“I told you: being afraid is the worst sin there is.” Talking About Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless with our guest, Cinematographer and Filmmaker Andrew Wonder
Cinematographer Andrew Wonder joins hosts Andy Nelson and Pete Wright to discuss his recent work on Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, and share his passion for Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 French New Wave classic Breathless. Wonder reflects on his fascinating journey in the film industry, from starting at MTV at age 17 to his current work as both cinematographer and director. He provides fascinating insights into shooting Oh, Canada, including technical details about how different actors photograph on camera and his approach to working with established performers like Richard Gere.
The conversation explores the innovative techniques used in Breathless, including the famous jump cuts that came about when Godard needed to cut the film down from 2.5 hours to 90 minutes. Wonder shares his deep appreciation for how the film was made, including behind-the-scenes stories like how they achieved the iconic street scenes using a modified mail cart to hide the camera. The discussion examines how the French New Wave's approach to filmmaking continues to influence modern cinema, and the importance of preserving cinematic history while pushing boundaries in contemporary filmmaking.
The discussion delves into the challenges facing contemporary filmmakers, the state of modern cinema, and how films like Breathless can inspire new generations of creators. Wonder also shares his thoughts on current filmmakers who are innovating within the medium and carrying forward the spirit of experimentation that marked the French New Wave era.
Whether you're a fan of French New Wave cinema, interested in the craft of cinematography, or curious about the state of modern filmmaking, this episode offers valuable insights into both classic and contemporary cinema. Wonder's enthusiasm for Godard's groundbreaking work, combined with his own experiences behind the camera, makes for an engaging discussion that reminds us why Breathless remains a pivotal film in cinema history.
Welcome to Movies We Like • Cinematographer Andrew Wonder on Breathless
About Andrew
About Breathless
“I told you: being afraid is the worst sin there is.” Talking About Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless with our guest, Cinematographer and Filmmaker Andrew Wonder
Cinematographer Andrew Wonder joins hosts Andy Nelson and Pete Wright to discuss his recent work on Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, and share his passion for Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 French New Wave classic Breathless. Wonder reflects on his fascinating journey in the film industry, from starting at MTV at age 17 to his current work as both cinematographer and director. He provides fascinating insights into shooting Oh, Canada, including technical details about how different actors photograph on camera and his approach to working with established performers like Richard Gere.
The conversation explores the innovative techniques used in Breathless, including the famous jump cuts that came about when Godard needed to cut the film down from 2.5 hours to 90 minutes. Wonder shares his deep appreciation for how the film was made, including behind-the-scenes stories like how they achieved the iconic street scenes using a modified mail cart to hide the camera. The discussion examines how the French New Wave's approach to filmmaking continues to influence modern cinema, and the importance of preserving cinematic history while pushing boundaries in contemporary filmmaking.
The discussion delves into the challenges facing contemporary filmmakers, the state of modern cinema, and how films like Breathless can inspire new generations of creators. Wonder also shares his thoughts on current filmmakers who are innovating within the medium and carrying forward the spirit of experimentation that marked the French New Wave era.
Whether you're a fan of French New Wave cinema, interested in the craft of cinematography, or curious about the state of modern filmmaking, this episode offers valuable insights into both classic and contemporary cinema. Wonder's enthusiasm for Godard's groundbreaking work, combined with his own experiences behind the camera, makes for an engaging discussion that reminds us why Breathless remains a pivotal film in cinema history.
Welcome to Movies We Like. Each episode, Andy Nelson and Pete Wright invite a film industry veteran to discuss one of their favorite films. What makes a movie inspirational to a cinematographer or a costume designer? Listen in to hear how these pros watch their favorite films. Part of The Next Reel family of film podcasts.
Andy Nelson:
Welcome to movies we like, part of the True Story FM Entertainment podcast network. I'm Andy Nelson, and that over there is Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
It is. It's Pete. He's here.
Andy Nelson:
On today's episode, we have invited cinematographer and filmmaker Andrew Wunder to talk about Jean Luc Godard's Breathless, a movie he likes. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's so exciting to talk about this film and to be here with you guys. It's such a great collection of crew members and artists that you've amassed over the time you guys have been making this show.
Pete Wright:
Thank you so much. It's it's always great when you open a conversation with us that you we've already interviewed someone who's a friend of yours. It's just the world's getting smaller every day. We love it. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
This is perfect.
Andy Nelson:
That's just so true. Well and we're just excited to talk with, with creatives and people in the industry because there's, you know, everyone's out there working on so many different projects, but we're all also movie lovers. And I think that's the thing that, it's nice to be reminded of that that we're here because there was probably some movie we saw when we were kids and said, I wanna do that. You know?
Andrew Wonder:
No. Totally. I was just at a film festival in Rome, New York of prints of silent pre code films. Wow. And Ugh.
Andrew Wonder:
And after and after going to Cannes and after being in all these festivals, so Canada it's my first time in a long time being in a festival with no one trying to sell anything. Everyone who made those movies is way dead. You know? And it was just, like, love it, like, love it the game filmmaking for a weekend, and it's exactly that way because it's it's you know, at some point, this nourished us, and it nourished us enough in the face of everything else in our lives to make us pursue it. And so if we don't go back to the nourishment, like, what are we creating?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Exactly. Great way to put it. Well, let's talk a little bit about you and and how you got started. Like, what what were those moments that were in your life when you were young that kind of triggered a little response in your head that said, I might wanna go in that direction.
Andrew Wonder:
You know, it's funny. I'm I always liked movies. I always liked creating, but I was one of those kids who didn't know what he wanted to do, didn't know what he was good at. You know, high school I remember middle school, high school theater was kind of fun. I played a little bit of my parents' mini DV camera.
Andrew Wonder:
Then I was always interested in that stuff, but then when I was 17, I had the opportunity to work for MTV on a show called Maid. And I left my senior year of high school, and I was traveling around the country meeting high school students, filming them, making the show, getting, you know, like, eaten alive by executives and being given crazy notes. You know? But it was a, and I went to film school after, and I've shot movies. I've worked at all the stuff, but I I'm always surprised how much I go back to the principles because back then, it was early reality, and it was more like the Maisel Brothers or Pettebaker, single camera verite.
Andrew Wonder:
You'd be in the school for weeks with kids. You record your old audio. You'd be in it. And and there weren't a lot of trained filmmakers on the show, but I was young, so someone had to teach me. And I felt like the lesson I was always taught was that story and emotion is all that matters.
Andrew Wonder:
It's like if you're there, if you're present, if you're alive, you know, we would shoot 200 hours of tape for 40 minutes episodes. So you would have to, every day, turn dinner into a scene, turn breakfast into a scene. And it was just was such a great exercise in crafting emotion. And when I got to NYU after that, it was hard to find that same camera feeling like a participant, that same feeling of cinema. I think that's where cinematography became interesting to me in school.
Andrew Wonder:
It was I had a lot of good mentors. Eventually, I met Paul. I worked for this great cinematographer, Harris. You know, I wouldn't I would work for these people. I'd learned from them.
Andrew Wonder:
I would teach them video cameras and and being there in the early 2000 when digital was so new, and was so wild west, it was just very exciting. And I think it really taught me a freedom that I sense of seeing, you know, when it was so wild west, when you were shooting on tape and no one ever be able to project it or all these weird problems we were dealing with in formats. I feel like now have things have kinda homogenized again. You know, we saw a film. We saw digital, but it's not as wild west.
Andrew Wonder:
And, you know, that fire is what I'm always looking for, that what I first got when I was 17, being in a place in transition, making eye contact, being present. And part of the reason why I picked this film actually was because it came to me later in my life because so little of cinema that felt as present as it did when I was 17 existed. It was actually Paul Schrader for showing me this film in my thirties. You know, I probably ignored it in film school and I don't know. It's amazing how, you know, cinema's lifelong, right?
Andrew Wonder:
Isn't it amazing how there's always new cinema to just feel you. And so this was one that wasn't when I was 8. Could you imagine watching this when you're 8?
