This is Rumble with Michael Moore.
And I'm Michael Moore and welcome everyone.
So we have with us here today on Rumble, the creator of the
series I've been talking about now for a number of months,
maybe the best thing that I've seen on TV.
In the last year, he wrote Contagion a good decade or more
before COVID came along. He wrote and directed this
incredible film that we've discussed, called the Report,
dramatic version of the Senate committee that held the
investigation to figure out what was going on during the Bush
administration with the black sites, with the torture and this
series. It's on Apple plus TV.
It's called Extrapolations. I'm showing the first three
episodes of it in my Film Festival because it plays like
great cinema. It's an anthology series, and
when I was growing up these were somewhat common on television.
Maybe you've heard of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, where every week
it was a new story, like a like a small film.
And that's what Extrapolations is.
It's eight episodes, but it's not episodic TV.
There is a brand new story every week.
The extent of this begins first episode in the year, I believe
2036. The last episode takes place in
the year 2070. So while Extrapolations is set
in the quote future, it starts in the very near future like 13
years from right now and there have been great documentaries
made about the collapse of our planet.
I haven't seen anything to match this that has used fiction
drama, this anthology series mode here with this particular
issue and been able to tell such a powerful story.
I can't tell you how many times I've teared up watching these
eight stories now some of them characters that you are
introduced to in the first story, we'll call it the episode
first episode. You will see again maybe three
or four episodes down the road. Some of them not to the last
episode, some you'll see only once.
The actors that Scott convinced to do this, I mean it just TV
doesn't get this good. Meryl Streep is in it.
Kit Harington, who played Jon Snow on Game of Thrones.
He's the supposedly the the guy who's going to help save the
planet. He's got strong environmental
tendencies, except he's got to make at least a billion dollars
while he's saving Earth. On and on and on.
Edward Norton is in it. Forest Whitaker, Marion
Cotillard, David Schwimmer. Oh my God, so many great actors
in this. Some again, are only one
episode. Some come back 20 years later,
10 years later. I'm telling you, my friends,
you've not seen anything like this.
If you can convince people in your family, your friends, your
neighbors, your coworkers, your fellow classmates, this is just
great filmmaking. It's great drama and the
storytelling. By the end of of any particular
story, any particular episode here, you need to sit with it.
You need to think about it. You'll go to bed.
You'll be thinking about it tomorrow.
How often do you get to see a movie or something on streaming
on TV where literally it just sticks right, right to your
bones. And that's what extrapolations
does anyway. So, So before we bring Scott on
now, I want to thank the underwriter for today's episode.
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OK, it's time to bring on the great Scott Z Burns, the creator
of this incredible series on Apple TV.
And I I just can't tell you enough.
If you have nothing planned this weekend, this is a great binge
weekend. I Can't Sing Scott's praises
enough, but let's let Scott do some of the talking.
Scott Z Burns, writer, director, producer, creator, thank you so
much for making this series. And thank you for being on
Rumble here with me today. Thank you so much for everything
you just said. That was sort of a dream come
true for me, I should also say. We are in the middle of a strike
and I am a a member of the Writers Guild and we're not
supposed to be out promoting our products.
So I just want to say two things about that.
First of all, I'm doing this because Apple put the show in
front of the pay wall, so they're not profiting from this.
I am not certainly not profiting from it.
So I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the show free
from commerce. The other thing.
Which I will say about my Guild that I think is lovely is I've
spoken to them a few times during the strike about wanting
to take an opportunity to talk about climate.
And what I've said every time is part of being an adult means
that sometimes you have to deal with more than one difficult
situation at a time, and this is exactly that.
And Labor and Climate are not strangers.
We will encounter those two things more and more as time
goes on. That they encouraged me to talk
about the show and to talk about climate change.
Also thanks to those of you in the public, every poll that's
been taken during the writers and the actors strike shows 70%
or more of the American public support the writers and the
actors in this strike. And so I will speak on your
behalf, if that's OK, Scott, and thanking sure, the vast majority
of the American people who've been supporting us.
And thank you for also supporting the UAW.
So I really appreciate you saying what you said.
And of course, our unions and the UAW and others, our
environment, our collapse is first and foremost in the front
of all of their minds and their actions in trying to save this
planet. We're all in the same boat here
together. Just explain to the audience
here how this came together. Where did this idea come from?
Clearly you make films about social issues, social justice,
corruption and power, all the great work that you've done both
on TV and with movies. But I've never seen anything
like this. Thank you.
That means a lot. You know, we need to save the
planet so that we continue to argue about all the other things
that it's important for us to argue about.
