SPEAKER_02 0:15

Hi, Kimmy.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hi, Lou.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

How you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I'm doing good. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Um, I'm doing wonderful despite having to get up at like 4 a.m. this morning, but I'm okay. I'm gonna live.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I feel for you. I well, I have been getting up really early.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I had like a weird reset last week where all of a sudden I just went to bed one night at like 9 30. And so I've been getting up between 6 and 7 every day and going to bed between like 9 and 10.30. And then having a crazy morning routine, which includes drum roll, please. I am now middle-aged qigong.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Wow. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I'm doing qigong in the morning. I'm doing my morning pages. I'm like living my best um like middle-aged life. Middle-aged life. I'm gonna be like in the park with all the like amazing, flexible seniors soon doing my song, moving the energy in and out of my body. I don't know how I got I don't know how I got to qigong, but I got there somehow.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Well, that's really good. Um, I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

You know, it's and you know it's my birthday coming soon.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Well, in like five days.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

And yours is in like three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Three weeks, exactly. I was at the Redwheel Coffee this morning, and um I found out that one of the braces has the same birthday as me. So we we we're very excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Love you, bitchy Scorpios.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Um, so we're talking to Paul Fisher today.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Uh exciting.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Who wrote The Last Kings of Hollywood. Do you know I've bought 12 of these books and given them away as gifts because and everyone's come back to me and said, Oh my god, this is the most amazing book. I mean, everyone loves his writing.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I know. And you have been talking about him forever. Like when you were like, guess who we got? I was like, oh my God, this is like akin to like me getting Enya to be on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Oh my god. Yeah, except Paul Fisher, I don't know how many cats Paul Fisher has. I think it's a lot of dogs though, because they were barking in the background when we were recording.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

But um Paul Fisher is your Enya.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

He was um he was incredible. He was an incredible interview, and um, I think honestly, the interview speaks for itself. Let's just drop right on in.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Let's go. I love your writing, it is so spectacular. Thank you. It's uh it's very interesting to me. You you seem to have um uh large focus on uh the goings-on of the movie industry, like from Louis Le Prince to the Last Kings of Hollywood, and I am interested in where that came from.

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Um I mean I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was a kid, you know, I had a Steven Spielberg poster on my wall.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Right. But you're you're kind of a producer. I mean, you you are a producer.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

Yeah, I have produced. I think I went through kind of like a meandering way to writing, which is essentially what I do now. Where I wanted to be a director, I went to film school. Kind of the first thing I learned at film school was that I wouldn't be a very good director.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Oh, why why why did you come to that conclusion?

SPEAKER_04 3:42

I think my mind craves a kind of organization and a kind of space that when we were making short films and stuff, and I was like, okay, actually being a director means making a million decisions back to back to back to back to back.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

It does, yes.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

And on fly, and to be great at it, you have to have a sort of fluency in speaking, camera and editing and and cutting and all this stuff that you know this is a bit harsh and unfair, but I remember sort of feeling like I think the best I could be as a director is I could probably direct like George Clooney. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of workmanlike and solid, right? And no one gets very excited about it. And sometimes it's cool and sometimes it's fine. And I kind of as a 20-year-old, I was like, well, no, I want to be Steven Spielberg, or you know, I wanna, I wanna whatever I do, I wanna be really good at. And I just felt like there's a ceiling in the way my brain is wired.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

I see. So you direct. Yeah, so you didn't feel like you could have that you'd have that director gene, so to speak.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Yeah, and I don't know if that's true. I don't know if you develop it, and I don't know if that was just being young and going, okay, this is not coming naturally to me, so I'm gonna draw a line under it. But kind of in the same uh in the same process, I went to one of those film schools where everybody shot, you know, I set our last semester term was like everybody took a week, shot a short film, right? Um, and then you crew it on the next guys, and you crew it on the next guys, and you crew it on the next guys, and and because my expectations, my directing was were relatively low, I was like, okay, no one wants to go first, I'll go first, I'll get it out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:25

Um, and no one wanted to produce because it sounded really boring because it's you know, at film school it's really line producing, right? It's really pretty much it's not creative producing at all. So no, so yeah, all logistics, permit schedules, the van, the whatever, all the stuff 19-year-olds don't want to do. So I did that for mine. Yeah, and it went pretty well. And so the next guy was like, Would you produce mine? And so uh over the like 12 different short films, you're meant to kind of rotate what you do at that film school, but I was just producer for everyone, and I figured, okay, I can do this, and I sort of enjoy being in somebody else's brain rather than just always my own. Yeah, and I sort of enjoyed you know the challenge of okay, you want to make something happen, you want to express something, how do I express it for you? How do you do I enable that? And so I did that for a few years, and then um I wrote the first book and I wrote screenplays, and it came along that way, but I also kind of realized my time on earth is kind of limited, and I'm not enjoying spending so much of it asking for permission to do things from people I don't respect all that much. And I think a lot of producing is convincing or selling or asking for permission from people you don't need, respect, you know, enjoy being around. Yeah, and some people are incredible at it, and I just resented it.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

So it's nothing, you know. What is Siddhartha say, know yourself and the world is yours, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:56

So yeah, and then you know, so I just reached a point I was like, you know what? What I like is being in this world, but at my own pace with the books, with my creativity, with being able to express it where it's not the directing thing where I'm rushed and I feel like my skills and my toolbox are kind of limited, but it's also not the producing thing where I feel like what's my body of work going to be? Because so much of my time is going to be asking for, you know, can I do it? Please, can I do it? Can I have the money to do it?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah, I I can understand that. Um, one of the things about so I'm about halfway through um The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, which is fascinating. But one of the things I noticed about that book, as well as um The Last Kings of Hollywood, is you write it's there, it's the documentary, it's it's almost like reading a documentary movie in prose form. It's very bizarre, it is very accessible, it is spectacularly well written, and but you take time, like when you're describing um uh Louis Le Prince's wife, it's there's a sense of prose to it, like you're describing a character almost in this very, very rich way, which I never noticed until reading your book. It kind of brings the the character closer to you, even though you're reading a documentary about a real person. And I thought it was very clever.

