Latest / Boomer Has It! / The Craft Behind the Controversy: Actor Reed Birney on Queer Thriller "Blue Film"

Transcript

The Craft Behind the Controversy: Actor Reed Birney on Queer Thriller "Blue Film" · Boomer Has It!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hi everyone.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: We have as our guest today a very special actor, Reed Burney, whose quiet, unassuming performances really dig into you and haunt you long after you've seen them.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: You believe every second of his work because he doesn't look like he's acting.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: He's always looks like he's living it.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: And even if you don't know his name, you'll recognize his face and be familiar with his work on such shows as House of Cards, Gossip Girls, Succession, The Handmaid's Tale.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: He's soon going to be seen in Silo and Rabbit Rabbit movies such as The Menu, The Hunt, The Changeling.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: He's done a lot of stage work, including Casa Valentina, Annie Baker's adaptation to Uncle Vanya, and he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in Stephen Cram's The Humans, which was on Broadway and also played here in London.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: But two recent films have really defined his work.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: One is one is called Mass, which is a compact theatrical drama in which he played the grieving but stoic father of a boy killed in his school shooting, in which this boy was also the perpetrator of the act, and the extraordinary hothouse chamber piece blue film, which might be the most controversial film of the year.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm JB Miller in London.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Jim Jelamis in Brooklyn.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: And this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome, Reed.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now I didn't describe what Blue Film was about, and I would love you to take us through this.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna make me do it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: And and your involvement in it, because you helped you helped develop it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: But why is it at some why is it maybe the most controversial film of the year?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I guess we don't have to worry about spoilers particularly.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um we can just the premise.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's a two-character uh film um written and directed by a fellow named Elliot Tuttle, who was 23 when he wrote it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay and uh 26 when we filmed it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um precocious yes, a real cinephile.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh it starts with a Camboy, which for your viewers who may not know what that is, it's a guy who does uh online sex work.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he's quite um he's what they call a fin dom, which I think I'd never heard that term, but it's a financial dominator.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he tells us to his his audience on the webcam that he's gonna spend the night with someone who's paying him$50,000 to spend the night.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he shows up at the Airbnb, and I'm there masked, so it's not really clear who I am.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um it is eventually revealed that I am um his middle school teacher who's followed him from Maine to Los Angeles to um put him on the right track, is what I like to say.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like he's gone astray, and I want to uh see if I can remind him who he was and could be again.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also um characters named Hank Grant uh is a convicted pedophile.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's the extraordinary thing because it's and it's it's really an empathetic portrayal, uh portrayal of a um of a sex offender, which may offend some people in on the face of it without having seen the film.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: But the film is extraordinary.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Both Jim and I have seen it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um we were just we just knocked out by it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a it's a when someone says it's a brave film, do you is that a is that an insult?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because you is that I didn't mean it for that to come across as as calculating, because the film doesn't feel calculating at all.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I I think it is a brave film because it's not uh it it really it works hard to not judge either of the characters.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's really interested in uh uh letting you, the audience, sort of contemplate what perhaps it's like to be these people.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um at one point uh at a screening, someone said to me, Don't you feel like this is uh a bad time to tell this story?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't think it's ever a bad time to tell a story about what it's like to be a human being, honestly.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, um I I saw a review posted yesterday, yesterday from a Chicago Alternative Weekly, and they called it a seductive thriller.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it has moments of, as you pointed out, uh a young man, we see him on camera, he brags about earning fifty thousand dollars, he arrives at a stranger's door only to see the rip the occupant wearing a mask and operating a camera, and it has all the elements of a thriller.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, after watching all 82 minutes, my wife and I holding each other's hands, uh I I'd call it an emotional thriller.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it really just um it's it's you if you have any kind of empathy for anybody, any other human, you you're going to be engaged by that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, Jim, uh I I have to acknowledge that people who perhaps are victims of abuse um or somehow or other triggered by it cannot go on the ride.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: They they really feel like it's irresponsible to humanize a pedophile.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um I disagree, but uh I understand um that it just might be too much.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just as soon, nothing we do in the movie is illegal.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: There is no uh breaking the law.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you say a pedophile, yeah, it's such a hot button for something.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, a lot of reviewers I read a ton of reviews read, and they're they're all very insightful because I read good reviewers.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but many are saying they're making analogies to call me by your name, baby girl, pilon.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a new one I have not seen with Olivia Wilde and and um Cooper Hoffman called I Want Your Sex.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: But I I I don't find any of those, the ones I've seen to be emotionally intelligent to speak of.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I I you know the the dynamic dialogue and stilled with revelations in this where each character journeys toward an outcome.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: I it's almost like I don't know why I had this feeling, my dinner with Andre trigger warnings.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: Trigger warning for my dinner with Andre.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, folks have have compared it to that too, because it's you know, two guys sitting around talking.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is remarkable about what Elliot has done is that while these two guys are sitting around talking, there is such an incredible sense of foreboding and danger.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't quite know how that happened, but uh it's very clear that it has a sort of thriller component.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many people kept saying they expected one of us to kill the other one by the Yeah.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, watching it, you never know what's gonna what is what's gonna come next.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it does really um uh keep you guessing.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: So you're going on the sort of the same journey that they're going on.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know what's gonna happen, and you don't know what's gonna happen as a viewer.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's but it's not only just a brave film, it's a very brave performance, um, if I could put it that way, because I don't think every I don't think a lot of actors would take that role.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's puts you in a very vulnerable position, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they probably I probably you're right.