Eric Roth

Eric Roth is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter best known for adapting Forrest Gump, for which he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. He has received additional Academy Award nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star Is Born, and Dune: Part One, and is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after writers. Roth co-wrote Killers of the Flower Moon with Martin Scorsese. He continues to work in films as both writer and executive producer. His latest project, the 2025 film The President’s Cake, is now playing in theaters. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  And now, I don't want to make this whole thing about death. But I just the thoughts of like, you know, which I'll repeat, but that comet my mother made as she was dying, who's a lifetime atheist and communist and didn't believe in anything past this. And I asked her, "Are you afraid?" when she was kind of at the end. And she said she was curious. And I thought, "Well, that was a good place to start with something." And then you sent me that beautiful poem about that when we're not watching ourselves, maybe somebody else is watching us as we move through something else, you know? And I loved your book, by the way. I have it right behind me here. It'll stay here now forever. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you liked it.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  It was beautifully architected. And then, you know, in all ways, in all ways. Are all stories good for the same reason? I think they might be, because I think you get to unleash the use of words into ideas, trying to put, as a writer, trying to put the best word in front of the other. Some people are way better at it than others, you know? Just to relate to well-known artists, writer named Dennis Johnson, who I think was one of the great American writers, wrote a short story called "Jesus' Son," that is pretty well-recognized as one of the great short stories. And then more recently, I've been

• 1:48Speaker 01

  friendly with George Saunders, who's a wonderful combination of words and science. You know, I tried to sort of compete with them in emails. It's like a joke. It's like talking to a poet. But I think it's how they've learned, as the great writers have, or great artists, same thing with painting or something, being able to put one brush stroke in front of another to, you know, to communicate an idea. So... In that sense, I think all storytelling is the same. And that's just how good you're able to do it. But I think it's a cliche, probably, but probably true that everybody does have a story to tell. It's like, I always believe there's somebody for everybody, same kind of thing.

• 2:28Rick Rubin?

  Do stories need a structure and do they need the same structure?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I would say neither is true. I think that's up to the artist, however they're best communicate. I mean, you know that better than anybody with music, that there's somebody who might just a sound and that sound will be everlasting and someone else will do it a different way. I'm pretty traditional in my structure, very Shakespearean, you know? Not that I'm Shakespeare, but even though I think Shakespeare said the two greatest lines in the English language, exit ghost, you can think about that for a while. But yeah, I think you need that. It was scaring me with AI a little bit. It's now learned to, it learns dramatic function of Shakespeare.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  So he knows about catharsis and act structure and it. And that will then use that to obviously, you know, increase its ability to tell stories. But I think people can tell stories any way they can. I think you just do what you think is comfortable. I think one thing I've learned, and I think I learned this oddly a little bit from Bob Dylan, just by osmosis, that anything's culturally appropriate in a sense that you can use anybody else's work to, if it encourages you, it creates for you something that you hadn't thought about.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  And then it becomes a wide kind of mass of what bubbles over in you, something maybe beautiful or corny, you know? Or that, I remember I was writing something and there was an Emmy Lou Harris duet with, like, I think Lefty Frizzell or somebody, you know? And it was like, it was always very moving to me and it always kind of just, it just stuck with me. But it helped me to then use that to appropriate that to, not the particular song, but that sound, whatever that felt like, to be able to try to articulate that. So I think there's, you know, haikus and there's, I wrote a movie a long time ago for, and I haven't told this story, so not that much, for Kurosawa.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And he had asked me to help make an Anglo character in his movie called Rhapsody in August. And we had, we talked through a translator, but he'd sent me the script, which was translated. And it was like a haiku. I mean, it was just so beautiful, just an ant on an anthill. And however he was describing things, it was really, really quite lovely. And then I realized I wrote in this kind of Jewish, intellectual, psychiatric, kind of prosy, you know, and it was so, so different from what the beautiful way he was explaining things. And, and you know, any artist will do things differently than another. And, but I think they all kind of have to borrow from each other and also have to learn

• 5:22Speaker 01

  through some experience, you know, so you don't get to be Kandinsky or something without spending the time, you know, learning to be Kandinsky. And you don't get to be Rick Rubin without learning how to be you.

• 5:34Rick Rubin?

  On the psychological note, have you ever done therapy?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I have some, not much. I had done it individually for a while in like, like late 60s, early 70s. I found myself kind of straying with my married life, let's put it that way. And I'd done a lot of lucogenics, all kinds, you know, with privately and also with like people like Jerry Garcia and stuff. I mean, in other words, lots, lots, lots of, you know, acid tests and everything else. And so, yeah, I had one psychiatrist I found was very enlightening, let's put it that way. And my problem is I get too hung up on kind of the style of the... Of the psychiatrist, but they've been incredibly helpful.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Then I became psychologist, obviously, when they started just prescribing drugs. She was pretty amazing. Yes, she was not, she wasn't intrusive at all. Very sensitive and I thought she led us in great areas. Yeah, so that's psychiatry to me. How did you connect with a police psychologist? Somebody made a recommendation, just her being really strong. And yeah, I mean, she was really unobtrusive and let us kind of fight it out, you know, where we had to and love it out where we could. And it was important. Yeah. She was a great facilitator that way.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Have you done much psychiatry at all? Done a lot of therapy, different kinds. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I think it's important. Yeah, been helpful. Yeah, I think that's part of what, when I sort of introduce myself to you, that I want to go back to that in some form or fashion, whether it's with a orthodox rabbi or, you know, a shaman, you know? What motivated you to reach out in the first place? Oh, well, oh, no, this is why, because I've been having these kind of incredible, I call them the porch sessions, you know? These guy during, I don't know why, right before, I guess more during the pandemic, people just started coming over, want to sit on the porch and talk. And we could talk six feet away.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And I don't know, I think it's more they were like old man Roth, you know? What does he have to say? And all these people just started showing up, you know? It's like sometimes announced, sometimes not announced. And, and they've always been, I'm sorry I didn't tape them, even though I understand since we have a ring camera, they're all on there. And I was, I was talking to Jed Apatow, who we both know together, and a couple of other people too, who love you. James Gray and a few other people and, and really kind people. And I was saying, I've just been enjoying this. enlightening conversation about things that I wouldn't necessarily normally think

• 8:24Speaker 01

  about, you know, and how does it affect my work and my children and everything. And everybody said Rick Rubin. And so it was pretty easy, you know. And then I thought, I figured when I text you, you would just never text back. And I thought that was cool too, you know, that'd be fine. But you've been very generous with your time. Tell me about the first time you took a hallucinogenic drug. Um, wow, first time. I was with a group of people in Haydas Berry, truthfully, which sounds kind of corny. And someone said, try this. And I'm always willing to try, you know. And I've had some pretty scary things, but not, I mean, where I never minded like

• 9:07Speaker 01

  the floor opening up, you know, or all of a sudden I was, you know, sitting in a cloud or I think I had once a experience of feeling like I was having an affair with Time Magazine, which was pretty interesting. You know, I don't know what that was all about. But I never felt that I was going to become psychotic, you know. But I could see how it could become psychotic for somebody who has really tremendous fear, you know, and unresolved things. And but I think, you know, from just playing with marijuana and stuff, you know, and having lovely times through the whatever, you know, eroticism of it, or just the taste of a brownie or some nonsense, you know. But that, I always felt it was expansive to

• 9:50Speaker 01

  my mind. I was never, I never liked cocaine, though. I just don't like that feeling. I mean, I guess I'm more toward, I'm not advocating this anyway, but heroin or something, you know, more mescaline than, or, you know. But, I mean, I think drugs have their purpose, you know. And I guess it's, I've always been interested in trying to find out what's the limits of what I'm trying to think about, you know, and where all this comes from. I mean, to me, the greatest story, what I said to Bob Dylan, with the Bob Dylan thing, was that in his book called Chronicles, he talks about, he was at the time with Daniel Lenoir, who I'm sure you knew or know quite well. I think he's gone now. But he was struggling

• 10:32Speaker 01

  creatively, Bob Dylan, and he took a trip out to, like, the bayou, because they were in, I think, working in New Orleans or something, and they went out to Lafayette. He said he'd walked into, in his book, he said he'd walked into a gift shop. He sort of found the secret to everything. It was a card that said, "World's Greatest Grandpa." And so that somehow put together whatever he was struggling with, you know? And I thought, yeah, sometimes it's the most simple thing, yeah.

• 10:59Rick Rubin?

  Do you feel like you're the same person now as you were before you took any hallucinogens?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. I think the same person's in there, but I think it's been re-informed in a way, you know? That at least it opened up the possibilities of things. But I don't want to emphasize this because my life hasn't been, you know, particularly about that. I mean, I think that's a nice afterthought in a sense. I mean, I'm way more interested in, for me, for the creative process is really important. And these things I mentioned earlier about what am I, what sources am I taking this from? What I do as a screenwriter is kind of a bastardized form of, it's more of a craft than an art. You can be artful at it.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  But it's not a novel. You know, to fill a page up, a lot of ellipses and half thoughts, but strong visuals, you know? And, but it's a form of writing, you know? And it's like, I've been lucky enough to, people have appreciated, I think, some of the things I had to impart, you know? One of my proudest was more recently with the actor Josh Brolin. I had written a play of High Noon, we were considering, that he was considering. And he was very close and wrote a play of High Noon because they had never had a drama on Broadway, a Western drama on Broadway. And I was told that Josh was telling people about, he decided not to do it,

• 12:33Speaker 01

  but that his philosophy at the time, at least more recently, was a Scott Fitzgerald story. More of an essay to an extent about life and death and this and that. And he was telling people about, it turned out I had written it. It was from when I did Benjamin Button and I had written a speech toward the end of it. And it was actually a speech that... Nora Ephron asked me, who was planning her funeral, asked me if she could use it. But it's funny how they attributed it to Scott Fitzgerald, who I couldn't hold a candle to. But in this one instance, it's pretty, it's pretty powerful, I think, about just, about life and about how, you know, there's no rules or anything, you know, as long as you're not hurting