SPEAKER_04 8:21

And is that just is that because you're screenwriting chops or maybe I definitely I think with screenwriting you kind of learn you can do more with a handful of details than you can with really sort of with a bunch of facts.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Yeah, well, and also it's there there comes the the you know, there comes a a certain economy that you have to have to. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

I've always loved there's that, and you know, you can do that in prose too, right? Like Stephen King has this thing of like you want to give the reader just enough to be able to imagine the thing and leave them enough space to kind of fill in the rest of it themselves. With their imagination, right? Yeah, and with nonfiction, the balance I think is you want to make sure that what you give the reader is specific and vivid and also just true, factual, not your interpretation, right? And and you know, I think I've been lucky, especially on the man who invented motion pictures. My editor was a historian, and so she was very, or like had trained as a historian. And so she was very adamant about you know, every little bit of anything that's in here and noise on the street, the way something looks, the weather, someone's inner monologue, unless you can source it, we're not gonna have it.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Oh, interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

Yeah, and so that helps with economy, because in a sense, you can only keep the stuff you can source.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

And you can't really add anything else to it.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Right. Um and so that helps. But there's also there's also a way to I think that there's also a way to explain the stuff that you can source in a way that um, you know, there's there's the dry way and there's the rich way, and you do the rich way. Do you know what I mean? Like it you take time to do it in a way that that makes it feel like I can feel it.

SPEAKER_04 10:05

I try, you know, it's kind of like it's old-fashioned, but I'm I'm always sort of like, you know, if my dad used to travel a lot for work, and I'm always like, okay, if he was on a red eye and went to Hudson Books or whatever beforehand, and he was like, I'm gonna need something to get me through this red eye, I've gotta write a book that would, you know, get somebody through a flight kind of thing. Um so it's engaging and it's and it's you know, aimed at everybody, kind of being accessible to everybody and not you know, and with all this stuff and on in a different scale, the man who in Metal Motion Pictures was a lot of like, you know, how how much do I need to explain about the mechanics of film? Right. You know, and even with the last one, how much do I need to explain about distribution? Or, you know, I think my 12-year-old who wouldn't read that book because she's too young, but like she only knows streaming. You know, this idea that there's a thing at the movies, and then you may not see it again unless you come onto it at on television at the right time, and you've made sure you're home at on time for the TV guide, and this is how it works, and you'd have to use you know, if you're Ray Harryhausen or whatever, using puppets or clay to make something, and there's no such thing as a computer where you can type things in, and um so I kind of start with economy is a good word. How much information do I need and then no more? And how much detail do I need and then no more and just keep it moving?

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah. Do you find yourself um I mean I'm on a project right now, and uh it's a play, so economy is important. Yeah. And I overwrite and then I cut back. Yeah, I overwrite a bunch. You overwrite a bunch too. I I think it's sort of like the closet sort of and I I don't like the the concept of a vomit draft. I've never really appreciated that. But I think there's something it's like, well, this is what I'm trying to say, and now I'm gonna say it eloquently on the second past. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 12:05

I've stolen this from someone, but there's this idea of you know, there's certain writers who are kind of like more like painters and they start with a blank canvas and then they fill it. And then there's certain writers who are more like sculptors where you find a giant block of marble and then you whittle it down to your David or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

It it's funny that you said that there's a friend of mine at ABC, and I was running the storyline of this play buyer, and um, and I said, I finally have broken through. I've I've I've I've found a way into this story that I need to write, and I feel like I'm Michelangelo um tapping away at the David. And um, she said, You know, you just compared yourself to a genius, right? I'm like, oh god. I'm like, oh my god. So but um, but the other thing I noticed about um your books is so the I found you through um Last Kings of Hollywood because that is literally my era. I was third in line at the Cornet Theater in San Francisco for Star Wars, and so um the factual details is was not only sort of like taking me down nostalgia lane, but how do you keep all of that information organized? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Um I mean it's a lot, it's a lot, it's so the most useful thing I had when I was writing The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, which is a previous book, yep, um, I was like, you know, I try and think of books that it might live on the same shelf as, and with that book, I was like, you know, I really like The Devil in the White City, Eric Larson, where you're kind of like it's it's true crime because it's got the serial killer stuff, but it's also cultural history because it's got the world's fair stuff, and so very early on, I was like, if I can do a version of that where I can do cultural history mixed with this mystery disappearance, and so I emailed Eric Larson, who wrote The Devil in the White City, and Eric who is very friendly, um his main tip, and he's much more organized than I am, but his main tip was put everything in a chronology, even if the book won't be chronological in the end, just all the bits of information you have, you put them in a timeline, you log them by character or by theme or by event or by place or whatever, and then that's gonna show kind of the skeleton of the way things meet, and like you know, so there's stuff in the Last Kings of Hollywood where you go, Oh, George is going to England to do Star Wars the same week or day or month or whatever that Francis is going over there to do apocalypse now. Okay, and so you see these hinges.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Um it's almost like you have the the poster of truth. Yeah. And then from that you can look at it and start manipulating.

SPEAKER_04 14:50

Yeah, and it sort of filters, right? So the timeline has got all the facts in a timeline, and then they refer back to, you know, I don't know, let's say I found something in a Tom Schoen book about Martin Scorsese. That fact and timeline will be marked MS-SHO, whatever, with the page number. And then so that timeline refers back to all the binders that are over there and the highlighted books and the clips from the films and whatever. And then I overwrite, which is me shopping for my big block of marble. Right. Everything goes in there, it's super unwieldy. Um, and then I narrow down and narrow down and narrow down and narrow down. And there are holes. Like honestly, a couple of months ago, I was starting to work on something else, so I cleared away my shelves of the research I'd had.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

And there's always stuff I find where I go, ah crap, that was a great. And I didn't put that in. And you're like, oh, shoot. Um, and I think you just kind of had to make your peace with those things are gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, it's sort of like the the the um trials and tribulations of an artisan that you're never done type of thing. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

If you're missing things, you're okay. If you put in things that are wrong, I think that's where it gets to be kicking myself. Yeah. Yeah, right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

So what inspired you? Let's let's start with Last Kings of Hollywood and go backwards. Sure. Um, what inspired you to do this book? And why did you choose those directors?

