Director Celine Song on ‘Materialists’ (Death, Sex & Money)

Long before Celine Song was nominated for an Academy Award for her feature directorial debut, Past Lives, she was a struggling playwright in New York City with an unusual side hustle: matchmaking. In this special episode presented by Death, Sex & Money https://slate.com/podcasts/death-sex-money, host Anna Sale sits with Celine to unpack how this personal experience inspired the plot of her new A24 movie, Materialists https://a24films.com/films/materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal. Follow and listen to Death, Sex & Money wherever you get your podcasts. Thoughts or future episode ideas? Email us at [email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Sam Fragoso?

  Hey, everyone. I'm Sam. I wanted to drop in for a moment and share an episode from one of my favorite podcasts still going. It's called Death, Sex, and Money, hosted by the inimitable Anna Sale. Full disclosure, she's also been a mentor of mine. If you haven't heard the show before, it's a podcast from Slate in which Anna explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversations. She gets to the heart of some of the hardest topics for most of us to talk about: death, sex, and money. Since the show began in May of 2014, Sale has built a career out of going there, going to those vulnerable places in conversations most interview programs

• 1:22Sam Fragoso?

  try not to go to. Obviously, we're no stranger to those places on this podcast, but a lot of what we have done on this show is inspired by what Anna started doing more than a decade ago. Her work has been, as I said, a guiding light for us, starting with an episode featuring the great, late Bill Withers. It's called "How to Be a Man," and without that episode, I don't think Talk Easy would be what it is today. But that's not the episode I wanted to share with you for this midweek drop. Instead, I wanted to play a recent interview that Anna conducted with writer and director Celine Song. Before Song was nominated for

• 2:02Sam Fragoso?

  an Academy Award for her debut feature film, Past Lives, she was a struggling playwright in New York City with an unusual side hustle. Matchmaking. This episode gets into how that formative experience, that side hustle, how it kind of serves as the basis of her latest film for 824, Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and the man of the summer, Pedro Pascal. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd recommend you see it. I think it's still playing in a select few theaters around the country. I'm sure it's going to be on streaming any moment now. If you enjoy this conversation with Anna and Celine, you can follow and listen to Death, Sex and Money

• 2:45Sam Fragoso?

  wherever you are listening to this right now. I'll see you back here on Sunday with a brand new episode of Talk Easy. Until then, I'm going to turn it over to Anna, talking to writer-director Celine Song. Enjoy.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  If you were asked to conjure up your perfect romantic partner, how much money would they make? How tall would they be? What kind of clothes would they wear? What sort of work would they do? These were the sorts of questions director and writer Celine Song asked clients when she worked as a matchmaker in her early 20s. It's also the sorts of questions her protagonist Lucy asks in her new movie called Materialists. You may know filmmaker Celine Song from her 2023 debut feature Past Lives. It was nominated for multiple Academy Awards. It told the story of one woman and two men that she loved.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  One she'd met as a child in South Korea and stayed connected with after she moved away, and one she met as an adult at an artist residency and married. That movie was a soft, slow love story. Like, I remember the aching feeling I had through long stretches of it. Materialists is fast and quippy and chock full of hot movie stars. The matchmaker Lucy is played by Dakota Johnson. She caters to clients and she's also caught between two potential partners. The perfect on paper finance bachelor, Harry, played by Pedro Pascal. And then there's her imperfect ex-boyfriend, John, played by Chris Evans,

• 4:38Speaker 01

  who's a struggling actor making money doing catering and living with roommates. Being a struggling artist is something that Celine Song herself has experience with. Before she was a movie director, she wrote plays. That's when she did matchmaking as a side hustle. And in this conversation, Celine and I talk about what she learned from those early days flitting between high-end clients and her friends, who were struggling writers and actors, and what is gleaned and what is missed when you are honest and upfront about the currencies at play in the dating market.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  I always say this, which is that, like, fine if you want somebody who's six feet tall. We're all gonna be 5'7" at the end. We're all gonna shrink.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  This is Death, Sex and Money.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  The show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. I'm Anna Sale.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Thanks for doing this with us. I was able to see the film last night, so I have context. So fresh. I want to talk to you about so many little details in the script, but I will keep it spoiler-free for our listeners. I want to just get as, like, into it as you do in the script. Like, feel free to be as kind of... Crass and brash.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  My characters don't, my characters don't, you know, swear that much or anything.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  It's not swearing, but it's, I just mean crassness around money. I think that's like-

