#263: Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky — Exploring Creativity, Ignoring Critics, and Making Art

Darren Aronofsky (@DarrenAronofsky https://twitter.com/DarrenAronofsky/) is the founder and head of production company Protozoa Pictures http://protozoa.com/. He is the acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker behind both cult classics and blockbusters, including Pi http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003DWG29A/offsitoftimfe-20 (which earned him a Best Director award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival), Requiem For a Dream http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000JCQCW4/offsitoftimfe-20, The Wrestler http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00274EYKY/offsitoftimfe-20 (the third U. S. film in history to win the esteemed Golden Lion award), Black Swan http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004Q08BE2/offsitoftimfe-20 (which won Natalie Portman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Portman the Academy Award for Best Actress and garnered four other Oscar nominations), Noah http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00M7URUUE/offsitoftimfe-20 (His biblically inspired epic that opened at number at the box office and grossed more than $362,000,000 worldwide), and his latest, mother! https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMotherMovie/, a psychological horror-thriller film starring Jennifer Lawrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lawrence, Javier Bardem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Bardem, Ed Harris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Pfeiffer. In this episode, we explore a wide range of topics, including: His creative process and "nomadic writing" Work environment and highly unusual desks The "Month of Fury" How to navigate tough conversations over creativity and control Psychedelics Dealing with critics And much more... Many thanks to Peter Attia https://tim.blog/guest/peter-attia/ for making the introduction -- check out his three previous appearances on this show here https://tim.blog/guest/peter-attia/. Please enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim, my go-to platform for 24/7-supported, zero downtime blogging, writing online, creating websites -- everything! I love it to bits, and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. Whether for personal use or business, you're in good company with WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim -- used by The New Yorker, Jay Z, Beyonce, FiveThirtyEight, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and Time, just to name a few. A source at Google told me that WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim offers "the best out-of-the-box SEO imaginable," which is probably why it runs nearly 30% of the Internet. Go to WordPress.com/Tim https://WordPress.com/Tim to get 15% off your website today! This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/timfor years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is visit Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today. Enjoy.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  No, this is inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites, everything. I love WordPress 2 bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress. And the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin? I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site,

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  both, neither, something else, you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on wordpress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO, that's search engine optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else on search engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization, but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt

• 1:47Tim Ferriss?

  and then became an investor slash advisor to Automattic, which runs wordpress.com. That is how much I believe in this, and that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about. Because I'm in love with X, and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress. And that includes everything from the huge sites. That I mentioned to neighborhood sites. And it is super easy to get started. There's no need to worry about security or upgrades or hosting. They offer 24/7 support and handle all of that, which allows you to focus on creating the highest quality content that you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't want to have to worry about getting emergency emails

• 2:32Tim Ferriss?

  if I'm on vacation or something like that. And WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this. I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress. And they can't buy that with a sponsorship. They can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime and quality. And that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So check it out. Go to WordPress. That's W O R D P R E S S dot com. WordPress.com forward slash Tim to receive 15% off of your website today. That's WordPress.com forward slash Tim.

• 3:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time. And it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P O T T S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  for a lot of what would later become The 4-Hour Work Week. So go to audible.com forward slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com forward slash Tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial.

• 4:35Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, breakfasts, whatever it might be, that you can test and apply in your own life. The specifics, the details, the beliefs, habits, and so on, that you can actually use in the real world. In this episode, we have a fantastic guest I've wanted to connect with for a very long time, Darren Aronofsky. So who is Darren? We're gonna get to that in a second, but he was introduced to me by another podcast guest, Peter Attia, who is a medical doctor, an endurance athlete, or he would say, former endurance athlete.

• 5:16Tim Ferriss?

  And I encourage you to also check out his episodes, because it'll put a lot in context. And Peter has three episodes. If you just go to tim.blog/attia, A-T-T-I-A, you will find three of them. They start with Dr. Peter Attia on Life Extension, Drinking, Jet Fuel, Ultra Endurance, Human Foie Gras, and more, to the next one, Optimizing Investing Blood Hormones and Life, then My Life Extension Pilgrimage to Easter Island. It's a long story, but check it out, tim.blog/attia. But back to Darren. Darren Aronofsky. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram, @Darren,

• 5:55Tim Ferriss?

  D-A-R-R-E-N, Aronofsky, A-R-O-N-O-F-S-K-Y, to say hello. And he's doing some very cool stuff on Instagram. And Darrenaronofsky.com is the founder and head of the production company, Protozoa Pictures. He is the acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker behind cult classics like Pie, Requiem for a Dream, and The Wrestler, which are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his filmography. But going back to the beginning, Pie, his first film, that was 1998, won him early plaudits and a Best Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Aronofsky, that's Darren, later directed and produced The Wrestler, which I absolutely loved, and made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which happens to be

• 6:37Tim Ferriss?

  the oldest film festival in the world, where it became only the third US film in history to win the esteemed Golden Lion Award. Darren later directed the indie box office phenomenon Black Swan, which won Natalie Portman the Academy Award for Best Actress and garnered four other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Then his biblically inspired epic Noah opened at number one at the box office and grossed to more than 362 million worldwide. His latest movie is Mother, with lowercase m and an exclamation point, a psychological horror thriller film starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and many others, Michelle Pfeiffer, goes on. I've had a chance to see this movie and I'm stumbling over my words because it's it's

• 7:20Tim Ferriss?

  hard to describe. It was mind bending, super intense, and I walked around in a dream state for an entire day after seeing this. It is unlike anything you have ever seen. So if you want to strap on your seatbelt and go on a roller coaster, I suggest that you check it out. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Darren Aronofsky.

• 7:50Tim Ferriss?

  Darren, sir, welcome to the show.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Thank you, Tim.

• 7:52Tim Ferriss?

  I have been looking forward to meeting you for some time now.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. I'm a big fan as well.

• 7:57Tim Ferriss?

  We have quite a few mutual friends and I have some suggestions. I won't mention them by name yet as to topics and questions, but I wanted to start with a question about your writing environment.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a good question.

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  I've read a little bit about a desk, a peculiar desk.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:17Tim Ferriss?

  Could you describe this desk and if you still use it?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  It was interesting. I know you've spent time in Japan and so I was in Japan probably promoting, I don't know if it was Pya Requiem for a Dream, and I went to some spa town south of Tokyo. I can't remember the name of it. And I guess it was the kind of nexus of this place where they make these puzzle boxes. I don't know if you've ever seen them. They're kind of beautiful patterned wooden boxes and you can't really see any hinges or any spaces, but if you slide a few panels in a certain order, and it could be up to eight, 16, 32 moves, depending on how much money you want to spend. Eventually it opens and there's a secret compartment.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  And it blew my mind. I had never seen any type of souvenir like it. I bought a couple. And I played with it for a long time. And then, I think it was early days of internet, so I started to Google a little bit about what it is. There's a whole art form. I won't try to butcher the Japanese word for it, but I then noticed that there were contests worldwide. And that there was this one dude who was winning year after year contests, and he was a guy in Colorado. So I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And so just randomly, I tracked him down and I sent him an email. His name's Kagan Sound. And I sent him an email. I said, hey, you know, did you ever think of doing any furniture?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  And he's like, well, actually, I'm working on this thing for a library. And I said, well, it'd be interesting maybe to do a desk out of it. And he loved the idea. And then he, it was amazing. He said, it's true master. We should probably go over to my house and check it out. I would love to see it. David saw it. I don't know if he told you about it, but he freaked the hell out. So David Blaine, yeah, this is, this is part of why I'm asking. Oh, okay. But yeah. So anyway, he ended up this, this master. So the whole thing is made it completely out of wood. He doesn't work with any other materials but wood. And I'm not sure the count on puzzles in the desk, but it's, I mean, scores of them.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  And eventually, they all sort of work together to build to a final release where you, basically, it, he was able to turn it into a musical instrument. He created bellows all controlled with wood and the drawers. And by actually pushing the drawers, it creates sounds. And it has a full octave. And he asked me what song I wanted. And it has, he then was able to build a, basically, a computer thing that has switches that are all blown by the bellows. And if they're done in the right order, a panel flaps open in the back with a secret drawer. So it took him five years to do it, and it was insane. And I think the price we agreed on was a crime at the beginning. A crime to him or a crime to you?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  A crime to him. It was a crime to him. And I felt so, and then I realized I didn't have a chair for it. So then I said, you know, we should make a puzzle chair for it. Another five years later. And I paid through the nose for that to get him back. But it's a beautiful thing, and it's a great desk.

• 11:26Tim Ferriss?

  I want to say I read this in a previous interview that you've referred yourself as a nomadic writer, writing in one place for a few weeks and then moving locations.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  How does your writing process differ project to project? Or do you, how do you use, say, the desk that we were just talking about and combine that with shifting locations? I'm on book deadline right now, so I'm thinking about this. And of course, I'll do anything to avoid writing, including interviews.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Exactly. I completely understand that procrastination. But you know, my writing partner, a guy I write with a lot, Ari Handel, once said to me, probably the most important thing I taught him was that, and I didn't do this on purpose, is that procrastination is part of the process. That actually, your brain needs a break every once in a while. And not to say to abuse that, but to be a little easy on yourself and allow yourself to go to a bookstore, to go to a museum, to just, even if you're serious about your work, even when you're not working, you are working. Your brain is putting stuff together and, you know, inspiration comes from the strangest places, as we all know. You know, you suddenly stumble on something that's exactly what you were looking for when you didn't know you were looking for it.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  But it's changed my writing process. I used to, what I do was a tremendous amount of prep, where we would do a tremendous amount of research and outlines, and eventually get to a place where we were exhausted with that. And then I would do something called the muscle draft, where I would go and disappear somewhere, usually far away, where I could be very alone and be very lonely. And that loneliness would inspire me to work hard and fast. And I would muscle out a draft, which meant I would never go back. It was all about just pounding through it to get to the end as quick as possible. And it was like a two, three day process. And you come out with like, if it ended up being 120 page screenplay, you'd have an 79, 80 page screenplay.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  But in that muscle draft, there would be moments when you...

• 13:26Speaker 03

  You know, when you do enter that zone, I don't know if you have a term for it, if you run into it, but there's that zone when you kind of forget time. It's, you know, I imagine athletes are doing it and rock musicians seem to be doing it when they, their eyes roll back in their head. But as a writer, every once in a while you get that where, where time disappears and something comes out on the page. And that scene is often something that ends up staying all the way through to the end of the process.

• 13:52Tim Ferriss?

  When you are muscling out that first draft, is it in, are you using screenwriting software? Is it just kind of brain vomiting bullets on into a, a word document? What does it look like?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  It's, I'm trying to think, I mean, you know, Final Draft has been around for a long time now and it's a great software that I've used. I don't, I don't know if Pi was written on it. It's hard to, that was 97, so I can't, I doubt it probably. I probably was formatting stuff back then. I don't really remember.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  But, you know, that, that just helps you. It helps you work quicker because, you know, instead of dealing with indentation, you press tabs and shortcuts to get through it quicker. I mean, you know, screenwriting is very much like sculpture in the sense that, you know, if you start with a piece of clay, you don't want to just focus on the hand. You know, any artist that does that will tell you, you know, then the hand will be like grossly detailed and enlarged compared to the rest of the body. You kind of just want to slowly start cutting away at the clay to get closer and closer to the final form. You know, but you don't want to get the sandpaper out till you're ready for that like level of detail work. And so it's just about passes.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  You keep going through it and once you say, I'm going to start writing, even if you get to page 30 and you think, oh, page five needs something, you just make a note of it and then zap to the end before you ever go back. So it's, it's really like working it way, working slowly away at, at that big clay.

• 15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Do you no longer do the isolation retreats?

