DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience — Transcript

I'm waiting for Chaz to start his rapping career very soon.

My midlife crisis.

I am not coming to your open mic night. I'm putting my foot down. I have to have a boundary somewhere.

Beat Zero is just going to be a weekly podcast of Chaz.

Oh my God, I couldn't imagine anything worse. Hi i'm chas fisher and.

I'm mel killingsworth.

And i'm stew willis and.

Welcome to draft zero podcast where filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And in this episode perhaps the final episode in our what feels like mammoth undertaking for the the year our series on talking directly to the audience we've been focusing on characters speaking to the audience and for this episode to finish off we're getting a little bit more meta and we're looking at films in which the filmmakers talk to the audience so not only are characters breaking the fourth wall but it's actually the writer stepping through and breaking the fourth wall and in the case in one of the films the 40 year old version the character literally breaks the fourth wall in a play to talk directly to the audience. And so the films we are looking at are Adaptation.

Stories We Tell.

And the 40-year-old version.

And all of them, to one degree or another, that we're going to explore, play with communicating directly to the audience. And I think I will say up front that, I mean, it's interesting because it is a spectrum, but you are more or less clear by the end of the film that the filmmakers have been talking to you directly. And I do think it's also worth saying that all these three films are also all autobiographical.

So, what we've tackled so far, we've discussed examples where the filmmakers are talking directly to the audience. Fight Club, in particular, that scene where Jack is raving about IKEA furniture.

Oh, and then there's the overlaying graphics of the catalogue. So, there's a fourth wall breaking of the text. But I don't know if that's David Fincher speaking to the audience, right? Right. But it's definitely in the playing around with the fact that we're not just, it's not trying to pretend that the camera is invisible and that we are just observing. Right. But I guess there is, what we're talking about is an awareness of the camera and of the edit and of sound and of the artifice of the film production is in actually all three films.

Yes, definitely. And I was just going to say in Pain and Gain, which we did for voiceover, we definitely identified that those title cards were, this is still a true story is definitely not from the characters that's not them being aware that they're in a movie and using a title card to communicate to the audience that is the filmmakers saying you know like drawing attention i guess somewhat to themselves providing.

Commentary they're commenting on their own film.

Yeah i mean one of the big takeaways i've taken from this whole series is i always used to think like you are sensibly sue in the last episode on breaking the fourth wall if we loved it so much when in those three amazing examples that we looked at why don't we do it more often and i think breaking the fourth wall all of these techniques do in some ways uh further distance the audience and i use distance i guess in a wanky artistic brechtian theater point of view but what i mean is just remind us that we're watching a piece of screened entertainment. We can't get, I was going to say that we can't get as lost. And I thought that that distancing would always push us further away. But in Breaking the Fourth Wall, it created more intimacy and created a different relationship between us as the viewer and the characters. And in each of these three films, it's not just the filmmakers talking directly to us. You know, the characters have voiceover.

The characters- Speak to the camera. They barrel the camera in all, almost all three films.

Yeah. So, these basically still use all the things that we've looked at before from using the characters, but what they do is I guess they take that extra step further and, I'm interested in asking you guys, do you think there's any way that the filmmakers can talk to the audience directly without drawing the audience's attention to the fact that they're watching film or TV?

I think that I think that the 40 year old version actually does a couple more subtle things in terms of that, which work on one level as something within the text. And then also, you may or may not realize at the time that it is the filmmaker speaking directly to you. I think if you notice that it's the filmmaker, it might pull you out of it. But there are more subtle things in that film that I don't think necessarily. In fact, the first time I watched it, I don't think really, I did not bump on as many of them for sure. Sure. Most of those are audio cues or like very subtle jokes or uses of color or things like that, which we'll get into. But I think for the most part, you're going to notice partly because it's unusual in the form.

I'm going to bounce off that and say, I think it's kind of context dependent because I think what you're talking about is there is a difference between something where we know that the characters know that they're in a film. I mean, that's true of most documentaries, right? Yeah. They know that they're in there and they're acknowledging it. Right. And the question I think is, is the film itself making a commentary on the nature of cinema itself in a broad sense, like adaptation? Or is it actually something that's just a little bit more self-aware? I mean, stories we tell has to be self-aware because it's literally a documentary and everyone knows they're participating in the documentary. So the characters are aware of what's going on. Whereas I think the 40-year-old version, when we get to it, is... On the other end where, like, as much as it's a film about someone creating art, it's not about someone making the film that you're watching, right? It's not kind of that kind of convolutedly meta. And I think there is a difference between all those three things. So, I think you can have something that is very quite formally complex that is speaking directly to the audience. I would guess that some of the most watched content in the world has people talking directly to the camera and that's stuff that people watch on YouTube. And I think the filmmaking that we are seeing on YouTube and obviously because I'm doing more YouTube stuff I'm now watching it but there's just a lot more people that are now watching stuff where people are talking directly to the camera presenting and it's really quite multifaceted and complex in the kind of the way it's using the form a little bit more postmodern or hypermodern and I think we're going to start seeing that infect mainstream storytelling because it has to.

I think your thesis is right but I think your example Sample might be superseded by TikTok.

Sure.

Effectively, they're the same thing. I don't think they're, I mean, the platform, yes. If you're saying that the platform specifically, I mean, you know. But then again, I mean, someone complained that Oppenheimer was a movie for TikTok brain. That was the latest main person on Twitter. And it was just like, what? It was like, this is edited so fast. It's for the TikTok audience. And it's just like, wow.

Sorry, just identifying. Look, it feels like we're actually really wanting to get into the, meat and examples of that we've done here so that we can talk less abstractly. But I think it might be useful to restate the levers, the craft tools that we've identified in this series so far, because I think it will probably help us identify what these films might be doing differently and how the filmmakers might be drawing more or less attention to themselves and to what effect. So, the levers that we identified and they've grown as we've done this series.

And I've got one more to add. Okay.

So, we've got diegetic to non-diegetic. How in-story world to outside the story world is the communication. And I think that will be an interesting one here, because I think that's actually what makes these films feel different is how in-story world or out-of-story world the filmmaker communication direct to the audience is. Who is talking, ranging from storytellers to characters? Whom are they talking to, themselves or directly to the audience? And I think certainly stories we tell really plays with that. From when in time is the communication coming? That was a particularly relevant one to voiceover.

In contrast to barrelling to the camera, which we talked about this idea that it was super emotionally present. So, you know, he was putting us in the immediate feeling of the character.

Yes.

You know, where voiceover can be more reflective.

What does the communication want from the audience? And I think that's going to obviously be an important question here. year. And as you guys identified in Fight Club, and we delved into more when we did Breaking the Fourth Wall, how much control does the communicator, and in this instance, the filmmakers, have over the narrative?

So, I'm going to build a subset of that because I think what's interesting is that we're doing one film, Stories We Tell Being a Documentary has a whole bunch of people that are interviewed, but they don't have control over the communication. That's Sarah Polley, and we know that. So, they're telling her story, right? But they're aware that they're talking to an audience. So, I'm just going to finish. I would say the other lever is how aware are the supporting characters of the fact that they're in a quote-unquote in a film that they're talking to the audience? because I think that is a spectrum as well. Go on.

Because I think what we'll find in 40-year-old version is there's moments when Radha, the character, is talking to us and moments when Radha, the filmmaker, is talking to us and whether the other characters are aware of that or not.

I think what makes stories we tell such an interesting one to talk about control is, yes, Sarah Polly is doing the documentary. Yes, she's the director. Yes, she's in control. However, the documentary ends up being about herself, and some of the people within the story have more information about her than she does, in which case there are a couple of scenes in which it feels she has ceded control. Now, again, obviously, because she's in control of the edit and things like that, she's still showing us that, right? She's still making the choice in post and in the construction of it to what to show, what not to, in what order, and how. But it's really fascinating because in a lot of documentaries, obviously, you become personally invested in some way, but that doesn't mean it's about you, whereas this literally is. And so it's fascinating that at certain points, there are characters who have more understanding and more pieces of the puzzle than she does in the immediacy of the scene as she's filming it and talking to them. Hmm.

I really want to dive into that, but that is not the order in which we've chosen to attack these films. So I'm going to squash all my thoughts down and hopefully they resurface later on in the podcast.

Let's just see how constipated your brain's going to be.

So we are going to start with Adaptation written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze.

She hates me she's disappointed i could see it in her eyes when we met i've got to stop sweating, oh she looked at my hairline she thinks i'm bald she's thinking i would never in a million years sleep with this guy we think you're great oh thanks wow that's that's nice to hear, like you I'm putting in a chase sequence so the killer flees on horseback cops after them on a motorcycle and it's like a battle between motors and horses like technology versus horse Susan we would really like to option this you want to make it into a movie I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately John LaRoche is a tall guy sharply handsome the book has no story There's no story. Make one up. Okay, we open with LaRoche. No, we open at the beginning of time. Okay, we open with LaRoche. Crazy white man. We open our Charlie Kaufman. Fat, bald, ugly. Paces. I've ripped myself into my screenplay. That's kind of weird, huh?

All right. So, Adaptation was the follow-up to the previous Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman collaboration, which was being John Malkovich. And it's important to reference that because that is a kind of important character plot point that is referenced.

Right off the bat.

Yeah, throughout the film. And it follows Charlie as he struggles to adapt an unadaptable novel called The Orchid Thief by Susan Orleans. Orlan? Orleans?

Isn't it The Orchard Thief?

Especially at the Denouement.

Hey, he says it like me. At least he says it like me.

Cool, I really like Trestakil. Until the third act of Newyament. That's not how it's pronounced.

And the other, I guess, main element to this is the relationship between Charlie and his entirely fictional twin brother, Donald, to whom the film is dedicated.

How's that for a summary, Mel? Does it pass your approval?

I shall allow it.

Oh, I have to say, I have to say that I'm going to embarrass everyone involved. I watched this film with my parents and my nephew and his girlfriend, and they were second screening. They're like not even 20. Anyway, they're 19. They're second screening the whole way, but, you know, whatever. But I forgot how much masturbation was in this film. So much masturbation.

Did you tell them that masturbating is a very important part of writing? Because it is.

That's just the words I put on the page, Mel.

So, I'm actually, I'm interested in getting your guys' take as to broadly how the filmmakers, and I think we're mostly, when we're talking about filmmakers, is going to be talking about Charlie Kaufman as the writer.

Are we?

Communicating, well, okay. How are the filmmakers communicating directly to us? Because I remembered this film being even more kind of revolutionary in its metaness than, I guess, you know, we've moved on 20 years of storytelling and it didn't feel quite so confrontational on this. I think it's my third watching of the film as it did originally when I watched it.

I mean, you've done a Robert McKee seminar, haven't you, Chas?

Yes, I have. I was watching it with Anna and I'm like, I've done this seminar. And Anna was like, did he yell at you like he does in the movies? I'm like, no, he was not like that at all.

