- Hello, Ari. - [Ari] Hi. - So great to meet you virtually. - So great to be here. I was just telling you how
much your work means to me, I'm very happy to be talking
to you, to be doing this. - The feelings are very mutual, I'm a huge admirer of your work. Where are you calling from? - I'm in New Mexico right
now, in an apartment I came out here to be near family 'cause I was sort of displaced, I was in California when this all happened and I'm a New Yorker. So I've just been, for a little while I was hopping from bunker
to bunker, now I'm here. I'm trying to get back
to New York eventually, I hope sooner than later. - So as I mentioned to you, we've compiled a series
of open-ended questions that we put together,
the students and myself, and with your permission we'll begin. - Let's go. - What was your most vivid
memory from childhood? - Oh, wow. Well. Gosh, most vivid memory.
- Start with the hard ones. - Yeah, that is a rough one but let's see, I've told one story before
and it's I guess it's vivid, it's sort of, it's a series
of like very kind of, they're in some ways vague
impressions but they're also very, very powerful for me. And I don't know this is
the most powerful but I, so yeah, when I was very
young, I think was my, yeah, I think it was both my
parents took me to see Dick Tracy in the movie
theater, the Warren Beatty film. And I'm not sure if it was
the first film I'd ever seen but I think it might have
been, at least in theaters. And I just remember like a wall of flames and somebody firing a
Tommy gun in front of that and then I just just started screaming and running out of the theater and I think I ran 10 city blocks
with my mother chasing me. Just running into the street screaming. And so that made an impression on me. I mean, that's sort of, yeah, I mean, I guess that's like a cop-out answer since like it's not extremely
personal but I figure that's-- - It's very personal. - [Ari] Tied to film in some way so. - Who were your early influences when you were coming of age? Filmmakers or otherwise. - Well, when I was really
first getting into film Scorsese was probably like the
guy for me more than anybody. Scorsese and the Coen brothers
and Kubrick were all like, the first filmmakers I
wanted it to be, I guess. I mean, there are just so many. I've talked a lot about Bergman and how important he was to me growing up and how important he still is to me. Gosh, I would say Chris Morris, a British writer, director, comedian, whose work really, really made a pretty profound impression
on me when I was younger and I still keep returning to
Chris Morris to get excited. - Is there one particular
movie that changed your life? Or is that too hard to? - Well, I've talked about,
I've talked a lot about this but "The Cook, the Thief,
His Wife and Her Lover" was a film I saw when
I was like too young. And that really like, I feel like I'm not, it's not hyperbole to say
that it ruined my life for a couple years. And I've talked about it too much, I need to find new things to talk about, but that really was like
a traumatic thing for me, seeing Cook, the Thief,
His Wife and Her Lover and feeling like just somebody was puking violence in my brain. And it was like somebody
else's sick is going into me and now I'm sick. - [Gregory] Didn't end well. - That's somehow not only
made an impression on me as just a kid who's being, you know, I guess psychologically
harmed by something but also every now and then I recognize like, oh, like there's a part of me that wants to now do that to other people, it's like put images in people's heads that maybe are hard to
contend with or are upsetting and it's all it's all very
sick and not very healthy. But that was a film that really, really made
a huge impression on me, for better or worse. - Do you feel your work is
autobiographical in some sense? - Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah. Probably more than I will
ever publicly admit to but this is probably
as close as I'll come. But everything I've written is coming from some desperate place and usually when I write something that doesn't feel like it's
answering those like needs I tend to lose interest, those movies don't really end
up getting made or pursued. Yeah, yeah, but I try to
pass everything through a dense enough filter
that you can't really see where exactly it's actually coming from. And then by the time you end
up on set making the film it's less therapeutic and it really just becomes a
matter executing something. So I often, often like
the writing of something is very therapeutic and very, very, I feels as though I'm purging something and then I end up making the film and I'm asked very often like, is it therapeutic to make the film? And It's never, no, it's
always just a nightmare of trying to achieve something and you're trying to
get as close as possible to something that's in your head and that is what it is, it's kind of like working blind because just practically
it's so hard to make a film because you're working
with hundreds of people and the clock is hanging over you and there's so many things
that go wrong every day and then and then you get
back into the editing room and then I usually have a series
of week-long panic attacks where I feel like I can't release this and I can't my face people
maybe seeing parallels or people seeing reflections of themselves or what feeling that I
