Every Yorgos Lanthimos Movie, Explained by Yorgos Lanthimos

Vanity Fair

"I guess I realized that there is some kind of journey, and I'm not alone in this journey." Yorgos Lanthimos had made 9 films over his career, making his name widely known for his distinctive style characterized by his dark humor and exploration of absurd and surreal themes. From his very first film 'Kinetta' to his recent projects like 'Poor Things' and 'Bugonia,'' Yorgos takes a look at all of his films and discusses in detail how they came to life.    Director: Claire Buss Director of Photography: Eric Brouse Editor: Daniel Poler Talent: Yorgos Lanthimos Producer: Madison Coffey Line Producer: Natasha Soto Albors Associate Producer: Lyla Neely Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins Lee Camera Operator: Chloe Ramos Gaffer: David Djaco Audio Engineer: Lily van Leeuwen Production Assistant: Courtney Podraza Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Assistant Editor: Billy Ward Senior Manager; Creative Development: Hannah Pak Director; Creative Development: Claire Buss Director; Content Production: Lane Williamson Senior Director; Programming &amp; Development: Ella Ruffel Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin

Transcript

00:00There is creative control in terms of like, nobody tells me what I can or cannot do apart

00:06from reality.

00:18I'm Yoros Lanthimos, I've made nine feature films and we're going to talk about all of

00:22them.

00:23Kineta.

00:24I was making commercials for a few years.

00:29I started quite young, like 19, 20 years old, I started directing commercials and when I

00:36went to film school in Greece, I mean, there wasn't and there still isn't such a great

00:42educational system in terms of cinema.

00:46There were very few films being made and to think that, you know, like a young person would

00:52say, this is what I'm going to do in my life, felt like totally absurd.

00:58So, doing commercials was like an indirect way of being in contact with something that

01:04felt relevant to filmmaking and I never thought that I would actually get to make films.

01:10film.

01:13Since we were making enough money from advertising, we just decided that we could do it ourselves

01:24and we didn't need that much.

01:26We just could get a, you know, 16mm camera and, you know, go to a place with reactors and

01:33just, you know, film stuff and we don't need lights.

01:36We don't need makeup, we don't need anything, you know, we can just do it like that.

01:41You know, whatever we needed, we had to borrow it from someone, you know, if I wanted a red

01:47car and I didn't have a friend who had a red car, like we had to pay for a red car and we didn't

01:53have any money.

01:57After so many years of doing commercials and, you know, we just had an aversion to that and

02:03we just wanted to do something totally rough and so spontaneous in every way.

02:10And I think it was my most fun experience on a film set because, you know, we're so naive.

02:15We never knew even if anyone was going to watch that film.

02:19We just did it, you know, for ourselves.

02:33Very early on, I also recorded dance performances and I was interested in it.

02:41I had friends who were, you know, great choreographers.

02:46And so I was really around dance, dance theater early on.

02:53And I guess it influenced, you know, how I like to approach performance, rehearsals.

03:00It was trying to figure out what it is that I'm, that doesn't appeal to me in the things that,

03:09you know, constitute, you know, advertising commercials, you know, that world, that aesthetic,

03:16and trying to figure out what it is that I am attracted to and how things could be different.

03:22Which I guess was to an extreme because if you start from, I don't like this, I want to do something different,

03:31you know, you usually find the other extreme, which is an interesting and useful, I think, process.

03:40Dogtooth.

03:44While I was working in advertising, I had met Efthymes Filippo, who's someone that I worked with on many films.

03:52We became really good friends and very close.

03:54And I knew him from advertising.

03:57He was a copywriter in an advertising agency and he'd never written a screenplay before.

04:03And, but I, you know, I could see even in the work that he did there that he had a very special mind.

04:12Just the stuff that he was coming up with, you know, for commercials that most of them never got made.

04:18Or we made them and then the clients wouldn't want them, wouldn't air them.

04:23And I suggested to him, you know, if you wanted to write a screenplay together.