• 15:33Speaker 03

  I do it less and less. I mean, it's a funny story. Just telling my son, this was when I, when I wrote Pi. My friend, actually, who does visual effects for me, um, his parents had a little cabin up outside of Woodstock. And I was like, hey, can I go there for a few days and pound out my muscle draft on Pi? And he was like, yeah, sure. And I went up there and, and his parents were intellectuals and just had books and books and books. They were academics, so there was tons of books. And then I was, you know, procrastinating, looking through the books. And of course, the only book that caught my attention was Carrie, which I had never read. So I proceeded to pound through procrastinating by reading Carrie, scaring the living crap out of myself. You know, when you read King, it's just like, wow.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  And then I really had to write quick because I had to get the hell out of this cabin. So I think I wrote the first draft of Pi in like 18 hours. Wow. But, but to talk about now, um, it's funny, this, this, this new movie, Mother, is very, very different process. The most different process than I've ever done and probably more similar to where I started. I wrote the script in five days. And it was this kind of fever dream when it happened. I had had the idea two weeks before and it, you know, it started off with this idea for this allegory with a real kind of relationship drama at the core. But I didn't know how to structure it. And then I had this kind of breakthrough of what the structure is.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  And I had a five day weekend without, uh, my son was with his mom and I was all alone. And I just sat in my kitchen, I actually even go up to the desk and I just pounded it out in my kitchen, in my underwear, barely eating. It was just like this fever that came out of me in, in five days. And when I was done with the script, I showed it to my producers who didn't know I was even working on something. And they were like, wow, wow, I think there's something here. And it's weird, I think I've always been jealous of musicians. You know, you hear the story where Bob Dylan wrote a song in the afternoon and it became, you know, the anthem for a generation. But as filmmakers, we really don't get to do that. It takes us two to five years.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, Black Swan, the first meeting with Natalie was 10 years before I shot it. The Wrestler was eight years. The Fountain took me six years. Noah was an idea for 20 years. You know, it's a long time. I, but I was like, is it possible as a filmmaker to take a single emotion and a feeling of, and it's kind of what I was feeling right in that moment, and, and try to channel it into a single track and into a movie? And I think that's kind of, it kind of captures a single emotion, this film, even though it has other stuff, it really was one color that burst right through.

• 18:17Tim Ferriss?

  I want to talk about something maybe related to Fever Dream. So the, the idea of, or concept of madness. And I want to say, I'm certainly paraphrasing, that maybe you've said that by walking the tightrope between sanity and insanity, you can learn what sanity is, or something along those lines. Do you have a fascination with madness? I mean, if so.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:46Tim Ferriss?

  Or, or why do people have that perception?

• 18:48Speaker 03

  I had an uncle who was schizophrenic. So I grew up around that and I got to see it very, very close and sort of saw his mindset and also how it weighed on my family. And, you know, the emotional ripples from that were tremendous. And then I also saw how society treated people like that. And so it's, it's something I've been very close to and I've always thought about it. And I remember reading, what was it, The Denial of Death? Did you ever read that book?

• 19:25Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  That's a good one for you.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  But they talk about the liminal, the line, the thin line between the

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Conscious and the subliminal.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Or I think how they were using between genius and insanity. And there were things that my uncle would say that, I mean, he was a highly functioning guy. He worked, he worked as an engineer for New York City for his entire life and, you know, had a pension and all that, you know, made it through, but lived a very tough, tough life because of the illness. But he would say things that were just unbelievable, brilliant. Like, I remember one time my dad was talking to him about something, you know, about how to do something. I don't remember exactly the details. And he said, well, I can't really say this on radio, right?

• 20:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you can.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Do it if you want.

• 20:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you can.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. And he said something like, yeah, that's like if you fuck a snake, you get an elephant. And I remember hearing it, I was whatever, I was 12 or 13, but that's kind of a crazy metaphor and kind of beautiful. And it's so, you know, it was like the best way of saying, yeah, right. Like you're selling me the Brooklyn Bridge. So, but he had many of those that were just sort of like, that's not proper English, but it kind of works, you know?

• 20:41Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, I've always had just an absolute fascination with that very thin line. When I was an undergrad, I was, I'm not a mathematician. In fact, part of the reason I went to Princeton is because at the time at least did not have a math requirement. I was scared off of math by a very belligerent teacher in 10th grade.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Oh, that's so.

• 21:01Tim Ferriss?

  My, yeah, it was terrible. My brother, in fact, same grade, different teacher, was steered in the opposite direction and is finishing a PhD in statistics.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  Shows what teachers can do.

• 21:09Tim Ferriss?

  But I was drawn to a few specifically mathematicians at Princeton who were really riding that razor's edge and had multiple suicide attempts, but were also brilliant beyond all description.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:22Tim Ferriss?

  I personally, and I in fact also have a cousin who's schizophrenic, which was relatively later onset and became effectively a different person, still very smart. But have you ever worried that you would bleed over that edge?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  You know, luckily my hubris doesn't go that far where I get that worry. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not crazy hypochondriac and stuff, but yeah, sure. I've, when I was a

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think when I was a teenager and I read somewhere that like schizophrenia is onset can happen in your twenties, you know, that idea that when you're a fully formed human being, suddenly things can change for you. That was a scary idea. Will it happen for me? But, you know, I, you know, and I definitely think when it came to, you know, perhaps

• 22:17Speaker 03

  exploring, you know, plant enhancements, I was always a little terrified that I might go too far in a certain direction. But, um, you know, so it's always been in the back of my head a little bit, just because, you know, a lot of that stuff is genetic, but I don't think it's really haunted me. But I guess maybe a little bit you, you thought the possibility, the fear of it.

• 22:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, I almost off myself in college. So I went through a very, very dark period that I actually talked about really publicly in a major way for the first time onstage at TED, which really shut the room down.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Well, no, good for you. I think it's important.

• 22:55Tim Ferriss?

  But that is always, or has always been kind of in the back of my mind. And one of the things that I got from, as you put it, plant enhancements or psychedelic experience was temporarily experiencing what could only be, would have to be on some level synonymous with extreme mental illness.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 23:19Tim Ferriss?

  And having

• 23:20Speaker 03

  There's a real connection.

• 23:20Tim Ferriss?

  And developing more empathy as a result, living in a place like San Francisco, where you're just surrounded by people who are homeless and mentally ill. So one of the topics I had down to talk about was psychedelics, which was suggested by someone we both know who will remain nameless for now.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  I want to know who that was.

• 23:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not sure how you would feel. There are only three, but.

• 23:47Tim Ferriss?

  What role has that played in your life? Or how do you think about it as fitting into your life?

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Well, I, look, I think it's, I've researched it, read a lot about it. I think it's very interesting. I mean, you know, the story of deer in Siberia that eat mushrooms and fall over. And it doesn't seem like there's any true, you know, survival of the fittest evolutionary positivity for a deer to make itself that helpless. So maybe there is something else going on that some other medicine or something else that this creature is getting out of putting itself at risk was just a fascinating idea. And the fact that shamanism and reaching alternative states has been just part of

• 24:33Speaker 03

  our culture for a super long time and then somehow got completely washed out and, I don't know, turned into the sacrament, maybe rock and roll music, but we've really lost, you know, anything that's sort of trying to reach away from scientific reality is, you know, clearly a loss. And, and it seems like, you know, there's a lot of wisdom to come out of, you know, some exploration in a safe type of examination as long as very controlled environments. It's, there's clearly tremendous benefit, you know, that's happened, you know, for

• 25:16Speaker 03

  a society, you know, over, that's recently been discovered and is being rediscovered right now.

• 25:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm involved with some research at Johns Hopkins and a few other places related to use of psilocybin specifically in potentially addressing treatment resistant depression, among other things.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  That's what's fascinating, all that stuff that MAPS is doing with PTSD and the fact that the Defense Department is supporting it, you know, because it seems to be working. You know, I just saw a film that came out of Israel that is using MDMA to sort of help people deal, not just soldiers, but people deal with all different types of emotional distress. It's fascinating and it's interesting and it's clearly, you know, if the Defense Department is sort of supporting it, then there, there's probably some, you know, it's probably pretty interesting to them.

• 26:13Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's also a really smart place for research to start, or one, at least of the subsets of the population that's very smart to work with is returning vets.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:24Tim Ferriss?

  Specifically, among other reasons, because it is a nonpartisan issue. It's very hard to be like, fuck the vets.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:30Tim Ferriss?

  Or like, screw the terminal cancer patients who want to decrease end of life anxiety.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  It's funny, though, because another thing I'm involved with is I'm on the board of directors for the Sierra Club. And a big part of what Sierra Club is trying to do is get vets into nature.

• 26:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  And we have all these different programs that do that. And in fact, I actually went to the Arctic with two vets. And it was amazing for them to sort of, you know, not just to have that experience, which is completely mind expansive, to see, you know, nature in a true, to see true wilderness, like what's happening in the Arctic. But I think to, a lot of them, what they expressed to me is they actually, this is what they were fighting for, was to defend this, you know, in their, their spirit. So they actually get to see the beauty of America outside of the cities that they're from.

• 27:21Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to, I want to continue to talk for a little bit about really old traditions, because what we're talking about, or at least some of these traditions have existed for millennia. Fasting is another one.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:33Tim Ferriss?

  Have you done experiments with fasting?

• 27:34Speaker 03

  A little bit. It's something I definitely want to get more into. I've been totally into the idea for a long time. Of course, you know, I fast once a year. Not that I'm religious, but because I like the spiritual practice of fasting once a day with my buddies. And so I get together with my friends and fast for that one day. But a long-term fasting, I think, is fascinating. And I've heard great stories about it, but I haven't, I haven't actually had the, it's amazing how.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Little that goes on in our privileged lives and how, you know, that's just a very interesting practice.

• 28:14Tim Ferriss?

  What is interesting about it to you? Because I try to, for instance, I try to do, and note to people listening, I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on the internet. So, don't be stupid, talk to a qualified medical professional, blah, blah, blah. But I've done, I tend to do at least three days of consecutive fasting per month, and then I do longer fasts a few times per year.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Wow, and you do just water?

• 28:37Tim Ferriss?

  I will make some allowances, and I do it differently at different times. But what I will sometimes do is use fasting as a way to kickstart ketosis. So clicking over into ketosis, certainly our friend Peter, Tia knows a lot about that, was in ketosis for about two and a half years straight. But fasting for a period of time, and what I will allow if I'm doing a longer fast in particular, is I will allow myself non-caloric drinks that are unsweetened. So let's say black tea, black coffee.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Right, and Kit Kat bars.

• 29:13Tim Ferriss?

  And Kit Kat bars, only zero calorie Kit Kat bars. And I will also, particularly in the beginning, allow myself some exogenous ketones, so they're just supplemental ketones, or fat, like coconut oil, to help with the transition.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 29:30Tim Ferriss?

  But besides that.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 29:33Tim Ferriss?

  Next.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Then the pain is after two, three days, right? It's supposed to ease off.

• 29:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for most men, women can sometimes take a little longer to click over. For most men, about two to three days, and then you can click over.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  All right, well, let's do it.

• 29:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'm in, I'm in. What interests you about the fasting?

• 29:51Speaker 03

  I mean, once again, it's just a way, it's clearly a way to explore other spaces, you know? I mean, I immediately, for me, if I've got a difficult meeting where I kind of have to be a jerk because something's not getting done correctly, you know? If I skip breakfast and do it close to when lunch is, you know, I get stuff done. So I do, in my own way, I do, I do micro, micro fasting. To control my mood, knowing that, you know, some of that anxiety and anger will disappear as soon as I eat. So it's sometimes a good thing to sort of motivate myself to, to help

• 30:35Speaker 03

  with the work in certain ways. So I do do my own mood enhancement. I mean, for a long time, you know, I was dating someone and, you know, we used to get at each other. And then finally, someone turned me on to the word hangry, which is the hungry, which I think is probably pretty common now, but at the time it was a pretty new word. And that was, it kind of changed my relationship and kept the relationship going for the next three, four years. Cause we could actually identify why we both became assholes for a little bit. So clearly it's a major mood, you know, blocker and changer and alternator and all that stuff. So I think that's interesting. And then, you know, I've heard and read all about the health benefits of it. And, and then of course, there's all the meditative

• 31:17Speaker 03

  elements of it to control the mind over the body and all, you know, what David Blaine is always demonstrating, clearly going to some serious extremes. But, you know, I think there are lessons to be learned and, and experiences to be have, had, had during it.

• 31:34Tim Ferriss?

  So this is sort of the nature of my fragmented mind that we're going to jump around a lot. But you, you mentioned difficult conversations or where you have to be an asshole. I had read about, well, very, very much in passing, you having a conversation with Mickey Rourke before filming.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Well, Mickey's version.

