Talk Easy – Literary Hub

Wesley Morris on the Disappearing Middle

Talk Easy — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 08:55:02 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries.

Wesley Morris has served as critic at large at The New York Times since 2015, covering film, politics, and pop culture. He joins this week to discuss this year’s Academy Award nominations.

At the top, we discuss the omission of Greta Gerwig from the Best Director category, former Secretary Clinton on Barbie-gate, the ‘perversely effective’ nature of Killers of the Flower Moon, and the ways in which Bradley Cooper’s Maestro upends the traditional biopic. Wesley then reflects on his early adventures in moviegoing, the indie film boom of the late ‘90s, the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what the Best Picture nominations of 1988 can tell us about 2023’s slate, and the erosion of the ‘middle’ across film and culture.

In the back-half: Todd Haynes’ beguiling new film May December, Ava DuVernay’s Origin, the Academy’s fraught relationship to diversity, the function of Wesley’s work in 2024, and a reading of his moving, personal review about Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: What we’ve lost is the ‘middle’ of movies, the drama or comedy that has no great aspirations. It was not made to win or be nominated for awards. I want to try to unpack how—and why—we’re here. Do you see any parallels between the decline in film criticism with the decline in filmmaking? Did one precipitate the other?

Wesley Morris: Well, that’s a more complicated proposition, because the decline in film criticism is related to the decline of periodicals where film criticism thrived. I think the two things are related but not necessarily causal of each other. I do, however, think that in the last fifteen years, there’s been a sort of downgrading of what a review can do and should do. You know, there’s this tension between coming up with a review—liking something a lot, they love that—or really panning something. When I worked at The Boston Globe, for instance, we gave things stars. If I was like, “Killers of the Flower Moon: two stars” that would have superseded anything I would have necessarily wrote about it. That middle place, the middle of moviemaking is gone, a kind of mixed criticism… people have lost patience for that. That a movie can’t have things that work and don’t work. The disappearance of the middle— there are so many middles that have disappeared. Middle ground, middlebrow, middle class. There’s either, or. There’s very little room for not even debate and disagreement, but just complexity. I find it really interesting that none of the ten nominees on this Best Picture list include May December. Did you see that movie?

SF: I love it.

WM: Yeah, I did not the first time I saw it. Then I went and saw it again, and was like, “What was my problem?” I saw it the next day. That’s a movie that has so much going on. It’s so of a piece with where we are right now. It’s not telling you what it’s doing or how it’s feeling or what it even is. It’s like the weird touchless-ness of Todd Haynes, even though there is so much touching in this movie— the music is touching, the butterfly metaphors are touching you. His fingerprints are all over this thing, but it still feels like the hand guiding it is completely invisible and these characters are just doing whatever it is that they’ve been set on this earth to do. To sit down and talk about this movie and what is happening here… it is really deep and really satisfying to unpack it or argue with people about it. Like, I leave a movie and do not trust my response to it. And in the case of May December, I just went the next day and saw it again. It was like seeing something dead come to life right before your eyes. I found that expansion of my mind exhilarating.

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Sam Fragoso is the host of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly series of conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and NPR. After conducting seminal interviews with icons like Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and Noam Chomsky, he independently founded Talk Easy in 2016.

Dan Levy on Not Fearing Sincerity

Talk Easy — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 09:08:04 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Over the past decade, writer and actor Dan Levy rose to prominence for his work on Schitt’s Creek. After co-creating the series with his father, Eugene Levy, he turned to a more personal project.

Said project is his heartfelt directorial debut, a film entitled Good Grief. At the top of our conversation, Dan shares the origin of this story and we discuss the importance of friendship, his experience working as a director, and a pivotal, full-circle moment from his time in London. Then, we discuss how he charted his course as a co-host on MTV Canada, the red carpet experience that clarified his path forward, and his ultimate arrival at making Schitt’s Creek.

On the back-half, we unpack the pure, timeless nature of the hit series, Dan’s journey to making Good Grief after the show’s momentous conclusion, a powerful scene from the film, the universality of loss, and the responses that encourage him to continue creating.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: Schitt’s Creek has an evergreen, timeless quality to it. It feels very much in the spirit of The Honeymooners or The Beverly Hillbillies or Mayberry. But Hillbillies and Mayberry ended in 1971, Honeymooners ended in 1956. You are a spry, fresh-faced forty year old who was not around for those programs, but was using those shows as touch points—as reference points—was it your way of bridging the kind of generational divide between you and your father?

