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Bulletproof Screenwriting

Spike Lee Scripts Collection: Screenplays Download

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Spike Lee born March 20, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University.

After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film.

Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She’s Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.

His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

The movie portrayed the racial tensions that emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo’ Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington.

The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006).

Spike Lee’s role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (2010).

Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.

Below are all the screenplays written by Spike Lee available online. If you find any of his missing screenplays please leave the link in the comment section.

When you are done reading take a listen to Apple and Spotify’s #1 Screenwriting Podcast The Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, with guest like Oscar® Winner Eric Roth, James V. Hart, David Chase, John August, Oliver Stone and more.

(NOTE: For educational and research purposes only).

DA 5 BLOODS (2020)

Screenplay by Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott – Read the screenplay!

BLACKkKLANSMAN (2018)

Screenplay by Spike Lee, Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz – Read the screenplay!

BAMBOOZLED (2000)

Screenplay by Spike Lee – Read the screenplay!

CLOCKERS (1995)

Screenplay by Spike Lee – Read the screenplay!

MALCOLM X (1992)

Screenplay by Spike Lee, James Baldwin and Arnold Perl – Read the screenplay!

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Screenplay by Spike Lee – Read the screenplay!

BPS 197: From Broadway to Hollywierd with Tony® Winner Stephen Karam

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Today on the show we have writer and director Stephen Karam. He is the Tony Award-winning author of The Humans,  Sons of the Prophet and Speech & Debate. For his work he’s received two Drama Critics Circle Awards, an OBIE Award and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Stephen recently directed his first feature film, a rethought version of The Humans for A24 films, to be released in 2021.  He wrote a film adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull starring Annette Bening, which was released by Sony Picture Classics.

His adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard premiered on Broadway as part of Roundabout’s 2016 season. Recent honors include the inaugural Horton Foote Playwriting Award, the inaugural Sam Norkin Drama Desk Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, a Lucille Lortel Award, Drama League Award,  and Hull-Warriner Award.

Stephen and I have a great conversation on how he went from Broadway to Hollywood, adapting his award-winning play to the big screen, his creative process and much more.

Erik Blake has gathered three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare. The piercingly funny and haunting debut film from writer-director Stephen Karam, adapted from his Tony Award-winning play, The Humans explores the hidden dread of a family and the love that binds them together.

Enjoy my conversation with Stephen Karam.

Right-click here to download the MP3

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Alex Ferrari 0:00
I like to welcome the show, Stephen Karam, how're you doing?

Stephen Karam 0:16
I'm doing really well. How you doing today?

Alex Ferrari 0:18
Good brother. It is Karem. But it's Karam in the motherland. So I was trying to be authentic.

Stephen Karam 0:28
You actually nailed it. You nailed it. No I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here and, and be on the show.

Alex Ferrari 0:37
I appreciate that man. Listen, I just got done watching your film literally 10 minutes ago, cuz it's been it was it was I was like wanting to do as fresh as humanly possible. And I absolutely loved it. We're gonna get deep into that the humans and how you came up with it and all that stuff. But first things first, how did you get started in the business?

Stephen Karam 0:58
Good question. Um, I fell in love with storytelling in Scranton, Pennsylvania, not through any formal education or i My sister was in a production of Little Shop of Horrors at the Scranton Intermediate School. I remember seeing the movie and kind of just being blown away and wanting to get as many VHS tapes as I could. So it started just as an interest Public Library. How many videos can I take out how many plays can I read? And because what was going on in my high school where student theater, I started imitating whatever playwrights, you know, I'd be reading in in Scranton, high school, whatever we were doing. So my first like memory of like creating stuff and participating was both was both acting in school plays and then and then trying to imitate writers that I loved. So just writing skits sketches. In eighth grade, I made a film version of The Cask of Amontillado for a school project with three of my classmates. I didn't know how to I had no editing equipment, so I had to using the crazy heavy camcorder I had to film it. The only way I could figure out how to do was to film everything on the tape in order. So it's like I didn't think right you had to go back.

Alex Ferrari 2:26
And then try not to eat into it. Try not to eat it to the previous steak. I feel

Stephen Karam 2:35
I aggravate my first that was like my first like stab a dragon. But you're laughing Do you have any? Do you have any similar Oh, my experience

Alex Ferrari 2:43
I've first I've been directing for 25 years, my friend and I lived in a video store actually worked in a video store in my in my high school day. So my editing in college, before college was to VHS tapes to VHS decks, and I just would crash. So I was I was just a step ahead of you. In the huge step. It's it is like my hero. But but the first ones though, the first very first thing that I did in high school, because there was no technology was exactly your technique. I would I didn't know how to add. I didn't know what editing was I didn't even understand the concepts because it was no information about I mean, the only information I had was the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark VHS and the Making of Star Wars VHS. And that was essentially all that film education I had at the time, not so much on the editing. So I just kind of just like well, if I shoot it in order, and you would see it and I actually watched it the other day, I don't know why I pulled out my old high eight tapes. And I would see where the splices would come in because I hit the record button. And if you don't hit pause, it would be like a janky cut Oh was just horrible.

Stephen Karam 3:46
Janky cut you get the spice. You know you have to run with it. But it was the there was a there was a moment where the splice was so bad. I remember we added like I couldn't figure out how to bridge it and so we added a commercial so that it would seem like the staticky slice was like stooping us into genius sponsor

Alex Ferrari 4:06
Oh so you were doing you were doing like crazy transitions even in camera.

Stephen Karam 4:11
No, it was we there was this really? I think the like I remember the special effects I remember was like we I did no learn how to there was like a fade button and so there was a great sequence where if you know that truth story, he's it is a horror story. And it's basically like he ends up these these friends end up like one he ends up burying the other alive we walling him up brick by brick, and my sister's like playset like play kitchen house had like there was one section of those brick exterior so I kept like gently fading with this trial like losing my my dad's like trowel, and then we'd like fade back in and just felt like cardboard bricks would be a little higher, with the trowel and then we fade out fade back it

Alex Ferrari 4:56
Well, you know, but the struggle was, this is the struggle was real the struggle was real.

Stephen Karam 5:01
It's also just, I guess the short answer to your question is that this was not my entryway into making plays and films was not that sophisticated route. It was sort of, I was at a public school, there were no artists in my family. So I had wonderful arts educators here and there, and that sparked the love. But I was like a, probably later than a lot of when I think of what, just incredible access young people and film students now have, oh, technology wise, and it's just, I'm giddy, like when I met people outside of the Paramount last night, and just talking to students who, you know, at that time, I was, like, you know, talking about, well, I still don't have the money to buy anything else. And I don't know how to, I can't make any more movies on my parents recorder, because it takes too long to edit it. Now you're just talking to kids where it's like, it's just incredible, like the technology is there it's in if it's not there, it's in their hands on their phone. And so they already know, and are able to do so much. It's just is really just completely thrilling. I don't want to get too far ahead of me. But I felt like the recall that these early experiences was in pre production, like using my iPhone and Artemis Pro on my phone to just go and line up those opening sky shots of the opening credits. And just not taking any of that for granted. It's like I can't imagine being born into that technology. Because doing it was just such a sense of wonder, I'm just sharing that with my cinematographer like the back and forth. And I like to be able to map out something in a way that feels pretty sophisticated, especially once you figure out like what the, my, my oldest iPhone is like an iPhone eight s whatever, you know, I think the focal length, it approximates, like 18 millimeter. But you know, like, I did have a lot of recall, like, How incredible is this, that that I can be having these discussions like and I remember just not being able to figure out how to do anything other than making the movie perfectly in.

Alex Ferrari 7:07
No. But you learned though, I mean, doing the that's the thing. I think a lot of times, filmmakers nowadays and even writers, they don't, when you when you're when you're doing like I sound like to old farts. But like when you do the struggle, like when you're struggling through that kind of technology, you're forced to learn things that you might not if you have everything at your disposal. So even if you even if you using your iPhone, they're still you know, it's a lot different than shooting with an airy or red, you know, so. And if you're editing on on your iPhone or editing on, you know, Final Cutter DaVinci your premiere, you're learning things and you're right, I can't even comprehend what I would have done with this technology.

Stephen Karam 7:50
In some ways, I guess it's like everybody makes the most out of what? Yeah, the pros and cons of where of what you know. And to your point, I think it's interesting. Like, I think about my being unafraid of like, starting from not being seduced by the technology, like I feel like I wonder if I would be so seduced by if I came of age at a time when I knew how like just maximizing the amount of like coverage you get, especially like, over the shoulder over the shoulder, then we'll go and close, then we'll get the established if I was like really married to how, cuz I would have been an obsessive editor as a kid, I imagine I might have just been so attuned to that, that I would have abandoned shots that might have required a little more thought like, like, lost out on the joy of that. And when you start by being like, the only way to do it is to like rehearse and get things ready. Suddenly like the idea of doing like a two minute shot where you have to like coordinate six actors like it's so much of the way that humans is filmed. It's like I sort of love that I feel like you end up your weaknesses become your strengths because you sort of have both in your arsenal like I'm so in awe of how a movie you know with a lot of coverage could be taken away from a director and and maybe to a different movie by someone imposed Oh yeah. That I feel like my focus I'm grateful that I also like know the benefits of what even on movies have to move so quickly like just the benefit of what you can get from if there's a reason for it for like a longer take or what what that emotional read resonance the payoff of those moments can be because I could see myself just being like oh my god just literally cover everything from every angle so that you know I could make this movie you know, into it doesn't even have to be about a family if I decided to add enough voiceover in post.

Alex Ferrari 9:51
Now when you when you go when you start your writing process, how do you approach the process in general do you go with Characters first plot first. You know, how do you actually approach the process in your world?

Stephen Karam 10:08
Ah, it's a little different every time I it ends up being centered around the characters. But in this case, I the initial impulse was like, I was feeling a lot of fear and anxiety about, you know, I was that my day job just about life in general financial crisis and just hit I was an assistant at a law firm thinking about writing my next play. I always like to write from fear or questions I can't answer. I guess that's not character. But in that realm, I was thinking like, Well, why I guess I should be. A lot of things are keeping me up. And I should maybe, what would it mean if I decided to write about these questions I can't answer or these fears. I'm having money, anxieties, worries about health and health insurance, and they'll feel so mundane. And I've always loved the psychological thrillers horror genre, I've always loved being scared, I was always the person who wanted to go on the Haunted Mansion ride or the haunted house. And I just thought, I've never written anything genre, but I was like, what if I write a play about people I love are the things that are keeping me and people I know up at night. And it's actually like, somehow the story itself is like, actually scary, like viscerally scary. And so I was like that, I think I might like to see that. And it might, might be my interest might. So I thought I was going to do something away from character super genre. Almost almost like a slasher movie, like where I would put a family in a haunted house and watch, go jump out of closets and, and I still want to see that movie. And maybe I will see that movie. And those movies exist, but but I just when I put the people into the house, I started to really love them, they got more and more complex. And that kind of like three 417 layers deep kind of layers of character doesn't necessarily lend itself it sort of almost takes it out of being pure genre, even if you're trying to make it pure genre. So that was the origin of the humans on stages, sort of it went from being what I thought was going to be more of a camp, stage thriller, like death trap, like a throwback to these like sleuth, yeah, those old commercial Broadway hits that didn't really exist anymore. And it just kind of in spite of myself, I ended up with with a bit of a genre collision with something that that really was a family drama, comedy, but also completely infected by my love of the horror genre.

Alex Ferrari 12:39
Oh, there's no, there's no question that the horror genre is like drizzled all over the place. Because I'm watching the there's certain scenes in the movies. I'm watching and I'm going, is there I mean, am I safe? I mean, I walked in with with this movie, I felt like I was watching this movie, then all of a sudden, it's like, I he's not gonna there's no monster is it? There can't be a monster. But it was just so brilliantly done that at any moment, like you got me on edge. And I'm like, no, no, I trust the director. He's taking me to cetera as a storyteller. The I can't believe like, you know, an hour and something in they're gonna show the monster like, that doesn't make any sense to me. And, and the monster wasn't in the trailer. So that I

Stephen Karam 13:21
Well, what's crazy is I so somebody who loves more genre, but also loves like, like stuff that's subtle and skirts around the edges. It's like I, I, you know, you're always like, create, I think it's like I was talking about students. It's like, you just you make the movie that feels like the only one you can make. And part of that is running, writing towards what you want to see and what you love and what scares you. It's excited to you and I love movies, even when there are like literal ghosts, but I'm always disappointed. Always and with With few exceptions, like like, even a movie that I'm obsessed with, like Rosemary's Baby, you know, early plants can repulsion of course all these great movies but eat the Rosemary's Baby. My least favorite part of part of that I think is the least scariest when you see the demon baby right? Of course, you get the peek into the crib. And I don't even want to call it a misfire because when a movie is that brilliant, you don't need to you don't need to fix anything, it is exactly what it should be. But it is funny that like that impulse even in movies that I hold up as like, you know, like pinnacles of the genre. It is funny that I'm always like, just as a personal like clocking where I feel like a little less scared or like Oh, my imagination was going to such a more interesting place then that demon that little like the puppet baby with the makeup and

Alex Ferrari 14:43
Oh, yeah, let me you don't want to see the shark. You don't want to see the shark in Jaws,

Stephen Karam 14:46
You know, but if you watch the end of the humans again, I promise you you will see something that will shock you that you will you're going to be shocked that it's hidden in there so explicitly and that you didn't see it.

Alex Ferrari 14:59
Okay,

Stephen Karam 15:00
It helps when you see it big cuz you did. Did you see it on a movie screen?

Alex Ferrari 15:03
No, I couldn't make it to the screening last night so I saw Yeah, I saw

Stephen Karam 15:06
Just to say that there is something there is an effect of a potential I don't want to say a faceless entity coming out of a wall in a way that on a rewind or on that.

Alex Ferrari 15:17
Oh, no, I saw I saw the thing that scared them.

Stephen Karam 15:21
You guys saw the thing that scared of it at the end?

Alex Ferrari 15:23
Yeah. I know. I saw I saw no, I saw that. I know. I saw that completely. Yeah, when he drops us. Okay, we I don't want to. I don't want to give away too much.

Stephen Karam 15:31
So let's we shouldn't spoil it. We shouldn't. Yeah, okay,

Alex Ferrari 15:33
So let's not go too deep into it. Because I don't want to spoil it for people.

Stephen Karam 15:37
Curious because you're we both love Cooper I can see Stanley's the O ring above you. But like, I'm like, how do you it is a fun push and pull. And it's I kind of love that you were thinking I guess the my big joy with this movie is that the potential feels really real in a way that maybe it didn't quite as much on stage. But where you actually are like, is she actually going to open a closet? Or like is something really crazy going to jump out? Or is this the tension coming from?

Alex Ferrari 16:07
So this is what I loved about the movie, man? You know, cuz when you first start watching it, I walked in cold. I didn't know the story. I only saw a trailer I walked in cold. So that's the way it's best way. I love watching movies. Just like I don't want to know anything about it. Just do what you're supposed to do. You turn the lights up. Did you turn the light? Yeah, yeah, everything was dark. It was everything was dark. Okay. Anyway, of course, I mean, you have to watch a movie in the dark. So I'm watching it. And as I'm watching it, and I love the way the camera moves, which is so brilliant. Because you do a lot of frames within a frame in the film. I noticed that right away. There's just so much framing within framing and framing. And the camera moves. I wouldn't say fly on the wall. But it's definitely distant. So you feel like you're voyeuristic in the in the entire, this is just my feeling on it. You're voyeuristic and you're overhearing something that you might not really should be overhearing. This is very pretty private stuff. So I love that aspect. But then the the noises and the booms, and then how you build that tension. Which is so fascinating, because I'm like, but this is not a horror movie. And this is not a thriller, I think. And that was the thing that I loved about it because it kept me someone who's seen 1000 movies. 10,000 movies at this point in my life. Kept me on edge going, Wait a minute, is the is her monster here. And then, oddly enough, I feel the monsters within the there's so many, there's so much of that within the characters in the stuff, some of the stuff that the characters are saying, I'm like, Jesus, these people are horrible. Like they're so mean. And I'm like, That's my family. I know that I got that person in my family. I got that person in my family, I got that person in my family, they would say something like that. So it's like this. It was just such a at the thing is the thing I love about it, and then I'll let you. I'll ask you another question. But the thing I love about it is that I'm faced level. It didn't seem like it was it like it was I was going to be a good story. I knew it was going to be well written and all of that. But it when you first the first few friends you just like this is I didn't expect what I expected. And that's so rare in today's world, that you walk in thinking something and you walk out thinking something else. And it's so hard to do that nowadays because we're so jaded and so literate visually and seeing so many things for us to be surprised, and anything and it wasn't a cheap surprise. It wasn't like the cat jumped out at you. It was just done on a psychological level. May I say almost Kubrick Ian in the way that it gets under your skin a bit if that makes sense.

Stephen Karam 18:41
It does make sense. I don't even know that I want to say anything other than I know it's a real joy to just listen to somebody you know process the film it's it's a private experience for so long you you sort of make it and you're hoping long for the opportunity to hear what other people think and experience and yeah, like from from the the voyeurism I mean, it's interesting, it's such a slow burn and the movie in a way that I was really hoping or couldn't really anticipate was how many people like you kind of come in cold in a way that the dream was that there would be need to be no preparation that this wasn't the type of adaptation that was like you love to the play now coming up that it was really its own entity. And so the surprise element, which I guess I'm most proud of, because it it felt it feels like it's born out of the just the emotion of the the ride of the story, the characters and their journey. That sort of bending are really familiar thing that we all know but so slowly, while also not being dishonest. It's from the opening frames, everything. The DNA of what I'm doing is embedded in the shots and it's a very bizarre opening shot of a dad to be hiding behind like the molding in a distant, like you said, so part of you knows. And yet I also wanted the audience because none of it needs to be processed, you know, consciously, which is part of like, you know, watching Kubrick it's like you don't even know what some of those images and the frame is doing to your but what the folk but but you just know that you're feeling unsettled. And so I was actually blown away by using domestic drama and comedy how it's such a familiar thing, right? It's in our bones. We know what the family having Thanksgiving, know what those these movies? Do we know what they do, and we love him for it. And so I was surprised how just shooting them differently. I mean, it literally working with my cinematographer, and just framing them in unfamiliar ways, right? How much power that has almost because it doesn't announce itself. It doesn't that like, you know, you noticed it, you were like, okay, he's keeping his distance. This is a lot of a lot of empty space here for but but to an audience who's just going to watch a movie, you sort of like the slow burn of it, as you sort of the movie teaches you how to watch it. I think if you forget it more, and you almost don't know where the dread or the creeping suspicion that something's off, I didn't want to say dread but like, just the power of synonym of just the visual imagery of just image by images that you can hold familiar things right a little askew, you can go down a tenement hallway, you know, on the right focal length, and you're just like, why am I scared watching Amy Schumer walk down a hallway like this is not this is not a weird moment. I just laughed at her in June Squibb like what's happening and you know, last night like the Paramount's so great because it's such a large, huge and it went from a laugh line about you know, Amy's like should I should I just dumped you want me to just dump grandma down the staircase How am I supposed to supposed to go down there to just cutting to the next shot of this read this like blood red?

Alex Ferrari 21:56
Yes with with that lovely always with that lovely image on the on the on the elevator

Stephen Karam 22:02
With a lovely image on the elevator like the audience and this is something that's like now I'm just getting experienced where there's time just kind of went like, like, they felt something about that was eerie to the point that there was like, like, like, the way that one does in a horror movie where you just instinctively know it's like too claustrophobic. You want June Squibb to have more room in her wheelchair. And I just love that. I mean, that's the power of like a photograph and the moving pictures like you the just how powerful the frame is. And I think for me, it was always a balance of not to lean too much into like, I I think the things I love about the genre are what I hate about it, and that I hate being told so early on that a scary thing is coming. Like with music with a staying and and I still love it because it's like, Oh, scary things about to happen. And then it happens, but it's still satisfying. And with the humans just kind of playing with all the tropes that I love, like, like, wrapping my arms around them, but also like, what if it's also like a horror movie with jumpscares, but also much quieter? What if it doesn't have the lead in underscoring of a horror movie like the thing that Telegraph's like creepy, creepy? And weirdly, for the movie like this? I think it makes it feel a little like creepy or creepy. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. There should be. Someone should be telling me more how to feel like someone should be holding my hands as an audience member. Because we're so used to that, like, there's no scary scene, or this is a funny scene,

Alex Ferrari 23:34
You definitely leave the audience out there. You're guiding them to be you leave them out there, you're like, like you said, you're not guiding them. So they're kind of just like, I have nothing to hold on to. I like what's going on. And it gets gets worse in the best way possible. As the as the film goes on, as you build it. You just start like I can't, I can't hold on to this thing. I can't hold on to the score. There's no monster like and you're just like, I don't It's uh, you're off kilter completely. And it's so brilliant. That scene in the hallway. I mean, you using blood red as the, the dog the cover of the elevator. So um, like, and, and all the other stuff so I can understand why people felt like a little bit off there. But, you know, going back to what we were talking about with Kubrick. I mean, I was trying to explain to my wife who's never seen the shining before she's like, is it a scary movie? And I go, I go, it's not as much that it's scary, is that it gets in your bones. And it's that it's not like there's, yeah, there's a couple of scary images in it, but it's not really like it's not a horror movie in the, in the grand scope, and it has that kind of just eeriness, the way things are framed the way things are sitting there. And there were there touches of that in, in the humans, which was so beautiful because you just like I just feel weird here. I don't know why and it just gets you it gets inside. You and that is not a super, that's not superficial, like a lot of horror movies are or a lot of cinema is a lot of times it's always on the front. But when you can get inside someone's psyche, or in their bones that you've achieved something, no question.

Stephen Karam 25:15
Well, thank you. I mean, it's a challenge, it is really hard. And you never know, you know what, what works for one person might not work for another person who, you know, I respect everybody's opinions and tastes. And so I also don't, you know, I don't think somebody is wrong if their adrenaline only gets fueled by like, you know, quick cuts. And I think, you know, we are who we are, and so, but they're sort of share that love of the like, you know, why can't I stop thinking about, you know, the tenant? It's like, these movies that feel deeply imperfect? Or why can I stop thinking about the shining? Why does the imagery still to this day, you know, more than a movie that might might be so hell bent on exploiting the why just dump blood in the hallway? That's not scary? What if we see should we be seeing people split open, that spills the blood into the, you know, so even the people come away from the shining, thinking of it as like the ultimate like, gory movie, it's almost like you have to see it again, to really remember that like, intestines, the movie is not about like intestines being being thrown and eaten at every, every turn. It's almost like, I agree with you that it's more shocking, how much it is about, like the architecture and the framing. And the fun thing about like making the humans was going down the wormhole of like, pre war, architecture and empty space. And, you know, there's, there's been a lot of like, interesting writing about, like, the horrors of empty space and that empty, the more empty the frame, the more horror is implied. But it's also a lot to like, take the leap. To hope that you know, cuz, because I think other people, understandably, are just like, fill the frame like, I've no, no, don't, don't I don't make me be patient. And, like, what you said was the goal, but also a lot of people in a way that I understand as somebody who likes to watch, like a good rom com every now and then, like, I literally will tune in, in those moments, to watch a movie when I want the hand holding, or I don't I want to a movie or a TV show that's going to tell me what it is, at every turn. I don't want to have to be like, what's going on? Why am I feeling this way? Yeah. And then, of course, my favorite movies are movies that, that, you know, take that journey and take that risk and feel like complicated people. Like, you know, my favorite movies have this. They feel like people to me, like in the same way that my favorite people on the planet are not all good or all bad. They're complicated. But they're specific, but there's, like so specific. And so you can revisit them again and again and again. And again. Because they never really bore you. Or there's something that just feels authentic about the fact that they're sprung from like, a vision. Instead of like, my biggest fear, which is like movies made by committee, you know, where you are too many, you know, I mean, I'm not talking about collaborations, like where people choose to work in teams, I'm talking more about like, you know, for writers got fired for the other writers got brought up and 17 more writers got came out of the project and 50 more on credited writers got brought on and then you know, and then three producers re edited the movie after it got taken away from the director of a few years from now, it's just gotten. So yeah, there's there's the beauty in a 24 and that they've essentially found success in movies that are those movies or that that let's just say they're just they're not fazed by slightly genre bending or harder to pin down. So I also feel like I had I had like, the right home to do that. Those kinds of things that you're talking about.

Alex Ferrari 29:01
Now, you know, the the humans is originally a play in that play won a Tony Award, I got to ask me, what was it like, winning a Tony?

Stephen Karam 29:11
Award? I mean, it's great. It's also like, the big gift of like, a words is that they don't, it's not that they don't mean a lot they do and that it's like, you know, it's like it's like a you know, it's it's affirmation, it's a nice thing, you're but the it almost like the real gift of like, getting the golden ticket, like in a moment like that is that it also shines a light on how to reveal, like Joy gifts, everything about what you do, it really just comes from, like, are you making stuff that you feel like how do you feel about what you're doing? Right? No external, you know, and so the moment you get it, or you get the brass ring, I'd say you kind of just confirmed like, why I was staying on my day job to make to write the plays that I was writing. Why? You know, I never took Like more commercial, screenwriting options that, that I just didn't want to, I think there's nothing wrong with taking them. But just, I didn't feel like drawn to the specific projects or in other words, I just think it's, it's not that it's a piece of hardware it has meaning. It's just that it also sort of reminds you that the the debt kind of looking to other people to give you a trophy is also is not where it's at. It's, it's kind of like a, it's a great lesson to learn. And I think I think I had that crazy good fortune that come my way. You know, in my mid 30s, which is great that it didn't happen to me when I was 22. Oh, God, I've actually thought I might have thought that it mean, something it didn't. Yep. That I actually am fancy. And it's that it was just a season like incredible. I mean, what's fascinating as it was, it was up against the father, which became a movie last year, the one with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman. So there's like two, it's fun to see, like, you go after there's often long droughts of like plays that become movies. And it's fun. funny to see in one season like that we both got our movies made. He did such a brilliant job. But just to say, I mean, does that answer your question?

Alex Ferrari 31:23
No, it does. No, it does. It's because I mean, I've had Oscar winners. I've had any winners on the show I've talked to and I always like to ask that question. Because I'd like to see, there's so many people listening think that's that's the end goal. And I always, like, when you win the Oscar, you've got maybe a three minute, four to five minutes situation, you don't even remember it. When you're up there. It's from what I understand. And then you're whisked away, you do a bunch of press. And then it just starts to wean away. But I've talked to so many people who've won those awards, who afterwards were depressed, because it's like, where now where do I go now because they associated so much to those awards, as opposed to know what you need to associate is the journey have fun in the journey, because that's a lot longer than that one minute.

Stephen Karam 32:10
And it's also it's just, you know, going back to like the staying connected to work that comes from your, your, your gut and your heart or just that, that that you're obsessed with, to make it like a Hallmark card. You know, the joy that comes from being obsessed with what you're making, you know, it feels very childlike and very cliched, but it's like, nothing is better than that. And then taking the journey to try to make something that has meaning to you that you want to share and make with others. It's just It's just where it's at. And the everything else is a red herring. It's just, it's it's just a red herring. It's just like dangling. It's like, what are all these sci fi movie? I feel like it's like, I just watched Lynch's dune again. And it's like, the spy. It's like, you know, it feels like the spice. It's like a hallucinogen.

Alex Ferrari 32:58
Yeah,

Stephen Karam 32:59
It's like, you know, it's like one of those movies where you spend the whole, like, looking for the golden Snicket or one of those things, and it's, and then you, you know, it's so cliched, but it's like, and you know, I experienced this with I have incredibly brilliant students, and I'm so impressed with everybody that I get the chance to work with every year. And then I'm just like, you have to, like leave room for how hard it is to their fears about like, the focus is like I want an agent and I want to get you thinking about all the wrong things. But you know, you also remember the hunger and how those things do feel important. Because before until you have some validation, you feel like that's what's gonna make you a writer that's gonna make you a director. And it's like, I do tell them that but it's it's funny to see you know, to make space for like, the feelings on both sides. But the best gift of it is it just for my case, it sort of refocus me to not just to see for what it is like, a great sort of feels like a like a slice of birthday cake. And just nice piece of birthday cake, eat it. It had too much icing on it, you end up feeling a little like, should I be cake but it was delicious. You don't regret it. And then you know, the next day it's gone. And so you're just I'd say the big thing that is true about Awards, which which is hard to admit because it feels as somebody who doesn't have a publicist and is not going to chase them. Yeah. They do get more people to see your work. And so So I would say like, it would be a lie to say that if you know you win the Tony Award for Best Play or you win the Academy Award for Best Picture. You know, the thing that if someone were to say like do they have any value? I would my answer is no in terms of personal value, but yes they do and marketing more eyeballs.

Alex Ferrari 34:55
Yeah, marketing and branding everything. Oh, absolutely. No question.

Stephen Karam 34:59
So So there's there's to me there's a bit of it's that isn't that like I don't the focus that gets put on awards. And I also hate that these things that I don't think have truth beneath them or literally mean that you wrote the best play of like, a godlike way. I hate that they do really result in, you know, and being cinephiles like we all have those screenplays and movies we're obsessed with where, you know, almost everybody's favorite movie did got ripped off or snub,

Alex Ferrari 35:30
Shawshank Redemption, Shawshank Redemption.

Stephen Karam 35:34
Or just saying I read some crazy article where someone was like, Will this be Paul Thomas Anderson tear where like he finally gets right. I was like Paul, Thomas Anderson hasn't been recognized.

Alex Ferrari 35:43
I, I know you read you read my mind. I'm like, wait a minute, did he does he not get like an Oscar for a script?

Stephen Karam 35:50
That's never been gotten gotten the golden ticket or something

Alex Ferrari 35:54
Neither did Kubrick neither did Kubrick

Stephen Karam 35:56
Of course, it doesn't matter. It's like is so you know, or someone like even you Stanley coupe. It's like, it's like, you know, we know these things. It's like, they're totally true. And sure, sure, sure. Sure. You know, I'd say that just so I don't sound completely like Guy Smiley. But I'd say the complex thing is that they really can help a movies get seen by more. Absolutely. And, you know, as writers and directors like, of course, it feels like a lie. To not say like that is part of the dream is that people also see your work, especially in the independent film market. It does feel like it's just so hard to get right. Especially in this landscape. How do you when you can't do platform releases anymore? Like what is? What does it mean for these movies? to just get blasted to very quickly to 1300 screens, and then to VOD, and,

Alex Ferrari 36:47
Right! You want to get people to watch it. You want to get people to watch it. I have to ask you. So I've talked to so many screenwriters and, and, and filmmakers in general, that they talk about the zone and tapping into that, that place that creative place where you can, you know, whatever comes I always consider myself a conduit. I think many of the people I've spoken to who are writers specifically, they're like, I don't write this, I just, I'm here and it comes to me and it just comes right through me. But there's certain people that know how to go there and tap into that all the time. What is your process to kind of center yourself to get to that place where these ideas flow in and you you can just like like Tarantino says it's so beautifully he's like, I'm not writing this. I'm just I'm just dictator. I'm just snog refer on these guys talking, you know? And he gets into that place and there's so many people who know screenwriters who know how to do that. Almost on demand, but it's rare. How do you do it? How do you do it in your work?

Stephen Karam 37:48
I I don't rush it. So I I'm not the person to hire if you need if you need like a very quick

Alex Ferrari 37:55
A quick two weeks, two to three week turnaround.

Stephen Karam 37:59
I become obsessive and I let myself I'll tell you what I do. I I like with this film. I very much felt haunted by Ali ferrets, the soul of Fassbender film because of the way it held its middle aged female character in this pre war architecture, a lot of frames within frames like you mentioned. Keselowski being very interesting colors like being very close, very distant. And so. So I had this concept of like, running with that and being something felt very right about not filming and traditionally being very close, or very wide, and not a lot of in between. So I let myself like do I do research trips a lot before I write. So to your point about the zone, I don't force it. I'm not the person that's still at 7am writing 10 pages of a screenplay. If I'm feeling stuck and a little blocked, I will go back to a really like visual place especially that tends to get me excited and gets me more in the zone. And it just gets me thinking in a way that is more filmic and more dimensional. And you know, I watched the by Edward Yang like 100 times, and it's just a movie. I mean, I found it years ago because it was on some obscure Thank you Martin Scorsese. It was like on one of his like, top 10 movies of the 2000s. I was like, What's this movie, but it's film very wide. It's also people's feel very like ozouf, people spilling in and out of the frame the very patient. And so I kind of just let myself when I'm not in the writing zone, like go into a watching zone and watching other people's work and feeling doing a lot of reading. And usually that points me back to the writing like back to where I'm ready to open final draft and get going again. But I don't have the practice of like pushing through five screenplay pages every day. I don't think that's a bad practice. I just you know that for you. You know part of creative is also figuring out what your own crazy and processes. And for me, I do really get sort of like fuel from more dimensional thinking and that that often involves reading, visual art and just and watching movies.

Alex Ferrari 40:14
Now, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?

Stephen Karam 40:21
Great question. I would say the core thing that has never sort of altered is just is it focusing on work that comes from your gut level place, making, making, making movies or coming whatever, you're creating a short film, Play feature? Keep keep the focus on the kind of movie that only you could make. And stop looking at these external guides or Wow, that did really well, that film festival or that was a big hit last year. And you can you can play that game. And you can probably do it even really well. I mean, I think I think a lot of people probably do, I just feel like my advice would be, I've gotten the most traction, success, personal happiness on the journey in making these things. By by focusing just Yeah, being reminded that the largest thing you can make is often the thing that already inside you like the the kind of thing that the qualities and quirks and the sense of humor, and a weird sense of everything about yourself is that you actually have, it's so freeing to me, as opposed to thinking like, I got to make this movie more important with the capital I by writing about someone else's family, or I know, she'll be pregnant. Like, suddenly you start drawing from these ideas that are so external, and I think it's much more frightening and hard to remind like, especially young writers, how, once you if you actually accept that the biggest ideas are already some somehow like locked inside view. It's kind of like, it's almost scarier because it's, it's a nice like, scapegoat to be like, What am I What will my next film be i It should be something like that, or a war movie or big, it's, it feels very abstract, because you're drawing on influence in the wrong way. Instead of like, knowing from a gut level, like I want to write about my mom, or I want to write this comedy, I want to make myself like doing something that feels no matter how abstracted it becomes Right? Like, but when you're anchored in that, I just feel like you never go wrong, even when you're screwing up and you have to and you are failing, and you have to try to figure out what the structure is that'll hold that that gut level. idea, it's, it's just the the only way that I think I know you you go wrong in a million ways is when you start from the other place, like wow, it seems like these things are doing really well or No, I guess I should write a horror movie. You know, it's it's always it comes from the wrong place. No matter how talented you are, it comes it. It never sort of, yeah, the journey is never as rich,

Alex Ferrari 43:15
I always tell people that the best the only thing that you have that makes you different in the marketplace is your own secret sauce, is that thing inside you that nobody else has. And I was talking not to drop a name but David Chase, who is the creator of The Sopranos, of course. And he wanted to write a movie about his mom, his his and that's how the sopranos was brought to the world. You know, he wasn't going you know, what's, you know, what's big now superheroes? Like he didn't say. So it was that and what

Stephen Karam 43:43
Or like somebody that he's influenced being like, not knowing the people never know that the deep personal connections, even creators, right mob movies or write series about that. And so, so the hilarity is, so many young writers try to imitate the sopranos and create something that they think is about crime guns and they think that's what's underscoring this friend is which isn't this the reason sopranos is so unbelievable is is it's all the emotional undercurrent that clearly like David's connection to these characters is the undergirding you think it's the action and all this stuff and that's that's delicious, but it's the that's the secret sauce is not that is not the guns and the and the murder. It's it's that part of the I mean, I didn't know that he said that. That's amazing. Yeah. And I also I want to steal the secret sauce because it'll save me a lot. I felt like my answers get winded and yeah, it's about the secret sauce.

Alex Ferrari 44:38
It's about the secret sauce. It's the only thing that you have like it's the only thing your life experience your your interest your things like you like things that I couldn't write to humans, no one could write the humans only you can write the humans and you couldn't write, you know, the sopranos because only David can write the Sopranos. And that's the thing is you got to find that thing with inside you. That's so brilliant.

Stephen Karam 44:58
Like, do you feel the struggle Feel yourself though, like how easy it is, I guess the counter this should be like it is really easy to get away from it. Like it can be hard to keep reminding yourself like, oh, it's when you're getting from that place.

Alex Ferrari 45:11
I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I I chased the dragon I call the chase at the drag chase that dragon so much like, Oh, that's hot or I'm going to be like that director, I'm going to write like this person. And I did that for so many years till I finally I guess in this only happens as you get older. You just said no, I need to, I need to focus on what's inside me. And the second I started doing that. My work got better. I was doors opened up. You know, I was thinking that things just started to lay themselves out at me where I didn't have to work as hard to get certain things. Whereas when I was trying to chase the dragon, all there was is block block block block. Oh, you're almost there. Nope. Take it away. block block. Almost there again. Oh, nope. Block. And it was just so fascinating to like, and only when you finally can show when you're comfortable enough in your own skin. And it takes a minute for you to do that in life. You know, some some kids, some guys have it in their 20s Some guys and gals have in their 20s I didn't. Like you said when you when you got your success was in the mid 30s and think it was because you probably would have lost your mind in your 20s. And I would have lost my mind in the 20s If I would have lost my mind. Yeah, of course we would have probably self destruct because we weren't prepared for that. One person have a friend of mine an actor said this a great comment. He's like, when you're when you fame is like a bucket of water. And when you're when you're young, you're a seedling. And inside the bucket, there's a seat and the water comes in and just swashes you all over the damn place. But when you get older, the roots take place. And then when the water comes in, you don't move as much. That's awesome. Isn't that amazing? Who do we have to Who do you credit that to? So that

Stephen Karam 46:48
Is that a friend of yours?

Alex Ferrari 46:49
That is Carlos. I was Rocky from Reno 911. And he was playing a character and my first feature. And his character was like a guru. And he just blurted that out. And I'm like, Carlos, I know you're trying to make fun of the guru. But that was damn good. And I quote that quote all the time. That's in the mail. I don't know if you got it from somewhere else or not. But that's where I heard it from. So shout out to callate parlous Ellis Rocky from Rio de illusion.

Stephen Karam 47:15
And what I see with with younger writers a lot too, is that what's very funny, it's like the first taste of any kind of success. People you're you're then the way that there's this illusion that the way to capitalize on it is that the opportunity that comes your way is often like people seeing your special sauce, and then trying to weirdly like capture your special sauce, but then add their own ingredients to it because maybe they want you to staff, right for a shot where Oh, your special sauce can easily get drowned out. And I think that's a hard lesson to learn for a lot of younger writers too, because who can fault anyone for wanting a good paycheck? And, you know, and and I went through one process. I mean, I don't have not written a ton of screenplays, I've written two before this both got made. One I saw a third of it got rewritten a gay character got turned straight, you know, but it was even in those things, that they're valuable lessons in terms of even like now going forward. It's like, well, what, what if I ever do write a play that I think could be a film, you know, the play before this son of the Prophet, I was happy to just let it not become a movie. Because once you but you have to sort of live through these things. And once you live through the fact that like, a little bit of extra money doesn't actually make you happy. Like if you're waking up and working on something that you Yes, that's causing you a lot of stress. And I'd fall asleep at night going like now there should be two gay people in this movie. Why? Why is one of them as straight, it's not going to be more commercial, it's going to be a disaster. You know, it's like, it's like, okay, well, you have to when you're in your 20s you have to learn that lesson, where you really feel the truth of it. Because in your 20s after like, you know, day job for 10 years, I was like, I think maybe I think maybe the security in this money for a year was gonna will make me exclusively happy in a way that I am under estimating. And then I had and I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot. Like, I don't like buying a lot of clothes anyway, like, I don't, I do want to pay my rent. I but once you have your shirt every day, like every week anyway. Yeah. And so. So this, so this didn't feel fancy in the way that I thought it would feel fancy. And I do think some lessons have to be learned. I mean, I guess I guess it's not easy, but I love talking advice like with you and this it's like it's like the it's like how to find that sweet spot of like, not forgetting that like you arrived with a certain degree of knowledge. But by also by like needing to learn some of it viscerally instead of like, thinking that like yeah, if I was 22 and someone gave me this talk, I would just believe them and would just,

Alex Ferrari 49:48
Oh no, if someone gave me this talk at 22 I would have said your chat, whatever. I know everything. You know nothing. I'm serious. No, that's the way you know it. That's the way it was when we were 22 Just like you look at someone would have had this conversation. They could have given us the keys to the universe literally. And like if you it could have been me from the future coming back talking to my younger self and I would go dude, I've gone through this don't do this, don't do this, do this, do this invest in Apple at $7 and everything is going to be fine.

Stephen Karam 50:18
Also Roth IRA, right? Where was the guy? Someone should have given me that lecture if you don't have parents that know obviously, you need some you got to Google it or your own rod

Alex Ferrari 50:34
And last question, sir, because I have to ask this question three of your favorite films of all time.

Stephen Karam 50:40
I feel like it kind of gave them away in the making of the human so it's like I listed three films but that Ali fury the soul incredible love story and clip incredible drama incredible everything about it I love striking movie in every sense of the word and completely surprising. I guess this is three movies, but the three colors trilogy. One of them are the bestsellers written loving

Alex Ferrari 51:10
Double life Double Life Veronique double life

Stephen Karam 51:14
I guess I could be giving a I guess that is three movies. Edward Yang is a favorite as well. And I feel like there's so much in the horror genre and psychological thrillers that like it's hard to be asked this question because the truth is, I just want to sit and just keep hearing yours. And then I want to say three back. And then I want you to say three more. I want to go oh yeah, because even in like with the Stanley Kubrick it's like how did not like 2001 like I still remember like actual feelings I had when watching something even the first time when I didn't understand it, I just remember like, like, feeling like things world's expanding like you because I didn't grow up with going to like some sort of sophisticated arts camp or something. Or I felt like I was in college really sorting this out in my 20s before I was even be exposed to a lot of incredible filmmakers and art tours. But Stanley is one of those people who like like 2001 weirdly slipped its way into my like, like Blockbuster experience in high school and I just do remember like like just kind of like understanding something you don't even understand that there's a whole way to reveal yourself and other worlds through art that is just like beyond what you even thought was possible. Because I didn't think people were allowed to do things like

Alex Ferrari 52:44
Not at that level not at that level now at that point you know without budget now would that budget my friend

Stephen Karam 52:51
So but basically I guess what I'm saying is like this game is only fun for me if we if it's just 45 minutes of us talking about cuz I don't actually happen the same way that I think all wars are bogus. Really believe in favorite films. I just believe in like the 170 movies.

Alex Ferrari 53:07
Right, exactly. And I feel like this conversation is something that you would have heard at three o'clock in the morning at a Denny's. After watching a midnight showing of a Kubrick film I feel this is what this conversation would be like, and you're laughing if everyone not listening.

