#45 - Julian Caldow: Designing Tim Burton’s Batmobile, World Building Game of Thrones, Bond Gadgets, Proof of Work, & The James Cameron KY Jelly Incident

Today’s guest began his career working as a runner on James Cameron’s legendary action movie Aliens but found his home in the art department where he honed the skill of concept art becoming one of the foremost illustrators in the business.

With a resume that includes movies such as Star Wars Rogue Rogue, The Martian, Gravity, Casino Royale, Tim Burton’s Batman, Game of Thrones and even a few Harry Potters thrown in for good measure, I’m looking forward to delving into his creative process.

My guest is Julian Caldow.

Transcript

HOST

Every great film and TV maker began as a red carpet rookie. In this podcast, each episode you'll learn. From the inspiring career journey of someone. Who'S grown to the top of the Entertainment industry, hearing how they mastered their craft with life lessons you can apply to your own creative career, business or relationships. My name is Mike Battle, a film crew member turned screenwriter, and I'll be your host. And this is red carpet. Rookies.

INTRO CLIPS FROM PREVIOUS GUESTS

I was 24 years old when we went over to make Schindler's List. I didn't know what I was doing. I have that still everything I do impostor syndrome. What I learned from Steven Spielberg is just keep going, push forward, no matter how bad things get. And then they casted a young guy named Brad Pitt. Don't think so much.

Don't take no for an answer. It was my first meeting with David about Fight Club. The day that Pixar called, I was ready.

I just picked up the phone and. Made half a million dollars. I mean, at the beginning of every job, I kind of think, what if I don't have any ideas? Dream come true. Working on a Bond film, I was terrified because I thought, well, what if I just screw this right up? He said, you'll get a script at the end of the week.

Titanic.

HOST

Hello and welcome to Red Carpet Rookies. Today's guest began his career working as a runner on James Cameron's legendary action movie Aliens, but found his home in the art department, where he honed the skill of concept art, becoming one of the foremost illustrators in the business. With a resume that includes movies such as Star Wars, Rogue One, The Martian, Gravity, Casino Royale, Tim Burton's, Batman, Game of Thrones, and even a few Harry Potter's thrown in for good measure, I'm looking forward to delving into his creative process. My guest is Julian Caldo. How are you doing today?

JULIAN

I'm good. Thank you, Mike.

HOST

Thank you very much for being here. Now, Julian, I ask all of my guests the same first question, and that is, what did your parents do and did it affect your career choices moving forward?

JULIAN

Well, my father was a civil engineer. He worked all over the world doing huge motorway projects and this, that and the other. He worked trying to make a second international airport in Sydney, Australia, back in the 70s, which didn't happen because of a load of protests. And my mother was a physiotherapist. So as far as my influence from them is concerned, it was probably more from my father, who was always a big movie fan. And from an early age, he would sort of say, oh, this film's coming on, or, this film's coming on, you should watch this. So there was like all kinds of movies, like Frankenstein, King Kong, all of these things that he was sort of interested in from his own childhood, really. So I suppose my influence, even before I really knew what film was was from my father's love of film, I would say.

HOST

Amazing. Were you into art from a young age or just movies?

