00:00Hi, this is Mariah Gullow from The Hollywood Reporter, and this is Meet Your
00:04Nominee, and I'm here with Oscar-nominated, for a ninth time, Diane
00:10Warren. Hi. Hi. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Now, you've been
00:14nominated nine times, but I don't mean to say that to make you feel
00:19pressured about winning. No, no pressure at all. It would be nice, you know, but you
00:24know what? It is great to be nominated. I mean, you know, it is. I mean, I
00:27stayed up all night with my friends, like, counting down the seconds, and
00:31this is like, it never gets old, and in fact, this was probably the most
00:34excited I've ever, literally ever been to get nominated. It's probably the best
00:37morning of my life, like, and it wasn't the first song, and it wasn't the second
00:41song, and it wasn't the third song. It was number four, so I had a little heart
00:45attacks for a few minutes. Well, you know, just to let you know, you beat Peter O'Toole
00:52now, because he had eight nominations. Did he ever win? He did not win, no. I mean,
00:58Victor Young, composer, had 21 nominations, so I mean. Did he ever win? He did
01:04posthumously. Oh, good news, bad news. But here's the good news, he won. Bad news, he's
01:10dead. Okay, so I don't want, both of those things I don't want to happen to me. I don't
01:13want to be 21 times, and I want to be here for it. I mean, it's really fun. If you
01:17go
01:17on Wikipedia, there's statistics about, you know, most winning, and winning the
01:21earliest, and the latest, and I mean, there's so many. I've been 30 years now.
01:27My first was at the 60th Oscars, and here I am three years later, the 90th. With
01:31nine. That's amazing. What a stretch. I mean, I feel like that's kind of a lucky
01:35thing, though. This is a lucky year. Hopefully, that would be nice. That would be nice. I'm
01:40hoping. I think it's my most important song. I do. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about
01:46stand-up for something, which is in the movie Marshall. This song is, you know,
01:51it's, it's a call to action. It is. It's a call to action. We had common
01:55interviewing, and that's exactly what he said. It really is, especially in the
01:58times where, and who knew how timely it would be? You know, it was written for
02:01Marshall. It was, it was written to reflect who Thurgood Marshall was, but
02:05literally every day, it becomes more relevant, and, and so many amazing causes
02:11are, are, are, are just adopting the song right now. Yeah. You know, it's, it's like, wow. I mean,
02:16even this week, you see high school students speaking out against gun violence.
02:19Yeah, they're standing up, you know? Yeah. How, how great is that? Yeah, yeah. It's the
02:23kids again, right? It's inspiring. It's like, it's like in the 60s, like I, when I, when I wrote this,
02:27I was trying to write a song, like one of those, you know, protest anthems, the soul
02:31kind of protest, like, like, change is going to come. I listened over and over to change
02:35is going to come. I go, I want to write the 2000, at the time was, it was at the
02:39end of
02:392016. You know, what's the, what's that song going to be in this era? Like, there's no
02:45songs like that. There's nothing that makes you like, I want to write a song that you
02:47march to. Yeah. I want to change the world with, with, with the song. And I just, just
02:52over and over, you know, just listened to those kinds of songs. And, and, and it's
02:57weird because the era that that sixties era, that tumultuous era is now in, in
03:03where we're at in 2018, like you go, wait, what's changed in over 50 years? Well, you know,
03:08what, what's, what, what doesn't change people that there's a point where people don't
03:12take it. It's the kids, you know, they, you know, whether it was marching, you know,
03:16and with anti-Vietnam and against everything else that was going on, you know, it's, it's
03:20going to happen again. It's happening again. Yeah. And so the song that was almost from
03:25that time is even more so for this time. Does something feel different with your, I mean,
03:31your songwriting process, does it feel different when you have an, I know, like a nominated award
03:38winning song like this, I haven't won an award yet. So I only know the nominated part and it's
03:43awesome. You know, it's just, you know, it's just like this, but the song is making a difference.
