Talking Pictures Podcast | Episode 9 | Max

PATTY JENKINS: I could not sleep, and my internal narrative was, "Way to go, loser. Loser!" Like, I just laid in bed, like, just so miserably hard on myself. BEN MANKIEWICZ: Hi there. I'm Ben Mankiewicz. Like all of us, Patty Jenkins has had those nights when her brain just wouldn't turn off, when she couldn't shake the fear of failure. Patty is best known for directing the Wonder Woman movies. In fact, Patty is the first woman to direct a superhero franchise. Wonder Woman hit theaters in 2017.

(CROWD CHANTING) BEN: 2017 began with the largest single-day protest in US history. Millions of women across the country marched to protest the election of Donald Trump. He'd take office 20 days later. CROWD: (CHANTING) We can! Yes, we can! BEN: It made for fertile ground to launch a Wonder Woman franchise. It became one of the highest grossing movies of the year. My daughter was only four when Wonder Woman hit theaters. Now she's ten. As I prepared for my chat with Patty, my daughter and I sat

down to watch Wonder Woman together, as well as the sequel Patty directed, Wonder Woman '84. My kid fell in love. Certainly with Gal Gadot, with Wonder Woman's origin story, and a little, I'm afraid, with Chris Pine. Look, there are still days when my daughter insists that I'm the least cool person to roam this planet. But there are other days, like when we watch Wonder Woman together, that makes us feel like we completely understand each other. We're connected. We're one. That is the power o

f movies. ♪ ("TALKING PICTURES" THEME PLAYS) ♪ BEN: I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz, and this is Talking Pictures, a podcast about movies, about memories, and about all the stuff that happens in between. Turner Classic Movies makes this podcast with the streaming service Max, where you can see some of the movies mentioned in this episode. My guest this week... Patty Jenkins. ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪ BEN: Before Wonder Woman, Patty directed Monster, a true crime movie that came before true crime stori

es were ubiquitous. Patty has also directed prestige television... dramas like The Killing and comedies like Arrested Development. I interviewed her last fall in Santa Monica in her office, which felt more like a home. Her mom, Emily, was there. PATTY: My mother is a superfan of yours... (LAUGHS) ...and I am too, but my mother lives and breathes classic films, and so this was a big deal. BEN: Clearly, Patty was using her mother to soften me up. It worked. Before she worked in movies, Patty was a

first AC, or assistant camera, on music videos, shooting with A-plus-level stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Wu-Tang Clan. Do you think that dealing with such enormous stars with mega-wattage talent and star presence, do you think that helped you figure out how you deal with big movie stars on a set? PATTY: It definitely humanized everyone. Like, I've been-- Or I'll put it this way, by the time I made Monster, people were surprised at how comfortable I was on set. So, I know that this is

-- I know what we're doing here. We're a crew. I've been on thousands of sets by that time. And I've only been on sets since I was 19, 18 years old. And so that's the only job I had done. So it definitely, like, seeing Michael Jackson in particular, like, being behind the scenes with Michael Jackson, and he's a human being, and he's struggling, and he has needs, and he's-- that was one of the most incredible jobs I ever did. BEN: What video was that? PATTY: It was "Earth Song." And that was the

craziest story because he wanted no one to be watching him as he performed, so we were up in a field up in New York. -And, um... -BEN: Like upstate? -PATTY: Upstate New York. -BEN: Yeah, yeah. PATTY: And they had built, like, a 30-foot white Cyc wall so that the whole crew was behind it, and only Michael was on the other side, about three feet from the wall. And the only thing they couldn't figure out how to do was pull focus from the other side. So they put me on the other side. So he was as cl

ose as we are right now. And he walked out, and he was, like, folded up like a fan, this guy. Like, so-- His energy, so closed in, and the second the song started, it was as if you were hit by a wave of energy of the biggest power you've ever felt. I could barely pull focus. It was what came out of this person right before my eyes was so stunning, so... -It was something. -BEN: Yeah. PATTY: So, back to your original question. I think when you've worked with so much talent like that for so long,

you definitely-- And by the way, I'm in New York. I have friends blowing up and getting famous, too, like, normal people that I know, so it had demystified-- So many of my friends are artists, and so many of them had made it that I definitely think it was demystified. I've never seen actors as an "other." They're just my friends who we're making something together. BEN: Um, so... you were making, I imagine, a pretty good living when you're working as a first AC on videos and a second on commerci

als, and you're a focus point, but you're constantly getting hired. You're going from job to job. -PATTY: Yeah. -BEN: You're doing all right. PATTY: I was doing great. I was making tons of money. I was learning a lot. And then I got to the point where when I was 28, where I kept having the dream that I was gonna make a movie on the side. And then I realized I can't get out of this circle because I can't stop working long enough to do it. And I can't not work. And so then I saw my friends who had

, you know-- who had never gotten a job and just had some sort of support system to have them just not have a job, who just said, "I'm a director," or, "I'm an actor," and they were making it. And so I was like, "I have to make my own door." So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to take out student loans and go to AFI because it's--" It was on the Michael Jackson job, actually, that the DP said to me there-- I said, "I don't want to go to film school 'cause I already know so much." And he said, "There

is a film school where you can go just as a director," and told me about AFI. And so I applied to AFI, and when I got in, I said, "Okay, I've got two years to make it. Or else I'm gonna have to go back to ACing." BEN: And for people who don't know, AFI, American Film Institute, but they have a film school. -PATTY: Yeah. -BEN: Right. -But it's super small. -PATTY: Super small. BEN: How many do they let in? PATTY: I think it was ten directors? -BEN: Yeah, like, a year. -PATTY: It was really-- Yea

h. BEN: And it's a-- how long a program? -PATTY: Two years. -BEN: A two-year program. That's got to be a somewhat difficult decision, to give up a lucrative career-- PATTY: Super hard. I'll always remember-- 'Cause I also was the happiest I was ever in my life in New York City. So, I'll always remember a moment of sitting in my closet on the Upper West Side, staring at my apartment and thinking, "I cannot believe I am doing this." Like, I got-- This is such a good life. I was making so much mone

y, living on the Upper West Side, having so much fun, and I was like, "Are you serious?" It was as if I was watching myself from the outside. Because I was like, "You're serious, I guess." BEN: Like, this is like-- You mean part of you was saying, "You're being-- This is foolish"? PATTY: Yeah. BEN: But this is good. You've made it. PATTY: You've made it. I was like, just get married, and move to the island, and become a cinematographer. No. I was like, I wanted to make my films. And so I was wat