For me, who's really more of a screenwriter and filmmaker, I
wanted to. See, what I could do with
fiction if it was informed by science and I just wanted to
tell human stories and I wanted to sort of test a hypothesis
that if it's a great story and it can move people, putting it
in in a climate changed world shouldn't diminish that.
That you know, as one of the people who works on our show,
Dorothy Portenberry is fond of saying.
The shows that don't address the fact that the climate's going to
be different or already is different, those are the science
fiction shows. Those are the shows that are
pretending with the world. Our show, it isn't.
You know, people should know. This is not the worst case
scenario. We spent years in in in a
writers room making sure we weren't doing the darkest
version and what I really wanted to tell.
Was the messy middle of the story not not the part where you
know, the world ends. The world does not end.
In our show, it doesn't. And I also wanted to find a time
horizon that made sense for a lot of different people.
Because one of the things we never talk about with climate is
how it affects different people in different places.
And if you have children. Your time horizon might be the
end of the century. If you have a lot of money, you
may not even have a time horizon.
It may be the end of your life if you're in a frontline
community that's dealing with issues surrounding pollution.
Or if you're in the Marshall Islands and the seas are coming
up around you, or you're in Alaska and you're going to lose
your entire community to sea level rise.
You're on the Gulf Coast and you're being hammered by
hurricanes. Your time horizon is very
different. And I wanted to honor the fact
that when we talk about climate change, just like when we talk
about a lot of other social ills like health insurance or
anything else, it really depends on who you are and what your
resources are. And so that was the goal of the
show, was to not put it so far in the future that you could
ignore it because it just seemed like a different world.
Because the future shows up in different places in different
increments. It's not, as it turns out, like
Star Trek and everything was just different.
You know, walking around New York City, there are beautiful,
really new buildings, and there are buildings from the 1800s
right next to each other. And so we tried to create a
future that honored that that the future shows up in different
places and different amounts. And so that's how we chose to
set our stories. And I shortly thereafter sent
the first script I wrote to Meryl Streep, who I'd worked
with on a film called The Laundromat.
We had a lovely conversation about that.
We got to the end of the conversation and she just said
okay, when do we do this and we're off to the races?
It's a very diverse cast. Leslie Uggams is in this, the
great Leslie Uggams. I mean, yeah.
So when in the first episode, as I mentioned, it starts in 2036,
thirteen years from now, and it starts at the annual United
Nations Gathering to discuss climate, yeah, it's called COP.
You know, Cop 15, COP 20. Cop 28 is in a couple of months
from right now. That'll be this year's version
of that extrapolations. The first episode starts with
Cop. 42128 right now, so 42 and you've seen the news reports of
these cop gatherings, you know, they're huge and they're people
from all over the world. And the the most shocking image
in this first episode, right out of the gate is the camera is in
the back of the room of. It was supposed to be a huge
room and it's being held in Tel Aviv and it's 2036 and the room
is virtually empty. There are representatives from
countries sitting around the typical UN half Oval table.
But there's there's there's lots of protests going on all over
the world. But it looks like literally
either people have given up or they realized having another cop
is not going to solve the problem.
We're so far down the road. This is a theme that is repeated
through all eight episodes. What made you decide to start
this way? I mean, you had to start
somewhere and you introduced us to the wealthy corporate head
who's got all these plans to quote save the species and, you
know get the carbon out of the atmosphere and all this.
But you can also see that he's he's really about the do re mi
more than he is about. Yeah, there doesn't seem to be
any shortage of of those people you know kicking around right
now especially in the tech sector and the cop phenomena is
is interesting. I mean, we're not that far away
from the reality of of of this show and and and when it begins
and. I worked with the UNA little bit
on the show and I wanted to make sure I I got the details of the
cop correct. They were very forthcoming about
their own concerns about how effective these kind of meetings
have been. And here we are three years
later and we're having it in Dubai and as we've heard this
week. The president of the COP is a
gentleman named Sultan Al Jabir, who is actually the head of an
oil company in Dubai. And that steers us right into a
very familiar problem where on one hand, we need to work with
industry to solve these problems, on the other hand.
Industries concern will always be to make money for its
executives and its shareholders. And so are they really the the
people to be trusted with the planet And that is a big theme
of our show and it's a big, big theme of this moment.
It's interesting to me that the head of the UN this week here in
New York has decided that people who have not kept up with their.
Commitments that they made in Paris are not allowed to speak
during Climate Week. They called it the New York
Times Shaming without naming. What's interesting is amongst
those, and I will do a little shaming and naming, you know,
Rishi Sunak, who is the PM of England and of the UK, which has
been a leader in climate reforms announced yesterday that there's
no way. To help them fix their economy
and stay on their Paris commitments.
