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Alex Ferrari 2:22
Now guys, today on the show, we have John Hess from filmmaker IQ. Now I've been a fan of John's work. For years filmmaker IQ is an amazing website with these remarkable mini documentaries that he puts up on YouTube. And he's just shows you everything from how to make air powered blood squibs to the history of the mock buster, the fundamental elements of film music, who's in a movie credits, the science of deep focus and hyperfocal distance. I mean, the history of the Hollywood musical he goes deep into each topic he covers and they are so entertaining, so well produced. I just love what john has been doing over the years. He is definitely an OG in this space of helping filmmakers follow their dreams and make their movies so I just had an absolute ball talking to John on the show. I can't wait to share this episode with you. So without any further a do, please enjoy my conversation with John Hess. I'd like to welcome to the show the legendary John Hess from filmmaker IQ. Thank you, john for being on the show brother.
John Hess 3:38
Hi, thank you for having me.
Alex Ferrari 3:39
I appreciate it. Man. I mean less I've been like telling you earlier I am been a big fan of filmmaker IQ and what you do you have a very unique voice and how you approach the filmmaking process. And the work that you do with filmmaker IQ than anybody else in our space. And I've been at admire from a distance for quite some times you are. I like to call you. There's a few of you guys but like the OG's, you're one of the OG's. Okay. One of the original gangsters doing this because it's starting to weight right.
John Hess 4:13
Ah, yeah, the site started weights at my beliefs. Yeah, I guess so. I haven't really thought about that. But it was at the tail end of the MySpace era. So if you want to play off of that,
Alex Ferrari 4:24
Oh, I Oh, yeah. I made a lot of money on spy so they sell only independent film. I was it was I was huge on my space. Huge.
John Hess 4:30
My Space was I mean, we're talking like a bunch of old old guys sitting around talking to the old days. Yeah. But yeah, my space was kind of how I got into the whole discussing film online. And it was the through the MySpace film forums. That's really kind of how IQ started was born there. It's a long story behind it on if you want to get into it, but it basically was we wanted, we were kind of kicked off of my space. So we were both my friend I dance was we're both banned from my space and he's like, let's Start on site. Because we for a longest time, we didn't have moderate moderate moderators on on on the film forums. And then we've been clamoring let's get some moderate because there's probably people in here expanding constantly. Well, my friend Dennis The site was would always post very interesting articles, but he would bump the posts up to get them back the top, you would post an article, but he would bump it up. And that was against the rules, you know, the moderate, so they banned him, one of them one of the more you know, important assets of the film was banned because he would bump up his old posts and that's so he says, and I fought for him and I got banned as well and To hell with my space and we went off to your own site.
Alex Ferrari 5:38
Well, and arguably that worked out for you. Okay, because not many people talk about my space anymore. Is it still I know it's still on it's still around right
John Hess 5:48
It's still on for I guess there's some bands that use it, you know, or some music in the music scene still kind of uses it. Yeah, love. Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 5:56
I mean, it's like a SoundCloud is probably bigger than that.
John Hess 6:01
I mean, it's probably dead yeah
Alex Ferrari 6:03
I think was it who bought a Fox Fox paid like a billion for it?
John Hess 6:08
Back in the day? Yeah. Tom Anderson and nice little payday. Because everybody's friend remember?
Alex Ferrari 6:14
Tom! Tom! Tom! So um, so before we get going, man, how did you get into business? How did you get into the to loving what you do?
John Hess 6:24
Oh well, you know, it's the say you love it. You know? It's it's complicated. Say you love what you do. I mean, I love it so much. I'm willing to put up with all the crap that I do.
Alex Ferrari 6:34
Amen. Brother. Preach.
John Hess 6:36
You know, that's it's not that I love I love every single waking day moment. No, I honestly frustrated half the time. But I wouldn't do it if I wasn't. If I was that if I didn't love it. I'd be doing something else. So I started off. I made, I made little videos. And I grew up I was class of 2000. So I grew up in the late 90s. And I made little videos for my, for my high school. We just as a budding, you know, TV video production class. And I started doing just little projects, advertising on the morning announcements, because we had like closed circuit television back in those days, advertising the Academic Decathlon team, so I started making spoofs of things I made like a like a silent film spoof. I made a titanic which was really big back then spoof. I made a Mission Impossible spoof, which is yet another movie franchise from the late 90s. And a kind of like, I started fall in love with the whole process of just making moving pictures. Kelly, that's if you're if you've read if you heard Spielberg talk about how he got started how when he was a kid, he had a little eight millimeter camera and he would shoot two trains running into each other and, and he learned he could just shoot it and watch it over and over again. That's kind of same way I got into into video making or filmmaking is just I like creating things on this watching them over and over again. I kind of fell in love with that. But as a kid I always wanted to be in business. I've always because my father was in a national engineering so I was always involved with some sort of bit I just love the air of business. So I went to school to be a business major and I found I still like business but I was like I still want to make video that's still what I want to do. So about my second year of college I said hey, I want to go intern at I want to see if I can make marry that to become a business and and then video maybe do maybe like a producer and film so I found a a small cable company that was out in Corona, California and they were doing commercials like local local cable commercials. You know, it was really bad. Cow Worthington kind of stuff.
Alex Ferrari 8:34
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.
John Hess 8:36
Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I interned there for like a year. Like, I just just did it because like, I didn't take class credit cuz I was like, I don't want to do the paperwork. For the credit. I just wanted to be there and hang out and do like little these little movies, not movies, little commercials. Did that for a year. And I'm getting more detail than I probably need to but I did that for a year. And then I was laid off by the company. And my the people I worked with were laid off and I kind of burden me this like this little independent streak. like, Man, these guys, I known work for the company for 25 years, they build a family, they depend on this job. And the corporate culture comes in and just can't access them. And like, I don't want to I don't want to go work for the man. So I just want to started to start doing my own business. And that was about 20 years ago, or 18 years ago, 17 18 years ago.
Alex Ferrari 9:24
And what was that business? And what was that business?
John Hess 9:27
Oh, what do you mean my own business video production?
Alex Ferrari 9:30
Okay,
John Hess 9:30
So any like any kind of video production in fact I do. That's primarily what I do. I mean, the film one narrative filmmaking is something that I I want to aspire to more but right now I'm actually doing a ton of video work for like, I do work for cities and corporate corporate called corporations that call me in to do like a like a documentary about, you know, their corporate culture, whatever they want to promote. So I so I ended up still using that business education to mine the business marketing But I make commercials and stuff like that.
Alex Ferrari 10:03
So filmmaker IQ more was a side kind of like a side hustle for and more of a labor of love for.
John Hess 10:09
I mean, it's honestly the labor of love kind of thing. It's, I mean, I like to kind of push it more toward an actual productive income generating stream, it's really is still more of a labor of love. And I don't know, it's it's one of those things where I don't want to I don't want to kill it by making it too much of a job necessarily. Although I do want to do something to you know, I do want to actually make it to be more of a job, I guess. Right? Should I call it that? Let me I mean, I guess I'm being very candid, honest. breaking their spells about who I am and what I do?
Alex Ferrari 10:40
Well, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of, you know, and I've been doing this for four or five years, and I, I still, I still say that I have the original filmmaking tutorial on YouTube. It was in 2005, I put up behind the scenes of my short film that's still up there. So I was one of the first to do that. But I never kept going with it. So a couple other guys like Film Riot and Ryan, and those guys did it in rocketjump. And those guys, but a lot of people think that they have a different perception like I because of how good you do what you do. The perception of what you do is like, Oh, he's just, you know, this is this is amazing. And he's just killing it. And he's just rolling in it. And it's like, and then a lot of people, and a lot of people think that of me as well, like, oh, he must be just kidding. Like, you know what I make? I make I do okay, I do. Okay, yeah, but, but I'm not Scrooge McDuck in it anytime.
John Hess 11:39
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I made me even wrong, but like, I think even someone like Martin Scorsese, who is all intents purposes, hugely successful, he still has trouble. He still has problems making the movie he wants to make half the time, you know, he's always complaining, like, I can't get the money to do this.
Alex Ferrari 11:56
Well to be fair, you know, be fair, Marty's not going after two or $300,000 is going after 200 million to make a movie that doesn't have a lot of marketability.
John Hess 12:07
That, you know, you just hit on exactly how I feel about the situation. Yeah, if he would just go for like a $10 million movie, you know, get some people he's never worked with before. He could he could get that money in an instant.
Alex Ferrari 12:18
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's there's different like Spike Lee, Woody Allen. And those kinds of I mean, Woody, you know, regardless of his personal life, as a filmmaker, he did something that I don't think there is another filmmaker of his generation. He did, he made a movie a year for like, 30 years. And he always kept his budget because he knew his art, his films, had a specific audience that could generate a certain amount of money, and he would be able to attract huge stars to come in and work scale for him. Because he was who he was. And he built that kind of system up for himself. And I don't think I mean, maybe Clint is another guy that I will throw in that but that just a different plus a different generation as a whole different with a word. Yeah. But that's what that was. Even Clinton, like, you know, he did that. What was that last movie he did with the bomber jewel ever two children? Yeah, Richard, I can't I don't think Richard Jewell costs 150 I don't think that cut No, no, it did cost 150. Because Clinton knows like, you know, I'm gonna make a movie about Richard Jewell and it's called Richard Jewel. Like the people that What? Who else in Hollywood, in a studio is making Richard Jewel,
John Hess 13:26
With a schlubby lead actors like schlubby guy on the front.
Alex Ferrari 13:29
Who no one knows, Who no one knows, Who no one knows like, it's not a face that people recognize. So but he's click, but he's smart. Like there's a there's a there's a budget range that makes sense for that movie. Marty still hasn't figured that.
John Hess 13:46
No, you know, it's funny that you're articulating like one I feel like I was a lone voice back when what's the movie that part? Irishman to finish? Irishman Irishman cost almost as much as spider man homecoming? You know, like, happy? And it's, that's that should be like, if people will will? Let's because we spent too much money on Comic book movies. Well, there's a bigger audience for the comic book movie, you know, Spider Man. So I found that with that whole thing was you could just smell the marketing. That's right. You could feel it, you know, coming out, you
Alex Ferrari 14:22
No Exactly. And if you look at I mean, if you look at someone like Nolan, who also, you know, has a very expensive palette, but his films are for a very broad audience, even that like inception. It makes my head hurt and makes everyone's head hurt. Like thinking about the plotting in that film is is pretty insane. But for whatever but he brings in action. He brings in star like he understands his art form very well, where Fincher has a little bit of that Scorsese vibe to them, which is like, you know, I really, I really need 150 million input into like, Fincher, we'd love you man, but I I can't, we can't.
John Hess 15:02
Yeah, no. I love I love the fact that we're talking about this, because it's, you know, like so much of what I see online is kind of like just give, give these guys to give Marx was a $200 million because he deserves it. So you know, that's not how you put your money into it first if you had to put your put your dollar up and
Alex Ferrari 15:23
So everyone we're talking about here we're all talking about giants so Martin you already and Nolan and Fincher and all these kind of they're just giants. They live on mountain Hollywood, I call it mount Hollywood, where, where the they're the gods, the Olympic there, the Greek gods of, of Hollywood. And we're just the peasants throwing up stones. And I'm not throwing up stones at all, because I'm huge fans of all of them. And believe me, if it was up to me, I would give Mardy $500 million, because I would love to see what he does with that. But the reality is that on a business standpoint, it makes no sense. You, you have to you have to have if you're going to create a product and I know a lot of filmmakers out there gonna go films, not a product, I hate to tell you it is it is it. So if you're gonna have a product, that product has to have a cost, and there has to be an ROI or return on investment, that if you want to do art films, you make that $5 million, or that Woody Allen budget range film and do whatever the hell you want, like, whatever you want, because you'll make your money back because the ROI on a film like that makes sense for a filmmaker of that caliber. But if not, then no, like, Look, Spielberg couldn't get Lincoln financed. You know, yeah, it Steven Spielberg with Daniel Day Lewis as a star, and couldn't get financing for for Lincoln. If Maurice steel and then the reason why he couldn't get that was because the ROI essentially didn't look like who's gonna go see a movie. And again, and like, what's the budget range? Is it gonna make sense?
John Hess 16:53
And the way that Spielberg was selling this movie, Lincoln, he was saying this is going to be a courtroom drama about the 14th amendment.
Alex Ferrari 17:00
Wasn't great marketing at all.
John Hess 17:02
That's that's like, Oh, yeah, that's summer blog. That's a popcorn movie right there. Right. Right. But
Alex Ferrari 17:07
So even so someone was like one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, one of the most successful filmmakers of all time, couldn't get financing for a film. And it wasn't like he was asking for Mardi numbers, because Marty, you know, as Marty, yeah, but he was still asking for, you know, 70 80 million, 90 million to make this kind of period piece film. It took a hit to go to India to get the money. And they were just like, they were just happy to be making a movie with Spielberg, like here, here's a check. And it worked out for him. And now Netflix is doing the same thing with Marty. I think he's they're doing his next movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. So but their business model is different, though Irishmen made sense, in the Netflix ecosystem. It made and made all the sense in the world to spend 150 100 $80 million in the Netflix ecosystem in the Hollywood studio system, it makes absolutely no sense. It's just not fine. It's just makes no sense. Would you agree?
John Hess 18:00
Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know much. I don't know enough about the Netflix world. I mean, to me, the Netflix streaming stuff is still so speculative. We, they're no one knows exactly what the numbers are. They purposely hide that. So I don't know. I mean, there but I know it's not a Netflix is raising so much capital to make new properties. And part of me is like, Well, why can't I get a piece of that action?
Alex Ferrari 18:27
But yeah, well, if you if we go down the Netflix hole for a second, which from what I'm hearing about Netflix is I know for a fact that they're extremely debt, extremely in debt, because they've just they've had this kind of, don't forget, they were not a studio. They're, they're the Silicon Valley startup. So they look, they brought their entire business model as a Silicon Valley startup, meaning spent a lot of money, lose money for a long time to gain market share. And then right, you'll be brought the Amazon model, the Facebook model, every big Airbnb model, all of those kind of models. Then it became a studio afterwards. But you know, they're there. I don't know, man. It's just like we were talking about earlier is like it doesn't, from what outside, we look like, we're Scrooge McDuck in it. Netflix is the same thing. I think a lot of people have a different perception of Netflix as like, oh, they're just killing it. They're, they're hurting. They're hurting. I don't know if you know, I don't know if you knew it or not. But this is not we're getting into a little bit of tech geek stuff. Sure, since the pandemic, Netflix has been extremely hurting because more people are watching Netflix. Yeah. So the the load on their servers and the technology and the cost of that has, I think tripled. But there are no new subscribers that can't to offset that. So that just exists. That now they're just like, oh man, we've got this everyone's watching Netflix now. Great, unfortunately. Our business model is not set up for that. We just want a few people to be watching Netflix and pay for it, but don't watch it. And that's that's what happened. So they actually started throttling. I don't know if you know that they started throttling the image quality just a bit, because if they drop it 5%, that could be millions of dollars in service fees. So internet, that's what's that's, that's one of the things on, but I put enough
John Hess 20:23
I buy it. So yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. interesting to think about it. So yeah, like people, people who are losing their jobs or not getting new Netflix subscriptions?
Alex Ferrari 20:33
No, and there is an album. And there's also a critical level of critical mass when Yeah, there are no more subscribers that they can get. But yet, they're going to have to keep spending Irishman style money for projects to keep what they have, because now Disney's out and I want to actually want it. That brings me to another question I want to hear I want to talk to you about you know, Disney plus and the whole COVID situation and what happened and now Disney is already over 60 million as of this recording subscribers, which had gotten well, less than a year is insane. Now they're doing ulaan, so they're skipping theatrical. What do you think about that whole $30 you've got to be a member of Disney plus to watch it and it's an expense. It's literally they're doing $150 million experiment, which is what I was saying. When everyone's talking about trolls to like oh, trolls to kill that. I'm like, Dude, this trolls to was the first like month of the quarantine. Everybody thinks kids at home. Nobody knew what to do. Of course, I'm gonna spend 20 bucks on Charles to plot I want to see a tentpole, Mulan is a tentpole, what do you what do you what do you think's gonna happen with it? What's your thoughts on it?
John Hess 21:40
Oh that's a you know, it's what I hate the the the cliche, we interesting to see. Because I can say that about everything. I think it will probably be, it'll probably do this. It's hard to say because we're in such a weird time right now. Because we can't go to the movies theaters, though. So if the utricles even an option for them. As far as far as what I think is gonna I mean, I think it's an op. It's an it's an experiment, but I'm not sure you can be repeated in next year, when theaters do eventually open up again. Can you do that? Can you see that same kind of success if people have the option to go back theater. And again, I know theater is also one of those topics that people are feel it's very weird that every time I bring up the theater, like on social media or the utricle on social media, there's a group of people that want to see it die. I don't understand why.You noticed that?
Alex Ferrari 22:36
I have I have noticed that people are like it's dead. Ivan said it. I've said it many times I like I think I personally think that the the theatrical experience, as we knew it, in January 2020, will not return to that level, probably ever again, we will never have as many screens like that again, because it was all going in a downward slope, downward trajectory. I mean, theatrical attendance and things. It's just what's happening in regardless if you love it or not, I think there'll always be a theatrical, like there's Broadway plays, there's always going to be a movie theater. And there's always going to be IMAX is going to be an experiment in experience like that, but it's never going to die. People still want to go out and do that. But yeah, the business model is going to change. So now, Disney could just go You know what, guys, we're just gonna release this for three weeks, and then we're gonna go straight to Disney plus, and if you don't like it, we'll just go straight to Disney plus, because we'll probably make enough money to cover that.
John Hess 23:35
Well, I mean, I don't know if you follow the the courts just have one every overturn that Paramount decrees. So, which I think is, you know, people are, you know, jumping over head like that, how can we do this? I think the Paramount decrees are kind of long and done, because they were made at a point when movies had no movies had only radio as a competition. 1948 right, you know, fit television was 50s. So television came in and kind of beat the crap out of movies. And now we've got internet streaming, which let's face it, most people are probably doing instead of watching movies. So I think the time for a business model shift is probably here. So like what you're saying, as far as Disney, maybe Disney ends up buying a bunch of theaters where they'll come like Disney does not like the Egyptian here. That's
Alex Ferrari 24:22
No, No. Do they have El Capitan? Here? Yes.
John Hess 24:24
So maybe that happens in like St. Louis. Now they have a, you know, the Disney El Capitan in, in St. Louis or wherever Toledo, you know, and that's all they do is they show Disney movies, and I'm not a parent. But imagine if you were if I was a parent, heck, I take my kid to the Disney theater once in a while. And it might be something that's worth worth worth pursuing.
Alex Ferrari 24:44
And don't forget, there will be a Disney Store inside that Disney theater.
John Hess 24:48
Exactly.
Alex Ferrari 24:49
I mean, and it's so for them. It's almost a loss leader to get you in the door to watch the movie because they're going to sell you on others. I mean, it's the truth and it's the only way Like I agree with you 100% I think that theaters, someone's going to buy AMC before the year is out, if not this year, in the next year, or sometime in early next year, someone's gonna buy Amazon's already circling. There's a lot of people with a lot of cash, who could just come in and buy it. And all of a sudden you have how many screens all around the country. So and there's and there's, there's so many regel and all these other things. They're hurting and they're there. They're going to be vulnerable for purchase. I agree with you. There's only three major studios that have the power to do anything like that. The have the financial power to do that which will be Disney Warner's and universal. But But the big unknowns, Facebook, Cash, Google, Amazon, Apple. They have Apple has,
John Hess 25:51
Oh, yeah.
Alex Ferrari 25:51
400 billion cash. Yeah, just cash.
John Hess 25:59
Apple Store in every theater.
Alex Ferrari 26:01
No I mean, so that is but that's the key to this is it's this kind of creating of this ecosystem that Disney has been. I mean, that's what Disney does. This is that they mean their theme parks their cruises. Yeah, they're their Disney stores that it's it's what they do. So there's no doubt that there's going to be a Disney chain. And he just makes all the sense in the world.
John Hess 26:21
Mm hmm. And in that world, where we have the internet streaming, I don't see that as a bad thing. Because it's not I don't feel like it's stifling competition. Because it's not like these indie movies. We're getting into those big chains anyway. So I don't know.
Alex Ferrari 26:36
Yeah, exactly. I don't think you're absolutely right. I mean, yeah, AMC. I mean, I mean, yeah, some but not like really indie movies. That theatrical experience for independent film is almost non existent, unless you really are at the top 1% of all films, whether either you've got a a tastemaker, like Sundance or south by or, or an A 24, or someone like that neon when these guys that can kind of come in and elevate, elevate the art house vibe, in their small movies that could do that. And you have to really understand how you do marketing and audience building and all that kind of stuff. But for like the standard, you know, 100,000?
John Hess 27:19
Another also like these independent wings and these major studios that because I mean, if you're, if you're Fox, Adam, or whatever, you know, searchlight studios, or whatever you can, that that's where you would see some sort of, you know, if you're partnering with a large studio, or an independent man, I'm not speaking out of my experience there.
Alex Ferrari 27:37
Yeah, but but those kinds of things have kind of fall off to the wayside. It's not the early 90s anymore, where everybody like, you know, Paramount advantage, and Fox, searchlight and you know, focus film, like all of these small, little independent independence where the money is that so of course, they all made their independent labels. But so do you think that would so? Do you think that theatrical experience? Would you agree that it's going to be different? Do you think that it's going to be the Disney Studios, do you think, you know, IMAX is going to be a thing, like how it should be
John Hess 28:10
I think it was changing before January 2020. I mean, I noticed my, like, I I'm a big fan of the movie theater subscription model, personally, because I just I like for 20 bucks, I can go to movie theaters every weekend, count me in, and maybe I'll buy extra popcorn and you know, get the movies will make a little more money off of me. So I was already way on board with the subscription model. And then my AMC just recently switched over to the all the, you know, the big, the big chairs and the more spaced out stuff. And like, yeah, this is what I would, I'll pay actually to do this. So, I mean, we're no longer It's not like that, that, you know, sardines in a can kind of situation. I used to squeeze everybody in the theater, and the seats were like worse than, you know, airline seats. Or they were the same as airline seats. But so I so I think that that respect, but then again, it's there's a there's an old there's a theater that does the second hand. Second second run theater. Yeah, whatever
Alex Ferrari 29:05
That like $1 Theater, yeah,
John Hess 29:06
Dollar theater. And they used to always do they do like Rocky Horror every every three or four months. And there's that there's a little bit of that, like, I don't want to see that go away. You know, I want I want to be throwing popcorn at the screen and having this crazy time in the theater. So you know, maybe, but maybe the dollar theater model still kind of floats around. As I say, that doesn't mean you can have more than one, you know, model out there. So yeah, it was changing, I think. So. And I think with with the recent the COVID discussion about how we had to separate the seats and all that it's going to be quite different, at least for at least for the rest of this year.
Alex Ferrari 29:49
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. oh four, I think I think for the foreseeable future, it's gonna be
John Hess 30:02
Foreseeable future. Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 30:03
I think the next two or three years, this is going to be not exactly what we're going through right now. But there'll be different versions of this moving forward. I think COVID I don't think it's going to go away in the way. It's gonna be with us in one way, shape or form. We're not eradicating it anytime in the near.
John Hess 30:23
Exactly so and there's always the question of what's next after COVID you know what disease comes next that we all get?
Alex Ferrari 30:31
Well there's there's murder Hornets, earthquakes, explosions. I mean, there's just there's I'm sure there's a meteor honest way as we speak. Everyone busts out a deep impact and Armageddon so we can figure out how we deal with it. Yeah, but there's that's coming. It's coming.
John Hess 30:49
The secrets, the secrets oil, oil, oil drillers. That's how we get through the next
Alex Ferrari 30:55
Astronauts to drill Let's change drillers to be astronauts in five weeks. Yes, this, this makes all the sense of the world. But hell, what a hell of a romp of a film I love.
John Hess 31:06
It's going back aways.
Alex Ferrari 31:11
I mean, look, I look, I'll watch Armageddon before I'll watch Deep Impact, like I watched deep impact and once I've seen Armageddon probably 10 times in my life.
John Hess 31:25
What's the was that the every frame of painting did the whole thing. Bayhem? Really good, good video just discussion about and he gets a little respect for for being kind of just visually interesting. Oh, even though it's even though it's storylines might be stupid, but you kind of give it to him. He knows how to frame his shot.
Alex Ferrari 31:45
I said this. I've said this publicly before. And I'll say it again. There's action films before Michael Bay, and there's action films after Michael Bay. And the same thing happened with Ridley Scott when released and released. Tony Scott, when Tony Scott showed up, there's action films before Tony, there's action shots as films after Tony. They shift the visual medium, Michael Bay, everybody wanted to look at their action films to look like Michael Bay. They just did. And you could see them they just they copied the shots and they never got it right. And, you know, there's there's guys out there who will remain nameless directors who really, really like we're on top of trying to exactly do what Michael Bay did and all this kind of stuff. Whether you love him or hate him, like the rock is still probably my favorite Michael Bay film of all time. And it still holds up as part of the best story. But we love him or hate him. You got to respect the visual prowess of what he's been through. I mean, it's there is nobody in the history of film that did what he's done. You know, do I like all his films? No. But visually, I mean,
John Hess 32:53
He did for Netflix.
Alex Ferrari 32:55
Oh, yeah. The one with them with Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, that wasn't bad. But you can tell it's as you can tell, it's Michael like the second a friend shows up. Oh, yeah
John Hess 33:04
I mean, there's a lot of stupid stuff but you're looking at it like like Whoa, I never thought you would do that. The frame it's there's so much clever visual stuff is going on. It's Yeah, sure. It's wrapped in some some kind of silliness from my taste, but I can appreciate the fact that there's there's just so sit set pieces that are like, this is very creative. This is very ingenious. So yeah, I ended up really liking that in that movie. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it. But
Alex Ferrari 33:29
I was like six something six or something like that.
John Hess 33:32
Yes. Something like that.
Alex Ferrari 33:33
Something six, I was like the six ghost ghost guys out there doing what they do. But they're gonna go back to theaters real quick. I mean, I've always said that theaters have had a combative relationship with their customer base. For a long I mean, it's first of all, the experience used to suck was this. It was sardine sticky floors, stale popcorn, and then they charge you inside $45 for a coke $75 for for popcorn. Like, it's like, it's almost like it's almost like airport costs. So and they never really cared a lot. But then slowly but surely as their numbers start to go down. They're like, Oh, wait a minute, we've got to create a better experience, because we're not the only show in town anymore. And that's when these scenes started showing up and bars like it like the MC here in Burbank has like a bar inside of it. And it's like, you know, special seedings and the sound got better. But it's like, you know, for a certain generation we all remember like and they're still abusive. I still think they're abusive. abusive
John Hess 34:41
For a beer Come on, give me a break. Yeah, so there's a guy Well, I will say that the other day I was thinking about this I forgot to mention it but yeah, if you if the if this Disney owned I mean Disney is not going to do things like to lower the price I think
Alex Ferrari 34:55
Oh no but their experience look when you walk into Disneyland or Disney World Oh, yeah, you just my wife and I, every time we drive into the parking lot to one of those places, we just go let the beating begin. Because you are, you're just being charged, like $25 a park, and you're boom, boom, like, and you're just you're in there, but the experience, they are offering you a very high quality experience for the most part. So that's what you get. But you don't get that with a standard movie theater as well. Have you ever been to El Capitan?
John Hess 35:29
No, I haven't I need to go.
Alex Ferrari 35:30
So when I went to that when I went to El capitano, frozen there with my daughters, and they had like, the princess came out and did like a pre show. And, and there's this stuff. It was like in Disney everything. And next door, there's a Disney Store. And he's like this whole experience. And the price honestly wasn't much different than a normal movie theater. So I was like, Okay, this is this makes sense. This next?
John Hess 35:53
Well I think I think the point I was trying to make was that, I think if if let's say let's not pick these, let's say like Amazon or something owns a studio or owns a theater, you might conceivably see a lowering of the costs of like concessions, because traditionally the the argument was that concessions is where the movie theater makes money. Well, if that movie theater is owned by the studio, then they're also making money on the on the ticket price, right? conceivably, they can lower the you know, popcorn refilled being $7 for small, maybe it's $5 for a small, because
Alex Ferrari 36:27
And that's still abusive? And that's still abusive, but sure, but it's three days to $3. Last, yeah, sure. Yeah. Agreed.
John Hess 36:33
So um, there might be that might be a benefit that comes out of it?
Alex Ferrari 36:37
Well, it's a different business model. I mean, since you're a business major, so if you look at a business models of theatres, it's they get, you know, 50%, or, you know, 40%, or 30%, depending on the big how big the movie is, in the week, it's coming out. So you get a small percentage of the box office, all their money is made concessions. But if the studio owns the space, then they get 100% of royalty of the sales at the box office. And they get a little bit off of royalties off of the concessions, but where they start making their money is off of ancillary products. And so if there's a warner brothers style theater chain, then there'd be all sorts of Warner Brothers, and you can buy the poster of the movie, you could buy all the merch for that movie that week, and it's rotating in and out every week. And it makes sense. That's a different business model than what we have currently. And it's gonna change to just Nope, I mean, arclight, you've been to arclight? I'm assuming Yeah, yeah. So they have that little store on the side that has like the, you know, the movie memorabilia stuff. And sometimes they would bring out stuff. But it's kind of like a most, if not throw away. But it's not themed out like a warner brothers or Disney, or even an Amazon theater would have because and with Amazon's data on people's buying habits, they know what products are going to be out there. And they're going to have you just walk in with your app, pick up the thing and walk out and they charge your Amazon account. I mean, it's
John Hess 38:05
Oh boy, that'd be
Alex Ferrari 38:06
Well, they have those stores that are convenient. They have those stores now they have the bookstore now like that the Amazon bookstore that you walk in
John Hess 38:12
Not to get sidetracked too much, but I'll just tell you a story about yesterday, I was returning something from Amazon. And I found out that Amazon has this Kohl's thing where you go into Kohl's and you just drop off your product. And I did that and then the the Kohl's said thanks for dropping off. Here's a 25% coupon for Kohl's. And I was so impressed by it. I actually bought something. I was like, I need some sandals. And I just bought them and I was like this is this is such a brilliant idea because it's a great service for me. Because I don't the package is not the ticket to ups I have to worry about that and gets me in their store and I got I got what I wanted. I needed some sandals. So like I finally got my sandals and I got a coupon for it.
Alex Ferrari 38:48
So for Kohls when it's Yeah, for Kohls is a little bit you know, a little bit more hassles and staff, one person staff to deal with it and more foot traffic and Amazon's like, we need more we need real estate. So yeah, we'll give you traffic you give us the real estate. What's the deal? It is it is fairly fairly brilliant. Now let's talk a little bit about production film production. Yeah. What do you think it's going to look like? I mean, you're shooting now like how is it working you know shooting with you know, this COVID stuff? I mean, for one man crew or short like two man crew is one thing but like, for narrative TV show like I don't know how you move forward. Right right now at least
John Hess 39:33
I really I agree with you. I I mean, I do one man to man things operations. I do. And well I work with corporate clients. I've including school districts, and we're just, it's a lot. I mean, I don't get I don't want to sound too, too dangerously political, I guess. But it's a lot about optics. It's about appearing to look like you're doing in media where the mass You stay here so your social distancing, you apply you You know, we apply the, the hand sanitizers and all that. But it really just comes down to we just have to look like we're doing our jobs. And unfortunately, with with, with, when you get the larger narratives, we have lots of groups of people, you know, hair, makeup and sets and all that just 3040 people cruise it's hard to maintain those optics. I mean, you can, there's so there's a whole movement about, you know, getting somebody people trained in, you know, health and safety and having that one person on set and look, is that really gonna make that much of a difference was that you're just kind of it's just a See ya maneuver? I don't know. You know, I don't I don't, I don't see us really getting into like, traditional. And this I guess was like, I don't know, if you've probably been affected. But I think a lot the society in general has been had like overhanging depression. all, this?
Alex Ferrari 40:55
Yeah. You know, it was like, like Obama, like Michelle Obama came out. She says she has low grade depression. And I think it was. And I think what Seth Meyers said, like, when you go low, I go high. I have high grade depression. And it's, it's very, it's very true. No, there is there. I mean, I don't know why I do this. But I watched the news every day. And I just watched 30 minutes of it, it just I know, I watched network news. And it just watch it just to just to find out what's going on just just to stay informed. Because we've got canon, he got kinda got to know what's going on. Because I never was a person who watched the news. Like, I just, I'm like, you know, what, if it's the big enough, I'll hear about it, I'll find it on my Facebook feed, or someone will tell me about it. And now it's just like, things are changing so rapidly, and craziness is happening on a daily basis that you kind of have to stand for. And, you know, I sit there with, with my wife, I just turned her I'm like, why do I? Why are we doing this? I don't under, you know, we're hope we're praying for that last segment, which is like how a puppy saved someone with COVID. Like, it's, it's, it's like that we're praying for that one happy moment. At the end?
John Hess 42:05
Yeah, that's, that's depressing, because I think, you know, I'm trying to if I try to put together like a small production, and I'm not, I'm not throwing lots of money at I'm just gonna, you know, put together a little short film or something. I can't really foreseeably do that in the next, you know, few months. Just because if I wanted to cast it, it would be difficult because there's going to be half of your cast supposing Well, I'm not going to, or not even interested in working in something right now. They don't want to be in anything, you know, and I'm not going to be paying them huge amounts of money. This is more of like a for fun project. How can you it's hard to justify and it's hard to even even look like you're doing a lot of watching and watching old movies and thinking like, Hmm, I wish we could hug people like that in the movie. Because you can't do any of that stuff. Yeah, well, I don't know what's gonna happen.
Alex Ferrari 42:53
Love scenes. How can you do a love scene?
John Hess 42:55
No.
Alex Ferrari 42:56
How can you fight like a like a, like a, like a fight fight
John Hess 42:59
Close combat for now, we can't do it.
Alex Ferrari 43:01
I mean, it's, I know, I mean, someone like Tyler Perry, who has an infrastructure that makes all the sense in the world. He's popping out content like crazy. And he was he's the guy who creates content. Like he creates like, like 50 episodes of a show in like four weeks or something like that. It's like it
John Hess 43:17
Flows. Amazing. I mean,
Alex Ferrari 43:19
He just pumps it out. But he has this he's unique person, because he has an entire movie studio at his disposal, which he can quarantine, lock it down. And everyone's in a bubble for that time, and you could shoot, that makes sense. But no, we're not set up for that. But that's never been a thing. And that's in the studio world, let alone in the indie world. I actually did a whole episode about COVID safety because I went for a bike ride. And I saw, of course, independent filmmakers on the side of the road in my neighborhood, shooting a short or some scenes that were COVID related because the guys were dressed up in like, you know, hazmat suits and stuff, okay. And I'm just and they nobody was when they had the hazmat suit off, but the head was off. They were all clumped together in a small group talking, the actors were all talking and then the director and DP were setting something up over there and that nobody had masks on. And I'm like this, this is so irresponsible, like you can, you can't do it. Like I couldn't as a film director, put my cast or crew in harm's way right now. With for film, like, it's not worth it right now. It just doesn't make any sense to do something like that. I, I can't
John Hess 44:38
I'll send it further to mean look, I mean, not if someone and I'm not saying I disagree, but I'm saying if you even if you think it's not an issue, you can't get other people to do it. You know, I mean, it's it's like so you're you're just unless you find like a bunch of people that all agree that Oh, we're gonna take the risk. But that's not fun. That's not the point of making films that receive opinion. So it's I, yeah, we're all.
Alex Ferrari 45:07
Independent film independent film is going to have a rough time for the next few years, and people are gonna have to get very creative. You know, they're going to if they are going to do something, it's going to be, you know, kind of like what I did with my last film, which was last last film I couldn't do now is because going to Sundance and shooting at Sundance, which is something I can't do right now. But it was a small crew, it was a three three man crew was made the DP and the sound guy, and then my actors. And that was it. And I was running around so you, you have to you have to start getting creative in the storytelling process on how to do it. Like I've been hearing from the studio's people in the studios that they're saying, when you're writing, no crowds. Don't put this in don't put that in anymore. No more love scenes. It Yeah, like do figure out another way to do it. If we if we're going to continue to do so I think there's going to be a COVID era in filmmaking, where after we're done with everything that's in the can, we're gonna start seeing films and television shows that are going to be just like, oh, that was in the COVID era. Yeah. And it's going to be like, they can't kiss they can't touch. It's like this whole weird thing. But I think that's what's going to happen and independent film, I think, you know, I'm waiting for the next great COVID era independent film like the El Mariachi of this era. I don't know what that will be. You know, that's gonna like take the world by storm like the the paranormal, like paranormal activity. Perfect. COVID movie, like, perfect COVID movie, like
John Hess 46:35
You can see, though, that's a problem.
Alex Ferrari 46:37
No, no, no, but if they've quarantined together, they're fine. Okay. So again, but there's a small crew, very small amount, if you quarantine with somebody for two weeks, and everyone's all we're all good. All right, great. Let's, let's go. And we're all on a house. And it's very controlled. And that's the kind of films I think we're going to be seeing coming out.
John Hess 46:57
Yeah I mean, I always think about like, what what will future generations look back and ask us, you know, like, Oh, you lived through that era was like, it's gonna be an interesting story to tell the grandkids
Alex Ferrari 47:09
Now, so I want to go back real quick to filmmaker IQ, man, because I just, I love what you do with filmmaker IQ, you've, you've created some amazing, I've promoted your stuff over the years. As far as this little mini documentaries you make over like, you know, a lens that the feel the 180 rule, like, and they're all you know, all this color and lepin, 28 frames and 24 frames a second, all this kind of stuff. How, why do you do it? Because it's a lot of work, dude, it's like, I can see a ton. You've got the little 3d image that the 3d guys coming out, setting me to create a 15 minute video must take you forever.
John Hess 47:49
Well, the last video I did, oh, started at the beginning of the COVID saying was that Vox video, the history of William Fox, it'd be like 43 minutes long. And it was a ton of research just trying to go, why don't we Why do I Why did I think it's, it's it's a it's a self expression kind of thing I really enjoy ever just really enjoyed exploring the truth of a topic like that. And kind of going in depth into it. Because I don't I feel like no one else is really kind of tackling it the way that I do, which is unrelenting depth.
Alex Ferrari 48:23
Just I've seen obscene depths of the minutes on focus, like or on depth of field, I think it's 15 minutes of that, like it was like, but it's so entertaining. And like you go into the history of it. And it's like the lenses and the breakdown all is great.
John Hess 48:38
And of which I will get like plenty of YouTube comments that will argue with me and tell me I'm completely wrong, because I have not done the research. It's like, Yeah, but now I you know, it's also born I think I have a I have an internet forum personality where I do like to go on on. I unfortunately, read all the comments and I engage in Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a habit. part of who I am. A lot of stuff drives, sometimes ideas for new content was based on all that person made a mistake about that. So I want to talk about that particular point, you know, but it's kind of in that in that range. That's, that's, you know, I want to get to the point where I don't work can no longer read comments, because there's too many of them. That's, that's, that's my goal. But until then, I'm just I'm stuck arguing about 24 frames a second every day.
Alex Ferrari 49:27
Yeah, I mean, I mean, the depth that you do on these videos is pretty insane. And the research that goes into them is insane. The production of them. And again, you've been doing this for years now over a decade. You know, you've been you've been doing some of these, some of those little documentaries, the ones with the little, the little do I call it a little dude, I don't know if you haven't specific. Yeah, the little 3d dudes that go back seven, eight years.
John Hess 49:52
Yeah, about eight years. That's when they started doing the videos because we were when we first started filmmaker IQ was more of a aggregator site, a blog site and We'd do like what all the other bloggers do is just go out and try to find articles and post them together. And just the funny thing is we do that long enough, you kind of get a very good sense of what the blogosphere looks like. And you get kind of disgusted by like, I've seen the same thing over again. So I decided at that point, like, I'll just start making our own stuff instead of relying on other people to make stuff. So that's when the video started happening. And the first one was like Dolly zoom. I first explored that topic. But yeah, but I think I think what it is, is, I have talked to some people about this, I feel like filmmakers have like a, like 80% of filmmakers have an expiration date of like, say, I want to say like three or four years, I think three or four years it takes to learn everything about filmmaking, it's still that fun, like exciting, all good learning about this camera, there's new cameras coming out. So about three or four years, you absorb all this information. And then after that, you either if you love it, you continue on you, you pursue like story, and you pursue creation of actual, and we just said, a product, you know, you get over the the, oh, this is exciting, where this learning thing. And then the other segment just loses interest and they disappear. So I feel like a lot of what the growth in the internet is capturing that first, like three or four years of people that are just starting to learn this stuff. And the what's scary about that is there's so much marketing, there's so much like the the manufacturers are shoving down marketing information down your throat, like like a like, I'm just gonna pick on them. Black Magic just can't
Alex Ferrari 51:37
i knew you were gonna say I dknew youre gonna say black magic
John Hess 51:41
12k camera and they're saying it's revolutionary. It doesn't have Bayer system. And I'm sitting back, you're thinking the Bayer system is a good thing. People because people online saying the Bayer system sucks now, because this new marketing is coming down and slapping them with this new, we got this new system of camera. So I don't know where I'm going with all.
Alex Ferrari 52:01
But it started with red, red was the one that first came out with 4k and just like exploded I remember, at an ad, when it was a box. It was a box and they're like, just give us $10,000 and you will get a camera one day. And like that was insane. And then they sold like whatever 500 cameras that during an AB at that time. And they changed the game red changed the game, love them or hate them, they changed the game. So it took a while to catch up. And now people argue all the time, air is better than red Sony's better than airy and black magic is now you know, black magic was like kind of the redheaded stepchild for a long time. And now they've kind of come into their own as a real player in the camera game, you know, and I've always said, personally, I'm a big I love black magic I've had, I've shot black magic, I shot both my features on them. And I love black magic cameras and DaVinci Resolve and, you know, I drank the Kool Aid, because I feel because I feel that they have the best bang for the buck. And I think out of all the cinematic cameras, I think they have the best bang for the buck. And I did some tests once and I shot on airy, down the middle, and every Alexa down the middle and I shot the 4.6k Blackmagic down the middle. And I put them up and I brought in some filmmakers and some DPS I'm like, which is which and not a 10 times they can they could not tell the difference because the Blackmagic image lit the same everything was same same lenses and everything. The image is equivalent. It's not even and I know a lot of people are gonna be like know what he was saying. I'm like, Listen, calm the hell down. Where the the cost. The reason why the Alexa cost so much more, is when you start going three or four stops under five steps. It falls apart, the Blackmagic falls apart. But if you shoot it like you're supposed to shoot it, I it's pretty damn good. And the cost versus like 80 to 80,000 versus this a really easy workflow versus have fairly intense workflow and post all of all of that. You just got to kind of look another 12k What is it? How much is cost? 10,000?
John Hess 54:11
$10,000 Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 54:13
I you know, I'm not I'm fine with my I have a 4.6 I'm good.
John Hess 54:17
It's Yeah, like it's an interesting camera. The thing is, I've seen a lot of people jump on board with it. And it's just, I don't feel like the existence of a 12k camera does not invalidate your 4.6 camera. Right. You know, but it feels like a lot of people are thinking that and that's Mark I mean, it's not. And look grant Petty's he's he did a good job on his video, but I think it's the it's the next layer. It's the people that talk about what he said that are kind of overhyping it. And that's that's what that's what bugs me about kind of marketing and that's kind of what I've tried to do with my videos a little bit is to try to get down to the fundamentals get down to the understanding what does what does it mean when they say Bayer system Bayer pattern, you know, what does that mean? And then cut through some of that marketing hype that you're just constantly inundated with. And that's, that's, that's kind of what I'm trying to do with some of these videos.
Alex Ferrari 55:12
So like, Yeah, when black white and black magic came out with the 4k, the little mini pocket 4k, then everybody was like, Oh my God, oh my God, my God, we got a pocket 4k. And then like, five months later, four months later, the 6k comes out. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Guys? Are you are you effing kidding me? Really? Yeah. Like, can you? Can you stop it? Can you? Can you just not. And I know the black magic guys. I've worked with black magic. I yell at them all the time. I'll go like, dude, dude, seriously, man, like, just give us a year, give us like some time to like, enjoy what we have. Like,
John Hess 55:44
I'll give you a better one. I have the atom Mini, which I bought, like early. Well, early this year, they came with the atom Mini Pro, which I bought, because I like because I need that multi cam view, which is what added to the system. And then a month later, or, like, the week I got it after being on backorder for a month, they announced the atom Mini Pro ISO, which can record off all your camera streams at the same time. So it's like literally a month after I got the thing, a brand new one came out. And I'm looking at it like, Am I that's a great feature to have. Do I need it? Not really. But man, I wish I had that option. That's the thing is that you have to get used to the fact that hey, you know what? I need to stop buying technology and make stuff with the hat stuff I have had purchased.
Alex Ferrari 56:27
Amen.
John Hess 56:28
That's that's what I need to do.
Alex Ferrari 56:30
Well, I think and I think a lot of filmmakers use technology as an excuse not to actually get into the arena. Yeah, it's so true. I mean, so many filmmakers just like, Oh, I can't shoot it because I need this camera. Oh, I can't shoot it. Because I need that camera.
John Hess 56:44
What are you when people argue with me? About 24 frames a second? If people say that they want to have high frame rate movies, I would say go out there and shoot them yourself. Like you be the change. You go and then every single time. They always tell me I can't because I don't have any of this. I don't have any equipment. I don't have any casserole. So it's always it's always an excuse to get out of making something
Alex Ferrari 57:11
Well listen, I mean, I've been I've been a filmmaker for 20 odd 25 years plus, and I understand the excuse, demon, because it's fear. We're fearful of putting ourselves out there. We're fearful of creating art and oh my god, no one's gonna like it the comments Holy cow. All of that kind of stuff. And and not to mention that the pressure of if it's, you know, the cost and people you're working with, and can I really do it and all of there's so many doubts and fears that we as filmmakers have, that we find whatever excute looks simply happens with screenwriters that's like, oh, I'll write tomorrow. Or it's like there's fear as an artist in general, there's always fear and gear is the one of the easiest things you can say like, Oh, I don't have this camera, I don't have that camera, or I don't have this lighting, oh, I need that location. Or I can't make this script without 3 million like I can't, I just I can't, not to say I'm not going to go write a script that can make for 10,000. But at this script I can't make so I'm going to just sit around for three years chasing money for it. And that makes me feel like I'm a filmmaker, but you're really not a filmmaker, you're just a guy or girl chasing money. That will more than likely never happen. And I played that game for 20 years. 20 years, I played that game. So I turned 40. And I was attached to another big project with a big producer and screenwriter. And the project fell apart again. And I said I'm 40 I can't do this anymore. So 30 days later, I was shooting my first feature with a Blackmagic cinema 2.5k why because I had it. You have and and I didn't even hire a dp I lit the damn thing myself and never really dp before. I was a colorist for 10 years. So I felt that I could get it. I just gave me a down the middle of fixing a post. And I did
John Hess 59:10
You you're inspiring me, Alex. Man, I
Alex Ferrari 59:14
But I did. But that's the story. But the thing is that I didn't I made it because I was already with indie film hustle at that time. So I felt very comfortable for whatever is something psychological, but I just felt, oh, I have indie film house, I can go back to like, I have my I have my tribe. So if it doesn't work out, no big deal. Because I don't know about you. But in my mind when I made my first feature, it was going to be Reservoir Dogs. I mean, I don't know about you, but it was going to be Reservoir Dogs. It was going to be mariachi was going to be clerks, it was going to be one of these big, independent films that explode out of the gate. So that pressure that I put on myself, stifled me for 20 years and of course I was fearful and of course I was chasing every other dream and every other little project and everything else because I was scared to actually Go do it. Whereas when I finally just said, You know what, screw it, I'm going to just go out and shoot it. 30 days later we shot with a script, which was, you know, a page outline with a bunch of stand up comics and improvisers. And we shot around our, all their apartments and around LA, and we shot the whole damn thing and eight days, I went up to the Hollywood sign and stole it. Which by the way, anyone wanting to shoot on the Hollywood sign this is this is a little tip if you just want to eat because if you want to get permits and stuff, it's becomes a pain in the ass. button. Yeah, so I was like, I'm just gonna steal it and like halfway and we were released. I was scared. Oh my god, what do we get this the Hollywood sign on, like, halfway up. While I'm lugging the gear up with my actors and actresses walking in front of me and I've got all this gear. I'm looking up. And I said, No one's coming. No one cares. There's no one kid. Like if someone called them a someone's illegally should buy that they're not helicoptering somebody in by the time they get up there. I'm done with my shot. So I just realized like, okay, fine, I could just you and we shot and with all these cool images and stuff that we got up there, but I didn't give my mind a moment to stop itself. Because it was afraid and I just did it and I was done. And I got it out there and, and it sold to Hulu and we sold internationally and we did very well with it. And it was cost like five grand to make. And it was great. But that was I had to it took me 20 years to get there because of that fear and I think gear was one of the all bands I need to read. I can't Yeah, I need to I need to have all this all I need I need I need a tech No. How can I not shoot without a tech? No. Have you ever shot Have you ever shot with a tech? No by the way?
John Hess 1:01:48
No, I've seen them but I never thought
Alex Ferrari 1:01:50
I was shooting a music video and I had a techno the entire day. First time I ever had one. Oh my God is so basic. It's just, it lived on the tech all day. Just I just like I can't I can't I can't shoot without a mini techno everywhere I go. It was so amazing to have that thing. I was just like, Oh, I get why James Cameron has like 20 of these on the set just in case. But um, but anyway, so that's the that's the fear thing. So I think
John Hess 1:02:22
We've, we've kind of talked about gear for fear of gear, but I think it's also the, the fear of actually materializing your idea because as long as it's an idea in your head, it's brilliant. It's perfect. You know, the movie in your head is is Oscar winning. You put it on paper, and then you start realizing Oh, crap, it's maybe it's not.
Alex Ferrari 1:02:41
And then you start shooting? Oh,maybe
John Hess 1:02:44
Yeah. Are you see it? Oh, crap. This isn't really as good as I thought was gonna be. It's the fear.
Alex Ferrari 1:02:50
No, it's scary, man. It's scary being a filmmaker and doing all that but in anyone listening out there. I hope they don't get caught up that because tomorrow you'll wake up and you'll be you know, 70 and you'll be stuck chasing that, that that that Hollywood dream that Hollywood sells you that is bogus. It's the sizzle, no steak behind it. And you kind of just got to go out and do it. Like my second film. I shot with the pocket camera 10 ATP. The first generation pocket camera shot the whole movie on that people thought where I was crazy. That was crazy to shoot a whole film on that. I'm like, No, I love the look of it. It looks great. And it was a 1080 p camera right? blew it up to 2k for for my DCP screened it at the Chinese Theater. It's one of the best things I've ever shot in my life. It was beautiful. Lee shots I was like I can't I was I was scared to death. Because on my my 55 inch, you know, a color grading monitor it look great. I'm like, Yeah, but projection and like I don't know when in the first time I saw it was at the Chinese Theatre of projected theatrically, I was like holy cow. It holds like i thought was gonna get picked but it held so beautifully. So I don't want to hear excuses from people like oh, this and that. And if you want to go to tangerine with the iPhone and right, just worry about your story. People will forgive the image quality. And don't get caught up in like, dude, you're not deacons. Like you're not deacons. anyone listening, you're not Roger Deakins, you're not gonna make something look like Roger Deakins, I'm sorry. It's because there's one, Roger Deakins. You're not going to be Fincher, you're not going to be Nolan, you're not going to be Spielberg because they're that's what they do. And it took them years if not decades, to get to where they are. Be yourself and be the best version of yourself that you can be and that's all we can ever do as a filmmaker.
John Hess 1:04:30
That's a fantastic message. No deacons doesn't work alone. He's got no script set dressers he's got you know, location scouts and all the basic all the all the resources at his disposal x expose a expose. Yeah, well, I was gonna say that in this nice little narcissistic, but if so if it was between me and Steven Spielberg and Steele Spielberg was given like 15 minutes to work a scene and shoot it. And I was given eight hours to shoot the scene and I had the same people Steven Spielberg has I think I would probably hold up at least I wouldn't. I wouldn't embarrass myself. I think
Alex Ferrari 1:05:08
You get something competent up there it Yeah, it'd be something there. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I know what you're saying. You're not saying that you're Steven Spielberg, nor that right? You can compete at that level because he's Steven Spielberg. No one can.
John Hess 1:05:20
Exactly.
Alex Ferrari 1:05:21
But if you use the same crew, the same resources, chances are your stuff is going to look, it would be more present
John Hess 1:05:27
That would be Steven Spielberg, but it would still be okay. I mean, it's especially given a time time difference that I had, I had a lot more time than Steven Spielberg might pull off something.
Alex Ferrari 1:05:38
Something that looks really good. Like something that looks really good. And then before before we go, man, I gotta ask you, cats.
John Hess 1:05:47
Oh, okay.
Alex Ferrari 1:05:47
Cats. Come on. Let's Let's Yeah. Let's talk about cats for a second because you wrote it. You did a video about the you like cats. And I've spoken about cats publicly many times. Okay. And I generally don't like to bash other filmmakers on the show. And I'm not bashing the filmmaker, that something happened, in my opinion. I don't know what it was because it was such a perfect storm that you will never see in your lifetime again. Because you had Spielberg producing. You had an Oscar winner directing it you had based on one of the biggest Broadway shows of all time with the biggest music Stars of All Time. Some Oscar Wilde like us, throwing Oscar winners around like it was water on that set. And everyone drank the Kool Aid. Like everyone said, this is going to be huge. This is a great idea. That doesn't happen. You know, you get the room every once in a while. Like you'll get the room you'll get a showgirls, you'll get a trolls too. You'll get something that's so bad. That a transcends being good. I'm still not at the point where catch transcends to being good. I got through 20 minutes of it. And I just said, Oh my god, this is so bad. I can't keep going. Maybe with a group of people I could watch it again. But I can the room I could watch again and again, but I can't watch cats.
John Hess 1:07:12
Well I think with cats Well, I think what's true to me is I enjoyed I really liked basically, the garish ness of it as part of the first 20 misses we had we had a Jenny any dots sequence when you have the kids on the cockroaches. Oh, that is a bridge too far. That's That's the worst part of the movie. I get, oh, it gets better. It gets better. It gets better. Okay, holy it is. It is totally. Like once you get past that,
Alex Ferrari 1:07:38
Once you get past the dancing cockroaches,
John Hess 1:07:41
But with the children faces that wouldn't
Alex Ferrari 1:07:42
Children's faces. But that's the thing I want. I just want to impress upon everyone listening is that this was a universal movie, with Spielberg producing it. Like with $100 million behind it. This doesn't happen. These studios don't take risks like this. But on paper, but on paper. This was a sure fire hit like hmm, this was a hit on paper, it had a check every single box off. The one thing it did not check off was the cat Amos's that were in it and the unfinished hands and visual effects. Or at least it was a
John Hess 1:08:26
I even noticed the hands part. But I think what I what I appreciate what it was cats though is it does offer it adds something to the the musical genre that has been missing in a long for a long time. And that's actually having some people involved that. And again, I'm looking past the effects, which I think I just kind of got like a hot tub you kind of get used to it after a while.
Alex Ferrari 1:08:48
That was a great analogy. Like it's really hot when you get in but after a while just like it just waves over
John Hess 1:08:54
Like the ocean. But yeah, but I think he got like all these a lot of the roll a lot of the the more major roles of cat and again, like I got, this is an admission that I am a big cats fan before no movie came out. So I know I knew the there's not a story. It's a collection of songs. It's really what it is. It's based on poems by TS Eliot. So I mean, I have that background of it. So I understand new characterizations. But you'd have a lot of people that are that are in the musical genre that don't, because the musical genre has for a long time been plagued by the fact that you have to have the paper, the paper has to say, you know, we have this star and it's gonna bring this lunch box off this star, this star. And the problem was, you know, that is Johnny Depp. For example, in Sweeney Todd, he's not really a good singer, not for that particular role. That's the, the so what cats did, which was kind of unique was they got a lot of people in the leads that aren't household names that are that are from like the Royal Ballet Company, which was like, wow, we're actually bringing in people that are good artists. Now, we covered them.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:03
But in those sets,
John Hess 1:10:04
Atleast it brought in some good, some good art and if you actually, if you were to only watch one segment and not and just ignore the rest of if you watch the symbol Shanks, the railway cat and this is this is this sounds absurd now, if you watch just that segment, and you can it's actually very good because it's probably the best segment in the entire film. It's not. It's not like, disturbing there's no children on cockroaches. But it's actually some very, very high level dancing on on display. It's something you don't actually see in in movies. So I'll give I'll give the filmmaker credit for that.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:39
It's, it's lit beautifully. The dancing is great. The singing is fantastic. The songs are the songs. They're great, you know, what a Geneseo cat, whatever the hell that thing is called I don't go cat angelical cat. The first eight minutes of the movie is just one long ass song. And my wife looked at me She's like, is this gonna stop anytime soon? I'm like, No, it's not. It's not. And the best review I've ever heard for a movie was for cats. And it's one sentence, just so perfect. Cats is the worst thing to happen to cats and stocks. It's just apps. But it's been bashed enough in the press. But I just wanted to hear your point of view. So I appreciate that. Anyone out there? Please watch cats. Let us know what you think. In the comments below.
John Hess 1:11:31
It helps if you go into it maybe a little inebriated.
Alex Ferrari 1:11:34
Oh, no. Halfway, like in those first 20 minutes. I'm like, man, if I don't, I don't drink. I don't smoke. I've never done drugs. But I'm like, if I was high, this would be much better. Like I could like if you're if you're tripping, again have never tripped. But if I could only imagine like if I was tripping this this movie would blow my mind.
John Hess 1:11:56
It is it is one of those in the mood movies. Again, it is the thing is I'm also a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber who's obviously wrote cats, but Andrew Lloyd Webber in his earlier years, you have to realize the guy was there was some weird stuff he put out really weird classes is in that category. That category.
Alex Ferrari 1:12:22
Now I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. Ask all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?
John Hess 1:12:28
Oh, my lord. can be very, very facetious and say quit.
Alex Ferrari 1:12:35
Just just run away, just stop
John Hess 1:12:36
Run away. Because if you follow that advice, then you probably made a good decision. If you said, No, john, you're an idiot. I don't want to listen to you. And you probably have the right mindset for, for sticking it out in this business. Because it is it is hard, I think, to be less facetious, I think is to, to really understand what you're trying to put out there. I think a lot of people get so so narrow. So they put the blinders on. They think about their project their movie, and they think it's it is so perfect for everybody. And everyone will love my movie, because I'm the one that made it. And I actually had somebody send me a question the other day, he asked me, What does what do they mean by target audience? And I asked myself, like, how do you not understand what your target is? I just kind of went through what I went through with him was like, What is your movie? appeal to? What do you think, would want to see your movie? And I think that's if any advice, maybe it's just to understand, not only like, what what are you making your movie? Not say for who you're making the movie, but or how? How does the How does it fit in the larger world, you know, and I also realize, too, that you don't necessarily make movies for, for the entire world, you sometimes you a lot of the times you make a movie for yourself first. But also realize that fact that that, you know, try to tie that into I mean, I try that and make you make the movie for yourself. But also realize that how does that how to appeal to other people, if that makes sense.
Alex Ferrari 1:14:00
Makes a person understand who your audience is, basically, and try to create something for that audience is a good piece of advice.
John Hess 1:14:09
Yeah. And I think again, the audience could be you too. I mean, you are in the audience. You are You are the first audience. So if it doesn't appeal to you, then obviously it's not. I mean, if it doesn't appeal to you, you're gonna have trouble appealing it to somebody else.
Alex Ferrari 1:14:21
And oh, and three of your favorite films of all time.
John Hess 1:14:24
Oh, that's Dr. Strangelove is probably one of my favorites of all time. I'm not gonna go cats. By what you may think it's not even near top 10 I'm trying to think of the Dr. Strangelove is absolutely my favorite. Oh, I love Some Like It Hot. Yeah, I just like I'll just pick another one that it's kind of a more of a smaller one. This is kind of what really inspired me to be a filmmaker is a movie called The Big Kahuna.
Alex Ferrari 1:14:51
Yeah, I remember that. I remember The Big Kahuna
John Hess 1:14:53
Kevin Spacey Danny Devito and the guy that played the one of the vampires on Twilight went on to
Alex Ferrari 1:15:00
Yes, I know what he's talking about Yeah.
John Hess 1:15:02
And it's it's an it's a, it's a great little movie from the late 90s. It's about these three salesmen that get together and they're trying to land the Big Kahuna. And it's entirely driven by conversation and entirely place that takes place in a single room. And it is, but with some of the best performances I've ever seen on film. So that's, that's, I think that's one of my favorites.
Alex Ferrari 1:15:23
Very cool. I'll get that out there. Now where and where can people find you? Oh,
John Hess 1:15:28
Oh filmmakeriq.com I need to I'm I am redoing the website. Eventually. It's it's a long process. But if you really want to find me youtube.com slash I think filmmaker IQ is just look up filmmaker IQ, you can meet chase me around on Facebook. I mean, I post more like personal stuff on Facebook. But between those two, that's really where you're gonna see most of my face. And obviously, on this podcast.
Alex Ferrari 1:15:53
John I really appreciate you coming on the show, man. We could talk for about another two, three hours, just just geeking out alone on cast. But But I really appreciate what you do man and and all the education you put out there for, for filmmakers out there. So thank you for doing what you do my friend.
John Hess 1:16:12
Oh thank you for having me.
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Pat Flynn, the founder of Smart Passive Income (SPI), is a pioneering figure in the world of online business and digital marketing. His success story has inspired countless entrepreneurs to create their own passive income streams, and his educational resources have empowered individuals to achieve financial freedom. In this article, we will explore Pat Flynn’s journey, his strategies for success, and the impact of Smart Passive Income on the digital landscape.
Pat Flynn’s story began in 2008 when he was laid off from his architecture job during the global financial crisis. Facing an uncertain future, Flynn decided to take matters into his own hands and started exploring ways to generate income online. He initially found success by creating a website called Green Exam Academy, which provided study materials for the LEED exam, an architecture industry certification. The site quickly gained traction, and Flynn realized the potential of passive income as he continued to earn money from the sales of his study materials even while he slept.
In 2009, Flynn founded Smart Passive Income to share his experiences and teach others how to create their own online businesses. Through his blog, podcast, and various online courses, Flynn quickly became a trusted authority on digital entrepreneurship and passive income generation.
Pat Flynn’s success is rooted in several key strategies that he’s consistently employed throughout his career. Some of these principles include:
Over the years, Smart Passive Income has become a go-to resource for aspiring digital entrepreneurs. Pat Flynn’s relatable story and clear, actionable advice have helped thousands of individuals create their own passive income streams and achieve financial independence. Flynn’s influence extends beyond his website and podcast, as he has also authored books, spoken at conferences, and collaborated with other industry experts.
In addition to inspiring others, Flynn’s work has helped shape the digital marketing industry as a whole. His commitment to transparency and ethical marketing practices has set a standard for others to follow, fostering a more honest and authentic online business environment.
Enjoy our conversation with Pat Flynn.
Right-click here to download the MP3
Alex Ferrari 1:52
Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Jason buff.