SPEAKER_04 16:20

Well, they'd been like, so I was born in 1986. So I had a s and first film I ever saw was Raiders a Lost Ark. And then so I was of that generation where kind of like by the time I was a teenager, you know, like Star Wars was everything, and Anna Jones, everything, Back to the Future, all these things, The Godfather was the best film you'd ever seen, whatever. And it was a sense that everything that came after was not as good already. Right. Um, but even that those guys, you know, I saw Raiders at Home, first film I'd ever seen that was made before I was born. And then the first film I saw in the cinema was Jurassic Park. And you're like, oh, this guy's still going. And so there was just kind of a pantheon of these guys, um, right. You know, those three guys, Scorsese, whatever. Um, and so I was of that generation to kind of you know worship them. And then I went when I wanted to be a filmmaker, you're one of those boys who's like, Well, I want to be Steven Spielberg, I want to be George Lucas, that's the ambition. Right. And then I went to film school, and I think Easy Riders Raging Bulls had just come out, they come out a few years before. Okay. And and you know, all the boys in film school, because it was very male, wanted to be those guys and wanted to be the kind of male genius archetype thing. And I remember reading Easy Riders Raging Bulls and going, This is very entertaining. There's a bunch of stuff in here that's probably true. There's a bunch of stuff in here that feels like a giant stretch, there's a bunch of stuff in here that feels like gossip. But there's also this weird gap in its perspective, and that it kind of pitches that whole decade that we were all obsessed with as sex and drugs and rock and roll, and these young hippie kids, you know, kind of lunatics take over the asylum, and then eventually the executives have got to come back in and steady the ship and be the grown-ups or whatever. But you'd read it and go, Well, the three most successful guys who were financially Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, who were more financially successful than any film director I'd ever been, right? Um are, you know, pretty sexless and pretty drugless and pretty rock and rollless. Completely. So is how do you, you know, Coppola the sexless thing doesn't really reply, but how do you make that case for that decade? And then I it's sort of that book felt like it was sort of trying to cram these three guys into this narrative by putting them next to things. Right. Rather than and so it always felt like there was a different perspective on a decade that would be interesting, and then over time, as I was making films, as I was reading, as I was whatever, um that kind of married to this idea of oh, you know what? I'm actually really interested in this time period of Francis Copeland and George Lucas meeting and going to San Francisco and starting their own company and doing that thing everybody talks about in art school or film school.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

You're like, uh F the system, we'll get a barn somewhere, you'll make dinner, I'll edit your films, and you're like, oh, those guys did it.

SPEAKER_04 19:22

Yeah, they did. And it kind of failed immediately, but it also didn't fail. But again, that whole narrative of that decade, that's just touched upon and jumped away from.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yeah, it is, and also it it failed, but you're right. It failed, but it didn't fail because it really set a precedent. Yeah. And and I, from the the takeaway that I got from your book and and having grown up with these three legends as sort of touchstones, um, I I it's it's one of those things where it's almost like they proved they could do it, which put the system on notice. 100%. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

It's like, it's like, look, we can do this. And then if we actually had real money behind us, we could really do it. So it yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

To the degree that one of the things you know, we're talking about earlier about how much information you give in context and stuff, like that was part of the book too, was this idea of if you're younger than I am, we take it's we take it so for granted that they changed everything, and that that's the kind of thing film directors can do.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

That I thought, okay, part of the book also has to be setting up this idea that before these guys, film directors were employees, you know, they were like salaried employees. Right. And then these guys in one generation went from no, we're gonna be freelance artists, but also you know, engage with the idea of being in control and in and in power of our own companies and journey and destiny and creativity. So it was all those things, and then um I really like the kind of movable feast stuff of like you know, collective biographies or cultural history that kind of tracks an artistic movement, you know, where it's kind of like, oh, I'm not just reading about Hemingway, I'm reading about the Paris that Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Stuart and everybody was in. I'm reading I'm reading about the war in Spain that Hemingway and Kappa and all these people were in. And I always felt like I learned more about everybody involved when I can see them in cultural context, so to speak. Yeah. And people don't really do that with the film stuff, or if they do it. Um I think they do it sort of hand-fistedly. Exactly. They get crowbared together.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Exactly. And it's and it's not really done with I mean, pardon the expression, but it's not done with love. Like you did this with love, man. And it was um and one of the things I found fascinating was um the way the personalities came. Right. Like I I had had an opportunity to to I was at Skywalker for a screening or something when I was directing commercials and they were showing new technology there. And it was a bunch of vignettes up on the screen, and I was kind of going to myself, but I spoke it aloud, said, There's there's no fucking plot here. These are vignettes, this is this is stupid, right? And then this guy behind me goes, Yeah, the man's right. What's where's the plot in this piece of crap? Blah, blah, blah. And I turn around, it's like, dude, you're taking my line, and it was Francis Ford Coppola.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

And as I'm reading your book, it's like, that's the dude. Like it was, it came across so flawlessly, it was really impressive. And also, by the same token, I had never um, I've always looked up to George Lucas and never knew what his personality was like. And it was like, I don't know if he and I could be friends, you know? So there's a real truth to what you write.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

Thank you. The best thing I think I can't remember um, I'm blanking now. Essie Hinton, she wrote The Outsiders or whatever. Oh, right. Um was lovely. She read the book and then put up a tweet or a blue sky post or something where she was like, you know, I read this book, and that's Francis as I know him, and we're friends, and so it makes me trust the other stuff. And there were other people who were like, Yeah, that's George as I know him, that's Steven as I know him. And you go, okay, that's the best possible feedback that you can get, because you just want to get it right.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Absolutely right. And I think that she hit on it perfectly in that I'm when I read your work, I trust it.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

And that's and that's really and it's a compliment, but it's also it's nice to get into something that's so culturally important and be able to trust that what you're reading is the truth because we live in an era now that's disastrously false, you know.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Yeah, and like I think we all bring our biases to what we do.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

And like the thing the thing you were saying about two things, actually. The thing you were saying about documentary. I remember when I went to film school, I made this documentary. Uh, the guy who edited it, who became a good friend, he edited a lot of documentaries, and we go to this documentary film festivals, and we were both struck by how many documentaries would play at festivals, would do really well. And this was kind of like there was a brief golden age of this stuff, uh, you know, Man on the Wire, Sugar Man, all this stuff that did really well at festivals, where you could really see how manipulated everything had been, and the editing would juxtapose stuff where you went, Well, that was a reaction from a completely different time. His hair doesn't match, this doesn't do. Um and you would kind of go, Oh, yeah, because this is called a documentary rather than nonfiction storytelling. People just believe it. Yeah. And we don't think about the choices the editing maker the music makes, or or you know, that you know, you you've made films, so you go, Oh, I can tell that one audio clip was cut with this other audio clip to make a sentence. Yeah, and we were wrestling with those same things making our documentaries. And so, you know, I was when I started writing the books, I remember having that in mind of like, okay, I gotta be careful that just because something's a nice sentence or a nice paragraph, or it ends this chapter in an exciting way, that I'm not losing sight of being truthful and I'm serving the facts rather than myself. Um, and then the second thing I think, which I've always felt, which you also touched upon, I read so many film books. My house is full of film books, and 90% of them it feels again, I'm generalizing slightly, but it feels like the person writing them is an entertainment journalist who hates those people and thinks they should and thinks they should be brought down a peg. Or maybe they don't think they should be brought down a peg, but they think what's gonna sell is gonna make them sound a little monstrous. And sometimes that's the truth, right? Like if somebody went, can you write a book about Roman Polanski and not make him sound effed up? I'd be like, nah, probably, you know, there's stuff in the book where, like, you know, people ask me about Coppola, and I go, you know, there's there's early on in this book, you're gonna meet a guy who's married with kids and starts an affair with a high school kid who's dressed up as a maid at a party. There's no way to make that sound good and it shouldn't sound good, and it's not so good.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 26:13

