Hi, this is Eva from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly. And earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure, with the most advanced AI automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you start up going for your first software or ISO 27001, we're growing enterprise managing vendor risk. Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not a saint that could so work here. Get started today at Fanta.com. Where do you find a clear signal in a world of static? In a time of rapid change, cut through the noise. The economist goes beyond the headlines to decode the forces shaping today and defining tomorrow. Get the full story. It's more than news. It's a trusted global perspective. Economist know which way is up. There are novsky welcome to Gratil. How are you? Gras, I'm good. I'm good. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. No, it's a pleasure having you. I'm really glad. You translate this into Spanish? Yeah, it's going to be subtitled. Okay, great. Yeah. I just watched your latest film, cut stealing. I Want to know it was really entertaining first of all. Thank you. I want to know What's different from this movie from your previous films? I've seen a lot of your work and and it's like a really refreshing twist to To your career Well, let me ask you that question. How do you feel? It's different than the other films I've made. I thought it was really fast pace which made it really entertaining. I know it was inspired on a novel. Yeah. Which is an interesting aspect also of your work. I know you have films that you've written. So I don't know, I'm not... I like a lot of psychological thrillers to be honest, but this was a really entertaining comedy and I enjoy it. You saw it as a comedy. Yeah, like a dark comedy. It had like a subjacent sense of humor, which I found really interesting. Oh great, yeah. Yeah, I look. I don't really think about what I did before too much. I'm always just thinking about what I want to make now and I felt it was time to do something that was all about entertainment, something that was a lot of fun. It's hard to get people's attention today in today's world because most people are doing that. So how do you make something that's fast paced and capturing your attention and that's what caught stealing is. There's a really interesting shift in movies with all these streaming platforms that have caught the attention span short. As a director, how do you read these? Well, you kind of want to make theatrical experiences because I think people are less likely to be distracted in a theater. They're coming to the theater to be entertained. But then I think it's the job of the filmmaker to really make something that holds on to people's attention and makes them want to be there and not thinking about the work they need to do or whatever else is going on in their lives. How do you come by to the idea of your next movie, like you read this novel and you, it's part of the interest or somebody like recommended you, how's that process? Well, I read the book 15 years ago. Okay. And then I tried to get the rights back then, but I couldn't get the rights. So a bunch of time went by and then about a couple of years ago, the writer of the book had gotten the rights back and he called me up and said, hey, would you be interested? And so we just started working on it and thinking about it and then slowly but surely it sort of all came together. How difficult is to choose a new project in this time of your career because a movie such a long project and such an incredible amount of work. How difficult it is to choose your next project? It's a very good question. I mean, it's always a hard decision to make it because it's definitely going to be at least a couple of years of your life. So you want to make sure you're making the right decision. So it definitely takes a long time. But the projects that are creatively inspiring keep showing up and keep sparking that interest somehow. When you read the novel and when you read a novel in general, I know you have a really critical eye and clinical eye because you're a director. What elements of a novel speak to you in a way that you know that it could make a good adaptation? I mean, it's all about interest, right? Something that you keep keeps you on the edge of your seat, makes you want to keep reading it. You know, we all have that feeling in a book when you get to the end of a chapter and you just can't wait and you want to see the next episode kinda like a binge watching on Netflix when it's a really good novel. So that's what you're looking for as material that just constantly keeps you interested. What I find really interesting about like a creative life in a sense is that you getting to projects that improve your professional aspect in your life but also your personal aspect. I know that you've explored some really deep themes that are involved in your beliefs, in your personal beliefs, in your work. How do you approach this next chapter of your life? You look projects that cultivate something you're interested in or how do you explore this personal professional aspect of your work? I mean, you always have to find something that's inspiring deep inside. I really wanted to... It's not such heavy subject matter of this one. It's really an action film. And so, but I think I've been doing this long enough that the craft of making a movie has become super important to me and making something really well. I think there's also an art to that. It doesn't have to be like ripping out the deepest of emotions. It was more about how do we make people stay interested and have a good time and have fun. And that's for me, the best part of making this film is people come out going, that was fun, which is kind of ultimately like what Hollywood has always wanted to do. It's easy to get lost and forget about that. So it's been that type of journey. What do you find most rewarding about the craft and you're speaking about emotion? Do you approach your films in that way that you want to make the audience feel a certain emotion because we watched Mother like two days ago. I was so stressed the whole movie and we interpret that emotion with that movie. How do you approach that emotion aspect in your movies and what's the most rewarding aspect of your craft? I mean always comes through the main character. You kind of the beauty of film When it's done well, it can transport you from your own body and your own brain into a character that's not you. That's the power of storytelling is you are no longer yourself. It's an exercise and empathy and you're connecting with someone who might be extremely different from you. It could be a person from the other side of the planet. It could be a fictional person. It could be a cartoon character.

