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Rian Johnson (Director of "Star Wars", "Looper")

Published on Mon, 23 Jul 2018 10:00:00 +0000

In this episode of HODINKEE Radio, your host Stephen Pulvirent sits down with filmmaker Rian Johnson — director of movies like "Looper," "The Brothers Bloom," and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." It also turns out that Rian is a true watch nerd, as this chat will prove. We met up in Los Angeles to talk about spotting cool watches in old movies, his creative process, and what watch he's hunting for next.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent is joined by filmmaker Ryan Johnson and senior writer James Stacy for a wide-ranging conversation about watches, filmmaking, and storytelling. The discussion begins with Johnson revealing his passion for vintage watches and how he came to appreciate timepieces, including his connection to Hodinkee as a longtime reader of the site. The conversation naturally flows between Johnson's work in cinema and his love of horology, touching on everything from watch placements in films to his personal collection.

Johnson shares fascinating stories about his watches, including the pre-moon Speedmaster he acquired before directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a vintage Explorer 1016 with a unique tropical dial, and his complicated relationship with his father's gold Rolex Datejust. The filmmaker discusses his approach to storytelling, the challenges of writing and directing, and his experience working on The Last Jedi, emphasizing how the team at Lucasfilm encouraged him to bring his personal vision to the Star Wars universe. The conversation touches on classic cinema, the importance of pacing in older films, and how both watches and movies serve as vessels for personal stories and memories. The episode concludes with cultural recommendations, including the BBC America series "Killing Eve," Shane Carruth's "Primer" and "Upstream Color," and a book about the history of colors in art and design.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown I've been a fan of filmmaker Ryan Johnson for his movies like Looper, The Brothers Bloom, and of course Star Wars The Last Jedi, but I never even thought about him being a watch guy. A few weeks ago though, he tweeted a link to a hodinky story and I could not help myself from shooting him a message. We ended up eventually meeting up in Los Angeles along with Hodinky senior writer James Stacy to record the conversation you're about to hear. It turns out Ryan is a pretty big watch nerd. I think you're going to enjoy this one. I'm your host, Stephen Pulverin and this is Hodinky Radio. This week's episode is brought to you by Tudor. Stay tuned later in the show for a look at the Heritage Black Bay Chrono, a new take on one of Tutor's most iconic watches. You can also learn more at TutorWatch.com. Thanks so much for joining us, Ryan. It's really good to have you here. It's good to be here, Steve. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And uh we also have James Stacy here with us. Hey everyone. Yeah. Whole whole whole gang's here. Um so I wanted to start off, Ryan, by just kind of letting people know how we met. Um you know, I've obviously been aware of your work and a fan of your work. Stephen and uh shared a flat in Paris during the war. We did, we did. It was it was intense, but we we got through it. Yeah. It's almost like a war actually. Twitter, I guess. It's worse than a war. It's worse than World War II. Jeez. We're s we're starting heavy, we're coming in hot here. But yeah, I saw that you tweeted something we wrote and was like, wait, holy shit, is he a watch guy? Uh and reached out and sent sent you a DM, just like slid right into your DMs and then uh got an email a couple hours later and uh we connected over the phone and it timing worked out great for this trip. So I'm really glad we could connect and talk about watches a little bit. I've been reading the site for years, man. I'm I've been a fan for years. Unbelievable. I'm uh I was so happy I reached out. Yeah. Yeah. I
Unknown was I was sitting I I live in Vancouver so I I phone in to a video meeting on Monday mornings and then we were talking about who who's gonna be, you know, in these in these uh episodes and they're like and we and we got Ryan Johnson as well and I was like, sorry, did you say Ryan Johnson? He did like I literally unmuted and like adjusted my headphones and I was like the guy that did looper. They're like He was like cool, puts his mute back on. Yeah, that's rad because I uh a door brick. Oh thanks. My brother turned it on to me a few years ago and uh just really, really excited to chat as
Unknown fun. Thank you. I appreciate that. We got a couple good watch close-ups in that movie too. For sure. It was the timex that I wore like all through my twenties that Joe had on during that movie. Oh really? Yeah, it was really specific. Is that something you think about a lot? Is placing watches in your movies as a watch guy? What's really funny is since because I've only really gotten in any knowledgeable way into watches like in the past like you know I don't know ten years or so. And so uh the Star Wars you can't really place watches. So uh although it's tempting it'd be pretty cool if just on Sol Uh yeah, and and that I uh we I thought about like looking at a a specific brand of it, but ended up just going with um uh my prop guy found like a really interesting uh style with um uh with a really particular face. And I was just stylistically that looks good and it's generic enough to where it's not gonna take anyone out of the story. So it's set in this weird future, so you don't wanna date it using like a so I don't But I do sometimes I found myself uh watching movies that I love and just kind of squinting and saying, Oh, what's he for sure. Yeah, yeah. Mov yeah, movie watchers. Yeah, movies, TV, shows I don't even care about. Yeahah, yeah, ye. James just watches somebody else's watching someone. Have you guys ever tracked down the watch that you found? Like
Unknown uh like like hunted to find out what it actually was? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh probably, yeah. Like uh I mean the big one is uh is uh um Cooper in Jaws. What does he wear? What is he wearing? It's an Alestra. They're actually doing a reissue of it. It just came out. It's so it's like a skin diver, but on like a metal a metal uh That's awesome. Oh dude. Yeah. No shit. So that was like the grail on like watch you seek for many years, just trying to figure out what watch uh Hooper was wearing. Or you know, you gotta write you gotta write a story about this. That's a pretty great one. It's pretty well covered. Wow, interesting. But yeah, no, I mean it's a it's it's a cool piece. Is it Hooper or Cooper? His character. Uh Hooper, right