• 13:16Speaker 01

  anybody else and you can, and if you're not, if you're not succeeding at what you want to, you can just stop and change it, you know. It's easier said than done, obviously, but at least you can, if you had the courage to go and try something else. Yeah, the idea of a western on Broadway is, it's a really cool idea. I like that. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a pretty powerful play that I, the play itself is very powerful. It's about the blacklist, really, and, and the movie was, and Gary Cooper and all, and sort of American iconography of the whole thing. And it's about guns and, you know, but I think I, I made it, hopefully, a contemporary way. I mean, you'd appreciate this, since you're, this is your métier, anyway, is trying to

• 13:59Speaker 01

  put some contemporary music in it so that it feels, and the songs are all apt. I mean, there's a Ry Cooder song, Across the Borderline, and then somebody you know quite well, and I actually knew earlier than you, Johnny Cash's song, which was from Nick Lowe, The Beast in Me, which he used on The Sopranos. Yeah, when I was younger, I was asked by the cabaret department at William Morris, I was a client of William Morris, and I was pretty young, to travel with a bunch of artists, and they were all just kind of basically jerking off, wanting these little video ideas, you know. There was no MTV then or anything. And so I rode on the buses with Johnny, with the Cash family, and that was really interesting.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  And then Van Morrison was singing with his back to the audience at that point. And then, then of course, great Jerry Garcia, you know, so. How much do your experiences work their way into your work? Well, I think they do, but I try to make it, what, I think it's more about what the feeling is than the experience itself necessarily. I mean, the best kind of writing, which I still don't think I've mastered in any way, is subtextual writing, which is probably true about music too, or certainly about filmmakers. I know, I think Marty Scorsese, a great subtextual filmmaker, because he, even in like Taxi Driver, all of a sudden, there'd be some graffiti on a wall that he decided to show you, but

• 15:27Speaker 01

  the graffiti didn't say anything of any value. It was just a sense, this is an art and this is part of the city, you know. So he expressed a lot that way, but, you know, the worst kind of writing is kind of Ernie the Explainer, you know, it's like Good Morning, Mr. Water Commissioner, that kind of writing. So you want to try to find a way to have someone articulate what their most intimate concerns are through some other story about something, you know, if you're creating it, fine, or if it's a true story, it comes from life, and that says the same thing without having to do this kind of thing with big headlines. It's a hard, it's a hard thing to do. I think the, I think the great musicians do it. I mean,

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I think they do it through the lyrics are just spectacular, you know, where they, they don't necessarily talk about what they're talking about, but you know what they're talking about.

• 16:25Speaker 02

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• 17:01Speaker 02

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• 17:46Speaker 02

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• 18:38Rick Rubin?

  When you're adapting a story, how do you decide what's important enough to keep and what you can let go of?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  That's a great question because, you know, every book that was being given to me, I sit and I read it, right? And I start underlining what I think, this could be dramatically interesting, this. And all of a sudden, the whole book literally is underlined. So now, now what do I do, you know? But I think it also gives you a sense of what you're very smart about, as to what you're not going to use. Because you can start coalescing things into where one dramatic moment takes care of four or five. Now, I always warn the author that it might not seem Akin to what you wrote, but it will be. In other words, so I hope, you know, hope it will make it better if that's possible. Or at least it's just a different form.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Because I guess my calling is I'm a dramatist, I guess, right? Hopefully some humor along the way. But that if I'm able to somehow express the human condition in an honest way, and somebody could take something from it, just even as entertainment, something as farcical as Forrest Gump or something, you know? Which was silly at its heart, but there's something was constant about it. And then there are, I think, some more sophisticated movies like The Insider that I did and a few others that I think articulated things that were important, you know, society.

• 20:05Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story of The Insider.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  The Insider was a guy who wanted to basically get his pension. That's all it was. He was going to retire. His wife was a daughter of a tobacco farmer. He was a very complicated man because he was scientist, legitimate scientist, had a PhD in something in chemistry or something. But you wonder what he was thinking. He was working for the tobacco company. So he was sort of advocating, you know, the poison that they were putting out there. And he knew all about it, knew what was wrong. He could tell you in a second about the blood-brain barrier. And I happened to smoke at the time, so I was aware of it. I couldn't talk to him, though, because he was under a kind of a hold from the government. He wasn't allowed to talk.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  So we had to create kind of a guy in whole cloth. I mean, who was this man? But the first thing I remember saying, what kind of guy is a tobacco scientist? And he didn't want really very much. He just wanted to retire and wanted his pension wasn't even very much. But when they said, we're not going to give you your pension, he said, well, I'm going to start talking about what's wrong with this industry, you know? And he was pretty brave. He was a pretty brave guy. He was a very prickly guy, but I finally did get to meet him. Anyway, that was a story and it dovetailed with 60 Minutes, the television show. They did a report on him and then they squelched it because tobacco companies didn't want

• 21:32Speaker 01

  it, but also the government was kind of involved and it became very complicated with the personalities. Mike Wallace, the interviewer, the great journalist, because I think he was a great journalist, he was very, he was unafraid. And so they tried to not run the story and which made the producer nuts and said, what about the integrity of CBS? So it became a lot about honorability, you know, and I remember Mike Wallace calling me, journalist, there was a man named Lowell Bergman, whose story it was, he was a producer of the thing, he was very brave and he was a great reporter and he keeps yelling at

• 22:16Speaker 01

  me, Mike Wallace, well, what makes Lowell Bergman the moral fucking arbiter and this and that, so I just wrote it down. So it's in the movie.

• 22:25Rick Rubin?

  Wow, that's great.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I couldn't have said it, couldn't have said it any better.

• 22:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, how often does that happen where real life works its way into the story?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  If you have real life people and this happened in this Killers of the Flower Moon, where we imagined various things that we were, we wanted the Osage to say, you know, and then there was no way I could say it as well as, or Marty or anybody else could say as well as the real people. I mean, we can give them, we could give them sort of the ideas we want maybe them to express and then they turned it into what was affecting them as human beings and their life stories, you know, so I could have never written that, I'm a kid from Brooklyn, you know, I have no clue. The only other instance that comes right off the top of my head, it would be on Star is Born, I said to Lady Gaga, let's just sit down here and talk and I'll write dialogue

• 23:19Speaker 01

  for you from what you're telling me, you know, so if you see, and Bradley did the same thing, Cooper, and like the scene in the parking lot where they're just sitting for bullshitting, well, most of that's written. But it made her comfortable, you know, so that when the real person shows up, they have, you know, either limitations or abilities that you don't even know. And she's a, she's an interesting human being. The thing that was so striking about her, we were doing a read through and the songs were in there, there was no need for anybody to sing them. Bradley Cooper would just sort of talk them through, but she started singing and God showed up, you know, I'm sure you know that. She has something.

• 24:00Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that you can't, so you have to work with, I think, who the person is. I mean, old story, Russell Crowe was not, he didn't understand certain thing about his character in The Insider, so Michael Mann had me fly down to Louisville. He said he won't come out of his trailer, all that nonsense. And so I went in there and did Rick Rubin with him and said, is there a way where you can find a happy medium here? And I explained the scene again to him and he said, I'll try it, you know, eventually. And Michael, the director, was just trying to avoid having a continuing fight with him, you know, which wouldn't have been very productive.

• 24:35Rick Rubin?

  Let's use that case as an example. When there's a logjam like that, what's really going on? What's it really about?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  I think he had fear. He was afraid, you know, in other words. And if, if an actor feels he doesn't understand it, whether he's right or wrong, I mean, you need to find a way to articulate to them what you intended. And that doesn't mean you end up with the exact same thing. For The Insider, again, I got a call one morning from Al Pacino saying, I had written a, like a page and a half monologue and Al said, I could do this with one look. And I said, let me ask Michael, I have no problem with it. And so they, Michael said, let's shoot it both ways and they left the look in. All the words I wrote were out the window, you know, because he could do it without, you know, and I said, that's fine.

• 25:24Rick Rubin?

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

• 25:36Speaker 01

  No, except for, I think, after a while, you get the experience of that. Certainly less is more if you can, you know, even though I think there's some great monologues. And then as some directors just go like this, you know, cut. We'll take it out because I had a thing recently on, I think, a pretty particularly beautiful movie that I just finished called Here. We'll see if it works. It might be a disaster. It's all, it's all set in one room over a hundred years in a house and the camera's locked off, so there's no coverage. It's just one angle. But the stories are beautiful of the people that live there and so you don't know what to anticipate, you know, but I know, I feel the storytelling is very solid.

• 26:18Rick Rubin?

  How did that come about?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Bob Zemeckis, the director, Forrest Gump and I have a nice relationship over the years and I've done some other work for him and he called me, he felt, it's a graphic novel called Here and the, and the artist drew everything from this point of view. Everything was one way through a window. Well, not through a window, but you see a window in the back. So we, he said, you have the right melancholy for it. So maybe I do. I don't know, but I also have a sense of my mortality, which is what it's about eventually, you know, so I could write that. And then he put in some, he's very humorous and kind of farcical and lovely and, but it's about everything because dinosaurs walked through because anything that happened in

• 27:04Speaker 01

  that property, marsh birds, and it's quite beautiful. We'll see, maybe it won't work. I think the tone is right. I started crying like a baby in the first five minutes, but I think it was because of Rachel Portman music was on it. It was really beautiful. So I don't know, but we'll see.

• 27:20Rick Rubin?

