Chapter 1: Who is Larry Trilling and what is his significance in the industry?
Hello, and welcome to Mom's Car. Today, and this is a long time coming, I think I talk about Larry Trilling more than any other director I've ever worked with. He directed something like 60 of the 100 and some parenthoods, and he's just the sweetest, sweetest, sweetest man I've ever worked with.
And it's such a joy to have him in the car today and to get to introduce him to my best friend, Aaron. And we just had the most lovely, pleasant time. He's so smart and he's so thoughtful and I just love him to death. Please enjoy Larry Trilling. You know what's smart? Checking Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds on car insurance. You know what's not smart?
Not checking the coffee lids secure before you take that first sip. My morning coffee ended up all over me, and let me tell you, that smell does not come out easily. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability.
Allstate, North America Insurance Co., and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. So what state were you just in? Utah? I was in Vancouver, British Columbia. Oh, were you by Whistler? I actually drove up to Whistler for the day, rented a car and drove through Squamish and into Whistler. Have you been? Yeah, I went when I was probably 21.
I was dating a girl that had moved to Bellevue, Washington, and then we were both snowboarders. That's very cool. That's beautiful. All I remember is it was illegal to sell cold beer. So all of the liquor stores had these cooling tanks in front that were like ice cold water and you'd spin the beer in there to cool it down. That is insane.
Yeah, there's another one of these systems where you're like, oh my God. So you can do it. It's just, you got to do it in a really complicated manner. Spins the beer around, flattens it. Either you can't have cold beer or you can't. You can't have a workaround. What is the point of that law? I guess to discourage people from pounding them in the store. I guess.
Well, you know, remember the South always had the workers, the tall boy cans. At the register. Yes, in the big bucket of ice. And it was like, well, you know damn well you're cracking it the second you walk out that door. And drive-through liquor stores. Oh, yeah. Okay, I'm not told Aaron this because I knew it would be too exciting to learn about you before he was around you.
He has a labradoodle. Is that what you're going to tell me? Yes! That was it! That's the most interesting thing about me. I looked him up. That's why I'm here. Aaron loves his doodle. When he walks his dogs in Michigan, people yell out the window, what kind of doodle is that? It's a very emasculating dog. Totally. It's a very metro dog to have.
I've had the toughest guys go, yo, man, what kind of doodle is that? And I'm like, I'm anticipating a fight. And I'm like, oh, golden. Golden doodle. Are both of them? What's the little one? A Cavapoo. He's a King Charles Cavalier and a poodle. I wouldn't have predicted that for you in your future. Okay, so we both, of course, like everyone, were obsessed with Outsiders, the movie, growing up.
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Chapter 2: What experiences did Larry Trilling have at Santa Monica High School?
Remember the movie Class? And they were like, that guy went to Sammo. I said, oh, that's right. And I looked him up in the yearbook. He wasn't that involved in school versus, like, Robert Downey Jr. was in the plays, and I saw him. He was absolutely riveting in this play. He thought that. Oh my God, he was magic.
So Matt Reeves, the director, and I were students there, and so we tried to get him to be in our film. Oh, okay. A student film. A student film. And so he was like, how much are you going to pay me? Wow. And I said, no, we don't have any money. He's like, no, no, no. He's already a professional actor, you know, but he was so unbelievable. So none of his success surprised me at all.
Charlie Sheen was a baseball player. He wasn't in drama. He was playing at Sam Ohio. He played at Sam Ohio and he was serious about baseball. I think he may have had professional aspirations before acting. Then he did, what's the movie? The Cleveland Indians. Oh, Major League? Major League, yeah. I remember reading that about him, that he was a baseball player.
All those guys were a little older than me. The only one I was actually friends with was Dean Cain. Oh, wonderful. I mean, Superman. Who didn't that school spit out those couple years? Well, the main reason why is because at that time, Malibu didn't have its own high school. It was the Santa Monica Malibu School District. So all those Hollywood kids lived in Malibu. Like the Sheens.
