← How I Write
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- [00:01]
A
Tell me about the process of consumption over the years, watching films, watching movies, and how that builds a kind of mental bank that you can pull from as you're writing, as you're shooting films.
- [00:15]
B
It's really interesting because, yeah, you get, like, I don't know, I think so much. We both did this when we started out, where you're just trying to catch up on everything, and you've never. When you. When we were young and we met in Austin and we were trying to figure out how to not only, like, become a filmmaker, but write a screenplay and all of that. And you've never seen maybe, Wong Kar Wai, you know, or you've never seen, like, you've. We've, of course, seen whatever you consumed as a. As a. Just a viewer and a lover of film. But then once you think about yourself as a practitioner, you start trying to educate yourself on it. And now it's really interesting. I think where I'm at right now is like, you're trying to find pockets that you haven't seen before that are different, right. Of the history of, like, the history of our medium. And it's fascinating to go back and look at a lot of silent films and films from the 30s and 20s that are, like, almost, like, more interesting and more taking more risks than a lot of things coming out today, which is very counterintuitive, right, because we think of. We always think of, like, art as, like, always moving forward in a medium. And it is. But I don't know, that's.
- [01:32]
C
It's interesting. In our relationship, Clint has introduced me to so much of, like, the classic cinema that I missed, you know, growing up. And then I. I always sort of, like, was like a. A little hunting dog sniffing out, like, contemporary cinema. So I always had like, a very, like, good grip of, like, what. What the now was, and somehow, like.
- [01:54]
B
Yeah, who's worth watching now?
- [01:55]
C
Right. And we, like, would sort of share these tastes and sensibilities and notes and, you know, I've discovered so many movies that, yeah, became very formative because of my friendship with Clint. But, you know, when growing up, like, probably most kids, like, you're just seeing the blockbuster movies and the things that are kind of, you know, major releases in Fort Worth, Texas, you know, at the AMC theater, or just trying to get to blockbuster in time when a new movie comes out and be the one that gets one of the three tapes of whatever the hot movie was. But my awakening from finding things that are much more personal cinema was right as I was starting in film. I saw Itu Mama Tambien.
- [02:47]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [02:47]
C
And that was a movie that really, like, kind of hit me like a shockwave where I was like, oh, you can do a movie like that. You know? And I think if anything I took from it was like, it's a film that allows, like, the world to breathe into it. Yeah. And. And, you know, it's about sort of some of the simplest things of, like, a road trip to some, you know, mystical beach, and they're trying to get laid and things like that. But it's also about the deepest things. And I think that was very foundational in terms of opening up something that felt in line with my natural taste or my ambitions of what I hoped to do, which was really just go on adventures. It felt like a movie that was an adventure.
- [03:34]
A
I love that point about, whoa, you can do a movie like that. Like, I think sometimes our. Like, the aperture of creative possibilities that we have in whatever medium you're working, whether it's painting, writing, filmmaking, it's, like, artificially narrow. And sometimes you just need someone to give you the permission or show you the vista that was there the entire time that you just hadn't seen. And all of a sudden, it just unlocks this expansive realm of possibility.
- [04:05]
C
Yeah.
- [04:06]
B
And it even goes back to, like, how are you. To your first question about, like, what are you consuming? And all that. And it's like, how do you remain a student? And we were talking before we started recording, we were talking about, like, different art exhibitions and things like that. I remember seeing one on a Picasso exhibition, and it was in not a famous museum, and so they didn't have a lot of his famous work. And it was just this exhibition of all this, like, stuff that he made from construction paper and things that he glued together and doodles and all the stuff that he was just making at the coffee, like, at the. Like over coffee in the morning or at the breakfast table or whatever that never, maybe he thought was going to see the light of day, but it was just. He was always trying things and always, like, creating and. And I think there's something to that of, you know, I don't know, just keeping yourself childlike as an artist and not getting too rigid. And that can open up. You know, you can bring that into whatever medium you work in. That can open up new avenues for you.
- [05:11]
A
Can you tell me the story that you shared right before recording of as you were thinking through that shot with the log on the ground with the lens flare, and you thought of the scene from a movie that you had seen.
- [05:24]
B
Yeah, we had Adolfo Veloso, cinematographer, who.
- [05:29]
A
Did such a good job.
- [05:33]
B
He's a cinematographer on Train Dreams also. We shot Jockey together. And he is. He's a genius. He's a sweet guy. And, you know, I don't want him to get too big of a head, but he is a genius.
- [05:46]
A
Didn't do that well. Didn't do that well.
- [05:48]
B
Um. And, yeah, we were always looking for ways. Early on, we knew we were going into it in a way into the film and shooting Train Dreams, we didn't have a lot of money. It was an independent film, and we knew there was a. There were going to be a lot of cases where we wouldn't have enough, like, a lot of extras in the backgrounds or things like that, you know, like, to fill out a frame. And so we were constantly thinking of ways to. How do you construct a frame that not doesn't feel busy, but feels considered.
- [06:17]
A
And.
- [06:21]
B
Feels empty when it should be empty and not when it shouldn't be? Right. And this was one of those instances where we were out on. Without spoiling it, there's a time where Joel Edgerton's character, Grineer, is rebuilding something, and he's, uh. He's out on this, like, burnt acre. We were shooting in an actual forest that had been destroyed by forest fire. And so it's just this, like, ashen pit with a bunch of dead trees in it. And we were setting up this frame. Joel is chopping on a tree on the ground. It's already beautiful because, like, the way Adolfo's shooting, it's backlit with the sun, all this ash and dust is kicking up, but it just felt a bit empty. And we had. One of the frames we had looked at was. There's a shot from. It's a. It's a fairly famous shot, but from Ian's childhood, which is Tarkovsky's first film, where the boy Ivan is, like, surrounded by all this. These, like, ruined. Some sort of ruined structure. And it's just this very jagged. All these jagged, like, boards kind of framing him out. And we thought about that shot and. And then Adolfo just founds long, burnt stick on the ground that had, like, a curve in it and set it on the ground between camera and Joel and then put the camera down low and that just. There was something about the shape of that stick within the frame that just made the whole thing click together and somehow, like, spoke to also what the character is going through in that moment and how he's kind of hemmed in by his Grief and by the literal aspect of this forest that's burnt. And it's one of those that you don't think it's funny because you brought it up because you're like, oh, I love that frame. And I would never maybe pull that frame if I was like, oh, let's talk about this. But you never know what. And it's just something that we were inventing on the fly to solve a problem that we felt, which was this frame doesn't feel good enough, you know, and that's a really. It's just a really beautiful part of the whole creative process, I think.
- [08:33]
A
Tell me about your guys work together and we'll talk about the mission statement that you guys wrote early on. And you know what, let's start there. Let's talk about the mission statement. I never heard of something like that.
- [08:44]
C
Well, it's funny, you know, I, I was a. I was a business major in college. I studied accounting. And then I became. And then I became an accounting dropout when I discovered filmmaking. But as we, you know, we're setting out into this career of making films, you know, and we had met really right at the beginning of our journeys. I was like, we need a business plan for our careers, you know, because that's what you do in business school if you're going to start a new company. You have this sort of charting document. And there was all a bunch of nonsense in there, market research and this and that. And yet I was like. And within it though, this notion of a mission statement for a career we hope to have and what it could stand for, which was to tell stories of human connection and impossible places. And it's funny how ageless it was. That was over 15 years ago. I don't know exactly how long Clinton had been working ago. So we just say over 15 years ago. Um, but over 15 years ago we wrote that down. And it was an instinct then. And I think more. It becomes more vital with time the longer we've. We've worked.
