we grew up film fanatics we weren't you
know we're sort of film geeks guys that
like to watch a lot of movies and talk
about a lot of movies and I remember the
day that we told our father that he was
going to drop out of law school to make
a movie hello were the Russo brothers
I'm Anthony and I'm Joe and this is the
timeline of our careers lax 2194 yes you
if you pull us up on IMDB you'll find
this interesting title there
yeah it's called lax 2194 we have
nothing to do with that project so we
don't know why it's on our MD we've
actually tried for years to get it off
our IMDB page unsuccessfully you've
never heard of it we're Cleveland at the
time going to school they have no idea
what this project is so I am DV if
you're listening please can you take
that off you've never heard of it our
very very first movie was called pieces
Joe and I made it we shot it between
like 94 and 97 took us about which is
why we weren't working on LAX 21 into
the three years to shoot this movie in
our hometown of Cleveland Ohio
using friends and family as cast and
crew yeah we were inspired by Robert
Rodriguez who had recently made el
Mariachi and wrote a book about how he
made a movie for $7,000 we unfortunately
did not get this movie done for $7,000
it cost us a little bit more than that
we ran out of money here we did memory
we shot this that we shot on 16
millimeter we ran out of money and we
had to keep the negative in the fridge
there's six months it's a Saturday if
they're gonna black entire film we would
have lost think that the the whole mode
or sort of film geeks guys that like to
watch a lot of movies and talk about a
lot of movies and we weren't necessarily
Spielberg in the backyard with the
camera shooting film so we really didn't
know how to make a movie we had to buy
some books to teach ourselves how to do
it and I found the one guy in Cleveland
that could be
and I remember the day that we told our
father that he was going to drop out of
law school to make a movie there was a
rough day and our dad didn't speak to
him for six months but a lot of awkward
yeah
meals at the dinner - yeah it was
awkward for a period there but he
eventually came around and became one of
our biggest champions so he he became
very happy at some point we have choices
we're not here sitting here right now
not our Father so yeah this was a very
experimental genre film the kind of
movie that only a guy like Steven
Soderbergh would would enjoy and thank
goodness he was actually sitting in the
theater for that screaming said he
really liked the movie and it was the
start of our career we never released it
because we used a lot of music in that
movie that we actually cut the film to
we didn't know anything about the film
business and how much music costs so
when we went to clear leads up Linn and
Funkadelic and all these other awesome
bands we'd used in the movie we could
afford
we were sort of like what we need to pay
for this stuff really was a film it's a
disaster it's a documentary it's
supposed to look like that good news is
the safe is cracking I received a phone
call while I was living the feel like
student housing and I picked it up and
the voice on the other end said hi this
is a Steven Soderbergh show there was
getting an MFA degree in film at the
time at UCLA and I thought it was one of
my fellow classmates messing with me and
unfortunately for us it was was actually
Steven sort of where we want to eat with
him
her side Cuban restaurant and that is
Boulevard Los Angeles and had a really
interesting conversation with him he
said he wanted to produce her next film
and help us get into the business he
really liked some of the stylized
ailments of pieces and thought we had
potential and was going to become a
godfather so to speak at which point we
Joe and I went into about a three-year
cycle where we wrote three screenplays
eventually Steven formed a partnership
with George Clooney when they were
making Ocean's eleven so they had a
production company based at Warner
Brothers and we got a call one day from
the head of their production company and
he said basically Steven wants to
produce some other movies through this
company and you guys were the first name
he brought up so we sort of showed up
with our three scripts that we had
written and Steven said that one and we
made welcome to Collinwood took us about
a year to cast the movie we were
relatively unknown filmmakers with the
movie that only Steven Soderbergh liked
so it was you know not necessarily a
calling card film and we sat on the
couch in Jordan Stevens office he said
call it the Russo brothers corner and we
had a phone and a side table and we make
calls all day just trying to get actors
interested talking to agents this was in
the very like a right around 2000 I
think yeah they were there we were doing
this so it was right after that sort of
the epic 90s the indie the indie films
of the 90s so we were able to target
like some of our favorites from those
movies Sam Rockwell William H Macy
Patricia Clarkson Michael Jeter yeah I
was in Washington George Clooney played
a role in the film George actually jump
start the movie we couldn't couldn't get
the budget we needed until George
actually took a role a small role in the
film but he steals every scene he's in
playing a safecracker
teaches our group of criminals nada how
to crack a safe which was the plot of
the whole film we were able to go back
home to Cleveland where we had made
pieces originally and you know the prior
film we had made was basically a
do-it-yourself movie where where the
crew is like you can count them on one
hand so we go to our first day of
shooting on welcome to Collinwood in
Cleveland and we're shooting in this
warehouse area and we start to pull up
to set the two of us on the first day
and all of a sudden there's all these
trucks all over the place all these
police all over the place and I start to
get really anxious and Joe and I are
