#47 - Rhys Thomas: Directing SNL, Secret Marvel Security Meetings, The Handiness of a British Accent, & Making Documentary Now with Bill Hader and Fred Armisen

Born to a sleepy town in South Wales, after university, he swapped the countryside for the Big Apple where he made his name as the film unit director at New York institution, Saturday Night Live.

In addition to his time at 30 Rock, he’s also managed to peel off and create the hilarious documentary satire series Documentary Now with friends Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Seth Myers, and more recently, took a step into the Marvel Cinematic universe helming the pilot and multiple episodes of the hit Hawkeye TV show and much more. 

My guest is Rhys Thomas.

Transcript

 HOST

Every great film and tv maker began as a red carpet rookie. In this podcast, each episode provides a new conversation with a leading film and tv industry professional deconstructing their creative career and delving into the life lessons and stories they've picked up along the journey. My name is Mike Battle, a film crew member turned screenwriter, and I'll be your host. And this is red carpet. It rookies.

INTRO

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. It was Titanic.

HOST

Today's guest is Reese Thomas, born to a sleepy town in south Wales, after university, he swapped the countryside for the Big Apple, where he made his name as the film unit director at New York Institution Saturday Night Live. In addition to his time at 30 Rock, he's also managed to peel off and create the hilarious documentary now with friends Bill Hader, Fred Armison, and Seth Meyers, and more recently, took a step into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, helming the pilot and multiple episodes of the hit Hawkeye tv show and much more. Reese, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

RHYS

I'm great, especially after that introduction.

HOST

You're very welcome. Now, Reese, 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?

RHYS

My father is an architect, and he's an architect, but also from a farming family. If anyone from a farming family knows, I think it always kind of pervades your life in a work way as well. So his parents and his brother. So I sort of had a combo of that on my father's side, but also, I think the influence of my dad sort of leaving that farming world to pursue something like architecture, I think ultimately did have some sort of an influence, I think, in that idea, and that he sort of chose this sort of more creative pursuit I always did view, even though it's quite a technical profession and he's very technical. What I used to love about what my father did is he used to do these artists renditions of some of the buildings that he was designing, which were basically sort of illustrations more than technical drawings, which is most of what he did. But I used to love those artists renditions he did because they were always just, again, these wonderful little vignettes of streets. And I love the way he drew trees. That was on my dad's side. My mom was one of those people who did all sorts of things when I was growing up. She was a waitress when I was young, and then she worked at our airport, at Cardiff airport, on sort of more of a management level. So I had that sort of wonderful fun of being able to kind of run around an airport at weird times a day with her. And then she eventually became financial advisor. And so again, I would say on my mum's know, I think my mom was always. She's just always been very sort of tenacious and really sort of strong work ethic and sort of always pushing. And I think from her, I definitely feel like sort of this attitude, I think, of not being intimidated by anything. I think I reflect. That's something I think she always tried to imbue and I think always showed. So, yeah, that was the balance.

HOST

That's an interesting cross contamination of things you're learning there. Probably hard work from a farming family, not being intimidated from your mum. How old were you when your dad made that change as well? I wonder if that was an interesting point in your.

RHYS

No, he was an architect before I was born. But again, it's like saying my grandparents lived on the farm, my uncle lived next door to my grandparents, and we would go there every weekend with my cousins. And then in the summers I would work on the farm with my dad. We'd go and help with the corn harvest, which, again, I was a child, so helping for me was messing around in the fields and building forts with straw bales in the barns with my cousins. But we were always around and I grew up in the countryside. It's funny, it's just sort of a funny. I think my parents friends, most of them were from farming families as well in the area. So again, it's just sort of a texture of the world that you're around.

HOST

Absolutely. But it's quite different then, I guess, when you were in the library, I think it was at twelve years old, and you found this book on ILM. Could you tell me about that? And were you a creative kid at this point? Was this something that ignited something in you? You're working on the farm. It's quite a different thing to be reading about Spielberg's VFX company.

