Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll conclude our centennial series on the 100 pieces of art you should see in New York City. Sarah Cho from the Queens Museum will be our guest. We'll talk with author Jess Walter about his latest book, So Far Gone. It's really good. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Materialists.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: You and Me]

Alison Stewart: Do you remember a few years ago when a woman on social media put out her list of what she wanted in a mate: finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes, and someone turned it into a song?

[MUSIC - Billen Ted, David Guetta, and Girl On Couch: Man In Finance]

I'm looking for a man in finance

Trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes

Finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes

Finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes

Finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes

I'm looking for a man in finance

Alison Stewart: It appears that some people want to order a partner like they order something from Starbucks. One way we do that is with apps, or if you can afford it, you can hire a matchmaker. That is at the center of Celine Song's new film, Materialists. It examines why we date and who is suitable. It also debates whether love or the conditions surrounding love matter more.

It's a simple setup. Lucy's a matchmaker. Her ex-love is a struggling actor/caterer, and her current boyfriend is a rich guy. Which one should she choose? Remember, Lucy's a matchmaker. She's seen all sides of dating. Guys who won't go out with a woman in her 30s, a Republican who wouldn't dare date a Democrat.

The film, which by the way, isn't exactly a rom-com, debuted well over the weekend, the third highest in A24 history. It features actors Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal. It was written and directed by Celine Song. You may remember she's the Oscar-nominated screenwriter for her film Past Lives. She also directed that as well. Materialists is playing in theaters now. Celine, welcome to the studio.

Celine Song: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: For people who don't know this about you, for a while you were a matchmaker.

Celine Song: Yes. In my 20s, I actually needed a day job because I was a struggling playwright. I've been a playwright for 10 years. I couldn't pay rent, so I wanted to get a day job. I'm sure you guys know I live in New York City and New York City is a city of dreams. What that means is the day job market is very, very competitive. I tried to be a barista. They were like, "You don't have 10 years of barista experience." I tried to be in retail. They were like, "You don't have eight years of retail experience." I was a little bit at a loss.

At a party, I met somebody who was also pursuing their dream, but their day job was being a matchmaker. My ears perked up and I was like, "Maybe that's something that I can do." I interviewed for the job, I got the job, and I did it for six months. In those six months, I think I learned more about people in those six months than I did in any other part of my life.

Alison Stewart: I have to ask, what did you learn that people really wanted from a match versus what they said they wanted from a match?

Celine Song: I think that at the end of the day, it really does come down to the way that we want to feel loved. I think that we also want to feel loved in a way to feel valuable, even in situations where maybe we don't really feel that way about ourselves. I think that I saw the way that so much of being a matchmaker was kind of like being a stockbroker for stock. Part of the job was to really assess everyone's value and then to try to match them up with other people of similar value.

I think that so much of the conversation ended up being about the numbers, the height, weight, income, age. At the time I was married. Something that I felt in that time was that, well, the way that love feels, the way that marriage feels, the way that all of these-- how my heart works, seemed to have nothing to do with any of these numbers or even feeling valuable.

Alison Stewart: It was sort of interesting because, in the film, people are very blunt with what they want. "I don't want somebody who likes cats. I don't want somebody with a political leaning." Why did you think it made sense? I'm sure you heard this as well. Why do people want to place a Starbucks order for a mate?

Celine Song: I feel like, because part of paying for a matchmaker or paying for anything we're so used to when you're paying for a luxury experience, what that means is that you're going to get what you want. It's like a car. You're saying, "How do you get a car with all these qualities in it?" Well, you pay more. I think that there is a really funny thing where I think the world and the way that the world works has taught us that we can also start asking for that in terms of people. Not just people, people that we supposedly will love and grow old with and be together with.

Alison Stewart: One woman in the film says, "I'm ready to settle." What does settle mean?