• 31:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, no, so I actually don't have a whole lot of context, but, but roughly that you knew it wasn't going to be easy. That he had a lot of strong opinions. So you had sort of a, an honest upfront conversation. And I would love to hear how you open a conversation like that or plan for it.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  You know, I look, you know, Mickey at the time, you know, had an awful reputation. And I think that's because, you know, he, you know, I, I think in many ways he was a lot of his worst enemy because he just, you know, loved, loved acting, but he also loved boxing and, you know, and he had this fight and struggle between him, which one he was going to focus on. And, you know, I think he, you know, was, he really respected the box. Anyway, whatever happened with him. You know, everyone was warning me about him, everyone, but I love him and I loved his work.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Before I knew him, I just, I thought his work was exceptional and I, it was, I felt a crime on the acting arts that he did not have more opportunities to share himself with the world because whenever he has shared himself, it was unbelievable from Barfly to Angel Heart to all of that beautiful early work he did and then it just sort of disappeared. But I just wanted to be very clear with him because I felt,

• 33:22Speaker 03

  I just knew how challenging the film we were about to do was going to be and I just, I, I find that the longer I do this, the more clear you can be upfront, the better. Because no matter what happens, it always changes. I think sometimes people don't really hear what you're saying to them a lot because they really want to do something. So I try to be very, very straightforward and clear because I want to get all the, as many of the problems off the table because when we do get to set, time is really the biggest enemy or, you know, foe because it's so short and, and it happens so quickly that if you start getting to stupid things that weren't pre-discussed,

• 34:05Speaker 03

  it's a nightmare and so you have to be as completely prepared and professional as you can when you're spending whatever it is, $20,000 a minute or, you know, whatever it may be that day. You know, you wanna, you know, Mike Tyson money time is what I'm talking about. You wanna be on top of your game. So, I just want him very clearly with Mickey and I think, I think what it meant for Mickey for it is like, he, he looked at me like medicine. You know, he tasted really bad, but he knew it was good for him. So, you know, he just closed his eyes and opened his mouth and swallowed to get it done and, and really to keep, because I think he knew deep in his heart that what I was trying to do was, you know,

• 34:47Speaker 03

  make a great film with him and, and then, and then he rose to it and he brought it and, and bring it. But, you know, he talks about that meeting, you know, like the little skinny punk. And pointing his little stubby finger in his face, which I love. It's funny. I wish I was that tough. And that straightforward. I'm sure I was more cordial and polite to him because I was, I know I was in awe of him and excited to meet him. But I just wanted to be clear that like, look, you know, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. Let's roll up our sleeves and go for it. Because it's just, for me, filmmaking is so hard. I think for a lot of people, there's just so many challenges. It's like, you know,

• 35:30Speaker 03

  literally every single film I've done has been like its own IPO. It's its own corporation. You know, I start off with an idea. I have to attract talent and money to come together. Yes, there's a formula, but I generally are making things that don't quite fit into the widget factory. They're a little weird and stuff.

• 35:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I don't think they fit in the widget.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  So we have to, you know, I have to convince people why it's going to be a widget. And then we have to raise the money and hopefully, you know, make it and get the investors' monies back. And, you know, I'm five for six, which isn't bad, but you know, each time it's it's a real, it's a lot of work. So,

• 36:10Speaker 03

  you want to make the whole process of it for all the artists working with you as easy as possible. That's not really where you want to put your fighting. You want to do the fighting for the world and the money and all that.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  Let's say you're making a new film. And you're working with someone who you respect, just to depersonalize that a little bit, although you could give a real example. Let's say like Mickey, someone you really admire, who has a reputation for being very strong willed. And you're gonna have this conversation, and you're gonna have this conversation again.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:38Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you open it? Like, what is the, what are some of the phrases that you use to prevent it from blowing up or to, to try to allow it to go well?

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Of course, I mean, look, I mean, I've never done a situation where I'm asking someone, hey, we're gonna waterboard you for three months. You know, I mean, we're trying to do something that's exciting and hopefully beautiful and, you know, striving to make art. So that's the underlying agreement. So you're walking into that conversation, hey, I dig you, you dig me, let's try to make this work. But just to be clear, these are some of the things that are gonna be going on that will probably make you feel uncomfortable. And what would be some examples of those? You know, well, I mean, a very clear example would be, you know, when working with women, if there's things that, or men, there's things that are sexual in nature, you know,

• 37:31Speaker 03

  what's required nudity wise and all that type of stuff. And you have to talk about that beforehand because of course it's very sensitive material and you want everyone to be comfortable and very clear on why you're doing something. You know, anytime you do like a lovemaking scene, what exactly is it gonna be and why? And I've never really, I've never done a lovemaking scene to sort of make it sort of an erotic thing for an audience. I always, you know, try to tie it in narratively. So I tell them very clearly where the camera's gonna be, what we're gonna do, how we're gonna run the set, stuff like that. Same thing with violence. Violence, I think, is just as important in the other way of, you know, what we're gonna be, how we're gonna be demonstrating violence, how we're gonna show it.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  I mean, for me, that's a huge pet peeve because I feel in this country, you know, sexuality and violence has flipped, especially in the movies, where you can have as much violence as you want in a PG, PG 13 movie, but you can't have an ounce of sexuality in a PG or PG 13 movie. And that to me is, it's disgusting. I don't have words to go beyond that. The fact that we're, you know, training our kids to fire guns at such a young age with Nerf guns and video games, it's disgusting and disturbing while, you know, any form of like saying there's a beauty in human connection, physical connection, that no, we can't talk about that. And the fact that the MPAA sort of...

• 38:58Speaker 03

  reinforces that and that's what I mean, you know, I mean, here I'll go off, but like guns in ads. I walk down the street when my kid was five, six years old and my kid's pointing at huge, crazy, sexy looking machine guns on the biggest movie stars in the world. It's disgusting there. The gun companies are getting free ads and you know, yet you can't show, you know, someone kissing, you know, so there's a whole sort of bend with that. I don't know how I got there, but I got there. That's all right.

• 39:28Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know how I get to where I go half the time. I want to talk a little bit about the word catharsis. I recently saw your new film. I really enjoyed the experience and came away, I told you this, for a full day afterwards was in this dreamlike state.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Wonderful.

• 39:48Tim Ferriss?

  Which I savored and I had, I had a lot of questions and sometimes I feel like we, well, actually, Milan Kundera, I think, said that, you know, the stupidity of man is that he has all the answers and the intelligence or beauty of a novel is that it has a question for everything, something like that.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  That's interesting.

• 40:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'm paraphrasing and this is in his book of laughter and forgetting, but at one point I recall reading that you didn't intend people to have, to find catharsis in your movies. You know, they, they expect to have happy endings and so on, but that perhaps the catharsis comes the day after seeing the film. What do you want the experience of your audience to be or what do you want them to take away from any one of your films? You could give a concrete example or just in general, something that drives you?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Well, I guess I start off with, you know, the first rule of filmmaking is never to bore an audience. That to me is, is the worst feeling and experience when I'm watching a movie and my mind is wandering and maybe looking at the colors splatter across the screen. I think you always want to engage an audience, not just visually, not just through sound, but emotionally. So I think that's rule one is just to give people an engaging emotional experience for two hours, whatever your running time is. And then I think on top of that, you can hopefully layer in some ideas so that when people leave the theater.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  It's not like, you know, 15 minutes later, what did we watch? You know, I don't want to be the McDonald's of movies where the rapper, you know, it's just the rapper is all that's left over. I want people to be, you know, thinking a bit about and talking about it. For me, one of my best life experiences was just randomly I walked into a coffee shop and it happened to be around the corner from where Pi was playing in LA at the New Art. And a dad came in with his 18-year-old daughter and two of her friends. And the four of them were sitting there just talking about this black and white movie that they had just seen. And I just kind of eavesdropped, you know, listening to him, just thrilled that there was a conversation and a debate and what did that mean and what did that mean?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  And, you know, for me, that's always been the films I love is, you know, yes, you know, there are movies that you have a great experience in and enjoy and it's just a great pleasure to watch and a great experience. But I also like the ones that, you know, you know, make you scratch your head and you think about, you talk and you debate because, you know, you want to kind of have an impact. And I think in today's landscape, a lot of things are disposable and it's really, really quick how disposable they are because of how quick, how much stuff we're being bombarded with day after day after day. It's nice to sort of hopefully have something that reflects back on it and thinks about it.

• 42:43Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned emotional, I think you said emotional connection or engagement. What are the, what are some of the ingredients that helped to create that? Because most films fail, I mean, I think, anyway.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, it starts with the greatest, I think, the greatest invention of the 20th century that's overlooked, which is the close-up. And that's the great thing about cinema is the fact that you can stick a camera right in the face of Paul Newman, right in those beautiful blue eyes, and you can go right into his soul. And then when you project it months later to an audience or years later, potentially centuries later.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  You are anonymous in that audience, yet you can feel the empathy. Because in reality, two people talking and hanging out, how much eye contact do you make? There's lots of other things going on in this room that you're taking in, that air conditioner rattling, my guys mixing in the other room. But the actual connection with another human being, where you're really looking into their soul and not thinking about yourself. Because the thing is, when I look at you and you look at me, we're thinking a little bit about, wow, now I'm making it really uncomfortable us looking at each other and we're gonna be looking away. But in a movie, and via the close up, you can be unconscious and fully be in Paul Newman's head. Even though you don't know exactly what he's thinking, you can sort of study him and steal that thought.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  And that's, that to me is the greatness of cinema. Or one of the great things about cinema. And so, and that's where you get emotion. You know, and what happens is if you start linking different emotions together, hopefully you start to tell a story. What the story does is it expands the emotion. Just like a joke, you know, set up, set up, set up, payoff. You know, that's the classic structure of a joke. It's the same thing with drama, where you're setting up a character and building a character. You give them a challenge and then you see them go through that challenge and payoff. And then there's always the pitfall when it all falls apart and then they rise up. And that hero's journey, you know, is just so, I don't know if it's genetic, I don't know if it's part of the human condition,

• 44:49Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's something that we're taught very, very young in our first Dr. Seuss books. But it's something that we all around the planet, in every language, in every culture, can relate to. For me, the power of storytelling happened, I was, I graduated high school early and backpacked around Europe and the Middle East. And I ended up in the Gemma in Marrakech. I don't know if you've been there, but it's an amazing square in the middle of the souk, you know, where they're all, where they have all the shops and stuff. And at nighttime, it's filled with snake charmers and food and all this stuff.

• 45:31Speaker 03

  There was one old guy leaning on a cane and a beard telling a story. And he had a huge crowd around him and it was all in Arabic. And I didn't understand a freaking word, but I was mesmerized and I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to tell stories because that little old shriveled old guy on a cane was transforming himself into this 20-foot beast. And I didn't even understand the language. And I was like, that's cool, you know, to entertain a crowd with a point of view.

• 46:04Tim Ferriss?

  Where was that experience relative to your time in Kenya?

• 46:10Speaker 03

  That was after Kenya. I'm also on the board of directors for an organization called the School for Field Studies, which is a great organization out of Salem, Massachusetts, which basically trains mostly college students to go abroad and into sensitive environmental areas and do environmental studies. And when I was a, I don't know, a young teenager, I worked at the New York City Aquarium in Coney Island, which was right next to my neighborhood in Brooklyn. And one of the big perks of that job, besides being at the aquarium, was that if you wore the aquarium t-shirt, you got to go on the cyclone roller coaster over and over again. So we used to go 40, 50 times in a row on the cyclone, you know?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  And, but I picked up a book for the School for Field Studies there. And it was just this little color catalog and I was like, wow, they send kids to Kenya? And I was like, ma, this is what I want to do. Dad, you know? And somehow they took a few high school students and I was like in advanced biology. So I had a little bit, I was always good in science. My dad was a science teacher, so I was always pointed in that direction a bit. And so I got them to let me go to Kenya where I I did, what did I study? I studied thermo- thermo regula- no, I studied water strategies and ungulates. The next year I went to Alaska with them to Prince William Sound, actually where that big Exxon spill was.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  But I was there two years before that, which was fascinating because the research we did there, actually, they used that research after the spill to see what the impact was. But in Alaska, I studied thermo regulation and harbor seals. I just like to say these words because they're fancy sounding.

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  So, ungulates, now, tell us what fall into the class of ungulates.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  All animals that stand on their hooves. So, everything from cattle, you know, domesticated cattle to zebra, gazelle.

• 48:07Tim Ferriss?

  Deer, elk.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, there were no deer or elk. There might have been some elk and some type of elk there, but yeah, so it's all.

• 48:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's true, right. I guess there would be caribou in Alaska.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  It was interesting. We basically were there, we were on this ranch owned by an Afrikaner who wanted to, he did this thing called preservation for profit was his idea. Where basically, he was like, "Look, during a drought, all the cattle die, but indigenous animals, of course, don't die because they basically forage in the morning when there's dew on the leaves and then the mid-afternoon, they're in the shade." So, basically, what we were there to do is to prove his idea that indigenous animals were better adapted to the environment than domesticated animals, which is completely obvious, but in science, you have to sort of prove it.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  So, we studied them morphologically, which was biologically when they, and then we also looked at them and their behavior patterns during the day. And, I mean, it was fascinating because basically, we just used this, you know, I learned the scientific method and we did real serious research and real charting and real, you know, and the next year was Alaska when I went to Prince William Sound. And the beauty of that was the textbook, the only textbook we had was Origin of Species. And each, every two days, we had to read another chapter of Origin of Species and discuss it. And over the six, seven weeks I was out in the bush, that was the whole, the whole class.

