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FunTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - What film or series lit your fuse
00:13 and made you have to tell stories on screen?
00:16 - Right, so back in the seventies,
00:20 my dad was looking for something to do with me on a weekend,
00:25 a rainy weekend in Westchester, New York.
00:30 And he heard about a movie
00:32 that he assumed was appropriate for kids.
00:34 It was called "Dog Day Afternoon."
00:37 And he was like, "Well, you know,
00:39 we'll go see this movie about dogs having an afternoon,
00:43 I guess, of some sort."
00:44 And it sounded, he didn't really do his homework.
00:48 And he took me to see "Dog Day Afternoon."
00:52 And I think about 30 seconds into it,
00:55 he realized it was a mistake,
00:57 but he was into it and he was sort of looking at me
01:01 and I was clearly into it.
01:03 I don't know why, but we stayed for the entire film.
01:09 That film lit my fuse.
01:12 You know, it was the first experience that I had
01:15 as a kind of almost young adult.
01:19 I don't even think I was a young adult.
01:22 That blew my mind.
01:26 Pacino, I'd never really seen anything like it before.
01:31 And it just felt wild and exciting
01:37 and heartbreaking and multi-layered.
01:41 And really from that moment,
01:45 from when Sal said he wanted a plane to go to Wyoming,
01:50 to get out of trouble, I was hooked on acting.
01:55 I was hooked on writing.
02:01 And I was really hooked on Al Pacino.
02:05 And from that moment on,
02:06 I've probably seen the film 50 times.
02:08 I'll always watch it.
02:10 And, you know, what Sidney did in that film
02:15 was groundbreaking and rule-breaking.
02:20 And it just felt so alive to me.
02:24 And I don't know whether it's true,
02:26 but the story that I've come to hear
02:29 is that they were shooting the film in continuity
02:32 and that Pacino was wearing glasses
02:36 for the first eight days of shooting.
02:39 And at a certain point, he said, "Wait a minute, stop.
02:44 My character would have been so nervous
02:46 that he would have forgotten his glasses."
02:49 And the story that I've heard is that he put contacts in
02:53 when he was acting so that everything was out of focus.
02:56 And if you watch the film,
02:57 he's constantly trying to focus
03:00 and rubbing his head and rubbing his eyes.
03:02 And he looks like, you know,
03:04 in addition to all of the other problems
03:06 Sonny is having that day with law enforcement,
03:09 he's having an additional problem
03:12 because he can't see very well
03:14 because he forgot his glasses.
03:16 And I always thought that was genius.
03:17 And that kind of idea is something
03:20 that I'll always try and come up with some way
03:24 of disrupting an actor's intended performance.
03:28 Sometimes it doesn't work well,
03:29 sometimes it does with that Pacino story in mind.
03:34 - So when you were on your way up,
03:36 making your way as a director
03:40 and a writer,
03:42 what movie or series did you watch
03:44 that was so good it made you question
03:47 if you could ever really play in this sandbox,
03:50 if you could ever really rise to that level?
03:53 - Right.
03:54 There are many.
03:55 I think, you know, when I,
03:58 the first film that comes to mind is "Goodfellas"
04:02 and what Marty did with that film.
04:06 I think, you know, somewhere in the middle
04:09 of the Rolling Stones, cocaine, helicopter,
04:13 Ray Liotta, paranoid freakout,
04:16 I realized I was in the presence of a master filmmaker
04:20 and that, you know, Marty Scorsese
04:25 was someone who wrote his own rule book.
04:28 And really, maybe there were no identifiable rules
04:33 in that book other than, you know,
04:36 a very talented human being following his instincts.
04:39 With the right support team.
04:42 But I think "Goodfellas" humbled me
04:45 as much, if not more, than any other film
04:48 that comes to mind.
04:50 - That's a good answer.
04:52 So now, whether it was the success of your own work
04:56 or approval from someone whose opinion really mattered
04:59 to you, what first gave you the confidence
05:01 that in fact, you did belong doing this?
05:05 - So I moved out to LA a long, long time ago
05:08 with a guy named Ari Emanuel.
