00:00Uh, maybe just we're all getting old together and you try to retrieve your youth.
00:25What's more scary, going in space or in the heart of the jungle or portraying your parents?
00:35But it's much scarier going home because the other thing, space or the jungle, that's a physically difficult, logistically difficult,
00:44you know, oh my God, I have to walk up this mountain, I'm carrying equipment along with everybody else and
00:50it's the jungle and bugs.
00:51But the harder work is to try to be honest with yourself and to show your family in sometimes not
01:00a great light.
01:01Um, and you feel exposed, you feel vulnerable.
01:07So that's much harder, much harder.
01:09Not even close, actually.
01:11What's the thing with, uh, directors telling their own stories?
01:16Because Cuaron, Paolo Sorrentino, Ignatito, Kenneth Branagh, now you, Simone Spielberg.
01:21Why?
01:22What's happening?
01:24Uh, maybe just we're all getting old together and you try to retrieve your youth.
01:30It has to do, I will tell you, I think it has to do with, well, there's two things.
01:35The first is that there's a long tradition of it, quite a beautiful tradition and a wonderful tradition where you're
01:40personal and you put yourself into the work.
01:42Uh, the other thing, and I, I know this is maybe a little bit too downbeat, but, you know, cinema
01:49is in a very, uh, tenuous place, tough place.
01:53Uh, the pandemic did a lot of damage and I think all of us, and I know, because I know
01:59Inaritu very well, we're very good friends and I know, I mean, I know all those guys pretty much.
02:04And, and we all feel that the cinema is, uh, maybe, uh, eluding us a little bit, so we want
02:12it to be personal while we can.
02:14Hmm.
02:15I mean, I know that's a little bit sadder a response than you want, but it's true.
02:20Mm-hmm.
02:21Uh, there's a beautiful cameo in your movie, uh, Jessica Shanstein is one of the Trump's family.
02:26Uh, and it's really interesting, you said that you remember that speech.
02:32Yeah.
02:32So, um, so well.
02:35Yeah.
02:36Uh, did it stuck on you the idea of, of privilege?
02:40But it's a funny story about that speech that you're talking about, because my brother was in the audience as
02:45well.
02:45So I called him and I said, um, Ed, can you write down all the speech as you remember it?
02:54And I'll do the same thing and we'll look and we'll see if they're similar.
02:59So, he did his, I did mine.
03:02They were exactly the same, which makes me think it's pretty accurate.
03:06And I will tell you that at age 12, when I saw her speaking, I thought it was ridiculous.
03:12Um, there's a woman, she's talking, she's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and all she's doing is expressing how
03:20hard she had to work.
03:21And I remember thinking that's insane and you have no idea about anything.
03:28So, if you want to call that an awareness of privilege, then fine.
03:32But I can tell you, I remember as a kid thinking it was crazy.
03:36Speaking about that, you, you wrote the movie, uh, before, uh, 2020 and, and Black Lives Matter
03:45movement came along.
03:46Um, so why, why you are almost like in the shine, you had, the shine.
03:53The shine.
03:53Yeah.
03:54Why you wanted to tell this story?
03:57Why in America this thing is still so, so present in your opinion?
04:03It's impossible to look at the history, not just of the United States, but of the world, and not see
04:11the fissures of class and race.
04:14These are things that, uh, have long preoccupied the country, really since its beginning, and not even with the slave
04:24trade.
04:25It really began with the indigenous people of the Americas, and what happened to them.
04:31So, it's like telling the story of my country without involving yourself in these matters, would be to avoid the
04:40big, like, you know what they say, the elephant in the room?
04:43Yeah.
04:44So, I had to do it.
04:47But you're right, I mean, context and history change constantly, so who knows?
04:51The thing was written in 2019, and who knows how it feels to, to audiences today.
04:58Uh, I, I'm Italian, so, so I understand well, um, the importance of, of, uh, family, dinners with family.
05:06Yeah.
05:06How did you, uh, find the, the truth in those scenes, because the food, the, the words, how, how, how
05:13was for you portraying family dinner?
05:16Those family dinners, at the time, they seemed very important to me.
05:20Uh, they always, and I mean always, became chaos.
05:25They would start orderly.
05:27My mother would come out, she would say, here's dinner.
05:31And some, at some point, usually caused by me, by the way, I was very much a jerk.
05:37And I would say, you know, like, I'm ordering other food, I don't like what you have.
05:40And then all of a sudden, she'd go, ah, you know, and then all of a sudden be crazy.
05:44Um, so, I, I just tried to remember some of those dinners with as much detail as I could.
05:51Again, I wrote lists of things that happened.
05:53You know, my father would always cough on his coffee.
05:57And he always drank coffee in the middle of the meal, which I never really understood either.
06:01He'd have, like, spaghetti with tomato sauce, drink coffee.
06:04It's gross to me.
06:05I don't even understand that.
06:06But, uh, so all these little details I tried to put in there, because a work of, uh, art, if
06:13I may say that, it, it, it really lives in details.
06:17You know, without detail, it doesn't really mean anything.
06:19You could boil a movie down to its absolute summary, and it wouldn't, it's like whether it's good or bad,
06:25you don't know.
06:26So, the things that matter are how my mother would dress, how she would bring out the plate,
06:32how my brother would, uh, you know, he would make a gesture or something to me, kick me under the
06:37table.
06:38All these things had to go into it.
06:41Thank you so much.
06:42That's it.
06:43Thank you.
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