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Interview Only w/ Michael Russell Gunn - The Summit That Almost Ended Nuclear Weapons Forever · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Well, as many of
2:17
Speaker 1: you know, one of my favorite sort of debates is
2:21
Speaker 1: this idea of when is the perfect time to revisit
2:26
Speaker 1: an historical event? And what do I mean by that is,
2:29
Speaker 1: which is that you can get to a point where
2:30
Speaker 1: it's too soon, where there are too many people who
2:33
Speaker 1: maybe have their own who aren't ready to tell the
2:36
Speaker 1: full story, aren't ready to tell everything they know because
2:38
Speaker 1: they're maybe they're protecting future job prospects, maybe they're protecting politics,
2:43
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And then there's that sweet spot where
2:45
Speaker 1: you're past the sort of political part of things, but
2:49
Speaker 1: people are There's still enough people alive that have first
2:52
Speaker 1: person accounts. So it's somewhere, I think in the various
2:56
Speaker 1: conversations I've had with historians, somewhere between twenty five and
2:59
Speaker 1: forty years is sometimes you can get the perfect window.
3:04
Speaker 1: I say this because my next guest, Michael Russell Gunn,
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Speaker 1: is about to debut a terrific movie. That is it's
3:14
Speaker 1: not a documentary, is A I think A certainly A.
3:19
Speaker 1: I would call it dramatic account of basically the last
3:25
Speaker 1: meetings between Reagan and Gorbacheff, and when you look back
3:29
Speaker 1: in hindsight, here were two men in their own ways,
3:32
Speaker 1: at the sunset of their political careers, at the sunset
3:35
Speaker 1: of their political influence. And it starts with Rekuvek and
3:38
Speaker 1: that nuclear summit, and it gets into a couple of others.
3:41
Speaker 1: Michael Russell Gunn is both the director, the writer and
3:45
Speaker 1: my guest right now, and he is tackling this historical
3:49
Speaker 1: event which at this point, let me do my math.
3:52
Speaker 1: Here were forty years and I do October, yes, and
3:57
Speaker 1: I do. Let me start there. You've been researched this
4:01
Speaker 1: idea for a while, thinking about how you would put
4:03
Speaker 1: this into a major motion picture, which you'll be doing
4:07
Speaker 1: August fourteenth, so mark your calendars on that. What do
4:12
Speaker 1: you believe is the ideal sort of when you know,
4:16
Speaker 1: I think about you know, people are going to compare
4:18
Speaker 1: this to thirteen Days, you know, the Cuban missile crisis movie,
4:21
Speaker 1: for instance, is probably the probably the best comparative.
4:25
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm curious.
4:26
Speaker 1: You probably have your own, your own movies that you'd
4:29
Speaker 1: like to see this compared to. And when that was made,
4:32
Speaker 1: we were in the approximately forty year window. There were
4:36
Speaker 1: still people alive who were there, et cetera. What's your sense,
4:41
Speaker 1: do you feel like you now have the complete story.
4:44
Speaker 1: You've been You have every transcript you could find. You
4:46
Speaker 1: interviewed first person accounts George Schultz before he died. What
4:51
Speaker 1: say you do you feel like you have the complete
4:53
Speaker 1: story now of these nuclear summits of the second Reagan
4:57
Speaker 1: Second Arm?
5:00
Speaker 2: Well, boy, I hope I have a certainly a story, Chock.
5:03
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that the complete story, Boy, I'd
5:07
Speaker 3: need like a mini series, a limited series.
5:08
Speaker 2: We'll have to talk to HBO.
5:09
Speaker 3: But I think that this film, I think encapsulates the
5:15
Speaker 3: turning point in the Reagan gorvich Off legacy, I think.
5:19
Speaker 3: And that's the thing that was most shocking to me
5:22
Speaker 3: when I started the research. It went, like you said,
5:24
Speaker 3: it went on for years and years, went down a
5:26
Speaker 3: rabbit hole with George Schultz, you know, who's very generous
5:29
Speaker 3: with his time. And I think, you know what surprised
5:32
Speaker 3: me was that it had never really occurred to me
5:35
Speaker 3: that two leaders would get in the room without their
5:38
Speaker 3: staffs and without the press and with all all these
5:40
Speaker 3: things and just have a conversation for two days. You know,
5:44
Speaker 3: they talked for that long, and I think it built
5:47
Speaker 3: the trust and the friendship that then led to everything else.
5:50
Speaker 3: So I think that's the really shocking and dramatic thing
5:54
Speaker 3: to me about the film. And I think that the
5:56
Speaker 3: rest of it, everything else that flowed from that, the
5:58
Speaker 3: Washington Summit, you know, Janita, all these other you know
6:01
Speaker 3: summits that they had all were basically encapsulated.
6:05
Speaker 2: In that relationship form. And Ricky Dick.
6:07
Speaker 1: All right, so we just did our teaser. Now let's
6:11
Speaker 1: bring people back to the subject at hand. Yeah, So
6:15
Speaker 1: this is a movie. It's called Brink of War. And
6:17
Speaker 1: I'll be honest the movie title didn't I think back
6:21
Speaker 1: to Rekivic, I think back to and this was my
6:24
Speaker 1: own coming of age of paying attention to politics. This
6:27
Speaker 1: was around this time I became sort of becoming obsessed
6:30
Speaker 1: with it. My memory of it wasn't that this was
6:34
Speaker 1: a do or die moment in that it felt more
6:37
Speaker 1: like and I, like I said, I grew up. I
6:40
Speaker 1: grew up in a household very big fans of Reagan.
6:43
Speaker 1: My dad was a huge fan of Reagan. And I
6:45
Speaker 1: think it's certainly my memory of it is this is
6:48
Speaker 1: his second term legacy achievement. He wanted to do. To
6:51
Speaker 1: do this, that's my memory of all of this. Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 1: And what I think we What I'm guessing I misremember
7:01
Speaker 1: is the perception of weakness or strength with Gorbachoff in
7:05
Speaker 1: that moment. Where were we in the peristroiicat timeline? Yeah,
7:09
Speaker 1: it taking me back to where this movie is so there.
7:12
Speaker 3: You know, there's obviously a bunch of different You mentioned
7:15
Speaker 3: thirteen Days, you know, the Cuban missile crisis and and
7:18
Speaker 3: things like that, and Able Archer in eighty three obviously
7:22
Speaker 3: a huge dangerous moment where we misunderstood what their intentions were,
7:27
Speaker 3: they misunderstood ours.
7:28
Speaker 1: That was a real like yeah, I mean, and it's
7:31
Speaker 1: a crazy story, you know, basically a couple of just
7:35
Speaker 1: mid level people going, I don't know if this is real?
7:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it would.
7:39
Speaker 1: I mean.
7:39
Speaker 3: And you know, one of the things that I think
7:41
Speaker 3: is a legacy of the Cold War, and to me now,
7:45
Speaker 3: especially now looking back on it, that's quite frightening is
7:48
Speaker 3: how many times we were saved by relatively junior people,
7:52
Speaker 3: you know, Able Larger being the perfect example. This wasn't
7:55
Speaker 3: like we picked up the red phone, you know, in
7:57
Speaker 3: the open office and we you know, this was a
7:59
Speaker 3: couple of dudes at the lower level who were like,
8:02
Speaker 3: this doesn't sound right. I don't think America is actually
8:05
Speaker 3: going to attack us, you know, or whatever. And you know,
8:08
Speaker 3: so I think the one of the legacies of the
8:10
Speaker 3: Cold War and that we have all kind of collectively
8:13
Speaker 3: forgotten it.
8:14
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I wanted to.
8:15
Speaker 3: Make this film was because, you know, at time and
8:21
Speaker 3: again we came this close to armageddon. And so what
8:26
Speaker 3: was going on in eighty six when they when Reagan
8:28
Speaker 3: and Gorbachev met, was all these Soviet premiers had died
8:32
Speaker 3: before Reagan can meet them, can meet them. They were
8:34
Speaker 3: all older, they all passed away before we could meet them.
8:37
Speaker 1: And remember, I don't know you remember, but people of
8:40
Speaker 1: a certain age will remember. It was like, hey, they're
8:42
Speaker 1: playing classical music in Moscow, it must mean somebody died.
8:47
Speaker 1: Like that used to be this signal. You're like, wells
8:50
Speaker 1: and drop off dead is left dead. Well, they're playing
8:53
Speaker 1: classical music. So the assumption is, yes, that was my
8:57
Speaker 1: memory of those days.