Celine Song: I feel like she is saying something because she, of course, grew up with so much dreams that are built in us through media and everything about what she should get, what she deserves. I think about this so much because the movie is so much about objectification and commodification of ourselves and each other and then the way that we place ourselves and compare ourselves against everyone else. This is what we're talking about when we talk about the dating market or the marriage market, which is like--

Alison Stewart: The market? [laughs]

Celine Song: The market. Exactly, the market. It's so part of our language about dating that it's now inseparable from the way we talk about dating. Of course, this, I would say, tracks back to Jane Austen novels or the Victorian romance days where we would talk about the marriage market or dating market really openly. Instead of the garden parties and the little communities that the dating market existed, now this kind of turning ourselves into merchandise, turning ourselves into commodity in the dating market, is now immigrated into the phone.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Celine Song: Now the whole world, a global dating market, is now in our phones. You can have access to it and compare yourself to it. You can be like, "Okay, that person got Botox. Should I get it?" There's so much of placing ourselves as an object against other objects that are people.

Alison Stewart: So much to write about.

Celine Song: Yes, so much to write about. That's really how I felt, as I was leaving the job after six months, which I'll tell you why I left. After I left, on my way out, I remember thinking, "Oh, I think one day I'm going to write about it." I'd been trying to since I left the job in the 2010s.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Celine Song, the writer and director of Materialists, the story of a matchmaker who has to make a choice that will affect the rest of her life. Let's talk about Lucy. She's our protagonist. There's this early scene in the film where a bride, who's having a little bit of a meltdown on her wedding day, wants to talk to Lucy. Lucy marches in there like a general going into battle. She's got the bridesmaids behind her. They're kind of in a V shape as they're walking into the room. Her regiment's with her. How did you think about staging that moment when she had to talk to this bride about what marriage might mean?

Celine Song: In the script I wrote, it's like a president being ushered into the situation room.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Celine Song: She's the fixer. I think that's really what's true about some of these client-facing jobs, generally speaking. I think, in this movie, it's of a matchmaker. There are a lot of us who have jobs where it's client-facing. What that means is that when the client is in crisis, you're showing up to help and you're the person who can help. A part of it is that she cannot reveal how she feels about marriage and her heart and her own dating life. It's all about the client.

Alison Stewart: What does she really feel about love, Lucy really feel about love and marriage?

Celine Song: In the film, later, as the film grows deeper and deeper through its runtime, you will get to see what Lucy really believes. I think that part of it is that she has real trouble with it because she's not sure of the way it lasts, she's not sure if it is worth the difficulty or the pain. I think she has trouble having hope for it, like I think a lot of us.

Alison Stewart: She goes through an arc, really, with how she feels about it. When the movie first starts, though, what's her take on love?

Celine Song: I think her take on love is that she prefers to not deal in it. She's completely outsourced anything she might want from it into her clients, into her job, which I think is like a lot of us working women can relate to, of like, "You know what? I'm just not going to deal with my own dating life, but instead, I'm going to put all my energy, all my obsession with intimacy and dating and love into my work." Then it's, "I'm going to live vicariously through my clients."

Alison Stewart: You as the writer, in thinking about Lucy's backstory, why does she become a matchmaker?

Celine Song: It's probably a similar reason as I did, which is a financial reason. It's a great job for anybody who will walk into a room and feel like they have some empathy to give or some kind of people skill to use. I feel like she probably was trying to-- The dating industries, in general, are female-dominated fields with a few female-dominated industries. I feel like she probably felt like she could slip right in and really start to make some money.

Alison Stewart: She's very straightforward about money. She discloses her salary like that, no problem. Some people are like, "I make around so and so." How does this play into her beliefs about money and what another person can offer her financially?

Celine Song: I think that when it comes to the way that everybody's salary and also everybody's living situation, everybody's rent, those are going to be said out loud in my movie. In Materialists, something that I really wanted is to really name names and number numbers. I think it's because of the way that I felt like that was the most honest thing. I feel like it's interesting because I feel like we're comfortable being honest about a lot of things. Amazingly, money is still a place where I think we feel like we must be polite. I do think that it comes from the mores that were built into us from the wealthy. Because I feel like it's like, who doesn't want you to know how much they make? Your boss, right?

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Celine Song: Your boss does not want you to know how much they make. Because if they do, then, of course, resentment will build and then we'll start to really be able to place our salary against theirs. I think that's something about Lucy being so exposing with it. I think it has to do with her relationship to money and how she decided that to be frank with it is the way that she's going to be free from it. I think it does come from her working-class background.

Alison Stewart: I have a writerly question for you. Obviously, there are socioeconomic shades in this film. In the film, Lucy places an order for a coke and a beer. It introduces another character. As I sat down, I thought, "Wouldn't she up her game at a fancy wedding?"

Celine Song: Of course. I think that she would and I think she did for all her dates with Pedro Pascal's character, Harry, who is a wealthy guy. The thing is, I feel like in that moment, she is trying to actually recruit Him, Harry, Pedro Pascal. Something that she, of course, wants to do is she wants to show him the real her because she doesn't want him to think that he should date her, because just moments before Harry asked, "Are you hitting on me?" I think she's saying, "No, no, no, no. I'm trying to recruit you because I'm a working person who's trying to get you onto the service. I'm not the girl you want to date."

Alison Stewart: Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, he's a wealthy man, he's in finance, and he overhears Lucy giving her pitch to women at her brother's wedding, which she set up. What does he find interesting about her pitch for herself as a matchmaker to the women in the room?

Celine Song: I think that he sees her and, honestly, how smart she is when it comes to-- I think he feels that she speaks the same language. We see that they do. For example, their conversation in Nobu is about how they are really acknowledging how much financial language they know how to speak. They talk in business, they talk in deals. I think that he sees a kindred spirit in her.

Alison Stewart: Harry seems like a super nice person. He's a unicorn in her eyes, looking at him as a prospect, we should say. It comes up in the film, we're not going to spoil anything. Would he be that great if he didn't have that kind of money?

Celine Song: I think that the thing that is very interesting is how can you separate something from that person. Because I feel like the kind of job you have or the kind of point of view you might have, everything is a part of you. I think that's just where it becomes a complicated thing when it comes to treating ourselves as merchandise or as people. There's a character in the film who says, "I'm not merchandise. I'm a person."

I think that that's the key to my whole movie because I think that you can talk about Harry Pedro's character as merchandise. Then you can, of course, look at all these different assets, all these different qualifications that he has, or you can see him as a person. Then you realize that, no, every single part of him, it's all holistically who he is. He is also trying to work out how to be a person in the middle of everything that he has, and he's not spared.

Alison Stewart: I'm not going to give away any of your spoilers. Upstairs, half our room had their hands over their ears because they hadn't seen it yet, and the other half, we were talking about it. My guest is Celine Song. The name of the film is The Materialists. John is played by Chris Evans. He's an actor who wants to make it. He doesn't have an agent. He doesn't necessarily go on commercials because they're not for him. Fill in the blanks. Is John based on anyone you know?

Celine Song: I feel like it's based on so many really talented actors that I know, who, I think that, of course, is very difficult when you-- and I think about this so much. I think so many actors, they become actors because they were the best actors in college. They were the best actors in high school. They were the best actors in college. Then, of course, when they graduate, I think that you're faced with how vicious the marketplace is for actors.

This is actually connected to the way I would talk about my actors, my three actors, Dakota, Pedro, and Chris, which is that I think all three of them understand the central message of the film, which is that I'm not merchandise, I'm a person. I think this is true about all actors. All actors understand what it's like to be treated like merchandise. They call it cattle call. They call those auditions cattle call. They call it the meat market.

Then, of course, you go through the humiliating process of auditioning, auditioning, auditioning. Sometimes they're just told that, like, yes, but you're not as valuable as, I don't know, somebody who's another theater actor or another TV actor who became a theater actor. I think that some of those things are really heartbreaking. I think that John in the film has gotten quite bitter of it. I think that's really what's hard about it. It's generally, I think, what's hard about poverty in general. I feel like it's also hard when you have a dream. You have a dream, and then every day it feels like the world is telling you that your dream is never going to come true.

You live in New York City, which is a city of so much cynicism that we need to have to survive. Then, of course, this endless well of romanticism, too, because it's so romantic for all of us to be here and live our lives and get day jobs and then be like, "I live in New York so that I can one day maybe get my big break."

Alison Stewart: He's in a play and it was quick, but I think it's a play that you actually wrote.

Celine Song: Yes, it is a play that I wrote.

Alison Stewart: All right. I saw your name and I was like, "Wait a minute."

Celine Song: Yes, it is a play I wrote.

Alison Stewart: What was the name of the play?

Celine Song: Tom & Eliza.

Alison Stewart: That was the actual language of the play when you saw the scene?

Celine Song: Oh, yes, those are the first lines of the actual play. The play had an amazing world premiere directed by Knud Adams, starring Eliza Bent and Daniel Kublik. We were basically doing it at JACK, New York City. Do you know that space?

Alison Stewart: No. Where is that?

Celine Song: Anyways, it's in downtown Brooklyn. I really love working on that play, but that play is a 50-minute that start from these two people's first date to the night they die together. I would say that it was just thematically correct.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] How did you go about your casting process?

Celine Song: I talk about it always as a piece of matchmaking because I don't write for actors. I think many filmmakers do write for actors, but I don't really write for actors. I write the characters and then I go out like a matchmaker in search of their soulmate. So much of it is like part of releasing past lives and going and doing the award circuit, which I felt so lucky to be able to do. Part of that is that I get to meet a lot of actors. Of course, at the time, because the actors were watching past lives, they wanted to meet me.

I was just sitting down with a lot of amazing actors, and I feel like it's like a little bit of lightning, like just falling in love, where I sat down with Dakota within five minutes. I don't believe in love at first sight, but I believe in love at first conversation. During the first conversation with her, I think at some point, it just occurred to me, like, "Celine, this is Lucy, Celine." Then by the end of it, after she got up from lunch, and before I got up from lunch, I texted A24, my producers, and I said, "I think I found our Lucy."

Alison Stewart: I was wondering about this cast because they do work so well together. Was there anything that any of the actors brought to the character which caused you, as the writer, to change something in the script, something that Dakota brought, or something that Pedro brought to Harry? Was there something about their portrayal or how they dug into the character that you thought, "You know what, I could change that a little bit"?

Celine Song: I mean so much. Because I feel like they show up and then they-- It would happen, of course, in rehearsal, even. We would just talk about a certain scene in the way they were breaking up or then breaking up the scene and we're also talking about it. Even in the middle of us talking about it, I would just look at their face, and I would just know that we wouldn't need a certain line, for example, or there would be a simpler way to do it because the way that they are is going to speak to it or the way they're talking about a line will speak to it.

That was happening throughout the whole rehearsal process. On set, I feel like then, they're in their costume and they're there, and some of it is happening there. Of course, some of it is happening in the edit, too. Every piece of it, they're building it because after it's just text on the page, they have to fully embody these characters. Of course, it gets to a point where they're thinking about their own characters as much or more than me. Then it becomes so special.

Oh, you know what I would say is there are a couple jokes that Dakota pitched that were so good that are now in the movie, and I just feel like-- I'll give you one. What is it? Oh, there's a line where-- Oh, no, I don't want to spoil that.

Alison Stewart: Okay. [laughs]

Celine Song: Sorry, sorry, sorry. For example, it's like, what's a couple inches? I feel like it used to be a little bit more professional. Then, of course, she was like, "I just want to find something where it's like a little sharper." I think that we were starting to pitch each other lines. I think that in that moment, we were like, "What's a couple inches?" Then also the way that Dakota did it is what made it so funny. I think that that would be how it is. Oh, there are a couple other lines, but I feel like they will give it away. They will give away the movie. I'll tell you about it in a much later interview.

Alison Stewart: Directors have to constantly make choices on the set. What was a choice that you had to make that maybe ruffled writer Celine a little bit, but director Celine said, "I have to do this for this movie"?

Celine Song: I really think of directing as an extension of writing. The truth is I don't have the same kinds of maybe like rubbing up against each other that maybe the-- I feel like my writer and my director are really in sync because my director is really showing up in service of the writer.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Celine Song: I think it's coming from the fact that I'm a playwright first. Usually, the playwright is the person that the director and then the production is serving. It's the writer first medium. In film, of course, it's a filmmaker, it's a director first medium. Still, because I think because of my background, I'm always showing up as a director to serve the writer. I don't think I really have that kind of a thing.

The thing that I know is really true is that I feel like making decisions every day, some of it is about discovering what the writer wanted as the director and then realizing that like, "Oh, there's a more elegant way to handle that without lines," or like, "Oh, there's a better way to handle that in a way that's going to make the writer even happier."

Alison Stewart: When did you write this?

Celine Song: I wrote this after I finished working on Past Lives, after I finished all the post-production and everything the summer of 2022. There was a little period before Sundance, 2023, when Past Lives started its life. There was like a fun six-month period where I was going a little bit crazy because I was like, I knew I was a filmmaker and I knew I had made a movie, but nobody else knew. I was just waiting for Sundance to happen so my life begins.

