- Hello, I'm Anthony Russo.
- I'm Joe Russo.
And this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
[upbeat music]
- I would say that our number one note is,
"Do it again faster.
Action."
[upbeat music]
- Okay.
- Board number one here.
What are the Russo brothers
- [Both] known for?
- Their devastating good looks.
Remember online back in the day.
- Oh the plumbing company?
- There are plumbers in New Jersey,
the Russo Brothers. - [Joe] Yes.
- And then there's a pair of like I think Italian singers.
- They were the original.
What are the Russo's brothers
- [Joe and Anthony] favorite movies?
Anything by Sergio Leone.
Anything by Truffaut.
Anything by Coppola.
- [Both] Scorsese.
- Kubrick.
The Bowery Boys.
David Lane.
Any Abbott Costello films.
I would watch. - It's almost embarrassing
to name our favorite movies.
Because I feel like they're all the great movies.
- They are.
What if the Russo brothers directed Justice League?
I think people conflate DC in Marvel.
- What if, oh,
it's a play off the Marvel series.
What if. - Is it?
- I don't know how to answer that.
- See the Snyder cut.
That's the definitive cut.
- Yeah. - You don't need
to see anything else.
What did the Russo brothers do on Community?
What didn't we do on Community?
- The plumbing. - We executive produced
that show.
We directed a lot of the episodes.
Cast that pilot.
Costumed it, designed it, shot it.
We miss Community.
We missed our Community family.
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- Everybody but Chevy Chase.
- Amazing run, yeah. - We miss you too Chevy.
Not really.
What...
- Questionable.
- What happened to the Russo brothers.
I don't know what-
- What didn't happen.
- It's like a year and a half after Endgame.
And they're like,
"What happened to those guys?"
- It might be that band in Milwaukee
that they're referring to.
- Remember when they hit their peak with Endgame
and then they just fell off the map.
All right.
How were the Russo brothers
- [Anthony] Discovered?
- We were at a film festival called Slam Dance in 1997.
That's BC.
And we had a film called Pieces.
That was a very non-linear experimental movie
that only Soderbergh would love.
And he did.
And he helped us get our next film made,
Welcome to Collinwood.
And here we are.
- [Both] How many films have the Russo brothers directed?
- We know the answer to this.
- [Joe] Directed. - A lot.
- Under 10.
But there's a lot of TV shows in there.
There's a lot of commercials.
How do the Russo brothers direct actors?
- Very carefully.
- You have to.
We like to keep the actors from thinking too much.
So we do give very concise directorial notes.
Most of our work is done in prep with them.
So when they get to set,
they're ready to go.
- We love actors.
And we spend a lot of time
speaking with them prior to shooting.
To sort of develop
common understanding of the character,
common understanding of the film.
What we're going for.
- Then when we get to set,
we like to move fairly quickly.
- One of us will try to confuse somebody.
And then the other one will come in,
and try to clear it up.
- We'll give them contradictory notes
to see who they like better.
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- [Joe] You got that one. - How
much does a Russo brothers
- [Both] movie cost?
- I don't think we can answer that.
- A little embarrassing to answer that question.
- You're on the pricey side.
I think we're at that point
where there's only so much money you can spend.
And anything other like beyond that is irresponsible.
- No matter how much money you have,
you eventually run out.
- [Joe] 1, 2, 3. - How many
Russo brothers are there.
[Anthony laughing] - Zepo, Harpo, crowd show.
- We like to point out the name Russo
is similar to the name Jones in Italian.
In the sense there's a lot of them.
- What does the Russo brothers Agbo mean?
- Agbo. - Agbo is an interesting story
that predates our time in the film business.
- [Anthony] Yeah. - Ant and I
were working on a comedy show
at a school we were both attending.
We thought a great way to attract attention
for this midnight comedy show
we were doing on campus.
Was to have a very grumpy local resident
write a really shitty review.
- But everything he hated about the show
is everything we loved about the show.
- So we opened a phone book
and basically just scanned through it
until we found the name Gozy Agbo.
And Gozy Agbo became that angry local resident
who trashed our show.
- What I like about our-
The name of our company the most, Agbo.
Is it makes me feel like I'm at the eye doctor
and I have to read the chart.
- [Joe] What is the Russo brothers style?
- Smooth.
- Yeah.
- Cool under pressure.
- Bond-esque.
A common thread in our style
is that we like to not have a common thread.
Something Soderbergh taught us very early on
when he was mentoring us,
was don't let the world pigeon hole you.
Don't let them put you in a box.
We zig and zag as much as we possibly can.
And it's more compelling to us
to leave a trail of confusion.
- [Anthony] What are the Russo brothers
- [Both] influences?
- When we first started making movies together.
If you forced us to say our favorite filmmaker,
Truffaut might have come out of our mouth.
- I think so.
He was the best at balancing humor and tragedy.
- [Anthony] What Marvel movies
have the Russo brothers directed?
- I mean I think the easier answer
is you just Google that.
So go Google it.
Okay, are the Russo brothers.
I mean, that's like very philosophical.
Are the Russo brothers
- [Both] done with Marvel.
- Ah man.
That's a shitty question [Anthony laughs]
We're not gonna answer that question.
Are the Russo brothers good directors?
- Another shitty question. - I mean.
It's another shitty one.
And that really is a subjective question.
- Yeah. - So I think
you'd have to answer that for yourselves.