Dan Levy: In a way, I think. I grew up watching I Love Lucy and The Beverly Hillbillies. There are television shows that were so formative to my sense of comedy, and the joy and the deep laughs that they brought. My dad had a much clearer reference of all of those older shows.

SF: Did he like those?

DL: He did very much, and I think that’s what our show ended up being. It was nostalgia with my sort of younger, contemporary cultural references overlapped overtop— and then the clash of what that is. That’s what I think made it feel so inviting for people of all different ages.

SF: When you look back on that chapter, how do you understand the sensation it became?

DL: Making the show was so special. We were so kept out of that cultural conversation because, frankly, people didn’t start watching the show until we’d finished it. We were able to make eighty episodes of television up in Canada completely on our own, with little to no network notes. With the complete support of the CBC in Canada and Pop Network in America, which was the former TV Guide network, which meant that something like 90% of our households were still in standard definition in America. That’s how low stakes this show was. So, we had nothing but ourselves to use as an audience.

SF: Did that bother you?

DL: Not at all. We knew it was going to be a small audience because we weren’t on NBC. They passed because of the name!

SF: Oh, Schitt’s Creek.

DL: So our expectations were low, and it really came down to, “Please let us have another season to continue to tell this story.” It felt so special to be doing this away from the pressure of ratings and sweeps week and celebrity cameos and all of these things that are required by a lot of American television to keep and hold ratings. And the fact that it succeeded in the way that it did is an indication of the fact that we need to give people, creators, writers, television shows space and time to grow. Because it is the ultimate slow burn, Schitt’s Creek. It took two full seasons of the show before our family even said “I love you” to each other. And yet, all of the emotional impact and all of the emotional connection that fans find that feel for the show come from every moment of sincerity being earned. And that, I think, is where the depth of emotional connection comes from.

SF: The show ran from 2015-2020, and for so many people it was this beacon, this light, in a pretty dark era. But the other part of it was because it imagined a world that was softer, a little kinder, free of homophobia, and I think people grabbed onto it. I think they saw it as aspirational. How do you see your new film, Good Grief, in relation to Schitt’s Creek? Is it an extension of the world you were building? Is it a bookend?

DL: The one thing that we weren’t scared of when making Schitt’s Creek was sincerity. This was also coming off of an era of TV where you weren’t considered ‘edgy comedy’ unless you were making fun of someone or being incredibly vile. There was this world of edgy comedy that really came at someone’s expense. It was mean-spirited. It was hard. And it was the lack of fear around being soft that I think really contributed to this new wave of feel-good TV. You look at the success of Ted Lasso. That came off of everything that we had done that really was a great sort of next step in the storytelling of kind TV. I think this film, Good Grief, has that fearlessness when it comes to touching on sincerity and earnestness and warmth and honesty. I could have gone down a path where I wanted to make it edgier and hard, but that wasn’t my experience.

SF: So, it emboldened you to make the film?

DL: Emboldened me to tell a story that was rooted in something very sincere and not be fearful of that sincerity, even though oftentimes it’s criticized.

Ava DuVernay on Not Losing Track of What Matters

Talk Easy — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 09:01:37 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Over the past 15 years, filmmaker Ava DuVernay (Selma, Queen Sugar) has become something of an institution in Hollywood. As a writer, director, and producer she’s worked to make our industry more just and diverse—creating opportunities for voices that have historically been underrepresented both in front and behind the camera. In many ways her latest film, Origin, examines a hierarchy she’s worked to upend through a bold body of work.

And so we begin today’s episode discussing her creative adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s best-selling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and the timely questions she hopes to pose as we begin 2024. Then, Ava reflects on the influence of her Aunt Denise, what a typical Saturday looked like in the DuVernay household, her formative years as an underground emcee at UCLA, and how working on Michael Mann’s Collateral inspired her to direct.

On the back-half, we talk about the making of Ava’s first narrative feature I Will Follow, a life-changing review from Roger Ebert and the resulting decade as a director. We also wade through this past year in Hollywood, her hopes for ARRAY in the years to come, and the words of Angela Davis that keep her moving forward.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

SF: When you say you want to create something independent or left-of-center or adjacent to the industry on your own—you’ve obviously created a whole lot—what does that look like for you? How are you starting to dream again, and what do those dreams look like?

