
And then the other three ding-dongs who we work with as well, Robin, Bennett, and Michael. I know it's late, Thanksgiving's been a minute, but I want to say thank you, and I'm very grateful for you guys.

00:01:02 Speaker_02
We love you, and we thank you, and you make our day, too. Always here for you, anytime you want. And so let's try to make other people's days, and let's get into a nice, fresh episode of Smart List.

00:01:32 Speaker_02
Speaking of medical conditions, I know I can't even I can't want to talk about it.

00:01:36 Speaker_07
We can talk.

00:01:37 Speaker_02
I'm an open book I'll talk about anything Shawnee wakes up in the middle of the night with his with his heart thingy for Everybody other than Tracy here. The reminder is he's got an a-fib situation, right?

00:01:49 Speaker_02
Yeah necessitates the paddles at the emergency room every once in a while. It's just insane It's like if you had a car that would constantly just like have trouble getting started.

00:01:59 Speaker_07
Yeah would eventually replace the battery So you're replacing me on smart list? Well, nor just your heart.

00:02:04 Speaker_02
Sean, no.

00:02:04 Speaker_04
We thought about it for one second. We never even... Can we get you on a list? We didn't even do a deep... We didn't do a deep dive.

00:02:10 Speaker_02
So, he wakes up in the middle of the night, and his heart's not working correctly, or so he thinks. And so, he doesn't want to wake up Scotty, so he calls a Waymo for himself. Sure.

00:02:20 Speaker_02
And gets himself to the ER, and Scotty wakes up later with a phone call from Sean from the ER saying, hey, buddy, I'm here. Just want to give you a heads up. All good. So, I guess it's kind of...

00:02:32 Speaker_02
Nice that he doesn't want to trouble Scotty and worry him.

00:02:35 Speaker_04
JB, JB, not once, twice that night.

00:02:39 Speaker_07
I got cardioverted twice. So I went under and then Jimmy Kimmel calls me paddles, right? Because of this. So paddles got it twice that night. And yeah, it's pretty scary.

00:02:49 Speaker_02
And yet you still made it out to dinner the following night. You weren't in a great place that night. No, I was a little foggy. I was a little foggy.

00:02:58 Speaker_04
Oh yeah, of course you were. More so than usual. You've been, you know, electrocuted twice. Your body had been, you know, that's a lot.

00:03:09 Speaker_07
By the way, the nurse told me while before I did it, she goes, you know, I had a big tough cop come in here once and he said, I don't want to be put under when you do the paddles, you know, clear. And the cop is like, he's like, I don't want it.

00:03:21 Speaker_07
I don't want to be put on her. She's like, sir, no, everybody is put on her. He's like, nope, nope, I don't want it. And she goes, I've never heard somebody scream so loud in my entire life. The guy got with Claire Gronk and he was like, ah!

00:03:34 Speaker_02
Why, because it hurts? What, it's an electrical shock, right?

00:03:36 Speaker_07
Well, your whole body goes, it's like being tased. Right.

00:03:39 Speaker_04
How do you know what it's like being Tazed? Sean Tazed. Sean Tazed. That's your new name.

00:03:46 Speaker_02
It's not Paddle.

00:03:47 Speaker_04
Sean Tazed.

00:03:50 Speaker_02
Um, all right. That's enough. Yeah.

00:03:52 Speaker_04
I mean, you got, weren't you Tazed once at an Indigo Girls concert or something? What's the story on that? You had parked your Subaru with all the stickers, co-exist and all that stuff. You were parked.

00:04:04 Speaker_07
You were at, uh... We used to say in college for the Indigo Girls. You were at Bandor again. Okay, keep going. Sorry. No, I said it's college, and we'd say, if you take the N and the O out of Indigo Girls, it says, I dig girls. Yeah. Thanks, everybody.

00:04:18 Speaker_07
What a college.

00:04:19 Speaker_04
Now, was this, you were, this was at Harvard? What a college.

00:04:23 Speaker_02
Hey, Sean, just to close the loop, are you on the backside of figuring out this heart thing?

00:04:30 Speaker_04
Yeah, I'm going today after this. I just want to get, I want to say this, all jokes aside, I, and we, I speak for Jason, love you very, very much. Likewise. And the idea of you not being fully well is very distressing to me, to be honest. Well, thanks.

00:04:47 Speaker_04
And I wanna make sure that you're okay. So are we doing, is there anything else? Yes, today I'm going to like a super specialist. Okay.

00:04:52 Speaker_02
But what does that mean? You're going up into the thigh again. Is it like, are we knocking you out again? Like, is this a major surgery?

00:04:58 Speaker_07
It's not surgery. It's just, it's like a two hour procedure.

00:05:01 Speaker_02
So it's just, it's not a general, it's just that- Or an hour. It's not even two hours, it's an hour. You getting the twilight? Propofol. Propofol, yeah. This is what's driving all of this. You're so addicted to anesthesia. It's pretty beautiful. I know.

00:05:17 Speaker_02
You know what happened to Mr. Jackson, right? Yeah, well, I'm not taking it to sleep. Well, you know, slippery slope.

00:05:25 Speaker_04
J.B., you had it right when you got your thing. What'd I have? When we had our things, when we all had our things looked at. What happened? When they went up our butts.

00:05:32 Speaker_07
Oh, no, you mean the body scan? A body scan?

00:05:36 Speaker_02
No, you're talking about a colonoscopy, right? Yeah, remember? Yeah, that's just a twilight. Is that propofol? That's propofol.

00:05:43 Speaker_07
Now, like the cop, I requested no anesthesia.

00:05:49 Speaker_02
Come on, keep it clean. We've got a respectable guest. Here we go.

00:05:51 Speaker_04
Respectable guest on deck. Okay, well, let's hear it. Go to the intro, JB. This is great.

00:05:57 Speaker_04
Hey, guys, fresh off the pages of Wikipedia comes his very special... He always talks about his special intro that he does, and it turns out he looked at it... Again, it goes back to that thing that I hate, which is people go like, I did some research, and I'm like, oh, do you have the internet?

00:06:12 Speaker_04
I do too.

00:06:13 Speaker_02
No, that's my wife's line. I don't, I've never, I never say I've done research on anything. I know you don't, I know you don't. Man, today we have simply put one of our finest filmmakers living in the world, okay?

00:06:23 Speaker_02
His films have received 28 Academy Award nominations, taken home nine of them and grossed nearly $2 billion.

00:06:29 Speaker_02
His films have captured the small and the nuanced human condition as well as the enormous scope and scale of sci-fi's most complicated stories. Guys, he's our perfect guest. For Will, he's a Canadian. For me, he's a beast of a director.

