- The great thing about Riz is actually the first time,
the first time you sat at a kit, you were like,
"Why can't I do this immediately.
"Why can't I do this right now?
"Why can't I immediately succeed?"
You did.
- This is supposed to be easy. - I can do this.
- Very excited to be joined by Darius and Riz.
Good to see you buddy, great to meet you man.
- You too.
- Congratulations on this movie.
I love this movie and this performance.
'Sound of Metal' is the film. Lets set it up a little bit.
This character of yours goes on a hell of a journey.
I can only imagine how appealing it is
from an actor's perspective.
Talk to me how this was presented to you.
What was the pitch?
- Appealing in some ways, but also pretty terrifying.
- [Josh] Daunting, yeah.
- Yeah, so just to set it up, so the character, Ruben,
he's a drummer, he lives with his girlfriend
in a mobile home trailer
and he very suddenly loses his hearing
over the course of the movie.
And that forces him to reckon with a bunch of stuff,
"Who am I outside of my drumming?"
"Who am I outside of my relationship?"
And he has to kind of face the void, face the emptiness.
Really the film asks the question of,
"Who are you when everything that you thought you were
is stripped away from you?"
And you have to face that big, kind of black hole.
It involved learning how to play the drums.
It involved learning sign language,
immersing myself in both those communities,
that musical community and the deaf community.
And yes, it was scary, but actually it was just
one of the most joyful experiences of my life,
just because it was so challenging
and I grew so much from it and I met people
that I would never of otherwise met
and I'm just really grateful to them
and indebted to their welcome and their support.
They really helped build this film.
- Talk to me a little bit, Darius as the director
and co-writer of this.
Where does this come from?
Is there a true story this is inspired by?
What's the germ of the idea?
- It actually is inspired by, it comes from honestly,
writing's funny in that you learn where it comes from
as you go.
- This is what I'm dealing with.
This is what I'm sorting through.
- Exactly and it really is like that
and there was a catharsis for me kind of late in the game,
where I kind of understood it.
I understood what was calling me to it.
It began with a real band and a band with two people,
and I was actually doing it
with my dear friend Derek Cianfrance
and he and I were filming
this band Jucifer
and making a bit of a hybrid doc at that time.
And I ended up, I just had this calling
to write this script. I felt it deeply.
I felt the shape of it and I wanted to make it in this way,
but it wasn't until later that I really realized
why I was making it and I'll leave that a little oblique.
But yeah,
I would say, related to that question
you were asking Riz about,
the delight of getting into a character
and he was mentioning the terror.
It's a testament to Riz
because most people were really terrified of this role
even though it is a juicy, acting nugget.
It does ask something of you as an actor.
There's no capes or masks or anything to wear.
You have to be willing to be seen
and Riz is just one of the rare actors
that isn't willing, but willing to have courage,
is willing to actually step up into a place that's freaky
and do it and it's just an extraordinary thing
to see someone fill a script in the way that this guy did
and the way he took it on.
- Riz, you talk about sort of like the kind of
existential crisis this guy goes through, as you said,
kind of like everything that you define
your life by is taken away. I'm sure that's something
that you spend months thinking about
when you're making something like this.
What is that for you? Is that like taking the,
literally the ability to act, do your profession,
or is it more of a base, do you literally go to a skill
or a thing that you can't do?
- We're really gonna get real--
- [Josh] We're getting real, buddy.
- We're gonna, yeah.
- [Darius] And did you think about me a lot
while you were doing it?
- [Josh] Lets all hold hands. Come on guys.
- No, look, honestly, I think up until I did this role,
I think I approached acting differently.
I think it was about creating identities and creating masks
for me to step into and I think what Darius
has helped me realize, quite honestly, and start working
with an acting coach really, probably for the first time
on this as well and actually it's not
about putting on masks, it's about taking them off, really.
- Right. Showing more of yourself?
- Yeah, yeah and I think for me, it's like,
what do you do for love? Right?
What do you do to find love in the world?
We all want love. Some of us really need love.
If you can't love yourself,
you're gonna go looking for it elsewhere,
whether that's in an addictive place,
whether that's in a co-dependent relationship,
whether that's the applause of an audience
when you're drumming, whether that's the applause
of an audience at film screening, you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- Whether it's the nice lights and the interview
and over here and here we are on MTV.
I grew up watching it
and we go looking for love in all these places
and really it's all gonna get sucked
into that big black hole unless we can love ourselves
and that's Ruben's journey.
It's a journey of towards the beginning of self love
and that's why I think it's such a profound,
such a universal story,
but it's told in this incredibly specific, unexpected way.
And that's all from this guy's wisdom and his heart.
- Is it an added bonus that this is
intersection of music and acting?
I mean, this isn't necessarily the music that you produce,
but I know music is obviously close to your heart.
Is that a fun aspect of this to explore?
- That was just straight up terrifying.
I can't play drums. - [Josh] Really?
- Yeah. Do you play any?
- No. I barely can hold a microphone.
- But you--
- You do play, don't you? You do play?
- I play music, but I don't play the drums, but--
- It was scary.
- This guy learned to play the drums.
He learned from scratch.
I was with him the first time he picked up sticks
and you sucked dude, you couldn't even hold.
The stick was like you were holding a spatula or something.
- I was like--
- You were like--
- How does it work?
- But he actually, he took it on, he broke it down
with his awesome teacher.