Pete Wright:
Oh my God. And, you
Andrew Wonder:
know, but then, you know, but in my thirties living a little life, losing a little more, I don't know. I saw freedom. I saw things. You know, I saw not only what I aspire to do with a camera, but I saw freedom. And, you know, so I've always been looking for that my whole career.
Andrew Wonder:
I think
Pete Wright:
that's a I it's a really interesting thing. I wanna pick up on something you said at the beginning of that statement, which was, about missing some of the influence that you had on MAID when you got to NYU because I'm I'm always sort of flagging conversations particularly around DPs where you have there are DPs who recognize the value of the camera being a part of story, and there are DPs who recognize the technical achievement of capturing what the story is. And there's some line, some kind of gray area between the 2. So I'm curious your perspective. I mean, watching your stuff, it it very much feels like you're in the room with people, and then you pick this movie that we're going to be talking about in a bit, which feels like the camera's so much a part of the conversation.
Pete Wright:
It's gonna push people off the bat. And so I'm curious your take on on what role camera has in narrative.
Andrew Wonder:
I think, you know, from starting from a place, you know, before YouTube and social media when it really was just alone in the woods with a camera, the lesson I took from it is that as a filmmaker, your most powerful tool is the emotional distance you put between your audience and subject. Like, this conversation is way different than this conversation, even though my camera just decided it wasn't. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It it wants you to be a part of the conversation. Don't worry.
Andrew Wonder:
And, you know, and focal lengths streaming. I don't think any of it matters as much as that, you know, that physical distance decision. And so for me, it's like, again, it's what's beautiful about film is that we can have different intentions. 1 can be just Xeroxing other films. 1 could be waiting for inspiration, and we can get great films out of all of it.
Andrew Wonder:
I'm an organic person. For me, it comes from eye contact. I think you shoot with your ears and your heart. You know, by the time it's like a bullet, by the time you see it, the moment's already over. And so for me, that's how the camera paints.
Andrew Wonder:
That's how it becomes a paintbrush is being in those moments. It's funny. I've been building them again. My first films I made were with eyeglass cameras for this reason, because I love the feeling as a director that I could be here in a scene, and then when it got too intense, just get up and walk away for a minute and take a breath. And so the camera's relationship to subject is cinema to me, you know, and and using it and because what is it?
Andrew Wonder:
There's what's in the frame, There's what's the audience doesn't know is in, you know, outside the frame and what they think is outside the frame. And there's a lifetime of cinema in just those three tools.
Pete Wright:
What are your expectations when working with a director who has, has their own intentions around how to use the frame? I mean, do you do you bring the the baggage of expectation that you are playing a certain role in that partnership, or is there you know, do you work with directors who are like, please do what you're told?
Andrew Wonder:
You know, I've had such a funny career in that way. You know, I was I started working when I was so young after MTV. I was shooting features when I was at NYU for Michael Amoreda, and and I was shooting all sorts of stuff. And after school, I I kinda quit it. I was early YouTube.
Andrew Wonder:
A rapper threatened to kill me and my family. Paul Schrader was looking for someone to show him what the kids were doing. And I kinda quit cinematography to take this gig typing Paul's scripts from his, basically, word processor into the computer for him.
Pete Wright:
That's a different job.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, yeah. And and you know what? It was the last writers' strike. I was a union camera assistant. I was shooting movies, and the strike was coming.
Andrew Wonder:
And I was like, I don't know. I just wasn't enjoying it. I just wasn't finding the inspiration still. And and and when I took the job of Paul, I really started seeing it as art. You know, and that's when I made Undercity.
Andrew Wonder:
I would work for Paul all day and I'd break into subway tunnels at night. And then I was doing parkour on the weekend, and it was a great time of freedom. And so and what I've really taken from it is that cinema is an act of service. We do this for ourselves, but we do it to communicate with the world. Like, think we're we live in a time where nothing makes sense.
Andrew Wonder:
You know, we woke up in a future we don't understand. If there was ever a time for narrative to have an impact, it's like, who's gonna tell us how to live, Elon Musk or the artist? You know, it's really like we're in a battle right now, whether we wanna keep making our industrialized content or not, you know, and and these la next 10 years against the robots are really gonna make a difference. So I think of this as an act of service, and I just wanna make cinema that gives value back to cinema. I want this to live past my generation.
Andrew Wonder:
I want people to love this. I want this to have form and value, you know, forever. And so when I'm a cinematographer, it's it's honestly a relief because I I shoot for myself, and so I'm used to doing both jobs. And so when I get the chance to actually, support someone's vision, You know, it's great to be the cinematographer I don't have, if that makes sense.
Andy Nelson:
Sure.
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. You know, and and work that way. And for me, it's really, you know, I'm very lucky. I have a lot of experiences I've been working since I was so young in so many different facets. I just try to give as much of it as I can to help aid that intention.
Andrew Wonder:
You know, some filmmakers need more of it, some don't. Like, Paul and I have such a specific relationship. It's different than the Kevin Bacon movie I just did versus when I shoot for people I've known for years. So it's that's the beauty of it is that you don't learn when you're directing. But when you're shooting, you you see the impact of decisions on the process.
Andrew Wonder:
You see the impact of relationships to the process. So so it's a long answer, but when it comes to it, you know, that's that's where I look at is what what's the act of service I need to do to bring value to cinema in this role and relationship?
Andy Nelson:
Talk a little bit about your, about O Canada. This is the one that, you most recently worked with Paul Schrader, and it's, it's currently, having its run right now. And, I'm very curious to see this. I'm I'm very curious to kind of check it out because I think Paul can be such an interesting filmmaker in the way that he writes his scripts and tells his stories. What were some of the specifics as far as, like, in the conversations that you were having as far as the like, how you're gonna go about go about capturing this specific vision for this film?
Andrew Wonder:
This was a funny one. You know? Paul and I have been a part of each other's processes for almost half my life now, since I started typing those scripts. We've we've co directed films. We made a film for the Venice Film Festival that opened it.
Andrew Wonder:
We've I've shot for him. I've done second unit. I've read all the scripts. I've been in the edits for a lot of these films. And so I've always been around these years.
Andrew Wonder:
His last film to make it to Khan, Dog Eat Dog, I worked on. I did a lot of work with him on it. I did the 2nd unit. And so I've always been around, and he was moving back to New York. He moved back to Manhattan, and we'd reconnected.
Andrew Wonder:
And I just made a documentary with a friend who had gotten a kidney transplant from his mom. And he didn't know how to say thank you or how to explain his guilt. So we made a film. It was very you know, we lived in it with him for a couple of days. I made that film, and I sent it to Paul before the dinner.
Andrew Wonder:
And I was like, Paul, I'll make it this. And he runs into dinner with his assistant. He runs and he sides the table. He's like, how do you do that? Did you cowboy that?
Andrew Wonder:
Did you plan it? And I'm like, I don't know. Paul, do you know, this is how I do it. And he was like, alright. I'm gonna send you a script.
Andrew Wonder:
How would you approach it? I was like, oh, this I haven't had this conversation before. So he sent me the script to O Canada, which he was finishing adapting for Russell Banks' book. And I knew Russell, and I knew how close their relationship was. So I knew there was power to it.
Andrew Wonder:
And when I read it, I saw a couple of things I had seen in a Paul Schrader script before after reading them for 20 years, which is I saw him. Every time I'd see I'd read a Paul Schrader script, the second it got close to him, those pages were always gone before an audience saw it. And somehow I think Russell gave a gift of allowing because they were friends. You know who's the filmmaker Russell knew. And I think that Russell, by grace or by accident, gave Paul a vehicle to express himself in a way that I hadn't seen before.
Andrew Wonder:
It also it jumped around all these time periods, and it had done all it does all the stylistic stuff, which is very not in the Schrader, you know, man in the room wheelhouse. It was part when I was helping him on Master Gardener and posted. I kept saying I was like, Paul, you know, you you wrote a 2 character story. You can't make it like a 1 character story anymore. And so when I saw that those challenges were coming for him visually and I saw the emotional connection, I said, okay.
