Transcript of Guillermo del Toro

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hello.

This is— guys, this is really up there. Monica, she declared favorite of all time.

I believe it to be favorite episode of all time.

Yeah. And he's definitely a 3-way tie for me. I mean, this is the most incredible human we've got to sit with.

It's crazy.

Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro is an award-winning filmmaker. That's an understatement. He's won a bazillion Academy Awards and every other kind of award. Frankenstein, movie of the year last year. Shape of Water. Pan's Labyrinth. We are here to talk about Pan's Labyrinth, and this is so awesome. He has completely redone the whole movie with all these different technologies that now exist, and we will all be able to see it now in 3D among many different formats.

Incredible.

Cannot wait to see it in 3D. This is among the most special human beings on planet Earth. Please enjoy Guillermo del Toro. Hi, sir.

Gary.

Gary?

Yeah.

Dax.

Nice to meet you.

Welcome. That— you're right there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can I offer you a water?

Liquid Death. Let's go.

I just took the last Topo Chico.

Right on brand.

It is.

I just took the last Topo Chico, which is, you know, there's a shortage, or maybe you don't.

I am painfully aware.

You are? Do you love Topo Chico?

No, but it's news in the Mexican culture.

Oh, right. Yeah, that's true.

I don't know what they do to the well, but they pull it out of the ground. Yeah.

Well, it's gonna just increase the value. Now that's worth a lot of money.

Now he's wasting a lot of money.

Exactly. Could sell it on eBay.

I'm always curious about what books are those.

Well, some of them are past guest books, but some of them are just decorative.

Some of them are? You buy by foot or by color?

Yeah, exactly.

In your foot.

In your foot, yeah. Well, like set decoration, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm gonna start by saying I've been wanting to meet you for 20 years because I worked with perhaps one of my favorite people I've ever worked with was Guillermo Navarro.

Yes, of course.

Are you guys still friendly?

Oh, of course. What a great guy.

Oh, what a beautiful man.

Beautiful man. and beautiful everything. I mean, he's so full of talent and fire, and he doesn't put up with anything. Sure.

Is he an actor?

He's a DP. Oh, a DP. Was he the DP on Devil's Backbone?

And Pan's Labyrinth. He won the Oscar for Pan's.

Wow.

He was the first Mexican cinematographer to win in the history of—

Oh, really?

Yeah, of our filmography.

Yeah. There has to have been some sense, right?

Checo was originally a Steadicam operator, and then he became a DP.

But Rodrigo Prieto, Chibo, Chivo, that's who I'm thinking of. Yeah, Chivo, yeah. Yes.

No, he's a great guy.

What's your theory on this huge explosion of talent that came out of Mexico? I remember when I was working with Guillermo Navarro, he was telling me like, oh, he's from Guadalajara, right?

No, he's from Mexico. I'm from Guadalajara.

Oh.

Now we look alike.

Okay.

The other day I was, I saw a photograph and I said, boy, Navarro looks really haggard. And I realized it was me. People might accidentally, same name, same look.

People might accidentally hire him to direct something thinking they've hired you.

Or me do cinematography.

Or vice versa.

Yes.

Who do you think would do better at each other's job?

2 things I forgot everything about: cinematography, which I used to do on my Super 8s and even on other 16 and all that, and algebra. Algebra, I was a whiz kid for a year.

Yes.

And now I don't know even what it means.

You have 2 daughters?

Yeah.

Did you have to help them with math and go, wait, hold on, I'm supposed to be good at this?

No, because I think each generation does less and less of those operational things.

Yeah.

You know, like math. When I was a kid, it was a huge breakthrough when they allowed your calculator in the classroom.

Oh, sure. For like trigonometry or something.

They said, oh, that's cheating. I remember I had a Texas Instrument.

Sure. It's big boy too, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The bigger the better. But it was a huge debate. There was no internet or it would've been a huge point.

Well, my kids are in 6th and 8th grade. And so now, of course, the big debate is when and where can they use AI? kind of insane to think they shouldn't become adept at using it because it'll be a tool they will use. But it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. When and where?

Well, I think the debate for me is not what happens to the technology, but what happens to the human brain.

While using it, right?

Well, for example, I'll give you one thing we all live— GPS. You live in LA for 20, 30 years, whatever. And if you start relying on GPS to go home, you should stop.

Yeah, I can't get anywhere. I can't get to his house and I live right down there. Without it, I need it.

The other day when in the opening of the Lucas Museum, George very pointedly said, I want the name of the work, the medium of the work, the author, and the year. That's it. It's because now we walk with context in our pocket. You want to know more? I don't have to tell you if it's a good piece of art or a bad piece of art. You judge it and you want context, pull out your phone. I mean, that's good for me. Can we foster thought, not results?

Yes, I think we underestimate the joy there was to be had when you were trying to figure something out.

Well, you know, like, I brought my notes for Pan's Labyrinth.

You did?

Because I think the process is what's worth it, not the result. If we understand that, we understand that the shortcut is not giving you something, it's robbing you of something. I'm talking purely as what makes us human. Anytime you skip the process, you are not cheating on someone, you're cheating on yourself. You really are robbing yourself of it.

You know, the difference between winning the lottery and having created a way to—

My dad won the lottery.

I know, I'm planting that seed.

I know.

$6 million.

In 1969.

Hold on, we'll earmark that. I do want to tell you, I did reach out to Josh Brolin to ask him about you. And do you know what he told me? He said his favorite thing about you is having gotten to look at your journals.

That was one of those.

Yeah, so I feel very excited 'cause he was just—

This is incredible.

You're telling me how spectacular they are.

This is a relic.

That's a reward page in case I lose it.

Oh my God.

Wait, you drew this? Yeah.

That's—

Oh my—

How much time is in these 2 pages? Well, not much.

Maybe 3, 4 hours, but they can happen 3 weeks or 4 months apart.

Oh.

I only write when there's something worth consigning. And after The Hobbit, I stopped carrying them because I couldn't lose notes on The Hobbit.

Oh my gosh. I'm holding this up.

I feel—

yeah. This is spectacular. Guillermo, I'm embarrassed to tell you how much I would pay to own this.

I was about to say, I feel like we shouldn't be holding it.

Like, we're not worthy of this.

I thought it would be nice to bring it.

Oh, it's beautiful. Oh my gosh, Monica, I want you to feel the pages too.

Oh my goodness.

Did you draw this?

Yes, of course. Yeah. Years before Pirates, I must say.

I cannot believe this.

Oh my word.

That was a note for Mountains of Madness.

This was gonna be a question at the very end, but I need to ask it now. Are you friendly at all with Tim Burton?

No, we've never met.

You've never met?

We've never met. I mean, I know his influences. He comes from Edward Gorey, Charles Addams. I mean, I can trace his roots.

I can't believe you've never met him.

No, actually, I think that is very risky to meet someone that you have X in common. I've had that, like, people that you have 90% in common and 70% in common, where you disagree, you're gonna hate each other.

Sure, sure, sure.

When you disagree, you're gonna go, no, there's no conciliation.

We had an expert on the other day. You would know this because you love fantasy, but did you know C.S. Lewis and Tolkien hated each other?

Yeah, well—

For a period at Cambridge.

They disliked each other. They were too close.

One was an atheist, one was a Christian.

And a Christian that took great pains to get there.

I may add, I mean, bent over backwards.

Yeah. He had to convince himself.

Yeah. Contorted himself.

Yeah. So, you know, it's like when you took years to convince yourself of something. Yeah. You don't give it up that easily.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's now part of your identity and it feels threatening to your identity.

Your world would explode.

Yeah. But to find out that they also hated and loved opposite poets. And then I think it was C.S. Lewis hosted a Norse mythology reading session.

Oh my God. Yes.

And then Tolkien, and then they fell in love, and they both encouraged each other to pursue things.

That I was gonna say. Later, they did coalesce into one. Look, the highbrow nature of academia is brutal. It's catty.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Here are actors, comedians, magicians, and scholars, all very catty. Like, I'm friends with a lot of magicians. There's not a single magician that has ever spoken highly of another magician. Oh, that's so true. Ever. Or comedians.

If they die, they can't. They can like Houdini. Oh yeah.

Not a threat. They don't have a show opening.

They don't have to share any attention with them.

Yeah, but academia is very catty.

But you know, I'll say an exception to that, which is standups. You're right. Standup comedians are brutal. I did standup for a while, but sketch comedians, that's where I'm from.

That's different.

We do love each other because a lot of it is writing. It's writing. It's relying on one another. It's eating shit together. It's succeeding together.

You're gonna be in a writer's room together.

It starts communal.

It is. And I think that you find in academia, for example, I love reading Nabokov's writing. I disagree with 90% of his opinions about other writers. You don't have to agree with that because it's what you did with what you were given as a legacy. Like Burton, I can see the Gorey, the Edward Gorey in him, or the Charles Addams in him. But what he did with that, or the Dr. Seuss, or the way he transmogrifies that is interesting, but it would be very different.

Yes, yes.

than the way you metabolize, and it becomes part of your being.

I just know this particular part of your workflow is also very similar to his, right? He's just endlessly drawing and writing even while engaging with people.

It became less so for me. The most copious notes I took is before I could make movies. The more you have a team, the more you say, well, Guy Davis draws 100 times better than I do, or Francisco Ruiz, or you learn to rely on the people that you work with.

Right.

Every movie has a book like this?

It started with whole books for each movie, and then it went into 50 pages for each movie, and then 3 pages for each movie. 'Cause the more you have a team.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I do a thing called the submarine, which is 6 to 9 months before the movie starts. I hired 3 or 4, almost always the same designers, and we go deep before we hire production design, before we hire costume design. We dive deep into the shapes, the colors, the this and that, and then I draw less.

Really quick, what is the, the end product of that session? Is it storyboards?

Yeah, no, it's mostly the main concepts, the main tenets of the movie, like shapes, for example.

The rules.

The rules. And then you hire people, and if they want to break them, you say why, because I've thought about it. Not that you don't foster dissent, you do, yeah, but you say You gotta really convince me.

Yeah, 'cause we thought this through.

I think that, like, when I go to a set and I see something is not done properly, I say, you thought I wouldn't notice? Yeah.

You know?

And, like, when I was 30— no, less. When I was 28 or 27, Jim Cameron, we became friends instantly. I don't know why. He said, why don't you come over? We're editing True Lies, and I need to take out 25 minutes.

Was the inroad to this relationship, were you doing the special effects stuff? You had worked in some capacity for him, right?

No, no, no. Ron Perlman, who was in Cronos, had done a TV series called Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton. So he said, why don't you come to the barbecue on the 4th of July? I went and Jim was there.

Yes.

And Jim sat down and he said, so I hear you made a really expensive Mexican movie. I said, well, yeah, I mortgaged my house. He said, you know, you may lose it. He says, we only hear the stories of the people that donate a kidney and succeed, but there are a lot of people that donate a kidney and the movie doesn't open.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So true.

I go, that's absolutely true.

Yeah.

He says, will you show it to me? I said, sure. And he arrived to the screening at the Chaplin Theater on Raleigh Studios, and he said, if I get a phone call, I may need to leave. I said, sure, I understand. And then he saw the whole movie, and he said, the phone call was bullshit. Oh.

That was a get out of here.

If the movie wasn't bad, I would send a call back.

Oh, my God. Like it's a bad date or something.

Yeah.

He said, I can stay for 20 minutes from the beginning. And then we stayed for 4 hours.

Wow.

And we liked each other very much. He came from special effects. I could do all special effects. I knew rotoscope tracking. So we started geeking out.

Yes. Okay, I was gonna say, I had the rare experience to go on a motorcycle ride. I didn't know who was gonna be at breakfast, and I get there—

With Arnold, I know.

Yeah, with Arnold. And then he's there.

What year?

2004.

Oh, yes.

And who's the great puppeteer? The, um—

Oh, Stan Winston?

Stan Winston is there.

He was a writer.

Incredible. And so he naturally has zero interest in the 30-year-old that's there. Yeah, but he starts talking about the 3D technology he's inventing. And I happen to say, oh, so it's like bilateral stereoscopic vision. And he then goes, he's like, right? He hones in on me. He goes, why do you know about bilateral stereoscopic vision? And I go, oh, I was an anthropology major. And then I got all of his attention among all these people.

He's not just pretty. He knows.

Yes. So I imagine for you that was the same thing. I think if he figures out somebody knows about his neat kinks, he's just very drawn to you, I'd imagine.

He said to me one day, there are X number of filmmakers, then there are X number of writer-directors. That's less. There are even less producer-writer-directors. And he said, then there are even less designer-producer-writer-directors. He said, and then world builders. He says, you can count them with one hand. And when you encounter somebody, you can talk about the whole thing. How much is it gonna cost? Why is it gonna cost? How do we make it better, bigger, and cheaper? And that global view, he said, you immediately are interested because it's very nurturing and rare. I think because we had that commonality on effects, because I can sculpt a puppet, I can mechanize a puppet, I can mold a puppet. So I know molding, chemistry, you know, all these things. He liked it. I know, man. I'm going to figure out—

I love it.

How do you know?

Yes. So let's go in order a little bit. And you already started it. First of all, you're from Guadalajara.

Yes.

And mom and dad are Spanish. And I'm curious first—

Mexican. Yeah.

When did the family come from Spain? Like, what generation are you?

I have zero interest in my genealogy. I know my grandfather was half Irish. It was Guillermo Gomez O'Culligan.

Oh, wow.

It's like out of a Darby O'Gillis.

That'd be a bad restaurant.

O'Culligans.

E. coli.

E. coli guns. I know the kinship with the Irish 'cause when I went to Ireland, I said, why do I feel straight at home immediately? But the side of my father split into Puerto Rico and Mexico. That much I know. Now, my father had a very precarious upbringing. They didn't have money. His father was a gambler, which my dad was a gambler, but he sort of controlled himself, sort of.

So how does he win this lottery?

He married my mom. We were living in a little middle-class home. He always bought from the same— he won 2 times.

No.

What?

Yeah, he won the $6 million, and then he won a quarter of a million a few years later. Oh, my goodness.

