Restaurant Road Trip: Neighborhood Kombuchery
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WBOY) — Spring is here and as it continues to warm up, you may be thirsty for a refreshing drink. If so, one Morgantown business can keep you guessing with its quenching and creative kombucha flavors.
If you've ever wondered what blue milk tastes like in Star Wars, the Neighborhood Kombuchery in Morgantown has taken a crack at it for you to try.
If you're not familiar with kombucha, it's 'a fermented tea in its short form. And, we take a sweet tea, and we add a culture to it, a SCOBY—a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast—and we let that ferment until we deem it tastes good,' according to brewer Cody Woodring.
Founded in 2019 by Carissa Herman and her husband Andrew Rhodes, the Neighborhood Kombuchery has quickly expanded to local businesses and now distributes all over the state and even into Pennsylvania and Maryland.
At the Kombuchery, you can opt to get flavors on tap or canned, and for special flavors like blue milk, it is only available on tap during the week of May 4, known by Star Wars fans as 'May the Fourth be with You.'
Restaurant Road Trip: Mora Bakery
Inspired by a former brewery's own blue milk beer, the Kombuchery got to work on figuring out how to make the unique flavor.
'So, we don't have 'Banthas,' but we have bananas, and bananas when they are not quite as ripe…have more carbohydrates in them and starches, which are opaque, so we are basically juicing bananas and throwing them in there,' Woodring said.
For the blue pop of color, they use blue spirulina, a natural dye. And just like with its blue milk flavor, the Kombuchery uses natural dyes and ingredients to flavor its drinks.
'Usually when we're flavoring, if we're infusing like a dry herb we let it sit for a day or two to kind of mix into the things. This one is a nice one to let sit for a bit so the pulp from the banana settles out before we package it up and carbonate it,' Woodring said.
12 News's Barbara Ron tasted the unique flavor, and said that 'you can taste the bananas, but it's not, like, annoying and sweet like in a banana bread or something. It's light.'
The Neighborhood Kombuchery is located at 119 Pleasant St. in Morgantown and is open from 3-7 p.m. on Fridays. On Saturdays, you can find them at the Morgantown Farmers Market. For more information, you can visit here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Can Pop Culture Be Political … and Good?
transcript Can Pop Culture Be Political … and Good? Can Hollywood still tell great stories? Can movies be political without being tedious? When entertainment is dominated by franchises, is creativity still possible? My guest today, worked on some of the best movies of the early 2000s. Now he's responsible for one of the best TV shows of the 2020s. He makes art that I consider left-wing and also, quite brilliant. Tony Gilroy, welcome to Interesting Times. Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure. And I want to start by congratulating you on what I personally think a large number of critics, and a sizable fraction of the viewing public consider the most successful Star Wars production, maybe since the original trilogy. There's a lot of material to be compared with. So it's a big thank you. Good. So you've been frank in the past, about not having been an intense Star Wars guy, before you got pulled into this universe and into this work in this project. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it's like to come into a story, a franchise. Were you saying to yourself, 'I'm going to do something inside a franchise that no one has done before'? Or were you saying, Sure. Definitely. 'Look, there are other models here of how Christopher Nolan's Batman,' or something like that. No, I'm always trying to do something that I haven't seen before. That is going to be unusual. So no, I had no- I was very much not into any other model. I was very into striking new ground. And the other thing that I was being offered was a five year piece of history on that calendar that you probably know pretty well. I think you're a big fan. I have that five year tranche of history that takes you up to the first scene in Rogue One. It's the story of, for listeners and viewers who are not huge Star Wars fans- The story that Andor tells is the story of the rise of the rebel alliance, how you get to the point in the original Star Wars where Luke Skywalker comes in and there's already this rebellion ongoing against the empire, and you're telling a very, very political story. Well, that was the offer. The offer was, when I looked at it, it's the canvas that was being offered was just a wildly abundant opportunity of to use all of the nonfiction and all the history and all the amateur reading that I'd done over the past 40 years, and all the things I was fascinated by, all the revolution stuff that not only I would never have a chance to do again, but I really wondered if anybody else would ever have a chance to do again. When are you going to be able to have as we've ended up with a 1,500 page. I think of it as a novel, really, a 1,500 page novel that is trying to deal with as many aspects of authoritarianism and fascism and colonialism and rebellion and coalition and sacrifice and all of that? I think this is a good place to pivot more to a discussion of politics and art, because Andor is it's telling a political story in a way that goes beyond anything Star Wars has done before. It's not just the world of Skywalker family and the Jedi Knights. It's a world of bureaucrats and senators, politicians and so on. So talk a little bit about what is this world that you're showing. What is the political world that you're depicting in this show? The five years that I've been given are extremely potent. You have the empire really closing down, really choking, really ramping up. The Emperor's building, the Death Star. 'The rebellion on Gorman was a front from the start.' 'A cover to strip mine the planet for some mineral that they need.' 'Fronting for what?' 'A weapon.' They are closing out corporate planets and absorbing them into the state. They are imperialistically, acquiring planets and taking what they want. They are. The noose is tightening dramatically. There still is a Senate. There are senators that are speaking out. Impotently. 