Andrew Wonder:
There's something here. And so I came into dinner and I pitched him the aspect ratios, the black and white. I said, you know, there's a language we can create to this. Honestly, with no expectation, I just thought I was helping my mentor out with, like, solving a problem. And just halfway through the dinner, he's like, why don't you shoot it?
Andrew Wonder:
I had just sold my commercial production company that I had been directing at and running, and I was kind of at, like, a loss of faith in myself anyway in that moment. And it kinda felt like, well, I've been doing all this stuff, like you were saying, while we watch these movies. I've been doing all this to make a movie. Maybe I'll never get to make another movie. And so when Paul gave the chance, I was like, alright.
Andrew Wonder:
Let me bring the fire. It's like, I know him as a person better than as a filmmaker. And so I said, alright. If I can bring the person, if I could just push this a little bit and bring the person I know. And then I met Richard, and we started doing makeup tests, and I started seeing how much of himself he was bringing.
Andrew Wonder:
I was like, alright. There's there's something here. It's like, it's more human than what Paul's used to making, but, you know, that's what I do. I do the human stuff. And so it's like, alright.
Andrew Wonder:
Maybe that's the gift I can give back Paul is that I can give myself and I can give this side of me and maybe that will allow a different side of him to come out. And that's part of what I think is what helped, you know, there was a lot of us gunning that way, you know, and I think. But we have a very personal relationship. And so this was, you know, this is accumulation of 20 years of my life doing this film with him.
Pete Wright:
Andrew, I feel like you tried to sneak something by us, and I want you to know I caught it. You said you were at a point where you were in a a crisis of of faith yourself in your own place, and I'd like to hear more about that. You've created some wonderful work. Where did where did that come from? Because it makes O Canada sort of rehabilitative.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, it was very, cathartic. Rehabilitative is a great, you know, because it really brought me back to movies. I had made a film feral. It was, we went back into the subway tunnels for it. I was very proud of it.
Andrew Wonder:
Had some tough producer problems, some tough distribution problems that came out during the pandemic on there was a blackout Tuesday that was, like, where all media shut down to support Black Lives Matter, which was a great cause, but an unfortunate day to have your film released. Wow.
Pete Wright:
You
Andrew Wonder:
know, and so and I started a commercial production company with a partner and, you know, commercials have become a bread and butter. You know, it's, it's hard. I mean, it's like, nephold babies come up for a reason. It's like, if you don't come from this industry, if you don't come from the wealth, you have to build it. You know, it was a hard fact I faced leaving film school trying to create, and so commercials were after I worked for Paul, I taught high school for a year, and I came back so in debt.
Andrew Wonder:
That's where I discovered commercial directing. It got me out of it. It got me my home. So I started this company to keep building a life, but honestly, it just took me away from the things I loved about movies. It was part the business relationship.
Andrew Wonder:
It was part, I, I work in an eccentric way. And so I thought, oh, if I had 9 directors, match what we could do. And then when I discovered that not everyone works my way and that not all my stuff is applicable to everyone, it was a great lesson as an artist. But, you know, so it was kind of after a few years, it just wasn't feeling right. The business relationship wasn't feeling right.
Andrew Wonder:
I wasn't getting near films and I just, I don't know, I had to get out of it. I had done all this work to kinda creatively look at myself. And so I I just left my company and sold it back to my partner, and I just didn't know what I would do with myself. You know, we went on a little trip. I just took a moment.
Andrew Wonder:
Then this film came, and it was just, you know, in a beautiful way because it was during the other writers strike. If you think about it, like, the first writers strike brought me to Paul, the the second one brought me back. You know, we were supposed to originally shoot this in June, and we shot it actually. It's I thought this was a great day because it's the day before we premiere at Toronto, but next week, next Wednesday is my birthday, and that was the first day of shooting we did on the film. So I I, you know, I spent from June to September just living in this world.
Andrew Wonder:
And I hadn't shot for anyone but myself in about a decade. So, you know, it was also like I feel like there's points in life where you're lucky enough to have the right combination of ignorance and experience. I I had a lot of experience from my bare knuckle filmmaking, but I had a certain ignorance of being back in a DP role with a big crew and these actors and everything else. So it really forced me to probably examine my job and be present in my job and do my prep in a way where I didn't know what question was gonna come from me next because I hadn't done it before. So it was just more about prepping myself with intention so that I could be prepared for the challenges.
Andrew Wonder:
It's like that's where I say it was cathartic. It was cumulative. And I feel like it really comes through on the screen too. And that's why I'm really proud to say, I think we've really created a sensitive Paul Schrader film and something that's different for him, which is why it's it's had this world tour compared to the last few.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. Coming back into it after all of that and kind of, you know, figuring yourself out, what do you wanna do having these conversations with Paul working as DP on his film? I mean, you had you directed plenty of other things.
Andy Nelson:
Where are you at now? Are you, like, on a path where you're like, I'm really enjoying cinematography, and I just wanna dig in deep and do this? Or are you still wanting to kind of direct and and, be behind the camera in both ways as well?
Andrew Wonder:
I'm enjoying the spread, to be honest. You know, it was like, cinematography was my original skill. You know, I did it when I was 17. I shot features when I was 19 and 20. You know?
Andrew Wonder:
Like, I don't know. Like, I think I started so young. By the time I was in my mid twenties, I was just over it the way you're over anything, you know, that you've been doing for 10 years at that point. And so in a way, it's been, like, reconnecting with, like, a spirit I'd forgotten about in myself. You know, there's filmmakers that actually a filmmaker, the last feature I shot, who I've always admired, you know, we're getting his next film ready in the Yukon.
Andrew Wonder:
And, you know, it's been great to find, challenges narratively and filmmaking wise where I feel like by becoming a cinematographer, I'm not only serving a film that I believe in and helping a filmmaker that I can enhance, but it's also challenging my skills. It's like 2 brains are better than 1 sometimes. You know? And it's and it's fun to see stuff that's ambitious and different. At the same time, you know, I just my fiance woke me up with a dream 2 weeks ago last Sunday, and within 7 days, I had a 96 page script.
Andrew Wonder:
So I'm also, you know, really enjoying writing and creating. I think, directing's really tough. You know? Trying to get your films made is really tough. It's brutal.
Andrew Wonder:
I mean, as as as everyone knows. And so to find this way back to cinema that's not commercials because commercials, it's like there's great things about commercials, but it's like, it's like being intimate with a prostitute instead of someone you love. It's like you know what I mean? It's like, it's not intimacy. It's it's it's your you know, you're not making love the same way and that you do when you create narrative.
Andrew Wonder:
And so to be back in narrative and serving cinema again is great. And I find that it's really revitalized the director side of me too, because I feel like I could be a part of film. And feel free to develop my work to feel free to discover what it is I wanna create next, the way I wanna create it because that film doesn't have to pay for my food. You know? I can shoot a movie.
Andrew Wonder:
I can make a commercial. And so now, like, in the Breathless way, I can be free again. And I see already in the things I've directed in the last few months the difference that that's creating for me.
Pete Wright:
It's fantastic. Yeah. That's pretty special. And and you're suddenly working with, an really interesting cast of performers too, putting, you know, Richard Gere, Newman Thurman, and then, you know, Kevin and Kira, you know, in your in your conescence that's in post now. Right?
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. We just finished the color on it.
Pete Wright:
That is all also seems to be an extraordinary shift that it it sort of changes the nature. I'm I'm curious how it changes the nature of of filming now working with people who are so such seasoned.
Andrew Wonder:
Alright. Weird things about movie stars. I didn't realize I did these films. They look different. Like, I really understand now how you can put a lineup and how a movie star pops.
Andrew Wonder:
Like, Richard Gere burns magenta. You put 3 people on camera and Richard Gere is one of them, he's redder than everyone. We had to do all this makeup testing to make him look dead because he was red no matter what you did. He lived alive. Like he's so virile.
