The Russo Brothers Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions
The Gray Man directors Anthony and Joe Russo take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answer the Internet's most searched questions about themselves. How were the Russo brothers discovered? How many Russo brothers are there? Who are their influences? Did they go to film school? Anthony and Joe answer all these questions and much more! THE GRAY MAN will be in select theaters on July 15 and on Netflix on July 22, https://www.netflix.com/thegrayman Director: Justin Wolfson Director of Photography: Malcolm Cook Editor: Ryan Jeffrey Talent: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Melissa Cho Production Managers: Peter Brunette, Andressa Pelachi Camera Operator/Gaffer: Oliver Lukacs Audio: Kari Barber Production Assistant: Phillip Arless Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Video Transcript
ANTHONY RUSSO: Hello. I'm Anthony Russo.
JOE RUSSO: I'm Joe Russo, and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I would say that our number one note is do it again, faster. Action.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ANTHONY RUSSO: OK.
JOE RUSSO: All right, board number one here. What are the Russo brothers known for?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Their devastating good looks. Remember back--
JOE RUSSO: What?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Online, back in the day--
JOE RUSSO: Oh, the plumbing company?
ANTHONY RUSSO: There's plumbers in New Jersey, the Russo brothers, and then there's a pair of, like, I think, Italian singers.
JOE RUSSO: They were the original. What are the Russo brothers--
ANTHONY RUSSO: Favorite movies.
JOE RUSSO: Anything by Sergio Leone, anything by Truffaut, anything by Coppola--
ANTHONY RUSSO: Scorsese.
JOE RUSSO: Scorsese, Kubrick, the Bowery Boys, David Lean, any Abbott Costello film.
ANTHONY RUSSO: It's almost hard to name our favorite movies, because I feel like they're all the great movies. [LAUGHS]
JOE RUSSO: They are. What-- what if the Russo brothers directed "Justice League"? I think people conflate DC and Marvel.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What if-- oh, it's a play off the Marvel series "What If?"
JOE RUSSO: Is it?
ANTHONY RUSSO: I don't know how to answer that.
JOE RUSSO: See the Snyder cut. That's the definitive cut. You don't need to see anything else.
What did the Russo brothers do on "Community"? What didn't we do on "Community"? We executive produced that show, we directed a lot of the episodes, we cast that pilot, costumed it, designed it, shot it. We miss "Community." We miss our "Community" family, everybody but Chevy Chase.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Amazing [? writers. ?]
JOE RUSSO: We miss you too, Chevy. Not really.
What--
ANTHONY RUSSO: Questionable.
JOE RUSSO: What happened to the Russo brothers? I don't know what happened.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What didn't happen?
JOE RUSSO: It's like a year and a half after "Endgame," and they're like, what happened to those guys?
ANTHONY RUSSO: It might be that band in-- in Milwaukee that they're referring to.
JOE RUSSO: Remember when they hit-- hit their peak with "Endgame," and then they just fell off the map. All right, how were the Russo brothers discovered?
We were at a Film Festival called Slamdance in 1997. That's BC. And we had a film called "Pieces" that was a very nonlinear, experimental movie that only Soderbergh would love. And he did. And he helped us get our next film made, "Welcome to Collinwood," and here we are.
How many films have the Russo brothers directed?
ANTHONY RUSSO: We know the answer to this-- a lot.
JOE RUSSO: Under 10. But there's a lot of TV shows in there, there's a lot of commercials.
How do the Russo brothers direct actors?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Very carefully.
JOE RUSSO: Mm-hmm. You have to. We like to keep the actors from thinking too much, so we do give very concise directorial notes. Most of our work is done in prep with them. So when they get to set, they're ready to go.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We love actors, and we spend a lot of time speaking with them, prior to shooting, to sort of develop common understanding of the character, common understanding of the film, what we're going for.
JOE RUSSO: Then, when we get to set, we like to move fairly quickly.
ANTHONY RUSSO: One of us will try to confuse somebody, and then the other one will come in and try to clear it up.
JOE RUSSO: We'll give them contradictory notes to see who they like better.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah. How much does a Russo brothers--
JOE RUSSO: Movie cost.
ANTHONY RUSSO: --movie cost?
JOE RUSSO: I don't think we can answer that question.
