YouSaid · the spoken record

Edward Norton

lines on the record: 102
first: 2019-10-31
most recent: 2019-10-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think people, your tribe, the people you trust, like sounding boards, it's like nobody gets anything like this done alone. It's just like when in the back of your book you see an author, they thank things and it's names. But when you really, when you look at it as a block and you realize what that really is, it's just that's like a tribe. You know what I mean? around an author. Nobody, what's more solitary than writing a book, right? But you look at the network that's around an author and it makes them feel compelled to say, I could not have gotten this done without these people, right? There's not many things that are truly done in solitude.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's romantic later, but it really doesn't feel good along the way. And I think sometimes it's nice. To be reminded that it's been hard for other people when they were getting things done that you admired because it maybe gives you that extra little bit of determination or patience to persevere a little more.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That when you grow up on the film and then you see it got nominated for awards and it's affirmed and everything, you discount the fact that in truth for him, it was a very, very, very out on a limb experience and probably felt very half-baked a lot of the time. And I think it's good for people at any phase of life, certainly I think it's good for young people to hear people who get a thing done say like it doesn't feel good at many phases along the way. It feels entirely half baked. You feel entirely behind the eight ball and discouraged. And this is an intrinsic part of, it's an intrinsic part of it. It isn't all fun, even when you're like already, like you were saying, you're like, well, but you've had success in this thing, this should be easier. It doesn't get easier. It's anything that's worth thinking.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the selective remembrance. And it starts to turn things into a story. And I must say, I think, you know what I think I would say as a wrap-up on it is when I was thinking about doing this, I talked to Warren Beatty one time about making Reds, which is his own incredible three-hour long movie about American socialists. One of the really great films of that whole decade about America and about the American character and it's also emotional and it's about relationships and all these things. It's a masterwork. And he told me that everyone told him that he was going to flush all his chips on that bet and that no one wanted to see a three-hour movie about socialists with documentary footage from people who actually lived through the era, you know. And he just went and did it anyway. And the thing is,”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was interesting to talk through this like that because it's one of the things I dig about your show. I think you, as you know, and as everybody knows, you hack the process better than anybody. And I think that I've been talking about the thing itself in sort of reductive ways that are necessary when you become a cog in the marketing machinery around your own project. But I do think it's very interesting to actually think back through the process of a thing with actual consideration because the truth is, it's amazing how much you tell yourself, you start to discount phases of it. You know what I mean? It's amazing how much the maybe this is why the mind also eliminates the pain of a workout. You know what I mean? It's like you if you remembered pain. Viscerally, you might not ever do anything again. You know what I mean?”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really interesting in talking about personal self-transformation as an artistic benchmark. We don't trust him ever again.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I also couldn't have made this movie with the budget that I had and on the schedule that I had to make it if I hadn't worked with Spike Lee and Wes Anderson and Alejandro and Euridu I wouldn't have had the chops to do it. Those guys made me realize how much you can within limitations. And I think marinating in their work with them had a really, really big impact on my capacity to do this logistically”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Moves to derail it and moves to grab hands with a woman and say like no to that and yes to linking up with another human being and making a connection. You know what I mean? And I think the violence in that film is to reduce the film's message to the exploration of the nihilism is a pretty weak sauce read of it in my view. I think the message of evolution and growth in it is there. And I kind of feel that way about this. I think that this making Mother's Brooklyn now, it's got more of what I'd want to say as a father even in it than I would have been capable of earlier.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't have been the person trying to put that message across if I'd made this before. And so I'm glad in a way. I really am genuinely glad that it took a long time because I think I feel more spiritually determined that it goes in the direction it goes in at the end instead of into what I'd call something that's sexy. It's funny because Fight Club Some people say Fight Club is nihilistic and a lot of people cite that, but I never felt that about that movie. I always felt one of the things I liked about it was that Fincher for all his, you know, for all his crusty exterior, like that's very much about what we're talking about. I think it's about a person who goes into a romance with a nihilistic thing, but absolutely comes out of it. You know, like absolutely recognizes the destructive freight train that he's set in motion.