He didn't stop playing?

With the same vendor.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

So, one day, we're living there, and one day, we move into a house that was just out of The Shining. I would run my bicycle like Danny in The Shining. But he always raised us— I remember the immortal lines he said to my brother. He says, why do I have to do this if we have money? And my dad said, I have money.

Yeah.

You don't.

Yeah.

And he would say, you want that microphone for your camera? You're gonna go to the dealership and wash all the cars. Then you go to the spare parts warehouse and you have to clean all the boxes. And then I'll buy you your microphone for your Super 8 camera.

Well, so that was my other curiosity about your father, because I'm from Detroit and my whole family was automotive industry. I too worked for GM for years. It says he was an automotive entrepreneur. What does that mean?

First he dealt with Packard, then he dealt with Chrysler, and then Nissan and Chrysler.

Did he have a dealership?

Many dealerships. Many dealerships in the '60s and '70s and all that. He was really the worst boss I've ever had. I worked with him 5 years and I said, Dad, I'm quitting because I don't want to stop loving you. I never did anything right. I had always had to chase him for every penny.

So it sounds like he took the money he won and he was successful at growing that through his business.

Oh yeah, no, no, he was very smart. He was very funny. Yeah, he was very personable. He was a little remote at home.

This is my father too. So I only saw him every other weekend, but he was a car salesman. And when I'd move through the world with him, it's like he knew everyone at the hardware store and then he knew all the waiters and waitresses. And it was like, I just was kind of enamored with it.

Also, my dad was a motorcycle racing champion.

No.

And used to ride motorcycles instead of a bicycle. He would buy us a minibike. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was on a bike at age 6 or 7. I was riding my bike on the street.

You had the childhood I wanted. Of course you have to break some stuff.

Oh, God. Yeah.

Can you hear that? Can you keep it connected for the remainder of the interview? I have a bunch of scars from motocross.

Of course.

Parenting in the '60s would be actionable now.

Of course.

Sure.

He would take me on his BMW bike and he would go for ice cream. I was in the back, no helmets, of course.

Of course not.

He said, you want an iron horse? I go, sure. And he would do an iron horse with me on the back.

Sure.

7.

Yeah, yeah.

Wait, so how old were you when he won the lottery?

'69. So I was 5.

And do you remember, like, the day your dad comes home and is like, guess what?

Yeah, the night before, we went to the church party. So I remember that I won a fire truck, a plastic fire truck. And people said—

You're a lucky family.

Everybody said, well, congratulations on the raffle. I said, yeah, we got a red truck. Oh, you thought— I thought that was the—

The town was celebrating you.

I thought everybody loved my red truck. Everybody wanted it. That's my red flag. No, but my dad gave me the discipline. He said, you have to work for everything you need. And he said, it's for your own good. We inherited each other's clothes.

How many siblings?

One brother older than me who passed away, a younger brother, and a younger sister.

Okay.

So you're a middle— you're the middle boy.

I'm the second, which is how I fit the stereotype.

And do you fit the stereotype as a middle child?

Yes. You have to become the negotiator, the peacekeeper, the sane one, supposedly.

And then also, would you agree As the middle child, you can really disappear a lot. Because in my case, there was like a teenager who was crazy, and then there was a baby on the scene. So it was like between the energy they took up, I could be in my room for days and no one would have wondered.

I tell you, the parenting thing— I could disappear for a week and they would not ask where I was.

Right, not even curious.

Yeah.

If I had enough gas on the tank, I would go to San Antonio, to Texas, to buy Super 8 equipment. I would come back 4 days later. No one was there. No one asked anything.

Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

All I knew, there was cold meat and cold beans on the fridge. So that was that. Who made them? I had no idea.

You also described that, you know, when you're like a 7-year-old boy, most kids are outside playing football and you're like reading voraciously.

Oh my God, yes.

And then you're also a hypochondriac.

A complete hypochondriac.

Yeah. Where do we think that started?

Started when my dad won the lottery. He bought a library because somebody told him you have to have a library because you're a gentleman now.

Okay.

So he got a huge desk.

That sounds like they could have told him anything.

Oh, a library in the house?

In the house.

Okay.

Okay.

He bought 3 encyclopedias. He bought an encyclopedia of art, which I read complete when I was very young. He bought an encyclopedia for youth and one of them was the encyclopedia of health.

Oh, okay.

And I memorized it.

I thought, oh, I have trichinosis. I have high blood pressure.

You thought you had pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer at one point. I can talk to you. That is in my movies. All the biology, all this and that. That has been with me since I was a kid.

And did you shake it at some point?

Yeah. Yeah. My dad was a hypochondriac. His hobby was to be sick. Actually, I became fully fluent— English is my second language, but at age 7 or 8, He would make me travel with him to translate to doctors in Houston.

Oh, really?

I have glaucoma. Tell him that these are my symptoms. And I would speak to the doctor in English. And he said, what did he say?

Do you think because of the Catholic guilt, there was some sense that, well, with this great fortune we were given, there must be some price to pay and it'll be my health?

I don't know how complex my dad was.

But did you have any sense like that? Like something bad will happen to us because this is suspiciously good. I have.

I have.

Yeah, yeah, same, same, same. Yeah, yeah.

My parents won the money. One of the first things they tried to travel a lot to Europe, to this and that. And we would be left behind. And I stayed with who I called my grandmother. She was like Piper Laurie in Carrie. She would instill in me the sense of doom.

Oh.

Every day at the end of the day, I would call her and she would say, if I wake up tomorrow, I will see you. And if I die tonight, I want you to know that I loved you.

Oh my God.

Every day.

Okay.

So I would sleep rigid in the bed feeling, I'm sure she's dead. And when I slept in her house, I would sleep in a little cot at the foot of her bed, and I would spend the night hearing— Oh, come on. And if she stopped, I would go, she's dead.

Yeah.

Now, that for a decade at least. And then I was an altar boy. I was the spokesperson for the Virgin Mary. I was raised very, very Catholic. And this is the time when I was reading multiple books a day. I taught myself to do ultra-fast reading. And to this day, I can read a page about a second, 2 seconds, I get a page.

Oh my gosh. Okay, I know this about you. You're going to Mass at 8 in the morning, but you're coming home and you see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and the juxtaposition, yet also the parallel.

Yeah, it's the same. To me, this is completely true. My spiritual life is forged by movies, fairy tales, and religion. They become the same. Pan's Labyrinth, Hands of the Shape of Water, Frankenstein. To me, they are parables or fairy tales. They became effortlessly one. So my grandmother and I never agreed, but she would buy me the comic books on Tuesdays. On Tuesday, you went to the comic book stand in the corner. And I would buy everything. Archie, Little Lulu, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, and some brown and white Mexican horror comics that were the most salacious, grotesque thing ever created. I still have them in my collection.

Like would make Robert Crumb blush?

Oh, my God. They started— it was called Traditional Legends of Mexico, right? It was the name of the comic book. And it started very altruistic. Eventually, they started doing Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, whatever. And then at the end, they were just, let's put a rotten corpse and a skull scantily clad lady, and let's call it a day. My mother threw most of my comic books, like everybody. Yeah, but I kept some.

And your obsession with the monster, of course, makes total sense, which is, I'm not perfect, I'm flawed, I am in some way despicable, right? I have some sense that I am, like, defective in a way others are not.

Especially because you're the second child.

Yes. Yes.

Like, I'm not my brother, who's like a stud in the disco. And I'm not— whatever. Yeah. You're sort of in the middle. But also, you can be pretty brutal with yourself and truth, meaning you don't have to be perfect, but you don't have to stay either. You have to give yourself the license to say, look, this is who I am, and this is what I need. And it's truthful, whether we like it or not. And monsters always are truthful. They step into the room, you know what they are.

Right.

And that's one thing I carry to design. When I design, I say everything designed needs to have a history. And I said this morning, I was talking about a cistern, a Roman cistern we're designing for a stop-motion movie we're making. And I said, the, the bricks on the floor are too small. And he said, why? I said, because they use larger slabs so the water would slide. This I know. And it's not that you wanna make it more pretty or this, it's truthful.

Yeah. It's the truth.

You understand the design 'cause it came out of a need. Same with the personality. Like we dress, we are expressing something. Wardrobe is personality declaring.

Trying to give you a shortcut.

Into who you are.

Yeah.

And what do you own? What car do you drive? If you are wealthy but you have a 2010 car, I know who you are. Right. A little bit.

Yeah.

Warren Buffett driving the old Cherokee famously for 30 years. He tells you that.

He tells you that.

You're like, oh, okay. I really get it. It's not about the money.

Or somebody wearing Skechers.

Uh-huh. Yeah.

A wealthy man. And you go, well, he's going for comfort. Right, right, right. Like one day I visited a very famous filmmaker, a friend of mine, and he was very excited. What are you driving? And he says, my car. He says, a sensible ride. And that's what it is. It's a sensible ride.

What car do you drive?

It was a Chrysler 2012.

Okay.

I still have it.

Okay.

I love it.

Wonderful.

'Cause in Mexico you love your car. And once you get it, that's your car.

Loyal.

You don't have many cars. You're like, that's my car.

Yeah. You go down to Mexico and you see all these incredible '80s full-size pickup trucks that are like flawless.

Well maintained.

Mm-hmm.

I call him El Guapo.

Oh yeah.

My car. I say, hey, Guapo, let's go. I talk to the car like the Japanese. I believe objects have a personality and a soul.

Uh-huh.

I cook.

My favorite frying pan is the cheesiest frying pan, but I know exactly how it's gonna heat, how it's gonna cook the rice.

Yeah, yeah.

Since you feel a sense that they have some meaning to them, are you a major collector then?

I was, and I will say was because I'm quite pointedly donating, gifting, and auctioning most of what I own. Because I think if you are still accumulating after 55, there's something not quite right. Unless you're going to, like what George did, which I adore, open it to the public. If it's for you after 55, it's like wearing short pants. I mean, look, everybody has a sense of fashion. I personally wouldn't subject people to me in short pants and a backwards baseball cap.

Oh, I almost wore a backwards baseball cap.

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Catholic.

It is a death-heavy endeavor.

Oh, the way Philippines and Mexican Catholicism, the inroad into the popularity of the culture, the friars noticed the gorier the picture, the more people were like, this is interesting.

Yeah.

So Mexican Catholicism is really gory.

Yeah, there's blood on the crucifixion. You get some blood.

And you get exposed bones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You get the mortified flesh. They go hard. Yeah, they go hard. And Filipino Catholicism is just as hard.

Well, and Filipinos, I've got to work with a ton of them in Detroit. They all believe in ghosts too. Culturally, everyone believes in ghosts.

So do we.

Almost everyone has a ghost story or multiple.

Same. In a Mexican dinner, if somebody starts telling a story, a ghost story, you say, pass the salsa.

Yeah, yeah. You're all ears.

And everybody has one.

Even my grandma.

who hated everything supernatural, she had ghost stories. At bedtime, they don't tell you about Snow White. They said, there was this white presence in the house I lived in. No wonder you're all hypochondriacal! And I'm gonna die tonight.

Yeah.

Oh, that's horrible.

When I'm done telling you this story, I'm likely to pass.

My analyst says it's what is called a counterphobic reaction, meaning I was so scared as a kid that I learned to love and get really intimate with what I feared, which is a coping mechanism.

Of course. Well, that's like the same as when you roll back with your trauma, right? Like, if you've had sexual trauma, but you're into BDSM as a way to interact with it.

Whatever training you have for that, because then if you become the initiator, the controller, then there's some measure of control. I mean, when I was first scared that I remember as a kid, it was so profound. And my brother then scared me further that night. So, you know, I started seeing things in my bedroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Presence. I would wake up with lucid dreaming. In which these things were actually in my brain. They were there. So you have to learn. And I tell this story, people think it's a cute story, people think I make it up. It is completely true. I used to pee myself because I didn't want to get out of the crib because I saw a thing in the closet and fingers waving at me in the rug. And I got up and I said, if you let me go to the bathroom, I will be your friend forever.

Yeah.

I told the monsters and they withdrew.

Oh my gosh.

And this is true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was able to go to the bathroom. But to this day, in my grandmother's house, there was a corridor which I thought was incredibly long on the road to the bathroom. And I always thought, what if I see something standing at the end of the corridor, which is in Devil's Backbone, right? A few years ago, I went to that house.

It's 2 feet long.

It's 2 feet long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but in my mind, it was a—

It was a gauntlet of horrors.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so to speed through some things, you start messing with Dad's Super 8 camera when you're about 8 years old. This fascination takes you to, ultimately, the University of Guadalajara. You study cinema.

We founded the school. Oh, you did? And we were both the founders and the alumni.

Oh, really?

There was no school in Mexico, in Guadalajara, for that. Only in Mexico City.

Oh, okay.

So we founded 2 things, a festival, which is still going on, and the school, which is still going on under another name, but the same university.

Was any part of your artistic endeavor, like, an attempt to have control over this whole thing?

I guess.

I mean, I— I'm now your analyst.

No, no, no. When you don't have a social life— when I say other kids were playing football, I could not understand. I felt 70 at age 7.

You were in your study.

I've been growing younger.

Ah, Benjamin.

Like, now I feel younger.

Yeah.

Benjamin.

You're fending this life.

Benjamin del Toro.

If I only had looked like Brad Pitt.

If any of us could. I would take it.

But I felt old. What I think is, is a way to— I mean, we are constantly finding balance. When people say, I had a bad day, well, you're gonna have a good one. I had a good day, well, you're gonna have a bad one. Yeah, end of story. Like, the nature of the flow is the yin and the yang. In meditation, you remember nothing's permanent. Everything's gonna peak and it's gonna pass, whether you're the most happy person in the world.

It ebbs and flows.

And I think writing, creating—

You want it so bad that you create, that you create it.

And the world does not cater to that, to permanence. No, no permanence or to what you want.

But is it cultural? Because I feel like in America we are obsessed with happiness, with achieving it, and then we assume we just have that for the rest of our lives. But I do know in other cultures you just know that that's not something you get and you have, that it is temporary.

