Requiem for a Dream, Producer, Eric Watson

0:00Eric WatsonDarren called me one day and said, "Let's, let's, let's move to New York and make a movie." I'm like, "I don't... No, I don't think so." He goes, "Why not?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm your friend. If we make a movie together, I don't know if I'll still be your friend." And so we agreed to, separate at any point if the friendship was threatened. We started workshopping Pi and we shot the movie in, like, 20-something days in New York. We'd shoot on the subways, which you're not really allowed to do. Very complicated, but we would, like, all put on, like, NYU sweatshirts. I went in Darren's room and there, you know, he had a little bookshelf and I saw this book, Requiem for a Dream. Can I borrow it? On vacation, Scatwork took it. And, so I took it and read it on vacation. It ruined my vacation. And I got back and I'm like, "We gotta make this into a film." Yeah, I had a... I had more than once, fathers came up to me, hugged me, and with tears in their eyes and thanked me, 'cause we had saved their daughters' lives with this movie.

0:49Jawad MirThat's the biggest award you can get. Well, I wanted to start off by saying that how much of an impact Requiem for a Dream has had on so many people, including myself. And, you know, Darren's second film, but that's pretty much what gave him a breakthrough. And the way it was shot, the story, editing, the music, everything. I mean, that music track is used on YouTube, like, so many times, it's just crazy. And, yeah, just wanted to extend my gratitude to you for being involved in that film. A producer has a very pivotal role as anybody else, but, you know, without the producer, nothing gets kicked off, so thank you so much.

1:39Eric WatsonYeah. You got it.

1:41Jawad MirAmazing. So tell me, I know you worked with Da… Darren on, Pi as well. And then you worked with him on The Fountain, I think, according to IMDb. So just your journey with Darren, whether it was on Pi or... Start talking about Requiem, how that kind of panned out. You know, with the, at the era when independent cinema was rising. You know, you're talking about films like American Beauty, Almost Famous, Gladiator, like, different... All the cinema was popping up. It was a really good time of, for movies.

2:12Eric WatsonYeah. Sure. Darren and I met in film school at AFI, in the early '90s. And we also were there with Matthew Libatique… ... Darren's primary ceme… cinematographer. And, we were the three youngest students there. And we had a, the three of us had a love of hip hop. I came from the Bay Area, Matty came from down here, and, Darren came from Brooklyn, and so we really bonded on that. And, you know, Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing was a huge influence on us, and one of the reasons that I think we were in film school, to a degree. But definitely massive influence at that time. And what that movie did, what Do the Right Thing did was it, kinda... Up to that point, I mean, I love '80s movies…

3:05Jawad MirYeah

3:05Eric Watson... And they are great, but the, there was a way in which things were kinda becoming a little static. And Do the Right Thing kinda just broke it open and it was like y… there are no rules here. You can push the medium further. And so we, you know, we were young film students and we had that love and we made our second project in A… at... First year of AFI you make three projects…

3:33Jawad MirRight

3:33Eric Watson... Over the course of a year and, at that time. And so the first project they kind of assign the people to you. In the second project you get to pick your people. And the third project as well. And so on the second project we, you know, we're clear that we wanted to work together, and we made a short film called Protozoa.

3:53Jawad MirYeah.

3:54Eric WatsonWhich is the name of the company, and it comes from a Luis Buñuel quote, which you can look up. And, it, we, Lucy Liu was in the film, actually.

4:08Jawad MirYes. I noticed that. I just recently watched it again just to refresh my memory.

4:11Eric WatsonOh, you watched the short?

4:13Jawad MirYeah.

4:14Eric WatsonIs it on YouTube or something?

4:15Jawad MirYeah, somewhere. I don't know if it was YouTube or somewhere else, I forget, but it was, it was somewhere online. Maybe Facebook…

4:21Eric WatsonYeah

4:21Jawad Mir... Or maybe Twitter.

4:23Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah. And we don't really necessarily want it to be shown into the world, but we can't do anything about it, so we just let it be. But, you know…

4:31Jawad MirYeah

4:31Eric Watson... 'cause it's obviously not professional. It's a student film. But you can see the roots in that film of the style that the three of us were developing together. The visual style, the hip hop montage in particular. And some of the other things that were, you know, thematically as well in that film that we're really, like, into. Again, it was, you know, above our, above our age to be trying to deal with some of those themes even then, but we did that and we got along and, then we, then we got out of film school, and Darren and I were both living in Venice, California. We would, play handball together and hang out on the beach and, he was writing and did some, I think he did second AD on a movie and, which I won't name. And, but a friend of ours…

5:27Jawad MirShould I know it?

5:28Eric WatsonYeah. There were a lot of... In our, in our year at AFI, Doug Ellin was there, Scott Silver, Mark Waters, and a, and a few other filmmakers who went on to be pretty successful, in different ways, were in that year with us. We had a pretty strong year, of s… of student body, and AFI was kinda like, had some real issues, and our year was very militant and we kind of changed the system, which benefited students that came after us.... Collectively. And we, you know, we were kind of just, I was working in music videos and commercials and things like that, working for production companies here in LA and doing, you know, coordinating, things like that. And after about a year of that, Darren called me one day and said, "Let's, let's, let's move to New York and make a movie." I'm like, "I don't... No, I don't think so." He goes, "Why not?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm your friend. If we make a movie together, I don't know if I'll still be your friend."

