Ben Affleck & Timothée Chalamet Q+A | Marty Supreme | A24

Go has to step along with the movie that starts when it first started. I was like, okay, it's a late 24 movie It's kind of work-class neighborhood shoe salesman. It's going to be that thing I don't know how ping pong works into it, you know, but it's going to be that story And then it does this incredibly richly detailed version of that and then it opens and steps into like this is robinson With this whole other dynamic and this whole other side emerges Throughout there's about five stages of the movie where I think it opens and evolves And it's I think incredibly well done by josh, but the whole thing only works if you're deeply invested in and connected to the protagonist And this is a protagonist that on the paper. I think a lot of actors would not want to play this part Because there's this conventional wisdom that like we got to be likable. You got to be the great guy You got to be the hero, you know how every movie there's always like he's the best there is Like whatever it is, you know, he's the best tax preparer we've ever seen i've actually played that part And and and yet in order to to generate pathos and empathy in order to deep Like dig into the actual human experience, which I think this is really an expression of You have to be vulnerable. You have to be real you have to be all of the things at once, um Tell me what you thought about when you first read the script and what like your first reaction to it I was just stoked. I was stoked to work with josh who i've been dying to work with after uncut gems and good time and uh You know to your point. I feel like it's two-sided I I'd like to say it's 50 50 but really it was handled by josh That's why i'm so thrilled to do this q a with you because you've mastered both sides of the camera And i've mastered one side of the camera if that you know, uh, and uh, I shouldn't have said master That's just someone else man I will tell you what you are 30 years old and **** if you haven't mastered. Oh, man. Thank you ben. Thank you, man It is really I'm, really not a believer and not like telling the truth and it's extraordinary like most act it's hard to get into this business It's hard. It's even harder now And it's hard to find good roles and it's hard to be good in them And it's unheard of to to achieve what I see as mastery at this level. It just makes me think Kind of enviously i look like god this guy is gonna have the best 30 years Of any actor out there because you bring the gifts and the ambition to do Both something great and something interesting, but you lay yourself out there and take all the risks and you understand to pick the Best partners to do it with and that that's it. That's all that's really all it takes But so you you respond to josh you wanted to work with him. What was your take on the part? What did he tell you about the guy? What was his and what was your relationship with him in terms of some directors? You know, they don't talk. They're just gonna do the thing. We shoot it. We don't talk very much some directors much, um It just depends what you're, you know, some want to be right inside the character. It's a What was your working relationship with him? Like well, you nailed it and framing it like he was a sort of an unlikable character antagonistic at times because uh It's one of the the chief things josh instilled in me immediately was to not be judgmental towards marty You know is to take his point of view I think as you said talking about the best tax man that ever prepared taxes It's it could be harder to play something that's archetypal. I think you know, like a totally redemptive hero or totally You know a horrible villain because you got to hit that note each time this guy's messy and human and real and I feel like we all Know someone like marty who's equally at times you know inspiring and maybe believes in his dreams as much as he is a ******* scumbag and a You know somebody who operates purely out of self-interest but As you know following your career and your boston roots, you know, like, uh, we got boston in the house over there Yeah, hey, so he's a couple boston people are patriots. She just woke up. Wow Wow in lost la man. I didn't know that. Holy ---- any new york people in the house, man, right? Okay All right, there we go. Come on and then this turns into a new york boston thing. No, just just uh, just those **** I lost my train of thought just just these people that uh, um You know gotta get they gotta have their back exclusively because when you're young When you have a big dream when people don't believe in it, particularly when I have something to do There's something called ping pong that doesn't inspire, you know confidence necessarily. Uh, you gotta have your own back That's how I that was my end to marty as a character even just pursuing my acting career really young you know people scoff at you or You know, they tell you it's hopeless for all the reasons you stated before and uh, I really related to that, you know And it made me channel a part of myself in my early 20s or my late teens being from new york and feeling like you know, you gotta You gotta have your own back, you know I I it's interesting because when I first saw the movie I went and sat with josh and came on these things with him And I sort of said josh, what's the movie about and he started kind of bullshitting me But immediately I thought like this is actually a movie for you're not like about josh This is a movie