- Fantasia 2025: A Grand Mockery, Every Heavy Thing, Anything That Moves (July 29, 2025)
Weird is the name of the game at the Fantasia International Film Festival; you can always count on your average festival pick to feature some level of weirdness, or horniness, or avant-garde experimentation. (It’s telling when the most normal entries at a film festival are the blood-soaked action thrillers; more on those as these dispatches progress.) But some of the strangest acid trips of the festival have come courtesy of these next three titles, pure-strain hallucinogenic experiences that care not for the conventions of traditional plotting or naturalism, and instead just want to get their freak on.
So let’s start with a beautifully grimy, Lynch-meets-Linklater Aussie curio by the name of “A Grand Mockery,” courtesy of Brisbane-based filmmakers Sam Dixon and Adam C. Briggs. The story, such as it is, concerns Josie (Dixon), an aimless loser living out his repetitive days in the hipster confines of Brisbane: he wakes up, pours himself a coffee mug of boxed red wine, and shuffles through his go-nowhere job at an indie movie theater. The first act locks us in this routine, Dixon and Briggs’ choice to shoot on Super 8mm film giving it the grainy, liminal feel of a reality that feels like it’s slowly coming apart at the seams. And indeed, as the film progresses, it does; Josie seems to struggle with purpose, with mental illness, with the deteriorating confines of life with his dementia-riddled grandfather and the corpses in the cemetery he talks to in his free moments. (Yes, he’s the kind of guy who spends his time hanging out in cemeteries, his furrowed Cro-Magnon brow and long, stringy black hair making him look like a malnourished Glenn Danzig.)
As the film progresses, these moments repeat, with even greater and greater surreality, as Josie’s own sense of calm snaps out of order. Mysterious growths begin to form on his neck, the beer and cigarettes begin to flow ever more as Josie enters increasingly vulnerable states, his body collapsing ever more into a dead-eyed husk. It feels like Brisbane, and his life within it, is killing him slowly, and we’re just left to watch it slowly happen to him.
In this sense, “A Grand Mockery” is highly successful, a fucked-up fever dream that soaks you in the mindset of someone’s honest to God existential breakdown. Granted, that single note sustains throughout the entire piece, which can feel a bit repetitive once you know where it’s all going. Still, the goal is less to bring Josie to a conclusive story than it is to sit in the rot and filth of Brisbane’s hipster scene. It’s the kind of film you sense more than analyze. There’s something here about the alienation of modernity, of an elemental desire to return to nature to escape all of civilization’s horrors. No number of three-paper joints, of vinyl records, of intimate moments with loved ones can save you from the void. For all its occasional moments of dark comedy, it’s a film that makes you feel ill.
In a slightly more irreverent context, we have Oklahoma’s favorite indie film son, Mickey Reece, and his latest, “Every Heavy Thing,” a curious ode to the journalism and tech thrillers of the ’90s, with a hefty dose of infectious fun to its goofy premise. I’ve enjoyed Reece’s idiosyncracies in the past: See “Agnes,” an exorcism thriller that zags in the middle to follow a nun who just nopes out of the movie she was in, or “Country Gold,” which interrogates the clashing generations of country music through a vaguely Lynchian lens. “Every Heavy Thing” is a bit more laidback and more overtly comedic than those, but still doesn’t lose its surreal touches.
Here, Reece turns his oddball sensibilities to the rhythms of De Palma and David Lynch, with seedy underbellies of polite working-class society giving way to dreamlike nightmares and no small amount of surreal humor. Our window into this world is Joe (Josh Fadem, making great use of his twisted, confused expressions), the nebbishly ad salesman for a tiny alt-weekly in “Hightown City,” who ends up playing an inadvertent part in the serial killer schemes of a sci-fi tech billionaire (Josh Urbaniak, whose resemblance to Fadem doesn’t feel accidental) after he witnesses him off a lounge singer (horror maven Barbara Crampton) on a night out with his buddy. (Shades of “Blue Velvet” there already.) Urbaniak’s maniac wants him to take part in an “experiment”: He cannot tell anyone what he has seen here, and he will be dead within the hour if he does. Trouble is, his paper is beginning to investigate the mysterious disappearances of several girls around town, and the intrepid new beat reporter Cheyenne (newcomer Kaylene Snarsky) ropes him into the hunt. He knows who did it; can he keep his mouth shut as the bodies pile up?
“Every Heavy Thing” is lightweight for a Reece picture, but there are still fun signposts of the American id on display: Joe’s father (Reece stalwart Ben Hall) gleefully showing off his appearance on a gun-rights YouTube video, the Neuralink-y sci-fi schemes that undergird the whole affair, and so on. And in the middle is Fadem’s Joe, a classic De Palma protagonist coming apart at the seams with nervous energy, especially as Urbaniak’s William Shaffer invades his dreams (rendered with delightfully low-fi VR effects that sell the comic surreality of his predicament). Here, the realm of the Internet, and digital communication, become a means of confusion and control, as virtually every character is weighed down by some exploration or hidden want or expectation—all except Joe, an ordinary man so settled in his own life he must deal with the consequences of others’ own journeys (Urbaniak’s tech utopia, his wife’s budding affair, an old friend [“People’s Joker” director Vera Drew] reappearing post-transition to infer that she thought he was going through a similar journey).
It’s all very surprising and retrofuturistic, and unexpectedly funny. (One scene featuring a jailhouse guard who humors Joe’s cries of innocence is a real gut-buster.) Mickey Reece continues to make films that, while products of their influences, defy description.
But perhaps it’s fitting to move from De Palma pastiche to something approaching the ribald anarchy of John Waters, coming home to Chicago with Alex Phillips’ indescribable “Anything That Moves.” Phillips’ followup to “All Jacked Up and Full of Worms,” itself a horny, transgressive picture, “Anything That Moves” begins with a cherry-popping sequence of lovemaking in the woods between Liam (Hal Baum) and young Julia (Jade Perry), encouraged by her sister, and Liam’s girlfriend, Thea (Jiana Nicole). The movement feels right; her eyes light up, and as she goes over the edge, a floodlight beams over her face, and orchestral piccolos trill and crescendo in tandem with her. It’s the gift of orgasm Liam brings, himself a sex worker who spends his days biking around the Chicagoland area in a red wrestling onesie, dropping off sex and sandwiches to his roster of clients (via a hookup app that feels somewhere between Sniffies and DoorDash).