04:28And I brought him the idea of Dogtooth, which was like, you know, like a really simple idea of what if,

04:38you know, there was this family that raised their kids in a way that they didn't know that the rest of the world existed.

04:45I, when I gave him the idea, he just wrote some scenes, like five scenes of, you know, what that ignited in him.

05:01It's for this kind of story to work.

05:03You needed certain things to be a certain way for the premise to work.

05:09So we needed to find a certain type of house that had a fence, which it didn't.

05:14So we had to build the fence.

05:15So all of a sudden we started needing to find resources that we didn't have to before.

05:22So there was a lot of that going on, which kind of stressed me out.

05:25And then, I don't know, there's blood and things and more complicated film stuff

05:33that we needed to just figure out, you know, how to do with very few resources.

05:45For some reason, I absolutely wanted to shoot that film anamorphic.

05:52So we had to find a camera for someone to give us a camera almost for free and lenses,

05:57anamorphic lenses for free. And we found this camera by this guy who, you know, had cameras.

06:06But this camera was working a lot on music videos and commercials.

06:10So they would just fuck up with the lenses and, you know, they would unscrew them and

06:16swirl them or whatever to do effects.

06:19And so we got the camera and the lenses and most of them were like totally out of whack.

06:25And, you know, we were trying to calibrate them and we just, you know,

06:29we didn't know even how to and we couldn't.

06:32And there was one lens, the 50 millimeter lens that was fine.

06:37So we decided to do the whole film on that lens.

06:42And again, you know, in the process, that was very freeing because, you know,

06:48there are no choices. There's that lens, just move the camera around.

06:52That's it. Like you don't have to make a choice about that,

06:56which frees you to be more focused on other things.

07:06There's a work ethic with the actors and everyone involved.

07:10Like, you know, you just, you know, work because you love it.

07:13And, you know, you can stay for half an hour, you know, more if you need to,

07:18in order to make it better because everyone's working towards, you know, the same goal.

07:23And, you know, everyone's very flexible and love what they're doing.

07:27And it's not about, you know, money and being paid.

07:32And so it's easier to just, you know, devote your time and yourself in something that,

07:39you know, everybody's investing.

07:40You know, building a world with rules that, you know, seem kind of over the top for us,

08:01enhances the observation of how people behave within such a world.

08:08You know, humans need to question the world around them.

08:13And that includes, you know, the structure which is constructed by rules and traditions

08:22and everyday behavior that becomes a given.

08:27And I find it interesting to question all of those things.

08:31And I don't think there can be progress in any way without having people questioning,

08:37you know, the state of things at different moments in time.

08:43Alps.

08:45There was a lot of noise around Dogtooth.

08:49It was something like the appeal and the notoriety of it in a certain sense.

08:57We didn't expect at all.

08:58And I think I had like a strange reaction to it.

09:01The fact that it was like getting all of these awards in every festival and, you know,

09:07starting from Cannes and it went all the way to the Oscars.

09:12And at that time, you know, the Academy wasn't that diverse.

09:16And, you know, it was quite surprising.

09:19Becoming this thing kind of created like a weird negative reaction in me.

09:26And then there was all these, you know, actors contacting me saying they want to work with me.

09:31And, you know, I got agents and I went like to meetings in L.A.

09:37And I didn't know what I was doing there really.

09:41I felt it was extreme and I felt it was fake in a way.

09:45So I think my reaction to that like was like, let's not listen to all that.

09:50And let's just go and make another film the way we make films.

10:15I think if Themis came up with the initial idea, I think there was like a letter that a friend found

10:26under his doorstep of a guy that was offering his services as a friend or a companion for,

10:35you know, a certain fee for a certain time.

10:38You know, we started discussing it and then we, you know, we kind of shifted it to like,

10:44what if you lose someone you love and you want to find a way to kind of keep them alive somehow.

10:53And what if there was like this, you know, group of people that offered that kind of service

10:57to pretend to be, you know, your dead husband or wife or friend.

11:03In this film, there were a lot of written scenes with a lot of people

11:32that hadn't acted before, friends, people that we, friends of friends.

11:37And that really excited me.

