Director Brett Leonard on "Virtuosity", Russell Crowe & Denzel Washington

0:00Jawad MirSo Russell Crowe at the time wasn't a big star, but I think Denzel Washington was.

0:03Brett LeonardRus… no one knew Russell Crowe here almost

0:05Jawad MirYeah

0:05Brett Leonard... Almost no one. I basically…

0:06Jawad MirHe, w…

0:07Brett Leonard... Had to bring him over. He flew over, he slept on my couch. I paid for his screen test. Most of the studio was like, "Who the fuck is Russell Crowe?" Because I wasn't trying to do what everyone else was trying to do, and I was using tools at the time that were authentic to that space and the artists that were working in that space. I was very influenced by Philip K. Dick in my work. He's sort of been the p… the sci-fi prophet of Hollywood now, you know, many years after his death, because everything he's done has been translated almost.

0:43Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, The Making of Stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today my guest is director Brett Leonard, who has directed some of the most incredible and way ahead of their time films, including Virtuosity, which starred Denzel Washington and not yet known at the time, Russell Crowe. Brett and I talked about the film, of course, and its effects, its way ahead of its time thinking, but also the inspiration that he got from different, authors and filmmaker, which you'll find out in the discussion. Great conversation, not just about the film, but technology, where we're headed, what else he's up to in terms of his businesses, as well as a film that he's right now in the works of. So without further ado, here's my conversation with director Brett Leonard for Virtuosity. I don't rem… honestly, I don't remember if I watched it at the time.

1:34Jawad MirBut I did watch it, couple of weeks ago, when we were orig… originally spoke to spe… supposed to speak. And it was very interesting in the context of today's time.

1:45Brett LeonardWell, that's for sure.

1:45Jawad MirYou know…

1:46Brett LeonardI mean

1:47Jawad MirRight. In terms of…

1:48Brett LeonardI mean, I'm kind of, I'm kind of astonished myself at how completely, like, on the point relevant it is to, like, nearly everything in the tech discussion right now. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's like virtual humans, avatars, and of course, I even show the training of a large language model in that thing. I mean, it's like…

2:08Jawad MirYeah

2:08Brett Leonard... Talking about that in 1995. I mean, you know, it was because I had some great collaborators. A guy named Georg Gerber, who was very young at the time, who's gone on to have three doctorates and works at MIT in, disease epidemiology and all kinds of other things. I mean, he's, he's a, an amazing, brilliant guy, and he was a young, brilliant guy then. And, you know, I was working with him. He really saw the future like I did, and we kinda combined and a lot of those sequences came out of our collaboration.

2:40Jawad MirYeah, no, it certainly, like you said, avatars and language models and, you know, I mean, there are so many other aspects like robots, you know, and

2:49Brett LeonardIntera… interactive media, interactive TV

2:51Jawad Mir... Interactive media.

2:52Brett LeonardYeah.

2:52Jawad MirEverything.

2:53Brett LeonardYeah.

2:54Jawad MirAnd I mean, a lot of the stuff that's in the film, if I had seen the film again maybe five years ago, I would've been like, "Okay, this is, like, maybe 80 or 100 years away."

3:06Brett LeonardRight.

3:07Jawad MirBut now it seems like it could be here tomorrow…

3:09Brett LeonardTomorrow

3:09Jawad Mir... Or... Right? It's, it's just the technology.

3:12Brett LeonardVery true, yeah. Yeah, I've been living a strange experience over the last few years, which I'm living inside the movies I made 30 years ago. It's, like, weird. I mean, Lawnmower Man is another one that had a lot of things that are prescient to what's going on right now. And so, you know, I think about, you know, other storytellers in history like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I'm not comparing myself to them, but I'm s… I'm saying that, you know, they had 100 years after their death, things happened that were in their stories. But because of the acceleration we're in today, things that we were looking at, you know, 30 years ago are now happening right now. So it's, it's tripled in terms of the acceleration right now. It's very unique time.

3:54Jawad MirIt is, and the Ju… you m… you mentioned Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I have, I have had several times the great-grandson of H.G. Wells on this podcast…

4:02Brett LeonardWow

4:02Jawad Mir... Simon Wells, who's also…

4:03Brett LeonardWow

4:03Jawad Mir... Who's a dir… who's a director who directed Time Machine with Guy Pearce in 2002.

4:07Brett LeonardOh, he directed the... I did not know that.

4:09Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

4:11Brett LeonardI did not know that.

4:11Jawad MirI did not know that either, but now he and I are good s…

4:13Brett LeonardI mean, I know the m… I know the movie, you know…

4:14Jawad MirYeah

4:14Brett Leonard... Which I like, actually. But…

4:16Jawad MirYeah, it's, it's a, it's a good movie, and I, he and I are great friends now. Whenever I go to LA, we meet, we meet up.

4:21Brett LeonardWow.

4:21Jawad MirBut, you know, him talking about Time Machine and Jules Verne, I mean H.G. Wells and Jules Vern… Verne, those things haven't happened yet, at least to our knowledge. Like the…

4:30Brett LeonardNo, correct

4:30Jawad Mir... All the stuff that... Right?

4:32Brett LeonardRight.

4:32Jawad MirBut stuff like your film, stuff like, Philip K. Dick, who's written…

4:36Brett LeonardYeah

4:36Jawad Mir... Minority Report. I think he also…

4:38Brett LeonardWell…

4:38Jawad Mir... Wrote, Blade Runner

4:39Brett Leonard... Clearly I was very influenced by Philip K. Dick in my work. You know what I mean? To say I was…

4:45Jawad MirYeah

4:45Brett Leonard... Influenced would be an understatement. I mean, he, his... You know, I read every one of his books, and he was the prophet to me, you know? And actually is. I mean, he's, he's sort of been the p… the sci-fi prophet of Hollywood now, you know, many years after his death, because everything he's done has been translated almost. I mean, it's, i… it's just an amazing thing because he sure would've been surprised if that was the case. He, you know, he was barely making it, you know, in terms of g… you know, being able to eat when he was doing his work. And now he's got every m… sci-fi movie in the world is based on his work. It's pretty amazing.

5:24Jawad MirI wanna get to the, your movie in a bit, but because we're talking about this, I think it would be a…

5:28Brett LeonardRight

5:28Jawad Mir... Nice, cool way to continue talking about this. You know, we, there's always this discussion, you know, you see it during, conversations of different, writers, directors, or authors, and just people who are experts in science. You know, for people like Philip or people like Carl Sagan, people like…

5:49Brett LeonardYeah

5:50Jawad Mir... H.G. Wells, all these people, you know, to be, so ahead of time, to be able to…

5:56Brett LeonardYes

5:56Jawad Mir... Make these things, I mean, one can argue that they're just…... Assessing the society, where it's going, and kind of make a bold prediction.

6:05Brett LeonardYeah.

6:05Jawad MirBut do movies shape or do stories shape our future? All... You know, like, I remember Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don't know if you ever grew up watching that.

6:15Brett LeonardOf course, yeah.

6:15Jawad MirWhenever they were at…

6:16Brett LeonardYeah

6:17Jawad Mir... The engineering or Dr. Wesley Crusher or, what's his name, Geordi…

6:22Brett LeonardGeordi

6:22Jawad Mir... They used to have this little tablet…

6:24Brett LeonardYeah

6:24Jawad Mir... And that's exactly the size of iPad now.

6:27Brett LeonardYeah, I know.

6:27Jawad MirSo do… in your view, do movies predict future, shape our future, or…

6:32Brett LeonardWell…

6:32Jawad Mir... Is it just…

6:33Brett LeonardIt's interesting that you should say that, because I would say my main mission at this point in my life... I'm still making movies, by the way. I'm also... I co-founded a, virtual, a virtual therapeutic, healthcare company called Ubiquiti VX, so I'm in healthcare as well…

6:49Jawad MirOkay

6:49Brett Leonard... Which is kind of because of my work in virtual reality. Anyway, that's a long story, but, I... What I'm also doing now is I have a, initiative called FAST, Future As Story Today.