00:06:41 Speaker_02
And Sean, he's a titan in the sci-fi world right now. Ladies and gentlemen, here he comes, Denis Villeneuve. No way. You're kidding me.

00:06:50 Speaker_01
Oh my God, no way. You're kidding me. No way. I feel bad to interrupt your conversation. I apologize for the length of it. I was learning a lot of dramatic things.

00:06:59 Speaker_03
Put out the plastic, please. Un cigarette, one mistress.

00:07:12 Speaker_04
I don't know where I took a coffee with my mistress. No, no, Denis. What an absolute honor.

00:07:17 Speaker_01
This is huge.

00:07:18 Speaker_07
Oh my gosh.

00:07:18 Speaker_01
It's my great pleasure to be with you.

00:07:19 Speaker_07
I just wrote you an email, like a dorky email, like three or four months ago. I don't know if you got it.

00:07:24 Speaker_02
You did? Yes. Hold on. Do you know him? No. It was just a fan email.

00:07:29 Speaker_07
Yeah, I just wrote you an email. I was just like, oh my God. He got it, but no comment. That's right.

00:07:33 Speaker_02
What was it? Was it notes? Was it notes on a love picture?

00:07:36 Speaker_07
It was notes on arrival. You did?

00:07:40 Speaker_00
I'm not sure I got that.

00:07:42 Speaker_07
But, you know, Arrival I've seen, I don't know how many times. I just think it's one of the best movies ever, ever. I mean, it's just incredible. Thank you, Sean. Yeah.

00:07:52 Speaker_02
So, so much good work. My goodness. Thank you. That's it.

00:07:57 Speaker_04
That's it.

00:07:57 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's the interview. Thank you for joining us. Bye now.

00:08:01 Speaker_00
All right. I go back in the dark. Yeah, but it was pretty dramatic because I don't know you gentlemen and it was a very intense conversation you were having about your common friend. It actually sounds more intense than it is.

00:08:15 Speaker_00
Afib doesn't cause a heart attack. Untreated, it can cause a stroke.

00:08:28 Speaker_07
But AFib itself is not that serious, I'm told. We are not a medical podcast. We are not giving any- I want a second opinion on all of this.

00:08:39 Speaker_02
It's just too common, these trips to the freaking emergency room. Well, you know, we're all of that age. Denny, you're near us, right? We're all in our mid-50s or close to it. All this shit starts to wobble a little bit.

00:08:54 Speaker_02
The nuts on the wheels start to get a little loose, right?

00:08:58 Speaker_01
We arrived at that peak and now we're starting slowly.

00:09:04 Speaker_02
It starts to ache.

00:09:05 Speaker_04
Let's think that we're maybe plateauing. Before we get to the downhill, Denny, let's just enjoy a little plateau.

00:09:11 Speaker_01
We are on that plateau, yes.

00:09:13 Speaker_04
Keep talking about this part. But we'll talk about it.

00:09:15 Speaker_04
We end up talking about a lot of this stuff, because Jason says, because it's happening, and also we're friends, and I don't know about you guys, it does seem like... I said to Sean the other day... Things are falling apart.

00:09:26 Speaker_04
No, life is in session right now.

00:09:28 Speaker_03
Yeah, life is in session.

00:09:29 Speaker_04
Life is in session. Yeah, for sure. And you have to, I've had a certain amount of, not to get, lately of surrender to it. And just like, I can't fight it. I have to kind of go with the flow a little bit these days.

00:09:41 Speaker_04
And I'm concerned about things with health and with family and friends.

00:09:45 Speaker_07
Yeah, I literally listed all the things Will's going through last night. He's like,

00:09:49 Speaker_04
Oh yeah, wow, that was like 25. But everybody is. Nothing's happening to me. Life is just happening. Yeah. And so anyway, so Denis, you're catching us in a moment. This is about as philosophical as we get.

00:10:00 Speaker_00
Yeah, yeah, that's it. But the thing is that it's good that Sean is actually taking care of it and making tests and then because the bad thing is when you have a surprise that comes out of nowhere. Oh God, yeah.

00:10:13 Speaker_00
Like I lost a friend of mine that was like 58, Dyers-Byers Club. And just biggest surprise, he was a healthy guy and he just fell on the floor, bang. And it's good that at least you know you are taking care of it.

00:10:34 Speaker_00
There's someone, so it's going to be good.

00:10:36 Speaker_04
Yeah, you have, and that gives you perspective, right? When you have that sort of, when you get that contrast, when you see that happen, and these guys know I lost my friend, my dear friend Jeremy last year, quite suddenly as well.

00:10:49 Speaker_04
He wasn't even, I guess he was... had just turned 53 at the time. And it was very sudden. And it really does... It really puts everything in perspective a little bit, you know? For me, it did.

00:11:04 Speaker_04
I don't know about you with losing your friend, but the perspective... Absolutely.

00:11:07 Speaker_00
It was a big shock, yeah. The thing is that the doctor said, what is shocking and what we don't accept is that people actually have dates of preemption.

00:11:17 Speaker_00
Sometimes we are meant to be of a certain length, and sometimes some people are meant to live less long. It's shocking, but it's true. And expiration date.

00:11:31 Speaker_02
Well, somebody put it well the other day, they said, life is a journey, death is a destination. It's true, because we're all going there. And it's like, what do you do with your time? Are we using our time correctly? We're at that age where...

00:11:47 Speaker_02
We are sort of at, you know, past the midway point where we're at that age where you start losing your parents and mortality really comes into focus. And have you used your time well to this point?

00:11:57 Speaker_02
And what are you going to do with your remaining time? A wonderful theme in all of Danny's work. Yes, exactly.

00:12:04 Speaker_00
It's a theme that is one of the main theme of Arrival. And that's one of the things that I loved about the short story. It was based on the story of your life written by Ted Chiang. That is a little masterpiece.

00:12:15 Speaker_00
And it's about, yeah, living to the present time, to make the best out of it and not to be afraid of living because of the fear of death. And that I thought was a nice thing in this movie. In the short story, sorry.

00:12:28 Speaker_04
First of all, I didn't know it was based on a short story, Sean. You knew that?

00:12:31 Speaker_00
You have to read the short story. The short story is a masterpiece. It's like 28 pages or something, written by Ted Chiang, a very, very strong sci-fi writer. And it's like a little gem, yeah.

00:12:45 Speaker_04
I'm gonna look it up today. And I also think just hearing you say that reminds me of... It's really brought into focus... And it seems almost elementary, like kind of so obvious, but you gotta tell the people you love that you love them.