05:10 We went to college together and we were both out here
05:14 just dirt broke and struggling.
05:18 And he was at the bottom of the bottom of the mail room.
05:21 And I was working on a fishing boat down in San Pedro.
05:25 And I had been living with an Italian family,
05:28 the Galletti brothers, who kind of controlled the seaports.
05:32 A kind of, it was actually somewhat
05:33 of a "Goodfellas" type experience.
05:36 But I had met one of them and they had invited me
05:37 to stay with them.
05:39 And they had a housekeeper named Gedelia who hated me
05:44 and resented it.
05:45 I was not necessarily the neatest house guest
05:49 they'd ever had.
05:51 And I started writing these fictitious little scenes
05:55 between me and Gedelia and Gedelia plotting my demise.
06:00 And I was just writing them for myself.
06:03 But I would share them with Ari who was, like I say,
06:07 just cleaning up the dirtiest of the dirty coffee cups
06:12 and just big messes at the mail room at CAA.
06:16 And he would laugh and he and I would read them
06:19 back and forth and he would play Gedelia
06:21 and I would play me.
06:22 And he's the first one back in the late 80s
06:27 who said, "You should do this.
06:30 It's funny, it's good.
06:32 Keep writing."
06:33 And to this day, Ari is my oldest and best friend
06:37 and he's still my biggest inspiration.
06:41 And he's always the one who I send my work to first.
06:46 And he's always the one that inspires me to keep going.
06:50 - And he's not cleaning coffee cups anymore.
06:52 - No, he's not.
06:54 No, he's not.
06:54 But he's still supporting me.
06:56 And I'm lucky to have such a great friend
07:00 and to have gone through this mad journey
07:04 that is our business.
07:06 - What was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome
07:10 to allow you to turn projects that influenced you
07:13 into your own cinematic language?
07:16 - I mean, I always say that we are our own biggest obstacle.
07:22 That our stuff, our issues are what block us
07:30 from being creative, A, and functioning as a creative,
07:35 and then B, being able to negotiate the business side
07:40 of our business, which means lawyers and agents
07:44 and studio executives.
07:45 And you've gotta be able to do both.
07:47 And I think when I first started
07:50 and I was making my first film, "Very Bad Things,"
07:54 I had written a script, was fortunate to get Cameron Diaz
07:58 to say she wanted to be in it.
07:59 And that triggered a little bit of money.
08:01 So we were able to make it.
08:02 The next thing I knew, I was on a film set directing a movie
08:06 and I had never directed a movie before.
08:09 And I had no idea how to do it.
08:12 And I was scared.
08:13 Deep down inside, I was actually terrified
08:16 and I was very insecure,
08:18 but I didn't want anyone to know that.
08:20 So the insecurity generally came out
08:22 as sort of just irrational anger.
08:25 So somebody would walk up to me on the set
08:29 of "Very Bad Things" and say, "Good morning."
08:32 And I would be like, "What the (beep) does that mean?"
08:35 I had to quickly realize that if I let my fear
08:39 and insecurity and self-doubt win,
08:43 that was gonna be a really big obstacle.
08:44 And I was probably gonna shut down a career
08:46 before it ever got started.
08:48 And I very quickly learned that, you know,
08:51 when people say good morning,
08:53 they actually mean good morning.
08:54 And like, if they say have a nice day,
08:56 that's probably all there is to it.
08:59 And to be able to put my own fears
09:04 and issues in check was critical for me
09:09 to be able to navigate this business
09:12 because, you know, you can't attack everybody
09:16 that gets under your skin in this business.
09:18 You're just not gonna have a career.
09:20 And I very quickly learned that.
09:21 My last question, you know, "Painkiller,"
09:25 there's a lot going on here.
09:28 You know, I think like everyone
09:31 who watched "Friday Night Lights,"
09:34 we thought Taylor Keech, boy, he was so good as Riggins,
09:38 33, fullback Riggins.
09:41 And this is a wonderful turn for him.