'I believe we are in crisis.' The Senate has been all but completely emasculated by the time this five year tranche is over. And there are revolutionary groups, rebellious groups, and people who are acting rebelliously who wouldn't even know how to describe themselves as part of any movement. There are a completely wide spectrum of unaffiliated cells, I guess, and and activists that are rising independently across the Galaxy, and at the same time, you have a group more, more restrained politicians who are trying to make an organized coalition of a rebellion on a place called Yavin, which will end up being the true end of the true victory of the rebel alliance. I wanted to do a show all about the forgotten people who make a revolution like this happen on both sides, and I want to pay equal... I want to take equal interest and spend as much time understanding the bureaucrats and the enforcers of the rebellion. I think one of the fascinating things about fascism is that when it's done coming after the people whose land it wants and who it wants to oppress, and whoever it wants to control, by the time it gets rid of the courts and the Justice, and by the time it consolidates all its power in the center, it ultimately eats its young. It ultimately comes after its own. It consumes its own proponents. That's just reading about the last days of Mussolini a month ago. And it's just like, right out of the people get lost and get hung out to dry. So I want to pay as much attention to the authoritarian side of this, the people who've cast their lot with the empire, who get burned by it all. So is Andor a left-wing show? Because this is something that I've said a couple times in my writing about it, using it literally as an example, as a conservative columnist of a work of art that I think of as having different politics from my own that I really, really like. And I've had friends, especially on the right, come back to me and say, 'Oh, it's not left-wing or right-wing. It's just a TV show about resistance to tyranny.' But I think you've made a left-wing work of art. What do you think. I never think about it that way. It was never I mean, I never do. I don't, but it's a story. But it's a political story about revolutionary the empire. Do you identify with the empire. No, I don't, but I don't think that you have to be left-wing to resist authoritarianism. But I see the Empire as you just described it. It's a fascist. It's presented as a fascist institution that doesn't have any, Communist pretense to solidarity or anything like that. It's fascist and authoritarian. And you're meditating on what revolutionary politics looks like in the shadow of that. I mean, who. So you talked about all this history that you brought in. So what. Talk about that history a little bit. I mean, I've had a very I'm my education is very, very spotty and not college graduate and but completely autodidactic. I grew up in a house with an amazing library. And I've been a very active reader my whole life, and I've done just an incredible number of deep dives in my life where I've become obsessed with all kinds of different things, and I've made my own syllabus and I mean, I probably read Stefan zweig's Marie Antoinette when I was 15 or 16 years old and started a French Revolution Jag. And then I probably revisited that. I probably revisited the French Revolution half a dozen times in my life, and probably the last thing I read was oh, there's a great novel. Hilary Mantel's a place of greater safety. Oh Yeah. No, it's a terrific book, amazing book. And so I've done that. And I was obsessed with the Russian Revolution. And then the literature on that has expanded over time and the show trials and how have you ever seen house of government. It's just an incredible book. And different times, different things will come out. Oliver Cromwell, Zapata, the Roman revolutions, I mean, my syllabus for the show is it just goes back too far and too deep. It's just something I've always been fascinated in. I don't think of the show as a left-wing show, and I. I don't want you to think that I came on the show. I said before I saw the opportunity to use all this material and to dig into all these things. But that is not how I write. It's completely antithetical to the way I write. I write very, very small. I trust my instincts are going to take me someplace larger if I'm doing it right, but it's really almost exclusively all about character. I'm a really, really. I plot through dialogue. I go very, very deep, and you can see how many characters I have and how many I'm carrying. And I don't think of it as pushing or promoting or anything, in fact, the ideology. But you're rooted. But in the end, I mean, in the end, you're rooting. Look, I guess here's how I here's how I think about it. I've had versions. So this is a show to story about where you are rooting for revolutionaries against a fascist regime. You, as you said, you're not. You're not rooting for the empire in the end. But then it does. So that, to me is the political foundation of the work. And that's why I use the term left-wing, not because you have a 10 point list of revolutionary demands that you. Tony Gilroy support, but you're telling a story in which basically you're on the side of the radicals and the revolutionaries. But then at the same time, and this is why I think it is effective art. What I think you've been able to do, maybe coming out of all of this autodidactic reading is give people a window into why the radicals, even if you're rooting for them, you can see how things can go wrong. That is what I really like about the show's approach to politics is that there's no ever. What's fascinating is there's no. And in particularly in the second season, I was really eager to get into the idea of particularly for and using Stellan Skarsgard character luthen as the and Forrest Whitaker's character as the original gangsters and the difficulty of integrating the ancestors of radicalism into a coalition and watching a coalition try to come together. But I never there's never anybody, I don't think, who ever espouses an actual ideology of what they want to achieve at the end, other than to please leave US alone, stop killing us, stop destroying our communities. Don't build the Death Star and kill us. There's not AI never have AI never have a character. I don't think stand up and say, this is the Galaxy that I am trying to build and this is what I want to see. Now that's fair. And