00:13:00 Speaker_04
And you've gotta make the most of those... It's not about living the most you remember, like, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna parachute today or whatever.

00:13:08 Speaker_04
It's more that go and spend time and tell the people you love that you love them and be as loving as possible. And I've really been... I think so too.

00:13:17 Speaker_07
You know, I just saw this thing, Willie, everybody, that the pastor was saying at a commemorate, what is it called, a speech at a college, a commencement speech? And he said, when you're, he goes, I've seen thousands of people die.

00:13:31 Speaker_07
I've been on the, you know, our hundreds or thousands or whatever he said, standing next to them on their deathbed. And he goes, not one person said in their last breath, bring me all my awards. I want to see my awards one more time.

00:13:43 Speaker_07
Bring me, bring me, bring me my certificate from college. I just want to hold it one more time. And he said, what people ask for are the people that they love. Like Will was just saying.

00:13:52 Speaker_07
And that's the only thing they don't say bring me all this all the stuff that is so all the all the achievements I've made these I love the people I love yeah, yeah, that's it well Danny so so I imagine you get access to some of the greatest

00:14:09 Speaker_02
writers, stories, ideas, scripts, it must be hard to pick. And is there something that jumps out at you quickest when a project comes before you? If it's a story about mortality or the human condition or just the human, part of something?

00:14:35 Speaker_02
Is there something that you really like to make movies about, sort of a through line that exists in everything?

00:14:41 Speaker_00
It's a good question, because through the movies I've made, I always have the weird impression sometimes that the movie are choosing me more than, it's like the projects comes and there's something, a connection that is sometimes difficult to explain that is very intimate with the project.

00:14:57 Speaker_00
But recently I've been more drawn towards books that I, all books that I've

00:15:04 Speaker_00
been with me since a long time, like the Dune books, the books that I read when I was a teenager and those books have deep roots in my mind and in my soul and those books have been with me through

00:15:19 Speaker_00
through the years, and I know that because I have a relationship of decades with these books, I know that it means something so deep that it makes sense to spend years trying to adapt them.

00:15:32 Speaker_00
I have the same relationship with the book that I am starting to work on, an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, which is a space movie that takes place in space. It's a book I have read when I was very young.

00:15:49 Speaker_00
Again, it's a book that stayed with me through the years. And when you have roots like that, it's a... But to answer to your questions, yeah, Existential is a movie about questioning, about our... Why are we here?

00:16:04 Speaker_02
I love that. And then is it somewhat daunting to, especially with books that you love, that you've had as a part of you for so long, is it brutal to try to adapt those? Because most books are too long to fit inside of a 120 page script.

00:16:22 Speaker_02
And so you've got to get rid of a lot of stuff. Now with Dune, fortunately, you were able to break it up into two parts. And the second one was the second half of the book. Massive fan. Massive fan. As opposed to a sequel.

00:16:34 Speaker_02
So it's just you broke the book up into two films, which is incredible. The third one potentially... Three, right? Well, the third coming up, right, is a brand new story.

00:16:46 Speaker_00
It's the second book that will be the adaptation of Dune Messiah, which is the second book. The first movies were about that first book, Dune. It is.

00:16:54 Speaker_00
The first artist I approached when I decided to make this adaptation was Hans Zimmer, because I was just out of a movie with him and I absolutely adore working with him on Blade Runner. He's amazing, yeah. For Tracy, that's the composer Hans Zimmer.

00:17:11 Speaker_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did you choose the composer first? Because I knew that I will need, the score in Dune will be essential, will be absolutely crucial to the success of the movie to bring that kind of sacred quality that I wanted.

00:17:29 Speaker_00
And also because it's like, it's a matter of context. I was working with Hans, he asked me, what will you do next? And we were talking about Dune and I saw his face change because it's start to talk about it and the brainstorm about it.

00:17:47 Speaker_00
And Hans said to me that he had not seen the David Lynch movie because he wanted to stay pure, a virgin. He didn't want to see. He said, one day I know I'm going to make the score for a new adaptation. I want to know nothing about what has been done.

00:18:02 Speaker_00
I want to stay. Why am I talking about this? It's because Hans, right at the beginning, said, but is it a good idea to tackle, to get close to a teenager dream? To try to bring to the screen something that is so dear to our hearts. It is dangerous.

00:18:22 Speaker_00
You're meant to fail. You're going to fail. It's like you have to accept that you're going to fail, that you will be able to bring a little bit of it, a part of that dream on screen, and the rest will be far away from it.

00:18:36 Speaker_00
And that space between what you achieve, what you were able to bring, and the things that are different, means that I have space to grow and to get better, to make another movie. If I had absolutely succeeded, then I'd be in deep trouble.

00:18:56 Speaker_04
Well, I mean, by that measure, Denis, by that measure, it would seem that if you were to look at it, trying to hit that target of that dream, of a teenage dream, if you will, if you were to do that to the letter, to the number, to be exact, that would be, in effect, the failure.

00:19:14 Speaker_04
Because the success would be everything beyond that, the unknown, that you would bring this new, right? Like that idea. I wonder if... You know, I think about the films that you've made, and they have such scope to them.

00:19:28 Speaker_04
They are these... There's a sort of an epic nature to all of them. I'm such a... Like Sean and Jason, I'm such a massive fan of your films. And I wonder... They're so ambitious, visually, storytelling-wise, all of it, musically, all those elements.

00:19:48 Speaker_04
They are very ambitious, they are very big, and...

00:19:52 Speaker_04
Was there a moment when you were young when you saw a certain film or a certain type of film and you said, that's... Because for me, and Jason, you may be able to answer this too, as a director, are there moments where you go, this is where I want to go.

00:20:06 Speaker_00
Like this is the kind of thing that inspires me. I remember that one of the first movie that had a big impact on me was, and I saw it on TV frankly, was 2001 A Space Odyssey. trauma at first.

00:20:23 Speaker_00
Those apes, being afraid of that sculpture in the middle of the desert, it was so frightening and strange and poetic and powerful images. I will say that discovering the work when I was young, discovering the work of Steven Spielberg was a

00:20:46 Speaker_00
True Close Encounter of the Third Kind. That's a movie that really blew my mind when I was a kid. Also, when I saw Blade Runner the first time. That is another one. The original Blade Runner. That was something that I really...

00:21:02 Speaker_00
And I'm a Star Wars generation. The first movie that I asked my parents to see in the theater, the first time I said, I want to see that. Usually they were bringing me to the theater, but first time I said, I would love to see that.