ching myself from the outside, saying, "I guess this is what you're gonna do." Which continues to happen throughout my career. BEN: Patty's first feature was based on a real-life serial killer... Aileen Wuornos. Female serial killers are rare. Wuornos was a sex worker who claimed she was repeatedly raped by her clients. Starting in 1989, after more than a decade working as a prostitute, Wuornos began to kill her clients, her johns. She robbed and murdered seven men. She was caught, convicted, an

d after ten years on Florida's death row, the state executed Aileen Wuornos in 2002. Patty's film came out a year later. She called it Monster and cast Charlize Theron as Wuornos. It is a striking and memorable performance. Just a warning, this part of our talk is pretty graphic. Before we go there, here's a scene from the film. Charlize Theron is talking to Christina Ricci, playing the woman Aileen loves, Selby. Selby calls Aileen "Lee." AILEEN WUORNOS: Yeah, we're gonna have a drink, and we're

gonna forget about all this, all right? Cheers. SELBY WALL: Lee, this isn't funny. AILEEN: You don't know what's going on, Sel! I do. So, if you want to keep your eyes shut to the whole world, then the least you can do is hear me out. SELBY: No, I don't want to hear this, Lee. We can be as different as we want to be, but you can't kill people. AILEEN: (YELLS) Says who? BEN: How did Monster come to be? PATTY: So, Monster came because I'm a huge true crime buff. I still watch a tremendous

amount of it, which is finally acceptable. It was much less acceptable. BEN: What's your favorite true crime show? PATTY: I mean, all of them. I stream them through my sleep. And so it's like, you know, 48 Hours. I know them all. I've seen them all 1,000 times, and so-- BEN: I love 48 Hours and 20/20. You know the show I hate? Dateline. -I can't stand that show. -PATTY: So, Dateline-- BEN: I'm kidding. My brother's on Dateline. PATTY: Oh, is he? Oh yeah, that's right! -(BOTH LAUGH) -BEN: I love

Dateline, yeah. PATTY: Dateline Australia, I end up watching a lot, too, strangely. But anyway, so, all this true crime, I-- At AFI Fest, I ended up going to the Kodak Connect program. And I was seated across a producer, who-- Brad Wyman, who just offhandedly told me that he was making these serial killer movies straight-to-video for Blockbuster. And I said, "Oh, that's interesting. You should do one about Aileen Wuornos." BEN: Because you'd watched true crime shows about it. PATTY: Because her

story had always stuck with me. First of all, I'd watched the real case unfold as it was happening in '89. And then the way she was talked about bothered me so much, when people were like, "This is a man-hating lesbian." -I was like, "What?!" -BEN: Right. PATTY: "You're looking at this person who's been-- who's so damaged like a feral animal backed into a corner, and you think she just loves this?" And so, it was like the end of the most tragic opera, and I felt like that story, it-- it always

gnawed at me that it had never been told, and-- BEN: Where she is not excused but sympathetic? PATTY: Yeah, where I'm like, "How can you not-- How can you--" BEN: Or at least understood? PATTY: Oh, by the way, I feel this way now. I don't believe in psychopaths. I think that there's so-- maybe every once in a million years, you know, one in a million, there's somebody who's born with a spectrum disorder that makes them inability-- the inability to feel-- feel emotions. But when you go to prison,

and you know people who do horrific things, if you understood how horrific the things that they had experienced were, like Aileen-- Like Aileen didn't feel bad about murdering people. And when I would even talk about it in letters with her, she would say, like, "Overkill. They say overkill. That guy died pretty quick. That wasn't that bad. I've been locked up in basements and raped for, you know, months." And so, the level of torture that someone can go through, or damage, or whatever, I've alw

ays been endlessly fascinated as I watch. "Nope, that's not a psychopath. That's somebody with a line of damage that leads up to their inability to feel empathy anymore for anything less or at all." So, anyway-- So, that-- I said to him, "You should do-- You should make a movie about Aileen Wuornos," and he said, "You should do it. You won't get anything else made." And thus began the journey of me starting to sit down and write, and the greatest gift about it was that I probably was frightened

and commercial-minded enough in that moment of my career that I would have never done something as daring as make Monster and think that it could succeed. So, it was the first time in my life I'd done something so completely honest. I was like, "Ah, you know what? I'm gonna write a love story and frame it as a love story à la Midnight Cowboy. That's what I'm gonna do," thinking no one would ever make it. So, it was the first act of art in film that I've done that was just like... (WARBLES) That

's what I would do if I could make anything. And so I learned a lot from the fact that that's the thing that worked for me. BEN: And then did you get Charlize? -Who gets Charlize? -PATTY: Yeah. I wrote it for Charlize. I saw-- So-- BEN: But you didn't know her, right? PATTY: I didn't know her. Somewhere early on in writing it-- And 'cause I was really racking my brain for who could do this, who could play this. And I saw her in Devil's Advocate, and it was such an unvain shot, and she was workin

g so hard to sell, you know, this moment and doing such a good job, and I thought, "She could do it." And so, for me, it just, I was-- I was curious who could hit both ends. I needed somebody who, when she held that gun, could be terrifying and as powerful as Aileen really became, but also who was so vulnerable and loving, which Aileen was as well. BEN: So, my moment of crying, and as my memory serves me correctly, certainly the fir-- probably the first time -I saw it was Scott Wilson. -PATTY: O

h, yeah. (CAR DOOR CLOSES) HORTON: Look... (WHIMPERS) ...I've got the keys in the car. There's my wallet. Just-- Just-- AILEEN: (SPEAKS SOFTLY) Turn around. HORTON: No, ma'am. AILEEN: (SPEAKS AGGRESSIVELY) Turn around! HORTON: No, ma'am. -No, ma'am. No... -AILEEN: Get down. HORTON: You don't have to do this. AILEEN: Get down. HORTON: You don't. You really don't. (AILEEN SOBBING) I can't... -HORTON: You don't have to. -(AILEEN SOBBING) HORTON: You're just having a hard time. AILEEN: No! I

can't let you live. HORTON: Oh... Oh, God. Oh, God, my wife. -(AILEEN SOBBING) -HORTON: My wife. My daughter's having a baby. AILEEN: (SCREAMS) Shut the fuck up! (BREATHES HEAVILY, SOBS) -Oh, God! Oh, God, I'm sorry. -HORTON: Can you just-- My babies... my granddaughter. -(AILEEN SOBS, SCREAMS) -(GUNSHOT) BEN: You know, you put Scott Wilson in a movie, whether it's two minutes or 20 minutes, and your movie got better, right? Whatever you had, your TV show, your movie, your episode, anything g