6:29Eric WatsonAnd so we agreed to, separate at any point if the friendship was threatened. And, we put the friendship first. And so we packed our stuff and... Well, no, we went to, at that time there was a f… a kind of a festival/market of unfinished films in New York that the Independent Spirit project…

6:51Eric Watson... People put on. And so we flew out there for that one A… August I think, or September, and I'd never really spent much time in New York as an adult at that point. And, we were there for, like, 10 days, had an amazing trip. Literally on the plane as we were flying in I was looking out the window going, "Oh, I'm moving here." You know? And, at that we went to saw a lot of films there, met a lot of people, and we really, one of the things we learned was, doesn't really matter so much what your film looks like, it matters what it sounds like. And the thing that really separated the movies for us was the, quality of the sound, and these kind of unfinished films, and we really took note of that. And a couple months later we drove to New York in his Toyota, his parents' Toyota Camry with a little U-Haul box on top. We barely had much stuff. We were, you know…... Back then. And, we moved across country. We had a big 10-day drive where the, in the last 20 hours we didn't even talk to each other by the end, 'cause we were tired of being on the road with each other.

7:57Eric WatsonBut…

7:57Jawad MirOf course.

7:58Eric WatsonWe st… we saw, what did we do? We stopped in, we did a bunch of things, but we, one of the things is we stopped in Memphis to, see Al Green in his church. We built the whole trip around making sure we got there Sunday morning, and that was amazing. We got to New York, went to his parents' house. We had a apartment that he had found in, Hell's Kitchen, and then there was a massive snowstorm and we got snowed into his parents' house for, like, a week. So I really got to know him, because when you know somebody's parents you can really see where they're from and

8:30Jawad MirYeah

8:30Eric Watson... His parents were y… a huge part of his life and,.. And then we moved into a small two bedroom in Hell's Kitchen, fourth floor walk-up. You know, we were pretty broke. And it was definitely rough, New York living and, we started workshopping Pie with, you know, we were like, "Well, let's start with a one person in a room because that's the easiest thing to shoot." and w… w… we quickly identified that person would be Sean Gullette, who was in Darren's, Harvard thesis film

9:07Eric Watson... Supermarket Sweep. And I like Sean a lot. Sean was, publishing a magazine called KGB at the time, and just very deep in the early mid…'90s New York, mid…'90s New York scene, pretty quickly. And we would have these sessions, Sean, Darren and I, and then Darren would go write and he'd bring us back pages and we would have, keep, you know, more sessions on the evolution of the story, which I can talk a lot about. But, the, you know, we w… w… we just set a date of when we were gonna make it, and we're like, "If we have to make this for $10,000, we'll make it for $10,000 on a video VHS." You know, like, whatever. Whatever we have to do, we're gonna make this. Digital hadn't quite become real enough yet.

9:54Jawad MirRight. Right.

9:55Eric WatsonAnd we,.. You know, it was like, "We're gonna give it a shot. If we fail, we'll become accountants, you know, no big deal," you know? And,... But let's try. And, you know, started meeting people. Through production I met this guy, Scott Bogle, who was really instrumental, provided us with an office that he had there at Truth and Soul, and a lot of contacts for equipment and crew and, put a small crew together. And we shot the movie for, like, $60,000 by the time we were done. Basically $60,000 to get us to the Avid cut. And we shot the movie in, like, 20-something days in New York, very hard shoot. And, you know, that was,.. Yeah, that was our first film and w… we learned a lot. We, you know, we would shoot on the subways, which you're not really allowed to do.

11:00Jawad MirYeah.

11:01Eric WatsonVery complicated, but we would, like, all put on, like, NYU sweatshirts and, "Oh, we're students," you know? And we made that movie. You know, there's a lot that went into the creative decisions, which I'm happy to get into. But, and then we sent it to Sundance, where, Scott Silver and Mark Waters had both had movies there already, and so we'd gone to Sundance at this point, twice. And, you know, we would have this thing where we'd go there and we would, like, go out, and whether we were together or not together, we would, like, at the end of the day we'd have a stack of business cards and we'd go through them together like, "Who did we meet?" 'Cause we were very ambitious. And we kinda got to know how it worked there and met the people there. And so when we got the cut, we called everybody we knew, and, got it, the Sundance people to watch it. And Trevor Groth, who was kind of on the team there, he wasn't running the festival at that time, watched it and really became our champion.

12:03Eric WatsonAnd we got a phone call r… right before Thanksgiving, they give you the notice of… Who's in, you know? And we were, our biggest, our highest goal was to get a midnight screening at, Sundance, which we figured had a young audience and would get what we were doing. And we got a call that we got in the competition, which was like just way beyond our expectation, and, is really the premier part of Sundance is competition. And we, you know, we just knew our lives had changed right then and there. And, you know, we won the lottery basically. And we had to get the movie done, spend another $60,000 basically to get a 35-millimeter print of the 16-millimeter movie, and, like l… literally the negative was wet when we got on the plane, and that… that's a whole story. But we flew out there with the, with the print in hand, and, scr… you know, had a couple screenings.