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I think about that all the time because I'm like, well, it's so interesting, like who, we all grew up feeling like, well, talking about money or talking about value directly is so rude, or it's like, it's not polite society, it's not polite conversation. So, yeah, we talk about it. I mean, I love that you're calling it crass, you know?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  In Materialists, Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, has to talk, quite frankly, to her clients.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Hey, are you single? I'm a matchmaker. Give me a call if you want to meet somebody.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  I deserve someone who fulfills all of my criteria. Nothing over 20 being mine. I don't want someone who likes cats.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  How many marriages are you responsible for now, Lucy? Nine. If the girl asks for a call, drink water, with a salary over 500 grand,

• 7:20Speaker 03

  you deliver.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And I said crass, but maybe a better description is uncommonly direct. Even when we're talking with friends, we don't fantasize with such specificity about ideal hairlines or earning power. I mean, it's in there, the assumptions about the same education level, or the math of what kind of life you might afford together, and also that wild card about what it would take for you to be attracted to them physically. Celine makes all this explicit in her screenplay, in what the clients say to Lucy, and also how Lucy measures up.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  I was very struck by your creative choice to, for Lucy, the character, the main character in your movie, to tell the audience how much money she makes.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Her salary is $80,000 a year in New York City. And we learn that she grew up uncomfortable financially in a poor family. So how did you pick $80,000 before taxes? What did you think that that salary in New York City in this moment represented?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  So, so to me, 80 grand in New York City is the amount of money that an ambitious woman knows is not enough to live in the lifestyle that she wants, right? Somebody like Lucy, who is somebody who has, I guess, one would say, like, bougie taste. Or like wants to-

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Nice clothes.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Right? Yeah. Like, nice clothes, has materialistic desires, and has somebody, is somebody who wants to, basically, and this is very connected to her character, who wants to hide her working class background. So she is trying to live beyond her means. So to me, 80 grand is this woman who is very ambitious when it comes to that, wanting to, you know, feels okay, but wishes to make more, but is kind of on the edge of what she thinks so she can pull those things off with.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  So that's a number that we learn in the movie. We also learn a client asks for what her minimum is for what the man should earn that she wants to date. And I think the lowest number we hear is $150,000. Like, it's all, I mean, at least double what you're saying an ambitious woman in New York City would consider passable.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Of course. I think that is still a very active part of the conversation that is happening between people. I think in the way that, like, in the powder rooms, or like, in the way that it is kind of like, behind closed doors, the polite conversation, right? Kind of away from polite conversation, that is still very actively, and honestly, like, embarrassingly for feminism, still such a powerful thing, that you want your man to make more money than you, right? You want your partner to be richer than you, make more money and take care of you. My thing is like, well, that's a very interesting desire, that I still think that it is prevalent in everybody, is like, because of the way we grew up. I think it's in our bones a little bit.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  When Celine was a matchmaker in her early twenties, she heard a lot of these sorts of quiet, embarrassing desires said out loud. But despite the intimacy of the work, it was not a job that she trained for or even really wanted.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  You know, in New York City, everybody is looking for a day job because it's a city of dreams. And everybody is in pursuit of something that they're trying to achieve. So everybody has a day job. And as a result, to get a job as a barista, you needed like 10 years of experience as a barista.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  You needed skills?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  You needed skills. And to work in retail, they needed 15 years of experience in retail. So I just wasn't qualified for any of these jobs. So the job that I actually was qualified for and I interviewed and I got is, was as a professional matchmaker. And I only did it for six months, but I think that those six months were the probably the six months that I learned most about people and what desire is and also how we talk about love. What I learned is that every client would walk in describing the person they want to be with in terms of height, weight, job, salary, what kind of lifestyle, or what kind of place they own, how they own, if they own.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  As if they're a consumer.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yes, this is what I want to.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, they're a consumer of a product. And I think that this is something that is, we also see increasingly. I mean, we all have the marketplace on our phones, right? And we also are able to assess each other and assess, in turn, objectify and commodify and objectify oneself too. Which is why I think that there is a really, there's a surge of self-improvement, right? Going to the gym to get a body you want, plastic surgery. There's so many ways that.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  This language of self-improvement is actually so connected to the way that we see ourselves as a product and not a person.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  You're making me think about like, you're making me think of online dating as almost like akin to Zillow for buying real estate.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Like, Zillow is such, you know, we want to look, we have aspirations, we like, dig into the history and what we can find out, but you can't tell if the plumbing is solid, if the wiring will cause a fire, if the foundation is broken, you know, you get only what the staged version of this house is.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And usually, you, you know.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  You'll learn the truth.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  In the movie, Lucy herself is offered two versions of a suitor. One, the perfect on paper Harry.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  You are what we call a unicorn.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  He's the rich and suave businessman, played by Pedro Pascal. How much is this apartment?