Stephen Karam 53:22
I don't want to just go with you get the Grand Slam special and just go have that conversation. It's exactly what that is exactly what that takes me back to Scranton. And I do want to like the moons over Miami, Miami.

Alex Ferrari 53:37
You remember that? Of course I remember that. And you Oh God, it was a happy place. Yeah,

Stephen Karam 53:44
I'll go with go to the middIe let's find the next midnight screening. I'll meet you there.

Alex Ferrari 53:49
Oh my god.

Stephen Karam 53:49
We can zoom Danny's so we have no excuse.

Alex Ferrari 53:52
Oh my god. That's it.

Stephen Karam 53:53
We are next interview.

Alex Ferrari 53:55
Steven. Thank you again. So first of all, what can people see the movie?

Stephen Karam 54:00
So we're going to open in I don't know how public this is yet but we're going to be in about 20 cities on November 24. Okay, so anywhere you can google and find out which which arthouse cinema is playing your the new movies is that will be revealed very soon but November 24, day before Thanksgiving in theaters and then rolling out largely slowly after that, but that's awesome morning Mark 20 markets starting November 24.

Alex Ferrari 54:36
I am so you can I am so glad I'm so glad the powers that be gave you the keys to the car so you can drive this thing and I'm so glad that you that they gave it to you and I hope you continue to get the keys and you continue to make amazing films because I want to see what else you come up with my friend. So thank you again so much for being on the show and keep making great movies man.

Stephen Karam 54:59
Hey same to you thanks for having me.

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BPS 196: The Good, Bad and Ugly of the Film Biz with Adam White

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Today on the show we go through the good, the bad and the ugly of being an indie filmmakers. On the show we have filmmaker Adam White. 

We discuss the making of his new film Funny Thing About. We discuss financing, casting, how he got Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) to say yes to a supporting role in a romcom, shooting an ensemble cast during the pandemic, how we were filming the movie without having all of the funding in hand, securing distribution and much more. It’s a pretty insane story.

Samantha Banks is a successful business with a handsome fiancee. But over one crazy Thanksgiving Holiday with her scheming family, her whole world is thrown into a tailspin when they invite her ex-boyfriend, “the one that got away.”

We also discuss how he financed his first feature Inspired Guns and when that was a box office flop he lost everything including his house. It took seven years for him to bounce back and make another feature.

The last thing Elder Fisher expects when he and his brand new companion, Elder Johnson, hit the streets of New York is a couple of seemingly golden prospects. But dimwitted brothers Roger and Larry, low-level Mafioso, think the two Mormon missionaries who approach them have been sent by the “Boss” to deliver their next assignment.

So the brothers are willing to listen to anything the young men in dark suits have to say—including a message of salvation—even if Elder Johnson is the most overconfident and underprepared missionary to ever attempt to preach the word of God. Soon the witless brothers are searching through the Book of Mormon in a quest to find a hidden message.

But as the missionaries and Roger and Larry continue to meet for discussions, both the mafia and the FBI have their sights set on Elders Fisher and Johnson. The mob thinks the missionaries are FBI; and the FBI believes the young men are hitmen on a mission—and both groups want the elders out of the picture. The Elders come to realize they must rely on each other to survive this case of mistaken identity.

Enjoy my conversation with Adam White.

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Alex Ferrari 0:00
I'd like to welcome the show Adam White. How you doing, Adam?

Adam White 0:14
I'm doing great thank you.

Alex Ferrari 0:16
So, thank you so much for reaching out, man, it is I get like I told you, I get pitched on a daily basis for filmmakers to come on the show. And I'm always looking for stories that can inspire and teach about the process. And you definitely have a story like that.

Adam White 0:35
Yeah, I hope that I hope that my pain and suffering can be someone else's inspiration. And you know, they can learn from my mistakes, you know, not repeat them.

Alex Ferrari 0:47
Talking, talking from somebody who's gone through a lot of pain and suffering has a lot of shrapnel himself. This is my bread and butter. This is all I do all day, every day is my pain to help other filmmakers. But first, before we get going, Man, how did you get started in the business?

Adam White 1:03
Oh, man, that's a great question. I, you know, I, I, my brother, I had a brother who's five years older than me. And he, my whole childhood, he was like, I'm gonna go be going to film school, UCLA, I'm going to be a screenwriter. And I didn't know what that meant. And I was like, that's the thing you can go to school for that. And he was he had just graduated high school and was getting ready to he was taking a couple classes at junior college getting ready to go to UCLA and end up dying in a car accident. Oh, yeah. And so that just kind of was always on my mind of, you know, just in from his memory, my memory of him, you know, I was 12 he was 17 or 18. And I always was kind of like this, the screenwriter thing was always on my, on my mind. And then and then as I got into high school, I started playing, I wrote an episode of Seinfeld, just for the fun of it, because I thought, you know, I just had an idea, I thought that'd be funny. And, and, you know, and thought this would be cool. I should write movies, you know, and, and then, as I got into college, I was like, You know what, maybe I should go to film school and did that. We went for three weeks, but I already had two kids, and wife, and they were like, you'll never make any money. If you have a family already. Don't do film school. You're crazy. This is my advisors at film school. And so I'm like, Well, I also like entrepreneurship, so maybe I'll go get a business degree instead. And, and, but I was writing scripts at the time and going, I'll come back to this. I'll come back later on when I have when it when I can do it, you know, when things are a little more financially secure when I have kids, and you know, I need to take care of them. So that was kind of a it was kind of a weird way to kind of get, you know, meander through that. But yeah, and so then you decided to make your first film inspired guns, how, how did that come to be? Well, so yeah, so I started a business, I had done multiple online businesses. And what I found is, if you're a writer, and and want to be a filmmaking, like, probably the best crossover is to get into do an internet business that has to do with that kind of uses search engine optimization as like, the main traffic for the for the website, right. And because Google loves content, and I figured that out that I could create content that Google would consume, and I would rank higher in Google and I would get traffic and I could make money. And so over the next, I think it was five or six years, I just built these internet businesses. And then I sold many of them. And I had a big one that I sold, and it was like, Okay, that was big enough to where I can now for the next two years, just do film and and see what happens. Right? So I started volunteering on movie sets, just to learn how a set ran. I started making short films, I did like a short little web series and a couple other short films and got to the point where I'd met enough people in the industry and I was like, Okay, I think at this point, I'm ready to make this film and, and I had I had written it 10 years prior to ever filming it. You know, it was the first one that I wrote, I went I had written other since then. And I went back and really, I accepted some people I trusted and said, right, you guys just rip this thing apart because I don't want you know, if I'm gonna do this, I want to make sure it's a good movie. And, and so that so we went through many revisions, and then I was like, alright, let's let's, let's make this thing. I had a former business partner that I pitched and said, Hey, do you want to be involved? And he, he did a small investment, then his his current business partner also did a small investment. And so we were kind of on our way. And I'm like, you know, what, if I don't do this now, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I have the funds that I could make this happen. That was the whole point. So I just financed the thing, the rest myself. Yeah, so that was kind of how that came to be.

Alex Ferrari 4:40
Now, from what you told me, the film wasn't a blockbuster hit.

Adam White 4:48
That's an understatement. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 4:50
It wasn't a blockbuster hit. So what actually happened with the release? What? What caused Why do you think it failed? You know, because it was a very kind of niche. You know, it was a mix of two niches it was kind of like spiritual, but yet with the mob, and fun, yeah.

Adam White 5:07
Yeah, yeah, it was, it's probably the worst possible niche you could choose, I assume. But, um, and you know, the title, every time I tell somebody what the name of the movie is inspired guns to secondary, they're like, what was it? I can't remember. I mean, they can never remember the name. So that also didn't help. But yeah, it was, you know, it didn't it didn't go well, I did, we didn't have traditional distribution, right, I essentially became the distributor on the movie. And I had no experience doing that. So. So there was a there was a theatrical consultant. In that niche, it's a very specific niche. And we were I was in Utah at the time. And out of Utah, there's a lot of films that kind of do the same thing where they'll just release locally in Utah, because it's a specific audience there. And so you do a theatrical run throughout Utah, you know, and, you know, and there's been movies that have done, you know, seven figures doing that, right. So it's so it's, you know, it can work. And the film, there was a film that released just three or four months before mine did that was also kind of in the same niche, but not comedy that had done really well. And so so it was, you know, we were, I was hopeful and thought, Okay, this is this can really work if we do this just follow the same model. But yeah, as I as I did that theatrical run, one, the price like doubled in terms of my investment, which I wasn't, I knew I had to make a bit take a big shot if I was going to have a chance to succeed. And unfortunately, that meant I also had to, like, really leveraged my, the money that I had, and my home on that. Wow. But that was the only way to make it work. Right. And I just kind of found myself in a position where if I didn't do that, I knew it wouldn't succeed and it would have been, I would have lost all the money anyways. So

Alex Ferrari 6:47
So then you decided to instead of just lose the money you invested? You actually put your house up as well?

Adam White 6:52
Yeah. So So I basically just did like a because I, at that point, I owned my home because of the business sell, right? And so I just took that money and you know, did a home equity line of credit to pay for all the everything we had to do? And you know, everyone's like, You're crazy. You're stupid, you shouldn't do that. And I'm like, Well, no, this is gonna be a huge hit. What are you talking about? There's no risk here was just the delusion, delusion filmmaker, blinders were like, in full effect, right. So so yeah, so I did that. And as you know, when you do a theatrical release, you have to pay for all of the promotion of everything right? Yeah. Commercials the billboard

Alex Ferrari 7:29
Did you? Did you four waller? Or did you partner with the theaters?

Adam White 7:33
We partnered with the theaters

Alex Ferrari 7:34
Okay, so at least you didn't have to pay for the four walls but you did have to pay for all the marketing so radio play and posters and other things like that

Adam White 7:40
Exactly. All of that and essentially almost doubled the investment right in terms of the amount to make the movie versus to promote the movie is basically the same price. And you know, and we did have we did have distributions set up for DVDs like that was that was all set but they had no interest in doing the theatrical and that's why I kind of fell on me to do that. And then first weekend, the first week of the release our DVD distributor does a press release that the movies coming out in a couple months on DVD and so the theater half of the theaters saw that there was a Cinemark theaters they saw that they said well we're not going to we don't watch a movie anymore because you did that because you just told everyone when the movies on DVD so we're pulling you so after one week they pulled us destroyed any chance we had and you know and half the state to be successful so it was just you know one thing after another that was just you know went bad.

Alex Ferrari 8:34
Wow, man. And is it is it true? You said it did you lose your home for this?

Adam White 8:40
Well yeah, so so we got to the point where I had no income right because I stupidly sold everything off and you know and and then leveraged myself to the hilt essentially and then so it was like well I can try to get a job and but but when I did that I still didn't I still thought when DVDs come out there's a chance this will be successful so we'll sell the home so we can start paying back the loan also we can pay back the loan and we had we still had a little bit of equity leftover not much not not enough to do anything fun with but you know to live off of for a little bit anyway so I was like Well dude we'll sell that will live off the money until the DVS hit and then we can see where we're at right and I thought this can still be successful the DVD sales can still make it work and and then reality set in about two or three months later where I was like yeah, there's no there's no cavalry coming to rescue me. We're we're pretty much in big trouble at this point.

Alex Ferrari 9:35
In your marriage at this point, you have a family at this point.

Adam White 9:38
I had six kids at this point.

Alex Ferrari 9:40
Jesus Christ, man oh yeah.

Adam White 9:43
So my mid 30's had been very successful business wise and I was had to move back home with my parents for eight months. Let's just say my wife was pregnant by the way so she was not happy about the situation although she's been very supportive.

Alex Ferrari 9:58
Oh, She got an angel with you, brother. I mean, I'm sure, trust me, I have one of those myself, who've supported me through all my insanities over the years. It's so funny because when I was starting out in my career, I, the concept of making a feature. When I was in my 20s was just, it was too expensive. There was no digital technology, it was all film still, we're still in like, like mid 90s or so. So it was just too expensive. So what I did was commercials. So I spent 50 grand on a commercial real. And I just borrowed, borrowed, borrowed, and then I started shipping out three quarter inch tapes FedEx overnight, to every production company in. So that's my marketing. So it's 50 grand, plus all my marketing, and I'm just credit card credit card, like one or two jobs, I'm back, I'm back baby, just, I just gotta go want nothing. Crickets. And then then my then the thing happened with the mob, which is the movie that I almost made, which then brought me all the way back down to almost bankruptcy. So I went down a similar path, not as extreme extreme in different ways. But it just goes to show and I hope if there's a young filmmaker listening right now, just listen to two old farts talking about what what the delusions, delusion strong man, the delusion is. The delusion is so strong, it's that lottery ticket mentality I was talking about where you're like, this arm could shoot, you were like, oh, no, I just I'll just mortgaged my house. It'll be fine. It'll be it'll be fine. DVD sales will sale save us or the, it's this and you just start talking yourself into it. And you get deeper, deeper, deeper. And I've seen that happen many times with filmmakers who aren't married don't have families, when you're younger, you can get away with that kind of stuff. Because you're like, Oh, I'll eat ramen. You know, I'll sleep on someone's couch. But when you get six kids didn't think you were rolling. You were taking a huge swing. And it's and and many times you strike out and it's

Adam White 12:05
Frankly, it never crossed my mind that you tell me I'd be like, they don't they're talking about, you know, you haven't been did

Alex Ferrari 12:12
You have no understanding my genius? And, and and and obviously someone's going to see my genius and and it's not going to work out? And that's unfortunately not the reality. It happens for one out of 1,000,001 out of 2 million filmmakers is those stories, the stories that you that we all hold on to the Robert Rodriguez story, the ED Byrne story, these kind of stories of like the lottery tickets. But that is that was an extreme. Your story is extreme. Because I saw the trailer for the film, and it definitely looked professional. It wasn't like a complete mess. It would look awesome. It looked you had the potential for success. There was there was no, it wasn't like you were so delusional, that you didn't even know how to, you know, light a movie because I've worked with those filmmakers, or direct a movie it looked, it's professionally done. It just so happened that the way things the chips fell, that didn't fall on the way it could have very easily gone the other way. If the DVD guy wouldn't have put that out. Maybe you would have had a run at theaters, maybe you would have made some money back. Did you ever see any money from DVD or no?

Adam White 13:21
Um, a little bit? Yeah, one thing I did do, which I which I'll explain later was with the smartest thing I could have done was any money that I got back, I immediately paid back the other two investors with interest, you know, and smart like a penny myself. Because I wanted to make sure that they stayed happy. And plus, I had a real personal relationship with them and want to make sure nothing, even though they're both very wealthy, you know, I'd still didn't want there to be any hard feelings or whatever. So I did that first that I've definitely recouped some for sure. I remember when I first got on Amazon Prime because I owned the digital rights to it. And I put it on Amazon Prime and I think it made like nine grand in the first month it was on or whatever. Back in the day back in the day when you could do that. Yeah, I'm like, I'm back in business. Maybe if I do this every month, I'll be fine. You know, and then of course, it dropped off very quickly.

Alex Ferrari 14:09
The delusions even then you're like look nine grand. So if I do nine grand a month, that means I'm going to make almost 100 G's. I'm going to make 100 back I'll make my money back. I'm back baby. And then of course the universe just goes sit down.

Adam White 14:23
Here's $200 How's that sound? To feed your family of nine.

Alex Ferrari 14:30
She took it so what I always find fascinating as well is and I've talked about this on the show multiple times is the disease of being a filmmaker it's a disease it's it's it's it's this thing that once you get bitten by that bug it just you can't let go. So after this colossal you know, lack of failure, I don't want to I don't want to beat you up on it because we all go through shit. But this failure in the back of your mind most people would lick their wounds and like I'm out of this, I'm gone. Let me just go back to what was making money, I'll go back to being an entrepreneur, build up some more businesses, and move on with my life. Maybe I'll make a short film every once in a while for fun. But yet in the back of your head, you're like, how can I get back? And that's the insanity that we are as filmmakers. You're just like, I just took a beating from Mike Tyson in his prime in the ring. And I'm about I was about to die was on life support and you're like, When can I get back in the ring?

Adam White 15:28
I want to rematch.

Alex Ferrari 15:29
I want a rematch. So then you it takes you how many years before you are able to get back in the ring?

Adam White 15:37
Yeah, I mean, like, it was a dark time. I'll tell you what I I had those thoughts of I mean, you know what the worst fear for me was throughout that whole thing. I mean, other than being financially destitute, which sucked obviously, with with a family of six or seven, right? Exactly like that, that once the money ran out from the equity in the house, that's when it got really, really low. But But even then, it was like, the biggest fear for me was, I may not ever get to make make another movie again.

Alex Ferrari 16:03
Not that you won't eat nothing you won't eat.

Adam White 16:06
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can get on government assistance and eat, but I couldn't. I was like, I might not make another movie. And this that's, that, to me is like the worst of all of this. Right? So everything from that on became how do I get back to a point where I can make another movie. And so I did do exactly that. I went back to my roots and said, Okay, I know I can build up some more businesses and, and just get to a point where I can breathe again. And then And then, you know, cuz again, taking care of my family is number one, right? And so that's what I did. I started I got back into the internet business stuff. And yeah, and then I just got to a point, I was like, Okay, I'm feeling great, things are going good. Again, it took five, six years to get to that point, though, where it was like, Alright, I'm financially, I've recovered to a point where I can start doing this again, you know, and it was a long, it was a long period. It was it was it was tough. I actually saved probably three years before I really hit that I took me about three years. And then and then the next over the next couple years was like, Alright, now I'm going to start looking into this again. And, you know, without the risk of, you know, financial ruin again,

Alex Ferrari 17:10
Right, so then so you I'm assuming, during this time, you've had a conversation with your wife going, hey, you know, I know things are bad, but we're gonna get back up and, and then what? How did you approach the conversation of like, I'm thinking of making another movie? Yeah. Kevin, Matt, cuz I've seen that I've had these conversations. So I know like, how did it go?

Adam White 17:32
Yeah, she is she is not she is very, very supportive. She she wasn't as supportive the second time around, it wasn't like, Oh, this is gonna be great. I'm so I'm there with you. And that's, you know, but at the same time, you know, my income grew to a point where she's like, alright, yeah, go ahead and do another movie, you know, but I said, Look, I'm going to do it different this time. I'm not going to first of all, I'm not going to pay for it myself. That's the number one thing that I learned. And, you know, and then that that takes away all the risk right? There. There was huge risk, because I it was my own money right now. Frankly, I look at that as my film school. Like that whole experience. It cost me a couple $100,000. Right. But it would that was my film school. Like, you could not have gotten that good of a learning experience. In four years of school, there's no way No, I mean, in 10 years of school, you couldn't have gotten Yeah, you couldn't have Yeah, so So yes, it's if I think of it that way. It's not nearly as painful to swallow the what happened, right. But at the same time, nobody wants to feel like that. Right? Like it's not. It's not fun, you know, living with your parents when you're 35 and have kids is not fun.

Alex Ferrari 18:39
I can't even come from I can't even comprehend that my I feel you I feel your heart. I just go visit my parents. I'm like, yeah, no,

Adam White 18:46
Yeah, eight months. My wife's like, Alright, that's it done. I can't do it another day. And like, Okay, let's get out of here. Let's figure it out.

Alex Ferrari 18:53
And one of the reasons why I wanted you on the show is because I wanted people to really see, this is the real life. This is what this is what they don't show you at film school. This is not what this is not what Hollywood puts out there for filmmakers to see. They only put out the stories of like the Sundance winners and the lottery tickets in Palm Springs sold for 17 point 5 million and that's what they show. They don't show the realities of it. And I mean, on the show, I've had multiple filmmakers go through what you've talked about, not exactly like you, and I've gone through my own headaches as well. So I've got shrapnel just like you. But what I found fascinating about your story is that it is it is truly insane. And we are insane to go I just got my ass beat and I'm going to go back and and then that your thought process was like the worst thing that could happen is I can never make another movie. There's something so primal within the artist that you're like I can if I can't create again, is worse than death. Almost it's it's a weird thing that we have as filmmakers. Unlike writers on Like painters, unlike musicians, there are just cheap. Ours, ours is not.

Adam White 20:06
This is the most expensive hobby in the history of Earth. That's what it was, for me the first time around anyway. I, frankly, and ironically, while I was during the downtime of like the three years of like, trying to recover, I wrote a youth fiction novel, because it was like, the one release I had was very hard to be creative at that time, because, you know, oh, no, I know. I don't want to see I was depressed, you know, oh, super depressed. So I feel hard to be creative when you're depressed. But for some, somehow I was able to write this book. And like, that was like the, the therapy that I needed to just get me through that time. You know, and then until till I get to a point where I'm like, Alright, let's think about making movies again.

Alex Ferrari 20:48
Yeah, it's Yeah, trust me. I was I was hiding in a garage sorting comic books for two years after my my near bankruptcy, and my whole life went downhill with that shooting for the mob scenario. So I feel you bro, I feel I feel that So alright, so So now like the Phoenix, you will not you are rising again. So tell me about your new film. Funny thing about love?

Adam White 21:13
Yeah, so I just, you know, during the, during the pandemic, I Well, my wife loves Hallmark movies, first of all, and and like, I've seen 100 of these things. And oh my gosh, it's like torture for me. Every time I have to watch one with her. There's probably three out of 100 that I was like, Okay, that was all right. Yeah, but But I but I'm a huge fan of like the, the romantic comedies from the 90s. Like, while you were sleeping, or you know, you go, those are like iconic movies. And I'm like, why don't we have any movies like that anymore? Like, they don't make them there. They don't exist. And so I was like, You know what I'm going to, I can do way better than Hallmark. For me personally, like, as a man watching this. And I want to do something that's a throwback to that era, right of like, it's you have these really, you have good romantic comedy, but you have these awesome supporting characters that just make it super funny, right? Like, they're just, that's how all those were kind of modeled. And they're all family friendly, too, which is a good thing. For me. Anyway, so I started writing one, and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, Dude, I have all this extra time on lockdown. I'm just gonna finish this thing. And I busted out really fast. I was writing like five to 10 pages a day. And you know, and then and the characters just kind of came alive. I've written five or six screenplays. And this one was like the easiest to write of all and maybe it's because I'm a family man and or whatever. But, or because I've seen so many Hallmark movies, maybe that's why I don't. But whatever it was, it came with it came really easily. And you know, went through very few revisions. And yeah, and then once I had it done, I'm like, Look, this, this movie can be made for pretty cheap, pretty cheaply, right? We could do this for, you know, less than a million for sure. Probably less than half a million. And so I had some producer, friends, brothers that are producers, and I was like, Hey, let's, let's make this thing. And they're like, Yeah, let's do it. So during during the pandemic, or in the lockdown, we like literally started going and looking for money, you know. And that's kind of that's when me taking care of my investors from the Inspire guns really paid off. Because I went back to those guys. And I'm like, Hey, I'm doing another one, guys. Finally, you want in? And they're both like, Yeah, I'll go again, right? Because they were happy that it was a good return for them. So sure. And they both went in higher than they did the first time. Right. So now I had more money than I did the first time to start. And nobody wants to be first with investors. That's what I found out. Nobody wants to come to the party first or two. Yep. To say Yes. Then it's so much easier to get other people to say yes. And that's what happened. I happen to mention to some friends of mine, some neighbors and like, yeah, I just got our first or two investments in the movie. And then like, two days later, he approached one of them posed to me at the gym, he's like, Hey, tell me more about this movie? How do I get involved? You know, and then he drops, you know, 50 grand, and then another another neighbor's like, what you're doing this movie? What? Tell me more about this. And then they end up investing about 50 grand? Yeah, just like just like a snowball effect. Wow. So then we're like, we got to make this movie. So we just went like the full pre production mode at that point. And so good. So it's like divine providence. I'm like, this is I can't believe how easy this is happening. Compared to the previous experience, right? Just like Porcher

Alex Ferrari 24:14
Yeah, I think the universe was like, okay, okay, we beat them up enough. Let's skim a little bit of an easier, right. So gotta be tough. But you know, let's just give him a couple of

Adam White 24:22
Yeah make it Yeah, there was definitely no doubt in my mind that I should make the movie right at that point, when you have that much money when you have over six figures of you know, for an indie film that it's people have committed, and we had the cast like we immediately we got made people pay, like right away so they wouldn't back out on us. And, you know, it was we're like, let's do this. Now, we got to make this movie.

Alex Ferrari 24:42
So you're in the middle of pandemic, and, you know, I get, I get pitched all the time about like, Hey, man, I made this movie in the pandemic. I'm like, that's nice. I did three shows that I'm good. But your story about not only your inspired gun story, but then you're also shooting during the pandemic which has A very, has a couple of added stresses.

Adam White 25:06
Yeah. Well, we knew we had to do it quickly, right? Because Because if anybody gets COVID, you get shut down. Right? So you can't, and were to shoot it and shot it in Utah. No, no, Arizona. I'm in Arizona. Okay, so, so I wanted to stay close to home. This is my hometown. So so we we shot here in the Phoenix area. But we are we got to shoot this in 12 days is what we said. So we did it in 12 days, which to me is, you know, inspired, I think 20 days, right. And that and that seemed fast. So 12 days to me is insanity. But you know, I know people have done it faster. But it was not enough time but but we were able to do it somehow we finished but even then we're testing everybody three, three times a week we were everyone had to wear masks, except the actors. You know, it wasn't very fun for that that part yet.

Alex Ferrari 25:50
It was it was pretty. It was pretty vaccination. It was pretty everything like you were it was a weird, the world is still coming to an end kind of scenario. Yeah. And again, I always enjoy it. So and on top of that, it's the craziness of, hey, we're in the middle of pandemic, I kind of shoot my movie, like, that's the Saturday that we have is filming.

Adam White 26:10
I better do it quick before the world ends. Otherwise, I won't get to

Alex Ferrari 26:14
Like the you see that? The I really want to just spotlight how insane you're not the only one I'm the same way. We're all we're all the same way. But it's just like, I want to just just stop for a moment and just live in that moment. Like I got to hurry and shoot this before the world.

Adam White 26:33
I will I do not want to die not have a film this thing.

Alex Ferrari 26:36
It's like I need to get this out of me. I don't want to I don't want to die with the music in me. So you're shooting this thing? You shoot it. Let me ask you what was the toughest day on set? And how did you overcome it?

Adam White 26:51
The toughest day was? Well, they're all long days, right? Because, again, they were like 16 hour days every day. But the toughest day was we had we had to outside outdoor shoots, because you know that the movie takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday. And we had so we had an outdoor walk. And we also had a football game, we had to film that that part was difficult because I didn't realize that no one in the cast had ever played football in their lives. They had no idea what the rules were. They didn't know what this mean other

Alex Ferrari 27:21
What is this last thing? What is this ball? What is this? I don't understand.

Adam White 27:25
So then I'm sitting there, like, I didn't factor in time and teach them the rules of football. You know, I didn't. I didn't I was a part of this. So so I'm like, as quickly as I can, like, are you just lined up here and run that way and you line up here and run this way and you stand next to that person and make sure they don't get the ball? Like it was like it was It was chaotic. That's so that that made it go longer than the police showed up and said, Hey, you guys are supposed to be here. Then one of the homeowners associates, the people said you can't be here and we just ignored them. And like we just gotta hurry to finish this, you know, so we just kept filming, and then our our grip truck broke down, and we had one more location to go to. So then we're, we're move over to the other location. We don't have any of our equipment. They're like, what can we bring? What is the essential stuff we need to bring. So we bring that stuff over, we have our DP literally sitting in a wheelchair being wheeled around as our dolly because that was because it was a hospital scene. And we had a wheelchair there. You know, so that was probably the hardest day but but you know, and oh, and there was a choir practicing because it was at a high school. There's a choir practicing and they're super loud. We can hear them through the air vents. As we're trying to films we have to keep waiting on them. And they're they're like, it's like these angelic voices singing but we're like, we can't, that's great. But we can't, we can't use that. So we had to sit there and wait and wait until they would stop seeing and then they hurry and film and then they start singing again. So that was just one of those days where it seemed like everything was going wrong. And you know, if I but you but you made it through obviously you got Yeah, we finished the day. You know, not everyone was happy about it. But you know, I was

Alex Ferrari 28:52
When you like you know, it's always fun when you have perspective, like your first experience with inspired guns that shrapnel does give you a level of, of perspective on where you're at in your career. Like when you're when you're going through like when the when the when the the fittest hitting the Shan as they say, and, you know, you're just there, like, you know, everyone's losing their mind because they haven't had your perspective. Just like, I'm just happy to be here. Like, I'm just

Adam White 29:18
You don't know how lucky we are guys.

Alex Ferrari 29:20
Like, isn't it insane? That as artists, we really only get to practice our art for a short amount of time in our life. You know, unless you're Ridley Scott, who's on set 24 hours a day, seven days a week and has a cot there are some shit, I have no idea. But generally speaking, most filmmakers shoot a movie once a year if they're lucky once every two or three years or four years. So to actually practice our art is so rare. It's most of the time is getting the project up enough off the ground getting it ready casting if getting the money. And then did you get those 12 days or 20 days when you're actually directing? And then you're like, Okay, now I'm gonna post it As part of that process, if you feel that, but then most of the times distribution, how am I going to get my money back and we're gonna do this, it's you, you barely ever get a chance to actually direct and when I'm on set, I'm just like, oh my god, I gotta, it's like, you just want to soak it all in because it's such a rarity to do

Adam White 30:18
It is it's a rarity. But it's like, it's funny, because when I did inspire guns, when I was on set, I thought, I have found the thing that I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life. This is the greatest experience I've ever had, you know, outside of family and marriage and kids, like, this is the greatest experience I've ever had. You know, so that is what pulls you back. It's like, I've experienced that now. That's why the for those three years, I'm like, I might not ever get that feeling again, like I found the thing I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life. And I might not get to do it's been taken away from me, you know, it was like, hard, you know, but so the 12 days, that was like, the big the worst part about the film shoot was that it was only 12 days, because it was like, I just want to keep doing this, I want to I want the next one, I'm going to go for 24 days, at least just so I have 24 days to do it. You know what I mean? Where it's like, you get that feeling for 24 straight days. And then you go into the rest of, you know, into business mode to market the movie, but But yeah, you're right. It's that feeling of when we're actually doing the art form. It's such an amazing feeling you just wanted to last forever.

Alex Ferrari 31:20
And that's what and by the way, that's with as an indie film, as a filmmaker as you can get making a $5,000 movie two guys who are making 30 $50 million dollar movies, 100 million dollar movies, those, those guys, they get on set for a few months. You know, like if you're, if you're shooting a Marvel movie, you're shooting a Marvel movie for two, three months. And you're three years in development. And then post like doing all the visual effects and all this. It just, it's just an it's just so weird. As I always, always tell people, like, I wish I could just be a musician. I wish I could just pick up a guitar and play. Because that's why you just see sometimes you just see a musician, like throwing a guitar, just just playing around like or a jazz player, just like you know, just just, you know, jazzing it up,you know,

Adam White 32:09
It's gonna be doing that. Yeah. And they're, they're getting to do it.

Alex Ferrari 32:13
Right. And we don't get that we you know, as writers writers get to do that. But writers are different. It says a different. Writing a script, writing a book. It's a different feeling than being on set. And when you're on set, there is this energy. There's this magic, especially when you're the director, that you It's addictive. It is a truly addictive process. Even if it's a bad experience. It's still it's like pizza. Like if you have the worst pizza still pizza. Like

Adam White 32:39
I haven't I haven't had a bad experience yet. I mean, like both experiences, I think maybe because they were both comedies like it was. You know, people tell me like the film crew is like, this is such a fun set. Everyone's happy. And I'm like, I don't know any different like I've never been I don't I didn't I've never done a set where if people weren't happy where people weren't having fun, or oh, we're getting you know that. Oh, never. I've only done it twice. But you know, I'm pretty, you know, especially like you said after the first one with the shrapnel I'm like, oh, man, everything's fine. Guys. Just calm down. We're good. Like, it's nothing's bad here. We're so good.

Alex Ferrari 33:10
It's kind of like after Francis Ford Coppola did Apocalypse Now. He just everything else was just like, yes. Like, I spent three years almost killed myself. In a jungle. I'm good. It's all good. It's all good. So it's all it's all perspective. It really really is. Now I have to ask you, man, you have a you have John heater in your movie. For everyone listening. It's a heater, right? It's a heater head. Yeah, heater. So John heater for everyone listening. If you don't know the name doesn't sound familiar. He was Napoleon Dynamite. He he did blaze of glory with with Will Ferrell. And he's been in a ton of like, comedies, you know, big budget comedies. Yeah. I mean, he's done a lot of stuff in his career. I know he does a lot of vO work and stuff like that, as well. But he generally doesn't do supporting roles. So first of all, how did you get him? And then how did you get him to be a supporting role as well?

Adam White 34:08
Yes, he doesn't do romantic comedies either. So So though, that was there were two hurdles we had to climb. It really came down to as we were casting this and we had it fully cast, right. Except one roll. We hadn't called the guy we were going to cast yet. Because I was like, because because the whole time or like, one thing I learned the first time is if you don't have a name in your movie, nobody cares about your movie. They just don't. It's rough. It's rough. Yeah. So so even if it's the greatest movie of all time, then maybe they'll you know, it may find its way. But other than that people don't care. So I was like, alright, we don't have we had Barry Corbin. And he's been you know, he was like the general and more games of stuff. He's been in a ton of things. But even he wasn't a big enough name. I didn't think no. And then so I was like, so we got to like, we're like just a couple weeks out from shooting and I'm like, Alright, we have to get a name in this movie or else Or else we're going to set ourselves up to fail and this is just the business mind me going worse. I don't want to make the same mistakes again. So I literally went through IMDb and Like went through every male actor in that age range, and made a list of like, five to 10 guys that I thought, okay, we might have a chance to get this person for cheap. And he was one on the list now, because like he and I went to the same college right? And so there we have some connection there. And and I happen to we had cast Brooke white, she was an American Idol finalist. And she had she had a supporting role in this. And we reached out to the cast. I said, Hey, does anybody know John heater? And she's like, well, actually, I just shot a music video with him. And so I have his number. And we're like, Okay, well, listen, we need you to just text them and just say, Would you be interested in an a rom com that we're, we're shooting I'll be I'll be playing your wife. They're friends, right? I'll be your wife. It'll be fun. It'll be two weeks shoot during the pandemic, you have nothing else to do. Right. So. So she she texted me. He's like, well send me the script and buy like the script. I'll do it. And so he I sent him the script. And he liked the script, but he's like, I don't want to be in a Hallmark movie. And so I had to convince him that it wasn't a Hallmark movie that it was too much. There was too much comedy for it to be a hallmark. Right, right. You know, they won't want it. So he's like, okay, so yeah, I think it'd be fun. So I think it just was a matter of circumstance, honestly, the timing. And the timing was just perfect, right? He had nothing else to do because of the lockdown. And so he's like, alright, well, you know, and, you know, and we obviously made an offer that was enough to incentivize him to come to come be in the movie and be the kind of the Topfield

Alex Ferrari 36:27
How many days and how many days? Did you shoot him?

Adam White 36:30
Oh, he was there all 12 everybody was there.

Alex Ferrari 36:32
Really? So you didn't it wasn't a shootout thing. You had them all there for 12 days. Wow.

Adam White 36:36
Yeah. Yeah. What really helped that he was friends with with Brooke white though, because they just they had the time. I mean, they had a blast together. And there was a Brooke wife's best friend summer blesses our lead actress. So that was just like a party for them. Right. So they, it didn't feel like you know, it just worked out that way. It was just it was just like, perfect.

Alex Ferrari 36:57
Wow. So so the universe was really truly giving you an Attaboy.

Adam White 37:01
Oh, yeah. Well, that that even like, and the actors don't even know this, but like, we hadn't raised all the money.

Alex Ferrari 37:08
Right. I was gonna ask that was my next question. Like you started shooting without all the money?

Adam White 37:12
Yeah, we did. And I was like, Okay, I, we've raised this much. So far. Everything's worked out everything. The universe is aligned for us. We're just going to go for it. It's I'm just going to take a step into the darkness and hopefully, the light the way he is lighted, you know? Yes, I see now that I mean, even then, like, again, the blinders are on. And I'm like, I will get it fully fine. You know,

Alex Ferrari 37:32
That could have been man that okay, so everyone listening? Don't ever do what Adam did. Don't ever start production without your least at least your production budget, you might have to go find post, that's fine. But don't ever do what he just said he did. Because it's not wise. Because again, and even after your experience, this was a part of that experience that you didn't have the first time you're like, oh, no, everything's working fine. We got John here. We're gonna get going, it's gonna be fine. We'll just keep going. So what happened?

Adam White 38:02
Well, okay. Now to be fair, we had the money for production. But then we had to go through the Screen Actors Guild, right? Because that oh, yeah, of course. And that opened up a whole other world of problems, right. For independent filmmakers, it is not easy to work with the Screen Actors Guild. And so they said, alright, we need you to send us $80,000 of your budget as a bond to make sure that actors get paid. Well, we assumed because we hadn't I had worked with Screen Actors Guild before. I assumed that meant they were going to pay the actress for us, right. But that's not what that meant. They're just gonna hold that money. In case we don't pay the actors, you know, then they'll pay them, right. But we still had to pay the actors, even though they had that 80,000 We were going to use to pay them. So we were like, stuck because they had our money. And we couldn't, we didn't you know, we didn't raise more money. So we were like, What are we going to do? Because they're like, they said, they're going to give her money back, like 120 days after we're done shooting.

Alex Ferrari 38:53
That's it, which is very, very long. Yes. Very convenient. That way, yes. The way this act is very convenient that way.

Adam White 38:59
Yes. It was fantastic. Right? So so that's why we were scrambling it was it was like Alright, well, we could we were going to get through production one way or another because they weren't going to get a check till the end of production anyways, they got the first check the second one, the movie would have been shot. It's just that people would have been mad because they didn't get paid right away. So we were scrambling and we just like basically Big Screen Actors Guild said, hey, look, that's our money to pay people and we can't pay anybody if you don't give us our money back. And we had to escalate it, you know, inside their organization and get them to finally say, Alright, how much do you actually need? And we got the money back.

Alex Ferrari 39:31
But it was like, Okay, I get Yeah, I don't want to get into that conversation with sag in that because they're not it's not a lot of people think it's super easy to work with them for independence. It's not, it's not

Adam White 39:41
It's very hard. It's not a huge disadvantage to because you can't get big actors without using them so. So it's like you have to have one without the other if you want to have a chance to succeed and then they make it harder for you to succeed by doing stuff like that. But meanwhile, my my producers they were really good about they kind of didn't let me know that this was even happening. They did They did a really good job of like, shielding me from any of the external problems that we were filming. So I didn't find out till after but even then they were they were raising money that whole week, you know, like reaching out to people that they had worked with before and going, Hey, we're doing this movie this guy, John heater and that, again, getting a name was so important for that because anytime we started on John hitters name around, everyone's wants to listen like Oh, really? You got Napoleon Dynamite? Okay. Yeah, I'm interested. Right. Like, it's just amazing how, how many doors that has opened, you know, and right now we're on the press phase of this of the film. We have a national PR company working for us, and he's getting booked on some really big shows him as a supporting actor in this movie. He's getting booked on really big shows, because he's John meter. Right. So we're gonna get some amazing national press, frankly, just because we have him in the movie.

Alex Ferrari 40:47
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. And again, I've talked about this so much on the show, man, you if you're listening, getting a name or a face at minimum is so so so important in the process, because you're right, like when you're scanning through. If you're scanning through all those, you know, your cat, your cat, cat was, catalog, whatever it is carousel, going back and forth on Netflix or on Hulu or on wherever you're seeing it. You're gonna stop if you see the familiar face. Right. And John is one of those faces that people are like, oh, yeah, I've seen John because he's been in a billion dollar stuff. And he's, and he's just been in a lot of big shows. So it's super, super helpful to do that, man.

Adam White 41:33
Yeah, it really is, you know, Napoleon Dynamite still, you know, 17 years later, carries so much oh, this analogy. And it's just an iconic movie that people still they love him so much in that movie that everywhere we went, it was like, we had to stop people from taking pictures. In fact, I had to yell at him one time, because he was taking pictures with fans. That didn't work mask, you know, and I'm like, Dude, you can't get COVID Man. Shoot, man, you cannot be talking to anybody until the shoots over, you know, the last day of the shoot? Sure, take all the pictures you want. Because by the time you get tested, we'll be done. But until then, please stay in a bubble. But yeah, he it really has made for an experience that would that would have a chance to succeed. I mean, I feel so much more positive about what can happen with this. I mean, even the distribution deal that we got, which, you know, most I didn't know this, but most people don't get minimum guarantees.

Alex Ferrari 42:27
You had an MG.

Adam White 42:28
Yeah, we did.

Alex Ferrari 42:29
Because of John.

Adam White 42:31
Well, yeah, well, I don't know why you

Alex Ferrari 42:33
Get it's because of John. Because like, this is how it works. This is how it works. You got an MG because the distributor saw John and he goes, I can pre sell that or I already know, I can make money with it because of John's face and name attached to it. And that's what people don't understand who who are listening, or filmmakers might be listening is that no distribution company in today's world is going to give you an MG unless they guarantee no, there's a guarantee of that money. They've already sold it. So if I'm giving you $10,000 I already called up Bob over in the Netherlands. And I already know that Bob's gonna buy this movie for 10 grand. It's a done deal. So that's why that happened without John. Almost positive, you wouldn't got an MG. It's hard. It's just too hard.

Adam White 43:15
Right! I don't I don't even like it was interesting. Because the because it was gravitas ventures who we ended up going with a PR distribution. And they they they emailed us we weren't really because we were going to do the same dumb thing I did last time, which is just do our own distribution theatrically first and then see what we do after that and, and I started getting cold feet on that and didn't feel right about it. And I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to go to that same road again and have it fail, even though this movie has a much wider appeal. Um, and then Gravatars reached out to us and they said, hey, send us a screener. I sent the screener like 11 o'clock at night and 6am The next morning, they're like they offered. We want to distribute this, here's what we'll do. Plus, here's your here's your mg. Like it was like that fast that they are offering an MG to us. And I was like, wow, they must they love this movie. This is great.

Alex Ferrari 43:58
Did the MG is the MG covering. It's not covering your budget, is it? But it's

Adam White 44:01
Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, we were I was able to negotiate more than double what they initially offered on the MG. It you know, it's probably about 20% of the budget, but even then, like, you know, the fact that it was you know, anyone got it. It's something we know they're 100% committed to the success of the movie, right? Because because they put their money there. They're writing us a check right from the beginning. So

Alex Ferrari 44:23
That's awesome, dude, that's that's really I'm glad I'm glad for you. Well, you are a you are a success story in the sense that you were able to bounce back after you got punched in the face hard. And I'm you might have heard this on my show. It's like, no matter who you are in this business, you're always getting punched, you're in a fight constantly. You're getting punched in the face all the time. But many of you don't even know that they're you're in a fight. So when that punch hits you you're out for the count. You got you didn't know it was coming you got knocked out. And then in your days, you're like, I gotta get back in the ring. And we're able to work your way back to that and still be able to do what you love to do and that isn't enough. inspirational story that I think a lot of filmmakers need to hear, because I've hear that I talk to so many filmmakers on a daily basis that it's, I just hear it. I hear all these stories so often. And it usually ends in tragedy, it normally doesn't have an uplifting story. So that's why that's one of the things that caught my eye about your story that you went down. And then you came back up like a phoenix and nothing in the thing is to like you didn't like win the lottery, you didn't like, win an Oscar, you didn't get into Sundance, you didn't like, this is not that story. But you were able to get back to a place where you can practice your art, you could do what you love to do. And hopefully make another one. And that's success enough. Hopefully, your continued success. But as filmmakers, man if you just get to make another one. Get out.You've won.

