Q: I noticed you lingered on the sex scenes in this --
A: Goddamn right. And I wouldn't say lingered, I'd say we shot them in all their glory as they goddamn well should be shot. I mean we're trying to capture, amongst other things, the most beautiful thing in life, anybody who says that's not sex isn't living on the same planet as me. And they're lying too or just pathetically ignorant.
Q: Sex is the most beautiful thing in life?
A: What else would it be?
Q: Love, maybe? Just a guess.
A: Sex with love, yes, that's the best. But love without sex? Kinda depressing. Tragic even. And even hate sex: ya know, pretty f'ing hot on film, incendiary even, though that sort of thing tends not to last more than once in real life. The best way to think about that in such a way that you don't become fixated on sex, which is a mistake is: sex is nature's way of keeping us beautiful. Beyond any personal relationship, universally, if you were to live your life in such a way that you stayed attractive to the opposite sex, not pandering, or hacking yourself cosmetically, or losing yourself, it's something we naturally want to be, just generally staying in shape, learning about the opposite sex, the differences, what makes each happy, that's actually a decent code or guide to life. It holds up even if you're gay, I'm not claiming to understand this firsthand, but you get pretty immersed in gay culture living in West Hollywood, and there's male and female back and forth, polarity/charge, even within a same sex relationship. Hah, all of my gay friends seem to have a superior esthetic than straight men, that's for sure. I'm constantly getting fashion tickets.
Q: What about love between a parent and child? That's depressing?
A: If neither the parent nor the child could ever look forward to having sex with other people sometime in the future, yeah, that's pretty fucking depressing. What kind of sick parent would wish that? I know what it's like to love a kid, still I choose not to glorify that in a movie, I choose to glorify romantic love, not even because I'm a romantic, just because believing in having kids, that that's the most important thing, is bad for the planet, but people should still believe in romantic love. And I'd never shy away from sex in a movie because it's the most beautiful part of life and a primary human motivation -- if you've missed that, what the fuck are you paying attention to in life? Facebook?
Q: Why not just rent porn?
A: I understand you're just being argumentative and contentious, but that argument is idiotic and utterly phony. What makes something pornographic is not that it's sexual, most porn is boring and ugly, and even when it's not, it's tiring and sickening in the sense of you'd get sick if you lived on nothing but, I don't know, raspberry sundaes, 12 times a day. The definition of porn is sex apart from life. All of the sex in King Saud or any of my movies rises up out of life from a deep level at full power, that's where it gets its power, from the surrounding story and depth, or its honesty to nature. If you were to cut that part out of a movie you're not an artist, or you're deliberately not looking at the most beautiful and powerful part of life just because you're afraid of it, it's just gutless and dishonest. And however exciting a scene is on screen, I can guarantee you they're not exciting to film, so relax, the feminist police can rest, I didn't have any fun shooting them, quite the opposite, even in the scene, it's even less fun being in them.
Q: You've suffered for your art?
A: Goddamn right. Anyone who thinks it's fun shooting a sex scene has never shot one, it's pure stress. It's actually even less fun for the actor, sometimes the actresses get a release during them, but never the actor. But usually it's pretty stressful and unsatisfying for the actress too, unless you're shooting porn, which we weren't. Only some lying sexless hag, or a priest would say diff-
Q: Fine, fine, relax, I didn't want to get your panties in a bunch. Moving on, why do you think Hillary Clinton’s so disliked?
A: Ya’ know, I’ve met Hillary, she is a charming, very sweet person in real life, very dirty, earthy sense of humor which never comes across in public, she’s actually very loose and caustic in person, not the stuffed, stilted corporate suit you see on TV. I know the thing that bothered me the most was her using first lady as a stepping stone to power. It's unfeminist. Or at least feminism has changed the playing field enough that that sort of move is no longer respected. Related to that, both Clinton's are just owned by money, they're Democrat believers in Milton Friedman, or they want to have it both ways at least, which, bleh, that's a betrayal of liberal values, as well as being scientifically stupid and mistaken.
Q: Getting back to feminism, things are still not equal.
A: If by equal you mean the same, don't hold your breath, men and women are not the same and never will be. If by equal you mean a balance of power, where both sexes get what they want or need, I think that's possible -
Q: Do you think we have it in this country?
A: Hah! Men and women are at war in this country! We're at each others throats to the death. Talk about polarization, alienation and hurt feelings, that's the rule for both sexes, not the exception, the exception is to find somebody happy or at ease with the opposite sex in America.
Q: Who do you blame for that?
A: Well I blame women and they blame me or some other guy. I'm kidding! I adore women. Give me a break, I'm the anti-Weinstein, I'm the priest at the orgy in terms of Hollywood (I mean priest like in managing not to get laid, not like a priest dating 8 yr olds). My Mother is actually female, so are my sisters and almost all my relationships. Both of them, in fact.
Anyway, there's a lot of ways to have power, do you want to have power like a man? I mean, I seek power because it's expected of me, I guess I'm disgusted when I see someone abusing it and think, "I'm the one who should be leaving his mark on things", and I do think my biggest ambitions are the best ambitions anyone could have, not just cause they're mine, they should be everyone's goal, that's why I chose them, they're the optimum society we're capable of in our time.
Q: Couldn't a woman be the same way?
A: Absolument, if she were a great woman. I adore those sort of women, and I'd also call them feminists. I can't believe the fucking New York Times ripped me as anti-feminist, it's a joke, I adore real feminists, not their definition of it, but real feminists --
Q: What's their definition?
A: I don't know, repressed, angry, feeble women, shrieking away at anything and nothing, fainting with the vapors at the first sign of anything exhibiting testosterone. Castrated men too, Simps, men who think they're women or want to be women, which is not my definition. I don't like how it's being redefined to include golddigging as some form of empowerment or the new feminism, that was never part of the deal, it's impossible to respect that, bleh, skeevy, makes you want to bathe. Feminists make their own money, I think that's part of why Hillary turned off so many people, using first lady as a stepping stone to power is a form of golddigging, Harris is even worse like this, bleh. I say this having been both rich and poor, but you're talking to a woman and realize she's a golddigger, especially when she doesn't know it or doesn't see anything gross about it, it's a real turnoff. I don't hate people with money just cause they have money, all I do all day is chase money, that's 99% of making a movie, it's 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. But you can't be a slave to money. I mean if money is doing something wrong you gotta be able to lay down the law with them. So it's not really a male/female thing, it's an are you bought sort of thing. I adored Tulsi until recently, I still love Liz Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Val Deming, Jennifer Granholm -- they're all self-made women, very sexy. I love having a lot of women run, it's actually empowering to men, when women're running for office they're asking you for a job, we're being pursued for a change, it's a position of power, when they have to come to us and ask, "What can I do for you?". Hah! Here's a list baby!
Q: I think maybe it's not just greedy women, I've heard rumors there are greedy men as well --
A: But the women lead, if the women are corrupt, the men will be too, men already follow women, if you got a bunch of women and all they want is money and power, and they don't care how you get it, they'll breed a bunch of empty suits who'll do anything for money and power, that's the Clintons, that's Trump and Melania, and that's the recipe which caused the crash –
Q: Greedy women caused the crash? I guess we're responsible for 9/11 too?
A: You're responsible for everything, everything we do is to impress you. Out of you we emerge, and into you we strive to return. Even the terrorists were trying to get laid in heaven.
Q: I never realized we were so powerful.
A: I think you did. Fine, take no responsibility for power. I'm not saying you're solely to blame -
Q: Who would you blame more?
A: As I say, I'll blame us. Media, the intelligentsia, this is actually the part of King Saud that I’m proudest of, as well as the part of the country that most horrifies me, but maybe the only hope –
Q: What?
A: I'm proud of the feminist ideal portrayed in King Saud, but horrified because media has failed to articulate any sort of compelling heroine or feminine ideal for American women to aspire to.
Q: War, depression, violence in the streets, a coming apocalypse, and women are what most horrifies you?
A: Ya' know this is the exact same argument I got in with the New York Times, my first movie, Prince of Swine, was all about a sex harassment scandal almost exactly like the Weinstein affair, years before that broke, I didn't know about him, but I knew Hollywood, and the scandal depicted in it was in the middle of the range of what Weinstein's accused of, technically it was sexual assault, but nowhere near as bad as the worst of what's alleged, but the producer was the same type of character, and everyone was a spineless hypocrite and covering it up, laughing it off, all of Hollywood. And they didn't even engage the subject matter, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, they just literally shit their pants about the subject matter, "Oh you're a pig, you're cynical beyond redemption, you're a monster", just for bringing it up. Just like the New York Times was absolutely clueless Trump would beat Hillary, their reporting about Iraq was just awful, failed to perceive Bush Jr. was lying in the buildup to Iraq, just awful reporting about the war as it was going on, clueless, head in the sand, if the Weinstein scandal had been left to them, rape would never have been alleged, only harassment, and that would have been buried on p. 10 and forgotten the next day -- you see a common theme here?
Q: What? You hate the New York Times because they ripped your first movie?
A: No. They're intellectuals, they can't perceive into or fathom the primitive, it flusters them and they draw the wrong conclusions whenever primal human emotion is involved. It's just this hyper-shrill, hyper repressed, ivory tower cancel culture, I guess of the sort Bari Weiss resigned over.
The woman critic who reviewed it was so indignant, she gave it a zero, almost entirely on political grounds, all of her grievances were political/emotional, she called the movie anti-feminist, which was bullshit, every actress and woman who worked on it considered it a very pro-feminist movie. You have to misspell the name of the movie in the title credits to get a zero in your New York debut. She found the entire subject matter so "unpleasant" was her word, just frothing at the mouth to attack it, just this furious level of sexual repression, Nurse Ratchet like. And this was not a heavy case, it was maybe in the bottom third of what Weinstein's accused of, severe harassment, technically assault, but not rape.
Now that movie was dark, it was played as very dark comedy, which I wouldn't do on a real life case, never on a rape case, only harassment, this was fiction, but it had redemption and hope and was utterly true about what it depicted, but just too dark, they wouldn't even look at it in it's real light, much less understand it. And the women were worse than the men in terms of denial. That movie wasn't really about harassment, in the same way King Saud is not really about terrorism, I'm more interested in the dynamics of power, harassment was just the vehicle which exposed the dynamics of power, but it was completely accurate. I made the idealistic lawyer the heroine, the harassment victim was just sort of an airhead who wandered into the lion's den, so maybe they thought I was making light of it.
Q: Were you?
A: Well, it was a dark comedy, I guess I saw a run of the mill harassment scandal as light comedy after Iraq, though as I say I'd never write about a rape comically. I regard what happened to my family as not the end of the world after Iraq, and that was brutal and tragic. I guess, given many years, you just get over that shit when you realize, "You're not dead, and people have survived and triumphed in the face of worse." I mean FDR had freakin' polio, I don't feel I have room to complain. I don't have a weak stomach, but nearly fainted after seeing the x-rays of his legs. They were bent like wet noodles and calcified in that position. So they had to break them, not so he would walk, but just so they could straighten them. And he stood up from that, so to speak, he couldn't walk but he could stand, he was brought low after being a spoiled rich mama's boy, and clawed his way up to become maybe the greatest man of the 20th century.
Anybody's who seen darkness or tragedy is never the same, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You're not laughing at the suffering, that movie is hard but has great compassion to it too and hope, but when you can laugh again at the lunacy or grand folly of the world that's a good sign. Prince of Swine portrayed blatant harassment and brutality going on against a background of golddigging and very sexually aggressive women, using sex for advancement, whether it's marketing sex for your media career or weaponizing it in a business or social situation, so maybe they thought I was equating the two rather than just depicting the two. But that is Hollywood. It's a Darwinian circus.
Lookit the Tina Fey joke, "I only slept with Harvey Weinstein two of the five times he chased me" - she's using her actress to make a joke, that doesn't mean it's not true, joking is the only way comics have enough nerve to speak truly.
My movies pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors, name another male writer who can do that? Most other movies, ya know, they have these harmless, Mary Jane heroines, they're just entirely generic, just an appendage to the male character or somewhere to put their junk so you know they're not gay, it's the worst sort of phony liberalism, "Oh, I'd never be against women, I respect women" and then you write like that, it shows a total lack of respect, lack of knowledge that comes out of fear, it's like women who try to castrate men out of fear of the opposite sex. My heroines and villains, good and evil, are dangerous, you respect them in the way you respect something that can destroy you or bring you to your knees. So yes, the women in my movies are dangerous, damaged, duplicitous and disturbed, just like in real life, they're not sheep, at least the ones not being preyed on, but you won't find this sort of covert, passive sexism that's in most of the other shit out there -- and don't say it's overt sexism, it's not, only shrill, sexless idiots mistake it for that because they're three dimensional characters not afraid of anything with a cock, yes, they're dangerous, so are the men, but that you can handle that shows you're not sexist, just the opposite. It's just like racism, everyone sees things from their own point of view, but I've overcome that, I did that too when I was younger, created weak and feeble female characters, but I never tried to publish any of that, I knew it sucked on some level, I didn't make it public until I'd solved that.
Anyway, enough about this: the point is, the closer you get to power, ya know, the greater the temptation becomes to seize it, very few people take, let alone pass that test. I believe media power is a more potent form of power than either political power or money in the long run, so there's a lot at stake here, if I get media power I can improve the world a hell of a lot more than any President, simply by virtue of what I'll publish and get made. And it's not even an ego thing, I really believe in the ideas, if anyone else was saying the same thing and they had a better shot at power, I'd get right in line behind them and push.
Q: How would those ideas improve things?
A: There's about a thousand forms of capitalism we could have, depending on what laws we pass. Some suck, maybe most suck, some are dramatically better than what we have now. What's the difference between football and baseball? The rules. Totally different rules give rise to totally different games. An economic theory, whoever publishes the breakthrough theory to the new economy and gets the country to act on it, that person will have done more for the planet than anyone alive, you've doubled the size of every business, every salary, every charity, increasing jobs, healthcare, you're harnessing more human energy, with less time, effort and stress on people, for the benefit of people, that's what an advance in economics does, so it's more than any philanthropic effort, it's global in effect, because if it's successful, everyone imitates it, believe me, if we're successful, China, Russia, East Podunk, will imitate us. There's one other cause I'm passionate about, which doesn't directly benefit as many people, still, it would be a huge and historic advance, eliminate a lot of brutality and suffering if we were to make it happen, and I can do that with media power.
Q: Let's get back to feminism, you only seem interested or want to help women who live up to your feminist ideal?
A: I would say I'm only interested in people who are fighting for what I'm fighting for, male or female, it's not really a feminist thing, though that sort of woman is usually a feminist, though that word has been really corrupted in our time. Male or female, do you have the brain to perceive this is the optimum society/economy we can have in our time, and if so, male or female, do you have the balls to pursue it? It deeply wounds me that I used the patriarchal term "balls" to denote courage, male or female, my apologies to anyone offended, just be sure to leave an email and we'll send you a memo to the land of Gofuckyourself.
I split all people, not just women, into 3 categories: there's allies, and I love my allies, no better friend, no worse enemy -- these are people who believe in what I'm about and you don't even have to convince them because they already believed it themselves, maybe I just articulated it for them, that's what writers do, but they already felt it, inchoately, before I said it, because they've got such good taste and insight, these are the best people, so I support them and they support me, and whoever gets power, that's good, because the agenda is good.
Then there's enemies, which, I don't know why anyone would be my enemy, if you understand what I'm about, it's a good thing for everyone, so why would you oppose it? You might think it's ambitious, unlikely, but if it can be pulled off, it should be done. So to be my enemy you'd really have to be a malevolent idiot or a crook, and ya know, when somebody reveals themselves as that, joie de guerre.
Then there's maybe the biggest category -- ya know, just the herd, they're not really for or against anything, they're just being moved by the forces of life and society, this way and that. Maybe they're dangerous if they stampede, but mostly they're just sheep. So ya know, that's what we do, herd the sheep in the right direction, but more like a border collie than a wolf or anything. We don't prey on the sheep, barking and nipping at their heels is usually enough, maybe an inspiring speech might work if you've got media power.
Q: But putting it in feminist terms -
A: Feminist or just human, the ideal is to be a righteous winner, rather than a corrupt loser or a corrupt winner or a righteous loser. The ideal is possible, but you don't have to tell me how far we are from the ideal, I mean, motherfuck, you just saw how out of touch liberal women are with Hillary, half the goddamn women in the country are fantasizing over some sort of golddigging drivel and masturbation like Sex and the City or Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s their fantasy, to fuck an ATM machine, something has gone seriously wrong in this country, and I firmly believe this, bad media can really rot a person's mind and soul, and if you have rotten women you’ll have a rotten country, but if you have great women, just the opposite, you have something worth fighting for, but without great women, pfffft, nothing. So we should really encourage women to be great and fulfill their potential because it's our potential and gives us something to fight for.
Q: And the type of women in King Saud are worth fighting for?
A: Oh absolutely, the feminist ideal portrayed in the movie, if we held every woman in the country to that, if we believed in that and encouraged them to be that, you have to encourage women to be something great and believe in them, you can't just be critical, that’s the absolute best thing we could do and the rest of what I’m talking about will follow, all power flows from women, and if you can tap into that, bam, that's the goldmine, even the villain, she attains a sort of redemption at the end in which the feminist ideal is mirrored and can be seen –
Q: What is the feminist ideal?
A: It's sad that you're a woman and it's me the one explaining this to you.
Q: Humor me.
A: Feminists are women who marry for love and not power or money, or some advantage in the world, they're not frivolous, narcissistic or self-interested, they're alpha women, they're sexually charismatic and control alpha men that way, direct and inspire us towards some great and good purpose, if we weren't already directed that way, what they do comes out of compassion, vision and love, not fear, ignorance or weakness -
Q: And of course, we would be directing men in the direction you want --
A: Ya' know, a woman of taste, insight and character does not need to be told that, she does it naturally, and if for some reason she was unsure of the direction to go and did not understand economics, I could explain it to her -
Q: You could mansplain it.
A: Yes, I plead guilty to being a man, it would be a mansplanation, send me to the vet to be neutered, quick, we can't have that, it's not safe!
Q: Say something nice about women before you get smacked.
A: I get attacked for being hard on women, but show me a movie anywhere that has more dynamic, powerful, magnetic women than King Saud? If you're hard on somebody, or a group of people, it's because you think they're capable of being great.
Q: You're just whining, you didn't say anything nice.
A: I found Liz Warren very attractive, in that sort of button down librarian sort of way, which all nerds adore, before she let Bernie twist in the wind and then backed Hillary. She signed that thing against Franken though, so I trapdoored her too.
Q: How is that something nice to say?
A: Well it shows I’m judging women with my mind and not some other part, which I can’t say has always been true.
Q: What did you used to judge women on?
A: Often their ass.
Q: Can't you say just one nice thing about women?
A: Of course, I adore women, however critical I am of the huge mindfuck and corruption being done on modern American women. I loved Tulsi Gabbard until her latest stunt, I still love Tammy Duckworth, Jennifer Granholm, Val Deming, they're great role models, they're the anti-Hillary, the antidote, they don't pull any of her 1950's bullshit and are very successful. Here, this is something else nice, I do think the movie captures romantic love at full power, even if its some imperfect way, which it always is, which I’m very proud of, I mean, all these grand plans to save the world, they’re important, that can happen, but the short list of people you really love in real life, whether it’s romantic or not, any form of love, most people would consider that more important, and romantic love is the most powerful form of that. I think the movie very powerfully shows that between the two women, that romantic love is heaven and redemption, and the inability to love is hell.
Q: Yes, well, moving on.
A: It's a childless ideal too, they're a childless couple, I guess that's sort of cynical, but I think the best thing anyone can do for the world is not have children, until the population stabilizes or declines. So many problems in the world today, poverty, environmental destruction, all the other animals dying off, large masses of unwanted people building up at the bottom, all that, boil down to the same problem: too many goddamn people on this planet, especially too many unwanted people, whose parents just spewed them out into the world like so much garbage, just breeding like a virus, not a human with a brain or any beauty/grace/dignity, trash on the highway, just left them there with no plan for the future, took no responsibility --- a tiny percent of those kids grow up to beat the odds, maybe even they become greater than the average schmuck because of it, but most end up human wreckage. That was almost me, I came within a razor's edge of that.
Q: So you're going to cull some? Jump off yourself?
A: Well I'm not having kids, for that and other reasons. Some of my genes are really good too. Others not so much. I would not cull anyone unless the people agree to deputize me like that though. Which, ya know, we could do worse, everyone on my cull list are not really doing anything important, they're just sort of milling around aimlessly, on the couch or holding up traffic, or worse, they're really mucking things up -- I mean we could lose some of these executives who keep dreaming up more bullshit banking fees, no loss there, right? Quite the opposite, it's an improvement. You could whack every University President in the country, they are profiting bigtime off a corrupt system and at the very least enabling it, if not outright covering it up and committing fraud.
Anyway, no or fewer kids still leaves romantic love, the possibility of it anyway, but fewer kids. I guess that's one definition of feminism, women who find meaning without kids.