7:03Jawad MirOkay.

7:03Brett LeonardFuture As Story Today, because I believe the, that storytelling narrative is the first and greatest technology that humankind created, and that technology literally forms reality for us. It's in our DNA. Narrative is something that literally drives the creation of quantum entanglement and many other aspects of both the physical and metaphysical world, and I think that narrative is unbelievably powerful. And part of that, of course, is my own experience, having been a young filmmaker that made some movies that then suddenly, you know, really affected people and affected the nature of how a technology was being actually created. I definitely experienced that with Lawnmower Man to a great degree, and now Virtuosity is sort of picking up, where that left off. And so it's... I believe very strongly that narrative shapes our reality, very strongly.

8:00Jawad MirWell said. No, it's, it's... And, I mean, aside from the whole technology and shaping our te… future, I mean, storytelling is truly what we're all about. Our sheer existence is about storytelling. We are all telling stories every single second of the day.

8:14Brett LeonardExactly, and it's becoming more, and more, and more, I believe, a storytelling economy. I mean, people talk about the attention economy and all these things with social media. The truth is, what's at the core of all that?

8:24Jawad MirStories.

8:24Brett LeonardWanting to show a part of our story.

8:26Jawad MirYeah.

8:26Brett LeonardStory's at the core of it all. Maybe story is the reason for existence itself, because if you don't fall out of time, out of the great one, divine one, and fall into differentiation as an individual, you don't get to tell your story. Your story is known by the great one. So falling into time and falling into individual bodies allows us to share that with each other, and why? For fun.

8:55Jawad MirYeah.

8:55Brett LeonardFor the fun of sharing a story. And look, I think that cinema, we can talk about cinematic storytelling now, cinema accelerated that nature of storytelling and how it affected culture. Because when you add on the visual nature of storytelling through cinematic experience, you're, you're adding on a different language form that actually is an experiential language form, and we're now moving towards interactive cinematic storytelling, which gaming is a part of. That even accelerates greater this experiential interactive media form of storytelling. So it becomes, I think, a simulacra where story and reality move together until boom, the singularity is actually a singularity with story.

9:42Jawad MirYeah. No, I agree. I mean, you look at Ready Player One…

9:45Brett LeonardYeah

9:46Jawad Mir... Which I'm sure you have seen, right?

9:47Brett LeonardSure.

9:47Jawad MirI... Just this last weekend I was at a, one of the kids', friend's birthday party and they took... They invited us to this, virtual kind of like a gaming thing, and it was like a big room.

9:59Brett LeonardYeah.

9:59Jawad MirAnd this was my first time I actually ever did it, so we had these little guns, and I kid you not, for half an hour I was so into that world…

10:09Brett LeonardYeah

10:09Jawad Mir... That I was literally... You know, like, you know how you see in movies, like you're jumping from

10:13Brett LeonardYeah

10:13Jawad Mir... One spaceship to another or you're…

10:15Brett LeonardYes

10:15Jawad Mir... Running from the monster? Like, literally I was in those motions. I was so involved, and that's how real it's become, with sound effects and with storytelling…

10:23Brett LeonardOh, yeah

10:23Jawad Mir... And everything. It's fabulous.

10:24Brett LeonardI agree. I... Look, I mean, he wrote... Dennis Quinn wrote that after Lawnmower Man. He was influenced by Lawnmower Man. I mean, I have a very interesting sort of weird OG sort of position in this thing because I was, you know, the first to bring out the term virtual reality, which Jaron Lanier had coined. He's a friend of mine. Actually, Pierce Brosnan's character in Lawnmower Man is Jaron Lanier basically.

10:46Jawad MirAh.

10:46Brett LeonardYou know? Which is funny. I don't know if you know Jaron Lanier.

10:49Jawad MirNo.

10:49Brett LeonardJaron Lanier is an incredibly interesting, unique individual who has giant dreadlocks and looks kind of like an alien, and Pierce Brosnan plays him in the movie. It's almost the most extreme…

11:00Jawad MirOpposite.

11:00Brett Leonard... Opposite you could possibly imagine. But he literally says lines that Jaron had said at that time. Interestingly enough, Jaron has become a bit of a Luddite lately and is talking against all of these things, because of his own personal experience. And so it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating arena, this history of virtual reality with both reality and storytelling. And I definitely was part of that because I saw Jaron's thing very early on at this thing called the Cyberthon in, San Francisco where you went into this warehouse in the Mission District, and we all did drugs and stayed up for 24 hours and looked at all this new technology that was nascent at that point. And that was one of them, and it was very,.. It was an extremely unique experience that informed everything I have been as a storyteller ever since. It's very,.. Now, that whole area of the country, you know, which I had moved to from Toledo, Ohio just before that, literally just im… you know, imprinted this thing on me, and then that's the stories I've been telling ever since.

12:04Jawad MirThat's incredible. And you know, you talked about your friend. It kinda reminds me of all, you know, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg…

12:12Brett LeonardYes, yeah

12:12Jawad Mir... All these people. They've kept their kids away from all the technology because they know the ma… ramifications that they, it has. I mean, it has…

12:20Brett LeonardYeah

12:20Jawad Mir... Obviously good things too, like, you know, we connect, but too much of anything can just take in the wrong direction. And what, have you seen WALL-E?

12:29Brett LeonardI have, of course.

12:30Jawad MirYeah. You know, that came before iPads and iPhones came out.

12:33Brett LeonardYes, I know. I know.

12:34Jawad MirAnd to f… and that…

12:36Brett LeonardSo…

12:36Jawad Mir... Literally is our world right now

12:37Brett Leonard... Back to the Future II with the flat screen TVs and exactly the…

12:41Jawad MirYes

12:41Brett Leonard... The same aspect ratio.

12:42Jawad MirYeah.

12:43Brett LeonardYou know? There's…

12:43Jawad MirYeah

12:43Brett Leonard... There's so many expressions. There's, look, our brains absorb all of these visual and auditory and literary and cuneiform symbols which then create language within us, and that language becomes reality. Language is something that, through thought form, becomes reality. And so we create langua… we create language, we create narrative. That creates reality, and that's, that's just the nature of how we work. We're almost like, you know, holographic projectors as beings projecting a reality. And so this is kind of the code we feed in to the holographic projector, almost the film strip, and then that's what gets projected. And I really see cinema as a kind of metaphysical thing in that context. I see it as... And of course everyone now with AI will be making cinema, will be making things like this. So we're becoming where the entire, like, activity of humankind will be creating some kind of narrative construct around ourselves and around our organizations, around our tribes, and there's of course daunting aspects of that.

13:51Brett LeonardThe polarization we're experiencing right now is sort of coming out of that to a certain degree. But there's also a question in the stories each side is telling. And so I believe there's so… a way of leaning into that and doing an aikido move on it that actually makes it a very positive thing.

14:07Jawad MirI agree, and I think this holodeck example that you mentioned, I was talking to somebody about it recently. You know, we will be... I mean, it's interesting that we, maybe we are living in a, you know, The Matrix type of world.

14:19Brett LeonardThat would be a simulation, yeah.

14:20Jawad MirRight? But imagine, which could not be far away, where we can, you know, like in Star Trek when P… Captain Picard would say is, you know, create Sherlock Holmes, Pro… Professor Moriarty and all that stuff.

14:32Brett LeonardYeah.

14:33Jawad MirAnd you become, you go immerse yourself in that world without any of those, you know, goggles…

14:39Brett LeonardYeah, yes

14:39Jawad Mir... Or anything. And I don't think that's far away.

14:42Brett LeonardIt's not, it's not

14:43Jawad Mir... But I think one of the things I feel, and please tell me what you think about it, you know, this whole argument about is AI killing jobs, you know, we can talk about it nonstop, but in our world…

14:55Brett LeonardYes

14:55Jawad Mir... In the film world…

14:56Brett LeonardOh, yeah. Oh, yes.

14:58Jawad MirSo…

14:59Brett LeonardOh, yes.