exploited something in some way and I just want to destroy what I've done and just get out of it. - This leads nicely into
the next question which is, what is your very least favorite part of the artistic process sounds? Sounds like maybe most of it but. (laughs) - My least? - Your least favorite part
of the cinematic process. - Well yeah, pre-production
is in some ways my favorite it feels like summer camp and you're working with a bunch of people and you're all kind of, it's just fun, you're getting to know people,
you're building things up and it's really great. It's stressful but it's manageable stress and then shooting is
definitely the worst part. And there are like peaks every day and those peaks are usually when you finally achieve something, when you're looking at
the monitor and you got it and you can move on. But then immediately when you've got it there's that rush of knowing you have it and then realizing, oh, but
now there's the next thing that we have to set up
and I don't, I don't know, I guess I'm sort of an inward guy, I'm not the most extroverted
guy so it always takes energy. And so yes, so shooting is very hard. Shooting "Midsommar" was very hard because we were in another country and we didn't have enough money and we didn't have enough time and we were relying on daylight every day and the weather was terrible,
the clouds always came out exactly when they weren't supposed to. And so continuity was, even just the question of
continuity was a nightmare because we didn't know what
was gonna cut together. I'm still amazed that the
movies coherent at all. But yeah, anyway,
shooting was the hardest, shooting is the worst, it's
my least favorite part. But then when it's over I end up kind of feeling
nostalgic about it. Putting like a gloss
on on all the memories and now I'm sure in a year the experience of shooting
the "Midsommar" will just be something I remember only fondly. It's already happened with "Hereditary" and I know that's not what it was, I know that that was a nightmare too. - Do you enjoy the
collaborative process generally? - I really love collaborating with people and I've been very lucky in
that most of my collaborators have been just people I love and, I would say all the films
I've made are in so many ways, in so many ways they're like, it's a series of compromises
that have been made but they're also all so
much bigger and better and more expansive than what
I could've done on my own. I've been really lucky to work with amazing production designers, my cinematographer was
one of my best friends and he's also just like
a huge support system on everything I've done and there's like an an intimacy
that's achieved somehow in the making of these
films that goes beyond a lot of what I've experienced otherwise. Because you're all like
in the shit together and so I think did that that's
part of the joy of filmmaking is that you're sort of living
with a makeshift family for a time and you're all
pursuing the same thing and you're all climbing the same mountain and so of course, you know, sometimes it's a nightmare
working with other people but usually it's a joy. And it's, at least on
the last two features, the only two features so far, I fell into pretty serious
like little depression after shooting both films just because you get so close with these
people and you love them and you've been through
something and it's so intense that you kind of forget to
appreciate it or enjoy it at any given point and then it's all over and it's very abrupt. Like the last day of
shooting is the last day. Then you have a wrap party and then everybody goes
back to their lives and some of these people
you might never see again. But you were so, so, so
close for a few months. Yeah, I do very much like
the collaborative process. - What do you see as the central themes and preoccupations in your work? - I don't know, I can answer that and I often fall into the trap of answering questions like
that but I feel as though I'm falling into a trap. And that it's not my job to-- - Hazard a guess. - Yeah, it's hazardous,
it's always hazardous. There are things I end up realizing, there are themes I kind of
realized thing are prevalent like grief, grief is sort of a theme that's been I guess pervasive enough. The next thing that I'm
working on right now that will probably be the next feature if anybody ever shoots a movie again, is also dealing with questions about grief even though it's a comedy. - Oh, really? - Yeah, it's an absurd, very,
very, very stupid comedy. - Oh. Let's see if he comes back. Ari? We lost you there for a second again. - Oh, you did, where did you lose me? - Very stupid, stupid
comedy is what you said. - Oh, right, which has been, it's been churning for like six years and I hope I get to make it, it's been on the back burner for a while. - There is a relationship
between horror and humor that I think your films explore. - I mean, yeah, I agree
that there is a relationship between horror and
humor, especially in that they both kind of deal with
build-up and pay off, right? There's in horror you're
you're building suspense towards some sort of revelation and with comedy you're, it's
set up and then punchline. But yeah, I mean, I don't know, all I can say
about that is that I feel like, that anything, like any
film, book, whatever, without humorous is time wasted. - Do you feel there's a relationship between violence and catharsis? - Yeah.