• 49:38Tim Ferriss?

  I had read that your time, I suppose, acting as a field biologist or doing field biology in Kenya changed how you looked at the world. Now, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I don't know if that's accurate or not, but if that is true.

• 49:52Tim Ferriss?

  How did it change how you looked at things?

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Everything changes your life all the time.

• 49:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 49:57Speaker 03

  But back at that age, when you're 16 and you're a Brooklyn kid from New York City, who's basically, you know, you know, a concrete jungle flea. And you're suddenly in, you know, the savanna of Kenya. Of course, it's going to change your life. So it's a little bit of an overstatement, I think. But, um, I mean, every day was mind blowing. I, as an embarrassing moment, I was 16, so you have to forgive me. I got off the plane and I was riding with the professors to the thing. I was like, oh, when are we going to see tigers? They're like, there aren't any tigers in Africa, they're in Asia. I was like, oh.

• 50:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's what I meant.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  So I, you know, a kid from Brooklyn, no idea what was going on. So, I mean, every day it was just, every day, literally was something I had never seen before. And then in Alaska, and you know, this is a pre-Google, pre-crazy media age, you know, still only 11 channels on the station. A couple of people had cable, but early days of civilization. And, um, I remember we were kayaking. It was an amazing trip. It was like five weeks in kayaks out in Prince William Sound, one of the most untouched places on the planet at that point until Exxon showed up. And we, we were going to this glacier and I had never seen a glacier. Now everyone's seen a glacier at this point because of that, the calving ice and what's

• 51:21Speaker 03

  happening to the glaciers. But the idea of blue ice for a kid from Brooklyn? When I, and like, um, this Chenega Glacier, the first time I saw it, it was like two miles long, you know, half a mile tall. I mean, I just, with huge chunks of ice falling and you'd see the chunks fall off. And then a minute later, you'd hear the sound because of the distance, like at a ballpark. And then these huge waves from that start coming at you and you're in a kayak, so you're really close to the water. And on those waves are icebergs with seals hauled out, regulating their temperature on it, going up and down. I mean, just like, who needs psychedelics?

• 52:06Tim Ferriss?

  You've been called controversial. I don't know if you view yourself that way. But I'd love to talk a little bit about how to respond to public perception and criticism. Another mutual friend of ours, Rick Rubin, fantastic guy, incredible music producer, among other-

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Greatest.

• 52:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. He has said on this podcast, he said, "The best art," I'm paraphrasing, "the best art divides the audience." And so I think it was, help me out here, I think it was Variety, the day after you got a 30-minute standing ovation, said you should quit filmmaking and go to therapy instead. And you've had, as anybody who's in the public arena, has a fair amount of, say, criticism of various types.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:59Tim Ferriss?

  What would your advice be to a filmmaker you think is very promising, who's doing something that is not, that doesn't fit cleanly in the widget factory?

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:09Tim Ferriss?

  They're probably gonna catch fire, but they haven't had the experience. What would you say to a person like that?

• 53:14Speaker 03

  That's an easy answer. Keep going. You know, that's what you want. I mean, when I meet, when I teach, I like, both my parents were teachers, and so it's in the blood, and I love teaching. You know, the thing I try to instill in students is like, the only thing you have to offer is you. You know, your individual stories, your individual perception, your individual humanity, and figuring out a way to communicate that humanity to humanity at large. I mean, that's the beauty of cinema, once again, that you can have a six-year-old Iranian girl, or a 90-year-old British gentleman, and you can have an equal emotional experience if the filmmaker does their job right to it. So like, for me, it would be, you know,

• 53:54Speaker 03

  a ballerina and a wrestler. Hopefully, can I make you feel their blood and their pain? That's, that's the goal. Because that's, you know, that's one of the great things cinema does, is to bring us into other human experiences. So if you're, if it's truthful to who you are, and you're concerned about-

• 54:14Speaker 03

  How people are gonna react to it, you know, stick up your middle finger and charge straight into that fire. You have to. If you're trying to be a provocateur, just to be a provocateur, you know, go F yourself. You know, that to me is, that's the bad stuff is like when it's not real.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  So for me, it's not, it's never like, oh shit, how do I, you know, mess around with people? That's not why I make movies at all. I, I'm just juiced about these ideas and they have, they have nothing about being confrontational. But even when I do a film like, you know, you know, the fountain's been called the love poem to death. I, I piss people off even though it's just really gentle movie, romantic movie about a guy coming to terms with dying. I guess that's just not a very commercial idea in the West. But, you know, I, I thought it was at the time and I was like, you know, dancing around for five years telling studios I was gonna, that people would be interested in the movie. Cause I really believed it. I wasn't, I'm not interested,

• 55:13Speaker 03

  you know, I happen to be a filmmaker who wants to talk to audiences. I, I love it. I love when they respond. Unfortunately, I haven't done a comedy or something that's easy quite yet, easier to connect with an audience, not easier to make by any means. I just mean, you know, when you're going to, when you're aiming to please an audience, it's a lot easier to make it than when you're just making something that you feel inside. And for me, I, it's not a conscious thing. It's purely from my gut. That's the core for me. It comes from my stomach always. It's not the heart mostly, or it might be somewhere between, I don't know, what's right here?

• 55:49Tim Ferriss?

  Solar plexus?

• 55:49Speaker 03

  It's right beneath the solar plexus. It's kind of the stomach, I guess.

• 55:53Tim Ferriss?

  Like your large intestine?

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Oh, great.

• 55:57Tim Ferriss?

  No, yeah, it'd be like diaphragm, diaphragm.

• 55:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's basically there. It's that area. I, when I feel, when I'm writing and it's like coming out of there, I know it's like some type of chi energy from there.

• 56:08Tim Ferriss?

  So, do you pay a lot of attention to your kinesthetic response to what you're doing when you're writing?

• 56:15Speaker 03

  I mean, you feel it's that unconscious state where you're not feeling body. That's the that's the state to get into. Where it's just coming out of you, you know, and and that it's not by by no means is that often. You know, I believe there are writers out there. I was very, I know some real writers and I think they are get into that state a lot easier. And but I'm not a real writer, but sometimes I have ideas and that I want to get out and express. And so I I try to do it.

• 56:46Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you say you're not a real writer? And there are people who would argue you have writing credits that you are a writer.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  I don't know. I mean, I just, I guess I I'm in awe of I have I have some friends that really write. And I see the way they can put words together. I don't, you know, look, the reality, I I'm being more truthful with Ferris than I've been with probably anyone. The reality is I was a public school kid from Brooklyn and I they never really taught me how to write. And when I got to college, I went into the creative writing class and I almost flunked out of it. Because I really did not know how to write an essay. I didn't even I to this day, my my son, my 11 year old son knows more about pronouns and nouns and sentence structure. I just never learned grammar. It was never taught to me. And and then and it was a shame. I just never I never did the Romeo.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  So I probably have some type of insecurity about that because I don't think I could write that. I can write dialogue because I have an ear and and I and I do have some ideas that I can try to sketch out. But I don't really, you know, I guess I'm scared of I'm scared you're going to give me an essay to write. Because that's going to be a challenging one.

• 57:56Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to be the last person to give you an essay, right? My my writing, my senior thesis in college, which is mandatory. And it constitutes a huge part of your departmental grade for the entire time that you were at school.

• 58:10Tim Ferriss?

  traumatized me so much that I pledged to myself when I graduated, I would never write anything longer than an email ever again. Clearly did not work out. It worked out, but it didn't work out as planned, I guess.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  What was your thesis on?

• 58:25Tim Ferriss?

  My thesis was on the phonetic and semantic acquisition of Chinese characters in the Japanese language called Kanji by native English speakers. So how do native English speakers most effectively acquire both the meaning and pronunciation of Chinese characters?

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in retrospect.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  It doesn't seem like someone who's afraid of writing would write something like that. That's pretty.

• 58:52Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I had, I had, a lot of my true interests were buried in some of these early writing projects or even scientific assignments that I then felt were trivial or not serious for some reason, and now I'm coming back to them 20 years later.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I remember I took a neuroscience class. Initially, the plan was to be a neuroscience major, actually was a psychology major focusing on neuroscience for a host of reasons, moved to the language acquisition, namely principally, I couldn't do the animal testing that was required to be part of the lab I wanted to be part of.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Good for you.

• 59:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, I will say, I mean, I understand the sensitivity of the subject. I do think some studies are very difficult to do or impossible to do without certain animal modeling. But let me just say that, for instance, one of the studies I-

• 59:40Speaker 03

  I've been deep into this.

• 59:41Tim Ferriss?

  No, I know you are. Oh, I know you are. No, I know you are. I know you are. I don't wanna-

• 59:46Speaker 03

  No, not for environmental reasons, just I-

• 59:47Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  I have a, well, we'll talk about it later.

• 59:49Tim Ferriss?

  No, we can, yeah, we can definitely talk about it. The, but where I became, I was really fascinated by REM sleep and some of the physiological similarities to states that can be induced with hallucinogens.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:00:05Tim Ferriss?

  And so this was probably my sophomore year in college that I was really fascinated by this and it only took- Twenty years, twenty-five years to come back to it full circle.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Did you ever try to stay awake for a long time?

• 1:00:18Tim Ferriss?

  I stayed awake, and this is not advisable at all. I wanted to see-

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  I love the disclaimers.

• 1:00:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, because every once in a while I'll get an email from somebody like, "My cousin tried what you said, and he gave himself a headache." And I'm like, "Yeah, you gotta use your common sense, people." But I stayed awake for six days.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:00:38Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted to see what would happen, because I had read these reports of people having all sorts of odd phenomena crop up when you stay awake for that period of time. And so I used stimulants, nothing illegal.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:55Tim Ferriss?

  But was very good at concocting, putting together these cocktails for myself, and stayed awake for-

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Six days.

• 1:01:01Tim Ferriss?

  Five and a half, six days. I stopped because I was walking on campus. I remember very clearly where I was. I was, I was-

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  And you were naked, no?

• 1:01:11Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, I was naked, and there were goblins everywhere. No, I fell asleep while I was walking and woke up about a block later.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I had crossed two or three streets.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, "You know what? This is no longer a good idea." But you, have you stayed awake for a really long period of time?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  No, I had a, there was a test when I was in undergrad, and my roommate did it, where he basically was to stay awake, and he just became cruel. And I remember him telling me, like, they, they were like, he's like, "I'm gonna go to sleep." They're like, "Don't go to sleep." So he took a deck of cards and started throwing cards around the room, and made everyone run around and pick them up, otherwise he would go to sleep. So he started doing, like, really messing with the aides and the, and the grad students that were doing the studies on him.

• 1:01:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  But, of course, the overnighter and those are important, not just, you know, when you're in college and stuff, but I haven't, I'm glad you are out there exploring it for us.

• 1:02:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I don't, the, the conclusion is, don't do that.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Tim Ferriss?

  The conclusion is, don't do that. And if you remove sleep and food from people, they get really, really grumpy, it turns out. This is a quote from New York Magazine. This may have been from a while ago. Although I don't think it's that old, actually. So, "I think when I was starting out as a filmmaker, I had tremendous focus, but I don't think I robbed myself of too much life. I'm still friends with the guys I grew up with in nursery school. I have a great relationship with my family. I'm definitely attracted to balance, to symmetry. I'm definitely an ordered personality, but I'm a lot less ordered than I was."

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  God damn, I said some stupid shit.

• 1:02:44Tim Ferriss?

  Nah. So you can definitely deny, you can correct, you can settle the record straight. But this is of incredible interest to me because many people who would aspire to be creative or who self-describe as creative, burn themselves out. Or they sacrifice family, relationships by being singularly focused. And sometimes they're proud of it, sometimes they regret it.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Tim Ferriss?

  But this is, this is something that I don't hear very often.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I was wondering if you could just elaborate on that because how do you have, how do you have the tremendous focus required to do what you've done while still

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:27Tim Ferriss?

  having that balance and symmetry?