13:06Eric WatsonThe second screening... The first screening was at the Sundance Institute, which is, was not, is not in Park City. I know it's all leaving Park City, but…

13:14Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

13:14Eric Watson... It's up in the mountains where the, where they do all the programming, all the workshops and stuff. And, so it's very small, like 100 and something people, 200 people maybe. But all the big distributors came, 'cause they all go to see the competition movies. So like, you know, the Weinstein's were there and everybody…

13:30Jawad MirYeah

13:31Eric Watson... You know, were all there. And, but there's not, it's not really a audience, you know? It's like a film professional people, which are generally not the best audience…

13:40Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

13:41Eric Watson... You know. And Dennis Hopper was there, which was very cool. And we, yeah, we screened it, and the reception was good, you know? It was, it was definitely interest, but nobody was like... You know, there was a couple people were like, "Yeah, we're kind of interested." But this guy named Bill Block walked up to us and handed us his card and said, "I'm just starting this company called Artisan, with two other people. And I'm very interested." You know, we went, "Cool." And then Sunday morning at 9:00 AM we had a screening at the Eccles Theater, which is 3,000 plus people, and, you know, we were really hustling to get people there. We had a lot of guerrilla marketing tactics that we had already evolved, and, we applied those to Park City. And, we had this 9:00 AM screening, which is not the best time for a young audience…

14:30Jawad MirRight

14:30Eric Watson... But it was packed with young people. And 100 of our good friends. And, we basically got a standing ovation, at that screening for a couple minutes, and it was... Like Darren and I sat way in the back and watched. We was like, we just couldn't even believe we were there. And that screening went great and created a lot of buzz. And so within a couple days we sold the movie to Artisan. Artisan's, one of Artisan's pitches is like, "You're gonna be our first real film, and so we're, we're, we're gonna put more into it than we, than we would in other situations because, we have to also build our brand right now." You know? And so we're like, "That's a, that's a good pitch." You know? And they, and they were, w… they had a real professional team, amazing head of marketing at the time. And the whole marketing team was really strong. And so... And they got, they wanted to take our guerrilla marketing tactics and use them on a bigger scale, and we're like, "Cool."

15:33Eric WatsonBut we won the lottery again by getting distribution. You know, that's, again, almost impossible, and, w… we were extremely excited. We went to,... You know, and then Darren won the directing award as well. You know, Slam was there that year, and Slam took all the really big... There's about, directing's one of the big ones, and, those guys were great too. Good friends of ours. And then, and the movie got released that summer and, you know, kind of, a rollout, you know, starting in small theaters. And w… the first opening was at the, Angelika in New York, which is like the hub of independent movies nationally, you know, internationally, everything. And, the hub of American independent movies. And that theater, like there's a subway line that runs right by it and, you know, and we went to the first screening of that. And the train would run by and like shake the theater, and it just worked perfectly for the movie and…...

16:39Eric WatsonLike, but it, we had a very s… we had line, lines to get in and, you know, had a success for a small black and white movie for sure. And so during that whole time, we were, you know, Darren got an agent, at ICM and, we, were invited to do like the Hollywood tour. And we came out and met all the exec… met a bunch of executives at all the studios and, you know, kind of did the song and dance, our first one. And, everybody said, you know, "Whatever you guys wanna make, you know, w… we wanna do it." And we're like, "Great." You know, "Cool. That sounds cool." And, the Christmas... I can't remember which Christmas. One of those two, the one before the one after. I

17:34Jawad MirProbably '99 or '98.

17:36Eric WatsonYeah, I think, I think '98. I think '98.

17:38Jawad MirYeah, '98. Yeah

17:39Eric Watson... I went on a vacation with my family to Colorado and, a skiing vacation with my grandparents and my mom, and, I went in Darren's room, and there, you know, he had a little bookshelf and I saw this book, Requiem for a Dream. And we had, Darren had done a short film of Hubert Selby Jr.'s called Fortune Cookie in film school…

17:59Eric Watson... That Stanley Herman was in, the Ask guy. And so we had met Selby already, but we, you know, and I saw the Selby book, you know? I was like, "I couldn't read it. It was too, it's too hard." You know? It's just… Too close to home for me. Not in the drug addiction part, but just the way the family is, the way…

18:20Eric Watson... The mom is. And it's like, it's just hard for me to read. And I'm like, "Can I borrow it for my vacation?" He's like, "Yeah, sure, take it." And, so I took it and read it on the vacation. It ruined my vacation. And I got back, and I'm like, "We gotta make this into a film." so he read it and agreed, and we had a whole... We saw the structure of it right away. And, called Selby and he's like, "Yeah, I wrote a script years ago." And, you know, he was, he was like... I mean, Selby's one of America's great writers, and he was, like, pumping gas in LA for a living at that time. It was really sad.

18:58Jawad MirWow

18:58Eric Watson... But he was also, really big in AA out here, in NA out here. And, like kind of a legend in that world. But we flew out and talked to him and he said, "Yeah, I got a script somewhere." We're like, "Cool. Love to see it if you can find it." But Darren wrote a draft, and then Selby found a script at like the same time that Darren finished the draft. And, so he sent us the draft and we read it, and it was like really close to what we had done. And, we also I think,.. In that, in the book, there's a character named Angel, has this whole thing with the TV, and we really wanted to do that scene. And we asked Henry Rollins to do it, but he passed. He didn't really know who we were. And we... And then Darren had, Darren had written this other script. I can't remember the name of it, but in that script was all about Tappy Tibbons, the Chris McDonald character in Requiem for a Dream.

