00:00You know, we're living in a time where we're all so aware of the disparities and you look
00:08back, you look at the things that have progressed in humankind and the things that have degressed
00:14and you sometimes wonder, you know, are we mattering?
00:19And are we doing the things, I think most of us know what matters, we know what will
00:24matter in terms of how we approach the environment, but we also have to know that we're not going
00:29to get to that approach if we don't figure out how to approach each other.
00:33Yeah, it's, look, if film gets us talking about it, feeling through this stuff, I hope
00:40it makes an impact.
00:41I think it's very important in all of your movies, as an actor but also as a director,
00:46where do you find your freedom?
00:49It's a good question.
00:50It's a good question because, you know, there's a promise of, you know, very, I think, internationally
00:59recognized promise of freedom that's uniquely American.
01:05And the promise of that, in so many ways, is an inevitably broken promise.
01:13And so, this story, where you have a character who doesn't find a way around that and therefore
01:24is left inevitably heartbroken and heartbreaking.
01:27The way you film America also says something about you, as a director, the movie's entitled
01:32Flag Day.
01:33When you see an American flag, what do you see, what does it stand for?
01:38This is the subject of a lot of controversy today.
01:42Even within the United States, it's been very co-opted by a radical libertarianism that
01:49has no relationship to what would be patriotic.
01:56In fact, it's counter to that and much of it moving in a very fascistic sort of hunger.
02:04So the flag is, you know, I have friends that talk about, God, we have to reclaim that flag
02:09and what it means to us.
02:11And then I know other people who suggest, just as interestingly, that maybe we need
02:17to evolve to a place where we need to refresh it and have it represent the diversity that's
02:24the best of us.
02:25Who's the urge for a movie for you as a director?
02:28When do you know you're going to do this movie?
02:32Usually pictures in my head.
02:35It usually starts with images.
02:38You know, I mean, typically I think you would assume that an actor would be character-driven
02:41first.
02:42I find characters in the images when I direct movies.
02:47In this case, it was a crossover because from a very early point after reading the script
02:54or while reading the script, there was only my daughter's face that was the image of that
03:00character.
03:01You know, we always hear about actors talking about how so much of what it takes to be a
03:07good actor is listening.
03:09And it was very clear early on when we would point a camera at Dylan, she was really listening
03:16to whoever the other person in the scene was.
03:20And it's disarmingly so.
03:24I know your passion for camera shot.
03:25What object is it for you?
03:28This kind of opens it up to a conversation about, I was thinking about conversations
03:32that I had early on with Danny Motor, my cinematographer on this movie, where we both kind of kept
03:40shaking our heads and saying, we're going to make this on film.
03:47The final difference between film and digital photography is that there is a synthetic grain
03:55that you can give digital photography.
03:59But somewhere I trust that in our core, when we watch that, we know there's something synthetic
04:04about it.
04:05And when you have real grain moving through the frame, you have an experience of real
04:10time passing that you can only get today still in film.
04:16And so, you know, each movie has different images that become the initial marriage for
04:23me that drive the rest of the storytelling.
04:26That's fascinating because I love the way you film the past in this movie and the perception
04:30we have of the past.
04:31As a director, how do you stage time, for instance?
04:34It seemed to me you worked on blurring, on different films, on different lights.
04:39We tried to adapt lenses to specify that at times.
04:45And it's fun.
04:48And the other thing is, you know, along the way, there are these great film technicians
04:53who have created this amazing set of tools, things that we all know about, the big tools,
04:59the big CGI and so on, but they're great.
05:03These fast lenses that we have to shoot in low light and the swing and tilt lenses that
05:08can shift the plane in terms of the depth of field.
05:13It's all finally about what moves us or somehow brings us to a memory.
05:19I mean, there's a comic, Mitch Hedberg, a late comic, who said a friend of mine showed
05:26me a picture of himself the other day and he said, this is a picture of me when I was
05:29younger.
05:30Well, every picture is a picture of you when you were younger.
05:34And I think that movies do that, but also within the narrative, there are times that
05:39the narrative is presenting a picture of itself when it was younger.
05:43Thank you so much, Sean.
05:44Thanks.
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