Peak Humanity: Why Darren Aronofsky's Heroes Don't Wear Capes

He is one of the most disturbing and unapologetic filmmakers in Hollywood, from creating "Requiem for a Dream" to choosing conquistador sci-fi over Batman. But director Darren Aronofsky's new movie — "Caught Stealing," starring Austin Butler as a former MLB prospect — is a departure. Toward optimism; nostalgia; and Cheez. (Because, as any real New Yorker knows, you get everything you want when you no longer want it that much.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Love the crown molding.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 0:16Speaker 00

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  No FiOS? Yeah... no thank you.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 0:25Speaker 02

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• 0:30Speaker 03

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• 1:02Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,

• 1:46Pablo Torre?

  from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale, exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 2:22Speaker 05

  Get out of my neighborhood. I'm like, this is my neighborhood. I am 99% sure I've been here longer than you, motherfucker. Get out of my street. Right after this ad.

• 2:38Speaker 05

  The 50th Simply Bet. Delicious.

• 2:40Pablo Torre?

  This is the 50th anniversary.

• 2:42Speaker 05

  1970, so wow.

• 2:44Pablo Torre?

  So I got this during the pandemic.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 2:47Pablo Torre?

  No, so I, I, I, I put this.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  Do you understand what that means to be in that place?

• 2:50Pablo Torre?

  I'm not an idiot. So I've owned this shirt. I wear this shirt a lot.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 2:55Pablo Torre?

  I'm not just doing this.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  I'm like thinking what I can trade for that shirt.

• 2:59Pablo Torre?

  We might have a deal. By the end of this episode, we might have a transaction.

• 3:01Speaker 05

  So like, let me explain to you what a roll roast means. So should I put these on?

• 3:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, let's do it.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  So Roll Roaster is, uh, let's see. I don't know if I want to even hear my voice, but.

• 3:11Pablo Torre?

  If you don't want to, we can take it along.

• 3:12Speaker 05

  It's kind of sexy. No, I'm all right. You can wear them. I don't care.

• 3:16Pablo Torre?

  That's fine.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  So I grew up like, um, like a bird's eye shot. I guess they call it maybe half a mile from there. The original Roll Roaster in Sheepshead Bay.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  That to us was like the place, like, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning, you come and you get the roast beef with the, the, the cheese on top of it.

• 3:57Pablo Torre?

  The cheese with a Z?

• 3:58Speaker 05

  The cheese with a Z.

• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  No Lee at the end.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Which, by the way, I don't, I don't think I'll tell you exactly what that cheese is.

• 4:03Pablo Torre?

  You know what it is?

• 4:04Speaker 05

  So first of all, back in the day, all the waitresses were like the most beautiful women.

• 4:11Pablo Torre?

  So again, again, I'll show you the illustration on the.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Exactly. So they were always, they were the most beautiful women. So we'd always go in there, but we were like little geeky guys. And so, you know, we had no play. So when I was a, like, I think my freshman, right before I started freshman, uh, college at Harvard. And I'm bragging because it's part of the story. Uh, I wanted to get a job there. Cleaning tables at Roll Roaster and the motherfucker turned me down.

• 4:39Pablo Torre?

  There are a couple of things that's. Versus doing to us right now.

• 4:43Speaker 05

  But then, the other thing is, so then I, now I live in the East Village. And they try, and when I moved in the East Village, they turned, there was a roller coaster on across the street from the movie theater on 11th and 3rd. And they tried to, which was a few blocks from where I live.

• 4:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  And it didn't work, but it was kind of amazing that.

• 4:59Pablo Torre?

  I didn't know they franchised.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  They tried, they tried, it didn't work out. But that's the bomb, and I love that shirt.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, it's, it's, it's a special thing.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:07Pablo Torre?

  Roller roasters, so the thing that I, so I, from Manhattan.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, how'd you find out about it?

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  I would go to like Coney Island and I'd get a car.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Oh wow.

• 5:13Pablo Torre?

  And I would drive around.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  Oh wow.

• 5:15Pablo Torre?

  With my friend, and we'd get, whatever, we'd, we'd, so.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  So you just stumbled on Roller Roaster?

• 5:20Pablo Torre?

  I knew of it.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Oh wow.

• 5:21Pablo Torre?

  But the reason why this place blew my mind.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:25Pablo Torre?

  Is because you look at the menu, and there's the roast beef, and they claim, by the way, that this is a key to like longevity. There's a part of the menu, I want to quote the menu here, because one of my favorite New York things.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:37Pablo Torre?

  Is like the, you know, the true like native New York energy. When it says, um, what a delicious way to lose weight exclamation point. And they go on to just sort of proclaim, 100% trans fat free. And then, you look at the menu up top, and it's like, standard stuff, standard stuff, okay, like, cool, I got roast beef, they're really into that. Then you can get the champagne?

• 6:02Speaker 05

  I don't even remember that.

• 6:03Pablo Torre?

  Did you not, there's.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  Actual, actual, they have an alcohol license now?

• 6:07Pablo Torre?

  That you can buy $59.95 for wet champagne. And it's like.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  That's new, that's post my time.

• 6:16Pablo Torre?

  So I'm like, what is this place? My genuine reaction.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  It's real Brooklyn.

• 6:21Pablo Torre?

  And it's, and it's delicious.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  It's delicious, it's delicious.

• 6:25Pablo Torre?

  A number of times.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  The buns are great, I won't, I won't give away what the cheese is, because that's like a big secret. But, um, I mean, roast beef with cheese.

• 6:33Pablo Torre?

  How do you know the secret?

• 6:34Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, look, it's all rumors, but there was lots of conversation growing up. It's such a huge part of my lore, and it's funny, because when I shot Caught Stealing the New Movie.

• 6:43Pablo Torre?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  We do a sequence out in the water, which didn't make the movie. But we launched our, um, platoon of boats across the street. And my crew was there and they were, I was like, guys, you gotta go check out Roland Roast. And they're like, what's that? And literally like two stores down, I was like, go check. And then suddenly they were like trucking it in throughout the shoot.

• 7:02Pablo Torre?

  Oh, it's amazing.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  Totally addicted to it.

• 7:04Pablo Torre?

