← Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Can Pop Culture Be Political … and Good?
00:42:33
Does Hollywood have anything interesting left to say? In a world where franchises dominate and grown-up movies have fallen by the wayside, Ross talks to the showrunner Tony Gilroy, whose “Star Wars” spinoff “Andor” has, according to Ross, succeeded in being both original and smartly political in a Hollywood that is often neither.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Horton
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- [00:33]
Ross Douthat
From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthit and this is interesting times. American popular culture is in trouble. The Hollywood dream factory has gone stagnant, recycling the same stories time and time again. Giants like Marvel feel too big to fail, but they've lost the ability to tell us new and surprising stories. But there is one notable exception. The Star wars serial andor has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise. And part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political and to my mind, left wing perspective on its world without feeling at all like tedious propaganda. My guest today is the showrunner behind Andor Tony Gilroy. We're going to talk about how art and politics interact in a show about radicals trying to defeat fascism and whether Hollywood can ever tell stories for grownups again. So, Tony Gilroy, welcome to interesting times.
- [01:59]
Tony Gilroy
Thank you for having me.
- [02:03]
Ross Douthat
So I want to start by congratulating you on what I personally think a large number of critics and a sizable fraction of the viewing public consider the most successful Star wars production maybe since the original trilogy.
- [02:20]
Tony Gilroy
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of material to be compared with, so it's a, it's a big thank you.
- [02:28]
Ross Douthat
So you've been frank in the past about not having been an intense Star wars guy before you got pulled into this universe and into this work and this project. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that's like, what it's like to come into a story, a franchise. Were you saying to yourself, I'm gonna do something inside a franchise that no one has done before? Or were you saying, look, there are other models here of how, you know, like Christopher Nolan's Batman or something like that?
- [03:04]
Tony Gilroy
No, I'm always trying to do something that I haven't seen before that is gonna be unusual. So, no, I had no, I was very much not into any other model. I was very into striking new ground. And the other thing that I was being offered was a five year piece of history on that calendar that you probably know pretty well. I think you're a big fan. I have that five year tranche of history that takes you up to the first scene in Rogue One.
- [03:31]
Ross Douthat
And that's the story of the. For listeners and viewers who are not huge Star wars fans, right. This is the story that Andor tells, is the story of the rise of the Rebel Alliance. How you get to the point in the original Star wars where Luke Skywalker comes in and there's already this rebellion ongoing against the Empire and you're telling a very, very political story.
- [03:54]
Tony Gilroy
Well, that was the offer. The canvas that was being offered was just a wildly abundant opportunity to use all of the nonfiction and all the history and all the amateur reading that I'd done over the past 40 years and all the things I was fascinated by, all the revolution stuff that not only I would never have a chance to do again, but I really wondered if anybody else would ever have a chance to do again. When are you going to be able to have. As we've ended up with a 1500 page. I think of it as a novel, really a 1500 page novel that is trying to deal with as many aspects of authoritarianism and fascism and colonialism and rebellion and coalition and sacrifice and all of that.
- [04:39]
Ross Douthat
I think this is a good place to pivot more to a discussion of politics and art because Andor is. It's telling a political story in a way that goes beyond anything Star wars has done before. It's not just the world of Skywalker family and the Jedi Knights. It's a world of bureaucrats and senators, politicians and so on. Right. So talk a little bit about what is this world that you're showing? What is the political world that you're depicting in this show?
- [05:09]
Tony Gilroy
The five years that I've been given are extremely potent. You have the Empire really closing down, really choking, really ramping up. The Emperor's building the Death Star. The rebellion on Gorman was a front from the start.
- [05:25]
Ross Douthat
A cover to strip mine the planet for some mineral that they need. Fronting for what?