And so they're rolling them way back.
And this is what we have to guard against.
We need to deal with these issues now and the idea that
it's better for the economy to wait until we address this.
Is incredibly short sighted and dangerous.
We you know it just it's not going to work.
It may get his party some more votes, but we're well past the
time where that choice was possible.
You mentioned earlier that you want the audience to understand
that that this is not one depressing story after another.
I mean, yeah, there's hope, which is a necessary thing.
And then there's hopeium. Hopeium, the drug that we try to
give ourselves constantly, it's all going to be okay.
We're going to be fine. Technology will save us.
And and you very honestly throughout this series, remind
people, you know, yes, we need technology but if you're just
relying on that, that's going to save the planet.
These are voices from the future in your fiction.
I forgot who said I think it was Picasso.
Whoever said that, you know art. The importance of art is telling
a lie that actually tells the greater truths.
Fiction is not real, and yet it's sometimes is more honest
and more truthful than a documentary.
This is what every episode does, and I think once you roll into
the second episode, Sienna Miller is this scientist who's
trying to find where the whales are.
It's so powerful and so moving, and you tell these little
stories, these little personal stories that make this kind of
fiction so compelling. Yeah, I mean, episode two was
really, you know, I was in the process of losing my father to
Alzheimer's while I was writing it, and I'm sorry.
And so it really became an episode about saying goodbye,
and about how we deal with grief and loss.
And how, how you have to move through that.
And I think that there is a part of climate change that is going
to ask us of that, but the, you know, the the really amazing
opportunity about species loss. And and some of these other
issues my dog is barking in the background because I think it's
it's his favorite episode. It's what we still can choose.
You know, there are very bad versions of the future and there
are less bad versions. And I've been asked before,
well, how did you, how did you take care of yourself while you
were doing this? And I said I I actually never, I
never felt. More alive or engaged than when
I was doing this. These were stories I wanted to
tell and I got to go to work every day.
And I know you've had this experience with people who are
similarly moved. You know, the big issue that
everyone listening will have is what can I do?
And in episode 3, I really tried to answer that.
Davi Diggs plays a Rabbi in an episode with David Schwimmer.
I won't say what Daveed says at the end of that episode, but
that's how I feel. You know, we're we're going to
get through this. We're not all going to die.
But the only way we're going to get through this is by relying
and communicating with each other and making some very
difficult choices. And if we do that, we will, I
think, find out we have muscles that we have not used.
In a very long time. And that will be a beautiful
moment to be alive for. And that was really what episode
three was about. It was about how do we ask the
right questions? Because that's where this
starts, is, can you look around at work in your family?
If you're a kid at school? Can you look around and just
start asking questions about why is this thing that is so clearly
wrong? Still the predominant way of
doing things. And in that episode, which is
set in Miami and and by this time again, it's now probably at
least 10 or 15 years beyond where we're at now, the waters
are rising, parts of South Beach are underwater, the rest of
Miami looks like it may soon be. And this what you mentioned this
question. That keeps getting asked
throughout this episode is being asked by a 13 year old.
She wants to know why. Why is this happening?
What is the awful thing that we did to upset God or Mother
Nature or whatever to where we are facing literally being
underwater and to have it come out of the mouth of a 13 year
old and the brain of a 13 year old was so.
Beautifully done. And I would think too, I mean,
young people already today, if you have a tween or a teen, they
are completely aware of the planet that we're handing them,
completely aware they have already had it.
They're already fed up. They're, as you know, many of
them, they're very active politically.
A lot of them are going to be able to vote next year.
You really captured that? And that and giving voice to
that, to this new younger generation.
I owe a debt of gratitude to to my niece in Austin, TX for that.
She has a little bit of that character in her, I hope I did
when I was young. But what you said is exactly
right. You know, pretending that this
doesn't exist and thinking you're doing yourself or your
child a favor by not being clear and direct about what is going
on with the climate, It isn't going to make them them happy.
It's not going to make them like you more.
I know that we're afraid of triggering our kids, but I think
one of the things that we have to teach them is that some of
the things that are happening in the world demand action, demand
our interest and you're not powerless.
The part that's depressing is the part where they believe
they're powerless. It's very easy to teach people
they are not powerless. Young people today make huge
differences. You know, I was at a climate
event the other the other night and there was a young woman
there named Sage Lanier who was so powerful and she confessed to
struggling with climate related sadness.
But man, she's now turned it into a whole curriculum and she
is educating people and she's one of a number of people who I
met who are are making that kind of difference.