Andrew Wonder:
It was, like inspiring to see, you know, and it's funny. Kevin burns green. Kevin Bacon in the sea is greener than everyone. Everyone has their thing. It's interesting.
Andrew Wonder:
Like, Kevin has smaller features. You can put an 18 millimeter right in that guy's face. Richard Gere, it's funny. We would do these makeup tests. I I loved working with I have to say, it's like, if I have the opportunity to go on and be part of more great cinema, like, so much of it will be from what I was able to witness and absorb just being around him and his energy.
Andrew Wonder:
The calmness, the regalness at which she attended thing, but also the openness, the hard work. I had never seen an actor take the authority of a director to a rule. I think that's the big difference on the level of talent that they they own their character in a different way. And they come and talk to you, not like what are we gonna do, but they come talk to you about what their character needs are. I remember I would go to the makeup test just to just to look at Richard.
Andrew Wonder:
I just wanted to see how light hit his face, you know, and just get those hours that you can't get watching Pretty Woman. You know, you gotta see it, Ed. You know, I'm sitting there just silently in the corner waiting, and they're probably come on and he stares and he looks at me. He goes, oh, I heard Paul told me all about it. He was so excited to work with you, how you get a light in.
Andrew Wonder:
And I was like, all right, Richard, let's go. And, and I told him, and it was my intention at the beginning. I was like, Richard, I see what you're trying to achieve here. I'm gonna give you light all the way to shadow in every frame of your sequence, and you can decide in every frame what you reveal. You wanna hide it, you wanna be vulnerable, that is the tool I can give you.
Andrew Wonder:
You know? And that is the tool to help your performance, and that's where our relationship began. You know, and it was great talking to him about the character, talking to him about these things, how we can ask questions. It it was just it was like, you know, it's you're there because you want to achieve something. Right?
Andrew Wonder:
You know? And to see that from that level of talent was really inspiring. So Richard was great. Jacob was really amazing too as well.
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah. Jacob Elordi coming off of Saltburn too. Right?
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. But before, you know, the Saltburn trailers were coming out while we were shooting, Priscilla premiered at the New York Film Festival. Like, you know, we were kinda, like, right there as it was, yeah, taking off for him. And to see that kind of, again, that movie star energy, but in a younger package. And, again, my generation, so someone I could connect to in a different way.
Andrew Wonder:
And and it was interesting to see the same things, but just in a different spin just because, you know, like Richard Gere has been on sets forever. That guy can hit a mark like no one I've ever seen. Like, a micro mark. Like, you tell him a millimeter, he can hit it. Like, it's crazy.
Andrew Wonder:
Kevin Bacon was, like, the most intuitive person I've ever seen with a camera. I did a lot of scenes with him handheld. And it was amazing to watch him shift his performance timing with my movement so that he timed you know, I had to surrender after a while to see how he would time his lines with me as opposed to me timing myself with him. And it was an interesting dance that formed. And so, again, if you stay open, you know, what is it?
Andrew Wonder:
The actors are so interesting because they learn they learn filmmaking from a first person point of view. Like, think about, like, a director or a cinematographer. We film someone's experience, then we show it to them how we saw it. And so they see lights, they see cameras, and they all come at it in a different angle. And I love creating the environment where that where those itches can come out, where you could see them scratch, but you could see them and you can challenge those skills.
Andrew Wonder:
Like, with Kevin and Kira, they do a lot of TV, and I
Andy Nelson:
was talking to
Andrew Wonder:
the directors. Like, let's do our wonders. Let's challenge them. Like, let's make them act because they do enough work every day that if we don't challenge them, like, what will this be?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It'll look exactly like everything else they do.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Well, and I imagine that's nice for them to have people thinking about that while they're on set. Not just, okay, let's just set it up and shoot it, but really processing that. And and because that gives them an opportunity to be pushed, which, you know, can lend lend to them bringing more to their performance. And I think that's very exciting.
Andrew Wonder:
And more to an audience. And more to an audience. And more to an audience. Because, again, it's that connection. It's that distance.
Andrew Wonder:
It's creating that connection.
Andy Nelson:
Another interesting element with O Canada that I'm curious about is, obviously, we've mentioned the actors, but, because Richard Gere is playing the older version of Jacob Elordi or vice versa, were they also watching each other and using some of and did you end up having to use some of the same techniques from one to the other in order to kind of, kind of wrap that those story elements up?
Pete Wright:
Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. How do you capture age?
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, it's really interesting. Also in height's another one because Richard's, like, 5, 9, 5, 10, and Jacob 7, 7, 8.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. And so,
Andrew Wonder:
and I was like, Paul got all freaked out. I was like, well, Paul, good thing Richard said, a wheelchair half of the movie life that'll buy you. Yes. That'll buy you something at least. But you know, it was.
Andrew Wonder:
I have a theory, Colleen, my partner makes fun of me for this, but I love it. It's I call it the salsa theory. I feel that we are now become so media savvy that a monostylistic film doesn't work because we're all familiar with the styles, like doing something all in one shot, doing something all handheld, doing something all in close-up. There's no achievement in any more. Just like there's no achievement in creating sci fi because AI can do it.
Andrew Wonder:
You know, what's the achievement when everyone can do it easily? The source theory is about creating stylistic conflict. And I knew the height issue was coming, and I knew we had all these time periods. So for me, it was about creating a language that would constantly create contrast with itself, like a good salsa, which are 3 ingredients, not a 100. Like, it's tomato, onion, jalapeno.
Andrew Wonder:
And so when I looked at the film, it was trying to figure out how to create that balance. So part of that was with Richard. I used my personal lenses. I have a set of old Zeiss B speeds like Kubrick used, like they use on taxi driver that I've owned 4 sets throughout the years and I've built like 2 super sets and I've uncoated them and I've had them rehoused. They're my children.
Andrew Wonder:
No one uses them, but me, they don't get rented. And I was like, well, if you're gonna kill Richard, you're how do you not kill him on your lenses? And, you know, and because I wanted it to be personal. And so I really tried to make a present for him. We use a square aspect ratio, more 50 millimeter, more just letting it be his face, because Scott Hirsch and the makeup team did such amazing work.
Andrew Wonder:
Also, I've shown you Richard so many different ways that I just wanted that square to let the faces live in it. Paul doesn't like movement, so it was a great challenge for me blocking the scenes to be like, alright. If I can't move the camera, how do I move the actors? How do I start doing that Antonioni Godard stuff where they start to dance with each other? That's how I can trick him into movement.
Andrew Wonder:
And as our schedule got shorter, you know, camera movement and some of those dolly shots that are invisible became the only way to do it. And what was cool was being we did this film in 17 days of having to be so, oh, I love it, because no one can catch you. And you have to react.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
You have to be alive with the actors. And so that was my intention with Richard is if you're living a lie, even though you've succeeded, it's cold, it's hollow. But at the same time, he was in this old almost, church that was reclaimed. So the first word that came to my head was mahogany, warm wood. So I thought cold world, warm wood, square face, old, hollow, end of life.
Andrew Wonder:
But I used these softer lenses because I also, again, wanted to contrast the romance of it. And Jacob and Richard's funny. We do these makeup tests. And after the third one, I'm shooting Richard with a 50 millimeter under my breath. I go, man, the 50 is really your lens.
Andrew Wonder:
And I didn't realize I had said it out loud. And he looks to me. He goes, no. You're right. He's like, you really can't use anything else.
Andrew Wonder:
It doesn't look right. He's like, maybe a 35. Yeah. And and he was right. He was right.
Andrew Wonder:
It was crazy on set. It just he didn't look like Richard Gere unless you shot him with a 50 millimeter.
Andy Nelson:
Isn't that interesting?
Andrew Wonder:
It blew. It's crazy. It blew my mind. But then Jacob has this young face. He's long.
Andrew Wonder:
He's tall. I tested. So, you know, the past was where all the great stuff happens. It's the natural world. He's driving around.
