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The Birthday Party with Charles Randolph | Development Hell · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:24
Speaker 2: It's Oscar Night twenty sixteen. The stage of the Adobe
0:28
Speaker 2: Theater is set with what looks like a thousand candles.
0:32
Speaker 2: Hollywood stars are lined up in the front rows, colorful dresses,
0:36
Speaker 2: careful hairstyles, and endless cameras ready to pan from the
0:40
Speaker 2: crowd to the presenters. Ah, here comes Russell Crowe and
0:45
Speaker 2: Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling has a gold envelope.
0:48
Speaker 1: In his hand. Good evening, folks. We're here to present
0:52
Speaker 1: the award the Best Adapted Screenplay. And not to get
0:56
Speaker 1: too technical, but that's the screenplay that was the best
0:58
Speaker 1: at adapting to whatever harsh conditions and obstacles were thrown
1:01
Speaker 1: in its way.
1:05
Speaker 3: No, it's a screenplay adapted from another source, which is
1:09
Speaker 3: a novel play, short story, or a TV show.
1:14
Speaker 1: Agree to disagree?
1:15
Speaker 2: Okay, well exactly because what are we interested in in
1:20
Speaker 2: this series on development? Hell, the maladapted screenplay, the movie
1:25
Speaker 2: idea that does not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles
1:28
Speaker 2: thrown in its way. Anyway, back to the twenty sixteen Oscars,
1:36
Speaker 2: the video montage for Best Adapted Screenplay lists Brooklyn, Carol Room,
1:42
Speaker 2: The Martian and The Big Short Gosling opens the envelope
1:48
Speaker 2: and the.
1:48
Speaker 3: Oscar goes to.
1:52
Speaker 1: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay the Big Short.
2:03
Speaker 2: Allow me a little bit of name dropping. Charles Randolph,
2:07
Speaker 2: winner of that Oscar, is my and my best friend.
2:11
Speaker 2: I met him twenty five years ago when he just
2:13
Speaker 2: started screenwriting, and since then he's done the life of
2:16
Speaker 2: David Gaale, the Interpreter, Love Another, Drugs, Bombshell, and Big Short.
2:22
Speaker 2: And when he got the Oscar for Big Short. I
2:24
Speaker 2: was at an Oscar watching party in Brooklyn and I
2:26
Speaker 2: got so emotional I had to hide in the bathroom.
2:32
Speaker 1: Mister Randolph, mister Goagwell, how are you, my friend?
2:36
Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm good. Normally Charles would just walk over
2:39
Speaker 2: to the studio. His office is down the hall, But
2:42
Speaker 2: today he's calling me from London, where he and his
2:45
Speaker 2: family are living for the school year.
2:47
Speaker 1: How's it going now? I haven't seen him forever. I
2:50
Speaker 1: miss you, Charles.
2:51
Speaker 2: Le just do our thingy we can Okay, okay, okay.
2:53
Speaker 2: Notice the interaction he says he misses me. I get
2:58
Speaker 2: all flustered and try and get on with things. I
3:01
Speaker 2: love Charles because I love Charles. There was no question
3:07
Speaker 2: I was going to ask Charles for development hell story,
3:10
Speaker 2: because I've talked with him at length about every screenplay
3:14
Speaker 2: he's worked on for the last twenty five years, and
3:17
Speaker 2: I knew instantly which one.
3:19
Speaker 1: He would pick.
3:21
Speaker 2: Welcome back to episode four of Development Hell. So tell me,
3:32
Speaker 2: tell me how that whole thing begins. Start at the beginning.
3:37
Speaker 1: So Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise by a book from
3:43
Speaker 1: a guy named Stanning Albert called The Birthday Party, which
3:46
Speaker 1: is a true story of him in January on January
3:51
Speaker 1: twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, walking through the West Village
3:57
Speaker 1: and he is approached by a young black man on
4:01
Speaker 1: his right who he realized has a gun, and the
4:04
Speaker 1: young man leads him to a vehicle that's I think
4:07
Speaker 1: they're on thirteenth Street, maybe twelfth eleve them it's right
4:10
Speaker 1: off Fifth Avenue. And there's another young black man waiting
4:14
Speaker 1: who opens the door, and a third black young black
4:16
Speaker 1: man in the car, and they basically kidnap him to
4:21
Speaker 1: steal money out of his bank account. And what's interesting
4:26
Speaker 1: is they're incredibly young. I think the oldest one is
4:30
Speaker 1: maybe just turned eighteen. His name is Lucky. The others
4:33
Speaker 1: are sixteen and I think fourteen, and they have no
4:36
Speaker 1: clue what they're doing, right, They have no understanding because
4:40
Speaker 1: they don't have bank accounts, right, so they have no
4:42
Speaker 1: understanding that ATMs have a limit. They don't believe it.
4:44
Speaker 1: At first. They see how much money he has in
4:47
Speaker 1: his account. I think it's over one hundred thousand dollars.
4:49
Speaker 1: So they anxiously want to get that money and it
4:52
Speaker 1: drives them mad the system that they just can't get
4:54
Speaker 1: that money out over the course of a night, right,
4:58
Speaker 1: So they decide to hold him in Brooklyn with an
5:01
Speaker 1: apartment with three young women. It's basically three young women
5:06
Speaker 1: that sort of work for Lucky maybe it's kind of
5:08
Speaker 1: hard to tell as prostitutes. And he's held there for
5:15
Speaker 1: firs you know, basically almost I think seventy two hours,
5:20
Speaker 1: and a relationship develops with these kids, and at some
5:24
Speaker 1: point they're offering him pot, they offer him a blowjob
5:26
Speaker 1: once they find out that it's birthday. They're holding him
5:29
Speaker 1: on his birthday. That's why it's called the birthday party.
5:32
Speaker 1: It'll be his thirty ninth birthday. They want to get
5:35
Speaker 1: they want to get the money outs. They sort of
5:39
Speaker 1: had to plan to go into the bank with him.
5:41
Speaker 1: Of course that's not going to work. He sort of
5:43
Speaker 1: talks them out of that. To keep him honest. They
5:46
Speaker 1: threaten his father and they sort of ask, you know,
5:49
Speaker 1: ask for his father's address, and Stanley, knowing that his
5:53
Speaker 1: father's business card is in his wallet, can't really lie.
5:57
Speaker 1: They end up discussing killing him. So it's a test
6:00
Speaker 1: they do at one point. So it's just a really
6:02
Speaker 1: tense situation where he's you know, he's afraid for his life.