The Sheens, the Pens. Sean Penn. Dean Cain's dad was a director. He directed Young Guns, Chris Cain. Oh my God. We love Young Guns. Yeah. So Dean, I played basketball with. Such a nice guy, an amazing guy. And then he went to Princeton, dated Brooke Shields, was the all-time leading interception leader in the Ivy League. Maybe took Brooke Shields' virginity, she said in her book. Could be.
I think in her book she said that. Lucky bastard. Lucky both of them. I guess, you're right. Superman. I hadn't seen him for a few years, and then it was kind of a low moment. I was delivering pizzas, and I wound up delivering to him, and he answered the door. How you doing, Dean? He said, oh my God, I just got cast as Superman with Terry Hatcher. I'm going to be starring in this show.
He's like, what are you up to? And I'm like, I'm giving you your pizza. What are you up to? I'm up to so much. It's crazy I'm able to deliver this pizza in this moment. But look it, here we are. I'm delivering food. I know. You never know. Nothing's popped up yet? Oh, no. It'll take a while. No, it won't. We'll mostly just drive around and we pray that it comes up. Something will hit.
So none of those guys, though, other than Dean, were your direct age? At least one year older to a few years older. Holly Robinson also was there. Holly Robinson Pete. Remember her? Holly Robinson. She's on some TV shows and movies. She also married Rodney Pete, the football player. He was a Detroit Lion. He was a Lion. Yeah. Oh, good job, guys. Sports knowledge.
Don't you think it says something about the evolution, and this is a debate you and I were just in recently, but... Nowadays, all those kids, because again, the Sheens are Martin Sheens' kids. Right. Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. A lot of these people had money. Downey's dad was successful. Yeah. They would have definitely been at a private school now.
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Chapter 3: How did Larry Trilling get started in filmmaking?
And I would just say some things. And that was going on for a few weeks. And then one time I yell cut and I go, do you know that I say to myself, Dex, you got to be way louder and have way more energy. I go, you're not hearing it vocalized, but I'm beating the shit out of myself in my head. And then I talk to you. And he was like, oh. Yeah, I'm glad I know that.
And then I was like, yes, of course. He must think. He's never heard me receive an adjustment. Now, I'm making adjustments, but he's not receiving it. He's just hearing adjustments for him from his theme partner. The other guy's crushing it. I'm making all these things. He thinks he's flawless on take one. I was sympathetic to that, but it just went over my head.
I'm like, oh, he knows I beat the shit out of myself, and I hate everything I do. I really admired that ability to be in those two spaces at once, because you have to be so present for the other performance, and then you have to give your own. Did you ever act outside of high school? Not seriously. I was in a few student films. It was never going to be my life's ambition. I just didn't have it.
Did you love it, though? Yeah, it's fun. It's really fun. Pretending. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Aaron? Have you ever done any performing? Oh, gosh, no. He should have. He should have come out with me. Yeah. It could have been a comedy duo. Yeah, that would have been fun. Regrets, right? I enjoyed performing. Yeah, in junior high. Just being like spontaneously funny and goofy.
Were you guys kind of like a team together that way? We were a duo. I'm sure you've heard me say this, but for both of us, the best year of our entire lives. And I've had a charmed life. Still seventh grade is the best year of my life. Did you grow a bunch that year, right? You got tall that year?
No, it was already enormous, but I had moved to a new junior high and Aaron and I had become friends and we became friends in a way, and I'm sure you have these. Everything became crystal clear, which is like, as long as Aaron's laughing, I don't care what anyone else thinks. I have a single audience member in my life now. It's so important to me that I make him laugh. And I think vice versa.
And I think when you're that age, that reads as such confidence. So we became this really popular duo. Like the kids would imitate whatever voices we made up. And we'd go to parties and act obnoxious, and everyone loved it. We were movie stars. We just were so popular all of a sudden, and we loved it. We loved it so much. And did it grow from seventh to 12th, or where did it go from there?
We had a couple-year gap in our seeing each other. Did you guys have a falling out? We were starting to go on divergent paths. I was into being bad, but I wasn't into stealing four-wheelers. I was into throwing apples. I wasn't into smashing plate glass windows. I was into stealing cigarettes from the store, but I wasn't into getting hammered and huffing gas. Got it.