He seems happy with his role, Phillips gleefully swapping the gender roles of this kind of picture to demonstrate the ease and care male sex workers can carry for his clients, both male and female. “Anything That Moves” spends a great deal of time glancing at the equitable commodification of his sexuality, and his casual attempts to reclaim and hold it close. Take an early scene that feels ripped out of any number of ’70s pornos; classic porn star Ginger Lynn Allen getting railed in her home by the delivery boy, Liam. But rather than linger on the sex, we just get the tail end, and Phillips takes greater care to check in on their post-sex sandwich eating and casual banter.
It’s not all grinders and grinding, though; there’s a serial killer on the loose in the Windy City, and Liam finds himself implicated in the murders by a couple of mismatched cops (Jack Dunphy and Frank V. Ross) who finger him for the death of Julia’s dad (Paul Gordon). The story is only vaguely interested in that, however, serving instead as background for Liam’s various encounters with both Julia and the varying johns and janes he runs into throughout his work. There are gloriously reveled-in golden showers to go along with rivulets of gore as the killer does his work, all shot with vibrant color and urban grit by cinematographer Hunter Zimby. And, of course, one brightly-lit cinematic orgasm after another, as Liam does his thing with clients on all ends of the gender and kink spectrums.
The opening credits are emblazoned over close-ups of dollar bills with thick penises drawn elegantly over them, a lovely metaphor for the film’s exploration of the intersections between sex and commerce. But it’s also no dour treatment of sex work; “Anything That Goes” is chaotic, raunchy, and weirdly sweet for its bursts of violence. Sure, there’s a serial killer on the loose, but there’s also a purity of heart in Liam’s embrace of sexual freedom, and the solidarity of those who join him on their kink-friendly journeys. And that’s something to be celebrated.
- All 8 Netflix “Trainwreck” Documentaries of 2025, Ranked (July 29, 2025)
Netflix has enjoyed great success with the so-called “Disaster Porn” documentary, shining spotlights on cultural flashpoints with “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” in 2019 and the pandemic sensation “The Tiger King” a year later. The genre continued through “Meltdown: Three Mile Island” (2022), “Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99” (2022), “Waco: American Apocalypse” (2023), and two releases this year: “A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054” and “Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster.” Although only the Woodstock entry was officially given the “Trainwreck” banner, all of these docs chronicled events that went horribly, sometimes tragically wrong, and tapped into our insatiable appetites for material that revisits recent historical events through the lens of that most understandable of questions: “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?”
We now have a fresh batch of catastrophe-scandal docs on Netflix, and this time, they’re all under the “Trainwreck” umbrella, with the last of eight episodes dropping July 29th. From must-watch to passably entertaining to ‘hit the “NEXT” button,’ my rankings:
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
1. “The Astroworld Tragedy”
A tense, gripping, and harrowing tick-tock accounting of the shocking—and wholly avoidable—tragedy at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival at NRG Park in Houston in November 2021, where 10 young people died from compression asphyxia and hundreds more were injured in a horrifying, catastrophic crowd crush. Concertgoers (some of whom lost loved ones), journalists, and investigators reflect on the circumstances that turned what was supposed to be a beautiful and joyous day of music and celebration into a terrifying nightmare.
The “Day Of…” chronology includes the recollections of fans (“We’re young, we want to live life to the fullest. It was a concert that you didn’t want to miss”), cell phone footage and concise animated graphics, as we see how things went awry from the start, and built to a claustrophobic and petrifying and deadly domino effect, in large part because the crowd swarming Scott’s stage was pushed into a T-shaped barrier system. Says a crowd safety expert, after the fact: “This was not a case of missing red flags. This was a case of ignoring blaring warning sirens. I was shocked…by what I found.” You will be as well. (3.5 stars)
Trainwreck: Balloon Boy. Falcon Heene in Trainwreck: Balloon Boy. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
2. “Balloon Boy”
For one crazy day in October of 2009, the nation’s media turned away from coverage of major current events to focus on a homemade, helium-filled flying saucer that was flying fast across the skies of Colorado—a saucer that may or may not have contained a 6-year-old boy who had stowed away on the thing. (Turns out the boy, Falcon Heene, was hiding in the garage attic; swarms of law enforcement personnel somehow failed to find him during repeated searches of the family’s property.) “Balloon Boy” revisits the story with just the right mixture of responsible journalism and WTF incredulity, as the preternaturally eccentric Richard Heene, his wife Mayumi and their children continue in present day to maintain it wasn’t a hoax. “My family and I made an experimental flying saucer…and it took off,” says Heene.
Still, there’s that damning footage of the family appearing on “Larry King Live,” with substitute host Wolf Blitzer asking little Falcon, “Why didn’t you come out?”, and the boy looking at his family and saying, “You guys said, we did this for the show.” On the Balloon-o-Meter scale of 1 to 100, I’m about a 75 in favor of calling bull**** on the Heenes’ story. All these years later, Heene and family are still working on science-y things, with Heene telling us, “I’m working on something new…and it’s going to be really big.”
OK sport. (3.5 stars)
Trainwreck: Poop Cruise. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
3. “Poop Cruise”
A few years after the Balloon Boy madness, in February of 2013, we were consumed by another wild story unfolding in real time, as more than 4,000 people were stuck on a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico after a fire in the engine room. As one interviewee in “Poop Cruise” notes, a ship like this is basically a floating skyscraper on its side—and in this case, the floating skyscraper was without power and turning into a noxious waste dump. (“There’s only so much a toilet can take,” says the cruise director. Truer words were never spoken.) “Poop Cruise” is like “Titanic” without the death.
We’re reminded there are two worlds on a cruise ship—the hardworking crew members and the passengers who have come to party and be pampered—but after the mishap, they were all in it together, as all hell broke loose, with food supplies running out, human waste flooding the passageways and someone making the terrible decision to open the bar and dispense free booze, which led to fights as well as reports of carnal activity in the open. “Poop Cruise” makes good use of cell phone footage and news archival coverage, as former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin notes, “America couldn’t get enough” of the story. A chef on the ship recalls, “People were covering the poop with the toilet paper, and then again pooping on top of it, so it was a layer after layer after layer. It was like a lasagna.”