- Yeah. - Yes. I don't know if I can, I mean, for me, for me, yeah, I can't really
extricate one from the other. Do I have anything more to say? I feel like I'll be embarrassed
by anything I add to that but yes, in caps. - How about your thoughts about themes concerning religion and cults
that play through the work? - You know, I mean, I'll
begin just by saying that by the time I was given the
money to direct "Hereditary" I had written 10 feature scripts just trying to get anything going and "Hereditary" and "Midsommar" were only two films that had that in them. - Interesting. - And so I think it feels more pervasive to other people
than it does to me, although I'm aware of it. Well, I guess both films
are very much about family and about like the trap of family. I don't know if they're like both, at some point I guess
they're anti-family and just, cults felt like very,
very appropriate metaphors that just like worked
for whatever I was doing with those two films but again, I'm hesitant to expound beyond that, which I'm sure it's very
dissatisfying listening to this, to this conversation but. - Who's your imagined
audience if you have one? - My imagined audience? - Think about like as you're making a film or after it's made. - I guess it's me, I guess I'm
just trying to satisfy myself and trying to remember what
upsets me in other work, by which I mean what bothers
me, like what I don't like. I'm trying to remember where
I've drawn lines for other work because it's very easy to
like to lose those lines when you're doing something yourself. And then, I mean, this isn't
quite what you're asking but whenever I have to do talks like this or when the films come
out and then I do Q and As after the screenings I have
a very hard time doing them because I'm just imagining
which people in the audience think I'm an asshole and which people in the
audience hated the movie and how obnoxious it would be to like listen to me talk about it. And so I just don't want to say anything because I can only think about them. And it's all a projection and so I guess I'm just
trying sort of like avoid, I'm just trying to avoid
traps all the time. But I don't know, there's something disingenuous
about that as well but I guess I'll just let it stand, yeah. - What movies make you cry, or which movies have made you cry? - It's not hard to make me cry actually. Sometimes I really resent it, sometimes I feel like
I got socked in the gut and like somebody took something
from me without earning it and I'm always upset about that. Like, I'm an easy target
for the tearjerker but there are certain films
that make me cry every time. Recently Andrew Haigh made
a film called "45 Years", I've talked about this
a lot but that film-- - I love that movie.
- Me too. I've seen it so many times now,
I've seen it maybe 10 times and there's just at the
very end of the film there's a cut to black that's
so like perfectly timed and the entire film has
been building towards this like expression on
Charlotte Rampling's face which is like so loaded with meaning and every time it cuts to
black I just started weeping. It's a very like cathartic release, I don't know, I'm pretty amazed by that and I don't feel resentful
whenever I cry watching that, I feel that film because it earned it. I remember seeing "The
New World" in theaters and being destroyed by that,
like really, really devastated, and then feeling really grateful
for how destroyed I felt. The ending of "Defending
your Life" makes me cry, when Albert Brooks jumps out of the bus and gets into Meryl Streep's bus, that makes me cry, I love that. I'm trying to think of others. - It's interesting, Ben
Stiller who did pop up, mentioned Albert Brooks as well. - Oh, really? Yeah, I love Albert Brooks so much. Yesh, he's the greatest. "Modern Romance", "Real life", "Lost in America", and
"Defending You Life", that run was pretty incredible. I love "Mother" too but
it's not quite on the same, those four are just
beyond the beyond, yeah. - What is your greatest fear? - There's so many, if I were to choose... I guess it's maybe just
the people closest to me like changing or turning on me. That's something that I guess dictates a lot of my behavior as well. And just like loss of quality
of life, I guess that's, I waste a lot of time worrying about that. - So I have one last question and then if if you have time
we'll open it up to students. What advice would you give
students in this moment of peril? - Well. I don't know what advice I can give, this is an unprecedented
time, this is crazy. I know that I've been getting, I go from being a galvanized
by the whole, you know, Shakespeare wrote King
Lear during the plague, and then I swing from that
to that and feeling like, well, actually Shakespeare
wrote like what, 39 plays, he was probably writing anyway, and I only think that there should be any pressure on anybody to
