Bulletproof Screenwriting

Alex Ferrari 0:46
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Dave Bullis 1:55
All right, everyone, thanks again for joining me today on the show is writer director Greg Francis. Greg, how are you, sir?

Greg Francis 2:01
I'm doing pretty good, Dave. Thanks for having me.

Dave Bullis 2:04
Oh, thank you very much for coming on. I, you know, I really appreciate it. You know, I heard your podcast, heard your interview on another podcast, and I was like, wow, this guy has a fascinating story, and I want to talk to him as well. So, Greg, just to start off, could you give us a little bit about your background?

Greg Francis 2:21
Sure, as far as film and stuff.

Dave Bullis 2:25
Sure,

Greg Francis 2:28
I think probably like most kids my age, when the VCR came into play, we all became cinephiles. I liked movies all the time as a kid, and then I ended up moving to Asia. My parents are actually missionaries, and so I was living in Taiwan for junior high and high school, and one year for our tax rebate, we bought one of the very first VCRs. It was a giant, giant machine, and I just remember going down and I couldn't read any Chinese, so all the videos would be there, and I would just say, well, give me a comedy, or give me a horror, give me drama, or action, and then they would just give me a handful of tapes, and then just go back in movies all night, and that started in junior high and continues to this day, I think, but never really thought that this is something that I could do. It's just something that I loved, and it wasn't until I got into college and started doing theater and making short films that I really got excited about it. And then I thought, this is a sure beats working, and it sure seems like fun. Let's see if we can make this go, and that's sort of how it all started.

Dave Bullis 3:43
So, now, when you made those short films, were they, were they college projects, or were they just on the side for fun?

Greg Francis 3:50
Yeah, sort of, because, because it wasn't there, wasn't any. I wasn't at a school that had any kind of film program or anything like that. I think they had one or two classes, but I was in the Chicago area, and they had cable access stations, which I don't even know if they exist anymore, but it was like really, it was kind of like Wayne's World, where there was little studios that, if you went in and took some training, you could use their equipment and make shows for their TV for their TV station, and so I remember using their equipment and being like, oh, get this for free if we just want to. So we started making it, would somehow tie into a class project, but I remember making two or 330 minute projects, and then I started making at the college I went to, each class would make a film and have a big night, and so I did that for the last two years too.

Dave Bullis 4:46
Oh, cool. You know, I think there is still some kind of public access left. I'm sorry.

Greg Francis 4:56
Yeah, is there?

Dave Bullis 4:58
Yeah, I think there is.. um. Sorry, if I interrupted you, Greg, I'm sorry about that. I thought I think I think it was a little lag there. I apologize if I interrupted you, but yeah, I think there's still a stole a little public access programs here and there across the country. There's something in Philadelphia called Philly Cam and Comcast actually has to fund it, fund this, because it was a deal that they should actually struck with the city, and you can actually go there and use gear and stuff like that,

Greg Francis 5:25
And this, I mean, it was a great idea, and for people back in those days, where equipment was just cost prohibitive, and getting your hands on anything to make your own things was almost impossible, there's no, you know, DSLRs or anything like that, it was just so expensive, and film was beyond that, but even just getting big video equipment was silly. I think there was, um, we had camcorders that had come out, but the quality is really bad. In fact, I remember doing my first shorts, where it was like the old days, you would do in in-camera edits, you'd shoot, and if you didn't like to take, you'd rewind it, and then do it again, and rewind it, then do it again, and yeah, it makes me sound really old, but we were so excited just to be able to be like, oh, we're kind of making a movie that sort of planted the seed,

Dave Bullis 6:15
You know, I remember those camcorders too, growing up in the 90s, because I was born in 84 but I remember my parents, they got us, my parents got me a this like old style VHS camera, and I remember those huge ones where you would put it on your shoulder, it was literally like 20 pounds, and you're just like, I need a tripod, because look, my shoulders break in here, but you know, and yeah, and there's, and then you would edit it, and you could, like, you know, if you got fancy, you could try to connect it to your TV through RCA, you know,

Greg Francis 6:46
And you get to two of them and then try and do tape to tape and dub over like you do with your mixtapes. It was pretty cool.

Dave Bullis 6:52
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and eventually I got a TV with a VCR built in, and I connected another VCR, VCR to it, so I could actually start, you know, copying like stuff, like I can make copies of stuff I did for people, or I could like edit this together, make best of and stuff like that. Yeah, it was pretty high temp for things, so you're like, this is freaking awesome, you know?

Greg Francis 7:14
Yeah, exactly. And just to have access, that was the biggest thing. I don't come from a wealthy family, or or people that I mean, I was a Midwest kid, and growing up overseas, I didn't have any connection to the industry or people in the industry, and so getting your hands on equipment for the first time was like, so exciting, and being able to write stuff and then make it, it just was unprecedented, except for doing theater, you know, it felt like, oh, we're doing something important, and being able to do it for without having to pay was amazing.

Dave Bullis 7:44
Yeah, you know, it's kind of like what Spike Lee once said. Um, he said the reason he went to film school was just because they had all the tools, and somebody asked him if they would go to film school now, and he said no, I wouldn't go, because, you know, your phone is a camera now, so you know, and you know, cameras, like you said, DSLR and the red and everything else. I mean, you have these wonderful cameras now that you could, you know, some are more expensive than us, but you can still rent some of these, you know, and you know, you put together a pretty solid movie.

Greg Francis 8:11
Yeah, it's a completely different time now. You know, film school, you can go back and forth all the time, and the horrible thing, of course, with any school now is it's just so ridiculously expensive, but one of the great things that does come out of film school, more than the equipment or anything else, is just meeting other people that want to do what you do, and being able to crew up and get people to work on your projects and do it at that cost level, which is hard to find other places, unless there's good film groups in your city, or whatever, but film school does at least give you contact with other people that are trying to do the same thing.

Dave Bullis 8:48
Oh, very true,

Greg Francis 8:48
But it's expensive, man. It's so expensive, it's ridiculous.

Dave Bullis 8:52
Yeah, you know, I actually went to end up going to school for business, and you know, when I was there. I actually was like, you know, what I really just want to do film, and I ended up basically the way I network is through Twitter. I mean, that's, you know, how I met you, and you know, everything else, and you know, and you know, we can do things online now, like, there's so many online film courses and sites now. It's like, I literally, Greg, I don't know about you, but I get, like, an invite every week to a new, like, oh, we have streaming video servers, and we have webinars, and it's amazing.

Greg Francis 9:26
It is amazing. In fact, I was scrolling through all the people that you've interviewed, and I was like, "Holy mackerel, this guy's connected. You've gotten some amazing interviews with some really good people. No idea why you'd want me on your show, but I was, I was really impressed with all the people that you've, you've had on your show.

Dave Bullis 9:42
Oh, thank you very much. I try my best. I have a ton of other people too. I got like a back order backlog of people here now, but I really appreciate that. Thank you for saying that. But Greg, you're awesome, and you know that's why I want to have you on you know, and I want to talk about Poker Night too, but I just want to, real quick, to go back to your background, you know, you got started in the, in the video world, you know, on your IMDB, your first credit, you know, it's Paleo World, and you had a couple other things, could you talk about how you got started into that specific industry?

Greg Francis 10:25
Sure, I got out of film school. I got married like two weeks before I started film school, and I went on our honeymoon to my grandparents' house, because we couldn't afford anything. I was 21 and we came back and went to film school for two years and I made a movie about a 30 minute black and white sort of film noir parody, and of course it doesn't happen, doesn't matter how many awards I won at that point, so I ended up gripping for a year and PA-ing, and then I started art directing commercials, and about two years in a guy who worked at Family Channel saw my film and said, Well, I got this project I need over the weekend, I need you to this sitcom that has 100 episodes down to like a 15 minute sales tape for MIPCOM, which is kind of like napty internationally, it's a TV sales, so I did that, and watched it. Was a sorry, I shouldn't say that. It was a.. how should I say it? It was.. it was a tough job when we put together a good tape, and it sold really well. And so then, like, the next week he goes, "All right, now I've got.. we're launching a game show channel, and I need a doesn't matter what the budget is, but it was kind of like Princess Bride with the Dread Pirate Roberts, who would always say, you know, you have to do good or I can't hire you anymore, and wasn't to put pressure on me, but just to give you the reality of if people don't like what you do, we can't bring you back, and so I went from cutting something to shooting a 20 minute piece on 35 with no budget, I mean, just whatever we wanted to come up with, and that sort of started about, I gave that about almost a year of just doing these really big projects like that, and had a good run, and during that time someone from Discovery had heard about me, and they brought me in and asked me if I'd be interested in producing these series, and I was 24 and I was doing some, you know, big producing, be a really good way to expand, and and I was fascinated by it. There were two science shows, it was still shot on film, it was all international. So I jumped in, and we did that for a year. And then I was, you know, producing a tough gig, and I never wanted to be a producer. I was always a director, so I would argue with the EP all the time. Well, really, I want to be directing, but sometimes you get too valuable at one thing, and they don't want you to do something else. So, finally, at the end of that year, I quit, and when we finished the seasons, and then they hired me back as a director, and I started. I sort of rode right after that. About 96 was the OJ trial, and that was when the first crime shows went on Discovery, and our company did those, so it grew from about nine people to about 200 people, and we were doing five, six shows at a time, and had a big studio, and just running, running. I rode that horse for a long time. In fact, I'm still doing crack shows, but it was fascinating and fun, and I was traveling all over the country, meeting with different cops, and then coming back and getting actors and redoing, you know, the murders and the stories, and so it was a great education of, you know, showing up and having to do 1015, pages a day, or, you know, running around just creating stuff as you went, and it was, it was the best film school I ever could have had, and I really learned a lot.