about being an artist coming from a place having a tremendous amount of ambition Feeling like maybe it's too outsize and you don't deserve it feeling tethered to the people who who are Who you grew up with and who are around you? Finding yourself a hustler and needing to do what you have to do, you know having feelings and relationships But having those tensions with you know What else other ambitions you want to have and that messiness to me is what makes it human because the idea that there's all those Good people and there's bad people I think is basically a sort of a collective mind We're all subject to these competing influences And when you have that feeling that I think josh did and and I would guess that you did which is here I am I'm young But I see the world and I want to take it on and eat it all and ******* do the whole thing But oh ---- right behind i've got these people that I grew up with and how do I relate? to those people versus where I am now and and all of that ambition is so suffused in the movie But the thing that makes it human to me Is the humiliation it's also what made me know This is about show business because there's so much humiliation kind of along the way It's like the ping-pong with the ******* seal You know what I mean like you find yourself on the view going like jesus christ You know damn shots at the view man Not nothing against the view pick your own thing. You know what I mean? But just like all right, I can eat the hot chicken wing I guess But what does this have to do with the movie, you know what I mean, it's really great content, huh, right And and you know and like some guy's ******* spanking your ass and it's because like I want to ******* go to japan And I can be great and then like to have to throw the game You know, you don't present this like idealized version of somebody you present the warts and all version of somebody who has the boldness uh in their ambition and the self-awareness to know like Maybe some of these choices I shouldn't be doing and I know they're you know Who was also getting arrested at his home by his relatives to go back and work at the ******* shoe store Like this is about what it is to try to say. I want to be an artist I do have these ambitions to step out of this life that's expected of me And then to find your you know that that you need to have that hubris and also you're running against walls But if you had shied away from getting spanked by that ******* asshole um That guy what a great asshole. I mean, oh, yeah, was that the greatest? Well, you'll never see the guy who came on camera five seconds. I was like I hate this **** How did you like approach that in terms of just getting doing getting it out because it's one thing to say be unselfconscious Don't judge the character Uh, how difficult was it for you? Did you just go? Okay, josh. I'm with you. Uh, Have you learned to take all that? Second guessing out or do you just felt what's what is your you know, I feel like uh, I was Totally comfortable in josh's hands. I like that robert pattinson in good time or sandler and uncut gems and they don't play You know quintessentially likable guys necessarily You're still rooting for them and just tangentially what you said about the movie being about artistry I really really believe that and also I know you're a red sox fan a patriots fan a sports fan And I but I found my way into into that too it's like i'm a big wwe fan from my core too and I feel like I always loved wwe growing up because it was somewhere between theatricality and sports and it was right in the middle, you know, and uh, Uh just point being I felt like table tennis here was a metaphor for me and acting or all the hip-hop that I grew up loving and uh, uh Any sort of nastiness in the character. I don't know. I felt like it came with the territory bob dylan in a complete unknown He's in the history of what we know to be true about bob dylan whether it's true or not He wasn't quote unquote likable at every corner, but it was in service to his artistry to his guitar to his lyrics to his poetry Here it's you know, the music in a complete unknown here is you know a guy playing table tennis that's why I I felt a deep affinity for it because it's like he he takes it so seriously when If you're from new york I'm guessing it's like this from boston too Your thing is your personality if you're living in a tenement if you're living in a box your thing that you're great at That's exclusively your worldview and marty's got the thick glasses. He lives in a life of impairment And table tennis is his source of confidence, you know So I related to that deeply my favorite scene in the movie is with um is with rachel Where uh, and I always love this on the page too. He says, you know, I have a purpose in this world And that's not a that's not a blessing. That's a that's a burden. That's a sacrifice. I gotta see this through I felt like that was acting a little bit. It sounds self-aggrandizing, but I gotta speak truthfully to this audience, you know, and uh I just felt like okay I got You know based on what my teachers are telling me based on the feeling I have I gotta see this through, you know so this to me was like my dream role seriously been and uh It just meant the world to me any part of me in my career I don't know if you've ever felt like this any part that uh, you know, uh perfume company or fashion Wanted me to access in a perfume commercial. This was the exact opposite You know what? I mean? Josh wanted something