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of actors wouldn't.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it just never occurred to me.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I when I read it, I just thought the script was so beautiful.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought it was an incredible part.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, why wouldn't I want to play this incredible part?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I never ever thought of him as a monster or um uh depraved.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: He says in the movie that he's lived his life knowing how dangerous he is, yeah, and um voluntarily not participating sexually in the world.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and yet lots of people are like, he's completely irresponsible, he's not taking uh responsibility for his actions, he's a monster, he should die.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is violent um when people and I think part of it is that as they're watching the movie, they start to feel something for Hank.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and that plugs them in and they just makes him feel anxious.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going there, I can't go there.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's an extraordinary thing to think that a film can create that kind of response because that I mean, as a as a playwright, that's what this kind of response I would want from play to make it angry is that they're you're really getting them at some at a core place in them.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not easy to do that these days.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: You go back to like a rite of a spring, you know, whether it's a theater or you know, angry at early.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how difficult is it now to really get people up, you know, revved up angry?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know, it's interesting.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You say, Call me by your name.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was a movie about a pedophile, and nobody seemed to be upset about that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think because they were both so young and beautiful, and there was an Italian travel log connected to it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, part of part of the controversy was that neither actor was gay, and that was at a time when there was a lot more sensitivity toward that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that's right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: In that in that regard, I wonder how you know how did you get into the role?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: What was in the actor's toolkit that got you into the head of Hank?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the only thing I did to prepare was Elliot recommended I watch a documentary called Pervert Park, which I believe is on YouTube.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it I think it was nominated for an Oscar a couple years ago.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about a mobile home park in Florida where um sex offenders live when they get out of jail.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a community with support and group therapy and job counseling and all that.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they interview 10 or 15 of these convicted sex offenders.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the takeaway for me was they're just these guys.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not monsters, they're just these guys who have this thing that some most don't understand.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um they know they're dangerous.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they know at this point what they can and cannot do.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's like being an alcoholic, you just live with it every day.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's very dark, it's beautiful.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I think a little bit like our movie.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think the movie is very dark, and I think it's very beautiful.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's the there that was all I needed in terms of research.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in terms of the sex stuff that happens, and uh I've done stuff in plays um that have been pretty sexual.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think my personal philosophy is if something scares me a lot, that's the reason to do it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's great.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: I you you but you see a lot of, and we can I can even name them famous actors who have become lazy as they get older.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, al Pacino has turned into Al Pacino in quotes almost.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And that's happened to a lot of our, you know, they I think they and they're not taking challenging roles, they're taking probably maybe things that uh producers have put together.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you also had something to do with the the development of blue film, didn't you?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an executive producer on it, and and um I was offered the part.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Elliot had seen me in mass and uh offered me the part, wrote a very beautiful letter about how he thought I was the guy.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh that was in uh I think it was around October, maybe September even, of 23.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I signed on, but there were several things that I uh needed wanted to talk to him about.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the most fundamental thing was he was 25 or 6 at this point.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know what it was like to be old, yeah, and so Hank was not as authentically written as an older guy as uh he could have been.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked a lot about that.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think he was gonna have me be in a sweater vest, and I said, I don't think if I've traveled all this way to see the love of my life, I'm not gonna be in a sweater vest.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd call that an ageist microaggression.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: He just didn't know, he just didn't know, and and there's no no reason he should know.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um uh and then some other things that I found that since both characters are are from the same town in Maine, um there were no commonalities.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: There was no common references.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you were seeing somebody from your hometown, you would say, How's Mrs.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jones?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: and whatever happened to so-and-so.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there weren't any of those references in there.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we went through and and made it uh much more familiar between us.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: What was the what was the collaboration process like?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Was it over a series of phone calls, personal meetings?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was no, he was in LA and I was in New York.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was it was uh texts and emails and phone calls, it was all of that stuff.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you were about to say something, yeah.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was just wondering if if you if you kind of workshop how how the rehearsals went, or did there weren't any rehearsals?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: There was no such thing as a rehearsal.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: But but the budget of this film, you told me the budget of this film, and I could not believe it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to release that?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, Elliot had been an intern in Mark Duplas's uh office, and so he knew Mark and Jay, and they have a foundation that gives grants to young filmmakers.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he applied with this script, and the grant was fifty thousand dollars.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he got a fifty thousand dollar grant to make his feature-length debut, and uh, I believe we did it for maybe a little under$50,000.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh then there were, I think there was another 40 or 50 in finishing funds, and I'm not quite sure where that came from.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: It that is a good looking film to be shot for under 50,000.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Elliot knew he wanted to make a movie he could make, and uh, you know, two two actors in a single location is about as basic as you could get.