Jason Buff 1:57
I can't tell you how excited I am to have today's guest on Pat Flynn, his website Smart Passive income.com is an amazing resource for anybody who wants to learn about online marketing or how to create products that generate passive income. And so what I want to do is I want to focus on films as a form of passive income, which means that you put a lot of work into something, you create a product. And then after you launch it, you're able to enjoy the fruits of that work for many, many years to come. And what Smart Passive Income kind of teaches is all the different ways that you can not only create products like that, but ways that you can connect with the people who are going to want those products and ways to put the message out there and to grow an audience and build mailing lists and things like that. It's there's a whole lot more to it. But that's kind of the general idea. All right, here's my interview with Pat Flynn. Now the thing is, because you know, what you do, and what I do are kind of in different worlds, but they're also kind of in the same world. And that is the concept of creating something, whether it be a movie or a product or whatever, that people are going to, you know, spend a lot of time on, put a lot of work in, and then after they kind of like set it off into the world, it's going to have its own life, you know, right. So the idea was really to discuss filmmaking in terms of how to approach it like filmmakers, films as the product and filmmakers themselves kind of as the brand and the ways that they can use some of the techniques that you talk about in order to connect with an audience and to kind of build a career as a filmmaker. Love it. Let's do it. Does that make sense? Yeah, sounds great. Okay, because that was one of the things that happened with me was, you know, I tried to make a film about two years ago, and ran into a bunch of problems. It never even occurred to me to think about connecting with an audience and social media and all these other things as a part of being a filmmaker, you know, and it's absolutely key now, especially now that things are changing, and everything's going to virtual platforms, Netflix, and everything, that filmmakers kind of become their own entrepreneurs. Yes. You know what I mean? So what I was thinking we could talk about first, just because I think if you could talk a little bit about your story and kind of how you got into passive passive income as the thing that kind of became your topic of choice.
Pat Flynn 4:17
Yeah, sure. I mean, I could, I could definitely go over my origin story. I love telling it. You know, and I say that because, you know, from a filmmakers point of view, the origin story is really important. You know, the storytelling aspect. And just understanding really, where the main character comes from, is really what helps you connect with your audience. And so, you know, I'm gonna hopefully do the same thing with those of you who are listening. So for me, I actually went to school and wanted to, for the rest of my life, be an architect. I had graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in architecture in 2005. And everything was going great in 2008. I had just gotten promoted to Job Captain youngest person in the firm to get promoted, it was making great money for my age at the time, and I was looking forward to spending the next 40 years of my life in this industry trying to make a name for myself until it was done. June 17 2008, actually, to be exact that my boss calls me to his office. And he says that, you know, although I've been contributing a lot, and I'm just want a rockstar that I was going to be let go. And it just didn't make sense for me that they were going to lay me off, although, you know, looking back was obvious because because of the recession and whatnot, and they couldn't have me any more. But it was a big blow for me, because I didn't have a plan B, I had dedicated my whole just time and effort to the world of architecture, and I moved back in with my parents actually, it was also bad timing, because I just proposed to my, my girlfriend now wife, so yes, she did stay with me. And we're still together, we have two beautiful kids. And did you have like, awkward dates where you were at your, your parents? You know, yes. And then luckily, we're all we all get along. And I get along with her parents, she moved back in with her parents to actually because we both needed to save money. So it was tough times. And you know, it felt felt like I was kind of moving backwards, even though I had been moving forward the rest of the time beforehand. And, you know, I actually discovered podcasts at that time, because I had a lot of extra time. And it was one podcast called Internet Business mastery with that I really connected with with the hosts who are actually bringing a lot of guests on who talked about their origin story and how they got started with online business. And I heard one story in particular, was about about a guy named Cornelius Fichtner, who was teaching people how to pass the project management exam, he was making six figures a year doing so. And I thought that was really interesting. And that was my sort of lightbulb aha moment. You know, if I'm Spider Man, that's the moment I got bitten by a radioactive spider. That's when all these things are turned turning on. Or if you want to go darker, you know, that's, if I'm Batman, that's when my parents got murdered, but I'm not gonna go there. That's when I was like, Whoa, I have some knowledge about specific exams that I took when I was an architect, maybe I can package that information and turn it into something that other people can use. And I don't know, crazy idea, maybe people would pay me for it. And make a long story short, a number of months later, I had this website up called Green exam academy.com. Back then it was actually called in the lead.com. Lead was the name of the exam, l e. D, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which is like a boring topic for most of you. But for me, I became this rock star in that industry, because I was the only one really talking about it, helping people out online, just being very honest about what that exam was like, because I had passed it. And I was seen as an expert, even though I wasn't really, I didn't feel like I was an expert. They saw me as an expert, because I was somebody who was just had that experience taking that exam already. And in October of 2008, I released an ebook, to help people pass that exam, it was $19.95. And I sold over 200 copies in that month, and made eight, so almost $8,000 in earnings from an ebook. And it was just it just kind of blew me away that this was even possible. And you know, you hear people talking about these things. But when you're actually doing it, it just was mind blowing. It didn't even seem real. I thought it was doing like legal things. And the cops were gonna knock on my door like I had, you know, and then I started, you know, I remember even that first sale I had with that ebook, it just it I was excited, obviously. But then I thought about it. I was like, Well, what if this person asked for a refund? What if I get in trouble for this? What like, I don't deserve this, you know, and I had to go through a lot of these mental things that I had to learn just going down this route of being my own sort of indie entrepreneur, I guess you could say. And so, you know, I've learned a lot of things over time and helped 1000s of people start their own businesses of creating more businesses over time. And you know, a lot of people wanted to know how he started that business. Well, that's where Smart Passive income.com came from. That's, that's what most people know me from now, I have a podcast, over 23 million downloads, and a number of other things that I do on the side. And you know, I'm just here to help. So that's kind of my origin story and how I got started and it's it's pretty crazy to know that I've been doing this eight years now. And you know, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way I continue to make mistakes, but you know, every time I make a mistake, I learn from it and I continue moving forward and I report back so that everybody else can can learn from my journey.
Jason Buff 8:51
Now one thing I think you're missing from that story is the key role that Back to the Future played in your really difficult years there is that if you're if your speech has anything you know, if that's what actually happened was sitting around watching back to the future a lot
Pat Flynn 9:10
You know, I did back to teachers, my all time favorite. And most people who know even a little bit about me know that and I often include back to the teacher in my presentations, because it's just very, it's just very me but I remember when I got laid off, you know, that day I went back to my apartment and then my girlfriend was there and our fiancee at the time and she was just, you know, really making me feel better about what happened always just you don't we got this. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. And what really made me feel better was watching Back to the Future because that was like my comfort blanket. You know, my my pacifier, I guess you could say, and, you know, I always dreamt that I had access, I would get access to a DeLorean because then I could just go back in time and try something different, you know, not do architecture anymore. Try something maybe work a little bit harder in my job or do something to not get let go. And I finally realized like, you know, I I realized that I don't have access to a door. And but I also realized through watching that movie, that what you do now affects your future, you know, you could change your story. And I started to take action. And that's when I really got into, okay, this business thing that, that it's out there, why can't I do it? So let's see what I could do to make it happen. And I started to research it, I started to connect with people get really out of my comfort zone to try new things. Which, which is really interesting now that I think about I'm like, what if I didn't get let go? What would I be doing what I'm doing today? And I can absolutely say no, I would not because it was getting let go. And not really having a plan B that forced me to do these. Take these bold actions that were required to make the success happen. Right.
Alex Ferrari 10:46
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jason Buff 10:56
Yeah, it's, it's always in the form of some terrible thing, you know, your old life dies, and then your new life begins where you kind of like, emerge as maybe what you're supposed to be, you know, right, right, the uncomfortable moments. So talk a little about a little bit about the idea of how you built an audience, how you have connected with people and how you've grown smart, passive income, and kind of, one of the things that really impressed me about everything that you do is how much authenticity there is. And there's a lot of negative, you know, when you talk, especially to filmmakers, and artistic people, they look at marketing, a lot of times like, oh, well, this is kind of like the used car salesman, kind of like thing, you know, and they don't really, you know, and I became kind of a devotee to to the idea of marketing and looking at, I mean, even if you want to look at Back to the Future, and Steven Spielberg, and all these other people, who are tremendous artists, but they also I mean, especially Spielberg really understand branding and marketing and how to connect with an audience. And, you know, even when Spielberg has a bad movie, it's like, the brand is still there. And filmmakers have such a hard time thinking of themselves like that. They're like, I'm not Coke, I'm not, you know, and they don't really understand that. So can you talk for just a little bit about the concept of marketing and building a brand?
Pat Flynn 12:15
Yeah, it's funny, there's a quote by Seth Godin, who's famous marketer, that a lot of us in this space now, he's a, he's a quote says, marketers ruin everything. Because that's what a lot of people think of, of marketers, and marketers often do ruin everything. But you know, when it comes to building a brand, and marketing, I feel that that is my definition of that is what people say about you when you're not there. And to really focus on that part of it, like how are you leaving an impression on somebody? What is that? What is what is it that you are providing value? Like, what does that value have to offer? And how are they able to take that in? How are they able to experience that? How are they able to share that with others. And really, branding is what people say about you when you're not there. And I love that sort of mindset. Now in terms of, well, you're not Koch, you're not Steven Spielberg, you know, really scatter or whoever, maybe not, not yet, at least, but to a small pocket of the world you can be. And that's where really, I found success with even initially green exam Academy. I mean, nobody knows is hardly anybody knows what the LEED exam is. But for architects and people in the design world who really wanted to pass the exam, I was Steven Spielberg to them, you know, because I was the one putting it out there. And I was doing things like actually caring about what they needed help with, and focusing on that relationship building. And you know, a lot of times when you're doing something creative, you're kind of in your studio, or, you know, behind the computer and you kind of just doing your thing, and then you put your product out there into the world and then kind of just sit back and wait for people to react. Whereas, you know, a lot of people who are doing it, right, they get people involved early in the process, they start building those relationships, and they start to foster those one on one in one to many interactions that are now more possible than ever with things like social media and stuff to really make a connection. And there's a great article, I would I would kindly ask everybody out there who's listening to this to read, it's by a man named Kevin Kelly, who was the senior editor at Wired Magazine, and just a brilliant man. There's an article called 1000 true fans. And this This changed my thought process with how to approach marketing and branding and business and it can change yours too. And this was really written for you guys. It was written for creatives for artists for musicians. And the idea and the gist of this article is that, you know, if you're doing something and you build an audience of only 1000 True raving fans, by true raving fans, these are people who, who just love absolutely love what you do because you've you've made an impression on them, that you are a part of who they are. And, you know, they'll just love you no matter what you do, because you've you've just made that impression on them. So raving fans are people who will drive 100 miles to go see your movie because it's just that's the closest theater that it's available in. These are people who will get on a web like like Live streaming with you so that they can potentially interact with you, even though they're on the other side of the world. And it's 5am there, they wake up early for you, those are those are the true raving fans, if you get only 1000 of those people to follow you, under you, that's that of this world of what 7 billion people to get only 1000 to pay you for what you do $100 A year, in some way shape, or form it whether it's that product itself or access to you or something, you know, related to that $100 a year, right? That's, that's not much at all. I mean, I in many people pay $100 a month for stuff we hardly even use, like cable television or whatever. So $100 to support something you truly believe in something you're completely in love with is not outlandish at all. And if you have 1000 just 1000 people doing that you have your six figure a year business, that's $100,000 right there. And so it really hones in the importance of those true fans. And a lot of what I love to teach is, you know, a lot of people in the internet marketing space and build online business space. A lot of people focus on building what's called traffic or getting visitors to your website, everything that you read about is traffic, traffic traffic, but I try to approach it a different way. I say, Okay, well, what good is traffic? If when they come on your site, they don't have a good experience, for example, or I want the focus to be on okay, even if there's 10 people coming to your site? How can you make those 10 people feel special? How, like, what are their names? Can you get to know them. And the cool thing about 1000, it's not much it's, it's one person that day, for less than three years, if you can build one raving fan each day, which is now it's a little bit more possible, right. And building raving fan isn't very hard, it's a little bit of a connection, a touch. And as a creative, somebody who's building and making movies like, this is stuff that your audience craves, they want to know who's behind it, they want to get to know you and your personality, if you are there reaching out to them, and giving them permission to ask questions or speaking to you. And you're giving them a little bit of access to your thought process or, you know, even giving them some thoughts to where you're going next. I mean, oh my gosh, they're going to be with you forever. And it doesn't take very many to really provide an amazing living for yourself in terms of the monetization and expenses. But more than that, it's just, you know, I know as creators, we all love when we feel appreciated for the work that we do, because we put so much work and time and sweat and effort into it. And again, it doesn't it that read that article is essentially what I want people to do, it really goes into the long tail effect in really building these long term relationships that can then over time exponentially have just a massive effect on you. But not only that, just the amount of people your message, your feeling your book, your product is reaching,
Jason Buff 17:43
Right. Yeah, it's interesting how much you know, if you look at guys like Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith, and the guys who kind of have a name, you know, there's a lot of great movies out there, but you don't necessarily know who the director is or who the person is behind it. You know. And when you think about somebody like Robert Rodriguez, it's like, you know, that story. And then Kevin Smith, you know, that story, you know, he made clerks, and then he went off and you know, sold it for a bunch and then kind of came out of nowhere. So, you know, I think what you're saying goes along with that kind of thing, which is that the people that follow those guys connect to that story, and they kind of like internalize it to, you know,
Pat Flynn 18:21
Yeah, I mean, your brand or your marketing, it's not just the movie in the film that you put out. It's all the stuff that happens in between. And I think that's, that's really important to know. And it's not hard. It's just, it just takes some human to human interaction. I think that's another part that we're everybody in any space that's creating something that we really need to understand that it's not about b2b business to business or b2c business to consumer anymore. It's about p2p is my buddy Chris Ducker says it's the person to person relationships, and you know, you follow anybody in the space who has a huge following, they're doing that they're making those interactions. I mean, if you follow anybody, like Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, who is huge, he still makes even just a few seconds of time to individually, respond to people and he's using platforms to help them do that, like Snapchat. Snapchat is an interesting thing that I've just gotten recently into, that has been able, and has enabled me to have these really quick but very personal interactions with some of my fans. And you know, when you do that these people will start to spread and evangelize what you do.
Jason Buff 19:20
But yeah, it's amazing. Like, I was talking to Darius Britt, the other day, who's a guy who's kind of a YouTube sensation for filmmaking. And, you know, it really was kind of a breakthrough that he was talking about, you know, I might make a good film or a bad film or whatever, but people are gonna follow me, you know, they, they like me, they like what I do. So, you know, I might have good times and bad times, but you know, it's not about putting everything into the product that I'm making. It's about you know, saying that I am the author of that and that people follow me for that, you know,
Pat Flynn 19:50
Yeah, I mean, I and I'm not super familiar with in the filmmaking world, and, but you know, I can compare it very much to people who are self publishing books now.
Alex Ferrari 20:00
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Pat Flynn 20:10
Right. And there's just so I've gotten to know I've, you know, I just published my own book, and I've had decent success with it. And I've gotten to know a lot of other authors who have had success with their self published books, too. Because I'm very into this world, I'm very much into well, how, how can we go around traditional publishing and all the barriers and the red tape that that involves, and actually make an impact and help people but also make a good living at the same time. And I know a lot of people who are very, very much the Steven Spielberg, for example, in their own particular niche, and maybe I shouldn't say Steven Spielberg, because that's, that's, that would be the equivalent, like a self published person. But like, the Rodriguez, like you said, the guy who just everybody knows and he's doing it in his own way. I mean, I've gotten to know a lot of authors who are killing it in the horror space, or in the mystery sci fi space in future settings, like it's very niche down, but in these specific niches, they are the person who everybody reads, who everybody shares, who cannot wait till the next one comes out, who are just, like, building relationships with the characters that this these people are writing about. It's so interesting. And it really makes me want to do something. Fiction one day, I mean, that that's on my bucket list to write a fiction book or do some sort of film, and really affect people in the future
Jason Buff 21:24
Fan fiction.
Pat Flynn 21:24
Yeah, although I don't think I would ever touch back to the future because that shouldn't be touched anymore. So yeah, as long as the Mac is is still alive, I don't think we'll ever see any other film, and I'm hoping he stays live forever, because that means really, but anyway, it's awesome.
Jason Buff 21:24
Yeah. Okay, so when you're talking about I think this is actually a good topic, because ebooks, I think are very similar to the way that indie films have gone. You know, and it used to be that indie filmmakers, even like smaller ones had to go by studios, they had to raise an enormous amount of capital to make films and nowadays with the technology changing, and with video on demand, and all these other things, you know, filmmaking has become somebody something that everybody is kind of, you know, it's accessible to everybody. So the people who are having success with like, say, for example, in ebook and horror, how do you see them? And it doesn't necessarily have to be in that. But I mean, what kind of specifics do they do in order to reach out I mean, even like social media, websites, mailing lists, all the all the kind of staples of building that following.
Pat Flynn 22:32
So here's one specific thing that a lot of authors have done that I did with my recent launch that has worked really well. And that can really be transferred to any other launch of anything, but especially for indie filmmakers. And this is creating what's called a launch group or street team, related to your next upcoming film, for example. And so what I did for my my book that came out, it's called, will it fly. And it's a book about validating your next business idea before you actually spend all that time and money and effort on it to make sure it's something that that will work out. In the end, I actually recruited a group of people who were fans of things that I do, and only about three or 400 of them. And but it doesn't even need to be that much. You can have a street team of 20 people, for example, who you do a few things for you, for example, you give them early access, or to your film and allow them to provide feedback where you give them you know, still shots, for example of some of the scenes that are coming up that you aren't sharing with anybody else, you make them feel really special. And you also just keep them up to date, more than anybody with where you are at in the process. And in exchange for a lot of that, what they're going to give you is reviews on Amazon for that product, the day it comes out, they're going to be the ones who are going to share it. And a lot of times, even though they get early access to that book, or that product, for example, they end up loving the process so much and getting to know you and feeling your energy behind it that they're gonna go and buy it anyway. And they might buy multiple copies. I've had a number of people in my launch group for my book, buy 10 copies of my book, and then share it with their friends, because they were just like, I know, this book is great. I was there when it was being built. And I actually helped influence a little bit of what this was about. You can also have them choose between you know, if you're looking if you have like a poster that you're making for you can have them to choose their, you know, well, what elements do you think should be honest? Or which one of these two do you like better? I mean, you when you engage your audience in that way and give them opportunities to speak up or actually give them early access to things I mean, this small street team can have a huge effect. And it's it happens all the time. There's a guy named Mark Dawson, who I've gotten to know in the in the author space, who's writing these books, and he has this massive following. He does this with every single book, and people are just chomping at the bit to be a part of this sort of limited group for each of these book launches because they know they're gonna get early access, but also they all want to share it and provide help for Mark who they have gotten to know through the work over time that he's done.
Jason Buff 24:58
So now what if you like starting from scratch, though, I mean, these people, this guy's obviously been around and grown this group. But let's say like starting tomorrow somebody is, you know, trying to promote a film or we'll say ebook or whatever. What are the way what what would be some of the first kind of basics that they would need to start putting in place to start kind of building their massive empire,
Pat Flynn 25:22
I mean, I would have some sort of platform, a hub, where you could communicate one to many, in some way, shape or form, whether it be a podcast, a blog, I would definitely recommend a blog, even if you have a podcast to actually facilitate all that information and to collect email addresses, emails, man, if you are a filmmaker, and you have 1000 emails, can you imagine the impact that alone would have to have direct instant communication with your audience and your in your fans and to tell them and give them up to date things on what's going on, I mean, from scratch, you want to build a platform, and I would recommend a blog. If you are, you could even have a YouTube channel if you want for sure. But you know, somewhere where you can then collect email addresses, and just begin to talk about what you're doing. And share bits and pieces of it. You don't have to share the whole thing, of course, and you know, it reminds me of, of Gosh, Andy Weir, who wrote the book, The Martian, when he wrote that book, it was actually I don't know if you know this, but it was actually just initially a series of blog posts. And just this crazy idea he had for a story. And then what happened was, he started to gain a following online from people who were really enjoying these small blog posts. And, of course, he started from zero to but people started to spread his good message and his interesting story around, and then he started to get people who were knowledgeable about Mars and space to actually contribute. That's how he was able to understand all the, I don't know if you've seen the Martian, but, or read it. But that's how he was able to figure out all the information, he got to connect with people who knew what they were talking about, and actually sort of crowd created this book, if you if you will, with his audience. And so that's why it was just smashing success when it came out. And then of course, the movie came out. Also with Matt Damon, but, you know, in a similar fashion, we could all do the same thing, you just start sharing bits and pieces of what you're doing and talking about your story, and you're gonna get, you know, it's gonna be slow start. But if you connect, like with this, like what I said earlier with those people, five people, for example, might not seem very much to come follow you on your Twitter handle or your, your blog. But imagine being in a room with those five people and imagine what you could do with those relationships and how they can help you and you can have convert them into raving fans. Like, I always imagine the people on my email list as people in a room and my email list, for example, now is 160,000 people. So I imagine a stadium or two stadiums full of people who are there, sitting in those seats, and I'm at the center field or whatever, and whatever happened to share, I'm on that microphone. I'm like, Hey, guys, this is what's coming up. Here's where you can go get it. And, you know, a room of 10 people, I mean, it's it's still it, when you understand that those are actual people on the other end, it's it really changes the whole approach and and, again, emphasizes the importance of this relationships that you build, even when you're small.
Jason Buff 28:13
Well, yeah, I get nervous, you know, I've got like a 5000 person email list, and I get nervous that the second I email that I'm like, wait a second, I gotta read that. Sure. Okay, so let me let me talk about another aspect of this. Now. Another concept that you guys talk a lot about is mastermind groups. And this is a totally foreign concept, I think, to a lot of filmmakers and creative people. Can you talk about what the mastermind concept is?
Pat Flynn 28:45
Sure. So a mastermind concept. I mean, this was a term coined by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, but a lot of people have been doing it for even before then, and what what it is, it's a group of people, often very limited in size, that are consistently coming together, to help each other out, to hold each other accountable to set goals and stick to them. And back back in the day, for example, Andrew Carnegie had a group of people, I mean, he revolutionized the steel industry. But He credits the people he connected with on a consistent basis, who actually do more than he did about the steel industry, to have him become the richest person in the world at the time. You think of like, for example, back in the, you know, Knights of the Round Table days, I mean, it's essentially that it's, it's a table that's round, because there's no one person at the head, it's everybody they're contributing to help each other out for a bigger better cause. And so and so what was something I think a lot of indie filmmakers should be doing, or anybody who's creating is is be in a part of a mastermind group and it's it could be what with one other person or maybe four or five other people where you're meeting for example, every week or maybe once a month, and you get together on a call, and it doesn't even have to be in person I'm in to master among groups, I love them so much, I'm actually in two. And we meet virtually One of them's on free conference call.com that meets every Wednesday at 9am. And then the other one is that one meets on Mondays at 10am. And then the Wednesday at 8:30am. One meets on GoTo Meeting, you could also do it on Google's Google Hangouts, or even a Skype call conference call, for example, we'll just, it doesn't matter where you are, but connecting. And then it's it's a very formal structured situation to and I think that's important, because I've been a part and have been invited into mastermind groups where it's kind of like, you get all these people together who are building online businesses, for example. But then there's no structure and you kind of just talk about life, and you don't really get anything done. Right, in a mastermind format, here's how you can best use it. So what I would do is I would connect with one or two other people just to start out with.
Alex Ferrari 30:50
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Pat Flynn 31:00
Try to get on a consistent schedule actually put in your calendar make it a top priority, because more than anything, the mastermind groups and the people I've connected with, have held me accountable, who have really dug me out of deep holes and who have given me often brutally honest advice that I needed to hear. I mean, I wouldn't be where I'm at if it wasn't for them. So connect with a couple other people get on a consistent basis, get on a call together. And here's how it works, you get on the call. And the first part of it is you each share, you go round robin really quick, about a minute or two each talking about something awesome. That happened over the past week, since you last got together something that relates to whatever it is that your goals are. And so, you know, one thing that comes to mind when it comes to filmmaking is if you get together, you could say, well, I finished the screenplay for my next film, or you know what, whatever awesome thing happened, it's just a way to start off on a positive note, and actually start getting into the content of the actual meeting, which is, the highlight is what's called the hot seat. So one person every week is featured in what's called the hot seat. And that person presents what they're doing or what they have a problem with, or what they need help with what they need an opinion on, it could be anything. But then the rest of the group members, they're tasked with just being there to give advice to help to be a sounding board to give often brutally honest advice, like I said, and, you know, because you could talk about these projects that you're working on with your roommate, or your friends, or your mom, and you know that they're going to tell you stuff often that you that you want to hear, because they're good, they're gonna want to support you. But you really need to get with people who understand why you're doing what you're doing, where you want to go and give you the advice you need to get there. And so that hot seat can last, you know, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. And it does go by really fast. But it's a very, very open, transparent place. And people you know, you don't just want to hook up with other people also just who are random you want to get get together with people who you know, that you can trust. And it's going to take some time, you might want to meet with people in person to have a drink with them, or coffee with them or lunch with them first. So you know that there's a good vibe there. And then the end of the call is everybody round robin going around and talking about, okay, what's the thing that they want to accomplish by the next time they meet, and then the next person is in the hot seat the next time around? We we all the mastermind groups, I have have some sort of online community like as Facebook, Facebook group, or a secret Facebook group, or some sort of place where we can all message each other in between meetings if something comes up, but man, I tell you, it's it's one of the most powerful things in the world, to get together with other people who are more, not necessarily more experienced, because we all have different experiences. I think that's what it is, we all come from different angles. And you know, we even though a lot of us share the same audiences, we never consider ourselves competitors. Because we're all growing in this together. I mean, we're coming at it from a place of abundance. And when we can do that, and help others, we you know, what you put out to help others you always get back. And so it's just been great.
Jason Buff 33:45
But yeah, that's one of the biggest concepts that I think I've gotten from you and Gary Vander Chuck and some of these other guys is the idea of, you know, giving much more, you know, not come out and be like, you know, like me do this, do this for me, you know, offering a lot of value and offering so much that when you finally have something that you are interested in offering people that they're there for you, you know that you've built an audience, but through giving them an overwhelming amount of value
Pat Flynn 34:12
Yet, especially with social media, like the analogy I like to use a social media is like a big giant party, right? Like it's like a big giant room. And there's a party going on, everybody's having different conversations and different corners of the room and different areas. And they're all talking about different topics. Of course, you want to go find your people who are talking about the stuff that you'd like to talk about who you could, you know, join the conversation with, but you wouldn't go find those people and you find them in the corner, and they're talking about stuff that you like, and that might relate to what you're doing. You don't go there and you say, Hey, my name is Pat. Do you want to buy my Tupperware? Like you don't do that, but you always see that right? Like, how many times do we see tweets and facebook messages where it's like, Who are you and why are you selling me this thing? You know, you go there you join the conversation. You provide value, like you said, you just be a part of the group and then oftentimes when you befriend these people and they get to know you, they're going to be curious about what you have to offer, and want to know it in front, and from a genuine point of view and actually be more interested in and actually follow up with, or follow you through that process. No,
Jason Buff 35:10
I mean, that's probably the most I've got a Facebook group and I have to delete about half of the people that post in there, because it's all just about like this, you know, join my this joined by that, unlike first, you know, Developer Relations, I mean, that's, that's a little part of what indie film Academy was, it's like, I want to, you know, create something that's going to genuinely help people and I don't have anything that anybody really needs to support right now. But maybe when I do in the future, you know, or you know, and I also tell people who are doing things like horror movies or whatever, whatever genre you're working in, become a person in that world, you know, something that even if you just do blog posts that are curation, you know, like the top 10 of this, or whatever, you know, to get in front of that audience and give them things they're interested in just so they know who you are.
Pat Flynn 35:56
But you know, I love that you mentioned that it's sort of triggered something that I thought about that that could be really helpful. And that's understanding what you're sort of unfair advantages are and also your unique selling proposition. These are business terms that a lot of people use, but something is very relevant to anybody who's creating stuff in a competitive world where everybody's fighting for each other's attention or whatnot. So what I mean is like, say you do horror films. I mean, there's a lot of people who do horror films. But if I were to ask you, why should I go and watch yours? If you don't tell? If you don't know what that answer is? Then there's a problem. You know, why? Why yours, not the other person's? What's what's going to? What's different? What's your position? Why, what makes you unique, and it's very important to know what that is. And a lot of times you will won't know the answer. And a lot of you who are listening to this might not know the answer. And you might be cringing a little bit when I when I tell you that you have to, but a lot of times it comes from others to know what that is. And so I would encourage you to ask, you know, if you have any sort of falling already who watch your horror films, for example, it'd be pretty cool to hear why people watch yours. And you're probably going to be pretty surprised from the answers. But the answers will tell you what makes you unique. So you can make sure to incorporate that or just do more of that in the work that you do.
Jason Buff 37:14
Yeah, I had forgotten about that. A unique, unique selling proposition. Yeah, so let me talk about I want to talk about the negative for just a second, do you happen to remember any of the advice that you got in a mastermind group that kind of blew you away that you can share with us?
Pat Flynn 37:32
Yeah, I mean, I remember, gosh, there's so many times where the things for me, I mean, it everything from the name of my book and the structure of it to it, there was one time where I was really struggling with my podcast, for example, like, I felt like I was just not getting anywhere, I was kind of doing the motions and just in this cycle, and I wasn't really feeling it anymore. And there was one person in a group in particular, who had called me out on it. And he basically not in a rude way, but in a very respectful way, but also critical way, told me that I was being very selfish and thinking that way. And that I was putting the hard work that it took to put a podcast together. I was I was prioritizing that over what the podcast was actually for and what it was doing. So I actually got some good advice from the rest of the group, including this person, during that same call on how to make sure that I always through all the hard work and the grind, understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so I implemented some specific strategies. For example, I now have a specific folder in my inbox. That is simply for gratitude. People who have shared gratitude and thanked us for what I've done, I now have a board in my office that's pinned of thank you notes, a handwritten thank you notes that people have sent me for the work that I've done to help them and every time I get in that mood, where I'm like, Man, I don't want to do this anymore. Why? Why do I keep doing this? I look back right? Looking at that folder. I'm like, Man, I gotta keep doing it. And it reminds me of that conversation I had in that mastermind group. So so that that was a big one, too. There were also moments this was back in 2010. Actually, because I've been in groups in these groups for several years now. I was in a group, where I was considering creating this online course, about creating these what's called niche sites, which, which are sites that are built in a way where it's very much based off of keyword research and a lot of data numbers, and you just kind of build these sites, because there's no competition. And it's a lot of search, and there's tools to help you find out which sites to create things about. And, you know, I got ripped apart one time for kind of getting into some gray hat. sequences in terms of helping to put those together Gray Hat meaning, you know, there's white hat, which is like, you know, you're doing it the right way. It's good, it's all legit and legal or whatever. And then his Blackhat which is like, totally, like, not illegal, I guess you could say was just a bad way to do this. Is this and then I was getting into sort of the gray areas. And I was and I was ripped apart by one of the mastermind group members I had is like, Pat, this is not you, this is not your brand. If you go down this route, I'm gonna have less respect for you, because this is not who you are, and you are chasing the money, stop doing it. And it really just opened my eyes. And I didn't even realize I was going down that route. And it took somebody else on the outside just who had a different perspective, to tell me what was going on. And so I actually never ended up creating that course in the way that I initially had thought I was going to, and it was it was a saving grace.
Alex Ferrari 40:35
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jason Buff 40:45
So what in general do you feel? What do you feel are the key things that kind of keep people from having the success that they have the potential to have online,
Pat Flynn 40:56
Ourselves, you know, we are our own worst enemy. And to go even further with that, it's a lot of it has to do with fear, the fear of failure, the fear of making mistakes, or fear of looking bad in front of other people. I mean, I can't tell you, I mean, I can, because I have data on at least for my audience, that the number one fears that people have are the whole list of fears that people have when it comes to starting a business. But I can assume that it's pretty similar to when creating your own stuff in terms of filmmaking and whatnot. And a lot of times we just are afraid of disappointment we are afraid of or disappointing others, we're afraid of looking bad to her colleagues, and also just putting in all that time and effort in something that that won't kind of turn out to be a success at the end. And you know, those self doubts and that resistance, it really is something that I've learned over time to become actually a sign that before you do these things, and if you feel that fear, if you feel that resistance, if you're afraid, that's good, because that's a sign that you actually care that you give a crap about what you're doing. And it's a sign that there's something awesome on the other end. And when you think about your life experiences, and a lot of the most amazing things that have happened in your life, a lot of times it's precursor by something that you are completely fearful of. And, and that pattern just continues to hold through with with the creative mode that you have down the road. And so I've done things now purposefully because I've had fear for those things. For example, I'm not talking things like bungee jumping, or, you know, crawling into a box of spiders. But, you know, in terms of creating, I now I'm a public speaker, and I was completely deathly afraid of public speaking. But that's how I knew that that that's, that's something that was actually something I should do, because I knew it would help my brand. And I started just to do it. And the more I've done it, the more comfortable I've gotten, I still get nervous, I still like kind of dry heat backstage because I'm just but when I'm on stage, because I prepared enough. I mean, it's I go into automation mode, and I do it. And it's just done wonders for myself, my brand I actually have, I'm doing a keynote next month at a food blogging conference. And I'm I have a five figure fee, they're paying me five figures to speak for 45 minutes. It's like, it's crazy. Like, if you asked me, you know, you go into the door, you you talk to me eight years ago, I would have never done it for any amount of money because I just was so scared of it. But now I see the self doubt and resistance as a sign that you know, there's always something awesome on the other end.
Jason Buff 43:25
Do you have to play any mental tricks on yourself? Or do you have what what do you do to mentally prepare yourself for? Say the the speech that you gave at NAB or something like that? What are you doing like right before you get on stage?
Pat Flynn 43:38
All right, before I get on stage, I am doing breathing exercises. It's something that I've learned to do. You know, I take what I do very seriously, you know, and I know that although I'm I have this personality, and I am fun and just kind of just weird and whatever. I also do what I can to stack things in my favor. So one of the things I do for public speaking specifically, is I've hired coaches to help me everything I do, I try to hire a coach right now I'm actually working with in terms of physical fitness and my personal goals, to dunk a basketball, I'm five foot eight. And you know, which isn't that should never happen, but I'm going to do it. And I know it's going to be long and hard or hard, treacherous climb. But I've hired people to help me because that's just a random goal that I've wanted to do for the longest time. And I don't I don't think just because I'm sure it should stop me. And we talked about a 10 foot goal. 10 foot 10 foot 10 foot rim. Yeah. And I'm, I've increased my vertical 11 inches since I've started training and I'm only an inch away from touching the rim. I'm going to need a few more to get actually above it. Maybe grow some finger length because my hands are small to actually palm the ball. But you know, one step at a time. I just liked the enthusiasm. But I also know that as a byproduct of jump training, I'm going to be more physically fit all around. You know, and I that's what I do when I approach the schools. I don't just try to I try to make it fun and try to kind of have it be a process and gamify the whole thing. That's one of the things It has helped me the most as gamification of just life. And so I always am very interested in the numbers and the progress and keeping track of things and just understanding where I was versus where I'm at now and what I could do to better, be efficient and more productive, and so on and so forth. But other things that, you know, that kind of getting off tangent here. Another thing that I do beyond hiring coaches for public speaking, is I hired a singing coach. So a singing voice coach, actually, voice training essentially, is what I'm talking about. That's where I learned the breathing exercises to help increase my endurance, increase my fullness when I'm on stage. So I have a more commanding voice, and, and all those sorts of things. So, you know, just and also just practice rehearsing. And the more I rehearse, the more comfortable I get. And the last thing, the last trick I play on myself is just, you know, what I'm going to, as long as I know, I've put in the effort to rehearse, and I'm just gonna go out there and do my best and, and just just go for it, just just start, you know, that's one of the things I learned is to just start, you know, just ship as Seth Godin says, and there's a book out there called the Game by Neil Strauss, which is a book it's interesting book about the underground sort of pickup artists world. But I read it because there's just so many good reviews on it. But the tip the probably the best tip I learned from their from this world of, you know, picking up chicks, I guess you could say, and I have a wife, I love her. I don't use these tactics, or anything. But one of the things I learned what
Jason Buff 46:22
She knows, you could do it if you weren't, I don't know, deep down. She's like, Honey, I read the game, I'm sure.
Pat Flynn 46:28
Right. So yeah, I guess I have a plan B, just in case. But no, one of the things I learned was a thing called the three second rule, which was, you know, a lot of times when guys want to pick up girls, they psych themselves out, because they think about it too much. So don't give yourself more than three seconds, just to go up to a girl and talk to her. Right. And then it's just that initial start, that's the hardest part. And so just for me, whenever I'm doing something, and I'm nervous, I just I just go, you know, I prep a little bit, but then I go, I don't give myself more than three seconds to psych myself out, because I will say,
Jason Buff 47:02
No, but that's perfect. Because, you know, when I first started this podcast, and I definitely used a lot of your advice when I was getting started. And one of the key things for me, because I am not a public speaker, and I'm not like very comfortable, you know, talking to people on on this medium or whatever. But it was just to get started and just to start doing interviews, you know, out of the blue, just call people get, you know, try to get things going. And it was like after I started, then I started getting more comfortable. And then started, things started happening, you know, and I put together a website pretty fast that wasn't, wasn't quite that well developed, it didn't really have the key concepts. And it's like, slowly, over time, it's all kind of falling into place. And I've figured out exactly. You know, when people have you know, when you first start out, you're kind of speaking into a vacuum. You know, nobody you don't really have any concept of is anybody reading this as anybody you know, I'm doing interviews, they're going out, you can see the downloads and everything. But yeah, you don't you have that feeling like, Okay, this is just me in a room talking to myself, basically, you know, and then but like, if you just start and you just keep, start generating content and start, you know, doing things that you genuinely feel like going to help people, it just people start finding you, you know, and they're like, Oh, I didn't know who this guy was. And you know, then you start building the building and following that way. But if I sat there and tried to make everything perfect. And I actually remember, I don't remember where it was, but you had done some some speech talking about the first interviews you did and how bad they were. And I was like, Oh, terrible.
Yeah, I mean, I, and I'm sure you hear that all the time, people saying, Oh, well, you helped me out, you know, helped me do this and help me do that. And that's kind of reinvigorate you to be like, Okay, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow.
Pat Flynn 48:44
And oh, yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely. You know, you we all have something special that we can offer others. And we have to remember that sometimes. And, you know, in terms of when I first started out, yeah, it was terrible. But you got to get through those bad, bad takes, I guess you could say, You got to go through your first few terrible films, you know, to get to get to the good ones, for sure. You know, as long as you keep learning along the way, even as you make mistakes, you're always, as long as you're falling forward, you're still making progress. You know, it's when you give up, it's when you psych yourself out, it's when you turn back the other way that you're you're, you're really failing. And so you just keep going is really all when I could say,
Jason Buff 49:21
And it's that constant, like you need to start appreciating failure, you know, like, there's going to be a lot of failure along the way, especially in any sort of film, and filmmaking creative world where it's like, just get to get accustomed to failure. You know, it's the person that goes out and fails that first time and gives up it's like, okay, that's not gonna go anywhere. But the people you know, I think Steven Spielberg got rejected from USC, like 20 times or something like that. I mean, there's just all these great stories or even your example of Back to the Future. Was like rejected, I think my, like 20 studios or something like that?
Pat Flynn 49:55
Yeah. 2027 Studios back to these years. rejected a Harry Potter was rejected Tim Ferriss book, The Four Hour Workweek, which you mentioned earlier was rejected by 21 Different publish up different publishers. I mean,
Alex Ferrari 50:11
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Pat Flynn 50:21
Angry Angry Birds a lot of people don't know that, but that was Rovio, the company's 52nd game. Nobody knew any of the other games, but they keep they kept going. And man, they smashed it. I think the Angry Birds movie I saw a preview for it on television. I don't I don't know if I'll be taking the kids that one. But
Jason Buff 50:40
My son was like, Oh my God. I'm like, no, no, no. You don't like it. Do not like it. My son hates Star Wars, which is killing me. Oh, no, He's eight years old. And I'm like the biggest Star Wars freak in the world. And I took him to go see them. I can't get them to watch the originals. And I took him to watch the new one. And he's like, that's your thing. It's you know, we see it in the store and everything. He's like, Oh, look at Star Wars. You like that? And I'm like, when does it ever kind of connect? It will it will like my whole life. I was like waiting to have a son so that you know that he would look at me and be like, Dad, let's have a you know, lightsaber battle in the backyard. It's like no. Angry Birds loves Angry Birds loves zombies.
Pat Flynn 51:18
Versus there is an Angry Birds Star Wars edition. Maybe that'll be the transition.
Jason Buff 51:21
Yeah, I was we got that I was trying to. I was hoping I could trick him into liking it. Right. So one, one final kind of topic I wanted to go through. If that's okay, is your book will it fly. And something that I find absolutely fascinating is the concept of validating an idea. And being it you know, a lot of people and we kind of do this backwards in the filmmaking world, is people will write a screenplay, they'll spend 1000s, sometimes hundreds of 1000s, sometimes even millions on independent films, and they'll put it out there and nobody really is interested. And I think it's really interesting to see a lot the industry is kind of changed now to where all you're seeing is, you know, things that are already successful, that are already validated that people already have, you know, that are already kind of have an audience for them or whatever. Yeah, so I was wondering if and it's a little bit of a stretch, but I think it is related the idea of validating a business before you, you know, launch it and trying to get an idea of if you're going to have success, if you're the right person for that business, you know, and the things that you cover in your book, the
Pat Flynn 52:33
Book obviously is centered toward during business ideas and actually getting to a point where you're, you're getting paying customers, even before that business idea is actually created. And you know, because that's really the only way to truly know whether or not something is actually going to work out is that as can you get early adopters to pay for this idea first, and actually fork over money. And before you actually build it. And that's how, you know, there's actually a good example. In the end, maybe there's a takeaway for this, that is a parallel to indie filmmakers. But there, there's a guy named Jay Abraham, who was an author and just an old school marketers, brilliant guy, influenced a lot of people who I feel are my mentors. So you know, old school marketer before the internet days, you know, he's writing a lot of books. Before the internet was around, he wanted to know what books he should be writing about. And he wanted wanted to validate those ideas. And so what he did was he actually purchased classified ads in the newspaper for those different book titles that he had talking a little bit about what those books were about, and actually collecting payments for those books. In the classified ads, you didn't he didn't even have those books written yet. They were just all ideas. And he knew that the one that got the most orders was the one that he was going to write next. And so the others, he would just refund those payments. And this one, he would work with those people who would place his orders to actually write the books and make them exactly how they should be based on who he was work, who he was writing for. And that's a cool kind of a cool concept. And I think that can be done in the indie filmmaking world in different ways, shapes and forms. Maybe not necessarily getting people to pay for the entire movie or ticket for it before him but maybe to validate the the idea through maybe just getting people to get access to, you know, chapter one of the screenplay, for example, and getting their feelings on that. And if you can't even get people to get access and want those than want Chapter One of the screenplay, then maybe the rest of the chapters aren't ready to be written yet, for example, if that makes sense. And so again, just kind of breaking down the entire process from start to finish into little chunks and then along the way, kind of making it a litmus test to see if it's actually working out or not. And if it's not, then something has to be changed or be done differently. And if it's good, then that's the greenlight to keep going and moving on to the next step. It's almost like Kickstarter, you know, you're Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, you're using Kickstarter or Indiegogo or something which lot of filmmakers have used to validate their their ideas, you know, you create a little trailer, just to tease that idea. And if you can't get backers and people to pledge then then maybe it's not something that people are interested in. But the other the other part about validation. And the thing that's important that I tell people to talk about or to do in the book is that it will, if it doesn't validate, at least, you could continue to ask those people who you were trying to validate with why it didn't work out. And so with business ideas, for example, if you try to get people to pay for something, they're interested in that potential solution, but when it comes down to it, they don't pay you then you can ask them why. And they'll tell you what's wrong. Oh, I didn't. I didn't feel like it was worth that much, or I didn't feel the messaging was right, or you didn't, it didn't really seem like it was a huge, it didn't seem like it would solve my problem, or whatever it is, then, you know, and it takes the guessing out of it. I think that's that's one of the things that people who start anything or struggle with is just they're trying to guess and, and relying on hope and prayer more than actual data and what their target audience is saying,
Jason Buff 56:01
Well, cool, man. I really appreciate your time and for coming on. You want to tell people how they can get in touch with you and how they can connect.
Pat Flynn 56:07
Sure. Thank you again for having me. My website [email protected]. You can connect with me on most social media platforms, like Twitter Instagram at Pat Flynn.
Alex Ferrari 56:20
I want to thank Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at Indiefilmhustle.com/672. Thank you for listening guys. As always, keep that also going keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
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George Stevens, Jr. has achieved an extraordinary creative legacy over a career spanning more than 60 years. He is a writer, director, producer, playwright and author. He has enriched the film and television arts as a filmmaker and is widely credited with bringing style and taste to the national television events he has conceived.
As a writer, director and producer, Stevens has earned many accolades, including 15 Emmys, two Peabody Awards for Meritorious Service to Broadcasting, the Humanitas Prize and 8 awards from the Writers Guild of America, including the Paul Selvin Award for writing that embodies civil rights and liberties. In 2012 the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to present Stevens with an Honorary Academy Award for “extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement.”
Stevens served for eight years as Co-chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities following his appointment by President Obama in 2009.
Stevens is Founding Director of the American Film Institute and during his tenure, more than 10,000 irreplaceable American films were preserved and catalogued to be enjoyed by future generations. In addition, he established the AFI’s Center for Advanced Film Studies, which gained a reputation as the finest learning opportunity for young filmmakers.
Stevens was executive producer of The Thin Red Line, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He co-wrote and produced The Murder of Mary Phagan, starring Jack Lemmon, which received the Emmy for Outstanding Mini-Series. He wrote and directed Separate But Equal starring Sidney Poitier and Burt Lancaster which also won the Emmy for Outstanding Mini-Series. He produced an acclaimed feature length film about his father, George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey and in 1994 produced George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin, which depicted the wartime experiences of his father – one of the most highly regarded directors of all time. In collaboration with his son and partner Michael Stevens, he produced the feature length documentary Herblock – The Black & The White on the famed political cartoonist Herbert Block for HBO.
Stevens made his debut as a playwright in 2008 with Thurgood, which opened at the historic Booth Theater on Broadway. The play had an extended run starring Laurence Fishburne as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Fishburne received a Tony nomination and returned to the role in the summer of 2010 with runs at the Kennedy Center and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Thurgood was filmed while at the Kennedy Center and shown on HBO in 2011.
In 2006, Alfred A. Knopf published Stevens’ Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age – the first book to bring together the interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned Harold Lloyd Master Seminar Series. Conversations with the Great Moviemakers – The Next Generation was released by Knopf in April, 2012.
Please enjoy my conversation with George Stevens Jr.
Right-click here to download the MP3
George Stevens Jr. 0:00
You may find along the way that you thought, oh, I want to be an actor. And you find out later, you know, I, I'd like to be a costume designer, I've seen that. And, or, or director, whatever. And you know, so have some flexibility. Don't kind of set you're saying, Oh, I'm going to be a director, because you may find that may not be your strongest suit.
Alex Ferrari 0:27
This episode is brought to you by the best selling book Rise of the Filmtrepreneur how to turn your independent film into a money making business. Learn more at filmbizbook.com. I'd like to welcome to the show, George Stevens Jr. How you doing George?
George Stevens Jr. 0:42
I'm doing well. Thank you.
Alex Ferrari 0:43
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Sir. I'm, I'm excited to talk to you. You've lived a very interesting life, sir, to say the least.
George Stevens Jr. 0:50
Well, I'm working on it.
Alex Ferrari 0:53
You have, you have definitely gone through some journeys in your life and in the film industry and in politics in so many different areas. So my first my first question to you is, how did you get started in the film industry, and I know your father was a little well known, directed, the little guy started out a few years ago. But how did you get your interest? How did you get your foot in the door, if you will?
George Stevens Jr. 1:14
Well, as you suggest, my father was a director of I did just for full disclosure, my great grandmother was born in San Francisco after the Civil War and became an actress and a fine actress on the stage. And she was known as the youngest Ophelia to the great Edwin booths Hamlet. He was the greatest Shakespearean actor really, I think, in American history. Certainly, his Hamlet is renowned. And she started five generations of Stevens is in showbusiness, her daughter, Georgie Cooper, was my father's mother. And she married an actor called landers, Stevens, and it kind of went on from there. And yes, having been born to a father, who was the director. At the time I was born, he was photographing Laurel and Hardy comedies was a cameraman. And in 1935, he directed Alice Adams, with Katharine Hepburn and Frederick Berry, at age 30. And from then on, he really just made great films, one after the other, had a three year experience in World War Two overseas in that chronology. And when he came back from the war, I was buying a couple of years after that I was graduating from high school, and I didn't have a summer job. And he said, Well, you can help me. And he gave me two jobs. One, did this at home, and was to break down Theodore Dreiser's an American tragedy, the great novel of a, of a murder in, in the eastern United States, because he was about to write the screenplay for what became called a place in the sun with welcome Marie Clift, and Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, which was there his first Oscar winning picture as a director. And I broke that down and gave him all the information and two notebooks. And then also I was to read the stories, they sent from Paramount Pictures where his company was, they'd send books, screenplays, all sorts of stuff. And it was pretty. It actually was kind of boring, because most of these were kind of treat Glee love novels, you know, for a 17 year old or hot summer afternoons. But one afternoon, a smaller book came, and I picked it up, and I read it in the afternoon, and I went to see him that night with the book in my hand, and I walked in, he was in bed reading and I said, Dad, I said, this is really a good story. I think you want to read it? And he said, Why don't you tell me the story? So I started and my brain started working and I started reconstructing this book that I'd read and I walked around his bed, telling him the story of Shane. It was Jackson novel. And you know, I could get more interested in that a little boy with this gun gunslinger he had. And then the next summer, I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with my first job on a movie set. I was what was called company clerk, which meant I kept track of stuff, but I was right near that camera. And I did not know it was going to be a class. like film, Shane is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. So it was 71 years ago that I was in Jackson Hole. And watching Alan Ladd and Ben Heflin and Jean Arthur. And this little boy from New York who'd never been west of New Jersey. And he, Jack Palance, who came was his first major role. And so I was there. I've seen it all. And, and I did kind of fall in love with it.
Alex Ferrari 5:37
You got so I mean, you were born into the business. I know a lot of people who've been born in the business don't get bitten by the bug. But it seems like you were not only bitten, you were not you were mauled by the bug.
George Stevens Jr. 5:50
Some, some people get bitten badly by it. To take particularly, I mean, I'm very fortunate that I had a wonderful father and mother. But sons of famous fathers, they're, you know, at the time that most of them were having difficulty with it. And I think largely by the nature of my father. It worked out beautifully for him. And for me, we became partners into things together later.
Alex Ferrari 6:21
Now, you. You've also worked on he worked as a PA on a bunch of your father's movies. One specific one specifically was a little film called giant. What was it like? Being on set, watching Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, and what's the biggest lesson you pulled from being on the set of, of such a classic film like that?
George Stevens Jr. 6:44
Gotcha. There are so many Alex. But it was a great experience. Because I gotten out of the Air Force. I gotten out of college, Occidental College, and the Korean War ended. And, and they postponed my commission for a year. And I had nothing to do. And at that very moment, or just a couple of months before dad had acquired the novel giant, and made a deal with Warner Brothers to make it. So I spent nine months with him and two writers, in his living room, working on the script of giant is obviously as a junior partner observer, for the most part, but it he started to learn about film structure. And then one night, then I went in the Air Force. And when he started shooting, just before I was in Los Angeles, and he said, when it goes to show you a movie, so my mother and dad and I went to so Frank's on Hollywood Boulevard, and then across the street to the Egyptian Theatre. And so ealier Kazakhstan's East of Eden and the reason he wanted me to see it was that this young actor never seen before, comes on the screen and had this way of kind of walking in his hooded eyes. And it was James Steen. And dad was considering casting him in the role of jet Reek, who in the book was described at this sort of burly, big fellow. But Jimmy Dean was shooting Rebel Without a Cause at Warner Brothers. And he kept hanging around dad's office because he knew about giant and he wanted to be in giant. And though he was very different than jet, Rick had been imagined. Dad thought he was a kind of a once in a lifetime talent and gave him that role. And when you think about it, the three stars Rock Hudson was 28 These actors all going on to play in their 50s You know, with gray hair. Elizabeth was 23. And Jimmy Dean was 23 and was worth I was 23. And, you know, but to watch this work go on. Being in the Air Force. I I flew to Virginia to see the film shot in Virginia, where the film begins, where Elizabeth Taylor is the daughter of this man with a great stallion war winds. And Rock Hudson comes from Texas, by war winds and they fall in love very quickly, et cetera, et cetera. So I was there, and then I would fly into Marfa, Texas, and then I would be on this set. And, and there were lots of experiences. Sad experience. I was on the set very late in the picture. Jimmy Dean had finished all of his shooting. And he had he had agreed not to draw he had a little racecar and he agreed not to drive it while the film was going on. Because of he broke his leg. Everybody would be out of work. He understood that that he had finished shooting. So he bought a sport a Porsche spider. I think a poor spider 500 It was called and I was On the set one day and Jimmy walked in with his kind of tinted glasses, and told me about the car. And he said, you want a ride? So I walked outside the big soundstage at Warner Brothers with all those, you know, narrow roads. You've seen pictures if you haven't been there, and this little gray roadster sitting on the ground seem so tiny. And we got into it. And he revved it up and we drove through the studio. Lots of thank God, a prop truck wasn't coming or studio policeman, and, and back art. And he said, What do you think? And I said, Well, it's pretty good, pretty good. But now of course, the sad part of the story is that to two weeks later, Jimmy had told my father, he was going to ship the car up to Salinas, from Los Angeles, where he was going to be racing, and bid on the morning of the day, he decided not to ship it, and he and his mechanic, got in the car, and Jimmy drove it up. And they had that accident on the Pacific Coast Highway. And Jimmy was really a it's a complicated guy, but he was talented and, and fun. And I think he had plans to become a director. And, you know, but it was such a tragic loss. And it is strange. How, you know, this is 65 years ago, giant. How his memory lives today.
Alex Ferrari 11:39
Oh, without question. He's, I mean, I've been I've been at the observatory. I've seen the clock there and that statute, James Dean. Yeah, I mean, he's, I mean, rebel with those those movies giant rebel and East of Eden. I mean, they just, it is one of the tragic stories of Hollywood history. Without question well could have, what else could have been? What else could he have done? If given the opportunity, it was it was pretty
George Stevens Jr. 12:03
good. Just by then 24 had a whole life ahead of him. You asked about lesson on giant and one might be interested, two years, filmmaker. listeners. Were editing the film, I was now out of the Air Force. And it's three hour and 20 minute film giant. We, we premiered it at the Turner Classic Movies Festival last year, Steven Spielberg, and I introduced a restoration of it. And that film plays to see it with an audience in all those years later, and they are just with it every minute on the big giant IMAX screen. It's all about an independent women woman. They weren't making films about independent women in 1956. And it's a film about the Hispanic problem, or that that existed back then. And it's a issue we are still working with in our country. So the film is so far ahead of its time, and it's in its kind of values, and concerns. But we were editing. And we've been I've been working with him for a year in the editing room, again, hot summers. And I've got a golf game to worry about. And we've had two previews. And I said to him, just the two of us there. And, you know, we're running the picture. And I said, Dad, I said this picture, we've had two previews, audiences love it. I think just don't you want to just get it out there. And he looked at me and he said, Well, you think how many man hours I think today said man and woman hours are going to be spent over the years, watching this picture people sitting and watching it, how much time will be spent? Don't you think it's worth a little more of our time, right now to make it as good as we can. And it's a lesson that I took with me and everything that I've done in that idea that and that it's just, I just finished a book called My Place in the Sun, life in the golden age of Hollywood in Washington. And I was finishing it during COVID, which gave me time and I worked on it like giant to I just would go back to the quote real one as well. He would do chapter one, and go through it and just polish it and make it as good for the audience as you can. So the lesson is respect for the audience. And I think that should be in the head of every filmmaker.
Alex Ferrari 14:50
Absolutely. Without question. Now. You were when you were on the set of giant you had a young Elizabeth Taylor, which was your age at the time. She's obviously The legend and what she was able to do. I've got to imagine God a guy, you must have had a crush on her. I mean, every man on that set probably had a
George Stevens Jr. 15:10
rage. I met her a few years before when dad was placed in the sun. And I came on the set, and a Saturday, and Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, we're shooting a scene. And I'm watching dad direct the scene, and a quick story, because people who make films and and he said, Monty, want to go over there by the pool table. And Elizabeth, why don't you just start at the door? And then we'll just try to. And so they went, and they did the scene with a clip, clips, clip script girl, a person giving her, you know, corrections if they missed the dialogue. And that's it. All right, he said, Let's do it one more time, and suddenly went back. And they did it again. Yeah. And it sounds good. Let's do it one more time. It's got to go. They do it again. And then after that money comes over and comes up close to him and starts asking questions, and Elizabeth comes over anyway. And then anyway, they barely get the scene all set, and it was time for lunch. And I said it and I said, Why don't you have them do it three times before you gave him any instruction. And he said, sometimes it's helpful for the actors to know that they may need some help.
Alex Ferrari 16:35
That's really, that's actually pretty brilliant. It's a brilliant way of,
George Stevens Jr. 16:39
you know, his his job was to make the actors comfortable. But in order to give them advice, the advice has to be welcomed. If he goes over there says no, no, why don't you go here, and you go there and do that. Anyway, it's just a little lesson in indirect thing, but on that day, he introduced me to Elizabeth, on the SAT. And she was without question, in my mind, the most beautiful person on the planet, you know? And then as we're getting ready for lunch, Lisbeth walks over, said, Would you like to go to lunch, too, I found myself walking down the streets of the Paramount Studio. We were both 17 and right. And we go to the commissary, and she kind of walks in, and I follow in her wake as the woman takes her to a corner table, and all and then we had an end. She said, What would you like? And I was kind of fumbling around with the menu. I'm going to have a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake. And I said, that works. Let's do. And so I had lunch with Elizabeth Taylor, which was and, and throughout many episodes in my book, because Elizabeth kept coming in and out of my life and right up to the very end of hers. And she's a she was a wonderful talent, and great fun.
Alex Ferrari 18:14
That must have been this amazing. Well listen with all of the, I mean, you grew up in the golden age of Hollywood, and you were in the midst of it. You were in the thick of it. Were there any actors or actresses that had a major impression on you in your life? You will
George Stevens Jr. 18:31
obviously many from on the screen. And lucky some of the older ones, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda. Bette Davis, and I when I started the American Film Institute, that's another story share we use we I started the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. And, you know, the first was John Ford, and the second was James Cagney and Orson Welles and Jimmy Stewart and Capra and Fred a
Alex Ferrari 19:04
few other names. Yes, yeah.
George Stevens Jr. 19:07
And so I knew all of those greats, but I think the two who because I had I worked with him and personal situations were Sidney Poitier and Jack Lemmon. They were a few years older than I am, but more of my generation. And I knew I knew them in all aspects of their lives, not me became great friends, but I did, produced and directed and wrote separate that equal. The story of Brown versus Board of Education, a miniseries that won the Emmy for Outstanding miniseries and I did another only I've only done two mini series and both one the me one with Jack and one was Sydney and, and Jack was this this extraordinary gift If did Othello who could do drama and comedy, and, and was such fun. And Sydney had of all the great human qualities, in addition to being such a pioneer in the matter of and separate that equal was about equal justice, he played Thurgood Marshall arguing, developing and arguing the case against segregated schools in the Supreme Court that led to the outline of segregated schools. So
Alex Ferrari 20:34
those two those are two pretty, pretty impressive wants to say the least. Both legends in their own right, because we're in the golden age so much, is there any misconceptions that people have of that time in Hollywood at that time in filmmaking in general, any misconceptions that you think that? That you can think that kind of suit to your mind,
George Stevens Jr. 20:55
I guess what, I don't think, I guess there are all kinds of conception, Alex. But one is, it looks like a lot of fun. It was really hard work, and make and making the great films, particularly though, you know, accepting those challenges, and then films are filled with adversity, if something's gonna go wrong, you know, and if you're talking from the director standpoint, how do you deal with adversity? How do you deal with personalities. But when you tie a ribbon around it, you know, Turner Classic Movies. It's just amazing how so often you turn on and there's something that's just delightful. And it's, there's another phrase that's kind of part of the Stephens family that it involves another little story, but dad and I went to Academy Awards in 1952. And then I sat next to him and Joseph L. Mankiewicz came on the stage, who had won the Oscar the year before for All About Eve. And he read the nominees for Best Director. And he said that John Houston, The African Queen, William Wyler, Detective Story. Vincent Minelli, An American in Paris elior, Kazakhstan, A Streetcar Named Desire, and George Stevens of place in the sun.
Alex Ferrari 22:46
It's a pretty good year to say the competition was stiff that year, let's just say.
George Stevens Jr. 22:51
And I wouldn't be telling you this story. If John Houston had one for African Queen. My father won his first Oscar for our son. And we were riding on that night. And the Oscar was in the seat between us. He was driving the car, little old school air. And the Oscar was on the seat between us. And for some reason, he looked at me. And he said, you know, he said, we'll have a better idea what kind of a film this is in about 25 years. Now this is when movies came and went, there were no cinema texts. There were no DVD, there was no street in. But he having grown up in the theater, and we read the great plays, understood that the important thing about a film was what it stand the test of time. And he did not know that the 17 year old sitting next to him would one day be the founder of the American Film Institute, which is based on the idea of movies that last and the test of time, or the Kennedy Center Honors, which is about artists whose work stands the test of time, but it is also like respecting the audience. This idea of the test of time is kind of how I frame my appreciation for my own work for you know, the work that that I value and treasure now how
Alex Ferrari 24:25
did you says he since you brought up the AFI which is obviously a legendary institution, a film institution, one of the greatest film schools ever to be created as well as the honors that you create the Lifetime Achievement Award, which I watched every year when they came out. I started in the 80s when it started to come out and you know I remember Clinton Marty and Steven and you know Jack and these guys, there was just so much fun. Especially if when Robin Williams showed up.
George Stevens Jr. 24:56
Or John Stewart
Alex Ferrari 24:58
or Rickles or Rickles I mean, destroying Scorsese, which was in a way only rape was good. Yeah. So what how did you begin and what caused you to begin to create the AFI, which is pretty, pretty, you know, audacious goal to start with?
