Brian Koppelman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Why has Israeli TV been so good in the last 10 years? Srugim, Shtisel, Prisoners of War. There’s a lot more, actually. They are great shows. I want to give you an answer, but what I really think is, one thing I’ve learned . . . When your daughter says that there are things that she hears me say, I would say one of the things that I really have felt, the older I’ve gotten, is just an incredible comfort in saying, “I don’t know. ” Whatever that amalgam of things are that’s created the ground to be fertile enough, and then the artists to be ready to make the work that they’re making and to have it connect — I don’t know. I haven’t studied it, so I don’t have a ready-made answer for you. I think in a more global sense, we’re pulling back from 30,000 feet. There was a moment when I thought South Korean cinema was just incredible. It’s been for a long time. I remember watching this series of 8 or 10 or 12 movies, and I had a thought that it was a moment in time where the movies from South Korea — without ever mentioning what it feels like to have North Korea as your neighbor, as this bully, as this invasion of your psyche. They would never say that. The movies weren’t about that at all. Yet, receiving those movies, I felt part of why they were so potent was that they were suffused with that idea somewhere in the consciousness of the people making it. So, it had that kind of effect because you felt this need for freedom. You felt this sense of encroaching doom, this sense of wanting to define themselves — the people in the movies and the filmmakers. Perhaps something similar is going on. Anytime a certain area starts to produce work that’s really good and important . . . But I haven’t given the Israeli stuff the same amount of thought that I gave that South Korean stuff a few years back. I just watched Oldboy on a large screen for the first time. Do you like that one?…

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