Dave Bullis 14:13
So, so when they were, when you were producing, and they, and you mentioned that when you become so good at something and when you do something else, you know, like, what were some of the challenges you would face, you know, or some of the biggest challenges you fit you had to face as a producer.

Greg Francis 14:28
Well, it's all hard, I mean, and into something different. You know, I'd produce big commercial things, or we had money, discovery, we were on more of a limited budget, and plus it was international, so there was a lot of, and these were as close to pure documentary as everything that I've done, so you know, we were working with Archeology Magazine, and I'd send a crew out into the field, and they might go over to Petra in Georgia. Did, and I sent them over there, because we think there's a dig about one thing, and they get over there, and that story sucks, and they changed the story completely, but they're gone for seven days at a place with no, this is before cell phones or pagers, and they're out in the field, and I don't know until the day they come back to the airport, and they call me and say, oh, we changed everything, it's a whole new story, everything you sent us over here to do is wrong, and so then you come back and have to put that together, and so there was a lot of that, you know, and just trying to keep people safe, you know, we were weird crews in some hotspots, people just flying everywhere, just trying to manage all that and learn, and then come back and put it together into a story that makes sense, so it was a great experience, and a lot of learning on the fly, but at the same time, you know, I wanted to. There were two or three shows that I took myself, you know, going over to China and doing stuff there, and that's more what I wanted. I wanted to be out in the field, I didn't want to be sitting in the office or sitting in the edit suite as much as I wanted to be out doing it,

Dave Bullis 16:05
So as you went through the years of this, eventually you know you decided you wanted, you wanted to actually make feature films, correct?

Greg Francis 16:13
I think the goal was always to make feature films, that was how I went to school, and that's what you want to do, and you know, at that time, in the early 90s, it still seemed, you know, this was the Spike Lee era, the Kevin Smith era, all my heroes, Robert Rodriguez, these are guys that are out doing it, like, man, why, right project at the right, I Yeah, they were, you know, this, this town's tough, and so you have to work your way up, and I think I was, I was married and had kids coming by this point, and was doing really well in TV, where, you know, I was, I was just working all the time, and so it was always a struggle with me, you know. Do you keep riding this horse, or do you quit and leave and try and try and go out there and do what you wanted to do? And that's finally eventually where I got, got to where I wrote Poker Night, and started down that road.

Dave Bullis 17:20
So when you wrote Poker Night, you know, could you take us through the process of how you actually started to write it? I mean, did you outline heavily, or did, or, you know, did you do a lot of treatments, or did you just dive right in and just sort of find your way out, so to speak? Sorry, Greg, are you there,

Greg Francis 17:43
I Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm kind of processing it. Oh, sorry, laughing at myself. Yeah, I think what really separates a lot of amateurs from professionals, and certainly for me, I've written all my life, but I'm a very undisciplined writer. I love writing, I love reading, but let me rephrase, I love reading, and I love stories. But you know, sitting down and really being disciplined every day, I'm not great at.. I was doing so much time with homicide detectives all over the country, interviewing him all day, and then going out with him at night, and hearing all the 30 pages of Poker Night, I just kicked out in like a day, and then I sat there for about four months, and I didn't know what to do with it. I had a friend come in, and I would tell him the story, and so Doug and I would talk about it. He's credited with a story with me on the film, and he helped me break it and talk about different things, and then, and then over the next basically 10 years, it was a lot of rewrites and changes, and as things would switch, we would rewrite, and it continued all the way up till when we were on set. Finally, 10 years later,

Dave Bullis 19:11
So when you were writing, do you ever subscribe to the eight sequence method, or do you know, or you know anything like that, or do you just, you know, throw that aside?

Greg Francis 19:20
I think the only book that I had, because I took script writing in film school and grad school, and loved the class, loved the teacher, and wrote a bunch, but I think we had Sid Field's book, and there really, it wasn't really a cottage industry like it is today, where there's all these other things, you know, story didn't exist then, none of the other things existed, and I kind of was just plotting in the dark, and then it became and now back to the show. Out, well, if I have three acts, I can have three different stories at the table, and then he tries to escape three times, and so that's kind of how I built the structure of the film. And then we got to the end, and it sat there for another two, three months, because I didn't know I never had the ending, and didn't know what it was, or how to pull it all back together, and then finally that came, and then it changed again once we got to production. So it would be great to say that I was smart and had it all plotted out and figured out, and you know, you go back and forth too. If you write a lot, what's better to really know everything that you're doing? It's certainly easier in one sense, and it certainly makes it more achievable, but there's something nice about being surprised by the characters and being inspired as you go, too. It's just, it's a lot harder. It's a lot harder. So,

Dave Bullis 20:56
Yeah, I know. I've actually tried, like, both methods myself, and sometimes I'm writing, and just, you know, you sort of just get a starting point, and you have no plan where this is going, and you just sort of say, 'Hey, just see where the character is going to take me, and you know, it is, you know, sometimes you're like, 'Oh, wow, that happened, holy crap, you know, I didn't, I didn't see that one coming, but you know, once you can get into that flow, so to speak, you know, that's that sweet spot that all these all writers, you know, talk about it's, you know, it's, it's, it's the one thing you wish you could turn on or off.

Greg Francis 21:26
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's so tough. I, you know, anyone that's a writer, I have so much sympathy for, because it's a tough life, and it's a very tricky thing, and to be disciplined, and also to have something interesting and keep people interested, it's hard. It's hard. I need, I hope to keep getting a lot better at it. I need to get a lot better at it.

Dave Bullis 21:53
Have, have you read the book, The War of Art?

Greg Francis 21:57
Yeah, it's a great book.

Dave Bullis 21:58
Yeah, it's astounding. I always, every writer I always, who comes on, I always talk about that with them, just to see if they've read that, because that is, in my opinion, you know, like the de facto, if you're going to start at, like, a novel or a screenplay, you should just sit down and read this first, and you know, this is what you're going to be in for,

Greg Francis 22:15
It's funny, because you know, now it's like I said, it is such an industry, and I've read, I think I've read every book. I have this weird thing I ascribed, subscribed to, that if I learn one thing from a book, it's worthwhile. Now, since I love reading, but it's also, it's a great way to avoid writing, is I think I have every book on writing, and I'll sit and read that instead of writing, so it's tough, and I don't know that anymore, that necessarily they help. One of the best things I ever heard from a guy out here on screenwriting was, is the only thing that matters is if, when I get to the bottom of the page, do I want to read the next page, and everything else doesn't really matter. And I think that's really the truth of what a good screenplay is,

Dave Bullis 23:01
And that's very true, you know. So, as you took, you know, Poker Night, and you have the finished screenplay, you know, what was your next step in your getting it out there, and steps to get it made?

Greg Francis 23:18
That's another great question, you know. It's one of those that there were a few things before that that I got really inspired by, besides all of the great indie films. There was Wayne Wang did this movie called Smoke back in the early 90s, and it was about a cigar shop in Brooklyn, it had a lot of big names in it, and while they were filming, they, they were enjoying themselves so much, they shot another film called Blue Blue in the Face, I think, and just kept bringing people in, and they improv the whole nother movie, and I was like, man, people are just doing it, why can't we do it? So we tried a few things, writing and putting things together to get to that point, where I was like, we could do something kind of cheap, but it never came together. Poker Night was the first thing I felt like, all right, this, you know, this is something that has has a genre feel to it, and I think we could get the money, and at that point, obviously, Blockbuster was still huge, and you're like, at least someone will pick it up at Blockbuster, so I put it together, and I thought the only thing that I don't know is, you know, how to get the money, and so I was talking with friends, and my sister lived in a place where there were some people with money, and her husband owned a restaurant, and he said, "Why don't you come out, and I'll introduce you to some people, and I'll, you know, you guys can eat for free, and that's kind of how it started. I would go in and just pitch these rich people, and eventually we got about a million dollars, and I thought we were going to make the movie, so we, we packed up and moved, moved to that town, um. And then we still had to get another million dollars, so that was the problem, but I felt like, well, you've already got a million, how hard can it be? And it came together pretty fast, so but it proved to be harder than I thought.