9:00
Speaker 3: Well, you know it just well and this happened but
9:02
Speaker 3: three times, I think, you know, just and you know,
9:05
Speaker 3: since in nineteen eighty and so he so he had
9:08
Speaker 3: been wanting to meet and by the way, we had
9:10
Speaker 3: the old president he kept living. There's right, yes, and
9:14
Speaker 3: I think that was a piece of it. I think,
9:16
Speaker 3: you know, look, you know, Gorbachov was relatively young. You know,
9:19
Speaker 3: we all think to think of him as older, at
9:20
Speaker 3: least certainly I do, because I didn't grow up in
9:23
Speaker 3: that era as much, and so I think of him
9:25
Speaker 3: and I think the old guy, and you know, the
9:27
Speaker 3: guy who Michael, I will.
9:29
Speaker 1: Tell you that he was the first. Look, he's the
9:31
Speaker 1: first one I remember. You know, Look, we're all I
9:36
Speaker 1: will confess to having a lot my father having been
9:39
Speaker 1: very influential on me, but I remember him being a
9:41
Speaker 1: little nervous about Gorbachev because he say, oh, he's the
9:44
Speaker 1: first one without a memory of World War Two. Like
9:47
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, my father was of this belief
9:50
Speaker 1: that the Soviet leaders that have memories of World War
9:53
Speaker 1: Two and the slaughter and the importance the Americans had
9:56
Speaker 1: that like there was always a level of comfort. They're
9:59
Speaker 1: not they know how bad war was the Russians, the
10:01
Speaker 1: Soviets experienced the worst part of war works.
10:03
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And.
10:05
Speaker 1: So there was this cover and here was Gorbachev, a
10:08
Speaker 1: young leader, and you were like, he didn't have the
10:11
Speaker 1: memory of World War Two that these older leaders had.
10:14
Speaker 1: So you're right, We now think of Garbachev as this
10:18
Speaker 1: as this uh you know, glass snow spatter, strike out
10:21
Speaker 1: those things and instead at the time there was a
10:24
Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty and a little bit of nervousness. So
10:27
Speaker 1: we are we gonna have a young buck is he
10:28
Speaker 1: going to Frankly, everything that Putin is is was the
10:33
Speaker 1: fear that Gorbachev could be.
10:35
Speaker 3: I think I think that's one hundred percent right. I
10:37
Speaker 3: think we view him now through the lens of history,
10:39
Speaker 3: especially in the West. Is this saint correct? And nobody
10:42
Speaker 3: really knew he was young that you know, the Soviet
10:45
Speaker 3: system was a closed box, so we didn't have the intelligence.
10:49
Speaker 1: That seemed unusual for somebody this young to suddenly get
10:52
Speaker 1: in line, but they they were tired of leaders dying.
10:55
Speaker 1: That was.
10:58
Speaker 3: And I think he also came from a little bit
11:01
Speaker 3: outside of the you know, he came from the agricultural world.
11:05
Speaker 3: He came from you know, he was you know, famously
11:07
Speaker 3: and you know, working to increase agricultural output and things
11:11
Speaker 3: like that. And I think, you know, to your point
11:13
Speaker 3: about this kind of last living memory of the Great
11:16
Speaker 3: Patriotic War, right as they called it, they lose twenty
11:19
Speaker 3: million people that he brought the last Soviet marshal to
11:24
Speaker 3: Rickyvic Akramayoff to do the overnight negotiation. So we depict
11:29
Speaker 3: in the film, you know the Americans, you know of
11:31
Speaker 3: Paul Nitzi and cannadelm On, some of these lions of
11:34
Speaker 3: American foreign policy. He comes into the room and they're
11:37
Speaker 3: all they're all stupefied to see him. It's imagine if
11:41
Speaker 3: we brought our joint chiefs of Staff, you know, chairman
11:43
Speaker 3: of Joint Chefs of staff to this negotiation and they're
11:45
Speaker 3: all looking at each other like who is going to
11:48
Speaker 3: lead this thing now that we're going to engage with
11:51
Speaker 3: this guy. But you know, this is one I'm speaking
11:55
Speaker 3: now as a filmmaker that you know, one of the
11:56
Speaker 3: devastating things to me as the filmmakers, you got to
11:58
Speaker 3: sometimes you gotta make cuts, chuck, And one of the
12:00
Speaker 3: things that I had to cut for time was this
12:03
Speaker 3: incredible thing that happened overnight between Akromayev and Nitsy where
12:09
Speaker 3: Akramyov talks about exactly what you're saying, which is, I'm
12:12
Speaker 3: the last general in the General staff the Soviet Army
12:16
Speaker 3: that remembers World War Two, and so he says that
12:19
Speaker 3: his connection to Gorbachev is because Gorbachev wants.
12:23
Speaker 2: To change and engage in a way that they haven't.
12:26
Speaker 3: And so it's a really powerful moment, and it was
12:29
Speaker 3: powerful in the true history. I wish that we didn't
12:31
Speaker 3: have to cut it, but I think your point is
12:34
Speaker 3: well taken. That you know, nobody really knew and there
12:38
Speaker 3: were a lot of hardliners that were on the other
12:40
Speaker 3: side of Gorbachev, and we didn't know that either. We
12:42
Speaker 3: didn't know that years later there'd be a coup against him,
12:45
Speaker 3: that we didn't know how much pressure he was under.
12:48
Speaker 3: But the Red Army was absolutely saying this program that
12:52
Speaker 3: Reagan wants, this SDI thing, we're gonna have to go
12:54
Speaker 3: to war to stop it, and so you better figure
12:56
Speaker 3: it out or we're going to get rid of you
12:58
Speaker 3: and then we're going to attack.
13:00
Speaker 2: You know.
13:00
Speaker 1: The thing that we always forget, and that's why it's
13:03
Speaker 1: great when someone like yourself who tackles something through historical
13:07
Speaker 1: lensess is that we're not the only society that's divided politically.
13:15
Speaker 1: Every entity, you know, we you know, we always paint
13:18
Speaker 1: our adversaries as if boy they have unit beliefs. You know,
13:22
Speaker 1: the Chinese they're even the Russians now and it's like,
13:26
Speaker 1: oh no, and or the Iranians as we're coming to
13:29
Speaker 1: find out. Right, you know, every society has its moderates.
13:32
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they they're still radical looking in comparison,
13:37
Speaker 1: but every society as its moderates, it's hard liners and
13:39
Speaker 1: somewhere in between.
13:41
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, you look at what g is doing
13:43
Speaker 3: right now. It seems like every week he wipes somebody
13:46
Speaker 3: else out of the pollen bureau or the you know,
13:49
Speaker 3: the Chinese military structure, and it's.
13:51
Speaker 1: I think we ought to be a little more concerned
13:52
Speaker 1: about what's happening over there than we are, considering when
13:55
Speaker 1: you see a leader purging that is that's always a
13:59
Speaker 1: nerve business.
14:01
Speaker 2: One hundred percent agree I. I.
14:03
Speaker 3: You know, he's surrounding himself with who knows, you know,
14:07
Speaker 3: or just not having not feeling positions at all. It's
14:10
Speaker 3: it's it's eerie to watch.
14:13
Speaker 1: So eighty six is the recum it gets considered a
14:16
Speaker 1: failure and a success.
14:18
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, that's very well said.
14:21
Speaker 3: I think you know, the thing that was quite striking
14:24
Speaker 3: when I went to talk to Schultz was that, you know,
14:29
Speaker 3: it was us, It was the Americans who misunderstood Ricky back.
14:32
Speaker 3: It was we that thought it was the failure. And
14:35
Speaker 3: that was very humbling, I think in a kind of
14:38
Speaker 3: beautiful way to Schultz, because you know, they have this agreement.
14:44
Speaker 3: It's a you know, crazy true story. I hope your
14:47
Speaker 3: listeners go out and see it. It's they have they
14:50
Speaker 3: have a deal at one point to get rid of
14:52
Speaker 3: every nuclear weapon on Earth. And it falls apart over
14:55
Speaker 3: one word. And you know, to find out the one word, JACKI,
14:59
Speaker 3: you got to go the theater.
15:00
Speaker 1: And there's a teaser, yes, but.
15:03
Speaker 3: You know, it's this crazy deal. It falls apart, and
15:06
Speaker 3: Schultz and Reagan think, oh, this was it, this was
15:10
Speaker 3: the this was the greatest deal we're ever going to have.
15:12
Speaker 3: And it's a failure. So the Americans think, oh, wait
15:14
Speaker 3: a second, it's a failure. But Gorbachev and the Soviets.
15:19
Speaker 3: Gorbachev immediately goes and does a press conference in Russian
15:22
Speaker 3: where he says, this.