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um anything more than that is yeah, no, he just said, like, I if I'm gonna do this, I want to be able to do it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: And are you surprised that the the reaction has gotten in the sense that it's it's been it's been winning?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: You said it it just won an award recently.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: We won an award and award last weekend in Mallorca at the uh Atlanta Mallorca Film Festival, and um I flew over and Kieran Moore, who is the young man, is from Manchester, UK, and um uh we met in Mallorca for two days.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done anything like that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's gotten it's gotten a theatrical release in the state, yes, and it's gonna be opening in the UK on September 25th.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's on VOD in Spain now.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I believe it's opening in theaters in France and Germany and Brazil.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know it's played a film festival in Australia.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Letterbox seems to have a lot of people writing from Portugal.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's some pirating going on.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but even that's kind of amazing that you know it's it's quite a reach they want to pirate.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's a real reach for a small film.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I would imagine when you're making it, you you wouldn't necessarily anticipate it would have such a a wide a wide scope.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've made lots of movies that have never seen the light of day.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I somehow or other felt about this that it was gonna do something.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know why.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a feeling.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that when we were making it that it was good.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Kieran has that four-page monologue in the beginning.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is his first movie.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was 26 when he made it too.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um he hadn't even been, he didn't seem nervous at all, and he didn't feel like he was even worried about that four-page monologue.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, uh-oh, what are we what are we in for?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed up and he he nailed it on the first take.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, what are we talking about here?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um but did did does he have a theater background?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a that's no, he was a boxer for 12 years.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, yeah, he was a boxer, and at 21, he decided he wanted to be an actor, and um, so he's been you know doing it for about eight years, and he's had some real success.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: He has had several television shows.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he's ever done a play.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, but he had a big hit last year on this Netflix series called Boots, where he was this uh very homophobic uh Marine.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he got a very large gay fan base from that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so that seems to have migrated over to blue film.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you um that's it's just an extraordinary that is such a small film can have such a such a big response.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: You've been in some big films that may have gotten smaller responses, you never know.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, do you said you said you sensed while your guys were making it that yeah?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was I thought there was something magic about it.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um I will confess that I I never expected it to be so controversial, and that says something about my idiocy.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um so naive.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just is like, yeah, it's really good.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: People will like it.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: But but that's probably that was probably helpful for when you were when you were doing well.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I never ever thought of Hank as a monster.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And look, I played lots of bad guys over the years, and I know I know when I'm playing a bad guy and what my responsibility to the story is as the bad guy.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I I try to stay away from mustache twirling, but but you know, you gotta be a bad guy.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just never thought of of Hank as a bad guy.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who does thought of him as a sort of sad little man?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: The beauty of the film, and I mean, teaming up with the the Duplas brothers, I mean, you know, those are great allies if you have a small budget, and if you want to make a film that is the you know that uh resonates emotionally, and I it it's so thick with dynamic dialogues, the only way I can describe it, yeah, that at some point I I thought this could be a stage play, but no, it can't.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: There are so many great cinematic elements in it that make it watchable, it makes it cinema from the opening.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what made me think of that was the opening uh the four-page or at the beginning when we see him on camera, his fans reacting to him.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there are these great visual elements, the eye of the camera, the mask he changes of video formats three times.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there's home DV uh footage, um there's the regular 4K, and then the uh there's a third, I think the aspect ratio changes.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right, which which makes it very cinematic.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: He says Elliot said he wanted to use the the home movie camera um because they represent two things.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: You only use a camcorder for home movies or snuff films.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry, I have to get a drink of water, I'll be right back.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he said the the duality of the the in Innocence versus the darkness of the what the camcorder contrast.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then I, you know, there were these interstitial film clips in the middle of a of a young boy.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which I found who did you think the boy was?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: First I was distracted by it, and then I got felt sad and disturbed by it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, the the Dr.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Seuss book in his hand was a little bit on the nose.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: But I thought it could have been either either character.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I like that that you don't know whether it's me or him.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: As a boy.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because it could have been both of us.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or just a child.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, it's the director.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's his home movies.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: We got an inside scoop for our listeners.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Reed.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: How how did the film, how did Blue Film start?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what was the first festival?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we we filmed it in March of 24, and it uh we couldn't get any festivals interested in it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sundance and um Berlin and South by Southwest and uh, you know, all the top-tier festivals.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Aren't those um festivals that are supposed to take risks?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Berlin, especially, is a very gay-friendly festival, and um all of them turned us down because it was so uh triggering.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um they they actually said, We love this movie, we can't program it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you sort of lose a lot of respect for some of these places because you sort of think, well, what's the mission?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and finally, Edinburgh, a year ago in um August of 26, um, I think it was like a year ago today, actually, uh we premiered um in the Edinburgh Festival, not having any sense of how it would be received.