15:00Jawad Mir... This is, i… is it affecting our world? Yes. But at the end of the day, I think what's going to make filmmakers or directors stand out, whether they're in the world of AI or the real world, is how well they tell a story.

15:16Brett LeonardExactly right.

15:17Jawad MirAnd that is it.

15:18Brett LeonardStory is the original technology, and you, if you ha… have an expertise in that serves you well with all of these tools. These, all these other things are tools.

15:27Jawad MirYeah.

15:27Brett LeonardNow, they may be very intelligent tools, and also one of these tools may achieve sentience. I mean, that's, that's just possible.

15:34Jawad MirPossible.

15:34Brett LeonardYou know? And that means then it's more of a collaboration than a tool. So I'm a very collaborative person. I got into filmmaking because it's a collaborative art form, and I love collaboration. So for me, the AI is just another collaborator, and I'm loving it. I'm loving it. It's a, it, to me, it's a superpower, and anybody that's eschewing it is crazy. I'm actually with my son, ha… we have a company called Maxwell Generative…

16:00Brett Leonard... And all the film projects I'm doing, and it's funny calling them film projects because film references, you know, a ce… a celluloid backing with a tr… integral tripack of ch… chemicals on top of it. That's not what's going on anymore, but I still, we still call it film. But anyway, you know, it's funny. There was a filmmaker that said, "Ah, film, that's something you get on your teeth." I can't remember which, it was s… someone like Frank Zappa said that. Anyway, but, it's a, you know, it's a time where it needs to, we need to embrace these new tools because we can create even greater imaginative worlds, and that's, I believe, the purpose of consciousness, is to create a greater imaginative world for you to experience and for it to elucidate and teach your soul what's going on. That's... If story isn't about that, if experience isn't about that, what the hell is it about, you know?

16:54Jawad MirI agree. I couldn't agree more, and I think, you know, I've, I've been in production for 25 years. Done everything from events to corporate to doc… feature documentaries, now working on narrative. And one thing, m… I remember when I was sort of in my first 10 or f… 12 years of the production, I was really fascinated with, you know, drones and cameras, this lens and that lens. As important as they are…

17:18Brett LeonardYes

17:18Jawad Mir... After COVID, m… I don't know if it came with age or whatever, st… nothing else matters to me. I have to figure out how to tell the story through characters, deep meaningful characters.

17:30Brett LeonardYes.

17:30Jawad MirIf that works, then I'm on board for the everything else.

17:33Brett LeonardLook, it's always been that for me, to tell you the truth. I mean, it's funny because I'm th… thought of as a technological filmmaker, but the truth is the thing that was interesting to me about technological filmmaking was the techno mythology of the story I was telling. It wasn't about the technology. In some ways, I'm very, I'm very critical of technology and I've also, I've also told, you know, primarily cautionary tales about technology, but it's all about what you're actually expressing in the context of human narrative. That is the thing that's interesting to people. The tools are the tools. Look…

18:07Jawad MirYeah

18:07Brett Leonard... We could nerd out about tools all day long, you know?

18:10Jawad MirYeah.

18:11Brett LeonardAnd have fun, but it has nothing to do with why anyone would watch a movie.

18:14Jawad MirExactly.

18:15Brett LeonardMatter of fact…

18:15Jawad MirExactly

18:15Brett Leonard... I love the Dogme 95 philosophy. A matter of fact, I made a couple, pieces that were in that philosophy because I was so associated with high-end film tools, and I was doing IMAX 3D and all this stuff, that I went and I did the exact opposite of that. I did… I took camcorders and, you know, lit with flashlights and was doing... Just baring right down to nothing in terms of the technology, and just trying to get as much interest into the frame as I was possibly able to do without having any of the support of technology. And that was an ama…

18:48Jawad MirAnd that's what…

18:49Brett LeonardThing, you know.

18:49Jawad MirSorry, go on. Go on.

18:50Brett LeonardThat was an amazing genre to express, but it's just one genre. They're all valid genres as far as I'm concerned.

18:58Jawad MirYeah, and limited budget and limited equipment, again, something I learned 20, 22 years ago, pushes you to do something that is beyond anything else, pushes to… for you to create…

19:10Brett LeonardMakes it unique.

19:11Jawad MirYeah.

19:12Brett LeonardYeah.

19:12Jawad MirYeah.

19:12Brett LeonardYeah.

19:13Jawad MirBut this is amazing. I'm loving this talk, but let's go back to Virtuosity.

19:17Brett LeonardSure.

19:18Jawad MirI mean, we can keep talking like this forever.

19:22Brett LeonardYeah, of course.

19:22Jawad MirBut, you know, with Virtuosity, just tell me how... If we can start about how it came to be, like what was the genesis. And, you know, Russell Crowe at the time wasn't a big star, but I think Denzel Washington was.

19:33Brett LeonardRus… no one knew Russell Crowe here almost.

19:35Jawad MirYeah.

19:35Brett LeonardAlmost no one.

19:36Jawad MirHe really…

19:36Brett LeonardI basically had to bring him over. He flew over. He slept on my couch. I paid for his screen test. Most of the studio was like, "Who the fuck is Russell Crowe? We don't wanna..." You know, what are we... I mean, literally I had a lot of resistance, except Sherry Lansing and Deborah Quilla. Deborah Quilla, who was the casting director at Paramount at the time, totally supported him with me, and so did Sherry Lansing. And she said, "Put him in a screen test with Denzel and let's see how it goes." And Denzel was the final one. He completely said, "Yes, this guy is amazing," and he supported it. That's how that happened. So it was really me bring… look, I saw a video. Someone sent me a VHS of Romper Stomper.

20:17Brett LeonardAnd I was looking for a villain, and I'm wa… I'm watching him play this skinhead biker that is heinous. I mean, he's heinous. He rapes his girlfriend and he's beating up Vietnamese people. Like, horrible, and yet you love him. And I'm like, "This guy I want to be my villain." And he, and he also had a tremendous masculinity, and you couldn't find that in a lot of the young actors in Hollywood, that's for sure. So, it was, it was a time where, you know, a lot of people were coming from Australia, you know. And truth is Russell is actually a Kiwi. He's a New Zealander.

20:50Jawad MirYeah.

20:51Brett LeonardBut he co…

20:51Jawad MirYeah.

20:51Brett LeonardHe plays, he plays a, an Australian in his, in his life. But, and he does it well, by the way. But he's… he, you know, he had this tremendous presence and this ability to bring fun into the role of Six… Sid 6.7. A lot of, what is on, is i… was on the film, by the way, was, ad libbed. It was something that I allowed, you know, Russell to explore it, and, that was r… one of the most fun parts of the film. As a matter of fact, Denzel constantly expressed jealousy. He's like, "I wanna be playing his role."

21:26Jawad MirIt… well, he kinda did play a bad guy in Training Day, which was…

21:29Brett LeonardYes, he did

21:29Jawad Mir... I think eight, nine years later.

21:31Brett LeonardAnd he won…

21:32Jawad MirRu… Ru…

21:32Brett LeonardAnd he wo… and he won the Academy Award up against Russell in Beautiful Mind for that role.

21:39Jawad MirYes.

21:39Brett LeonardYeah.

21:39Jawad MirYes.

21:39Brett LeonardSo it came full circle.

21:41Jawad MirIt certainly did. And Russell Crowe, so, you know, you mentioned he's Kiwi. So I've grown up watching cricket a lot. I don't know if you've ever seen cricket.

21:49Brett LeonardI have, and it's like watching paint dry, but anyway.

21:53Jawad MirSo his brother… I think his older brother named Martin Crowe was the captain of the New Zealand cricket team in the late '80s and early '90s.

22:02Brett LeonardYeah.

22:02Jawad MirAnd he was, like, a really phenomenal player. I… you mentioned that, so I had to bring that in.

22:06Brett LeonardYeah.

22:06Jawad MirBut going back to full circle of him playing a bad guy, now his upcoming film with Rami Malek, Nunenberg, I don't know if you've seen the trailer.

22:15Brett LeonardI haven't seen it yet, no.