- [10:03]
A
So, like, as you're thinking through train dreams and the story and the. This sense of possibility of what it can be, and then. No, that's not what it's going to be. How does that mission statement inform what you write and the shape and structure of the movie?
- [10:18]
B
I don't know. I don't think that it's not a conscious thing. To me, at least speaking personally, like, it's not a conscious thing in terms of that. It's more of just like if your mission as a human is like, I Want to. I want to be a good person.
- [10:31]
A
Right.
- [10:31]
B
And I want to. I want to make other people's lives better when I can.
- [10:36]
A
Right.
- [10:37]
B
Then when you go to a coffee shop, even in that moment when you're interacting with this person, you're probably not going to be an asshole. Right. But it's not a con. Maybe it's not a conscious thing that's like limiting your. Limiting that. And so, you know, I think like, that stories of human, like human connection and impossible places. Those impossible places can be, in the case of Sing Sing, a maximum security prison. This. This, like, clearly very awful place in this situation. It's more just like time, you know, and the. And the, The. The heaviness of time.
- [11:09]
C
Yeah.
- [11:11]
B
You know, a. A rapidly industrializing capitalist society that. That's. That grinds out its workers into nothing. You know, like things like that, that, like, I think glancingly come together. But I. I don't know. I'm at least. I'm at least not thinking about it in like, okay, does this scene fit that or not? In the writing, once you get into that space, then it's just like, how do you tell the story?
- [11:36]
C
I think, like, from the. I would apply it. And thinking about this project of want to filter. As work comes to you and as you gain some success, more and more comes. And so it's hard to discern in what form, different opportunities, projects, scripts, and even your own ideas that you're generating. If you can do anything, as you gain success, you have opportunity. And the challenge becomes, well, what's me? What's the right film? What's the right choice? You know, what should Clint's next movie be? And so having a vision, and more specifically, like an applicable mission in terms of the work helps you see the forest through the trees in terms of what to do and choices to make. So it's very helpful to engage on a project. And then as you're doing it, I think it's just a great reminder. The world of logging in that period of time is very brutal, and people were brutal to each other. And so how do you fight against cynicism as you're writing and how do you find. We always talk about where's the light? And if there is light, even if it's a glimmer at times, you can endure in storytelling, really hardship. And so that counterbalance and finding that optimism within the work is just always like a great signpost that you can look to.
- [13:14]
B
Yeah.
- [13:15]
A
So as you're thinking through what the film's gonna be, you read the book. How do you go from I found this novella to a script, choosing what to include, Choosing what not to include. Because I watched the movie, I read the book, then I watched the movie again, and the ending's different, the relationship with the daughter is different. There's a lot of things that change. So how do you think about what to keep, what to take away, when to be faithful to the original text, when not to be faithful?
- [13:49]
B
I felt that, like, with this one particularly, we, like, we had to follow this rule of, like, being very true to the spirit of the book, but then letting the rest go and, And. And just being open with it and not like, you know, you can't. There's no point in adapting this novella if you're going to make it, you know, all of a sudden into a thriller or something and take it in a completely different tonal direction or. Or change Grineer as a person or something like that. And I think this is the thing of, like, you're translating. You're translating to another medium that has a completely different set of rules and a completely different set of how things work, you know, and what can work and how. And so it's a bit like, I don't know, going swimming. Like, we operate very differently just in how we move through the world, walking around here versus, like, jumping in the water all of a sudden. Yeah. And so there were things, again, it was just like trial and error. There were things that, like, there's a great story in the book, a great section where a guy, Greineer's taking this guy to town who's been shot, and he says he's been shot by his dog, right?
- [14:58]
C
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [15:01]
B
Like what? We were like, that's in the. Yeah, that's in the movie.
- [15:05]
A
No.
- [15:05]
B
No questions asked. And. And then we just transcribed it, you know, from the book, threw it in there, and we're like, it's perfect. It's great. And then slowly it was like, okay, well, it. It needs to cut down a little bit because it doesn't make sense into how the narrative has developed into the movie. And then all of a sudden, it, like, it was like, it doesn't fit anymore. And putting this maybe, like, translated version doesn't work anymore, and it's lost the point of. Of it from the book. And it's not like. It's just about listening to the work and what it wants to be.
- [15:35]
A
I think that's a key point. You listen to the work. And it's funny because if you're not a creator, you're like, what are you talking about? But if you are a creator, you're like, no, the work just comes to. First it whispers, then it talks, then it screams. And it has its own sense of.
- [15:50]
C
What it wants, I think, to make departures a certain point. It's a, you know, something we always talk about, like, earning your credibility into the storytelling. And I think you have to really, particularly with this work, adapting this novella that's very, you know, it's very beloved and. And it's a very important book to Clint. And so first is starting with, like, care, you know, really caring to try and honor it. And then you've got to really try to understand it in its essence. And then you have to go on your own journey with it and get sort of what's underneath the words, what's in between them, what's beyond it. And, you know, we set out, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about at some point, but a journey to where it's set, you know, and had our own adventures into that world. And with. With that. With that steady process of first, like, a deep investigation in the text itself, and then kind of our own inquiries into the place and time and the history books of vloggers and. And journals from U.S. forest Service rangers and then being out in the field ourselves, you finally feel equipped to chart, you know, how does this translate to the screen in all the ways that Clint was just saying? You know.
- [17:09]
A
You'Re talking about Sense of Place and Harry Potter. You can't divorce Harry and Hermione from Hogwarts. Right. Lord of the Rings beginning. You can't divorce that from the Shire. And Sense of Place is such a character in all these great stories. And you guys seem like you were so conscious and deliberate about building a relationship with that place, maybe even before the story itself began to unfold. Is that right?
- [17:39]
B
Yeah. And part of that is, like, what Greg is. Was. Greg always has a great way of, like, phrasing things that. I'll take, like, a paragraph.
- [17:48]
A
It's happened, like, four times already.
- [17:50]
B
These little nuggets are like, I'm gonna.
- [17:51]
A
Throw that right back in.
- [17:53]
B
It's a good catchphrase. And I think that's outside of, like, getting deeper into that one thing is, like, as an artist, you're trying to give something fresh, give your. This world or this story or whatever it is from your lens and through your lens. Right? Yeah. And Dennis, Mr. Johnson, who we never had the, like, the honor to meet, but, like, clearly in this book, even though it's only 117 pages. You can feel the research. You can feel that he knows this world of logging. He's giving you something, even if it's just glancing sentences like they use SAP to. To put on their hands to. To, like, repair their wounds. You know, things like that. They're like, that's from deep research. And if you're making a movie and you're making a film and you're adapting this thing, I want to give something fresh to it. We want to give something fresh to it as writers. Yep. And so, yes, we went into the place. Part of that is just, like, soaking up every logging book and being like, we're both research hounds and, like, reading every logging book you can find, like, reading every weird book about the location that you can find reading journals from people who lived in that time. But then nothing's going to, like, take the place of just, like, on the ground, like, research, you know, I suspect.