  It's amazing.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  And so it's crazy that it never got much bigger, but it really, it's in a, it's in a far corner of South Brooklyn and it's, it's really the bomb.

• 7:16Pablo Torre?

  So I just gotta jump in here to point out that I had never met Darren Aronofsky, who was one of the most provocative and surrealist and unapologetic filmmakers in all Hollywood, until he walked into our studio. We'd reached out to Darren because for a very long time, I had been fascinated by what seemed like his thoughtfully contrarian approach to storytelling. He's the guy who cooked up Requiem for a Dream with Ellen Burstyn and The Wrestler with Nikki Rourke and Black Swan with Natalie Portman and Mother with Jennifer Lawrence. And none of those movies allowed the audience a happy ending. But speaking of predictability, it is also clear now that Darren Aronofsky

• 8:01Pablo Torre?

  had no idea that we share one brag in common. It's a joke to the point where we will put up days since Pablo has said he went to Harvard on the wall.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  You actually went?

• 8:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Very cool. What year were you?

• 8:16Pablo Torre?

  I was, I graduated 2007.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Okay. So you now, once again, you have mentioned that you went to Harvard.

• 8:22Pablo Torre?

  Darren Aronofsky made me do it. But the other thing Darren enabled a couple of weeks ago was a ticket to a screening of his aforementioned new film, Caught Stealing, out August 29th. And I knew absolutely nothing about this movie walking into it. I had no idea that Caught Stealing's main character would be a former major league prospect named Hank, played by Austin Butler. And also, given Darren's larger catalog, which I had ingested in advance, I did not foresee the very special kind of surprise that I wound up being.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  There's a lot of surprises in it. I don't think it's, even when you know what it is a bit, it's

• 9:04Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  It gets people. I've been, we just started some screenings. We went down to Puerto Rico and did our world premiere and that was in Mexico. It was like

• 9:11Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, you're a bad bunny.

• 9:12Speaker 05

  Hearing people gasp was pretty cool, like throughout it. Yeah, yeah.

• 9:15Pablo Torre?

  Discovering bad bunnies in this.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:17Pablo Torre?

  Our friend who is sat in that chair, Action Bronson,

• 9:19Speaker 05

  Mmm.

• 9:20Pablo Torre?

  is in this.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  Action's the bomb.

• 9:22Pablo Torre?

  I had no idea when I was interviewing him.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:24Pablo Torre?

  Is this good? And then I listened back and I'm like, this is, I think, the greatest conversation I've ever had, maybe.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  It's out of control. They, we were just doing a little press with him. He's been really generous with his time because he's not the type of guy that does that type of stuff.

• 9:38Pablo Torre?

  No, no.

• 9:38Speaker 05

  Sweetheart. You know, they're asking on camera a bunch of questions and they're like, like, okay, what's your favorite crime movie? And I think Austin says Heat.

• 9:45Pablo Torre?

  Austin Butler, yes.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Austin Butler, yes. And Zoe Kravitz says, uh, true romance. And then, you know, Action takes that like totally long pause. Way too long and then goes Schindler's List.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  The room just didn't know to laugh, to smile or what, and he was actually kinda right.

• 10:03Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  As far as a crime.

• 10:05Pablo Torre?

  I mean, it's, show me the lie.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 10:08Pablo Torre?

  This is a thing that is relevant to the film, but, uh, it's a baseball metaphor. It was like catching a knuckleball, talking to him. I'm like, I don't know where this is going. Am I an idiot?

• 10:16Speaker 05

  That's so right.

• 10:16Pablo Torre?

  Is this?

• 10:17Speaker 05

  That's so right. That's right. It's sort of going all over the place and then it comes right across the plate.

• 10:22Pablo Torre?

  There's so little spin that it's the most spin you've ever seen.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true.

• 10:25Pablo Torre?

  Um, but I say all that to say that I didn't know this was a [BLEEP] sports movie in a real, again, not entirely, but meaningfully.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is good. There's a lot of stuff in it that only sports fans will get. Like, I mean, there's so many things we did that are like deep sports.

• 10:40Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah. I was like checking like the baseball reference page and I'm like, did this? Oh, no, [BLEEP].

• 10:46Speaker 05

  We actually changed the year of the movie because we wanted the Giants to be having a better run.

• 10:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 05

  So it was like, I think in the book it's set in 2000 and we moved it to 98 because there was the wild card. And so that was a kind of an interesting backstory for the film.

• 11:01Pablo Torre?

  Are you yourself a self identified sports fan?

• 11:05Speaker 05

  It's been a long time. Like, I was as a kid. I grew up in South Brooklyn, so it was like the Mets and the Jets, who were both playing at Shea at the time. And so, and also I was born in 69, so that was a victory year for those teams. I did see Joe Namath on the field as a boy, so, and Tom Seaver and Kingman, and so I saw some of that, but, like, in the 70s then, it's like Reggie Jackson time. So it was really hard to resist and stay a Mets fan when everyone's selling out to become a Yankees fan.

• 11:33Pablo Torre?

  It's hard to peak at the year of your birth.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  Exactly. And then have to wait till, what was it, 86 to have another victory.

• 11:40Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, more cocaine-y, but follow-up championship experience.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  I started watching a little baseball for this movie and sort of got caught up on some of it, but I didn't get deep.

• 11:52Pablo Torre?

  The thing that I experienced as I'm going through this film and I'm watching Austin Butler, having watched, again, in a weirdly compressed amount of time, Pie and Reckon for a Dream and The Wrestler and Black Swan and Noah and Mother, I go into this film and I'm sitting there and it ends and I'm like, "Did Darren Aronofsky just, like, make a romp?" Is this the sort of thing where you say, like, "This is mad cap"?

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Capes. Capes's the term.

• 12:23Pablo Torre?

  But I'm like, "This [BLEEP] was not just fun, but it was..."

• 12:27Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 12:27Pablo Torre?

  There was something in it, and I don't know if you'll take offense at this when I say it, but there's a hero.

• 12:35Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, gosh. How dare I?

• 12:39Pablo Torre?

  How furious are all of the cinephile pervs who love your [BLEEP]?