ANTHONY RUSSO: It's a little embarrassing to answer that question.
JOE RUSSO: They're on the pricey side. I think we're at that point where there's only so much money you can spend, and anything other-- like, beyond that is irresponsible.
ANTHONY RUSSO: No matter how much money you have, you eventually run out.
JOE RUSSO: 1, 2, 3.
ANTHONY RUSSO: How many Russo brothers are there?
JOE RUSSO: Zeppo, Harpo, Groucho.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We like to point out the name, Russo, is similar to the name Jones in Italian in the sense there's a lot of them.
JOE RUSSO: What does the Russo brothers AGBO mean? AGBO is an interesting story that predates our time in the film business.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah.
JOE RUSSO: Anthony and I were working on a comedy show at a school we're both attending. We thought a great way to attract attention for this midnight comedy show we were doing on campus was to have a very grumpy local resident write a really shitty review.
ANTHONY RUSSO: But everything he hated about the show is everything we loved about the show.
JOE RUSSO: So we opened a phone book, and basically just scanned through it until we found the name [? Gozi ?] Agbo. And [? Gozi ?] Agbo became that angry local resident who trashed our show.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What I like about the name of our company the most, AGBO, is it makes me feel like I'm at the eye doctor and I have to read the chart.
JOE RUSSO: What is the Russo brothers' style?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Smooth.
JOE RUSSO: Yeah.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Cool under pressure.
JOE RUSSO: Bondesque. A common thread in our style is that we like to not have a common thread. Something Soderbergh taught us very early on, when he was mentoring us, was don't let the world pigeonhole you. Don't let them put you in a box.
We zig and zag as much as we possibly can. And it's more compelling to us to leave a trail of confusion.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What are the Russo brothers--
JOE RUSSO: --influences?
ANTHONY RUSSO: When we first started making movies together, if you forced us to say our favorite filmmaker, Truffaut might have come out of our moths.
JOE RUSSO: I think so. He was the best at balancing humor and tragedy.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What Marvel movies have the Russo brothers directed?
JOE RUSSO: I mean, I think the easy answer is you just google that. So go google it. Are the Russo brothers? I mean, that's, like, very philosophical.
Are the Russo brothers done with--
ANTHONY RUSSO: --done with marvel?
JOE RUSSO: Oh, man, that's a shitty question.
ANTHONY RUSSO: [LAUGHS]
JOE RUSSO: We're not going to answer that question. Are the Russo brothers good directors? I mean--
ANTHONY RUSSO: That's another shitty question.
JOE RUSSO: It's another shitty question. I mean, that really is a subjective question. So I think you're going to have to answer that for yourselves, or go to Twitter and let someone else tell you.
Are the Russo brothers auteurs? No, we're not. Actually, we don't like the notion of auteur filmmaking because there are 1,000 people that work on a movie. You sit at the film and you watch the credits roll. We reject the auteur theory. How do you like that?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Are the Russo brothers releasing a six-hour "Endgame"?
JOE RUSSO: I think the longest we ever had it was like three hours and 40 minutes.
ANTHONY RUSSO: If we did a supercut of "Infinity War" and "Endgame," we--
JOE RUSSO: Could, probably, between the two, there could be a six-hour cut. But I think those 40 minutes deserve to be on the editing floor.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah. That's why they went there in the first place.
JOE RUSSO: You have the director's cut. That's it. There's nothing else. Sorry.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah. Why the Russo brothers--
JOE RUSSO: Why were the Russo brothers hired?
ANTHONY RUSSO: I would put the question, were we, in fact, hired?
JOE RUSSO: Do we even exist?
ANTHONY RUSSO: I don't know.
JOE RUSSO: Are we sitting here right now?
ANTHONY RUSSO: I'll tell you this. A few times that I've been hired, it's because I really know how to bus tables.
JOE RUSSO: Why do the Russo brothers direct together? Because it's better than directing apart.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We learned how to make movies together. And I think that we just began a process with one another that just continued to grow.
JOE RUSSO: Why did the Russo brothers kill Loki? He deserved to die.
ANTHONY RUSSO: [CHUCKLES]
JOE RUSSO: That's all we're saying on that. Why did the Russo brothers--
ANTHONY RUSSO: --kill Iron Man? Ah, jeez. I see where this is going now.