JULIAN

Absolutely. I mean, I can remember. The only thing that I was any good at at school was art. But I also did get encouragement from my parents in my art purely because that was something I seemed to excel in much more than any of my other subjects at school. And I remember doing an enormous painting of David and Goliath when I was about I must have been about ten. I'd been given a piece, a big roll of paper, and I think that my parents thought I would use cut pieces off to draw on. But I just painted on the entire canvas, which was about 10ft tall, I think. So I drew this enormous drew this enormous picture of David and Goliath, and my dad mounted it on card and put it up in our house. And having a big picture like that sort of in the house was kind of nice. And my parents would have say, look what our son drew. And then I can remember when Star Wars came along, painting white, sort of dewlux over that canvas, just directly over the David and Goliath painting and doing an enormous science fiction sort of a faux death star with all of these spaceships around it. So, yes, art was definitely sort of a big part of my life growing up, which was encouraged, which was nice. But I would do a lot of art in my spare time just learning how to use paint and pens. I don't know whether it was influenced by Mobius or who I even knew who Mobius was. Know Jean Guerreau, I think his name is. But certainly I was taking my inspiration from everything that I could find, which back then there wasn't a lot you had to sort of buy a book to get all of these sort of art references. But yes, I can remember filling loads and loads of sketchbooks long before I got a job in film, and often copying pictures from films that I'd seen, just remembering images from films I'd seen. I can remember a sketchbook I had. There was an old Roger Cormann movie called The Premature Burial, which I found quite frightening when I was a kid, and drawing pictures of these people buried alive so they're quite dark, sort of sort of shadowy pictures of people screaming in the dark. So it was quite morbid. But I suppose Ed Growl and Poe was sort of somebody who I was kind of interested in as an inspiration. And indeed, Roger Cormann's Poe movies with Vincent Price.

HOST

Interesting. To what extent do you think that talent was inherent in you? And I guess from speaking to maybe some of your colleagues as well, obviously you come on a journey, learning your craft over the years, but that was something that you had in you do you think it's something that can be learnt or it's just something that you have to build on?

JULIAN

Yeah, I do think it could be learned. It's that 10,000 hours thing. But often when I was drawing, being at work or at home drawing, when I was younger, being slightly annoyed by people sort of saying, oh, I wish I could draw. And I was like, well, that's because you can draw, but you haven't spent every day drawing. So still, like anything. It's like me sort of saying, oh, I wish I could do brain surgery. Yes, you can do brain surgery, but you have to train for ten years. I do think it's something that could be learned, but I think the most important thing is sort of learning how to see and understanding what it is that you are looking at as simple as things like understanding why a shadow falls the way that it does and giving space to that shadow. I mean, one of the guys who I really admire in the industry is Dermot Power, who worked on Harry Potter for a long time, doing creatures designs and stuff like that. And he really understands light and form, and he would do loads and loads of research into skeletons and nature. So his stuff looks real even if it's invented, because he has such a great sort of knowledge of how things work. And Adam Brockbank and Rob Bliss, these are colleagues of mine who are brilliant with light and form, and I think it's very much about literally understanding why you see what you see. And that's kind of something that I struggle with and have to sort of make an effort to really understand what I'm doing. If I'm using reference, even if I'm doing something off of the top of my head, something which doesn't exist, placing it somewhere. So you believe in that drawing that it is actually sitting in a real space? That's as important as the idea, I think, because what we're basically doing for a living is conveying ideas that look like they can be tangible.

HOST

Could you speak to how that process works for the listeners that don't understand? So you're conveying ideas for the director? Of course. Could you speak through how you create a concept in that regard? The funnel, as it were?

JULIAN

Well, I think you've always got to be making something that looks attractive. So even if you are designing something or taking a designer's ideas and creating an illustration, you have to make it look like an attractive idea. Case in point, something like Game of Thrones, which I worked on. I built the whole thing in a program called Lightwave, and if you just put that model that I'd done on the computer and taken a screen grab, it probably wouldn't have looked nearly as attractive a proposition as trying to light it, render it put in a real sky. Birds, fire, clouds, water, all of those things are making it, putting the reflection of the castle in the water, et cetera, so you believe you're looking at something that can be realized in the three dimensions with special effects, props, locations, whatever it might be. I just feel like you got to be in a place where you're giving the director, giving them that warm, funny feeling that says, that will work for this scene. And that that's that's as sort of sterile or as exciting a process as it's difficult to describe. I try and take the emotion out of it when I'm producing the stuff because normally it's about deadlines. So as long as they're moving forward and saying, yes, this is where we want to go, then I've done my job. And sometimes even saying that, though, Mike, sometimes I'll do a job and I go, I really like how that is looking, and it's thrown out. Some guy asked me about what's your favorite thing that you did on Han Solo, the Solo the Star Wars movie? And I said, well, you'll never see it because it didn't make it into the cut. But my favorite stuff I did, no one saw. So that's a different kind of satisfaction. But when you're showing somebody, a director or your own designer a piece of work, and they're satisfied with that, to move forward, that's kind of like just something off your table. Sometimes it is just off your table, and sometimes you feel like they've liked it and it's the satisfying feeling. But very often I can remember having discussions with other illustrators on the same project, and I say to them, I bet you they go for that one. And I'll say why? I said, Because that's my least favorite. Unless you're the designer, you don't control them.