George Stevens Jr. 25:16
Well, I was I after giant, I worked with my father, I started directing, I directed Peter Gunn, Alfred Hitchcock Presents those kind of shows. And then I went to work with my father on the Diary of Anne Frank. And we completed that I was associate producer. And then he got behind schedule, and I directed all of the location work in Amsterdam. It always done his own location work. So it was a big step up for me. But I, I did kind of joke to my friends that I said, I think I'm spending I'm going to devote my entire life to becoming the second best film director in my family. And then Edward R. Murrow, the great broadcaster came into my life, President Kennedy had been elected, had asked me to run the United States Information Agency, which made the Voice of America telling America's story abroad. And they had a film division. They made 300 documentaries a year. And Ed wasn't satisfied with the documentaries. And he asked me to come run the motion picture division of USAA. And it took me into the new frontier and President Kennedy. And it's just a whole exhilarating new world. And I was making films, I mean, we've had was able to add wanted, total rejuvenation of what was being done under the More staid Eisenhower administration. And I've brought lots of young filmmakers who went on to have great careers, and we made wonderful films. And I love one thing about President Kennedy, he was so eloquent. And he was off, I had wonderful quotes in his speeches. And one that I remember, I'd written down, he, he read the ancient ancient Greek poetry, you know, and he loved to quote, and then he spoke of the Greek definition of happiness, which the ancient Greeks said, is the fullest use of one's powers along lines of excellence. And I realized that Ed Murrow and President Kennedy had put me in the saddle of Greek happiness. I was making films loving what I was doing, along lines of excellence and for public purpose. So it was a wonderful Moreau and Kennedy were great influences on me at age 3029 and 30, when I came to that job, and 1967, but I had, you know, in the Kennedy government, because there's not much about film going on. And I, you know, had earned some prominence because people were conscious of the films we were making, and working with Murrow. And so people would come to me when it was an issue of film, and the National Endowment for the Arts was created to support the arts, the first legislation, funding for the arts, and they knew how to they could give grants to ballet companies or symphony orchestras. But what do they do about film? You can't give a grant to MGM, you know? So, we came to me and I suggested an American Film Institute, because I had been working with young filmmakers and knew that we needed a better opportunity and training. I was conscious of the disappearing of our film heritage that all the film was made on nitrate stock from the beginning of the 1940s. were disappearing. Nope, good catching on fire. In great archive fires are. So we started this film rescue program at AFI. And I was asked to run it and actually, Gregory Peck was the first chairman and Sidney Poitier to bring his name up again, was vice chairman of AFI when we started it.
Alex Ferrari 29:25
Now, at that time, and correct me if I'm wrong, there weren't that many film schools or programs in the country at all right. And the six were
George Stevens Jr. 29:33
several there, you know, UCLA and USC had programs, Columbia, and NYU, maybe a few others, but they were part of four year courses. We have a theory I had a theory that what we needed was a bridge, from education to the profession. And so we called our students fellows and they came for two years. To gain that added knowledge, you weren't required to have been a film student. You know, I was as interested in what they were going to bring to the screen as to what whether they knew how to run a movie Ola, you know, among our first outstanding students, one was Terrence Malick. And Terry had made one little 30 minute film, I think, in the back of it taxi cab. But he had, he was a Rhodes scholar. He was teaching philosophy at MIT men, a journalist, he was going to bring something to the screen. And another was art student in Philadelphia. And we gave a grant to make a little film called The grandmother, which is picture a perfect little film about a grandmother. It was quite weird. And then he came to AFI, and his name was David Lynch. I knew where you were going with that. Ahead of me,
Alex Ferrari 31:05
I was ahead of you on that one. Second, you said weird, and I already felt that was David coming in. I mean, yeah, who are some heat for the audience? Can you kind of talk a little bit about who the alumni are because you have really, you know, the AFI is popped out some of cinemas, Best Tours and best filming.
George Stevens Jr. 31:24
Honest Kaminsky, the cinematographer who's worse there's all of Steven Spielberg's films at Darren Aronofsky, Caleb Deschanel, who's with one of the first fellows and is still a top cinematographer. Oh gosh, somebody, the woman who directed coda? Oh, yeah, yes, she's there. And just outstanding. I wish I had the list in front of me. But those are a few memory. But the district you many, many wonderful filmmakers are from a Ed's wick. And Mark.
Alex Ferrari 32:10
I've had it on the show. It is such a wonderful, such a beautiful soul. Oh, he's such a want to say talking I when I had him on the show, it's like talking to the church of cinema. So just the reverence like yourself, the reverence for cinema is remarkable. You mentioned that you worked on Alfred Hitchcock Presents as a director. Am I Am I fair to say that you met Mr. Hitchcock and spoke to him and
George Stevens Jr. 32:33
worked with him? And what? Indeed, yes. Oh, please.
Alex Ferrari 32:37
He's happy to tell me some stories about Alfred please.
George Stevens Jr. 32:43
Actually, only to say only almost to say hello, when I was directing Alfred Hitchcock, because he would busy making psycho or something. But he had a wonderful woman, Joan Harrison, in this woman who ran it and I really worked through Joan. But then when I started the AFI, Hitchcock would come and do wonderful seminars at AFI. He was just so so precise about moviemaking, and wanted to simplify it. And I remember him saying, Well, how important the screenplay is. And it he said, once the screenplay is right, he says, It's automatic. And then somebody to work with Why don't you let somebody else then go direct it. He said, they may screw it up.
Alex Ferrari 33:44
And that drove away oh, that's
George Stevens Jr. 33:50
what we honored him with the AFI Life Achievement award show. I saw that um, and, you know, he, he was very much at the end of his career. He died the next year. But he is what you see is what you get with hitch. That's that manner and attitude is who he is.
Alex Ferrari 34:21
As a director, we all go through times that the we feel like the world is going to come crashing down around us on set during a production. What was that? Out of all the projects you've been on or been on your father set or your set? What was the biggest calamity or thing that you obstacle that came across? And how did you overcome it in the day?
George Stevens Jr. 34:42
Gosh, I'm trying to think of my father's films they were so frequent, the betta if this is not right in the line, but I'll tell you a story of his story of mine. The day we were going to shoot the scene where Jack Palance gunned down guns down. Stonewall Tory in front of Grafton saloon. And Shane, which is has to be one of the three. I don't know what the other two are most famous gunshots in films that your dad had this idea of, of. He wanted the muddy Street and then we you know, and he was looking for clouds up there in the Tetons. And he got there. And it was a Saturday. And they hadn't gotten that they've watered the street, but it was not. And he did not. And he was willing to send the whole crew home for Saturday. Bring them back on Sunday. And he said, get water from the river. I want this street flooded. And if you remember, Stonewall Tory, the little Southerner when he gets off his horse and start walking toward the saloon where Jack Palance is standing on the boardwalk in front of it. He's sliding through this mud. His foot footsteps are so unsteady. But for Dad, that was a disaster. You know, he knew how important that scene was to him. He decided to send the crew home at whatever cost and bring them back the next day, because that scene had to be perfect. When I was working with Sidney Poitier and this is a more personal I had been doing a lot of stuff since Peter Gunn, I'd founded the AFI Kennedy Center Honors this and that, and and actually, two separate but equal was the first time I had been directing. I produced and written the murder of Mary Fagan, which act lemon which won the Emmy. Now I'm doing this, and I hadn't. But Cindy believed in me, he loved the script. Both Jack and Sidney refused to do television that based on scripts I handed them they agreed to do television in these instances. And we were filming the scene. Cindy has been down in the south and seeing that trouble there. And and has gotten people in Clarendon County, African Americans to agree to file a suit that would become part of the Brown versus Board of Education legal case. He comes back up to New York, where the NAACP Legal Defense Fund law offices are. He comes in late, several of the lawyers are playing poker and Rio and and Sidney comes in, puts his stuff down, comes and sits down with him and plays and a poker before telling him where the story is in South Carolina. I unseen the comedies that Cindy had made with Cosby, you know, we're really great stuff. And Cindy started doing some kind of comic stuff. That wasn't what I was expecting. And I, I kind of Ted Cotton said Bassam to change the light and make an excuse, and kind of walked around, the only place we could find was that store room with lights and junk and everything. And I walk in with Sydney, and this is the two of us. And I said Sydney, I said, I'm not quite sure what what we're doing in this scene. And I don't think I phrased it very well. And that wonderful face looked at me with those eyes. And you said, Well, what is it that you want done in the scene? And I saw this whole thing falling apart. It's at the first kind of direction I give him, you know, and, and I just stood there and we looked at one another. And I don't know where it came from. But I said, I see Thurgood Marshall, as a man with secrets, said he says when that is what to want. Say that word. We went back to work. And we never had a false moment the rest of the way. But it's, it's you know, I've I look back on it. Thankfully, you know, if I faltered there, it could have been uncomfortable going forward.
Alex Ferrari 39:25
Right? You know, it's really interesting. That's such a great thing because each actor is his or her own world. And they work in a very specific way. And it's really interesting, because if you have two or three or four actors in the scene, and they all are working in different styles in different ways, as a director, it's difficult to you can't just do a broad direction you got to do this to that one. That one's being method that one's not being method and, and this time and get into the personalities and egos of the situation. It's a very interesting job.
George Stevens Jr. 40:00
To record. And a very good rule of thumb is, if you have something difficult, I mean, if it's everything fine, but if there's something and you want to address something with one app, if you know things are difficult, you want to address something with one actor, how to break it up, and then quietly take the actor aside and talk to them one on one. You don't want to embarrass an actor, or, you know, in front of the other actors, or right, then they might feel they have to dig in or justify themselves. So it private attention to individual actors is very important.
Alex Ferrari 40:44
Now, with all the professional accomplishments you've had in your life, which is the one that you are the most proud of.
George Stevens Jr. 40:51
Gosh. I'll pick one for you. It's a film called a film called George Stevens, a filmmakers journey. I've made it shortly after my father's death. And it's a film biography of my father. And I'm pleased to say that some friends and colleagues and some strangers say that it's the best documentary about a filmmaker ever. And it was so important to me. And I am so happy that it you know, I applied those rules that I learned from him, just work on it until you get it right. And to respect the audience, let the audience bring something to the film. And that film is going to celebrate its 40th anniversary next year. And it was on turning movies a few nights ago. And in I think your audience, people who are interested in filmmaking to go George Stevens, a filmmakers journey. So on the criteria Terry to channel I think it's on HBO, Max, are there ways to see it? And it you know, I was able to interview I mean, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn and Warren Beatty and directors, Houston and moody and and Capra, it's for a film lover, or even a
Alex Ferrari 42:26
smorgasbord. Yeah, it's a smorgasbord without question. If you could go back in time, and give your 17 year old self, who's just finished having lunch with Elizabeth Taylor, some advice? What advice would that be?
George Stevens Jr. 42:44
About? Gosh, it's pretty plain, but find something to do that you love. You know, that's the end, if it's making movies, be prepared for a tough road. And you and your show are often exploring with people, how do you get somebody to look at my movie pay for my movie, read my script, you know, and there's there, there's no short answer for that. It's whatever the circumstances, you have to work with those circumstances. But, but to stick with it, and, and you may find along the way, that you thought, oh, I want to be an actor. And you find out later, you know, I I'd like to be a costume designer, I've seen that. And, or, or direct or whatever. And, you know, so have some flexibility. Don't kind of set your say, Oh, I'm going to be a director. Because you may find that that may not be your strongest suit. So kind of determination and flexibility. And, and always to be reminded once you get some control and gaining control over your work, if you're a director is very important, and very hard to achieve. But once you have it, respect the audience, I remember my father saying and it's from another era, but he you read us a wonderful pictures of the early 40s Woman of the Year The first Spencer Tracy, picture, Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur. And the more the merrier. Cary Grant and Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman. There's just so many pictures. But he talked about they would open in the RKO City musical, which has 5000 seats, have a picture of him in front of it when Penny Serenade was opening a picture showed at that Turner Classic Film Festival last week with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. But he said there's something when 5000 minds come together, he said, they close the circuit, they bring their intelligence, they bring their curiosity. And the link is closed between the filmmaker and the audience. And just to have that idea that the audience he said about shame, which, you know, classic Western at all, somebody was trying to make it a little fancy. And he said, You know, I think I made Shane for the truck driver in Arkansas, says he spends a day alone driving his truck, and he may not be able to articulate his thoughts. But he's thinking, and he's curious about things, and he has ideas, and I want to leave a little something for him to do when it comes to the movie, let him bring something to it. That was beautiful.
Alex Ferrari 45:59
Really, really beautiful. You know, since you've, you know, been raised in Hollywood, and you've seen the change from the Golden Age, to where we are today. Where do you think the future of the industry, with all this new technology, this new generation that's coming up that is not as in love with movies as maybe my generation or your generation was? Because so many other options for entertainment are out there? What do you think the future is for Hollywood moving forward?
George Stevens Jr. 46:31
Well, it's very much up in the air. And I tell you what, I hope it's I hope that the movie going experience revives itself, that there's something more than Marvel Comics and the big, you know, pictures that people love, for good reason. But that, that, right now, it's almost only those that are flourishing in today's theatrical, you know, and I want people to see pictures on the big screen, that idea of my father with 5000 people, if it's 500, or 1000, you have seen it with other people. So I'm hoping that that will renourish itself. And of course, there are values to streaming people, our sets are getting bigger at home. And it's a better experience than it used to be. But it's it's, and more good directors and writers are now working for streaming and television. Yeah. Because they can tell stories that they want to. And that's in my, my plans for the immediate future, because it is a way to tell ambitious stories. So and now we have this writer's strike, which is, I think, very serious, because I think the writers are really feeling genuine. And I'm, of course, a member of the Writers Guild of displacement, that there are just there are less jobs and people are finding way and they kind of fear that AI, they're going to start asking AI to write a script or Polish a script or whatever. And so I'm very much interested in the writers reestablishing a place. But it has changed so much that it it's going to be difficult, but very important that the studios and the writers and the other guilds come together in a way that's fair. I mean, there are people in making $50 million a year off of the work that these writers are doing, and asked to be some way to find a fair situation that allows this fabulous medium that is so rich and provide so much for it to flourish.
Alex Ferrari 49:10
It isn't always the way though, that the machine will always take advantage of the artists if let left alone to its own devices. Right and that's why the unions are important. And that's why you know, collective and all that stuff with what's going on. I agree. And it's more I've spoken. I've spoken to so many writers on the show, who are just saying it's just becoming more and more difficult to make a living, not even become rich just make a living in the business directors as well because it's becoming more gig orientated like here. Here's a flat fee. Thank you very much out the door. You go in that there was a job every week maybe. But yeah, but there isn't a direct
George Stevens Jr. 49:57
people used to direct television kind of Like I did long ago, there were three networks or four networks with a whole season, what 2030 episodes, you know, that's kind of diluted. Now. Someone told me that prominent agent speaking to two days ago, that I think the last strike was 2008, seven or eight. And that year, the network's shot 55 pilots, right this year, there were 15 pilots. So it's all changing. And I hope there's some smart enough people sitting at the top and working for the unions that can find a balance that's going to, as I say, nourish this medium that we all love so much. I agree
Alex Ferrari 50:56
with you, 100%, I don't want to I grew up in the I grew up in the the the video store days, I worked in a video store. And that's what I fell in love with release. And yeah, that's where I mean, I was in high school, and I rented movies. And that's where I discovered giant, and that because I could see them all. And I just started and that's where I fell in love with movies and became decided to become a director. But I worked at a movie theater and believe me, and I remember my first movie in the theater and things, but my children don't like I've taken to the theaters, but they're just like, it's nice, but it's not as important.
George Stevens Jr. 51:28
So did not grow up with now going to have the first adult generation that did not go grow up going to the movies, and are at and it's something that's going to have to be managed. And you know, in the ID you can look at a movie on your phone with all due respect.
Alex Ferrari 51:47
No matter how clean and crisp the phone is. I mean, it's a travesty to watch taxi driver on your iPhone. I mean, seriously, I mean, are giant, for God's sakes, it's the movie itself is called giant, you should not be watching it on a small screen
George Stevens Jr. 52:01
it to watch taxi driver in a taxi?
Alex Ferrari 52:06
Essentially, that's it? Well, that's a different experience, depending on what street you're driving down and who's driving. George, what do you hope to leave behind is a legacy in film, with the work that you've done over the course of your your life and career,
George Stevens Jr. 52:23
will I encourage people to read my place in the sun, or listen to it just come out on the audiobook. It's hard for me to recite, but I've I've, from my standpoint, I love I've loved being involved in it. And, and kind of aspiring all the way I really did kind of set for myself as standard of excellence, and perhaps made a few mistakes along the line. But every time I did it, it was aiming high. And I'm pleased that so much of it people are, you know, I feel good that this film I made about my father 40 years ago, and it was still you know that it's still there and looking great. We've restored it. And so that test of time. I'm a I'm a respect the audience, test of time guy.
Alex Ferrari 53:22
It's such a beautiful place to be my friend. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I asked all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?
George Stevens Jr. 53:31
Well, I spoke about it before but you I would say don't have it. Figure out where you're going believe in yourself and keep your eyes open. And you're not choosing the easy path. So you have to be prepared for doors to slam and but make good friends, work with friends and set your sights high.
Alex Ferrari 54:01
What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life,
George Stevens Jr. 54:05
I think to listen. Listening is very important. And I think when you're young or even when you're old
Alex Ferrari 54:17
depending on if you're struggling or not
George Stevens Jr. 54:23
that that being a good listener. I remember Jimmy Cagney saying in some context for me, he said, Well, I'm a listening actor, you know, and I think in in any field in politics, and journalism, so we entered and purchased as a human being listen to the other person.
Alex Ferrari 54:53
And three of your favorite films of all time.
George Stevens Jr. 54:56
Oh gosh.
Alex Ferrari 54:59
Today Today Today,
George Stevens Jr. 55:02
today you have you know, I like Christopher Nolan's work. I loved Sarah Polly's women talking to beautiful film. And you know, there's just so many we have so a third I think I'll just say because it's its 70th anniversary, Shane. Right answer
Alex Ferrari 55:27
my friend. And where can people find out about your new book and what can they purchase it? At
George Stevens Jr. 55:32
official je s i think is my Twitter handle. I'm not a huge Twitter person. But I did put on Twitter yesterday, I came upon a letter I wrote to my father on Gunga Din, when I was five, five years old. And picture of him on the set that George Stevens jr.com is my website. all lowercase letters, GE o RG E Ste and s. jr.com.
Alex Ferrari 56:11
And then Amazon, you could buy the book or audible to listen. Yes, exactly. George, it has been an absolute pleasure and honor speaking to you, my friend, thank you so much for not only sharing your journey and your knowledge with all of us, but also for everything you've done for the film industry and for the arts throughout your life. So my friend, I appreciate you so so much and thank you again and for many more things to come in your future my friend. Thank you. Well, Alex,
George Stevens Jr. 56:38
I enjoyed talking to you. i i I felt I found many shared values with you. And that's always a nice conversation. A pleasure.
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Alex Ferrari 0:02
Now today on the show, guys, we have really inspiring and unique filmmaking story. Today's guests are Zander and Elliot Weaver, the mastermind independent filmmakers behind the feature film cosmos. Now on a daily basis, I get pitched just tons and tons of filmmakers wanting to get on the show. And as much as I want to help everybody out, I gotta, you know, I got to make sure that the stories that I put on the show are really good and really inspiring to the tribe. And I heard about Zander and Elliott's film Cosmos just by running around the internet. And what made their films so unique is that they shot their feature film, just like I did on a Blackmagic Pocket camera 1080 P. and that alone is not enough for it to really grab people's attention. Because like I've said before, no one cares about what you shoot it on, as long as it's a good story. And these guys were able to shoot a sci fi adventure film, Allah Spielberg's a mecca style about three amateur astronomers who intercept a faint signal from an alien race, and stumble upon something potentially world changing. Now they shot this entire film for about 7000 bucks. And I was so blown away with how good it looks.
And what's even more impressive is they got distribution, and they're selling their movie around the world, and making apparently good money with it. So the film was shot with three people in a friend's garage on a $600 camera, three LED lights and a decade old software post production software package, they shot with two lenses, one old and one cheap. One was a Tamron 18 to a 200 zoom, which they bought for about 100 bucks, and some vintage glass from the 60s from a brand I'd never even heard of. This is the kind of story we as filmmakers need to hear. We don't hear these stories very often. But I want to highlight these guys so much and I can't wait for you to hear their inspirational story. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Zander and Elliot Weaver.
I like to welcome Elliot and Zander Weaver, man How you guys doing? Very well. Thank you, Alex, thank you very much for having us on the show. Oh man. Thank you for being on the show man. You know, it's, I get I get I get bombarded with requests to be on the show all the time. And they're like, Hey, I made this really low budget movie and, and I, you know, and that was cool, like five years ago, like I made a movie for five grand like, that's, that's cool, but I get 30 of those a week. So it's not I need something a little extra. And I actually you guys came up on my radar with your film Cosmos a little while ago, we've been trying to do this for a while now. So everyone listening, the reason why it's taking so long as schedules, technology, all sorts of things to finally get to where we're at. But I saw what you're doing. And I was pretty blown away by not just the efficiency and the cost and all that stuff that you did, you did a movie for about 7000 bucks, as you told me, but the camera you used and we'll talk about that, and five years. And I say that with like, oh, God help you. You know, all that stuff. I feel it, brother, I feel it's, but I just love what you're doing and the quality and everything looks so great. So we're gonna get deep into Cosmos today. But before we do that, how did you get into this ridiculous business?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 6:14
Well, we ever since I think this is a story of many people who make movies and love movies, we've been doing it since we were kids. You know, since we were the first film we actually made, Elliott was five years old. And I was three. And we got the home video camera. And we made a film called when the toys came, came to life when the toys come live. And I've toys in our bedroom came to life. And after that we were just we were hooked and all through high school, we were making shorts with our with our mates and making music videos for them and stuff. And we decided to just go straight from high school and jump in, you know, we didn't go to a film school, we didn't go to a university. There aren't really the same kind of level of establishment like there are over in the US for film school options. So we were just we just thought we'd jump straight in get some experience and start trying to you know, find our feet in the industry really. But yeah, passionate since since very small, very, you know.
Alex Ferrari 7:11
So the question is, did you sue Pixar for stealing Toy Story from you guys is the question. Oh, yeah.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 7:18
But you know, we're working on it.
Alex Ferrari 7:21
Because obviously, I mean, I broke the story here that Pixar stole they saw your short stole your idea and has made billions of dollars
Elliot and Zander Weaver 7:31
that were like seven or six and we were fuming in the cinema. We were like ready to walk out. This is our first taste of you know, the sippy cups flying everywhere. It was just it was just rough back then I'm saying filming out of his birthday party.
Alex Ferrari 7:51
Can you imagineit to be fair, I'll give them that? They did was the production a little bit better than yours just slightly.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 7:59
Slightly. Alright, so
Alex Ferrari 8:01
let's um, let's talk about cosmos. How did Cosmos come to be?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 8:08
Cosmos came about because we were actually trying to set up another project. As Anna said, when we left school we tried to set Well, when we left school, we both tried to jump into it and sour hearts on directing a feature film, you know, finally getting around to this thing that we wait to get out of high school to do. And we set this project up, we started writing a script. And we we kind of faced that challenge that all indie filmmakers face, which is do we write a script we know we can achieve? Or do we write the script we'd love to see and look to me, I love to make but and we'll cross that bridge later. And of course being like 19 and 21 years old, we wrote the script we wanted to see, obviously, you know, we'll cross that bridge. And then we had to cross that bridge. So we were talking to finance and we were talking to investors and we got a crew together. And it was all looking really good. But understandably we were we were young guys, and we were asking for something like 5 million quid for a budget or something because they all snowboard for the people. We got involved, it was going really well. And all the investment people kept going. This is fine. Your story sounds great, fantastic. Crew look good. But you know, you haven't done this before. And you're young, and it's a lot of money.
I mean, a reasonable.
Alex Ferrari 9:18
I'm just I'm just saying it's like the equivalent of saying, hey, I need 5 million to build a house. I've never built a house before. I've seen it. I've seen it on TV, it seems fairly easy. So and by the way, by the way, at the end of a $5 million house, you have a house at the end of a $5 million movie. Maybe you make money, maybe you won't.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 9:41
So we were like, okay, you know, reasonable reasonable concerns. They kept saying go away and make a film and prove that you can make a movie and we were frustrated because we were like this is what we're trying to do. Anyway. We put that initial film on the shelf which was called encounter, went back to the drawing board and went okay, let's, let's probably do what we should have always done. Look at what we've got available. You know, we've got lots of computer screens, we've got a station wagon, you know, that's kind of Volvo car. We love astronomy and all this sort of thing. What can we do? Robert Rodriguez filmmaking? What can we make a movie out of that we've already got. And that's how Cosmos was born. And our initial concept was to make it in about 12 to 18 months, and then go back to those investors and go, Hey, there you go. Like there's a blu ray told you, we could do it. Let's get back to business. But because we wanted to do it the way we wanted to do it, where we could prove we had, or hopefully prove that we knew what we were talking about, and we can take a script and deliver it, we wanted to basically do as much of it as we could ourselves. And that meant it took a lot longer. But we fell in love with the project. And we just ran with it. And it took five years in the end. But we're thrilled with with the journey.
Alex Ferrari 10:49
So you so you, I mean, I'm assuming you made this on the weekends, and whenever you had spare time and stuff like that.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 10:57
Yeah, well, initially, we did. So the first, basically the first year and a half of work on the film, the casting, finding locations, costume, making the props and everything. And yeah, the first year and a half of the movie was was done in our spare time while we were freelancing, and we run a production company as well independent production company that makes TV documentaries, then from the end of 2015 onwards, we were like, if we're going to make this happen, we've got to commit to it. So we went full time on it. And we, it sounds a bit rock and roll. It's not rock and roll. But we we lived off the royalties from our documentary production, which is something that we talk about, to filmmakers a lot. We say, you know, if you're looking for that liberation, to be able to spend the time making your feature, film, your narrative feature, consider making some TV documentaries and getting them out on the market and letting them do some work for you. So those documentaries gave us that freedom. And for the next three years, or two and a half years, we work full time on the movie.
Alex Ferrari 12:01
Now what was the crew situation like?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 12:06
The situation was limited, right? So we had on the production crew, there was three of us. And that was our set myself, Zander and our mom. And we did. Right, we did everything. So we we rigged all the gear, we lit the sets, we rigged the mics we shot we did all the props, we did a lot basically we directed as well,
Alex Ferrari 12:32
there's that there's that.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 12:35
And with a shoot the shoot was 55 days spread over a year. Basically, we shot in blocks. And that was dictated because the actors, you know, were busy, and they had other commitments, and we tried to work around their commitments. And then in post production, it was just, it was predominantly the two of us, Sandra and I. And then we worked with a composer over about three months to do the soundtrack. So again, it was just xandra night for, like 28 months of just post production just staring at computer screens and just chugging away through, it seems like a really, it's a it's a mad way to make a film. But again, from the very beginning, our objective was we want something that we can show people, and that they can look at, basically, they can't take anything away from us. They can't sit there and go, Well, you know, it was well edited. But that was because you hired a professional editor wasn't it, or it's well graded. But that's because you hired a professional calibrator we wanted to for better or worse, whether it ended up being a good film or a bad film, we wanted to have something that we could show these investors and they could go. So apart from acting in it, and writing the soundtrack, everything else is you and we can go Yeah, now, on our next movie, we don't want to do that we want to work with people who have honed their craft and their masters of their skill and they can bring so much to it, but at least hopefully demonstrates that, you know, we have an understanding of visual effects. And we have an understanding of editing and we have an understanding of Foley and all this sort of stuff. We don't want to do it professionally. But at least we can be part of those conversations as directors. That was the end anyways. So
Alex Ferrari 14:16
I mean, cuz I mean, I've heard of these stories of projects going on for five years, and it generally never ends. Well. It generally doesn't end well when you hear like yeah, been making this movie for five years and like oh, okay, and if it's something I've worked I've worked on features that took that long to make and it just never got released just they paid it they did it and they just couldn't get it sold because it was either too bad or for whatever reason, so that you guys actually got it to the finish line. And and it looks as good as it did and it made as much noise as it did. Is is a feat in itself. Man. It really really I mean you are guy you guys are definitely the indie film hustle. personification? There's no no question about it, because to stay on a project for five years, man, you got to be committed. And that also says a lot about you as filmmakers. You know, if I'm an investor, I'm like, these guys are serious, man, they stuck on this thing for five years better or worse. And there's a reason why it took them this long. It's not because they were crazy, because it didn't have any money. And if they would have had a decent budget, this could have been done within a year all in. Yeah. So now you chose the Blackmagic Pocket camera, which has just a dear place in my heart because I shot my last film on the black bag. It's a pocket camera as well. I've been saying this for a while. It's a stunning image. It's gorgeous. It's tennety p i don't care. It's gorgeous.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 15:44
I yeah, we totally agree. We think it's this unsung hero of the film world and it's completely it's quite overlooked actually. Yeah, we saw when when we shot the film in 2015 we started shooting the film in 2015 and the pocket camera the original pocket camera I think was it did it come out in 2013
Unknown Speaker 16:05
something like that. Yeah, something like that.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 16:07
Yeah. And we we we saw the footage coming through online or people doing camera tests and we were just absolutely blown away by it. We just thought it just has such this filmic quality to it just looks absolutely lovely. So as soon as we could we could we were freelance cameraman at the time and we we bought a camera to use for work and then we were like this is it we've got to use this for Cosmos so it served us incredibly well there are there are you know bumps in the road with the camera battery life for example is no good the screens a bit iffy and all that kind of stuff but once you've got those things in place Yeah, what you've effectively when you buy the camera is this beautiful sensor really and we were we were very happy with the results of the film so much so actually afterwards we approached after the film was released we approached Blackmagic sure they gave it to give away to the filmmaking community which was wonderful like to have that association and that affiliation with them was a real moment of pride.
Alex Ferrari 17:06
Yeah, what I love about what I love about the camera yes the battery power I use the juice box so I just like used to have that. I just I put it in with the juice box at last I we shoot we shoot six hours.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 17:16
Oh yeah, it
Alex Ferrari 17:16
keeps going. It just goes and goes and goes with the juice box. It was solid that part and then I got the was it did you guys get the speed booster?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 17:26
We did we did get a speed boost. Yeah, meta bones. Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 17:28
the meta bone speed booster just automatic gives you another step and a half. It's wonderful. And yes, the monitor in the back can have issues can have issues but you could plug it in if you're if you're so inclined, a little little monitor, pop it out or something like that if you want to. But the speed that you the the speed, you can move the size of it. I mean, and now that I mean now they have the 4k pocket camera or actually the six k pocket 4k is old school now that the six k pocket cameras well, so they have these other versions are a little bit more beefy. But this has this super 16 dial it's a super 16 image. It's a sensor it's a super 16 sensor. So for me like with my film, I wanted that like 1990s Sundance indie vibe with a little bit of green I actually added it was too clean I added grain to the image and post but it's such a beautiful camera now what lenses did you use?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 18:24
We shot most of the movie actually on a single stills lens that we had a 28 mil 1960 stills lens that we just talked. Yeah, and it just like you said it, I don't know what it is about that sensor. But the way sort of the light blooms it does have like a grainy, although it's obviously digital noise it does have a grainy look to it. It looks like film grain.
Alex Ferrari 18:50
Yeah. But it's what it is. But it's pretty clean. But it's pretty easy. If you shoot it right, it's clean. And but the aesthetic of the image has that super 16 clean look. And you and if you just add just a little bit of digital grain to it which a little film grain onto it on top of it, it could just take it to that
Elliot and Zander Weaver 19:12
that other beautiful it worked it was perfect for our needs. You know, cosmos is a film set predominantly in in this car you know in the station wagon so we had to get a camera and all the you know a slider and stuff inside this car and shoot in the confines of the vehicle and to have this small camera was just absolutely you wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise,
Alex Ferrari 19:36
you would have to like cut the car in half and fly you know fly in and out and all this kind of stuff. Like I actually Yeah, like I own the Blackmagic 4.6 K camera, but I chose to shoot with a little camera because of the ease. Even if you would have had a red or an Alexa you couldn't have shot this film.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 19:56
We couldn't we say that to people sometimes and they kind of look at us and they go What do you mean and you Go. Well, I mean, it's tough to get a camera in a car. Like it's not it's actually our car. It's not a set. Car chop the roof off, we've got to drive home. So, yeah. And also up and again, some filmmakers look at you like, you know, you've landed from Mars, because Yes, he does. But he doesn't he doesn't matter to me and it doesn't matter in general. But be there is something beautiful about like film is high resolution but it's soft. It's a delicate image. It's not pin sharp, crystal clear high fidelity. And I think the 1080 p Blackmagic. It has the same texture The film has it's a bit a pinch sharp image if you want it and it's clean, like you said, but
Alex Ferrari 20:48
it's soft, it's it just softens the edges in a way that film does. I mean, they I've talked to Blackmagic a lot about this when I work with them. And I've told them that camera is just like an all of their actually all of their images, they always have this, this kind of like beautiful like it's like red is frickin just scalpel esque. In their image. It's so crystal clear. It's a bit it's a bit much where Alexa is also a soft image, but the Alexa costs 80 to 100,000 as opposed to the black magic and and all of that Now, one thing I found interesting about your story is that you guys, you had a soundstage obviously they don't tell you don't tell don't say this publicly, but you had a soundstage It was your garage, you actually built a garage soundstage where you shot a lot of the filming. Can you explain that processor? service?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 21:44
Yeah, yeah, well, we did the Garrett's actually a friend of ours. So we have one of the challenges that we faced is that the actual set of the movie is the is this car. The vehicle that we would use to get from the garage every single day. So you know, at the end of filming, we would end beginning of the day, we'd get there and we get all the gear out and we set the props up in the vehicle we shoot. And then by the end of the day, we had to direct everything, put it all back in the car and drive up, we could leave it all set up. That would have been but but the film takes place across one night effectively. And instead of having the car out in the middle of a field and shooting actually in the middle of the night. For the interiors. We just drove it into this garish, we put up a black psych and we shot during the day and faked it as if it was at nighttime and it worked superbly well. But we all we did all start going a bit early by the end of it because we weren't seeing any daylight it was middle of the winter here in the UK and we drive it in the dark shoot in the dark all day and drive out in the dark. So yeah, we craved the lunchtime daylight that we got every day.
Alex Ferrari 22:53
Now, I want to go back real quick. The whole 1080 p aspect Did you shooting untended p affect your D your distribution deal? Your sales? digit they go oh, no, we can't take your film because we need four k? Can I just want because this is a myth. People think you have to master in 4k, you have to shoot in six or now 12 K or something like that. I want you to I want you please tell the people please tell the people the truth didn't matter.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 23:24
No, it doesn't matter. Well, it didn't matter to us. We spoke to a handful of distributors, we spoke to a handful of sales agents. We even got two distributors bidding against each other for the film. And even when we settled on one and assigning all the deals up, not once in the sort of six months that we were doing distribution. And since have we been asked about what resolution The film was shot on not once did they ask us during the negotiation process? What what resolution is that? You know, what did you shoot on? It didn't matter. And in fact, when we got the deliverable, the tech specs in the tech specs for our distributor it actually said if you have shot your film in 4k, can you please let us know because we will have to set up a special pipeline for you. Basically, not many people do that. You know, in other words, not many people do that. And we'll have to go a special route for you. So yeah, not once were we asked Is it into k four k six K, they just they watched the screener. And that's all they really want it to talk about. So we often get asked to we get emailed by people going oh, you shot on the six k i read you shot on the Blackmagic six K and we're like no, no, we shot on the television. And they're like no, no, the
Alex Ferrari 24:44
same thing
Elliot and Zander Weaver 24:47
will happen right now get in touch and they'll say we watched the movie you know really impressed with what you achieved with the limited resources and UI Oh, that's amazing. Thank you. And they say well what do you what what camera Did you see on you tell them and like Elliott said They assume success. Okay, 4k, you know, it's the 10 ACP one and they go really I'm shocked and say, well, you you watched it. So like, do you like did it work for you? Did it distracts from the story for you? Or did you just watch it and enjoy it and not really worry? So yeah, I think it's very easy to get lost in the kind of K war with all the modern technology. But ultimately, I think as storytellers I focus should be more on the script and the acting and the soundtrack. Stop it on how many cakes stop
Alex Ferrari 25:29
it stop it, sir. You're talking crazy talk, sir. Crazy Talk. It's all about the cameras. It's all about the gear. If you've got a 12 K camera. If you have an Alexa with $100,000 lens on it. That's all you need. You don't need a story or acting that said that automatically makes your movie good isn't that that's what I've been sold. That's what I've been doing. Am I wrong?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 25:55
asked you know what codec we shot? We shot people go shot raw then right. And we we asked we shot pro res Lt.
Alex Ferrari 26:03
Well, that's not that's not honestly. Okay. Now I'm gonna have to say that is kind of crazy talk. Why didn't you shoot it? Come on, guys. You could have shot raw, well, wait a minute, but you edited and Final Cut, which we'll get to in a minute. So raw would have been a big pain in the butt for you.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 26:15
It would have been it would have been I mean, we just we did our own little camera tests. We put our nose to the screen and we were like
Alex Ferrari 26:20
LTE, you should have LTE not even pro res just to tell the difference. Lt. Yeah,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 26:26
we did HQ pro res and not an Lt. He tests and we were like, looking at our monitor, you know, our Mac monitor going up? Which one is this? I can't tell.
So we also like wanted to just like we wanted to, we're big fans of like committing on basically what it looks like and how it is lit and the color and you know, and so because that's those are the directions that we look up to from our childhood. You know, they didn't have that kind of flexibility that is now available to filmmakers. And I think it can hone your abilities in your craft. So to some degree, we wanted to test ourselves and go look, we're gonna bake this and we're gonna just shoot, and what we get is what we get, and we're gonna live with it. And that's, that, to us is part of the thrill and excitement of filmmaking. It's crazy man.
Alex Ferrari 27:13
Crazy talking guys crazy talk. And but you also have a limited theatrical right? We didn't Yeah, how could you How could you do that with a 1080? p? That's not possible, sir. How could you do that?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 27:25
Wow, great question. Yeah. held up beautifully on screen. We did actually do an upper as two cameras. Yeah, for the DCP using DaVinci. resolves upscale, which is nuts. In fact, I've heard that many people are selling the Blackmagic, six Ks and four KS, going back to the originals and just raising them because they prefer the image, how it looks on the original. But yeah, we had a limited theatrical release, the movie was in nine cities across the states, which was just mad for us, right? We are not anticipating that like two kids from Birmingham, UK, making a movie of its gonna be shown in cinemas in America. That was that was a dream come true. And we've seen it, we saw it twice on the big screen. We had a premiere here in the UK premiere out in Los Angeles as well. And it just really holds up incredibly well considering and I just, I just wish that filmmakers could, you know, stop worrying so much about it because of the kit that we've got available at our fingertips now. It's just so incredibly powerful. And there is just no excuse, I think
Alex Ferrari 28:34
no one and that's why that's another reason why I wanted you guys on the show because you shot with this camera because I shot with the camera as well. And everyone says what, all the same things you would get I've gotten with my film. And and I did the same thing like cuz on my monitor here where I calibrated it looked great, but when I was I premiered at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood with my father and I was like, this is amazing and but to understand I was terrified I just upwards I did a dp a DCP up to two k I'm like, Is it gonna work? And it's I don't know what it's gonna look like I'd like it's gonna be super grainy and like, Okay, well, it's supposed to be kind of grainy because I wanted it. And when I saw projected in the Chinese and I just sat there before the audience came out that we did a little Tex Tex scout on it. I was like, oh, Mike, it looks amazing. It's gorgeous. It was so and we did the DCP to the to the Vinci and I was just blown away. It's honestly I've shot with all the cameras known to man 3560 and I've tried everything. It's probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever shot that film. It's such a great camera and that's why I wanted I want people listening to understand. You can buy that little camera right now on eBay for six to $800 maybe less, maybe less. You can find you can buy the full like a full kit for like 1000 1200 bucks and that comes with like, a lot. I mean I bought my I bought mine off of ebay I bought it like it for I think 1000 bucks, but it was like a full kit case, batteries, all of that stuff and then to rig it out. It doesn't cost that much like you. Yeah, if you need if you need a matte box, I got my matte box for like 150 bucks. Yeah, it's it's you can really you can pimp it out, man, you can pimp it out. Really? Really?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 30:25
We made our camera rig. Oh,
Alex Ferrari 30:28
yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, yes. So please tell it tell us about your your rig sir. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Yeah,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 30:47
we actually put up a video on our Facebook page a few months back just to show people because they kept we've spoken about the fact that I've made this rig. And I don't think some people believe that it was actually true. But yeah, it's one of those very kind of Heath Robinson held together with gaffa tape kind of affairs, really. But just you know, when I was looking online, we didn't have a budget for this movie. I was looking online, and there's some wonderful rigs out there. But I think there's like two kinds, right? There's, there's these lovely machine milled beautiful things, right, that are quite expensive. 1000 bucks. Yeah, but cheap, plastic ones, and you think they're gonna snap when I first use them. So I just thought, because we had some very specific requirements with Cosmos getting in the car and being able to adjust the rig setup and what we wanted to do with it. I was like, why don't I just make a custom one. So went to the hardware store, got some word, got some copper pipe, got some nails, and just put it all together early. And you can see the behind the scenes. It's not pretty, right? It's not but
it's as part of the fun of this film. You know, we are very proud and very like, humbled by how well it's done. But we're also really excited because we've done it in sort of the most kitbashed ad hoc way, you know, we've got a cardboard matte box, and we've got ankle weights on the back of our rig. And we're using a wheelchair for a dolly and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to us. And it was film about it wasn't about standing behind a camera with a cap on and posing and looking cool. It was about making a film no matter what. And it wasn't about being cool and being seen with a red epic or Alex Yeah, we'd love love to work with that, you know, it would be a dream, but we fought we fought went that. That's sort of the image of feeling good about ourselves in exchange for actually being able to get a film made.
Alex Ferrari 32:44
Yeah, no, it's in that when I saw when I saw the behind the scenes and I saw you guys in a wheelchair. I was like, oh, Robert, Mr. Rodriguez has helped us out so much. Because he's, I mean, I'm a bit older than you guys. So I came up around the same time Robert did I speak of him? Like I'm my friend. I'm not but but Robert. Bobby, Bobby. Bobby, no. Robert, he did the wheelchair thing with his with El Mariachi and I did a wheelchair thing every everybody of my generation did the wheelchair like we and to be honest with you this is what how I got because wheelchairs are expensive. They're not cheap. So what we did this is back in 1994 I think we went to the mall where you could rent a wheelchair for the day for $1 25
Elliot and Zander Weaver 33:32
Oh wow.
Alex Ferrari 33:34
But we just took it home
Elliot and Zander Weaver 33:37
Wow. morally questionable.
Alex Ferrari 33:39
No, wait, wait, wait used it, returned it afterwards got my dollar I got a quarterback because I returned it. So the essential rental would be it was just a because no one does that like and there's also the 90s and they didn't you know and it's a different world way less less cameras let's cameras in the you know, security cameras less security. It was it was the Wild Wild West. But yes, that's that was what I do.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 34:08
Right. That's the indie film hustle.
Alex Ferrari 34:09
No, man. I since I've been I've been I've been living the brand since 92. Sir. What is the biggest mistake you made making this film? I'm sure there's a list. But what's the one that you like? Oh, um,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 34:27
I think I think the biggest well, so this is this is an interesting question. The thing that we often say we would do differently is we would just get some help, right? We would raise a bit of money, right? very obvious, like two people, three people. But the challenge that the reason it's not that simple, actually for us is because part of part of the marketing for Cosmos has been leveraging this kind of indie film spirit. It's been Connecting with the filmmaking community by saying, look, we're just doing this with nothing follow us along, be part of it. And, and so if we'd have done it, how most of the people do it, when they put a band together and they kickstart and they raise $1,000, then you're just the same as everybody else, right? So to some degree, this nuts stupid way of doing a movie was took ages, but it paid off because it's allowed us to open up conversation, we're talking to you now because of it, we wouldn't be otherwise. So I would say if I wanted to get it done quicker, with less stress, just collaborate with more people get it done sooner. But you know, I'm very proud of like, the way we've done it and and the experience that we've obtained from it, it's just like, God, it's a measurable way to just have a bit of a glimpse in and understanding about all these elements and aspects or it's like the ultimate film school. So it I, you know, it's a really interesting question.
Alex Ferrari 35:59
What did what did mom do, she was a third crewman who woman
Elliot and Zander Weaver 36:05
was essential so our mom professionally Not anymore. But before we were born, and while we were kids, she was a professional TV makeup artist. So we the one of the main disciplines that she had on the film where she was hair and makeup, and that obviously, you know, sort of rolled over into continuity so she was keeping track of all the beard length and the hair length and the colors and all that sort of thing. And then we did also just like rope in and pull it a good use doing the clapperboard every now and then sometimes holding the boom and sometimes running the smoke machine man. She was sort of almost like the third director really we were we were all in it together but she was also we often say she was the onset mom and every set needs a mom you know and all the older guys they kind of she mother them and they adopted her so we all we had this sort of family family unit on the film. Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 37:05
Now what did you guys use for smoke machine? Did you actually like buy one of those like party smoke machines? or?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 37:10
Yeah, we had we already had like a Mr. Like a disco smoke machine type thing. But we tested outside we're like, this is just not not gonna happen. Like in the windy British winters like okay, it's
just lit a cigarette. That's not gonna work.
So actually, the single biggest expense on the movie, we bought a gas powered our temp smoke machine. Yeah. The propane ones. Yeah, the proper drums, you know, and, and, but for us, we, we could justify it in our heads because we were just like, this is gonna give us a production value. We're going to be out in a forest and it's going to give us the depth and allow us to kind of make it look like we have more likes than we do. And we're big fans of like having that smoke medium to light in and all that stuff. So for us
it was it was about it was over 10% of the budget. Yeah, on this moment.
Alex Ferrari 38:03
But I want to get it I want to ask you something because I've shot with a ton of haze machines and smoke machines in my career. And you guys didn't shoot RAW. So I know from shooting with smoke machines that smoke doesn't take direction quite well. How? How Tony Scott shot every scene of every movie that he ever did with a smoke machine or a haze machine and it looked perfect every time how he did it? I don't know. I could only imagine I've had struggle with full crews. How the hell did you wrangle smoke or haze in a shot? And how did it not how did you match it in post? And how did you deal with it in color? Because sometimes if it's one shots hazy and then the coverage is not hazy. How do you like how did you do it?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 38:54
Well, it's difficult
Alex Ferrari 38:56
it was hard to sell Alex I have to tell you it was ridiculously hard.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 39:00
It was impossible. We almost Set everything on fire and third degree burns and the whole lot really no yes so we did get quite good at like timing the smoke machine so you can we could sort of like leave it off on its own and it would just trickle out and it's very against the rules of owning a propane gas. smoke machine is never leave it unattended but you know, we were all grown ups we were only a few feet away.
We all think we do like a blast right? We do. We'd like one of us would run around with a smoke machine blast into the grass and all that kind of stuff. And then you sit back and it should be this enormous fog cloud right here behind the camera ready actors are we ready? wait for it Wait for the moment wait
for the video. And then just when it was right we went for it.
Alex Ferrari 39:50
I have to I just have to point something out that you were judging me morally about my my wheelchair scam, sir, you left row pain machine unattended, sir Which actually could have killed people. My little scam did not kill anybody. And it was returned sir. So I both of you, I just I just wanted to point that out.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 40:10
I take everything back I'm sorry.
Alex Ferrari 40:13
So yeah, so that even even in post though, like, matching, matching that haze
Elliot and Zander Weaver 40:21
did it for the most part we it was okay. For one reason or another, we didn't have too much problems, but we did this there is always that you know, there's always that balance isn't there when you come to your color grade and you
think you did a bit of smoke stuff in it. Yeah. pasting backgrounds and paste that can you just take the smoke from behind this guy's head in this shot? Yeah. And put it in this guy and he would just be like,
Alex Ferrari 40:47
okay, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, I just want people that hearing this understand shooting with a smoke machine or haze machine is not easy, and it's time consuming. It is. You shoot it up. Settle. Wait, wait, shoot. Oh, cut. Do it again. And then like, Oh, you I've only done an insight. I've never done it outside. So I can only imagine shooting it outside where you guys had
Unknown Speaker 41:16
action as well. Like you'll be for 10 minutes. And then suddenly, you put the smoke machine over there. You know, it's it's you chasing your tail all night long.
Alex Ferrari 41:27
Now, can you talk everybody because you guys did purchase a very high expensive wind machine. So can you tell people what that wood machine was?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 41:36
Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, you know, in the, in the spirit of all high end special effects that you see in all the blockbusters. We we went into our garden shed and we were digging around and we were aware that you know once upon a time we were the proud owners of a leaf blower. So we got that Dyson leaf blower out gave it a bit of a blast and thought okay, well we can't record any dialogue while using this but we can have winds so yeah, that was one of one of our jobs. In fact, my job on the end of the shoot I was directing and blowing hot dusty air into the faces of the actors so you were just directing right yeah.
Alex Ferrari 42:16
Smith and it was Yeah. You want him to cry so you just show just slammed dirt into their eyes basically at high speed.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 42:29
Yeah, teary, glassy eyed look. That's great. Oh, sorry. No, you've just got your face amazing.
Alex Ferrari 42:38
Now what I want to talk about post because what I read what you guys didn't post again made my heart just just warmed my heart because you were using two pieces of software that I use on I look I'm a recent convert from Final Cut seven when I say recent was probably like four or five years like four four years ago maybe I think four or four years ago I think I switched over to editing four or five years ago I switched to editing to in resolve strictly but I had seven solid and with 10 ATP when you guys were shooting a pro res so I actually I mean with my first film I had to actually go to resolve because I was shooting RAW on the sim the old Cinema Camera the original the original 2.5 k Cinema Camera so I had to go rock because I'm like I finally have to leave poor Final Cut seven so you edit it in Final Cut seven and then you colored in color to Apple color if I'm not mistaken right
Elliot and Zander Weaver 43:41
sound design in Final Cut seven as well.
Alex Ferrari 43:44
oh yeah oh yeah
Elliot and Zander Weaver 43:45
yeah,
Alex Ferrari 43:45
so you guys are doing and what year was this?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 43:49
This was yeah started a
Alex Ferrari 43:53
truly truly no excuse so as I'm saying cuz I I did all this in like 2006 so there is there's no excuse no base you have what you had and that's again that's another great lesson here. You have it you own it use what you got
Elliot and Zander Weaver 44:09
that's it that's what it's all about and for us we we we produce all of our documentaries using Final Cut seven this system and again our philosophy is just like look there's been Oscar Oscar winning movies that have been edited on Final Cut seven we have no requirement to push to a new piece of software we're not shooting in 4k or 8k or something crazy. Shooting 10 Hp if it's good enough,
or parasite when the best time Yeah, john. Seven.
Alex Ferrari 44:38
Yeah, no parasite was edited.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 44:43
Yeah, it was so
Alex Ferrari 44:46
easy. I didn't know that.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 44:48
Yeah, it's still strong is a
small band of FCP seven users and
Alex Ferrari 44:53
like come on, keep it alive.
Software is a great piece of software, though. I do like music. Have a little bit better than color, I have to say,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 45:03
yeah, we're in the process of kind of switching over to resolve for all things, all things generally really, you know, cutting and grading as well. So, I mean, just black magic all the way.
Alex Ferrari 45:15
And that's another thing that people want people to understand is like, if you if you stay within the Blackmagic ecosystem, man, it works beautifully, like you, you shoot RAW, bring it into resolve, and you can do everything in resolve and then you don't have to actually even go out to online anywhere. it all stays in visual effects are connected sound is connected. It's it's a pretty amazing piece of software.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 45:39
You're talking some kind of unknown future world to us, Alex, we're still dealing, Final Cut seven and kind of
get a floppy disk. Floppy? No, no,
Alex Ferrari 45:51
get the zip, get the zip disks or get the zip disk. The zip disk in the jazz? Do you know even know what a jazz drive is?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 45:58
No.
Alex Ferrari 45:59
Do you know what a zipped is? Do you know what a zip disk is? You guys are so young. You're so young.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 46:07
Copy this right?
Alex Ferrari 46:08
No floppy disk was a 1.2 meg, if I'm not mistaken, disk that are held like 1.2 make the zip disk held 100 Meg's plastic disk. And then the jazz was the big brother of the zip. It was all by iomega it was a company this now I'm just I'm dating myself. And only like 5% of my audience is going. Oh, I remember that. No, I'm much, apparently much older than you guys extremely much, much older than you go. We
Elliot and Zander Weaver 46:39
used floppies at school putting our coursework on floppy disk. The USB flash drive thing was like, wow.
Alex Ferrari 46:48
Science Fiction, isn't it?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 46:50
Yeah. Now it's like, oh, he's
on USB stick. We were talking to someone not long ago. And they were talking about mp3 players when they listen and what was it and they said, Oh, you say they were saying something like, Oh, yeah. parently there was a time when mp3 players couldn't do this. And we were just like, oh my god. Like, there wasn't a time when mp3 plays existed. Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 47:12
yeah. Yeah, there was this thing called tapes. CDs, records, eight track. I yeah, a track vaguely in a car in a car. When I was a kid. I remember. Ah, anyway, I'm so I'm so I'm so effing old. I appreciate you. You reminded me. Thank you.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 47:31
I said so children have a tape. Recording you you mixtapes on?
Alex Ferrari 47:36
radio and waiting? Yeah, waiting for the radio, just like I hoping the DJ does not say a damn word over the song.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 47:45
The song in your life? This isn't right. Where's that?
Alex Ferrari 47:50
Because you hear that said 1000 times and you're like, Hey, welcome back. Like he's just waiting for that.
Oh my god, I used to do that all the time. So weird, because you guys, you guys were the DPS in this as well. And it looks By the way, fantastic. It looks gorgeous. So that's extremely impressive. You got what I love about the film is that you you really made it used so much production value, but yet in a very condensed very small space. Really, it was a small group of characters. And a lot of people think that you have to make a very contained movie like yours, which is contained but it wasn't contained. There's like big outside scenes, and there's excitement and things like that. But it doesn't have to be in a room. I mean, you you can think outside the box a little bit. And it's still you did a car. But it was a car with outside and you know the sky and there was a lot of production value and all this stuff that you did with it. But we did look at the film is really great. When you got into color, though. How much did you do? it? Was it like you guys were close to where you want it to be. And that's scary, man. I'm like, I'm just I'm letting you know, I've been a colorist for 1012 years. I have to shoot RAW because I need that. The freedom to like save me. For me. thing to do. Yeah,
it is the correct sensible thing to do is what you're saying?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 49:18
I mean, why not? Is the real answer to that question. Why would you not use those tools that are available? But ya know, we shot as we previously mentioned, we lit with the colors. We wanted it. You know how we wanted it to be lit with big fans of splashing color in their sky? Yeah, Tony. I mean,
you know, and we're not likening ourselves to No,
Alex Ferrari 49:41
no, no, no, it's just like Tony Scott. This is what I do. No, no, we understand. Yeah, we understand Tony. Rest in peace, Tony. But I mean, Tony and Ridley both. Yes, yes.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 49:54
So yeah, we our goal was to just capture that as much as possible on location and then When we got to, to the color grade, for the most part, it was a few kind of vignette power windows here and there. We pushed we did a thing. We did some tests early on, when we were comparing the Blackmagic footage to film footage. And we noticed that film had like a kind of slight greeny yellowy tint in the highlights, that's something we just saw. And so we just pushed a bit of that in the saturation of the contrast ever so slightly, it was a very time consuming process, because it always isn't it with the with the color matching and everything. But in terms of how, how much we push the image, we didn't do a huge amount to it. We were quite delicate with it.
Alex Ferrari 50:42
And how about visual effects? Because there's a couple of visual effects in the movie. There is
Elliot and Zander Weaver 50:46
70 visual effects of the film, how many? 170? Yeah, nice. Most of them are not visible there. We call them invis effects, because they're just not even supposed to be noticed. They're like set extensions, and skylines, and stars in the sky, and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I handled the visual effects. While Elliot was doing all the sound design and the Foley for the film. I did the visual effects on blender, which is fantastic open source. VFX software is just getting stronger and stronger. And man, it's exciting to see what they're doing with it. pioneering stuff. And, yeah, and After Effects as well. But for the most part, like I said, it was some stuff extensions and skylines. But there were more involved things. For example, the front of the telescope, we replaced the front end of the telescope in the movie, because it looked pretty awful. Actually, it was a it was a visually a tripod carry tube. And we created a prop for the front to make it look like a telescope. And then we got into the Edit. And we were like dad just does not sell
rubbish, rubbish,
rubbish, absolute trash. And so he turned to me and he said, Can we do something about that? So I had to figure that out. It was very much a learning process as we went. But yeah, I always say that like, when it came to the visual effects, it was something I was doing for fun before Cosmos was even a consideration. So if you ever get that kind of tinge of excitement about anything, just just explore it a bit because filmmaking is such a diverse discipline there's so many different elements to it, chances are it'll come back and help you at some point
Alex Ferrari 52:27
and you get so you can't then after effects you become a competent After Effects visual effects. 3d in Blender 3d, Final Cut, edit, and color and then you also mastered sound and final couple, which I know is ridiculous. Because I've done it myself. It's not really built not built as audio. Not at all. Not even a little bit, not even a little bit. And then you guys also did Foley as well.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 52:52
We did a lot yeah, we did the Foley and I did that. So it was it was doing the visual effects like I was stomping around and rustling and breathing into microphones and all that sort of thing and
Alex Ferrari 53:03
amazing 66,000
Elliot and Zander Weaver 53:03
sound effects were put in onto 100 audio tracks.
Alex Ferrari 53:08
So what what machine were you running because I know Final Cut seven fairly well that's going to tax the that's going to tax the software, sir. Yeah,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 53:19
I don't I just an iMac and iMac.
Alex Ferrari 53:23
That's an iMac with a with an operating system that still runs Final Cut seven because now officially, it's dead. Yeah, you can't upgrade. Yeah.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 53:33
We have to IMAX right. This one today and the one we made Cosmos on which we cannot change.
Also, the Mac is like dead now you turn it on and you just try and open up chrome or something. You just think we kill this computer trying to make that film? Yeah. It just wants to retire. It wants to graze.
Alex Ferrari 53:55
Is it something about Baxter? Or is it something to say I still have three towers of old max that I just I can't get rid of them. I just there's there's just something like I can't there's no I can't get rid of my Mac I don't like just just in case you need that CD ROM for some reason. You know,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 54:17
absolutely.
See the floppy disk drive on it. So you gotta keep gotta keep the options open.
Alex Ferrari 54:26
Just in case, everything goes to goes to hell. You got Final Cut seven. Let's rock and roll. Now, and so you finish this whole movie, you're ready. It's been five years. And you're like, Okay, let's get this out to the world. Tell me your adventures in distribution. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 55:01
Okay, yes, so we finished the film. And we then set about putting together the marketing materials that we thought we would need in order to get a distributor. So we did our own poster, and we cut our own trailer. And we put a screener together and all that sort of thing. And then we decided to, in the spirit of the film, continue to do everything ourselves. So,
Alex Ferrari 55:25
of course, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 55:28
Why wouldn't we have learned our lesson after five years? So we started, we actually tried to submit or we did submit the film to probably a dozen film festivals in sort of the tear of film festival that you hope your film might
Alex Ferrari 55:44
sell Sundance, Sundance, Sundance, or South by Southwest, you don't you donate it to Robert Redford's retirement, understand, as
Elliot and Zander Weaver 55:51
I'm sure he appreciated that, we obviously got flat out rejected from from every festival we submitted to. And then we decided to just sort of, we were going well, we're gonna go to we try to get into festivals, so we can connect with distributors. But I wonder if we can just connect with those distributors directly. And we spoke to a few filmmakers, that we knew we've done that route. And that's what we pursued. So with our marketing material, and a screener of our film, we set about reaching out directly, and sent out some introductory email, sent out some screeners and just started talking to people really, and we spoke to sales agents as well and try to suss out whether that was the right route for us. And in the end, we, we we got we actually got two distributors competing in a bidding for the film and push that up the or, you know, yeah, push the bid up and make it more favorable for us. And then ended up going with one that we felt offered something that was worth, you know, the deal worth signing up to. And, and that's what we did, that process took about six months from, from the day of finishing the fill to, but that's
Alex Ferrari 57:01
nothing. But that's nothing for guys like you you've already taken. He's taking you four and a half, five years to make a movie six months of distribution. That's nothing.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 57:09
I sense of time. It's like, we were like six months. Yeah, it was an interesting process for sure. But we used IMDb pros free trial to create a list of distributors that you know, in the in the kind of realm that we were looking for, and we just, we just went down that list. And ultimately, it worked out and we found a home for Cosmos that is done for the most part what we wanted it to do, although no distribution stories, plain sailing, for sure.
Alex Ferrari 57:44
Yeah, I haven't heard of one of those. yet. That ever it's like, yes, it was fantastic. They only gave me money. I actually didn't know what to do with all the money and attention I was getting was generally not not not something you hear. But but generally speaking, though, you're happy with where you went with the distribution company and how things have been how it's been put out into the world and everything like that, because I look, I've seen it everywhere. And I've seen it pop up a bunch of different places. So I'm assuming that you guys as far as marketing is concerned,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 58:14
yeah. It is. It is for sure. Yeah, we will. We will. We we've got us ventures. And I think their model is very much given to the producers, they know their movie, they can market it, you know, we'll put it on the platforms. And so as far as we're aware, most of the marketing of the movie is our work really, you know, we put the post in the trailer together, we did an ad spend on some social media to try and get it out there. And we're just trying to engage with the filmmaking community and share the process read as much as we possibly can. But you know, we are, we're certainly happy with the reach of the movie. It's available on you know, many platforms. In the US. It's on like Hulu, TV, it's on prime streaming and Vimeo. It's a all the all the all the S VOD, and VOD options that you could hope for, to be quite honest. But there's also certainly a strong argument for that kind of independent distribution route where you handle yourself if you do all the marketing anyway, right? Like, why not? Why not made that final step for us. We our goal was very much to be able to finish the movie, give it to somebody else have control over the marketing, because we didn't want it to be in someone else's hands were worried that it could be marketed incorrectly. But but to not, to not have all that time spent on getting that movie out there. So it made sense to hand it to somebody else because we wanted to start writing a new project to start moving forwards and not get kind of like bogged down in the in the personal distribution of the main thing
Alex Ferrari 59:50
now but the other thing is to you guys have a very different endgame for this film. And that's something that's really important for filmmakers to understand listening is that your goals with the film We're not to make a million dollars, or you know, or be, you know, rich or anything like that off the film, money's nice. We would like to have money if we can't keep going without it. But because I'm assuming you don't want to do another five years like this, I'm assuming this is it, you're not doing any more. No more of these movies, you have to promise me no more. But um, but you but your goal was to get it out there and and get your name out there for people to see you to have conversations about other projects to talk to other investors. That was the end game for this film, correct?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:00:38
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the film has, the film has been out six months now. And we are starting to move into a phase where the film is making us money, which is great. Because that's a real uptick. But you You're right, our goal was, we have the philosophy that like, we couldn't buy our way into the movie industry, even if we had loads of money. So we've got to find something of value, beyond the finances that would allow us to progress as film directors. So if we could trade, the financial reward for the exposure, and hopefully people are liking the movie and the word getting around, and maybe people in industry hearing about it and going Oh, yeah, I've heard about this film, actually, that was more valuable to us as filmmakers. And and we do try and stress that to people we talk to and, you know, on things like this, that we're not at all sort of suggesting, but this is a business model for
Alex Ferrari 1:01:37
the $77,000 five year model than No, not so much.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:01:42
We were you know, we run a production company. Aside from this, we got other projects and other fingers and other pies. The reason we wanted to make this movie initially was as a bargaining chip to get that initial film off the ground. In the end, it was just supposed to be something that we could barter with. But now you know, it ended up becoming something bigger. And it's actually acting in a way as like a crowbar. So open industry doors, and since the film has been released, we've had people from, you know, Hollywood, email us and you know, we've been talking to managers and we're potentially talking to people and it has, it has given us that sort of springboard. So yeah, we we traded the finances for potential, you know, to be able to help a career move further on.