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um David Canfield in Vanity Fair was there and wrote a beautiful piece uh about how profound the movie was.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that was we were off to the races after that.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh last fall, obscured releasing, which is the new distribution arm of Obscured Pictures, which is a very established press, movie press company.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: They picked it up.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we premiered in May um of this year, 26th, at the IFC in New York.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: You've told me that you this is the kind of project that you really uh enjoy doing, but you've done so much television.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: And when I met you, you were in London filming Silo.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, for um for Apple, Apple, Apple TV, which is uh that that season's coming out in September.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: So when's it?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's alright.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's already on in the States.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's on there too.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um it came on July 3rd, season three, and I'm in season three and four, so season four will be on any year.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: And what is what is rabbit rabbit?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Rabbit Rabbit is a Netflix series that I just finished the beginning of July, um, starring Adam Driver and Will Poulter and Odessa Young.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um Adam is a convict who escapes from prison, and he's meets up with his pen pal girlfriend Odessa and her N'erduel brother.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they're on the lamb, and they stop at a truck stop to get something to eat, and everything goes haywire, and they end up taking everybody in the truck stop hostage.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I am the sad priest in the truck stop that gets taken hostage.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sad priest, sad priest, yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: What at hot priest?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sad hot priest, sad hot priest.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: You your entire family are uh actors, right?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: I know, yes, madness.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: One trap family.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you can everyone say what no, we've we've put them into show business.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: What's that what's that Noel Coward song, Mrs.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: Umsang?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Worthington.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: You put them on the stage and they've stayed on the stage.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: What's that?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're they're both really good.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't begrudge them at all.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: They actually made a smart decision.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: They are they both our daughter is named Gus um Augusta, but we call her Gus because we were watching Lonesome Dove when we were pregnant with her.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we both said, Well, if it's a boy, it'll be Gus.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a girl, it'll be Gus.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out it was the ball was so amazing in that show.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh and Ephraim uh our son is an actor too.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: He and I did a two-hander together on a play um a couple of years ago called Chester Bailey, in which he mopped up the floor with me and was nominated for awards, and I got nothing.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: So well, you get a you have a Tony Award for both.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, but you know, you can never have enough, JB.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: No, all right.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe get an Oscar coming up.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: I have a bone of contention um with you, and that is that you've abandoned the theater.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I can't, I'm just still coming to terms with that.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I am too.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Why have you done that?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why have you been?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um I've done 10 billion plays, and I would say 90% of them were bad.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm weary of jumping around on stage.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um plays are hard.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Plays are really, really hard.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they take over your life.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I found that when I'm when I'm doing a play, I can do one thing during the day.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I can do my laundry or I can go to the dentist.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then you gotta really start thinking about eight o'clock at night.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you, you know, your life is not no longer your own.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um also they don't pay so good.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh I did a play in which during the play I had to turn down a hundred thousand dollars worth of film work.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just thought I that can never, ever, ever happen again.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I really have to stay available.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to leave my kids something and yeah, you know, all that stuff.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: So Well, you you are in real high demand at the moment.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a few months ago, you're about to fly to Australia to do Oh, well, I was gonna yeah, I was gonna go to Australia um to do a a tiny part in the the there's a theater company called the Elevator Repair Service here in New York, and they do a nine-hour presentation of the Great Gatsby where they literally perform the entire book.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they wanted me to step in for in the role of uh Jay Gatsby's father.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's one scene.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: They've all been doing this play for 20 years.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the guy that was originally playing Gatsby's dad is 92 and wasn't up to a trip to Australia.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they asked if I would do it, and I said I could do it just for a free trip to Australia.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I got rabbit rabbin, couldn't do it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: I know that uh you know every actor is always always worried where's the next job gonna come from.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, indeed.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I mean, certainly lately you've been in high demand.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: I can't imagine you're gonna be out of work or for you know.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have three days on a little movie coming up in um this month uh with Matt Bomer.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know Matt Bomer, the guy from White Collar?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh really talented and very good looking.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he did a thing with Jonathan Bailey called Fellow Travelers, I think was one of the most recent things he's done.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, I I'm gonna play, he's a school teacher and I'm the superintendent of schools, so I've got three days on that.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the thing about Blue Film and Mass both is that they were tiny movies, but they were great huge parts.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, because I'm not a movie star, those kinds of parts aren't gonna be uh available to me in a big Hollywood movie.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're gonna get um they're gonna get Michael Keaton or somebody to play those parts.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love doing those parts and I'm very grateful that uh these young filmmakers have thought of me.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, to get to do big projects, not as good parts, but you know, better money and higher profile.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's all good.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like being uh what a little fish in a big pond or a big fish in a little pond.