HOST

Interesting. You mentioned they're working on Game of Thrones, which you designed some of the first series of. Could you talk about the key conversations you were in in the beginning and how you approached the visual identity of the show's? Kind of unique world, I guess.

JULIAN

Well, you got to have a look at that in the context of what we know Game of Thrones now to be. And back then, when I had no idea what it was or even what it was about, it was just a job I was doing in Ireland for Gemma Jackson. And it was all very quick. We didn't really have much time, and I don't think HBO realized how big this world building process was and how much labor it would take to create it. I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but I was only on the thing for about two and a half months, and as far as I'm aware, I was the only illustrator. But there may have been others behind the scenes. And in subsequent series, they threw loads of illustrators because they realized there was so much stuff to do. But Gemma did seem to have a clear idea of what she wanted to do. Design wise, it's all very well talking about a castle, a Red Keep. We did have Internet fan pictures that we'd seen of what the Keep would look like. Gemma Jackson did a bunch of wreckies in Spain and came back with a whole bunch of great images of castles from there. And that was kind of a basis for the look of King's Landing, which was what I was concentrating on back then. And we also had a set from a movie that had been just made there called Your Highness, which was an American comedy, natalie Portman in it, I believe. And that hall was repurposed for Game of Thrones as well. So they started off quite modest in their ideas. But obviously, as the series grew, it all got more and more elaborate and expensive, I expect, as well. But at the very beginning, yes, it was big Spanish influence in the look. I can remember there was a beautiful cathedral in Palma in Majorca, which we looked at, and another place called Castilla de Coco, which was another major influence for the Red Keep. But it was all done very, very quickly because there were so many things to do. And I just remember thinking at the time, somebody's going to have to take over from me because I'm leaving in a week and there seems to be an enormous world of stuff to be done. There was much more work done after. And actually, the Red Keep evolved during the whole series with more plot points and more things going on in the garden and stuff. And it was fascinating to actually see them making these much more elaborate castles than the one I'd been involved in. But as I say, I think I did that in about a week.

HOST

How do the rules of the world affect your designs to some extent? Because you mentioned, obviously, the fantasy element there, and you've done a lot of fantasy harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Jupiter Ascending. But then you've also done Sci-fi, which is a very different world building thing in a kind of loose sense. How do you approach the rules of the world? And do you take a lot of inspiration from the director, or is it inherent to you? Because I've always found concept artists as a kind of endless funnel of creativity, which is also probably quite a hard thing to carry, as like, oh, here you go, let's give it to Julian. He's going to come up with something amazing.