that is, in fact, literally the argument that some of my more libertarian friends who love the show have made to me saying oh, this is ultimately a show about localism and leaving us alone against the depredations of tyranny. But talk, talk a little bit about how you portray the people who serve the empire, though I am, I'm with everybody on the show. I have to say, without sounding like a t-shirt or a cliche. I mean, I have to live through every single one of them to do it properly. I have to really feel for every single person on the show. And there's no shortcut to that other than to empathetically dive into every person's point of view and every person's, every person's insecurities. And I'm as invested in partagaz and and Deedra meero and syril as any of the other characters on the show. I mean, and these are just again, these are the characters who are imperial in various ways. Gestapo say they're Gestapo. Yeah, exactly. I don't. I don't have the luxury. That sounds so. That's so glib. I just don't I don't have any other way to work other than to fully be with everybody that I'm writing for and taking care of. And then as a dramatist, I also have actual human beings who are doing this that are vivid and alive for me. And, and so your empathetic response to the character is also then as an element of transference to the people that are playing the parts. And I don't know any other way to do it. I just go back to your last point about before we move on from it. Yeah I think if there's any ideology in the show at all that is expressed, that seems consistent through the whole thing, and it is something that I think and I don't know where that I don't know where it lines up. I think it would probably be just as confusing for you to try to make a left right marker on it, but I feel the disruption of community and the destruction of community and all the varieties of community, whether it's on a large scale with colonialism or if it's on a small scale with a city and a town or a family, or the Empire in the show is consuming and destroying communities everywhere. And the concept of community is the universal. I think that's the universal flag that I can fly all the way through the whole show and feel comfortable with. I mean, to me, what you've just described, the mentality of always trying to see the world through your character's eyes, through each character's eyes, right. Even when they're on opposing sides, even when they represent a community destroying perspective that you yourself are against, is the key to doing successful art about politics. But it's tremendous. It seems tremendously hard, I think, for people to do in the sense that when I think about most art that tries to capture American politics, certainly. But any kind of politics that gets close to the present moment, certainly there's just a failure of a conspicuous failure of empathy for anyone who's not on the same side as the screenwriter, the novelist, the filmmaker, and so on. That's my sense of things. And again, it's one reason that I appreciate Andor, I think. Do you think that they're like in terms of cinema, modern cinema or modern TV. Do you think there are other shows and movies that tackle politics that you admire, that you think, pull this off, this kind of cross political empathy. I don't know. I don't want to I don't know if I want to answer that by giving a list of shows. Maybe I'm going to push deeper on that. I'm going to push a little. That's even better. Please push deeper. I'm going to push deeper on that. Like I heard, I have to study up a little bit to come on a podcast like this with an interview like this, because it's a very serious. It's a very serious. No, the bar is higher. This is. No, this is no, it's seriously, man. This is a trickier conversation than most of the ones I have to have on this. I listened to the podcast that you did with the I don't the gentleman's name, the one who's trying to revive the vibe shift into the right. Jonathan Keeperman. Yeah, right-wing, publisher. Yep. Why is- why is, not just Hollywood, you can say, why is Hollywood for the last 100 years, been vaguely been progressive or been liberal? I think it's a much larger. I'll go farther and say, why is almost all literature. Why is almost all art that involves humans trend progressive. Let's stick with Hollywood. You can't make a living as an actor or as a writer or a director without an the higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you're going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It's just baked in. You're trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other. And what is it like to look from this. And people may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans. And that may be good writing or bad writing. And there may be people that have an ax to grind. But in general, empathy is empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better. I am at my job. And that is what actors do. I have to play. I'm going on. I'm going on Broadway. I'm playing a villain for six months. I got to live in that. I'm playing the slave. I'm playing the fisherman. I'm playing the nurse. I'm the murderer. You have to get in there. You have to live lives through other people. I think that the simple act of that transformation and that process automatically gives you a more what I would describe as a more generous and progressive point of view. It just has to. And I don't see how you can buy if you're going to reissue the Hardy Boys or something, or try to twist a nod and say that Melville or the Coen brothers or made a piece of right-wing art because you see something in there. I think it really Mrs. the larger point of the struggle that movement is going to be up against. Does that make any sense to you. I mean, yeah, I think that is the view of many, if not most people who work in the arts that I've had sustained conversations with about politics, why art tends to be liberal or progressive coded and so on. I think just to speak up on behalf of the conservative critique, I think you would say a couple of things. One is that liberalism and progressivism itself is in 21st century America is a power structure, a set of assumptions, views about who's good, who's bad. It passes a certain kind of judgment on the past. I think that can be antithetical to serious art, that you get a lot of progressivism where it's like, the moral