• 13:29Speaker 05

  12 million.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  And the other man is John, an old lover.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  Not gonna marry him, are you?

• 13:34Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Because he's good-looking and rich.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  He is handsome but broke, a struggling actor, played by Chris Evans.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  When I see your face, I see wrinkles and children that look like you.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Love, art, and money were all swirling around when Celine was figuring out how to make what she wanted. In her early 20s as a playwright, she was moving between elite spaces and struggling spaces.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  So it was a kind of a funny, like, two-world situation for me, to be like, spend all day talking about value, what is a bare minimum salary everybody used to be making to go on a date with them, what kind of job they want, height, everything. And then I would go home or go to my night job, and then I would be spending time with and love and be connected to all these people who were in the dating marketplace, considered worthless.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Because of no value, right? Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  When you would move between your day job and your night job, did you find yourself... I don't know, feeling judgment for the clients you worked with during the day and feeling like your real people were the theater people, where it's really what life is about and they, you know, weren't wrapped up in sort of the performance of status through their relationships, they were digging in through art. Did you, did you sort of feel like you were a tourist in the world of matchmaking? Or did you relate to the people?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Well, I think the first, I mean, of course, I think that in some level, I felt like it was a tourist matchmaking because of course, there are people who are full time, lifelong, committed matchmakers whose entire work is that.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And you were a short timer.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And I was a short timer and I was, it was a day job, it was very openly a day job. But I really do think that while I was in this job, it led me to be less judgmental. I think that, and I think that I hold on to that lack of judgment even now as a result of that job. So the truth is that I learned to be less judgmental about parts of the world that are more sensitive to value than the theater actors in New York City. But I really do think that just because you're pursuing your dream instead of wealth, it doesn't mean that you are suddenly able to not be a materialist, right?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  There's a very important scene for the character of John where he is arguing with Lucy about $25. And that's actually the thing that really crushes him too throughout. And that was something that, of course, Chris and I were talking about when we were talking about the character of John. It's like, he can't catch a break. And that's what it is. You can't catch a break if you don't have a lot of money, right? Which feels like, you're like, well, I'm, I'm not in pursuit of wealth, I'm in pursuit of my dream. But it doesn't mean that you're going to not be crushed daily by your lack of it, your lack of wealth, right?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And maybe he's in pursuit of wealth, but has learned to tolerate longer odds because he wants to get the wealth through arts as opposed to finance.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Where the odds are a little bit easier.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, exactly. It's a, it's a bit of a, it's a bad bet, right?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  So it's a, so I don't think that anybody is free from it. And I think that Lucy also knows that, which is why I think that it's not, it doesn't make a lot of sense for her to be judgmental or not about anybody.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Coming up, the allure and assured disappointment of thinking you've landed the fantasy partner, even if they do have all the right moves at first. The moment when Pedro Pascal picks up Lucy and walks her out of frame. My breath caught. I was like, sexy.

• 17:38Sam Fragoso?

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• 20:09Speaker 02

  You lifted her. You know?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  One thing that stayed with me after watching Celine Song's new movie was how edgy it felt to hear people say out loud with specificity what they found attractive and what turned them off. We talk about looks all the time in some ways in our culture. It's screaming at us from every image we see in movies, ads, or just everything. But we also don't talk about looks and attractiveness seriously. What we do to be attractive or to hold on to feeling attractive, it's a private endeavor. But philosopher Heather Widows, she talks about it all the time in public.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  The four features that I track are thinness, firmness, smoothness, and youth.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  She and I talk about looks and the narrowing ideals of beauty in our Slate Plus feed this week. She argues that the pursuit of looking good is overtaking more and more of our brain space. And as a professor, she poses questions to get her students to talk about the trade offs of that.

