James Mangold writes and directs films across multiple genres, but the one style he uses as a prism for so much of his work is the American Western. James and Marc talk about how A Complete Unknown fits into the Western mold and why the placement of the camera was of utmost importance in telling this specific story about Bob Dylan. James also explains his directorial strategy and how it factored into the making of his films like Heavy, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma and Ford v Ferrari. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: Who is James Mangold and what are his notable films?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Ja. Ja. Ja.
You know, I kind of, I wonder about this all the time, because obviously, you know, show business has shifted into, you know, old school show business has shrunken. and become a little more insulated.
And these sort of do-it-yourself operations that have become empires and dictate a lot of the cultural language, which is not very artful or thoughtful or even genuinely intellectual or genuinely philosophical. And entertainment has been limited to what we can hold in our hand. I do find that the impact for me, but I'm a different guy than the regular people.
I don't mean to say it like that, not to be condescending.
No, no, I know what you mean.
Ja, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich, dass ich,
And the kind of sensory overload. I mean, show business is such a broad word, I don't know how to address it, but if we talk about movies.
Yeah, movies and the idea that it held a primary cultural place for most people.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the American Western in Mangold's work?
Ja, es ist so interessant, weil ich... Teil davon ist, wenn du über jemanden schreibst und du sie kennst und mit ihnen spielst und sie sind sehr freundlich und enthussiastisch und du auch in einer Art und Weise, natürlich, ich gehe auf einen tiefen Dive in sein Werk, mache ein Film wie dieses und du...
die von der Größe, der Macht und der prolifizierten Art ihres Werks entdeckt werden, beginnst du, sehr empathisch zu ihnen zu werden. In dem Sinne, dass die einfachen Adjektive, die in den TV-Guide-Versionen beschrieben werden, enigmatisch, mysteriös, ehrgeizig, schwierig, zu einfach werden.
Well, the risk of being, of building an empathic relationship with that guy is that, I would imagine, is that then you're out to sea, in a way, that you can feel it, but you're still, you feel like you could put your...
Well, I don't mean empathic like I don't have objectivity to see when he's an asshole.
No, no, no. I just mean to get into that quiet part of Dylan must have been sort of exciting.
It just kind of happened. It was exciting. But at first what I did creatively on the screenplay level was make this kind of mandate to myself that I wasn't going to do the kind of story we were just discussing for Walk the Line, the kind of classic trauma.
But really it isn't there though that you could identify.
Of course. Ja, natürlich. Aber das wird vollständig kommen, weil ich glaube, dass es ein Trauma gibt. Es ist ein bisschen interessant, aber lasst mich da hin. Einer meiner großen Lehrer war Milos Forman, der den Film aus Peter Schäfers großartigen Spiel Amadeus gemacht hat. Ja, genau.
I found that strategy to be really inspiring for tackling Dylan's story, particularly for these years, because I felt like it freed me, at least in the beginning of the writing, from having to diagnose him, as opposed to viewing him as a kind of... Ja, ja, ja. Aber nicht paralysierend.
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Chapter 3: How does James Mangold approach directing and filming?
Some more so than others, maybe. Or maybe what drives them is essentially more internal than others.
But I think it's interesting what you're pointing out is that Dylan, you know, was unbounded in his desire to express himself, you know, however it was going to come.
But I don't necessarily see that as arrogance. No, no. That's kind of like any one of us. Sure. I don't, I identify in my own humble way with it. I've made movies of a lot of different genre. I've made independent Sundance films. I've made gigantic studio pictures. Yeah. From where I sit, the experience is awfully similar.
I'm not sure if you find it that different, but you essentially have to get in a space with a camera, make a scene seem real. The core tasks at hand don't change much.
But also you have in your own sort of lexicon of... People that inspired you. It's not unlike, you know, Buddy Holly and Woody Guthrie. There's a full spectrum of people who express themselves and have made a mark. So why limit yourself to anyone?
So what was so intriguing to me about the story of this period for Dylan and why I thought, because I didn't want to make, I'm not, I wasn't such a Bob Dylan superfan that I was like driven to make a Bob Dylan movie. Well, that's helpful.
Even me, when I talk to people, it's better if you're not a superfan.
Well, it will screw you up, yes. And what you always want to do, like I was describing about Walk the Line, is how does the movie eclipse the kind of the recreation of history and characters to be about something bigger than just, I mean, obviously audiences and press are going to describe this movie as the Bob Dylan story, they're going to describe the other one as a, but...
If the movie is going to have any kind of transcendence, it's got to be about something more than just an historical recreation of scenes from this artist's life. Well, yeah, you found the story. And the story in this case is not about all this stuff is interesting in the folk dogma and the community versus the self and all.
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Chapter 4: What are the unique challenges of directing a film about Bob Dylan?
Ja, und er hat deine Energie. Warum willst du darauf konzentrieren? Nein, er mag Kunst. Ich sage dir, es gibt einen Teil in den Filmen von Ford und Ferrari. Oh, ja. Einer der tollen Momente. Es war wirklich ein totaler menschlicher Moment. Henry Ford war der zweite oder dritte? Ja. Und er fährt in der Corvette und weint. Ja, es ist das Beste.
Es hat mich immer in dem Skript erschreckt, weil wir es geschrieben haben und es war kind of just sitting there, the balls and it just and and even Matt Damon was teasing him on the day, you know, and and oh, today's you crying day, which I was shocked at, by the way, Damon was busting Tracy's balls. Ja, ich meine, es zeigt dir die Art von Lockerraum-Bullshit in den Make-up-Trailern manchmal.
Aber Tracy hat es nicht nur genäht, sondern es ist so primal. Es ist so ein wunderschönes Ding, weil es dich tatsächlich entdehnt. Ja. What I always thought it was going to be was just a scene about kind of the corporate chairman being kind of flustered and freaked out. And what Tracy does with it makes it utterly, he's a guy who's lived in a velvet bubble all his life.
And suddenly he's had this primal life endangering experience. And it's just caused this kind of... Tracey ist ein toller Schauspieler und ein toller Schauspieler und ein toller Mann. Aber wirklich, das ist ein Moment in dieser Szene. Es ist so gut, oder? Und das ist, weißt du, ein weiterer Film über Künstler in einer Art.
Es hat keine Musik, Sänger in es, aber es hat einfach Gitarren für eine Rente verändert. Und es ist eine ähnliche Geschichte.
Ja, es ist großartig. Ja. Und okay, also eine letzte Sache. Also ist es wahr, dass du Swamp Thing machen wirst? It's true, I'm working on a story for Swamp Thing. Because I'm not a big comic book guy, but I love Swamp Thing.
Me too. I mean, I literally wrote to the new team at DC when they took over and just said, if this was available, I'd love to try something. What is it about Swamp Thing?
gothic horror kind of frankenstein legend the whole concept of man plant i find really like kind of but there's something about that that character that is sort of like i love the name i love just the title i love but he's an existential character the bernie writes an art to me of the original series is so incredible yeah and the the aspect of kind of being
separated from your life and suddenly haunting the woods and kind of living in this abject... Loneliness. Deformation and loneliness. And that's really interesting. I honestly don't know what's coming next. I kind of went really rapid fire through a series of movies, the last three. And this is kind of my kind of... And then I didn't anticipate, you know, the kind of whole fall season dance of...
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