Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 385: Selling Indie Films with the Regional Cinema Model with Daedalus Howell

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BPS 385: Selling Indie Films with the Regional Cinema Model with Daedalus Howell · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifagpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three eighty five.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I would rather hustle for twenty four to seven than
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: slave from nine to five. Mongle Wilder broadcasting from a dark,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: on that next draft.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: screenplay bulletproof.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: of project you are in the goals of the project
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: you are, so we actually break it down by three
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: categories micro budget, indie film, market, and studio film. There's
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: no reason to get coverage from a reader that's used
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: to reading temp pole movies when your movie is going
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: to be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and we
• 1:13
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• 1:16
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• 1:29
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• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Now today's guest comes straight from the pages of Rise
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of the Film Entrepreneur. Today's guest is data List Howell,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: and he is the director of a new film called Pillhead. Now.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: How he distributed and how he created the project from
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: inception is quintessential film entrepreneurship. He used one of my
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: methods called the regional model. Now, this is when you
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: create a movie or a series or content for a
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: geographical area. It could be your neighborhood, it could be
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: your town, it could be your city, something that really
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: speaks to that community, and you make it for a
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: low enough budget where then you can galvanize the entire
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: community around that movie, and then you can make a
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: business doing films like this. And that's exactly what he did.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: He created a movie called Pillhead, which is basically an
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: art house exploitation on art exploitation film. I forgot what
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: he called it, but it's an art house film. And
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: in his area up near San Francisco, it is a
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: very art house kind of community. They love art house films,
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: they love kind of quirky arty films. And he decided, look,
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna make this, and he did it. And I
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: forgot the exact budget. You have to listen to the episode,
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: but I think it was around thirty thousand dollars or
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: out of his own pocket. After he got investors and
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: got donations and things, he only had to say, spend
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: like seven or eight thousand dollars out of his own
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: pocket to make this thing. And he even talked his
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: way into free mind you free screenings at all the
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: local theaters where they four walled his film for free,
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: just on a revenue split. That's unheard of with a.
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: Small indie, micro budget indie movie, but he was able
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: to do that, and by the way, he was in
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: those theaters for weeks and he did very very well theatrically,
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: and that was just one of the multiple revenue streams
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: he created for this project. And he's doing more of
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: these kinds of progress so he could build a portfolio
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: of films like this to keep this process going. So
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: I really wanted to dig deep into how he used
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: the regional cinema model in the distribution and creation of
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: his new film Pill Heads. Without any further ado, please
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: enjoy my conversation with data List howel I like to
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: welcome to the show.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Data List, Howel Man? How are you?
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I'm grand Man? How about you?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much? Man. I appreciate you reaching out
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: to me and coming on to the to the podcast
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: and hopefully being you know, dropping some knowledge bombs from
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: your experience because I always look for unique, as you know,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: unique ways of looking at film, and you you hit
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: something I hadn't heard before. Hey how about using your
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: hometown as a backlot. I'm like, that's a podcast.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: So I had I had nowhere else to go, Alex
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: had nowhere else to go, And now I'm with you.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Man. So first of all, Man, what
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: made you want to become a filmmaker? Like, why did
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: you want to become a Carnie?
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question. I you know, I should
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: back up and tell you I'm from Petaluma, California and
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: what you may or may not know about Pedaluma. We're
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: north of San Francisco a little bit. This is a
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: movie town, and so we were surrounded by all kinds
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: of film phenomena, beginning with like American Graffiti, which was
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: shot here, Lucas Peig You Sue Got Married was shot
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: here Coppola, and then through the nineties and Benny the
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Abbott's phenomena, the Leader remake Flubber. I mean, it was crazy,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: the amount of like cinematic immersion just in production that
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: was here for a while, and so growing up in
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: that you get the bug. Compounding that lucasfilm was just
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: over the hill in Marin, right, and then you throw
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: in one on a writer going to Pedaluma High and
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: this is like super film consciousness in terms of a town.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of us grew up, with my
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: cohort and I with this fantasy that we could do
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: it too, and of course that was summarily crushed, you know,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: once we all went to Hollywood, and you know, as
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: everyone goes through that process. And so I had the
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: bug pretty early, and I had to really figure out
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: how I was going to like deal with having that
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: in my system. I became a writer pretty early on
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: for local newspapers and that kind of thing. So I
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: was able to kind of build a film adjacent career.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: I could interview film people, and when I did finally
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: go to Los Angeles in like the early two thousands,
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: I was principally, you know, an aspiring screenwriter. Had some
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: minor breaks that kind of thing. But you know, I
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: washed out and I was left with the disease. You know,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the virus was in me. I wanted to make a film,
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: and it got so bad man that after I mean,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: you know, the infection was riddling.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I always referred to the bug or the thing to
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: become a filmmaker. It's like herpes, Like it's literally it's
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: once you get it, you've got it for life. It
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: will flare up sometimes with sometimes it's dormant, but no
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: matter what, it will flare up eventually again. And then
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: you'll and then sometimes it's really bad and you just
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: start like, oh, man, turn into a crack feend.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: But go ahead, yeah, well that's yeah, that's a great
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: metaphor because it's really what happened. And it got it
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: got to the point where I began to forbid myself
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: to like read about you know, read film books, to
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: look at anything about any film because I didn't want
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: the flare up to come back because I was feeling
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: so negative about myself from never having done it. Ruh.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: And then I just I got in a situation where
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: I was between jobs in my my partner girlfriend said, hey,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: what do you really want to do? Now? You know
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: it's kind of wide open, and I said, well, what
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: I really want to do is direct And she didn't
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: know much about production anything like that, so she didn't
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: know it was impossible. And so she became a film
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: producer and I became a writer director. And it was
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: just it was just the drive to do it that
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: that compelled me. But it was really just you know,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: after you know you did this with this is Meg
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: fifteen years or whatever, you know, you're like, why haven't
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: I done it? There's no really excuse not to apart
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: from manifesting the drive to do so. And so that's
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: what we finally did. No.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I mean I had I had a horrible
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: experience with a mobster in Hollywood, so kind of that
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: kind of that kind of stained me and sad that.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Book, Yeah, that I'm going to though yeah, I mean
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: It is definitely. I realized its subconsciously stopped me from
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: ever going back into Like why would you go back
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: to the most painful time in your life and you
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: associate making a movie with the most painful time in
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: your life. So I had an excuse. It was a
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: horrible one, but I had an excuse why I didn't
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: do it. But at a certain point, you know, you
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: and I are both of similar vintages. You know, at
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a certain point you just go, dude, I'm not twenty anymore, Like,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: I can't keep I can't keep doing this.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. But the problem is when you bring that filmmaker
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: identity into your consciousness and you're carrying it that long
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: and you haven't made that, you know, the feature film.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Your life is all plot and no story. Man, you
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: start like you start a questioning who you are, and
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: of course all your friends are like, dude, are you
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: You're so you're a filmmaker? Really, dude, I mean, where's
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: your movie? And you've got a bunch of shorts on YouTube?