• 12:44Speaker 05

  You know, look, it's funny, I just, it's just something I felt. It's like, there's a lot of seriousness going on in the world and everyone's screaming at each other. And I think one thing that um uh movies do and stories do is they kind of unite people. You know, they bring people together. I mean, the the act of watching a movie, it's an exercise in empathy. But I and you've heard that before, but it's it's more meaningful than that because basically you are forgetting about yourself. In a really good movie, hopefully, you're in someone else's shoes. Literally, you're like in their head. Because the one of the great inventions of the 20th century that's overlooked is the close up.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  And what the close up allows you to do is you can look at Austin Butler up close without being self conscious that he might look at you or he might judge you or you could just look at him deeply and you can study him and you can actually kind of really connect with him and really go through the experience with him. And I think that is like a super important thing that people are doing less and less of when they're when they're scrolling. You're not really separating yourself. You're usually jealous or you know, all different types of thoughts are going through your head. But in a movie, you're going on a long, emotional journey with someone else, and that's a deeply human act. And so I think it's super important to get as many people as we can to watch these movies.

• 14:06Speaker 05

  Because I think anyone on any political spectrum, they come together and hopefully they're going to dig Hank. Because Hank is kind of just like an American hero. And I think we miss that. There's a lot of American heroes, but they're usually superheroes. And I kind of wanted to do like put out an American hero out there who's just a guy that a lot of us can relate to, that a lot of us can hope for, and then just connect with him. And it doesn't matter where you're coming from.

• 14:30Pablo Torre?

  Typically, though, because you are a master of the close up, you're invading the the interiority of your protagonist.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:38Pablo Torre?

  And you are showing us what it's like in there. And typically, I would say your catalog is defined by that being almost as traumatic for the audience as it is for the person that we're meeting.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:51Pablo Torre?

  And and this. This, um, I like Hank.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:55Pablo Torre?

  I was rooting for Hank.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 14:57Pablo Torre?

  This is not the anti-hero antagonist dynamic. Did you take, I took a class at Harvard as this.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  That's a, yeah.

• 15:05Pablo Torre?

  The resetting.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:06Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, the class I took was, uh, it was derided, but it was concepts of the hero and Greek civilization.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Is that Heroes for Zeros?

• 15:16Pablo Torre?

  That's how they derided it.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Exactly. I never, you know what? I never took Heroes for Zeros, but that was a huge mistake on my side because it took me another 20 years to discover Joseph Campbell and become a total addict of it. And I could have gotten it back at, you know, when I was walking out of college. Cause that, that's actually a huge tool for me in filmmaking now, the hero's journey. But it did take me a long time to find it.

• 15:37Pablo Torre?

  So, so finding it in terms of you learning about the hero's journey.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:41Pablo Torre?

  But also you now in this film, doing something that feels more classical.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:47Pablo Torre?

  To that point.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:49Pablo Torre?

  Was it fun? Was it more, how do you describe your process?

• 15:53Speaker 05

  I always have a good time. I mean, there, the filmmaking process for me is, is never that different from pie with whatever it was, $20,000 to, to this movie. Um, and all in between, they all have their own challenges and stuff, but the process is very similar. Um, but there was something nice about getting my crew together and, and basically I've been working with a lot of the same people since, um, since the nineties and, um, they've all become incredible masters of their craft. And then bringing that all to like, make a solid genre film, like not, because if you think, I've never really done clear genre, like pie is not really sci-fi, Requiem. My biggest letdown, just to talk sports was on The Wrestler.

• 16:37Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  ESPN would not allow me to go for the best sports film of the year because they were like wrestling's not a sport. And I was like, God, finished on you. Someone yesterday, by the way, also called Black Swan a sports movie, which I thought was interesting too, because it is in many ways.

• 16:52Pablo Torre?

  Golf is a sport, ballet is a sport. Is my personal take.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  Well, it's an athletic, uh, absolutely, it's an athletic movie. So it's good, this is kind of the third sports film, but there. They're similar, except that it's like, um, it's very clearly a crime caper. That's what we wanted to do. So bringing together that team of like masters that I surround myself with and be like, you know what, let's make the best genre film we can and have a great time.

• 17:18Pablo Torre?

  In nineties, New York.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Nineties, New York.

• 17:20Pablo Torre?

  Which is my childhood. I was born eighty-five.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Oh, very cool. Oh, so, uh, yeah, so you're a teenager in that time.

• 17:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  So it must have sparked a lot of, a lot of visceral memories.

• 17:30Pablo Torre?

  Frankly, it was like, oh, if I was cooler.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  I could have gone down to the East Village.

• 17:35Pablo Torre?

  I'd be around there. I grew up, you know, on, in Murray Hill, which is.

• 17:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not that far. I'm sure you guys wandered out a little bit.

• 17:42Pablo Torre?

  My mom is discovering that I wandered out a little bit in this very conversation.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 17:46Pablo Torre?

  Uh, but also just, man, I, the nostalgia for that era. What do you miss the most about that?

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Well, of course, there's just so much. In many ways, it isn't that different, but of course, it's so different. And the, and the main thing is like the social media aspect of it. And just like the communication aspect, like back in the day, and you probably remember this as a thirteen-year-old. Hey, meet me on the corner of blah, blah, blah, at blah, blah, blah. And you were there, and if you were late or you missed the person, you didn't talk to them till you got back to your house and had a telephone, unless you had a beeper or something. So it was, uh, it was a whole different way of communicating and interacting with each other. And I think there's also an immediacy, uh, back then of being in the present, of being what's happening right now,

• 18:34Speaker 05

  that we've lost because the reality is we're spending seven hours inside of our telephone. And our machines at this point, we are basically these cyborgs and we're gone. And I'm not saying, I'm not judging. I'm not gonna be like Elvis, don't sway your hips type of guy. Cause I think it's interesting. Like I'm all leaning into all the new stuff, but it's different. And that, that, that's kind of interesting. And I think there is a FOMO like you just had to, even as a city boy, that you wanted to get downtown.

• 19:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  The nineties in New York, in downtown, I call it peak humanity. Cause like the Soviet Union had collapsed. Our biggest problem was Y2K. Everyone was just talking about, did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman?

• 19:16Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:16Speaker 05

  That was, that was our biggest controversy with our president.

• 19:19Pablo Torre?

  American scandal at that time is so funny. If you watch the West Wing now, you're like, whatever.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  What?

• 19:25Pablo Torre?

