“Challengers is the future, East of Eden is a little bit past,” he says. “And I think that, for me, that I had to go back a little bit to basics or a little bit to ‘Why did I get into this in the first place?’”
An analog boy in a TikTok world, Faist often feels like a matinee idol right out of the midcentury. He rhapsodizes about films like All That Jazz, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Ben-Hur. “You watch that movie and you say, ‘How did they do that?’” he says. “This is magic trick stuff. I’m always kind of looking for that.” One gets the sense that the hot sauce on Hot Ones might literally kill him.
Growing up in Ohio, Faist realized his life’s purpose watching Gene Kelly MGM musicals like An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. “Unfortunately, you can’t go back, but you can bring the past into the future,” he says. (When I ask him what was the last film he felt that for, his answer is a pleasant surprise. “You know what movie I really loved? Passages,” he says, referring to Ira Sachs’s intimate, devastating, terminally horny indie. “Franz [Rogowski]’s performance in that? I’m kind of like, ‘How did he do that?’ So fucking amazing.”)
That reticence to just jump in, the standards he holds for himself and others, seems to safeguard a life that’s more than just a career.
“I think a lot of, especially white, young men who get rewarded really early take it as a confirmation that they’re being anointed and don’t ask themselves deeper questions about it,” says Kazan. “It’s really admirable to me that Mike is pursuing a life that feels authentic to him. And I think that that goes across the board—his relationship to fame, his relationship to his work, his relationship with his family, where he lives, how he lives, his dog.”