It could be a person from the other side of the planet. It could be a fictional person. It could be a cartoon character. There could be so many different things, but it makes you not yourself. And so that to me is like, it's almost a psychedelic experience in that. Your ego is no longer the main part of the story, and it's more the emotions of what it is to be a human. So I think there's incredible power to storytelling and for people to connect with emotions that don't belong to them to remind us that we are one species. And we're all kind of on a similar journey together. Yeah, I find that really interesting because movies in a way emulate dreams in a sense that the director is like the conductor of the subjectivity of the audience and to exercise that empathic ability in human kindness and essential aspect of a movie because you're believing a story that somebody built for you. I know you major in social anthropology. How did that affect your directing style? I think it was related. I'm not sure. I learned too much from that to affect me as a director, but more my interest in that is probably similar to the interest in filmmaking. I think the reason I was interested in social anthropology, cultural anthropology was I was just interested in other people's stories. So I've always had an attraction to that. And what made you take your way to movies? Like I know you majored in Harvard and then you started filmmaking and you were in a conservatory. What made you take that choice? Well, when I was undergrad in film school, I started to get a bit involved in the arts and I found that really interesting. It was something that I was always kind of interested in as a teenager, but didn't really have the tools in public school to figure out how to really focus on it and to follow that. But then suddenly when I was in college, there were a lot of resources around where you could end incredible teachers. And I just started to take classes in it and I just found it the most interesting. It's actually the first time in the only time I got an A was it was in film school in film class and then I just it just sort of made sense. When I got to college I had no idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. The idea of being a filmmaker was very abstract because it's a lot less there There's so much knowledge now out there about it

because so many young people have figured out

how to do it.

When I was starting out, there was Hollywood directors,

but independent film was just sort of starting

and the story of Robert Rodriguez becoming,

you know, hadn't happened yet.

So like that path was not very clear. So I didn't know if it was possible. It just suddenly became something I was interested in doing and making. And when I would do these projects, it just used a lot of parts of my brain that made me feel good. And then I just kept repeating it. What did you expect it to find in in filmmaking? And I ask you that question because I'm a fan of your work and you have explored so much genres but I can at least feel like the same voice in every different movie. What was the expectation when you started making movies before I liked to talk about your first film? but what was the expectation? Expectation to whom myself? Yeah, like career wise. Oh, I don't know. Nothing like this, not like this reality, if that's what you mean. No, I don't think there was clearly a path back then. I remember when I was doing Requiem for a Dream and they offered me Batman that they hadn't done that yet where your young filmmakers started doing these huge studio films to me. It was like what? What are they talking about? I don't know how to do that. So yeah, I wasn't thinking it that way. It was more about just telling stories that I wanted to tell that that's kind of what I was always interested. I kind of sort of still am interested I guess I'd become part of the system. Yeah, I got I got introduced earlier as a Hollywood director I've never really seen myself that way. I guess I've made a few films for Hollywood studios, but I live in New York. And I've always sort of felt like an independent filmmaker. So I don't know. Yeah, I guess my intention was just to tell stories and to continue to tell stories through cinema. I want to talk to you about your debut film, Pi. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. You wrote and directed that movie. You financed it with donations. What made you had such fading in that project? Like what did you see on that project? I mean, it's always the same. Like, it's a hard thing to say what gives you faith and a project. Because when you try make a movie you're gonna get so many rejections in different ways So what makes you hold on to a story to know it's good? I'm not sure what that is. It's just sort of a feeling that you You just keep coming back to it and you just believe in it So even when they say no, you like well You somehow make an excuse for yourself that that person doesn't understand it or some other reason and you just keep moving forward And I think I think it's the power in the project and the story there's something in the story's connected. And that might be connected to what you were saying,

like there's a similar voice. Yeah. That might be what I'm holding onto. There's something in there that like I think is cool or interesting or exciting because making a movie is a lot of work and it's a lot of pain. It's a lot of patience. I mean, there's, you know, this movie caught stealing that's coming out at the end of the month.