Andrew Wonder:
That's where I said, anamorphic. It's contradictory. You think square aspect ratio of the past. I'm like, but this is the sugar. This is the part of life he's savoring on his way.
Andrew Wonder:
You know, in that Jacob's Ladder way as the demon angels are coming to pull it from him. You know? This is this is what he's savoring. So I was like, warm. Paul's always loved the movie Fat City.
Andrew Wonder:
So my thought and on YouTube, there's an amazing free edition. It's looks better than the Blu ray. It looks better than any transfer I can find. It must be some old print that was done terribly to DVD, and that became my guide for all the past sections. It had the right cyan, the right again, shop deck, all of it.
Andrew Wonder:
It doesn't look right. Whatever this YouTube one is with the yellow sky, the blue shadows, it really got me. I tested every shadows, it really got me. I tested every atamorphic lens I could find, but all this old junk looked like, I could see the lenses, not the people. It was all, like, flares.
Andrew Wonder:
It was all, you know, like, all this shit you know, all this, you know you know, other indulgence. But this was a movie about people. I went to my good friend, Andy shipsides at ARRI rental here in New York. They had just been building a set of lenses. They took this site, modern set of Zeiss anamorphics, the master anamorphics, and they expanded them to full frame.
Andrew Wonder:
And Andy being an artist himself, added a little funk in there when he did it. And I saw these lenses. I'm like, oh. And you know, animal I don't know how much you know about lenses, but you know, like anamorphic, it's like, like, Wes Anderson uses a 40 millimeter a lot. And when he does, you see the curves.
Andrew Wonder:
Yes. You know? It's hard to get wide close, but this 32 millimeter alpha lens that Ari had built, I was putting diopters on it. I would get, like, in the trailer that they just put out, there's this handheld scene with Jacob. And that I'm, like, probably 18 inches from him, the entire scene.
Andrew Wonder:
Wow. You know? And and his face could take it. And so I really tried to contrast this Bergman like poetry in the present with this faded, atamorphic, wide angle. But, you know, classic, still in the Paul world, but using lenses in that different way.
Andrew Wonder:
I thought we had all this other random shit in different time periods of different ages of Richard. And I was like, oh god. Like, everyone's gonna get slaughtered. Makeup, production design, doing 20 time periods. And that was part of what motivated me towards black and white in suggesting it.
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Andrew Wonder:
I thought I thought it had a real practical utility, but also I thought emotionally, okay. This is a filmmaker in his life. And I was like, oh, this is fun because then we can use the language of cinema. Black and white allows you to light in that different way to light with contrast. So, you know, I could do the fifties in this kind of Wells way.
Andrew Wonder:
I could do the 2000 in this Bergman way, and I could use kind of the language of different black and white cinema to, again, tell these parts of his life. So that's how I tried to capture age by making it a kaleidoscope. And, hopefully, by creating enough contrast between scenes and images that you get lost in the contrast, and you don't notice the height difference in all these other things that we didn't have going for us.
Pete Wright:
Wow. It's that's amazing. And just like I I have a and it I watched the trailer. I'm I've got it playing right now again, and I I get it. Like, I totally get it.
Pete Wright:
I I don't think I had let go of the fact that, you know, there's this there's a shot in the trailer of him sitting in, looks like police station, and his legs seem to go on forever. Like, they're breaking the frame down, but I I don't get a sense that they're not, you know, part of the same being. That's incredible.
Andrew Wonder:
We had, there was one scene. We had a lot of match cuts that didn't make it in the, that didn't make it past shooting. Because we would set it up with, like, all these boxes and you'd be like, oh, you know? And so there was this one shot. It's in the clip.
Andrew Wonder:
It's, Richard walks towards the camera, and then the camera pans and becomes and Paul had this match cut. He was like, how are we gonna do this? I'm like, Paul, old cinema. Easy. We pan him, Richard walks out of frame, Jacob walks in.
Andrew Wonder:
It'll feel like magic, you know? Because the audience doesn't know what's outside of frame. So anything's possible. And I remember Paul, like, the week he got quiet. He looked me and said, you know what, Andrew, that's such a good idea.
Andrew Wonder:
It makes up for all your annoying ones. And he brought, and then he brought the whole crew over and said the same thing to them. That was, that was like every day with puncture. I'd be like, Paul, what if we did this? Could we try this?
Andrew Wonder:
He'd be like, why would I do that? Are we gonna do this? And I'd be like, Paul, it's just the Chinese menu. You could pick whatever you want. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
Sure. You know, here. Here's the menu.
Pete Wright:
I've just got a lot of dumplings, and today, maybe it's a soup. Oh, man. Well, it totally explains why, why you you picked the movie that you picked today. Yeah. I you know, speaking of 18 inches away from Jacob Elordi, that camera is in the face of these people.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh god. In just a wheelchair. Right. You know?
Pete Wright:
It's amazing.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. That's amazing. Let's let's use this opportunity to, shift our conversation to start talking about, Jean Luc Godard's Breathless, the film that you brought today.
Andrew Wonder:
New York Herald Tribune. Comes straight. Romeo, Asia, dear. Do you know the mail cart story with it with the opening?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. So tell us, the mail cart story. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, a little bit about the behind the scenes, how things were getting made here.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, a good famous one that I always love is that, you know, there's a New York Herald Tribune. You know, she's walking down the avenue, and, you know, Michael comes up to beat her, and they're walking down the avenue, and Godard wanted to be invisible. So Raul Godard, a war cameraman coming onto the film, they took a postal service cart, covered it, and they put him in it and they just cut a slot for the lens and one for his eyes and they had a cap. So all that on the, you know, it's, it's just a mail cart than just them walking in traffic.
Pete Wright:
Well, she's trying to the Hawk newspapers.
Andrew Wonder:
Exactly. And that's, you know, and that's a vibe, you know, this was a film. I, I went to film school. It probably, I probably saw it in film school and I just, I knew about Godard. I knew he was still alive.
Andrew Wonder:
It just, and now I, like, regret it so much. I had all these years where he was on the earth that I didn't understand it, you know, but, I had made my film, Feral, which you mentioned Undercity before. So about 10 years later, I made a narrative in the same tunnels about a homeless woman and her last days leading up to a blizzard, came out a few years ago, and I really wanted to be free. The first day of shooting, it just went so bad, the first 6 hours. And I was just like, oh god, my life's over.
Andrew Wonder:
This is it. This is everything. And and during that lunch, I remember sitting on the floor of this empty apartment, eating my cold Chinese food, coincidentally. And and I said to myself, alright, I need to do something different. This is a little movie.
Andrew Wonder:
I'm just gonna embrace what's good. I'm just gonna embrace whatever's good. I'm just gonna embrace. I'm not gonna worry about my weaknesses. And suddenly, the movie started to make sense.
Andrew Wonder:
I cut about 30 pages of script as we filmed. We kept finding new stuff. We kept going going. I'm editing it. I'm wrestling with it.
Andrew Wonder:
I'd never really done a feature on my own this way. And so I'm getting close to what I think is the edit finish line, and I find like, alright. Gotta show it to papa. I bring it to Paul. I go to his house with his wife, Marybeth, and I show it to him.
Andrew Wonder:
And and they love it. They love the performances. And Paul at the end, we're having dinner. He looks at me. He's like, yo, if you're gonna do all that French du wave shit, you should just do it.
Andrew Wonder:
I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you know, all the breathless shit.
Pete Wright:
If you're
Andrew Wonder:
doing it, just, just do it, make it a puzzle. Like, don't have to it, just do it. And I'm like, what do you got? He's like, I'm like, what are you talking about? And I literally, like, I feel dumb.
Andrew Wonder:
I was, like, admitting that in my thirties, you was a cinephile, but I didn't know I was, like, I just didn't know what he was talking about. And I went home and I put on breathless. I was like, fuck me. You know? Like, I was like, holy shit.