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life I'm in with what I see going on in the country now. I really felt differently by the time I made this film. Like I did not want Faye Dunaway to end up with a bullet in the eye. And the detective saying, do as little as possible because I think that is not what this country needs right now. And I am not super keen on things that are artistically rich, but ultimately really nihilistic. Like I don't think we need nihilism romanced right now at all. I think we've got nihilistic walking into classrooms with AR-15s and blowing kids away like way, way, way too often to be casually putting a sexy stamp on the idea of nihilism. And I think, and I wouldn't have felt that strongly about that if I had made this. 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. So it would have changed what Ken wrote about this and the sort of propulsive message of it or”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The romantic struggle of, but then the reality of it is not so pleasant sometimes. You know what I mean? But I think that for me, the gestation on this affected what I wanted to say and my capacity to even understand what I wanted to say a lot, I think if I had been able to make this in 2003 a whole bunch of things wouldn't have happened, I think I would have at that time in my life sort of had more romance for the idea of like the cynicism that's in the noir genre, right? I think I might have embraced in an almost like showy way that I could be as dark and cynical as any noir movie before, you know, at my age of”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's funny, if I, you know, there's the poet Rilke's, you know, who's Collection of letters that he wrote to a young poet. There's a bit in it that I think about a lot where he kind of says 10 years is nothing to an artist. Gestation is everything. And it's kind of one of those things that you put over your desk when you're in college. It's sexy to think that you know what it means in a weird way. Do you know what I mean? It's the kind of thing I latched onto when I was young because you imagine yourself with that.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or intellectual, or that it's going to be, I don't know what the right word is, a screed or a, it can be art. I mean, it's like Bob Dylan doesn't explain to you. He refused to explain to you what a lot of what he did was about, but you knew. You know people in his generation, they knew what he was writing about. They knew what he was getting at and he didn't have to say it. And it galvanized people. You know, it really galvanized people to participate in their generations and causes and all of it. And I think in some measure, that's the highest aspiration. Their own participation in the world around them, that's pretty fantastic.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We get so much stuff that's essentially engineered to make us passive. There's just so much in the culture that literally wants us to be a passive recipient of downloaded cheap nutrition, mostly, I think, trying to put us in a mode where we're inclined to buy shit. You know what I mean? I think that I think the stuff that activates people, the stuff that really gets them engaged is rare. And it's really cool when you feel it, when you have that sensation that reminds you that you can get actually provoked emotionally or provoked ethically or provoked as a citizen, you know, it's that's pretty cool. And I think it doesn't mean that it's got to be...”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rich, sophisticated, and most importantly, it put it so squarely in the audience's lap, it didn't give a cheap homily at the end. It didn't give a cheap redemptive reassurance in the end. It basically Insisted that you deal with the question yourself. And I think Lot of us, it changed almost like the aspirational goal for what you're going for, what you can do with a movie. And on some level, the thing I've had the most ambition to do is find things that In some way or another, instigate that same kind of activation.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the things that have meant the most to me as an audience member were things that had a transparency to them where you could feel you felt like it was really hitting the nerve of your own experience or even better the collective experience you know so for me like do the spike lease do the right thing had a had a seismic impact on me it was this guy writing and directing and starring in his own film about his own neighborhood. And it was wildly entertaining. It was visually original and dynamic. But then it was about America. It was about the toughest, thorniest. Questions about race and how we deal with each other and what's the correct response to the tensions that we feel about living all together. And it was just so, so...”