Michael Regilio
speaker
2,071 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 12 Jul
Michael Regilio’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And so when you're trying to create a character, a memorable character, one of the things obviously you want your character to be It's just interesting and be flawed in a certain interesting way. What you're also doing is creating a universe that that character is reacting to.
And so in order to find something interesting, to find a new story, to finally get around to answering your question, one of the things you need to do is think about the world that your character lives in and how does that world that you're showing on screen reflect the problems in the real world outside the theater in a way that feels resonant to the audience. Does that make sense? It does.
Yeah, plastics. Like plastics is the line that makes you jump on board with him because he says, like the very first scene in the movie, his dad comes up and talks to him. He's sort of hiding up in his bedroom. And his dad goes, what are you worried about? He goes, I'm worried about my future. I want it to be different, right? So the whole movie is this allegory of conformity and nonconformity.
Like he wants his future to be different. Then you just create this whole tilted universe of conformity, right? And then when he finds Elaine Robinson, she's the one person that he can stand to be with, the one person he can stand to talk to. That's what makes it interesting and resonant.
Let me give you one more example, which is, I talked about this in my new video, like the dude in The Big Lebowski. What makes him interesting is that he's introduced in the screenplay as being like the laziest man in LA County, which makes him pretty high in the running for laziest man in the world.
He's not this traditional hero who has big dreams and big aspirations and is super competent or anything like that. He's just the dude. So why do you like this guy so much? Why is he such a beloved figure?
The way you get your audience on board with a lazy bum who does nothing but smoke pot and go bowling is that you surround them with this universe of like super competitive, stressed out men, right? You have Walter. You have the big Lebowski himself. You have Jesus, the pedophile bowler. You have the sheriff in Malibu. Eight-year-old dude. You create this whole universe.
You create this whole universe of people who are not chill, who are not laid back, right? And then the dude becomes heroic because he's so cool. He's so laid back. He's not trying to achieve anything. He's not trying to become anything different. He just abides. And that's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him like him.
So it's a really interesting question of like, how do you find something new? You identify some sort of problem in the real world, and then you create that kind of universe, a tilted universe in your movie.
It is interesting because he on the face of it would not be a character you root for because he doesn't seem to want very much. But as you put it, hero and world are two sides of the same coin. In your new video essay, you say that film, maybe better than any other medium, gives us characters who embody new ideals for how to live one's life.
Now, I don't know if the dude fits into that category, but What ideals do you think we need to live our lives well at this moment in history? Are there any movies or characters that are embodying those values really well right now?
Well, let me just, I'll bring up something which I don't think a movie has addressed yet, right? Which is, I mean, I think one of the problems that we all are dealing with right now is screen addiction, right? Like you walk out on the street, you walk down the sidewalks of New York and everyone's sort of staring at their screen.
And there's a way in which we live in this world of self-consciousness where we're performing our lives, right? We're performing for this invisible, unseen audience. Literally in our case right here. Literally in our case right here. And there's a way in which all of us are negotiating two selves. There's our digital selves and our analog selves, right?
And there's a way in which the digital self of the digital world is a very seductive thing, right? It's where a lot of work takes place. It's where you can make a ton of money. And it's all clean and frictionless. And like the thing with screens is, you know, there's no touch, there's no smell, there's no taste.
Like it's just very, we have this new problem, which is like we are haunted by our digital selves and haunted by this sort of generalized other that we're performing for. I don't think I've seen a movie yet that sort of addressed that problem and turned it into a story that can be compelling and interesting. Does that answer your question? It sort of does. Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like you have some work to do, my friend. So get on it. But yeah, you're saying that there could be a hero who embodies the values of authenticity in a world where this digital realm is kind of, I don't know, creating an arena, but also destroying us.
Yeah. Rebelling. You're just swimming against the tide of like, if everybody's staring at their screen, everybody's obsessed with their digital selves, right? Then you would just want to create a hero swing against that tide and is privileging the world of atoms over the world of bits, basically.
Totally, totally. I think that, you know, I went to film school. I got out of film school. I want to be a screenwriter. So I want to get jobs where I could read screenplays. And the thing that people, young people know, I think don't appreciate is how difficult it was to find screenplays. Before the internet, screenplays were really hard to get your hands on.
There were vendors in New York that would sell screenplays on the sidewalk because it was just really hard to find screenplays. Now you go on your computer and like every screenplay in the world is available. I got out, I got a job at a production company. Then I moved on and got a job with a producer.
And that producer was working at Columbia Pictures and her job was looking for material for Matthew. So after I moved on from that job, Matthew knew me and hired me to be his assistant. And it was a great job. Matthew's the nicest guy in the world, like best boss in the world. But it was a great job because back then it was really hard to get your hands on screenplays.
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