- [19:13]
C
We never actually heard this, you know, because we didn't get a chance to meet him. But maybe why this was such a match for Clint as a filmmaker, material and filmmaker, was I sense that Dennis, because he lived in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, for much of the end of his life with his wife on the Moye river, which is in the novella, that there was the place was the seed, you know, and the story emerged from it. And this love of place. And there's a lot of writers that will have an idea and they're looking for a place to transplant it onto. But I think a big driver for us as filmmakers is to have one thing we always say is we build stories from the dirt up that we come into a place and try to listen to the people and the place itself first and allow the story to kind of come from those experiences. And I don't know, I put some money on it. I think Dennis may have operated that way. Who knows? We never got to hear ourselves, but that's probably part of why it feels so lived in.
- [20:19]
A
So how do you guys do that? You go out there, obviously.
- [20:22]
C
What do you. You, You.
- [20:23]
A
You walk around.
- [20:25]
B
We. We always try and, like, now, especially, like, I'll tell you specifically how this one was done, and that'll give kind of an example of what. What we do. We found a cabin that we could stay in and ride in that was on the river close to where Dennis had lived. And on the river where the story's set and where Dennis had lived, we found a naturalist from that area who had written a few books about the natural history of the area.
- [20:54]
A
Oh, cool.
- [20:55]
B
We paid him to take us out for a day and just show us different trees, talk about glaciation and what that did to the area, do all this. And then we would just go at night and just go into these, like, bars in these logging towns and you just hang out and then, you know, find somebody to start talking to. And sometimes it's just like it goes nowhere. You get, you know, you just have a nice conversation and then sometimes you meet, in the case of this, somebody from the Kootenai tribe who is working at a fish hatchery trying to reintroduce the sturgeon that had been this area for 350,000 years, you know, or whatever, and, and. But had been overfished to the point where they were almost extinct. And now they're trying to put them back in the river and just all these little things that you could never. You can never find that in a book. You could also never say, oh, I'm going to a bar to meet that person.
- [21:50]
A
Right.
- [21:50]
B
Who's going to teach me this. That is going to wind up influencing the character of Ignatius Jack in the film and is going to give this image of this 10 foot long fish hanging from a pole in the beginning of the film.
- [22:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, the word that comes to mind for me is just the texture. Like when something feels alive, it feels real. There's a texture of reality that can only come through doing something like that.
- [22:13]
C
You know, given that we were adapting this work, you know, anytime we were in the car out in that world, we were listening to the audiobook O Train Dreams, narrated by Will Patton, who now narrates the film. And it would recontextualize.
- [22:27]
B
What a voice.
- [22:28]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah. It would just open up and recontextualize things that we had read over and over and over again in the actual text on paper. And then you'd go up on a mountain range covered in snow, like a stand of old growth trees, and you'd step in there and the air would shift and you'd feel that you were in a deeply spiritual place. Or then we'd be driving at night and there'd be a giant control burn. And you felt the immense power of it, even in its contained setting. And that could take you to the imagination of what the fire that takes place in the novella could have looked like and felt like. And so all of this, as you're saying, collected together became such a. And we finished, actually we finished the first draft there. While we were there.
- [23:23]
A
Oh, wow.
- [23:24]
C
Looking out over that. Looking out over that river. And we had a big snowfall, and there was, like, trains running through at night, and. And. And so we were riding high on finishing the draft, but then we read it as we left.
- [23:39]
A
We got work to do, boys.
- [23:41]
C
Deeply depressed.
- [23:42]
A
We got a lot of work to do.
- [23:43]
B
Nice weekend. It's Monday.
- [23:50]
A
So then what do you do? You go from shitty first draft to then.
- [23:53]
B
But you got to get that shitty first. You got to get the clay on the table.
- [23:56]
C
Yeah.
- [23:57]
B
And you got to get the shape of the face. And then that's the thing. I learned the most about screenwriting at one point from building some cabinets in my house. Really, during the pandemic, we all started doing, you know, had our little hobbies. And my wife and I, we're in this rental place, but we're like, you know, we've always wanted these, like, built in bookshelves, and we're gonna do it. And so we found this thing. You buy IKEA shelves, and then you start framing them out, and you build this frame, and it looks terrible, but you get them in there, and then you get the. You get them up on their frames, and then you start, like, you know, you put some molding around it, and you start and then you paint it, and it still looks bad. And you say you put some trim around it. It still looks bad. And, you know, you, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep working at it until it gets to a place where it looks good. And there's always a little bit of. You know, you can always use little hacks like putting trim on the outside or crown molding on something to, like.
- [24:50]
A
I think it was. The founder of Rolls Royce was once asked how he made Rolls Royce, and he said something to the effect of, I just looked at a normal car, and I said, how do I make every single thing better? And you just do it over and over and over and over again. And there's something to that. Like, you know, there's a version of something being great. Oh, I had this grand vision. Woke up in a dream. And then there's another version of. I just took that scene, And I found 74 ways to improve it. And it was the 74th one that finally brought it all together, or just the culmination of those 74 things that gave it that sense of quality.
- [25:27]
C
I mean, it's a corollary to professional athletes, too, of just, like, consistency of showing up and being able to deliver, you know, at a high level through an insane amount of preparation, you know, But I think with. With respect to writing, you know, it's it is a thing that I think makes Clinton world class artist and has taught me a lot is the not settling, you know, and all this belief that there is a better moment or a line and to keep digging and to keep, like, questioning it. And literally, until you get to that, for Clint's sake, it was like a couple days before Sundance, you know, but just until you have to put the pencil down. But, like, I don't. I don't know. I think you would probably still be editing Train Dreams if you were allowed to.
- [26:19]
B
I watched it the other night because we did a live score event. And the tragedy of it is, like, there was this scene or this thing that I wanted to put in there that I never knew how. And then. And I just. We were never able to figure it out. And I was watching it the other night, I was like, I understand how to do it now. And we have the material. I like, oh, but it's fine. You got to leave it. You don't need to go. Like, somebody. I forget where I heard this, but somebody talked about, like, you don't want to. Like, once the painting's up in the museum, you don't want to go back and, like, start touching it up. Like, let it be.
- [26:55]
C
It is a thing that has shaped our partnership of, like. I would probably shoot something I wrote on a napkin today, you know, and. And. And Clint helps me see the beyond and the refine and see how great it could be. It's a good idea, but it could be a great moment, you know, if you worked on it. But I think with. But I think with Clint, I can help him, you know, push it, actually.
- [27:18]
B
Get, you know, push it out.
- [27:20]
A
So I'm exactly like you. I'm. I'm. I'm like, come on here. Here's the idea. Let' let's shoot it. Come on, let's go. And then I work with a creative director named Tommy who's just like you, who's like, dude, we gotta push. We gotta stop it. We gotta push, we gotta push. And he just has this unbelievable patience. And then you get to the end, you're like, dang it, you are so right about this, like, patience, this sort of deliberate patience, and to insist on better and better and better and better. It's. I need a partner to do that. I can't do that on my own.