JULIAN

Well, it's very rarely, let's give it to and that's not really so satisfying as actually having sort of a working relationship with the designer where you can bounce ideas off one another. But as far as sort of designing and world building is concerned, it's really all about people. And that sounds slightly pretentious, but it's absolutely true. When you're designing things, you think about what's going to be seen on the screen behind people's heads or bodies or sizes of doors and things like that. The practicalities of something that you're drawing, because you could draw something very elaborate and someone will say, well, there's no way for this tiny little scene in the film, Julian, that we can afford to do that. We've got to do something simpler. If you have a scene that goes on for four or five pages, then you're perhaps spending a little bit more time invested in creating something a little bit more elaborate. But if you're doing half a page, you know that they're not going to be spending much money on that particular scene unless it's a very key short scene. So there's a lot of factors in terms of sort of world building. Doesn't matter whether you're doing something contemporary or in space. The rules are sort of determined by the money. Not so much with things like Star Wars, where you've got a spaceship or something like that, because that can be thrown into a scene, as it were. And again, it might be just something flying by or it might be something that we spend a lot of time in, like, for instance, like the Millennium Falcon. Something I had nothing to do with, by the way. Obviously that's a key set. So a lot of money gets thrown at something like that.

HOST

No, it does. And speaking of key sets, I often say to my guests, there's normally one question I have to ask. I know you've answered it before, but could you speak to when you were asked to fancy a crack at the Batmobile? For Tim Burton?

JULIAN

Yes. For Anthem. Yes. That was very interesting and very exciting. And I was very naive. That's my first Art Department job. That was a job I was doing, making the tea and handing out blueprints and getting prints done and doing concepting as well, because that category didn't really exist as such back then. There was only a handful of people doing that. So, yes, the Batmobile was something that came about because I had done some sketches of a sort of an imaginary film that I had in my head. And I had drawn this picture of this futuristic car chase which I had shown to Anton back when I was doing creature effects for a film called High Spirits, which he was designing the sets for Anthem. And he'd seen that image then. And when I came on to Batman, the first job that I was doing was creating photocopy facades for a potential backlog idea of the street. And I didn't really know what I was doing. The scale of one photocopy that I'd done from some book, reference book, and the photocopy of the one next to it were different scale. So the doors were like, different heights and stuff like that. And I didn't have any concept of scale as far as film was concerned. Proportion, yes, that's different to scale. But it was clear they wanted to find a job for me and I couldn't really do that. So I think Anton asking me to have a crack at the Batmobile, which is Words, was more to do with, he can't do that, let's get him on that. And I think it was because he'd seen this futuristic car chase thing that I'd drawn, which I don't know where that is now. So, yeah, that was very exciting. But again, I really had no idea where it was going to go.

HOST

He put a lot of trust in you.

JULIAN

He did. He was a fantastic guy in that sense. I don't know why he trusted me. Maybe it was the folio of stuff that I had showed him before, which was all off my own back, by the way. It was kind of a folio that I had kind of enlarged in my time when I was doing Creature Effects for three years. I think it was specifically to show art department people, but it was things I was doing in my spare time. Imaginary scripts, imaginary stories. And so this folio of work that I'd given Anton was an accumulation of three or four years of just ideas. And I think that was probably why he did trust me, because he had no other reason to, because I was like 25 years old. I had some crayons, like Karen Dash crayons, which I had used to do all of illustrations, no computers. I didn't want to get involved in paint because it was messy and whatnot. So, yes, he must have had faith in me. But I suspect he was a bit anxious in those first weeks because even when I was doing the car, I was kind of in the mindset of it being a car with a sort of a Batman motif to it. So, like, the wings on the back rather sort of 50s like a 50s American car would have these sort of wings on the back. That was kind of my feeling about it. But as I kept on producing cars in inverted commas, he was like, we've got to do something a bit more brutal, a bit more bit more of a statement, so that's when it evolved into the land speed record sort of side of things, a much bigger, bolder, rocket powered thing. I mean, we got the rocket from the TV series, obviously, at the back, had that sort of little thing of fire, but we kind of went one step further. But that was mainly due to Anton's encouragement more than anything else, to go that step further, to create something a little bit more sort of brutal and sort of crazy.

HOST

What a fabulous story. Thank you very much. It's funny, it tracks interestingly to an idea that some people talk about online, which is called Permissionless Apprenticeships, where the idea is essentially to get the job, your dream job. All this sort of thing is front end the work. And as you did with your portfolio. And then there is a sort of undeniable stack of I can do this, or certainly a version of this to generate trust. It sounds like you were doing that all those years ago.