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  I mean, it is a balancing act and, you know, but I think all the time you put into life, you know, into family and into friends and into activities outside of the work, you know, back to our procrastinate, not to say with your family is procrastination, but bringing in those other experiences into your life is what makes you be able to relate to people and to communicate. And at least for filmmaking, that's a major part is, you know, going to a diner with friends

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  and seeing an argument between some strangers over there ends up in a movie for me, you know, living life and seeing stuff and doing all different types of experiences through this planet is important to be a storyteller because it's all about the stories. I mean, I think the first three, four films of my career and definitely all my short films before that all came out of very personal experiences of my life. And, and the problem is if you keep working non-stop and you're originating your material, I think it's different if you're more of a journeyman who's going along and then just taking your craft and bringing it to life, bringing a great script to life.

• 1:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  What do you, what do you mean by that as a journeyman?

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Well, something that's not a personal story by nature. I mean, I think every story's personal or you can find a personal way because anytime you portray a character on screen, you should sort of infuse them with real emotions and stuff. So to do that, you have to feel it yourself, but.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  If you're drawing on your own life and your own stories and you're somehow more autobiographical somehow, even through metaphor, because I think all my films are not about, I'm not a ballerina, yet, you know, there's a lot of Natalie in me, I mean, that character Nina in me, not Natalie, but Nina, the character. I'm not a wrestler, but Randy the Ram I'm pretty connected to and I understand why he makes every decision. And some of those stories in there I can relate to are drawn from my own life. So I think, you know, if it's an assignment where you don't really, you're just showing up as a director and you're there to, you know, make all the departments work together and make the actors do it.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  I think it's, it becomes, it becomes more of a craft then. Not to say that it's not an art, but I think if you're trying to create your own stories that are coming out of life, you have to actually live life to do it, you know? Otherwise, you're just getting your stories, I don't know where you could get your stories from. I guess you can make things about being an obsessive film, which is kind of like, you know, one of my favorite filmmakers, Fellini, started making films about directors making films, you know?

• 1:06:22Tim Ferriss?

  Or adaptation.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, eventually he went off and told other things, but for a while, that's what he worked on. And so I think you have to balance in this, in this art form. It's very different, I think, in different forms, because other forms can be expressed in different ways. So I can't really speak for that, but storytelling, you need stories.

• 1:06:43Tim Ferriss?

  Reminds me of something I was told at one point, which helped me at least, which was a friend of mine, a writer, I think it was, it might have been, it was either Debbie Millman, I want to say, or Maria Popova. And they said, if art imitates life, you have to have a life.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:07:01Tim Ferriss?

  And I guess my follow-up question is, when you are really immersed in a project,

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Tim Ferriss?

  and maybe, maybe now with family and so on, it's different than in the early days, but...

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  My experience and part of the risk I have when I go into a project is that it tends to crowd out other things. Do you schedule, say, time with friends and family so that they don't get displaced? How do you ensure that that happens? Or are you just programmed in such a way that it's natural?

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  It's not a bad life as a filmmaker because basically, at least the way my my schedule is, I do a film every two, three years. So in that two, three years, there'll be like a 50, 60 day run, which will be completely selfish and completely committed and dedicated to the film, where I'm working 18, 20 hour days over and over again, insane amount of time. And, you know, you get one day off on the weekend and then the next day you're probably prepping. Although I'm able now to almost get two days off because I've been doing it enough that I kind of have more skills that I can go in, so I can get a weekend off sometimes.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  But where I can spend with family and friends, not that I could go out and party and have a beer, I mean, it's got to be very mellow. And most of the time I'll just want to watch Game of Thrones. But that's a huge marathon that only happens once every two, three years. And then you get into editing and it's basically a nine to five job. You know, there's always things coming up, but it's a much slower pace. And that could be a 40 week process. Then you get to selling the film, which is kind of a two, three week kind of marathon of travel, but it's kind of fun because that's where a lot of stories come from because you see all these different cultures and you just see a lot of crazy shit. So it's not that bad. And then, and then I get into development. And when I'm in development for the next project, it's, once again, I can really shape

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  that around my son's schedule and, and I can have time to see my friends and have experiences and travel and stuff like that. Because when you're developing, it's all virtual, virtual in your head, not quite in a computer, but it's, it's all in your imagination for a while. And all you need is a notepad and a pen and you could be anywhere.

• 1:09:22Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular resources, and I'm sure this is a question you've had a lot, so I apologize in advance, but I haven't heard the answer. So to aspiring filmmakers, let's just assume intelligent, driven, organized. So a big assumption, but let's just assume they check those three boxes.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:09:40Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular? Books or resources or approaches that you would suggest they take, assuming that they're, they want to put together some type of narrative storytelling, so they're not doing a document.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I always push The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. It's very good, but it's only for people who are writing screenplays. But he's great. He basically took Joseph Campbell's work and turned it into screenplay language, and he did a really good job at it, and we're totally part of his cult. Because I believe in that hero's journey, and not to say that's the end-all, the end-all, and there are other ways to approach it, but it's a very, very interesting structure that can really lead to big breakthroughs when you're struggling. You can look at the different archetypes that there are, and often you find yourself falling into it. And, you know, it's funny, like Requiem for a Dream, when I was working on it, it was

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  before I read Vogler, but now that I look back, I was doing stuff similar, where I was charting out where their emotion was the characters. And what was interesting is that the graph was actually upside down. When something good was supposed to happen, something bad was happening. And I was looking at it, and one day I flipped it over, and I said, "Oh, they're actually the bad guys, all my characters. The good guy is addiction. And this is actually a hero's journey of addiction overcoming the human spirit." And that's when I finally understood what the movie was about. And charting it and using hero's journey is how I was able to figure out that idea out,

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  that this invisible monster, this craving, was actually the hero of the film. But that's great. And then the other thing, back on what we talked about, is, you know, tell your story. Don't try to figure out what people want. Because the reality is, you know, and I kind of learned this when I was coming out of film school, I went to support my friend Scott Silver, who's a big screenwriter now, who directed a film that was at Sundance, and it was the year that Welcome to the Dollhouse was there, and a bunch of other indie gems. And I remember watching these films, go, "These are such specific, unique movies, but they're done exquisitely well."

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  And what Sundance allowed me to believe, and what independent film has allowed so many dreamers to believe, is that if you make a film well... No matter how personal it is, if it's truthful, you'll find an audience.

• 1:12:10Tim Ferriss?

  So not to invoke the name of Rick again, but I was having a conversation with Rick recently in a barrel sauna that is the exact replica of his barrel sauna. And we were talking about this deadline that I continually, I'm actually working hard on the book, but I spent a lot of time talking, I spent a lot of time talking about how hard I'm working on the book. And I was asking him some questions about working with musicians and whether he knows if something has hit the mark or not. And I'm going to paraphrase here, but he said effectively, great is always better than now.

• 1:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  And, and then the way I interpreted that was, you know, there's always a good time for great. There's never a good time for mediocre. So if you feel like you're rushed to hit some kind of deadline, obviously the realities of production and so on, don't get me wrong, but.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't rush, you can't rush. That's, you know, I mean, Rick's filled of wisdom. And it always comes out so interesting. But yeah, I get that. It's, you can't force it.

• 1:13:19Tim Ferriss?

  The thread I want to tease a little bit is something you mentioned earlier, which is, say, the argument between the strangers that in the diner that then makes it into your movie.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:29Tim Ferriss?

  Could you tell us, or tell me, since I'm just sitting right here, about your, your history with the game of Go?

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  I got into it a lot when I was doing Pi. I needed a game for the two guys to be playing so that they had some reason that they were meeting, so that Max and his mentor could meet. And I just thought playing chess was just, we've seen it so much and it's cliche and mathematicians playing chess was just not quite interesting enough. And at that point, 97 Go was still very much a fringe game, sort of is still. And, but I think it was much more fringe then. And we used to go a lot to the New York Go chapter meetings, which were like 18 very intellectual people and very book-lined departments.

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  At different houses each week playing Go. So it was a great cast of characters just to find and they, you know, the best thing about Go character, Go characters are the ones that have said that blow off chess as like a fool's game. You know, they, they so look down on chess and it's just such a chip on their shoulder that they've, they've graduated to Go. But that, you know, another thing that's fascinating that I've been hearing a lot of people, I think actually Rick was talking to me about it. That's where I heard it was.

• 1:14:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, he's the one who suggested I ask you.

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go. But the documentary, which I haven't seen yet, he told me there's some documentary about what it meant, this computer finally beating these Go masters. And he was telling me about a scene where after the first move, the Go master gets up and like walks away because basically I guess the point was that it's such a radical way to change of how the game is played, how this computer is playing it, that it's actually affecting now how humans play each other. Well, that's, that's a line about AI that is interesting where, you know, it actually changes the way we act with each other after thousands of years of playing a game a certain way.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  Suddenly this idea comes that is a moment of genius that changes the way we look at the board. That was interesting idea.

• 1:15:39Tim Ferriss?

  And is that from a doc, that's from a documentary?

• 1:15:41Speaker 03

  I believe so, but you have to ask Rick.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'll ask Rick.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Fascinating and I was, I've been thinking about it for, for since.

• 1:15:47Tim Ferriss?

  So that, yeah, I don't want to take us totally off the rails, but.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  Do you play Go?

• 1:15:51Tim Ferriss?

  I have a Go board at my house. I'm not good.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Tim Ferriss?

  I tend to play a highbrow version of Connect Four, which is Connect Five. I, my brother and I love to play, we just call it Connect Five or something like that, where we use a Go board and it seems really childish, but my brother's, I mean, he's, he's a statistics PhD, very good chess player.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  And these games can actually last a really, really long.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  So it's just basically getting five in a row and you could place them anywhere on the board. Sounds great.

• 1:16:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And it can, it can take.

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  You don't flip tiles or anything. It's just about blocking each other.

• 1:16:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. You just, you leave them there. So you're not capturing, well, you are capturing territory, but the rules are. Completely different from real Go.

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, my, my son came home from math class with that on paper and we played it for a while and I was like, wow, this is complicated game.

• 1:16:37Tim Ferriss?

  Super complicated and Go is so fascinating on many, many levels. One of which is you can feel like you're winning and then effectively if you're, if your pattern recognition is off, in a handful of moves, completely lose. I mean, it's, it, the tide can turn a lot faster. I shouldn't say this with any degree of

• 1:17:00Tim Ferriss?

  credibility because I know people like Josh Waitskin are actually good at chess. I'm not, but the, the game I got really into in Japan. So my first trip abroad was a year in Japan as an exchange student at a Japanese school, lived with a Japanese family.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  I, I listened to the session you did with the knife maker.

• 1:17:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Murray Carter. Oh, Murray's amazing. So.

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  I want to get some of his knives.

• 1:17:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, the knives are incredible. You should. They're so good. The Muteki line. Oh, his stuff is amazing. So the game I got into was called Shogi. So Shogi is Japanese chess.

• 1:17:36Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:17:36Tim Ferriss?

  And what makes Japanese chess different, and there are ways you can play Western chess this, this way, but you're able to reuse the captured pieces.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:17:45Tim Ferriss?

  And just drop them on the board at different places. And then also not only do pawns get promoted, there are multiple pieces that turn into completely different pieces.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  Oh, very cool.

• 1:17:55Tim Ferriss?

  When they get.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  It's the Pokemon of chess.

• 1:17:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's really a cool game. And so there's, I used to buy these books in Japan. Tsu me shogi. Tsu me shogi is a basically books that allow you to, it's like, think of a really slow app. It's a book where you, you try to figure out the three or four moves in a given position necessary to win the game. And then there's an answer key. And so I would, on the subway, because you have a lot of time on the subway in Tokyo, at least I did. I would either read comic books or I would look at these Tsu me shogi or I would read judo textbooks. But I mean, I'm.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  You did judo?

• 1:18:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 03

  As an aside, it's funny, one, I, it was very upsetting when they got Wi-Fi on the New York City subway because. Now I have to work hard, but like my rule is never take out your phone. Not because I'm worried about getting stolen or anything, but just because that's the chance to watch people for me. And so you don't want to get lost in your device at that point. It's that that's the great time and the rule in New York is great. You know, basically you can stare at anyone you want. If they make eye contact with you, you can never look at them again. But you're allowed to look as long as they don't look at you. And that's that people come to New York, I said, that's the rule. You can, you can watch and check each other out, but if they need realize you're being checked out, stop. So I, I find it fascinating and I imagine, uh, yeah, the subways in Japan must be insane.

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  It's just, you know, once again, you know.

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what, what shocked me about, I mean, there's so many things that are so alien about Japan. For someone who hasn't been exposed.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Tim Ferriss?

