#393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? No seem. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the scale. No

This episode is brought to you by Zapier. new sponsor, but not new to me as a service. We'll get to my personal story, but if you run your own business, think about all of the hours and hours. you spend moving information from one software program to another, or one window to another, one social media platform to another, copy and pasting, blah, blah, blah, all because those things don't easily work together. They're not connected. With Zapier, now they do. Automatically.

My team And I have been using Zapier for years, which helps us with tons of stuff, such as just to take one example, connecting Facebook ad campaigns to our email platform. And uh you could also, as I do Automate.

publishing things that you put on Instagram to other social media platforms. Saving us. Hundreds of Yeah. My team has also raved about Zapier support. This is super important to me, which in their words

quote, is in a class of its own, end quote. And that is not paid placement. We test all of these things and if you use Zapier as full paying retail. customers. Uh that is not because we got any type of freebie. There are tons of examples. Now why are there tons of examples? There are tons of examples because Zapier supports more than fifteen hundred business applications and the possibilities are virtually endless. For automating processes.

For getting shit done. And uh you may know if you read the four hour work week that the third step is automation. In other words, not adding headcount. to a messy process to fix problems, but automating as much as possible. You want to eliminate then automate and only then delegate. And Zapier is one of the best Automating softwares, if you can use the plural. One of the best pieces of automation software I've ever Come across.

It is the easiest way to automate a ton of your Work. So check it out. If you want to try it out or just learn more, go to zapier dot com slash Tim. That's Z A P I E R dot com slash Tim. Connect the apps you use the most.

And let Zapier take it from there. You can do a million things. I'll give one more example. You could, for instance, instantly engage with leads for your business, send them to a CRM or spreadsheet, and then notify your team so they can act fast on every opportunity. And here's the really beautiful. and perhaps the gem to really highlight. It's easy to build an exact solution that you need in minutes without writing code or asking a developer for help. So as a non-technical person, you can piece these different programs together in a way that is customized for your needs and your business and what is important to you. So you can get the hell

Back to focusing on the stuff that you're good at. Okay, so that's it. Join more than four and a half million people who are saving an average of forty hours per month by using Zapier now and for a limited time for my listeners. Try Zapier for free. By going to our special link. Zapier.com slash Tim. That's Z A P I E R com Slash Tim for your free fourteen day trial. I use this program all the time. My team uses this program all the time. Zapier dot com

Slash Tim. Hey, just one thing, Tim. This is Michael from Zapier. It's pronounced Zapier.

Like happier. So that's Zapier dot com slash Tip. This episode is brought to you by Super Fat Nut Butters. I've got uh two boxes of them actually sitting within fifteen feet of me in a cabinet. These little beauties are great. I've been using them as quick mini breakfasts. That's one use. And as on the go fuel for a few months now. I was

Pretty slammed this afternoon. I had a Wi Fi debacle and I was preparing to record a podcast, so I didn't have time to make something to eat or buy something to eat, but these saved my ass. That's a great use case. They're two hundred to three hundred calories each, depending on which ingredient cocktail you eat, because they're a bunch of different types. M C T meaning medium chain triglycerides, protein, macadamia, caffeine, et cetera. Three to five grams of net carbs per pouch. They are keto and paleo friendly. And they are really easy to transport. You can throw them in a backpack or a pocket. I love these things. The first time I tried super fat, however Before warrant, I finished the entire box in maybe two or three days. So watch your portion control and pro tip, the way you eat them, you have to unscrew the top, you get about 90% out of it that way, and then you tear the pouch, tear it diagonally, not straight across, and that'll get you the last 10% or so. I suggest ordering the variety box.

You can try that way all five super fat flavors in one box, and you'll get two pouches of each flavor. that way. You can also get fifteen percent off your order by going to superfat.com slash Tim. That's superfat dot com slash Tim. Tim? For fifteen percent off. When you go to one more time, superfat.com

Slash Tim. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show where it is my job to interview and attempt to deconstruct world class performers to tease out the habits, routines, and so on.

that make them tick, make them good at what they do. My guest this episode is none other than Edward Norton. You can find him on Twitter at Edward Norton. He is one of the most celebrated actors his generation and has starred in, produced, written, or directed more than thirty films. He's been nominated for three Academy Awards for his performances. His most recent film, Motherless Brooklyn, which he wrote, directed, produced, and stars in will be released on November first. I've seen it and I do not say this lightly. It is spectacular. It's based on one of my favorite books, and we dig into that and get into a lot related to creative process, creative struggle, and so on in this episode. People mostly know Edward for his acting, but he has a substantial parallel career as an entrepreneur, investor, and activist in both technology and environmental sustainability ventures. He has hit a lot of home runs. We don't cover that in depth in this episode, but we talk about it here and there.

As one example, in twenty ten, Norton co founded and was chairman of CrowdRise, a charitable crowdfunding platform which raised more than five hundred million dollars for US nonprofit organizations before being acquired by GoFundMe. the largest social fundraising platform in the world, for which Norton now serves on the board. He also co-founded EDO, which applies advanced data science and machine learning to the analysis of audience engagement signals for the media and advertising industries. EDO's data and software are used by every major film studio and in their media rotation planning and virtually every major television network now includes EDO data alongside Nielsen data within their pricing metrics. He is the founding board member of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, an award winning Kenyan conservation and community development organization. And in 2010, he was appointed the first United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity. Edward really seems to do it all. And in this wide ranging conversation, we explore how he does that, why he does that. Why he feels able

to change chapters. in his life. We go deep into, as I mentioned, creative process, creative struggles, both inside and outside of film. If you'd like more Edward after this episode, you can listen to my 2016 interview with him. which is very, very different. At tim.blog forward slash Edward and Take my word for it, go check out Motherless Brooklyn in theaters. If Just for the music alone.

It's absolutely. Outstanding. So with that said Without further ado, please enjoy a very wide ranging and for me super fun conversation with Edward.

Norton. Edward. Welcome back to the show. Love being here. You know I love our conversations. Yeah, man. And we have a lot to talk about.

And I wanna start with Going back in time. to nineteen ninety nine. And this is an interview where I'm gonna ask you questions, but I wanna share some autobiographical sketch from my own life. So nineteen ninety nine My mom recommends a book to me.

And my mom is I I would go so far as to say a book snob in the best way possible. She recommends me perhaps one book every two or three years. And in the span of two weeks my brother, who is Exactly the same. recommends The

same book which was Motherless Brooklyn and It became a favorite book. I read it multiple times. And for ages I thought to myself, I Why hasn't A movie.

A film adaptation of some type. And I wanna know How you came across Motherless Brooklyn.

And I believe Ninety nine or thereabouts. And What impact it had or why it grabbed Your attention.

Sure. So I was you know, I I I li I was living in New York. I was like in New York. actor I started working in films. But I would always split.

Back home to New York. Um And Yeah, I uh

I came up with a lot of people in theater and people who were writers and people who are artists and Um There's kinda that The thing I love about New York is the density of it. You're It's not like a company town.

Like LA is or a one. Um And I think um Uh I was at a party in the village. And someone

I knew who knew Jonathan Leatham. Um Yeah. Got we were talking.

And And she said. You know, Jonathan Leathum and I said, Sure, sure, yeah, he's that Brooklyn writer who You know did this and that and um Uh

She said, Yeah, he's a friend of mine and he you know, he's got this new book coming out. About a turretic detective. uh who has obsessive compulsive disorder also and And his um trying to solve the murder of his boss in Brooklyn and

I I literally was like Stop. You had me at Turetic. I was like I literally said Tic. I was in Turetic Detective. I'm I'm

I'm salivating. I'm I'm But I I have to read it. Um And uh

So I I somehow got connected to Jonathan and I I persuaded. I got The book in Galley.

For him. It hadn't been published yet. Um And You know. Revealing our age. I

I it was a it was a Xerox. I had I got a Xerox with a cli a clip binder on it. And for those um on the podcast who are young nerdy tech geeks who don't know what Xerox is. Um before PDF You actually had to print something. On a paper.

On a copier. And and so I had I had a paper You know, bound. Zerox copy. Uh of it. And I read it.

Um in one go. And um You know, it's it's funny because I When I really think about why did it grab me so much. It's very similar.

to the experience I had reading Catcher in the Rye for the first time, it Lionel. The character in Motherless Brooklyn. has many of the same emotional.

Hooks. That I think Holden Caulfield Does By the end of page one.

You're you're on his side. Yeah, you're sort of because he's narrating his own story to you, because From the first sentence he's telling you. This is how my head works.

And you can hear the calm rational Uh mind at the center of the story. When he describes this chaotic

Uh condition. That he has that That he has to spend his life navigating. You Jonathan Leatham, he he pulls off the thing that we all try to do in books, in art, in music.

Which is the end of page one, you're emotionally bought in, you're you're hooked, you relate to this character. You feel for him. You have empathy. But you're laughing. You're sympathetic.

You're impressed. It's just like He does It's a zero to sixty emotional buy in that's very, very rare. You know, you you You relate.

And in In the most reductive sense you you And then from there it becomes this This study of the mind and how it works and the fact that his condition

Is extreme that he has the physical twitches of Tourette, the m the mental obsessive compulsive components of it, the vocalizations. Um that are that he can't control that are both hilarious and painful and awkward and

Um make life difficult for him. We don't all uh we don't all have Tourette's. But I think what Jonathan achieves. Is Everybody sees themselves in it because we all are constantly in a conversation with our own minds.

We all Have A rational center. That deals with our behaviour. And our

noisy voices that tell us to do things we know we don't want to do. You know, we we all relate to being Essentially in an argument with ourself. and with the impulses that we wish we could control better. So Tourette's

is Oui. It tourette becomes this this It becomes as sort of he and Lionel they become a proxy for us, you know, and and our

Are the difficulty we have navigating ourselves and that just nailed me. It just like I was I was completely Um

Entranced by it. And Honestly, as an actor, I just was greedy. I was like I want that gig. I want I want the part. No, I want I wanna Because because not because it was like oh this is instantly you know, showy, it was more this is just hard. How would you do this? You know?

