....
[Film School University, USA]
Noel had the laptop open before Laurence even got back with the noodles.
"It’s up!" he said, not looking away from the screen.
He was supposed to be finishing a shot list for his Intro to Production final, but he pulled out one earbud instead.
"Yo, Laurence."
Laurence lay on the top bunk with a laptop balanced on his chest and headphones in, not responding.
"Laurence."
Nothing.
Noel threw a sock at the underside of Laurence’s mattress.
"What."
"Co watch this."
"Is it out?"
What were these twenty-one-year-old film school students so excited about?
A new adult video of their favourite ’actress’?
...Usually that would have been the case.
But this ti it was an interview with their favorite director, the one they proudly called themselves fans of.
"Yep." Noel nodded. "Regal’s latest interview just dropped."
"Why didn’t I get any no–!"
DING–!
And just as he was about to finish a pop up ca up in his mobile.
"See."
"Coming down. Let’s watch it together."
Laurence was already climbing down; it always worked - an unspoken rule in Room 214 where they might ignore each other over howork, food, sleep, plans, or whoever had borrowed the phone charger again.
But if one of them said it was a Regal, whatever else was happening stopped.
....
Within minutes, Noel dragged his desk chair over next to the bed.
The intro began with a few establishing shots of the Sunset Tower, a voiceover from the interviewer - Claire Weston.
Her byline was on most of the big profiles this year - setting up the week since the Oscars, the twelve wins, all of it.
Noel had the volu at maybe sixty percent.
Then Regal walked in, and the first thing Noel noticed was that he was alone.
No publicist, or assistant, and nobody trailing behind him with a phone and a schedule. He wore a plain grey sweater and dark jeans.
"Look at him." Laurence said. "He looks like a grad student."
"Actully his twenty-eight... so that counts as little over a grad student."
Claire: ["Let’s start sowhere simple. It’s been a week. How are you doing?"]
Regal laughed a little, looked at the table, and said. ["Honestly? I don’t have much ti to think. I imdiately had to get back to the post-production of my next film."]
He stopped, as if realizing how that sounded.
["Which makes it sound like I am being dismissive of the awards. I am not. It was extraordinary. I just... don’t know how to hold it and keep working at the sa ti, so the work usually wins."]
["Does it always?"]
He thinks about that for a mont.
["Yeah, pretty much. My finance would confirm that."]
["You must have lucked out there."]
["I couldn’t agree more."]
Claire pushed further. ["You have spoken about the story in every oscar speech. I want to go deeper on that. When you sit down to write.... What are you actually trying to do? What’s the goal?]
Regal answered without hesitation.
["Entertain soone–
["And I know that sounds reductive, coming from a person who spent his acceptance speech talking about practicing hope and rehearsing humanity and - all of that."
["But I an it genuinely. At the foundation, before anything else, I want the person watching to be entertained."]
["Hmm, can you define entertainnt? Because I don’t think you an what most people an by it."]
He gave a small nod. ["Right. For ’entertainnt’ doesn’t an cody, action, or spectacle."]
["I an... engaged.
["When sothing happens on that screen and the person watching simply cannot bring themselves to stop."
["When a character is falling apart and the audience feels it in their chest, or when soone is rising toward the choice that will define them and the audience leans forward because they need to know what happens next - that’s entertainnt. It doesn’t have to be funny or loud; it just has to be felt."]
["And you think that’s achievable in a superhero film?"]
He looks at her directly. ["I think it’s achievable in any film if you take it seriously enough."]
Laurence grabbed Noel’s arm. "Did you hear that?"
"I am sitting right here, man, obviously I heard it."
....
["There’s sothing you said once.... I have been trying to find the original quote.
[It’s about the audience coming in wanting sothing. Can you talk about that?"]
He set the cup down. ["Yeah. That’s sothing I think about a lot, actually."]
A brief pause followed.
["Nobody cos to a theatre hoping it’s a bad film."]
Karthik sat up straighter and Noel noticed the shift imdiately.
["That sounds obvious when you say it out loud"] Regal continued. ["But I don’t think the film industry always acts like it believes that."]
["Think about what it takes for a normal person, soone who works all week, who is tired, who has a dozen other things they could be doing, to actually go to a cinema. They have to decide to go, travel there, stand in line for a ticket, and then find a seat."]
He leaned forward slightly.