- Yeah. Guy Licata was my drum teacher
and he's someone who's really highly regarded
in the drumming community as well because he makes these
amazing drumming pads for practicing on
and creates software around that
to teach people how to play the drums
and it was kind of like he was my therapist
because playing the drums is a very primal,
instinctive thing.
You can't think your way into playing the drums.
And so it brought up all kinds of stuff, man.
Similarly, learning sign language with JLS, Jeremy Stone,
my sign teacher, that brings up a lot of stuff
cause we hide behind words and when you express yourself
with your full body, it's harder to lie.
So, learning how to play the drums
and learning sign language, it was challenging,
it was joyous, it was a very intensive process,
but it was really learning about yourself.
- I love seeing also, you mentioned
working with actual deaf performers in this.
I'd seen, I like Lauren Ridloff, I'd seen her on Broadway.
She's amazing. - [Riz] She's incredible.
- And she was just cast in a Marvel movie.
I don't know if you guys heard,
she's going to be a superhero.
- Such an amazing breakthrough, isn't it?
- Huge.
- Such an emotional moment, I'm sure.
- You know what's amazing too is she plays
the role of a teacher in this movie
and she was a teacher for 10 years.
You know, your normal acting trajectory,
where you teach for 10 years.
She's that special in the sense that she's that grounded
in real life and knows how to interact with real things
and yet, she's so effervescent and amazing
that she's just having this moment now.
She's that awesome. It was so fun being around her.
We just didn't want her to leave.
- One of the rare positive things
I feel like we've been talking about in recent years
in pop culture is this increased representation
we're seeing in all aspects, hopefully, in media.
And you've been very outspoken about this,
wanting to get scripts that are colorblind,
like not looking for specific kind of people
or races or ethnicities
and just sort of playing the character.
Do you feel like you're seeing a shift in the roles
that you're being offered that aren't
being defined necessarily by race or ethnicity?
- I think what we're seeing is pockets of bravery.
And I think with the democratization
of the whole story telling landscape,
there are more and more pockets
and I think it takes guts to go there still for some people.
Speaking to people I just bumped into here from the business
who I respect are well regarded and they're just like,
"Yeah, it's great, it's great. I couldn't take that risk
with my company."
A lot of people--
- [Josh] Wow? Really?
- Still see us as a race, could see Lauren Ridloff as a risk
and it takes brave people and risk-takers,
people like Darius to step up and go, "This is fresh.
This is a fresh perspective. This is something different."
People want something slightly different.
The heart of all that difference
actually is something universal, we can all relate to.
So, I think we're starting to see a shift.
I think that's undeniable, but I don't know if it's
a kind of systemic shift. I think there's an insurgency.
- I will say, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
- You don't have to be brave to cast you in anything.
I was brave in a lot of ways, but not in that way.
That took no courage all.
I was blessed.
- It was actually just the spending time together
that took more.
- It was the investment and having to be near you.
That was tough.
- I was knocking on your door, just like there
in my thong just like let's work.
- That's exactly right and actually even while you talk
about that, I still have to summon courage.
- Exactly. You've leaned back away from me just as I--
- Yeah.
- We're just happy you didn't show up in the thong today.
Is that your default like in the trailer?
- No, actually--
- It's getting hot in here, so do what you gotta do buddy.
- I'll see what's up.
- The last time I think I spoke to you was
a much different kind of context, Comic Con for Venom.
Is there postmortem on that experience?
I'm just curious, like, it's a huge business.
Did it exceed your expectations
in how the public responded to it?
Because it was kind of like, critically, it was mixed
and then public like really embraced it.
What was your postmortem, looking back on that
whole experience?
- I mean, I know if it says more about the film
or more about the limitations of like... gatekeepers
in understanding what people were like.
The audience is more diverse than ever.
They global. It's hard to put a finger on that pulse.
I don't know if it says more about the film
or more about our ability to predict
what will and won't work
and to me that's actually really boring
because that makes me feel that we'll actually
would have received wisdom about who is
and what isn't a risk.
We can kind of throw that out the window and roll the dice.
- Before Robert Pattinson was cast at Batman,
I saw a lot of people fan casting you in that role.
- Oh really?
I think he's going to be fantastic and you know,
I really admire the journey that he's gone on as well
between Twilight and this moment, where he's kind of just
been really led by the work and you have to applaud that
because there's so much in this business
that will lead you down a different road
and I actually really have to thank Darius as well.
A kind of critical moment in my career of kind of
hitting me over the head with this undeniable script
and saying this isn't going to pay you any money,
this is going to be a really scary experience,
but come and dedicate a year to going deep with me.
- Are you excited to see, recently news that Ms. Marvel's
gonna be a Disney Plus show?
- I'm so excited about that and Bisher is an amazing writer.
She's from West London. She's from Hounslow.
Hounslow's taking over Hollywood.
- I mention this because you went on record of being
really excited about that as a potential prospect.
- Yeah, yeah. I just think,
let's just tell some fresh stories, man.
That's what the world wants and there's so many out there
waiting to be told and I think 'Sound of Metal'
actually is in many ways is an untold story.
It's about someone who exists in that limbo space
between the hearing world and the deaf world.
It's about portraying deafness, not as a disability,
but as an identity and as a community
and it's something to be proud of.
It's a musical about self love.
There's 10 of those that get made every year.
- [Josh] Totally.
- It's one of those.
- Exactly, a genre onto itself, right?
Another one of those.