Not exactly “It’s been 84 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint,” but it has a certain graphic resonance to it. (3 stars)
Trainwreck: Storm Area 51. Matty Roberts in Trainwreck: Storm Area 51. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
4. “Storm Area 51”
The only two-parter in the series features a number of colorful and real-life characters, most notably one Matt Roberts, who in 2019 was working at a vape kiosk in the Valley Plaza Mall in Bakersfield, CA., and would go home every night to his desktop and write entries as “The Shitposter,” which he describes as “a digital diary of stupid shit.” How can you not love this guy? After watching a YouTube clip of Joe Rogan talking to someone who once worked at the highly classified United States Air Force facility known as Area 51 in the Nevada desert, which has been Ground Zero for conspiracy theories since the 1950s, Roberts was inspired to ask, “What if every fool on the Internet converged on Area 51? What would they do, shoot everyone?”
Thus was born one of the stupidest and most fascinating online social movements of all time. “Storm Area 51” recounts how Roberts quickly lost control of the narrative, as literally millions of people from around the world signed up to well, storm Area 51, much to the alarm of the locals. We’re introduced to the likes of “Disco Donnie,” a promoter tasked with turning the event into a kind of Woodstock for alien enthusiasts, and Col. Cavan Craddock, who commanded the 99th Air Base Wing and had no choice but to take the event seriously. It was the correct decision, but he comes across a little like Sgt. Hulka in “Stripes” when he says, “There’s nothing funny about two million people wanting to Storm Area 51.”
Spoiler alert: On the night of the big event, it was more like a couple hundred random clowns than a couple million who arrived at the gates of Area 51, and there was no storming of anything. As for our guy Matt Roberts, a week later, he was back at the vape shop, looking and sounding for all the world like a character in a Kevin Smith movie. (3 stars)
Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
5. “The Cult of American Apparel”
You might recall those racy ads for American Apparel in the mid-to-late 2000s, featuring half-naked models (some of them employees or friends of the company) in provocative poses. CEO Dov Charney openly courted controversy while boasting to the media about “T-shirts that are made in a non-exploitative setting.” But as “The Cult of American Apparel” reports in straightforward, boilerplate fashion, Charney was a mercurial and allegedly abusive figure. He called employees in the middle of the night to scream “I hate you! I f****** hate you!”, would hold weekly conference calls with store managers to name a “Fool of the Week,” and, most damning, allegedly sexually harassed a number of female employees who had signed agreements saying they couldn’t say anything disparaging about the company.
Charney’s notoriety was such that he was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” by Fred Armisen, and there’s no denying the seriousness of the allegations (though Charney was never charged with any crimes), but the guy is a garden-variety asshole. This is a serviceable piece of work about a terrible man, and that’s about it. (2.5 stars)
Trainwreck: The Real Project X. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
6. “The Real Project X”
As was the case with “Storm Area 51,” this is a case of a relatively innocuous posting that goes viral. But whereas only a small group of idiots actually showed at Area 51, thousands of party-hungry morons descended upon a family home in the small town of Haren, Netherlands, after a girl named Merthe inadvertently clicked “Public Event” for her 16th birthday party in 2012. We meet a dude named Laurens who recalls thinking, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I invited more people?” and then sent out hundreds of invites, leading to a rowdy mob showing up and wreaking havoc that night, as they tried to duplicate the madness depicted in the fictional, found-footage teen comedy “Project X” (which was said to be loosely inspired by an actual out-of-control teen party in Australia). The most interesting “character” in “The Real Project X” is a man named Chris, who at the time was the “night mayor” charged with overseeing all things that happened after dark in the region. Cool job, until it wasn’t.
“The Real Project X” is a study in alcohol-fueled mob mentality, with some of the drunken prats looting local stores and businesses, resulting in more than 100 arrests. As for poor Merthe, who was totally faultless, she still seems affected by the event, though she’s forgiving of those who turned it into a near-riot.
Maybe she should head to Cali and bond with our “Storm Area 51” buddy Matt. (2.5 stars)
Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem. Mark Towhey in Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
7. “Mayor of Mayhem”
It’s not that the tragic-comic story of the late Rob Ford’s Jacobean descent into scandal and chaos isn’t worthy of a documentary, or, for that matter, a feature film, though I’m not sure how many remember “Run This Town” from 2019, with Damian Lewis (!) portraying the disgraced mayor of Toronto. It’s just that “Mayor of Mayhem,” while competently filmed and featuring the usual amalgam of news footage and interviews with journalists and former colleagues, et al., doesn’t really tell us anything new about Ford’s rise to power as a blunt-talking, deal-making populist—and his spectacular fall from grace, as he was caught on video smoking crack cocaine. Twice.
Perhaps Ford’s saga will get the limited dramatic series treatment one day; one can imagine Jesse Plemons disappearing into the role. (2 stars)
Trainwreck: P.I. Moms.. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
8. “P.I. Moms”
A superficial and at times confusing take on a story that is admittedly crazy but isn’t particularly splashy or high-stakes in the first place: the saga of a never-seen reality series called “P.I. Moms,” and the downfall of the founder of the detective agency that was to be the centerpiece of the show. In 2010, Lifetime began production on “P.I. Moms of San Francisco,” which followed a team of soccer moms as they investigated what appeared to be mundane cases of alleged infidelity, insurance fraud, and custody disputes. Not exactly the stuff of “Charlie’s Angels,” eh? Turns out much of it was staged (shocker!), and the agency’s founder, a former cop named Chris Butler, was involved in criminal activities that landed him an 8-year federal prison sentence. The series was canceled before airing. It wouldn’t have been much of a loss if the same thing had happened to this documentary. (2 stars)
A mixed bag, to be sure—but I’m still hoping for another batch of “Trainwreck” documentaries in the near future. How about “Trainwreck: The Coldplay Kiss-Cam Debacle,” “Trainwreck: The Blue Origin Backlash,” “Trainwreck: Blake v Baldoni”…
- Life is Like a Piano: Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) (July 28, 2025)
The great comedic songwriter and performer Tom Lehrer passed away at 97 yesterday, outliving one of the writers credited with penning the “advance” obituary that The New York Times had been holding for many years, a phenomenon that sometimes occurs with notable people who live longer than expected. Lehrer might also have been amused by the people who heard news of his passing and expressed astonishment that he hadn’t already kicked the bucket. He released his first album in 1953 and retired from live performance in 1967, never to return, although he continued to write and record new songs in studios for another decade.