Andrew Wonder:
This guy did it. Yeah. You know, this guy did it. And it struck me and it really struck me, but, you know, I, I was finishing a film, so it struck me, but it kind of stayed in my database. I shared to my editor.
Andrew Wonder:
I was like, oh, wow. Someone's going for what I've been trying to figure out. That's cool. And but I I just there was other stuff. There was, like, this, world shutdown and other things that kinda distracted me from what I had learned in that moment.
Andrew Wonder:
And, you know, 2 years ago, Godard passes away. And I went back to the theater. You know, they were playing it in film form in 35, and I went to see it. And it it struck me again. And and like the Beatles, I just I just lost myself to Godard, and it's been about 2 years of just being lost in the catalog.
Andrew Wonder:
I've gone on on the way to Khan. I went on a pilgrimage to his studio. I've met his DP. I've, like, I found something. You know?
Andrew Wonder:
I found something I haven't been able to find anywhere else. I found an attitude of freedom. You know? And and as I started reading his criticism and I started reading again how he worked, I was like, oh, wow. You know, because there's a quote he often used that really strikes me.
Andrew Wonder:
I think she was this film and it shows a lot about his work, which is that an artist is someone who takes the world and turns it into a portrait of themselves. You know? And I think for me, that was from what I've done with the camera, what I've done immersion wise. Look at Dard really opened up to me was how, the personal can become so invisible the more you give yourself to it. It's not about, like, writing yourself as a kid, but it's about infusing yourself so vulnerably inside of it.
Andrew Wonder:
I mean and in a way, it's like what I also love is that I mean, it's cinemas everything's documentary. Right? Everything's documentary. If you use a camera, you're documenting someone. Whether it's, like, a car accident on the street or 2 people playing dress up, It's documenting a moment, and that moment becomes a time capsule forever of that moment.
Andy Nelson:
Sure. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
And to see this you know, and the frenchie way it started, it's a treasure of discoveries. Because with that attitude, he discovered things. He was using things, you know, he had ignorance. He hadn't made a film. He was a critic.
Andrew Wonder:
But bustling with ideas, like, when you see Wells with Citizen Kane, you know, someone who just had the right ideas at the right moment, you know, with the right people.
Andy Nelson:
I mean, the French new wave, you know, I just had a whole conversation about that over on the the Cinemascope podcast. So it was it's fitting that you picked this, having, with me having just watched this and a whole bunch of other French new wave that's very fresh in my mind, but it's such an interesting group of people, all of them pushing so many interesting ideas, breaking away from the staid expected way for that the French industry was making films that they found incredibly, boring, and they wanted to try infusing it with, you know, new directions, new life, new new ways to use the camera, new ways to edit, new ways to integrate your actors in the space they're in with the way that the camera, is moving as well. And and I think that's what's so interesting about this. And just, like, rewatching it for this, it was I was reminded yet again how funny it is that the very first thing we see or we hear is Michelle saying, after all, I'm an asshole. And you're kind of like, start the movie off with that, and you're getting this sense of like, oh, okay.
Andy Nelson:
This is the guy I'm gonna be following for the next hour and a half. Where am I gonna be going? And just, like, giving us something that feels already just so different. And he you know, it's not very long after that. He's looking right into the camera as he's driving and, like and and we're getting something that felt so different.
Andy Nelson:
And I think that was, we saw a lot of that with all of the French new wave, but this film, I think there's there's a lot of that that Godard was really playing with.
Andrew Wonder:
It's so fake. It's real. Yeah. You know? And I think there's a beauty to that, and I think and it's like, and I think what's important with the French New Wave is that they loved cinema, and they saw what they loved dying.
Andrew Wonder:
You know? And they came to with new energy to save it. I think we give the seventies in America way too much credit on on its influence of a cinema. Because, I mean, think about it. What did they really do?
Andrew Wonder:
They just industrialized and commercialized European cinema from the sixties.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. You know? And you go back to 1960 and think you have Breathless, Pick Pockets, Psycho, and Peeping Tom all come out the same year.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right?
Andrew Wonder:
10:10 years after existentialism. You know what? Sartre, the end of the forties, just blows up the world with existentialism. And 10 years later, we see the first people wrestling with the ideas of psychology, internal monologue, motivation, and actually wrestling with it. It's like Bertolucci.
Andrew Wonder:
Bertolucci is the son of a poet who didn't wanna do poetry to be in his father's shadow, so he picked a new art form. You know, these people were solving problems. They were answering questions with a form they didn't understand by punching their way through it. They weren't taking images of images. They were taking images of the world.
Andrew Wonder:
And I think what the seventies began, which is the cancer we're stuck with now, is taking images of images and thinking that's as good as actually answering questions about the natural world.
Pete Wright:
The the movie seems to have I mean, to your point about being so fake, it's real. There it seems to have a propulsive nature to it as if they collectively were so immersed in getting their messages out that they didn't care to take time to do the things that cement modern blockbusters as blockbusters. They the violence is just skipped frames. We get people hit by cars that aren't hit by cars. We see them off it happens off camera, and then we the camera, we're suddenly see them and they're lying on the ground.
Pete Wright:
But we don't have time to see them because we have to get to this, like, 15 minutes straight conversation about how badly this guy needs to sleep with her and how much she does not want to give him the time of day right now and eventually relents. It is extraordinary that that is given so much space to breathe, and we're in bed with these people. And the stuff that we are focused on now, how critical we are of the action in movies and how much time and space we give action in movies, that it felt like Godard just didn't care about. He was like, that's not the important part.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, and do you know do you know the story of where the jump cuts came from? Do you guys know this one? Yeah. I agree. The jump cuts avenue?
Pete Wright:
It's it's why you're here, Andrew.
Andrew Wonder:
Teach us. Oh, it's my it's just so it's so silly, but so good, which is that, you know so the first cut of the film is 2 and a half hours long. You can read all the Richard Brody. Richard Brody's book is just incredible. Everything is Cinema.
Andrew Wonder:
It's just incredible. The stories I don't know. There's a lot of great books, but Richard Brody's is really good. And and part of a lot of what they talk about is that the you know, Chauffeur wrote an outline, Godard wrote a script, and then he got the set, he threw it away, and he improvised every day. You know, he just made it up and kept going.
Andrew Wonder:
He would write the lines in the morning if the actors could memorize them because it's all out of sync sound. They dubbed it later. And the first cut was 2 and a half hours, and the the the producer was like, no. We have to deliver a 90 minute cut. And he went to Melville, you know, Army of Shadows Melville who plays the the author in the film amazingly.
Andrew Wonder:
And and Melville is like, oh, you know, you just gotta cut some of the scenes. You know, you gotta cut out the stuff that doesn't matter. And Gajar just was like, okay. I'm not doing that.
Pete Wright:
Oh, no.
Andrew Wonder:
He made it breathless. He instead of cutting out scenes, he cut out all the dead moments. And it's something and it's something that really strikes me. And I think we forget about the when we use the jump cuts now, we forget the intention of snap. Like, you know, what is cinema?
Andrew Wonder:
Is cinema the story in your head? Is cinema the storyboards? And I think for some of us, cinema is, like, I went punching every day, and this is the best 90 minutes I came back with. You know? And I think there's a certain ferocity.
Andrew Wonder:
I think Scorsese also does this well, which is, like, being so focused on performance and energy that anything that takes away from that, like the time it takes for a gunshot to happen or the or there's a scene where Michael is going to steal a car, and you see the guy walking behind him, and they cut right before he says anything. It's like you don't need the scene. Richard Brody talks a lot about how it's an action film in the way that Goddard felt the momentum of filmmaking is part of the film, and they made it in a breathless way. And, again, it keeps coming through. It's funny.
Andrew Wonder:
I mentioned that festival in Rome, New York, Capital Fest. Amazing. If anyone's in New York area, it's a it's a 1928 original movie palace. They bring these prints in every year. It was incredible, but it was fascinating because, you know, these are the films of the sixties are old films to us, but to them in the sixties, the old films to them were the films of the twenties.