Dave Bullis 25:15
So, when you got that first million, you know, with the pitch, did you know, did the investors ask a lot about, like, you know, ROI, or did they want to see, like, a physical packet, because I mean, at that point, you know, probably, you know, digital packets are big now, but I mean, at that point, you know, physical packets probably still in vogue, so did they ask to see any of that?

Greg Francis 25:35
We not really, we had a pretty nice business plan, similar to what everyone else is going to put out. You lay out here's some similar films. Here's how they performed. A big statement up front about risk and how much money you need to have in the bank if you even want to consider an investment like this. What the rate of return could be how how profit from film is divided, a lot of background on all the people that were involved, and then we did have a DVD that had a little video pitch, it had a little teaser on it, and some more information, but truthfully, the people that I was talking to, I don't think they cared one bit. Most of them were very, very wealthy, and I, when, because I went back to them and tried to do it once, once we had the million, and I was hitting a couple walls. I'm like, why don't you guys just double your investment? And they were like, we look, we never expected to see this money again. We like you, and we liked, we wanted to invest in you, and so go out and get the rest, and see if you can make it. But it wasn't like they were looking at this, is boy, this will be a great way to return the money. I think mostly they were also just, you know, part of it is it's a sexy business, and I think they were interested in that, and, and a lot of these guys were venture capitalists themselves, who started with nothing and had some people bet on them, and became incredibly wealthy. So, I think, you know, it was like a long shot thing that wasn't gonna hurt him too much, and they were amused by me, probably truthfully.

Dave Bullis 27:29
I once read an article about from a filmmaker who said there are other methods of ROI, and what he meant was basically his, he had one financier, and that was a billionaire's wife, and this wife just liked to tell people that she was a movie producer, and whenever he had a movie, you know, she would write a check, and here you go, and so when they, when they would go to, like, you know, yacht parties, or whatever else, hey, you know, my wife, this is my wife, film producer, so that's how they got our why, that's how her ROI, funny,

Greg Francis 28:01
Yeah, people are really funny, and it's a tough thing, because anyone, as anyone in this business knows, it's it's a really tricky thing to return money on investment, especially now. I think it's harder than ever. You have to be very creative about it, and I think there are people that are coming up with some really interesting ways, but the business has changed so much, I think, in the last three years. Even so, it's a dicey thing, especially if you're trying to go it alone.

Dave Bullis 28:32
So, you know, just as a food for thought, Greg, you know, I don't know what your next project is. Not to jump too far in the conversation, but you know, have you ever thought about crowdfunding for your next project?

Greg Francis 28:46
Yeah, I have. I think that it's a great, great source. It's, you know, getting.. I think getting the people in the following.. I think now maybe with a project behind me, and people a little bit more aware, at least some fans of the project. I think that that would be easier. At the time, I certainly didn't think so, but now I think you know that's definitely something to look at.

Dave Bullis 29:14
So, you know, so now that you know, eventually you did get the 2 million or so to make Poker Night. You know, how did you go about, you know, building a team from there? I mean, did you already have producers on board, or did you wait until after you got the money to start, like, crewing up with, like, a director of cinematography, and you know, all the other key roles?

Greg Francis 29:32
Well, it was a long process from there, and all those initial investors are not involved with the project as it is now, there was a point where after we had the money, and I came out and met some people out here that were very shady in LA, and still didn't have a good feel for it. There was a producer that was a line producer at the time. Who was just starting to make bigger movies, and he loved it, and very quickly he got the script to he was shooting a film in Ireland, or Isle of Man with James Franco and Kevin Reynolds, who directed Waterworld, called Tristan and Isolde, and the guy that was the the second unit director, swordsman on the film stunt coordinator also did Star Wars, and for whatever reason, he loved the script, and he got it to Sam Jackson, and he got it to Hayden Christensen, and they both wanted to make the movie, and all of a sudden it became a big project, and they didn't want me to direct, and I debated with them a long time, and finally stepped down and stayed on as a producer, and we got picked up by three companies right away, and a lot of, lot of fighting, and a lot of phone calls for about a year and a half. I was on the phone every day with all these different people, and it suddenly became something, and we finally ended up at Icon Films, Mel Gibson's company, and it was going to be a $10 million film, and that was set for August 2006 and it was about a year leading up to that of just trying to get Sam and Hayden's schedules clear and getting everybody in the right place, and at that point then they got offered Jumper with Doug Lyman, which was, I think, 100 and 100 and $10 million film. They both were probably making more than our budget, their whole budget, and they left. And so the after two years it sort of fell apart. They gave me a couple names that I could try and get to keep the project alive, but I was at a point where I needed to make some money, because it was a long road to do that, and so I just dropped the project and went and started directing skincare commercials in overseas, and then here in the States, and did that for about four years, and during that time the project was optioned three or four more times, and set up at different places, and almost to go, and had lots of meetings as a writer, none as a director, and finally I just kind of stopped giving the option, I didn't want people to take it unless they would let me direct it, and so that went on for another year or so, and then finally the producer I have now came in, and he'd been bugging me over the years and knew of the script from the first first incarnation back in like 2004 and he's like, "We're going to make your movie this year. I was like, "I don't believe you, and then we went and did it, so it just took a long time to get there, and as far as putting the team together, there wasn't anybody left from when I started, no one, and so it's all new. I took two people, we shot in Canada, and the only people that came up with me was a young lady who started as a PA for me and is now a big commercial producer, and just produced her first film, and the DP, and I actually had a different DP up until two weeks before the film, who I shot a lot of commercials with, and he was just breaking into film. He wasn't just breaking, but he had done a lot of small films and was getting bigger films, and did a really nice horror film that year that was big, and was ready to do it. And we pushed a week, and he thought the film wasn't going to go, and he took a different job, so I had to find a new DP in a week, and so I found Brandon, and Manny did a great job for me. We really clicked right away, and it worked out really well.

Dave Bullis 34:12
So, did you find that your experience as a producer, so when, like, a fire like that breaks out with it, you know, your DP, you know, has to leave a week before that, you were able to find one so quickly, you know. Do you think your producer experience helped with that?

Greg Francis 34:26
Yeah, I mean, anyone who, regardless of, I guess, where you end up in these positions, you know, the reason I got that producing job in the first place was because I was producing all the stuff I was directing, and then anything that I've done outside of Discovery, like I've done two series in China, a lot of commercials, all the skincare stuff for four years, I'm producing and directing all of that, so it's not that I've ever stepped away from it, and I think you also end up in, you want to control as much as possible. Will just, so that you have the things that you need, and so none of those things stood in my way. I would say, in the sense of it, it bothers you, but you're just like, oh, we've got to make this happen, and so you keep going, because otherwise, man, you fall apart, because everything burns to the ground pretty fast, and there's crises every day, so you just get, get tough and keep pushing through, and don't let it stop you.

Dave Bullis 35:32
Yeah, and that's very true, Greg, because I, you know, there's, you know, I've done stuff myself, and you like, you know, you always sort of end up, you know, realizing those short films that you did, or you know, student films, whatever, the, you know, those always end up teaching you, you have to have like a plan A through Z, and because plan A is going to fall, very rarely does play plan ever work out, and then you gotta, you know, and then going down the steps now till we actually get something that actually ends up like, you know, like you with Poker Night, until it ends up actually happening, and everyone's on set, and you're like, all right, here we go, let's film this.

Greg Francis 36:04
I used to tell people, you know, because how am I 40? I'm 47 so I started when I was 2021, 22 you know, like in all those years I feel like I've failed so many times at so many things, and the reason that you get paid better as you get older is because you don't fail the same way, and so it's like I've seen all those problems happen in 20 years, 25 years, and I know I'm not going to have that same problem, I'm going to have new problems, and I'm going to make new mistakes, but I better not make the same ones that I've made before, because it's the business is just, it costs too much money, so I think you know, experience really does teach you, and those hard lessons that you learn on all the hard projects only make you stronger and better when you come to a new project.

Dave Bullis 36:51
Yeah, it's very true, you know, like something I've learned is that over the years is that storyboarding is so key. I know some directors don't storyboard, but that's something that I've learned that really helps not only you visualize the movie, but sort of it helps everybody else as well.