15:23
Speaker 2: Was great we did and we had a great talk.
15:27
Speaker 3: And even years later, you know, Schultz gets back to Washington,
15:31
Speaker 3: he starts to you know, come around and realize something
15:33
Speaker 3: was really made in Ricky Big and then there's the
15:36
Speaker 3: narrative starts to turn, but even fully, he doesn't understand
15:41
Speaker 3: it so much so that years later the wall falls.
15:43
Speaker 3: Gorbachev comes out to Stanford and he said, when we met,
15:47
Speaker 3: it was at his coldest point. And then three years
15:49
Speaker 3: later it was over. What what what happened? And Gorbachev
15:52
Speaker 3: just answers him one word, He just says, Ricky Vick.
15:54
Speaker 3: And I think that goes to the fact that they
15:56
Speaker 3: got in a room together, they formed a relationship. They
16:00
Speaker 3: realized they could trust because it takes two to tango right.
16:04
Speaker 3: You can't just say you get one, you gotta have both.
16:09
Speaker 3: And they figured out a way to build a relationship
16:11
Speaker 3: that led to the end of the Cold War. And
16:12
Speaker 3: I think it's profound. I think it's to me as
16:15
Speaker 3: a as a history undergrad, you know, just a young
16:18
Speaker 3: history undergrad. You know, it's shocking that I didn't know
16:22
Speaker 3: about this. It's one of the biggest diplomatic achievements in history.
16:25
Speaker 3: To me now looking back on it.
16:29
Speaker 1: Did we we considered a failure because we didn't get
16:32
Speaker 1: a deal and were they coming because they were just
16:35
Speaker 1: they viewed it as they viewed it as step one
16:38
Speaker 1: and we went in there thinking of a five step
16:41
Speaker 1: process and we were thinking we were at step five already.
16:43
Speaker 1: Is that the miscommunication? Basically?
16:45
Speaker 3: I think it's that. I also think it's the American
16:48
Speaker 3: tendency to think of things in game theory. I think,
16:52
Speaker 3: you know, one of the things that was most striking
16:54
Speaker 3: to me was Jared Harris, British actor, plays Gorbachev, and
16:59
Speaker 3: he came in and he's you know, he's ultra prepared.
17:03
Speaker 3: You know, his performance is obviously incredible, but he comes
17:05
Speaker 3: in he's read every transcript, he's read all the books.
17:07
Speaker 3: He obviously's memorized the script, and he's off book with
17:10
Speaker 3: the script. But one of the first things he said
17:12
Speaker 3: to me was he's like, you Americans, he said, you know,
17:15
Speaker 3: you're always talking in sports terms, right. He reads all
17:19
Speaker 3: the you know, the commentary that the advisors are making,
17:22
Speaker 3: and he's like, they're all talking about you know, Gorbachev
17:24
Speaker 3: came to play. That's a line we put in the film.
17:27
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, they're always talking in sports analogies.
17:30
Speaker 3: And he's like, it's almost you thought that it's either
17:32
Speaker 3: win or lose, and from Gorbachev's perspective and the Soviet perspective,
17:37
Speaker 3: like you said, this was one point on an arc
17:40
Speaker 3: that they were trying to accomplish, and he's saying, that's
17:44
Speaker 3: really profound. I also think it's profound from Gorbachok's perspective,
17:47
Speaker 3: because that's why he goes into a press conference and says,
17:50
Speaker 3: for the KGB to hear, for the Red Army to hear,
17:53
Speaker 3: we had a great meeting.
17:54
Speaker 2: It was great. Don't worry, we're going to figure it out.
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Speaker 1: zero seven eight six seven if you're in Louisiana. Does
19:49
Speaker 1: this movie get made? If you don't have those transcripts
19:52
Speaker 1: of Reagan and Gorbachev, this is just so much hard.
19:56
Speaker 3: Would have been a hell of a lot harder to
19:57
Speaker 3: write the script. I can tell you that much. I
19:58
Speaker 3: think does it get ma, You know, it takes a
20:01
Speaker 3: lot to make a movie. I would say that certainly.
20:04
Speaker 3: Being able to point to those and say to the cast,
20:07
Speaker 3: to the financiers, this is real. You know, we're not
20:10
Speaker 3: making this up. You know it's it's real, I think
20:13
Speaker 3: certainly that helps.
20:15
Speaker 1: I think about Oppenheimer and how Nolan did such a
20:17
Speaker 1: great job of turning a transcript yes, into this dramatic
20:22
Speaker 1: you know, arguably it was the backbone of the entire movie. Yes,
20:26
Speaker 1: and it is a committee transcript, And I remember I
20:29
Speaker 1: interviewed Nolan for that and how important it was that,
20:33
Speaker 1: you know, as great as the Ki Bird book was,
20:36
Speaker 1: that he based it off of the book, did not
20:39
Speaker 1: have this transcript? Yes, right, this was different. Tell me
20:42
Speaker 1: about getting this transcript and when I don't. Is this
20:47
Speaker 1: something that has was released about a decade ago? When
20:50
Speaker 1: did when did this become available? Yeah?
20:53
Speaker 3: So I mean, well, thank you for referencing Nolan Oppenheimer
20:56
Speaker 3: because that was that's maybe one of my maybe my
20:58
Speaker 3: favorite film of his.
21:00
Speaker 1: I will tell you we've you know missus podcast that
21:03
Speaker 1: I have seen them both. Hot to see it, and look,
21:06
Speaker 1: the Odyssey is terrific. It's great. Oppenheimer was much harder
21:11
Speaker 1: to do what he did. It's a greater achievement to
21:15
Speaker 1: create to do what he did with that material. The Odyssey. Hey,
21:19
Speaker 1: it gave you great material. You just had to be
21:22
Speaker 1: a you know how to execute. And I say this
21:24
Speaker 1: with no it was amazing with Oppenheimer in some way.
21:28
Speaker 1: When you think about the the level of difficulty to
21:32
Speaker 1: turn that into major cultural touchstone, right, you know that's
21:39
Speaker 1: not easy.
21:39
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you.
21:41
Speaker 3: It's such an it's it's such an engagement in the
21:43
Speaker 3: material that you can't imagine in the true history. And
21:47
Speaker 3: so I think, yeah, I mean, so to answer your
21:50
Speaker 3: question about Ricky Vic and the transfers there, you know
21:54
Speaker 3: what happened to me was I had written a different project.
21:58
Speaker 3: It was a book that had optioned from former sectif
22:01
Speaker 3: Ash Carter and Bill Perry, and unfortunately that project didn't
22:05
Speaker 3: work out. And it was on nukes, right, their book.
22:07
Speaker 3: It was also it was about the non Lugar Amendment. Yeah,
22:11
Speaker 3: and so you know I was really disappointed, and I
22:14
Speaker 3: you know that was about you know, Sam, Sam Nunn
22:17
Speaker 3: and Dick Luger are to a Republican and a Democrat.
22:19
Speaker 3: I wanted to do a story about us coming together.
22:21
Speaker 3: You know, I think we've gotten so darn good at
22:24
Speaker 3: yelling at one another that we've gotten how to talk
22:26
Speaker 3: to one another. And I think that I wanted to
22:28
Speaker 3: do a story about coming together. That didn't work out.
22:30
Speaker 3: Participant bought it. It went away, a very Hollywood story.
22:34
Speaker 3: And so then I was talking. I was lamenting this
22:37
Speaker 3: to Bill Perry, and you know, very generously, he said, oh,
22:40
Speaker 3: you got to come up to the Hoover Institute in
22:42
Speaker 3: Stanford and talk to George Schultz. And so I said, well,
22:45
Speaker 3: I'm not going to turn that down, you know, another
22:47
Speaker 3: percent of American foreign policy. And so I went up
22:50
Speaker 3: and met Schultz, and he was very grandfatherly.
22:53
Speaker 1: You know.
22:53
Speaker 3: He showed me around, and he takes me in this
22:56
Speaker 3: conference room and he shows me this oil. Tell me
22:58
Speaker 3: when this was Just give me a time, s this
23:00
Speaker 3: is this is about nine years ago. Now, okay, yeah,
23:04
Speaker 3: I'm doing the math in my head. It's probably probably
23:06
Speaker 3: nine years ago.
23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was in the middle of he had
23:09
Speaker 1: a cooperative biography being done with him too, So he
23:12
Speaker 1: was in a you know, everything you hear about him.
23:14
Speaker 1: He was very very generous. He wanted to tell his stories.