6:05
Speaker 1: And it turns out they you know, there's no way
6:08
Speaker 1: they can making making get the money out, and so
6:11
Speaker 1: they decide to let him go. With their adolescence to
6:13
Speaker 1: their adolescents, and it's also it's adolescence, yes, right, it's right.
6:18
Speaker 2: It's three teenage boys.
6:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely correct. I mean three and three teenage girls as well,
6:23
Speaker 1: who are also quite young. I think their youngest one
6:25
Speaker 1: is fourteen even, and they just they just do teenage stuff.
6:28
Speaker 1: They have teenage perspectives, they have you know, you know,
6:31
Speaker 1: yet they're very worldly, you know what I mean, yeah,
6:34
Speaker 1: you know, And so it's you know, there's there's young
6:37
Speaker 1: one you know, one woman you know, talking about one
6:39
Speaker 1: sexual practice she won't do because she's saving it for marriage.
6:42
Speaker 1: You can imagine what that is. And it's just it's
6:44
Speaker 1: just it's a heartbreaking that that's her, that's the thing
6:46
Speaker 1: she's keeping, that's the thing that she has to offer, right,
6:49
Speaker 1: and so it's just it's it's just yeah, it's it's
6:51
Speaker 1: it's it's it's that youth, you know. But it's also moving.
6:56
Speaker 1: It's also sort of I mean, the book's quite good
6:58
Speaker 1: in that sense. It's like you get a sense of Wow,
7:00
Speaker 1: these you know, there's a real community amongst these kids, right,
7:04
Speaker 1: they are wholly relying on each other, you know, and
7:07
Speaker 1: this is the only family they've got, and they're and
7:09
Speaker 1: they're they're they're down for that family. They'll do what
7:12
Speaker 1: it takes for their families. Yeah, it just is one
7:15
Speaker 1: of those books where in reading it, it has a
7:19
Speaker 1: wrongness to it and a an authenticity to it. It's
7:23
Speaker 1: just very hard to find right as a story.
7:26
Speaker 2: Why was Why do you think Tom Cruise's people were
7:29
Speaker 2: attracted to this, to this book in the first place.
7:33
Speaker 1: Well, I think Stanley's a remarkable guy. He you know,
7:37
Speaker 1: what he does over the course of those three days
7:40
Speaker 1: is he pays attention to these little clues which you
7:42
Speaker 1: don't sort of see coming, uh, you see him noticing things,
7:46
Speaker 1: and then when he's being interviewed by the police, he
7:48
Speaker 1: just repeats them back and they are there. They manage
7:51
Speaker 1: to find these six people very quickly, I mean extreme.
7:56
Speaker 1: You know, he did a remarkable job. He remembered little
7:58
Speaker 1: bits of numbers that he heard repeated, He remembered the
8:01
Speaker 1: patterns on the floor, He identified the bus schedule going
8:05
Speaker 1: outside the building. He could sort of identified the flight
8:10
Speaker 1: patterns to JFK going over the building. He knew that
8:13
Speaker 1: it was a relative, relatively big boulevard in Queens. He
8:16
Speaker 1: knew kind of he could kind of guess by the
8:17
Speaker 1: sequels how far the ocean was away. And so he
8:20
Speaker 1: not only managed to save himself by building a relationship
8:23
Speaker 1: with these young people, but he also managed to put
8:26
Speaker 1: the police onto them very quickly.
8:28
Speaker 2: So that version, there's a slender version of the story
8:31
Speaker 2: which is just simply Sherla colmbs absolutely.
8:33
Speaker 1: And that's why I think I think that's in fairness
8:35
Speaker 1: to stand. I think that's what he thought he was getting.
8:37
Speaker 1: He thought he was going to get. You know, Tom
8:38
Speaker 1: Cruise's going to play this guy who you know, heroically
8:41
Speaker 1: saves himself, you know, and then bonds a little bit
8:43
Speaker 1: with these with these young people, but but then you know,
8:46
Speaker 1: it has to put them away. And I'm presented with
8:50
Speaker 1: this thing, and it's just it's a fantastic story, but
8:53
Speaker 1: it has the obvious problem. Right, It's a story of
8:56
Speaker 1: three black, young black men holding a white guy, a lawyer,
8:59
Speaker 1: a federal attorney, as a matter of fact, hostage, and
9:03
Speaker 1: it's just it's hard to describe. It has an ethnocentrism
9:08
Speaker 1: to it because it rooted in the perspective of the
9:10
Speaker 1: white guy. It just feels a little untoward. It's just
9:14
Speaker 1: one of the stories that we in Hollywood can't tell.
9:17
Speaker 1: You simply cannot tell that story right. And you know,
9:21
Speaker 1: if the film were being made, and you know, in
9:25
Speaker 1: fifteen years earlier than nineteen ninety eight, he could have
9:27
Speaker 1: gotten away with that. But by that period it was
9:29
Speaker 1: already too late to tell this story without fully honoring
9:32
Speaker 1: the humanity of the perpetrators. And so the thinking is,
9:36
Speaker 1: how can we take this and make it work? And
9:40
Speaker 1: what I end up doing is I turn up everyone's
9:46
Speaker 1: racism for lack of better phrase, right, I make Stanley
9:49
Speaker 1: a guy who thinks he's a liberal, but he's trapped
9:52
Speaker 1: by his own categories in the world. I make these kids,
9:55
Speaker 1: these kids who have very few opportunities and are trapped
10:00
Speaker 1: in their own kind of perspective of the other. So
10:02
Speaker 1: there these are a group of people who, even though
10:04
Speaker 1: Stanley's being held in this apartment, blindfolded and basically in
10:07
Speaker 1: a big room with six kids, six young people, he
10:11
Speaker 1: can't see them really literally and metaphorically, and they can't
10:14
Speaker 1: see him, right. Uh. And then what happens is, you know,
10:19
Speaker 1: in the script, you know, he starts to rebel against
10:22
Speaker 1: this situation. He gets he gets angry, and they start
10:25
Speaker 1: to work through their own prejudices, prejudices against one another,
10:30
Speaker 1: and it sort of culminates in a in a in
10:32
Speaker 1: a scene where basically he unloads on them and he
10:38
Speaker 1: gives voice. I think a little bit of that old
10:41
Speaker 1: essay from Poete Hertz, is it? Norman? Can you remember
10:46
Speaker 1: the Norman.