How do you It presents all the meatyest challenges for an actor. It's paradoxical. It's actually physic demanding. You have to see the humanity of the character. underneath it and it just was like

This would be a field day. I would really like to play the role. Okay, so let me hop in for a second here because uh I I really want to Yeah. underscore a few things that you said that struck me about the book and also about the film. And if if I'm misquoting you here, I'm I'm gonna quote you quoting someone else, but in one one of the interviews I read in in prep for this, even though we know each other, I found you referencing a C. S. Lewis line from Shadowlands.

We read to know we're not alone. And I think that as you said Lionel on on one hand is such an unusual character, but on the other is very usual. In that he represents this This schism.

that we sometimes feel about our outer and inner worlds or or perhaps even dueling inner worlds, right? And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give any uh Spoilers. in this, but he even references parts of himself As Bailey, right? we kept in the film it's one of the real it's one of the

It's one of the details of the book that's really marvelous where The His condition The part of his head that

has the inhibition the lack of inhibition and the Impulse control. You know Um Problems and

Literally. Fight Fight. His His conscious self fights the attempts to restrain it.

And And calls him Bailey, so he's It's so it's such a schism that That When he yells sometimes he the voice in his head yells at him and names him Bailey. It's

It's um You think up you think about like the ways we talk in our head, like you think about Think about the number of times that you've said quietly in your head Oh, you're such a fucking idiot. Like why you know.

Th think about the critical voice in your head aimed at yourself. It It's literally right out of Yeah. You know.

And you being a meditator. The the noisy mind, right? It's like the noisy mind. Literally given given name, given form, given voice. It's like It's not just that we s can't stop our thoughts, it's that we

Actually have a piece of our head. That criticizes the r the actions that another part of our head is Yeah. You know, implementing it's

Yeah. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing that we live with and that most people don't discuss as a openly or actively as a A phenomenon, you know.

Yeah, it's uh It's it's also It meaning the film. I'll I'll be honest. Initially. Even though I know how skilled you are, I was

I was very nervous. to see the advanced screening because This book is so dear to me. And it's On top of that, in some ways a very hard film to pull off.

And you you you not only pulled it off And uh we'll we'll certainly spend uh some time on creative process, which I wanna get to in a second, but you made some decisions that I think Strengthened. the uh not just the main characters, but the sort of humanity and the drama and the tension and everything that goes into the storyline itself. So to To zoom in on the on the

Yeah. The creative process which Uh I really know very little about. I don't know the backstory. But if we look at nineteen ninety nine, then we jump forward ten years, two thousand nine, ten additional years, two thousand nineteen when we're recording this.

When when did this catch for you? When did it actually start to happen? Because you uh I just wanna Point out to people. Produced, directed. And start in. This film.

of concentrated effort. So what did making this film look like? Um It went in phases, and in some total. There's no question it's the most work I've ever put into a film. Um

It's one of them it's one of the deepest dives. And And longest climbs how w whatever metaphor you want to use. I've I've I've worked on this one longer and deeper than

Any Creative Peace. I've I've worked on um Okay. Yeah.

The initial hook, as I said, was character. I was then busy. For a while I I I had a a lot of other projects that I knew would We're literally gonna take me a couple of years.

Before I had The bandwidth to really seriously contemplate it. But Much like

You know, as a function of what we're discussing, the brain works on things. You You you're you're busy doing other things. But I was noodling on it. It was rattling around in my head. I would reread the book, I would think about the character. I

even when I wasn't actively trying to write it. I even started to sort of like try to imagine the physicality of it and How do you take something that's an interior monologue in a book and reduce it down and select pieces of it and what are the best pieces of Lionel and my brain was kind of cooking on that. For years.

Um But when I got around to saying to myself, All right. Actually what happened was In about two thousand three in two thousand two, sorry, I I did a run of work. I did, um

I did a big film. I did Red dragon. Um, with a bunch of great actors. And then I did Spike Lee's The Twenty Fifth Hour. And then I get a play. uh in New York for the rest of the year. I did uh Lanford Wilson's burn this.

And it was such a Th the whole the year was It was an amazing year. It was a it was It was a very notably vital and

Satisfying year of creative work for me. Um I worked with amazing people. I worked with heroes of mine like Spike Lee. I didn't. I did two films in a row with Phil Hoffman and

And then we did plays next door to each other and we had come up together and that was really gratifying and I I uh I I kinda got to the end of that year and I felt Something very rare.

For me, which is I sort of felt satiated. I actually felt like Um I I spent the whole year working in a gear Um

that I'd wanted to work in for a long time and I felt like I'd run a marathon very successfully and It was sort of like why run another five miles until it hurts? I feel good. I What am I gonna do? Do I wanna just Like

keep going until something goes badly, you know? And I kind of got this moment of clarity where I was like, I need to take a break. I really want to take A a substantial break. And in Two thousand three I just

I stopped working entirely. And I uh focused on getting my pilot's license. And I I did that for like six or seven months, just trained. did aviation training and and got my pilot's license and it was it was great. It really cleared my head. It really uh it emptied it out.

And I sort of got to the end of that and I thought I'm ready to work on Motherless Brooklyn. So I I I had this nice sort of clean slate. Kind of feeling.

And when I sat down to look at it again, I realized There were some issues with turning it into a film'cause it's this very interior monologue. The whole book is kind of this interior. narration and it has a plot, but really it's like Lionel in his head. Edward, could I ask you to pause for one second? You taking that break

And we're gonna come right back to where you left off. But I would imagine that there were people who said, This is not the time to take a break. You're red hot. This is when you should commit to A, B, C, D, or E. Perhaps not, but there are many people who fantasize about taking such a break, but never do. They can't shift out of six gear. Was that hard for you? Uh It was a little bit. It was a little bit, but I I've had good examples in my life. My you know, my dad is like an incredibly accomplished person.

um in multiple dimensions, you know, he's A scholar and Um Marine Veteran. And uh um A lawyer.

But he was a corporate litigator. He was a US attorney. He was, you know, federal prosecutor for Maryland. He was an environmental litigator. He was an environmental organization builder. He's worked at a private equity firm. It's like he's really He's had a remarkably

Rich Tapestry. in his career. There's a connectivity through all of it. There's an intellectual connectivity. There's a A values mission driven. Kind of thread.

To everything he's done. But I've really watched my dad over the years. Um very fearlessly. pull the video game cartridge out and put another one in. Um he really had you know remember when we were kids and you had your Atari cartridges and I gonna play tanks or am I gonna play like um

No, what was it? Combat. It was called combat, right? Or you or you're gonna play Yeah. Um He he I've seen him have what I would call

the pleasures of staying very Feeling Um Challenged fresh. um invigorated.

about what he was doing. through phases of his adult life. And And I kind of learned to view those changes as As

Not as risky, but as like refreshing, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I I saw even as a kid you absorb You absorb when your parent is turned on by what they're doing. You know, and I

I I literally remember the new spring in his step his enthusiasm, i him being charged up and it I think as you get older and you have kids yourself, you You forget almost how important it is how much. A child perceives

About whether their parents are happy. You know what I mean? It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world. But I I had an awareness that my dad's happiness was often Pegged to making

You know, bold shifts in the way he was spending his time and I I I felt like I'm one of the luckiest people in the world'cause I get to work

I get to do you know, work or make a livelihood. out of something that is play for me. It's It's

And the last thing I wanted to do when I kind of meditated on it. Was Why do I wanna Why do I want to turn this into a career? You know what I mean? Why would I turn this into

Um Uh Something where It's exhausting me. Or it's

Um Mm. what am I chasing? Like if I'm satiated or if I've just achieved like the things I wanted to. What h what a waste it would be if I

If I If I make myself like a Uh Careerist. Coppertop.

You know what I mean? Right. And and uh And what a waste if I don't sees while I'm thirty years old on the freedom. to

Yeah, the f the freedom to that comes with this gig, the the freedom to like uh get a pilot's license. You know what I mean? And uh Those were dreams I had too. I I dream my whole life of getting my pallet's license and I was like

I've got the money now, I've got the time. what's my reason for not doing it. I don't have one. So um Yeah. Um

And then we get back to the voices in the head,'cause voices come in the head. Voices of insecurity. voices of competitiveness. Voices of Um

Aspiration Uh Ambition. m maybe more than aspiration, like ambition to For

Ongoing. Plaudits, affirmation. Clause. You know, like the the The hunger for

For achievement. Um It they come in the head and not to mention But There's the voices from outside, but really the truth is like

The ones that master you are the ones inside. They're the ones That are saying like You know. You're gonna you know, y you need to get more of this or

And and I think um It comes it comes in. But Piloting was really good for me. It was really good to not um Take a break and and just kind of like

go on vacation or lounge around. Because I replace the consumption in my work with like the consumption in learning. Like in it my brain Piloting.

was like one of the hardest things I ever took on. You know, it was like It made It honestly made the work I'd been doing feel kinda like Play ac play acting, which weirdly it is. It is, you know, like it's like oh making up stories and playing dress up for a living.

Or like hurling myself into the sky by myself in a Plain. With you know. ultimate consequences to screwing it up. You know what I mean? It's like it's like Create create creative risk and risk of botching a landing.

Or not. Or not. Actually equivalent. And it's like a great perspective too. You know what I mean? Um Because I've always found

I get some of my my best Sort of. For me, like I get'em I think we talked about this the first time. I did your show. I think we talked about like the things that are meditative

That are not. Sitting with your legs crossed. Trying to clear your mind, you know what I mean. We did because we were sitting on a pier looking at surfers and we're talking about the role that's played in your life. Uh-huh.