23:17
Speaker 1: He was wanted to tell he wasn't he wasn't keeping
23:19
Speaker 1: anything secret anymore.
23:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, not at all. He's very reflective in that time.
23:23
Speaker 3: And he he came, you know, he brought me to
23:26
Speaker 3: the conference room and there's this oil painting I think
23:28
Speaker 3: it's oil of the Rickievic room, Reagan and Gorbas shops
23:32
Speaker 3: standing and across from another. And you know, as a filmmaker,
23:36
Speaker 3: I was struck by that visual that here's these two
23:39
Speaker 3: people in a room, a tiny, tiny room in Iceland.
23:42
Speaker 3: They started to tell the story, and I'm just fascinated.
23:44
Speaker 3: I went back to see him again and he you know,
23:47
Speaker 3: you know, I told you he was grandfatherly to me,
23:49
Speaker 3: but he you know, I had a very very young
23:51
Speaker 3: baby at the time, and he was like, well, how
23:53
Speaker 3: are you going to how are you going to do this?
23:54
Speaker 3: How are you going to make money while you write
23:56
Speaker 3: this move? Like he didn't believe me his economics background.
24:00
Speaker 3: He's like, go home and talk to your wife, you know,
24:02
Speaker 3: go home and talk to her and if she says
24:03
Speaker 3: it's okay, then we'll do it. So I go home.
24:05
Speaker 3: I call him back and I said, yeah, I still
24:06
Speaker 3: want to do it. So he brings me back and
24:08
Speaker 3: he gives me, you know, hand scribbled on copies of
24:14
Speaker 3: the transcripts still stamp.
24:16
Speaker 2: Classified and he gives them to me.
24:19
Speaker 1: And that were those still classified at the time or
24:22
Speaker 1: had they been classified?
24:25
Speaker 3: They certainly he was very very you know, uh strict
24:28
Speaker 3: about you know, with himself and all that stuff. I
24:30
Speaker 3: can't imagine they were still classified, but you know, they
24:33
Speaker 3: but I don't know when they were. Now they're online,
24:35
Speaker 3: you know, now you can go to the National Security
24:37
Speaker 3: Archives website.
24:38
Speaker 1: But at the time they were not. When you know,
24:41
Speaker 1: they weren't anywhere.
24:42
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't find them at all. So he
24:43
Speaker 3: luckily gave them to me. And that was the basis
24:45
Speaker 3: of the script. You know, the very first scene between
24:47
Speaker 3: Ringing and Gorchov is nearly verbatim, you know, from this
24:51
Speaker 3: from this transcript, and so you know, just like you
24:53
Speaker 3: were talking about with Oppenheimer. Yeah, to bottom line it,
24:58
Speaker 3: the film wouldn't exist from a resource standpoint at all
25:01
Speaker 3: without I just I love I mean, to me.
25:05
Speaker 1: This is the best use of film. This is like
25:08
Speaker 1: it is taking something and you know that this is
25:11
Speaker 1: the transcript look, we are this is a dramatized reading
25:15
Speaker 1: of it, but the words are not changed. You didn't
25:18
Speaker 1: have to be a script writer here. The words are
25:21
Speaker 1: the words. So you know, it's interesting on this, which
25:27
Speaker 1: is does do personal relationships matter in foreign policy? Right there? This,
25:33
Speaker 1: I actually think is more. There's always been a debate
25:36
Speaker 1: about this, how personal, how important is that relationship, and
25:42
Speaker 1: how important is the structure of a country's relationship with
25:47
Speaker 1: another country? And is that ultimately matter more than not?
25:51
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm guessing coming away from this film,
25:56
Speaker 1: the message you're sending is no personal relationships matter? Been
26:00
Speaker 1: among two superpowers? Yes, I think so. I think the
26:06
Speaker 1: thing that I learned was very much that.
26:08
Speaker 3: I think that I probably came up like I mentioned
26:12
Speaker 3: history undergrad.
26:14
Speaker 2: You know, I see I see.
26:15
Speaker 3: The hurricanes, I see the Canes helmet in the background, chuck,
26:17
Speaker 3: like I went to Clemson undergrad. We'll talk about that
26:20
Speaker 3: later different podcasts. But you know, I think that I
26:24
Speaker 3: probably came from a system's idea, from a historical suite.
26:28
Speaker 3: But you know, there was something really profound about these
26:34
Speaker 3: two and their willingness to engage. I don't think things
26:37
Speaker 3: change without that. And I think that the lesson for
26:41
Speaker 3: me and the humbling lesson for me was that just
26:43
Speaker 3: how important that is. And so it became this larger
26:47
Speaker 3: theme of the movie, which is just that we have
26:50
Speaker 3: to engage with one another. If we want to figure
26:52
Speaker 3: our stuff out, We're going to have to engage, because
26:54
Speaker 3: we're never all going to agree, right, Yeah.
26:58
Speaker 1: I will tell you this. I just think, you know,
26:59
Speaker 1: it's funny the the there's one version of history that
27:05
Speaker 1: has always characterized Reagan as a vessel, yeah, rather than
27:11
Speaker 1: a leader. And you know when I have read his diaries,
27:17
Speaker 1: which that came out in the seventies, you know that recently,
27:20
Speaker 1: but it was what was sort of the things he
27:22
Speaker 1: was thinking about as he was preparing to run for president.
27:25
Speaker 1: And then stories like this you realize this, you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: there there is if if there is been a mis
27:35
Speaker 1: framing a history of a recently historical figure, particularly probably
27:40
Speaker 1: in academia, it is it is sort of the discounting
27:44
Speaker 1: of Reagan, the intellect discounting Reagan the sort of the
27:50
Speaker 1: true sort of world leader here. And it seems as if,
27:54
Speaker 1: I mean, let me put it this way, imagine the
27:58
Speaker 1: reaction if we found that Donald Trump and Plutin had
28:01
Speaker 1: a one on one without anybody in the room.
28:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be shocking, right, I mean, it would
28:07
Speaker 2: be shocking, and.
28:08
Speaker 1: It'd be nervousness. So, you know, and I don't think
28:11
Speaker 1: that there was no I am curious. Was there nervousness
28:14
Speaker 1: on both sides of having both these men alone in
28:16
Speaker 1: a room?
28:17
Speaker 2: I think enormously so. I think enormously so.
28:21
Speaker 3: And and and quite frankly, to look back, if you
28:26
Speaker 3: imagine if you were, you know, sitting in the Pentagon
28:29
Speaker 3: with the Chairman of the Joint Chief or on the
28:31
Speaker 3: Armed Services Committee, you know, you're in the Red Army
28:34
Speaker 3: headquarters back in Moscow. You know, these guys were negotiating
28:39
Speaker 3: one on one and you didn't have any part in that.
28:42
Speaker 1: You know.
28:43
Speaker 3: I think that there's an enormous kind of concern I guess,
28:47
Speaker 3: I would say, and you know it comes up in
28:50
Speaker 3: the transcripts that comes up in the film that all
28:52
Speaker 3: these different interested parties have this.
28:54
Speaker 2: Kind of uh you knows, did interest? I guess is
29:01
Speaker 2: the word.
29:02
Speaker 3: But one of the things that was I think surprising,
29:06
Speaker 3: at least from your point on the Reagan side of.
29:08
Speaker 2: It, was it's hard to it is hard to underestimate.
29:14
Speaker 3: The good will that was borne by the American people
29:18
Speaker 3: to him. You know, when I looked back, and you know, again,
29:22
Speaker 3: I was very very young, but like I didn't know
29:25
Speaker 3: he won forty nine and fifty states. You know, when
29:27
Speaker 3: I go and read that, I think waited second forty
29:30
Speaker 3: nine and fifty states. That sounds like not just another
29:34
Speaker 3: time period. It sounds like an alternate history, you know
29:36
Speaker 3: what I mean. And so I think that in the
29:39
Speaker 3: same way that Gorbachev existed in a certainly an autocracy,
29:45
Speaker 3: if not a dictatorship, he was able to speak in
29:48
Speaker 3: one voice, and I think Reagan carried an immense amount
29:51
Speaker 3: of good will into Rikubc and was able.
29:53
Speaker 2: To speak no.