- [27:53]
B
Well, and the thing on the flip side, like, I never thought about. I studied. I started as a. Like a fiction writer, studying that and. And being very enamored with the words on the page and the sound of the words and. And where do you break a paragraph and things like that? And how do you. How do you break to the next paragraph? What I never thought of until I met Greg was like, are you telling a story or not? You know, and this very, like, this more structural thing that now I think is like, actually the foundational element and the rest is. Is how. How you're getting that out there. But that thing that just like whatever it is that connects train dreams to sing sing to a cave painting or. Or an oral poem, you know, from like a. Like from. From ancient times of like, what is that thing that you're trying to communicate? There's all the fun stuff, which is how. And how do we get that shot? And how does this edit, like, get us from this shot to the next? And, oh, wasn't that, like, beautiful that we seeded this idea earlier with an image? Oh, that's great. But getting back to that foundational element, that's what I learned very deeply from Greg was like, telling a story, you know, and then. And then it all kind of coming out from there. And that story can be, like, as simple as a guy's driving a taxi and eventually kind of goes nuts. Right.
- [29:18]
A
Okay. So we're talking about how do you get your writing done? And if you're thinking about work and how you can be more productive there. Well, I recommend a tool called Basecamp. Basecamp is a project management tool, and it's different from the other ones, which are loud and noisy and cluttered. They're feature bloat. Basecamp says, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to keep things simple so that you can focus on what actually matters, which is just getting the work done, you know? Now, for us, Basecamp is a place where we can track what we're doing with how I write, when episodes are being recorded, where we're recording them, the publishing day, all those sorts of things in one place for our entire team to look at. And I had the founder, Basecamp, Jason Freed. He came on the show, and I noticed that he really cares about writing. He cares about manifestos, he cares about great copy, he cares about telling a great story. And him and his co founder, they've written five books. And I can tell you that they bring the same care and attention to detail to their books as they do their software. So if you're thinking about work and you're asking, hey, how can I be more productive? How can I make my team more cohesive? Well, then I recommend Basecamp. All right, back to the episode. You know, my sense is, if you looked at the number of words in various screenplays, Train Dreams would be all the way to the left side in terms of. There's not that many words in the film. But then there are these moments when you really try to say something right? Like, what's the preacher in the pulpit line late in the movie? A hermit in the woods.
- [30:49]
B
Like a preacher. The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit. Yeah.
- [30:52]
A
Like, you hear that? Okay, Boom. But this one really stuck with me.
- [30:55]
B
That's from. Straight from the words of Dennis Johnson.
- [30:59]
A
And I think this one is, too. You'll let me know. This world is intricately stitched together, boys.
- [31:05]
B
Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things. We are but children on this earth pulling bolts out of the Ferris wheel, thinking ourselves to be gods.
- [31:16]
C
That's clap.
- [31:17]
A
You wrote that? Hell, yeah, dude.
- [31:19]
B
There we go.
- [31:21]
C
But that. That's, like. That's part of that earning the credibility thing, I think you. Like, one, he's such a brilliant writer, but two, you're just so deeply channeled into the essence, you know, that you wouldn't necessarily know the difference between Dennis and Clint's words.
- [31:40]
B
And that's the idea that, like, even in our work that we're trying to get to. This was a big thing on Jockey. This was a big thing, I think, for Greg as well, on Sing Sing.
- [31:52]
A
Is.
- [31:55]
B
There'S a lot of care put into the writing and. And making a. Like, having a line like that. Like, you know, that took 45 times of, like, going through that. Like, what kind of. If they're pulling bolts out of something, what kind of machine would they say at that time? That would make sense, but also kind of makes sense for us. Right?
- [32:12]
A
Right.
- [32:12]
B
Little stuff like that. Or what metaphor do you use to. To get across this sense of, like, what we are, which is a bunch of idiots having this, like, this. This system that we have no idea how it works, and we're just like, why don't we just straighten out this river and put a dam in it? Who knows what'll happen? You know, like. And so how do you find a metaphor that Arn Peoples would say that Joel. Joel's character, Grineer, would never be able to say that.
- [32:36]
C
Right.
- [32:37]
B
He would never be able to construct that sentence or that maybe he would have the idea. But, like, all that to say, like this trying to get to this place where there have been other things about the film that people think there's a lot of improv that we. That we do. And a lot of times we'll at times throw the scene out and.
- [32:54]
A
What do you mean improv?
- [32:55]
B
Improv of just, like, letting the actors, like. Like setting up a scene in this film. There are multiple times where it's just like, all right, we've got some chickens, and Joel and Felicity are now going to feed the chickens. Let's see what happens. You know, and then giving them. That comes from, like, a documentary background of, like, setting something up a space and then kind of adjusting it into something that feels considered. And then you always have the edit, so you just get a bunch of stuff and then you have the edit to, like, actually shape something that feels considered. But you want to get to a space where when the viewer's watching it or when they're reading something as a. As a screenplay or a piece of fiction or whatever, they don't know what was made up on the day, and they don't know what was written six years earlier.
- [33:39]
A
Right.
- [33:39]
B
Or two years earlier, whatever it is. And. And you. There's no. There's no difference in feeling between something that was very considered. Like this kid throwing a cup of. Like a cup into a river. There was an image that I wanted from very early on that we put in the script. And like, now how do you get it to feel like the kid just threw the cup in the river kind of on accident? And then Joel's like, oh, what are you doing?
- [34:06]
A
I love the way he responds to it.
- [34:08]
B
That. That.
- [34:09]
A
That really moved me when I watched it last night. Like, it was very fatherly thing to do. It's very loving, but also just like, would you do that for.
- [34:18]
B
It's so sweet. And that was very considered, too, like, stepping back. Something that. Like a line that people love and have really connected to, which is when the pilot. When they're about to start, all the stuff of, like, going up and down, the pilot's like, you better hold on to something that's something that's really. Like. People really glommed onto that line as some sort of, like, thematic. I don't know, like. Like, yeah, for the film. And that's something that the pilot said on the day. That pilot. She's a real pilot. She's. Her name's Amelia. She's never acted before. And there was a different line in there for that moment, and it was kind of awkward. And I was like, how would you. If you were about to do this with. Take this guy up and, like, give him a fun time? Like, what would you Say. And she's like, I would say this and. But there's no. You don't want the viewer to feel any difference when they're. Or the reader, if it's a screenplay or whatever.
- [35:11]
C
The best part of improv, too, is that as writers, we get to take credit for it.
- [35:19]
B
Wow, that was a great idea.
- [35:22]
A
When you think about a main character and giving that main character, establishing the sense of connection, making us want to root for the main character. There's a few differences between the book and the movie in terms of almost the morals of the main character that kind of go back to a killing that's early in the movie. And how do you think about. Do you want the main character to be loved? Do you want us to root for the main character? When don't you. Like, what if we don't like the main character? What really matters as you're shaping that.
- [35:58]
B
With this one in particular? I think it's funny what you're referring to with the. The guy getting thrown off the bridge. And the intention of that was. And. And the intention in the scene is that he helps for a moment. He gets swept up in, like, helping do this thing. Right. And then he gets kicked away and. And. But he gets swept up in this violence, in a thing that he doesn't condone and feels very sickened by, and then that haunts him.
- [36:26]
C
Right?
- [36:26]
A
Yeah.
- [36:27]
B
That's something that, like, in screenwriting 101, you would never do that. Right. You're told to never do that. Never have a character try and murder somebody who's innocent in the beginning of the film, try and help other people murder somebody in the beginning of a film. Right. For no reason at all. And. And just get swept up in something like that. You were told to do the opposite. You also are told to, like, not have a passive main character who's just kind of. Like, life's just kind of happening to him. You're told probably not to have, like, a quiet main character who doesn't say a lot over the course of the film and all these things. But, like, that was the. That was the character in the book where he's this. Like, he's feeling a lot of things, he's thinking a lot of things, but not in ways he can necessarily understand.
