Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi join forces with lyricist Taura Stinson and composer Nicholas Britell to create the ultimate pop anthem for Don’t Look Up. Outside the film’s bubble, news from the U.S. Capitol forces difficult questions about life imitating art.
Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi join forces with lyricist Taura Stinson and composer Nicholas Britell to create the ultimate pop anthem for Don’t Look Up. Outside the film’s bubble, news from the U.S. Capitol forces difficult questions about life imitating art.
Narrator:
In October 2020 before starting production on Don't Look Up, Adam McKay gave an important assignment to two collaborators. They would not be joining him in Boston, but their contribution to this movie could not be overstated.
Adam McKay:
My marching orders to Britell and to Taura were write the greatest anthem that can ever be written to save mankind. That's all.
Narrator:
Adam wanted a song that could save humanity from itself. It also needed to be funny and to sound like a real pop ballad you'd hear on the radio. Naturally, his first call was to the guy he trusted to score are his last two movies and was already writing the music for Don't Look Up, Oscar nominated composer, Nicholas Britell.
Nicholas Britell:
Adam and I had talked about it'd be amazing to get a truly pro lyricist to come and turn this into what it needed to be. And so, when we were talking about it, I just said, "You know what? I think I know exactly the person we should reach out to.
Narrator:
Taura Stinson. Taura's written lyrics for Destiny's Child and Usher. And she received her own Oscar nomination for a song she co-wrote with Mary J Blige and Raphael Saadiq for the movie Mudbound.
Taura Stinson:
And he told me, he's like, "Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi, possibly." I'm like, "What?"
Narrator:
Yes. Nick and Taura's anthem will be performed by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi, who play a pop star and a rapper respectively, in Don't Look Up. Their characters, Riley Bina and DJ Chello, have an on-again off-again relationship that consumes the attention of seemingly everyone in the movie.
Adam McKay:
When you see stories about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, or who's dating who, or who's breaking up, there's no way I don't read that headline. That stuff is just irresistible. It's kind of this grand soap opera that we all live in the middle of. And that's what Riley Bina and DJ Chello are.
Narrator:
Adam's idea is that Bina and Chello go from objects of fascination to comet activists. They use the power of pop culture to get people to take the comet seriously. It's both a mocking of our celebrity obsessions and an effort to use that obsession, however fruitlessly, to save the world. Their superpower is the song. So Taura Stinson and Nick Britell have their work cut out for them. They have to write a pop ballad that'll serve as the crescendo of the grand soap opera in the middle of this comedic disaster film.
Taura Stinson:
There was this love song, the love song element that we had to honor and then has to go into this cautionary tale. In my opinion, it needed to be funny too, in order to balance it all.
Nicholas Britell:
There are tragic elements. There's funny elements. There's a lot of very complex tonal sort of mixture in the film. But ultimately, for any of these moments, we're taking them seriously. This isn't a joke song. This is a song.
Narrator:
And this is an episode about how during the production of Don't Look Up the emotions in that song took on a life of their own, when a personal tragedy and a national one threw everything into chaos.
Taura Stinson:
It was just such a crazy thing. I left my phone for a few hours and I look back and the country's falling apart again.
Narrator:
This is The Last Movie Ever Made, episode four, A Song Is Born. It's the fall of 2020, Taura Stinson and Nick Britell are beginning to compose. As Taura gets to work, she starts to feel a sense of deja vu.
Taura Stinson:
I have loose ties to Ariana Grande in a different way because I sang background on Bang Bang.
Danielle Waxman:
I love that song.
Taura Stinson:
Various Ariana songs, like Side To Side, a lot of her big hits.
Narrator:
This is why Tauras's voice may sound familiar. In her previous life she also sang on Paris Hilton's one and only album, with a legitimate banger, Stars Are Blind. And she worked as Paris Hilton's personal assistant, a job previously held by Kim Kardashian. Glitzy, yes. However, it's through Taura's Oscar nominated work and the champagne filled parties in that orbit that she came to know her new collaborator, Nick.
