21: Looper, with Rian Johnson and Adam Lisagor

0:00:00My favorite sentence I saw written about it was Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker.

0:00:04And just what, just the sentence that got me. It just said, "What happens if you hit you in the face and take off?"

0:00:09I'd be pissed.

0:00:11I think I would, yeah. I can't really land a punch, I think.

0:00:16I've never really tried, so I guess I'd be okay.

0:00:19I am here in, what do we call it, Sandwich Studios?

0:00:24Sure, well, yeah, I've never, I've never come up with a name for it.

0:00:27Well, I'm, I...

0:00:28I am Lee studios here in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

0:00:33It is a 24th of October and I've got two very special guests with me.

0:00:38Um, I have Ryan Johnson, writer and director of looper, smash hit time,

0:00:45travel, sci-fi movie, uh, and friend of the show, longtime friend of the show.

0:00:51Adam Lee score.

0:00:52I will, I should point out, I think also upfront is that I've warned all of you on

0:00:56previous episodes that you were to have seen Looper by now. The show will be very spoilerific.

0:01:02You should queue it up on your iPod to listen to later if you haven't seen the movie.

0:01:07And shame on you for not having seen it already.

0:01:08Alan: Who has an iPod anymore?

0:01:10Steve: Well, iPhone, I don't know.

0:01:11Steve (off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera,

0:01:12off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera,

0:01:13off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera,

0:01:14off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera,

0:01:15off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera, off camera,

0:01:16that's got that much capacity.

0:01:21So, boom.

0:01:24Oh, okay.

0:01:25I didn't, all right.

0:01:26Well, what are you going to say?

0:01:28What are you going to say to that?

0:01:30What are you going to say?

0:01:31I have nothing to say except iCloud.

0:01:32Well, but that's what I say.

0:01:35That's my retort.

0:01:37You know, finally, now.

0:01:38iCloud has a 25,000 song limit,

0:01:38and for someone with the music collection

0:01:40as studly as mine, that actually presents a problem.

0:01:42You do love music, and this is something

0:01:45I wanted to actually ask about as well

0:01:44in relation to the... So it's been how long now since the movie came out?

0:01:49It's been like three, four weeks now.

0:01:56And you've done quite a number of interviews and press for it.

0:01:58And I've tried to absorb all of it.

0:02:03I mean, just because I wanted to not talk about stuff that you've talked about.

0:02:07It's impossible though. That's the thing.

0:02:10there's only so many things you can ask about a movie.

0:02:13It's true, but there are a million facets of the process of making the movie.

0:02:18I think.

0:02:19Do you like talking about that?

0:02:21I would love this.

0:02:21I gather you do because I listened to your commentary.

0:02:24And I can get a sense for what you like talking about because you didn't have

0:02:29anybody prompting you.

0:02:31You just had your movie to respond to.

0:02:33You're so naked before you.

0:02:35I'm excited about this.

0:02:36To be fair, we are naked right now.

0:02:38That is true.

0:02:40as one of the advantages.

0:02:41- Pre-requisite of sandwich studios.

0:02:44- It's kind of where it gets its name.

0:02:45- Yeah, it's like--

0:02:46- I don't know what that means.

0:02:48- Yeah.

0:02:48Well, that's a good place to start though,

0:02:52is one of the things that you've done.

0:02:53And I don't know if it is unprecedented.

0:02:56I don't know if you've stolen the idea from somebody else,

0:02:58but you have issued a, what would you call it?

0:03:02A commentary track.

0:03:03Standalone, and the intention is,

0:03:05the movie is obviously it's still in theaters.

0:03:06It's not out, it's not for the DVD,

0:03:08it's not for the Blu-ray.

0:03:10intention is you load it up on your iPod, Adam, take it in the theater for the second

0:03:16time you watch the movie, you sit there with your headphones on and you've got writer/director

0:03:20Rian Johnson talking to you throughout the movie like you're watching a DVD with commentary.

0:03:26Adam: It's pretty great and I listen to it without the movie.

0:03:31Thanks man. No, I mean like as I saw...

0:03:35This is a battle.

0:03:38Okay, I have to explain myself. I went back and saw the movie a second

0:03:43time and I wanted to take notes during it so I didn't want two sources of

0:03:47information

0:03:48competing. And then I went home after I watched the movie and I put

0:03:53the commentary on by itself without the movie.

0:03:56And it challenged me to do something I didn't expect I would be

0:04:01doing which is trying to recreate the movie in my head as you talk through it.

0:04:05Which with a visually strong movie like this is easier to do because it's not wall-to-wall

0:04:12dialogue and long takes and everything.

0:04:15It's like a lot of really well composed stuff which is what you do.

0:04:22So I want to get back to the commentary stuff as well but I wanted to first, I wanted to

0:04:30out by congratulating you on something I thought was even more impressive by than the in theater

0:04:37commentary which is that on opening night of the movie you did something that was I

0:04:47found so impressive and it was that in LA here we have a theater, a movie theater that's

0:04:54the best theater in town is called the Arc Light.

0:04:56It's got stadium seating and you can reserve your seat and everything and always go for

0:05:00row, Jay.

0:05:02Fred Johnson.

0:05:04Yeah.

0:05:05Yeah.

0:05:06And the ushers are, they all wear these kind of embarrassing purple banded collar, short

0:05:13sleeve button-up shirts.

0:05:18And I've always wanted to find one of these shirts to be at Halloween.

0:05:22I now have one in my closet.

0:05:24Okay.

0:05:25I would love to borrow it.

0:05:26Thank you for offering.

0:05:28And so what you did is you, without giving up the gag, you posed, oh, and these ushers

0:05:37introduced the movie.

0:05:38Every single screening of a movie, they go out in front of the audience and say, "Thank

0:05:41you for coming to the ArcLight.

0:05:42You're going to be watching such and such movie.

0:05:45Please silence your cell phones."

0:05:46And Ryan did this in front of an unexpected audience and one of your friends got in on

0:05:52video and it was amazing.

0:05:53amazing. It was a pretty impressive and I don't know how many people knew that it

0:05:57was you.

0:05:58Not many, I don't think. That's one of the nice things. Nobody knows what directors

0:06:01look like. So there were a couple of people who snickered, but I, yeah.

0:06:05Well, it was such a, I feel like it was just, um, it's a perfect emblem of your,

0:06:09the spirit of the love of movies that you have and what you put,

0:06:13what you put into, um, that experience.

0:06:18Now you've gone through it three times of releasing a feature film.

0:06:21This is always so kind of giving that you want to put everything you have into the audience's enjoyment of the movie.

0:06:27That's that.

0:06:28That's what that that's what struck me about that.

0:06:31Am I kissing your ass too much?

0:06:32No, it's a very kind way of putting that.

0:06:34I appreciate that.

0:06:35It was a fun thing for me to do, but that's why that's a very kind and flattering way of putting it.

0:06:39Another thing that the ushers do is they wear a tag around their neck on a lanyard that says the name of their favorite movie.

0:06:46Yeah.

0:06:46No, I borrowed one from somebody.

0:06:48I forget what his favorite movie was.

0:06:50It was not my favorite movie.

0:06:51So maybe Terminator three, the rise of the machine.

0:06:57Yeah.

0:07:01So that, that was fun.

0:07:02Um, I, uh, I learned a lot about, uh, stuff that I, the, the technical stuff

0:07:10behind the process of making the movie from your commentary, um, just like things

0:07:17like, I mean, you talked a bit about your choice in lens flare and your lens choice

0:07:21and shooting out in a more anamorphic format and everything. Yeah. Here's a question. Why,

0:07:29why do anamorphic lens flares work for you? What do you mean? Like why? Aesthetically,

0:07:35what do you think it says about, about the frame? Well, if you get that purple, blue,

0:07:41Yeah. Well, I mean, it's really distinct to anamorphic lenses.

0:07:45It's something that doesn't look like anything else.

0:07:48And I like it when it feels organic in the frame, usually when there's a light source in the shot that you can see that it's actually coming from.

0:08:00So when there's a lot of the instances in the movie, there's like a helicopter with the light coming right in the camera.

0:08:08There's a scene between Joe and Paul Dano's character where they're in the kitchen and

0:08:13the whole thing is designed to be lit by this refrigerator that's open and the bare refrigerator

0:08:18bulb in there.

0:08:19And there's a really distinct flair that's coming off of that.

0:08:22In one shot it crosses Joe's eyes.

0:08:24Yeah, we lined it up just right so that you could kind of, so because the whole thing

0:08:29is he's, Paul is spilling his guts out and Joe's kind of sitting and you're trying to

0:08:33read what, how Joe's reacting to what he's going to do and what he's going to do.

0:08:37and that idea of like a mask across his eyes.

0:08:40But yeah, I don't know, for me,

0:08:42I think it looks cool first and foremost.

0:08:44I think it also has a very comforting sort of,

0:08:48it reminds me of early Spielberg movies

0:08:52and "Close Encounters" and "E.T."

0:08:55and there's something about it

0:08:57that just feels like a movie to me.

0:09:01It's interesting that it's become something

0:09:04that people are familiar with, you know, from,

0:09:07I know JJ Abrams uses it quite a bit.

0:09:12Just a little.

0:09:15I'm curious, is it something that you talk in the commentary as well

0:09:17about a couple of effects shots that you actually used fake lens flare

0:09:21in order to mask some sort of artifacts or whatever?

0:09:27Well, now what we did was for the helicopters,

0:09:29which were CG helicopters,

0:09:33I had had a bad experience with CG helicopters on the Brothers Bloom.

0:09:38We had had a full daylight shot where helicopters had to go through.

0:09:43We couldn't afford real helicopters.

0:09:44We had to create cartoon helicopters.

0:09:46To me, no matter how hard we worked on them, they always looked like cartoon helicopters.

0:09:51So I had been very frustrated.

0:09:52I knew there were a lot of flying vehicles in this one.

0:09:54Our advantage was they were all going to be at night.

0:09:58I remember I had seen the extras on the Blade Runner box set, where they showed the development

0:10:05of the flying cars and they showed a pass of the effects pass before they added in those

0:10:09really distinct flares, those lights that are coming off the cars.

0:10:14And it looked terrible.

0:10:15It looked like what it was, an optical comp.

0:10:18But then when they put those flaring lights on, suddenly it forgave all the ills and it

0:10:23looked awesome.

0:10:24And so that's what we did with these.

0:10:26So those are CG.

0:10:28But then there were a couple of instances where we had to--

0:10:33we shot something that had a lens flare,

0:10:36but then we had to paint out a wire or something that

0:10:38crossed the lens flare.

0:10:39And then the FX guys had to repaint the lens flare.

0:10:41But I think the trick is you try and keep it organic, I guess.

0:10:46That kind of work sucks.

0:10:46I used to work in FX when I've painted back lens flares.

0:10:51It's not fun.

0:10:53So what I was going to maybe get at was,

0:10:58well, okay, so you wouldn't add lens flares

0:11:02necessarily that weren't organic, which is a good thing.