["By the ti they are sitting in that dark room, they have already made themselves vulnerable. They have already committed.
["Like I am here now: Entertain ."
["Obviously, they want it to be good. They show up with the genuine hope of experiencing sothing - so feeling they couldn’t get at ho."]
A small pause followed.
["That’s not nothing. It’s an enormous amount of trust they are placing in the people who made the film, and I think you owe it to them to take that trust seriously every single ti."]
The dorm room was quiet. Down the hall, soone was playing music - bass-heavy and muffled through the walls, while soone was running past their room outside.
Neither of them registered any of it, a single question lingering in their minds - did all filmmakers think like Regal?
Actually... no. Forget the others.
Why hadn’t they, aspiring filmmakers, ever thought of sothing so simple?
Claire asked. ["Does that feel like pressure when you’re writing?"]
He thinks. ["It feels like responsibility, which is different from pressure. Pressure makes you smaller, pushing you toward safe choices because you are afraid of disappointing people, while responsibility makes you bigger. You are not scared of the audience; you are working for them."]
Noel paused the video, and Karthik glanced at him. "Why would you pause it?"
"I need a second."
"Don’t be dramatic."
"I am not being dramatic. You know I am always scared of the audience, right? It terrifies .... I keep thinking they will chew alive if they don’t like my short films."
"...Just reading the comnts section of the short film we uploaded last week. No, I still didn’t read them after what you said. For the most part, they are negative."
"...Right."
"But now... I feel dumb as fuck. What was I afraid of?"
"Finally you realized you are dumb, dude."
"Ugh... fuck you man!"
They laughed at each other for a while, but soon the mood settled.
"Okay, okay... I agree, dude, I am a slowpoke. But more than that, what Regal said makes sense. Now I am starting to think those comnts, as brutal and honest as they are, might actually be our biggest supporters. And it’s such a simple reality, yet nobody in this program ever talks about it."
Noel pushed his chair back and rubbed his face with both hands. "We spend four hours every week in Hendricks’ class going over composition, blocking, and coverage, yet the idea of responsibility has never even co up."
"Not once. And we talk about craft as if it exists by itself, like the films are made for each other, the departnt, or the festival circuit."
....
Claire asked. ["This is a million-dollar question, have you ever faced writer’s block? I find that hard to believe, because your stories never seem to stop coming. The dium might change, but the ideas don’t. And the quality of your work has never seed compromised."]
["Does that an you have never experienced writer’s block? Do you have so trick up your sleeve? If you do, please share it. Many aspiring writers struggle with this, and it would really help."]
That question hooked both Laurence and Noel imdiately.
Yes, they wanted to hear Regal’s answer. How did soone get past it?
They had faced it themselves many tis - sitting for hours, thinking and thinking, yet nothing ca.
["Writer’s block is real."] Regal said. ["And I agree, it can be very difficult to overco once you fall into it."]
["But first, I want to make one thing clear.... don’t disguise laziness as writer’s block."]
Claire frowned slightly. ["What does that an?"]
["What I an is that, in most cases, when a writer says, ’I’m struggling with writer’s block,’ they actually aren’t."]
Regal paused for a mont. ["And so of that bla falls on us... on you, on , on everyone who teaches writing."]
He continued. ["What’s the first thing we tell new writers, even before they really begin? We warn them about writer’s block.]
["So soone who hasn’t written a single paragraph in their life already knows about it. And then whenever they get stuck, even a little, they imdiately think, ’Oh, this must be writer’s block.’"]
["Getting stuck while writing is completely normal. Mistaking that for writer’s block is often just plain laziness."]
["So before you say you have writer’s block, ask yourself whether you are making excuses... or whether it’s actually a real problem."]
The more they listened to Regal speak, the more it felt like a verbal slap to the face.
The man was delivering blunt truth without the slightest hesitation.
["Anyway."] Regal said. ["I will end with sothing practical for people who really are struggling. Put the pen on paper. Or your fingers on the keyboard. Write. Type. Whatever nonsense cos into your mind. It doesn’t have to make sense."]
["Just keep writing. And writing. And writing so more."]
["Hope that helps."]
As the question ended, they both looked at each other with a knowing expression.
Yep, that was definitely helpful.
....
Claire asked about the speech. ["I want to ask about the speech.... the famous one. The ’I will be back in fifteen minutes’ mont. Was that planned?"]
Laurence leaned forward. "Oh, this might be a fun one."