  It was like, you, school uniforms. Like that was

• 19:29Speaker 05

  How dare they?

• 19:29Pablo Torre?

  That was a real problem America was grappling with.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. So it was like, everything was like, the temperature was a lot lower. And you know, pre nine eleven, it was a very different world.

• 19:38Pablo Torre?

  Pre nine eleven is the era.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  And then musically, it was like hip hop was booming and going international, which as New Yorkers was exciting. Grunge was kind of over by ninety eight, but was still important. Electronic music was just starting. Musically, there was just so many still new forms. There was still an underground, which is like hard to have at this point. So I feel like a big part of this film is the FOMO over the nineties. Like, you want to see what it was like? Like, you know, come home.

• 20:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Oh, my God. Like, the idea of America being so optimistic that to be cynical felt radical?

• 20:15Speaker 05

  Well, I had that a lot because back then, I saw Making Requiem for a Dream and Pie and all these kind of more underground films then and finding a little love, but it was it was hard because Paris Hilton was queen. Letterman was cynical and that was that he had a bite.

• 20:31Pablo Torre?

  But was distinguished by the zag.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 20:34Pablo Torre?

  That he was making. Like, that's so and Requiem, which I had, my experience with that is that high school, college, I just remember being like, why are people chanting ass to ass?

• 20:57Pablo Torre?

  And I then was like, oh, oh. And so I could revisit it. And I'm like, what what genre do you, for people who somehow haven't seen it?

• 21:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I guess I would ultimately say it's a horror film where the monster is addiction in a certain way. It's invisible, but it's it's kind of horrific, the film, but it doesn't really fit into a genre.

• 21:20Pablo Torre?

  Right. Right.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  But that guy, by the way, did you catch him in the movie? Did you see him in Claude Stelling at ninety two years old?

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

  No, wait, wait, wait.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  The Gil Hodges line.

• 21:30Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  The studio begged me to cut it, by the way, because they're like, no one in the world knows who Gil Hodges is. And I'm like, you know what?

• 21:39Pablo Torre?

  Me.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Yes, it's a bunch of Brooklyn boys.

• 21:42Pablo Torre?

  This podcaster knows the legend of, yes, Gil Hodges, Brooklyn Dodgers.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 21:48Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  So, uh, yeah, and he just wrote me recently, Stanley Herman is his name. That's like what he's known for and he gets recognized and, uh, he might actually put on his tombstone.

• 21:59Pablo Torre?

  Ass to ass?

• 22:00Speaker 05

  Exactly. I was like, you know, more people will come visit you.

• 22:02Pablo Torre?

  Stanley Herman.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  I met him, actually, I was a film student, um, in the early nineties in LA. And he came in and I was like, hey, so I, I've got this one role in this little short I'm doing called The Pervert. Will you do it? He's like, definitely. And so he's been the pervert in every movie, uh, pretty much, except in the new movie. He's, he's a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

• 22:23Pablo Torre?

  I want to explain ass to ass for people.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Really?

• 22:28Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre.

• 22:31Pablo Torre?

  Can you describe it? I don't want to summarize it. I want to know how you would explain it to someone who's never seen, just that scene.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Basically, when we put the movie into the world, the MPAA, which is the censorship board, um, for Hollywood, they wanted to give us a X rating for, for, mostly for that scene and what happens in that scene. And, and other things, of course, in the movie, there's a lot of drug use in it. And a lot of profanity and it's terrible, you know, it's a pretty tough film.

• 23:00Pablo Torre?

  Oh, it is like, I want to laugh about this in the context of this movie will change you.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:07Pablo Torre?

  Because it's real in a way that is just rare in cinema.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Well, it's funny, so this is the 25th anniversary and there was a big screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. And they're re-releasing a DVD, Any Moment type of thing that has all these things on it. But for the, for the Toronto Film Festival 25th screening, I got Ellen Burstyn to come out in 92 as well. And she was like, I'm watching it. So I was like, you know, I haven't seen it in years. So I was like, okay, uh, if I, I'm going to sit next to Ellen and watch this. Cause I think the last time we watched it was at the world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 90, in 2000.

• 23:40Pablo Torre?

  How'd the French react?

• 23:41Speaker 05

  We had an incredible reaction in France. It was insane. It was like, it, it had started at, we were, we were a midnight screening because they thought it was too rough to be earlier. But the movie before us went too late, so we started at 1 AM. And it finished at 3 AM and the applause went on like, you know how they talk about these applause, but it was. In my career, I've never seen anything like it in any other film, not even my own. It was like, it was crazy at three o'clock in the morning and it was very emotional. But we still had no idea that it would be this thing people would be talking about 25 years later and the impact of that film on young people and now young people that are actually making films, it's a beautiful thing. And it just had, just like a bunch of, I guess we were like late, we were probably 30,

• 24:25Speaker 05

  a bunch of 30-year-olds, just trying to do everything we could and just make as good a movie as we could. So, it was a great, it was a great, it was a great experience. But sitting next to Ellen during the screening, I mean, she was just slapping me the whole time. She's like, "Shame, shame." And I was kind of shocked. I was like, "Wow." You know, it's definitely the film of a 30-year-old, not the film of a 56-year-old. So, you know, it's a different movie for me.

• 24:52Pablo Torre?

  Well, that brings us back to the ratings and the question of what do you do with the scene that is still being talked about?

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, at that point, not having an R-rating, there was huge problems. I think there still is, like, you can't advertise in newspapers and, but the studio stood by me because I was like, "Look, this film is about what addiction can do to you. And if we shave back anything, we're undermining the whole purpose of the movie." So, the movie has to go there because it's showing you how dark it can get if you kind of allow yourself to be ruled by addiction.

• 25:32Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's like McGruff the Crime Dog was like the standard mode of warning people about drugs are bad.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  I was doing a Q and A and there was a woman stood up and said, "Thanks for a requiem and made me sober 25 years ago." And the guy who wrote it, Hubert Selby Jr., the great author, wrote Last Sex at the Brooklyn famously, he was an NAIA sponsor for 30 years and the amount of lives he saved with this and with the film and with the book, it's an amazing accomplishment.

• 26:18Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 27:32Pablo Torre?