- [05:29]
Tony Gilroy
A weapon. They are closing out corporate planets and absorbing them into the state. They are imperialistically acquiring planets and taking what they want. They are. The noose is tightening. Dramat still is a Senate. There are senators that are speaking out impotently. I believe we are in crisis. The Senate has been all but completely emasculated by the time this five year tranche is over. And there are revolutionary groups, rebellious groups and people who are acting rebelliously who wouldn't even know how to describe themselves as part of any movement. There are a completely Wide spectrum of unaffiliated cells, I guess, and activists that are rising independently across the galaxy. And at the same time you have a group of more restrained politicians who are trying to make an organized coalition of a rebellion on a place called Yavin, which will end up being the true victory of the Rebel Alliance. I wanted to do a show all about the forgotten people who make a revolution like this happen on both sides. And I want to take equal interest and spend as much time understanding the bureaucrats and the enforcers of the rebellion. I think one of the fascinating things about fascism is that when it's done coming after the people whose land it wants and who it wants to oppress and whoever it wants to control, by the time it gets rid of the courts and the justice, and by the time it consolidates all its power in the center, it ultimately eats its young. It ultimately comes after its own. It consumes its own proponents. That's been the. That's just reading about the last days of Mussolini a month ago, and it's just like right out of the people get lost and get hung out to dry. So I want to pay as much attention to the authoritarian side of this, the people who've cast it a lot with the empire, who get burned by it all.
- [07:28]
Ross Douthat
So is andor a left wing show? Because this is something that I've said a couple times in my writing about it, using it literally as an example, as a conservative columnist, of a work of art that I think of as having different politics from my own that I really, really like. And I've had friends, especially on the right, come back to me and say, oh, you know, it's not. It's not left wing or right wing. It's just a TV show about resistance to tyranny. But I think you've made a left wing work of art. What do you think?
- [08:00]
Tony Gilroy
I never think about it that way. I never think about it that way. It was never. I mean, I never do. I don't.
- [08:07]
Ross Douthat
But it's a story. But it's a political story about revolutionary.
- [08:12]
Tony Gilroy
Do you identify with the empire? Do you identify with the empire?
- [08:15]
Ross Douthat
No, I don't. But I don't think that you have to be left wing to resist authoritarianism. Right, But I see the empire as you just described it, right? It's a fascist. It's presented as a fascist institution that doesn't have any sort of communist pretense to solidarity or anything like that. It's fascist and authoritarian. And you're meditating on what revolutionary politics looks like in the Shadow of that. Right. I mean, who. So you talked about all this history that you brought in. Talk about that history a little bit.
- [08:51]
Tony Gilroy
I mean, my education is very, very spotty, and not college graduate, but completely autodidactic. I grew up in a house with an amazing library, and I've been a very active reader my whole life. And I've done just an incredible number of deep dives in my life where I've become obsessed with all kinds of different things and I've made my own syllabus and I've. I mean, I don't know, I probably read Stephane Zweig's Marie Antoinette when I was 15 or 16 years old and started a French Revolution Jag. And then, you know, and I've probably revisited that. I probably revisited the French Revolution half a dozen times in my life. And probably the last thing I read was, oh, and there's a great novel, Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety.
- [09:33]
Ross Douthat
Oh, yeah, it's a terrific book.
- [09:35]
Tony Gilroy
Amazing book. And so I've done that. And I was obsessed with the Russian Revolution, and then the literature on that has expanded over time. And the show trials and, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen House of Government. It's just an incredible book. And at different times, different things would come out. Oliver Cromwell, Zapata, the Roman Revolutions. And so, yeah, I mean, my syllabus for the show just goes back too far and too deep. It's just something I've always been fascinated in. I don't think of the show as a left wing show. And I don't want you to think that I came on the show. I sort of said before I saw the opportunity to use all this material and to dig into all these things. But that is not how I write. It's completely antithetical to the way I write. I write very, very small. I trust my instincts are gonna take me someplace larger if I'm doing it right. But it's really almost exclusively all about character. I plot through dialogue. I go very, very deep. And you can see how many characters I have and how many I'm carrying. And I don't think of it as a pushing or promoting or anything. In fact, the ideology.
- [10:48]
Ross Douthat
But you're rude. But in the end, I mean, in the end you're rooting. Look, I guess here's how I think about it.
- [10:54]
Tony Gilroy
Yeah, go ahead.
- [10:55]
Ross Douthat
Right, so this is a show, it's a story where you are rooting for revolutionaries against a fascist regime. Right. Okay. As you said, you're not Rooting for the Empire in the end, right?
- [11:06]
Tony Gilroy
No.
- [11:06]
Ross Douthat
So that to me is sort of the political foundation of the work. Right. And that's why I use the term left wing. Not because you have a 10 point list of revolutionary demands that you, Tony Gilroy, support, but you're telling a story in which basically you're on the side of the radicals and the revolutionaries. But then at the same time, and this is why I think it is effective art, what I think you've been able to do, maybe coming out of all of this autodidactic reading, is give people a window into why the radicals, even if you're rooting for them, you can see how things can go wrong. But that is what I really like about the show's approach to politics. Right. Is that it's.
