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00:00A24 has become known for producing deep, introspective indie films that feel different from Hollywood's usual fare,
00:06and in turn has developed its own set of fans that are hyped to watch whatever they put out next.
00:11It's pretty unique for a film production company to gain such a large and loyal fanbase,
00:15so what exactly is it that makes A24 A24?
00:19This is a company that's only been making movies for around a decade,
00:23and in that time it's punched well above its weight.
00:25As well as acquiring a cult status in and of itself,
00:28several of its films, Ari Aster's Hereditary, Alex Garland's Ex Machina,
00:33and The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All At Once,
00:35have gained that level of acclaim on their own.
00:38No matter what, I still want to be here with you.
00:42They're not wedded to any one genre, still follow a reasonably traditional release model,
00:46and never really seem to miss.
00:48All this in a landscape where low-to-mid-budget movies are increasingly hard to come by.
00:53So what's their secret?
00:54And what are they doing that other production companies could or should be doing
00:58to give us a healthier, more diverse, and more interesting mainstream cinematic landscape?
01:03This is a brand new experience for me as an actor.
01:06Here's our take on A24, the common threads that run across all their films,
01:10and why it's made them so successful.
01:12That breeze feels good as hell, man.
01:14Yeah, it do.
01:15For more from the take, check out our Patreon where you can vote on what we cover next in our
01:20exclusive members-only series, Total Take.
01:23So often, A24 gives us complicated, messy, sometimes explicitly unlikable protagonists,
01:29and invites us to understand and empathize with them.
01:31While it's not one of their better-known movies, their debut release did this with,
01:35at the time, one of culture's most infamous actors,
01:38Charlie Sheen in Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.
01:42While playing up to his public persona, the film minds that furrowed deeper,
01:47exploring the character's breakdown and his desire to get his life back on track.
01:51It illustrated how the company was completely in touch with the zeitgeist,
01:54but also wanted to look at it from a slightly different angle.
01:57I thought you were going to be pale white with drool and a paralyzed claw hand
02:01talking out of the side of your mouth, but I think you're going to make it.
02:05Oh, thanks.
02:06Dream Scenario, a recent release starring Nicolas Cage,
02:09finds Paul, a biology professor, inexplicably popping up in the dreams of people all over the
02:14world.
02:15What follows is an exploration of the true toll of viral fame.
02:18In life, Paul is generally passive and dull, but his behavior in the dreams,
02:23and people's reactions to it, begins to shine a spotlight on his deeper flaws as well.
02:27The film uses this surreal scenario as an opportunity to unpack the price of being
02:32in the limelight in our ultra-connected era.
02:34Want a full explainer on Dream Scenario?
02:36Let us know in the comments.
02:38This attitude towards flawed protagonists is also exemplified in its first two real
02:42breakthrough movies, Harmony Kareem's Spring Breakers and Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring.
02:47Both films utilized the star power of people we were used to seeing in very different roles.
02:52Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens shed their Disney Channel image for Spring Breakers,
02:57while Emma Watson was no longer the goody two-shoes Hermione in The Bling Ring.
03:01Come on, let's go to Paris's.
03:04I want to rob.
03:05But at the same time, they were still accessible, exciting pieces of event cinema,
03:11helmed by recognizable and successful names.
03:13The Economist explained that this was part of their mission statement from the jump,
03:17to challenge preconceptions about high-quality storytelling and champion auteurs with unique
03:22stories to tell and work that might appeal to young cinephiles.
03:25One of A24's most critically acclaimed films so far is Barry Jenkins' Moonlight.
03:30And with Chiron, we again get this focus on a complex, relatable, flawed protagonist.
03:35I told you the count was off and you said it wasn't.
03:38That's you calling me a liar.
03:39This works so well in the film because we see the character develop over years.
03:44The shy, unloved child in the first act, the gangly teenager in the second,
03:48and the tough yet vulnerable man in the third,
03:50who himself feels like a callback to Mahershala Ali's character from the beginning of the film.
03:55Despite him doing things that we may be tempted to judge out of context,
03:59assaulting a classmate, becoming a drug dealer,
04:01the fact we get a full picture means we never do.
04:04And instead, we focus on the one constant in his life,
04:07the burgeoning romance between him and Kevin,
04:09and how they find each other again as adults.
04:12You ain't changed one damn bit.
04:15You still can't say more than three words at a time, huh?
04:17This is so refreshing because it deliberately plays against the hero-villain archetype
04:22that is so present in mainstream cinema right now.