So pa you know Piloting is a great meditation for me. It absolutely eradicates everything but the present moment. It's very, very, very difficult. to be out of the present moment. Um And there's a function in it that's really interesting, which is

Mm-hmm. Takeoff and landing. In particular. I'm sure there's a metaphor in this somewhere.

are extremely, extremely Focus things even for a modern airline pilot in a plane that basically flies itself. you are seriously on deck when you're taking off and landing that plane. And I think that experience is so intense. It's almost like this z

I it it almost does what Sometimes it takes me forty five minutes of meditation to get anywhere near which is it. obliterates, atomizes distraction. Right. Because you you must

deal. With That moment. And in which there's very little margin for error if something goes wrong. And it sort of atomizes your distraction.

Then you get yourself up into the sky. And you're floating. And somehow that atomization sustains. I don't find myself Stressing.

once I'm on autopilot and I'm floating. I Look down. at the landscape going by. I Think about it.

I it's real Daniel Kahneman thinking fast, thinking slow, like once I'm up in the air. And I'm kind of ahead of the plane. Yeah. I get into a very slow Slow gear.

And a very meditative gear just watching the landscape go by. Um And It's wonderful. It's like really, really, really wonderful. For me. And I think um

Uh It's I get that surfing, I get that scuba diving, but It's amazing how quickly piloting Kind of.

um straightens you out. Straightens your head out. So you You finish this Incredibly productive.

Sprint. With acting. You take this sabbatical of sorts to focus on piloting.

Which sounds very therapeutic and holding you in the present tense. For Much of the practice. You come out. With

A clear mind And You take another look. Yeah. Marvelous Brooklyn. And you're realizing there are some challenges. As you mentioned, one of them translating an internal dialogue in words on a page into something

Cinematic. What else what else were you Pondering, turning over in your head as you Re examined. Brotherless Brooklyn,'cause it is not.

An easy book to turn into a film. No, um Sometimes I think. People don't even realize the degree to which the sound makes And the music or

Make or break. For a film you can have a film that's cut. The same film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. With a bad sound mix. will seem like a piece of shit.

Like it it really It is astonishing how important that. Layer of varnish. is on the whole thing. And

You you can't adapt a book into a film. A book is not a film. It's just not. It it functions in the mind of the reader.

You know. totally different way. Um Because you are activating imagery in your head. in a much, much more surreal

way than when you're receiving The sensory you know, being encompassed by me by visual and sound in a film. And you have to you have to you can't think about Um

I think faithful adaptations almost never work. If you're trying to literally transliterate the book into Uh uh uh. A verbatum as close to a verbatim thing. Those are the worst.

film adaptations, the very best ones, I think. Or literally like They're like transposing a piano concerto for guitar. You know, you have to just completely change the it the wave form of it. And my favorites.

are ones where You know, like Out of Africa, which is a film by a truly great director, Cidney Pollock. with one of the great performances by an actress ever. And it really holds up. It really, really holds up when you watch it.

Not only technically. But also thematically in terms of being a film about loss. And the desire to hold on to things and possess them and coming to an acceptance of loss and impermanence. It's a really, really, really beautiful film. And it's based on

In theory. Isaac Dinnison's memoirs Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass. There's none of the narrative plot that's in the film is embedded within the book. It's it her those are memoirs. The whole romance, the things these are all suppositional. They they springboarded from

The essence of her sort of spiritual observations And meditations on impermanence. And they created a story. from whole cloth, you know. It it it and that's Why it's a great film. They understood what the essence.

Was And they turned it into A narrative. and s cinematic experience that's totally its own thing. And Jonathan Letham.

not only loves films and is very erudite. He he really held holds that belief that Yeah. It's better to springboard and create something new onto itself. So when I said to him like

What Like I think you gotta deal with certain structural challenges in this, and one of them is that motherless Brooklyn has a slightly surreal tone in the sense that it's about guys in the modern world who feel like they're living in a pocket of Brooklyn.

That has never moved from nineteen fifty seven. Um and they speak and act like Almost like Raymond Chandler's gumshoe. detectives, but if you slap that onto the screen And have guys in fedoras talking that way with Priuses floating by

You are you have You have immediately put yourself in an ironic mode. Right. You've you've you're essentially saying We're we're being tongue in cheek here. Nothing needs to be taken seriously. And if you go in that gear, then Lionel doesn't have to be taken seriously either.

And his tourette. is now a gag. Not a complex person. It's it's a It's a wink wink kind of a gag because the rest of the thing is a wink wink gag.

And I didn't want to do Motherless Brooklyn like the Blues brothers. You know what I mean? I didn't Which is a great movie. That's just You know, not what I thought.

it it had within it. I wanted to play Lionel straight and I wanted him to be A rich, complex, sometimes Poignant and affecting and Um You know

Uh A human being whose loneliness is real, whose isolation is real. um alongside his humor and stuff. And if you if we played it ironically, that wasn't gonna be there. And so I said to Jonathan, like You know.

In the book, people call him Freak Show. Would people really even do that in nineteen ninety nine? You know, what this feels like is maybe Maybe it Let's set it in the hard boiled world of The books you love, the films we love.

And You know, and and Let it be. Um a fifties thing. And amazingly.

Jonathan was like I dig that idea. You know, he wasn't he no, he really was. He wasn't like for one second. He I mean think about that. You write a book, people say they love it. And then someone comes along and says

Hey, um What if we were to Like Transform it, like literally set it in a different time and therefore have to come up with a different mystery plot.

Because the book is about the Yakuza and the Japanese sea urchin trade and Zendos. And all these things that are highly contemporary. Even though there's an old school feeling to the noir. sort of vernacular of it.

And without and he was like I love it. You know, he's like, I love it. Like Let's treat him like Marlowe and send Lionel into another mystery. And I and he was like, I get it. I I

I think it's a cool idea. And it's it's very um It I I can't really overstate how rare it is for someone to be that Um

broad minded about their own piece of work, you know? When did you have that conversation with him, roughly? Was that Yeah, somewhere somewhere like Almost like five years after he published the book. I got it. So this would have been after you've revisited it, after the piloting kinda two thousand four, two thousand five period.

Yeah, and somewhere Honestly, somewhere f in flying around Over Southern California. Kind of do things. I had this kind of clarity that like

That this That the way around what was feeling like a tone problem. Was just simply

Set it in the fifties. And that And once that Once that things sort of settled in me and I knew Jonathan was okay with it.

Then something really interesting happened which is something else that I had been chewing on for a long time totally unrelated to motherless Brooklyn. was My fascination with what happened in New York. In the mid fifties.

This kind of really dark part of New York's social history. That I was really, really interested in. And in one person in particular, this guy named Robert Moses. Robert Moses. How do you approach that?

How do you approach The How do you approach the density of what was going on? Yeah. And I and I had sometimes thought it's kind of like

The way that Chinatown is about stealing LA built being built on stolen water. I always thought like What happened in New York under Robert Moses is sort of It's own.

original sin, its dark history in the twentieth century and But yeah, it's too dense though. It's all this urban planning stuff and Blah, blah, blah. And I had this moment where I suddenly went That's what Lionel can be the conveyance into Lionel can We can take Jonathan's phenomenal

detective and we can send him into in a movie, which has to be bigger, has to have bigger scope. We can send him into this. Into this. he can become the conveyance into this very Dense and complex.

thing um that I was also interested in. And suddenly suddenly I had this like um Yeah, this mash up, this Yes. idea of mashing up.

These two things. So Robert Mose is for people we won't spend Uh we don't need to spend a ton of time on Robert Moses, but Е вач Brother's Brooklyn.

I wondered It had to be in a way, right? How could it not be In this film. played by Alec Baldwin. And for th for those who

Might have some passing familiarity with the name. Robert Moses is the subject of a book called The Power Broker, also. Very, very Uh very good book by Robert Carrow. And

There's a whole chapter on him too in the in the Um Burns Documentary. Called New York. Uh

There's a there's a big section. Which was That was my first encounter with the story of Moses. Um was in the new the documentary in New York. Um

Mm-hmm. Yeah, he was and he was He was titularly he was the parks commissioner. Um

But Secretly he was essentially Darth Vader. um of New York in the twentieth century he held an almost uncontested imperial power. Over New York City.

Above any mayor, any governor. He uh He ran New York City like the Like an autocratic Caesar. Um and made almost all of the significant decisions about how New York

Yeah. evolved from being a nineteenth century city into being a modern city, he the the the whole physcape of New York's transformation. um in that era was directed by him. So speak speaking of directing.

As I mentioned earlier, you you wrote, produced, directed And start in. this film. Did you want to do from the outset all of those things? Or was that a byproduct of challenges you ran into? Or Is there is some other origin story. I'm just wondering how it came together. It no, directing uh I wanted to y like I said, um

Yeah. I'm not really totally joking. I was kind of it was a greedy actor impulse to Grab a great role. I really thought this is a really memorable character and it's a great challenge. It's everything I love to try to take on.

And it was like I just want to play this part. then I did I I was turned on by the challenge of adapting it. And then I ran into that went through this process that we've talked about and when suddenly I kind of had this

What was for me exciting idea about the mashup and I had Jonathan's Hall pass. To be that. Sort of Free wheel.

In it. Um I I spent a lot of time then. researching and working on how to make kind of

Mash up. Um Not between books, but really just between of motherless Brooklyn but conveying it into sort of a literary version of this History.

And um And once I was finished that, which took me a long time. Like many a number of years. Because I went through writer's block and I And I got hung up on the plotting and

I got distracted by other projects. But when I finally got it done. Took A solid eight years. I would say for me to get to where I was happy with it.

Um Then I reached a point where I was in my own mind gonna shop it around to directors that I admired.

But someone You know Did something good for me. Uh The A studio executive that I was friends with.