- [11:50]
Tony Gilroy
There's no ever. What's fascinating is there's no. And in particular in the second season, I was really eager to get into the idea of particularly for and using Stellan Skarsgrd's character, Luthen, as the sort of. And Forest Whitaker's character as sort of the original gangsters and the difficulty of integrating the inceptors of radicalism into a coalition. But I never. There's never anybody, I don't think, who ever espouses an actual ideology of what they want to achieve at the end other than to please leave us alone, stop killing us, stop destroying our communities, don't build the Death Star and kill us. There's not a. I never have a character, I don't think stand up and say, this is the galaxy that I am trying to build and this is what I want to see.
- [12:38]
Ross Douthat
No, that's fair. And that is in fact, literally the argument that some of my more libertarian friends who love the show have made to me, saying, oh, you know, this is ultimately a show about localism and, you know, leaving us alone against the depredations of tyranny. But talk a little bit about how you portray the people who serve the Empire.
- [12:57]
Tony Gilroy
Though I am, I'm with everybody on the show. I have to. I truly, without sounding like a T shirt or a cliche, I mean, I have to live through every single one of them to do it properly. I have to really feel for every single person in the show. And there's no, there's no shortcut to that other than to empathetically dive into every person's point of view and every person's insecurities. And I'm as invested in Partagas and Dedra Miro and Cyril as any of the other characters on the show.
- [13:30]
Ross Douthat
I mean, and these are just, again, these are the characters who are imperial and characters Gestapo.
- [13:35]
Tony Gilroy
Say they're Gestapo. Yeah, exactly. I don't have the luxury that sounds so glib. I just don't. I don't have any other way to work other than to fully be with everybody that I'm writing for and taking care of. And then as a dramatist, I also have actual human beings who are doing this that are, you know, vivid and alive for me. And so your empathetic response to the character is also then as an element of transference to the people that are playing the parts. And I don't know any other way to do it. Just go back to your last point about before we move on from it. I think if there's any ideology in the show at all that is expressed that seems consistent through the whole thing, and it is something that I think. And I don't know where it lines up. I think it would probably be just as confusing for you to try to make a left right marker on it. But I feel the disruption of community and all the varieties of community, whether it's on a large scale with colonialism, if it's on a small scale with a city and a town or. Or a family or the empire in the show is consuming and destroying communities everywhere. And the concept of community is the universal. I think that's the universal flag that I can fly all the way through the whole show and feel comfortable with.
- [15:20]
Dr. Horton
Your new beginning starts now. Dr. Horton has new construction homes available in Ellensburg and throughout the greater Seattle area. With spacious floor plans, flexible living spaces and home technology packages, you can enjoy more cozy moments and sweet memories in your beautiful new home. With new home communities opening in Ellensburg and throughout the Seattle area, Dr. Horton has the ideal home for you. Learn more@drhorton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder.
- [15:51]
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- [16:29]
Ross Douthat
I mean, to me, what, what you've just described, the sort of mentality of always trying to see the world through your character's eyes, through each character's eyes. Right. Even when they're on opposing sides, even when they represent a community, destroying perspective that, you know, you yourself are against. Is that is the key to doing successful art about politics? Right. But it seems tremendously hard, I think, for people to do in the sense that, like, when I think about most art that tries to capture American politics, certainly. But, you know, any kind of politics that gets close to the present moment, certainly there's just a failure of. A conspicuous failure of empathy for anyone who's not on the same side as the screenwriter, the novelist, the filmmaker, and so on. That's my sense of things. And again, it's one reason that I, I appreciate andor I think. Do you think that they're like, in terms of cinema, modern cinema or modern tv? Do you think there are other shows and movies that tackle politics that you admire, that you think pull this off, this kind of cross political empathy?
- [17:42]
Tony Gilroy
I don't. I don't want to. I don't know if I want to answer that by giving a list of shows. And maybe I'm going to push deeper on that. I'm going to push on.
- [17:49]
Ross Douthat
That's even better. Please push deeper.
- [17:51]
Tony Gilroy
I'm going to push deeper on that. Like, I heard I, you know, have to study up a little bit to come on a podcast like this with an interview like this, because it, It's a very serious.
- [18:00]
Ross Douthat
It's a very serious.