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: Who are you? You know? It's like, it's so it. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: you just have to do it. You just have to
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: do it. If you're going to do it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I hid behind you know, I did
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: direct like little commercials or music videos and things like that,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: but it wasn't what I wanted to do, and I
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: hid behind post. So I was like that was it
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: was kind of like nice. It's adjacent. You're yeah, you're
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: still a filmmaker, but you're not doing exactly what you
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: want to do. So it's a great experience, but you hide,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: you hide in that in that world. So for me,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I hid there for god knows about twenty years.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, dealing. Yeah, and then you did a podcast and
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: that okay, you know, you hit behind the podcast.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Then I hit behind the podcast and behind this. I'll
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: be honest with you, though, I'll be honest with you.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: If it wasn't for the podcast, and if it wasn't
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: for the tribe, I don't think I would have made
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: this is Meg. The reason why there was two reasons
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I did it was because one, I wanted to prove
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: to the tribe that it could be done. I wanted
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: to prove to myself it could be done. I also
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: wanted to use the tribe as something to keep me,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: come to keep me. Uh what's that word? Ah? Not compatible.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: But when you're trying to when you're trying to do
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: something and someone tells you, like Z watching you, I
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: forgot that word, that term. I can't I'm losing my.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll never find it out.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I'm sure someone's yelling at it in their car at
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the moment. But but but I did it for that reason,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: and then also for whatever odd reason because it was
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: still doing Indy film Muscle on kind of a side hustle.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Still it wasn't my full time gig. Yet We'll be
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: right back after a word from our sponsor. And now
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: back to the show. I just said, well, if it
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: doesn't work out, I always have any filmhouse, so I
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: could just go back to that. So it's like my
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: safety blanket, you know. And it's become this kind of like,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: oh I I'm good, I'll just go. It made me
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: more brave to just go out there where it might
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: scare other people, because you're like putting yourself out there.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It's the opposite for me. I find it very comforting
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: knowing that I have an I have not only an audience,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: but I have a tribe. I have a community that
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I could always go back to and if it doesn't work,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: it doesn't work.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's that's really I think that was one
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: of the smartest moves. You've clearly one of the smartest
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: moves you've made, you know, and you did. I mean,
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: you've definitely galvanized the community. I mean, I'm you know
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: how they say, like the Velvet Underground had one hundred fans,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: but each one of them started a band. You know, right,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: You've got well more than one hundred fans. But there's
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: gonna somebody some film history and it's going to trace
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: back this explosion in dependent film and they're gonna be
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: able to blame one man. They're gonna go Alex Ferrari,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: and you know they'll find you.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: You know what, I honestly that would be the most
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: wonderful thing ever because if I you know, I'm here
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: just to help and I want to. I want to.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I want that and I get these stories like yours
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: and and other people who've listened to the podcast for
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: a long time, like I finally made my movie. I
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: finally did this thing. But now it's my job to
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: teach you how to make money with it. But that's
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: why you're here, yes, because you have a unique story
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: behind it. Now tell me about your film. Pill head name,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: great name, Oh thank you.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The general gist is a young art student takes
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: too many pills and wakes up in what's probably a
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: parallel universe, and it's all about finding her way back
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: to her reality, whatever that may be, in a sort
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: of redemptive alex in Wonderland kind of phenomena. However, we
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: went at this sort of fit you know, typical sci
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: fi style plot, I think, with an art house of vengeance.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: And so I call it an artsplitation film. This thing,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I just it's like your first year in film school.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: You take a survey course and it's all Jean Lucadard
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: and Truffau and all that kind of thing. I checked
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: every box I could. Man, it's black and white, it's
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: it's moody, it's handheld, it's it's an aesthetic kind of
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: like hat tip to you know, the French New Wave
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: and all the films I grew up on and that
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: kind of thing. And so it scratched a lot of itches.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: You know that the flare up was real. Yeah, and
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: so it's it's a very different kind of movie and
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: it doesn't really fit into the general indie landscape, which
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: is a stumbling block in some ways and sort of
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: what it's differentiator in other ways. And I was able
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: to play that to my advantage once once I accepted
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: that this is my aesthetic, there's no way around it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I have to make the film I'm going to make,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: but I have to make it in a way that
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: it's meaningful to my audience. And I know, and I
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: knew pretty much who they were because I'm in local
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: media and that kind of thing, and I knew that
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I wasn't going to make the kind of film that
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: was going to scale and explode. I was making a
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: regional film. I was making a film that was gond
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: be meaningful to where I'm from and the people in
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: my community. And that sounds a little backwards, because you
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: want your film to be as big as possible, option
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: you wanted to go everywhere. But I'm really hooked on
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: this notion of regional cinema, the way that you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: they used to be like regional theater, right there'd be
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: a you know, like a playhouse, and then they'd put
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: on a regular program, that kind of thing. I wanted
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: to start something wherein I could incredibly create films and
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: know that I had an audience here and do it
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: on a regular basis. And the trick to that, of course,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: is making them inexpensively, making them profitable, and making them
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: for an audience that you know is going to come back.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: And so I knew it was going to make a
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: pedal Uma film.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: That's that's that's a really. So that's what regional cinema,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: that the regional cinema model is for you. Because that's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: the first time I've heard that term.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: And is it?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it might it might be. I might be out
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: there in the zeitgeist, but I've never heard of that. Yeah,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I've never heard of it. And generally speaking, if I
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: don't hear it, I've never heard of it. It's a
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: weird thing because I'm I'm pretty much inside in this
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: world all the time. So and I heard that, I
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: was like interesting. So now that's the definition of it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: And honestly, it's a you know, where we're taught as filmmakers,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: especially our generation, but even younger filmmakers. Everything's got to
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: be huge. It's got to be big, it's got to
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: be blockbuster. You've got to make one hundred million dollars
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and you know what film entrepreneur is about is to
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: start bringing it down, bringing it down to niche audiences.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: To bringing it down. Now you've created the regional aspect
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: of things, which is awesome because now you are you're
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: doing basically what I've been preaching, but doing it on
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: a regional standpoint as opposed to a niche. It is
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: a niche, but it's an original niche. Yeah, but it's
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: a regional niche. And if you, as a filmmaker, have
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: a region that you know that you can sell movies to,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: and you can make those movies for a budget and
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: you can recoup your money and continue to make that's
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: a business. That's a business. And if it goes somewhere
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: else and it goes international, or it sells outside online
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: somewhat to a bigger audience, fantastic. But your audience is
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: what is going to sustain your career. That's a really
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: powerful thing. And it also gets out of you. It gets
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: that lottery ticket mentality out of the filmmaker's head, which
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: is like, I need to make something. This movie's got
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: to pop for me, I need to go to Hollywood,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I need to do You don't, you don't. You could
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: keep it small and as long as you're cool with
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: not living in the Hollywood hills and you could just
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: have a lifestyle. You buy a house, you know, pay
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: your rent, you know, and enjoy, like make money, make
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: enough money to sustain you and your family comfortably and
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: make your art. Well. Hell, that's the dream.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: No, that's that's You're totally right, and that's the metrics
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: of success. Can you do it again? It's to support
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: you versus like you're saying, the lottery ticket where it's
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: supposed to make your career overnight. That's just not going
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: to happen anymore, you know, unless you're in that system,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: which you know I would have, I would gamble. Most
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: of most of everyone listening is not clustered in Hollywood.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Maybe they are, but even.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: If you're here, But even if you're here, it's a
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: lottery ticket. There's one guy like like you and I
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: were raised in the in the nineties, like we came
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: up in the film industry, like in the nineties where
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: independent film, like every freaking week there was Tarantin, you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Rob Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, Richard link Letter, Spike Lee, John Singleton.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: I mean it just kept you know, Steven Soderbergh. Every
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: week there was a new magic Lottery.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Ticket being handed out, and Sundance was just stapping these
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: guys out, and it led us to believe that that's
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: the system. That's what you do. You show up, it happens,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: and it doesn't, and that could be that could really
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: derail your life artistically, you know, tell me about it.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: So yeah, So, so I, you know, I had to
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: really pull back and figure that out. And once you