10:47
Speaker 2: R your Nego problem in mind?
10:51
Speaker 1: Exactly? My Negro problem yours? Yeah? Exactly?
10:55
Speaker 2: From Yeah, Actually both Charles and I got it a
10:59
Speaker 2: little wrong. It's My Negro Problem and Ours by Norman
11:03
Speaker 2: pod Horitz, published in nineteen sixty three. It's a famous
11:08
Speaker 2: in the you read it today, really unsettling essay where
11:12
Speaker 2: pod Hortz confesses to quote the hatred I still feel
11:16
Speaker 2: for Negroes quote based on his experiences growing up as
11:19
Speaker 2: a working class Jewish kid in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn.
11:23
Speaker 1: And the way you know a Gibstanley and basically that perspective,
11:28
Speaker 1: he is someone who's both understanding of where they come from,
11:32
Speaker 1: but angry that they still act as though the door
11:35
Speaker 1: is closed to them, you know. And and I can
11:39
Speaker 1: actually read it for you because I had it on
11:40
Speaker 1: the script I have. I can read the scene to
11:43
Speaker 1: you if you want it. I do want you to
11:46
Speaker 1: do that.
11:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you'll see.
11:49
Speaker 1: I mean the piece is you know, it's quite raw. Really,
11:53
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's you know, it's in an area
11:56
Speaker 1: era prior to current sensibilities. I think I wrote it
12:00
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, And
12:03
Speaker 1: you kind of get a feeling for, uh, for the
12:07
Speaker 1: script in terms of it's you know, it's taking some risk.
12:12
Speaker 1: Let me put it that way. He's been held for
12:14
Speaker 1: a few days, right, So the kids are in the room,
12:18
Speaker 1: Stanley's there, he's looking away from them. He let him
12:22
Speaker 1: take his blind fall off but he's face in the wall. Lucky, Stanley,
12:29
Speaker 1: let me ask you something. If you had a chance
12:32
Speaker 1: to put me away for life, would you do it?
12:36
Speaker 1: Stanley considers, Stanley, you know where I live, you know
12:41
Speaker 1: where my father lives. I don't know who you are.
12:44
Speaker 1: I don't know where we are. I don't care. I
12:47
Speaker 1: just want this whole thing to be over. Lucky contemplates
12:51
Speaker 1: the flat sincerity of Stan's answer. Then he laughs. Everyone looks.
12:55
Speaker 1: It's a strained laugh. That's right, Lucky says, Make the
12:58
Speaker 1: negro think he's got a chance. Open that door wide.
13:01
Speaker 1: Then boom. He slaps his hands together and stands the
13:05
Speaker 1: ear stan flinches as Lucky stands and turns away from him.
13:10
Speaker 1: Stanley mutters, grow up, pardon I said, grow up? Yeah?
13:15
Speaker 1: I heard you shoot me or let me go. Either way,
13:18
Speaker 1: Stop pretending that you're the victim here. Stop whining. There's
13:22
Speaker 1: no anger in his voice. The door's open, Lucky, Okay,
13:27
Speaker 1: not always, not everywhere, but after thirty years of people
13:30
Speaker 1: like me, it's pretty much fucking open. If you'd stop
13:34
Speaker 1: worrying about being a negro, maybe you could just walk
13:36
Speaker 1: through it. And if you don't, don't blame the rest
13:39
Speaker 1: of us. White man's keeping you down, white man's put
13:42
Speaker 1: crack in the hood, white man's giving you aids. Please
13:45
Speaker 1: grow the fuck up a stun silence, Lucky steps back
13:50
Speaker 1: over to him, looks down on the back of Stan's
13:53
Speaker 1: head with confused menace. Stanley's not done. The door's open,
13:56
Speaker 1: he says, deal with it. You're just too proud to
14:00
Speaker 1: walk through or afraid. It's either that or you're just
14:03
Speaker 1: playing lazy. Lucky grabs Wren's Tech nine. He yanks Stan
14:07
Speaker 1: backwards by the scarfing, rams the muzzle into his mouth.
14:10
Speaker 1: Stand wretches mystic scream. Stand forces himself to keep his
14:14
Speaker 1: eyes shut. Stand, Lucky says, grabbing the stand by the
14:17
Speaker 1: tie gun still in his mouth. Lucky drags him too
14:20
Speaker 1: the hallway. Sin and Wren push through. Stay here, Lucky yells.
14:26
Speaker 1: Lucky forces Stand down the hall hall. He thinks he's
14:29
Speaker 1: taking him to his to the bathroom, to his execution. Instead,
14:32
Speaker 1: he pushes Stand hard against the front door. There's your door,
14:35
Speaker 1: Lucky says. He pulls Stand back, opens it wide, gets
14:39
Speaker 1: behind him. Open your fucking eyes, he says. Stands pov
14:45
Speaker 1: on the building landing, framed by the open front door.
14:48
Speaker 1: Dark and dangerous freedom. Lucky presses the gun to stands back.
14:53
Speaker 1: Door's open, Lucky says, go on, bounce, walk through, walk through.
14:59
Speaker 1: He's angry. Now Stan doesn't move, can't move a decisive.
15:03
Speaker 3: Beat, yeah, Lucky says, ain't that easy.
15:08
Speaker 1: Lucky slams the door or he turns to see Stan
15:11
Speaker 1: has his eyes still closed, as always refusing to see him.
15:15
Speaker 1: He gets right in the white man's face and whispers,
15:18
Speaker 1: negro Oh wow.
15:25
Speaker 3: Wait, so in the book that doesn't happen at all,
15:33
Speaker 3: So is it the problem?
15:34
Speaker 1: Right? The problem is, you know, to earn the right
15:38
Speaker 1: to tell this story, you have to sort of reframe
15:41
Speaker 1: it and you have to take its underlying racist complexity
15:45
Speaker 1: and you have to make it the theme. You have
15:47
Speaker 1: to thematize that complexity, right, And that's what we do.
15:50
Speaker 2: When we get back, Charles talks about adaptation. We're back
16:08
Speaker 2: with Charles ran talking about his adaptation of the Birthday
16:11
Speaker 2: Party and how tricky it can be to adapt a
16:14
Speaker 2: true story for a screenplay.
16:17
Speaker 1: I'll give you another not related to me, but a
16:19
Speaker 1: very good example. I ran into Robbie Robinson, who is
16:23
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton character in Spotlight, who's the editor on the
16:27
Speaker 1: Spotlight Team.
