00:00And those texts turned to me and Ezra texting each other, talking about how do we convince Olivia to act in the movie?
00:05Yeah, there was a...
00:06Because she kept just texting us, like, every name of every other actress in Hollywood, who is not Olivia Wilde.
00:14And it was just...
00:15And we kept saying, yes, and...
00:18Yeah, and then I just started being like, you do it, just like in all capital letters, just like, you be the person, you do it.
00:25It'll be better if you do it.
00:27I would never have, in a million years, dreamed of doing that on my own.
00:31Like, I never would have done it if they hadn't.
00:33That's where we differ.
00:34Told you to.
00:35Exactly.
00:36I make myself front and center.
00:42Hi.
00:42Hi.
00:44Wow, thanks, Seth.
00:45Oh my god, you guys must be in fabulous spirits.
00:49How was last night?
00:50How are you feeling this morning?
00:51This is the best night of my life.
00:52I should have done, like, a bigger Google on this, but, like, I was wondering how many films have actually gotten a...
00:59Because you don't get a standing O in America very often.
01:02You can really trust a standing O.
01:03I didn't understand what was happening.
01:04I was like, why is everyone leaving?
01:07I was like, wait, we're doing a Q&A?
01:08Oh.
01:10Namaste.
01:11Namaste.
01:12Namaste.
01:13Namaste.
01:13How long ago did you get this script from Rashida and Will?
01:17You know, it's funny.
01:18This process came together real quick in the grand scheme of things once we got going.
01:24So it was last fall that I realized that I could get this, we could make this movie.
01:33I had gotten the script way before that, actually.
01:37Always loved this script.
01:38But, you know, I thought, I don't know exactly what it is yet.
01:42I can't tell exactly what it is.
01:44And then when it came to be that we could actually get it going, I asked these guys basically, at the last possible second, can you make a movie, like, now?
01:55And we shot it in April.
01:57Like, it's crazy that we're premiering it within the same calendar year of making it.
02:02And it was...
02:04Because she's a beast.
02:05Because we were collectively a bunch of beasts.
02:08And it was, I think, a script that, you know, had been in development for a long time.
02:14And then it's one of those things that the kind of chemical equation of everybody coming together and actively workshopping it just made it happen pretty quickly.
02:25Did you guys have to move stuff around to make it happen now?
02:28Or, like, was it just, like, a really good kismet situation?
02:32It was just good timing.
02:33Yeah.
02:34It was good timing.
02:34We shot it very, I mean, we shot the movie in, like, three, four.
02:37Yeah, 23 days.
02:38Yeah.
02:39So it was...
02:40And we rehearsed for a little bit.
02:41But, yeah, it was very quick.
02:42It was...
02:43Yeah.
02:44Yeah.
02:44Thank God.
02:45We were lucky.
02:45You were, like, literally...
02:46It was in L.A.
02:47You had just finished the studio?
02:49I just finished Platonic.
02:50The studio was airing while we were...
02:51Oh, right.
02:52That's right.
02:52That's right.
02:53The thing.
02:54But, yeah, it was...
02:55It was...
02:56Yeah.
02:56We had just...
02:57Oh, yeah.
02:57We were, like, just trying to write the show, basically.
02:59Yeah.
03:00But we had...
03:01We had different...
03:02Seth had never seen the Spanish film.
03:05I still haven't.
03:06I...
03:07I had seen it a couple of years ago, and I loved it...
03:12Just loved it hugely, and thought this would be so great.
03:17And I'd thought about Seth, because my wife produced a lot of Seth's movies, and I thought...
03:21You probably don't know.
03:22We've been friends for, like, 20 years.
03:23Yeah.
03:23And I thought...
03:25I really thought...
03:26I thought...
03:26I thought that would be a really fun one to do with Seth.
03:30And I talked about that and everything.
03:31But it was...
03:32And then a producer, who's one of our producers, had gotten the rights.
03:35And it seemed to just...
03:37It seemed to hover in this limbo, and I got...
03:41I got into this headspace of thinking, like, huh, that one's just not gonna...
03:45You know, it's gonna elude...
03:48You know, it's gonna elude me.
03:49But I kept thinking about it, and separately, loved Olivia's films.
03:56And then...
03:57And suddenly, it comes around and said, Olivia's gonna direct it.
04:01I thought, what?
04:01And she wants Seth.
04:02And I was like, oh, my God.
04:04It...
04:04I just couldn't believe it.
04:05It was one of those things that I thought...
04:07I thought, this isn't gonna happen.
04:09And then it ended up happening, like, with a better combination of people than I could have imagined.
04:15I was so...
04:16Everything I can.
04:17And Penelope, too.
04:18I was like...
04:19I couldn't believe how supportive and enthusiastic she was from Jump.
04:26I mean, she...
04:27I'll never forget my first Zoom with Penelope.
04:29She was so sweet.
04:30She was in Madrid, and she was like, I love this movie.
04:33I love it.
04:34And then she was like, it's so funny.
04:36And then in the background, suddenly, there's Javier Bardem standing behind her, and he's like, are we making a movie?