- [37:20]
A
A lot of times in the movie, I noticed that he'll. Whenever he learns something, other people are like, yeah. And he'll be like, oh, really? I think there's three times in the movie where he kind of didn't know this thing, and it wasn't like everyone should have known that, but you get the sense that he just doesn't know that much, but also is very deep.
- [37:41]
C
Right. There's also an aspect, I think with a lot of movies we've done, they sort of become known in many ways because of their central performances. And I, if I've tried to analyze it, I would say is because we really try to fuse work to, to the artist and allow for them to what we always say, like, empty the tank finally and like, you know, bring all that they have as a person. And so Joel, you know, the way he kind of moves through the world and like, and like his spirit, I think, kind of fused into this character too. And it's something we're always listening to and we're always refining and sharpening a script so that it becomes the clothes that they can put on to be most truthful. And so it's part grineer, but it's also kind of like trying to listen to things that we can kind of surface from his essence too.
- [38:44]
A
Yeah, you talk about the spirit. So I, you know, pretty outgoing guy. Outgoing enough. And I had just left the theater and I walk over to a bar down the street. It was a sort of bar, coffee shop type thing. And it was probably 9:30, snow in the streets. And you know, these two very good looking girls walk up to me, they're like, hey, you know, how's your night going? And usually I'd be like, all right, what's going on? And I was like, I just, can you guys just like stay over there, just watch this movie?
- [39:16]
B
It like, oh man.
- [39:17]
A
Very sort of melancholy. And it was crazy because like, I just had this sort of very gloomy spirit for the next few days. It was wonderful. It was just like feeling the, feeling the weight of what he went through.
- [39:33]
C
And.
- [39:36]
A
And, and, and all that. And that's what I liked about, you know, someone said something to me that there's a scene later on where Grainer meets a girl and in a very Hollywood movie, you know, maybe they, you know, fall in love or something like that.
- [39:48]
B
And like.
- [39:49]
A
No, you know, no, it's just, that's the movie. That's, that's, that's what it's about.
- [39:55]
B
And that's life. Just like the story you just told. Right. If I were like telling that in a very Hollywood movie, it wouldn't have that story that you just told about what happened at the bar would not have gone that way. Yeah. Which is like where you thought about this movie and, and all that. And that went back to kind of a central premise of. Of the movie itself and. And of the story was treating real life as cinematically as. As any, like, movie plot normally is.
- [40:32]
A
Right.
- [40:33]
B
Like, for example, it's really exciting to see a heist in a movie or a battle or something like that. But trying to treat, like, trying to treat something that is monumental for us, like falling in love or. Or like just feeling peaceful with the family or with a friend one day or this very resonant feeling of like when you walk out of a movie or read a book that changes you and you just kind of want to sit in that feeling. Like translating that to film in a way without overdoing it.
- [41:04]
A
Without overdoing it. That's a very key point.
- [41:07]
B
You should.
- [41:07]
A
Schmaltzy.
- [41:08]
B
Schmaltzy. I don't know if that's a real world or not.
- [41:11]
C
Okay.
- [41:14]
B
But just trying to, like, sounds a Yiddish. Not like, I don't know, like, not overdo it, but give it the resonance and the. And the. And the, like, the depth and the respect that that moment deserves.
- [41:33]
C
So going back to you at the bar, so they. I think maybe they were more into you because you were brooding. So train dreams, maybe, like, put this glow on you.
- [41:43]
A
Give me a spirit of attraction. You know, I just, you know, I said this to you.
- [41:50]
B
I.
- [41:50]
A
The first time I watched it, I had small tears as I watched the movie, especially early on with the sweetness. And I remember just gripping the side of my chair. Little did he know that he would remember these moments as. These years as some of the best of his life. And I got to watch it last night on Netflix so then I could stop it. That was about minute 36. And then the payoff of, you know, what comes from. That's about 8:12 minutes later. And then last night, I didn't have any tears as I watched it until the end. And then we got the Nick Cave song in the credits and it was. The Hoover Dam had just collapsed. And it was. And I. Last night, I mean, it was. I don't know, it must have been one in the morning, and I was just bawling like a little girl. And it was just feeling like this melancholy, a certain kind of sadness, gloominess. But it was wonderful. It felt very sort of therapeutic and peaceful. And I want to get back to that point about not overdoing it, because the word that's coming is that what I. The sort of tears last night were these sort of subtle feelings of sadness and gloominess and not this sort of intense despair. And sometimes in just the hustle and bustle of life. You kind of skip over those more subtle emotions. Yeah.
- [43:28]
B
And it's easy to. It's also easy to skip over them even when you're making a film and when you're constructing it and trying to think about a way to lead the audience to a place and communicate something without manipulating them. Right. You are inherently. We're manipulating them. Whether you're. Again, whether you're writing a book or whether you're painting something and you're trying to show them this, like, you know, landscape from through your eyes or whatever or through editing. There is inherent manipulation, but trying not to be dishonest about it. I don't know even the way to. The best way to articulate it. There's also something very interesting that, like, I don't understand it, but about this medium that's very like. I feel like there's still like infinite possibilities with this medium where, like, you do all this stuff and you put this thing together and something else is created. Like, I. We talked about it a lot, like, at the end, like through the edit and trying to figure out the ending. And I was like, I guess this just won't be like a film that really, like, affects people deeply, emotionally, you know, like, it'll be like an interesting film, but, like, they probably won't be crying from it. And like, that's fine. Maybe that's just what it needs to be. And it's been very interesting that that's not the case. But, but yeah, there's something. And, and, and, and even with you, like, I've heard this from a couple of different people where they, like, see it and they, they see it one way and they see it a little bit later and watch it again and get something very different from it. Now, I haven't changed the film in the two times that you saw it. Right. But you've changed. And then something changes in between you and this piece of work that you're. That you're interacting with. That's like very. I don't know, it's hard to talk about it without getting into like, kind of a woo, woo, mystical kind of place.
- [45:27]
A
That door is open if we want to go there, you know.
- [45:29]
B
Well, no, but you can't hear words break down. It's like having, having a religious experience. And then what do you say? And so then we create a metaphor for it of like, it is like this. And I experience, you know, like, you can't really articulate what it is. You just have to experience it well.
- [45:48]
A
To your Point with, I was at a film screening recently and the director got up at the beginning and was joking, but I thought was joking in the most true way. She said, it has been my dream to get a bunch of friends and family in a room and make them all sit in a room and watch the thing I've made, like, locking them in their chairs. And I think directors and architects are very similar in this way of, like. I mean, man, with directing, you are creating a world. You got the writing, you got the visuals, you got the sound, you got 363 other things. And it is this sort of consilience of different art forms that comes together.
- [46:26]
C
Yeah, no, I do think it is the greatest artistic collaboration that exists. You know, it takes the visual medium, the written medium, music, art, in terms of design, you know, and brings that all together to tell one story. And, you know, one of the things we've always talked about as we've grown up as artists is how do you define success as a director? And, you know, at least personally speaking, like, there are times when, you know, something only meets your vision and you are harnessing, like, this whole group of artists together and that have sensibilities and their own tastes and all that. And so if it just meets the vision, I actually don't really see that as success. It's like, can it expand beyond the vision, you know, and show us something that surprises you, that still feels true to, you know, the intention, but is revelatory? You know, I'm always after that in my collaborations with actors or cinematographers of, like, here's the idea I'm starting with, but what else is there? Like, what's underneath it, what's beyond it?