My dad had a real estate company, and he said, before you go into this doomed movie career, he said, you should work for me. So I worked 5 years for Dad. And what I remember is payday on Friday, everybody was a prince. And everybody knew that Monday comes, you're gonna have to show up and start working again.

You get 2 days of—

You get 2 days of being—

Being a king.

A largesse.

Yeah. Buying drinks for friends.

Yeah. You put a clean shirt on and you went dancing.

By Sunday night, you're back. You're like, 4 or 5 times. I gotta go back.

Why did I do that? But the thing that is funny for me is when the culture is all focused on secondary gains and it pays no attention to primary gains.

Please define those 2.

Secondary gains is the things that you have to replenish constantly. Attention, money, wealth. When you meet somebody that is very rich or very famous and they are worried about how will the movie open, this review was bad, I lost X amount of money. The primary is the person that hugs you and loves you exactly as you are.

Right.

That's a primary gain.

Win or lose.

Yeah. For me, the most intense primary gain moment is when your kids are 4 or 5, and you open the door, and you're Ultraman.

Yeah.

And they run because you're home. That's pure primary gain. And those never go away. They're bedrock. And I find it worrisome that But more and more, we are veering towards secondary, tertiary gain. If you're not careful, you are hollow.

Yeah, I went to a Latino funeral recently in Carson. It was an overwhelming experience. This person who had passed was not famous. They weren't a boss of many people. And the turnout and the experience and the friends and the family, the depth of that—

That grief.

Yes. And the sharing of it. And I just looked at kind of the white culture I came from. If you went to a funeral and there was more than 12 people there. That would be crazy. That other thing was really on display and I was like, oh man, we're really missing the boat in a lot of ways.

There's not such a thing as a better culture or a worse culture. I think that all of them have incredible positives and incredible negatives. It's just what stays with you. I'll give you a difference. For example, in many cultures, when you're in grief, somebody says, I'm about a phone call away. If you need me, call me. In Latin culture, in Mexican culture, you show up with a bucket of food.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You say, hey, I heard, and you're already there. You don't say, look, all you have to do is call me. No, you just show up.

Yeah.

And you're there in the good and the bad. But there are so many others. I mean, nothing is perfect.

Yes, but there are aspects that are aspirational. And what I observed was this man who I adore, watching him grieve, what I realized is we were all there to take it on, and we all experienced it with him. I was in shambles. Everyone was. And I thought, what a beautiful thing. We're helping him carry this thing.

You know a culture by the way it deals with its most vulnerable, the elders, and death.

Yeah.

Yeah. Those 3 are markers of a culture that are incredibly important.

I'm gonna add one more. I was in Miami not long ago, and I was out at a very nice restaurant, The traditional white version is you get a babysitter and you go to this really nice restaurant and you have this romantic experience. Well, that was happening at many tables. The white people were there with the mom and dad, and this is 11 o'clock at night. All of the Latino tables was like, all the kids were there, brothers and sisters were there.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's just different. And I think it's aspirational.

The fascination for me is just what stays with you. We all make massive mistakes. I've caused pain, I've been caused pain, and you continue to do it. But the fact is, the balance, the ultimate balance, the invoice comes in the last 3 minutes of your life when you have no illusions of being— what do you do for a living? Well, in 3 minutes, nothing.

Yeah, exactly.

There's no other thing.

No other thing. And who are you? In 3 minutes, nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the moment the system starts to—

Yeah, yeah. The DMT's released.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's ideally what you should have accumulated in life. What you should have accumulated in life is, well, yeah, I fucked up royally over here, but I did this other thing.

Yeah.

And it all comes incredibly clear. For some reason, it may be biochemical. That's why I say experiential is human. It's not that I'm a Luddite. I'm not a guy that says, well, we should not use technology. No, no, no. It's just, look, at the end of the day, the invoice is what did you live to achieve? Whatever it is. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. I was a good brother.

What a gift to have at the end.

What a gift to say that.

Yes.

I was a good father, or I was a good son.

Good son, yeah.

You don't have to be all of that. I was a good friend. That's why I just say, please, just let's be careful for a second about how we launch into the next incarnation of our humanity. I'm not saying don't do this or do that.

Always balance it against this other—

Yeah, just pay attention.

Pursuit. So, okay, your first, I think, professional job, right, is you write 5 episodes and you direct 4 episodes of this—

No, before that even. I mean, I was doing my Super 8s and people started to say, oh, you know how to do makeup effects, would you do them on my short film or my indie film? And I started to do effects for other people while I wrote and directed my own shorts. And I said, well, when I quit real estate, I said, I'll try to make a living this other way. And I founded my company with my partner and my then-wife called Necropia.

Necropia. That's a good name. I assume in Spanish this is still the base Latin of necro.

The place where the dead dwell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, but the thing I'm curious about is before you did your first big movie, you had been working for 3 years building puppets.

Building the machine, the little Kronos device. What I said is 10 years before, and funny enough, I studied under Dick Smith, who was the Oscar-winning makeup effects man that did Amadeus, that did Godfather, The Exorcist. Altered States. He accepted me into his makeup effects course, and the Academy bought part of his estate, and they found my first letter.

Oh, really?

No way. And I found it remarkable. I'm still the same guy.

Yeah.

What I say, what I say I am, what I think of the genre, how I think it can be a parable, it's the same. I said, oh, I like this kid.

That's a gift.

Well, you had an incredible gift, which is you kind of knew what you were about pretty young.

When I was very, very little.

Yeah.

That's, I guess, of all the gifts, one can have in life, I think that's the one.

I'll ask Amy at the Academy if she wants to share it with you.

Oh, yes!

It's the letterhead from Necropia. And I basically say, in my second or third letter, I say, look, I'm not gonna do this for a living. I just wanna make my first movie. And there's no one in my country that makes makeup effects. So I have to found a company, work for a few years into having the equipment, and then make my first movie.

But I'm referring to, didn't you create for a series stop-motion film you were intending on making.

Yeah, I was going to do that.

100 puppets. Yeah. And the studio was broken into and everything was vandalized and destroyed.

Destroyed. And they smeared poop in the walls.

Okay.

No. Okay.

Uh, it's called— in Mexico they call it foxing.

Oh, it's a tradition.

Yeah.

Well, that's like toilet paper.

That type of burglary, they call it mesorreado.

Okay.

Somebody—

Sounds kind of nice.

Oh my gosh.

Sure. They went ape in there.

No, what it means is they didn't find anything worth stealing.

So they got pissed.

They got revenge.

But how did you recoup from having spent that much time working and focusing on something and having to say goodbye to that?

A friend of mine said to me, the key to life is huge windshield, small rearview mirror.

Mm. That's nice.

I think that's a very succinct— like, I remember, and you may remember, when computers started, I started writing on a word processor, and you could save 3 pages at once. And I was like, this is— who can do anything better?

Yeah.

Then computers came, and I was 20-something writing a book on Alfred Hitchcock, which got published by the university. But I had done 130 pages or something like that, and I erased the disk. And I immediately, immediately went, okay, page 1. Wow.

But okay, page one, new project, or page one, the same one?

Same one.

That's a constitution. That's hard.

That's a personality trait. I don't know that you can teach that.

No, no, you have to sort of have it. You know, it came from crashing motorcycles. I remember this when I was in motocross. I would take a dune the wrong way, and I was on a 300 enduro motorcycle, which is too heavy for motocross, and in the air I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna die or break my bones. And then something went wrong and I said, okay, I didn't die, I broke my bones. How do I get up? How do I push the bike off of me? Like, immediately it was like, okay, next step.

Solution, solution, solution.

Which, by the way, eventually as a person, there's a lot of you that you don't process, and one day you're crossing the street and you have a panic attack or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's that thing from 20 years ago.

That I didn't process 15 years ago.

Okay, so you do Cronos.

So I found the company, I do all the special effects.

Yes.

I do commercials, 15 movies, blah, blah, blah. And then I have the tools. Then I made Cronos, which is incredibly hard to do, incredibly against the grain, incredibly unpopular with the financiers and the government and all that.

Sure.

And then it wins at Cannes. That's in 2 seconds an 8-year journey. Wow.

Wow, wow, wow. What film opens up the door to Mimic?

Well, Mimic, which it was a trapdoor.

As we're about to learn.

And Miramax, they loved Cronenberg, supposedly. Turns out they didn't.

Yeah, they probably didn't even see it.

Someone told them. They probably didn't even see it. But at any rate, we developed— they wanted to do a 3 or 4 anthology movie with Bryan Singer, myself, I think 4 directors. And they said, develop a short story. And I had read Mimic, and I said, well, we can do this one. as a short, 30 minutes. I showed them the tests, and they said, we gotta do it as a feature. And I go, I don't think there's a feature in there.

Right.

I've been unemployed. Cronos is '91, '92, we finished shooting. It comes out in '93. I owe a lot of money. I owe a quarter of a million dollars at 28.

Oy.

Oy.

It's not great for creativity.

No, it's not great for creativity. And I said, well, I gotta pay that. By the way, that money, whatever I make on Mimic, I put into paying the ransom for my father.

This is all, I'm presuming, '97.

My dad is kidnapped '98.

But this period, I'm presuming, is one of the hardest chapters of your life between directing this movie.

And we just—

we must say that this movie is a miserable experience for you.

Oh my God, no, more than that. Let me put it this way: that movie is the worst experience I've ever had.

Really?

Including everything. Yeah, because nothing made You are giving someone what time will prove that it doesn't matter if it's good or not. You're giving them your 100%.

Yes.

You're giving them images and moments and episodes in a film that are great, and they hate them.

They fucked with you on casting, ultimately editing. They fired you at one point, or tried to.

They actually fired me on a Friday, and I was rehired on a Monday.

Yeah.

That same Monday.

And Brolin was in this movie. Yeah, Brolin was. That's why I called him.

I loved Brolin.

He was in a rough period for himself, as he told me. He's like, I was drinking a lot on that.

He was drinking and he was reading a lot. And we would have these deep, deep, super deep discussions.

Too deep and unproductive?

What I love about Brolin, there's certain people that have the soul of a poet and the pain of a soul of a poet. He had that. And whether they're actors, directors, writers, you love them for the purity of their pain.

pain.

Yeah, which I think is a huge gift.

It's an asset.

If your pain is pure, your song is clearer. You sing in a louder, clearer voice in this world.

This is so out of school, but I have said it when I interviewed his ex, but I was around Heath Ledger several times in important ways, and I could feel the weight on him that was much more severe than the weight I've experienced. It was palpable. And heartbreaking. And also why he was just so brilliant and ready to go.

But it goes with that.

Exactly.

Yes. But you can philosophize all you want. The experiencing of it is never altruistic. But I happen to think that with age, you learn mechanisms that are more truthful to the way the world works, and you learn to declare your worst self without fear. The moment of freedom is not when you are at your best. best is when you are at your worst and you say, and that's me. It's the only clarity you can aspire to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had this the other day where I had to present an award. This bit went wrong. It was— the whole thing was terrible. And when I was driving home, I was like, oh yeah, I like myself just as much. And it was a moment for me. I was like, oh, we've arrived somewhere that that doesn't matter what just happened.

There's a great mechanism. It's very Very simple in therapy, when the question you have to ask of anything is, and? I crashed my car. And? Well, I'm gonna take it to repair. And? It's gonna come back. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And? I lost a million dollars. And?

Right.

Yeah, we stop. We don't model out the whole thing. We stop at the part we hated.

Or the part we love.

Shame.

Oh, yeah.

I met someone great. And?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just met them. Oh, okay.

And?

Now I've got to— you know, everybody takes the trash on Tuesdays. They have 2 kids they haven't seen in 2 years.

Oh, okay.

That is also cultural. The tragedy of certain cultures is to tell you that one day you'll get there.

Yeah, exactly.

What is there? I just wrote a scene in a movie that we're gonna shoot in stop-motion and all that, where they have to face death, which is apparently my favorite theme.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the guy says, is this it? And death says, what else were you expecting?

Okay, so there's 2 things that are happening all in the same zone. Your father gets kidnapped, and you've had this insanely terrible experience on memory lane. And both of these things end up involving James Cameron in this very sweet way that I want to shine a light on.

Very sweet. First of all, he said, don't do it.

Don't do the movie?

Yeah. We were sitting in his garden. I mean, by this time we're brothers, and Jim is my brother. Any trouble, I'll call Jim. We've gone through everything together.

He's a good big brother.

He's a great big brother.

Yeah.

I highly recommend.

Good choice.

But he's one of the guys that shows up.

Yeah.

He shows up with lasagna.

Yeah.

He says, I'm here. I think he's Mexican. But he says, don't make the movie. You're gonna get none of the budget and all of the pain. He has warned me 2 times.

Oh, wow.

I'll keep the other one secret.

Okay, great.

Both times he was right.

Interesting.

Yeah. And I made the movie. I go through it. He almost gets into a fistfight with Harvey Weinstein at the Oscars.

Monica, you must know this story.

What?

Won his 25th Oscar of the night for Titanic. He's holding the editing, I believe, Oscar.

I think it's the editing.

He's coming back to his seat. It's in commercial, and Harvey Weinstein decides this is a great opportunity to come up to him and he said, you know, why don't you work at Miramax? We're a filmmaker-friendly studio. And Jim fucking goes off.

Yeah. Do you mean like the way you treated my friend Guillermo?

And he lets it rip on the floor of the Academy Awards. words, people have to intervene. James is like, he almost got belted in the head with this Oscar.

James said, I was almost gonna belt him with the Oscar. And the thing is, what people don't understand, back then the public image of these guys was that they were patrons of the arts.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, Miramax was independent and arty.

And they bad-mouthed me everywhere. So for 5 years I couldn't work. For 5 years between Mimic and Devil's Backbone, I was unhireable, basically.

Oh, my.

You know? So, everybody has heard I couldn't create images. They had to come in. And what I did— and this is, again, that same mechanism— I said, I don't need to make movies there.

Yeah.

I'll make a movie in Spain.

Yes, exactly.