16:27
Speaker 2: So Spotlight is the movie about the Boston Globes investigation
16:34
Speaker 2: of Catholic priests suspected of pedophilia, among other things. And
16:41
Speaker 2: in that movie, Michael Keaton plays the editor of the
16:46
Speaker 2: Boston Globe.
16:46
Speaker 1: Is that right?
16:47
Speaker 3: Remembering correctly?
16:48
Speaker 2: And there is a scene so you run into the
16:50
Speaker 2: guy who was the real editor of the Boston Globe.
16:53
Speaker 1: Correct. Robbie says, you know, love the film, and there
16:56
Speaker 1: says one part I don't love, which is the part
16:59
Speaker 1: where it turns out that the Spotlight team was given
17:02
Speaker 1: the information about what the Catholic priests were doing earlier,
17:05
Speaker 1: and I was the editor at the time a newspaper
17:08
Speaker 1: was given it and I nothing, And he says, the
17:10
Speaker 1: truth be told. When that story came in, it was
17:13
Speaker 1: one of forty stories that on the tip line for
17:15
Speaker 1: that week. It was the second week that I was
17:19
Speaker 1: on the job, and I wasn't even there that week.
17:21
Speaker 1: I was actually had taken a vacation week in the transition.
17:26
Speaker 1: And so you know, I've always been a little uncomfortable
17:28
Speaker 1: with that scene because it's not really quite my culpability
17:31
Speaker 1: is really not quite what you know, what the film portrays.
17:36
Speaker 1: And of course I'm saying to Robbie, You're not winning
17:39
Speaker 1: an Oscar without that scene, right. That scene is what
17:42
Speaker 1: makes that movie right because in that moment we see
17:44
Speaker 1: the people in the Spotlight Team, like all of society,
17:47
Speaker 1: like us as viewers, are culpable on some level right
17:51
Speaker 1: of ignoring this problem for many years. And that's what
17:54
Speaker 1: makes it interesting. And so this is the problem of
17:56
Speaker 1: this that you face, right.
18:00
Speaker 2: In order to understand to earn the right to have
18:04
Speaker 2: to to make heroes out of the Spotlight Team, to
18:09
Speaker 2: be a moment of resistance in the beginning.
18:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean it's not in the beginning. It's
18:14
Speaker 1: towards the end of the film. But they have to
18:16
Speaker 1: be not just people who uncover, right, some horrible truth
18:23
Speaker 1: about society. They have to face their own culpabilities in
18:26
Speaker 1: relationship to that right. And that's necessary. And so when
18:30
Speaker 1: taking a true story and building a film out of it,
18:33
Speaker 1: you have to find those moments. How can we take
18:35
Speaker 1: this thing and make it something's you know, more dramatic
18:40
Speaker 1: and more you know, politically compelling, let's say, than what
18:45
Speaker 1: it and then what it is. And the first problem
18:47
Speaker 1: is easy to solve, the second problems hard. And in
18:50
Speaker 1: this case, the choice was In my case, the choice
18:54
Speaker 1: is to make Stanley Alpert different than the real Stanley Alpert.
18:57
Speaker 1: And the fact is right because the real Stanley Appert
19:00
Speaker 1: doesn't have those qualities. And obviously the person who hates
19:03
Speaker 1: this version more than anyone is Stanley Alpert. Right, He's
19:06
Speaker 1: always making jokes, he's always you know, he's he's always
19:09
Speaker 1: referencing things, you know, he's he's he thinks of himself
19:12
Speaker 1: as a liberal, you know. And it allows me to,
19:16
Speaker 1: as in the section I read to you, it allows
19:18
Speaker 1: me to focus on that critique of African American culture
19:23
Speaker 1: that at the time was something that went a little
19:25
Speaker 1: bit unspoken, but was in a lot of people's hearts,
19:28
Speaker 1: right like in like in the and the Poet's essay.
19:32
Speaker 1: But you know, but but you know, was not was
19:35
Speaker 1: not never sort of portrayed, right, And of course that
19:38
Speaker 1: didn't that did not end very well.
19:40
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to that in a second. But I
19:41
Speaker 2: wanted to this. This is a really, really crucial thing,
19:44
Speaker 2: and I want to kind of spend a little more
19:46
Speaker 2: time on it. This goes to something you have often
19:49
Speaker 2: said to me about screenwriting, which is that the important
19:55
Speaker 2: conflict is not the external conflict, but the internal conflict, right.
20:01
Speaker 2: So it is not enough, in other words, for us
20:03
Speaker 2: to have a movie about a an obvious conflict between
20:08
Speaker 2: three black men and a white guy they're just kidnapped.
20:13
Speaker 2: There must be an internal conflict within the white guy's
20:17
Speaker 2: heart and the black guys, yeah parts right for us
20:21
Speaker 2: to kind of for the movie to come alive. Right,
20:24
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is that you had to construct
20:27
Speaker 2: an internal conflict for Stanley.
20:30
Speaker 1: Correct, And that means I have to move away from
20:33
Speaker 1: the victim narrative because victims inherently aren't generally speaking, people
20:41
Speaker 1: who are facing that kind of internal conflict. They're facing,
20:44
Speaker 1: generally speaking, an exterior conflict. And then will you stay
20:47
Speaker 1: up away from from that narrative. It becomes a problem
20:51
Speaker 1: obviously for them for someone who sort of feels like
20:53
Speaker 1: we're a victim, right, But it also it also makes
20:56
Speaker 1: a better story, right, And this is part of the
20:59
Speaker 1: part of the problem with the moment you know in
21:02
Speaker 1: which we're recording this podcast, is that there is such
21:05
Speaker 1: a an attempt to to elevate victim stories to to
21:12
Speaker 1: to platform people without often the sort of constituent internal
21:17
Speaker 1: conflict that's going to make them fully human and fully engaging. Right.
21:21
Speaker 1: And that's why so many of those films fail to
21:24
Speaker 1: work or fail to make money, is because they don't
21:27
Speaker 1: they don't solicit our attention fully, right, because you could.
21:30
Speaker 1: You know, there's a reason Schindler's List is focused on
21:33
Speaker 1: Schindler and not the people in the camps, right, because
21:36
Speaker 1: Schindler has a strong internal conflict, right, which is much
21:40
Speaker 1: harder to do if you're you know, a victim of
21:44
Speaker 1: a holocaust. Right, It's just you know, it's much harder
21:46
Speaker 1: to do.