"Totally. And don’t act like you weren’t waiting for this part."
On the screen, Regal laughed. "No. Absolutely not."
He shook his head. ["If I had planned that beforehand, my team wouldn’t have even let walk near the stage."]
["It was really spontaneous. I got up there and realized I still had a few things I wanted to say, but I had already taken enough ti. I don’t even know why I was confident I would be back on that stage. I just said it. And... yeah. To avoid embarrassing myself, luck was on my side. I did return."]
Laurence covered his mouth with his hand, grinning behind it. "Dude literally bet all the aura of his life on that one statent."
"Yep. The most iconic Oscar mont of the decade, and it happened because the guy thought he still had a few things left to say."
Claire continued. ["Was there a mont during those fifteen minutes when you thought, ’This was a terrible idea’?"]
["Imdiately. Imdiately, yes. I walked offstage and the first person I saw was Gwen, and her face—"]
He stopped and laughed again.
["She didn’t say anything - just looked at . I said, ’I know,’ and she replied, ’Go back up and make it worth it,’ which turned out to be the most useful direction I received all evening."]
Claire nodded. ["And then you went back for Best Director and continued the speech."]
["Right. Which... the room’s reaction to that was sothing I wasn’t prepared for. I thought they might groan coldly, but they—"]
He paused, a quieter expression crossing his face.
["They were with ... the whole room. I don’t take that for granted. Walking back onstage at the Oscars, saying ’I am back,’ and getting the biggest response of the night isn’t about ."]
["It’s a room full of people choosing generosity... to enjoy sothing together."]
A brief pause.
["Which is exactly what I said about cinemas, isn’t it? The sa thing... just on a smaller scale."]
Laurence and Noel had discussed this before, probably six tis, in different forms since they started watching Regal’s interviews last sester.
The sa question always ca up: why did these interviews feel different from everything else?
And the answer they kept returning to, even when phrased differently, was simple.
He talked about filmmaking as if it were ant for soone.
A specific, real person sitting in a real seat, soone who had given up their evening and lowered their guard because they hoped the movie would be worth it.
Every other interview they watched, and they watched plenty, treated the audience as an abstraction.
A market and demographic.
Regal talked about them like they were a person he owed sothing to.
....
The exact interview of Regal went live on Vanity Fair’s website, and on Tube.
By night, it had beco the most read profile on the site in three years, while also crossing millions of views in Tube.
The reaction wasn’t the usual awards showoff, and bragging - the speculation and industry positioning and box office discourse that had surrounded everything Regal-adjacent for the past several months.
This was sothing quieter and, in so ways, more significant and more aningful.
Even though normal audiences were more interested in sharing the article with comntary about the Oscars or the speeches or the three nominations.
The more inside mbers of the industry are more interested in specific insights Regal put forth during the interview.
And the most talked about line was:
Nobody cos to a theatre hoping it’s a bad film.
It beca the one that spread the furthest leaving a deep impact.
It was such a simple statent but it resonated in a way that was hard to explain exactly, except that it felt true in a direction that most film industry discourse didn’t bother going.
It was about the audience.
It started with the audience and it ended there.
The cinema community picked up the section about the dark room - the hundred strangers taking their walls down together.
Film students were sharing it in group chats.
Projectionists were sharing it.
A theatre owner in Ohio posted a photograph of an empty auditorium with just those two paragraphs underneath it and the caption:
...this is why we still do this!
–and it was shared by people who had nothing to do with the industry and everything to do with loving films.
....
The more considered responses ca in the days that followed.
The Guardian ran a piece examining Regal’s philosophy of audience trust as it related to the broader crisis of confidence in theatrical cinema:
Streaming was slowly penetrating the movie going audience, admissions were declining, and here was a 28-year-old filmmaker articulating, more clearly than any studio executive had managed, exactly what a cinema offered that nothing else could replicate.
The piece was read in studio boardrooms. Whether it changed anything was a separate question.
A film professor at NYU built an entire seminar around the Vanity Fair transcript the following sester.
The walls coming down line was, apparently, a useful entry point into discussions about spectatorship that had previously been difficult to fra for students who had grown up watching everything alone on laptops.
None of this reached Regal directly, or if it did, it didn’t reach him loudly.
He was in post-production.
[IWTEYP] completed its filming, and the post production work is in full swing.
....
.
[To be continued...]
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