0:11:06Yeah.

0:11:09Oh, another thing I noticed about what helps sell

0:11:11the CG vehicles or the Blade Runner type optically-comped

0:11:15flying cars is that sound design that you add that makes it

0:11:19all of a sudden a real object.

0:11:24You used great automotive sound design quite liberally in this movie.

0:11:28Even in the trailer early on, I think there was the first trailer I saw,

0:11:36which was more of a teaser, had some future car stuff that sounded

0:11:41unlike any automotive sound design we saw.

0:11:45We had a great sound designer Jeremy Pearson who had worked.

0:11:50Actually we found him because we first talked to Skip Leavsey who works with the

0:11:57Coen brothers.

0:11:57Who that's kind of, he's kind of like a, I kind of worship that guy.

0:12:05His, his work in the Coen's movies was kind of the first time I started really

0:12:10paying attention to how sound was used as a storytelling device, integral to the film.

0:12:18And so we found Jeremy through Skip and Jeremy had worked a lot with Skip and Jeremy is a

0:12:25tremendous sound designer and I think what he did was he took his cue from the visuals.

0:12:31He took, you know, and from kind of the feel of the whole world we were creating, which

0:12:35was a very grounded feel.

0:12:38So you hear a lot of mechanical whirring and stuff that sounds like it's coming from a

0:12:47real engine as opposed to space age, but I think that's because visually all the stuff

0:12:52in our movie looks like real engines.

0:12:54And so he was just going to take his cue off that.

0:12:56The bike to me has a sort of Millennium Falcon starting up-ish sound.

0:13:00Yeah.

0:13:01Well, and that's what, I mean, the first Star Wars was kind of, you know, that was a big

0:13:05touchstone in terms of, I still think in terms of sci-fi movies, that's one, you know, it's kind of the

0:13:09one of the most convincing worlds that's ever been created, I think, because everything feels so lived in and so

0:13:16mechanical and so... And I think they've, either they reused it or

0:13:21I've lived the last 30 years of my life in a lie, but that Millennium Falcon

0:13:28mechanical, starting up sound, was reused in Raiders for the airplane that Jock drives when he drives.

0:13:34when he jumps in the river.

0:13:36If they didn't reuse it, then it's,

0:13:37I always thought it was an in-joke

0:13:39because it sounds almost identical,

0:13:40but it says how mechanical the Millennium Falcon was

0:13:42as a spaceship that you could reuse the sound

0:13:44for a 1937 prop plane.

0:13:46- Right, right, right.

0:13:48Well, it's funny too, I remember in film school at USC,

0:13:52they showed like a breakdown of the sound effects

0:13:56in the sequence where he was escaping from,

0:13:59with the idol in the very beginning.

0:14:01- That's the one where they reuse that Falcon sign

0:14:03when he starts the plane.

0:14:04- Yeah, and they talked about how when the boulder

0:14:07was rolling down, they close-miked the wheels

0:14:11of their VW van on the gravel driveway

0:14:15and just got the mic right up close to it,

0:14:17and that created that kind of rolling stone

0:14:20against stone type feel.

0:14:23Or when Indy is holding onto the pit

0:14:26and the door is closing, he starts to like,

0:14:28the vine kind of starts tearing loose.

0:14:33You can hear the biting of an apple in there to hear that kind of "kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

0:15:03So many of, there are so many mechanical elements in the music, in the score, that your composer, your cousin, correct, Nathan, uses in the score.

0:15:15Does it go the other way at all? Are there any musical elements that are used in the sound design?

0:15:20Um, not really because they're kind of working, they're more or less working separately.

0:15:27And because of the way Nathan works, we actually ended up getting, oftentimes, in the mix to the point where we would have to choose between one or the other.

0:15:36Because the music and the sound design were kind of doing the same thing.

0:15:39And so, um, so no, there are, there are, but you know, there's stuff in the sound design that's very musical.

0:15:46musical. Like there's tonal beds that Jeremy will lay in that will just be like the ambient sound in a room, but they'll have, they'll be performing the same function as music.

0:15:57Where they'll be laying down a drone that gives like a feeling of uneasiness or tension or, you know.

0:16:03Well, also there's like a lot of percussiveness in your editing style.

0:16:06And it feels like over and over across the three movies, you see these moments

0:16:12of impact that are just expertly achieved with cutting and sound.

0:16:17Um, uh, I mean the bet, the probably the best example in this movie is just the

0:16:23blunder, the, you know, the blunder bus going off.

0:16:26Um, the first time you see it, it's so impactful and it's, and it's paired with

0:16:30that frame of a cut where the figure appears and then...

0:16:35- Yeah, yeah.

0:16:37- Do you have a musical background at all?

0:16:40- No, not really.

0:16:41I tool around on a couple instruments, but I'm not really.

0:16:45But my favorite editing is all the same way

0:16:50that I was talking about sound design with the Coens.

0:16:52For me, Scorsese is where it begins and ends

0:16:56in terms of editing.

0:16:57If you watch his editing, it's all musical.

0:16:59It's not continuity, it's just purely jazz and based on rhythm.

0:17:07And it's got its own kind of music to it.

0:17:12So that's the places that I really learned editing from watching.

0:17:20That's very integral to it.

0:17:22Like if editing were a musical instrument, you'd be good at it.

0:17:24Oh, yeah, that's very sweet of you to say.

0:17:27We also, I should say, we have a very talented editor that I worked with, Bob Ducey, who

0:17:32was just, you know, we ended up getting along really, really well and just having a good

0:17:38working relationship.

0:17:39It was your first time working with him?

0:17:40Yeah, first time working with him, yeah.

0:17:42Adam, you said you were talking, I love the adjective "percussive" for the sound design,

0:17:47and the one that really stuck out to me that really just got me so unnerved was Sarah chopping

0:17:53the wood and the sound of the axe hitting the woodblock and percussive is

0:18:00exactly it was just over and over and over again and I was so...

0:18:04You listen carefully you can hear some apple crunch.

0:18:06Yeah but I was so unnerved at the diamond and nerve-wracking and then there's this horrible

0:18:12horribly violent axe hitting the wood over and over again.

0:18:17Yeah it makes you wince and it's that's something Jeremy built in at first I thought it was

0:18:22too big, but then I realized now that actually, especially for a dialogue scene

0:18:27like that, that's kind of just backstory that she's telling.

0:18:29It's a really nice kind of violent way of keeping you on your teeth on edge during it.

0:18:34And she really busted herself up during that.

0:18:36She did actually.

0:18:37She, it's hard to swing an axe and we, after a bunch of takes of that, her shoulder

0:18:42was, was actually really messed up.

0:18:43And, um, uh, for the rest of the shoot, she actually had a really hard time holding

0:18:48stuff up, like anytime she had to hold a gun with that arm.

0:18:52I remember we had our prop guy actually holding the end of the gun that was out of frame at

0:18:57one point because she couldn't support it for long enough.

0:19:02Let's see.

0:19:06So I guess if we could go back to the automotive stuff.

0:19:11You had constraints, budgetary constraints that led you to – and you talked about this

0:19:18in your commentary a little bit, but that led you to go with a certain era of cars that

0:19:26were just cars in the world in 2044.

0:19:32But you're able to justify it other than budgetary ways.

0:19:37Talk about that a little bit.

0:19:39Yeah.

0:19:40Well, anytime now I watch a science fiction movie that has not a huge budget, the first

0:19:46thing I look at is how do they do the cars.

0:19:48I mean anything that's new, that's in the future.

0:19:51Because that's the expensive thing that you can't get around.

0:19:54And that's the thing that is guaranteed to change.

0:19:57No matter what your take on the future is,

0:19:59the cars are going to be different 20 years from now

0:20:02than they are now.

0:20:03And it's always interesting.

0:20:07give you a look at the approach that they took with the retro, but a very specific kind of retro car that you don't see very often. It was all specifically these European retro cars that are foreign to your eye.

0:20:29And they--

0:20:30Like an art deco.

0:20:31Yeah.

0:20:31Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:20:33So anyway, so yeah, the approach we took,

0:20:36because we knew we were creating this grounded, broken down

0:20:39society, was to say, OK, well, it's

0:20:42like the Yank tanks in Cuba.

0:20:43Like people have had to make their cars last for 20, 30

0:20:45years.

0:20:46And so yeah, in that way, we were

0:20:49able to take cars from now and then just age them way down

0:20:53and make them look like they've had new engines kind of put

0:20:57into them.

0:20:58But it seemed like not even just now, it was maybe 10 and 15 years ago.

0:21:03Some of them, yeah.

0:21:08It feels like the way you talk about Gattaca referring to that era, like the Art Deco era, to take its production design cues.

0:21:10I kind of think that your movie kind of took a lot of cues from the 90s, like for a lot of the wardrobe choices.

0:21:18And just like the hairstyles even.

0:21:27And I like the idea, as the character,

0:21:32Geoff DeAnel's character Abe talks about

0:21:35when he's making fun of young Joe's tie,

0:21:37his kravit, which I love.

0:21:41But he calls it a kravit.

0:21:42Never heard it that way.

0:21:44I'm only going to say it that way from now on.

0:21:48Is that these things are cyclical.

0:21:50And so you kind of have to imagine

0:21:52that this world of 2044 has already gone through

0:21:57the whole back to the seventies and eighties and nineties and then back to the

0:22:00forties, fifties, sixties.

0:22:01Well, and there's also, there's, I mean, you know, if, uh, you know, if, if you

0:22:06were in whatever, if you were in, uh, the sixties designing a film that was going

0:22:11to be set in the far future of 2012, you know, and if you look at us right here in

0:22:172012, you know, we're in 2012 and my watch is from the fifties, you know, and, and

0:22:23most of the stuff that we're wearing you could have seen on somebody 20, 30 years ago.

0:22:28I think that it's a, I don't know, I wanted to, the same way that good period stuff,

0:22:35good period design doesn't draw just front. Like if a movie is set in 1963,

0:22:41a big mistake is to have everything in the person's bedroom be circa 1963.

0:22:46You gotta find stuff from the 40s and from the, you know, stuff that would be handed down

0:22:50and thrift shop stuff.

0:22:52So, taking that approach to the future seemed to make a lot of sense.

0:22:56Well, one thing I thought too with the choice of the cars, and aging them even too, is it

0:23:03laid this backdrop of what the economics, the economy of the US in 2044, without anybody

0:23:12ever talking about it or mentioning it, and it was this palpable sense of, wow, things

0:23:18have not gone well in the next 30 years.

0:23:21the Miata is the hottest car. And the only successful people seem to be

0:23:27gangsters. Right, seems in the criminal world. Yeah, there you go. My dad drove a

0:23:34Miata in 1990 and it was the most futuristic thing you'd ever seen. Yeah,

0:23:37well I like the idea of it being. It's funny though, I realized, I forget if I

0:23:41talked about this in the commentary, I talked about MacGruber. Yeah, yeah, and they did the exact same joke as

0:23:47MacGruber where they like, you think it's gonna be a hot sports car and they

0:23:50reveal it's a Miata.