Some mistook his withdrawal from public life for having died; A 2003 Sidney Morning Herald profile of Leher began, “Word that we’ve secured an interview has people around the office launching into such unlikely yet infectious ditties as ‘The Vatican Rag,’ ‘Smut’ and Lehrer’s ode to spring pursuits, ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.’ It also has people asking with a surprised tone: ‘Is he still alive?’”
It’s fun to imagine the songs Lehrer would have written about all this. His discography is stocked with all-timers, but only if you’re into novelty songs that riff on things that were happening in the middle part of the 20th century but now require footnotes. The work combines erudite social commentary, boundary-pushing cheekiness, and a piano sound rooted in the music halls that birthed vaudeville.
“We Will All Go Together When We Go” captures the bleak absurdity of mutually assured destruction in the Cold War era, and now feels like a predecessor to “Dr. Strangelove” as well as to Randy Newman’s “Political Science (Let’s Drop the Big One).” “The Masochism Tango” is about what it sounds like it’s about (“I ache for the touch of your lips, dear/But much more for the touch of your whips, dear”). So is “The Elements,” which is set to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major-General” song, and consists mostly of Lehrer reciting the names of elements on the periodic table, but rearranged to rhyme. “National Brotherhood Week” calls out the hypocrisy of devoting a mere week to brotherhood while giving people who loathe each other the other 51 weeks of the year an opportunity to pretend they’re decent (“It’s fun to eulogize/The people you despise/As long as you don’t let them in your school”).
One of my favorites is Lehrer’s nonexistent title song for the film adaptation of Oedipus Rex, which includes such verses as, “He loved his mother like no other/His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother!/One thing on which you can depend is/He sure knew who a boy’s best friend is!”
I first encountered Lehrer’s work when my fourth-grade choir performed a few of his songs during a winter recital. One of them was “Pollution,” which is done in the style of a song that the Sharks would’ve sung in West Side Story. It’s a toe-tapping ditty about humanity’s destruction of the environment. It begins, “If you visit American city/You will find it very pretty/Just two things of which you must beware/Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!” The first chorus goes, “Pollution, pollution/We got smog and sewage and mud/Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud!”
Memorizing the names of songwriters wasn’t something I did at that age. I made a point of memorizing Lehrer’s after I heard “Pollution” and other Lehrer classics played on The Dr. Demento Show, a syndicated radio program specializing in comedic songs, sketches, and other silliness. Demento, also known as Barret Eugene Hansen, announced his retirement earlier this year. Still, his show ran for more than five decades, introducing established names like Lehrer to new generations while giving up-and-comers a platform to find a mass audience. Demento’s most significant find was “Weird Al” Yankovic, who, as Yankovic himself has said on many occasions, probably would not have existed if he hadn’t grown up listening to Lehrer.
Lehrer was originally a mathematics professor (first at the University of California, Santa Cruz, then at Harvard) and continued to teach even when his music was at its peak. He was a ferociously nimble pianist and a composer of funny, topical songs that he’d play for friends. It all started in 1953 when, mainly for the heck of it, he paid for the pressing of 400 albums of his original work to give out to friends. A 1997 profile by Elijah Wald sums up his ascent:
The 1950s are often remembered as a cultural war zone, with Eisenhower and suburban conformity on one side, and the wildness of rock ‘n’ roll and beat poetry on the other. Lehrer stood firmly against both, and against decency, compassion, and virtually the whole range of human virtues. His songs, crafted with the care of the great Broadway tunesmiths, were studiedly intellectual and fiendishly irreverent. His idea of a cheerful ditty was “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” His idea of nostalgic sentimentality was an ode to “The Old Dope Peddler.” His idea of romance was “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” a paean to the woman he has killed, but whose hand he has kept as a souvenir.
“I think I could get away with that stuff because I was this clean cut college kid in a bow-tie and horn-rimmed glasses, being kind of innocent and smart,” Lehrer said. Fans took the record home on vacations, and orders began drifting in from around the country. “The word spread like herpes,” as Lehrer puts it, and soon he was making nightclub appearances. After a while he graduated to concert halls, then recorded his second studio album in 1959. That same year, he recorded live versions of both albums, one at Harvard and the other at MIT. (His advertisement for a live set said it “contains exactly the same songs, but unfortunately also includes Mr. Lehrer’s tedious spoken commentary.”)
In reality, Lehrer’s onstage patter was as sharp as his lyrics. “You know, of all the songs I have ever sung, that is the one I’ve had the most requests not to,” he said after performing, “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” a charming tale of murder and dismemberment, on “Songs by Tom Lehrer.” In that same show, Lehrer said, “I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this, you know. I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching.”
Lehrer became a national phenomenon when he was invited to perform his work on “That Was the Week That Was,” a U.S. adaptation of the same-named satirical-musical British series that looked back on the previous seven days’ worth of news. “TWTWTW,” as it was known, ran just two seasons, from 1963 to 65. Lehrer’s work survived and endured, though, probably because each song seemed to exist in its own hermetically sealed universe.
Lehrer declined all requests to return to the keys and unveil new material or play the hits. Part of the problem, he told interviewers, was that he didn’t find much humor in many of the major political developments after his heyday. What was he gonna do, a funny song about 9/11 or the 2008 recession? More than that, “I didn’t feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding,” he said. “To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.”
However, although Lehrer stopped performing and recording fairly soon into his music career, he was always willing to discuss his work. He did countless interviews over the decades. They produced many amazing quotes, like “If a person feels he can’t communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it,” and “Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize,” and my favorite, “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”
“I really don’t have anything more to say,” he told Bob Claster. “To just come back and stand on a stage and do the old songs again doesn’t really appeal to me, and performing doesn’t appeal to me at all.” He said people used to speculate that he must not have liked performing if he decided to stop doing it. Lehrer would reply that he liked high school, but didn’t want to do that again, either. But he added that he was grateful for his brief window of fame because it let him travel all over the world and meet interesting people and, more importantly, it “enabled me to do what I always wanted to do, which is teach part time and hang out.” If not for the music, “I would have had to have a real job, god forbid.”