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least engaged with the character in some measure of the way that I had been engaged with him. I think my first, my very, very, very, very first thing that I really was holding my breath on was in a way, did I do Lionel justice? Did I do Letham's great character, a basic, honorable reinterpretation? That seemed to me to be working. And Jonathan, I was very, very nervous showing the film to Jonathan. And when he was really exuberant about it, that set me into what I'd call a kind of happy relief. But I think that what can What Ken gets at that's Gets at a deeper level of satisfaction is that it's more what you read in the beginning. At a certain point, you kind There's the hope that you can craft something. In a way that works the kind of magic on people just as a Piece of cinema, whatever.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, It's a funny thing when you finish a thing, you go through these. You start to sort of amass data points on how is it actually landing and you show it to people you respect and you show it to some friends and you I was starting to get a happy sense of slow confidence that it was working as a film, that it was doing what I wanted it to do and that people were.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think to stick with Ken, I mean, Ken's affirmation of the film was just like it was about as meaningful a compliment as I've ever gotten. on my own work it's like he's He's one of the druids In my matrix of people who have really mattered in filmmaking, he's one of the giants and he also in particular, he has clearly got this unparalleled commitment to dissecting kind of the American character. He really, he's committed his whole creative career to trying to understand who we are through the past. And I can't, you know, I can't overstate my admiration for the work he's done. So it's to have him kind of actually take the time to write this piece that he wrote about the film was, you know, I had tears in my eyes when I read it the first time.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say he bent the genre. I'd say he redefined the genre. I think there was never. There was never long form, you could even argue that the whole embrace of long-form storytelling that's now ubiquitous on what we call binge TV watching started with the Civil War. You know what I mean? Ken's film The Civil War was the most audacious long-form film in American history at that time. And he basically said he was one of the first people to say, People will not only sit for this, they will devour it. They want rich, nuanced, long stories about these seminal events in our history that are still defining who we are. And he reinvigorated, reshaped the entire form of not just documentary, but I literally think of filmed storytelling.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can listen to them. Without having seen a frame of the film, and it is really, really beautiful stuff, really beautiful stuff.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did, and I think this trifecta of Tom Wenton Marcellus and this incredible, incredible young composer in London named Daniel Pemberton and everybody's been reacting to it. And I agree with you that I've been working on this for a number of years. And I am still not tired of listening to the music on the film. The soundtrack, it actually, the soundtrack just came out this past Friday. We released the soundtrack and the score last week on the streaming services.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And again, it was one of those things that a lot of people kind of looked at me a little bit cross-side. They were like, You can't, you know, it's going to feel weird to bring his voicing into a film in that era or to try to bring a modernist sensibility. Of dissonance and electronic kind of components into a jazz score But I didn't think that was true because I knew that Tom Really has an appreciation of jazz, especially like Charles Mingus and other jazz artists who explored the kind of dissonance that I think Tom has explored in his own music on records like Kid A and Amnesiac and his own solo stuff. And I knew there was more synergy than people were recognizing on paper. And I thought we can do something really interesting mashing these things up.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely type of music, not just in its sort of explosive, but because literally it's about taking melodic forms and twisting them round and round and round and doing variations on a melody, variations on a melody, variations on a melody. And so I knew I wanted that a little bit. And once and on the jazz component of it, I went initially to basically a geniusalis who Of the key music that was being played in a club in the film. But I also wanted to weave in, honestly. Know why I was so into mashups on this, mashups of sort of like Know a tretic character with an old-fashioned noir. I wanted to mash up sort of jazz with radio head in a way, the things I love. And I got Tom York to write a beautiful song for the film that we work into the film not only in his performance of it, but also in a 50s style Miles Davis-like arrangement of it.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think not even mine. Everybody's favorite films usually have music that's more transcendent than that. And I don't mean transcendent, literally that transcends the text. It's not solely there as kind of a subtle embellishment. It's kind of more boldly used as its own. Primary piece of the experience of the hypnosis that the film's working on you. And jazz was going to be a part of this film because of the era. It was also... Me, if there's a kind of music that's heretic, it's jazz in the era of Bob.