arc of the universe is always bending in a particular direction, and everyone in the past who had different views is benighted and wrong. And so on. And that is its own failure of empathy and understanding, I think, and one that progressives are particularly prone to. So the empathy for the empathy for events is what you're saying. No, the empathy for people who existed, who had views that contemporary progressives now considered consider benighted, for instance Yeah, but I'm trying to make a deeper point. Well, but you're asking me why. I'm saying just the act of the job, just the act of the day to day work puts you. It doesn't matter. The ideology there may be exceptions to all across the spectrum, but in general, the act of pretending to be someone else. Or many actors don't like to use the word pretending, and writers don't like to use the word pretending. The act of inhabiting or becoming someone else in any iteration, in any historical setting. Just that simple transformation and the work that goes into that until the point where you can access it immediately, that act, I won't put it. I'm very eager to put it in a religious context for you because I know that's I know what a strong flavor that is on this show. It perhaps not religious, but it is an act of transformation that is, it's more than a magic trick. And it doesn't put you it doesn't necessarily put you in an ideological, it doesn't cast your vote, but it does open your mind in a way that forces you to think twice about the person who's sitting next to you on the bus. And I guess what I'm just trying to suggest is that some people do it better than others. Some artists do it better than others. And, and but there is also a pattern where art that is made in an environment where people share a particular worldview, where it fails the test, you're setting it right. The test of empathy is often when it's confronting people who hold views or represent ideas or institutions or anything else that contemporary progressives don't favor. So just to give you an example, right. And again, you don't have to agree with this because don't have to criticize any of your colleagues in the business. But if you go back and watch a movie like the shape of water. Guillermo Del Toro's movie that won Best Picture, at the beginning of what we now think of as the great, the great awokening. That's a movie where in a way, it's a very empathetic movie. It's a movie about how a band of outsiders, minorities, non-humans and so on band together to defeat an evil authoritarian figure. But the evil authoritarian figure is supposed to be like the evil representative of white Christian McCarthyite masculinity. And Michael Shannon has does it, in a way, a very good job of portraying the role. But as I sit there watching the movie, it's a movie that absolutely has no empathy for anyone outside its circle of virtuous outsiders. It has no sense of what it would, what would actually be like to be, a patriotic in that picture. Yeah O.K. Good, good. I don't think it's a subtle. I don't think it's a subtle picture. And I think it's doing what. What will I hit. I mean, what will I come back with. Let's talk about in the Heat of the Night. Let me know. Let's talk about in the Heat of the Night for one second just to pick a. O.K, I don't know. I mean, in the Heat of the Night, the Rod Steiger character, the Southern Sheriff, couldn't be more of a cliche as the movie starts. Couldn't be more of a living caricature of what we all expect and lives on those expectations. As the movie tracks along, and as some great writing and great directing and great acting gets done. You gradually become to realize that everybody involved in that picture is absolutely as invested in him as they are in Sidney Poitier. And they're absolutely invested in that character as much as they are in any other character. And the whole thing is alive. And the difference between shape of water is it wants to be Gothic. I'm not sure what Guillermo was going for there. It's a different kind of movie. But when people really care about it, they get there, I don't know. Well, let me give. I agree with you completely about in the Heat of the Night. Let me give you an example from your own work. Which is, I think, the best movie that you made. You've only you've only actually you've directed three movies. How many movies have you directed. Three movies. Yes 3 movies. So So they're all good, to be clear. But the best of them are, I think, by general consensus, is Michael Clayton, which is a movie stars George Clooney as a lawyer who's a fixer who ends up dealing with a case of corporate malfeasance where a company poisoned essentially poisoned a town, poisoned kids. And one of his colleagues has a crisis of conscience, played by or essentially has a mental breakdown driven by a crisis of conscience. And this is, again, I would describe this as a movie I love. I love Michael Clayton. I would again describe it as kind of a left-wing movie. It's a movie about how why they're evil. Why is that O.K. Because the foundation of the movie and I would say this, if you make a movie, if you make a movie, that's about where the moral foundation of the movie is that the American military is awesome and kicks ass. I might love that movie or I might dislike it, but I would call that a kind of right leaning movie. And if you make a movie about how evil corporations are poisoning your children, I call that a left-wing movie, right? But what I want to get to is the villain in that movie is played by Tilda Swinton. Terrific performance. And to me, you create her and she creates the character to write in a way that is again, fulfills the goal of creating a character who you're rooting against, who's obviously the bad guy, but who is deeply human, fascinating, bizarre, totally relatable in various ways, again, in a way that I think lots of movies that have a political perspective fail at. And that's all I'm getting at. I think that there is a way in which you can make a movie that has a political point of view that captures the fullness of reality, and it's hard to do, and you do it well, and not everyone does. This isn't even a question. I'm just. I'm just. I'm trying to. I'm trying to get you. Yeah all right, well, let me respond to that. I think you might have an opening statement in on Andor just because it is essentially there's a lot of politics and fascism is