00:21:16 Speaker_00
Looking at my dad's newspaper, it was Star Wars. And that was something that changed. I remember the oomph, the energy coming out of this movie. It was incredible at the time. I was 10 years old, like probably you. I was like the target audience. Yeah.

00:21:33 Speaker_00
I was like, it's, it was the impact of that film was insane. Yeah.

00:21:39 Speaker_05
And we will be right back. And now back to the show.

00:21:47 Speaker_02
Well, you know, something that I love about, I think 2001 might be my favorite film, and the thing that I think really draws me to it time and time again is not only the music and his composition, et cetera, but something that I just realized while you were talking that it does so well that your films do incredibly well is, as Will said, your scope.

00:22:14 Speaker_02
Your scope, your ability to cinematically capture scope and scale in the obvious large scale, but in also in the internal scale as well, the massive scope of a human's internal experience in a certain story.

00:22:34 Speaker_02
There are things that are incredibly small and intimate that goes on in 2001, as well as the obvious external large scope of space and these machines and et cetera. Talk a little bit about

00:22:51 Speaker_02
your ability to capture that and the departments that you're drawn to in filmmaking that allow for you to travel as wide on the internal journey of a character as well as the external of these massive undertakings that you do from

00:23:08 Speaker_02
from a production standpoint?

00:23:10 Speaker_00
I think that scope and visual effects and things, it's not that difficult. I think that the thing that is a challenge that I'm focusing a lot on set is to try to make sure that the emotional journeys of the actors, of the characters, are authentic.

00:23:27 Speaker_00
People are talking to me about intimacy, but I think it's more... Everybody, all the directors are trying to... to bring the intimacy, the inner world of the characters, their inner journey on screen.

00:23:43 Speaker_00
But it's about the inner logic, the authenticity of that journey to make sure that it feels like... genuine human reactions.

00:23:54 Speaker_00
And I think that's where the strong emotional impact comes from, when you feel that there's something that feels real, that feels like you can relate to.

00:24:03 Speaker_00
And it sounds obvious, but specifically in sci-fi, I feel that very often characters don't behave like real humans. It's a personal sensation sometimes that I have. It can be two-dimensional. It's coming from the documentary.

00:24:18 Speaker_00
I did documentaries when I was young.

00:24:29 Speaker_00
It's something that I think that I'm really focusing as I'm writing, when I write or when I read the screenplay or when I participate in the writing process of a screenplay, I try to focus on and with the actors as well, to make sure that that journey

00:24:48 Speaker_00
is feels like grounded. It has roots in something real. So when Amy Adams see the alien, we believe it because it feels genuine. It feels like a real human reaction. Does it make sense? Well, yes. Yeah, yeah.

00:25:04 Speaker_04
Well, Jason, you kind of brought it up about that inner and then you were just touching. I was thinking about specifically a Stellan Skargaard character in the two Dune films, yeah? As this... I forget his character's name. Baron Arkanen, yeah.

00:25:22 Speaker_04
Yeah, and he's this... I mean, he's this incredible villain of all villains in a way. He's this sort of despicable person who does the most... sometimes capable of the most awful things.

00:25:34 Speaker_04
And yet you see in that moment when you see him eyeing the throne, and the throne is available, that moment you see he's not just a bad guy like Jabba the Hutt, not to make the comparison or talk down, but you see the envy, you see the desire for that, the thirst, the hunger for it, to reach with his eyes are reaching for it.

00:25:56 Speaker_04
Could it be mine? in this way that's almost Shakespearean, but very real and human too. I found that shot of him, when you cut to him, I found that very alarming.

00:26:12 Speaker_00
I thank you so much because you're the first one who's talking about that moment. It's exactly this idea of addiction to power. The man is about to die, but still the idea that he could get closer to power is like a human addiction.

00:26:27 Speaker_00
I'm really, thank you very much for pointing that.

00:26:31 Speaker_02
But there are components to building a moment like that, that you're just uniquely incredible at in your ability to balance all departments to create that moment.

00:26:43 Speaker_02
And so for our listeners out there that aren't as familiar with what happens on set and the sequencing of things, talk a little bit about how you approach a moment like that where you know that it needs to have the authenticity of

00:26:59 Speaker_02
of sort of the human condition to counterbalance this crazy odd sort of space world, nether world that's not really that tangible, but the human emotion is. And so that needs to be real while this other stuff is not that real.

00:27:15 Speaker_02
And are you thinking I'm fully reliant on the actor to really ground this with no acting and just being raw? Do you predetermine a certain visual language, a certain piece of music from Hans, a certain bit of sound design from your mixers?

00:27:35 Speaker_02
Like, you know, there's so many different elements that you can do to build a moment just perfectly like that. It's a very good question.

00:27:43 Speaker_00
Thank you. All shots are different from that specific moment where the baron is like lying on the stairs. It's a character, for those who haven't seen the movie, it's a character that is just about to die and sees suddenly the throne.

00:27:59 Speaker_00
The king has left the throne and the throne is up the stairs and he's looking at the throne and he's crawling towards it. And with a moment like that, I will say it's a very simple image. So it's about Stellan.

00:28:15 Speaker_00
I explained to Stellan the idea, and Stellan Skarsgård, who plays the Baron, will perform and bring that to life. Sometimes I will say that the camera angles and the camera movement can help to enhance Elevate. Elevate. Thank you very much.

00:28:38 Speaker_00
I appreciate it. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm here. Elevate is to bring force into an idea. The camera is always very powerful, but it's all the birth of the idea is acting, of course. Yeah, that's cool.

00:28:52 Speaker_00
But let's say perhaps, especially in the... And to answer about music, it's something for me that it's a power. Music is super powerful, but I try to not think about it. as I'm shooting, because it needs to be on screen first.

00:29:10 Speaker_00
It's something that... Well, I had a question about that.

00:29:14 Speaker_02
Let me just finish just one point there, Sean, sorry. But so while the music can come and does come much later in the process, the assets you may need on the set to create the visual of it, i.e.

00:29:28 Speaker_02
a techno crane or whatever it is that you want to shoot that scene in a certain way, you need to have a lot of that stuff predetermined so that you've got your crane there that day and your rigors have set up the lighting in such a way, et cetera, et cetera.

00:29:44 Speaker_02
So, how do you manage the balance between having an actor have the freedom that you want to give them, but also fit inside sometimes a very technical and pre-thought and heavily prepped visual sequence that you need them to fit inside of.

00:30:01 Speaker_02
Hit this mark, react this way, turn this direction, you know, to fit something that may have other departments all predetermined.