Adam White 45:48
Yes, I didn't really consider I wouldn't. I was always ashamed to call myself a filmmaker after the first one, right? Because I paid for it myself. And it was only one movie and, you know, they're like, No, anybody could do that if they had the money, right? But But now that I've done to Okay, and and, and I got other people to invest, you know, where I'd have to use my own money, alright, I'm a filmmaker, I did it, you know, like that's, and that's probably just a dumb way for me to classify myself, but just just a maybe my own insecurity of talking about it. But but, you know, it definitely feels a lot better to know, I came back again, and I did it. And I've made a movie that I think people are gonna really enjoy. And you know, it's gonna kind of meet that need of good family entertainment, that that you can wash together and feel good. And that's what we all need is some good feel good stuff.

Alex Ferrari 46:34
Absolutely. Now, if you would have thrown a puppy in there that saved Christmas, then you would really have something. But until I'm sorry, you didn't

Adam White 46:41
Hey there's time for a sequel.

Alex Ferrari 46:44
I always ask people like, what should I make a movie about? I'm like, if you have a puppy who saves Christmas, it's presold

Adam White 46:51
You have a winner.

Alex Ferrari 46:52
You have a winner, Puppy saves Christmas, all day, every day, put Dean Cain in it done. Now, I'm going to ask, I'm gonna ask you a few questions asked all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to make it into the trying to break into the business today?

Unknown Speaker 47:08
I think that it's, first of all, and you know, I can't give any advice that not everyone else's given I'm sure. But, but and people that are a lot smarter than me. But I would say, you have to know that nobody cares about your stuff nearly as much as you do. Right. And most people don't care at all about your stuff, right? So. So it's, it's really a matter of how you can help other people and getting people on board with what you want to do. But having said that, once you get the ball rolling, like just putting it out in the universe, and I'm doing this, it's amazing how people will jump on board, right, want to be a part of something. So you kind of have those two things working against each other. Nobody cares. But once you're doing something, and they and they know you're doing it, then they want to be a part of it. So you know, just like you the great thing about filmmaking is like, I didn't have to go to film school, and I didn't have to get permission, right? Like I could just do it. You know, you can just make a movie. Nobody can stop you. Right. And that's what's so amazing about it. Plus, it's so cheap now that anybody can do it. So So yeah, I mean, just just get out there and do man just just make it happen. You know, just the book. Speaking of Robert Rodriguez, that book was so motivational to me before I did inspire young

Alex Ferrari 48:19
Everybody, everybody, everybody who reads that book is like,

Adam White 48:22
Okay, okay, I can do this, I can make this movie, I only need 10 grand, it'll be fine. You know, that's not true.

Alex Ferrari 48:28
Which is the thing I think is the best and the worst thing I love Rebel Without a crew. Um, anyone who listens to the show knows I am a huge Robert Rodriguez fan. And that book has done I think his story is done more good and bad at the same time, because he made everyone believe that they could do what he did. It wasn't his fault. It was the narrative. It was a story that they got put out to everyone talks about this. They still to this day, talk about El Mariachi, and in from 91. Like everyone's still talking about that movie. Yeah. And the thing that most people don't understand is that you're not Robert Rodriguez. Like, he is a once in a generation kind of talent. Like he's such a talented filmmaker. Whether you like his movies or not is irrelevant. It's how he makes them the amount of talent the amount of skills he has. Not everybody could do that.

Adam White 49:14
Yeah, I think the timing and probably some luck, frankly. I mean, we all need luck. Oh, to be you know, most of those guys are so you know, it's just it won't work for everybody because we don't have those things all working together in our favor.

Alex Ferrari 49:26
Right. No question and I've said this many times on the show before if all mariachi shows up today do we does it doesn't even break through? Do we ever have a robber or do we have a Kevin Smith if Clark shows up today? Yeah, yeah, probably probably wouldn't make it through the noise. But in the 90s At that moment of time, it was it was it was it was destined to be what he would he became. Now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?

Adam White 49:52
There's probably lots of lessons in terms of business that I could share, but I'm Taking care of the investors was was a really really good one getting a name actor was a really really good one I like I've literally started I made a document where I like said here's all the things I learned from the second film shoot right but I don't think that I want to make sure that I put into practice next time and and there's there's a lot of those things but the biggest one was no matter what cast a name actor no matter what you find whatever you have to do to get a name actor raise more money, whatever it takes, you know, cut in other places so you can afford one because that will make all the difference because they don't care like distribute distributors. And you know, buyers don't care if the movie is good even.

Alex Ferrari 50:44
That's not that's not even that's not even a question that's not even in the equation it so Exactly. It's not even in the equation. That's the thing that filmmakers don't know. So there's that is that just like, oh, but my movies really good. Don't care. I can't sell it without Danny Trejo without John here without some face on the cover that I can sell. And three of your favorite films of all time.

Adam White 51:08
You got these on the back wall? He's probably right. He's probably high on the list I have. The Fellowship of the Rings is probably my number one favorite movie of all time. Nice. Love the Bourne series, but it's probably Bourne identities, the the best of those. And then Toy Story, which I'm not like a big animated guy, but I feel like that might be one of the greatest movies ever made.

Alex Ferrari 51:33
I would agree with him. It is a pitch perfect film. It started story wise, it's

Adam White 51:39
Yeah, and the perfect story for that medium of CG animation. Right. And they did it on the first try. Which to me is like unbelievable. So yeah,

Alex Ferrari 51:51
three Yeah, that's not not not a bad combination Bourne totally story lords. Lord of the Rings, if it's not okay,

Adam White 51:57
Give you give you a variety.

Alex Ferrari 51:58
And where can people see the movie? When is it coming out?

Adam White 52:01
So the movie comes out December 3, it'll be on in select theaters, probably about 10 to 20 cities and then also on demand the same day. So December 3, it'll be everywhere. Essentially.

Alex Ferrari 52:14
Adam and I appreciate you sharing your your story with us and and dropping those knowledge bombs on the tribe. And hopefully, it's some inspiration. And some warnings will be picked up from this this from this conversation, but I appreciate you man. Thank you again.

Adam White 52:30
Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 52:31
Best of luck in the future.

Adam White 52:32
It's has been very therapeutic for me. This is the first time I've really talked about that story publicly. So So now I'll be able to sleep at night again. So let's be good.

Alex Ferrari 52:42
Thank you man. I appreciate you.

Adam White 52:44
Alright man!

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Simon Kinberg Scripts Collection: Screenplays Download

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Simon Kinberg (born August 2, 1973) is a British-born American filmmaker. He is best known for his work on the X-Men film franchise, and has also written such films as Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Sherlock Holmes. He has served as a producer on others including Cinderella and The Martian, the latter which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. His production company Genre Films had a first-look deal with 20th Century Fox. Kinberg made his directorial debut in the 2019 X-Men film Dark Phoenix from a script he also wrote.

Kinberg was born in Hammersmith, London, England to American parents Monica Menell-Kinberg and Jud Kinberg, a New York City-born writer and producer. From age six, he was raised in Los Angeles, California. He is Jewish. Kinberg graduated from Brentwood High School, and then from Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude; in 2003 received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, where he won the Zaki Gordon Fellowship for Screenwriting.

Below are all the screenplays written by Simon Kinberg available online. If you find any of his missing screenplays please leave the link in the comment section.

When you are done reading take a listen to Apple and Spotify’s #1 Screenwriting Podcast The Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, with guest like Oscar® Winner Eric Roth, James V. Hart, David Chase, John August, Oliver Stone and more.

(NOTE: For educational and research purposes only).

THE 355 (2022)

Screenplay by Simon Kinberg – WILL POST AS SOON AS IT’S AVAILABLE

DARK PHOENIX (2019)

Screenplay by Simon Kinberg – WILL POST AS SOON AS IT’S AVAILABLE

LOGAN (2017)

Produced by Simon Kinberg – Read the screenplay!

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

Produced by Simon Kinberg – Read the screenplay!

DEADPOOL (2016)

Produced by Simon Kinberg – Read the screenplay!

THE MARTIAN (2015)

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BPS 195: The Profitable Feature Film Formula with Rob Goodrich & Jason Armstrong

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Today on the show we have film producers Jason Armstrong and Rob Goodrich.

Armstrong and Goodrich founded Walk Like A Duck Entertainment, a film production company that develops and produces high quality scripted and non-scripted content.

With a combined 30+ years in the entertainment industry, Armstrong and Goodrich have held positions in all aspects of production with a focus on IP acquisition, development, packaging and raising capital.

The company has forced strong and supportive relationships with filmmakers and talent, advising and collaborating through all aspects of production.

Jason and Rob are currently in pre-production on Andy Armstrong’s SQUEALER, and recently completed production on the following films: SLAYERS (starring Abigail Breslin, Malin Akerman, Thomas Jane), DIG (starring Thomas Jane, Emile Hirsch, Liana Liberato), SKELLY (starring Brian Cox, Torrey Devitto, John Palladino), and SALVATION (Claire Forlani, Thomas Jane, Skeet Ulrich, Theo Rossi, Ashley Moore).

They have also acquired life rights of John Fairfax, an adventurer who crossed both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in a rowboat, which they’re currently developing with Tiffany Fairfax, widow of John Fairfax.

Armstrong and Goodrich puts a premium value on developing creative and strategic partnerships across sales, distribution, co-production and post-production companies. The trajectory of a project varies on a case by case basis, Armstrong and Goodrich are uniquely positioned to manage all aspects of a projects lifespan.

As music, publishing and sync-licensing continue to establish increasing revenue streams and relevance in a financial model for a film or TV series, they have established 6 To Midnight Music, an ASCAP / BMI affiliate with a Co-Publishing deal with BMG Music, headed by Walk Like A Duck Entertainment partner, Cameron Goodrich.

Film producers Jason Armstrong and Rob Goodrich have created a way to produce profitable feature films in record speed durning one of the craziest and uncertain times in film history. I sat down with both producers to see how they are doing what they are doing, how they ramped up so fast and how they are making money with there system.

Enjoy my conversation with Jason Armstrong and Rob Goodrich.

Right-click here to download the MP3

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Alex Ferrari 0:00
I like to welcome the show, Rob Goodrich and Jason Armstrong. How're you guys doing?

Rob Goodrich 0:17
Good. Thank you so much for having us.

Jason Armstrong 0:17
Great. Thank you!

Alex Ferrari 0:19
Thank you so much for coming on the show guys. You guys are you guys are as they say, in fuego right now, doing a lot of a lot of productions. And I want to and you have a very kind of like a different way of doing what you guys are doing, which I really want to kind of get into. But before we get started, man, how did you both get started in this insane business?

Rob Goodrich 0:43
Well, I leaned over to Jay, he's my senior. So I'll let him go first.

Alex Ferrari 0:49
I'm sure and I'm sure he reminds you about that all the time.

Jason Armstrong 0:55
Or vice versa.

Alex Ferrari 0:56
Exactly.

Jason Armstrong 0:57
So yeah, no, I started off in the business originally as a copywriter in in commercials and everything. And then Antalya commercial down in LA met a producer asked me if I was interested in writing for television. So So then he developed a children's while sort of a tween series. At that time, he had an Oprah deal with Nickelodeon. So it was originally something for Nickelodeon. And then Disney came in and, and sort of swept, swept, swept it away, to get worked, worked on that, and then created another series. I would say probably about a year after that, and and then you sort of fall into that writers room, you know, sort of the in house writers and, and everything else. But that was sort of the the early, you know, the early stage into the business was was very much from a writing perspective. And then in that tween world, and then started slowly moving into producing, you know, my own content, having a little bit, a little bit more control, obviously, right or over the creative to an extent, to an extent that that stage, and then yeah, and then did a lot of children's series Brucella children series, a lot of CO pro deals. At that time, I was in Canada, so I was doing a little copro deals between Canada and the UK. And then just kept, kept rolling into two different things. There's some obvious some lifestyle stuff that came into play. And then and then dove into into the features.

Alex Ferrari 2:35
And how about you, Rob?

Rob Goodrich 2:39
Well, you know, it's funny, I never, I never considered myself much of a film guy growing up, I always enjoyed going to the movies, I enjoyed renting movies. But you know, as far as telling you, who was in every movie, who directed it just never really was my forte, I never took a huge interest, what I did find was that I had a really good rapport with people. And I had a good, good ability to sort of put pieces together. I found that through playing sports as a kid and, you know, always sort of being in a leadership position. So I guess through college, which had no film intentions, I started to develop more and more of an interest in entertainment. I ended up working on the music side. First, to be honest with you, I was working with a lot of artists helping to coordinate sort of like those radio concerts that they would do, seasonally. So what that really did was that taught me how to work with artists and work with sort of the in and out demands of not just a rapper or a band or this or that, but their entire entourage. And so it was sort of a culmination of taking my ability to sort of put puzzle pieces together and my growing fascination with film. So through that sort of music thing and introductions to a lot of managers and sort of that, that circle of that high level music world. I took an interest in film, and I did what we all sort of hope I hope we all do his IPA, IPA on a ABC reality show, which I will not name. Realize that that was not for me. And then I got a call from Paramount that said, hey, you know, you you work with Justin Bieber? On the music side? Would you have any interest in coming and sort of consulting as a producer with us on the Never Say Never Bieber tour, which Paramount did? So I worked with some of the other producers on that prior. And that really sort of kicked it off. I mean, I think it's I don't know if I had a career path set in mind. I've always looked at producing in sort of a broad scope. You know, I think entertain entertainment is entertainment and what is entertaining to somebody is different to another row, I, I've always taken my background in music, transitioned into film, and a little bit of TV. It's all sort of just being the same thing. You know, it's all just sort of management from top to bottom. So through that, ironically enough years later, that's how Jay and I met under the roof at BMG Music through a colleague who said, I think you guys would really mesh well. And so we'd both sort of taken our own paths in the film world and had some success with that, and certainly climbed our way up, and touched every corner of the business and had some success and had some failure and got our bruises. But by the time Jay and I met at BMG Music, it was actually to discuss the film and immediately hit it off. And I think it was that perfect moment where we collided and could really complement one another with where we were at in our own careers and where we were, you know, aiming to go.

Alex Ferrari 6:03
You know, it's so funny, because I've been in the business now for 20 odd years. And, you know, when you're when you're working with somebody, especially a producing partner, it's like dating, like you're getting into a marriage you are, you know, there's no question about, especially when you're like, on one project, it's like that, let alone multiple projects over the course of years. So that's something a lot of filmmakers don't really understand about the partnership scenario. It's you're dating before you get married, and, and you're married after you signed the deal to make the first film. And then you're like, alright, well, we dated already. You know, we could divorce after this project, but we're going to go through this project.

Jason Armstrong 6:47
As soon as you create an llc.

Alex Ferrari 6:54
No question it is, and there's so you guys seem to like, you know, from what I was able to gather through your IMDB profiles, you guys have been hustling for a while, in your own worlds. But it seems like when you guys got together in more recently, actually, you just started all of a sudden, like you were in a lot of productions, and a lot of different things going on at the same time. So that's very unusual for a new, you know, producing partnership that I've seen, I don't see like it just doesn't, overnight, just come up, you guys have both been working out. You've done some work in the future world who doesn't work in television world, but really not likely, you're doing now not at the level, you're doing it now with the cast and things like that, what kind of what started this explosion of, of these, you know, doing so many projects and with the caliber of people you're doing so recently,

Rob Goodrich 7:45
You know what it was sort of a collection of years where we very mindfully said, you know, let's, let's get that IP, let's get the content, let's make sure that our catalogue is full of stuff where we know we can pull something out. And when we've got that extra piece, we can really start to package it more seriously. And, you know, look, I mean, we've been fortunate with the snowball effect. We've identified IP that we that we think fits into the market well, but we've also identified a time that, unfortunately, has been so damaging for so many businesses, we've, you know, we've used a formula in the past two years, where we've been able to create, you know, marketable films, for modest budgets. And, and really, when the world has been so scared about, you know, big crowds and heavy footprints, we've been able to go shoot these movies, you know, not on a Netflix budget, we're not concerned about insurance, but really more on a smaller budget with smaller crews, where we can say to actors, look, we need you for six days, or we need you for three days. We've limited our shooting schedules, and you know, this, the scope of our films are sort of in that mid range. But you know, we've shot six this year as a result. And I think that snowball effects, when you can go to an agency and actually deliver a fee on time and escrow. And you can get an accurate, calm and have a pleasant experience. It really has a positive effect. And I mean, we're fortunate now where we've got a lot of agents calling and saying, Hey, what do you have that I can sneak in accurate? Or would you look, would you look at this project. So so we really were aware of not trying to jump the gun and just make a movie to make a movie, but really be a little bit more strategic in how we rolled it out.

Jason Armstrong 9:39
Yeah, and also, I would say I'm just sort of add on to that. You know, through that time, a story can be achieved in just the same way haven't be self contained. You know, you can still have great stories that doesn't that don't have to have an incredible number of company moves and have all these different settings. There was you know, through COVID, there was this opportunity to still have, you know, tell great stories, and focus very heavily on the character development through the story. And that could be achieved, you know, with fewer cast members of your locations, and still, you know, still deliver great content that didn't speak to the market. So, you know, it was it was just that opportunity, and also to touch on the other thing that you mentioned, Alex, with regards to sort of moving quickly. I feel as though there's, you know, everyone's sort of, if they've been involved in the business from every angle for a long period of time. So, I mean, like, Robin, I like before mentioning, the PA, you know, worked is, I mean, I've been a scripting, you know, I've been a continuity director, I mean, I've been a general, I mean, so like, hearing through all these things, and what happens with all that is you have, you start to develop this very, very large network. And when you find someone to partner with, that isn't so safeguarded, and protects that network, because I feel a lot in our industry, you know, even if people partner together on one film, you're like, Oh, these are my guys, or these are, this is my network, this is who I access. And the problem is that just puts up these walls immediately. That shouldn't be there, because this is a collaborative business. I mean, that's, that's where you thrive. And I feel as though Rob and I wouldn't be partnered, our success sort of happened very quickly, because there were none of those walls it was, each of our networks became one large network. And we're able to sort of pinpoint where certain strengths and certain projects could stand and, and access those without delay. And I think that's sort of you know, that's, that's what you that's what you need to do, if you're going if you are going to partner together and build a slate, and evaluate the IP and determine whether the market speaks to that, you know, that content and everything you need to be able to, you know, open book with regards to what your access is.

Alex Ferrari 12:00
It's interesting, because if I go back to the analogy of the marriage, when you start dating someone or you, you start moving in with somebody, you don't have a joint account just yet. You have separate, you have separate accounts. And then when you have a joint account, it's serious. Now we're sharing our money. So it's the same thing. You're sharing your contacts, you're sharing your network. And by doing that, you're able to basically put gasoline on the fire because you're able to access so many things. Yeah, I've been with I've, you know, I've had I've partnered with people, they're like, I, I hang out with Tom Cruise every weekend. I'm like, Can Can Can you? Can you? Can you talk to Tom Cruise? No, no, I can't. That's very sensitive. I can't talk to Tom Cruise. I'm like, yeah, what the hell are we doing here? I'm using as exempt. I don't know anybody who knows toppers. But anyway. But I get the boy, you get the point like and, and it could be something as like, Oh, yeah. Me and Thomas Jane, go hang out. And we go golfing. Oh, can we maybe pitch them this project? You're like, well, that's, it's my that's my connection with Thomas. That's not with you know, it's weird. But it's, it's kind of this whole energy that a lot of people in the industry have of lack of, of fear. Because you know, I think you go it's gonna agree this entire business is run on fear, Hollywood is run is completely run on fear on FOMO fear of missing out huge deals have been dropped huge amount of money have been dropped purely on the fear of losing out. And if and we and we unfortunately have seen some of those movies over the years, but But Rob, you were talking about your formula, can you kind of dive into this, this formula that you're that you're you guys are working on that are able to do all this and today's environment? Cuz I think you probably started prior to COVID. But you were kind of like, primed, ready for it when it came out in a way.

Rob Goodrich 13:50
Yeah, we really were. You know, it's interesting look, at the end of the day, for any filmmaker, it's always about money. And and not necessarily, hey, how am I going to make money? But how are we going to source money. And I think that's where that's where I think we really separate ourselves. We, you know, we're genre agnostic. And by what I mean by that is we don't measure ourselves to a horror film or a drama or this. I mean, we're looking at the market, we're filmmakers, but we're also businessmen. And we want to be able to say, alright, if I want to do this one day, I have to have the track record of doing XYZ before that, to be taken seriously. Right. And so we're really in the business of establishing partnerships, creating, you know, good relationships with people. I know, that sounds sort of cliche. So a big part of our formula is, you know, who do we like to work with? Because who can we call next to say, Alright guys, you know, I'm in I'm in Las Cruces, New Mexico right now. So okay, guys, here's the tax credit here. Here's where we know we're certain soft money sets. Can we go to the usual partner so we start to analyze a product Based on certainly location, and what those tax credits look like, so we can get some semblance of where, where our financing structure comes into play. As that's happening, we're in daily communication with our sales partners, our distribution partners, really working backwards, so that we can say, alright, this finance plan actually does fit in line with the scale of the film, the budget, we can make this type of movie with this amount of crew, for instance, we're a union production company, we're always hiring union crews. So by working backwards, obviously, like a lot of filmmakers, we're in daily communication with those distributors, or those sales companies say, Okay, what do we think about this cast list? What do we think about this so that everything that we're doing, we're checking a box, so that we don't have that pardon my French that oh, shit moment, you know, when we're supposed to go off, I, if I just did this differently, if I just had that actor, or I just thought about that other seat currently. So we really, we try to work backwards to a degree. One of the things, you know, that I think it has been working for us is, you know, we built some good relationships with talent. We've We've got actors that enjoy working on our set, we try to keep it relaxed. And, you know, we welcome the creative feedback and collaboration. So when we're able to call an agent or an actor, and say, Hey, we've got this project, or they're calling us and saying, I'm looking for something for two weeks, what do you have? Well, that's such a big piece of the puzzle, that we're then able to really get that packaging process, going a lot faster. You know, we're not necessarily always hunting, to make a movie, bring it to a festival, get all the awards, do everything. I mean, it's a different climate today. As we all know, we were very interested in exploring and evaluating every project and every sales opportunity every day that we're prepping, filming, and then post so that we're always elevating the value of a project. We're looking at streamer deals, we're looking we look at the article, but we're always exploring what that best fit is for any film. And we've been very fortunate. I mean, New Mexico has been terrific. Massachusetts has been terrific. Toronto has been good to us. So I hope that answers part of it.

Alex Ferrari 17:30
So usually, what you guys are basically saying is don't shoot a $2 million period piece personal film, with no stars attached shot in black and white is generally it's generally not what you want to do. And that's the approach of so many filmmakers they just like I want to make art. I'm like, great, if you want to make art make it for $5. Don't make it for 5 million and mortgaged your house, which I've had people on the show who have mortgaged their house have lost their house, because they're like, Hey, I think this is gonna go it's the craziest in our business is so insane. Because I've talked to investors and the like, you guys, this is insanity. I'm like it is Yeah. But yeah, if you know what you're doing, it can be you can make money with it. But the scope of of, you could spend $2 million and have literally a useless product, you spent $2 million on cookies, you have $2 million worth of cookies you could sell. Right? So there's a product, there's a product there.

Rob Goodrich 18:33
Yeah, you know, and we're not afraid either. And I think it's important to be honest, in this business, I don't think you have to be a jerk. But I think it's good to be transparent. And look, I mean, we know how to finance films, we know how to package talent, we know how to sell films. So we can we can analyze a project from really any perspective, not to say we're the best at it. But you know, we've got a pretty good understanding of each, so that when we're talking to a filmmaker, or we're talking or evaluating a new project, we can very easily to your point, say, look, I totally love where you're coming from. But here's why that wouldn't work, right? In today's world. Instead of saying your project sucks, we're not going to do it. Maybe there's some value in it. So then we can have a more collaborative conversation and say, Look, this is how we might approach it. These are the types of people we might bring into it to help you see, you know, this follow through with your intentions. We never want to say no to any project off the bat. But we are pretty quick to say, here are the things that we know won't work. And that's based on real time, experience, real time, market trends, real time investors, etc.

Jason Armstrong 19:43
Another thing I would want to say too, is I mean, a lot of art is a timing chance, right? I mean, it really does play by time and chance, especially within the arts. So there are things that are going to speak to certain types there. You know, there's going to be an audience for certain content at a certain time. And unfortunately, you know, something can get lost. If it if it isn't, you know, released or, or evaluated at the right time. So I mean, that's the other thing that will pay very close attention to is, is recognizing you know what, right now, this would be unfortunately the it's not so much even how it's being built out so far is just that it will not achieve the audience that it should right now. So in order to and then that and then that becomes just this lost art. And to your point before it is a business. So if it's, if you are going to do it as a hobby in the arts, then that is one thing. If it is going to operate as a business, then yes, you need you need to develop something that people want, and that will sell. And, and that doesn't. And then there's a lot of fear that surrounds that, then people when they hear that they start to think, oh, how is that going to jeopardize the creative? How is that going to alter this, this, this and this, this, and it doesn't actually have to do that. And, and at the same time, let's let's look at that, if it's something that is not flexible, that cannot be flexible, cannot be examined, you know, in order to sort of build it in a different in a different way than it might be it's something that just sits somewhere and is never seen. Never heard of no one's ever aware of which is fine. But one of the one of the most valuable things in the art world is literally in you know, having an effect on people you know, provoking a conversation, excitement, anything like that. That's that's that's sort of the the largest payoff outside of VR was that, you know, investors obviously, one of the largest payoff is actually having that developing an audience having an effect on its audience. Right. So that's, you know, that's something you really, you know, you do have to pay attention to the timing of these things. And if something's not now it can't be a year from now it can you know, in or find a way for it to be that So,

Alex Ferrari 21:54
Right. So in other words, contagion not gonna come out right now. As a brand new movie. Not really like it. I don't care if it's Steven Soderbergh not happening right now. Nobody wants to see them. How many? How many? How many pandemic movies have you turned down in the last two years?

Jason Armstrong 22:15
It's wild.

Alex Ferrari 22:16
Right?

Rob Goodrich 22:18
It's funny how quickly people pick up on a trend and go, here. I've got this. What do you think?

Alex Ferrari 22:24
I've been yelling on my show for the last two years. Nobody wants your pandemic script. Nobody wants to watch it. Nobody wants to see it. I don't care if Meryl Streep's in it. Nobody wants to watch it. Because we're living it. It's kind of like having a terrorist movie A week after 911. So one of the things is there something that you see, in your, in your day to day, some mistakes that you see filmmakers make when they're pitching to producers, or trying to pitch you guys a script, or or project or something like that, because there is a you know, I do my best with this show to educate as many filmmakers as humanly possible about the realities of this business. And the realities of life. Don't run up to you at a Starbucks and go, here's my script. Read it. I don't know who you are. You don't know who I am. You don't know who I am. But here read it. There's certain ways of doing things. Is there mistakes that you consistently see that you can kind of call out and hopefully help some people listening?

Rob Goodrich 23:22
Well, Jay, I can jump in first. I mean, I think I think a common thing that sort of gets under my skin a bit just because it never works. And I never, you know, we've all pitched something before, right? So I don't ever shame anybody for doing that. You know, when you come up and you say, Oh, I've got money attached to these investors or this actor, I want to call BS every time. I mean, one of the ways that Jay and I typically vet a project and about five seconds, is I say, tell me where your bank account is. And I'll make a $1 deposit. Because if they've got a bank account open, well, then they're more of a business to me. But it how do you have these investors? And how do you have this infrastructure set up to make a movie that we can just jump in and start packaging? It's not really set up. And then it's the Phantom investor or it's the Phantom actor, who to your point earlier is like the cousin of Tom Cruise that went out once but I don't want to call him yet because he's, you know, Uruguay. So that's a big red flag. I would much rather see a project when somebody says, Hey, I love this movie that you guys just did. I think I have something that might connect with you might not let me just send you a logline. Or would it be okay, if I just send you some preliminary info? Without all the baggage, you know, then it could be more appealing to sort of say, oh, you know what, this is pretty cool. Let us follow up. Let us see where it's at. Because we have the tools to help package that if it's something that we like, it's just sort of the

Alex Ferrari 24:59
So the letters of intent, not so much?

Rob Goodrich 25:11
it's nice to have I guess?

Alex Ferrari 25:14
Be honest, be honest, it's absolutely almost useless. It's like it's literally it's absolutely almost useless letters of intent. I got I was up, I was packaging a deal. And the producer was like, Oh, we have this letter of intent from this Oscar winner. And, and I saw it. And everywhere he, I mean, literally, if he could have tattooed it on his frickin chest, he would have tapped because everywhere he walked in, he's like, here's my letter of intent with this dude, that I spoke to unconvinced the first talking point. Yeah, that's first talking points. I have a letter of intent from this Oscar winner. Here's his signature. So all that says to me is that you were able to calm this poor, older actor with a little commitment. No, no. The letter What? No, I said letter of intent, sir.

Jason Armstrong 25:52
From the talent, a letter of commitment for the financing,

Alex Ferrari 25:57
Commitment, stop it.

Rob Goodrich 26:00
Well, you know what, here's here's the, here's the behind the curtain of all of that, right? Yeah, we obviously work with a number of agencies and ensure projects from that. And they'll have talent, quote, unquote, attached, that are, quote, unquote, attached. So it's hard enough for the people that are in the industry, the managers, the producers, the talent, actually have a project that is that far along. So when you've got somebody that is fairly new to the game, or trying to break in, or has a great idea, it's just that much more unbelievable, to no fault of their own. But it's just such an uphill battle. I mean, really, where we are in an industry right now. And we're, we've had some success, not to give the company sauce away. But look, you make an offer, you make a payer play offer, and you deliver the funds. And that's going to make it real to an agent. And it's amazing how quickly that reverberates through the industry. Oh, wow. They, they actually escrow that talent, a day before it was due, or was due, oh, yeah, they signed the contract. So that's what makes it real, no one is attached until that money is in that account. And for better or worse, where we are, I mean, it's such a competitive market right now, there's so much out there, and there's so many places to put content, that you've got to make it real by putting the money in the account. And you got to be willing to part ways with it. And with that comes a lot of risk for producers. But you know, you got to be confident in what you're doing.

Jason Armstrong 27:26
You got to be offering the model that you put together, right? Because there's always been a filtering system that's existed, right? We know that. And it's because otherwise, there just be so much being channeled into all of these outlets. And now there's just so many, so the filtering system is just become even more prominent, and important. And so the way to actually get around that is to have everything built. So if you are going to engage, you have the money to engage, it's not, it's not oh, we're engaging, and then there's going to be this long period of time where nobody's talking about it, because you couldn't really have the follow through. That's, you know, immediately that's a red flag and people are going to take seriously. So the second that you do engage with the people that you do need to put your project together. Everything has to be in place. So that if you get a yes, immediately.

Alex Ferrari 28:22
And that is that's refreshing, because that doesn't happen in our business at all. It's a lot of talk, it's a lot of talk a lot of luck in the lip service and all this kind of stuff. And I mean, God, how many people like oh, I have this guy attached, or I've got this money's about to drop. Oh, I love that term. The money's about to drop tomorrow. It's dropping. Oh, we got pushed back. Oh, because his allowance hasn't hit yet. Because, you know, he's a multimillionaire in England. And his wife gives him a million dollars every month as in and he just wants to be in the movie. And we've Yep, sure. I'm not telling you stories, you're gonna hurt. It's a small, it's a small little roll, like maybe at the bar or something, you know, give him two lines, and he'll finance the whole movie. Like we hear all these stories. And by the way, everyone who's not watching this we're all laughing we're all we're also we have smiles on our faces because we've all heard these stories before. But it's so fascinating over my career, it doesn't change now what those stories that we're just talking about happened to me in the 90s when I was coming up and they're still happening today and they think that they work and that's why I kind of call out you know letters of intent and like the all this kind of stuff that's all kind of fluff you know or I could get this guy on the phone right once walked by this person or you know I parked cars or where this guy plays golf or something. There's always so many of these stories but when you guys are doing is interesting because you're actually I don't know doing what you say you're gonna do. Which is oddly a rarity in this business. How I've always found it fascinating how anything ever gets done in in Hollywood and I can't even comprehend at the 100 $200 million world, how many moving parts? How many things because even that world, they're still financing these things, they still they're still banks, they're still like, you got to go? Absolutely. I mean, it's not like, Disney is just writing checks, though they probably can at this point, but they're smart enough not to use their own money. Yeah, right. You know, it's

Rob Goodrich 30:24
Our big thing, too, is look, I mean, we've got, we've got projects in pipeline for the next year or two years that that are those studio level films. But for right now, we're the world's at where we're at, we control the clock, you know, and we're able to really, we're able to work with AD's and work with mine producers and work with directors that we can talk to every day. And, and, you know, we can control the financing and the model, and control the sales and control the marketing, you know, to a degree, right, but we're able to control the clock a little bit more, which is, which has been helpful, and it keeps us busy. But it allows us to sort of work with and to spit out a product that, you know, we know, sort of shares the integrity that we went into it.

Alex Ferrari 31:13
Can you guys talk a little bit about the importance of a bankable star, based off of budget. So you know, cuz I always tell people, like, Look, if you got a $50,000 movie, anytime you could put a bankable star, and even if it's a phase, do it anytime, at any budget range. But as that budget continues to go up, you at that point need to have bankable stars of certain magnitudes depending on the budget. So certain actors can finance a million dollar, or $2 million, even a $5 million, but they're not going to finance a 30 million, then you need another two or three of those guys. Well, you need Bruce Willis to show up. Or you need to, you know, and Bruce does I think movie a week now I think he's doing a movie a week.

Rob Goodrich 31:55
A One day One day shop.

Alex Ferrari 31:59
Pops up it's 365 movies this year. It's fantastic. But, but filmmakers don't really get that a lot of times and they're like, Oh, I wanted to, again, it goes into that hobby thing. Where like, oh, I want to be pure. I'm like, Well, I'm not the best actor for the role, then do it for 50 grand, don't do it for 500 grand. So can you talk about the importance of it, and then how you're able to attract these actors, I think we kind of touched upon this, like money talks. So if you show up and drop some money, you're gonna get people's attention pretty quickly.

Rob Goodrich 32:29
We through the years, everybody's got a gatekeeper. Right. And so the agents and the managers, they're gatekeepers, it's like any business, you know, you sort of all come up together, or you meet here and there. In my world, I was in Venice Beach for a long time. And it took a lot of the sort of the razor blades out of the agents out of the managers, when we were having a beer at Hinata, or the whaler or, you know, at the beach. So forging those relationships, you know, it's a q&a, you know, we're on the producing side, they're on the, they're on the deal side. So we've been able to, over the course of a few years, balance each other, say, Hey, let me you know, pick your brain on this, let me pick your brain on that. So that access to talent, or that access to a quick read, has been very beneficial. And that's a relationship thing. And I hate that term, but it is relevant, like any business. I think that you know, money talks, that's how you get your talent, you got to get to the talent. So how do you get through the gatekeeper? Oh, good story, some level of packaging, and then the offer that you can come in with. Now, once that talent is there, what we really focus on is having a good experience, you know, we want our talent to feel as though they're valued on set, they're not just a hired piece, you know, and so far, that's been pretty successful. Those conversations, go beyond the film, they turn into text messages, hey, you watching this game? Or hey, are you gonna be in LA or boulder or this or that? So it is it's relationships. And then, you know, we've been very fortunate to sort of repeat working with certain actors, and then when you do that, like anything else, it's human nature. People say, Well, these guys got to be doing something right. This guy's working with them a number of times and they bring in their friends and it's sort of a pyramid

Alex Ferrari 34:26
It's like kind of like who's dating the you know, the hot girl and then like, and then all the other girls all the other girls are like, well, in this ugly dude, obviously is I'm not the guy with the ugly dude. But

Jason Armstrong 34:40
I didn't know this was visual. So normally we need to

Alex Ferrari 34:48
But it's it's always kind of like but it's it goes with investors too. It's like who's the first one to the party. And then when you you have, you know, a hot girl or a hot guy at the party all the time. Everybody else all the other guys and gals go away. And why is that movie star hanging out with these guys? Constantly? Yeah. And then like, then you start investigating it. And they they're like, Oh, well, this. And I have to ask you, though, you know, once you build relationships with actors, which I've had the pleasure of being able to build relationships with actors over the years, I call them up sometimes directly, I'll go, Hey, man, I got a project you want in? We've already know it's a, it's a one on one relationship that we've built over years. And I go, I don't want to cut out the agent because you don't want to piss off the agent. So can you talk a little bit about the political minefield that is calling up the actor directly? Or maybe talking to the actor first and then go into the age? How do you guys know it straddle that?

Jason Armstrong 35:41
Well, we do exactly that. So I mean, we'll we definitely play by the protocols of how to detect it. Because the reality is, even if you have that relationship, you can have that conversation, you do need then to engage the team, because there's a lot of moving parts behind, you know, and certainly in the caliber of the actor actress, it that, you know, that teams obviously larger or smaller, there's a lot of moving parts in there. And, and you could probably have a Creative Conversation with talent for a little while. But in order for it to become real, it has to it has to go through the proper channels. And I feel as though there's a lot of cases where there is maybe that one on one relationship, and, and they'll talk about something for, like for an extended period of time. And because they haven't started engaging the right parties, it never really gets there. Because things are being built behind all of these talents. All the time. I mean, things are being evaluated for them to be started. Their schedule is filling up. I mean, sometimes their schedule is filling up, almost without their being aware of it. And it really I mean, I mean, they have to, they have to, they have to okay, but my point is, it's like there is a machine behind them. That is that is handling what they are attached to what they get engaged on. So So we typically, and I don't want to speak for both Rob, like for both of us, but we typically will have that conversation, but then we will then we go immediately to their team. So that so that everything, there's just clarity, and everything was just transparent, right from the start. Otherwise, it's almost getting the reset button. You know, you engage have this long conversation with town, and then you hit up the team. And it's like, you might hit reset, because right, it starts all over again. So

Rob Goodrich 37:35
Yeah, I mean, let's not pretend that there are egos that go top to bottom.

Alex Ferrari 37:39
What Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a bit. There's egos in this business? No,stop it.

Rob Goodrich 37:44
So the funny part is, is there, I hope agents and managers aren't listening. But you know, a lot of times, there might be bigger egos on that side of the aisle than the talent. And so I think that if you're not sort of appreciating and respecting every lane of the business, sure, then there's a lot of butthurt people, and they will literally stall, what could be a pretty easy transaction, you know, they get paid, the Africans paid, we get our actor, you know, and so, you know, what we try to do is, even if there's that personal relationship, we're very quick to stay in our own lane. Hey, you know, actress acts or actress bathroom, what, you know, we would love you for this project, we're gonna have our attorney reach out to your representation and have this go the right way. We present offers through the appropriate channels, we really tried to lead on our legal Well, we can just sort of create some buffer between what could be a relationship, whether it be an agent or an actor, and the actual business. I mean, we all I like to think we all have the same goal in mind. And 99% of the time, that's the case. But to Jay's point. I mean, we really are adamant about just doing things the right way. And we're the type of people that will go the extra mile and do the extra work. And if that means, you know, one extra step to make sure that that last person was on that email, or got notified that hey, this is gonna come through. We just wanted to do it this way. Well, then everybody's on the same page. And then that that actor or actresses team, then they can determine how to sort of circulate around something and we're very hands on from that point.

Alex Ferrari 39:25
I can't tell you how refreshing this whole conversation has been so far. I can't it's for people listening. It just doesn't happen. But what you guys are saying is what should be the industry norm, but is not. There's so many different kinds of players out there who don't do the basics. This is not like revolutionary stuff. You guys are talking about that. It's not rocket science, guys. It is it is basic, like basic thing. Like if you want to make coffee, you need a coffee bean like it's a simple, real basic stuff for most people. Like I'm gonna make coffee But out of mind, I'm like, Okay. And I'm gonna, and then I'm going to tell you it's it's the best coffee in the world. And I have a letter of intent from the best coffee being in the world. So it's remarkable, remarkable. Now, another thing that I find fascinating, but you guys is you guys are a production company. So but you do have deep wells in the investment world, meaning that you you finance your own projects, essentially, how do you? Or do you have any advice on pitching investors on your projects and how you kind of package them to a certain extent for for filmmakers, because that is, obviously everybody wants to know, like you said, at the beginning of this conversation, it's all about how we're going to get the financing to make art and hopefully make some money doing it.

Jason Armstrong 40:44
Well, I think that sort of circles back to your, your original, one of the questions that you made, Alex, which was if young filmmakers are trying to put something together, and they're going around to either look for a CO production partner, or something along those lines. One is, you know, betting things properly. And, and to making sure that you do have a model behind you. But I mean, for, for investors, it's recognizing that it's a business that you are, you're selling something. So you know, one of the things that Robin a conversation that Robin I have had with, with people when when we maybe don't see eye to eye, they brought us something, and we're looking at building it out with them, because we actually really do like the IP and everything. And don't worry, this is circling back to financing and money. But, you know, looking at building it out, is and there's some pushback look at them saying, I mean, tell me about another business that can operate that way. Like, take yourself out of the film business, and save what other business on earth could ever operate that way? Right? Where people would where people would be like, let me in, you know, let me let me give you my hard earned money, right, that I've been working for years for and I don't even care if you inherited it, it's still it was somebody, right? Somebody worked horses part earn money and put it into this, right? I mean, so that's like, the first thing you have to think about when you're approaching anyone is, wait a second, like you in depth, take yourself out of the arts, if you're trying to if you're trying to get people to give you a lot of money for an art take, remove yourself from it and recognize how would this operate in any other format? Right. And if you can see that, then that's great. But that's the that's one of the first things that Rob and I will say to someone, how would that ever work? So then outside of that, it's, it's like any business, you are trying to mitigate risk? Okay. And one of the one of the first things that anyone is going to talk about with regards to film, or sorry, or any, any, any form of media, for that matter, is, it's a risky investment. It's, it's a risky business. Because what you're selling is you're selling the product, but but you're also you're relying on people to like it, not that they need it, and especially right now, where there's endless content available to everyone. Now, it's not so much like, oh, you know, well, I need it, I need something to watch in the evenings, right? I mean, the kids have gone to bed, ideally. And now, you know, I can sit down and watch something and escape for a little period of time before you know, the morning comes there, they start to get that, that well is mess. So now, it's got to it actually has to be It can't just be the content. That's not what you're selling, are you actually selling something that people actually like, and what? So So I mean, that's, that's the whenever we talk about finance and bringing in money, we one we will have a model, so that we can show, look, we've evaluated the market, we recognize that the budget is going to speak to the market right now in this Shaundra our talent, this comes back to where you asked about, you know, or made a comment about finding that a Lister or that star that is going to drive sales, or be your most marketable piece in the film. You know, you have to actually, you have to pay very close attention that because not every actor speaks to every genre. And that'll be something that a lot of people present to us, they'll say, Oh, we think this person is perfect. And you know, and they sell so well. And be like Well, no, they sell so well but not not genre. They there's there's no knowledge in that. So yes, there are no name, but then you do have to actually it has to be you know, well researched as to whether they are going to inform sales speak that. So all of that is is basically just trying to find ways to mitigate the risk of investment on every project.