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Those two films, the blue uh blue film and mass, struck me as sort of theatrical in the best sense of the word, the kind of films I like, which which feel very uh they're not stagy, but but you're in the you're sort of in the room with them.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're very character-driven, both of them.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: Character-driven, right?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I would imagine working on those projects, uh I might be wrong, but I would have thought it's more like being in a play than to being in a 10-second scene in a in a television.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, or uh, you know, scenes where you're running down a street or whatever.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And those are fun too.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, to really get your your acting juju going, those and I think my staged career experience really helps me.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um to be able to craft long takes.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Mass, we did 20 minute takes.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, that that was and that was that was actually staged here at the Donmar warehouse.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Did you get to see it?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't can't remember.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh I told you it wasn't I I I thought it did work on a lot of levels, but not as well as the film.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was um, you know, it was trying to almost compensate for being on stage, which it shouldn't need to was on a a revolve because you had four people sitting uh at a table.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sitting at a table.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you know very slow revolve.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: At one point early before we made the movie, someone suggested to Frank Kranz, our writer-director, this is a play.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he took it around to some theaters to see, and they were saying, Well, we'll workshop it.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I don't want to workshop it, I want to do it.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: I don't blame him.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then the guy that ended up producing that said it's too intimate for a play.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: In a play, you're not gonna get the close-ups and you're not gonna get all that dynamic.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think it lost some of that that uh you know intimacy.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but the Dunmar is not an enormous theater, as you know.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, and I think the turntable was a really smart solution, it was rather than uh because I was worried when they were gonna do the play that they were gonna have to find all these reasons for people to get up and walk around, which would uh sort of spoil the right.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: I I would hope you'd be offered more roles like that.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, has your agent uh fielded any any more blue films?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, JB, how it is.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a crazy business.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, you don't know what's out there till it's out there, yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um a friend of mine, uh a producer, actor, producer, has uh uh optioned a book about a father and a daughter um that he would like Gus and me to do, um which would be great.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful story.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the novel is coming out in October.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, he needs five million dollars.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um so it's years away.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's years away.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: That that I mean, that's uh I mean, theater is is faster in a way.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, not nothing.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I you know, it can take a couple of years, um, you know, a couple of seasons or whatever to get to something staged.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: And right the musicals take even longer because they have to raise more more money.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: I recently saw a rewatched uh film about um Francis Bacon Love is the Devil, which was John Mabrie's first film.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Fabulous.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah, I don't know that made on a very, very small budget.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh it's with um uh Derek Jacobi.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Francis Bacon and and Daniel Craig, pre-James Bond plays his lover.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I've heard of this movie, yeah.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible film.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh the uh I saw that film, and there's a moment where the term meet cute really takes on a takes it to another level.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Would you like to describe that, JB?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, is that the first scene in the film where where where Dyer falls through a skylight trying to rob what he thinks is an empty, empty studio, and it turns out to be Francis Bacon's studio and living living space.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And he and and Bacon says to him, I'll um I won't report you to the police if you stay the night with me.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: And then there begins their long relationship.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: But um, I I brought it up because it took it took um uh uh John Mabry seven years or eight years to make his next film, which was called The Jacket, which he hadn't developed himself.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: He was he was just sort of stuck in Hollywood looking for a project, and someone else had dropped out, he directed this film, and um it's nothing on on Love is the Death.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come close, yeah.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's so much easier now to make movies.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you can make a feature-length movie on your phone.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I think it's actually a really exciting time for young filmmakers, uh because they can this sort of guerrilla filmmaking.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's well, that's yeah, that's true.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: But that's not a five million dollar budget, and that's not gonna, you know, that's not gonna pay the rent, but it uh but it's a good prize.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's something very much to look forward to and happy to do whatever comes along in the meantime.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm so lucky and so proud at my age that uh and after many, many, many decades of wandering in the darkness, um, that I have been able to sort of land with these two movies, especially with Mass and Blue Film.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't picture, I don't think of you as wandering through the darkness, Reed.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: You you did win a Tony Award.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but JB, let's not forget I'd been acting for 35 years at that point.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and there was the problem with late career success is the all the people who were so awful to me as a young actor are dead now.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I don't have the satisfaction of saying I told you so.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I can't believe that's true.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: You've been you've been relieved of that.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: It must be liberating.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so true.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: At this stage in your career, then, and and seeing the industry change, um you know how how um anyone can make a film, anyone can be an actor now.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: What are are there actors, producers, or even works that you you really admire that maybe have taken you by surprise or caused you to change your mind?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um gosh.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I'd done a little more prep here.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um nothing comes to the top of my head, but I will say I am always delighted when I see something that actually um tells the truth.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think I think there's a lot of showing off in show business and more and more and more and more.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it it gets hailed.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of big stars are just hams, just ham bones.