04:41I was like...
04:42You have to say yes.
04:44Yes.
04:46And it was just the best, the best feeling.
04:49Did...
04:49I know you're just sort of describing this as, like, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf with some Astaire Perel in there.
04:55But I do...
04:56For people who haven't seen it, also...
04:58That's a very fancy...
05:00I wanted to throw one more in there, which is, like, where does couples therapy and, like, an Orna Pickens...
05:05Where does she...
05:06Where does it fall?
05:07It's got Orna in there as well.
05:08Okay.
05:09For sure.
05:10Yeah.
05:10Yeah, because I think Penelope's character is a realist, and she's encouraging these people to take responsibility for their own happiness.
05:19And I think that's something that I think Orna does quite often.
05:23And it's a good message to put out there, I think.
05:28So hopefully that rings true for people.
05:30What is your guys' favorite...
05:34Like, if you're at a dinner party or you're in any situation where, like, the choice is small talk or deep talk, like, what's a topic you guys lean on?
05:43I don't like small talk.
05:44I'm very bad at it.
05:44I go way too deep, way too fast with strangers and start talking about things where I can see on their face and, like, I didn't sign up for this.
05:52I do a weird question where I say, like, if I told you another pandemic was coming, what would you do?
05:57Where would you move?
05:58Like, do I go really?
05:59Oh, that's a fun question.
06:00Yeah, I'm like, would you move to a farm with your closest friends?
06:04Everyone take a moment to pick up.
06:07I moved to Park City, Utah.
06:08Park City, Utah works for me.
06:11Yeah.
06:12You're not small talk.
06:14You're big talk.
06:16Yeah.
06:16You're big talk.
06:18These days, it's like, you know, what are we going to do about mass Gestapo?
06:23Yeah, exactly.
06:24Shooting American citizens.
06:26Small talk.
06:27Yeah.
06:27Exactly.
06:28Have you found an answer?
06:29We're sitting here talking about movies while an illegal army is being mounted against U.S. citizens.
06:38Yep.
06:39But I think that one of the most delightful things about this whole experience was there was this kind of template.
06:54There was this idea of there's an unhappy couple and another couple comes and there's this, you know, there's this collision in one space and two people who are in one state of relationship are going to collide with these other people.
07:10And something's going to be very different by the end of it.
07:14And there's the, I don't want to, you know, ruin it for people who don't see the movie.
07:17But there's obviously like the stimulus of the type of people, the people upstairs and who they are and what they bring down with them.
07:27But, but I don't, I can't really think of anything in a long time where the person kind of leading us said to Seth and me and Penelope, like, I love this template.
07:39But what I really want out of it is I want to, I want to improvise and curate and write it in, write it based on you.
07:49I want you guys to bring, you know, so like the entirety of the menopausal Mary Claire Haver thing, all of that came from Penelope.
07:58She, she wrote it.
07:59She wrote the thing about the thing.
08:01Seth and Olivia worked out the entirety of that ending, you know, and my character's name was Shane.
08:06And I, there's a hawk in my life.
08:10Yeah.
08:10There's a hawk in my life and the idea, but, but it's very, I said it last night on the stage.
08:16Olivia said, let's, let's, we don't have a lot of time, but let's stitch the parachute as we're falling and it's going to open.
08:21And, and I felt to a very, very unusual degree that what the film became is the version, the version informed by the four of us very specifically.
08:35Like we brought our own baggage.
08:37We brought our own experiences.
08:38We sat around a lot and talked about our own, you know, experiences in the vein of the film.
08:45And, and, and, and, and because Olivia shot it in sequence, whatever happened, whatever we discovered, improvised, we could build on.
08:55Yeah.
08:56And we would improvise one line sometimes and then we'd all look at each other and be like, oh, that, that could be a big thing.
09:00Like that could actually come back.
09:02Like that could change.
09:02Yeah.
09:03It was, it was, you know, um, yeah, it was really cool in that way.
09:07I don't, yeah, I don't think I've had an experience where the, where the text was being, the, the text was being discovered by having the conversations about what we all thought was important and funny.
09:21Yeah.
09:21You know what I mean?
09:22And, and it, it just like, that can, that, that can really not work.
09:27Like, it can, it can really not work.
09:30And I, like, I just said I don't want to watch it last night, but the, like, that's chemistry.
09:35And I, I felt like it's a, it's an amazing feeling when you're like, when you're, you're playing ping pong and the rally goes on and on and on.
09:45And you're just like, it's spinning up and spinning up and you sort of feel, and I felt even toward the last week, we didn't actually really know for sure how the kind of tone shift from Hawk sharing his story to, you know,
10:00and that, I, we decided, we decided not to, I, I kind of wrote that story of Hawk's background and I asked Olivia, can I not tell you what I'm going to say?
10:11And, and can we just shoot you guys?
10:14And she, she let, she let me drop that into the mix without pre-reading it, which was amazing.
10:21And those shots on her, or her hearing it for the first time.
10:24But only with Edward Norton do you say like, yeah, sure, you can write your own monologue and just drop it.
