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00:00Opus is about a larger-than-life, eccentric pop star, played by John Malkovich, who disappears
00:20after 30 years and comes back to the public eye.
00:26He invites all of these wonderful people here to listen to his newest album, and that's
00:34where all the fun begins.
00:36It's outrageous.
00:38I started working on Opus five years ago, so you're sitting in a room and you write
00:45something and you think it's funny, and then I.O. delivers it, and you're like, oh, it
00:51was funny.
00:52It's extremely easy.
00:56This was the opportunity and the honor of my young 36-year-old life, and we had a ton
01:02of fun.
01:03It was freezing cold.
01:05New Mexico, perfect crew.
01:06I have no notes other than the weather.
01:09Holy shit was it cold.
01:12But man, I'm so proud of the film that we made.
01:13I'm so happy people finally get to see it and that I get to be here with all these humans
01:19that I love.
01:20It's cool.
01:21For me, I just thought it was a very intelligent script, and I like the characters in it.
01:29I like the story and the kind of oddity of this story.
01:33It goes to very unexpected places, and myself, I would never look to a celebrity for any
01:45kind of moral authority or life lesson, not because I don't think there are excellent
01:57people who happen to be known, but because I just don't think that's really our job.
02:05So I read it and liked it and liked where it went.
02:10I feel similarly.
02:14If I finish a script, I have questions, and I feel like I was like, Mark, we need to meet.
02:21I have questions.
02:23I want to know more about these people and this world and what drew you to it.
02:31I think as somebody who definitely is a part of the social media generation, fame is so
02:40much more ubiquitous.
02:45Anybody can be a celebrity if they really want to be.
02:50I think also just the nature of fame and how it's changed and a story that is kind of dealing
03:01with somebody also who is of the generation of true, hard, concrete fame.
03:07There's facts.
03:08There's data.
03:09There's merch.
03:10There's people who would show up and have these feelings.
03:14That conversation, I feel like I'm always kind of interested in, not just in the level
03:20of celebrity, but how it affects all of us.
03:23So getting to kind of work with everybody and play with everybody and kind of ask these
03:28questions together was fun to me.
03:31I saw you do a finger point.
03:33Oh, I guess it was technology.
03:36Yeah, I do things that are like...
03:40I was like, I don't know.
03:41I could volley it right over.
03:44This is so exciting.
03:46This is such a unique script where I just saw on the page and I was so happy to come
03:51and support everybody in this piece and the characters are so rich and different.
03:58I jumped at the opportunity to play new people I haven't played before and I get to play
04:03a tabloidy journalist who is much different than myself.
04:10So that was fun.
04:11I mean, first of all, I guess I'm just agreeing really with what people have said in that
04:18it throws up questions and doesn't necessarily answer them, which I kind of liked.
04:22And there's sort of some conflicting kind of things in that I wasn't sure what I thought
04:30afterwards, which I really I kind of like that feeling at the end of a script.
04:34And it was very it was it was also really fun to read, but it is also really dark.
04:39It just had all these kind of levels in it that I felt excited by.
04:45And also I got to play like a kind of a music bro, like an old school music bro.
04:50Similarly, like it was a it was a really fun role to play and being mean to me, being mean
04:56to Aya.
04:57Who wouldn't love that?
05:00And also Juliet and I had worked together before and we got to work together again as
05:05a sort of like sometimes a little bit of a duo, which was super fun.
05:10But yeah, I'm just I'm so in awe of Mag and proud of what he did with this film.
05:20And he was he was just excellent in holding it all together and keeping us on track with
05:27the story.
05:28And it was it was really exciting for me to work with someone who I can't believe it's
05:33his first film.
05:35And and I'm just I'm super excited to see what comes next for him, because I think he's
05:41awesome.
05:42What do you do when you're getting hungry?
05:43Sit through supper.
05:44I do feel like a freshman coming to high school with all the seniors.
05:56So for me, I was like so thrilled at the opportunity to even get to share a scene with these legends
06:02on this couch right here who are so accomplished and and adored and and by myself and by everyone.
06:11And the script was so smart and fun.
06:14And I actually kind of was like, maybe this might actually could happen, you know.
06:20And so that was really fun and interesting to me.
06:22And yeah, we all had a we had a great time on set and it was a really, really wonderful
06:26experience.
06:27Mark Anthony told me he was going to get some great music for it.
06:33And I had my doubts about that just because I think that's very hard to do.
06:39He brought one piece to visit me when I was directing a play overseas and which was nice.
06:48And then he decided against that one.
06:50And I got these three songs.
06:53I think the morning I listened to them on the way to the recording studio, quietly in
07:01the Uber.
07:02And I thought, well, that'll be a challenge.
07:05And because I hadn't sung any pop in probably 40 years or more.
07:14And so I walked in and there was there was Mark Anthony and there was Niall Rogers and
07:22then The Dream.
07:24And we met and there was the engineer, Cook, yeah, legend.