The filmmakers thing, I think, is interesting, and it's kind of sad, maybe, that we're doing this first, but there's a reason, because it's probably the one film that most screenwriters have watched, you know, because it's about screenwriting. It's that, oh, it's a film about screenwriting that actually managed to pull it off. I think there is a tension between Charlie Kaufman writing the story and Spike Jonze telling the story, right? We were talking about in our pre-chat that if Charlie Kaufman himself directed this film, it would be a lot more depressing. And I think it's to do with when in time is the communication is happening because you've got a duality of Charlie Kaufman as he writes the story and then Spike Jonze telling the story from a future where he knows that Charlie Kaufman wrote a great script. And so as much as the character is depressed about his inability to adapt this novel, the filmmaker making it knows he succeeded. And so there's a wistfulness to it. So it isn't depressing because he knows there's a way out, whereas I think sometimes depression, part of what makes depression depression is that you don't feel like there's any escape. It's an absolute despair. So I think there is an interesting tension there that it could be the choice of colour palette, could be the choice of music. There's just a sense of play that I think comes from Spike Jonze. I think the Charlie Kaufman version of the third act, when it becomes the thriller, would have possibly been less fun and more that I am not going to enjoy having to do the trope. I don't know. I haven't- I actually did- we could have read the adaptation script, but we did not.

So, like, I guess the metaness comes from he has chosen, instead of it to adapt the novel, he has chosen to write about his struggle in adapting the novel. And the the moments when i really became aware of the filmmaking i guess where the meta structure of it because at no point is there uh breaking the fourth wall in this and there's a few title cards but not a lot mostly just to tell you.

When and where you are.

So no breaking the fourth wall in terms of charlie looking at the camera and directly addressing the camera.

Yeah so largely Actually.

The communication is diegetic. That's what we're saying. Even the quote-unquote voiceover is either him thinking in his head, so it's not him talking to us, or him talking into a voice recorder.

Okay, we open with LaRoche. He's funny. Okay, he says, okay, he says, I love to mutate plants. He says, mutation is fun. Okay, we show flowers and, okay, we have to have the court case. Okay, we show LaRoche. Okay, he says, I was mutated as a baby. That's why I'm so smart. That's funny. Okay, we open at the beginning of time. No, okay, we open with LaRoche driving into the swamp. Crazy white man.

Yeah, and at no point do we see the actual Charlie Kaufman. It's not like Martin Scorsese at the end of Killers of the Flower Moon.

Or in the other film that we talked about doing for this, which we mentioned right at the beginning, American Splendor, where it moves between the real Harvey Beaker and an actor playing him. And we kind of see that a little bit in stories we tell where it uses reenactors and the real people interchangeably. Yeah.

So, I think the reason why I was surprised at this on this viewing is how, I guess, diegetic all the communication is. Like, it feels like it's within a story world. It feels like, like Nicolas Cage never tells us he's Nicolas Cage. It's not in that way drawing our attention to the fact that it's a movie. It's all happening to this character of Charlie Kaufman. And the i and so i guess it's structure is the main way of doing it i mean what i really loved is the film has about three or four different opening scenes and as he goes through his relative crises where he's trying to figure out the story it's like he's throwing out the whole story and starting again but then you realize that the new way in for him the new way of him tackling the story is something that he has already done in the opening of the film so it's kind of teaching us how the the story got crafted as he went through it so he might like just to give you i guess some of the summaries is he's having a meeting with the production company till the swing the executive who owns the rights to the book and it cuts away like he's thinking about flowers and it cuts away to this beautiful it's completely prompted by his voiceover and his thoughts, this time lapse of evolution.

I've been on this planet for 40 years, and I'm no closer to understanding a single thing. Why am I here? How did I get here?

And then, you know, several scenes down the track when he's trying to figure it out, he's going, this is how it's about flowers. We'll have a time lapse about everything from evolution, you know, and he'll go, oh, it's LaRoche's story or it's Susan's story. And he'll say, this is our way in, having already shown us that he's given us that way in already. And those were the main moments where I was going, oh, I'm suddenly reminded that this is a film. And I wouldn't have felt quite as struck by those moments if they hadn't already done it. Like if he was genuinely going, oh, this is the new way in. And he just like completely does something new that we haven't already seen, as opposed to referencing something that has already happened in the past and recontextualizing as to why it was in there and in that order and why it was in that moment.

It's interesting. I was going to say that this film, unlike the others, has no real people in it because both the other films use some of the real people. But that is not true. Catherine Keener, it's in the film playing herself because she was in Being John Malkovich.

John Cusack and John Malkovich are both in there.

Yeah, we see Lance Accord, the cinematographer who shot Being John Malkovich and shot Adaptation. I don't think we even see Spike Jonze in it, right? But it's interesting there. The only real people are connected to being John Malkovich, which is, we go to the set of them shooting the film. What is interesting, coming back to my nephew, who was not born when this film came out, right? And that's important, because he had this thing of like, hang on, did any of this, is this real? Did this actually happen? Like, he wasn't sure. There was nothing in the filmmaking that was telling him that it was partially documentary-esque, right? That it was like a docodrama or whatever kind of terminology on that spectrum in a way that I think stories we tell is very clear that it's documentary-esque. And that's a choice that the filmmakers have made, whether it's Charlie or Spike Jonze.

I think the opening scene, if you're coming into this completely cold, where they're on the set of being John Malkovich, you're like, oh, is this actually behind the scenes footage? And then Nicolas Cage comes in and they call him Charlie Kaufman. They make that very clear very quickly. But if you're, I do think that like within the first five minutes, they play with that and then they move on from it.

Yeah.

Yes. But to Stu's point, nothing in the story as presented to us in the movie tells us when reality stops. Right.

I do think there is a shift when it becomes the thriller.

Yes. Right.

That it becomes more heightened. So in the third act after Robert McKee says, you just need to make something up and wow them in the end.

Wow them in the end. You got to hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. Find an ending, but don't cheat. And don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina.

Gotta be a chase scene.

The film, just the way it's shot, kind of indicates this is made up. And that, I think, is indicated to the audience that this is completely fictionalized. Right. But I think previously to that, it is kind of like a historical reenactment. It's just that the historical reenactment is about someone trying to write a screenplay as opposed to this is the story of Shakespeare, or this is the story of, You know, there's lots of biopics which are about creation. I mean, you've written one.

Chaz.

It's just that this film is about the creation of itself.

Yes.

It's an Ouroboros.

Yes. Two nice callbacks at a Romel. Well done.

Caroline has this great tattoo of a snake swallowing its own tail. Ouroboros. I don't know what that means. A snake. It's called Ouroboros. I don't think so. But anyway, it's cool for my killer to have this modus operandi because at the end, when When he forces the woman who's really him to eat herself, he's also eating himself to death. I'm insane.

I would like, it's very clear that that's the point, like having seen it a few times now, the point where it really departs reality is in that third act. But I still think that anyone who's not read the book, which I have not, and has not seen the film or is watching the film for the first time would really... Struggle to know, did Charlie Kaufman really have a twin brother who died in the trying to write of the story of adaptation where he was murdered by the author of the book as played by Meryl Streep? And it sounds silly and delightful. And I think, you know, the ending does somewhat emotionally save what's gone beforehand. As much as I was kind of riveted throughout, I think the fact that you've got Robert McKee telling him what to do.

Shut up. The first time I saw this movie, me, my friend Tim McKinney. It was 2011 and he had heard that this was really good. And we went to his place and sat down on the couch and watched it. And neither of us really knew anything, had not seen Being John Malkovich, did not know who Charlie Kaufman was, et cetera. And our jaws were on the floor. Also being an American, I completely bought all of the, like the alligator stuff. Not only was it like Chekhov's alligator, cause you'd seen it and all, But I'm like, oh yeah, that would absolutely happen. There's no doubt in my mind, people tromping around getting eaten. So in terms of how it read to me, it absolutely read as credible, maybe slightly heightened, like biopics do write short-cutting things. But I was like, this is absolutely batshit insane. And coming back to it, every time I've come back to it since, I still have that little bit of a thrill of an experience, which is quite fun.

On this watch, the only point where I recognized it tangibly leaving reality is because they finished the book.

Right?

So, what you were talking about, Stu, in terms of the kind of felt like dramatizations of what was in the book. And I presume that a lot of the Susan Meryl Streep character's voiceover is directly from the book. At least it felt that way, that like it was her observations of her experiences as it felt like it would have been written in the book. And they, you know, there are bits where Charlie and Donald are like reading out bits of the book to us and talking about, is this the theme of the movie? Is this what we're going to explore? law. And it's when he can't find the ending in the book that they depart. And, you know, Donald creates the spying on Susan. The thriller plot kicks off.

She's lying. What do you mean? What happened? Nothing. She said everything right. Too right. Maybe they're too right because they're true. Did you embarrass me? People who answer questions too right are liars, and everybody says Jesus and Einstein. That's a prepackaged answer. What do you mean, Jesus and Einstein? Listen, Charles, I have an idea. I need you to buy me a pair of binoculars. What's Jesus and Einstein?

Which is nicely meta, because it's basically he brings his brother in to create the thriller plot, and then his brother literally finds, stumbles upon the thriller plot.

What we didn't mention in our summary is the Donald character, Like a subplot is the Donald character is like unemployed, living with Charlie, even though they're twins, Charlie feels much more superior to Donald intellectually, but Donald feels much more, he does not suffer from the same social anxiety.

These are clearly two sides of Kaufman, right? That's how we read this. The one side of him that's like, yeah, I've written award-winning Oscar-nominated plays, and then the side of him that has imposter syndrome, and it's the two sides of him at war with each other, right? That's absolutely how I read it.

Yeah, I read Donald as a little more idealized. He's the version. It's connected to his imposter syndrome, but I don't think he sees himself as the guy that's going to write a serial killer movie.

No, but I think it's fun that he gets the fact that he could be good at it, but then he despises it, but then he realizes it's a real art, but then he thinks maybe he'd make money. But then he was like, but actually, it's kind of hard. But then he's like, no, it's easy. But it's not real art. It's great.

I agree with Stu that yes okay to the extent that I think Donald is someone he aspires to be that is a part of himself but Donald's character is in the film not just to justify this third act but to give voice to to create the contrast of Charlie's anxiety because Donald comes home one day and says I'm going to be a screenwriter and then the very first draft of the very first screenplay he writes is this like amazing financial success, even though in Donald's like attempt to create the story, Charlie ridicules it throughout. And it does sound like it would make no sense, but very entertaining.

It's a little obvious, don't you think? Okay, but here's the twist. We find out that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder, right? See, he's actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him. Isn't that fucked up? The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality. On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this. Mom called it psychologically taught. The other thing is, there's no way to write this. Did you consider that? I mean, how could you have somebody held prisoner in a basement and working in a police station at the same time? Trick photography.

So, this connects to the Leavers. I will say the other thing that Donald does is give Charlie someone to talk to.

Yes.

And I think what we're talking around is that even though the topic of the film is rather meta, I think a lot of what it's doing structurally isn't actually as layered, for a lack of a better word, as stories we tell or even the 40-year-old version. And it's actually, I mean, it's got two timelines because it's intercutting the story of Charlie writing the book with the actual excerpts from the book, the scenes of the book, which serves as the B plot. But largely, the characters, you know, I'm going to go through it. Most of the communication is diegetic. There is at no point that he talks to the camera as Charlie, knowing he's in a film called Adaptation. It is the memoir of it, right?

There is voiceover, but it is in-world voiceover. It feels very of the moment that he's in. It's not coming from a different time, usually. Yes.