JULIAN

I was. I mean, from right at the beginning of my film career, I had been doing that, storing up work to show people, like, for instance, on Aliens. I already wanted to be in the art department on Aliens. When I walked onto those sets, I was like, this is crazy. I'm sort of walking around in this sort of space city and I went to go and see Peter Lamont, who obviously I was aware of his stuff on James Bond and everything else he'd been involved in. And I'd made him this hardboard sort of 2D it's hard to describe. It was on three layers of cardboard, and on the top layer of cardboard it just looked like a suitcase. But as you sort of peeled back the cardboard, this suitcase changed into a motorbike, like a Bond gadget, because obviously he was involved with Bond. So I wanted to show him, look, you have Bond go into an airport or something and go into the men's room and then basically make this motorbike of the whole thing sort of transforming. And he started talking about little Nelly out of You Only Live Twice about the helicopter in that. And so we got into this discussion about props. And years later I got to work with him on Casino Royale. And in fact, only a couple of years ago, this guy, I can't remember the guy's name, produced this journal that was all written by Peter Lamont about the making of Casino Royale. And he referenced that seeing that little cardboard suitcase motorbike that I made for him. And he said he'd stored that in his brain to use me at a later date. And so when I came for my interview on Casino Royale, it was a very, very short interview, which was very flattering. So he just basically, when do you want to start? But I had no idea the impact of showing that Prop thing to him all of those years before had had.

HOST

Because you did end up designing something which was kind of a Bond gadget in a suitcase, wasn't it?

JULIAN

I did. I know. It was a self fulfilling prophecy. Almost dark gun. Was it? Well, there were several gadgets in there, but the one that sort of features nicely in the film is this chip gun case that features early in the movie where Bond gets injected with a tracer in his forearm and then he sort of puts his arm out to check that the tracer is working and there's like a little halo scanner that goes over round his arm. I built that in three D and that was taken away and Prop came back. And it just looks fantastic. But I understand when it went to the Bahamas, it was almost immediately dropped and damaged to the point where they had to ship it back to England, repair it and then send it back, like in double quick time, because I think they were shooting the following day. I can't remember the exact course of event, but as soon as it was shown over there, it was dropped and it was quite a heavy case. And I think whoever picked it up didn't realize how heavy it was and dropped it.

HOST

I thought you're about to say it got stopped at the border in the Bahamas.

JULIAN

Maybe it did. I don't know. I mean, I can imagine props people have those kind of problems all the time. We're making a Bond movie. We're making a Bond movie.

HOST

That's incredibly cool. Now, before we wrap up on rare carpet, Ricky's June, I always ask a quick fire, but I do have one more question to ask you before we do that, if that's okay. And I would love you to tell me about James Cameron and the Ky Jelly incident.

JULIAN

Where did you hear about this, Mike? Did I tell?

HOST

No. Bit of online sleuthing.