- [18:01]
Tony Gilroy
No, the bar is higher. This is. No, this is. No, seriously, man. This is a. This is a trickier conversation than most of the ones I have to have on this. I listened to the podcast that you did with the. I don't know the gentleman's name, the one who's trying to revive the. The vibe, shift into the.
- [18:16]
Ross Douthat
Yep. Jonathan Keeperman. Yeah.
- [18:18]
Tony Gilroy
Right wing. Yeah, but yeah.
- [18:19]
Ross Douthat
And like, right wing publisher. Yep.
- [18:21]
Tony Gilroy
The what? Always why is. Why not just Hollywood? You could sort of say, why has Hollywood for the last hundred years been vaguely, you know, been progressive or been liberal? I think it's a much larger. I'll go farther and say, why is almost all literature, why is almost all art that involves humans trend progressive. The. Let's stick with Hollywood. You can't make a living as an actor or as a writer or a director. The higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you're going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It's just baked in. You're trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other. And what is it like to look from this. And people may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans. And that may be good writing or bad writing. And there may be people that have an axe to grind. But in general, empathy is. Empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better I am at my job. And that is what actors do. I have to play. I'm going on Broadway, I'm playing a villain for six months. I gotta live in that. I'm playing the slave, I'm playing the. The fisherman, I'm playing the nurse. I'm the murderer. You have to get in there. You have to live lives through other people. I think that the simple act of that transformation and that process automatically gives you a more. What I would describe as a more generous and progressive point of view. It just has to. And I don't see how you can buy if you're gonna reissue the Hardy Boys or something or try to twist a knot and say that Melville or the Coen brothers made a piece of right wing art because you sort of see something in there. I think it really misses the larger point of the struggle that that movement is gonna be up against. Does that make any sense to you?
- [20:29]
Ross Douthat
I mean, yeah, I think that that is the view of many, if not most people who work in the arts that I've had sort of sustained conversations with about politics, why art tends to be liberal or progressive coded and so on. I think just to speak up on behalf of the conservative critique, I think you would say a couple things, right. One is that liberalism and progressivism itself is in 21st century America is a power structure, a set of assumptions, views about who's good, who's bad. It passes a certain kind of judgment on the past. I think that can be antithetical to serious art. That you get a lot of progressivism that where it's like, you know, the moral arc of the universe is always bending in a particular direction and everyone in the past who had different views is benighted and wrong and so on. And that. That is its own failure of empathy and understanding, I think. And one that progressives are particularly prone to.
- [21:32]
Tony Gilroy
So the empathy for events is what you're saying?
- [21:36]
Ross Douthat
No, the empathy for people who existed who had views that contemporary progressives now consider benighted, for instance.
- [21:46]
Tony Gilroy
I'm trying to make a deep point. Well, but you're asking me why. I'm saying just the act of the job, just the act of the day to day work puts you. It doesn't matter. The ideology may be, and there may be exceptions to across the spectrum, but in general, the act of pretending to be someone else or you know, many actors don't like to use the word pretending and writers don't like to use the word pretending. The act of inhabiting or becoming someone else in any iteration, in any historical setting. Just that simple transformation and the work that goes into that. And until the point where you can access it immediately, that act, I'm so, I'm very eager to put it in a religious context for you because I know what a strong flavor that is on this show. Perhaps not religious, but it is an act of transformation, that it's more than a magic trick. And it doesn't necessarily put you in an ideological, it doesn't cast your vote, but it does open your mind in a way that forces you to think twice about the person who's sitting next to you on the bus, right?
- [23:03]
Ross Douthat
And I guess what I'm just trying to suggest is that some people do it better than others, right? Some artists do it better than others. But there is also a pattern where art that is made in an environment where people share a particular worldview, where it fails the test, you're setting it, right? The test of empathy is often when it's confronting people who hold views or represent ideas or institutions or anything else that contemporary progressives don't favor. So just to give you an example, right? And again, you don't have to agree with this because, you know, you don't have to criticize any of your colleagues in the business, right? But if you go back and watch a movie like the Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's movie that won best picture sort of at the beginning of sort of what we now think of as the Great Awokening, right. In a way, it's a very empathetic movie. It's a movie about how a band of outsiders, minorities, non humans and so on, band together to defeat an evil authoritarian figure. But the evil authoritarian figure is supposed to be like the evil representative of white Christian McCarthyite masculinity. And Michael Shannon has, does in a way a very good job portraying the role. But as I sit there watching the movie, it's a movie that absolutely has no empathy for anyone outside its circle of sort of virtuous outsiders. It has no sense of what it would, you know, what would it actually be like to be, you know, a sort of.