You know, I don't need them. When you mourn something you have, celebrate everything else that you could have.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, if you cannot be focused on this thing that you're mourning and you lost, 'cause you can no longer focus on what's—

Well, it's like mourning. The risk of mourning, if you lose someone, somebody close to you, there's a syndrome where you stop paying attention to everybody else that was left.

That's true.

Yeah, like you lose a son or you lose a brother. Well, you have other siblings. I'm not being glib.

Yeah, yeah.

You stop paying attention.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's the same in life.

The reaction to losing a loved one should be, fuck, I gotta double cherish the ones in front of me. But the reverse happens sometimes.

And Pedro Almodóvar had said to me, if we can produce a movie for you, And during the kidnapping of my dad, 3 things happened. One is the negotiator, which Jim Cameron hired—

So Jim said, let me— his father was kidnapped for 72 days.

First phone call is, we want $3 million in 3 days, $5 million in 5 days, or we chop his head off. That's the first phone call.

Oh, fuck.

And first third of the kidnapping, I go and hide in a closet, cover my ears, cannot talk while they're talking. Last third of the kidnapping, I negotiate. So, somewhere in the middle, you change. My beard comes off. I have no hair on my face.

And it arrives.

It arrives.

Oh, my goodness.

My mother loses all her hair during the 72 days. All the hair. Eyebrows, hair, everything. But this guy comes in. Jim hires him. People say, oh, he paid the ransom. No, we paid the ransom, but he paid for the negotiator.

And he offered to pay the ransom, right?

He did. He said, I'll get it in cash in a helicopter. I said, Jim—

And I'll be flying the helicopter. I'll go in with Navy SEALs.

Oh my God.

Slow down, slow down, slow down.

He is such a good big brother.

That makes me—

I mean, I obviously, like, respect him so much, but that really makes me respect him as a person.

Although we were in tragedy, I said, look, I don't want you to solve it. We have to solve it.

Yeah.

But what happens is in the first 72 hours, they call back and we say, I think we are able to gather— because my father never gave any of us access to the money.

Nor, I'm sure, told anyone where it's all at.

It was his money. But we couldn't access it at all. Not even— and so I put whatever I had left of Mimic, which was very little because I had paid the debt from Cronks.

Yeah.

That's what we had. So 3 days later, before the negotiator arrives, we say, I think we can gather about $100,000. And they hung up. And we said, oh. And the negotiator arrives and says, what did you say? $100,000. The negotiator says that same day, he's gonna stay between 70 and 75 days, and you screwed He said, because if you can get $100,000 in 3 days, you can get a million in X amount. And so, they're gonna squeeze you. Brutal to know that, but that's the way the experience was.

Can I ask, and maybe this is too personal, is there the moment at the end from a movie where he walks out of somewhere and the money has been placed somewhere?

Well, that's a whole hour, and it's incredibly harrowing. But when people say, oh, you know, you had a great career, I said, no. No, I've survived a career. It's a brutal biography, but people always think where you are is where you've always been.

Sure, sure.

But of course it isn't. And the kidnapping was the same. Many days you would wake up and said, what if he doesn't return?

Well, the protective part of your brain has to be actively also preparing you for that to save you.

When we talk about people that are similar as directors, some visual, some this, The difference is in your experience. I am acutely aware of the spiritual, and I'm acutely aware of pain. That makes a difference. Your images are charged in a different way, and they help you through this. The negotiator says that. He says, what do you do, each of us? And I say, I'm a writer-director. He says, write. Every day, write for 3 to 4 hours every day. I want you— he's kidnapped, not you. You're gonna discipline yourself into sitting down—

This person's special for you.

Oh, well, he was an English agent. He had worked for the Secret Service in England. Fascinating guy.

Yeah.

But he says, you're not kidnapped.

He is.

You're a writer. Write. And what you will be assigned in this first part is you will transfer all the phone calls into dialogue, in English and in Spanish.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

Okay. He kept you busy.

Well, he makes you do what you do, and that helps you find a center. But the other thing that happens then, I start writing 2 things. Monte Cristo, which is about revenge, and The Devil's Backbone. Oh, my gosh. For Pedro. Pedro, during the kidnapping, comes and visits me, and I said, here's what I'm writing. And he says, these are like 3 movies in 1. I said, no, no, no. But I developed The Devil's Backbone and Monte Cristo while my dad is kidnapped.

Were you talking to your dad? Like, how did you know?

A few times. We talked to him only 1 time as proof of life. His first line is, why are you taking so long?

'Cause you know it tells where the money is, motherfucker.

And by the way, we already paid once. And now we have to pay again. They said, now we have enough money, we can wait.

Oh my God.

So they keep him another 30-something days. I'm 62, and now I'm the only one that remembers that. My mother's gone, my dad is gone, my brother's gone.

Do you draw on that often?

Only in whatever little tools you get philosophically to cope with that. But, you know, that's when somebody talks about, oh, you know, you're an artist and you're privileged, and you say, I'm more than that. Well, you're the sum of everything. Don't judge anyone by where they are. Judge how did they get there? What did they learn in the process? What did you go through?

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. So now you go on a run. The Devil's Backbone is incredible.

But even that, for example, comes out 9/10, the next day, 9/11. And you learn, okay, whatever joy you achieved in Toronto Film Festival that day, and you feel like a winner, then life tells you—

Oh, talk about impermanence.

Yes.

There's all this cosmic stuff. You learn at a visceral level how connected all our fates are. I mean, that's the impossible thing for me is how we have been individualized. by machines that have basically worked as narcissistic mirrors. And we are now incapable of understanding that we are all a single-cell unit, whether we like it or not. When you only think of yourself, it's cancer. We have cancer. The key to happiness— Sartre said, hell is the others. Heaven is also the others. If you have kids and you say, I just want their good, you are immediately You know, yes, I'm going through this, but my kids are good. You can always say that. It's like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. It could be worse. It could be raining. There's always that permutation.

Yeah. Okay, I just want to get to pans now because we do Blade II and then Hellboy.

Blade II is a blast.

I would imagine. Wesley, he's an enigma to me.

He's an enigma to me. Well, at one point he said to me, I am unknown.

Ooh!

Really?

Absolutely agree. I wanted to prove how I could handle big action, 'cause part of the myth on Mimic, the Weinsteins were saying, well, he cannot do big movies. And I go, oh, I can't? I'll show you.

Yes.

And Blade was done for about $35, $40 million, plus Wesley's salary. But it was a relatively small movie.

Yes.

And I wanted it to look big, and the action to be very innovative and all that. And he said to me, I have a few rules. He says, I don't do over shoulders.

Oh.

I'll give you 3 setups a day, 4 setups a day, and the rest you do with my body double. I don't care.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And he said, and blah, blah, blah. And I said, I can do all that. Why? Because I know how to shoot makeup effects. So I can shoot a full shot. Like, there's a close-up in the movie that is not Wesley.

You're kidding me.

It's his body double.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a close-up.

I need to rewatch it.

A whole scene.

is not Wesley. And I remember Wesley in the ADR.

I'm shocked he came to ADR.

He came to ADR.

If you don't do overs—

We actually enjoyed each other at the end. We have a couple of big moments.

Sure, sure. How do you deal with confrontation in general?

If it's private, I negotiate. If it's public, I go the whole way very fast.

Oh, okay. If it's in front of everybody—

Oh my God. It's like, okay, now you're not giving me that space? I'm gonna go all the way with you.

Okay.

I am actually good with confrontation. It comes from being Mexican.

Yeah.

Privately and with friends, it's really hard. If you love somebody, then I'm paralyzed. But if you're a star or you're a head of a studio, I go all the way. I don't mind. But privately, I really like to find a point of comfort for both of us.

Yeah. Compromise.

Okay. So, 2006, Pan's Labyrinth. And that's what we're here to talk about because it is, A, the 20-year anniversary.

Yes.

And it's coming out again.

Yeah.

And it's coming out in a bunch of different new formats.

I have color timed it 20 times in the last few months. Oh my goodness. I have color timed it for 3D, color timed it for Barco, color timed it for Dolby Digital, color timed it for 4K.

Wow. What's your stamina through that?

In the last 5, you have about 6 neural points in color where you go, are the highlights clean? Are the blacks saturated and clean? Black or white in an image, the highest point of contrast and the lowest, are easily contaminated. It's very hard to achieve pure whites or pure blacks.

Or pure black, right? Yeah.

So you have— this is a magenta black, this is a cyan white.

I went to a really cool test when I was coloring for a movie I directed, and they were showing Us, people are enamored with 4K, 6K, 8K. Then they show you what's the difference when you control the blacks.

That's it, right?

Like, you could be in 2K with really controlled blacks versus 8K. It's like, oh, well, this looks so much more beautiful.

I mean, look, I tell you, Dolby Digital laser projection is just so incredibly beautiful.

Mind-blowing. Because you can control those so well.

The whites are pure, the blacks are pure. For example, saturation and color. The more you saturate, the richer the black, right? So if you have good blacks, you have perfect color saturation. Ideal. And then you have to be careful. And I work with 2 colors in the spectrum that are very hard: gold and cyan. Incredibly hard.

Why?

Both gold and cyan become green really easy.

As you start manipulating them?

Yeah. Cyan, but you sneeze and it's blue. And cyan, you sneeze and it's Oh. And gold, you sneeze and it's red.

Oh, wow.

And you sneeze and it's yellow.

Yeah.

So you have to constantly be footing that.

So when you're coloring, you're prioritizing your 2 colors the most?

You say, these are the 6 points in the movie that I need to make sure are good. And then you do a full timing 1 or 2 times.

Okay.

Normally, I have to do it because I'm available and I'm right there. And then you have to make sure the audience is experiencing that. This is the most perfect the movie's ever been.

Yeah, so what is it like for you 20 years later to see now visually a version that—

I finally like it.

Oh, wow.

Oh, 'cause you were unsatisfied?

I was always— and there's still one image.

That drives you nuts?

It's horrible. I call it a Seinfeld. I don't do establishing shots. This is establishing shot. So every time it pops up, I go, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah, I hate it.

I hate it.

You can hear Kramer walking in the door.

What happens is it's strong lit. It was the only time— we always, like, when you map out the location and you say, we can shoot here because the sun is behind us, right? Or lateral. You never wanna shoot with the sun in front.

'Cause everything's flat, right?

It's flat, horrible.

There's no—

yeah.

So the sun is frontal on this establishing and this establishing.

Which you don't like. I wanna add this. This is interesting. A lot of times also, your failures, your inconveniences can give birth to something very special.

100%.

So this is true, right? That you mimic— they fucked with you in the edit so much that you being clever were like, were like, from now on, my shots are going to be very long and constructed so it's impossible to get into them.

Yeah, that, or it levels back when my editor called me and said, could you please shut up, count to 3 before saying cut? Because I used to say cut right to the frame. Yeah, cut. Because I didn't want anyone else coming and editing it.

But this is weirdly a gift for you, right?

I have now relaxed. Bradley Cooper helped me relax.

He did? In what way?

Like, no one's gonna fuck with you.

Every day, heresy. I'm gonna say heresy. What if we— I would jive. Yeah, I said, I can jive. The more you can surf and not just play chess, the more both of those disciplines feed on each other.

Yes.

I think that is really good to be rigorous in order to be flexible.

Yeah, like, know it perfectly so you can throw it away.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Is there something better in the distance? If there is, don't be so uptight that you don't see it, but don't be unprepared, 'cause you will lose it. A conversation is working if both sides are listening.

Yes.

Right? And sometimes people show up with a preconceived notion, whether it's an actor or a director. And I've talked to people that have worked or were friends with Kubrick, and yes, he knew most of what he wanted, but then the accident and the lack of importance in delivering a line, he caught it. And he had to extract through process. I think it's the same with every perfectionist. There's a point where you have to have the accident.

Yes, yes, yes. Well, it'll start feeling like AI made it.

That's the point. It's not chemistry, it's alchemy. The key to alchemy, both philosophically and chemically, is you take what is called vile matter and you transform it into sublime matter. If you only juxtapose and permutate which is what a search engine does, things that already happened, you're crisscrossing information, you achieve straight onto the middle.

You bullseye the average.

You never achieve the 1% over there.

Yeah, it's actually incapable. It's not built to do that.

You're reacting with everything you are. You were beaten as a child. You lost your mother when you were 12. You suffered tragedy. You suffered joy. You got drunk at 15. You crashed the car. All this is inside of you taking that decision that day.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that is in there.

It's magic.

It's magic. Let's call it what it is. It's art.

Yeah.

The other thing produces something that didn't vibrate with any experience, no matter how many, because it's not a model. We are part of a living, breathing cosmic experience. And I'm not going woo-woo. This is true of every one of us. And then you vibrate with others. And the way you achieve one solution, the way you stutter in one take and you go, that's the good one!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry I stuttered. That's what made it work.

Yes.

We all live that excitement.

Yeah.

It's a sport. It's a contact sport.

Scorsese's a lovely example of this for us, right? He will often use flawed shots.

And his own flaws.

Yes. So prioritize what he saw in that performance at that moment, right?

And that's why many people, people I respect, are one-take, two-take. I visited Steven into shooting Bridge of Spies, and it informed everything I felt about Shape of Water. Everything. In the couple of days I visited.

Really?

He would orchestrate a shot. He said, do you like it? I go, it's glorious. He says, wait a second. Can I get better? And he goes in and he changes one vector. You enter through the right, you stop right there. And instantly, it's better. And he says, better? I said, much better. But 3 takes. I always was like, oh, I do 12 takes. I started to say, I gotta be able to shoot it. I gotta let it go. Now, when you get the feeling— life is like water, right? Like, if you are like this, how much water are you holding?

Yeah, exactly.

And if you are like this, how much water are you holding? And I think the key to art is you have to feel when you have to do that, when you have to do that.

Exactly. My life experience of that was I had bought an engagement ring for my wife. wife. I had it for a while. I was going to go to a restaurant, or it was the first place I ever said I love you. It was going to be around a certain day that was like a month out. And then it's Christmas night and we're sitting in bed and there's this emotional thing happening. And I just went, oh, I'm going to try to recreate this in a month at a restaurant, but it's now.

Yeah.