  So I just gotta go back to the concept of the hero's journey for just a second here. Because as Darren Aronofsky said, he came to it regrettably late in life. And I've been thinking about this because as much as he became critically acclaimed for being this weird and abstract and disturbing auteur who was bootstrapping low-budget but highbrow movies, it turns out that Darren has toyed with the idea of making a film that is not just about a hero, but a superhero. And he's been thinking about this for a while now. Around the year 2000, Warner Brothers originally hired him to develop the movie that eventually became Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. 10 years later, he was then attached to direct Hugh Jackman

• 28:16Pablo Torre?

  in The Wolverine. And Darren dropped out of both of those projects, obviously. But he was intrigued.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  And I wanted to know why.

• 28:30Speaker 05

  I've always been interested in that because I do think like there's always interesting to do with certain of those characters. I kinda had a, had a, like, I was attached to Batman for a while and Superman and The Watchmen. Cause I've always, I wasn't a crazy comic book fan as a kid.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  But I, I got into graphic novels when I was in college. Actually, my roommate was an animator and he turned me on to The Watchmen and gosh, the Frank Miller Batman. What's it called again, the series? Anyway, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight series. So I read all those and they were like real literature, those, those things. So, um, but I wasn't really a big superhero fan. And then I got, you know, when I got the call about Batman, I was in the edit room on Requiem. And it was kinda before they would take all these young directors and stick them on big franchises. So it was kind of a new idea. And I was kind of intrigued, but I've always felt like a need to author some stuff and not necessarily just do someone else's character.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  So I've been very lucky that I've been able to do my originals first. So when Batman came on, I really wanted to make The Fountain. And that was this kind of really big, expensive, experimental movie. And I felt like, I felt like if the studio saw me as a superhero director, maybe they would let me do this crazy thing. And eventually they let me do the crazy thing instead, you know? And then, you know, Chris Nolan had the launch of his career off of it, which is great. And he, he did it in such a smart way. Yes. That I don't think I would have ever done. I would have probably made it small and edgy type of version of it. More dildos. Not that, not that dark. I don't think I would have got away with that. But, um, so, and then I've been lucky.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  Cause after, after The Fountain, you know, I was able to go small and do The Wrestler and Black Swan. And I've always been able to do the ones I want to do. So there are some interesting things in the superhero universe, but I think most of that stuff has been visited and kinda where I am now is like. Real human heroes and that can unite people. I think that's that's my sweet spot and where I'm looking to like do stuff is like bring people together with stories and characters that kind of remind us of how great our lives are and like and like and be positive towards the future. Cause it feels like

• 30:43Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's

• 30:44Speaker 05

  It's like things are getting ripped and torn apart, you know?

• 30:47Pablo Torre?

  It says something and from a macro perspective, of course, you're right. If you're to trace the arc of history from as as yourself have made films about the origins of the human condition and also like humanity as a concept. Um, if you're to trace that, things have undoubtedly gotten better over time.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:03Pablo Torre?

  But in the present tense, it feels miserable to the point where to go and do the inverse of what we observed before. Um, things are so overwhelmingly cynical that optimism feels punk rock.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  That's where I am. Exactly. And it's funny, I I'm hearing that from other filmmakers too. Like you're gonna see like a lot of the kind of indie edgy guy that people are starting to lean into that because, you know, I've been talking about it like if Hollywood can do anything right now, it's like shut up and dance like let's let's entertain, let's entertain, let's do what we do great, which is we make great movies that capture the world and remind, you know, think about the human potential and and where the world can go. It's not a dystopian future. Like where is the protopian future? Where's the great future ahead of us? Or where's the great human characters that have grit that just sort of power through?

• 31:51Pablo Torre?

  Part of what I think you would have, I mean, clearly you thought about this, what you would have hated about superhero filmmaking is being beholden to a canon that was not your own and a community of policemen.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 32:03Pablo Torre?

  Who would have hated.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And when you push the edge a bit.

• 32:06Pablo Torre?

  The choices and and the interpretations.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I mean.

• 32:10Pablo Torre?

  And some and look, and it's my thing, it's impossible to do because again, Christopher Nolan did a Gothic Batman that was incredible. But the policing of your work from people who feel like they are the actual arbiters of the content.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Well, now I'm about to be policed, as you said, by people who are like, well, this isn't a real Aronofsky film.

• 32:31Pablo Torre?

  And that's my point is like you have now made this subreddit of, I mean, literal and figurative.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  When you, I don't want to give too much away, but when you actually think of the content, how many people live, how many people die?

• 32:43Pablo Torre?

  I should be, I should be very clear. I'm grading on a Harvard level curve.

• 32:47Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly.

• 32:48Pablo Torre?

  The gentleman's

• 32:49Speaker 05

  No grade inflation.

• 32:49Pablo Torre?

  The gentleman's A of man, Darren only had this many people shot in the head. He's gone soft.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 32:57Pablo Torre?

  So there's so much of that, obviously. But on the scale of Requiem.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it's a different world. It's a different world.

• 33:04Pablo Torre?

  But I love it, but again, it's just like, but that's part of what I found so delightful.

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the question is, can we bring the same level of attention and filmmaking to a different kind of genre? That's been fun to breathe life into other types of stories.

• 33:19Pablo Torre?

  Yes. Speaking of life.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:22Pablo Torre?

  I'm so good at segues.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:25Pablo Torre?

  Your sort of field biology.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:29Pablo Torre?

  Sort of that section of your.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:31Pablo Torre?

  CV. Part of what I, one of my favorite things in life that I do in my show, I talk about quite a bit, is just like how the ecosystem of New York City is underrated.

• 33:42Pablo Torre?

  But you're somebody who like went abroad to.

• 33:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:44Pablo Torre?

  In your teen years, right?

• 33:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:47Pablo Torre?

  Could you explain what you did and just, I want to sort of bring that back to where we are, actually.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I've always had, I'm from like the southern, southern part of Brooklyn and like two houses away from a concrete parking lot that leads to Manhattan Beach, the actual beach, like the sand and the oceans right there, like real nature. And, you know, being in the southern tip of Brooklyn, you know, there were two types of people growing up in my Brooklyn, not today's Brooklyn. People who wanted to get to the big city and people who were never going to get the [bleep] out. And I was always like, I want to get to the big city. And then very young, I really wasn't into travel and like, you know, seeing the world. The other great thing about growing up, up down in South Brooklyn is there was the New York City Aquarium.