looking at each other what the heck's
going on we're supposed to shoot here
today everything's in the way
let's grab some trucks all over the
place he had no idea that this was our
crew and there could the police were
there for our production we literally
like we had no frame of reference and
that's scale from a budget like that to
a budget like that and get cops and
trucks by slightly you mean 200 times
the budget that's right but I was still
miniscule compared to Kath America
Winter Soldier so we had to shoot some
complicated stunts on on this movie one
of which involved hanging Michael Jeter
and Sam Rockwell from a pipe about 30
feet over the ground for a sequence in
which they were trying to sneak across a
pipe in order to get into this apartment
to break into a safe the learning curve
was steep forget again for guys who had
played just about every role on their
first movie behind the scenes now we had
to start understanding how other
departments worked because that movie
was our film school yeah it very much
was this was right after the rise of The
Sopranos and I think the shield had just
premiered on FX FX was striving to be
like the free cable HBO drama by a guy
named Kevin Riley yeah Kevin Riley who
was a real maverick very very smart
executive good time when you they were
trying to make television more cinematic
they couldn't afford like the big future
director they began looking at indie
directors for to bring to television for
the first time so somebody had somehow
mentioned to us - Kevin liked what we
were doing and he offered us this pilot
called lucky which was a very strange
comedy
about degenerate gambler and we shot at
handheld and really aggressive and and
different and it caught a lot of
people's attention in the industry I
think the show lasted one season it was
one of our favorites or even a few of
the work done yeah pilot became kind of
an industry favorite and I can't tell
you how many meetings we got as a result
of that pilot people really loved it
luckily that pilot on the hands of depth
and David Nevins and they had a pilot
script for a show that they were really
excited about called Arrested
Development what happened to my
someone cut off his little foot is it is
it noticeable
well gotta remembered you're gonna be
all splattered in red paint that's gonna
distract the eye Ron Howard said a very
interesting thing to us at the time he's
like he felt like it was really
important to try to reinvent what
television comedy could be that was the
aspiration of that show I mean and which
is which is reality television was
coming in and it was taking up all the
time slots cuz it was really cheap and
you know he felt like sitcoms were stale
and single-camera comedies were becoming
the the thing of the moment the problem
with them is that they were expensive so
they went to indie filmmakers like us to
try to figure out a way to accomplish
everything that they wanted on a budget
so Dogma was big at the time of the film
movement there was very stripped-down
film movement and Anthony I thought all
right well it's just Dogma Arrested
Development and we wrote a cover letter
to the cast saying everyone gets the
same trailer be prepared to hear on hair
and makeup we're gonna move quickly
natural way the first two things never
happened by the way but they were they
were part of the fire initial the spirit
yeah but you know we we were pushing
everybody to work at a certain pace and
we came up with this idea to use digital
cameras and these were the first it was
the first time I think in a network
history that someone had shot or asked
to shoot a narrative show
with digital cameras of course the
network thought were insane remember
this was like 2002 yeah I wanted to make
it feel like a mockumentary we were also
being very referential to reality
television which was was taking over the
programming at the time so they felt
like people understood the aesthetic
behind it yeah so they're their big
concern was like oh you guys can't shoot
this on digital video cameras it's gonna
look like crap and we're like we want it
to look like crap that's the point
that's the whole aesthetic we're going
and also the point is that with digital
camera you move much faster and keep the
camera rolling so we can just shout out
ad libs to the actors and I can just
keep going it was a tool for us to
really try to reinvent how things were
being made what budget level they were
being made at and that yeah I mean
there's a lot other to the narrative of
rust involved we convinced them that you
know that was the way to go and then we
had to get the script down from sixty
shootable I think we ended up shooting a
36 page Krabs the other thing about rest
to the bellman and this was an
innovation that we came up with while we
were trying to figure out how to shoot
this enormous lay long pilot is the the
element of the narrator which was
performed by Ron Howard you know that
narration and interessant development
allowed us in the editing process or
even in the script process to pull out
chunks of the story so that we could
just get to the funny parts you know so
anything any sort of plot that we needed
to summarize Ron Howard could do it very
quick as a narrator I think we came up
with us two weeks before we shot yeah
we're sitting in a room with Mitch going
how do we get all this you know how do
we get all this plot because we've tried
to take it sort of the other ways and we
couldn't do it there were other
technique techniques we came up with
which included flashbacks so that we can
get really quick story bites out the
narrator was the key to all that because
it allowed us to go anywhere at any time
so with a show like peer pressure I
think which was episode 9 of season 1
where I believe is Buster wants George
Michael to get weed for Lucille because
she's having dizzy vertigo attacks
there's sort of crazy episode unfolds
and I think ultimately that might have
