John Hillcoat.

Marc and I were at the Apple Store in Soho last Tuesday.

No, we weren't there to admire the Appletech on display, although I must admit that it's one of my favorite pastimes. John Hillcoat, director of the soon to released film The Road was there to speak about the movie. As Marc and I were ardent fans of The Proposition (a badass Australian western, also directed by Hillcoat) and Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, it seemed like a pretty logical thing to do.

The moderator/interviewer wasn't too inspiring, but things got a lot better when they opened up the floor to questions from the audience. Marc totally got up and asked a question, which is only cool because they were filming the interview which means that if you download the John Hillcoat interview from iTunes Podcasts, you'll probably hear/see Marc in it. Well, his question was pretty cool too, but the fact that he's on the podcast is so much more fucking cooler.

Another guy admitted to having smoked a joint before asking his question, whereupon things in the room immediately got very quiet and awkward. I wonder if they left the guy in the podcast. I have a feeling they might have edited him out.

What made it all worthwhile, though, was when John Hillcoat started to paint a very dreary, apocalyptic view of the future of the film industry. Well, what he basically said was, "for the next eighteen months, the film studios will fund and release nothing but franchise films and low budget comedies." He then railed on about how the faltering economy had scared film studios out of taking risks, and that in this day and age it would be nearly impossible to get the studios to agree to produce a film like The Road. Or for that matter, a film like There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men (Marc can probably think up of better examples).

Pretty scary. But Marc got his copy of The Road signed by Hillcoat, which made everything better in the end.

I feel like this blog is slowly becoming The Adventures of Marc and Michael.