Filmmaker Mike Figgis on desire: the disruptive force behind every great story, why we’re drawn to the forbidden, and learning to enjoy it without acting on it. Figgis Unfiltered S2 E4.
Season 2 of Figgis Unfiltered examines the human emotions, one at a time. In Episode 4, director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) takes on his favourite subject for drama — desire. Starting with Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, he argues that desire is fundamentally disruptive: the thing that arrives from left field and threatens all the stability we’ve built, from marriage to the modern dream of controlling even death. Drawing on the philosopher Georges Bataille, he explores why desire feeds on prohibition, why we’re pulled toward the forbidden, and how possession and destruction are never far apart.
He tells the story of casting Richard Gere in Internal Affairs — the complex Hollywood outsider nobody wanted — then takes your questions: on desire left deliberately unresolved, how to tell a desire that’s truly yours from one shaped by others, and how desire becomes the engine of great drama. He closes on how desire changes with age — not as something to act on, but as a creative wellspring that “happens between your two ears.”
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Desire — Figgis’s favourite subject for drama
00:19 Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire
01:13 Why desire is a disruptive force
01:55 Marriage, and the vow no one can really make
02:59 Bataille: desire needs a taboo to break
04:42 The fear of death and the urge to control everything
06:35 Internal Affairs — desire, power & Richard Gere
07:57 Casting Richard Gere, Hollywood’s outsider
10:37 Temptation, and the signal that someone’s “up for it”
12:19 The lure of the forbidden
14:09 Possession, and “if I can’t have it, no one can”
15:18 Listener questions — Dave (Toronto): desire left unresolved
19:56 Jada (Toronto): is a desire truly your own?
23:53 Eric (Seattle): desire as the engine of drama
26:17 Desire tempered by age — a creative wellspring
28:46 “You don’t have to act on it” — a final word
🎬 Mentioned in this episode
Films — That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel) · Internal Affairs · Fatal Attraction · Looking for Mr. Goodbar · Days of Heaven · and Mike’s own Leaving Las Vegas
People — Richard Gere · Andy Garcia · Laurie Metcalf · writer Henry Bean · Georges Bataille · Jerry Bruckheimer
Book — Diary of a Mad Old Man by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
📸 Daniel Raczynski
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