Unknown ? Yeah, Hooper. Sounds good. Yeah. All right. Have you ever tracked anything? I've done it twice. That could be an interesting vein of collecting though. Like you collect watches you've seen in movies. I'm very shocked that actually there's not kind of a whole subset of the culture that's in maybe there is and I just don't know it. But uh After Hours, you know the Scorsese movie? After hours. Yeah. So because they there's so many close ups of um Griffin Dunn's watch during the course of the night as his universe is falling apart. And every time it flashed to it, I was like, What is that watch? And it's actually it's a Hamilton khaki branded, like the military style watch. But this was before you guys did like the piece on it and with the reissue that just came out of the one that our our producer Gray has over here on the other side of the studio. There you go. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. So this is so this is before this came out and I was like, oh my God, that's such a cool and so I just went on eBay and it was just Yeah. Like one of those the simple like the songbird ones. Exac yeah, exactly. It's like this. It's it's much smaller than this. And it's it's got the khaki bracelet on it. But yeah. Oh that's really that's really nice. Oh, sure. Uh and then the other one, um so uh there's this movie uh The Other Side of the Wind. Have you heard about this? Oh this is the uh well thing, right? Okay, so I've gotten to know uh um sorry, we're gonna be talking for an hour before we even really start. This is awesome. Okay, good. All right, so I've I've I've been lucky to get to know Frank Marshall, the producer, who's Kathy Kennedy's uh husband. You know, Kathy runs Lucasfilm, so I've worked with her really closely of Star Wars. And Frank is a legend, and he's also kind of um he's kind of the forest gump of the film world, not in terms of his intellect Things that he did was he worked in uh like the 70s with Orson Wells when Wells was making like his last couple movies. And he got into that through working with Bogdanovich. He was like Bogdanovich's guy on uh paper I mean he goes back like to the day and like, you know. Uh so anyway, he got into working with Orson Wells on this last movie that Wells shot but never finished called The Other Side of the Wind. And it starred John Houston as this aging film director. And Bogdanovich actually co-stars in it as like his protege, sort of. But anyway, the d Frank for years was trying to get a hold of the original footage. He finally did it. It was like locked in a vault in Paris with all this complex French bureaucratic bullshit like keeping everyone's hands off. And he finally found a way to get everyone to agree and sign whatever they had to do. Got the footage, cut it all together into a movie. And I got to see it recently. It's incredible. And John Houston in that movie in nine I think they shot it like in the mid seventies, I think, early seventies. And he's wearing a pulsar P2. He's wearing a such a weird watch. So strange that John Houston is wearing this like what would have been at the time like a cutting edge like you know. It looked like the future. That is super cool. Which you it's not actually that uh I don't know. I mean you can find them and they're not astronomical or not. Were you able to find one that works? No. But so that's a next step is I gotta figure out uh it's it's so dumb I'll still wear it around even though. Yeah, it's awesome. But then I went to a YouTube rabbit hole recently, is watching a bunch of Peter Sellers interviews from the early seventies and I spotted him wearing one as well. The same thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Pulsar V two. I was like wow, all these things. It's like a weird cult watch. I guess so,
Unknown yeah. They're probably all gifted each other then. I'm sure it's barely the same watch. They're friends or one guy gifted all his buddies one and it's filtered through something like that. You have an Orson Wilde question, don't you? Uh not necessarily a question, I suppose it's more of a comment. Uh wine commercials? Well, yeah, sure, of course, maybe the best thing on the internet, depending on your mood. Yeah. We'll have to link that up in the show notes. Uh can you can you tell people what this is? Yeah, it's just like it's two I think it's two takes. It's like if if this interview went really bad or if I had a really bad day. If and and and I want and I wanted to like try and regain some level of like positivity in my life, I would watch this video. Watch that depressing clip from when he's
Unknown dying of alcohol and like botching the sad thing he's forced to do to make money to make it I I get it. I get it. You framed it in a way that ro
Unknown bbed some of my beauty. That's my gift. It's Orson Wall's attempting to deliver the like two-camera line about some uh like California faux champagne. And he's clearly unhappy about being there and possibly Possibly. Possibly. Most certainly drunk. And uh and and it's really it's
Unknown just it's stupid funny. It's so funny. I the the drinking and the the I in this same YouTube thing I went down, I s I watched a bunch of talk show um talk show stuff with uh uh um with Oliver Oliver Reed. Okay. And oh my god. Seeing the d when those guys drank, like what that meant and seeing them like if I get a little too drunk at a party, I'll wake up the next morning paranoid over what stupid stuff did I say at the party. These guys were getting trashed more than I've ever gone trash in my life and going on freaking Johnny Carson and like telling anecdotes. And uh I mean it's completely bonkers. But um John Houston in the movie plays it it i it takes place over the course of a night and he he is basically getting increasingly trash the whole night. And I it's very obvious that and you read behind the scenes stories, he was just drinking on set um the whole time and he's got that kind of you know, ing it's an amazing performance. He has that kind of stone faced gravity of just like you can feel just his face looks like it's carved out of drooping, you know, stoned, he's so drunk and just like it's it's it's um an amazing performance. Anyway. Is is that era of