- Welcome to Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter.

Directors, I'm Stephen Galloway,

and I'd like to welcome Yorgos Lanthimos, Ryan Coogler,

Spike Lee, Alfonso Cuaron,

Bradley Cooper, and Marielle Heller.

Thanks for being here. - Thank you.

- I want to plunge into the deep end.

We're in a very political time.

Sam Goldwyn once said, "If you want to send a message,

"send it Western Union."

Agree or disagree?

- Why you looking at me?

(laughing)

Why's everybody looking at me? (laughing)

- 'Cause if you don't have an opinion on this,

we're in trouble.

- Well, we live in very dangerous times.

Artists, you know, reflect what's happening in the world,

or what they want,

and the way you think about art,

everybody has their, can file their own vision.

But for me, this guy in the White House,

Agent Orange, he's,

it's not America's brightest moments

since he's been in the White House.

I feel.

- Which doesn't strictly answer the question

in the sense that what you're making now,

or developing now could come out years after he's gone.

So, should films be directly political?

- I will say, if you're an artist

and you make the decision that you're not going to include

politics in it, that's a political decision itself.

When you say we're not going to include it,

that's a political decision.

- But I also think there's no should,

because films are as wide in variety

as we are as people.

So, there have to be films that are making political choices

and are reflecting our political feelings,

and then there are films that are existing

as purely entertainment.

We need all of those things in order to

meet all of our different moods as audience members too,

and I think we have a responsibility as artists

to be reflecting the culture, as you say,

but, I mean, there's no should with any of this.

We're all just artists trying to make things

that help us feel better in the world that we're living,

our own separate existences, right?

- I mean, it's such a personal art form.

And, it doesn't really belong to us

once we put it out there.

And whether it's going to be politicized our not

is really not up to us.

So, it,

the answer really is,

I mean, we all speak for ourselves, but,

the more personal we are, the more specific we are,

the better story we can tell.

And then it's up to the audience to decide

whether they see it politically or not.

- In what way was A Star is Born personal for you?

- Oh God, every way.

Yeah, I mean, it's the only reason why I made the movie.

I mean, the one thing I knew,

I mean, I waited until I was 42,

if I didn't have something to say,

there was no reason to make the movie.

And I just wanted to investigate relationships,

particularly between a man and a woman in love.

And what happens when you're,

when something happens to you when you're a child,

and whether you have the means to deal with that,

or you have the community that can help you.

And if that doesn't happen,

how does that inform the rest of your life?

And then also, the idea of finding your voice in this world.

I mean, it really was a great platform for me

to examine a lot of different things

that I've been thinking about cinematically for years.

- Did making it change your mind about anything?

- Oh gosh, about everything. (laughs)

Yeah, I mean yeah.

You learn a lot.

It definitely allowed me,

or enabled me to have the confidence to want to do it again,

to have an idea,

or you know, a lot of ideas and vision,

and sort of visual tableaus

and then have it be the story that you wanted to make

is very gratifying.

- What about directing surprised you?

- I think I had the great luck

to have been working for years as an actor

with directors who have been very collaborative

and it felt like a seamless transition.

I think it's because I love filmmaking, I love cinema.

You know, I grew up, these movies changed my life,

the people around this table.

Do The Right Thing, I don't even know how to,

I couldn't even talk after I saw that movie.

- Look at Spike. (laughing)

- No, but it's the truth.

- And I appreciate it, I thank you.

- It's the truth, I didn't even know what to,

it's like having a child,

it's like, oh, this is a new emotion

I've never even experienced.

That's what films have done for me.

So, to be able to be a student of it for decades,

I think, allowed me the tools to be able to do it myself.

- But what did you not expect?

- For it to be as joyful as it was.

It really was joyful.

I felt like I was in exactly the place

that I was supposed to be in that moment.

- The whole time?

(laughing)

- Not during prep, not during,

terrified of prep. - Come on.

- Well, you can't see the light

at the end of the tunnel at prep,

you just got to go down into the cave every day

and hope that one day you're going to see the light.

But, once you see the light,

and then the light gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger,

then it becomes fun.

- Is directing a joyful experience for you?

- It has it's days, but,

(laughing)

but it's an intense experience.

You know, it's,

it's a long process, but also, it's a process in which

there's so many things that can go wrong.

But at the same time, I think that the biggest thing is

that you know that whatever you do

is going to be there.

You know, it's going to be there forever.

It's not that you're going to,

okay, we change it tomorrow at the next performance.

You know, it's, you're just cementing something.

And then, yeah, it's intense.

It's amazing.

But at the same time, it's an intense process.

When they asked me at the end of a film if I'm happy,

I'm never happy, I'm relieved.

You know, I think that if you ask a fox

after being chased by hounds for (laughing) 12 hours,

and then he goes to a refuge,

and says "Are you happy?",

no, it's, the fox is relieved.

You know, he got away with it.

(laughing)

- Is it more joyful when you're doing

a personal film like Roma,

or when you're doing a studio film like Gravity?

- It can be joyful either way.

It's just a different,

it's a different approach.

Roma, the thing is, it has a different intensity

that I was not expecting

because I didn't know what I was walking in.

You start asking if films should have a message or not,

I don't think that that's not an option,

because even, you were talking about entertainment,

everything that we do is going to convey a message,

is going to convey an ideology,

is going to convey a politic, no matter what, you know?

One way or the other.

Even if you don't intend to do that.

And doing a personal film is just that,

more stuff starts to come out

that you not necessarily feel

comfortable about dealing with.

- Such as?

- You know, it's like the recognition of your society,

of Mexico for instance,

and recognizing the issues going on in Mexico

are the same as the rest of the world.

Or even my own relationships inside my,

you know, the personal relationships at home

when I was growing up,

and these perverse relationship between race and class

that pretty much, I've been part of

just by being part of a certain society.

You know, so it's,

and it's not comfortable to recognize those things

and just try to be blunt and honest about it.

- Was Black Panther a political film for you?

- Yeah, it's about a politician, you know?

So, there was no way for it to not be.

- Yeah, yeah, interesting.

- Yeah, so I was,

you know how we always saw it like,

it's a character who's, you know,

the political leader of a fictional country,

and it's fictional, you know,

but we put it on a real continent,

we wanted to set it in the real world.

And that's kind of how the character Shawn showed up,

that's how he identified himself, as a politician.

So, you know, through that, definitely a political film.

- You've gone from Indie filmmaking to now being,

you know, one of the kings of the studio system.

- One of the what?

(laughing)

- Like it or not, you have tiptoed in and out

of the studio system.

- That's Iger, you're getting mixed up.

(laughing)

- Fair enough. - Yeah.

I'm at the wrong table.

- Which do you prefer and why?

Spike, would you go back into a studio film?

- Well this BlacKkKlansman focus the studio.

- [Stephen] Okay, it's an Indie label, isn't it?

- What is Indie now?

- What is Indie? - Yeah.

What is Indie?

- I mean, it's, you got to get the money, we can go.

So, you know, I got, as I told this person the other day,

I got one Jordan, independent cinema,

and the other Jordan, (laughing)

in the steel system, so,

got to go where the money is.

- Yorgos, you've come from Greece.

How do you feel about making a studio film?

And have you been in talks about doing any big studio films?

- To be honest, it wasn't very different for me,

and again, it's that kind of differentiation,

what is a studio film and what isn't,

so long as I have the creative freedom

that I need for each film,

as Spike says, you know, whoever believes in the project

and is willing to back you up,

you know, it's a great opportunity to keep working.

So, I really don't see it like that.

I see, you know, the stories that interest me,

that next film that I want to do,

how I want to do it differently,

or the things that I want to develop further.

So, it's all about that.

And then you find the appropriate people

to support you and back you up.

- What was the biggest challenge for you

in making The Favourite?

- Well, the fact that it was a period film

complicates things, I think.

And it makes it more expansive.

It was the most expansive film to date.

But what I find challenging

ever since I started making English language films,