So, it's definitely giving access to inner thoughts, but it's his inner thoughts to himself. It's the audience of his communications himself, right? So, with those voiceovers. So, he basically wants him to fucking solve these story problems. The communication of the film as the whole is actually what he says, which is he wants to share what he learned from reading this book, which is all the stuff he actually says. I want people to, you know, love plants and love life.

And Orlean makes orchids so fascinating. Plus her musings on Florida and orchid poaching, Indians. It's great, sprawling New Yorker stuff. And I'd want to remain true to that. I'd want to let the movie exist rather than be artificially plot-driven. Great. I guess I'm not exactly sure what that means. Oh. I'm not sure I know what that means either. I just don't want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood thing like an orchid heist movie or something or changing the orchids into poppies and turning it into a movie about drug running why can't there be a movie simply about flowers, I guess we thought that maybe Susan Orlean and LaRoche could fall in love but I'm saying it's like I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know, or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean, the book isn't like that and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. I feel very strongly about this.

Because I do think one of the amazing things about this film is that it actually does all that.

Right?

He succeeds in this roundabout way of making a film about the themes of the book, and he's communicating the way that he has. So, I think the film as a whole is talking directly to the audience, but I don't think any of the characters are, right?

Yes.

I don't think Charlie has power over the filmmaking as separate from the narrative. Charlie clearly wrote the screenplay, but as indicated by the fact that he's not playing himself, he's being played by Nicolas Cage, is I think there is a separation there. A subtle one, but an important one that I don't think Charlie has complete control over the filmmaking. Right. Charlie the person, not Charlie the character. But I don't even think Charlie the character has power over the filmmaking either. He does over the script, but only in hindsight do we understand that.

Over the script he's writing. Like, this is to your earlier point about Spike Jonze. Spike Jonze is dealing with the Charlie Kaufman who's finished the script. The Charlie that we're seeing does not think he's going to ever finish that script.

I don't think any of the characters have an awareness, really, that they're going to be in the film, the story of the making of, you know, the screenplay that is about him trying to adapt this book. Right? So there is not- Except LaRoche. Yes. Who's going to play me? Yeah.

He's that screenwriter. What, the guy that's adapting our book? Yeah. What's wild? It's nice to meet you. Hey, dude, who's going to play me?

That's three other levers, don't we have? To who the communication, from when in time, and we kind of hinted to that, which is the script is being written in the present, the communication of the filmmaking is definitely presenting it in kind of like an omniscient hindsight, you know.

Like it's structured in that way. They could have structured it differently so that his development of the themes and breakthroughs and the understandings of the material happen as they occur to him. But the structure of the film from the very first scene already has those understandings in them. And it's only as he comes to them that it recontextualizes for us as the audience what the filmmakers were doing beforehand and how they were exploring those themes and choosing those moments. What does the communication want from the audience well i think interestingly the donald charlie relationship is the only way that charlie could have got to a line where someone says like what the whole film is about you are what you love not what loves you she.

Thought you were pathetic, that was her business not mine, You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

And only through, you know, an alligator chase scene third act with an imaginary twin brother could Charlie- I mean, he did discuss that. Like, there were bits where he was talking about Susan's characters yearning for passion and feeling trapped in her marriage. And that LaRoche was liberated by his near-death experience to follow his passion. Like all these characters are defined by what they love and it's only when charlie embraces what he loves about the material what he loves about screenwriting what he loves about storytelling that he can finish the script it.

Is kind of that love letter to the horrific process of writing it's very um it's very stockholm syndrome.

Yes this.

Is terrible and yet i love it and i must continue to do it.

I was just surprised that i thought adaptation and this was an option chosen for us by our patrons like it polled very highly in the in the homework options and and was suggested this is the one that i thought would be most overtly communicating directly to us and i was surprised at how in world and within like these character relationships and how it really is almost only through the structure that we are being communicated directly to by Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.

In a way, it's less talking directly to the audience than the 40-year-old version, and certainly more than stories we tell. You know, I think if Charlie and Donald were actually collaborating on a screenplay, you know what software I think they could use? Arc Studio Pro.

This episode of Draw Zero is brought to you by Arc Studio Pro, a modern, fresh app for the screenwriting world. Which of course has industry standard formatting which, That's the bare minimum. But exciting for us Australians, it has it for both US letter and A4. Crazy. And it also lets you cheat the margins, which is one of my favourite little features. But it has advanced tools for storytellers that are actually easy to use. You can seamlessly move between drag and drop beat cards into a treatment and into a screenplay and back and forth at any time. and you can color code your beats. Super useful whether you want to tag your beats for characters, narrative point of view, thematic sections, or however you want. We got to use all of that on a project where we took it back to cards and then from cards to outline and from outline to pages. The development process was intuitive and powerful. All the while, it was the best remote collaboration experience we've had in screenwriting software, and we've tried a lot. I loved looking at a line of dialogue that Chaz had edited, going to the edit history and changing it back to the line that I wrote. We used the software to present to our producer and script editor at each of those stages, at boards, at outline, and then at pages, who could then leave comments in the app, which is both useful and terrifying. And we could reply to those comments, tag each other to throw each other under the bus, or we could tick them as resolved. It really is as easy to use as Google Docs. And this development workflow has worked so well that Chaz has decided he doesn't need me anymore. And he's using it on a solo project because it's not just from collaboration. And I know I'll be using it on one of my own projects because the development workflow really is that intuitive. We've noticed Arc Studio Pro is being constantly updated and the development team is super approachable and responsive. They've now introduced the new notes feature which facilitates that collecting of all your scraps of ideas and allowing you to get into the flow of free writing and figuring all your structure all within one spot. Arc Studio Pro. Join the thousands of screenwriters from amateurs to pros and everyone in between who've already made the leap. Arc Studio offers a completely free plan because starting to screenwrite shouldn't cost you anything. But you can also get $30 off the pro plan if you want some of these pro features. If you visit the link in the show notes or go to arcstudio.com slash draft zero, that's draft zero without a hyphen. And now for the third hour of a screenwriting podcast. Except this episode is like 90 minutes. All the better for it.

I do think that simply by nature of calling him Charlie Kaufman and even just by getting Nicolas Cage to play him right off the bat, it is talking directly to us in a somewhat removed way, right? Like by saying, you know who this person is, you know who that guy is playing him. All right, you kind of see where we're going here with this right at the beginning, which really draws attention to that by mentioning his name in the script multiple times in the the first couple of minutes, et cetera. And that's the writer being like, hey, you see what we're doing? You see what we're doing? You see what we're doing, right? Okay. So I do think you're right. I think I was actually a little bit surprised as well, revisiting it, how much less it did than the other two. But I think that it kind of sets us up for it really clearly with where we're going. And then goes, all right, we've set this up and now we're going to go completely off the rails.

I think to phrase this using the craft tools, I thought that a film as aggressively self-aware as this one is, where, like you said, Stu, it is called Adaptation. It is a film about the process of the making of itself. For a film that aggressively self-aware, I was surprised by how diegetic everything was.

I think that's a choice. And part of the reason maybe it's successful is because the content is so wild and out there, it's grounding it in quite conventional tools. Yes, we're meant to laugh with the fact that Robin McKee is like, don't use voiceover.

I have failed. I am panicked. I have sold out. I am worthless. What the fuck am I doing here? What the fuck am I doing here? Fuck. It is my weakness, my ultimate lack of conviction that brings me here. Easy answers, moves to shortcut yourself to success. And here I am, because my jaunt into the abyss brought me nothing. Well, isn't that just the risk one takes for attempting something new? I should leave here right now. I'll start over. I need to face this project head on. And God help you if you use voiceover in your work, my friends. God help you. It's flaccid, sloppy writing.

But the voiceover is diegetic, right? It's not him smarmingly talking to the audience. It's him talking to himself for a reason. It's largely motivated. They've invented a character to do it. There is the storyteller cuts. There's the A plot and the B plot. They come together. There's a lot of stuff that's quite conventional storytelling that lets it be a little bit more wild. And that is an interesting contrast to the 40-year-old version, which is in some ways kind of hits the beats. And it's kind of does a great job of like mocking some of those beats that it's hitting about the autobiographical artist's journey film, but because it's got some of that conventionality, it can slip in these moments of breaking the fourth wall of, of talking directly to the audience to be a commentary on things. And I know I'm kind of like anticipating that rather than doing it in wrap up, but I think what's interesting about stories we tell is it's a little bit, neither it's, it's not a conventional story and it's not conventionally told.

Yeah.

Right. But it's using techniques that I've seen in other projects to deal with similar personal subject matter.

Excellent segue.

Can you describe the whole story in your own words? What? The entire story? I guess I better pee first. I'm interested in the way we tell stories about our lives, about the fact that the truth about the past is often ephemeral and difficult to pin down. Well, I guess if you could start by describing Mum in as much detail as possible. My memory of mom is she was a fun person at parties, that she laughed loud. Michael was a private person, and Diane was not a private person. She yearned for more. She was very warm, you know, full of life. But I do think it's really interesting to look at this one thing that happened and how it's refracted in so many different ways. What I overheard was mom saying that she was pregnant and that she wasn't sure who the father was.

Stories We Tell is a documentary by Sarah Pauly, who is an actor. And she starts telling a story about her mother who has passed and ends up sort of stumbling upon her own Mamma Mia situation in terms of literally, wait, which of these guys is my dad? Let's find out question mark and the documentary takes a couple different twists and turns following her journey of yeah finding out is the person who raised me my biological father is this other actor or that other actor she has she has three men who could potentially be her father it's a very personal piece and, is very clearly from the beginning that but it takes some really interesting side tracks along the way.

My first thing is because i've worked on a couple of documentaries in editing hardest.

Thing in filmmaking feature.

Documentary absolutely no question yeah um but and also i've done some you know kind of content and i'm using that term deliberately disparagingly advertising and stuff that's documentary light and one of the questions we asked very early on is this a documentary where we see the camera or is it documentary where we don't is it a documentary where you see the lights and you see the camera or is it one where we try to hide the apparatus of the filmmaking is like a very early decision that that documentary filmmakers often talk about or at least have in my experience and this is a documentary where very clearly in the kind of the first act or first sequence we see them setting up all the equipment right they are We're not trying to hide the fact of the apparatus. You know, when we were trying to decide what films to do for this, I watched The Thin Blue Line for the first time. Errol Morris, absolutely revolutionary documentary. I mean, it's one of those things that you look at and you go, fuck, this really did change everything. So much copies from this. But at no point do you see the existence of the camera. This, we see the existence of the camera right from the beginning.

Not only the existence of the camera, in that same sequence, she sets up the fact that they're going and doing voiceover. Like actually having her dad do a voiceover where he's reading and she's saying, oh, take that line again. Oh, can you deliver this a little differently? So they're really she's really pushing the fact that this is a crafted story that you have multiple takes that she has control as an editor and that not all of the things that we are seeing and hearing are as they were delivered the first time.

What I like about that is she also makes it very clear that the narration, the voiceover, is written by her father. She's recording it and directing it, and he wrote it. And it sets it up in the beginning. And in the credits, they actually say, Michael's voiceover by Michael Polley. And I think that's really interesting because coming back to who is talking, there's actually the people that are talking to the camera. There's Siri Polley who is editing this film together. There is Michael who's delivering a voiceover. And then there's obviously the quote unquote, the voiceovers of the characters when they go to B-roll or whatever. But the narrator is Michael and not her.