And I went and got the wedding ring then, you know, and it was like, all right, no, it's happening Recognize when it's happening.

Einstein said, imagination is better than knowledge, right? More important than knowledge. And also, living the moment as it wants to be, because it wants to be that, is wisdom. It's more important than any of the other things. And the problem is we preconceive so much that we're living not with a living animal, but a piece of taxidermy. Or life becomes taxidermy. Oh, if I don't get this, then it's not— no, no, life is so alive. Well, it's not domesticated. Yeah, it is what it wants to be. Yeah, same with a movie, by the way. I say when people think I'm all you, you, woo-woo, when I say the movie tells you what it wants to be. I paint model kits on Sundays, and there's a point in the coloring where the color tells you— you say, I'm going to paint it white, and then you And how it happens is you let the model and the color talk to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a conversation.

It's a conversation.

Yeah.

Same with life.

But it requires confidence.

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

To let go. I think that requires, I'll be fine, it'll be fine, things will be fine if I let go.

Well, there's a great mantra. No matter what, I'll be okay. Because it's a decision to be okay. I did a 10-day silent retreat.

Oh, wow.

Completely silent. You couldn't make eye contact, you couldn't talk, blah, blah, blah. I learned about meditation, and there was a point where I had my first panic attack. Actually, the key is you are in the panic attack. I never had it for decades. I never had it. And I go, I couldn't recognize it. Yes. But you stay on it and you come out. Whatever you're going through, stay on it. Exactly. The good, the bad, whatever, because it's gonna go.

Yeah. Panic attacks are interesting. I used to get them too. I— yeah, I used to get them often, but I learned like what creates the panic is like, when's it gonna end? When's it gonna end? When's it gonna end? And when you just start to realize like it's going to, but you don't get to decide, then it goes away. It's this fear of it never ending.

It's the Buddhist— the discomfort is the craving for a different state of being.

That's exactly right.

Discomfort is acceptance of it. Yeah, yeah, this is me right now.

The problem is not the lack lacking is the wanting.

Yes, exactly.

Yes, yes. I don't have— that's the problem, not the having. But you know what you're describing exactly? That's life. When is it gonna end? It will.

Yeah, yeah.

Just give it time.

Not on your time schedule, probably.

You know, everybody that dies had the laundry to pick up. Everybody that dies went, oh, I was gonna go to the dentist.

Not anymore, buddy. I have a question about Pan's Labyrinth because it was quite celebrated. Obviously, you were nominated for 6 Oscars. You won You got a 22-minute standing ovation, which is the longest in history at Cannes.

At Cannes, it still holds the record.

Yes.

In international festivals, it got broken this year. In Venice, it got 25, one film. But in Cannes, it still holds. It was really surprising. I mean, they programmed us the last day of the festival. Most journalists had gone.

Oh, wow.

We were expecting the movie to just play. And in France, the audiences are very silent. At the end, like, if a movie is not playing, you hear the seats pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, 'cause they make it a point to get up and make the seat—

They want you to know, I'm walking out.

They want you to know, I'm walking out.

Yeah, yeah.

But they don't react to the movie. Like, American audiences are, woo! Wow!

Don't get in there!

Get out! Run! Yeah, yeah. Mexican audience is also very silent. But in France, all of a sudden, in the middle of the movie, people starting to ooh and aah. And when she cuts his mouth in the middle of the movie, they gave it a huge ovation. And I thought, this is landing differently.

I have many questions about this.

Yeah.

And when I imagine being in this situation, I think I would love the first 3 minutes.

Yes.

I would feel so validated and loved.

And then at about the 5-minute marker, I might think, you don't know what to do.

When is this going to end? And everyone's looking at me. And to know that there was 17 more minutes back to Seinfeld. This is an episode of Seinfeld.

Yeah, this is a commute.

What literally— what goes through— what's the real-time visceral experience like? Do you get self-conscious? Then do you move past that? Are there waves of accepting it and rejecting it?

It's very uncomfortable at some point. And Alfonso Cuarón, who no matter what I tell him, it's not necessary, Alfonso, to tell the truth all the time. Yeah, but Alfonso 100% true. He's doing it. Yeah, he does it. He's brutal. And he noticed, and he said, let it in. Take it in, pal. Don't fight it.

It would be hard not to fight.

I'm not very good with too much praise. Alfonso said that, and I was able to— it was also surreal. And then it didn't show up almost anywhere. because most people had left. So it was like, if a tree falls in the forest... But then eventually, it trickled out, and Thierry, the head of the festival, said it got the longest-standing ovation in the history of the festival, and that got picked up. But the first review was not a good review.

Really?

Really? I think the headline, I may be wrong, it was like, this ain't Blade II.

Oh, my.

Okay.

Okay, that's a take.

It could go either way. We need to know how that person feels about Blade II to begin with.

For example, when Alejandro Alfonso and I are doing gonna open a movie. There's always trepidation. We always say, look, Alfonso is very, very wise, and he's very worldly in certain ways, but he's tough. But he says, if you make a bad movie and you win a few awards, is it not a bad movie anymore? I said, and if you make a good movie and you don't get any awards, is it a bad movie? We live and die by our latest record in this industry.

Yes.

And then, you know, the best place to be is when you say, say, whatever happens, I'll be okay. Like, I don't need any more reaffirmation. The only thing you do is, did I do it my way?

Do you like it?

Did I get the thing in my head out in the way I'm proud of it?

That's exactly right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I make the thing I wanted to see?

That's it. I mean, they always say, well, how do you choose the movie? I say, the one nobody else would do is the one I do, even if it's Blade II or Hellboy.

Your career is definitely defined by I think it's so exciting because so many people have not seen Pan's Labyrinth 20 years ago.

On screen, certainly. Right.

And then now, so not only obviously the visual of it has changed in ways, what are you finding for you that's shocking about, let's say, watching it in 3D? Like, what is new or exciting to you?

Well, when I did Pacific Rim, I quite pointedly, my first thought thought was really silly. I said, I wish I could go back and do Pan's in 3D.

Oh, no kidding.

Because the posterization was so good, and I felt I could make the fantasy world a little deeper and the real world a little more shallow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, I didn't own the movie. I couldn't control it. I couldn't spend the money to do it. Nobody would. So I thought, well, out of my head. Then it took me 15 years to buy Pan's Labyrinth Wow. I got it back. And the first thing is, I want to try and do it in 3D. Yes.

So cool.

I'm so excited to see it.

Me too.

The thing with, uh, 3D, if you use it creatively, if you actually are supplementing the story with that, and the experience is deeper, then it's worth it. And we did it very pointedly with the same company that we did Pacific Rim, and we did it by the same manual old human method. I mean, there are shortcuts now with AI and all this. And I said, it's my money. I want to spend more money and do it with a person making that decision than a machine or an algorithm.

I just want to do 4 minutes on Frankenstein because I had the most glorious experience with Frankenstein, which is, unfortunately, I think Jacob Elordi overshadowed What? You— I didn't know you made that movie. I knew there was a Frankenstein movie coming out with Jacob Elordi.

Oh, thank God.

We were at a friend's house and they're like, let's watch this. I heard it was good. And I'm like, okay, I'll give it a shot. And from the second it starts, I go, oh, someone very special is behind this movie. The imagery immediately is so overwhelming. that I went, this has to be Guillermo. Like, I didn't know that was you.

It's such a fingerprint.

It's such a— it makes me emotional what you achieved visually with that movie. It's so mind-blowing that I wanted to ask you, do you think you're a painter?

Nah.

What do we think?

How do I—

how do I understand why you're able to create images in the way you do?

I'm visually extremely disciplined. But by this, I also say I am joyful in the creation of images. I think 80% of the communication with an audience is not verbal. Meaning we have the play, that's one thing, the screenplay. But we have the audiovisual screenplay. And that you code in colors, shapes, light, is nonverbal. And most of the movie is submerged in that.

But the pleasure of consuming the image, it's very rare that you are aware of the pleasure you're getting you're receiving just looking at this composition.

Yeah.

It's so powerful and soothing.

It comes from painting.

Yeah.

It comes from me studying the painters as a kid with that Encyclopedia of Art and learning what a difference it made when the Romantic school of painting— what is it trying to achieve? The Symbolists, what are they trying to achieve? Why is it important a small painting like The Origin of the Why is it important to paint peasants eating potatoes, which was not academically acceptable before? And understanding that from a really early age, you became what you ate, but also in a way that favors communication where you say, I love Jack Kirby, right? I love, uh, Steve Ditko. I love all the comic book artists, but I also love Manet, Monet, Courbet, and having the same balance. value. So you say, okay, I'm gonna entertain and surprise. But also, it's a pulse. Every image either relaxes you or takes you to a wow, gives you tension. If you make every image equally important, you're not doing your job right. You have to know when you want people to lean in and when you want them to lean back.

Yeah, back to the ebb and flow of life. The ebb and flow has to exist.

So you design it like You have an overture. Yeah.

And we slow down and we take a breath. We regroup. You have to have a largo, an allegro, an allegro non troppo.

You have to make it symphonic because the aspiration of a movie is to be like music, to transport you.

Music has this miraculous quality, which is it seems to enter you.

It's the highest art form, in my opinion, music. And when any of the other forms achieves a little bit that musical, uh—

Magic.

Yeah. I mean, I always say, look, Orpheus, Yes. Got Eurydice out because he was a musician. Almost got her out. He didn't. He failed at the end. But I'm saying, if he was a movie director, both would be in hell from the start. He would say, listen to me, I need 120 people and a few million dollars to show you my art. And the musician just grabs an instrument, and even no instrument, and just the human voice. This is what you come at the end of the discussion about art. The only treasure you have is a voice, and each of us have a voice.

Yeah.

And each of us have one song, one song you sing. And when you hear the right voice sing the right song—

Like, what is language? Language is this tool we use to get this thought in my head into your head. And then music somehow is this fast pass of like, let me give you the emotion in my heart. Let me open my mouth and let this noise out, and you can feel my emotion. That's like—

But even when you talk about language, that's the magical thing about language. I write— English is my second language.

Which is mind-blowing to me. I can only imagine how smart you sound in Spanish.

Which means that by the time I talk to you, I already thought it, proved it, converted it, checked the syntax.

I can't believe it.

And then said it in less than a second. So I value the language so much. I value the precision of the term. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the next to right is the difference between the lighting bug and lining.

Yeah.

There is so much music in the language. Oh, what a power.

Yeah.

The alliterations, the rhythm of the consonants, the way consonants are music. And when the voice is right, I mean, they can say Orson Welles.

Right. Who cares what he's saying?

Who cares? You're in a soup can. Yeah. It's like I used to joke about the guy in the trailers ordering a pizza. I want a pizza. A double pepperoni.

And now...

But that's the thing. We all have the human voice. Please, let's not lose it. That's all I have to say about art. Please don't make it about an image or a sound. It's the human voice. Can we understand that if we lose our voice, we all are something not human? I mean, whatever the hell will stand in our future on 2 legs, if we lose the human voice, that thing, no matter how wealthy, no matter how full of comforts, that thing is not going to be a human being. Can we all understand the stakes? Don't short things that can divide us. That's the magic of the human voice.

Okay, last thing, I promise, on Frankenstein. I want to applaud him publicly. I think the Oscar Isaac performance is among the best Incredibly complex. One of the most vanity-free performances I've ever seen.

I agree with you.

It's so beautifully unvain. I don't know what else to say.

Unselfconscious.

Unselfconscious. Total lack of vanity. And I want to know, did he arrive like that? Did you guys work to be that? What happened there that's so special?

First of all, thank you. And I'm gonna say, actors is like magicians or comedians. You know when you did the pause at the right place, right?

Yeah.

But you also know when you did not filter it through vanity, when you were completely in danger.

Let me show you the ugliest version of myself.

The most vulnerable. I mean, that performance is A, incredibly hard to deliver. Yes, it is. B, perfectly delivered.

Yeah.

It does what it needs you to experience.

It's a master doing it.

It is a master performance from this guy. We had a great time. We had a great talk. He is my brother. He's one of my brothers in life. I adore him. I said to him, look, I've been Victor and I've been the creature. And I said, I've been the worst and I've been the most vulnerable. And the fact that we are paradoxical beings, if you are the actor and I'm the visionary director, we cannot deliver this movie. I said, you have to be a flawed motherfucker and I have to come to you and say, I don't know. And I have to come in and say, we are fucked up.

We gotta figure this out.

I said, so the next few months, I gotta tell you everything I've done wrong in life, and you have to tell me everything you've done wrong in life. And we have to come in as imperfect as we can to this movie, because the rest I already took care of.

Everything visually has been—

You and I are gonna have to fluctuate, and we We achieved something that made us very vulnerable. And there was a moment in that movie where my entire bottom as a human being fell through. We were connected. I could see him from the other side of the room, and I would go, and he goes—

Oh, amazing.

What an experience you got to share with a human on Earth. Incredible.

I knew when he didn't know, and I knew when he knew. Yeah, yeah.

You were one being.

One being.

Yeah.

And that is, to this day, the best experience I've ever had.

Oh, it's so obvious. It's so obvious something very, very special happened.

Some movies are brawlers and they take care of themselves. This movie was a brawler. Like, losing the actor for the creature 9 weeks or so before we start shooting—

I didn't even know that happened.

I was not afraid. I said, something better is coming. And I talked to Jacob and I see him on the Zoom. I said, that's the guy.

Yeah, yeah, he's incredible in it as well.

on 2 takes, 3 takes with that guy max. Yeah. And the direction was simple.

He is a monster. I mean, he's a beautiful monster. But I was on a red carpet at like the Golden Globes, and I turned around and I just was in his chest, right? And I'm a large man. And I go, oh my God, you're glorious. This is literally my first words to him. I'm like, you're glorious.

He's stunning.

Like, he takes your breath away.

Yeah. There was never a question about the makeup. There was never a question about how much of me is gonna show up. It just went in. Then, you know, whatever happens— like, for example, I worked with Mia Goth, who's completely instinctual.

She's riveting.

She's riveting because I never knew what was gonna happen in the day. But she's real. The 2 realest actors I've worked with are Sally Hawkins and her. You didn't know, and all of a sudden, you were— Cut!