ot better if it had Scott Wilson in it. And that was to me the most powerful moment -in the film. -PATTY: Yeah. That was one of the hardest scenes I've ever done in my life. Like, it really-- still to this day, it goes down in history as like, it was emotionally so hard, and it was so painful and ugly. It's the crime that haunted Aileen Wuornos -till the day she died. -BEN: Really? PATTY: In all of her letters that I ended up inheriting, eleven years of her letters, personal letters-- BEN: She g

ave them to you, like, the night before the execution, -right? -PATTY: Yeah. Exactly. And I gave them back, but I-- we read them all, and they-- In it, she would always ask about that man's family. It was super clear that she knew she'd gone too far. All of these other guys she could project onto them whatever she wanted because they were johns, and there was a slippery slope of her getting a little more-- you know, projecting a little too much onto them as it progressed, but that guy was trying

to help her, and she had to kill him for his car. And so she knew what she did. -BEN: And he's just so good. -PATTY: Oh! He's so good. BEN: I mean, you just wanna-- He's a guy you always want to be on his side. PATTY: And by the way, also an incredible moment of-- of learning as a director for me, too, because it was very dark. We had tiny, little, grainy, you know, Video Assist at that time, and I couldn't see what he was doing. And I remember trying to direct him at one moment and saying like

, "I think you're really feeling scared," and he was-- him saying back to me, "You're gonna have to trust me." (CHUCKLES) -BEN: Yeah. (CHUCKLES) -PATTY: And it's not until you see it projected that you're like, "Oh my God!" The smallness and subtlety of the performance is so beautiful and painful, like, just so painful. -BEN: Yeah. -PATTY: You know, it's one of the reasons why when Charlize won the Oscar, I just wept and was so happy for her and understood what that is because I think that peopl

e outside of Hollywood often don't realize you have to live it to a-- Of course, you're not living it for real, but you have to go through it emotionally to find the honest emotion. Some part of Charlize has to decide to pull the trigger on Scott Wilson and understand it so deeply, and that's awful. You know, it's really hard, and that movie Monster, in particular, you couldn't celebrate any of those actors enough for me because I saw what they had to go through to do it. BEN: Monster was a crit

ical and commercial success. It grossed nearly 13 times its budget. As Patty said, Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Academy Award for playing Aileen Wuornos. CHARLIZE THERON: Oh... This has been such an incredible year. I can't believe this. Um... I-- I don't have a lot of time. I have to thank my incredible director, Patty Jenkins. Thank you. -Thank you. Thank you. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) BEN: Somehow, despite Monster's critical and financial success, Patty Jenkins ended up broke. Ho

w is it possible that you don't have 1,000 offers? PATTY: I did have 1,000 offers. -BEN: Oh, all right. -PATTY: I really did. So, the struggle that I've had throughout my career is that the 1,000 offers that came were all... not beautiful, emotional things to me that I wanted to do. Particularly not after Monster. I had such a profound experience making it. That there were lots of money jobs. There were lots of faux art jobs. BEN: So, give me an example. I don't-- I know people don't like talkin

g about things they turned down, so I don't need-- just what kind of things are you getting offered? What kind of things are you literally saying no to, even though you're what, like, 80,000 dollars in debt -at this point? -PATTY: Yeah. Yeah. BEN: Because why? Because one, Monster didn't really make any money. PATTY: I got paid-- What did I get? Sixty thousand dollars. -From start to finish. -BEN: For the whole movie? And you didn't have any points in it or anything? -PATTY: No. -BEN: It's just

that's it? PATTY: I wasn't in the union. I got no residuals. -Nothing. -BEN: Nothing. And-- And so-- PATTY: Even though it made 80-something million dollars. -(CHUCKLES) -BEN: It made-- And with a budget of two? PATTY: Yeah. One point five. BEN: One point five, Jesus. So-- So, at 1.5 million, it makes 80 million, and you don't make any money from it. How do you turn down at least one big money offer? PATTY: I don't know. 'Cause I thought it would-- BEN: How do you not take at least one big one?

PATTY: I thought it would ruin my career to make a movie if it wasn't great, and that I didn't believe in it. And I only know how to do things that I completely believe in. And I-- So, the only wisdom I will say is that I saw the precipice of what was happening to so many people ahead of me, where they make a shitty second movie and you're over. It's just-- You're just-- It's shut down. It's treated as a fluke. BEN: So that was in your head? -Like, don't-- -PATTY: Big-time. BEN: Do not take a bi

g swing and miss, -or I've lost all this? -PATTY: Don't. Don't do it. Don't do it. And also, don't make it because you will have to succeed either. The only-- Steve Perry was giving me great advice at this moment too. He's like, "You can't work from this place." He's saying-- BEN: How did you know Steve Perry? PATTY: So, Steve, I had-- I had written "Don't Stop Believin'" into Monster. I had written the scene beat to beat, line to line, lined up exactly to that song. And everybody said, "There's

no way. Journey doesn't give that song to anybody. Nobody's ever gotten it before. He's-- Steve Perry is a born-again Christian. He's hiding out in the woods. He doesn't talk to anybody." So, Charlize and I penned, like, a passionate letter 'cause I just was like, "We have to get the song. We have to." And Steve literally showed up in the mixing stage the next day and was like, "I love it! You can have it!" And we were like, "What? What's up with all the myth of you?" And he was like, "No, no,

you can't-- You're understanding the song." He's like, "I wrote the song about homeless people. And it's about desperate people. I just don't want to sell it for-- It's not about the money." BEN: Right. "I'm not gonna sell it to Corona." PATTY: "It's wrong. It's the wrong thing to do." And so he ended up, he was very much hiding from the world at that moment. BEN: And you didn't know him. PATTY: I didn't know him. So he ended up sitting behind me on the mixing stage and started just coming to wo

rk every day and I remember this moment so clearly where I was very alone at this moment, everybody's gone, and everybody's moved on to other projects, and I was fighting some creative battle, and he pulled me aside in the hallway and he goes, "You gotta stick with it. Don't give up. You're right. You're like the lead singer right now. You gotta stay, you gotta--" So he ended up becoming like the artist whisperer. I needed somebody who-- And he ended up, I think, feeling invigorated by being bac

k at work. So he came to work with me every day for four or five months. He ended up re-recording a bunch of stuff with me, fixing all kinds of things. BEN: He was like a hermit. PATTY: He was a total hermit at that time. But he and I had such a wonderful time, with him being the artist who taught me, who was whispering in my ear all the time, "You gotta stay pure to yourself, you gotta do these things, and--" So he had said to me, "If you make one for them, and you fail, you lost. You're a two-