Actually sat me down in a bar. In New York. On twelfth Street and was like Dude, you need to direct this. And I was sort of like, Oh, but the part is really challenging and And and he literally said to me

No. think about the movies that we came up on that mattered to us. Do the right thing. Reds Warren Beatty's great. film about American socialists. Um

You know, dances with wolves and Unforgiven. Like he kept citing all these examples of like Sometimes. an actor is really right for a role. It's really in their wheelhouse. And they've come up with a story and they just

do it. You know, they they take that big swing. And And he was like He kinda said to me like Wha you know, why wouldn't you do this? Like why wouldn't you you've

This mashup is yours. You don't want to sit over Someone's shoulder. You know. And he he just was like, You can do this. And I kind of did have that moment where I went

Mm-hmm. You know why yeah, why wouldn't I? I do love those films. They have meant a lot to me. Like some of some of them were defining films. For me. And it was sort of like I I He urged me across the line.

into into getting excited about Just owning it. You know? And uh when uh if if we're

I I d I don't mean to obsess on the timeline, but I'm so curious to get an idea of the timeline since this is such a longitudinal project, right? I mean it's so when when did you have that meeting with Uh This executive who gave you the talking to related to directing the film, roughly. Because normally I start a

Jump in. I'm sure has happened to a lot of people is they have this backburner set of projects. But by and large In my case, I never come back to them. So I'm f I'm fascinated by someone as busy as you are and

Certainly not just with film. You have you have many, many hats that you wear, much like Your dad, in a sense, very multifaceted. How this remained a project. Roughly when did you Have this conversation.

I w I I probably started I actually not probably I started actively writing it the summer of two thousand three and I wrote like sixty or seventy pages of what became like a hundred and fifty page script. And they were good. Like they were good. They were the beginning of the movie as it is now. And um And people really liked it. Like they were like this is really, really cool. Like and then

I got horribly blocked. I got it wasn't like distractedness. I really I had it framed out and I had the a things, but I couldn't in my mind just sort of puzzle out. A compelling way. to get lost in the murk, but emerge from it.

You know what I mean?'Cause I do. Especially with this just if I could call it genre, right? Is the the the getting lost in the murk is absolutely important. Absolutely. You know you you anybody who watches Chinatown and tells me The the first time that they They have any idea what's going on. Until about twenty minutes before the end of the movie.

is lying. Y you have no idea what's going on in that movie. Zero. Um, in fact I've tracked it. There's a very specific scene where he's in the car with Faye Dunaway, where he finally narrates He is Read of what he thinks is going on. And there's only about twenty minutes left in the movie.

And by the way, he's wrong. He Mm-hmm. He thinks that what's going on is all about the water and of course it's about Incest, right?

Um And And that Yeah. You know with these films that it's not about comprehension.

They're getting lost. In deep convolution. is actually part of the point. Which is Which is an important point.

Which is that it's hard to know what's taking place around you. It it literally Existentially noir at its best is about How difficult it is to see. Where

the dangers are around you and where power is and who's got the power. You know, that that's That's in what they're thematically, I think, is their strength is they really do remind us there are things going on in the shadows. That are that are antagonistic.

to us and that if we don't figure out what's going on damage is gonna get done. You know. I

But I I I wanted I wanted the puzzle to make sense. Even

You know, you have to get lost, but you have to know underneath it what's really going on so that you can emerge from it or bring people out of it in a way that Yeah. It it all.

is satisfying and it does make sense in the end, you know, to some degree. And that's why I got hung up. And then I did that terrible thing which is I put it in the drawer. Right, to your point. I I put it in the drawer and I was like, I just need a break. And then literally uh

I got sent a re a really weird cool script called Down in the Valley. And I decided I'm gonna do that. And I'll I'll do it quick. I was like, I'm gonna do that one really quick. It's a little independent phone and do that one quick and then I'm come right back to this, right? And then Then

I did the illusionist. And then And a film I had been working on for years to pull together. came together, the painted veil. Naomi Watts got free and she wanted to do it and suddenly it was like

I'm making a film for six months in Prague and then I'm making a film for six months in China. And time just starts to roll by and your mind gets further and further from the thing you're working on. And um Just one thing after another.

kept coming in and then that thing in the drawer that you haven't figured out. becomes more and more and more of a block, you know, of lead. It's just like It's not An active thing. And I think

The same person who later helped me embrace it. I should direct it. At a certain point called me and was like, Hey There's other people who are interested in this. I think maybe um

You know, should we let someone else take a crack at it? And I don't even know if that was true. I I I have a feeling might have just been sticking a fork in me. But it worked. Like and And actually this friend of mine, he was the studio executive who at that time was running New Line. Um

And he actually did something that I laugh at in retrospect. Which is He cited a specific director. To me. Who I think he knew.

the idea of giving up my project to that person specifically was gonna make my skin crawl. Like and and he and he just whether it was conscious or not, he he hit me with exactly the right piece. of information. For my resolve. Thing. get very, very

Strong again. And I I took it out and and he He did kinda put a deadline on me. He was like look You know, we

We've been sitting on this thing a long time and This person wants to do it. And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, and he and he was like, How about well, how about we just agree How about we just agree like You'll get it done by Christmas, or we'll start having a real conversation about like letting someone else take a crack at it. And it was it was great. It it I literally knuckled down

And I pulled it out, I looked at it. talked some other writers with some focus who I Respect. Puzzled it out, cracked it.

And finished it really. Aggressively, really. I I wrote like I wrote my college thesis, I wrote the large bulk of the rest of it in like two or three weeks of like long D Nights of

Just powering it through and Then it was done. It's a very uh very helpful friend, the the anonymous executive. No, it's it's not anonymous Toby Emmerich, he's the head of Warner Brothers now. Very, very uh clever. Maybe accidentally, but very helpful. Clever, helpful, but also like

You know. Hollywood and the business of movies is sort of like inside baseball and it uh honestly I sometimes think it's probably very boring to most people but I I do think I I do think it's w it it's always good to highlight when

when there's exceptions to sort of the the the reductive cliche about something. And people in this day and age are constantly talking about how studios you know, it's impossible to get original adult stuff made and everything. But I I did not I I've had this champion, Toby Emmerich's been this incredible stalwart champion of my project. Um For over a decade. like a really long time encouraging me, pushing me along, helping me actually like get through these mental block moments.

And then when I actually got it done. Starting to try to figure out with me. How to get it. made and he didn't have the collateral to get it made. Um

And then we went through this next period, which was like five years. of really struggling Two To you know, it was like the producorial struggle. The writer struggle was over, but the producer struggle was at least five years.

Um Of both of us hammering on it. And trying every equation. of casting and financing and everything to get it made. And all You know, thwarted throughout. We were constantly thwarted.

Um Let's dig into thwart for a second here, because I I I would imagine that many people listening On some level of thinking. You're Edward Frickin' Dordan. Like why on earth would you hit these roadblocks? What What what were the types of feedback

Or the And I'm not saying that I doubt you had it. I just think it'd be helpful No. Honestly, I think

No one can ever take for granted Dead Someone should just hand you money to make a film. I never know it Like I don't it it it it doesn't matter if you've been nominated for ten Academy Awards or It

It doesn't matter, it's risky. It's risky. And when someone's coming Yeah, you with um I'm gonna do a a big scale nineteen fifties period film. About like a dense kind of the

Chinatown like story about New York City and its urban development. Oh, and at the middle of it is a guy with Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder, it's sort of You know, Rainman meets Chinatown. People's eyes just people's eyes start crossing and and you you go, Okay, not Chinatown, LA Confidential. That one was much more accessible. It's it you know what it is, it's not Rainman. He's he's got full on autism. It's forest gump. meets LA confidential. You start you start going, it's not Rainbow meets Chinatown. That's too tough. Forest jump

Meets LA Confidential, the more accessible version. Of Both things. But people's Eyes are just like

You got your chocolate and my peanut butter my peanut butter and your chocolate. They don't they're like, What the hell are you talking about? Like you know, it's really you're you're definitely like describing something. In the trade it's like To to say that it's execution dependent. Is a is a is an understatement. M mostly people are like, you know. Br please bring us the next one. You know what I mean? Like um

It's And and when you're saying to people Will you give us me? tens of millions of dollars to make this, you you can't like walk around in a huff like

How can this be so tough? Like I I understood why it was tough. Um I I understood. Why it was why it was tough. And also like, you know, I I the upsides of not pursuing let's call it a careerist you know, the pursuing projects where

My agenda was will this be one of the biggest movies ever? is that you can make a lot of really excellent films. That you're proud of and that people end up Not only loving but seeing as maybe almost like essential

Zeitgeisty movies like Fight Club or Twenty fifth hour or American Reacts, but those none of those movies were financially successful. So it's not like I was walking around like You know. Like

Like some actor on a run of gigantic hits who's considered like Yeah. Oh, this guy's gonna open the movie at twenty million, so we'll do anything he wants to do. You know what I mean? It's just It's just not the same and and you can't

Unfortunately, you You can't You can't. Collateralized. Um

Artistic credibility. Uh into any kind of a Mm y y you know, any any number. You just can't.

Yeah. And if I'd been willing to make If I'd been able to make motherless Brooklyn the way I wanted to. For fifteen million bucks.

of budget, I could've I could have done it the next day. You know what I mean? But I needed slightly more than that, and so it was tricky. It was just tricky. on the p on the the hunt for

Producers and and production budget, but may I ask you a question about writing process? So you pull out This dusty Bound. Pile of paper.

That's been sitting in your desk. What is the first day of writing? Look like it's a little bit more. I mean do you just start Spitting out anything that comes to mind in hopes that

something good lands on the page or do you use a different strategy? I mean I I as someone who's put stuff on the shelf and I I find writing very, very difficult. Maybe and So if I if I let something sit for a long time, I might be able to go back and edit what I've done very quickly. But the thing that struck fear in my heart, that murky part that I couldn't quite find my way through

may have been turned into a mountain. In the meantime, right? Like it's it's I've developed all these stories around why it was hard, how hard it was. What did the first day or the first few days of working on that look like and feel like for you. Well the really interesting thing was that when I s read what I had written I forgot.