identified and but I just it's funny, I just saw Clayton for the first time in 18 years. The night before last. Really they had a screening in La. Yeah, they had a show print and we were out promoting Andor and they tied it in with that. I hadn't seen it in 18 years, and I in a packed theater just two nights ago and saw it again. So it's fresh in my mind. I really don't I'm going to really push back against left wing on that picture. I don't understand at all what is left or right about poisoning people with a pesticide and lying about it. I don't think anybody on the right wants to be if I was let's keep my politics out of it. But if I can't see myself ever, in any iteration of myself, identifying with the corporation that has been fighting a class action suit for poisoning people and. But that's what. But wait, Tilda Swinton's character is so she's such a lost person. She has to practice being herself. So you can imagine the volume of legal issues. It's quite substantial. And as general counsel, what I do, what our in-house department does, she's completely if there's a political element about the movie, I think at all, it's Tilda Swinton trying to falsely approximate what she thinks may be male corporate behaviors. You might be able to make an argument about that, but Yeah, who wants to defend pesticides. I don't think it's left or right at all. I think it's about people. And I think I mean, I think I'm a moralist, if you want to know the truth. I mean in the number one definition, not the number two definition, but I think I really in the end, I think there's a moral code that I have and I think that gets expressed a lot, but it's impossible for me to see Clayton as an ideological thing. I mean, well, it's just that this is the last thing I'll say, because I want to ask you a different question about Michael Clayton. The last thing I'll say is just. But do you. Of course, of course, of course. You don't identify with the corporation that's using pesticides to poison the children. Well, then. But that's your alternative. Left right. If I made if I made a movie, let's say I made a movie. And it was about a English department, faculty that was led by African-American lesbian professor that persecuted a virtuous Catholic, conservative academic and got him fired. I would feel like I'd made kind of a right-wing movie. But then I could say oh, well, what are you on the side of persecuting? Persecuting Catholic intellectuals? No no one's on that side. Well, no, but who you choose as your villains does have political implications. That's all I'm saying. So let me ask you a different question about Michael Clayton, which is this. Go ahead. So why didn't you make more movies like Michael Clayton. It's been 18 years. Why are there duplicity came out after that. And then you did a Bourne movie and then you got sucked into the Star Wars universe. But I watched that movie. I was like, I could watch five more movies, 10 more movies like that from Tony Gilroy. I mean, well, that's AI mean, if you look at my if you look at my complete CV, it's pretty chaotic. And you could tell that I as to go back to what we said before, I'm always looking. I don't really want to do anything that I've done before. Why I really wanted to make duplicity. I really had a gasp making it. I went from there to legacy. I really tried to give. I'd been on the Bourne. I've been with the Bourne franchise for many years and that's its own shambolic success. And I wanted to give them a Marvel universe in a way. We really had a way of doing that there was just too much bad blood and too much confusion, that it didn't work. The life of a screenwriter, the life of a writer director. I have not been able to pick and choose what I've wanted to do. I have had many films shot down from under me, know most of them. And that's well, that's the core of the question. So I grew up younger than you. I grew up in the 1990s, which meant that for me, as a teenager, someone who was not as crazed about the movies maybe as you were, but who liked them a lot, and they were a big part of my life hanging out, going to the movies on weekends. I took it for granted then that you would have serious movies for grown UPS, fun original movies, a movie you worked on. Devil's advocate. The Pacino. Keanu right. So that was the kind of movie that going to the movies meant you were going to see a big movie star giving you a big speech, playing Satan in a Manhattan skyrise. Wow Oh yeah. Yeah step on up, son. Come on. That's good. You got to hold on to that fury. That was great stuff. And to me, the big change in American pop culture in the last 20 years is that the world that made movies like Michael Clayton, movies like devil's advocate possible has just gone away. And I'm wondering if you agree with that. It just seems incredibly hard going. You stopped going to the theater. You stopped going to the theater. Well, I started with a capital Y. I stopped going to the theater. No, I take that personally because I do have a lot of kids, and I don't get to the movie theater. You don't know it is my fault personally. Totally no, I mean the. Oh, man. I've been around so long. I've seen this whole thing. I've seen all these dynastic changes happen and ridden it through. The economics are just what they are. And Michael Clayton existed in that moment where the model on that movie is, if I could get a movie star whose full freight price was basically the cost of the movie, and they do the movie for free, I had a movie. I mean, even at that point, if George is going to come in, I think the movie cost 20. I think George was getting 15, 20 at that point, and he waves his fee. He owns the picture. That's how that movie gets made. That model began to degrade over time, and now it's an impossibility. I mean, now Clayton is an absolute streaming show. Well, there aren't movies. There aren't movie stars anymore. That's There are no movie stars anymore. No, there are no movie stars. And so all of these things have changed. So my father did. My father was in the same business. My brothers were in the same business. I have grown up on this my whole life. It's prenatal for me and one of the major, most important things carved in stone that I know. It does no good to complain about the weather, man. You got to go out. You got to. You got to see what's there. Now I don't want to I grew up my brothers and I grew up and my