explicitly different here and he's like, how are you actually in your core? Not how we idolize A version of you like, you know, so, uh, i'm sorry you had a bad experience on hot wings Or how I actually didn't even go on hot wings hot ones. I was like, what am I gonna throw up and eat wings? What can I say? No, what if I just don't go and they're like, I guess you can say no Like you can say no to playing ping pong with the seal That you only figure that out 30 years late. But uh The thing is most they teach acting You know and they tell you know what your character wants, right? And when they teach directing and writing they teach these sort of notions of there's this arc You know a set of things happens in the sequence and they're kind of linear and and knowable And that's good storytelling uh greatness art to me he's understanding that there's Six different things that people want at once all the time and oftentimes they don't even really exactly know You know good acting supposed to be able to stop and say my objective in the scene is The truth is, you know, a lot of times I don't even know what I ******* want. Do I want to? You know what? I mean? I don't know if I want to have a relationship with my brother I don't do it. I don't know if I want to have this baby with this woman Do I really want to you know, go out there and get this dog back? I want the money, you know these Putting yourself and understanding the conflicted nature of people but also undergirding that with the like this real central driving the sort of like Unbridled humanity of wanting to be alive and engage and do something and I do think it's about show business with a ping-pong It's because it's sort of like acting when you just look at it objectively. It's so ignominious you know what I mean, like we're all putting makeup on and saying our feelings and all and uh, but but something Every now and again something comes along And moves us and touches us and no matter this guy does not the perfect things or the right things But things that we fundamentally understand The magic of this movie is that I am attached to this coming-of-age story. I'm fixated by this mrs. Robinson story I'm like appalled and astonished by this flashback to the holocaust and then i'm Elated watching like watching Michael Jordan watching these guys play Ping-pong and bringing art to that and and then I mean by the end of the movie. It's like a pure It's like hoosiers or the natural i'm like running around my living room my arms up in the air because he wins the ping-pong game and and ultimately to land that with the With the return and the sort of arrival at his basic humanity and seeing his child and losing all that Like to me, this is the perfect movie to encapsulate The messiness and the kind of fundamental mystery of the human condition And it doesn't work if at the core you're not feeling it all the way through And I wanted to just point out that like I went back and watched all your other stuff And it's you're right like to do Dylan and you did I think exactly exactly the right not apologizing for it Not backing away from it, but just trying to find some truth because here's this genius and we're fixated by it but when you Play a part you it seemed to find the perfect fusion between this is a character. It's not you But it is imbued with but yet it feels utterly natural and fluid when you're preparing for a character like There's a bunch of different ways that actors do it and some people don't like talking about it If you don't you can tell me **** off or you can just tell a lie But how do you do you look think about it physically? Do you think about this guy has this accent or he's going to move this way or do you just connect emotionally to it? Or do you even know? yeah, these were the the back-to-back roles here because I did a complete unknown in mario supreme in the span of five months or something and the the approaches were different because bob dylan's obviously a very known public figure and that was a challenge and sort of daunting in the sense that It almost become like an impression an impression contest for somebody who all this guy did better on snl than you did in actual You know fancy, uh fox searchlight movie here. There's a physicality approach like, you know, again It sounds pretentious but like baryshnikov and balanchine and the way these these dancers move these classic ballet guys. I love Having that attitude and the table tennis playing obviously john mcenroe michael jordan these guys that were confrontational and mike tyson I love the idea that in ping pong you could have like a boxer mentality uh, and again, it seemed kind of Not silly, but like, uh, just counterintuitive in a way. I liked otherwise with josh was about you know, channeling and energy and uh, The first scene we shot in the movie was coming down the street and what is shot to be paris was actually in new york In paris and the first note I got from josh was more swagger more attitude, you know more swagger and I loved it Except wow, i've never gotten that note on a movie ever, you know Like no, but in a good way, you know, he's like, yeah bring more swag and I was like What the **** are you saying? No and and and it blew my mind, but it was uh You know, I I don't know how you feel but I feel like the first week of a movie or the first three days You're always kind of finding your rhythm the director You always feel like the first couple days you did were bad and I always end up liking those first