been like a penultimate episode in terms
of all the stylistic techniques we used
on that show plus the level of insanity
that it reaches at the end the shoot
on the docks with the hot cops and and
and a bunch of fake drug dealers if you
look at peer pressure as sort of a way
to encapsulate what Arrested Development
is I think it really touches on you know
the thematics of the show which have to
do with parents and children and and in
the tone the insane tone of the show so
we just won an Emmy and Arrested
Development for the pilot and it given
us a lot of political capital in the
television space and we're able to pick
and choose projects moving forward one
script that came across our desk that we
really fell in love with was written by
Dan Harmon and it was called community
and it was about a collection of misfits
at a community college and we just
thought it was a genius idea and that
the the execution of the script was you
know really per our taste it was layered
it was clever it had really unique
characters in it it had callbacks call
for words it really reminded us of
Arrested Development a lot of ways I
should say you know our approach to
television was exactly what our approach
to indie filmmaking was prior to that
which was you know we would approach a
project from the very beginning just
with a script basically and then we
would build the show out from there like
a future director would so what excited
us about working on the show that he
could come in and create a world and
that's what people came to us for was to
create world and they asked us come in
an executive produced the show and sort
of Godfather it we came up with a very
different look than Arrested Development
we just felt like these were two very
different shows there's more of a
magical realism to community and and I
think the tie that binds on all the
projects that we work on from pieces to
Collinwood to arrest it to community up
to this point we're all about ensemble
casts and all the misfit families that
were you know either either bonded by
blood or
by friendship and community was you know
a show that you know once we created a
sandbox and everybody jumped in and
started playing the Box just kept
getting bigger and bigger and bigger we
started to think about the pilot like a
John Hughes movie and we were very
referential to to that in terms of out
the style we approached the pilot to
community with and then that evolved
like we I think once the show got picked
up and we wanted to move forward and
talking with Dan you know we didn't want
to stay stuck in that genre so we began
to dabble and various genres with that
show and so to run different episodes at
different kind of the narrative conceits
and cinematic technican seeds and that
really became part of the lifeblood of
what that show was we had had about a
decade run in television that went
really really well
and during that run Joe and I started to
think about transitioning back to
features and and we really wanted to do
an action feature and we were working on
an idea together for that when all of a
sudden our agent called up it basically
said you know Marvel has a list of 10
directors that they want to talk to
about the next Captain America movie and
you guys are on it so they had already
made Captain America the First Avenger
and they were thinking about making
another one and for some reason we
showed up on that list later we found
out why when we wanted to finally meet
with Kevin Feige and his team we had
directed these two paintball episodes
season two of community and the
paintball episodes and community were
well known because they were action
spoofs Dustin Lynn who's really close
friend of ours had done the one in
season one and then
we did two episodes back-to-back in
season two one was based on spoofing
Sergio Leone the other was spoofing Star
Wars Kevin it turned out Kevin Feige
runs Marvel was a huge fan of the
paintball episodes and asked us to come
in and talk about what we would do with
Captain America yeah we didn't the one
thing I love about Marvel is they don't
necessarily bring people in who they
think are actually higher ball they're
really just going on a creative
exploration so you know the conversation
with us could have just ended there but
things clicked and we kept I think over
two months we may be met with Marvel
over four times over two months where we
kept getting more and more specific
about what we would do with a second
Captain America movie unfortunate thing
about being asked to do the Captain
America fall is that I started
collecting comics when I was a kid I
still have my collection it's a really
big collection in my closet and I think
stories that speak to you as a child
that you have an emotional connection to
stay with you for your life in a way
that no other stories can so I think I
learned a lot about narrative from
reading comic books and was a Lord of
the Rings fanatic it used to carry it
around like a Bible everywhere it went
and I had a stack of comic books and
that's I think where the two of us
learned to tell the stories in a very
early age we had the bug to do a movie
like this and I think there's probably
very few phone calls coming off of
community they could have pulled us away
from that I think that in that
movie I think was surprising for a lot
of people you know not a lot I don't
think anyone thought of us at that point
as actual directors but we wanted to do
a really hardcore action film because
it's one of our favorite genres and
styles and the movie worked really well
and we ended up having a long run with
the MCU
[Music]
Audio ever so continuing our work within
Samba was on Captain America Civil War
we super-sized it from when her soldier
I think worked with more characters than
were in any Marvel movie up to dated at
that point in a really sort of Aria
started trending in the direction of
what would ultimately become infinity
war an end game the main set piece of