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the music and sound in many films Approached As what I would call An emotional accelerator, or just an emotional enhancement of what is already taking place within the text. So the moment is obviously dramatic and the music reflects that drama. It's violent and the music reflects the violence. It's sad and the music reflects the sadness, right? And sometimes you get what I would call a very reductive kind of mirroring effect. And what that does, I think, is it makes the music disappear. It makes the music become a pad of embellishment underneath the other aspects of the film as opposed to like a unique. Unique element in its own right that is almost taking on a primary role in communicating emotion or character or narrative or whatever, right? And I think a lot of my favorite films have”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there really wasn't an in between. It was like, and the bet paid off in every way. And the beautiful thing about it was actually in a funny way. The alliances I formed with people to get this done. Are thick now? It's like I really feel. Really feel like a deep kind of alliance with the people who help me achieve this long held dream. And it's been, I've been able to reciprocate, there have been ripple effects to finally getting it done that were as Meaningful as the thing itself, which is great.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think I can say That no film has ever been financed off of the specific type of deal that we did for this one. And I will never, it's not replicable either for me. It was a very, very, very unique situation. And I wouldn't even want to go through the headache of trying to replicate what we did on this because I think Was a little bit like Alex Honold. I felt like I felt like I was going up a pitch without a rope and that If I didn't get each and every handhold perfect, it was going to be a complete and utter... Was going to be a complete fail. It was sort of like. I was either going to get to the top or the whole thing was going to crash and burn completely. There was no, there really was not.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no question that my kind of parallel life outside of my creative filmmaking life, this whole other dimension of my professional life that is just not a public facing component of my life. 100% That ended up Unlocking the way to Get this passion project done. There's no doubt about it.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Secondary trading in that company. And I basically set up a situation where some of the investors in my film had been looking at acquiring that company through their private equity firm. And they couldn't, but I was able to essentially do a deal with where they could be my LPs and buy a stake through secondary deal in this company that they were very interested in. And we all felt that the likely returns on that were such a sure thing that they considered it a, I basically told them, I'll get you access to this deal if you'll finance my film too. And so I set up like a parrade. I set up sort of like a”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“literally hedge off all risk on a single film, right? Which is why most co-financing companies are the ones with big bank roles like legendary that can do big slate financing with the studio because you're essentially playing the portfolio, right? Historically, studio returns have delivered a return, like a positive return, right? You're going to people and saying, hey, we put some money in my film, you can talk till you're blue in the face about why it's going to work. But the bottom line is the numbers don't lie. You're taking just a massive singular risk if you invest in one film, right? I did a deal with some of my co-financiers around Basically, I had access to the secondary trading on a company, a technology company that I was an original investor in and strategic advisor to. And I had a fund, a little boutique fund that was”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can never, you really can't hedge off the risk of an individual film. The only way you can do that is if the way that Stephen Soderberg and Channing Tatum really brilliantly with Magic Mike realized like we can make this film for like under six million bucks and we can pre-sell the foreign for more than the budget. And then we can own it. You know what I mean? So, like we can start shooting the film knowing that we're in the black on it and therefore literally finance it ourselves and own it. You can hedge off, you can literally de-risk a film if you can make it for less than what you can pre-sell the far and on. That's the only way to...”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other thing was that post 2016, you've seen the film, and even though I had written it. Essentially, the way it is by 2012, there was a lot about what changed after 2016 that suddenly Toby was ringing me up and saying, man, a lot of what is embedded in this script is staggeringly on point. Right now, in a way that it was not in 2014. And I think that maybe that was part of why when I was giving it to all these terrific actors and saying, I don't have any money for this, I have to have everybody like, you know, defer fees and just work for love of the project. But it felt toothy to people. It felt like of its moment more than it had a few years before. And I think it exerted more of a gravitational pull on this incredible cast of actors. And that helped me get it made too.