  How do most projects originate? Does it usually start with you getting a call from a director or what are the different ways that a project will happen?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I think there's every one you could imagine, you know, like we did one recently I did with my son called Walt Grace. It's from a John Mayer song, an old John Mayer. I don't know if you know the song, John loves it and.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  I didn't know John, but my son asked me, you think this is a good idea for a movie? I said, it's great. It's about a guy who is kind of trapped in life, doesn't have a great relationship with his wife. He has one kid that does love him, one kid doesn't, or doesn't have a good relationship with him. And he has kind of a Groundhog Day life. He designs wings for like Lockheed. It's supposed to be set in 1967. And he decides to build a submarine in the basement, which I don't know how he's gonna get it out of there. But in ours, it's like an outbuilding, a garage. And sure enough, he takes off in a homemade submarine where he's got, you know, propellers are made of fans and from the ceiling, he's gone to the junkyard. And it's spectacular. So there's a, there's

• 28:27Speaker 01

  also a feeling of yellow submarine with it, I think. But it's quite lovely, I think. We have some people who seem to want to do it, actually, now. So we'll see. And John Mayer will do the music, I guess. But so that's one way it came, things come. Others are just books sent to me, you know, would I be interested? And it's really about the subject. And then directors, Dan Eagle and you've asked me to rewrite Arrival, which I did. And then, and then he asked me to do Dune, you know, so we had a relationship. And Dune was a little complicated for me because it wasn't my favorite book ever written. But it was an interesting assignment as to how to make this the best. And I tried, you know? It's one that's been attempted many times over the years. Yeah. As a fraud history.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's tricky. I think he did a good job. I think it's, my problem with it was, I'm being a little too honest, probably, but that there's a character named Duncan Idaho in it. Now, this isn't a translation. I mean, we're supposed to be millions and millions. I said, where does this name come from? You know, I understand it's a translation of whatever you want, Jamo Jackass. But it's not. So I always, but I think it's a prodigious book because he invented a glossary and a geography and everything else. And It was a surprise. I mean, I think Star is Born was the most important movie in the more recent times, not because it's a great movie, I think it is a good movie. And certainly, I love the fact it put me more in touch with the young people, because

• 29:57Speaker 01

  young people really seem to enjoy it, even though it's an old story. But it made me feel vital, you know? And so I was in my seventies, so I said, hmm, you can still write that, no? That, I think, gave me a, you know, I'm not saying I was done, but it did so well, and then all of a sudden they figure I know something still, you know, which is ridiculous.

• 30:17Rick Rubin?

  Is it different writing for a theatrical release versus something that's going to be watched on a streaming service?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Well, that's a great question, because I have tremendous guilt about, I began House of Cards. So, Fincher, who's my best friend, I guess, in the world, one of the more loyal people you would ever meet, and I hope you have a time to meet him, he decided to do it with me. And I had actually been aware of it from earlier, when we had seen the English version, that Pacino and I and Michael Mann were gonna make it as a movie, because it's just Richard the Third. It's like, you know, you think these guys are so tough, watch me go in this room and fuck 'em. And then he'd go in the room and fuck 'em.

• 31:00Rick Rubin?

  How's the English version? I've never seen it.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  It's the same thing, basically. It's just that the guy is not, he never wants to go past the station in life he is, which is sort of the whip of the party. In other words, and he's gonna just manipulate everybody, you know? It's succession in that way, I guess, or the succession is that, you know? But it caught on. I wanted to sell it to HBO, figuring we'd just get water cooler conversation like The Sopranos or something, but people started bitching it, you know? And all of a sudden, these eyeballs became available and... I'm not happy about particularly the results, you know. I still fortunately get to write movies that are, that doesn't mean they don't go right on streaming, but they start at least with the idea.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  But the only one, I think, if there hadn't been a pandemic, I think Dune would have played for quite a while. But with the pandemic, you know, people just sat and watched at home.

• 31:56Rick Rubin?

  Is there any benefit in that idea of binge watching or episodes that you can tell a story over six hours, 10 hours, season after season, as opposed to having to get it into a two-hour film?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I've just been presented with that, and I'm not sure the answer. It's the same Dennis Johnson. I thought, how come they haven't done a movie about the guys who've come home from war, right? Because every other era has done, The Best Years of Our Lives, a movie called The Men that Marlon Brando was in, Coming Home, of course, famous one about Vietnam. So they haven't done that for this war, like these wars, the Afghanistan-Iraq stuff, you know, and the guys are obviously in bad shape. So I was gonna write that, and Spielberg came to me with something else, and I started conflict. And the head of the studio said, why don't you just sell it to HBO? So I did. And he said, they said, who do you want to write it? I said, Dennis Johnson. They didn't know who even was. And I said, I'm getting him.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  And he wrote five of the most amazing scripts, called Unarmed. Everybody in it's an amputee or a burn victim. And the only triumph of it is one guy to walk across the street to leave. And it is so spectacular. And it's all written, as I say, in a subtextual way. And we're close now. Catherine Bigelow might do it. But it's important, I think, and we get to use all, we would have all disabled actors, disabled veterans, and disabled civilians. And I think it'd be pretty incredible. I mean, years ago, I was gonna do Cuckoo's Nest, and my agent said, they'll never make it. Jack Nicholson was not involved.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And so, and I was friends with Michael Douglas, really good friends. And so I went off to do a movie called The Onion Field. But then they got Jack Nicholson, and I went, oh my God, I fucked a dog here, man. But I did come back and do rewriting, which was nice. But that has the same tenor of this, the black humor and anger, you know? So I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this. We'll see, you know?

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• 35:34Rick Rubin?

  From the time you finish a script and you're happy with it, how different might the movie be than what you're visualizing when you're writing?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  They're all very... I mean, I think sometimes events take over. I'd say the movie is different from what the original was with Killers of Flower Moon. I think it might be a more important movie. I had leaned into the Western nature of it, and then Leonardo decided he didn't want to play the hero, and he was right, because he was worried that I'm going to be the Great White Hope here, you know, saving the Native Americans, and that's what the book was, and this happens to be fact. But, uh, so we went away from that, and Marty did his work and saw the movie. He always was, uh, we always tried together to get the culpability of everybody, that people would just walk over dead bodies, you know? In other words, what is that all about? I mean, there's even a great trailer about saying, "Who is the wolf?"

• 36:28Speaker 01

  You know, and that's the metaphor, right? You can spot the wolf, don't worry. And I think they leaned into it the right way and so that the movie doesn't have that sense of having to do what's sort of the white guy saving everybody. But it's not done in a kind of, I don't want to put her down, Rachel Maddow, but it's just not done with headlines, you know? It's done with great taste, I think. I think Marty's, he's an extraordinary artist. And I would work with him and we're going to work again together. I'll work to the end of time with him, you know? But he's not always faithful to what you did, so you have to have a pretty strong ego, you know?

• 37:09Rick Rubin?

  Well, that's what I wanted to ask about, about not being faithful. Are you ever surprised by the direction it takes? And do you ever come around to think, oh, this is actually better than what I had originally envisioned?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. And I also think things have gone where they haven't gone as well as they could have.

• 37:26Rick Rubin?

  For sure.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I did a movie called Lucky You that I never understood. I found out why later on that the director had Alzheimer's, but I never understood why he wanted to do it. I figured, oh, he's going to come in and do something. It's about a love story set in Las Vegas with a poker player and Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana. And I thought it was pretty good. And I actually took it from, there was a movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Warren Beatty called The Only Game in Town. And that was about her playing basically a hooker, even though they don't call it, they didn't call it that then. And he's just a degenerate gambler. And the end of the movie is quite beautiful, where he's sitting on the curb and water's running down the curb and you figure he's just dead broke, man.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  He's got nothing left. And she comes, sits beside him and he sort of says, that's the way it goes, you know? If you're going to be a gambler and... He starts taking out hundred dollars bills and making them into little boats down the river, right? So I guess it worked out. But that was supposed to be the feeling of it, you know? What is luck and all that? And it didn't work. It was just no good. So I don't know. I guess I was disappointed, but I think you have to rely on the director's gonna realize something, you know? You have to hope they have something. I mean, I have a sort of philosophy that, and I've worked with everybody, that you have to take a third way.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  You know, there's your way, there's a director's way, and the director's always gonna win. One of the stories I tell occasionally is I did a movie called, this was The Onion Field, actually, and I wrote a, I thought a great scene and the director kept saying, it's not working. And I said, yeah, it's really great. You're, just shoot it. He said, you know what? I'm gonna go the other way. I'm gonna leave in the script and not shoot it. And that was the end of that conversation. It wasn't very kind and I don't think it was very brave of him, but that's the way it goes, you know? So you gotta figure out a way to be part of what they need to articulate what their vision is, you know? And they're the boss. And when it says a film, I don't think it's bullshit. I think it's their film, you know? It's like a musician and it doesn't go any other way. I think, you know, did a movie called Mank, which was about the guy fighting for credit

• 39:41Speaker 01

  with Orson Welles, you know, on Citizen Kane. And he set the ball, no question, he set the boat off with the right architecture and the right journey, but director's gotta take it there, you know? And if you don't get there and get to the right place, it's not worth seeing.

• 39:55Rick Rubin?

  Do you do a lot of research for the projects?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Tremendous amount. I like every, God is in the details, you know that? Yeah, I do. But everything, I think, everything I read at that point is all grist for the mill, you know? And that's why I'm back to, at seventy-eight particularly, what are the things they're gonna define?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  So I'm doing a thing called rendezvous with Rama, which is an old Arthur Clarke book that they've made two, it's not that they made two thousand and one, I had it, it was written around the same time, same philosophy. And I have an astronaut that's been helping me and he said when he went out of the spacecraft, he just laid back like he was in a bath and looked up at the stars, you know? And so I said, okay. So if I can get that feeling, because I think- The feeling this particular piece really dovetails to the things I've been thinking about, that the thing that comes and interrupts these people's world doesn't have to have a reason. It might just be God.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And some of the people who are like, kind of religious, believe in this 2130 that Jesus showed up, sent by God from the planets. And he just showed up in, you know, Palestine, or Israel, wherever you'd like, and did what he did, and then they crucified him and went back up to the planets, you know? And that he's still doing that, you know? So, everybody adapts, you know, to whatever their ear is. But I think this overriding sense, and I don't think you can escape it, you get a particular age. Doesn't mean you have to dwell on it, or it immobilizes you, but I think it spans your horizons, you know? And that's a good way to say it, I guess.