- SDCC 2025: Celebrating ALL the Popular Arts (July 28, 2025)
“Cease and desist!” A “lawyer” in an ACME t-shirt yelled up at the “Coyote vs. Acme” panel in the biggest room at San Diego Comic-Con, Hall H, the cavernous 6700-seat venue people line up for days in advance. “Coyote vs. Acme” was of special interest to Comic-Con attendees. Inspired by a witty 1990 Ian Frazier essay in the New Yorker, it is a hybrid animation/live action film, based on the idea that Looney Tunes’ Wile E. Coyote, after decades of backfiring Road Runner-capturing equipment from Acme, decides to sue them for damages. In 2023, after the movie was completed, Warner/Discover CEO David Zaslav decided it would be of more value as a tax write-off than a theatrical or streaming release and decided not to let anyone see it. Fans protested, and ultimately, Ketchup Entertainment took it over. In Hall H, moderator Paul Scheer joked that for legal reasons he could only say it was Acme that “dropped an anvil on the movie.” He and Will Forte, who plays Coyote’s lawyer, told the cheering audience that it was our support for the film that ensured its upcoming theatrical release, in late August of 2026.
The panel also included director David Green, Eric Bauza, who provides the voices for ten cartoon characters in the film, co-star Martha Kelly, and, in a surprise appearance, Wile E. Coyote himself, holding up signs to answer questions, as he does in the cartoons. The “lawyer,” of course, was another cast member. P.J. Byrne, who in character tried to replace the presentation of the movie’s trailer with a zoom call from his boss, Foghorn Leghorn. The clips we saw of the movie had the chaotic energy of the cartoons, and I especially enjoyed the lawyers’ opening statements in court, with John Cena’s character as Acme’s lead counsel and Luis Guzman as the judge.
Also in Hall H, there was a panel from this summer’s “Bad Guys 2,” moderated by Kevin McCarthy. The original Bad Guys were there, Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, and Awkwafina, along with new cast members from the “Bad Girls,” Danielle Brooks, Natsha Lyonne, and Maria Bakalova. We got to see a wild clip from the film as the Bad Girls hijack a rocket ship and the Bad Guys come after them. McCarthy asked them about recording “efforts,” the grunts and yells that usually come at the end of recording. Awkwafina told us about the sounds she had to make as her character is “going down a thousand steps while being electrocuted.” Rockwell’s were for his character’s hypothermia. Brooks said that because her character sucks on a lollypop, she had to as well during the recordings and developed a fondness for the cherry flavor. When McCarthy complimented Maron’s podcast interviews, Maron confessed that everything he knows about acting he learned from the actors he interviewed, sometimes brought on the show specifically for that purpose. Lessons that were especially meaningful to him included Martin Landau’s advice that acting is listening, Ethan Hawkes explaining that before filming “Training Day” he watched each of co-star Denzel Washington’s previous films the way a football team watches recordings of the opposing team’s games, and Al Pacino telling him that “acting is the pursuit of truth.”
Other big events included a first-time SDCC visit from George Lucas, a Hallmark Movie panel, Matt Stone and Trey Parker on this week’s headline-making episode of “South Park,” and Ryan Gosling presenting a glimpse of one of the most anticipated movies of 2026, “Project Hail Mary.”
More SDCC highlights:
Ray Costa’s composer panels are always at the top of my list. Movie score composers do not worry about whether you will want to hum the theme. They are as committed to the story and the characters as the writers, directors, and actors. In the 11th annual panel of composers for comic book and franchise movies, the discussion was about reflecting the emotions of the characters and the arc of the storylines. As Alex Seaver (“Arcane” Season 2), pointed out, that sometimes means a battle with the sound design team over what gets heard more prominently. In these scores, “every second has to have a purpose and lead somewhere.” He especially enjoyed the opportunity to produce full-length four-minute songs for each episode.
The clip Mick Giacchino selected to show us from “Penguin” was an emotional scene with Sophia (Cristin Milioti) screaming at her brother as she is dragged off to prison. He told us she is has favorite character and it was “a dream come true, exciting to do something different with the character and find out what made her tick.” Like Mick Giacchino, some of the composers had to respect or incorporate previous themes for those characters or settings while creating something new. The Penguin wants to be in a higher social class, but he is also irrational. So he combined a string quartet with some percussion to create that emotional conflict. For “Andor,” Brandon Roberts said he had to “segue musical palette-wise” from “Rogue One,” “a beautiful kind of puzzle, to honor the script.”
Simon Franglen delighted the audience by giving us a sneak preview of the wind traders’ theme from the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” He said when he worked on “Titanic,” there was no money for music. His background as a synth musician helped James Horner develop four minutes of the score as the ship first comes into view with more than three minutes on synthesizer. He talked about developing music for the Avatar theme park attraction. It’s a 3D world, with five hours of music.”
Michael Giacchino, moderator of the panel and father of Mick, said that composing the score for “Fantastic Four: First Steps” was not like “The Incredibles” (which he also scored), but like a mash-up of “The Right Stuff” and Disneyland’s Light Parade, filled with hope and optimism, like the original Tomorrowland.
When asked about AI, all the composers agreed that “people want to feel human people doing human things,” and ideally you bring on people who are better than you to create what Franglen called “random chaos,” though they value the struggle between human and machine.
Most of my favorite panels feature “below the line” talent, the unsung heroes of filmmaking who do the stunts, the editing, the make-up, costumes, special effects, and many, many more. Some of the best are put together by Impact24. Their “Game Changers” panel featured women who had come from backgrounds as diverse and surprising as aerospace engineer, lawyer, and banker, to shape stories in Hollywood. Make-up department head Katie Machaiek (“The Rehearsal”) said that being able to experiment with digital tools to create wounds and other make-up challenges created a “more refined hand” when she was literally face-to-face with the actors. Sue Obeidi (Muslim Public Affairs Council) hopes she will be able to put herself out of a job advising Hollywood projects on Muslim representation. “Every story we tell is a matter of survival.” Allison Norlian (director of Meandering Scars) also spoke eloquently about the importance of representation, including mental illness and disability.