Alex Ferrari 44:53
And it is it is when you're when you're hiring an actor or a name actor, you're basically paying for marketing upfront, is you are investing in a marketing budget up front. So if you're getting if you're paying for Thomas Jane, he has a built in audience and a built in built in awareness that he's been able to build up over his career that has valued you. Can you do that for Bruce Willis? That's telling investors and that's telling people who are buying your film and buyers, you've, you've pre invested in marketing, where in a world where you know films of your size, you can't compete with the studio's just there's no way you can compete marketing money. There's just you can't you can't market your film.

Jason Armstrong 45:38
We're not matching. We're not matching our budget in marketing PR,

Alex Ferrari 45:42
No, no, are doubling or tripling. Yeah, exactly. And even if you did, what, what would that be? What value? Would that bring? Like? Seriously? Like, how could you would you even make a dent in the universe have some sort of awareness, but you put Bruce Willis in your movie, there's automatic awareness is automatic. So when you're scanning through 1000 things, you're like, oh, there's Bruce. Or there's Thomas, or, you know, there. And that's what you're paying for when you hired these these named actors. And that's what filmmakers need to truly understand. And also, another thing I always try to say is some actors. We were kind of joking about Bruce Bruce is still Bruce. And Nicolas Cage is still Nicolas Cage, no question. But there were certain actors who oversaturated the market with themselves. And I worked on movies, where the like, oh, this poor guy, like paid a good amount of money for this one actor, but he did 25 movies that year, I'm not exaggerating. And he went out to the distribution companies, like we already got three of those guys have that guy this year, we're good. And he got sick, he got saddled with a movie they couldn't sell, because the actor was oversaturated. So there's, you've got to kind of figure that out as well. It's a, it's a lovely type rope, we work we want.

Rob Goodrich 46:51
That's why we do pay close attention to speak pretty regularly with our sales guys and say, you know, what's in the pipeline for this individual? You know, what do we need to be aware of not today, but six months from now? Right? You know, I want to add one more thing to the financing. So, two things, really, I think the most important thing for people to take away is you have to be flexible, and you have to adapt, that adapt to the money and you have to adapt creatively. Because they're, they're intertwined, no matter what. So one of the ways that we really kickstart our projects, we have skin in the game, we'll put skin in the game as a company, so we can give an investment group and investor another company for a copro some level of confidence that, that we're in it. You know, we've got something to lose to we're working

Jason Armstrong 47:39
It is like being alone. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 47:44
Misery, misery loves company. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Rob Goodrich 47:52
The other thing I was gonna say in sort of, as we're looking at financial models, and as we're looking at sales, and how do we maximize something being marketable, we have not not changed the the gender of an actor or an actress in a film, we have flipped roles, because we've identified Oh, well, you know, that actor might be more might be better as an actress, because we can get this individually and might increase the marketability, so long as it doesn't take away from the creative. And, you know, Jay and I are very, not pushy, but very upfront with our filmmakers to say, look, any suggestion we have, we're in your corner. As a director, we're in your corner as a creative team, we are always going to be pushing for what makes this movie, the most marketable, most commercial it can be, because aside from the money, that means more eyeballs are going to see it. So if there are ways for us to make improvements like that, that's how it all connects the marketability, the commercial ability to sales, the money, the investors get their money back, they come back to us and say, What do you have next, and the actors are happy.

Alex Ferrari 49:03
So it's a win win, win win across everybody across everybody's and that's, again, another rarity in our business. To say the least. Now one thing, most most filmmakers have this problem and I think everybody at any stage in the in the game other than in the studio system is distribution is actually making money with their product. Because before the you know, with the cost to make the product was such a difficult thing and expensive thing. Now you can make a pretty high quality product with the right people at a low cost. But getting it out to the marketplace and actually generating revenue with that is more difficult now than ever before. In the ever changing landscape where T VOD used to be a thing now is no longer a thing really, especially in the independent film market. S VOD is great, but they don't pay you for three years. So how do you how do you make that business work? You know, a VOD is great, but you know so and then foreign sales is not what it wasn't the 90s or the early 2000s, and you don't have DVD to fall back on anymore. So how do you guys, you know, generate revenue with your films? Like how is it like how were you doing sales agents? Are you doing pre sales? Foreign? What? Where's that kind of work? I mean, obviously, don't give me numbers. I don't want to your entire business model guys, but just generally,

Jason Armstrong 50:19
No, absolutely. I mean, look, we honestly, it's, it's different with every film, so that that's just a fact. You know, there are a lot of there are a lot of filmmakers right now that are a massive part of their finance model is foreign sales. So they'll they'll lock in a certain amount of foreign sales, and then they'll maybe try and leave domestic open, but more often than not, they'll, you know, make a big domestic deal, too. And then they'll evaluate with that shortfall or that gap. And

Alex Ferrari 50:49
Is this pre is this pre production? Or is this after production,

Jason Armstrong 50:53
Pre production,

Alex Ferrari 50:53
So your pre sell your pre selling based on selling

Jason Armstrong 50:56
On pre selling to foreign, and then even looking, and then looking at an MG domestically, and then evaluating what a gap or shortfall could look like, Okay, now, that's so that could that back, that's why that's we need to pay very, very close attention to the film. So, you know, to how it's how that genre has been performing over the past couple of years, how your talent within the in the film have been performing, or who you're looking at signing into the film, have been performing over the past couple of years. Because if you have sort of pre sold the fill to all the major markets, and now you're you are recognizing that you still have a gap or a shortfall, and you're filling that with potential equity, instead of or maybe looking at your senior financing and thinking of bridge or something along those lines. The problem is that, that is where you can find yourself in a spot where you're training someone you saying, Well, this is what's left. And you know, we need this as a as a shortfall. You want it as equity or make an equity investment? Where are you pointing to the potential ROI for that money for the person that's coming in, because you've pretty much sold the Fill everywhere, where it's going to perform well. And if if you were so in need of the money to make the film, to greenlight the film, that you weren't able to evaluate the best deal, either from a domestic sale or in foreign, you weren't really looking at the windows, you know, or like when it was gonna be built. So you're all of a sudden, you're sitting at a spot where sure you got a complete model if they fill the gap, but how are you? How are you explaining to them where they're going to see revenue? Right, because things are going to get eaten by the foreign distributors and then the sales agents going to take their fee and then it comes back in and then if you were working with senior financier to cover all that, then they've got their fee and then that's coming out and and then all of a sudden, there's all these things are getting paid out ahead of this gap, or shortfall and the gap or shortfall doesn't even have any collateralised territories or profitable territories to sit on so so that's something to be very, you know, conscious of when you're when you are examining that sort of pre sale model, which we do and then if you know if you if you have a strong enough relationship with with sales and distributors and you can engage in these conversations and not have to perhaps you know, sell your film right up front but but have those conversations recognize what its worth is again, that's a lot of that is relationship based but it's also having worked with them in the past and delivered right so so there's there's that and then then when you're speaking to to someone from an equity standpoint, hard money as opposed to soft money, you can say look, we've deliberately left this this this this open, and let me show you how this genre and this talent has performed and not not five years ago.

Alex Ferrari 54:05
Yeah, so no Blair Witch projections, and no Paranormal Activity projections that's a horror movie and your sales pitch now like they made a billion dollars you could too

Rob Goodrich 54:18
Those other ones when they show you the comps in there from 2003

Alex Ferrari 54:25
Blair which is still on every low budget horror movie comp ever

Rob Goodrich 54:31
We see insidious Blair Witch

Paranormal and paranormal don't forget paranormal.

Jason Armstrong 54:37
Yeah. See, that's that's also so that's that's that's that's the other you know, that you know, we're that's what brings up a very important subject. We deal a lot with sort of savvy investors, right. So that have already been in the game so they expect a certain thing from our model. They know that they're going to get a game If they're evaluating it from a from hard money standpoint, that that we have, we have we can answer to their ROI we can answer to their immediate ROI. And, and we even have room in the waterfall, right? I mean, because, you know, people love talking about the waterfall. But there's so many cases where the gap is a shortfall, it would take so long for them even get their ROI, their initial ROI and their investment. Forget about the back end points. I mean, my God,

Alex Ferrari 55:30
Well, it's kind of like, it's kind of like a river. And it's going over to a waterfall. And at first, it's wide open, and the waterfall is plentiful, and there's a lot of water running through. But every time you throw some new financing, there's another log, there's another, there's another giant rock, and then all of a sudden that waterfall starts slowing down to the point where it's a trick by the time it gets to the edge. It's it's a trickle, but you sold them. You sold on the open waterfall. And that's the problem.

Jason Armstrong 55:57
Absolutely.

Rob Goodrich 55:57
I can't tell you how many times we've been distracted at earlier stages that Jay and I are big, you know, contract guys, right? So everybody knows what's going on? Everybody involved? You put it in the drawer after you sign it. Hopefully you never look at it again. But there's no lingering. Well, what about this? What about that kind of conversation? I cannot tell you how many how many projects have been stalled by producers or other individuals fighting for back end points. And you just want to say you got to make the damn movie first. Oh, yeah. Yeah, then maybe we'll see. So. But that's, that's a target. I always sort of get turned off by

Alex Ferrari 56:39
Oh, everybody. I mean, how many times I mean, I've had I mean, when I was first starting out, we were meeting my original producing partner when I was just starting off off a short film I was producing that was getting a lot of heat around town. And we were taking meetings, we were fighting about the feature rights were like, I want this credit. I want that credit. And I want this back end point. I'm like, and you know, only time kind of shows you like you're idiots. There's this is not Spider Man, guys, you need to calm the hell down. Like it's not you want to fight for those points. Absolutely fight away. But there's no potential let's make the damn thing first. And then let's talk about talk about what's kind of music. It's the same thing. Who's got the publishing rights? It doesn't have the publishing rights, same thing.

Jason Armstrong 57:23
Yeah. And, and I think that's the thing when you're saying sort of saying people using the Blair Witch on you know, on a deck to help sell their film or to help or to help work on investment for investors, you know, drop some hard equity into it. It's I mean, that can work for for investors that have no experience in the business dentist, a dentist. Well, that's sexy. I mean, yeah, I can't get an ROI like that on any other investment.

Alex Ferrari 57:50
But it's so but it's immoral. It's immoral. You can't you can't throw an anomaly. Blair, which was an anomaly, parent paranormal activities anomaly and didn't send

Jason Armstrong 57:59
There's no longevity to that. Right. There's no longevity. So you'll make one movie. And Robin, I've had this conversation many times, we have no interest in making one movie. That's so if you if you deceive, right, essentially, that's pretty much what it is. You just see, of course, investors, or you just see partners that are coming in on your project, and never coming back. And anyone they know, is never coming back saying you. You haven't forged a relationship that's now going to come back on your next two or three films.

Alex Ferrari 58:31
It's toxic, it's toxic,

Rob Goodrich 58:33
Starting from scratch all over again, on your next bill. We put so much work into building that out, would he go nowhere.

Alex Ferrari 58:41
And then and then and again. On top of that you're not even starting from scratch, you're starting worse than scratch because now you've got a bad reputation out there. And now you're gonna fight against that. That's when you move. That's when you move from Louisiana to Atlanta, Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to New Mexico, and New Mexico to Vancouver.

Rob Goodrich 58:59
Well, it's crazy, because it's such a it's such a big, big business, and it's expanding across the world. But it's a

Alex Ferrari 59:06
Small business

Rob Goodrich 59:09
That traveled

Alex Ferrari 59:10
You have no idea like I'm sure if you and I started you guys and I started like talking off air about who we know. I promise you we know the same people. And I've talked to so many people on the show and I'll be like, Oh yeah, I worked with that guy. Or that guy. I started with them when they were coming up or oh this guy or that. There's this but now and it's it's people think it's a big business. It is not everybody knows everybody small world. It's very small and it never ceases to amaze me how small of a world it really is in our business. And if you piss somebody off or you do somebody wrong, it will come back to you. There's no question, no question about it and the best advice I ever got for being in the film business and everyone listening knows this because I say at nauseum don't be a dick right? that goes from the grip to the PA all the way to the producers in the director. Because you don't want to work with you don't want to work with a dick. Oh,

Rob Goodrich 1:00:09
Well, you know, I always find it takes more energy to be a dick to just either be nice or walk away.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:17
Well, that's for you because other people have made it into an art form of being a dick. Have you run it? Have you run into that guy? I've run into that, but he might just only one. There's only the one guy in Hollywood. Who was a dick. Everyone else is super cool. But now, so what do you guys up to next? Well, your next project.

Rob Goodrich 1:00:39
So we're out in Las Cruces, New Mexico right now doing a film called Squealer with Andy Armstrong of the Armstrong family, huge stunt coordinating family and he is behind the camera right now. Big second unit director. So our idea behind that was let's take a sort of a horror thriller actually feel and punch the hell out of it and really pump up the stunts make it look like something people haven't seen before. We've got West Chatham, Theo Rossi, Catherine knotek, our cast is growing we're attaching to more today. We're thrilled about that. We dropped a pretty good nugget the other day in variety. We've acquired the rights to fame adventure, John Fairfax, who if you haven't been familiar with who this man is, the most interesting man in the World commercials were based off of him. Wow. So we're, we're very excited rode the ocean twice single or guys wild

Alex Ferrari 1:01:37
Single word, single or really?

Rob Goodrich 1:01:41
Yeah. So I mean, I would advise anybody to go to his obituary New York Times, John Fairfax 2012, your mind will be blown.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:51
So you mean to tell me that sharks have a week dedicated to him is what you're saying.

Rob Goodrich 1:02:01
But now we're looking at a couple of big properties. We just, we just options, something with Thomas Jane, we're going to copro his next movie of Western late spring. And a number of things in the works. I mean, we've been very comfortable and excited and happy living where we've been living right now. And I think 22 and 23 are going to see us take a take a Leap, leap forward with some sort of higher caliber higher scale projects. That really, instead of doing this, four to four to seven movies a year, probably get it down to about three or four,

Alex Ferrari 1:02:38
Three or four Bigger, bigger ones, as opposed to bigger pictures. Yeah, that's a good four to seven super fun.

Rob Goodrich 1:02:45
That's a pretty good standpoint. I mean, we're always, you know, if we're EP in a project, that's fine, if that makes sense for us, and we can be of use, we're always looking, and we're always happy to help friends or finding projects. But from a real hands on producing standpoint, I think we're really looking to, to elevate the scale of what we're doing a bit, and we've got some good property to deal with.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:08
Now, I'm gonna ask you guys, quite a few questions asked all my guests. What advice would you give to a filmmaker trying to break into the business today? Well, JJ is literally pissing himself right now. Jay is literally pissing himself right now.

Rob Goodrich 1:03:22
My assistant Alyssa, who is a huge fan of this podcast.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:27
Oh, that's awesome.

Rob Goodrich 1:03:28
She is She was a PA. And on our last production, I said, you know, I just My hands are too full to the production office. Do you guys have anybody who can help me out a little bit? Well, I'll tell you, she and her boyfriend have been the hardest workers on set as PDAs. And what they ended up doing on our last film was Alyssa was working with me on her third film, she's now flying out here to work with us. Her boyfriend ended up driving talent around, ended up working in different departments. So my advice and j then you can chip in is get in, get in there and PA, because if you are within eyeshot of somebody you're within your shot, and you're within arm's length, and they're going to pull you in, and they're going to give you an opportunity to say, come help me out. And eventually that conversation turns into, Oh, what do you want to do? Oh, you want to be in the camera department? Well, let me see if I can get you to be a camera PA, something along those lines. My big thing is start at the bottom. You know, you don't have to have a script. You don't have to try to be a filmmaker to be a filmmaker, I would really urge you know, try to get in on the ground and do as much as you can onset or in an office working with the people that are doing it.

Jason Armstrong 1:04:39
Yeah, I mean, so just to touch on and carry off what Rob said. The Yeah, I mean, really get engaged, get really engaged because understanding all the roles is so valuable. I mean, even if you're even if you're a screenwriter, an aspiring director, anything Understanding every everyone's job that's required in order to produce these things to deliver these things, because it's a lot of moving pieces. And if you're ignorant to any of those moving pieces, it's gonna affect your ability to, to, to properly present yourself or your material. So, so yeah, I mean, get in there, get different jobs, you know, even if it's not something that you want to do, learn it so that when you do actually get that door open to the, to the field that you love, you can actually speak intelligently, but what you need from different departments, different key heads, everything else. And then I would say outside of that, don't be precious, just don't be precious over your material, right? I mean, God, the number of people that are sitting on potential IP, and they're like this, well, I just it, this isn't the right, this isn't the right fit, or, you know, this, I'm worried that they're going to do this with it, or if I show it now, it's not gonna work out, and then I'm gonna, you know, and then it's gonna be gone. So, just don't, because the truth is, you will do that forever. And then then that material that you thought was just so valuable, it's not relevant, or, or you've given everyone so much time to either touch on a small piece of it, right? Because, you know, so many of our ideas, and so many of our creative ideas that we come up with, they're, they're triggered from something we've read something we've seen something we've experienced. And to think that there aren't a vast number of people that are experiencing the same thing, and might have similar ideas or anything else. So get it out there. See an opportunity? Don't hold it close to your chest. You know, be smart. Be smart, right? I mean, protect. Sure, Mark, but don't be precious.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:56
Yeah. And I always tell people, the business is tough enough, man, you don't need to throw more obstacles in front of you. There's going to be plenty of them along along the way without you screwing yourself up. Just you know, don't as as, as a famous sage once said, don't don't push the river. Don't it's yeah, don't push it's gonna flop.

Jason Armstrong 1:07:13
And you know what the best thing to say about you know, don't be a dick. Honestly, our business is stressful enough. Oh, God. I mean, be around dicks. Come on.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:25
Oh, and we all have been we all had been when we were coming up, we all have to do we all have to deal with either bosses or? Or egomaniacs? Or you know, or sociopath. I dealt with a mobster for a while. That's a whole other story. That's a whole other conversation. Um,

Rob Goodrich 1:07:42
You know, I'll tell you a quick story real quick. And I don't want to press time. But you know, I was a PA before and we're talking about Bruce Willis. And, you know, he was he was due to come into the office, and I was working for a very well known producer at the time. And he was neurotic. And I was like, why are you erratic? He goes, well, well, Bruce really likes a clean office, which understandably, and I'm looking around, and I'm like, David, this place is spotless, and he gets on his hands and knees. And he gets under a desk and he pulls out a piece of trash. And I got it, I'll get it. I'll get it. I'm the assistant, right. And he goes, doesn't matter. We're on the same team. I'm going to get reamed out by him. He doesn't know who you are, doesn't care who you are. And he goes, I'll just do it myself. I'm right here. That little lesson taught me so much. I'm going to just go ahead and do it. We're all in the same team. I don't have to have any level of hierarchy, hey, you go do this. It's got to get done. And I think if you can lead by example, it travels down all the way down the line. I mean, for some, for somebody that's coming up, you know, impressions matter. And if you if you listen, and if you're, if you're astute, and you're a go getter, and you don't have to talk to necessarily, you know, just absorb everything and be in the room. And I think that that could really go a long way for a lot of people.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:04
I mean, I saw a video of Keanu Reeves on John Wick for carrying camera gear up Astaire upstairs. Yeah, on a company move. And everyone's like, look at Keanu Reeves. Oh my God. He is literally you know, a saint. And I'm like, he's a human being man. He's, he said, he's just a good dude, man. I mean, he's like, he's just a good dude. That's all it is. Like, he's not like, he's not Jesus guys. You know, but he's, he's a good dude. And I love to work with them. As I'm sure everybody. So Kiana if you're listening, any three of us, any of us would love to work with you, sir. Well, we'll make it work for you. We'll make it work for you. Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life?

Rob Goodrich 1:09:48
Yeah. So you know, out mine is it's it applies to both. I have two young daughters. The lesson for me has been didn't know when to turn it off. So I always just been a hustler my whole life. And I always thought, Okay, I have to do all of these things if it's ever gonna happen, bla bla bla, you know, part of it's a function of being where we are career wise, that makes it a little easier. But, you know, especially during the pandemic, I was much more able to just press pause on everything, have lunch with my kids. And I think that that has translated into work as well, where I don't feel like I need to answer every email within five seconds. You know, there's a, there's sort of this, like, hurry up and wait mentality in Hollywood, but there's panic if I don't do it now. So I think the lesson learned for me is that it's okay to sort of take a be, you know, it's certainly been reflected in my work as well. Because I'm, I'm more you aware of what I'm putting out there. And I'm more conscientious of let's, let's just not push, push, push. But let's actually take a second, sit back, a take care of yourself for a moment, enjoy what's around you, and be you know, take some time to make sure that what you're doing, you're doing right,

Alex Ferrari 1:11:11
But is that but that also is his age. I mean, your 21 year olds are not generally coming to that enlightened state. You know, and it took me a while to man, I've been hustling as you can see still hustling with everything everywhere. Non stop. Yeah, to a certain point, my wife actually said, you don't, you don't need to garage sale anymore. We don't need you to go hustle out, you know, this or that. I got a real quick story. I gotta tell you, because it's so funny. And I think it really hits this point. A years ago, when we moved to LA for the first time. I was, during Christmas, I always figured out how to hustle things. So I figured out that on GameStop, there was this video game that you could buy on sale for like $15. But on Amazon, it was on sale for $50. So I was like, Oh, wow, this is cool. So most people are like, Oh, you must have bought like a whole bunch of things from GameStop. I'm like, No, that's way too much work. So what I did is I posted it on Amazon for 60. Anytime a sale would come in, I would then have buy it off of Gamestop put their address in and have Gamestop ship it directly to them. So I was basically doing auto arbitrage. And I pulled in like oh before Gamestop stopped, like 40 or 50 sales in before Gamestop saying what the hell's going on with this account. And I was so proud. I went to my wife. I'm like, Look how much money we made for Christmas. This is great. She's like, we didn't move across the effing country for use of video. We're here for you to be a filmmaker. I was like, oh, gosh, and this like that moment. You just have to go okay, I need to pull back for a second. Really what's important, and why am I here? What am I doing? As opposed to the I gotta make money? I gotta make money. I gotta hustle. I gotta hustle. I gotta hustle. Jay, what's your what's your answer to that?

Jason Armstrong 1:13:06
Uh, well then see, if we're looking at you know, without the years and age sort of coming into play. And young, I would say not to wait for tomorrow, like, where it's gonna be a little bit more perfected. Right. And, and so, and Rob was just sort of touching it like, I've got two little girls too. And same here.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:29
Yeah, same here. Amazing. Well, well, twin girls, twin girls, man, it's a I'm 25 Look what they've done to me. I'm 25 years old. Look what I've done to me.

Jason Armstrong 1:13:39
I think that's the thing. You know, I mean, it's it's basically, it's a you don't, because there is that, especially in this business. And again, you sort of touched on that where I was sort of saying to be loving, precious. It's, um, it's waiting, you know? Oh, it'll be I'll have this other piece attitude by tomorrow, or this will be finessed a little bit more by tomorrow. And then that tomorrow becomes the tomorrow tomorrow. And, and yeah, I mean, that's just it ends up being wasted time. So I would say I would say that that's something that took me a while to learn at the beginning. Especially as a writer at that time. It's it's you know, yeah, don't wait.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:22
The art of good the art of good enough. Yeah, the art of good enough because if not, you'll be five years on one script. And, and last question, three of your favorite films of all time.

Rob Goodrich 1:14:39
Oh, boy, you want to jump in there?

Alex Ferrari 1:14:42
Not really.

Jason Armstrong 1:14:49
I mean, this guy you got to put in Weekend at Bernie's.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:52
I mean, obviously, obviously,

Jason Armstrong 1:14:55
Obviously Weekend at Bernie's has to be in there.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:00
David Oh God I forgot the director's name well, man

Rob Goodrich 1:15:04
Whatever you say is gonna sound better than mine

Jason Armstrong 1:15:08
I don't know we can hit one hit one we'll go bounce back and forth.

Rob Goodrich 1:15:13
Okay so I'll give you my three but one of them has an A attached to it So in no particular order we've got Rudy we've got Tommy Boy we've got Love Actually.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:27
Wow, so that pretty much told me everything I need to know about you sir. It's a pretty much got your entire personality wrapped in those three films.

Rob Goodrich 1:15:36
And I'll give you I'll give you my three a national treasure.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:41
Oh my God.

Rob Goodrich 1:15:45
Listen, I'm in this game. entertainment. Entertainment. I swear to God if national treasures on I am not moving and I can recite every line.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:56
I am I think I think you're not gonna have a beer sir. Those three those those three combination that's a hell of a. That's a hell of a compliment. Love actually thrown it will laugh. Tommy Boy, Rudy.

Jason Armstrong 1:16:10
It's so true though. If you actually back up and just evaluate your favorite films, but the films that you've watched 1000 times rideable number of times, and if it's on you don't turn off. And you actually don't even start multitasking. But watching well actually, I mean, that happened what for that? I can't even imagine the 100th time over the holidays. This you just keep watching. Because it's always on the holidays. And all of us go anywhere. And

Alex Ferrari 1:16:43
It's it's it's you know, we all could say Citizen Kane. We could all say Godfather but I haven't watched this again since film school. And Godfather is not a movie I watch every weekend. You know it's and don't get me wrong Godfather is an AMAZING film. But it's those movies that you just watch again and again. You know, for me, Shawshank fightclub the matrix that solid, solid solid three like they turn on, then you want to get into the 80s actions Lethal Weapon predator, Die Hard. And then we now we could just

Jason Armstrong 1:17:18
See this is what? I can't do this. I start saying

Alex Ferrari 1:17:24
Oh, but this was Oh yeah. You know, it is I always like throwing that out. There's like it's three that come to mind at this moment in time. It will change tomorrow will change five minutes from now. But at this moment in time, That's it boys. It has been an absolute joy talking to you guys. I wish you guys nothing but continued success in what you're doing. And I appreciate you guys coming on and sharing some real knowledge bombs with with my audience because if they need to hear it, they need to hear from people who are doing it and doing it right. So I do appreciate you guys coming on man and much continued success. You guys.

Jason Armstrong 1:18:01
Thank you.

Rob Goodrich 1:18:02
Thank you. It's an honor for us and we're fans of the podcast and you know, we're looking forward to making more movies.

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BPS 194: Inside Making One of the Most Insane Indie Films Ever! with The Daniels

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Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as DANIELS, have been writing and directing together for over a decade, initially with a slew of viral music videos, commercials, and short films, then with feature films and TV directing.

They’ve developed a reputation for combining absurdity with heartfelt personal stories. Oftentimes they incorporate a unique brand of visual effects, and visceral practical effects into their genre blending projects.

They have directed music videos for Manchester Orchestra, Foster the People, and won a VMA for their video for “Turn Down For What,” which Scheinert bullied Kwan into being the lead actor in. Kwan is a really good dancer.

They wrote and directed the feature film Swiss Army Man starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, which went on to win the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, received multiple nominations, and gained a large cult following.

While they were writing & developing their Oscar® Winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once, a kung fu sci-fi dramedy starring Michelle Yeoh, Scheinert went and directed a small redneck dramedy called The Death of Dick Long, also released by A24.

When an interdimensional rupture threatens to unravel reality, the fate of the world is suddenly in the hands of a most unlikely hero: Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), an overwhelmed immigrant mother. As bizarre and bewildering dangers emerge from the many possible universes, she must learn to channel her newfound powers and fight to save her home, her family, and herself, in this big-hearted and hilarious adventure through the multiverse.

They both live in Los Angeles. One of them has a son. The other has a goofy dog. But to be honest Daniel does most of the work.

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Alex Ferrari 0:44
I like to welcome to the show The Daniel's. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert how you doing guys?

Daniel Kwan 3:45
Good. Thank you for having us.

Daniel Scheinert 3:47
Pretty good. Hello!

Alex Ferrari 3:48
Good, guys, thank you so much for coming on the show I am. I am a fan of what you guys do you guys are insane. And I love about you. It's, it's, it's such a wonderful thing to see the work that you guys have been doing over the years. That's the only word I can use is insane. But in the most wonderful way humanly possible. So when you guys got into the future game, I was so excited to see like Swiss Army Man, Miranda Bailey was just on the show a few weeks ago. And she was like telling me the whole story about Swiss Army Man. I'm like, how the hell what the how is that? How did that get financed? What happened? It's just like, it's her fault. Exactly. She told me, she told me the whole story and is it was fascinating. But before we go down that road, how did you and why did you guys want to get into this insanity? That is the film industry?

Daniel Scheinert 5:50
I just did whatever my brother did as a kid. So like, he did like math team. So I did math team. And then like, he and his friends started making movies. And so I started making movies, with with my friends in high school, but but there's that's a very different thing than the industry, you know. And it's interesting, like, I did a lot of theater as a kid. And then the older I got more, I was like, Oh, I don't actually want to be an actor that industry seems not for me, you know, and, and the film industry is, you know, there's, there's a lot of warts, there's a lot of problems and things but like, you get to like, especially as a writer and director on your own terms, collaborate with friends and tell stories, you know, like it was the funnest thing I'd ever done. I was I just got hooked and and we're so lucky that our careers we still get to do it in a way that's pretty similar, you know, to like the the high school college version of making movies.

Alex Ferrari 5:50
No, no question.

Daniel Kwan 6:56
For me, I I'm like the, in the heroes during the talk about the refusal to the call, you know, you run away from the thing, and I feel like I've been running away from your bio pics can be more interesting than mine. I guess, though. Yeah, cuz because I get yeah, as you refuse the call. Exactly. The setup is so much better. But I, I grew up really disempowered for some reason. And I don't know where it comes from, like, I did not believe in myself, I didn't believe that I had worked and, and yet people would tell me like, Oh, you're pretty good at this, or you're pretty good at that. And I wouldn't believe it. And I just kind of run away from all of it. Especially coming from my mother, you know, my mother would be like, you're a good storyteller. Why don't you write some more? And I was like, No, Mom, you know, that's like, that's stupid. That's a waste of time, that's not going to help me get into college, I was a very nervous person had a lot of anxiety. And so everything was about what was the most practical route forward. And I was miserable because of it. Because I wasn't how I my brain, you know, wasn't built for practical, it was built for, you know, wild, insane storytelling. And apparently, my mom, when I was younger, met a Christian like a fundamentalist Christian fortune teller, for lack of a better word. And she saw me apparently this this, this soothsayer, and the great bio, exactly. So wild is fast, and it's fast. No. But she she said to my mom, your son, I was in like, third grade, just like your son is going to be a great storyteller one day, maybe even a filmmaker. And he's going to spread the word of God. And my mom never told me this story until much later until, like, as an adult, she's told me now, but now I understand why she was pushing me to go to film school, which is so funny. Anyone who is a Asian American kid who is the kid of like, the son or daughter of immigrants will understand how profoundly strange that is. To have a Yeah, to have a Chinese mother, say, Son, don't go to business school, like go to films go to film school. And so I did what, you know, all children do. And I ignored my mom and I went to business school. So again, I was like, fuck that. I don't want to do that. Sorry. I don't know if we're allowed to swear on this. Fine, it's fine. Art that for that. I don't want to go. I don't want to risk my life. I don't want to be a miserable starving artists. I'm gonna go to business school. And I was miserable. I was I was I hated every minute of that experience. And that was like, well, maybe I should go to maybe I should try this out. And so it's even when I went to film school, I didn't want to be a director because I looked around. I was like, I'm not a director. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to command 100 people in a crew. And so I was like, I'm gonna become an animator. I'm gonna learn how to animate and just make things on my computer by myself. And that's where I met this guy. And and this experience of meeting, Daniel shiner has been one in which every single time I feel like I don't belong in this industry, kind of like going back to your question of like, how do we get into this crazy industry? Anytime either of us felt like we didn't belong or the way that we worked and processed, our arts felt incongruous with, with how the industry worked. shiner being such a contrarian, we'd be like, so what, let's do it anyways, and I think was one of the biggest, most satisfying lessons I've learned over and over again, with every project is like, Oh, the way things are, aren't, aren't exactly how they have to be. And in fact, we can find better ways to suit ourselves. And I think if more film students learned that like that they can build a film process suited to their specific style. Just like every painter has a different process. Every poll has a different process. Like growing up, you learned about all the tours in film school, and I didn't see myself in any of their work, you know. And so I'm sorry, yeah, we have a it's all good. It's all good. If a dog in the background, it happens. It's all good. And so anyways, yeah, it was it was a series of accidents. And we have slowly built a career around this project of trying to figure out how can we be ambitious filmmakers who make great work that we're proud of, while still staying grounded and human and not not be assholes? I think that's one of the things that for some reason our industry has really built up is this idea that like, in order to make great stuff, you have to be a really mean person.

Daniel Scheinert 11:33
But in order to have a good biopic, I think we might have to turn me into the villain for the second half. I'll be like the manager of Brian Wilson. Yeah. Mercy. Oh, me, Paul Giamatti. Like taking advantage of you. Like you should take more drugs more ADHD

Alex Ferrari 11:53
That helps with your creative process. Absolutely. It would be the equivalent of my Cuban parents going go be a filmmaker. Yeah, go ahead. Because when I told when I when I told my parents I wanted to be a filmmaker my mom's like okay, let's do it on my desk like what what do you what? Yeah, what is that? What is that I'm like I can be a PA I can make $100 a day. That was that was my pitch to him to be

Daniel Kwan 12:14
It's so practical. You know how to appeal to an immigrant father I can 100 bucks a day dad come on

Alex Ferrari 12:20
$100 Cash a day. That was as far as my vision of my career had gone now you guys you guys obviously got a get started with shorts and and and then made made your bones and music videos. By the way, some of the music videos, some of the most interesting music videos of the last decade have been directed by you guys. And I'm not just smoking smoking

Daniel Scheinert 12:44
Smoking our butt

Alex Ferrari 12:46
Smoking your butt blowing smoke up your butts. I came. I came up in the 90s with Fincher and rubberneck and all these amazing films, I love music videos, especially in the 90s, late 80s, early 90s is when the form really took took you know, they took it to other places. So when I saw what you like, you know turned down but what I was just like, What is this? This is I mean just the clocking of the gun cocking as she sits on his face is a level of brilliance I have not seen very often in music video so thank you sirs.

Daniel Scheinert 13:23
Creative peak.

Daniel Kwan 13:25
That sound effects was

Daniel Scheinert 13:28
On your face

Alex Ferrari 13:29
It was just such a beautiful thing. It's such a small thing and only I like everybody else might have seen other things but when I saw that, I'm like they're filmmakers.

Daniel Kwan 13:40
That is to our audience. That's where the metaphor or the the term smoking your ass came from.

Alex Ferrari 13:51
So you guys did some amazing work in music videos. What lessons did you bring from your music videos experiences into the feature world which are obviously two different though I could argue to say that Swiss Army Man and and your current film both are just really long music videos, in the sense of the visuals are just insane.

Daniel Scheinert 14:09
Like the fact that like there's music nonstop. Like,

Daniel Kwan 14:13
We rely on music a lot.

Daniel Scheinert 14:15
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, we learned a ton. Obviously, like some, some incredible music video directors do kind of like non narrative aesthetic tone poems. And we always did like short films, we always like tricked a band into paying for our short films, you know, like, they were very narratively driven. So we, we kind of were honing our voice as writers while doing music videos. And that made the transition a little, like, more organic, I guess, you know, because we were like, Oh, we're, um, you know, a lot of videos have like a beginning, middle and end turned out for what doesn't have much character development. But you know, there's a little bit of a linear story, you know,

Alex Ferrari 14:59
I'd argue to Say there's a lot of character development. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Daniel Kwan 15:14
Notes you see the world right bends around the protagonist over time. This is the constant in the world is when you don't turn down in sales turns up exactly. But to piggyback on what he's saying, like, we didn't think of ourselves as writers like I again, I don't even think of myself as a director at the time we first got hired for the for a dancer or a dancer. Yeah, there's so many things that I we did not

Daniel Scheinert 15:36
He's the star have turned down for what that's him.

Daniel Kwan 15:38
Yes. Yeah. In case you didn't know.

Alex Ferrari 15:39
It's fantastic.

Daniel Kwan 15:42
Thank you. But so we treated every project as, as Film School in some ways to be like, Hey, we've never worked with a DP before. What's that? Like? Let's let's bring a DP on for this one. More? Oh, well, you know, what is what is the production design team supposed to be? In? What's that? What's that relationship supposed to be like? Let's let's bring on a production designer. And every project, we just built our family out and started adding more and more people and learning new skills. You know, we like I've always wanted to play with motion control camera rigs. And so we did that for a battle's music video. We've always wanted to do

Daniel Scheinert 16:18
We started out doing a lot more like visual effects. Yeah. And we slowly learned more and more practical effects. gags Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so much more fun when you can actually like, blow up in the air mortar have a breakaway prop,

Daniel Kwan 16:30
Right. And then like, we wanted to play more with stunts, and just see what that was like. So we did a foster people video about car chase. And we learned that we hate shooting car chases, you know, so every every project was was like a selfish way for us to learn something new. And then by the time we were ready to do features, like we had accrued a team with a very specific skill sets that, you know, really supported our process. And we felt like we were ready. The only thing that was really hard, I'd say the hardest part of the transition was the timeframes of, of music videos versus features, you know, music videos, you prep, pitch, write, shoot, edit, and release within a month. With features, you know, it takes you a year just to write like the first draft sometimes. And that was a that was a real struggle to like, slow down, and step back and say no to everything and basically turn off the faucet that we had of work coming in. Because we were at the peak of our of our music, VO careers. And we had to step away from that and say, You know what, I've always we've always wanted it to be filmmakers, who did features and narrative. And that was probably the hardest part. And I see a lot of contemporaries, who are in the music industry, who never did that. Never had the I don't wanna say discipline or self control. It's more just we had each other to keep each other accountable. So we, we were the ones who were able to say, Hey, should we pull back and we had someone who, who basically was there to keep us accountable and not get tempted to get pulled back into the whirlwind that is music video,

Daniel Scheinert 18:09
And we got lucky. You know, we know friends that do turn off the faucet and write a screenplay and can't get it made.

Daniel Kwan 18:15
Yes. It's hard out there.

Daniel Scheinert 18:18
But yeah, yeah, we learned a lot. We still use all the same tricks and work with all the same crew.

Alex Ferrari 18:24
Yeah, that's the thing is once you once you find people that you can work with you hold on to them for dear life, because it's, you know, there's a comfort level there. You could you could just look at them and they know exactly what you want. Or they're, they know what you want before you know what you want. So once you walk into like, perfect, exactly the aesthetic I want. Famous.

Daniel Scheinert 18:43
Now we're going to like, quit working with them, although,

Alex Ferrari 18:46
Obviously, obviously, obviously, that's what you do. You let you leave them alone. And you go get high Oscar winners. Just Hi, Oscar winners.

Daniel Kwan 18:53
All of this. This is the this is the industry way.

Alex Ferrari 18:55
Yeah, exactly. Now I so you guys have done some insane projects. What is your writing process? Like? Were you two working together? Because I write but I write by alone. I've never written with somebody else. So how do you guys go back and forth with the writing process?

Daniel Kwan 19:10
Yeah, it was a real that was a real learning. Like that was that was a lot of growing pains in that like leak from music videos to screenwriting, because neither of us thought of ourselves as writers. But when you're a musical director, you're constantly having to write new ideas. And so our process for music videos was actually pretty organically formed from the fact that we just had to be constantly pitching. Like we put out two or three pitches a week to different songs, and we get rejected 90% of the time, but that really like the exercise a part of our collective muscles where we were basically throwing ideas back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until someone laughed or someone gasp or someone emoted and then we're like, okay, what is that? Why, what like, let's let's latch on to that. And then we would start to throw ideas back and forth until they became these snowballs that kind of kept attaching more and more or conceptual ideas, narrative ideas, visual ideas and like we would start putting on different visual references that we'd pull up from YouTube or Vimeo. And we would never write anything down, it would all just be in our heads and just be ping pong back and forth for a couple of weeks, you know, without writing anything down, just seeing what stuck. And then finally, when it came time to pitch, we just write it all down and send it out. Which is great for music videos, because you have to have that speed. Once we transition to features that became really hard to do to ping pong the feature back and forth without writing down without you know. So what is our process? Now I feel like he changed.

Daniel Scheinert 20:36
I feel like it changes on every project. And that might be the lesson you know, is that like, we're cons. It's almost like a weird therapy exercise. And if you do the exact same thing, each time, you're not going to like make discoveries, you're just going to like, kind of create, figure out a pattern of how to make a similar, but not as good thing because it's not as like authentic and heartfelt and, but we still bounce ideas off each other a lot. We spent a lot of time apart. And we're each other's biggest fan. And also like biggest like, critic, because we built kind of a common vocabulary and trust of each other's thoughts. So it's a lot of like, time apart and coming back and being like, I have this thought it really resonates with me. I do I write very poorly by myself. And so like, sometimes I'm hungry to be like Dan, hang out with me. I want to throw ideas out.

Daniel Kwan 21:33
Sometimes Daniel Daniel Scheinert comes from like, an improv background. So everything about that world is about like reactions and

Daniel Scheinert 21:39
Collaborative and a sort of an extrovert who's feeds off other people's energy. And then Kwan is like, introvert extrovert. And so like, every once in awhile, he just disappears. It's like, nope, leave me alone. I'm writing, you know, and he'll come back with, like, really great stuff. But sometimes, you know, the great stuff is five times longer than we agreed it was gonna be back to the drawing board of like, how do we do we keep it all which parts do we keep? You know, it's an editing process. And just a lot of trial and error.

Daniel Kwan 22:09
Yeah. So with our first draft for everything everywhere, we spent a long time outline together, throwing things back and forth the ways that we have been talking about and then shot it went off to do his other movie Death a dick along with not a porn. Yeah, not respectable.

Daniel Scheinert 22:29
Exactly. It's misleading, I understand.