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: scale stuff to not just the level where you can
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: actually make it, but you know who's going to watch it,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: and you know that you're going to earn it back
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: and and beyond, it changes your mindset and there's a
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: lot more freedom in it, you know, especially if you
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: know your niche. You know you're doing now. And I
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: totally agree with you. Regional cinema is a niche and
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: the niche is the region in this case. And I
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: and I grew you know, this is where I live,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: is is it's a very special place, and so I
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: knew it was fairly dependable, and but there are ways
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: to galvanize that and make it happen. And so we
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: set about h with our production. And I have to
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: tell you from the like I was talking earlier about
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: the arts plantation factor this, I knew this is going
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: to be intrinsically not a mass market film. There's just
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: no way about it. But I knew, and it is.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: And if I did anything other than that, I wouldn't.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: I wasn't going to be you know, my artistic integrity
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: and all that. BS wasn't going to be intact. But
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: if you're going to make a film at our age,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: after not having made a film, you're going to make
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: your guy damn film the way you want to make it, right.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: So I had to dovetail that into a concept that
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: would work. And so I was on the radio program
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: yesterday and guy put it out and say, hey, you
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: cut Pedulum is kind of a character, and like, that's right.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: You know the town I made the town look I
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: would say beautiful, but I gave it a vision that
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: that this town hasn't seen itself that way before. And
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: and I think that had resonance, you know, And that's
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: some It's talked about a lot, but to kind of
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: like roll back and like how to do this kind
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: of thing, You're gonna need a lot of favors. You're
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: gonna need a lot of a lot of buy in
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: from like the sort of civic you know, like bureaucracies
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: that you have to participate in. And you're gonna have
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: to become friends with the local press, and you're gonna
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: have to have to have a story that's beyond local
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: filmmaker does good, you know, because they've be seen that story.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not nineteen eighty two.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No one cares. No one cares. Everyone's making a
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: movie right now. You know. They'd rather write about the
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: YouTube kid than they would use So I just hunkered
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: down and wanted to tell the story that I told.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: And uh, but I wanted to make the film. I
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: didn't want to do too much gorilla stuff. I knew
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: that I had to do it legally. By that, I
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: mean like permits and insurance and all the things. And
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: I needed to keep it cheap, lean and fairly invisible
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: because I couldn't afford to close off streets. I couldn't
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: afford to I couldn't ask any businesses to stop their
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: business for me that kind of thing. And so the
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: first thing was, you know, to ensure the production, you
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: have to be permitted, and to get that permit, I
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: had to appeal to the city of Hetaluma, and I
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: go to them, and you know, so in pedulument, as
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: I mentioned before, has been has seen a lot of film, right,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: and they're used to big budgets coming in and they
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: make this is cities make money on movies through transitory
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: occupancy attacks. That means heads and bets, right, crew comes in,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: fifty plus people more. They those people are put up
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: at hotels, they're eating local restaurants, local services. So films
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: can be a big money maker for a city. So
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: when you come in and say I got this little,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: itty bitty film, please give be a film permit, They're like, yeah, well, okay, sure,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: we're not going to deny your your freedom of speech,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: but what's in it for us, especially since in my case,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: I wanted a discount And no one thinks that you
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: can negotiate with bureaucracy, but you totally can, especially the
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: smaller town, because the mayor is your neighbor, right. So
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: I wrote a letter to the city manager. They want it,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: I think two bucks a day or two twenty five
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: a day or something like that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: And now back to the show.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: You know that was their deal to twenty five and
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: I had like a twenty day shoot, right. I thought
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: a significant amount of money to the city. It's like
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: what four grand or something like that. But to me,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: that was like a budget breaker, right. So I wrote
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: a letter to the city manager and email and I said, Hey,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: here's the deal. I'm a towny, I'm a local. Everyone
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: here is local, it's locally cast, it's all this. Here's
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: the general pitch. And the guy wrote back and said,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: have about three hundred bucks plat rate in done. I'm like,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: isn't that great? You can do that, right? And so
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: then I went through Fractured Atlas, which is a nonprofit
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: sort of fiscal sponsor, you know. There if you can't
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: receive donations yourself because you're not a nonprofit, they'll they'll
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: vouch for you and receive those funds. And they have
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: an amazing insurance policy situation where they've worked out so
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: they broke up some deals so they get discount insurance
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: for production. So I was able to take that get
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: discount in insurance, which is what the city wants. They
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: want you to mess up anything and they want to
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: make sure. So then I had to go most cities
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: will ask you to go to the local emergants as
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: usually like a Chamber of commerce or a downtown emergence
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Society or something like that, because they're main concern. And
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: this was a concern in Pedaluma and it kind of
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: led to a lot of productions being shut down or
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: not even shut down, like blocked from coming in. Merchants
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: complain about streets being shut down, sidewalk traffic, ending foot
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: traffic on no customers right, even if they're compensated by
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: a studio or whatever, it's never enough. Everyone's grumpy and
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: it's so disruptive to local business. So when you have
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: a lean, little production like ours, you're not going to
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: impact them that way. But you got to tell them that.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: And that was the weird part. I didn't expect to
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: go to a local business and say, hey, man, we're
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: gonna be shooting here, here's my flyer. You have to
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: announce it that way. That's where I got the first
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: bit of like pushback. I was like, we're just a
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: small I mean, we're gonna look like tours. There's only
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: five of us, you know, in a camera. And they
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: were so suspicious and so kind of like, hm, we
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: remember what happened last time, you know, like you know,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: I can't remember the film, but it came I think
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Scream was shot in Yea locally and it ruined the
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: town for a few weeks. Right, So they were pretty
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: chapped about that, and and I just had to sit
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: down and talk with them, And eventually I surfaced up
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: to the you know, the the chairperson of the Downtown Association,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: and I just I just pled my case and made
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: it clear to them that we're not gonna shut anything down.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: This person happened to be a Mason, right yeah, and
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: I through that person's influence, everyone just jumped in. And
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: then the Masons said, do you need a building to
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: shoot in? I'm like yeah, and they gave us their building.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: We shot in the Mason Temple. At one point. It
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: was crazy, man. And so it's that it's that local
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: boy makes good angle, but more like, we're doing this together,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: we're doing this for these reasons. This is how an
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: aligance with what you're trying to do, and we're not
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: gonna cost you with it, and we're not going to
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: tell you we're gonna make your business look good. And
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: it's going to be an advertisement for you or anything
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: like that, but we are going to respect you and
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: your business, and we're going to make this as seamless
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: as possible, and we're gonna make it fun for you. You
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: want a cameo, great, you know that kind of thing,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: And so that's power of the cameo, which is the
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: most ye as everyone knows, the most bs thing ever
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: because that usually it's the first thing gets cut right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: That in the associate producer credit.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, got a couple of those.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So that's what a merchant buy in is is like that.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: That's how I would characterize it is because you're going
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: to need the streets of your small town as if
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: you're shooting the exteriors and you're using their storefronts and
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: their backgrounds and that kind of thing. You're going to
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: get location releases from them, you know, and that kind
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: of stuff, and you're going to you want them to
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: love what you're doing, versus being afraid that you're going
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: to cost the money by blocking their customers from getting
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: in or intimidating people, or people don't want to be
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: on camera. People are afraid of being caught up in something.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: People don't want to be in. A movie called pillhead,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: I get it, you know. And so so you start
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: just literally on the street level, going door to door
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: saying this is what we're doing. We're we're ensured, we're
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: playing by all the rules, we're not going to make
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: a mess, and and we're gonna we're gonna try to
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: make this a pleasurable process for everyone. And uh in
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: most of the time they they get into it. We
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: actually we gained more locations than we were a threat
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: of losing because people said, hey, why don't you shoot
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: my building too? You know, when we had a place
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: that just schedule wise wasn't gonna work out. Another guy
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: stepped up because he's like, yeah, this sounds like a
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: lot of fun you guys here, you know, doing a
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: great thing here and that kind of thing. And so
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: that's that's the place to start on the street level.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Right now. What was the what was the budget on
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: this film?