• 21:27Speaker 06

  So I ask things, things like, you know, how many years do you think you'd give up if you knew that you could get up looking perfect every day? And I go, you know, would you give up two years? Put your hands up. Five years, 10 years? And it's extraordinary how when they're really, you know, answering for themselves, there's an awful lot of hands still going up. I would give up 10 years of life if I knew I could get up looking perfect every day.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  I also really liked how Dr. Widows is not about shaming or encouraging us to do certain things at the individual level. Her goal is to get us all talking about how much beauty and the pursuit of beauty matters collectively.

• 22:06Speaker 06

  We do not want to believe that teachers pay more attention to their good-looking pupils than their intelligent pupils. And we don't want to believe that courts make judgments on how people look. But the evidence is absolutely overwhelming. In fact, maybe our younger generations are doing better at this because pretty privilege is all over TikTok.

• 22:27Speaker 06

  They know there's a pretty privilege. And they get told, oh, no, if you just do your schoolwork, it really won't matter. But they know it does. And that's why we have to start by telling the truth about this far more than we do.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  If you are a Slate Plus member, you can hear that conversation in your feed right now. If you are not yet a Slate Plus member, you can sign up right now on the Death, Sex and Money show page on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, or just go to slate.com/dsmplus to unlock all the benefits of Slate Plus membership, these kinds of extra conversations, plus ad-free listening to all the podcasts that Slate makes. And we also want to hear from all of you with your own stories about the interventions you're doing to look more attractive and how you feel about it. How much time and money do you spend on improving your appearance, either with skincare or injectables, hair dye, teeth whitening or straightening,

• 23:27Speaker 01

  plastic surgery? And how do you talk about all that? What feels OK for you to do and what doesn't? And are you open with your routines or treatments or secretive? Record a voice memo and send it to us at [email protected].

• 23:49Speaker 01

  This is Death, Sex and Money from Slate. I'm Anna Sale. Lucy, Dakota Johnson's character in Materialists, is fluent about wealth with her matchmaking clients. But we learn this is not her world. She grew up without money and kind of finds rich people amusing, something to study. Writer and director Celine Song grew up the child of artist, a filmmaker and graphic designer. She moved to New York City in 2014 to get her MFA in playwriting. She was born in South Korea and then her family moved to Canada when she was 12. While making art felt like the family business, she was also taught early on that it wasn't without risk.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Well, you're always kind of walking into it thinking it's a bit of a gamble. Because that's the amazing thing about being an artist. I remember at one point talking to my accountant. And, you know, there was a real question. It was the first time we worked with an accountant because I had my first TV job. I was a staff writer for Wheel of Time. It's the first time I made any money that made any sense to get an accountant. So we get an accountant.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  You can move off of TurboTax.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, we may not get a return this year, right? So I was talking to the accountant. And then the accountant, I think that we're talking and it's something that, of course, my accountant is asking. It's like, well, how much do we expect to make next year? And I was like, could be $0 or it could be $1 million. Like, I don't know, right? It's a very, it's an amazing amount of uncertainty. And every day you hope that it's on the higher end of the spectrum. But you don't know. You're kind of walking into every year, every day, just like, maybe you'll hit the Lotto. But I think that I was very comfortable with it

• 25:42Speaker 02

  because of the way that my parents are working artists.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Your parents being familiar with the ups and downs financially of being an artist, like when you had a really lean year, you didn't feel like there was judgment about your value related to their love?

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Or their pride in you, like that was separate?

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Because of the family you grew up in.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  I think that's definitely true. And I think that it's also real that it's like, well, only thing that matters is anything that I think that wouldn't make them proud is if I wrote something that was bad. Right? Or why I wrote something that was not art, right?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Not art? Oh, Celine, that's so...

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so horrible, right? But it's possible, like, it's totally possible that it's like, imagine if I really wanted to make a buck and I wasn't making art so that I can make a buck. Like, I think that would be... By the way, the part of what I'm able to do is that I never have to... My only goal then becomes... Because there's no other way that I'm gonna try to impress my artist parents. The only thing I'm gonna do is to make something great. So it's like something that I know I feel very lucky about is that, like, you know, my friends are, you know, when their parents, you know, they're not in the arts, and then they talk to them, they'll just ask questions like, it's like, so when are you gonna be on Broadway?