Taura Stinson:
We became very friendly. We talked Outcast and Nas and all of the greats. We love music and so that's pretty much what we talk about. We can talk about it all day.
Nicholas Britell:
I was in a hip hop band in college and I'm a huge fan of hip hop. And Taura had been working in R&B and hip hop for years and years. And I remember her making some incredible recommendations to me about music to listen to.
Taura Stinson:
We've been friends ever since.
Narrator:
When they got started on their anthem, Nick first took a stab at a melody. Like the song's title Just Look Up, Nick wanted the music to climb.
Nicholas Britell:
It actually reaches up. It's a fourth and then another fourth, and so it's this kind of just look up going up. I sometimes think there's a subconscious shape to things that affects all of us. In music in particular, I've always felt that the shaped matter of melodies.
Narrator:
Taura begins to compose lyrics. If you too want to write a hit song that could potentially save the world, she has some songwriting tips.
Taura Stinson:
Dear writers, do yourself a favor, make word soup. It's so cool. It's just a creative process that kind of guides me. I'll just list words, like rapid fire typing on my desktop or in a notepad or gum wrapper, so that when I'm ready to sit down and write the song, then I have words and phrases, particularly for Just Look Up, it was like doom, peril, wormwood, stars, moon, love, the last moment, love me to the last drop, things like that, like how would the character feel singing on stage with a meteor overhead that's potentially going to kill off humanity? So that last moment of love.
Nicholas Britell:
Could we have a song that starts where it feels like a love song, and then as the song evolves, at a certain point, you realize that it's actually really about the end of the world. It's almost like a manifesto about how do we stop this, or have we already lost, which in theory sounds like a tricky song to write.
Taura Stinson:
I can't really visualize a comet hitting earth, but in a different way we've had that. And so I used COVID as an analogy for that. 2020 was kind of like a co-star in the song for me.
Narrator:
Perhaps you have your own words for 2020, perhaps they have something in common with Taura's, who was surprised that they got the okay.
Taura Stinson:
We can say shit-box news? That's okay? And I can curse and everything? For Ariana Grande? It was like the perfect scenario for me.
Nicholas Britell:
Taura really helped show Adam and me that we were on the right path. Also, to give Taura huge respect for this, she recorded a demo of her putting this together that was amazing. And it helped give Adam a sense of, oh wow, this song can really work.
Taura Stinson:
And he's like, "Taura, Adam doesn't have any notes." And I'm like, "What?" He's like, "I've worked with him a lot and he doesn't have any notes." And that made me feel so good.
Narrator:
So with the thumbs up from Adam, Nick's next job is to take the song to Ariana and Kid Cudi. He drives out to meet Ariana at a recording studio in the San Fernando Valley.
Nicholas Britell:
There was a grand piano there, and I was like, should I just kind of play the chords, just play the idea before we actually go in and try things out? So I just played the track, and I remember it was amazing because she was just kind of like, "Oh, okay, cool. I have some ideas. Maybe I'll just go try some stuff out." And I was like, "Oh, sure. Let's just try some things out." She gets in the booth and we start playing against the reference track I brought of it.
Ariana Grande:
I had a session with Nick. He brought in the instrumental and it was really beautiful, and the chords, the piano chords and the beat that was there. And so I basically just went in the booth and I did a melody pass.
Nicholas Britell:
And within like 30 seconds, to my ears, she was laying down a finished pass of the whole song. I remember just sitting there and looking around the room and just being like, I've never seen anything like that before.
Ariana Grande:
That ended up being the pass that they used for the melody of the song. The first take was just what ended up being the song, which was super cool. I thought he was going to chop it up and move things around and change things. But he just kept the melody exactly how it was in the first take, and I was like, "Oh wow, that is flattering." (singing)
Narrator:
Pop singers rarely falsetto that their fans are all going to die. However, when there's a giant comet in the sky, artists deserve to be blunt. Next it was time to focus on Kid Cudi's rap. Initially, it wasn't clear if Cudi would write his own.