AD: Well, luckily, at the same time that I was working within these industry spaces, I was also building ARRAY. It’s over a decade old, it is a distribution company, we distribute films by women and filmmakers of color, we have public programming for free, for the community, all around cinema. We have a four-building campus in Echo Park where we edit and we ideate and we educate and we do all kinds of beautiful things. We work against law enforcement brutality and aggression through our program called “Leap.” We created ARRAY CREW, which is a database that has thousands and thousands of crew members from all kinds of communities that you can search and hire. We’ve done things that I’m very proud of and very bolstered by and ignited by and I have given that 70% of my attention and given 20% to these other places, and now it’s just going to be 100%. Imagine if it has my full focus. Gosh, what can we do?

SF: Do you still want to make films?

AD: Oh, absolutely. I’m not tapping out on that. I’m talking about the rest of these shenanigans.

SF: I’m trying to get the Ava back that I know!

AD: (laughs) I’m back, I’m here! I’m never going to give up on the films. It’s just the industry around the films. It’s something you have to be prepared for, you have to be mindful of, and you have to actively participate in. And we can decide how much we participate and how much we don’t. And there are other ways to make films and there are other ways to reach people and those are worthy endeavors to try to figure out.

SF: This film [Origin], because it is part of an industry, and it is coming out now as we speak, I’m thinking about this line that Angela Davis has, that she told you about your own movies. She said, “All of [your work] helps to create fertile ground. I don’t think that we would be where we are today without your work and the work of other artists. In my mind, it’s art that can begin to make us feel what we don’t necessarily yet understand.”

To bring us full circle here, when you hear that from her, about these films that you have brought into this world, that you have given your life to, that I know you have put all of yourself and all of your time into, does it feel worth it?

AD: Absolutely. Absolutely worth it. Absolutely exactly what I want to do, and I need to focus on that even more and let the rest of the stuff go. And when you read that quote back to me, I remember at the time being very ignited by it, and you know, life gets in the way and you forget— I remember that Roger Ebert quote meant so much to me, and I forgot those lines. They just hit my heart. Those are the things that remind you of what you’re doing it for, why you’re doing it, and what matters. It’s so easy to lose track of it.

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Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker. She has won an Emmy Award, the NAACP Image Award, and BAFTA awards as well as been nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Her latest film is Origin.

Michelle Williams on Making Things that Feel Definite

Talk Easy — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:01:30 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

As we begin the new year, we’re returning to our conversation with brilliant actor Michelle Williams.

We walk through the making of Showing Up, Williams’ fifteen-year partnership with director Kelly Reichardt, and her upbringing in Montana and San Diego. Then, she describes coming of age on the set of Dawson’s Creek, her pivotal turn in Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe, and her path to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.

On the back-half, we discuss a healing passage from Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Williams’ memorable performances in Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn, and her final day shooting The Fabelmans. To close, she shares how she remains present as a mother, a formative Walt Whitman quote, and how—at age 42—she’s begun to create from “a place of peace.”

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: What’s the Flaubert quote you always use?

Michelle Williams: Ugh– “I want to live the quiet life of the bourgeois, so I can be violent and unrestrained in my work.”

SF: Why don’t we talk about that work? Because there’s a shift that happens, from naturalism to expressionism. Or, at least that seems like the aim in projects like My Week with Marilyn, Fosse/Verdon, and now, most recently, The Fabelmans. Was that the aim?

MW: That’s what happened to me when I made Marilyn. Before that, in my late teens and my twenties, I wanted to—because I was coming off of a teen drama—I wanted to learn naturalism. I wanted to tell the truth. And then, when I went to make Marilyn, I realized I was missing some tools in the kit. I hadn’t played someone who was far from me physically, and I had to unlearn myself. I had to break myself down, get rid of myself, and then rebuild myself in this person’s image. That work was so painful. It hurt to find new positions. I’d been assembling myself for thirty years, and all of the sudden, I had to change things that were inherent and structural. I started working with teachers in London—movement teachers, Alexander teachers, dialect—and I got so excited! The possibilities it would open up, that I’m not bound to myself. I became hooked on this kind of training and studying an external way of approaching a character.

SF: You have a quote, you said, “I wanted to make work that an audience member had to deal with, where there was less interpretation on their part because the interpretation was really my work.” What do you mean by that?