• 27:07Speaker 02

  And I do think of this as a huge privilege. I usually call it my, I call it my trust fund. Because it's like, it's a trust fund. It's not real, it's not wealth, but it's wealth in a way of having parents who would never ask me questions like that. You know what I mean? Like, just like, who just understands what being on Broadway is? Because they understand that what I make... I can tell them about, like, be the semifinalist for the O'Neill Theater Conference. And then they will understand the exact context of it, and they will understand the competitiveness of it, and they will assess it exactly right.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Like, it's never gonna be like, it's never gonna be like, oh, just, what is that? Just nothing. Or, wow, it's amazing. It's neither, it's always gonna be accurate.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Celine's first feature film, Past Lives, earned enough accolades to make any parent proud, artist or not. The movie was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Celine has said the story of Past Lives is semi-autobiographical. Celine met her husband, Justin Karitskis, a screenwriter best known for writing the movie Challengers, at an artist residency. In Past Lives, the protagonist is a playwright living in New York City from South Korea. She reconnects with a childhood sweetheart from South Korea who comes to visit. And Nora, the protagonist, is happily married at the time.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  While there is a pull of will they or won't they, Celine's writing doesn't let us settle into quick judgments. Like Arthur, Nora's husband, voices his jealousy, but in a way that feels tender and always kind.

• 29:01Speaker 07

  What?

• 29:04Speaker 08

  I was just thinking about what a good story this is.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  The story of Hyeong Woo and me?

• 29:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 08

  I just can't compete.

• 29:20Speaker 07

  What do you mean?

• 29:26Speaker 08

  Childhood sweethearts who reconnect 20 years later only to realize they were meant for each other.

• 29:32Speaker 07

  We're not meant for each other.

• 29:33Speaker 08

  I know.

• 29:36Speaker 08

  In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny.

• 29:45Speaker 07

  Shut up.

• 29:46Speaker 08

  Me? What? Think about it. Our story is just so boring.

• 29:51Speaker 08

  We met at an artist residency. We slept together because we both happened to be single. We realized we both live in New York. So we move in together to save money on rent, get married, so you could get a green card.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  I mean, it sounds so romantic.

• 30:08Speaker 08

  That's what I'm saying.

• 30:13Speaker 08

  I'm the guy you leave in the story when your ex-lover comes to take you away.

• 30:17Speaker 07

  He's not my ex-lover.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  When you were first falling in love with your husband and you're both artists and you're both at this critical early career stage where you're thinking about the focus you have to dedicate to your work, what you get from being in community with other artists, the competition you feel among other artists, like what was that like when you discovered each other? Was it a tumultuous kind of falling in love for you or was it easy? How do you remember it?

• 30:51Speaker 02

  I think it's, and this is a thing that's also hard. It's unfortunately very easy.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  And I say unfortunately because I think that, and it's expressed in the film a couple of times. Right? Lucy goes, "Love is easy." You know, dating requires a lot of effort, but love is easy. And to me, that would be my experience of it. It was, it's immediate and easy.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  So, yeah, there's no like, it wasn't very effortful in that way. I think it was just like effortless and simple and just happened, you know?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  And you weren't alarmed by it?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  No, why would I be alarmed by it?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Would you feel alarmed by it?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I think when forceful love comes, especially maybe because you were in your