So we're not helping anyone by hiding the truth because you
can't. I mean, you know, you walk
outside in New York City this summer and you see the smoke
from these fires and we have to talk about it because here's
what happens if you don't. There are people in the world
who will tell you that there are fewer acres on fire this year,
actually, than other years. And they're right.
But a lot of the acres that are not burning are acres in Africa,
and they're African grasslands that probably burned last year.
And a grassland isn't as good a holder of carbon as a forest.
Now, the acres of forests that have burned this year are like
nothing else we've ever seen. I think the amount of carbon
that was released from the ground and from the trees is
basically more than Canada would make in in about a year.
And so Canada this year doubled its carbon contribution to the
world by Catching Fire, and there's no way to hide that.
You walked outside and and you saw it in the air.
I had people send photos of New York City to me all summer long
saying this looks like an episode of your show.
Yes. On one particular day here in
New York, it got so dark at 2:00 in the afternoon that I looked
out the window and the nighttime lights in New York City came on
at 2:00 in the afternoon. And it was a shocking sight.
And I've always said to people when they like in the can being
from Michigan. We'll get occasionally you'll
get a day in January where it's 70 degrees and everybody's so
happy. And I'm like, what are you happy
about? It's not supposed to be 70 in
January, you know, And it's, it's like, and I would say to
people, if the sun suddenly came up at 1:00 in the morning, 2:00
in the morning, would you just be jumping for joy?
Oh, more sunlight, more tan, you know.
No, you would be freaking out. You'd be running.
Down the middle of the street, like your hair was on fire.
Like something something was wrong.
The planet was off its axis and we are all about to die.
Yeah, I I grew up in Minneapolis.
And you know, I, I know that I used to go skiing at these
little ski hills around town. And from what I understand, they
either are making their snow or their seasons getting shorter
and shorter. And it's not just the
inconvenience of no snow. You know, this has a massive
impact on agriculture on insects which lead to disease, which is
a whole other thing. So the impacts of changing the
climate that we built the world around over hundreds of years is
not a small thing. And you know, we really need to
to check ourselves and change path rapidly.
You mentioned or I mentioned it earlier in the episode with
Forest Whitaker and Marion Cotillard and he's been kind of
a, I guess an inventor most of his life.
There was this great moment where she, she's his wife,
Marion Cotillard and she's just so disappointed with who she
sees this person. They've essentially been a
failure by this point. It's it's a New Year's Eve in
the year who? 20 What Is it Scott 205020602068
or 2060? Yeah.
And so they're in San Francisco and they're trying to have a
little New Year's Eve party. And he's so hopeful that the
next thing is going to save him, is going to take him somewhere
else. And then she reminds him, yeah,
Do you remember when you told us we just need to get solar panels
everywhere? And now there's so much smoke in
the air from all these continuing fires.
But the sun doesn't even make it through the smoke enough to get
to the panel. Like that day when it was 2:00
PM in New York City and it was dark, no sun hit any solar panel
in New York City on that day. And I thought, wow, am I just
getting a snippet of the. And I had already just watched
your episode and I'm thinking, this is this isn't 2068, this
is, this is actually going on right now.
Which means one of my takeaways from your series is.
Well, maybe there is still time to fix this, to stop it, to do
something different. But and then and then she says
and the windmills, all the windmills up and down the coast,
hardly moving because the the way the smoke and the whole
atmosphere has changed, the wind isn't what it was 50 or 100
years ago. And now we've got all these
windmills just sitting there. Wow, to hear that, especially at
a time when that's all we we got it.
We need more windmills. We need more solar panels.
And you know as I've said that we should have been saying that
when Jimmy Carter put the solar solar panels on the White House
roof and we would have had 50 years down the road but now
lost. That's gone.
OK, can't get it back. What do we do?
Tell me just the thought process of even allowing the that
thought to be expressed because I were I don't you know
obviously we don't want people to take it like oh all hope is
lost. Why are we even bothering?
But it's it's quite a a voice from the near future telling us
if we don't get it to together now, now, not even now,
yesterday, we are going to be doomed on some level.
The planet has plans for us because we're the killers.
Yeah, So it has its own law enforcement, Mother Nature,
believe me, the planet's going to live.
Yeah. The planet is going to be some
kind of a rock somewhere doing something.
We are the ones that aren't going to be here.
Yeah. My feeling is no, I I agree with
with what you just said. You know there are there are
complicated stories around climate that we need to, to
prepare ourselves for. You're right, the planet, the
planet will be here. The the question is will we be
going around and around on it? And then beyond that, I think
the biggest question is how will that feel, you know, and our
show gets into you know gets into that in the episode you
just mentioned, what is life like for Marion and Forrest?
What passes for fun, what passes for food.