Or go to Twitter
and let someone else tell you.
Are the Russo brothers auteurs?
No, we're not actually.
We don't like the notion of auteur filmmaking.
Because there are thousand people
that work on a movie.
You sit at the film and you watch the credits roll.
We reject the auteur theory.
How do you like that?
Are the Russo brothers
- [Anthony] releasing a six hour Endgame?
- I think the longest we ever had,
it was like 3 hours and 40 minutes.
- If we did a super cut of Infinity War and Endgame,
we, there'd probably- - Could probably
between the two.
It could be a six hour cut.
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- I think those 40 minutes
deserve to be on the editing floor.
- Yeah.
That's why they went there
in the first place.
- You have the director's cut.
- Yeah. - That's it.
There's nothing else, sorry.
- Yeah.
Why the Russo brothers?
- [Joe] Why were the Russo brothers hired?
- I would put the question.
Were we in fact hired?
- Do we even exist?
- I don't know.
- Are we sitting here right now.
- I'll tell you this,
a few times that I've been hired.
It's because I really know how to bus tables.
- [Joe] Why do the Russo brothers direct together?
- [Anthony] Oh.
- Because it's better than directing apart?
- We learned how to make movies together.
And I think that we just began
a process with one another
that just continued to grow.
- Why did the Russo brothers kill Loki?
He deserved to die.
That's all we're saying on that.
Why did the Russo brothers
- Kill iron man?
Ah, geez.
- [Joe] He deserved to die. - I see where
this is going now.
- He deserve to die.
[Anthony sighs]
Why did the Russo brothers
- [Anthony] hate the Hulk?
This is... - We nerfed the Hulk.
We nerfed him.
We just didn't know what to do with him.
We were like,
"What, this big powerful character.
What we do with this big powerful character?"
- Can you find out who wrote this question?
I'd like to talk to them.
- [Man] What would you say to them?
- To say to people who think we nerfed the Hulk?
He deserved it.
Lots of controversial.
- Yeah. - Marvel fans responding.
This one is just Russo brothers.
Very philosophical as well.
Russo brothers.
Can the Russo brothers speak Italian?
- Poco.
- We grew up in a very large Italian family.
Very colorful Italian family
in Cleveland, Ohio.
And I think our love for storytelling
started at a very young age.
Where we'd all sit around the dinner tables on Sundays.
Our extended family.
There'd be 20, 30 people at a dinner.
Have multiple tables set up.
Our great grandmother would cook pasta.
Then we tell each other stories
about what happened that week
and make each other laugh.
You'd...
Our notion of this,
you know, communal storytelling
comes from our dinners every Sunday.
And you know, our love for telling stories.
Probably one of the most significant influences
on us as artists was growing up in the family
that we grew up in.
- Yeah, I think so.
And I also think that, you know,
our grandparents immigrated-
Our great grandparents immigrated.
When you have a family with an immigrant history.
There's a journey inherent in the family story
that you came from somewhere
and you're going to somewhere.
And that there's sort of like those big questions
about identity and purpose.
That sort of spoke
to our larger interest in storytelling.
- [Joe] Russo brothers.
- [Both] New movie, The Gray Man.
- Starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.
It's an action thriller.
It derives from our love of action thrillers
as kids and film fans growing up.
We like complex thematics.
We think there's some really interesting
modern thematics in the movie.
It's one of those movies where we hope, you know,
if you are eating your popcorn in the theater
that you forget to eat it
for most of the movie.
Or if you're at home watching it
that you put down your cell phone.
- What distinguishes this movie most
from the action that we've done before
is that it's more grounded in the real world.
It's not a sci-fi world.
It's not a fantasy world.
It's the world we all live in.
While there's many dimensions of the story
that are larger than life.
It still stays tethered
to what human beings are capable of and limited by.
- [Joe] Did the Russo brothers
- [Both] go to film school?
- That's an interesting question.
- Yes and no.
- 'Cause we made a movie.
We made a fir-
Our first movie in independent film
before we went to film school.
Then we went to film school
to use their equipment to finish the movie.
Then we took that film to-
While we're film school to Slam Dance,
got discovered by Soderbergh.
Stephen Soderbergh.
Dropped out of film school.
So we really never finished film school.
- Yeah.
We did it a bit backwards.
But I will say this.
I think we both really appreciated our time there.
- We did.
So who did the Russo brothers say is the strongest Avenger?
We said, Wanda, at one point.
Captain Marvel, another point.
Thor.
- Certainly never said it's the Hulk.
- Certainly not the Hulk.
He'd be low on the list.
Like right underneath Groo.
Remember Groo the Wanderer?
He's like just below Groo the Wanderer.
All right, last question. - We skipped one.
- We skipped one, so we're gonna go back.
But we know it was the best question.
So we saved it for last.
- Did the Russo brothers make Stranger Things?
Yes we did. - This is my favorite
last question.
- We made Stranger Things.
- We did not make Stranger Things.
All credit on that goes to the Duffer brothers.
Who are incredibly talented.
Who are also twins.
We are not twins.
- Right, we're not twins.
- Wait, the Duffers are twins, right?
- Yeah, they're twins.
Yeah. - I was kidding.
[both laughs]
- I think my favorite question was,
"Are the Russo brothers."
- Google's a powerful tool.
It's interesting to know what people think of you.
And apparently our legacy
lies somewhere between the Duffer brothers
and nerfing the Hulk.