cinema something you particularly love? I love it. I love the seventies, yeah. And um uh I I also though uh one of the nice things my my girlfriend Karina Longware she does a a podcast about uh old Hollywood. And so one of the really nice things about like the p past like you know, past five years or so has been she watches a lot of old movies for her uh research. And so for me it's like film school and it's been a real I mean I to the point where if I sit down at night, um you know in, our version of Netflix and Chill is film struck and chill, and we'll just put on like an old movie, usually something from you know the the forties or or earlier. And uh yeah, I 'cause I'd I'd I'd watch a lot of stuff from the you know, seventies and sixties when I was in college especially. But um getting back into you know, uh the previous era has been interesting. Wha what is it about that era that appeals to you? What the the classic? Yeah, the classic era I don't know. I mean the I don't I I I don't think I I don't know. I I know some people, especially with the seventies I think, who tend to romanticize the era specifically. Um I guess uh intend to kind of guild it as uh and and yeah, I can you know I can get that. Like whatever if th if that's something that romanticizes that makes it uh more meaningful then then I get that. But for me it's it's much more about the individual films. And um there were just some great stories that were told, just by some amazing people. And the for me it's also fun watching very old films. Um we just watched a film the other night. Um I'm probably gonna get the title slightly wrong, A Woman of Paris. It was a movie that Chaplin directed but was not in. It was a silent film. And uh it was a drama, it's not a comedy. And they actually have, you can see the marketing guy, right? They're equivalent to marketing guys, it was what that probably was just Chaplin, put a title at the beginning of the movie that said, you know, to the to the movie going public, the Mr. Chaplin does not appear in this film. Also it is a drama that he has directed. We hope you enjoy it. Like just to let everyone know up front. But anyway, you watch that and and seeing this thing that in some ways is is uh has all these kind of formal things that make it so of another era and puts so many roadblocks up in terms of your modern sensibilities, and then watching an actress who has a scene where she is just so glowing and alive and you feel like, oh my god, this it feels like I'm watching somebody at a party yet last night having a great time. Something that just cuts through a century and the weird barrier of um it being, you know, this flickering black and white old film and you're just seeing the spirit like a time traveling or traveler, you're seeing the spirit just alive on the screen in a way that um just hits you between the eyes. I don't know. That's that's part of the fun of it I guess. It's also just damn good movies. Nothing nothing wrong with
Unknown that. It is remarkable when films of of an age manage to yeah, like you said, kind of cut through all the expectations that you may have built up about modern films. Absolutely. Like every time I I and I ramble about this film a lot, the three have all heard it from me, but North by Northwest I'm loosely obsessed with because that movie doesn't age. Loosely loosely is generous. Tightly obsessed. It's an amazing film. And there's some aesthetic parallels to Looper, intentional or otherwise. Well just in the cornfield and that sort of thing. And you re you read that people freaked out in the theater 'cause there's no music when the plane's chasing him and and that kind of stuff. I mean and and you watch that now in that movie it's lost nothing. It's lost nothing. It's
Unknown confidence. And that's something that I think um I don't know even for myself it's it's it's really, really hard to you look at something like that, you look at David Lean's work, you look at the stuff they were doing, the steady hand they did and the confidence they had to make a decision like that. Um there's a we
Unknown ird patience to older movies. Yeah. And it could be in the cut, just in the way the editing's changed. Yeah. But t scenes take a little bit longer, like scenes that don't need to. Yeah. Take a little bit longer. And there's something nice about that that I I find I don't know if it's calming or I agree. It slows my brain down just a little bit. I think
Unknown people think you can't get away with it today. I really think you can. Um but it's it takes guts, you know, it takes it and I don't know. Yeah, it's a it's a tough thing. But yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, some good stuff certainly. So good. I mean you talk about guts and acting with confidence. I mean you recently, your most recent project, you wrote and directed a Star Wars film. That's that's I mean, talk about guts. I mean that's that's crazy. I mean how do you how do you approach a project like that? Um it's weird. It's like I mean when you well like it sound it I got scared hearing you say that just now. I can tell from the the gulp. The gulp. It sounded yeah, you caught me mid-water gulp. It it sounds um and I think that it there it is just this strange thing where um uh you know because I I had grown up with Star Wars meaning a lot to me and really being my whole world when I was a kid and first telling stories in my head and everything. Um I it what it I think if I come into it as a job and thought as a grown up, can I execute this job so that it fulfills these sa you know, these th I think I they would have didn't bit just been paralyzing. But for something because of what it was, I jumped into it and just instantly felt like I was jumping back into um uh a sandbox from when I was a kid. There was there was something where that element of it that would have made it just terrifying very quickly disappeared and I had the most fun I've ever had in my life um creatively with it. It it felt like play. Um in a really in a way that I I you know I like to think like serves uh serves the process well for it. But yeah, I don't know. Um it sounds scary once you get into it. Um it felt really comfortable. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much freedom did you have? I had uh that well that was a the really nice thing is I I had um yeah, I had m as much, if not more, freedom than I've had in my other films, in my independent films. And that's not what I expected coming into it. Um but I think, you know, Kathy Kennedy and Kiri Hart and the other folks at Lucasfilm and also the folks at Disney. Um they they knew that they understood that and some and you know, all of them had known George and some George Lucas and some of the folks at Lucasfilm had worked with him on the film still. There are people who go back to when he was doing the prequels and they knew that the the the original films that he made were personal things for him um and that's what made them what they were and so they were real it wasn't just like I was allowed to slip my own personal take on what Star Wars is into it. They actively encouraged me to not be afraid and to make it something that I genuinely connected with and cared about, something that came from my heart. Even if that meant it was gonna be, you know, uh it wasn't gonna be just like checking boxes of of of different kind of fan service things. Right. The ultimate way as a fan, I think the ultimate way to service fans is to make a movie that's alive, you know, and make a movie that's uh and that's what George did. And so I felt really lucky that the people, you know, up at the top that, was kind of those were the marching orders and I was really allowed to kind of find what I cared about and and make it. Which was cool. And and how would you describe that kind of personal stamp, the way that you made it yours? Like what what about the last Jedi is is you? Oh I can't I mean you can't describe not even just like uh 'cause you don't want to say or because you'll sound like an asshole. Although you don't want to say and you will sound like an asshole. Uh but but also just I think it's you it's it's almost like um I don't know. It's it it it it it uh because I'm trying to think how to describe it. The the process is so uh intense and you just dive into it, you're making decision after decision that all add up to what the thing's gonna be. And essentially you don't have I at least I find I don't have time it's not like you're consciously thinking about those things. You're just telling a story that feels right to you and putting stuff that connects with you into it. And the sum total of all that ends up being the movie. And you're uniquely unequipped to define what it is that makes it yours when you get to the end of it, I feel like. It's almost like asking like when you talk, what what is it about your personality that's expressed and how you and you couldn't define it, you know. Yeah, that's that's totally fair. Yeah. If you were to piv
Unknown ot a similar question, if you were to say uh with those marching orders, what did you personally feel you wanted to protect in the film? That you would appreciate about the ones that you grew up Aaron Powell U
Unknown h I mean for me a lot of it was tone, a lot of it was the emotional response that I as a kid had to the movies growing up and remembering what for me what the the with Empire Strikes Back, for instance, the um the ways that that was exciting in kind of a scary way to me, you know, and the the way that also the the operatic kind of thrill of um some of the moments in that, the original, you know, A New Hope and Jedi, all of them. Um and and tone, I guess also the funness. That's one thing that JJ, among many things that um JJ just nailed with The Force Awakens, I thought was the tone. He had just that fun, you're you're just on a ride and you want to be with these people type tone. So the humor of that, trying to get that in-I don't know, it's a whole bunch of stuff that kinda adds up to all the st
Unknown uff excuse me that I love about Star Wars. I thought it was remarkable how well you were able to maintain the big small moments that existed in the original three movies where they could show you something that was happening at a galactic level and then show you something that was happening at a very human level and they were contrasting nicely. Like I find you watch a lot of comic book movies and the comic book movie and that's not of course not what a Star Wars movie is, but the comic book movies have become a genre in themselves where you have of some very strong people and then a stronger person and then they find a way to beat them and that's the end of the movie and they do that again and again and again and again. And with these things it seems that there's always there's a humanity within Star Wars. I th I think that's what there's always been
Unknown . Yeah, well th I appreciate that. Yeah, and that's something that uh that is another really nice thing that um I think J J honed into and that all the folks again at Lucasfilm and Disney were cool with 'cause there is that thing so Damon Lindelof that wrote a really great piece about uh what did he call it? Scope creep creep, where there's just a natural tendency to have the world blow up at the end of everything. You know, and there there is like a story gravity that's just make it bigger to make it more you know. And uh I think everyone involved in this kind of recognized that, you know, that's not entirely what's there's that in Star Wars, but that's not what makes Star Wars tick. Right. I guess uh
Unknown that's good. Like because I wouldn't give anything away for n someone who hasn't seen the film, but you know, the the sequence with the bombers. Mm yeah, is that is at is at the same time. This isn't an opening sequence of the film, roughly speaking, you know, first act, and uh uh the sequence of the bombers has of course a huge bombing raid happening with huge ships and it's at a very macro level. And then you have this one instance that's that's very tightly shot on someone's face and someone's hand on something they're supposed to touch. And and to blend those two things together, that's like that's done by people who it's done at a high level by really good war films. They'll do two things at the same time. You'll see the macro size of a of a war and then the micro of being a pilot or a guy reaching for a gun or something. Well it was
Unknown really interesting cutting the that sequence and some of the space sequences together. One of the things I I and this was real education for me that I learned really quickly was you emotionally disconnect so fast if you don't cut to a human face. For sure. Really often. And that sounds obvious, but it's incredible how uh d seeing it in practice, in seeing how even if you go a couple of shots just It really is true you can't emotionally ca you ha it every few shots you gotta go to somebody's face and know what's at stake and know you like the person and they're in danger. Yeah. Yeah
