David Remnick: We all remember the spring and summer of 2020, whether we like it or not. There was the COVID pandemic and all its losses, and a reckoning with racial violence that led to some of the biggest protests in our history. There was also one of the most contentious presidential election races in our time. Some might prefer to forget that period. Yet, it turns out to be bottomless material for a filmmaker named Ari Aster.

In the horror movies Hereditary and Midsommar, and the more iconoclastic Beau Is Afraid, Aster is relentless about putting his characters and his audience in a state of anxiety. Cringe doesn't begin to describe it. Aster's latest film is Eddington, which is set in a fictional Southwestern community, a place roiled by COVID and conspiracy theories.

Ted Garcia: Maybe I just talked to your video, ask where all your deputies went.

Joe Cross: Okay. Well, why not just ask your governor about her little catch and release policy, okay? Because if it wasn't for that, maybe I could hold onto my deputies and the people we arrest.

Ted Garcia: I know. I know. One of them was fired for excessive force, and another one was forced to quit by a YouTube First Amendment auditor.

Joe Cross: Okay. Yes, that is the same auditor that drove away your work in the Sheriff's Department.

Ted Garcia: Your undersheriff died of a fentanyl overdose.

Joe Cross: From handling fentanyl.

Ted Garcia: Your captain and your chief deputy took jobs in Rio Ranch.

Joe Cross: That was devastating.

Ted Garcia: You can't keep your own office going, but you're going to--

David Remnick: Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and it's like a hand grenade tossed into the traditional summer movie season. It is unapologetically political, but the satire doesn't spare either side of the aisle. Our producer, Adam Howard, sat down with Ari Aster, who wrote and directed Eddington.

Adam Howard: I think one of the things I'm impressed by is just your willingness to take a big swing and do something contemporary. A lot of the big blockbusters you see nowadays could take place in any time, any universe. Even a movie I really admired, like Sinners, it speaks to modern politics, but from the vantage point of a period film. Why do you think more filmmakers aren't more willing to touch the hot stove of the here and now?

Ari Aster: Well, I think it's really hard to talk about the moment because nobody really understands what's happening. It's hard to make a film about COVID because we haven't metabolized any of that. I mean, I don't feel we've metabolized how seismic that was, but we're also still living through it. We're still in it. I do think that a big part of the COVID culture right now is looking to the past. There's a lot of nostalgia, and then there's a lot of talk about trauma, but it's all about looking back while we're ignoring the present. We're not even talking about the future because I don't think we believe in it. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the people leading us don't believe in the future.

I've been asked to describe what the film is about in one sentence. My answer to that was, it's about a hyperscale data center being built just outside of a small town. The film begins with the promise of a data center being built that is tied to AI. Not to give away too much of a spoiler, but we end on that. There's a way of looking at all the stories in the movie Eddington as training data. The movie Eddington is training data for whatever this thing is that's coming, which I didn't ask for.

Adam Howard: Right. [laughs]

Ari Aster: I don't know if you did.

Adam Howard: No, no. All of your movies have a sense of humor, but I think it's fair to say that Eddington is your funniest. When I went to see the movie, I had an experience I don't think I've ever had before, where, at the beginning of the movie, and this is not spoiling anything, there's a title announcing when the film takes place, that it's May of 2020. That immediately got a huge laugh from the audience I was in. I was like, "Oh, that's really cool that we're all collectively acknowledging that sort of gut punch of like, 'Yes, I remember that, and I'm ready. Buckle up.'" Was your approach always going to be satirical?

Ari Aster: Yes, it was always going to be satire, but I also wanted it to be inscrutable. I wanted whatever my position is in all of this to be, maybe, veiled for as long as I could. I think at the end of the film, it becomes pretty clear where I stand. I wanted to make a film that was kind of pulling back and describing the structure of reality at the moment, which is that nobody can agree on what is real.

Adam Howard: Right. My understanding is that some version of this script has existed for some time. Is that right?

Ari Aster: Well, I had written a sort of contemporary Western that was set in New Mexico. I'm from New Mexico. A long time ago, long before I made Hereditary, right after I left school, I wasn't able to get it made, and I lost interest in it. Then, in late May, early June 2020, I found myself in New Mexico near family. I wanted to get down on paper what was in the air. Everything had kind of reached a boiling point. The fever of 2020 lockdown had kind of reached its highest pitch. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, whether it was going to explode, whether it was going to boil over.

I was writing it in a state of anxiety and dread, which, I think, is that sort of the prevailing mood of not just the moment, but for like the last 10 years. The framework of a contemporary Western suddenly felt really appropriate for this. I went back to the structure of that old script, but everything else was written from scratch.

Adam Howard: When I was watching it, I guess because you're juggling so many interesting characters, I was thinking a little bit about the work of Robert Altman a little bit. Then, when it was over, the movie that came to mind for me was Do the Right Thing, because it's just so many incredibly fully realized, funny, lived-in characters. Like the world is very recognizable, but there is this ratcheting tension. I wonder what you make of that comp. Then, also, if similar to that film, you were very intentionally trying to do something topical and get in people's faces a little bit with this movie.

Ari Aster: Yes. Well, when you mentioned Altman, I'm sure you're maybe referring to Nashville-

Adam Howard: 100%, yes.

Ari Aster: -which is one of my favorite films.

Adam Howard: Mine, too.

Ari Aster: I think one of the great films about America as like a circus.

[MUSIC - Henry Gibson: 200 Years]

It's been hard work, but every time

We get into a fix

Let's think of what our children faced

In two - ought - seven - six

It's up to us to pave the way

With our blood and sweat and tears

For we must be doing something right

To last 200 years.‎

Ari Aster: Certainly, that film was on my mind. Do the Right Thing is just one of the great works of art.

Mookie: Hey, Sal, how come you ain't got no brothers up on the wall here?

Sal: You want brothers up on the wall? Get your own place. You can do what you want.

Ari Aster: I will say that it was a reference for me early on when I was giving the script to people.

Sal: This is my pizzeria. American Italians on the wall only.

Mookie: Yes, that might be fine, Sal, but you own this. Rarely do I see any American Italians eating in here. All I see is Black folks. Since we spend much money here, we do have some say.

Ari Aster: The tongue is slightly in the cheek there, especially because it's set in a town with very few Black people, in a state with very few Black people.

Adam Howard: Right. Just to go back to your earlier point about the differing perceptions of reality right now, one of the most unsettling things about the moment we're in is what people are willing to believe in. You got QAnon and replacement theory. The President of the United States is sharing memes that his predecessor might be a double. The conversation we're having right now, of course, is happening amidst a time where the Jeffrey Epstein story has resurged into the public consciousness. I wonder if you could speak a little bit about how you feel about conspiracy theory culture and why it's such a center of this particular film.

Ari Aster: With the Epstein stuff, the snake is now starting to eat its own tail. It really scares me that all these things have come into the mainstream, including Nazism. It's really alarming. I wanted to make a film where everybody is, in a way, a conspiracy theorist. You were asking about references or films that might be on my mind. One was JFK, which I think is a really interesting film because it's kind of a rat king of different conspiracy theories that don't have a lot to do with each other. Some of them contradict others. It's been widely discredited. I find the film to be really, not only fascinating, but important for the way that it captures the fever and the mania of conspiracy thinking.

Donald Sutherland: Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, The Mafia, keeps them guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents them from asking the most important question: why? Why was Kennedy Killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?

Ari Aster: I feel like all of us in America now, we're kind of living in that atmosphere, the atmosphere of JFK. We're the only ones who see what's actually happening. I feel that Eddington is a film about a bunch of people who really care about the world, and they all know that something's wrong. Nobody can agree on what that thing is. They're all looking at the world through these strange windows that are distorted, and they distrust anything that falls outside of their bubble of certainty. It's a film about what happens when these people living in different realities start bumping against each other.

Adam Howard: You said you wrote this in a state of anxiety and fear. Do you feel more fearful now since the creation of this film, this whole process, or is there anything you're feeling optimistic about, or do you feel like we're actually going downhill?

Ari Aster: That feeling of dread has only grown more intense for me. It feels like we are on a very dangerous path. It feels like, to me, at the very end of this path is a brick wall, but we're only accelerating. If there's anything, maybe, hopeful in the film, it's that it is a period piece. Maybe there's some opportunity in seeing the way we were, and maybe that can give us some clearer picture of where we are and the path that we're on. I mean, the film is also a Western, and it's a genre film, and it's meant to be fun.

Adam Howard: Well, in spite of that, I don't need to tell you, we live in a very politically polarized moment. I imagine there's going to be, whether you want it to or not, people are going to latch onto whatever they want to take politically from this film. There'll be people who feel like it's too one-sided, and there'll be others who will say it's not one-sided enough. Have you steeled yourself for that discourse, and are you comfortable wading into that stuff?

Ari Aster: Yes. Look, I also made this film in 2024 before the election. I've never made a film that changes day to day so much. I'm definitely aware of the critics of the film. I feel like most of them come at the film for not taking enough of a stance or not being partisan enough, but that's not what the film is about. To me, that would have been way too narrow. The film is about the environment. If I did make a partisan film, that would have only reached the choir that it was preaching to. I don't even see the point in it at this point. I'm most concerned right now with the fact that we're all unreachable to each other.

Adam Howard: Just going back to COVID, COVID is this thing that, to your point, we've just so assiduously avoided reckoning with a million people died, you would never know it sometimes. It's something that, I think, people are consciously trying to avoid. How do you make that the center of a movie and get people to buy tickets on a summer day and say, "You could go see Superman, but come watch this movie to revisit a very painful chapter in American history"?

Ari Aster: We all went through it. I don't know. I'm personally desperate for art that at least attempts to grapple with whatever the hell is going on right now. If anything, I just made the movie that I kind of wanted to see. COVID, I think, was a really huge inflection point. I don't think it was the advent of anything. I think we had been living in something for a long time, but it was the moment at which, I think, the last, to whatever that old world was, was cut right.

Adam Howard: Beyond COVID, this movie delves into the George Floyd protests and the movement around that. I happen to be a Black American. For me, and I think a lot of other Black Americans, that period was very fraught because there was a sense that we're having conversations that are good to have, but the lack of actual tangible progress during and after, and now we're living in the midst of a backlash to a lot of that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your perspective on that whole moment.

Ari Aster: I was amazed at the power and momentum of that movement. I haven't seen anything like it since, and I hadn't seen anything like it in so long. I think one of the things that allowed that to happen was the fact that people's public lives had shut down completely. The film is doing something kind of tricky, which is that we're largely tied to the perspective of a conservative white sheriff who's got--

Adam Howard: Played by Joaquin Phoenix.

Ari Aster: Played by Joaquin Phoenix, who is something of a libertarian. We are receiving the news of George Floyd's murder with--

Adam Howard: Through his eyes.

Ari Aster: Yes, through his eyes. He's getting the spin that he's getting. Meanwhile, he's living in a tiny town in New Mexico that has very few Black people. He works with a Black person, but this is all very abstract to him. Even the kids who are being activated in town, it's abstract to them. Some of them are much more sincere in their efforts, and some are just looking for community, and this is a bandwagon that they're jumping on. Again, the challenge here was for me to pull back as far as I could and just give as broad a picture of the landscape at that moment as possible.

Adam Howard: I'm curious why you thought the Southwest was an ideal setting for this particular story, and how did you use your own experience growing up there to infuse the film with some authenticity?

Ari Aster: Well, it's the region that I know best. I've always wanted to make a film set in New Mexico. New Mexico is already a really interesting microcosm for the country. It's a blue state, but most of the small towns are red. There's a long history of racial resentment, and there are just so many cultures that never really intersect, or they do, only in the most-

Adam Howard: Superficial ways.

Ari Aster: -superficial ways. I was especially aware of that when I was a little kid, just in school, and it felt exciting to me to make an ensemble film in New Mexico, where you're covering as many bases as you can and including as many voices in the cacophony as possible without neglecting to tell a coherent story.

Adam Howard: This is your second collaboration with Joaquin Phoenix in a row. I'd love to hear more about what your working relationship with him is like, what makes him such a unique actor for this kind of project.

Ari Aster: Joaquin and I worked together once on Beau Is Afraid, and that was a really good experience. I think we both have a lot in common. We're both kind of nuts, and we're very neurotic, and we are serious about what we're doing. He's somebody who really likes to talk through things a lot. I have found that that is a really useful process for me, just going over the script, and he'll have a lot of questions. The purpose is never to answer those questions, I've learned, but rather to find what the more activating questions are and find a way to preserve those and keep those going so that on the day of shooting, those are still alive.

Whenever anything becomes wrote or figured out for him, it's dead. This was an interesting process because his character, Joe Cross, was inspired by somebody I had met in New Mexico. When I was rewriting the script, when I was polishing it, I flew back out to New Mexico. I drove around the state. I went to different counties and talked to different sheriffs. I went to small towns, talked to mayors, police chiefs, public officials. I went to pueblos, just trying to get as broad a picture of the state.

I met a few really interesting people. One of them was this sheriff of a vast county, but very small population. I flew out there again with Joaquin because I wanted him to meet him. We drove around with the sheriff for a couple days. Joaquin's wardrobe in the film, his look, his stance, was modeled on this guy.

Adam Howard: What was it about him that was so striking to you?

Ari Aster: It's ineffable. It's hard to say. He was a big personality. He is a 70-year-old or so man who used to be a cop in Albuquerque, but it was too violent for him and so he came out to this county and ran for a sheriff. He had a feud, a long running feud with the mayor of the biggest town in his county.

Adam Howard: Which is similar to a plot point in the film, yes.

Ari Aster: Exactly. With Joaquin and Pedro Pascal's character.

Adam Howard: Is he aware that this character is going to be somewhat loosely inspired by him?

Ari Aster: He even showed up to consult on a few days, and so he saw that Joaquin was dressed like him.

Adam Howard: How did he feel about that?

Ari Aster: I think he was thrilled.

Adam Howard: Has he seen the finished movie yet?

Ari Aster: Not yet, but I'm curious to hear what he thinks.

Adam Howard: Do you read reviews of your films, or do you tune that stuff out?

Ari Aster: Every time, I promise I'm not going to, and then I relent. I find that it can be really harmful. There's always a point at which I have to stop. You spend so long making a film, and then you want to know how it's being received. I tend to get the temperature. There are filmmakers who claim to not look at that stuff at all. I think that's probably bullshit. I can't imagine not even-

Adam Howard: Having any idea.

Ari Aster: -peeking.

Adam Howard: One of the reasons I wanted to ask is that, as I'm sure you know, some of the reviews have alluded to this movie being polarizing or divisive. That being potentially your intent.

Ari Aster: Well, the film is about polarization. The reception has been polarized, but that feels natural to me. It's not like I set out to do that. Like, "With this one, I'm going to make something really divisive." While we were in the edit, my editor, Luke Johnston, and I would say, "Yes, this is going to--" It would usually be at points in the film where we'd be like, "Okay, yes, this is where we're going to--"

Adam Howard: Lose people?

Ari Aster: Potentially. To me, excising all those things would have made the film just nothing, and so you got to listen to the movie and do what's right for the movie. The worst thing that could happen for a movie like this is, meh.

Adam Howard: [laughs] I'm sure everybody loves it.

Ari Aster: Even everybody loves it, something would be wrong. I don't know how that would even be possible anymore in this landscape. Honestly, it feels right. My concern is that I don't know how much of a hunger people have anymore for anything controversial or challenging. What I want is for people to go out and see it. I do hope that the film is funny. It's a Western. I hope it's rousing. It becomes an action film by the end, kind of an absurd one. I hope that there can be some sort of bizarre solidarity in sitting in a theater with a bunch of people and recognizing the insanity of the moment and just the fact that we're all struggling on the wrong end of puppet strings and that our neighbor is not our real enemy.

Adam Howard: Thank you so much for coming in and for having this conversation with me. It's been great to talk to you.

Ari Aster: Thank you for having me.

[music]

David Remnick: Director Ari Aster speaking with the Radio Hour's Adam Howard. His new film, Eddington, is opening in theaters nationwide. You can read Justin Chang and Richard Brody on the movies at newyorker.com, and you can always subscribe to the magazine there as well, newyorker.com.

 

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.