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now that I've got this job, I'm not going to tighten up, you know what I mean? I'm not going to play to be here forever. I'm going to use the position to do some of the things that made me want to get into this in the first place. And he did immediately, he did it with Bradley Cooper on Starsborn. And he did it with me. You know, he was like, he literally said like part of the tradition at Warner Brothers is we make, you know, auture-driven stuff and all Clenicewood's films were done there and they made Ellie confidential and so that was a shift and then also I got Bruce Willis Stepped in and stepped up for the movie, and that made a difference. And I found, I called in a lot of chips and figured out some very clever ways to pull together the co-financing alongside Warner Brothers that we needed and suddenly started to tumble.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A weird set of things started becoming emergent to me post-2016. Toby Emmerich became head of Warner and he said to me, like, look, I'm not going to have this job and not make a couple movies. I really want to make. And it's Warner Brothers, and we've got to make those movies. That's part of our tradition. And yours is one of the ones I want to get done. And I'm going to figure out the absolute best deal I can give you to get it done. And you're going to have to find some of the money or a lot of the money, but we're going to, I will create a way that we can get this done, which is amazing. It is amazing. No, no, no, his. A lot of people who have that job who don't say”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's a lot of really, really new and diverse voices are getting a platform to tell stories because of their model. But it was a timing thing. I felt very low about it at times, yeah, very, very, not defeated, but very discouraged and thought that it might be one of those things. I just had to sort of sigh and. Make a big pivot on or let go of Then”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't negative on that. It was probably the thing I would have, but I had a note, it was before they had really started making some commitments to putting things in the theater. The way they did with Roma, the way they did are doing with Noah Bombach's terrific movie, Marriage Story, and others. And I didn't want to get hung up on sort of the like. Almost like the pretension of saying, I want to see this in the theater, but I did. I just wasn't quite willing at that point to surrender to the idea of. Of making it only for a streaming presentation like they did with Roma, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. And I think I'm not one of the ones who's negative on the way they're approaching this stuff. I think it's really.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had many moments where I thought This is not going to work out the way I want it to. I just don't have. Have the cards to Win this hand. And I went through a couple things where I was like, well, maybe I will just direct this now and go to. Another actor who I think we get this movie made instantly and I think would be really great. But that kind of broke my heart a little bit selfishly. I really felt. Connected to this character of Lionel and I could kind of see my way. Into that, but I just couldn't bite the bullet and make those phone calls. I had a moment of, this all went on so long that Netflix became a big force in the landscape of ways you could get this stuff done. And I could have walked over to those guys who I think are awesome. And I think gotten this done in probably one conversation. And I didn't have”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How long am I going to let this mirage? Is this a mirage or is it a thing that I just have to persevere? And how long am I going to chase the mirage?”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would affect my decisions. I would sort of go well, you know, I could take another year off or you get a point where you don't have kids and you're in a great new relationship and you say, oh, well, let's just take our surfboards and go. But it's like, oh, but this might, you know, I've got to keep pressing on this because it might happen this year. And it sort of, it throws like those old models of the universe where the black hole is, you know, taking the time, space fabric, and bending it. You know, that's how this was for me. It was like bending the spacetime fabric of my life, even though it was not happening. And there's this point where you have to kind of keep reassessing. It's like,”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is why we go to movies. You know what I mean? And I really had all that conviction. But then I was like bending my life. It was like this shadow force. It was like a dark matter force in my life because it had this gravitational pull that would.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I also think, I don't know, there's frustration at not being able to achieve some goal. is never pleasant, right? We don't associate it. It's just not a pleasant feeling because you sort of want what you want and especially if you think you've got high-minded or only positive motivations, you're sort of like, it's frustrating not to get to do this. And with this project, I definitely. There was a period where it was always hovering. It had a kind of an albatrossy kind of effect on me in the sense that it was I wanted to do it and I felt I had a good vision for it and that it could be unique and actually like be the kind of hypnotic movie experience that really reminds people”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing right? Yeah, and don't you, I mean, you've done so, like when you Famously, like with the, you know, when you worked on kickboxing. Or when you do any of the things you've done to sort of demonstrate that you can do things within body transformation or learning to speed read or anything, don't you on some level come away with it, come away from it saying I have a capability now that I carry within me, whether other people see it or not, that gives me like a kind of a confidence.