MW: I didn’t want people to be able to project things onto me. I wanted to make things that felt definite. And I’m interested now in both, for sure, but I didn’t want to be pure projection.

SF: And you felt like you were.

MW: Yes, and I didn’t want to just be that. Film is a medium where you are asking people to relate to it personally, so there’s an amount of projection that’s necessary in the audience-performer relationship. But I didn’t want it to be just that. I wanted to risk how much an audience member could love the person that I was making. I wanted to risk their love and earn their respect.

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David Remnick on the Continued Gift of the Written Word

Talk Easy — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 09:58:19 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He joins us this week to discuss his latest dispatch from the Middle East, reporting on the aftermath of October 7th in what has become the Israel-Hamas war. He also shares the personal story of Avichai Brodutch, how he imagines this conflict may resolve, and our ‘failure to communicate’ in this increasingly polarized moment.

Then, we turn to Remnick’s personal history: from the art that influenced him growing up in New Jersey to his pathway to journalism at Princeton University and his start at The Washington Post under the tutelage of legendary editor Ben Bradlee. On the back-half, we talk about Remnick’s early days running The New Yorker, the state of journalism today, why he cautions against despair as we head into 2024, and a tribute to the creative longevity of musician Joni Mitchell.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: A week before you started working as the editor of The New Yorker in 1998, in the June 22nd issue of the magazine, you wrote an article about a critic, Alfred…

David Remnick: Alfred Kazin.

SF: And I wanted to perhaps return to that, the first paragraph of it, and see where it landed with you and how it may be instructive for us in this moment.

DR: “The inexhaustible urge toward self-expression makes it nearly a sure thing that there will always be writers around as long as there is us. The dicier question is whether there will be readers. Not just readers of the sports pages and the jumble, of self-help best-sellers and the consultant’s confessions, no, but passionate readers who ignore the phone and the TV for a few hours to engage a book whose ‘difficulty’ is that it fails to soothe the ego or flatter a limited intelligence; the reader who honestly believes that the best and deepest of what we are is on the shelf, and that to read across the shelf changes the self, changes you.”

SF: When it ran in ‘98, your friend, mentor, and now a staff writer for you, John McPhee, said in The Washington Post, “That’s a pretty good portrait of David himself, and a pretty good forecast of how he’ll run The New Yorker.”

DR: He did? John McPhee, man. Look, I am not blind to the world of Netflix, TikTok, my phone which is sitting six inches away from me. But the fact of the matter is, I know nothing—in our cultural lives, our intellectual lives, in our civic lives—that is as effective, and reaches more deeply, than the best of what is written. I’m a huge movie watcher, and junk television watcher, and ballgame viewer, and, and and! But written expression, that’s what I ended up giving my life toward, and it’s immensely enriching and gratifying, and I believe in it.

I remember very distinctly interviewing Philip Roth, about fifteen years before he died, when I first got to know him, and he was disparaging about writing and—not the literary world, but this piece of business—and I bet you I borrowed the language from him, that he despaired of the notion that not enough people were turning off the TV, turning on a lamp, throwing the phone across the room, and devoting themselves for an hour, or two, or three to a enigmatic, difficult text of any kind. Because it requires a lot of you. I’m guilty enough of that too, even though my professional life demands it, but it’s the gift of a lifetime. The library is a gift, and to ignore it is a sin.

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David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He has written hundreds of pieces for the magazine, including reporting from Russia, the Middle East, and Europe and Profiles of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Katharine Graham, Mike Tyson, Bruce Springsteen, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, Benjamin Netanyahu, Leonard Cohen, and Mavis Staples. He also serves as the host of the magazine’s national radio program and podcast, “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” He is the author of seven books as well as editor or co-editor of several collections of New Yorker articles. He has taught at Princeton University, where he received his B.A., in 1981, and at Columbia University. He lives in New York with his wife, Esther Fein; they have three children, Alex, Noah, and Natasha.

Willem Dafoe on His Human Approach to Acting

Talk Easy — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 09:01:01 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Willem Dafoe has built a career out of shapeshifting. His latest role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things demonstrates exactly that.

Today, he joins us to discuss his compelling performance in the imaginative tale, the elaborate details he discovered on set, and the three-hour physical transformation he underwent each day of filming. Then, Dafoe describes his upbringing in Wisconsin, his early love of B-movie, and his formative years in the theater as part of The Wooster Group in New York City.