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they get they win prizes and they and they get, you know, and it's like I don't buy it, I just see you showing off.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're also seeing we're seeing more famous actors on stage because it's uh a way to raise money really quickly, stage of production.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and they want to do it because they want the legitimacy of a Broadway, you know, and they want to, and maybe it's the one award they're missing to be an egot.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but and I think that's always been true that that people who've never done plays but like, yeah, I'd like to do a play.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like it'd be a good idea.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like okay, good luck to you.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when when people when it actually breaks through and you find you stumble on something, either a big movie or a little movie, where there isn't showing off, I'm just so gobsmacked.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think most things that we see uh are about killing time.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's Saturday night.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, what do you want to do?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: You want to go to a movie?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's go to a movie.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you go to a movie and you kill a couple hours, and it's like that was good.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want to go eat?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then and if somebody on screen is going, you get that they're sad.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: The story is the story is being told, you don't believe it, but you're you're following the story.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you actually see somebody who does the thing for real, you forget you're watching a movie and you're just like, oh my god, that's what I see.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're in so much pain.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, somebody help them.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that doesn't happen very often.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's uh you we all sort of live for that, whether we are conscious of it or not.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, because when it when it really happens, it's undeniable.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe people don't know or think about acting, don't realize it, but they've been touched.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: I I think I saw you in an interview.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you spoke to an Australian interviewer and talked about your mother watching you on stage and forgetting that it was you.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, her own son.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that was uh especially significant because she was always petrified that the set would fall down or somebody would forget their that there would be a catastrophe, and she she couldn't ever relax because she was so anxious about me being in the play and all that could go wrong, you know, the live theater thing.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's no net.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and she saw me play Lee Harvey Oswald in a play.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she said afterwards, she said, I forgot it was you.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the highest praise I could ever have hoped for from her.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she she certainly uh uh followed her job description as a parent to worry about the stage falling, stage falling on you.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and just for for some some of our listeners who who might not be familiar, you know, about sort of the tangible differences between theater and cinema.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: You were talking, we were just talking earlier about actors who who go go to the theater or act in the theater.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: What are the different skills um that you know, what does it an actor need to do to prepare for the stage?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: And alternatively, what does the actor need to do to prepare to prepare toward the camera?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh I I think telling the truth is telling the truth.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't think in terms of the work itself there's much difference.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't project to the back wall, something like that, you know.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think telling the truth in the most interesting way possible applies to both.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um I want to ask you, I like to ask you the difference between um the um uh audiences between Broadway and the West End or New York and London, because you've seen it from both sides.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: When you were when you're in um uh in the humans, it moved, I think, to the Hampstead Theater.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then again, when you were in London um a filming silo, you went to see a lot of theater.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: You you felt the audiences are really different in London than in New York.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I you know, I don't want to uh with all due respect, um, I feel like uh British audiences are raised and serious audiences, I think.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not I'm not talking about, you know, the the folks seeing Mamma Mia, but um uh I think they're raised to be super respectful and in the theater.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so my experience doing the humans at Hampstead was they made no sound at all.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were like an oil painting.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then afterwards they would say that was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you He just wanted to throttle them.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like he could have left.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were a couple of jokes in there.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um why is that?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you said that they're they're conditioned.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the the British mindset, but it felt like that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would say conversely, uh, American audiences are too enthusiastic, especially lately.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um they will talk and shout out and uh I will say or or they'll stand out, they'll give a standing up.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everybody, every show, it doesn't matter what it is.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't matter what it is.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: You have to stand at the end.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, no, no.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: At the end is one thing, but they have seen the audiences.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, now yeah, you're right.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: They'll stand in the middle of the show.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: Or you know, they'll applaud an actor.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the first scene.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the sta the entrance applause.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Entrance applause.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, no, let's see what you can do first.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to applaud you.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, there we're no, we we give a lot of entrance applause.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a friend of mine, an American who lives in London, not you, JB, um, when he was a young man and went over for the first time, he went to see, I think, production, maybe hay fever or something, with uh, and Penelope Keefe came on stage and he started applause.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, was the only person.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's so embarrassing.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he then became quite successful and years later met her and mentioned it, and she said, I remember that.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's the only time ever happened.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, how embarrassing.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: Just outrageous.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: We we've had we we've had stories here of uh of of actors stopping a production because someone was not even their phone went off, but was looking at their phone in the sideline of of an actor and it like destroyed their concentration.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh in New York probably happened.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's I think it more happens way more in New York than it does there.