be productive right now, we're living through history. And so maybe just, you know, let's do that and get through it. But one thing that I can say is that everything has slowed down and I have been reading more than I was, which has been really nice and there's something
liberating about the fact that we're all in the
same situation where, I know a lot of people who got
really screwed by this thing beyond people who died and I'm so lucky because I didn't really
have anything going and my life hasn't really changed beyond the way that it
changed for everybody. So I'm so fortunate that I feel like I can't really speak to anything. It's kind of gross how fortunate I am. And I had friends who
were a week away from, I had one friend who was a week away from shooting a massive, massive, movie. I can't imagine how the
frustration and the grief of just being ready to go and
then having that cut down. And then that of course,
who cares about that when you have people losing their parents and people losing their
their husbands and wives. I mean, I don't know, it's
all becoming mush now. I have no advice except just
hang in there and it sucks. - I think that's great
and beautifully said. We're gonna go to questions
now, first ones from Elizabeth. - Okay, hopefully my internet cooperates. So, do you hear me, is this working? - Yes. - I feel like this question might make you feel put on the spot even though you're very careful about avoiding elaborating on some stuff, but I have to ask, you talk about the sensation of feeling
perhaps like manipulated almost when some films make
you induce like tears, which I can relate to. Can you talk more about maybe your theories for that motivation of wanting to induce this
sensation of feeling like infected or discomfort through your images, because I think it's
something I relate to a lot but I find myself feeling
like worried or guilty often. Like, what is my motivation for
wanting to induce on people? Like, I don't know, if
you could expand more what you think maybe that
impulse is as an artist. - Yeah, well, you know, I
find that I'm often writing the stuff that I end up making or end up committing to
making when I'm in crisis and when I'm really
working through something, whatever it is that feels immediate. I guess whenever writing feels
more like an act of survival than me practicing some
like craft or something. And so part of it is me trying to relay whatever that feeling was that was driving me
through the writing process and wanting to have it feel that, capture the desperation and the immediacy of whatever was happening
while I was writing. And then I also, I guess I just, for me image making is what
is like the first thing that draws me to film making, I feel like that's what
I'm most padded about, I love getting into sound
and I love playing with cuts and I love working with actors but really in the end
I need to have at least like five or so images that are so, that are just burning in me to the point that I you know I have this
kind of constant engine that gets me through the making of a film because it is very, it's
a nightmare making a film. It's a joy but it's very hard and it's very hard too because unless you're editing
while you're making the film, like somebody like Soderbergh did, shooting and cutting his own
films and he's incredible, I don't know anybody like Soderbergh. He's a hero of mine just
knowing his process. But unless you you're cutting
while you're making the film, which I'm not doing, I can't
even really watch dailies 'cause it's too, I need to
think about tomorrow, not today, or like not what I just did. Then you don't know what's gonna work and some things don't work,
some really essential scenes end up on the cutting room floor just because you didn't get them right, not because the scenes
don't need to be there. And you have to figure that away... - Hopefully he'll come back. There's so many more questions to ask him. - And getting it right. So for me it's, and maybe
this comes from having watched films when I was too young
that had really disturbed me and impacted me in negative ways, like "Carrie" was another film that just, I just was not ready for "Carrie",
it really fucked with me. And there were images in "Carrie" that just penetrated in a way
that I wasn't happy about. The hope for me is always,
I want to make something that like stays with you, I want to like put images in your head that you can't easily dismiss or that you can't move
immediately away from. I'm not saying that I'm doing that, I'm not saying that's
something I'm achieving, I just know that that's something that's a goal that I've been aware of, at least with these last two films and with a lot of the shorts
that I was making before, but really with these last two. - Nabil, where are you? - Oh, hello, can you hear me? - Yes.
