Materialists with Celine Song and Mona Fastvold (Ep. 548)

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

Directors Guild of America

Tv & Film

4.6 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Director Celine Song discusses her new film, Materialists, with fellow Director Mona Fastvold in a Q&A at the DGA theater in New York. In the conversation, she discusses how the film was inspired by her own time as a matchmaker, the differences in dating culture values across countries that contributed to crafting the narrative, and how the process of casting the right Actors for her roles mirrored the matchmaker theme of the film. The film tells the story of Lucy, a successful New York City matchmaker who maintains that she will only marry a wealthy man. But when she becomes entangled in a romantic triangle with Harry, a charming billionaire, and her ex-boyfriend John, she finds her plans are not so clear cut. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://www.dga.org/events/2025/august2025/materialists_qna_0625

Transcript

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0:00.0	Like the world sees you and then it's like, well, there's Chris Evans, the merchandise,
0:05.0	and then there's Chris the person.
0:06.6	And I think that it's like the gap between those things was enough to drive anybody a little bit mad.
0:12.3	So just like any good matchmaker, when I'm casting these roles, I'm thinking about how Chris
0:18.5	the person or Pedro the person or Dakota the person are the right
0:22.6	match for the person that I want to depict, right? So so much of it is ultimately about falling in love
0:29.0	with them. Hello and welcome back to the Directors' Cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.
0:53.7	In this episode, a young and ambitious
0:55.9	matchmaker finds herself torn between her perfect match and her imperfect ex in director Celine
1:01.6	Song's romantic comedy, materialists. The film tells the story of Lucy, a successful New York
1:08.7	City matchmaker who maintains that she will only marry a wealthy man.
1:13.3	But when she becomes entangled in a romantic triangle with Harry, a charming billionaire,
1:18.3	and her ex-boyfriend John, she finds her plans are not so clear-cut.
1:24.4	In addition to materialists, Song's other directorial credit includes the feature film Past Lives,
1:30.6	for which she won the 2024 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in first-time
1:36.2	theatrical feature film.
1:40.2	Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theatre, New York, songs spoke with director Mona Fastfold about filming materialists.
1:48.1	Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation.
1:59.7	Thank you, Russell for being here.
2:02.0	Saturday night.
2:04.0	You could be on a date.
2:06.0	You could be on a date?
	...

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