three days Fresh It does and I gotta say like I don't think I understand the temptation because you're young and it's a lot and you know To to sort of you know, and the modesty and humility that you obviously have But there I don't think there's any need to apologize for trying to do something great Like nobody ever did anything great just accidentally Like I was actually just trying to be mediocre and showed up and I did the sistine chapel like it doesn't work that way Uh, we all aspire in our way to bring art to our lives to do something special be something great like I think that ambition that's so writ large in this movie It has to be part of of of being an actor trying to do this because you have to stretch yourself so much You have to take so much away at risks And I understand the pr of it all but I I really do think You want to say yeah i'm trying to do something great Because if anything else to people to know like if you like this performance then come along with me try to do something great That's the point. Um I think it's really I think it's kind of beautiful and inspiring and I also hear all there's all this ---- about not This is a q a where I just talk That's the problem with getting an actor and ----. Let me tell you about my work Like dude, it's not you're not in this movie. Shut the **** up I just think that like we hear all this talk about movies and the quality of movies and changing of movies like This is it man. This movie is as good as any of those movies that people talk about They become enshrined in our minds and special with distance But this is what it looks like when they just come out And in 10 years and 20 years, it'll be on the lists and it'll it'll be you know And you know, you know, you are young will be older and you'll be telling kids like now, you know Marty supreme is actually really what it's all about So like there's something to really celebrate and revel in that people are are doing this and I I really just want to applaud you Because I know from my experience even when I was your age a little younger You know, it's very hard to be like, oh, I want to do something great. I want to do something special but you're gonna give me six million dollars and put on an outfit, you know and kick bad guys and it's It's there's a lot of tension, you know against that like so that you have to have that in you How do you wrestle how do you make choices on the movies that you pick? I've just been lucky working with uh, great directors wanting to work with josh Mangle the the big movies i've done have happened like with denis bonobo. He happens to also be You know one of the best if not the best filmmaker in my opinion, you know, there you go. Got a big denis shout out And he's having for doing he's got the marty supreme jacket on let's go full full, uh full swagger and he's got the pants Oh full full spending consumer man. Thank you, man. Yeah Great Cool. Yeah, give me your email after uh, so, uh, uh, no, I just feel like and I gotta go back on track the just just trying to work with great directors and uh, I had one thought too, I love what you were saying there because you're nailing something that's You know, it sounds pretentious to talk about but you got all these forces that uh, try to push you in a lot of directions It's not only in show because it's just in life one of my favorite things of this movie. It's the naivete being young It's like even at 30 years old if someone, you know, I left college or dropped out of college when I was 17 or 18 If somebody at that age asked me now, should I drop out and to pursue my career? I'm old enough now to go ****. I don't know if you should really do that and You know josh said it more poetically than I could say right now. He said the last frame of the movie is like, uh He said like sometimes you see pictures of your parents before they ever had you and you go well Who are who were those people? You know, they look so different and Sort of marty kissing. Goodbye A naivete of his dreams of his of his youth of his innocence and uh, I feel like we're all Especially if we're in this room, we're all film aficionados and passionate about movies. We're all dreamers. We're all artists, you know It's it's harder to keep that spirit as you get older You gotta be really intentional about it and not because people are malicious, but you know The world doesn't operate to incentivize you to know what's best for you. You know, what's best for you? you know, um Man, I gotta start a philosophy class or something, man Yeah, so you could go you could like have a career on on instagram no self-help ----, you know, I mean like no, it's it's That's meaningful to me like and that's interesting and in fact Maybe more interesting than the sort of nuts and bolts of the process people have their process and sometimes People have the same process and the results are different and it's a function of stuff. That's hard to understand um And I I can say that it's like i'm now old enough to say pretentious things You know, I mean that's what happens you get old you get gray hair You should be like, yeah, yeah that guy and then you can be like listen the truth is Like you waste all the you why why was I saying all this ---- when I was younger? I had a lot of those ideas now i've forgotten them all that's the downside of uh getting older but the one question I do want to ask you about the process because I I've faced this myself in my life looking at okay You have a short notice you got to go do