But it also doesn't serve anybody if I go, I'm gonna ignore the experience of that 18-year-old as she grows up and ignore the experience for everybody involved, and I'm just gonna try and make this sound as awful as possible, and then try and make everything else it touches sound as awful as possible because it makes for a headline or something.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Right. Um, right, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 26:36

You're trying to be truthful, you're trying to have you know, love for the subject, like skeptical affection. You're trying to yeah, you're trying to embrace that we're all human, and you're also trying to respect your reader, right? You know, where you kind of go, my reader is smart, I don't need to insert myself into everything or put things down to seem smarter to make them feel like we're smarter than the subject. Um yeah, you know, and sorry, one last thing. And to go back in the way, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

The Kim Jong-un book, right? Or Kim Jong-il book, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Yeah. So like in the 70s, Kim Jong-il, who was young, ran the Ministry propaganda in North Korea, had these two filmmakers in South Korea kidnapped.

unknown 27:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

Yeah, absolutely bizarre. And I remember so I started writing that book, and I was not a North Korea expert. I'd never written a book, I'd never had anything published in a friggin' magazine. Right. Um, we just pitched it. My agent at the time was just an absolute wizard at pitching stuff, people bought it.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

And so I had no credibility. And I also, at the time, everybody I spoke to who was a North Korea expert was like, oh, I don't know if they were kidnapped. I think they may be lying about the whole thing. Um because they defected and then changed our minds, whatever. And then on top of that, North Korea obviously half of what you read is nonsense that someone's passed on from passed on from past on. So with that book, I was like, if I make one mistake, I'm dead. The whole thing loses credibility because it's such an insane story. Right. I'm really convinced they were kidnapped. I'm gonna commit to this being the thing, I'm gonna explain why I think it happened. I'm not an expert, I have no kind of built-in credibility or goodwill from anybody. If I get one thing wrong, it's gonna discredit the whole rest of everything. So no pressure at all, at all. No pressure at all. But it was really good training for everything else, where you kind of like, you know, it's not as important if you repeat the myth about Francis Coppola, George Lucas. But it's been a good approach to approach everything in that way of like, you know, I'm one slip away from everything else getting discredited. You know, you can if someone only trusts what you're saying 90% of the time, then they might as well not trust you.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Yeah, absolutely. Um, but one of the things that I found interesting about reading this book was as you read about the personalities that are these directors, I had more respect for them because they're real. Right. They weren't demigods, you know. Right. It was kind of like they were as fucked up as the rest of us. Right. They just happened to be do great things.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

On top of the fucked upness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:24

So it was one of the early decisions that I was never I grew more confident in it, but I wasn't confident that the start was this thing of I'm gonna call them by their first names. Right. You know, and hopefully this doesn't seem like I'm sort of faking an intimacy with them, but hopefully it feels novelistic, but it also makes the reader forget Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas, which are brands and just picture people.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

The per the people, yeah, and very effective. Um, I want to talk a little bit about the man who invented motion pictures. How did you find that story?

SPEAKER_04 30:01

So, with all of these, just from reading a lot. So I was on a train, I grew up in France, and um, I went on a skiing holiday in Switzerland one year, and I was with much better skiers than I was, um, you know, to sort of posh British people who were had gone, you know, their whole lives and been trained by Olympic coaches or whatever. And so day one, we go kind of off piste, and I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I can keep up. I'll be totally fine. I've only done greens and blues, and I'm not very athletic. Anyway, within five minutes, I crash and I tear my shoulder. Oh, geez. And I had nothing else to do the whole rest of the holiday. And the only place around that sold books had these really sort of crappy, trashy paperback novels kind of thing. And there was one I picked up because it was thick and it was about film, and I think the author was Polish, Polish American, Hungarian American, called Theodore Roschak. Actually, it sounds like a Hungarian name. But anyway, and it was called Flicker, and it was a sort of a brick of a novel and and kind of Da Vinci code type conspiracy theory about this idea that the whole motion pictures were invented by the Illuminati, essentially, to kind of beam um uh subliminal messages into the people, into the populace to make them do stuff, whatever. Right. Very Da Vinci code coded. Um, and I was reading this and it's trashy and it's enjoyable. And then there's one chapter where someone, a character in the book, is explaining this whole conspiracy theory history. And, you know, it kind of goes, well, you know, and even the first guy who ever made a film, Louis Le Prince, he was French and he lived in England, and you know, he made a film, and then Edison had him assassinated. And I was like, it's weird, but this one sounds real. There's something, there's something too messy about he's a Frenchman who worked in England, but he made what? And so I remember sitting there in this little hotel and Googling it and going, Oh, okay, this guy existed. That's cool. And then going, Oh, okay, this guy actually did make a little like the oldest little scrap of motion picture we have is his. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

That's cool.

SPEAKER_04 32:05

And then going, oh wait, he had the first patents for the camera and the projector that anybody ever got. That's cool.

unknown 32:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

And then, you know, Pitter Pat or Google School or whatever finding that patent and going, Oh, this is a film camera, this works. Like this has the you know, ribbon of film thing, and it has the thing. And um, and I was like, I wonder why I've never heard of this guy. Not even like a passing reference. Um and then obviously the one thing that wasn't real is Thomas Edison did not have him assassinated, but his family were convinced he maybe did. And so they kind of got involved in this thing to try and prove that he did. And I was like, okay, this is like a Victorian true crime book, if I can dig around and and if there's more to it than just that. Um and luckily there was, which was cool. Yeah, no, I came from there.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

Yeah, it's it's uh like I said, I'm about halfway through in the and it's it's really good reading. Uh it's um also very interesting the fact that even the we don't think about the 1800s as being as cutthroat as things are today, and it was. It was absolutely as cutthroat.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

So, yeah, and I'm gonna bang on again because I ramble, but one of the things you were saying about these two uh Coppola Luke's and Spielberg coming across as characters. Right. Um, there's always a moment in the research where the people you're writing about, you find them at a point where they're very different from the idea you have in your mind.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

Completely.