03:47You know, it's like the last two songs I was nominated for, I feel that, you know,
03:51till it happens to you, the song I did wrote for Gaga for, for the, from the hunting ground,
03:55that was a song, you know, which I think brought the whole, I brought, I think it brought some
03:59sexual assault that helped bring that into the conversation where it wasn't before. And that was the
04:04songs, you know, saying till it happens to you, you don't know, like when people go,
04:07yeah, you know, it's going to get better. Well, you know what till it happens. It's like,
04:09it was anger in it and stating a fact. Now you have stand up for something. It's like,
04:13okay, we said till it happens to you. Now it's like, okay, we're going to change this shit. You
04:17know, now it's stand up for something and change it. Cause it's going, in fact,
04:21in until it happens to you, there's a line, um, to, um, till you walk where I walk,
04:26it's just all talk. And I realized that the line I wrote in stand up for something in the
04:30chorus, you can't just talk the talk. You got to walk that walk. It's interesting that
04:33they're in both songs, you know, and it's, but it's saying the same thing. It's like,
04:37no, you got to like, you got to stand up. You can't just sit back and talk about it.
04:41It feels like people are doing that right now. It's great. Cause we're woke. And once you're
04:46woke, you don't go back to sleep. So this is the woke national anthem. I hope, I hope it becomes
04:51that.
04:52Just in the past two years, you know, there are, there are more active marches. There's the
04:57women's March. Oh yeah. Is that awesome? There's, I mean, I mean, this is becoming a yearly event now.
05:02The me too and times have adopted, um, stand up for something as well. That's excellent. So
05:07they're one of the, I'm really proud of that. Do you stay in touch with Lady Gaga? Yeah. I mean,
05:12every now and then I, you know, I mean, she's busy, you know, she, I mean, I'm busy, she's busy,
05:16but she's a lot busier than me, but you know, I, I stay in touch with her. Yeah. Yeah. Do
05:20you
05:20ever plan on that collaborating with her in the future? Well, we did a song for stars born. I still
05:26like to do more in the future. Yeah. She's just so talented. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm,
05:29I'm so lucky. I get, I get to work with, you know, these great artists, you know,
05:33I get to work with Andrew and Common on them. Yeah. Tell me about the collaboration
05:36with Andrew and Common. I met Common when he, when he beat me, I was up against him
05:41for grit with a song I wrote called grateful, which was my seventh nomination. But I knew,
05:44I knew that one, one wasn't going to win. I knew that, that he'd win with glory, of course,
05:49you know, and he did, but we, we, we talked about working together, you know, after,
05:53after that a bunch of times, and then finally did. So when I, after I wrote the song, I thought,
05:59you know what, how cool would it be to, to put a rap on there? And, and what about Common?
06:04There's
06:04no one else besides Common. If we could add Common, if he could, you know, create this great rap on
06:09here
06:09and write this, you know, something to, to lift it. And, and it's so weird. Like literally a week
06:15after I thought that I was on a plane to Sundance and it was one of the few times I
06:18had to pay for my own
06:18flight. And usually I don't fly first class if I had to do that. And at the time I thought,
06:22you know, I'm just gonna, whatever, I'll pay a little extra just to be a little comfortable.
06:26And he's writing back of me. And it was like, not even a week after I thought of like, that
06:30he'd be
06:30the perfect, because you, those kinds of songs from the sixties, you didn't rap didn't exist yet.
06:35So I thought like, what if you put that on there and you mashed, you know, decades and genres.
06:40So he's sitting in back of me and I, I told him about the song, I sang him the chorus
06:43and he like loved
06:44it. And he goes, well, when we land, just get me the song, you know? So I sent him a
06:47song and I got like
06:49all these missed calls from him the next day. And he goes, I finally, you know, I don't know, I
06:53just
06:53didn't see the calls. I called him. I'm like, and he's like, I have to be on the song. I
06:58have to be on it.