On the back-half, we dive into his task-based approach to acting and how it guided his memorable performances in the late William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., Oliver Stone’s Platoon, and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. To close, Dafoe reflects on the joy of collaboration, his search for truth as an actor, and his desire to continue creating in years to come.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: Before you jump into the movies, there was a way in which you developed your craft. There’s an essay in The Drama Review from 1985 called “Task and Vision,” where you lay out your principles and the work itself. “Task and vision, vision in the form of a task.” Can you explain to me what that means to you and how it is foundational to how you approach this work?

Willem Dafoe: That’s this idea that everything is based on doing, as opposed to showing. One of the beautiful things about The Wooster Group, which really put a heavy stamp on me, was that in that theater, the technicians were as important as the actors, and the actors were as important as the technicians. They weren’t all that different. It’s about having an experience, having something happen to you that’s transparent enough that the audience can hopefully have a flavor of that experience. It can broaden how we think, or it can give us other possibilities. Rather than telling us something we already know or recognize, put us in a new place. It’s why I like going to the movies so much— because you see some example of some personal generosity or heroism, and it inspires you. It’s about giving yourself to something that expresses a more collective experience. That’s the thing that gets me going: to lose yourself in something.

SF: Did you lose yourself on The Florida Project with Sean Baker?

WD: I try to lose myself as much as I can. With The Florida Project, I tried to be a good hotel manager.

SF: But the fluidity of that project—the collaborative ways in which everyone worked, the interplay between people—in some ways, the movie is about how happiness is interdependent on the people around you. And to me, that feels like somewhat of a metaphor for making movies, or trying to do the work that you’ve made.

WD: I’m with you.

SF: I was watching Poor Things and thought that the warmth of your role, the tenderness that’s at the heart of the film… I felt that deeply in The Florida Project as well. It reminded me of that film.

WD: Well, Bobby in The Florida Project is a person that takes care. That’s always moving to me. The thing that moves me more than anything else in a movie is when someone extends themselves in a way that has a flavor of selflessness to it. That they’re doing it because they need to do it. It’s a natural thing, it’s not transactional. If everything that is made is some sort of expression of what our experience is, being here and why we’re here, and it tries to address what we’re here for, the theory that I keep coming up with is we’re here for each other, because that’s what we got. What’s beyond this world, we don’t know. We won’t know until we get there. So, while we’re here, the best thing we can do is be useful.

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Willem Dafoe is currently appearing in Poor Things. He is a founding member of The Wooster Group and one of the most immediately recognizable actors working today.

Maria Ressa on Fighting for the Safety of Journalists

Talk Easy — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 09:03:58 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa has spent the past decade advocating for the protection of journalists. In light of the paperback release of How to Stand Up to a Dictator, we return to our urgent conversation with the trailblazing author and activist.

We begin by unpacking the fragmenting effects of social media, how the internet gave power to authoritarian regimes around the globe, and Ressa’s five years uncovering those operations. Then, we walk through her early years: moving from the Philippines to suburban New Jersey at age ten, three lessons from childhood, and her discoveries at Princeton.

On the back-half, we discuss Ressa’s serendipitous entry to the newsroom, why she founded Rappler in 2012, and her critical reportage on President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, which led to her arrest by the Filipino government in 2019. Now, she’s charted this fight in her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. To close, we unpack her continuous pursuit of the truth, her recognition as a 2021 Nobel Laureate, and an ode to a lifelong friend.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: The result of your reportage was constant online harassment. The people sending these messages were emboldened by President Duterte’s contempt for the press. All of this brings us to what happens on February 13th, 2019. You’re arrested for the first time and brought to NBI headquarters. NBI is essentially the FBI in the Philippines, and they strategically planned to arrest you, so they could hold you overnight. I want to read from your book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, which describes what happened that next day as you made bail and began to talk to the press.

Maria Ressa: Oh, yeah. The next day I was supposed to post bail, and I stewed all night thinking, “Oh my god! It’s not as if there wasn’t a spotlight on me. I was one of the most prominent journalists— I headed a news organization. Imagine what they would do to somebody who was a young kid in a dark alley.”