Some of what I had written and I liked it. Like I was reading it as if someone else had written it. And it was making me laugh. You know, um

I was I I I kind of had this Reinvigoration of Uh The pleasure of it, ironically,'cause

Procrastination does a really weird thing to your head, you know, when you When you push something off it starts to become monolithic. You know, I I I don't know what that is, but it it becomes monolithic and and then it just intensifies your desire to avoid it. Um

And it was fa it was it was fascinating to read it and find and kind of have the sensation of like This is this is so much fun. Like this is such fun language the characters to go why the wh why why did it put the you know W why did I give up on this and then

In a funny way, I went back to my cards. 'Cause my issue wasn't a character issue, it wasn't a Yeah. Cards you mean literally index cards for scenes?

Totally. Yeah. And I and I Sat down on a huge rug and I mapped them all out. And I kinda looked at the node that was like this is the problem. And like I said, I I had a couple conversations. I brought some people in that I trust and I was like

Really I'm hung up on this whole thing over this. I did kind of almost just some Rubic Cubing with some people and it was like I was like, Oh, wait a second. I'm overthinking this. This gets easily solved by just doing X, right?

And then suddenly it was like Holy crap, like that really wasn't that big a deal at all. I just needed You know, I needed a few people in a room brainstorming. And I did it with um.

Brian Coppelman and David Louis. Oh, nice. Yeah. Who Were you know, great pals, great writers. Yeah. Wrote rounders, produced the illusionist. And it was kinda like it was kinda like You know, I ran it them through it. They're They're obviously terrific on this stuff and

Really just they I let they let me use them as a sounding board. I threw ideas around. I feel like I remember David Levine saying at some point, like I said something, David Lee goes, I don't wait, what's wrong with that? He was like, You just said it, like what's wrong with it? Like what's wrong with that? That's great.

You know, and I was kinda like Oh. It but is it can that that's you know, is it that simple? You know, and and and And it was like it was they helped me.

They help me. You know, crack my own My own blockage in a way. Such good guys. Just to just to take a second for that. There's they're Two really skilled and really, really just good human beings. Also co creators along with Andrew Russorkin of billions. Yeah, yeah, that's their their show. And they're they're great. Th those guys um They uh

They're like serious tradecraft pros, you know, they really are like Yeah. The they They're writers, um

in the old school mode. You know, they And and they were great. Helped me. So um

Uh They help me punch through it and uh Then I went and like I said, I wrote the rest of it in kind of a almost like a blitz. And um And uh

It was great. It's a funny thing, like I was actually thinking About as we've been talking about this.

Sometimes I think guys don't acknowledge Men especially. Maybe women experience this too. I don't I don't know. But I certainly see it in a lot of my guy friends is like It's so stupid to be competitive about some things.

Um But But in what we've been talking about, I can actually kind of recognize if I'm honest. that two things happened. One is that When Toby at one point said to me

I'm gonna I'm gonna Give someone else a crack at this. It really was actually like the flaring of a very like You know.

Um Low A very low kind of primitive kind of competitive. aggro sensation in me. that galvanized me. You know, I I kind of was like

You're not giving it to that guy. No way. No way. Like this is mine. And and and I'm gonna Like

Give me a you know, it was like It did kind of push me, right? And that's not necessarily like a quality Mm. Yeah.

That that that's a quality I would say in general. that I try to de de emphasize or or cultivate out of myself like Like the Mm-hmm. competitive competitive a competitive attitude within

creative work. It's really stupid and I think it can be really counterproductive. I also think like Around the culture of movies with award shows and all this shit. There's so much. Absurd. Like

Like construct of competitiveness that is beyond inauthentic to anything to do with This kind of work. You know what I mean? It's like it it it's like it's even m more inauthentic to creative work than it is in figure skating, you know, where it's like subjectively scoring a figure skating routine. It's like the idea that Yeah, that

Yeah. The culture would Um construct like a competitive matrix around Um

Any kind of an a creative form with awards and all this stuff is really Like Sort of mortifying. You know, uh in some ways, and I think

But at the same time, like it It galvanized me. And it's funny'cause we were talking about We talk about flying. D

There's an interesting kind of component of that too, which is Say like oh well your insecurities come in, I'm not working and You know Are people gonna forget him? about me, and just stupid stuff comes in your head.

But there's an interesting thing about doing something like getting good at flying or getting good at surfing. Which is like It drops through you into this kind of confidence. And there's a component of that that's competitive too, because in a weird way you go in in your head as a guy, I think some you sort of go

Yeah, but I can do this. Right. It's like having a black belt. It's sort of like It's like You you're listening to someone blather on about something and in the back of your head going, Can you take off a plane and land it?

You know what I mean? It's like I'm serious. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I totally get it. You know, again, not the highest order of Of motivation. But it It

When you say like A lot of people don't do that. Or a lot of people wouldn't take that break. Sometimes I think If what you're doing is your sort of

I don't know, exercising your muscles or developing a musculature that you're proud of. Right. If it's a com if it's like a component of yourself that you it's almost like You have a secret, you have some secret skill, or you have. I think it's

It's interesting the way that it um It dials down the volume on On Insecurities.

In general. You know what I mean? I do. Yeah. And it I I mean it really hinges, it seems. To me on

the stories you tell yourself which create the lenses of your reality in the sense that They they mold your perception. of what you're doing. Right. Yeah. And don't don't you f I mean have you done so like when you Famously like with the f with the

You know, when when you like were worked on kickboxing. Yeah. Or when you do any of the things you've done. To sort of demonstrate that with That you can do b things within body transformation or learning to speed rate or anything, right?

Don't don't you on some met level come away with it. Come away from it saying You know. I have a capability now. That

that I carry within me, whether other people see it or not. That gives me like A kind of a A confidence. One hundred percent.

One hundred percent. Which is uh why I often recommend to people Even if they never have the opportunity hopefully never have the opportunity to use Kickboxing or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or some martial art.

outside of a practice environment that they should train because the way they will carry themselves through the world Male, female, doesn't matter. Age doesn't matter. Will be different. And there will be a certain Quiet that I think

can be built and added to With many different skills that Demonstrate an ability demonstrate to yourself an ability to learn, be self-sufficient. Survive.

Whatever it might be. So it it makes perfect sense to me and also The The motivation that you're talking about or the motivations Yeah. Be they

Good or bad, somewhere in between. Putting aside the value judgment. They are, meaning they exist. And In In the examples that you've a few of the examples you've given

You've been able to Utilize them, right? Harness them. Ultimately Two Yeah.

for f as as one example, get the script done, right? So it's uh it's um It's uh it's It's I I was I was listening to to someone not long ago talk about how they've shifted from looking at things On a value scale of good to bad. as an experiment to one of beautiful or not beautiful. Like how can you take whatever this motivation is, whatever this opportunity is, and turn it into something

beautiful. It doesn't mean you you ignore uh morality or good or bad, but it but as a thought experiment, looking at things through that lens. So you're able to Take what might be looked at as a base primitive Urge this drive. And

transmute it into Um Oddly enough, I mean at the end product, like something that looks very deeply at impulses and human nature. I also think um I don't know, there's there's um

Frustration. Uh not being able to Achieve some Some goal.

Is Never Pleasant. Right. We don't Associated. It's just not a pleasant feeling.

'Cause you sort of want what you want and Especially if you think you've got high you know, high minded or or only positive. Um motivations you're sort of like mm

It's frustrating that to get to do this and and with this project I definitely Yeah, there was a period where It was it was always hovering. It was it had a kind of an albatrossy kind of effect. on me in the sense that it was

I I wanted to do it and I felt I had a good vision for it and that it could be unique. Um And And and actually like

hypnotic movie experience that really reminds people This is why we go to movies, you know what I mean? Um And I I really had all that conviction.

But then I was I was like bending my life. It was like It was like the shadow. Force it was like a dark matter force in my life. Because it had this gravitational pull. That would

It it would affect my decisions. You know, I would sort of go, Well, you know, I could take another year off or Yeah. You get a point. You know

Where you don't have kids and you're in a real Great new relationship and say, Oh well Let's just take our surfboards and go, but it's like oh, but this might, you know, I I've gotta keep pressing on this. 'Cause it might happen this year. And it sort of it throws like

Like those old models of the universe where the black hole is you know taking the time space fabric and bending it, you know, that's how this was for me. It was it was like bending. the space time fabric of my life. Uh. Even though it was

Not happening. Right. And there's this point where you you have to kind of keep reassessing. It's like How how long am I gonna like? Let this mirage

Is this a mirage or is it A thing that I just have to persevere. Um and how long am I gonna Chase the Mirage. You know?

And and when you were shopping I'm not sure if that's the right term, but when you were Uh Engaging in the produceral is that the word Challenges.

And pursuing that At that point Were you confident that you could get it made and that it was going to get made? Or was it more of a

Test run to see Or a fishing trip to see what type of feedback you would get. How can I guess how At that point, how convinced were you it would happen or how committed were you to sort of willing it to happen? I I had many moments where I thought Um

This this is not gonna work out. The way I want it to. I I just don't have I don't have the cards. Two

When this Hand. I'm I'm I'm And I went through Things where I was like, Well

Mm. Maybe I will just direct this now. And go to Another actor. Yeah, who

I think we could get this movie made instantly and I think would be really great. Mm. You know, but that kinda broke my heart a little bit selfishly. I'd I'd I Really felt. Connected to this.

character of Lanel and I could kinda see my way. into that, but I just I just couldn't bite the bullet and make those phone calls, you know? Um I had a moment of uh it this all went on so long that

You know, Netflix became a a big force in the in the landscape of ways you could get this stuff done. And I could have walked over to those guys. who I think are awesome and I think gotten this done. In

in probably one conversation. Um and I didn't have I I wasn't negative on that. I I It was probably the thing I would have But I

But I had a no it was before they had really started making some commitments. to putting things in the theater. Um The way they did with Roma. The way they did Um

Or doing with Noah Bombach's. Terrific movie, marriage story and Others, you know, and I and I I I didn't want to get hung up on sort of the like

the almost like the pretension of saying, I want to see this in the theater, but I d I did. I just I I wasn't quite willing at that point to surrender to the idea of of making it only for a streaming presentation. You know, like they did with Roma, I've done it in a heartbeat, you know, uh like and I think it's I'm not

One of the ones who's negative on Um the way they're approaching this stuff. I think it's really I think there's a lot of really, really Um

new and diverse voices are getting a platform to tell stories because of their model. You know, um So I but it was a timing thing and

I I felt very low about it at times. Yeah, very, very um Not defeated, but disc very discouraged. And Thought

But It might be one of those things I just I I just had to sort of um sigh in. Make a big pivot on or let go of and Then

Um Oh uh uh You know, a weird set of things. started becoming emergent to me.