Andrew Wonder:
Right? And so it was a real treat after all this Godard to see the films that he would see in an innocent way. And, you know, it's interesting. You see these old prints, and you see all the repairs and the prints of them making the old you know, all the splices that fix the errors. And it was funny, and that was the first time I saw the same jump cuts.
Andrew Wonder:
It's so funny how these things throughout time change things. Like, Godard had a like Warhol, I think Godard, wore out his welcoming culture. And there's, like, a dark spot in culture, you know, where you see, like, people start to get cynical on him. He was around too long. And I hope that now that his paths will allow us to kinda let go of the 100 leader movies he made that are, you know, for the deep head like me and realize that, you know, I know it's like when you copy Malick, when you copy when you copy these images, these images, you've already failed because these images didn't come from an idea in someone's head.
Andrew Wonder:
They came from intention and reacting. You know? They were just picking cafes. They were walking down streets. They were coming up with lines.
Andrew Wonder:
Like, those things came from the universe talking to each other. You know? I I really believe it. It's like when you think that what's in your head is better than what the world puts in front of you, that's just narcissism. It's not art.
Andrew Wonder:
You know. And and the people create great art that way. But, you know, to find a kindred soul who knows that it could be the opposite and fought so ferociously to take, like, the, what is it, the intelligence of Bergman and the freedom of Cassavetes and kind of cut it together in this new way?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And I I can't remember. There was a point in the film where there's, like, the president coming through France. Right?
Andrew Wonder:
And Yeah. Eisenhower.
Andy Nelson:
And that was, like, just there. And so they just decided, hey, let's just use it. We'll just integrate that into, you know, part of the story. And so that's kind of that same thing where they're just like, this is what's going on. Let's just let's just grab it while it's happening.
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. And it's it's the it's the beauty because, again, they all send them as a time capsule. Right? And so when you let moments be alive, then you capture something for all of time. It's like, I was just in Paris after Cannes, literally.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh my god. Colleen, I dragged her around. I was finding every location I could for these movies to just see them now, just to walk by them. And you know what? It's the French New Wave doesn't exist aesthetically because sixties parish doesn't exist anymore.
Andrew Wonder:
And it's like and so this is the time capsule of life. And that's where I say, again, it's like we need filmmakers now to tell stories of life as it is today because these are the records of this time. Again, is it gonna be the capitalists? Is it gonna be the tweets? Or is it gonna be the narratives that we allow another generation to fall in love with that says, okay.
Andrew Wonder:
You can live with compassion. You can live in this world. This world isn't burning. You have a lifetime here. So how are you gonna live it?
Andrew Wonder:
And those are the things I see in Breathless and I see in these sixties films from Goddard, which is, how are you gonna live in a world that's falling apart? How do we live in a world that doesn't meet our ideals? Who are we in this world? You know? And those are the questions I believe we have to ask today, even though if you recopied any frame of this today, it would have no relevance.
Andrew Wonder:
The attitude, the intention, the spirit, you know, can still guide us as we create in this present moment.
Pete Wright:
This movie makes me think on that reflection in particular, especially this idea that the people who can resonate the most with these movies are the people who were on the street walking up and down with the with the the mail cart. Right? Like, these were the people who lived that experience, and their historical view of it is going to be something they can appreciate over time. The people who are in charge of making movies now aren't walking the same streets, and that's sometimes why I feel we get a disconnect from the stories that we're getting now, the biggest stories, because the people who are who are bankrolling the move most of the movies anymore are not the people who would push a mail cart with a camera in it.
Andrew Wonder:
It's it's happened before. Like exactly. And I think you beautifully say it because it's like it's happened in the world before. Let's say the fifties were the same way. It's like we've had these areas of time where over industrial relations made us lose faith in the form.
Andrew Wonder:
Now cinema in those periods had the advantage of being town hall. You know, that's what we've lost, and that's the scary part. It's like seeing these films from the twenties. It's everything had to be a movie to be communicated. The news had to become a movie.
Andrew Wonder:
Musicals had to become a movie. Everything had to be a movie to be presented. And that peaked, unfortunately, probably somewhere in my childhood when these aspirations took hold. You know? Right.
Andrew Wonder:
And and, you know, and now we're in this new chapter. But what will be those things? You know? And it's like, is it about budget? Is it about attitude?
Andrew Wonder:
It's like, I think sometimes we have more people that wanna make movies than wanna watch them. And that's the scary part too. But on the flip side, it's like and in other way, it's beautiful. It's only bad if you worry about making money. You know, it's good when it comes to art.
Andrew Wonder:
It's good when it comes to consumer. It's good. It's just unfortunately, it's just it's you know, it's again, 20 years ago, I'm in an office with Paul watching him run into a room, go, this whole world's becoming more work for less money. And, you know, that was 20 years ago, and it's just become more so. It's like the world doesn't end.
Andrew Wonder:
I mean, r Todd in the twenties talks about the sky falling after the plague in France and everything they say in the twenties thirties. It's just things just become more so.
Andy Nelson:
The French new wave is so often touted as as something that's been so influential in so many different ways through film. And, I mean, Godard, as you said, I mean, lived a very long life. And I know, like, we're talking about this film specifically, but do you feel, like, when you watch films that are playing today, like, are there any filmmakers who you're feeling like, you know, there's something that they're doing that's really interesting that's starting to push some of those bounds that I'm looking for?
Andrew Wonder:
God, have you seen this? My first film on movie. Have you heard of this? Oh, what's her
Andy Nelson:
It's a film called my first film. Name
Andrew Wonder:
of my first film. Oh, okay. The director's name is Zia Anger. It just got released on movie.
Andy Nelson:
Okay.
Andrew Wonder:
Blew my mind. It's about a woman who tried to make her first feature 12 years ago. It's kind of the story as a narrative of what went wrong as well with her reflections now. It just took the metanarrative and the female narrative to a a place that really struck me, that felt new, that really captured me. And, you know, it was it was the first movie in a long time that I regretted not seeing in the theaters.
Andrew Wonder:
You know? It just it it was, I couldn't get into the I couldn't get tickets at the Roxy screening where they're doing the q and a, and so I watched it at home. And I'm glad because I got to show my partner, but I missed it. So that really got me. The Beast was amazing with Lia Sedo this year.
Andrew Wonder:
It's a Bonello's film, The Beast with Lia Sedo. It's it's it's incredible. Criterion just released it. I saw it at a festival months ago. It's full of ideas.
Andrew Wonder:
And that's all I'm looking for is where are films that are full of ideas?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
You know? Because that's that's what I love about cinema. I think movies are getting better. Like, I think I think good stuff's happening. Again, there's stuff that people love about other stuff, but but that's that's really what I'm looking for.
Andrew Wonder:
I'm gonna do a q and a at the Roxy for good one this weekend, which is another film, which is a great example of a little film that could, made in a few days in upstate New York about a really sensitive issue. You know? So I think these films are happening. I think the problem is more it's like I felt like again, when the digital revolution came, there was this moment where they were trying to tell us all we had to figure it out. We had to figure out distribution.
Andrew Wonder:
We had to market. We had to do this and that. And it's kinda true, but I don't know. I go to LA and I go to a party for a film, and there's 8,000 publicists and business people there. You know what I mean?
Andrew Wonder:
It's like there I don't see filmmakers at these parties. And so there's tons of people working on that. And I've really just come to terms with, if we're gonna save cinema, the artists have to be focused on saving cinema, and all we can do is just make the sausage. We have to make the best sausage we can right now before the robots come and make, you know, chop cheese or whatever they're gonna make. But we have to make great sausage.
Andrew Wonder:
And being at these festivals, being distributors, meeting the peep programmers, it's like we're in this together because they're the sellers. And so if they can't figure out how to get the best sausage to the consumer, then the best sausage just doesn't get made anymore. Yeah. That's that's that's what we face.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right. On one of our other shows, The Next Real, we just talked about the film Chameleon Street. I don't know if you've seen that one, but that was No. It's watch it.
Andy Nelson:
It's an amazing example.