That night, when my government took away my freedom, they drew the line of repression directly to me. It was the moment when my rights were violated, when I went from being a journalist to being a citizen. If they could do this to journalists with some power, in the glare of the spotlight, what would they do to vulnerable citizens literally left in the dark? What recourse did a poor person have in a dark alley?

“For me, it’s about two things: abuse of power and the weaponization of the law,” I told the assembled reporters. It was the first time I had spoken so harshly in public; every time the government did something draconian, it radicalized me. “This isn’t just about me, and it’s not just about Rappler. The message that the government is sending is very clear, and someone actually told our reporter this last night: ‘Be silent, or you’re next.’ So I’m appealing to you not to be silent, even if—and especially if—you’re next!”

Press freedom is not just about journalists; it is not just about Rappler; it is not just about me. Press freedom is the foundation of the right of every Filipino to have access to the truth. Silence is complicity because silence is consent.

“What we’re seeing is death by a thousand cuts of our democracy,” I continued. “And I appeal to you to join me… I’ve always said that when I look back a decade from now, I want to make sure—”

My voice broke then, so I repeated the sentence. “I want to make sure that I have done all I can. We will not duck. We will not hide. We will hold the line.”

SF: I was listening to you read that passage, being moved once again and inspired by your passion and commitment to this work, to this calling. But I don’t think we can talk about the work you do without talking about the very real human consequences of what you do. To do that, I want to go to June of 2020, where the family of Daphne Galizia, who was killed for her reportage, issued this statement:

Over the years, we watched the former Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat and his cronies pursue increasingly deranged attacks on Daphne. These included online abuse and harassment campaigns, vexatious tax investigations, false criminal charges that were thrown out of court, and civil and criminal libel suits.

Daphne died with five criminal libel charges and 43 civil libel suits pending against her.

This targeted harassment, chillingly similar to that perpetrated against Maria Ressa, created the conditions for Daphne’s murder.

The government of the Philippines is creating the possibility of a violent attack against Maria and other journalists.

So, I must ask, as you return back home in the coming months— how do you process that specter? The worst-case scenario in which your life is profoundly at risk?

MR: I embrace my fear. The goal of all of this is to make us stop doing our jobs because we’re afraid. So, for me in my head, it was really simple. I tried to just imagine what the worst case scenario would be—and I start with that in the prologue—I imagine that, and then I figure out what I would do in each one, embrace it, and defang it. And then I keep going.

Because I think that in situations like this where the government attacks journalists, the goal is that you self-censor. That you mute your journalism, or that you stop doing journalism. Our goal is not to stop, not to change, to keep doing excellent journalism, to build our communities, and to hold our government to account. I think about it like how we live with pollution— it’s part of the air you breathe, but you don’t let it stop you from walking or running. You just keep going.

SF: Maria, I asked a question about you, and of course you ended up talking about everyone else. But what about your heart?

MR: It’s like planning coverage in a war zone. You know there are dangers, but if you plan well, you plan your way in, and you plan your way out. The difference here is we’re not walking into a conflict area— we’re living it. I suppose that I live life as a breaking news reporter. I’m ok living with the uncertainty of it. The things I can control, I can control. The things I can’t, I let go of. Half the problem of dealing with fear is your own mind. The other part is that I know, whether I go to jail or the worst-case scenarios happen, it depends on how I react now. What I do today. And I claim that.

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Maria Ressa is the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending freedom of expression and democracy. She is CEO, cofounder, and president of Rappler, the Philippines’ top digital news site, and has been a journalist in Asia for over thirty-six years. She was TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018 and won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2021. Among the many other awards she has received are the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. She grew up in the Philippines and the United States and currently lives in Manila.

Benny Safdie on Capturing Life on Film

Talk Easy — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:00:34 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragosois a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries.

Throughout his fifteen-year moviemaking career, director and actor Benny Safdie has been drawn to naturalism and first-time performers. Fittingly, his recent collaboration with comedian Nathan Fielder (“Nathan for You”) was a perfect match.

Benny joins us today to discuss their satirical black comedy series The Curse, the timely premise that inspired the show, and Safdie’s history of capturing real-life personalities on film. Then, he describes his early connection to the 1979 movie Kramer v Kramer, a New York encounter with photographer Robert Frank, and how directors Robert Bresson and Frederick Wiseman opened his eyes to the possibilities of street casting.