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Just a smidge under thirty thousand dollars Okay, So.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: It's a it's anough, it's a low budget without what
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: it's a argue our people will argue micro budget totally.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: It's I don't even think it qualified for the micro
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: budget sag agreement. The Ultra low. I mean, we didn't
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: we paid. That's the thing here's to keep within the budget.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: We flat rated all the performers and so everyone got
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: a hundred bucks a day across the board and that
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: and that's great because that kind of that keeps the
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: spirit of the thing alive. These people are getting paid.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: They're paid actors. That's huge for them because we're often
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: in small towns just starting their careers and that kind
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: of thing that's huge.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Is normally they wouldn't even get paid to be in
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: a future in a small town. So that's a big plus.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: You have to do it, you know. And we had
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: used we used a casting director. Remarkably we have one
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: up here, I guess because there's a lot of extras
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: needed when the big films come in. So and so
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: this was the chance for the casting director to break
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: some talent and it was great for everyone. But we
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: paid everyone, which makes them accountable, right, they show up,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: they take it seriously. But at one hundred bucks a day,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: where I think the minimum for a sag agreements one
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: hundred and twenty five, I just couldn't make it, pencil man,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: So they didn't get their you know, SAG units. But
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: they don't care, right.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's not about the seg gifts. How many
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: days did you shoot, by the.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Way, twenty And so here's the thing, man. In the
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: middle of our production, the big California fires in northern
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: California happened and Pedaloma wasn't affected necessarily, but all the
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: surrounding area was, and so we were smoked out and
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: we had to shut down and reschedule, which is pretty
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: traumatic for a small scale production. And there's a moment
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: of course where I'm like, we're never going to get
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: this done. This isn't going to happen. But Karen Has,
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: our producer, was able to like triangulate, work it out,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: get all of the merchants to come back on board
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: on different days. You know. The first thing that happens, though,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: when there's a catastrophe like that, is that all of
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: the monies, all of the donation kind of stuff, like
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: the free catering and that kind of thing that goes
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: right out the window because they're diverting that energy and
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: resources to you know, people who actually need it, you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: fire her victims and that kind of thing completely makes sense,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: but that was that was something we never accounted for.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Of course, and we had to figure out how we're
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: going to patch all these holes. You know. Fortunately there's
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: a local woman who makes tamales and so we lived
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: on tomales for a week or so.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: But it was it was I want to say a
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: quick story. My first film, Broken was my first short
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: film in two thousand and five. We shot in a
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: like an it's arguably an abandoned hospital, but we like,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: there's four floors that are abandoned, but the rest of
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: the hospital is functional. So wow, basement was like and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: it's like from the forties and the fifties. There was
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: like ancient stuff and like there was entire, entire like
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: floors full of props. Basically they've just been sitting there
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: for decades and they're like, go have it, go at it,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: and they eventually originally we're going to be for five
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: hundred bucks. And at the end of it, they had
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: such a good time with us, so like, I don't
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: worry about it. So we got the whole place. We
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: got the whole place for free. But the problem was
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: the week before we were shoot, a hurricane hit us.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Because we were a West pomp by, so a hurricane hit
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: our area. And when we drove up there, like everything
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: was destroyed, a lot of a lot of flooding happened,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: all of this stuff. So we just incorporated it all
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: into the story. We just had screwed it. Well, just
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: we got a roll. We're we're shooting in five days.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: This is happening. But the best part was that FEMA
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: because there was a hospital center shop there and there
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: was hundreds of thousands of people in line outside while
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: we're trying to shoot a movie. So you got to
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: roll with a bunch of something.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: You gotta roll with it, man, Like, now you have
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: a great production design and a cast of thousands, right, Yeah,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: that's yeah, And that's that's the thing. Though, when you're
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: a lean, small production, you're you can pivot like that,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: you know, and so if you do have a natural disaster,
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: you can actually either incorporate it or at least in
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: our case, reschedule and make it work. But so that
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: that was a setback, But generally speaking, everyone was appreciative
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: and understanding of it and that kind of thing, and
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: so throughout our post production we kept everyone abreast of
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: what was happening. That kind of thing, because once you
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: go into post production, it's like your film disappears, no
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: one cares if you're in the cave for yes, totally,
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: and no one knows what's happening or if it's ever
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: gonna or if it's ever gonna happen, So we would
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: dribble content out.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll ask you, did you you obviously understand who
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: your target is, which you it's a niche audience, but
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: it's a very broad you know, you've got a lot
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: of spectrum of people there. So how did you realize
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: that your movie, which is an art art exploitation film,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: would would resonate with this audience? Did you do any
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: mark did you do any market testing? Did you like
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: what was the the other than just being shot in
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: that town? Do you think that was enough to gather
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: everybody to come to see your movie?
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: That was a start, That was definitely a platform that
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: we could start with. But that's a great question. I
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: knew that given the sort of demographic megap here. It's
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: a pretty arty town. We're very close to San Francisco,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: and there's a lot of a lot of people who
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: go back and forth between here and the city, so
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: it's sort of it's a suburb. So it's got a
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: kind of a cosmopolitan edge to it in some ways.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: And the local movie theaters are multiplexes and and have
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: the usual stuff, and so this new art house films
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: as such. So I always knew that I was going
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: to pursue some kind of local theatrical distribution to kind
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: of like to slate that thirst for that kind of content.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: We'll be right.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to the.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Show in this area, right, And so we're blessed that
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: in that we got a couple of like old school
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: venues that used to be old movie theaters that can
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: still do it, that are now music venues and that
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: kind of thing. And so I always had an eye
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: to like reviving this arthouse phenomena in town.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: And so it's a consortium, if you will, a consortium
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: local exhibitors.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, that's my joke because it's you know,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: every small town has most small towns have movie theaters.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: Most of those movie theaters are going to be owned
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: by somebody, right, and that's often a local business person,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: or if it's a chain, you can figure out where
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: the basis of that chain is. And oftentimes the regionalized
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: because of the nature of how the businesses to put together.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: They're often they could be like a big AMC theater,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: but they're actually local franchisees that kind of thing and
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: so or something. I'm not sure for that particular chain,
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: but that's how it often works. And so you can
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: find through just through some internet slough thing like who
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: actually owns the theater, right, uh, And it's usually a
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: small company that kind of thing. Up here, we had,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: for you know, a fairly small market relatively speaking, two
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: separate exhibition companies right that between the two of them
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: represented most of the theaters in town. And so I
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: knew that those guys had to be my friends, right,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: and I needed to make a case that our film
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: would be worth the risk of slotting, you know, against
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: the Avengers in this case, you know. And so what
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: we did was I knew that a good healthy cast
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: and crew screening would would I just at this point
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: I had faith in the film. It was cut, we
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: had a great mix. I knew that, I knew that
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: we had something that was really going to make the
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: town lose their shit, right, And so I booked a
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: theater in town called the Mystic, which is one of
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: these used to one of these old single screen, funky,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: fairly large venue, beautiful place that has turned into a
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: music venue. But they still had the screen. And I
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: approached them and I said, you know, what's your rate
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: for a single night screening. We're nearer casting crew. And
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: it was like three thousand bucks. And again, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: a deal breaker for me. And so I made the
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: case this is a local film, it's local talent, it's local.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: This local that I just really sold them on. This
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: is your opportunity to be a hero to the cast
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: and crew of this film and their friends and family
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: and bring new eyes to this theater who haven't seen
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: it in this capacity in thirty years. Right. And they're like, yeah,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: totally go exactly, total idy feel muscle, And they saw
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: the merit in that and they shaved it down to
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: like a thousand bucks then, which is great. Still, that's
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: a thousand bucks, right. So then in fact, I have
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: one here. I got myself a designer, my producer, and
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: we made a program and then we sold advertising in
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: that program right to underwrite the production or sorry, the
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: presentation of the cast and crew screening at this theater.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: So we sold a thousand bucks worth of advertising. Then
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: of course he's had to be printed, and I go
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: to the print shop. I'm like, hey, man, I could
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: go to you know, FedEx, Kinkos or whatever, or we
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: could keep a local, you know, Pedalum of printing and
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: and we'll throw an ad in there. And the guy
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: just shaved it down to like practically zero. We had
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: to stable them ourselves, but we totally hustled it and
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: we passed these out and everyone was happy, and so
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: you know, they're and you know, and it's if I
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: could put them in the special thanks I did, you know,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: the credit role. But the film is pretty locked at
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: that point. But but you know, all these advertisers were like,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: you know, and of course they got to come to
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: the screening because that's the thing. Man, I wasn't selling
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: any tickets, right. I told the cast and crew, come
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: on down, bring as many friends as you want. The
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: theater's capacity is a three hundred or something like that.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: And I set it up on event bright so I
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: can I could register the capacity. And I wanted the
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: on event bright. You know, they show you how many
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: tickets are remaining even though they're free. You want to
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: see that number like a dwindle and get down, down,
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: down and then there's surges, right, and so we packed
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: that place beyond capacity. Right. We had a line out
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: the door which everyone wants to see. I invited all
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: of the local press to see that line, and the
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: local exhibitors. So they come and they see this film,
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: and of course, you know it's cast and crew. Everyone's
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: cheering every time some new face pops on. It's a
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: rout of applause, right, And it was a really spirited,
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: fun up, great event. You know, the film's eighty minutes,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: so you're in and out right, but we kept the
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: party atmosphere going. It was really great. And that's what
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: happens is the press, the exhibitors, they come up to
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: you like, that was really great. That was really exciting.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: You know, what's your next step? Next step is a
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: bunch of legs. The next week, we do a bunch
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: of interviews and we do some deals. Right, what we
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: negotiated with the exhibitors. They have you know theatrical exhibition exhibition, sorry,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: exhibition is kind of weird where they they need to
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: they kind of lost lead on the film, right, and
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: somewhat on films, right, so's they're moving popcorn and concessions.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: That kind of thing for the first few weeks, right,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: a big film comes in, they take a dive on
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: the ticket price. Uh that there's there, and then the
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: longer the film stays there, the more their percentage of
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: the box office goes up, as you know. And so
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: I knew that I couldn't really tolerate that threshold, you know,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: because I needed to make some money now at this point.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: And so because of the nature of our our sort
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: of aware the whare, the awareness we had created in
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: town and all that, and because I knew some press
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: was coming up and all that, I was able to
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: tell the story of getting into how we're having local exhibition.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: It makes the film seem successful because no one gets
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: its distribution right. And you know, if unless you go
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: out of forty miles square radius, you don't know, the
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: film's not everywhere, right, it's in the movie theater, right,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: And so we did a straight up fifty to fifty split, right, which.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Is a stout for them. It's huge for them.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so they got more money up front on
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: a Thursday night from our little film than they did
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: with Endgame, which is playing the theater next door. Because
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: there's five guys in there, right, Because it's that film
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: had been played out a little bit, and so it
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: was a win for them, and it was a win
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: for us. And they have all their stuff wired, so
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: like you know, they're taking the tickets and all that,
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: and we had the invoice of them. At the end
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: of the month, they send the money, and the money
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: shows up and it's great, And so we ran for
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: a couple of weeks in four different cities. That's the thing.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: That's what you don't want just one theater. You want
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: to leverage your press as white as you can and
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: in as many markets as you can. Even though it's
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: ostensibly the same community and the same type of audience,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: they live in different places sometimes, and we have enough
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: regional media that I was able to like push that
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: and once you get one story, you can push that
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: story to other places. I got lucky because one of
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the newspaper chains here has a reporter that you know,
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: they're cheap on the reporter, so they get the one
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: guy to write it, but they run it in three
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: different papers right by and by me. So here here's
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: an example. You know, here's here's one clip, right you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: and this is of course the hard copy. It has
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: more of a life online. You know there's another clip right,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: same article, same exact article. This one was different. This
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: is a shot from the movie. This is the cover
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: man of a local alternative newsweekly. And they they just
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: jumped on it. Man, we made it a story because
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: we had three hundred people who had a great time
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: talking about how great it was and then looking for
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: the paper. So then that's how you do it, man.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: You start small, and you keep it focused, and you
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: and you knock on the doors that you know will
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: open for you in your town, and and you keep
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: the spirit light with it. And so so this all
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Snowballs are our Amazon release. But anyway, that's that's kind
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: of like the.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: So how much did you make on this theatrical release?