SPEAKER_04 33:39

You go, okay, if I can track that, I've got something. And so with the Kim Jong-il book, I started, so that was another thing, you know. I would just read the newspapers and it always mentioned stuff about like, oh, Kim Jong-il's so good, every time he plays golf, he hits 18 holes in ones, and Kim Jong-il's invented the hamburger, and Kim Jong-il doesn't defecate.

SPEAKER_05 33:58

And yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:59

And one of them was always like, you know, he loves movies so much, he kidnapped this guy, and and and then one day I was like, I probably should look this up and see if this actually happened. Yeah. But so when I started writing the book, my mental image of Kim Jong-il, like most people, was you know, the puppet from Team America, right? Little guy, big hair, platform shoes, bit ridiculous. Exactly. And then I was researching it for the pitch, and I found a picture of him that's in the photo insert in the book, as a young man on a film set, and he just looks fucking cool. You know, he's he's got you know the fly shoes and the cool coat, right, and a bit of authority and two girls behind him. And and you go, okay, how did that guy become the other guy?

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Right.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

And now I've got a kind of something not static to explain, but something dynamic to try and track. And with um The Last Kings of Hollywood, when you go, Oh, okay, when I'm starting this, Francis Coppola, who I think of as like the filmmaker's filmmaker who'll gamble everything for his freedom, he's a studio employee with a Rolex watch and a Porsche. And people at UCLA think of him as a sellout, and yeah, you know, he's investing into fucking video jukeboxes trying to make money, and George Lucas is the guy who hates narrative and stories and characters, and he just wants to make mood poems, and he thinks people who make money are hacks and cigar chompers, and you know, Steven Spielberg, who's the guy who like put everyone's childhood on screen, is a kid who feels like he doesn't belong and he's so awkward and he feels like he's behind everybody, and his own agent is like, Yeah, you're a hack. You could, you know, maybe good second unit director one day.

SPEAKER_05 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

Okay, how do I trace that to that? And then with the man who invented motion pictures, one of those was going, Oh, I've got an idea in my head of Thomas Edison, you know, who's kind of like slumped on his workbench working really hard, you know, kind of wizard who comes up with these genius inventions through exhaustion. And then going, actually, um, this is Steve Jobs kind of. You know, the the kind of work coat that we think of is the black turtleneck. And giving the interviews to Scientific American is coming out on the platform and telling everybody what you're coming up with. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

You know, meanwhile, he's got a bunch of was he's got a bunch of Wozniaks behind him, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

Yeah, and then you go, oh, okay, now I've got something I can try and frame and express. Right. And um, and I just found that really interesting. And I found that really interesting too that um as you say, a lot of the ways industry and stuff worked then worked the way it does now, and it was kind of brutal, and it was kind of um also this great sort of turning point where you know Thomas Edison kind of invents the Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Tony Stark, you know, kind of entrepreneur genius guy. Um while also investing, inventing sort of innovation as big business that banks fund. Yeah, you know, and that was really interesting to me that Louis Le Prince was this guy. Invention had been him up to that point, you know, just just a well-educated guy in his garage coming up with stuff who's kind of an artist, kind of an entrepreneur, kind of a fiddler. Um, and then movies were invented at the same time as innovation as a sort of business rather than a hobby was invented. It's interesting to me.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Yeah, it's interesting to me also that in the in the um uh Louis Le Prince book, how if Kodak didn't come up with this concept of gelatin and and ridden film type of thing, he he would have never got there.

SPEAKER_05 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

And filmmaking may not have been it would eventually, but it was it was a very interesting confluence of things that had to happen for him to be successful at starting this whole thing that we now all rely on.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

Yeah. And that was, you know, and another interesting way of writing cultural history where like a lot of that period, if you're like, all right, who am I, what am I gonna read about invention and innovation?

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:17

In the 1880s, it's like, well, here's a mammoth biography of Edison, titan of history, who moves history forwards. And really, there's actually this theory of innovation. It's more kind of like, well, you know, Kodak does this thing over here, and then this guy does this thing over there, and then this guy does this thing over here, and it's just this sort of synchronicity.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Well, it's also the yeah, it's also the um the uh definition of a creative person. I mean, it's it's not that any of us are geniuses who are just particularly good at connecting dots.

SPEAKER_04 38:49

Yeah. Usually different things that, you know, celluloids specifically, where people are like, I don't know what this is for.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Right.

SPEAKER_04 38:56

Is it starched collars? Is it billiard balls? I have no idea. Right. And so weirdly, that sort of plastic doesn't have a cause to exist unless these other guys are also going, How do I make images move? Which doesn't have the way to happen if that other plastic doesn't exist. Exactly. Um that's all, yeah, just picking stuff, you know, sort of being in touch with things and trying to connect them together. And, you know, Edison, I think there was this time period where I think he was aware that that's what he had to do, but he had put so much pressure on himself. He'd started doing that thing, you know, the same way Elon Musk will go in ten years, we'll have flying cars on Mars. Right. You know, Edison would come out and go, in ten years, we'll have uh cruise ships made out of solid gold, you know, just saying stuff to keep the hype going.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Well, one of the things that I noticed in both those books um is that these Edison, these very famous people, yeah, created a hit which carried an enormous amount of momentum to get them through the bad stuff, not the bad stuff that they did, but the stuff that wasn't successful. Yeah. And that and it it is amazing how that momentum can can help gloss over that stuff. And that you bring out the humanity of all that in in the way you write.

SPEAKER_04 40:14

So thank you. I think so. It must be a weird thing to be trapped by. Yeah, completely. You know, to be defined by and to feel like you're you're trying to keep up with. And with with these the more recent guys, the Coppolas, the Lucas's the Spielbergs, I think there's also an interesting part of I think there's an awareness they have, they had of how do I capitalize on this thing and keep the momentum going while also you know kind of juking it and doing something else, because that's the only way I retained.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

I think yeah, I think Lucas was floored by the success of Star Wars. Yeah, I think he didn't see that coming at all. And now he was a Star Wars guy, and no matter what he did from that point forward, I think Urban Kirchner directing The Empire Strikes Back, the second one, was a genius move. Yeah. Because I don't think he had the chops to to elevate it like that.