Alex Ferrari 1:02:31
But the other thing is that you also didn't make a $200,000 movie and had that goal, then you made a $7,000 movie. Yes. You know, very, very Robert Rodriguez esque. A nice round seventh house.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:02:46
Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 1:02:49
Exactly. No, that's, that's amazing, guys, you guys are definitely an inspiration, an indie film inspiration. And in, you know, it's, it's an you did it in today's world, but get a little bit in the past, because it took me five years to do. But but all the things that you did travel to this point right now. And the, the basic spirit of what you do is, is getting out there and doing it. And not everyone needs five years. Some my son might need seven. But um, but you did it and you did it on your own terms. And you told the story you wanted to tell, and it's doing exactly what you want for it. And you can't really ask for. I mean, you could ask for a bunch more. But generally speaking, you got what you aim for.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:03:34
Yeah, we absolutely, we actually got a lot more than we aim for. I mean, we've walked away with a movie that people are watching, and they're enjoying it. And we have people contacting us every single day to say, you know, I checked out your movie. We're in lockdown. And it's brought me hope and it's brought, you know, and it sounds corny, right. But like, ultimately, as filmmakers, our goal is to, like tell a story that people connect with and to hear that people are enjoying the film, and wanting to kind of connect with the community and be part of it. It's just, it's an absolute dream. And on top of that, the actors that are in the movie, they're like family to us, you know, like, we've been to weddings, and we've moved houses and we you know, we're all part of it together now. And it's been a testing experience, but it's just an incredible one as well. Very, very lucky.
Alex Ferrari 1:04:24
Now, I'm gonna ask you a couple questions as my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:04:32
Blimey. Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 1:04:37
Take five years, take five years and
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:04:39
go to take me nuts. I would say be be passionate. Because I think there are a lot of people, you know that and I talk to a lot of people we've crossed paths with filmmakers. And I think you can and also young crew, you can sort of sniff out the ones You kind of want to be in it because they think it's cool. And I'd love to walk the red carpet. And I'd love to be it's a glitzy glamour industry. And then you can also immediately tell the people that don't care about that at all. They're just, they have to do this because they love it so much. And I think, I think that people who are in positions of power can tell why, why you're sitting in front of them. And if you're passionate, and you love it so much, I think that that you're gonna win them over. So I'd say be passionate about what you do,
I say, really identify what it is about making movies that it's gonna make you happy, though, why do you want to do it, because if you're doing it for the end goal, if you're doing it, because it's going to get you somewhere, someday, that's just not really going to get you through those challenging nights where you're, you know, you can finally get seventh crashed on you for the 100th time and you're in the middle of a render, and you just lost your head. You know, it's to me, a big thing that I've learned through the making of Cosmos has been about just enjoying the process. Don't forget that it's filmmaking that you love. Not the next movie, not the movie you're making 10 years, not where you'll be or what you could be doing some day. It's right now. And if you're on set with a camera, and you're making a movie with actors, you're doing it, you're just doing it. So just enjoy that and try to hold on to that through the whole process.
Alex Ferrari 1:06:25
Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:06:31
things take time? Yeah, I'm gonna say exactly that. Patience. Yeah. God. Yeah.
Patience, persistence. things take time, things take longer than you ever thought they could just accept it. And don't face it. You know, you're doing the best you can.
I remember hearing, there's a phrase that I we our dad used to tell us, he heard and he told us, and he said that people overestimate what they can achieve in a year. But underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. Yeah. And it's like, that's, that's great. I remember leaving school 18 and be like, this is it. You know, by the time we're 22 should be
Alex Ferrari 1:07:08
any time now Oscars, should I should I get the tux now? What should I do? Now? I'm
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:07:13
32. It's been 14 years since I left school. And I've just, you know, it's been six months, we've released our first film, it took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we didn't give up and we all now hear. So patience. Don't give up. Keep working hard. love what you do. And it will come
Alex Ferrari 1:07:30
and three of your favorite films of all time.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:07:34
Definitely et
Alex Ferrari 1:07:35
Yeah, I figured, man, I don't know. I feel when I saw cosmos. I'm like, Oh boy. These guys love that Spielberg boy, they just love it.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:07:47
Steven Spielberg. Yeah, I mean, it's good. It could easily be three Spielberg films be top three. But I tell you what, we watched the other day again. The first time in a while Meet Joe black.
Alex Ferrari 1:07:59
Of course. Yes. Cool. Yeah, love. I love your black
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:08:02
love me. 201 movie. Wow, incredible. Um, but yeah, you go and pick some pick one.
It's hard to pick a favorite man. I tell you what, not picking a favorite movie. But another good Martin breast movie Scent of a Woman. Oh, yeah. And seen anything Spielberg jaws close encounters are classified as so good, man.
Alex Ferrari 1:08:30
I mean, you can watch jaws right now. And it is perfection. It's just the shark. I don't care. It's just perfect. It's exactly what it needs to be. I don't want to see g shark. I want I want I want that shark. It's It's so so perfect. And did you know I'll give you a little bit just trivia. The scene in the boat where they're drunk. It's the night before the big thing and what's his name? Oh, the old Robert. Robert Shaw is doing that whole, like, long diatribe about like the dialogue. He's like talking about that. That was actually written by john Milius. Ray Spielberg called them like the night before and said, Hey, john, man, we got to shoot the scene tomorrow and we need a scene and john is not sure and he wrote the scene out for him.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:09:23
Just tie this up for it.
Alex Ferrari 1:09:25
Yeah. What's like it's like you calling one of your mates and going Hey, dude, can you can you help me out with this shot but that's who they were they like the yes young filmmakers
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:09:33
Beto.
That's amazing. I mean, it's funny because we will have this we'll talk to the film, you know, Trump's gonna make yourself and you'll have this phrase like, what's a perfect film and people say jaws and suddenly everyone goes up jaws jaws.
Alex Ferrari 1:09:46
Mommy jaws is a perfect is it? Yeah, there's, I mean, Spielberg has a few perfect films. I mean, there's he's, he's got a couple in his you know, and, I mean, I could go into the Kubrick I can go into Fincher and I can go into Nolan. I can go tomorrow I can go into Marty. I mean, Coppola, I mean godfather obviously.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:10:09
We love Gladiator as well.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:10
Like Blade Runner. Blade Runner. Alien aliens if you want to go down.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:10:19
overlooked isn't a camera camera.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:21
So this is the funny thing of okay. And now there's just two. This is from geek stalker guy, so just bear with us. Cameron, I went Titanic came out. I people were like, you know, I don't know how old you guys when Titanic came out?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:10:36
Yeah, okay. Have you seen it?
Alex Ferrari 1:10:39
Yeah. So, so Okay, so nine, so I was a bit older than you 97. But when when to everyone, it was a big hoopla $200 million is gonna bomb who's gonna want to watch Titanic? I mean, we all know how it ends. Like, why would you do that? And I just kept saying to everybody who was saying that anyone I talk to him, like in Cameron I trust.
Yeah, I love it. Cameron I trust because he has yet to make a bad movie. And if you look at his filmography, from the abyss, aliens Terminator, Terminator two True Lies. Amazing. He just always delivered it just always. So then, when fast forward a decade, and then avatars they're saying the same thing about avatar. I'm like, Hey, can I trust Cameron? Cameron, we trust. He's one of the most underrated filmmakers. I think in history, he's the most one of the most successful filmmakers in history. And the funny thing is that and I always tell people this like, do you understand that nobody else can make avatar? Like there is no Spielberg Spielberg is not getting half a million half a billion dollars to go develop a new IP new technology about blue people with arguably no major bankable stars like major stars involved no other like you said born with nothing that could support a half a billion dollars that today Yeah, today stars, you know, yeah, so nobody, not Peter Jackson. Definitely not Fincher, definitely not Nolan. like nobody else to do it. Other than someone like James Cameron, and there is nobody else. And when you when you realize, and I've heard these interviews, like when you're the only person on the planet that could do something like there's no there's not an argument here. Could Spielberg make a movie like avatar? Yes. But not by himself. He doesn't have the skill set. camera isn't like a whole other level, like with the technology and and you know, and Nolan and all that, you know, there's just nobody else that could do that film. No one else would write and get a check for half a billion dollars.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:12:52
Now you're right, actually, that's something you quite easily overlook because you just go
Alex Ferrari 1:12:57
Yeah. You take it for granted. You just take it like Oh yes, James Cameron, but there's nobody else.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:13:04
I love watching behind the scenes footage of especially on an interview series in the water camera on his shoulders. His waders just did you did you?
Alex Ferrari 1:13:13
Did you guys listen to my interview with Russell carpenter, the DP from Titanic. So you have to have to listen to about to quit Cameron's story. And every one again we are now you guys can leave. It's now just between us. We're just we're just talking now because we're geeks. Russell Carpenter gets called in to his Malibu house. And it's like, we're gonna do True Lies. It was about True Lies, because he didn't realize that he did Titanic and now he's doing all the avatars. And he calls them up and James Cameron just brings them into his mansion in Malibu, and they're walking around and he's just talking to Russell like, he got the job. Like, there's no offer. There's no nothing. He's just talking to him. Like he's been hired. So we get out he leaves. He's like, I think I was hired. And and. and Cameron during that time, even during the Titanic time, his his reputation is he's rough. Let's just call his rough. He's a little bit of a taskmaster. Let's call it Cameron's legendary for being that dude on set. And so then his students realize and everyone's like, how's it working with James Cameron? He's like, it's great. I have no problem. I don't understand what everyone's having such an issue with James like, we've been shooting for a couple days. It's been peaches. It's been great. So they're in his Malibu house again, his screening room in Malibu, and there's in there seeing dailies and he's shot comes up from Arnold and then I'm gonna guys everyone Prepare yourselves I'm gonna curse I don't care. So I'm just quoting Mr. Cameron at this point. And he goes, What the fuck is that? And Russell's a he starts like big and the production designers. They And the first ad is there and a couple of their keys are there. And he goes, Hey, Russell, I just spent $20 million in the biggest movie star on Earth. It'd be nice if I could see his fucking face. Oh, wow. And then all of a sudden the next shot comes up and he just goes to town at every single shot and Russell's just like, okay, okay, so he leaves. He's out in the parking in the parking area. And he's like, he's calling his wife's like, I've been fired. I've been fired. I've been fired. I've just been fired. There's no way I can go back. I mean, obviously, James Cameron wants to get rid of me. Then the production design in the first day they come out and it goes, Russell Russell, he does that to everybody. Because none of us he didn't call all the other DPS has worked with he does it to everybody. He calls up the DP from the from like the Abyss and he goes, does he goes, did he try the whole? I want to see the face guy. Yeah, he does. He does it to everybody. It's not you. You're fine. Just keep going. And that is James Cameron.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:16:00
We saw recently, we saw the some of the behind the scenes from the Abyss as
Alex Ferrari 1:16:05
I was about to say that. Did you see that documentary? Did you see the set up? Or did you see the documentary? Did you see? Yeah, you've seen the whole documentary, right? The whole like,
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:16:15
why am I looking? I mean, all the way from the beginning, right, Cameron? You go Oh, yeah, the guy that made avatar you go No, no, no, no, no See? This? Like, Oh, yes, a nuclear silo? Let's fill it with water and build a set. Why are you talking about
Alex Ferrari 1:16:28
he's been, and I'll give you one more camera story. And then we will end this interview. Because we could just keep talking for an hour. Can I read it? I read one of Cameron's biographies on the Abyss if you saw the behind the scenes of this, and by the way, anyone listening here should go watch the Abyss if you haven't seen it, and get the DVD and or Blu Ray, and watch. arguably one of the best filmmaking documentaries I've ever seen up there with hearts of darkness for Apocalypse Now. It is amazing to watch. You just sit there with your mouth on the floor the entire time they're doing it. And the suits at 20th Century Fox, it was way over budget, it was like a 50 million at that time was like 50 million bucks $60 million to make the movie. And it was just going up and up. And like, you know, the tarp broke and the filtration system broke. So people, and they had to buy these really expensive, like design these really expensive suits so people can not only see, and we can see their faces. So he has like he's so on the line item. It's wardrobe. It's wardrobe, but it costs like $10,000. And everyone like no one knows what's going on at the studio in the studio and like they're somewhere in North Carolina. And so a suit flies in. And if you saw that the behind the scenes cameras, you know, you're underwater for 10 hours. So you have to decompress for two or three hours underwater, so you can come up without getting the bends. And Cameron was doing this all day every day. He was he was in the water more than anybody else. So he was a taskmaster. But he was proving he's walking the walk. So this he he's just getting out of this decompose the composition and he takes off that that that you know that that element that he that they built right. And this guy comes up who's obviously a suit an executive, he comes up and goes, Hey, James, I'm here from the end before he could finish the sentence, James took the helmet and slammed it on the guy's head. So now the guy can't breathe. Because it's without oxygen. That thing is airtight. So now he can't breathe. He grabs him by the by his tie, and Dre and lifts them over like he's dangling from the edge. And if he falls into water, the dude is gonna die. If he falls into water, unless someone gets to him, he's gonna die. And he dangles them there while the guy's like barely breathing for like 10 seconds. Then he pulls them back in, rips the thing off he goes, if I ever see you on my fucking sin again, I'll kill you. And
now you see, this is the 90s. Guys, this is early 90s. This is a whole other world. I don't suggest you do something like this. But these are the legendary stories of James Cameron. This is one of a billion of them. But I have heard or read about over the years. And I know a lot of people who've worked with him. And every single time I I meet with somebody like I had another guy. Okay, one more story. And that'll be the last James Cameron story. A buddy of mine. He was at the DGA. And he's a DJ director, and he's, you know, he's a good director in his own right and has a couple films under his belt and he's big and music videos at the time. And I think it was Spielberg and Cameron. I think in Jackson or something like that, where they're giving a talk to the other day. And they're like, yeah, you need to do this and we're doing this is the new way and do this. And my buddy comes up he stands up he goes, Hey James, that's really nice because you're James Cameron. I don't have access to that kind of stuff. Like in front of everybody called out James Cameron in front of all these other directors. James goes, Well, what are you doing tomorrow? Do you want to come set? That? No, this is this is avatar before anybody knew what the hell avatar was. Before anyone knew what the technology all you heard was rumors about what the technology was that was being built. And I even heard I was here at that time I was here in LA. So I heard like through the grapevine, like James Cameron's doing something like this now. So he shows up, shows up onto set, which is the what is that the volume, the volume, right? And he's the volume. And there's this and they're basically developing technology. This is all brand new technology they're developing. So behind them in the soundstage is like three rows up with just computers, it must have been 40 people with wires and computer gears and just servers and shit just because you know, and you see James Cameron with this monitor in front of them. And in the monitor wherever he moves the camera. You see, avatar, you see, whatever that I forgot the name of the planet, Pandora, you see Pandora, right? So you see Pandora in real time. In real time, you're seeing everything in real time. So he sees everything, but it's all virtual. So then, my buddy standing behind him because he's shadowing them. He stands behind and he's watching. And he goes all right action. And it's the scene where they like they arrived the first time the helicopter and they jump out that thing, right? So he does and he goes in the take action and they he jumps off like a stool. He jumps off the camera, and he runs and he runs into a digital tree. Like he runs into a digital tree. And it goes, Hey, Jimmy, can you move this thing? About 20 feet that way? And he goes, sure, James. And all of a sudden, like from God, a mouse from God comes into the screen, clicks on this tree in real time, lifts it up roots and all moves it over 30 feet and plants it over there. Let's go again. These like and then they do it. So then my buddy comes up to him after like a few hours of this and they're like prepping something and he goes James man, this is. This is pretty cool technology man. And this is where you understand where James Cameron is in a completely different playing field than any of us are. He goes, you know, it'd be really fucking cool. If I didn't have a cable to this damn thing. This cable has been driving me nuts. I wish we could figure out a way to do this without a cable. It's the most cutting edge technology in film history at the moment. And he's like, but the cable is buggy.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:22:32
not perfect yet. And that's
Alex Ferrari 1:22:36
and that is and that is James Cameron. I'm sorry, everyone for listening if you're still with us, and we turned this into a James Cameron love fest. I apologize for that. But, guys, guys, where can people find you? What you doing your film all that good stuff?
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:22:52
Well, we have a website Cosmos movie official.com, where you can find out where you can check out the film and follow us on social media and even buy some merchandise. If you fancy
Alex Ferrari 1:23:01
works. Are you selling
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:23:02
merch? We're selling caps, and they're they're flying off the shelf. But yeah, we're on all social media and we make we make it our personal quest to reply to every single piece of correspondence we get. So if you have any questions about the process, or about your own movie, and how distribution might work, or this or the other, just get in touch, we're always happy to talk genuinely,
Alex Ferrari 1:23:26
thank you guys for being an inspiration to the to the film tribe and to filmmakers everywhere. We need stories like this, to keep us going. Because it is a fairly depressing time that we're in currently. And, and before before, you know the situation that we're all in. It was still depressing. 29 eight it was still fairly depressing for filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers and making money and making your movies and all this kind of stuff. So these are the kind of stories I like to promote and and really give people inspiration to go out there and make their movies. And you guys are the personification of indie film hustle. So thank you guys so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Elliot and Zander Weaver 1:24:07
Well, thank you very much for having us. It's honestly it's awesome to be on the show. Thank you.
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Daniel Stamm was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, where as a teenager, he was the host of a radio show and editor of a youth magazine. He toured with a theater, studied drama, and published a play before he went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a peace worker. Two years later, he returned to Germany to go to film school and study screenwriting at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg. He wrote a TV movie that got nominated for Germany’s most prestigious media award and directed a documentary on rock musician Nick Cave.
Daniel moved to Los Angeles and graduated from the American Film Institute’s directing program. His thesis film got nominated for the ASC Award. In the following three years, he made short films, wrote songs for local singers, sat on a film festival jury in Kosovo, became a certified hypnotist, and hitch-hiked across the US. In 2008 Daniel’s first feature film, ‘A Necessary Death,’ premiered at SXSW in Austin, Texas, before winning the audience award at AFI Fest later the same year.
His second feature, ‘The Last Exorcism,’ premiered at the Los Angeles Film Fest in 2010, was distributed by Lionsgate, and grossed over $65 million worldwide. The film and/or its actors got nominated for the People’s Choice Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, and an MTV Movie Award. It won an Empire Award as well as awards in Sitges and Toronto.
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Alex Ferrari 1:52
Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Jason Buff.
Jason Buff 1:56
Today we're talking with the director of one of my absolute favorite films, The Last Exorcism, Daniel Stamm is with us today. And I'm really excited to for you guys to listen to what we talked about, I learned a whole lot. And one of the biggest things I got out of this was Daniels checklists that he goes through, you know, he's known for being a very prepared director. And he actually gave me his list of his checklist of things that he makes, he looks at before he directs the scene. All right, here is my interview with Daniel stem. And I think the best place to start is going into when film really kind of affected you like the films that you were that kind of convinced you that you wanted to do this for a living when you were growing up?
Daniel Stamm 2:43
Well, my dirty secret is always that I didn't start out wanting to make movies I was I was a big Role Playing Game Nerd a lot of Dungeons and Dragons in my teens and all that stuff. And I always thought I have to find some kind of job where I can keep playing Dungeons and Dragons basically, and get paid for it. So I wanted to be a writer, I was kind of looking around in Germany for programs where I could study writing, because German parents won't let you just do something, if you don't get a diploma for it, they don't take it seriously. So I knew I had to look for something where I could get a diploma. And it would kind of be taken seriously. So I always said I wanted to be a journalist, which was a complete lie. Because I wanted to write novels, you know, make make that was always amazing to me, just the feeling that you could sit down with a couple of people and make something up and suddenly it exists in everyone's minds. And you have like this, you know, this godlike power of creativity was mind blowing to me. And I think once once you've experienced that it kind of gets addictive. You know, it was never like a question that I could do anything else. So then I ended up at a Film Academy in Germany and Luke Vicksburg, which was kind of the most modern film school in Germany. They're very renowned traditional old film schools in Germany that vendors and Fassbender and like the Verner Hertzog although the old German greats went to invent this film school opened up and it was very commercial, you know, it didn't, didn't only support like making movies, it made commercial to make TV shows it made all that kind of stuff that the other schools frown upon. And I studied screenwriting there. And I was there for four years, and wrote my little screenplays and then I would give it to directing students and the directing student would go off and make the movie and it'd be horrendous. Looking back now, they were pretty brilliant. But of course, as a writer at the time, you're so stuck on what you have in your head that no matter what they come back with, it's never what you imagined it like right now should have given them somewhere sec. But they also always came back with these amazing stories that were like adventure stories because there was always I mean, everyone who's tried making a movie knows that that there are always unsurmountable conflicts, you know, and it's a team sticking their head together and trying to figure it out. And the the actresses are beautiful and there's romance on fit. It's all that stuff that you yearn for. And you're locked out of all of that, as a screenwriter and I always had the feeling, the storytelling process is kind of artificially cut in half. Because I've already figured out the story of the characters in my head, all I need to do is to communicate that to the actors, and the cinematographer and the production designer. And I can call myself a director was always weird to me that there was some random person coming in halfway through the process, taking over being the Big Shot, that then gets all the credit for the movie, right? Oh, I thought I can do that too. But then my friends at the German film school, they weren't that taken with their directing program. So when I decided to start study directing, I knew I didn't want to do it there, even though it's a great school. But I came to Los Angeles and studied at AFI the American Film Institute here. And I was, you know, lucky, it's a crazy, expensive school, which I had to learn that everything in the States is because in Germany, you know, you go to film school, it's an application process, it's kind of tough to get through. But once you do get through it, you don't have to pay anything. And then AFI suddenly was like, $100,000, something crazy, which I didn't have. So it took me a year and a half to raise the funds through scholarships from different organizations and all that which was kind of a job in itself. And then I came here, all bushy tailed and wide eyed to Hollywood, which still kind of amazes me every time I take the exit ramp, and it says Hollywood, I've always like I've never wears. And then I found out that the German Film Academy that I went to, they had sent a group to the American Film Institute before they started the school for a week to explore and to do research. And then they basically rebuilt the American Film Institute in Germany, like the structure, the the curriculum, everything the people they hired, even, it was weird, because it was like, I knew everything about the school. And I've never been there because it was a one to one copy of the whole thing. And then I started directing short films there and kind of met my team there that I'm still working with my cinematographer and my editor, we worked together there. And it was kind of a great environment because the German film school didn't have the language barrier. Everyone that was studying there came either from Germany, Switzerland, or Austria. So there weren't very big differences in cultural approaches to narrative to storytelling to filmmaking. But at AFI in my first group was a Native American writer, or an Australian cinematographer, an Asian production designer, and a Indian editor. And we were making ends meet as a German director, and we made a hip hop movie, which none of us knew anything about. Of course, that's, of course, that's what you made you feel exactly. Cool, because you suddenly get challenged all the time, the all these things that you kind of take for granted and have never thought about, like, your editor will suddenly let a wide shot stand for two minutes. And you kind of go crazy and you go like, we can't do that. And she says, why can't we do that. And suddenly, you have to search inside of yourself what your impulse is where that's coming from that you can't do that, like everything, every creative decision, you suddenly have to verbalize and discuss with a team. And there are some fights that you win and some fights that you lose. And if I was very concerned with kind of de emphasizing the power of the director, which I think was really helpful, that you weren't the Big Shot, you didn't get to call all the shots like the first short film was initiated by the writer. So the writer had all the power, which created complete chaos, because obviously the the writers were like in character, completely different from the directors like the directors normally are these kind of grandiose, confident people and the writer. Really sweet kind of smart but introverted people. So it kind of put everything on its head. And it was a really good process, because you couldn't just take something for granted and just pull the director card and do it. And then, yeah, then then there was a seminar for the cinematographers I think, in second year, where one of the teachers told the class A genius thing that changed my life, which is tell your directors to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, don't spend years fundraising don't spend years developing, because it's a trap, like many of my friends that they're still fundraising, they're still developing something and have been for 10 years. And they never shot a frame, because they kind of missed that momentum. And it's hard to get that back out of nowhere. So my, my cinematographer called me every day and said, Are we shooting something yet? And I always said, I don't have a script. Doesn't matter. Let's shoot something. And that's exactly what we did. We kind of looked for a story.
Alex Ferrari 9:54
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show
Daniel Stamm 10:03
That would support us not having any money because no one had any money you're coming out of film school, you're completely broke. Digital was, this was in 2004, kind of you could shoot digital, but it was still kind of expensive. So another seminar, Dave, I actually taught you to concentrate on what you have and build your project, your first project after film school around that rather than trying to achieve things that you don't have. So if you know a great actor, you know, write something for that actor, if you know a great location, build something about that if you have access to crazy, advanced camera, you know, when construct something where you can show that up. And we were sitting down, and we basically said, Okay, we have nothing, whatever, something, but what you have in Los Angeles, of course, which is a tragedy for them, but great for us is you have so many good actors out of work, then heart would do anything for no money. And if you can just find them and give them something worthwhile to do. You don't really have to pay them. So we we decided that we make a fake documentary, which at the time that was kind of before the whole fake documentary, wave like bread player, which had been made five years earlier, but had kind of not really spawned any any new movies yet. This was before paranormal activity and all that. And we thought if we shoot in that format, we don't have to light anything. And everything can look greedy, and bad. And it doesn't matter. Because if it looks bad, that's just adding to the realism of it all. So let's shoot in that style, we just get a video camera that one of our actors had, and we we borrowed it from him. And then we came up with a story that there is a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker and film school. And for his thesis project, he is finding a suicidal guy on Craigslist, and basically is following him through this last week. And of course, there are all kinds of complications. They're becoming friends and sound girl is far he's falling in love with a sound girl. And I've kind of all kind of complicated, right, but we had four pages, you know, we didn't have a script, and I was so traumatized from AFI from the process of working with a screenwriter. Because me as a screenwriter, myself, of course, we were bumping heads all the time. So what I why I wouldn't have shot anything for a decade probably like everyone else, is that I was so exhausted. And even the thought of getting together with the screenwriter again, and writing something kind of sounded crazy, to me. So this, this project that we went into with a four page outline, was kind of perfect. And then we improvised all the scenes with the actors, and made that movie, the downside was, because we didn't have a script, there was never, it was never over, you know, we were kind of improvising scenes into the blue. And if something didn't work, then we would just shoot more scenes and shoot more material. And it took us three years to make the movie in the end. And of course, the toughest thing is to just support yourself while you're making a movie. And you're kind of fanatically single mindedly focused on making that movie, but at the same time, you kind of have to eat and pay rent and all that stuff. So that was a tough time. But in the end, at some point it was it was done. And then we submitted it to AFI fest to the festival, at which we were always told FYI, graduates don't get into AFI fest, because they don't want to be seen as kind of leaning towards their own people and all that stuff. But somehow we got in, and we won the Audience Award, which was a big thing at the time. Because other films that had won the Audience Award, we're like Hotel Rwanda, and life is beautiful, and all these kind of big movies. And suddenly, there was our small movie in between there that no one had ever heard about.
Jason Buff 13:46
You have an unnecessary death?
Daniel Stamm 13:49
Unnecessary death Netflix right now.
Jason Buff 13:51
Oh, really? Oh, great. Yeah, I've watched a lot of the I watched the some of the footage you put on YouTube? Oh, yeah, those, but I was trying to I was trying to watch it. And yeah, that's great.
Daniel Stamm 14:02
Oh, that must have been so weird to just watch the deleted scenes of stuff. You approach.
Jason Buff 14:09
So let me talk a little bit about that. You know, in terms of improvisation, how would you guys like say you're going out to shoot one day? What how would you, you know, put that together?
Daniel Stamm 14:20
Well, I think the main thing is to in the beginning, understand that it's a completely different talent to have for an actor to be good at improvising, than to be good at making written lines come to life and appear fresh. And as if they're being said for the first time. One of my actors put that really well that there is a different part of your brain that processes making up lines for the first time rather than regurgitating lines. And that's something that a lot of producers are later learned don't really know about like if you're making an input project, then you have to cast improv people. It doesn't make any sense to give them a scene and lines and see if they Don't make that come to life because it won't help you in the moment at all. So I was very much focused on finding great improvisers. And what you kind of get as a bonus, is that you end up with very smart people, because improvising takes a lot of brain power. And you have to be very fast thinking on your feet. And you have to be very high energy, which is really important. I didn't know that at the time, but you really are looking for someone who has higher energy than real life, like if you take people that are very authentic, but they all kind of are either normal life speed or slightly slower, it'll bore you to death on camera, and you kind of have to try to make up for it, and editing and all that kind of stuff. And it's hard. So luckily, I ended up with very eloquent very smart people. And then we kind of went out and I always gave them a paragraph and said, Okay, this is the scene we're coming from. The great thing is that you can shoot in chronological chronological order, which is huge, of course, for the actors to be able to kind of base their performance on the scene, you're just coming from which you don't have normal narrative movies, because they're always scheduled by location. And sometimes you shoot the climax, third at first, and then go back to the third act first, and then go back to the first act, and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of rain power always goes to kind of reminding the actors where they're coming from and all that. So that was easier for us because they knew where we were coming from, but I would summarize it for them again, and then kind of tell everyone what they are trying to achieve in the scene and not give them the outcome and just kind of give them the intention that they are going into the scene with, and really talk that up to them. And sometimes take them aside and talk to them separately so that they don't overhear what the other person's objective is. And then we would just shoot and shoot and shoot. And because it was video, we didn't have to, you know, care about how much material we were shooting. So the first take was always 20 minutes long. And then we did the second take. And I kind of pointed out which the great moments were. And we boil it down to 10 minutes, and then two, five minutes and into two minutes and into one minute. And in the end, we ended up cutting all these things together. And oftentimes, we ended up with the first tag, both parts of the first check, because it was kind of the freshest, because it was the first time that they would come up with this stuff, and kind of keep it as fresh as possible. I would always say new words, make up new words, don't repeat stuff that you've said in the last take the way you said it in the last check, keep the ideas, but phrase it differently, try different things try to surprise each other. And they were up for that. And they really loved each other, which was great, because we spend, as I said three years together, kind of making up stuff together. And if there had been one bad apple in that group, I think it would have been really problematic. But it was a really great group of four core group of four people. And the only the team only consisted of those four people, and then my cinematographer and me a good sound. So altogether, we were six people. And
Jason Buff 17:56
I see you're directing and doing sound.
Daniel Stamm 18:00
That kind of work that was the problem is like very do it yourself, we didn't have a single location permit or anything, if necessary, we could cram the entire team plus equipment into a car, if we didn't have a location, we would just shoot the scene in the car. It was like very fast, you know, if nothing took big setup, it's really a big relief. If you don't have to make it pretty, you know, you don't have to light it pretty, you don't have to find a great location. But you go for realism, all that stuff, all the design stuff is off your chest, you just have to as a director, it's hard. And as a cinematographer, too, it's hard to let that go because it kind of it does something to your ego that in the beginning is very uncomfortable. But then after a couple of days, you kind of switch to that my cinematographer. He's such a good cinematography, he's Hungarian. And he would kind of if he could, he would shoot black and white high contrast, you know, that reads like a very much Sigmund disciple. And it was really hard for him to switch to making it ugly. And he would frame things so perfectly that from every now and then while we were shooting, I would have to bump into him. So that the camera and then after a week, he came to me and he said I get it now I get it. The big breakthrough for him was that he started listening to the, to the actors, which he wasn't used to because the cinematographers are so focused on the framing on the image, that usually they don't listen to the actors, but because he had to listen to the actors, because they were suddenly pointing something out outside of frame that he would have to pan over and show that in the beginning. Some actors were like, Oh, look over there and the camera would stay on the actor. And I would always have to tap him on the shoulder and kind of pan over and after. He kind of totally switched to that. So that was great. So that would be my big advice. I think about making your first movie Don't I know it's tempting to really let your creative juices flow and to write something the French Revolution or something in outer space or something I
Alex Ferrari 20:01
Will be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Daniel Stamm 20:10
But it will never get made like the Hollywood is so fear driven, that no executive will give you that that will give you money to make your first movie, that's the problem, you have to have made a movie to Make Your First Movie and short films don't count. That's the problem. I know that short films are great to kind of learn stuff for yourself. But it's a total illusion that you can show a great short film. And someone will say you are displaying such talent that now we're gonna give you millions and millions to make your first feature. I think that was the case once and there are a couple of famous examples where that might have happened. But that's like one in a million to bet your career on that was kind of crazy. So I think what you do have to shoot for these days is to make a feature naked, as independently as possible. If you're waiting for someone else to give you the green light, I can promise you that you will never shoot like if you rely on someone else's money, you get all these all these stories where someone prepared and prepped and they were ready to shoot. And then everything fell apart. Like almost every story ends like that. Yeah,
Jason Buff 21:14
It's really funny that you're saying that because you're you're almost exactly describing the scenario that I went through, because we had a screenplay, and we had all these investors and all these things that were going on. And it completely, you know, I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for everything to be perfect. And then it fell apart, you know. So now what we're doing is just taking the money that we have, and we're going out and shooting something, you know, just getting out and shooting and making something you know what I mean?
Daniel Stamm 21:39
Yeah, and that's the hardest step. You know, because I think filmmakers are kind of perfectionist by nature. So it's the impulse is, I think, very common to wait for perfect conditions. But perfect conditions will never be there. And money will always go away. Like my whole whole first movie cost $3,000. Altogether, like everything was on we we got used tapes, and we taped over the dailies of day, after tomorrow, we get Everyone brought their own lunch, I didn't have any money to do anything, I was sleeping on a friend's couch at times. Like it wasn't very, very clear. I promised everyone no one will ever make a dime from this, which changed everything because suddenly it's okay for everyone to work for free. If they know that you also are putting in all the work, and you swear to them that you will never make a dime from it. You know, like the Netflix money, we were giving away to charity, because I have to keep up this promise that no one can ever make any money from this movie. And that helps it freed everything up. And everyone kind of contributed and brought their editing system and their camera and their sound equipment and their this and that. And it was kind of a really good time. But all that started with finding a story that you can shoot in a in a non pretty way, and how that really helped me later. I mean, I was lucky with all this stuff. Because what I learned what I didn't know coming out of film school is that you have to do something that Hollywood that is new and worthwhile to Hollywood like the other thing is that no one in Hollywood will ever help you just out of the goodness of their heart, you have to get to a place somehow, where you have something that they want, you know. And coming out of film school, of course, we always thought we have to emulate Hollywood, like the biggest thing to us was like getting a helicopter shot. Like if we could get helicopter shot, then we've made it, which is complete nonsense. Because the one thing that Hollywood has is money, like they can have all the holidays, other helicopter shots that they want, it's not going to impress them, if you have a great stunt, it's not going to impress them, they you have to give them something where they go like, Oh, we didn't have that before. And it's not. So it can't be about money. That was the big revelation afterwards that we luckily went the right direction, out of dumb luck because we didn't have money. So we really focused on performances and getting very authentic moments and kind of making this heart wrenching drama thing. And because all the all that we had was time, there's always this kind of saying that you have to have quality, time and money. You have to you can choose to you can either get something great and make it cheaply, but it will take a long time. Or you can make something great and it will take forever, or it will be fast, but it won't be cheap and all these things. And I think that is really true. So we didn't have money, but we had all the time in the world. And we wanted to make something great. So we kind of concentrated on that. And then when we had made the movie, it turned out that that's exactly what Hollywood was looking for at the time because the fake documentary thing was just coming up and was becoming popular. And they were looking for someone to be able to work in that medium and get great performances out of it. So that's how I got my first kind of studio job with the Lionsgate project that then became The Last Exorcism.
Jason Buff 24:57
Okay, did you was there the idea when you went up Shoot that it's like, since we're shooting video, let's just try. If we shoot like, say an hour, let's try to have at least five minutes of that big goal that we can cut out, or it was that kind of your process with I mean, back in those days, I think that shooting in video, and shoot, you know, if you're shooting that in film, you have to kind of be like, Okay, we have to get it on this take in it, you're not afforded that when you're shooting video, it's a lot easier.
Daniel Stamm 25:25
It's, it's huge for the creative process. Someone said that in an acting workshop at AFI. And it was amazing that the most valuable words that you can ever say as a director is, I don't know, let's try it, it might not work, which is exactly the opposite of what you think a director should do. Because you always have the feeling, the director has to have the vision and has to know exactly what they want. And they have to be able to communicate it to everyone and then everyone is trying to hit that on the nail somehow. And if you do that, then that's that's a lot of pressure to put on all your creative collaborators because they have to kind of try to hit your vision exactly. But if you say guys, I don't really have a vision, let's just play an experiment, and we'll come up with something together, then suddenly, you take all that pressure away from them, and you allow them to contribute. Everyone's waking up and going like, oh my god, they want my input. They don't just want me to execute something that they have preconceived, but they actually want me to be involved in the creative process itself. And suddenly you get stuff that is not filtered through one mind. You know, if you are that kind of filmmaker, that is that is kind of exerting that power and putting the your vision on everyone, then that means that everything that ends up on screen is filtered through your mind. And if you're a genius, that might be great if you're a David Fincher or you know, Orson Welles or whatever, but I'm not, you know, and I know that. And so it's a big asset to me to get a group of people together, that I think are funny, and witty, and brilliant and fast, and get all these American ideas and these moments in the scenes together, and then be able to cut my scene together from all these moments that I didn't preconceived, but that were little gifts that came out during shooting, and they only came out because I gave them that freedom to just play and try stuff out. And some stuff will be totally off and will not work out. But that's fine, because we're shooting on video. And it's not that every second is golden, because we're shooting on film, every second cost so much money. But video really allowed me to kind of open that up. And say we have the whole day for these three scenes. Let's just see what happens. And there was always there wasn't a single day, when there weren't moments coming up that were completely surprising and a complete gift. And over three years, honestly, I never went home, not being totally ecstatic about a day. And that's I think the only thing that can get you through this long shoot, you know, because that's the only payoff you have is that if you lie in bed at night, you got I can't believe that moment happened today that look between two people happen today that line that idea that this that. And it's just it's the most satisfying thing. And you never get that with a script. Because with a script, or you rarely get that with a script, because with a script, you have a very preconceived idea of what the scene is going to be and how it's going to look. And most of the time, the best thing you can do is to kind of achieve that it's rare that you suddenly see something come to life in front of you that is so much better than what you had imagined in your wildest dreams in your in your mind.
Jason Buff 28:26
Can you You told a story that I heard before about your screening in Kosovo. I was wondering if you could talk about that for just a second. Yeah. It's really interesting.
Daniel Stamm 28:35
Yeah, no, that was crazy. Because we I was at a Kosovo film film festival with my thesis film, and then they invited me back a year later to be in the jury. Or a couple of years later, I guess, because I did bring a rough cut off unnecessary death. And there were three people in the jury and everyone was was screening some feature film project of theirs. And my colleagues films. This sounds very arrogant, but I thought I thought were clever. They were great. But they weren't necessarily mind blowing. But the audience went crazy standing ovations and I was like, Oh, my God, this is the best audience ever can't wait, and not wait to show the rough cut off unnecessary data. And it was something that my editor had put together. It was a cut that I hadn't even seen. So I was excited to see it. And we're screening the movie, and the movie is over. And I'm getting ready for my standing ovation. And for people to come up. Give me an Oscar. And there was silence, absolute terrifying silence. And then there was like one person which is the worst silence would have been I thought in the moment was the worst thing that could happen. But then I learned seconds later. That's the second worst. Because then someone in the last row started clapping like this, which is like in a western when you want it to slow clap.
Alex Ferrari 29:57
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Daniel Stamm 30:06
Western when you want to show silence, you don't just have it silent, but you have like a kod how there's like a Cricket Cricket. And I didn't get it, I was so impressed at taken with my own creation up there. And the great thing about tech documentaries is also because everyone is contributing, you don't have to be an egomaniac to love the product because it's everyone's creative together. Yeah. So I was really amazed by the thing, and couldn't wrap my mind around why no one was responding to it, I thought it was so powerful. And then I was walking down the steps to do the q&a. And I turned around, and everyone was kind of moving in the audience, which was weird, because normally, for q&a, you just stay in your seats, and you don't get up and you don't walk, but people were walking out or running around or whatever. And when I realized there were people in the audience that had broken down, and their friends were kind of gathering around them and pulling them back up to their feet, and we're talking to them or whatever, whatever. And next to me was a girl that was rocking back and forth. And she had her hand in her face and her hands and the tears were running down her forearms. And that's when I realized, wait a minute, they didn't understand that this wasn't a real documentary. I didn't announce that beforehand. I didn't mean to fool anyone. It just wasn't a situation where you kind of would have announced it. And they were reacting to it as if they had just seen this guy kill himself on camera. And because the the character is a very lovable character, they were devastated by it. And I was running around was the worst feeling because you had, it's as if you had dropped this bomb on these people. And they were seriously hurt. So I was running around, trying to tell everyone that this is a fictional film, and they didn't get it when I would say match the suicidal guy. So there was Matt was the suicidal guy. And Gilbert was the filmmaker that was following him. And I would I would tell someone who had broken down, Matt is an actor. The first first reply I got was like, does Gilbert know Gilbert as an actor, too, like it was so. And then there was one girl, an American girl, as you as you would imagine, that was attacking me. She was jumping at me. And she grabbed me by the collar. And she shocked me. And she was this tiny girl, but she was just in ninja mode or something. And she screamed at me, You're a murderer. You shouldn't be allowed to make movies. And then her friends dragged her off. And then the organizer, the organizer of the festival came up to me and whispered in my ear and said Stay where you are. Don't go outside, there is a mob gathering to deal with, which is exactly the words you don't want to hear in Kosovo that had just been through murders for, right. The last thing you want is the month that's given.
Jason Buff 32:59
And it's bad when you're the worst thing.
Daniel Stamm 33:01
And it was it was devastating. And then I phoned my team, my editor and say, We got to recut this movie, we got to change the ending. People were devastated. And she said, Well, isn't that what we were going for? Which is true, it is a tragedy. So you kind of want to evoke these emotions. But it felt as if we were playing unfairly. And for the first time this whole sentence with there is responsibility and filmmaking, and you have to take responsibility and filmmaking. I understood what that was about. I'd never understood that whenever people were talking about, oh, Oliver Stone with Natural Born Killers got people to kill other people. I always thought, well, that's a powerful movie, if you can achieve that, you know, obviously the movie work. It's a tragedy for the people that died. But is it really up to the to the filmmaker to prevent that from happening. And after seeing that in action in Kosovo, it just wasn't fun. It wasn't a rewarding feeling of oh, look, what we were able to do. We just never thought about the why, you know, we worked so hard on trying to to affect an audience emotionally, which you always do when you make a movie that I never stopped to think well, why are we doing this to them, we just try to get them to feel bad, but we don't give them anything in exchange. And that was kind of an epiphany to me. And then we did recut the movie, screened at South by Southwest and then screened at AFI Fest and won the Audience Award, which I think we wouldn't have if we hadn't recut the movie, but it definitely was counterintuitive. To say our movie is the sounds very arrogant again, but our movie is too powerful for the audience to consume. We have to water it down. But that's kind of exactly what we do. And I think it was the right decision.
Jason Buff 34:43
That's really interesting. You know, can you talk about when you say give them anything in exchange and you know that you went back and re cut it? What did you recut and what what was the what was really the difference between the version they saw in Kosovo and the one that was at AFI
Daniel Stamm 34:59
The big diff Once was the ending, we had shot two endings, one which was very straight up just to spoil it all spoil the whole movie in the end, that's the suicidal guy. And Gilbert, the filmmaker, they're going into garage together, and Matt is going to shoot himself and Gilbert has gone on film that. And one ending was we stay outside and we hear the shot. And then there's silence for a minute. And when Gilbert comes out, and we see the inkling of Matt on the floor, and he has shot himself in the head, and you can see on Gilbert's face that what he just saw was so nightmarish that you'll never, never be able to forget that. And he kind of is paying the price for for his ambition to become a great filmmaker. Whenever there was one ending, which we showed in Kosovo, which played it very straight. You know, there's this guy who is announcing his kind of kill himself, and then he killed himself, you know, the entire time what's going to happen, and you always kind of hope some miracle will happen. But guess what, the miracle doesn't happen. And that's it. And that was just devastating people. The other ending that we had shot was that we stay outside of the garage, we hear the shot. And then there's a pause, and then we hear a second shot. And it takes us a moment to understand what was going on. And we someone runs to open the garage, and both of them are on the floor. And it turns out that net has shot Gilbert before he shot himself because of a whole subplot with a sound girl who was Gilbert's ex girlfriend. And net was in love with her and Gilbert, who wanted Matt to kill himself took the girl away from him to not give him a reason to live in that kind of stuff. So he shot Gilbert, which was the much more Hollywood twist, ending and played much less straight and much less real. And it felt like that's exactly what people need it, they needed something that was telling time for tipping it off and say it's alright, this is a movie, here's a heightened reality, and also to punish Gilbert in a more conventional way for manipulating this guy that we've fallen in love with, into suicide. And now he paid the price by killing him by himself by being killed. So that kind of seemed to work. I think that was the main, the main thing. And I think in general, it's always, like you want to take something away from a story. I think that's the basis of storytelling that kind of communicate and insight into the world and into the human experience through a story and you put your audience through different emotions and make them invested in the thing. But it's all with the with the implied promise that they will get something out of watching this for two hours, that no one else knows they will be let into a secret, you know, that they can take away into their life with and we didn't really supply that secret. I had a few I was basically saying, Here's a movie that will make you miserable and teach you nothing. And that's responded, that was a problem at the time. Yeah,
Jason Buff 37:48
I think that's really, you know, interesting, because with all the like horror movies, the whole concept of a horror movie, is that you're going to watch something that's horrible, you know, that's something that's terrible. But there has to be some element of it, that attracts people to it that makes people want to experience that, you know, and gives them that like experience. One of the interesting things you said when you were working on The Last Exorcism, and I want to go into that in just a second is just that the documentary format doesn't give the audience a place to hide. And I thought that was really, you know, interesting, it's like you have more power doing that.
Daniel Stamm 38:26
Because you have to first person narrative, people are looking right into camera, and the cinematographer is a character in the film, he's not kind of this invisible floating camera. But there is a direct proxy for you as an audience member in the movie. And if there is danger coming towards the camera, it's coming towards you. And it's, you're kind of aware that there's danger coming from 360 degrees with a narrative, conventional movie, you can always kind of count on them, showing you what you need to see. Like, if there's something that's important for you, as the audience member to see and not to miss, they will make sure that they cut to that close up or that insert or that whatever. And that kind of gives you a certain safety because you are being taken by the hand and guided through the story by someone who already knows the path of the story. But with a fake documentary. It's all about the stuff that you miss, and that you don't see. So that you keep the audience on their toes about you know what we might be showing you this side of the room right now. But that doesn't mean something can jump out behind you at any moment. Because you know what, we don't really know what's going to happen. And this we don't really know what's going to happen, I think is really a very important component in effect documentary, especially in horror.
Jason Buff 39:40
Right! And you see that a lot with me and you know, Spielberg use that and Saving Private Ryan, the idea of, you know, and you see that in a lot of films that you'll have a scene that's all handheld and shot like a documentary, even though it's in a traditional narrative film, right.
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Jason Buff 40:05
You know, just to give people that feeling of uneasiness, and that at any minute, something could kind of, you know, affect your point of view or whatever. Yeah,
Daniel Stamm 40:13
I think the other component is that moving, moving images, just stimulate the viewer and kind of put it in energy into the thing that the brain has to process. So you are, there's just more happening on a very simple, simple way. And if you have a locked off shot from a tripod, whatever is moving is just the object in the frame. But 90% of what you're seeing on screen doesn't move. Whereas as soon as you go handheld, that means every single piece of grain will have been in film world, but now pixel moves it in at any split second. So I think there is something that is just kind of overwhelming to the brain. And that really kind of pumps up the adrenaline just by the virtue of going handheld. And the other thing that I found out about handheld that was amazing to me, and I still don't have an explanation for it was when I was watching large countries, the idiots he has, everything is handheld, and the performances are amazing. And then for some reason, there's some scene in the woods that is like a minute long, where he's suddenly aesthetic on a tripod. And suddenly, the performances suck. And I realized that handheld for some reason, really helps out your performances, like everything gets better. If you go handheld, maybe that is because the audience can't focus on every single twitch in the face at any moment. Like if the if there is a stale performance, probably if you have Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, and John Malkovich, you're fine, you probably don't have to go handheld. But if you if you have performances that are on the on the stellar side, going handheld suddenly gives the whole thing of vital effect that you otherwise wouldn't get. I don't know what it is. But I swear as soon as you try it out, you'll see that your performances get much better and
Jason Buff 42:10
Yeah, definitely. I think that, you know, it's also the concept that you're capturing something that's really happening in the cameras, not like the cameras not ahead of the action, right, you know, the cameras following the action and seeing things, you know, all of a sudden, and you see this a lot in The Last Exorcism that you know, as they're moving through a scene. It's like the camera is like, it'll go over and capture something and you're like, oh, did I just see that? Or what was that? You know what I mean? It's like, it adds a lot more dynamic feel to it.
Daniel Stamm 42:40
That's really hard to simulate for the cinematographer. If you're on take 20 And you've worked for him to kind of pretend he is very surprised by what just came into frame is kind of an art form in itself.
Jason Buff 42:53
Okay, well, why don't we jump into that? Can we talk for a little bit about how the Last Exorcism started, how you got involved meeting with Eli Roth, all of that story.
Daniel Stamm 43:06
So I have made Last Exorcism and Last Exorcism head one the audience, necessary death and the Audience Award, which changes everything that will be my next piece of advice for the starting filmmaker, make that feature, and then try to get it into festivals, because Hollywood, like very few people in Hollywood, I think, have, taste and rely on their own. It's true. It's really crazy. Like I get, I get scripts, from studios that are so bad, that you've got like, who not only who wrote this, but which executive read it and said, That's a good idea. Let's make this movie. And that's 90% of all scripts. And it's I think it's really rare. There's a handful of people in Hollywood that trust their own opinion and what they will, what the other people will rely on is other gatekeepers that at some point, put a stamp of approval on that project and film festivals, big film festivals with a good reputation. Do that like if you screen at Cannes, or at South by Southwest, some Sundance or AFI fest, or LA Film Festival or something bigger, and you screen there, that's already great. If you win an audience award there or a jury award there, suddenly people will take your movie seriously. And they will think the movie is great, even maybe if it isn't, but they don't really do to have their own experience. So suddenly, after the Audience Award, there were a lot of agents and managers that that wanted to meet. And I learned that because always like everyone always wants an agent and thinks their career will really hit hit off, hit it off when they have an agent, which is nonsense. And also an agent will never want you like an agent that you have to approach will never want you you have to make something again, that that agent finds desirable and And he wants you. So this whole knocking on people's doors that people are always trying is not going to work. But you have to kind of get the approval of the stamp of approval from some festival if possible, and then they will knock on your doors. Anyway. So we did the rounds with the agents, and found an agent. And we were looking at different scripts and couldn't find anything. And then I had the feeling I had done unnecessary death. And I had this feeling I really want Jacob Foreman to see this movie check. A foreman was a screenwriter in my year, who wrote all the boys love Mandy Lane was a really good guy. But we never had never had that much to do with each other at AFI. And I don't know where this feeling came from, that I wanted him to see the movie, but it was just a really strong feeling. So I emailed him and said, I made this movie. Can I send it to you? And she said, Sure, send it to me. I sent it to him. I don't think he liked it much, because he never commented on it. But what happened like a week or two later, was that he was writing a screenplay for a production company called Strike entertainment. And they had had two directors Hochberg CO and Andrew Gerlinde. On this movie called cotton, which was an exorcism will be a fake documentary exorcism movie. And they're the two directors left the project because they had another project with Will Will Ferrell at the same time called the virginity hit. And they had to decide which one to make. And they were under obligation with Sony to make the virginity it's a suddenly, this project didn't have directors, and Jacob, in during a lunch break or something overheard two producers say, man, we lost our directors, where are we going to find someone who can do a fake documentary horror Jacob had in his bag, you know, which I don't believe in fate, or the supernatural or anything like that. But I have no explanation for how that okay. And he gave them the movie. And they watched it. And it obviously wasn't a horror movie, but it was exactly the format that they wanted. And so they called me the next day and sent me the script, and wanted to meet. And the script was, I think I can say it now all these years later, was horrendous. And it was also wasn't written towards a fake documentary, because in a fake documentary, if you really want to sell it as real, then you can have something spectacular happen in every single scene, because the audience will figure out after two scenes, that this is obviously not a real documentary, like in a real documentary, if you catch one amazing moment on camera, people structure a whole documentary around that, you know, so this script kind of had some action sequence with people flying through the air and every scene and just didn't work. And I went and I had no interest in making the movie. And I went into the, into the meeting, if I had wanted to make the movie, I think I would have been really, really nervous. But because I basically just came there to say, your script sucks, I'm not going to do it. I wasn't nervous at all. So I told them that very bluntly, no diplomacy involved. And I learned then that there's nothing sexier to Hollywood executives than you not wanting to do their project. Because they always They're not stupid. They know that the script that they have out there is not brilliant and needs work, as they always call it a call, it needs a Polish. But Polish always needs a complete rewrite. And they kind of know that and then they invite all these directors like 1020 directors to come in. And 19 of those directors say this is brilliant, I want to do this. I'm the right guy for this. And there is one guy who comes in and says the script doesn't work. I don't want to do it. Then suddenly they want the one guy that didn't want to do it I had that, that people have for other projects that they called and said, we've shown it to 10 directors, nine of them love it. You didn't want to do it, could you come in for a second meeting, go with one of the people that want to do it. But they want to hear that you have ideas how to make it better and all that. And I basically came out of that meeting with them saying you can do with the script, whatever you want. You can hire your own writer, you can completely rewrite it. We'll give you one and a half million dollars, do it. And that was exactly what I needed to hear. Because then I brought a writer on board that I loved. That's a genius who completely rewrote the movie within four days or something. And then, yeah, Eli was attached. I didn't talk to him in the beginning. I think couple of weeks later, we had a call scheduled and now I was nervous because I suddenly was talking to like a horror legend Eli Roth, I think he was on the Inglorious Basterds set in his trailer and had just seen unnecessary death and was super nice and super complimentary and stuff. And then we went to make the movie and they let me bring on my cinematographer, my editor. And there was a little bit of a struggle. What I mentioned before that they because they've never made a fake documentary. They didn't couldn't quite wrap their head around the the improv thing. Like they said we need to see casting tapes.
Alex Ferrari 50:00
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Daniel Stamm 50:09
If we can only judge casting tapes, auditions, if we see actors that are doing the same scripted scene, and then we can compare the quality and I said, Well, that's completely useless. Because even if it's a great scene and written, it's not going to help you in an improv, they said, we have to do it anyway. So I always had to make the actors read the scene. And before I knew it wasn't gonna make a difference. But for the producers, it was important. And then we went off to Louisiana to New Orleans to shoot the movie. And the great thing was that this company strike entertainment had made all these 100 million dollar movies with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford and whatever, whatever. And they had never made a movie under $80 million. So they had no idea what to do with our little $1.5 million movie. So they didn't take it seriously. They mentored when they said, do whatever you want, they meant that they completely stayed out of it. So the conditions were very close to what we had unnecessary death with a couple of more people, obviously, and the unions required us to have all these people. But there was a whole camera team that we never needed, that was just coming in eating doughnuts, and going. In the end, I wanted that because I wanted to recreate that intimacy. That was the big strength of working in that format that you don't have 50 people staring at the actors and that you don't, for example, have to use the slate because it turned out to me that clapping the slate and going I've seen 14 Go action basically communicates to the actors now create artifacts, now try to someone you are not, you know. So I always try to avoid slating or we would slate in the other room quietly, secretly, and then cut over with a camera. I didn't want them to act, I basically wanted them to be themselves and put ourselves into the situation. And we never showed the script to the actors with Last Exorcism, we had a script all written out, which we needed for the investors and for the production company, and all that kind of stuff. But it was like my best hidden secret was this script. I knew if I ever showed that to the actors, it will be impossible to get that out of their heads. Again, it makes them created from scratch, and come up with all these fresh moments, because they would just try to reproduce the script. And it's amazing. If you watch the movie, and read the script, how close the two are, I think no one would believe me, if I if someone who had read the script and seen the movie wouldn't have never believed that the actors never saw the script. But I think it's the same technique. You tell them what motivation they go into the scene with, which is actually very similar to what you do with a movie that has a script, you know, you talk to the actors about where they're coming from, and where they want to go. And then let them go and kind of see how that goes. And that's how we did last exorcism. And then we came back from this from this experience that was just really great. And started editing. And suddenly everyone was very involved, suddenly had a lot of producers in the editing room that helped. And the ending, like if you've seen last exorcism, the thing that was great about the original script was the ending. And that was like the one thing that I was excited about, which was, This only makes sense if you've seen Last Exorcism. But the original ending was they go into the forest, they see a shadow, they see they hear the noises of the demon, and they run and they don't get killed. And they they reappear a week later and cotton. Our our excesses now has a full church with hundreds of people. And he's a celebrity and he gets his own TV show. And he's, you know, he's a star because he has, he has gotten a demon or as close as possible on video. And he's basically marketing that. And what was so smart about it, is that the whole movie, he tells us what a successful evangelical preacher needs, he needs a hook, you know, which is the demon on the on video. And everything cotton does in his little frog is based on sound, and it's based on lighting and all that kind of stuff. And basically, in the end, it's just the huge version of that. So I wanted the audience to leave the movie as split as they had come in with a believer saying no, I saw a demon. And with this, the cynics, the atheists saying Oh, it's just, it's basically a big PR video. And this exorcist used us and showed us the stuff for financial gain. And I thought that was the smartest thing that you come out of a movie and you don't even know if you just saw a horror movie. Or if you just saw a drama about a preacher that has a great marketing idea. You know, that was our most expensive scene because it needed green screen for the demon and it needed all these extras and the location of the church and all that stuff. And then we cut it together. And it didn't work like I showed it to 10 friends And out of those 10 Friends, one, one friend thought it was the greatest ending he'd ever seen. And nine friends were completely confused, and said, We don't know what just happened. And I learned that you can, you can ask a question and not answer it in a movie. But it has to be clear that you're asking the question. And with our ending, it wasn't even clear that we wanted the audience to wonder about whether this was fake or not. They, they didn't even know what the question was. And we couldn't, we couldn't make it work. And then, of course, I had had my shot. And now it was opened up to the group. So every producer, every cousin of a producer, or the, you know, the cleaning lady of a producer suddenly had ideas about the ending. And then we ended up with one that I don't think does justice to the rest of the movie. But it was the best out of the bunch. And to this day, I don't have a better idea. And I live lie awake at night for having screwed up the ending, especially because there was a thing to go in with. But I guess you never get that second chance. It will always be like that.
Jason Buff 56:04
Well, it's really difficult to especially when you're doing a movie like that, I don't know, there's very few movies that have like completely satisfying ending when it comes to like kind of putting together a mystery what's going on, they eventually figure it out. And then the ending is never quite like the build is a lot more important. You know, that's what keeps you going through it.
Daniel Stamm 56:24
It's so weird, though, I totally agree. But you work towards that any most of the time you have that ending before you have anything else, and then you built the entire movie, to move towards that ending, like in screenwriting, you know that as a screenwriter, you need to know where you're going. So the ending is, you know, the big payoff that you are working towards and can't wait to show to the audience. And then the outcome for some reasons exactly what you're describing that it's always weaker than it needs to be because there's all this expectation on it after the two hour build up. And then to pay that office really hard. You almost need like finishers head in the box in seven or eight Fight Club, he's good with the endurance that kind of pull the rug right under, but it's rare. It's true. Right.
Jason Buff 57:07
Now, um, I got so into listening to you. I was thinking about my next question. How did you in terms of finding like Ashley Bell in the actors? How was that process?
Daniel Stamm 57:18
Well, that was it was equally hard, because our casting director had no idea how to do the improv thing, and didn't believe in it and didn't really take the project that seriously, which was kind of hard to overcome. And she thought I was a complete delight and didn't know what I was doing when she didn't tell me to my face. But there was a friend, an actor who was a friend of mine, which she didn't know. And he was auditioning, and she was pitching to him about me not knowing what I wanted, which is exactly to I didn't know what I want. But that was the point. It was the point of keep it open, keep it free and whatever. Yeah, which I just did improv with the actors, which I still do now with projects that have a script, even if I know they're only going to, to do scripted lines, because it very quickly tells you something about the energy and the IQ of the actor, if they have to come up with their own moments, you know. And it's something I did an internship with a casting director called Melly Finn, who cast all of Cameron. Oh, sure, of course, yeah, Titanic, and Terminator, and all that stuff. And she said, always cast actors not just for how they're acting, but for who they really are. Because when it gets to it, and they are tired, and you don't have time, and you have to rely on them to get you out of that situation, they will always revert to who they really are at their core, which is completely true. But that also means you have to invest in that during the audition. So what I did is I sat in the waiting room, and I pretended to be an actor waiting to go in. And I was just chatting up the actors that were. And it's really interesting moment, because it's stressful for an actor, they are nervous, they're trying to prepare and there's a guy next to them that won't shut up and tries to involve them in some conversation. And how they react to that tells you a lot about who they are, you know, as soon as they know that you are the director, they will be on their best behavior. And you don't really ever have the chance to get to know them for real until you start shooting. So it was important to me to kind of have that moment. And with Ashley, especially like she was so sweet and so supportive. And I think she thought that I was nervous. So she was trying to calm me down because she and it was great. And then she was only the second girl that we saw for that role and she just killed it. Like it was so scary to be in the room with her because we improvise the exorcism.
Alex Ferrari 59:45
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Daniel Stamm 59:54
What kind of, I think in an audition, so you always try to see Hopefully your script has a certain kind of character character development and show at least two sides to a character. One is the starting point and one is the end point. So I think it's smart in auditions to kind of have at least two scenes, one scene each that showcases what you're looking for. And if there is no scene in the script that does that, I think it's worth it to just write a script writer, write a scene for the audition that will never show up in the movie, but just very clearly focuses to see that one side from the actor, because you need to see the range. And then the other thing that I always do is like, no matter how great the first take is in the audition, because sometimes people come in and they just nail it, you always want to do a second take and change something. And that can be completely random, again, has nothing to do with the character or the script. Like sometimes I say, now do it as a five year old child. Now do it as if you are on the electric chair. Now two completely made up stuff. But it tells you something super important. And that is how well can an actor adjust to suggestions to direction, you know, and write some because I learned that the hard way during during my thesis film that someone came in and was just amazing. And then on set, she just couldn't get there. And it turns out that the night before the audition, her boyfriend had split up with her. And she was just so miserable. And the part was about a miserable drug edit. And she was tired, and she just wasn't acting, she was just so great, because that really happened to her. And then on set, she couldn't reproduce that. So since then, I've always tried to make sure that I can only really judge how great an actor is. If you ask them to do different things with the same material with the same lines and see if that's if that's what you're going for. Yeah, so that's how we found Ashley. And then the Exorcist was much harder. We saw hundreds of people. And we asked them to make up a sermon on the spot. And Patrick Fabian came in and he gave this eight minute long, perfect, immaculate service. And was preaching for eight minutes. And he talked so fast that I couldn't follow it. You know, I couldn't. It was actually saying but there was this energy that he had that just made me want to kind of go up, stand up and cheer. And that's where this endless exorcism, the banana bread scene comes from. That was great. I went to you. So basically the The Exorcist that the exorcist says I can tell them anything. I could preach about a banana bread recipe. And they would say hallelujah, and they wouldn't notice. And they make a bet. And he does. That came from the audition scene. Because Patrick Fabian, our exorcist did exactly that. Like he could have talked about anything. And the energy still would have kind of Pinterest made it to the audience the way it was. Right?