• 41:40Rick Rubin?

  When you're writing, let's say, a monologue for a character, how important is the content of what they're saying versus, "This is a great line"?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I mean, you would like to be, say, presidentially, that you just want to put the... No, no, I know, but I'm sure your ego comes in.

• 41:58Rick Rubin?

  There's no right answer. I mean, there's only your answer.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I think there might... I get you, but, I mean, but I think it's kind of narcissistic to only dwell on what you think will last, you know? Maybe the whole speech will last and it's more important that way, but I don't know if I really think about it either way. I mean, I think, I try to write with human, is this what I do? Someone called me a sappy dog heart. I try to write that will be remembered. I like the fact that I've built a legacy of things that I think I chose pretty well, you know? Not always, we've had some monster failures, but I think pretty well, and I still think I continue to choose pretty well. And, I mean, I have other issues, so it gets more complicated, so...

• 42:44Speaker 01

  My mother was very tough on giving love. And so I always felt I needed some validation, right? And I still do in my wife's system. He's 80 years old. You feel like you need validation? You need like an Oscar nominee or something? I said, I don't want to. But it's like, I want to go call my mom and say, look at my report card. You know what I'm saying? So there's your psychiatry again. It's like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know if I'm getting over it or not. I don't know. I'd like to.

• 43:10Rick Rubin?

  That's an interesting thing, though. When our parents pass away, who do you call? You know, when you get good news, you don't have that, that feeling anymore.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  No, no, you don't have that thing. You could just share, you know? You really love sharing, you know? Yeah, I think that's true. I guess, I think I do with my wife, maybe, you know? She's a, she's a doctor and she's pretty supportive. But she doesn't quite get this world I'm in, you know? She, it's just different, you know? She, she relies strictly on science. Whatever you say has got to be accurate. You know what I'm saying? You can't just make it up. I remember Fincher being angry at me because in Benjamin Button, I had some silly speech about, with Brad Pitt in the middle of the night at the hotel. I gave her some bullshit about how, how you have to steep tea and this and that, you know?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  And David said, this is such nonsense, you know? And he left it in.

• 44:06Rick Rubin?

  Have you ever had a mystical experience?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I think one. It ended up pleasant. It wasn't pleasant. I had had cancer a couple of times in my life. I've been very sick a lot. But I had cancer twice. And the first time I was just 32. And it was directly from my grandfather, colon cancer. And in those days, they just bombarded you. I mean, they just didn't really quite know, you know? And I remember laying in bed and, and I'm not religious and I'm certainly not Catholic. And an angel showed up and sort of form of a nun kind of. And, and she says, time to go. And I said, I don't really want to go yet. And I love my wife and I love my kids. And can we just forestall this, you know? And she thought about it and said, okay.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  So, I don't know, that was my wish fulfillment, you know, but it felt real. It felt real.

• 44:58Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I mean, the other thing, the other side of it, the bad side of it is when I, I think when I get afraid, or I don't want to see certain things, I imagine rats are going around. I see a rat run across the ceiling or something, you know, something weird like that. That's about as mystical, I haven't got, I think I feel more mystical when I'm writing, that I can feel what imbues me, you know, what makes me soar, and at least makes me feel like I'm soaring. And I don't know, I wish I could say I did mystical, I'm not sure, I completely believe in magic. So I wish I did. So I mean, I think that's, I'd like to learn how to, honestly.

• 45:39Rick Rubin?

  When you've had that feeling of soaring while you're writing, is it just that the lines are coming? It's like, oh, this is good, this is good, this is good. Describe it.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  It feels like you've, I love to go swimming in a lake in the summer, where it's just cold and feels like you're coming alive, you know, and that's what it feels like. And you don't have to judge it, and you don't even know, because it's so corny, the way I do it. I say out loud the dialogue and the worst acting known to man, the voices never change, you know, any of that. And yet, you feel like, wait a minute, you're not Mozart, this isn't coming right to you. You only have to erase a fucking note, you know, but you do feel like you're imbued with something. I don't know what it is, and I guess that's a creative spirit that you, and if it works, it's great. Even if it doesn't work, if you can try it out, why not, you know?

• 46:29Rick Rubin?

  Do you always write dialogue out loud?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Pretty much. I have the, I say just characters, it's so bad, it's embarrassing.

• 46:36Rick Rubin?

  So you'll basically act it out for yourself?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  It's less acting, I sort of almost whisper it, you know, like, to see, I don't know why, just to see if it's, feels right, I guess. And I also learned a long time ago, there was a director, Michael Chimino, and he had prepared a wallet for Mickey Rourke, so Mickey Rourke knew where he came from. I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet, but it had a fortune from a fortune cookie in there, a picture of his daughter, his draft card, and this and that. And his point was that every single character has to have their own voice. Every single character has to have their own psychological makeup that they came from something. They're gonna go somewhere. And I took that to heart. So I think that's a big key about how with the dialogue kind of thing that everybody

• 47:23Speaker 01

  sounds different and interesting and doesn't have A follow B and says something off the cuff. And I mean, in other words, where you try to make it as real as possible.

• 47:33Rick Rubin?

  Do you know all of that about the characters before you start? Or does their character come into focus as you're writing?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  When as I'm writing, pretty much unless there's something so defined for them in a book or something where you don't want to make the audience go crazy, you know? Uh, no, I think, uh, like this one I'm writing with this, uh, rendezvous with Ram, what's the thing called that, that I've slowly kind of made this commander, this ship into somebody that was not really there and whatever I felt he should be, you know? And you just start describing things like, you know, I think I wrote that he has, uh, he's very taciturn, but he has a great sense of irony or something, you know? So wherever that took me, you know? That was my first impression of him. And then, and a lot of it's just what I will say is that, um, I think every movie I wrote

• 48:24Speaker 01

  except for Munich began and end with the exact same scene I wrote. Almost everyone, yeah.

• 48:31Rick Rubin?

  And you start with the beginning and the ending? Is that typical?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Typical, always want to know where I am to begin with and where I end. The middle's a big mess. Have no clue, which is, I think, part of the fun. You get to take a journey, you know, and discover people and things and things you'd never expect. If you do it well, great. If you don't do it so well, it's not so pretty. But, um, it's, yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful. And then I'll, I'll find that I'll really struggle over the first like 25, 30 pages or 20 pages and think, I'm just not going to get through this. And all of a sudden on page 70, you know what I'm saying? And then you're done. Something unlocks something and I never fight it, which I think is what happens with people with like, um, when they get this fear of continuing, you know, on the blank page and all that stuff, writer's block. I just change the weather.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  And others make it rain or snow and all of a sudden you look at it differently, you know.

• 49:24Rick Rubin?

  Do you always change the weather for a story? Or do you ever do something to change your condition to allow the change?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I think I do both. Yeah, I think that will lead me to do something differently. Yeah.

• 49:36Rick Rubin?

  Like, might you go for a drive or, you know, do something different instead of just sitting at the desk?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. No, that's exactly right. I'm very hidebound and kind of, this has to do with, I think, with being born in the late 40s and being a 50s and 60s kid and that, look at it as a job in that way. I mean, I formally go to work. I get up, you know, whatever time, same day as it's gotten earlier as I've gotten older and try to do the Marshall McLuhan thing, stretch out the amount of hours available. But this came for a little bit from John Cheever, who I'd read. Got up at seven or 6:30, got dressed, put his hat on, his tie on, his suit on. Took the commuter train into New York. Had rented a small basement, I think basement or boiler kind of room place under apartment building where he worked from.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Took his pants off, folded them really neatly, sat in his underwear, took his hat off. Wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote. 12 o'clock, chime went off, got up, went and had a three martini lunch. Came back, wrote till four, put the suit back on, went to the computer, you know, took the commuter train home. And so he felt that was a job. I mean, there's a lot, a lot of artists do that, a lot don't, you know? So I don't think, there's no rule for it. Same way you ask about how do you approach these things and what would you, you know, is everybody's different, how they did. And I think, I'm sure you find every musician you work with is different, you know?

• 51:01Rick Rubin?

  Can you work on more than one project at a time?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Try not to, but the good news would be if they start dovetailing where you're rewriting one and starting another. I have the next year pretty well laid out. After that, we'll see, you know?

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• 52:55Rick Rubin?

  Does the breakthrough moment happen at the beginning of a project? Like, let's say you're asked to adapt a book. You read the book, and as soon as you have an idea of, this is my way in, is that the big breakthrough, or does it happen later?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  It can do either. Like, I read a book called Damnation Spring. I'm just looking at the book. That I assumed it was gonna be about something it quite wasn't, but I'm gonna make it about what I thought it was gonna be.

• 53:23Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I thought it was about, yeah, I thought it was gonna be about Moby Dick with the redwood trees. It's about a, it's about a logger and his sort of cantankerous kind of guy and cutting, cutting down trees, cutting down trees. And it's not quite the story and I wanted to make this guy be tallest redwood is his Moby Dick, you know? And eventually, I don't wanna give it away, but what I think he does with this. But I also like to, where, as I say, God's in the details, I love to go off on tangents, like I wanna do what a life of a tree is and why do trees survive nuclear holocausts? And well, how do trees, how their roots join together? And all these things we just don't see or know about, you know?

• 54:09Speaker 01

  There's a book called Overstory, it's spectacular that way, about sort of like short stories about trees and things you never thought about. And so I love that. So that's part of the, you know, the excitement of doing something new. And then there are other times you just kinda found her along and then all of a sudden something just hits you and you get it, you know? And you, at least you think you get it, you know, you don't know till it's all said and done and then you have to give it to somebody else and all that stuff. But once you write Fade Out and you just feel pretty good for about an hour, you know? And then, then you, then you think you fucked the whole thing up and you think you could do it all over again, you know?

• 54:46Rick Rubin?