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: What was the kind of revenue? Generally speaking?
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: We were making about a thousand bucks a week, right,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: and so it made a dent in our our initial outlay.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: And that's the other thing. All the film was in
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: part underwritten by Indiegogo, right, not significantly, but a few
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: thousand bucks. We had a private donner, right, who came
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: in for a couple of grand to begin with, and
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: then midway through I'm like, I need more money, and
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: and so I just asked him again and he was
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: cool enough and kick you know, kicked down another computer
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: grand and our post we did ourselves. We built our
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: own you know system, you know, out of bits and
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: pieces and used Premiere. In this case, we got a
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: real break though in the mix Central post La down there.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: Barm did our did our mix through. I did some
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: music videos for these guys back when they're running some
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: label stuff and my brother's kind of a mid level
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: rock star. I worked with those guys and so they
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: did the for free. I mean that's that was huge. Yeah,
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: and so I should say for free. They they yeah,
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: and they're great associate producers. I'm very happy to have
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: worked with them. And if you ever need a good
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: post man, uh, that's where it's at.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: So good but credit.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: But so we we made it down in that and
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: then uh or so that's that's for one theater. So
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: so we had four theaters, some theaters to better than others,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: uh and ran multiple nights in most of them. And
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: so we are now, oh that's the other thing. Let
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: me backtrack a little bit. We didn't have enough money
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: to make the film when we started, but we knew
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: that we could keep making money while we're making the film,
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: to keep paying everyone and paying it off.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: And I think the dangerous plan business plans, sir, well,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: is it though, because you.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: Could either not make your film. You could either wait
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: till you have your whole budget and not make the film,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: or you can know that you're going to do You know,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: you have your day job.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: And you're gonna sink a little bit of your paycheck
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: and do it well. Thanks you.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: If you have a revenue stream that you know it's
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: coming to cover your nut, then yes, yeah, I've seen
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: too many filmmakers start like we got ten grand, but
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: we really need fifty. We're just going to start. We
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: don't know where the other forty are coming from. That's dangerous.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: No, that is dangerous. I don't advise that, but I
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: do advise making a film if you know that you
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: that if you don't have the budget at once, that
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: you're at least going to accumulate the budget, actually accumulate it,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: not pretend you are, but actually know you're going to
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: earn that money or require that money through production and
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: post mostly in our case, so that you actually are
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: still making that film. There's nothing worse than having, you know,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: a film in your hard drive and waiting for somebody
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: to write a check. That's not going to happen, and
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: you never do it. It's better just to keep moving
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: as best you can and then to keep it as
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: cheap as possible. So we're so this is thirty grand,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: but this is the This is thirty grand over eighteen months.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: That's still a lot of money, But that's a lot
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: of money there in smaller chunks.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: So that was what was the total that you actually
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: had to recoup after everything was done?
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Oh of our own actual outlay, right.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And investors or donation Is it all donations or it
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: was all.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: It was all? It was all donations or Indiegogo kind
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: of stuff.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: So like actual money you had, like what was the
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: what was the to make this go into the black?
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: To recoup our personal out of pocket expenses, we only
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: needed about eight grand, you know.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you can't make a grand with an
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: independent film, then you really shouldn't be making an independent film.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Right, And you can do that. And the great thing is,
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: you know, we own it too, you know, and it's
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: part of Yeah, and it's part of this growing library.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: And now it lives online and you know, Amazon sends
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: us the little statements very you know, and so well
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: they don't need to send it. I check every day.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: But but there's it's better to do, to have done
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: and do and start building your your intellectual property empire
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: and have something to leverage. And here's the thing with Pillhead,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: it's not a standalone property the way I constructed it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: It speaks to and it it actually features other things
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: that I've done. So there's this character who has a
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: book called called Quantum Deadline. Uh that's a kind of
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: a mcguffin in the movie, which is also a book
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: that I wrote that's published. And so I'm selling the
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: book in conjunction with the movie, right It's yeah, but
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: it's but it's not just product placement. It's it's a
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: plot device. It's that it's trans media, you see, it's
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: a it's they share the same story world. So the
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: movie and the book are kind of exists in the
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: in the lumi verse for lack of a better a
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: better term, And so that's that's, uh, that's how I'm
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: kind of thinking of this long term. It's like, keep
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: building in keep building the world in properties that exist
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: within that world and own all of it. And so
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: it could be a longer game, but it's a better
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: game to play, I think.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: So then how did you how was your online marketing game? Like,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: how did you because you know you have this audience
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: that you're trying to reach, how did you reach this audience?
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: How did you, you know, reach out to this audience,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: your regional audience, and then also beyond.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: So what I did first for the regional audience because
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: we did that cast and crew screening through event Bright,
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: which you know is just a you know, it's a
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: free ticketing service at the level we were doing it,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: that allowed me to capture all of their emails. So
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: not only did I have my cast and cre emails,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: I had all their friends and family at that point.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: And so so that was a list of you know,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: three hundred plus people, which doesn't sound huge, but it
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: is huge when you want your numbers to spike on
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: your on your first day of release and you say, hey, everyone,
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: remember that great time we all had last month or
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: a couple months ago if you missed it in the theaters, Uh,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: here's here's the chance to really deep dive into this film,
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: and I hope that the film can endure repeat viewings
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: and so because it's got a lot of Easter eggs
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that in it. And so that's how
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: we did it. We just did a blast encourage everyone
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: to share it. Of course, we leverage social all that,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: and you can triangulate through emails, like you know where
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: people are on different social platforms, and you can invite
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: them to fan you know, like your fan page and
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And so that's how I started.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: And then I started with press releases and just sending
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: them out to places that I thought would cover the film.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: And I'm still in that process in trying to trying
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: to push the online. But that's a little so that's
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: a little outside of the regional model. That's a whole
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: different kind of Uh, it's more traditional in that at
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: this point right the.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Revenue stream, it's a hybrid. It's a hybrid model.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you have to keep doing that and keep
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: that alive because it keeps in the constiossess. And so
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: I send out a press release or some sort of
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: appeal to a reviewer or a blogger, and it doesn't
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: have to be like you know, a huge place. Any
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: any mention helps, you know, And so that's what I do.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: And it only takes you know, it's templatized at this point,
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: so it takes a couple of minutes every day or
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: every every week in my case. And that's what I'm
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: doing now.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: And do you did you use like have you built
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: an online community on Facebook at all or on different
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: social media platforms?