• 34:34Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  Where a lot of my friends would intern, because if you intern there, you get a T-shirt that would let you go on the Cyclone in Coney Island as many times as you want. We would go on the Cyclone 40, 50 times a day. We would just ride it all day until like our brains were like.

• 34:47Pablo Torre?

  That's insane.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. We have, what's CTE? What is it called?

• 34:50Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 34:52Pablo Torre?

  You and the NFL have a number of things in common in terms of that.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  And while there, one of my friends stumbled on this kind of brochure for this program that took kids and trained them as field biologists around the world, a group called School for Field Studies. Which is still around, training ecologists of the future. I'm on the board now. And so I went with them to Kenya and I studied ungulates, which are animals that stand on their hooves.

• 35:16Pablo Torre?

  Like giraffes.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  Giraffe, anything, yeah. Gazelle, zebra, anything. And then, and then the next year I went with them to Prince William Sound, Alaska, and, and, and studied thermoregulation, harbor seals. And just like being in crazy nature, when you couldn't find all that stuff on Google, totally blew my brain. And definitely, you know, I became a scientist. You know, and the way I look at the world is through the scientific method.

• 35:43Pablo Torre?

  So what I am sort of connecting with you about when it comes to the optimism is like, a fundamental sense of like, truly like nostalgic wonder. And in New York, the thing that has blown my mind is whales. There are whales in New York Harbor.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  I have, I have not heard about this, really.

• 36:03Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  Because they're driven up north from the, from climate?

• 36:07Pablo Torre?

  Because it's a multivariate equation.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:09Pablo Torre?

  But there's been a cleaning of the harbor.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  So humpbacks or what's in there?

• 36:14Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 36:16Pablo Torre?

  So like, you can, dude, there are photos, and these are real.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  Really?

• 36:20Pablo Torre?

  In which there are humpbacks breaching.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  No.

• 36:23Pablo Torre?

  And in the background is the cyclone.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 36:26Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. I have not seen this.

• 36:29Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  So that's out, actually out on my beach.

• 36:31Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  Down in South Brooklyn.

• 36:32Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. You have to send me that.

• 36:34Pablo Torre?

  I actively will.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 36:36Pablo Torre?

  Um, I will spam you with my pro whale propaganda.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic.

• 37:13Speaker 06

  In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 38:56Pablo Torre?

  New York to me, right? So it went from a place of growing up, and this is the pre-social media era, obviously, pre-cell phones. It was part of my nostalgia, I realized, oh, this is It felt like a, like a, like a, like a small town in a way.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 39:13Pablo Torre?

  Like now, New York is so fragmented because phones have fragmented everything.

• 39:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:18Pablo Torre?

  And there are zillion New Yorks for people. And there's a TikTok New York and subgenres inside of that.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 39:23Pablo Torre?

  When I was growing up, I just felt like, oh, man, everyone's talking about Rudy Giuliani.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:28Pablo Torre?

  Everyone is sort of dealing with this. So even like a blackout to me, growing up was.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 39:34Pablo Torre?

  Right?

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Amazing. I had a lot of fun on the blackout.

• 39:37Pablo Torre?

  Everyone's talking about the same thing.

• 39:39Speaker 05

  Right. You don't feel that connection in New York still?

• 39:42Pablo Torre?

  I, I just think that because we are seeing things through our phone.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:47Pablo Torre?

  There's just less of it.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  That might be true.

• 39:49Pablo Torre?

  Um, but I.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Less of, it's an interesting, I don't know, I mean, shooting, caught stealing in the East Village. Uh, we shot on the corner of Sixth and A, uh, where Benny's Burritos used to be.

• 40:04Pablo Torre?

  I used to live on Tenth and C.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  Okay, you know exactly where I am.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  But it was a freaking circus. I thought I was on Bourbon Street. I was kind of grossed out by like what the East, what, what the East Village, I was like, oh, this.

• 40:16Pablo Torre?

  Alphabet City was a place my parents warned me against.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Alphabet City was, Alphabet City was hardcore. Absolutely. I don't think it's so scary anymore, but it was very, very intense.

• 40:27Pablo Torre?

  To the point.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  Very intense. But, um, and it seemed like people were having a good time though. So like at first, like Friday night, I was super pissed off because I thought, I didn't realize the type of crowds we were gonna have to be dealing with. And people screaming, you know, people screaming, get out of my neighborhood. I'm like, this is my neighborhood. I am 99% sure I've been here longer than you, motherfucker. Get out of my street. But then I realized people were having fun and then I, I did, I've gone out a few times in it because I had to go check out bars and scout bars. And there was a lot of life going on still in New York. It felt alive, uh, in a real way.

• 41:00Pablo Torre?

  One of my takes about New York that I feel as a true like, you know, you know, New Yorker. And the question of like, when do you get to claim that? Do you have, do you have a standard for that? Does anyone get to claim that if they are not from here?

• 41:11Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, we all know when, it's all, my second que, uh, where are you from, New York? Second question, where'd you go to high school? And I was like, oh, we moved to Long Island when I was seven. I was like, okay.

• 41:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yes.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  No, we're total snobs, total snobs.

• 41:23Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 41:24Speaker 05

  I mean, because we did pay dues. We did pay dues.

• 41:26Pablo Torre?

  And, but beyond the whole like. Look at what New York used to be like.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:31Pablo Torre?

  What we grew up with.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  Which is our favorite conversation as New Yorkers.

• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  You're always like, "I could've got bought that building for blah, blah, blah."

• 41:37Pablo Torre?

  Christ, yeah, yeah. The whole thing of like, I've been, I found a rent-controlled apartment that I'm still, just like the whole lore of.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:44Pablo Torre?

  Where to live, how to live, all of that. Part of what I feel walking around to what you just described is just knowing what's been here before.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:54Pablo Torre?

  Reduces, I think, the anxiety lots of people feel around how intimidating.

• 41:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:59Pablo Torre?

  Like, oh, this street, even like walking through, so one example.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:03Pablo Torre?

  Like, walking through a busy street in like the West Village, and it's like all these very attractive people, and it's like, they're all, you know, watching you and all of that. I'm like, "None of you people used to be here."

• 42:12Speaker 05

  No.