  What's typical length of time that you'll work on a script?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I used to work about a year. I've cut that down just because I really wanna get more things accomplished with limited time. So I, I think it's like five, six months now, probably. And it's probably shorter than I would rather, but I think I have to. And then I made the script shorter, too. I used to do really long, like 180, 90, 200 page scripts.

• 55:08Rick Rubin?

  Do you think in going from a year to five or six months for a script, that the scripts have gotten better or worse?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  I think it's the material, you know, probably some of it is better because I think I've learned through experience where how to say things which I before tried to say in seventeen different words and now could say twice and also have a certain obviously technique about how to tell who people are and identify their personality but but every single thing I write does sort of give the same problem, how are you going to articulate this the best possible way and how you can tell the story and is the story going to mean anything, I want it to mean something, not to just fill up space, you know.

• 55:54Rick Rubin?

  Is every great movie about something bigger than what the story of the movie is?

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I think so, I think so, I think it's something that's lasting, yeah, I think you've done something of value, I think that's true, I hope that's true.

• 56:07Rick Rubin?

  Is the theme of the movie the same as the moral of the story?

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Well, that's interesting, well, I happen to write toward theme and I think theme is most important rather than story, most people completely confuse story with theme, but I think you also have to, you have to know what the thing is eventually going to be about.

• 56:26Rick Rubin?

  Tell me what the theme is, that's why I'm asking, is the theme the moral?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I would, I'd say that's a little facile, I think it's more than that, Rick, I think it's, I think it's what makes something profound and not profound and it's not for me to judge was profound, you know, I'd rather Bruce's or alive to look at that, you know, but I know on Killers of Flower Moon Marty wanted to do this culpability about people being culpable with this destruction of these people and how do we do that and so it's really interesting to figure out how to do that and I knew that made this thematically more than just this murder mystery kind of thing, has made it about the sort of sadness and destruction and the quality of what human beings do to one another, the worst part

• 57:15Speaker 01

  and what could be the best, you know, what's justice and all that, I mean, in other words, so I think. It becomes where you'd like to make it feel profound. I mean, that's a, that's pretty arrogant. Make you think you know what that is. But at least you, to yourself, you feel like I really said something here, you know? Can the theme always be reduced to a couple of sentences? Should, should best of all, yeah, I think should. Yeah, I guess that's another thing I've really learned was, you know, everybody's kid about less is more, less is more, less is more, less is more. I think, and I would like to learn more about that, you know? I think still I probably overload my life and things I do, but maybe sitting and being quiet is fine too, you know?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  And my wife says that, you know? She says, don't take somebody not answering you on a text, meaning anything. She says, just silence, you know? And she's great that way. And, and I think I wish, I wish I could get that, you know? That's, it goes back to that validation, what the hell, they didn't answer me back, you know? And the silence is what I'd love to get to, you know? I think that's, that's what I think I'd like to lead to, and maybe that's, seems a little cliche about wanting how you want to end things, but I'd rather end in quiet, you know, in a certain way. Otherwise, it's just a fucking noise, man. It just seems too much. Do you watch a lot of movies? Yeah, I watch like every day, almost.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  And I like, I'm gonna go today, I go like once or twice a week. Yeah, I love them. I mean, even if I don't like them, I like something about it. I like sitting in theater, big screen, I like something, you know, forty feet. I mean, not that I don't watch movie on television, my phone like anybody else, but yeah, I'd love to, I love that moment where something really moves you, or a sound. I mean, I remember in All Quiet on the Western Front last year, there was a sound of just music, I'm sure it was music, as they were going into battle or something. It was so profound. I mean, it was, profound, I've used too much, but it was, it just soaked into your, inside you, into your vertebrae, you know? It's like, that sound was so powerful.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm, I'm such a, I wish, I guess if I had two things that I didn't do in life, I wish I'd become a novelist, but I was always afraid, and I wish I had the ability to do music. I think, I think musicians, as I said to Greg. Are the most nonjudgmental people. I don't know if you feel that way, but nonjudgmental, carry their art with them, don't really care much mostly about race of anybody. Just want that music to sound, you know, and it's just transcendent to me. I don't know really how to, I wish I could describe it, you know, and you know how.

• 1:00:00Rick Rubin?

  There's always a, grass is always greener. I know that actors always wish they were musicians and most musicians wish that they were actors.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Really? Is that true? I didn't know that about musicians. I never, I knew, never knew a musician was basically except for whatever their, you know, problems with drugs or whatever else, trying to recreate experiences and get that feeling all the time. I never knew they wanted to be actors. I thought they were pretty happy with what they did, you know, if they're successful. If you're not successful, it's a whole different world.

• 1:00:28Rick Rubin?

  Have you ever been asked to work on an adaptation and read the book and just felt like, I don't see a way into this?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Well, I've done it slightly differently. I've started it and I realized I can't do it and I sent the money back. I've done that like five, six times. And not because of the quality of the book, it just didn't, I just, I thought I saw something in it that I just didn't ever see. And then I never thought it went, went where I'd like it to go, I guess, which might be just my arrogance, not the book's.

• 1:00:54Rick Rubin?

  And then the other way around, are there ever times where you'll see something that you think it's either not good, it doesn't have much potential, and then it turns into something really great without your involvement?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, most times actually, but the famous quotes are, bad books and bad plays make great movies. So, yeah, because they're sort of, you know, sort of people ignored them. And I would get far as Gump that, I mean, the book to me, I mean, rest his soul, the man who wrote it, but it's just farcical, you know, sort of silly. And I'm not sure I made anything more than silly, but at least it had a heart to it, you know?

• 1:01:31Rick Rubin?

  Was it a popular book before the movie?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  No, not much.

• 1:01:35Rick Rubin?

  And how did you come to the book?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I came to the book through, I worked with Tom Hanks on a What turned out to be a really bad movie that we had a whole different approach to, which was called The Postman, which was a post-apocalypse thing that I tried to do as candide, was he had four mules and he said they were called John George Ringo and, I don't know, Sarah, you know what I'm saying? And it was funny, it was sarcastic, it was supposed to be sort of like Lilliput, it was like Gulliver, and he's in this dystopian world and he's supposed to be an ex-postman. And so it had this kind of whole tongue-in-cheek look to it and also, I liked it, I don't

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  know if it was any good, but then 10 years down the line, Kevin Costner made a very serious movie out of it, and I want a razzie, which means you made the worst year movie of the year. So, yeah, I don't think you can quite know, you know, but it has to, I mean, to me, and especially now, it really has to speak to me in some way that I feel like it can be additive to it, you know, there's no point in just retyping it.

• 1:02:47Rick Rubin?

  So did Tom bring you the book? Is that how it started?

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  No, the woman who had the book of The Postman also owned Forrest Gump, and they had tried a couple scripts with the author and somebody else at one of the studios, and she says, "What do you think of this?" And I said, "Well, I like the way it transports you over the years and his kind of constant belief in God, the girl Jenny and his mother, you know, it's kind of interesting, and him being challenged, which we couldn't do anymore." But I thought maybe I could say some things about how I felt about where I grew up and how I grew up and what turmoil was in the world. And then the director's a stick-in-your-eye kind of guy, but equal opportunity stick-in-your-eye,

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  and he doesn't care if you're Democrat, progressive, he puts, you know, Marilyn Monroe's picture in the bathroom of the White House, that kind of thing with the Kennedys, and he just didn't care, you know, and the thing struck a nerve, though, and even though I don't think, it's funny how that movie lasted, boy, it's kind of amazing, you know? People really, really grew to that. But you don't know, you don't know, but as long as it occupies, it occupies sort of the most important part of your life in that way, I mean, equal with your children and wife and everything, that's when you get up, you can't wait to go. I like to... I like to be able to know what I'm gonna write the next day.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  So not to be anxious about it. So I won't write that. But I'll just sort of, you know, sort of scrap it out. And then be ready to write it the next day. So I know I have something to start with, you know?

• 1:04:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I have almost the opposite, I think. I like having a schedule where I'm showing up to do something. But if I think too much about what it is that I'm doing, then I'm already working on it before I get there. And then it undermines it.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Wow, that's interesting.

• 1:04:42Rick Rubin?

  So I try to keep a distance from the work when I'm not in the moment with it.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Nice. I love that. I mean, I would be afraid of that. I would be afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into it or something. I don't know. That wouldn't carry over.

• 1:04:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I like that feeling of coming to it new.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  I love that. Wow.

• 1:05:00Rick Rubin?

  Every day like I've never seen it or heard it before.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Wow, wow. But I do, see, I'm so hidebound that I'm opposite of you completely is that I read from page one every day.

• 1:05:11Rick Rubin?

  Wow. I think there's something to that, though, because context really is everything. And if you understand the flow of the information, I imagine it would be easier to continue it than to just pick it up where you left off.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like, I just was looking here that I want him, I'm gonna put into this particular Rama thing that I want him, his opening line to be, "I am a navigator." So I love that, what that, what that could mean, you know?

• 1:05:38Rick Rubin?

  It's a great line.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't thought about it, you know, and then all of a sudden I said, well, that unlocks a bunch of things, you know, which what this guy wants to do. And, and I have a thing with him where his wife supposedly had died and he went back in the service and, but people live, they can live to 140 and such. It's supposed to be 2130. But anyway, she said, "You'll see me in your dreams," and he hasn't seen her in his dreams. Until he gets into a certain part of this alien ship they get into that has a water feature to it, and he gets in the water and all of a sudden it, it opens up all these other things, like a hallucinogenic kind of thing where he starts, you know, seeing her. And I think it can be beautiful. I think it'd be beautiful.

• 1:06:17Rick Rubin?

  That sounds great. I like also someone saying, "You'll see me in your dreams." It's beautiful.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw, I say, somebody said that in a song, I think. I think, I think in a song, yeah. Yeah, I get a lot from the music. One of the ones I took was, I don't know the group's name, you probably know, where he says over and over, "I can't take my eyes off of you."

• 1:06:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's a really famous song.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just love that.