Taura Stinson:
I thought I was going to have this opportunity to write Kid Cudi's rap, which is so funny because he's a genius and I'm a big fan and why would I be writing his rap? But I wrote one and you got to try. It was something like (singing). Bars.
Narrator:
Ultimately, Kid Cudi wrote his own.
Nicholas Britell:
First time, I just kind of played him the track, played him where we were with it, kind of this is a zone of what needs to happen storywise. It was a question that really required his insight on, of how to make this all connect. Because actually, that moment with DJ Chello is sort of the crux of the entire shift of the song. Until we figured that out, it was sort of like, how do we get to this, "We're all going to fucking die, everybody."
Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi:
When Nick Britell first played me the song, I was blown away. Ariana's voice is so beautiful and so soft and sweet, but powerful. And I was just like, "Where do I fit?" And we were able to figure it out. I went in there and kind of wrote my own thing. I think that that worked best to kind of give it that flavor, that Cudi flavor. (singing)
Nicholas Britell:
He really was thinking about the character, which obviously, I think, was the key to the whole thing. He was thinking of what would DJ Chello do at that moment? How would that happen? But also, there was an idea of, even though it's a character in the movie, the song has to still be great. It has to be on Scott's artistic level. (singing)
Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi:
The wonderful thing about this was that it was such a true collaboration in every sense of the word. Everybody weighed in and was able to... We really worked together on this, even though it was during the pandemic, and even though a lot of this was remote.
Taura Stinson:
And then next thing I know Ariana sang her part, and the next thing I know Kid Cudi was there, and I'm like, "Oh, my God. We're done. There it goes." (singing)
Narrator:
By late winter, the anthem is complete. Now to get it on its feet. Back to Boston. It's the first week of January 2021, the taping of the concert is next week. For that concert, Arianna's character, Riley Bina, needs a show stopping, earth saving outfit. Enter costume designer, Susan Matheson.
Susan Matheson:
My background was in performance and theater, and then I transitioned into music videos and opera and live performance. And so I really wanted to do something that was a spectacle. And so when I was meeting with Adam, I was like, "Let's do something wild. Let's do something where she takes up the stage, or where she's very, very long and her dress is very, very tall, or it's very, very wide."
Narrator:
Susan hunted for inspiration, for a look that was entirely new. She found it in an online presentation of a Valentino hot couture collection called Of Grace And Light. Due to the pandemic, there were no spectators and there was no walking. There were simply 15 acrobats in a black void, suspended in the air, some on swings, some just floating. Each model wore a gigantic dress with tremendously long skirts, and each dress was shockingly bright white.
Susan Matheson:
The reason they did this is that they did not have access to the dye houses and the embellishers and the embroideries that they would normally have access to. So they thought, "Why not do everything in white, and we can project images with colors onto the clothing and create what we want to create."
Narrator:
There was one dress in particular that caught Susan's attention.
Susan Matheson:
It's really not a gown. It's more like a sculpture. So I should say this one sculpture that is like an orb of feathers, with a long gown protruding from the bottom. So Adam loved this one gown and I love this one gown, then we had to convince Valentino to allow us to use it.
Narrator:
Luckily, Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino, is a fan of Ariana.
Susan Matheson:
More importantly, his daughter is also a big fan of Ariana Grande, so that helped a lot.
Narrator:
Now to literally get Ariana into the dress. Oh, pardon me, sculpture.
Ariana Grande:
The top was this cage of feathers that was so super beautiful and crazy. And I felt like I was a walking piece of art that you'd see at the MoMA or something.
Narrator:
Picture a dandelion on a stem. The fluff covers Ariana's body from her head to her hips. It's made of white feathers attached delicately to a wire bodice. As Ariana is only five feet tall, the skirt is nearly three times the length of Ariana's entire body.
Susan Matheson:
It's funny because Linus the cinematographer said, "It looks like a cross between a manta ray and an angel." So we'll see what we can achieve. Does it look like a manta ray? Does it look like an angel? Or does it look neither.
Narrator:
Angel is more accurate. The dress is so long that Ariana must descend from the sky. This dramatic entrance makes her feather ball dress resemble a comet. In this way, Susan has not simply picked a beautiful gown, it's also a thematic one, and it forces people to perform the message of the song. Just look up and face the unexpected.
Narrator:
And in early January 2021, this emotion is wearing on Susan personally. It has been four months since Susan was sideswiped by her own unexpected news. It hit the first Saturday of November 2020. While most of the country's attention was on the announcement of a new president. Here, Susan talks about it with co-producer and friend, Staci Roberts-Steele.
Staci Roberts-Steele:
I remember the day after Biden won, you called me and we were talking about work stuff. And then I was in a bit of a mood and got a little snippy, and we kind of had a little banter and hung up, whatever. And then I called you few hours later and I was like, "Look, I'm sorry I was kind of bitchy earlier basically, but just letting you know that my dad died." And then you told me something that also happened to you that weekend.
Susan Matheson:
And actually, I'm tearing up already just thinking about it, because I said to you, it's all coming back to me, Staci. I said to you, "I'm sorry that I was difficult and very, very intense, because I had just found out that I had breast cancer." Hang on. I think it's not helpful that I'm crying right now.
Staci Roberts-Steele:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's okay. It's okay. And you can take your time. Take your time.
Susan Matheson:
Because I'm just really remembering that moment when we spoke. It was very intense. I vividly remember, I got the information about five minutes before walking into a fitting with DiCaprio. And I got the information by accident because there was an email that I thought was just letting me know that I was going to be getting results in a month, but the results came in a month early.
Susan Matheson:
And the email said something about the patient's known breast cancer. And I said, "Known breast cancer? This is unknown." And I walked into my fitting with DiCaprio knowing that I had breast cancer, but I didn't know at that point if it had spread throughout my body, if it was localized, I didn't know anything.
Susan Matheson:
And the old paradigm used to be that you needed to go into a dark room, be depressed and wallow in your cancer. And I spoke to the doctors and they said, "You know what? It's better to keep working because then you're not going to be obsessing about cancer and mortality. And you've got something else to think about."
Susan Matheson:
And so I kept working. I actually had surgery December 14th. I came back in a week, actually had drains and all this kind of stuff hanging out of me. And it was crazy because I had to have a lymph node removed. I had a lumpectomy. I never thought I'd talk about this in a podcast. I actually was, at first, didn't want anyone to know.
Susan Matheson:
And so cut to, I've been going through, the whole time you've been talking to me, breast cancer treatment. But I've actually been having a really, really good time on this movie. And you could even have a good laugh about the cancer.
Susan Matheson:
You know what I was saying to people about the cancer? I was like, cancer never bothered to call me, check my schedule and say, "Is this a good time for cancer?" Why did cancer not call and look at the schedule and say, "You know what? I've got a fitting today with Leonardo DiCaprio and this is not a good time. We're just going to schedule ourselves at the time when you're the most busy in your life."
Susan Matheson:
I've been going through radiation right now. I'm kind of burnt to a crisp. And every time I roll over at night I wake up. But I'm still trying to have a sense of humor about it. And I've gotten to know everyone in the radiation department, because you have to go every day, five days a week for six weeks, in my case. And it's kind of been amazing. I've gotten to know these incredible people. Everybody else, except for me in radiation, goes in and puts on a hospital gown. But I refuse.
Staci Roberts-Steele:
What do you do?
Susan Matheson:
So I go in and I realize that the amount of time it takes me to whip off my shirt and get on the radiation machine, is identical to taking off a hospital gown. So I said to them, "Hey, if I can take off my shirt in the same amount of time as whipping off a hospital gown, do you mind if I come in in regular clothes?" And they said, "No." Because I thought, "I don't want to feel sick. I don't want to look sick. I don't want to feel sick." And there's something about a hospital gown that just kind of reinforces this idea that you're sick.
Staci Roberts-Steele:
So Susan, you be basically dressed yourself for your radiation.
Susan Matheson:
That's right.
Staci Roberts-Steele:
You did your own costume.
Susan Matheson:
Yes. I'm costumed perfectly.
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Fake ad:
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News clip:
Now [inaudible 00:22:54] with chief meteorologist, Jeremy Reiner.
News clip:
Well, the weather story, it's a simple one. High pressure is nearby for the next several days. No Arctic air and no storms to worry about. Temps out there [crosstalk 00:23:05].
Narrator:
It's the morning of January 6th, 2021. And so far, it's just an ordinary every day on the set. With the concert of mere six days away, Susan has the day blocked off for a fitting with Ariana. Almost everyone else is focused on filming a scene in a fake restaurant in Boston. Everyone that is, but one person, who on the morning of January 6th has been deployed 439 miles away.
Jonathan Zurer:
My name is Jonathan Zurer. I'm a local producer here in Washington DC, and I will be helping to coordinate the B-roll and establishing shots in Washington for the film.
Narrator:
Weeks ago, Adam had the idea to hire Jonathan to shoot cell phone footage of the Stop the Steal rally. Adam of course had no idea what was going to happen that day. But he and his editor, Hank Corwin, liked to insert found footage into their movies. They did it with Vice and with The Big Short. In that way, American culture gets to rear its head as a character in his fictional worlds. Perhaps Don't Look Up's fake protests could be punched up with video of the real thing.
Narrator:
Given that a right wing website once wrote this in their review of Vice, "Those on the right elected Trump more to fight those like McKay than to fight those like Nancy Pelosi." Jonathan has decided to take a few precautions.
Jonathan Zurer:
I did dress intentionally to blend in, or what I thought might blend in on. Honestly, you couldn't ID who I was, which I thought was probably for the best. I left my wallet at home. I brought $20 in cash and had no ID on me at all. I had on a balaclava, a black balaclava, which covered my head and my face, except for my eyes. And it also meant I could wear a surgical mask underneath the balaclava so that no one would know that I was wearing a mask. No camera crew, no sound people, just me and a cell phone.
Jonathan Zurer:
It was not unlike any other rally I've ever been to. The people, they're angry. They were shouting. They were saying rude things. They were using bad language.
News clip:
ANTIFA, you could go fuck yourself.
Jonathan Zurer:
They were playing music. There was a lot of Village People music being played. I heard at least two Village People songs. It was actually kind of boring. So I left, and I went and sat down on 14th Street. I texted my wife said, "Hey, I'm okay." I told her if you didn't hear from me by 4:00 PM to call the cops. So this was at noon.
Jonathan Zurer:
As I'm sitting there, I see people start to walk eastbound on Constitution Avenue, just a half a block down for me. And I realized that something has happened. I don't know what, but something has triggered people to start heading towards the Capitol.
News clip:
Are you guys walking the two miles down or are you [inaudible 00:25:39]?
Narrator:
So Jonathan joins the crowd heading towards the Capitol. However, as the crowd swells, he begins to feel unnerved.
Jonathan Zurer:
And as more people kept coming and more people kept coming, people got more aggressive and more emboldened. There were a few people who started saying, "Come on, second wave, second wave," like it was a military operation.
News clip:
Let's go, patriots. Let's go.
Jonathan Zurer:
All of a sudden, you could start to hear and see smoke bombs, fireworks. I don't know. But there were loud bangs. Not gun fire, loud bangs and pops, and you could see smoke rising in front of the Capitol.
News clip:
Make sure it gets on Twitter and Fakebook. Fakebook.
News clip:
There we go, baby. That's the truth right there.
Jonathan Zurer:
And at a certain point, people started singing. They were singing the national anthem in unison. (Singing) It wasn't at that point obvious that people were breaking into the Capitol. But as I was walking away, I would pass the checkpoints with the Capitol police and the radio chatter was getting more and more frantic.
Narrator:
Things are getting ugly. Minutes later...
News clip:
Chaos at the Capitol, a mob supporting and encouraged by President Trump storm the US Capitol, breaking windows, pushing through police, with shots fired inside as lawmakers were gathered to count the votes confirming president-elect Biden won the election.
Narrator:
The DC news slowly reaches the set of Don't Look Up in Boston. They're in the middle of shooting a scene at Bojo Mambo's, the fictional restaurant where Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan and Leonard DiCaprio's characters pretend to eat shrimp and debate what to do about the comet.
Narrator:
Adam directs the other patrons to overhear the scientists and beg for the truth. Jennifer's character will spill it all, and this will start its own riot.
Adam McKay:
Let's get that one more time. Off of Leo's line and action.
Narrator:
As people take breaks from shooting, they start to find out what's happening at the nation's Capitol.
Jeff Waxman:
It is Wednesday, January 6th. I am in the basement of Bojo Mambo's watching Washington DC on my phone, what's going on there, which is really nuts. [crosstalk 00:28:10]
Cory Candrilli:
Heard the chatters on set. Me and two other people were really kind of like, "Are you seeing this?"
Narrator:
Two becomes three, becomes 12, becomes the entire set, including Jennifer Lawrence. They're all now staring at their phones.
Jennifer Lawrence:
It just felt surreal that we were reading about this while shooting these kind of riot scenes. And I remember Rob and Leo and me getting the news on our phones and reading it out loud. It's just one of those unbelievable things to say out loud, Americans are breaking into the Capitol.
Narrator:
And somehow, Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to get back to work, to film a scene where her character starts screaming that there's a planet killing comet headed towards earth and that the president will not save them.
Kate Dibiasky:
I have news for you. It's already a complete disaster. They're talking about letting a comet the size of a mountain hit the planet to jack up a cell phone company's stock.
Jennifer Lawrence:
Channeling was certainly very easy. This upsetting, maddening, horrifying, terrible, just disgrace to the United States was infuriating. So I had to get angry at one point and that seemed pretty easy.
Narrator:
As she uses her real anger to fuel her characters, elsewhere other members of the cast and crew have their own reactions to the Capitol attack, starting with special effects coordinator Cory Candrilli.
Cory Candrilli:
I come from Staten Island, and that is a very, very surprisingly red borough. I had a lot of friends and family that actually were down in DC for that day. And I was just kind like, "Ah, you maniacs." Then all of a sudden, when it went down, it was kind of like, "Well what's happening?" Because all the stuff that I saw from my friends and stuff like that on Instagram and stuff, they were protesting, they were doing their thing. But it didn't give off any of a vibe of my friends and family on Instagram that something was going to be what it was. Everybody was shocked because that's something that's never happened in our time. The last time that ever happened was 1812. It was disturbing.
Narrator:
Tyler Perry is also shaken.
Tyler Perry:
It was really, really sad to see those hollowed out halls with Confederate flags walking through them. A house that slaves actually built. Slaves built. I'm seeing this happen hundreds of years later.
Narrator:
The news is slower to reach the costume department where Susan Matheson and Ariana Grande are continuing to figure out how to get her in that overwhelming white dress.
Susan Matheson:
I was busy placing a feather piece on Ariana Grande, and Ariana calls her mother, and her mother's on FaceTime with her, and we were in such a bubble because we'd been working all day long on this costume, and we'd been in this fitting with Ariana for hours, that it was Ariana's mother who explained to us what was going on in Washington DC. And we couldn't really wrap our heads around it because it was such a surreal juxtaposition of this beautiful, angelic costume, and then these images of these men. It was like, "What's going on?"