29:55
Speaker 1: And look, the lack of this gets a too, you
29:58
Speaker 1: know that when you when there's no when there's not
30:01
Speaker 1: another political campaign, you know, does you know there's this
30:05
Speaker 1: famous Obama quote with Medvedev where he's on a hot
30:09
Speaker 1: mic and he says, you know, after my re election,
30:11
Speaker 1: I'll have more flexibility, which was one of those things
30:15
Speaker 1: you never want to have out loud. But what he
30:17
Speaker 1: said was absolutely true, like it's true of every American president,
30:21
Speaker 1: Like hey, when set, when I'm when I'm not, when
30:24
Speaker 1: I don't have to run again. Yeah, I can take
30:27
Speaker 1: more risk essentially, or I can I can you know,
30:30
Speaker 1: have uh, I can maybe expand the aperture of the
30:34
Speaker 1: conversation we're going to have. And that was Reagan at
30:38
Speaker 1: Recuvit wasn't it. And it sounded like they wanted a
30:40
Speaker 1: big deal going in. They were looking for Now. People
30:44
Speaker 1: do need to remember the political environment. It wasn't the
30:46
Speaker 1: best domestically at that moment for Reagan. You had Iran
30:49
Speaker 1: contra that was sort of percolating on, you had a
30:53
Speaker 1: political situation that was sort of growing. You know, the
30:57
Speaker 1: six year itch is a real thing in American politics,
30:59
Speaker 1: and we were at the security to Reagan. So they
31:03
Speaker 1: did they were looking for a political outcome short.
31:05
Speaker 3: Term r Yeah, yeah, And I think they definitely were.
31:09
Speaker 3: And I think that I think certainly the people around
31:13
Speaker 3: him were, you know, and I think that in the
31:15
Speaker 3: same way that on the Soviet side you had you know,
31:19
Speaker 3: you had Schever Nazi who supported him, Akromaeoff who supported Garbuach.
31:23
Speaker 3: If you had those people desperate for a political solution
31:25
Speaker 3: to this thing, and I think that there was. So
31:28
Speaker 3: there were a lot of hopes writing on the on
31:30
Speaker 3: the big guy in both cases, and in Reagan's case,
31:33
Speaker 3: I think, you know, he I think he was well
31:38
Speaker 3: aware of the clock ticking, you know, probably more than
31:41
Speaker 3: a lot of people and they think, you know, so
31:44
Speaker 3: I think there was a lot writing on that and
31:45
Speaker 3: there was not just that, I would.
31:47
Speaker 2: Say, for the whole world.
31:49
Speaker 3: You know, that's one of the things that I think
31:51
Speaker 3: is underestimated when we talk about Ricky Bick is the
31:55
Speaker 3: whole world is standing there, you know, watching this door.
32:00
Speaker 3: They literally filmed that they called the most famous doorknob
32:02
Speaker 3: in the world, but they filmed a doorknob for two
32:05
Speaker 3: days because they couldn't get into the room. So you know,
32:08
Speaker 3: the whole world's waiting to find out what's going to happen.
32:12
Speaker 1: So, I mean, this has always been the question, how
32:15
Speaker 1: close who are we to agree to get rid of
32:17
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons? It was really, one word.
32:21
Speaker 2: Very believable. I believe it. I think we were very close.
32:24
Speaker 3: And I think and I think that that this view.
32:28
Speaker 3: It comes back to your question about the film give
32:30
Speaker 3: me for my cynicism.
32:31
Speaker 1: I don't know if I believe it, but I mean,
32:33
Speaker 1: you know, sort of make the make the case to
32:35
Speaker 1: a cynic like me.
32:35
Speaker 3: On this Well, I think I think two things were
32:38
Speaker 3: going on. You had the willingness to change on the
32:41
Speaker 3: Soviet side for the first time possibly ever. That's number one.
32:46
Speaker 3: I think you had a duopoly in global politics. You
32:51
Speaker 3: didn't have China, China's expanding its arsenal now you know,
32:55
Speaker 3: you know, you didn't have saudiing around all these kind
32:58
Speaker 3: of you know, bubbling up crises. And so I think
33:00
Speaker 3: you had a structurally a duopoly of a world geopolitically
33:04
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways. And you had therefore a
33:08
Speaker 3: lot of pressure from those two entities on allies. So
33:12
Speaker 3: you could go to the Brits of the French and say, look,
33:15
Speaker 3: if we give them up, you got to give them
33:16
Speaker 3: up too. And so I think that that moment in
33:21
Speaker 3: history probably got us the closest ever. And I would
33:24
Speaker 3: say that the success and the bearing out of my
33:28
Speaker 3: argument on this would be that we did end up
33:31
Speaker 3: producing them by ninety percent. I think if you had
33:33
Speaker 3: told Schultz or anybody else in that room, you know,
33:36
Speaker 3: as we depict in the film, Schultz opens with this
33:38
Speaker 3: gambit of like, let's reduce them thirty percent, and the
33:41
Speaker 3: Soviets immediately come back with fifty percent. And it's a
33:44
Speaker 3: shocking moment to Reagan into Schultz. And I think that
33:48
Speaker 3: the argument that I would make is that this was
33:51
Speaker 3: the moment, if ever it was going to happen, this
33:54
Speaker 3: was the moment.
33:56
Speaker 1: So tell me about the cash. You talked about Jared
33:58
Speaker 1: Harris and just how haired he was. What did Jeff
34:02
Speaker 1: Daniels do to become to study Reagan what we're doing.
34:06
Speaker 3: Well, he spent months and months working on the accent,
34:09
Speaker 3: you know, working on the working through the script. He
34:12
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, he's he's obviously spent some time
34:16
Speaker 3: with Sorking. Sorking, you know, kind of we met on
34:19
Speaker 3: the newsroom. Jeff and I met on the newsroom. Sorking
34:21
Speaker 3: was my hero and mentor. So I knew he could
34:24
Speaker 3: do the twelve and fourteen page days on set if
34:26
Speaker 3: he had to with the script. But he was off
34:28
Speaker 3: book by the time he landed, which was incredible. And
34:31
Speaker 3: he spent all this time and then spent, you know,
34:34
Speaker 3: just like Jared, two hours Jared's case, three hours a
34:37
Speaker 3: day in the makeup chair to get.
34:39
Speaker 2: The look right.
34:40
Speaker 3: And you know, part of the part of the growing
34:44
Speaker 3: up I think that every filmmaker has to go through
34:48
Speaker 3: is learning who you can trust with a performance. And
34:52
Speaker 3: you know, with Jeff I my first show was the
34:56
Speaker 3: newsroom with him and with Aaron, and watching him was
35:01
Speaker 3: watching this guy who I knew from Dumb and Dumber
35:05
Speaker 3: in a Rachnophobia and all these other things. You know,
35:08
Speaker 3: I wasn't yet skilled in the ways of you know,
35:10
Speaker 3: Purple Rise of Cairo and these, you know, other films
35:13
Speaker 3: that he had done. And I knew him most on
35:15
Speaker 3: the comedic side, but then see him on the dramatic side,
35:18
Speaker 3: I was like, this guy can do anything. I was like,
35:20
Speaker 3: this guy's incredible. So the first thing with Reagan was,
35:24
Speaker 3: you know, does he want to do it? I wanted
35:26
Speaker 3: him to do it. Does he want to do it?
35:28
Speaker 3: And I think he pulled it off in an amazing way.
35:32
Speaker 3: Both of them are incredible to watch.
35:38
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Speaker 1: is E T h o s dot com slash chuck.
37:17
Speaker 1: Application times may vary and rates may vary. Let's be honest,
37:27
Speaker 1: tell political history is hard to get mainstream actors to participated.
37:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what I'm most impressed with is
37:35
Speaker 1: you came up with a script, You've got clearly sold
37:39
Speaker 1: it in such a way that you got mainstream by it.
37:43
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm it always, you know, look to me,
37:46
Speaker 1: this is educated. This is an opportunity for people to
37:48
Speaker 1: get educated. And if you know, I don't I don't
37:51
Speaker 1: want to force people to read The Economist. You know,
37:54
Speaker 1: you know that's okay. Everybody learns different ways. We've got
37:57
Speaker 1: different methods. And if you learn to via podcast, you'll
38:00
Speaker 1: learn be a movie, you'll learn be a documentary. I
38:02
Speaker 1: don't care, just learn, just learn history. Yeah, it's an accomplished.
38:08
Speaker 1: That's an accomplishment all in the inn itself, that you
38:10
Speaker 1: were able to get a mainstream budget and mainstream actors.
38:14
Speaker 1: And again, this is not easy. It's a handful of
38:17
Speaker 1: times that you see this, how'd you pull it off? What? What?
38:20
Speaker 1: What was this? Is this? This is a big, big
38:24
Speaker 1: win before the movie even gets out.
38:26
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and I agree with you. It is.
38:29
Speaker 3: It is huge. It doesn't happen a lot these days.
38:32
Speaker 3: The first thing is that that it came with a script.