11:40And what happened between the actors and the non-professional actors.

11:44So I try to work with people that have a specific voice

11:48and see how I can integrate that in my way of, you know, viewing the world and filmmaking.

11:57There's a very interesting tension between the experienced actors with people

12:01that have never done it before because one doesn't know what to expect from the other.

12:06And there's that unpredictability.

12:09And it creates this tension and energy that wouldn't be there if it was like two actors,

12:15like knowing how are they going to do it and where they're going to go next.

12:19And so I really love that kind of dynamic.

12:22And, you know, a lot of the people in Alps that were not actors were like,

12:28there was the waiter from my favorite cafe and there was a lawyer friend of mine.

12:35Yeah, that was something that I kind of kept and, you know, try to do in every film at different levels.

12:44The Lobster.

12:49After making three films this way, basically, in Greece, that's why I decided that I,

12:54you know, I needed to have a few more means in order to be more in control of the result of what I wanted to make.

13:03I decided to move to London and make English language films.

13:09I realized that it was actually more difficult than I expected to make my first English language film, The Lobster.

13:19Well, it took a long time to put it together because maybe some of it was my fault,

13:25but certainly there was a misleading enthusiasm about my work.

13:30But when I presented The Lobster, people didn't really react well to it.

13:37They thought that I decided to make English language films in order to make like more conventional films.

13:44That was the expectation I realized.

13:47What we expected was that you're going to make something, you know, in the English language,

13:53which is, you know, conventional, but you'll do a little bit of a twist to it because you're like,

14:00different. And it only really managed to happen when Colin Farrell and Rachel Weiss got involved.

14:10Are you planning on buying anything else nice for yourself while we're here?

14:13Yes. Contact lens solution and a Parker rollerball.

14:19I didn't know you were short sighted.

14:23I'm short sighted too.

14:24Now I was working in a totally different structure, in a professional environment,

14:29in places where there was a film industry and there were rules, funnily enough, that I had to kind of abide by.

14:40I think it was the first or second day on set where the AD was next to me with his watch and going like,

14:47I go like, what's, what's wrong with your watch? Is there something wrong? Like, what's, what's going on?

14:52And he was like, you have to, two more minutes to finish this scene.

14:56And I go like, what?

14:58I thought he was joking, really. I mean, my AD was like doing laundry and driving people around and like,

15:06also doing the schedule and like setting down the tracks and like everything.

15:13He wasn't like next to me going like, I have to hurry.

15:16So it was, it was quite shocking. And, you know, I, I got acquainted with a different type of mentality,

15:24which is like, you know, this is our job. But I, throughout, you know, making The Lobster,

15:29I just couldn't get over how people that are making films, which to me was like a gift and magical.

15:38And I could never imagine that I could do it as a real thing.

15:43You know, anyone that's involved, how could they not care? And how could they not literally gift

15:53two extra minutes to get the shot, you know, right? But I guess I, you know, I, I understand that,

16:01you know, with structure and resources, you know, there needs to be, you know, a set of rules.

16:10Otherwise, like you can go wrong. And there's so many people involved that actually,

16:15you know, do make a living through that. And, you know, there needs to be regulation.

16:21Man eats alone.

16:22Well, there's a thing that I don't want to discuss with actors, what the character is,

16:41how they should do it, what's their background. I'm not doing any of that because I don't want to

16:47limit it. I don't want to narrow it down to something very specific. I also don't want to

16:54do it because I want to be as objective as possible while I'm watching them perform,

17:01because I feel like if we've agreed, oh, this character is this way. So he walks this way and

17:08he speaks that way. Then, you know, we don't have any distance to go like, that's stupid. That looks

17:15terrible. So if we haven't agreed that, I don't know what it is that you're bringing. You know,

17:20I can just be almost as an audience member and go like, okay, come in through the door. And then I

17:27could go like, why are you walking like that? That's, that's ridiculous. Like, what are you doing?