- [47:33]
A
Does the word ambition ring a bell in what you're saying, or is it something different?
- [47:39]
C
Sure. I mean, just because I'm a very ambitious person.
- [47:42]
A
Well, I thought I saw something. I thought I saw something from your first film or something. Like it was. You guys were talking about ambition in your first film to, like, really go for it. What was that? What was that?
- [47:53]
C
Yeah, yeah. I do think, you know, there's an inclination to, especially with first films, to work within your means. You know, basically, I have this house for free, so we're going to make a movie in the house. Who we have for free versus having an idea that. That it feels like you're reaching. That scares you a little bit. It's like, I don't know how the fuck we're going to pull this off, and yet we still only have this finite amount of money. But with this money we have to do this thing and something about the reach of it, you know, can, can push something to maybe be able to break through the noise, you know, I, I, I do think locations can do that for you. That like a lot of our films have been set in, in places that are priceless and so they, you feel scale and it allows you to then do maybe more intimate work within something because you're operating in such a grand environment.
- [48:54]
A
When you're writing, thinking through the early stages of a love story, what matters in order to make that story feel real? Because this comes back to that theme of not having it be so over the top, having it feel pure and true.
- [49:13]
B
With a love story in particular, I think it's the same as any friendship or any, anything you're trying to get, I mean, I don't know, not to get too much in the weeds, but like, it's like, what is the love story you're telling? Am I showing you a like couple that's been together four years and I'm trying to show you that love story in a film? Or am I showing you this couple who's, I'm, you're seeing them meet young love. And I'm, and, and I'm, and I'm just. The whole film is about that of the first three months, which is the most like, chaotic and beautiful and wonderful. Da da da da. But then doesn't have some of that resonance that comes later. Or like this one, this one was a, was a. With Gladys and Greiner, like, it was really important to make it feel to feel their love but also feel the depth of their connection to each other.
- [50:05]
A
Yeah.
- [50:05]
B
You know, and, and to get those two things across, that they are totally enamored with each other. Where, like, you see that, that time early on where you just can't keep your hands off of each other. Right. But then you also see the time later where you're like arguing over money over the dinner table. And that doesn't mean you don't love each other, of course. Right. But that's like all the varieties of a relationship.
- [50:26]
A
But even that, I watched that last night. I thought about that. That had this sort of loving sharpness.
- [50:32]
B
Of course, because, like, they're not like. And that's the thing, I think it's, it's kind of like a bummer to see. And it's a bit of a cynical thing where it's like, I was thinking about this when I saw Bardo, that came out a few years ago, and that relationship between this married couple just feels so deep and resonant. And I was like, oh, I've been craving this. I haven't seen. I didn't even realize I hadn't seen something like this in a long time. You know, in. In modern film. Because most relationship things about relationships are like, kind of cynical and like they hate each other and their marriage is falling apart. Da, da, da. And it's like. And so, yeah, like, my wife and I argue over money and things like that, right? But like, but it's, it's. There's. It doesn't mean we don't like each other. You know, we still like each other and love each other very much, but we're human beings. We get in arguments and we get in disagreements over things. And so that one, this one was like. It was about calibrating it to where it didn't feel too much one way or the other. And there were things in the edit that we shot that were in the early, early cuts of the film that made it feel too. Like there were too many barbs between them. And there was one too many arguments given the real estate that you, you know, we don't have a lot of time with them right before what happens, happens. And so like it at first, like when, when I was getting feedback along the way, people were like, well, they don't even hate. They don't even like each other, you know, or it then went the other direction where it was too light and airy and too sweet and it didn't feel like a real relationship. And so I don't know if I even answered your question, but it's about calibration along the way if you want to make something feel real.
- [52:11]
A
Feedback. How do you go about getting feedback at different stages of making a film? Like feedback? In the scripting, we have different answers on this.
- [52:18]
C
I've evolved. At the beginning, I admittedly it very emotional defensive and. And just I'm a heart honestly type of person. And so, you know, the beautiful. When that's working well, it's like your heart forward and. And there's a lot of passion. And then the, you know, the negative side is, is you can take things too personally when people are really. They're there in service of the thing you're trying to do, want to give you, want to help you, you know. Now I think we probably are somewhat in a similar place now. Is that you get notes and it's like, just try it, you know, just try it. See what's there, you know, and who.
- [53:06]
A
Are you getting Notes from friends, family.
- [53:08]
C
Collaborators, depends on in the writing process. We have, like, a pretty small think tank, you know, there's one friend, Linda Hallbert, who we've known for over a decade. We've made a lot of movies together. She's read almost every draft of everything we've ever written. And then it's just expanding that field slightly. And then it's like, who has to read it? You know, like financiers or, you know, producers or such. And then you're navigating, it's somewhat delicate, like, power dynamic with feedback of, like, do I have to take this note? You know, how. And so the person delivering it, especially to artists, like, there's a way to do that, that if they have the same spirit of just try it, and we may be wrong, and we're like, okay, well, then we'll try it. And maybe you're right. Cool things can happen in that type of dynamic. But I think sometimes it can go sideways when there's a lack of trust or that whoever's giving the note, it's like a mandate to an artist. Then that gets kind of, you know, then the porcupine things come up.
- [54:18]
B
And it's good to have a combination. It's good to get a combination along the way of people who, especially with the film speaking specifically to that, but people who know what you're going for and getting their notes where they're like, I know from talking to you and from. Or from knowing the book or whatever, like. Or from being on set, like, what you're trying to do. And this is not coming across alongside people who have no idea what. What any of it is. You know, like friends who are just like, what'd you make your movie about? And they're like, well, here we go. And then they can, like, they can. Getting their feedback in different ways is really helpful, too, of it. It just. It's the closest to an audience you're going to get right of, like, what's working, what's not. What do you think is really not working, that you need to be much more clear about that is totally coming across. And you're like, great, then we can pull this back a little bit.
- [55:12]
C
Sometimes they don't even need to say a word either. You can just watch them watch it feeling really, you know, where it, you know, is a lean forward and you. And you. You know that they're feeling it and they're plugged in. You know, when they're retreating, you know, you can feel the energy in the room. But I think At a certain point with anything like you get, whether it's an editor in the writing process where you don't have perspective anymore.
- [55:37]
A
Yep, ain't that right?
- [55:38]
C
And you. And feedback is just shakes the tree, you know, nothing else. And oftentimes, like there someone may be raising their hand and pointing at something that is wrong or feels wrong, and it is, but it's. It's. Maybe the problem is actually much earlier in the script or the film, you know, and so the what and how to address it is not always directly aligned, but it can surface where the work needs to go.
- [56:04]
A
Tell me about the piece of advice you guys got early on. To beware of having too much dialogue and not to lean on that. What was the thinking behind that?
- [56:12]
B
Oh, it's a. It was a mentor of ours and a good friend who gave us the advice. He's a screenwriter and he gave us the advice to only use dialogue as a last resort. Now, that didn't make any sense, you know, early on. And it was only something I think we learned by doing. I remember there was a scene in Trans Pecos, the first film we wrote together that Greg directed, and there was a scene where it's between Johnny Simmons and Gabriel Luna and they're in a truck. There's a whole long dialogue sequence about what's going to happen next and what this one's worried about and what that one's trying to convince him to do. And it was a good. Like a lot of good dialogue in there. And then I don't remember if this happened in the. In the shooting of it or in the edit.