time loser. If you make one for them and you succeed, you're still a loser 'cause it wasn't what you wanted to do. If you make one for you and you win, you're a two-time winner. If you make one for you and you fail, you still win, 'cause you got to make what you wanted to make." And so, that has been very important to me in my career. I actually don't know if I would be capable of doing it anyway. I think it's just-- I didn't leave doing camera work to get another high paying job I don't want. T

hat's not what I want. I want to make the movies I want to make, that's what I want to do. BEN: That's an incredible story. The Steve Perry story. PATTY: The Steve Perry story, and by the way, he's still one of my best friends. He's been an incredible part of my life and creatively is still someone I turn to for advice. But it's also funny, he comes to set with me so often that it also was such a funny part of it where anytime I would be shooting something, I'd come in and approve like font for

some episode of something. And people would be like-- And I'd be like, "I don't know." And I've spent so much time with Steve now, he'd be like, "I mean I wouldn't do a sans serif and--" People would be like, "Okay, that's great." And then he'd walk out of the room and they'd go, "I'm sorry, is that Steve Perry? From Journey?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot. I forgot. Yes." (LAUGHS) BEN: Oh, that's so good. That's so good. After Monster, it took 14 years before Patty made anothe

r feature film. She agreed to make a tentpole movie. A big-budget film put out by a major studio. Tentpoles are supposed to generate enough money to make up for the less-profitable pictures the studio puts out. Tentpoles cost more, but in most ways, they're actually less risky. They're often based on existing IP that has a built-in appeal to a wide audience. In Patty's case, the tentpole she signed on to make was Wonder Woman. Part of the DC Comics franchise at Warner Brothers. WONDER WOMAN: I u

sed to want to save the world. This beautiful place. But the closer you get, the more you see the great darkness within. BEN: Um, it took you a bit to make that first feature, and you said, "Thank God." What did that mean? PATTY: I did. And I say this to filmmakers all the time. Nobody's as hard on themselves as a 28-year-old who's not exactly the adult that they always wanted to be. Like, just the internal narrative. I could not sleep. And my internal narrative was, "Way to go, loser. Loser

!" Like I just laid in bed. Like, just so miserably hard on myself at that age. In retrospect, and I say this to people all the time, yes, it still took me a gap of time between Monster and Wonder Woman. But even all the pilots I did, the amount of political savvy, and adulthood, and maturity that I needed to not lose my shit and just be able to handle those jobs, all those years were super helpful to getting there. And so, if you make it too young, and I've seen this happen a bunch of times, an

d I've seen a bunch of people wash out of tentpoles because they were too young, and too new. And you're like, "You can't pick a young writer and then put them in responsibility of being the CEO of a major corporation." Which is what making a tentpole is like, you know? Like you need to be approving dolls at the same time as you're doing this, at the same time as you're-- You know, it's like-- So, I think-- I'd rather make it a little bit later and be able to run with it and go forward than to h

it it too young and then not be able to back it up. BEN: You told Bryce Dallas Howard in an interview, and this surprised me, when it came to how involved you were in the merchandising of-- PATTY: Everything. I mean I was the CEO of Wonder Woman. Of the Wonder Woman movie, outfacing. Of course there were other producers involved but it's like I had to be the one thinking really carefully about whether the color on that standee at Target really represented what the movie was gonna end up 'cause I

was the only one that knew! 'Cause the movie wasn't done yet. So it's like-- So you become-- Like, you've gotta be so responsible. And I've even heard about, like, younger directors being on those movies and like not communicating. I'm like, "That's not gonna work. People are gonna start talking behind your back. You're gonna get kicked off the thing. They're not gonna have faith. You have to be explaining to the studio what you're doing so that they understand, they feel confident. BEN: Do you

like doing that? PATTY: I don't care. I'll do anything. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll fight any war to make a great film. No. It's a hassle to be so busy and to have to work so many hours, but, really, that's all the more reason I say that you have to love the movie that you're making and believe in it. And believe in it beyond being a-- BEN: You should delegate some of this authority to Steve Perry. PATTY: Yeah. (LAUGHS) He's very helpful. But I look at-- And I don't want to judge other film

makers for what they do. There are lots of filmmakers who make lots of things for different reasons. Sometimes there are filmmakers who are making things, in my opinion, for their own glory. I'm bored with that. Like, I don't know how much more I can feel, so it's like to be-- And not many, but every once in a while, it's like, "I'm gonna make this movie and I'm gonna be sealed as a genius in history." I'm like, yes-- I don't care what happens after I'm dead, I really don't care. And so the trut

h is, to be able to fight a bigger battle and be able to say, like, "Hey, let's try to save-- send a message to every-- all the children of the world," I'll do anything, I'll make any phone call. And so that's what makes it worth it. And that's why when I look at movies that are just a money job that would just be for my ego, and not, again, it's not why directors do them, most directors believe in their films, but if I don't believe in it then that's what I'm doing. So it makes it super easy to

not do those movies. 'Cause I really don't want to make a phone call to the CEO about a movie I don't even care about that I already got paid for, you know? Then you're just living a shitty life. ♪ ("TALKING PICTURES" THEME SONG CONTINUES) ♪ BEN: We need to take a quick break. When Talking Pictures returns, Patty Jenkins talks superheroes. In particular, one that seemed to be speaking directly to her. PATTY: I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed through that movie and it had a profound influence on me

because I was Superman. ♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪ ♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪ BEN: Welcome back and thanks for sticking around to hear the rest of my conversation with writer-director Patty Jenkins. I wanted to know how Patty survived financially during those 14 years between Monster and Wonder Woman. And then its sequel, Wonder Woman 1984. So what do you do to make money after Monster, and you're turning down, you know, mainstream, big money movies, right? PATTY: I struggled to make money until Wonder Woma

n '84. I mean honestly. So, I-- I had a few movies that I wanted to do. They didn't work out for a variety of reasons. And I kept directing TV to get by while-- One movie in particular I tried to make for seven years and I couldn't get made, which in retrospect is mystifying to me now because it was-- The lead character was a dog, everybody in town told me you could not-- It was a rated-R movie starring a dog. And everybody in town said that could never succeed. Not like they thought Monster was

gonna succeed, but in retrospect I'm like, you think if so many of these filmmakers like-- You roll the dice on their second movie. Like you just roll the dice. It was only like a three million dollar budget, but nobody would. And so that-- that, you know, I'm ponderous about now when I look at, like, so many of my peers, I'm like, yeah. Chris Nolan and I made our movies about the same time but then everything else he decided to make somebody made, and they just wouldn't make my movies. They ju

st wouldn't. They only wanted me to make their scripts. until Wonder Woman-- I aligned finally, again. BEN: And Wonder Woman initially, you're involved and they're interested in you, but then they don't like your vision for it, right? PATTY: No, it wasn't that. It was-- So I wanted to-- It was one of the first things I told. The only thing in town I said that's what I want to do, is I told Warner Brothers I wanna make Wonder Woman. Chris was making The Dark Knight at the time, so they just weren