Their other panels included two composers connected to “Dora the Explorer” projects. “Dora” is a 25thanniversary reboot of the beloved series. Bobby Villarreal wanted the music to convey love, friendship, and belonging. Because questions are such an important part of Dora’s personality, he leaves chords unresolved when she asks one, to evoke the anticipation of discovery. Kenny Wood (“Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado”) said he was inspired by Bad Bunny and Camila Cabello, pan-Latino, “anywhere Spanish is spoken.” Though he recorded with an orchestra in Scotland, ¾ of the musicians watched Dora “after they have haggis for breakfast.” Eden Rousso told us stories about working collaboratively and drawing from each member of the writers’ room’s individual expertise on “Wylde Pak.” They took suggestions from a secretary and “even an executive.” As a theater kid, she enjoyed creating an episode about a theater camp, featuring “redneck goon” character Chuck, keeping in mind that “comedy is about subverting expectations.” Jon Griggs, editor of the popular “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” reality series said that one problem with the show’s success is that “the cast becomes self-aware.” They think, “I’m a terrible person! I’m going to change that. And it is completely fake.” But one benefit of subsequent seasons is “not so much set-up. You can explore characters more.”
“Snow White” composer Jeff Morrow confided that he provided the whistle for Dopey and got the Disney archivist to find the same glass bottles used to provide the sound of the organ in the original animated film to dust them off so they could use them again. And editor James Thomas provided the chicken sounds for this year’s unexpected hit, “A Minecraft Movie.” Andrew Schmidt (WondLa) said the most important lessons he learned from co-producer John Lasseter is “make the world you’re building one that you would want to go to, everything comes from what best serves the story, and reveal the world from your protagonist’s eyes.” VFX supervisor and 2nd unit director Johnny Han (HBO and DC’s “The Penguin”) talked about the challenge of taking events that occurred in another film (“The Batman”) and presenting them from a different perspective, “pure sorrow and tragedy.” Nikhil Koparkar’s enthusiasm for “The Wheel of Time” began when he read all 15 of the books, long before he got the job. He got to create “an orchestral love letter to the series.” That included creating a song called “The Hills of Tanchico,” which he described as “a bawdy bar song that is hundreds of years old with darker undertones.”
Unsurprisingly, the stunt performers panel, titled “Selling the Hit,” was energetic, with a former Army Ranger, an Olympic athlete, and a fencing master. We heard about Nathan Fillion’s special consideration for the stunt performers, taking a break so that the stuntman could get on camera to earn extra pay. The story I liked best was from Janeshia Adams-Ginyard, who doubled for Danai Gurira in “The Black Panther.” She’s very good at falling out of a car. She’s not so good with bees. They terrify her. So, when she was being taken to set in a golf cart and a bee flew at her, she impulsively rolled out of the moving vehicle, scaring the driver more than the bee scared her. A classic Comic-Con moment was when the stunt people were arriving as the previous panel, VFX experts specializing in animals, were leaving. A member of each panel had worked on “Cocaine Bear,” but they never met until SDCC.
The Black Panel and the Blerd (Black nerd) panels both emphasized the importance of representation, authenticity, and pivoting to develop whatever skills might be called for. Jay Washington, soon to have a recurring role on “Euphoria,” spent 24 years as a professional wrestler, then became a stand-up comic. “After 30 minutes on stage, I needed a Gatorade, instead of after 30 minutes in the ring, needing a week off.”
Outside the convention center in the Gaslamp neighborhood and along the shoreline, there were elaborate installations with exhibits and interactive attractions from Dr. Who, Peanuts, Abbott Elementary, Aliens: Earth, King of the Hill, and many more. In Jacobs Park, behind the convention center, streaming anime app CrunchyRoll held a two-day festival of anime and anime-inspired music, including yama, INIKO, Yaejim and SPYAIR, with delightful anime nerd co-host Jacki Jing.
The Children’s Film Festival concluded with an endearing film about a 13-year-old girl with synethesia called “Magnetosphere” (now available on most streaming services). It has a lot of goofy humor alongside a perceptive depiction of the pains of early adolescence.
The vast Exhibition Hall had huge displays from Marvel, Peanuts, Netflix, Random House, and more huge brands, the motorcycle from the upcoming “Tron” sequel, LEGO Glinda and Elphaba, plus tables selling everything from comic books and original comic and cartoon art to t-shirts and tchotchkes from every popular IP, L. Ron Hubbard books, and something called Butts on Things, which is exactly what it sounds like.
The costumes worn by about 10-20 percent of the attendees were as wildly imaginative as ever, with classic characters from Disney animated films, superheroes from Marvel and DC, and up-to-the-minute designs from “KPop Demon Hunters” and “Fantastic 4: First Steps.” The one that made me laugh the most was a couple who used a cardboard circle and some well-studied movements to cosplay as the pair caught by the Coldplay kiss-cam.
I often describe SDCC as “the Iowa caucuses of popular culture,” where we first see the entertainment that everyone will be talking about 1-2 years from now. That’s not why people keep coming back, though. It is the most inclusive, supportive, instant community anywhere I’ve ever been, with something for everyone. 55 years after a small group of comic collectors got together to show off their treasures, even after the pandemic and the strikes and more competition from studio-sponsored events, San Diego Comic-Con is still going strong, surprising, welcoming, and inspiring new generations of creative people.
- Dead Man Walking: Taron Egerton on “She Rides Shotgun” (July 28, 2025)
Taron Egerton can be a tricky actor to pin down, and that’s exactly how he likes it. Since breaking out as a street-kid-turned-spy in “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” he’s perhaps most distinguished himself by disappearing into one role after another.
Whether channeling a crown prince of pop in the Elton John biopic “Rocketman,” or getting under the skin of a convicted drug dealer playing cat-and-mouse with a serial killer for crime drama “Black Bird,” the Welsh actor and singer clearly relishes a challenge. Those currently tuning into Egerton’s unsettling performance as an arson investigator on Apple TV+’s “Smoke,” his second collaboration with crime novelist Dennis Lehane, can attest as well to the way his career choices seem driven most by the desire to keep surprising audiences, taking on roles they wouldn’t have expected him to play and knocking them out of the park, one by one.