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So I because I was a local author and
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: all that, I was able to use my own kind
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: of presence, right, and so I'm generally the face of
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: the film, even though this wonderful cast and crew this,
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: I got to push it, right. And so through my
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: own Facebook, you know, I've got like only fifteen hundred followers,
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: but they're really great and they're really responsive, and so
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: they're not like your tribe where they you know, if
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: you ask them to, you know, march and take bullets
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: for you, I don't.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Well, you're given way. Shipless credits are giving me a
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: wit to credit.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: My tribe goes, oh this guy, this asshole again. Right,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: But it keeps it, it keeps it moving, and and
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: I know it's working because I see I see the
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: you know, the the hockey stick, you know, in my
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Amazon results, but I also get really great feedback. For
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: whatever reason. Pill Head is the kind of film that people,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: if they get into it, want to talk about it
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: and tell me about it, which is really great. And
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: so I've I've met people online it was just hey,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: I watch your film, man, I really dig it. Did
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: you mean this by that? That kind of thing they're
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: trying to decode some things. The dude I was speaking
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: with yesterday on the radio kind of nerded out on me.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: I didn't. He was putting out things that work, in
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: my opinion in the film. But I was like, yeah, dude,
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: you know that you believe that. Let's go for that.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: And I don't mean that like in a like a
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: you know, cynical way. I just mean, like, you know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: you know what it's like, people find something that you
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: didn't maybe intend, but that's important to them, and it's
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: important to let them have that.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's no question. I mean, I know Kubrick understood
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: that very well.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was brilliant, not even talking about anything, you know,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: exactly just like you.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Guys figure out what I meant. I don't know. You know,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: it's much more interesting now, did you at any point
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: did you consider doing traditional distribution, Did you go down
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: that road at all? Or was this play and from
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: the beginning, like we're doing this all the way.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: Okay, it was planned from the beginning that we were
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: going to make a like a completely comprehensively unmarketable film, right,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: And that was and I mean it sounds weird, It
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: sounds like like irrational after the fact, but truly Alex,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: my producer, and I were like we had done some
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: conceptual art installations were we were all about the creative
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: and which can be a healthy thing, but also it's
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: not going to make any money. The idea was to
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: make the film we wanted to make about this place
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: for this place, and that was the audience. So as
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: long as we stood, you know, just kept kept to
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: the principle like this is a pedal film for pedal lumens.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: That was going to be enough to take it over
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: the the you know, the hump. But but there is
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: a little part of you, of course that goes it
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: would be cool though, if this got picked up, and
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: it would be a hell of a lot easier if
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: it did. And and so early on I looked at
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: the distributors that were distributing the kind of films in well,
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: they're a the art house films of a peculiar kind
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: of psychedelic nature, like like this one and uh and
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: it you know, it comes down to like there's the
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: big ones like Anna Perna and A twenty four, that
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: kind of thing, and there's like a little once like
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: a celloscope. None of those guys wanted to talk to me.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: It's so and and I knew that, and I kind
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: of needed to lob that out there to confirm for
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: myself that I'm I gotta stay on my path. And
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: even if they wanted to pick it up, I don't
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: think there's the investment for this kind of film. And
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: this film was so regional in it's in its scope
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: that it wouldn't make sense really outside. In some ways, however,
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: I found it's a little more universal thematically than than
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I'm probably giving a credit for. But but now I
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: I you know, there's there's the darkness is always lurking, right,
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: and it's in the seduction of of you know, breaking
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: through somehow. I was always there, but you got to
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: stick to your own thing. It's the only you know.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: And then how about film festivals. You didn't decide to
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: go down to film festival route either.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: I considered it, and I remember looking at the film freeway,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: you know, lineup and thinking this one looks good, that
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: one looks good. I did the You know, I took
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: pleasure in submitting to Sundance and giving them one hundred
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: dollars to support.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It's a fantastic donation.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's and I knew that going in. I
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: had never submitted a film to Sundance. I had no
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: delusion that it was going to get in, but I
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: wanted to have participated in that. Finally, does that make sense?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: It's it's such a strange, such a strange Sundance is
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: such a unique film festival in the in the scope
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: of the world, I mean, unlike any other film festival
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: anywhere in the world, especially for people in the US.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Sundance is it. And we know that it's astronomical. We'll
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: now back to the show to get accepted. We know
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: we have almost a better chance of winning a lottery
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: or a scratch off than we do of getting our
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: film in. Was last year was like fifteen thousand, eight
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: hundred submissions and one hundred and twenty films got in,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: including shorts, so if you go go on the features,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: it's even less. Like the chances of you getting in
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: are so astronomical, But then we all turn into Jim
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Carrey and dumb and dumber. You're saying, but there's still
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: a chance. But you're saying, there's a chance, and that
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: little dream is what kind of you know. Look, I
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: fell into it, like when I made Ego and Desire,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: which was a film about Sundance.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: At Sundance, Yeah, at.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: Sundance without Sundance permission. I waited a year to submit
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: to them because I was like, if I'm ever going
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: to get a chance, this is it. I wasted a year,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: you know, I wasted a year of my time, you know,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: chasing that film festival dream. So I always find it
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: fascinating when film filmmakers now are just saying, you know what,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: I don't think the film festival are up is for me,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: and it's not for everything, And it's not what it
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: was in the nineties, like you know, like Sundance was
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: stamping them out. They don't do that anymore. There is
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: no festival that does that anymore.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: Right, and festival the festival culture has changed quite a
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: bit too, and what's considered a festival worthy film is
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: way different, right, and not just in terms of like
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: you know, production value and that kind of thing. But
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: you know a lot of them want stars, a lot
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: of them want aid names.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: They want asses and seats, they want yes, and that's Look,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: you need star power. There's two ways you get into
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: a film festival star powers, or that you can prove
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: that you can fill that that those seats and those
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: showings by your audience whatever. That If you're a YouTuber
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: who made a film and you say, hey, look I
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: got five million subscribers and I'm going to get how
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: many seats you need? Three hundred field, Yeah, it's not
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: a problem.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's yeah. And I didn't have that, and so
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: I knew that I'd have to like make my own breaks.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: The other thing was, I was, I put myself on
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: this timeline, right. I booked the first screening before the
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: film was done, right because I needed the deadline and
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: I needed to like really push it. And I know
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: that sounds a little risky, but we have the technology,
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: you know, it just takes the drive to finish. And
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: that's what we did. I mean like up all night,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: you know, that kind of stuff. But it was worth
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: it and it's exciting, you know, but no, this is
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: not a festival film, man. And that was that was
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: kind of a weird thing to accept, you know, because
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: I had, you know, i'd been yes, as everyone, we've
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: been through these festivals. We've seen but the cultures like
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: it's fun, but it just has changed and there's such
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: a deluge of content now and our little black and
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: white weird art flick is just not the kind of
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: thing that's gonna play, you know, it's.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: It's not and trust me. Look I you know, with
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: ego and desire, I was rejected from all the major festivals.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: I mean I got into rain Dance. I got a
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: world premier at rain Dance, which was huge.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: That's pretty great.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really I was so blessed about that,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: but I was rejected by every other one. And I realized.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: I was like, you know, I think other festivals just
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: have a big stick up their butt about promoting sun
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Dance at their festival, Like you don't want to be
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: thinking about another festival while you're at my festival.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was like, because anyone who watches the
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: film really enjoys it. But it's a filmmaking movie. It's
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: about filmmakers selling a movie at a festival, Like, why
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't that play? It's a perfect film festival movie.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it didn't.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: So it's odd, man, I've seen. Look, I've I've been
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: in over six hundred festivals throughout my career with all
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: of my projects. It's changed so so much, and.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: It tastes of change. Yeah, it tastes are different too.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, like the people who go to film festivals,
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: it's it's usually an older demographic now and there's a
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: lot of baby boomers. They're kind of looking for the
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: thing that speaks to them. You know, no one wants
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: your punk rock, weird movie. You know, it's it's better
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: to project it on a wall, in it unless unless
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Brad pits in it. And if Brad pitts in your
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: punk rock movie, it's not a punk rock movie anymore. Man,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean, it's a.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly So you've got no this on Brad Pitt.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: He's great, but but.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: There's there there's that whole thing as well. Uh, It's
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: it's remarkable, man. But look, and also I wanted to say,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: I saw on your website you have some merch. Have
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: you been selling that merch? Has it made any money
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: that you created any revenue off of it?
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that that's the thing. I put it
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: all on the front page of d Howell dot com
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: and uh that Uh, that's a constant stream. It's really great, man.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: It's not like huge, but it's it's definitely buying groceries.
