Mike Figgis

There was a New York Times piece about it the other day, and that gives me so much satisfaction that that it lived on and being appreciated more so now than it was 25 years ago.

There was a movie called Leaving Las Vegas that was this beautiful low-budget movie that Mike Figgis directed.

When I left Miramax and went to MGM, I wanted MGM as a studio to also be able to release independent movies that I had earlier in my career.

I don't know if you've seen it, but it's an absolutely beautiful movie with Nick Cage and Elizabeth Shue.

Tony, what's your number

five? My number five is Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas.

That's a good one.

You know, the great Oscar-winning film with Nicolas Cage is a man who's drinking himself to death.

How qualified are these people? How long have they been practicing? And are they practiced in the specific area that you need? So I would use AI to help guide you towards the specific type of therapy that it thinks you might need, rather than telling you therapeutically about what you should actually do.

Film director Mike Figgis isn't worried about AI's creative limits.

As far as he's concerned, it's about as clever as Hollywood, which isn't saying much.

I think I- AI is kind of rubbish.

Hi, Mike Figgis again with Figgis Unfiltered.

This week we're going to talk about my favorite subject for drama, which would be desire.

One of the great films about desire is from the maestro Louis Bunuel.

No.

He hosted an outstanding podcast about making movies with Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis.

That was a great one.

And he currently hosts the podcast Golf Smarter.

Welcome to The Projection Booth.

I'm your host, Mike White.

My guest today is director Liz Sargent, whose feature Take Me Home grew out of a Sundance-selected short and stars her own sister, Anna Sargent, as a disabled woman navigating her family's aging caregivers, told entirely from Anna's point of view rather than the people around her.

Take Me Home opens in New York on September 23rd before expanding to Los Angeles and beyond.

And I was looking to media, and I felt such anxiety, and all I could see in media were these cheesy, emotional resolved relationships where people suddenly feel whole, and I just felt total anxiety and had no idea what to say to this woman who I was in her body, would be the first person I would ever meet who would be the same as me.

And so I took all of that emotion and tension and wrote a two-hander, and somehow I won this competition, and I got to shoot it in the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong.

Mike Figgis was my mentor.

RSA Hong Kong was my production team.

I mean, right here in time, 1986, is when the gerbil rumor sweeps through Philadelphia.

Is Gere so low that over the next couple years he goes nuts trying to lose himself in a 1980s fog of drugs and sex? So low that one crazy night in search of a thrill, he tries something wild involving a rodent? Well, I'm thrilled when the esteemed film director Mike Figgis agrees to an interview.

Figgis is best known for his 1995 masterpiece Leaving Las Vegas.

But years before that, he is hired to direct Internal Affairs.

Well, I've got two scripts which I'm raising, trying to raise money on, and then I am actually doing a, a much more interesting project, which is repurposing, um, all my archives into sort of 30-s- minute episodes, very influenced by Mr. Jean-Luc Godard.

The idea that you can put anything with anything and just see if it works, you know.

One of the best parts of the job of a journalist is you get to talk to people like Mike Figgis.

I've never interviewed him before, and it's fun to talk about whatever with a great director.

Uh-huh

... um, which was directed by Mike Figgis, who I do interview in the podcast.

And then of course, Pretty Woman, which...

And Pretty Woman basically makes-

So I had like RSA Hong Kong or RSA's Hong Kong team as my production company.

Mike Figgis was my mentor and I just had all the resources, which was like the most amazing gift for someone, you know, to have this beautiful calling card and to really only have to think about directing and not, you know, when you do indie films, you're doing everything and it's sort of impossible to Anyway, so long story short, it took me a while after that.

It was a great calling card and got me into the industry.

And then I always knew that I wanted to make this family story somehow.

Salkin describes it as one of the first modern memes.

Guests will include sex columnist Dan Savage, director Mike Figgis, commentator Andrew Sullivan, and Stanford communications professor Fred Turner.

The first two episodes dropped on September 17th, with new episodes releasing weekly on Thursdays across all major platforms.

I think the reason that this could be interesting is really, they're not even beginning to suggest that this ever happened.