That also tells us from when in time, right? Because he's narrating things that she's discovering, which means we know that the narration is happening near the end of this process.

Michael in particular has both separate interviews, like to camera pieces, separate to his sitting in the sound recording booth reading his story. His version of the events um but i want to make two comments one is first of all not only do they show the the lights and the setup and the camera at the beginning but they are using footage from who we learn very quickly are her siblings half all of them half siblings actually she thought two of them were not half siblings but it turns out they're all her half siblings and it's them talking about how uncomfortable they feel about the process they're about to go under. They clearly don't think we're rolling yet or being recorded. They're having a discussion with Sarah about how is this going to go? What's this going to be like?

I just think that I might be sweating through my shirt. Yeah, I'm ready. I don't like this. Are you nervous? No. Yeah, it'll get worse.

It's not only drawing attention to this is a documentary, like you are watching a filmed process, it's drawing attention to how aware the subjects are to that relationship as well. And like before they've even told us what the story is about, they're telling us they're feeling deeply uncomfortable about engaging in the process.

I do wonder that she sets up a level of ambiguity how much of that is with or without their knowledge right she could have prompted them they could know exactly how that will be used etc and she sets that up with us by showing us the audio recording booth and I think that level of ambiguity it's is there's there's nothing unethical about it but it is really interesting to toy with that in in a story like this.

So I think it's playing with these things in two ways, right? So we have the ambiguity over what is real, what is not, how, for lack of a better word, ethically sourced or how authentically sourced this material is.

Right?

So there's a degree of ambiguity there and then the ambiguity around time, right? This isn't a documentary that sets up with title cards for the year. And I've worked on those documentaries. In the Bob Brown doco, The Giants, we had very clear timelines. And when we're editing and cutting the sequences, they're all built around time periods. That is a film that was largely told chronologically to help people grasp the magnitude of what was going on. This, they've kept it ephemeral to make it feel, I guess, more like memory. Yeah. Right? Because, and certainly as I've gotten older, you know, I'm the only one here in their 40s. Not for long, thankfully. Yes. The 40-year-old version. I'm waiting for Chaz to start his rapping career very soon.

My midlife crisis.

I am not coming to your open mic night. I'm putting my foot down. I have to have a boundary somewhere.

Beat Zero is just going to be a weekly podcast of Chaz.

Oh, my God. I couldn't imagine anything worse. But we've actually danced around the main craft tool that Sarah uses that draws our attention as the audience, that is her talking directly to us.

But she doesn't really talk directly to us. This is what's fascinating about it.

Oh, no, this is where I disagree with you.

Oh.

So, throughout the film, there's a lot of Super 8 footage, which in Michael's opening voiceover from his story that he has written, he references how on his honeymoon, he was an addicted Super 8 footage and he's describing the footage and we're seeing Super 8 footage.

Let me continue by telling you another from Michael's artistic pursuits. At about the time of his marriage to Diane, Michael decided to purchase a movie camera and to record their belated honeymoon in England. Watching it, several features of his work become apparent. Every time you see a group of people in my Super 8 movies, every time you see a few people, you get interested. The camera goes away and looks at the roof of a house or something or disappears in the distance. And so this is my way of filming was not to include people too much.

So right at the beginning of the film, it is telling us that these Super 8 dramatizations or moments are real.

Are archived. Yeah. Yeah.

It's fascinating. I just have to describe it. You guys know what I'm talking about. But for anyone who hasn't seen the film, at the end of the film, she deliberately reveals to the audience that she is shooting all that stuff. She shows us Sarah Polley directing an actor playing her mother. She shows us Sarah Polley with a Super 8 camera shooting this footage. She tells us that everything that we've just seen that we- in terms of the Super 8 footage that we thought was archival footage, that was real, like real, like was actually her family members.

It was actually documents, like in the sense of the word, this is a documentary. These were- it's a film made of documents.

And she could have gone through the whole film having done those reenactments, but just left them as a suggestion. But she tells us as the director of the film, she reveals to us that we've been hoodwinked, as it were. And it's very clever because it's such a deliberate misdirection because she's often returning to the same footage, which feels archival documentary-ish where you're like recontextualizing the same thing over and over again because you don't have a lot of the footage. It's often in the same moments with the same characters to make it feel like oh this was actually shot by people it felt like candid super 8 home video footage and the one point i'd seen this film before but i didn't remember how overt it was there was one shot at her mother's funeral where the camera finds harry her mother's lover and her biological father who she finds out is a biological father through the thing, but it does a focus pull to find him at the back of the thing. And that's when I'm like, that's not real. And I Googled it then and went, yes, this is recreated footage. But what I didn't remember, and this was my second time watching it, I didn't remember that Sarah tells us in the film that she shows us overtly that she's been making that up. And I'm fascinated to you guys, why is she doing that? Why is Sarah Polly the director, revealing that she's misdirected us.

So, I'm going to answer that question, but I do want to observe. I was suspicious early on. I was like, there's a consistency to the look of the film stock and stuff. There were changes over this period. I expect more of a differences. There were some shots that didn't fit. It's like, how do you have a shot of this? Why was someone filming this? But I kind of was like, meh.

They're actors, right? They're in that world. They're on sets a lot. You kind of glaze over that at first.

And she has done stunning casting. Yeah.

And she does use real footage as well of her mother. There is stuff that is real with her mother.

And her father, because they show her father with a beard. Yeah. That's very clearly him from a different time.

When I was talking about this with my mum, she, with Sandra, top tier patron, you too can have these conversations if you sign up and are a biological relative. She was like oh i knew from you know i could tell that there was two different people being the mother so she picked up on it really early so i think it's interesting there's the what is the effect of it as a surprise but as we've talked about many times surprise only works on the first watch what is really interesting is when you start looking at techniques like drama or knowing the outcome what do they mean on the re-watch so she has done that not just for the surprise but she has to be aware that some of the audience are going to be like yeah this is dramatic reenactment right you know i have seen air crash investigations i know what dramatic recreation looks like and so what is to answer your question she's done it for for a reason and i think it's because for me there's two things going on here i think one she's talking about literally the stories we tell ourselves right there's harry's understanding of what happened to him and i think he is inventing or building up a relationship with her mother that may not be true he kind of imagined more of a romance and in the same way he's kind of inflated his relationship with Sarah. He suddenly feels like up to three hours that like he's her dad as opposed to, you know, raising her. Right. So there's on that level, that's what she's trying to do is that these stories are constructed. But I also think for me, my takeaway about the film is on a subconscious level, I think Sarah is kind of doing therapy.

Right.

She is getting the opportunity to direct her mum, to spend time with her mum, a person who died with her at like 10 or 11. And I think that age of 10 or 11, your parents are still a little bit otherworldly. To me, I don't think you're really, you know, I didn't really begin to think of my parents as people apart from myself until like my late teens. You're angry. You begin to have that moment in your teenagehood when you kind of start fighting with them. Right. And I think for me, I didn't have it, but I think that's true for a lot of people, right? That process of children departing from their parents is like from 12 onwards. I mean, maybe you're the one with kids around this age, Chaz, and I think she hasn't had that moment of going and discovering who her parent was as a person, and I think the film was a way of her doing that.

I don't think it was subconscious, though. I think she's quite conscious of the fact that that's what she's doing in a lot of ways, and I think that partly because I've read a lot of other things that she's written about her process about her stuff on film sets and and that sort of thing oh really what is.

Her process on film sets.

Well a looking back at stuff in terms of what she did as a kid on film sets but then also like for example the actors roundtable after women talking talks a lot about how she encourages therapy encourages people to be doing stuff like that encourages people to deal with their specific trauma and talk through the things as their character, as well as themselves as people. So I think she's quite in touch with and interested in interrogating that on a personal level outside of just this. So obviously, Stories We Tell was maybe like 10 years ago, but that feels like something that she's been doing for quite a long time.

I mean, I'm interested in the effect on the audience of this decision. I agree with you that that's what she's doing, like what she's trying to explore, what she's trying to communicate. Kate, I'm interested as to what was the effect on the audience and, you know, on, on Sandra having that reveal or having that exploration, even if you, if you twigged earlier as you both did, what was the effect of that? Some archival footage, some not that, that kind of recreation that.

What I liked about it is even though I was kind of suspicious, it was just done so casually, the transition into her directing. And they'd done a really good job of, we definitely had. B-roll or C-roll, really, of her shooting cutaways on her Super 8. So it wasn't a sudden surprise. We knew that she was shooting stuff herself on a film camera.

She foreshadowed it.

And then they kind of just do it and you're like, oh, right? Yeah. Because you are now wondering, it's kind of like mythologizing. It's the difference between facts and emotional truth, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like there is a difference between these are the facts of what happened and this is the impact of it. And I actually really like Harry's speech about the players and the impact on the people around them and all that kind of stuff. And then her insistence that she's got to explore all sides because really it's people's interpretation of the events that what matters more than the event itself, in particularly in something like this i would say no that's not true it's not i mean obviously what matters is she was born there is quite a literal outcome but the kind of the emotional reality about it is constructed by people's interpretation of what happened not yeah.

She makes such notable switches between different techniques and between different styles and between one person saying something and then a person in a different interview re-examining that and i think the effect on the audience the The effect that it has is to make us feel through the story of people that we do not know the same thing that we experience a lot in our lives, which is where, you know, you get to a point where you've told the story a certain number of times and you think, am I lying to myself with air quotes or have I misremembered this and it simply becomes cemented as fact? Or am I telling things that I think the audience wants to hear versus am I telling myself what I want to hear versus do I even know the truth? Am I just guessing? And you have these stories where things are sort of ephemeral and they've become shaped over time and you lose track of where one begins and the other ends. And I think she's literally creating that emotion by mimicking it with visuals. And I think that's a really fascinating, incredible use of documentary.

And she, like we said at the beginning, in the summary, that it's all about Sarah, right? But she only appears on screen as the filmmaker, right? Yeah.

She's never interviewed. She never talks directly to camera and she doesn't give her voiceover.

Nope. You hear her off camera asking questions sometimes and you see her obviously filming.

But that's her as the filmmaker. filmmaker it's.

Her as filmmaker but sometimes she is clearly asking something as a filmmaker but also as a sister.

Yeah but also.

As a friend like like there's context to things she's asking which makes her more than just one thing but.

She's never the subject of the movie in the way that these other people on screen are the subject of the movie absolutely not the closest she comes to being the subject is almost the most artificial part of the whole movie which is where she does as the reenactment of her first meeting with Harry in that cafe.

I was about to bring that up, yeah.

Where they've got coverage and they've got her saying in voiceover lines that she's kind of over-performing.

Feels like big brother, it's great.

Yeah, and that all feels like deliberate choices that she doesn't, as much as this is about her and her discovery about her own parentage, she as the filmmaker is really trying to avoid that, being the subject of the documentary.