17:33Killing of a Sacred Deer. After we finished the screenplay, I felt that it was more of an American

17:42film, an American story, that it would kind of be more grounded in a way in America, felt more

17:50natural place for it. We were very scared because we heard all these stories about how it works in

17:59America and how, you know, restricting it could be. I mean, it's like with the unions and what you can

18:04do and what you can't do and it's going to be complicated and all of these things, it works in

18:10a different way and it's more expensive and, you know, all that. But somehow we filmed in Cincinnati

18:20and it was like the beginning of this period of Cincinnati becoming like a popular place to make films.

18:28One of the reasons was like it had this incredibly state-of-the-art hospital, which was a key

18:35location for the film, that was very new and some of the floors were still empty. They weren't being used yet.

18:43Eat a donut. I don't want it, Dad. You do, but you're afraid your mother and I will tell you all for

18:50eating donuts. I just had this idea that the camera was a presence that was observing the

18:58characters and would, you know, normally be somewhere high up looking at them or somewhere really low

19:04hiding, you know, watching these people. So that was like the first inclination in order to come up

19:13with a set of rules of how are we, you know, filming this. I used Zooms, you know, quite a bit,

19:20so there was that kind of style reminiscent maybe of like 70s films or horror films, which I guess the

19:31film flirts with, like flirts with a genre. Stop talking. Don't you understand that you're wasting

19:38time and you don't have much time left? I said stop talking. Steven, it's going to be better once it's done.

19:45The killing of a secret deer for me was my version of a horror, mystic kind of film. But also what

20:06happened in the process of writing the screenplay was that I realized there were quite a few parallels

20:14with, you know, an ancient Greek tragedy, Iphigenia. And we, you know, we threw in a couple of

20:25things from that as well, although we didn't start thinking, you know, let's, you know, adapt that.

20:30As we were writing the screenplay, we went like, oh, that kind of is reminiscent of some aspects of,

20:36you know, that. So, I mean, the title itself is, you know, the killing of a sacred deer is like how the story

20:43of the tragedy starts is like this sacred deer is killed and it ignites, you know, a whole war and

20:51drama and bloodshed.

20:55The Favourite.

20:58The Favourite was actually a project that we were developing for a long time. Well, even before I

21:05was involved, there were many years of that story being developed with different writers. And then I

21:13I started searching for the appropriate writer to work with on it. And we discovered Tony, like Namara,

21:24who's an Australian writer. And it clicked again, kind of in a similar way that I clicked with

21:32of Themis. I found someone that I felt had a strong voice. My vision of the Favourite really,

21:40you know, matched his voice.

21:42It seems you have allocated even more money into the abyss that is this fool's errand.

21:47Oh, yes, we will win. Sarah is sure we will win.

21:51This is the landholders' tax. You have no idea the firestorm of rage you have set loose in the

21:54countryside. Really, are they angry? Dearest Queen, how do you like my stockings? Festive.

22:00Very. I was just explaining to the Queen a mistake that's taxes. The war as well. We should sue for peace.

22:05Oh, Holly, you are such a bore. I really wanted Olivia Colman to play the part of the Queen. And when we

22:14scheduled it for production, she wasn't available. And I just went, I don't want to make this film without

22:21Olivia. Why don't we just, you know, wait for her and make The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is,

22:30you know, a screenplay that we have ready. And, you know, people involved in that in the Favourite

22:36kind of freaked out that it was like being postponed again, once again, because it was a project that

22:41was around for many years. But I just, you know, I really couldn't think of anyone else playing that

22:49part except Olivia. Mr. Freeman. Mr. Morley. I guess it's my tendency to try and break again

23:05rules and what's been done with the genre before. And I did look at films that did that. Like,

23:11there's also, you know, apart from Abadeus that I think it's, you know, incredible.

23:16There's The Madness of King George, which was a great period film made. Peter Greenaway's

23:22The Draftsman's Contract we looked at. I mean, a lot of the, I think some of the actual wigs

23:27we might have found that were used there and we made them even, you know, bigger and weirder.

23:34What an outfit. Thank you.