21:47
Speaker 2: And he's he is criticizes and he for the centrality
21:50
Speaker 2: that he that the movie, uh, for the fact that
21:54
Speaker 2: Schindler's at the center of the movie.
21:55
Speaker 1: And yes, and but by putting by putting Schindler, you
21:59
Speaker 1: can actually tell the other stories better better. Right. It's
22:03
Speaker 1: the interesting contradiction here, right, because it gives us a
22:06
Speaker 1: sort of an emotional perspective where we do not know
22:10
Speaker 1: is character going to choose Option A or Option B.
22:12
Speaker 1: That's what you kind of want to be, and all
22:14
Speaker 1: my films strive for that, right. So we have it
22:17
Speaker 1: here with these three kids, in the sense they're having
22:19
Speaker 1: to make the choice. How bad at gangsters do they
22:21
Speaker 1: want to be do they want to kill someone? Right?
22:23
Speaker 1: And we watch them in the film discuss that amongst
22:26
Speaker 1: themselves try and make an effort, and they're not up
22:28
Speaker 1: to it. Each try at some point to try and
22:31
Speaker 1: be the guy, and they just can't. These kids just
22:33
Speaker 1: can't do it right. Whereas you know, Stanley needed the
22:37
Speaker 1: same thing in the story and and for me, that
22:40
Speaker 1: was him basically fighting his own desire because he's a
22:45
Speaker 1: talker and he's a man who wants to own truth.
22:47
Speaker 1: He said, you know, he gets up in front of court.
22:48
Speaker 1: He's a litigator, right, he's a federal attorney and speaks
22:52
Speaker 1: truth to people who do im moral things, and so
22:56
Speaker 1: he wants to be that guy. In the course of that,
22:58
Speaker 1: he really starts to realize as they express themselves in
23:01
Speaker 1: their background, as their humanity becomes more fully realized over
23:05
Speaker 1: the course of the film, he you know, he realizes
23:08
Speaker 1: that he does see them as in the scene that
23:11
Speaker 1: I just read to you.
23:13
Speaker 2: So his wait, so that just to go a little
23:16
Speaker 2: bit more over his conflict. He believes himself to be
23:21
Speaker 2: a liberal who can see the broader context in which
23:26
Speaker 2: disadvantaged people act. And yet when he is in this situation.
23:31
Speaker 2: He struggles to maintain.
23:32
Speaker 1: That absolutely yeah, yeah, well, and bookends with the fact
23:39
Speaker 1: that he has to go at the end of the
23:41
Speaker 1: film to a you know, to a lineup and and
23:45
Speaker 1: basically pick the young man out of the line which
23:50
Speaker 1: was essentially you know, assuring that justice will be served.
23:53
Speaker 1: So he's met making this choice, right, He's come to
23:56
Speaker 1: see their humanity. He knows that the system is going
23:59
Speaker 1: to be incredibly harsh on the man. It was they
24:01
Speaker 1: all got anywhere from I think fifteen to twenty years
24:04
Speaker 1: and essentially sort of ruining their lives. And yeah, he's
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, he still does it, but he doesn't like
24:12
Speaker 1: it in the film, so.
24:13
Speaker 2: He described that describe that an so he in the
24:16
Speaker 2: movie version, are you now back? So does the ending
24:20
Speaker 2: go the way the ending when in real life?
24:25
Speaker 1: Yes and no. I think one thing that that it
24:27
Speaker 1: does is it makes him more empathetic to their plight. Right.
24:32
Speaker 1: I won't say that the film sees their their their
24:37
Speaker 1: backgrounds as exculpatory, but it does. The film does suggest
24:42
Speaker 1: that they deserve greater understanding than the system will give
24:46
Speaker 1: them because of the back the harsh backgrounds they come from.
24:49
Speaker 1: All of them I think are potentially, you know, fatherless
24:52
Speaker 1: and have problematic backgrounds. We hear a little bit about that,
24:56
Speaker 1: and of course the film in the real story, No,
24:59
Speaker 1: and the real story, you know, Stan Albert, a victim
25:03
Speaker 1: of crime, wanted to see justice served, and justice was served.
25:07
Speaker 1: And I don't think he felt particularly ambivalent about it.
25:10
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, in my discussions with him
25:12
Speaker 1: after he read the script, you know, it's it seemed
25:15
Speaker 1: to offend him that he owed them, he owed them
25:20
Speaker 1: more than, you know, more than what was given to
25:25
Speaker 1: them in terms of how he portrayed them in the book,
25:29
Speaker 1: you know. And he may not be wrong, you know,
25:31
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm using his story for my
25:34
Speaker 1: own purposes.
25:35
Speaker 2: Right when we get back, Charles and I talk about
25:38
Speaker 2: who gets to tell whose stories. So in the movie version,
25:48
Speaker 2: he gets they let him go. The young men are arrested,
25:53
Speaker 2: and does is the climax of the movie him picking
25:55
Speaker 2: him out.
25:56
Speaker 1: Of the No, it's them being sentenced in there and
26:00
Speaker 1: they remember they haven't been able to look at each other.
26:02
Speaker 1: Really the course of the film. It's sort of an
26:04
Speaker 1: interesting thing, is you know, he's got the scarf which
26:07
Speaker 1: they've blindfolded with, so s for covers most of his
26:09
Speaker 1: face and then they turn him away. They never really
26:12
Speaker 1: get a chance to look at each other. And at
26:14
Speaker 1: the end of the film, uh, he basically in the
26:19
Speaker 1: in the courtroom has a chance to walk eyes with
26:21
Speaker 1: It's lucky, the sort of the their leader and the
26:25
Speaker 1: first time these two people can actually see each other.
26:28
Speaker 1: But he sort of comes to a place where, you know,
26:31
Speaker 1: he can see the other violently, and that's that's the
26:36
Speaker 1: best we can hope for for that stuff.
26:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a beautiful metaphors they're running throughout this that
26:42
Speaker 2: we've two people who literally and figuratively cannot see each other.
26:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then by the end the occupy, Yeah, occupy
26:51
Speaker 1: the same space.
26:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, even as he occupied the same space. By the
26:55
Speaker 2: end of the movie, even as these young men are
26:59
Speaker 2: being sent off to jail, we have we the audience
27:02
Speaker 2: have some feeling that they're seeing each other for the
27:05
Speaker 2: first time, right, which is necessary because, as you said,
27:09
Speaker 2: if it's simply slam bam, if it's a law and
27:13
Speaker 2: order episode, it's not interesting.