- [56:59]
C
It was in the shoot.
- [57:00]
B
Yeah.
- [57:00]
C
On set.
- [57:01]
B
That scene became one line and some looks between them. And it was so much better than all this shit we had written, you know, and. And that was. That was a real lesson for both of us of. Of just trying to get to that place where your film is operating in a way where you're not having to say everything. And again, that's where. And going back to, like, what we started talking about with, like, silent cinema is like, what's the. What's the least you can do that's going to make your film that's going to give the most to the audience.
- [57:37]
A
You know, it's so funny as you say this, so obviously Train Dreams embodies this. But then there's the scene where art is just talking and talking and talking and talking. And I was. Maybe it's something about the music. Maybe it's something about whatever's going on. It's kind of hard to follow him. And I realized I'm actually not supposed to listen. He's actually just spewing energy into the world, which is exactly the opposite.
- [58:01]
B
Yeah. Which is like. And that. And that line that you quoted earlier, like, those will stick with you.
- [58:07]
A
Well, later on he says, it's all beautiful, ain't it? And it's just that one line.
- [58:12]
B
And if you've got that silence where the audience can, can. Can do their work. Now there's films like, like very dialogue heavy films or plays like, you can't. This doesn't apply to his Girl Friday. Right.
- [58:25]
A
I just watched Before Sunrise. The whole thing.
- [58:28]
B
That's not like. That's a different beast and should be full of dialogue. And that's the whole point of it. Right. And like. And there's a musicality to that and a rhythm to it that, like, that works and you're, you're. You're locking into its own thing, but this isn't that. And this is a different kind of approach. And, and for this, I think the more you can, like, get it to the place where the film's doing the talking. There was a great, like, great piece of voiceover that we wrote. Like, that was like, there's a scene where he's sitting by a lakeside, or Grineer sitting by a lakeside after he's, like, left logging. And I was so proud of this voiceover that we had written and about, like, the deep history of the land and the glaciers and all this. And we got to the. In the edit room and that scene wasn't working very well. And our sound designer, Lee Salivan, who we've worked with quite a few times, I was like, should we pull this voiceover out? It just. It's not. It's not like really connecting in the way that I hoped. And it was like, well, listen, it's some very good writing, but it's not a good scene. And so you pick which one you want. Do you want the good writing or do you want a good scene? And I was like, yeah.
- [59:42]
C
I do think in the iterative process of filmmaking, it's important to us at least to write it, to override it. Yeah, sometimes. Because then it's still. That's in the black and white. It's one dimension that now you're going to have performance. You have camera, you have the setting, you have all these other things that, that can then speak into what the scene's about. And then you can kind of have the fluidity to throw it out, you know, or put it all into a look or else. But we won't know what we're reaching for unless you put it there first, you know, and actually. And actually wrote the whole thing in all of its, you know, excess.
- [60:23]
A
Well, tell me about how you let the story guide you. Like, at what point, I would imagine you start off this idea of a story, and then at some point we're talking about a little bit earlier, where the story kind of takes on its own form and maybe it surprises you or something like that. Is that what happens or what's that like?
- [60:47]
B
Yeah, I think there's a good example of this. Like, you're trying to get to that place where. Where you're listening to the story and it's kind of moving of its own. It's an odd thing to say, but it's like, almost like you're finding it rather than you're creating it. And. And it's. And. And I'm sure you've had a lot of poets and writers and. And everybody, like, say this much more eloquently than we will right now. But there's a good example of this from. From the ending. You mentioned the ending earlier of this film. The ending of the book is one of the great endings that I've ever read in literature. It's so fantastic and it's so perfect. It's kind of like this almost like gravity's rainbow level ending. And we totally thought that would be the ending of the book, of the movie, and wrote that in the script as the ending kind of verbatim, you know, of like this wolf boy, this performance by this wolf boy. And. And then it ends in the book where he says, and it all went to black and that time was gone forever, right? And I was like, wow, what a perfect ending. That's gonna be the end of the movie. We shot that. We shot that whole thing, shot the plane sequence, which is currently the ending. And it was a much, like, smaller little thing. And then we started watching it down with our editor, Parker Laramie and everybody else. And it was very clear that, like, oh, the airplane sequence is the ending. The film just ended. Now we've got all this. We got 10 more minutes of stuff. What do you do with that? You know? And so then it's a thing of, like, first you like him and haw over it for a minute and you're like, well, surely not, you know, um, but. But then once, once we leaned into it and said, okay, like, this is the ending. Now, how does that other stuff work into getting us, like, building up to that ending. And. And then that plane sequence, like, then it was like, you know, 35 different versions of editing that plane sequence to get it to what it is now. But it was an aspect of just, like, listening to that feeling, and it was clear what the movie wanted. And then you can. Either at your own, you know, to your own detriment, you can listen to that or not. And then it just became. Everything became so much more rich and so much deeper by building up into that. Even the thing of, like, him looking at himself in the mirror. And that. That was not originally in there, right? That was, again, something that. Just, like, we found that theater. Our production designer, Alex Schaller, went to the bathroom in the basement and came back up and to Adolfo, and I was like, hey, you've got to shoot something. I don't care what it is. Shoot something in this bathroom. It's amazing, you know, and then that opened up this thing where like, well, what would you do with that? Oh, he's not seeing himself in the. He can now see the. He's not seen himself in a mirror in a long time. He can now see this whole of the years, blah, blah, blah. And so I think that's like an example to take it out of the clouds of just, like, it was a very iterative process of, like, listening to what the film wanted and then responding to that. Then that opened up its own set of problems to solve and questions that then, like, okay, well, how does a Wolf boy sequence even fit into that? How does seeing the Jon Glenn and space fit into that?
- [64:08]
A
So very simple question, like, with your original script, let's say, like, we're done with it. We're ready to move this to the next stage of development. What percentage of that script ends up in the final movie? Or maybe ask it the other way, what percentage of the final movie you think are in the original script?
- [64:29]
C
One interesting data point is that of the four films we've released, all four have a different ending than what we started shooting.
- [64:37]
A
Huh.
- [64:38]
C
I don't know what to make of that, but I think we also. We know the importance of endings. Like, that is what you walk out with is that feeling, you know, and how do you stick that landing is, you know, one of the most, if not the most important thing you do. And it's setting up this world. It's having memorable scenes and going on the ride. But then it's that ending. And, you know, in thinking about the novella, I also agree. Like, I remember the sensation I had when I first finish the first finish reading it. But it's like. Like a whole paragraph is dedicated to the sound that the wolf boy makes. And it's like the imagination and what it can conjure versus like actually now having to execute that and translate it to film. Like, I don't know that our medium would suffice. The potency of.
- [65:35]
B
I think that's right.
- [65:36]
C
The idea and what's being expressed. So like, that would be its sort of fatal flaw if it was what you actually try to end the film with. And yet the plane sequence, I don't know that the plane sequence in the novella could conjure what a movie could use in its medium to express a similar feeling.
- [65:57]
B
Right.
- [65:57]
C
And so I don't know, like, there's a unique trade off there.