00:30:09 Speaker_00
A good example would be the sandworm riding, where Timothée Chalamet, playing Paul Atreides, will attract a sandworm, and then when the sandworm arrives nearby him, he will jump on the worm and ride the worm.

00:30:23 Speaker_00
So it's a sequence that is heavily storyboarded and needs months of prep. And at this moment, let's say that the choreography that I impose, I'm more of a dictator, I impose a rhythm, a precise choreography that Timothée has to follow.

00:30:45 Speaker_00
But inside that choreography, there's tiny moments where Timothée, when I'm in close-up on him, how he can anticipate the arrival of this beast toward him, the way you can act with

00:30:58 Speaker_00
his eyes, there's tiny things, the micro-precisions of acting that he can bring. I mean, I'm open to ideas, but in general, sometimes it's more loose. Some sequences, there's more space for the actor, and those are also

00:31:16 Speaker_00
I love when I have time to give space to the actors, to read, to bring some ideas. I'm talking about the settings of a scene. It's very inspiring when when people bring good ideas.

00:31:36 Speaker_02
But complicated sometimes when you have stuff that's predetermined and then you've got an actor that's got different ideas. And it's like, well, no, no, no. This isn't one of those scenes where you can freestyle.

00:31:47 Speaker_00
Exactly. But at the same time, it requires tremendous acting skills. to be able to perform and to bring life to like Maté facing the worm or Amy Adams facing the aliens or to be in relationship with something that doesn't exist.

00:32:03 Speaker_00
It's like it requires nice imagination and it's not easy for actors to perform in those movies with big toys and all these things. And to answer to your first part of your question about techno cranes or dollies, etc, those are all planned in advance.

00:32:23 Speaker_00
When I built the scene, it's all drawn, prepared, so we know exactly what kind of technology we'll use on the day, of course.

00:32:30 Speaker_02
Was there a lot of green screen versus volume stage on Dune I and II? Did you use any of the volume stages? Was it all green?

00:32:41 Speaker_00
Was there a split half and half? No, we were almost as possible outside in the real environment or with real sets. We built as much as we could. And we are, we were in the real environments, in the desert.

00:32:58 Speaker_00
And those landscapes are, for the people who have been in the landscape that are bigger than life, that bring humility inside you, that the impact on those landscapes is tremendous on the actors and myself.

00:33:16 Speaker_07
Yeah, I watched the whole behind the scenes, all of it, all of the Dune, both Dune. I couldn't consume enough of it. I was just blown away with how it's made.

00:33:28 Speaker_07
And one dumb, dumb question I have is when people are walking in the sand and it's the first footprints in the sand, That's one take. Like, how do you do that?

00:33:40 Speaker_01
You know what I mean? You're going to love show business. You're going to love show business so much.

00:33:47 Speaker_00
The rake crew. We can erase footsteps in the background, things like that with CGI, but you cannot have an actor walking in his own footsteps again, because that's a nightmare for VFX. So you have a crew with rakes?

00:34:02 Speaker_00
So it means that we have to plan to find areas

00:34:08 Speaker_00
move the camera, put the camera on a dolly and move to make sure that we have the perfect place to do five or six or seven or eight takes, that we will also have the crew, we'll have the discipline not to make any footsteps.

00:34:25 Speaker_00
It sounds simple, but it's not. It's like when you have a crew of 800 people in the sand to make sure that everybody follow the same path. Amazing.

00:34:35 Speaker_00
And it gives the opportunity to see crazy things, like every night when I was going back from the set at sunset, there were a hundred people grooming the sand dunes to record the footsteps that we had made. That's terrible.

00:34:48 Speaker_00
So the wind will do its work during the night, and it's very poetic. And smooth it over. That I felt, oh my God, am I Miguel O'Malley?

00:34:56 Speaker_01
Yeah, you're a monster. People roaming the desert, sweeping the sand.

00:35:00 Speaker_04
Believe me, I've had the same thought. Jason made some footsteps in the sand and he yelled at his caddy. He said, you missed a footprint when he was playing golf. He's a real monster.

00:35:12 Speaker_04
But, you know, when I was thinking about, you were talking about the actors and... and asking them to have imagination and working with them on all these thoughts and this inner life and stuff.

00:35:24 Speaker_04
And I was thinking about the collaboration that you've had with a bunch of different actors across a bunch of your films. You've used and worked, not used, you've worked with lots of people in different roles.

00:35:39 Speaker_04
I was trying to think who was... Well, certainly our friend Josh Brolin, you've worked with a lot, you know,

00:35:47 Speaker_04
I think starting in Sicario, which I want to get to, which is an incredible... I urge anybody, if you've never seen Sicario, to please see that. It's so phenomenal. Jake Gyllenhaal, you've worked with a couple of times, I think, with prisoners.

00:36:05 Speaker_04
Emily Blunt. And then our good friend Emily. You've had a lot of repeat collaborators.

00:36:10 Speaker_00
Yeah. But yeah, it's all about the nature of the project and the parts are a bit boring, but I wish I could work with all of them again. I'll do it.

00:36:27 Speaker_00
But it's a thing that honestly I adore working in the United States is to have access to all these incredible actors. I mean, it's like, and it's casting is very strange.

00:36:40 Speaker_00
I mean, it's, you bring someone and it's intuitions about the proximity of an actor and a role and you, it's a gamble in some ways. Yeah.

00:36:57 Speaker_07
Can I go back? One really quick question about the music because I thought that was interesting. You said you were talking to Hans before you started.

00:37:05 Speaker_07
And do you listen to cues or music before you even start thinking about how you're going to film it to get ideas? Or writing, you mean? Do you envision stuff from listening to music? Or do you wait to incorporate it later?

00:37:23 Speaker_00
I'm going to be very honest, every time I write, or directly listen to music, and that's why I say music, I'm very sensitive to music, I absolutely love music, but it has like, you know, I remember once, one of my first films,

00:37:40 Speaker_00
I was directing a specific scene and as I was like alone in my bubble with my headphones listening to this fantastic piece of music and I was saying to myself, it's going to be amazing. Whoa, it's going to be something.

00:37:54 Speaker_00
It's the power of music, you know, then you look at this thing with all the music like, hmm. It's the same with writing. Sometimes I write something and I get emotional. I'm like, oh my God. Maybe I'm great. And then you read it the next morning.

00:38:08 Speaker_00
It's like, no, it's the music. It sounds stupid, but it's the truth. I cannot work with music. I work with silence. Then I can try to, and silence is my friend. I love, my sets are very boring. I'm not a funny director.