JULIAN

Oh, OK. Yes. Well, toward the end of The Making of Aliens, james Cameron, I think, paid for the last two or three weeks of shooting himself because I think Fox had said no more shooting. And Jim Cameron, being Jim Cameron, said, I'm not finished yet, and spent three weeks doing cuttings of hands, feet, clumping in the rain, all sorts of cuts that he needed to sort of stitch various pieces of the movie together. And there was a colleague of mine, Nigel Booth, who was doing creature effects on that. He was Ripley's hands operating the power loader. And we were doing all these little things. The Americans had all gone back to the States and it was just this little crew of English technicians and I should say the Scotak brothers who were doing the miniature stuff, doing some great miniature stuff on the stages. So it was a very exciting stage to be on because there was about 20 or 30 setups going on at any given time. You had like a miniature alien queen with the overpositor in one area, and then you had a little section of the room where Ripley and Nuke get attacked by the face huggers with all the rain coming down. We made some little very simple puppets for that. Well, actually, the puppets were already made, but we made some wires to make them sort of move very, very simply, very rudimentary, much more so than the ones that had been made for the feature shots. And there's the scene where the Marines are going through the air ducts trying to escape from the aliens, and they needed somebody to get into an alien suit, basically. And I was sort of standing there holding I don't know what at the time, some prop or something, painting something, and Jim just sort of said, Julian go and get into a suit now. I was okay. Okay. And I sort of went upstairs and there was three or four makeup rooms. And I got dressed into this alien outfit with Nigel's help, Nigel Booth's help. And then I sort of plodded down onto the stage with this crazy outfit on. I've got nothing but respect for the stuntmen who worked on that film because those things were so uncomfortable to wear. And I was in it for an hour at most. And those guys were wearing them, like, all day. So for a few I'm in the film for a few seconds where Vasquez, a sort of Mexican soldier, sort of shoves her foot onto the side of the alien and blows its head off. And they had a female stunt woman, a stunt woman in there playing Vasquez. But it was very, very hot in the duct because you had these lights very, very close, red lights. And Nigel was there sort of with a paintbrush with this bucket of ky, dipping the little paintbrush in the ky and painting on my head to make it all look slick and sort of salivary. And James Cameron, who was never not doing a shot he was just going around the set making sure that this setup was right. This setup was right. Came over, he said, we're shooting this in a moment. Hurry up, Nigel. And Nigel was painting my forearms with this thing. And he sort of pushed Nigel aside, just picked up the bucket and said to Nigel, you've got to have an attitude about this. And he just basically threw the entire bucket of ky over me. So it was just all just dripping absolutely everywhere. Which was, in a funny way, a great relief because the lights were so hot. So it was, like, very cool. So, yes, I can remember going to cinema with my brother and sort of tapping him every time there was a shot of me. I think there's three little shots of me, like, for about a 10th of a second. But that movie is a very well edited movie. But that's largely thanks to, well, the editor whose name escapes me. What was his name? Ray Lovejoy. But also because James Cameron was there to provide him with all of those shots that he needed, which he knew because, well, we know who Jim Cameron is now. Maybe we didn't then, but thank you very much, Julian.

HOST

That was an excellent anecdote. Now, to wrap up, we have a little quick fire, if that's okay, one by one, if whatever comes into your head would be amazing to hear. And the first one is what is one of the best pieces of advice you've ever been given?

JULIAN

It was actually given to me by Billy Joel, though not directly to me. This was at the end of his concert. I saw him in a concert in Wembley many years ago. He said, good night, everybody. Drive safe. And. Don't take shit from anybody.

HOST

Love that.

JULIAN

Although I did. I have taken shit from all kinds of people in the film industry, but you kind of have to bite your lip when you've got a family.

HOST

As industries go. You definitely got to take some of that, I think.

JULIAN

Well, you can speak your mind. That might not always get you where you want to go. Having said that, I do know somebody who always spoke his mind. He's doing very well for himself.

HOST

Fair play. There we go. Number two, do you have a favorite film or maybe just one that impacted you a lot?

JULIAN

Well, I think one of the film that sort of impacted me to get into the film industry before I really even understand what it was, was probably King Kong, the 1933 version, which I saw when I was six, and I was utterly enthralled by it. Okay. I was only six years old, so how many films I had seen by that? Well, you could probably count on your hands, but I'd never seen anything like that. And that led me to very much get interested in that stop motion animation. And then a couple of years later, I saw 1 Million BC, which was Ray Harry Housen's, one of Ray Harryhausen's movie. So I think those early stop motion movies were definitely the sort of magic things of those fantasy movies, was definitely which sent me down that road. And, of course, Star Wars was such a sort of like a game changing movie back then. I can remember seeing a Sunday Times magazine with this picture on the COVID of this movie that was coming out called Star Wars. And I was like, what the hell is this? Because it looked like up till then, nobody had thrown money at a science fiction film. They were always kind of cheap looking. You could tell from this that they'd spent some money, or at least had some people who knew exactly what they were doing. So I would have been eleven when that film was shown in the UK. Or twelve. And it's impossible to ignore the influence of that film on most people of my age in the industry. But it was really those fantasy films which made me want to go and get involved in film.

HOST

Lovely stuff. Number three, what gives you a reason to get out of bed every day for a day of concept design?

JULIAN

Well, to be honest, sometimes the jobs are quite daunting and you kind of dread going in, but then you do jobs where you're really enjoying things. And I did a movie recently called well, not actually about ten years ago now, called Life. Yes.

HOST

With Julian. Bonnie produced it. They've been on the show. Jay Galenhall was in it.

JULIAN

Yeah. Yes. And a really lovely director and a great designer as well, nigel Phelps, who's a friend of mine. But working on that, I can remember, like I would be bouncing out of bed every morning to get involved in that. It was a great fun thing to do with some great people around me. Gordon Champs, who's sort of a 3D whiz as well. He was always there to help me. And Nigel was very supportive. And the director as well, Daniel Espinoza, who's a lovely chair.

HOST

Very cool. Number four irrelevant of the necessary talent. Which job in the industry would you do if you weren't doing yours?

JULIAN

You mean another job within the industry? Yeah.

HOST

That you would like to do? Oh, I think I'd like to be a costume designer, I'd like to be an editor, whatever.

JULIAN

Well, I did a little bit of directing out of my own finance and a little bit of directing doing adverts, but I would quite like to have directed, but not for studios. I would have liked somebody else's, somebody like James John Carpenter in the 80s when he was doing independent movies. I would have liked to have directed movies like that, where you were doing it for not very much money, but you had creative control, which is, I think, something that there very few people have in big movies. And I think there's plenty of young directors who end up making movies that aren't the things that they wanted to do. But why would they? It's not their money, do you know what I mean? Which is know, obviously people like George Lucas, he financed his own movies when he did the prequels. Like them or hate them, he had complete control. It must have been great fun to do that.

HOST

Cool. Next one. If you could work with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

JULIAN

Well, John Carpenter. I would have liked to have worked for John Carpenter when he was in his Pomp. And I would have loved worked on the thing as well, of course.

HOST

Yeah, with your creature background.

JULIAN

Yes, absolutely. That would have been great. Fun thing to do. It's just a great looking movie, great cinematography from Dean Cundy, great directing and a great cast as well.

HOST

Amazing. What is a book that everyone should read? Can be, ideally, career focused, if that makes it easier.

JULIAN

I'm a big fan of Cormac McCarthy. I think he's great, the great author. He did a book called all the Pretty Horses, which got made into a movie, and they pretty did not a bad stab at the movie, but the book is fabulous. I love that. Just a very lyrical book. He's a great writer as far as film related stuff. Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Gold. That's hilarious. Even though he wrote that God knows how many years ago, it's still very pertinent to the way the business works and just very entertainingly written. And more recently, Oliver Stone's autobiography, Chasing the Light, which is fantastic. He's a great writer anyway. But yes, he fired me off Alexander, but I still have tremendous respect and his book is great.

HOST

And then finally, Julian, if you won an Oscar, who would you thank?

JULIAN

Everyone. I suppose the thing about Oscars is when you're in an apartment, it's very different from being an actor. You just have to thank everybody, wouldn't you?

HOST

Well, that works too. Thank you very much for your time today, Julian. Amazing insight and definitely the first Ky Jelly related anecdote we've had on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us.

JULIAN

I look forward to hearing the next Ky Jelly related anecdote.

HOST

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER B

Thank you for listening to another episode.

HOST

Of Red Carpet Rookies.

SPEAKER B

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