And I'm guessing, too, you don't even want to be a part of whatever's happening. Like, just I just— I don't ever want to fuck up this thing that's happening.

I remember, for example, in the scene between her and him, we had the butterfly on the table, and in the 3rd take, she drops down and talks to the butterfly. She decided that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had her holding it like Hamlet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she just dropped down to the level of the butterfly. And the next take, I went down with the camera. I said, let's be prepared.

Yeah, yeah.

I opened myself. I said, I have to know a little. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, I gotta light it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she— the first day, I said, well, this is your mark. And I'm very precise with the camera normally.

Yes.

I said, this is your mark. You're gonna stop here, and I'm gonna do a mini master. And she says, what is a mini master? And why do I have to stand there? I knew this was coming from purity.

Right.

You're not ego. It's not an ego. And she said, why don't we shoot it and see what happens? And I go, yeah, why not?

Ah, very freeing.

I mean, there was a countdown. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then he went, yeah, why not? Yeah. Okay, when does Pans come out?

Pans Labyrinth comes out on my birthday, October 9th.

Happy birthday! Okay, wonderful. I will be watching it in 3D. Guillermo, it's such an enormous honor to get to chat with you.

It was fun.

I just really feel lucky.

Sometimes we have singers who come in and they'll sing, and sometimes we're like, how is this our job to be here?

Yeah, Marcus Mumford sitting there screaming at us.

Yes.

With his guitar.

In the zone with them. And like, that's how I feel getting to look at them.

Amazing.

But isn't that amazing? What's happiness? We do what we love in whatever moment. And it doesn't have to be the moment of acting or the moment of directing, but our life is aligned up with our joy.

Yeah, that's a special—

That's a blessing.

It is.

Oh, well, what a blast.

Yes.

Thank you, everyone.

And I didn't drink the liquid death. Oh, no.

You can take it with you.

There's a great rule to directing. If you drink, you pee. If you pee, you live. Oh, never leave the set.

I like that.

All right, well, be well. Thanks for coming in.

Thank you. Bye-bye, guys.

He's an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here, she's gonna let him have the facts.

I just went peed and my underwear's on backwards. So—

Backwards?

Yep.

Not inside out?

Backwards.

Aren't your underwear generally bigger in front than in back?

Uh-huh.

Don't you really notice the up front having—

apparently not.

Apparently not.

Did you correct it or you're like, this is—

No, I didn't have time. You— so I left it.

I see. You were sitting on the commode and you look down and you're like, oh, those are backwards.

Exactly.

And then you're like, but fucking who has—

What am I gonna do, take off my shoes, my pants? I have a belt on.

I don't know that you'd have to take your shoes off to take your pants off.

It— trust me. I could, but it would take a lot of thought.

Okay.

And they're slippery shoes. It would come off anyway.

Wow, you committed. There's no physical discomfort though?

No, I mean, it's a comfy— it's a, it's a thong.

Sure. So now it's—

It's not a string. It's, it's not a— what do they call that even? I don't even know what that's called anymore.

String bikini.

It's not a G-string. I would notice if it was a G-string.

Okay, right. And it was Yeah, maybe the—

I also think maybe these are a little stretched out.

Okay, the elasticity has seen better days.

So like, it's probably covering up more than it should.

Okay, okay, great.

This leads me to—

But the back doesn't feel like, um, cumbersome and bound up? Like, you don't feel like you have a bunch of fabric back there?

No, because it's still a small amount of fabric in the front, you know?

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

So this leads me to the fact that I did I did not fast math. Well, I maybe I did fast math, which is why it was too fast. Incorrect. Yes. Where I thought I was starting my period this past Monday. It's Wednesday.

We had, in fact, we had a guest that's coming out.

I know.

Where a good chunk of the interview is talking about your different phases and you were completely on, you were talking outta your ass on that one.

I was.

In retrospect.

I was. And I, and I, maybe we were in the same phase. I don't even know.

Yeah.

But I thought I was about to start my period. I did. And I, I'm not— nah, it's—

would you ever use—

upcoming Monday.

Like the app I now have, Flow?

I had it for a little bit.

And you're like, uh, yeah. I have an open mind since that plane ride, if I'm being honest. I should.

I should. Since that plane ride?

When I first started using it. When I discovered I had already made the meal I was supposed to make.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um. Day 1 of having the app.

Well, you can tell people they don't know what's going on. It's not out yet. You have Flow.

Yes, I have Flow for partners. So I, I, I, in theory, know what my partner is going through.

Yeah, I actually, I think that's so, for one, like smart. Yeah. 2, it's very sweet. It's that you care to know what's going on with your partner. Yeah. I recommend this for people in partnerships.

Yeah. Yeah, I do too.

I asked if you, if like there was an ability, like a Google Calendar where you had a lot of people. So you had your partner, you had You have both of your teenage girls. You have me, all the women you have to deal with on a daily basis. That's what I need.

I actually need like the AI version that's like, you should make up a reason to go out of town these 36 hours. That's never how it should be used.

Nope.

No, stick around and enjoy.

It's just like, make us all dinner on our days. That'd be fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, but anyway, so I think the backwards underwear has to do with my face.

Impending.

Yeah.

Okay.

But I was so dumb.

Well, you're also very chipper though.

I know, but now I'm—

I thought that.

I was like, have I done bad math again? Is it 2 weeks away? Because normally I'm not in so great of a mood. I have pretty bad PMDD. Um, that's an intense version of PMS, and I think I have it.

Double Virgo.

Double Ds. Yeah, double Ds.

Double Virgos. Yeah, you like things in doubles.

I do, I do. I do. Um, so I'm normally— I can tell because I'm very easily agitated.

Yeah. Well, though, and I don't want this to sound, um, insulting, let me back up and say, do you remember the great guests we had that 30% of all medical issues are psychosomatic, right? That we learned that 30% of people with seizures don't have epilepsy, 30% of people with heart attacks don't have heart disease, that it's kind of a Uh-huh. So just acknowledging we're very, very prone to psychosomatic conditions. Do you think any element of it is psychosomatic?

So you didn't need to say that. Oh, because I was gonna say that.

Oh, okay. Oh, here it is.

Oh, um, no, because I was gonna say, well, 2 things. One, I am in a good mood. Yeah, for the most part.

Chipper, I'd say.

Spring to your step.

And that worries me a little that I'm not doing math.

Still not?

Yeah, I'm not doing math correctly. But also what it did tell me was that, yeah, some of it might be in your head 'cause you're expecting it. But I was in a very good mood last week.

Right.

And I said to myself, I'm like, I don't have that anymore.

Right. So you're ready to, you're happy to shed it.

Yeah. I was like, oh, I must not have, that's gone away.

Yeah.

But I did have a few other things, like my back was hurting. These are all—

I think this is the way in which it could manifest itself psychosomatically, which is you have a bit of irritability and then you go, oh, here we go. Right? Like, it's here. Whereas that might have just been an acute moment of irritability. But certainly if you're like, here we go, I do think you're then really noticing things that are irritating you, perhaps.

But then the, um, you know, the backwards underwear is very pre-period.

That's a tell.

Yeah, you're dropping stuff. I don't understand. I spill a lot.

Clumsy.

Get real clumsy.

PMSCC.

PMS clumsy clumsy.

Clumsy clumsy. Crazy clumsy. Yeah.

So, um, that's what's going on with me.

I went to a concert last night.

Oh my God. CC.

Yeah.

How was it?

Yeah. And I try not to name drop, but this feels like like it would be insane not to name drop.

So what is it?

I went to see Jack White with Jack Black.

Oh, no way!

How great is that?

That's great. Are they best friends?

Well, did you see the SNL that they did last year? It's among the most impressive things I've ever seen. It's Jack Black, he's hosting SNL, and Jack White is the musician now.

I love this.

So he does a version of Seven Nation Army, but walking through the green room, talking to cast members, then comes out on stage, then collides with Jack White, and then they let it fucking rip. It's impressive on 20 levels.

Wow.

The comedy is happening, the improv is happening, the synchronicity of the song is happening.

Wow.

There's a couple of people in the world that can do what Jack Black did in that bit.

He's so talented.

So fucking talented.

If you missed that episode, go back in the archives.

We did interview him.

Great app.

So then Wabi Wab was nice enough to connect me with tickets.

Great.

So I then reach out to Jack Black. Now, this is the second time this has happened in my life. So one time, as you might recall, I invited Matthew McConaughey to a stand-up performance at this arena on a date, basically.

Andrew Schultz.

Yes, Andrew Schultz. And we went and it was embarrassing because like I had gotten tickets, but of course like he had built the arena, like he had helped design the arena. So then he's like, well, yeah, we could totally do your thing, or we could go sit in this box, blah blah blah. So it's just kind of funny, like I invited him and I was like, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So similar thing happened, which is I was like, oh, I know Jack likes Jack White. I have 2 tickets. Um, I don't know who to go with on Tuesday night. So I invited him and he was like, uh, yeah, okay, great. Let's, um, we'll ride there. So he rides an electric motorcycle, which is fantastic. So he showed the— I mean, maybe the highlight of the night was him and I riding around on motorcycles to go to this show, just chatting at every stoplight. It was so fun. But of course, like, and again, major blessings to Wabi Wabi. He had hooked me up. I was gonna get very nice treatment. But then I arrived with Jack Black, and then it was like, as we're coming in the parking lot, it's just like everyone there knows to instruct him to go there.

He goes to shows there all the time. He has a special parking spot. We don't— nothing. Like, you just go anywhere you want. You want to sit on Jack White's lap? Like, you name it.

So, so you didn't end up sitting in the seats you got?

No. And I got to sit on the stage with Jack Black.

On the stage?

Yeah, just stage right, like where the guitar tech is working on the guitars and stuff.

Backstage side stage?

Yes, stage right. And then also I get to meet Jack White because I'm with Jack Black.

Oh, fun.

It was so fun. It was so fun. And then as Wobbly Wob and I were just discussing it. Jack White is so worth seeing in your lifetime. But what he does with this guitar is almost really beyond description. He's doing something much, much different than just— he's like, he's forming a piece of metal into something, right? There's like, he's at war with this fucking guitar and he just manhandles it in this way that is just really wild. I don't think I've ever— anyone's seen anyone live play guitar like he was doing.

Wow. That's awesome. He's from Michigan.

You know, John C. Reilly Um, is in the video for Archbishop, one of my favorite songs, one album ago. What's the name of that song, YB1? Archbishop Harold Holmes. Harold Holmes. Archbishop Harold Holmes. And it's about a preacher, right? And I didn't even know this, but John C. Reilly, I had seen the video. John C. Reilly did a video of him in a church as a preacher to that song.

Okay.

Well, John C. Reilly was there last night, and then I found out from him, he just made that video. That wasn't like a request.

Fun.

He just want— he loved the song so much he wanted to make a video. Yeah, so he was right there in his garb from the video.

Oh, preacher's garb.

Yes, yes. Well, this cute top hat and stuff.

Sure.

I don't know if you call it—

we're not supposed to call it that, but yeah, yeah, but I know what you mean.

Wait, I think it was a top hat.

No, I'm saying because whatever he's wearing is not—

yeah, it's not a top. Yeah, he didn't look like Abel.

To me it's more of a chef's hat looking—

Stovepipe hat, maybe they call it.

Maybe.

Stove top. Anyways, it was a lot of fun.

Fun.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

You were out in the world.

I was out in the world, and I really, um, I really like that Jack Black so much. He's, he's such a sweet boy.

Yeah, I like him a lot too.

Okay, my other story—

Oh.

Is— oh, back to back, 2 stories.

Oh my gosh.

Well, I'm happy to hear another one of your stories.

You go, and I, I have more, but nothing— Oh, tell me yours.

Okay, well, so, um, we don't have any air conditioning, like, period. Everything has been ripped out of the house.

Yeah, this is— and, and for people who don't know, it's still very hot in LA.

Oh, in the 90s. It's— we're in a heat wave and it's getting even worse this week. It's getting— whoa, did you get a fly? Oh, oh, a gnat.

Listen, there's—

And now you're scratching your elbow kind of uncontrollably.

We'll get to this.

Okay, okay, okay, go on. So we have no air conditioning.

No air conditioning.

Bella's in Paris.

Mm-hmm.

And the girls and I go to bed night one with no air conditioning. And we're on the second floor and it's, you know, it's warm. It's warm up there.

Yeah.

It's very warm.

Yep.

And so we all start in my room and we're— I'm just laying, you know, with pajama bottom pants, no shirt, no sheet, anything. I'm just laying—

Is your underwear on correctly or backwards?

I'm in my, um, pajama pants. Oh, so you don't wear underwear with your pajama pants? I find that disgusting.

You don't? Okay.

I don't think anybody does.

Of course.

No, that's what jammy— I don't think men wear underwear with their jammy bottoms.

Are you serious?

Yes.

Rob?

Yeah, I wear underwear under it.

Okay.

You fucking prude.

No, I think he's in the majority.

Are you afraid you're gonna get a boner in the middle of the night? I also never wear pajama bottoms. Well, that's different. When I didn't wear pajama pants, I wore boxers to bed.

Yeah.

Oh, but if you wore pajama pants, you put fucking underwear on under them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because you're throwing it on if it's like cold. And then do you leave your underwear on in a massage?

Yeah, a lot of people do.

Okay, listen, I was told I'm supposed to by bitches before. By my mom recently. No, recently she's like, leave your underwear on.

Listen, I also leave— I'm 50/50 on leaving underwear on in a massage. I sometimes do, I sometimes don't. But also, I wear pajama pants all the time, constantly, and I'm wearing underwear.

But your underwear are way smaller than my underwear. Although your nighttime underwear might be bigger.

You've never seen my underwear. My nighttime underwear is huge.

They're knickers.

Yeah.

My knickseys. Where was I? Okay, so.

It was hot.