Greg Francis 37:10
I've heard that, I've heard rumors of that. There was a great story about Matt Damon going to work with the Coen brothers on True Grit. and he said he wanted to take the job, because I forget who was telling him, it might have been, I think it was Brad Pitt said, you know, the great thing with working with the Coen brothers is every day you get your sides, which is, you know, the piece of the script you're shooting that day, and next to your sides is the storyboard of every shot they're going to do, so you know exactly what you're doing in every single scene, and I was like, "Wow, that's crazy. And I remember getting to hear Mmm Walsh talk when I was in film school about Blood Simple, and he.. it was the Coen brothers' first film, and he had a great story about he had this idea when he gets shot and falls in the bathroom, how he wanted to do it, and he said the Coen brothers kept showing him that the storyboards are going, "No, but look, this is how you fall, and he goes, "Yeah, but I thought of it, and they said, "No, no, this is how you fall. And so I always think of that, because I love them, they're brilliant, but yeah, I don't know that my drawing skills are good enough for, for storyboarding, and sometimes I'm also, I don't know, people are all funny, but you're like, I don't know if I want everybody to know, because it changes so fast, and as soon as you put it on paper, they're like, but this is what you're supposed to do, and I think doing so much TV, and so much, so many things that change so quickly, I end up being a lot more fluid on set from what I plan. So

Dave Bullis 38:52
That's a great story about Emma Walsh, you know, Blood Simple. You know, I've watched that movie, you know, a dozen times. You know, I think that's a very good, almost a film school in itself, because it's, it's, it's very good, and they, you could tell they, you know, they didn't have a lot of money, but they used the story to just, you know, hey, look, we don't have, we can't blow up a car this and that, because I remember the interview they did for Raising Arizona, they said they finally got to blow up a car, which I always wanted to do, they couldn't do that in Blood Simple or or Crime Wave or Second Movie, I forget what it was, but you know it was, but as you get better, you know, like you said, not only do you get paid better from making the same mistakes, but you get to blow up a car, yeah, you have to dream bigger, you know, Greg, just to, you know, sort of take a step back, you know, when you were talking about, you know, in LA, and talking about producing, and you know, going out and finding some really shady people. Is there any, you know, just sort of tips that you could parlay to people that, about, you know, what to look out for if they ever, you know, get someone trying to give them a, you know, a deal, whether it's a distribution deal or, you know, an actual investment deal.

Greg Francis 40:13
Boy, it's difficult, because as the creative, you know, you're willing in some ways, to almost do anything to get your movie made, and so when people are offering you things, it takes a lot of discernment to know, is this a good offer, is this a bad offer. How do I, and truthfully, when you're starting out, you don't really have a lot of choices, but I did feel, because I had raised that initial investment, that I was sort of a caretaker of that, and a lot of, a lot of the guys that wanted to invest or to work with that money, I just didn't trust even having the money that I raised. I didn't feel like you could just tell, and then you know, then you sort of learn, well, that's how they all are necessarily just these guys, but and then you know, over the next 10 years I go back and forth a lot, well, you know, if I would have said yes, then at least the movie's done, you know, or maybe it just should never happen, and so it's a cautionary tale on both sides, because at a certain point you just want to get it done regardless, but you also don't want to have to go back to the people that believed in you and trusted in you and say these guys took us all for a ride. I think once I finally came to a producer who was putting up the money and, and staying on board, it was a different situation, and so it took, it took 10 years to get to the right situation. I hope it won't be 10 years for the next one, but I would say use your, use your judgment, and and then sometimes you know, you look at some of the great filmmakers, John Sales, James Cameron, they all, you know, these guys that started with Corman and some of the other things, it wasn't ever the best situation. Their first films are, you know, they show promise, but they're not great. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice and go for it, and know that it's not going to work always in your favor. Paul Thomas Anderson was the same thing with Reicher, with Heart Eight, and then, and then you hope that you had enough goodwill off that project to get another one, so it's, it's, it's very difficult. I wish that I had better advice, but trust your gut, trust your gut.

Dave Bullis 42:34
Well, no, I think that's great advice, but you know, and right, you sort of parlay the, you know, one moving to the next, and I don't think you'd have to wait another 10 years to make something after poker nights, because I think you know you've got distribution on iTunes right now. You know, the movie's doing.. I see all the time people are tweeting at you about the movie. You know, I really think that, you know, and like we talked about earlier with crowdfunding, I think you know when you do have your next script, I think you can sort of expedite the whole process now.

Greg Francis 43:04
Well, you're off to God's ears. I would love to be able to get another shot at the plate. We've had a good reception. It's been fun to see there's definitely a lot of haters too, but the people that are looking for something like it, I think, like it, so that was that was why we tried to do it in the first place, was just to come up with something that's the same but different in the same realm, but different, and have fun with it, and that's what we tried to do, so I think it connects with certain people, and other people have no patience for it, so I understand that too.

Dave Bullis 43:44
So, you know, and speaking of, you know, actually making the films, you know, could you take us back to how did you actually cast Ron Perlman in Poker Nights? You know, you know, how did you go about contacting him and eventually cast him in the movie?

Greg Francis 43:57
Well, you know, I wish there were more romantic stories about this kind of thing, but the casting process is a very difficult thing, and I was, you know, coming out of TV, it's different because people want to work, and I'm not working with high-level actors on the shows that I do, it's mostly new actors, so it's very easy to get lots of auditions and go through the auditions, and make people audition again, and find the right person for the role. For this, we knew we needed to get good actors, and we had a casting director, Chadwick Struck, who's really great, and goes back and forth between, you know, some low-budget stuff to better budget stuff. He works a lot with Kevin Spacey's company, and he just is a really great guy, but any of these movies are hard to get because there isn't a lot of money, and you're, you're just sort of throwing, throwing it against the wall until you get somebody to say yes. I think with Poker Night on. Page, it could go either way. You don't know if it's going to be, you know, a gory slasher film, or if it's going to be or play to the more smart parts of the script. So, getting people to read it and getting offers out that people were interested in, it took a while. I remember, and I was hitting every character actor I could. I just had, I had lists of 5060 names of the best in the business that I loved, and we just, you know, couldn't get responses a lot of time, and so you go through, you make an offer, and it's a timed offer, usually, so it'll be x amount of money against x number of days, and we need you to respond by next week, and you never, even though they're required by law to make, give them the offer. You never know if they do. You don't know what's going on. And I was looking for older guys, so some of these guys are like, I'd rather be out in my boat fishing or whatever. So you never know the truth of if they even read the script or saw the script. And so we kept just making offer after offer after offer, and we went back and forth too, because you're like, well, do you get Jeter first, or do you get the young guy first, or do you get the old guys at the table, and which is going to help the other, and I always wanted to go for the older guys, because those are the guys that excite me anyway, but there was a lot of thought that maybe we should get the lead first, because if we get the right lead, it'll help position the film to the older guys, and eventually it didn't matter, it would be a lot of rejection. I want to say it might have almost even been a month, and some people would, you know, it wasn't really a rejection, it'd be the offer runs out and you don't know what's happening, but truthfully, we got one actor who said yes, and as soon as he said yes, we filled up all the roles like super fast. In fact, one of the things that I would recommend, and I've heard other people do, is that you can make a contingency offer, because a lot of, a lot of these lower budget films, you're, you're doing favored nations, you know what that is, right?

Dave Bullis 47:03
Yeah,

Greg Francis 47:04
So everyone's getting kind of the similar offer, but I did hear after that, you know, you can, that there is a thing called like first in bonus, because sometimes it's just getting that name to make it a legitimate prog project, so as soon as you have somebody that means something, all of a sudden it means something, and then everyone else is afraid. So, maybe there's a five grand. I don't know, five grand is ridiculous. I don't even know what the number would be, but there's a bonus for the guy that signs first, because then everyone else came in, and literally, I think once we had that first name, we had everybody within two weeks, and Pearlman was a guy that you know I've loved forever, I've loved since Quest for Fire, and really wanted him in, and he's funny because we did the Q and A out here at the premiere in LA, and I was telling this story, and he was like, well, you know, because he wanted to play a certain role, and I had three old guys at the table, and the guy that Proman plays, I always imagined as like a 40 year old guy. I wanted one guy in between our young guy and the old guys, and so Pearlman really wanted to play that part, and I kept going, he's better for the other part, I want him as one of the older guys, so I can get a younger guy, you know, like these are, you know, like a Mark Ruffalo, that's a Dreamcast, or you know, even a John Cusack, some of these guys that are really great that could sort of bridge that gap, and the word kept coming back, nope, this is the one he wants to play, and when I told the story, Ron was like, well, if I would have known you felt that way, I never would have pushed for it, and I'm like, no, it doesn't make any difference what I thought, because Pearlman is great, and actually the producer said to me, you really want to tell Ron Perlman, though, is that what you want to do, you don't want him in the project just because you think that this role should be this way, that is a really dumb thing, so I was like, no, you're right, I'm an idiot, and one of many times, and so I sort of, I don't even, I didn't even rewrite it, we just changed it and gave it to Ron, and my gosh, he's he's the shining light in the film, he's amazing, and he knocked it out of the park, I think he felt like, well, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have ever taken this role if it was that, but I'm like, man, it's the best thing in the world that he took this role. It's the best thing in the world. The producer talked me out of my foolishness, and he shines on the screen. He's amazing. Fact, we got so lucky with all the actors, I can't, I couldn't even imagine that we would get a cast like that. These guys are all brilliant, and I mostly just had to sort of stay out of their way and let them do their thing and learn, watch and learn a lot, just like Poker Night.