friends and I grew up with a generation of writers before US, Great writers and great producers and directors and whatever. But they many of them, became embittered by the changing landscape and the changing topography of what had happened. And that's a lesson that I've taken away. I'm staying flexible. I want to work. I want to be obsessed. I want to work on something that I'm into. What gives you hope right now. Like, do you think do you think that we are just stuck in a world where can maybe make something great inside a franchise. But mostly movies for grown UPS are over. Or are you do you think things are going to get better. I don't man. Better, I think there's a couple. There's a couple, there's a couple really significant things. I mean, I just personally I have a movie that I'm hoping to get greenlit very soon that's very much that I go back and direct, and it's about movie music and it's certainly not Clayton that it's a thriller, but it's very much in the same scale. And it's very ambitious and unusual and it's and and I think you'd find it if I get to make it, I think you'd say oh, this is the thing I was talking about. But Yeah. What's new and good. I'll tell you what's good. What's good is time. The two major developments, I would say, are the best developments in recent years is one is Tony Soprano because prior to Tony Soprano, every writer who ever went into a pitch meeting or ever dealt with an actor, there was always a note. Can we make this character more sympathetic. How do we make how do we make Ross more sympathetic. Should we give you those notes. I get those notes from my producers every week. You had a dog. If you had a dog there, a puppy, it would be a lot better. After Tony Soprano, people really began to realize something that had already been staring at them, which is that characters need to be fascinating and have to be relatable in some way, but they have to be fascinating more than anything else. And sympathetic is wasn't the characteristic that everybody wanted. I think that's a huge tectonic development. I think the other development that's probably more significant is time, the ability to tailor the size of the Canvas or build a house to the lot and appropriately is an incredibly liberating creative. Development that's transformative. I have a story. Does it really want to fit into a 3. Three hours. Does it really want to fit into seven hours. Does it really want to be 24 episodes. Is it really just a movie. I think how shows are delivered time will now be. It's just I mean, I can't stress how. It's almost as if you added perspective to painting it's shadow or something. It's really like that's a really major development. Now, all that said, all that happiness and everything, that's great. And I listen to your I podcast, I was talking to people in La the last couple of days. I've heard some just absolutely Gothic dire information or prognostication about I don't know how to deal with that. I don't know how to think about it. I don't know what you did with it. When you finished that podcast, what did you think when you were done with that podcast. Did you want to go out to the parking lot and scream or what I didn't fully believe it. That's the truth, right. I don't think the world's ending in 2027. I think with the movies it's a question about I hope you're hope I'm right. I hope I'm right too. We'll find out. I hope you're right, man. But to me, the question with the great question is an audience question for your business. If you get an AI that can generate 1,500 simulated versions of Michael Clayton or Andor and let's be honest, it'll be 1,500 simulated versions of a Marvel movie or Star Wars show. And the actors aren't real, and there's no actual screenwriter behind it. Do people want that. And I think that they don't in the end, that even if most people watch Andor, don't know who Tony Gilroy is, in the end, they want to think that there is a mind and a human being behind the story, just as they definitely want to think that you're talking about the work your actors do that it's like it's Tilda Swinton and George Clooney playing those characters. Even in an age when movie stars have declined, people want to think they don't want AI simulacrum playing a fictional character. And this may be my total naiveté, but I do think that's what it comes down to for Hollywood. With it's does the audience accept the substitution of whatever I can do for what you can do. And I'm hopeful that they don't. I mean, I think that's I'll talk about that for one minute, but I think it's subsidiary to well, maybe people will have nothing else to do to watch because they won't have any jobs and they won't have anything. I mean, or maybe it's a Chinese. No, I. I 2027. Yeah no, I mean it's so terrifying. There won't be a movie business. I don't want to be I mean, one of my I think, personal philosophy that I've and it's not something again, it's not an agenda I put in. I find out forensically what you really think when you go out and sell your picture. It's really an odd thing. And over time, I've really become more aware in these kind of conversations and post facto, what I've really been doing. And one of the things I feel I've really been doing, I think human behavior and human insecurities and just all the things that make us chaotic, complicated beings, has always had a corrosive effect on every technology and weapon and everything that's been thrown in its way. I think it's like water. It leaks down and it rusts. It's managed to wonderfully rust out all of the things that have been thrown at it before. I don't know if this is one that we can beat in your scenario. Maybe it's true. Maybe live theater will become just this cult like thing. Maybe because maybe there'll be some huge, incredible Renaissance of return to an acoustic community in every way, shape, or form. I don't know, but I am not sanguine about the next corner we're going to turn, and that's something I have. No, I don't we have no frame of reference for that. So absent that I would try to be optimistic I suppose. So that's a dark place Tony. So give me some light. Give me some advice right now. Set aside I just the movie industry without the total transformation, just the movie and TV industry that you're in right now. Give me advice for the young Tony Gilroy or the would be Tony Gilroy, the would be screenwriter, Director, whatever else of 