22:15Jawad MirHe plays... Yeah. Oh, he plays a N… Nazi, officer who's basically being held on a trial.

22:21Brett LeonardOh, wow.

22:21Jawad MirAnd he, and he plays, like, with that German accent and everything. And it, I mean, it's… it looks literally like Virtuosity but just completely obviously different time periods.

22:31Brett LeonardRight. Sure, yeah.

22:32Jawad MirBut the way he pulls off the evil…

22:34Brett LeonardYeah

22:35Jawad Mir... Character but at the same time somebody you can sort of connect to, if you know what I mean…

22:40Brett LeonardYeah

22:41Jawad Mir... Is amazing.

22:42Brett LeonardOh, great. Yeah. Well, look, Russell, I think... Look, his performance in Virtuosity is amazing.

22:48Jawad MirYeah.

22:48Brett LeonardI, we had so much fun filming it with him. It was a, it was a constant exploration of how do we get more interest and style into this part, you know, and he co… he constantly brought that. He's a very instinctual and intelligent actor that way. And, the fact that Sherry Lansing allowed me to explore things with, like, with his character like that in terms of ad lib was very unique. She was an amazing studio head. I think it's because she was a woman. You know, she didn't have all the bullshit the guys had going on. And she w… she basically protected me during the making of that film to do some really unique things in it. I mean, look, I make genre films that have esoteric ideas in them. I mean, I was very influenced by David Cronenberg, of course, and…

23:32Brett Leonard... David Lynch and who… Cronenberg, you know, Scanners, that's a, that's a genre film about exploding heads, but it's got some really esoteric ideas in it. And so I'm always li… if, you know, people looked at Virtuosity, "Oh, it's a sci-fi action film." But if you look at it now and look at all the…

23:48Jawad MirIt's not

23:48Brett Leonard... All the ideas in it are something beyond that, and that's what to me is unique about American cinema. You can actually make a big audience film for a global audience that pe… that will be absorbed by them and enjoyed, but you can put real esoteric concepts in there. Same thing with Lawnmower Man, which was an int… independent film, but no one knew the term virtual reality at that time. The word virtual wasn't out there at all.

24:12Jawad MirYeah.

24:12Brett LeonardMatter of fact, I had to force them to put that term into the trailer. But we had to go back and re… to, like, insert it because they said, "No one knows what that is." I said, "Please, you gotta... It's about that. Please." And so they did, and, you know, the rest is history.

24:27Jawad MirYou know, Virtuosity, I don't think it's a science fiction by any means. I would like to call it, I think I heard this term once by Spielberg when he was making the first Jurassic Park.

24:36Brett LeonardYeah.

24:36Jawad MirSo he said Jurassic Park is science eventuality.

24:39Brett LeonardYeah, it's science…

24:40Jawad MirAnd I think that…

24:40Brett LeonardBut

24:41Jawad MirRight, and that's…

24:41Brett LeonardAll my, you know what? All my, all my science fiction films have been science eventuality. Because, you know…

24:46Jawad MirYeah

24:46Brett Leonard... In Virtual we used real virtual reality gear to represent the gear at many times. So, it blends between science fact and science. Or, you know, I've always liked the term speculative fiction. That's the one that Harlan Ellison, you know, always wanted to use, and a great sci-fi, a great s… speculative fiction writer. And I think that's, that's interesting as well.

25:09Jawad MirWonderful. One of the things that I will be very honest, it bothered me, but at the same time I di… it didn't bother me was the visual effects.

25:17Brett LeonardYeah.

25:18Jawad MirSo, you know, obviously this was, like, 1995.

25:21Brett Leonard5.

25:22Jawad MirBut because the way the tone of the film was…

25:25Brett LeonardYeah

25:25Jawad Mir... The effects didn't really hit me that badly, but also because of Russell's character…

25:32Brett LeonardYeah

25:32Jawad Mir... Was so dynamic.

25:34Brett LeonardYeah

25:34Jawad Mir... At the time when you were making it, was there any kind of reservations with, you know, "Okay, the visual effects are not up to par"?

25:42Brett LeonardNo. I mean, look, those visual effects are actually groundbreaking in many ways.

25:47Jawad MirRight.

25:47Brett LeonardOne of them being we did them on Pentium 90s. See…

25:51Jawad MirOh, good lord

25:52Brett Leonard... My process was some…

25:54Jawad MirI know exactly what that is

25:55Brett Leonard... Part of the visual effects for me, okay?

25:57Jawad MirYeah.

25:57Brett LeonardSo I was using actual cyberpunk artists who were working in 3D Studio Max, which had never been used on a professional project before, in Pentium 90s to make something that was authentic to what I call cyber… cyberdelia. I was in ex… I was y… honing,.. And, you know, look, this is not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. I, right now actually though, people are looking back at it and saying, "Well, that's more interesting aesthetically than just doing photorealistic computer graphic effects."

26:26Jawad MirYeah.

26:27Brett LeonardYou know?

26:27Jawad MirI agree. That's what I wa… that is what I was trying to say, and I think you…

26:29Brett LeonardNo

26:30Jawad Mir... Put it out properly.

26:31Brett LeonardYeah, and it takes time for that. But now you go back and you go, "Does any el… any other thing look exactly like that?" No, it's unique, because I wasn't trying to do what everyone else was trying to do, and I was using tools at the time that were authentic to that space and the artists that were working in that space, and that's why it makes it a very unique piece. It's not just perfect photorealistic effects, though there are some. The tentacles, you know…

26:57Brett Leonard... The, that stuff was done at a much higher level, but it's all Pentium 90s, man. Pentium 90. They're fucking boat anchors now, you know?

27:04Jawad MirYeah.

27:05Brett LeonardSo.

27:07Jawad MirYeah.

27:07Brett LeonardCrazy.

27:07Jawad MirNo, I, that's, it's, it's incredible, how time shifts. I mean, we talked about that earlier in terms of technology. But while you were working on the film, aside from the casting of Russell Crowe, what were some of the challenges that you faced? You know, whether it's from the studio heads that they were not getting it, or meeting the release date at the time, you know, anything of that nature while working on the film…

27:33Brett LeonardSure

27:33Jawad Mir... That drove you nuts.

27:34Brett LeonardOh my God. Okay. Well, all of the d… executives below Sherry Lansing were driving me nuts, but Sherry Lansing was the studio head and she protected me. She literally said to me, "Don't listen to those idiots. I got your back." And she did. I called her Studio Mom. She was, she was amazing because there was a lot of things I was trying to do that no one saw what the frick it was gonna be. They just, they didn't understand. I was... My company was producing the effects. My company was producing, a lot of the aspects of the film. The two producers that were on it, they left to do, Primal Fear while I was in the middle of shooting, okay? Because they said, "Look, you got this. You know what this film is." 'Cause they didn't understand it.

28:21Brett LeonardThey didn't understand what we were doing production-wise. Just so you know. Th… by the way, there was just a re-release of it on Blu-ray.

28:28Jawad MirYeah. I saw that.

28:29Brett LeonardOkay. And there's a lot of documentaries and, you know, videos and, interviews on it that talk about all of this stuff. All of the, onscreen effects that are on screens in the movie are real and interactive with the actors in real time, including the Media Zone scene…

28:49Brett Leonard... Which is all real-time computer graphics d… being done in real time on the set, being shot by the ac… extras in the scene onto those screens. So it was in and of itself an interactive media experience to make the movie. Again, process…

29:07Jawad MirWow

29:07Brett Leonard... Reflecting form. Process reflecting content. That was what I was doing, and I was doing it on a big studio picture, m… a very rare thing to get away with. So everyone was freaked out by that, but I got away with it. And it's, I look at it back now and I go, "Man, it's amazing we got this done this way." It was, it was…

29:25Jawad MirIt's…

29:25Brett Leonard... An incredible experience

29:26Jawad Mir... It's interesting you talk about real-time visual effects because nowadays you see that in a lot of behind the scene films…

29:32Brett LeonardYes

29:32Jawad Mir... And it's kind of in a indirect way marketed as it's a brand new technology. Like, you know…

29:37Brett LeonardYeah, exactly

29:37Jawad Mir... Now we can do this. But, you know, the executive…

29:40Brett LeonardWe had 94, man. 94.