• 31:51Speaker 02

  I was 24.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Early to mid twenties, 24, young. At this stage of life where you're kind of just figuring out what your kind of desires might be and where you want to go and maybe, I think alarmed maybe because there is something with falling in love where you are hitching your wagon to someone else and your ability to be totally free to make your own choices is more limited. One could view it that way, but it's interesting you didn't at all.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is, you try it and see if the wagon runs. Like, you know what I mean? It's not like hitting you to a wagon, but I go like, well, see, let's see, you can get off. But I mean, I think about this so much in terms of like the way that um we talk about love generally. I think that it's something that I uh happened uh when I was releasing Past Lives. Where uh where I was sharing Past Lives and then somebody said to me, it's like, it just feels like uh my main character in Past Lives. She seems to have like too much love in her life, right? She feel it feels like she has too much.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  And I was like, well, it's really interesting because people feel very entitled to all kinds of things. People feel entitled to uh many different feelings and many different objects. And also like uh we all feel entitled to someone who's six feet tall, who makes this much money, who has this kind of a job, who likes me this way. Like, there are so many things that we feel entitled to things. But the one thing that I think we hesitate to feel entitled to is love from the person who love you.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this line in a in a wedding speech that a character says, when you are lost, go towards love.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And I I almost like caught my breath caught and I was like, oh. And I love the simplicity of that. It's not saying romantic love, it's not saying turn toward your spouse. It's like go towards the place where you have love.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  When you are lost and cocoon there and that will be part of the path back.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  That's the only answer. That's the only answer that's going to make sense. It's the only deal you can take. Because of course, there are many deals that is offered to Lucy when it comes to love and romance and relationship. It's about the film. But the only deal that one can take is what that is. You just have to go where love is.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And I I think though it's so interesting when you describe, this is this is definitely a love story. There is. It's a lust story, too. There's some desire. And I wonder how you thought, like, when you think about lust and then this list of things that people are saying that they are drawn to in a kind of like, not love way, not a heart love way, but in a kind of like, like greedy yummy, ah. Like, do you, how did you think about physical attraction and lust? And how you want to portray that as part of the mix of what powers love? In particular, I'm thinking, because you're casting two very handsome men.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  So I think it's there.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  I think that there is whole level of conversation about lust and desire. And I think that's actually very disconnected to romance and actual feelings of wanting to sleep with that person. Because it's not necessarily true that the person that you have the most chemistry with, the person that you want to sleep with the most, is a person with the best body. And, you know, what a beautiful thing that you have these three entirely lovable actors. Because I think that beyond how beautiful they are, something that I'm looking for when I'm casting them in this film is lovability. Someone that we can see and say like, oh, so adorable.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Or like, oh, cute, you know? It's like, oh, funny, you know? Because all three of them are just so funny. And I think that, that, what is it? It's like, and also, by the way, it's very different than likability. Likability, likability, of course, is about something that has broad appeal, that everybody can be okay with.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  No edges.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  No edges. Lovability is something where, you know, when we love something, we never go like, well, I love that person because everybody else loves them. Right? You go, no, I love that person because only I get it. Right? I'm the only person who gets what's so lovable and adorable and cute about that person. That's why I love them. Right? So that, to me, is the lovability of it. And I think that is actually, I think, something that is of more focus to me than even like, whatever.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Good looks, you know? Because the good looks, of course, they're actors. You know, they're beautiful actors. So good looks is one thing. But to me, what I'm interested in is like, yeah, but Dakota's so funny, you know? Oh, yeah, you know? Oh, yeah, Chris can, oh, look at the way he's gonna, you know, uh, go like, fuck.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I love, in front of the, in front of the bathroom mirror, when he's brushing his teeth, I thought, oh, that was such a good moment. I really, I fell in love with him in that moment. He was so real.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  But you're gonna fall in love with him there, right? You're not gonna fall in love with him because he's cool looking and walking around and looking cool. No, you're gonna fall in love with him because it's so, uh, it's pathos, right? He's like, you're like, oh, he's so pathetic. You know? He just wants to look good for his girl. Oh, you know, touching his hair. And you're like, oh, it's so adorable. It's so funny. And it's like so honest and very earnest, too. So I think that's what, uh, makes this actor so incredible. And it's why I wanted them with the movie, you know?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Coming up, how more success and more money has changed the way Celine thinks about friendship.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  I think that the person who, uh, makes more money in a friendship or a relationship should be the person who knows how to handle that, uh, social situation.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Can I ask you about money and friendships?

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Because I was struck by the portrayal of different social scenes. There's, there's a very posh, fancy wedding where everyone is, you know, glad-handing, but there's not a ton of warmth. And then there's a scene after a play where all the theater people are standing outside and smoking. And there's a real scene of like, these are our, these are our people. We're hanging out and it's warm and we know each other. And I wonder what's been your experience having had moments where you're winning the lottery in the arts and you have friends who are in a different situation? What have you noticed about the ways in which money, uh, gets in the way of the intimacy and love and friendships?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I've always found it to be so gracious when my friends uh who had more uh money than me would be uh lovely about it and gracious and lovely about it as in like they will just be like