I mean, I think that scene is great because we know from a storytelling point of view that she's 18 and it's clearly her at her current age. They haven't even tried to young her up. It's Harry as he is, not as he was when they met. And that's what I mean about time being weird because they haven't bothered. They could have recast it. They could have recast someone as her. I mean, she was a public figure. You probably have an idea of what she looked like at 18, but they They could have made some attempt to make it period correct. But what I loved about it is, yeah, it feels a little bit, you know, air crash investigations or, you know, the first 48 or one of those kind of like cable TV shows where it's like, we're going to get the people involved to kind of reenact this crime scene moment. But not trying to make it as it was. And it is a curious effect because I think something that's so personal, she's kind of distancing herself from it, right? Right. So as much as the film was about her story, but she is not the subject of it, even though it's about her. So it's kind of this really interesting thing that a sense of who Sarah is is kind of created in the negative space. The absences of her in front of the camera give us an impression of who she is.

And one of the main times that we see her outside of that reenactment is when she's directing her father's reading of his material, of his voiceover. And it is always shooting her in profile. never straight on and it's often just as I was losing myself in the filmmaking it would cut back to her saying please say that line again was.

It Tom or Wayne or Jeff you could just take back that one line yeah was it Tom or Wayne or Jeff.

It's reminding us that this is a construction it's reminding us that this was performative and it does that throughout like that moment where she's deliberately telling us where she's showing us her directing the person we thought was her mother you know it's telling us like you guys said that you know it's called stories we tell and so you've referenced that wonderful speech about harry about how he feels an ownership of this story that she's denying him because it says you know her dad wrote 40 pages or something that he reads out uh sorry her her the person who raised her mick i mean she calls him his dad so yeah and her biological father harry also wrote something that he does not get to read out to us he has interviews so.

What do you think of the concept of me making this documentary where we're sort of giving equal weight to everyone's version of the story i don't like it i i i think that that takes us into. Into very wooly like I see you can't ever touch bottom with anything then We're all we're all over the place. I think they can all be heard It's it's giving them equal weight, which I find particularly those who are non, Players first of all there are the parties to an incident those who are there and who are directly affected by it Then there is a circle around that of people who were affected acted tangentially because of their relationship to the principal parties. And then there's another concentric circle further out there, which basically has heard or been told by one of the principal players about it. And all of these may have different narratives. And these narratives are shaped in part by their relationship to the person who told it to them and by the events. One does not get the truth simply by hearing what their reactions are. People tend to declare themselves in terms of what they saw, in terms of what they felt, in terms of what they remembered, and in terms of their loyalties. The same set of circumstances will affect different people in different ways. Not that there are different truths. There are different reactions to particular events. The crucial function of art is to tell the truth, to find the truth in a situation. That's what it's about.

Boat and to me that seemed like a very deliberate choice that she didn't invite harry into the sound booth to give a voiceover or.

She did and then didn't use it but we'll never know yeah and harry harry's the one who calls this entire exercise he says it's concentric layers and that was like my theme for this whole thing and like when he's talking about that that is this film it's all concentric layers both in reality it's all concentric layers of truth and fiction and what we remember what we don't want to remember what our brains have uh scrubbed and also the process of making a film is the same look.

This film is also like particularly that third act particularly that debate that harry is having with sarah you know where the things were getting tense between them over his desire to celebrate their relationship and her desire to protect her father from the pain of learning that she is not his biological child. And in that tension, in those moments, her emails, she reads them out in voiceover, but she's never on screen when she's reading them out. We're on other things happening.

You reacted very, very strongly, very, very strongly to it. You were enraged and you were very upset. Hi there Harry. I suppose I'm confused as to why it's such a pressing issue for you that this story be public, when it is already known by everyone we love and everyone who loves us. As I said, while my dad has had some time to deal with the news, he has not yet had to tell his friends or answer any questions from anyone outside of his immediate family. This space and privacy has been important for him, and I believe strongly in protecting that for as long as possible.

And do we know whether they're actually emails that were contemporary?

Yeah, we don't. And she's deliberately making us question those things. She's deliberately drawing our attention to the making of this story. But unlike Adaptation, where I feel like in Adaptation, it was a story about the telling of itself so that it could allow, like you said, Stu, for us to get lost in the kind of character moments, to actually genuinely get lost in Charlie and Donald's moments here. I feel like this one is deliberately distancing us. I mean, I find it a very affecting emotional film, so I don't mean distancing emotionally.

I did find it distancing emotionally, which is interesting. Cool. I wouldn't say cold. I was just like, the film is cool.

But to me, it was deliberately pushing us back so that we start exploring those intellectual ideas about truth, about storytelling, about family, about myths, about who we are.

I want to go through these levers again. I'm going to start with the first one because I think what you've kind of identified is, interestingly, it's similar to adaptation. The lever is the communication diegetic. I think pretty much I would define that the communication in this film is diegetic because we see it being created in the world of the documentary. We see him in the voiceover booth. We see him, you know, we see the characters talking to the camera. We kind of hear Sarah talking in the presence, like off camera, like she might be off mic, but she's in the room with the actors. She's literally in the world with these characters. She is not doing a voiceover that she's written later on. Over the film, right? So, I think that's interesting in terms of the kind of voice communication. It is diegetic. Obviously, the film is edited and she has shot stuff to construct it. So, there's stuff that's there, but the kind of communication is broadly diegetic within the story world.

Yeah. I mean, in documentary, almost everything is quote-unquote diegetic. Can we ask that question about in-story world versus not in-story world? Because I feel like that archival footage, whether it is archival footage and when it's recreation is presented as the same that to me is then pulling a lever in this area where we're being made to think these siblings are on camera it's.

Also hard because a documentary is a slightly different beast right.

Yeah but i mean that's what i'm saying is interesting yeah that's why i'm trying to articulate it that that like she is not yeah doing audio commentary over reenactment for footage or recording like and i began to think that we should you know that we literally hear her in the world of the environment. So, we've talked about they keep on cutting to her in the voice recording booth giving direction. We see her in the interview spaces. We see her direct people, but we don't hear as an omniscient third-person narrator, right? Or later on presenting to camera. And what is interesting is even compared to a documentary, the kind of presentational documentaries like Supersize Me, right? Or the kind of stuff you'd see on TikTok or YouTube, she's not even a presenter, right? That stuff is also kind of diegetic, but it kind of feels like it's detached from the moment she is definitely presenting herself as being part of the physical worlds of these characters the people that we know and.

Maybe that's why the her reading the emails stood out to us because they were non-diegetic in a way like.

Yeah and we don't see the emails on screen yeah but she still has constructed them if they are artificial which we've put a question mark over them are they written as you know in reality tv as interview or a voiceover that they use to patch something together? Is it something written in the future, right? Or, you know, one of my favorite films that we've done before, Sans Soleil, where these letters are completely made up, but they're just a structuring device. They could be completely made up, but she's chosen to make them feel like they're part of this story world. In the same way that she's chosen to do reenactments and has not gone reenactments, right, until she's chosen to reveal it. So, the other levers then is how much control do the storytellers have over the story? What is interesting about this is I think there's definitely Sarah has all the control.

Yes.

But there is a sense that there is a degree of awareness that this relates to the awareness that the characters are obviously all aware that they're in a documentary. It's not an odd doc where the characters just get used to the camera. They're clearly, it's not like she's just tagging around people for two years and they know the, or that they're doing the hidden cam kind of stuff that is, you know, another film that we talked about doing for this episode was Zone of Interest. And Zone of Interest is playing around with kind of the spy camera, the surveillance aesthetic. But that's deliberately something they were doing in Zone of Interest. They literally had all the cameras were remote controlled and Jonathan Glazer sat in a truck to not be in the space. He chose to not be in the space with the actors to give it this really detached observational style. And this is the opposite. That's why I'm drawing that, that they've made a decision that the filmmaker is in the physical world of the actors. And they're aware of that. And they're aware that they're in a doco.

And most importantly, the communication to the audience. We're being made aware of it. Sarah, not only does she have control of the narrative, not only are the characters all aware they're in a film, she is making sure and reminding us as the viewer constantly that this is a movie and that she's in control of how and when it's being presented.

Yeah. Well, for me, and we can use this as a segue, we landed on adaptation. I really wanted to do Stories We Tell because Stu wanted to do a documentary. This feels perfect. It's one of my favorite documentaries ever. It's incredibly meta. But once we picked the two and I started thinking was when I came with 40 year old version. I think 40 year old version plays in both of these sandboxes in really interesting ways. We have on one end of the spectrum kind of we have a narrative fiction. And on the other end of the spectrum, we have a documentary and 40 year old version is so interesting and how at first glance, I think Chaz, maybe like you'd started watching and then you messaged and was like, I've really I'm not 100% sold on this being, you know, so the film talking directly to us mel and i'm like just wait for it but i do think that it's it's more subtle but part of it is because rata's just not famous right everyone knows who sarah paulie is everyone in the filmmaking world does at least right and she plays with that and nicholas cage insanely famous charlie kaufman somewhat famous has done a lot of big things in film and rata's not so she She both has to push things harder and can do the exact same blatant techniques without actually feeling as much like she's talking directly to us as Sarah or Charlie can, which I think is fascinating. And so as soon as we determined the adaptation stories we tell, I just felt like 40-year-old version was a really natural fit in terms of playing with not just all these levers, but the specific techniques that these films play with.

Any more thought on what kind of play we want to write? Remember, if you put in nothing, it'll be nothing. Like your career? Remember this face? She was one of Spotlight Magazine's 30 Under 30 playwrights to watch. We watched, but where'd she go? How are you? Archie tells me you're teaching. How's somebody who ain't had no real hit gonna tell me how to write a play? She ain't no Tyler Perry. I did win a 30 Under 30. Yes, it was quite a couple of years ago. What do I got to do? Write a slave musical? An all-white play? This some bullshit. It rang a little inauthentic. I asked myself, did a black person really write this? This some fucking bullshit. Bullshit. Think about me doing hip-hop. Doing what to it? I want to make a mixtape about the 40-year-old woman's point of view. Why my skin so dry why am i yawning right now why them aarp niggas sending shit to my house this is 40.

So nothing suits the themes of the 40 year old version than a middle-aged white man explaining black culture you know like with all the controversy about break dancing i started I'm starting to get irritated with all these white people talking about breakdancing. They actually are awesome, my friend.

White Australians as well. Like, oh my God.

Can we date this so that the future people know that we're talking about?

The Olympics closing ceremonies were yesterday. Olympics 2024.

The first time that breaking has been an Olympic sport.

And likely last.

And the Australian Olympic representative, Reagan, has been memed to fuck.

Verbally excorciated.

Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of the memes are quite joyful, I think.

Some real good memes.

I'm having a great fun with it.

The Nosferatu candle might be my favorite.

But it has triggered a whole, and I think quite healthy discussion on cultural appropriation, on whether it's homage or not, or participation, how Australia picks its Olympic athletes in the the dancing competition, all this other kind of stuff. So it's actually quite fitting that we watched this movie right at this time.

Yes, but we are not here for appropriation, but for Stu to give us appreciation.

So it's a kind of a biopic about... Writer blank who's a teacher approaching 40 living kind of like a very similar frustration of kind of like a charlie kaufman like classic frustrated writer living in a small apartment she is in harlem right teaching kids at a local school she even references dangerous minds right you know she's teaching struggling kids and there's kind of two parallel storylines that are going on right can't remember which one triggers which but one is her kind of selling out writing a play called Harlem Avenue for a wealthy white theater producer called Jay Whitnum, who basically wants it to be more authentic and more suffering. And that's one of the great exchanges that it felt like, man, I'm sure there are people of color who have had exchanges with people at film agencies that feel like this, where it's people like, hmm, I had to ask myself, is this written by a black person?