't doing that. So I talked to them off and on for the next eight years or whatever it was. And then they actually came to me about it when I was pregnant with my son, and I was like, "I can't do it now. Not right now." And then when it did come back, they already had a way that they wanted to do it, which I wasn't the right director for. BEN: They made up their mind about a direction, and then you were like, "This is not..." PATTY: We just didn't sync up. And then a year later, they ended up jus

t changing their mind about what they wanted to do and remembered me. And so then, finally, it just came together. BEN: For people who, you know-- There'll be a lot of movie people listening to this, but there'll be some people who only like movies, right? You know? What are the different pressures between making a movie like Monster with a one and a half million-dollar budget and a movie like Wonder Woman with 150-million-dollar budget to say nothing of the second Wonder Woman, right? PATTY: S

o, the first one... The first movie is obviously pretty desperate because it's your first movie, it's your one shot. You do wanna make money back for the people putting money in to be seen as somebody worth rolling the dice on again. So all of the same things are there. BEN: So you feel the pressure of returning investment -for the investors. -PATTY: Always. BEN: Even though you yourself are capped out at 60 thousand bucks for Monster. PATTY: It doesn't matter. If you want to get your next movie

made, you have to be a good roll of the dice, you know? So you want to be as artistic as you can be always and Trojan horse it if you need to. Like more on the Wonder Womans, where I'm doing a ver-- To me, Wonder Woman was just as personal of a small story as Monster. Exactly. But on the escalating pressures that come with Wonder Woman is a massive budget to return. But also, the biggest one to me was this was her one shot. Wonder Woman. This is a character that I love and that has a huge fan b

ase. And I'm now the one who needs to deliver the best-- This is what I would even say to the studio. Or when people would say to me, like, "What's your spin on Wonder Woman?" I'm like, "It's not about that. I need to deliver the best Wonder Woman movie of all time. I'm going to follow my own heart into what's the most beautiful story to do that with. But I need to make a great Wonder Woman film for all of us. BEN: So even you feel responsibility, there may be a feeling of responsibility to Warn

er Brothers, there may be a feeling of responsibility to Gal Gadot, -to Chris Pine, -PATTY: To DC Comics. To Wonder Woman, to Linda Carter. BEN: But mostly-- Right, to Linda Carter. But also to this abstract concept of Wonder Woman-- PATTY: Everybody that shows up on Halloween dressed up as Wonder Woman that this is their one shot-- BEN: Because if you swing and miss, there's never gonna be another Wonder Woman. PATTY: Nope. And you don't get new fans, and you don't get-- The younger generation

doesn't get Wonder Woman. You know? I thought about that all the time. BEN: My daughter doesn't get Wonder Woman. PATTY: She doesn't get Wonder Woman. Superman changed my life. You know? I believe in the power of these movies. Seeing Superman a few months after my father died and seeing him lose two fathers in the first act of the movie and go on to be Superman-- And I fucking-- That's a movie I sobbed through as a kid. SUPERMAN: All those things I can do. All those powers... And I couldn't ev

en save him. BEN: Patty's dad, William Jenkins, Bill to his friends, was a US Air Force officer and fighter pilot. Earned a Silver Star in the Vietnam war. Then back at home, his plane crashed during a combat training exercise. He was dead at 31. His daughter was seven. The dad stuff in Superman is what gets you. PATTY: I sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed through that movie. And it had a profound influence on me. Because I was Superman. I thought I was Superman, I could be Superman. I could find lo

ve, I could go on. So it just rocked my world as a kid. And so to be given the opportunity, and I still take this incredibly seriously, when and if I do a tent pole, you'll have an opportunity-- The reason that I've loved them and will continue to do them, maybe, even though I'd like to do smaller films too, is the opportunity to speak to the youth of tomorrow in metaphor through the power of story and that scale is so... How do you say no to that? Like, how do you not try to change the world, l

ittle by little, with storytelling, when it's such a beautiful medium? BEN: So you're so organized, I'm curious whether the mere pressure-- For a lot of us, the pressure between making a one and a half million-dollar movie like Monster and a 150-million-dollar movie like Wonder Woman would just be the enormity of the stakes involved. But my impression of you from listening to interviews and reading is that you're so organized that you probably didn't behave that differently on Wonder Woman than

you were on Monster, or on The Killing or on Arrested Development. PATTY: I don't think. I don't think so. I believe, and I try to teach this to my son now, like, you either be all in or don't, you know? Like even when I fix somebody's movie for them, and then everybody left, and I stayed and finished the movie for them because you gotta be a finisher. Like, go all in because-- Even because it's no fun to do half assed. It's boring. Like, it's boring. It's try for great, try for great at everyt

hing you do. So I feel very much the same, and even the pressures are different. The longevity of those Wonder Woman movies is insane to be on the same movie for three years is crazy. BEN: Does that mean you spent basically six years-- PATTY: Eight, now. Cumulatively. Yeah, eight on Wonder Woman. Yeah. And so that's where it's like, that stuff is kind of mind boggling to just be doing the same story for so, so, so, so long. But beyond that, filmmaking is filmmaking. And even the stuff you don't

know, it's like-- There's always been stuff. I don't know how to get the dolly up to the top of the cliff either. So like if I'm gonna tell you what I want in the special effects and somebody else is gonna do it. It's really not that different. There's nothing that different. BEN: When Chris Nolan and you make your first movies at around the same time, then he gets to make everything he brings up-- But I know you're not knocking him or anything. PATTY: Not at all. I love Chris and look up to him

so much. BEN: But is there some sexism involved in that? PATTY: Now I think so. Now I definitely think so. It's funny, I escaped thinking about this for so long, and I think it was to my benefit that I just wasn't-- I thought we were a lot further than we are in this world coming into this. Particularly, coming from New York, where I had friends so many men, and women, and gay, and every kind of friend. And so we thought we were through that. We thought this was past tense. Now in retrospect, I

think that... we've just come to a place where they're wanting to put women in the position of director, but still wanting diverse people's ideas is still... -BEN: We're not-- It's not the-- -PATTY: We're not there yet. And so in retrospect, I look back and I'm like-- In retrospect, I just kept saying, "Oh it's funny. People keep telling me they love the script and it makes them cry, but no one will make my movie." In retrospect, I'm like, "Really? I made a hit movie and you wouldn't roll the d