Unknown . Yeah. I I thought it was a powerful scene and just something kind of stood out in my mind because that for me as a kid, though that's what that's what these movies were about, were these big scenes. Yeah. And then these very personal scenes, father-son scenes, childhood scenes, losing scenes of great loss, very personal things, things that you know so Luke lost his family that wouldn't matter to somebody that didn't know Luke, but you know Luke. Right matters to you. Exactly. And then at the same time you have something that's happening on a grand scale and he's a key in in kind of a big lock. And I think that carried over into your films as well. I appreciate that man. Thank you. It's just a neat story structure. I think is not you certainly not unique to Star Wars, but is very well played throughout that that series. Yeah, it's a big part of what makes it what it is. But
Unknown I'm glad that came through. It's definitely something we had our eye on. And now we'll look at this week's sponsor. Over the last few years, Tudor's Black Bay line has been the gold standard for watches that combine a respect for watchmaking history with modern craftsmanship. The Black Bay Chrono adds an additional complication to the Black Bay family, but all built on the foundation of the iconic snowflake style hands and the sturdy Black Bay profile. Inside beats the manufacture caliber MT5813, a column wheel chronograph movement which is chronometer certified and fitted with a silicon hairspring. The Tudor Black Bay chrono is bold and modern but with, just the right dose of nostalgia. Visit your local authorized retailer to see these watches in the metal or TutorWatch.com to learn more. Let's get back to the show. It's interesting too for me to think about that in terms, or I guess not in terms of, but in in maybe contrast or comparison to something like brick, right? It's it's such a different scale and a different in some ways a different type of story. I mean brick is something that you know, I know it was shot in in the school you attended. You know, it was it's it's a very human level personal story that is shot and takes place in a place that's very personal to you and is written by you. Yeah. Trying to tell that story versus jumping into Star Wars, which is something you're you're kind of stepping into and is happening at a very big scale and a scale that's like not very tangible day-to-day for for us. How do you approach telling those two types of stories similarly or differently? Aaron Powell Well, I think you have to make them the same. And it's weird. Like I I I see more similarities. Like Brick was in in the way you describe like a more intimate thing for a lot of reasons. It also though it's a it's a weird movie. Like in terms of like form formal stuff that it that should be like a barrier to emotional entry, you could argue it has even more stuff than something set in space with the weird top way everyone talks and it's kind of this bizarre high school world but it's not really like a realistic thing like and um but anyway I I I but the the trick I think for me with both of them, it's the same. And it's strange. Like Star Wars didn't um I feel like this is a version of what I I said before in terms of just having the creative freedom to make it personal, but excuse me. Star Wars didn't feel like um I don't know. It didn't feel like stepping into something bigger necessarily. I feel like it it can't. You know, anything you step into if you don't feel it on the same level that you feel the small indie movie that you're making and know emotionally why it matters to you in the exact same way and know down to scene to scene, know what that scene is about in a way that you can express in personal terms for these characters and why that connects with you, it doesn't matter if it's a small indie mystery or drama or whatever or a massive space movie. It's it's not gonna work, you know. So so for me it's strange, like the hearing the question, like I I n I never really thought of them as different as different th
Unknown ings, I think. Aaron Ross Powell In making movies when you're trying to translate an idea to not just the visual side, but to to make the story. What's the challenge that someone who's never done it before would not appreciate? Yeah.
Unknown Um I think you know, for this so with in terms of screenwriting, um uh in terms of telling a story that's gonna keep an audience actually entertained for like two hours in a theater. Um for me, and this is still the most challenging part of it, is you know, one of the when I was a a a teenager, my dad was in the home building business. He wasn't uh in entertainment business at all, but he was fascinated with movies. And I think he secretly wanted to make movies. And so he took a screenwriting course and he I was like seventeen and we drove up to LA together and he brought me to this screenwriting course. It's uh it was Robert McKee, it's the guy do you know uh adaptation? Yeah, of course. It's the guy they're making fun of in adaptation. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's uh he has a very pedantic sort of like, you know, style. He gets he he gets, you know, uh a lot of people making fun of that. I everything I know about screenplay structure I learned from that weekend in that class with my dad. And the basics of it are just there there is in terms of the story of a screenplay, in terms of um there's an element of engineering to it that hopefully is invisible to the audience, but as an audience member you know if it's not clicking. And it just basically is is uh it's all about reversals and it's all about um every 15 minutes something pretty interesting has to flip around. And every thirty minutes something bigger has to flip around. And over the course of the whole movie, something massive flips from the beginning to the end. And it's there is an element of that where it sounds kind of obvious, but as a screenwriter, it's easy to just say, and then this happened, and then this happened. It takes a certain amount of um conscious discipline to say, okay, what's really going to make you say, oh my God, now this is happening. Oh crap, now this is happening. And you know, and um I don't know, I'm not expressing this very well. But it that that to me is both the most interesting and the most difficult part of screenwriting is um there is a discipline to it. There's an element of bridge building, of engineering that you have to pay attention to if you actually want someone to stay in their chair for two hours.