SPEAKER_04 41:10

Yeah, it completely lifts it. Yeah, and then I think there's a weird guilt about it where you know I trust there's enough people like John Melius, so like people I trust, and if you track the stuff Lucas says, we do kind of go, okay, yeah, this is a guy going, I'm gonna make a little kids' film, and I think it's a great idea, and the world needs it, and it becomes the biggest thing ever, and everybody kind of resents you a little bit. Right. Because if you're Friedkin, if you're Scorsese, if you're people with stuff coming out in 77, you're going, a fucking kids film. No one wants to see my stuff about Jesus or about gay cruising serial killers anymore. And so you can see his Lucas' narrative shift then to like, oh you know, it's about the Viet Cong and it's about and it's about actually I'm doing allegory over here. Um and so he was interesting in that sense too. If you go, like, oh no, this guy's the momentum is something where he's like, I've got to see this through, but also I'm really fascinated by this question of like, you know, Lucas would say for for ages and ages and ages, oh, you know, once I'm done with Star Wars and once I'm done with this other stuff, I want to go back to making the little mood poems and the THX's. And the and I think with the museum opening now, we can all go, all right, that was bollocks. You know, the thing I wanted to do was the giant was the giant museum. Yeah. But for the longest time, you know, you'd interview people or I'd talk to people, and some people who knew him very well would go, it's possible. You know, maybe he's, you know, but then I don't know why he hasn't done it already.

unknown 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:41

Maybe he's done them and kept them for himself and doesn't want to share them. And then other people who knew him very well would go, no, that's nonsense. He's just trying to tell himself he's a certain kind of person.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Well, I think once you have something that blows up like Star Wars does, um, or even The Godfather, uh, that that's when you lose your innocence and then you have to redefine who you are. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's like it's it's you you can't go backwards after that.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

You can't. And I think one of the things I find endearing about Coppola Coppola is there's a very earnest pretension in how he tried to reinvent himself every time. Absolutely right. Where he goes, fuck it, I'll put on a beret, I'll run a restaurant. Yeah. And it's really, as my daughter would say, cringe. But it's cringe with with such a kind of direct earnestness and a willingness to fail. Um whereas Lucas, for better or for worse, you always get the sense that he wants to be the smartest guy in the room still, and he wants to have the final word and to know that he did everything purposefully, and there was a reason behind everything. Um I think Coppola, one of the contradictions, but also one of the reasons I think filmmakers really like him, is he was a guy who was really sensitive or is still really sensitive about being embarrassed. But also really willing to really embarrass himself by trying to take a left turn.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

And paradoxically, um he embarrasses himself with garishness because he's trying to build up this whole big persona about himself. It's it he's such a walking contradiction in a funny way. I mean, it's it's it's fascinating to watch.

SPEAKER_04 44:22

So yeah, like I've honestly I've really loved the last few years in the sense of like, you know, you read so much about the filmmakers like Orson Wells or like whoever it is who like got too late in their life and they had this big final film or final films that they wanted to make and they never get to make them and no one gives them the money. And so it's there's something so brilliant and liberating about Coppola going, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make my megalopolis, I'll do it my way. But then he can't help the contradictions where you go, Okay, yeah, this is a guy telling you I've put all my money into it.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 44:56

By which he means I've sold some of the expensive watches. Yeah, and I've you know, I'm still very, very rich, but not as rich as I used to.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

I've only got one Ferrari now, you know, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 45:05

It's a guy in a really expensive suit telling you, I've just moved to a house in London, but also I'm broke. Yeah. But also I'm releasing this myself, um, which I love. But then also making this film, like it's your big last spin, you've been working on it for 40 years, it's your roll of the dice, it's your last, it's gonna be your magnum opus, no one's controlling you. And not only is it not particularly good as a film, but then I'm really fascinated by. Have you seen the Mike Figgus documentary, the kind of the mega doc thing of making it?

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I've not seen that now.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Coppola seems half engaged the whole time. He's not really directing, he's sort of floating around.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

The sense I I get from what I read is that he did it because it was expected of him, not because he wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_04 45:56

And I find those things really interesting. Very interesting. Of like as you say, he's sort of there's an image of Francis Coppola that even Francis Coppola has.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Right. Right. That he needs to be. Exactly right. So, but in a in a weird way, and I'm I'm not sure this is completely out of my ass. But I look at Sophia's films, yeah, and I'm kind of like, man, that's kind of that's Coppola version 2, calmer, steady, and because I love I love her films. I mean, I I think they're fantastic and they have a an aesthetic and pacing sensibility that I find um captivating. Yeah. And I can't help thinking if Coppola was a calmer version of himself, if he would have been more like that. Do you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 46:48

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So and and when I started writing the book, I was like, another thing that's really cool about this, I can't think of another example of if I say Coppola as a director, it could be the dad or it could be the daughter.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:06

And they both have sort of equal value, you know. And I know there's Argentos and there's but you're always like, well, one of them's the main one, really.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

Um, and so there's something also really cool about that Zootrope thing of like it started as one thing and then it becomes this family business that's really, in a way, as close to what the original little mini studios were as anything. Exactly right, yeah. In that sense. Um and part of that is because the last name is a brand that he knows how to manage and he knows how to sell. And so we think of that as automatically a negative. And we think of selling out and all these things that attach to it. But sometimes, as you say, that's the momentum. That's it is.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Well, someone had to do it, right?

SPEAKER_04 48:32

I mean, someone had to do it, and also to some degree, you're like, if this filmmaker really is at this point where process is so much more important than the end product, which is ideally the place anybody wants to get to as a creative person.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 48:49

Um, this is a real example of someone going aft the product.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

I'm just having a good time with a hundred million bucks of my own money. And then you have to re-question yourself. We're like, well, why should I have an issue with that? Either I enjoy it or I don't. But and it's not your money. It's not your money. It's not I would read the reviews and people are scathing, and you're like, why? Somebody in instead of taking the money to their grave or putting it in a Panama thing, they went, I'm gonna do a thing, I'm gonna have a good time. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Um which is laudable, I mean, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

Yeah, which is really great. Yeah, you know, it's what you would hope every filmmaker at the end of their life, if they can, would go, you know, I'm just gonna do the thing. Who cares? Yeah. Um, and that goes back to that earnestness thing, too, I think, where you know, people, you know, Spielberg sometimes I read drafts of the book and I would go, I wonder if he's as interesting as the other guys. And I think it's because he either had more self-awareness or was better at performing self-awareness than them. And I think he's very good at performing earnestness, but actually being a very calculated in a good way, clever, strategic business person. Whereas Coppola is just mood, mood all the time.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah. I mean mood within the mood within a system that um can tolerate massive mood swings.

unknown 50:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

You know, I I tell my wife, my wife works in the corporate world, and she has getting really fascinated by you know what you do and the industry you're in. And I said, don't be, because you have to understand that if this industry did not exist, I would be unemployable out on the street. Yeah. Do you do I like that's my mood. So all the stuff that goes along with being creative for a living needs a certain sandbox. Right. And if that sandbox doesn't exist, then I'm out and I'm I'm an outlier. I'm by myself. Um, you know, because I can't do corporate world, I can't do that stuff. So um I want to hear a Spielberg theory. Oh, my Spielberg theory is that he I feel like for all the moodiness of Coppola and all the ambition of Lucas to do small poetic pieces, Spielberg is the true passionate filmmaker. Yeah. Because I think he truly, and and it feels like this, he just truly loves making films.