00:38:27 Speaker_00
I'm someone who loves to be, when I get in the car in the morning, it's total silence. I need silence. I arrive on set, I need silence. And I try to protect that bubble all day long. That's where I can find my way when there's music, I'm gone.

00:38:43 Speaker_00
It's too powerful. And this is why, to answer your question, it's like, even I have music from the past movies right now, I cannot listen to this music. It's too powerful.

00:38:57 Speaker_07
But yeah, you introduced me to Max Richter, because I never heard of him. And I was like, what is that piece so powerful?

00:39:04 Speaker_02
Staying with music, though, where for you does the score and the sound design begins? Talk to us about that process for you and when does it happen?

00:39:18 Speaker_00
First of all, yeah, it has to... I try to think about the sound and the structure of the sound design as much as possible in the screenplay. And I know as I'm writing that I will need music there, there.

00:39:33 Speaker_00
I will create a sequence, a musical sequence more. It's something that is embedded in the DNA of the screenplay. But then when we edit the film, there's like, I'm working with an editor, Joe Walker, who is a master that Joe is coming from, was

00:39:50 Speaker_00
studied as a composer, he was a composer first, then he did sound at the BBC as a sound editor. So where I'm going is that sound, what I love, and one of the reasons I started to work with Joey, we made many movies together, is that for him,

00:40:06 Speaker_00
Sound is as important as the image. And it's something that when I was making indie movies, I felt that the sound was coming at the end of the process and with very little time.

00:40:14 Speaker_00
And I was always kind of disappointed not having the proper time to make a real embedded sound design. And so now I try to bring the sound as early as possible.

00:40:26 Speaker_00
So it's like, as I'm shooting, we have sound designers that start to create, specifically with sci-fi, to create sounds that will be fed to the editing room very early on. So these sounds have time to

00:40:42 Speaker_00
live with them and make sure that they will enter the test of time and get used to them and make sure that they are right through time. It's not just flashes that are last minute flashes. And it gives, of course, more time to explore, experiment.

00:41:00 Speaker_00
And so the sound is something that is, again, as important as the image. And with Johan Johansson and Ann Zimmer,

00:41:11 Speaker_00
both composers were flirting close to the sound design sometimes, meaning that the music, sometimes there's like a dance that I install between the designers and the composer that they will flirt and cross sometimes the border of one of each other.

00:41:29 Speaker_00
And for that it needs communication.

00:41:31 Speaker_02
But that sound design is embedded prior to you spotting with the composer and figuring out where you're going to put some of the music. So it's the sound design first, then, yeah?

00:41:42 Speaker_00
Yeah, but I will say that it depends on the sequence. Sometimes I said to the team, here it's Hans. Hans Zimmer is not known to be subtle. You know, when he invades the soundtrack, it means there's no...

00:41:57 Speaker_00
So there are some moments where we say, okay, that's the area. I said, here it's going to be, we go full hands or here we go. It's trying to find the right balance between what the sequence, the scene needs. Yeah. It's about the needs.

00:42:11 Speaker_00
It's the movie that guides me.

00:42:14 Speaker_05
Yeah. We'll be right back. And now back to the show.

00:42:24 Speaker_04
Can we just touch on Sicario for another moment, if we could, because I'm... And just talk about how that came... how that came to be, how that came into you, into your purview, and what sort of led you... I don't know, there's something about that film that I find... I just adore.

00:42:42 Speaker_00
It's so visceral. It's a... I've been very interested by the border between United States and Mexico. I thought it was, like, very meaningful. about our reality.

00:43:04 Speaker_00
I was reading about it, I was looking for a project that will be, for a story, something that will allow me to explore that zone. and came into my hands at one point. I read a lot, but one project came, called Sicario, written by Taylor Sheridan.

00:43:21 Speaker_00
Yeah, the great Taylor Sheridan. Taylor Sheridan is well known now for all the work he's done, but at that time it was one of his first screenplays. And still today, it is by far, by far one of the best screenplays I ever read. Wow.

00:43:34 Speaker_00
The amount of research that Taylor had done to bring that world to life.

00:43:41 Speaker_00
I still, the best compliment I have about Sicario is when I meet border officers or people, policemen, DA officers, people who work at the border who saw Sicario and said, that's the real deal.

00:43:55 Speaker_00
And honestly, it is because of the work that Taylor had done. He had done his homeworks, and when you were reading the screenplay, in front of something that felt authentic. Very, very strong screenplay.

00:44:10 Speaker_00
I remember reading it, and I was like, the screenplay was so intense. I finished the screenplay, I was drained of energy. I was like, oh my God, I love it. I'm so sad that I love this so much.

00:44:21 Speaker_00
I would love to go in the dark, and I was just out of three very dark movies in a row, and I said to go back there. But it was exactly And it's by far the movie that was the fastest process. I read the screenplay, met the studio.

00:44:40 Speaker_00
We got along spontaneously and we did the casting. It went bang. I was behind the camera with Roger Deakins. It was like one of the fastest projects I ever made.

00:44:50 Speaker_00
And still to this day, it's a very nice shoot because there was like just a nice balance between the budget and the subject. And it went quite, it was a nice shoot.

00:45:02 Speaker_04
Yeah, I just want to say, JB, I want to get your point, which is I just want to touch on the great Taylor Sheridan. Again, you can tell, I never read the script, but you could tell the material was so strong.

00:45:13 Speaker_04
It really comes through, you know, not just obviously the visual and the way the film is, is incredible, but also that the material was really strong. I think it was pretty... Ah, he had crazy ideas.

00:45:24 Speaker_00
I mean, like that border shoot, that slow motion car chase at the border. Great ideas, great. Taylor is amazing to write cinema. Very cinematic ideas. Great dialogues, great characters, but very strong sense of cinema.

00:45:43 Speaker_00
I'm still grateful that I had the chance to bring that on screen.

00:45:46 Speaker_02
That shootout you mentioned there at the border is one of the most tense things I've ever seen, still probably ever will see. And there's obviously great planning that goes into something like that, because it's just so intricate.

00:46:03 Speaker_02
But I guess that's my question, how much planning did go into something like that? And just more generally, When you're working, your visual taste, your aesthetic, your sense of composition and whatnot is just unmatched.

00:46:18 Speaker_02
And you're working with your equals in cinematography with people like Roger Dinkins and Greg Fraser.

00:46:28 Speaker_02
When you sit down and you start to shot design and shot list and previs and all that stuff and prep and decide how you're going to actually photograph something, what is the relationship with cinematographers like that that are so accomplished and so, in a good way, opinionated?

00:46:48 Speaker_02
What's the back and forth that goes there? Do you let them know kind of what you're seeing and look for them to kind of plus that? Or is it the other way around?