Unknown And do you figure that's crap? You do you do that at a gut level or you write it and then you go back and say like well we could
Unknown Aaron Powell It's a it's a combination. I think I think it to a certain extent there are because you meet people who aren't screenwriters who who can just tell a great story, even if it's just an anecdote about what happen And you meet people who they could they could have this is something I think McKee actually says it's really true. You meet people who they could have just almost crashed in a plane and barely survived and ran a stolen a horse to ride across a desert to get water and and live. And then when they're telling it you're nodding off 'cause they're not telling it well. I think there is a certain degree of innate storytelling that somebody has or doesn't have. But at the same time, um you know a script has uh it it's it's uh having that helps, but it it there is like I said, I keep coming back to the word engineering, there's just an element of it. But then you hear stories like I've heard the Cohen Brothers just start writing at page one and just feel their way through it. So I guess if you're if you're actually talented like the Cohen brothers, then yeah, I'm not. Spoiler alert how do you approach directing something if it's something you've written versus something that you didn't because I know you you sometimes work as a director and sometimes you're writing and directing projects. Yeah is it is it for you a different process or is it sort of like with Star Wars where you just have to sort of slip into the material and it's sort of the s I mean, excuse me, it's sort of the same. And the only time I've I've directed something I haven't written has been with TV, with Breaking Bad. So where first of all, the writing was better than anything I could ever write. The writing was just magnificent. And I find- I mean, writing sucks, man. Writing is miserable. I don't believe anyone who claims to enjoy writing. So it's actually it was heaven for me to just show up and basically do the fun part, which is working with the actors and directing this great script that someone else had done the work of writing. Um but no, and and also though, even when you write something and then directed, or I find this um there is a weird kind of schizophrenic split that happens where you show up on set and the person who wrote the script is a different is a different person who you come to resent over the course of shooting. You're like, the hell wrote this line And it's not about staying true to what you were thinking when you're sitting in front of your little you know computer like six months ago. It's about no, this is boring. Why is this boring? Let's do what we have to do to make it work. Do you find yourself doing that even when it's a script you wrote as well, where like it comes out of someone's mouth and you're just like, oh that does not work? All the time. Oh, oh the time. And that I'm really col that's why I I I'm really collaborative with the actors. We'll run through it if we can lose a word, if we can lose a phrase, if something's not working, if it's not clicking. That's one thing that uh I d I I've definitely tried to get better at and have learned that's one of the biggest things I feel like I keep learning is the degree to which um you know you have to know what you're telling, you have to know why certain things are there, you have to know the intent of it all, but not being precious and realizing if something doesn't look like it's working, it's not working and you gotta you gotta change it. You know?
Unknown Yeah. Yeah. And considering you'd said that, you know, nobody likes writing, I assume it means you don't like writing so much. I think some people like writing. That's fair, that's fair. But the um for you, do you find that your buzz where you really find your sweet spot is in those scenarios where you're in the trenches, like you said, and you're making it
Unknown work? I mean there's nothing more fun than that. At the same time I mean, you know, uh y y you hate writing but you love writing, you know. There's nothing better. Yeah, you know yeah. Especially when it comes together. Yeah, when it clicks feeling, right? Yeah. Yeah. When it clicks. And I love having ridden. That's like Right. Yeah. Right. It's definitely better than writing. Right. Yeah. Exactly. It's a good deal. That's it. And that'll be amazing. You said that there's nothing better than that feeling, you know. But clicks or something your brain gets out of its own way and it works out. Exactly. It's so rare. Yeah. So rare. So to bring it quickly back to kind of kind of almost where we started. Um you know, when you and I were talking about watches the other day, you know, you mentioned that when you got the call for Star Wars, you picked up a speedmaster. Yeah. Are there other kind of milestones or exciting moments that you've marked with watches? Yeah, I feel like excuse me. Um yeah, I feel like with like the watches I picked up over the years, and I don't have I don't have a collection that would that would impress any regular hodinky reader. It's not like I have like amazing watches or something, but each one of them. You also have a really nice explorer on the other thing. My new baby. But each one but e I don't know, each one of them though, um and I think this is probably true with with with uh everyone who's into watches to some degree. Each one of them tells a story of that moment in your life, you know. And so each one of them in its own way is kind of like a milestone. And when you put it on, you remember who you were when you got it, where you were, why you got it, why you loved it. For me, especially with because I've found I've I've I've gone a few newer watches over the years, but I've really come to find that that that vintage watches are really where my heart's at. I think it's the combination of uh you know the combination of that storytelling of what the watch meant to you when you got it. And then the watch itself has a history before that that maybe you know about or maybe you can look at it and imagine and tell yourself as a story. And I'm just like and that the the combination of those two things and having that encapsulated in this beautiful machine on your wrist. I mean it's it's just really powerful, I think. You know but yeah yeah Speedmaster was I was about to go off to do Star Wars and um I had at that point I had a few watches, but um I had gotten a few watches over the years, but it wasn't it was when I put that Speedmaster on my wrist and looked at the What sort of Speedmaster? It's a uh it's pre moon. It's six I don't call pre moon. It's nineteen sixty nine. And so it's a uh I forgot I looked up one four five. I used the app to look up the number of it and I promptly forgot it. But I put on my wrist and I remember sitting in the car after I first put it on, just looking at it, and it it was m like just that first moment. I think everyone's in the watches has that where it's like, Oh, this is my watch. Yeah. Again, we talk about things clicking. It's like that moment where it could just flip it. a Speedmaster, the fact that it was it was you know this pre-moon but the moon watch I was going off to do Star Wars. I was like, oh that's kinda cool. And then it's doesn't get any better than that. And then and now I because I had on my wrist the whole time I was making Star Wars, now when I put it on it reminds me of all the great memories when I was on set making it It's fantastic. It just all connects up, yeah. Yeah, ye