• 1:06:41Rick Rubin?

  It's a standard, so there's so many different versions of it, I'm not sure which is like the original.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. This one was not somebody, a group I knew, but he says it like thirty times in a row, you know? And I use that in this thing I did with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, where he, first time he looks at her, he says, "I can't take my eyes off of you." So I know that's a good romance line.

• 1:07:04Rick Rubin?

  How does poetry work its way into your work?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Well, I'm really well-read, and I'm really interested in what the words are one in front of the other, you know? Why do people put these in this order? And some are so much better at it than others, you know? The poetry, to me, I think, is a sense of feeling, that it's the same sort of soaring you get, and then starting to believe that maybe this actually is poetry. I don't know if it is, but you start feeling like it could be, you know? Which is pretty freeing, that you're now writing something. But that can either dovetail, or it can conflict with the director.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Some love you to try to be as expansive as you can be with prose and poetry, and others don't like it. I mean, they feel like it inhibits their process. And for instance, David Fincher is, as I say, I think he's a savant in some kind, he's just a genius. But he likes things really logical. He wants Vito A, like that, and you have to explain to him why it isn't. And I like that, too. I mean, I think that really presses you into rethinking what you thought you could just sort of willy-nilly throw out there, you know, to the universe. And for him, he needs to understand it, and that it makes some sense what you put, adds to something else.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  While others are much more gracious in saying, "Go for it." You know, Marty, Marty's that way. Marty'll let you, if you want to write the movie backwards, just let's try it, you know? Let's try it, yeah. The directors are interesting people.

• 1:08:46Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the different styles of the directors you've gotten to work with. How different are they? What do they expect from you and what they're like to work with?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Well, Marty is, Marty's very generous during the writing process, a little more reclusive when he's about to go make it. So he then takes over. I think he inhabits the movie then that, I think it's part of my job to have them understand the movie that they're gonna make oddly, you know? In other words, this is what I can tell you I think it is and whatever you can add to that would be amazing, you know, if you have a point of view. Fincher's rough. We argue like crazy, but he has, he has something in mind that I wanna try to get to for him.

• 1:09:26Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about an argument. Like, what's the kind of thing you would argue about?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  He would say to me, he'd read it back to me and say, "This makes no sense." And I said, "What do you think? Everything you say that makes sense?" You know, that's how we'd have an argument. And he says, "Well, that's just your writer and you thinking you're gonna bring out words that are gonna, you know, somehow attribute back to you." I mean, you get very personal. He also, I know he knows, he knows things about me with the validation stuff. And he said, "Oh, you wanna win an Oscar," whatever it is. But no, we would, I'd sat behind him during Mank and he would turn around, "What do you think?" And I'd say, "Well, I don't know, Dave, blah, blah, blah, blah." And he'd say, "Well, you're wrong about that," you know? But we started to fight it out and get to where we, I mean, we always love each other. He's the most loyal man I know.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Most loyal man I know. So he's that way. Denis is very visionary. He said that he felt that I was the, kind of, the spiritual quality of Dune, you know, cuz I, I got that hallucinogenic, you know, that whole tribal thing.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  And early, I worked with a man named Bob Mulligan who did Kill a Mockingbird. He was a very generous guy. Those guys in that era were very...

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Sort of Playhouse 90, if you remember that, or television.

• 1:10:41Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  That's what they were steeped in. And I'm not talking about deep theater, I'm not talking about Glass Menagerie or something, but they got telling drama, dramatic stories from stage plays, in a way, through their television shows. Stuart Rosenberg was another one. He did Cool Hand Luke, and he was the one who introduced me to Paul Newman, who I became friends with for life. I was, I walked on the set when I was like nineteen or twenty with my, they needed rewriting, and went down to Lafayette, Louisiana, and I bought a new pair of corduroys, and I had a new briefcase, and Paul said, "Our savior's here."

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  I don't think so. But we were friends for life, and, you know. And I stay friends with a lot of these people. I like to maintain relationships with them. I think they all expand my universe, I think, you know. And in Maine, a few are a little toxic.

• 1:11:35Rick Rubin?

  You were saying about scripted versus ad libbing earlier, when you were talking about Star is Born. And in a way, it sounds like it stemmed from an ad lib. You got them to talk to you, and then you organized it and refined it, but it starts with an ad lib.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  No, you're a hundred percent right, and I think it started more with Bradley Cooper, first directing assignment, and not really, I'm not saying he doesn't know music, but it's not his life. He wanted to portray a character that he created. I suggested him he should use Sam Elliott's voice. That's the huskiness that he kind of has there. So I think I was going along, I rewrote that, I mean, because what they gave me, I just didn't like, and I said, "I have to start from scratch." And I said, "I'll do it really fast, but we all have to do it together." So in three in the morning, we were changing, you know, but there was that ad lib stuff, you're right. It was, or the improvisational probably better than ad lib. Improvisational quality of it, but also it had an accuracy, because Lady Gaga knows

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  what that life is. Bradley maybe doesn't know it to that extent.

• 1:12:43Rick Rubin?

  I was gonna say, other than the dialogue, how much descriptive writing do you do in a script?

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  A lot, a lot, probably too much, probably too much. But I think it, some directors like it because it establishes a tone. It gives kind of wonderful, I think, visual possibilities. I just wrote, I realized I was reading a thing I'd written about, James Cook, the navigator, the explorer. And I was writing something about that he had docked his ship somewhere in the Antarctic and letting the men have a Christmas Eve celebration. And it got cold and they went down below and he stayed up and he sang, he started singing Silent Night by himself. But I thought, I love that. But I said, I don't know if I have the boat right.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And so I looked at the boats and I forgot they had those oil lamps. So I put the oil lamps in, you know, and they're rocking. And I said, that somehow refers to it. And then we cut from that to the spaceship in 2129. It's a kind of a junky ship. It's supposed to be a work ship, but it's very sterile. And the people inside are very sterile and they're like monkish almost because they go for seven months without doing anything. And they're supposed to be putting these beacons up on asteroids to warn people about the asteroids coming. Anyway, it's quite different than the oil lanterns, you know. So I love that. Yeah, so I do put a lot of, put a lot of prose in there,

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  but I think it's my downfall in the sense of, because I want to be a novelist, so this is the way I can do it. People still let me do it. They don't let most other writers do it anymore. But I think it does impart to the director what I think it's gonna look like. Some get annoyed, say, why do you have to talk so much? So I said, okay.

• 1:14:33Rick Rubin?

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

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Depends on how good I think the original material is, you know. And then there's the other side of what does the audience expect?

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  And I don't know that. Somebody's there. Somebody's, you're looking at somebody.

• 1:14:52Rick Rubin?

  No, I thought I saw, I saw a feather out the window. Strange.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:14:57Rick Rubin?

  It's like I thought of.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  That's not strange. That's Forrest Gump.

• 1:15:00Rick Rubin?

  It was a bird, but it was just a feather. So maybe it was a bird. Holding a feather, but I couldn't see the bird. I could just see the feather. It's like, that's strange.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  That's interesting. I like that.

• 1:15:11Rick Rubin?

  It was beautiful.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just put up a hummingbird feeder yesterday. I'm a big hummingbird person.

• 1:15:16Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  And, yeah, I, I put, I had up my window at the, where I lived in Malibu, um, in the colony there, I had a window that, I didn't look at the beach because that's too distracting to me. I was looking at a tree and these hummingbirds just kept coming and coming. And my parents died that particular year and somehow my mother's somehow related to me hummingbird. And then I, I put it in Benjamin Button where David let it stay where Brad Pitt's on the sea, like the Atlantic Ocean, and he'd just been, he was on a tugboat and got crashed by a submarine, which was true story. And he was on now, like a boat that he was safe and he looked down and saw a hummingbird come up out of the sea. And he said, how did that get here? And I know how it got there. It's like a Robert Hunter lyric, right?

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Like, where did that come from?

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  So, uh, yeah, that's the, um, adaptation part of it. Yeah.

• 1:16:11Rick Rubin?

  Are you superstitious?

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  I am, to a certain extent. Are you?

• 1:16:15Rick Rubin?

  I don't think so. I think I may have.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  I think I am.

• 1:16:19Rick Rubin?

  I may have been at times. I don't think I am right now.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  But most people don't think they're superstitious, even though they're superstitious about things. It's kind of funny. They, they think that's science in some way. I, I like to gamble, so I play horses. So I'm superstitious about that a little bit.

• 1:16:35Rick Rubin?

  Do you go to the track on a regular basis?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I go once, once a week. And I sit with guys who are 800 years old.

• 1:16:41Rick Rubin?

  What's the first time you went to the track?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Uh, my grandfather, little Russian man, barely spoke English. He spoke Yiddish, uh, and I spoke Yiddish at the time. And, uh, uh, he would take me, he had four loves in his life. He loved boxing, which I did, I fought. And, uh, uh, he loved the horses. I'd go with him when I was like six, seven years old. He loved baseball. We'd go stand on an apple box at Ebbets Field. And he loved fishing. And I still love fishing.

• 1:17:06Rick Rubin?

  So did you grow up on the East Coast?

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brooklyn.

• 1:17:09Rick Rubin?

  I wasn't, for some reason, I thought you grew up on the West Coast.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Bedford-Stuyvesant.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Till a certain extent, then I went to high school out here.

• 1:17:17Rick Rubin?

  Has there ever been a window where you've stepped away from horse racing? Or has it been a continuance since six or seven years old?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  I think I've stayed with it the whole time.

• 1:17:26Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I like, I like, but that would, that would be superstitious stuff. I like all sports, I guess, so, but I think I am superstitious to a certain extent about some things. I'm not OCD about it, if I won't count steps backwards or anything. But I think I am, yeah, I'm interested that you're not. That's kind of interesting, but I'd love to know what you think of magic and stuff, you know, which is close to superstition.

• 1:17:51Rick Rubin?

  Well, I believe in magic, so I don't know.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you might.