2025. What would you tell them. Well, I give the same advice. All these people come and kids come and whatever. I mean, it's simple. They're young, they're eager, they're eager to learn. No, but I mean, have something to say. It's just people can't be doing this job because they think it's cool or the money's good or whatever. I mean, there's no point in this. You have something to say. The optimistic other thing is, where do you ever go. What? supermarket. What train ride. What bus. What do people talk about everywhere. They talk about what are you watching. What are you seeing. Did you see this. What episode are you on. The amount of narrative that is being consumed and I guess the leisure time liberation and the accelerated just the delivery systems that can bring it to you. I mean, narrative is an essential food group to the human experience, and it has never not been. Thus will that go away because it's a machine doing it. I don't know how will machines do it. Will they do it better. Will people accept that I have no idea. But people, man, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. I mean, a lot of times I'll tell writers if they're telling me, one of the things I always say is it's really good to tell your story. If you're working on something, it's a campfire story. I mean, the best writers are people that could sit down. I could sit down. And I really think confidently with a little bit of lead time and and and a vodka in my hand at a campfire, I can hold your attention. I can really hold your attention. That's really valuable. That never ends. So that seems to be proven. Well then, well then we'll if the AI 2027 scenario is real, we'll agree to meet up around the campfire in the post-apocalyptic ruins. And you can tell me a story, Tony. And until then, thank you so much. Thank you, I will Thank you so much. Below is an edited transcript of an episode of 'Interesting Times.' We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player below or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Ross Douthat: From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat and this is 'Interesting Times.' American pop culture is in trouble. The Hollywood dream factory has gone stagnant, recycling the same stories time and time again. Giants like Marvel seem too big to fail, but they've lost the ability to tell us new and surprising stories — with one notable exception. The 'Star Wars' serial 'Andor' has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise, pleasing obsessive fans and critics alike. Part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political and, to my mind, left-wing perspective on its world, without feeling at all like tedious propaganda. My guest today is the showrunner behind 'Andor,' Tony Gilroy. We're going to talk about how exactly he made 'Star Wars' great again, how art and politics interact in a show about radicals trying to defeat fascism, and whether Hollywood can tell stories for grown-ups again. So, Tony Gilroy, welcome to 'Interesting Times.' Tony Gilroy: Thank you for having me. Douthat: I want to start by congratulating you on what I personally think a large number of critics and a sizable fraction of the viewing public consider the most successful 'Star Wars' production, maybe since the original trilogy. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
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‘Andor' Creator on That Stunner 'Genocide' Speech and Its Real-Life Inspiration
Great sci-fi often serves as an allegory for current social and political issues. But never before has Star Wars hit such a topical bullseye — intentional or not — as Tuesday's episodes of Andor season two when a character delivered a stunner speech that warned of rising government authoritarianism, the dilution of fact-based reality, and the reluctance to use the word 'genocide.' More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Andor' Star Denise Gough on Dedra Meero's Worst Nightmare Coming True How May the 4th Became Known as Star Wars Day and How It's Being Celebrated The Best May the 4th Gifts for 'Star Wars' Superfans, from R2-D2 Watches to the Force-Inspired Candles Airing on Disney+ the same day a Drudge Report headline became the latest to warn of 'America's Slide Into Authoritarianism,' the acclaimed drama series featured a sequence where the courageous politician Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) risks her life to deliver a speech before the Galactic Senate where she furiously attacked Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial forces. But one can also easily imagine her words being said by a politician on C-SPAN right now. 'I believe we are in crisis,' Mothma says. 'The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.' And then, referring to a prior sequence where Imperial forces massacred peaceful protesters on the planet Ghorman — a world the Imperials invaded to exploit a precious mineral — Mothma says, 'What took place yesterday… was unprovoked genocide.' At this, the other senators cry out in protest at Mothma's use of the word. 'Yes, genocide!' she repeated. 'And the monster screaming the loudest, that we helped create, the monster who will come for us all, soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.' It's worth noting that Andor season two began production in November 2022 and wrapped around February 2024. So filming was completed long before the reelection of Donald Trump and just a few months after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 (the latter having sparked much debate among experts over the last two years — such as here and here — over the right or wrongness of using the word 'genocide' when describing Israel's military response in Gaza). Nonetheless, the scene has some viewers on social media interpreting the moment as pro-Palestinian. Asked about the sequence and its real-life inspirations, Andor creator Tony Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter, 'The really sorry truth about the about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what's happening to them.' Continued Gilroy: 'I mean, the control of truth has always been a scabbard of power. Power dictates the narrative, and always has tried to always do that. Look at what the Empire does to Ghorman with their propaganda campaign. The very first scene [in the season] that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that's