And, uh, talk a little bit more about, um, your time during the pandemic when you first decided to dig into the footage and what it was like to go through that again with her.

Yeah, I-- We were all, um, all at our family home in Napa Valley, where I grew up, and, um, and sh- we had all this time, so she thought, "Well, let's get that footage out and look at it again," 'cause she always wanted to revisit it.

And so we just started looking at it.

I had never seen it, so it was just wild for me to see 'cause I just remember that time, and, um, it was so fun to see Jason and then just to see what she was focused on and get to see the, um, all the, the wigs and the extra area that I had never seen.

So for me, it was the first time many years later to see that set and remember it.

But we had almost 100 hours, and, um, so we just started looking at it and t- we started talking about, like, how, how could it be put together in a way that wasn't now a marketing film.

It didn't have to sell anything.

Um, I guess I'm, can you talk a little bit about that? Is something that, is that something that changes, uh, over your career of filmmaking or is it always an issue for everyone?

just come out with her.

Yeah, she just came out with a great biography on Marie Antoinette.

So I read her book, and it was so interesting to me that she made her human and showed all these details of her as a young girl.

And and that they really took away Mops, her pug, when she arrived, and what it was like to be an outsider, which I feel like everyone...

Everybody feels that at some point.

Yeah, everyone can relate to going into this world where you're learning how to fit in.

And I was always the new kid at school because we moved around so much.

I love the photographs in here where they're in their costumes, their gorgeous costumes, outside smoking a cigarette and on their cell

Everybody feels that at some point

... yeah, everyone can relate to be- going into this world where you're learning, um, how to fit in.

And, um, I was always the new kid at school, 'cause we mo- we moved around so much.

So, so I just, um, I was really taken by just the, all the details of how she went through all these transitions that everybody goes through in life, except for on this crazy circumstance-

On a world stage

... during... and then the French Revolution.

So, so I wanted, I just was...

And, and that era, the way they lived and the, the way they dressed just seems so, um, decadent and fun and over the top.

And I wanted to know if that's something that you saw in Marie Antoinette before you read the biography or was that when you read the biography that you discovered that?

I think I don't think that much about what the story is about in that way.

I think I just am drawn to projects that intrigue me and then afterwards I can kind of have more perspective and step back and kind of look like what they were about at that time.

But in the moment, I'm just...

I just get interested in a story and just get into it.

And I was, I mean, the way I got interested in Marie Antoinette was Dean Tavallaris, the great production designer who was a friend of my father and like an uncle to me, was reading the Stefan Zweig biography and was talking about it at dinner.

And I had no idea that she was 14 years old, how young they were.

And I wondered, how do you see silence as a tool in this film?

There's an energy that drew you to one another?

Yeah.

No, I saw his clothes for the Grunge Collection.

I lived in California and I came to New York and I was with my mom and I said, I really want to go see, can we see this guy's clothes? And she brought me to the studio.

And then I first met Mark and then I was coming to New York in my 20s and we crossed paths and hung out and became friends over the years.

connection into filmmaking?

No, I was just always into fashion and what people were wearing since I was a really little kid.

And a lot of European filmmakers were visiting my parents' house in San Francisco.

How did you first hear Air's music?

I remember I was in London, and I was writing the script for Virgin Suicides, so it was probably '97 or '98, and I was in Rough Trade record shop just looking around at albums, and I saw Air's, I guess, a CD.

And I remember just asking the guy like, "Oh, is this good? Do you like it?" And they recommended it, so I bought it and I took it home and I was listening to it while I was, uh, working on my script and, yeah, I just got really into the atmosphere of it and because the story is set in the '70s, but it's actually twenty years in the future looking back at that time, I liked the idea of not having music from the period for the score, that it's a memory and then to have contemporary music that's related to the '70s and it had that quality.

And so since then, as in the fairy tales, you know, they got married and had a lot of children.

children.I love that song and I love when Thomas plays it, especially when he plays it in concert now or live.

I feel like that's my song.