  To Japan specifically, even in East Asia, and I've spent time in China. I've gone to school there. I've spent time in Taiwan. I've spent time in Japan. Japan and within Japan, Tokyo is just a particularly, a particular brand of weird. And so you get on the subway and I remember a couple of things really striking me. Cause I'm 15, everything's backwards, right? We're driving on the opposite side of this street. Like we have to take a shower before we get into the bath and like all these rules that seem very Alice in Wonderland, topsy turvy. And then I sit down on the subway and you'll see, you know, these salary men, sarerimang, who are on their way to work, these worker bees. And they're reading comic books with the most explicit porn imaginable.

• 1:20:11Tim Ferriss?

  And they're completely nonchalant about it. Yeah. I mean, tentacle porn, who knows? And then the, uh, the other hilarious phenomenon I bumped into, which I really didn't expect. So you hear about in Japan, perverts on the subways and they're definitely perverts on the subways and they're called chikang. So if you're like chikan, chikan, that means a pervert, pervert, pervert.

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:20:31Tim Ferriss?

  And so if like some guy is trying to fondle some girl's ass, like you'll hear chikang and then there's a big kerfuffle. What they don't tell you is that, uh, remember one day I was in my.

• 1:20:41Speaker 03

  Just put chikan and kerfuffle in one sentence, just so you know.

• 1:20:44Tim Ferriss?

  Might be the first time. The singularity is near and I was in my school uniform, 15, clearly a high school student.

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Have my judo uniform over my shoulder, it's wrapped up. And I'm standing up, it was packed subway and I fear, I feel someone groping my ass.

• 1:21:01Speaker 03

  Oh wow.

• 1:21:02Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm like, what is going on here? I can't turn around because it's so crowded.

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  Oh geez.

• 1:21:07Tim Ferriss?

  And eventually I'm able to turn around and what do I see? Not what I expect, I see two really old women with like half of their teeth with Captain Gold chuckling to themselves because they'd been grabbing my ass. And these women are called obatariyang. So obatariyang is from old battalion, which it's a long story, but it refers to like older Japanese women who just don't give a fuck anymore.

• 1:21:36Tim Ferriss?

  And so, yeah, it was a real cultural experience.

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  My favorite, you know, when I went to Japan for the first time, which was with Pi, you know, I was, I was a big, huge fan of, um, I had all, I dreamt for so long to go to Tokyo.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  And I was like, you know, I kinda, I kinda wanna make a statement here, I kinda, you know, I wanna be remembered, you know, I'm coming with this little film, what can I do? So I dyed my hair purple. And I came and I do an interviews the whole time with big, bright, purple hair and no one mentions it. And I get to my last interview and it's kind of a young hip guy who's like a pop star in Japan and we become buddies and I'm like, man, you know, like I made my hair purple, but no one's commenting on it. And he goes, here, come to the window, we look outside and it's a major intersection, he says, who has purple hair out there? All the old ladies dye their hair purple.

• 1:22:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's true.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  And I'm like, oh, oops.

• 1:22:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's totally true, 100% accurate. Oh my god, I didn't even piece it together. That's true, I'm having flashbacks. I think the old ladies are grabbing my hat.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  It's like, you know, in Requiem for a Dream, they dyed their hair red and then out there it's purple. So, very funny.

• 1:22:47Tim Ferriss?

  So, speaking of tentacle porn, that's about as graceful a segue as I can make. And we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but this is one of the bullets that was recommended for me to talk to you about. And I should preface this by saying, in my second book, For Our Body, there are two chapters on female orgasm, two on various aspects of male sexuality, so I'm not shy about talking about this, but-

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  Suddenly, I'm on the Howard Stern Show.

• 1:23:15Tim Ferriss?

  Suddenly, you're on the Howard Stern Show. Restricting ejaculation. I don't have any context for this, but I was told to ask you about restricting ejaculation.

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  Wow, where'd you get that from?

• 1:23:27Tim Ferriss?

  My sources cannot be named. But is that something that you can tell us about?

• 1:23:33Speaker 03

  Um, I'm not sure what you're referencing. Oh, oh, I think, oh, there we go. It's coming back to me. It was funny, I had a, well, there's in Requiem for a Dream, there's something in the background called Month of Fury. Which was, I guess it was early self-help. I had a, when I, wow, this is going way back, and actually kind of flows a little bit into probably why

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  a growing friendship is happening here, because it's similar roots in a certain way. But when I, my first, when I was in film school, and this is another great thing for young film students to know, is like, there's usually the first screenplay you write that will never get made. And believe me, that happens. And at a certain point, you have to be, take the bold step to abandon it, you know? Because there's a learning process in that first script. And I worked on a script that was set in Coney Island, and I had a guy, a really talented kid I grew up with, who probably, if he went to Wall Street, would be a, you know, a hundred millionaire type of guy. But he ended up getting involved in this kind of culty organization that are those guys who go around and sell-

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  Roses and little toys around the streets wearing ties. I don't know if you ever see them. They're a lot on the west coast and they they're basically kind of pyramid schemes where you basically open up an office and you hire like 10, 20 year old kids and they go and they hustle for you. And then you buy it from a guy above you and then if you get a few, you slowly move up this type of thing. And they have these huge conventions in Vegas with where they all come together and they have all these chants where they juice each other up and get all excited. And I, when I was in film school, he was in the west coast area. And so I just sort of studied it and hung out with him. And once again, here's another play, hang out with a friend, but also kind of get stories. So I developed this whole kind of

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  characters and world for this movie about this. And eventually I didn't make that film, but I was able to take that character and and when I had to bring Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream Alive, Sarah Goldfarb, the old lady, watched a lot of TV, but we couldn't afford the TV to put TV on the channel. So I decided to make my own TV show and create and create kind of a Tony Robbins-esque because Tony was just starting and it was he didn't sort of evolve into the kind of figure he is now. At the time, he was sort of a televan. No one really knew what it was and it was it was odd. So I kind of created my own sort of version of that and had this guy on TV and I had to give him a philosophy. So I had an actor friend who was also a boxer and he had this thing called Month of Fury.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  Eddie DeHarp is his name. And it was three rules, which are actually three great rules. It was 30 days. Uh, no refined sugar. 30 days, no red meat. And 30 days, no orgasm.

• 1:26:27Tim Ferriss?

  Now, were those all together?

• 1:26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, you do all three for a month for 30 days. And it was actually a very interesting, you know, so so he preached it to me because he would do it before he would box.

• 1:26:37Tim Ferriss?

  So one more time, no refined sugar.

• 1:26:39Speaker 03

  No refined sugar. So that's everything like toothpaste, anywhere where there could be sugar, you know, no red meat and then no orgasm. So in the movie Requiem for a Dream, the third one is not actually pitched because I just thought it would be good as a little secret and I'm sort of giving it away, although it's come out of it. It's actually in there. It's actually in there a bit. It's an Easter egg that's hidden in the film somewhere. It was funny because when, you know, when we started working on it, I suggested to the actors that they should go on a month of fury before we make the movie, just to understand what it is to withdraw, which is a big part of the movie because it's hard if you're not a drug addict or a smoker,

• 1:27:23Speaker 03

  you know, to actually stop something for 30 days, to fast, as you talked about, to, it's really tricky. And here were three things that were seemingly not hard to do. And it was funny to, you know, run and see my actors at day 24 and 25 wanting to kill me, you know?

• 1:27:40Tim Ferriss?

  Hence the month of fury.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I have another friend, my best buddy, who actually on day 29 ended up proposing to a woman, which I was like, you never propose on day 29. What are you out of your freaking mind?

• 1:27:51Tim Ferriss?

  The month of fury.

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  The month of fury, we called it. So if I ever did a self-help, that would be, you know, hey, if you want to co-write it and start a movement, I know you, I know you got sales.

• 1:28:03Tim Ferriss?

  The month of fury. All right. You heard it here first, folks. I could, I could get, I think, quite a few people to participate in the month of fury.

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  It's actually very effective.

• 1:28:11Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to ask quite a few questions about the new film, but the first is related to the writing of the film. So when you are writing a film like Mother, and there are many, and I don't want to give anything away, but many visual components, how do you write that type of material?

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  Being the writer and then the director, I can sort of not worry about that that much. But there are two different steps. I think first you're writing and you're following along the emotional truth of the characters and following scene by scene what's going on and watching the story unfold. And then There's the next stage at a certain point, you kind of hang up most of your writing cap because you can always rewrite if you're the writer, but then you start to become the director and start to think about blocking and movement. And that was a very, very big deal in this film.

• 1:29:08Tim Ferriss?

  Can you define blocking, just for people who don't know?

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  Blocking, yeah, sure. Blocking is basically just how actors move in a scene. That's all it is. But it's really, truly a big part of the work because for a lot of reasons. First, you want to create blocking that's organic and natural to what the actors are doing in the scene. So you want to make sure whatever the actor's doing makes sense with what their objective is in the scene, or what they're doing in the scene, or what they're not doing in the scene, or what they're hiding in the scene. So you kind of want to think about what that is all about. Then, there's a second tier, which is as the filmmaker, you're trying to make it as economical as possible, meaning as few setups, as few times

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  to move the camera as possible. Because every time, you have to sort of change where the camera is, you have to change the lighting, and that just takes time. And you want to get as much time shooting as possible. So you're trying to figure out blocking that works best for the simplest amount of technical problems, unless you're really trying to do something technically, super challenging stuff. So you try to balance those, and you know, and it's kind of a balance, because sometimes you'll tell the actor, oh, can you help me out here with blocking? Because it means we have to do less. But sometimes you don't want to get in their way, and you want them to be creatively free. So you want to give them an open playground to play around in, where they can do and move. So it's all,

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  it's a balancing act, but it's a big part of it. So at a certain point, you know, when the script is done, and in the case of Mother, I was actually lucky enough to have a three and a half month rehearsal period, where basically, I convinced Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer and Harris to join me in a warehouse out in East Brooklyn, where we basically taped out the set and got, we would work on the scenes, and then we'd get up on our feet, and we would just start to block them. And then... In the last two weeks of that three and a half month long process, I actually brought in my cameraman. And we shot the entire movie, moving the camera on on video as kind of homework and then.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Which was really fascinating because you figure out all different types of problems like. Oh, how's the camera going to get from it's it's a constant moving handheld camera? So how am I going to get the camera from here to there because there's a wall there?

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  Um, and and that's that suddenly started to play into action and for this film. It was a very, very restricted visual language. That was part of the one of the challenges I put in front of myself. Normally you'll have a wide shot in a movie and nice thing about a wide shot is. If an actor somehow does something that's not that's like dramatically new, emotionally new, or if they decide to. Comb their hair a different way in each take. If you go out to a wide shot. The basically the the illusion is broken for a moment because the. Viewer's eyes have to take in more or different part of a scene or there's other things to look at so that when you pop back into a close up.

• 1:32:12Speaker 03

  You can get away cheat almost what's happening and no one would ever notice. In the case of my film, since there was no wide shots. It was extremely challenging. I mean, the only shots in the film are either over Jennifer Lawrence's shoulder. On Jennifer Lawrence's face or her point of view, which means what she's looking at. That's the only coverage in the entire film. So that's why this edit has been, you know, almost a year long cut. Because I had such a limited amount of language to work with and I had to make every moment by moment by moment work. Even though that's not really happening in real time.

• 1:32:49Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you choose to use that constraint? I find. I feel like I could talk to you about constraints and rules for a really long time.

• 1:32:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:58Tim Ferriss?

  Because you mentioned.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  Fury.

• 1:33:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the month of fury. Exactly. Just get progressively more belligerent. And you talked about, say, having lunch scheduled for after the difficult meeting. And then you have, say, shooting over Max's shoulder.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:13Tim Ferriss?

  And different. Ways of, as you put it, sort of limiting your

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:18Tim Ferriss?

  visual palette. Why do that?

• 1:33:19Speaker 03

  Well, I think coming out, starring as an independent filmmaker with very limited resources makes you be very, very, you know, you strategically have to figure out economical means to basically take advantage of all the limited resources you have. So I ended up actually stylistically creating techniques that actually are turn those limited economics into a stylistic choice. So I've always been preaching that boundaries are the most important thing in any form of an art. You know, I mean, when you're a painter, you have the boundaries of a canvas and the limitation of your colors.

• 1:34:03Speaker 03

  And I think it's extremely important to do the same in filmmaking and to make real choices about how you want to do those limits. Sometimes they're self-imposed. I have less of the economic issues, although always you have to be very economically responsible for what you're doing. But I went really extreme on this film, which was like, I basically said, there's three shots for every scene, which is an incredibly low amount of shots that I would normally do in a movie. And it just became an interesting exercise and experiment. You know, and there were times when Matty, my DP, was like, don't you want to, you know, like, never does a character come between Jennifer and the camera.