Jason Buff 1:02:45
Was it always part of the story that he was, you know, kind of faking it? And he was like, just kind of pulling something it did, because I read something about how it was influenced by that documentary, or Joe Marjo. Yeah. And I just recently watched that, and it's like, it's amazing how much power comes from watching him in that documentary. And there's kind of a similar feel, right? That?
Daniel Stamm 1:03:09
Yeah, I think that that's what I mean, that was the script that I originally got. And I think that was the core idea to the original script, was to watch someone who is not a convinced believer in Exorcist, but doesn't even believe in God. And it's just kind of a fraud. But at the same time, and that's always, I think, important and characters that there is a but in there, he is a criminal, and he's playing with people's tragedies. But he is so charming, that you can't hold it against him. And he's also his argument is undoing this, if they believe in it, and it helps them then great. It doesn't have to be real kind of a thing. So I think this this duality between the rockness and the crime criminal part of him. And the charm is something that really made that character and that's what we were looking for in in the actor too. And it's funny to see Patrick in the different roles, because he's been in so many TV roles. And he's always cast for exactly that person for someone. You know, you can completely trust him. He's a bit, a bit too smooth and stuff, but he gets away with it, because he's just very charming. So you build on that.
Jason Buff 1:04:20
Right! Now, it seems like what you're trying to do and do very successfully in the beginning, is, you know, it's very light. There's a lot of really kind of comic moments, but there is a little bit of a dark, kind of like, you know, when they bring out the book when they start talking about real exorcisms, it's almost like the audience should start getting concerned even though he's not concerned. Like, you know what I mean?
Daniel Stamm 1:04:46
It's such a good observation. Yeah, I think humor is like such a good weapon, because you want to, in any movie you want to you want to create identification between the audience and your protagonist and the first act you want them to like him to want him they want, they should want him to achieve what he is trying to achieve, so that you kind of suffer with them and you enjoy stuff with if it goes well. And humor is a really good tool for that, like if someone is funny you immediately like them. So especially in the horror movie where if you know you want to go horrific in the third act, you need to get the audience to care about that character. Otherwise, it's horrific. If it's just some random people getting beheaded, then no one really cares. So I know that it's tricky to do terrifying and funny at the same time. So I try to stay away from that. But I try to be exactly what you're saying light in the beginning and kind of draw the audience in through humor and fall in love with this character. And then we can go horrific later. But that's exactly what you're saying is so great that it would be great if there was kind of what you call dramatic irony that the audience already has an uneasy feeling. And that, you know, the feeling that the character is walking into a trap. And he doesn't know it, but we know it but we like him by now so much that we fear for him. I think that's a great place. If you have the audience there. In the at the beginning of a horror movie, you're golden.
Jason Buff 1:06:13
Right! Well, you see that a lot with like Jaws and things like that. It's like all the characters are kind of unaware of stuff. But the way things are coming together, the audience is kind of like sitting there trying to hit the brakes, right? Like, no, no, no, no, no, come on, let's let's slow down. Don't don't just run in there with the you know, even though he's doing all these, you know, really kind of funny things with the cross and the sounds and, you know, and you see the father and the way he's acting? Is there like a Can you talk a little bit about getting into the second act and think ways to, uh, you know, one of the things that I was doing is I always try to, you know, I'm working on a screenplay, that's not even a screenplay, but just a story that's got the documentary vibe to it. And what I did when I was watching The Last Exorcism was just kind of watched minute by minute what was happening, and things happen so fast. In the beginning, you get so much story, you know, like, what's going on who this character is what's going on? You know, and by the time he's leaving for, I believe it was Georgia, right?
Daniel Stamm 1:07:13
New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jason Buff 1:07:15
No, yeah. Louisiana. Sorry. I should know that. He, like, it's only like, 10 minutes into the movie, you know? Yeah, that's, or something like first,
Daniel Stamm 1:07:25
I mean, you want to keep that that's the problem, you want to keep your first act as short as possible, because people want to get to the meat of the story. But at the same time, you want to create that identification. If you don't have that, and you leave into the second act. Without that in your pocket. You're screwed. But a lot of that, obviously, is editing to it's amazing. Like my editor and I, we love each other. She was like the priest during my wedding and all that. But man, do we scream at each other during editing, and it's 90% is because she wants to cut stuff out to create momentum. And I am trying to save moments and save scenes, because I've worked so hard, achieving those getting that moment on camera. And, and she's just throwing it out. And I take it personally it's as if she's, you know, cutting a leg of my kid or something. But it always no matter how much I scream and kick and whatever, she always turns out to be right. It's all, always we always end up with the fast version. And that is that something I had to learn that is actually a compliment to your filmmaking because it means you've tried to create 200 meaningful moments throughout the movie. And if you are successful at creating those 200 meaningful, clear and emotional moments, then you don't need 200 of them, then 20 of them are probably enough to tell the story, you know, and wanting all those 200 moments in the movie is just coming out of your insecurity as a filmmaker and your your vanity and your pride that you've created these moments. That actually what I should have heard when she said we don't need that moment is trust the other moments that you've created that are in the movie that they are strong enough to carry this moment, you know, it's the same with with screentime like actors are always we shoot all the stuff like it's a good example the sermon with a banana bread that cotton did. We shot that for a day, and the sermon was 45 minutes long. So of course Patrick Fabian watches the movie and goes like oh here Come my at least 20 minutes of and then he's devastated when it's only 45 seconds of that in the movie. But how he should see that is that those 45 seconds communicate everything we need to know about the character because he's so great in that scene. And that's exactly what you're saying we can get so much information on that character that we don't need the 20 minutes we the 45 seconds are completely okay. And it's the same in editing. So I think when you were saying the first act is how fast it probably in the director's cut was 45 minutes long. Long and unbearable.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:02
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Daniel Stamm 1:10:12
My good thing is that I have a very bad memory. And whenever she wants to get something through, she just cuts it out and sees if I notice it or not. And it shows me something in a week, I don't even notice that that stuff is gone. So we always end up with the tightest version. I think that's something for, for every filmmaker with me, it was a long learning process. So if you could start with the knowledge that you almost can't cut something too fast and too tight, because the audience is so quickly bored, that you if you are precious about your stuff, and you want to stick to the script, and even though the editing rhythms suggest something different to you, you're dead in the water if you don't answer that.
Jason Buff 1:10:58
Well, it's always an interesting contrast, because of course, later, once you get into the more frightening scenes, the whole concept of anticipation and that something is going to happen, you know, then it's just like the scenes go on forever, you know, and everybody's just like waiting for something to happen.
Daniel Stamm 1:11:15
Yeah, it's such a careful balance, because the other thing, and that completely contradicts what I just said about cutting in first. But in some editing book, I think it was Walter merge or something, they wrote that the audience doesn't feel speed, the only thing that they feel is acceleration, which is I think so true. So if you start with a very fast first act, and then you have a very fast second act, and then you have a very fast third act, the whole thing will just seem like in one gear, and won't necessarily feel fast. But if you have a second actor is slightly faster than the first and the third actor is slightly faster than second, then they will suddenly say, Wow, that movie is really fast, even though in general, it wasn't, but it accelerated. And that is something that an audience has a feeling for. And of course, the other way around to what you're talking about, if you slow down, it's suddenly unbearable, because we've gotten used to certain speed, and suddenly deliberately, you you, you stretch a moment, you know, that really does something to the audience's psyche, but it's such a such a balancing act. And that's why this whole wisdom of therapy, what what's the saying, there are three movies, one that you write one that you shoot, and one that you edit, and that's the final movie, I think that is really true. And the more you can subscribe to that, and let go of all the preconceived notions that you had during writing, and then even harder of how hard it was to get that crane shot in that scene. And that, you know, that day that actor was in a bad mood, and a still got a great performance. And none of it matters, the only thing that matters is what ends up in the editing room, my editor makes a point out of never coming to set and not getting to know the actors, because she says she doesn't want to be influenced by the reality of it all. Because the audience is not going to know that they the audience is not going to know the location. No, the actors know that whatever. But she just wants to work with what actually materializes on the screen. And I think that's a really, really good approach. Right?
Jason Buff 1:13:11
Another thing I think that's really interesting with the documentary approach is that you can I mean, you can do this with a regular narrative, but the idea that characters are lying, and that you're finding out the truth behind things, it just, it seems a little more realistic when you're seeing like characters, like when you're talking the two characters, or they find out the girl is pregnant. So right, they have their conversation, and then they talk to the dad and the dead saying stuff and you know, you feel like he's lying, or this person is saying something, and you're trying to get to the truth with that. Yeah. One thing that's always intriguing to me is the whole idea that once you get into the second act, you know, or even the second part of the second act, that the energy kind of dies in a lot of stories. And that's where most movies kind of start to, you know, you start to like kind of wander around the theater. Do you have any any advice on that, or anything that you can talk about in terms of the way you tell a story, you know, like structure it together so that it doesn't fall apart during that area?
Daniel Stamm 1:14:13
It's hard, obviously, because the second I mean, one thing that happened we learned the Syd field three act structure originally. And I think what people always were bumping up against was the second act is too low or too too long. And it kind of, there's a there's a drop in the middle, and then Syd field very smartly invented the midpoint, which is like you have a turning point from the first actor, the secondary of the turning point from the secondary to the third. And now he basically introduced another turning point, which he called the midpoint, where everything shifts in the story. I think that's a big help. And then you just have to you have to keep having ideas. I always have the problem with scripts that I'm getting that I have the feeling. Writers are inventing and having ideas into the second act. If unlucky until the end of the second act, and then it's Oh, then there's violence. And then there is people throwing each other from buildings and shooting and car chases. And it's almost as if they start, stop writing and just say, and then third act generic third act. And I'm always saying, because it's hard to tell your agents what you're looking for, I'm always saying if you can find me a third act that is not based on physical violence on generic physical, and it's hard, especially in horror movies, and slasher movies, because it's always like the big confrontation in the third act. But if you can find me a script that has a confrontation in the third act that is not based on who is drawing his knife first, and steadying the other person first, then I want to read that, and that has to do with with the other thing we were talking about earlier that if you want to give the audience something to take away, and some kind of little bit of an have a piece of knowledge that they didn't have coming in, like how is that going to work? What are they going to learn out of someone drawing, pulling up their knife sooner than the other person, that's not really something you know, the story doesn't resolve in a way that is teaching the audience something about life other than always be armed and always draw your weapon. So that's, that's the main thing I'm looking for. And if the feeling if there is a strong third act, like some something that still has ideas, then the chance that the second act that's leading up to that is strong and not generic, and doesn't slump is much bigger than if the second act is leading towards a generic third act. But it's, it's tough, you really kind of have to, you can't ever be lazy. And you can ever go to like the common places and have things play out. Especially if you're working with a three act structure, because the audience is so savvy, that you, you really kind of have to continue giving them something. So don't start shooting before your script does. What really helps, is telling your script to someone. Like I did that with last excesses without knowing that, like every actor that came in, in the beginning, because they hadn't read the script, I told them the entire story of the script. And watching them by after you've said it so many times, it's kind of an automatic thing, you don't even think about it anymore. So you can have the, the the mental resource to really watch the listener react, and you can tell exactly where they are engaged, and where you are losing them, like I always lost them. At the end, I should have known that. There was always there was always a slump in the third act, that looking back at it now that I should have reacted to we should have rewritten it. But it's really like you have to tough, you have to be tough with yourself in that moment. And it hurts because you don't want to see you don't want to acknowledge that you're losing, you don't want to have to rethink something. But if you don't do it there, then the problem is just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. So I guess you have to keep inventing the story until you can tell it in a way that keeps the reader engaged the entire time. And you can tell by like you hear a lot of people telling you their story, like there's so there is a student that falls in love with this girl. And in the end, it turns out, she was a guy all along. And you kind of go like, Well, okay, you told me the first act, you told me the third act, what's the second act, and you can kind of tell that the second act is gonna slump because in the in the three sentence of the elevator pitch version, it doesn't even come into play, you know. So I guess you have to keep working on your overall story until you can tell it in a way where you don't lose the audience ever. And then I think you know that you have a second act that will hold up.
Jason Buff 1:18:43
Do you when you're writing? Do you try to write lots of notes and get everything out? And I mean, do a lot of the work basically have the whole story there before you actually begin the screenwriting process?
Daniel Stamm 1:18:57
I'd be snobbish to talk about because I haven't written the screenplay by myself since film school years ago. I mean, they were always talking. I think that's very true about the inner critic that gets in the way. And we had that very strongly. We had great screenwriting teacher, and she taught us all the techniques. And the result was that we were a class of great script doctors, we always knew what was wrong with stuff. But none of us ever wrote anything again, because what we wrote would never hold up to our expectation. Yeah. So to get this critic out of the way, the only technique that I've ever heard about that does that is to have a notepad for the critic, and just write everything down. You know, give him give him the space to be heard, so that he doesn't get in the way anymore, but then attend to those notes later. Don't let them get into the way of the initial brainstorming flow when you're writing something that really kind of works. And yeah, I do that religiously.
Alex Ferrari 1:19:56
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Daniel Stamm 1:20:06
I don't start writing anything before I don't have an exact structure. I have the turning points. I'm very much going by Christopher Campbell's hero's journey, which I think is an amazing book. Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, which then Christopher Vogler wrote into a book called The writer's journey, which, which is absolutely, I think, absolute genius. And of course, there's a lot of controversy is it too formulaic as to whatever, whatever. But just to be aware of those principles of those archetypes, I think helps you usually in structuring it. And that's what you're talking about, about the slump and the second act that also helps you to avoid.
Jason Buff 1:20:46
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of Vogler is one of my favorite books. And you know, one of the things that it helps me with is, when I'm writing when I'm in the middle of a story, you know, if you go back, I never read, I never went through the process of reading all those books before I started writing. You know, it was funny, because I was already writing and then I was like, Oh, well, this looks like an interesting book. And I would read that or you know, even McKee story or, you know, save the cat, all these other books that are, you know, kind of the canon of screenwriting books, and it's not that you learn screenwriting from them, but you can it kind of jumpstart your, your thought process of, okay, you know, if you're, if you're listening to Vogler, he's got all these different archetypes, you know, all these different characters that have played a role traditionally in stories. And you can say, Oh, well, this character is kind of the gatekeeper or whatever, you know, and it just kind of, it helps you jumpstart that kind of like creative process. So
Daniel Stamm 1:21:38
I totally agree. I think it's about getting you to ask the right questions. And that's, that's where the formulaic thing I don't care that it's formulaic. Because I don't have to have everything come into play if I don't want it, but it can't hurt to ask yourself the question, do I need that in that turning point here? If the answer is no, then fine. But at least you didn't miss asking yourself the question. And I by now, I've even put together like a questionnaire with 36 question. Questions then asking myself for every single so much energy goes into remembering the questions that if I have that written down once, it's different for every story, obviously the answer, but the questions are always like, what are you? What are you trying to make the audience feel? How is what is lighting, communicating? What is bundled on my bum? All these? What's the subtext? What's the obstacle? What's the objective? There's always stuff? What are the stakes, there's always stuff that will contribute tension to a scene. And it really helps me to not have to start from scratch every single time and then go like, Oh, yeah, right, the obstacles. But I have one questionnaire that clearly says, What are the obstacles? And then it gets me to think about it. And that's basically what all of these screenwriting techniques do for me to get you to ask the right questions. So that's huge.
Jason Buff 1:22:55
You actually have that document?
Daniel Stamm 1:22:57
I do. Yeah, I can, you can post it, I can email it to you.
Jason Buff 1:22:59
Oh, yeah. That would know, I would absolutely love to just so that it's, you know, that's, that's really helpful. Because whenever you're, you know, you know, I haven't directed a feature, but I mean, that the idea of, you know, having something to make sure you always have to, like, kind of get your head in the game and be like, okay, am I sure that all these things are happening, because you don't want to go back later and be like, this could have been much better if I just accepted remember that they maybe they're fighting a little in this scene, or maybe there's like, you know, there can be more tension with this or that Right, right. Okay, so I wanted to I want to make sure I'm not missing anything about The Last Exorcism. One of my I really, it's like one of my favorite horror films of all time. Wow.
Daniel Stamm 1:23:42
Thank you so much. I don't hear that a lot. Because a lot of the real horror audience hated the movie with a pet really? See, the thing that you always have to take into consideration is that we are rarely seeing a movie called right. We are always going in we've seen a trailer. We know that and that and that about it. And that's actually an interesting story. When I like when Lionsgate bought it. They were counting something on their fingers. And I was like, what are they counting and turn out? They're counting while they're watching the movie. They're counting trailer moments. And when when. So when they were deciding whether to buy the movie or not, they wanted to make sure that there are seven trailer movies, their trailer moments in the movie that they can cut a trailer from. And once they reach that, they were like, Okay, we're gonna buy the movie. So that is something that I Now keeping in mind when I'm writing or thinking of a story. Because if you have six trailer moments that you are fine with getting away in the trailer, but one philosophy one is a nature revelation question, you know of a character that turns out to be the bad guy or if you know something, then the marketing department won't care. They will cut it into the trailer and you can argue all you want you have no power over that anymore. They will give away your best kept Secret. And with Last Exorcism, it was kind of similar in that the whole movie is basically based on the question, is this girl crazy? Or is she possessed? And you only get the answer at the very last minute in the movie, you're waiting for that for 90 minutes. But what Lionsgate did to create a great trailer was they took a shot of the girl crawling away from the camera, they played it backwards. So now she's crawling towards the camera, then they flopped it. So now it's upside down, they put a silhouette in there, it looks like she's in the, in the light of flashlight. And now it looks like she's crawling towards camera on the ceiling. Which is a great shot, you know, complaining afterwards, like where's that great shot in the movie. But it wasn't the movie, it was just the backwards and on the floor. But it also gives away after 18 seconds in the trailer, that the that the girl is possessed because otherwise she couldn't climb on the on the ceiling. And we were so careful not to have her do anything in the movie that a crazy girl couldn't do. Like in our movie. She didn't levitate, she didn't spin her head. She didn't, you know, whatever, whatever. Because we needed to keep that question alive. But of course I should have. If I had known that Lionsgate is going to put the answer into the trailer, I would have structured that different because now we have an audience that had gone to see the movie because of the trailer, but was always 90 minutes ahead of the movie. So it must have been a really boring experience for them to watch the movie because the main spine of it just completely fell apart. So I don't I don't get a lot of people that like most of the people that really love The Last Exorcism are not horror people, necessarily. They kind of like I get that a lot where it's like normally I don't like horror, but I really love The Last Exorcism. Yeah, rarely do I get I love horror and I loved elastics
Jason Buff 1:26:53
That's, that's really surprising, because, you know, I think it's one of the most effective horror movies that I've seen, you know, and I watch a lot of movies. And I really have gotten to the point now with Netflix, where I'll put something on and I'll give it about five minutes, you know, and if it doesn't pull me in, because there's so many bad horror movies now. It's just like now that the the digital revolution and everybody's got cameras, and I mean, it seems like everybody shooting horror movies, but there's a lot of people that really shouldn't be making them you know,
Daniel Stamm 1:27:26
But that's it tells you a lot about because we were talking about the fast first act. You know, if you give the movie five minutes that used to be like the title sequence wasn't even over after five minutes. And now, now there's so it's so easy to kind of click the next movie, that as a filmmaker, you just have to be aware of that and give the audience something like I was I was when I was on the jury in Kosovo, there was all these short films, I had to watch eight hours of short films. And there was this beautiful movie about two monks in the snow. Yeah. And I fell asleep immediately. I was like, if you don't start with an explosion, or, or something crazy, right? That wakes me up and goes like, watch this, you know, then you're kind of screwed for sure. I think with the with the horror, I think the next successful horror filmmaker is the one that can figure out the next step after the fake documentary. Because I love fake documentary. I think there's real strength in the format. But I think that people are tired of the conceit and for gimmick, and there is a certain cheapness that comes with it, you know, and people, I think, one for next thing. And I think if we ever it is can take the strengths of that movie, but roll it out of that style, but roll it into a conventional movie, then you'd really have something like it's not a horror movie, but blue Valentine's that the Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams Oh, yeah. They I think we're very close to that, where they, you can tell that the performances are so fresh that I bet anything that they are not following any script of it. They're improvising the whole thing. And yet, it's not the fake documentary conceit. It's not like, Oh, here's a documentary crew. Here's a filmmaker, Bob. And that's kind of, I think, the beginning of an approach where someone takes the strengths of both mediums and puts them together. And in terms of a look, it's so bizarre because it used to be that that film was so slow that you had to artificially light it right now, video cameras and film are so fast that you really wouldn't have to light anything. We've just become so accustomed to the artificial artificially lit look, that when it's not artificially lit, it kind of stands out, but maybe it's time to get back to that and to say we don't have just because we don't realize something and we want to shoot available light. That doesn't mean that we suddenly need to have the documentary perfect documentary format.
Alex Ferrari 1:29:58
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Daniel Stamm 1:30:07
We can also do that in a conventionally narrative movie, right?
Jason Buff 1:30:13
The thing that we're trying to do is all that I'm trying to do is, you know, I put something together that was kind of, you know, similar to, you know, The Last Exorcism, and you know, the documentary format. But I come from a background of documentaries. So I love documentaries by Errol Morris and a lot of these HBO, you know, the true crime things and everything. And so the idea was to say, Okay, can we go? Can we do it have elements of that, you know, handheld camera and going into stuff, but also have more of like, you know, Errol Morris films, all these beautiful scenes that are very cinematic as well, you know, so we're going to kind of see if that works. Because, yeah, I totally agree with you, you know, it's like, you get a couple of hits, you know, The Last Exorcism wreck was also a really good example, I think. And then it's like people, when I would tell them about what I was doing the first thing out of their mouth would be like, Oh, it's found footage. I'm like, No, it's not really there. Like, you know, we're done with that. They won't even let you in the door anymore. So it's like, okay, well, let me let me go back to my, to the drawing board. Forget it.
Daniel Stamm 1:31:19
Maybe that next filmmaker will. It's not the time is definitely right for the next idea to come along. Just like paranormal acts, or like Blair, witch, and then paranormal activity. You know, they really hit the timing with with the fake documentary. I think if I were to make my first movie right now, I would really try to not make I know that it's tempting to do the fake documentary thing, because it's cheap. But again, exactly what you were saying people already kind of rolled their eyes and are tired of it and won't even give it a chance. So if you can't figure out any alternative, it's probably worth experimenting.
Jason Buff 1:31:56
One other thing I also noticed is the use of music in The Last Exorcism, which is kind of breaking away from the documentary format, because you do incorporate a soundtrack. Right? So I was just curious.
Daniel Stamm 1:32:10
I think I think score is such a powerful tool in horror filmmaking. And you kind of have to obviously find your balance of, of realism in the whole thing. I mean, people were complaining, it's amazing with the internet right now, how many complaints you have to, you know, have to deal with? Of course, people were like, very Oh, this is obviously shot, it's two with two cameras, or it's different scenes, because they cut that together and that together, so then you kind of it's true. So then you kind of have to wait, is that complaint worth or would it have been worth it to not have a shot reverse shot in your movie, just for that, I can never say the word very similar to theirs for that for the authenticity, or not. And you kind of weigh your your tools and what you're going to use now. And with score, it was pretty clear to me that the effect that score has, to me way outweighs the the artifice of having score on the movie. Plus a lot of documentaries these days. If you look at Nick Broomfield stuff are a lot of like modern documentaries very, very heavily use music use score. So that was never a problem. Really funny. Okay.
Jason Buff 1:33:28
So let's move into Is there any there any stories about the life after you made it or you know, is there any insight in terms of I mean, did you go to festivals, or was it just a straight sell to Lionsgate? Yeah, in terms of distribution?
Daniel Stamm 1:33:46
Yeah, I didn't have anything to do with it. It's amazing how much can filmmaker you don't have, once you deliver your cut. There's really nothing you're never been consulted. Again with it, especially here. They did a very smart thing. And Eli is a great salesman. And he went around to different studios and showed the movie to different students at exactly the same time and let them know that other studios are watching it as well, to get a bidding war started. And that's exactly what happened, everyone which was amazing to me. Everyone wanted the movie except for Fox. But the one since wandering universal wanted it Lionsgate and blah, blah. And then in the end, it just came out to who is willing to commit to the most PNA which is what is it prints and advertising. So how many prints and then how many theaters are you going to screen and how much money is going to be invested into advertising and Lionsgate committed to $16 million in PLA, which is kind of amazing for a movie that was made on a budget of $1.5 million. And that was the highest that there wasn't that committed to like almost 3000 screens which is huge. for 2000 1000s of screens. And what then happened, which was kind of amazing. I never knew about this, they showed the trailer in theaters. And they kind of the process is that you buy, basically advertising time in front of another movie, right? So you are completely gambling, whether that movie that your trailers cut in front of is going to be huge success, and millions of people will see it, or it's a complete flop and no one will ever see it. And we had we kind of had both we had the movie and in front of splice, which I thought was a great movie science fiction movie, but also a complete flop that no one ever saw. So there was kind of murky waist. But then we also had the trailer in front of inception, which offers a huge blockbuster. So that helped them. And then what's happening is that the studio is working with a company that is basically sending out spies all over the country into movie theaters. And they have a questionnaire and they all they're doing is that they write down people's reactions to the trailer. And they write down quotes, like they sit behind you because I saw the questionnaires afterwards. And they would write, boy, a teen looks up from his popcorn, and says to his girlfriend, we gotta go see that. And they write down how many people are watching the screen when the trailer is playing, how many people are going to the bathroom, how many people are not interested, how many people are all that kind of stuff. And then they that gets translated into a score. So the studio knows how well a trailer played. And we were playing like our release date was against piranha 3d, which was turned turned out to be an amazing movie Alex, Alessandra neighs. But they had problems with the trailer, because they they didn't have their digital piranhas ready by the time that the trailer was cut. So they put in some kind of weird bed, or the official pureness of the trailer look crap. So our score was a lot higher with our trailer than piranhas score was, which was important because you try to avoid having two movies of the same genre open the same weekend because you're just cannibalizing your audience, right? If you are the only horror movie on a weekend. That means you get 100% of the horror movie audience rather than having to split it with the other one. So it was kind of this, it was always clear that Last Exorcism and pirana would not end up actually opening on the same weekend. But none of the two studios dimension at Lionsgate was budging. It was like this game of chicken. We're not moving, we're not moving. And then when the trailer scores came out, it was clear that the differential was going to move. And that gave Lionsgate such a big boost. In confidence, I guess about the movie, that they suddenly increased the P and F from $16 million to $24 million. Which just means a lot of presents and TV spots, and a lot of presents and posters and a lot of you know that kind of stuff. And I think that really catapulted the thing then to well not go it was like number one on Friday, and it was number one on Saturday. But then the movie takers like overtook it on Sunday by $100,000 or something. But that doesn't really matter, because everyone is looking. Which movie is winning the weekend on Friday? By the time they don't think He's rarely check in again on Monday and correct. Okay, who actually won the week. So we were in everyone's eyes, we have this number one movie. And because it was a French, French, and like the French finance, it was French money. So it was officially a French movie. And in France, you don't go by opening weekend, whether you want the weekend or not, but you go by opening Friday. So to this day, France would say Last Exorcism was the number one movie in the country when that's actually true. But there is a lot of there's a lot of PR, obviously coming from the number one movie in the country because you sell the movie worldwide, but the entire world waits until the US has opened to movie like France wouldn't suddenly go before the US or Czechoslovakia, Australia, China. And they're looking at the numbers and depending on the numbers, they will decide how many screens to show it on how much PNA to do in their own territories. And if you have a blockbuster in the US, that means that suddenly the entire world pumps a lot of money into your movie, and you suddenly have a worldwide whereas if you bomb in the US, you can have the greatest movie in the world. But it would be very rare that foreign territories have the confidence to go for big release even though you're bound in in the US. So that's why we suddenly became this kind of $70 million worldwide thing on a budget of 1.5.
Alex Ferrari 1:39:58
We'll be right back after a word for Mr. sponsor. And now back to the show.
Daniel Stamm 1:40:07
Which sounds great. But obviously, if you pumped 25 $24 million into something, you could market anything. But that was kind of great. And because it's unfortunately true that all Hollywood ever looks at is your last movie and how successful your last movie was. And they go, for some reason, they rate success by box office, which is like such crap, because I had nothing to do with the marketing. You know, the movie could be horrible. And there was great marketing. And it was a great box office success that I then get hired for the next movie because they think I'm a great director, because the movie did well, kind of doesn't make sense. And the other way around, I can have the greatest movie, if you look at Steve Jobs this weekend, which is, you know, an amazing movie with amazing Oscar winning winning talent, but totally flopped at the weekend. If you just judge Danny Boyle by the box office income, then I guess he's a bad filmmaker now or something. So it's it's bizarre, but it kind of opened a lot of doors for me afterwards. And got me to
Jason Buff 1:41:07
Did you go back to Germany? And what kind of get to promote there?
Daniel Stamm 1:41:10
Yeah, I did. But Last Exorcism was a huge flop in Germany. And it wasn't even a big release. It's very weird, like, which was huge. And France, huge. Italy, completely flopped in Spain, completely weird went up against Harry Potter, complete. Germany, my friends hadn't even heard of it. So that was a little bit. Obviously, what
Jason Buff 1:41:32
Did you tell them? You say I'm a big filmmaker. Well, that's why I'm really famous.
Daniel Stamm 1:41:38
Like, yeah, that's why Facebook is so important, so that everyone knows what successful filmmaker. Yeah, and then I made my next movie called 13. Since then, really proud of and there was a lot of fun to make, and that I would argue, is as good as the last exorcism, but it made $9,000 at the box office, it was screening on 22 screens, which again, has nothing to do with the movie, it's just the dimension, it was dimension movie and dimension hasn't had a hit in a long time. So they just don't have the money. Even if they want it, they couldn't pump $24 million into marketing the movie. So if you're working with dimension, you kind of know that you're probably not going to go theatrical until you're unless you're like screen five or scary movie or something. And then suddenly, my career is judged by my last box office, which is $9,000. So all the cachet that you have, after the $70 million movie is kind of out the window. And it's not, you know, it's not your fault, but there's nothing you can do against it, you kind of live and die with your movie, and you're held responsible even for stuff that you had no influence over.
Jason Buff 1:42:47
Well, how was that? Because that was, you know, looking at your career, that was the first straight up narrative, you know, not handheld, right? Film, you know, how was that different? How did you approach because one of the things that I was, you know, I do a lot of research and the actors were talking about how well prepared you are, you know,
Daniel Stamm 1:43:11
That is, that is the questionnaire that we were talking about, like, because I always like I get starstruck and I get nervous like suddenly working with a Ron Perlman wouldn't completely terrify me. And the only or or with rutina, Wesley who I had such a crush on which he was on Trueblood and to suddenly happen in person. And the only thing that protects me from completely hiding in my shell, is that I know that I am going to be more versed in the story than they are right. I've set over the script for years. I know every line I wrote some of those lines, I know why they're in there, there isn't a single question that they can ask me that I don't know the answer to I'm not always gonna give them the answer. Because sometimes you kind of want them to experiment and try and whatever. But the only level of security that I get comes from my knowledge of the script. So I guess that's what they're talking about when they say I'm so prepared. I always want to have one version that I know I could fall back on as this this scene if there is no idea on the day, and I completely draw a blank, which you always do. There's a one or two days in every shoot where you just for some reason, freeze and don't have any answers. And then it's good to be able to fall back on something that you figured out beforehand and kind of go off of that. And yeah, it was important to me to not be pigeonholed into the fake documentary corner, which happens pretty quickly. And because in all meetings that I had people were always asking you the same thing, which is can you shoot conventionally? Now I was always like, well, that's what I studied in film school for years, just because I've made two fake documentary films like they are the exception. It's not that the narrative standard movie is the exception to what I do, but the don't fake documentary. So I kind of had to prove that to people. I think it wasn't Orton, to me that it's not a fake documentary movie. But if you notice, there isn't a single locked off shot in 13. Since it's all handheld it's much, much more stable than Last Exorcism because the character itself is not supposed to have a character. But it's all handheld, which goes back to the whole helping the performances and injecting the energy. Right.
Jason Buff 1:45:23
I mean, it's not what I mean is yeah, it's not like a shaky camera, though. But it is. Right, right. You know? What was the hardest part about changing formats and going into like a purely narrative? And, you know, multicam kind of shot the film with that. We're in general, what's the hardest part of like making a film what's kind of the part that you dread?
Daniel Stamm 1:45:44
I dread them all. I'm terrified of every single step of it. And then every, every time after that step is done. I'm always like, Oh, that was kind of pleasant. I don't know why I was so afraid of this, but your next part is really gonna suck. And then, with every absolutely ever since, when I'm writing, I think writing is the most terrible when I'm casting. I'm like, Oh, my God will never find our people. When I'm blocking. It's, it's it's a stressful thing. If you're not not made for that I don't think character was unnecessarily made more of a writer soul than a director. So I'm very introverted and shy and don't really I'm not a leader person that goes back everyone, look at me, I have the solution, follow me kind of thing. So it sucks. Directing sucks a lot of energy, every minute of it. Just being social and being in exchange with so many people for weeks, it's just I'm dead after a movie. So that's kind of hard. The Perfection isn't it's definitely hard because you have with the standard movie, because you have a very clear idea of what you want it to be. And because it never is, you're always slightly frustrated. And you have to work against that frustration, whereas with a fake documentary is the opposite. It didn't have a very clear idea of what the outcome was gonna be. But you get all these gifts along the way. So you're always in a state of euphoria. So it's very different, like one is a very dark place. But even with Last Exorcism, I am so tense when I'm shooting, that I can't, I can't really enjoy it. If I look back at the past exorcism time, which was the greatest time was great cast, Ashley Bell could not be a lovelier and mortality person, I had my friends around me and my cinematographer, my editor, it could not have been a bit of time. And after it was done, I was like, Why didn't I enjoy that more. And it is because you're always anxious, because they're always expecting the next day to kind of go down in flames somehow, or me at least I do. I'm kind of a defensive pessimist. I'm always expected Doom around the next corner. So that's maybe the hardest, hardest thing with the standard format entity, you have to block and there's so much you don't have to do in effect documentary, you don't tell the actors where they had to stand when they say what line, you know. And that really helped. And, and it saves you a lot of time because you can count on the camera following the movement of the actors, because you don't have to light anything, you can pan and go wherever you want. And it's just much more restrictive, in a in a standard format.
Jason Buff 1:48:17
Now, do you watch films? While you're I mean, the obvious question is, and I know that you've you answered this previously about movies like The Exorcism or movies that are kind of in a similar genre. Do you try to watch movies that are kind of in the same genre that of the one that you're making? Or do you try to
Daniel Stamm 1:48:37
Like with Last Exorcism, it was important because we knew that we were up against a classic, The Exorcist that no one has ever gone up. And if we were trying to top it, we just fail. So the only the only way for us was to stay away from everything that the exorcist did. Like the levitation of crawling down the stairs backwards and for this whole sexual stuff, and go for something completely different and get out of the way of The Exorcist. And because of that, it was important to watch that the exorcist and know what in and out and also watch recent movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, because you also wanted to stay clear out of stuff that they did and think there was, there was a scene that I loved in Last Exorcism. That was so creepy. And then someone gave me a copy of paranormal activity before that came out. Last Texas, and it was exactly the same scene. It's that scene where the girl stands up and just stares at her boyfriend sleeping. And then it's kind of the clock going forward to do it. And you know, she stands there for eight hours. And we had the same without the clock obviously. But we had the same with the sun going up and sun going down of our girl standing there staring at the exorcist who is asleep. And we had to cut that scene out because I know we would have been accused of copying that scene even though I hadn't seen when we shot it, or wrote it.
Alex Ferrari 1:50:00
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Daniel Stamm 1:50:08
Yeah, but yeah, you kind of have to be aware of what the movies are already gonna be compared to my next movie that I'm working on right now as a home invasion movie, slept watched, you know, the strangers and you're next. And all those movies that came out recently or that are classics, the genre, wreck wreck and wreck too. And you know, the magic also, it helps to just pull freeze frames from stuff that you like, or look at you like that doesn't have to be home invasion movies, necessarily. Like I've told a lot of Blade Runner references that obviously, it's couldn't be more different from storyboards. But I really liked the look. And it really helps if you can show people what you like and what you don't like, with my cinematographer, I don't have to do that anymore as much because we've made so many, I mean, many movies together, but we've known each other for 15 years, and my taste hasn't changed and his taste hasn't changed. So we don't have to re educate each other every single time we've worked together. But it definitely helps for everyone else. And for the producers that always ask how are you going to shoot this? Which is such a weird question, how am I gonna shoot it? But I don't even know what they're talking about? I guess they mean, what is the color spectrum? Or are you going to use long lenses? Or not? Are you going to move the camera? And I mean, a lot of directing is pretending that you have answers that you actually don't have. It really is like every every meeting that I have, the truth would be? I have no idea like to every question, how what do you Whom do you want to cast? What do you I have no idea. I'm not there yet. We're still in the story. But you need to give them answers because they want to feel that you're in complete control, which everyone knows is alive. Because everyone is lying. Every director that's auditioning for a movie is coming up with all these, you know, completely made up things that they throw out as soon as they start making a movie, but you first have to walk in with a concept. So it really helps to have a visual presentation together. And to have a starting point for the work you're going to be doing.
Jason Buff 1:52:10
Well, I've got one final question for you. I really appreciate you know all the time that you've given us. If you could go back in time and give yourself advice, give a younger version of yourself advice, what would you tell yourself?
Daniel Stamm 1:52:24
Well, I lucked into it, I would tell myself to fucking hell enjoy it. Because there's nothing wrong with enjoying it, it's not suddenly gonna derail just because you enjoy it. You know, you don't have to live in fear day. But I know exactly that on the next movie, I'll be in fear again. And maybe that's just my MO. And I think it's getting better from movie to movie, it's probably not something that I can just tell my younger self, and he would do. But I lucked out with a lot of things that that did happen with me. But I would tell and I basically gone through that while we were talking, I would tell younger people not to to look for the green light, wait for the green light to write something for the resources that they have to not be perfectionist and wait for the right moment because it'll never come and to not try to impress Hollywood with stuff that is money related because they have all the money in the world. I think those those things, that's actually at least what I'm trying to tell everyone from my old roommates who I watched wait and develop for five years, and the script was never quite ready. And maybe someone optioned it. And maybe they'll get an agent until they walked out of the door with the script and said fuck it, I'm going to shoot this myself and I'm going to shoot it now. I always thought it was never going to happen. And so I think you have to get to that point. And if you look at people, how people that are working in the film industry, how they started, most of them have exactly that story. If it's Oren Peli with paranormal activity, who just shot it for $15,000 in his apartment with two friends, or whomever, like the first efforts are always, almost always independent efforts that they didn't need anyone's approval for. Because no one is going to bet on you until you've proven that you can do it. Short films are not proving it to them anymore. So it has to be a feature. So you do have to make a feature on your own. And then just pray that you get into festivals and get noticed some?
Jason Buff 1:54:21
Yeah, I think that's you know, I did an interview with Brian unit, which Oh, yeah. And that was one of the key things that he said during that interview was that, you know, when they're putting together projects, that they're not one of these gigantic studios, they find different elements and it's like, okay, what can we let's build a story out of what we already have versus you know, what, what I would do when I you know, was just as writer was I would sit down and I would just say, okay, what can I imagine? You know, I put stuff together and there was a part of me that would try to you know, okay, well I don't want to have that spaceship blow you know, I tried to make it small enough. So a production company would look at it but I was never writing it from what do I have right here around One way that we can actually film and just, you know, make something really quick. So I think that's
Daniel Stamm 1:55:03
Why it's really important because you think it'd be easier if you have more freedom. And if you can write whatever you want it, you're not restricted by reality. But I think it's the opposite. Like with me, at least with necessary death, the story came very quickly, because I had all these restrictions, and it didn't look in outer space, and it didn't look to the French Revolution to whatever, but it was very clear, it has to be something that takes place in my kitchen, you know, and that, that suddenly gives you a better framework for stuff. And that, that helps for sure, I wouldn't even because you said you were writing something smaller, so that a production company will like it, I would even urge people to go one step more radical, and write something that they can do without a production company, because even production companies are not, most of it will fall apart, or they're never gonna make it and you're tied up. And that stuff, if you really, you need the persistence and the energy to emerge with something that you've made without the help of a production company, I think, and they're probably a lot of examples that would prove me wrong. But, but I also I don't know anyone who actually relied on a production company and then got a movie made. I just don't I know the people that have gone the other direction and shot their own thing. And then one festivals and my wife was shooting something with our best friend right now they've made a movie that was huge was made for $10,000 or something. There's just the thing is that there's no excuse anymore. Today, I understand that there were times when you needed that kind of money, because the average cost a quarter million dollars and for the the camera shot 35 millimeter film or whatever, and you needed that support. The great thing is today, you need talent on your site, but you don't need the support anymore. And that's really a big chance that we should take a think. Well, Daniel,
Jason Buff 1:56:56
I really appreciate you coming on the show. I mean, this has been an amazing episode. We're at like two hours now.
Daniel Stamm 1:57:02
It was really, really fun. Thanks, Jason.
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Alex Ferrari 0:00
I'd like to welcome to the show Alex Trachtenberg man, how you doing Alec?
Alec Trachtenberg 1:07
Good, how you doing?
Alex Ferrari 1:09
I'm as good as I can be in this crazy mixed up world we live in. getting crazier by the second. I'm excited to have you on the show. Man. You reached out to me last year. Thank you for your patience. You reached out to me last year about your new book. The Lights Camera, Lights Camera cell, how to actually sell selling techniques and sales techniques in the filmmaking world. Which is like I was saying earlier, sacrilege you don't talk about salesmanship in in art and filmmaking. I'm an artist, I don't have to think about money in sales. That's somebody else's problem. That's what most filmmakers think, which is to their detriment. And we as we were talking, both the rise of the filmstrip runner and Lights Camera cell are great companion pieces. Because they both go into very different I mean, a lot of the stuff that you talk about in Lights Camera cell could easily apply to the entrepreneur method and vice versa. So I think they're really great companion pieces. But before we get started, man, how did you get into the business?
Alec Trachtenberg 2:17
Yes, so um, it's funny, I actually, when I went to college, I went to Loyola Marymount, which is a pretty big film school, but I actually didn't major in film, I majored in Communication Studies, you know, did some short films on the side, I've always had an interest for producing. And then eventually, I created I produced the feature film called the cabin, which my with my director, who's from Sweden, so as, you know, little indie film, we shot out in Sweden back in 2017. It got picked up on distribution domestically, and they're also representing us internationally as well. But yeah, you know, got the film on to Amazon, you know, Hulu, all the different sites up there. And,
Alex Ferrari 2:58
you know, I've
Alec Trachtenberg 2:58
always had a passion for film. But I also, you know, just working in sales myself, I'm working in a variety companies, you know, help companies like Airbnb, Amazon, in kind of, you know, driving more sales and awareness about their products, I saw there was a huge overlap in, you know, what I was doing as a film producer, and what I was doing in sales as my day job.
Alex Ferrari 3:21
Very cool. And then you decided to write the book Lights Camera cell, which is I'm assuming you saw a hole in the marketplace for a sales book and independent filmmaking. And it's not only sales of movies, but it's also sales of yourself as a filmmaker, accompany your career, and your projects and a script, whatever, any kind. And that's the thing that people don't understand. Please let me know what you think is, people don't understand that sales is in our lives every day, all the time. It's not just the weasely guy selling a used car somewhere. I mean, it sales of like, what are we having for dinner tonight, you've got to sell what what you want, and you know, you got to touch it, and you're talking like, Oh, I want to go to this place? Well, it's constant throughout throughout the life. And I kind of figured that out early on, when I was even trying to date girls in high school. I'm like, it was a sales, it was a sales presentation. Oh, I had to, I had to, I had to fight I had to prospect I had to fight I had to, you know, provide value. Like if you go out on a date with me, you will get this and this and look at how cool I am all this kind of kind of sales techniques I was doing instinctively back then. But now as an adult, I kind of realized what I was doing. So do you do agree with all that? Oh, I
Alec Trachtenberg 4:41
totally do. I mean, in every aspect of your life, whether you know, you have a child and you're trying to convince your child to be you know, behave in a public space, or, you know, like you mentioned dating. I mean, Tinder is like a prospecting platform. I mean, you know, going on these on these websites and trying to find your best match and you're trying to demonstrate value by the photos you post and the things that you say. And you know, sales, printed presentations are those dates in themselves, right? When you're going out and, you know, you're showing you can provide, right. So, yeah, I mean, sales is such an important aspect of everything that you want to, you know, be able to do and accomplish in the world.
Alex Ferrari 5:19
Yeah, and even as a filmmaker, when you're on set, it sails all the time. You know, if you're a dp, you're trying to sell your shot to the director, if you're a director, you're trying to sell your vision for the film to the actors and to the crew. And and working with like, it's, you know, unless you're a dictator, and then additionally, generally doesn't work out very well. But you're generally always, you're always selling you know, like, like, ABC always be always be a closing always be closing. Yeah, that was from Glengarry Glen Ross. But, but you're always selling
Alec Trachtenberg 5:52
such a, it's funny, you kind of harped on that idea with a used car salesman. I mean, there's so many negative connotations towards the word sales. And I think a lot of artists and, you know, people in the film community don't really want to align themselves with that type of, you know, personality or role, right? Because, you know, usually when you think of sales, you think of being pushy or aggressive. You know, people, you know, tend to say, you know, that's not for me, I don't do that, right, but
Alex Ferrari 6:17
they see, like, deceitful, like, being deceitful, and things like that, like a used car salesman, right to screw you over.
Alec Trachtenberg 6:22
But you know, at the end of the day sales is really all about, like, you know, understanding value and, you know, finding common connection with another person and figuring out ways that, you know, both parties can work together for the benefit, right? Um, you know, you if you're an artist, and you have amazing scripts, like if you're a writer, right? I mean, you're providing value to a production company, who you know, would love your your projects, to be able to produce them and put them out into the world. But it's how you convey that and how you communicate it is really important.
Alex Ferrari 6:53
Yeah, I mean, I used to, when I first launched indie film, hustle, I would get some slack from some of my contemporaries, because they just saw it might unrelenting. Just Just sales, constantly marketing and promotions in and just pushing and pushing and pushing. But I felt that I had a strong value proposition, I felt that like I'm providing a value, I'm not, I'm giving away 95% of what I do on a daily basis. So it's not even like I'm selling, selling, selling, I need you to give me my money. Now I want to help. And I wanted to get that information out there as much as possible. And I still do that to this day. And it's been, it's been helpful. And it's helped me grow indie film muscle to where it is. But a lot of a lot of other creatives, they don't have that, that they have that same kind of block that you're talking about, where it's like, I don't want to be associated with sales, or snake oil salesmen, which is literally one of the origins of the bad sales. You know, the guy that comes into town, tells you a whole bunch of lies, steals your money and sells you like, you know, whatever oil to drink to, to get rid of cancer, you know, whatever, whatever that is. And I get it. I get and movies have not helped, by the way. Oh, for sure. I
Alec Trachtenberg 8:03
mean, so many movies out there that you know, portray salespeople not to be the greatest people in the world.
Alex Ferrari 8:08
Right. They're a great villain, they're a great villain. But I think filmmakers, I think people in general are starting to come around to the idea that sales is an integral part and it doesn't have to be dirty, it doesn't have to be sleazy. It actually is all about providing value. And, and convincing people that have a problem and serving that, like convincing people that like if you have a problem, what I'm proposing could help you and that's across all business. In regards to getting a job in a job interview, your your, your sales, you're in sales.
Alec Trachtenberg 8:44
Same thing, you know, you could be the greatest director in the world. But you know, if you go in, you know, with that conversation to that producer or that agent and you don't, you know, communicate that or build that rapport, um, you know, you're gonna it's gonna be lost talent, you know, and nothing is worse than wasted talent.
Alex Ferrari 9:00
Oh, God, I know. And I see it all the time in my in my line of work, where I talk to a lot of these great artists that I see some great movies I'm like, but you're not going to they didn't they didn't get the sales aspect. They don't get the marketing and promotions aspect of it. In your book, you have two great kind of explanations of sales and how important it is to to filmmakers. Can you talk about the Robert Rodriguez example and the Quinn Tarantino example in your book?
Alec Trachtenberg 9:27
Yes. So Robert Rodriguez. You know, it's actually his his father was in sales.
Alex Ferrari 9:34
I don't know that. Yeah.
Alec Trachtenberg 9:36
Yep. And so for him, you know, he didn't have any sort of, you know, blockings to him being able to go out there and make a film if you wanted to make one right. So, you know, he built rapport with, you know, the people around this community, like, you know, friends and really kind of just grass roots went up there and made, you know, a feature film, right. And, you know, it was like, I think was like $7,000 You know, and and he went out and talked to a bunch of just distribution companies put it out into festivals, you know, really, you know, just spearheaded that whole thing, right? Same button Tarantino. So his producer Lawrence Bender, um, you know, he, if it wasn't for Laurens bender to be able to see that talent in Clinton's ability to write, you know, he wouldn't have posed the question of him to direct, right. So he directed Reservoir Dogs, which was unbelievable movie, right, really set the platform for, you know, his his directing career has not only just an amazing writer, but as somebody who can also, you know, direct like film. So, you know, being able to sell these ideas, even Steven Spielberg to I mean, I have an example, where Steven Spielberg would just go on the universal tours, and then he would highly recommend you don't do this anymore. But if you would, like jump off the tram, and then, you know, went to the one of the buildings of where all the producers are hanging out, and he would just confidently sell them as if he will belong there. Right. And then before you know it, I mean, he got introduced to sin sheinberg, who, you know, was the head of universal at the time, and like president, and, you know, at that point, that's kind of where your launch was, and if he didn't have that, that kind of ability to build rapport and, you know, be aggressive to, you know, Chase his dreams mean, we wouldn't be able to see et, or Jaws, or, you know, other amazing movies he's made. So now,
Alex Ferrari 11:27
what is the sales mindset?
Alec Trachtenberg 11:30
So the sales mindset is really understanding that, you know, the value that you can bring to other people, but not only that, being able to know how to communicate that value, right. So, um, you know, in terms of understanding, like, social cues, right, and like, understanding, like, what like, like, for example, if you met, if there was a producer right in front of you, like in the coffee shop, right? Like, you wouldn't want to go up to the guy and start hounding him and start selling, you know, pitching ideas, right? Like, you know, there's a way to really, you know, do it strategically, where, you know, you set up an email to him, or somebody get a referral, fine, you know, a ways like to build it, like, you know, get in on the right foot, as opposed to just, you know, being random and not really having any kind of backdrop to what you're saying,
Alex Ferrari 12:20
isn't it? Isn't it amazing how people online and in person will walk up to somebody who, and it's happened to me, anytime I'm out in a festival or market or something like that, I always get this to happen, man, many of my guests have as well, where you have a filmmaker, or somebody come up and go, Hey, read my script, Hey, watch my trailer, watch my movie. How can you help me? And it's kind of like this, like energy suckers, I call them because it's just like, what can you do for me? Me? Me, me, me, as opposed to providing value? And and what can I do for you? And how do you build that relationship? Before you start asking for stuff, and it's not as dry as trying to be authentic too, because I don't know about you. But you know, my radar is pretty honed out for authentic relationships and, and non authentic relationships. And those, sometimes the non authentic relationships are fine if there's an equal exchange of value, and it's a business transaction at that point. But if it's a, you're actually trying to build a rapport with somebody to truly try to help them with nothing in return, and maybe a year, I mean, I've built relationships. I never asked for anything three years down the line, maybe four years down the line. And we actually built a real relationship. And then when I call them, Hey, dude, can you can you help me with this? Or that? They're like, of course, man, after everything you've given me? Of course, I'll reciprocate. So can you talk a little bit about that approach, which is, so it's the equivalent of walking up to a pretty girl at a bar and like, you and I are going to go sleep together right now. Just let's get in the car, that's not going to work that generally doesn't work generally doesn't work. And you'll probably get someone called upon you, bouncer or police.
Alec Trachtenberg 14:11
So what they call in sales is qualification process, right? So in the first stage of sales, it's considered prospecting. And that's trying to locate, you know, the ideal buyer or the ideal person that's perfect for your service or your project. So, you know, doing research is really imperative. I mean, now that we live in, like, the digital age, where any information you need is at your fingertips. I mean, you can type in someone's name on Google and find something on page seven, that, you know, you never would have known about. Right? And like, you know, really understanding, you know, their background, I'm seeing, like trying to find like trends in terms of like, you know, projects that they've worked on in the past, right, what they might be interested in, paying attention to those things. And then when you're in those conversations in that prospecting phase, and you're qualifying them You know, like, say things like, Oh, I noticed that, you know, the last three films that you that you've worked on evolved in comedies? I mean, it seems like comedy is something that's, you know, interested in you, what's your favorite type of comedy, right? And then you know, from there as a writer, you can really try to understand, you know, okay, maybe this producer is more interested in this type of material. So you're not trying to sell him something that isn't going to fit that box, right. So, you know, really trying to understand what value you can bring to what he's looking at, or she's looking at the moment.
Alex Ferrari 15:28
Now, how do you? How do you eliminate wasting time on people who do not benefit from the value that you have in a project or service that you're trying to give?
Alec Trachtenberg 15:38
So you're saying like, so what do you mean by that? Like,
Alex Ferrari 15:40
like eliminating wasted time? So like, like a perfect example, I think you kind of talked about a little bit, but it's kind of like doing a shotgun email to 500 producers because you find their their email lists on IMDB somewhere. And you're sending comedy spots to, you know, Jason Blum? Like it does. Yeah, I
Alec Trachtenberg 16:01
think so. Yeah. I mean, you know, like understanding, you know, having a target of just a few that you've done really hardcore research on, I'm talking like, looked at, you know, their LinkedIn, their IMDb profile, you know, saw connection, maybe you have a connection, common connection that you can reach out to that can maybe, you know, introduce you in a warm way, as opposed to just you know, randomly, you know, sending mail, right. So, I think it's really important to just to select few, instead of just mass emailing, you know, every single, you know, person out there, because that's kind of garnering the same results.
Alex Ferrari 16:37
Yeah, I get emails, people asking me to produce their films and find financing for like, they paid like, Can you help me get money for my movie? I'm like, you obviously have no idea who I am. What I what I'm capable of, because I am not your guy, like you did, obviously did not do your research here. I do I get curry letters, I get query letters from scripts. I'm like, hey, I want you to produce this. I'm like, No, like, we're in anything. It's not like I'm, I'm hidden, is not like, you can't really do much research on me, there is a ton of stuff out there. If somebody really wants to do research on me. And they still don't do it. It's fascinating to me, but it gets that's just laziness.
Alec Trachtenberg 17:18
Yeah, it's laziness. But also, like, when you are communicating to that person in an email sequence, like, by like, mentioning those personal things about that, you know, individually reaching out is really important, because that's going to show them that, you know, you really took the time to like, you know, look them up and care about them. Right. You know, like, for example, Alex, if I was reaching out to you, you know, I would say, I love listening to your podcasts, specifically, my favorite, you know, episode was with this person, right? And then kind of explaining, you know, what, what did you benefit from, like, you know, listening to that particular episode, that's going to show that, you know, you're not just someone who was just randomly reached out to you who didn't really know, you know, who you talk to you and all that.
Alex Ferrari 18:02
And it's so true, I'll get I'll get email letters from PR people who obviously have no idea who I am, or what I do. And then I'll get emails from other PR people or filmmakers, who will do exactly that, like, Look, we've been listening to you for years, this episode, and this episode, and I've done this, and I've read that. And as I take those, I actually take the time, if I have the time to actually look into those more closely than a blanket, just, you know, flat shotgun is template email. It's, it's fast, it's fascinating. Now, the second, the second stage is discovery, what is discovery?
Alec Trachtenberg 18:39
So discovery is like the time where like, when the first off the prospecting stage, the whole goal, that is to schedule a time to be able to communicate with that decision maker, whether that be like a 30 minute, you know, Skype call or meeting for coffee, right? It really depends on on who you're talking to, for example, you know, if you're speaking to like another dp and your director, you'll maybe meet them up for coffee, right? But, you know, if you're talking to an executive producer, most likely you're going to be going to their office and that person's office or, you know, meeting a common ground, probably, everything's gonna be virtual, and, you know, during the panel, but, you know, that's all is to really just, you know, get on a call with them and ask them questions. So discovery is really that, you know, where you're taking the research that you've done on this person, and then asking questions about what they specifically are interested in, what are their pain points, what are their, you know, their goals, right? And then collecting this information, you can then you know, connect that to your project or service, or what you can bring to the table. But you know, if you go in there blindly trying to sell yourself right off the bat, you know, then you're going to you know, have that used car salesman mentality, which is obviously not been effective.
Alex Ferrari 19:53
Now, what what advice would you give on how to vet potential prospects? So, in the sense of just like making sure that they're so just making sure that they're really great match, I mean, obviously, you could do research, you could do research and things like that. But even going deeper, are there any techniques that you use to vet them to make sure that that you are a good match? And whatever you're trying to sell them?
Alec Trachtenberg 20:24
Yeah, um, so understanding, like the job title of the person that you're speaking to, you know, making sure that you're speaking to a decision maker. So, you know, anything like for finance here, for example, you know, understanding if the person you're speaking to is the one that could actually write the check, or somebody who's associated with that person who, you know, you're there. They're almost like the gatekeeper in a sense, right? They're trying to understand, you know, what your projects about and then they relay that information to, you know, the the key decision maker, but the issue is, you know, the gatekeeper is not going to be able to effectively sell your product or service just as much as you can, right. So, or as better as you right? So you really want to make sure that you're connecting with the right person, right off the bat.
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Now, how do you how do you use discovery to vet potential film distributors? Because as you know, it's one of my favorite topics. The the very, the, if you want to talk about a negative connotations, the sales guys, can you imagine what the connotation is with film distributors? It's horrible. So what do you do to vet potential distributors for your projects?
Alec Trachtenberg 0:25
Yes. So just as much as is like, you know, if a distributor reaches out to you about your project, and you know, I'm sure, as an independent filmmaker, you're excited, you're like, Oh, my God, like me. Everyone likes me, right. But you know, just like in a job interview, you know, this is just as much of an interview for them than it is for you. Right? So, you know, as you really got to make sure that it's the right opportunity and the right, you know, company for, for the goals of your movie. So having a list of questions for that discovery call to really understand, like, you know, um, you know, what is the marketing strategy that you have in mind? Like, what is the key demographic? Do you think that this would be for our film, right, like, you know, females ages 18 to 40, who were into, like, horror movies, like, you know, really kind of, you know, understand, like, what, what they think of your film, and see if it aligns with what you think, right. And, you know, if they, if they make very big promises, you know, it's it's usually a very, you know, a big red flag, I'd say, but you really want to check to see if that person is genuine. Right? So the questions that you're asking, and that discovery call is, you know, most importantly, finding out if they're capable to get your film out there. Most importantly, or if they're genuine, and they actually are, like, you know, passionate about your project, and you're not just going to be one out of, you know, 200 films that they're going to take to Cannes next year to try to sell,
Alex Ferrari 1:48
you know, right, exactly. And they Yeah, there's a couple of bigger, independent film distributors who shall remain nameless, who pump out 30 releases a month 40 releases a month, it's impossible to show tender loving care to every one of them. It's just impossible. They're just a factory at that point. So it's, it's always interesting, and people filmmakers listening right now, when you do get that email, which is so it's like I said, they liked me, Oh, my God, they like me, you feel like you've won something. They, a lot of times, they use that as to their advantage, but you really got to vet them, you really got to figure out if they're a good match. Have they seen your movie? Last time? They haven't even seen your movie? Right? Yep.
Alec Trachtenberg 2:31
Yep. That's the biggest thing is like, what was your favorite part of the film? That's like, one question that you need to like, if you if you do ask that. And they don't answer that. That's like, hang up, like don't even like continue the conversation. You know, how to how do you sell something that you haven't watched yourself? You know, I mean,
Alex Ferrari 2:49
it's, it's ridiculous, but that is the world we live in with distribution. Now, how do you how do you demonstrate value to a potential prospect?
Alec Trachtenberg 2:58
So there's a lot of ways to demonstrate value. So I mean, even like demos, like a demo reel, or resume headshots as an actor, those are all like physical collateral, you know, to really sell yourself and your and your services. You know, be like a sales deck, like a pitch deck, you know, and you know, thinking like graphic design, making sure it's very professional looking. And, yeah, I mean, sorry, we have to cut I don't know why this I haven't like exited out
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. I think so. Um, so how do you demonstrate value to a prospect potential prospect?
Alec Trachtenberg 0:08
Yeah, so there's a lot of ways to demonstrate value, um, you know, as a filmmaker So, you know, one thing, you know, like your demo reel, for example, that's an example is something that's collateral that's selling your services and what you can bring to the table. Same thing with headshots, you know, sales decks, like pitch decks of a film, and making sure that you know, when you're creating this collateral that is very professional looking, because, you know, this is going to be in the hands of decision makers and buyers and you know, other people in the industry and you really want to ensure that, you know, you're putting great stuff out there that really reflect your professionalism as well.
Alex Ferrari 0:46
Now, how about for screenwriters? How can screenwriters provide value?
Alec Trachtenberg 0:51
Yes, so for screenwriters, you know, have it having those those scripts, you know, for a variety of different, you know, like, genres. So, for example, if you know, your comedic comedy writer, right, and then like drama, having kind of, like different variations there, if a producer requests it, but also, you know, getting out there, like, like with like film festivals as well, like, if your film has won any like screenplays, that's like, you know, it's a screenplay contest, and that's damaged value as well.
Alex Ferrari 1:23
So and as far as should, should you also create, I mean, pitch decks and stuff like that for screenplays, or is that overkill? Unless you're actually trying to produce it?
Alec Trachtenberg 1:33
I think there's never any hurt in doing that. I mean, you know, it's really any way that you can put a visual aspect to the project to make it a decision maker really kind of see it, I think, is always great things. I think that's definitely recommended, for sure.
Alex Ferrari 1:49
And there's this kind of like value bait is kind of like value based selling, is when you're doing this kind of stuff. Exactly.
Alec Trachtenberg 1:55
You know, it's like, the value that you can bring them for sure.
Alex Ferrari 1:57
Now, any tips on closing the deal?