something and you got to play a guy who's really good at ping pong and You know, however, however all the artifice like came together to whatever extent it was you it's not guys the face blah blah blah It doesn't really matter. I'm not saying Show me the strings and oh we had two rabbits and a guy was a plant in the audience And there was a string on the other, you know Because that kind of ruins it but I just want to know what? How much work you did and how successful you feel you got and what like to actually just going ****? I gotta get great at ping pong. It was it was just that it was technical work Not someone's fired and uh, and uh, no and no, it's just a really technical exercise, you know, uh, I feel like um, we're talking about work ethic when we're upstairs those are parts of the job I get really proud of because um, you know, I was watching that that champaign movie recommended me the uh, about uh, yeah colors and uh I don't know why but when I was watching I was wondering what their onset life was like because they're It was just too tangential but uh, I can't get into that but As far as the ping pong in this movie the guitar playing completely unknown the other technical exercises. I've had in the movies it's just about being disciplined and that's where my sports background no matter how pitiful my Ambitions to be a professional athlete have now served me in my in my acting career How much time did you put in just playing ping pong? Do you have a coach you do a few hours a day? It was it was when I say six years doesn't mean every day six years, but it was on and off, you know Josh approached me about this before covet. So I had a lot of time and you know practice makes perfect repetition and and uh So that was you doing that? There's no there's no stunt guy. No. Yeah, that's ******* amazing It's it's I mean that stuff is just as difficult, you know, they're not i'm like well we got face replacement, right? Let's get a guy that does a thing. Um But but if you can do it and if you can get there It it has to help and it has to inform that when you um Go into like a scene with like odessa. That's her name, right? There's just fabulous actors a round of applause that I thought that woman was Amazing and I love that the movie kept surprising me with the characters again seeing where you the eye black and i'll never forget that I was like, oh my god Just beautiful and then she her look at you like yeah, you know what I mean? It's just This movie's beautiful because it says like don't Make all these assumptions about what you think the world's going to be And if the acting's not real that none of that all fall flat, you know You have to keep calibrating what you think of these performers When you go into a scene that's going to be emotional. Um, whether it's the end or any of this stuff Um, you know, that's the thing about acting that everybody goes. That's the showiest stuff that people remember and you know um What's what's your approach to that and what's your approach to like do you get at all results oriented? Do you just like have to not care about it? You find yourself just living the person like what's your approach? Just in general trying to find emotional reality because you do it so well, man. I don't I didn't uh I actually didn't love you know It was so explicit in the way the script was written that last scene and that can feel torturous It sucks when it's like and then he starts crying. Yeah, it was it was explicit like that I think like in calling by her name And the way it was written and here it was quite explicit and you know, josh, I remember josh was like, you know when I had I was fucked up, man. I was like But so in my ear I get it dude. I know this is supposed to be like a really intense thing, you know And you get to say you're obviously nervous There was one grip I had gotten close with over the course of the shoot Like the one guy I was allowing myself to talk to and I got to say like don't **** this up today I was like, man, I wish I wasn't talking to you this whole time. But uh I was like just to hear that at the last moment. But um, no, I think the approach is unique each time. I would you know These scenes the last two scenes are similar in calling by her name and in this they end on the guy weeping I think they represent different things and there's a different quality to them But I would say in scenes and movies where I gotta be emotional I always find it way easier to be opposite someone and you know tethered as opposed to staring at a you know Some you know, you hear the focus shifting didn't have a real newborn shaking off camera They were like the kids went home tim, it's a tennis ball and action sort of sort of you're right and uh Also, they were switching it out the newborn which was which was odd But like I just bonded with this one. Yeah, exactly Yeah, that's true. And uh Yeah, that's fucked up. There's all sorts of you know There's all sorts of rules, you know, which is obviously very needed I think like a baby can work 10 minutes at a time if he could work 10 minutes She worked no minutes at a time, you know Anyway, that's a whole different subject This movie feels like the writing is spectacular and that it always means something it's always moving the story. It always feels real But it never ever feels like writing Uh, I didn't read the script. I read I was actually gonna do a movie with josh Um before the strike and then the strike happened and I was like and it's coming over here. I was