- [24:29]
Tony Gilroy
I don't want to defend that picture.
- [24:31]
Ross Douthat
Okay, good.
- [24:32]
Tony Gilroy
I don't think it's a subtle picture, and I think it's doing what. What'll I come back with? Let's talk about it in the Heat of the Night. Let's talk about it in the heat of the night for one second. Just to pick a. Okay. I mean, in the heat of the night, the Rod Steiger character, the Southern sheriff, couldn't be more of a cliche as the movie starts. Couldn't be more of a. A living caricature of what we all expect and lives on those expectations. As the movie tracks along and as some great writing and great directing and great acting gets done, you gradually become to realize that everybody involved in that picture is absolutely as invested in him as they are in Sidi Poitier. And they're absolutely invested in that character as much as they are in any other character. And the whole thing is alive. And the difference between Shape of Water is it wants to be gothic. I'm not sure what Guillermo was going for there. I'm sure there was a different kind of movie, but when people really care about it, they get there, I think. I don't know.
- [25:31]
Ross Douthat
Well, let me give. I agree with you completely about in the Heat of the Night. Let me give you an example from your own work, Right. Which is, I think, the best movie that you made. You've only actually. You've directed three movies. How many movies have you directed?
- [25:44]
Tony Gilroy
Three movies.
- [25:45]
Ross Douthat
Yes, three movies. Right. So they're all good, to be clear. But the best of them, I think, by general consensus is Michael Clayton, which is a movie, stars George Clooney as a lawyer who's a fixer who ends up dealing with a case of corporate malfeasance where a company essentially poisoned a town, poisoned kids, and one of his colleagues has a crisis of conscience played by. Or essentially has a mental breakdown driven by a crisis of conscience. Right. And this is again, I would describe. This is a movie I love. I love Michael Clayton. I would again describe it as kind of a left wing movie. It's a movie about how they're evil.
- [26:23]
Tony Gilroy
Why is that?
- [26:24]
Ross Douthat
Okay, because the foundation of the movie, and I would say this, like, if you make a movie, if you make a movie that's about how. Where the moral foundation of the movie is that the American military is, you know, awesome and kicks ass, I might love that movie or I might dislike it, but I call that a kind of right leaning movie. And if you make a movie about how evil corporations are poisoning your children, I call that a left wing movie. Right. But what I want to get to is the villain in that movie is played by Tilda Swinton. Terrific performance. And to me, you create her and she creates the character too. Right. In a way that is, again, sort of fulfills the goal of creating a character who you're rooting against, who's obviously the bad guy, but who is deeply human, fascinating, sort of bizarre, totally relatable in various ways. Again, in a way that I think lots of movies that have a political perspective fail at. And that's all I'm getting at. Right. I'm. I think that there is a way in which you can make a movie that has a political point of view that captures the fullness of reality and it's hard to do and you do it well and not everyone does. This isn't even a question.
- [27:38]
Tony Gilroy
I'm just trying to get you. All right, well, let me respond to that. I think you might have an opening statement on Andor. Just because it is. Essentially there's a lot of politics and fascism is identified and. But I just. It's funny. I just saw Clayton for the first time in 18 years the night before last.
- [28:06]
Ross Douthat
Really?
- [28:07]
Tony Gilroy
At a screening in la. Yeah. And they had a show print and we're out promoting Andor and they tied it in with that. I hadn't seen it in 18 years. I went in a packed theater just two nights ago and saw it again. So it's fresh in my mind. I really don't. I'm gonna really push back against left wing on that picture. I don't understand at all what is left or right about poisoning people with a pesticide and lying about it. I don't think anybody on the right wants to be. If I was. Let's keep my politics out of it. But if I can't see myself ever in any iteration of myself identifying with the corporation that has been fighting a class action shoot for poisoning people.
- [28:50]
Ross Douthat
Right, but that's what.
- [28:52]
Tony Gilroy
Wait, Tilda Swinton's character is. So she's such a lost person, she has to practice being herself. She's completely. If there's a political element about the movie, I think at all it's Tilda Swinton trying to falsely approximate what she thinks may be male corporate behaviors. You might be able to make an argument about that. But like, who wants to defend pesticides? I don't think it's left or right at all. I think it's about people. I mean, I think I'm a moralist, if you want to know the truth. I mean, in the number one definition, not this number two definition. But I think I really, in the end, I think there's a moral code that I have, and I think that gets expressed a lot. But it's impossible for me to see Clayton as an ideological thing.