That's it? No, no, no, no. It's about gentrification and how this young couple struggles to you didn't like it. The idea is powerful. But? It rang a little inauthentic. Okay, well thank you for that note. I appreciate it. But there's something there. Okay. I just wish you hadn't shied away from darkness. I mean, if you're gonna call it Harlem Ave, you gotta give me Harlem Ave. I should write in a teen mother. shooting up in an alley. No, no, no. No, you're missing my point. I'm talking about gentrification. A black Harlem shifting under a white hipster land grab. But your play never goes there. I ask myself, did a black person really write this?

And she's just like, what the fuck? And it's her kind of, her story of dealing with that struggle and it's paralleling her interest in exploring rapping, which she apparently did as a kid. And that's it. So it's the story of her putting on the play, her exploring a rapping career at the kind of the two main, the A and the B plot. The C plot is her teaching these kids theater. And there's a kind of like a D plot, which is her romantic escapades. It does feel like it's hitting these traits. What's fun about it is it is hitting the traits of both the artistic story and elements of black cinema, which I wish I knew more about. But I've seen enough, particularly Spike Lee, to be like the homeless man across the road who kind of drops science towards the film and the film kind of hangs shit on that and the kind of references to Dangerous Mind and all that kind of stuff. He's playing around the cliches of Black Sinatol for a white audience, I think.

Seriously, it would mean a lot if you came. Archie. Give a bitch a chance, man. Her desperation's making me nauseous. Although technically, you gotta eat something to throw up. Know what I mean?

Similar to a way how American fiction did, which we were also talking about.

I think it would make a great double feature with Nope.

Okay.

So here's a weird observation. I was like, why did they shoot this film in black and white? So it's shot on 35 millimeter black and white. I kind of feel like she shot it in widescreen black and white as a weird Woody Allen reference. Because this feels like a funny inversion of Woody Allen. This is kind of a film.

She did, by the way.

Oh, okay.

She mentions Manhattan. manhattan she first of all she mentions it but she also cribs a shot from manhattan near the end ah.

Well there you go yeah yeah.

That's right so there you go like.

The running joke of all the young men wanting to hit on her and how she you know she's horny all the time and these 19 year olds are hitting on her it felt like such a piss take of woody allen.

She also did say i listened to an interview with her where she was talking about because she is a teacher and some of her students show up as her students. So she does the opposite of Sarah Polly, where her brother is actually played by her brother. And some of her students are played by her students. And she said that the experience did come from having some of her students, not the ones that play themselves in this film, actually attempt to hit on her at some point. And she goes, what? Those references are intentional. Although the black and white was partly budgetary, Partly budgetary and partly originally this was meant to be a web series. When we talk about the Metanus, she had written the web series and it was about her life. And then her mother died. And basically she rewrote it. And she wrote that into this. She talks a lot about dead mothers really explicitly. You want to talk about, you know, Sarah Polly therapizing herself. I think in a lot of ways that is this it's dealing with and it changed the focus of it a little bit.

That's your mom? Yeah. Is she coming? In spirit, I guess. Oh, shit. Yo, why you ain't say nothing? Don't you get tired of adding people to the dead mom club in your head and.

Then she just thought like it's a feature it should be black and white and there's several uses of color throughout which i think are part of the techniques of how the filmmaker talks directly to us which i think is fascinating because there's multiple uses of color but the main one is where we see suddenly 4.3 imagery of brightly colored images. And that is, instead of using voiceover, it's taking us inside of her head and what she is thinking or what she is picturing. And so it's just visually giving us a writer talking directly to the audience, which is great.

So it's connected to the play she's writing. And there's even this section where, so you see her imagining the play and you've got these characters, actors that we've actually already met in color reenacting the play but there's even this bit where she's writing this terrible fucking dialogue and she knows it's terrible she's reading it aloud and the actors on screen are mouthing it but it's her voice and it's just a really fun playful thing that makes you know that she kind of knows what she's writing is cringe but she's trying to do a good job but also trying to embrace the cringeness well.

I have ideas too why can't we just make a community garden it's not that simple it is you just have to change your perspective take nothing wrong with my damn perspective excuse me don't take that tone with me ladies ladies stop just stop, This some bullshit.

Can I just interject here to say, I thought Mel had missed the homework brief and there was a lot of the character Radha talking directly to us. And, you know, in Mel, in your defense, Radha is also the writer and the filmmaker, but I felt very much that it was nearly always the character we were seeing. Like, I was always involved in the story. I was never had that distancing or reflection on how the film was being made. She does break the fourth wall a couple of times to great effect. So, as someone who watched this and still at the end of it, like, now that I've digested it a bit and I'm hearing some of your guys' examples, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's how they did it. And that's how it sits somewhere on the spectrum in between adaptation and stories we tell. Yeah. When did you really feel Radha as the filmmaker talking directly to the audience as opposed to Radha the character that we're following in that story because to your point they've used this very startling filmmaking technique where we're cutting to color we're cutting to aspect ratio we're cutting to actors recreating stuff that as she's writing it but that's to put us in her head as part of her creative process in that moment. So I didn't feel like this is Radha, the filmmaker, telling me this is how you write a movie about my life.

I think there may be an element of you having an expectation of when you're like, oh, I didn't have the distancing effect, that that's kind of what you were specifically looking for.

Quite possibly.

I will say I found this the most emotionally effective of the three films that we looked at.

Definitely.

For me, I think just the way that Sarah Polly foreshadows it right by showing herself like in the mirror with the super eight and things like that. I think Radha foreshadows it in two ways. Again, within the first five minutes, because you see her being a voyeur a lot. You see her eavesdropping on her neighbors having sex. You see her looking out the window and watching people walking. You see like pedestrians, you see her like watching TV and you realize like what we're doing to her, because this is a very self insert, is trying to peer into and figure out what her life is like. Right. And then she also has this commentary like in the like writers group right with her kids where she's talking about like commentary on art, like commerce versus like cause and emotion. And you realize, like, they're talking about art within their drama class, but she's clearly talking about this film that we're watching.

Now, the dean said I could kick the both of you out of the class after what happened last week. No. So terrible. But I won't. Why? Because even though we'd all rather be someplace than this terribly lit room. Not me. We committed to telling a story and not some version of Poverty Point either. OK? Okay? So don't think if you don't get what you want, Elaine, that the world should stop for you. Mmm, I like this, Miss B. Or that if someone says something you don't like, Rosa, you get to choke them the fuck out. You're right. My bad. Now, Elaine, your poem was great. Okay? Yeah? Yes. But don't think because you created something that people would appreciate it. Okay? Or you'll end up some washed up 40 year old playwright with some stupid notion to become a rapper and the shits from drinking a diet drink that doesn't quite meet the FDA standards. And do you want that for yourselves? I said, is that what you want? No.

So it's incorporated. But I think where I really felt it defines itself as that is when she's literally writing a play. And you have, it's this very Hamlet-esque thing of the play within the play. And the play is meant to be taking all of these little elements and cranking them up to 11 to see what the effect is on the audience. Which is, you know, the place of thing where it's, I catch the conscience of the king. And I think she's saying, like, I, Radha, the filmmaker. Am doing this thing as Radha, the character with this play to just shout my message at you in ways that you cannot possibly miss it. And as a writer, obviously, I feel all of the things that she's going through in terms of, you know, the despair and the agony over the ridiculous things that the funding buddies say to you and like, am I ever going to make it? And should I just become a teacher and like all those things? But I think she's talking to a larger audience than just filmmakers. And she's talking to people who consume art full stop. And by talking to people who consume art full stop, by using that play, it's such an explicit device. And that's the first time I watched it through. And again, I think the third big thing are the going into her mind. I think just because she's not saying, she's not taking a break as Roda the director and giving us a, so when I was doing this and this person was talking to me, I thought she's giving it to us visually. She's giving it to us in color. She's giving it to us sometimes in people who are like her real life brother. I don't think she could be shouting it at us any louder other than like, you know, doing the Woody Allen thing of pausing and walking in as herself and and talking directly to the camera, which she does as the film critic. But it feels like a very similar technique to that.

I think maybe it's just because I didn't know anything about Radha as a person that everything I was watching felt like I was watching Radha the character. And yes, it's extremely autobiographical, but like, so you referenced that super powerful moment where she's at the end of her play, where she starts, you know, rapping about her experience of the play and of what she's gone through and why it's garbage. That felt like something that the character i've just been watching for two hours would do as well as also being the filmmaker shouting their creed at us i.

Got really afraid scared of the choices and the bullshit i made thinking i wouldn't get paid but i'm carol's daughter so that shit don't stain i gotta tell you a nigga was choking tired of selling my soul for these tokens, these coins. But guess what? I made a different choice because it's time to F-Y-O-V find your own voice. F-Y-O-V F-Y-O-V 40 year old version indubitably. F-Y-O-V F-Y-O-V Not telling truth just don't make sense to me. Holding back from who you should be. F-Y-O-V Fund your own vision, fill your own void, find your own voice, fuck you old vultures. 40 year old version, that's who I be. I'm out.

And I think she knows that, and I think that's why she does a couple things. The breaking the fourth wall is, I think, to really draw attention. And also, literally, you'll notice stuff in the set design and stuff, like a box that just says, Rotter's shit. Or like the writing, you know, on the labels of her script and things like that. I think that's to say, hey, this is what I'm doing.

Okay. So, I'm going to be flippant.

Gasp.

But when did I think the filmmaker was talking to the audience? The film has credits, if you're watching the screen, Jazz, that says, starring Ryder Blank, written and directed by Ryder Blank, right? Why is this distinction between Ryder the character and Ryder the filmmaker more of an issue for you than Charlie Kaufman, who's played by Nick Cage, in Adaptation? Is it just your awareness of Charlie Kaufman as a person? Because I would say this film is actually more talking directly to the audience than Adaptation. Adaptation is more meta in the sense that it's about the writing process. But I think this is more directly talking to the audience from the filmmaker's perspective.

I guess if we look at any powerfully autobiographical movie like Past Lives, I'm like, is that the filmmaker talking directly to us? Or is that the filmmaker writing a film that is very emotional and powerful and presenting it to us?

Both. I mean, they kind of both talked about how they draws on their own stuff.

Yeah, but then this technique that you guys are experiencing, where it's the filmmaker talking directly to us, can only be for autobiographical stories.

This takes it to a different level than past lives. I don't think comparing those quite works in terms of you've got, you know, characters who are more explicitly, again, named the same thing, going through the same experiences, using very real documentary-esque techniques, etc. But you're still identifying something along the same spectrum.

Okay, I'm going to come back to my observation earlier about YouTube and TikTok. I think you're saying, can this only be used for autobiographical films? No, but I think we are moving through an era at the moment where there is an interest in authenticity. And I think that is only going to grow if we are moving into a world where stuff is written by AI or AI-assisted or more just driven by the algorithm, right? Right, then stuff that is truly personal and coming from a weird place has value. You know, one of my favorite records, and I'm sure I played it for you is, Jackson C. Frank, this blues guitarist. It's basically a record that sounds like he recorded it in three hours and it's raw and broken and he ended up getting found dead three decades later, having only ever recorded the one album, right? All that tragedy is in the recording and it's really authentic and it stands out. And I think this kind of filmmaking, right? Is stuff that one you can borrow techniques from i think documentaries and stuff that's autobiographical is formally more inventive than the stuff we're seeing in mainstream cinema right.