like, hey Josh, are we gonna do that movie? He's like nah, I actually I think i'm gonna do this other movie the ping pong movie And I was like, yeah, you'll regret that ************ Doesn't regret it but when you know when you get a script you look at like josh like how much freedom do you have to You feel like I gotta say all those lines. Do you feel like it doesn't matter what I say? Does he is he open to doing that and do you like to improvise? Absolutely. And I what i've learned over the process of doing these q a's with josh and ronnie bronstein who co-wrote it is I think there can be It's insecurities too strong a word, but they don't want their writing to be misinterpreted as juvenile or something And so we've done q a's where at times from my school of bob dylan i'll go maybe i'm like are they over explaining ----? but now i've gotten it three months after the movie being our two months because I I I see that they don't want their work to be misunderstood and to the degree that when we're working on it They really did want me to be ultra memorized and they were right in doing so, you know, uh, the words are fabulous and And I think because the tone is a tone is so chaotic. They were used to the way actors could Misrepresent the tone in in a very simple example dropping too many f-bombs or being really chaotic adding too many ad-libs and I could see how masterful they were probably on good time and uncle jenny going no. No, these are like traps for an actor You know, don't don't just over accentuate everything. Uh and their word, you know and even their line line deliveries is too strong word, but even like the whole thing about like, um, Uh, you want to get physical like an ape, you know, and they were so precise about that And it wasn't particularly funny to me in the moment or yet or ingenious and i've watched it with many audiences They go. Wow. That's like one of the lines that really hits, you know, uh, I look at that sounds like i'm a comedian or something but um They were super intention. Definitely. There was room to improvise, you know, whenever things felt right, you know that scene with the Rat so slowman bob dylan gave him that name rat so he plays my uncle in the movie He plays murray and when i'm getting arrested there's ample room there, you know I'm yelling about the toiletries and ---- None of that is scripted, but you gotta that has to feel like You know, you can't just pause there. Is that scripted when he when him and his the kid is the kid's nephew and the guy investor He's like give me a coffee. He's like we're trying to do business here like men. Shut up. Give me a ******* call That was generally no I think the like men came in on the day because ronnie would come in with like that I was dying during as many scenes where they're obviously not cutting to me, but i was dying, you know Just laughing so hard. That was one of them. He's like it was so it was uh My screen was crawling When I was younger, I remember like, you know Me and matthew were in high school and we were like really nerdy like actor kids that took our ---- really seriously We watched all the movies all 70s movies and I was like, okay Dustin hoffman and pacino and dinero and you know all these icons and then there was like sean came along and denzel and um, there's so many actors that I really looked up to watching we watched their movies over and over and studied them. I saw I watched colors I was like, okay duvall and sean penn. What are they gonna do? You have to see it Who are the actors that you really admired? Uh, like when you were younger and who are the actors that that you respect and look up to now and and admire who just Not a complete list obviously, but just comes to mind. No, well yourself. Obviously i'm not just saying that's what i was looking for All right, we can move on No, it's the truth man. It's the truth. Um, I don't know what the line is now because i haven't seen shakespeare shakespeare in love in a while, but um you've you've such a You've such a great pompous actor line in it i'm forgetting what it is The easiest thing in the world for actors to touch into is egomaniac But but no tell me no, but I can go section by section really like uh, Uh, my mom works for actors equity in new york to this day It's a stage union in new york. And so she had you know, brought me to a lot of great plays growing up You know denzel washington. I just saw a video. He's pronouncing his name correctly. It's denzel Maybe i'm it's not denzel. It's like denzel. That's the way he's saying you Anyway, and uh, maybe you should know the **** with people. You've all been saying my name wrong for all these and nobody Uh, I saw him in many amazing in fences with a viola davis on broadway. Maybe I was like 12 years old. Um edward norton and birdman truly uh was transformational for me because he's Once more playing the kind of pompous version of an actor who thinks he knows everything, right? It's also very inspiring joaquin phoenix and the master um You know leo, you know, basically everything uh um, and then in recent years um man No, no, no, i'm kidding i'm kidding that's that's the right actor answer from shakespeare. I think i'm doing good. Yeah That's what it is. I don't know if you've seen any of my work lately. No, that's that's that is the one um No, uh ----, man. I want to give you a good answer. Um ------- a like it. Oh, you know what? Um, uh I don't want to mispronounce his name. I think his name is david johnson. He was in the last alien That's