29:42Jawad Mir94. But the exec… the executives that are questioning you, what kind of stuff were they saying? I mean, I don't want any, know any names, just in…

29:50Brett LeonardWell, this, "If we don't, if this doesn't work, we're gonna lose this, don't, we're gonna lose these days. We're gonna, you know, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're banking on things that are very, you know, unproven." and I'm like, "Yeah, isn't that what fl… cinema is about? Isn't that what filmmaking is about?" I mean, everything I've ever done has been jumping off the cliff and building the wings as you fall. Now, doing that on a major studio picture is kind of unheard of. They don't like that. But the ma… the ma… the, some of the amazing studio pictures that were done in the history of cinema have always… Always. So you gotta b… you know, you gotta fight, y… you got to fight the law, you know? And…

30:30Jawad MirYeah

30:30Brett Leonard... Sometimes the law does w… win in the long run, as the song says, but it allows you to do something that now in today, that film is being reabsorbed in a way that it wouldn't have been if we'd done it the quote-unquote usual way. There's that. And then there was, there was,.. What was I gonna think about? There was, there was some… w… we had done, l… we built downtown LA and did a giant translight, and that was quest…

31:00Jawad MirYeah

31:00Brett Leonard... You know. We d… we did a lot of things in that film that were sort of off the beaten path. Of course, doing the effects the way we were doing was really scary to everybody, except Paul Hager. Paul Hager was the head of post-production at Paramount, and he was the head of post-production at Paramount for many years, through like five regimes. He was the J. Edgar Hoover…... Of the Paramount r… regime, right? And he literally kind of looked like J. Edgar Hoover, tell you the truth. He was a…... You know, a really intimidating, gruff man. And I, he's, and they were like, "Go in to talk to Paul. See if he, Paul's gonna let you get away with this," thinking Paul was going to stop me. Paul appreciated it. Paul saw it was innovative, and he said, "Go for it, kid. I'm behind you." And he allowed me to do things in this very different radical way, and that was, that was surprising. So in the studio system, you can run into individuals that actually understand things, and actually will support you if you're a bit of a maverick, you're a bit of an innovator.

32:03Brett LeonardAnd that's what happened to me.

32:05Jawad MirYou're right, but it's very rare that happens.

32:07Brett LeonardVery.

32:08Jawad MirVery rare.

32:08Brett LeonardVery.

32:08Jawad MirThat's, there's more people who are trying to sabotage, you know, not directly…

32:14Brett LeonardExactly

32:14Jawad Mir... But indirectly…

32:14Brett LeonardYeah

32:15Jawad Mir... The pr… the production. Because…

32:17Brett LeonardTotally. Totally true

32:18Jawad Mir... You was being d… you know, tried. Like, you know, you look at films like Star Wars, George Luke. I was just watching, I've seen it so many times, I was watching an interview with George Lucas. You know, he said that, "When I showed the films to my friends," like friends being Scorsese…

32:30Brett LeonardYeah, they…

32:31Jawad Mir... Coppola…

32:32Brett LeonardThey…

32:32Jawad Mir... De Palma, he hated it.

32:33Brett LeonardHated it.

32:33Jawad MirBut the one person who said that this is gonna…

32:36Brett LeonardSteven

32:36Jawad Mir... Break all the, Steven Spielberg.

32:37Brett LeonardSpielberg. Yeah.

32:38Jawad MirRight?

32:38Brett LeonardYeah, I know the stories. Yeah.

32:39Jawad MirYeah. So it's, it's always i… it's so cool to have one person believe in you because even if you're wrong, knowing…

32:48Brett LeonardYeah

32:48Jawad Mir... Even if you have self-doubt, knowing that somebody's got your back, then it motivates you…

32:52Brett LeonardYeah

32:52Jawad Mir... To make, put in 500% as opposed to 100%.

32:55Brett LeonardAbsolutely. I totally agree. Look, a… and you know, I had a great time on that film. Obviously the film celebrates Los Angeles in all of its locations. It's a very heavily Los Angeles, you know, based film.

33:08Jawad MirYeah.

33:09Brett LeonardIt's in that movie, LA Plays Itself, I don't know if you ever saw that documentary. It's about L…

33:13Jawad MirNo, I have not

33:14Brett Leonard... Yeah, it's a, it's a good documentary about LA being used in film…

33:16Jawad MirI'll check it out

33:17Brett Leonard... History. Yeah. But it's, you know, it was a celebration of that. It was a celebration of doing things a different way in the effects realm, you know, and in the interactive media realm. It was, you know, obviously with Russell being new kind of to the scene, it was, kind of, you know, amazing to watch, to watch him become a star. I mean, that's, that's literally what it felt like.

33:41Brett LeonardJust like, wow, this guy is really holding the screen, you know? And, it's, something that Denzel saw too as we were doing it, and commented on it quite often, you know? And of course, directing Denzel Washington, that's a g… that's just a joy. He…

33:57Jawad MirYeah

33:57Brett Leonard... You put 150 millimeter f… fil… you know, lens on his face, he delivers. He, I mean, the man is one of the great cinema actors of all time, and a movie star, and that's a rare combination. A rare combination.

34:10Jawad MirAnd a very humble human being.

34:12Brett LeonardHe is.

34:13Jawad MirHe is.

34:13Brett LeonardAnd now he's true, a true man of faith. I mean, I watch him now…

34:17Jawad MirYeah

34:17Brett Leonard... I mean, it just, he's one of these guys that, you know, has such a presence about him. And boy does he understand the frame, dude. He understands exactly how to play in that frame, and that's a rare thing in most film actors, in all honesty.

34:34Jawad MirYeah.

34:34Brett LeonardYou have to sometimes direct them to understand that. He knew. He goes, "Where am I? Where are you? What do you got? 150? Okay." He put his, he put his face exactly in the light and exactly the right way in this frame that s… I mean, it was incredible. It was an amazing experience.

34:49Jawad MirWow. That's, that's so cool…

34:50Brett LeonardYeah

34:50Jawad Mir... To know. I mean, I've, I've always admired Denzel for everything that he's done, but for him to be able to pick up, despite the fact he's done, what, 40, 50 films, to figure out the lens…

35:01Brett LeonardOh, yeah

35:01Jawad Mir... The focal length and the…

35:03Brett LeonardWell, look, he's a good director. He's a good director.

35:05Jawad MirYeah.

35:06Brett LeonardFences is a really good film.

35:08Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, Fences, I mean, I haven't seen the play, which I've seen the clips of, which obviously…

35:12Brett LeonardWell, it's, the film is very much like the play.

35:14Jawad MirIt is.

35:14Brett LeonardIt is…

35:14Jawad MirYeah

35:15Brett Leonard... Like the play. But you know, it's, it's still a translation, and it still works very well. Yeah.

35:20Jawad MirYeah. Let me reverse back in time. How did you... I'm always fascinated, just because I'm in this world, we all have our stories of how we s… got… how we started, you know?

35:31Brett LeonardYeah.

35:32Jawad MirThere was sometimes a scene in the film that sparks the inerti… you know, spi… sparks your story, your journey. What was that moment in your life where you decided…... I wanna do this?

35:47Brett LeonardIt's gotta be probably watching The Wizard of Oz on television.

35:51Jawad MirLove that movie.

35:53Brett LeonardI was very young. That was the only way you could see it at that time. It came on once a year. And of course, that movie, made in 1939, which is an amazing…

36:01Jawad MirYeah

36:01Brett Leonard... Year for film, with Citizen Kane and Gunga Din and all kinds of…

36:05Jawad MirGone

36:05Brett Leonard... Other films

36:05Jawad Mir... Gone With the Wind.