23:38But that kind of minimalism visually of that film. But then weirdly enough, I remember

23:45showing Robbie, which was the first time actually working with Robbie Ryan, the cinematographer,

23:52stuff like possession, Zulawski's possession in terms of like how the camera moves and interacts. And

24:00and I started having an interest in, you know, wider lenses. It started on the killing of a sacred

24:06deer, you know, having that kind of approach. And then it went further with a favorite.

24:14The queen has decided, Harley. I disagree.

24:17A lot. I would like an audience with the queen where I may state my case.

24:20Stage it to me. I love a comedy. Is there cake?

24:23During that time, mind you, there was a rule of using no artificial lighting, uh, all the way

24:31over to the favorite. I wanted to maintain that kind of freedom on set. So the first time I met Robbie

24:37Ryan, I went like, you know, I want to make this film, but you know, have in mind, I don't use lights.

24:44We just use natural light or candles or, you know, practical lights. But I, you know, I don't want

24:51any lights on set. I don't want to be waiting around when we're, you know, changing setups to light

24:58people's faces and all that. And, you know, Robbie was, you know, game. Like he actually took it very

25:06very seriously to the point of a few days before shooting a night scene outside the castle. He went

25:16to me and went like, so, you know, like you said, we're not using any lights.

25:22How are we going to shoot outside at night with no lights? And I go like, Robbie, I mean,

25:29we're going to get lights for the night scene. I mean, I, I meant it as a, like a, the general rule.

25:35There is no way of shooting without lights. To me, it was like, so like telling of how, you know,

25:43devoted he was in like maintaining the rules of the game that he was like trying to figure out how we're

25:49going to shoot at night, pitch black with no lights. Do it again.

25:58The favorite was, you know, Emma Stone enters and I find, you know, a kindred spirit, like someone

26:06that I communicate without, without having to say anything. You know, we have a similar sense of

26:13humor and it's easy and funny and obviously a great actress and gets it. And, you know, it just feels

26:24right. So by the end of it, we just, you know, told each other, you know, I really want to do this

26:32again, you know, and we meant it, um, as history has showed.

26:38Poor things. So poor things, I thought it was perfect for Emma. She fell in love with it as

26:47well. She fell in love with the character immediately. That film was, I guess, different

26:52in every aspect, you know, from telling Robbie, we're using no lights and him going like, we're

26:58going to do at night to say, to saying, this is all going to be in a studio. Everything is going to be a

27:07set, even exteriors, the cities, everything will be built.

27:24We're shooting a lot of different stocks. We're shooting black and white. We're shooting

27:29color negative and we're shooting Ektachrome as well. When we watched the first images were like

27:36blown away. We also tested VistaVision for the first time and we shot one scene of poor things

27:45on VistaVision, the reanimation scene that had no dialogue because, you know, all of the VistaVision

27:52cameras that we knew that were working, you know, are extremely loud.

27:57But we also pushed, I think, the use of, you know, wide angle lenses as much as we could. And again,

28:14being driven by this story, which felt so otherworldly and using 4mm, 16mm lenses on a 35mm camera.

28:27You know, producing those, you know, porthole views of the world and

28:33miniatures and LED walls and just trying to create this world, mostly being inspired by,

28:44you know, old school analog filmmaking, like as it would be, you know, back projections. Some of the

28:51sets were actually, you know, painted backdrops that we later enhanced in post-production.

28:57So it was like a way of merging, you know, all this old school type of cinematography,

29:02building those sets, painting the backgrounds, and then using either stuff that we created, painted,

29:11animated on an LED screen so that, you know, it's more efficient to film it. But everything was created by us.

29:22Do you, Bella Baxter, take this man as your husband? Did we miss the part about anyone objecting to this?

29:30Or has that been removed in some kind of faux modernization of the catechism?

29:35I just worked by researching music, listening to a lot of music while I was in the editing room,

29:50trying things and managing to find the exact thing that felt right for each scene and for the film as a whole.

30:00I listened to Jerskin's first album, which is very complex, but essentially a pop album, but had

30:10such versatility in terms of sound and composition. And I just felt that I,

30:17again, like I found someone that creatively is extremely interesting and I'm very, I feel very close to in a way.