Daniel Kwan 22:32
But I wrote the first draft while he was gone shooting that movie, and it came back and it was like 240 pages, you know. So it's, I'm definitely I have ADHD, I realized, while writing this movie, and I think because of that I'm different, very generative. I'm just constantly writing constantly, I have notebooks that are always open, I have like five different. I write stuff on my phone, on my notebook on my laptop on my, you know, I just need to be writing constantly on things. Otherwise, my brain will explode. I just need like, let them out. And so I handle a lot of that over to shiner. And then China just like points out things that are working and points and like, tries to help form it into something that like makes both of us excited. So it's so far it's been more like scares the producers less. Right. Exactly. That's, like I'm, I'm very ambitious. And China is very practical minded. And so I think the combination of our brains has been very, very good.

Alex Ferrari 23:33
You know, it's funny when I had Miranda on the show, everyone listen, you gotta listen to Miranda, the producer of Swiss Iron Man. The stories that about how that movie got me because I was fascinated and like, how in God's green earth did anybody put money up for this film? Like, In what world is this movie exist? Apparently this this and this universe? It exists and others it might not, but in this universe exists? And she said that she said, like she talked to I think somebody intercompany and they like she'd read they're like, we're not gonna make this right. We're not gonna make the movie about the farting with a dick. And that, really? She's like, No, we're, we're really gonna make you gotta you guys got to listen to that interview. It's so fantastic. That pitch Yeah, no, yeah, there was like, how did you? How did you come up with the idea? It's such an insane idea. How did you come up with it? And how in God's green earth do you pitch that in a room?

Daniel Scheinert 24:24
Which ones was Army man? It was Army man. Yeah. The idea started work were the same way. Like all our music videos started it was kind of like an an image or a gag or a little scene that like, made us laugh. And it was just the opening scene of a guy. Initially the idea was like, feeding a corpse beans. Like it's fuel, and then writing it's far it's off a deserted island to freedom,

Daniel Kwan 24:53
But it was like very beautiful and like it was very

Daniel Scheinert 24:57
And then we were like, that would be a funny like the

Daniel Kwan 25:00
The music that shows, right. Yeah, the music I was listening to was Ben Zeitlin, you know who did be some Southern Wild, his short film that he did before that was called glory at sea. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but it's fantastic. They have best ambitious indie film, made on with no money. And like it was such an aspirational thing for us to watch in college. But the score is incredible. And Ben, you know, worked on the score, but I was listening to that score while we're on an airplane. And just imagining the beauty and the catharsis of a man riding off on a farting course was like making me laugh. But I will say that, like, a lot of our stuff, as wild as it is, comes from a very practical place. Because, you know, you mentioned in the 90s, the great music players like Fincher and Romanek and Spike Jones and Michel Gondry know, they had big budgets, you know, $5 million stars, stars who, you know, millions, when we were when we, by the time we got into the music industry, you know, Napster and streaming had decimated the industry, so that, you know, we were working with $10,000, you know, most of that 10 20,000, or whatever. So, we got to, we got stuck in this really interesting mode of, of filmmaking, which was very practical and based off of problem solving. So like, we happen to be flying to Alabama to visit his family, and do sort of a mini writer's retreat for another movie we thought we were going to write, and we were asking ourselves, what resources do we have there? Because we should shoot something while we're there. That'd be fun.

Daniel Scheinert 26:33
And they live on a lake in Alabama, their neighbors had a boat. And so we were like, maybe we could do a weird gag with a boat.

Daniel Kwan 26:40
And I was like, Okay, there's two of us. Okay. It's a short little thing with two people on the water. What could that be? And that's where this idea came from. And I think like, a lot of our work is kind of coming from very practical, like, problem solving. And so yeah, so that's where it came from. I pitched it to him. And shine, it was like, that's amazing. We have to make it and I immediately regretted pitching it to him, because I was like, I don't want to make that though. You know, like, I don't want to show that to my exactly the person, the person that Miranda's company who said, we're not really going to make that as like, oh, yeah, that's that was what I was saying to it's not Yeah, they weren't. They weren't crazy for thinking that. And then it just, it just kept grew. It really was like a cancer in my brain, and are both our collective brains. It doesn't have growing and more ideas kept latching on to it.

Daniel Scheinert 27:28
And then it became a long short film about like, the amnesia, the like, the amnesia corpse, trying to figure out what happened to it and learn about life. And then that short film got bigger and bigger. And we were like, maybe it's a feature that would be hilarious. Like an almost as like a joke. We started fleshing out the feature, and then

Daniel Kwan 27:47
You know, as a joke, we pitched it to a in a general meeting, we were actually speaking of industry. So we're getting we're getting passed around Hollywood, doing general meetings, and we kept pitching our joke ideas, because we didn't have any ideas that we thought would appeal to most studio heads or to any producers. And one day, we decided to pitch this movie to a producer almost as a joke. And he leaves

Daniel Scheinert 28:09
Like, do you really want to make that? Yeah. And we're like, yeah, he's like, why haven't you written it? And he's, and we're like, oh, because we don't think it would get made. And he's like you. If you believe in it, you should make that no one else. No one else is ever going to make that movie. Like, mysteries are true. And it was like, it was a good kick in the ass.

Daniel Kwan 28:26
Yeah. So yeah, that was Lauren. singly, one of the producers on our on that film was the one who kind of liked Miranda. Yeah, he kind of like pressed the button to turn, turn that part of our brain on and say, Don't do it. Why not?

Alex Ferrari 28:41
Yeah, but I have, but I have to ask, like, you guys did some pitches. Right. So did you What were some reactions from the pitches? Like I gotta believe that somebody's like, I could just see the pale white skin of a of somebody, like just all the all the blood flow coming out of their bodies, like, you guys. You're not serious. Sorry. Yeah,

Daniel Scheinert 29:01
Were pretty good at pitching our ideas because we're also like, self deprecating, and, like, totally ready for the, the criticism, you know, I agree and like, and sort of have the attitude of like, you know, if you don't get it, it's not for you. Don't please don't, please don't give us money. Like, I don't want you in a great you know, regretting this or, you know, just every draft and every screening. Like not getting it but but it was hard. Yeah. And it took like someone with a weird sense of humor like Miranda like to say yes, that got the ball rolling. And then I will say something we discovered later that really helped was we we got the band Manchester orchestra. Robert and Andy to start making some songs for us when we were developing it. Before it was Even though officially greenlit, And then we started pitching it with music. And we were able to pitch the opening scene and press play, and just start describing it as you heard this, like, oh, gorgeous music. And it was such a different feeling in the room where like, people were suddenly like, what the hell's going on? This music is making me emotional, and it's so beautiful. And what you're describing is profane and stupid and should not I should not give you money. But I think it helped, that really helped crack the pitch in that case, just to be able to, like, you know, play music, which is something we still do sometimes.

Daniel Kwan 30:49
Yeah. The other two things that really helped us was the fact that two things happened. While we're in the middle of trying to get funding and trying to get actors. The first thing that happened was we somehow got into the Sundance Institute, like the Sundance screenwriters lab for the screenplay, and we were like, what? Like, who at the sun, like, you know, right? Think about Sundance, you think about so many other movies, and not so sorry, man. That's not what you think about when you think about Sundance. But you know, to their credit, they saw something really earnest in our work, and they saw our past work and saw that we were trying new things, and you know, what is Sundance if not a place to foster new voices. And so they brought us in, and it was, incredibly, creatively, just exactly what we needed at that point in our careers, regardless of whether or not the movie was gonna get made. It was so healing. And it also showed us that there was a place for us in this industry in the way that we were talking about at the beginning, where we were talking about, maybe we don't belong here, it's like, oh, the Sundance Institute was one of the first places that we went to were like, Oh, this beautiful, creative environment can exist. And it does exist. And we should be chasing after this. And so that was really great. But we got the stamp of approval from Sundance, which made suddenly our foreign corpse movie people had to like, really lean forward and and process and then maybe have

Daniel Scheinert 32:13
Robert Redford so this. So this is a good move.

Daniel Kwan 32:15
Exactly. Yeah. Robert Redford, his stamp of approval. And then, oddly enough, while we were at the Sundance Labs, we were so fed up with how intellectual we had become, we had been talking way too much about themes and characters and, and all this stuff that is really important. But after a while, as filmmakers who want to be on set who want to be making things and really expressing things that you can't even put into words, it was very frustrating. And we happen to get a song in from Columbia Records from one of our Commissioner buddies, Brian Downes, who, who works at Columbia, he sent it over, and it was turned down for what and he was like, What do you guys want to do with the song it's kind of a wild song. And so we were like, this is perfect. Let's turn off our brains. And let's do the opposite of what we'll be doing no theme, no character, no, just like pure ID, let's create something so wild and so frenetic and beautiful and strange. And then basically, will basically will hold nothing back. And will will will say to the, the label, like I dare you to let us make this. If they actually let us make it and we'll have to go make it. And so we did that. We put that online, instantly a viral hit. And so we got the viral hit, we got the Sundance stamp of approval, and suddenly making the foreign incoax movie made a lot of sense to you know, certain investors obviously, we still scared away a lot of people but yeah, we're really lucky.

Alex Ferrari 33:41
No, it's it's it was the right place. Right time. Right product. And also, the thing is, a lot of people might not see this in your films, but there's so much emotion in the characters. There's like, you know, everything everywhere. You're you know, you're tearing up like it's yeah, they're hot dog fingers. But there's so much emotion behind what's going on. Same thing with Swiss Army Man, like you tear up watching that film. So it's not just insanity for insanity or gag for Gag sake. You know, there's, there's heart behind it. And that's what stick makes you because, you know, I can't say anybody can come up with a 40 corpse idea. But in the wrong hands. It's a movie about a 14 corpse total but yeah, and what you guys did you elevated it and that's because what Sundance saw in your work, you're like, Oh, there's more here than just the gag. The gag is just super It's interesting. It's no one's ever seen this before. And that's what's really beautiful about what you guys are doing. Now. Now you guys, you know we all as directors, we're all on the onset. And there's always that one day on set if not every day, but always that one day specifically the the entire world is coming crashing down around you. The world is coming to an end. You're not going to make your day you're going to lose the actor. The sun has gone the camera fell in the lake What was that day for you on Swiss Army Man? And how did you overcome it?

Daniel Kwan 35:06
We probably have different answers for this. But yeah, go first. Yeah,

Daniel Scheinert 35:10
We shot sorry man in like five weeks and a bunch of we had a bunch of travel days in there too. So it wasn't even like five days of shooting per week. And week four, we did four night shoots in a row. And it was like all the bear stuff and like, and we just burned the candle at both ends and started going insane. And

Daniel Kwan 35:34
I thought I was gonna want everyone's getting sick.

Daniel Scheinert 35:36
Yeah, I thought I was at rock bottom at that point. And then I got sick after that, as we traveled up to Eureka, with a small crew to get all the beautiful redwoods stuff. So like on day one or two of wandering around the redwoods that morning, Quan like wanting to rewrite the scene, again, we were constantly rewriting while shooting on that one was not a good idea. And so like, and he was like, we don't have time to rewrite it. Oh, well, but it's a bad scene. Let's go shoot it. And I was sick and sad and demoralized. And that was how we started our day. And then we went out into the woods. And while shooting it, I just started feeling like I was gonna pass out like just, and like hopeless. And we were just kind of a boring scene where the camera we're just doing normal coverage. But I was like, the movies going to be a disaster. It's not going to work. That's not going to work. Dan hates it. I don't even know how to give notes on this scene. I like walked away and walked up to my producer Jonathan Wong. And I was like, I don't think I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm gonna make it. And he's like, what's up? Apparently, I said something. Like I said something where he he interpreted as like Daniel thinks he's gonna die. But I thought what I was saying was that I couldn't finish the movie, but I'm not sure what if I was speaking English. I was like, I was like, You were gone. I was like, close to a mental breakdown. And that seemed turned out great. It's great. The writing was fine. Like in the edit. We like our met him edited it together. And we watched him. We're like, What the fuck is good. That day was so sad. I guess I don't have to direct I guess the key to directing is to walk away is to walk away and get sad. And it'll turn out good. But uh, but yeah, we did. We learned a lot of lessons on that movie about how to manage morale, you know, and, and that that's a huge deal on a feature that like, it's not just about do you have a good idea and a good plan? It's about like, are you taking care of yourself?

Daniel Kwan 37:35
Are you take care of your crew?

Daniel Scheinert 37:37
Are you taking care of your crew and, and we and we left that one being like, whew, a lot of room for improvement. You know, like it got too hard.

Daniel Kwan 37:46
My quick stories last day, or sorry, the last scene of the movie is everyone on the beach. I'm sorry, spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen it. There's a beach. There's A beach. Everyone's on the beach.

Alex Ferrari 37:57
There's some there's some beans.

Daniel Kwan 37:58
Yeah, exactly. And then we, you know, a small budget, no lighting equipment. Nothing. We literally we had to wait for, you know, the 1520 minutes of magic hour to shoot that entire scene. And it was Radcliffe's birthday. I remember. And Radcliffe really wanted to lie down in the water, even though it's freezing cold. Like we're like Daniel we have, we have a dummy. And he's like, no, no, no, I want to be here. I want to like I think it's important for Paul to see me here to be part of this and like, okay, great. And so we neurotically blocked it all out and tried to like come up with a plan to shoot that whole scene, which is like, you know, 1213 It feels like 12 setups, right? It's like everyone has their own Spielberg pushing on like in the medium shot plus three or four wise plus a couple of very specific shots between Radcliffe and Paul. Anyways, it was a lot of set shots. And we had to do it in 15 minutes. And so we literally we just our anyway, I think we on our No, I feel like we once by the time we started shooting, it was like half an hour and we basically just didn't cut we went we basically we made the plan and Larkin was operating for the whole movie or DP. And so he knew exactly like when, where to move from each setup. And so we'd be like, Okay, we got it. Next up. Okay, we got it next. Okay, we got it. Next up, okay. Now, everyone, all the actors get ready, you're gonna shoot your one shot and we're just gonna do a couple takes back and forth and we move on to the next person. And like I said, I don't know how many times we cut but we really like there was no time to sleep. You know, we just went like, Okay, now you're close up. Okay, now you're close up. No, you're close up. And then we missed the last final interaction between Paul and and Daniel. As the sun was setting, we cranked the our ISO was cranked wide like like as high as possible.

Daniel Scheinert 39:50
Real bad. And Larkin was just muttering we have to stop.

Daniel Kwan 39:53
Yeah, it was it was so grainy and like, and we're like shit I think we might have last week. I don't know. I don't know if we got our funds. Only and it was just like a really just scary feeling to have to like, we didn't nail the ending. And, you know, we like like Shannon was saying we were kind of already, like, burnt out from the process of making this film. So that was definitely like, that was week two. Yeah, that was.

Daniel Scheinert 40:19
Yeah, that's the end of week two. Yeah.

Daniel Kwan 40:22
So that was really scary. And you know, we ultimately finagle some some

Daniel Scheinert 40:26
Was it week one because maybe on Friday, I sort of remember the schedule in my head, but it was fast. I remember as being like, Oh, my God, we just started and now we're shooting the ending.

Daniel Kwan 40:35
Yeah. And we're exhausted. And we're exhausted. And like, yeah, I guess it's a short film. We're Yeah. So we just learned a lot of the limits of of our, you know, of our budget versus our ambition.

Daniel Scheinert 40:46
But we've been, I will say, like, you know, I hear stories of films that's gone wrong. And I've and makes me feel so lucky. That like, like, it's, it's been hard and things have gone wrong, but just because it's just because it was ambitious, not because of like, we've been so lucky that, you know, we haven't worked with assholes. And that, like, we've had good producers and that we've headed off a lot of the really disastrous types of things that can go wrong before. You know, we got to set so we're Yeah, we're such lucky filmmakers that you know,

Daniel Kwan 41:22
These are our horses.

Daniel Scheinert 41:23
These are ours. Like I was tired, and it was hard.

Alex Ferrari 41:26
Yeah, it's not like Coppola on apocalypse. Now. You're not in the jungle for three years with a gun to your head. So it's not putting things into perspective.

Daniel Kwan 41:34
Yes, exactly.

Alex Ferrari 41:36
That's No, those are no, I feel but I feel both of those. I love the Best Directing tip just walk away depressed, and it'll come out fine.

Daniel Scheinert 41:46
Weird. I mean, we did kind of thing this was starting man, there was a part of a masochistic part of us that we're like, it's about a guy kind of losing his mind in the woods. I think that might happen to us while we do this, but maybe that'll make it an interesting movie. This will be our Apocalypse Now.

Alex Ferrari 42:05
I was about to say this is very Apocalypse Now a very method directing. It's very,

Daniel Scheinert 42:11
I don't aspire to do for that. Yeah. Now, I like having fun.

Alex Ferrari 42:17
So speaking of fun, I just was I had the pleasure of watching everything everywhere, all at once. A couple of weeks ago. I think at this point, we can we can half ago, I saw it. And as I'm sitting there watching it in theater. I'm just looking at it and going. I'm so glad this is in existence. I'm so glad somebody put this out into our art mold over our universe. And then hotdog fingers show up. And I'm like, oh my god, I love this film. There's Hochberg fingers. I have to ask, how and it's such a beautiful and I joke, but it's such a beautifully done movie. And, and I'm not smoking about again. But that's it. I promise you there'll be some YouTube comments saying no. Smoking uh, but no. But honestly, though, I'm watching it. And it's, you know, Michelle Yeoh is a is a goddess. Data from the Goonies oh my god, what a powerhouse actor. I was not. When I saw him. I was like, Oh, look, it's data from Goonies Oh, he got work. Fantastic. You know, that's why that's the first thought. And then I'm like, holy crap. He's really good.

Daniel Kwan 43:26
Yeah. And then underestimate data.

Alex Ferrari 43:30
I heard his voice when I heard his voice. For the first time I have this data. He's like, I just because I've seen the Guney 1000 times. Of course, yeah. Jamie Lee Curtis, and then just the whole cast that you put together. It is such a beautiful ballet of insanity. And emotion. It's remarkable how. And I have to ask you the same question again. How on God's green earth? Did you guys come up with this idea?

Daniel Scheinert 43:54
Yeah, I mean, I feel like we could do a whole podcast one day about where ideas come from and how it's a mystery and what isn't the human brain? And how does neuroscience work? And this is of the neurons firing that make us giggle? And then at what point does do we then test that against the culture to see if it's something worth putting out there as opposed to just an inside joke? And much of that is, like, with intent, and how much of that is pure luck or just like subconscious, you know? This thing's like

Daniel Kwan 44:26
Like, we're, we're all discovering that genius doesn't come from individual ideas don't really come from individuals. We're all just conduits for this like bigger, mimetic battle that's happening all around us.

Daniel Scheinert 44:37
We're gonna get philosophical with your very simple

Alex Ferrari 44:40
ExI love it. I love it. So you're channeling, channeling

Daniel Kwan 44:43
Channeling

Alex Ferrari 44:43
From the ether from the ether from

Daniel Kwan 44:45
It's all from the ether. And I think the only thing that makes us different and I think the thing that is our superpower is we say, Yes,

Daniel Scheinert 44:51
We say yes to the idea that we haven't seen that sound unproduced. Yeah,

Daniel Kwan 44:56
We say yes to the to the bad ideas, we say yes to the things that should not be A mostly because the moment we tell ourselves, oh, this shouldn't be made. We we question the angles, like why not? Hold on, but it didn't resonate with me. This is interesting. Yeah. Oh,

Daniel Scheinert 45:20
If it sounds on producible, that means no one else is going to beat us to it.

Daniel Kwan 45:24
There's also that

Alex Ferrari 45:24
There's no competition. There's no competition.

Daniel Scheinert 45:27
There is like, I was just talking about the philosophy of ideas. And there's, there's this book impro by Keith Johnstone. It's like an improv book that I read in an acting school. And he has a chapter about creativity and about how, you know, effortless it is for the human mind. But it's hard for a lot of people because it's trained out of us, like our school system, and our culture teaches us how to curate and focus and ignore, you know, playful ideas. But that like, it's, it's like, if you don't do that, like if you talk to like hunter gatherer cultures and stuff, like it's creativity is like, effortless and it's everywhere, and that there was an he loves. There's some anecdote about some like, that's like an Inuit tribe or something that like, one of those tribes that has, you know, 20 words for snow. And they think that there is a sculpture inside of every rock. That is that is that has to be discovered. Not that there's a sculptor who's really good at it's like, and they're like, so instead of being like, Dan Quan is a really good sculptor. The way that the tribe talks about it, apparently, is there like there's a lot of weird rocks around lately, like what's with all the, all the rocks have some really interesting animals inside lately, and I just thought it's such a beautiful counterpoint to how we normally talk about, you know, creativity,

Alex Ferrari 46:52
And not to spoil anything, but you know, there might be a rock or two.

Daniel Kwan 46:55
Yeah, they're pretty weird rock. Yeah. Weird. But yeah, I feel like to sum it up, I feel like every idea we had in this movie, a 10 year old could have come up with, you know, like, it's all it's no hotdog hands and cocking rocks. It's like, there's nothing special about any of this stuff. It's just the fact that we, we chased it, you know, and I think I think we're like there's a sort of naivety there where we like, foolishly chase after these things.

Daniel Scheinert 47:24
Ourreal skill isn't coming up with weird ideas. It's convincing people to invest millions of dollars and to risk their entire artistic reputation out those good ideas.

Alex Ferrari 47:36
You guys should do a masterclass on how to convince people to give you money to do ideas, because you guys are the masters at this because not once but twice with to like, again, the pitch How is that? How do you pitch this? They could such a visual thing? And and how do you attract the cast that you do? Like, it's, that's the other thing is that like, you guys are going off and doing it with some unknown actors. You're bringing in some of the top actors around to do the show yo, was Michelle Yoda how she has not been a lead in a movie outside of Hong Kong is beyond me. Like I could I heard that I was like,

Daniel Kwan 48:12
I know, we felt the same way. We were like, what?

Daniel Scheinert 48:15
We did not know that. And so let's tour

Alex Ferrari 48:18
What she's she's so she says she's a goddess. She's amazing what she does, and how she how she played this part was so beautifully. I mean, it's so beautifully directed. And everything is just, it's, it's just going better. As I'm talking to you. The images are flying back into my head. Hotdog fingers. I still have nightmares, by the way, about duck fingers. When I first saw the motions. I was just like, why has no one ever done this before? And I go, I know why. It's disturbing. It's a wonderful, beautiful way. It's like, Oh, my

Daniel Kwan 49:00
But to our earlier point, like you say, why? How come no one has done this before? Ever since our movie has come out? It's only been about a month now. But yeah, people have been sharing past work that feel like somehow we ripped it off or whatever that we've never seen before. So like there's been two or three different instances where people have sent us hot dog finger scenes from other movies that we've never seen. Or, like, you know, there was a children's book, my friend sent me a children's book, where they're just to talking rocks on a hill. And I was like, This is amazing. You know, like it's all there. It's on the ether. It's just it's how you cook it you know, it's how you it's how you make the stew that's that's

Alex Ferrari 49:36
No pun intended. No pun intended with no look. I mean, it's not that it's not that we haven't seen that before. I can't remember seeing it but like you see like a movie like I forgot one of the Spy Kids had guys made of thumbs, you know and like giant Yeah, you know, like it's not that but the way you guys that fingers in the way the movement and stuff was just so and I don't want to make this a podcast about the hotdog fingers but it's just such Have a just an amazing visual. How did you guys do the quality of visual effects on such a low budget? Because this is, this is not $100 million Avengers $100 million as a catering budget for Avengers. But how did you guys use it to make because the visual effects are remarkable. They really are.

Daniel Scheinert 50:18
Wow, thank you. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, coming up in music videos, we did a lot of our own effects at first. And then like I said, we

Daniel Kwan 50:26
But that was kind of our calling card, like, labels would reach out to us be like, Hey, do you have any cool visual effect ideas that are cheap? Oh, yeah,

Daniel Scheinert 50:34
Those guys who can do like, yeah, like tons of effects for no money, because you just do them yourself. And that was our, our thing. And then we learned a lot about practical effects, mostly by working with Jason because of our day, our production designer. And, and kind of brought all those tricks to this movie. And so a lot of it's like, not that fancy, you know, and, and while writing, we would write gags that we knew could play to our strengths. So we were very rarely writing things that were going to require, like a huge VFX team to strategize and bring on 3d generalists to design myths to figure that out, you know, and instead we're like, oh, no, it's, it's all going to be practical. And when it's not, we know which tricks we're going to use. And they're not too hard to pull off.

Daniel Kwan 51:27
Yeah, we're using a lot of the same techniques that, you know, filmmakers in the 80s were made, we're using, it's the only difference is in the 80s, or the 20s. Or even like wondering, oh, yeah, yeah, a trip to the moon, a trip to the moon, like, just like the match cuts with the with the poof of smoke, like, we're just using those same exact techniques. Except the difference now is, we don't have to do 20 takes to get the practical effect, right, we can do one and a half good takes, okay takes and then we fix it in post with with with our very, you know, rudimentary skills as after effects artists. And so we're kind of cheating every way we can to make the illusion of, of these effects work for as little effort and as little money as possible, which is why I think people say, like, the one talking about the fact that we had about like five to 600 visual effects shots. And it was done with a team of like five to seven people, we say seven, because we're also including ourselves in that number.

Daniel Scheinert 52:26
And there were a couple of people who came on for a few weeks, but the like, core team was pretty small, like really small, the coaching was like our friends were people. And we all just like had synced hard drives. And we would just like, we did it on After Effects. And I think some of it's very impressive what the guys pulled off, you know, and somewhat was very ambitious, like the kind of bagels, bagels. But the other kind of secret weapon is that Kwan has great aesthetic taste. And with a small team, and it all being an After Effects, it was possible for like, Dan to push certain shots over the finish line. And instead of giving like 20 emails to try to refine it, he could just be like, great, give me the project file, open it up, I'm going to spend an hour or two, that's exactly how I want to feel we're done. But like, we didn't have to do all the effects that we also got to put our fingerprints on it.

Daniel Kwan 53:21
Yeah, efficiency there. Because I think one of the reasons why so many visual effects in movies look the same is because they, they there's so many layers of communication between the director and the visual effects artists now that you kind of as a director, you go into these post houses, and you're not really allowed to play that much you're not allowed to explore. And that's really frustrating as directors who love visual effects. And so this was a way for us to be able to have our cake and eat it, we can, we can do it for less money. And we get to have our fingerprints all over and really play with the style of how it's going to feel.

Daniel Scheinert 53:59
But people who are great at visual effects. would listen to your comment about our effects looking incredible. And they'll be like, no, they don't. Because a lot of it's like real, real janky little janky. But there's like a charm to it. And it's about energy not about like, pause the pause the frame. That's a perfect shot, you know, kind of

Alex Ferrari 54:20
I've been I've been a VFX producer, a VFX supervisor, a lot of indie projects. So I mean, I understand you're janky but it's perfect for what you're trying to do. It's not it doesn't have to be Thanos throwing a moon at somebody. But that's not what that's about. And that's why I'm like even at that budget level, it still looks phenomenal. And you're so caught up with the kinetic energy of the scenes. I mean, the bagel stuff and all me you just get caught up with it you just like you're in it because if I'm looking at all that law, that comp was just a picture sort of blurred that a little bit more if they could have just comp that a little bit better or thrown. No, I wasn't there. I was in the story. So with that, I'm sure if I go back and analyze it, I'm sure I'm sure you guys go back and analyze it like, I did I do that 100 $200 million movies. I'm like, how did that get through? Like, obviously see, that's a really, when my wife is looking at a movie and going, that's a bad green screen. And it's like a $200 million movie. I'm like, oh, figured it out. Have a few more at last couple questions asked all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?

Daniel Scheinert 55:31
Adjust your goals, bro. breaking in. Breaking in shouldn't be your goal, because a lot of people break in and then they're sad. And they make the world a worse place. And they make like upsetting weird content. And they talking about us talking about us.

Alex Ferrari 55:48
Look what happens when you follow your dreams, everybody.

Daniel Scheinert 55:51
Turns out, I'm cynical, this was all a front. All these nice jokes for you kids. As you know, I like to say that, like, if you love making movies, chase that feeling find people that you love making movies with. And, and maybe you'll end up getting paid to do it and and find a niche, and then that'll be great. Or maybe not, and you'll still be happy and, and having the therapeutic beautiful experience of making and sharing artwork, you know. And that breaking in can sometimes be the worst thing for you, you know, if you don't get to make what you love, or with people that you love doing it with. And so, it'll happen. If you just make stuff you love. You know, you'll find your niche in the world, you know, and that niche might mean your local film festival. And that's dope. Awesome, you know, or it might be a 24. And that's cool, too.

Alex Ferrari 56:57
And that and that's fine, too. And let's just give a shout out to a 24 Thank you for allowing and helping movies like this to put on to the world because there's just really isn't your only isn't that there? Isn't that another a 24?

Daniel Scheinert 57:10
Their fighting the good fight getting tricking people into watching provocative challenging things.

Alex Ferrari 57:16
Right! It's fantastic. Now what is the lesson that took you guys the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in lif?

Daniel Kwan 57:24
Longest to learn. I'm trying to think of lessons I'm still learning right now, maybe something I'm trying to figure out is this balance of, of, it's more than work life. Because I think work life is like, that's, that's a given. Everyone has to tackle that. But it's like, it's from a leadership position. Because, you know, again, I never wanted to be a filmmaker, I never wanted to be a director, I never wanted to be a leader. And so a lot of this feels like it's been put upon me in a way that like, makes me very uncomfortable and unsure of but the balance of, of being a a leader, who is also who's just as concerned with the final product, as the process is something I think I'll always be learning and always reflecting on, I think with this movie, we got really close to a perfect process, in that and the fact that like, it's the most ambitious thing we've ever done, it was is like foolishly, foolishly ambitious for how much money and time we got for to make it. And yet, it was the most fun, the most loving the most just gracious environment. And I like I really, I really think it was like, it was so much easier than so sorry, man, even though you know, technically it like it's like, exponentially harder in every way. As far as production goes. But because we went in with the the goal of creating a, an environment that was just really fulfilling, and, you know, all push towards this idea of letting everyone who walked on tourist sets, be able to show off their best version of themselves. You know, that was like one of our goals was to empower people to just, you know, become the best version of themselves on our set. And it was so fulfilling and so fun. And I have so many great memories of the shoot in a way that I can't say the same for our previous work. And I think this is something I think we'll always be chasing after because if we can have it all if we can be ambitious and you know, creative directors who also just build in beautiful environments for peace. able to exist in into Korean like that that is going to be such a beautiful, beautiful thing to prove to our industry, you know. to myself into our crew, but also to the rest the industry.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:22
That's a beautiful answer. By the way. That's a beautiful answer. That was a really wonderful answer. And last question, three of your favorite films of all time.

Daniel Scheinert 1:00:32
Ah, this is always hard. I like giving different answers, you know,

Daniel Kwan 1:00:37
You go first.

Daniel Scheinert 1:00:42
I love I love a crazy documentary. Love American movie, the movie, boys trying to make their movie not available for rent digitally anywhere. For some reason. You got to figure this out. But

Daniel Kwan 1:00:56
The first thing that my brain went to was Magnolia, probably. That's why I just keep returning back to because it's a movie that does everything wrong. And it feels so right. And it doesn't matter. You know, like, and I'm like, I wanted to be chasing that as a filmmaker for a long time. Just that feeling that I got when I watched Magnolia for the first time

Daniel Scheinert 1:01:23
My brain just went to like, Moonlight is insane. It's just like the hype, it pays off is great. So beautiful. And like it was like at the right place at the right time where like our culture was trying to like quit being so homophobic. And like, it was like, here's how like, here's, like, empathize with this person, like 100% successful and it was like, just like this, like, epically important thing for our culture. And for me, you know, to just like to fall in love with this love story. And for a beautiful heart. Yeah, to thing and for it to win Best Picture. Yeah. And then for it to go. And he feels alive. Yeah.

Daniel Kwan 1:02:04
I'll go back to one of my childhood favorites, which was it's probably the movie I've seen more times than any other movie. It's Groundhog's Day.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:11
It's a masterpiece.

Daniel Kwan 1:02:14
Yeah, it's a masterpiece. And it became like a spiritual guide for this movie, because it was a film about, about nihilism about the treasury of existence, but wrapped up in a really fun comedy. And they and then he pulls off both those things wonderfully. And I was like, I want to do that with our movie, The whatever we do with this film, it has to pull off both of those things. It has to be so much fun. And so philosophical and insincere. And so the long answer is only

Daniel Scheinert 1:02:47
Princess Mononoke gay. Oh, yeah, just blew my mind when I was a kid. And then I've been I've been thinking about it lately. And just how like, brilliant. Like the the ambiguity of good and evil is in that and how important it was for me as a kid to like to chew on that, you know, when like, we're usually fed these kind of like violence is the answer beat the bad guy stories, like just go blow up their building was like, is the moral of, you know, a lot of, you know, action adventure movies. And it's like, no, this one's confusing, and it's about people with different interests. And also, you're gonna fall in love with a little wolf girl. It's very confusing and exciting for me as a kid.

Daniel Kwan 1:03:35
For my last answer, I don't want to say this because it's so obvious, but I have to say it just because I need to pay tribute to how much it the movie means to me. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Never heard of it.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:50
Never heard of it. Who's in it? No. No, that's me. boundary is a master. I wish he would be making more movies. Now. I want somebody please listen to give him a budget. Let him do whatever he wants

Daniel Scheinert 1:04:03
Back up with Charlie. He spirals a little like, I think I would if I didn't have Dan.

Daniel Kwan 1:04:10
Yeah. And you got to have a balance is just, yeah, it's the movie that like that. Really. I feel like it changed me as a person and made me understand. Yeah, my world, my the, my place in the world in a completely different way. It was, I think it was the first time I experienced meta modernism in the wild. This this idea of trying to get beyond postmodern, like post post modernism. And it was so cathartic and healing for me to see that play out in a story for the first time. So that yeah, it's incredible. And also, it's just so much fun, like the filmmaking of it. It's just so fun. And obviously we stole so much from boundary when we started making these videos and even in our features, you can see his fingerprints in it as well. It's all there.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:55
Yeah, guys, it has been an absolute pleasure and honor talking to you guys so much. On a continued success, I tell everybody to please go watch everything everywhere all at once. It is. It is a brilliant piece of cinema and I'm so glad it exists in the world. Thank you guys for doing you. Thank you for being a conduit for the insane. And to bring it into our universe, my friends. Thank you so much.

Daniel Kwan 1:05:17
Thank you for having us. This was fun.

Daniel Scheinert 1:05:17
Yeah.

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Denis Villeneuve Scripts Collection: Screenplays Download

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Denis Villeneuve born (October 3, 1967) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award (formerly Genie Award) for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013. The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Internationally, he is known for directing several critically acclaimed films, including the thrillers Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015), as well as the science fiction films Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). For his work on Arrival, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. He was awarded the prize of Director of the Decade by the Hollywood Critics Association in December 2019.

His latest film, Dune (2021), based on Frank Herbert’s novel of the same name, premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival; the film received critical acclaim, was a commercial success at the box office internationally, is currently his highest grossing film to date, and earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, with the film itself winning a leading six Oscars at the 94th Academy Awards

Below are all the screenplays written by Denis Villeneuve available online. If you find any of his missing screenplays please leave the link in the comment section.

When you are done reading take a listen to Apple and Spotify’s #1 Screenwriting Podcast The Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, with guest like Oscar® Winner Eric Roth, James V. Hart, David Chase, John August, Oliver Stone and more.

(NOTE: For educational and research purposes only).

DUNE (2021)

Screenplay by  Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts & Eric Roth – Read the screenplay!

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)

Directed by  Denis Villeneuve – Read the screenplay!

ARRIVAL (2016)

Directed by  Denis Villeneuve – Read the screenplay!

SICARIO (2015)

Directed by  Denis Villeneuve – Read the screenplay!

PRISONERS (2013)

Directed by  Denis Villeneuve – Read the screenplay!

ENEMY (2013)

Directed by  Denis Villeneuve – Read the screenplay!

BPS 193: The RAW Reality of Being an Indie Producer with Miranda Bailey

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Miranda Bailey is a prolific producer, actor and director, known for producing high quality independent films. Her passion for bringing compelling, well-crafted stories to the screen has been the driving force in her distinguished 15-year filmmaking career. Bailey has produced over 20 films, among them the Oscar®-nominated THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and the Spirit Award-winning THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, as well as James Gunn’s SUPER, the Sundance hit SWISS ARMY MAN, the critically acclaimed NORMAN and the indie hit DON’T THINK TWICE.

Bailey’s directorial narrative feature debut BEING FRANK, an offbeat family drama/comedy premiered in the Spotlight Section at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival and was theatrically released June 2019. She assembled a decorated cast including Grammy-nominated comedian, actor, writer, producer and New York Times best-selling author Jim Gaffigan, two-time Emmy winning actress Anna Gunn, Samantha Mathis and Logan Miller. 

Karen Kehela Sherwood of Imagine Entertainment produced the film alongside Amanda Marshall of Bailey’s Cold Iron Pictures. Bailey’s made her documentary debut GREENLIT – a humorous documentary examining the hypocrisy inherent in Hollywood’s “green” movement – premiered at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival to critical acclaim and was acquired by IFC International. Bailey’s second documentary, THE PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMIST, the film was released theatrically by The Film Arcade and on VOD by Gravitas.

In 2018, Bailey teamed with Gurl.com co-founder Rebecca Odes to launch CherryPicks, a groundbreaking aggregate movie review and rating service by female critics for the female audience. The site went live in 2019 and over 800 female critics are subscribed to provide their reviews on the site.

A production powerhouse, Bailey’s Cold Iron Pictures has amassed an extensive list of critical and commercial successes, including SWISS ARMY MAN, starring Golden Globe-nominee Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, theatrically released by A24.

DON’T THINK TWICE, directed by Mike Birbiglia, starring Gillian Jacobs and produced with Ira Glass (This American Life) was distributed by The Film Arcade. NORMAN, directed by Joseph Cedar (BEAUFORD, a Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released by Sony Classics. Bailey also produced I DO…UNTIL I DON’T, directed by and starring Lake Bell and Ed Helms.  Additionally, in 2019, she produced the Sundance hit documentary, THE UNTITLED AMAZING.

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  • Miranda Bailey – IMDB

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Miranda Bailey 0:00
Hello. Is this Miranda Bailey? I'm like, yeah, like this is me something about her. Did you crash and audition last week for the da da da da And I was like, Uh, yeah, well listen that is unacceptable. I will tell you something right now, you don't do that in this town.

Alex Ferrari 0:16
This episode is brought to you by Indie Film Hustle TV, the world's first streaming service dedicated to filmmakers, screenwriters, and content creators. Learn more at indiefilmhustle.tv. I like to welcome the show Miranda Bailey how you doin' Miranda?

Miranda Bailey 0:31
Pretty good. How are you?

Alex Ferrari 0:33
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm I'm excited to talk to you about your adventures or misadventures in the Hollyweird business.

Miranda Bailey 0:44
That's a good way to explain it.

Alex Ferrari 0:46
I'm sure you have a few stories that you can say on air and probably a couple more out there.

Miranda Bailey 0:52
I could say it all on air now.

Alex Ferrari 0:55
Well, that's, that's, that's amazing. So first question, How and why did you want to get into this insanity that is the film business?

Miranda Bailey 1:04
My father was friends with Brian Dennehy and Brian Dennehy became kind of my mentor resource. And I went to the set of Little Miss marker when I was a young child. And I saw this little girl acting with him and decided that I wanted to do the rest of my life. Because that was the women that were there were, I think a script supervisor now that I know who it is a teacher and the little girl. Sounds like so I'll be an actress. So then, I studied acting and then came well, while I was in college also was directing and writing just because it kind of came out of me and was producing accidentally in theater I didn't even realize it was producing. Then moved to Hollywood, Hollyweird and got very lucky at the beginning. You know, crashing audition got my sag card, you know, made a lot of money on a commercial, Denis Leary accidentally, my ego went really high, and crash roller once reality hits, and started getting partisan stuff that I didn't really have any control over. And so I decided to start making more stuff that I liked to be in, or to at least be in existence, then being stuff that I didn't like, anyway, now I got into producing.

Alex Ferrari 2:32
So I wanted to go back for a second. So I love to hear stories of when the ego goes up. Because it is fantastic. It's a wonderful ride. First part, at least. Wonderful, Rhys, how did you deal with it? Because I always, the reason I do the show is to try to let filmmakers know that you are in a boxing match, and you're gonna get punched in the face. I don't care who you are in the business. Punches are being thrown at you left and right. Most filmmakers don't even know they're in a fight, let alone that there's a punch coming towards them. That is one of those. That is one of those things that the ego when you get that first award, the first red carpet, the first time someone says ooh, you're like the next Spielberg or the next Nolan, or this kind of thing. The ego builds up. What so after you did that commercial with Dennis, Larry and made, you know, a gazillion amounts of money back then because I know what money was made. It was a national, I'm assuming. So you

Miranda Bailey 3:29
They had that played on the Superbowl.

Alex Ferrari 3:30
Oh, Jesus. So you were just like, this movie business stuff is easy. Why do people talk so hard about? So what was it? What was it like just going up? And then what was it that caused the fall of the reality when that punch came?

Miranda Bailey 3:46
Well, you know, you know, in hindsight, you know, 26 or seven or however many years later, I think I'm really lucky that my ego was slammed down so quickly. Because ever since then, it's been massive, you know, climb up this ice, you know, mountain, like ice climbing. I slept. Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, it really was I was very fortunate. And, you know, I was 21 or 23 or something like that. So, you know, I didn't believe in fortunate I believed in you know, destiny. And,

Alex Ferrari 4:33
Of course, and you were destined, obviously,

Miranda Bailey 4:36
Well, I know I'm destined.

Alex Ferrari 4:39
Obviously, obviously, we all are,

Miranda Bailey 4:41
It takes a lot more work to get to that. I mean, I don't know exactly what my destiny is. I will be a grandma someday, I hope

Alex Ferrari 4:49
Okay, fair enough.

Miranda Bailey 4:51
But um, ya know, I was squatting in this house in Mount Washington and Every morning it was for sale party, we were in the basement, we put the mattress up and slide it behind the washers and dryers or whatever. And then we'd have to be out of the house. And my roommate at the time, and I had just gotten there, like, I'd been there maybe two weeks. And she had an agent through her aunt for commercial, and we didn't look anything alike, like at all. And she asked if I wanted to crash the audition to see what it was like. And I was like, Sure. And, you know, I was like, not nervous because I was crashing, I put on my ugliest dress, you know, so she looked hot. I didn't wear any makeup. I put my hair in long brown braids, because she had like a short blonde Bob and she was tall and skinny. And I was like, shorten whatever. And wrote my name down on the sheet. And then it's like eight and so I wrote like, independent. And then it's like their phone number and I wrote my phone number. And I think I was teaching Pilates at the time. That was like my job, which everyone didn't know what it was or like Pele it's what is it? At Pilates. And I remember driving like, like on the on this very curvy part of the 134. That's pretty dangerous. And my leg Motorola rings. And you know, there wasn't really caller ID and like, Hello. I'm gonna like, I'm like, yeah, like this is me something rather Did you crash and audition last week for the lottery? And I was like, Uh, yeah, well, that is unacceptable. I will tell you something right now. You don't do that in this town. Nobody does that in this town. Okay. You don't pass auditions. I was looking everywhere sending everywhere trying to find independent doesn't exist, and I can't believe you did. Don't ever ever do that again. And I was like, Oh, I won't definitely. Just real quick though. Like are you calling to tell me never to do it again? Or? Or am I getting a call back? She goes well, bolts honey. That's amazing love with the United talent agency straight case she's trying to appear. You've got her on Saturday, you've got to call back. Oh my god. This time. Here's your agent Socrates expecting your call.