36:06Brett LeonardGone With the Wind. It was an effect… that was a huge effects film of its time. Prosthetic makeup effects that had never been done before. Opticals, all kinds of, you know, wirework. I mean, the color, you know, all of it was truly an effects film. And then the other... So that was the beginning. But where it sealed the, sealed the deal was at seven years old… I went to the theater with my parents to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey.

36:36Jawad MirYes.

36:37Brett LeonardAnd I was riveted.

36:41Jawad MirSee.

36:41Brett LeonardAnd I, yeah. But I mean, look. And I was like, I watched it. My parents started arguing during the film because they couldn't get em… engaged with the film. You know, there wasn't enough dialogue in it for them.

36:52Jawad MirYeah.

36:53Brett LeonardAnd I'm like watching it, and I turn to them, and this is, I'm seven years old, I said, "That's what I'm gonna do." And they said, "Oh yes, little Brady, of course, that's what you're gonna do." And I studied that film, every frame, every shot. I read Jerome Angel's The Making of 2001, starting when I was about 10 years old, and that's why I became an effects guy. That's because I read how he did all the... And I didn't understand it the first 10 times I read the book, but eventually I did, and that's how I became even pioneering certain visual effects because I just saw what he did there, and I saw how he pioneered it with Doug Trumbull. When I first moved to, LA, one of the first people I looked up was Doug Trumbull. I found out where his studio was in Marina del Rey, and I went there and introduced myself. And Doug didn't really know me a lot for many years, but he became a mentor of mine over a period of time. And, I'm, I was very sad when he passed away a couple years ago.

37:58Jawad MirYou know, to…

37:59Brett LeonardHe did the effects. He did the, some of those effects in 2001 at 21 years old. Holy crap, that's amazing. All the split-scan effects, all that was Doug Trumbull at 21 years old.

38:12Jawad MirIt's incredible that, you know, you talked about The Wizard of Oz. I've seen that movie gazillions of times.

38:17Brett LeonardYes.

38:17Jawad MirAnd I don't even know why I have never thought about it until you mentioned this. So the only thing to me was, in that film, the color and black and white.

38:28Brett LeonardRight.

38:28Jawad MirThat how did they make a color in 1939, right?

38:31Brett LeonardYeah.

38:32Jawad MirI never thought about the tornado sequence, how they made it. I never thought about so many others like that, the, with the…

38:38Brett LeonardSpinning piece of cloth

38:40Jawad Mir... The monkeys, the flying…

38:40Brett LeonardSpinning piece of canvas with dust. I mean, it's amazing what they did in that film effects-wise. Amazing.

38:49Jawad MirI gotta read up on that because the same thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey because I remember the first time I saw it because it was all big. Like I got into film because of S… Jurassic Park when it first came out.

38:58Brett LeonardRight.

38:59Jawad MirSo I saw 2001. I'm like, "Why is everybody making a big fuss?" I'm like, "Well, who cares? Like monkeys and this." And then I saw it the second time, and then I saw it the…

39:07Brett LeonardYeah

39:07Jawad Mir... Third time. And then I saw it the fourth time. And it finally got onto me. And then, and when, Spielberg directed AI, which was from…

39:15Brett LeonardYeah

39:15Jawad Mir... Stanley Kubrick's material…

39:17Brett LeonardYeah

39:17Jawad Mir... I didn't like the way, you know, I… You've seen AI, right, with Haley Joel Osment?

39:20Brett LeonardI have, yes, I…

39:21Jawad MirYou know how he's underwater and…

39:23Brett LeonardYeah

39:23Jawad Mir... The camera pulls out, you feel like the film is over?

39:26Brett LeonardYeah.

39:26Jawad MirAnd again, it took me several viewings. So with Stanley Kubrick and his way of storytelling is something that just doesn't sit with you the first time. You gotta watch it…

39:36Brett LeonardDoesn't sit.

39:37Jawad MirOver and over again.

39:38Brett LeonardI agree. Matter of fact, I mean, I always loved it, his films and it, right away, and I'm always a defender of them. I'll never forget, Eyes Wide Shut comes out. I'm at Hollywood parties, and everyone's putting the film down. I'm saying, "You're all idiots. In a few years, this is gonna age like fine wine and gonna be considered a masterpiece." Which of course is what's happened, you know? Now, yeah, there's still controversy around the film, but it's, it, that film as well, every film he's ever made ages like fine wine because it's truly a work of art in a mass market medium, and that is a very rare thing. Only a few filmmakers have done that through history. You know, he really made giant art films. That's what I mean.

40:21Jawad MirYes.

40:21Brett Leonard2001 is a giant art film about space. I mean, and of course intelligence and consciousness and artificial intelligence. You know, I mean, all these concepts, and he was conceptual. It's one of the reasons why my films are, in some ways, primarily conceptual. I'm a conceptual filmmaker, at the core, and then character and story forms around the concepts. That's, you know, that's a, an outlying form of commercial filmmaking. It's, you know, the, a lot of commercial filmmaking is more focused on story, character as everything. For me, the concepts have to be there too, just like Cronenberg is his thing. You know, there's…

40:59Jawad MirYeah.

40:59Brett LeonardAnd because of that, you kind of have to work in genre in order for that to be a core…

41:06Jawad MirRight

41:06Brett Leonard... Aspect of what you're playing with, you know? But just so you know, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, motion control was created for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

41:15Jawad MirYeah.

41:15Brett LeonardAnd without that, there would be no Star Wars. So anyone that likes Star Wars, go watch 2001. That is the only reason Star Wars exists.

41:26Jawad MirYeah. No, I read about that. And you know, one of the films that you didn't mention, obviously you probably forgot Shining, right? Like, you know, and it

41:34Brett LeonardI mean…

41:36Jawad MirLike, Kubrick's way of framing a shot…

41:39Brett LeonardYeah.

41:39Jawad MirWhether it's Doc… whether it's Dr. Strangelove…

41:42Brett LeonardYeah

41:42Jawad Mir... Whether it's

41:43Brett LeonardOr Lolita

41:43Jawad Mir... Spartacus, right? Or Lolita, yeah, all of these films. There's just something about it that just pulls you in.

41:50Brett LeonardYeah.

41:50Jawad MirAnd one thing I will say about Virtuosity…

41:53Brett LeonardYes

41:53Jawad Mir... Is that you had this, I'm a big fan of wide shots…

41:59Brett LeonardYeah, me too

41:59Jawad Mir... Because it pull, it pulls me in.

42:00Brett LeonardWell, that was, that was Kubrick's thing, using wide lenses.

42:03Jawad MirYeah.

42:03Brett LeonardYeah.

42:03Jawad MirExactly. And because it pulls you into the environment subconsciously, right?

42:08Brett LeonardYep.

42:08Jawad MirAnd I really admired that in Virtuosity because now when I watch films, even if I've seen them five times, like I'm, like Jaws is just coming out tomorrow, re-releasing on its 50th anniversary. I'm gonna go see it in the theater.

42:20Brett LeonardYep.

42:20Jawad MirAnd I'm, I'm gonna absorb it again, like just that wide. So I wanna appreciate all the work that you did in Virtuosity with that wide frame because that's what made the aesthetics and the production design come to life.

42:30Brett LeonardYes. And I wanted to celebrate LA As an already future city. 'Cause it already was in the future, you know, in the '90s. It already felt that way. And so, and of course, you know, Kubrick used to famously pick one working lens of wide shot and one working lens for close-ups, and then shoot the entire film that way. And the reason it did, because it cuts like butter. Then you don't have issues with cutting because those same vocal links allow you to create a consistency with cutting that's just an amazingly, seamless experience. It's, it's one of the great lessons of his filmmaking, is like limit the way in which you're shooting and then move the camera to where you want to, s… show things. Of course, he also was very Japanese and he'd start close, then move back.

43:20Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

43:21Brett LeonardYou know?

43:22Jawad MirYeah, no, it's, it's, it's so true. And, you know, kind of coming back to you, on Virtuosity. When the film is done, the production is done…

43:32Brett LeonardOkay

43:32Jawad Mir... You know, post-production begins. We talked about, a little bit about that. Post-production finishes. Obviously you guys did some test screenings, I'm assuming.