38:35
Speaker 3: You mentioned the transcripts and the script, that it was true.
38:38
Speaker 3: The script was, you know, as good as I could
38:41
Speaker 3: possibly write it. And I think that so that started.
38:45
Speaker 3: You know, JK and Jared and Jeff all signed on
38:49
Speaker 3: due to the script. And I think the other people
38:51
Speaker 3: is that what you pulled off?
38:52
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you and I have a mutual
38:54
Speaker 1: friend that i've you know, like every every every recovering reporter,
38:58
Speaker 1: we all think we have a green layer and TV idea,
39:02
Speaker 1: so we get real writers to help us and and stuff.
39:05
Speaker 1: But I have learned that there are various ways. Sometimes
39:09
Speaker 1: you studio says yes, or sometimes you get actors to
39:11
Speaker 1: buy in and then you go to the studio in
39:13
Speaker 1: this case, you got the actors first.
39:15
Speaker 3: We got the actors in this case, went to them
39:18
Speaker 3: with the script, said, you know, I wrote fan letters
39:23
Speaker 3: and said please please take a look. Yeah exactly, yeah,
39:26
Speaker 3: please take a look.
39:27
Speaker 1: I got I know that letter.
39:29
Speaker 3: No, yeah, And like, you know, how do you how
39:32
Speaker 3: do you feel JK. Simmons about spending a month in
39:36
Speaker 3: Iceland for no pay? You know, how do you feel
39:38
Speaker 3: about indie movies and the cold and winter? And so
39:42
Speaker 3: you know, it's you know, the fun thing I think
39:45
Speaker 3: about each one of these guys is that they've been around,
39:50
Speaker 3: they've all, they've all, they've seen everything, and so each
39:53
Speaker 3: one of them, in their own way, I think, said
39:56
Speaker 3: to me in an individual way. Both JK, Jeff certainly
39:58
Speaker 3: and also Jared said they were looking for a challenge.
40:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were looking for something to challenge.
40:03
Speaker 1: They had. Guys are pros. I mean, you know, I
40:05
Speaker 1: think about JK. Simmons, you know, whether it's the happy,
40:09
Speaker 1: go lucky guy on TV commercials selling insurance or the
40:13
Speaker 1: scary guy on eyes. I mean, you know, he's just
40:16
Speaker 1: I love the guy. You know, it's funny. I I
40:20
Speaker 1: don't remember who came up with this expression. I think
40:22
Speaker 1: it's I think I heard an actor one say this,
40:24
Speaker 1: which there are two types of actors.
40:26
Speaker 2: They're aliens and humans.
40:28
Speaker 1: And JK. Simmons is definitely a human, Like he's always JK. Simmons,
40:32
Speaker 1: like you know who it is. But he his range
40:35
Speaker 1: is amazing. Oh it's you know, for for being you know,
40:40
Speaker 1: for being such a familiar actor to so many of us.
40:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he you know, if I can nerd out
40:46
Speaker 3: with you for a look for a split second with JK.
40:50
Speaker 3: You know, I wrote in this letter to play Schultz.
40:52
Speaker 3: I really believed in Schultz's legacy. You know, he was
40:55
Speaker 3: a marine. He's one of only two people to serve
40:57
Speaker 3: in four different cabinet positions. He really believed public service.
41:00
Speaker 1: No, he's there's he's one of that. He's on the
41:02
Speaker 1: mount rushmore of unelected best politicians in our nation's history, right.
41:08
Speaker 1: You got maybe Lea Panett is on there. He was elected.
41:11
Speaker 1: But there's a couple of these guys that are like
41:13
Speaker 1: the the unsung heroes who were never elected but were
41:17
Speaker 1: incredible partners with electeds.
41:20
Speaker 3: And they just believed in public service. You know, they
41:22
Speaker 3: they weren't asking for money. They Baker might be another one.
41:26
Speaker 3: Jim Baker, great example, you know, and and I think,
41:30
Speaker 3: you know, the film is dedicated to him for that reason.
41:32
Speaker 3: You know that it was in my contract that that
41:34
Speaker 3: memoriam was for Schultz because I believed in it. I
41:37
Speaker 3: wanted to start this conversation inspire public service and they
41:41
Speaker 3: and so, you know, I wrote to JK. You know,
41:43
Speaker 3: I wrote that love letter, fan letter, whatever we're gonna
41:46
Speaker 3: call it, and I said, look, this is the film
41:48
Speaker 3: is going to be dedicated to him.
41:49
Speaker 2: This is so important to me.
41:50
Speaker 3: And he, you know, he came to set and the
41:55
Speaker 3: first take I like audibly gasped, and my script supervisor
42:01
Speaker 3: was like, what's wrong, Like, what's wrong?
42:02
Speaker 2: I call cut?
42:03
Speaker 3: I go in and I thank him because he was
42:05
Speaker 3: doing Schultz's accent. Schultz isn't famous, Schultz doesn't break, and
42:09
Speaker 3: he's not Gorbachev. Nobody's going to know but me. But
42:12
Speaker 3: he was doing the Schultz accent and he's I said,
42:16
Speaker 3: thank you so much. It means so much to me,
42:18
Speaker 3: And he was like, I was always going to do it, man,
42:19
Speaker 3: what do you think? And like it turned out he'd
42:20
Speaker 3: been talking to my co producer about, you know, getting
42:22
Speaker 3: footage of Schultz and he was like, yeah, I was
42:24
Speaker 3: always going to do it. It's just a consummate craft
42:26
Speaker 3: and pro of these guys. And he kind of chuckled
42:30
Speaker 3: and said I was always going to do it. And
42:31
Speaker 3: then we get in post production and chuck. My sound
42:35
Speaker 3: designers who do all of Jk's movies say, what's wrong
42:39
Speaker 3: with his voice? He's got like a he's got a
42:41
Speaker 3: thing with his voice. That's that's not JK. And I said,
42:43
Speaker 3: he's doing Schultz and it's so subtle and so beautiful
42:47
Speaker 3: and it'll, you know, it'll disappear into the film in
42:50
Speaker 3: a beautiful way. But it's just that kind of professionalism
42:54
Speaker 3: and that kind of craft I think is a tribute
42:57
Speaker 3: to every one of these guys.
42:58
Speaker 1: So this is our first movie. You've done plenty of
43:01
Speaker 1: TV shows, So what's the What was the biggest learning
43:08
Speaker 1: curve for you?
43:10
Speaker 3: Biggest learning curve was the uhh, the shortness of time.
43:15
Speaker 3: You know, you know television, well, television production, you know
43:19
Speaker 3: is very fast paced. You know, you turn around an
43:22
Speaker 3: episode between seven and twelve days depending on your budget,
43:25
Speaker 3: so it's really fast.
43:26
Speaker 1: So the newsroom, each episode was was basically just over
43:29
Speaker 1: the leaky, you know, you're just cranking every single second
43:33
Speaker 1: and so.
43:34
Speaker 3: But but in film, you you you're given slightly more
43:39
Speaker 3: breath to figure things out, but you're not really given
43:42
Speaker 3: more time. As strange as that sounds, what it means,
43:45
Speaker 3: what it translates into is that, you know, in features,
43:50
Speaker 3: unlike in television and television, you could be an episode,
43:53
Speaker 3: you know, three of season five and everybody it's kind
43:57
Speaker 3: of everybody knows what they're doing.
43:58
Speaker 2: The crew work.
43:59
Speaker 3: In features, you come in, everybody's got to get to
44:02
Speaker 3: work together really quickly, and it's all got to work.
44:04
Speaker 3: And every day you get up and this was a
44:07
Speaker 3: you know, I think we had nineteen days on this.
44:10
Speaker 3: Every single day you got to get up and pray
44:12
Speaker 3: that the cinematographer and the ad and everybody's gelling and
44:14
Speaker 3: you're gonna get the shots and you're gonna get it
44:16
Speaker 3: all done. There's no there's no do overs, there's no
44:20
Speaker 3: coming back.
44:20
Speaker 1: So the real work is before your schedule. You know,
44:24
Speaker 1: you've got to because if you're not like if you
44:27
Speaker 1: don't have everything lined up right, if the planes aren't
44:30
Speaker 1: ready to take off, you haven't prepared the plane to
44:33
Speaker 1: take off, you win, You're gonna lose your window.
44:37
Speaker 3: You're gonna lose. You're going to absolutely lose it. And
44:39
Speaker 3: Schultze had a phrase called best prep wins. He was
44:42
Speaker 3: the one that put all the advisors on the airplane
44:44
Speaker 3: when they thought it was just a weekend with with
44:46
Speaker 3: Breagan and Gorbachaw. He's like, no, I'm just just in case.