Alex Ferrari 7:11
This movie business is super easy.

Miranda Bailey 7:15
I'm like, Okay, so like that Saturday, I go to the thing. I have one line. The word is the internet's I say the word the internet. I booked a job. It's an international commercial playing ball with Dennis Leary. I go on set I meet this really awesome girl. Samantha was I think we were friends for a while. I don't know what happened to her. And there was another guy on set I also kind of ran into through the through the worlds and we're like all at a coffee shop like computers or whatever. And like we would like look up and say the internet. But like Dennis Leary would like walk by us while it was talking to the camera. And it was so cool. And like it was it just felt so like I needed to be there. I loved it. And you know, and then I had a couple more auditions and couple more callbacks, but I didn't get anything. And then the department, the commercial department for UTA shut down. And they had to go find an agent. And that's when reality hit. It was not that easy. It was not and then and it was just definitely not easy.

Alex Ferrari 8:18
So that's that was the rise in the fall of the ego. And that's honestly your right, it was probably the one of the biggest blessings you had is at such a young age because I'm sure you've met a few people along your journey that that did not happen to them early on. And they're still dealing with their egos in their 30s 40s and 50s and older. And it becomes

Miranda Bailey 8:39
Much more devastating for them when things don't work out for me. I just expecting to not work.

Alex Ferrari 8:46
That's your, That's your place. You're like this is never going to have this movie. The money will never drop. That star will never sign. This is never Oh, it did. Okay, great. We're never gonna get into Sundance. Oh, were going to Sundance Great!

Miranda Bailey 8:59
Finally ended up at FCM after like a meal of a toy toil and just like crazy stuff, which had to happen from like a short that I directed as an exercise to get out of the documentary. I was directing. It was too dark for me. Sure. So I needed to make a comedy at my house. Now from that shore, that's how I got representation with echo Lake and ICM, and this was, you know, seven years ago, so like 25 years into struggling to try and you know, get the right representation then finally, like I remember when my dad short this guy emote to my manager now, but he's one of the first people I met in Hollywood. And, you know, he's, you know, he's, he's, he's big time, right? And I would never act even ask him or consider him to represent me. I mean, he's he saw a diverse movie greenlit that went to South by, it was like a comedic documentary and and whatnot but so golden in my short to get like notes or something like to see like, Hey, do you want to take a look at this and see if you have any like, thoughts. I called him back. He's like, incredible. This was amazing. I want to represent you and I'm like, What do you mean? I want to be your manager. And I'm like for what he's like directing and writing and I'm like, what does that mean? Like, what do you like? And she's like, I'll get your jobs and I'm like, Really?

Alex Ferrari 10:30
Okay, so, I don't know. But it sounds like that casting director for the Superbowl commercial sounds very similar to your manager invoice. Like, exactly. Now, I mean, you've worked on some amazing projects. You know, super and Swiss Army Man, I got to ask you about Swiss Army Man. How in God's green earth did that get made? Like how is that movie like that is so wonderful. It on paper? I can't believe this is a good pitch. It's a horrible pitch on paper. How did Swiss Army Man get made and thank you first of all, for having a part in bringing it to life? Because I'm so glad it exists in the universe. But how did you how did that movie get made?

Miranda Bailey 11:20
Well, you know, it's interesting because that is kind of like the point where my confidence as opposed to ego allowed that to happen. So you know, I did squid in the whale Before Noah Bombeck could get arrested like no one would no one would even glance his way after Mr. Jealousy right. But I there was something there and then this feeling, you know, in your stomach kind of thing. And then I had that same thing with James Gunn was super. And you know, I said yes to that. And then Diary of a teenage girl Mari. So these are all either fail. Like, you know, no one will hire this director again, or director, jail people or new directors that have a voice or like so I gave Jill Solomon her first writing job ever. Which never made the movie but it was from a short story called Courtney Cox's asshole. And then, I hired her to write me talk pretty one day into a script, but then it didn't end up happening. She wrote it, but the movie didn't end up happening because David didn't want to get made, but I still on the script. But so by by asked by after Mari, I was like, you know, I kind of feel like I know it when I feel it. And I had had some other directors that I worked with, where I didn't have that feeling. You know, that didn't work. So it was kind of like I knew it was it was it's like, I can't explain the kind of kinesthetic feeling in the air when you are like, No, you're like, I think this person has vision, like a vision of their own that is unique, which is pretty rare. I mean, I wish I did, honestly. Sure. I mean, I hope I do. I just don't know what it is yet. But so I had done job cedars Norman. And Ken, he's like a director with, you know, an incredible vision. And it was going to be his first American film footnote in Israel, which was nominated for an Oscar, which is most beautiful film. And so Oren moverman had asked me to come on, come on to footnote and on footnote, I admit, I guess I guess I had met this, you know, this team of, of financiers and this team of producers, and who I'd also knew some of them from time out of mind. Because Oren moverman is one of those people I think, has real vision. So this guy, Lawrence, he he's on his movies, and he comes into town and we're at this house, I'd finally gotten into the Soho House. Okay.

Alex Ferrari 14:06
That's when you finally got in.

Miranda Bailey 14:07
Like getting into the Aspen house because I still wasn't cool enough to get into Hollywood house. And there's no filmmakers here. So they needed filmmakers here. So

Alex Ferrari 14:16
Right, exactly.

Miranda Bailey 14:18
I'm still not calling out for the hot whatsoever, for the record, but

Alex Ferrari 14:24
I was. I was I was invited once. I pretend that I'm invited. Yes, exactly.

Miranda Bailey 14:30
Yeah. So he's got a lab. What are you working on? What do you got going on? I gotta go on. And he starts telling me well, this is what I'm looking to partner on. And he's given me one story. And I'm like, Yeah, kind of seen that before. And it gives me another story. I'm like, that sounds depressing. I love Dan Stevens. But no, that sounds kind of depressing. And then, you know, there were just a couple of these ones. He gave that. I don't have anything like new doesn't have anything like, it's like, well, I have one but You're probably not gonna like it. And it's something that these kids have never seen a movie before. You know, they made a music video. And you know, it's about a guy who falls in love with a dead guy not fall in love with best friends with a dead man and in the forest and his boners a compass. And it's called Swiss Army Man, and he uses the dead body like a Swiss army knife. And I was like, any actors attached? He's like, No, not yet. And I'm like, What's music video turned down for what? And I go.

Alex Ferrari 15:37
Oh, oh, those guys.

Miranda Bailey 15:39
Oh, okay. How about this Yes. greenlit will make a one and a half million dollars, because that's what I made diary for and the squid for. And, you know, it's two people, whatever. And let's set a meeting for tomorrow. And he was like, Really, that's like the last one I would imagine that you would use feminists be into. And I'm like, whatever. i It doesn't feminist, non feminist, you know, like, being lost in the woods, and being so what's your opinion on I hadn't read the script yet. So that night, I read the script. And it was like, insane. But if you know that music video, sure. You're like, I get it. And then the script still needed work or whatever. So Daniels come in, and I show up at the office. And I'm like, I say to Amanda Marshall. I'm like, Hey, so we have a meeting today for it's with Daniels. Who's that their music video directors. I've already greenlit the movie. You know, here's the script. And she's like, are you serious? I'm a guest. So she goes and she reads it and she comes back. She goes, you're not? You're kidding, right? Do not going to make this movie. She's, she's like, we're not making a movie about a guy who's Boehner tells them where to go Miranda, who was just his girl. He's like, she goes, and I don't even know how half of these things like how does he become, you know, a motorboat or like, whatever, like, watch this. So I play the music video. And she goes, Ah, wow, cool. I get it. We go and we meet with them. We tell them a couple of things about how we, you know, feel that the, you know, it needs to be dude, basically development stuff, and structure and stuff. Yeah. And we give this offer and of course now, this is where the Hollywood douchey this becomes Hollywood douching. This is where their agents and managers were like, Oh, great, we got an offer. So then they're like, well, we want 7 million. And now we're gonna shop it around. We have an offer from pictures. And I'm like, normally, if it comes back to if there's something that happens and something comes back to me, I'm like, you know, but with this one, I'm like, go ahead, shopping around.

Alex Ferrari 17:57
Let me know how that works out for you.

Miranda Bailey 18:01
Like have fun. I can't even get a black woman to be a lead. Okay, good luck with this. You know, like so, you know, and I tried many times, and it was it was hard. So they just did the companies that will put a lot of money behind things. It's like they need a sure thing, of course. And this was far from that. And so they went around for six months, chopped, it came back to us. And then we did a budget realize it was like around more around 3 million. And then we were like, Okay, well the best thing to do here because they at one point they were gonna play the parts, or Daniel, Daniel Quan was gonna pay for that play part. And I'm like, listen, we really need like, a indie art house. Starling. Yeah. And then you need your international like James Patterson type guy. Right. And so we went to Paul Dano because our new Paul Dano and and what Lawrence was working with Oren. And he said, Yes, and then we got James Patterson on but James Patterson didn't want to rehearse. And we were like, but these are like, even before a take. Okay, like, that's impossible. It's for the dead body.

Alex Ferrari 19:35
All of that. Like there's a lot of logistics. Yeah.

Miranda Bailey 19:38
Camera maneuvers, and special effects and practical effects and stunts, like you have to hearses. So, we were like, Okay, that's not gonna work. And I'm like, well, there's that Harry Potter kid. He's valuable. That dandy guy. So we call Daniel Radcliffe's agent and his agent was like, Oh my God, that clip has been begging to work with the guise of this music video if they ever were gonna do anything. Oh, wow, that was really easy. And that's how that's how they came on. And I have to say that Daniel Radcliffe, I mean, everyone knew Paul Danna was a genius, right? Yeah. But Daniel Radcliffe to me, just blew me away his. And watching him work and watching how precise he was in watching his getting to know him and like his process and being there. And I mean, that's the hardest role in the whole movie. I mean, there's only two roles in the movie really? Like they're really they're there. They both both of those guys. Paul and Daniel, like their champion.

Alex Ferrari 20:48
Yeah, no. Yeah, they're they're two titans. So two titans in the space. And when I saw that, I was just like, how in God's green earth Did This Get Made? Like how, like what things needed to line up for this to be in front of my eyes right now? Any baby destiny, it's destiny. So that's, that's a fantastic so right now i Now I can die in peace, that I know how this movie finally got to the screen. So thank you. So there's always that day on set. And I asked this of all my guests, that the whole world's coming down crashing down around you. And now most filmmakers say that's every day. But there's that one day that you feel like oh, my god, I can't believe this is happening. Why am I here? How am I going to get out of this? And it could be a million things. You've lost a location, the actor doesn't want to rehearse that day, whatever it is, what was that day for you on any of your projects? And how did you overcome it?

Miranda Bailey 21:45
I can think of two. Okay. The most recent was on God's country where there was suddenly a pandemic.

Alex Ferrari 21:55
Right, we heard that we had Julian on the show. So we heard that that holster because that was his too, by the way. So what's what's the other one,

Miranda Bailey 22:03
But I had to fire them.

Alex Ferrari 22:06
For your perspective is a little different.

Miranda Bailey 22:09
Yeah, and I and we had money in the movie or company of money in the movie, you know, you don't know if you're ever going to make it again. Obviously, that's it same you know, him as a film director, but like, for me is someone who is like, here's a people that may or may not ever work again. And I have a choice whether or not we can keep going another three days to finish the week, risking Tanduay getting back to London or not. Or pulling, pulling the plug. So Tanya, we can get back to her. Just brutal. Um, but fortunately, it all worked out. And we came back a year later. And we did it. So right, you know, and the other one was, on this film that I directed, called being frank with Jim Gaffigan, which premiered at South by the whole culmination of the movie of this guy, hiding between these two lives, ends up at this one, like, you know, Starling festival, in this small town. And it has to be very, very choreographed of where each person goes, we have two cameras, where where each shots going to be where it's so and so's place where so this was placed. And we have this, we had like, found our location, it was near this lake. And two days before we were and we're almost done with a movie, and it's like it's the final it's like the big scene. And if this scene doesn't work, the whole movie falls. But we had really, really figured out a way to make it work with the location like this tree here will block him here because we'll be here. This person will walk this way leading us over here to the popcorn to whatever right the all based on this location that had hills and levels because that way you could hide right? Like you could figure out a way to miss each other. So I'm onset directing this scene, which is already insane we didn't have enough extras for the pool it was freezing and they're extras on their phones. I'm like it's I've been that like just like the phone I'm looking at a phone I'm looking at a phone. Right right right. It's not a book put a book if somebody

Alex Ferrari 24:37
Wants a book

Miranda Bailey 24:41
And we kept moving the extras around you know like pool in different bathing suits and

Alex Ferrari 24:47
And time is in time is ticking and money's burning.

Miranda Bailey 24:51
Lunch break happens and turns out that for for the big scene that we're shooting, not next day, but the day after for two or three days, we lost the location, of course. But they have a place that we can go look at right now right over here, power that's available. And I'm like, okay, so me and my IDV or OCR get in the car, we go to the park, and it is just a lack

Alex Ferrari 25:26
Cinematic, extremely cinematic is what you're saying.

Miranda Bailey 25:30
And we look at each other. And he's like, none of the blocking that we had before her, or any of the setup will work. And I'm like, I know. And I'm like, so what's the chance of us getting the other place back and then another line producer, another bruise like zero. And I'm like, so what's the, what's the possibility of us not having to do it here and they're like, zero, this.

Alex Ferrari 25:58
And you gotta run and you've got to figure it out.

Miranda Bailey 26:01
Yep. And that was, after we shot that whole day. We went to Iran and I went to the park, and figured it out until sun went down. And then the next day during break, and during afterwards, we also kept figuring it out, how will how a block and how we'll shoot it. And then the next day, we began.

Alex Ferrari 26:30
But that's the thing that it is, I think that filmmakers don't understand it that the world is every day, every day, something goes wrong. Very rarely does everything go exactly according to plan because it never goes according to plan. And I love I remember the first day I walked them to set to direct my first big thing and I had a shot list that was obscene. And the first ad picks up and goes, Yeah, we're gonna shoot about five of these. Before lunch, I know you've got 40 We're gonna shoot. So pick the five you want. And if you're really good at those five, we might be able to add two more. And you're just like, but I spent all night putting that together like yeah, I don't care. That's not the reality of the world. And I always try to explain this to filmmakers before they go on like these, just the whole world's gonna come crashing down. And this is what it'll teach you in film school. They don't teach you how to adjust and pivot on the day second by second because the costume didn't show up. food's not there. You're losing locations. The camera doesn't work because it's frozen over or overheated. I'd like it's just obscene amount of things that could happen. And it doesn't really the only difference is when the bigger budgets is generally on a much bigger budgets, the studio stuff. Things still go I've still I've spoken to those those filmmakers and they're like, Yeah, we just we lost a location. Like even the big the 100 million dollar movie. They look like we just ran grabbed the camera, me and my DP and the actress and we stole I'm like you stole shots at 100 million plus movie because we stole shots. It's just

Miranda Bailey 28:11
I mean, this is what I love about camera tests. I'm always like, let's get it set. So our cameras can be usable.

Alex Ferrari 28:19
Ohh that's Amazing. Oh, that's great. I never thought of that.

Miranda Bailey 28:22
Yeah, I mean, being able to produce alongside alongside produce the movies, and watch and learn from James Gunn, and Mari Heller and Daniels and not and and the bad ones. Not that the bad. I'm not a list, you know, but there we have ones made mistakes. There was this one that was too afraid to talk to the actress. I'm like, she stopped folding laundry like she didn't she just talked to her dad, you know? And I remember he's like, Well, you tell her and I'm like, I'm not the director. You know, just knowing like, Okay, I if I you know, that didn't work or like, you know, seeing someone just do bad things to you know, or make bad choices, and seeing people make good choices and watching how different people prepare, you know, working with Mike Birbiglia and like bow, both actors who wrote directed and starred in their material, and I was able to produce those. They have very different ways of going about how they do it. And that was fascinating. And it definitely made me feel like hey, you know what, I could do that sometime. And it'll be totally different than theirs. But I've learned like, from there like brilliance, and then the and then the bad things that happen on set with with the same stuff, how they handled things. And producing really an enacting really kind of got me was my best film school as a director.

Alex Ferrari 29:49
Right. Right. Well, let me ask you a question as a producer, when you pick the wrong horse, in any department, it could be the director. It could be an actor. It could be a You know, as a crew person, when you pick the wrong horse, obviously, the higher on the on the totem pole being the director, the actors are the DP. How do you adjust that? Aren't you like you? Like, what do you do as a producer? Like, oh my God, he's not talking to the actress like, What? Are we going to finish our day? Are we like, how are

Miranda Bailey 30:18
Were pretty much screwed I mean,

Alex Ferrari 30:23
I love that.

Miranda Bailey 30:24
Yeah, I mean, it really, it's the script, right? It's the product. Sometimes it comes just as a script, and you build around it, sometimes it comes as a script, director, and then you help cast it. But it's that director's job to really hone it in. And it's my job as a producer to get the director's vision correctly. So even though I wouldn't have made the same choices that Lake Bell did on I do until I don't, my job was to support her choices. And that's kind of what you have to do as a, or the way I look at producing personally. And so I would say one of the most important lessons that I learned was producing or directing, or even mentoring, because I doing a lot of mentoring of people, not through programs, just individuals. Is, you really have to love it. Because if it doesn't make money, like anything I did, and I have done things thinking, Oh, this will make money never does.

Alex Ferrari 31:39
And then oh, this will never make money.

Miranda Bailey 31:41
This will never make money. And it does, but I love it. And it does. So it just makes, and I've done things that you know, this, this, you know, it's things. So, honestly, if you love something, because it's hard, if you love something, whether it's a commercial success, or a critical success or not. If you love being there every day, then it's still a win, you know? So and I'll go back to like, you know, with my bid Yeah, I loved I was like, you know, I was like determined to do his next project. After Sleepwalk With Me, I pretty much stalked him, you know, in a nice way without a craziness and was like, I don't want you could have turned in a bunch of blank pages. And I would have said yes, like, so I knew I was going to make his next movie. And that was a success. And so we were really lucky. But I didn't know I really didn't think it'd be Who the fuck wants to see a movie about improv actors not by make his next movie so badly that I was willing to overlook that plot.

Alex Ferrari 32:52
Right. That's how you like, I don't care, I don't care what it is,

Miranda Bailey 32:54
I don't care. Because, you know, and that was successful, you know, and I enjoyed, I enjoyed it. And, you know, became really good friends with Kate Micucci from that, and worked with beautiful people and great, great DPS and great, just great everything. Like, I love Mike, I love everyone on that, you know, Kagan's rad, everyone. So when when that stuff happens, it's really great. You know, and then when the for instance, with lakes movie was similar, you know, it wasn't a critical success. It wasn't a commercial success. But I really loved working on it. And I loved watching her work. And I love watching, you know, working with my friend Amanda on it. And, you know, we got to be in California and you know, Dolly wells and I became close, and she is hilarious. Yeah. You know. And so it's

Alex Ferrari 33:55
Now when you're looking when you're putting a PAC a project together, what do you look for in a director? Or the what are the traits that you specifically look for in a director?

Miranda Bailey 34:07
Um, well, I do seem to do a lot of I seem to do a lot of first time directors. So I can't really explain it because it's not like a looking, it's more of a feeling. And it's, if they can see it, and explain it to me, and I can see what they see. Then I know that they know what they're doing that what they want. If they're wishy washy, or you know, unsure, you just feel it in the room. And oftentimes, you don't even get to that point because you already feel it in the writing.

Alex Ferrari 34:52
With the writer directors, you generally work with writer directors, right. Seems like it. That's generally the way it goes.

Miranda Bailey 35:00
I mean, it's not a it's not a mandate or anything.

Alex Ferrari 35:04
What is what is the biggest misconception that people have about a producer and what they do?

Miranda Bailey 35:10
Well, people think we make money

Alex Ferrari 35:16
Do you make obscene amounts of money and just trucks of truckloads. You've got a Pablo Escobar problem like the rats are eating my money. I have too much money that

Miranda Bailey 35:24
I've got mattresses stack full of money behind me. It's just invisible. The best kind of money perceive success money

Alex Ferrari 35:35
That's the best kind. You can't spend it though. You can't spend it not to

Miranda Bailey 35:39
Like Bitcoin because it gets you into parties and restaurants. And you don't have to pay anything.

Alex Ferrari 35:47
Gotcha. That's the perceived the perceived riches of being a producer's wanting to know. Yeah, people think you're like, when you're in the film business. Oh, you must be making a lot of money. I'm like, no, no, no, that's, it's, that's the top one of one of 1% that, like, make that kind of grit. And that's all you see. I would say.

Miranda Bailey 36:07
Hey, I'm here I'm gonna tell you something!

Alex Ferrari 36:10
Im still fighting baby.

Miranda Bailey 36:13
Movie, or something's gonna happen where I will make money like actual money someday. $30,000 I will make more than that in a year. On a movie someday. I just got to stick in there. I just gotta hang in there

Alex Ferrari 36:31
Another 20 years. Ad I got this. I got.

Miranda Bailey 36:35
We're trying to do TV now. So I'm like, maybe there's money.

Alex Ferrari 36:39
Well, that's, I mean, everyone knows that. That's where the money is, is in television. So it's,

Miranda Bailey 36:45
Trying to get in the door of that is like, Fuck, it's hard. No, no. We just shot a TV show a Hindi nine episodes are selling now. I don't think that's been done yet.

Alex Ferrari 36:57
It's been done a couple of times. idea on the note is not a bright, it's not a bright idea, generally speaking, but the pandemic, you have to do what you got to do.

Miranda Bailey 37:09
Sorry, it's nobody GQ plus story. It's about mental illness. It was super important for me.

Alex Ferrari 37:18
I love this. I love I love that this is such a raw conversation. So people really have a look filmmakers who just are new to the business, get an understanding of what the business is really like, is there's so much perceived perception about the business. And I always tell people, the Hollywood's really good at the sizzle, but they suck at the steak. And

Miranda Bailey 37:39
Great, great if that's okay, is that a mug? Because I'll buy it.

Alex Ferrari 37:45
Because it's so true. Because Oh, and I always use the I always use the example of because I was from LA I lived in LA for you know, over a decade. And, and I always anytime someone came to town relative to like, Hey, we're not going to Hollywood Boulevard like no, you don't want to go to Hollywood Boulevard. I go no, no, that's where the Oscars are. I'm like, yeah, that that that 50 feet is basically all looks good. And I go that is a perfect analogy for the business. Because on Oscar night, Hollywood Boulevard looks amazing. But if you go a block over to the left or a block over to the right, you better hold on to the purse. It's and the farther you get away from the COVID another Kodak

Miranda Bailey 38:32
Oh, it's now it's just insane. But I was there for the Irish screaming the premiere. And I will say it looks just like you know the

Alex Ferrari 38:41
Oh, the Chinese Theater of course. And all of that stuff.

Miranda Bailey 38:44
That was awesome. But that's the only time I've ever or like when we did super. And that was at the Egyptian Yep, yeah. But don't go there just to like go see the stars because you can actually the stars go on forever. Oh, forever and ever go to the stars by the spied by the good coffee shop.

Alex Ferrari 39:02
It's exactly. But I use that as an analogy. Because it's a perfect analogy of what Hollywood sells. It sells the image. But the reality is, I mean, if you just if you live in LA for any short amount of time you realize it is a Boulevard of Broken Dreams. So many people go there with these bright eyed and bushy tail ideas about the business. And that that reality hits hard. And it's not an easy, it's not an easy grind. It is his grind. Like you just one day. And you're you know, arguably a very successful film producer. And in your you know, I mean, you've done some amazing projects. I mean, you've done you've done you've worked with amazing people you've made amazing films, but you're still you still awesome at it. You still grinding it you still do. And I tell people I'm like I know Oscar winners who are like I gotta still hustle the next project that you know the boss will get me into a party but it's not gonna pay my rent. Like

Miranda Bailey 39:58
By God's country. I remember someone one of my Hey, friends is distributors who's kind of betting on it or whatever they were planning on doing a words campaign? I'm like, Yeah, well, Warzone payment. Words don't keep the lights on. So bring your number up.

Alex Ferrari 40:12
Yeah. I don't want an Oscar nomination. Another million.

Miranda Bailey 40:18
It is you have, you know, there is an amount. I mean, I do, like a cockroach. And like, I feel like, you know, slowly the world, but people quit around me. And if I can just still be there that time.

Alex Ferrari 40:38
You just gonna wait everybody out. But you know what the, you know, the funny thing is about that. Keep working, keep going. But you know, what I and I've said this so many times, you know, I've been in the business close to 30 years. And I know people who are less talented than many people I know. But they just stuck it out. They had a willpower to keep going. And they're less talented, less experience, and they just keep that just keep grinding and they outwait everybody else. So people are like, Oh, I know this talented person like talent, man talents, the beginning of the conversation. It is, it is because there's, you know, a lot of talented directors and writers

Miranda Bailey 41:20
Talented is needed, like so I have this quote on my website, Miranda bailey.com. Yes. I just put on my website that that I read in the newspaper in the Hollywood Reporter that first week I was here, okay. Oh, I clipped it out. And I have it somewhere in some journal, you know, some pasted it down. And I don't know who said if someone important, probably. And it said talent isn't what gets you in the room. But it's what keeps you in the room?

Alex Ferrari 41:49
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Miranda Bailey 41:51
So I would I do think I'm talented at this point. But I know that that's not enough. And

Alex Ferrari 42:01
Then there's hustle, then there's experience, then there is craft and there's all these other things that you need to be good at. Not just just that,

Miranda Bailey 42:09
Yeah. You know, basically, if you can be, you know, for me, the most important thing right now is authenticity. Yep. And that is the hardest thing to find, when you first come to LA, probably for people who are going are getting into the movie business. And it's it's hard to be authentic, surrounded by inauthentic people. So but I think that the pandemic has really helped kind of the world realize what in every business what they want to be and who they want to be and who they want to be around. And I think that my hustle was really, really killing me before the pandemic, you know, authentic, but I was definitely doing things very fast. And I am kind of bad like this, like Sundance and South by has kind of gotten me on this again, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, spring break, let's go. Like, let's like, vacations get to kids. Yeah, it's more important for me to go to that go to the Oscars, it's more important for me to I live in Aspen now, like, it's more important for me to just, I don't care how much I like the project. If the person involved that is a producer involved, or a director, or social or even an agent involved or whatever is an asshole. I don't want to do it. No, because my time, my time now, I'd rather sit here and create this movie I'm working on with Oren moverman, or one of the five movies I'm working on or movement because I love him and he's my heart and soul. My brother that may never get made, then, you know,

Alex Ferrari 44:03
Life's too short. Life's too short. And as you get older, the the, the the level of crap that you put up with starts to drop dramatically. When you were 21, you'll put up with a whole lot of crap that you won't put up with at 41 or 51. And it just started you just start and it's you just start dealing with and it's so true. And you really start finding out what's important to you. Because when you're young and you're starting out in the business, it's all about the business, your entire identity is wrapped around the business. But as you get older you start to realize oh, I'm more than just a director I'm more than just a writer you hopefully get to that point that you realize I'm a father I'm a mother I'm a sister a brother I charity I do other things besides just this and yeah, it takes time it takes time. It takes time to realize and

Miranda Bailey 44:52
I think supporting other filmmakers like has been a you know are other people who want to be producers want to be writers or want to be directors and stuff. That's because Have a great joy in my life. They're not just making our movies, but even just helping them get their movies made that stuff is, is because no one ever helped me. And in fact, it was kind of the opposite. They tried to hurt. So I always said, you know, if I ever get to a point where I can be valuable enough to help other people, that doesn't mean give them money to make their movies, right. But give them support and encouragement, then I will do it. And that's been something you know, that's a non-country, which just premiered at South By the way that came about with me is, I had been Frank that I directed, and merkt ahead, Ingrid, which she directed at the bendfilm Festival. And we were talking as directors, and she told me about her next idea. And she's like, but I just don't know what to do. And I'm like, Well, you know, I'm here for you anytime you need it. And she's like, well, will you be my mentor? And I'm like, Yeah, of course. And so my relationship on that movie, obviously, it ended up becoming later on, you know, bringing on my company and my agency and like, I need the right publicist, and you know, now finding the right agent for her and, you know, finding the right festival to premiere out and stuff like that. I'm just so fucking proud of her.

Alex Ferrari 46:23
But that's, that's a joy. That's the joy that you look for now. And that's the thing that I look at, when I started this show six, almost seven years ago, my life changed. Because I started giving back, I started being of help being of service to other people. And and then now I get to talk to people like yourself, all the time, where I would have killed to have this conversation with you early on in my career. Now, I'm just like, This is amazing that I get to talk to you at a different place. And, and hopefully, my intention is not to get anything out of it. For me, that's I don't care. I'm here to have a great conversation that hopefully will help other people. And that's the intention I have with all my guests, regardless if they want Oscars, or if they're just a new filmmaker just starting out. And that has been so rewarding. And it's, it's changed my life. So I think you're feeling that too, just by helping others and mentoring others and giving back in that way.

Miranda Bailey 47:18
Yeah. So it's great, because then, you know, you're a part of something that you love. Right! You know, and and that's just that's, that's it

Alex Ferrari 47:29
Now, how, how, because you've been doing this for a while now. Can you tell the audience how the independent film space has changed in the last five years? Not 20? The last five, arguably the last two or three? How much more difficult? Is it to make a movie, get distribution, get your money back in return for your money for your investors? Is there how has it changed from, you know, 25 years ago?

Miranda Bailey 47:59
Well, we're in a very, very state of who knows because of the pandemic. Sure. So that's obviously problematic when it comes to shooting things. And if you get shut down because someone gets sick, or if there's a new variant and and you know, we are still in a pandemic, even though people are not talking about it, I mean, my husband and my two kids just got COVID Again, by longer so that I could get to Hawaii for my vacation. But I'd say one thing that I I'm, I think is great about the last five years is that the idea of windowing, which has, you know, has has collapsed, so there was for a while and are about 90 days is a real theatrical release. And otherwise it stay in dates. And there's really no in between. And then they were calling something called like broken windowing. And I'm like, that doesn't sound good. We call it creative windowing. So creative windowing. And but it was still very hard to navigate. And that what people don't understand is when you selling your movie, you're gonna get way more money from Florida and everything if you had a traditional 90 Day release. But you had to play in so many theaters, and your box office numbers had to be so much money in order for those deals overseas to actually kick in. So as soon as that change, you're kind of screwed. So for instance, with being frank, we released it through film, arcade and universal because we didn't want to take necessarily in any of the other offers, which is good because we made more money than the other offers by now. But our deal with Universal was a 90 day doing, which I didn't think would be the right thing for being frank. But that was the filmer K deal. If day and it should have been day in but Did you know universal at that time was doing 90 Day theatricals. So now, with us being able to watch at home, you know, marry me, let's say that now that the rom com coming back, which I'm like, hallelujah,

Alex Ferrari 50:18
Thank God.

Miranda Bailey 50:20
I need some more. I mean, that's my favorite genre. So I usually never get to but you can put it on TV and still make a million in the box office opening weekend. And on on Peacock, it had a gazillion people sign up for peacock and watch it that opening weekend

Alex Ferrari 50:39
I did. I did my wife wanted to watch it so

Miranda Bailey 50:44
The numbers or anything and I, you know, so that that's really great. I mean, I think the other thing and this is probably just for me, because other people I, I want to make I want to direct to one of those movies that you're like, oh my god, did you see the ALI Wong movie or the movie? And they're like, oh, yeah, I love it. Who directed it? I don't know. Like, it was on Netflix or it was on this. That is my ideal situation. Because then you do not have to be a director like with a point of view or say something or, you know, is he ripped apart? Or is it now in authentic way?

Alex Ferrari 51:21
Correct! No, you're absolutely right. It's changed so much. I can only imagine Disney how many how much how many subscribers Disney plus got from all the Pixar movies? Oh, yeah. All that stuff and HBO the whole last year? I mean, how many people signed up

Miranda Bailey 51:37
Played all the best they played lately? And Harry Met Sally. I watched it like four times.

Alex Ferrari 51:41
Exactly. So they're it's the game has changed so dramatically. Is there a place right now? In your opinion? For the well, we would have called in the 90s? That independent an independent film from the 90s? The? The slackers, the clerks the El Mariachi is the Brothers McMullen. Those films. Is there a marketplace for that anymore? Those kinds of films?

Miranda Bailey 52:03
Yeah, there is there is, you know, there's Magnolia, there's AFC neons doing their own wing, which is called Super. There's film arcade. Those, those are the ones who are doing those movies. And then, of course, there's self distribution models out there now that you can do that, you know, because there's nothing I mean, once someone asked at South by when I was on a panel, like, you know, what do you think about idea of self distribution to this and it's competed, that's I'm like, look, the more places there are, for us as filmmakers to be able to put our money or movie out there. So instead of it sitting on on our shelf, or in our closet, it's on Apple, or Amazon or whatever the better because no one wants to make a movie and not be seen. Now that has nothing to do with money, or minimum guarantees, or anything like that. But you know, there's more places for you to see a movie, there's ability for you to make a movie, the market. You know, big sales had been gone for a long time.

Alex Ferrari 53:14
Oh, yeah. And pre and pre sales as well.

Miranda Bailey 53:17
Well, pre sales is a totally different kind of thing. It's not in for independent film anymore.

Alex Ferrari 53:21
Yeah. The days of AFM and just having a poster. I mean, unless you have a relationship with buyers,

Miranda Bailey 53:28
I know Nick Cage movie that Stallone movie and movie you're fine, solid, but you know, or big or big director, but if it's like you need making a movie starring my best friend, you know, Zack, Sal Lin, we're not going to pre sell it.

Alex Ferrari 53:44
No, no, and you're right, it's just that that world is is gone. And I always tell people with with self distribution, you got to hit the ball so well, to get to make real money in that play in that space. You got to really know what you're doing, really understand a lot of different things to be able to generate three, four or 500,000

Miranda Bailey 54:05
That does it. So like the arcade, we do self distribution. I mean, Bleecker Street's also doing service deals. Sure. So you know, I think as long as you use those companies that really knows what what they're doing, and they'll guide you then then then you're good.

Alex Ferrari 54:23
Now I'm gonna ask you a couple questions ask them I guess what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?

Miranda Bailey 54:28
Um, don't

Alex Ferrari 54:30
Run away get an accounting job No. You gotta love it.

Miranda Bailey 54:36
You know, I don't know. My advice is always changing. You know, I would, I would say is understand that it is a collaborative art. And if you can't collaborate, you will make it because what doesn't bend breaks?

Alex Ferrari 54:53
What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life?

Miranda Bailey 54:59
That I am not fat despite magazines or movies, and what they have said, and then I don't look like everybody else. And I want to thank Shonda Rhimes. For this. She's the one who allowed people to go and be seen that are real people. Because when I got to Hollywood, I was called, not fat enough to be the best friend, or skinny enough. So but I was really funny. So I needed to gain or lose 20 pounds in order to be successful. And I was not pretty enough to be the lead. And those were the rules for me as a woman.

Alex Ferrari 55:38
Wow. And they told you that

Miranda Bailey 55:40
This more than once

Alex Ferrari 55:43
Wasn't like one outlier, it was a constant.

Miranda Bailey 55:46
That's just the way it was. Wow. And life is not over when you're when he turns 30 If you're an A woman in the business, in behind, or in front of the camera, my dad learned how to ride a horse at 65 years old. And he then became a horse champion by the time he was 75 years old. So you know, just stay on the fucking horse.

Alex Ferrari 56:12
And three of your favorite films of all time.

Miranda Bailey 56:15
Oh, gosh, True Romance. Number one favorite film of all time. That's amazing. Then I'm gonna go with my fair lady.

Alex Ferrari 56:25
Obviously, both double double, double.

Miranda Bailey 56:28
Thirdly, Some like it hot.

Alex Ferrari 56:31
Oh, very good. Wow, that's, that's a heck of a screening night. And run to where can people find out more about you and and see what you're doing?

Miranda Bailey 56:42
Well, my website mirandabailey.com, because my dad was smart enough to get my name on websites when they first started so lucky because you know, you know, Shaundra Wilson would asset by now has my writing, directing, acting producing in it. And it also has the some information on Cherry picks, which is a website that I started for female critics to kind of put them together and give a score for female critics. And that's the cherry picks.com That's a really fun. It's kind of like, I want it to be the cut meets Entertainment Weekly meets rotten tomatoes for women and non binary people. Fair enough, but it's you know, we show this was Army man's on there. I mean, Ford versus Ferrari, I will say is one of my favorite movies in the last five years. It's so good that

Alex Ferrari 57:36
It's such a good movie that says Miranda, it has been entertaining as hell talking to you and also very educational. I appreciate you taking the time out to talk to the tribe and dropping your knowledge bombs on them. So I appreciate you. Thank you again.

Miranda Bailey 57:52
I had to go drop something else. So thanks so much, guys.

Alex Ferrari 57:56
I love it. Thanks so much.

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BPS 191: Swingers, Scream & Rudy – The Art of Producing with Cary Woods

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Today on the show we have legendary film producer Cary Woods. 

Cary Woods is a film producer best known for producing worldwide blockbusters such as Scream and Godzilla, the beloved independent films Kids, Cop Land, and Gummo, and modern classics like Rudy and Swingers.

Woods is also responsible for producing the breakthrough features of such notable directors as James Mangold, Doug Liman, M. Night Shyamalan, Alexander Payne, Harmony Korine, and Larry Clark, as well as the screenwriting debuts of Jon Favreau, Kevin Williamson, and Scott Rosenberg.

Woods’ filmography features a lineup of A-List actors, including: Robert Downey, Jr., Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Marisa Tomei, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Mike Myers, Laura Dern, Heather Graham, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Broderick, Courteney Cox, Timothy Hutton, Andy Garcia, Neve Campbell, Sean Astin, Michael Rapaport, Jean Reno, and Steve Buscemi.

Born and raised in the Bronx, Woods graduated from the USC Gould School of Law before beginning his career at the William Morris Agency (now WME). As an agent, Woods represented – and in many cases introduced audiences to – the likes of Gus Van Sant, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Connelly, Milla Jovovich, Charlie Sheen, Matt Dillon, Todd Solondz, and most prominently, Gregory Peck.

At WMA, Woods also represented many of the industry’s most successful stand-up comedians including Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, Gilbert Gottfried, Sandra Bernhard, Tommy Davidson, and Jackie Mason.

After developing the Indie favorites Heathers and Drugstore Cowboy as an agent, Woods accepted a position at Sony Pictures Entertainment (the parent company of Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures) as a Vice President – Office of the Chairman, reporting directly to Peter Guber. Woods later segued to a production deal at Sony, resulting in the release of a succession of iconic films, including So I Married An Axe Murderer, Rudy, Only You, and Threesome.

After starting his own production company – Independent Pictures – the explosive release of the 1995 cultural phenomenon Kids (starring then-newcomers Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny) began a streak of culturally significant, critically-acclaimed independent films produced by Woods under his banner.

The next few years saw the releases of Citizen Ruth (the first film from future two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne), Beautiful Girls (which introduced American audiences to Natalie Portman), and Swingers (springboarding Vince Vaughn to comedy mega-stardom).

His 1996 film Scream (the most successful film of “Master of Horror” Wes Craven’s career) marked a turning point for the entire genre, grossing over $170 million and setting a box office record that would stand for 22 years. The film instantly and single-handedly pivoted horror toward postmodernism, spawning a massive billion-dollar franchise (consisting of successful sequels, a TV series, toys, and Halloween costumes), as well as inspiring countless knock-offs in the years since.

Gummo – the directorial debut of Kids’ screenwriter Harmony Korine – received the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1997 Venice Film Festival. Bernando Bertolucci, the famed director of Last Tango in Paris, praised the film, calling it “The one revolutionary film of the late 20th century.”

In 1998, the first US-produced entry of the iconic Godzilla film franchise would become Woods’ and Independent Pictures’ single highest-grossing film, earning nearly $400 million.

Woods would go on to serve as co-Chairman, and Chief Creative Officer of Plum TV, in which he was a founding partner. Broadcasting in the nation’s most affluent markets (i.e. Aspen, the Hamptons, Miami Beach), the luxury lifestyle network would go on to earn eight Emmy Awards.

Enjoy my conversation with Cary Woods.

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Alex Ferrari 2:20
I like to welcome to the show Cary Woods how are you doin' Cary?

Cary Woods 3:33
Thank you very much love being here.

Alex Ferrari 3:36
I I've been a fan of your work as a producer for many years. You know, me coming up in the 90s. As a young filmmaker, I was influenced by many of the films that you worked on. And we're going to we're going to go down memory lane a little bit and I'm sure from our other conversations, I know that you've got some good stories.

Cary Woods 4:02
Well, I'm flattered.

Alex Ferrari 4:04
So how did you get started in the business?

Cary Woods 4:09
Well, I went to Southern California to go to law school. And I did so at the University of Southern California law school. Not long thereafter, I realized I didn't really want to be a practicing lawyer and and I loved film. And being the guy from the Bronx, the notion that I was going to come to California and end up in the film business would have been like you're telling me I was going to be an astronaut. But if you're in Southern California news, throws stone you're gonna hit somebody who either is or who has a relative in the film business from a television business, which I did at law school. And nonetheless, long story short, I made my way into the William Morris mailroom passed the law school.

Alex Ferrari 5:03
Very cool. And that's it. That's where many, many a career has started.

Cary Woods 5:10
Excuse me?

Alex Ferrari 5:11
That is how many, many have a career in Hollywood have started it?

Cary Woods 5:16
Yeah, I'm definitely not alone with the William Morris mailroom as a starting place.

Alex Ferrari 5:22
Now, how did you get from the mailroom to producing your first project?

Cary Woods 5:27
Well, um, my first project do you mean as a as a film producer?

Alex Ferrari 5:33
As a film producer correct.

Cary Woods 5:35
Well, I had ended up working as an executive at Sony Pictures for join Peters and Peter Guber, I was hired as an executive working for them. And when seemed I just didn't want to be a studio executive. I wanted to be a movie producer. And I had a friend Rob freed who had a production deal at Columbia, which is where I was, and I was given the deal there. And Rob had been working on a movie called sewing Married an Axe Murderer. And I think at the time, he was developing it and Chevy Chase was attached to play the lead. But we weren't getting any traction. And I had a friend who was an agent at Uta, her name was Cynthia Shelton, and she represented Mike Myers, who I was a gigantic fan of on Saturday Night Live. And she thought that the part would be great for Mike. So I said, Well, you know, I love Mike. Let's see what he thinks. He reads a script. He really, really likes it. He wants to make a substantial amount of changes, but we love all of the ideas that he had. And he did make those changes. And then we were lucky enough to then have Wayne's World come out and pretty much making the biggest comedy star in the world. And so Tristar, which was where the movie was set up, was thrilled to have Mike Mars now be the star. So I Married an Axe Murderer.

