And this is Adrian and I talking one-on alone, in this space that was once a garage that was built in 1957. The house is older. But anyways, this is me talking to Adrian Brody.

This looks like, I don't know if you've seen my movie Clean, but this looks like my spot, but it's inspired by me, but it looks like Clean's little workshop thing. Oh, really? Yeah, because these look like shotgun shells almost. I always got red and some earplugs in the knife. WD-40? Yeah, but he could make improvised weaponry ah and this looks like a little bit of a setup like you could turn this into a yeah i'm not quite doing that i know i appreciate that you're not but well when you do something like that do you uh you do a ton of research on it is that what you do yeah so like i made up all kinds of wonderful i'm not wonderful but pretty intense weaponry. Did

you actually make some weapons before you did the thing? Any functional weapons that you did that you made? I don't want to incriminate myself. No, it's not. I'm not insinuating that you have them. I don't

have them any longer, but I've made things. Yeah, when I was a kid, I learned how to, I taught myself how to make

books. A lot of this stuff is just remnants from the old studio, which was a very sort of deeply cluttered garage that was basically the history of my life. So there was stuff everywhere. Yeah,

it's my life. That's why I relate to this. Yeah, my house is very much like that. Well,

now it's upstairs in the office room, what was in the old garage. But I can't let go. What do you keep most with books? No, I have an art studio.

Oh. And so I paint a lot and do a lot of quite layered textural work. So I accumulate a lot of materials, profound materials and inspiration that sometimes never even gets used and lots of paper bags. Sure. It looks pretty intense.

When you say layered, are we talking like schnobbling?

A bit more, yeah. I mean, very lived in, not quite like plates. No plates? No, not plates. They're amazing. I love the plates, but not layered. They

are amazing.

Not layered in the sense that although they're quite strategically layered, they're not evident as such. They feel like they're very lived in. So while I'll be working on canvas, I don't want it to really look like it's a canvas. I want it to look like it's something right off the street.

Right. So do you kind of like paint the bags and stuff into the surface? Paint bags, draw on them,

do separate works on them sometimes, do add materials to the surface. Like some

early Jasper Johns-y kind of shit?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So some of the- Rauschenberg kind of layering on it. They're very- More Rauschenberg. More Rauschenberg. And, you know, Basquiat's a big influence as well. You know, just through his written text. I didn't... My mother photographed him. Yeah. And she has this wonderful photograph of him in his studio. My studio, I shared a... I was roommates with an artist friend of mine for years on on uh great jones which was the block that that uh basquiat studio

was so right by the old street at the bowery oh yeah by bowery

jones that's where it was those are good buildings oh it was so great i had a studio there on the bowery as well which i ended up becoming really good friends with a wonderful artist um alfredo martinez good who's a New York artist who actually, ironically, forged Basquiat's and sold them as Basquiat's and ended up being incarcerated and served quite a bit of time in Rikers for it and suffered immensely. I mean, he went on a hunger strike. Did he make it through? He did. He's not around now, unfortunately. He had a bunch of complications. But he, by the way, is another inspiration. This all comes full circle because he was a master at weaponry and obsessed with improv, guns, machine guns. He used to have way back in the day, a studio in Soho and in the basement, it was some, some wealthy, I don't remember the whole story about some wealthy patrons set up, but he had converted this lower level in the basement to a shooting range. Everybody, wow. Everybody would go down there. I'm sure they were all pretty lit. Yeah. And then just go shooting machine guns. It reminds me of like. But Alfredo is an amazing guy and a wonderful artist. I have a bunch of his work. I wonder what

made him. I guess it was just money to decide to get into

the forgery racket. I think he was broke. Yeah. It was. I mean, everything comes down to that ultimately, especially for artists. I mean, he wasn't selling his works for nearly that kind of money. He's got desperate. Yeah, desperate. And he was very talented. Yeah, well, guns on the lower side, I think that Burroughs was down there with the shotguns and handguns. Yeah, he was, exactly. I remember, yeah, I remember being very inspired by him when I was younger. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like what in particular? You know what it is? Because it kind of resurfaced, but I had this, an LP. I had a record. Was Laurie Anderson and John Guiorno on it? Was that it, maybe? I don't remember. I was very young. I was early days in LA. Of him reading. Of him reading. Yeah. You know that one? Sure. There's only a couple. I don't know where it is, but yeah. And I loved, I would listen to it again and again. I loved the sound of the way he's talking about, whatever. And they were like comedy bits. They were. I don't remember him being that humorous. I remember finding him. You know, I did a beat era movie. Which one? I played a, it was called The Last Time I Committed Suicide. Oh, yeah. It was actually with Keanu Reeves. Yeah. And Tom Jane. Yeah. And Claire Fulani. And it was a very interesting movie. And I played a character that was kind of loosely based on. On Burroughs? No, on Ginsburg. Yeah. Yeah. Keanu was based on Kerouac, and I guess Tom played a Neil Cassidy-esque character. They were all kind of fictional characters. The romantic hero of all of them. Yes, yes.

Well, yeah, but those Burroughs, I think it's either They Call Me Burroughs is one record, and then there's a triple record with him, Laurie Anderson, and John Guiorno. And they each have a record of their own in this three-album set. But, yeah, he just—it was his voice that blew me away, too. Yeah. But I grew to realize that they were kind of bits. Sure, sure. Like, you know, that whole Dr. Benway business with, you know, get me a new scalpel,

nurse. Yeah, for sure. He was aware of what he was doing, but he... Menacing. Yeah.

But, like, let's talk about this new movie first, which I don't usually do. Yeah. Because I think it could probably get us other places. Sure. In that, I don't know that I've seen a movie like it in a long time, if ever. But when I talk about it, I seem to only be able to compare it to There Will Be Blood.

That's, I mean, that in and of itself is such an epic compliment. But it's an epic movie. And it's an epic movie. But I do see those parallels as well. Right. Absolutely. About, you know, sort of power. Yep. Yep. And the greed and corruption of that. And how, yeah, the dream of overcoming this and then ownership. Yeah. Ownership and dominating. Yeah. Very similar in a way. Yeah. Turns into Van Buren. Yeah. In a lot of ways. Yeah. I thought that. Cinematically too. Yeah. And the music. Right. Feels very kind of very emotionally evocative and then jarring and very much a character. And just the space.

Like it takes some, like I don't know where this guy came from, this director. But, you know, and I know he hasn't done a ton. But to have the confidence to create that kind of cinematic space is just this rare thing, man. And going into that, I mean did you know that he was capable of doing that? I had a lot of faith in Brady. Yeah.

Brady Corbet is the filmmaker. And he had done two films prior. Yeah. You know, one was Vox Lux, which is a very cool movie. Yeah. And Childhood of a Leader, which is also a very interesting film. And you can tell in his earlier work, which you know as an actor you can definitely tell that you're in the hands of someone who's going to give you um space to do interesting choices and uh that that has a has a style and a and an understanding of film. Yeah. So I felt very confident that, and he'd also co-written The Brutalist, the screenplay with his wife, Mona. Where does that even come from? I mean, he wanted, they found the idea of writing a film, making a film about an architect and architecture. Very interesting. And in particular, because there aren't

many films of that. Yeah, because like, you don't think like, man, this is going to be, this is going to be riveting. You don't think an architect. Right. But he's, I think there is something.

Yeah. No, this is that. The film is completely epic. I'm blown away by it. But I do think he knows how to delve into, I think he understands the psychology of all of this very well. Also being an artist, being striving and the hardships of being a filmmaker in this business and being an auteur filmmaker

and

the obstacles and the complexities of having a benefactor, having to be, you know, raise money to do the work. And then everything you want to do and desire to do cannot be compromised if you have a vision. But ultimately, I think that's very personal to him. Well,

I mean, but it's very interesting what it speaks to in terms of class, in terms of the immigrant experience, the immigrant experience, how, you know, and the arts in general, but also anti-Semitism. That's right. You know, the you know, how the waspy aristocracy saw the bohemian sort

of and the envy there. Yeah. I mean, like it unfolds very slowly. the artistic contributions of immigrants, yet never really including them or making them, even if they do assimilate, they're never treated as equals.

Never. Yeah. I mean, like, I read a biography of Rothko once, and it was crazy what those guys would do to pass. But, you know, when he was at wherever it was, Yale, I think, they weren't even letting Jews in, really. Oh, yeah. But I think there's some sort of parallel between like his life. I mean, Rothko's like the best, right? Yeah, absolutely. And but when you're when you're preparing for this role, I mean, what are you doing? Like, you know, because you were a research guy and I like I didn't realize I thought the guy was a real guy. But it must be based somewhat on the idea because modernism in and of itself. And then at the very end, when you kind of, you know, there's an award presented to you or a tribute, you know, the interpretation of why your character created those spaces given. And the way he, you know, he doesn't, you see him as an immigrant, not necessarily as a survivor, but it seems that in his family, the Holocaust looms large. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah, it is not just physical surviving, but his

tenacity to just pursue this goal and life's work to leave behind something of great meaning and that the influence, and this was a theme that, and Brady speaks about this quite a bit, about how post-war psychology has deeply influenced post-war architecture. Yeah. And brutalism in particular is quite an antithesis of the eras prior and resulted, many of them were Jewish, of Jewish descent, and also came as the result of cities having been bombed out through World War II. London, parts of London were massively rebuilt with government-sanctioned capitalist works and Czech Republic and et cetera.