Now 35, he’s been a familiar face for just over a decade, and the most entertaining parts he’s played in that time—including a starry-eyed ski jumper in “Eddie the Eagle” and a slacker TSA agent called to heroism in “Carry-On”—have made clear his earnest charisma and fearsome versatility in about equal measure. Always, he conveys a certain restlessness on screen: the sense, even with his most charming characters, of something burning away under the skin.
The same can be said of his riveting work in “She Rides Shotgun” (opening in theaters Aug. 1), a tense and gritty crime-drama—adapted from the novel by Jordan Harper—that casts the actor as an ex-con on the run. In the lead role of Nate, who’s been marked for death by dangerous enemies he made in prison, Egerton plays a far more tragically flawed and desperate character than those presented to him in past film roles.
Fresh out of jail and driving a stolen car, Nate careens back into the life of his estranged 11-year-old daughter, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger), whom he knows is next on the hit list for a vicious gang that’s already exacted revenge by murdering Nate’s ex-wife, Polly’s mother. In hopes of saving his daughter, Nate flees with her, determined to outrun the corrupt cops and brutal enforcers on their trail. As they fight to survive, Polly is forced to grow up too quickly; and all the while, Nate struggles to reconnect with the daughter he’s always loved but hardly knows.
The role was a rich one for Egerton, who also produced “She Rides Shotgun,” in how it allowed him to both push himself as an actor and form a close bond with the 10-year-old actress playing his daughter, with whom his on-screen chemistry was especially crucial. While recently visiting Chicago with director Nick Rowland (“Calm with Horses”) for an advance Q&A screening hosted by Cinema/Chicago, Egerton sat down for an interview inside Bernard’s, a cocktail lounge on the second floor of the Waldorf Astoria Chicago.
In conversation, Egerton discussed “She Rides Shotgun,” the themes of fatherhood emerging from his recent roles, the actors he most admires, and the Werner Herzog documentary that he can’t live without.
This interview was edited and condensed.
Even before “She Rides Shotgun,” you’d been exploring crime fiction through your collaborations with Dennis Lehane, who developed both “Black Bird” and “Smoke.” Like Lehane, Jordan Harper writes brutal, hard-boiled stories, and I’m curious what draws you to working in this genre, if that’s been a conscious decision on your part.
I’ve never really thought about it before, and I really just respond to what I respond to. But as you were asking that, something occurred to me. I was dropped into the industry in an action film. I felt very much like a fish out of water. Throughout my 20s, I pined for projects that felt a little more sober, nuanced, and psychologically interesting. I’ve perhaps used the currency I have gained within work that’s quite action-based to segue slightly into a genre that’s more intellectually stimulating, perhaps more nuanced in terms of character.
I don’t know if that’s even true, but it’s what occurred to me when you were asking the question. I’ve wanted to try to find projects that are more challenging, and to play people that are not as accessible, perhaps, as the roles that I first became known for. Eggsy in “Kingsman,” “Eddie the Eagle,” “Rocketman” — these are all parts that are easy for you to love very quickly — and that were designed that way, right? That’s something I felt penned in by, after a while. The work I’ve been doing in recent years, with “Black Bird” and “Smoke,” has allowed me to enjoy playing with the expectation that you’re going to like me immediately.
I sensed that in the performance you give in “She Rides Shotgun.” With Nick, you’re playing this character tormented and trapped by the cycles he’s fallen into. He’s trying to break out of those behaviors, for his daughter’s sake, but he still harbors such darkness and rage.
I’m in my mid-30s now. While, obviously, I’m still a young man, I do think something’s happened in my life over the past couple of years. I’ve hit that first age-bar, where I’ve gone, “Oh, fuck — I’m no longer the puppy-ish young buck I was playing for many years. I can’t play that guy anymore, because I’m going to be 40 in a few years, and it’s going to start getting weird.”
Although this movie is, at its core, a simple story, I felt there was a lot between the lines of who Nate was, such as the inference of his history with his brother. And I always felt there was a suggestion that his brother might have been an overbearing presence in his life; you only see one image of them, very briefly, in the movie, and the body language is such that you can tell he’s this big, hulking figure. [laughs] The guy we got for that photo was a mixed martial artist, a really imposing guy.
The reason I mention that is because Nate is a character that, I feel, was always a follower. He was always a gang member, never a gang leader. He’s somebody who went with the flow and now realizes that he has lived a life not necessarily aligned with who he is, or who he wants to be.
Then comes this set of extraordinary circumstances that are of his own making, and of his own mistakes. He gets into a fight with a guy who tries to bully him into acting on the outside, and he kills a guy in prison shortly before his release; the gang knows it was him. Now, he’s in this situation where his daughter’s gonna die, and he’s trying to do one last good thing. I always felt the character was a dead man walking. I always felt that from the moment you meet him in the film, that you should have a sense he’s a man marked for death by the gang he was affiliated with, perhaps marked for death by fate as well. It doesn’t feel like he’s gonna make it out alive, but I enjoyed his regret. I enjoyed his conflict about who he is and what he’s done.
In a completely different universe. I suppose that’s something that I’ve been experiencing in my own life, where I’ve been reflective of my 20s and my journey so far, now having been a working actor for 10 years.
A dead man walking.
[laughs] They’re completely different situations! But there’s something of who he is that spoke to me, I suppose.
To that idea of him being marked, it’s how Nick appears in the eyes of his daughter that starts to matter most to him. Ana Sophia Heger, who plays Polly, was 10 years old when you were filming. I’m curious to ask you about that collaboration and being on the other side of this parent-child dynamic — which you’ve played before, but usually as the son.
It was very freeing, actually, because the shoot was about Ana, not about me. It sounds possibly like I’m signaling virtue; maybe, on some level, I am. But I felt, when we were making it, that it was really about her experience. That’s what was going to make or break the movie. That was highest-stakes.
When I was 15, I did a play in the art center in my hometown. In the grand scheme of things, it was a pretty local, communal affair, but to me it felt universe-expanding. I thought about that a lot when we were making this film, because she’s five years younger than I was then, and this was a movie with an actor she was at least partially aware of, through her parents. The stakes were that much higher.
Making it as much about her as possible was very freeing for me, and not entirely altruistic. And then you have the extraordinary sensibilities of this young actor, who is prodigious in her talents and quite wise beyond her years.