44:49
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring all my guys. Oh, so best
44:52
Speaker 3: prep wins. And I repeated that over and over in
44:54
Speaker 3: prep and our prep and on production, and our ads
44:58
Speaker 3: came to love it.
44:58
Speaker 2: They were like, yeah, why aren't using this. We're gonna
45:00
Speaker 2: steal this.
45:03
Speaker 1: You joked at one point, well, look, you have to
45:05
Speaker 1: make some cuts when you're.
45:06
Speaker 2: Making a devastating chuck.
45:09
Speaker 1: And you know, is I like to remind myself when
45:14
Speaker 1: I'm writing twenty five hundred and three thousand word substacks, Hey,
45:18
Speaker 1: everybody needs an editor. Not everything needs to be twenty
45:20
Speaker 1: five hundred words. Not everything needs to be a mini
45:23
Speaker 1: series or or sort of or or limited series. I
45:27
Speaker 1: guess is the is these days. And yet when I
45:32
Speaker 1: think about historical events, you know, I am as a
45:39
Speaker 1: history buff. I'm always lamenting what didn't get done, and
45:44
Speaker 1: so I would prefer I mean, I'll give you an
45:48
Speaker 1: example recently, this is it. It's a sore spot for me,
45:52
Speaker 1: and it's a source part for our mutual friend that
45:54
Speaker 1: you brought up earlier. When Netflix did the Garfield mini series, Yeah,
46:00
Speaker 1: they did it in four episodes. It's pretty clear to
46:03
Speaker 1: me that the original intent was eight or ten and
46:06
Speaker 1: the Netflix executive said, there's no appetite for this, you
46:09
Speaker 1: better do it in four and they were wrong. There
46:12
Speaker 1: was an appetite, and they were and they were wrong,
46:15
Speaker 1: and that it should have been eight. And there's just
46:18
Speaker 1: way too many missoppors. And it really bums me out
46:21
Speaker 1: that people think, no, Garfield's been done. No, it hasn't.
46:25
Speaker 1: But that's that's another that I set that aside. What
46:29
Speaker 1: is the better format to tell a story? And how
46:33
Speaker 1: often is it the movie and how often is it
46:35
Speaker 1: the limited series. I am aware that I am a
46:41
Speaker 1: fifty something and probably prefer more not less. At the
46:45
Speaker 1: same time, I want you educating twenty somethings. What is
46:48
Speaker 1: the best way to tell a story? You think when
46:50
Speaker 1: it's historical event like this.
46:53
Speaker 3: Well, for twenty something, I'm excited to report the twenty
46:57
Speaker 3: something are going back to the movies. We can thank
46:58
Speaker 3: Neon and a twenty four or to you know, have
47:01
Speaker 3: raised this young generation to go to the cinema for
47:03
Speaker 3: the first time, and you're here at least a decade
47:05
Speaker 3: or two. I'm thrilled, to be honest with you, because
47:07
Speaker 3: I thought it was all gonna be tiktoks.
47:08
Speaker 2: But it's it's a great news.
47:10
Speaker 3: We we in the industry owe a great debt to
47:12
Speaker 3: these young distributors who are bringing you know, young you know,
47:16
Speaker 3: and we've got new movie stars, you know, Shalomagns and diets.
47:19
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, make the experience of going
47:22
Speaker 1: to a movie an event. I'll hard to pursue a
47:24
Speaker 1: little bit.
47:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and they managed to do this, and
47:28
Speaker 3: I think in a great way. And I think on
47:30
Speaker 3: you know, for movies that tend to skew older, whether
47:33
Speaker 3: it's you know, Neuremberg or Pressure or whatever, those kind
47:36
Speaker 3: of most for historical things, those are back too.
47:39
Speaker 1: And so I'm very excited. I found out being an
47:41
Speaker 1: empty nester, I'm back in the movie demo. There's two
47:44
Speaker 1: movie demos, right, there's basically twelve to twenty and then
47:48
Speaker 1: there's fifty five plus the eptyestery, right, so it's uply
47:52
Speaker 1: I've been a targeted demo. I had no idea.
47:54
Speaker 3: No, it's it's great, it's great news, and so I think,
47:58
Speaker 3: you know, I think that's that's anent of it.
48:00
Speaker 2: I think that is.
48:01
Speaker 3: And in terms of your question about the structure in
48:04
Speaker 3: the medium, whether you know it's the Garfield Limited on
48:07
Speaker 3: Netflix or what have you, it's you know, I can
48:10
Speaker 3: speak only from the creative side, which is for me.
48:13
Speaker 3: You know, my agents give me a hard time sometimes
48:17
Speaker 3: because they say, well, what if it's a play instead
48:19
Speaker 3: of a movie or whatever? And I think it for
48:22
Speaker 3: me personally, the way the story comes to me in
48:25
Speaker 3: the medium that it comes to me in.
48:28
Speaker 2: Is how I lock in.
48:29
Speaker 3: And so I really personally struggle with Like if you
48:32
Speaker 3: had said, hey, Michael, here's triple the money, go make
48:36
Speaker 3: the limited series version of Rickyvick, I would have personally
48:39
Speaker 3: really struggled with that from the creative side. But what
48:42
Speaker 3: I can say in terms of the business right now,
48:45
Speaker 3: I think that the audience is hungry and thirsty for
48:51
Speaker 3: these kind of histories, whether it's the Garfield thing or
48:53
Speaker 3: pressure like we talked about Nuremberg Oppenheimer. I think there's
48:56
Speaker 3: this hunger in the audience for these true histories and
49:00
Speaker 3: it's not going away.
49:01
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds that I look at your career and
49:05
Speaker 1: the shows you've worked on, even in the TV space,
49:08
Speaker 1: and I'll just get audience a quick rundown newsroom designated Survivor, Billions,
49:14
Speaker 1: the Tie Cave Rescue. Yeah. And I know you've worked
49:16
Speaker 1: with my friend Adam Perlman on Billions, Yes, and he's
49:20
Speaker 1: very similar. You are drawn to the real yes, more
49:24
Speaker 1: so it feels as if you know you're willing to
49:28
Speaker 1: dramatize real events and maybe yes there's maybe there's dialogue
49:32
Speaker 1: that you don't know existed or not, but you want
49:35
Speaker 1: to make the best guess of what that dialogue might
49:37
Speaker 1: have been versus you seem drawn to this. You're not
49:42
Speaker 1: a fiction guy, are you? Yeah?
49:44
Speaker 2: Not as much.
49:45
Speaker 3: I mean I would say that I like to stretch.
49:47
Speaker 3: I mean, Universal recently gave me an opportunity to write
49:49
Speaker 3: a fiction script, completely fictional script, and so that was fun.
49:53
Speaker 3: But I do tend to lean more of the true stuff,
49:55
Speaker 3: and I get brought that. You know a lot of
49:57
Speaker 3: your things are how much opportunity you have? You know,
49:59
Speaker 3: I did Rescue, right, and you mentioned that and the
50:03
Speaker 3: financing company on that liked what I was doing. They
50:06
Speaker 3: I was the show runner. They in Thailand, they liked
50:09
Speaker 3: what I was doing. We're on set in Thailand and
50:10
Speaker 3: they said, what do you want to do next? And
50:12
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to make this crazy movie
50:14
Speaker 3: about these two guys arguing about nuclear policy. And they're
50:17
Speaker 3: like what. So that's how that came about. You know,
50:20
Speaker 3: sometimes it's just what you what you can grab ahold of.
50:23
Speaker 3: And I'm very fortunate that they were into that idea,
50:27
Speaker 3: that they thought it to it.
50:28
Speaker 1: Seriously, all right, look, we all any of us in
50:32
Speaker 1: this creative space generally, yeah, you have something that you
50:37
Speaker 1: really really really want to make, but you know, you've
50:39
Speaker 1: got to continue to earn the trust of studios, continue
50:42
Speaker 1: to earn the trust right where all right, we're going
50:45
Speaker 1: to give you that chance. Right. I always joke with
50:47
Speaker 1: Nolan he doesn't get to do Oppenheimer if he didn't
50:50
Speaker 1: do Dark Knight like you know, you know you sometimes
50:54
Speaker 1: you do, Yeah, I'll do a superhero. So here I'll
50:57
Speaker 1: do I'll prove to you I can do the superhero.
50:59
Speaker 1: Want me to do that? Fine, yep, now give me Oppenheimer.
51:02
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen in the reverse, correct, what are you
51:05
Speaker 1: building towards what's the dream project?