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm selling, Yeah, I'm selling the film. I'm
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: selling the books that are related to the film. And
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: on the site you can you see that I kind
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: of make explain what I'm doing. This is all one
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: world and these are the different pieces and you can
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: you can dive into the book or you can watch
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: the movie and there's more to come and stay with
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: me and that kind of thing. It's just the beginning,
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: but it's it's it's like the foundation, you know, for
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: like a personal content empire. You know, it's like.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: That's but that's that's where the future sure is, man,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: that is that's I believe, truly believe that's where the
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: future of independent film is going. It's not this one
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: movie that's going to get me to where I want
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: to go. It's it's going to be the grind. It's
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: the film after film, building a portfolio, not selling out
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: to distributors or creating some hybrid distribution deal where you
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: maintain some sort of control over your your film, not
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: for fifteen years, but for five or three things that
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: there's so many different ways of going about it, and
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: this is the future. I think that what you're doing
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: is fantastic.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: I think that one of the tricks, though, is to
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: keep it coherent in its own universe, because people want
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: you know, we see this with binging on Netflix and
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing. I find that audiences, if they're
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: going to invest in your your thing, your story, they
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: want to they want to be like rewarded for that investment.
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: And you got to do that by giving them another
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: story just like the other one. I'm not saying the
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: same plot I thing. I'm saying, like the same world.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: Allow them to dive into something that you keep building
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: out for them that keeps them in and interested in
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: that world. I think they as filmmakers, we want to
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: always do something new and novel and all that, but
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: if you can commit to a story world with characters
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: within it that you can explore I think that's better.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: I think it's better to corral everything under some kind
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: of unifying concept, like you know, I'll use the obvious
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: example of Star Wars. Star Wars is like a world
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: and all this universe frankly, and all this stuff is
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: in it right, and there's no dearth of story material
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: you can there's always as a new spur some place
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: to go. I think if I can encourage anyone, if
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: you if you want to build a foundation that blossoms
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: into a business, keep it consistent unto itself. And I
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: know that can feel like you're locking yourself into something,
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: but if if at all possible, because synergies developed right
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: And I'm not like selling like you know, millions of
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: copies at quantum deadline, but I've sold more this year
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: with this movie because of the relationship between those two projects,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: uh I than I have prior to the you know,
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: and hopefully one feeds the other that kind of thing,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: And as I roll out new material that speaks that
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: plays in the same playground, It'll keep growing exponentially.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: And it's similar to what I've done with my films
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: with like this is Meg and you know which this
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: is Meg is not specifically a filmmaker movie, but it's
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: a movie about the industry.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: It's about an actress. Yeah, I mean it's it's.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: About the industry, but it's also you know, really it's
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: part of my ecosystem of indie film hustle, so I
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: created multiple revenue streams off of it in addition to
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: just the actual sales of it and licensing it and
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: things like that. But now with the Ego and Desire,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: which is coming out as of this recording is coming
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: out in less than the moth hopefully, Uh, that is
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: going to be real product placement and real interesting because
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: that is a product that is designed for the tribe,
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: like it is designed for a filmmaker, an independent filmmaker
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: like it. I mean, I wanted if I would see
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: this commercial or I see this trailer, I would be like,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: got to see that, right right?
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: No, that's that's yeah, totally, It's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: You've you've, that's your Niche is kind of turning the
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: camera back on the camera, you know, and and and
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: exploring the nature of independent film. That's a perfect sweet
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: spot for you. It's great and everything dovetails perfectly, right.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: It's a coherent brand proposition. I think you're onto something, and.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: That's that's what I've been trying to do. And I
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: you know, and shooting for the Mob, which is a
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: book about my filmmaking, and then I've got the new
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: book Rise with the film. Like if there's a there's
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: you could see the film entrepreneur aspects of my business. Yeah,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: I and you have to an extent, you've created multiple
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: revenue streams coming in and you're not getting You're not
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: retiring off of them. I'm not retiring off of anything.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: You know. It's it's work. It's a hustle, but it's
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: it's it keeps the roof off over my head lights
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: totally on. Family is fed, we go on a vacation
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: here or there. Life is good, you know, you know,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: And I live in Los Angeles for God's sakes, right,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: So I.
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: Mean, like I I lived somewhere else that you know helps,
• 58:56
  Speaker 6: you know, But I'm here and in this kind of
• 58:59
  Speaker 6: world that I'm building out as a film entrepreneur is
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: something that's able to sustain me and my family.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: And you're doing you're doing something similar. So that's one
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: of the reasons why I want to jab on the
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: show Man. It's really great stuff. Man.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Oh cool. Yeah, there's that threshold and I think for
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: me it's about eighteen math maybe two years out where
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: I hope that the revenue from all these endeavors begins
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: to catch up and eclipse, you know, the other work
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: I have to do. You know, I'm a writer, so
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: I write regardless, so you know, I right for clients
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: or right for magazines and newspapers, that kind of thing.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: But I feel a tipping points coming and eventually it's
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: kind of you know, and that's that's if you can
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: make it like that, that's the best way to make it, man,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: where you made it yourself and we all have help
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: along the way and all that, and we help others
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: along the way, I hope. But ultimately you build your
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: own kingdom. You built your own empire, Alex, and I
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: think that everyone should endeavor to do that because I
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: think in that we're going to be a bunch of
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: micro studios in five ten years.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: But that's the I agree with the under perssell. We
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: have to be our own businesses, we have to be
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: our own corporations, we have to be our own studios.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show. And I got to
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: that tipping point probably around two and a half years
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: in is I got to that tipping point where I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: just said to my wife, I'm like, I don't think
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: I need to do post anymore. You know, if a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: directing gig comes along, yeah, I like it, I'll take it,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: but I don't have to do it anymore. And that
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: is the most wonderful feeling for someone who's been hustling
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: for twenty odd years in this business to just wake
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: up every morning and go do what I love to do.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: It's the dream. It really is a dream. I'm so
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: blessed and humbled by it. And that's what you're doing
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: on your end with your films man. So congrats man, seriously, thank.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: You appreciate it. Yeah, I have to say that the
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: way you do things, I really appreciate, the openness and
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: the way that you share how you accomplish these things.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: That's something I'm trying to engineer figure out a way
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: to incorporate into what I'm doing. So because the give
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: back factor is pretty huge. I mean, as we talked earlier,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: without listening to Indie Film House and all that and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: kind of keeping the spirit of film alive in my head,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: I don't think I would have gotten to this point.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: And I think that if there's a way that filmmakers,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: filmmakers can bake in some kind of way of acknowledging
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: or helping kind of keep the community growing all the better.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that is for me yet. Perhaps
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: I'll figure it out.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: But as as I don't know who said this, but
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: if I forgot who the philosophers said this, but it says,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: if you want to, if you want to succeed, help
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: someone else succeed, right, and and then steal from them,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: I think, obviously, and then knock them over the head
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: and take no. But but I've discovered by giving is
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the greatest strength I have. Is because I am of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: service to my community. I give as much as I
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: possibly can. Sometimes I give and give too much. I
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: give away ninety five percent of my information for free,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: and I only charge for about five percent of what
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: I do every day on a daily basis. You know,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: I could easily there's some podcasts that I do, some
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: interviews with some people that I'm like, could charge twenty
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: bucks for this. This is amazing information. Give it away
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: for free because I just found and I discovered that
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: when you pay it forward, man, it comes back to you.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: And now it's addictive for me, like I can't not give,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: I cannot be of service. It's part of my DNA now.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: So wherever I meet someone right tray, you know there's
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: only there's only one of me, So I can't do
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: it as much as I would like, but as much
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: as you can give. And as filmmakers, you have to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: find that the thing inside of you that you want
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: to be of service, and that be of service could
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: be making a regional movie for your community, of a
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: film that's a market that's a that's a need in
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: that in that marketplace, and you're being of service to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: that community, giving them a light that they haven't seen before.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be grandiose. It could be something
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: very small. But when you discover that being of service aspect,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: and you should incorporate that in any way, shape or
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: form you can through your work, it is It's so
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: much better than the me me me vibe that I
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: had back in the day when I was coming up,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: when my ego is out of control and all sorts
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: of craziness that I've gone through in my career. That's
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: why anytime I meet a filmmaker, which I'm sure you've
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: met too, who are just so ridiculous, that's why maybe
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: ego and desire, because I had to take claent it's
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: so ridiculous that I say it's all good man. I
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: think there's nothing I need to say to you. The
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: business will take care of you, life will take care
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: of you, and you might have some success here or there.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: But I promise you the hammer's coming. It always comes,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: and I don't care who you are, it always comes.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: So you will be humbled. If it's not it's not
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: me to do it.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: Humb's all you do?