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um do people look on their phones in London?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't notice so much.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't what are you doing going to the theater if you're gonna troll through, you know, well, there's the the famous probably apocryphal story of you know, a play's happening, the phone rings, the guy picks it up and says, Hello?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm watching a play.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's all right.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh poor actress.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: Poor actors.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: What's it like to be in a play where you know it was not going well, and you've just got to you said 90% of the plays you're in what you didn't do well, or you you didn't like them, you didn't think they were that good.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's yeah, I it's really hard to write a play.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to write a a play that works.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, God bless everybody who's trying, but it's very hard.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the planets really have to align up and um not many people can do it.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we sort of take for granted because we mostly you know, we think of streetcar or kind of hot tin roof or something, and it's you know, it's like you hear the plays that work, and so you just go to the theater and you whatever you're gonna see is gonna work.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you don't have to go back, you know, 70 years to find a good play.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, you don't, um but I do feel like uh in my experience, it's harder and harder to find a really original accomplished new play.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like there's a lot of like two couples on the upper west side and so what's right, two couples, not even just one couple, two couples.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: That sounds good.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well you gotta have two couples because then there, you know, there's more opportunity for conflict.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I also I think because I'm I've been at it almost 52 years.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I this is a terrible thing to say, and I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble, but I sort of feel like I've seen I've seen all the performances that are gonna change my life.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um well you've seen some good performances.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some really amazing performances.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: I saw Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards do Moon for the Misbegotten, and I don't ever need to see that play again because I've seen it done perfectly.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that's it.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Name a few more.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was great.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what is your top your top oh I saw you know, I was sort of at the tail end of the golden age, I would think, but I saw Ava Legallion and Rosemary Harris in the Royal Family, I saw um uh George C.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Scott do Death of a Salesman.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and these days when I go, it's it feels like I'm going to the drama club.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all my sons performed entirely by children.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: You've met a lot of really interesting people over the years.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: You you you stopped me in my tracks when you told me you'd met Myrna Lloyd.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh now I wouldn't say she and I were best friends, but I shook her hand.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: Shook her hand.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: This works she and she I met her at the opening night of my first movie, Four Friends, in 1981.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she was at the premiere, and uh so she's seen you on screen.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she seen me, yeah, and said nice things.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, you know, whenever I see Myrna Loy in something where she's young and beautiful, I'm like, one day you're gonna come see me in a show.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, absolutely.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really fun.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: That was an exchange of that was two actors admiring each other's work.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a pretty special occasion.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: No, I always think of that whenever I see you know the thin man movies like my friend Reed, yeah, at an event.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I am hoping you will return to the stage at some point.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um it would have to be it would have to be a really remarkable circumstance.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and also because I'm not a movie star, nobody's gonna build a production of Death of a Salesman around me.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I I could go to St.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Louis and do Death of a Salesman, but I don't want to go to St.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Louis and do Death of a Salesman.
• 50:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't want to lose out on some lucrative.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I at this at this stage in my career, I'm loving the sort of the real lifeness of doing film and television.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: That you're in a real bank or you're in a real bedroom or you're in a you know, and it's yeah.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: What about a whole family involved?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: How about a something that had uh somebody once said to us said you all need to do Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, think about it, that's disgusting.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: The very reason to do it, Raid.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's a challenge, disgusting, disgusting that fill you with like, hmm, interesting.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: He can do blue film, but he can't do who's afraid of what is reading.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's her real life son, she's kissing.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, come on, it's kissing people.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's what people want.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's just acting, Reed, for God's sake.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's it's acting, not really kissing.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's acting, you know that more than anyone.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, not really kissing.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that was that from that discussion on a podcast led to the very famous production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, by a Bernie family, the even which superseded Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's the Bernie, the Bernie version of the thing.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't go anywhere near the finally the plays being done the way I wrote it.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: Damn it.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I love it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: From your mouth to all producers' ears.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody listening?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thanks, Reid.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: This has been really a lot of fun to get you on your pod for a while.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, remind viewers and listeners about Blue Film.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's being released here in England September 25th.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's available on iTunes and Amazon and Letterboxd and YouTube um rental.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can see it a lot of places.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you're one of those people that pirates stuff, apparently you can pirate it too.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh Lucy it's it's out there, and uh I'm I'm incredibly proud of it.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a challenging watch.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are prone to triggers, uh just know that going in.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's a beautifully made movie.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I would say.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed, agreed all around.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, thank you very much.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so Jim, do you have a do you have a headquake for us today?