07:33And he they said, well, how do you want to proceed?
07:38And I said, well, let's record.
07:40And we started and then he would tell me kind of quite early on, he'd say, no, let's
07:48go up for that.
07:49And I was kind of like, an octave?
07:54Really?
07:55Because that was kind of eight billion unfiltered camels ago.
08:01But he said, yeah, yeah, you got to just do it.
08:03And that's how it went.
08:06And he was amazing.
08:10I think the songs are great.
08:13There was an amazing period where Dream and Niall were working with John Malkovich as
08:19Moretti and Beyonce and then back with John and then Beyonce and John.
08:28I feel they're often in conversation with each other.
08:31Absolutely.
08:32You know, so he had big shoes to fill and he knocked it out the park.
08:39You know, I think, listen, what you see is what you get when you look at me.
08:47And I think so many of the stories that have moved me throughout my life are characters
08:53who don't look like me, are characters who don't have my world view.
08:59We might not be the same age, the same race, the same sex, we might not have the same orientation,
09:04whatever.
09:05It's like the humanity is what moves me.
09:09And so I'm also like, there's people that I love and I work with and we have different
09:15politics.
09:16You know, it's like it's but it's it's like humanity and like care for each other.
09:20I think that that has to be the heart of it.
09:25So I think for sure it feels maybe slightly psychotic at times, you know, if I look at
09:34the news for a single second.
09:36But my hope is that for me and that for other artists that we continue to, you know, just
09:43champion each other's work and and and I don't know, all to say that it's it's massively
09:49important.
09:50There's, you know, there's so many queer storytellers who have changed the medium and, you know,
09:57I don't know, could change lives and and outside of that, you know, storytellers who are not
10:03in Western, you know, in the Western canon, like, I don't know.
10:10So it's a it's not the most eloquent of answers, but it's because I it's because I'm getting
10:15worked up in my head.
10:16No, it's OK.
10:17It's OK.
10:18Actually, I'm mad at you, Glenn.
10:19We're fighting.
10:20We're fighting now.
10:21I've been seeing new headlines just in our movie world that I'm really excited by in
10:32that there might be a new renaissance for independent cinema.
10:38And I feel like that this is the most this the biggest area of diverse storytelling and
10:43characters, and we're seeing it more and more.
10:46So I want to lean into the cup is half full in these moments, but and especially this
10:55festival has a particular vibrancy and aliveness.
10:58I came before the pandemic.
11:01So this has been an exciting time for movies and characters and rich storytelling.
11:05I just want to add to that.
11:07Can I just pick up on something that I have said?
11:12I think, you know, the key is in champion championing each other and championing all
11:18sorts of different voices.
11:21I think the arts has always been a place where change can happen when change is being kind
11:29of squashed in other areas.
11:31And I think it can be a really powerful kind of way of of of getting stories, telling stories
11:38also that aren't necessarily exactly about what's going on, but but kind of paralleling
11:43what's going on.
11:44It's such a great thing.
11:47And I guess, you know, that can happen in any kind of story about any kind of person.
11:51That's the stories that I, you know, I really respond to are universal stories.
11:56And it could be the person could be completely different than me in, you know, race, politics,
12:03you know, gender, sexuality, whatever I hope that we're moving towards.
12:08And I think that we can, you know, guide a movement towards just a sort of universal
12:17collective kind of lifting each other up and and helping each other relate to each other's
12:23stories and supporting each other, telling the stories that are meaningful to us and
12:30can resonate with others, you know, I mean, I'm really just rephrasing what you said,
12:35but I think it's a really passionate time for all of us to to to sort of try and figure
12:41out how we can contribute and how we can lift each other up.
12:45And I think as long as we're asking that question and like trying to do that, we're we're on
12:50a good course.
12:52For these individuals and the crew, you know, it's like it's one thing when you sit and
12:59you're like, hey, we should all do X, Y and Z.
13:02But the way that they made this movie, the lack of ego that they brought to it, the,
13:08you know, respect and the way that everyone listens to everyone and like, you know, this
13:15is Ariel's journey.
13:16And I owe very much so a leader on the set, very much so, you know, a voice on the set.
13:24Same with everybody on this couch.
13:26Murray Bartlett would show up at like a 6 a.m.
13:30call time, knock every one of his lines out the fucking park.
13:35Sorry for Kirsten Deadline.
13:37He'd bring you homemade trail mix that he somehow made that's scrumptious.
13:44Like there was real love and there was.
13:48I think that as the world seems crazy around us, when you have people that are as accomplished
13:55as John and Juliet and soon to be, you know, Murray, you have this amazing cast.
14:01You would think with this amazing cast comes all of these other things, but everybody just
14:08came to make the best film and there's something really beautiful in that, you know, and that
14:15we could control.
14:18And I was really inspired by the way everyone they treated everyone and again, the leadership.
14:25And so I don't know.
14:27I wish that we could show people that aspect of it as well.