19:58Eric WatsonHe's like, "Well, what if I put Tappy Tibbons in this to replace that?" You know, and I'm like, "Sure, that's a great idea." And he, wrote it into the script, and that was really, you know, the difference between the book and the script is, and is that more than anything, or the script and the book and the movie. And, he wrote that in there. And then, we sent it out to all those people that said they'd do anything, and nobody called us back. Which was our…

20:26Jawad MirOf course

20:26Eric Watson... Our fir… first lesson about Hollywood. You know, they don't mean what they say, you know? And,.. But Artisan, who, you know, said, "This is really hard and really dark, but we'll... You know, if you can find somebody, we'll come in for half." So we had that, and we had a distributor. And so we've, through our lawyer, Jeremy Barber, at the time, he's an agent now at UTA, met this guy, Palmer West, who, wanted to get in the film. And his dad, his dad had done well in the insurance business. And, Palmer, came in and put the other half in, and then, and ultimately a little more. And between Artisan and Palmer, we made the movie happen. And we shot it in New York with our f… union crew. First, you know, it was like $5 million. And even then, that was a big accomplishment for what we did.

21:29Jawad MirFor sure

21:30Eric Watson... And, you know, then we had to cast it obviously. And so we went through a huge casting process. We got Mary Vernieu, who had worked with Scott and Mark before us, and Stefan S… Sinkwitz and Bo Flynn, who are EPs on Requiem. And, Mary's the best. Amazing casting director. And she loved it. And so, and she knew... She knows everybody. And so we read a lot of people and offered to a lot of big stars at the time, and several, very famous people turned us down. But, it, you know, we got,.. I think we got Jared first. And I don't, I don't remember the sequence. We really wanted Dave Chappelle for Marlon's character. We asked him three times or two times, and he turned us down both times. We've gotten to know him since, But he had a pretty clear point of view about why, and we understood that. But we kind of... That was always our dream. This was before Dave got really big.

22:32Jawad MirYeah.

22:33Eric WatsonAnd then, and then Mary's like, "Marlon Wayans really wants to do this." And we're like, "Marlon Wayans? You know, what are you talking about?" But we wanted a comedian, because we wanted to bring some levity to the role and to the film. And we're like, "All right, we'll read him." And he came in and he was really good. He had gone to the Fame school in New York. I forget what it's called. But, the high school that trains actors. And so he had some training, and he could act, you know, which really surprised us, and he was really good. And, we were kind of blown away by him. We got him and then, Jared was proposed to us, and we were like... You know, he was on My So-Called Life at that point pretty much. And, eh, he'd done, he'd done, Fontaine, which was pretty... He was pretty good in Fontaine. And we're like, "Yeah, but he's, you know, not big and... But he's a, he's definitely a..." As a movie star. He was big as a star at that point 'cause of the show. He's a teen idol. And, but we really also wanted a pretty boy, you know, and Jared's definitely a, still a pretty boy.

23:37Eric WatsonAnd he was good. He came in and he was really committed, really, like, wanted to do it. And the, Artisan liked that idea a lot, of having him in it. So we cast him, and then, we... I think, I think next, you know, we were also going out to, well, you know, for Sarah Goldfarb, we were going out to w… women in a certain age group that, you know, they don't get a lot of big roles at, once you get to a certain age as a woman in Hollywood, unfortunately. And, but Alan Burson was one of those women and… She said she wanted to do it, and we were like… And we didn't, we didn't do an audition with her. She had two Oscars. You don't do that.

24:32Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, of course not.

24:33Eric WatsonAnd the… And, we were just blown away that Ellen Burstyn wanted to do it. So we had her, and then we did it. Then we just needed, Marion, and, we, did a reading and, you know, we were big Sergio Leone fans, so, Once Upon a Time in America, you know, Jennifer Connelly is like at our age at that time, we loved Jennifer Connelly, of course, on the screen.

25:00Jawad MirLa-Labyrinth as well at the time, right? When she was in that.

25:03Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah. Yeah. But really Once Upon a Time in America was really like…

25:06Jawad MirYeah

25:06Eric Watson... You know, could not forget her in that. And she came to do an audition with Jared in New York and she like came in and like threw him around the room literally, you know, like and we were like, "Yes, this is the perfect..." You know, she's strong and, you know, she had a film background. He had a TV background. And so we had our cast. You know, we got Chris McDonald after that, and that was also a really great casting piece. And the entire cast in that movie, really proud of. And you know, kind of for everybody else we wanted was kind of really good New York actors because New York has such a great pool of actors, and so we filled it up with kind of the indie stars and darlings of the time, and just across the board, really happy. And yeah, then we went and made the movie. And w-working with Ellen was a incredible education in professionalism, you know.

26:18Eric WatsonBecause here was a woman who, you know, had two Oscars, definitely proven herself, but she had to put on all this facial makeup. It was very hard. It wasn't fun for her. She had to get there before everybody to do that. All the prosthetics that are in the film, 'cause she changes her looks a lot in that movie.

26:37Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

26:38Eric WatsonAnd, this guy Vincent Guastini did all that, and, she,.. Yeah, she really taught us like no matter where you get to, you have to still apply yourself a hundred percent. Like, you can't halfway do it. And,.. So shooting with her was am… was amazing, and we kind of shot her out first mostly. And then the, you know, the other actors like… 'Cause Jared came from TV and, Jennifer came from, film, Jared would n-really nail his takes on takes two and three, and she would nail them on five to seven, basically. And we were like, "So a lot of those scenes with those two of them, they're not in the same frame." if you look at the editing, we had to solve that editing a little bit. But, we on set we realized we gotta do singles on them and, but you know, their performance really worked.