0:23:51And I saw that while we were editing for the first time.

0:23:54I was like,

0:23:55And you guys, but you didn't have any Mazda or Miata signage on the car.

0:23:59No, we didn't.

0:24:00Well, we didn't get any.

0:24:00I didn't.

0:24:01No, we didn't.

0:24:02Yeah.

0:24:02I don't know if we got clearance cause we actually, um, there was a futuristic car

0:24:08that, uh, Bruce drove in a sequence that got cut actually, that was a, this crazy

0:24:15concept Mazda.

0:24:17So I think we, we were working with

0:24:19in 2044 or in 2070?

0:24:21- In 2070, whatever, yeah.

0:24:23- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah.

0:24:24- My favorite future car of all time

0:24:26is probably a Woody Allen sleeper.

0:24:28- Oh, yeah. (laughs)

0:24:29- You can tell it's plywood held together with string

0:24:31and it might as well be an Oscar Mayer Wiener mobile.

0:24:33- Yeah. (laughs)

0:24:36- Let me take one quick break.

0:24:37Let me take a quick break and thank our first sponsor.

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0:25:29- Okay, can we go back to like just going through period,

0:25:32cyclical period and culture and anachronism,

0:25:36and you are a person who,

0:25:40I feel like you're sort of planted

0:25:43in a lot of different periods in time,

0:25:45through your storytelling.

0:25:50There's tons of it in Brothers Bloom.

0:25:54Obviously, in Brick,

0:25:56all of the style of the storytelling

0:26:00and the dialogue and everything,

0:26:02it all comes from a period of storytelling

0:26:05from what, would you say the '40s?

0:26:08Well, it's been Hammet, so it's earlier.

0:26:11Oh, okay, '30s.

0:26:12Do you feel like you're, and your watch is from the 50s, do you ever feel like you're

0:26:19of a different time and place?

0:26:20I mean, do you, I'm not to say an old soul or something stupid like that, but do you

0:26:24ever feel like, you know?

0:26:26No, no, I don't.

0:26:28No, I feel like this is the moment that we're in.

0:26:32This is the time that we're living in.

0:26:34And I feel like one of the things that's exciting about right now is especially,

0:26:39um, I don't know, especially the fact that culture has become so, uh, I don't

0:26:47know how to exactly phrase this.

0:26:48Uh, you know, it feels right now like the idea of, um, like everything from the past

0:26:58is up on the surface right now and instantly accessible and remixable.

0:27:03And taking the best from every period of and every culture and absolutely,

0:27:08absolutely.

0:27:09It's more accessible than ever.

0:27:10And so, uh, for me, that's, that's not of the, that's entirely of this moment.

0:27:14You know, the fact that, uh, we're drawing from all over the place, uh, you know,

0:27:20in mixing styles and arrows completely indiscriminately, you know, even the,

0:27:24you look at the furniture in this room, you know, look at that next to that next

0:27:28to that, you know, look at the, you know, the, the, the design is kind of just

0:27:32taking whatever works. And for me, with filmmaking, it's the same thing. Really, it's all about

0:27:40whatever's going to serve the story best. It's all about what's going to get at the

0:27:44heart of what I'm trying to talk about the best. And for each of these movies, there's

0:27:50a different reason that they have those kind of anachronistic things in them. But it's

0:27:56never because out of a sense of nostalgia for an era or a sense of want pining for an

0:28:00era it's always because that specific thing makes me feel a certain way and so

0:28:07that's that communicates something that's very important to me right now in

0:28:11this moment.

0:28:11I look at Wes Anderson's movies in that light.

0:28:14Yeah.

0:28:15The way he just assigned you know does his production design and chooses his

0:28:19artifacts, his objects.

0:28:20Yeah.

0:28:21So carefully from all throughout time you know through all throughout the 20th

0:28:25century anyway. In a movie like Royal Tannenbaum's you see Ben Stiller's character Chaz running

0:28:32his whole investment operation with like circa 1983 Apple II next to late 90s cinema display

0:28:40or whatever. But just from a tech standpoint if you're a tech nerd or an Apple nerd you

0:28:49kind of geek out over that stuff. But I feel like I've heard him talk about that before

0:28:53And he said exactly what you have which is he just responds to the objects that make the most sense exactly about being

0:29:00necessarily

0:29:02You know specific to period yeah, because he's creating a modern world like you you know like you are but it's a world where

0:29:09The people in that world have taste and there's an immediacy and it like Moonrise Kingdom

0:29:15Which I think is you know a masterpiece. I think it's absolutely

0:29:18You know

0:29:20one of my very favorite movies of the year, definitely.

0:29:23But, you know, he-- I don't know, he--

0:29:26so many of the stuff in the-- so many of the individual objects

0:29:33in there could be considered anachronistic,

0:29:35but the whole thing is built to--

0:29:38I don't know, with such a sincerity

0:29:40that it busts through that wall and takes it

0:29:44so far in that direction that suddenly everything in it

0:29:46incredibly vital and hits you with an immediacy.

0:29:51- Every object you see is an object that you had as a child.

0:29:54- Yeah, and it evokes something that gets you right there

0:29:58in the moment where you're standing.

0:29:59It doesn't smack of nostalgia at all.

0:30:01It has a vitalness to it that, yeah, that's extraordinary.

0:30:06- Oh, sorry, go ahead.

0:30:08- No, I was gonna say the other, I mean, I don't know,

0:30:09the other interesting thing with,

0:30:11I guess this is kind of a tangent, but I don't know.

0:30:16I think that there's talking about Wes Anderson specifically makes me think of the idea of

0:30:26I think in a lot of cases people tend to think that a director premeditates his style the

0:30:34way that you would choose an outfit to put on in the morning.

0:30:41Because it's specifically directors who have very distinct styles like Tim Burton or Wes

0:30:46Anderson.

0:30:47It's very easy to look at their movies and think, or I guess to a lesser degree with

0:30:52what you're saying with the period stuff with the films that I've done, it's easy

0:30:55to look at them and think, "Well, why did you make that choice?

0:30:59Obviously you made this set of choices in order to…"

0:31:02And the truth is, I don't know, I can only speak for myself, but I'd be very surprised

0:31:08If you talk to Wes Anderson, if he wasn't just that, it's really the

0:31:13equivalent of speaking in your voice.

0:31:15You know, it's not, it's very little that's premeditated.

0:31:18It's, it's almost like when you're talking to somebody, your natural

0:31:22accent of your voice is not something you're consciously controlling.

0:31:25You're just trying to communicate as clearly as possible what's on your mind.

0:31:28And you're speaking in a way that's natural to you.

0:31:30And it's insulting when somebody suggests otherwise, because it's almost like if

0:31:34you're speaking in your natural voice and they say, why are you doing that

0:31:37dumb voice right now.

0:31:38Why are you doing a dumb idiot impression of somebody else?

0:31:42And also that you can see though how it's, I don't know, you can see that it's, I

0:31:47don't know if I call it, it's insulting if someone's being insulting and calling

0:31:50you dumb, but it's also something that's very, it's almost counter instinctual to

0:31:55look at a film and talk about it in a quick, you know, it's hard to communicate the degree

0:32:02to which the some feeling of a film is the process of a thousand tiny little decisions

0:32:09to the point where there is something very weirdly, you know, cumulative about it and

0:32:16weirdly the direct product of what's inside the person who made it.

0:32:22Yeah, it's a holistic process.

0:32:23Yeah, completely, as opposed to a determined one in that way.

0:32:30So if we could go back to you feeling like you're a man of this time and place, and this

0:32:37is really exciting.

0:32:38A man of this time and place.

0:32:43What you said was you're a tiny little girl of this time and place.

0:32:50And it's exciting that we have access through whatever archival technology or whatever it

0:32:56We have access to all the best of all times and cultures and everything.

0:33:01If you were to extrapolate that and project into the future,

0:33:06you're going to be making movies and telling stories for 10, 20, 30 years.

0:33:09God bless you, sir.

0:33:13So do you ever think about what it's going to be like to make these kinds of movies

0:33:15or whatever stories we're going to be telling in the future?

0:33:21You mean, how do you mean?

0:33:23I mean like in the way that you feel like we've used, like if you could call it like a singularity or something, or unity right now.

0:33:30Yeah.

0:33:31Do you think that, like I kind of look at that in a sort of a relative sense and think that maybe 20 years ago they thought they had reached some sort of a unity.

0:33:41I'm sure they did, yeah, absolutely.

0:33:44I think it's important though to always feel like you know what I mean? I think that it's

0:33:49I don't know, I think it's incredibly important to feel like the moment you're in is the most

0:33:56exciting moment in all of human history. I think that I hope that in the future I'll

0:34:04still feel that way I guess. Maybe I'm not understanding your question.

0:34:06No, you answered it. To what degree do you think the tools that you use or that we use,

0:34:14and everybody, all of the thousands of people that help you make your movies,

0:34:17to what extent do you embrace those tools and think that they influence how

0:34:24the final product comes out? Oh yeah, no, they're a product. I mean it's really to the

0:34:28point where what you create is inseparable from the tools that you use

0:34:33to create it, at least from my perspective as a

0:34:37director. But my experience of a film is very different than, you know, for me,

0:34:41For me, Looper is, to take an example of the most recent movie, for me, you know, when

0:34:47I look at Looper, so much of it, it's not, my experience of it has so much to do with

0:34:54my memory of making it and the experience I had with the people around it.

0:34:59That means the camera that we use, that means the type of equipment we use, the rigs that

0:35:03we use, the lights that we use, just that all that is baked into that film.

0:35:08me, but that's that, you know, not for the audience, obviously.

0:35:11So maybe sometimes, even on an unconscious level.

0:35:15Yeah, maybe.

0:35:16Yeah.

0:35:17I guess I did about that stuff about how the audience responds to technological

0:35:21choices that they're never, ever going to be thinking about consciously.

0:35:24You hope that they do.

0:35:25Yeah.

0:35:26There there's a, you know, yeah, I guess you hope that they do all you can do is,

0:35:32Obviously, you're also choosing your tools based on what feels good for you in terms

0:35:40of how it's going to look with the end product.

0:35:41For example, for me, that's the reason that I shoot on film.

0:35:44I think it looks like a movie to me.

0:35:48It looks good and it feels the way that I want my stuff to feel.

0:35:53I guess all you can do is make that for yourself and hope that connects with at least some

0:35:59people in the audience the same way.

0:36:00And it gives something even for argument's sake if there was absolutely no visual difference between digital and film.

0:36:07I'm not saying that's true but for argument's sake the fact that you are shooting film and you get a sense internally that there's a film rolling through the camera

0:36:18that probably makes your experience of directing it different and that it would impact the final outcome as well.

0:36:25Yeah, yeah I would guess so. It also looks a lot better.