Unknown ah, yeah. It's fun how uh especially old watches, but watches in general can connect with those yeah, with those experiences that become kind of totems or or credits or or or something like that that you kind of
Unknown completely, yeah yeahah not ye they connect up to when I was in London working on Star Wars you guys published a thing about the dirty dozen and um trying to think if that was maybe it was after I was in London. But anyway, I got really into uh reading up on British military watches. Yeah. When I was in London I was originally I was looking around for a Mark Eleven and uh and I found a gorgeous Mark ten that I ended up getting. Okay. And so it's um oh it's so beautiful. And it also talk about storytelling, it has a uh you you can see a slight fade on the dial where the minute hand was stopped. Oh where the ham was stopped. It's not incredible. Yeah, so you just picture how many years this was sitting in like some, you know, to imagine like some dude's like case like with the sun sweeping over it once a day for like thirty years. Um but also just m the connecting up to with the time in London. Like that was a fun way to and I was because I'm in my forties now, of course I'm reading a bunch of World War Two history. That's what everyone does kind of have to do. And so yeah. But yeah, yeah, everything like connects up. Tell us about your Explorer. This is so this Explorer, it's a um uh it's a ten sixteen, it's from uh nineteen sixty-five. I had uh yeah, I I I I had had my eye on getting an explorer for a while. I knew I wanted something that had a little character in terms of the dial. I figured, well, look for something that maybe has a little tropical kind of discoloration or just something unique about it that I can kinda and uh I've been poking around and then um I'd also kind of delay just asked a few friends of mine who were like, you know, kind of in the watch world to keep an eye out. And a buddy of mine found this from just like a private seller in New York and it's it's it it's it's uh 1068 is gonna it's incredibly clean, it's beautiful, and the dial is this uniform caramel color. And I it came actually on uh uh on a bracelet. It came on like an an oyster bracelet. I wear it on a on a leather strap and just the combination of the rich brown leather strap with the face. I d I love it because it's it's a really special watch for me. It was something that I really kind of prized and yet on my wrist, like n unless you know watches, you wouldn't look twice at it, you know. It just kind of is But yeah, and my uh excuse me. Yeah, the first watch I my my dad had a uh uh like a gold date just okay from the early eighties. And uh you know, on like a gold jubilee bracelet. It was like a lot of gold. And uh that was the watch that he wore when I was a kid. Um and he gave it to me in two thousand two and uh like engraved the back and it was really nice. But I I don't know, yeah, it wasn't it was it was a in my for me at that moment it was like a big gold Rolex, you know. And it it's weird. Like I um you know, we were talking a little about about this before and we talked a little about this on the phone. Like you hear I think a lot of people's experience with watches always start with, Oh, my dad gave me his watch, my grandfather gave me his watch. Right. Um I wonder how many of those stories have kind of I don't know, because it for me, I was like conflicted about that watch. It's interesting. I had my dad was a wonderful person. We had kind of a complicated relationship and a lot of that stuff went into my feelings about this watch that for me, in a way, signified a lot of the stuff I felt like I didn't want to emulate about my dad in a weird way. Not to turn this into therapy. No, no, no. But anyway, so I uh I took that, I kind of put it in a drawer and didn't think about it for years. You know. And so the other nice thing about getting into learning more about vintage watches has been learning and appreciating more about about Rolexes and about that watch and about, you know, and now I'll um develop more and of an appreciate. And so, you know, the the first day of shooting on Star Wars I wore my dad's watch. You know, when we rapped, I wore it. When I, you know, when I worked with Frank Oz during the Yoda scene, uh I wore the watch. It's cool. Talk about what he creates. Yeah. Well, 'cause he he passed away like five years ago, so he wasn't for the shooting. So it it's become kind of a way to connect with with with him, you know. But for me, I guess this is my way of also sort of finding my version of of my dad's watch, you know, which is another storytelling thing that helps connect it all up. That's cool. Yeah. Do you ever find, you know, speaking of wearing watches on set, do you ever find that wearing a particular watch on set ends up connecting you to other people on set or other people that you're working with? Have you built connections that way? I haven't actually. It's strange. I mean, there's excuse me. We can come hang out if you want. Okay. Anytime you want. That's what we need. I don't know why, but they're they're please do. Oh my god, are you kidding me? Let's do it. Let's do it. Oh my god. No, you see a l you see a lot of nice watches, not like a lot of the um heads of department, you see a lot of submariners, you see a lot of like really nice watches. But no, I don't know why. I it's very rare, actually. That's why it's so much fun getting to come here and talk. I have a very good friend of mine, uh my friend Noah Segan who's really he's an actor and we've he was in Brick and with that we've known each been good friends since then. He's very much into watches. And so it's nice to have one good friend who we can like send each other Instagram links back and forth and drool over the right. You gotta have somebody to swap watch. I know. Completely. And we have very different taste in watches too. He's like his like Grail Watch is like a a root beer GMT. Okay. And he's m very into kind of like the that you know seventies sort of gold sort of