SPEAKER_04 51:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Because every time we see a film, even as he gets older, the craft is is improved.

SPEAKER_04 51:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

And I think that's and and to me, he is um, I don't want to say the purest, but well, the only way to say it is like he's the purest filmmaker because that's that's all he cares about.

SPEAKER_05 51:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

And I agree. Yeah. And I don't underst you know, I I see what you're saying about like is he putting up a front or something like that, but I think he just does his thing, and I think the people around him make sure that he's allowed to do his thing and everybody trusts him to do his thing, and he found the balance.

SPEAKER_04 52:04

Yeah, and I also think there's a great intelligence about the means to an end aspect of all that stuff. Completely agree. Of you know, like in one sense, you can put Scorsese and Spielberg in that same bracket where they're guys who just want to make the films. Right. But I think Spielberg also had and has the capacity to go, okay, well, to make the films that I want to make, maybe I need to schmooze over there, maybe I need to do the DreamWorks thing, maybe I need to, you know, be more expansive in that way. But you never get the sense, as you do with Coppola and Lucas, of like, are you confusing the means and the end? Right. You know, is ILM meant to be the thing that allows you to make Star Wars, or is Star Wars the thing that allows you to have the money to build all this other stuff? Are you confusing? And you never get that with Spielberg.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 52:55

Um, you know, and so that's why when I say like even the calculated dosewords on like in the best way possible, there's an interesting thing of like there's a bunch of people I spoke to who would have been Steven's assistants, whoever it is, 40 years ago, um, who would be like, I love Steven. I don't have a single wrong thing to say about Steven. He's been the nicest person I've ever been around. Um I'm also not talking to you because that NDA is ironclad and I'm not even risking running through it. So it's someone who does their business properly almost. And I just find that fascinating because I think we have this when we talk at a brands, we have this image of him is just kind of like, you know, boy wonder, you know, kind of, you know, ET just sprouts out of him, and all these worlds just sprout out of him. And actually, you're like, well, no, this is an intelligent person who's hardworking, who um whose brain has a great capacity for a bunch of different stuff, whether it's the money aspect of it or the logistics aspect of it, the creative aspect of it. And he's not just, you know, Mozart coming up in little breeches and stuff just pours out of him.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

No, no, he's he's he's a he's a workman. I mean, he's a workman. And I understand at a very high level. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

Yeah. Like I remember, so I I got to do a couple of days on Indiana Jones and on Crystal Skull when I was just like a PA. And literally we were at Downey Studios, and I had this giant warehouse, and literally you walked into this warehouse that used to be an airplane hanger or something, and it was to the left is the all the crates from the end of Raiders, and in front of you is like the green screen and the jungle in the cars where Shia LaBeouf and Kate Planchette do the sword fight, and over there is that little temple with the kind of the kind of naked Mayan guys, and so they had all these different sets in there. Yeah. And my only job for two days was you know, rolling, air conditioning off, cut, air conditioning on, rolling, air conditioning off for two days. But there was obviously, and I'm sure you've been on film sets, there is this thing on films of those scale of that scale where there's hundreds and hundreds of crew members. But the director's world is maybe a dozen people, it's the cast and the heads of department, and then everything spreads from there.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Right. And he's only talking to the or she is only talking to the first AD and the DP, basically.

SPEAKER_04 55:17

And there was a brilliant thing of like Spielberg seemed you know always there early, always there late, focused, quiet, whatever. Kaminsky, focused, quiet, all resorted by him. And then first AD Adam, I can't remember his last name. Um loud and getting shit done. Right. As you need your first AD to be. As you need your first AD to be correct. Yeah. Um, but there was also something, just because I was sitting next to the switch for the air conditioning, there was something about watching, and again, this is one of those things where in hindsight I go, this is why I can't be a director like this. There was something about the social skills and however you would term it, of the way Spielberg was able to operate that world of a dozen people through the first AD to get what he needed done, to also sort of be impulsive. The reason they had everything in that one warehouse is so he could go, you know, tell Shia to work on the sword for a bit. I feel like going to do that over there with and like I loved opening the book with that thing of Coppola on that first studio film going, I wasn't ready for how many decisions I have to make in the day, and they all have to be the right decision. And when I started winging it like I knew the answer and I didn't, it just slowly drifts off course. Because I think that's something people don't necessarily understand about making films.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

And they also don't understand the concept of decision fatigue.

SPEAKER_04 56:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

You know, you get to a point where you still got 35,000 decisions to be made on the day, and you can't even decide whether you should like pull your zipper down before you pee. You know, it's like really nightmarish.

SPEAKER_04 57:04

I was talking to my daughter this morning because she and my wife got a hamster yesterday, and I've been a little grumpy, not grumpy about it, but not as enthusiastic as they want to be. And she's like, Don't you love the hamster? And I was like, I love the hamster, but it's just one more thing I got to think about. Right. About taking you to basketball, about walking a dog, about what I'm gonna wear, about when I'm gonna shower. And so, like, yeah, just imagine it's six in the morning, you don't see your kids because you're on location somewhere, and every five minutes, you know, it's like, let's say it's it's Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, it's kind of like battered hat or not battered hat? Should he be punching him with the right? Does he stand to the left? Does I look over there? Do you like the light this way or not this way? Should we have him on standby to shoot in half an hour? Nonstop. And you get a couple of those wrong, and the whole thing is a little wonky. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

It's a little wonky. Yeah, it's nuts. It's nuts. So yeah. Um, so any plans to have any of your books turned into movies?