Alex Ferrari 7:19
And you rode the Wayne Wayne's World tidal wave.

Cary Woods 7:24
Well, you know, it's like when you have the guy who just starred in the biggest comedy of the year before starring in your comedy. Movie, it's kind of a stroke of luck.

Alex Ferrari 7:38
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you also you worked with Peter Gubers. Who, who are obviously, you know, legendary film producers, what were what were some of the lessons you took away from working with them.

Cary Woods 7:55
Peter was incredibly first of all he's very, very smart in you can't teach that. But he was an incredibly organized guy. So we would get on the plane, and he would take out a sheet of paper, and he would go over his to do list and his to do list would be anywhere from 20 to 50 things that you would be constantly reviewing of things, projects that you were doing together. And so that you would basically I mean, and there was no particular time of day that you would be going over them. I we were together a lot. And he would go you having a to do list and I go Yeah, and goes, Okay, let's, let's go through it. You know, and it'd be like, Okay, what's going on with this? And what's going on with that. And basically, it was just a sense that projects are constantly on, you know, the reading the moving forward, or, or nothing's happening. And when you go through those lists, it's sometimes painfully obvious that you haven't done anything on something for a few days or a few weeks, or whatever it is, but he was tightly in control of everything that he wanted to get done. And so yeah, so that was pretty much a pretty good learning experience.

Alex Ferrari 9:09
So I've been asked so many times over my career, what a producer does carry. And you know, the question is such a loaded question, because there's so many different kinds of producers. But in your opinion, what does a producer do on a on a feature film, let's say?

Cary Woods 9:25
Well, you know, I'll go back and make that same pun, which is, how long as a piece of string? I mean, really, there are so many different types of producers. I mean, I think one, probably one of the best ways to do it is isn't talk about it is that without whatever contribution that person made, there would be no movie. You know, that's a producer. If that person didn't exist, you would have never seen that movie. You can be a little bit less strict about it and say, okay, the movie wouldn't have been the same movie it would have gotten made. But it would not have been the same movie without that person. Sometimes good sometimes bad. Yeah, the academy actually has rules about it, which is that it used to be to be a member of the Academy, Producers Guild, you had to have two credits, but they couldn't be shared amongst more than two people. So if you shared credit with one other person, you got to have a point. And you needed four of those to equal to, if there were three or more, it counted for nothing. So that's the way the academy strictly looked at produce. I don't know if it still does. I mean, I joined many years ago, and I was asked, Well, do you have four credits? And I said, Well, yeah. And but I didn't realize that that was the math that we used to be curious to see if that's the way it's still done. But they basically, were recognizing that there was two producers that were required there. Now you can have, I don't even know how many producers but I don't even know if there is a number. That is can you have 30? I don't know, I don't really know the

Alex Ferrari 11:17
I'll tell you what I worked up. I worked on a project that had 30 producers, because I did the credits on it. And my God, it must have taken me two weeks just to do the credits, because everybody's like, Well, my name is above this, and I have a shared card with this. And where's how big the font? Oh, it's insanity.

Cary Woods 11:35
My guess would be that we're not for I think they're probably a few of those that had they not existed, the film probably still would

Alex Ferrari 11:45
Couple probably a couple

Cary Woods 11:48
It took the strict definition, then that would be I mean, you know, a producer makes the movie happened, it doesn't, you know, either the movie wouldn't have happened wouldn't have happened in the same way, then there's no point in their executive producers

Alex Ferrari 12:05
Co-producers

Cary Woods 12:07
Or can make a significant contribution. I mean, line producers, the people are on the field actually putting the movie together physically. They don't often get producer credit, they get co producer or associate producer, Executive Producer, they physically make the movie, like I count them among people, without whom there wouldn't be a movie, you know. So there's a lot of different kinds, and basically, some contribute and actually make the movie or make the movie better. And some don't, you know, and that's, that's what it comes down to.

Alex Ferrari 12:42
So you you made a movie earlier in your career that it obviously impacted me. And of course, I can't watch it without crying even to this day, which is Rudy, how did you bring a story like that to the big screen? I mean, it doesn't seem like a automatic blockbuster idea.

Cary Woods 13:04
Well, Rudy is the producer of the movie, Rudy you know, he felt that this was a movie. He felt his story was a movie. And there was a brilliant sports movie called Hoosiers. Also an Indiana sports movie that was written by Angelo Pizzo, the same person who and and Rudy loved that movie and being Rudy. He meaning he wasn't going to let anything get in his way. He came out to Los Angeles and he found Angelo Pizzo. And he said, I want to tell you my story. And Angelo being the kind of guy he is he's a great guy didn't slam the door face and said, Yeah, I mean, come on in and he starts telling them the story. And Angelo, thanks. Yeah, that's, if that's a true story. That's a movie. And Angela starts writing it. And I mean, Rudy is the, you know, the movies about him. But he, he's the he is the producer of the movie in many, many ways. He didn't get it made. But if you think about the person who first saw an idea, a story and said, Wow, that could be a movie. In this instance, that person was rude. And it was also Angelo after that, who confirmed it and wrote it. But yeah, that's how that happened.

Alex Ferrari 14:28
And how'd you get involved?

Cary Woods 14:30
And then I got involved because my partner, Rob freed. This was one of the projects that he had percolating when we joined together at Columbia. And, and it was right at the beginning of the project getting going in and then David, on SPA or director met Sean Aston in Chicago, and called the SAP and said I've got our Rudy, when he said, What do you mean? He goes, I mean, he was showing us and Rudy Rudy was involved in every part of that movie because he was just that kind of infectious guy. So just around. And Rudy felt that Shawn Aston should be rooting. And then that was it. Now, at the time, Sean asked, and wasn't the big star casting Sean asked and didn't really help us with the studio saying, Oh, this movie, but that Shawn was perfect for the part, you know, obviously, and we just went at it. This is the guy

Alex Ferrari 15:41
And then did you and then you peppered and you peppered a bunch of good actors, and very known, respected actors around Sean, to kind of round out the cast.

Cary Woods 15:53
It was never really a cast heavy or star heavy thing. It was just based on the fact that it was a true story. I mean, we had tape of Joe Montana on the Sunday morning show where they asked literally, they asked him what was the most exciting sport? What happened the most striking moments for you in sports, and he starts to tell the Rooney story. He goes, Well, when I was a sophomore at Notre Dame, he starts telling story, Joe Montana, and we had this on, that we were showing to the studio guys, you know, because we were saying this, these are the kinds of people are going to come out this movie for us. I mean, we did so much there's so much into getting a studio behind the movie. I mean, one of the things that happened when this was because I had worked for Peter Guber before I you know, turned it into a producing deal with Sony, I invited him to one of the Notre Dame games that year they were in the top five or 10 and there was a game against Michigan, if anybody's not a college football fan, this will bore you but if you are, you're going to love it and we invited him to come to that game. And you know, we got him seats on the 50 yard line in that morning, you know, they were gonna fly in on the Sony jet had a bunch put together a Notre Dame pack of like, you know, a fanny pack and a scarf and gloves and they will all put it in each of their seats on the plane without them knowing about it so that when they came on the plane, they had all the stuff flying out to South Bend for the game where they were when the plane was meant on by a South Bend Police Force and driven in to the stadium you know, with you know, police sirens blaring and then went were brought into the tunnel so that they could come in the tunnel to their seats. I mean, we did like a whole thing. And you know, they loved it and obviously you want the studio to be beat this was in the middle of production you want the studio to be in to your movie and to love it be that matter as it relates to their How much are they going to spend on it? What dates are they gonna put it out and all of that plus it was incredible fun.

Alex Ferrari 18:22
Yeah, I couldn't imagine I can only imagine Yeah, I remember seeing it in the theater. I remember when it came out. Everyone was just you know, it's one of those it's it's always on the like the top 10 sports movies of all time because of Rudy story. It's pretty remarkable. Honestly. This whole store

Cary Woods 18:41
Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh, the director credible. I mean, the those same two guys did Hoosiers, which arguably is another movie among the top 10 best sports films and like, same guy. Yeah. You know, and they're both Deanna they both went to school at Indiana. They were college roommates. I mean, they are Indiana, Indiana.

Alex Ferrari 19:07
Now, how did you go from a film like Rudy? And I'm not sure if it was the very next one. But I know it was a couple movies down to kids. Which is it? I remember going to the theater to see kids. It's, you know, obviously the legendary Larry Clark made that. I remember seeing it in the theater. I don't know how old I was. I must have been Oh, I was older than the kids in the movie. But not by much probably about five or six years. And I just was like, How Did This Get Made? How did this get out? And and I remember hearing but like it's you know, it's there's so much hoopla about a film like that. How did you get involved in with kids and how to come to life?

Cary Woods 19:50
Well, Gus when I was Gus Van Sant, first agent at William Morris. And, you know, we obviously remained friends after I After I went off to be a producer, and he called me up and he said, you know, hey, look, I got this script, you know, Larry Clark is directing it. It's incredible. I mean, he just went on about how much he loved it, and how much you love this writer and blah, blah, blah, what I read it because no one's gonna make it. And I said, I'd love to read it. And I had, literally about three weeks earlier met with these guys who were about to, they were, they were gonna invest about five to $10 million into the film business. And we're talking to me about things that we could potentially do together. So I read the script. And he sent me that and Ken part, two scripts at Harmony Queen wrote, and I literally either read them in the same night, or one night after another, I couldn't believe what I was reading, because it was, it was so fresh and so original. It's he was writing about a generation that he was part of, and usually it takes about seven to 10 years for somebody to become old enough to write about that generation. So if you're writing about in 1617 year olds, usually you're about 25 When you write, but harmony was writing it when he was 17. So he was living it and writing it. And it was incredible. And so he told me harmony is coming to LA and would I meet him? And, and I did and, you know, he looked like he was 15. And, and we just spent the day. I mean, I knew he was gonna make the movie after I read the script. And then I flew to New York immediately to meet with Larry. And, and then that was it. I called the guys and I said, I think I found our first movie. And, you know, and I sent it to them. And, you know, they said, I mean, I'm still to this day match you if they've ever read it or not. But I was extremely enthusiastic. And, you know, it was, it was really, really fresh and exciting. And Larry had, I mean, talking Larry, it was like he had directed 20 move. He didn't have an iota of doubt about what he was gonna do with that movie. And, you know, so so we went forward.

Alex Ferrari 22:31
And that kind of I mean, it was also a young, a young Rosario Dawson was her first project. I mean, you guys literally plucked her off the stoop, didn't you in New York, right?

Cary Woods 22:42
Barry and harmony walking in the Lower East Side. And her mom, Rosario and a mom on the stoop talking. And they heard her and they heard the dialect. And they just stopped and walked over and said, you know, this is they've just started talking to her. This is what we're doing. Would you like to be involved? I mean, Rosario doesn't have you know, she's not in the movie all that much. But you know, really important point. And obviously, she's Rosario. She was fantastic. And yeah, it was just one of those things where they just passed by hurdle on the stoop. A mother is incredibly interesting woman too. And, yeah, that's exactly how it happened.

Alex Ferrari 23:28
How? So I remember when that movie came out. I mean, it was obviously done independently. It wasn't done by Studio. I, if I'm, if I'm if I'm correct, correct. There wasn't a major studio behind that film.

Cary Woods 23:43
Correct.

Alex Ferrari 23:43
Right. So it was done independently. And I remember when it was coming out, there was so much controversy about it because of the subject matter and kids and the sexuality of it all. And, and I've just never seen something so raw and honest, because I was a kid, too. We all were, and we all knew what was going on with those during those years. I mean, that was a heightened version of that. No question, at least in that group of kids. But how? How did you get this out? Because I remember there was like picket lines. People were like, well boycotting this thing come out.

Cary Woods 24:19
Well, I can tell you this. There's a lot of thought into it. We hired first of all, I hired a lawyer called off the Garbers, who was one of the kings of First Amendment law, he represented the New York Times. His daughter, Liz Garbus is a pretty important documentary filmmaker right now. But we showed the I anticipated that we could find ourselves people you know, and down south or wherever, actually challenging us legally. And so I wanted to have, you know, a legal opinion shutting that down. Before it could even happen. I mean, there was nothing about The film that in any way skirted the law, but I just wanted to be sure that we had all of our I's dotted and T's crossed. So off the Garbus, you know, was our first amendment lawyer. So he he did that. I mean, we were very, we knew going in I mean, we, everybody was legal, you know, everything was done correctly, because we knew what it was. And we knew that it was dynamite. But at the same time, we were dealing with St. Kitts, so you're you had to be extremely cautious about the way we went about things a couple of guys was sleeping, you know, at Larry's house, or at Harmony's house, because otherwise, there were times where you just wouldn't know if they would show up. You know? And

Alex Ferrari 25:53
That's how you get that that's how you kept an eye on that's how you kept an eye on?

Cary Woods 25:57
Well, yeah, you know, because, I mean, they were excited to be in the movie, but, you know, when, when, when the movie was done, they went back to being kids, you know, to being done, which meant they were out.

Alex Ferrari 26:09
Right. And I saw another documentary about many of those kids. And they became, you know, just legends on the streets of Washington Square and all that. But after that movie came out, it was it was one of those movies in the 90s, like that only could be released in the 90s. I don't think that that there's no way in God's green earth that kids could be released today. In a theatrical experience.

Cary Woods 26:33
I don't think no. Just couldn't get made that, you know, that movie wasn't independently made. Nobody was giving anybody the money to make that movie. I think that we had one shot, and we were lucky. We took it. And that was it. You know, but it was just one of those things where it all came together. And and I think having it,

Alex Ferrari 27:02
I think I love that film, too. I think it's one of those films that independent filmmakers should definitely watch. And it's such a almost cinema Veritate way of looking at it you feel like a fly on the wall during that film. It is it is one of those quintessential 90s films to say,

Cary Woods 27:21
I'll tell you how many times people ask me how much of it was scripted. And how much of it was scripted was almost 90% Virtually every word was scripted is you know, there's the scenes, the girls talking scene where Larry and Irene let them go, you know, just say, Sure, go for it. But other than that, every single word in that script was scripted. You know, that's,

Alex Ferrari 27:45
I mean, remarkable. It seems so natural. It seems like Yep. It's dialogue that it, it's like, there's no way someone sat down and wrote that. But

Cary Woods 27:55
Well, he was there, Pierre, he was there. He was, he was a skater. And these guys were his friends. And he hung out with them. And he knew how they talked about them. And he, you know, so you couldn't possibly be, you know, he, he was there. These were these. This was the kind of dialogue that he was part of it.

Alex Ferrari 28:21
Yeah, that's remarkable. Now, now, you also worked on another movie, which is essentially one of those quintessential 90s indie films. And they're, you know, I always you know that that whole time period of the 90s is where the independent film boomed again and you know, for mariachi, Two Brothers McMullen and clerks and all of these films, and one of those films was Swingers, and swingers was one of those films because for me, when it came out, it was one of those. I can't believe they made that in the sense of like, I How did they make that movie for such a small budget? How did you can you tell me how that project came to be?

Cary Woods 29:03
Well, all of that stuff. Well, I came into it a little bit late, but here's was my relationship to it. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, we're both in Rudy. John fans currently Rudy's best friend. Yeah. And John fabro played the quarterback at the end. He's a little bit of an asshole, so I got to know them in that movie. John then went off and wrote in John and Vince are friends in John went off and wrote that script, which is kind of a little bit of their story of his and Vincent story in Chicago. And Doug Liman the director. Originally, John wrote it to direct it. And Doug Liman got the script and read it and wanted to direct it and he offered to find the answer this father As a lawyer, and he had clients, and they were gonna put together the money to finance it, and it wasn't a lot of money.

Alex Ferrari 30:06
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Cary Woods 30:16
And, you know, when John was going to star in it, and he wrote it, so he agreed to that. He agreed to do that. So then the movie happened. And then when it was done, they weren't getting into festivals, and they were having some, so they called me and they said, Hey, would you look at this movie? You know, I think he may like it. And then, you know, I'm like, sure. I loved it. I absolutely knocked me out. I couldn't believe how much I loved it. And you know, and then we did some work, they did some music stuff, and, and they didn't get into Sundance. And I remember calling people. back a couple weeks before Sundance, I started to call around to the studios, to set up screenings for people who were, you know, the heads of the studios saying, Look, if you haven't been, if you haven't not been to Sundance yet, so you haven't spent any money, which is good, because the most valuable film in Sundance this year is not going to be in Sundance, I'm going to send it to you right now. And essentially, they watch the film, you know, it wasn't in Sundance, and people started to like it Now eventually, Harvey one with whom I had a deal. He really wanted it. He just, he had to have it. And there was one other company, who, whose person whose highest level person who can see the movie had seen it and liked it. But in order to get it bought, the person who could say yes or no to that level of decision, wasn't in the state, and was going to be another day before he came back. And so basically was like I either had to take Harvey Weinstein's offer, which he hasn't even said anything yet, or dance for day two, until this guy got back to the United States without even knowing whether he was gonna say yes, even if he did see it. So I really didn't have a short thing. I had no one of the offers. So I got a tremendous amount of pressure from Harvey Weinstein about, of course, so he didn't know really, that I didn't, that the decision maker wasn't around. He didn't, he didn't know that he didn't know how long it would take for the guy to be back. You know, he just knew that I was holding out, you know, like, he was gonna see it any minute. And he finally said, Well, you know, I said it look, you know, if you want it, make me an offer that makes me take it off the table so that I don't do anything irresponsible to my partners, you know? And he said, Okay, well, what's that number? And I told him, and it was a larger number than I think he thought, but he said, Yes. And, and so we he got the movie, and he put it out. I never was really happy with the way he put it out. I don't think that the movie, it gained a tremendous amount of acclaim and fame after it's released, but didn't do didn't have a really big box office rice. But, you know, but he put it out it is, you know, and then, of course, on video and streaming, it became a thing, but I don't think he really understood what it was when he put it out.

Alex Ferrari 33:56
But that so, it so let me ask you though, because I remember that, if I remember correctly, because it's been a few years since then. The budget of that film was like to 200,000 a quarter million or something like that, right. 250 Yeah, accordingly, accordingly. So it was a $250,000 budget film. And Doug Liman made that movie look like it was made for me, you know, at least three or $4 million, if not more.

Cary Woods 34:23
Doug is a super, super talented guy, super talented guy. The casting was incredible. There was no stars movie, you know, Heather Graham, the only sort of known person in the movie, but she didn't work at her anywhere near what her salary would have been. And, you know, he did a beautiful job. He's really talented, you know, and in in those kinds of movies, the script was so good. You know, when you think about movies that don't cost a lot. It's the screenplay you know, that screenplay. I was just sad. You know, what people remember about that movie is no one really remembers the shot. They everybody remembers, Oh, mine come up to me Oh, remember the shot when this happened, but they will come up to me and say your money, you know,

Alex Ferrari 35:15
Oh God, I mean that guy. Oh my god, how many lines that movie is like one of the most quotable movies of the 90s. I mean, it was everybody was quoting that movie and I was in college, when that movie hit and it was just like everybody was talking about swingers and how they got it made and, and how it looked and it looks like such high production value. It's so It's remarkable because do you think a movie like swingers would even dent the world today? In today's marketplace? I mean, the quote, the script is good, obviously it but

Cary Woods 35:49
It's hard to know. I mean, it's look, the movie is a love story between these two gods. Right? They love each other. Sure. No, John and Vince love each other. Is there room for with a different backdrop for two guys of that age really loving one another as friends? I think so. I mean, that's the kind of story those stories happen. You know, and, and I think, you know, well written and well told, you know, not not about swing music, but about around something else. I think it worked. You know, I mean, those are the kinds of human relationships that are gonna always resonate one way or another.

Alex Ferrari 36:31
And in the end, the investors of that film did okay.

Cary Woods 36:34
Everybody did great.

Alex Ferrari 36:39
I know, I remember I read something that Doug lime was like, yeah, there was some dentists that we got some money from, and, and they got a check back. And they're like, when can we do more of these movies? Is this the way it always is?

Cary Woods 36:52
Well, look, everybody did great. But, John, you know, John Van, and Doug really did. And it's not because they all got rich on that movie, but their careers just all took off. And their careers are incredible. All three of them have amazing careers right now.

Alex Ferrari 37:11
Right! And Vince Vince is I mean, he built a car to his his comedic career. And John is built as not only acting career, but also his directing career. And Doug is, he's a fantastic, fantastic. Is he gonna do that? That space movie with Tom Cruise? Now? They're gonna actually shoot in space.

Cary Woods 37:28
They're talking about it. No one talked about it. I'll tell you, John bathroom thing that's amazing about him is that when he was on the set of Rudy, he was always around the director. I mean, there was it was so clear that this guy wanted to direct and that he would direct, you know, he was he was constantly around the director picking his brain, you know, it was like, it was very clear that this was a guy that would one day be sitting in the director's seat

Alex Ferrari 37:58
And launched the biggest movie franchise in the history of cinema. Can you imagine if you would have said, Oh, the guy from swingers? Right? It's gonna launch a multi billion dollar franchise that Hollywood has never seen before. Yeah. And now he's redoing it. And now he's heading up Star Wars, essentially. So he's done. Okay. He's money. He's money as they say,

Cary Woods 38:26
He is money. Really smart. And he really works hard.

Alex Ferrari 38:31
Yeah, I heard he's the nicest sweetest guy on the planet.

Cary Woods 38:34
Sweetest guy. Yep.

Alex Ferrari 38:36
I hear. So so then you got to work on another project from the 90s, which also is kind of a redefined genre, which is scream. How did you get involved in screaming and how did was it like,

Cary Woods 38:53
Well, it was weird one because, you know, some of the people might company you know, some of the development people read the script came into my office. You've got to read this script. This heart phone came in. First of all, it was called scary movie. Right? Right. You got to read the script called scary movie. I go, Well, what is it? It's a heart. I said, but you guys know, I don't like horror movies. Which is the truth. I'm not a big horror fan. It's not a horror film. It is a comedic. It's a spoof on the horror genre. It's calm. So I said, Well, I like comedy, and I like spoof so I read it. I loved it. It was hilarious. And so I, you know, I read I loved it. And I immediately called up the studio and I sent it over them and said, We got to make this thing. So it was Miramax. And they agreed, and, and I knew Drew Barrymore and I sent her the script for the lead, not the part that we know that you Barrymore played, and she wanted to do it. And so then, you know, then that was it. I Drew Barrymore and the script, and you know, we were ready to go. So, um, and then and then when then that happened, but I then got I got a call from drew a few weeks later saying that she didn't want she wanted to play the part of girl number one. And I'm thinking wow, okay, great, cool. So we're gonna play that, like, how do you want to look different? Like, how do you want to do that? She was No, no, I only want to play girl number one. And I thought, oh god that goes to movies. My league just left. So I say, well, that goes dead on page 22. She goes, yeah, no, I love that part. I want to do it. And I'll do anything else. I'll do any publicity or anything like that. Now, at this point we had with Craven, you know, he had come on. And so the film itself was more solid, you know, yet Wes Craven directing it. And she said, you know, I'll talk to Wes, and I'll explain it. And I. And when she explained it, she said to me, Look, if I die on page 20, whatever, then anything can happen after that. The audience will, nothing will surprise them, they'll be up for anything. Because, you know, if they've killed me on page 22, then anything could happen. I knew she was right. And I went, I called Harvey wanting the next day. And I said, Look, Drew doesn't, you know, wants to play girl number one, but she will let us you know, she'll do all the press that we wanted to do. And, you know, you'll save millions of dollars, because you won't have to pay her much. And you'll still and he said, Okay, let's do what is Westbank? And I said Wesson is fine. He said, Okay, let's do it. And a few remember the poster for school one? Oh, yeah, Drew Barrymore's? Right. That's it. He's in the middle. She's in the movie for like three minutes. And the poster is her beautiful face with her blue eyes, you know, shining out of the poster. Hilarious.

Alex Ferrari 42:30
But she was so it was Drew's idea to be that part. It wasn't it wasn't was his idea.

Cary Woods 42:35
No, no. Wow. Drew Barrymore is brilliant. Some actors sometimes just have an instinct about these things that you just don't see. I mean, Matt Dillon had it about drugstore cowboy. You know, drugstore cowboy was written for a 40 year old man. You know, Gus, drugstore can be the, you know, firstline 40 year old Bob. And I had given I was an agent and I gave it to Matt as a writing sample, because I had just signed Gus as my client. And I wanted him to hire Gus as a writer. And I gave him drugstore cowboy is a writing sample for the script that he wanted to write. He read the script. And he called me up. He was happy to see you. I go, why he goes, I'll tell you what, dinner so we go to dinner. He goes, Listen, I have to play this part. I met the guys 40 years old. We've already sent it to Bill hurt, which we had sent it to Bill hurt after kiss of the Spider Woman. He goes, No, that's too old. He can't be 40 because if he's a 40 year old guy who has been a drug addict, since he's like, 13, there's no so persuaded me and I introduced them. You know, I set up a meeting with him and Gus, and he persuaded Gus to and ended up being a drugstore cowboy. And it was purely because he saw something about that character being 20 years younger. That the writer director didn't see surely I didn't see. And you know, we were connecting it to Drew saying that she should play the part of the girl. Girl number one she didn't even have a name she just drove number one. Sometimes out to see things that we don't see. It's an interesting,

Alex Ferrari 44:32
It's and that's the brilliance of that movie. I mean, if you don't kill me, spoiler alert for anyone listening if you don't kill a bear. If you don't kill Drew Barrymore off in the first three or four minutes of the film. I'm not sure the movie does well, it even it's the thing that it was the Hitchcock aspect of things you know, you killed off your main lead. Well, wait a minute, if I could, I just killed off Jubair more. Nothing is everything's out the window. And it was So perfect with a commentary on the horror genre and what Kevin Williamson script was doing. And it was a remarkable script now, I got to ask you though, with with working with Wes, did you? What was it like working with, you know, kind of like a legend? You know, and he was at the, I think at the top of his game at that point.

Cary Woods 45:19
What it was like was Yes, sir. What else do you need? Yes, was a horror movie with West Craven, for now. And, you know, and I'm not even a guy and even if I was didn't matter, I'm not even a guy who like pretended to, you know, have a great interest in the genre of great knowledge about the genre. Only news ahead, Wes Craven directing a horror movie, you know, so that was it, you know, whatever he needed was, what was what my job, you know, and, and he was a pleasure to work with.

Alex Ferrari 45:58
Now, how did you get involved with Cop Land, another film, that just is, I mean, one of the starting films for James bang Mangold, who, who's had a decent career, since then,

Cary Woods 46:10
I had, I saw heavy at Sundance, Jim angle, first movie, and I flipped out for it. I just flipped. And, and I'm very director centric, you know, if I see a filmmaker that I really like, and that's interesting, I want to talk to them and meet them and see what they're interested in, you know. And so I saw heavy at Sundance, and Jim was there. And, you know, the beautiful little movie. I don't remember if at the time movies were selling for a lot at Sundance, but it wasn't that kind of movie wasn't going to be like a big commercial thing. But beautifully done. And I met with him and I said, Well, what do you do you have anything you want to do? Next? He goes, Yeah, I want to do a contemporary Western. It takes place in a police to any pitches me Copland? I go, That sounds really great. You know, when when you're done writing it, can I read those, I'm done writing it. Great. Let me read it. So I read it, I love it. I say I want to do it. I go down to Harvey I go, I think I found our next movie, and I give him Cop Land. And then, and he loved it too. And then he sent it to John Travolta, they had just finished Pulp Fiction, and he sent it to John Travolta to play the lead. And I remember going down to meet with John Travolta who liked it. But who as he put it, wanted to get paid. And what he meant by that was that apparently on Pulp Fiction, knowing that pay, no. And Pulp Fiction then became a big giant hit, and John Travolta now was back at what his price would be on the open market, which was nowhere near what Harvey was gonna pay him. So he said, Look, I love it. I want to do it. Tell Harvey I just want to be paid. And so. Okay. And then an agent at William Morris. I think John Stuart storm was at ICM at the time and somebody at William Morris, who was trying to sign him sent him the script, because an agent thing to do is to send a script to somebody at another agency that their own agent might not have thought of them for, which is what happened here. Stallone had never heard of the movie. And he read it, he loved it. He was down in Florida, he offered to fly up to New York and meet. We met him, you know, he said he was going to gain weight. He couldn't have been any nicer or any more respectful. I mean, it was like, you know, the opposite of things that you heard about Sly Stallone, and you know, he was going to be working with a first pet Well, a second time filmmaker, but essentially, you know, first time filmmaker, and couldn't have been a nicer, more respectful guy couldn't have been, and he, you know, he, he worked as hard as you can work on that port. And I think he did a great job. He was great.

Alex Ferrari 49:36
And how did you put together that cast and being it's an insanity of a cast?

Cary Woods 49:43
It's always a script, really. It's always about it's about the script and the director. You know, if you have a script and the director can go into the room, and persuade the actor that he's going to get what is on the page if the actor likes what's on the page. You're going to get him, he's not going to do it because he likes you because you're a nice guy, and you'd be the guy to go out to a game with, you know, it has to be these are artists and they want to do something that's gonna challenge them. And that was a really, really good script. And then of course, as we kept going on this cast started become better. So then the actor was like, Well, wait a minute, you've got De Niro and Stallone and yeah, you know, so then all of a sudden, it becomes like a snowball effect with Harvey Keitel, you know, and it's like, all of a sudden, yeah, you know, now you want to be part of

Alex Ferrari 50:36
Nobody. Nobody wants to get to the party first. But once once the mood right, once the movie is dating a pretty girl, all the pretty girls want to come?

Cary Woods 50:45
Exactly Well, we had a lot of pretty girls at that party.

Alex Ferrari 50:48
There's no no question. No question. I mean, you're looking at I mean, Robert Patrick Lee Ray Liotta. Like he just got the list just goes on and on. You just watch that movie. You're like, how did it get this guy had to get this guy, holy cow. It was, and still alone is probably one of his best performances in, throughout his career

Cary Woods 51:06
Go out as a producer and say, Oh, well, I'm so amazing. It isn't you don't have a script, you could be I don't know, whatever you are, you have to have a script. And you have to have the right talent director that's going to be shooting it, you know, and then they you predicting the made, you can make it look good as a producer, if you have those two things, you know, without them. I don't know what else you can do.

Alex Ferrari 51:29
Exactly. Now, you also worked with a young, a young filmmaker, writer director, by the name of M Night Shyamalan, on his first feature called Wide Awake, which has, which he's completely gotten nothing to do with his career. As far as his where his path, but yet you worked with EMI at the very beginning of his career. What was that experience like?

Cary Woods 51:58
That boy, graphical, very nice guy. Here's the thing about an night, first movie or second movie, you did a little thing in India before that. But he carried himself again, like Larry Clark, he carried himself like he had directed 20 movies. I mean, this guy knew filming. Or he knew what he wanted to do. And he was he's going after he's a pleasure to work with. And this was the kind of thing where his Indian movie and him he the power of his talking about his script and about what the movie was going to be and just as intelligence made us feel, and it wasn't a very expensive movie made us feel like well, yeah, we want to be we want to work with this guy. And that was a major milestone.

Alex Ferrari 52:47
And then and then as I say, the rest is history when he wrote that little ghost movie.

Cary Woods 52:53
That will go smoothly Correct.

Alex Ferrari 52:56
Did he Did he mention the ghost movie while you guys were working together or not?

Cary Woods 53:00
No, unfortunately. He and the Weinstein's had a falling out shockingly, the shocking. Shockingly, another director that didn't want to work with them ever again. And just my luck, I'm stuck there. And he goes off and does that movie, you know? And I'm just like, you know, nothing I can do about it, because I still had my deal where I was stuck at Miramax, right. So, yeah, so there were a number of there were a number of those.

Alex Ferrari 53:36
I'm sure. I'm sure there was a couple of drinks after success came out.

Cary Woods 53:42
Yes, listen, I love them. I wish nothing but the best and I surely understood why he didn't want to do anything with those guys again. So you know, no quarrel for me.

Alex Ferrari 53:52
Of course, of course. And then you know, so you've been living during your career at this point. You've been living in the indie world in the Miramax world, you know, it basically in the heyday of Miramax, which was the 90s, basically from the early 90s, all the way into the basically the early 2000s. And then you got to jump into a very deep pool, working on a huge big budget blockbuster like Godzilla with Roland Emmerich, who is, you know, arguably one of the best action directors and spectacle directors. Honestly, I think in the history of cinema, what was it like and what did you take away from that experience from working on smaller budgets, smaller films to jumping to

Cary Woods 54:38
The truth of the matter is that it went backwards. I worked on the big ones first. I had my deal in Sony before I did kit or gumbo was good shirt or any of those, you know, Godzilla was an odd thing because I was dealing with a guy. We always chasing down the rights to Mr. Magoo. You And there was a Japanese company called toe toe ha that represented that owned the rights and there was a guy in the Valley who represented them in dealing with people who wanted to come to them for the rights and I came to them for the rights will came to him to see if the right for Mr. Magoo available may work. And I went back to Tristar and Colombia which is where my home was. And they wanted nothing to do with Mr. Magoo. And despite the fact I have to go tells the guy from Magoo that they don't want to do it even with Mike Meyer, they didn't like the dailies on AX murder. Don't that's a whole other story I read not even get into because it's so aggravating. But, um, I mean, Mike Myers was a comedic genius as far as I was concerned, and the studio didn't like the dailies or So I Married an Axe Murderer. So consequently, they didn't want to get the rights to Magoo for Mike Myers to write and star and Magoo. I mean, think about that. Any event, I had to go back to the guy and say, Look, I'm really sorry, but the studio is passing. It was Oh, that's too bad. But you know, what just became available is that my clients own the rights to Godzilla. And up until now, the director who created it was alive and he didn't want to share the reading want us to option the rights to an American studio, but he passed away sadly, a month ago now my clients are willing to do it. And I'm Godzilla. So I raced back to the office. And they said, No. And I had worked for Peter Guber, who was their boss. He was the chairman of the studio overs. You know, Columbia and Tristar. I tracked him down. And, you know, basically he said, Well, how's it going to go? Not that great. This is what happened. And he goes, the rights to Godzilla the fire breathing monster, I go, Yes. He goes, Oh, no, we have to do that. Leave it with me. And then again, that was it. They got the rights. No one was happy with me. But nonetheless, we got the rights.

Alex Ferrari 57:20
And you said you had to jump you had to jump over a couple people said to get that project greenlit.

Cary Woods 57:25
It was the kind of thing that you're not supposed to do. So if I was taught political politics in studio 101, I broke every possible rule.

Alex Ferrari 57:38
But it's Godzilla man.

Cary Woods 57:40
But it's Godzilla man. Yeah, it was Godzilla. And you know, just sometimes, it just happens so often, when you just know somebody is missing. You know, somebody's missing something here. Anyway.

Alex Ferrari 57:53
And I remember I mean, I remember when Godzilla came out, it was the marketing budget on that, oh, God, Oh, my God, it was everywhere. It was. I remember, they took big chunks out of like, the Empire State Building or something like that, like they had a banner. And it looks like, literally, there was a chunk missing. It was

Cary Woods 58:13
For the premiere screaming in New York was at Madison Square Garden. Madison, in the marketing was brilliant. You know, you have to say, I mean, size does matter. I mean, they were having so much fun with it, you know, um, it was fun. It was a it was a fun project to make into market. You know?

Alex Ferrari 58:43
What was in that? Obviously, that was probably the biggest budget thing that you'd ever worked on,

Cary Woods 58:48
Yeah, by by a lot.

Alex Ferrari 58:50
Right. So what was it? Is there any little lessons or gold nuggets that you kind of pulled away from that experience?

Cary Woods 58:58
Can you do a movie that size? Have a director like Roland Emmerich? You know, it's having some experience and doing movies of that size is really important, because it's not what I did. No, it's not my thing. And he knew exactly what he was doing. So

Alex Ferrari 59:21
Yeah, it's remarkable. It's remarkable now that they give Marvel movies to younger, inexperienced directors or just they maybe have one or two indies under their belt, and they get thrown into this 100 and $50 million beast. But I think that that's a machine.

Cary Woods 59:39
I think the exactly, I think the infrastructure is in place right now, where the line producers and everything else, where you basically can put somebody in there who creatively puts together who talks about what it is they want to do, and then they've got this giant team of people who can make it happen. ad budgets that work for them. And obviously the budgets generous, but I don't think I think it's it. They've now got it down to a science, especially at Marvel. They didn't you know? How many of them were here? Are they turning out?

Alex Ferrari 1:00:16
Three three to four if you include the Sony stuff? Yeah, it's

Cary Woods 1:00:20
I mean, it's essentially it's right. They got it down to a sign.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:26
It's a factory. It's a factory.

Cary Woods 1:00:27
It's a factory.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:29
Yeah. And there's, you know, those kind of movies. God, I just remember, seeing Godzilla was freaking everywhere, man. Like there's, it almost reminded me of Batman 89. Like, it was at that level of marketing.

Cary Woods 1:00:43
It was, well, you got to remember the guys, the producers of Batman. Damn, you know, the studio about Godzilla. Makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's probably not a complete coincidence.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:59
Now, um, what are you working on now? What are the projects you're working on now?

Cary Woods 1:01:04
Well, we just finished shooting a movie, The John Slattery directed go Maggie Moore, starring Jon Hamm, and Tina Fey. And based based and actually, it's based on a true story of a killing that happened about 30 years ago outside of Euston two women about the same age pretty much kind of nondescript in their 40s. And they were both murdered three days apart about 30 miles from each other. And the thing about it is, they both had the same name. So three days, murders three days apart, 30 miles apart, pretty much the same age with the same name. They investigate and the authorities conclude that it's a coincidence.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:03
Of course, of course it is,

Cary Woods 1:02:05
Of course. Alright, a pearl. Paul Birnbaum reads about it and thinks no possible way. Is that a coincidence? So he concocts a tale. And this was on America's Unsolved Mysteries. I mean, Robert Stack did an episode on this. Our writer saw it and thought this, you know, this is perfect fodder for like a, you know, Fargo like black comedy, which he wrote, and is great. And Slattery found it and he put it together. And you know, him and Faye are incredible. Nick, Mohammed from Ted lasso is in it. And he's great. I love him and Ted lasso. And yeah, so I'm excited about that. We just wrapped that a couple of weeks ago. And I'm doing a teeny tiny little movie called man with a really talented, who I think you spoke to called Steve Friedman, who's like a 21 year old kid who basically put together a movie for like, $15,000 as a crowdfunded thing. And somebody brought him to my attention. And I took a look at, you know, a few minutes of it and just spoke to him for a little while, and it was clear that he was talking to a filmmaker. So

Alex Ferrari 1:03:26
Yeah, he has he has a very interesting story and he's going to be on the show in probably a few weeks after your your you air. But he, he's great.

Cary Woods 1:03:36
He's very much one of a kind. He's funny, Tik Tok generate he's an old soul from a different generation. Yeah, yes, very much. And, and he's really smart. And I think really talented. And I only don't know many people who love movies as much as he does. He truly loves cinema. And he's a throwback and I'm really and he's 21 So I'm really curious to see what the future holds in store for him and I have no doubt it'll be great things but it's fun it's fun working with you know another 21 year old director kit you know, it's been a while for me

Alex Ferrari 1:04:14
And he probably has any probably has a ghost movie that he's gonna direct soon soon after.

Cary Woods 1:04:19
Oh, I would imagine but this time I'll be the producer

Alex Ferrari 1:04:23
There you go this time you're not gonna let that go? Yeah, no.

Cary Woods 1:04:27
He's not having a fight with the studio.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:31
You're the studio you're in the studio.

Cary Woods 1:04:33
I am the studio right now he's I don't know that his ghost movies gonna be the next one. But he'll do whatever it's gonna be it'll be interesting.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:46
Now as a as a producer carry me. We all you know being on set and working on projects over the years. There's always that day that everything's around you is it everything is crashing down around you. There's you're losing the sun and actor doesn't show up the cameras broken the director as a fit. Something happens as a producer, that the whole world's coming down crashing around you? Is there a specific project or day that sticks out in your mind? And how did you overcome that day?

Cary Woods 1:05:17
I think interesting question. For me, it's, it's different than than a day on a set. Okay. For me, it's more like the movies going away. In other words, like for me once we're on the set the movies happening, so there's a day and you're gonna have a problem with that de you'll fix it somehow. To me, I'm the bigger calamities is Oh, shit, they're not making the movie. You know, the bigger calamity for me was getting the phone call from my lead, you know, Drew Barrymore. Like, I don't want to play the lead, I want to play the girl who's gone on page 20. You know, and I literally, I'm on the phone, and I'm seeing the movie go away. I'm seeing myself having to go up. Oh, well, we lost the lead. So they're not gonna make that movie. And there's that, you know, it's more like, those are the kinds of things I mean, the other kinds of things. I mean, I've never gotten the calamitous call, you know, like my directors, mother died, or my, there are those. Look, we're human beings, and we live human life. No, so it is divorce, there's death, there's all accidents, that can kind of happen. But even those things, you know, will close you down for a couple of days, but you're still making the movie, the other kinds of things where you're just your movies gone, you know, it just went away, you lost your lead, or the money is not coming in, you know, the money changed their mind. Those are more the kinds of things that I've had to deal with. And Drew's probably the best example of one where it was like, Oh, God, there goes, it's, it's, I mean, I have to get ready to have the meeting, where I'm gonna go try. Now I was sold, she sold me, you know, I mean, creatively, I was totally sold creatively, it wasn't my saving money. With them, it was gonna be, hey, you're gonna save X amount of millions of dollars, you know, and it's a good idea creatively. So I was plotting how I was going to sell it to them. But, you know, I got lucky that they saw it that way. And they ended up making well, they got lucky too. And they ended up making the movie, but it could have easily gone another direction.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:42
Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions asked all my guests. What, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today.

Cary Woods 1:07:52
But in one, it would in a filmmaker,

Alex Ferrari 1:07:55
As a director as a director,

Cary Woods 1:07:57
Shoot, go out there and shoot stuff and put it on YouTube and get it up. And as much as you can shoot, and if you can write, write as much as you can write? Because, look, it's a different era. You know, when I started in this business, saying to some kid go shoot, well, how am I going to shoot a camera cost $60,000. Now you can go, go get yourself a phone for $500. And shoot, you know, and all you need is a couple of friends or a couple of actors. Do it sweet. Did you know that's basically trees, the model of a guy who didn't have anything, he had a phone, and he started shooting things and cutting, cutting it on the actual phone himself, and putting it up on YouTube. And that's there are a lot of people who are doing that. And now there are a lot more places than YouTube and there's tech top and there's Instagram and there's just go out and do your thing, because there's no reason not to because there's no barriers to entry as it relates to economics.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:59
Now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life?