Dave Bullis 50:06
It's that old saying, when you have a great script, you know that's like half of the work done for the director, right there, so you know, because you can always, you know, go from that, you know, all the actors can go from their actions, their dialog, the subtext, and then they said, you know, having a great DP is like the other, you know, 20 some percent, and they said, you know, there's just like 10% left, where you, the directors, it's up to the director to screw it up. Have you ever heard that, Greg?

Greg Francis 50:33
Yeah, yeah, I think that I think there's a lot of truth to that. Over the years of doing it, I've really learned to sort of step back and let let people do their jobs, and, and I mean, you get the credit anyway, unless they're really screwing up. People still say nice things about me, but, my gosh, the crew we had, the DP I have, Brandon Cox, the actors I have, you know, the things that are messed up in the movie aren't my fault, and the things that work, I really, the credit belongs to everyone that was up there. The Canadian crew was unbelievable. I just felt really lucky and really blessed with the people I got to work with.

Dave Bullis 51:15
So, do you have any other, you know, tips for directing actors that you've, you know, you've accumulated over the years,

Greg Francis 51:22
Boy, every everybody's different, and you know, you work with somebody, each one of them was different. Ron was very specific, and if I gave him a note on a line, you could bet that that line would change. He was very. I was afraid there's a couple of John Adam books on directing, I don't know if you've seen those. I think it's like I'll be in my trailer and I forget what the next one is, and it was all these stories of him working with big actors and all the problems, and he and he collected them from generations, you know, stuff with Steve McQueen and with other people, where just directors and actors clash, and so it wasn't that I read that and was like, oh, I'm scared, but I was very nervous going in, of, you know, who's this guy that's done all this TV, and you know, we know what we're doing, we've done 200 movies, and it's true, they all had, I think, knowing that I wrote the script, and they all had a lot of respect for the script, gave me more cachet, so there was never a time when anybody got grumpy with me, or or rude to me, or said shut up, or you don't know what you're doing. They were all very, very good, but at the same time, I feel like I'm not an overbearing director. I've learned over the years one of the things that I usually do, and this is from poker night even to my crime shows, is I sort of set up the scene, this is what's happening, here's your blocking, and then let them do the scene the way that they've prepped it, because it could be way better than anything that I thought or that I would direct them to do, and so when you see it the first time, you're just like the audience going, 'Wow, this could be amazing. And then, if it sucks or it's bad, then you can come in and start leading people a certain way. But I usually don't try. I mean, on Poker Night, we didn't get to have rehearsal beforehand, you know, we're just thrown right into it. In fact, oh yeah, remind me, I'll go back and tell you one more casting story, but I tend to step back and see what people are going to bring to the project first, and then go from there. But with these guys, they're all.. I mean, what could I tell them? You know, these guys are all veteran actors, character actors who've been shooting hundreds of movies, and I'm just the guy for this one, but you know, they treated me with respect. They listened to everything that I said, they changed things, they would.. if they felt I was leading him the wrong way. We would talk about that, Ron, and I, on our very first take, I was trying to do something that I thought was helpful, and he sort of was like, I think the script, you know, is this way, and it was really good. So they kept me in line, too, and I like anything, you know, you learn, learn from the best, they were amazing, and that's just being patient, and I love actors. I started as I started in theater. I would never necessarily say I was an actor, but it's so much fun to have people come to life and bring something to life that you did, and to get to work with these guys and have a process to allow them to relax and do their best work, that's something I cherish and really enjoy. So it was so much fun,

Dave Bullis 54:50
You know. You mentioned having a big actor, and you were kind of scared, because you know, sometimes they might be, you know, used to a certain thing or a certain, a certain way. Yeah, I actually had a, you know, just to, you know, just to compliment that story. I have a friend of mine, and he was shooting a movie here in PA, and he shot at Eastern State Penitentiary, and the actor was notorious for just going off of the director at random times, and he was relieved at the end because they didn't have a fight at all. They, they actually got along well, and he, at the, you know, as they were leaving for the day, he came up to him, and he's like, "Yeah, you know, it's amazing, we got along and everything. And the guy said, "Yeah, well, I'll see you tomorrow, and he said, "No, no, we're done, the movie's over. And he's like, "What the.. what the fuck do you mean the movie's over? And he goes, well, that was it, we got every, all the footage, and we were all good, and he goes, what the fuck, and he said he just lost it for no reason, for telling him the movie was done, I got, and so you know, but you're right, though, you know, you know, I would still, there's certain actors I would just love to work with, but I'm always, you know, hesitant, because you know there's different experience levels, and there's different expectations, and you know, and some people just have bad days, you know. Yeah, so you just got to sort of ride the storm and see, you know, where that takes you, right?

Greg Francis 56:11
Yeah, and you know, I don't know, everyone has a different approach. I've been doing it a long time, but at that level, and the way that those guys probably saw me, not at their level, but I'm also.. I come in pretty.. it's not hat in hand, but you know, I don't feel any need to throw down some kind of.. you know, I'm the guy in charge, and this is how we're going to do it, and you're on my train, I'm no David Fincher, I'm no James Cameron, I don't.. that's not my skill set yet. I'm just a guy that wrote a script, and I'm happy to be here, and ecstatic to be working with you guys. And so, you know, I was very.. I talked to each of them to say, well, this will feed into that casting story. So part of making these offers is, you know, you hear all the time, well, I went and met with this guy, and we talked about if this, if they would be right for the part, how they saw things. Well, on this level of filmmaking, you don't, I mean, I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody, the agents refused to allow me to have a conversation to even be like, well, are they right for this? Do they hate this script? Have they read the script? Do they have.. do they decide they want to play it in a dress? You know, I don't get any feel at all other than their body of work and how amazing they seem to be, because they don't.. you know, Perlman might get on the phone with me, and all of a sudden think I'm a good guy, and then say, well, you know, tell his agent, make the deal, I don't care what it is, I want to work with him, or the opposite, he might say, forget it, I don't want to do it, and the agents are already not happy because you're taking their actor on a small film, and that's time that they can't be making money on a big film, so it's a hard process to get in, and it wasn't until they accept the offer that then I get a phone number, and I can call them. So now they're already in the movie. I don't know if they like me, if they like the script, if we can work together, any of it. So it's a scary call, and you have to get on the phone and say, "Hey, I hope you liked everything. Let's get to know each other. What? How do you.. what's your take on this character? And it's all after the fact, so it's a really.. I mean, I was in amazing hands. It wasn't like I was going to somebody that's never done anything at all, sudden they're hired, and it wasn't some.. none of these guys had a reputation of being, you know, crazy or anything. They're all brilliant actors, but it's still that feeling of it's the cart before the horse, a little bit, that we can't even have a chance to make sure we can get along, because some people you just don't get along with. So it was a very frightening thing, but with each of them I was very clear. Look, you know, I've done TV, I haven't done a film. I did write this. This is how I see things. If you have a process different than what my process is, tell me the best way that I can help you. You know, this is how I approach it. How do you approach it? I know Ron Eldar was one that he told me right away. He's like, look, you don't have to come in and play any kind of games with me. I don't need to know, you know, think about this or think about that. You just tell me exactly what you want, say it faster, say what you want. I think you should be angry here. I don't like how you said that word. He wanted me to be very specific and not waste time on trying to manage him or direct him in a different way, because you know how it is, you'll be like, well, you know, I was thinking, you know, you've had this part and you've come in here and you're trying to set the scene to get him to a way that you want him to be, and he was just like, just tell me exactly it. There was another actor on set that was unbelievable, in a smaller part, Lachlan Monroe, he played the serial killing photographer, and he, he's been on so many sets, and he was in Unforgiven, he's been in a lot of the Wayne Brothers movies, and he could tell the cameraman every time he would cross behind the actor, okay, I'm getting ready to bring out the knife on 123, and then you know he was like directing the cameras, but they never missed any parts of his performance in the middle of his performance, I'd never seen that, and he was brilliant in the film, so there was a lot of everyone has a different process, and you sort of start learning, but I think the best thing you can be, at least for me, on the first film, was to be very flexible and fluid, especially because I mean these are top top actors, they're not, you know, the money makers that a Tom Cruise is, but man, they can just act circles around so many of our big celebrities, they're just really, really good.

Dave Bullis 1:01:05
It's also sort of like what Dov SS Simon says in his book, you know, from Realtor Deal. He always recommends saying to actors, why don't we try it this way?