Awesome so this is what i want to borrow down to because let's say i'm writing a story that is not about me but is about things that are powerful and of interest to me in what way am i talking directly to the audience what tools can i use to draw their attention to like can i communicate directly to them other than just by writing a narrative and telling a story. So this is, I guess what I'm getting to is, is 40 year old version, just writing a narrative and telling a story. At what point is it rather the writer and the director talking directly to us? I didn't feel at any point.

Okay. So, I mean, I think these are interesting questions and I do want to make sure that we give this proper, this film, it's proper Jew, right?

Oh, I loved the film. Don't get me wrong. I'm just questioning it through this lens.

I think this is like Fleabag plus one on plus two, right? Like, I think Fleabag feels like it's a part of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, right? And this feels like it is on that spectrum, that this stuff is a spectrum. It's not like, oh, the filmmaker's not talking to the audience, filmmaker is. Because obviously, as we've talked about this whole series, it's always the filmmakers talking to the audience. Where the filmmakers in a broad sense, it's the writers, it's the directors, it's the editors, it's everyone coming together and talking directly to the audience. it's just to what degree are we made aware of that and.

What is the.

Emotional effect of it and i am like she literally eyeballs the camera multiple points of time.

Yeah but but we've got breaking the fourth wall where that's a character doing that it's not i just never felt at any point that it was hi i'm writer blank you know famous rapper writer filmmaker talking to you as opposed to i am the person you've been watching for two hours but.

If you didn't know who charlie kaufman I think you're confusing fame for knowledge.

No, I'm not. Because the film adaptation tells us who Charlie is. It opens with him on a film set. Charlie kaufman in text even if people who have no idea have never heard of charlie kaufman before can go into adaptation and be told he was the writer of a famous movie that is struggling with writing uh and so.

How is that different from a film which is starring writer blank written directed by writer blank playing a character called writer blank who's.

Writing a stage play.

Okay so then you have just said is that not just limiting it only to the scenario where the writer director and actor is the same person because you you raised phoebe waller bridge i don't feel that fleabag and phoebe waller bridge are the same person why.

Is that an important distinction how are you so confident that sarah polly in stories we tell.

Is sarah.

Polly the person and not.

I'm not i'm not i think it's the point in stories we tell that she is trying to very much distance us i think that's the point of the text what i'm trying to do is find techniques from where filmmakers clearly talk directly to the audience that we can learn from.

There is two running in parallel in 40-year-old version as far as me. There's the filmmaking techniques, including but not only to eyeballing the camera, right? But then the second thing is the meta quality about a particular type of cinema that he's talking about that to me is as valid as adaptation talking about the meta quality of writing itself. She is talking about how do you tell authentic black stories in an industry that is controlled by white people? This is my interpretation as a white person, right? And at what we are looking as signals of authenticity. And she is hitting the beats. The homeless guy across the road is a trope of stat that kind of feels like it's out of one of Whitman's notes. I almost expected him to have a speech about, oh, maybe there's a homeless guy that ends up being the magical negro.

Well, he's kind of a double trope. Like, he's the homeless guy slash magical Negro trope.

So this is the part where I tell you I was an artist who had fallen from grace, right? And I impart some wisdom to you that changes your outlook. Because you gave me a fucking sandwich? Like I'm some fucking magical negro just sitting here with shit in my pants so I can help you make up your mind? Nope. I ain't that nigger. And maybe next time, if it don't kill you, could you put some mayonnaise on both sides of this dry ass bread? I'm trying to cut my throat the slow way. You're welcome.

And then there's the stuff about gentrification. She mentions Daydream's Mind and the idea of raising these kids and getting them out of the Harlem and all that kind of stuff feels like it's built into this text, the way in which, and this connects to kind of Get Out, this kind of commodification of black culture, right? Is the stuff I'm getting, and I say this as a white Australian, so obviously I can only interpret it through what is communicated to me. So that feels like it's a meta quality of the film that is her talking to the audience in the same way that having Robert McKee turn up as a character in your film at the third act turning point, dropping wisdom is exactly the same kind of beat as the homeless magical Negro going, what, you expect me to turn you all around? Like, give you wisdom is the same moment at the same time, right? It is. Them talking to a self-aware audience, right?

So can you only use that tool when you're talking about the process of making what you're making?

No. Okay. So let me answer, you say, what are the techniques, right? Rewind 10 minutes and I say, okay, because here's the thing, right? I talk about, I think she sets us up for this in the first 10 minutes by showing her being a voyeur, right? Listening to an eavesdropping on neighbors, watching TV, looking out the window at pedestrians, three techniques that show her as a voyeur, Right. So that is a technique that you would write in your action lines. If you want to say, OK, here's a theme of the character who is doing a certain thing and I want to talk directly to the audience about this thing later in the script. OK, you set that up with visuals. There's your action lines. There's also, for example, when she meets with a producer and he starts commenting on quote-unquote character types of characters that we've just seen. He starts rambling about sassy older women and beleaguered teenagers and people who want to pitch themselves as a director. Okay, there's a technique. You can have a character who comments directly on things that we've just seen. It doesn't have to be about, you know, filmmaking. It can be commenting on, you know, skateboarding ne'er-do-wells or, you know, single moms or whatever. But you can say, okay, here's a technique. You have a character who is going to be the commentariat on things that we've just experienced. There's also one of my favorite little tiny moments is there's all these actors in rehearsal and they're going back and forth. And one of the actors is getting frustrated and it's like, all right, fine, call it out for me. And then someone off screen goes, Radha! Yeah, that's something that you can write in, whereas you have one character do something and then you have something completely unconnected that the audience would get, right, as being a joke that the characters might not. So those are all techniques that she is using that speak directly to the audience that are not dependent on it being about filmmaking.

Yes.

And I would add into the flash cuts, right, which we've already hinted to this flash cuts to the color. But like when she is looking at her mum's paintings, they literally cut to pictures of her mum's paintings. And that is a technique that feels like it comes out of documentary, you know. To mention the thin blue line that I talked about earlier, they talk about evidence and then the film without audio commentary will just cut to photos or articles or things that are reflective of that. It is non-diegetic. It is using a non-diegetic technique. In a pure dramatic film, you wouldn't do that, you know. And it's super presentational, right? So obviously adaptation plays around with, you know, we go in through the evolutionary sequence, which interestingly enough, Stories We Tell does the same kind of evolutionary sequence. How did I get here?

Big bang.

The thing is, in adaptation, if they're going to have that flash cut, it would be the painting on a wall. So when we want to see a photo of Susan, we see her on the dust jacket in a book diegetically. If they were using the techniques of this film, it would literally just be a photo scanned in, presented to it outside of a story world. And in fact, it probably would be the real Susan. Okay. okay, so this is a technique, but you can play with this, right? I doubt you have seen it, and I haven't seen the whole thing either because it's like four hours. But in 1974, Peter Watkins made a film, a docudrama about Edwin Munch that is in a mockumentary style that includes sit-down interviews with the characters, right? And they just take it deadpan serious. And, I mean, his stuff's really interesting in the way he was kind of explaining documentary and stuff. And, yes, that is a biographical story, but it's kind of more experimental mental with techniques we've seen how some of these techniques are also used in fight club fight club includes like flashes to dicks and all that kind of stuff like as part of it so i think the idea of saying you can only use it autobiographical is narrow thinking because i think this film i'm.

Not saying that i'm asking the question of you guys just to be clear.

I mean maybe you're playing devil's advocate but i think to me it feels like you didn't come into this either knowing or caring too much that this was an autobiographical film. I came in with that knowledge, right? Either because it said on Netflix or because of the way that Mel framed it. So I kind of was already picking up on elements of, they're showing me like the prom photo of her with her manager. Oh my God, so good. So you could start, like there is a version of Spontaneous, a film we've mentioned many times, that could actually play around with some of these techniques to create a sense of authenticity. It's got a lot of flash cuts. It's got flash cuts to them. Younger, it could do recasting. It could do moments that kind of borrow these techniques where she kind of looks to the camera, right? And in the end... What we're getting to is what is the effect of this? I think what's important about this story is the whole thing ends with the whole speech about finding your own voice. Right. So it's important for the themes of the film that we understand this is coming from her personal experience. And I actually fucking love her rap. I can see why it did so well. I love that they shot it. Cause you're like, when she does it, you're like, fuck, she's good. She is really good. And she is funny. And I love the playing. Like this film is actually super funny as well. Right. And all of that is kind of helping me understand it through the lens of authenticity. Right. In a way, it's the opposite to stories where we tell, which is stories we tell as much as it's a personal story. It's about the ephemeral nature of authenticity or the lack of truth, you know, the difficulty of having a truth or the complexities of truth. Whereas this is about the opposite, about telling your own truth. And adaptation is interesting because I feel like it's not so much concerned about truth with a capital T, as much as it's about expressing a kind of particular kind of feeling, for lack of a better word. The feeling, the frustrations of creation and then the power of creation as well. And I think it does a good job of that. And also how beautiful and amazing flowers are.

I am playing devil's advocate here. Please, I want you guys to convince me and educate me. And Mel, you particularly highlighted something that I'm like, oh, yes, that is something I'll pull away in key learnings. I think my point is that if this had been written and directed by Radha, but starring someone else, that she was directing another person, it would have been just as powerful for me.

Yeah.

So at no point was I going that this is more or less authentic because it's an autobiographical story of the writer, director and star. So I was trying to look for things that can apply outside of that context. And look, American fiction really is a fascinating companion piece to this because it is, for a large part, telling this satirical story about the creation of a piece of art and doing the same commentary on how, you know, what are the expectations of the commerce of art and particularly how white the commerce of art is on black art and what its expectations and creations and pressures are. And then at the very end of it, we spoke about how the end of that movie, it deliberately has three endings and is, you know, intercutting with the conversation with the director where it becomes like there's a big jump. In the techniques used in that ending where it's drawing our attention to the creation of the film itself that you've just watched, as opposed to just seeing a narrative presented about a person where that person never tells me that they're kind of aware that they're in a narrative as a real person, as opposed to the character that they're playing is a long winded way of me discussing the point.

I think if people haven't seen the film, they would be very confused about at that, but it tracks, right? Yeah. I'm watching Stu's face, but I was like, oh, right. I've seen it. I know where you're going with this.

Basically, I would have had just an amazing a time if it wasn't Radha playing Radha.

I mean, all of this stuff exists on inspection. And I think the idea is we're just categorizing when it clicks over a particular point. Because I would say that Radha's rapping, right? It's shot really close up. They're coming close so we can see it her, but this is her talking directly to the audience. This is not dissimilar of the moments in High Fidelity when Rob turns to camera and gives a lecture about what she's feeling, right?

Or Spike Lee, like you talked about, the love and hate speech.

Yeah, right? They're moments where she is talking about her experience as a 40-year-old woman directly to the audience. They're not her eyeballing because it's not a soliloquy in that sense, but it belongs to a tradition of spoken word, right, that she is finding a way to insert into the film authentically. So I think it could have been played by someone else, But then we're like, well, depending on who that was, like if it's Nicolas Cage rapping about the experience of menopause, we're going to understand that it's right or blank speaking through him. Right? Yes. And I'm using that as an obvious extreme. Please, Nic Cage, do not blackface.