0:36:27[Quacking]

0:36:29I don't think I'm ever going to shoot on film, honestly.

0:36:34Really?

0:36:36The last time I did was in school.

0:36:36Not that I have access to shoot on film.

0:36:38I mean, maybe.

0:36:40I don't know who.

0:36:41Have access to it.

0:36:42Why do you say that?

0:36:44Because if I weigh all of the pros and cons of choosing resources to go into production,

0:36:46I don't prioritize that one very highly.

0:36:53I would choose something else, I think.

0:36:55That's a personal choice.

0:36:57Right, right, right.

0:36:58It's also where you're coming from now.

0:36:59I mean, you're coming up where you're shooting digital all the way up.

0:37:03Yeah, that's true.

0:37:05And not that we're far separate in age or anything,

0:37:09but probably my early formative experiences of cinema

0:37:15are maybe a little bit different from yours.

0:37:17And I'm always kind of personally jealous of people

0:37:22who can feel the quality of celluloid because I can't.

0:37:27- Really? - Yeah.

0:37:28- You can't do when you see a film shot digitally?

0:37:30- No. - Really?

0:37:31- And I'm pretty, I'm generally kind of astute

0:37:33about media stuff, but that's something

0:37:36that I'm pretty blind to.

0:37:38- That's interesting, huh?

0:37:39- Maybe, I don't know, maybe you could teach me.

0:37:42- No, I got nothing.

0:37:43Yeah, no, to me it's night and day.

0:37:46To me, I see a movie shot on digital

0:37:48and it can be very well shot and it can, you know,

0:37:50But I, you know, I don't know. It's very, it's very rare except for when, well, I don't know.

0:37:56There, um, although a lot of times stuff that's shot on film these days is so baked and treated in the DI

0:38:04and so messed with that it's hard to, you know, it can be hard to decipher sometimes.

0:38:09But I don't know. Anyway, I'm, the point is not, I guess, to put down another medium.

0:38:16The point is just to say that I like the way the film looks.

0:38:19I think it's the best looking thing out there. Did you want maybe it is something that I'm specifically tuned into I don't know but

0:38:24I don't know to me. It makes a difference. Did you did you see that documentary? No, I haven't seen it yet

0:38:31I haven't seen it. Yeah

0:38:32Yeah, I don't know I I

0:38:34It's tough. It's I guess and to some degree I guess I

0:38:38Don't know you could you can make the argument that it's like the audio file talking about

0:38:43P3s versus AIFs and listening to them and what the difference is.

0:38:47And I...

0:38:48Steven: Well, it's like we were talking, we had permanently kicked around that maybe if

0:38:52we had more time or whatever, we'd talk about the master too.

0:38:54But that's the explanation that I've seen Pete Anderson give was that if I'm going to

0:38:57shoot film, that's why he shot 65mm was then I might as well go all the way and really

0:39:04shoot film.

0:39:05Shoot the biggest film I can get my hands on.

0:39:08Even if the camera's the size of a refrigerator.

0:39:10refrigerator.

0:39:11Yeah, film looks like a movie to me, digital looks like video to me.

0:39:14It's just, you know, and I don't know, I don't know that that's anyone else's

0:39:17experience, but I know it's mine and so I'm just going to make those choices for

0:39:20my own films.

0:39:21Yeah, it's kind of a belabored discussion at this point.

0:39:23Yeah, it's kind of boring.

0:39:24Boring.

0:39:25Boring.

0:39:26Sorry I brought it up.

0:39:28Can we-

0:39:29I just took a panorama picture of you guys.

0:39:32Oh, excellent.

0:39:33Digitally.

0:39:34I haven't used that feature once on-

0:39:35Oh, it's the best.

0:39:36It's the best.

0:39:37It is really fantastic.

0:39:38Okay.

0:39:39Look at that.

0:39:44Oh, that is more CAD than what I took.

0:39:46Yeah.

0:39:48Okay.

0:39:48Awesome.

0:39:49So if we're triangulated right now, if we each take a panorama, we could pretty much get 360.

0:39:50Oh, yeah.

0:39:55So going back to the tools you use, this is a tech podcast.

0:39:57I mean, generally speaking, you talk about other stuff.

0:40:02Who knows?

0:40:04But largely the people who listen to it are probably fascinated by the tools.

0:40:09Tools of whatever trade.

0:40:14But going back inside the movie, there's a lot of tech inside the movie.

0:40:19In the world of the movie.

0:40:24How much thought proportionally speaking did you put into imagining all this technology?

0:40:29like imagining all these, this technology.

0:40:34I know like for AI or Minority Report or Spielberg assembled the world's greatest

0:40:39futurists and they came up with every gadget.

0:40:43Did you do a lot of brainstorming research?

0:40:46I did none of that.

0:40:48No, it was interesting because I didn't write the movie from like a world building perspective.

0:40:50I guess I was mostly just doing everything I could to make the story work.

0:40:56And so I wasn't thinking really of how the world was going to look.

0:41:01And so when it came time to actually design the world, it was less about

0:41:05digging into what future tech will actually seem like.

0:41:12It was more about, you're taking that picture.

0:41:15It was more about what will work for the story.

0:41:18And honestly, taking a very simplistic approach to the tech and the thought

0:41:24simplistic approach to the tech in the film also seemed right, because I figured

0:41:29there was so much else we were asking the audience to absorb and spend their brain power

0:41:33figuring out with the time travel and the Looper stuff and the TK stuff.

0:41:38The last thing we needed was a ton of tech that the audience had to wince at and say,

0:41:42"Oh, what is that crazy thing doing? How does that work?" Even if that's fun for me, it just wasn't what the movie was about.

0:41:50So, yeah, we got cell phones that kind of fold out and are cool, and we got hover bikes

0:41:55that kind of look like Triumph motorcycles.

0:41:57But there's not a ton of, you know, hopefully there's nothing that you can't glance at and

0:42:03figure out what it is.

0:42:04Sure.

0:42:05It's an invisible keyboard.

0:42:06Yeah, that actually, I like the controller.

0:42:07The controller in the library.

0:42:08The idea that you're actually manipulating something in 3D space.

0:42:13Right.

0:42:14That I did like.

0:42:15And I liked that.

0:42:16So it was kind of like in Children of Men, that game that the kid plays at the table.

0:42:19Yeah, that's right.

0:42:20- I also thought it stuck out to me

0:42:22that unlike Minority Report,

0:42:24which everybody, it looked super cool,

0:42:25but everybody points out would be physically exhausting

0:42:28'cause your arms are in front of you.

0:42:29- Not if you're Tom Cruise.

0:42:31- Not if you're Tom Cruise.

0:42:32- Well, all right, not if you're Tom Cruise,

0:42:33but if you're anybody else, your shoulders would fall off.

0:42:35Whereas in Looper, the touch technology

0:42:39looks like something you could sit there

0:42:40and like I do, like work it 10 hours a day.

0:42:42- Right, and ergonomically safe.

0:42:44I like the one that Old Joe's,

0:42:48I almost called him Old Bruce, that's not polite.

0:42:50It's not polite.

0:42:51It's rude.

0:42:52- That old Joe's wife uses the display that she kind of slashes away with the--

0:42:55- Oh, that actually slashes her finger through to turn it off.

0:42:57- Yeah, that's pretty neat.

0:42:58- Yeah, yeah.

0:42:59- It wasn't even glass.

0:43:00It was just a projection.

0:43:01- No, it was just floating there.

0:43:02Yeah, yeah.

0:43:03- From a storytelling perspective, one of the things that I thought was interesting

0:43:04is that in a lot of time travel movies, it's now, like today when the movie's being made,

0:43:11versus where you're going.

0:43:12So back to the future.

0:43:13It was 1985 and 1955.

0:43:18In Looper, there is no now.

0:43:21The only two years, really, there's a little montage where you go through them, but you're

0:43:24talking 2040s and the 2070s.

0:43:27And 2040s are effectively now.

0:43:29And you get into that mindset where now is 2044.

0:43:35And the tech is a lot more grounded.

0:43:37And we don't spend a lot of time in the 2070s, but when we do, that's where there's the way

0:43:43more whiz-bang stuff.

0:43:47Shanghai too, which is like a sort of a futuristic city to begin with.

0:43:51Yeah.

0:43:52I mean, it, it, I mean, it made sense to me to have our, uh, you know, to have our

0:43:58present day be near future just cause I figured it was either that or we create

0:44:02an alternate present day and that's a little more complicated.

0:44:04To me, it was just easier to wrap your head around the notion that, okay, this

0:44:08is 30 years from now, so some things are different.

0:44:10The big thing being that time travel is used in this way with these guys, which

0:44:16It would have been a pain in the ass if we had done the present day and had to have it be something that was like underground, but actually around today. Like that just would have required a lot of machinations that would have taken up screen time. So yeah, it made sense.

0:44:32So you've, you've, you've talked a lot in other interviews about the, the, the theory of the, the way that time travel operates.

0:44:41And, and, um, I found it interesting.

0:44:44I was listening, I, when I saw the movie again, Oh, no, no, no.

0:44:48When I, when I listened to your commentary again, you said something about how, when you were writing that scene between young and old Joe and the diner, how Bruce is so dismissive of that whole line of questioning.

0:44:59It's so boring.

0:45:00and you said something, you said, "I own words used against me." No, not at all

0:45:08used against you. You said, "Bruce is more interested in what's happening inside

0:45:12his head than in explaining the time travel stuff." Yeah. I feel a lot like

0:45:16Bruce in that, right now, in that I, you know, I've kind of, I can't wrap my tiny

0:45:21brain around a lot of the time travel stuff. I got confused when when we see

0:45:25the two alternate realities unfolding.

0:45:29So I'm way more interested in what's happening inside of Bruce's head,

0:45:32and I'm way more interested in what's happening in your head,

0:45:34like what we've been talking about, the process of making the movie.

0:45:40So I feel like there's two types of people watching these kind of movies,

0:45:44and there's the people that are so smart that they get caught up

0:45:46in all those details in the machinery of the time travel.

0:45:50And I'm one of the lucky people that's not smart enough to get caught up in it,

0:45:53So I just let it all fall away and I enjoy the story.

0:45:55Those are my people.

0:45:56Yeah.

0:45:57Well, you built the world.

0:45:58Like you're the, you're the, you're the architect.

0:46:00So you get, you kind of both.

0:46:02Yeah.

0:46:02Yeah.

0:46:03But at the same time, that's, uh, I don't know, the, the, the, the, you know, the

0:46:09mechanics of time travel or something that are kind of fun after the fact.

0:46:14But I, I don't know, man, I'm, I'm frankly, I guess if it, you know, that, uh,

0:46:22To me, that's almost like bonus content.

0:46:25If I go see a time travel movie, I'm either going to enjoy it or not enjoy it

0:46:30based on whether it was a good story and whether I was into it and whether it took

0:46:34me someplace that I cared about, whether it was funny, whether it was entertaining

0:46:38basically.