not that hard to pronounce. Yeah, no, no, but I don't know if his first name was david I'm, pretty sure I know his last name is johnson If anybody knows please correct me while i'm up here so i don't get killed online, but whoever was in the last alien uh He's just a fantastic actor. I was blown away. I watched it at the chinese theater and he was phenomenal I actually couldn't believe it and uh He was phenomenal. I thought there were 15 great performances in this movie Uh, like and the hardest thing in my opinion to do is have like one or two lines in the movie You think about it you get there, but it's not like you're saying first few days They're hard, right? Then you're going and you're loose and everybody's loose and they know what they're doing and you got to come in and say 5.99 ma'am and you know you said at home 55.99 ma'am And you don't know anybody and you're tight in the Performers in this the guy that had to open the safe who you told him like i'm gonna look at this i'm gonna be your manager I'm gonna tell you what to do the look on that guy's face was as good as anything I mean just look devastated and betrayed but also a little tempted and like rageful like 15 different things going on the uncle the the the guy who owned the dog. I mean it was What do you attribute is that is that casting is that the environment that creates that? Is that useful to you because I just thought like Everybody I really believe this Every single performance matters to hold the world together. It really is a collaborative effort There's no ******* one person that's doing it and you had just a sea of great acting in the movie No, that's josh and I agree with you. I think when it's incredible. That's amazing. Odessa. You mentioned earlier is phenomenal Uh, then quote unquote non-actors, but they're all fantastic. No, I I would I would give the kudos to josh there he assembles this ragtag group of people and He just gets great performances out of them and you need to be good on camera once and uh, Uh, he just did a phenomenal job with that. I don't have a more specific answer than that. Everyone was firing You had jack we had an amazing crew in the movie obviously darius He had who I think is the best camera operator in the world and colin anderson you had you had jack fisk as production designer Who was a legend? I mean jack is a He's a master. He's a genius How much of an impact does because and also I watched that movie It was like it's a great example of production design I've seen a million movies period new york and you're like looks like it's at a central costume It's a pro, you know, you just can tell that okay this world ends at the edge of frame This thing felt so real throughout and so textured and so full like What was your experience with jack and what was what kind of a difference did it make to have that? That level of of technicians and artists around you. No, it was it was unbelievable. It was totally next level and it uh It didn't feel like a performance movie, you know It didn't feel like oh we're gearing this up for an actor or the ensemble to get with everyone felt like they were firing jack fisk you know ben just said it but this guy's probably one of if not the greatest living production designer and He feels like he's creating an environment to shoot a documentary with him Yeah, I I asked I asked jack what films influenced him in this regard for this movie And he gave me this great line where he said he doesn't pull from other movies because he feels like he's pulling down from water down life You know, in other words he's trying to pull from you know How the things actually were, you know lawrence's which is the the table tennis, uh, uh Center that you see in the film, which is the first black-owned business in times square in 19 1950s jack pulled the actual city plans. He went to the archive in new york He pulled the actual floor plans with josh's wife to build out the actual location So and also, you know, this stuff wasn't cynical that is to say it wasn't like overall hunting for awards Because you'd be out of your mind to try to get awards in a ping-pong movie or you know, or a ping-pong thriller um this way Wouldn't make any sense. So, uh, it just felt like everyone's And also it was this amazing combination. You said colin anderson That's a that's a deep cut name drop because he's a camera operator who also did one battle after another but he's really on another level and uh But also he like miyako belice. He was the amazing costume designer I feel like this perfect amalgamation of the old guard and jack fisk I mean our gaffer was a legendary gaffer who did hoosiers. He literally did hoosiers and uh, uh, Yeah, it is. Yeah. Oh, wow You're in man. Holy ----. Wow. You're directing you got this is who you gotta know. It's like casting you go Okay, this dp to get I mean that that's it's like it's all of it. It's it is a That they all work together make it great. That's the truth. You know anybody who gives you this like, yeah, these people come in Not it is there artists no, we had an all-star team in fact, I thought I thought we had so many quote-unquote alphas not to use that word, but that it almost like It made you realize there should really only be room for one because darius is an amazing cinematographer But also he takes his time and then I had these contact lenses because josh one of my eyes to be beatier in the movie So i'm wearing that's true so i'm wearing lenses to offset my vision and then i'm wearing corrective