But like using the levers, right? Everything that's happening is largely, other than the point that you made about those color cutaways, are the only things that are non-diegetic to the story.

And she eyeballs the camera at key moments yes.

Twice and both times it was hilarious three times i.

Think it's at least three times.

She's also got um she's also got people the on the street interviews a lot of them break the fourth wall as well yeah.

And that feels connected to spike lee's work as well yeah yeah.

She's she also toys with diegetic sound quite a bit which you can write but is a way of talking directly to the audience i'm.

Gonna try and segue this into key learnings because the one thing that I took away from you Mel, that is something that I could take away and apply to any project as a way that if I want to get a message that I'm talking about to an audience really clearly is all three of these films dramatize something, before they comment on it. They don't comment on it and then dramatize it.

Unpack that a bit more.

So, we have seen in 40-year-old version that writer is being pushed to sell out before they hang the hat on it and have the discussion in world about what it is to sell out, like what the compromises are making. In adaptation, we are seeing those different openings where ones One's from Charlie's perspective, one's from Susan's perspective, one's from LaRoche's perspective, one's from the perspective of the flowers. They've shown all of us, all of those before we get to the crisis where he's like, oh, we should do it from the flowers perspective.

And you get that great time-lapse shot.

Yeah. And in stories we tell, you know, Mel was talking about the foreshadowing of Sarah being with the Super 8 camera. Like, it's the very opening with her siblings commenting on how uncomfortable they feel. She's talking about the stories and the different versions of something before the third act, they're actually commenting and that becomes like the source of the conflict or the drama or the narrative. So if any of these films had those moments where the dramatization was happening at the same time or following the commentary, it would feel more, I guess, from the characters or it's not forcing us as the viewer to recontextualize what we've already experienced.

I think adaptation, and to some extent, all of them follow up with it as well. But you're right, which they choose to start with, even if they loop back around, is crucial in how we feel about it.

There was a moment when I was watching 40-Year-Old Version when they mentioned John Coltrane, and there's a track that drops, and I'm like, oh, it's John Coltrane. And then I looked at the credits, and it wasn't. And I had to go back and Shazam it to work out who it was.

Probably couldn't afford it.

It was Courtney Bryan. But it felt like it was the kind of film that would do something like that, that would talk about the cliche of every vinyl collection has white boy jazz, has Miles Davis as a kind of blue in it, and then they play a track from a kind of blue. It's the kind of film that it is.

Which is the How Much Control Lever. Yeah.

And I think the choice to shoot in black and white is them saying that there's a degree of artifice to this. I think color now, once upon a time, black and white read as socially real. I think we use desaturation or we did it for a period of time to do real, but we wanted some color. I think that's to do with the difference between cones and rods, but that's another pose for another time. And I think the choice of shooting black and white is to go, hey, this is a film that there is a separation here and obviously referencing Woody Allen. My question is around emotional effect, because I think this is all about what effect do you want? What tools do you want to use? I think it really helps that in the 40-year-old version, what she is talking about is the kind of tropes around black art and black cinema. So she is referencing them in the work. It doesn't feel like it's imposed and it's actually connected deeper thematically than I imagine how those tropes are used in, say, Deadpool and Wolverine, right? right, is meta, but I can't imagine they're really talking about it. I haven't seen it yet. And adaptation is using that metaness is about the internal conflict between hitting the beats, hitting those moments for audience understanding and try to go underneath the art. And I think that is an internal debate because art is about communication and the further you stray from the conventions, literally the heart of the language you are talking in, even if that is in cinematic language is for an audience. And so, therefore, the narrower your audience is, even if it's more authentic. And I think adaptations about those challenges and stories we tell is about the ephemerability of truth and how that connects to identity, right? You thought you're person A, now you thought you're person B. Does that make you A or B? Are you now C? And I think the film is about that. And all three films, I've got my little thesis, but they also tell you quite directly what they're about. And isn't that why you want to talk to the audience? Is so you can say, motherfucker, this is what this is about. And they clearly do that at 40-year-old vision. She stands on a stage, raps into a camera. Adaptation tells you what he wants your experience of the film to be. And in stories we tell, she is asked, point great, why are you doing this? What is the point of all of this? And she can't quite answer it. And to me, that's why you would want to do these techniques is because you don't want to be misunderstood.

You want to state your thesis as blatantly as possible. I mean, people will still fucking misunderstand it, but you will state it as clearly as possible.

I mean, Stuart and you, this is going to be fascinating for us in the project that we're working on next, because we're both terrified that because we're wanting to explore stories of dangerous masculinity and radicalization of young men, that it's very easy for us to accidentally drift into something that they would love, as opposed to understand that we're critiquing.

I mean, that's a much broader conversation about the world we're living in now, where people are like, I don't want characters to kiss on screen because they characters haven't consented to it.

Well, I guess it's the Fight Club and Starship Troopers. Is it satire?

Or the conversation that I was literally having earlier today where someone's like, the bear is pro capitalism because it shows Tina having a really hard time. I'm like, that episode is explicitly about why capitalism is bad. It's like, what are you watching anyway?

But yeah, so, I mean, that takeaway that these techniques are used, at least in these three films, to give the writers in particular a chance to have their characters talk about the theme of the film.

Have their characters talk about it, have their characters write plays about it, have their characters write books about it, have their characters ask their siblings about it. You know, it's lots of different ways to explore it.

But other films that we have, I know you're trying to finish there, but other films that we've talked about in earlier episodes, such as in our antagonist theories, particularly the, you know, characters versus the audience. F is for Fake is about authenticity in cinema and recreation. And it's very much explicitly about that. And it uses some of these techniques. American Splendor.

But then you've got Orson fucking Wells talking to us. Like there's not been a film where there is not more about the filmmaker talking directly to us.

Oh, it's great.

I mean, it's Orson Welles. You can't find a bigger ego.

But when I watched Stories We Tell, I was like, wow, this feels really indebted for F is for Fake. And there's probably films that predate F is for Fake. But that kind of blurring of meaning and all that kind of stuff. And I think, you know, this is why you would use these techniques. And I think, for me, I can't think of a pinpoint, but I'm going to ponder. These are the things I'm going to be pondering. What techniques, both in terms of the levers, but also specific techniques such as presenting photos or talking to camera or voiceover or barreling and, you know, the kind of structural stuff, where in time this stuff is coming from. I'm going to be thinking about how all this relates to Thane, you know. Is a character coming back to a story about dangerous masculinity? It's the obvious choice. If there's a voiceover, is it coming from the point in time where he realizes the error of his ways? Is it coming from the point at the time where he's fully, deeply, absolutely committed to the cause and then, you know, that all is lost moment is him realizing it's a disaster and then we have no voiceover. Right. These are things that you can do that kind of can connect to what we're trying to say. And I think it's good to kind of think of them through that.

I believe in fitness.

Do you, Chas?

Great callback. Great callback.

You believe in food.

Porque lo nos dos.

I do not believe in fitness. this.

I believe in cheese.

So Mel, what are your key takeaways from this exercise?

I just, I... Loved it so much they.

Are three wonderful movies to have watched in in a short space of time.

I think because i'm i'm writing something right now a script that toys a lot with style and structure and i loved how all three of them did use diegetic and non-diegetic audio or audio that we thought was one thing and then turns out to be another like it sounds like a voiceover but it's actually him talking to screen through the use of j cuts and l cuts through sarah polly's talking off camera versus reading something out versus having someone else perform her words with rata like having characters talk over each other i loved a reminder that it is scripted i mean in documentary it's not quote unquote scripted so much as written by sarah polly but all of that how you can really use your script to establish how important when audio starts and how you can use that to play with your audience um i love that in all three of these i also really liked the idea of foreshadowing how much you were gonna fuck with your audience straight up front which was a lot of fun and i I think I loved how I just love the artifice and how all three of them play with artifice and our authenticity and I think it's so fascinating that we chose something that used like 18 layers of artifice like adaptation something that's a documentary and goes to prove how weird that line is by casting actors as real people and then. You have something like uh 40 year old version and which gets real people as actors and toys with those relationships. And so I think watching all three of these, there's just such a sense of play with the form and with... The stories and with the formats that I literally just have like this took half of a notebook just my notes on the three of these but I think the really specific moments of techniques and things like that like that attention to detail like I said how in 40 old versions some of it's just a tiny bit of set dressing or in adaptation you reckon that it probably would have been written how the brothers look quite similar but are slightly different and things like that I wanted I wanted to mention, just name drop a couple of other things that I think people should seek out. So I mentioned before, Nope, I think being a great double feature, even though it's even further than adaptation, it's certainly not as direct, but it talks about making movies and making TV and just like 40 year old version, how, you know, people of certain groups are forced to, you know, sell parts of themselves and fake authenticity to get somewhere right. I mentioned Beaches of Agnes, one of my favorite ever documentaries that I think goes along with this. There's a documentary called Mark My Words. I don't know how easy it is to find, but if you could find it, I would absolutely watch it. It goes along with 40-year-old version, American Splendor, and F is for Fake, we already mentioned.

I think it's been on my list for a long time, and it's probably not a 2024 thing. God, we're planning for 2025. 25, we should do an episode- I mean, if we're talking about doing an episode on lessons from musicals, we should consider doing an episode on lessons from documentaries because I think there's a lot of stuff that we, as fiction writers, as this is indicated, but even stuff that is a little bit more straight, like a thin blue line, that we can sit there and go, fuck, these are techniques we can borrow from, right, that we can learn from because that form seems to be like- as a friend of the podcaster and, He basically says that cinema is dominated by naturalism. The super genre of pretty much modern cinema is naturalism. Very rarely do we get away from that. So it's kind of interesting to look at stuff that kind of opens up that spectrum. Yeah.

I think those would be two great episodes. I mean, speaking of commentary on the process of making a product, Stu, I'm actually glad that we've had our first on-air debate in what feels like a long time. It feels like we've been agreeing with each other too much for a while. So it was nice for it to get a bit fiery and spicy there. And like in the end, you absolutely won and both convinced me. I was playing devil's advocate. I very much enjoyed the movie. I wanted to dig in and try and learn with the tools.

Just admit, black women are invisible to you.

He's fucking Christ.

He doesn't see color, especially when it's black and white film.

I mean, this is, I feel like I'm so trapped. It's like, oh my God, I'm married to a woman of color, but then I'm just doing like the classic politician thing. like I have a daughter, anyway thank you both for being late when life is kind of slamming us on a personal level so well done on picking and debating these three amazing films a lot of that picking of the homework was done by our patrons you too can pick our homework for us and bring if you want more draft zero more often you can join our patrons in particular thanks to Alexandra, Jen, Jesse, Crob, Lily Lily, Malay, Paolo, Randy, Sandra, Thies, and Thomas. See, the list is growing. You guys too can be part of this amazing group. And as you've seen from hopefully the back matter episodes we've recorded to this series, our patrons are also posing some pretty awesome questions.

And I'm going to foreshadow it now. We're in the process of setting up a Discord, so you can argue with us on Discord.

We'll have a channel which will be team chas and a different one for team stew.

It's like the house of the dragon and then it turns out mel is being damon and she's like oh actually maybe i should rule giraffe zero slow and steady you surface the throne.

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