Cary Woods 1:09:18
One of the biggest one of the biggest bands, the thing that gets in the way of people both in life and in art and in this business and many businesses ego, put your ego aside, you don't have to be overly modest, but none of that means anything. What means something speaking since we're talking about movies is what's on screen, or you know what ends up on the screen with your name on it. That's all really that needs to map. You know, the rest of it is like what position credit or you and all of this kind of stuff doesn't really matter at the end, you know? because you can, I won't get asked me about a lot of people and a lot of movies and I won't know what position they were in, I'll just know if their name was on the movie or not. You know, it doesn't matter. You know, Jim Brooks, great filmmaker once said to me, because he was having a screen, I was developing something with him and examine a screening of a movie he had just finished. And he invited everybody in the office to the screening. And very often, you know, a lot of filmmakers are really precious about who gets to see a cut to the movie. And he was invited in the receptionist's and the secretaries and everybody, and I sit there, Hey, Jim, how you know, you're really generous with who you invite to your early screening. You know, well, how come you feel so comfortable doing that? He said, hey, look, these are just stories, and everybody can have ideas about stories. And so therefore, they can have a good suggestion. And if they do, at the end of the day, it's gonna say, directed by Jim Brooks. And I thought that is it's both humble, and it's confident. Yeah, and it's smart. Now, and that's the truth. The end of the day, what's up on the screen is what's gonna matter. The rest of it is all just noise.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:19
Great, great. Great lesson. Now and lastly, three of your favorite films of all time.

Cary Woods 1:11:24
Oh, God.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:25
Whatever comes to mind at right now?

Cary Woods 1:11:27
I mean, come on. Um, well, what you know, it's like me. Okay, the godfather shockingly shockingly. Mean Streets. Marty. And then where do I go from there? Well, I'm going to exclude any of my own movies because they could be in there but um, uh, huh. I mean, just because it's Citizen Kane. I have to say Citizen Kane. Sure.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:08
Hey, that's that's very respectable list. Very, very.

Cary Woods 1:12:11
I mean, you know, you don't want to say Oh, well, yeah, Citizen Kane in The Godfather, but then you watch them in your Yeah. How else can you not?

Alex Ferrari 1:12:20
I mean, yeah, I mean, my list is always generally each it fluctuates. But it's you know, it's it's Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, the matrix, Blade Runner. I mean, the list goes on and on Pulp Fiction, you

Cary Woods 1:12:34
No, there's so many there's so many.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:37
There's so many. But I always like to like what's coming at the top of the hill? What's, what's the mike throw away, like, if it comes on on TNT? Or if it see on streaming or something like that, you just throw the remote away and just keep watching.

Cary Woods 1:12:49
What have you seen it like? I I mean, I saw Mean Streets not too long ago. I'm talking about showing my son, the godfather. All of this has been happening in the last three weeks. And I guess I was talking about citizen. I mean,

Alex Ferrari 1:13:04
It's fresh. It's fresh in the mind. It's fresh.

Cary Woods 1:13:07
Yeah. But I mean, if I would have seen about a year ago or so I saw Goodfellas at the film forum in New York. You know, if you talked to me a week after that, it would have been good phones instead of means

Alex Ferrari 1:13:19
As as much as it should be, as it should. Yeah. It's, it's It's tough. It's a tough, it's a tough thing. It's a tough thing. But Karen, I really appreciate you coming on the show my friend and Oh, my pleasure and sharing, and sharing and sharing your knowledge with everybody. So I appreciate it. And please, keep making great movies my friend.

Cary Woods 1:13:39
Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate it.

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BPS 190: How I Made My Filmmaking Dream Come True with Andy Erwin

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Andrew Erwin and his brother Jon are the filmmaking team known by most as the Erwin Brothers. The Birmingham, Alabama born brothers grew up around college football and entertainment. Their father, a local news anchor introduced them to the television industry at a young age. As teenagers they began their career in sports television with ESPN as camera operators.

After several years working in sports they transitioned into directing music videos and documentaries. They won music video of the year three years consecutively at the GMA Dove Awards working with some of the top artist in Christian, Country, and Rock music. They went on to produced the award winning 9/11 documentary The Cross and the Towers (2006).

In 2010 the brothers shifted their focus exclusively to developing feature films. Their first feature narrative, October Baby (2011), was a coming of age drama about a young girl named Hannah (Rachel Hendrix) trying to find her birth mother. After a strong grass roots campaign the micro budget feature debuted theatrically in the top ten eventually landing on the front page of the New York Times.

Andrew and Jon’s sophomore release Moms’ Night Out (2014), starring Sarah Drew, Sean Astin, and Patricia Heaton, was their first venture into comedy. The crowd pleaser had a successful theatrical run with Sony’s TriStar and continues to grow its audience on dvd as a cult classic.

Next Andrew and Jon tackled the epic true sports story Woodlawn (2015), starring Jon Voight, Sean Astin, Nic Bishop, and newcomer Caleb Castille. It was a deeply personal story for the Erwins. One of the characters in the Alabama story is their father, played in the movie by Astin. The duo continue to live in the Southeast as they write and develop stories of redemption and hope with a strong emphasis on their faith roots.

The inspirational true story of Kurt Warner, who overcomes years of challenges and setbacks to become a two-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl champion, and Hall of Fame quarterback. Just when his dreams seem all but out of reach, it’s only with the support of his wife, Brenda, and the encouragement of his family, coaches and teammates that Warner perseveres and finds the strength to show the world the champion that he already is.

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Alex Ferrari 0:00
I like to welcome the show. Andy Erwin, how you doing, Andy?

Andy Erwin 0:16
Great man! It's good to be with you. And good good to talk movies.

Alex Ferrari 0:19
Yeah, man. Absolutely, brother. So, man you've had, you've had a very interesting career, to say the least. But how did you get started in this insanity that we call the film industry?

Andy Erwin 0:30
I mean, I think anybody that gets involved, either they pay a lot for film school, or they run away injured during the circus, and we were kind of more of the circus kind of performer route. And so, um, you know, my brother and I, we were kind of studio rats, my dad was in news. Growing up, he was the news encouraging 11 in Dallas, and the CBS affiliate there. And so we always grew up around kind of the industry. And, you know, when we kind of became teenagers, they let us use the equipment from midnight to 4am if we worked off the books for $10 a day, and, and so it wasn't at the CBS affiliate, I won't name no one can say brookwater Child child labor laws. But we did that when I was 15, my brother's 12. And we just kind of fell in love with telling stories. And so I went off to college in New York, and and John was in high school, and I just heard what he was doing back home, I was like, that's way cooler what I'm doing. So I dropped out of school. And we started working on the weekends for sports networks, like ESPN as cameramen. And that paid the bills for us to the other five days of the week, to to be able to have this hobby grown out of control. So at that point, we live in Birmingham, Alabama, started a little production company ended up working into documentaries and music videos, with this idea of one day doing features but it took about 15 years till we got to our first one. And it was a it was a it was a crazy journey to get there.

Alex Ferrari 2:04
Very cool, man. And so you were you were you were hustling as a camera guy trying to get his trying to get their movies made. And you got your first micro budget film made, which was October Baby if I'm not mistaken, right?

Andy Erwin 2:19
Yeah, it was a small, it was a small budget film. We did it for about $750,000. 19 days shoot. There at that point, we were doing a lot of music videos. And so doing a lot of rock videos, we were kind of good at blowing things up. And so, you know, if we couldn't figure out how to interview video, we just blow something up. And in fact, the last treatment we did for a band called skillet, it's Dan comes out, things blow up, it starts to rain, more things blow up, it stops raining, everything blows up. And that was the whole treatment. And, and that video kind of blew me blew up. And so you know, and so we, we ended up directing more and more second unit kind of things. And getting on film sets, doing stunt sequences was kind of our thing. And then, you know, we just said it's now or never we need to take the opportunity to try to do you know, see what we could do on our own. And so we said, rather than lean into all of our tricks or anything flashy, listens to a small little character drama. And there was a friend of ours named Gianna Jessen that was had an incredible story about her life story that we heard and we just said, what if we fictionalized that, and kind of put it in the context of this kind of kind of romantic kind of coming of age story. And do that little $750,000 micro budget should have never worked? Did it? Like, if we had known what we know now, I mean, that like we would have told ourselves never to go for it. But we raised the money to both put it out in theaters and do it ourselves. And it made enough money to give us a chance to do more. So it was that was our that was our journey.

Alex Ferrari 4:04
Now that ignorance is bliss, isn't it? When you're young?

Andy Erwin 4:08
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, you because, you know, they say whatever, doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But there's certain things in this industry that actually kill you. And so, you know, I think if you knew all that going in, like we would never, I mean, I talk to my kids all the time. I'm just like, I look at like just the recklessness of a 13 year old and I'm like, Man, if I had known now when I was a dad, there was no way I would have done some stuff as a kid. Cuz he just like that could actually kill you. But you know, when you're young, when you're young and ignorant of those things, you just say hey, why not do it like this? And I think as a filmmaker, you know, it's better to try that stuff out early. And, and not to get a little bit more reckless and sometimes it works and sometimes you die.

Alex Ferrari 4:55
Exactly. Hopefully figuratively, not literally In our business now, but with October Baby, you actually took it out on your own and you actually did your own kind of the job do your own, like, for walling it off of it and getting it on the world. And how did you actually get it? Because it was a fairly big, big hit for such a small budget.

Andy Erwin 5:15
Yeah, I mean, for such a small budget, we felt like we really needed to be disciplined to do something that was just about kind of character relationships. And we've done this tiny little pilot for a small TV network that didn't make it. And we did a little, little pilot with this small cast that we that we fell in love with. And, in fact, one of the cast members that we discovered was James Austin Johnson, who is now the new Biden and Trump on Saturday live. He, he was in Nashville, and he sits broken out this year. But he was as funny little kid, there's 19 years old, you're in Nashville. And, and so we took that cost, and the pilot didn't get picked up. But we're like, we love this cast, let's insert them into this story that we're writing. And so we wrote it around that task. And when we get done with it, it wasn't meant to be a kind of a controversial film at all, it was really just based on my my friend Gianna story. But it hits some kind of, you know, raw nerves with different people and, and there's a lot of distributors that were nervous to kind of take it out. And we just had that we had that independent film spirit, they were just like, Well, why not take it out on earth again. So

Alex Ferrari 6:34
Again, the ignorance the ignorance is helpful

Andy Erwin 6:36
It's the ignorance. And then and then we went, we went and raised the money to put it in theaters and hired, you know, Samuel Goldwyn, to put it out. And it really should have been a train wreck, and it worked. And, and, you know, I think the goal with any independent filmmaker, especially early on, is for your product to do well enough to find an audience. You know, that's, that at least validates enough to allow other people to take a risk on you to let you do another one. And, you know, so we weren't aiming for a homerun, we were really aiming to, let's get on base. And let's do a story that we believe in. It's a story that we're proud of. But, you know, but it's not, it's going to shatter records. And let's get on base show that we can do this. Have one under our belt, and let's keep going forward. And that was what October Baby was for us.

Alex Ferrari 7:25
Now, with your music video background, what did you bring from your music video background into the into your narrative feature film? Because I mean, I've directed music videos a ton, and there's a lot of you get a lot of hours on set, which I think helps a lot. And you know, with, well, you deal with craziness that you would never deal with on a feature film.

Andy Erwin 7:45
Yeah, I mean, oh, my gosh. That that, I mean, I think there's a lot of things. I think, first of all, it's kind of like, you know, short films with a lot more volume to it, because you're working on somebody else's budget, you know, you're not having to go out and raise, you know, $20,000 a pop to do short films, you're, somebody's paying you to do it. And, you know, and back then there was actually budget for music videos, that's kind of, you know, going to where, you know, you can't do it unless, you know, you're a college kids, but back then they accept budgets. And I think I think several things, it allowed us to kind of get just time in the saddle, and to try different things. And I think just like any other art form, you know, for a long time, up front, you make your way imitating other people he's trying stuff on, until finally, there comes that moment where you find your voice, and you're like, Oh, this is the kind of stories I tell, this is my style. For a long time, up front, you're just trying different things on like, what it goes like this, it's like that, and doing music videos allowed us to kind of try a lot of hats on. And so we started out in more than a Christian contemporary world, and, you know, had a lot of fun there. But, um, but then, you know, moved into country song, and then we ended up doing a lot of stuff in the rock world. And that was where we just got to experiment. And the second thing was, is allowed us to learn how to deal with big personalities. And I think there's, you know, I think every actor wants to sing, and every singer wants to act. So there's, they're, you know, intrinsically kind of the same species. And, and I think he just learned to deal with, you know, fragile egos deal with people that need to feel safe. Know, artists, whether it's a music artist, or an actor wants to look stupid, and I think typically, a lot of the neurotic behavior that is exhibited is just from people being afraid of looking stupid. And so it is the loudest to learn how to navigate a lot of that stuff. So it knocks some years off of those headaches of learning how to speak that language. So that when we stepped onto a film set, it's just like, oh, okay, this personalities familiar, at least and, and then and then my brother, my brother in law Particularly the media is more visual. And he brought a lot of that visual style into how we shoot.

Alex Ferrari 10:06
Yeah, I mean, I think as directors, we, the thing I've talked to actors all the time is they just want to feel safe. And if you can make them feel safe, they'll give you the best, they'll give you the best they can. But if they don't feel safe, that's when the problems occur.

Andy Erwin 10:21
And I've worked, I've worked with a lot of actors that, you know, there's certain actors I've worked with that have a reputation for sideways sideways energy. And but, you know, I just, you know, a lot of them are like, no, they're sweethearts, as long as they feel safe, that sideways energy means he had a toxic film set, or a weak film director or somebody that didn't really know what they wanted. And they felt like they had to, it's the same thing that happens with kids, when like, you know, my kids at home, if there's not like some boundaries and stuff, and they feel like they're in charge, you know, they don't feel safe, then that's where you get all the sideways energy, but they really know where they fit in the family. And you're giving them really good boundaries, and giving them enough leash to be their own people, and not trying to control them, but you're trying to direct them. And it's imperfect science, but it's really about that safety. And that's what creates that with actors. And I think we started learning that with a lot of the crazy neurosis that happens on music videos.

Alex Ferrari 11:20
Oh, music videos. They are they are wonderful, aren't they? But if there was a podcast, we could just tell stories of what happened on set that we can legally say publicly.

Andy Erwin 11:32
Yeah! I would have to change all the names. There was one, there was one music video I did, where, where there's two artists that I won't name sure that that might have booked the men but um, but the the the label paired this, this group together, and they're a duo, they're famous duo. But they didn't get along. And so because they didn't really they weren't, like best buds, the way they appeared on the screen. They were like, two different artists that were sort of artists they paired together. And so, you know, they had their own tour bus each had their own tour bus. And it was a hot summer day, and we're doing this music video. And I would go into one's tour bus and say, so until, you know, we're ready to get on set. It's like, well, what so and so my partner, is he ready to go? Now is that why am I going out until he does, like, I'll be right back. And I go into their tour bus. And I'd be like, Hey, man, and I just went back and forth for like 30 minutes until I taught one of them into coming out first. And so it was constant.

Alex Ferrari 12:35
And I'm sure that's probably one of the most tame stories you have.

Andy Erwin 12:40
That's the one that I legally, I'm not afraid of getting sued for that one. So

Alex Ferrari 12:45
Now that you know, as directors, man, there's always that one day on set, that the whole world's coming crashing down around you. camera's not working you losing your life, the actor will come out of the trailer, all this kind of stuff. How what was that? What was that worst day for you? Which there's an argument of me that every day has one of those, but what what was the one that sticks out in your mind? And how did you get over it? How did you get through that process that day?

Andy Erwin 13:10
I think you know, I think as a director, you know, you always, I mean, the first two or three days of filming any film, the first few days of principal photography, you're questioning all your life choices, and you're like, it's all burning down. This is why I get exposed. This is where they find out that I don't know what I'm doing. You know, and it just and you develop kind of a little bit of that marathoners pace, and you get into a rhythm. And I think the biggest thing you have to learn as a film director is that you got to let certain fires burn, you know that, you know, you're not going to be able to put out every fire every day, you just got to get you got to you got to keep one from consuming the entire set. And so there's little fires, they're always burning got to get used to. There's any point in the day, there's at least five people that are going to be tested you. And I think as you have more time in the saddle, you get a little bit more calluses where you're like you're not, you don't lack empathy, you're not immune to the fact that it's hard. But you just have to be okay that people aren't okay with you sometimes. And but for me, the biggest catastrophe that ended up I think actually making a better film was on the movie Woodlawn, you know, and so Woodlawn was another independent film that we had done. So it was one that was the most personal to us. It was it was a story that my dad used to tell us as a bedtime story growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, and it was the one that we wanted to make. And it's a true story about the last part of integration in Birmingham, Alabama in the 70s. And this one little football team that was the last integrate. And the first black superstar that came out of that system is Captain Kidd, Tony Nathan. And so we raised the money to do it. It was the most money we had raised at that point was about 13 million. And we went out to start, you know, it was a week last week of pre production. And I cast the kid out of out of London to play the role of Tony. I don't know what it is about British actors, but they make a big play the best people from the South. Just look at anybody on TV right now that's got a southern accent. I guarantee you, they're from England. But but sort of, so I cast this kid, really good actor that's going on to do some good things. And the week before we started filming, for whatever reason, that would not an explanation. The Embassy in pulled his visa, they wouldn't let him they wouldn't let him travel. And we're like, you know, we didn't have the budget to push. So, you know, instantly. I was like panic, I just said, and our casting director starts, you know, just throwing out all sorts of names of people that were good actors, but I'm like, what, are they athletic? Do they play football? You know, because it was so important that this actor be able to do a lot of in camera stuff. And, and so we were panic, there was this one kid named Caleb Castiel. That was the stunt double for Tony. And Caleb had auditioned for Tony. I hadn't seen this audition was a particularly good. But he just had this charisma that wouldn't quit and said, Well, if I don't get Tony, I'm going to do the stunt double. So he shows up the stunt double. And this kid played for Nick, Nick Saban University, Alabama. And he runs like a gazelle man, he just is pretty to watch. And I was just, you know, I'm kind of a person of prayer. And I was just like, man, what do I do? And I just Caleb's name popped in my head. And I was like, surely that him he's been in one TV commercial.

Alex Ferrari 17:05
Surely not. Talking to the voice in your head, surely not him.

Andy Erwin 17:13
Just it felt right. And he just had this, this, this spirit that wouldn't quit. So I called them up. And I just said, Caleb, I need you to get over to the studio. I'm going to give you every opportunity to win this role today. And he said, I've been waiting on the call, I signed my died today auditioned with the date and said, This is the day I got the role. He said, I just knew it was mine. And I was like, holy cow. So I threw him in a room with Jon Voight, who's playing there, Brian. And Caleb just in good acting is about how you respond. It's about being in the moment being present. And it's not about acting, it's about reacting. And Taylor just reacted incredible being in the room with an Oscar winner. And he had the skill. And the whole movie, we call this the whole team together said, you know, this movie is about rallying around this kid Tony. And the team rallying around him, we're gonna rally around Caleb, He's our guy. And so he became the star, he became number one on the call sheet that day. And it made the movie. And since then Caleb's broken out, he's on one of the leads on NCIS, Los Angeles now and is doing incredible for himself. But that was the day he went from being a stunt guy to being number one on the call sheet. And I think a lot of times on a film set, the worst moment where you feel like it's all going down. It doesn't always work out. But a lot of times there's a doorway there to make something better.

Alex Ferrari 18:38
You always plan you always may have a plan, but it generally rarely ever goes according to plan. And it generally, generally, I'm gonna say nine out of 10 times it's a better than what you expected.

Andy Erwin 18:51
It usually does. I mean, and I think that's the hardest thing for young filmmakers. I think it was a big lesson for me there. But for young filmmakers, and that was my third feature at that point. But for young filmmakers, there's this fear of if I let go of control, that that people are gonna see that I really, that I'm a fraud. And I think any artist feels that. And I think as a result, we hold it tighter to the best be like I don't want you to judge me. Don't Don't judge my ugly baby. And, and I think what I've learned is, when I do that, when I have done that, the best I can hope that for that movie, good turnout is the one that I have in my head. There's no room for discovery. But when you kind of loosen your grip and you trust the close group of collaborators to speak into that process and have this policy of best idea wins. Then there's this element of discovery where it doesn't matter where that idea comes from. If it's a great idea, let's use it. And it just it when you realize that you have control because you're in the chair. You are the director there A lot of power that goes with that, that allows you to look at other people's ideas. So you discover things that you wouldn't have other other ways. So it makes a better movie.

Alex Ferrari 20:08
You know, I always find it fascinating. I've had I've had, I've been blessed by speaking to so many amazing, high high and performing people in this business, Oscar winners, Emmy winners and so on. And it'll never ceases to amaze me. The whole concept of imposter syndrome is something that is so prevalent in I mean, I'm like, I talk to somebody, I'm like, you want an Oscars like, Yeah, but I get I get sick when I go on set for the first day. I'm like, Yeah, wow. And it's so I always like, I always like to let independent filmmakers know it's okay. Even even the top of the top legends have issues with imposter syndrome. It's not something that's just you. Everyone's got it.

Andy Erwin 20:50
Well, I remember hearing Joe Wright talk about the first day Yeah, on on set with Gary Oldman on darkest hour, and he's like, I thought my job was supposed to be just making the environment around Gary, right. So that he can, you know, do its thing and it gets in the first day. And Gary leans over is like, you know, what do you think? Was it too far? He said, Joe realize that that moment, he said, really great directors want to be directed away from really great actors want to be directed. And, you know, that idea that any you know, anybody always has that feeling of I don't really know if I'm doing it right. And so after directing point in Woodlawn, I love I love the minute, but he called me he called me late one night. And John was like, Andy, it's, it's it's boy. Am I any good in this picture? I'm like, you're great. He's like, if I'm no good, just kept me out. Just cut the character completely. As a job, go ask your Oscar, bro. You know,

Alex Ferrari 21:52
You're okay!

Andy Erwin 21:54
Or, you know, or, you know, I directed Cloris Leachman and she had Oscar and and this latest one Anna Paquin. She's the youngest Oscar winner. It's just it never goes away. It just all of us feel like how do we stumble into this job? You know, and there's, there's a fraction of a percent of people that are just so qualified, they can do whatever they want. And there's an arrogance that goes with that. But I think even in that case, even in that case, there's I think it's motivated by insecurity. You know, I had a great interaction with Denzel Washington when we were I was mixing underdog and we're on the we're on the sound stages at Sony. And he was mixing letters to Jordan next door. I had underdog Michael Mann was was mixing his TV series he's doing right now across the hallway. And then Jason Reitman was test screening. Ghostbusters on the fourth stage. So we're all on stage six. And I texted somebody, and I said, Oh, my gosh, how did I get on this stage? She's the imposter here. And my filmmaker friend Rob backs and all four of you.

Alex Ferrari 23:05
I'm sure I'm sure Denzel at one point or another said that the same thing about like you because he just like everyone starts somewhere, man. No one just comes out an Oscar winner. No one just comes out knowing everything. You got to go through the process. You got to get the bumps I always call you gotta get the shrapnel. And that shrapnel is what makes you man. But yeah, you're absolutely you're absolutely right. Now, man, I got to touch on I can only imagine man, I recently after I watch American bug, which we're going to talk about in a second. I went I went back I was gonna meet let me go. Let me go watch that, because I'd seen the trailers and never seen it. Man, that movie was was impactful. Man, it was such a powerfully emotional film. And it's just, it's such an oddity, because it's like, hey, let's make a movie about how a song was written. Now, it was one of the biggest songs of all time, but it's like, you know, to hear that, like, let's go see how my heart will goes on was written. Like, it's nothing. So how do you make that though? That would be an interesting, I've seen the making of that movie. Yeah. How did you? How did you get that? How did you get involved with that? How did you want to tell that story?

Andy Erwin 24:13
Yeah, yeah, you know, it was, it was funny because, you know, we do pedal into stories, and we do very much gravitate towards stories of faith. I think that's become much more mainstream experience over the past 10 years than maybe when we first started. It was much more a tiny little niche kind of early on but now it's kind of found its footing where you know, the same way that other niche genres like you know, superhero movies or horror films have found their footing in something that's more mainstream you know, but but but when we started we were trying to find that hopefully we've been part of that solution you know, as well as others like divan Franklin, but with with I can only imagine, you know, we were not smart enough to really go out and find great stories. They just typically land in our lap. And I was screening we did a comedy, I do not recommend directing a comedy. It is very tough. We did a small comedy. Our second film was a small comedy for Sony called mom's out. And, and it was definitely, you know, took years off my life but but in the middle of that I was tasked screening a comedy up here in Nashville. And, and I just was cold calling a lot of people in in the community that might be interested in watching it. And so I reached out to Bart Miller from the band Mercy Me who wrote the song I can only imagine. I wrote, I wrote him on Facebook, and I just said, Hey, we don't know each other. But we run in the same circles. I'm test screening my film tonight. We'd love for you to see it. You want to come see it? He said, wrote back right away. So I just moved here from Texas. Yeah, I would love to see it. And at the end of the film, he really enjoyed it. And he said, Can we talk? And he said, There's a movie studio that's been developing my life story, the story myself and past five years. I would love you guys to take a look at it. And I said, Well, it's kind of serendipitous. They sent us the script this morning. Oh, and it just was kind of one of those things. And then I was like, What are you doing tonight? And he's like, Well, what are you doing? I was like, I was gonna go watch Captain America at midnight. He's like, I was gonna do the same thing. I was like, did we just become best friends. But the whole stepbrothers thing, but I I read this, we read a little bit of script, and the script just didn't jive with me, because it was just that it was about somebody's life experience. And it ended on a downer note, and they said, you know, one day, Mark wrote a great song. And it was like, we're like, we're like, this isn't a movie. It has to be something universally relatable. And it has to be something that's beyond just the song. And we sat down with Bart, one day, and my brother asked them Bart, if I were to say, Can I hold a gun to your head and say, Is there a god? What would you say? And he said, Absolutely. Because the change I saw my father, he went from being the most abusive men are know, to be my best friend. And if something can change his life, they can change anybody. Really. That's interesting. And then I was doing an interview, about a year later, when we're promoting Woodlawn. And the host asked me off the air. He's like, what story are you working at? Looking at that next? And I said, Well, off the record, we're looking at the story of I can only imagine. He said, Oh, my gosh, he said, I was at the Ryman that night when Amy Grant pulled him up on stage and gave him a song back. That's the most magic thing I've ever seen in music. I don't know about this. So I call it Martin. I'm like this happened. He's like, Oh, yeah, man. That was the big magic night in my life. I forgot to tell you guys that. I'm like, you idiot.

Alex Ferrari 27:47
Help me help you!

Andy Erwin 27:53
Like, that's a movie. And I'm like, is your triumph. And so we engineered that whole film. From the standpoint of what would it be, I think there's something universally relatable about the kind of the Father wound that a lot of guys have, in particular people in particular guys, and that desire of every man because that fraud, imposter syndrome, wanting to have their father stand and applaud them. So we're like, what if we engineered the moment at the end, that is an empty room, and he sees his father, and the whole movie builds to that moment. And you know, and then, you know, this abusive father that eventually stands in approval. And for men in particular, when they watch the film, it catches them way off guard and brings really big emotion. Because of that, and it's beyond something of faith. I mean, faith is definitely a huge part of the story, but it's really about that universal desire of redemption between a father and son. And I think Dennis Quaid killed it. I think it's one of his best performances as the Father, and I'm really, really proud. I'm really proud of how the film turned out. And that was really the launching point. We had a disagreement with the studio on how to make it. They said there was only 17000 people on the planet that would watch it. Because it was just

Alex Ferrari 29:16
To be fair, to be fair on paper not a good sign.

Andy Erwin 29:19
No, not at all. Not at all. It's a song about a Christian AI. It's a movie by Christian song like they're really, in fact, the day that we started making it there was a big deadline article that said the music biopic is dead. And that was the same year that that stars born and Bohemian Rhapsody, and a bunch of others came out. So you know, guess the article was wrong, but But you know, I think we had a big disagreement and so we went out and again raised the money to both make and release it. We did a blended find a book PNA and the production budget, which was the production budget was about 7 million on it. And, and then we bought it out from under the studio and made it independently And then right before, right when we started shopping it, roadside attractions came along and said we know how to put this out because we specialize in kind of wards films that are niche. And they had just done Manchester by sea. And that was their big, you know, hit. And we're like, Okay, we'll trust you with it. If we can do this deal with your sister company Lionsgate too. And so Lionsgate stepped aboard, we did a deal with them and rented the system and put it out. And then little $7 million film did 86 million, it was so good breakout month,

Alex Ferrari 30:32
Not a bad so that so that turned out of what started at a studio studio didn't believe in it. The way you guys believed in it, you took it back from the studio, put your own money, your own money in and release it yourself. And then of course got all the money out of it.

Andy Erwin 30:48
But our investors didn't really invest. And we didn't do too bad either. I mean, my kids are going to college, but it definitely was life changing for us as well. But yeah, we did, we did get a page one rewrite, you know, our version of the story. And that's when the studio who had worked five years on it and couldn't crack the story. Didn't like that. And we decided, hey, we're gonna stick with our vision. And we made, you know, you don't always want to go all in, in the moment. But there's certain hands where you're like, This is my island moment. And so we pushed out all the chips in the middle of the table. And it was either going to be a success or a disaster. And we just happen to land on the front side of that.

Alex Ferrari 31:32
Yeah, it landed landed on black for you. And yeah, there's no question. But look, there are those moments in life where you're given a choice you like, are you? Are you in? Or are you out. And unfortunately, so many filmmakers make that, that they do that all in at the very beginning of their career. And they like mortgaged their house, and they want to tell the story, and it doesn't work out well for them. So your story is definitely an anomaly. But then for everyone listening, well, they did it. I'm like, Yeah, they did it. But look at the story they had, they had a song that millions upon 10s of millions of people around the world knew you had, you had an audience, that's what the studio didn't understand. They didn't understand that, that there was so much love for that sort. But then again, it wasn't just about the song, it's really about a son and a father.

Andy Erwin 32:19
It's about the ingredients, like, you know, that's why you can't go all in on every hand, you know, the ego and the ego, artists in each person that says, Oh, this is going to be, you know, that's only one component that the bit the bigger things are branded IP is king, you know, having something that has a following. Then secondly, so that has the story ingredients, you know, for us, we very much look at kind of how, what, you know what Jordan Peele did with Get out. I mean, he had a great horror movie, and appeal to his core fans. But he had this rare universal overlay to it that appealed beyond just, you know, slasher movies that had a social justice appeal that had a hitch Hitchcock feel, it was something very something for everyone or, you know, or movie like quiet place that did that same thing. It was about that universal idea of father tried to make his family safe. The father mother tried to fight for their family that was beyond a horror movie. And so those ingredients are rare. But we have the ingredients, you have the branded IP. And then the third thing is tank. It's all about timing. Like, I can only imagine could have happened 10 Other ways that 10 other times and I'd say no, no, there's times it fails. Right? It just the the timing was just right. And all this stuff lined up. And and we just happen to fall into that. And so

Alex Ferrari 33:49
So now your new film, American underdog, which, by the way, I absolutely love my wife and I we got the screener sent to us man with my wife and I my wife's like my wife doesn't know but football much, but I'm like, Look, it's a good movie. Look. It's got this guy in it. It's got Anna Paquin. She's like, Oh, Sookie, I'm like, yes. Okay, from true love. So she's like, alright, I'll watch it. And we're there on like, a Saturday afternoon. Oh, we just start watching it and we're just like, son of a bitch. This thing's grabbing. Holy shit. That's like it's grabbing, pulling me in like what the hell like I knew who Kurt Warner was. I didn't know the extent of his story. I knew he was an underdog but I didn't know the details. But but it's but the key was watching my wife watch it, who knew nothing. And she was like, getting involved in the emotion and the characters in the story. But football was just an aftermath. Like, that's just that doesn't even matter to her. It was all about the characters. And again, we were saying IP, I mean, you've got Kurt Warner, who's a very famous football player, and then you throw the word underdog and then you throw the word American underdog. Might as well just put up Stallone and rocky up there at the same time. Like, you were hitting up, but you are hitting a bunch of good. So when I saw it come through my, my view, first time the trailer, I was like, Oh, this is gonna do well this will be this. This is gonna do just fine. How did you guys get involved in this story, man?

Andy Erwin 35:14
Well, it didn't hurt that the Rams won the Super Bowl and gave us the home video but um, yeah, you know, it's again one of those things that fell to us. And I'm really grateful for it. But 20 years ago when I was a sports care, man, the only Superbowl ever worked was in 2001 Super Bowl in New Orleans. And it was Kurt Warner and his second Super Bowl against Tom Brady and his first and and you know that the story we tell in a movie had happened the year prior. And I just remember watching Kurt and being like, just intrigued by the guy. There's something very rocky ask. I mean, I think the films that influenced this one the most were rocky, Cinderella, man and warrior where there was really a lot of fighter stories about kind of one man against the world and fighting for something that the stakes that drove what what happened in the, in the arena. You know, there's something very rocky asked about Kurt, and but I just remember watching him go over the stands, interact with this spiky haired, beautiful lady. And that was his wife, Brenda, and I always said, I would love to know the story behind that I never knew that I was going to be 20 years later that my brother and I would be the one to direct the film. So when it came back around, I can only imagine him we then another movie after that. And then as we were finishing, you know, the touches on the script for the story we're gonna make, somebody said you ought to talk to Warner's, again, it's a film that stuck in development. At another studio, we specialize at that. And they said, but if the option is up and in, you might want to look at it. So we went to their house in Phoenix and said, you know, we're not here to pitch you what your story is, what do you think your story is? And Kurt said, it's about the things off the field that drove what happened on it. Everybody knows to football, but I want to, I want them to know what I saw in my, my wife, Brenda, and my son, Zach, who's disabled, and blind. And we're like, well, we can do that story. We know how to do that story. So when we stepped into it, and then the pandemic kit, and through all of our plans in the air, and then we finally, as we were writing the script, zactly vies a longtime friend from Shazam. And you know, and Chuck and all that. And DAX and I were talking on FaceTime one day, and we had the same agent, and he said, What's this Kurt Warner movie, I keep hearing my name thrown around. And I said, was that the book for the next three years? I wasn't going to pitch you. And he said, No, let me read the script. And I sent him the script. And he texted back at midnight that night, so let's make a football movie. And then I called, I called up the producer team. And I said, why this land? Exactly. I didn't mean to. But he said, and they're like, great. And so then it kept pushing because COVID And finally, we just like, if we push one more time, we lose that because he's going to do Shazam, too. And so we just call them and said, Hey, guys, what you screw it number that we have to hit. And they gave us the number we had to hit to make the movie. And we said, Okay, we've got to chop this schedule from 45 days down to 30. To make it and so it was the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life. But we kind of all that turmoil we focused it on. Like, this is the story we're telling, this guy had the deck stacked against him. And we're all going to live her own story together in the middle of trying to film in a pandemic, you know, and that once he was on board, he rallied around that and then Dennis Quaid, he looks so much like Romeo quaintness equate, I'll let you play anybody you want. But I think it's special when an icon plays an icon and I had been a highlight reel addict for meal. And I said to him, he's like, I'm you for me. I want to do it. And then you know, and then all these great character actors came on board like Bruce McGill, and you know, Adam Baldwin, and chance Kelly and all these guys. And then the really what's in it over the top was, we're like, it has to be about it's a co starring thing. It's not It's Brenda is very much the equal lead of the store. She's the underdog on the other side of the coin. And when Anna Paquin read the script, she fell in love with her. And she called me and she said, You know, I've never done anything interactive with really anything inspirational. I don't know anything about sports. I don't really know anything about faith. She's like, is that a problem for me playing the wife of a prominent sports star that's a Christian? And I said, Absolutely not. And as long as you can really try to fight to understand the person you're playing, and make it make what is important to her important to you. It's like That's exactly how I work. Like, well, who wouldn't want to work with an Oscar winner? And once she signed on it for me medically took off. And she had Zach paired so well together because Zach typically does the action comedy thing. And he doesn't well better than anybody. But Anna really grounded him really well with her drama and and typically goes for the hard, gritty characters. And the Chuan glass can artists kind of things. But Zack really kind of pulled her lifted her out and showed this lovable side that people haven't seen her before. And so it made an incredible, and just we just like, this is our moment, we have to do it. Now. If we don't do it now, it's never gonna happen. We just rallied around that. And again, it could have been a failure, but it just worked. So

Alex Ferrari 40:41
And both of them played parts that they generally don't play. I mean, you don't? Exactly Yes, Zack. No, I've never seen Zach in a dramatic way he they both killed it. They both I think did. He was Kurt. I mean, there's just no no question about it. And then when you see it that obviously when you see the the images of Kurt in the in the credits and stuff like that, which is just like, fine, man. It's just, it just hit it that I wasn't I wasn't prepared for it. Let's just put it that way. I think it catches, it catches you off guard. You know, I'm a pretty look, man. I've been a filmmaker for 30 years, it's hard to catch me. It's hard to catch me. So it's when a movie does get me like, Oh, son of I didn't see that comment. Generally could see things coming. I didn't see that come. And so you have and I and it happened with me. And I can only I can only imagine because I didn't I didn't see it coming. So the way you guys are approaching stories is it has a very unique perspective. And yeah, you're coming through faith, and that angle of it. But it's hits you at an emotional level that generally you don't expect as a film as an audience member, because so much of the stuff that we consume today. So McDonald's, fast food kind of entertainment, and then when a home cooked meal shows up, you're not ready for it.

Andy Erwin 42:05
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, if you're used to McDonald's, when, when there's, you know, broccoli on your plate, you kind of roll your eyes at first, even though that's really what your body needs. And so it's like, how do we dress that up in a way that makes it non threatening, but then allows still allow something of substance? And I think that, and I love hearing you say that? Because I think the audience that I value the most out of any audience. I mean, absolutely, we serve a Christian audience that loves stories of faith. And I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't apologize for that. But the audience that I valued their opinion the most, is the audience that we call the benevolent skeptic. The Benevolent skeptic doesn't have anything against faith, there's nothing that they feel negative towards it, but it's also not something they naturally consume. And when you can kind of catch them off guard, and earn the right to be heard, and leave them with something to chew on, and the things that they didn't expect. You know, it leaves them with something that maybe not a part of their natural daily diet. And I think it's really cool. When somebody from that audience, you know, we did another we did a, we did another film last year at the same time, which I don't know why we did that we're just a glutton for punishment. Well, we did a, we did a documentary called The Jesus music, which is about the history of Christian music. And it was one that was just a passion project. There's a love letter to a lot of our friends. And there was a there was a critic that I've since become really good friends with on through Instagram, but I didn't know him at this point. But he wrote he his critique of the film, and he said, he said, I'm a self professed, you know, you know, agnostic, borderline atheist. And he said, This is not my normal thing, but I expected one thing and I came in realize, you know, I feel like somehow the ER was tricked me and changed some of the neural pathways to my brain. And he said, I'm kind of pissed about it. And, and, no, it's like, it's like that dog on it. You let me in. And I think that that sacred ground because I'm not there to try to de force mean anything to anybody. I'm not there to try to create controversy. I'm just there to plant a seed of hope. I think people desperately crave right now,

Alex Ferrari 44:21
Right in America, dog American underdog is not is not preachy at all? No, it is so subtle. It is such a subtle message. But the message in there that rings the most to me is the story of the underdog, which everyone can, everyone can feel the story of hope, the story of love the story of a family. Those are the things that that ring the most out of that movie to me, and everyone can really connect with that. And then of course, you throw in American football, then you're ready to rock and roll.

Andy Erwin 44:54
Right! It was it was really cool because in that universal overlay, I think good filmmaker, influences The most in our career that we kind of aspire to is Frank Capra, Frank Capra. Frank that just that old school, you know, Sicilian optimistic immigrant kind of perspective in that world war two generation that blatantly peddled hope. And people a lot of times didn't know how to take it at first, you know, it's a wonderful I couldn't find its audience until years after the release. But he was just so good at it. And that's something I think in cinema we've lost that. For whatever reason, the backlash, backlash that we don't have the antihero, there's nothing wrong. The antihero, you know, I love the Godfather is one of my top 10 films I love. But there's become so much of that it's become so saturated in this fatalistic kind of perspective, that I think as a, as a industry, we've forgotten how to hope. Yeah. And so for us, I think the thing that we peddle without apologizing is a rush of hope. And it's a feeling that people don't know that they need, but then when they experience it, they walk away, they're like, I can't help but smile, and believe in something better. And, you know, for me, a lot of that hope comes from stories of faith, but there's something universally related to believing, you know, on top of that, that I think, is something for everyone, regardless of where they come from. That's what we want.

Alex Ferrari 46:23
Now, I'm gonna ask a couple questions asked by guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?

Andy Erwin 46:28
You know, I think your individuality your uniqueness is your brand. You know, I think a lot of times people come in, and I want to be like, you know, one size fits all to this. And I just want to be vanilla and kind of find I'll do anything. But I think it's your uniqueness that will make you stick out, I think that uniqueness will also present the biggest obstacles up front, because people want will want to put you in a box and say, Well, you need to fit over here, you just fit over there. Like I'm neither and and continue to lean into your uniqueness and find stories that display that at full volume, that allow there to be time for other people of like minded taste, to kind of center around your brand. And that will be you know, where you find your breakout. Like for years, David Russell struggled with finding out like, what's my brand, and he would have all that frustration, until he really leaned into the idea of my brand is a dysfunctional family. That's what I know. And so then he does stories like the fighter and Silver Linings Playbook enjoy. And those are all about dysfunctional families and their dish charming sense of the word. And that's where his brand really popped out. So I just think for me, my brand was about hope and about faith. And and that's what we leaned into and didn't refuse to be categorized in one side or the other. And, and then eventually the brand comes out of that. So that's what I would say. My biggest advice is embrace your individuality.

Alex Ferrari 47:57
And last question three of your favorite films of all time.

Andy Erwin 48:00
Oh, man, that's, that's that's a tough one. I love en. Casa Blanca is probably my number one. I think particularly because they hadn't written into the movie when they started filming it. And it just discovered it along the way. It's perfect. It's so perfect. I would say that you know, it's wonderful. Life is number two. I love Frank Capra. And, and then I would say I love a movie that really caught me off guard when I watched it was Ron Howard Cinderella Man, I absolutely adored that movie. That was so good. For you, it'd be number number four and then number six through 10 would be Spielberg films.

Alex Ferrari 48:43
It just all just just let's just list them off. And where can people and where can people see American underdog?

Andy Erwin 48:51
Yeah, it's out everywhere now digitally on Blu ray everywhere, wherever things are sold. And it's it's doing really well and iTunes is number three on iTunes right now. So check it out.

Alex Ferrari 49:02
Brother Andy, I appreciate you coming on the show man. Congrats on all your success and continued success to you my friend.

Andy Erwin 49:08
Thoroughly enjoyed the interview my friend!

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