I've watched it hundreds of times. I've had to sit there and just go through it with a magnifying glass, you know, making everything exact and perfect. And so to do that, you have to really kind of love the characters or love the story or love a sequence. So what makes a project worth that? It's kind of there's something about it that's shining to you that's hard to put into words. Do you think like there's an existential element deep beneath the whole idea because especially in Python, there's a really interesting question about numbers, about if we live in a deterministic world, that movie speaks to me because I'm a software engineer, so it age pretty good because right now computers and AI, it's crazy, but we've accomplished. But do you think there's an existential element in your work, like you're working in a way it's a way of denying that? To find existential, what do you mean? There's this really interesting book called The Denial of Death of Ernest Becker. That basically says that the human race has to deny that because if it doesn't deny it would turn neurotic. So he explains that there are three paths according to him to deny that one is religion, the second one is love and the third is your work. So an artist in the purest and according to him, it's a guy that denies it's death towards it, it's towards because it's like a way achieve. Maybe not in mortality, but to transcend that. Do you connect with that idea? Definitely. I read the Nile of Death in college. And it was a very significant book for me. It was blown away by the liminal ideas in it. I don't remember that idea. I think it's time to revisit it and read it. But yeah, I think when I was younger, I used to feel, think about that. And yeah, because I even set a term now. It's coming back to me where it's like Pain is temporary film is eternal. Yeah, that's that that is so it was definitely I and it's true I mean a film like pie where it's 26 years now and we're still talking about it It just had iMac's release last year they're doing a black swan IMAX release for the 15th anniversary

Later this month, so you know you hope that

Movies are gonna be stories that people watch

For a long time and I guess that has to probably do with me as the creator dealing with my ego issues in some way but

I do think that movies are more fungible now in the sense that there's so many other ways that people are getting their stories and their entertainment in the world that it's just...it's super important that their artistry is fantastic stick to kind of hold on to people's attention, but it's also like, it's okay to put something into the world that is consumed right now, because you just, you don't know the longevity of these things. No matter how hard you work on it, you just never know. Welcome to Paddy's Peace City area, your blind date is already at the table and there she is. Kazum Brenda, what are you doing here? You're married anyway! Substitution brought to you by Paddy Power, Kazum Brenda makes way for Beth, the office crush. Oh, get him! You might not always pick the right starter, but your sub can still deliver! Because with Paddy's Super-Sub, your bet rolls over to the player coming on!

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Wait.

Is that an enterprise sales solution?

Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. To get 100 pounds of your first campaign, go to linkedin.com slash lead to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash lead terms and conditions apply. And there's also like a lot of information that's hidden in cultural references about the reality of the year it was published. And that I think it's something that it's often missed. That's interesting. And they can age pretty good. Like maybe some movies were not intended to represent what they represented. But the timing aspect of the movie was essential, right? Well, it's true. Well, how does it work when you make a film like caught stealing, which is a period piece? So it's set in 1998. And we did everything possible to kind of make it feel like 1998. Even the quality of the grain of the movie itself, we tried to like capture that spirit. So yeah, I think it's right. It's funny. When we made Reckway for a dream, it was really important to try to make it not exactly set in any time period because we wanted to make it timeless, you know, so that people could come back to it and connect with it. And so everything from their sneakers, wearing pro-kids to Levi's, things that always come back into style at one point in the movie during a big emotional scene, Jared picks up a phone and it's a big, big, block phone with it and ten on it. That, you know, it's just ridiculous with the word Sony on it, right on his ear. And we just never even thought about it. But the thing that would date most obviously is technology. But we miss that. I think the whole concept of a phone is going to become obsolete in probably the next two decades, people are going to see the movies and why are they

holding like this?

...