51:09
Speaker 3: The dream project is probably another true historical story. But
51:14
Speaker 3: just like you referenced, it's something I say to my
51:17
Speaker 3: reps all the time, I probably got to go do
51:19
Speaker 3: the you know, the prove you can do it movie
51:21
Speaker 3: in order to get the budget for the other one. So, yeah,
51:23
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer doesn't happen without Dark Knight. I'm very aware that
51:26
Speaker 3: the thing that I probably want to do next doesn't
51:28
Speaker 3: happen without me going to do the other thing. And
51:30
Speaker 3: so right now, if you're asking me honestly, you know,
51:33
Speaker 3: I'm writing a video game adaptation for Universal, right like,
51:36
Speaker 3: that's that's the job, and.
51:38
Speaker 1: I don't mean to laugh at that. I will tell
51:41
Speaker 1: you the most impactful new TV show I've watched in
51:44
Speaker 1: the last two years is a video game which I
51:48
Speaker 1: had no idea until I sort of got into it
51:50
Speaker 1: realized it was Fallout.
51:52
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Fallout.
51:54
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't realize video games could be this interesting,
51:58
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the game itself is quite as interesting.
52:02
Speaker 1: But well, chat about I'm not gonna sneeze at that.
52:05
Speaker 2: I mean, no, no, and it's all that is a.
52:08
Speaker 1: Very important TV show. By the way, I mean, essentially
52:13
Speaker 1: the we could call it this sort of what if
52:16
Speaker 1: reci even had gone the wrong way, we might be
52:19
Speaker 1: living fallout.
52:20
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's one hundred percent right.
52:23
Speaker 3: And I'll and I'll double down on it and say,
52:26
Speaker 3: for me at least and or in the Star Wars universe,
52:30
Speaker 3: one of the best spy shows in the last ten
52:32
Speaker 3: years up there with the Americans, and here's Tony Gilroy
52:35
Speaker 3: and they just say, here's the keys to the Kingdom.
52:37
Speaker 3: Go do what you're gonna do. And so I think,
52:39
Speaker 3: you know, if somebody came to me and said, do
52:40
Speaker 3: you want to do a spy show in the Star
52:42
Speaker 3: Wars universe, for sure, you're gonna let me do that
52:45
Speaker 3: for sure. Like that's that's the thing. I think. We've
52:47
Speaker 3: got to be careful not to turn up our noses.
52:49
Speaker 3: No one didn't turn up his nose. He made Memento,
52:52
Speaker 3: he goes to make the Dark Knight, he gets to
52:53
Speaker 3: do Open Hunter.
52:54
Speaker 2: You know, he proves he.
52:56
Speaker 1: And it's but it also this is something that my
52:58
Speaker 1: journalist friends also have to learn, which just there's not
53:01
Speaker 1: one way to teach correct And you know, you can
53:06
Speaker 1: take a you know, you could take a Star Wars
53:08
Speaker 1: spy thriller and teach people about depolarizing and why you
53:13
Speaker 1: need sort of a form of political moderation, and why ultimately,
53:19
Speaker 1: as I always say, we invented politics so that we
53:21
Speaker 1: could settle disputes without killing each other. Then ultimately you
53:24
Speaker 1: may hate politics, but thank god we have it, or
53:27
Speaker 1: where we'd all be. You know, if any of us
53:30
Speaker 1: are left, we'd be underground in some like crazy ass shelter. So,
53:36
Speaker 1: I mean, this has got to be You've just got
53:38
Speaker 1: to be absolutely to the moon excited about the fact
53:43
Speaker 1: that this is hitting major Mosher picture release.
53:46
Speaker 3: I'm I am over the moon, over the for a
53:49
Speaker 3: first film to get a theatrical release. I'm over the
53:52
Speaker 3: moon and the fact that it's going to get a
53:53
Speaker 3: wide release. That were you know, my home state of
53:56
Speaker 3: South Carolina. I live in Los Angeles, nown but my
53:58
Speaker 3: home state of South Carolina is going to get the film.
54:00
Speaker 3: You know, it's a it's a dream come true. And
54:03
Speaker 3: I think you know, it's also a testament to these
54:06
Speaker 3: actors who signed up. It's a testament to this tributor
54:09
Speaker 3: who signed up, you know, to do it. It's We're
54:12
Speaker 3: really fortunate nobody made Dark Knight money you know what
54:15
Speaker 3: I mean, sure everybody made you know, Memento money at best.
54:18
Speaker 3: And so I think that's really where we're at is
54:21
Speaker 3: if you have that passion and people join you on
54:23
Speaker 3: that journey, it's a it's a collaborative business, you know, Chuck.
54:27
Speaker 3: If you and I get in a room and write
54:28
Speaker 3: a play or write a book, there's only one or
54:31
Speaker 3: two of us. But this is a collaborative business. You
54:33
Speaker 3: need everybody, all.
54:34
Speaker 1: Right, let me get you out of here. On career advice,
54:37
Speaker 1: there's a young twenty something reporter maybe listening to this
54:42
Speaker 1: who has it, you know, who has a bunch of
54:44
Speaker 1: ideas in their head. Right, there's a lot of ex
54:47
Speaker 1: journalists who do incredible creative My friend Daniel Silva, yeah,
54:51
Speaker 1: you know who you know, thought, how do you become
54:54
Speaker 1: a novelist? Well, he was a journalist first, you know,
54:56
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, learn how to write, you know,
54:58
Speaker 1: learn to write at a wire service. You'll really have
55:00
Speaker 1: right on, Doublin. I meanway, Graham Green, that's exactly right.
55:04
Speaker 1: Like you know, so how did you break in? You know,
55:08
Speaker 1: what was your big break? And how would you tell
55:10
Speaker 1: somebody perseverance matters? But what what is that well, you know,
55:19
Speaker 1: I say this myself, like you you have to learn
55:22
Speaker 1: how to get rejected a lot in this business. Yeah,
55:25
Speaker 1: and take it right, Yeah, you you do.
55:28
Speaker 3: You know, it's a it's a I I used to
55:30
Speaker 3: call it the centrifuge, you know, the centrifuge. You can
55:34
Speaker 3: have a you know, alumni connection, you can have a
55:38
Speaker 3: friend of a family member, you can do you could.
55:40
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people who will help you get
55:43
Speaker 3: your your first step. But to survive and to thrive,
55:48
Speaker 3: it's absolutely perseverance. It's a lot of no'se. It's believing
55:53
Speaker 3: in the thing that you're doing and being passionate about it.
55:57
Speaker 3: But more so than those practical things of just you know,
56:01
Speaker 3: sticking with it. I think one of the things that
56:03
Speaker 3: I underestimated was when the things don't work out. You know,
56:11
Speaker 3: my first job was porking. And he said to me,
56:15
Speaker 3: he told this story about a play that he had
56:17
Speaker 3: ready after a few good men, a few good men happens.
56:20
Speaker 3: It breaks him out. He becomes a superstar, he is
56:23
Speaker 3: super nova in the business. And he has this other
56:26
Speaker 3: play and it doesn't work out, and he thinks, this
56:29
Speaker 3: is crazy. Why I'm you know, a few good men
56:31
Speaker 3: and the second place should be a slam dunk. But
56:34
Speaker 3: then he goes back to look at it years later
56:35
Speaker 3: and he thinks, and I don't even know what it was.
56:37
Speaker 3: He never told me, but he said, I thank goodness
56:39
Speaker 3: it didn't work out. And so the things that you
56:41
Speaker 3: don't get are sometimes even more important than the things
56:44
Speaker 3: you do get. And I think that's one of the
56:47
Speaker 3: things that I take with me when I when I
56:49
Speaker 3: get upset that something doesn't work out.
56:51
Speaker 1: I lived my life with through the motto of everything
56:54
Speaker 1: happens for a reason. You just don't know what that
56:56
Speaker 1: reason is yet. Yeah, here here, Michaels. Is great to
57:00
Speaker 1: get to know you. I'm just super excited for you
57:04
Speaker 1: about this because and just I wanted to succeed for
57:07
Speaker 1: all the reasons we've discussed. It's we we you know.
57:11
Speaker 1: The more you know, hey, we can we can teach
57:14
Speaker 1: history and throw a little sugar on it if you need.
57:16
Speaker 1: Here here, yeah, yeah, congratulations, August fourteenth major pretty much.
57:23
Speaker 1: You know there'll be two odysseies and one brink of war,
57:26
Speaker 1: all right, you know, so that's okay
57:28
Speaker 2: Right, So als, thank you, Chuck, thank you so much.