- [29:38]
Ross Douthat
Well, it's just that this is the last thing I'll say because I want to ask you a different question about Michael Clayton. The last thing I'll say is just.
- [29:43]
Tony Gilroy
But do you. I want to know if you would.
- [29:45]
Ross Douthat
Of course. Of course. You don't identify with the corporation that's using pesticides to poison the children. Right.
- [29:52]
Tony Gilroy
Well, then you.
- [29:54]
Ross Douthat
If I made a movie, let's say I made a movie, right. And it was about a English department faculty that was led by a, you know, African American lesbian professor that, you know, persecuted a virtuous Catholic conservative academic and got him fired. Right?
- [30:14]
Tony Gilroy
Right.
- [30:14]
Ross Douthat
I would feel like I'd made kind of a right wing movie and that. But then I could say, oh, well, what are you on the side of persecuting Catholic intellectuals? No. No one's on that side. Well, no. But who you choose as your villains does have political implications. That's all. I'm.
- [30:46]
Dr. Horton
Your new beginning starts now. Dr. Horton has new construction homes available in Ellensburg and throughout the greater Seattle area. With spacious floor plans, flexible living spaces, and home technology packages, you can enjoy more cozy moments and sweet memories in your beautiful new home. With new home communities opening in Ellensburg and throughout the Seattle area, Dr. Horton has the ideal home for you. Learn more@drhorton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder.
- [31:18]
Lori Leibovich
Hi, this is Lori Leibovich, editor of. Well, at the New York Times. There's a lot of misinformation in the health and wellness space. But at the New York Times, no matter what the topic, we apply the same journalistic standards to everything we write about, whether it's the gut microbiome or how to get a good night's sleep. Even if we're talking about something like, is it bad for me to drink coffee on an empty stomach? Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts, calling dozens of people doing the research. It can go on for months so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are Counting on us. If you already subscribe. Thank you. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.
- [32:22]
Ross Douthat
So let me ask you a different question about Michael Clayton.
- [32:24]
Tony Gilroy
Okay, go ahead.
- [32:26]
Ross Douthat
So why didn't you make more movies like Michael Clayton? It's been 18 years. Why are there, you know, Duplicity came out after that. And then you did a Bourne movie, and then you got sucked into the Star wars universe. But I watched that movie. I was like, I could watch five more movies, 10 more movies like that from Tony Gilroy.
- [32:44]
Tony Gilroy
I mean, well, that's a. I mean, if you look at my complete cv, it's pretty chaotic. And you could tell that I. As to go back to what we said before, I don't really want to do anything that I've done before. I'm. I really wanted to make Duplicity. I really had a guess making it. I went from there to Legacy. I really tried to give. I'd been on the Bourne franchise for many years, and that's its own shambolic success. And I wanted to give them a Marvel universe in a way. We really had a way of doing that. There was just too much bad blood and too much confusion that it didn't work. The life of a screenwriter, the life of a writer, director, I have not been able to pick and choose what I've wanted to do.
- [33:25]
Ross Douthat
Well, that's the core of the question. So I grew up younger than you. I grew up in the 1990s, which meant that for me as a teenager, someone who was not as crazed about the movies, maybe, as you were, but who liked them a lot, and they were a big part of my life. Hanging out, going to the movies on weekends. I sort of took it for granted then that you would have serious movies for grownups, fun, original movies. A movie you worked on Devil's Advocate. Right. The Al Pacino. Right. Keanu. Right. So that. That was the kind of movie that going to the movies meant you were going to see a big movie star giving you a big speech, you know, playing Satan in a Manhattan skyrise. It was great stuff. Right. And to me, the big change in American pop culture in the last 20 years is that the world that made movies like Michael Clayton, movies like Devil's Advocate possible, has just sort of gone away. And I'm wondering if you agree with that. Right. It just seems incredibly hard. Go ahead.
- [34:25]
Tony Gilroy
You stopped going to the theater. You stopped going to the theater. You were the capital Y stopped going to the theater.
- [34:31]
Ross Douthat
No, I take that personally because I do have a lot of kids, and I don't get to the movie theater.
- [34:35]
Tony Gilroy
You don't.