27:16
Speaker 1: And you can't do it right. I mean, there is
27:19
Speaker 1: a history of obviously you know, the victim in TV
27:24
Speaker 1: shows and movies, you know, being white and the perpetrator
27:26
Speaker 1: being black. But it's something that we've been uncomfortable with
27:29
Speaker 1: for a long time now, right And certainly the idea
27:33
Speaker 1: of three black three black men rang on a white
27:36
Speaker 1: guys has always been I mean not always, but it
27:39
Speaker 1: has been complicated in recent years, in the last twenty
27:41
Speaker 1: thirty years, it has been a complicated idea, right And
27:44
Speaker 1: and really it's why this thing was sort of in
27:47
Speaker 1: development hell, because nobody ever got comfortable with it.
27:51
Speaker 2: So you finished the script and tell me what happens next?
27:57
Speaker 1: Who do you take it to? First? It goes immediately
28:00
Speaker 1: to a few directors. In fact, one director that first
28:03
Speaker 1: weekend calls me on a Sunday night, which never happens
28:06
Speaker 1: based on the weekend read, incredibly excited about it and saying,
28:10
Speaker 1: I'm all in, I love this, this is fantastic. Come Monday,
28:15
Speaker 1: he goes in the office. He has two interns who
28:17
Speaker 1: are graduate students from NYU who are both black, who say, now,
28:22
Speaker 1: you can't do this, this is not this is not
28:24
Speaker 1: going to work, you know, and you know he backs
28:27
Speaker 1: out immediately. So he backs out twenty four hours later.
28:30
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of directors who came on
28:32
Speaker 1: board Unfortunately, there were no black directors available. I think,
28:36
Speaker 1: you know, I think we a couple were approached. It
28:39
Speaker 1: was a slight It was two thousand and eight, so
28:41
Speaker 1: there weren't quite as many as we have now obviously,
28:43
Speaker 1: but no one, No one was around. I think what
28:46
Speaker 1: we tried to do is we tried to tone it down.
28:49
Speaker 1: We tried to sort of tone down, you know. I
28:50
Speaker 1: remember sort of sitting in the office with going through
28:53
Speaker 1: and counting all the inwards and seeing how many we
28:55
Speaker 1: could take out, just to sort of make it a
28:57
Speaker 1: little bit more palatable to be because it's raw, it's
29:00
Speaker 1: very raw. Then what happens, well, what happens is a
29:04
Speaker 1: couple directors go away and nobody really works until the
29:08
Speaker 1: great Milosh Foreman.
29:10
Speaker 2: Milosh Foreman, famous for directing One Flew over the Cuckoo's
29:13
Speaker 2: Nest in nineteen seventy five. In two thousand and seven,
29:16
Speaker 2: he's well into his seventies, and.
29:20
Speaker 1: Milosh has a remarkable ability to do dramedy and comedy
29:25
Speaker 1: and drama at the same time. And Milosh says to me,
29:30
Speaker 1: when we first sort of start unpacking the history of
29:33
Speaker 1: the project, he says, stop, stop. It doesn't matter if
29:36
Speaker 1: the characters are real. If the actors find in them
29:40
Speaker 1: real humanity, and the actors bring their own truth to it,
29:44
Speaker 1: it will work right, and all that other stuff will
29:47
Speaker 1: go away. And if it's problematic, we get rid of
29:49
Speaker 1: it in the editing room. Don't we have the time?
29:51
Speaker 1: We called it political correctness, right, so don't worry about
29:54
Speaker 1: the politically well, it's polity correct not if it's real
29:56
Speaker 1: and if it's human, and we will be totally fine.
30:00
Speaker 1: And he had another thing he would talk about, which
30:02
Speaker 1: was that, you know, anytime you nestle up against censorship,
30:09
Speaker 1: you know you're in the zone when you're making something interesting.
30:11
Speaker 1: In fact, he talked about he would talk about how
30:13
Speaker 1: and he's from Czechoslovakia, how you know the great thing
30:16
Speaker 1: about having our actual sensor is they tell you exactly
30:20
Speaker 1: where the line is, so everybody knows exactly where the
30:22
Speaker 1: line is, and so that you can you can you
30:24
Speaker 1: can approach the line with great subtlety, right because because
30:28
Speaker 1: everyone knows where it is. And that's the thing that
30:30
Speaker 1: American culture does not have, is that sort of that
30:33
Speaker 1: sort of you know, clear sense, no line until we,
30:36
Speaker 1: of course do it a line. In recent years, we've
30:38
Speaker 1: kind of created some lines for ourselves. But yes, there's
30:40
Speaker 1: no line, right, And so he said, and so he said,
30:43
Speaker 1: it's good that we make people uncomfortable. It's good that
30:46
Speaker 1: it's raw. It's good that some of it's incredibly provocative,
30:49
Speaker 1: because that's what's going to make it real. And and
30:53
Speaker 1: and he fully owned it. And you know, I get
30:57
Speaker 1: I get emotional thinking about it, but he he was
31:00
Speaker 1: just so open to what the thing was, right. And
31:05
Speaker 1: then you know, I get a series of notes from him,
31:08
Speaker 1: and I realized their notes on a scene he's already done.
31:11
Speaker 1: And I get another series and I realized their notes
31:14
Speaker 1: on something entirely different. And I call his wife and
31:18
Speaker 1: she's like, yeah, you know, he's not been feeling well,
31:20
Speaker 1: give me a couple of weeks. And then he never
31:22
Speaker 1: came back to it. At that point, I think she
31:24
Speaker 1: had realized that he just wasn't up to it. You know,
31:28
Speaker 1: he was quite old. Yeah, And and so you know,
31:33
Speaker 1: I finally find the guy that I think can bring
31:36
Speaker 1: it home and and he's just not. He's just can't.
31:38
Speaker 1: He's just not gonna be able to do it. You know,
31:40
Speaker 1: I think she worried that he wouldn't even have the
31:42
Speaker 1: stamina to do it right, you know, because directing takes
31:44
Speaker 1: two years, takes two and a half years. So if
31:46
Speaker 1: you see problems at the beginning, you know, you got
31:48
Speaker 1: to remember, what where's this person going to be in
31:49
Speaker 1: two years?
31:50
Speaker 2: When does he die?