Greg Francis 1:01:14
Yeah, they were totally open to everything. There was one, there was only one time that I that one of the actors was like, I'm not going to do that. It was a pretty funny thing. I asked him to do something that was a little bit crazy, and he was like, I'm not doing that. And then the next day, he told me, I really should have done that, which, you know, they're masters at games too, all those guys, and so they were directing me as much as I was directing them,

Dave Bullis 1:01:43
You know. I once was talking to a friend of mine, Gary King, who I'm hoping to have on the podcast, and he said one thing he learned while making all the student films and short films was that you have to take after each take direct the actors in a certain way, that way when you go to edit, you have different things to choose from, because he used to have actors basically do scenes, I'm sorry, each each take of a scene the exact same way, and then when he was editing, he's like, man, I got nothing really to choose from, it's, you know, it's either take one, where she says it like this, or take two, where she says it exactly the same way, you know,

Greg Francis 1:02:16
Yeah, I can see that, I think I can see that I don't know that I've ever done that. Partly, I feel like you're heading down a path that you know where you want to get to, and you can feel it when it's there, and even just to get what you want correct takes, takes some time, so you know it might take three, four takes to get it where you want it, and then you want to get it right. If they were doing something different every single time, partly, I mean, I think it depends too on the kind of director you are. If you're making your show more in the edit room, or if you're locking on set to what you're going to do in the edit room, and I do. I would say I would subscribe more to it if I feel like we've really knocked it out of the park on the first set of coverage. Well, let's try something different on this one and do one or two takes that way, but it's tough when you don't have a lot of time, and you're moving fast on a low budget film to have, because then you're going well on your wide shot. If you do five different versions, then you're going to go to your over or your medium shot. Now you got to do five different versions, and they better match the first five versions. Then your close-up, those all better match those first five. And how delineated are those five? So I think that it can work, and especially maybe on a comedy, I could see that a lot more, because there's a lot more room for that, but I've, I haven't done too much that way. I think that it's an interesting idea, and if you have all the, if you have a lot of time, I think it'd be a great thing to explore. I just, I guess, I haven't had that luxury yet.

Dave Bullis 1:04:03
Yeah, I definitely agree. It would definitely work better on a comedy, because that way you could at least have that juxtaposition of, like, you know, he's supposed to say this, but he's angry, and it's, you know, stuff like that. So, yeah, I, you know, I see exactly what you mean, and you know, but no, you know, a lot of this would always come up with his food for thought, and it's just, you know, that's why I love creating this dialog, just to see.

Greg Francis 1:04:24
Yeah, it's awesome. And I think, too, like, if you're really exploring something, there's something interesting to making that happen. I mean, Fincher is famous for 100 takes, but I've had people that have been on his sets, and they say he's not really directing him much, he's just making him do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again, until you're not acting anymore, you're just talking because you're exhausted and you don't know what he wants, but doing things different ways. I think there is a way that would be interesting to explore that way. Well, what if we did it like this? What if we did it like this, and all of a sudden something new comes out of that scene that wasn't there before? Or I just, I've never done it that way, but I think it's interesting way.

Dave Bullis 1:05:06
It's very interesting. One technique I like to do was, I actually on the last take, I just let the actors, I say I'm not gonna give you any direction, and I'm gonna let you just, whatever acting decision you want to make, that's what we're gonna roll with, and just to see what they would come up with, and you know, and so that, and also makes the actors happy, because now they're saying, "Oh, good, we get to have some, you know, some input on the scene, you know, so you know, my, you know, that's just what I've sort of learned over the years, too. I don't know if it helps much, but

Greg Francis 1:05:38
I think it's a great idea. I usually do that on the first take, where I'm like, well, let's see, let's see what you want to do, let's go out, let's just try it, let's see what it is, and see what they're doing, and then I'll gradually move them towards what is in my mind influenced by what they did, unless what they did was so brilliant, which is what happened a lot with our, with our poker guys, and then in the end, a lot of times I'll circle back around and say, you want to try something different, and let them do a different one, and sometimes that changes the whole scene, and then you go, all right, no, I really like that take on it, I hadn't thought of that before. Now let's go back and redo the wide shot, and redo this, and switch things around, because it's so good, because you usually start conservative, and then you get a little bit crazier as you go, so it's all fun.

Dave Bullis 1:06:22
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's always.. you know, I usually keep end up keeping like a journal of everyday shooting, and you know what I learned there, and you know how to do all this stuff that way. It carries over well into the, you know, the next projects when you're like, you know, looking through back over that stuff, and you're like, oh well, I remember this stuff

Greg Francis 1:06:37
I've never done that. That's a really great idea.

Dave Bullis 1:06:41
Oh,

Greg Francis 1:06:42
As I get older, and I can't remember stuff anymore as well as I used to.

Dave Bullis 1:06:48
Well, I'm glad I was able to, you know, give you that great idea. You know, so you know, with Poker Night now, you know, it's on iTunes. You know, could you sort of go through how you got, you know, digital distribution for it, you know, why you chose iTunes, and you know, you know, is it coming to Netflix, stuff like that.

Greg Francis 1:07:08
Yeah, I'm sure it is. I didn't choose it, the producer, the producer did it, and actually we were picked up prior. We, we were really close to being in South by Southwest last year, we were one of the finalists, and then I guess we were one of the last to cut, and that hurt, but we had a lot of interest in the film then, and Accelerator Media is the one that picked up the film right after that, and they're an amazing company, they've done really well for us, as far as I would know. They got us a lot of our online press, and they put it immediately on. I think on the fifth, it went on video on demand and on Amazon, and it didn't hit iTunes till a couple weeks after that, and we had a week run here in LA at a theater, and it's internationally, though there's streams in every language already, but it opened in Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, so it's like conquering the Middle East as we speak, or at least it's playing in the Middle East, but I get tweets from Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, a lot from England recently, and I think now that it's out there legally, a lot more people are seeing it, but here you can get it on iTunes, you can get it on VOD, it's on Amazon, and it should be coming to, I think it's coming out on DVD in February, and then probably right after that it'll hit Netflix.

Dave Bullis 1:08:47
Oh, very cool. Because I'm actually, I didn't know it was on Amazon, but I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes if you want to check it out.

Greg Francis 1:08:53
Yeah, that's awesome,

Dave Bullis 1:08:56
You know, because I had Jason Brubaker on, who's like a digital distribution mastermind, and he's always talking about, you know, different ways, and you know which, you know, there's really no correct answer for the right platform, so to speak, you know, so if you chose iTunes, you know, is a really a big difference between that and Amazon. Well, I mean, I don't know enough to comment, but I mean, really, what I hear is basically the answer is not really, because you know everyone's fighting over, you know, space, it's still, you know, you know, there's the store window where you know people would walk by. Well, now you know the front page of iTunes is that new store window where everyone wants to fight for retail space.

Greg Francis 1:09:31
Yep,

Dave Bullis 1:09:32
So

Greg Francis 1:09:32
It's been a very interesting thing, and also, you know, just the distribution models different, like Accelerator had somebody that was just getting lots of placement on different websites for articles, or they did a lot of clips of the movie. In fact, at one point I was like, pretty soon we'll be able to see the whole movie just through clips but I, you would think, well, it's going to run, I don't know, who knows what, I don't know what the digital model is, but maybe it's going to run like three weeks before the movie opens, and then once it opens, it tapers off, but it was a lot longer tale, where I'm still getting reports, I mean, they're still putting, getting reviews and websites that are talking about the movie. We just had an interview on Fangora go up yesterday, and it came out on Amazon and VOD on the fifth of December, and it wasn't until close to the 20th, I think, on iTunes, so you know, just getting it out there and getting it around it, it seems to be that their take is it's a lot longer window, you try and hit a lot more sites and you keep the publicity going, because it can always drive somebody there, and it is, I think, in this climate, just getting anybody to even know about the movie is the hardest part, especially if you're not running, you know, a 32nd ad every two minutes on TV. So, just having anybody even know that it's out there takes a lot more time and energy.

Dave Bullis 1:11:13
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Somebody once mentioned to me recently, it's not money that's in shortage now, it's attention spans,

Greg Francis 1:11:20
Yeah,

Dave Bullis 1:11:21
And he said, you know, he actually got money for his project, and he's like, you know, trying to get the word out there. It's like, you know, it's a very crowded marketplace,

Greg Francis 1:11:29
Yeah, it's very tough, and especially, you know, the line is so much more divided. What used to be, you know, a good, you know, 2 million to $5 million film is a $500,000 film now, and you're in the same ballpark as you know 1000 other films trying to get the same eyeballs and with no money, and so it's a difficult time to sort of step out and stand out from the pack, but it's also an amazing time, because you know 10 years ago none of those films would get made, or very few of them, just because it was cost prohibitive. And now there's so many more ways to get your film out there. It's just we've got to find a good economic model to be able to sustain this, this new way of doing things.

Dave Bullis 1:12:16
Yeah, you know, very true. And you sort of see how it's sort of forming right now, where basically everyone is getting their own, you know, all their own content on their own websites, you know, Netflix, HBO Go, they're sort of taking their things off Hulu and Netflix, and just sort of saying, hey, we're gonna just be here from now on, and you have to subscribe to us, and that's why now Netflix and Hulu are creating their own content, and pretty much everyone now is looking for their own content, even Amazon is looking for their own content now.

Greg Francis 1:12:43
Yeah, back Ron's got a new series on Amazon that's really great if you get a chance to see that.