JOE RUSSO: He deserved to die.
ANTHONY RUSSO: [EXHALES SHARPLY]
JOE RUSSO: Why do the Russo brothers--
ANTHONY RUSSO: --hate the Hulk?
JOE RUSSO: Oh, we nerfed the Hulk. We nerfed him. We just didn't know what to do with him. We were like, what? This big powerful character? What do we do with this big powerful character?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Can you find out who wrote this question? I'd like to talk to them.
- What would you say to them?
JOE RUSSO: To say to people who think we nerfed the Hulk? He deserved it. Lots of controversial-- Marvel fans responding. This one is just Russo brothers. It's very philosophical as well-- Russo brothers.
Can the Russo brothers speak Italian?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Un poco.
JOE RUSSO: We grew up in a very large Italian family, a very colorful Italian family, in Cleveland, Ohio. And I think our love for storytelling started at a very young age, where we'd all sit around the dinner tables on Sundays, as our extended family. There'd be 20, 30 people at a dinner, have multiple tables set up. Our great-grandmother would cook pasta then we tell each other stories about what happened that week. You'd make each other laugh.
You'd-- our notion of this communal storytelling comes from our dinners every Sunday, and you know, our love for telling stories. Probably one of the most significant influences on us, as artists, was growing up in the family that we grew up in.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah, I think so. And I also think that-- you know, our grandparents immigrated, our great-grandparents immigrated. When you have a family with an immigrant history, there's a journey inherent in the family's story, that you came from somewhere and you're going to somewhere. And there's sort of like those big questions about identity and purpose. That sort of spoke to our larger interest in storytelling.
JOE RUSSO: Russo brothers new movie "The Gray Man." Starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and Ana de Armas. It's an action thriller. It derives from our love of action thrillers as kids and film fans, growing up.
We like complex thematics. We think there's some really interesting modern thematics in the movie. It's one of those movies where we hope, you know, if you're eating your popcorn in the theater, that you forget to eat it for most of the movie, or if you're at home watching it, that you put down your cell phone.
ANTHONY RUSSO: What distinguishes this movie most from the action that we've done before is that it's more grounded in the real world. It's not a sci-fi world. It's not a fantasy world. It's the world we all live in. While there's many dimensions of the story that are larger than life, it still stays tethered to what human beings are capable of and limited by.
JOE RUSSO: Did the Russo brothers--
ANTHONY RUSSO: --go to film school?
JOE RUSSO: That's an interesting question.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yes and no.
JOE RUSSO: Because we made a movie. We made our first movie, an independent film, before we went to film school. Then we went to film school to use their equipment to finish the movie. Then we took that film to-- while, we were still in film school, to Slamdance, got discovered by Soderbergh, Steven Soderbergh, dropped out of film school. So we really never finished film school.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah. We did it a bit backwards. But I will say this. I think we both really appreciated our time there.
JOE RUSSO: We did. So who did the Russo brothers say is the strongest Avenger? I think we said--
ANTHONY RUSSO: And of them.
JOE RUSSO: --Wanda at one point, Captain Marvel at another point, Thor.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Certainly never said it's the Hulk.
JOE RUSSO: Certainly not the Hulk. He'd be low on the list, like, right underneath Groo. Remember Groo the Wanderer? He's, like, just below Groo the Wanderer.
All right, last question.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We skipped one.
JOE RUSSO: We skipped one, so we're going to go back, but we knew it was the best question, so we saved it for last.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Did the Russo brothers make "Stranger Things"?
JOE RUSSO: [LAUGHS]
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yes, we did.
JOE RUSSO: This is my favorite last question.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We made "Stranger Things."
JOE RUSSO: We did not make "Stranger Things." All credit on that goes to the Duffer brothers, who are incredibly talented, who are also twins. We are not twins.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Right. We're not twins.
JOE RUSSO: The Duffers are twins, right?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah, they're twins. Yeah.
JOE RUSSO: I was kidding.
[BOTH LAUGH]
ANTHONY RUSSO: I think my favorite question was, are the Russo brothers?
JOE RUSSO: Google is a powerful tool. It's interesting to know what-- what people think of you. And apparently, our legacy lies somewhere between the Duffer brothers and nerfing the Hulk.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