0:46:39And then on a completely secondary level afterwards, I'll then think about, "Oh,

0:46:44and the time travel, well, this made sense.

0:46:45That didn't make sense.

0:46:46And I'll try and pick it apart like that."

0:46:49And so I guess that's the level on which it operates for me.

0:46:52And the time travel, if it's ever a priority between keeping the momentum of the story

0:46:59up and stopping for 20 seconds to explain something so that somebody won't wonder

0:47:05about it in the car ride home, I'm going to keep the momentum of the story up.

0:47:08To me, that's just where my priorities lie as a storyteller.

0:47:14Yeah.

0:47:14It probably creates some like little bit of tension that propels the movie forward

0:47:18anyway, if there's an, you know, just like the right amount of mystery, not too much.

0:47:22I hope so. And it, you know, uh, yeah, you always hope so. And you always, the other

0:47:27answer is you just, you try your best, you know, you just try your best and you don't,

0:47:31you don't always get it right. I'm sure there's stuff that I probably should have

0:47:34explained more deeply in the thing and more stuff that I've explained too much, but all

0:47:38you can do is kind of trust your instincts and, um, ride that line between keeping things

0:47:44moving and keeping things explained.

0:47:46It's like I think it's almost more important to make it feel like it makes

0:47:51sense than that it thinks like it makes sense.

0:47:54Absolutely.

0:47:55That's all that's important.

0:47:56And that was, you know, watching time travel movies, preparing to write this,

0:48:00that was a really liberating thing that I realized is you're, it really is like

0:48:05doing a magician doing a trick, you know, you're not creating something that's...

0:48:10And the other thing is, I mean, that, you know, time travel is, uh, time travel is,

0:48:15is put in the genre of science fiction. The truth is time travel, and this irks some people

0:48:22to hear this, but time travel is not a science fiction. Time travel is a fantasy element.

0:48:26Time travel is like Harry Potter stuff. It's magic and unicorns and dragons. You have to

0:48:31treat it storytelling-wise on that level, where you create a little box that exists

0:48:37and it makes sense inside that little box. You're never going to be able to explain

0:48:42it or ground it to an extent to where somebody can actually analyze it with real-world logic

0:48:47and say, "Yes, that was airtight.

0:48:49That makes sense."

0:48:50- Miniclorians.

0:48:51- Miniclorians, yeah, there you go.

0:48:55- What, I mean, you've answered this question 100,000 times too, in terms of all of the

0:49:00long list of time travel movies that you appreciate or watched as research for writing this.

0:49:08somebody says to you, back to the future, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

0:49:13blah, blah, terminator, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, back to the future. But does

0:49:16that does that ignite a positive response in you? Like the Yeah, this is good that all

0:49:20these reference points came out in the movie? Or is it? Is it like, what man, I made my

0:49:24own movie?

0:49:25Jared Ranere: Screw you old man. Yeah, that was tremendously good, because they're, you

0:49:30know, because those are great movies. And so people are seeing that in there. You know,

0:49:36That's a huge, tremendous compliment.

0:49:39As opposed to, "Blah, blah, blah, insert bad time travel movie name here, blah, blah,

0:49:44blah."

0:49:45That would be bad.

0:49:47I did think that because the story was not about time travel, because the story was about

0:49:54the characters dealing with this situation, I absolutely was not above using an audience's

0:50:01knowledge of the genre in order to shortcut over as much as I possibly could.

0:50:06And, and so, uh, and so far from it in terms of, you know, saying I built my own

0:50:12thing, I didn't, I stood on, you know, I took anything I could, and not only in

0:50:17terms of using them as storytelling things, but using them as, uh, things I

0:50:22knew the audience would be familiar with so that I could, uh, you know, so that I

0:50:27could shortcut over not having to explain it like like the fingers

0:50:31disappearing you know that's exactly where I was going to jump to and the way

0:50:34that you can pass a message to your future self which is by writing it

0:50:38scarring them you know taking a blade and yeah writing a message into your

0:50:42skin so that the scar shows up on their future self yeah see young Joe I love

0:50:46that you see young Joe with a bloody bandage yeah I don't want to text it

0:50:52there's a gag there too that I know I said I warned everybody about spoilers

0:50:56but it's too good of a gag.

0:50:57We're so deep into it now.

0:50:58It's too good of a gag to ruin now.

0:51:01But yeah, that's just a really gruesome version of the Back to the Future Polaroid.

0:51:06And I think that's a conceptual thing that we're all just culturally aware of because

0:51:11we grew up watching that movie and that's absolutely the same way that old Joe trying

0:51:17to change things by finding this problem and eliminating it.

0:51:21Instinctively, we know that from watching Terminator movies growing up.

0:51:24And that's, I wanted to absolutely use that.

0:51:27And I wonder, and this is like, this is stretching pretty far, but by putting Bruce Willis in your movie, is that its own cultural reference point?

0:51:37I mean, naturally it is.

0:51:40But like, I watched your movie the first time, the first time I saw it, and I see Bruce and I've seen 12 monkeys and I'm, and without, I caught myself thinking, is Bruce Willis from the future?

0:51:51Yeah.

0:51:51Like he very well, you know, he may be.

0:51:54I mean you spent time with him. It's very possible. Yeah. Yeah, it's very possible.

0:51:58But his watch is from the 50s. Go figure. Oh, is it? No, I don't know.

0:52:04Yeah, which is your favorite Back to the Future movie?

0:52:10Let's get right down to it. Let's get to brass tacks. There's one question.

0:52:14There's only one rational answer to that question. Oh, God, I think I know what you're going to say, but it's probably a different answer than mine.

0:52:20- You're kidding. - No, I don't.

0:52:21I think it's an easy answer.

0:52:23- There's only one answer.

0:52:25How can you say anything but one?

0:52:26Are you a two apologist?

0:52:28- I'm a two apologist. - You go for two?

0:52:29- Wow. - Wow.

0:52:30- No, not that I don't like two.

0:52:31I think two is a great movie, but--

0:52:32- Number one. - Number one.

0:52:34What are you talking about? - Yeah, of course.

0:52:35- Yeah, number one. - He kisses his mom.

0:52:37- Oh my God.

0:52:39Well, it's also number one is--

0:52:40- Or his mom kisses him, but either way.

0:52:42- Yeah.

0:52:43Number one is, you know,

0:52:45to make a really ham-fisted dumb analogy,

0:52:48If number one is a, you know, if number one is like a great tune, like "Someday My Prince

0:52:57Will Come," number two is kind of a riff on that.

0:53:01Yeah, exactly.

0:53:02Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:53:03But there's something about, I don't know, one that's just like a perfect movie.

0:53:06I mean, it's just perfectly constructed.

0:53:09For me, I just got so excited about the world that it created, the future world that it

0:53:13created.

0:53:14that almost single-handedly made me want to make movies.

0:53:19- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:53:21My cinematographer, Steve Yedlin,

0:53:23is also one of my best friends too.

0:53:26When I first met him, he was still a senior in high school

0:53:29and he had shot, I knew we were gonna be friends

0:53:33because he had, just with a video camera,

0:53:34and his little brother and his friends

0:53:36had shot "Back to the Future" too.

0:53:39Like he had recreated it, just like in his kitchen,

0:53:41the whole thing, yeah.

0:53:43the way that those kids did with Raiders, Steve had done somehow at Back to the Future

0:53:47too.

0:53:48And so he loves that film.

0:53:49Yeah, I don't know if he still does.

0:53:51He'll probably kill me when he hears this.

0:53:52When you were a kid, did you recreate any of your favorites?

0:53:54Yeah, I actually, I've told this story before in some interviews, but I actually almost

0:54:00burned down my parents' garage trying to recreate the DeLorean fire tracks from Back

0:54:06to the Future.

0:54:07It was, I was really stupid.

0:54:09It was because I tried to do them by I figured I would soak little strips of toilet paper and gasoline

0:54:15Obviously and lay them out behind the car, but to soak the strips of paper and gasoline

0:54:20I poured gasoline into a styrofoam plate and

0:54:24Soak them and of course the styrofoam dissolves and basically becomes napalm

0:54:28Yeah, and so when I lit these things up they look great

0:54:30but then I stamped on them to put them out and I accidentally stepped back into the napalm and that

0:54:35Ignited and was stuck to my foot and meanwhile the garage which somehow is filming this inside the garage was was filling with black smoke

0:54:43And it was it was a big mess

0:54:45Yeah, when when childhood love of moviemaking combines with our natural pyrotechnics

0:54:51For a class project. I definitely blew up

0:54:54The US Embassy in Beirut like to reach you know to react to reenact that disastrous

0:55:01Wow, it's going a truck full of explosives into a model. Holy crap. You were you're on another level. Oh, I look dumb

0:55:07So the John and I were talking about this a little bit earlier

0:55:16How that the

0:55:20Looper had this additional element that sort of took it and turned it like added on top of the what you thought

0:55:27Whatever you thought the movie was gonna be and that was the TK element, right?

0:55:31The supernatural.

0:55:36And you include that element in a very organic way.

0:55:39It doesn't seem supernatural until shit gets real.

0:55:43And what I think of as the third level.

0:55:49I don't normally think about movies in act structure or whatever, but I felt two different

0:55:52plateaus.

0:55:59Two different kicking it up a notch.

0:55:58The first one was the montage of Joe becoming old Joe.

0:56:03And the second one was the first time that Sid loses his shit.

0:56:07And the sound design, that piercing scream,

0:56:13that supernatural element was very exciting and unexpected.

0:56:17So you're like, "What just happened?"

0:56:22I love how there's the extreme telekinetic supernatural element,

0:56:26and then like the most base stupid side of it,

0:56:29which is that it's mostly guys floating quarters

0:56:31above their hands.

0:56:32- Introduced like an hour earlier in a film

0:56:35and it's just there, right?

0:56:37- And it's there for one reason,

0:56:38and it's to pick up chicks.

0:56:40It's like they all read it in the same book.

0:56:41- I think of, like I've played poker in casinos a lot,

0:56:45and then like there's two types of poker players.

0:56:46There's the kind who learn to like do fancy stuff with the--

0:56:49- Roll over the knuckles.

0:56:50- Yeah, they roll the chips with their knuckles.

0:56:52And I've played enough that I probably could have learned it,

0:56:55But I always thought that was a terrible thing to learn, because then you sit down and you

0:56:58realize, "Well, this guy plays poker."

0:57:01But that's what it seemed like the quarter thing was with the TKs, was that they're not

0:57:05even thinking about it.

0:57:07The people who can do it just sit there and they rotate a quarter to three inches above

0:57:11their palm and they're not even thinking about it.

0:57:13But yeah, they're just using it to try to pick up chicks.

0:57:16Well, there's a somewhat arbitrary and I think rather stupid rule of thumb in screenwriting

0:57:21that you're not supposed to ask the audience

0:57:26to buy more than one big thing.

0:57:28There's probably a name for it or something.

0:57:31But just from a screenwriting class point of view,

0:57:33it's something that's probably,

0:57:39and it is something that is tricky, it's problematic.