On the back-half, we dive into Benny’s co-directing work alongside his brother, Josh Safdie, a heartbreaking scene from their debut feature Daddy Longlegs, and the projects that followed: Good Time, Lenny Cooke, and Uncut Gems. To close, Safdie talks about why he worked as a boom operator while directing, his recent pivot to acting, and his full circle moment of playing an astrophysicist in Oppenheimer.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: As a father, have you been re-processing some memories from your upbringing— where your father would create home movies with you and your brother Josh?

Benny Safdie: There was this idea that everything can be interesting, in some way. You can look at certain movies, like Neorealist films and Iranian cinema, where all of these people were making movies about reality. You have Bicycle Thieves literally using the people coming out of the stadium and incorporating that into the movie. So, I understood early on that life can be interesting, or whatever it is that you’re experiencing or feeling is important. It’s just a matter of how you frame it.

SF: Do you remember the first time you and Josh commandeered the camera and began making your own projects?

BS: It was the early nineties. That was when the first consumer cameras were out there, and I think a lot of people from that time grew up under this idea that there’s more accessibility to something that felt so far away. There was also this weird moment early on when point and shoot cameras started having video on them. People didn’t necessarily know when they were being filmed, so there was a lot of honesty that you could capture. I think people now are more aware of cameras.

SF: Oh yes, we’ve been worn down.

BS: Exactly. I remember there was one time I was on Bleecker Street, and I walked by where Robert Frank lived, and I saw him on his bed laid back in repose. I was like, this is unbelievable. I love Robert Frank. I also take photographs! I happened to have my medium format camera with me. So, I go to take a picture of him in this state, and some hand comes in and says, “How dare you!” and she slams the door. And the picture I ended up getting was this hand holding the door closed. It wasn’t him who slammed the door— whoever closed the door, I was like, “This is what he did all the time! All he did was sneak photos of people.”

That was like the first version of the home video camera. Garry Winogrand is another good example of this, all his photos are interesting moments of people. Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Helen Levitt. You had all these people finding these moments. In Helen Levitt’s case, a whole family crammed into a phone booth. That’s an amazing picture, and you could say it’s an amazing movie because you can see all the people’s emotions on their faces. So, there is this idea of watching and being watched that is definitely in “The Curse,” this idea that somebody is always there looking.

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Benny Safdie is a film director, screenwriter, actor, and film editor. Together with his brother Josh, he co-directed Daddy Longlegs, Lenny Cooke, Heaven Knows What, Good Time, and Uncut Gems. He has also appeared as an actor in Licorice Pizza, Are You There God It’s Me Margaret?, and Oppenheimer.

Brit Marling on Writing Women Who Get to the End of Their Stories

Talk Easy — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:18:17 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

For more than a decade, actor and writer Brit Marling has made futuristic work that reveals truths about our disquieting present. Her latest endeavor, A Murder At the End of the World, is no exception.

We recently sat with Marling in front of a live audience as part of this year’s On Air Fest LA Annex, where we discussed her excellent new show on FX, the role artificial intelligence may play in the future of filmmaking, and where she first fell in love with science fiction. Then, Brit reflects on her winding path at Goldman Sachs and Georgetown, where she met longtime collaborators Zal Batmanglij and Mike Cahill that would eventually result in films like Another Earth and Sound of My Voice.

On the back-half, we speak on the power of collective action, the public outcry that followed the cancellation of The OA, the state of Hollywood, and why Brit was inspired to direct upon finding a passage from the late Polish auteur, Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: There are so many places to begin, but I figured we’d start with a passage from Rebecca Solnit’s 2020 memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence. In it, she writes:

Becoming a writer formalizes the task that faces us all in making a life: to become conscious of what the overarching stories are, and whether or not they serve you, and how to then compose versions with room for who you are and what you value.

Brit Marling: That feels like a mic drop moment. Do we need to even say anything else?

SF: [Laughs] Honestly, thanks for coming out. I think we’re good here. But in the four years since we first sat down, as you and Zal Batmanglij began to embark on this new show, A Murder at the End of the World, what were those overarching stories that you wanted to tell, and where do you and your values fit into them?