31:51
Speaker 1: How he dies about three years later? You know, And
31:54
Speaker 1: I do not know what shape he was in in
31:55
Speaker 1: the end. He may have been fully cognizant all the
31:57
Speaker 1: way to the end, but but you know, he died
31:59
Speaker 1: a bit later.
32:00
Speaker 2: But it was Can we just pause on meals about this?
32:04
Speaker 2: So Milish is a person who comes out from under
32:09
Speaker 2: the iron curtain. He grows up in toutalitarianism. You know,
32:15
Speaker 2: he he has a kind of I mean, if you're
32:18
Speaker 2: looking so what this project, what you're saying is what
32:21
Speaker 2: this project needed was an authenticity in its interpretation, you
32:25
Speaker 2: would something, it needed fearlessness, It needed fear and one
32:31
Speaker 2: way to do this is to find a black director
32:34
Speaker 2: with you know, That's what That's the solution we would
32:37
Speaker 2: do today. Correct, Correct, for whatever reason, there wasn't someone avel.
32:43
Speaker 2: But the other version is to find someone like Milosh.
32:46
Speaker 2: He started his career thumbing his nose at one of
32:51
Speaker 2: the history's most brutal authoritarian totalitarian regimes. So it's like
32:58
Speaker 2: he's like, if anyone's going.
32:59
Speaker 1: To say f it, and he did, and he and
33:04
Speaker 1: it was and it was it was just I can't
33:05
Speaker 1: tell you how liberating it was. It was just shockingly
33:08
Speaker 1: liberating after I think it had been three maybe four
33:11
Speaker 1: years at that point, you know, and he's like, no,
33:13
Speaker 1: let's we will get this. Do not worry. This is
33:15
Speaker 1: not our this will not be our problem.
33:17
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
33:18
Speaker 1: Uh.
33:19
Speaker 2: And you think he's you think he's right, his interpretation
33:23
Speaker 2: is right.
33:23
Speaker 1: I do think he's right. Yeah, I do think. I
33:24
Speaker 1: think what happens is if you hire actors who you
33:27
Speaker 1: know who can bring something to it, if you listen
33:31
Speaker 1: to other people from other cultures, if you gets a
33:33
Speaker 1: communal effort a film, right and and if you do that,
33:37
Speaker 1: you will find authenticity, you know, if you're looking for it.
33:41
Speaker 2: Because I know you well, if you permit me a
33:44
Speaker 2: little bit of of of psychoanalyzing for those who don't
33:49
Speaker 2: know you. You are you're the son of an evangelical
33:54
Speaker 2: preacher from Texas. You grew up all over the world
33:57
Speaker 2: because your dad was smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe. You're
34:03
Speaker 2: you're you're so out in certain ways, you're such an
34:06
Speaker 2: outsider to Hollywood. It's it's phenomenal, and the outsider has
34:14
Speaker 2: you know, in some ways, you you and Milo c
34:18
Speaker 2: I I on this because you're because you're both outsiders, right, right, right.
34:22
Speaker 2: It's one thing that this was written by the standard
34:25
Speaker 2: Hollywood screenwriter, who is the privileged white guy who went
34:31
Speaker 2: to Harvard and then you know, did a graduate degree
34:34
Speaker 2: at NYU and then interned for a famous director and
34:37
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Right, that's not you. Though there is
34:40
Speaker 2: a privilege in writing something like this, there is great
34:47
Speaker 2: advantage and privilege in not having a dog in the fight,
34:52
Speaker 2: in not being part of the worlds that you're portraying.
34:57
Speaker 2: So we understand the privilege that comes from belonging. The
35:01
Speaker 2: person who belongs can tell a certain kind of story
35:04
Speaker 2: with a degree of confidence and accuracy and verve that
35:11
Speaker 2: the outsider can't. But then, but we're forgetting that there's
35:14
Speaker 2: a there is a separate set of advantages that come
35:17
Speaker 2: from being someone who doesn't belong to either of these worlds.
35:20
Speaker 2: And my point about you was that in this context,
35:24
Speaker 2: you're not part of Stanley's world, right, That's that you're
35:28
Speaker 2: Charles from Texas. You're not part of his world, and
35:30
Speaker 2: you're not part of the Lucky's world. You're you're off
35:33
Speaker 2: on your own little island, and that there's so so
35:36
Speaker 2: much that's an incredibly liberating moment to be the outside,
35:42
Speaker 2: you know, to be so I feel like we're overprivileging
35:45
Speaker 2: the set of advantages that come from belonging, and we're
35:49
Speaker 2: under we have underestimated the set of storytelling advantages that
35:54
Speaker 2: come from being the fly on the wall who's just like,
35:58
Speaker 2: you know, you don't know anything to Stanley. That's why
36:01
Speaker 2: you're able to do that. You're not if you were
36:04
Speaker 2: part of his world, you would have been constrained in
36:07
Speaker 2: your portrayal of him. Similarly, Lucky, if you were part
36:10
Speaker 2: of his world, you would have been coned. You're on.
36:12
Speaker 2: You were unconstrained because you weren't. This wasn't And that's
36:16
Speaker 2: like why it's so important for all of us at
36:18
Speaker 2: storytelling to defend the right of the storyteller to describe
36:23
Speaker 2: worlds of which they are not a part. That is
36:26
Speaker 2: it's so essential that we defend that.
36:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and particularly for writers, right, there's something about
36:35
Speaker 1: you know, there's something about the screenwriter which is different
36:37
Speaker 1: from the other other jobs on the set, which then
36:42
Speaker 1: you're required to give voice to to dozens of different people, right,
36:48
Speaker 1: you know, and and to be good at that, you
36:51
Speaker 1: you know, you need to be able to to to
36:54
Speaker 1: understand different types and embrace different worlds. And I do
36:58
Speaker 1: think you're right. We've undervalued in a way what it
37:01
Speaker 1: means to be, you know, to be someone who lurks
37:03
Speaker 1: above it a little bit, right, Uh, certainly in my field,
37:07
Speaker 1: now maybe in maybe in other fields, to be different, right,
37:10
Speaker 1: I think what the end that people want is they
37:13
Speaker 1: want everyone from different backgrounds to be able to tell
37:17
Speaker 1: their story, to be in the position to sort of
37:20
Speaker 1: sit in the director's chair if they want, or to
37:22
Speaker 1: sell screenplays that they want, and that is that is
37:25
Speaker 1: the goal. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that we
37:29
Speaker 1: should silo off our industry in that way, you know,
37:33
Speaker 1: and silo off our subjects, because we do. We do
37:36
Speaker 1: lose something when we are no longer communicating across you know,
37:40
Speaker 1: not just cultural or racial lines, but ideological lines. You know.