0:57:40I think that I tried to attempt it, obviously.

0:57:42And I think that there are people

0:57:48I've talked to or heard from

0:57:46way they were, it didn't work for that reason where they're like, "That's more

0:57:49than one thing you're asking me to buy.

0:57:51Why is that in there?"

0:57:52But for me, it was, first of all, it was really necessary just because I wanted

0:57:57Sid to not just be a theoretical threat.

0:58:00I didn't want him to just be someone who could grow up to be evil because

0:58:05he's super smart or something.

0:58:07I wanted that threat of the future to be manifest in a very concrete and affecting

0:58:15way in the present. So I wanted the danger of the future to be not just something intellectual,

0:58:22but something actually right there threatening your life. And that seemed like a way of doing

0:58:28that. But it did require, you know, planting this other big thing in the first act of a movie when

0:58:34we're already setting up this one incredibly big thing. And so my approach to it was to throw it

0:58:39away, to plant it by, at the beginning, when your head's wrapped up in the time travel stuff, to

0:58:44to just toss this little thing out there.

0:58:45And at the end of it, when the time travel stuff has gone away,

0:58:48that's when we raise this thing back up.

0:58:51That was the approach I took.

0:58:53Very effective.

0:58:54Yeah.

0:58:54Oh, thank you.

0:58:55Fun and effective.

0:58:58I want to thank our other sponsor, Tonks, P-O-N-X, Coffee.

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1:01:25Here's here's one. Here's one more thing that I've been wanting to talk to you about since

1:01:29Our mutual friend Ronan brought it up on Twitter

1:01:33Yes, and that is he kind of challenged you a little bit and said Ryan you're doing all this generous stuff talking about all these

1:01:40different parts of the movie that in

1:01:43Maybe in in other time

1:01:46An audience wouldn't have access right to the to the author's thoughts, right?

1:01:52And let's make no mistake, it's very generous of you.

1:01:57But being a movie maker of 2012 means you can give that to your audience.

1:02:03Have you thought about metering how much you're giving to the audience?

1:02:14I've thought a lot about it.

1:02:19Let it loose, man.

1:02:20No, I don't know.

1:02:21I've thought a lot about it.

1:02:22I don't have an opinion.

1:02:24I should say I don't have like a conclusion about it.

1:02:30It's something I've given a lot of thought to.

1:02:31It's hard because I am very much out there on Twitter mostly these days and very present.

1:02:39And I try and be like part of the conversation and respond to people.

1:02:42And that's something that I do just because I enjoy doing it.

1:02:45It's something I was doing before people were even really watching my movies.

1:02:48I just like being part of that big conversation that's going on.

1:02:53And it's hard because when people ask you questions about your movie, there are

1:02:58several things that happen.

1:03:03First of all, you don't want to seem like you're being an aloof jerk by saying, "I

1:03:09don't know, what do you think?"

1:03:12Yeah, exactly.

1:03:13But there's also something that comes from a worse place than that where you think, "If I don't answer, people are going to think I didn't think about this and I don't have an answer, and the truth is I do.

1:03:24So I want to respond so people know that I--because also when it's phrased in terms of it being a "plot hole" or even though we got some really great reviews where I can't complain at all in terms of the critical response.

1:03:47You would occasionally read a review where it would kind of dismiss the logic as, "If you think too closely about this, it doesn't make sense."

1:03:56But the thing is, I thought very closely about it for two years of my life and it all makes sense.

1:04:02And it's hard to not, when somebody engages you in a forum where you can reply to it, it would require just a Herculean effort.

1:04:13Not to, I think.

1:04:14But it's something that I'm, I don't know, for the next one, I guess I'm, I don't know, I can really see the merit in not responding.

1:04:25I can really see the merit in doing whatever I would need to do to kind of disengage a little bit, I guess.

1:04:32What do you know?

1:04:33What do you think?

1:04:33I think of it as an editorial choice.

1:04:38If you think about the whole world of your movie as one artifact to which you're contributing right now.

1:04:42Then if you choose not to answer the questions, then you're editing them of that artifact.

1:04:50That artifact is separate from Looper, the movie that has a start and a finish.

1:04:59You can't ignore that right now.

1:05:00The artifact takes on a different form.

1:05:04Being, you know, having exposure to conversation.

1:05:08The artifact being the mass of conversation that happens around the room.

1:05:12Yeah, the massive conversation or the artifact being every release of, of the

1:05:17original Star Wars trilogy that ever existed and every piece of packaging and

1:05:20every toy being a part of the movie.

1:05:22Right.

1:05:22I kind of like thinking about it that way too.

1:05:25Yeah, but is it, I don't know.

1:05:27Is there value in letting it exist on its own,

1:05:32letting it speak for itself?

1:05:37And even if that means short term,

1:05:39there are gonna be people who see it once,

1:05:43don't give it much thought and say,

1:05:44this didn't make sense 'cause of this or that,

1:05:46but maybe they see it on DVD,

1:05:48yeah, on Brainship 10 years from now

1:05:52and say, oh, actually this and this,

1:05:53yes, that's interesting.

1:05:55Having the patience to let it take root

1:05:57and let it do its own thing,

1:06:02rather than trying to immediately patch it yourself.

1:06:05Is there merit in that?

1:06:09Absolutely, I think there is.

1:06:11I mean, I'm speaking as somebody who reacts defensively

1:06:13constantly throughout, to all things.

1:06:16I see merit in not making decisions based on defensiveness.

1:06:19Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:06:23Yeah, I don't know.

1:06:25Honestly, I'm still figuring it out.

1:06:22I can't think there's any doubt that a time travel movie invites that sort of feedback

1:06:27to a much greater level.

1:06:29Any movie, you're going to invite criticism of characters' decisions.

1:06:33If the movie ends in a way that you didn't want, you're going to get complaints.

1:06:37No doubt.

1:06:38But a time travel movie invites this whole second level of, I don't know, fantasy metaphysics.

1:06:44Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:06:46That's true.

1:06:47you're operating in that tricky gray area of where science meets fiction,

1:06:52and you're inviting all sorts of--

1:06:57Yeah.

1:06:59There's a small number of people who have very strong opinions about what would happen if you travel back in time and met yourself.

1:07:00Regardless of those assholes, I think it's tremendously generous of you to have been contributing to the conversation, including coming and being with us today.

1:07:15Yeah, thank you very much. I mean, this is a real thrill.

1:07:18Is that it? Are we done?

1:07:20The following podcast is brought to you by Field Notes Brand Notebooks.

1:07:26In connection with their limited edition, made in the USA,

1:07:30pocket memo books for fall, the traveling salesman edition.

1:07:33For more information, please visit FieldNotesBrand.com.

1:07:40My philosophy is that because I've been so tied in with traveling sales for so many years,

1:07:46my dad and I and both my sons are traveling salesmen.

1:07:50I really think that the traveling salesman is probably the inspiration for our country

1:07:57the way it is now because they're industrious people, they work very hard, they don't take

1:08:02no for an answer.

1:08:04To me, that's what we are today in this country.

1:08:08And the traveling salesmen are still there.

1:08:11They're on television, they're on radio, they're on the internet, and they're still there.

1:08:15They're traveling the airways.

1:08:16They aren't traveling door to door much, but by gosh, they're still there.

1:08:20And it's been a real trip to travel along with them these many years.

1:08:25That's Ron Solberg, author of "The Whizbangs of Ooze and Oz, America's Salesmen, Their

1:08:30Lore, Lives, and Laughs," which is an incredibly thorough guide and fascinating history of

1:08:34traveling sales in this country.

1:08:36We got the chance to sit down with Ron recently for an interview to talk to him about the

1:08:39profession and some of the stories behind those who crisscrossed the nation before us.

1:08:47So Ron, thanks so much for joining us.

1:08:49You actually have a background in traveling sales yourself, you said.

1:08:52Well, I really got started working for my father in southern Minnesota.

1:08:56He was my boss.

1:08:57And when I was attending college, I had to make a little bit of money to go to college.

1:09:01And so he hired me as one of his traveling salesmen.

1:09:05And I went door to door, both in communities and in farms, and was selling brushes and

1:09:11waxes and insecticides during the summer months.

1:09:15And actually I was making pretty good money.

1:09:17A hundred dollar a day was considered to be pretty good, and I got about 50 percent of

1:09:21that.

1:09:22So I was making maybe 50 to 60 dollars a day on those hundred dollar days.

1:09:27So you're currently a teacher, and I think I'd read in your book that your father was

1:09:30also a teacher as well, wasn't he?

1:09:33He was.

1:09:34in Minnesota and this would be in the 1930s I guess and he actually started

1:09:41selling these canning products where you can can pickles and things and he was

1:09:46selling that door-to-door but he went into fuller brushes and he realized he

1:09:50was making more money selling floor brushes in the summer than he was

1:09:53teaching in the the other nine months of the year so he made the logical move to

1:09:57switch back to two fuller brushes and he was he was a boss he had about 15 guys

1:10:03working for him in southern Minnesota and I was one of those guys during the summers

1:10:08at least.

1:10:09He was terrific.

1:10:11I'd get down and I couldn't make a sale for the life of me and I'd come back to him and

1:10:16say, "Dad, I just, I really, I can't do it.

1:10:19The doors are being slammed in my face."

1:10:21He says, "Well, let me help you."

1:10:22He'd come back with me and walk door to door and he was super.

1:10:26He had a way and it's hard to even explain it, but he taught me to be a good salesman.

1:10:32The trick really was volume is the number of stops you make.

1:10:37If you make a certain number of stops, for instance, in a community, you're going to

1:10:41make that $100 a day.

1:10:42If you, and farmers, are bigger buyers, at least they were at that time because they

1:10:47didn't get to the department stores and other places, and so you didn't have to make as

1:10:52many stops as farmers.

1:10:53But if you made those stops, let's say three to four stops in the country in an hour, you

1:10:58probably would make a pretty good day for yourself.

1:11:02Do you know approximately how many years he sold for?

1:11:06I don't know.

1:11:07He must have been selling fuller brushes and a field manager for maybe 30 years, 20 to

1:11:1130 years.

1:11:12When he finally retired down to Arizona, he couldn't get out of the sales business, so

1:11:17he went to selling maps to schools.

1:11:20So in a sense, he kind of was returning to his roots because he was going back to the

1:11:24school but as a salesman.

1:11:26I went along with him to kind of see how he did it, and he's a super salesman.

1:11:30He just was.

1:11:32Getting into the history of it, what are the origins of the traveling salesman?

1:11:37The earliest salespeople in Europe, they called them "montabanks."

1:11:43And a montabank actually translates into somebody who would stand on a platform and promote

1:11:50a product, kind of like you see in a carnival barker or something to that effect.

1:11:55And so it was stationary, it wasn't a traveling salesman, although they would travel as a

1:11:59group from place to place, kind of like early patent medicine people would.

1:12:03They'd have their patent medicine shows and bring their shows around just in America.