27:41Eric WatsonThey had, they had a chemistry. They had a… There's a realness to it and between all f… all four of them. And we had a great New York crew. You know, we really were exposed to the way that, you know, generational crews matter. That's something that's really going away now. It was the beginning of going away then. And, I think we did it in forty-two days. And the last day was, the last scene, you know, 'cause I knew that would be a tough scene for the crew. We cast all of, Scott Franklin, our associate producer on that, and, Darren's friends mostly, you know, and some of my friends and, you know, the, all the like the Wall Street guys that we knew to be the extras in that scene. We got a waiver from SAG for that and, told the crew that if any of the crew didn't wanna be there that day, that was fine.

28:43Eric WatsonWe would figure it out and we shot that scene last. And then, yeah, it got the edit, and we got into Cannes. We got a, we got a midnight screening finally at Cannes,... Out of competition, uncertain regard and, which worked out well for us there 'cause we did get a real like young audience 'cause Cannes, the young audience can't get in during the day a lot of the time. But at midnight, that's when they go, and there's an amazing young audience that goes to Cannes, and we screened it. And again, Darren and I sat way in the back row and watched, a lot of it, and then we went. You know, when the movie ends, they put the spotlight on the filmmakers and the cast.

29:32Jawad MirThe stage. Yeah.

29:33Eric WatsonAnd, so we went down for… We were down there when that happened. But, the, you know, the movie ended, and we got like this, I don't know, fifteen-minute standing ovation or something. It was, it was crazy. It was like 3:00 in the morning, and we were just one of the more emotional moments of our lives, for all of us, and really powerful, and we're like, "Wow, we just, we did something," you know? And yeah, you know, the s… it was NC… It was rated. We got an NC-17 rating. Studio wanted to make it R, so we get more theaters, and we're like, "No, we're not changing a frame." We went back and forth with them. We went back and forth with the MPAA, tried to get a better rating. They're like, "We hear what you're saying, but we can't." You know, it was a whole negotiation. And so it was released NC-17, and for that there's a lot of restrictions on theaters, so it got a ultimately a limited release because it was NC-17, but we did very well for that. Theatrically, but the movie really still has a life beyond that.

30:36Eric WatsonAnd we're very on... Yeah. Yeah, we were super happy and, you know, then the Hollywood tours followed and… A bunch of things happened and then, and, Darren, we had gone to kind of Tulum, Mayan Riviera area for, 2000 New Years. And, we were really inspired to do this story. Kind of, Roald Dahl has a short story that, is kind of a box within a box story.

31:14Jawad MirOkay.

31:15Eric WatsonAnd we were kind of wanting to do, "Oh, let's do a box within a box within a box," and through three time periods. And we had this structure that we had, and we picked the three time. Let's do the far future, let's do the present time, and let's do the kind of Mayan conquistador world. And we kind of built the, that movie around that, concept, which it evolved a lot. And that whole journey was a multi-year, very challenging journey 'cause we made a, in the end, we made a $30 million art movie, which Hollywood doesn't like to do. And that was, that was The Fountain. So yeah, any aspect of that you wanna dive into more? That's the short, sh… short, long story.

31:53Jawad MirWell, first of all, I haven't had any guests who talked for 30 minutes and I stayed quiet, which is awesome. It makes my life easier, so.

31:59Eric WatsonYeah.

31:59Jawad MirBut it tells me something about, obviously, these were some of the best times of your life that you remember it so vividly and clearly, right? So that clearly shows. We will get into Fountain another day because I haven't seen Fountain in a long time, so it's not fresh in my memory.

32:13Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah.

32:14Jawad MirBut you talked about sound. You know…

32:17Eric WatsonYes

32:17Jawad Mir... I made my first student film on 16 millimeter and digital in 2002. And I had to record my own fully, like, getting out of bed and, you know… ... Opening the fridge. And I remembered at that time that I realized how freaking important sound is, right?

32:36Jawad MirAnd that plays in Requiem for ridiculously well. Like, especially those little fast cuts when they're, you know… ... Inhaling everything in. And you talked about, your, the influence of, Once Upon a Time in America-type films and, Once Upon a Time in the West, and that showed in the visuals, the framing, the, you know, the wide angle shots and…

32:58Eric WatsonThank you

32:58Jawad Mir... It really did. And bec… I'm a huge fan of wide angle lens because I think nowadays everybody likes to cut into close-ups because it's cheaper and it's faster and all that, and you can hide little things and effects. But amazing. Like, you know, I really appreciate that. And I didn't even know Jared Leto was in the film until we watched it after such a long time. I had no idea. You know, he looks like a little kid in that movie.

33:22Eric WatsonYeah, I know.

33:23Jawad MirAnd now he's like, you know, such a huge star. You guys,.. Yeah, no, I just wanted to give… You answered a lot of my questions that I had, so I have to now think about what else to ask you. You know, let me ask you something. If it's too personal, please tell me. The theme of the film was very dark, right? And you talked about that, how you took the book and you brought back… you came back and you convinced Darren to do it. Was there a certain thing in the book, in the story, whether it was drug related or whether it was just relationships, that you knew somebody at growing up that spoke to you, that hit a nerve and that pushed you to go to Darren?