Alec Trachtenberg 2:01
So as far as closing the deal, um, you know, you really want to ensure that you guys are on the same page in terms of, you know, the project, the service, and that kind of goes in with, you know, understanding like contracts and agreements. I mean, I would definitely recommend, you know, not doing anything without contracts, as you can, you know, agree, I've heard some horror stories on the podcast where, you know, one person didn't get like a waiver for the, you know, for physical parents on the film, and the distribution company won't distribute it, because they don't have that waiver. And then, you know, the whole project falls apart, and, you know, hundreds and 1000s of dollars, you know, go away. So having those agreements in place is definitely important. And, yeah,
Alex Ferrari 2:49
what else? closing deals, closing deals, tips on closing the deal.
Alec Trachtenberg 2:53
Yeah. And then as far as, like, you know, the type of clothes, right, so there's different types of clothes that you can do, like, assumptive closes, right, where, you know, you assume that, you know, that they're their soul in your project, let's say, your dp, right. And like, you know, the producer, you're speaking to your director speaking to, you know, has three other DPS that they're, you know, kind of talking to, you know, maybe like aligning your, your projects and your background and your expertise and how you can bring to the table and demonstrating that value, you know, saying, okay, so when, when a shooting star, right, like sometimes that confidence there can really help, you know, elevate you and show that, you know, this is somebody who's really passionate and wants to work on this project
Alex Ferrari 3:38
now, and how do you handle objections, or fears of potential prospect?
Alec Trachtenberg 3:44
So there are different types of objections out there objections come from anything from like time, you know, let's say the person doesn't have any time to read your script, or, you know, they're not in need of your service, right. So really, understanding the type of objection that you're getting right off the bat is really critical. Because then you can really, you know, strategize on ways to combat that objection. So, think of objections, as you're very welcoming, you really want objections in the sales cycle, because objections means that they're having that kind of dance with you, right? Like, if you were a lost, cause they wouldn't have even interacted with you in the first place. Right? So, you know, it's just a matter of, you know, demonstrating that value and reconnecting to their you know, propositions and you know, goals and pain points and and see how you can connect with both of them
Alex Ferrari 4:37
now, and what is relationship success?
Alec Trachtenberg 4:40
So, relationship success is the last stage of the sales cycle. That's when the sales has been done. Everything's close, but it's actually you know, everyone thinks that once you close the deal, once you get the job once you you know, get the girl it's like, done with, right, but really, you know, it just starts at that point, right. So Customer Success is continuingly providing that value. And and, you know, checking in with that person and making sure that, you know, you're delivering what your spoken what you want, right? If you're a writer working on a contract term, you know, am I you know, getting these these edits drafts in at a at the right time, right on? Am I delivering on what I promised? Right? am I bringing the value to you that I've originally proposed? And then, you know, finding ways to get referrals and, you know, additional and maybe like upselling, in a sense, right. So, for example, if you're working with a particular company as a freelance, you know, videographer or filmmaker who's making like commercial videos, right, maybe there's a way to make additional videos for them, or, you know, find out about their sister company that also needs video collateral as well that you can produce. So that's really what Customer Success is really all about.
Alex Ferrari 5:51
fascinating conversation, sir. It's always it's always good to teach and instruct filmmakers on how to sell themselves and sell their projects. Because it's so so so, so important. Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions. I asked all my guests, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?
Alec Trachtenberg 6:10
So I would say, I would think of yourself as an entrepreneur. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the paradigm of shift of like film just to pass, you know, 10 years, you know, it's really a self, you know, promotional endeavor, right? So, really, you know, think of yourself as a business and go out there and get it done. And don't wait on anyone else.
Alex Ferrari 6:34
Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?
Alec Trachtenberg 6:41
That's good question longest? I'd say you know, understanding that you know, what you're passionate about, and, you know, what, like, you know, what you want to create might not align with other people, but that's okay. Because you'll find, you know, your tribe, just like, you know, you've you found your tribe of people that really, you know, agree and are, you know, passionate about what you're putting out into the world. And, and, yeah, that's, that's exactly
Alex Ferrari 7:10
how we'll end in three of your favorite films of all time.
Alec Trachtenberg 7:14
All right, so I'd have to say I'm a big Scorsese fan. So I'd say you know, Goodfellas and then I'll just don't want to random funny one rat race. Do you remember rat race? Oh,
Alex Ferrari 7:26
God. Yeah, I remember rat race. That was a while ago. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very random net first time on the show, sir. First time rat races on the show. I know that from it's like a he has a ton of different celebrities that are actors
Alec Trachtenberg 7:41
over mark. What is Keven Gooding Jr. Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 7:46
everybody's everybody. Everybody else in that they remember it was it was a fun film, if I remember correctly. And now where can people find find more about you? And how can they purchase the book?
Alec Trachtenberg 7:59
So yeah, you could actually go to Alec Trachtenberg calm. So I actually consult one to one, you know, with not only filmmakers, but entrepreneurs on really how to establish that, you know, sales mindset and follow the five stages of the sales process to really, you know, get, you know, what they what they want, right? Whether that be a job, you know, connections, so forth. And then my books available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble it's lights cameras, so so I'm sure I'll give you the link.
Alex Ferrari 8:32
It will be in the show notes. Alec, thank you so much for being on the show, brother. I really appreciate your time. And thank you!
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Stanley Lloyd Kaufman never really wanted to make movies, but wanted to work in Broadway musicals. During his years in Yale, though, he got introduced to “B” pictures and the works of Roger Corman. Lloyd later got the opportunity to executive-produce a short movie made by a fellow student. The film, called “Rappacini”, got him even more interested in movies. He bought his own camera and took it with him to Chad, Africa, were he spent his summer. There, he shot a 15-minute film of a pig being slaughtered. That was his first movie, and was the birth of what was later to become known as Troma Films. He showed the footage of the squealing pig being killed to his family, and their shocked reaction to it made him wonder if making movies that shocked audiences would keep them in their seats to see what would happen next.
He wanted to be a director right then and there, so he got a couple of friends at Yale and made his second movie, The Girl Who Returned (1969). People loved it, and he went straight to work on other films, helping out on projects like Joe (1970), Rocky (1976) and Saturday Night Fever (1977).
Lloyd put in a lot of long, hard hours in the film business, just to be in the credits and to get money for his next project, a full-length feature. It was a tribute to Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and the classic era of silent-film comedy. Even though Lloyd hated the movie when it was finally completed, people seemed to love it. He formed a studio called 15th Street Films with friends and producers Frank Vitale and Oliver Stone. Together, they made Sugar Cookies (1973) and Cry Uncle (1971), directed by John G. Avildsen. A friend from Yale, Michael Herz, saw Lloyd in a small scene in “Cry Uncle” and contacted him to try to get into the film business, too. Kaufman took Herz in, as the company needed some help after Oliver Stone quit to make his own movies. Michael invested in a film they thought would be their biggest hit yet, Schwartz: The Brave Detective (1973) (aka “Big Gus, What’s the Fuss?”). It turned out to be a huge flop and 15th Street Films was ruined. Lloyd and Michael owed thousands of dollars to producers and friends and family members who had invested in the picture.
Lloyd, trying to find a quick way to pay off the bills, made The Divine Obsession (1976), and with Michael formed Troma Studios, hoping to make some decent movies, since they only owned the rights to films they thought were poor. They were introduced to Joel M. Reed, who had an unfinished movie called “Master Sardu and the Horror Trio”. The film was re-edited and completed at Troma Studios (which actually consisted of just one room) during 1975, re-titled and released in 1976 as Blood Sucking Freaks (1976) (aka “Bloodsucking Freaks”). It was enough of a success to enable them to pay the rent so they wouldn’t lose the company.
Lloyd later got a call from a theater that wanted a “sexy movie” like The Divine Obsession (1976), but about softball (!). The resulting film, Squeeze Play (1979), used up all the money Troma had earned from “Bloodsucking Freaks” and, as it turned out, no one wanted to see it–not even the theater owner who wanted it made in the first place (he actually wanted a porno movie). Just when things looked their darkest, they got a call from another theater which was scheduled to show a film, but the distributor pulled it at the last minute. Troma rushed “Squeeze Play” right over, and it turned out to be a huge hit. Lloyd, Michael and Troma eventually made millions from it, and had enough money to buy their own building (which still remains as Troma Headquarters). Troma then turned out a stream of “sexy” comedies–i.e., Waitress! (1982), The First Turn-On!! (1983), Stuck on You! (1983)–but there was a glut of “T&A” films on the market. Troma noticed that a lot of comedies were being made, and decided to make one, too, but much different than the rest. After reading an article that claimed horror movies were dead, Lloyd got the idea to combine both horror and comedy, and Troma came up with “Health Club Horror”–later retitled and released as The Toxic Avenger (1984), a monster hit that finally put Troma on the map.
Lloyd Kaufman and Troma have become icons in the cult-movie world, and Troma has distributed over 1000 films. Lloyd has continued his career as a director in addition to producing, and Troma has turned out such films as Monster in the Closet (1986), Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), Combat Shock (1984), Troma’s War (1988), and Fortress of Amerikkka (1989), and Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006), which follows an army of undead chickens as they seek revenge on a fast food palace.
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Alex Ferrari 0:07
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
Dave Bullis 0:35
This guy is the founder and president of trauma entertainment and the creator of the Toxic Avenger. I'm sure you already know who the guest is without even saying his name. But with guest Lloyd Kaufman.
Lloyd Kaufman 2:11
Yeah. Hi, Dave. How you doing?
Dave Bullis 2:12
Good. How are you buddy?
Lloyd Kaufman 2:14
Good. Thanks for having me on.
Dave Bullis 2:16
My pleasure, Lloyd.
Lloyd Kaufman 2:18
You know, my daughter, one of my daughters. They were the mutant middle child, one of the mutants and Romeo and Juliet. She started a company called kit split, which is an air b&b for a film gear for film equipment, film and video equipment. Kit split K I T. K is in Kaufmann. it.com. Her partner is named Christina and guess what the last name is? Coffin. Boo Delos. So Lizbeth Kaufman is my daughter, but her partner is Christina boo Delos kit split that calm we use it, it's great. It's if you own a camera, and you're not using it. Trauma might need a camera and can rent it from you through kids split, get very cheap and expensive insurance and get a price that's probably 20% of the exorbitant equipment houses so kids split that commas. Hearst media is one of their major investors and they they're in both the East Coast and the West Coast.
Dave Bullis 3:25
And you know, Lloyd I'll not only link to that in the show notes, but I wanted to ask you also about independent film, and just how everything has changed even you know, since we last talked, you know, our, you know, unfortunately, George Romero, he's passed away. Net neutrality has sort of passed away. So it's just a shame, you know, but so I wanted to ask you,
Lloyd Kaufman 3:48
I would like to pass away myself, frankly, I don't have the nerve to put a make an appointment with the business end of a shotgun a little scared of pain,
Dave Bullis 3:59
You know, that I can only imagine what the eulogies would be at your funeral. I mean, I could just imagine, there would actually be a line bigger than the Apple store or Starbucks. Just just to say, I'm serious. I mean, you you have always been a rock star of an indie film. And I just want to I wanted to ask you, what do you think of the current state of independence? You know, filmmaking? I mean, you just touched upon the rental houses, you know, has has things gotten a little better. Have they gotten a little worse?
Lloyd Kaufman 4:29
Well, it only gets worse. At least for trauma. The The problem is, as you know, the the democratic revolution of movies means that everybody can make a movie, and you don't really need money anymore. You know, you can make it on your phone. As you know, it's broadcast quality. And young people today have mastered the 1000s of people making movies out of 1000 movies. You're gonna have a few masterpieces. The problem is you can't live off your art, you can't pay the rent or eat. That is because the giant telephone and the movie, the media conglomerates, now AT and T owns Time Warner, you know that kind of stuff. They control all the sources of revenue. So and they want to own and the laws have changed. So they now can own all the sources of revenue. It used to be that the television networks were not allowed to own the content. But now they can own it. And they want to own it. So that is why Netflix is spending $8 billion on their own damn, they're making their own damn movies, and T shirt a T and TV shows. And, you know, there's only about seven big companies that control of all the medium. So it gets more and more difficult for trauma and for independent filmmaker. But the good news is that you young people can make movies for nothing, I can't, because I don't know how to do it. I'm stuck in the celluloid age. So I can only make $500,000 movies, which that model does not work. It used to but not anymore. So this one I'm going to do Shakespeare shitstorm, our version of the tempest of Shakespeare's Tempest, that's bound to be the last one because my wife and I have to put up the money. And I can't imagine we can keep putting up half a million bucks. So this will be I mean, returned to return to newcomers aka volume to trauma and our fans. Our fans helped us Kickstarter. We paid for the next one, though, traumas, has no money. So my wife, the Commissioner, and I will have to fund them.
Dave Bullis 6:54
You know, I actually helped back return to return to newcomer high volume to on Kickstarter. Lloyd.
Lloyd Kaufman 6:59
Yes, you did. I remember that. And thank you so much. You gave us $15,000. At eternally grateful to it was very generous.
Dave Bullis 7:09
My pleasure, I actually found the money in a, in the old story, the old burlap sack behind the 711
Lloyd Kaufman 7:15
Yup that once you took the severed head out of it, there was all that money, and thank you for giving it to help us. But our fans really raised about 80,000 bucks for the budget of return to return to New coma aka Volume Two, we had run out of money, and we had money coming in later. But we had a time where we either would have had to stop and lay people off in the editing department. But the fans came to the rescue and got us over the hump and then we were able to pay for the rest of the movie. So we built above for 400,000 Maybe. So the fans got it gave us at 20% of the budget. So it was pretty damn nice.
Dave Bullis 8:01
So as we talked about independent cinema, Lloyd and we talked about return to return to newcomer high volume to so, you know, where does the impetus for you? Where do you when do you decide, you know what movie you're gonna make? And you know, when you start actually starting to write, you know, you start to write the script and you actually have to get the mind to that for this, you know, what does that impetus sort of start from?
Lloyd Kaufman 8:20
Usually, it's it's born in the current events of the day. But Donald's moved next to the trauma building, there was a McDonald's that moved in next to our building on in New York, in Hell's Kitchen, Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, and they were horrible neighbors. They They destroyed, they damaged our building, and they and they had they brought rats the size of raccoons and and at the end it it it got me into reading Fast Food Nation and starting to think a bit about the disgrace that is called fast food, and how McDonald's tortures the animals. exploits the workers makes shit food that causes pubescent teenagers to get obese. There's nothing good about it. And of course, the McDonald's architecture is disgusting to look at. There's nothing good about it whatsoever. So that led me to want to make a movie about that issue. And I'm a big lover of Broadway musicals. And I always wanted to make a musical and Gabe Friedman, who was our editor for 10 years, our supervisor of main editor for 10 years, he suggested make it into a musical and and he pretty much wrote poultry guys night of the chicken dead. Oh, we wrote it together, but he really was the driving force. And, and he, in fact, I think he's the one who gave me Fast Food Nation to read.
Alex Ferrari 10:03
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Lloyd Kaufman 10:13
The movie cause Fast Food Nation didn't appeal to anybody but the small number of yuppies who read the book. So the movie was pretty boring. Whereas poltergeist is aimed at the younger generations who can change the world and maybe have in fact, McDonald's has, I think, cleaned up his act a little bit. I think they're raised their minimum wage a little and I believe they're trying to emphasize salads and healthier food, at least I hope they are.
Dave Bullis 10:44
Yeah, I haven't been to McDonald's in quite a long time. So I haven't really, I don't really know the menu too well, except for the only time I would go there to eat, he's to maybe eat breakfast or something like that really quickly. You know, you're kind of like, you know, in a rush, and you just kind of go in there to grab something, and then you eat it, and you go, Oh, I'm sorry, I ate that.
Lloyd Kaufman 11:03
Just because it's fast food doesn't mean it can't be good. You know, I mean, it's sad, nothing wrong with salad, nothing wrong with the protein, but to make this fatty, disgusting. And they of course, the animals are tortured and, and that's where poultry guys came from, in the case of return to return to New komyo aka Volume Two, that's the second half of my big event movie returned to Nukem high volume one and volume two. And the themes there were the they also concerned food and the fact that our high schools have been serving crap food. So they've contributed to the very bad health of the American teenagers. And you know, we have a huge problem with obesity. And also the bullying is a big theme of return to Newcomb high and of course, it's a less bionic love story and sugar cookies in 1971 was a lesbian, a lesbian. Vertigo was based on Hitchcock's vertigo. So we've always been sort of rooting for the underdog, and returned to Newcomb high volume wanting to deal with the underdog who gets bullied for being the, you know, in the LGBT Q department.
Dave Bullis 12:30
And I mean, you know, it's kind of like trauma right, Lord, you know, it's the underdog always fighting for the for the little guy trying not to get smushed by, you know, the the corporate giants,
Lloyd Kaufman 12:40
Trying to fight back and doing everything when King hands to change the world make the world a better place a little bit to be part of the actions and passions of his or her times, as Oliver Wendell Holmes stated back in the day, uses Supreme Court justice. very right wing though.
Dave Bullis 13:06
Because, you know, as we sort of talk about, you know, return attorney nuco, High Volume Two, I know, you know, once you finally got everything together, you know, and you and you were able to start the Kickstarter, and it was successful. You know, we were able to start shooting, you know, what were some of the challenges of making a film, you know, making an independent film nowadays. So what what were some of the big challenges that you came across? Well, while making the movie,
Lloyd Kaufman 13:28
The biggest challenge we have is we make $20 million movies for 350 to $500,000. And, you know, Trent Hager, right, you know, he wrote, citizen Toxie he just has a wonderful movie out called 68 Kill. And when we were writing citizen, Toxie, we had an investor who was going to put up I think, $2 million dollars for citizen Toxie. And we wrote it for that budget. And then the investor disappeared, and we had to make the movie for about half a million. And we, we did not change the script, we made the script that Trent wrote, and Trent was extremely, it's a fact he's in I interviewed him in one of my books, and he devotes a fair amount of the interview with how happy he was that we didn't cut anything out of the script. Due to budget, we figured out ways to do everything that was in citizen Toxie $2 million script, we figured out how to how to make that movie for 400,000 bucks and he was very, very happy with that. But that is the most daunting part of this movie we're about to make. Shakespeare shitstorm which is a version of The Tempest. It is huge. It's a huge deal. 1000s Well, it's like return to nuclear my volume to its enormous cast of special effects, costuming, transformations, explosions. People High Falls people on fire. I mean, it's a $20 million movie made for under half a mil, well, it probably three fifths of Volume Two, I think was 350 to maybe 400,000. Somewhere in that zone. But we won't make if it's as low as it is, we will lose it all because we're denied access to the revenue streams.
Dave Bullis 15:25
And I know you're having a lot of premieres, you're out you're sort of touring the film. Yes. Some of the you know, and I saw some of the screenings on the on the website for the film. But also, you know, I had David Campfield, our mutual friend, Dave Camfield, on the podcast, and he was, obviously he does the trauma now, podcast. So you started your own streaming service, by the way, it was a great idea, in my opinion, because I think that's where everything is going. So you know, everyone's gonna have their own content that's theirs, and just sort of go from there. So you're how has you know trauma now, you know, has that sort of come to what you wanted it to be, as you know, has you ever had a good response from that?
Lloyd Kaufman 16:03
Trauma now is great. The problem is, nobody knows about it. And we have no money to advertise, we have no money period, but we certainly don't have money to advertise. So it's all word of mouth. Ah, terrific. In fact, return to New KO my volume one, the first half of this event film is premiering on VOD, on trauma now at this very minute. And every month, we have two or three premiere movies, young world premieres. And then I curate about a dozen movies from our library, some of which are classics, or sometimes there's a theme. It's a great service, it's only 499 a month. And it keeps it drama alive, where we have we went bust, we're living on the memory of fumes, we're not living on fumes. We're living on the memory of fumes, and without our fans going on trauma now. I don't know how and you know, shopping at our studios store. Trauma, direct trauma direct is our store on trauma.com. You know, we are fans, the only reason we're still around, they support us and they subscribe to trauma now. And anybody out there who's listening, if you want to support new, brilliant, independent filmmakers, the next generation of James guns and, and the other famous directors who have come out of the loins of trauma, Eli Roth, Trent ageia, and actors like Samuel Jackson, and so on and so forth. Support trauma now and support the new filmmakers whose movies are premiering on trauma. Now. It's a great, great system, it's only 499 a month, first month is free. So but even if it isn't free, you pay the 499 let with the last independent movie studio with the last ones. And we're certainly the 44th year. And it's never been more difficult. And we're the last ones who even pay lip service to true independent filmmaking. There are no studios left to have any longevity. And and the ones that wanted to that do have longevity. It's all about money. There is no idealism or love of the art or it's all about who's in the movie and the packaging and the huge advertising campaigns where the last one Troma entertainment is the last one and when it's all thanks to our fans, we wouldn't be here without our fans. And net neutrality helps us do that free open and diverse internet, which unfortunately, FCC, the Federal Communications Commission director Ajit pi is named Pi was his last name for ship pi. He's decided to get rid of net neutrality. So that means the main conglomerates now AT and T Comcast, you know, these aren't even they're not even involved in the art. It's their phone companies, ISPs. But the point is they want to build a superhighway that Dale they will be able to afford to pay for and beyond. But we we will not be able to afford to be able to put our content on the superhighway. So no longer will everybody be equal. There will be an elite of rich people. It'll be a CBS, NBC ABC World. You'll have the homogenized baby food of the major conglomerates on this superhighway. And their vassals and then all the innovation and all the new people and all the brilliant James guns and Eli walls so the future will be on this dirt road. The Internet that will be a dirt road and well
Alex Ferrari 19:59
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Lloyd Kaufman 20:08
Take a long time to buffer and, and they'll slow us down and feed themselves. You know, it's gonna, it's it'll be over, be over and you'll they won't be any more innovation. Where did Kickstarter come from came from net neutrality on the internet. It's a free open and diverse internet democratic medium trauma has half a million people every month coming to my fan site and traumas website and store and Twitter and Facebook and at Lloyd Kaufman on Instagram, we have literally maybe more than 500,000 Every month, because they like it. And we have just as much opportunity on the internet as Disney if they liked Disney, they go to Disney, if they like trauma, they go to trauma, but everybody's equal. It's a level playing field. But if there's a superhighway, that's fat that you can get that delivers fast broadcasting to the consumer, and then the traumas on the dirt road, that takes a long time to buffer. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna want to waste their time, it'll be like public access TV, people are going to want to go with a good quality broadcasting is and that's going to be on the superhighway, and we will not be allowed to be on it that mainly because we won't be able to afford to be on it. So I imagine will be done if indeed, the free open and diverse internet goes away. But nevermind, trauma traumas just a movie company, they are going to be cures for cancer, they're all these wonderful things that come out of the free open and diverse net neutrality that simply won't happen. The innovators have got to have to go through if you have a toothpaste that can prevent cavities really prevent cavities, you won't be able to go direct to your audience, right, the Angry Video Game Nerd gets millions and millions of views and makes and makes money from the net neutrality internet. But if the maybe he will be able to afford to be on the superhighway, but the the net, the YouTube stars of the future or new young first time YouTube stars who under normal net neutrality conditions might be able to attract millions of people because they've got something that the public likes something new and different. And that might change the world a little bit. They won't be able to have to go through one of the majors or the vessels of the majors, the toothpaste, the guy who invent stupid, the the gal or guy who invents to real cavity preventing toothpastes will have to go through Colgate, or polymer or the other one Procter and Gamble, and they won't be permitted to make very much money, they'll they'll you know, they'll get the tiny, you know, you know how it is who, right, if you want. So, you know, and there'll be a lot of innovation that won't happen because nobody will know about it or that the gatekeepers in the cartel and the monopolies won't have the imagination. You think that the monopoly that got the cartel, you think that they would have understood how great Kickstarter could be? Right? Kickstarter started with nothing? Nothing? Yeah. Right. It's cool, because the public wanted it, they knew there was a need for it. But the establishment wouldn't understand that they're not going to they certainly and they certainly don't want competition. Netflix wouldn't be here without net neutrality. Now they're, well, now they're part of the elite. And they're part of the, the they're probably going to close the gate. They're probably close the gate and not you know, now that they're inside the, the treasure house and probably a bar us from, you know, they'd probably go against net neutrality. Google, I think is four minutes early. And I think Facebook is too. So that's good.
Dave Bullis 24:01
Yeah, that's actually something to hear. Because you think they'd also be a be against it. But you know, that's why what have you on here, Lloyd? Because, again, you're fighting for the small guy. You know, like when people ask me, how do you promote a podcast and I go, I have no clue. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. So that's why I have people like you, Lloyd. Because you're out there fighting the good fight.
Lloyd Kaufman 24:22
Well, you have a good podcast and you've done 75 or more chapters, episodes. And obviously, whatever you're doing, because of net neutrality and the Democratic level playing field of net neutrality, you're, you're able to attract viewers if you didn't, if your podcasts were not interesting to people they use, you'd be gone.
Dave Bullis 24:45
Well, thanks. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. By the way, your episode. This episode we're recording right now is going to be episode 205. Wow. Can you believe it?
Lloyd Kaufman 24:55
That's great. When will it air?
Dave Bullis 24:57
It's going to air next week. Week. So it'll be plenty of time to, you know, for everyone to hear about the premiere and everything. But you know, I, you know, I saw the video you by the way, Lloyd. I know we're starting to run out of time but I saw a video you you and it was called Kevin or it was called Lloyd Kaufman bothers people at Hugo's premiere. So I have to ask, you know,
Lloyd Kaufman 25:19
What was it again?
Dave Bullis 25:21
It was called Luke coffin bothers Kevin Smith. And it was just, it was no, it was funny. It was, it was good, all good stuff. And I just wanted to ask, you know, you know, growing grassroots campaigns like that, you know, I, you know, I've wanted to have Kevin on this podcast, he seems like such a good guy. Is he a good guy in person? Lloyd.
Lloyd Kaufman 25:41
I don't know him. Well, I certainly admire him. And he certainly one of our greats. But I can tell you, there's a show that he has called comic book men. And they have a episode coming up in the fall, I think with a it's trauma for one of their episodes where they were all there. And it's terrific. It's very funny, and how nice of men and Mang and Brian Johnson and Kevin Smith you know, they were nice to devote an episode to trauma entertainment. Toxie and kabuki man and I and, and I think Katherine Cochran and Elizabeth ambrozy Oh, you know, we had a trauma episodes very, I can't talk too much about it, because I've been pledged to confidentiality. You know, they don't want me to be a spoiler, obviously. But it's a very funny, they did a great job. It's hilarious. So keep an eye out for comic book Men and the trauma. So how nice is Kevin Smith? You know, allow a trauma episode.
Dave Bullis 26:44
And it's speaking of that load, too. You mentioned Toxie. I don't know if you could actually talk about this. But one question I wanted to really ask you is, you know, I know there was a talk about a remake about there was actually be a remake of The Toxic Avenger. How is there any more news about that?
Lloyd Kaufman 27:01
Well, they've got Conrad Vernon as the director. And he is great. He loves trauma. He did the sausage. He did Sausage Party. He did Shrek. He's, he loves movies. You know, he's one of the unique establishment people who actually love movies, and are in it for the art not for the scum soak their red carpet rape culture. So he's a good guy, and you can have a conversation with him. He knows film history, and he's going to do a great job. I I am not confident that the movie ever is. I think their deal runs out make. So so far, they've not put it together. Akiva Goldsman who was the big shot on the case. It's been about 10 years and I think, I think they have not been able to make it happen. They got a couple of a few more months to run. And if they you know, I think it's gonna take a miracle.
Dave Bullis 28:06
Because at some point, John Travolta was was attached to it, right?
Lloyd Kaufman 28:10
They had John Travolta, they had, what's his name? Pumping Iron guy was Arnold, the governor. Yeah. He signed, he signed. Apparently they announced it at the Cannes Film Festival years ago. And then he quickly unsigned for he unsigned because he, he got offered a $60 million remake. He was getting $60 million for a remake of something. One of his maybe it was a Terminator, whatever it was, it was shaped. But unfortunately, that was it. So far, they've come up with nothing. You know, and they, they, I mean, they have Conrad Vernon, he's great. But I think I don't think it's gonna happen. To ship if it had, if it happened, we would have gotten a big check. Or they've got they've got to make so if that's how it goes, we get a big check. And then we can make not only can we make Shakespeare shitstorm which we are making but we wouldn't be able to make the fifth Toxic Avenger, Part Five grime and punishment, which takes a lot of which takes place in Chernobyl. And but we don't have the $800,000 to make toxic five. So I don't think that will get made. I think good Shakespeare's shitstorm might well be in my lap if I get through it if we actually make it the summer. It's very daunting task. Like all movies, movies, Shakespeare shitstorm is $20 million movie being made for three or 400,000. So it's a hell of a project. So that may well be the end of it because I can't keep putting up my wife and my money to make good movies.
Alex Ferrari 30:03
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show
Lloyd Kaufman 30:12
Where the major media and major media not only doesn't give us any outlet for revenue, but doesn't even cover us after 50 years of making movie. I've been doing this for 50 years. And New York Times. Never said never put the word trauma has not been in the New York Times or any newspaper. 25 years. We had our 40th year a couple of years ago, four years ago, no New York media covered it not a word. No Hollywood Reporter No, no variety. You know, there hasn't been an independent movie studio that has existed for 44 years. There hasn't been one in history this done what we've done and left such a mark, the cultural map, right? Look at all the directors from James Gunn, to Eli Roth. To the guys who did Deadpool to Takashi meet gay to the guy who did the stillness, the whatever it is a water, Del Toro, right they all love traumas. Peter Jackson is a trauma fan. Hayao Miyazaki, the guy who did my neighborhood doctor was a huge fan. Right? The Deadpool guys talk more they talk about right you can see their influence of trauma there yet, with the fact that we live for 30 years, survive for 30 years totally independent, totally independently with no, you know, we don't make movies for lifetime, which is a division of one of those conglomerates. We're totally on our own. No, no interest because we don't and we don't have the money to advertise. So the New York Times has no interest in us, nor does the New York Post note it was nor do any of them have the media. The only reason they're interested is when there's some advertising, right variety. If you take a page and variety of advertising, they might give you if you're independent, you might get a little article, you know about what you're doing at the Cannes Film Festival, same with Hollywood Reporter But apparently the you know, we just we are not anything we don't exist. We do not exist return to Newcomb, high volume to return to return to Luca y2k Volume Two, it doesn't exist doesn't matter that Lloyd Kaufman has been making 50 has 50 years of experience making movies like The Toxic Avenger requests of nuclei or squeezely Waitress first turn on movies that have clearly influenced a huge segment of our mainstream talent. And that brought forth Samuel Jackson, Oliver Stone got into this industry because of me. I mean, there are tons of people who wouldn't, who wouldn't be around or who who are heavily influenced by the trauma of yet. Nobody cares. Nothing. We are we are we are not, we don't exist. We do not exist. And it's especially damning. In New York where we've, you know, we own a building, we got to payroll, we've we've made movies in New York State for 50 least I have for 50 years, and the fucking bastards don't even acknowledge that we exist. The critics review us and they always give us very good review and the Museum of Modern artists, premiering returned to New come i and, and the Museum of the Moving Image here premiered return to return to New komyo aka Volume Two, but only the critics of the times are the poster, whatever, give, you know, they pay attention, they review the movie, but again, they when they review the movie, they stick. It's usually stuck in the ghetto, where the guy is making a documentary about a left handed mattress worker or, you know some kid who's made his first horror film and you know, but it's politically correct kind of person that that's, you know, that's called you know, they stick it in the, the section. It's like a ghetto, which and the people reading the paper of the New York Times, you know, they don't even read that section.
Dave Bullis 34:24
Yeah, you know, and that's why again, what I wanted to have you on, I think it's so important to support trauma, because you actually release one of my favorite movies of all time which is cannibal the musical, which is Trey Parker Matt Stone. You know they for everyone listening Casio knew that name those names they do Southpark
Lloyd Kaufman 34:42
We discovered them we discovered them and helped them make cannibal the musical we distributed it nobody else would nobody. We helped them finish it and you'll see the opening of cannibal the musical is very trauma ish and the rest of the movie is much better taste candidates a brilliant film that they were able to use the VHS box to help them get credit, credit credibility. So when they were pitching South Park and all that stuff, gave them a little bit of professional, you know, professional air. And I'm in some of their early I'm in orgazmo. And they're great guys are terrific. They're wonderful. They're great. They were great. But that's only another example of like, when there's an avalanche of people that have come out of trauma. It's unbelievable how we are totally ignored. I still can't get get over. Oh, and then the thing that really pisses me off David is and I again, I'm grateful you know, James Gunn gave me two seconds in his wonderful Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a masterpiece. That's a beautiful film. And I have a two second shot. So all you know, all the recognition I've gotten more recognition for my two seconds in Guardians of the Galaxy than for my 50 years of you know, killing myself to make poultry guys night of the chicken dead or traumas war, or terror firmer. You know, it takes me about five years to make a movie returned to New kamayan Return to return to New Komai aka Volume Two, it's a two part event film similar in the same way that Kill Bill is two volumes. I spent seven years on that. Right the seven years that's all that's the only movie I made in seven years. So you know these people right there get plenty of attention to Suicide Squad, which is plenty of attention to Batman Forever. Plenty of attention to whatever scum white the Weinstein, Robert Redford, Sundance, rape, red carpet worshipping culture of the so called independent world, right that we don't even own the world end of the word independence in any word anymore. Right? The movies, the $12 million movie made by celebrities that get shown at Sundance, that people forget after 10 minutes. That's where the that's what it's all about worshipping Harvey Weinstein up on the right. He's up on the hill and everybody's in. at Sundance, they're all in awe of him and look at the scum. Look at the world they live in. Look at the Robert Redford Sundance Harvey Weinstein worshipping world, right and yet, and yet trauma ignores us. They were ignored. We are ignored. We have been doing this for 44 years. Right? We have a fan base that goes out there and books, our movie theaters. Our fan base are the only reason we're still here. Right? Right. We have a brand new trauma. Trauma is a brand. I don't think people go to see it Fairmont movie, because Paramount's name is on it. In fact, nowadays, that's such a filthy culture that they've got. Right.
Dave Bullis 37:59
You know, I also was talking to some friends Lloyd. And I apologize. I know we're running out of time. But just in just in closing. I know. I know. You have to run. But I was talking
Lloyd Kaufman 38:09
I can give you another 10 minutes. Oh, cool. Awesome. Aiden said that he just came in and said it's okay.
Dave Bullis 38:16
Okay, awesome. I didn't want Hayden to break my legs or anything.
Lloyd Kaufman 38:21
He's the best. It will he loves you. And thank you. He's very thankful that you're giving me some time too and thank you.
Dave Bullis 38:28
Oh, oh, Lord, anytime. Because the first time I ever met you, I remember. I I wanted to like this because there's so many things I wanted to say to you. And we met on the set of cross bearer, which is the film in Philly. And I was just covered in fake blood and you were like, I walked up to you as a Lloyd you're like, please don't get any of that blood on me. Because you were wearing a new jacket. I remember and I was like, oh, sorry. I forgot I was covered in blood. But
Lloyd Kaufman 38:54
Thank you for preserving my jacket.
Dave Bullis 38:56
No problem. Those are the memories I cherish forever. Lloyd. The first. The first memories don't touch me kid. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, I love you. I love it.
Lloyd Kaufman 39:05
At least at least I didn't touch you see? That's what the mainstream right all these agents and facilitators. And and right, it's a successful talk about this. Drain the Swamp. Oh my god, the mainstream cartel? It's a cartel. It's a monopoly. And I don't I think it's just disgusting. And it's a it's hundreds of millions of dollars of lobbying in Washington to get the rules against monopoly changed. And all this worshipping of a conspicuous consumption. You know, the the they'd rather put it, they'd rather publicize a $25,000 wedding cake in the New York Post and talk about the fact that trauma just achieved its 40th anniversary.
Alex Ferrari 39:55
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Lloyd Kaufman 40:04
They'd rather have a piece about Brianna's fur coat and how one of these fashion models in $200,000 dress skirt wardrobe, wants to have the fur coat that the fur coat that Rihanna us has been wearing. Right, just the idea of a fur coat is obscene. But you know, that it's, it's, it's the it is the value system, the E entertainment value system, the the whole, the whole thing is filthy. And we saw back in the 60s. You know, it's, it's money, it's old 99% of the industry. And again, I I think I'm an expert at 99%. And more than 99% of the people in our industry are scum of the earth. They're crooks. They're lazy. They hate movies, they're there for because they think it's easy. And it's a fast, it's an easy and they and they're there for the for the velvet, velvet, ropes. Keep the real people out. There, they're propelled by flying. Sorry about the pun that propelled by flying, you know, business class to the Cannes Film Festival, and then bragging about how Oh, I didn't read my shoe. You know, and, you know, that's a restaurant that they you know, it's like $800 for for people, you know that that's the world they live in? That's the world they live in. Right. Yeah. And, you know, get young people to blow them, you know, casting couches, and, you know, you hear about all that stuff. And it's true. It's disgusting. It's horrible. But the worst of it is, from the from the point of view of art, is that we're getting a world of homogenized baby food. Yes, politically correct, I suppose. And that's good. But that stuff that's going to change the world is not getting to the public.
Dave Bullis 42:14
Yeah, it's a real art.
Lloyd Kaufman 42:16
That genuine artists, yes, there's a tiny amount there's a tiny number. James Gunn, Eli Roth, Jon Voight, you know, those people, the best people in the world, a tiny, tiny number, genuinely love the cinema. But the rest of them, they are going straight to hell, they are gonna burn in hell.
Dave Bullis 42:40
You know, because one of the things that you just touched on was, there's so many people you meet in this industry who call themselves producers, they make a producers card, they pass out at networking events. And you always say, you know, where are these movies that you're making? You know, where are the scripts that that you're, you know, you're talking about where's this work? I, you know, where the hell is all this stuff. If you start to scratch that surface a little bit, Lloyd, you start to see that it's all just a facade built on bullshit. And it's just, it's all about going somewhere and being seen and that's what they really want. They just want to be famous. They don't want to actually put work in they don't love movies or anything else. They will be a storyteller. It's just about being famous. You know what I mean?
Lloyd Kaufman 43:20
Or the Yeah, exactly. Yeah, basically, right. Money, money, power, money and power, money and hookers and mansions and you know, drive around a Rolls Royce that you don't even own no fucked up values. None of them none of them knows that Daniel ortho on is
Dave Bullis 43:42
Or even Takeshi Mecca like you just mentioned. Or you know, like if you mentioned somebody like that or or even Miyazaki like they wouldn't know who those people are.
Lloyd Kaufman 43:51
You have to dumb down your conversation with the people are getting there's a very small number with the greatest people in the world. Conrad Vernon, you can actually talk about movies. You don't have to dumb yourself down. Obviously James Gunn, obviously. Trent Hager loves movies and loves, you know, you can have a conversation without Don't you know, you have to dumb yourself down for the so called professionals. Now the gatekeepers the gatekeepers?
Dave Bullis 44:23
Yeah. And that's why I you know, I'm glad to see you're still making movies, Lloyd. And, you know, so you know, return to return Nukem high volume to you actually just announced the date at the Trocadero theater theater here in Philly. You know, and you haven't going TO to having a premiere out in Los Angeles as well as the Beverly Hills. And I also want to link everybody in the show notes to all those theaters. We can buy tickets online, you go on,
Lloyd Kaufman 44:50
How is it possible? How is it possible that Romeo and Juliet written by James Gunn that way selected by the Museum of Modern Art to be in their Shakespeare series. They only showed three Romeo and Juliet movies, one of which was to Romeo and Juliet. How is it possible that movie has never been on on any TV or any of the show times in HBOs and blah blah blah? How is it possible that returned to Nokia my seven years of my life which is a very well reviewed the time New York Times liked it. The critics they're certainly don't do us any favors. They wrote a great review. It's never been on any cable system. Nothing totally blackballed. Only because we're independent. How is that right? That's right. There's plenty of shit they put on. Right? They got plenty of shit. They got some good stuff to HBO, Showtime, whatever. The only one that showed any of our movies in the last 20 years. The only thing the only kind of broadcast we've been on was Robert Rodriguez, his channel El Rey, and he's a filmmaker. He's an artist and he loves trauma. And he's, he's one of the people that really love movies. Yeah. But, you know, why is it you know, it's a cartel. It's a monopoly. It's disgusting. And thank you, David Budos for helping us promote blehm Lee's fine art cinema mark, march 8 and LendLease Noho. Seven clicks March 9 to 13th in LA and I'll be there with the cast. And I think we're gonna see some from James Gunn, and John voids making a video and Trent haga will have celebrities trauma alumni there, the cast Katherine Cochran, and other Zakka Miko and some of our stars will be there. It's going to be great. We have an art show by the way. The hyena gallery in Burbank has organized an art show for a month of March with all the paintings and sculptures are all inspired by returned to Newcomb high and returned to new comer. Hi, sorry, returned to return to New Kumite. About 20 artists have created paintings and sculpture all inspired by the class of nuclear my legacy the franchise or whatever you want to call it. And then there's going to be a big party on the ninth of March at the club Cobra, which is a club next to very almost next door to the lovely Noho in North Hollywood. So it's going to be quite a trauma festival. And then march 1, you go to the Trocadero, I'll be there with Katherine and, and some of the stars. And we're going to have a great premiere at the Trocadero in Philadelphia for return to return to New coma, aka volume two. And this is all thanks to our fans. Our fans go to the theaters and tell the managers they want to. They want Lloyd's movie. And so if there any fans there, thank you. And thank you for going if they're fans listening, and now go to your local cinema I can very often show up.
Dave Bullis 48:08
Yeah, and I'm going to link to the shownotes everybody where you know, you can go to the screen, or you can go to your local theater, and you know, ask for Lloyds movie there. And then you can actually do that. So I'm going to link to all that in the show notes. Lloyd. I get thank you for going over the time, by the way. I know.
Lloyd Kaufman 48:24
Hold on. Hold on one second, please. Oh, wait. Yeah, let's wrap it up. I see that. Something's happening here. Can you I've run over. But thank you very much.
Dave Bullis 48:35
My pleasure, Lloyd. And again, I can't wait to have you back on again. When you when you make Shakespeare's shitstorm. We'll have you back on for the third time. That'll be the trifecta.
Lloyd Kaufman 48:44
Wonderful. And come and visit Tomago one of these days.
Dave Bullis 48:48
I am going to take you up on that. I want to go to York. Give you a tour. And I want to take you to lunch. I want to I want I want to come up there and I want to take you to lunch Lloyd.
Lloyd Kaufman 48:56
Beautiful. Let's do it. Anytime. That's great. And you'll get a kick out of trauma visiting we get a lot of tourists, too. They just ring the doorbell and come visit the trauma building and beautiful Long Island City queens. Alrighty, see you soon, David. Thanks.
Dave Bullis 49:11
Take care, Lloyd. Best wishes. Bye bye, everybody. Bye!
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Alex Ferrari 0:06
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff.
Jason Buff 1:36
On this episode, I'm talking with Jeremy Gardener and Christian Stella about their films, the battery and text Montana will survive. We'll talk about all the stuff that went into making the battery the difficulties of making a really, really low budget independent film the cold hard reality of being an indie filmmaker today, as well as the new way they've approached distribution for their newest feature. So get comfortable, you might want a nice cold beverage or some tea, you know, maybe some aroma in the room, maybe some lavender some some Jakar and lar and enjoy this episode, because I had a good time talking with these guys to record the show. Yeah, just a few episodes.
Jeremy Gardner 2:17
Yeah, I've been subscribed for a while. But then I went on a tangent and subscribe to every podcast ever. And now I can't remember what I'm supposed to listen to.
Jason Buff 2:25
I used to like my favorite way to learn filmmaking, aside from DVD commentaries was listening to podcasts, you know, because you can sit there for a good hour and a half listening to a filmmaker and you'd never get that access on just like interviews and stuff.
Jeremy Gardner 2:40
That's literally how Yeah, that was one of my big tools. When I was deciding I wanted to make the battery was podcasts. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I started back with creative screenwriting, Jeff Goldsmith's podcast. Yeah. And I listen to a ton of those. And then I just went, what else is there and downloading everything?
Jason Buff 2:59
What are the ones did you listen to my my big one, because I was trying to make a film in 2012. That didn't end up happening. But I would listen to one called film method all the time. And it was to two women that were like, they had already made their own film. And they were just interviewing people that had worked on it and talked about it, but they stopped recording it in 2012. So it was like, all of a sudden just came to an end, but it's the void now, well, that's kind of what I based mine off of was just the idea that I want to learn stuff and people want to you know, they want to hear what actually goes into filmmaking, you know, instead of like these kind of generic conversations, you know, I like to go into, you know, the nuts and bolts, money issues, technical, you know, the cameras that were used and stuff like that. So
Jeremy Gardner 3:41
No, absolutely. I mean, it's that's the important stuff. And that's, that's why I listen to watch every behind the scenes extra on every DVD I had for years. And I listened to director's notes for a long time. I don't know if you know that podcast that was Yeah. Gosh, there was another one.
Kristian Stella 3:57
I'm a I'm like a big YouTube and Vimeo guy. Like, I've watched a lot of a lot of the camera geeks on there, you know, and all those camera reviews and tests. Like I love Philip Bloom. Uh huh. Yeah. Whom is like my hero.
Jason Buff 4:11
Yeah, he's, there's a lot I think most of this stuff, because I also do. I'm an amateur cinematographer, you know, so I just sit there and watch everything about lighting tutorials, and everything about lenses and whatever, you know, I don't think it's like you don't even need to go to school anymore. If you've got an internet connection. Oh, absolutely. Get on it. You know,
Kristian Stella 4:30
I mean, that's I mean, everything that we everything that I did technically for the battery, and now takes Montana has been through tutorials is insane. Like, I mean, I was just telling Jeremy the other day, I was like, Well, I'm trying to fix a couple shots and text Montana color wise. So I'm like, I have time to watch another 20 hour DaVinci Resolve tutorial.
Jeremy Gardner 4:52
Yeah, I spend most of my time listening to screenwriter interviews and stuff too, because back when I didn't think I could actually make a movie. I just wanted to be able to Write a script. And just just to hear different processes is amazing, because no one does it the same way. And so you'll start to think that your, your writing routine is weird. And then you'll listen to 20 Different people say that there's 20 different variations on some same thing. So it doesn't matter. It's just getting, it's just putting the work in.
Jason Buff 5:19
I mean, that's one of the things that I just recently put up a blog post about the creative process. And there's a bunch of videos, about screenwriters only talking about the creative end, you know, and how they schedule out their day and how they actually write, you know, and it's it. It was nice to hear almost all of them say, Well, I spend most of the morning procrastinating. And then when I start hating myself, kind of sit down, and I'll start writing, you know, so you realize that everybody that has this drive to write screenplays, or to write anything, they're all kind of fighting with themselves, you know?
Jeremy Gardner 5:52
Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a daily grind. And but you know, the thing that I've unfortunately, the thing I've taken away from every single interview I've, I've heard is that the, you know, the successful writers are the ones who treat it like a day job. They know that they have going to put in a certain amount of hours every day in the seat, but in seat and just writing and, boy, just getting your butt in the seat is the hardest part for me, because I will find everything else to do
Jason Buff 6:16
when you started screenwriting, what were the resources that you found were the most helpful,
Jeremy Gardner 6:23
you know, it's funny, I started probably very similar to a lot of people I found a Syd field, you know, screenplay book from God knows when it was all yellowed and old, for like 25 cents in a used bookstore. And, you know, people kind of laugh off those those manuals, but that really helped me understand the structure, and the formatting. And then once you get that down, it's just about reading other screens. I just read as many screenplays as I could and you start to see how you go, Okay, well, this is the structure but I can tweak it to make it you read a certain way that I want to read and I like to write mine with absolutely zero camera interaction at all I really like almost write like a prose story where it just flows.
Kristian Stella 7:08
Yeah, they say Jeremy Jeremy screenplays sometimes read like novels. It's kind of,
Jeremy Gardner 7:12
But he's gorgeous, but sparse novel, they're not like dense. Like I have a rule, I refuse to have any action beat go over four sentences, I will not do it. Because I know people skim. So I have little rules for myself. And I don't like to, I don't like to break up sequences with like interiors, and exteriors, I kind of like to try to let them flow into each other and just just drop maybe while he walks into. And then the next line the bathroom, there's no like, interior the bathroom. Because you want to just keep a pace and the kind of momentum going I'm really about readability. Because when it's so hard for me to read some screenplays, they're just so dense, and just so much stuff on the page.
Jason Buff 7:50
Yeah, I think that a lot of people think that you have to follow very strict codes, you know, and what I've learned from talking to other screenwriters is that, you know, as long as you're telling the story, and as long as you're bringing people into the movie that you can kind of do whatever you want to, you know, you have to have a certain amount of structure. But there's a lot of leeway with that.
Jeremy Gardner 8:07
No, there really is, there's no like I said, That's what I like about John August and Craig Mason, you know, they'll they'll talk to you about the nuts and bolts on their podcasts all the time. But for the most part, every rule that someone tells you that you can't break, they will just say no, that's not true. If that were the case, we wouldn't have this movie or that movie, or this movie or whatever. So you can break whatever rule you want. If you're writing a good story,
Jason Buff 8:26
So what what would your typical day be? You know, talking about screenwriting? Like do you have to set like a date that you're going to finish by? Or do you just sit like sit down? Do you do you do a bunch of writing out notes and blueprints what what kind of is the
Jeremy Gardner 8:39
I'm so weird when it comes to writing it's well, you know, unfortunately, I have not had to write on a deadline yet, I have not, you know, taken a job where it needs to be in by this time. So it's very hard for me to manufacture my own my own deadlines. So typically, I will just start writing, I will just start writing and then I'll write I'll do what's like a beat sheet, where I will write down just slug lines of the scenes that I know are going to happen up until a point where I don't know anymore. And then I'll go and I'll start writing that. And then the net, I was telling someone the other day, I think I was telling your wife, Christian, that I if you look through my notebooks, you will see the same beat sheet written over and over and over again. And I don't know why I do it. I will go back after writing like 10 or 15 pages. And I will write again, the same beat sheet of the scenes. And I'll maybe add a little bit in between or I'll reorganize them. But for the most part, I think it's just me re familiarizing myself with where I'm at. And then hopefully something will spring up and I'll add another beat to the end of that thing. And then I'll go back and start writing again. And I'll take walks and lots of showers and just i i ruminate on it a lot. I think I think you get a lot more writing done when you're not writing than you actually think. Yeah.
Alex Ferrari 9:54
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Kristian Stella 10:03
Lots of Starbucks trips, oh, yeah,
Jeremy Gardner 10:06
I have a weird thing about being able to write in the place I live. There's something about being there as often as I am there. It's just like I can't, I can't disconnect myself from just the routine of living in the home. So I need to try to get out of it as much as possible.
Jason Buff 10:22
Yeah, I think that's, that's a lot of people have told me. I mean, I'm the same way too. I cannot. I'm here in my office right now. I've tried to write here. And it just doesn't happen. You know. So I'll go off to Starbucks. And I'll sit there. And when you don't have all the distraction, that's when you say, okay, I can sit here and actually do the hard part, which is, you know, the word focusing on it. Yeah,
Jeremy Gardner 10:42
Yeah, there's something about the chatter of being in a public place. I like that kind of white noise of people talking and just the mumbling in the in the ruckus of just people moving around, that helps to other than silence. Another problem I have with writing, which people should not do is, I wake up every day when I sit down to write and I go back and tinker with everything I've already written. So I will kill an hour or two hours just perfecting what's already written. So you know, in a good way, when the script is finally done, it's been it's been polished in a way that it's like it's a second or third draft, but it takes so long to get to that final draft because I just go back and move commas and moving commas is not writing.
Jason Buff 11:24
Do you do one like, you know, as they say, vomit draft? Do you try to get like one first draft down? And then go back?
Jeremy Gardner 11:30
No, no, that's what I wish I could do. I really wish I could just move just barrel ahead and not worry about what happened before. But I cannot I keep going back, and tinkering and tweaking. And then And then hopefully, by the time like when if I wake up and I tinker with the pages I wrote the day before. Hopefully, by the time I get to the end of those, I've kind of pushed myself into the process a little bit.
Jason Buff 11:53
So how did you guys meet? You guys have been friends for a while. Right? And where are you from?
Kristian Stella 11:57
We're both we're both from Central Florida. You know, we're like, right outside Disney World. But we met when we were kids, basically. I mean, I was definitely a kid. I was like 13 or something. And we started making movies back then. And that was kind of our film school, which was it was also a regular school because we dropped out of school.
Jeremy Gardner 12:15
We started education system.
Kristian Stella 12:17
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's like staying in school in Florida. But yeah, we just started making movies back then like with like a $500 Sony Handycam and what year are we talking here?
Jason Buff 12:27
Just so I know.
Jeremy Gardner 12:29
Let me think about this. We shot the bags in 2000.
Kristian Stella 12:32
Okay, okay. So this is pre HD. Yes, definitely. It was like almost pre computer editing. Like, I still remember buying a hard drive for like $500 for like a like a 40 gigabyte hard drive.
Jeremy Gardner 12:46
I mean, we were cutting out when we cut in our shorts before we did the bags on like, like VHS to VHS like,
Kristian Stella 12:51
Oh, you're on a VCR. We were we were editing VCR to VCR when like in 1996 or seven or something. But yeah, so we just did that we we made some features with my sister, and got gotten into some film festivals. And then we became adults and we had to get jobs. That was Yeah, so that was like a just like an entire decade where we just, you know, waited tables and so on.
Jeremy Gardner 13:20
Yeah, we didn't do much for 10 years, and then we kind of moved apart and then I was trying to Well, I'm gonna go pound the pavement as an actor. And then that got really demoralizing really quickly and I had spent a lot of time like we were talking about watching those DVD extras and reading those interviews and listening to those podcasts and thinking you know what, I think it's about time to get the band back together the technology had finally caught up and I started to believe that there was a way to make a movie that could stand you know, against real quote unquote real movies now so I felt like we should jump back in it because that was the thing about our early movies even though they were fun and you know, we played festival I remember the director that Sarasota Film Festival telling us you know, I'm going to put your movie in this festival but because it's clear that you guys made a real movie but it's also very clear that you have absolutely no money because you it's just the quality was so
Kristian Stella 14:08
He said it was the first movie they had ever played that wasn't shot on film. So okay, it was crazy.
Jeremy Gardner 14:14
I mean, he was even talking about like maybe having a micro budget Features section in following festivals because we he just didn't know what to do with us. So that by the time the the technology caught up was like okay, well we can make something that you could literally play in a theater and people wouldn't be like oh, well was it shot on my face?
Jason Buff 14:37
Yeah, I mean that I definitely know that feeling because I mean, I think I'm a little older than you guys but you know, when I was in film school, it was like that was the only option we could only we could shoot on 16 millimeter and like spend everything we had you know, and like spend 30 It was easy to spend like 30,000 bucks on a little crappy 16 millimeter film because you had to send it off to to the lab, or the other option was to shoot on VHS. So there's a lot of people, you know, now that are coming back to it after it's like, everybody realized, Okay, now the technology is caught up all these people that couldn't make films when they were, you know, college age are coming back to it, you know?
Jeremy Gardner 15:16
Yeah, absolutely. It's such a it's such a democratic process. Now. It's it was like the art that no one was allowed to get in unless you had permission or money. And now that's not the case.
Jason Buff 15:26
Right! Okay, so you went to where did you go? You went to New York area, or where were you at?
Jeremy Gardner 15:32
Yeah, actually, Christian's dad got a show on the Food Network, and moved up to New England, Connecticut area to shoot the show. And he was like, you know, he's like a second father to me. So he's like, Hey, I know, you want to be an actor. We're gonna go live, like 40 minutes away from New York City, if you want to come live with us. So I, like hugged my family, goodbye and moved. Moved up there for 12 years
Kristian Stella 15:56
He moved up there with me. And then within like, six months of me living up there, I was like, I want to move back to Florida, and then left him with my parents.
Jeremy Gardner 16:04
And then their entire family ended up moving back to Florida and I stayed I was there just until this last until this last October, but I can't I gotta get out of Florida. I can't, I can't take it.
Jason Buff 16:19
So you were like, what on the couch or something for up in there? And
Jeremy Gardner 16:22
Oh, no, there. No, I had a, they had a room for me. They had I mean, it was like I was their second their third child. So it was a great living situation. And then I ended up you know, I got a job and I got my own place. And I moved in with a girl. And you know, I settled in up there when they all left, I need seasons, I was just talking about how I can't, I can't deal with this warm winter down here. It's creeping me out. I'm a very seasonally, you know, creative person, if if it's nice out all the time, all I want to do is do fun stuff. I kind of need those dark, cold winter months to get a little, you know, to turn my thoughts inward and helps to create and read and
Jason Buff 17:04
focus maybe snow every once in a while.
Jeremy Gardner 17:07
It's so nice. I just,
Kristian Stella 17:08
I just want to be able to drive to the store without like driving my car off a sheet of ice. That just flipped me out. I stopped driving for like four years when I lived up there. Because I mean, I only lived up there for two years, but I just refuse to drive on the snow. And then I got scared of driving in general, because I was like I haven't driven it for months.
Jason Buff 17:27
Alright, so let's let's focus on filmmaking wind. When was the I mean, what was the kind of seed that got you guys started with the battery? What Where did that kind of begin? Well, there was this
Jeremy Gardner 17:37
online, kind of they were going to, there was a site called massify, that was going to make a movie completely through the community. So they were taking pitches for scripts, and then they were taking director videos. And then they were casting all through this website. So I sent in I was I made an audition video. And I wanted to make it kind of like a short film. So it stood out. So I made this little two minute short about a guy and his friend who kind of document their day to day life in a zombie apocalypse world, this little two minute nothing video, and nothing ever came of that site or that movie, I believe it became Perkins 14, one of the eight films to die for in that series, or whatever it was. But um, but I couldn't shake the idea of this, like just two guys wandering around in the woods, in a post apocalyptic situation. And so then I started thinking about, well, the way you if you're going to make a no budget movie, it's the way you should do it is you should, you should tailor it to what you have. And in my mind, that is right. But after a word from story, you could write a creative story around any situation. So now back to the shop, no money. What's the what's the way to do that? Well, okay, we'll just shoot it in the woods, right? And then if there are zombie, there are people trying to avoid zombies? Well, if they're smart, they're going to avoid cities. So there'll be in the woods and that way we could get around all that stuff. And it just kind of came became a way for me to take the zombie genre and turn it inward and focus on how two different minds would would be affected by that rather than do this big, grand, you know, macro scale, the whole world is dying. Yeah. And
Kristian Stella 19:11
at the same time that like he's thinking about getting back into film. I had I had become a food photographer, and the best food photography camera was the five d. So I had a five d mark, too. So I already had the camera that was like changing the the indie filmmaking world. I just so happened to have to have that for my job. So it was like the kind of perfect storm is as he was thinking about this movie. I had the equipment to make a movie, sort of when I had the camera waste.
Alex Ferrari 19:50
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Jeremy Gardner 19:59
you So that's basically where it started just just just tailoring a story to what I knew would be cheap. And you know, there was a long time where I could not convince anybody that you could make a movie for the kind of money I was talking about. I just couldn't I remember I was introduced to some, like rich guy at a bar. And he started talking to me like a big wig. And as soon as I mentioned $6,000, he just laughed and walked away.
Jason Buff 20:27
So that was, yeah, that happens a lot.
Jeremy Gardner 20:29
Well, it doesn't happen as much anymore. You know, it's people are coming around to the fact that movies can be made for nothing.
Jason Buff 20:35
Well, you know, the funny thing that I run into is, so many people think that they need, you know, 100,000 or $200,000, to make, you know, a little indie movie. And it's ridiculous,
Jeremy Gardner 20:45
it frustrates me to no end, I've seen so many people just waste money, they just waste money. And I don't understand, like, the whole my whole concept going into this was, look, I believe we can do this. But if we can't, if it doesn't work, and I get the money, I got the money from like, 10 different people. So it'd be like little chunks of $600. So nobody was going to be broke. No one's gonna lose their house. And no one's gonna hate me. That was it's just like, just, you know, hedge your bets, right? Something that you believe in that you could do for an incredibly small amount, and then don't don't break anybody don't lose any friends over it. Had you been acting before? Yeah, I've always been like more of a writer and an actor I did. I did a bunch of plays when I went up there up to the north. And, you know, I was always the actor in our movies, when we were making them younger. I was in all the plays in high school. So I wanted to be an actor, or a writer. And it wasn't until I got the confidence from listening to all these interviews with other filmmakers and watching movies and starting to understand them more that I was like, Well, you know, I can I can, I'm just going to direct this thing. I'm just going to do this thing straight through, it's gonna be my little, my little creature. But it was really it took a long time for me to say, I'm directing this because I had never been in those shoes before.
Jason Buff 21:54
Sorry, Christian, you were gonna say something? Oh, I
Kristian Stella 21:56
was just gonna say the other thing about budgets is that I think it's hard thing for people to wrap their head around that equipment can be rented, you know. And like, in fact, it always is rented in large budgets even. So like, that was one of the things that people come up and they're like, you know, you guys couldn't have made that movie for $6,000. It's like, it cost more for the equipment. I'm like, I mean, I used a Zeiss lens, but it was $150 to rent it for the whole shoot. So there's always so the only thing I owned was the camera. And even that would have been $250 to rent. Right? So you know, I think that even that seems to be a barrier of entry for people. But it shouldn't be. It's not.
Jason Buff 22:34
Yeah, it's funny because I you know, I've shot a couple of shorts down here, my cameras, I've only got a 60 D. And I've got a couple of friends who I've got one friend who has a five d Mart three, and has never used it. Like it was a gift from her husband. Oh, and so I'm just like, hey, do you mind if we borrow your camera for this shoot, and you know, whatever. And she's like, Yeah, sure, whatever, I don't care. I've never even I don't even know how to turn it on. So it's just like the equipment now has there's no barrier, you know?
Kristian Stella 23:03
I mean, I'm shooting on a Canon C 100. Now, and I let my friend borrow it all the time. And he's another filmmaker. Yet. Meanwhile, he went and shot a feature on an iPhone. And I was like, why don't you just borrow my camera? And he's like, I was afraid to ask. So now he borrows it all the time.
Jason Buff 23:21
Yeah, I know that he knows. Yeah, I
Jeremy Gardner 23:23
think that just I think people also, I mean, one of the hardest things for me to do is ask for favors. I'm really bad at asking for favors, but you'd be amazed the amount of things that you can get just asking. I mean, even just you know, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we were shooting something new for to add into tax Montana. And we we'd like put a budget aside for okay, if these people want money, here's what we're willing to spend. And then we go there and then we introduce ourselves, we tell them what we're doing. And then they just let us do it for free. And it's just it's amazing. Like how how often you can find, you know, the things that you need, just from through people's generosity, everyone just balloons up in their, in their mind what these budgets have to be and they just they really don't have to be that big, especially for your first one.
Jason Buff 24:11
Now, can you guys talk a little bit about the filmmaking process. I know you've talked a lot about the making of the battery. But can you just talk you know for indie filmmakers, can you talk about the process that you went through to create that the production maybe a little bit of pre production and the production process?
Kristian Stella 24:29
Well, yeah, we allowed to curse. Yeah, go ahead. I was a bit of a shit show.