Lincoln's particularly hot, and, and, and I think she gets it in her head she's not gonna be able to sleep. And she's like me, right? So she's a little bit prone to this psychosomatic— yeah, whatever you call insomnia, right? She had a real bad year. She got over it, thank God. I thought she was never gonna get over it, but anyway, she got over it. But I, I could just feel that she got in, in her head that she was not gonna be able to sleep. So she's already on Pinzanido I do fall asleep and then I hear, Dad, stop snoring.

And I'm like, am I not?

And of course I'm like, I bet I'm not. I bet she's so easily agitated because she already can't go to sleep.

But didn't you say you've been snoring lately and that's why you're doing the sleep test and stuff?

Yeah, but now I have a spray I'm using that I thought— I am not a trustworthy witness because I didn't witness it. Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

I was asleep.

You're unreliable.

All to say, though, So, okay, sorry, I'll sleep on my side. How does one not snore? It's not like I chose to snore in the first place. I know.

That's what's like my snoring.

So now I've been woken up, and now it takes me another 15 minutes to fall back asleep. And then as soon as I get to sleep, he's like, Dad, brother. And I'm like, oh my God, I can't. What are we going to do? I'm like, okay, mind you, we were in my room because it was the coolest of the 3 options.

Yes.

So I go, fine, I'll leave, I'll leave. So now I'm like crumbling. I go into Delta's room, which is like 750 degrees, and I lay down on that bed and it takes me about 45 minutes to fall asleep in there. So now we're at about midnight, I'd say, that I'm going to bed. Gotta wake up at 6. 1:30 AM, because unbeknownst to me, and I don't know if Lincoln And now Delta's snoring was bothering her, or she just was like, it's too hot in here. She went out to the guest house.

Smart.

Yes, because that does have air conditioning.

I don't know why you guys—

We should have started that, but absolutely stupid. Okay, so she's left. Delta was asleep when I left. So Delta wakes up at 1:30 in the morning and nobody's in the room.

Sure.

Additionally, a couple spooky things happened by Delta. Delta got convinced earlier when we were just in Delta's room and we were listening to a book on tape. She went in the hallway and Frank wasn't in his little bed, the dog. And she got convinced that someone had moved Frank out of his bed onto the hallway. And I said, well, hon, Frank would have barked if a stranger—

Definitely.

But she had it in her mind a little bit that something spooky was already happening.

Oh no.

Then she wakes up in a room and no one's there anymore.

She hated that.

So at 1:30 in the morning, after I finally fall asleep, all of a sudden, lights full blast are on in her bedroom. And now I'm up.

She's crying. Oh, she's crying.

She's scared. She's like, she woke up in a room and no one was there. She went to bed and there were people there. There's a ghost in the house moving Frank. And so I'm like, oh my God, this is badness. Now it's 1:30, and we lay there for 45 minutes, and it's just too hot in that room now. And I said, do you want to go back? And all to say, by the time we got in my bedroom and we went to sleep. It was like 3 AM. It was madness. It was total chaos from 9 PM till 3 in the morning. Was crazy.

Bad.

Yeah, barely made it through yesterday.

But you did.

And then when it's time to go see the concert, I'm like, I should be so excited to see the concert, but I would love to go to sleep right now. Yeah, but I rallied.

And you're happy about it?

I'm happy about it.

Speaking of sleep, yeah, I I am convinced there's a bug in my ear.

Okay.

How did you— And I think he got in there in the night.

Okay.

And I can't get him out. 'Cause my ear is so itchy.

Uh-huh.

And, like, in a strange— it's in a strange way. Like, very, very, very itchy. I used a Q-tip to see if I could get any legs out.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. It, I think, just pushed him further in or something.

Okay.

Okay. Also likely, potentially, when I was like itching it a ton, I irritated it. And so now it's just itching because it's all irritated.

Yeah, sounds highly likely.

Ugh.

Versus a bug.

But also, but then, so I was like, is it possible? But I really don't want to go to urgent care. I don't want to like go deal with this. I just want him to come out, you know?

Can you put a little food on the, uh—

No!

Yeah, put a little food on the edge of your earlobe to draw him out to eat.

A little piece of cheese.

Yeah, whatever they eat. Maybe another dead— maybe a dead gnat. Glue it to your earlobe to lure him out to feast on it, and then he'll get stuck in the glue. Hope you woke up and there's like— there's 6 or 7— there's tons of bugs all over your ear, and then you wouldn't know if they just came from around the room or out of your ear.

I wouldn't.

You'd probably end up attracting some to live in your ear.

I know. Ew, God.

What about light? Does light do anything? Like, could you shine a light at night?

I know, but I can't.

I don't think you have them.

Ah, like nothing's coming. Nothing's coming out. And, um, but once you think something's in your ear, it is really—

It's a racket. It is.

It's like crazy-making. Yeah. Um, and I—

And that's bled over to your elbow, is that what you're about to say?

Oh no, there's just mosquitoes all over this fucking city and I'm all bit. I hate that. Oh, but you know what was fun? So I went— this is not gonna— I always— I praise Cara. I love Cara.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cara does sometimes have mosquitoes.

Well, it's outdoor.

Oh, I'm talking about inside.

Okay.

I think, I don't remember.

Is there a water feature in there that they're breeding in or something?

Not inside, but right outside there is a little pond.

Well, there is outdoor eating, so maybe the doors are opening and closing so much.

Yeah. I think doors are opening and closing. There is a water feature outside that I wish they'd take out. They're doing their best, but for some reason there's a lot of mosquitoes. Last year— this is a thing, this isn't just this year. And so last year I used to come with all those bracelets.

Oh yeah, bug repellent bracelets.

Yeah, I used to keep them in my car and then I would just cover myself.

Well, this is actually an advertisement for Qatar because if it's, you know, if you have to deal with mosquitoes and you still want to go, it's a testament to what a great place it is.

It really is. But this year I bought a spray, uh, because I did research and it said DEET, the pop— the, the chemically popular one that is fine. I'm fine. I want to use it. Like, I want to use this.

I love DEET. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but I read in an article that it does have the same effectiveness as this other thing that's like more natural, which I don't trust, but it said percentage-wise it's the same as DEET.

Okay.

So I got that.

Yeah.

And I've been bringing that with me to car and spraying it all over.

Like you're going camping.

Yeah, it is. I was spraying it, and it's strong. Like, it smells really strong. One time I was with Anna and I was like, you need this, and I just sprayed it at her and she hate— she really hated that.

She's part mosquito. That's what you found out.

I never even thought about that.

Yeah, she might be part mosquito.

Oh my God. Okay, this is a good way for me to test.

Yeah, it's like vampires. Yeah, put garlic everywhere and see if they react poorly.

She was more upset because she thought maybe it got in her What?

I'm allergic to garlic.

And you stay up a lot at night.

I prefer.

Oh.

Oh yeah.

How do you like the taste of blood?

Fine.

I don't know. Anyway, um, so yesterday I was at Cara editing and I had my mosquito spray and I—

This is hilarious to bring mosquito spray to a restaurant. Really?

I sprayed it all over. Um, and—

What if they had it next to the toothpicks at like the host stand?

No. So they— he— the bartender did come up to me before I took my spray out and he said, just so you— if you want any of this mosquito spray. He said, it can get really bad. He's like, it's been kind of— people have been getting bit. So I bought this. And I was like, well, not to worry. I have my own. I know this isn't a great endorsement, but it, it, it, as you said, you know.

Like when you went to a restaurant and they said, would you like bear spray? Because sometimes bears are in the restaurant. They do come in sometimes.

Listen, okay, this gets a little crazier. So I spray it all over and then I look over, someone's come in and it's still early-ish. And it's Leslie Bibb.

Oh, great.

Who I've never met.

Yeah, not a friend of the pod.

Yet she should be.

Yes, her partner is.

Exactly. So she's sitting next to me and I never do this. I don't— again, not really in keeping with my PMS, PMDD, but I was feeling friendly.

Yeah, frisky.

Yeah. I was like, hey, I have this mosquito spray, um, if you want it, because there are a ton of them. I said, because there are, there are mosquitoes in here. And she was like, wait, what?

Of course.

She was like, there are mosquitoes. And then she was like, why? What's happening in Los Angeles?

Why can't we have butterflies instead? Like, that would be way better.

Oh, I know.

Replace them with butterflies.

Butterflies. She was like, what's going on with Los Angeles and mosquitoes? And I was like, I know it's horrible, but just if you want it. And so I put it there. She sprayed it on herself and she was like, thank you. And I said, I'm Monica. And she said, oh, hi, I'm Leslie. And I said, I do Armchair Expert.

Interview you.

Yeah. I said, I do Armchair Expert with Dax. We interviewed your sweet partner. And she was like, oh my God, yes. She was like, I know you. She was like, and then she brought up something I specifically said on that episode.

Which was?

Which was Sam Rockwell, for people who don't remember, uh, talked about how he went on safari. You guys were talking about going on safari.

Yeah, yeah.

And he said, you know, like, you were both so alert and aware of all the animals.

Oh yeah, man-eaters everywhere.

Yeah, you, you guys were so aware, and he was like laughing because she was like, Leslie's, Leslie's just sitting there so calm, not, not thinking twice. And I said, yeah, because she lives in a world where she's used to predators. You don't. And he told her that when he got home. He was like, I've been thinking about this. And, and, and so she brought that up and she thought it was really good.

Nice.

Um, so I liked that. And anyway, we started chatting for so long. And so I love her and I want to invite her on the pod.

Okay. Did either of you buy each other's No.

Okay.

She was about to have a meet, like a—

Meeting.

A meeting. So we just chatted until her lunchtime.

Did you eavesdrop on the meeting to see what project she's about to do?

No, I wanted to, but—

Yeah, of course.

I had work to do.

Okay.

So my headphones were in.

Sure. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

It was a fun meet cute.

Yeah.

All because of mosquitoes, really.

This makes me think Kristin was just on a flight home. I don't think I should out them because I don't know if it's public knowledge, but she was on a flight home from Paris and she saw a mutual friend.

Oh.

Friend of the pod.

Oh.

Who is flying home from White Lotus.

Max?

Yeah.

Is that public knowledge?

Yeah. No, it's public knowledge he's in White Lotus.

Oh, then Max. I don't know. I don't want to ruin it. I got so happy he's gonna be on the new season.

Oh, you didn't know? No, I didn't know that. It's a big— it's so exciting.

Yeah, I don't really follow much casting news, I guess.

Yeah.

Can't wait. Love Max.

I can't wait for the next season. Obviously he should come on.

You know, I'd like to be on White Lotus.

Me too.

Yeah.

Let's— we've said it here.

You've heard it here from our lips to the—

to Mike White's. You could convince your friends with— or, you know, Mike White. You've worked with him.

I have worked with Mike White. I don't think that gives me an edge, but I have worked with Mike White. I love Mike White. I'll say that.

I love him.

Yeah. I don't know if he loves me, but I love him. I love him.

Listen, I'm really— I'm not jealous of you of anything, but I'm jealous of you for that, getting to work with him.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was in an actor-to-actor capacity. It wasn't something had written. That would be different.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just 2 actors.

Oh, I thought— oh, I must be thinking of something. Then I'm not jealous anymore.

Yeah, there you go.

Anywho, so speaking of white men—

Oh, right. White Lotus, white men.

Max is white.

He is.

Um, attractive. Speaking of attractive white men—

That's better.

No, and it is part of So I started watching Traitors.

Which I don't know about Traitors.

Oh, Dax, Traitors is a big deal. Okay.

Okay.

It's very—

I apologize that I don't know.

Okay. Thank you. Um, it's, it's highly watched reality TV. It won the Emmy.

Yeah, we watch it. You watch it?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, we love Traitors.

It's so good.

I feel way less bad that it's a reality show. I don't watch a ton of reality.

I know, but you like, you know Survivor. You don't watch it.

But I know of it.

Yeah.

That's true.

So you need to just know about Traitors. Yeah. But anyway, I've never watched it yet. I've known people love it and stuff, but it hasn't been— I also don't watch reality TV, so I was like, I don't think it's going to be for me. But then, got to be in my bonnet. And I decided to start. And so there's a new season out now. So I started with this new season and I caught up to where it's week to week. So I caught up, I'm invested. You love that. So it's a real life werewolves and villagers slash mafia, which I think most people have played one of those 2 games.

Right.

And this season is in quotes, normal people, but the other seasons are celebrities. But a lot of these celebrities are also from the reality TV world.

Yeah, right.

So they're from Survivor or Real Housewives or— anyway, it's so fun. So I watched this new one and then I went back and I watched the last season. I watched the whole thing.

Uh-huh.

And I love it, but I was getting so mad because—

Of the disappointment.

Yeah, well, yeah, there's so much deception. And spoiler, so if anyone is gonna go back and listen to— watch season 4, skip ahead.

Okay.

Or pause.

No, I think you gotta skip ahead. Pause is gonna deliver you right back where you—

You hate when I say pause. The winner is this guy from Love Island, Rob R. Okay, so he's a traitor from the beginning. Rob R is so Okay. He is insanely hot.

Yes.

Yeah.

And what makes him hot? I want to hear the breakdown.

Well, do you want to see a pic, Rob? Do you want to put up a picture?

No, I want to hear what you think is hot about him. Okay.

Physically, he's just so hot.

His face is gorgeous. How's his physique? Do you care? I think his physique is good, although that's not sticking out as one of the main things.

But I think he seems He seems tall-ish from what I can tell. Got great hair.

Oh, great.

Just a beautiful face.

Yeah, it's sweet.

And he wears kind of fun outfits.

Oh, like Ryan Hansen?

No, he wore a sweater vest with nothing under it.

That's normally a very douchey move.

I think he could be. He's on Love Island.

But no shirt cardigan is—

That's great.

It had—

well, no, it had like hearts on it. Like, it was almost like when you wore the sweater that Pené gave you.

Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't a shirt.

It was almost like feminine.

Yeah, okay.

And, and it's like showed confidence.

Okay. Yeah, it's just no shirt underneath. That's like generally—

I know.

It can be a bit of a trigger. I know.

And I wore a vintage shirt once and it was kind of tight. And so he is a trader. And at first, when I first meet him, I'm like, ugh, Love Island, like this guy. He's set.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There he is.

Angular features, real strong chin.