• 42:12Pablo Torre?

  Like, you are new here.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:14Pablo Torre?

  Like, that confidence is like what, to me, you have to, that's like accumulated decades of just like not, like, [BLEEP] you. Like, I'm not, you can't intimidate me off of this street.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  But I love that New York is always changing, like, it used to be, I used to really complain like, oh, that used to be like this, but I find it exciting that it's like a living, growing, changing city. And like on my corner where the roll and roaster is, I don't know what they're putting up, but they took down everything, and it's gonna be something ugly, but I'm like, okay.

• 42:48Pablo Torre?

  It's gonna be a weed store, Darren.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  It's exactly.

• 42:50Pablo Torre?

  It's gonna be illegal. We asked for legal weed and we got it, and it sucks.

• 42:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, but at least that shrunk too. That was like everywhere, every bodega.

• 42:57Pablo Torre?

  Now it's being.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  And now it's like, now, now the ones that have the license seem to know what's going on a bit, but it's, yes, it's, you get everything you want when you no longer want it that much.

• 43:07Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Like, my friend, Ari Zablotsky, built his bar, Zablotsky's, in Williamsburg, but it, you know, he built it when I was like 36, and I'm like, dude, I got a [BLEEP] baby.

• 43:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I'm going to bed at 10:30.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  I was like, where were you in the 20s when we needed a [BLEEP] dive bar that we could drink for free? So, you always, your friends get, at least for me, they're, I'm always, it's always 10 years behind what I needed.

• 43:32Pablo Torre?

  I have a friend who just opened a bar, and I'm like, I am not gonna hang out.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  I may not ever go see you.

• 43:37Pablo Torre?

  I'm not gonna hang out.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  Exactly. You will never see me there. Maybe, you know, if it's your birthday, I'll come by for.

• 43:42Pablo Torre?

  That's literally what I did. And I was there and I shook his hand and I'm like, I gotta go. I have a five-year-old.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 43:48Pablo Torre?

  Um, but, but the, the other thing I, the most authentic, like, just like feeling about New York that I have is the wonder, not merely that there are whales here suddenly.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:56Pablo Torre?

  Speaking to the changes of things, but that there are places that are just so close to me that I've never even walked into, that one day I do.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:06Pablo Torre?

  After decades of ignoring it and I'm like, this has been here the whole time.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  There are always discoveries and things are always changing. That's, it's, I just went to that thing, um, I met this guy, um, his last name's Digital, but he's this artist, Kevin, Kessin? I can't, I can't remember, but he built this like observation thing that's inside of, um, it's all covered in mirrors. Have you seen this thing yet? It's like this new observation tower, like around, um, Grand Central Station.

• 44:35Pablo Torre?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Vanderbilt, one Vanderbilt.

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, one Vanderbilt, exactly.

• 44:39Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the observation deck.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  Yes, it's sick. Did you go inside? It's actually, we're checking out.

• 44:42Pablo Torre?

  Can I tell you what I did? So I bought a ticket for me and my wife and.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  Kenzo Digital, I think it was.

• 44:49Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I think that's right. So I bought a ticket and the line was so long that it snaked into the subway. I'm like, I'm not waiting.

• 44:57Speaker 05

  I could hook you up. I met the guy. So next time he goes.

• 45:00Pablo Torre?

  Darren, I, I've been meaning to go.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  I was like, oh, this is, uh, it's like an artist interpretation of an observation deck and it's like a lot of fun.

• 45:08Pablo Torre?

  So to me, the fact that there are these like, you know, in that case, a literal, almost like funhouse mirrors scenario.

• 45:14Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 45:14Pablo Torre?

  Um, up in the sky. I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm also, another one of my just beliefs is New Yorkers, real New Yorkers, also should do some tourist [BLEEP] sometimes.

• 45:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:24Pablo Torre?

  Because it's actually, oh, guess what? Central Park is cool.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, Central Park's a tourist thing now? That's scary.

• 45:30Pablo Torre?

  Am I breaking the news to you that it's largely European?

• 45:33Speaker 05

  I, I haven't been above 56th Street in like 30 years.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  It's been a long time since I've been up there. I mean, I drive up the FDR and pass it and I'm always like, oh, there's people there too. I always like wonder like, who are these people like north of 50? I mean, there's big buildings with like lots of people in them and stuff. I have no idea who those people are. Nothing up there.

• 45:54Pablo Torre?

  But that's also what's great about New York City.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 45:57Pablo Torre?

  There are countries, there are republics.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are whole countries. It's just like, literally, it could break off and I would not even need a passport to get in because I'd have no interest.

• 46:04Pablo Torre?

  And to be clear, some are luxury towers largely owned by like Chinese billionaires who never show up.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  That's the weird thing. When you like.

• 46:12Pablo Torre?

  Ghost apartments.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  When you're coming in from wherever JFK or whatever and you look at the land, I have no idea what that is. It used to be I knew every skyscraper and I have these little thin things and I'm like.

• 46:23Pablo Torre?

  The thin things are, that's what's over.

• 46:25Speaker 05

  And they're confusing. There's many of them and they're all over the place now. And it's like, what is that?

• 46:30Pablo Torre?

  I feel like we've become, at the end of this podcast, Statler and Waldorf, just complaining about skyscrapers.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Well, you're welcome to be a New Yorker.

• 46:37Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, no, it is.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  Should we talk about Shea Stadium?

• 46:40Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God. I mean, I'm, so I grew up a Yankee fan.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 46:44Pablo Torre?

  So part of my.

• 46:45Speaker 05

  Have you ever been to Shea?

• 46:46Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Okay. Yeah, I don't know how young.

• 46:47Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no, no, no. I mean, how dare you?

• 46:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:51Pablo Torre?

  But old Yankee Stadium, even more than Shea, but Shea as well.

• 46:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:55Pablo Torre?

  What I miss, of course, is that feeling of like, you walked in, because all these places are now the equivalent of a billionaire's skyscraper. City Field as well as the new Yankee Stadium.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, which is nice. City Field's pretty nice, though.

• 47:06Pablo Torre?

  They're both.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  Beautiful, yeah. I haven't been to the new Yankee Stadium, which is embarrassing. I gotta go see it.

• 47:10Pablo Torre?