Jeremy Gardner 24:36
But it was a lot of shit. Yeah, well, that okay. Well, that's the one thing that should be should be very much noted is that we, you know, for the longest time because Christian was down in Florida and I was up in up in Connecticut, kind of on my own trying to get this thing going. And I'm not a producer. Like I said, I'm very bad at asking for people for things from people. And I finally had to set an arbitrary date I said, you know all Just first we're doing this thing. That's it. August 1 is the date. And, you know, I got location squared away. But you know, between casting zombies and getting all the props together and trying to work out a schedule, which I'd never worked out a movie schedule before, these things were just like, beyond my grasp a little bit. And so that really, really hurt us in the actual production was that we just, we had about three full days of pre production. Once Christian got up there, we had three days to buy all the props, get all the zombies, like in order, get the crew, you know, our small crew shot list shot lists up to where we were shooting. So if there's anything to be learned is plan as much as you can before you get to set because everything will go wrong when you get to set. And if you if you plan for the things that you can, that you can fix, then when everything else goes to shit, you'll be ahead of the game. Meanwhile,
Kristian Stella 25:57
meanwhile, I only ever shot like two silent four minute short films. Before I got up there. I was still reading how to how to use the camera when I got up there because I was like, I mean, I know how to do photography, but I did not know cinematography at all, I
Jason Buff 26:12
saw the clip of I haven't seen the full documentary behind the scenes. But I saw the you're looking at that book Master master shot master shot. And I thought that was kind of a joke. But was that were you like actually not
Kristian Stella 26:23
a genre. And those books are awesome to master shots. Yeah, great.
Jeremy Gardner 26:28
But that's the thing too, is like, you have to just there has to be kind of a blind, youthful confidence when you go into something like this. Because if you think about all the ways in which you can fail, you just won't do it. You know, and it's like, I know, Christian is talented in a way that I'm not I know he's, he's going to solve any technical problem that we run into. And I I have faith in my acting and my writing and understanding of what I want the story to look like. And it's like, at some point, you're gonna run into stuff you don't really know. But as long as you keep it to a manageable budget, like I said, if you screw up, whatever, you know what, no one's no one's gonna die. So you just have to have this kind of blind confidence and just go in and do it, I think is learn as much as you can from all the free information that's out there. And then just do it. Because, man, if you really think about all the ways you could screw it up, just you might as well just wait tables.
Kristian Stella 27:20
Yeah, and I mean, no one's no one's come back, and like called me on the shots that are out of focus, or the shots, they're overexposed, and all this other stuff that I can see in that like paying me, nobody calls you on that as long as the movie is a good story, and is competent, most of the time, you know, like, as long as you're telling the story, and it's, it looks competent, um, you can get away with a little bit of that, at least at first. I mean, at least specially if you're making it yourself. And I think
Jeremy Gardner 27:50
I think passionately told to is a big thing too. It's like, you can tell when you're watching something, if it's if it's somebody just trying to cash in trying to grab a quick book, somebody just just doing an homage to some splatter thing that they've seen, or if someone just really genuinely is putting themselves out there. And I will give anything a pass if I can see the
Jason Buff 28:11
passion in it, that it was there a lot of ad lib on the set. You know, it's
Jeremy Gardner 28:15
funny, I get that a lot and the script is so we cast we cast Adam Adam was the theatrically trained actor, so it was a little bit harder to get him to come out of his shell. So basically, what you see in every scene is almost completely as scripted. But then I as the director being in the scene would let the let the scenes run longer. And I would start trying to throw him off at the end. So most of the ad libs will come from tags at the end of the scenes as written. Because once we would get once I would know in my mind that we were reaching the end of the scripted portion that Adam knew I would kind of throw in a curveball and see if he would follow me. So there are definitely definitely some ad libs in there and some goofy kind of asides, but for the most part that is a that is a written as a written movie. I'm just so naturally you can even tell ya know, it's mind blowing you know all the little weird things like fuck you sir. Fuck you to death at the end. You know, the see that that's a tag. There's a scene where we're, we're playing catch, and I just do a weird dancing like, boop, boop, boop. That was a whole dialogue scene about like, we'll start our own like place and we'll we'll let people in there and we'll decide who gets to. And it just was coming off really stilted because we were playing catch up. And so I just, I just said, Screw it. I'm just gonna do a weird song and dance. And then that was what we used instead. One of
Jason Buff 29:37
the things that I think syncs films and one of the things that you guys do really well is everything's very, it feels very natural. And one of the problems that I have with a lot of the things that are coming out now is the acting just you know, that's like the first thing you notice is just people reading lines. You don't really feel like a scene as is actually taking place. Well, I
Jeremy Gardner 29:54
mean, it obviously all starts with casting. I mean, you gotta get somebody who can do it. Right off the bat you got to know They can do it.
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Jeremy Gardner 30:11
But it's also about letting the actors you know, feel out there feel their way through the scene, you know, I didn't get to do that much of it on this because it was our first time and, and, you know, and I was in the scenes, but there's a part about it, that's if you put an actor in a box, and you tell them that they can't go here, here or here. And it has to be like this, this or that, then they're going to you're going to stifle they're their instrument, their one thing that they have, which is trying to feel confident enough to fail, not be embarrassed to try something crazy. And you know, there's something about kind of going through the scene before you shoot and letting the the actor go where they naturally would want to be. And then framing your shot around that is an easier way to get them to feel comfortable doing something that they would naturally do.
Kristian Stella 31:01
Yeah, I would say that like, the the wide shots in the battery, were extremely helpful to the fact that like they, they had a ton of room to move around. And then on top of that, like there's just something for me personally, um, when you when you look at like the digital video, because even like the five d it's great, but it's still video superduper close ups of people just feel soap opera ish. So like, even just just shooting wider like that makes it feel more cinematic, which in turn actually helps your performance. Like there's just something about, like those, those ultra macro close ups where you can see every pore on their face, that makes it feel more like you're watching a movie and that like like you can see the acting because it's your right up in the face.
Jeremy Gardner 31:53
I mean, those are necessary for a certain if you're going for a certain style. But I would also say that even though I said the script is you know, this movie's pretty scripted, I made very clear from the get go that it I'm not precious about my words. That's another way to that that's that's a surefire way to get a stilted performance is if an actor doesn't, can't feel the line, the way it feels natural coming out of their mouth. And yet they feel like they're, they're tied to that, that verbatim. So just whatever we feel, I mean, I was literally reading a script last night for a role I'm going to do and as I was reading it, I was changing words in the moment, and then writing those words down on the script. Because the way it's written didn't sound natural, I couldn't quite make it flow in a natural way. But if I just tweaked this word, change that word, then suddenly it starts to come out more naturally, you know, in the way that I've analyzed that chair. So
Kristian Stella 32:43
weren't, you weren't like precious about actions at all, either. So it's like that, that'd be the other thing. Like, we didn't really we weren't precious about locations or actions, we'd be like, hey, you know what this location is not working out, let's, let's move over to this location. And let's, hey, maybe they're playing catch in this scene where they weren't playing catch. Or maybe they're doing this in this scene? Yeah, it certainly
Jeremy Gardner 33:05
works for a certain kind of movie, the more I think, just the more freedom you can give an actor to feel like they can move about find the character, find the characters gate and rhythm, and and feel their way through the set. Then you're just gonna get it's just gonna get better, the more the more they feel natural and lived in in the moment, the more natural performance you're gonna get.
Jason Buff 33:26
You know, it reminded me a lot of gym Jeremy rush. I don't know if you guys have ever Absolutely. Well, thank you
Jeremy Gardner 33:32
very much. That's, that's a good compliment. Yeah, I just just lived in is what I always go for. I mean, I always say that, I will tweak the dialogue until it until I can read it, where it doesn't feel like it's being read anymore. And then I'll say throw it all out. If it doesn't work for you just just get, you know, the point of the scene, right? You know, the, the intent of the scene, and then just get there any way that feels right. And if you have actors who are quick on their feet, if one actor goes a certain way to try to get to the same point in a different way, then the other actor will follow and let them follow. And then
Kristian Stella 34:06
if that doesn't work in the editing room, throw it out. Because we did a lot of that too. Right?
Jason Buff 34:12
Were you working with a lot of non actors? I mean, I assume most of the zombies were just friends, right?
Jeremy Gardner 34:17
Yeah, all the zombies were non actors. Unfortunately, that's, you know, they're not only were they non actors, but they were young. We get that a lot that well, all the zombies in this movie are the same age as the Yeah, I get it. Yeah, we should have cast a more diverse set of extra money. But like I said, we didn't do good enough pre production. So that goes back to that.
Jason Buff 34:38
Well, talking about for a second about the technical aspects. I want to talk to Christian for a second about you know, in terms of the way you approach this, I assume most of its natural light. Can you talk about kind of the what you were using? I know you're with the five d mark two and you said a Carl Zeiss lens. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach that?
Kristian Stella 34:58
The craziest thing about But the movie was that we knew that the last third of it takes place in the back of a station wagon. So we needed a super wide lens. So I ended up renting a Zeiss 21 millimeter that on the full frame five d m, that ended up kind of creating the whole look for the movie because it was such a better lens than any that I had, that I tried to use it as often as possible. So then, you know, we already knew we wanted to shoot super wide, but then shooting with the 21 millimeter, just really, really opened it up even further. So much. So in fact that we, we actually we didn't shoot with the intention of having the movie be to 35 one we actually cropped it in post as an afterthought, like it was just that we realized, wow, these The shots are so wide and they looked much better cropped. And it once again, like helped with the film look that we were trying to achieve. So ya know, as far as lighting, I just had, like a $50 LED light that was battery operated because we were in the woods, we had no power. It was only using a couple scenes. And then the I mean obviously the most important thing I had was one of those variable ND filters because so much of it was shot outside in sunlight. And that's the one thing that I noticed whenever I get sent something now someone's like, Hey, can you review this Can you review this, their shutter speed is all like It's first time filmmaker, the shutter speed is all over the place. And if you get that Saving Private Ryan look from shooting at a high shutter speed. So other than that, we I didn't really have much equipment. I didn't even have a fluid video head on on the battery. I mean, it was crazy. I had an $80 shoulder rig from optika Oh yeah, that was that was that was it I had a plastic tripod that I bought at BestBuy. So, ya know, I was unprepared. But, you know, we wanted most of the shots to be static. So, you know, I didn't think I needed a fluid video head and all those other things. And we didn't quite have the budget. So
Jason Buff 37:20
yeah. So what what were the major things that if you could go back in time, you think would have made things a lot easier for you
Kristian Stella 37:29
a steadicam? Because we had discussed it, everything's going to be stationary. But then you know, you start making the movie and it's like, oh, well just, you know, follow along. We're gonna walk down this hill over these rocks and, you know, just walk behind us and that kind of stuff. I mean, my I might ask was saved in post by premieres warp stabiliser. And that's, this is just not something you want to rely on. Especially like, you know, it has artifacts and so on that I can see. But we had to do it because we didn't have a steadicam. Although like on the last day of the shoot, one of the producers was like, I got a Steadicam in my trunk. I wanted to stab him. I absolutely wanted to stab him.
Jeremy Gardner 38:15
And I would say just, you know, there are certain things about the fact that we didn't get to, we didn't really know how to plan, a shoot schedule. So there are some, there were some days where we were just overloaded with things we had to get. I mean, when we had the only other two actors in the movie, Alana O'Brien and Niels Bala, they we had them scheduled on the same day, because they're both coming from New York. And that's 14 pages of dialogue, you know, and then it's raining. And then it's, you know, the night is approaching. And it's just one of those things where you start to feel, you don't want to feel like you're losing control, you're set when you have actors there. And once the elements get involved, it's just like, we should never have scheduled both of those actors on the same day that many pages in one day, but we just had no idea how to schedule the film. And we had such a little amount of time to do it. So
Kristian Stella 39:03
a backup audio recorder would have helped on that day, because our audio recorder fried. And we had no other option to record audio. And we waited two hours to get one and then finally gave up and recorded using the mono mic on the SLR. So yeah, that would have I mean, we would have not just saved the audio quality of that scene. But we would have saved the two hours while we were waiting for someone with a video camera to come that had XLR inputs.
Jason Buff 39:33
Right. But it's another thing that you guys did that, you know, a lot of indie filmmakers forget about is you hired a guy to be your 100% sound guy, you know, and that makes a big difference.
Jeremy Gardner 39:45
Absolutely. Absolutely. That was you know, that's the, you know, I think throughout our little weird troupe of filmmakers since you know since we've been kids.
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Jeremy Gardner 40:06
We've all kind of had our own specialty, but none of us have ever been sound guys, do you know that that is a very specialized area to go into. So when I was the one thing I did do, right in pre production was, I put an ad out and I for a sound guy, and I said, Look, I got a little bit scratched to give you and I can give you a little back end in the movie. But you've got to stay with us the entire time. You can't go home, I can't be wondering where you are, you know, every day when when it's time for call. You just got to be a part of the crew, and you're going to be there. And this guy responded. He was like, that sounds cool. So I met this guy for a couple pints. And we ended up arguing over the merits of baseball and hockey for about two and a half hours. And you know, he's a sound guy now. But he used to be like a roadie. So he's used to like living in a van with musicians and stuff. So he just, I mean, day one, he was there. He was sleeping on the couch in the cabins with us, you know, beers at night, he was, you know, doing everything that a grip would do that a PA would do. He was doing sound. So he was invaluable. So if you can get yourself, you know, and especially in a small crew of people are gonna have to wear many hats. So get a guy who can do sound and blackout windows if he needs to.
Jason Buff 41:19
So what would you say was the hardest assignment? Well, let me ask you about the scheduling. What if you could go back? And possibly what you did for techs? We'll talk about that in a second. But what when you're scheduling and everything, what are the is there a specific tool that you're using now that you didn't have then or something that you're doing now to schedule things out?
Jeremy Gardner 41:41
Do we still have not scheduled a movie tradition? Or
Jason Buff 41:44
you would like to in the future? Yeah, well, I
Jeremy Gardner 41:47
would love to just get a good line producer and do it, they can do it themselves. No, it's just one of those areas that I just had, we haven't had to I mean, text, as you will see was not very well planned in itself, either. So we didn't learn a lot from our first effort. But uh, no, but there's little things that are obvious. Like when you look back, like, Okay, you can't have 40 or 50 extras standing outside for 12 hours a day, two days back to back, you got to feed them, you've got to keep them occupied. And there's a way to break that up. But then you realize that you can only have the certain location where those extras can be for one or two days, then you start running into issues that we just didn't really concern ourselves with. I mean, there's a moment in the movie where we're Mickey puts blankets all over the windows in the car, because he doesn't want to see the zombies faces anymore. And luckily, you know, story wise, you can, you can justify that because Mickey just can't deal with the situation. But in reality, we realized after that first day of shooting with all those extras that if we have these extra staring in the windows for the entire 35 minute third act that these these characters are in the car, you're going to start to see them get bored, you're going to start to see the zombies looking at the camera, you're going to you're going to you're going to you're going to invite the audience to start looking at the zombies rather than focusing on the characters. But it was in fact, just because we couldn't we couldn't afford to have them out there all that time. So we went back after the first day, brainstorm, just came up with that blanket idea and then move the car into a garage into a controlled setting, put a sunlamp out the window and had one person shake it and then just added the zombie sounds at the end. And that worked fine. That's one of those creative decisions I'm really proud of. But it was one that we might not have had to run into if we had, you know, knew how to schedule a movie.
Jason Buff 43:44
What was the hardest day on the set?
Kristian Stella 43:48
Yeah, it was. It was the day where the sound broke. I mean, that was the day I quit the movie before the sound broke.
Jason Buff 43:55
Okay, well, I didn't know about that.
Kristian Stella 43:58
I quit on text to I think I quit the movie. Yeah.
Jason Buff 44:02
It's kind of a tradition at this. You're not doing it
Jeremy Gardner 44:05
right. If someone doesn't quit. Yeah, that means it's not hard. That means you're not struggling.
Kristian Stella 44:09
We were trying to make a squib and it was failing. And it was an it was a design.
Jeremy Gardner 44:14
That was the day that we had the two actors come in from out of town. There's this get shot in the legs. We were trying to make a squib out of nothing and a blood and a condom and like a firecracker. It was raining. You're running out of time. You know, tensions were high, the sound broke, we ran out a light, it was just the most everything that could go wrong. went wrong. I mean, if you watch the documentary, you'll see it's just once that day is mentioned it everyone sighs It was a rough day.
Jason Buff 44:46
But I think it's helpful for other filmmakers to realize, you know that it is such a difficult process because I mean, you know, I think everybody who makes an indie film that doesn't have much of a budget has probably gone through the same thing and a lot of people quit. You know, a lot of people never make their film.
Jeremy Gardner 45:02
Ya know, that's unfortunate too, because it's the most rewarding and most fun I've ever had. And it's also, you know, the most stressful and crazy, but those two things go hand in hand. And there's nothing like, you know, sitting down with other filmmakers and chewing the fat and listening to them talk about their nightmare moments on set because you then you can relate Oh, yeah, gosh, that's just like, when the wasp nest was stuck in the car door, and the lawn mowing. People came on the same day on the first day of shooting, I was just like, what is happening here? It's but it's but that's kind of one of those badges of honor You were after you made a you know, an indie movie on your own.
Jason Buff 45:40
In terms of the music, can we talk for a second about that and how you were able to get such a great soundtrack?
Jeremy Gardner 45:48
Absolutely. And thank you. Um, no, you know, it started as I'm a huge fan of rock Plaza Central, this band rock Plaza Central, I've loved them for years, I used to be a big fan, I would go to all their shows. And when we cut together a location scouting video, before we'd ever, ever made the movie, we used one of their songs, and we kind of put it up on Twitter for people to see what we were going to do. And the lead singer of the band contacted us and said, Hey, that looks cool. You guys gonna use our music in the movie as well, which had never even occurred to us that that would be a possibility. And then he was really kind and put us in touch with his label. And they were super mean, they gave us the rights of the songs for literally nothing like I think it was like 500 bucks forever, worldwide. That is great. And even better than that. It's like he put us in touch with the band, the parlor who has a couple songs in the movie, and they just gave us free rein of all their songs for nothing. And the same thing happened with you know, wise blood he does the electronica in the movie electronic songs in the movie, he Adam kind of knew him from college. So he gave us his music, son hotel, and El Canadore were some Florida bands that Christian knew from the local scene down here. He talked to them, and they let us use their music. You know, here, a lot of people I mean, one of the most amazing things is no matter where I've gone with this movie all over the world, whatever language people always, always ask about the music. And that's so rewarding, because there's something that's to be said about, you know, artists helping other artists out and it was such a beautiful thing for them to do to let us use their music. And what's been lovely is how often those bands have contacted us and said, hey, you know, once the movie came out, we saw a huge uptick in downloads and sales on our music and stuff. So it's just, uh, it's one of those things where, you know, look, we can't give you much up front. But you know, if our movie does well, you'll do well, it's, you know, it's a symbiotic relationship. And that was amazing. And now we're like, great friends with Chris Eaton from Rob Platt presses Plaza Central. And that's it's such a weird thing to go from being a fan of somebody and like, I shook his hand one time at a show to now he'll like, call me up and say, Hey, I got this idea for a novel like, what do you think about this and just talk to him about it, you're like, is so crazy? You know, it's so crazy to go from fan to peer and collaborator,
Jason Buff 48:04
but you haven't told him that you are like that. And he's not like, oh, I want to shake my hand again.
Jeremy Gardner 48:08
I told him, I mean, there was literally a show where I was so into it, I was having such a good time that they like, handed the microphone to me in the crowd to like, hold up to the trombone player, because I just wouldn't stop and then another show, they were like, Hey, man, we saw you out there, like dancing up a storm, like a crazy person, like just thanks. So it's cool that you're like getting into the musical. And I was just like, they talked to me. Now it's like, go to their house. And like, you know, having barbecue with their kids and stuff. It's so wild.
Jason Buff 48:39
As far as the DVDs and stuff like that, and reproduction of their songs do you guys have to have like contracts and things like that, that were worked out? Just can you give me an idea of how that all kind of worked out. So
Kristian Stella 48:49
most of the bands, most of the bands is we're off label and they gave they gave us like the rights to do anything with their music in the movie. Including I mean, rock Plaza central gave us those rights. And then but then they were like, Oh, we forgot we're in Canada. No, we have a label in the US. So we did have to get in contact with their label. But their label basically gave us the rights to use the songs.
Jeremy Gardner 49:18
Yeah, you definitely have to get you know releases signed, you have to get all the bands to sign up. But once you do once you get into deliverables if you if you have a distribution deal. You've got to get all the the contracts squared away with those artists. But I mean, I can remember I think one of the bands from Florida was planning to be playing in New York City. And Adam, you know, who plays Mickey, our producer, one of our producers, he was like, what they're in the city right now. And he just like hooked it down to where they were playing a show and like confronted them to say, Hey, can you sign this release for that song? It's in our movie, it's just like, you just gotta you gotta get it all squared away. Deliverables is a is an annoying, annoying part of what should be one of the most amazing parts of the process, which is, hey, we're gonna distribute your movie.
Alex Ferrari 49:59
We'll be right I back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jeremy Gardner 50:09
Cool. What do we need to give you? Oh, everything that's ever been made in the world? We have to God no.
Kristian Stella 50:16
But I mean, yeah, in general, I mean, I mean, we didn't really have to pay for the songs. I mean, we, I think even the record label differed the payment until after the battery was like bringing in money from the distribution. So it was it was pretty, pretty awesome, actually.
Jason Buff 50:34
Now, can you talk a little bit about your post production process, I just want to give people a full view of the whole thing and kind of how you went from taking all, you know, even the minutiae of taking the card out of the camera? And did you do backups? Did you you know, how did post production work? Can you talk about that
Kristian Stella 50:54
I could talk about on the battery. We had, I'll tell you, we had two hard drives on set, they, I would take the cards out every day, when we got back to we have these little cabins that we were staying in, I would take the card out, put it off onto the to hard drives, then I would move one of the hard drives into one the other cabin just in case one of the cabins got broken into because we had all this film, camera equipment coming in and out. So or it burned down. Who knows, you know, so I, we had, we had two separate hard drives every day. Um, and then after that, post production kind of took like two whole years. I mean, it was often off. I mean, it was we never
Jeremy Gardner 51:39
just like jumped into it all at once. Because we didn't have time because we had day jobs.
Kristian Stella 51:44
By day. I mean, me, my sister, and Michael Katzman, edited the movie. And then after that, our friend Ryan Winford did the score. But everything else then after that was done by me. Um, so like, I did the sound design and the score mixing and the color grading and then, you know, like the final kind of tweaking to the Edit, and all that stuff, the deliverables. And that that just was like, it's just never done, we would play a film festival and I'd come back and be like, I gotta fix that color. In that scene, I gotta fix the sound in that scene.
Jeremy Gardner 52:24
But like I said, I mean, we are, we are lucky in that you really are lucky if you have people who can wear many hats, because it's, you know, our editors are, you know, they they put together a rough cut for us. And then until I could come down, and we could really sit there and hone the edit. And then but then they also just went off on their own and did like hundreds of Foley Foley sounds for the movie, which we didn't even you know, think of how we're going to get to fully they just went off and did that. Christians, you know, going into his garage and like, recording himself slapping the car like a million different times. So we can create that soundscape for all the zombies like slapping their hands up against the windows. So it's like everybody's doing, you know, jobs. I don't know. I remember. One thing Christian wanted was somebody to do sound design. And I met a guy and Christian flew to New York, he flies to New York to meet this guy. And the guy like who's basically like an intern somewhere. And he thinks he's a hotshot tells us that the movie can't be can't be done in the state. It's him.
Kristian Stella 53:26
He said, he said, we didn't have enough Foley, we had 1000 pieces of Foley in the movie. And he said we needed more full, which means he didn't even notice it was fully which is good. Yeah. And it was I'm like, we're a $6,000 movie. We have 1000 pieces of Foley in here. And he's saying I can't mix it until there's more Foley.
Jeremy Gardner 53:42
And so Christian goes out Christian goes outside for a cigarette. I walk outside and I'm like, Hey, man, what's going on? And he's like, Fuck it I learned to do it myself. And then you went home and just watched online tutorials and and did the sound design himself. So hopefully, from here on out what we're hoping is it Christian doesn't have to wear as many hats because I could see him dying his hairs graying because I'm the writer, director, actor guy who gets to do all the fun stuff. And he's just like, I'm coloring the same scene for a year.
Kristian Stella 54:17
Because we added we added editor like we will, Jeremy and I co edited the new movie. And but I also did the sound recording on the new movie on set. So like, I was just adding jobs like and this
Jason Buff 54:31
one it might be she just saved the things that you didn't do in the credit. Yeah, exactly. This
Kristian Stella 54:35
went I mean, not in tax, Montana. All the tech was done by me the only the only thing that wasn't was the score was done by Ryan again. But I recorded the score with him. So you know, like, it's just nuts.
Jason Buff 54:49
Now, was there any when you were learning how to do that? Were you just going on YouTube or was there any just for people who might want to take on something like that? Yeah, I'd help them.
Kristian Stella 54:59
I mean any thing. Like, because I mean, even my my other job I do photography and design. There's a site called lynda.com l y n. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, that site. I've learned how to do a million things on that site. And it's pretty great because you could just sign up for $20 like crunch for a whole month and then cancel your subscription with it sign up again, when you need a refresher.
Jason Buff 55:26
Yeah, that's sad. Because that's I've done that before. Yeah, like, oh, I want to take this class. But I don't want to, I don't want to get a membership. So you can do a two week free trial too. Yeah. But did you take Deke McClelland class? Ah, I think Deke is kind of the Guru over there because I teach Photoshop, but I'm also a graphic designer. But um, you know, it's, it's funny because I learned Deke was the guy that basically taught me Photoshop back in, like 98 or something like that. But it came the it used to lynda.com used to also be I think, total training, I think they merged or something, ah, and total training used, you would get like 20 VHS cassettes of how to learn Photoshop, but I remember that arriving one day, and I was just like, so excited to get the total training series anyway. Sorry. Off topic, right. It's
Kristian Stella 56:15
totally, you know, like, I'm sure Mike Deke, I would I would probably recognize him or something like, oh, yeah, well, I've seen that guy a million times. Now because I mean, I've watched all every Adobe program I've watched on there because I use pretty much every Adobe program and different jobs.
Jeremy Gardner 56:31
And I would say my advice for all that is to get yourself a Christian. Because because I just want to go right, I don't want to do that shit.
Jason Buff 56:40
We're gonna give Christians email address and home address at the end of this so everybody can get in touch with them.
Jeremy Gardner 56:47
I said, get yourself a Christian, not
Unknown Speaker 56:51
another Jeremy. Everyone needs another Christian, but no one needs another Jeremy. Yeah.
Jason Buff 56:58
Okay, so. And color grading? Can you talk about that for a second? Because I mean, yeah, we're doing that
Jeremy Gardner 57:05
in here and defer to Christian
Kristian Stella 57:08
Yeah, you don't know anything about that. I'm actually this is crazy. Now, on the battery, I, I was using just the built in color corrector stuff in Premiere. I didn't switch to resolve until text Montana. And that's why I'm still learning resolved. Because it's, it's kind of a whole mindfuck for me. But, ya know, the battery was done with, like, the Fast Color Corrector and all these other premier tools. And then I think, towards the end Colorista which, but that was already when I was like, like, after we had premiered the movie, I was going back and fixing some things. But then the the major thing I did on the battery was Besides, I've just I was color grading it to be really low contrast, I was always bringing up the blacks. Because I felt like when you have these crushed blacks and these super, super whites, basically, it's stuff that really you can only do with video. And film didn't really have that because even you know film film in a theater had this light going through it. So to me, I was like, I'm not going to I'm not going to ever have true black in the battery. So it was always kind of raised up to like around, even like 10 ire. Um, but anyway, I know. But the most important thing I did on the battery was I got I bought this film grain loop from a company called guerilla grain. And it was like $50 for a real scan of film grain. And I put it over top of that because of over the battery because not only did it make it look more like film, but it also helped with I had been doing a lot of noise reduction from shooting high ISO at night. So that you know, when you use I was using neat video for noise reduction. And when you do that things start to look plasticky and fake and the film grain really kind of gets rid of that plastic look. But now that I shoot with the C 100 I'm using DaVinci Resolve because there's just so much more color information there. Alright, so shooting progress. Yeah, I'm shooting into the progress ninja animus ninja to recorder. Okay, and it's so it's so much more. I mean, it's like night and day from the battery. So say like Texas, Montana will survive is a found footage movie.
Alex Ferrari 59:55
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Kristian Stella 1:00:05
Yet on a technical level, it's way, way more. It's way better looking than the battery is.
Jason Buff 1:00:13
Okay? I don't want to put Jeremy to sleep over there. So let's talk about are you
Jeremy Gardner 1:00:18
kidding me? I have I have recordings of Christian talking tech, and I just listened to it as my lullaby. Yeah, I've just heard it 1000 times, but people do need to know this
Jason Buff 1:00:27
shit. As you were making the film. Are you thinking about distribution? Were you concerned with trying to build up social awareness of the, you know, what was your idea towards the marketing?
Jeremy Gardner 1:00:40
You know, we didn't really have one. Honestly, I think that a lot of times Speaking of things that could derail your, your your production, putting the cart before the horse is one of the the main issues today. I mean, I don't, I had people, you'll still spend a month making a poster for a movie, they haven't even considered getting out there and actually making so it was really just about one thing at a time, right? Let's let's make a movie. First, let's see if we've got a movie first. And then Okay, one, let's see how we can get people to see it. And then it became, you know, the festival circuit trying to get into festivals. And then, you know, getting a trailer cut together, that's, that's interesting enough to where you might get some people, there's a little bit of buzz about it, get it to some websites, that traffic in those things, and just start to build an awareness. But it really wasn't until the festival, the festival circuit kind of kicked up that we started building an online presence. And then going to those festivals and glad handing and meeting people and talking to them is really the only way you're gonna get get noticed in, you know, because there's so many people making movies. Now the only way you're going to rise to the top is is to get into festivals, get seen, be there, meet as many people as possible, be nice, be humble, have drinks with them. Make yourself available.
Jason Buff 1:01:55
What were some of the more important festivals for the film in terms of like, what you guys connections and things like that, or what were the most fun ones?
Jeremy Gardner 1:02:03
The fun ones, or there's so many fun ones. I mean, the first, the first one we got into was the Telluride horror show, Colorado, which was amazing. And that was our world premiere. And we were super excited about that. And then after that we didn't get into anything for months. I mean, it got really demoralizing you start throwing $50 a pop at these festivals and not hearing anything. And it's like you're chucking money into a hole, and you've no idea what's going on. And then out of the blue, we got an email from imagine in Amsterdam, which is a big genre festival, it's been going on out there for about 25 years. And we got into that. And then because they are a part of kind of a genre, you're like an international genre, like coalition know, most of film festivals, other film festivals that were in that same Union started asking for the movie. So there's this weird thing that happens where at first, you're spending a lot of money to get to submit to festivals and not hearing anything, then you get into one and then suddenly other festivals know that that's happening. And then they start saying they're going to waive their submission fee. And then at some point, not only do they waive the submission fee, they just invite you to screen their period. And then at some point, they start flying you out, and they start paying you screening fees to show your movie. So it's this really weird process where if you're lucky enough to start to catch a little bit of fire on the festival circuit, you can go from spending money to making money and getting to see the world. So imagine definitely was what kick started that. And then from there, we went to we won the Audience Award there which has been won by like Silence of the Lambs. And you know, the raid and Donnie Darko and from dusk till dawn all these like great big genre movies. And we won that award somehow. And I know that's just because we were there. We were there for a week we were having beers with people we were shaking hands, we do lively q&a is and we you know, and it's it's part of the politics of of building an audience and hoping that they'll follow you to your next project is just saying, I know I'm living in a dream right now. And I want to be respectful and humble of the entire process. So it's, that was really fun. And we went to dead by dawn in Scotland and won the Audience Award there. And then we went to Brazil and Mexico City. Fantasia was sold out crowd even though we were already released in the United States, which was kind of a hang up there weren't sure if they could play it. They decided to take a chance on us anyway. And it was completely sold out there was still a line outside when they shut the doors we ended up giving up our own seats. So some more people could squeeze in just just a really amazing process to go all over the world go down to Brazil and and you know, we were the opening night film at macabre Mexico city like 500 people in the theater like red carpet and flashbulbs and but these things really like they help you build traction and and now to see on this Kickstarter campaign, how many of those people from all over the world have kicked in that we don't even know? is incredible. And that's that's just for I'm from not taking your audience for granted. And it's, of course it helps that, you know, the thing I said at the beginning of this whole process was, if we do at least come close to what I'm what I'm trying to do here, which is make this interesting, you know, artsy, character driven zombie movie, the gatekeepers of the indie horror world will respond to it. And then you know, to get people like, Ain't It Cool News and bloody disgusting and Fangoria and dread central all these people to write really positive things about the movie just really helped to help push it along.
Jason Buff 1:05:34
Were you doing anything? Or was it just like, once you got the first festival? What was it? Imagine?
Jeremy Gardner 1:05:38
Imagine? Yeah,
Jason Buff 1:05:39
once you got that all these things just started happening without a whole lot of effort from you guys. Or were you still, like out there, pushing it and promoting it.
Jeremy Gardner 1:05:48
I mean, we were always pushing it in our way, you know, through Twitter, and you send a couple emails here and here and there. But it's amazing how many people find it on their own. You can you can try morning, noon and night to get pressed for something and never hear a word. And then as soon as something happens, it just you can't stop it, it just takes off on its own. It really is crazy. It's like the catch 22 about you know, getting an agent, like, you can't get an agent, unless an agent comes looking for you. And by then you need an agent. It's just one of those weird things where it's just you're not gonna get press until the press hears about you until they can't ignore you anymore.
Jason Buff 1:06:26
Right. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things we talked about with our marketing the film marketing program is the idea that you need to be, you know, if you go to some, you need to be the person that's already kind of in front of like horror fans, or zombie fans, you know, so if you're getting on Bloody disgusting or Fangoria, or whatever. There's no way you're gonna you could do that on your own. You know, those people already have this that fan base, right?
Jeremy Gardner 1:06:50
Well, there's another Well, there are little things too, right. So even though we want this movie to stand on its own as a film, it definitely helped that we were able to every time we were talking about it at a q&a or whatever to say that we made it for $6,000 because it was the truth. But it's also it's a it's a clear marketing hook. Right. But people are going to write about that. So it was one of those things we actually talked about, like do we really want to talk about the budget for this movie? Or do we want to just let it have let it exist on its own merits. But at some point, it was just like, You know what, it's too it's too good of a marketing hook.
Kristian Stella 1:07:22
And the Walking Dead helped as well. Which the movie? I mean, the movie was conceived before the Walking Dead premiered. But I mean, that was Major.
Jeremy Gardner 1:07:32
Yeah, there's little things like that. And what was I just going to say? I don't know. I'm glad for you. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for popping in there and talking to me.
Kristian Stella 1:07:44
Well, I'm saying that zombies zombies don't hurt. But we didn't we were not planning on that at all. In fact, they might have actually like stunted the movie if if zombies were as big as they are now.
Jeremy Gardner 1:07:55
Oh, no. Well, I mean, even even when it came out, I you know, I heard zombie fatigue, zombie fatigue all over the place. And it was like, oh, boy, here we go. I mean, it got to the point where when I told people I made a movie, I would say, oh, yeah, I made this little like, artsy horror movie. I wouldn't say the zombie word unless I was pressed, because it's just you hear so many people just completely shut down when they hear zombie. And that's just annoying. That always annoys me. I always said like, nothing is worn out if someone makes a good one. I mean, you can make 500 vampire movies and be sick of the mob. As soon as someone makes a good one. It's like, oh, with the return of the vampire film, it's no, it's just because someone made a good one again,
Jason Buff 1:08:30
it really is. You know, when you're making a zombie film, it's never about the zombies. It's always about the human. You know, I mean, Walking Dead is not about zombies at all. It's so yeah,
Jeremy Gardner 1:08:41
absolutely. No, and that's the way it should be. Right? I mean, it got to the point where I was even considering very briefly, when it was, you know, was difficult for us to try to get, you know, make up for the movie. I was like, You know what, let's just put all of the zombies in T shirts with a Z on it. And then don't even don't even don't even deal with this zombie makeup. Just to prove that this is more about the characters than the zombies they'll just that'll really piss people off and be weird, but it was a little maybe a little too esoteric.
Jason Buff 1:09:08
So okay, let's talk about distribution. No, that's the distribution aspect of the battery
Unknown Speaker 1:09:18
yeah
Jeremy Gardner 1:09:22
okay, no no, it's well so you know after we got to that first festival tell you right or we were approached by a film buff about the digital rights
Jason Buff 1:09:34
the world relation the worldwide digital rights
Jeremy Gardner 1:09:37
and and you know, like I said between Telluride and imagine we didn't have a lot going on and didn't see they felt like okay, that was it. That was our we're winding down now. So let's let's do this. Let's let's get on this train. And you know, of course, then the movie takes off.
Alex Ferrari 1:09:58
We'll be right back after a word from Mr. sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jeremy Gardner 1:10:07
And you start to wonder, Oh boy. And we got approached by a lot of people saying, well, you've already given away your, your worldwide digital rights are you crazy. And you know, that's a lesson you got to learn is that you gotta, I mean, it's a hard lesson to learn, if you've never done it, the business side is so difficult to navigate. If you're just coming into it, I think far more difficult to navigate than actually making a movie. Because every time you do something, someone tells you, you made the wrong decision. But through having that, at some point, we were able to get our international rights back from them. Because we we realized that they weren't really interested in selling the international rights, they were really more focused on getting the movie out in America. And excuse me, we met a woman named Anik mannered who saw the film at at a festival in France. And she has been just an incredible champion of this movie. From the moment she saw it, she actually flew to Germany while we were there, and had brunch with us. And it's just been working tirelessly to get us into festivals. And she works with Raven banner in Canada, there's an international sales agent, and got them to take the movie on and they were able to go out and sell it to territories across the world. And then speaking of getting a champion, you know, AJ Bowen, the actor, he, when he saw the movie, he didn't stop talking about it at all. And he would go on podcasts and mention it. And you had mentioned it to the point where the host of those podcasts started are like, alright, we got to watch this movie, this guy won't shut up about the battery. And then they watched it, and then they wouldn't stop talking about it. And it just so happened that they had frequent guests on who run Scream Factory shout factory. And because they talked about so much finally, Scream Factory was like, Alright, let's see what this movie that these guys won't shut up about is, and then we were able to get a DVD and Blu Ray Deal from Scream Factory, which is just, I mean, that was I think we grew two feet tall our heads can fit through the doors. I mean, it's just amazing because you're told right off the bat that you're not gonna be able to get a physical, a physical distribution deal if you've given away your digital rights. But you know, what those guys are make just makes it beautiful, physical, you know, things in a digital world now that luckily, they were able to just take a flyer on us. And we got to put this amazing blu ray out with this documentary, which covers all the ground you're making us cover right now. I'm kidding. But it isn't a fantastic documentary, you should really I encourage everybody to, to check it out if they can, because we basically made that exactly what we were talking about earlier, which is my film school was watching DVD extras and listening to podcasts. And so we made a 90 minute feature length documentary that goes from those stupid short films we were making in high school all the way to the festival circuit on the battery. And it goes through every step of the process. So we really wanted it to be where somebody sees this. And they're like, on the cusp of thinking, Can I make a movie or not, then this would push them over and say just go do it. Because it's going to be hard, but it's going to be amazing.
Jason Buff 1:13:10
Now, the documentary is only available with the DVD and the blu ray. Is that right? Or is it
Kristian Stella 1:13:15
Yeah, for now, for now it is it's only on the North American blu ray DVD released by Scream Factory. But we're looking into whether or not we can put it up online for free. Because I think it's promotion for the DVD and blu ray. And it's like, like we're saying it's a really really wonderful kind of thing for filmmakers.
Jeremy Gardner 1:13:42
But I'm almost more proud of it than I am the battery just because if I you know, it seems something so thorough, and you know, so so naked about the, you know, the ups and downs of the process, I would have been like, that's it, we're doing this thing and that's that's what we were hoping and oh god
Kristian Stella 1:13:57
I worked on that documentary for like six months.
Jeremy Gardner 1:14:02
But it's like 1010 bucks for the DVD or something on Amazon, you and you get that that and the end the movie and the commentaries and the outtakes and stuff like that. So there's a and we really tried to pack it with as much if you want to make a movie, watch this stuff as you can. I don't even know where we started with that question. What was the distribution? Distribution?
Kristian Stella 1:14:22
But yeah, I think that I think what he was getting it was just that you know, first time movie, or our first movie, um, there's just there's a lot of like legal stuff and lawyers and expenses and so on that happen in distribution. So you know, and on the battery we had like 10 investors. So not a lot of that money trickles down to us in the end. But like just due to the system like the whole the whole system in general. It's not like it's not like screen factory didn't pay well they paid great
Jeremy Gardner 1:15:01
It's just one of those things where you have to do it's I wish there were, I wish I could create a like a list of things you need to do once you start to enter the distribution process of making a movie, but it is literally so dense, and there are so many possibilities. You, I almost feel like, you just kind of have to read as much as you can and then weighed in and then make a decision. Because the amount of of options that we had that we didn't know we were going to have when we made one decision that suddenly another avenue opened up later, if we hadn't done this, we could have done that. It's just, there's just no way to navigate it. And we try as hard as we can. We've had you know, filmmakers, email us and contact us and ask us about particular, you know, distribution companies or deals and it's just like, man, if it feels right, do it, there's just no, you'll you're gonna learn from the process is the only way to only way to really go about it. I mean, I'm sure someone out there who can elucidate much more, you know, with much better clarity than I can on this part of the process. But it was easily the most difficult part of the entire process for us to navigate was the business side. And the distribution side, I think you just kind of got to learn as you go.
Jason Buff 1:16:16
The thing that's interesting, you know, listening to that is when you say it's a $6,000 movie, I've heard people that work in independent film, talk about just the deliverables costing more than that.
Kristian Stella 1:16:28
Well, I mean, when it comes to distribution, a lot of the deliverable stuff was just like, written off of our payment. So you know, that's, like, I think, like, maybe the entire first year of the release, I mean, like, it just everything went to expenses. So we yeah, we didn't have to pay for a lot of things up front. But, um, yeah, we had. But I always say that the $6,000 is the production budget. That's what it costs us to get to the premiere and tell you right horror show. And then we did have some business related expenses after that, but we already had deals on the table that we were ready to sign. So, you know, I know, one for a fact was what's called errors and omissions insurance, you know, yeah. And that was like, that was like $4,000 that we had to pay. And I think Adam got a personal loan from his father or something, and he and you know, and then he got paid back eventually. But we, you know, we had deals on the table at that time, we would have never paid for that. If we didn't.
Jeremy Gardner 1:17:40
I mean, there are certain things you can do to make it make it easier to navigate, like, just make sure you've got all your, your performance releases, signed by your actors, make sure that you've got a chain of title, you know, in order, there are things that you're going to just look up a list of the typical deliverables. And then there are certain, you know, there's certain ones that you can check off before you even make the movie or while you're in pre production that we just didn't even think about until we were done. But I'm pretty sure
Kristian Stella 1:18:05
that as far as like the business expenses of the battery, maybe had I think that plus creating an LLC for like $2,000, I think those might have been the only ones that we paid upfront. And then the rest were deducted later on through distribution companies and so on. And not to say that that wasn't a lot. It was a lot. It was just, we didn't have to pay it up front.
Jeremy Gardner 1:18:31
Yeah, when you get your first report of your residuals and you see that gigantic chunk that goes to expenses, you just go. That was like three months rent. or more.
Jason Buff 1:18:42
So yeah, I just wanted I kind of wanted to go into the things that Jeremy discussed in his article on Movie Maker. Because I, you know, I it really is something that I think a lot of filmmakers don't talk about, and people don't want to, you know, first of all people don't ever want to talk about pirating, you know, and what a big deal it is now, and how easy it is for people just to download anything they want for free. And how much that affects you guys in on the distribution side? And, you know, and can we talk about how that's affected the way that you you know, your your newest project?
Kristian Stella 1:19:21
Yeah, I mean, I'll say because there's something I don't think he put in the article was that when the day our movie was released, the piracy was, I mean, within three hours of the iTunes release, the piracy was just insane. But even like a year later, there was a day where some piracy group released a version of our movie and it was like the 30th torrent of our movie. And there was 100,000 downloads of that torrent in 24 hours. In that same 24 hours, we were selling the movie DRM free on our website for $5.
Alex Ferrari 1:19:59
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Kristian Stella 1:20:09
That saved 24 hours, we sold two copies, we made $10. And all of our other digital sales had kind of just slowed to a halt at that point. So was like, there were 100,000 stolen in one day a year after release, we make $10. That day. It's, it's it's the ratio, that's insane. You know, like piracy is kind of a way of life at this point, I get it. But the ratio should be far, far less like I would say there's got to be anywhere from 20 to 80 Illegal downloads per every one real rental. That's just way too high.
Jeremy Gardner 1:20:50
Yeah, and those those those, those are never going to translate one to one, you know, for everybody who pirated it, bought it and said, Well, that's never gonna happen. That's just not the way it works. I think it I did touch on in the article that it is easy to vilify the piracy community, because, yes, they're they're causing a lot of issues in the movie business. I mean, where a $5 million dollar budget five years ago, you know, you could you could wrangle with, you know, companies who fund those movies now are really, really hemming and hawing over a quarter million dollar budget, because they know that the second that movie is released on demand, it's going to be pirated. And so all the risks go go way higher. And so the budgets are driven way down, less movies are made, which means less crew jobs, there's so many things that it affects that people don't know. And I think you're never I think people tiptoe around the the piracy issue, because you're never going to get the pirates. The people who torrent on your side are the ones who believe that everything should be free, and information is free, and screw you and I don't care, you're never going to get those guys. But there is an interesting contingent of the piracy population, who number one would download it, if they could, if it were available in their territory. And there is something to be said about the fact that, you know, the way that movies are distributed nowadays is not taking into account the fact that the world is completely connected, everybody knows what's going on, in the movie world, everywhere in the world. And so, you know, I can remember even myself, you know, years ago, hearing all about the loved ones was an Australian horror movie, right? And it's just like, you hear so many great things about it. And you never know, when is this coming out here, and you just need you keep hearing people talk about and you're like, Am I ever gonna get to see it. And I actually ended up getting dumped in the US like four years later. But it's one of those things where it just seems crazy not not to hit on, you know, hit on the audience when they're ready for it when they want it. So that's one part of the of the piracy thing that needs to be taken care of another one is that I just genuinely feel that there is a certain amount of people out there, especially a certain age group, who absolutely have no idea, the devastation it causes throughout the industry, they just, movies are not what they used to be when I was a kid, you know, I would, you know, I begged to be taken down to the video store. And I would stay in there for two hours, they were things that I knew were made, they were big, and then you had to go and get them and you had to pay for them. And sometimes you didn't like them. And that's part of the process. You gamble a little bit with your money. And maybe you see the greatest thing you've ever seen. And maybe you see a turn, but that's part of the process. Now there's a generation that just simply thinks of them as little tiny thumbnail posters that you click on. And then they play and that's it. And there's, there's no heft to the the process and the amount of people and time that goes into making these movies anymore. And I think that is that's just a reeducation that needs to happen. Or it might not, might not even be able to happen. I just don't know if you can convince a generation that gets it for free. Why they shouldn't get it for free anymore. It's a real, sticky, prickly issue to bring up.
Jason Buff 1:24:04
I think that another huge thing is just the fact that people aren't going to theaters anymore, too. And it's like, everything's become just digital files now. And we've gotten so far from the days when you had to go to a theater and watch a film. And then many, many months later, you would be able to rent a copy at your local video club. And sometimes they would be they wouldn't have it. You know, that whole culture is disappeared. Oh, it's completely
Jeremy Gardner 1:24:28
gone. And I love I miss it. And yeah, I mean, even you know, the movie that changed my life that made me like super aware of that movies were made was Jurassic Park. That sounds might sound crazy, but that was the first time I started thinking about dressing. Well, it's one of I remember someone telling me hey, the dinosaurs are made with computers in my brain. My like little 12 year old brain just went like what? Like, that's not possible. What do you mean they're made with computers? And suddenly I started thinking about the behind the scenes process of me Making a movie. And I cut my first lawn, much to my father's chagrin because he'd been trying to get me to mow the lawn for years I mowed my first lawn to get money to go see Jurassic Park because I saw it seven times in theater. And then we didn't come out on VHS for over a year after I was in the theater, you know, it's just like waiting for this thing to come out. You can have it and and those that's just gone now, you know, the movie comes out, people go see it, opening night opening weekend kind of fizzles out, and then 90 days later or less, you can download it or steal it or rent it online. You know,
Jason Buff 1:25:34
a lot of times, you know, here, it's like you'll see the movie will come out in like a torrent or something, even before it comes to a theater. It's ridiculous. You know, and I've been trying to I've been making an effort to try and see everything in the theater now. And it's so different, you know, the concentration that you have in the way that you're affected by the movies. I mean, even watching it on a great big HDTV. It's just not the same.
Jeremy Gardner 1:25:57
No, it's not. It's a whole different experience. And what's crazy is you're right, it's this communal thing that I love it and more people should engage with. I was actually my mother, you know, she's not a huge, like, cinema person. But I'm down in Florida. And I get to see her for the first time in a while. And she'll always tell me, she tried to watch this movie. And she couldn't get into it. Because I know she's just sitting there distracted. She's got her phone, she's got Facebook, she's and I took her to the movies for the first time in like 20 years. We saw a couple of movies in the last couple weeks, and to watch her sit there and fully focus on the movie and like, follow it and be engaged with it. Because she knows she can't pick her phone up or leave is just like, oh, yeah, that's why you go to the theater. You go to the theater to commit to the experience of letting a story wash over you. Not not with your phone and not with going to the bathroom and getting up and going to the kitchen. It's just you're there you're in it.
Jason Buff 1:26:46
Well, it depends on where you got it to. Because I see I mean, it drives me nuts, but people that just bring up their cell phone in the middle of the movie. I mean, I had to like yell at a guy the other day because you're just sitting there checking his Facebook in the middle of something I don't remember what our Star Wars
Jeremy Gardner 1:27:01
it's just it's It boggles my mind that that with the amount of it I mean, it's it's clear at this point that it is a serious social faux pas and people still do it.
Jason Buff 1:27:11
Yeah. You know, it's funny because I was listening to your interview on the the critics what was called the the review podcast is facing the criticism, the critics and your comments about well, let me put it this way. One of the greatest experiences I've ever had in a theater was watching Dances with Wolves. And I really loved the fact that you were saying that how good that movie was and how people have kind of forgotten about it, because I watched it recently. And I didn't realize I was watching the the director's cut just like 12 hours long. Because I was supposed to go to a friend's house later. And I was like, Yeah, I'm sitting here watching Dances with Wolves, but it's not it's not ending here. been on for the last four hours, and we're still not to the midpoint. But it's such an amazing movie, and I don't ever see you having that kind of experience. Again. I don't know, movies just aren't made like that anymore.
Jeremy Gardner 1:28:05
No, they're not. And you know, that's the thing. That's another thing that people don't understand about what piracy has done. Right? You want to know where those movies I mean, dances will didn't cost that much money, but you will know where those middle those mid range budget movies have gotten those adult movies, those grown up movies. I mean, when I was in, you know, in high school, I saw every single movie that came out. I can remember going and seeing Return to Paradise. Did you ever see that movie? That's, that's a drama. Yeah. Joaquin Phoenix, Vince Vaughn and haitch it's a movie that time has completely forgotten. And yeah, it was a movie that came out on a Friday and I went and saw it. You know, I loved it. And it could it could never be released. No one would ever make that like $30 million. You know, drama, about like, should they go back and take a guy out of a Malaysian prison. And it
Jason Buff 1:28:53
was such a downer was really rough. But it's like, what's the budget of
Kristian Stella 1:28:57
bone tomahawk? Like? 1.2? Or one point? Exactly. That movie like, just like 15 years ago would have been like a 15 $25 million movie. Yeah. And in theaters like everywhere.
Jeremy Gardner 1:29:09
Yeah, it is strange. But you know, but that's the thing is like so now because of that, because they need to milk every single dollar out of that opening weekend. That's why you get in so many giant superhero movies. That's why you're getting sequels. That's why you get because they have to curb every possible risk. They can't take a risk on some of these small moves. I mean, luckily, there's, you know, people like Megan Ellison and Annapurna pictures, like putting movie putting money into these like art tours, movies, but for the most part, the movies that filled the bulk of the year, you know, 10 years ago, they just aren't being made anymore, because you got to get that four quadrant picture out. So you're either talking about movies being made under a million or over 100 million, and it's just a weird, weird thing. That little giant
Kristian Stella 1:29:49
like giant movies like with Jerry Maguire be made today.
Alex Ferrari 1:29:54
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Jeremy Gardner 1:30:04
Like it was a huge hit and like would somebody Greenlight Jerry Maguire probably not
Jason Buff 1:30:09
gonna get a movie, just I mean, like, look at David O Russell and guys like that, you know, Wes Anderson and PT Anderson and those guys, I mean, they can get stuff made, but it's because they have the brand name, you know, they know there's going to be an audience for that. But even
Jeremy Gardner 1:30:22
even that, I mean, you're talking about again, that's Megan, Megan Ellison. You know, she's a billionaires daughter who's decided to take her money and give it to directors who aren't getting the master you know, she's done. She's She's funded a ton of those movies at the David David O. Russell movies, too. She decided to put her money behind artists, where the studios are afraid to sometimes I mean, even look at like Spielberg was saying he was having trouble getting money for Lincoln, it was gonna be a TV movie, because he couldn't get the money to make it as a theatrical movie. There's it's just crazy. How afraid Hollywood is have taken chances anymore. And a lot of that is because those movies are swallowed up by by torrents,
Jason Buff 1:31:02
well, I want to make sure we have enough time to talk about tax Montana will survive. Can we do a segue into that and talk about how you've approached that, and especially this kind of unique way that you guys are using Kickstarter to fund it, or it's not being funded. But it's a way to control the distribution process.
Kristian Stella 1:31:18
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, textbooks handle survivors movie, we shot it two years ago, but then our day jobs took hold again. But we're trying to use Kickstarter to basically buy them, like we want the internet to buy the movie off of us the way that someone would go to Sundance and buy a movie, for a million dollars off of filmmakers, we want the internet to do that we want to it's a finished film. And we want if we hit our goal, we're just going to give the movie to the internet via Creative Commons. So that way, torrenting will be completely allowed and encouraged, will have DVDs that you can burn with artwork that you could print and and we'll have it on YouTube and Vimeo. So this was kind of our reaction to piracy, which is that like, rather than vilify the torrents, like let's use them as a distribution method. So yeah, I mean, hopefully it works.
Jeremy Gardner 1:32:16
Yeah, the days are ticking down. But what you know, it's a way to to try and get a hold of those people who did torrent the movie who would have paid for it as well, you know, these are their, you know, we got, we put up a comment on some of our Torrance on some of these torrent sites. You're a couple years ago, just saying, Look, we're not passing judgment. But we're, you know, we're dayjob filmmakers, you know, we're barely getting by, we made this movie for six grand if you like, what you see, you considered kicking in, and we had, a lot of people donate money through that. And so those are the kinds of people who use torrents that we're hoping that we can get ahead of time, rather than slowly letting the movie rollout traditionally, like the battery did. And having people in Australia go well, I don't know when it's going to be in Australia. So I'm just going to download it now. So if we can just get it all upfront, then maybe we'll have the cushion to take time off work and make a movie and then everybody everywhere in the world can see it at the same time if they want to.
Jason Buff 1:33:16
So does that mean that you don't have a mean? When you do creative commons, does that mean that you no longer have ownership of it? Or how does that work?
Kristian Stella 1:33:26
That particular creative, there's a there's a couple of Creative Commons licenses, but the one we're going to be using basically means that you have to give us credit for the movie. And that you can you can't profit off of the movie itself. Um, as in the audience can't profit off the movie, but the audience will be allowed to like, remix it or so on. Like, if they they wanted to take audio from it and use it in something that they make they they can make profit off of that. So you're kind of allowed to mess with the movie. Um, but other than that, you're totally allowed to share it and do everything else. So the only thing is that we we still have to get credit and
Jeremy Gardner 1:34:08
basically, you can't just put it in your own box and sell it as is in a store but you can use it to remake art, right? It's artists saying, you know, here here's a piece of art if you want to make a different piece of art from our art, by all means do it. Yeah.
Kristian Stella 1:34:24
If you want to sample it and put it into a dance mix, you can and you can make money off that dance mix. We're not you know, like that's that's the kind of license that it is.
Jason Buff 1:34:32
I think the bare bone Bongo scene would be great as a rave
Kristian Stella 1:34:36
art my friend already did this though the composer already did that.
Jeremy Gardner 1:34:41
I'm sure someone else could do it out there too that I would love to be in like Prague and you're like baby bourbon but that would be amazing.
Kristian Stella 1:34:49
You watch it becomes like this huge hit the guys like like a millionaire like oh, just sighs number
Jeremy Gardner 1:34:54
one dance number one dance song in the world is Baby bear bones by like script And we're over here going, why did we do this?
Jason Buff 1:35:04
So, go ahead. Sorry.
Jeremy Gardner 1:35:06
No, I was well, I was just gonna Yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Jason Buff 1:35:09
Okay, thank you. So I mean, I think one of the things that I liked about your article too, was just your kind of honesty about how difficult it is to make a living as an indie filmmaker. And since we're all about indie filmmaking, you know, Can you can you talk a little bit about that, that the idea of being able to make a living as a filmmaker and what you guys do, which is more like you have day jobs, and you make indie films? I mean, is there a goal to move everything to being like 100% filmmakers? What is your view on that kind of thing?
Jeremy Gardner 1:35:44
Yeah, I mean, that's my goal. That's, that's 100% My goal is I just want to make movies for a living. And I'm not talking about you know, making movies, it'd be like a multi multi millionaire, even though that would be nice. I would just love to make a comfortable living and make movies as a job, you know, and it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult. I mean, when you see the money that you that can that can come in from a small budget movie. I mean, this is sustainable. If if you could start getting enough, you know, time to make movies and put more movies out in the world, it kind of snowballs. I mean, I know, Joe Swanberg famously said that too, you know, he's like, you know, once you get three or four movies out in the world, every time you make another one, then everyone, you get another press push, everyone talks about your other movies, you get a kick up on the rentals are the sales of those previous movies, and it just kind of snowballs every time. And so he's made a career out of just making like a million movies and just kind of kind of living that way. But I do believe there's a way to build an audience slowly, and get and get enough of a return. So that you can keep equity in your own movie The next time you make it, and then make a little bit more money the next time you release another movie, and suddenly, you're sustaining yourself by telling stories and making art I do. I do believe it's possible. I don't know. I'm getting old. I'm gonna die. So probably not, it's gonna happen sooner, I'm definitely going to be managing a bar somewhere.
Jason Buff 1:37:09
Yeah, I mean, I've talked to a couple of filmmakers who are full time not necessarily making their own projects, but their directors for hire whatever those are. And they say that sorry, I say those are
Kristian Stella 1:37:19
all unicorns,
Jeremy Gardner 1:37:20
unicorns, are the people making films for a living? But no, he's saying directors for hire not making their own thing.
Jason Buff 1:37:26
Well, I mean, the thing that they've said is that they it's not like before, where you'd like make a film every three years, it's like, these people are making two, three films a year, you know, and there's just this mass production.
Jeremy Gardner 1:37:37
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, that's what we've been saying forever, we need to generate content to me is you look at the people making a ton of money on YouTube, because they're putting up content every week, everyone wants more stuff, you know, if we could get to the point where we were shooting a movie, you know, in finishing, or finishing all post production within you know, 910 months and then starting work on another movie at the end of the same year, then you know, that's, that's the goal is to be able to, like, maybe start working on two movies a year, one of the ones everything, Jeremy always talks about that, and like, what I'm doing all the post production, but that's the whole point to is to make enough money to where he doesn't have to do that anymore. And luckily, and that's another thing that you'll realize, you know, once you start doing this is it, you build a network. And you know, now we've met people who, who will do those jobs for us so we can hire who we trust to do those jobs. And it could fit within the budget that we're talking about. So the Christian doesn't have to do everything. I mean, eventually, you'll meet people who who can help you in this process. I mean, the network of filmmakers that we've met, since we toured the battery is has been invaluable,
Kristian Stella 1:38:34
but it's always hard. It's always hard to to even think about, like scaling up like that and being like, Can you can you keep the quality up two times a year? You know, that's scary. I mean, like, just in three years, you have six movies, and it's like, Man, I can't even imagine three years from now having six movies out there. Right. And having them all be quality. So that's that's scary, too. Yeah, that's
Jeremy Gardner 1:38:57
another thing. I mean, well, especially with the way I write it'll never happen. I can't Yeah. That's another that's another thing too, is like I have been I've thought about a lot that I wish I could just pull my standards down a little bit. You know, it's like, maybe my standards don't seem high to everybody else. But I have serious quality standards with what I write and what I feel like it's worth making the same way Christian as ridiculous standards about what you know, you know, when he does technically with the camera and color and sound, everything like that, like he will, he will futz with something for weeks. And I'll just be like, I'll let it go. But I'll be the same way with the scene. I'll tweak a scene while I'm writing it forever. And it's just one of those things where you're never gonna get enough done, you know, to create this kind of content generator, like we're talking about if we, if we have such high standards, but I don't know there's got to be a middle ground somewhere. It seems
Jason Buff 1:39:50
like you know, with the following that you guys have been building.
Alex Ferrari 1:39:54
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jason Buff 1:40:03
Have you ever considered approaching a production company? I mean, going in, you know, putting together a script and saying, okay, and go going for more of a traditional not so Ultra independent, but going, and have you been able to keep that following? I mean, do you have like some way to be in touch with your fans? I mean, is it primarily Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that?
Jeremy Gardner 1:40:22
Oh, yeah. Well, we didn't even touch on this. Yeah, one of the main reasons. One of the main other reasons we may text Montana is because I wrote a script that I love that, you know, I started getting a lot of a lot of attention after the battery made the rounds, I started doing the water bottle tour, I've talked to the companies, I've talked to agents, and I've gotten very close, we've gone down the whole casting route path. And we've gotten for far along the route to the traditional funding of making my new script. And then it always just kind of fizzles out in one way or another. You know, you hear that, Oh, we love your unique voice. And it's so it's so interesting. And so you, and then, you know, once you get up to like to turn $53,000, they start trying to kind of, you know, buff a little bit of that personality out of it. Well, can't we explain where the monster comes from? And can't we cast this person even though they're way too young. And it's, it just becomes like, oh, man, the the concessions you have to make for such a small amount of money is demoralizing. And after about a year and a half of that. That's why we'd say you know, let's just go out in the woods and make text Montana because we wanted to not have to get permission to make a movie again. It's so frustrating to feel like you got your foot in the door and a business that you love. And then it's just the wheels turn so slow that you just like at some point, we just like we got to go do this again. Because we're going to it's going to tear our souls apart. If we keep waiting for somebody to say, Okay, here's the money, go make your movie. So that even though and honestly, it's still happening right now, like we that script is still out there, I'm on the cusp of another, going down another avenue to get that movie made. And it's you know, I feel really good about this one. But I felt really good about some before. So I've gotten a little bit cynical about that process. And so there's a, there's a part of me that says, You know what, that's fine. Let that script do what it's going to do through the system. And let's still remind ourselves that we gotta go make our own movies, if no one ever gives us the permission. Plus, there's,
Kristian Stella 1:42:18
there's something that like, nobody ever talks about. But it's it's crazy. With all of these budgets getting smaller and smaller and smaller. If a production company comes to you, and hires you on his director for a quarter million dollar movie, your pay as director is probably around $5,000. And then you're expected to work on the movie for pretty much a solid year and then promotion and so on. And it's like, how do you how do you even make a quarter million dollar movie and live off of $5,000 for a year and a half to two years while you make and promote the movie? It's kind of insane.