Post two thousand sixteen. Toby Amric became head of Warner. And he said to me, like look I'm not gonna have this job and not make a couple movies I would

I really want to make. And it's Warner Brothers and we've gotta make those movies. That's that's part of our tradition and Yours is one of the ones I wanna get done and I'm gonna figure out the absolute best deal I can give you. to get it done and you're gonna have to find some of the money.

Or a lot of the money, but We're gonna I will create a way that we can get this done. Um, which is amazing. No, no, no, his his There's a lot of people who have that job who don't have

You don't. Say Now that I've got this job, I'm not gonna tighten up. You know what I mean? I'm not gonna play to be here forever. I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna use the position to do some of the things that made me want to get into this in the first place. And he did immediately. He did it with Bradley Cooper on Star Warsborn.

Um And he did it with me. You know, he he was like I'm He literally said like Part of the tradition at Warner Brothers is we make Like

Yeah, autour driven stuff and All Clint Eastwood's films were done there and they made Ellie confidential and You know, and Um So that was a shift and then also

I got Bruce Willis um Uh Stepped in and stepped up. for the movie and that made a difference and Um

I found I I called in a lot of chips and figured out some very clever ways to pull together the co financing Alongside Warner Brothers that we needed and And suddenly. Started to tumble.

Um I I have to I have a follow up question. Two thousand sixteen. You've seen the film and

Essentially the way it is by two thousand. Twelve. There was a lot about what changed after two thousand sixteen that suddenly Yeah, Toby was ringing me up and saying, Man, a lot of what Is embedded in this

Script is is staggeringly On point. um right now in a way that it was not in two thousand fourteen. And um And I think that

Maybe that was part of why when I was giving it to all these terrific actors and saying, I don't have any money for this. I I have to have everybody Like, you know. defer fees and just work for love of the project. But it felt tooth y to people. It felt

Wait. of its moment more than it had a few years before and uh And I think it it exerted more of a gravitational pull on This incredible cast of actors and that helped me get It made two. You have an incredibly star studded

cast you have in front of the camera you also have I did a a fair amount of research prior to our conversation. You also have a lot of talent. Behind the cameras. and working on the film and other capacities who were involved.

You talked about deferring fees or having actors willing to defer payment in some fashion. You used if I think the phrase creative co financing, or found creative ways to co-finance. Feel free to not answer if if that's the best move, but Could you give Even a hint as to what that Means

Because uh You can never um you really can't hedge off the risk of an individual film. Um The only way you can do that is if like The way that Steven Soderbergh and um

And Channing Tatum really brilliantly with magic mic realized like we can make this film for like under six million bucks and we can pre sell the foreign Um, for more than The budget. Um

And then we can own it. You know what I mean? So like we can we can start shooting the film knowing that we're You can you can hedge off

You can literally de risk a film. If you can make less than what you can pre-sell the foreign on. That's the only Way to

Two. Literally. We hedge off all risk on a single film, right? Um, which is why like most co financing companies are the ones with big bank roles like Legendary that can do big slate financing with the studio because you're you're

You're essentially playing the portfolio, right? Um And historically studio returns have delivered a return, like a positive return. Right. So

If you're going to people and saying, Hey, we put some money in my film. You can talk till you're blue in the face about why it's gonna work, but the bottom line is the numbers don't lie. You You You're taking just a massive singular risk. If you invest in one film.

Right. Um But I Mm-hmm. I did a deal with some of my co financiers around

Um basically I had access to The secondary trading on a company a technology company that I was an original investor. in and strategic advisor too. And um

I I had a fund. a little boutique fund that was Doing Secondary.

trading in that company. And um And I and I basically set up a situation where some of the investors in my film had been looking at acquiring that company through their private equity firm and I I um Yeah.

They couldn't. But I I was able to Essentially do a deal with Where they could be

Um My LPs and buy Um Yeah. By a stake.

uh through secondary a secondary deal in this company that they were very interested in. And we all felt that the We all felt that the The likely returns on that were Um

Such a sure thing that That they considered it uh I basically told him. I'll get you access to this deal. If you'll finance my film too.

And so I set up like a pair trade. I set up sort of like a can A par trade on my film. And um a position in this company. This is also a great example

of where swapping cartridges in the time the video game that is the timeline of your Multifaceted career. tangible way. Right. Because you've but you've been exercising other

interests and developing other capabilities and knowledge in a comp a seemingly completely unrelated sector that then allowed you in some ways to get done a project in what many people would view as your primary career over a period of twenty years to finally Get it done. That's w that's remarkable. No, there's no there's no question

That my kind of parallel life outside of my Creative filmmaking. Life, um This whole other

dimension of my professional life. Yeah. Yeah. You know. It's not a public facing component of my life. Um

One hundred percent. The That That ended up Um

Unlocking the way to Passion project done. There's no no doubt about it. Yeah.

Wow. And I think I can say that. Um That no film. No film.

Has ever been. Financed off of the specific type of deal that we did for this one. It was um and I and I don't and I will never it's not replicable either for me. It it it was a very, very very unique situation. Um

And I uh I um I wouldn't even want to go through the headache of trying to Replicate. what we did on this because I think

It was a little bit like Alex Honnald. I felt like I was I felt like I was going up. A pitch. Without a robe. And

Yeah. If I didn't Get. Each and every handhold. Perfect.

It was gonna come. It was gonna be a a complete and utter You know. Um It was gonna be a complete fail. Like like it was sort of like

I I I was either gonna get to the top or the whole thing was gonna crash and burn completely. There was no There really was not, um An in between. Yeah, there was really wasn't an in between. It was like it was like an The bet paid off.

in every way. And um And the beautiful thing about it was actually in a funny way the The alliances I formed um with people to get this done. Or are thick now. You know, they're it's like I really feel

I really feel like a deep kind of alliance. With the people who Help me achieve this. Yes.

long held dream and uh It's been I've been able to reciprocate. There have been ripple effects to finally getting it done that were They were As as As meaningful as

As the thing itself, which is great. How cool. The uh The the I mean the tour of duty that was put in to get it made is no joke. And y you mentioned Theatrical run. And putting the film into theaters

And Uh I I could make an argument and I texted you this right after I saw the film That

If even if the projector ceased to work. And one were only able to listen to the movie through a proper sound system, like some of the sound systems in theaters. that it would be worth much more than the cost of admission. Could you could you speak to the

the soundtrack and the music and anything that that you think makes it noteworthy because I am Not an audiophile, I'm not a musician. I appreciate music. I enjoy it, but I don't know the first thing about music theory or sound quality or anything like that, and yet The

The audio experience was so different for this film compared to the last Let's just call it dozen films I've seen in theaters. Why is that? Well I think that I think that

music and sound In many films. І запроч As what I would call Um

an emotional accelerator or just a an emotional enhancement. Of what is already taking place. Uh Within the text. So

The moment is obviously dramatic and the music reflects that drama. It's violent and the music reflects the violence. It's It's sad and the music reflects the sadness, right? And and sometimes you get what I would call a very reductive kind of mirroring effect. Um And what that does, I think, is it makes the music disappear. Right. It makes the music.

become Had of embellishment. Underneath the other aspects of the film.

As opposed to like a unique a unique element in its own right. That is almost taking on a primary role. In communicating.

emotion or character or narrative or whatever. Right. And I think um A lot of my favorite films. Have

I think Not even mine. Everybody's favorite films usually have music that's more transcendent than that. And I don't mean transcendent, literally that is Transcends the

Text. It's not It's not solely um there as kind of a subtle embellishment. It's It's b it's kind of more boldly used as its as its own Um

Uh primary piece of the experience of the hypnosis that the film's working on you. And I I You know, Jazz was gonna be a part of this film because of the era. It was also

to me If there's a If there's a kind of music that's turretic, it's jazz in The era of of Bob. Um

type of music, not just in its like sort of Explosive Sort of Um But because literally

It's about taking melodic forms and twisting them round and round and round and doing variations on a melody, variations on a melody, variations on a melody. And um And so I knew I knew I wanted that a little bit. Um And once and on the jazz.

component of it. I went initially to basically a genius, went Marcellus, who Helped me. Curate and think through Um

Саме такі music that was being played in a club in the film. Um But I also wanted to weave in I wanted to weave in honestly I don't know why I was so into mash ups on this, mash ups of sort of like

You know, a turretic A turretic character with a Old fashioned noir. I wanted to mash up sort of jazz. with radio head in a way, the things I love and um I got Tom York to write.

A beautiful song. For the film. Um That we that we work into the film not only in his performance of it, but also

In a fifties style Miles Davis like arrangement. Of it. Um

And again, it was one of those things that a lot of people kinda looked at me a little bit cross eyed. They were like This you you can't w you know it's gonna be It's it's gonna feel weird. to bring his voicing into a film in that era or to try to

Bring a modernist sensibility. of of dissonance. And electronic kind of components into a A jazz score. But I didn't think that was true.

