It's a drama.

So yeah.

Or, or it's a mystery, it's a thriller, whatever it is, you know? I don't know.

Um, but I mean, the best horror movies will have those, but they'll still, like, you could take the scares out and it would still tell a compelling story.

Like, The Shining is still a fascinating story even if it wasn't, you know, as viscerally terrifying a- as it is.

Because I wanna know, I wanna track this guy's decline, and I wanna watch how his family has to, has to react.

I think that's, that's a really engaging story.

Like-

Talk about, well, first of all, that screenplay.

I wasn't even trying to write a movie.

I'm just trying to write a scene just for fun, just for me.

So I'm just thinking I'd been in a similar situation with a double booked Airbnb.

Well, really, I went to an Airbnb in a really rough neighborhood late at night and I couldn't get in.

And I'd read this book, The Gift of Fear, that was explaining all of these red flags that people, but primarily women, are programmed in our society to suppress.

This internal radar that... that we all have but like that men can give off these pins, pre-incident notifiers that are these like behavioral ticks that you know, by themselves might not be that big of a deal but in concert with each other can signify danger.

Like the experience that you had as a player trying to recreate that into a cinematic experience.

Okay.

Where you did something really hard, and, and, and you are reaping the benefits of that because you probably have more energy and you probably, you probably have some self-esteem rise from that, right? And I think that...

So even though my moment to moment is, is largely similar than it, th- as it was before, I do have...

Like, there is a sense of, of accomplishment that I think kind of is an underlying vibe that, that I can, I can recognize as being, as being different.

Do you feel that? I know when I got sober I felt that way.

You know? I felt like, oh, like, things still bother me, but, like, I have this, like, cushion of self-esteem that I've never had before, and I only got that after I got sober.

So maybe, maybe we have that in common.

What did you learn from Weapons?

So-

Like I think by the time I wrote James' chapter I had that idea.

I was like, "The kids are in the basement." Why though? Like why would the kids be in Alex's basement? It just, it just felt like that's where they had to be.

And then I, and then I, I just kind of had this idea of like it's, this is gonna sound really woo-woo and I really don't like to talk about the meaning of the movie but I have said this before so I, I guess I can, I can let this much out of the bag 'cause it's already out.

But like the Gladys and Alex chapter, to me, is a, is just about living with an alcoholic parent.

I grew up in an alcoholic household, my dad died of cirrhosis, you know, and, and it's a terrible thing that comes into a family dynamic and it changes everything.

And, and so, you know, I had a happy hate-... house, and then something came into my house and it turned my dad into a scary person, and I'd go to school and- and everything's cool, and I'd go home and I'd have a scary house with a scary dad, you know? And so like, that to me felt so interesting.

And it just- and it was amazing.