Jeremy Gardner 1:42:57
And no one has been able to explain that to me. No, literally no one. I've talked to filmmakers I know, like what you've seen very successful, and no one's been able to explain, okay, you get a fee, you know, you get your your rate for actually filming the movie, but what about when it's time to go into post and it's time to you know, edit and then do sound and then Mark promote? And then like, what, how are you making a living, then no one can explain it. I still don't know, five years, in five years after making the battery. We've made another movie. You know, I've talked to people I've gotten meetings, I've talked to managers, I've talked to heads of studios, I've no idea, no idea how you're supposed to live,
Kristian Stella 1:43:35
I mean, that $5,000 would be gone before you come out of pre production, you know, you just two or three months of of rent and food and so on, you know, if you want to if you if you're making a quarter million dollar movie, you got to make a really good movie. So you really got to, like be in there, you know, doing months of pre production and months of post production and months of promotion. It's just, it seems crazy. To me. I do feel
Jeremy Gardner 1:43:56
like that's one of the pitfalls of the fact that everybody can make a movie now is that it's almost expected that just like well, that's deal with it. Like, you know, it's I remember that. I don't know why this popped into my head. But the there's a scene in A League of Their Own, where they reveal that the girl baseball players are gonna have to wear these little skirts and everyone guffaws and he goes, ladies, there are 64 women getting on a bus back home right now that will play in a bikini for if I ask them to. And you kind of get that feeling where it's like, if you can't make a movie and live for this fee, then they I got a line of kids who want this job. I got a line of filmmakers who want to be in this position. Sorry, that's just the way it is nowadays. And that's just like
Kristian Stella 1:44:35
this and in from, like, from a production standpoint, it's kind of like, Don't you want your director to not be worrying about how he's paying the rent. You know, like, that's the last thing he needs to be worrying about when he's in charge of your, you know, even half million dollar movie. So that's that's something that we can't crack it. Yeah, I
Jason Buff 1:44:55
think there's a lot of kind of ego going on there and people don't really disclose Sure. Yeah, well, I
Jeremy Gardner 1:45:00
mean, I have a friend you know who who's a filmmaker, pretty successful filmmaker. And, you know, he he decided to go around it and raise the money for his movie on his own and then just paid himself a decent salary. Like out of the budget like, I'm, this is how I'm raising the money to make this movie on this budget, there's so much I'm paying myself to do it, I wrote it, I'm going to direct it. And that's that. And I was like, well, that's, you know, that's pretty good. Pretty good way to do it if you can get around all the gatekeepers and just be your own production company. So I don't know this sounds like a demoralizing way to go out.
Jason Buff 1:45:32
So what what advice do you have in default to indie filmmakers that are out there that want to make their first film and want to kind of follow in your footsteps,
Jeremy Gardner 1:45:40
you got to have friends, you got to have friends who will help you out people who are going to be in the trenches with you in the mud splashing around in the dirt willing to do anything they can to get it done, that's you're not going to get anywhere, if you don't have, if you don't have loyal people on your side, you got to you got to plan as much as you can ahead of time, you got to write, you know your story, a good story around what you can get what you know, you have, and then you got to not freak out about the things that you think might fail, or you'll never do it.
Kristian Stella 1:46:09
And my advice would be that you got to have at least one skill that you can sell to others, you know, whether it be cinematography or sound design, or any of that, like, you know, that's where I mean, that's where your money is likely to come in the first couple films is from the work in between making your own films, just like we have friends that are editors, and so on, and they go and they get paid to edit other people's movies, and then they edit their movies for free.
Jeremy Gardner 1:46:37
Yeah, and the irony of this whole process is that I, I only wrote the battery originally, because I didn't want to go and audition for roles as an actor. And I'm, I'm about to be in my fifth feature film since the battery came out. And that's simply from meeting filmmakers on the festival circuit becoming fans of their work in them fans of my work, and then them calling me up and going, Hey, I'm about to go and make this movie, I got a great role for you in it. And just suddenly, I'm being cast without auditioning. When, you know, this whole thing was was me railing against the process of auditioning. So you end up you find a little skill and hopefully you can you can tangentially work in film.
Jason Buff 1:47:14
I actually forgot to ask you about that. What was the experience of working on spring like because that's, that's actually one of my favorite movies from the past couple of years. It's what was that marking with Justin and Aaron. It was
Jeremy Gardner 1:47:28
amazing. You know, Justin and Aaron, were actually the first filmmakers. I met on the circuit. We met them very briefly in Amsterdam, I thought they were full of themselves. Then we met them again for much longer in Brazil. And they told us that they thought we were full of ourselves when they saw us in Amsterdam, and then we became great friends, and I love them to death. We had a wonderful time. And just being on their sets. Amazing because those two guys, I mean, Justin's a really, really, really clever and creative screenwriter and director and Aaron is just, you know, he's like Justin's Christian. He's, uh, you know, he's an incredibly talented guy. And he's really technical. So to watch them kind of confer you know, with each other on set about a scene and then and then break up and then go and do their individual things is amazing to watch that set work like clockwork really helped me. You know, cache things away for the next time I'm on directing To some it's really great.
Jason Buff 1:48:24
Was there a lot of it seemed like the scenes were very loose and kind of,
Jeremy Gardner 1:48:27
yeah, well, it's funny because they, they definitely let me improv. I think that the part of that was me learning on the fly, what it's like to be on a real set, you know, because you know, things got to move, you got to make lunch, you got to make your days you got to make your time as he's walking around talking. You start to worry that if you if you goof off or follow, you know, follow a thread down some weird improv line that you're going to, you're going to throw off the entire schedule of the day. So I kind of boxed myself in a little bit. And I didn't really go as far as I'd have wanted to, but they were certainly open to my improv lines. What's interesting is you throw out an improv and then they'll either say nothing, or say, oh my god, that was really funny. Do that again, or actually, this time, don't do that thing. But I was really boxed myself in and then I get down to the set on San Diego where we're shooting in the bar, Vinny Quran, who was one of the leads in their first movie resolution, and apparently he don't give a crap about no days or schedules because he was just riffing left and right and all I could think was man, man, I should have done good Vinny did venido care Vinnie just B's Vinnie. Vinnie. Don't give a shit and he don't give a shit. So but ya know, it's such a such a blast, man. I can't wait to work with those guys. Again. They're really really good friends.
Alex Ferrari 1:49:46
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
Jason Buff 1:49:55
So I want to make sure that you guys what what is the website to go to? For tax Montana, how can people get in touch with you guys? What's the best way to find out more, and all that great stuff,
Jeremy Gardner 1:50:06
you can go to Tex montana.com, that'll take you right to our campaign page, we are about nine days away from this thing being over, which means if we succeed, you're only about 15 to 17 days away from actually seeing this thing, because we're just going to release it. It's done. Tax montana.com You can find me on Twitter at Mr. Jeremy Gardner.
Kristian Stella 1:50:28
And I'm at Christian Stella.
Jeremy Gardner 1:50:31
I'm only Mr. Because every other permutation of Jeremy Gardner was taken. So it's not like I'm calling myself and Mr. But there was just no to that. Yeah. And then you can find us on Facebook at text Montana or the battery on Facebook. But text montana.com or Twitter, we're really active on Twitter.
Kristian Stella 1:50:48
Yeah, I mean, people can just like ask me stupid camera questions. I'll answer I didn't matter. I mean, there's no, no question too stupid. I'll just call it stupid on a podcast one day.
Jeremy Gardner 1:50:58
Yeah. Well, that's we've always been, I always used to say, like, you know, whatever you think of Kevin Smith's films, the fact that he makes himself available to so many people and so open about the process was something we wanted to ape. And we tried to do that, you know, we try not to ever let an email about a question about filmmaking go unanswered. So whatever you got thrown at us
Jason Buff 1:51:19
awesome, guys. Well, I really appreciate your time. And you know, I look forward to you know, seeing the film, how, how are you going to release it when it comes out? Are you just going to put it do you? Do you assume that things will just kind of like, explode on their own? Are you going to put it somewhere specific? Like I tend? Yeah, well,
Kristian Stella 1:51:35
basically, if we hit the goal, um, two weeks after the campaign ends, we're going to release it on YouTube and Vimeo. And the Vimeo version will have the download button unlocked. So you'll be able to download it to NADP, from Vimeo. And then there's going to be torrents of in all kinds of shapes and sizes and of DVDs and blu rays with artwork. And then, you know, takes montana.com At that point will just be kind of a repository of all the different ways you can get it. And at that point, then people can post it anywhere else. If there's places that we don't know, the only places we're not going to be doing are places like iTunes, etc. because then we'd have to charge for the movie. And that's the whole point is that after this campaign, we're not going to charge for it ever again. So that's it. I mean, if they'd be if they'd be willing to put it up for free, I put it on iTunes.
Jeremy Gardner 1:52:31
Yeah, and if we don't hit our goal, we're going to take the hard drive with the movie, and we're going to film myself smashing it with a
Jason Buff 1:52:40
Guys. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else? Are we good?
Jeremy Gardner 1:52:42
No, that's it texmontana.com Thank you so much for for the Forum. Thank you guys. It's a really fun chat.
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Alex Ferrari 0:07
I like to welcome to show Kevin sorbo How you doing, Kevin?
Kevin Sorbo 0:10
I'm doing good. How you doing Alex?
Alex Ferrari 0:11
Good, my friend. Thank you so much for for coming on the show man. It's, it's, I'm a I'm a fan and, and believe it or not, we've worked together then beyond that you didn't even know but I actually worked on two of your films, one of them being abels field where I was the colorist and the post supervisor.
Kevin Sorbo 0:29
Wow.
Alex Ferrari 0:30
Unable to field.
Kevin Sorbo 0:31
I love that movie. That movie deserved the theatrical you know, it's weird with these independent movies. It's uh, yeah, if I could draw it's about PNA it's about word of mouth. But you know, we got a big battle when battling the Hollywood giant studios, but that's a really good movie.
Alex Ferrari 0:46
It was a fight. It was a fun movie. I love the director love the producer. They get picked up by Sony eventually. So I know that I know. It did at least get some sort of good release. And then I worked on another movie I forgot it was it was you in a jungle fighting a monster of some sort. I forgot the name of it. This is years ago. And I was the colorist on that one as well as in Louisiana.
Kevin Sorbo 1:08
So in Louisiana,
Alex Ferrari 1:10
Louisiana.
Kevin Sorbo 1:11
You're gonna jungle fighting a monster. It sounds like Hercules but I shot number seven.
Alex Ferrari 1:14
No, no, it was not. It was definitely not Hercules. It was another movie. I'll find it I was actually looking it up before interview I'm like I couldn't find in my I got a lot of pee. I got a lot of credits in my thing. So I was just kind of looking like where it is. And I know they changed the name afterwards. Anyway, but, but I've Oh, so I have you on I've had you on my demo reel for a while. Back in the day when I was when I was color grading. But, uh, but I was a fan of yours since the beginning. But let me let me start off the interview with how did you get into the business?
Kevin Sorbo 1:44
Um, a really small town in Minnesota about 7000 people in it. We're about 25 miles west of Minneapolis. It's called Mount Minnesota. It's on a beautiful shores of Lake Minnetonka. And so get the name Lake think Minnetonka we were home to Tonka toys. That was the industry in my little town employed like you know, 25% of the population there. But we went to the Guthrie Theater and the Guthrie Theater is very famous singer Minneapolis and back a lot of actors out of Broadway start there. A lot of things start there before they move like Lion King, for instance, was there before they moved to Broadway. So we went 11 years old went to see the Merchant of Venice. It was a field trip with my elementary school. I was 11 I don't know what the hell they were saying because it was Shakespeare but I was mesmerized by it all. And I you know, on the way home I told my mom I said, you know, I'm gonna be an actor. And she said, is that right? She goes, Well, that's nice, dear. And, you know, I I kept it quiet because you know, being a thespian, where I came from and we made fun of those people in the drama class. I was a jock. I was a football basketball baseball guy. So I had to hide in that closet so to speak, until I got into college where I had double major in business but I took my minor in drama so I but I, you know, Minneapolis, really offered a lot of great things for me because a lot of people don't realize that Minnesota Minneapolis is headquartered national core is seven 3am Honeywell Pillsbury General Mills target Best Buy so all these companies they said there that all their commercials back in the day there so I got that all important Screen Actors Guild card by doing commercials all through college.
Alex Ferrari 3:24
That's when I was I was when I was in Florida. You know, the actors I worked with they were just just dying to get on to the get that sag card. And that's how many of them got them just by doing that commercial like oh my god, I'm sag eligible now because I got this this commercial. So it is it is a hustled being an actor, there is no, no, no doubt about it
Kevin Sorbo 3:46
I double major marketing advertising, I tell people I market and advertise myself because you are your own product in this industry, you know, and you got to get out there. And most of the time I tell people that want to get a business they go What's the like, and I go, I'll get ready for you know, a lot of doors being slammed in your face because rejection is the main thing of Hollywood. So, you know, it's a matter of getting out and again out there. I remember I did a lot of commercials. I'm one of the few guys I know that I'd befriended when I moved out there because I didn't know anybody. I already had the sag card. I already had the commercial agent because I sent my reel out to the commercial agents that I you know, found out about and they all assigned me because you know, I had a good reel already. I already had like 40 commercials on there. And so they knew my face from commercials. So that wasn't a problem. I never had to work another job. between 1986 and 1992. I shot over 100 commercials.
Alex Ferrari 4:37
Wow, you were you were an actual working actor.
Kevin Sorbo 4:41
I was a working actor and in between that was enabled me to do the really good acting classes. I said I studied with Roy London, for instance. You know they were Roy Roy in my class alone I had Matthew Perry's classmate Brad Pitt was in that class with me, Charlotte Ross. With some really good people that went on to do obviously had really good careers. So it enabled me to study and not have to like miss things because of work or something like that. And I remember my commercial agent one time I called up because you know, once you start to get to know people, Hey, man, there's one for there's one for Coca Cola. You hear about that one, you know? And so I'd call my agent all the time. Hey, what about this one? And my commercial agent said to me one time it's Kevin, I got 100 other clients, you know, I said, I don't give a crap about your other clients. Do you think they care about me? My mantra is, let me have the opportunity to be rejected. That's why I said, let me at least go in there. I'm willing to drive and this craphole traffic of Los Angeles to do what you know, and wait an hour before they see me for my two minute little audition scene. Let me have the chance to get turned down. I mean, I treated it like a business. I really pounded the pavement.
Alex Ferrari 5:51
Now, you know, you know, I mean, I've I've been directed for a long time. And I've obviously done a lot of auditions. And we as filmmakers get a tremendous amount of rejection. But it pales in comparison to the immense amount of rejection that actors have to deal with on a day. I mean, sometimes being rejected 456 times a day, if they get to that many auditions. How do you deal how did you deal with rejection? Because I'm assuming Yeah, you were a working actor, but I'm assuming for those 100 so commercials, you probably went out for 2000 of them?
Kevin Sorbo 6:21
Oh, sure. I live in Santa Monica. Right. And Ocean Park Boulevard is right in the Venice border. And to deal with rejection. I went and pumped on everyday at Gold's Gym and bike and either bike or rollerblade to downtown Manhattan back every day. Otherwise, I think I would have gone postal on people you really have I think and I think being that jock. I used to be that outlet was amazing for me. And I needed it. I needed I also played I had six years I was in three basketball leagues. So I was I was playing basketball three times. We had one in Pasadena, one in Northridge and one in Beverly Hills. So I wasn't I was playing hoops all the time. So I was always physically staying active to burn off that frustration.
Alex Ferrari 7:03
Because Yeah, it's absolutely frustrating to say the least.
Kevin Sorbo 7:06
I got down the last two guys for Lois and Clark, who's Dean Cain and myself. Dean's very dear friend of mine. He's a great guy. And we both did our auditions. Our screen tests with Terry hats are have already had the role. And that night, my manager call she got the role cap. And that was when Laura Mar studios used to be in Warner Brothers. They're gone now. But I think Les Moonves was the president there before he moved to CBS. Right? So they call me you got the role. I got excited. We want party. And then the next day, yeah, they change your mind. They're going thinking, Oh, that'd be absolute high, high highs of acting Low, low lows. It's a very frustrating business. But ultimately, three months later, I did book the role of Hercules. And as I love to tell de my show, when for seven seasons found a new zealand around the world. 176 countries became the most watched TV show in the world. And you got Canada for three seasons. I'm okay.
Alex Ferrari 8:03
It all worked out for everybody
Kevin Sorbo 8:05
It worked out for me. Things are great. I've done a couple movies together and we got another one we want to do together next year. We're trying to raise money for right now.
Alex Ferrari 8:12
Now, what is the one thing you wish you would have known when you started in the business?
Kevin Sorbo 8:21
I wasn't surprised how political is I wasn't surprised how crazy it is, you know, because I knew enough about it. And even just in the commercial world in a smaller place like Minneapolis St. Paul, which really isn't that small. It's pretty big, pretty big around there too. But I just I I had a hard time dealing with the backstabbing, they came from your own agents and your own managers that you found out about later. I remember one time I was in talking my commercial agent a good buddy of mine I just finished golfing and I stopped by and say Hey, what's going on blah blah blah. And right next to me. I heard the Booker from my buddy say oh card no carts out of town right now but I got a much better person for the role anyway. And I stood up and I said I just got off. I just got off the golf course with corn I busted him and I told you this happens all the time. It's It's It's amazing to me and also you know when when you sign I got very lucky I two series Hercules and Andromeda. So I 12 straight years of two series I the lead in him, and both of them 117 years, 115 years, and the percentage of you getting a second season is very rare. So but the amazing thing is how corrupt the industry is because you've heard it before the creative accounting.
Alex Ferrari 9:43
Don't do it.
Kevin Sorbo 9:44
They admit to a back end deal on your series or movie means you're gonna take it in the back end is really what it comes down.
Alex Ferrari 9:51
Great. That's actually a really great term.
Kevin Sorbo 9:53
I spent nine years in my lawsuit for my back and I Hercules with Andromeda and ultimately I'm getting throwing out my phone out that the judge behind it all was in the back pocket of the studio already the whole time. And my man, I really I really big entertainment lawyers, big, big ones that handle like the big name actors out there. And they said to me, Well, you know, you know, I said, Why? Why can't they just be honest? And he said, whilst the price of doing business, really, the price of a business is trying to screw you over, when when Titanic was the first movie to make a billion dollars back in 1997. Yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger gets up in front of an audience of 2 billion people around the world and says, here's a movie, even the studio won't be able to hide the profits and, and you got a lot of nervous laughter from those first 10 rows of all the big wigs that run the whole frickin world, you know, but it's amazing to me how corrupt the industry is, and it's pretty open about it, you know?
Alex Ferrari 10:49
Oh, and it's something I've been yelling and screaming from the top of the lungs trying to warn filmmakers about because and I've seen it like, you know, you know, working on posts for such a long time on films like angels field and things like that. I hear it from the producers, I hear what's going on with distribution, and the Hollywood accounting and, and all of that kind of it's, I remember, I had a conversation with a distributor on a film of mine. And he actually told me, he goes, Well, you I was asking him, why is the cheque so small? Or? Or where's this cheque coming from? Or like, I got a check, you know, like, but where I know reporting, I didn't know what it was from. I'm like, thank you for this little money. But I like what, what is it? And he's like, what are you complaining about? You got to check. Most filmmakers don't even get a check. so nonchalant about it. It was just like, it was just like, I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee. It was so nonchalant. I was like, Oh my god, this is completely entrenched information
Kevin Sorbo 11:40
If you get into a second season, third season, a TV series, press me, they're making money. And they're making big money. And behind closed doors, they will each admitted I've golf with these guys. And they sit there and go, yeah, it is kind of what goes on the business. But he goes, Oh, yeah, I made money in there right away. But you know, certain people get paid and other people don't get paid because you got to play that Hollywood game. And I'm not a very good player at this stupid game. I'm not a big fan of it. I'm not a Hollywood guy. But I love being on the set. I love making movies. I love doing TV series. I like you know, it's I still get very excited when I'm working. I love doing it. And I'm going to hopefully, you know, thank God for independent movies, I'm still able to keep a career going.
Alex Ferrari 12:18
Now with with Hercules, how did you get involved with Hercules? Because if I'm not mistaken, it started off with some It was like movies first, right? And then it turned into a series.
Kevin Sorbo 12:26
yeah we have five to our movies. What when my agent called me on this one, I kept, I'm not a small, I'm a six, three, you know, and back then I weighed around 225. I'm to 10. Now because I'm getting older. It's hard to keep the muscle mass, though working out every day, though. But, uh, when I got the call, I thought all right, you know, I mean, I'm athletic. I played sports. And I'm, you know, I work out all the time and lift weights all the time. But I tell them that they're gonna want some, you know, 280 pounds, no neck, you know, bodybuilder times they know, what they're looking for, is the guy that looks like he's an NFL quarterback, or maybe a decathlon guy. And I said, Okay, that's interesting. So I read the read the size that went in to read for that universal. About a week and a half later, they call me back and again, another week and a half later, they call me back in again, another week, they call me and seven times over like two and a half months. Wow. And the very last time i big build right off of the the the one on one that universal. Yeah, you know, the big tower hole in the big black towers, on the highway. I call it I call it the building where actors go to die.
But I went, I went in there, I was down the last three guys. And Sam Raimi was our executive producer. So I get in there, I'm on the stage. And that must have had there's like 30 people in there. They're all whoever's gonna make this decision for this TV series as all the men and women that have all the power and universal beside what TV shows get picked up and which ones don't. Right, so I got on stage and I said, you know, you guys have brought me in here a lot. I appreciate it. I signed the contract cuz now you're done the last three, they're gonna make it right. So we sign that five and a half year contract in case it goes more than more than one you know, turns into something more. And I said you guys never give me any direction here. Is there some way you want me to do this? You know, I'm looking at Mr. Ram. He says no, we like what you're doing. Just keep doing you're doing. So I read I read again with the with the actress. And then they said That's great. That's great. Okay, um, Sam hits the woman next. She goes, she goes, Oh, yeah, I need you. I have to ask you to take your shirt off, please. Right. And if you watch the show is in good shape. So I took my shirt off. And there was a you know, a few audible Oh, my sort of gas. And then being a smartass that I am I said, Well, I'm a lot bigger out of my clothes. Sam says to me, Ramy says so if you get the row Kevin Would you be willing to you know, shave your stomach and chest. I'm not like Robin Williams like seven inches. The girl but I got a little man cover there. Sure. And and he said, Would you be willing to shave it? And I went, Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted a man for this role and I started walking off the stage. I got I got a big laugh and I said thank you all I left and the next day I flew to Vancouver because my ciclos series The commish so the third day on the set, I somebody had one of the pieces come up, Oh, you got to call your manager. So call my manager, Beverly Dean. And Beverly says you got the role. You're going to be Hercules. You're going to do five star movies are going down in New Zealand and blah, blah, blah. She's very she's all excited. I walked back on the set and I looked at checklist and I said I don't want to crap from you. I'm half God now. I went I went I went down there that actually for the next two months, I pumped a little hard to put another five pounds of muscle on and I trained with Douglas one Douglas one was one of Bruce Lee's original students.
Alex Ferrari 16:00
Oh yeah,
Kevin Sorbo 16:00
We went 60. Oh, great guy. We went his he developed thing called a white lotus kung fu method, whatever it was, but he taught me all kinds of weapon we work like eight hours a day for five days a week for two months. I go to New Zealand. Who do they book opposite me to play Zeus but Anthony Quinn. So I get a whole year working with Anthony Quinn Paulie and your listeners don't know he has Shame on you.
Alex Ferrari 16:24
Yes, please, everyone just google Anthony Quinn.
Kevin Sorbo 16:28
People need to in this industry they need to get schooled on the people that were there before us. And this is the guy that was nominated for six Academy Awards. He won twice. So it was halfway through the third movie where something happened on the set with Michael Hurst who played my sidekick Keolis and co crew laptop just cracked up and I looked down because we had we had live in the show not to make writers mad but we would add live stuff and they could take take it off they wanted to but I looked at Michael I said that's what this show is going to get picked up as a series he was a thing so I said yeah, because there's nothing like an on TV right now. There's nothing like this. It has this bigger scope with the cinematography what is New Zealand It was beautiful. The wardrobes we had the fight scenes that we did the monsters that we had. And sure enough by the end of the movie, the third movie, universal said we love what we see we haven't released anything yet. We're still cutting the first three movies but you're gonna stay down. We're gonna make this a TV series. And so by our season three, not only that we spin off. The female sort of Hercules version was Xena Warrior Princess. That same season. You know how Hollywood is is something's hoppy. I'll copy it. Sheena came out another another female thing. Robin Hood, Tarzan, Sinbad, Conan all these other shows came up sort of copy what we are doing. And by season three, we did pass Baywatch as the most watched TV show in the world which is pretty cool.
Alex Ferrari 17:53
That's amazing. And you guys were shooting in New Zealand before was in vogue. It was before Lord it was it was before Lord of the Rings right before
Kevin Sorbo 18:00
Peter Jackson used to come on the set the sailor cruise developing because we shot from 1993 through the end of 1999. I was down there for seven years. And we had Peter Come on a sailor cruise developing because all during that decade he was writing all three movies of Lord of the Rings. And when we wrapped he took 80% of my crew he took all the stunt guys. He took our our camera team we took well john Mahaffey and pm McCaffrey, the camera guys were just amazing. The john Mahaffey ended up doing second unit directing and all those things plus all the Spider Man movies after that, but nyla Dixon won the Academy Award for Best wardrobe for Lord of the Rings. I always told my crew I said, you know, it's ridiculous that they don't want to nominate us for a Golden Globe and me fine for acting, whatever like that, but to not look at us for cinematography. There's nothing on TV that looks as beautiful as his show and for our wardrobe and I was sort of like okay, she's not winning the Academy Award for the wardrobe on Lord of the Rings she should have got a gold over me on my show because the wardrobe on my show on Xena was amazing. And our stunt guys were just incredible as well so I don't know it's it's the politics of the business once again because we wrote first one syndicated show we weren't a network show so they just like they don't want to pay attention to us even though we had higher ratings than most shows on networks. And it was it was funny because
Alex Ferrari 19:17
I really never heard of and maybe you can tell me if this happened before but the studio doing a five movie like deal first then to see then roll it into a series has that been done before?
Kevin Sorbo 19:31
Well, here's what here's why that happens called the Action Pack wheel. Where they had they have four other shows doing movies we were the only ones that did five movies because they love with the show look like the other ones that for you had tech wars that Shatner was producing. You had midnight run where they took the movie that Charles Grodin and De Niro did was such a great movie it is had they had BJ in the bear and they had banishing sun does this karate thing. Okay. So we were the only one that it was funny because Sid sheinberg was the was the president of unify the time? And I remember, it was like, it was around season three, and I was back home with the universal Christmas party. And he comes up to me says, You know, I gotta be honest with you, when they came up with these action, we'll we just figured Hercules would be the first to go and you're the only one that still around? I don't know. It's just like throwing spaghetti against the bloody wall and see what sticks. But I you know, it's it's it's it's funny how what I was gonna say is if it back in the 70s, ed McMillan and wife in the cloud, and they had all these, these these two hour rotating shows that we're going over, like every Wednesday night, I think that's what they're trying to copy again with his Action Pack, but just it just didn't take off. I don't I don't know what happened to tech wars and why that didn't work. But we were the only ones that ended up surviving, which is great.
Alex Ferrari 20:51
I mean, to be fair, I mean, on paper, it does not sound like if you would sell like, you know, we're going to do tech wars with we're going to do and we're going to do Hercules. Like Hercules is one of those stories that has just obviously been beaten to death forever, because it's just an it's one of the oldest stories around. But yet you couldn't quantify the magic of the chemistry of what you did. And what the writers did with the directing team to production team, everything. It's just that old soup is not on the paper.
Kevin Sorbo 21:17
Yeah, well, you know, I think a lot of us do what Sam Raimi is brand new to you know, I mean, they love the quirky humor and breaking the fourth wall like Gilligan's Island or something. I mean, you know, every time I even turned my head they put a big sound effects. In the fight scenes, I love doing the fight scenes, you know, we did three every episode basically. And Peter Bell, our stunt choreographer would let me work with I mean, we would sit there and we shot like eight to 10 day episodes. So I was down in New Zealand 10 months here that was home for me for seven year. So when we were not shooting, I was fighting that day, we'd still be rehearsing I'd go in and block a scene that I'd go you know 50 meters away with the stunt guys to rehearse what the next you know fight or flight scene is gonna be and we always try to put in funny stuff. Like if I would throw a guy 100 meters and he lands he only put a wire economy lands in the Calpine pasture somewhere and then I kicked sword out of one guy's hand and flies through the air we've always made sure as that flies through the air make sure that guys getting back up and as sword hits some of the back of the head and knocks them back in the golf ball thing you know, in a bar fight I throw a guy out the bar you know through the wall and it's a cut up body of us you know, and you know, the hole in the wall is is kind of body and fans love that stuff. And it was it was corny it was cheesy but it was done that way on purpose because we knew with a show like this we got to have we want people to laugh with us and not laugh out. It works.
Alex Ferrari 22:41
Yeah, it's a very you had to do a little tongue in cheek I mean, if you would have done it dead serious. I think it probably would have not
Kevin Sorbo 22:48
I said tongue firmly planted in shape.
Alex Ferrari 22:53
And if so, and to go back to what you were saying earlier, you have to actually fight for back in participation on on that all that stuff for her.
Kevin Sorbo 23:01
Believe it or not, they after seven years they were gonna do seasons eight, nine and 10. Right. I got approached by major Roddenberry Gene Roddenberry's widow to do the first show ever created by Gene Roddenberry after the original Star Trek series back in 1969 was Star Trek it wasn't enterprise wasn't the next generation it was actually Andromeda. And my captain Captain Dylan Hunt was the first Captain ever created Captain Kirk so they she came to me and said, boom, they gave me a they gave me a two, two year guaranteed 44 episode pay or play. If the show the imago they're gonna pay me for 44 episodes holy cow at the salary that I was being offered for season eight on Hercules per episode. It was it was it was a mafia deal too good to turn down. Yeah, and I'm a Star Trek fan to begin with. And universal wasn't that mad about it because they own a sci fi channel anyway, so I was like, I was still part of that family. But because I didn't sign eight 910 I think it was like a screw you to me. And it's it's amazing what they will do to juggle the books. You know, they said they said oh, we lost so much money on the show. I wouldn't you lost money. I knew they were making money by season two, season three, they're making big money. But they can say whatever they want. And they own the court systems. They don't I mean, it's amazing to me how corrupt the system is and it and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. I know guys that did other series that didn't get paid on their back end either. I know James Gunn, I used to golf with the late James Garner. And I was a big fan of Rockford Files. Yeah, he had a he had a fight 13 years or fers back end deal 13 years ago always make an improper file. It's It's unbelievable what these guys do. And it's it's they said oh, it's just part of doing business. Well no, it's not just being honest. But there's no honesty and integrity it's gone you know and it's it's bad that battle so I never got paid my back end.
Alex Ferrari 24:59
Oh my god.
Kevin Sorbo 25:02
They had Sam Raimi and Rob tappers contracts down there during the negotiations during the moderation mines next to theirs. My lawyer says their definitions are identical when you pay those guys. One lawyer from that studio said, well, all depends how you want to define the word definition. And that's when I said to the moderator, we better go to a different rooms right now, because I'm about to go across the table and probably do something that's going to hurt this guy. So Wow, it's amazing. What, what they'll do. So you know, and I'm a Midwest guy. I mean, a handshake shakes as good as a contract. But you know, you see, you'll see how thick the contracts are in Hollywood with all the double talk. And, you know, it's like, it's like Washington DC, right? What? 5000 page bill the other day, and they said, you got to read it.
Alex Ferrari 25:52
Yeah, they do. They do that constantly. All the time. They do stuff like that. It's so then but if you would have played ball and gotten 789 signed, that might have been different for is what they're saying?
Kevin Sorbo 26:03
Who knows, knows no one knows. I don't think I don't think would have been a different I mean, I know guys that didn't get paid in their backends other shows, I won't name them but they came back and said, Hey, we want to do a movie out of this. And they said forget it. And then they got paid their back and all of a sudden
Alex Ferrari 26:17
to do so when when So basically, if they want something from you, you can give them more money somewhere else. Generally, they they'll play ball like the Rockwood file thing is insane. That's insane. rockcliffe I was a huge I mean, what the 13 seasons, 13 seasons,
Kevin Sorbo 26:29
why don't win 13 seasons, but he took him through 10 years to fight it. Oh, yeah. I think I think they got seven years out of
Alex Ferrari 26:36
it. Exactly. But still
Kevin Sorbo 26:38
13 years before he got paid. And he did finally get paid. He finally got paid. How much money did they make on the money they owed him for those 13 years? Oh, of course. Of course.
Alex Ferrari 26:49
No. It's it's it is it is. It is. It's it's Aren't you happy? You're in a business?
Kevin Sorbo 27:00
It's amazing. You know, it's not the City of Angels. It's a city of broken dreams.
Alex Ferrari 27:04
But no, no question that
Kevin Sorbo 27:07
I think you'll agree doesn't matter what side of the cam you're on. Yeah. It's a business you want to be involved in.
Alex Ferrari 27:13
Especially if and the more I figured this out in my in my tenure in the business is the more control you have over the product, the distribution, their creation yourself, the better chance you have to actually get paid.
Kevin Sorbo 27:29
That's what we're that's what I'm doing my own stuff now. You know, so, but I mean, I don't think anybody gets in the business and say like an actor. Well, I didn't want to be an actor just sort of happened. Okay, right. Exactly. supermodel is I never really want to be a model. Yeah, you were just a hot babe that everybody was gawking at all. But I don't know, somebody took my picture and paid me $10,000
Alex Ferrari 27:47
an hour. So I'm like, why not?
Kevin Sorbo 27:52
Okay, I believe that.
Alex Ferrari 27:54
Now, um, can you explain something? Because I mean, obviously Hercules and Andromeda, you have fans, you have a really passionate sci fi fans? And what can you tell explain to people what it's like to actually be at Comic Con, and to meet your fans. Because I've been on both sides of the table. I've been on the I've been getting the autograph. And I've also given the autograph. And it is a really interesting experience. And I can only imagine what it's like for someone like you. So can you explain that to people?
Kevin Sorbo 28:25
You know, it makes a difference if the show is current as well. I mean, I still do Comic Cons, I still get invited a lot of them. I mean, this year socks, of course I had about, I pick out about eight a year, even though I probably get invited worldwide to maybe 30. I pick, okay, I've never been there. I want to do that one against that was good. But Hercules and Andromeda are still out there. And they're still fans out there with it. But when it's current, it's more rabid. It's more insane. Because I'm there as Hercules I come back for my two months, then I'm back home in the states before I head back down for the next season. And so I still got the long hair. I still got the you know, the look. And you sit across a table and people are there. They're nervous to shaking. Yeah, there's shaking. They're scared. I've had a couple women faint at the table. It's crazy. But But now because it's like those people now are in their 30s they're the age I was when I filmed this during my all my seven years of my 30s and now they got kids. So they're showing it to their kids. And there's more there. It's just kind of a nostalgic thing for them now to see me and meet with me but the kids are the ones that saw open eyes. But I love doing them. I have a blast doing them. I'm a golf nut so I'll golf every con i go to it I find a course Well let me tell you off at seven in the morning I go fast. I'll do 18 holes in less than two hours. And I go to the con and hang out and we go to dinner with some of the other actors like going to dinner. Shatner was just a just a hoot man banza come up to me during dinner and I'm cool about it. I chatted Like he won't take any of this like, he goes, Okay. You want to talk to me come to Canada. And I started get that two months I've been. I've been sleeping on an airplane. I've had people wake me up. No, I mean, I'm sleeping. And hey, can I get a picture?
Alex Ferrari 30:22
Here? Yeah, you kidding? No.
Kevin Sorbo 30:26
But but most people, most people are really cool. You get the people that hate you too. I mean, when I got married, I had female fans, right? And I hope people watch your show now. They got married, got married, I guess they thought that they sent me a picture of them in a bra or something. I ended up marrying them. Right? It was
Alex Ferrari 30:42
the it was that dream that hope that he's not married yet. So there's still hope that I might just maybe,
Kevin Sorbo 30:49
but I don't I don't know. But most fans are pretty cool. I gotta say most most people, especially now with the movies, I do a lot of family friendly movies. Like a whole spiel. But in the movies, I call with a good message in there and stuff. So I know I've lost some fans with that, you know, I'm heavy on Twitter and Social Media and I I posted truth. And like jack nicholson says you can handle the truth. And a lot of people can't they don't want to hear the truth. They want to believe whatever, whatever is fed them on the internet, because if it's on the internet, it must be true.
Alex Ferrari 31:17
Well, that'd be that's the law. I mean, that's the law says if it's on the internet, it has to be true. Now, there was a movie that you did call call the conqueror. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because it seemed to me that was in the middle of the Hercules. You know, fire not fire storm, but in the hurricane that was Hercules. And, and it was a universal project. I think they were kind of in you please correct me. They were kind of grooming you for something at that point. Can you talk a little bit about call? Um, yeah. I
Kevin Sorbo 31:45
mean, Raphael and Dale Aransas called me up and she's Dino's daughter. And she worked on the first she produced I think the first I think all three of the Conan movies. Conan called call was Conan his father in the books and also in the comic books. And they sent me a script, and I knew is in that vein of Hercules, but it was much more violent, much more sexual. And they were worried about me offending my Hercules fans, I was not I wanted to do with the way the script was written, which was much darker than what we ultimately shot. But they took the they made that our movie a PG 13. And a kind of a light pG 13. Really, we had a lot of humor in there as well, which I love humor and everything I want. I want the I love the humor and all that stuff. But yeah, they were kind of grooming me to sort of take over and not really take over our little bit, do the next thing because I had another movie right after that, that I was supposed to start filming as well. But that fell apart because of an illness that I suffered. And, but it was a bummer that I wasn't able to continue with them. But cold call was fun. It did. Okay. They opened on Labor Day weekend, which is just stupid. And I knew it was stupid. I said, I told my manager I said, we got to fight this. This is dumb. I mean, I know what the numbers are. People have gone to movies all summer long. And now Labor Day weekend, as most schools have been open for a week or two and people are done going to movies. And I said this is a Thanksgiving movie. Please wait. And they wouldn't universal wouldn't listen. And so the movie did. Okay. It's done very well in reruns and DVD sales. And because every time I go in autograph shows, Comic Con shows, I get at least 30 or 40 people that come up, they have any autograph the DVD. So I know it's out there and people like and it's funny. just mention it because I was at the gym just yesterday with my son here. And there's two people came up and they brought that up. What cracks me up is I did it. The last season of the OSI and I'll meet these these women are college girls. Oh, I love you on Oh, see. So I got you know, 250 episodes been Hercules and Andromeda. They don't nothing about that. But they know those eight episodes.
Alex Ferrari 33:47
It must be I mean, as an actor with such a fan base. And yet me you've done so much in your career. I mean, can you just we talked a little bit about it earlier, but for people to understand what it's like to kind of walk in your shoes, like when you walk out in public, you know, you do get recognized and and because I mean, Hercules was like you said one of the biggest shows in the world. And I'm assuming this is worldwide. I'm sure you probably have stories that you were somewhere in Europe one day and and people just walk up to you like Achilles and where they go Herky jerky, you know.
Unknown Speaker 34:21
Perfect. Exactly.
Alex Ferrari 34:24
But But how what is that? Like? Because I mean, I don't I'm never gonna have that experience. I'm just curious if you if you could share a little bit of that.
Kevin Sorbo 34:32
I said people are people really nice about it. Last year, I had three Comic Cons and row near. one weekend after the other. I looked at my wife and I said, I got three, three teenage kids, two boys and a girl. And I said, Let's take the kids, let's go spend a month in Europe. Thank God it wasn't this year because all would have been canceled, right? So year and a half ago already. So I had one in one in Vienna, one in Munich and one up in Brussels. And so when I was when I graduated college, I went to Europe to study In three months, I end up living in Europe for three and a half years. So a form of de la. I stayed in Europe, I was with an agent in Milan agent up in Munich, and Zurich, and, and Hamburg, London. So I shot a bunch of commercials when I was in Europe as well. So I love being there. It made me grow up. I was 22 year old kid, it made me grow up. And really, I'm in a different country, different language, different culture. And it was really good for me to do it. It's I mean, it's a different world over there now, but it was, it was great back then. So to take the kids back, there was amazing and to go back and walk through the old man, I live in Munich for like a year and a half, walk back my old neighborhood and go out wherever we went out. You know, it was like, Oh, my gosh, it's Hercules or, and drama. It was always it was all all of that. And every city we went to outside of the Comic Con, of course, the Comic Con brings in those crowds. We just walk in the streets. It happens every day. I mean, of course now I get to wear a mask when I'm walking around by yourself. And we can breathe our own, you know, carbon dioxide, which is great. But it happens every day through airports and hotels. But what's interesting now, most of the time, it's about my family friendly movies. Like what if God's not dead? Let there be light tables field. It's those kind of movies that people stopped me now more than anything else, which is pretty, pretty amazing.
Alex Ferrari 36:23
That's awesome. And that's really awesome. Now when you're working with a director, what do you look for in a director when when you're working with one?
Kevin Sorbo 36:32
I want him to let me do whatever the hell I want. As far as
Alex Ferrari 36:37
I know all stop it. Just let me do me.
Kevin Sorbo 36:42
You know, it's, uh, I have the progress. I do love blocking. I want to go out there and, and I like to rehearse with the actors off off. You know, when you guys are setting up lights, some actors want to do some some don't they want to be more spontaneous with or something like that. It's fine. Everybody's got this sort of little approach to things. But I want the words to be secondary, right? I want to be in them. I want to be in there with the the Meisner technique. I'm working off you, you're working off me. But like I said earlier, I like if there's any chance for humor in there, I want to throw in humor. So I talked to the writers all the time on a Hercules we were always three scripts ahead. So in between setups, to I'd be on, you know, on the set phone calling back to LA because the writers were in LA, they went with us there. And I say I'm looking at, you know, this episode we're shooting in three weeks. I don't get this. So I love this part here. Can we expand on that? So I'm always open to work with the writers. I'm always open to work with the directors. In all the years I've been involved the business I think it's only handful of directors that were really kind of a pain in the ass that were just tough to deal with. And it wasn't just me it was with everybody. And but for the most part, I've been very fortunate. And even all the actors I've worked with, there was only one person of all years and Hercules I'm not going to name his name. That was really a pain in the butt when it came down to guests on the show news Panda, but for everybody in dangerous, dangerous and the fights, you know, and that's why actors think that look, I'm a good athlete. I know I'm and I'm good at fight scenes. And all the fight scenes I did in Hercules which would be I don't know hundreds and hundreds of I only hidden one stunt guy physically hurt him. And it was because he went past his mark when I'm throwing elbow behind me because I'm throwing an elbow without looking as I'm fighting guys up here. Sure. Anyway, two feet past his mark. And I busted his nose. I mean, it was blood His eyes were cliff, I'm sorry. That's my fault, man is my fault. Me, but I felt horrible about it. And I know what the you know, I've heard stories of Steven Seagal hurting guys all the time on the set. Right? And I know, do that with other actors. their ego is why can do this. And I agree with Harrison Ford where he said I don't want to fight actors. Because I'm doing it all the time. And these guys are not but their egos why can do this. And I that's the time, I would tell my stunt guy. Sam, come on in and you're taking over for this point, you know, because it just wasn't worth it for me to get hurt because I got hurt enough on that show. Just doing stuff the way it was. And, you know, it was my ego that wanted me to do my own stuff, my own stunts, but I just had fun doing it. I loved him.
Alex Ferrari 39:17
And and now and I know you mean you've you've worked on the every scope of production from you know, indie indie budgets to multimillion dollar budgets. How do you deal as an actor with difficult production environments? Because I've been I've been I've involved the different production environments when I'm not the director, but and I just I just watched to see how and I can only imagine like on the production side of stuff enough. But if you're the actor in front of the camera, and you're the star, how do you deal with, you know, not to say in competence, but maybe you know, ego, things like that. What do you do as an actor especially, it also depends on where you are in your career at that point, too.
Kevin Sorbo 39:58
I think the best thing to do When you reach those points, which, thankfully for me, I have been having a lot in the creative span 35 years now. You take those people aside one on one I don't like making I don't like when I don't never want to embarrass people in front of the crew. I don't want it to me. I like I don't care if I'm acting or if I'm directing on it. I like to have a fun set. And I love to work fast. I believe in Clint Eastwood's mentality. You know, you're an actor. You come in prepared. You're on the camera team. You come in prepare, Clint those two takes and they move on one if it's if it's if he's happy with it, you know, and he's used to people coming in and whispered to directors. I mean, a lot of these younger directors think you know, all Hollywood, you got to work 16 hour days, you know, and I'll whisper in their ear. Oh, by the way, Clint Eastwood does eight hour days makes Academy Award nominated movies. Okay, just saying I'm just
Alex Ferrari 40:51
throwing it out there. You know,
Kevin Sorbo 40:53
there's so much waste of time on this.
I act.
I act like an assistant first ad. You have the first ad but then you got me and I walk on set and go. What are we waiting for? What's going on? You know, just get get going. And on Andromeda we kept a much. Hercules was longer days only because
Alex Ferrari 41:14
of the locations and an action to action always takes a little time.
Kevin Sorbo 41:18
And drama. We rarely went out even though you know, Stargate was filming down the road from us where their studio was, but every time Stargate was always outside, but every planet looked like Vancouver, you know, just pure, beautiful trees. That so we rarely went outside. We did a lot of green screen. We kept it we had two two big studios that we had my ship and one we have the rica Morrow and another one. And we did a lot of green screen and we worked that show Hercules including drivetime and lifting weights every day. I was 17 to 18 hours door to door. It was a brutal schedule. Wow. And drama those 12 hours door to door. If I if they picked me up at six I'm home at six my crew lovebugs that crew would just come off X Files. And David the company moved to X Files down to LA for last season there. were created a big stir he was like I'm done with Vancouver and I love Vancouver by the way but anyway um my crew love me because most one hour shows by your call time at 5am in the morning on Monday by Friday because those 12 hour turnarounds you're looking at a five o'clock in the afternoon start then you shoot till eight or nine Saturday morning. We wrap virtually every single day between five and 7pm every day. My crew is going home every day and having dinner with their family and they love me for after coming off the hellhole that they had on the hours they had on on x file so it can be done in I my latest movie miracle is Texas which will be in theaters next summer. I don't know if you can really see that post back. We can. I directed it. We got Lou Gossett Jr. We got john Ratzenberger was great. We got Tyler Maine. The WWF fans know Tyler Maine is the sixth dude. But he's also Sabretooth on all the x men movies. It's a great wonderful movie set in 1930. So people look for that when that when that does come out miracle in East Texas next spring. But that one we wrapped every day between 10 and 12 hours of shooting at the at the most. And we were outside at a ranch most the time we shot in the same location they shot Revenant where they set Unforgiven where they shot Lonesome Dove and open rains with Kevin Costner. So it was a great location and the people that crew we had was phenomenal. And I there's no reason that you can't, you know, shoot 12 hour days Max, there's no reason you just got to get people moving and keep things going. I like an ad I want to I don't want to be the jerk on the set. That's my abs job. I need the ad who's tough and on on top of things. And he's got to be he's got to be the bad cop. I'll be the good cop. But I've always trusted in everybody that I hire for their departments from hair and makeup to wardrobe to camera that you're hired because you know your job better than I do, which of course they did. So, you know, I may have ideas but I want I want it to be as corny as it sounds. I want to be a collaborative effort, which it should be, you know, if you have a bird's eye view of his set, I don't care what kind of movie there's independent big budget movie. As you know, it's a I call it organized chaos. You know, it's just it's crazy of all the people running around and hear people coming out and doing this person and camera guys lighting guys, and all of a sudden and action and then it's just becomes that scene once and cut and then it goes back into organized chaos.
Alex Ferrari 44:44
It's the second year everyone rushes in. It's like
Kevin Sorbo 44:49
It's like all the ants took a break and then oh, we found a dead animal.
Alex Ferrari 44:55
So So how do you how do you like directing now? I mean, I mean, you do to direct any Hercules episodes, I
Kevin Sorbo 45:01
started writing on Hercules. Yeah, I've been I've I've been DGA now for 2024 years and sag rover over 35 years. So yeah, I mean, it's uh i love it. Um I think I'm very good at that keeping separate the acting part and the dragged by when I'm in the scene because I'm in I'm in the movies I direct as well. I will I will leave it over to my first ad to do the action and cut. I don't know I I like to I love to film rehearsals. Because there's some wonderful things have happened. I do I'd love it
Alex Ferrari 45:43
if I can I do it.
Kevin Sorbo 45:44
How many times been on set when the director didn't film I so I go just shoot it. You know what it is? Oh, come on, in there. Get it on film. Because, and one thing that bugs me more than anything, is if an actor screws up in line, even if it's me, don't cut that it shuts the energy down right away. It just shuts it down.
Alex Ferrari 46:07
You know,
Kevin Sorbo 46:08
and we in very few directors did that on Andromeda, which is great. You know, you screw up. Now go, go, go, go, go keep going. And I just get back in that mode and go again, give me give me the lead in line, whatever it may be. But keep keep that energy going. Because a lot of times in the DPW goes, Wait, am I just got to fix the light. You know, that's 15 minutes.
Alex Ferrari 46:25
You they always have to fix a light?
Kevin Sorbo 46:30
Well, you know, I think I think for every for every department that a friend of mine who is an editor says you can never ever stop editing. You just got to find a place to finally stop.
Alex Ferrari 46:44
Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're never in a movie is never finished. It's abandoned? Yeah.
Kevin Sorbo 46:51
Okay, we're done. You know, cuz you sit in that editing room. And thank God, it's just as quick as it is today what it used to be, oh, cut a squirrel. But still, you get in there. And you can get glassy eyed after a while. It's just like,
Alex Ferrari 47:03
test me. I know. Trust me,
Kevin Sorbo 47:05
I definitely know what I will do. When I get my first director's cut in is I will bring over about 10 buddies of mine, friends of mine in the industry, and let them watch it and get their thoughts on it. I think is a smart. And I think every director, I'd read through that morning, every writer read throughs are important. And writers scripts, because writers are there and they're three in the morning. And they're writing and writing, writing. And then they get too close to it. And they can be such major holes in people's scripts that they can't see anymore. You get a bunch, you get a bunch of actors that you know, as a writer to read it out loud, and you can hear it out loud in yoga. Okay, yeah. And make your notes during that. I think it's important.
Alex Ferrari 47:45
That's so amazing. It's very, it's very, very true. And yeah, a lot of times when I tell writers as well, like, read the dialogue that you're writing, because it might read well, but when someone says it, not so much.
Kevin Sorbo 47:59
Those four writers take the most abuse, and they got the hardest job. They do the hardest job, you know, how do you find a great script? I mean, I've been on the set many times, and I've been guilty of it to where the actor goes, who wrote this crap. writers, you know, and actors take enough abuse the way it is. But yeah, it's it's a tough job. I wrote one episode of Hercules and we shot it. But I'll never do it again. It's just it's way too much work for me.
Alex Ferrari 48:25
And how and by the way, you've done so many projects. How do you pick projects, because I'm assuming you're getting bombarded with opportunities all the time.
Kevin Sorbo 48:32
You know, it's funny on LinkedIn, Kevin sorbo, dotnet, where people go get a hold of me as well. I get I get 1015 scripts a day sent. I mean, a week sent to me. And I got to type the same thing over again. I'm only looking for funded projects right now because I've got, you know, I've whittled down, down about down to about 20 that I want to do. And it was 25 but I've done five of those so far. The hardest thing is finding funding of course, it's so frustrating to find money for independent movies. And independent movies are fine with Avengers fine with the Pirates of the Caribbean. Why would they you know, all these action movies that cost 300 million bucks and they'll spend $100 million promoting it so they're on every their trailers and every football and basketball game and every whatever. And when I'm doing movies that are three $4 million people think that's a lot of money. That's like the catering budget on Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, seriously, this and i i do movies that have that aren't filled with violence and hate and anger that seems the only thing coming out of Hollywood right now these movies that have such a negative viewpoint and just everything's got to be weird and just off beat and I like to do movies that people can go to and go like a blindside movie or Green Book which was awesome movie well.
Alex Ferrari 49:51
It's also a Soul Surfer and souls
Kevin Sorbo 49:53
yeah soldier. movies that have a positive message movies that characters. I can never be Hercules in real life. You'll never be Iron Man. Okay, but we can be the characters that we see. And what made me fall in love with acting was my mom. I'd sit with her when I was a kid watching Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and, and, you know, all these wonderful actors that are in that golden age. And I love these movies and with with a with a humor and that whatever that was in there, I just said, You know, I see actors that never seen Casa Blanca, these young kids you've never seen Casa Blanca, you've never seen, you know, Lawrence of Arabia, all these great old these movies that were just mad 10 commandments, and there's so many massive movies out there. And people that get in this business, I think need to get more educated on the history of the business as well. I think this is important.
Alex Ferrari 50:43
I mean, I was I was doing a color session years ago with one of the hottest music video directors in the world at the time. And I'm color grading this and I'm working on this project like hey, do you want a little Blade Runner here? And he's like, what's that? And I'm like, wow, I'm like your music video director. And you haven't studied Ridley Scott, probably one of the greatest commercial and visual storytellers of all time. He's like, No, I'm like, I need to stop the session right now. We're gonna go, I'm gonna grab my blu ray, watch the seed. Like, I was like, Are you kidding me? And I was the old fogy in the room. And I was like 30 something.
Unknown Speaker 51:18
Yeah,
Kevin Sorbo 51:19
it was.
Alex Ferrari 51:20
It was it's, it's insane. I just want to touch back really quickly, when you're getting all these scripts, because I want to do you a service. So everyone listening because I know a lot of people are gonna try to probably reach out to you because they're all filmmakers and everybody wants to get their projects done. A lot of times when they're and I've tried to tell people not to do this. They'll reach out to, you know, actors of your statute and with with your credibility, your bankability, and they'll go, Hey, here's my script, I need a letter of intent to go help find money. Can you explain why that is something? Do you do Letters of Intent? Is it is that something? I mean, all
Kevin Sorbo 51:57
if I read the script, I give scripts 20 pages, hold my interest, then I'll keep reading if it doesn't, I'll move on. But I'll do a letter of intent only now if it really has my interest because almost all these movies come in with no money attached to it. Right? And there's it's in it's frustrating, but if it's a role that really hits me after 20 pages, then I'm interested I mean look I got three movies and they can right now one of them is miracle is taxes. They're going to be in theaters next year. Hopefully we get past as COVID ridiculousness is shutting down the world running people's lives. I got a new TV series called the pot wins. It's like a Last Man Standing Tim Allen series as we shot at it. We shot eight episodes this past July in August, in beautiful San Bernardino. And it was a very boss who plays my dad and it's it's hilarious. It's great. Very, very funny stuff. We'll see what happens with that we did like I said we did eight is
Alex Ferrari 52:51
that was that independent?
Kevin Sorbo 52:53
Yes independent. It's independent but Netflix is interested in fox is interested right now. So we'll see what happens with that but but I've got four movies lined up for next year already one of my directing as well. We just got funded for that one. We raised the like 4.2 million, but I'd see it's like every two years I'm able to raise this money I want to be able to do two of these movies a year it's tough out there guys. And I know people come to me saying well I got a nice little independent movie that's a good you know, I call them actors movies. I'm gonna backtrack a little bit when I look for movies now. I want to look for movies that that move people like you said that like Soul Surfer like lineside like like greenbook which I thought was amazing bigger Morton's incredible. Like, I love doing movies like that, that people go I know guys like that or I can relate to that make you laugh, make you cry, movies that have hope in them. You know, we lost them. We have so much anger and hate in our world right now. And divisiveness. I want to do movies that hopefully would pull people together and you know, have a good message in there for anybody and everybody looking for something good. And because I think I think most people are I just think the media loves to perpetuate the anger and hate right now. I think most people are good people. And you know, we just got to find a place where you know, we can do movies that that get made and I meet very wealthy people I do a lot of charity. I do a lot of charity golf events. I meet very wealthy guys and they can spend $9 million dollars you know promoting some candidate for governor a president that doesn't get elected and gone that 9 million bucks I can make two or three really good movies that would be out there forever because that candidate yard is backing no one remember that is anymore? No so it's weird it's it's weird where we got to fight for the culture now I think more than anything else and that's kind of the movies I want to do movies with a positive message.
Alex Ferrari 54:34
And you also have a book out right?
Kevin Sorbo 54:37
I got I have a book that came out called True, true strength that came out about eight years ago I finally wrote a follow up called true faith. true strength was born out of us in the season five and Hercules I was having all kinds of problems my left arm and my shoulder and my fingers were cold and nama comfort was going on. I came back to do promotional work on I was on Letterman Leno did all the talk shows before called the conquer So I went to see my doctor and Beverly Hills there and he found a lump way up here. Before they could do a bio Shannon, thank god they didn't end up being an aneurysm that had been spitting blood clots down my arm for months while it opened up, sent hundreds of class my arm. And unfortunately for class my brain I suffered four strokes.
Alex Ferrari 55:19
Oh my god. So
Kevin Sorbo 55:20
I spent the I had another action movie I was going to be doing and I couldn't do it because I couldn't walk anymore. So I learned to walk and balance over the next four months. Again, it took me three years to fully recover. If you watch the last two seasons of Hercules, you can see I lost about 15 pounds of muscle because I wasn't able to work out the way I was working out before and I went from an 18 hour door to door day to about a three hour door to door over those two years is slowly building myself back up to about 10 hours a day. But it took me three full years to recover from it and true strength. People go to Kevin Sobel dotnet and get an autographed copy. It opened a door for me I thought I'd never be doing which is speaking events I do about I've had all 12 speaking events are canceled because of COVID. I've been to in the last month fortunately, one back in my home state of Minnesota, and I just didn't want up in, in, in in Dallas. I was in Dallas last week. So it's starting to open up again slowly. But it's really about true strength is sort of plan words because it Hercules had a lot of stunt guys make me look like a stud. Right? So I couldn't beat up those guys. And really, for me, it's like, you got to find your own true strength because everybody's got a story. Everybody's gonna have a roadblock in their life. No matter what age you're at, that you got to find out. What am I going to do? Am I gonna blame God family, friends, everybody else? The reality is you have to look in the mirror and say, okay, it happened to me. What am I going to do about it now and you got to find your own way to get back to living a life again, instead of blaming and crying and whining about it.
Alex Ferrari 56:44
Amen, brother, amen. And then I'm gonna ask a few questions asked all my guest. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today?
Kevin Sorbo 56:54
Go for an intern intern. I mean, don't get paid for the hack where they get yourself in the set. You know, I tell people all the time I got when I my first my first acting coach is Bill trailer at the LA studios and they're in LA. And his wife, Peggy period died just the year before in a car accident. But he taught me so much in terms of just just sticking with it and going for it. But interning is just a way to get yourself on a set. He told me to keep doing the commercials I'm doing says because you're putting in miles, you're getting in front of the camera. Some commercials I talked in other ones I did. I got to be on a beach with a beautiful girl in a bikini selling, you know, orange juice or whatever, you know, but you're on that set, and you're doing stuff. I remember an actor in that class kind of make fun of you not a real actor doing commercials. Well, I got a hot date one night, he's my waiter, okay. I don't have to wait tables, I have money to be able to go out and have a meal. I do do commercials. I'm telling you one thing. Number one, you get your sag card. And number two, you'll make money. The first two years on Hercules, I made less money than I did the previous three years that I made in commercial residuals, because I would at any given time I have 15 checks a day coming in, whether it was $10 or $1,000, but I would rip off and every check while I'm watching Monday Night Football go on. This is awesome. You know, and there's money in there. But there's also a chance for you to do the things you want to do to further your career. And so I tell people get on a set and intern at any position. Watch what people do learn that way. Kevin Costner did Dan Raleigh studios, he learned what? Okay, this is what the carpenters guys are doing. This is what the camera guys are doing. Do you think he's a good director? Yeah, I think he's a damn good director of the no damn good actor.
Alex Ferrari 58:38
And Yep, absolutely. Now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?
Kevin Sorbo 58:47
I think patience. More than anything else, I'm a very impatient person. Me to what I did learn earlier. That's that's that kind of ties in with patients as a as a positive thing against the negative of patients is failure. I used to caddy at this private Country Club in Minneapolis, very wealthy guys, mostly guys, I cared for between 30 and 70. Okay, they're all successful guys all had money. And I would ask them, you know, here I am, as an 1819 year old kid carrying double bags is walking a fairway? How did you become successful? They all said, Kevin, oh, I failed. And then I failed again. And then I failed again. Then I kept failing. He said failure is a positive thing, not a negative thing. You got to you got to get rid of all the bad stuff. But take the positive stuff and drag that along with you. Because that's what I learned getting out to Hollywood with all those doors being slammed in your face because I told you as an actor, oh, you're too young. You're too old. You're too fat, you're too skinny or too whatever. There's always reasons they want to get rid of you. So I just I looked at that is a positive thing. I said, I know every actor, they get in their car and they're chewing on their steering wheel when they're driving the four or five or whatever. Tell them I say it that way. Why did I do it this way. I got to the point. I just Get in the car and said, I did the best I could have. They don't pick me. It's their loss. And that changed a lot for me just being a lot more positive about it.
Alex Ferrari 1:00:08
Very cool. And last question, what are three of your favorite films of all time?
Kevin Sorbo 1:00:13
I already named one of them. Casa Blanca, no question about that one. Yes. Jeremiah Johnson, Ray, maybe Jeremiah Johnson. And then it's a tough one because there's so many great ones in there. But I'm gonna take HUD it's an earlier poem and believe what I, the reason I want to be an actor were Paul Newman, Robert Redford. I've met Redford Newman passed away. But I have a letter from Paul Newman that's on my wall in my office. And it was great supportive letter and how he, you know, was a fan of stuff I've done and it just, it was just, it was just pretty cool. But, of course, Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid in the sting are pretty darn good.
Alex Ferrari 1:00:55
They're not bad. They're not bad films. They're not bad. Not bad at all. Kevin, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and this crazy, crazy time that we're in. And I appreciate you, everything you've done in your career and a lot of joy that you've brought to a lot of people over the years as well with all the parts you've done. So thank you again, my friend and safe safe travels.
Kevin Sorbo 1:01:14
More to come more to come Kevin Sorbo Happy New Year. Let's make 2021 awesome.
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