- Okay, awesome. Hi, Ari, thank you so much for
coming and talking with us. I was wondering if maybe
you could talk about what do you think that things that horror as a genre can offer narrative, I guess like how do you find, like what are the special
qualities of horror as a genre? That it offers narrative
versus other genres of film that maybe attracted you to it. - Well, I feel like when
horror is done right, one, it like it gets me excited
about the medium as a whole because you're really
playing with all the tools. Sound and image, editing,
performance, music. I mean, for me it's also
been a matter of like kind of pulling back on certain things that I feel are typically over exploited. But really, you know, I mean, "Hereditary" when I first started writing
it was not a horror movie. It was a family drama and it was just like so
fucking punishingly bleak and I liked it but I just knew the audience for this
thing is really limited and that's fine, but it was
also just too close to home and I was really like, it
was just painful to write it because I just knew I
could never make this thing and then it occurred to me
to start redeveloping it as a horror movie and suddenly
all the things that were, all the things that served
as deterrence for me as I was writing it
suddenly became like virtues because it is ultimately
horror is a genre. It's a genre where you can
really kind of tunnel into the really ugly things and I think it rewards people who don't shy away from the
things that otherwise in any other genre it'll turn
off just about everybody else, or everybody in the audience. I mean, I'm somebody who, I'm like alert to like the
bittersweet ending and all the, I'm somebody who... I just have no patience
for half-measures I guess and I have found that I've been able to sort of tell these
stories that i want to tell without compromising and without compromising in ways that I would feel are compromises, other people might think I've
compromised left and right. And that somehow the audience
is still kind of there for it and so in that way I'm really
grateful to the horror genre. I've been kind of anxious to like leave it only for like the time being, but I recognize that for me it's been really kind of perfect. - Dylan. - Hi, thank you so much for
being here, it's just a delight. I have a whole bunch of questions for you but I feel like I should ask
the most straightforward one. I had a similar reaction
that you had to Dick Tracy when I first heard the Haxan Cloak and I wonder about your
relationship with him because that movie feels like it's so separate from his world but it like really, I don't know, I feel like it really
made something different out of both things
having having him there. - Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite, favorite things about making these films has been working with the composer's, working with Colin Stetson on "Hereditary" and working with Bobby, aka Bobby Krlic, aka the Haxan Cloak on "Midsommar". Also because these were people
who I just loved listening to before I was making films. I reached out to them hoping that they would
be interested in scoring and they both were, very luckily, they were the first people
I went to for both films. So I feel very fortunate
to have worked with them. Bobby is just a great guy so
working with him is just fun. But and, you know, I think that his, the music he's known for,
like his self-titled album and Excavation, that actually
felt appropriate to me while I was writing "Midsommar". Just him without really, his music not deviating from
what he actually usually does and then as I was making the
film and it occurred to me, like this really, really, really is a fairy tale more than anything, I stopped seeing it as
the horror film at all, despite the macabre stuff. It just felt like this really needs like, the score needs to be romantic and lush and kind of sentimental. That for me was what, you know, the ending, if it didn't feel
kind of romantic and swelling and kind of ecstatic then
it wasn't gonna work at all. And it took a while to find it. Colin and I, Colin Stetson,
had a really great thing going where we were emailing each
other the entire way through. So he would send me a cue and I would just kind
of send him back notes and that really worked. We were speaking the
same language over email, nothing else really needed to happen, we never worked in person. And that was not working with Bobby, and it was kind of scary
'cause the emails were just, emailing was just not working and we weren't on the same
page and so I flew out there hoping that maybe we could
develop a rapport in person and in the first two
days of working together with me talking to him and him
kind of scoring in the room that final cue, which is I think, it's either just under 10
minutes or just over 10 minutes, two days that was finished. It was the first thing we
did and I found that we had just the most amazing
rapport in person together and that score happens so
quickly, just together. I mean, it's all him,
but just we were able to communicate so well in person. I'm not sure if that's
what the question was but ultimately that that's
what the process was and it was really a joy. And I'm excited to hear
anything Bobby does at any time, same with Colin. But I'm very pleased with
both of those scores, I feel you know honored
to have worked with both of those artists. - Jane. - Hi, Ari, when you write a screenplay do you always have the ending in mind or is it always evolving? - Do I always have the
screenplay in mind when I'm? - I'm sorry, the ending of the screenplay, do you always have it in mind or is it always evolving
as you're writing? - "Midsommar" the ending
was always very clear. The ending was like the first
thing that occurred to me. "Hereditary", there was an
epilogue in "Hereditary" that I had to like chop out and kind of, not so much chop out as like, I had the ending of the film as it is now sort of absorbed an epilogue that was there from the beginning. And I'm so glad I did that, a
lot of people hate that ending but I'm happy with it. The next thing I'm doing the ending was very clear from the beginning. Yeah, I mean, I outline very heavily so by the time I'm
actually writing a script everything's pretty much set. Yeah, I mean, endings
are really important. I'm usually having like
a vivid ending in mind is what, again, it's an engine for me to get through the writing of the scripts. But I try to have an
image beyond just like some sort of narrative resolution. And, I'm sorry, I'm
actually gonna run over here and grab a charger and then sit over here and plug my computer
in, I'll be right back. - Yeah, that's fine, few more questions. - All right, okay. - Just a few more questions, Jack? Are you there, Jack? - Hello, can you hear me?