30:38The first, you know, demos that he sent to me, I cried basically, because it was, you know,

30:46again, another moment of going like, you know, this, I found a person, like he

30:54gets it. This is what he's created is already as a demo, you know, moving. So he composed the entirety of the

31:03score before we even shot a frame of the film.

31:06Kinds of Kindness came out of the need to do something different to what we had done with

31:16Ephthymes. And I think that at that point, we came up with the idea, why don't we just make a film,

31:23like a triptych or, and we didn't know if it was going to be like individual short stories as it ended up being, or they would, you know, overlap and show them in parallel.

31:33But I think when I also had the idea of using the same actors, as we were writing the script,

31:40I kept thinking that it would be interesting to use the same actors in the different parts.

31:44So that made it clear that we had to make the stories separate so that you wouldn't be confused with the same actors if the stories were told in parallel and not one after another.

31:56So that came out of that need of doing something different with Ephthymes and also working, you know, again with Emma and having the opportunity to do something different with her.

32:07And also working with other people that I wanted to work with, like Margaret Cawley and Jesse Plemons.

32:13Willem, that we worked together on poor things and he's another, you know, part of the troupe.

32:19Raymond, I've given this a lot of thought and I can't do what you are asking me.

32:26I, again, come in and sit down there before you speak.

32:32Raymond.

32:33I, I want you to come in and sit down there before you speak.

32:36I'll leave you two alone now.

32:50I always try to have some time of rehearsal with the actors.

32:55Sometimes, you know, the period is really short because we don't have them for a long time and sometimes we do get more.

33:01On The Favourite, actually, we had plenty of time to rehearse.

33:07And also, you know, that's when Emma became acquainted with the way of the way I like to rehearse with the actors, which is basically

33:18not rehearsing the scenes and the dialogue as they're supposed to be in the film,

33:23but doing the exact opposite, kind of deconstructing them,

33:27not think about the character and how they're going to do it and how they're going to perform,

33:32but going through the lines while playing games, while doing silly things and getting comfortable

33:39with each other, getting comfortable with making a fool of themselves in front of everyone and

33:45not care about, you know, how they're perceived or anything like that.

33:49And at the same time, like ingesting the text, but unconsciously without thinking about it intellectually.

34:00I think, you know, I just keep saying it's a process of like just creating this family or group or troupe

34:07that just gets bigger and bigger and someone is added every step of the way.

34:14Should we all go upstairs to the bedroom?

34:20I think it's best we don't go up to the bedroom tonight.

34:25What, we're going to fuck on the table?

34:28Come on, Dan, that'll be weird.

34:30Uh, we'd better be getting home soon. Liz, you must be tired and I have to be up early.

34:37But everything was wonderful tonight, though.

34:40I think you're right. I think we should leave it for some other time.

34:43Maybe next time.

34:47I'll clean up the plates.

34:50I just can't stand having food in front of me when I've finished eating.

34:53I will help.

34:54No, Martha, you sit. I'll be right back.

34:56No, I want to, please.

35:00Just, you know, maintain that kind of enthusiasm and intimacy with, you know, the actors and,

35:07you know, keeping it as simple as possible and focusing on the essence of things.

35:11Bougonia.

35:15Bougonia was the first time that I received a screenplay and I felt that I wanted to make it,

35:22like, almost as it was. I had never had that experience before. And I read the script,

35:28I got really excited and I sent it immediately the same night to Emma and she had the same reaction.

35:36And we very quickly, you know, decided to get involved.

35:40So, Will Tracy had written this great script.

35:44It was initiated by Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen that, you know, knew of the original film,

35:50which I didn't know and I hadn't seen and neither had Will.

35:54The great thing was that Will watched the film once and then he wrote the script just,

36:02you know, by using the premise and not like going back and trying to make a faithful remake of that

36:08film. I think he saw the possibilities and the interest of making something very contemporary that

36:19belonged in America.

36:22Thanks, Johnny. Feel free to leave early. I mean, unless you're busy.