06:59Can I be, I go, you don't have to ask me. I'd be honored. And what he came up with
07:03is, is inspired, you
07:06know? And as far as Andra, I thought Andrew would be perfect, but I had only read the script when
07:12I wrote
07:12the song. I hadn't seen the movie yet. So when I saw the movie with the demo in it, I
07:16didn't know Andrew
07:16was in the movie. She plays like a Billie holiday character. I'm like, wow, how crazy is this?
07:21Like that all this meant to be stuff is, is happening, you know? Yeah. It's like, you know,
07:26whether it's common, you know, right after thinking, you know, common's the perfect person
07:30or wanting Andrew, it's like, okay, this is so meant to be. Yeah. And, and, and this fits with what
07:36everybody, you know, we all want, you know, better for the world. All of us, we all stand up for
07:40what
07:41we stand up for. And if we can inspire, the song can inspire people.
08:04People feel inspired by this song. What, what do you recommend they do? Like how, what's the next step
08:09for the call to action? You can't sit down. You have to like go for, it's not just marching,
08:13it's voting. It's, it's, you know, just voting these people out that make these gun laws or,
08:19or, you know, just whatever you can do. Take it off Twitter, start with Twitter and then take it
08:24off of Twitter. Exactly. Start with the hashtag and then walk down to the streets. It's not just a hashtag.
08:28It's not just a hashtag. It's like, it's active. Call to action is active. So I have a couple of
08:32questions
08:32for you about Oscar Knight. Yeah. Um, if you could complete these sentences, if Jimmy Kimmel were
08:39to crack a joke about me, he would say, Susan Lucci's back. Susan Lucci's back. Maybe at the end,
08:50he'd go, she's not Susan Lucci anymore. Hey, and even Susan Lucci. She won when she's alive.
08:57That's right. It wasn't 50 times and she wasn't dead. So it's all good. That's right. She's a true
09:02inspiration. Um, the night wouldn't be complete unless blank happens. Unless I win. Yeah. Is that
09:10okay? Can I say that? Yes, girl. Alison Janney was the same way. She was like, she's so cool. She's
09:14like,
09:14I'm not, I don't know if I should say this. And then she was like, yeah, but it's like, let's
09:18be real.
09:19And by the way, Alison's so cool. And she, I have a parrot named Buttwings. I said she could borrow
09:24him for
09:24the Oscars and he'll nip her ear right off. He's a little asshole. What a great plan. Yeah. I said,
09:29if you need a parrot, I got one and he'll, he'll do the same thing that other parrot did. But
09:34worse,
09:35he will bite your ear off. You won't nibble. He will bite it off. He'll be a great prop. Yeah.
09:42The nominee I'd like to dance with at the after parties is? Common. Cause we're going to,
09:46it would be a victory dance. Hopefully. Excellent. Wishful thinking. Why not be wishful thinking?
09:52So we're just talking about like inspirations, call to action, but is there a movie that really
09:57inspired you when you were young? Oh, there was a bunch. I loved Born Free. You know,
10:02that was right into, played into my love of animals. You know, I love, I remember loving that movie and
10:07loving that song as well. And what's been the most surreal thing that has happened since the
10:13nominations? Yeah, the whole thing is surreal. I'm, I'm, I'm a Valley Jewish girl from Van Nuys,
10:18not that far. And this was a million miles away, you know, going over the hill into Hollywood. Like
10:23me and my friend were over there. We used to hitchhike here, you know, and to, you know,
10:27and, and, and here's like somebody that, you know, just would dream of this, would dream about being
10:32on the Oscars and had no right to even ever think I'd be at the Oscars, much less nine times.
10:37Um,
10:38that's beyond surreal. I don't take any of it. I'm not jaded. I don't take any of it for granted.
10:43It's, it's a blessing and it's amazing and I'm grateful. Well, Diane Warren, thank you for letting
10:48us hang out at your studio. Thank you. And we'll see you on Oscar night. You will. Bye. Bye.
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