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Noah, no, no, I'll get it and make more money than you. But then I always think about like whether they want to pretend like they don't. So that to me is also something that I feel a lot, especially like with like like, I don't know, like my crew or something. You know, like I don't want my crew to, you know what I mean? I don't wanna be weird cuz I'm when I'm in a position of a boss. I don't wanna be uh, I don't wanna be in transparent about uh how much more money I make. Cuz I do, of course, I'd make more money than the, you know, uh, you know, somebody who is in the my my department head, of course. So I'm not going to be in that situation, act like um, well, who knows how much money we all make? Like, it's obvious, you know, I'm their boss, I'm their director.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  So it's actually the responsibility of the person who has more money to uh be open about it. And also to be cool about it.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  By cool, do you mean nonchalant, no big deal?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Like, not, not making it a, not making it a thing. So I've really have loved it when my uh my friends who who make more uh, and I learned from this too. Uh, once I did make more money, which is that like my friends who are able to like just pay for it and then like not even say much about it and then like change topic. You know, like not making it a, not being fussy and not making it a uh, an act of generosity. Cuz already the person who has less money already knows that this is an act of generosity, right? So there's this word in Koreans.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  And sing seik is something where it's like when you do something nice. And then you just make sure that everybody knows about it. Right? That's sing seik. So it's like you just don't wanna make sing seik, right? About

• 41:09Speaker 01

  That's a bad thing.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It's a bad thing. Why? It's not a, it's not a bad, I think there's, I think you can sing seik in a cute way. We can be like, well, I, I took care of that problem for you. Like, it's kinda cute, it can be cute, it can be sweet and cute and like, kind of like a wonderful thing. And then, of course, people might, in that situation, be like, oh, my God, thank you so much for taking care of that. I can't believe you did that.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  You said sing seik?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Sing, sing seik.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Sing seik. I, I think when I employ sing seik, it's mostly in my marriage with things like, did you notice I unloaded the dishwasher?

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Sweetheart.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  No, it's a very, it's a kind of like, uh, it's such a useful word because it's such a big, uh, part of, I think, like roommates, like, you know, like living together, marriage, like, family, like, it's such a deep, uh, thing that we do. And I think it's like, but then how, whether you're able to keep it cute or make it up to something dramatic, I think that's the, always the, uh, that's the balance. And then maybe it's like, the, sometimes like the timing is bad, so be careful. You know, sometimes you're like, this is not the time to be sing seik. And sometimes like, like, you know, like, I, I saw somebody, of course, like, it's a Korean word, it's not a, it's not a part of everything. But like, once I, I went to a funeral and somebody was sing seik.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  And I'm like, like, this is not the time to sing seik. Right? It's like, it's like, yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  I'm from West Virginia and my, we, I, when my husband and I do sing seik, we say, I want credit. Like, that's what we say to each other.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  I want credit, yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  And sometimes I just want compliments.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Notice this, please.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  There was a really great, uh, I feel like what it was, there was a, there was a really great, uh, comedy skit where it was like a song about like, I want, I want compliments, I want compliments. And I'm like.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I think that is so, I mean, I think, but I think, yeah, I want credit. Yeah, like, that's what, that's what, that's what this is. This is, I want credit, right? I want it to be known here that this has happened. And I think it's like, you know, like, in the zombie apocalypse, like, that's just not the time for saying, saying, right? Like, it's a, it's a real, it's only really, it's only cute in peacetime.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  That's writer and director Celine Song. Her movie Materialist, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, is out on June 13th. This episode was produced by Zoe Azulay. The rest of our team includes Andrew Dunn and Cameron Druze. Daisy Rosario is our senior supervising producer at Slate. Hillary Fry is Slate's editor in chief. Death, Sex, and Money is produced by Slate. Please support the production of our show by becoming a member of Slate Plus. You'll not only be supporting our team, you'll also get access to bonus conversations like my interview with beauty philosopher Heather Widows that is in your feed right now. You'll also get access to all of the shows that Slate makes,

• 44:18Speaker 01

  like Slow Burn and Dakota Ring, without any ads or sponsor breaks. You can subscribe directly to Slate Plus from the Death, Sex, and Money show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/dsmplus to get access wherever you listen. Our theme music is by the Reverend John Delour and Steve Lewis. And don't forget, send us a voice memo to tell us what kind of interventions you are doing to enhance your attractiveness and how you feel about having to do those interventions. Record it and email it to us at [email protected]. You can also send us any questions, comments, critiques, or show ideas. We love hearing from you.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Again, the email is [email protected]. I'm Anna Sale, and this is Death, Sex, and Money from Slate.

• 45:15Speaker 09

  History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating, so you know how much weight to give the source, and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it. The Nobel Peace Center called it "an excellent way to stay informed,

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• 46:36Speaker 10

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long-haul truck together.

• 46:44Speaker 11

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 46:48Speaker 10

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 46:50Speaker 11

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 46:53Speaker 10

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 46:57Speaker 11

  That's it.

• 46:59Speaker 10

  Find out what it's like to be a long-haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.