04:25Christine in Lady Bird, Ivan in Locke, Mikey in Red Rocket.
04:28These characters do bad things, make mistakes, and have to deal with them.
04:32But by focusing in on stories like this,
04:35everything feels grounded in a relatable reality.
04:38Are you mad?
04:38Yes.
04:39Wrong, I'm not.
04:39Yes, I'm mad.
04:40Tonight I've gone mad, and I will have to get used to being mad.
04:45This focus on character is always their pace,
04:48and then from there, they can move off into interesting directions.
04:50If there's one genre that A24 has become associated with, it's horror.
04:55But in particular, it's a kind of horror that had previously been edged out of mainstream cinemas.
05:01A24's horrors dispense with the tired tropes of slasher movies and jump scares,
05:05and instead mine our deepest traumas and find the horror amongst them.
05:09I wish I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did,
05:14but your sister is dead!
05:16If you could have just said,
05:17I'm sorry, or faced up to what happened,
05:20maybe, Dan, we could do something with this!
05:23Talk to Me sees a group of teens experimenting with a Ouija-like game,
05:27where the sudden rush of spiritual possession is played as a new party drug.
05:31The story parallels the dangers of naively experimenting with harmful substances.
05:35My little brother's in hospital. He went way over.
05:39You let a kid do it?
05:40And how quickly they can consume you.
05:42As soon as she lets it in, it cannot go for more than 90 seconds. Am I clear?
05:46What happens after 90 seconds?
05:48They'll want to stay.
05:49Talk to Me doesn't aim for cheap thrills or easy kills.
05:53It instead depicts the harrowing grip of addiction.
05:56Both how it can develop to cover existing grief,
05:58but also how it creates a new pattern of destruction for the user and everyone around them,
06:03as Mia spirals out of control.
06:05In Saint Maude, the horror all comes from Nurse Katie's experience
06:08of having tried to save a dying woman's life, and failing.
06:12Her proximity to death and her being defeated by it completely changes her.
06:16She goes from Katie to Maude, becomes a devout Christian,
06:19and speaks of having these spiritual experiences.
06:22But what's so tense in watching it is we don't know whether this is Maude
06:25going through some sort of psychological breakdown,
06:27or whether she has somehow blurred the boundary between this life and the next.
06:31Like, he's physically in me or around me.
06:36It's how he guides me.
06:38In Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, the tropes of the horror genre are more recognizable.
06:42We have a group of young, beautiful people engaging in reckless behavior
06:45who then begin to fear that there's a killer in their midst that's coming for them.
06:49But rather than solely relying on jump scares,
06:51the film zooms out and uses this conceit as a way to explore the Gen Z condition
06:55and the anxieties of that generation, not least climate change,
06:59given the whole reason they're at the party in the first place
07:01is to shelter and perhaps disassociate from an oncoming hurricane.
07:05Who was the killer? I wasn't the killer!
07:07Alice, you're f***ing coked out.
07:08You're coked out, okay? We're all coked out!
07:11The filmmaker propping up this horror revival is undeniably Ari Aster,
07:15who with Hereditary and Midsommar has created two of the most iconic horrors of the modern day,
07:20both of which are underpinned by feelings of grief and loss.
07:23Much like St. Maude, in Hereditary, there is this tension between life and death
07:27that becomes more and more unsettling as Annie begins to try and commune with her dead daughter.
07:32Rather than these moments being poignant or cathartic,
07:34instead, they become frightening and uncomfortable
07:37as the experience pushes Annie more and more into a state of madness.
07:41But they put a curse on us when we brought Charlie back.
07:43We made a pact with something.
07:45Something that is in this house.
07:46I don't know what it is, but it is after Peter.
07:48In Midsommar, it's Danny's grief having lost her entire family
07:52that is the most pronounced,
07:53and what pushes her into becoming indoctrinated into the Harga commune.
07:57What's particularly interesting in this film
07:59is how it deliberately challenges a lot of horror conventions.
08:02It takes place almost entirely in beautiful, blistering sunlight.
08:06The commune feels almost idyllic,
08:08but by creating this initial sense of calm and serenity,
08:11the horror elements feel all the more shocking and pronounced.
08:14This is feeling really wrong.
08:16We need to leave.
08:17These horrors never undercut the genre,
08:20but instead attempt to understand what makes it work
08:22and how it can be a frame for stories of loss, trauma, and psychological fear.
08:27What's most refreshing about A24 is how they flooded cinema
08:31with a host of new directorial voices and new acting talent.