  City Field is better than New Yankee Stadium, if I'm being objective. But both feel so much less, I mean, Yankee Stadium I'll speak to because that's my experience growing up, going to the bleachers, McDonald's, and just like yelling at outfielders.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:26Pablo Torre?

  Truly, like Raoul Mondesi, we're just like, we just yell at him. He's like, I'm the team. We're just like, I don't know, we're just, this is what we do. It's less intimidating.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:34Pablo Torre?

  It's less, there used to be like a home field advantage was actually a meaningful competitive advantage. And now it's just less because all the things you've described about New York and its changingness.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:46Pablo Torre?

  The glory of it, but also like the sanding down of those edges.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true. It's true. I mean, yeah, I remember when. The Subway Series, and I was like, I want, I want tickets, whatever it's gonna take. And so I, I was, I had just made pie, I had a few Hollywood connections, I was like, calling anyone, I couldn't get tickets. And I was on a fifth floor walk up in Hell's Kitchen where I lived, and suddenly my door knocked. And Morgan, who lived on the third floor, she's like, you know, you want tickets to go see the games? I was like, and I forgot she worked for MLB.

• 48:21Speaker 05

  Like a neighbor in New York. So I had tickets, I, and I was like, well, how many can I get? She's like, how many do you need? I was like, I'd like 10 tickets to the bleachers. So I had 10 tickets to the bleachers of every Subway Series game, and I brought my, all my boys. And, uh, the worst, one of the worst experiences, talking about Home Advantage, was being at Shea, I guess it was, was that still Shea?

• 48:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was Shea. At Shea, when the Yankees won, and there were more Yankees fans than Met fans, and the Yankees were booing, the fans were booing the Mets at home. And I was like-

• 48:52Pablo Torre?

  Eat it, Aronofsky.

• 48:53Speaker 05

  I was like, so, no, it sucked, because you guys had money and you bought all our [bleep] tickets. I was so angry. I was so angry. I was like, this is so disrespectful to come to someone's house and piss all over it. It sucked. And I got destroyed.

• 49:07Pablo Torre?

  Sorry that capitalism-

• 49:08Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 49:09Pablo Torre?

  ...exists.

• 49:23Pablo Torre?

  I wanna quote something from you.

• 49:26Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 49:26Pablo Torre?

  Um, cuz I, I wanna geolocate where you are now with regard to this.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 49:33Pablo Torre?

  Quote, "I don't give a [bleep] about the test scores. My films are outside the scores. Ten men in a room trying to come up with their favorite ice cream are going to agree on vanilla. I'm the rocky road guy."

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Jesus, how old was I when I said that?

• 49:46Pablo Torre?

  That was yesterday.

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 49:49Speaker 05

  You know, I totally tested this movie because

• 49:53Pablo Torre?

  2014.

• 49:54Speaker 05

  2014, yeah, it was a different world. I totally tested this movie because, you know, Charlie Chaplin famously would tour his comedies around the States and he would go to bum wherever just to see.

• 50:06Pablo Torre?

  Barnstorming.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I was inspired by that because there is comedy in this and there's like violence in this and there's like shock moments and I wanted to see how they were playing for different audiences. And I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from it because, once again, it was a different exercise. It really was about making something fun and entertaining. And I wanted to reach people in that way. And so you learn a lot from it. You learn a lot and you learn things unexpectedly. You get shaken up. Things shake up because you're like, okay, for some reason, something's not quite clicking. How do you get that to click? And so we did a bunch of it.

• 50:45Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:46Speaker 05

  Different Darren.

• 50:48Pablo Torre?

  The whole notion of, because you're how old now?

• 50:51Speaker 05

  56.

• 50:52Pablo Torre?

  At 56, you're like, the whole thing of what people

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:58Pablo Torre?

  have always wanted from me, which is to listen to them.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 51:03Pablo Torre?

  There's now a point at which that's creatively interesting.

• 51:06Speaker 05

  Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I think, look, my mentor, Stuart Rosenberg, is a great director. He did Cool Hand Luke and Pope of Greenwich Village. He'd always say he had a sign on his desk that said, "Where is my audience now?" And I think that's always true and I've always believed that. Like even when I was making films that were more weird or abstract or disturbing, I am always thinking about it. Because you want, you want people to like, understand what's happening, even if it's not the most pleasant understanding of what's going on. I don't know, but you know, I've done this before. The Wrestler is a similar film where you have a hero that you're rooting for who just can't get out of his own way. And Austin Butler really was able to do that, was able to take a beating down to the mat,

• 51:50Speaker 05

  but always kind of dust himself up, stood up, you know, licked his chops and put up his dukes and started fighting again.

• 51:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  So it was kind of fun to do that.

• 51:59Pablo Torre?

  Did you know that you want, and forgive me if this, I'll give a big spoiler alert.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:05Pablo Torre?

  Did you know that you wanted to do something with this one that you, I don't recall you doing, which is actually give people what feels like a happy ending?

• 52:18Speaker 05

  It's a mixed happy ending, to be fair, but I, yes, I felt, you know, it's a tough ending and it's a hard ending to land. It took us a while and I think I wanted people to leave with a positive feeling into the world because I think the character is on an upswing, but this is the first of three books. And in many ways, it's setting up a lot of things that happen later. I have no idea if that will happen. The film works as its own piece and has a very, very good ending. But it's a complicated ending because the character has gone through a lot and it's like a lot to, there'll be a lot of like unpacking in the next few years of his life.

• 52:58Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, in the last, some of the last scenes, a literal unpacking. There's that reveal.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  Exactly. That was fun, right?

• 53:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, we'll end it there, but

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 53:09Pablo Torre?

  But, but the whole thing of, I think you just, what I found out today is that Darren Aronofsky is finally, you're developing a cinematic universe. The D A C U. Dare I say. Like Roland Roaster.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:23Pablo Torre?

  You might be attempting a franchise.

• 53:24Speaker 05

  Exactly. Well, hopefully we'll do better in Manhattan. Man, thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation a lot. And when did you graduate Harvard?

• 53:33Pablo Torre?

  Uh, 2007.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  Oh, that's right. Click.

• 53:36Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 53:38Pablo Torre?

  [bleep] you.

• 53:48Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Love the crown molding.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay. Bye bye.

• 54:41Speaker 02

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