you know, and that's the opposite. So it's fun going back and forth with him. Is there anything that's your Grail watch? Um I mean I feel like I have to cover my explorer if I say anything because honestly no I'm in that honeymoon where it's just like no wrist right now too and feel the exact same way. Really, really, really. You know the that uh there's one watch, I've never seen in person, but every time I see it, I'm just like, that looks like maybe the perfect object. It's the um it's uh it's a Patek, it's the uh amagnetic, the thirty four seventeen. Stunning. In steel. Oh, it's gorgeous, isn't it? Amazing. With that script. Oh, it's so beautiful. I don't know what it is, the combination of everything with it. And uh I just I I just would just love to see one in person someday. It's it's it's it's also it's it's in the range of, you know, the more it it it's in the range where it's morally questionable to ever spend that much money on a watch, even if you had the money. Yeah. But uh I know that I know that uh price range very well. Yes, that's it's that range. Uh but it's it I mean it's stunning. But no, right now it's I'm in that happy place where I'm just incredibly happy with what's on my wrist. It's a good place to be. That's awesome. Yeah
Unknown . You should tell your buddy uh Noah about uh have you seen Firefox, the Clint Eastwood film, nineteen eighty two? Since it came out. Oh my god. He has a root GMT in that. Is he? He always wore them, right? In real life. I think Eastwood always wore it. Oh really? I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So John Millius, too. Oh no shit. That was his thing. Yeah, yeah. Wow. He had a good one, good one right at the end of that documentary Milius. Yeah. They're doing a little bit of an interview just before he passed. Yeah. And he's got the like just a fantastic. Movie movie watch spotting. Let's start our own podcast. Movie watch spotting. Done. Are you kidding me? Done. Oh my god. Well yeah, Ru uh uh Firefox, he like there's like a scene where he's he's following somebody along through Russia before they steal that plane. Yeah.. It's a fun movie It's a cheesy movie, but it's pretty. Oh my god. It's good. Oh my god. Alright, this is a story you're writing for next week. Done. Consider it a sign. There you go
Unknown . That's awesome, man. So cool. Cool. Well, every uh every episode we like to finish things off with a little bit of a culture recommendation from uh from our guests. So uh it can be anything, it can be a film, it can be a book, it can be something you worked on, it can be something totally random that you're just into right now. Um if I had to recommend something, I feel like this is this is getting recommended not an a lot right now, but not as much as it ever should be. No, I haven't. I'm turning you on to something. Good here. Okay, good. All right. Excellent choice. Yeah. Producers are now looking right now. Yeah. Killing Eve, it's a BBC America show. Okay. Um it's so it's uh it's kind of like a short series season of a series. Um uh I think it's not on Netflix. We got it on iTunes. Okay. Um, but it is fantastic. And it's uh it's about um a Sandra O who is an an actress I've always known was good, and then I saw her in this role, and it's like Cranston and Breaking Bad, it's just like, oh my god, she just is incredible in this part. Um she plays a uh she's living in London, she works um at a she she kind of works as a spy and she gets but she's like a low-level sort of sort of bureaucratic uh paper pusher to a certain degree and she gets pulled into the hunt for this international assassin. Um and it's it this sounds very cliched. It sounds great. Everything the show does, every choice it makes is the opposite of cliche and just every single episode there's something that makes you go, oh crap. And it's so beautifully made, and the performances are so good. Awesome. Um yeah, killing Eve. Highly recommended. Amazing. That's super. Sounds great. What do you guys got
Unknown for me? Um so on on in in a similar vein, I you know, we hope that all everybody's listening to this is Seen Looper, a great movie with a with a solid uh time travel hook, right? Um I would recommend the two thousand and four film Primer by Shane Cruz. Oh man. How have we not talked about this yet? It's a thing. That movie's a thing for sure. It's really raw. You know, I'm friendly with Shane. Oh really? Oh, that's
Unknown that movie I got to know. It's something, right? Have you seen Upstream Color? No. No. Oh okay. Am I allowed to slip a second one? It's a second movie. Okay, sure.
Unknown It's his second movie. If you like primer, check out Upstream Color. Upstream Color and Primer. I mean we'll double down for Touching Truth. Nice pull with Primer. Primer's a fantastic one. I'm not gonna say anything more than needs to be said because the movie d does not want to be explained. Yeah. So I'm not gonna try. Also good luck explaining. There's also that too. I can dodge that one on premise alone. But yeah, it's a fantastic movie with a time travel conceit that's very clever and super deep and uh doesn't really get in its own way, which is tough for time travel movies. So awesome. That one and now upstream color as well, so I have something to watch uh on my flight flight home. Good choice. Sweet. How about you? Uh I'm gonna go
Unknown with the book. So uh there's a book called The Secret Lives of Color, uh that my wife got for me uh as a gift maybe six months ago and I finally plot my way through it in little bits and bits and pieces. And it's a series of short essays about colors. And it's very detailed. It's not yellow and blue. It's aquamarine and ultramarine and cerulean and literally like pigment by pigment. And it goes all the way back to the raw materials that these colors were sourced from, the histories of how they were used in art and architecture and design and film and essentially decodes the way we see the world color by color and it's extremely fascinating. Um and there's all kinds of strange stories including, you know, adventures halfway across the world, ground up bugs, civil wars. It's it's really wild and it's it's essentially a book about a whole bunch of things you take for granted and making you not take them for granted anymore. Yeah, I finally finished it recently and uh highly, highly recommend it. Nice. That sounds so very cool. Yeah. Well thank you guys so much for joining us. This is uh this has been a super fun, super fun episode. It's been great. So it's really cool.. It was a bless Thanks so much. Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you to Ryan and James for joining us. This week's episode was produced by Grayson Korhonen and was recorded at the Network Studios in Los Angeles. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.