Alison Stewart: That's such an interesting time in a person's life.

Celine Song: Oh, yes, because I'm so nervous and I have so much anticipation, but I still have to wait for the festival. It was just like six months of a little bit of like-- I don't know, I felt a little bit out of my mind. In that time, I was like, "Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to, in these six months, crack something that is going to be my next movie. I want to write my next movie at that time." Then I thought, "What's a story that I always wanted to figure out?" Then I thought back to the time I worked as a matchmaker, and I was like, "I'm just going to figure this out."

The whole time that I was releasing Past Lives and going through that incredible journey of going through my debut film's entire life, I knew what my next movie was going to be. It was always a little secret that I would walk into everything with. I'd be like, "I know what my next movie is. It's going to be Materialists."

Alison Stewart: Celine, what did you learn from Past Lives that proved to be useful to you on this film?

Celine Song: I think that, honestly, how to make a movie, because, before Past Lives, I didn't know how to make a movie. I think that I would say it wasn't just one or two things. It was the whole thing. I think that I just didn't know how to make a movie before Past Lives. Then for Materialists, I did know how to make at least one movie. The other thing that I noticed-- Go ahead.

Alison Stewart: I'm just going to say, what does that mean for you, if you knew how to make it? Before you did it, you made this beautiful movie. You didn't know how you'd do it. Now what do I know about making a movie?

Celine Song: Just the process. I'm sure so many artists and writers and people who come on this show will tell you the same thing. The process is what makes the-- What everybody sees is the "product." It's the end of a process. For me, as somebody who's making something, the making of it, the process of it is the art. It's an act. I think that I didn't know how to do the act, and then I learned how to do the act.

I feel like the other part of it that I really learned beyond just how to make a movie, and I mean that pretty literally as the verb that it is, how to wake up every day, go on set, what to do, how to run a day to how to edit, how does the editing work, how does post-production work? To me, that's what I mean by making a movie. Beyond all of that, something that I know from making Past Lives is that the theme of love is completely universal and that it is entirely worthy of cinema. I think that it is something that I felt.

It's really funny because I feel like it wouldn't matter who you are, you could be the toughest-looking guy that I would talk to at a small Irish festival. Even you are going to be interested in love and matters of the heart. Love, dating, relationship, marriage, matters of the heart. Everybody's so obsessed with it and into it and is curious about it and want to talk about it because it's a great mystery of our lives and it's a great trauma that visits us, even the most ordinary of us. We don't have to be the most extraordinary people in the world to do this one thing in our lives that is completely extraordinary and entirely miraculous.

I think that's something that I learned releasing Past Lives is that it's really just a matter of if you're embarrassed to talk about it. I think that's really what it is because I feel like I would just-- The only difference that I would feel, everybody would want to talk about love and their own love life when I was releasing Past Lives, but it would just be the difference of who whispers it to me and who is proud to talk about it. I think that it's just a matter of--

Alison Stewart: It's funny.

Celine Song: It's real. It's not a question of whether you are interested in the matters of the heart and cinema from the heart, but I think that it's also the question of how comfortable are you to really get real with it or to really dive in and to really say, "Yes, I think love is worthy of talking about," that love is an important theme in my life, and that love is worthy of cinema.

Alison Stewart: Your husband wrote Challengers, Justin Kuritzkes. He was here, actually. Do you consult one another, or is that separation of church and state?

Celine Song: No. I feel like it's so much more-- He reads my first draft. I read his first drafts. Like the really raw, not ready to show anybody kind of drafts.

Alison Stewart: Oh, you love each other.

[laughter]

Celine Song: of course. Then, of course, a part of it is that we also have to-- Something that's true is that we would be as brutal with each other the way that we are brutal with ourselves. That's how you can trust. This has been true for-- We've been married for now nine years. We've been together for-- 2012, so what is that?

Alison Stewart: 13?

Celine Song: 13 years. yes. It was happening from the year one, just how-- I think that we really built our relationship off of the part of us that's like colleagues, too. It's not really church and state in that way. It is church and state when it comes to the business of it or we wouldn't work together.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Materialists. I've been speaking with this writer and director, Celine Song. Thank you for coming to the studio.

Celine Song: Thank you for having me. This was so great. What a great conversation.