37:46
Speaker 2: You know, what's interesting about this story told today is
37:53
Speaker 2: obviously it's sort of it fits a project conceived in
37:58
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, feels makes us a little honey
38:01
Speaker 2: of this nature makes us a little uneasy in twenty
38:06
Speaker 2: twenty four, nearly twenty years later. The other thing is
38:09
Speaker 2: that it was interesting about it is that I feel
38:13
Speaker 2: like our uh, our attitude towards projects like this on
38:19
Speaker 2: the on the kind of racial periphery have become a binary.
38:25
Speaker 2: We think of white projects and black projects, and a
38:28
Speaker 2: white project is done by a white person, and a
38:30
Speaker 2: black person project gets done by a black person. But
38:33
Speaker 2: this movie isn't black or white. It's about black beating
38:36
Speaker 2: white and white meeting black and like so it's like
38:39
Speaker 2: it's not clear each side has a right to tell
38:42
Speaker 2: the story right, and a lot of what's what's going
38:46
Speaker 2: on in this kind of like like when you talked
38:48
Speaker 2: about the one director loves it and then the interns
38:52
Speaker 2: read it the black and say you can't do it,
38:54
Speaker 2: is that it's a dispute about they're obviously understandably reading
39:00
Speaker 2: this through their eyes as black beats white. Stanley's reading
39:05
Speaker 2: this as white beats black, right, and like it's it irresolvable,
39:10
Speaker 2: it's not. What makes it fascinating is that I can't
39:14
Speaker 2: think of a movie that a contemporary movie. I mean
39:18
Speaker 2: this movie today would give us fits. I mean, you'll
39:22
Speaker 2: give us fits today because no one can decide what
39:24
Speaker 2: it is exactly.
39:25
Speaker 1: It would it would, it would aggravate an unresolved tension
39:28
Speaker 1: in our society. And I think the mistake I made
39:31
Speaker 1: is I assumed that I knew where society was going.
39:34
Speaker 1: I assumed that I knew that what's going to happen
39:37
Speaker 1: is that we're all going to be better at working
39:39
Speaker 1: through our residual racist attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and we're going
39:44
Speaker 1: to get closer and closer. In fact, the film ends
39:47
Speaker 1: with Stanley listening to a bit of rap, and this was,
39:51
Speaker 1: of course, after Obama had been elected, So the sort
39:54
Speaker 1: of message of the film was actually, we're we're on
39:56
Speaker 1: the road. We're not there yet, but we're on the road.
39:58
Speaker 1: And of course that didn't happen. Where I thought society
40:01
Speaker 1: was going is not where we went. We were trenched
40:03
Speaker 1: back into, you know, even stronger understandings of the importance
40:08
Speaker 1: of race and not to some you know, idealized version
40:12
Speaker 1: of all. It's going to learn to ignore our differences
40:15
Speaker 1: more and more and embrace, you know, in these these
40:17
Speaker 1: things that won't matter, and you know, you couldn't. I mean,
40:21
Speaker 1: you couldn't do the film today even reading it today.
40:23
Speaker 1: I read it today in a restaurant and I just
40:25
Speaker 1: try myself wincing, you know, every other page, because it's
40:27
Speaker 1: you know, I you know, I really went for it.
40:29
Speaker 1: I really am. It's very provocative in places, in people
40:33
Speaker 1: saying the things that they're not supposed to say. You know,
40:36
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in things that feel uncomfortable and awkward
40:40
Speaker 1: for me, like like I don't know, I want to
40:42
Speaker 1: go there, because what that gives you, if you will
40:45
Speaker 1: sort of take on those subjects, is the texture of
40:48
Speaker 1: the world starts to become really interesting. I mean, because
40:52
Speaker 1: suddenly every little choice matters, you know, And and that's why,
40:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the one of the scripts
40:58
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed writing the most, because every little choice
41:01
Speaker 1: starts to matter, right, because all kick comes laden with meaning.
41:05
Speaker 1: Part of it is just a professional habit of Okay,
41:07
Speaker 1: it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. That's whe I'm going to go, right,
41:10
Speaker 1: But also part of it is, you know, I do
41:12
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, this is not writing in the novel.
41:17
Speaker 1: This is a collective endeavor, and we get to check
41:21
Speaker 1: our work with people of all sorts, of all stripes,
41:25
Speaker 1: and you know, if we're open and if we're all
41:29
Speaker 1: working hard, you know we can we can get to
41:33
Speaker 1: something that feels very true. If you try things and
41:36
Speaker 1: that they work, they work, and if they don't, they don't.
41:37
Speaker 1: That's what this is. That's what this is why we
41:39
Speaker 1: do why I do this business, and it allows us
41:41
Speaker 1: to take greater risk, I think, instead of less right
41:44
Speaker 1: because you know we're working together.
41:49
Speaker 2: There is no movie version of the Birthday Party. When
41:51
Speaker 2: Milos Forman drops out, it's the end. The adaptation does
41:56
Speaker 2: not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles thrown in its way,
42:01
Speaker 2: which is a shame. This episode was produced by Nina
42:23
Speaker 2: Bird Lawrence with Tali Emlin and Bena daph Haffrey. Editing
42:28
Speaker 2: by Sarah Nix, original scoring by Luis Quira, Engineering by
42:31
Speaker 2: Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
42:45
Speaker 2: Next time on Development Hell, Patty Jenkins talks about her
42:49
Speaker 2: R rated Dog movie.
42:51
Speaker 1: This is.
42:54
Speaker 2: This sort of on one level is super bleak. It's
42:58
Speaker 2: not it's.
42:58
Speaker 3: Magical, no, it is it is.
43:00
Speaker 1: The journey is bleak, and it seems like it's going
43:03
Speaker 1: to be, but it ends up being magical.
43:05
Speaker 2: It heads up that our friends over at the Happiness
43:07
Speaker 2: Lab have a special episode I'm in Your Way soon
43:10
Speaker 2: to celebrate World Happiness Day. I'm in it talking about
43:14
Speaker 2: running and the journey versus a destination Spoiler alert, I'm
43:18
Speaker 2: a destination guy, not a journey guy. It'll be dropping
43:21
Speaker 2: into this feed on March twentieth, but you can find
43:24
Speaker 2: happiness tips from doctor Lori Santo's any Day over at
43:27
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab