[Sound of a bottle of beer being placed on a table, a long sigh] So, okay, you’re listening to this, so you’ve seen the film, you get it, you’re… you’re one of the good ones. [Chuckles, but it’s a bitter chuckle] Because let me tell you, the amount of emails, the tweets—God, the tweets—after *Lamb* came out… “Wow, what a great political thriller!” Yeah. Sure. Fine. That’s… that was the surface. That was the… the thing you see on the water. But the title. The goddamn title. So many people just… just completely sailed right past it. “*The Lamb Was Sure to Go*.” It’s a line from a nursery rhyme. The whole *rhyme*. It’s… Jesus. [A long gulp of beer] You see this? [Pointing at the screen, presumably at a shot of young Arthur] This shot here, the reflection in the puddle? Took us two days to get that. The DP, Miguel, he was ready to kill me. The light, the composition, the… the way the world is upside down for him. It’s his entire reality, it’s inverted, it’s a lie. But nobody… nobody talks about that. They just want to know if the car chase was real. Which, for the record, it was. Stunt driver, Javier, nearly broke his back. But no. The title. The title is the key to the whole… the whole architecture of the thing. The first film is *The Lamb Was Sure to Go*. The prequel is *Everywhere That Mary Went*. It’s the first half of the couplet. You don’t… you don’t just get one without the other. The meaning is in the fucking gap between them! [Leans into the microphone, voice gets more intense] It’s not a cute nickname the press gave him. It’s a trigger. It’s a… a psychological anchor Mary built for him over thirty years. His own *mother* used to sing it to him. And Mary’s people, her… her spook therapists, they co-opted it. They re-wired his goddamn childhood lullaby into a control mechanism. It’s the most insidious… thing… I could think of. It’s not a gun to his head, it’s a nurs— [Catches himself] And people just… they pay their twelve bucks, they shove popcorn in their face, and they go “Huh, weird title,” and they never think about it again. They think it’s just… I don’t know, a cute ironic thing. It’s not ironic! It’s horrific! The horror is in the banality of it! A nursery rhyme! Look at this scene. See how she—Mary—see how she touches his shoulder here? [Pointing] It’s the exact same pressure, the exact same placement, that his foster mother used when he was seven years old and she’d calm him down after a nightmare. We researched that. We had a consultant. A behavioral psychologist. For eight weeks. To get the micro-gestures right. So that subconsciously, on a level he could never, ever articulate, he associates her touch with safety. With comfort. And we buried it in a wide shot. Because that’s how it works. It’s not a close-up. It’s the shit you barely notice. And nobody… not one fucking critic… not one. They talked about the score. Which is great, Don did a great job, but Christ. [Another sigh, longer this time. Sound of the beer bottle being emptied.] It’s… it’s fine. It’s fine. Maybe with this one, with *Everywhere*, they’ll get it. Maybe they’ll watch them back-to-back and their goddamn head will explode when they realize Arthur never had a single original thought in his life. That his big, heroic, Oscar-clip moment of defiance was him just… just finally arriving at the destination she built for him thirty years earlier. Everywhere that Mary went… the lamb was *always*, always sure to go. They… they better get it this time. Or I swear to God, I’m going to make a three-hour movie about paint drying and title it “Go Fuck Yourselves.” See if they get *that*. [Abruptly, voice shifts to faux-cheery] Anyway, this was the first day we shot with the young actor who played Arthur. Kid was a prodigy. Absolutely brilliant. Didn’t even have to direct him. Just… just incredible.