RHYS

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's. The other thing is, know, I had two parents that worked full time jobs, and so, you know, I'd often come home from work at six or 07:00 in the evening. A large part of my childhood was we would rent videos pretty much almost every day, and that was what we'd sort of get. We'd come home from school. I was always terrible at homework because my brain was always programmed that we'd watch a movie before my parents came home. Watching movies was just something that we did a lot of. And so, again, that was always sort of my happy place. And so I was always interested in what it was. But, yeah, the sort of craft of it, as you said, came alive, I think, when I think I saw this book, and it probably had some still from Star wars or something on the front of it that caught my eye. But, yeah, it was about the technicians at ILM and the route towards developing the visual effects in that movie that was just sort of an eye opener of all these other professions. And again, it was funny because I remember, again, there was technical drawings in there, which, again, I sort of connected to what my dad did. So you could kind of see these connections of craft people in it. And I think that's what sort of comes alive, because obviously, when your early impressions of movies are there are actors, and that's pretty much it. And the story, whatever the context of the story is, but sort of starting to unpeel those layers of what was behind it that helped in terms of sort of creativity. Again, my desire to join film. I had no idea about things like film school or even a context of the fact that movies could be made anywhere but in the United States, really. There were british films that I sort of watched growing up, but there were always these sort of little anomalies because there were so few of them. My mum had started encouraging. They're sort of interested in that. That sort of acting was like a world that you could access literally, like local amateur dramatics and local theater companies and theater workshops and things. She'd sort of raised that as something that might be kind of interesting. So I'd started doing a little bit of that, sort of, again around twelve or 13, and then also actually starting to do some extra work on welsh language television once in a while, which obviously there you actually get to be on a film set. That's things. Those early years that my early teens, I was definitely kind of starting to kind of try and find some sort of a path or some route in, maybe unconsciously. It wasn't like I was thinking of any kind of career or anything, but it was just something that I was interested in and just felt just something fun to do. Because, again, I went to a school where rugby was basically what the popular kids did, and I enjoyed rugby, but I wasn't particularly great at it. I think, in my way, I sort of was like, you had to find something else that you could kind of do. And again, the school didn't offer anything like that. So I sort of also developed this world of friends and things away from school through doing theater. So, anyway, that was a long, rambling answer to say that state of mind at that time was sort of a little all over the place.

HOST

Yeah, absolutely. I can see you're building your craft. You're building your steps along the way. You've gone from, obviously knowing nothing about it to learning about ILM and craft and then getting into acting a bit. Did you make the move to New York in part because you couldn't see going any further on that path in Wales?

RHYS

Again, I think it was possibly unconscious, yes. What happened is actually, again, I was also always really. The other thing that always excited me and gave me joy was travel. We didn't go on many sort of a huge amount of trips when I was sort of younger abroad, but we did the usual thing that sort of british families did. Went to Spain a few times and France. And again, it was always so exciting. And I remember my parents would buy property magazines with properties in the south of France. And so I'd often sort of. I loved fantasizing about us selling everything and moving somewhere fun like that. And so when I was 18, I actually went to Brazil for a year to teach English with a charity that sort of a student a few years older than me had gone on and again in pursuit of that sort of travel thing. And so I think that also sort of opened my eyes up to just how small the world is and also how unintimidating it really was, actually just to kind of drop yourself somewhere and just how you could figure things out and meet people and how your world could sort of expand that way. So I think that was a layer as know. Again, I went to university in Dublin, which was also kind of a slight sort of right hand turn from where a lot of my friends were going to university in the UK. I was the only one. I sort of discovered that you could actually apply and go to Dublin, which also just felt like an adventure. So I went there and, yeah, so I think I just always had that sort of push to keep moving. And if you could sort of put yourself in a new situation, then it was all the more exciting.

HOST

Awesome. You mentioned meeting people there, and one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, of course, how you first got your job at SNL and how you met James Signorelli and things like that. So I'd love to hear that story, if possible, and also your thoughts on luck in a career as well, because you talking about meeting people there, being in the right place, the right time, obviously, meeting James was one of those. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, too.

RHYS

So, yeah, I went to New York with my wife. We'd met in university and had gotten married with the sort of very practical, as a very practical solution to being able to actually go to New York, which sounds, you know, we'd been together for a. So anyway, I won't go to. Yeah, we went to New York and really sort of a little bit on a whim. We interned at late night with Conan O'Brien sort of the summer before we graduated. So we'd been in Rockefell center. And it was funny. Again, I didn't really know Saturday Night Live, other than by reputation, but their studios were sort of on the floor above where we were sometimes I was a script intern, so I'd have to sort of deliver scripts around the building. So sometimes I'd take a shortcut through their empty studio because they were off. And again, I remember it was because I'd heard so much about the show, but the studio sort of kind of surprisingly small and sort of de romanticized it a little bit. I was, you know, again, tv studios, they're not the most romantic of that. That as well. Again, it was like, oh, New York felt the door was opening in New York in terms of like, oh, we could go there and do something. We sort of met a few people. Again, we're both kind of goody two shoes in terms of diligent workers. And so I've gotten a few references from the people at Kenner O'Brien out of that, sort of pursued them, but, yeah, so thought, well, we'll go back to New York and try. And, of course, then spent about sort of six or seven months just bashing our heads against the wall because there weren't any open doors. So there's a lot of PA for free, literally, ads. There's a thing called Craigslist there where you can advertise things for free. So, yeah, little jobs. Being a Pa on some self funded short film, which was also kind of a depressing experience because I was watching people thinking 20, $30,000 of their own money into a film that you could see from the get go was not great investment. Bouncing around doing that. I managed a Colston creamery, which is a nice cream chain here. I got a job there. And it was one of those things of just, like, making your way in New York. And the film industry really did feel kind of impenetrable, because in New York, unlike LA, there's not much. There's a very sort of fixed amount of shows, especially at the time, that were happening in New York. So you either found your way into that world or you didn't. At least that was my impression. So anyway, I finally got a job at a post house, a commercial editing company. Again, just an ad, but they were looking for a receptionist, and it was editing. And at that time, any job in film felt really exciting. And editing especially felt like that seemed kind of like something worth doing. So I went and interviewed and I got the job. And then within the first week, sort of discovered as well that the path of a receptionist at an editing company is to become a producer, not an editor. So I was already a little bit kind of feeling like I was on the wrong side of things. But James signale had sort of come in to meet with one of the editors and chat with them. And again, I'd sort of cross pollination of worlds in terms of know. We sort of had a little chat, again, just in passing. But again, there were some names I recognized. There's some names I could use, at least that sort of made some sort of connection. And again, I didn't know much about the show at all, but it did have a sort of legendary feel, like the way people talked about it, the reverence. So he felt very important. And he definitely carried himself with this kind of level as well. So, anyway, that happened, went back to work. And then basically, like a week or two later, the phone at the office rang and he basically said that one of his assistants was leaving and did I want to come and work for him. So, yeah, again, very much luck. Like 100% luck. I think part british accent helped. There was some sort of exoticism laid in there. But again, I think in reality, it's like, look, it was a combination of look. But yes, we've been nipping at the heels of this world again. It's a little bit of like you're kind of really doing your best to kind of will something into being. But yes, in terms of that phone call coming, it came out of nowhere. It was definitely sort of a big revelation. I remember, again, just finding out that I'd be paid, I think it was like $500 a week. And that just felt like life changing. It was just like, oh, my God, what the hell am I going to do with all that money? So, yeah, it was pretty cool. But after that, then it was suddenly I was at SNL, and that was a whole new world because I'd never been on a film set before, a professional film set. I'd been on some, obviously the low budget ones, but a real one with real crew and real trucks and real equipment, and they were shooting on film. That was all sort of brand new and super exciting, but also the environment of a production office. Again, it was like. Because the film unit at SNL, what was amazing about it was it sort of operated more like a sort of independent production company within the show in that there were only three full time employees in the film unit. There was sort of.

HOST

Myself, so, sorry, would it be possible to explain to the listeners just what unit is, in the sense that Saturday night is live? Of course, yes.

RHYS

Sorry. Saturday Night Live is a live show broadcast on Saturday nights from 1130 to one, and it is genuinely live. Sketches and musical performances. However, there's always been a tradition of short films within the show that generally sort of functioned to help with costume changes, scenery changes. That was sort of their purpose in it by that time. And James Signale, who I'd gone to work for, had been the film director and film unit producer since 1975. Since the show started, other guest directors and other directors have come through, but he was sort of the mainstay of that side. And the main trade of the film unit, content wise, was fake commercials, parody commercials, was what they were really sort of well known for. And there were some sort of legendary ones that I sort of quickly became acquainted with because they're props. Again, you walked into the filming offices and there were all these sort of fake products on shelves around the office. Little chocolate donuts with picture of John Belushi on it on the front, and cheer head and all these kind of colon blow, the sort of cereal that Phil Hartman had advertised. And so, yeah, you're kind of surrounded by this stuff, but I was not familiar with the show. Genuinely I think the second show I ever saw was my first week working there. I just hadn't really gotten into massive. It was a lot of sort of pretending like I was familiar with what people were talking about and then quietly sort of trying to catch up. And this was pre YouTube, so there were tapes of all the parody commercials that they'd made as well, on shelves there. And so I'd kind of be working my way through some of those, watching them. But, yeah, it was like a cool place to land because full production company. So Wednesday night, we'd get the script. Whatever we were going to shoot Thursday, you'd prep it, and oftentimes you'd be on location or maybe on a stage, but never in the building. You never really availed of the facilities of the show. We kind of built it all from the ground up each week. So the crew were all freelance. Sets would be built, props shopped, all that kind of stuff. Everything was happening just starting Thursday morning. And then, yeah, Friday, we'd shoot for eight or 10 hours. And we'd shoot on film, like I said, sort of 16 mil or 35, depending on the level of polish that the film was supposed to have. And then, yeah, then Friday night, we'd go and the film would be being processed. We would start editing at a commercial editing house. We'd be editing on the video taps. So vhs tapes with the timecode burnt in. And then sort of at some time on Friday night or the early hours of Saturday, the color correct of the film footage would be happening simultaneously at another commercial post house across town. And then Saturday morning, those flats would sort of come. The tapes would arrive at the editing house and they'd conform. It was basically like this nonstop operation from Thursday morning until Saturday. There were the series of things that had to happen. And again, what was exciting about it was that none of it happened in the building. So we just kind of would disappear and we'd go off, and you'd be around the city in all these different places at the early hours of Saturday morning, sort of picking up tapes and running to one other place. It was a really cool kind of high speed education in production and sort of seeing how things were done and, yeah, kind of couldn't beat it, I think, for experience.

HOST

Absolutely. Wow. It sounds incredible. And obviously, you were still just an assistant at this point, but to skip on a bit, you had your british accent and your farm boy hard work, and you worked your way through the production schedule, through line producer, all those jobs, and you became the film director of the film unit. And one of the questions I'd love to ask you is where do you find your creative voice? And how do you jump in when you've got so many other comedic talents around you? It's probably a difficult place to be in many ways, because you're the boss. But you've also got also quite famous names for comedy around you, too. How did you deal with that?

RHYS

Well, yeah, actually, that's an amazing question in that I've never really thought about it that way, but a little bit is, honestly, it's a huge benefit. You've got some of the funniest people around that are either writing the material that you're going to go shoot or performing it. So a large part of my job was, yeah, you had to sort of find the craft around that. And I think the way I sort of looked at it was that I had to meet the standard of whatever was being delivered on my side. It was a sort of collaborative effort. And I think the example from Jim Signale and what they'd been doing was. Yeah, again, there was enormous matter. Know that thing we were shooting on film? We'd have really great directors photography that would come in and they'd be lit beautifully again. And you could really see the comparison with the live show. They had a polish to them and felt even compared to, I think, a lot of the british tele I'd grown up with some of the commercial parodies, they really looked authentic. And american commercials at the time looked way more polished than british commercials as well because they really spent money on them. The example I had was just that there was a level of polish that these films had to have to them initially, that was really, I think, the magic going in. So thinking about that, and then I slowly sort of realized that maybe my sort of point of view on it or what I was contributing or what I should contribute was also the job of grounding whatever the film was. Because that was the thing I realized that would oftentimes sort of worry me when I first get the script on a Wednesday night, is sometimes you'd have the really absurd conceit or you'd have a really funny joke. But you sort of knew that within the parameters of a film that it could be a swing and a miss. Like if it came too abruptly or if we hadn't set up the world correctly, it could just feel like a flat joke. Or that we were, again, like an uncle telling a joke at an inappropriate joke at a party. If the mood is not right or if the right person is not telling it. It just doesn't land and it can be uncomfortable. So often the thing I found myself sort of trying to figure out was, yeah, just what do we need to do to support this and to make sure that this sort of, again, hit lens correctly, that we've set the audience up correctly for it. But at the same time, also the reality of the world needs to feel true and correct as well. If it is something crazy or if the characters completely unreal, what do we need to build around that to not make it feel just like a stupid, sort of lazy kind of conceit? I think that was sort of the early stuff, and then it was funny. Then it sort of drifted into what I sort of realized I really had fun with was doing genre stuff where we sort of emulate the styles of other filmmakers or forms. And so that, again, sort of happened by accident. The first time, I think we did a fake movie trailer for a british gangster film that was sort of like a guy Ritchie film. And so the fun of that was sort of looking at the language of those and kind of sort of taking a shortcut through that. And then once we did that, then suddenly more writers had ideas along those lines and it was fun. And then initially, I didn't really have much involvement in the writing. And you'd get given the script and you had to go do it. But then it started. Sometimes now I'd sometimes get consulted. They'd come and say, hey, I'm thinking about this. What do you think? So you could actually start sort of thinking about it ahead of time, but also thinking, well, maybe if we did this or let's not do that, or these are things that I noticed that they often do, and we're really fun. And so it started becoming a bit more of a mingled process as well as we went on. And so, yeah, I don't know. Again, I think grounding, that was the, I was kind of, that was always my first thing was like, and I guess when I say grounding, it's like, you have to find the right tone. I think that was the most important thing that I sort of realized I was doing, was like, I had to find the tone of the thing.

HOST

That's really interesting. And it's funny because I think a lot of people would look at your cv, your resume, and think, documentary now is such an interesting, offbeat production. But now you say all of those things. You can see that actually, SNL was the perfect layup for it. You talk about creating authentic genre stuff, things like that. I'd love to hear how it came together with you guys and why that group of you specifically with Bill, Fred and Seth, everybody.

RHYS

Yeah, so documentary now really came out of, again, of a film that we made at Night Live. We made a film called the History of Punk that Seth Myers wrote. And Fred, I think Fred wrote it with him as well. But Fred was in it as sort of the main character. This sort of punk artist from the late 70s, early 80s called Ian Rubbish. And the joke of it was that he was a thatcherite punk artist, essentially. He sort of never lost his allegiance to Maggie Thatcher and the conservatives. And Bill was also in it. And. Yeah, again, we had a few days, a couple of days to make it. But it was a documentary. Part of the task was we realized, like, we've got to shoot archival material to sort of support to build out who this person is. So we had to shoot some fake performances that they'd done. And the guys wrote some funny little snippets of songs. We had to know some legitimate people to talk about them as though they were real. So we managed to get Steve Jones from the pistols. Again, I'm talking like Thursday morning this process started. And we were sort of quick phone calls. And Steve Jones is in LA. But we managed to find a local cinematographer here that could go to his house and shoot him for us Thursday.

HOST

Morning to go live Saturday night.

RHYS

Yes, exactly. I remember Thursday night, we went to a club on the Lower east side. And we shot sort of punk, early punk performances and shot them raw. I was using my phone and I was shooting stuff. I think I was using an app that was sort of emulating that sort of eight millimeter film and shooting it. And we were looking at all the different ways of like, how do we make this all feel real and authentic? And then we shot the sort of famous pistols interview. We sort of recreated that anyway. So it was like a template for what documentary now would. Yeah, those guys were all involved. Again, I'd done a few films. Again, Seth. I had success, know, we worked together a. We did a Wes Anderson fake movie trailer that he'd written. And Bill again was know in a lot of the films I did. And John Mulaney often was also sort of a regular collaborator. And again, Bill's a huge film nerd. Mulaney is a big, huge film. So it was a little bit of that kind of just. I think we were all sort of excited by the same. You know. What I didn't know is that. Yes, after history of punk, IFC, who did Portlandia with Fred had sort of expressed an interest in the film. And I think they've been looking, Bill and Fred have been looking for something to do together as well. And so they sort of took that film and said, we'd like to do something like this. And so that's sort of really sort of how it started. And then it took us about a year to figure out what the show would actually be, because initially it was like, well, fake documentaries, but fake documentaries about what are we going to do? What can we offer that's new or so, yeah. It was that year later that we finally sort of sat down in a room together and started beating around ideas. And the Grey Gardens idea, Seth sort of pitched it, and that was the kind of the first time, I think, with the idea of actually just taking on recreating a well known, beloved documentary, but just sort of slightly off center with a different set of characters, as though sort of this parallel universe. Yeah, that kind of came from that sort of idea. And then from there, it was kind of opened the door to sort of thinking about some other ones. And we obviously did some original ones as well, within we. I think the benefit was that coming from SNL, myself and Alex Boner, who is my longtime DP at SNL, we had the confidence that we could recreate. That was part of the fun, was like, we knew on the sort of craft side, we'd been constantly sort of looking at really trying to be true to formats that people had shot on, looking the sound design, all the little cues that kind of make something feel real. We got excited by that stuff. And so it felt like no matter what the idea that came out of the room, we were like game to try and figure out how to do it.

HOST

Yeah, amazing. And I wanted to ask, what would a typical day look like? Because it is quite an unusual project. To what extent is it improv? Is it scripted? I can imagine Bill and Fred running around in the Grey gardens thing and you having to try and catch them as they go. What's it?

RHYS

It's actually. It was actually very know. We really sort of figured out the episode ahead of time, partly because our schedule was generally we'd have about four days per episode and because we had the same lead, two leads in the first two seasons, it was always Bill and Fred, and it was the same directors doing every episode as well. The way we would make a season work was that we would sort of borrow time and days from other episode. So we'd kind of figure out what could be done quickly, what couldn't, and sort of balance it out that way. But, yeah, no, very tightly scripted. And so part of the job on the day was often actually trying to figure out, how do we break the feeling of being scripted and find the truth in sort of the point of view of the documentary filmmaker. So a lot of it was sort of like, you'd rehearse it, we'd look at it, and then, yeah, you look for all the contrivances, sort of the conveniences that just happen to be the language of film, that the camera is always in the right place. The camera always seems in film. The camera always knows who's going to speak next. And obviously, in documentary, they don't. And so it was usually a process. And again, the great Gardens episode was what we started with. It was the first thing we were shot, and it was a great layup for the series because it was the Maisel's brothers, and they had a very particular language to the way they shot. Again, it was the two of them, and it was one camera most of the time, sometimes two, depending on what they knew they were walking into. But in the case of great gardens, it was one. And so you knew you had that constraint, like, okay, well, the camera can't be getting him and him at the same time. So, yeah, we'd probably frame for a wide shot here, and you'd have to stand in the corner of the room because you'd want to stay out of their way. It was a real fun experience of kind of, like, thinking about it and looking at it through those eyes. And we realized that making it, we had to sort of get in character as well and kind of give ourselves those constraints. But it's really liberating to sort of suddenly give yourselves those constraints because, yeah, you're not overthinking it. You're not sort of throwing in a million options in the air of like, well, we could do it this way. This way, it's like, pretty much, no, this is the way it needs to be done. And if we need to cut, it's a jump cut because it's time cut because the camera could not have moved over there. So that was always the kind of the way it goes. But then eventually, once we got really good at it, we might be doing a piece of four episodes, five episodes in a single day, and it would just be a costume party for Fred and Bill. They'd just be like, okay, you're this character. Now. I've got to put this on because we'd be in one location, but we realized, like, oh, over here. This looks like the Italian Riviera for our Bob Evans episode, and Fred's playing an italian movie star. And then this way, there's a great that that we can use for whatever else it is. And we'd be switching the camera format, switching everything over in between. So, yeah, it's a super fun. It's like a little art project for the most part.

HOST

It sounds like a hell of a laugh. Definitely.

RHYS

Yeah, it's great.

HOST

One of the things I was going to ask about that is Saturday Night Live is, I'm sure, an amazing bubble to be in. And documentary now still had a lot of the same gang. And I've heard you talk in other interviews about how when you moved to directing Hawkeye, you were going out in the open, perhaps rather than being under a, quote, safety blanket. And I'd love to know how that felt and mentally, what you were thinking when you were going outside that bubble, because that must have been something new for you and maybe a bit scary. Could you talk to that? And going into the Disney machine of it?

RHYS

Yeah, it was scary in that, yes, you're stepping into a new world. And I think the interesting thing, I've done other things outside of the pilots, and so I've been in that situation of stepping into new worlds, but generally being a part of creating those new teams. So you sort of had that level of control. Hawkeye, in that way, was similar in that, again, I did the pilot. So when you do a pilot, you're the sort of producing director, and so hiring the crew, casting, production design, choosing the look of the show, all that kind of stuff, that's what you're doing. And so in that regard, that was very sort of comfortable and fun. And the discovery was that you had this amazing team, like a much bigger team than usual and a lot more resources than usual at your disposal. And the layer that I'd not really ever had was you had storyboard artists and previs and all these things. And even on the production design level, we had sort of the ability to sort of in the unreal engine, to previsualize sets. And so there was a lot of that fun, kind of like, whoa, the scale of know we can really start exploring. At the same time, the intimidation was from the fact that you're stepping into Marvel's world, and it was a very well established world that was run a very certain way. And almost everyone that I was working with had done multiple Marvel movies before, so they really were all familiar with each other, and they were all familiar with, again, this is the way we do things at Marvel, you could feel it in the air. And so that was a sort of scary thing. Was you aware that you borrowed the keys to someone else's boat and was sort of just trying to figure out how to drive it, and all the while being aware that you didn't want to damage it? And so, yeah, that side of it was different. I think the difference, when it's your show again, if I decided I wanted to spend, I want to look at the schedule and I wanted to spend more time on this one thing, because I really knew that that was the thing that was going to take time as my show. I can do that and I can decide for myself, like, well, I'll make up the time elsewhere. I'll take time from this thing. I know I can do that quick or whatever. When you're in the marvel world, you've got this giant machine that sort of freedom to be a sort of bit more nimble in that way that sort of goes away a little bit because everything's much more sort of. So I think that was the hardest thing sometimes, was sort of you're almost trying to educate people to the way that you do things. And again, coming up from SNL and documentary now, it can seem a little bit like a little reckless at times because it's a little bit of that tenacity in terms of like, no, it'll be fine, believe me. It's like one shot is all it is, or actually, it's going to happen off camera. You guys are designing or singing. We don't need to do that. And to get people to believe you that that's because I think a lot of the crew on these big movies are used to directors telling them, like, no, it's just going to be this. Don't worry. And then, of course, the director shows up and then suddenly wants five other options, or the producers want five other options. There was a lot more people being answered to. And so you'd want to do something simply, but no one would trust you that you're going to do it simply. They'd arrive with all the stuff anyway.

HOST

Just in case on those sets. Reese, you're definitely right.

RHYS

Yeah. It's so funny. No matter what you do, and then suddenly you can't move as fast because now you've got a ton of equipment over there that you didn't ask for, but it's there. And then suddenly they've convinced you, like, well, you should shoot it because we bought the stuff. And then, so the time that you thought you were going to borrow is gone because now you're shooting that thing that you thought, well, I don't really need it. Again, it's a different process, and I get it. And look, again, you sort of realize, look, it's my show in some regards, but it's also their show, and they're paying a lot of money for it. So you've got to sort of adapt your mode of thinking and understand that. Look, if the producers think that this is important or the producers, then I've got to get that for them as well. It was just that adjustment ultimately. But super fun the whole time as well.

HOST

Absolutely. There's normally one question I have for each guest, which is my own personal question I've got to ask. And my one for you with this one, Reese, is what happens in a secret Marvel security.

RHYS

Mean? The funny thing is, I was sitting in this office. We started like I'd be doing my video calls from here. And, yeah, I had a call with the head of security at Marvel sort of early on, just like, you have to have this briefing, and they do. They still put the fear of God into you just because sort of like, you're handling top secret material. And so there's keep your curtains. If you've got anything on your desktop, curtains need to be closed. And again, if you saw around my house, there's no one gives a shit and no one's around to look into. And don't print anything out. And da da da. And don't tell your family because you'll be surprised that people will innocently say something to somebody and it gets out. So is that kind of vibe. And so I was really like, again, it was a pandemic. Wasn't seeing many people anyway, but I didn't tell my family I was doing it until it was announced and I really followed the rules, and I thought I'd done a good job. But then things get out anyway, again, that someone else spoke eventually. So, yeah, I've worked in different things now where those NDAs come in and everyone values their content so much that it's just a way of being brilliant.

HOST

Thank you for sharing that. And it brings a nice circularity to our conversation because it reminds me that you haven't changed from what you were saying earlier, where you and your wife were the goody two shoes going around getting things for their first job to wrap up on red carpet rookies. Reese, I like to do my own version of in the active studio questionnaire. So just think of the first thing that comes into your head, if that's. Yeah, the first one is what is one of the best pieces of advice you've ever been given?

RHYS

Okay. So I don't know if it's directly a piece of advice, but it's a mentality. But basically, Lorn Michaels, who executive produces Saturday night, is Mr. Saturday Live. He's famous for saying that the show doesn't go on because it's ready. It goes on because it's 1130. And it's interesting in that that is true of anything that you do in film, in that you have a schedule and you can want it to be perfect and you can slave and slather and bash your head against the wall. But ultimately, something has to get made, something has to be recorded, and you have to keep moving. And so I think that thinking of just keep moving and keep doing. And again, you got to switch off that sort of overthinking brain at a certain point because it needs to happen has been incredibly valuable. I take a real joy in problem solving. Again, I never say this, you can't say this to crew and you can't say this to producers because they'll think that you're willing to do anything. But I take a real joy, again, when those constraints land or when you realize that the thing you wanted wasn't there. There's a moment of panic, of course, but then there's a real pleasure sometimes in going, okay, so let's take a breath and let's think about, okay, what else can we do? How can we do it? Anyway, it's not necessarily advice, but it's sort of a philosophy, I think, that is kind of carried out from SNL.

HOST

We can do philosophies. Thank you very much. Number two, do you have a favorite film or maybe one that just impacted you a lot in your life?

RHYS

Yeah, it's a weird one to say, but it's where my brain, again, top of brain, boogie nights, 1997. And again, I think I was just at that age where I was going to the cinema by myself and watching, just paying attention. And boogie Nights was that opening shot sort of comes down off the neon sign and descends sort of down over the streets and then comes into the club. And then that opening, I remember just, like, electrified me because it just was such a number one, it's sort of a virtuosic shot, but at the same time, it was just the storytelling of it, the way that it sort of took you as an audience sort of down into the world of these characters. And then that whole movie, again, it was the first movie where I was aware of the director's hand that the point of view was suddenly really present for me. And I went to saw it a couple of times and I know it's about pornography, so it's 17. It was a questionable choice, but no, it was really just like. Again, the way the camera moved in it and just the craft of it, it just felt so alive and, yeah, again, I could feel the choices being made and so, yeah, that was huge. But yeah, again, that's my top of head answer. There's a million other movies I could probably go to, especially around that time.

HOST

Wicked. Number three, which job in the industry would you do if you weren't doing yours? Talent is irrelevant. You can do whatever one you want.

RHYS

Cinematography. Again, cinematography was not something I was aware of as a career choice, as a role because I didn't go to film school and it just was kind of just ignorant. And so I think I just went for the top tier jobs of sort of actor and director. But I've always loved cinematographers and I love the craft of it. And again, their side of the process, I think it's always really fascinated me. So, yeah, definitely that amazing.

HOST

Number four, if you could work with one person, living or dead, who would it be? Sorry, that's hard.

RHYS

Oh, that one is really know. Again, obviously to spend time on a Spielberg set would be wonderful. Again, Hitchcock I love just again, to sort of sit in a room and see Kurosawa also just a sort of point of view on the world that is just so fascinating. Yeah, sorry, that's three people.

HOST

No, don't be sorry at all. Number five, what is a book? Ideally, sort of career or creativity focused, but doesn't have to be that everyone should read.

RHYS

Bring it back to Kurosawa. His book, something like an autobiography. It's wonderful. Again, it's autobiographical, but so full of his sort of thoughts on the world and his thinking on film. But there's something sort of deeply humanistic about it and thoughtful and just an outlook. I think it's a very useful read.

HOST

Amazing. And finally, if you won an Oscar, who would you thank? Reese?

RHYS

Well, definitely my wife. We came up together and she works with me on everything, so that's 100%. And I'd be murdered if I didn't. Obviously, children who you hope would be at home watching and do that all thing and parents. But yes, this is one of those huge questions because I think I always come out of every project I do. You feel so deeply grateful to your crew and key people that sort of go that extra mile for you or did something crazy in the middle of it. I always feel inadequate in sort of how you want to thank them because I'm aware. I remember early on getting, sorry I'm rambling here, but I remember early on getting emails for films that I did at know whether it was from Bill Hayter or someone or him passing on. I remember once we did something and he hear that Tarantino had said something nice about one of the films and so he passed it on. But I remember my first thought was that I sort of felt guilt that it was coming to me. And so I remember asking Bill like, oh, can you send Alex my DP an email? As trying because it was like I was aware it wasn't just anyway. So, yeah, I think I'd come off that Academy Award stage and just be washed in a sweat of guilt, probably because I'd forget people.

HOST

Fantastic. Thank you very much. That was very honest. And thank you for sharing that with us. Reese, thank you so much for your time today. Amazing journey into the wonderful world of SNL documentary now. Hawkeye, thank you so much for your time.

RHYS

Thank you.

SPEAKER C

Thank you for listening to another episode of Red Carpet Rookies. To help us grow and be able to interview more amazing film and tv professionals. Please do subscribe and drop us a rating on the Apple Podcast Store, on your iPhone or online if you're an Android user. If you're interested in regular updates, the best thing you can do is to join our mailing list@redcarpetrookies.com, or alternatively, find us on Instagram at red carpet rookies or Twitter at rcrookiespod. I also tweet regularly about my own learnings in the business at Mike fbattle on Twitter, so please do come and say hi. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.