based on the Wannsee convention — the convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch. You could say all this about the Gulf of Tonkin — which got America into Vietnam — or you could say the burning of the Reichstag [which paved the way to the Nazi's rise to power], or you could say the sinking of the Lusitania [which pushed America into World War I]. You go all the way through history, and power is the control of truth. So I think with that speech, we were looking to be timeless and classic.' Added the creator, a bit wearily, 'And I'm not psychic.' The second and final season of the Star Wars drama has been not pulling punches when it comes to depicting a wartime drama. In addition to that Wannsee convention scene (see the real-life photos and how closely the Andor setting matched up), the show made headlines during its premiere episodes by staging the first rape attempt in Star Wars content in a scene involving Bix (Adria Arjona). 'I get one shot to tell everything I know — or can discover, or that I've learned — about revolution, about battles, with as many incidents and as many colors as I can get in there, without having [the story] tip over,' Gilroy said about the latter sequence. 'I mean, let's be honest, man: The history of civilization, there's a huge arterial component of it that's rape. All of us who are here — we are all the product of rape. I mean armies and power throughout history [have committed rape]. So to not touch on it, in some way… It just was organic and it felt right, coming about as a power trip for this guy. I was really trying to make a path for Bix that would ultimately lead to clarity — but a difficult path to get back to clarity.' Andor Disney+'s acclaimed Star Wars drama series which currently has the highest rating of any Star Wars TV show or movie on Rotten Tomatoes. The show follows the adventures of Rebel Alliance leader Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and leads up to the events in the film Rogue One. The final three episodes air next week. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
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‘Andor' Team Breaks Down Their Favorite Series Moments, Including That Mon Mothma Speech
Hundreds of Star Wars fans gathered at the Writers' Guild Theater in Los Angeles on Friday night for 'An Evening With Andor,' a PaleyLive finale celebration of one of the franchise's most beloved series. The audience cheered wildly when cast members Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Ben Mendelsohn, Genevieve O'Reilly and executive producers Tony Gilroy and Sanne Wohlenberg arrived for an extended Q&A moderated by comedian and Star Wars fanatic Patton Oswalt. More from The Hollywood Reporter Keeping It Real: Which Effects in 'Andor' Were More Actual Than Special Streaming Ratings: 'The Four Seasons' Blooms in Premiere Week, 'You' Stays on Top Why FX's 'Adults' Team Has Been Partying at Laundromats However, fans hoping that creator Tony Gilroy would continue to deliver content set in a time long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, will be disappointed. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter on a red carpet before the event, the Andor creator shared that it may be some time before he returns to the Star Wars universe. 'Rogue is ten years ago, and this is six years of my life, and it's 26 hours of programming,' he noted. 'I mean, never say never, but I want to direct again. Not right now.' Gilroy also shared his favorite scene from the series — which wrapped up its second and final season earlier this month — and the one he was most disappointed not to have included: 'Eedy coming for lunch, coming over to Dedre's apartment. I could write Eedy all day. I was so disappointed I couldn't get Eedy going to Luthen's gallery. I was like, 'Oh, my God, that's a half-hour scene.' I really wish I could have written that.' Luna, who plays series hero Cassian Andor, shared his favorite scene, which came at a decidedly more dramatic moment in the story. 'The whole Ghorman massacre was so intense, deep and emotional,' he told THR. 'It was definitely something I'm not going to forget. There were shots where everything was happening at the same time. There were moments when there were multiple cameras and we were executing the whole thing with all the extras, stunts, the effects and fires and detonations and fights. It looked incredible.' The sold-out audience cheered loudly throughout the screening of episode nine, which played in the theater before the Q&A. During the panel, Luna shared that the production's dedication to creating an authentic universe through practical sets and effects allowed the actors to deliver their best performances. 'If there was a drawer, there was something inside of it. There was a logic in the kitchen for cooking. Many times, the production design team would come and explain to you the logic of the set,' he explained. 'The job of the actor becomes possible. It's not about you and the words, it's about you living in the moment.' Gilroy added, 'The greatest thing that we did was we were able to inspire and allow mania in every department. People want to go crazy. They want to do their work. If you give them enough time and just enough money and say, 'Ok, yeah. Go further than you've ever wanted to go before.' We let people go nuts and people want to go crazy and every department people were so happy to do all this crazy shit.' One of the series' most talked-about moments was a stirring speech condemning fascism delivered by Senator and future rebel leader Mon Mothma, played by O'Reilly. She shared with THR how she was able to deliver such a powerful performance. 'Initially, we would film it in sections, and [Gilroy] said to me, 'You want to do the whole speech, don't you?' And I said, 'Yes, I do. ' I want to feel, I want to have to stand up and give that speech many times so I could feel it as an actor,' O'Reilly said. 'I would have to carve the nuance of when she was focused, when she was distracted, when she was fearful, so that you could fill a speech with that. I think this whole piece is an examination of courage, the courage of ordinary folk. But she doesn't quite know it's courageous in the moment. It's full of self-doubt and fear. I could find her courage within the words and within her voice.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
