I'm here with the cast and the director of the newly named The Hat Machine. Hi. How's it going?

Good. Good to be here.

It's really the Hurt Machine. Let's clarify before we go any further.

Good to see you again on the back lawn at South by Southwest. We saw you here last year.

Yeah, I was here last year with my film Short Term 12. Me and Brie Larson were out here. We had a great time. It's a movie that no one ever talked about and didn't have any buzz whatsoever. Died a quick and sudden death right after the festival. No, it did very well. It was really nice.

So the premise of this film, I know you wrote the film and directed it. Premise of this film, I love it because it's all about sort of like what what Young Hollywood is kind of about and so and what people are all about, it's social media and sort of like the implications of what's happening in the world and these two are dating in love but have never met. They've met online. Right.

Yeah, exactly. They're in a relationship uh but they meet over OkCupid. Um and the film follows what happens when uh John's character begins to suspect that Kate's character, who is ostensibly living in Berlin all this time, is actually secretly been living in New York right beside him since they began dating.

You ever heard of this app? Google this people by proximity. You meet people who wanna hook up like right now. Okay, so do all of you think do that you could actually be in love with somebody you've never met?

Sure.

You do? So like do you think it's a realistic premise that you could actually fall in love with somebody via Skype and via sort of email and text and phone calls?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's always room for the element of when you actually meet each other, but I think that sparks can fly in a in a variety of different, you know, over over different mediums.

Right. For real love, like deep real true.

Well, I don't know. My the first time I feel like I fell in love was like you know with movie stars when I was a kid and I mean it felt pretty real to me.

Okay, so we need to know.

Um, Marissa Tomei was my first big crush.

Okay.

I had a I had a I had a shrine on my wall, many pictures from her movies. Untamed Heart, love that movie.

All right, who were your crushes growing up?

Oh jeez, my crushes growing up. Uh, that's uh that's one I haven't given a ton of thought to. I think that my first real crush was definitely probably Britney Spears, I guess. That was a pretty big one for me when that first album came out. I I I actually bought that album. That was that was uh

Let's hear her go again. Oh, my goodness. Do you know the moves too? Did you go in your room? Did you do the dance and the

I I I bought the album and I thought that it was totally not a big deal that I like, you know, she went to Tower Records and I was like, oh yeah, I know, of course, of course. Um yeah yeah.

What about you, Kate?

Uh there were so many, so many. Uh Dennis Rodman?

Dennis Rodman? It's a bad boy persona. Oh yeah. Oh. There you go. I can relate to that. This that is actually true, but um

Edward Furlong in uh Terminator 2 was yeah, that was pretty much and Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites that formed my entirely.

Oh, thank you. Do you know he's here this week?

No.

Yes. Where? I don't know. If I knew, you and I would be going and yeah, I'm I'm with you on that one. So do you think that that a female perspective that you could fall in love via, you know, internet and

Sure, I do. It's realistic. I believe so. Yeah. I think it's so rare that you find a connection with anyone at all. Right. If you find one with somebody over the internet, that's great.

So, did you two when you were filming, did you because I know you meet at some point in the film. Did you um so did you do the majority of the filming scenes apart first or was it sort of scattered throughout? Was it sort of in chronological order?

Well, yeah, the the filming was done based on location. So, the film wasn't shot in in chronological order. Uh but we did save the scenes where John and Kate are together for the end of the film just because we felt emotionally like it would be nice to sort of build to that crescendo because all that does actually happen at the end of the film. Right.

Does it help as an actor?

It was great. Yeah. I I we I we built a very, you know, we we built a very real rapport in person like in between takes just hanging out. We had a very good time making the film. But then when we when we were doing all of our scenes, you know, we were separated by several stories because Kate was in another room and I was in a different room. We were doing the Skype scenes together. So when it got towards the end of shooting where we actually had to film stuff together, it was like, oh, how how do we act now that you know, when we're in three dimensions with each other. So I thought it was actually a very wise um format to

You were actually shooting the Skype scenes in real time like it was you were each shooting simultaneously. Right. So it was real Skyping. Right.

This is like real So real with all the perils of real Skyping including uh fading internet connections. So.

Right. That's the best part though. It's like when somebody's about to say something, you're like, is he gonna tell me he loves me? And it's like. Well, thanks for chatting with us. Can I borrow your hat? See you on the plane on the way back. See you at LAX. I'll give it back then, I promise.