ice on a three-million-dollar movie afterwards because it was about a dog, and you didn't have faith in me? Even though what I just did everybody said wouldn't work either. But they just didn't believe in my ideas. They wanted me to do what they wanted me to do. BEN: So one thing you said that I wrote down, I liked it so much because it just-- Especially for, one, a guy and two, an idiot like me. Like it just you framed it incredibly effectively which was um, "Look, I wanna make movies about wom

en. That's cool and fun. I don't wanna make movies about being a woman, that's boring." PATTY: So boring. And I still get offered those a thousand trillion times a day. BEN: What's the difference? PATTY: The difference is, people come to me all the time with-- "There's a story of a woman who was the first pilot to--" I said, "That movie is about gender." -BEN: Right -PATTY: Right? We already have seen the movie about the first pilot that did it. We've already seen the movie about bravery, so the

only exceptional thing here is that it was a woman. And, yes, that's a great story, and, yes, that's a story worth telling, but I want to make great movies about the big world, you know? And I felt this way about Wonder Woman. I don't want Wonder Woman-- Wonder Woman saves the world. It's wonderful, everything she stands for women, but it shouldn't be that the men get to save the world and the women only save women and talk to women. It's like we want to save the world too. And so I just I cam

e in as a very gender-blind director wanting to make my own films. BEN: So was there more pressure on Wonder Woman '84 than the original or was it just the-- PATTY: Yeah, I think so. I think there was more pressure because I felt like we were-- There was tons of scrutiny on us for how incredibly successful the movie had been. And then, the movie even started to kind of pull a lot of eyes, and people trying to advertise on the backs of Wonder Woman. Of sort of saying "girl boss, click bait." You

know? "We're here, we're number one we're here to stay, we're taking over." All of this kind of stuff. And so I could feel the heat on my back. And I was thinking, "Ooh, they're going to be gunning for us soon. What goes up must come down. They're going to be gunning for us." So, I sort of went into making Wonder Woman '84 going, "Oh, they're gonna-- they're gonna kick the shit out of us in one way or the other." And the sad thing was, I think we would have made a gajillion trillion dollars bec

ause we were the number one selling DVD for, like, the next year and a half and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. BEN: You mean if it hadn't come out in the middle of the pandemic? PATTY: If it hadn't come out streaming because of the pandemic. But the long story short is, there was more pressure on it 'cause I knew people were gunning for us. BEN: I should probably know the answer to this question, but I don't. So, where are you now on Wonder Woman? Are you done with Wonder Woman? Is that-- PATTY:

Yeah. For the time being, yeah. BEN: But you-- I mean. PATTY: But prob-- easily forever. Yeah. BEN: For the time being. And a good chance that-- PATTY: Easily forever, yeah. BEN: So, somebody else would make the third movie? There'll probably be another movie. PATTY: No. They're not interested in doing any Wonder Woman for the next-- time being. BEN: Isn't that-- That seems strange. Does it not? PATTY: You know, listen, it's not an easy task, what's going on with DC. James Gunn and Peter Safran

have to follow their own heart into their own plans. So, I don't know why-- the why of, like, what-- of what, you know, what they're planning on doing and why. And so, I-- you know, I have sympathy for what a big job it is. And they have to follow their heart and do what they're interested in and do what they're-- you know, what they have got planned. BEN: At a Disney Investor presentation in 2020, news broke that Patty would direct a movie in the Star Wars universe. It wouldn't be part of the m

ain Star Wars franchise, but rather an original story called Rogue Squadron, focusing on elite fighter pilots. However in 2022, there were reports that the Rogue Squadron project had been shelved. Do you-- Do you see yourself making these, you know, grown-up, serious movies like Monster, or, you know-- And I don't know where you are on the Star Wars thing either. That's hard to follow too. Or do you have a franchise in your future? PATTY: I-- I don't know the answer to that question. I am always

, like I say, I'm always sort of outside of myself, watching myself at the same time, where I'm like, "Wow, I guess you're gonna do this." I never thought I would find a home in tentpoles. Like, that's not a thing I thought I would do. So, I am-- So, when I left-- when I left Star Wars to do Wonder Woman 3, and I went and I started working on that, we talked about, "Okay, well, maybe I'll come back to Star Wars after Wonder Woman 3." So, we did a deal for that to happen-- we started a deal, but

I thought I was doing Wonder Woman 3. So, when Wonder Woman 3 then went away, Lucasfilm and I were like, "Oh, well, we've got to finish this deal." We finished the deal right as the strike was beginning. So I now owe a draft of Star Wars, and so we will see what happens there. You know, like, who knows? It's a-- It's a-- They have a hard job in front of them of what's the first movie they're going to do. They have other directors who have been working, but I am now, you know, I'm back on doing

Rogue Squadron, and we'll see what happens. We need to develop-- you know, get it to where we're both super happy with it. BEN: Let's take all the contract stuff and all the stuff about other-- But you would be happy to do a Star Wars movie? That would be exciting if it worked out? PATTY: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because of exactly what I'm saying. Star Wars is a beautiful-- The emotion of Star Wars and what it stands for is something so beautiful in this world, and particularly what it can-- in

a moment that we're at right now where-- Star Wars was born out of World War II, right? It's born out of how you-- How do you make a metaphor and talk in metaphor? Right? BEN: And George Lucas seeing war pictures... -PATTY: Exactly. -BEN: ...of fighter pilots. PATTY: Exactly. And so, in that way, I've always wanted to make a fighter pilot movie. It's been a dream of mine. I always was in-- had a hard time with it because I'm in love with the jets of the '70s and '80s, and that's not where the

great dogfight stories are. And so, you know, so, Wonder-- Sorry, Star Wars becomes a great playground for that. I think Star Wars is so beautiful. So, yes, if I can do something beautiful and do something that serves that audience and is great, I would love to do it, of course, you know. But meanwhile, if I don't, I may make my dog movie. -BEN: I was going to say... -(PATTY LAUGHS) BEN: ...if I can offer you either one, you can't take them both, Star Wars or the dog? PATTY: It's going to be on

e or the other. And then I have another idea, which is pretty big, of my own. So, it's like I have no idea what path this will all take, you know. ♪ (THEME MUSIC RESUMES) ♪ BEN: We're taking another quick break. Stick around, though, because when we come back, we'll put Patty Jenkins to the test with the Super Eight. ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪ ♪ (THEME MUSIC RESUMES) ♪ ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪ BEN: All right. The Super Eight. -You ready? -PATTY: Yeah. BEN: The first eight questions. All right, here we g

o. Your most memorable movie-watching experience was? PATTY: Reds. I was a little young. My mom is a film buff, as you-- as you now understand, and she took me to all kinds of movies. We lived in Europe, and we lived on college campuses, and they were always showing all different kinds of movies. So I grew up watching incredibly diverse, independent international films and all these things. Reds, when it came to the theater, my mom took me. And I remember trying to identify-- I didn't understan

d it completely. It's an interesting, you know, movie to be talking about right now in the context of everything that's going on in the world. But I remember leaving the theater, Cinema Twin, and sitting in the car. BEN: Where's the Cinema Twin? PATTY: In Lawrence, Kansas. And it was raining, and there were raindrops on the window, and I felt something so complex. And I was turning in my head, "Wow. That is-- is making me feel very thoughtful about very deep subjects." And I hadn't known that fi

lm could do that, really. I had seen other films, and I either didn't understand them or I was feeling good or bad, or I liked it or didn't, whereas I understood Reds enough to be thinking philosophically about it and understanding that film could do that. BEN: That movie has the greatest-- This is not one of the questions. This is a fill-in question. (CHUCKLES) That movie has the greatest blank in the history of movies. What? PATTY: Oof! Um... BEN: I'm thinking of one specific thing that I beli

eve this is a fact that cannot be argued. PATTY: I don't know. I don't know what that is. BEN: Hug. It's the greatest hug. -PATTY: Oh, yeah, that is true. -BEN: In any movie ever. PATTY: I was going to say romantically epic and yet so political. -That was what I was-- -BEN: Sure, but-- PATTY: But yes, you're right. BEN: That hug, when they get out, when they see each other on the train, when he gets off the train, that is a-- PATTY: And I think that's actually the moment that I was thinking abou

t in the car. It was sort of like such an-- such a sophisticated, tragic romance. BEN: Yeah. All right. What movie did you love in high school? PATTY: So, I was very into Pedro Almodóvar and Ken Russell and a bunch of, like, random European filmmakers. What Have I Done To Deserve This? was a standout because there was something about the balance of absurdity and deep drama that I was just delighted with, that I still am delighted with, that I feel has had a big influence on me, where I was lik

e, "They're talking about the most scandalous, incredible things, but they're so completely dead serious and delivering it so straight." And so that was like-- I watched that movie a ton. And then Raising Arizona I think is probably the movie that I've probably watched the most in my life because I think we watched it every day, like all through high school and college. ED MCDUNNOUGH: Which one you get? H.I. MCDUNNOUGH: I don't know. Nathan Jr., I think. ED: Gimme here. Oh... he's beautiful.

H.I.: I think I got the best one. ED: I bet they were all beautiful. All babies are beautiful. H.I.: This one's awful damn good though. ED: Don't you cuss around him. H.I.: He's fine, he is. BEN: What's a movie you would show, like, a date, somebody you were really into? PATTY: Um... I would-- It would be I Know Where I'm Going! The Powell and Pressburger film because it's the most romantic film I've ever seen. And I don't-- I can never put my finger on why. I think about it a lot because I al

ways say, "What is it about that story? What is it about?" And I think it's about... BEN: Real quick, is that a movie you saw, like, because you were in college towns, -or did you see that, uh... -PATTY: That, I saw later. BEN: ...on television? PATTY: That, I saw later in adulthood, and-- and it blew me away. And I think that what it is is that I personally am fascinated by your inability to control who you love. You fall in love with people-- You can't really-- You know, you can't decide who y

ou fall in love with. And that, I think, is what's so powerful about it, to me. It's not the romantic comedy where the people hate each other. You know, it has all the makings of the tension and everything, but instead, it's a story where they have collided with each other, and there's nothing they can do. Like, they-- they can't-- They have to face the fact that this is happening, and they can't stop it, despite whatever they want. TORQUIL MACNEIL: Will you do something for me? JOAN WEBSTER: It

depends. TORQUIL: I don't care where or when, but somewhere, sometime, will you have the pipers play "The Nut-Brown Maiden"? JOAN: Will you do something for me before I go away? TORQUIL: It depends. JOAN: I want you to kiss me. BEN: You know, so many people have-- not just in this forum, we haven't done enough of these, but, you know, have mentioned Powell and Pressburger movies, -as movies that-- -PATTY: They're unbelievable. BEN: And it keeps being-- Everybody-- They keep being different o

nes. Right? PATTY: Yeah. No, I'm not surprised because very few people is it I Know Where I'm Going! To me, it doesn't-- The other films are great -but don't hold a candle to it. -BEN: Right. PATTY: You know what I think it is about those guys? They were so modern. There's something so fresh and edgy and modern about their filmmaking that is mesmerizing. You know, like, and Roger Livesey, who's in-- who's in I Know Where I'm Going! and Colonel Blimp and several of their films. BEN: A Matter of

Life and Death, I think, too. PATTY: Yeah. He's-- He, to me, is a heartthrob. Like, he's such a modern heartthrob. He's cutting right through in a kind of male lead that was not happening at that time. Just so honest and clean. BEN: What movie makes you cry without fail? PATTY: What had I-- I had a hard time with this one. I was thinking of many. BEN: Do you cry easily? PATTY: No, I don't cry all that easily. But then sometimes I surprise myself with how easily I cry. Moulin Rouge, I find to b

e such a beautiful masterpiece of a film. BEN: Which one are we talking about? PATTY: The-- The Baz Luhrmann one. And watching it this time, what was so interesting to me was, it's about-- it's all about the campiness and the silliness all over it, which is-- Baz is so good at. And in his younger films, sometimes he went so far with that that I didn't like it as much. But here, in that film, was the first time I felt like he deftly rode that, rode that, rode that, rode that, and then opens up in

these certain songs through the door of-- of Ewan McGregor into this incredible earnesty that is so beautifully done that it just is evocative of all love, all kinds of love, and tragedy and loss. And then shortly thereafter, Nicole Kidman, who's resisting it, she opens up into it. And so, what I was amazed by, watching it with my son, is we were watching this movie, I'm showing it to him, and then as soon as those songs start, I just start crying, and I cry through the whole song. And my son i

s looking at me saying, "What the hell? What the hell is wrong with you?" And I'm like, "I don't know." It's the-- It's the setup and release is so good. So, that's the other one that, like, I don't have any control over. BEN: What filmmaker of the past would you think, "Hey, let's go-- let's make a movie together"? PATTY: So, Powell and Pressburger just because I would be so interested in how they were making films versus everybody else in that period of time because they were-- they were obvio

usly incredibly daring and avant-garde, and pulling off such avant-garde films in a time that was much harder to do so. So, just like, I would love to get the flavor of them and how they did it. But Charlie Kaufman now because of the fact that Charlie-- I don't-- I-- I would love to make films that say even more complex emotional things, and many of the things I want to make films about are-- go into the realm of quantum physics and-- and all kinds of philosophical, spiritual things that you rea

lly-- it's harder to do with a straightforward movie. So I'm always fascinated by that kind of mind that-- that is not how I automatically go to things. So, the fact that he really knows how to do something that I don't know how to do well, I would be fascinated to collaborate. BEN: Charlie Kaufman, one of a number of surprising answers. -(PATTY LAUGHS) -BEN: Uh... Okay. There's a vast warehouse where all movie props are kept. What would you-- When you break into that place, what would you steal