36:27Or you have things to do, but feel free if you can.

36:30Up to you.

36:31I mean, from its genesis, it was like a contemporary film.

36:35Choosing to build this house that it takes place was an important decision.

36:41Instead of like trying and combine different locations that would be appropriate for the

36:46house and then another for the basement and building that house in a realistic manner

36:52was that kind of blending of the worlds.

36:55So we built an actual house with the basement there, but it was built.

37:00So it wasn't real, but it was at the same time.

37:04And there was so much detail that went into it and especially

37:10James Price and his team included so many details in the house, in the backgrounds,

37:17things that you never see in the film.

37:20You would walk into the house, open every drawer, every pot or whatever,

37:26and there was something in there that made sense with the world of the film.

37:30And that was so helpful for the actors, like to just go there and feel like it's real.

37:40Incredible.

37:41What is?

37:43She's the D2.

37:46The best I've seen.

37:48How can you tell she's an alien?

37:50Well, the signs are obvious.

37:55They did a hell of a job on it, but the tails are there.

37:58Narrow feet.

38:00Then cuticles.

38:02Slight overbite.

38:06It was quite important that we decided to shoot it on Vistavision when we finally found

38:11a camera that was slightly quieter than the one we had used before.

38:16You know, using a larger format while filming these, you know, three people in a very

38:24tight environment, you know, created this conflict between something iconic and larger than life,

38:32which is a face, a human face, but within, you know, like a fucked up basement.

38:38So I think that, again, created this sense of avoiding making the film too literal, because

38:49it requires of you a lot of faith in it while watching it.

38:54And it requires of you to make judgments and decisions about what you believe, what you don't.

39:04So creating it visually, a realistic contemporary film, but with all these heightened details,

39:14I think, allows for the viewer to believe in those things.

39:20You're going to say that I'm in some kind of internet-induced, auto-hypnotic

39:25feedback loop and gatekeepers and norms and all that weak hegemonic horse,

39:31but that is precisely the limp rhetoric that you've been instructed to counter the human insurgency with.

39:37That's the hyper-normalized dialectic, by which you've convinced seven and a half billion people

39:42that they're not your captives, to keep us believing in these false institutional

39:50shibboleths.

39:52You mean shibboleths?

39:53That's what I said.

39:54The fact that people are willing to question, which brings us, you know, to the beginning,

40:02question what the truth is and what reality is, find proof, question the facts that they're being

40:11given and, you know, try and find their own truth.

40:16And I find fascinating that now that I'm kind of in it as well, that the more technology advances

40:26and science, the more blurred it becomes.

40:31Because science has reached a point like physics and neuroscience, they have reached a point that

40:38they understand more, but, you know, the more they understand, the more complicated it becomes and the

40:46more you need to believe in something that's not proven, if it makes sense.

40:51So there's all these theories, for example, that, you know, we live in a simulation, for example,

40:59which, again, fascinates me.

41:02And I'm like, why not?

41:04It makes sense what they're saying, you know, and it's scientists that say that.

41:08So it's fascinating that, you know, a scientist is asking you to believe almost the way that you

41:14believe in God or whatever God anyone believes.

41:19And it becomes like a similar thing.

41:22Like we used to kind of try and disprove the belief in God with science.

41:30And now science is kind of asking of people the same thing to make that leap and believing that

41:38there's something that we can't prove and we can't understand.

41:41But we have a hunch that that's what's going on and kind of feels the same.

41:45And I find that fascinating.

41:49Talking about all these films, it feels like a more cohesive journey instead of like the way

41:54you experience it in life, which is like I'm going from this to this and this overlapped and,

41:59you know, complaining about it and not, you know, not being happy with it all.

42:04And, you know, trying to, you know, go through everything, I guess I realized that there is some

42:11kind of consistency in a journey and, you know, and I'm not alone in this journey.

42:19And there's like all these people that are jumping on the boat and, you know, trying to achieve,

42:25you know, similar goals.

42:27And I might be willing to make another film, which I was doubting for a little bit.

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