Dave Bullis 1:12:49
Oh, sure. Which is that?

Greg Francis 1:12:50
It's called Hand of God. They just did the pilot, but I think that he's.. I think that he's wrapped the series, so I don't know how many episodes. it's probably 10, and it'll, it'll probably be February, March, maybe even later, that it's going to come out, but the pilot's up on Amazon now. It's really good.

Dave Bullis 1:13:10
Okay, let's, I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.

Greg Francis 1:13:13
I think Titus, Titus two, his Amazon series Bosch starts in February, he's already wrapped that, so he's got another one. So both those guys went immediately to the Amazon series right after the film, which is great. It's giving good actors a lot of life and things that maybe they.. I don't know if they, for whatever reason, they wouldn't say that they could carry a network show on a certain way, and these guys had the freedom to do this and make these characters their own, so they both really enjoyed it,

Dave Bullis 1:13:46
And that's really cool, and it's also more opportunities for everybody too, because you know there's gonna be more directors, and

Greg Francis 1:13:52
Somebody I was at a meeting at the Writers Guild, and they were saying there were 300 over 300 drama series on TV last year, over 300 that's just unprecedented. So, there's a lot more opportunity, and I think that's sadly, in some ways, I think that's the direction independent film is moving to. Those people that sort of were in that sweet spot in the market are all gravitating towards TV.

Dave Bullis 1:14:19
Yeah, I can definitely see that as well, and you know, and also, too, there's so many independent film channels now, too, which, which just, you know, specialized independent film, and you know, you go on there and you're like, wow, there's like a couple 1000 choices of movies that have been made in, you know, in the past five years that are all independent films, and it's just, you know, you, you don't have enough time to watch them all, you know, in a given time, because it's always getting new ones in there, so you know it's very, yeah, it's very interesting to see where this is all, where it is all going to go, and you know, which eventually is going to become the new market model, in both of terms of payment and distribution, and you know, and you know, and net neutrality too, you got to make sure that you know stay. Where it is, or else you know it's all sort of for nothing, because if you know there's different, you know, levels of internet, then you know some people who don't, you can't afford the big stuff, you know, will you know, get became off trouble watching things online.

Greg Francis 1:15:14
Yeah, there's a lot of big issues that are coming up, and interesting issues, and it's a, you know, you've been around this business for a long time, too. It's not like it's so much more of a middle-class business than people think, at least for people in the tech side, from the writing, directing, producing, even the acting side. There's the, you know, the five 10% that are really ridiculously wealthy, and the rest of us are sort of grinding out our time because we love this. I didn't get into this to become wealthy, I got into this because I love to tell stories, and I love working with people, and I love that collaboration, and I thank God that I'm able to pay my rent doing it, but nobody's like stockpiling millions and driving a BMW, you know. We're still all Honda Toyota guys trying to go to work each day and make enough money to pay your rent at the end of the month, and mostly just because we do love this. This is, I can't imagine doing anything else. Just feel very lucky and thankful and blessed each day on whatever level of production you get to be involved in, it's a great way to make a living. It's a hard way to make a living, but, man, I can't imagine doing anything else. It's so much fun.

Dave Bullis 1:16:33
Oh, yeah, I completely agree. You know, it's like Ted Hope - he actually left independent filmmaking, and then now he's back. It's just that it's an addiction.

Greg Francis 1:16:40
It is an addiction. You're absolutely right,

Dave Bullis 1:16:43
Greg. I actually have a few questions for people who wrote in. If you don't mind, I'll just pick like the best three. The first question is, do you have to live in LA to become a screenwriter?

Greg Francis 1:16:55
Nope, especially not now. I think you caveat to that would be it sure helps. I was in Indiana when Poker Night first was in the trades with the first incarnation, when we had Sam Jackson in, and suddenly I had agents for writing, and I had, you know, 4050 meetings with all the different studios and all the little studios, and I had to fly out every time, and then I had to do a lot of stuff on the phone, and so you go, is it easier if you're here? It sure is easier if somebody calls your agent and says, "Hey, that guy that wrote that thing that we read last week, can we get him in here today? And they're like, "No, he doesn't live here, but we can do a phone. They might be like, "We'll get somebody else in them. So, I think, but once you've made it, I don't know if it matters as much, and the industry is getting smaller, but boy, it's hard to get that lightning in a bottle for that first script to get people interested and wanting to meet with you, and I think being out here helps, and especially, I mean, I wasn't here, so it was really, and probably you see the movie and you're like, well, that script shouldn't have gotten any attention, but I think for some of the scripts that aren't 1,000% great, but maybe they're only 80% great. It sure helps to know low-level executives, the low-level assistants, people that you can give your script to that'll read it and then push it up to their boss, and you don't get to do that unless you're out here. So, I do think that there are advantages to it, but I would wait until the last possible second, I would get two or three scripts under your belt, and then come out when you're ready, blow up the town, and then you can get out.

Dave Bullis 1:18:49
Yeah, and you know it's like what Quinton Tarantino said about, you know, making a first project. He said, "Oh, just make Reservoir Dogs.

Greg Francis 1:18:58
Yeah, exactly. I had there was.. I went to one of the first things I went to out here was the guys that wrote Batman Forever, and they had written a script before that that was a brilliant script, but no one had seen Batman Forever yet, and everyone was asking, well, how do you do this, how do you do that, and they kept going, just write a great script and everything will happen for you, and I was so angry at the time, because I'm like, what does that mean, and how do you write a great script? And you know it's almost a blow off, and it also implies that they wrote all these great scripts, and Batman Forever sucked. So I was even angrier after I saw that, but I do think there's some - I mean, there's some truth to once you have material that people want, you're in a whole different place. You control a lot of things. They have to come to you to get it. At the same time, you know, if you write a great script, shoot it. If you're in Indiana, if you're in Pennsylvania, if you're in Georgia. It get friends together and do it. Write something that you can do, and you come out here with a project that's good. You're in a whole different world, and you're treated completely different than somebody that wants people to give you something, or that you want to give you a chance, you've already taken that from them, and you've given yourself permission and done it yourself. And then, and then the world is different. Hopefully, it's a good film, and it's a good project, but it's hard. It's a hard game, and being out here, I think, at the beginning, anyway, making those contacts and working your way up is a good way to go, although it's changing fast,

Dave Bullis 1:20:52
You know, that kind of answers the second question as well, which was, once I have a screenplay written and finalized, what should be my next step?

Greg Francis 1:21:00
Get everybody to read it, anybody that you can, and have them tell you all the things that they hate and don't like, and give it to people that will be honest with you. I have, I have a group of writers across the country, from Virginia to the Midwest out here, that I've worked with over the years, and, man, before we shot poker night, I sent it to all of them again, and they've read it over that 10 years, and I'm like, look, I'm about to shoot, don't let me make an ass out of myself, tell me what sucks, because this is the last chance, and I don't know if they did a good enough job, there's some problems, but you know, you have to cultivate those people, and then anyone that you know, you just give it to them, and you keep trying to find somebody that's going to get it to somebody that means something, and I would say, while you've done that, you better be writing more, don't don't think that this is the one that's going to do it, because it's probably 99% chance that it won't, you need to have more than one script, and they need to be getting better, and they need to see something. And then the truth is, is the way the business is now, unless you're making it yourself. There wasn't anybody that I had a meeting with on Poker Night, and it all starts the same way. Oh, we love the script, it's a great script. We have these projects, would you be interested in this? It's they don't want to make your movie, they want you to make their movie, so they're going to be offering you things that they have to see if you're right for that, so all of these things are just things to get you in a door, unless you're going to do it yourself, but the only way to do that is to have two or three things, keep writing and develop a voice that people want to hear, it's a hard, hard road, I would, and again, the other side of that is, I think I said it on Ashley's thing, which is, I'm, I'm not the most talented writer, I'm not, I have so many friends that are way better than me and way more deserving of getting attention for the writing than me, I think that I picked the right subject at the right time, and did it in a way that was different enough that it caught people's attention. It wasn't writing about Martin Luther King or LBJ or Game of Thrones. It was something that was very doable. It was very genre. It was something that you could read it and see what it was going to be. It wasn't setting the world on fire. It was just sort of a very popular genre that people were liking, and so it was more right place, right time than any great talent on my part. So I think it's being open to all those things and trying to get better, and and then getting lucky. Sad to say, luck has luck to do with it too.

Dave Bullis 1:23:47
Yeah, that is very true. You know, luck does play an integral part in some of this, and, and you know, it actually ties in with the with the third question, which is, you know, should I crowdfund my project to show investors that there is interest in the project, and I think what this person is saying is, if they crowdfund, they can then go to investors and be like, see, we've already raised x amount of dollars, there is interest in this project, can we get, you know, an actual, you know, private, you know, private equity now.