- [34:35]
Ross Douthat
So it is my fault, personally, Totally.
- [34:39]
Tony Gilroy
No, I mean. Oh, man, I've been around so long, I've seen this whole thing. I've seen all these dynastic changes happen and ridden it through. The economics are just what they are. And Michael Clayton existed in that moment where the model on that movie is. If I could get a movie star whose full freight price was basically the cost of the movie, and they do the movie for free. I had a movie. I mean, even at that point, if George is gonna come in, I think the movie cost 20. I think George was getting 15, 20 at that point. And he waives his fee. He owns the picture. The. That's how that movie gets made. That model began to degrade over time, and now it's an impossibility. I mean, now Clayton is absolutely a streaming show.
- [35:25]
Ross Douthat
Well, there aren't movie stars anymore, right?
- [35:28]
Tony Gilroy
There are no movie stars anymore. No, there are no movie stars. And so all of these things have changed. So my father was in the same business. My brothers are in the same business. I have grown up in this my whole life. It's prenatal for me, and. And one of the major, most important things carved in stone that I know, it does no good to complain about the weather, man. You gotta go out. You gotta see what's there. Now. I don't wanna. I grew up my brothers and I grew up, my friends and I grew up with a generation of writers before us, great writers and great producers and directors and whatever. But they. Many of them, became embittered by the changing landscape and the changing topography of what had happened. And it's. That's a lesson that I've taken away. I'm staying flexible. I wanna work. I wanna be obsessed. I wanna work on something that I'm into.
- [36:23]
Ross Douthat
What gives you hope right now? Like, do you think that we are just stuck in a world where you can maybe make something great inside a franchise, but mostly movies for grownups are over, or do you think things are gonna get better?
- [36:38]
Tony Gilroy
I don't, man. Better? I don't know. I think there's a couple really significant things. I mean, just personally, I have a movie that I'm hoping to get greenlit very soon that's very much that I go back and direct, and it's about movie music. And it's certainly not Clayton, that it's a thriller, but it's very much on the same scale, and it's very ambitious and unusual. And if I get to make it, I think you'd say, oh, this is the thing I was talking about.
- [37:01]
Ross Douthat
But good.
- [37:03]
Tony Gilroy
What's new and good. I'll tell you what's good. What's good is time. The two major developments I would say are the best developments in recent years is one is Tony Soprano. Because prior to Tony Soprano, every writer who ever went into a pitch meeting or ever dealt with an actor, there was always a note. Can we make this character more sympathetic? How do we make Ross more sympathetic? Should we give you a dog?
- [37:25]
Ross Douthat
I get those notes. I get those notes from my producers every week.
- [37:28]
Tony Gilroy
If you had a dog. If you had a dog, there, a puppy, it would be a lot better. After Tony Soprano, people really began to realize something that had already been staring at them, which is the characters need to be fascinating and have to be relatable in some way, but they have to be fascinating more than anything else. And sympathetic wasn't the characteristic that everybody wanted. I think that's a huge tectonic development. I think the other development that's probably more significant is time. The ability to tailor the size of the canvas or build a house to the lot appropriately is an incredibly liberating creative development that's transformative. I have a story. Does it really want to fit into a three hours? Does it really want to fit into seven hours? Does it really want to be 24 episodes? Is it really just a movie? Is it. I think how shows are delivered. Time will now be. It's just. I mean, I can't stress how. It's almost as if you added perspective to painting. It's Giotto or something. It's really like that's a really major development now. All that said, all that happiness and everything. That's great. And I listened to your AI podcast. I was talking to people in LA the last couple days. I've heard some just absolutely gothic, dire information or prognostication about AI I don't know how to deal with that. I don't know how to think about it. I don't know what you did with that. When you finished that podcast, what did you think when you were done with that podcast? Did you want to go out to the parking lot and scream or what?
- [39:06]
Ross Douthat
I didn't fully believe it. That's the truth. I don't think the world's ending in 2027. I think with the movies, it's a question about, I hope I'm right too. We'll find out.
- [39:17]
Tony Gilroy
I hope you're right, man.