10:29And then after you were shooting it, I was like, I think I would make fun of this.
10:36And, and Penelope got kind of angry at it.
10:41Oh yeah, it changed the whole thing.
10:42But I will, I will say like, on the last couple of days, as the scene unfolded, we all turned to each other and, and kind of went, we did it.
10:52We did it.
10:53Like we did it.
10:54We figured it out.
10:55Like it was, it was, it was.
10:57But that kind of thing, it requires such like constant engagement from a cast.
11:02It's not the kind of movie where everyone's like, well, bye, and goes home and just doesn't think about it, shows up and reads the lines.
11:07They were so fully engaged the entire time that everybody would arrive being like, yeah, you know, I was thinking about it.
11:13And I have an idea and I have a thought.
11:15I'm going to try this.
11:16And that is like a true director's dream to be like, yeah, we're all locked in and doing this together.
11:23You say that, but that's a lot of director's nightmare too.
11:25It really is.
11:26It really is.
11:28Olivia was.
11:29Yeah.
11:31No.
11:31Have some ideas.
11:32Sometimes it's great.
11:35No, Olivia was absolutely, I mean, the equanimity and enthusiasm she had for the, for a process of evolution on the fly.
11:44Yeah.
11:44Was really a next level kind of confidence.
11:48It's also like hard to do.
11:49Like you need people who can actually do it.
11:52Yeah.
11:52Like to.
11:53And keep it organized.
11:54Keep it organized and understand, remember, technically understand.
11:58Yeah.
11:58How to make it usable and when to improvise and when not to improvise and when it becomes too late to improvise.
12:04Also like shooting on film.
12:06So it doesn't mean you can be like, well, we'll just do this forever.
12:08No, yeah.
12:08It was like a limited amount of film.
12:10And, you know, some of those takes, like there's a scene in the middle where we have a long conversation about sex parties.
12:15Yes.
12:15And it's a 16 minute take.
12:18It's a thousand foot man.
12:19Which we shot for like two and a half days or something like that.
12:21And the crew were so excited because they were like, we've never seen actors do an entire scene in one that's that long.
12:30And it was only because it was a bunch of prose.
12:32It was like a little play.
12:34Do you ever have an intrusive thought about taking the reel and stealing it?
12:38I love it because our crew is largely the studio crew, like our camera crew.
12:42I mean, all of them.
12:43They only knew her as a crazy person.
12:44Yeah, they were like, this is different.
12:46But everyone kept saying like, are you going to take the reel?
12:50I would have.
12:50I would have done that.
12:51You would have.
12:52Oh, now I know.
12:56Gotcha.
12:56Gotcha.
12:57Yeah.
12:57Before we run out of time, one question I'm asking everyone who comes in is what was your first, like the first job you had in Hollywood where you were able to get yourself like a little present?
13:08And what was the thing you got yourself?
13:10I was on Freach and Geeks and I bought myself an Acura.
13:17At 15.
13:18Yeah.
13:19At 16.
13:21They are sponsoring the festival.
13:22Yeah, exactly.
13:23I know.
13:23So, Acura.
13:25Put some cup holders in the back of your car.
13:27Do you still have it?
13:28Is always the...
13:29I do not say it got destroyed on my first date with my wife, actually.
13:33We got in a terrible car accident.
13:34Oh, that's right.
13:34Yeah.
13:35Oh, my God.
13:36So, there you go.
13:37But it kept me alive.
13:39Yeah.
13:39So, I guess that's good.
13:41Yeah.
13:41How about you?
13:42I lived in New York.
13:46When I was shooting Primal Fear in L.A. when I was 25, I was totally unconvinced that this
13:54wouldn't be maybe my last job.
13:56So, I was saving my per diem money.
13:59I was like hoarding it in a huge envelope.
14:02And Richard Gere said, Richard...
14:04Because I was thinking, this is a couple months' rent, you know, if this doesn't go well.
14:09And I remember Richard Gere saying something like, you know, he had these amazing guitars
14:15and I play guitar.
14:16And he took me guitar shopping and he showed me this like 1969 Martin guitar.
14:20And I was so in love with it.
14:21And it was...
14:21I don't remember what it cost.
14:23And I said, I can't get that guitar.
14:26And he looked at me and goes, kid, you are going to have to learn how to spend some money.
14:29And he was like, take that pretty money in your envelope and buy that guitar right now.
14:35And so, it was like the first thing I ever bought over a thousand dollars.
14:38And I still have it, yeah.
14:39That's good.
14:40Mine was a car.
14:42It was a 1957 Chevy Biscayne.
14:46Wow.
14:47Yeah, it was really beautiful.
14:48It was powder blue.
14:49Did it drive well?
14:50It didn't.
14:51It broke down all the time.
14:52I was going to say, what?
14:53And in those days, I was there with like the Thomas guy on the side of the freeway,
14:58just like in the fast lane, terrible place to go down.
15:00Both cars and a real double-edged sword.
15:01Yeah, yeah.
15:03Really stressful every time.
15:06Thank you for chatting.
15:07I appreciate it.
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