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: You do you?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: I think that there's a tick in filmmakers. I think
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: filmmakers are, especially in the indie realm, are intrinsically problem solvers, right,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: constantly figuring out how to do something or fix something
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: or whatever patch a holes of somewhere. And I think
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: when you see problems in in like the community, like
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: in terms of like accomplishing something or making a film
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing, there's an impulse to want to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: fix it or help somebody, like, dude, you're doing this wrong, man,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: this is how you do it. And I think maybe
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: that's where it comes from at first, where you're just like, ah,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: I got to help this guy. He's a you know,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: he's gonna waste everything here. And I don't know, it's
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: it's it's a fascinating place to be. And maybe it's
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: just maybe I'm just getting older, you know, and.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Don't underestimate the power of age, brother, I'm telling you, man,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I look when I was twenty oh ooh,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: I would I would slap myself. You know. It takes
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: years of shrapnel. Uh, It takes that that that kind
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: of that rhinoceros skin that you've got to develop because
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: of all the just the bruising and the battles and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: the and the punches and the the you know, the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: the cuts and scarring that you have to go through
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: in this business. And I'm not being dramatic. It's the truth.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Like we all go through it, and as you get older,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: you just start figuring things out. And that's what I
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: try to do with this podcast. I try to like
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: give them a little bit of a shortcut. I still
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: want them to go through their pain, but it's one
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: thing to be sideswiped by an MMA fighter who's sitting
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: next to you. And another thing is that if someone says, dude,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: there's an MMA fighter right next to you, and you
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: will be punched any minute. Balance there's a huge difference
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: between you're gonna get punched, but understanding and preparing for
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: that punch is a whole other start.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll put yeah. Good the MMA metaphor, I love it,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: y Yes.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: I always call ego is the MMA five that sits
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: on your shoulder. That that's what ego is, because it'll
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: be it'll be quiet. Sometimes you'll be like, ah, quiet down,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: quiet down, he's fine, but he's just waiting for that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: moment where there's an opening. And there's always that moment
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: you're like, hey maybe I am not that boom, and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: that's it. You're out, like hey maybe I am really
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: this good boom. There you go, You're out, and ego
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: is always there waiting for you, and you've got to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: kind of flatten it and it takes forever. So I
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: use that analogy all the time, that MMA fighter is
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: always on my shoulder.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: I love it. That's good. That's good.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I ask
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: all of my film entrepreneurs. Sir, what advice would you
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: give a film entrepreneur starting a project today?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Really focus on the writing. That's the one thing you
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: can do for free yourself and get right with enough
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: practice and dedication to it. Make sure that script is
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: story worthy and shooting and shooting worthy first. Just you
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: can't fix You can't fix bad writing and post. You
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: can edit around some stuff, but even in my own experience,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: there are scenes where I go, you know, if I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: just spent one more day on a draft, I could
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: have cleared up a lot of problems for myself. Just
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: make sure that things written first, write it fair enough.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: Now, what is the biggest lesson when you learn from
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: building your company building what you're trying to do with
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: your film company.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: So go in on getting professional advice for setting it
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: up correctly. If you're going to do an LLC or
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: or sole proprietorship, whatever you're going to do, just make
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: sure you actually set it up as a business and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: do it legitimately. Sometimes if you're going to have if
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: your business is going to have what they call a
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: fictitious name, and by that it's like a name that's
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: not your own. Yeah, DBA, go through the hoops to
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: check all the boxes. It's worth it and and it
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: sets you up for success. You don't want to have
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: to like mess with your taxes. You don't want to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: have to mess with all the stuff that's just going
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: to slow you down artistically. Do it right, and if
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: you have to pay a little bit for it, do that.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: Get an account and I get that's a great point. Accountants.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: You know, we're even cheap totally bookkeepers is it's way
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: cheaper than you think, you know, And.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Then you're doing it yourself, man, I can tell you that, especially.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: When you mess it up. Yeah, especially in production having
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: a book. I didn't didn't have one on Pillhead, and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: I really wish I did because it would have been
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: so much easier just to have it happening every week.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: Everyone gets paid, versus can I get my check? It's midnight.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I'm you know, like rallying.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Let me get the book out.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, just pay the two hundred bucks or whatever.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: It's nothing.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's no, it's it's it's it's a
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: good ROI and an rot return on time and return
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: on investment. Ah, yes, yeah, because you know a lot
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: of us are as filmmakers, especially us US guys who
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: are at the micro budget level. We always want to
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: save a buck, but you've got to be smart on
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: where you save it. Because if you save five dollars,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: but if you pay that five dollars and that five
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: dollars will save you an hour or two in work
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: or time, does it make is your time worth more
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: than five dollars?
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Could you be doing something else that could generate more
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: revenue or help the project farther along? That is such
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: a huge, huge thing.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: That's a great point. Let the pros do the pro stuff,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, fair enough enough.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: Now, what what did you learn from your biggest business failure?
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: Hmm? Well that wasn't necessarily this project.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Ye.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 7: In this business in general, there's a lot of people
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 7: who are often not invested in your success.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: And yes, and it's it's important to recognize that and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: get rid of them early. Not that anyone may be
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: intentionally sabotaging you, but they may unconsciously have a grudge
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: and you might be carrying them with you and you
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: want to drop them as soon as you can. We
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: see this in creative stuff sometimes, you know, it's not
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: all of the times, just sometimes just sometimes those guys suck.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: You know, there's just there are energy vampires. You know
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: that they want to be close to you because you
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: got the thing and they don't, and they're going to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: take it from you, bit by bit, drop by drop
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: in paper cuts, death by pep yats.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they may not even know they're doing it.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Get rid of them. It's okay to get rid of them. Yeah.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: It took me a long time to figure that out.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: Long time to figure that out.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Now, in your opinion, what is the definition of a
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: film entrepreneur?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: A film entrepreneur is someone who endeavors to make filmmaking
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: their live their live in livelihood and by pragmatic and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: judicious execution of their their talents in the cinematic space.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: That you are a wordsmith, sir, I don't know.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: That's out a little put on. Let me try that again.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: I was I was reaching there. Now, film a film
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: A film entrepreneur is somebody who who knows that to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: make films, they have to make films that that sustain
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: them ultimately and so bye. By being smart as as
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: as well as uh, pragmatic is the way to go.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: Now, where can people find you your movie and what
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: you're doing.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm at d Howell. It's d h O W
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: e l l dot com. And if you want to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: go directly to the business, it's culturedepartment dot COM's culture
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: d E p t dot com. I'm at Facebook, at
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: data less Hall dot days. Don't even bother that don't
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: can't even spell it, never won, but d howl dot com.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: There's links everywhere. I swear sir and then pill hits
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: on Amazon. Go to Amazon and watch Pillhead you can
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: see how I did it.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Is it on Prime or is it on just rental?
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: And?
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's on Prime?
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nice, fantastic. Are you finding that you're making a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: little you're making good money on Prime as opposed to
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: rental and purchase.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: That's a great question. I'm finding it's not quite as
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: juicy in terms of Prime. But I'm Prime is kind
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: of a long term play for me because I'm trying
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: to push it a lot, and it's easy to get
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: people to watch it if they're not paying out of pocket.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: You know that it's a little frictionless, and so I'm
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: kind of in a marketing push right now, and so
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: I'm sending out links to you know, bloggers and stuff
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: like that. I want them to be able to click it,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: watch it, love it, talk about it. So that's kind
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: of where I'm at right now. So yeah, there's a
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: bit of a little bit of a decline. But you know,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: the great thing about Prime though, it's like it's opened
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: up in the UK now, so the film's kind of
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: getting a different audience, that kind of thing, less friction,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: long term play. I'm a little I'm still on the
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: fence about it a little bit, to be honest. But
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: how about you.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: But you're a huge in Turkey, so that's all really
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: that matters. Yes, you can't walk the streets in Turkey, sir,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: so I can't.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: Anyway as a trans at.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, brother, I appreciate you coming on and
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: being so transparent and forthcoming with the tribe. Man, So
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for dropping those knowledge bombs.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: Brother, Oh thanks for having men. This is a real
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: privilege and pleasure. Really truly appreciated. Ban, thank you.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I want to thank day Liz so much for coming
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: on and sharing his knowledge bombs with the tribe today.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: If you want to check out his movie or links
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: to anything we talk about in this episode. Please head
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: Forward slash three eighty five. Thank you so much for
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: listening to guys. As always, keep on writing no matter what.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at bulletproof
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.