Pete Wright:
Watch it.
Andy Nelson:
It's an amazing example of a filmmaker really, playing with the form and, it's a fascinating story about con artist. And it was the only film that he ever made. He won the, big prize at Sundance, but then never was able to get anywhere after that. It's it's kind of tragic because it's such an amazing film. So, yeah, check that one out if you get a chance.
Andrew Wonder:
Outstanding. An early Sundance too. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, wow.
Andrew Wonder:
Yep. That's like angst. Have you ever seen angst? Mm-mm. The Austrian film?
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, it's the most horrible it's probably the most it's like, I think it's the closest to true horror cinemas gotten. I really love it. It's a it's a also a director's only film.
Andy Nelson:
Is this the 1983 film?
Pete Wright:
Gerald, the cargo
Andrew Wonder:
Crazy looking guy?
Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to check that one out too.
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
It's on it was on Mubi recently, which is cool. Yeah. I like Mubi. They always have the weird stuff. They have a lot of good good good good right now too.
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. But they have, like but there's Godard I can't find anywhere else, but Mubi, You know? And a lot of the Godard's going away, like Band of Outsiders. It's just not in print anywhere. I had to get, like,
Andy Nelson:
a Interesting.
Andrew Wonder:
I went to go see it at the Paris because I couldn't find it. I got a, like, a I bought a used Blu ray off Amazon. It's interesting. We're in this 4 k restoration time where some of these films are are getting restored. They'll never be prints again.
Andy Nelson:
Right.
Andrew Wonder:
It's becoming the new definitive copies, and the rights are all changing.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And it's it's very messy, and it's it's hard trying to track stuff down. So, yeah, I I if I like something, I try to get a physical copy of it so I can hold on to it because who knows what's gonna happen. You never know these days.
Andrew Wonder:
No. It's crazy. Right?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I like rolling the dice. I like getting only digital so that one day I wake up and just see what movies have they taken from me today.
Andy Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
What's just been just just stripped from my library? Oh, well.
Andrew Wonder:
Yep. Yeah. It's funny that, like, you could purchase something and then have have, just them take it.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
Really. Oh, you oh, no more.
Andy Nelson:
You didn't really own it. No more. Hey. I have to ask you, especially since you worked with, Richard Gere on O Canada, but, what are your thoughts on the remake of Breathless from the eighties?
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, man. Have you guys seen it?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. I I love it. I actually really love that.
Andrew Wonder:
It's you know, my friend, Alex Peterson, I hope he hears this. He's my little good art friend. He also very much likes it. Yeah. It's a wild energy.
Andrew Wonder:
I mean, it's like it's like definitely someone got a different breach. You know? I just love the audacity of it. I love that it exists, that anyone would try to do it, that they didn't do the psycho Gus VanSett route, and they just went like neon demon with it. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
Okay.
Andy Nelson:
It's crazy. And I, I hadn't seen it. I just rewatched breathless and, the Godard version. And then I I watched it. I'm like, you know, this might be the only way to actually do a remake of this because he just they just went, like, we're just gonna go totally eighties crazy.
Andy Nelson:
Like, it's a wild ride.
Andrew Wonder:
We're gonna make a movie.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
It's, it would be really funny if I had misquoted and had came on ready to talk about that one. Right. Be the greatest curveball in cinema ever.
Andy Nelson:
Oh, man.
Andrew Wonder:
That's
Pete Wright:
all. I feel like you guys have totally ruined it for me because now I I have to go watch it. And what's the surprise now? It's eighties bonkers, eighties Richard Gere. That's like It's 8 AM Monday morning for me.
Pete Wright:
I just
Andrew Wonder:
if you oh, man.
Pete Wright:
Made in that kind of Richard Gere.
Andrew Wonder:
I just watched Pretty Woman again. You know what's wild about it because it's like that. Have you, or if you want a great cinema story real quick, look up the original script for Pretty Woman. It's called $3,000. Have you ever heard of this script?
Pete Wright:
It's yes.
Andy Nelson:
I've heard the original title, but I haven't looked for the script.
Andrew Wonder:
Oh, it's available. It's a fascinating I learned so much from filmmaking from the script because I think it's a great example of how you have to go for the jug. You know, the filmmaking process, Mandela's out and everything, because all these people are involved by the end. And I really think it's important that when you write a script, you have to really go for your concept. You know, you have to really hit it hard.
Andrew Wonder:
So because so much of it's gonna erode it's gonna erode away. And $3,000 is a perfect example of that because Richard Gere is just his character is just an asshole who picks up a coke core and locks her in a bathroom till she's done going through withdrawal, then takes her to dinner and dumps her out of the street. Wow. And it kinda has the scenes in the movie in it. Like, it's like,
Pete Wright:
but like they're walking backwards in a mirror. Like, it's not quite right. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
It's so wild and the ending's crazy. And it's, like, just like a shooting of Gary Marshall was a genius. Like, whoever just, like, read that script was like, oh, we could do this with it
Andy Nelson:
Right.
Andrew Wonder:
Was a genius. And and that's what's amazing about film. Right? It's not always the auteur. It's not always like, a great film can come from so many places.
Andrew Wonder:
It's baffling sometimes.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right? Then sometimes it's just sheer blind luck that it ended up turning out as good as it did.
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. I think it's always sheer blind luck when it comes out as good as it did.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. No. That's very true. Yeah.
Andrew Wonder:
So
Andy Nelson:
it's so many so many things that can go wrong. Absolutely.
Andrew Wonder:
And very few that can go right.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. No. No kidding. Well, Andrew, this has been such a fun conversation with you. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about your career, all of these other tangents we've gone on, and, of course, Godard's Breathless.
Andy Nelson:
We really appreciate it.
Andrew Wonder:
Okay. This is really great. It's it's great to be part of the beautiful catalog you guys have put together of artists, and, I really appreciate you discussing one of my favorite films. I hope you guys got to enjoy it.
Andy Nelson:
Oh, certainly. Thank you.
Andrew Wonder:
Loved it.
Pete Wright:
Thanks, man. This has been great.
Andy Nelson:
Do you have any, places online you send people to learn more about you or kind of check out what you're up to?
Andrew Wonder:
Yeah. I'm I'm pretty active on Instagram now with the release of the film, and I'm putting up a lot of stills and a lot of behind the scenes and little stuff I'm discovering. You follow me at Andrew wonder on Instagram. Pretty much every social I'm Andrew wonder on except for TikTok where it's Andrew wonder TV. And and then then also there's my website, which is wonder dot n y c.
Andy Nelson:
Dot NYC is a thing? Yeah. That's amazing. Wow.
Andrew Wonder:
And I got it. I know. That's how I felt when I
Pete Wright:
got it. And, it does not sound like a personal account, wonder.nyc. That's a business of dubious intent is what
Andrew Wonder:
I hear. Come take the Silk Road on the run of the road. Exactly. But yeah. No.
Andrew Wonder:
Those are those are 2 great places to find me. But, yeah, Instagram, I'm always down to talk about any of this stuff. I love teaching. If anyone has any questions about the process or Goddard, it's like the likelihood of any of us succeeding or making a great movie is 0.0000001%. And so the best thing we could do is actually support each other.
Andrew Wonder:
Because any of us making a great movie gives us all a chance to make great movies. And so anything I could do for a listeners out there, please, Andrew Winters here. Pleasure, and thanks again for having me today.
Andy Nelson:
Well, that is fantastic. What a way to end it. Well, we will have all those links in the show notes, everybody. Again, we certainly appreciate you joining us here today. And for everyone else out there, we hope you like the show and certainly hope you like the movie like we do here on Movies We Like.
Andy Nelson:
Movies we like is a part of the True Story FM Entertainment podcast network and the next real family of film podcasts. The music is chonk clap by Out of Flux. Find the show at true story dot f m and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, threads, and letterboxed at the next reel. Learn about becoming a member at the next reel.com/membership. And if your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, we always appreciate it if you drop one in there for us.