- [39:18]
Ross Douthat
To me, the question with AI, the great question is an audience question. Right. For your business, if you get an AI that can generate, you know, 1500 simulated versions of Michael Clayton or Andor, and let's be honest, it'll be 1500 simulated versions of a Marvel movie or a Star wars show, right? And actors aren't real and there's no actual screenwriter behind it. Do people want that? And I sort of think that they don't in the end that, like, even if most people watch Andor don't know who Tony Gilroy is, in the end, they want to think that there is a mind and a human being behind the story, just as they definitely want to think that, you know, you're talking about the work your actors do. Right. That it's like it's Tilda Swinton and George Clooney playing those characters. Even in an age when movie stars have declined, people want to think they don't want a AI Simulacrum playing a fictional character. And this may be my total naivete, but I do think that's what it comes down to for Hollywood with AI It's. Does the audience accept the substitution of whatever AI can do for what you can do? And I'm hopeful that they don't.
- [40:29]
Tony Gilroy
I mean, I think that's. I'll talk about that for one minute, but I think it's subsidiary to like, well, maybe people will have nothing else to do to watch because they won't have any jobs and they won't have anything. I mean. Or maybe it's a Chinese AI nuclear race. No. I mean, it's so terrifying. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to be. I mean, one of my, you know, one of my. I think a personal philosophy that I've. And it's not something. Again, it's not an agenda I put in. I find this. You find out forensically when. What you really think, when you go out and sell your picture. It's really an odd thing. And over time, I've really become more aware in these kind of conversations and post facto what I've really been doing. And one of the things I feel I've really been doing, I think human behavior and human insecurities and just all the things that make us chaotic, complicated beings has always had a corrosive effect on every technology and weapon and everything that's been thrown in its way. I think it's. It's like water. It leaks down and it rusts. It's managed to wonderfully rust out all of the things that have been thrown at it before. I don't know if this is one that we can beat in your scenario. Maybe it's true. Maybe live theater will become just this cult like thing. Maybe there'll be some huge incredible renaissance of return to an acoustic community in every way, shape or form. I don't know. But I am not sanguine about the next corner we're going to turn. And that's something I have. No, I don't. We have no frame of reference for that. So absent that I would try to be optimistic. I suppose so.
- [42:11]
Ross Douthat
That's a dark place, Tony. So give me some light. Give me some advice right now. Set aside AI Just the movie industry without the total transformation. Just the movie and TV industry that you're in right now. Give me advice for the young Tony Gilroy or the would be Tony Gilroy. The would be screenwriter, director, whatever else of 2025. What would you tell them?
- [42:34]
Tony Gilroy
Well, I give the same advice. All these people come and kids come and whatever. I mean it's now simple.
- [42:40]
Ross Douthat
Young, they're eager. They're eager to learn.
- [42:41]
Tony Gilroy
I know, but I mean have something to say. It's just people can't be doing this job because they think it's cool or the money's good or whatever. I mean there's no point in this. Have something to say. The optimistic other thing is what do people talk about everywhere they talk about what are you watching? What are you seeing? Did you see this? What episode are you on? The amount of narrative that is being consumed and the. I guess the leisure time liberation and the accelerated. Just the delivery systems that can bring it to you. I mean narrative is an essential food group to the human experience. And it has never not been thus. Will that go away because it's a machine doing it? I don't know. How will machines do it? Will they do it better? Will people accept that? I have no idea.
- [43:28]
Ross Douthat
But people, man, we tell ourselves stories in order to live.
- [43:33]
Tony Gilroy
No, I mean a lot of times I'll tell writers if they telling me, you know, one of the things I always say is it's really good to tell your story. If you're working on something, it's a campfire story. I mean the best writers are people who could sit down. I could sit down and I really think confidently with a little bit of lead time and a vodka in my hand at a campfire. I can hold your attention. I can really hold your attention. That's really valuable. That never ends. So that's. That seems to be proven.
- [43:58]
Ross Douthat
Well then we'll. If the AI 2027 scenario is real. We'll agree to meet up around the campfire in the post apocalyptic ruins and you can tell me a story. Tony.
- [44:09]
Tony Gilroy
All right, you bring the bottle.
- [44:10]
Ross Douthat
Thank you so much.
- [44:12]
Tony Gilroy
A pleasure.
- [44:37]
Ross Douthat
As always. Thank you so much for listening. And as a reminder, you can watch this as a video podcast on YouTube. You can find the channel under Interesting Times with Ross Douthat. Interesting Times is produced by Sofia Alvarez Boyd, Andrea Batanzos, Elisa Gutierrez and Catherine Sullivan. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary, Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Amin Sahota, Pat and McCusker Mixing by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuluski. And our director of Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
- [45:36]
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