• 1:34:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 03

  No one ever crosses the lens.

• 1:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  I noticed that.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Which is crazy because when we're doing crowd scenes with lots of people, you know, it would be a lot easier to tell the story by having Jen get lost in the crowd and crowd come through. But no, I was like, and my DP, Matty, was like, why, why, it could be, and we talked about it for a while and I was like, no, I think let's just remain orthodox here. Let's remain truthful to the intent. And the one thing I was worried about, people would feel claustrophobic or, you know, bored by the style, and that doesn't seem to be the response. People aren't seeing those limitations. And I think that's because we just turned it into a language and into a style that people can understand.

• 1:35:28Tim Ferriss?

  Is there something you hope audiences will respond with or walk out with? Did you have? An objective and this ties into I suppose the genesis of the film as well. I don't actually know the origin story.

• 1:35:43Speaker 03

  Well, the origin story is hard because it's murky. I think it came out of these endless headlines, the endless stream of notifications on your telephone. The ability to scratch right beneath the surface of our kind of civilization and realize how many desperate and awful things are happening around the planet still in this, you know, pretty enlightened time. And there's a lot of rage and a lot of helplessness because like, what can I do? How can I stop this? And, you know, being an environmentalist, when we're completely under assault, when, you know, what science is telling us is going on.

• 1:36:26Speaker 03

  And the same people that use their smartphone every second and every minute of the day are the people who say, well, science isn't always right, yet this, the product of science is in their pocket, you know, dominating their lives, yet refusing to see what's going on. Like, how could you not say, wow, there might be some connection going on? And I don't know, I come from a science background and I witnessed how little tiny small changes by man can deeply have huge effects very quickly that are out of control. You know, and then this new idea of these feedback loops, which isn't that new anymore, but these ideas that are becoming more idea that there's these tipping points where things are just going to start to accelerate.

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  You know, and as a parent, I just sit there and I go, oh, my gosh, you know, I look at the beauty of my child and want them, forget about having a job, having a freaking atmosphere and having the ability to, I mean, it's just crazy to ever think, you know, he'll see a really an elephant in the wild and in any type of wilderness way. I mean, I for the first, I guess, I guess Prince William Sound was very much wilderness when I was a kid. And something happened to me when I was in Prince William Sound. I was, I had a, we were kayaking, as I said, for weeks and I was eating a granola bar. And the wrapper fell into the water. It was like a foil wrapper. And I freaked out. I like stopped. I tried to, it just went right under.

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  And because of that guilt of that, I still, when I see trash on a beach, I pick it up for that foil, you know? It's like that guilt has carried me. And I, because at that time, it very much felt untouched. Like I was the, one of the first humans to ever experience it. There isn't a place on the planet anymore. Not because of pollution only, but because of climate change. That isn't affected by humans. There is nowhere on the planet that is true wilderness as it was 60 years ago. You know, when I was, I was riding a Western. And I realized, you know, it was set in 1883, I think. If every single person on the planet disappeared, dropped dead, was abducted or whatever, at

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  that point in time, besides some forged metals, belt buckles, horseshoes, bullets, guns. Everything, every remnant of humanity would be gone in a century. You know, completely gone. Cause it was, everything was built out of earth materials. And then you suddenly have all these freakish new materials where every single bag of Lay's potato chip you have is something that's around for 10,000 years. Longer. Particles that are part of us. And you can't escape it. And so quickly, from my childhood, where there still was places on the planet that weren't really feeling any impact, to now where it's all changed.

• 1:39:18Speaker 03

  It's scary that people are just completely denying it and turning their backs on it. And out of that, just, you know, I just want to howl. It's like, you know, I felt the Ginsberg howl and I just wanted to howl. And I guess it's my howl.

• 1:39:33Tim Ferriss?

  What is the Ginsberg how?

• 1:39:35Speaker 03

  Allen Ginsberg's, uh, the poem how?

• 1:39:37Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, got it. All right. Sorry.

• 1:39:38Speaker 03

  You've never read that one?

• 1:39:39Tim Ferriss?

  Betraying my lack of education.

• 1:39:40Speaker 03

  That one you should read. That one's great.

• 1:39:42Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:39:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, but it's basically, you know, it was a cry from the sixties, you know, of like what, of first generation, or at least that's the way I took it.

• 1:39:49Tim Ferriss?

  How would you like people to go into the movie? And who should go see them? Like now, that now, the obvious commercial answer might be everyone.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  Everyone. Well, I think, look, I think you gotta know you're going into a roller coaster ride. And it's like, you know, when you get to the amusement park and you see that loop de loop and you're like, no freaking way. You should prop, you should be ready for it. I mean, I, and no matter how much I prep you and Tim can tell you, it goes there. So, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's intense and.

• 1:40:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's very intense.

• 1:40:22Speaker 03

  So if you want an intense, different ride, if you're, you know, you want to see something different at the, at the cinema, you know, please come on down. Um, I, I think, I think it's, you know, that's what we tried to do was make, make a very unique roller coaster. Except, you know, it may go off the tracks and into the concrete wall, but I can't really be, I don't want to be responsible for that, but that's what happens. But I, I mean, I, I just want, I think it works on a lot of levels. I was always like thinking it was going to be really scary and, and, you know, tilting into the horror genre. You know, Jen Lawrence, when she saw it, actually thought it was incredibly beautiful and moving, that there was a beauty to it.

• 1:41:05Speaker 03

  And, and then, and I've heard that reflected in a lot of ways. And so it's definitely not your normal night at the movie. It's, it's, but it's the type of movie that you go see and, and everyone will have something to say about it, I think. Um, and hopefully there are not too many profane words directed in my direction.

• 1:41:26Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it could be profane, but modifying something good also.

• 1:41:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30Tim Ferriss?

  There's that.

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:33Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like to ask about the sound.

• 1:41:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Tim Ferriss?

  So I have read that, well, a few things. That A, a lot of independent films, or films in general, fail from poor audio quality.

• 1:41:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a big thing I realized very young in my career was like, this is a pretty good movie, but something's off. And it was always the sound.

• 1:41:54Tim Ferriss?

  And the sound in this movie, and I mean, in more than one of your films, certainly, is very, I'm searching for the right words, but very visceral, very pronounced. And I only read this other expression after the fact, after I saw the movie, but that thinking of music or the sound as an additional character?

• 1:42:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Tim Ferriss?

  Could you elaborate on that? Because I've never paid so much attention to sound in a film.

• 1:42:28Speaker 03

  I think it's, well, you saw a slightly unfinished, only the first half of the film was kind of really dialed in, so it's gonna get better, I hope. That's what we're supposed to be doing as we speak. You know, sound design for me is a huge tool, and I got totally turned on. When I was a young kid, I saw a documentary on the guys who did the sound design for Star Wars, and they were out in the desert banging on wires, making lightsaber sounds. And it blew my mind. I was like, oh, wow, you know, that's such a cool idea, that you can use any sound to do this, and matching up sound and image, you can really mess around. So I've always been fascinated by that. But, you know, since I make these films where I really am trying to make the audience have a visceral experience with

• 1:43:11Speaker 03

  the character, in this case Jennifer Lawrence's character, I try to draw the audience into her subjective point of view by, you know, creating a soundscape that starts off realistic, but then as things sort of shift and get more and more insane, becomes more and more expressive and expressionistic.

• 1:43:31Tim Ferriss?

  I love the fact that people are gonna be able to see this in theaters for a lot of reasons. And I wanna connect this to something else that I read about you, which relates to the...

• 1:43:46Tim Ferriss?

  Historical lack of compliance to widget making. So the story of you shooting Natalie Portman for Black Swan in the subway at something like three in the morning without necessary permits, without her having signed a contract. How do you, and I don't know nearly as many filmmakers as you do, but I know a few. How do you get away with it? I mean, meaning you seem to be able, and this is from the outside looking in, but to make the art you want to make and bend the rules or do things like that. Why is that? Are there certain sort of contractual decisions or conversations you've had that allow you to do it? Did you set the precedent as like a problem child early? So that they're just like, ah, it's fucking Darren. So you get away with it?

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just the project. I don't think, you know, it's never meant to be abusive. I mean, sometimes, no, no, no, no, but I'm just saying that I think that's the reality is it's, it's not abusive. It's about the work. It's always about the work. And I think if you can relay back to that, that this is about, you know, us bringing this to life in the best way. And I think, you know, there are people that would take that line of argument and turn it into abuse or, or push the line to something that's not safe or fair. And I think I'm pretty empathetic to other people's feelings, maybe to a fault, because I think some directors, it may, it's kind of helpful sometimes to push past some of

• 1:45:16Speaker 03

  that pain and be blind to it, but that's never, that's just not my character. I can't do it. I feel when people are uncomfortable very easily. And it makes me probably better as a director to read performance, but it probably gets me less than what I always need because I feel sorry sometimes. I have mercy, I guess.

• 1:45:38Tim Ferriss?

  How dare you.

• 1:45:39Speaker 03

  So, yeah, but, but you know, I think though, that, you know, when it's the work, you just, you go for it and people get excited by that. And if you're actually being truthful about that, it's, but there are times and places where I've tried to do too much and people pointed out to me, hey, that's probably, you know, it's not fair for these reasons. And I hear that and, and then I just listen to myself if that's the truth or not.

• 1:46:03Tim Ferriss?

  If you have that conversation and it doesn't feel true to you, is that, is that one of the primary causes of walking from potential projects? Or like what, and I guess all of this is sort of coalescing into a question of if you were talking to a very promising new director, let's say director, maybe they're a writer-director, but they direct. And you wanted to prevent them from getting chewed up or corrupted by the system, is there any particular career advice that you would give to them?

• 1:46:34Speaker 03

  It's a good question. I mean, I mean, you know, you gotta be doing it. I'm always from the school, you gotta do it because you have to do it. But you don't have any other choice but to do it. Just recently, I ran into a filmmaker and he was sort of complaining and whining about doing a TV show because he really wanted to be making films and that, and then, but you know what, my advice to him was not just stick with your gut and do what you want. I could tell he was the type of guy that should be doing that TV show because I could see like he was, he was already past that point where he had crossed and he was just gonna, so I was like, do it.

• 1:47:15Speaker 03

  But then you find people who just, you know, want to do what they do and, you know, and then you just want to support them and give them as much love and support to, to get it because they're trying their hardest to do something that only they can do.

• 1:47:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now, does that mean, for instance, I've heard this advice with writing, that writing, you should only write, say, a book if it's easier for you to write the book than to not write the book. Like, it has to be that much of a kind of compulsion.

• 1:47:47Speaker 03

  I don't think it's ever easier to make a movie than not make a movie.

• 1:47:51Tim Ferriss?

  I guess maybe just sort of from a personal

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:47:57Tim Ferriss?

  pain pleasure standpoint. Like, I remember reading an anecdote, and I don't, again, who knows, it's the internet, but about you, I actually think this might have been from the New Yorker, about a diary entry where you were talking about a rave in Thailand, and you were like, the sun came up, and the people were dancing, and the sun came down, and the people were dancing, and the tides went out, and I was miserable because I wasn't making movies.

• 1:48:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:48:22Tim Ferriss?

  That means you have to make movies, right? I mean, it's

• 1:48:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I mean, I think for me it was storytelling more than films. Although I think there were definitely things in my past and experience that, you know, helped me. Like very early on, I got into photography, into black and white photography when I was in junior high school and I would, you know, go into the darkroom and develop the film. I loved it. And I don't know why that fell into my lap. It just so happened they had this lab nearby and I was able to take a class there. And then I just started thinking about photographs and taking pictures and all that. So, and that all led to this. But I think it could have gone anyway. It's funny because when I was in college, I didn't

• 1:49:05Speaker 03

  know what I wanted to do. The first couple of years I was in college, I hadn't discovered filmmaking until I was a junior in college. And I remember walking around hitting myself in the head going, "Ah, I'm never gonna find what I want. I'm never gonna find my calling", you know. And then it happens for you, hopefully. And it happened for me. I found something that, it was the first time I ever got an A in college, was filmmaking. I was a B minus student until film came along. And suddenly, boom, it was like something that kept me out of my girlfriend's room, you know. I was like, I'd rather be, rather be cutting the movie than laying in bed. So, I was like, you know, I found it. But I think eventually

• 1:49:47Speaker 03

  it comes. And, but it could have been a lot of things, I think. I don't think necessarily like, I mean, it's this weird, kind of weird art form. And it could have probably come to me in lots of different ways. It was just something that I was like, okay, I see a path. I see something there. And it's interesting and fascinating. And there's a lot to learn in there. And so I just went for it.