• 1:17:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what, it's like, someone, I can't remember who told me this, believes in a thing called manifestation, that if you manifest things, you can make them come true. And maybe that's true.

• 1:18:07Rick Rubin?

  Well, I think we do.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess we do.

• 1:18:10Rick Rubin?

  We envisioned these lives and they've appeared and it's unbelievable. Doesn't make sense.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  No, it makes no sense, but you're able to inhabit them, you know? And that's how I feel about characters I write. I'm able to inhabit them, even though I may not know much about them, except for the psychological thing that everybody has that's different, you know? And some things I don't understand because I don't understand the person, but I try to make him not understandable and to some extent, but then you find that the character may understand himself better than you think he did. Those kind of things. I think there's a reality to writing these things, you know?

• 1:18:43Rick Rubin?

  Is it harder to write for women?

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Probably is, but I haven't found it to be. I mean, I think they all have the same properties. I mean, I don't know, then we get into the whole sexual conversations with things and I don't know if men are women. I don't think men are women the same that way particularly. But I think I've written a lot of good women. I mean, I think that they, you know, I think I wrote a beautiful character with Cate Blanchett and Benjamin Button, where she's a ballerina, you know? I thought it was pretty lovely. And but I always infuse these things with time. Like in that was like sort of the sliding doors idea where if something didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, then she wouldn't have been hit by a cab, you know, that kind of thing. And I love that. I love the randomness of things. And I did the same thing in Forrest Gump, you know, is he just flying around and or

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  is it destiny? I don't know the answer to any of that. So maybe I believe in magic. You're probably right, you know? Yeah.

• 1:19:38Rick Rubin?

  I remember in Forrest Gump, I don't know if they were reenactments or actual old footage used. Do you remember?

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Those are old footages, yeah.

• 1:19:45Rick Rubin?

  Did you write it in the script that we're going to use this footage from this event?

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  In some cases I didn't. Some I they they researched what would that what would happen like I had, for instance, his uh he's supposed to have been an All American and with the University of Alabama, they won the national title or something. And so he went and visited Kennedy, you know, and I have him visit him John uh Lyndon Johnson as a veteran from Vietnam and he he gets shot in the butt and Lyndon Johnson makes a joke out of it. The interesting thing about that was that um that was all brand new technique. The only one who had done anything like it was Woody Allen and Zelig. So Bob, it was a Mac that sort of perfected this, but if you look at it now, it's so rudimentary. It's it's a little silly, you know? But he's always that this thing here has a whole longer conversation for us about

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  basically about AI, but this first this deep fake stuff. Where they the the movie will have Tom and Robin Wright off stage say, hi, Mom and Dad, this is Margaret. And he'll walk into the living room and they'll both be they'll be 22 years old. Tom will look like he's right out of Big and she'll look like she's out of Princess Bride. So I don't I don't know. The morality of all that gets a little tricky. I don't know how the, I'm also curious how this will affect music.

• 1:21:05Rick Rubin?

  Had you seen Zelig and realized, I can use this technique in Forrest Gump? It's a really radical idea. This guy can be in these different places and we can use actual footage.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm pretty visual and I thought, well, I think we can do this. Yeah, I think if someone knows how to do it. Yeah, we can put him in that scene. And even worse, I know but it's quite done it, but I could put words in people's mouths they never said. So John Kennedy could have said, I love Hitler. You know what I'm saying to him, whisper it to him. And it's obviously you're taking liberties there, but you know, we had whatever he said and he laughs and this and that. So they, they linked it to something that was part of another all American ceremony. And then they just put him in there, you know? Yeah, I don't know how I envisioned that. It just happened, you know? It's just something that came out of the blue.

• 1:21:55Rick Rubin?

  It's a radical idea and I think it's as significant in the long-term success of the movie as anything else about it.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no question, no question, yeah. Oh, I think so. And that's magical again.

• 1:22:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, we just had never seen anything like it before. And that idea of seeing a fictitious character in a familiar real world situation is very interesting.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very odd and there was a, do you remember the comedian on the radio, Phil Henry?

• 1:22:27Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Yes, he did all those kind of different voices. He was kind of something nasty, a little racist, but somebody called me and said, you need to listen to Phil Henry tonight. So I, he said, he's announcing Forrest Gump is dead. So, so I said, I joined in and I said, hi, I'm the writer of Forrest Gump. And yeah, we're sad to say. And I see Quentin Tarantino just had that with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the character that Leonardo played, he said was dead.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  That he had died. So sometimes, yeah, it's confusing what's real, what isn't.

• 1:23:03Rick Rubin?

  What are your all time favorite movies as a fan?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  I love a movie called Amore Cord that Fellini made. It's like a dream. Two Thousand One is probably my most favorite. Godfather two, probably the ones that are traditionally, you know, that most people would. I was talking yesterday with somebody, um, I used to, when I was young, much younger, I loved the movie Giant, thought that just summed everything up for big movies and I watch it again, it's not very good, you know, but there's that James Dean being heroic and climbing up and getting oil and Elizabeth Taylor and there's something very American about it. I'm, I'm very American in my own way. I love, I love things about America that are, I think

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  it's very moving about people who put their lives in jeopardy and, and then there's an ideal that we, we used to have and I hope we still, I don't know, we have a very rural place in Montana and I'll talk to these guys and we have completely different points of view and fortunately we're able to get over them, you know, just so we can have other things to talk about, but it's just, it's a shame that country is so divided about the things that we all care about. I don't know what that's all, I don't know what's happened, you know, it's a, there's so much hatred and racism and everything else, you know.

• 1:24:21Rick Rubin?

  Are there any things that you firmly believed when you were young that now you've gone 180 on?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, well, my parents were both, died in the wool communists. I was a red diaper baby. I can't tell you the number of times we stood in the rain to free the Rosenbergs and I think their, their intentions were all good, but they, they forgave the same fault to those people that, you know, you had to forgive all sorts of things and my dad was a communist till his dying day, you know, and he thought even Stalin was pretty great, you know, so those are, those are things that just don't resonate anymore that way. I think as American Communist Party members, they probably had some good beliefs about sort of socialism, you know, that, you know, who, how can you help people? And

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  I think that was good. The other thing is this, um, since I've had, had cancer and stuff, I'm not afraid of dying, but I am, I am so interested in what I thought was kind of constant and they're not, it's not anymore about as you get older, what, what are these things that come toward the end of things and what can you expect and what you can't? And I think I probably earlier on felt, well, you know, maybe it's X, Y, or Z. I even thought the other day, we were in London, outside of London, in a, this beautiful old cathedral, ninth century or something, and I said, what if it was all true? That maybe all this was, there was a Jesus, I mean, maybe that, never mind that, maybe

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  all Buddhism's, whatever it is, that all what we think is just, you know, made up mythology, but what if some of it's true? I mean, maybe it could be, so why not? Why not open your mind? I remember Tom Hanks once yelling at me, we were having, he was an evangelical, I think, early on in his life, and we were talking about religion, and I was saying something kind of atheistic and kind of adamant about it, and he said, how do you know? And I said, I don't know. I don't know why I think I know. And I think that's the big difference, you know, you assume you know so much, and then all, that's your ego narcissism and all, and then you find out you are wrong about many things.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, I used to love to, this was before TSA and all, but I followed Joan Didion, in the sense of I was actually friendly with her and John, but she would sit in airports and write about people as they came off of planes, that's how she would design characters, and I did that for a little bit. And then you realize, well, you're wrong about these people, you know, you have certain ideas you're gonna create. It's a fantasy, yeah. Yeah, it's a fantasy, yeah, yeah. It's fun to do, but you're just always surprised, you're judging a book by its cover, and you figure this tattooed beast, and then all of a sudden they start talking about Keats or something, you know, it's like, what the hell? I love that.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  I remember we were, Tupac Shakur came in to actually read for Forrest Gump to play Bubba. I didn't know who he was, and then he was renting a house in the colony, and he was sitting on this stoop, and he said, Mr. Roth? I said, I came over, and I said, how are you? And I knew he was Tupac Shakur at that time, and he said, you don't remember I had tried out for that? I said, why would you try out for that? He said, I don't know, I wanted to try something different, and I want to find out who I was, and this and that. And there you go, book by the cover, you know, and then here's this great artist, yeah, great, great artist, yeah.

• 1:27:49Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever see Unforgiven?

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I loved that movie. Yeah, I loved the writer, David Peoples. He wrote Blade Runner also.

• 1:27:58Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  He's amazing writer. And then I rewrote him on Munich. And I know him quite well. He's about my age. He's incredible writer. There used to be a whole world of screenwriters that were only screenwriters, not writer-directors. So there's very few left. But Bo Goldman was probably one of the better writers ever. He won an Oscar for Harold and Melvin and for Cuckoo's Nest. We call both sides of the plate. Yeah.

• 1:28:25Rick Rubin?

  One of the things that was interesting, I remember when I saw Unforgiven, I bring it up because up until then, in a Western, you expected the good guy was a clear-cut good guy and all of the attributes he had was noble. And the bad guy was the bad guy and he was evil. And Unforgiven broke that mold.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  Completely, yeah.

• 1:28:45Rick Rubin?

  And it feels like maybe everything changed since then. That idea of just the good guy versus the bad guy, maybe that became obsolete with that movie.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  I think it probably did. I mean, to some extent, except for they have big super-action heroes and, you know, so I don't know. You know, those are the black hat and the white hat. You wear the white hat, you're the hero. The black hat, you're not. I tried to write a movie for Clint Easton, a Western, his last Western, and Bradley Cooper got me involved. And he said, "The only thing I don't want is you to do a sequel to Unforgiven." And I said, "I get that." So what I did was invent him as a ex-outlaw. This is supposed to be 1906, right after the San Francisco earthquake. And he's a kind of policeman in quote Chinatown for that era.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  And somebody comes back, because he'd been an outlaw in the olden days, who he supposedly had killed a person's father. And he came back and stabs him and this and that. And then he says he's dying and they have this whole journey to take him home and what happens along the way, these people. And Bradley Cooper plays his son. But the big point of it was he's completely full of shit. He had never been an outlaw. And he created this whole myth for himself. And so when you have to, when he had to get in trouble, kind of toward the end of this, he got himself out of it by being brave. And he didn't have to make up a story. But I love the, I love the whole idea. So did Clint. He said, oh, my God, the idea of

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  just pretending you're somebody and everybody giving you, you know, your props for that. And turns out to be feet of clay, you know?