Mild delinquency versus serious delinquency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't make the cut at some point. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Mom's Car. We are supported by Allstate. You know what's smart? Checking Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds on car insurance. You know what's not smart? Not checking the backseat of your car before telling your coworkers to hop in.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Larry face when starting his career as a director?
Yeah, and every single person. Yeah. All right, nice meeting you. Well, that was cute. Yeah, that was lovely. Cute dog, it was a doodle. Can you even believe it? It's meant to be, man. It is meant to be. I mean, I can't believe that's where we started and our pickup was at a pet restaurant. And have you not been called again? That is insane.
So I guess my first question before we do a list is I'll go first. So, you know, the very first thing I ever watched that made me question what is going on that makes this what it is, was Raising Arizona. Where you were thinking there is a voice or a person or an entity that's making this happen. It's just not unfolding in real time. And more than that.
You know, remember the sequence where he steals the Huggies and he's running down the street and then the dogs are chasing him through the house. I mean, what I didn't know then is like, they're on a 17. They're on this really wide lens, which looks very specific and most things are not shot in that. So like, A, just visually there was something going on that was much different.
I just started realizing like, oh, these are assembled and manufactured in a way that they can come out differently visually. And then obviously it was so original tonally. I think before that I just took movies as a matter of fact. Here's a movie. I love movies. But I never got bogged down into like the mechanics of why it was pleasurable or that I liked it. That was kind of my gateway movie.
How about you? Did you have a gateway? Yeah, but I think it was Annie Hall for different reasons because I didn't really develop a visual sensibility as much. I think I had more of an ear for dialogue and for behavior.
The eye came later, but the way that people talk to each other and the way that he talked to the camera directly, the snappy banter and the way that there was a combination of comedy and then genuine emotion, How much of it that there was a Jewish lead? Was that in the mix? That was in the mix. That sort of self-deprecating, neurotic Jewish trope was very familiar.
And hadn't really been done or had it? It had, but not in that particular way. Definitely there were TV characters like that. But I would imagine those were Gentiles kind of lampooning what they had witnessed versus coming from the inside. Yeah. Also, he would always get the girl, even though he was nerdy, you know? So I think that spoke to me. Yes, yes, yes.
Also like the smart guy wins kind of thing, you know, it's not the jock, it's the smart guy wins, he gets the girl, you know, so it's part of that. But it was really just the idea that there's this music to the language and there's a romance about New York City and that I just felt swept up in it.
Movies were always immersive, but something I was just ready to go to recognize that there was a hand in that. And I think it was easier to know that because Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in it. So it was very clear to go, oh, that's his movie. And he made this as his point of view and his sensibility. Right. It wasn't a committee. Right.
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Chapter 5: What is the difference between directing film and television?
You can make them laugh, you can make them breakfast. Yeah, so I think, I wish I knew that a little younger. Okay, so if you were to, just give me your top three Tarantino movies. Top three Tarantino movies. In order. Yeah, in order. Okay. I'm going to go, is Kill Bill one movie or two movies? Great question. I'll let you pick that as one. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to go Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill.
To me, those are above everything else by a lot. Okay. And then I would say the next one, I could go for either Reservoir Dogs or Inglourious Bastards. Okay, now I'm going to make an educated guess right now. Okay. I'm going to predict that you saw Once Upon a Time in the theater and you have not seen it since. That's correct. And I do like it, but it didn't even occur to me.
You must, must, I proselytize this movie. It's all I talk about. I have watched that movie six or eight times in the last 18 months. Okay. Then he asked me, when's the last time you've seen this? I go, when it came out. So he watched it again. I watched it again when I got home. And I was like, oh my God, he was fucking right. How did I not love it that much?
I know sometimes you have to watch it a couple of times, but. Yeah, dead on. So I would have put Once Upon a Time after the first viewing, I would have put it in like the four or five slot. And I'm telling you, now it's number two. And it's like, the more I watch it, it's almost challenging Pulp Fiction. Wow. I really need you to watch it again as quickly as you can possibly.
The ending sequence in the house is the craziest 20 minutes of a movie of all time. And the revisionism of it is so great. You know, it's like, oh, if only it turned out this way, you Yes, if only Cliff Booth had intervened. Well, what you're hitting on, though, is I've thought a lot about this because people often ask me my favorite movies.