08:34Not only that, but they've given them implicit trust,
08:37allowed them to develop and tell their own stories,
08:39and taken on a role as creative collaborators rather than dictators.
08:43Director Harmony Corrine spoke about how rare this is in cinema,
08:47saying,
08:47Hollywood is run by accountants at this point,
08:50and so anytime you speak with someone who's not a pure accountant,
08:53it's not a pencil pusher.
08:54It's exciting.
08:55They had heart to them.
08:56I think about the fact that we can both see the songs,
08:59so even though we're not actually in the same place
09:02and we're not actually together,
09:04we kind of are in a way.
09:06Celine's song enamored audiences with her feature directorial debut Past Lives,
09:11a romantic drama about the ebb and flow in the relationship
09:14between childhood friends as distance, life, and personal choices pull them apart.
09:18New directors, particularly women, and especially women of color,
09:22are so seldom given the opportunity to tell their own stories,
09:25and so A24 providing this kind of space is vital.
09:29Beyond translating between two languages and two cultures,
09:33I also was translating between two parts of my own self.
09:37Robert Eggers is one of A24's biggest success stories.
09:40His first two features for the company, The Witch and The Lighthouse,
09:43both quickly became cult favorites.
09:45Not only critically acclaimed,
09:47but remixed through countless memes of Black Phillip living deliciously,
09:51and Robert Pattinson and William Dafoe duking it out on an isolated lighthouse.
09:55Both films feel quite consciously slow and methodical,
09:58allowing Eggers the space and time to get inside the minds of his characters
10:02and see what makes them tick.
10:03And while they are formally quite different,
10:05you still get this auteur-driven look at a world that is chaotic,
10:09where the folklore and myth still hold real power.
10:12I am that very witch.
10:14When I sleep, my spirit slips away from my body and dances naked with the devil.
10:19They have also shown a willingness to push beyond
10:21what is typically expected of an independent film studio,
10:24and the kinds of films those studios make.
10:26Directorial duo Daniels began their career with the esoteric,
10:30warm-hearted love story, Swiss Army Land,
10:32which did feel like it bore the hallmarks of the kind of American indie cinema
10:36that typically does well at festivals like Sundance.
10:39But with their follow-up, everything everywhere all at once,
10:42they had the space, time, and budget to make a summer science fiction blockbuster.
10:46As well as new voices behind the camera,
10:55like Charlotte Wells, Bo Burnham, Jonah Hill, and Gillian Robespierre,
11:00the studio has given space for actors to break through
11:02and perhaps show sides of themselves they weren't able to show before.
11:06Zendaya may have been a Disney child star,
11:08but her arrival as a mainstream actress of real weight came in euphoria.
11:13Colin Farrell has been a box office pull for a long time,
11:15but A24 has allowed him to explore interesting experimental work
11:19like The Lobster and After Yang.
11:22With someone like Michelle Yeoh,
11:23here's an actress who has always been a superstar,
11:26but has maybe been underused in Hollywood for the majority of her career.
11:30First of all, I was really blown away by the fact that
11:32the superhero was this ordinary aging Asian immigrant woman.
11:38Along with others like Robert Pattinson,
11:40Brie Larson,
11:41Timothee Chalamet,
11:42and filmmakers like the Safdie brothers and Noah Baumbach,
11:46they have created this stable of talent who know that their stories will be in safe hands,
11:50and now who know that they'll get seen by a dedicated, enthusiastic audience at the same time.
11:56The independent cinema landscape in the U.S. has changed,
11:59and arguably for the worse.
12:01Streaming's cannibalization of the DVD market has meant less money is going around,
12:06and so studios are less willing to take bets on what are perceived to be risky projects.
12:11The idea of making $100 million on a story about this love affair between these two people,
12:17yeah, I love everyone in the movie, but that's suddenly a massive gamble.
12:22Not only have A24 shown themselves as willing to take those risks,
12:26they also seem to understand their audience so well that with each new release,
12:30the sense of risk dissipates.
12:31These are films that utilize nostalgic, retro aesthetics that are already popular amongst young people.
12:37That feeds the audience's desire for creativity and curiosity,
12:41that never forgets that movies can be about spectacle as well as being about character.
12:46You want to hear a story about how me and this bitch here fell out?
12:50It's kind of long, but it's full of suspense.
12:54That's the take.
12:55Click here to watch a video we think you'll love,
12:57or here to check out a whole playlist of awesome content.
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