Was that clear from the start, in auditioning with her?
I’d seen a test of Ana on her own from the casting director, where she’d performed the scene where she’s on the phone with Park, and she gets very emotional, upset, and defensive. She is beginning to sense that her dad isn’t a bad guy, but she’s also seen this advert on TV and found out her mum’s dead, so she’s doing this incredible juggling act: doing as the TV is telling her, but being very conflicted about it, because she does not believe her father has killed her mum.
I watched her do that, and she had such an innate emotional understanding of the conflict that the character was going through. It’s nothing you can teach. It’s a level of emotional intelligence that is extraordinary—and, dare I say it, not to be disparaging, but there are plenty of successful adult actors who do not have that. It’s very exciting when you find a 10-year-old who has it.
Of course, we did a screen test together. I said, at the start of the test, “It’s okay to be nervous. We all get nervous. I’m a bit nervous, too.” And she said, “I am nervous, but I’m ready.” And that is who she is. She’s amazing. She still gets nervous, she’s human, and we still had to protect her, but we needed somebody who could step on set and claim her space. Ana does that.
In preparation for this role, you reached out to actors you admired and asked them to recommend films in the same key as what you were searching for with this character. Gary Oldman said to watch Dustin Hoffman in “Straight Time” and Gene Hackman in “The Conversation.” Stephen Graham told you to watch Oldman in “State of Grace.” Learning this led me to think about the actors you’ve met across your career, to ask about the mentors or role models who’ve guided you at different stages.
There are actors who have been very kind to me, and very paternal at the times I’ve worked with them. On the first “Kingsman,” Colin Firth was absolutely that for me. There is one actor who’s somebody I do have a very active relationship with, who’s somebody I do look up to, and that is Stephen Graham. He’s an actor I turn to and look for advice from, whom I admire greatly.
He’s not the kind of guy who would wear the mantle of a mentor very lightly; that’s not really who he is, but he does see himself in a big-brother role in my life. And I think we all want that. We all need to look to examples of people we want to be like or emulate, whose talent we admire and covet. That’s why representation is important, of course.
Stephen is somebody I’ve just loved for a very long time, a real actor’s actor. Right now, with “Adolescence,” the world is becoming incredibly aware of who he is, possibly in a broader way than it ever has. But the industry has known him to be one of the best there is, for a long time.
I’d be remiss not to ask you about Ray Liotta, whom you shared scenes with in “Black Bird.”
That was a very emotional time for me, for a number of reasons. Ray and I, for the short time we worked together, developed a very special bond. I still feel that the scenes he and I shared together in that show are some of the best acting I’ve done. I was very struck by him as a man and as a talent. It was sad for me for a number of reasons. Our relationship was blossoming and then he passed unexpectedly.
I think he absolutely would have been in “Smoke.” He’d expressed the desire to be in it, and Dennis had every intention of putting him in it. I don’t know who he would have been, but he would have been in the show. I know that, because Dennis has said that, and so that was sad as well. I also have my own private fatherhood stuff, you know? I think I am quite responsive to any kind of paternalistic figure that has presented itself in my life. I found it emotional, and I was very emotional promoting the show, because of Ray’s passing. Fatherhood is a theme that I am clearly drawn to. It seems to be cropping up quite a bit in what I do.
He was a massive talent, and the scenes you two shared in “Black Bird” are so raw and powerful. Thank you for sharing that experience.
I really do appreciate that, thank you.
“She Rides Shotgun” is a project you produced, as you did “Black Bird” and “Smoke.” What is it like to work as both actor and producer in getting a film like this made?
One of my demons is that I have probably a larger sense of imposter syndrome than is healthy. [laughs] When I was sent the script for this, I felt it was something that I wasn’t going to get. And actually, now, in hindsight, if I’m honest, it probably got made because I wanted it to happen.
This is the first time in my career where I feel like I’ve been the real engine behind something getting made. Through the grace of Chris Slager of Fifth Season, Brad Weston of Makeready, and of course [director] Nick Rowland, they were very comfortable and welcoming with me being a central part of the creative process and involved in all aspects of it.
It’s the first time I’ve ever really had any insight into the finances of production. I’ve never really bothered myself with that before, and I only mention it to give a sense of how much I really felt like a producer. I don’t know, in the projects that I’ve had executive producer credits on, that I always felt like an executive producer. With this, I really feel like one. I feel like I’ve been inside it, and I’ve enjoyed it.
Nick and I are also the same age, so that feels different. That’s a very different dynamic to anything I’ve experienced before, and Nick is intensely collaborative, inquisitive, and interested in all perspectives. It’s a Nick Rowland film, but it does feel a bit like my baby as well. And I’m intensely proud of it for a number of reasons.
I’ve very much enjoyed being able to use what currency or power I have to bring something into existence that is to my taste, that feels very raw and human. Nick says of himself that he doesn’t think of himself as an intellectual filmmaker, and I don’t think of myself as an intellectual actor, but I know that I love things that are undeniably emotional and human. I love things that allow me to explore what I feel manhood is, frankly — not the tropes but the facets of what I’d describe, those feelings of vulnerability, of not being afraid to show your doubt, fear, or insecurity. I really enjoyed doing that with the character of Nate — who in some ways this genre would have archetypally made to be more stoic and unassailable.
We’ve run out of time for this, so I’ll just leave you by saying I was delighted to learn recently—via Letterboxd—that we have a favorite film in common: Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man,” which I find impossibly haunting and beautiful no matter how often I watch it.
[grinning] Oh my god, I must have seen “Grizzly Man” 15 to 20 times, and there’s just something about it. It’s Werner, I think. He casts a spell, and it’s unquantifiable, and it has an intangible quality about it. I love, love, love that movie. It’s mythic and spiritual and weird, but it’s also got this character whose ego is taking him to such a place of toxicity and delusion. But I just find it endlessly fascinating. It’s lovely to meet someone else who’s passionate about it… Funnily enough, I bumped into Kate Mara on the street the other day, and she told me she’s just shot a film with Werner, [“Bucking Fastard,”] where she’s playing twins opposite her sister, Rooney. How cool is that? I’m so excited to see it.
“She Rides Shotgun” is in U.S. theaters Aug. 1, via Lionsgate.