Because I I knew that Tom Mm-hmm. Really like has an appreciation of jazz especially like

M Charles Mingus and other jazz artists who explored the kind of dissonance that I think Tom has explored. In his own music on records like Kid A and amnesiac and his own solo stuff and I I knew there was more synergy than people were

recognizing on paper. And I thought We can do something really interesting. Mashing these things up and And we did. And I think this this trifecta of Tom and Went Marcellus and this incredible, incredible

young composer in London named Daniel Pemberton. And everybody's been reacting to it and I I agree with you. Um I've been working on this for like a number of years. And I am still not tired of listening to the

music on the film. I I have the the the soundtrack it actually the soundtrack just came out this past Friday. Um We released the soundtrack and the score. last week on the streaming services and smart they are beautiful. They are they are just they You can

Listen to them. Without having seen a frame of the film. And it is really, really beautiful stuff. Really beautiful stuff. Kudos for the dance scene.

as well. I uh we we don't we don't have to give any spoilers, but what a what a fantastic, fantastic scene. people who watch it will know what I'm referring to. And uh I I wanna hop Two of reference to I dare call it a review, but

I don't think review is quite the right word. So I've had Ken Burns on this podcast. He's one of the For people who don't recognize the names. Or the name one of the most legendary, if not the most legendary, well respected documentarian of Ever possibly in in the United States. Uh

Yeah, it means just a prolific, prodigious talent. And He wrote a piece of the I would say he bent the genre. I'd say there's a there's a

He redefined the genre. I think there was never There was never long form Uh you know, you could even argue that the whole the whole embrace of long form storytelling that's now ubiquitous on Netw we call binge TV watching.

started with the civil war. You know what I mean? Ken's film The Civil War. was the most audacious long form film. In American history. At that time.

And And he basically said He was one of the first people to say. People will not only sit for this. They will devour it. They want

Rich, nuanced, long stories about these seminal events in our history. That are still defining who we are. You know, and And he re He re

Invigorated, reshaped. the entire form of Of not just documentary, but I literally think of filmed storytelling. He did. He has and I'll I'll probably get some of these numbers wrong, but since since we're just doing a a quick deep dive on Ken, there are

There are film effects named after Ken Burns, mostly related to his treatment of still photographs with it embedded within and named after him in some of the most popular software programs currently being used. And the Civil War one must keep in mind was on broadcast television, and it was somewhere between fourteen and twenty hours of total content. And at the time uh I want to say within a year or so between thirty and forty million people had watched

the civil war. I mean and if you if just let that sink in for a second considering that it's appointment viewing. I mean it's It's Absolutely incredible. So he writes this piece on Medium, which I uh which I only very recently read, and I'm I'm gonna read the last

Paragraph. Uh I mean it's it's it's absolutely worth reading and I'll I'll link to it in the show notes for people at Tim.blog forward slash podcast and you can find Edward just search. Norton or Edward Norton and then we'll have a link to this. But the last paragraph is is one that really strikes me. So if a lonely orphan, burdened by society's heartless response to his Tourette syndrome, can rise above his daily struggles and battle against jaded masters of the universe types, then what excuse do the rest of us have for our own apathy?

Motherless Brooklyn answers with a resounding None. Exclamation point. That's a hell of an ending to a hell of a piece. about the film, about you, about

Mm-hmm. We could talk about that, but the the question I'd love to hear your thoughts on Eventually. Is

What would you hope? to do. What a what effect, if any, do you want it to have on people? Or uh the the sort of larger larger picture, if any. The impact.

To be on individuals who watch it or otherwise. Um Well I think I mean Ken's Ken's affirmation of

The film was just like it was about as Meaningful uh a compliment as I've ever gotten. Um on my own work. It it it's like he's

He's he's one of the druids And In my you know, in in my matrix of people who have really mattered in in filmmaking he's

He's one of the giants and he um And he also in particular. He is Clearly got this. unparalleled commitment to dissecting

Kind of the American character. You know, he he He really he's committed his whole creative career to the To trying to understand who we are through the past. Um

And And it's I I can't You know I there's I can't overstate my admiration for the work he's done. So it's it's To have him kind of

Um Actually take the time to write this piece that he wrote about the film was was uh You know. I I I had tears in my eyes when I read it the first time. Um

Can I I'll just pause for a quick second, I'm sorry, because people may not realize just how effusive and uh direct his commentary is in this piece. I've I've never seen anything like it. So I'll I'll just give one more quote, which is dot dot dot. So I'm not gonna read the the the entire paragraph, but an instantly classic lead character in a career best performance by one of our finest actors, scene after scene of memorably smart and funny dialogue delivered by a brilliant ensemble cast, gripping action with a gorgeous score that's the best I've heard in years. It's nothing less than a modern masterpiece. I mean Mm.

How did you I I know you just said it it c it could bring a tear to your eye, but like how did you feel After twenty years. Of hoping to make this To read something like that. From none other than

the legendary Ken Burns. I mean what What happened? Were you dumbstruck? Were you Yeah, yeah, I I um I mean uh It's a funny thing when you finish a thing you go through You go through these.

Uh Y you start to sort of amass Data points on how is it actually Landing, you know, and you um Show it to people you respect and you show it to f some friends and you

You know, you you Uh I was starting to get a A happy sense of slow You know. Confidence that it that it

was working. As a film. That it that it was. doing what I wanted it to do. Um and it people were

Just with at least engaged with the character in some measure of the way that I but that I had been engaged with him, right? I I think my first my very, very, very, very first thing that I Really

In a way, did I do Lionel Justice? You know, did I do Letham's Great character. A basic Honorable. Um

You know. um reinterpretation and That that seemed to me to be working. Uh and Jonathan I was very, very nervous showing the film to Jonathan and when he was really experant about it that That set me into what I'd call um a kind of happy relief.

Um And but I think that what can What Ken gets at that's hi gets at a deeper level of satisfaction is that He he it's more what you read in the beginning. It it um

At a certain point you kind of There's the There's the hope that you can craft something. Um in a way that work's a kind of magic.

on people just as a Whatever. I think the things that have meant the most to me as an audience member.

were things that had a transparency to them where I where you could feel you felt like It was really hitting the nerve of Your own experience. Or even better, the collective experience, you know, so For me like

Do the Spike Lee's do the right thing. had a had a seismic impact on me. It was This guy writing and directing and starring in his own film about his own neighborhood.

Um And it was wildly entertaining. It was Visually. original and dynamic.

And then it but then It was about America. It was a it was about The toughest Thorniest. questions about like

Race and And how we deal with each other and What's the correct response to the tensions that we feel? about living all together and it was just so, so Rich.

Sophisticated And most importantly it put it so squarely in the audience's lap. It didn't give a cheap homily at the end. It didn't

give a cheap redemptive Reassurance. In the end. It it Basically Like

s insisted that you deal with with the question yourself, you know, and I think A lot of us, it changed almost like the aspirational goal. for like what you're going for. Um

what you can do with a movie. And On some level. Mm. thing I've had the most ambition to do.

Is is find things that that in some way or another, um instigate that same kind of like Um activation you know in

We get so much stuff that's essentially engineer to make us passive. Like it there's just so much in the culture. Yeah. literally wants us to be a A passive

Recipient of downloaded Um Cheap nutrition mostly I think um Trying to put us in a

Mode where we're inclined to buy shit. You know what I mean? I think that um And I think Um The stuff that activates people, the stuff

that really gets them engaged. Is Mm. Is rare and it's really cool when you feel it, when you've when you have that sensation that reminds you like That you can

get actually provoked emotionally or provoked ethically or provoked. In term as a citizen. You know, it's That's pretty cool. And I think

Um You know, uh um Academic or intellectual or that it that It's gonna be um I don't know what the right word is, a uh a screed or a um

It it can be art. I mean it's like Bob Dylan Bob Dylan doesn't explain to you, he refused to explain to you what a lot of what He did. was about But you knew.

You know, you knew you know Yeah. people in his generation they knew what he was writing about. And they knew what he was getting at and he didn't have to say it and it galvanized people, you know, it really galvanized people to to participate. Um

in in their generation's And um causes and all of it. And I think in some measure that's the highest aspiration. It's it's the if if you can if you can get people to think

About Um their own participation in the world around them. That's pretty fantastic. I I think you nailed it, man. I I I sent you a message right after walking out of the theater. I saw it here

in Austin at the Violet Crown. Really nice small theater. Fantastic. Sound, good luminosity, which is a whole separate c conversation, but they they project properly. And it really does it brings up a lot and it communicates a lot without doing it in a heavy handed, two on the nose, literal prescriptive way. And it as as you said.

Doesn't offer Neat. Uh pithy, unrealistic, simple solutions to complex situations. But it In not doing that in presenting

the story and the characters and the universal struggles and challenges and desires in a very artful, powerful way. I I think Does a much greater service. It's a fun watch, but it's also a meaningful watch, and that's That's

Really hard to do. So Thanks. I I mean I I um It's funny. I find You know, there's um

There's the Poet Rilka's um fa you know, who's I w I love it his poetry in his work, but there's that famous collection of letters that he wrote to a young

poet. There's a bit in it that I Think about a lot. He where he kinda says ten years is nothing to an artist, gestation is everything. And um It's kinda one of those things that you put Over your

desk when you're in college. You know, and you because it just sounds It it it sound it it's sexy to think that you know what it means in a weird way. Do you know what I mean? I totally do. It's a kind of You look you I latched on to when I was young.

Um Because I w You know, you imagine yourself With that. the romantic struggle of

But then the reality of it. Is It's not so pleasant sometimes, you know what I mean? But I think that for me the

the gestation on this affected. What I wanted to say. And my capacity to even understand.

What I wanted to say a lot. I think if I had been able to make this in two thousand three, a whole bunch of things wouldn't have happened. I think I would have at that time in my life. Sort of had more

romance for the idea of like the cynicism that's in the noir genre, right? I think I might have Embraced In an almost like Showy.

Way. That I could be as dark and cynical. As any noir movie before. You know.

Um At my age. the phase of life I'm in with what I see going on in the country now. I really felt differently by the time I made this film. Like I did not want Faye Dunaway. to end up with a bullet in the eye and the detective saying, Do as little as possible.

Because I think That is not. What This country needs right now. Um

And I am not super keen on You know, things that are artistically rich. But ultimately really nihilistic. Like I don't think we need um I don't think we need nihilism romanced right now.