• 1:50:08Tim Ferriss?

  If I were to ask, say, some of your closest friends, what your superpower is, maybe you wouldn't talk about it because you seem to be a pretty understated, humble guy. But what your superpower is, or what makes you different, what would they say? Or what might they say?

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  I mean, my friend Dan is like, who does visual effects for me. It was, I met him first day of freshman year of college, says, you know, when people ask me if he changed, I say, you know what? He was an asshole in college and he's still an asshole. But I think that's my friend telling me that.

• 1:50:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's what old friends are for.

• 1:50:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard for me to say, but definitely, one of the best things about my life is, as I talked about there, is I still hang out with the guys I went to nursery school. I still hang out with the guys I went to high school with. I still hang out with the guys I went to college with and, I think that, that having the roots, like I'm into roots, I'm into loyalty and I think that's pro- and I work with the same filmmakers, pretty much. And I think, I don't know, I had, my friend Jed once said, the guy who dies with the most friends wins. I thought that was pretty good advice.

• 1:51:19Tim Ferriss?

  If I were to pester your friends a little bit more, give them a few drinks.

• 1:51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Tim Ferriss?

  And they get past the obligatory, he's still an asshole, he's always been an asshole.

• 1:51:30Tim Ferriss?

  If they're, if they got to like the, the, the point of drunk reminiscing.

• 1:51:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35Tim Ferriss?

  And sort of the emotional point of drunkenness.

• 1:51:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Tim Ferriss?

  What would they attribute your success to? A lot, a lot, I mean, more people don't make it than make it.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:46Tim Ferriss?

  In the film business.

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  Phew, it's a good question.

• 1:51:50Tim Ferriss?

  What would you attribute it to? If we could make it direct to?

• 1:51:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a combination. I mean, I had, I had excellent parents that, you know, almost always supported me and always told me that not to work so hard. Not to work too hard. You know, when I would say, I gotta go work, they'd say, well, don't work too hard, was their saying. I, I mean, that was after I got out of college. So up to college, they put, they were both school teachers and academics was super important. But they also created a lot of, they created very good responsibility and boundaries, but also didn't necessarily create opportunities, but gave me breathing room with support to find opportunities. So I struggled in my twenties, but I was able to struggle in my twenties.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  And so that, that was, that was, I think, a big part was having that type of support system and my sister. So family was a major part of it. And I think that allowed me to have persistence. You know, um, which I always say is nine tenths of the game is persistence is, you know, you gotta get up to the plate, you know, to get that chance to take that swing. Uh, and to get to the plate just takes a lot of work. But then, and then when you get there, it's preparation and homework. Having done all your homework and, um, as well as you can, as much as you can. And then, and then as you're taking the swing is make it a responsible swing for the team.

• 1:53:24Speaker 03

  You know, make sure that that, I, I love the baseball metaphor. I wonder how much longer I keep going.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  With your students you teach, what is the name of the class? I don't, I mean, I, I don't do it regularly because I haven't found the best place. I, I taught NYU for a bit and, um, a few other places. But I mean, I just, I just, to be honest, I kind of wing it to see what kids are doing. You know, I'll come in, I'll, I'll talk to them about what their dreams are, what their projects are. I'll ask, they all sort of share, so I have them all describe each other's stuff. But I, I love doing scene study with kids where I have them put up a scene and bring, work with actors, put up a scene. Now, this is a, this is a scene that has already appeared. No, no, no, no, a scene from their projects. They describe it to me. They tell me what they want.

• 1:54:13Speaker 03

  They'll put up the scene and then I'll, I'll teach them, I'll give them my, my direction on how I would block it. I'll work with the actors. I'll just show them my process and then I'll take a chalkboard out and I'll show them, let's, how, how do we shoot it? And I'll just draw my designs to show them how to draw it. So I give them. And the chalkboard is sort of bird's eye view. Always bird's eye view. That's how I've always, I, I came up, I mean, I, I know other filmmakers do it, but it was when I was nine, 20 years old, starting to do films. That's how I started. I always, and it's probably from playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. It's like, you know, you got that sky view and like, I drew little triangles and I came up with all these different shapes and forms. I have my own like language that I've developed over the years for how to do it. And I have the ability to look at.

• 1:54:57Speaker 03

  That architectural plans and then to see it in 3D below. So I can, that's how I do it. I do it very much from a bird eye view.

• 1:55:05Tim Ferriss?

  Dungeons and Dragons will be for round two. I was always a chaotic, good.

• 1:55:10Speaker 03

  Cleric.

• 1:55:11Tim Ferriss?

  Grey elf.

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  You were a grey elf?

• 1:55:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you were a cleric?

• 1:55:14Speaker 03

  No, no, I, I don't remember that well, actually. I mean, we played forever. But I don't actually remember my character.

• 1:55:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'll bring some graph paper next time. If you were to, this is related to the class. Let's just say you could no longer make films. All right, and your sort of divinely assigned mission was to coach five to 10 filmmakers.

• 1:55:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Tim Ferriss?

  And not only would you get the psychic reward of seeing them do well, but much like, say, someone who bankrolls a poker player. You would get a percentage of the future. What are the things you would focus on if you had, say, a six month period?

• 1:55:52Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, if I was doing that and I had a share of it.

• 1:55:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:57Speaker 03

  I mean, as soon as you bring the share into it, it's like.

• 1:56:01Tim Ferriss?

  So we could, we could, we could approach this a couple of different ways. So one is you get the profit share. So it's like a 50 50 split with them, plus you have a kicker, but you have to add some money in. All right, we could do that.

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  I would never do that.

• 1:56:14Speaker 03

  Film investment's an awful investment.

• 1:56:16Tim Ferriss?

  This is, of course, that's what we have huge Chinese companies for. But the, the other could be really whatever reward you would want to get out of it. So it could be the acclaim and receiving awards and prizes and so on. It could be anything else.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  I mean, really, I mean, the real, I guess, I mean, the gift of any teacher is to see whatever the goals of the student

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  are, as long as their righteous goals be achieved, you know? So, you know, I would probably want to teach students that were. You know, probably had, just wanted to tell good stories and then I would want them to see them, make them as well as they could and then have them connect with as many people as they could. The awards, the money, that's all silly stuff. I mean, it's great for everything, but it's really, has as many issues with it as good things. So, um, I mean, it's, it's just, you want to find people and I'd want to find students that really just want to tell stories and entertain and they,

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  not that they want to be a filmmaker because we're the, um, rock star of the present day or the NBA basketball player of the day, you know, where it's because that's what they want to do. Like when I started telling stories, it wasn't, like when I was a kid, no one knew what Spielberg did. We heard the name Lucas and Spielberg, but that was it, you know? But not really, you know, no one, how do you become a director? And when I started to do it even, in the early nineties, it wasn't really, it was early Sundance days, it wasn't really this track record of how to do it. So I wasn't like looking for the reason to be, you know,

• 1:58:01Speaker 03

  that it could lead to something that was clear. It was just something that was interesting and fascinating to me. So, at this point, when there are all these paths to, you know, um, fame and money and all that, and you know, if you make one film, you can go and do a Marvel movie or something like that, which is happening all the time now. I think you want to find people that are looking to tell stories and then help them tell stories. And like when I, the last class I taught at NYU, my best student was a Turkish kid who was going back to Turkey to tell a small story about an apple tree on the, on the, on the side of Mount Ararat that starts a village fight. And tiny story, it could be huge, who knows?

• 1:58:44Speaker 03

  But he was serious and he just wanted to tell that story. And so I gravitated to him and I spent most of my time in the class working with him and to help him because he was the guy who was gonna go make a movie and was serious and knew what he was doing. And I said, "Let me focus on this kid so the other kids can see..." Be inspired by his path.

• 1:59:03Tim Ferriss?

  Any top scripts, if somebody has never read a screenplay and you're like, look, just start, start with A, B, C.

• 1:59:12Speaker 03

  I mean, the guys working today, Eric Roth, Scott Silver, read any of their scripts, they're great writers, Chris Terrio, I mean, there's a lot of great writers working right now. I mean, there's a lot of good, great scripts that I've read. I mean, Charlie Kaufman's scripts are great and fond to read.

• 1:59:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's enough to start with.

• 1:59:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Tim Ferriss?

  Where can people find the film? Where should they learn more about it? I've never had something produce.

• 1:59:38Speaker 03

  Mother.

• 1:59:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, exactly. And I've had, just for everybody listening, I highly recommend you check it out. Like, like Darren said, like, no, you're signing up for a roller coaster. And, but I've had nothing produce this really unique, I'll get yelled at for modifying unique by someone I know, but that's okay. I'm gonna, just for him, very unique, dreamlike state for about 18 hours afterwards.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  It was amazing.

• 2:00:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was really profound. But where can people learn more about it?

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it's mother with a lowercase m and an exclamation point, which causes all different type of difficulties with social media because of the exclamation point. But, I mean, by the time this comes out, I hope it's gonna be around. If not, you know, I mean, just Google mother movie and you'll be seeing a bunch about it, about it, I hope.

• 2:00:32Tim Ferriss?

  Where can people, if they want to check you out on social media or what's that or anything else?

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  Both my full name, Darren Aronofsky, at on Instagram and Twitter. Yeah, that's, I, you know, Instagram is pretty cool. I've been doing this cool thing. I don't know if you've been following it, but I, I found two young film students and they were moving out to go to film school in LA. And I rented them a big projector and a cube truck. And they'd been driving through the country, projecting the word mother in different languages onto all different types of structures around the country. And so I've been posting these beautiful images that these young film Makers have been making to help self promote my film, but also it's been a fun project to learn about all these different places all over America. It's kind of humans of New York.

• 2:01:22Speaker 03

  Is that humans of sure. Is that the name of the

• 2:01:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, humans of New York.

• 2:01:25Speaker 03

  Humans of New York, but more projections of mother.

• 2:01:30Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. So people can say hi to you on the interwebs and check it out. Any last asks or recommendations of the people listening besides seeing the movie?

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  I mean, just keep, keep seeing the weird stuff. Go out and, you know, let, you know, support when you and then spread the word, you know? So I think, you know, if you dig the movie, get it out there and get everyone to go see it. I'm hoping that it's the type of film that you'll want to talk to other people about.

• 2:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I will, I can attest certainly with two people I saw with, we talked about for hours afterwards. So it's one of the things I really enjoyed is that it does not follow the typical template, any typical template that I can, that I can see. So it leads to a lot of conversation.

• 2:02:18Speaker 03

  Dare to be different.

• 2:02:19Tim Ferriss?

  Dare to be different. Well, Darren, I really appreciate the time.

• 2:02:22Speaker 03

  Thank you, Tim. It's been amazing.

• 2:02:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this has been really fun and we can, we can keep going, but I want to let you get back to

• 2:02:28Speaker 03

  Next film.

• 2:02:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, polishing up everything. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything we've discussed, including the movie, books and so on, in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast as per usual in every other episode. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:02:47Speaker 03

  Bye bye.

• 2:02:48Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, the world of the esoteric. ...as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny

• 2:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time and it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing and you will

• 2:04:17Tim Ferriss?

  thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become The Four Hour Workweek. So, go to audible.com/tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com/tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel or your

• 2:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  commute into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com/tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial. This episode is brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites, everything. I love WordPress to bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress and the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times.

• 2:05:31Tim Ferriss?

  The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin? I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site, both, neither, something else, you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on WordPress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO, that's Search Engine Optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else on search

• 2:06:16Tim Ferriss?

  engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization, but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt and then became an investor/advisor to Automattic, which runs WordPress.com. That is how much I believe in this, and that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about. Because I'm in love with X, and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress. And that includes everything from the huge sites that I mentioned to neighborhood sites. And it is super easy to get started.

• 2:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  There's no need to worry about security, or upgrades, or hosting. They offer 24/7 support and handle all of that, which allows you to focus on creating the highest-quality content you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't want to have to worry about getting emergency emails if I'm on vacation or something like that. And WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this. I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress. And they can't buy that with a sponsorship, they can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime, and quality, and that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So check it out.

• 2:07:40Tim Ferriss?

  Go to WordPress, that's W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S.com. WordPress.com/Tim to receive 15% off of your website today. That's WordPress.com/Tim.