Yep, exactly.

Real defined nose. Not bulbous like mine. It's not— he doesn't have like a clown's, um, horn on the end of his.

That's not—

Delta got to squeeze it in the other day and it was like she was just— got way too— it like, it became one of her fucking stuffies or her fidgets, you know?

Yeah.

And I just remember this trick you would do in junior high where you'd ask someone to hold the tip of their nose. I forget the premise, but you can really easily turn the whole tip of your nose purple.

Oh, okay.

So then I had to tell her, I'm like, hon, you can squeeze any part of my face, just not the tip of my nose. I'm afraid it's going to be a big purple bruise. And she was having a hard time, of course, resisting.

Yeah.

Because it's just a clown's honk, honk, honk.

Because you said it specifically. And then for her, of course she does.

No, she just was— she just found her way to it.

The tip is the most fun part to squeeze.

Yeah, mine is definitely meaty. You know, you get a— even me, I can get all 5 fingers, you know, they're not touching each other when I hold it. It's like the size of a racquetball.

No, it's fine.

A ping pong ball.

It's great.

Okay. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, I'm not complaining.

Okay. So Rob R is classically attractive.

Classically trained.

Yeah.

In the art of gorgerie.

trained level of attraction.

Yeah, yeah. Everless, it looks like.

But so for me, normally that is not my type.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause I'm— I do, I'm like, okay, like, douchey pretty boy. You're too popular. There's no way you have a personality.

Fuckboy.

Yeah. And he's from Love Island, so I'm definitely like, yeah, fuckboy.

Yeah.

Okay. But then he's like nice to people and And like soft, kind of soft-spoken. And then he makes friends with people that I like, but like in a real way. Like he says, like, I don't want to kick this person off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got a heart of gold.

Yeah. And he keeps— he's like pretending he's from Alabama and he's like kind of playing this like, I'm this dumb guy and he's not. 'Cause he's also playing chess the whole time. So I'm like, uh-oh. And he's a traitor. He's bad, right? Yeah, he's no good. group of people gets so fucking played by Rob R.

Sure.

And it is shocking to watch. I mean, it's shocking in that it's just like—

Charisma.

It's just so obvious. Like, it's so real that this hot, tall—

Kind.

Kind in quotes.

That's right.

He is tricking everyone.

Yeah, this is always my issue with—

Well, he's not acting like he's like—

Yeah.

Although he did stick up for his He stuck up for his best friend in the house who's gay. And it was hot.

So he's an ally.

Yeah.

And like, so anyway, I'm just, then I'm starting to get furious, right? Because then he—

You felt betrayed.

Well, even though I knew the whole time he was a traitor.

Oh, you did? Okay. So it's not a mystery to you.

Yes. That's what's fun about the show. You know the whole time. So you're seeing people Like, yeah, you know, you're kind of like, no. And like, very, very smart people, the smartest people in the house, are like, it could never be Rob. Like, they're saying it.

That's happening on Million Dollar Secret, the one show I do like. But I would argue none of them are very good at lying. Like, as soon as they have the million dollars, they crumble. They can be like so convincing when they're— but it's like the amount of pressure once you have the million is pretty funny.

Well, yeah. And then So Rob R turns on a fellow traitor pretty early. Okay. And I, that, I was like, fuck you. That's bad.

You're having a real ride over there.

I hated that. And then he did it again to the other traitor and I was like, this guy.

But you still fuck him, right?

He has a girlfriend. Oh. Anyway.

But he was single? Well, the girl at the end was single too.

I know. Oh, okay. So that's the main betrayal. So he has this buddy who's also from Love Island, a different season or whatever, or whatever. So they like bond and she's this like gorgeous girl. Maura. Maura. Maura.

Okay.

Maura, I think.

Do you smell something?

Because I don't know if it's Mara or Maura.

Oh, yeah, that's a hard one.

I think it's Maura. Yes. She's Irish.

She's in a full leather catsuit.

Yeah, she has great fashion and style and she's very hot. So they are best buddies in the house, and, um, poor girl, just getting played.

She got played.

And it was so sad because she kept saying like, it's so hard for me to let my guard down. I've been cheated on so many times. My trust— I don't— it's very hard for me to trust people. She's saying this throughout, and yet she refuses to see Rob as a possible traitor. Towards the end of the season, people are like, I think it's Rob. People are starting to say it. And she's like—

She's going down with the ship.

It can't be. And he makes her pinky promise something and he betrays her.

Well, he had to, to win the game. The point is to win the game, right? Isn't that the point? You say so. I haven't seen it, but I'd imagine the point is to win the game. Don't enter a game like that. I hated it. Okay.

I hated it.

Do you still like him or no?

No, I'm—

Oh, you're mad at him?

Well, I just don't know what to think anymore.

You don't trust him, but you kind of love him.

I hated what he did to Maura.

Okay.

She was so fragile. And then I, then I felt so bad because I was like, she has to watch this and watch herself.

These shows probably have a little more PTSD than people might guess. I think so.

I think so.

Anyway, it's a great show.

Okay, I'll check it out. But it sounds like the kids would like it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Calvin loves it. Okay, great.

Okay, some facts, some facts from, I think, my favorite guest we've ever had on. I've talked about it to everyone.

He is— dude, I did— back to the Jack Black thing— I did— I made him listen to 20 minutes about Guillermo del Toro yesterday at the concert.

Like, you told him about it?

I was like, oh my God, I interviewed Guillermo del Toro, and I just couldn't stop telling him fascinating things about him. He has seen his notebooks.

Oh, he has?

Yes.

I could not—

He has the same feeling we do. He's like, each page needs to be taken out surgically and like framed.

Yes.

And protected.

Put in the Smithsonian. Yes.

Yes.

I, I could not believe we got to see those.

And hold it.

And hold it. Like hold his heart.

Yeah.

That's what it felt like.

His brain and his heart.

His brain and his heart which are one thing. He's so pure. And we put it on the table and your feet were up like this and I got real panicky.

I did too. I moved it very quickly. I saw it was too close.

For a second I was really feeling some pain.

Don't be cocky, Dax. Don't overestimate your athletic prowess here. Yeah.

It was just such a beautiful episode. He gave us so many nuggets of wisdom.

Oh, it was incredible. incredible. He's incredible. He's a philosopher, he's an artist, he's a painter, he's a writer.

I just— I love him.

One of the best directors to ever live.

I know.

I can't think anyone that's ever been better than him visually. I mean, Tim Burton is, you know, he's in, he's in that same space, but like the visuals of fucking Frankenstein are impossible.

The world building, because it's also like the, the visuals are unbelievable, but this— his stories are also So beautiful and moving and deep.

I cannot wait to see it in 3D.

I know. Same. Yeah, same. Okay, so that was just very special. I don't think I've felt like that after we left an interview in a very long— maybe Ke Huy Quan was maybe the last one.

Yeah, the way I said it is Bill Gates' holistic understanding of everything on planet Earth is something that I've never observed in anyone else. Like, it's just the totality of his knowledge is so impossible. It's like really hard to comprehend. And I feel this exact same way about Guillermo. Me too. And it's not specifically Bill's thing.

It's not knowledge. It's like—

well, it's also knowledge. The amount he knows about art and fucking writing.

But that's not what's shining through. What's shining through is a holistic view of the universe. Humanity.

Humanity. Yeah. Yes. Yes. A deep, deep intrinsic understanding of humanity.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's outrageously special.

Yeah.

I too, I think we text each other afterwards, which we haven't done in a while. It was just like, whoa, that was mind-blowing.

Yeah. So lucky. So lucky. We didn't sit on this for too long, which is fine. But when he said that when he had that experience when he was a kid and he saw monsters and he needed to go to the bathroom and he told them if If you let me go to the bathroom, I'll be your friends forever. And he is.

He is. He is. He is friend, a friend of the monsters. He literally is.

It's so moving. I can't really handle it.

You just picture him as a little boy and you're like, it must have been hard to have that enormous brain.

I know.

Well, he's so smart. Yeah.

Essentially.

Yeah.

Reading in the encyclopedias.

Yes. And his father's library.

Yeah. Okay. You said that Warren Buffett drove an old Cherokee?

Yeah. Jeep Cherokee with wood grain on the side.

I don't know why my Google doesn't know about that.

Okay. It should. There's a— your Google should know that there's a, uh, a profile of him on 60 Minutes in the '90s, and there's many shots of him driving that old clunker. Okay.

Yeah, because this is saying Cadillac XTS, Cadillac DTS.

He may in the mid-2020s or mid— I don't know how you say that— the 2010s, he might have— that Cherokee might have died, but he, he still lives in the same like 3,000-square-foot brick ranch.

Yes, that is—

And he was driving a very old Cherokee in that segment. All right.

Well, I don't know what to say.

I never forget a car.

I, that's true. Yeah, that is true. That's one of your gifts.

It's like Molly and the outfits.

Molly McNerney and the outfits. That's right. Okay. I looked up what are the most family-oriented cultures? Cultures that are deeply family-oriented typically prioritize collective wellbeing, multi-generational living, and lifelong financial or social interdependence over individual autonomy. Regions and countries noted for strong family ties: South and Southeast Asia. I can say that's true. Latin America. It says Southern Europe, Italy, Spain, and the Middle East and North Africa.

So really everyone but Northern white Europeans.

No, it doesn't have China. China. It doesn't have—

Well, it said Asia and Southeast.

No, South and Southeast Asia. India, the Philippines, Indonesia.

Okay. Oh, okay.

Okay. So yeah.

Oh, okay.

Interesting. Oh, I was looking up longest standing ovations at film festivals. Longest recorded standing ovation at a major film festival belongs to Naza, which directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zohr, which received a 25-minute this year at the Venice Film Festival.

Okay. 25. And he was 22, right?

Yeah.

Historically, Cannes held the longest standing benchmarks for the endurance clapping. Endurance clapping is what I think. No kidding.

Your fucking hands must kill after 15 minutes of clapping.

That's really funny. Led for 2 decades by Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, 22 minutes. Third is Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore.

Okay.

At Cannes 2023. 20 minutes. 2004. Sentimental Value.

Oh, we love that movie.

Love that movie. Cannes 2025, 19 minutes.

Ooh. How do people know when to stop?

I don't know. They don't. Clearly they don't.

That's so weird. Like, if you've gone 19, how aren't we going 3 hours?

Do you think people are timing so they do know, like, I want to give this one the most?

Or like almost the most?

Do you think there might be a timing I can't imagine there is.

I mean, someone's timing it for sure.

Someone's timing it, yeah.

But I don't think there's a big clock on display, no.

Okay, well, I find this interesting. Unfortunately—

What if it was like an analog dial, like a watch face, and then it had along the way different movies as the pressure's rising?

And then maybe they're like, I don't want it to be longer than Pan's Labyrinth.

That's right.

Yeah.

And then right before it's over, Someone goes, you know, fini, or whatever they, they say. Fini, fini, fini.

I think it's just fin, fin, fin, fini. I think, I think it's just F-I-N.

Okay.

Fine. I think. Um, okay. I, you know, I went to Cannes, obvi— not obviously. I think just 'cause I've talked about it a lot. I went to Cannes study abroad, 2008.

You and Callie?

Nope. Me and Anthony.

Well, you and Callie were in London at a premiere.

Yeah. We went to, uh, the breakup. Yeah. We stood outside. Um, but no, I went to Cannes for study abroad, and that was in 2008. And, you know, we had to beg for tickets to get inside. It was super fun. So I was looking to see if any of the ones I went to got up there.

But were you a part of any standing ovations?

Yeah, there's almost always a standing ovation.

Man, I couldn't go. I couldn't go. This is my issue with concerts and encores, like any kind of Kind of whatever. I've said enough about the chorus.

I love the chorus! Joy!

I hate all the chorus.

You need to— okay.

Yeah, it's pageantry.

It's fine.

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, Guillermo deserves it, but the notion that this band, you know they're gonna play 2 more songs, but you have to beg them to come out to play the 2 more songs is like, just play the 2— just play all the songs. It's fine.

Okay.

Okay. Now unfortunately, I wasn't part of any of these top Which is upsetting.

Yeah.

Um, but I'm just double-checking. Okay, real quick.

Dotting your i's and crossing your t's.

That was— I saw Matt Damon at— he was there for, uh, I think Che. Was he in Che?

Yeah, he was.

He was, right?

Yeah, he played Che.

Um, and I— so that was so exciting because I got in that one.

Oh.

So I was just sitting amongst him, high up. Yeah.

That was a long movie.

It was like 4 hours.

Very.

I saw so many movies, obviously, over the course of that.

How many hours was Shay? It was a 2-parter, so I think it was like 5.

I probably only saw one part.

And Benicio del Toro plays Shay.

Is that— Mm-hmm.

Benicio del Toro.

All of those movies really blur. I don't remember anything because I was just seeing 3 movies a day.

Yeah, it's too many.

It was a lot. A lot. Um, okay, well, I didn't get to experience—

Okay, well—

The 20-minute one.

Better that you got to sit in a room with Guillermo for 2 hours.

Much better.

Than 22 minutes of clapping.

I agree.

Yeah.

I agree. Oh man, when he talked about how the people stole his puppets and then put poop everywhere.

Yeah.

And then you said, oh, they went ape. Now I understand ape shit. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Throwing shit everywhere.

Yeah. Going—

Tonka.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've never thought about that.

Oh, you haven't? Okay.

You knew that?

Yeah.

Oh.

Um, my favorite is when they chuck it at viewers of the, um, at the zoo. Yeah, because a lot of people don't know about chimp behavior. And when you're at the chimps of the Mahala here at the LA Zoo, you'll see one shit in his hand, and I know time to get behind something, but other people don't.

Oh my God.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't mind that because I'm like, this is what you get, kind of.

Oh yeah, I don't mind that they do it. They should.

Yeah. If I was, uh, a chimp in a zoo, you'd do it.

Yeah, if I was incarcerated at a zoo, I would throw my shit every chance I got.

Exactly. I agree. Um, all right, that is all.

Okay, wonderful.

That is all.

What a blessing.

I agree. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

All right, love you.

Love you.