-So happy to have you here. Congrats.
This is really an accomplishment
for the first time you directed and wrote a film.
It's a beautiful film.
-Thanks. Thanks for having me.
-Were you -- At what point of being an actor
did you think to yourself, "Oh, I want to direct one of these,"
or "I want to write one of these?"
-I have a very odd life, because I started off
wanting to be a writer/director my whole life,
and then I kind of accidentally fell into
this amazing 16-year acting career,
which has been an insane journey
and is an insane journey, as well.
But it took me a long time to figure out --
I hold the position of director in such high regard
that I didn't want to just be some actor
goofing off trying to do it.
It's something that matters to me,
something that's important to me,
and so I took four years, and I waited till I had a story
that rally meant something to me.
-It's called "Mid90s."
It's about a group of kids in the mid '90s.
They're skateboarders. That is the culture.
I have to assume that you were pulling for something
from your own life because of the amount
of specificity to this world.
Like, this had to have been something
that you experienced to some degree.
-Yeah, I mean, I was
a horrifically terrible skateboarder.
I -- I -- [ Laughter ]
I would film, 'cause I liked to tell people what to do,
and I wanted to be a director.
So it was the perfect role in that group of friends.
And I was unathletic, so...
[ Laughter ]
But, you know, the story's about --
It's not a biopic, but it's personal in the sense
that I relate to being 13, I relate to being lonely,
and I relate to something
giving you a community outside of your home
and a group of friends
and something to fall in love with.
And, ultimately, this movie is just about
a group of kids at a time
when it's you and your friends versus the world
and your family is less important than your friends.
-I've heard you refer to it as an animal-kingdom movie.
And I'm assuming that refers to just the pecking order
of kids at that age and how some are more dominant than others.
-Yeah, well, the kid's like 13, and then there's another kid
who's like 14 who kind of is the first one that talks to him,
and then there's kids up to like 18, 19.
So he's kind of figuring out how to play --
move around the chessboard and figure out how to fit in
and then move up.
And I don't know. It's just -- I've related --
I kind of feel like all of the characters in some ways,
because I feel like, when you're young,
in the '90s especially --
I don't know if you relate to this.
A big part of the movie is, like,
the corniest thing you could do is try or care about anything.
And that's a big part of the movie
is that none of them care,
and it's kind of showing off how little they care.
I mean, they're pretty much beautiful morons
and, essentially, like my friends and I were.
You know? Which is like,
they make so many mistakes, they speak in ugly vernacular,
there's toxic masculinity, homophobia,
things that are true to the time
and truly hard to watch
but I felt would be more offensive to be revisionist
and to change the way it was
than to hold a mirror up to how ugly it was.
So these kids do things, they endanger each other's live,
but at the same time, they deeply love each other.
So nothing's really black-and-white,
and the movie's not black-and-white,
and I hope, if I'm lucky enough to get to do this again,
to always create complex characters
that are challenging what our definitions of good and bad are.
-One thing that's amazing is, no matter how good
a script you wrote or how well you directed it,
obviously, it was very reliant on the cast,
and you went outside of just natural professional actors,
and you cast a lot of skateboarders
to be the actors in this film.
-Yeah, and I actually wanted to finish my point,
because I went astray for one moment,
which is just --
And that's totally on me, by the way.
-No, no. -Not on you.
But the idea is that
the corniest thing you could do was to care.
-Yeah. -And there's a kid
named Ray in the movie, a character named Ray,
who's played beautifully by one of the first-time actors,
Na-kel Smith.
And he tells this kid, in a way that's not corny,
and subtly, basically, he does care
and he's trying at life.
And I found, whether I was a young kid
trying to fit into a group
or the older kid trying to make
someone else kind of care a little bit,
when someone older takes the moment to show you something
in a non-corny, sweaty way,
it sticks with you for the rest of your life.
-Yeah. -You know?
And it's really a very moving story
even if, at times, it's hard to watch,
and it's funny, and it's crazy.
-It's really funny.
And I can't believe that they weren't actors.
I mean, like -- And you tell --
By the way, I know -- -They are now.
-They are now. -Yeah.
-I know actors, and once they started skateboarding,
I'm like, "Oh, that's not actors who learned how to skateboard.
This is definitely the other way around."
-So, I did, basically, everything to make
this incredibly difficult for myself.
-Uh-huh. [ Laughter ]
-My lead was 11 years old.
You're not supposed to work with children.
-Who's fantastic. -Sunny Suljic, he's brilliant.
The rest of the cast, besides his family,
played by Katherine Waterston and Lucas Hedges,
both brilliant actors, are first-time actors,
and they're all real skateboarders.
A lot of them are professionals, you know, or semiprofessional,
and, you know, skateboarding,
which is always constantly butchered in film.
So, I chose a subculture that doesn't want to be spoken about
and doesn't want the kid from "Superbad"
making a movie about them.
[ Laughter ]
I chose to work with children, which are --
Notoriously, you're not supposed work with children or animals.
And I also decided to take on the duty
of elegantly framing hip-hop,
which is another subculture often butchered on film
that doesn't want the kid from "Superbad"
making a movie about it,
about how this music is the emotional backbone
of my and a lot of people's childhood
and how A Tribe Called Quest is, to me,
what John Lennon is to my parents.
-Yeah. -Right?
And I guess I'm comfortable in discomfort
and comfortable with a lot of challenges
because it turned out to be the most beautiful, challenging,
emotional, incredible experience of my life.
And I am genuinely --
I have to come on here and sell [bleep]
whether I like it or not.
[ Laughter ]
I'm being dead serious.
I could be on here next time, like, telling you something...
-Wait! Wait a second! You've lied to me?!
-I love seeing you.
[ Laughter and applause ]
I love seeing you.
And I love seeing you, and I love seeing you,
and I love seeing all of you,
and sometimes I have to be on here on some bull [bleep]
and, like, this movie is my heart.
I spent four years making it.
I care about it.
I love it, and I promise you, if you go see it,
you will be moved and laugh and enjoy yourself.
So, thank you. Go see it.