At all. I think we've got We've got Nihilistic. We've got nihilists walking into classrooms with

AR fifteen's and blowing kids away. Like way, way, way too often to be Casually. putting a sexy stamp on the idea of nihilism. We we And and I think um

And I and I and I wouldn't have I wouldn't have felt that strongly about that if I had made this Ten years ago, let alone twenty years ago. You know, so it it would have changed the Mm. What Ken wrote.

What Ken wrote about this. And the and the sort of propulsive you know, message of it or I wouldn't have been I wouldn't have been the person You know

Trying to Put that message across. If this is a good thing. Before. And um

And I and so I'm glad. in a way. Like I'm I'm I really am genuinely glad that it took a long time because I think I feel more um Spiritually. determined that that it goes in the direction it goes in at the end. Instead of um into what I'd call like

Some people say Fight Claim is nihilistic, and a lot of people say that, but I never felt that about that movie. I always felt one of the things I liked about it was that Fincher for all his Um You know, for all his crusty exterior.

Like that's very much about what We're talking about and I I think it's about a person who Right. goes into a romance with a nihilistic thing, but absolutely comes out of it. You know, like absolutely

recognizes the destructive the destructive freight train that he's set in motion and moves to derail it. And moves to grab hands with a a a woman and and say Like

No. to that and And yes to linking up with another human being and And um

making a connection. You know what I mean? And I think uh the the violence in that film Is Uh. Ти реду the film's message to

The exploration Uh Um weak sauce read of it, in my view. Um I think the I think the

the message of evolution and growth in it is there. Um and I I kinda feel that way. about this. I I think that this Making Mother's Brooklyn now

Um It's it's got more of what I'd want to say as a father even. In it then. than I than I would have been capable of earlier.

I I also couldn't have made this movie in With the budget that I had and on the schedule that I had to make it. It if I hadn't worked with Spike Lee and Wes Anderson and Alejandro when you redo Um Yeah. The

I wouldn't have had the chops. To do it. Um Those guys. Made me

Realize how much you can um within limitations. And I think I I think I'm going to be able to do marinating in their work. With them.

had a really, really big impact on on my capacity to do this. Logistically. I've s I've said it before, I'll say it again. Kudos to you, man. It's a great film. And Uh I I wholeheartedly urge everyone to check it out and I I do not take

saying that lightly because I recognize one careless recommendation and people are like fuck that Tim Ferris. So Uh really and really interesting in talking about personal self transformation. As an artistic benchmark, we don't trust him ever again. Yeah, exactly. Yep, yep. Exactly right. But I do feel comfortable recommending this. It's great. And uh see it in the theater. Uh that that's definitely a recommendation. It'll be great when it comes out on other platforms, but it it's it's really one of those films you want to see in a proper environment. And uh

We've been talking for a while. I know you're a busy man these days and I I think this is a good place to to wrap up, but people can say hello on Twitter at Edward Norton, Instagram Edward Norton Official Facebook Official Edward Norton. I'll link to all these in the show notes. Everything we talked about, I'll link to in the show notes per usual at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. But Edward, is there anything else you'd like to say? Any parting comments, suggestions, anything else that I'm missing? No, uh um I Uh it was interesting to talk through this like that'cause I

Um Dig about your show. I think you uh as you know, I And as everybody knows, you hack the um

you hack the process, you know, better than anybody. And I think um I think that uh I've been talking about I've been talking about the thing itself in sort of reductive ways that are necessary when you become a cog in the marketing machinery, um or in your project. But I do think it's it's very interesting to actually think back.

through the process of a thing with actual consideration'cause the truth is like It's amazing how much you tell yourself, you start to discount. Um phases of it. You know what I mean? Like i i it's o it's amazing how much the Maybe this is why like the mind

also like eliminates the pain of work out. You know what I mean? It's like you If we if you remembered pain. Viterally you might not ever do anything again. You know what I mean? But but you You um It's funny, isn't it, that the function of the head has a tendency to

Um I don't know, focus on the positive in some measure, you know? Oh for sure. Like Yeah, the selective remembrance. Yeah, the s the selective remembrance but um And it turns it starts to turn things into a r uh a story and it's I must say, I think uh you know what I think I would say as a as a wrap up on it is

When I was thinking about doing this. I talked to Warren Beatty one time about making reds. Which is his His own incredible

You know, three hour long movie about American socialists. And um It it's one of the really great films of that whole decade about America and about the American character and it's also emotional. It's about relationships and all these things. It's it's a masterwork. Um

And he told me it was he told me that everyone told him that that he was gonna flush all his chips on that bet and that um No one wanted to see A three hour movie about socialists with documentary footage from People who

actually lived through the era, you know. And and he he he just Went and did it anyway. And the thing is that when you grow up on the film and then you see it got nominated for awards and it's affirmed and everything. You you sort of you

You discount the r the The fact that In truth for him. It was a very, very, very Um

out on a limb experience. And probably felt very half baked. A a lot of the time. And I think

It's good. for people it's good for people at any phase of life. Certainly I think it's good for young people to hear people who get a thing done say like it doesn't feel good at many phases along the way. It feels entirely half baked. You feel entirely behind the eight ball and discouraged and this is an intrinsic part of

It's an intrinsic part of it. It isn't all fun. Even when you're like already Like you were saying, you're like well But you've had success in this thing. This should be easier. It d it doesn't get easier. It's it's Anything that's worth

merit in it is gonna be Hard. And the hard part isn't romantic.

When it's hard. You know what I mean? It's romantic later. It's romantic later. Yeah. It's romantic later. Um, but it it really doesn't feel good along the way. And I think um Sometimes it can it's nice. To be reminded

that it's been hard for other people when they were getting things done that you admired because maybe gives you that extra little bit of determination or patience. Um to persevere a little more. Absolutely. And when in doubt.

Oh People, your tribe. The people you trust, like Sounding board. It's it's like Nobody gets anything.

Like this done alone. It's just It it it's You know. It's almost like

when in the back of your book you you see an author, they think Things in its names. But when you really when you look at it as a block and you realize what that really is, is just that's like a tribe. You know what I mean? around an author, nobody they they just what's more solitary than writing a book, right?

But you look at the The network that's around an author and and And it makes them feel compelled to say, I could not have gotten this done without these people. Right. It's it's um there's there's not many things that are that are truly done in solitude. Agreed.

And uh A lot of things worth doing. Not in solitude also. To have companions on the path.

And uh I am Could not be happier for you and it means a lot to have you back on. Hope we get a chance to hang again soon. And uh Thanks so much for the time. For sure. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Super Fat Nut Butters. I've got uh two boxes of them actually sitting within 15 feet of me in a cabinet. These little beauties are great. I've been using them as quick mini breakfasts, that's one use, and as on the go fuel for a few months now. I was Pretty slammed this afternoon. I had a Wi-Fi debacle and I was preparing to record a podcast, so

Didn't have time to make something to eat or buy something to eat, but these saved my ass. That's a great use case. They're 200 to 300 calories each, depending on which ingredient cocktail you eat, because they're a bunch of different types. MCT, meaning medium chain, triglycerides, protein, macadamia, caffeine, etc. Three to five grams of net carbs per pouch. They are keto and paleo friendly, and they are really easy to transport. You can throw them in a backpack or a pocket. I love these things. The first time I tried super fat, however, before warrant I finished the entire box in maybe two or three days. So watch your portion control and pro tip, the way you eat them, you have to unscrew the top, you get about 90% out of it that way, and then you tear the pouch, tear it diagonally, not straight across, and that'll get you the last 10% or so. I suggest ordering the variety box. You can try that way all five superfat flavors in one box, and you'll get two pouches of each flavor that way. You can also get 15% off your order by going to superfat.com slash Tim. That's superfat.com slash Tim.

for 15% off. When you go to one more time, superfat.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Zapier. New sponsor, but not new to me as a service. We'll get to my personal story, but if you run your own business, think about all of the hours and hours. You spend moving information from one software program to another, or one window to another, one social media platform to another, copy and pasting, blah blah blah, all because those things don't easily work together, they're not connected. With Zapier, now they do, automatically. My team and I have been using Zapier for years, which helps us with tons of stuff, such as, just to take one example, connecting Facebook ad campaigns to our email platform.

And uh you could also, as I do Automate. publishing things that you put on Instagram to other social media platforms, saving us hundreds of hours. My team has also raved about Zapier support, this is super important to me, which in their words, quote, is in a class of its own. End quote. And that is not paid placement. We test all of these things and if you use Zapier as full paying retail. customers. That is not because we got any type of freebie. So

There are tons of examples. Now why are there tons of examples? There are tons of examples because Zapier supports more than 1500 business applications and the possibilities are virtually endless. for automating processes for getting shit done. And you may know if you read the four-hour work week that third step is automation. In other words, not adding headcount. to a messy process to fix problems, but automating as much as possible. You want to eliminate, then automate, and only then delegate. And Zapier is one of the best automating softwares. If you can use the plural, one of the best pieces of automation software I've ever come across. It is the easiest way to automate a ton of your work.

So check it out. If you want to try it out or just learn more, go to zapier.com slash Tim. That's z-a-p-i-e-r.com slash Tim. Connect the apps you use the most, and let Zapier take it from there. You can do a million things, I'll give you one more example. You could, for instance, instantly engage with leads for your business, send them to a CRM or spreadsheet, and then notify your team so they can act fast on every opportunity. And here's the really beautiful part and perhaps the gem to really highlight. It's easy to build an exact solution that you need in minutes without writing code or asking a developer for help. So as a non-technical person, you can piece these different

programs together in a way that is customized for your needs and your business and what is important to you so you can get the hell back to focusing on the stuff that you're good at. Okay, so That's it. Join more than four and a half million people who are saving an average of 40 hours per month by using Zapier now and for a limited time for my listeners, try zapier for free by going to our special link. Zapier.com slash Tim, that's Z-A-P-I-E-R.com slash Tim for your free 14 day trial.

I use this program all the time, my team uses this program all the time. Zapier.com slash Tim. Hey, just one thing, Tim. This is Michael from Zapier. It's pronounced Zapier like Happier. So that's Zapier.com slash Tim.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.