09:44 Matthew Broderick, he's so still,
09:47 and he's so, you can feel the smugness
09:50 and the entitlement of Richard Sackler.
09:53 What burned in you to tell this story this way?
09:57 This for me started years ago when Eric Newman,
10:01 who's our executive producer and a good friend,
10:04 came to me and said, you know,
10:05 "Would you be interested in exploring the world
10:09 of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma?"
10:11 And I knew of Purdue Pharma,
10:13 and I started thinking about my relationship
10:17 to people who have experienced addiction.
10:19 And I realized very quickly that I could count
10:22 more than 10 people I knew personally
10:25 who had died of not just OxyContin and opioids,
10:29 but some from other drugs.
10:31 But I certainly felt a personal connection
10:34 to people who've died from opioids.
10:37 And I started thinking about some of my creative influences,
10:40 artists that really inspired me,
10:42 from Chris Cornell to Tom Petty to, you know,
10:46 one of my true heroes was Prince,
10:48 all of whom died of opioids.
10:50 And I realized that, you know,
10:53 I was very, very clearly and deeply connected
10:57 to this epidemic.
10:59 And I knew that that would give me the fuel
11:02 and the fire and the passion to wanna roll up my sleeves
11:06 and tackle six episodes,
11:08 which is a reasonable amount of work
11:10 and requires that connection.
11:12 But that was, for me, a personal connection that I had.
11:17 And if you talk to Matthew Broderick or Taylor Kitsch,
11:20 they also, like probably you do,
11:22 like almost everyone that's reading
11:25 or listening to this right now,
11:27 we don't generally have to reach far
11:29 to find someone whose life was either taken
11:32 or, you know, utterly eviscerated
11:35 because of drugs like OxyContin.
11:37 So the passion was there from the start.
11:40 - The fascinating thing to me
11:42 is the way you laid it out as a business
11:45 and the motivations of Sackler and his family members.
11:50 It is completely understandable,
11:53 but the idea of, you know,
11:57 of knowing you can make a lot of money
12:00 and knowing that you're creating addiction,
12:03 how surprised were you
12:06 when you discovered this along the way?
12:09 - Yeah, we had an incredible piece of source material,
12:13 a book called "Painkiller" written by Barry Meyer.
12:16 And, you know, after reading his book
12:18 and spending a lot of time with him,
12:20 it's impossible to get FaceTime,
12:22 obviously with the Sacklers, they don't talk.
12:24 The more I unpacked the evil, twisted genius
12:30 that was a capitalistic home run,
12:34 Purdue Pharma and OxyContin,
12:36 but the more I realized how they basically came
12:40 to have the idea that they were gonna mass release
12:43 into our culture heroin in a little M&M pill form
12:48 and be able to coerce and manipulate,
12:51 and I think bribe members of our government,
12:54 particularly in the FDA, to sign off on this,
12:58 then use their marketing skill,
13:00 the first real group of doctors
13:03 that bought an advertising agency
13:05 and understood the power of marketing
13:08 and were able to sort of treat this pill,
13:10 this heroin in a pill, as a McDonald's hamburger
13:15 or a Coca-Cola, treat it with the same sort of,
13:18 you know, marketing strategies that you would
13:21 the hamburger or the soda.
13:24 It was diabolical.
13:25 And, you know, if you're a capitalist, great.
13:29 And I support capitalism and I support people making money.
13:32 And if you apply common capitalistic ideology
13:36 to the Sacklers, just money-making, they get an A+.
13:40 If you start to put even the slightest amount
13:44 of moral judgment upon the way they were making their money,
13:49 these are some evil people.
13:52 - And that Matthew Broderick,
13:54 he's one evil Ferris Bueller, huh?
13:57 - Yeah, yeah, that was the thinking that, you know,
14:00 to take, the bad guy never thinks
14:03 that he's the bad guy, right?
14:04 So to take, you know, all of the goodwill
14:08 from Ferris Bueller and twist that into Richard Sackler
14:11 would be potentially quite interesting.
14:13 And he did a great job.
14:15 (mouse clicking)