43:40Brett LeonardYes, we did.

43:40Jawad MirThe studio did. What was the reaction of audience in that, and were there any changes implemented? Were there suggestions made that you fought for or you didn't fight for?

43:51Brett LeonardWell, look, there's always y… cutting it down. That always happens. And there's scenes that were lost that I miss, okay? But I understand the process. And by and large the audience enjoyed the film, but, and this is '95, and there's a kind of sociological component to this that's a little controversial, they were surprised to see Denzel Washington in this movie.

44:20Brett LeonardIn the context of the, of the time. And that to me was daunting and it was also, you know, unfortunate, because I thought he was amazing in the film, but it was a genre that he had not played in before. He was considered in certain genres and it was like a little bit of a cognitive dissonance that happened, and that in the, in the, postmortem of, you know, the film only performed... It didn't perform horribly, but it didn't perform as a hit. And that was the postmortem. That it was conceptually something that was interesting, but it actually was weirdly the cast that was a mis… kind of a misnomer for people. And that, you know, you could put him in Crimson Tide, but, you know, where he's in this sci-fi world and going, you know... It, and then of course that doesn't exist anymore. That's, it's all, you know, that's been blown apart. But at that time, that was actually something that meant something.

45:23Brett LeonardAnd I had other studio heads talk to me about that and say it in very crass terms, which I will not repeat here. You know, and it, and it was, it was disappointing, that played out that way. The film is much more accepted now.

45:39Jawad MirOf course.

45:39Brett LeonardI mean, it's, it's, you know, a… and especially with the themes that are in there. Now, you mentioned post-production. To one of your previous questions, were there issues that I had to deal with. The post-production on this film was one of the most contracted ever done on a big effects film. It was 10 weeks till release…

45:59Jawad MirWhoa

45:59Brett Leonard... Till release. Till release. So that had to include release printing and all of that. So the, again, the techniques we put together to do the effects were based around the limitations, in some ways, of that schedule. And I literally was working around the clock. There were four dubbing stages going when we were doing the final mix. There was multiple compositing, suites. I was literally going between compositing suites and dubbing stages and editorial 24 hours a day, where I'd, I'd grab five-minute naps here and there for almost that whole 10 weeks.

46:42Jawad MirGood Lord. 10 weeks is nothing.

46:45Brett LeonardYeah, no. And it's considered... At that time, Paul Hager said, "This is a new form of contracted post that's gonna take over what's going on in feature films." And guess what? It has.

46:57Jawad MirYeah.

46:57Brett LeonardThere's a lot of contracted post that goes on in feature films now.

47:01Jawad MirBut I have to commend you, Brett, that, you know, there's a l… line in Matrix where Trinity says, "Nobody's ever done it before," and…

47:09Brett LeonardYeah

47:10Jawad Mir... Neo says, "That's why it's gonna work." And for you to be able to, I mean, whether it's in the script…

47:15Brett LeonardYeah

47:15Jawad Mir... Or not doesn't matter. For you to be able to have Denzel in it at that time from a sociological…

47:20Brett LeonardI know, I know

47:20Jawad Mir... Standpoint, you know, it's…

47:22Brett LeonardI was thrilled.

47:24Jawad MirIt's, it's a testament to your ability to see the future because…

47:29Brett LeonardYeah

47:30Jawad Mir... You know, it, I believe that people who believed whatever they believed…

47:36Brett LeonardYeah

47:36Jawad Mir... Had more to do with not being exposed to the world…

47:41Brett LeonardYeah

47:41Jawad Mir... As they should be…

47:42Brett LeonardExactly

47:42Jawad Mir... And ignorance.

47:43Brett LeonardYeah.

47:43Jawad MirBut I mean…

47:44Brett LeonardIt's amazing

47:44Jawad Mir... Look at Denzel now, right? Look at Denzel now. Like, doesn't even, nobody even sees color when they look…

47:49Brett LeonardNo, exactly. Exactly

47:50Jawad Mir... It's, it's just Denzel, right?

47:51Brett LeonardExactly.

47:51Jawad MirIt's Morgan Freeman.

47:53Brett LeonardExactly. Yeah

47:54Jawad Mir... But that's, that's…

47:55Brett LeonardWell, it's true. And, you know, and I don't know, there was an article that came out after the re-release, saying, that was a r… review of the re-release, by IndieWire. It said, "The, Virtuosity walked so The Matrix could run." And there are so many, so many concepts and even lines and moments in Virtuosity that are direct to The Matrix…

48:17Jawad MirYeah

48:17Brett Leonard... Would happen four years later, or five years later. And, the, by the way, the Wachowskis, they acknowledge that. They've acknowledged it to me, and they're totally sweet about it. I mean, it's, you know, they were very aware of that, and even V… Lawnmower Man and all that. So, but by, and I'm a huge fan of theirs because I think they nailed The Matrix. I mean, The Matrix…

48:39Jawad MirOh, God, it's, yeah

48:39Brett Leonard... The first Matrix is a perfect film. I, it's, it's… Yeah.

48:43Jawad MirYeah, to me that first and the second one I didn't mind, but after that I didn't…

48:47Brett LeonardYeah

48:47Jawad Mir... Care for the last two.

48:48Brett LeonardYeah, the third one is like, "And now we're gonna paint ourselves out of the corner we put ourselves in."

48:53Jawad MirYeah. But, was Gattaca before yours or after with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman? I don't remember.

48:59Brett LeonardI can't remember. It may have been bef… no, I think it was after.

49:02Jawad MirAs after?

49:03Brett LeonardYeah.

49:03Jawad MirYeah, no. O… o… one thing that I will say that I've always appreciated, and I kind of mentioned this, films like Terminator, Minority Report…

49:10Brett LeonardYeah

49:10Jawad Mir... Predator 2…

49:12Brett LeonardYeah

49:12Jawad Mir... Terminator 2…

49:13Brett LeonardYeah

49:13Jawad Mir... Gattaca. Not Gattaca, sorry, your film. When they show, when you guys show a future…

49:18Brett LeonardYeah

49:19Jawad Mir... There's elements of modern plus…

49:22Brett LeonardYes

49:22Jawad Mir... The present aesthetics, which is what the future should be.

49:25Brett LeonardYeah.

49:25Jawad MirBut when you show a film to me, maybe growing up was different, but may… now I'm different.

49:31Brett LeonardWell…

49:31Jawad MirWhen it's like everything is…

49:32Brett Leonard... Like Logan's Run. Logan's Run

49:33Jawad Mir... Yeah. Yeah. Everything is, like, just, you know, fabulously lit up and visual effects.

49:38Brett LeonardWell, yeah.

49:38Jawad MirAnd to me, I'm pulled out of it because that's not…

49:40Brett LeonardWell, I'm with you

49:40Jawad Mir... The world that I can relate to.

49:42Brett LeonardMe too. Me too. Although, I will say that Logan's Run, because it does that in a really extreme way, is actually a unique film of its time because it does that.

49:53Jawad MirInteresting.

49:53Brett LeonardIf you go back and watch it, you go, "Wow, they were fuck... They had, they had balls, man." I mean, I mean, it was, it was a ballsy movie to make at that time. It was, it was the last... And Star Wars changed everything after that.

50:09Jawad MirYeah.

50:09Brett LeonardSo it was kind of a unique moment.

50:13Jawad MirYeah, I gotta rewatch it. What…

50:15Brett LeonardIt's the reason, though, by the way, I think it hasn't been remade. Many filmmakers have wanted to remake it. Bryan Singer wanted to remake it. A bunch of filmmakers wanted to remake it, and were on the, on the path to do it, and it never happened. I think one of the reasons is because it's a daunting future vision that doesn't connect to our current moment.

50:34Jawad MirWell, somebody's gotta do it.

50:37Brett LeonardYeah. Yeah.

50:37Jawad MirWhat's,.. As we sort of wrap up, Brett, what... I think you kind of mentioned now you have multiple businesses and companies.