SPEAKER_04 58:03

Uh there's been a few. I mean, so the man who invented motion pictures is currently under option by a French company. Oh, great, okay. Who have been working on it. Um partly because obviously France is connected to the story, partly because I think to do that kind of period thing that's quite expensive. Um, your odds are best if you're in a country where the government still gives you money. Yeah, so they're working on that. And then a Kim Jong-il production came close a few times. Like it was optioned by a very well-known filmmaker, um, and he didn't manage to do anything out of it over two, three years, and it was optioned by another quite well-known company, and kind of sat there for a while, and it was bought by a newer company, and I wrote a few drafts, and we all loved the scripts. Um, and we had an actor, Korean American actor. Probably, you know, if you think of one or two Korean American actors as one of those two guys who is really into it, wanted to play Shinsang Ok, and then the trick you get with that is money kind of has interview paranoia, you know, like the Seth Rogan film of like, is this gonna bite us in the butt? And then the creatives who don't have that paranoia, so like that actor, for instance, we had conversations where I was like, Look, if you're worried about it, let's just talk to one of these security companies and see what they would say. Um, and it's a really interesting one because people in South Korea tend to be like, nah, we do stuff by the North Koreans all the time. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Let them, yeah, they won't do anything. But people in America are quite scared. And so um, we went to this kind of security company, and they were like, Look, you're no one's gonna assassinate you, nothing bad's gonna happen. But it's gonna cost you a few grand a month for a while, where you should probably, you know, have your own, you know, changeable IP addresses and your own secure Wi-Fi networks. Like you will get hacked, don't have nudes on your iCloud, all this stuff. That's the way you do stuff. That's all guys behind computers. Um, you know, don't fly through Beijing, you know, don't, you know, it's gonna be inconvenient more than anything. Um and it was the kind of thing where you go, uh, is it worth the inconvenience for a movie? Is it worth like my kids having to deal with this? Yeah. Um and so, but you know, but with that, I was like from the first option when that filmmaker optioned it and he was really excited and enthusiastic, I was like, look, dude, it's never happening. There's just there's just too much risk aversion. You know, I'll take your money for the option, right? I love money for doing nothing. Yeah, I I love coming to LA and having lunch, and we talk about movies and stuff, but this is never gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

Uh, and then you know, two years later, he was like, You're right, I don't think this is happening. And then the next person was like, We're gonna make this. And I was like, I'll take your money, but this is never gonna happen. So it's kind of happened with all of them. And then this one, this one's a weird one. There's been interest. Um, the one I'm most intrigued by, there's a company in London that quite likes the idea of turning it into a play.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:08

Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:10

Yeah. Um, and it's just about finding your way in, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

It's just about well, it kind of brings us back to where we started about like I just gained that block and like chipping away. Yeah. Finding that angle, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:24

Yeah. And I think with the representation of them is interesting because you get it's almost like I'm going to the quarry and there's blocks that just don't look right, you know, like if you're adapting it into something where it feels like you know, like I enjoyed the offer, the the kind of Godfather miniseries thing, but you're like, can we do something that gets past? Who do we get to impersonate these guys that we all have a mental image of in our mind? Right. You know, and and how do we make it not be greatest hits of like, oh, this is the Jaws episode, and this is the you know, how do we make it more different and more meaningful exactly? Why make this? Yeah, we've got all that stuff. Yeah, what makes this better than like a documentary or whatever? And I don't know that we've figured that anyone's figured that one out yet about this one. Um I think if it were me, I mean maybe I'd stick to the very young film student warehouse stuff. There was someone really interesting who asked me if I'd seen industry in the TV show.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:30

And she was like, you know, all the American Zoetro guys coming out of film school stuff kind of has that vibe. And I wonder if you do. So I was like, oh, maybe I should watch industry. Um and I think that's what I like about the stage idea, maybe there's enough artifice built in already.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

I I I think it's that's you know, like I said, I'm on a play now, so it's it I can see the the early stuff being very stage-worthy.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

You know, it's a lot of stuff there.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:57

So I was like, oh, and if you've got two acts and you you know, act one is sort of Zootrope and Act Two is sort of 83 Jedi Zootrope Studios, and you can contrast the two. Um, so I don't know, but it's but it's out there. Um I like the idea of letting them go though. Like I enjoyed writing the screenplay for the North Korean one and writing a few drafts and trying to think about it different ways. Yeah. But I think it would be a really cool experience too. I always assume nothing gets made because nothing gets made. Right. But it would be a cool experience too one day to be like, oh, let's see what this person's done with this, and I had nothing to do with it. And let's see if I you know like it, don't like it, if it looks like meeting a family member after they've had a facelift. Right. You know, just surrendering that control.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:42

Yeah. Um, this has been amazing. Thank you very, very much.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:46

And I've enjoyed it. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:48

Yeah, no, this has been a blast, man. You're a cool dude. Um have a wonderful rest of your day. And you too. Uh I'll speak to you soon.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

All right, really appreciate it. Cheers too.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

All right. What did you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

Okay. Wow. I feel like I I feel like that was such an interesting interview, but also for any writers or people wanting to write, there's like some amazing tips in there too.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

Completely right. Yeah, absolutely right. There's a couple of so and he's so he's he's I don't know if he's self-effacing, but you know, he talks about like, yeah, but then there's stuff that I dismissed, and he's just he's he's a real writer, you know? Like he really, he really does kind of imbue everything that's cool about the arts.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

Totally. I I remember when he was talking about how um like talking about facts and making sure that you can only keep facts because if you put something in that's wrong, like people start to distrust you. And it's so true because I do think like if you're writing something and you put something in that's not right and someone finds fit knows that or figures that out, they're always they're gonna write the whole thing off as being like, oh, this is just like the loose truth instead of being what it is, which is obviously very well researched. And I mean, I feel like there's a lot of people that could be doing with a little bit more of that in general. Absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

But the thing that's interesting is that, like, in talking to him and and his you know, sort of very um passionate pursuit of factual truths, is that the truth is really fascinating. The truth is fascinating. He presents it in a way that is so digestible and so wonderfully easy to read, but yet you can still tell there's so much work behind it. So it's it is it's a great read. We're gonna put all of his books on in the uh show notes so people can check them out. Um he's also written another one called Um The Man Who Invented Uh Motion Pictures. It's it's about it's fascinating. It's it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

There's just is that about the guy that like nobody knows about that he like randomly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

Yeah, so he disappeared.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

Yeah, he was like, oh, just this guy that nobody ever references.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

Right, Louis Le Prince. So yeah, so cool. It's good. But um, yeah, our thanks to Paul Fisher for coming on the show. He was fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

Yeah, incredible. Thank you for throwing down some wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:23

And making Lou's dreams come true.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:27

On that note, bye Kimmy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

And yeah, you're next. Bye Lou.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

It's edited by Alexander.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

And we'd like to thank our sponsor, our only sponsor, and our fabric sponsor, LinkedIn software. That's what I'm saying.