lenses on top of the contact lenses and But then I you know, we the first day we shot and I felt like josh was kind of testing me So I didn't want to take them out to show them I was game and I got an eye infection overnight And this is 100 percent The photos are nasty, you know, I came in the next day like this And I was kind of like, you know, my vision is very important to me josh Like don't **** with me, which is a totally normal thing make a living with my eyes josh. Yeah in the moment I was like, I hope he doesn't think i'm soft, you know, and i'm now i'm like, oh my god, you know My anyway, my eye was swollen but point being from that point forth. I would say to josh All right, give me a five minute warning before the shot and then i'll put the lenses in but then all of a sudden darius Is taking his time. I want to have the five minutes ian, you know, there's a legendary guy for oh I need 20 minutes for the lights and then you know, you knock off three shots a day or something uh, I don't know how this related to what we're talking about, but uh I do want to go back to gwyneth who you mentioned who I thought was just Spectacular like also deeply vulnerable deeply real many different things at once in every scene The tension I thought was one of the great crazy weird Love flirt scenes, whatever you want to call it that phone call Culminating and throwing the ******* apple into the thing. I was like, oh my god uh, and the way that the subtext was present in that like How did you approach that? Uh, was it did you know her? Did you talk about it ahead of time? Did you kind of just let it happen because you know The chemistry is one of those things where it's it's impossible to know like what and you guys had it You know, just just I thought it was Spectacular. Um, what was it? Like how'd you approach it? How'd you like working with it? you know, I was kind of in awe of her because of uh, all the work she's done and she's kind of institutional and uh, I said it before but I felt naive and realizing how good she was reacting. I don't know. Wow. She's really good And I thought well, duh, you know, uh people people have known this forever. So, uh, But I love that scene that phone call scene I feel like there's versions of it there were a lot more lecherous on on my part and uh You know, like they cut away from me And that's why you have a director. There you go. Tim went lecherous And uh, no, it's true and um I just know I love that. It was easy. It was easy going It was like she was super easy. Did you get to know her? Did you keep the distance and tension and let that be part of? I thought she was really warm. The amazing thing with glenneth is she was unbothered, you know, she I think everyone else including myself was desperate to be there And I don't feel like gwyneth You know, her life is awesome No, I yep, that's gwyneth anyway Her her life was I get to get it. Yeah Yeah, her life was awesome. It's it was gonna be awesome regardless. Oh, she hasn't worked That's the other thing coming back and doing something like that But I think that that affect was to me seems part of what she was doing Because that character had this lovely poignant tragic combination of having felt as though she was this person and a sort of sorrow at the way her life had kind of Delivered her but also wanting to maintain the dignity of it let me talk about one of the great cuts ever in a movie is like the cut between When they tell her oh get on the phone We're gonna hear the review and the next shot is the guy walking out of the door. I guess the party's over I don't know I've had those reviews, you know, and it's like it's amazing. It was amazing. Um, and then to make credible You know the stealing that it was costume jewelry and the degree to which there was a kind of a dance so that Again, it speaks to this thing of typically movies. They're done really well They're faithful to the one Central idea that they have we got to get our characters from here to here to there And you allowed it to be multiple things at once with each of them. She she hates you. She loves you She's attracted to you. Does she like your attention? Does she feel contemptuous of herself of you of her husband of money and all of that was just the soup that was present? But there was something about what was happening Where I believed it to I believe you were why you were coming back and forth but for her to be going out and you know into the park and Again, like having this vulnerability and then shutting down again is is what makes it innately human and that takes you know, that's Very very hard to do and I I know her and admired her she's a great actress But I I thought that I thought that was like a just an astonishing performance. It's one of those really really special films that you know, um Honestly, I just i'm glad that I was alive to see it as an honor to sit here and talk to you I think you're a guy that's um, you know, once every 30 years or so somebody comes along who is Magnetic and fascinating but also deeply talented and who has the integrity and the sort of bravery To try to make their own way rather than follow the ways that things are supposed to be what they've been done I see you doing that you're ahead of the ******* game at 30 You're to me what like james big dean would have been if he hadn't got killed I can't wait to see the rest of your career man, and I hope you don't drive your porsche too fast Uh, thank you very much. Thank you ben. Thank you. Thank you ben