James Vanderbilt is a screenwriter, producer, and director whose work includes some of the most acclaimed films of the last two decades. He’s perhaps best known for writing Zodiac, David Fincher’s modern classic thriller. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about Nuremberg, his new film as both writer and director, set just after World War II as the Allies prepared to put high-ranking Nazi officials on trial.

Vanderbilt explains that one of the biggest challenges was finding a way to tell such a heavy story without numbing the audience. “I sort of feel like two hours of unrelenting grimness and sadness… I just shut down,” he says, pointing to the moments of levity in Schindler’s List. That film has “humor and grace and wit,” he says. “You laugh during parts of it, so that when you get to the really horrible stuff, you’re able to take it in… and that is something we thought a lot about in terms of [Nuremberg].”

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