Maybe, suggests the defeated interviewer, "Inland Empire" should be approached like James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake": Accessible as lyrical art, but filled with puzzles for those wanting to go deeper. Lynch nods, swigging one of his tepid cappuccinos. "Yes, with James Joyce, word combinations conjure things. He uses them as an art form and a language for abstractions. Cinema is its own language. As the sound and picture get going and things begin to happen, it can get pretty abstract, but it's a language that says something that can't be said in words -- or maybe could, by a poet."

"I like films that hold abstractions," he says. " 'Getting it' is a subjective thing, because we're all different, and each interpretation is as valid as another. The audience is putting things together as they go. If there's a bump in the intellectual understanding, let it happen. Have that experience, and then later mull things over. Let intuition kick in. It's a higher knowingness. If you try to put it into concrete terms, you're gonna block it."

What’s your relationship now to the work back then? Are you as passionate? I really had to think about that. My analysis of that is, you’re a different person with different needs. A lot of that is based on confidence. When you’re starting out in an art form or anything in life, you can’t have confidence because you don’t have experience, and you can only get confidence through experience. But you have to be pretty confident to make a film. So the only way you counterbalance that lack of experience and confidence is absolute passion, fanatical spirit. And I’ve had this conversation over the years with filmmaker friends: Am I as passionate as I was in my 20s? Would I risk my whole life? If it was my best friend or my negative drowning, which do I save? The 20-something self goes, I’m saving my film! Now it’s not that answer. I’m not ashamed to say that, because all that passion doesn’t go away. It disperses a little healthfully. I’m passionate about more things in the world. I care about more things, and that serves me. The most fascinating relationship we all have is to ourselves at different times in our lives. You look back, and it’s like, I’m not as passionate as I was at 25. Thank God. That person was very insecure, very unkind. You’re better than that now. Hopefully.

Guadagnino brought them Challengers, which will be released this month. Reznor said, “He started us down a path, saying, ‘What if it was very loud techno music through the whole film?’ ” (This is exactly what it turned out to be.)“I wish I had his notes,” Ross said of Guadagnino. “His notes were so fucking funny on what each piece was meant to do.”“Oh, yeah,” Reznor said. “ ‘Unending homoerotic desire.’ It was all a variation on those three words.”

Film geeks don't have a whole lot of tangible things to show for their passion and commitment to film. They just watch movies all the time. What they do have to show is a high regard for their own opinion. They've learned to break down a movie. They understand what they like and don't like about a film. And they feel that they're right. It's not open to discussion. When I got involved in the movie industry I was shocked at how little faith or trust people have in their own opinions. They read a script and they like it - then they hand it to three of their friends to see what they think about it. I couldn't believe it. There's an old expression that goes something like, He with the most point of view wins.

Maybe we’ll get to a point where the novelty will be that a human being wrote something: This person proved that they were in a box away from any A.I. when they wrote this thing

as writers and creators, you want people to watch your show, so if you can make something look and sound like something else that people already want to watch, then you might be able to convince a producer that it will have legs. But I discovered through doing “Fleabag” that you have to write something that is more dangerous, more honest, more unusual and more provocative — especially if it’s going to go into a pool with a million other things. Honing the uniqueness of whatever you do is your best chance. I know I’m saying that having just signed up to do “Tomb Raider,” which has an audience already, and I know that’s what Amazon wants, and Amazon made this unbelievable deal8 8 In 2019, Variety reported about Waller-Bridge’s development deal with Amazon Studios, that “sources say the deal is worth around $20 million a year.” with me. I care so much about delivering for them. Being able to do that dangerous, naughty, transgressive stuff in the heart of something that is very valuable to them in terms of I.P. satisfies both of those things, but the discipline for me is to not just give them the “Tomb Raider” they think they want, but to give them something else.

People are going to interpret everything I do as my feelings on contemporary womanhood because I’m a contemporary woman. I don’t want to escape that part of me. I can see how I’ve gone into masculine roles with Bond and “Indiana Jones,” but those worlds are the ones that always intrigued me. The high-stakes action world appeals to me, whether it’s masculine or feminine. I like the urgency of it and the idea of being able to write a female character in a world like that.

It’s a window into your psychology: You want to be a pleaser and do the assignment well, but what you actually want to do is something riskier. Oh, my gosh. That’s exactly what it is. But the best thing is when you satisfy both. The journey there can be quite [laughs] — I love the feeling of having done what’s been asked, but I hate the feeling of pleasing.

I think that with Bond there is something dangerous, transgressive and incendiary about that character, and it’s the same with Indy. He completely revolutionized the action hero, which Harrison1 1 Harrison Ford, of course, who has said “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will be his last go-round with Indy’s famous whip and fedora. is dead set against him being described as, but there was something that broke the form. We accept them now as the biggest franchises, but in the kernel of these characters is something naughty and dangerous. They were the rascals of their time, and I feel like Villanelle and Fleabag are rascals.2 2 Villanelle is the name of the assassin character, played by Jodie Comer, in “Killing Eve.” “Fleabag,” for those who haven’t seen it, is that show’s title character, played by Waller-Bridge. The show earned six Emmy Awards and 11 nominations for its second season. So it was less like, “I want to go do this big movie,” and more, “I want to play in the sand pit with these rascals.” That’s one way of looking at it.

I couldn’t write anything that I felt didn’t have that deeper element sincerely at the heart of it, and that writer is with me everywhere I go. It’s ever-present: What does this mean? Because I’m obsessed with having an audience be moved.6 6 Waller-Bridge said the most recent things that moved her were the TV series “Dead Ringers,” a concert by the singer Christine Bovill in which she performed Edith Piaf songs and a revival of “Guys and Dolls” at the Bridge Theater in London. I was moved when I read the script, and I was moved when I heard Jim7 7 James Mangold, the director of “Dial of Destiny.” He is the first director other than Steven Spielberg to direct an “Indiana Jones” movie. and Harrison and Kathy talk about it. I mean, I wasn’t in tears on the floor, but I felt that tingle of, this has got some human stuff going on. But the day-to-day? Some of the days were superfun, and we did look really cool. But the proper actors don’t want to just look cool. They want to make you cry while looking cool.

It felt comfortable. It felt like a part of life that I knew and had experienced. It felt like memory. And then, in talking to my wife about it, I realized that that’s not a relationship you ever see in films, but it feels like you’ve seen it before. It’s so complete, in the telling. It taps into things, particularly those of us who have 16-year-old daughters, as I do, who are into theater. It’s very precise.