Joe Gillis

You know this film? Am I telling you something you don't know? She's sitting with this actor, William Holden.

He plays Joe Gillis.

He is a Hollywood writer who's kind of like owes a lot of debt.

He doesn't know what to do.

We had Tom Francis on the show for Sunset Boulevard.

He played Joe Gillis for people who were listening.

This is a clip of him talking about your direction.

Let's listen and we can talk about it on the other side.

It really is a way of asking the audience to be co-authors in the experience.

So on Sunset, the streets of Broadway, the streets of New York became a kind of substitute for the streets of Hollywood.

But I also kind of love the idea, you know, like Tom Francis, you know, at one point, you know, he's walking around outside the theater and he stands in front a picture of himself and outside a broadway theater for the first time ever and he says the lyric uh he sings the lyric i'm sure i came out here to make my name of course he's talking about as he's talking as joe gillis as a writer coming out to hollywood to make his name as a screenwriter but of course on some level he's talking as tom francis talking about making his broadway debut and of course as you know has since gone on to become a huge young rising star So I love kind of embracing all of the kind of the simple reality of of the of the experience for the actors and the audience.

Before we run out of time, I do want to ask you about Much Ado About Nothing.

Just really kind of, and I would sing it to- I totally get that.

And I would sing it to Joe Gillis.

Yeah.

The sun comes up, I think about you.

Yeah, it's not bad.

People should know that it is red and it was chosen not by accident because I feel this is the kind of, as they used to say in 1950s, a sports shirt that Joe Gillis would wear when he was hanging around the mansion in Sunset Boulevard.

So that is our movie today, yes.

It's because red works well in black and white.

wonder how it happens.

Exactly.

The guy that's dead is named Joe Gillis.

He's played by William Holden, who was he had a brief Hollywood career leading up to this.

he could just be ...

And maybe that's part of the reason that Norm Desmond's star faded, because they found out, and then he shoots Joe Gillis at the end.

Oh.

After, of course, a, what I would hope would be a white hot sex scene between Matt Bomer, which is of course [laughs] giving new meaning to the phrase white hot, 'cause the two of them fucking's gotta be the whitest thing that's ever happened-