that film of course is a battle between
the Avengers had been split into two
signs over the course of the movie to
philosophical divide and it was set at
an airport in in Germany you know from a
staging standpoint it was by far and
away the most complex thing we had done
in our careers up to that point uh
anything took a good 50 days of shooting
to execute it was almost like a movie
within the movie it was such a complex
and large sequence that a lot of people
ask us you know how do we approach
action how do we get how do we execute
action I think that sequence is a really
good example of how Joe and I approach
it like we all we design everything
around character you know all action for
us is just an expression of character
and it's specific to the narrative of
what's happening with that character at
that moment in this story and I think if
you look at the airport sequences civil
war you'll see we the the whole sequence
is sort of a series of character moments
where everybody is having a very unique
experience to where they are in the
narrative at that point and that gives
us the shape and the form for the
sequence and gives us a narrative thrust
to push through the sequence
all that for a drop of blood
[Music]
you know Joe and I throughout our
careers we've always tried to find
unique ways to work unique opportunities
and unique forms to work in because we
feel like it allows us to tap into
different creative muscles and find
original expressions and one of the
great things about the MCU
is that it's serialized storytelling on
a scale in movie theatres that's never
been attempted before
so because it's serialized that provided
us with opportunities as storytellers to
go to places that you normally can't go
to in a single standalone two-hour movie
so when we realized with our partners
Markus and McFeely who are the writers
on all of our Marvel movies that we
could possibly create a movie where the
bad guy wins and get away with it it was
very exciting to us at a storytelling
level for many reasons one of which is
you don't normally see movies where the
bad guy wins but and number two is you
know we all have lives where
unfortunately the bad guys do win
sometimes so the the opportunity to go
there on a narrative level was really
exciting to us because we could deliver
people a movie that had a difficult
ending but wouldn't be so devastating to
them that because they knew that that
there was there was a potential future
there was a potential road forward
because these movies are serialized so
that was the big swing that we took with
Avengers infinity there one of the other
trends I think in our work besides in
Sambas is deconstruction we like to
deconstruct I think communities a show
about deconstruction of pop culture
Arrested Development is a show about the
deconstruction of a family of an insane
family and if you look at every choice
that the big choice will be made in the
Marvel Universe it's about
deconstruction I think that we lined up
really well with phases in which we got
involved in Marvel they had already
built the beginnings and typically what
you do and a second act is you
deconstruct the beginning and you tear
it down and then in the third act you go
the backup so if you look at our work
over when our soldier Civil War and
infinity war as its second act leading
into the third act which is endgame
we're deconstructing and Winter Soldier
we tell you that the good guys are the
bad guys
in civil war we divorce the Avengers
from one another and because they're
divorced in infinity war they lose and
and you know half the universe is killed
which would lead us to endgame
the endgame was a great creative
opportunity for us in that it was the
ending you know it was our job to no
longer think about where the MCU goes in
the future it's simply like to look back
at the previous 21 movies and provide
the most satisfying ending to that
narrative that we can so you know what a
ridiculous opportunity where Joe and I
got to use these characters and build
upon this narrative that had had been
contributed to by so many wonderful
artists through the years even through
the decades going all the way back to
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and so that was
an amazing opportunity for us as
filmmakers you know if you told us more
were kids that we'd never have the
opportunity to tell that story we would
never believed you yeah and I think if
you wanted to assess the arcs of the two
leads of the Marvel Universe cap
starting off where he did and then you
know at the end self-actualized a live
out a life with his lost love Tony in a
certain way was always fated to die he
was a futurist who always saw death on
the horizon and it couldn't rest until
he defeated it even if it cost him his
life and what's fascinating about him is
that he went from the egoist to selfless
and cap goes from service to
self-actualization so they have really I
think compelling arcs the two of them
over over the course of their films and
we're very happy with the end of endgame
we like layered storytelling we like
surprises we like to create a sort of
density of narrative that you know
people on a second view or a third view
because we like to watch movies multiple
times can find little nuances or subtle
references that they didn't see the
first time around
I think really what it is is like Joe
and I we grew up film geeks we didn't
grow up the film makers the dialogue
around movies was really important to us
cuz that's like if we weren't watching
movies we were talking about movies I
think one reason why we like to sort of
layer movies with all these sort of
interesting just not ideas or elements
is that we love the conversation that
can flow
from those kinds of things that we we've
got so much in our own lives that are
being a part of those conversations they
were just trying to sort of you know
create films that they do that seem
generate our own conversations