[Laughs] Looking at your own movies, is there anything you would go back and change about those if you could?
Anthony: We've always been very lucky, you know? In our career, we've always worked with great collaborators and worked to put out the versions of movies we wanted to. Certainly, with all the Marvel movies, we've done that. Wanting to change something has never really been an issue because we've had the opportunity to do that as we've gone along, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head, can you Joe?
Joe: I think we're too close to those movies. If you were to ask us this question in ten years, maybe [Laughs] we could find something to change. We're so close to them, it would be hard to pick them apart.
Personally, I wouldn't say anything needs to be changed. With Pizza Film School, having worked with someone like Josh Brolin on the Avengers movie with that director/actor relationship on set, what is it like to talk to him about a film like No Country For Old Men that obviously inspired you both?
Anthony: It's amazing. This is something we learned while working with him: he is a really adventurous, innovative, brave filmmaker. That was a very difficult role for him to do. Thanos, on screen, hopefully looks easy, but in order to make that character, the work required is really difficult. He has to do a lot of performing by himself, on a stage, in very difficult costuming because it's all technologically based to track his performance. We very specifically wanted to map his face and his body movements, and everything Thanos did, we very much wanted grounded in Josh. So, it was an arduous way for him to work, but he really embraced it as this great acting experiment for himself. What he was able to do with the character was remarkable, and we couldn't have been more excited by it, but we learned through that process of working with him that he's not only a great actor, but a great fan of the filmmaking experience, and he's very savvy and been paying a lot of attention as he's been working through his life.
So, talking to him about that experience was very exciting for Joe and I. After working on the Avengers films, the fact we were able to continue that conversation about a specific movie that we had nothing to do with was extremely exciting for us, especially a movie that we are so passionate about. It was great, and it's so funny to hear you talk about Mark Hamill and Josh, because for people like that to give us access to movies that we've known for so many years as fans, to finally start to see behind the scenes and start to understand the process of making those movies is a pretty thrilling experience and shocking one. You hold those movies in such high estimation for so long, to finally figure out how the sausage got made was a strange experience, but a fun one.
View this post on Instagram EP. 5: Working with the Coen Brothers, Thanos vs. Llewelyn, shooting an unauthorized mockumentary - we unpacked a lot in this week's episode. Watch as the always lucid, wonderfully philosophical @joshbrolin talks NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN with us. Check out the link in our bio to watch on @agbofilms YouTube channel. A post shared by The Russo Brothers (@therussobrothers) on Jul 3, 2020 at 12:54pm PDT
EP. 5: Working with the Coen Brothers, Thanos vs. Llewelyn, shooting an unauthorized mockumentary - we unpacked a lot in this week's episode. Watch as the always lucid, wonderfully philosophical @joshbrolin talks NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN with us. Check out the link in our bio to watch on @agbofilms YouTube channel.
A post shared by The Russo Brothers (@therussobrothers) on Jul 3, 2020 at 12:54pm PDT
You're using Pizza Film School to talk to us about the films that inspired your career, but what do you hope the biggest takeaways filmmakers of tomorrow will have from your work?
Joe: You can educate yourself through watching cinema. If you understand story structure and you sort of demystify the process behind making it, it becomes more accessible to you, and then, of course, easier for you to make. We're trying to take all the important lessons we've learned as filmmakers and impart those on a new generation. That's really the idea behind Pizza Film School with a bit of a wink and a smile. Ant and I make no bones about the fact that our upbringing consisted of a diet of movies as kids of both popular movies and arthouse films, so we have an appreciation and love for both, and aren't prejudicial in any way towards one kind of filmmaking versus another. Our intention is always to demystify for people and allow them the access to tell their own stories.
Anthony: Like Joe was saying about demystifying the process, we feel that's important to us because we grew up a million miles away from the film business. We saw that as something that was very foreign and that happened on another planet, and so it took us a long time to really warm to the idea that we could possibly make movies. It was not an idea that we came to very easily, even though we had an immense passion for film. I think that it's important to humanise the process for people and show them it's more graspable than they may have originally thought.
Thanks a lot for your time, guys. I'm a massive, massive fan of your work and what you do with films like Avengers, Extraction, and AGBO, makes my job worth doing so thank you very much.
Anthony: That's so kind, thank you.
Joe: Of course, we totally appreciate it and thanks for staying up late!
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