- [66:02]
B
Yeah. And there's something that Greg said earlier, which is like, about overriding. And that's a lesson we learned early on from Trans Pecos as well. And by making some mistakes where it's like, put it all in there, you know, at the very least, your actors are going and. Or your production designer, your dp, they're all going to internalize that and it's going to come out even if it's not said right or not or not articulated in some way. And I think that with like, you're asking about like, what percentage it depends on the film. With Jockey, we wrote. We wrote at least 50% while we were filming that movie, you know, and then a lot of it didn't end up in there.
- [66:42]
C
Every night.
- [66:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. Sing Sing.
- [66:44]
A
You guys write in Google Docs?
- [66:46]
B
No, we outline. Yeah, we outline in Google Docs as like kind of a prose document. But then we're writing in final draft just because this isn't sponsored by final draft. It's just like the easiest one to use. But I would say, like, all of those things end up in the movie that you shoot, even if they don't end up in the movie. You know what I mean? Like, like all of the. And sometimes actors get a little like bothered when like their favorite line gets taken out or something like that. And. And you feel bad as a filmmaker, but at the same time it's like it's in there even if it's not in there.
- [67:25]
A
You know, music, you're a musician and you feel that in the movie soundtracks. How does what matters in a soundtrack?
- [67:37]
B
I think that thing of just like making it all going back to that. What we were saying about like not wanting the viewer or the audience to know what is improv and what is written. It's all of a piece. And that's. That is. I can't speak for. It's different on every film, right? Because, like, I just watched a film last night that had, like, the best needle drop ever, and it totally didn't fit. And. But it fit because it didn't fit. This is not that. Train Dreams is not that. Right? But, like, I find. Just speaking very personally, that I learned on Jockey and then came into this is like, there's. In the same way that we were talking about, like, your. You're almost trying to find a story rather than build it. There's, like, some rhythm that I'm trying to find in the edit and through the edit, rather than making that rhythm, and there's a rhythm at which point the, like, film locks into itself and. And you can feel that. And when you're editing, you'll hit moments where it's like, that stretch of 10 minutes is great, right? And that one's locked in and this one's terrible. And. And you're just trying to, like, get into that. And the music is a big part of that. Bryce Desner's score. He's. We've worked with him on all of our films, and yeah, that was perfect. But, yeah, it's just like. It's just like getting into that. Getting into that, like, rhythm and then that emotional rhythm almost, and then the rest can. Can come out of.
- [69:13]
A
You know, people don't realize how hard it is to match the music to the mood. I mean, you know, we just made this short film and I spent a little bit of time looking for music. The two guys who I worked with spent a bunch of time and, oh, my goodness, you just flip through hundreds, thousands of songs and you're like, ah, it's not quite right. It's not quite right. And that was actually the biggest argument that we had. It was like five and a half minutes in. There was this one song, and you said earlier it fit because it didn't fit. It was the same thing in this. But then I watched and I said, I know it fits because it doesn't fit. But we spent too long in that energy so that it no longer fits if we play it for more than 25 seconds. And I was like, guys, trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me. And even with the sound leveling that you get, you know, you're kind of in Adobe Premiere and you're bringing the little cue, you know, little key thing down and up, and then trying to have like the little kind of like the flip of a mustache at the end. Like I was didn't, you know, right at the end. And it's one of those things that until you've done it, you don't realize the complexity and the subtlety to it. And it's also like one of the more subjective, hard to pin down into language things. But, man, when it's bad, when the soundtrack is off, it really just hurts everything.
- [70:31]
C
Process wise. A big thing both of us do is. And it usually starts in the writing process, developing a playlist. You know, if one of us is.
- [70:39]
A
During the writing process, a film.
- [70:41]
C
Yeah. And, and, and the sources of that can be very wide ranging, whether the songs or other, other pieces of music, other scores and, and then also something that we both do, you know, whether that's even beforehand using like different source material is like making these mood reels or with early production dailies as the edit starts. Mood reels just kind of taking, taking. If we were to do it after production, you know, taking, you know, some of the, like the key select shots and kind of putting together almost like a tone poem with, with a piece of music that we can become like a, a guiding light of like here's, here's the feeling that, you know, we're going for with, with the ultimate work. And then you're often editing with tent music and so you're grabbing from other scores and things. And it's a imperfect system because it's not cohesive and yet it can still at least start to touch the feeling that you're going for with the scenes. And then the big thing you have to do is when we ultimately. And we like Bryce to see our stuff as early as possible and not like when it's fully baked, but is, you know, allow him to sort of get a sense of where some of the starting ideas were. But then you have to just push it all aside and you pull all of that temp out and everything else and then allow it to be as much a blank slate as possible. But you have some of these kind of guiding principles and things along the way that can help at least have a common language.
- [72:15]
A
Let's close here as you guys think of Maxim's mantras that you come back to in your work together. Have you developed some or.
- [72:23]
B
I think that my dad used to always. Which is very annoying when I was a kid, but it just rings in my head now. And I think it's like if I were to pass anything along that works for any writer or artist or anything like that, but he would always just be like, he'd Always say, pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention. And sometimes that was because I was, like, doing something very stupid, but sometimes it was just because we lived in the woods and, like, we were walking through the woods and I was being too loud.
- [72:53]
A
Yeah.
- [72:53]
B
You grew up where? In Florida, on a cattle ranch. In Florida. Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the thing that applies, like, whether you're in the writing, whether you're in the edit, whether you're in production, whether you're having a meeting with an actor, pay attention. And that there's so much, like, I think everything can be kind of solved from that.
- [73:17]
C
You know, I would take to steal the mantra of the program that was the center of our movie, Sing Sing was trust the process. And, you know, it has many meanings to the men inside that program. I would say one of them is just like, you know, it's a shit show until opening night, and then somehow it just works. But it's really. I think something that we embraced is. Is the process is where the life is, you know, and make the process good and healthy and do it with great intention. Like, we really laser in on that in terms of, like, go on adventure. Go on an adventure into the world that you're writing in. Imbue the work with the values that you try to live with. You know, things like that, like, really, really thoughtful and really granular time spent in that can yield, like, really interesting work, I think.
- [74:22]
B
And it is by. Is that thing of, like, by focusing on the details, the bigger picture will take care of itself. You might not know, like, how you're going to pull off this, like, big sequence of whatever it is, or how you're going to, like, make a love story happen. Right? But you focus on the little details of that thing, whatever it is, in the writing or in the editor or whatever, and then focus on your shot list and then the sequence will play out. You know, trust the process is a good one.
- [74:51]
A
Cue the end credits. There we go. Good to meet you guys.
- [74:56]
B
Thanks, man. It was pretty fun. Yeah.
- [74:58]
C
Yeah, it was cool, actually.
- [74:59]
A
Really cool to meet you guys. Really cool to meet you guys. It's. You guys are so thoughtful and you're not.
- [75:06]
B
You.
- [75:07]
A
You didn't. Oh, like, you're not overdoing it, but it's, like, true. And it's that you can feel the care and the cycles of thought and revision and the depth that only comes from that deep consideration in your work and from this conversation.
- [75:27]
C
Thanks, man.
- [75:28]
B
That means a lot.
- [75:29]
C
Yeah.
- [75:29]
B
This is a great podcast you have, and it's been like the variety of authors that you speak to and artists and, like, what they talk about is always like, it's great. It's really fun.
- [75:40]
A
Watch Train Dreams.
- [75:41]
C
Thank you very much.