- Yes. - Okay, I'm curious about the
dream scene in "Hereditary", just the way that you captured what it's like to be in a
dream kind of blew my mind when I watch that and
I'm just curious about what it was like when you first
had the idea for that scene and how the how the idea
developed, like if it was a-- - I'm gonna cut you off, I'm really sorry, you actually froze for
like 30 seconds for me and I did not hear the
first part of your question, please ask that again. - Okay, my bad. So I'm a huge fan, first of all. So I'm curious about Annie's
dream scene in "Hereditary", can you hear me? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Okay, good, all right. So I was just completely blown away by how perfectly that captures like how weird it is to be in a dream. Like the pacing of it and everything, and I was just curious what it was like when you first had that
idea and how it developed. Like if it developed quickly or if you had the entire
thing in your head or if it was something
you were kind of chasing. And then how did you actually
execute that scene on set with the crew and everyone and
Toni Collette and Alex Wolff? Like how did you get it that perfect, I'm just just curious. - Thank you. Okay, so I remember when
I first wrote that scene, the idea was, it was
written into the script that there would be no room tone. That it was gonna be utterly
silent, which is very, I just know that when you
take tone in a theater it's very uncomfortable because you just have the theater sounds, like there's no environment
anymore in the movie. That was something I was
excited about trying, I didn't know who's gonna work, and luckily it just kind
of worked right away. The sound design team was like, we don't think it's gonna work, and then we tried and then it
worked, so we just did that. And that when along way
just creating that mood. And then as far as doing it on set, I think the only direction
I gave the actors was, drag out every silence between each line as far as you comfortably can. So don't speak until it's
unbearable to not say your line. And then we took out a
lot of those silences that can't be in the cut
because they were interminable but those I guess were the
prime ingredients of that scene. But I'm glad you're mentioning it, I was really pleased with how it came out. That it worked for you. Yeah, thank you, thank you. - Annie. - Hi, he's frozen. - Oh, he's frozen. Oh jeez, okay, well we're very close. Let's see if it comes back, there he is. - Okay, I'm back, sorry. - Ari, thank you so much for
sharing, really appreciate it. So I'm interested in your
commitment to subversion. I'm curious to hear more
about your thoughts on taboo and what are some taboos that interest you or do you wish were addressed
more in the arts slash life? - I don't know if I
can address like taboos that I wish were being addressed
more often in the arts. I guess I've always been
excited by work that is in some way transgressive. Although there's nothing worse than like some self-conscious (speaking
in foreign language) who's just shattering
taboos for the sake of it, that's also like something
that I can't stand and something that I'm always worried I'm inadvertently doing or being. I don't know, I mean, God... I guess I'm just excited by the idea of not doing the done thing and
kind of finding a way to, like, I mean, I don't know, I really don't feel
that I'm doing anything particularly original or that I'm in, I'm like on my own path. Even for instance in "Hereditary"
I was very excited about taking off a 12 year old girl's head 30 minutes into the movie,
that was very exciting to me. But comes from me having seen "Psycho" and being really excited
by what "Psycho" did. I mean, it's just, I don't know, for me what's exciting
about working in genre is the idea of breathing like
fresh life into a dead horse and finding ways to avoid cliches while at the same time like
honoring certain traditions. And then of course for me, genre is also a way of
veiling personal stuff and there's a structure that exists for me that kind of allows me to like hang very messy feelings in
sort of an organized way. God, I'm not answering anything, I'm just talking like an asshole. I don't know, I'm not sure if
I've given you some sort of, I'm not sure if I've given you
anything there but that's-- - Sorry, if a follow-up is possible, I'm curious if you're concerned that like if the veil was lifted it would take away from the impact of your work? - The veil of what? - Like the veil of whatever is veiling the sort of personal stuff. - No, if anything the work
would be more impactful but then I would be vulnerable. Ultimately it's all armor
and it's so that I can, make as full-bodied a statement as I can without being completely
paralyzed by guilt and shame and fear. So if anything the movies
would probably be better without all the veiling but I would die. - I know we're running out of time but we do have to two
more questions, are you? - Yeah, I'm fine.