00:46:58 Speaker_02
Do you let them start to design things and then you let them know whether that fits inside your plan?

00:47:04 Speaker_00
It's a sequence like that battle sequence, for instance, has to be planned months in advance because it's a puzzle. Different parts have been shot in different places. And you have to create a piece of highway

00:47:17 Speaker_00
With all these cars, it has to be very, very well planned according to sun positions. And so it's storyboarded. And of course, working with someone like... Roger Deakins will have a strong input. That's what I love. It's like a collaboration.

00:47:37 Speaker_00
I mean, it's like we will find together the right angle according to the board that I did, but I'm always open if someone has a better idea on set that will make the shot even stronger.

00:47:50 Speaker_00
The thing I love working with Roger is that we both are, when we are looking for a shot, looking for the angle, not multiple angle,

00:47:59 Speaker_00
but we used to work with one camera and just making sure that that search for the best angle possible is something that we really, really loved. On Sicario, yes. Only one? Wow. I will say it's because I'm monomaniac and it's something that Roger has.

00:48:25 Speaker_00
We try once to put a second camera on one and it was a disaster. I mean, you feel it, you know it's not right. It's like there's one place to put the camera and the rest is, we are both On a movie like Doom, sometimes there was additional cameras.

00:48:42 Speaker_00
It's because of the nature of the beast, I didn't have the choice. And Greg Fraser had that flexibility too.

00:48:52 Speaker_07
I have four cameras on me right now.

00:48:55 Speaker_04
And we wish it was zero. And we wish it was zero. Is there a possibility to do zero? No. I want to make sure we get it. I want to say... I was thinking about...

00:49:06 Speaker_04
your films and your filmography, all the things that you've done, and they've... Not only have they been epic, as we've discussed before, and had tremendous scope, but also they've been... You've tackled a lot of... I don't want to say that they're dark, but there is darkness there.

00:49:24 Speaker_04
You challenge people in the sort of the darker realms. Certainly some of your earlier films and your Canadian films that these guys I might not know about, but... Polytechnique and Cindy's.

00:49:34 Speaker_04
I'm thinking about Polytechnique, which is about the Montreal Massacre, which was a terrible incident in Montreal in 1989. I was there, I was in Montreal at that time. You were? Yeah, yeah. And I was living there.

00:49:47 Speaker_04
And I... Those films, or as I mentioned before, Prisoners and Enemy, and then you get into even Sicario. These are heavier... subjects that you're tackling, my question is, when's the rom-com?

00:50:04 Speaker_00
Yeah. Actually, my first feature film was some kind of a rom-com. Was it? Yeah, it's not a good one, but it was. She did lose her life at the end. Actually, he dies. Wow. But it is one of the reasons when I did Sicario, I knew arrival was coming after.

00:50:32 Speaker_00
And I did Sicario knowing that I would make a movie with more light. And because I was like, it's true that I had made a series of film that was pretty violent and dark. And that is, there's a toll to this, there's like a weight.

00:50:49 Speaker_00
and I needed to go toward. And I think that science fiction also helped me to go toward something like looking in the future, something that's more, there's more light there, I feel right now.

00:51:03 Speaker_02
So it's a... Please don't stop making the dark stuff too, because there is an uplift and an excitement watching a filmmaker do things at your level, no matter what the genre, what the mood is.

00:51:18 Speaker_04
JB, would you agree that if somebody says there's a new Denis Villeneuve film coming out, you're like, where do I line up?

00:51:26 Speaker_01
Thank you, gentlemen. You're very generous with me. I'm going to shit talk you when this is over.

00:51:34 Speaker_02
Well, speaking of the earlier stuff- Let's ask Brolin, let's ask Brolin for the real deal.

00:51:40 Speaker_02
Are there any films from the beginning of your career that you would enjoy perhaps reshooting nowadays, knowing what you know now and do, not that you have any regrets, but anything, which, I should phrase it differently, which film from your past do you think would be most fun to redo now that you know things now that you didn't know then?

00:51:58 Speaker_02
Wow, that's a nice question.

00:52:01 Speaker_00
The past movies are like, I'm the father of those movies. It's like, I see movies sometimes as a selfie of yourself. You know when you look at pictures of yourself when you were a teenager? The shame?

00:52:17 Speaker_01
Yeah, it's the hairdo and the clothes. And I have that relationship with my past work. Ooh, ouch.

00:52:26 Speaker_07
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

00:52:27 Speaker_01
That's the truth. I would like to go back to my teenage years? Nope.

00:52:34 Speaker_07
Hey, how do you, how do you, Denis, how do you take care of yourself with these massive months-long shoots?

00:52:40 Speaker_02
Yeah, health-wise.

00:52:42 Speaker_00
Honestly, very simply, I need good hours, sleeping hours. And one thing that I did on the past two movies, which was like, advice from Ridley Scott, because I said, I asked Ridley, how do you do it?

00:52:59 Speaker_00
How do you, how can you make, say when I make a movie, Ridley makes three movies, and he has a very high pacing, and it's just to make sure that your hours, shooting hours are regular, that there's no, and so I, we do what we call French hours, meaning we shoot 10 hours a day.

00:53:18 Speaker_00
But no lunch, no breaks. So it means that the hours are always the same. You always start the day at the same time and end the day no overtime. So it's like it creates a balance in your schedule. I love that. So you're not content.

00:53:32 Speaker_00
You do that on every job. On the past jobs, yes, yes, yes. I didn't do that on Blade Runner and I almost died. How are you on night shoots?

00:53:42 Speaker_02
Night shoots will kill people. I mean, literally, unfortunately.

00:53:46 Speaker_00
Yeah, it's about to create a balance in the schedule. Trying to find a balance so you will protect the crew from being exhausted. Because for the people who don't know about shooting, it's just that

00:53:56 Speaker_00
the nature of the structure of the schedule because of the turnaround of the actors. Sometimes you end up starting your day in the middle of the afternoon and finishing late at night. So it's like being in constant jet lag.

00:54:08 Speaker_00
It's not good for creativity. Yeah, I totally agree.

00:54:10 Speaker_04
It's terrible for creativity.

00:54:12 Speaker_07
It's terrible, terrible, terrible. Knocking on an actor's trailer at three in the morning, we're ready for you.

00:54:17 Speaker_04
Or when they say, they go, hey guys, it's lunch and it's 12 midnight. And you're like, what do you mean lunch? This is not lunch, I'm sorry.

00:54:25 Speaker_01
Or you land on set at 6 p.m. and say, hey, good morning, and say, cut the crap.

