The Big Sick, Allison Janney & Michel Gondry

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2018

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One Bullseye episode. *Four* Oscar nominees! First up: Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani. They co-wrote "The Big Sick" and you probably heard about it already - the Academy just nominated it for Best Original Screenplay. They're two fascinating, sincere and brilliant people, and the film is a unique, hilarious and subversive take on modern romance. Jesse talked with them earlier this year. Then, the hits keep coming. Director Michel Gondry talks about the song that changed his life. Oscar-nominated actress Allison Janney (West Wing, I, Tonya, Mom) talks about how Paul Newman helped jump start her career. And Jesse tells you about the last movie Orson Welles ever directed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, before we start this week's episode, I've got a favorite to ask.
0:03.3	Do you love Bullseye? Like so much you want to tell everybody about it. Do you want to hear your
0:07.7	voice on the radio? Call us and leave us a voicemail at 323-484-4712 and tell us why you love the show.
0:17.7	That number again is 323-484-4712. We want to use clips of your testimonials about what you
0:26.8	love about Bullseye in our show promos to convince people to give it a try. 323-484-4712. Thanks.
0:37.2	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumHun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:49.3	I'm Jesse Thorn. You know, it's a cliché, something every writer's starting up gets told dozens
0:54.6	and dozens of times, right? What you know, right? Good writers, we've made up stuff with autobiography
1:00.5	all the time. Kumail Nijani and Emily Gordon pretty much did exactly that. They wrote a movie together
1:08.2	about the early days of their relationship. They're married now. They called it the big sick.
1:14.8	And one thing that they learned, writing about your actual life, your actual friends and family,
1:21.4	it can be scary. It's scary on a couple levels one. You don't want to mess it up because it's your
1:27.1	story. You get one crack at it and you want to do a good job of it. And then it's also scary
1:32.0	because you do feel so naked and vulnerable to a lot of people. And we're in this weird position
1:38.6	now where we want more people to watch it. So we want to feel naked and vulnerable in front of
1:44.2	the biggest audience possible. It's Bullseye.
1:52.0	Coming up, we'll talk with Kumail and Emily about how they turn the real story of their
1:59.2	relationship into a feature length Academy Award-nominated movie. Sometimes Kumail says you just need to
2:05.3	get that personal stuff out there, even if it's a little gross. I just felt like for me it was like,
2:10.1	you know when there's a catch a bottle and there's the film's gun at the top, you got to like slam it
2:14.4	and get it out before you can do anything else. That's how I felt this story. That is not a good
2:18.9	description of this movie. We are not the gun. Get the top of the catch up.
	...

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