34:04Eric WatsonWell, one thing we realized right away is the book is a, it's ultimately a book about love, and it's about the things that we do to fill that space in our hearts where we don't feel like we have love. And so for us it was always a love story, and it was a movie about love. And you know, addiction is driven by that need to fill that space in us. And so we understood that, and we always held that as our really, that's what the movie was for us at its heart. I mean, I definitely had some people in my life that I had lost to, heroin, by that time. And that was definitely, you know, a factor in my awareness and some influence about it. But it wa… You know, for us, you know, people see it as an anti-drug movie, and that was not our… Some people do, you know, and that was not our intention. We didn't even, we didn't realize that until after the movie got released, you know. And, a… and nor do we want it to be a pro-drug movie, you know.

35:05Eric WatsonThis is about people. It's about what we do in our lives, and our compulsions and, you know, whether it's addicted to TV or addicted to, you know, what… whatever it is, it's like the, it's, it's the same thing. It's the same psychology. And so, you know, for us, it was never a drug movie. We,.. Yeah, I lo… I lost my thread there.

35:32Jawad MirNo, that's fine. Be… It's interesting because I think that film, Re… Requiem, is more timely now in the last four or five years than, in my opinion, than it has ever been because, you know, not a lot of people do drugs. People do drugs, but not a lot of people do drugs. Now everybody has social media, and there's a genuine addiction, right, with social media. I mean, it's, it has positives, it has negatives. And the thing with drugs is there was a, you know, you sniff something physical that exists, it's tangible, but social media is not, and you have… and that loneliness, that's what I to… For me, Requiem was more about loneliness.

36:08Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah.

36:08Jawad MirLike, right? The thing of finding that connection with people because… and you're trying to impress other people subconsciously just to get, you know, recognition because you wanna be part of that group or that club. And that sh… that's existing right now, and I think people, you guys need to do a re-release or unless there was one last year, I don't know, 25th anniversary or…

36:27Eric WatsonYeah, we couldn't do a full re-release, unfortunately.

36:30Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Because it's, I think it's a very important film for people to see, not just because of drugs, it's because of addiction loneliness, because that exists in our society more today.

36:40Eric WatsonYeah. I remember the thing I lost track of, which is…

36:44Jawad MirPlease go ahead

36:45Eric Watson... After the movie was released, I had a, I had more than once, fathers came up to me, hugged me, and with tears in their eyes and thanked me because I'd, because we had saved their daughters' lives with this movie.

37:00Jawad MirWow.

37:00Eric WatsonAnd it was really, like, probably the most impactful, powerful m… my entire aspect of filmmaking in my life of like, wow, you can make a difference. You know? You really can make a…

37:12Jawad MirThat's the biggest award you can get.

37:13Eric WatsonBiggest award you can get.

37:14Jawad MirThat's the biggest award anyone can get.

37:15Eric WatsonWhatever else we got out of it, that for me was those, you know... So I, whatever, I met a couple of them, right? Multiply that, you know. Many women have come to me since and said, "That movie really saved me," and, it really struck a chord with, young women in particular, which I didn't, also wasn't really aware of until that moment. My fiancee watched it 30 times when she was young.

37:40Jawad MirWow.

37:41Eric WatsonYeah.

37:41Jawad MirIn that…

37:41Eric WatsonAnd she told me. You know, I was like, "What? Are you okay?"

37:44Jawad MirYou know, us guys, we always live in our own little bubble.

37:48Eric WatsonYeah.

37:48Jawad MirYou know? We only think about how is that gonna... You know, it's, it's just two different, you know, species, right? We're men and women, so we have a hard time understanding why certain things hit them because they…

37:58Eric WatsonYeah

37:58Jawad Mir... This is not really a, you know, a rom-com type of a film, but obviously…

38:02Eric WatsonYeah

38:02Jawad Mir... It connected with people.

38:04Eric WatsonThe you know, the, I wanna s… speak to the sounds a little bit with, w…

38:09Jawad MirPlease

38:10Eric Watson... So with Paul we put, we put half the money in our budget from day one. Before we began, we're like, "We're gonna spend half the money on sound, half the money on the visual," which nobody who made independent movies thought about it that way. I mean, we only had a limited amount of money, but we made sure to hire a really good sound guy, Ken Ishii. And yeah, the so… sound was a high priority. We got a really great sound designer, Bryan Emrick, who's a bass player and friends with Clint Mansell. And that, Clint Mansell's a whole story, too. And so w… we said to them, "We wanna create a soundscape, where the sound effects and the score are in key and working together." so we, since then we've always had this vision of sound as a soundscape. You're creating a soundscape. It's not just, none, no individual element is isolated. It's all together as a whole. And then the, I was really, I was writing for a music magazine back then and really into electronic music, and I suggested that to Darren.

39:17Eric WatsonI'm like, "We're gonna do this black and white kind of Sin City, the comic book inspired, high contrast film, that's gonna feel really grainy and gritty. L… but let's, let's create contrast with the sound, a very c… courteous, futuristic soundscape." And at that point, you know, other than, like, Clockwork Orange and that kind of electronic music, there w… there wasn't really electronic music in film. This was six months before Trainspotting came out. So…

39:47Eric WatsonSo it's really the first kind of electronic music, if you, like modern electronic music s… s… s… soundtrack and score. And w… so when we got to Requiem w… we had an idea of, like, let's take all the Requiems that have ever been composed that we could find, and, give them to Clint, and told Clint to, like, cut this up like you would with hip hop. 'Cause Clint had been in a band called Pop Will Eat Itself and, you know, which was kind of a rock hip hop fusion band, that was really big in England and other parts of the world, but not in the US. And so he basically, like, took all these different samples and then put them into, you know, created that score, and we kind of knew in the editing that we wanted to get to this really accelerated editing pace. So, like, each, there's moments when the kind of pace of cutting almost doubles.