00:54:30 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly. Danny, aside from the... Are you a Montreal Canadiens fan?

00:54:36 Speaker_04
Is that what you're going to ask him?

00:54:37 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly. Well, it was part of it. It's like, aside from the good sleep, what's the other thing that you do to really sort of decompress and get away from the incredibly, you know, immersive work directing is? Do you watch something silly on TV?

00:54:54 Speaker_02
Are you a sports fan? Do you watch hockey?

00:54:56 Speaker_00
No, but as I'm shooting, honestly, when I shoot, I make a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week commitment. way to relax. For me, I'm 100% present to the project.

00:55:13 Speaker_00
So there's no, specifically on a movie of them, sci-fi movies, it's every second, not even sci-fi, any movies, there's no, the way I will recover from a movie is to go back home in Canada, in the forest, go with my family, spend time with the kids.

00:55:32 Speaker_00
And that's where I recharge my batteries. But during a shoot, there's no moment where I know that.

00:55:42 Speaker_07
And because of that dedication, you will now have made, it will go down in history, Dune as a franchise, just like you loved Star Wars as a franchise as a kid, you created a franchise that will last forever in the minds of these kids.

00:55:59 Speaker_00
I didn't do it thinking about the word franchise. No, of course not. For me it was I was making two movies. Of course. Because franchise for me is always like something that is linked with commerce or like there's a plan. Okay, three great movies.

00:56:18 Speaker_00
Three great movies that are connected. No, but it's not bad. It's just that I was not saying to myself, okay, I'm starting a franchise. That wasn't your goal. I'm adapting this book in two movies and we'll see what happens after.

00:56:29 Speaker_07
But for the fans, we're so happy you're making three of them.

00:56:32 Speaker_04
But Sean, not only that, but also, does it ever occur to you, not unlike you, looking at your father's newspaper and saying, please take me to this movie.

00:56:43 Speaker_04
It must be kind of cool knowing that there's somewhere, there's a kid who said to his parents, please take me to Dune, please take me to Dune 2, who 10 years from now says, I want to study film, who makes a film with people they know, and makes a big, huge film, and they do it because they saw Dune when they were 7, 8, 9, 10.

00:57:03 Speaker_04
To be inspiring in that way, I think it must be very cool.

00:57:07 Speaker_00
I don't know if it had happened or something, but it would be moving to think that people could be inspired. One thing for sure is that I made those movies. We were talking about darkness and violence earlier.

00:57:23 Speaker_00
The movies were made for PG-13 instead of rated R. It was the first time after, apart from Arrival, all my other movies are for adults. This one, I insisted.

00:57:35 Speaker_00
I agreed with the studio also to make it PG-13 because I wanted the movie to be accessible to a younger audience that would have the same age as when I read the book. So I thought it was inspiring for me.

00:57:52 Speaker_07
And adults like me who have the brains of a 13-year-old.

00:57:57 Speaker_00
But for me, I like the idea that those movies are taking themselves seriously, meaning that they are sci-fi that doesn't apologize to be sci-fi or I love sci-fi.

00:58:11 Speaker_00
I remember when I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was 13 years old, the impact of that movie on me at 12 years old. I thought the darkness of it, I felt that someone was talking to me as I was trusting me as a kid.

00:58:28 Speaker_07
And when Darth Vader said, I am your father, I was like, what would that feel like?

00:58:32 Speaker_02
Inside joke. Well, Denny, you seem as kind as you are talented. I just can't thank you enough for talking to us at three ding-dongs for an hour. It was a pleasure to chat with you this morning.

00:58:47 Speaker_02
Thank you very much for the invitation and thank you for your generosity as well. That means the world to me. Well, thank you, sir. Congratulations on all your great work. Please keep it coming. Take care. See you later. Good luck, Sean.

00:58:59 Speaker_02
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Bye. Well, you got blessed by the great Denis Villeneuve, Sean. I think your prospects look good.

00:59:08 Speaker_04
He just said, basically, like, hope you live.

00:59:11 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:59:12 Speaker_04
From the great Denis Villeneuve.

00:59:14 Speaker_04
He's, yeah, I mean... Hey, if you're out there and you're not familiar, and again, I know that we do, like, we compliment our guests a lot because we have people on that we like and we respect and we get shit for it sometimes. You guys just...

00:59:30 Speaker_04
All you do is compliment. Well, we like to compliment people who are really good at what they do.

00:59:34 Speaker_04
And if you're not familiar who Denis Villeneuve is, and you're not familiar with his films for some reason, I really, this is true, I urge you to go and watch some of his films. All of his films. His Canadian films that he made and his current.

00:59:49 Speaker_04
He's just an incredible, I mean, JB is a director, right?

00:59:52 Speaker_02
Just stunning, yeah. He's not, there aren't many in his league. I think it's probably about... It ain't deeper than 10, and it's probably closer to 5.

01:00:01 Speaker_04
No, and again, he made Brolin look good. You know what I mean? Oh, it's very hard to do. I mean, think about that shows what a filmmaker he is. Yeah, I think how many cameras that takes. Just off the, you know? Yeah.

01:00:11 Speaker_07
But he's really cool. He's, uh... So cool. Yeah, and you can tell he's in charge, which I love. Canadians are cool, right?

01:00:19 Speaker_02
Yeah, the accent I think he needs to work on a little bit. He's from Des Moines. Um, but I think...

01:00:25 Speaker_07
No, he's not from Des Moines.

01:00:27 Speaker_04
No. No, dummy. God. He's from, I think he's from Montreal, yeah? Quebec.

01:00:36 Speaker_02
Montreal is in Quebec, but... He's not related to Jacques Villeneuve or Gilles Villeneuve, right? I don't know who those people are. Those are Formula One drivers.

01:00:49 Speaker_07
Oh, excellent. Wonderful.

01:00:50 Speaker_02
They were.

01:00:51 Speaker_07
You know what? Here he comes.

01:00:55 Speaker_02
What's up, Sean?

01:00:55 Speaker_07
I love that he brought Close Encounters up. Oh, yeah?

01:00:58 Speaker_04
Why's that?

01:00:59 Speaker_07
Well, because when... I remember that one moment when... You all saw the movie, yeah?

01:01:03 Speaker_04
This is gonna be so lazy. Honestly, this is gonna be so freaking lazy.

01:01:08 Speaker_07
When the little kid is standing there, waving to the aliens as they're leaving, he actually says out loud... What does he say?

01:01:29 Speaker_02
Nice, on yard.

01:01:31 Speaker_06
Nice, buddy. Smart. Plus.

01:01:38 Speaker_04
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