Jacob Elordi Expresses His Love for Australia, Music, Animals & Poetry

GQMagazine

2023 GQ Men of the Year cover star Jacob Elordi expresses his love for his favorite things in the world—including Brisbane, David Bowie, spiny lizards and Les Murray poetry.  Director: Robby Miller Director of Photography: Brad Wickham Editor: Robby Massey Producer: Camille Ramos Line Producer: Jen Santos Associate Producer: Chris Sechler Production Manager: James Pipitone Production Coordinator: Tanía Jones Talent Booker: Ernesto Macias Camera Operator: Mar Gaffer: Niklas Moller Sound Mixer: Phillip Kim Production Assistant: Lyla Neely Post Production Supervisor: Rachael Knight Post Production Coordinator: Rob Lombardi Supervising Editor: Ian Bryant Assistant Editor: Billy Ward Special Thanks: Set furniture generously provided by CB2.

Transcript

00:00 [upbeat music]

00:02 Hi, I'm Jacob Elordi,

00:06 and these are some of my favorite things in life.

00:10 Oh, okay, yes.

00:15 Favorite things about Australia.

00:17 Where I'm from, which is Brisbane.

00:21 Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

00:22 I was born and raised there.

00:23 There's something about the houses,

00:25 like the style of a house that's called a Queenslander,

00:27 and it has like an airway underneath it.

00:29 And you live upstairs.

00:31 There's like an inherent nostalgia, I guess, attached to it.

00:34 And it's not like anywhere I've ever been

00:36 in the world before.

00:37 So sometimes if I need inspiration or something,

00:40 sometimes going home to where I grew up is helpful for that.

00:43 You know, it's probably because I was raised there.

00:45 Probably has something to do with that.

00:47 It's kind of this unspoken thing when you're from there.

00:50 It has like a spirit that you can't really articulate

00:53 or put into pictures or sounds or words.

00:55 It's just a feeling.

00:56 And I'm sure everyone has that, you know,

00:58 with the place that they were born and grew up in.

00:59 There's like a lust for childhood or something.

01:02 Like you're always trying to get those days back.

01:04 The next one is music.

01:06 I have this like thing about things

01:09 that are overrated, underrated.

01:12 The Ziggy Stardust album by David Bowie

01:14 is overrated, underrated in my opinion.

01:16 And just recently I've been listening to that album

01:19 kind of in everything I do,

01:20 particularly this song called "Five Years."

01:23 I love the way it sounds and I love the way it feels.

01:26 And then I kind of get more into David Bowie

01:27 and I just, you can kind of,

01:29 because he's such a trendsetter and like a world shaker

01:32 and he had so much to say,

01:34 he can become this like great big thing, you know,

01:38 and you don't really look at the nuance of him.

01:40 But I mean, that guy's a genius.

01:42 The next, which is a constant through sort of

01:45 my whole life, and it started with the song "Perth,"

01:49 is Bon Iver.

01:50 And you can kind of read that.

01:52 There's like discussions around his music

01:53 and comment threads.

01:54 And it's almost like the sounds he makes

01:57 create this feeling that you can't articulate or express,

02:01 but everybody knows that feeling somewhere,

02:04 somewhere in their gut or in the fiber of their being.

02:07 Everyone on the planet, I really do think so.

02:09 Whether it's like a whale or a screech

02:11 or the depth that he takes his voice

02:14 or an electronic sound, it's packed with so much meaning.

02:17 And that is always, always inspiring to me.

02:20 In the same vein is "Fred Again."

02:23 It's the same kind of thing with the sounds,

02:25 the snippets of voices and passages that he chooses.

02:27 The words are ultra simple, but they mean so much.

02:31 How to say as much as you can

02:32 in the simplest, most accessible way.

02:35 And that's something that's always interesting to me.

02:38 And then "The National" is also in that same world

02:42 of feeling and simplicity, simplicity of expression.

02:47 You know, this like, you know, we're all here thing,

02:49 and we're all having a go at it

02:51 and all kind of doing the best and the worst that we can.

02:54 And then on top of that, there's a movie,

02:56 "Come On, Come On," the Mike Mills film,

02:58 they all kind of link up, you know, in a way.

03:00 And that sounds super obnoxious with my legs crossed

03:02 in a turtle neck.

03:04 But yeah, music.

03:06 Animals.

03:09 I mean, some of this stuff is so self-explanatory.

03:11 I really love animals.

03:13 My dog is my best friend in the whole world.

03:15 I love that dog.

03:16 My dog will smile at me when she is happy

03:19 and frown when I leave.

03:21 And that kind of relationship

03:23 with something that kind of looks like a Disney character

03:26 is pretty, pretty fantastic.

03:29 I quite like seals.

03:30 Yeah, my dog looks like a seal when she swims.

03:32 They do make me laugh.

03:34 - Do you have any particular favorite animal

03:35 that is native to Australia?

03:38 - Yeah.

03:39 What do you call it?

03:41 Oh, the thorny devil.

03:43 It's a small lizard, and it's covered in thorns,

03:46 like spikes.

03:47 Thorny devil, I like those.

03:50 I got together some poems that I really like.

03:53 The first poem is by Philip Larkin.

03:56 It's called "Home is So Sad."

03:58 I think it's probably because of that simplicity

04:01 and feeling in the mundane kind of thing

04:04 before the music.

04:05 I think it's gonna be different

04:06 to every person that reads it.

04:09 I think it encourages reflection

04:12 and any kind of retrospect on childhood lost,

04:16 or not lost, but sort of spent, rather.

04:18 The last "Hellos" is by Les Murray.

04:22 That's another poem that I really like.

04:23 It's ultra Australian,

04:25 and Les Murray has a way of capturing,

04:28 I think, this kind of blue-collar experience,

04:30 which is somewhat similar to my own.

04:32 And this one is about a father dying.

04:36 He's responding to his family members and children,

04:40 saying to him, "Don't die yet."

04:42 And he's like, "No, no, I'm too busy dying to die."

04:45 This line.

04:46 "On the second day, you're busting to talk,

04:49 but I'm too busy dying.

04:50 Grief ended when he died.

04:51 The widower, like soldiers

04:53 who won't live life their mates missed."

04:56 I really like that, and I'm not too sure why.

04:59 So don't ask.

05:00 Oh, this poem is by Arthur Rimbaugh,

05:03 and it's called "Dance of the Hanged Men."

05:05 And it's just kind of a really fun, devilish kind of poem.

05:10 And I really only like it

05:13 because there's a line that says,

05:15 "The devil's paladins, the skeletons of Saladins."

05:19 That kind of reminds me of the introduction to "Aladdin."

05:22 You know that song that plays

05:24 when the merchant is moving through?

05:25 "The skeletons of Saladin."

05:27 It's kind of, you know, there's like a trance to it.

05:30 "The paladins are dancing, dancing.

05:32 The lean, the devil's paladins,

05:34 the skeletons of Saladins."

05:36 Like, that sounds really cool when you say it out loud.

05:41 Yeah, so I like those.

05:42 (upbeat music)

05:45 Thank you very much for listening to me

05:47 talk about things that I like.

05:49 I do appreciate it.

05:50 (upbeat music)

05:53 (upbeat music)

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