40:47Eric WatsonIt's, it's actually pretty mathematical. And, you know, he did, he did this amazing job of kind of doing this kind of hip hop, classical music. You know what I mean? And, w… with electronic themes in there. And but we're like, "Okay, we need a, you know, we wanna record this, and we wanna get a quartet." And, at that point I reached out to Balanescu Quartet, who had done this Kraftwerk, album. It was amazing. It is amazing. And, they said yes, and but Kronos Quartet was the quartet, you know. Like, avant-garde quartet, period. And, we, I got a hold of them, and they said yes. And so we went with Kronos. And so Darren had a college friend who had, he'd gone to Harvard with, who was kind of running Skywalker Sound, and so he gave us a deal to do the mix, so we went to Marin to mix this movie, which was very strange.

41:54Eric WatsonYou know, but got to meet George Lucas and, you know, we get, you know…

41:57Jawad MirNice

41:57Eric Watson... This was quite a fun time. But we were isolated in the middle of nowhere in Marin scoring this movie. And, but we got there, and we did the, and we did the whole sound mix and score there. That's where Kronos worked, so it really worked out well. That's where they like to record more than anyplace else, and they have a great sound stage there. And w… the transposing what Clint had done into something that they could play was a huge job and, I can't remember the guy's name. David somebody. He did that job. I forget what, forgetting what that's called. But, he transposed it for them in a way that they could play it, and they're brilliant, and so they figured it out. But the... We'd spent, like, almost 48 straight hours recording that, score in, like, two days. It was unbelievable. Like… But that was probably the most magical moment of the whole experience, was working with Carlos recording the score to picture, you know?

42:58Eric WatsonAnd each track was just like, "Wow," you know? And then again, "Wow. Wow." And so we were, we were blessed to have them on that score. So just referencing the s… the score that you mentioned there.

43:13Jawad MirYeah.

43:13Eric WatsonAnd Brian Eno still did sound design on that film as well, as we also brought in a team from Toronto. So, Darren still works with one of those guys.

43:23Jawad MirYeah. No, that's... I mean, if it's funny that music is used on all major doom and gloom videos on YouTube like, you know, the world ending.

43:31Eric WatsonWe had th… we had this moment where we, one time we turned on a screen and the, one of the Lord of the Rings had used, had taken the score and done a full orches… orchestral version of it for one of their trailers. And…

43:47Jawad MirReally? Which one?

43:48Eric WatsonYeah, I…

43:48Jawad MirThe first or second or third?

43:50Eric WatsonI don't remember, but, what's the director of those movies' names?

43:54Jawad MirPeter Jackson.

43:55Eric WatsonPeter, thank you. Peter, we knew Peter a little bit at that time and he didn't call us and tell us this. We were like, "Hey, what?" You know? It's like, "At least call us and ask us," you know? And actually Clint ended up getting paid for that, which was good.

44:08Jawad MirOh, that's good.

44:09Eric WatsonBut that was the most egregious, use…... That we saw. But what happened is people started, you know, when you're making something, you use temp music.

44:18Jawad MirTemp tracks, yes. Yes.

44:19Eric WatsonIt's, and some people would use this as a temp track, and then the directors would get a, you know, like, "What, nothing else is gonna work." And so you hear tons of stuff still, I hear it all the time, I'm used to it now, that clearly is referencing and using that influence, you know? And you know it happened, you know it was a temp, and then they had to figure out what to do about that…

44:38Jawad MirYeah

44:39Eric Watson... In the, in the process. But, and definitely gets used all over the place. And, you know, ultimately we're honored, to have created something…

44:46Jawad MirYeah

44:46Eric Watson... So iconic with Clint.

44:49Jawad MirFor sure. I, you talked about temp track. I had Mark Mancina, who's composed music for Bad Boys, Speed, Twister. And I didn't realize, I'm a, I'm a huge Mark Mancina fan and listen to Bad Boys. I'm a big score fan. I listen to scores…

45:02Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah

45:02Jawad Mir... For the last 30 years.

45:03Eric WatsonYeah.

45:04Jawad MirAnd so they were... I don't know which one was first. I think Bad Boys was first. So when he was doing music for Speed, they were using temp track from Bad Boys. And if you, and then when he composed the music for Speed, if you listen to both of them separately, it's almost the same notes but reversed.

45:22Eric WatsonYeah.

45:22Jawad MirRight?

45:22Eric WatsonYeah.

45:22Jawad MirBad Boys, da. And in Speed, da. Right?

45:28Eric WatsonYeah.

45:28Jawad MirSo it's, it's amazing how those things work, and, but yeah, your film certainly has been used so many times. I think I may have done that long time ago in one of my earlier edits for a fun video that I did long time ago, 23 years ago.

45:43Eric WatsonOh yeah. And again, it's just, you know, it's like we had a lot of influences in Requiem, you know? And that we've, you know, well, certainly a lot of film influences. Sometimes full on shots, were directly used. Perfect Blue was a major influence on us, the anime film. And

46:05Jawad MirI never watched that.