BM: You always go so deep right from the start. Around that time, I had written this op-ed for The New York Times called “I Don’t Want to Be the Strong Female Lead,” which was an essay trying to wrestle with the idea of what to do about female protagonism. One of my answers has been, as a storyteller, to operate in a space a little bit outside of reality. Because if you deal with reality head-on, you’re just constantly dealing with some measure of oppression or being an oppressed character. I felt like science fiction and fantasy was this way to get a little bit outside of that.

adrienne maree brown has this really beautiful term I’ve heard her use—she’s an activist and a writer—she calls it resistance fiction, this idea that all fiction either reinforces the status quo or rebels against it. So, I felt like I was always operating in the space of science fiction or fantasy as resistance fiction. Then, part of what started to form with the idea of A Murder at the End of the World was braiding some of that, calling something in, but also trying to make something more in the world as we know it, present day, and contend with the realities of violence against women, and not show it on-screen in a way that perpetuated it, but just deal with the echoes of it. I used to have long conversations with Rebecca Solnit, and we’d talk about these ideas, of the struggle of a woman to realize yourself when you can’t often find yourself mirrored back to yourself in fiction. In writing this story, I spent a lot of time in the library just reading screenwriting books and plays and scripts. I think I read The Silence of the Lambs hundreds of times.

SF: Why that one?

BM: I was looking for female characters that felt authentic and alive and like the women I know in my life. Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs was FBI in-training, but she never asked anyone for permission. She believed in herself, and therefore we the audience believed in her. I also felt inspired by Antigone. Of course Antigone, being so bold and brilliant as a young woman, has to die in the narrative, so I was thinking, “is there any way we can write women like this who don’t die? Can they live? Can they get to the end?”

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bio

Ziwe on Not Sharing Too Much, But Sharing Enough

Talk Easy — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 09:04:53 +0000

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Writer and comedian Ziwe has made a career out of conducting charged and satirical interviews. She joins us this week to discuss her debut essay collection, Black Friend, the backstory behind her essay WikiFeet, her early affinity for broadcast news, the influence of satirists Jonathan Swift and Stephen Colbert, and her early, formative experiences working in comedy.

On the back-half, Ziwe reflects on the making of her YouTube series Baited, a memorable episode with Aparna Nancherla, her pandemic pivot to IG Live, and the Showtime variety show that followed. To close, a philosophy on art-making from Ira Glass and what Ziwe hopes for in her next chapter.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Sam Fragoso: When you recorded the audiobook for your new book, Black Friend, how did it feel reading passages that are deeply vulnerable, that you have already lived and worked hard to put into an essay?

Ziwe: Reliving is not challenging to me; writing is challenging to me. I’m a professional writer. I’ve been a professional writer forever.

SF: Since age five.

ZF: Well, I wasn’t getting paid at age five.

SF: You should have been!

ZF: [Laughs] I should have been, but I probably got paid for my first joke when I was twenty or twenty-one. So, I’ve been writing for a minute. When I was reading my audiobook, I was still editing it. As I was reading it aloud, I thought, “wait a second, this sentence should move like this— oh, this is wrong.” So, there was a constant critique of this being my work. At some point when I was recording, I just put AirPods into my ears, and I listened to classical music by Jonny Greenwood, the Phantom Thread score.

SF: House of Woodcock?

ZF: Yeah, House of Woodcock. I love that song. I would listen to that as I was reading, so I could relax and appreciate the journey of it.

SF: The push-and-pull between wanting to write these essays, but not wanting to share too much, but feeling like you ought to share more than you previously had— how did you hold that, with the upbringing you had that valued privacy?

ZF: It was quite difficult. Ultimately, I worked through it. Some essays are completely cut from the book because I didn’t want to share those facets of my identity, and there are other essays that I really pushed forward because I wanted to share more. “WikiFeet” is one of the first essays that I completed for the book, and it was about my feet score being really terrible on wikifeet.com, being rated “okay.” Over the course of three years, I started to unpack why I felt so self-conscious about that rating. That’s an essay, particularly, that went from being funny and not vulnerable at all — a straight joke, super satirical — to an examination of what it means to be a public woman. So, re-writing and writing are my process, and I held that by going into essays thinking, “Do I enjoy this essay? Is it good? Is it worth publishing? Will people appreciate it? Do I appreciate it?” and then interrogating that at every turn.

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Ziwe is a comedian, writer, and actor. She was the executive producer and star of the eponymous late-night variety show ZIWE on Showtime. She has also written for Desus & Mero, Dickinson, and Our Cartoon President. She lives in New York City.