Ariana Grande:
I was in the middle of this fitting, of this four hour fitting because we were practicing the harness and hiding all of the rigging for the performance and trying to make the dress work. And I just remember picking my phone up for the first time in a few hours and having like a thousand texts, and looking at my friends group chat and seeing texts from my mom, and just this utter state of panic and shock and kind of heartbreak. And it was just such a crazy thing. I left my phone for a few hours and I look back and the country is falling apart again.
Narrator:
It was as if everyone on the Don't Look Up set was obeying the words of the movie's anthem, just look up. In their separate apartments, Adam McKay and lyricist Taura Stinson are alone with their thoughts and the news.
Adam McKay:
I am here listening to news coverage of right wing extremists attacking the Capitol building today, breaking in. Seems like a woman was shot and killed. A bunch of these right wing extremists were stealing stuff out of the Capitol, sitting in the chambers, mocking it.
Taura Stinson:
Shit has hit the fan. So they're right now waiting for Donald Trump to come out and make a strong statement. But he already did. He made a strong statement when he came out in whatever he said, because I won't even give him the time of dating anymore, incited this riot.
Adam McKay:
It's a raw kind of anarchic madness, anger. We could feel it for years and years, this country just spiraling out of control.
Taura Stinson:
But the biggest thing, as a black woman, is I can remember this past summer and watching the news footage and there being a very different outcome. People were getting hit over the head. There were tear gas. It was all kinds of stuff happening because black men and women had already been killed, sleeping in their beds, buying shit from the store. It's just reinforced to us over and over and over and over and over again that we do not matter.
Adam McKay:
We don't know where this is going. It could escalate. It could spread to other cities. I'm watching crowds right now waving around flags, Confederate flags.
News clip:
Why aren't we seeing more arrests?
Taura Stinson:
Right? Why aren't we seeing more arrests? Look at this. Look at this shit. Look at this. There's people hanging off of banisters. It would've been bloody fricking, I don't even know what today is, bloody Wednesday. That would've been the headlines if it were black people because everybody would've been killed.
Taura Stinson:
In relation to our film, you don't even have to look up anymore. It's all around you. Wow. That's all I have to say.
Narrator:
You don't have to look up anymore, as in the comet's already hit and it must be faced. Next week on The Last Movie Ever Made, the aftermath of the insurrection complicates the films own riot scenes.
Adam McKay:
I was just on the phone with the film commissioner, and we're shooting a riot after the Capitol had a riot yesterday. So I'm a little anxious people are going to come by and join in and think it's a real riot.
Narrator:
And the pressure is on to stage a concert to save the world.
Jeff Waxman:
It was one of the most stressful days of my life on that job. I swear to God. We've blown up houses, flipped cars, shot people. And I've never been so stressed over a damn dress in my life.
Susan Matheson:
And I kept saying to special effects, we need more wind, more wind. And I think I drove them a little bit mad.
End credits:
The Last Movie Ever Made is a production of Netflix Film, Hyperobject Industries, and Pineapple Street Studios. It's produced by Emmanuel Hapsis, Gabrielle Lewis, Staci Roberts-Steele, Danielle Waxman, Sophie Bridges, and Alexis Moore.
End credits:
Our editor is Darby Maloney. The show's narrated by Emmanuel Hapsis. Our theme song is by Nicholas Britell. Mixing, sound design and original music by Hannis Brown, with additional music from Epidemic Sound. The show's written by R. Roosevelt. Fact checking by Charlotte Goddu.
End credits:
Executive producers at Hyperobject Industries are Adam McKay, Harry Nelson and Clare Slaughter. Executive producers at Pineapple Street Studios are Bari Finkel, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Max Linsky. Don't Look Up is streaming now on Netflix. Follow @NetflixFilm on Instagram and Twitter.