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“It’s an Intermediary Kind of Format Designed to Move Ideas, Language and Structure to the Screen”: Oren Moverman Talks Screenwriting with Ryan Gosling

I'm Not There

The following interview appeared originally in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2007 print edition.

We don’t cover enough screenwriters in Filmmaker, but that’s not entirely our fault. This magazine is devoted to independent film, and for many, the director is also the writer. Or the script has emerged from improvisation or some other nontraditional means. And while there is a new breed of independent-minded screenwriters today — Charlie Kaufman, Capote’s Dan Futterman and Juno’s Diablo Cody come immediately to mind — many of the “marquee screenwriters” still work almost exclusively in the studio world.

By virtue of the unique niche that screenwriter Oren Moverman has claimed for himself, he is that rare top screenwriter who has, until recently, operated primarily in independent film. His special talent has been successfully collaborating with auteur directors who have written their own previous work. To their projects he not only brings the ability to collaborate but also a wide-ranging knowledge of art, philosophy, politics and literature – material that enriches the worlds of the films he contributes to.

In 1999, Moverman co-wrote Jesus’ Son, Alison Maclean’s film version of the Denis Johnson story collection. In 2002 he co-wrote Bertha Bay-Sa Pan’s indie drama Face. And this year, he shares screenplay credit with the directors of two of the boldest movies around. With Ira Sachs he co-wrote Married Life, which premiered at Toronto and is forthcoming from MGM and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment in February. And with Todd Haynes he co-wrote I’m Not There, the profound and deeply satisfying journey into the various personas of Bob Dylan. (He’s also adapting Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel Empire for producer Joel Silver, but we’ll leave discussion of that for his Fade In profile.) He also plans to step out of the writer’s den into the director’s chair this year with one of a couple of projects he is close to financing.

We’re very happy that Ryan Gosling agreed to interview Moverman for Filmmaker. Gosling is the star of such films as Half Nelson (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), this year’s Fracture, The Notebook and the Sundance Grand Prize-winner The Believer. Like Moverman, his interests are passionate and wide-ranging, and he commits to challenging material whether that hails from the independent or the studio space. Gosling is also at work on his own project as a director. He’s developing it with Moverman, and they talk about it briefly at the end of the friendly, funny and thoughtful conversation that follows. — Editor

Gosling: Now, just because we’re friends, it doesn’t mean I’m going to take it easy on you in this interview. I owe it to your fans to ask the hard questions. You realize that?

Moverman: I didn’t, but let’s test our friendship.

Gosling: I also want it on the record that in certain independent circles I’m known as a kind of edgy Barbara Walters. I will make you cry.

Moverman: Well it’s very easy to make me cry. I don’t consider that an achievement, you know.

Gosling: So, my first question is, on IMDb, you have interesting credits. “Uncredited Writer.” “Special Thanks To.” First of all, if you’re credited as the uncredited writer, isn’t that a credit?

Moverman: I think that’s technically true. We have to check with the Writers Guild. But I don’t think I’m credited as an Uncredited Writer, I think I have an uncredited role in a movie, which is even more embarrassing.

Gosling: See, I get right to the heart of it. What is it, Oren?

Moverman: It’s a movie called Vanya on 42nd Street that was directed by Louis Malle. I worked on the movie — I kind of walked in off the street and ended up being a PA. This was 1994. I had come to the States in 1988 — after I finished my military service in Israel, where I’m from — and I worked for a few years at JFK airport doing security. Then I was out of a job, and had nothing to do except wait for my daughter Maya to be born. I went to Brooklyn College for a few years, studied film, but I didn’t know anyone. One day I opened The New Yorker, And there was a picture of Louis Malle, Andre Gregory and Wally Shawn — they were shooting Vanya in the Old Amsterdam Theater. I don’t know what got into me, but I literally ran down there, met Andre Gregory’s assistant, who allowed me to just stand in the lobby, and walked up to the producer — the security guard pointed him out and said his name was Fred Berner — and I said, “Hi Fred, I’m here for the job.”

Gosling: [laughs] I like how in your version of this story, you kind of talk like the guy from Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

Moverman: [laughs] Oh, man, I love that film. [in a Warren Oates impression] “Hey Frank, I’m here for the job.” [laughs] That’s a great movie.

Gosling: “Do you think Alfredo would give a damn if his head could buy us everything we’ve been looking for? A way out?” How come you can’t write stuff like that, Oren?

Moverman: Nobody can write stuff like that. You can’t even make a film like that anymore. And starring Warren Oates!

Gosling: So you walked up and said, “Frank, I’m here for the job.”

Moverman: His name was Fred — this is not a movie, this is real, let me write the end of this. So he told me to go across the street to the production office and ask them if they have anything. So I went across the street and said, “Fred sent me for the job.” They gave me the script and said, “Come back tomorrow. We need PAs, there’s no money but Louis Malle is directing.” I knew his films and I loved some of them a lot, especially Elevator to the Gallows and Au Revoir, Les Enfants. So I came back the next day, met Louis, and he said, “Okay, I’m also going to put you in the movie.” I ended up being in front of the camera a little bit as an uncredited actor,  as you so cleverly found in IMDb. And then I started talking with this young actress on the set, Julianne Moore. She said, “You should meet my friend Todd because he’s a genius.”

Gosling: All right!

Moverman: I rented Poison, watched it and liked it. I wasn’t blown away, to tell you the truth, but I was very impressed. And then I was invited to the cast and crew screening of Safe, which blew me away, and that’s when I met Todd. And the rest is history — as you can tell from IMDb.

Gosling: Were you writing at that point?

Moverman: I actually was writing, but I wasn’t writing in English. I wrote a screenplay in Hebrew. Then I wrote a film called A Hiding Place — later it became Looking Glass — which was my first English feature, and through some very weird circumstances, I actually got the money to make it. And so, a few years after Vanya, I was in pre-production to direct the movie with money from France when, four days before shooting, the money was pulled. The film collapsed and died right then and there. But I was left with a script that became my writing sample, and it really kind of made a career for me.

Gosling: You have a lot of “Special Thanks” on your IMDb page too, by the way. How special are those thanks? Is it like, “Hey Oren, thanks for coming into the editing room and making sense of this mess,” or is it, “Oren, thanks for letting us shoot at your house”?

Moverman: [laughs] No one can shoot in my house, it’s too small. No, they are all very friendly thanks that have to do with me giving my two cents.

Gosling: On Velvet Goldmine, for instance.

Moverman: On Velvet Goldmine, I gave notes on various drafts of the script, and I gave notes, along with a lot of other people by the way, on the edit. I did the same thing on Far from Heaven. So by the time we got to write the Dylan movie, I really knew what a Todd Haynes script looked like and what it needed to do. The others were all about giving opinions, ideas about cutting and things like that. And camaraderie.

Gosling: You’re big on camaraderie, huh?

Moverman: I like camaraderie.

Gosling: [laughs] I like camaraderie too.

Moverman: You’re never alone with camaraderie.

Gosling: Let’s talk about I’m Not There. I’m hoping that this is the biggest movie of all time, because if it is, the studios are not going to know what the hell people want to see and movies are going to be so interesting for the next 5 or 10 years. But tell me how you go from reading Chronicles [the Bob Dylan memoir] to making a movie about Dylan without him? Todd comes to you and says, “I want to make a movie about Bob Dylan” and you say, “The only way to do it is to have five people play him!”

Moverman: I think that I’ll probably generate a little bit of controversy in giving you my version of this because, true to a Dylan project, there are a few versions of how exactly the idea was born. All I can do is give you my mine. And by the way, the film was written before Chronicles came out. What happened was after Velvet Goldmine and before Todd moved to Portland, he w as in Brooklyn and we would see each other a lot. My son Amir was born, my second child, and I was a stay-at-home dad, basically. My wife did the heavy lifting; I didn’t have much work at the time. Todd would come by every few days and we would be like an old couple with a baby. We’d go have coffee while Amir was napping next to us. It was great. Todd is an incredibly interesting guy and you can talk about anything with him. We probably talked about politics more than anything else — more than movies. And then one day, he came in to the apartment and said, “I want to make a film about Bob Dylan.” And being the visionary that I am, I said, “Forget it — you’ll never get the rights. And even if you get the rights, the movie will be about casting, the whole thing would be about ‘Where do you find a guy who looks and sounds like Dylan?’” We then talked about it for a while and it sort of made sense that if there were to be a movie about Bob Dylan that nobody and everybody would play him — it would just have to be the “Bob Dylan experience,” a kind of non-narrative, nonlinear film made of fragments of some of the characters Bob Dylan has been in his life, but none would be called “Bob Dylan.” So Todd developed this whole idea and these characters. In the beginning there were more characters, actually. I remember “Charlie,” a spin on the Charlie Chaplin elements of Dylan’s early years.

Through various connections and Killer Films, a short proposal got to Dylan’s manager. He showed it to Dylan and Dylan said yes. I think he liked the idea — the approach made sense to him. But [Dylan] also wanted a stage version. So, I get the call from Todd, and he says, “Guess what Oren, you are now ‘of the theater.’ ” Killer sent me out to Portland, where Todd moved to after a cross-country road trip devoted entirely to Dylan, and we worked out a stage version of I’m Not There. It was going to be the same characters but the stories were going to be different. It was very elaborate, and then we worked out the stage design and how it’s going to be divided up and how characters are going to come in and out. I went back to New York City, and started writing, but after a while I realized that this was not happening. [laughs] Dylan, or somebody, changed directions and it ended up going to Twyla Tharp, who did her own thing. That’s a whole story in itself. And so I was off the island, and I was doing other things, writing other films, including Married Life with Ira Sachs.

Then months later I got a call from Todd saying, “You know what, this is too much, I need you to work with me on the film.” And I said “Let me just give you notes and support you and do everything the way we always do it,” because he would read my screenplays and do that for me too. But he said, “No, this is a writing partnership, this has to be done right, this is a lot of work.” So, I packed my bag again and went to Portland and we worked on the screenplay. He had a ton of ideas and material. I remember sitting down with him and he said, “Look, we’re not writing a screenplay, we’re interpreting,” which sounded very Talmudic to me. From then on we started talking about every single word in the screenplay, analyzing things from different points of views and reviewing all the books and research that we had done. From that point it came together really fast.

Gosling: And how did it come together financially? What studio got behind it? Who made the film?

Moverman: Originally we developed it at Paramount. Then they had a regime change and put it in turnaround, and then it was put together piece by piece. Celluloid Dreams were involved in foreign sales and John Sloss was involved at Cinetic. Jim Stern came on board and Soderbergh got involved at a later point. But I can’t pretend to know exactly how they pulled it off.

Gosling: How do you pitch an idea that there’s no reference for? Because there’s nothing to compare the film to, which from my understanding in Hollywood, you really need if you want to get something made. They need a comparison film. Did you talk about Bob Fosse at all?

Moverman: No. The film is obviously unusual, but I think the process of making it was also unusual. I didn’t do that part of the labor. I know that Todd met with people and described it, but it wasn’t like Paramount came on board because they “bought a pitch.” I think they knew it was Bob Dylan, Todd was coming off the Academy Award nomination for screenwriting on Far from Heaven, so I think there was just this idea of “Okay, Todd Haynes wants to develop an interesting film about Bob Dylan; that’s potentially something.” Once the screenplay became what it was and they took a look at it, I know for a fact the quote was, “This is not a screenplay, it’s a headache.”

Gosling: You write scripts like a director, and you are a director — you are going to direct your own films. What’s it really like for you to collaborate? Do you really like writing for other people, or are you just a masochist? [laughs]

Moverman: That’s a two-part question. The second part first: I’m not a masochist. I do like collaborating with people, but I actually think that collaboration is not one thing. There are different types of collaborations, different flavors, and most of them I like. My favorite type of collaboration is with a director, although I’ve had some really good collaborations with cowriters who were not directing. I come into it with the need to tap into the director’s vision, to understand what he or she wants as opposed to what I want. It’s a great exercise, and I don’t think it’s that far removed from acting. It becomes similar in that you have to get some basic understanding about what the director is trying to achieve that involves putting your ego aside. It’s kind of like learning a language that you didn’t really speak before. Contributing to the process by always asking questions and trying to understand what the director wants so I can give it to him or her. And it’s not that far from a director’s collaboration with the cinematographer. I bring my lenses — my various ideas, my point of view — and I propose them to the director and he or she can choose…

Gosling: Right, but a cinematographer is not involved in the conception of the idea. I mean, you and the director are on each other’s minds for a certain period of time and the script can go anywhere. And then at a certain point you kind of have to relinquish it. Is collaboration a “letting go” process ultimately? When do you, Oren Moverman, start to say, “I should back out of this now?”

Moverman: Well I think that my objective is always to let go. I have this very pretentious approach to screenwriting that I will now share with you. Do you know Marcel Yanko?

Gosling: No.

Moverman: He was a Romanian artist, a Dadaist. At some point he moved to Israel and created an artist colony. When I was a kid, I saw him paint this beautiful painting on a woman’s breast. [laughs] He was very old.

Gosling: Keep it clean, Oren, c’mon.

Moverman: Breasts are clean.

Gosling: Not if they’re painted on.

Moverman: It was a work of art, and I remember being very impressed by it but also for the first time being introduced to the idea that there can be a sort of art that is not permanent. I later learned that he used to do assemblages of these machines that he would put in museums and they would destroy themselves after a while. I became intrigued with this whole idea of art that destroys itself or makes itself go away, and I kind of found myself approaching screenplays that way, which is to say if a screenplay is written and is made, then truly for most people the screenplay doesn’t exist. It goes away. It’s an intermediary kind of format designed to move ideas, language and structure to the screen. And if it doesn’t ever get made, aside from the pain it caused the writer, it again doesn’t exist because it never made it as a film. It froze and died. People can’t have access to it. So my goal is to make the screenplay go away, and to let go, hopefully, because the film gets made.

Gosling: But how do you turn off the part of you who wants to be a director? Or is that not hard for you?

Moverman: It’s not, because I try to think like a director and to think of the needs of a director and apply them to the screenplay. I try to find the language that’s right for each project.And then some directors direct you. I think both Todd and Ira gave me directions, they told me what they wanted. Todd told me to interpret and Ira told me to be kind, because every character was fighting a great battle. Other directors I’ve worked with have said things like, “Well I’m just going to ramble for the next hour and you just take what you think is good for you.” And then there are directors who say, “I trust you, come back with something interesting.” If they do that, then I go and I direct it on the page as well as I can, and that’s the screenplay.

Gosling: Tell me about Ira. You have a special thanks on his film Forty Shades of Blue as well.

Moverman: Right. That’s the thing — once they give me special thanks, they’re mine — they have to hire me!

Gosling: It looks that way.

Moverman: Ira and I had a mutual friend, Jonathan Nossiter, who directed Sunday, Signs & Wonders and Mondovino, and is now making movies in Brazil. He wanted us to meet and the official excuse was that we should meet because people think we look alike [laughs]. We’re both bald, Jewish guys with glasses. So we met and we got along. What I didn’t know was that he was auditioning me for work. I was dumb enough to believe that we were meeting because…

Gosling: You’re both bald and Jewish and wear glasses?

Moverman: Yeah! After a while he said, “Do you want to read a screenplay that I wrote really quickly, a first draft? It needs work, but I think it’s got something.” It was based on a book, so I also read the book and got some clear ideas of what I thought the screenplay could be and how it could be different. I talked to him about it and then went off and wrote a draft while keeping in close touch with him. He looked at my draft, and we started working on it together and shaping it, and that became the film Married Life.

Gosling: Do you want to talk at all about the difference in directing styles between Todd and Ira, or is that kind of like trapping you?

Moverman: Not at all. They’re very different personalities and have very different kinds of visions and approaches, but they are both obsessive filmmakers in the best sense of the word. They are in charge of every detail and really work hard to control all the elements of their movies. So in that respect, they’re very similar. Both are great with actors. Obviously directing I’m Not There is just a different process for anyone, no matter who you are, because it’s a film about fragmentation.When I was on set I would see a shot, something they were shooting really quickly before the end of the day, and I would have no idea where the shot belonged in the film.And I knew the screenplay inside and out! It was so fragmented and all in Todd’s head. He sketched everything out, had very extensive storyboards, had done tons of research — he’s always very organized about all that. He puts together huge books of visual references for his films. Ira does that too in a way. He just may not put it all into one portfolio, but there are always piles of books and references he pulls out of thin air, and there is always stuff to talk about, from photography to literature to music to art. He’s a huge cinephile and there are hundreds of movies in his head.

Gosling: Our good friend Noaz Deshe brought up an interesting question. Have you ever had to do a rewrite on a script in the editing room, like after a film has been shot? Not for reshoot purposes but for structural purposes? And how involved are you in the editing process overall?

Moverman: So far I’ve been very involved and have always been welcome to contribute.I’ve watched every cut of the films, all of them, and I’ve gotten to give comments and suggest changes. They don’t always listen to me, but I think it’s my duty and privilege to give notes, and sometimes they actually listen and that’s very rewarding.

Gosling: Do you get pissed when they don’t listen?

Moverman: No, I try to be very respectful. I think at the end of the day every movie is rewritten in the editing room by the editor and the director. Sometimes it’s extreme and sometimes it’s not. On Married Life, I think that film sort of found itself in the editing. Ira did a beautiful job shooting the script, but then there were certain things about it he liked more than others and certain ideas about what the film should actually be at the end. I really admire him for that, it took an enormous amount of confidence. We wrote some new voiceovers, and it was a really great process discovering what the film could be through the editing. You know, to me editing is screenwriting with permanence. In the initial script writing stage every idea in the world is available to you. You can be overwhelmed by the fact that there are no limits. In the editing you are limited. You have the footage that you shot. That’s it. But within that limitation you have so many permutations and possibilities of arranging things, rearranging things, restructuring and literally rewriting with the cut. And so I think every film ends up being somewhat rewritten in editing. And then locked. And then it’s its own thing. Forever.

Gosling: I know that you have come in and rewritten other writers’ scripts. How does that work?

Moverman: It’s always a weird thing to come in and rewrite someone else’s screenplay. It can feel uncomfortable, especially when you know another writer has been fired or somebody has reached a dead end. I just finished a script where a writer basically worked for a couple of years on his own idea. It was a spec script that got bought, and he was working with the producers, and was rewriting and rewriting and rewriting, and they came to a mutual agreement that he’d reached a place where he couldn’t go any further in terms of what’s needed for the director. So they called me in, they said would I be interested, and my first question was, “Well, how does he feel about it?” Because even though it’s a Hollywood project and you don’t owe anyone anything, it’s done all the time, and the Writers Guild has strict rules about how to do it properly — I would feel very awkward going into a script where a writer has been pulled out kicking and screaming and the producers are upset and everybody feels like they’ve wasted time. It’s not a happy place to visit.

Gosling: Did you ever see that film The Five Obstructions?

Moverman: Yes I did.

Gosling: What do you think about the concept of that film? Do you agree that when you give yourself parameters it forces you to imagine ways out of them?

Moverman: I think limitations are essential. I like working with rules, even if the rules are “to go crazy” or “to be as austere as possible,” which never happens, by the way.

Gosling: Like what kind of limitations, for instance?

Moverman: Like, say, “Okay, this is how we’re approaching the film, this is how big it is. This is the style. The aesthetics. The way these characters talk.”

Gosling: The period of a film, is that a limitation?

Moverman: Absolutely.

Gosling: What about the fact that you’re not from America but you write American movies? Is that a bit of a limitation? I remember once talking to an Israeli actor who said, “I’m a really good actor here, but I’m not good in the States.” There were characters and certain kinds of people that he’d been studying his whole life who were specific to Israel and who Americans would never understand. He could only play a few types of people here, so he feels limited.

Moverman: That’s a great point. I’ve been here for almost 20 years, but there is still a limitation of being “the outsider.” But it’s also a very liberating limitation. I think that probably my limitation as a writer who didn’t grow up speaking English is that I know fewer words than most American screenwriters, so I don’t need to get lost in trying to find a great sentence. I just write down what I know. Which is very limited.

Gosling: [laughs] You know more words than me which is embarrassing, but…

Moverman: I think it’s true that this is not my culture, although now [American culture] is everybody’s culture one way or another. But being an outsider is a very helpful limitation.

Gosling: It seems to work that way.

Moverman: Every film is made with an incredible amount of limitations, and it starts with the basic limitation of the screen, this rectangle that we can’t really go beyond. Then there are the limitations dictated by the budget. That’s a big one. The amount of shooting days and the like. Limitations are not really talked about in film reviews, because people like to watch movies and accept them as the filmmaker’s ideal vision, or sometimes a product of a certain powerful producer. But in general, the limitations of budget and the economic structure have a huge influence on the aesthetics that define the filmmaker’s vision. It’s not as if the director gets to play out everything the way he wants. He works within limitations, and fights against them, and they end up shaping his vision. I think what ultimately happens is that people become very creative in working with their limitations. They are not allowed to shoot in a certain place that they really wanted or the day is over and they can’t go into overtime or they suddenly can’t afford a crane for the shot they designed — all of a sudden they come up with something else. Something inventive. Of course, limitations can also be enormously frustrating.

Gosling: It’s like the beginning of film: People were trying to push the boundaries. There was no sound, so then we were trying to figure, how can we have sound? Everyone’s talking into flower vases because that’s where the mikes are, and then that’s not enough — we want to move the camera, so let’s find a way to move the camera and have sound. Then we don’t like the fact that the image is just black-and-white — let’s make it color. And then we don’t like the fact that it’s square, so let’s make it widescreen. There was a period of time when we were experimenting like crazy. We’re not really doing that anymore.

Moverman: Well, in a way we are, I think, because there are two separate issues. There’s the technology part of it, and then there’s the creative part of it. I think technology always wants to be new. There’s always a drive to come up with new things and invent new gadgets, new formats, and excite people in new ways. That’s human nature and that’s also business nature. But I think that in terms of experimentation in movies, in terms of content, in terms of what people are doing in movies structurally or even in terms of acting, in terms of visuals, and how everything pertains to financing, the limitations are becoming harder and harder to navigate. It does feel like there is a certain sensibility, a certain abstraction in movies of the ’70s that a lot of people, including the people who get to greenlight films, liked and loved when growing up, that the marketplace, whatever that is, is not allowing right now. Earlier we talked about Alfredo Garcia. I mean, Sam Peckinpah — can you imagine him trying to make films today? I guess at the same time you could say, could you imagine somebody trying to make a Bob Dylan movie where six people play him? That’s basically a big studio experimental film. Well, I think that’s kind of a miracle. And it’s not a true studio film.

Gosling: Talk to me a little bit about your film.

Moverman: My film? Well this brings us full circle — directing. I started out trying to direct a film that collapsed and broke my heart and gave me writing opportunities. And now the writing may open up opportunities for me to direct again. For a while it sort of became my hobby trying to put a film together. A very serious hobby. Looking Glass. Then another called Cordless. And now it seems to be coming together and I will be directing a film soon. But then again, you never know, I’ve been here before.

Gosling: Do you want to talk about casting?

Moverman: Why don’t we not talk about it? I started approaching actors. But nothing is solid yet. You know how actors are.

Gosling: Oh man, they are flaky flakes — can’t trust ’em.

Moverman: Oh, but you’ve got to love ’em.

Gosling: [laughs] Well, I can’t wait to see your movies. And I can’t wait to be in ’em.

Moverman: Mmmm. Well, that’s gonna make me cry.

Gosling: I heard and I read somewhere that you’re working with Ryan Gosling. Oh, that’s uncomfortable — that’s me.

Moverman:That’s a little uncomfortable. I don’t mind talking about it because I don’t think he’ll ever read this.

Gosling: [laughs] Yeah, we’re working together on the film about child soldiers in northern Uganda.

Absolutely, and you’re my director, and I just watched a bunch of stuff that you shot over there which I have to say is absolutely gorgeous.

Gosling: Yeah, it’s kind of cheesy though, don’t you think? The footage is nice but we were trying to get money for it so we cut it into kind of a cheesy trailer.

Moverman: I didn’t think it was cheesy. Why do you think it was cheesy?

Gosling: Because it’s not trailer material. It’s just to give you a sense of the life. It really should just be watched without music and without any cuts. It’s just something that’s supposed to give you a sense of the place. To cut it up and put music to it is really not what it is.

Moverman: It brings us back to the fact that there are all these kinds of very worthy films, films that could be really important, innovative, or just interesting and eye-opening, but they’re not pitchable. You can’t make a trailer and sell them. So hopefully there are other ways to get them financed, other ways than just studios and mini-majors and traditional models of film financing. Finding the alternative sources, finding new and innovative routes that are more independent by nature, I guess, if that’s a word we can still use, to make these movies.

Gosling: Well, then, Mr. Moverman.

Moverman: Yes, Mr. Gosling.

Gosling: Thank you very much.

Moverman: Thank you.

Gosling: I hope I’m Not There and Married Life are the biggest hits of the year.

Moverman: Thank you.

Gosling: And good luck to you and your directing.

Moverman: You too.

Gosling: And I’ll talk to you as soon as we hang up. I’ll call you when we’re not being recorded.

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