50:45Brett LeonardYes.

50:45Jawad MirWhat are you up to now? Are you making any film, or is it more focused on the business side?

50:48Brett LeonardYes. Oh, yes. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm involved with a film, that was written by Sean Stone, Oliver Stone's son, and, Mona… Monalisa Maree, who's, another screenwriter, that's, tentatively called Dark Star. I know that's the s… the name of John Carpenter's first film. But, it's a very different film. It's, it's about astral battles, so it's kind of a technological, metaphysical, spiritual battle film. And it's, got a lot of unique concepts in it. I'm gonna be using AI extensively in the creation of the film, because the aesthetic really, like, leans in that direction. And also, the concepts in the film are about that. So I'm gonna be reflecting conception.

51:31Brett LeonardAnd I love having process reflect content. And, it's just for my own. 'Cause I live in the process of making a film. I don't live in the end product. The end product's for everybody else. By the end of the movie, I've lived it, and it's, "Go ahead. You guys do it now," because I'm done with it. I don't wanna watch it again. I've seen it enough. So process experimentation is always at the core for me, and I'm g… I'm really getting into a lot of that right now with AI, really jumping off the cliff, and I'm telling you, it's gonna be some amazing things happening. Absolutely.

52:04Jawad MirAmazing. And you're using Midjourney for that, or just all over platforms?

52:09Brett LeonardLiterally dozens, okay?

52:10Jawad MirDozens.

52:11Brett LeonardThe key, the key thing is how you put humans in the loop and do context engineering in the context of workflows with our AI collaborators, and that is the blind spot for a lot of people. They don't realize there's a total art to that is not just plug in the AI and it just happens. That's gonna produce very middling work.

52:37Brett LeonardYou want that last 2% of greatness, you've gotta really understand those aspects, and that's what I'm focusing on.

52:44Jawad MirAnd has it been green-lit, or is it still in the…

52:46Brett LeonardYes, it has. It actually has. Gold Tree, Gold Tree Films, executive producer and financier, Tim Chinakis. And, it's, we have a cast I can't, I can't announce yet.

53:01Jawad MirThat's fine. Yeah, that's fine.

53:01Brett LeonardBut, it's g… it's gonna be an amazing film. And very different in how we're making it, just like my other films were that. Virtuosity was an example of that. So we're gonna be using the new tools. And of... And look, there's aesthetics, and when it first comes out, there might be people that have issues with some of those. It's just…

53:19Jawad MirOf course they will

53:20Brett Leonard... Experienced this throughout my career. And every time. Now, you know, 30 years later, it's like, "Oh boy, that's something really special." Like, I'm, "Yeah, I knew then." So.

53:33Jawad MirNo, it's, it's, it is so important to do things that are timely, right? So not just in the world of effects. I have directed, three feature documentaries, and I'm just directing my first narrative, and every film that I've made, it, they're very human rights, political, social…

53:51Brett LeonardYeah

53:51Jawad Mir... Films with protagonists in them. But I try to sort of take... Not n… n…... I think pr… sides is the wrong word. Like, two perspectives.

54:02Brett LeonardYeah.

54:02Jawad MirAnd I always get sh… kinda shot down by one over the other. Like, "Why are you doing this?"

54:06Brett LeonardYeah.

54:06Jawad Mir"And why?"

54:06Brett LeonardOf course.

54:06Jawad MirI just know that in 20 years it will live, because…

54:10Brett LeonardExactly

54:10Jawad Mir... That's all that matters to me, right? And that's what's, what you're doing, and that's incredible. So this film comes out next year you think?

54:16Brett LeonardIt, we're gonna be making it, into next year, so probably toward the end of next year, yes. Yeah.

54:22Jawad MirAmazing, man. I'm looking forward to it.

54:23Brett LeonardI, and I'm a co-founder of a company called Ubiquiti VX, where we're doing, it's, it's, we call ourselves the Netflix of health, wellness, and performance. It's literally a web platform that allows you to do virtual therapies that are all been very proven in the world, but usually they're very difficult to deliver because of technology, being needed. We're doing it… Literally in the browser, through the web, with just the click of a link, and cameras on the, on the laptop and microphones. Doing biometric assessments, all kinds of things, and giving you an immersive virtual experience of health, wellness, and performance.

55:01Jawad MirThat's incredible, man. That's incredible.

55:03Brett LeonardYeah, it…

55:03Jawad MirThat's really incredible

55:03Brett Leonard... It's literally taking concepts from my movies and making it into something real. And it's been an incredible journey. I, my partner, David Kirschner, came along and brought the financing, and it's, it's been an incredible joy. Dr. Skip Rizzo, who's the number one VR clinician on the planet, he runs the ICT lab at USC for many years, he's, the pioneer of virtual therapies. He's the chief scientist and co-founder as well, and it's been an amazing journey to stretch myself into another arena. Of course, storytelling is still at the core of that as well.

55:36Jawad MirOf course. Of course.

55:38Brett LeonardIt's about grabbing control and, out of your own healing journey, and using technology to help do that.

55:44Jawad MirFabulous.

55:45Brett LeonardAll right.

55:45Jawad MirI'm, I'm really looking forward to your film. I'm gonna, I'm gonna email you, I'm gonna get your, the company that you're talking about, just get the address so I can check that out.

55:52Brett LeonardAnd when will this be on? When will this be up?

55:54Jawad MirProbably in the next three, four days.

55:57Brett LeonardSend me the link. I'd love to check it out.

55:58Jawad MirYeah, I will. I will. Where are you based out of, LA or San Francisco?

56:02Brett LeonardLos Angeles.

56:04Jawad MirAwesome.

56:04Brett LeonardYeah.

56:04Jawad MirI'm planning to be there next month.

56:06Brett LeonardOh, cool.

56:07Jawad MirIf you have time, I would love to…

56:08Brett LeonardFabulous

56:08Jawad Mir... Grab a coffee with you.

56:09Brett LeonardLet's get together for lunch. Yeah, that'd be great.

56:10Jawad MirAbsolutely, a lunch is even better. Amazing.

56:12Brett LeonardYeah, and you…

56:12Jawad MirWell, thank you so much, Brett

56:13Brett Leonard... Send me some links, send me some links to your films. I'd love to check 'em out. I love documentaries, by the way, so.

56:16Jawad MirI will. I will.

56:18Brett LeonardI'd love to see… ... Something about, especially about human rights and social justice, so

56:22Jawad MirYeah, these are the, these are the two ones, In Search of My Sister…

56:25Brett LeonardOh, nice

56:25Jawad Mir... And Citizen of Moria. And now I'm working on a narrative, called, Whispers in Time, which I'm raising funds for independently. It's actually a story of a Jewish boy in 1944 during the last stretches of Holocaust…

56:39Brett LeonardOh, wow

56:39Jawad Mir... A Pal… a Palestinian boy in 1982 during the Lebanese war, that, and how their stories are interconnected…

56:46Brett LeonardOh, wow

56:46Jawad Mir... That leads up to the events of 2023.

56:48Brett LeonardBeautiful.

56:48Jawad MirSo yeah, it's a short…

56:50Brett LeonardBeautiful

56:50Jawad Mir... That I'm working on, and then eventually feature. But I'd love to send you links. I'd love to continue talking to you, Brett.

56:55Brett LeonardYes, absolutely.

56:55Jawad MirI haven't seen your other films. I'm gonna watch The, Lawnmower Man, and I will…

57:00Brett LeonardOh, yeah. Yeah

57:01Jawad Mir... And probably wanna talk to you.

57:02Brett LeonardLawnmower Man's '92. Lawnmower's '92.

57:03Jawad MirYeah.

57:04Brett LeonardTalk about ahead of its time, man. It was crazy.

57:05Jawad MirPleasure talking to you. It's been really fun. I really appreciate it.

57:08Brett LeonardI had fun. Take care.

57:09Jawad MirAll right.

57:10Brett LeonardBye-bye.

57:10Jawad MirTake care, Brett. Bye-bye.