Greg Francis 1:24:16
Um, yes, I would say, when I came out to LA with Poker Night, and a million dollars in the bank. It was a lot easier to open the door for me than it was coming out to LA with Poker Night and no money in the bank. When people feel like you're halfway there and you've already convinced some people that your project has worth, it does make a difference. It made a huge difference. So, yes, if you could crowdfund half your budget, a quarter of your budget, it certainly is a lot easier for an investor to come on when they're not the first one. The first one's the hardest, just like the cast, and I feel like once you say, "I've already got $50,000 in the bank and I need 200,000, it's a lot smaller road. To get there, and you're already on that road where people feel like we're getting on a train that's moving, that we're the one that's having to push the car. So, yes, I would definitely say that's the case.

Dave Bullis 1:25:13
Very cool.

Greg Francis 1:25:14
As, why would I say that? I have no idea. I'm saying it, it seems like it would be the case, and it's got to put you, it sets you apart from the other people and puts you further down the road, but I say all this without great knowledge of that, and so take it as a caveat, but I'm just an idiot who got lucky,

Dave Bullis 1:25:33
You know. It's very good advice, Greg, though. You know, I do think you made a really good point, and you know, if you do have money in an escrow account, and you know, say, hey, we're halfway there, or we're 20% there, or 70% there. It does carry some cash with it. Yeah, you know that way you can. People are like, oh, this guy is serious, and you know, he is blown towards something, and you know, you know, just, you know, I know you have places to be before I just really quickly, I'll tell you a little story about we were, I was gonna be part of a pitch fest, a producer's pitch fest, and we were gonna invite wealthy investors who we knew to come talk to us, and it ended up falling apart, but you know what I was doing was creating a very well thought out pitch packet, and then if they wanted to, they could just read the executive summary as soon as they opened it, and then everything else was like, you know, going to be all about our market aggregators, our social media plan, how to, you know, getting an email list. I mean, it was so in depth, and you know, one person actually said to me, Do you think that they're going to sit there and read all this, and I said no, but they'll probably pass along to like their accountant or their money manager or somebody else who probably will read it, and you know that's that was my plan. Unfortunately, never happened. We ended up not having a pitch fest, so and that was those probably go two years ago now. So right now I've just been, you know, writing scripts in the meantime, but yeah, that's just sort of to tie in with everything we're talking.

Greg Francis 1:27:02
Oh yeah, it is. I was actually even while you were talking to, I was thinking of there's there's a deal out here in LA that they'll do occasionally with post houses now, and I think part of it is because the post industry sort of upended a little bit in the last few years too, where Post House will say to you'll have a script, and they're getting into the producing business, so they'll say, well, we'll give you post on this film, let's say we're going to give you 300 $300,000 of services, but we'll only charge you 50 grand, so you can go to investors now and say you've got $300,000 of investment in your movie against your million dollars by having us on board, and then you'll bring all the post here and pay us with what you make out of the film, and we'll be executive producers, so there are people that are putting deals together that way now too, but it, it puts you on the road. Does that make sense? So, I think it would be the same with crowdsourcing.

Dave Bullis 1:28:07
Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, is it just like certain production houses that are doing that now, or

Greg Francis 1:28:12
Post houses. I've seen it with post houses,

Dave Bullis 1:28:14
Okay,

Greg Francis 1:28:15
With a lot of them, and part of it is, you know, that also gives them work to keep their people going, and and projects coming in, and they're reaching out to, you know, more people on the lower end of the spectrum, where you know they might be telling you it's a $300,000 investment, but probably they're giving you $100,000 investment that's over, overpriced to 300 so if you get money in, they get paid out first, and they get a bigger price than what it was. So, probably every 10th film that one of them finally makes money pays for the other nine, but it does give you a way to get started. And so, I've heard that going on out here, not as a scam, I don't think it's a scam, but I do think it's that sort of bonus of being first in and then looking out for themselves.

Dave Bullis 1:29:06
Yeah, actually, I think that's a great idea.

Greg Francis 1:29:08
Yeah, it's a smart way to go, and I think equipment houses will do that too. You know, they'll work your deal on well, it's $200,000 of equipment, we'll give you that, we'll give it to you up front, but you're going to pay us $80,000 against that, and then when your deferments come in, you'll pay us the rest, so you kind of piece it together piece by piece.

Dave Bullis 1:29:33
Yeah, and that actually, you know, that would help a lot as to if equipment hosts to that. So, I mean, and you know, just thinking out loud, it'd be great if you actually, you know, could crowdfund something, and get, you know, both a post house and a storage house to actually do that for you, to actually, if they could actually join in together, and you could get, you know, you know, six figures of services for, you know, whatever amount of money.

Greg Francis 1:30:10
That's excellent, and then you still have to come up with a way to pay your cast and your crew, but, but the rest of it, it's a great way to get started.

Dave Bullis 1:30:19
Oh yeah, absolutely, but yeah, that's actually a good strategy, because I mean, if you did have that, and then you could actually, you know, either crowdfund, and then go through that to get a, like, a producer to actually come on board, or, you know, well-known direct cinematography, and then, you know, try to, like, you said, get in the first cast member to actually add importance to the project, and sort of go from there.

Greg Francis 1:30:39
Yeah, I think it's a great, great way. In fact, truthfully, just like the script thing, any way that you can get money for your project is a great way. It's an even better way if you can actually return money to your investors. That's the best way, but it's just.. it's an interesting climate and an interesting time, and I think the more people are innovative about how they approach it, the more chances you have.

Dave Bullis 1:31:09
Yeah, very true. And you know, I think we'll end up seeing more of those chances coming up now with everything changing, as we were just like, as we were saying,

Greg Francis 1:31:17
Totally well, and I mean, again, if an idiot like me can do it, I mean, it took us 10 years to get it to this point, and you want to say, well, after 10 years, you hope it's really good. I don't know if we got anything that was really good, but it's, it's good, it's just, it's a long road, and you want to go down it with your eyes open and enjoy the experience, and some people are going to get really lucky, and in the first year, first six months, they might hit it, and all of a sudden they're making a movie. Other people, it might be longer than 10 years, but it's just know what you're getting into, enjoy that process, and don't let anybody stop you, and don't take no, because if you want to make it, you can do it. And I think I'm, I'm proof you don't have to be a genius or super talented, you just have to really enjoy the ride and do your best, so.

Dave Bullis 1:32:08
And that is a great message. And you know, I wholeheartedly with you, Greg. So, Greg, you know, where can people find you out online?

Greg Francis 1:32:16
I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Tumblr, I think that's it.

Dave Bullis 1:32:27
You also have an IMDB too, which, oh

Greg Francis 1:32:30
Yeah, IMDB. I got my email, if they want to bug me, I guess any of that's fine.

Dave Bullis 1:32:36
And where can they find Poker Nights at?

Greg Francis 1:32:38
Poker Night is on VOD, it's on Amazon, it's on iTunes, and in February it'll be on Blu-ray DD.

Dave Bullis 1:32:47
Excellent, and I'm gonna make sure to link to all those in the show notes, so if for those listening who want to actually purchase it, rent it, I, you can go to write to those links, I recommend you check it out. You know, I've seen the trailer, and you know, from what I've talked, from what I've heard from Greg, and talked to Greg about, you know, I, it sounds phenomenal, and I want to check it out, and I'm probably gonna check it out tonight. I actually literally, this week has been like, I've had no time to watch anything, so that's why I haven't watched it, so I, but I promise Greg will watch it, so

Greg Francis 1:33:20
Don't even worry when you get a chance, take a peek, and then let me know what you think.

Dave Bullis 1:33:25
All right, we'll do so. There's a lot of people, Greg, who listen to the show who don't like, you know, either subscribe or what have you, and I'm always, you know, pleading with people, please. It helps me parlay to get, you know, guests, or, you know, to, they want to come on a good show. They don't want to come on a show. It's like, oh, they have no subscribers, they have no ratings, you know what is this? But so it's kind of like a movie, you have to attach, you know, somebody to add importance to it, you know. So, but Greg, thank you so much for coming on, you know, I really appreciate it. And, you know, you know, I wish you the best of Poker Night, and also I wish you best with, you know, whatever projects you're working on now. Hopefully, we'll see some, something, another movie from you soon.

Greg Francis 1:34:05
They can't, can't say how much I appreciate it. Thanks so much for asking me on, and really impressed and excited for what you're doing. And if anyone feels like they're wondering what kind of show it is, look down the list of names that Dave has on his show, and it's quality, quality people. I don't know what I'm doing there with this list, but it's a great group. He's doing God's work for film, so thanks for having me on, man.

Dave Bullis 1:34:32
Oh, thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate that, Greg.

Greg Francis 1:34:35
Thanks, brother. Stay in touch, bug me if you need anything else, let me know.

Dave Bullis 1:34:39
All right, thank you very much. And have a great Saturday.

Greg Francis 1:34:41
All right, you too, Dave.

Dave Bullis 1:34:42
Take care, buddy. Bye, bye.