• 1:30:26Rick Rubin?

  But then it turns around. It's beautiful.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, then that's what I did at the end. I turned it around for him. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:32Rick Rubin?

  But would you say every story is a love story?

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yes, 100%. Yeah, I mean, I think, what is the only thing we can't define? Love. I mean, it's probably the most primordial important thing there is, probably, right? I don't know if you can define it. I can't define it. Maybe other people can.

• 1:30:54Rick Rubin?

  How far can you stray from the archetypical Hollywood movies, happy ending, romantic tension, conflict? Are those rules to follow or can you break those rules?

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think you can break any rule, but I think you always will end up oddly with the same Shakespearean structure. Like, the perfect example is Pulp Fiction. He told the story backwards and forwards and, but he still had to have a beginning, a middle that has a beginning that states the problem, the middle that exacerbates it, has a catharsis which leads you to the ending. And so I think it's harder to do that. But I think as we modernize things like the great Charlie Kaufman would do things like adaptation where he's adapting the adaptation and making it part of his life

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  and his brother's life or an imagined brother. Or, I mean, so it's wonderful complications or Sunshine of the Unspotless Mind, all that. And, but you still have this, I always found, at least even in those, I could tell you the structure of them, you know? So I think that's a constant. I guess it has to be. Maybe it has to be. But the ending stuff, I think the only truth about, I think in love stories that you should end. Where things are not resolved, that they feel either broken hearted. Very rarely are happy love stories. You want to have a bittersweet ending where somebody can't resolve it and you can't bring it to fruition, whether someone dies or someone

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  leaves, or you want to sort of wish fulfillment, hoping that they, in another world. I also believe, so here's magic. I believe that Francis Coppola and I were talking about this, that great movies is continue, great books, plays, music, whatever inhabit you in this like they live on the other side of the moon and they're all continuing their lives. That the Godfather people are all out doing whatever they do and whatever movies you love, and they're there and you can always just go pick them up and put them back in your pockets, you know? And I love that idea.

• 1:33:05Rick Rubin?

  It's beautiful.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  I started, I was once gonna, it didn't work out too well, but I did Cat in the Hat. And I started that he was one of these kind of magical creatures that lived on the other side of the moon and would get a phone call, we need your help, kind of thing, you know? But the only thing I loved about that script was, I think it was a good script altogether, but I rhymed every word like a Seuss book, you know, I love it.

• 1:33:31Rick Rubin?

  Was it gonna be animated or no?

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it was live action and they ended up doing a really, I thought, bad movie with Jim Carrey, just over the top stuff. But what I made it was primal that the mother was pregnant and the children were very jealous and afraid of what was coming into the house. And so the thing one and thing two, you know, all this stuff, thing one and all that. It's kind of great. Yeah, it's kind of fun.

• 1:33:56Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the old days in New York, the experimental film world.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that. I was very part of that. I was going to NYU Film School and I gravitated down to, oh, actually I was an English major to begin with at Columbia, but gravitated down to this, everything was an alphabet city, you know, below St. Mark's Place and Bob Downey Jr., Ed M. Schuyler, all these people doing these things and a place called a Millennium Film Workshop where you could just move around rooms and.

• 1:34:26Rick Rubin?

  Was this in the 60s?

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Like 68, 67, 65, yeah, that whole era. Andy Warhol, you know, some of his people were there. I knew some of them. I know Moriarty and a few other people, but I knew Bob Downey I worked for in like four movies. They were all insane. Bob Downey Senior. Yeah. And but all these really interesting artists, but it's interesting how they just disappeared. I don't know. Some just got old, obviously, but there were a continuation, I think, a lot about from, you know, Jack Kerouac and all that. I was gonna say beatniks. Yeah. Yeah, beatniks, basically. That's like Bob's in here. His mother was a beatnik. You know, she always wore black and that whole thing.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  How has the movie business changed over the course of your life? Well, the the loss of theaters. I mean, the idea that not to watch a movie in a theater is the most important thing. After that, it would be, there used to be personal relationships. You may not even like the people, but you sort of knew everybody. There was a lot less content providers. There were probably Seven, whatever the big studios were. Was it just a smaller business overall? Smaller world felt like a high school. That's a big high school. You sort of knew your place in it, what you wanted to get to, all that. But, you know, if I just had this happen recently, that if somebody decided not to do a project of yours, saying, I'm gonna pass on this, right? And they would call you up and tell you why, you know, and

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  or it's just not for me. It's not my, even if that's simple, mine, not my cup of tea. There it is. But we appreciate you trying, you know, that kind of thing. Now you never hear from anybody. It's just your agent says they're not gonna do it. You know, the person out, that's me. That's how I felt. I mean. It feels like less of a human business. Yeah, exactly. More commerce than. Yeah, and it's become even the rallying cry, which is a sad, is that everybody says nothing matters. And that's that's a tragedy to me. I'm sorry. I think it should matter, you know, what you're doing, what you're saying, even if it's not my cup of tea, it doesn't matter, you know. Write the best action movie, write the best Star Wars, whatever you want to do.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  It's just, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know about the younger people. The way I wish I, and my son's young. He's a, he's a director now and my other son's a wonderful writer and they have different looks at things.

• 1:36:55Rick Rubin?

  When you're writing a character, do you typically have an actor in mind to play it?

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Not mostly. I don't know. I don't like to do that too much. Sometimes I'm in, it's part and parcel of the deal. Like I knew Tom Hanks was gonna be Forrest Gump, so. He was great because he could go in and pitch the thing. He said, I'm sitting on a bench and I'll do all that stuff as an actor. I would prefer, I have a general idea, general idea, and then you gotta get more.

• 1:37:21Rick Rubin?

  Is that a common thing for an actor and a writer to get together and put something together and then pitch that as opposed to coming from a director?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  It feels to me like it is. I don't know anymore, you know? Yeah, I think it is. I think it is, yeah. But I've still done, like, when we're done here, I'm gonna zoom with Jeremy Strong, that actor. And we have, I think, a pretty great idea. But maybe we'll figure it out with him. I'll be glad to do it with him, you know? But it's, it's more unusual with actors. Actors are good because they're only busy for like four months out of the year or, you know, and then they have time. Directors are impossible because they, you know, it's a year and a half of their lives or whatever, two years. And so if you don't get it done, you ain't seeing them for two years. They'll be doing something else, you know?

• 1:38:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And it also seems like they're so in for two years on a project that after it, it's like they're not even themselves.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  No, that's absolutely right. It's, I mean, I mean, I had opportunities to direct when I was younger and I made a decision. I'd rather stay with my children, you know? That's not, I'm so heroic, but that's what I decided. Cause you're gone. You're just gone. You're miss, you're missing their lives and they, they know it. But something else more important to them.

• 1:38:37Rick Rubin?

  Did you always want to be a writer from the beginning?

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've I've toyed with one point, I said, I think I want to be doctor, which was ridiculous. I can't even add six and eight. And so I think I'll go back to school and take all those courses, the organic chemistries, all that, and then go to some bad medical school like Grenada or Yankton or something, you know? I mean, what I admire about your life, as little as I know about you, is that you at least are experiencing so many things, and I wish I'd experienced more things.

• 1:39:10Rick Rubin?

  Well, I am now. I didn't for the majority of my life.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  Oh, you didn't?

• 1:39:14Rick Rubin?

  No, I was sat in a dark room for eighteen hours a day for thirty years.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Or I'm not sorry, whatever. You probably learned a lot from that.

• 1:39:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  I would I would never have that discipline.

• 1:39:27Rick Rubin?

  No, this is a new adventure. I realized I can do my work anywhere.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  Anywhere.

• 1:39:33Rick Rubin?

  And I might as well do it in a beautiful place. And I first had that revelation when I started working in Los Angeles versus New York, because even though I would still work all day, it felt like I was on vacation compared to being in New York.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  I got you. Wow. Well, my sort of regret is so like juvenile. It's like romantic, right? I wish I had had that romantic year in Paris with whoever, you know? Or just on my own, or, you know, I never did those things, or, you know, London, whatever, you know, Ireland, and it's not gonna happen, you know? So all of a sudden.

• 1:40:06Rick Rubin?

  It can. I mean, it would just be, it'd be a different one. It would be the different version of a romantic year in Paris. You can do that.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. No, you're so right. I sort of wish I had done when I was thirty, you know what I'm saying? I don't know why. It's just what it add to my experiences. I always wanted my life to be like a Jack London flyleaf of his novels, that he was a, you know, a fisherman and whatever else. He went to the Alaska and all that stuff, you know? And that's creating a personality. I guess I'm not, you know?

• 1:40:39Rick Rubin?

  It all worked out.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  It all worked out. Exactly. If I I would just get that in my head, you know? Because there's too many small things. It's like my mother would say to me, don't sweat the small stuff, you know? And she's so right. And I sweat the small stuff still though. It's like, I wish I could stop this nonsense about things that don't matter. You know, I'm a little better with it. I'm a little better with it. I had a whole thing, I won't mention what it was, with this whole weekend. I was like kind of upset about something and I realized this is so fucking stupid. What in the world? And then you get yourself into a situation where I was mad at somebody and then they texted me and should I ghost them and all that whole thing, you know, it's like so petty. So juvenile. Oh, so juvenile.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  So I did. That's amazing. For the moment, for the moment. That's amazing. Yeah, it's funny.

• 1:42:00Speaker 06

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• 1:42:14Speaker 07

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• 1:42:19Speaker 07

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• 1:43:02Speaker 07

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