46:06Eric WatsonYeah, definitely watch that. The, a… and so we, you know, it's like it's, it's, it's part of, you know, our... Definitely there's a huge amount of, Spike Lee shout-outs in Requiem, of course. You know, when we put those four women on the chairs, it was like the three guys in…

46:24Eric Watson... In Spike Lee and, you know, we're like, "Yeah, the… these are our heroes. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna reference them." We're, we're, it's, for us it's paying homage and it's how it works. It's like... And especially 'cause we came from hip hop, it's what you do in hip hop, or what you used to be able to do in hip hop. And it's the evolution of the mediums. It's like, yeah, let young people take these things and do something creative with it, you know? Go for it.

46:47Jawad Mir100%. 100%. I would love to talk to you with Fo… about The Fountain another time, but just to kind of wrap things up, and you mentioned it, that, you know, you guys had, you and Darren had this thing that let's not ruin the friendship, right? If any time that comes…

47:04Eric WatsonYeah

47:04Jawad Mir... In the way of what we do…

47:05Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah

47:05Jawad Mir... We should... So you did three films with him…

47:08Eric WatsonYeah

47:08Jawad Mir... Correct?

47:09Eric WatsonYeah.

47:10Jawad MirWas that a moment in there where things were not personally, like it wasn't…

47:14Eric WatsonThe Fountain, The Fountain was very hard. It took several years. You know, we were gonna shoot with Brad Pitt in Australia. We spent a year in Australia. That didn't happen. You know, that's a whole story. Then we ended up…

47:29Jawad MirThat's fine

47:29Eric Watson... We ended up making it and, but it was just really hard on us personally. And, kinda after that I was burnt out. I was also kind of becoming a Hollywood person that I didn't wanna be, you know? Like, as much as we still stayed in New York and did our best not to become that, it was just, I could just see myself becoming a, an asshole, and I didn't wanna be one, you know? And I wasn't happy. And so for my own life, I just kind of needed to go a different direction ultimately. And we have retained the friendship. I'm working for him right now. I'm producing a AI-generated series called 1776 On This Day, that's on YouTube, doing 30 episodes this year. And, you know, it's like I produced, I did a Chris Hemsworth series with him called Limitless.

48:16Jawad MirYes, Limitless. Yes.

48:18Eric WatsonAnd, I did…

48:19Jawad MirI think one of my f… my deep peep was part of that series in some capacity.

48:23Eric WatsonCool. Yeah.

48:24Jawad MirYeah.

48:24Eric WatsonAnd great camera guys on that. And, you know, I produced a movie for Protozoa with Arnold Schwarzenegger a couple years back, and yeah, it's like we, you know, we're, we're friends and I'm glad, grateful to the friendship. And at this point it's like, you know, we're both doing really good right now personally, but, like, you know, when we go through hard times, it's like we call each other and like, "I'm gonna do this," you know, whatever it is. It's like we're, he's one of my oldest friends in the world and, you know, sure, creative collaborator, full trust in that space, but more than anything it's like this is, this is my friend.

49:00Jawad MirYou know, I love that about what you just said about you and Darren's friendship because in Hollywood, other than Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I have never heard of anybody staying friends after you get involved in the business, and it's really a testament to your relationship that you guys have valued that more than anything else. Because, you know, w… when... As you get older, you realize, you know, your work is very important, but it's the relationships that you build are far more important, and, kudos to that. Kudos to that.

49:25Eric WatsonYeah.

49:25Jawad MirIt's awesome, man.

49:26Eric WatsonYeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's really strong. Dar… Darren's a very loyal friend with all of his friends. Like, he had, a engagement party or wedding party in New York like a year and a half ago, and, there are, you know, guys there from when he was seven years old, you know. Guys from high school, guys from college, guys that I've known, you know, that since I met him, you know. They're, they're all there along with these, you know, Jeff Bezos and these other, you know. It's like it was, it was a, it was a full spectrum of his whole life, and he's really good about that. He's one of the... He's kind of inspiring the way he keeps his friends.

49:58Jawad MirThat's amazing. Well, it's been lovely chatting with you. I would love to talk to you more, but I would love to talk to you about The Fountain, if you're cool, sometime down the road…

50:06Eric WatsonYeah. Of course

50:07Jawad Mir... If that's…

50:07Eric WatsonThat's a whole show.

50:08Jawad MirYeah, and you're a great storyteller, by the way. I gotta give you that.

50:12Eric WatsonThank you.

50:12Jawad MirYou're amazing at it, and you had me captivated, you know, for 51, 52 minutes and, yeah. Thank you so much. And again, you know, like you said, things… We all pass things to next group of filmmakers. And I will say one last thing, is that when Requiem came out, I was 23…

50:30Jawad Mir... And I wasn't really into those kind of dark-type films, but I think I saw it after it became a cult classic in 2003, 2004. And the amount of impact that has had, a… along with films Steven Spielberg has directed, Robert Zemeckis, you know, Darren's film. My favorite film of Darren is The Whale.

50:50Jawad MirRight? That… I love that film. Nothing against any other film, but…

50:53Eric WatsonYeah

50:53Jawad Mir... It had a huge, it has, it has had a huge impact on the work that I do, and, obviously you are a huge part of it. You know, so thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

51:02Eric WatsonYeah. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for taking the time.

51:04Jawad MirWe'll chat for sure soon.

51:06Eric WatsonOkay. Take care.

51:07Jawad MirThank you, sir. Take care. Bye-bye.