1:12:08But they were doing that in Europe.

1:12:10And it developed a little differently in the states because in Europe, the enterprises

1:12:15themselves were selling.

1:12:17They had rights to sell their products in particular areas.

1:12:21In this country, the salesman went out and sold away from the enterprise.

1:12:27They might sell clocks or tinware, but they could roam the country.

1:12:32They didn't have any particular territory that they were locked into.

1:12:37And so that was kind of a difference.

1:12:39The traveling salesman in America were really traveling, and of course you had a different

1:12:43situation here too with being a wide open country and people were locating in different

1:12:49areas.

1:12:50In fact, one author has called it the introduction of the everywhere community, because in a

1:12:55sense the traveling salesman was bringing the goods and services from the cities out

1:13:02east, Boston and other areas, to the farms and the settlements that were farther west.

1:13:09They were several things.

1:13:10They weren't just salespeople, they were also newspapers.

1:13:14In fact, that was an important role that these traveling salesmen had in early times.

1:13:17They were carrying news with them.

1:13:20would, Johnny Appleseed for instance, was very much involved in warning settlers

1:13:24as to maybe some Indians who were sort of on the warpath I guess you'd say.

1:13:30And he would tell them, you know, you've got some problems coming down the road

1:13:33here. So these early traveling salesman were carriers of news and advice, so they

1:13:39had multiple functions.

1:13:41And with those early salesmen, what were they selling

1:13:44exactly, or rather what was the most like prevalent thing or things that they were

1:13:49were selling. Book salesmen were probably the most common salesmen and saleswomen in

1:13:56the 19th century. One of the finest book salesmen of all time was Parson Weems. His

1:14:04primary product was Bibles, but actually he wrote his own things. Some say he's kind

1:14:12of equivalent to current reporters for National Enquirer and some of the others because he

1:14:16would tend to fictionalize the people of his day, like George Washington.

1:14:20For instance, he wrote a story about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and

1:14:24telling his dad that it was -- he did it, and his dad complimented him for being honest.

1:14:31And that's fiction.

1:14:32It didn't really happen.

1:14:33But actually what did happen is probably Wham's own son did something very much like that,

1:14:38but I don't think he admitted to his dad that he had done it.

1:14:41But he wrote a lot of books, and they were very popular.

1:14:45really enjoy them. And what's kind of interesting about the the WEMS book, the

1:14:50book about George Washington, about being honest, it was one of Abraham Lincoln's

1:14:55favorite books. I believe that he liked the book so much that of

1:15:01course his campaign theme was "Honest Abe" and he probably got it from Parson

1:15:07Wems in the story about George Washington. So these things get kind of

1:15:10passed on in strange ways. But book sales kind of evolved in another way. It's

1:15:16called subscription sales. They would go door-to-door with a portion of a book

1:15:21with some illustrations and text and there were a lot of blank pages and they

1:15:25would go door-to-door and say we're selling this book, are you interested? And

1:15:30they'd say yeah I'd like to buy that book and so they put their name in

1:15:34the back of the book and they go to the neighbor and say you know your neighbor

1:15:38down there said that they'd like to have this book, maybe you would too, and so the

1:15:42neighbors said, "Oh my gosh, it's endorsed by my neighbors, so I'll sign for it." And of

1:15:46course they didn't have to publish the book ahead of time because they knew

1:15:49just how many books they were going to sell. Mark Twain got involved in that

1:15:53kind of process. His early books were sold by subscription publishing. One of

1:15:58the most successful subscription salesperson was a woman, and she was

1:16:04criticized for doing this. Women shouldn't be doing that sort of thing. They shouldn't

1:16:09be going out in public and knocking on doors. And she got so mad about it that she wrote

1:16:14a book about that defending her position that she should be able to do that just like anybody

1:16:20else just because she's a woman shouldn't restrict her from that profession. It was

1:16:25a very important way of selling books in the 19th century.

1:16:30There's that sort of stereotype there not to answer your door because they're going

1:16:34to give you this hard sell and they're going to try and make you buy something.

1:16:37But in those early days when these people were so kind of like rural and

1:16:40way out in these distant areas, was it something like more positive because the

1:16:46stranger is coming to your door and he's going to talk to you and he's also going

1:16:49to bring interesting things from the outside world?

1:16:52Yeah, it was for many different reasons. One of the kind of traveling salesmen

1:16:59called the Arkansas Traveler. And the Arkansas Traveler, actually Parson

1:17:04Whims was probably an Arkansas Traveler, not just because he sold books in

1:17:08Arkansas, but the characteristic of the Arkansas Traveler was that he would

1:17:12speak with people who were really out in the boonies and people who really didn't

1:17:18want to talk to anybody. They were there to get away from life, I guess, or get

1:17:21away from from other people. And so he had to ingratiate himself with these

1:17:26people to sell his items. And so the way he did it is he brought his violin and instruments

1:17:31with him. And he would invite these people to join him in music. And of course that really

1:17:39attracted them and that was typical of the Arkansas traveler. Also, traveling salesmen

1:17:45were collectors, collectors of music. You have a couple of traveling salesmen who were

1:17:51selling nursery items, they were not out there to sell the items as much as they were collecting

1:17:57the music of America.

1:17:59And there are a couple of museums, one's in Missouri and the other one is down in North

1:18:04Carolina that has a collection of massive amounts of music of the time.

1:18:10This should be 19th century America.

1:18:11And of course, in the case of the music, you kind of reverse the process.

1:18:16The MMS was there to contribute his music, but these traveling sales people were there

1:18:22to collect the music of the people.

1:18:25Other people did other things.

1:18:27Their storytelling was big.

1:18:29I mean, the people knew that when the salesman came along, he had a lot of stories to tell

1:18:33them, humor, jokes.

1:18:35I can see why people were attracted to this.

1:18:37They knew that this was sort of an entertainer who was coming around, and in the process,

1:18:42they'd buy some things from that entertainer.

1:18:44The traveling salesman would come in a lot of different colors and brands and purposes.

1:18:49In fact, the one traveling salesman who was collecting the music, his boss said, "You're

1:18:54not doing much selling, frankly.

1:18:56You're trading your goods, in this case nursery items, for music.

1:19:01You're not really bringing in much revenue."

1:19:02But that wasn't his thing.

1:19:05In your book, you've dedicated a whole section to Johnny Appleseed, and you said you consider

1:19:10him a legendary traveling salesman.

1:19:13That's not something you usually think of when you think of this iconic folk hero.

1:19:19Why do you consider him a traveling salesman?

1:19:21For several reasons.

1:19:22Johnny Appleseed covered a lot of territory.

1:19:25He started out in the East Coast and went all the way up to Indiana.

1:19:30And he was spreading word about a very, very important product with the apple.

1:19:36Today it's pretty common, but at the time people didn't have access to sweeteners and

1:19:41certainly alcoholic beverages, apple jack, and it's also a preservative.

1:19:48And perhaps the most important element of the apple was that it tended to serve as boundary,

1:19:53the trees served as boundary to the property because these people were settlers and they

1:19:58were just claiming their piece of land and they could claim land by ringing their territory

1:20:05with these apple trees.

1:20:06So Johnny Appleseed was really helping them settle as well.

1:20:09But he's also a missionary.

1:20:13So he was passing on information about the Swedenborgian religion, which is kind of really

1:20:20equal to his interest in the people that he was talking to.

1:20:24And the college there in Urbana is actually there because of Johnny Appleseed.

1:20:30He was able to persuade a friend of his to donate property to the college so that they

1:20:35could put that educational facility up and build it.

1:20:40He's a very interesting person.

1:20:41I think that the real story about Johnny Appleseed is far more interesting and really unusual

1:20:49than the legends that have grown up around him.

1:20:51Disney and others have tended to fictionalize much of what he was, but he was truly an inspiration.

1:21:00There are certain sales techniques or things that we now consider like sales staples that

1:21:06you write about that you were born from the heyday of traveling sales, like the warranty

1:21:11and the money back guarantee.

1:21:13Well, in terms of the warranty or the money back guarantee, Marshall Field was an early

1:21:20innovator and of course it was very, very popular and that was the cornerstone of his

1:21:25early business here in Chicago.

1:21:28The title of my book has the words "Whizbang" in it, and of course that was a word that

1:21:32he called his people whizbangs, his traveling salesman.

1:21:37The other thing is giving away samples.

1:21:40And of course a lot of this started as door openers.

1:21:42I used samples when I was selling floor brushes.

1:21:44I had pastry brushes and vegetable brushes and little bottles of perfume.

1:21:49And I'd say if you talk with me for just a moment, I'll give you this pastry brush or

1:21:53this vegetable brush.

1:21:54And that doesn't sound like a big deal today, but it was a big deal.

1:21:59And frequently these door openers became products.

1:22:04One of the most amazing stories I think is with the SOS pad.

1:22:08He was selling for the kitchen cookware.

1:22:11He had trouble getting the door open, so he was talking to his wife and he said, "What

1:22:14can I do to get the door open to sell my goods?"

1:22:17And she said, "Well, why don't we do something with a pad that maybe a steel wool and maybe

1:22:24it has soap in it and give that away and maybe the doors will open."

1:22:28Well, of course they did.

1:22:30But the kind of funny part of this was that he said, "Well, what are we going to call

1:22:35this thing?"

1:22:36And she said, "Why don't we call it SOS pads?"

1:22:38And she said, "SOS pads?

1:22:40Save our saucepans."

1:22:42And so his wife in that case was his partner in putting that together.

1:22:46Wrigley started out selling soaps, but he was giving away sticks of gum.

1:22:51And of course, we now know that the gum was far more popular than his soaps.

1:22:56And what's interesting about that, he took it a step further by mailing out samples to

1:23:05people with telephones.

1:23:06And of course, this was the early 20th century, so he used the addresses of people with telephones

1:23:12as his potential customers.

1:23:16Avon products started out as he was selling books and he needed a door opener and so he

1:23:24worked with, I think he had a relative who was a pharmacist and he said, "Can I put something

1:23:29together that maybe would open a door?"

1:23:31And they concocted some perfumes and things.

1:23:34And of course now we know that the perfumes, the cosmetics became far more interesting

1:23:38to the customer than the things he was trying to sell.

1:23:42And the name Avon is kind of interesting.

1:23:43The reason it's called Avon is because he lived in New York and he lived near a river

1:23:47that looked very much like Stratford and Avon in England, where Shakespeare is from.

1:23:53So that's where they got the word Avon.

1:23:55And it's serendipitous how things happen.

1:23:59We have a traveling salesman, Lay, who of course we know him now as the potato chip

1:24:05man, discovered that a chef, coincidentally his name was Crum, out in Saratoga.

1:24:13The story goes that Vanderbilt came in, the very wealthy railroad man, came in and ordered

1:24:19some potatoes and the chef delivered them and Vanderbilt said, "You know, this is not

1:24:25good."

1:24:26So Krome went back and invented the potato chip.