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: I do have a headquake, and it came out of uh re-watching The Sopranos, which I've been doing in fits and starts, and um it it led me to the online performance platform called OnlyFans.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um spicy, you know, I I I'm just not aware of OnlyFans.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: I just I've heard about it.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: I remember it first coming to my attention because Bella Thorne, who was the co-star of Zendaya in um in a in a kid's show called Shake It Up, that she had ended up on OnlyFans.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, okay, so so what?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: Then I found out it's uh it's a spicy performance platform where there's nudity and sex, where you can make a lot of money.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: I've been meeting to to um join it for ages, but I can't think what what anybody would pay to see.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, yeah, yes.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: Only fans.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I have to digest that.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh can I continue?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what what I didn't know was that the potential for earnings, I've been hearing about it a bit, they're almost unlimited.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: They stretch into millions of dollars per month for the world's most famous creators, right?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a global platform when we see mostly women, sex workers doing stuff.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um sadly, the average performer, right?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's not look at the hype, hype.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: The the average performer makes a hundred bucks a month, maybe or a hundred and eighty bucks.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because there's uh the the platform skewed towards a few ultra successful.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, can I wait?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's the average.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the people earning less than that, like$40 a month.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't quite understand why any more going on.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a it's a dead end for a lot of people.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, you're sacrificing your your public appearance, your reputation, whatever it is.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there are other platforms where other people make money, but you know, I'm a chaste person, and that's why I'm I can't fully share all the information about these these platforms.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: So where does the where did where do the sopranos come in?
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: There was an the Emmy Award-winning Sopranos actress whose name was Drea Demate Mateo.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I remember she was the girlfriend and of the actor's name, Chris.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: He was he was the nephew of um of the um James Golfina character, right?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, forget his name a little bit.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: After the can the Sopranos, which is an old show.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it I think the first the first episode was in 1999 or 2000.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um later, much later in her career, leading up to 2019-2020, the global pandemic, she refused to comply with Hollywood's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: And because she was anti-vax or vax hesitant, her town agent dropped her, her income completely dried up.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: Then she had some kind of a problem with her home, and her parents were suffering from dementia, which is sad and tragic.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: And she went into arrears on her property.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: And as a last resort to support her two kids and save her home from being repossessed, she launched an OnlyFans account charging 15 bucks a month.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: She says she made 75,000 bucks within her first 75 minutes on the platform.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: It saved her home.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she didn't do nudity except towards the end.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: She played uh she played Adriana.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the um Adriana.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: Adriana.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: She was really good in it.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't quite understand why her agent would drop her because of a vaccine mad.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no vax, no work.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like company PayC.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: They they wouldn't, no one wanted to hire her because they were afraid that you wouldn't be on you couldn't be on set with a large a large staff of production large production staff and risk um giving getting getting covet or giving covet or whatever it is.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_03: What if she did on OnlyFans?
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, nobody like I said, she she only she only um uh they were just sugg suggestive photos towards the end.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: She she had nudity.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: The the other weird part of the story is that her 13 or 14-year-old son helped the photo retouch him.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and they she's very about it.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: She saved the family, and she has some kind of streetwear brand or something that um keeps her keeps her um in in the black.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that's my headquake, only fan.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_03: Only fans came to the rescue of a wonderful actress who otherwise would have been on really hard times.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, Tish School of the Arts graduate.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: All right, good for you.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: You're all.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think in France is called Monsieur Moonlight.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: I might be wrong.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, it's a fascinating story, and um that's my headquake if you enjoy the Beatles as much as I am.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: Can you can can you share a revelation or something interesting about the book?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I think because you know, a lot of people are fatigued with the name Epstein.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you can breathe a little life into it.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: He was um, yes, I mean he was a fastidious um, he was the right manager in some ways for the Beatles.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: He was um privately uh he was gay and he was Jewish, so he dealt with a lot of anti-Semitism in the business, and he was very afraid that he'd be he'd be outed.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: And he was the reason he was afraid of being outed was not just really for his own his own mortification, but he was afraid it would really damage the Beatles.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: He was so afraid of that.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: So he kept very much to himself.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: He was at a very sad, he died of a drug overdose, uh maybe unintended, um, barbiturates at the age of 32 in 1967 at the height, height of the Beatles' fame.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it was an early, early casualty, really, really sad story.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_03: But there's much to that, much more really to his life.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, I recently saw a play about him here in London called Please Please Me, a new play, um, about his relationship with um John Lennon.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: He was he was in love with John Lennon, and sort of obsessed with Lennon.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_03: And there was uh question of whether they uh they were they went on holiday to Spain in uh for 10 days in 1964 or 63, I'm not sure.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: And there were many rumors of what may have gone on then.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's an interesting story, and uh it was called Mr.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: Moonlight by Philip Norman.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my headquake for this week.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for watching and listening.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm JB Miller in London, and I'm Jim Jelamis in Brooklyn.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: This is Berber Hassan.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: Bye bye.