And so for sure, part of the show is a cautionary tale, the
finale. And again, I'm not going to give
away too much. There is a kind of
reconciliation that occurs where we come to terms with the fact
that we've been doing this and we have known better.
You know, there there's so much information that's come out in
the last couple of years about the fact that oil companies knew
what they were doing as far back as the late 50s.
And they have actively pursued a misinformation campaign that is
very similar to the tobacco companies.
In fact, there's some evidence that says that's where they
learned it. And so, you know, they've known
that this was the cost of doing their business and they cashed
us all in. And so that needs to really
stop. And one of the ways that those
things stop is accountability, which is a thing that I really
believe in. And the finale of our show was
informed by a movie called Trials of Nuremberg, where the
people who perpetrated the crimes against humanity in World
War 2 are held to account. And the way that I got into it
was I found an old article written by law professor I think
in 1972 at at either U at USC. I'm pretty sure that deals with
the rights of a tree. And this is not new.
There really is a thing called eco side and it really is a
crime against humanity and we need to stop scoffing at it and
start deciding that that's a thing that we can all stop but
we all have to do it. And said that was sort of, you
know, I think I gave away a lot of the ending, but you'll be
interested to watch how, especially if you're a film fan
and know know the Trials at Nurburg about how that plays out
in our show. No, it's very powerful.
No, you didn't give it away, but this issue of accountability is
very present in this series and conscience.
Knowing right from wrong all of this, it's so powerful and it's
so moving. I've I've watched the series
twice now and I've told people on this podcast that I actually
went back and watched the Miami episode a third time.
I wanted to see if I could watch this episode and not cry.
And I I couldn't pull it off. And I found myself after
watching this series through a couple of times.
I found myself not only even more committed to figuring out
what I could do personally, but what can I do?
The greater thing that has to happen to all of us
collectively. And how can we do that?
Could start in your apartment building.
Could start on your block because, you know you could
start anywhere. It doesn't have to be just you
or just me. And there's a whole host of
things that have to happen. But if we are, if we can't stay
stuck on, oh, somebody's going to fix this later or technology
will save us or in the. The one episode, the president
of the United States is congratulating people for
planting another thousand trees, but it's already in the twenty
50s or 60s at that point. And you and you know enough by
watching your show, you're saying, well, that's a good
thing to do, That's a nice thing to do.
But really they're still going to be doing that when if we
don't have this figured out by 2060.
Holy smokes. And it really.
And it's like, but you did it so beautifully.
You weren't making fun of people planting trees.
You were like that. Yes, this of course has always
been what we should have been doing.
And yes, in 2060 it's too late. So what's the plan, Stan?
Yeah, it's really exhilarating filmmaking passing in the form
of a a series on the streaming television.
But it's way. Way beyond that.
I thank you for for making this. I thank you for coming on my
podcast. You probably can't talk about
what you what you're doing next. If I were you, I wouldn't.
Nope. But because, Scott, you and I
both know they must not see us coming.
Yeah, exactly. I I am writing a play because
I'm allowed to do that during the Guild, All right?
And I don't know if you even know this, but the last play I
wrote was called The Library, which was about a school
shooting. And I have you and and bowling
for Columbine and a few other really important people in my
life to thank for that. Well well thank you for saying
that and and I I already, I don't know what I'm going to do
with this but extrapolations is going to there's going to be
somewhat of a it might be a crooked line but it's going to
be a straight line I think. To one of the next things that I
do regarding this particular issue and the larger
ramifications of how we can survive, how it's not all
hopeless yet and you've given me that that sense of inspiration
to do something with that. So thank you for that.
Just keep doing more of this. It's much much appreciated by
people who care about what's going on and who also would like
to take a good 45 minutes to an hour and.
And sit down and watch something that, dare I say, is hugely
entertaining in the sense that that why do we love the movies?
Sometimes you laugh and sometimes you cry and sometimes
you get mad and sometimes it makes you think whatever it
does. And if it has you doing that 24
hours later, then you and I have succeeded in what we're trying
to do here. And I I encourage everybody to
take this opportunity to watch. This eight episode series called
Extrapolations by the great Scott Burns here, who's been our
guest on Rumble today. Any final words, Scott, before
we go, It's all yours. I will keep doing what I'm doing
if if, if you do the same. And thank you again so much for
having me. This has been a pleasure.
I will continue to do that. Thank you so much.
Scott Burns. Thanks to all of you who
listened to this today. It's extrapolations.
It's on Apple TV plus. Watch it.
Thank you very much, Scott, and thanks to all of you who are
listening to this today. I'm Michael Moore.
This is Rumble, and we'll see you next time.