1:24:28They called it the Saratoga chip initially.

1:24:31It was just a regional thing.

1:24:32He was discovered by Lay and he bought a bunch of this, bagged it up, put it in the trunk

1:24:38of his car and went store to store saying, "I've got something here that I think you'll

1:24:41be interested in."

1:24:42We know today that Frito Lay is big in the potato chip business.

1:24:48What's I think so important about these salespeople, the very best salespeople take advantage of

1:24:54the moment.

1:24:56They see something and they say, "My gosh, this is something that will sell."

1:25:00A favorite story I have is I learned about it when I was working with these really great

1:25:06salespeople.

1:25:07One of them had been out to Colorado and he was skiing with his wife.

1:25:12They were going from one peak to another to go to another slope.

1:25:17And they were going to be taking this cable car from one location to the next.

1:25:21And while they were transversing this valley, a small plane came down and clipped the cable.

1:25:28And two or three of the cable cars in front of this insurance salesman crashed into the

1:25:33valley.

1:25:34And of course, they were killed.

1:25:35But he was left dangling up there above the valley with his wife and in the process sold

1:25:41them insurance policies to the people who were in that car. Again, you know, these people

1:25:47see the opportunity and they take advantage of it. They just, and they aren't necessarily

1:25:52taking advantage of people. In most cases, I think they're giving people something that

1:25:58they maybe didn't realize that they wanted in the first place. One of the favorite stories

1:26:03that I have is the man who was actually from this particular area. He went to college in

1:26:08in Aprilville, Gates. His name was Betamillion Gates. He wasn't born with Betamillion, but

1:26:14that's what they called him later. Gates eventually would sell barbed wire for the people in DeKalb.

1:26:20In fact, DeKalb University, Northern Illinois University is probably there because of the

1:26:25barbed wire business, because that's where barbed wire was invented in DeKalb. But he

1:26:31started selling barbed wire, and he was called Betamillion because he would bet on anything.

1:26:37started his first sailing west and he saw some farmers who had cattle who were

1:26:44roaming all over the place. Of course that's why he had the cowboys because

1:26:48they had to continue to corral these cattle that didn't know where they were.

1:26:52And he said, "I can keep this cattle right there. There's 30 very wild cattle but I

1:26:57can keep them there." And they said, "No, you can't do that." He said, "I betcha I can."

1:27:01And of course he strung the barbed wire around his cattle and they weren't ready

1:27:05to go anywhere. Eventually he was so successful selling barbed wire that he went into the

1:27:10steel business, Republic Steel, and probably his biggest venture was an oil company that

1:27:16we now know as Texaco. That was his company. So very wealthy. In fact, he was so wealthy

1:27:22that he actually bid for Carnegie's steel business. Of course, Carnegie we know is probably

1:27:29one of the wealthiest people of all time in America, but that's how wealthy this guy was.

1:27:34But Gates was something else.

1:27:36I mean, he was very successful.

1:27:39And he knew what he wanted to do.

1:27:40And he took advantage of the moment,

1:27:42just like so many of these very good salespeople do.

1:27:44With those success stories, do you think there's a process of,

1:27:47like, that process of learning to walk door to door

1:27:49and kind of meet all kinds of mix of people?

1:27:52Does that help?

1:27:53And does it further their career in the end, ultimately?

1:27:58And then does learning to sell have some sort of benefit

1:28:00in general, do you think?

1:28:02I've seen articles written about this that sales training can help people in almost any

1:28:08vocation, except if you're a monk or somebody that's at a computer all day and you don't

1:28:13need to talk to anybody.

1:28:14But I think there are some basic principles that you learn just going door to door.

1:28:20One of them is there's formulas.

1:28:22The formula I mentioned to you that you have to make so many stops in an hour in town,

1:28:28I think the formula was eight stops an hour.

1:28:32If you go slower than that, you're not selling.

1:28:35If you go faster than that, you're not selling.

1:28:37So eight stops an hour.

1:28:38In the country, it was four stops an hour.

1:28:41So there's formulas that you learn.

1:28:43And there's also the idea that optimism, persistence, is so important.

1:28:51And I mean, that's kind of an intangible, but it is important.

1:28:55And I think the very best salesmen are friends to the people that they sell to.

1:29:00Johnny Appleseed was a friend to his people.

1:29:02There's so many examples where they didn't see them just as salespeople, but they were

1:29:06friends.

1:29:07And I think it goes as far as to talk about some of the television personalities like

1:29:12Ron Popiel.

1:29:14He comes across to you as a friend.

1:29:15I've got something I want to share with you.

1:29:17Give me a moment and I'll tell you about it because it's really a pretty good bargain.

1:29:22And we're only $9.99 a month for...and I'll give you something extra with that.

1:29:28I'll give you a cookbook or whatever it is.

1:29:33They know the people they're talking to and they're like friends.

1:29:37And the moment.

1:29:38As a teacher, I call it the teachable moment, but it's a sellable or the sales moment.

1:29:44There's a moment when you say, "Yes, I know that this is something you could use."

1:29:49One of the quotes is the last one to say something in a sell is the buyer.

1:29:55So you wait until the customer says something.

1:30:00You don't talk over the customer.

1:30:02You let the customer finally say something.

1:30:04And the person that says something last is probably the one who's winning, or I should

1:30:09say is buying in this particular case.

1:30:13There are techniques.

1:30:14And some of it is more art than science, but a lot of it is things that you can tell people

1:30:22you should be doing it this way.

1:30:24For instance, one salesman, who was very successful, says you've got to have a gimmick.

1:30:30His gimmick was jewelry.

1:30:32He had some very fancy jewelry, watches and things, and people would say, really, that's

1:30:36very interesting.

1:30:38So they would become interested in him as an individual and say, that's what you got

1:30:43there.

1:30:44That's intriguing.

1:30:45That was his thing.

1:30:46How did your book wind up happening?

1:30:49How did whiz-bangs get written and what was the process there?

1:30:52I'm a history teacher and I was asked by the Newberry Library to put together some lesson

1:30:58plans on a turn of the century sales activity or labor activity in Chicago.

1:31:05And I decided to focus on merchandising and marketing.

1:31:09And as I was doing that, I realized that this isn't just a lesson plan, it's a book.

1:31:15So seven years later, I ended up completing this book about traveling salesmen.

1:31:22It was some of the most rewarding times that I've ever had.

1:31:25I combed the stacks of the Library of Congress and the Newberry Library.

1:31:29In fact, that's where I found this journal of this Bible salesman, A.M. Jones.

1:31:33It was a journal.

1:31:34I don't know that anybody had ever seen it.

1:31:37I had to handle it with gloves because it was very fragile.

1:31:42Probably one of the first things I found, I said, "Well, this is unbelievable.

1:31:46This is something that's written by a traveling salesman 100-plus years ago."

1:31:50told me his techniques and everything else. And so one thing led to another and I

1:31:56realized that such a wonderful, rich, rich field. And I had the opportunity to serve

1:32:02as a researcher at the Library of Congress, comb their stacks for everything they had.

1:32:07I visited museums. I visited Parson Wehm's museum in Virginia and I went through their stacks. They

1:32:16had a lot of information about Parson Wehm's and out of went. It was just, there's just so many

1:32:20Another wonderful resource is the patent medicine capital of the country, which is Marshall,

1:32:27Michigan.

1:32:28At the turn of the century, early 20th century, there were 100-plus patent medicine businesses

1:32:33in Marshall, Michigan.

1:32:34I talked to a lot of people there who knew a lot about the patent medicine business,

1:32:39and that was thrilling to get in touch.

1:32:42So there were just a number of resources, being able to talk to people, being able to

1:32:47go to museums, libraries, and some have said, "Well, you became sort of a traveling salesman,

1:32:52didn't you?" Again, by kind of traveling around and selling my ideas, or at least buying ideas,

1:32:59I guess, from others. You have a whole section about humor that's

1:33:03based around the traveling salesman in your book. How did that come about?

1:33:08Some historians believe that you can tell more about the life of a salesman by reading

1:33:12the humor of the day than almost anything else, because some of the humor that I have

1:33:18collected goes back 150 years.

1:33:20It's as funny today as I think it probably was the day that the salesman first uttered

1:33:25it.

1:33:26A lot of the jokes were about themselves.

1:33:27They like to make fun of themselves.

1:33:31So much of the humor is farmer salesman.

1:33:36My favorite story is the traveling salesman came up to the door and as he was knocking

1:33:42and the farmer's door. The wife comes to the door and he notices a three-legged pig or

1:33:48a pig with a wooden leg running by. He said, "Before I sell you something, I've got to

1:33:52ask you about this three-legged pig. What's with that?" And the woman said, "That pig

1:33:56is very special." "Well, I can see that. It's got three legs and a wooden leg there." "Well,

1:34:02there's more. That pig, our daughter was failing math and that pig tutored our daughter. Now

1:34:06She's straight A's. Well that that's that's special, but what about the three legs?

1:34:12There's more.

1:34:14This house was on fire that pig comes in rescues us and today

1:34:17We're here because that pig got us out of the house. Well, that's that's special. But what about the three legs? There's more

1:34:24We were destitute. We didn't know where our next dollar was coming from the pig knows that goes in the back air digs a hole finds oil

1:34:30Okay. All right. All right

1:34:32special pig. Tell me about the three legs. Well, a pig like that you can't eat all at

1:34:37once.

1:34:38That's great.

1:34:40You mentioned at the start that all of the historical traveling sales wound up coming

1:34:44around and now kind of there are glimmers of it on TV and the internet. And specifically

1:34:51you referenced that the grocery store chain JUUL here in Illinois, that that's sort of

1:34:56a good example of what goes around, comes around, that kind of idea in sales.

1:35:02So the Jule Tea Company started out in Chicago, actually, door to door.

1:35:08He went door to door selling coffee and tea and things.

1:35:11And it was an innovation at the time because at that point, if you wanted to get coffee

1:35:15and tea, you go into a store and it probably was in a barrel.

1:35:18It wasn't very fresh.

1:35:20And so he was able to deliver some fresh food door to door out of his wagon.

1:35:26And of course, one thing led to another and it became a grocery store.

1:35:31actually the founders of GLT were relatives. They were eventually acquired

1:35:37by the grocery store business. We moved fast forward to about perhaps 20 years

1:35:45ago and the introduction of Peapod. And what happened was of course Peapod now

1:35:51started going to the grocery stores, picking out the items for you and

1:35:56delivering them to you so that you get the fresh products and you didn't have

1:36:00to go to the store and get them yourself. You know where they got those items from Jewel

1:36:04Tea? They actually shopped Jewel Tea to pick up the groceries to deliver to the people,

1:36:11so it came full cycle. You know, you go from door to door to the grocery store and back

1:36:18door to door. And that's so typical of the way this thing goes. It comes out in a different

1:36:27but it's still door-to-door sales. It's still door-to-door sales. So it's a, it's a,

1:36:33that's kind of the story of traveling sales.

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