- Okay, great. So, Mickey. - Hi, Ari, thank you for being here. You kind of alluded to
this in the last question but I guess I was wondering what do you see as the
function and or benefit of gore within films? - Well, first of all there's
like an aesthetic beauty, potentially. I guess I'm thinking a little bit about the question about violence and catharsis, if you're gonna kill
somebody in your movie you might as well make it good. But at the same time, to like I guess slightly remove
the tongue from the cheek, you might as well make it
impactful and for instance, I mean, I can't talk about it broadly because I'm just gonna just
disappear in my own ass but I feel that the, okay, so specifically I could point to showing Charlie's head
on the side of the road in "Hereditary". And that her head comes off in one scene, but it's so quick that we, hopefully the audience
is almost not even sure if they saw what they thought they saw and there's like a restraint to that that maybe is a relief to people and also kind of allows
them to feel the impact without being grossed out. But then that also, you know, by hopefully showing some
restraint in that scene, the hope was that people would
kind of let their guard down to a degree that they're not even aware of and then the next morning when
you hear the mothers screams and her panicking and freaking out, hopefully that starts to
penetrate on some visceral level and then by showing the
girl's head the idea was, like I want the audience
to come as close to feeling what the family is feeling, like as far as like the
horror of this incident and how just unbearable this is as I can. And ultimately it's like a fool's errand because it's their daughter and they've, their whole life is wrapped up in her and you've been watching it for 30 minutes and she's kind of a creepy kid. But for me it's, I want to make it count and so ultimately I want
the violence to penetrate and I want it to bother people
because violence is horrible and it reverberates. And then, I don't know, there's just, our bodies are so
vulnerable and then we die and then they rot and there's something, I think we spend our entire lives kind of trying to distract ourselves from just how vulnerable we are. And so, I don't know, there's something appealing to me about reminding everybody that everything is finite and precarious and were really just,
you know, just decaying. Well, is that the answer I want to give? Anyway, that's the answer I gave you. - Last question is from Dawn. - Hi, Ari.
- Hi. - I was wondering, I've googled
all over for this answer and this is a short question and I was wondering if
your father has seen "The Strange Thing About the Johnsons"? - Yeah, yeah, he has. - What does he think about
it, what does he say? What did you say when
you showed it to him? Or did he see it on his own? - Well no, I mean, it was my thesis film at grad school at AFI. And so, yeah, I showed him my thesis and, yeah, he liked it. (laughing) I think his his response was like, I think the first time
he saw it he just said, too weird, Ari, too weird. You know, I don't know, but
I think it's grown on him. I feel like there's been much more. There have been things in
my films that I've been, so much more worried about as far as people close to me seeing them. - Is there anything that you
wanted to put into a film that the studio wouldn't let you? - No. I had to fight with
the, I mean, not fight, but there was a long back and forth with the MPAA about "Midsommar". I've been lucky, I've
been working with A24 and they're very supportive
of their filmmakers, they're great, they're as great as everybody thinks they are. - Can you be more specific
about the "Midsommar", which part were you fighting for? - It was the sex temple stuff, the director's cut has like
the full sex temple scene. It was just a lot of trimming,
it's a lot of trimming. And they also were pushing back on (speaking in foreign language),
the jumping off the cliffs and demolishing the old man's head. But no, I haven't really, I mean, I have stories that I won't
tell about "Hereditary" that don't have to do with
A24 but that were horrible, but I won't tell them,
because it's just too messy. But I will say that the issues I've had dealing with like the studio as far as the cuts are
concerned are all my faults. "Midsommar", first cut
was about four hours long, it was too long. I wasn't being careful enough
about just timing scenes and so it was very hard to get
that to two and a half hours. For many, many months I didn't think that there was any possibility that I would ever get
it below three hours. So it was a very painful
process of cutting things that I thought the movie needed that I thought were
important for the characters, were important for the
world, were important for, and I still think that
they were important, the theatrical cut of "Midsommar" is my, that's my cut, I approved that cut. I did that with with my
editor, Lucian Johnston. But that was very painful, was getting it to a releasable length. And even at two-and-a-half hours it's arguable that the movie just, it shouldn't be even that long, you know. But it is, at minimum. Yeah, so that's been the hardest thing but ultimately it comes down to I made a movie that was too long. I did the same thing
with "Hereditary" too, the first "Hereditary" was three hours. I mean, usually assemblies
are much, much longer but I'm not sure how typical it is that you end up cutting
40 scenes from a movie, or 30 scenes from the movie. And that's pretty much what
happened with both films. So hopefully I've learned my
lesson but I probably haven't. - Ari, thank you so much, this
has been so extraordinary. I want to ask Lyndsey to turn on the audio and asks all the students
to turn their screens on so we can all thank you and
give you a round of applause. (audience cheers and applauds) - Thanks Ari.
- Thanks!