? PATTY: I would steal the red balloon -from The Red Balloon. -BEN: Yeah. PATTY: Because that movie, I think, is-- I think it's on my screensaver here somewhere. It-- It-- It, I think, is such a masterpiece. I loved that short film so much. And it, to me-- It's funny, the name of my company is Wicious Pictures and that I named the company based on a guy in a dog run, who had this gigantic, terrifying-looking dog that was the least scary dog of all time. It was just super dopey. And he had an acc

ent, and he kept trying to convince me, "No, he looks dopey, but he's vicious." -(BEN LAUGHS) -PATTY: And I was like-- And you couldn't tell if he was saying "wishes" or "vicious." And so to me, The Red Balloon is-- is the beginning of-- of a flavor of film, which is my favorite flavor and my greatest endeavor, which is to make very... things with great magic and fairy tale but in a very gritty reality. And Monster was-- was more-- You can see it more clearly in that than the Wonder Woman films

, even though I tried to do that same thing in the Wonder Woman films, have No Man's Land, where you're dealing, you're sitting in the grit, but you're also telling this fairy-tale love story. That, to me, is the greatest pocket of filmmaking that I'm interested in doing. BEN: What was your mom's favorite movie? PATTY: My mom's favorite movie was Charade. Which I was-- What would you say? -PATTY'S MOM: I switched. -BEN: She switched. PATTY'S MOM: Bridge over the River Kwai. PATTY: Ah, Bridge ove

r the River Kwai. Well, see, that's good because I've seen Bridge over the River Kwai, and I was horrified when my mom said Charade, and I was like, "I have never seen Charade." BEN: Have you still never seen Charade? PATTY: No, I've never seen Charade. I love though-- But I-- This is why I love collecting people's top ten movies because there's always, like, egregious misses... -BEN: Of course. -PATTY: ...that you forget that you haven't seen, and so that I have to see Charade now. But Bridge--

Bridge over the River Kwai. -There you go. -BEN: All right. All right. But Charade, also a-- also a good one. 1957, my favorite year in movies, by the way. -PATTY: Oh, yeah. -BEN: Well, what was your-- what was your father's favorite movie? PATTY: I do not know because my father passed away when I was seven, so my answer would be my grandmother's favorite movie, which had a profound effect -on me. -BEN: His mom? PATTY: No, my-- my mother's mother, who-- My mom's mom did not have a sophisticated

taste in film and was, you know-- was not somebody I would associate with that. And I asked her probably in my twenties what her favorite film was, and she said, The Best Years of Our Lives. And I remember saying, "Oh, that's sweet. I'll watch it because you said that." And then I was so blown away by what a masterpiece and how incredibly-- I thought that that kind of filmmaking was invented later at that time, like, I didn't think anybody was having that honest of a conversation about war. MR.

MOLLETT: It's terrible when you see a guy like you that had to sacrifice himself. And for what? HOMER PARRISH: And for what? I don't get you, Mister. MR. MOLLETT: We let ourselves get sold down the river. We were pushed into war. HOMER: Sure, by the Japs and the Nazis, so we had-- MR. MOLLETT: No, the Germans and the Japs had nothing against us. They just wanted to fight the Limeys and the Reds. And they would have whipped 'em, too, if we didn't get deceived into it by a bunch of rad

icals in Washington. HOMER: What are you talking about? MR. MOLLETT: Just read the facts, my friend. Find out for yourself why you had to lose your hands, and then go out and do something about it. BEN: You know, I don't want to tread on difficult fam-- but you never asked your mom, like, what movies your dad liked. PATTY: I don't even know if she would know the answer. BEN: Yeah. -PATTY'S MOM: Could I speak? -BEN: Yeah. You could speak. PATTY'S MOM: We were all overseas almost the whole time

I was married to him, and it wasn't easy to see films. So, I do remember we saw-- PATTY: I know a lot of his favorite records, but-- PATTY'S MOM: ...Doctor Zhivago in Germany. But I don't-- I don't know. PATTY: I didn't think she would know. -BEN: Yeah, I got you. -PATTY: Yeah. Because I don't think he was watching films. I mean, he was in the service from the time he was 18. I don't think that's what they were doing. Yeah. BEN: Who was your dad? PATTY: My dad was a fighter pilot. BEN: What was

his name? PATTY: Well, Bill Jenkins. William Jenkins. BEN: People called him what? PATTY: Captain William T. Jenkins. They called him Bill. -BEN: Bill, not Billy? -PATTY: "Jenks." -BEN: Jenks? -PATTY: They called him "Jenks." That was his nickname. That was his call sign. Not everybody has a call sign that's their last name. I always enjoy that a lot of people call me Jenks now and so-- and keep that carrying forward. And when I flew in an F-15 at Nellis Air Force Base, they painted Jenks on th

e side for-- for me and my dad. BEN: That's pretty nice. PATTY: It was pretty great. BEN: Patty, this has been great. Thank you very much. PATTY: This has been so great. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so honored and delighted to be here. BEN: I really enjoyed that conversation. I hope you did too. Thanks again to Patty and to her mom. Hoping Patty watched Charade after we were done talking. As for me, Patty inspired me to watch Reds again and, if I'm honest, a handful of old Journey mus

ic videos. I'm a betting man, and after listening to that conversation, I'd bet good money that at least 65 percent of you Googled, "What's Steve Perry doing now?" ♪ (THEME MUSIC RESUMES) ♪ BEN: You can find many of the movies we talked about on the streaming service Max. We made a list for you. It's in our show notes. James Kim produces and edits Talking Pictures. Dori Stegman books the show. Glenn Matullo mixes each episode. Thanks to Phil Richards, Yacov Freedman, Julie Bitton, Katie Daniels,

and Emma Morris. Angela Carone is our executive producer. Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt and Allison Cohen from the Max Podcast Team and, as always, to Charlie Tabesh from TCM. See you next time. ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