And so I decided to make a list of my 100 favorite movies. This was a long time ago. But then I decided I have to figure out the right criteria because I'm not really a cinephile like I am that I love and adore movies. But I'm not a person who can tell you everything about the French New Wave and the Italian neorealism. You've already blown by my knowledge.
Right, so I don't have a comprehensive... I thought you both knew what that was. I'm not an erudite film person. Like if you would talk to certain filmmakers who've watched everything. Tarantino. Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, James Gray. These guys, they've seen everything. I'm not that. I'm pretty mainstream taste. Yeah, me too. My favorite thing is a smart Hollywood movie.
I like other things too, but I said, I have to make my own criteria that is not pretending like I could be a film critic standing here telling you what the greatest film is. Yeah, graduate class. So I made it very clear to say favorite, not best. What makes a favorite film? There are three things, and the favorite film ideally hits all three, but must hit at least one. Okay.
One is the size of the impact it had on you when you first saw it. How much did it blow your mind? How transformative was it? Number two, how... relevant, important, influential, culturally speaking? Where does it rank among, in its time, in its place? How is it, you know, how important is it? How much did it influence people on culture, right? And the third thing is how rewatchable is it?
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Chapter 6: How does Larry Trilling approach working with actors?
Okay, I'm gonna put that way up there too. My number one drama of all time is Thief, Michael Mann's first movie. I adore Thief. I just rewatched it. It's pretty spectacular. I've watched that movie more than any other movie. And you know my history with this movie is I would get drunk. Brie would go to bed. I'd be kind of blackout drunk.
I'd watch Heat, and then I'd get crazy, and I stole a parking meter. I, like, went and dug up a parking meter because I just wanted to steal it. Really? I tried to rob 7-Eleven with a fake gun. Yeah. After watching Heat, yes, and Brie was like, you're not allowed to watch this movie after I go to bed. Threw the VCR out the window.
I would watch Thief almost every night I was hammered that she went to bed. Oh my God. I was obsessed with it. Yeah, he used to call me and tell me about the next thing that he had. I remember going to Santa Monica and there was a fucking parking meter. What? In my living room. Yeah, you couldn't get into it, of course. Wow. Yeah, that movie would make me crazy. Inspire this antisocial in you.
Well, it was this self-righteous, justified, I didn't have anything and I'm going to take it. It's so toxic and dangerous, but I do recognize I was fully like, well, I didn't get what I deserved and now I'm going to take it because fuck everyone. And this is my one chance on planet Earth and I'm not going to not experience this.
And in my mind, I was going to be rich from these, like stealing the parking meter at the time. And the best part of me stealing the parking meter is you couldn't really pick it up because I took the concrete with it. Then drug it to my apartment. If you were missing this parking meter, all you'd have to do is look at the sidewalk.
And I drug it all the way up to my steps and then fucking got it up my steps. And then Bree comes out in the morning. I'm now passed out. And she wakes me up. She's like, there's a parking meter in the living room. Did you ever break it open? Did you get the change out of it? Oh, no, I would shake it.
I saw I got a hacksaw, and I cut the top off so I could get rid of the post and the cement, and then I would shake it. No, that thing's somewhere on planet Earth with all the change in it. Oh, my God. No, I was never successful in any of them. The 7-Eleven thing was a disaster. He said, give me your money, and the guy said, no.
and then sprinted out of the zone and got on my motorcycle and rode way too fast all the way home. So I'm like, well now the police are coming. Okay, let's talk TV shows. I think that should be our last bracket. Okay, great. What's your all time favorite TV show? Ooh, might be Breaking Bad or it could be Mad Men. So the newer offerings. The Sopranos in your list. Sopranos, they're up there.
Friday Night Lights, 30-something. Those are the ones jumping right out. Of course, can't be objective about Parenthood, but I would hope it's up there somewhere. I mean, it's one of my favorites. I think people will get a kick out of this. You and I were in the pool the other day and we were like trying to understand whether or not Parenthood was as good as Friday Night Lights.
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