Sean Penn on the filmmakers he rates and the insanity of preferred pronouns

I don't know how you talk about pronouns when babies are getting ******* vaporized on the front line of Ukraine. I don't even know how you talk about it. On that note, we'll take some questions from the audience, if you would like to ask a question. Good evening. Two-time Academy Award winner, three further nominations, actor, director, humanitarian. Of what, personally or professionally, are you most proud in your life? Well, of course, anybody that's had kids, they're born with you proud of them, even when they're falling down. I can tell you briefly that I've had opportunities to be part of identifying leaders who didn't know they were. And then you see it happen. I think that's the only thing that strikes me in particular outside of my two kids. Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses today and also for your constant support of Ukraine. I was wondering if you could tell us about any films or filmmakers that you think are quite underrated, in your opinion, and you think that more people ought to know about. That are underrated? Yes, and you think more people should know about. So, is there any film underrated that more people should know about? Oh, you know, this is going to be the one that I, because of course, this is one of those ones where the bandwidth just vibrates because there's a lot of them. I think, so I'm just going to have to kind of do, what is it, the Rorschach test? I would go to Carol Ballard. People should know his movies. I think that he is more of the wild animal world than he is of the human world in his understanding of nature and the way in which he beautifully photographs things. Gosh, I'm really going with, because obviously there are people that anyone paying reasonable attention would know, even if they haven't been making big hits. But certainly there are a lot of international filmmakers whose names I won't come up with quite quickly because I'm bad with, you know, I'm a monocultural American and I'm bad with names elsewhere. But maybe I might circle back to you because, you know, it's just a marine crowd. Yeah. Okay, any further? The man back in the back. Dino Montiel. Thank you for your time today. Please stand up. I was very moved by your performance in Mystic River, and I wanted to know how you left that work on the set because you did such heavy work, especially with Tim Robinson. I'm sorry, I'm working with a broken eardrum. I was very moved by your performance in Mystic River, and I just wanted to know how it felt like to leave some of that work on the set because you did some really heavy work with Tim Robinson specifically. So it's about your performance in Mystic River and there's some heavy work you did. How were you able to do that? Okay, so this is something that's easy for me to talk about. And again, I don't know if it applies to all actors, but for me it is the case. If you look at a character like that character in that movie and that story, I think it's fair to say that you have a very confident person. Misguided though he may be, criminally misguided, confident. And so that's the main shadow that's hanging over you or sun that's over you when you're working on a film and when you're on and off the set is that you're holding the nature of that person. So while there is within the narrative incredible tragedy and there's a couple of scenes in particular that are directly facing that tragedy, those scenes I read them one time and didn't look at them again until I had to do them. I don't want to know about that stuff. And so the experience of that is that you're centered in your body and you're feeling strong and confident. So that's a good movie shoot. It's good when you're shooting and it's good when you go to dinner afterwards. When, for me again, when you're doing a character that's let's say deeply insecure, I don't like doing that so much. I've done a lot of it, but it's not a good backpack to carry. So on Mystic River, I do want to touch on the ending of Mystic River, like different people understood the ending to be different. What really is the interpretation in your head? What was the ending? I don't remember the end of the movie. We'll move on to another question then. Sarah, you wanted to ask? How did you decide to make Mystic River? You've chosen a movie that is uniquely difficult for me to talk about because it's one that I neither have seen nor ever will and I'll tell you why. So I signed up to do a movie with the director, the credit director. And initially through Mel Gibson, he had approached me with it, oh some ten years before we made it. And then for various reasons it got put off and I was, you know, I would have been an actor for hire. I wasn't involved like as a producer as they were. And then, whenever it was, they did come back and said, you know, we've got the money and we want to make the movie. And I thought the script was fantastic and the story was extraordinary. And so we shot it. And because the role had so many places that you could go with it, because I trusted the director implicitly, there was no stabilizing one take. I was all over the place. I was very free to go all over the place. Now, sometimes you have to do a certain amount of editing of that yourself because you may not trust the director as much. And so, and you wouldn't want to give them things that could look ridiculous because, you know, the old idea of you're willing to fail. I was, believe me, willing to fail and I'm sure, depending on any given take, because I went everywhere on that. The film was taken over by others and there was a lawsuit and all of this stuff that, again, I wasn't part of, but I watched it happen. These others were the same ones who saw fit to cut shooting the day they had scheduled with Oxford, at Oxford, about the origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. So they thought it wasn't important to shoot at Oxford. And I knew this from Mel and Farhad because I wasn't going to be involved in that particular scene, in those scenes, the exterior. So those same masters of great judgment took over the film and did their own edit on it and I can't face it. I can't, good or bad, I don't know, but I can't take the chance. We'll take one final question from the audience. The member there with the green jacket, with the glasses on. Yes, Liam, is that you? I recognise you because you're an actor yourself. Not as good as Sean. Hi Sean, you've been in the room with President Zelensky, you've been in Ukraine. I just want to find out what your opinion is of his leadership and what you think his psyche is during this conflict with Russia. Well, clearly, from the point of view of where it's going to go, there's no, you know, if we look at Churchill's history, let's say, you know, you rise them up to knock them down and then they can rise up again. It's not going to be an easy road. No matter what the US does related to this war, it's not going to be an easy road. What I would say about him is that I think that he turned out to have been born to be the guy in that position at that time. And what I can say is that of all political leaders that I have ever met, and I have been privileged in many cases and appalled in others, to have met many. Even with most of the best that I can think of, there's a professionalized agenda that they don't know how to get out of what they're saying to you. He speaks extemporaneously, totally, genuinely, always. And so what I would say is my reaction to him is I trust him. I can't speak as a Ukrainian who's concerned about every level of policy throughout that country and, you know, what they're going to need in the future, what they're not going to need. But, boy, I think that any of us would have been lucky to have him in our leadership, given what happened. Shaun, the final question is going to be from me. We ask all of our guest speakers if there's one piece of advice they could give to the audience. People are going to different areas of their professions, students, they aspire to be different areas. What would that piece of advice be from Shaun Penn? I think it's, you know, just closing one's eyes once a day and just asking yourself the question, am I using my own thoughts or have these been drummed into me? Because especially with the aforementioned, you know, kind of cultural assault or assault against diverse thinking and language, what I think is an incredibly sophomoric overvaluing of certain issues. For example, and I'll say, you know, when it comes to, I fully understand and I believe in sensitivity and certainly I would aspire to, you know, know how to make anyone feel the way they want to feel in terms of talking. But I don't know how you talk about pronouns when babies are getting ******* vaporized on the front line of Ukraine. I don't even know how you talk about it. So, if we're going to, I think we've got to be willing to triage some of this stuff and stop the bleeding. Well, thank you very much for that and thank you so much for joining us again.