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Serious, yeah, I get it. I get it. I totally get it. Well, you know, again, not the highest order of motivation, but it... When you say, like, a lot of people don't do that, or a lot of people wouldn't take that break, sometimes I think if what you're doing is you're sort of, I don't know, exercising your muscles or developing a musculature that you're proud of, right? If it's a component of yourself that it's almost like. Have a secret, you have some secret skill, or you have a thing. It's interesting the way that it... Dial down the volume on insecurities in general. You know what I mean?”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's an interesting kind of component of that too, which is say like, oh, well, your insecurities come in. I'm not working. And are people going to forget about me? Just stupid stuff comes in your head. But there's an interesting thing about doing something like getting good at flying or getting good at surfing, which is it drops through you into this kind of confidence. And there's a component of that that's competitive too, because in a weird way, you go, In your head, as a guy, I think you sort of go, yeah, but I can do this, right? It's like having a black belt. It's sort of like you're listening to someone blather on about something. And in the back of your head going, can you take off a plane and land it? You know what I mean? It's like.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's even more inauthentic to creative work than it is in figure skating, you know, where it's like subjectively scoring. Figure skating routine, it's like the idea that the culture would Construct like a competitive matrix around any kind of a creative form with awards and all this stuff is really like sort of mortifying in some ways. And I think, but at the same time it galvanized me. And it's funny because when we were talking about Talking about flying”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When Toby at one point said to me, I'm going to give someone else a crack at this. It really was actually like the flaring of a very low kind of primitive kind of competitive agro sensation in me that galvanized me. You know, I kind of was like, you're not giving it to that guy. No way. No way. Like, this is mine. And I'm going to push me, right? And that's not necessarily like a quality. That's a quality, I would say, in general. That I try to de-emphasize or cultivate out of myself. competitive attitude within creative work, it's really stupid and I think it can be really counterproductive. I also think around the culture of movies with award shows and all this shit. There's so much absurd like Like construct of competitiveness that is beyond inauthentic to anything to do with this kind of work. You know what I mean? It's like.”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. That's their show. And they're great. Those guys. They're like serious tradecraft pros. They really are like Their writers in the old school mode, they, And they were great helped me. They helped me punch through it. And then I went, and like I said, I wrote the rest of it in kind of almost like a blitz. It was great, you know, it's a funny thing, like. I was actually thinking. About as we've been talking about this. Sometimes I think guys don't acknowledge men especially Maybe women experience this too. I don't know, but I certainly see it in a lot of my guy friends is like. It's so stupid to be competitive about some things. But in what we've been talking about, I can actually kind of recognize if I'm honest that two things happened. One is that”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nice, yeah, nice, who are great pals, great writers. Rote rounders, produced the illusionist. And it was kind of like. Know, I ran it through it. They're obviously terrific on this stuff. Really, just they let me use them as a sounding board threw ideas around. I feel like I remember David Levine saying at some point, like I said something and David Leg goes, I don't, wait, what's wrong with that? He was like, you just said it. Like, what's wrong with it? Like, what's wrong with that? That's great. And I was kind of like, oh, is it that simple”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally, yeah. And I sat down on a huge rug and I mapped them all out and I kind of looked at the node that was like, this is the problem. And like I said, I had a couple conversations. I brought some people in that I trust. And I was like, Really, I'm hung up on this whole thing over this I did kind of almost just some Rubik's cubing with some people. And it was like, oh, wait a second. I'm overthinking this. This gets easily solved by just doing X, right? And then suddenly it was like, holy crap, like that really wasn't that big a deal at all. I just needed a few people in a room brainstorming. And I did it with Brian Koppelman and David Le”
2019-10-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #393: Edward Norton — On Creative Process, Creative Struggle, and Motherless Brooklyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT