David Marchese

an award season question.

There's obviously a lot of...

award season buzz around Hamnet and by the time this interview comes out we'll know what nominations the film did or didn't get but right now the thing that I'm curious about is sort of what like the whole awards rigmarole stirs up for you

Because I imagine it could involve feelings like of envy or competition or it involves salesmanship or glad handing, which I feel like are not necessarily the kinds of feelings or ideas that are interesting to you or come naturally to you.

So how do you deal with this moment?

Maybe you like doing it.

A wandering samurai.

What do you think someone could learn from watching you work?

It's a historical fact.

You know, it's so interesting to hear you talk about the practicalities of directing for you because, you know, often when I've heard other directors talk or read about other directors, there's recurring images or tropes of how a director behaves that are, you know, it's like... What is it?

I want to say it's Francis Ford Coppola who said this.

I could be wrong, but he compared being a director to like being a ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself every day.

Or sometimes you hear directors compared with generals or something like that.

And these are all sort of very, to my mind, kind of like alpha aggressive macho metaphors for the job of directing on the day.

But it's so not what you're describing.

And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you handle the necessary leadership aspects of being a director and making a movie.

I have kind of a historically inclined question for you.

So in Shakespeare's time, the time period in which Hamnet is set, the death of a child was a much more common occurrence than it is now, at least in rich Western countries.

Yeah.

And I assume that as a result of that, people just had a different perspective on what it meant to lose a child or different feelings or expectations.