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BPS 298: Creating the Cult Classic Sharknado with Thunder Levin · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two ninety eight, Looking Good, Billy Ray,
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  Feeling Good, Lewis Trading places, broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
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  Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
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  to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
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  host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
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  professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot com. Enjoy today's
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  episode with guest host Jason Buff. Do you like sharks? Do you like
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  NATO's? Well, my friend, you are in luck today because today we
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  are talking with Thunder Levin, screenwriter of Shark Nato and Sharknado two. I
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  was wondering if you could talk for just a second about your experience when you
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  first got into Los Angeles and what your expectation was versus what you actually found.
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  Sure, I got a tala in late nineteen eighty six with my student
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  film in hand, and I was quite prepared to send it to Steven Spielberg
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  and have him say, where have you been. We've been waiting for you,
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  right, That's what usually happens, and that did not happen, to
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  my great surprise, although I did get a very nice letter back from his
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  director of development at the time saying we thought it was a very well done
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  student film, and so then I set about the hard slog of trying to
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  make connections, and I guess it took about three or four years of just
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  sort of knocking on doors before I got my first directing job. And then
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  that didn't go very well. I was sort of outmaneuvered politically. I went
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  into it being I guess, very naive and thinking everybody was there to help
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  me realize the vision and all this nonsense, and no, everybody was there
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  for their own causes, or at least especially the producers, and so that
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  did not go very well. And so then it was a sort of a
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  case of regrouping, and I started writing more, and it was a long
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  time before before other things started happening, and I started doing corporate promotional videos
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  for a living, which actually is a fairly good living if you can make
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  it work. But it wasn't what I wanted to do, and so years
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  went by, and finally I was in my mid thirties when I thought,
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  you know, this is ridiculous. We've got to make something happen if nobody's
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  going to hire me to do it. I ought to make my own film,
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  which had always been the plan. It's just that, you know,
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  that was a someday kind of thing. Someday, if things don't work out,
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  I'll just make my own film and I'll show them. And then finally
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  I realized, you know, someday. It was a couple of years ago,
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  I've got to get going and tried to raise money to make an indie
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  film and did not raise enough, and so that project collapsed. But some
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  of the investors that i'd contacted, you know, who had who had pledged
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  funds, remembered me a year or so later when I had another project,
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  and now I seemed like, oh, well, he's done this before,
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  even though we hadn't actually gotten the first film made, So there was there
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  was some recognition factor when I went back to them a year or two later
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  and said, hey, let's let's make this film. We can do it
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  for less money than that other one, and it's going to be more commercial
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  and all these things. It was just the funding. It was. It
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  was more of a niche a niche film. But I don't think that's why
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  I fell apart. It was a little science fiction film, but I think
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  it fell apart because we were trying to raise close to a million dollars and
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  I just didn't have the connections to raise that much money. But then the
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  next film we tried to raise money for, which was a zombie film,
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  was much more modestly budgeted. We went in saying we were going to make
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  it for a hundred brand, but we would have the option of raising one
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  hundred and fifty, and so we we eventually got to one hundred grand,
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  and we said, okay, we're invoking our option to raise one hundred and
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  fifty because we think it'll be a better film that way. And we raised
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  one hundred and fifty, so it was much more doable and it seemed like
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  it would be much easier for it to make a profit. So you worked
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  as a producer on you're talking about mutant vampire Zombies from the Hood. I
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  am, yeah, and so I was one of I was, I guess
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  credit wise, I'm the executive producer on that. George Saunders was my partner.
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  He was a producer, But I ended up raising about ninety five percent
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  of the money. And so really it was a nuts and bolts from the
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  beginning to the end kind of production for me, and I learned a lot
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  doing it. I don't ever want to do it again. I know there
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  are people out there who enjoy putting the deal together and working all that stuff
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  out, that that's not really the part of the business that intrigues me.
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  Like I like making movies. I like the creative part. I like coming
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  up with a story and figuring out characters and casting and working with crew and
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  cinematographers and sound people and artists and actors and you know, seeing it all
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  come to life. Putting together a deal doesn't really doesn't really excite me that
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  way. Can you talk for just a second about how you were able to
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  put together that kind of funding? And I mean, I know it's not
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  the really fun part of filmmaking, But one of the things that I've been
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  trying to focus more on is talking about the non creative aspects and the more
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  business aspects of putting together a film. So can you can you discuss just
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  a little bit about the process of actually putting the film together and raising the
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  funds and what kind of you know, things like did you have to make
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  it at LLC? And the legal aspects of it. Sure what I mean,
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  I guess the first thing for anyone to remember who's going into this is.
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  It's a film business, not the film art, not the film crew
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  aft. It's a business first and foremost, at least to people who are
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  going to be investing, and people are going to be buying films. So
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  you've got to put together a package that makes sense from a business standpoint.
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  So it's not about ge this won't this be a really cool story because investors
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  probably aren't going to care about that. Some of them might, but most
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  of them aren't. Most people who are investing money in a project want to
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  make money, so they need to see that you have some grasp of the
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  business side of it. So the first thing is to do your research and
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  figure out what movies are selling, what movies are getting made on the low
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  end, and what are selling in the marketplace. And of course the marketplace
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  is changing in the midst of changing drastically. You know, ten years ago,
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  fifteen years ago, it was all about what can you get on the
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  shelf at Blockbuster, And of course that's not the case anymore. It's about
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  how do you get attention for a movie it's on vod or on iTunes or
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  Amazon or what have you. And the all business really is sort of reinventing
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  itself right now, and even the studios or are scrambling to figure out how
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  all that is going to work and how to make money from it. So
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  it's a it's a weird time to be making an indie film right now.
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  But what we did was to research to put together Basically, we put together
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  a business plan, and the things we had to include in that were,
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  how is this film going to make money? What you know, what's the
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  physical process. We're going to form an LLC, a limited liability company.
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  The investors are going to be the limited members, and the producer and I
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  were the general members, which meant that the investors would only have their investment
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  at stake. They couldn't be touched for any losses beyond the money they put
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  in, but they would have no particular say in running the company, and
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  George and I would run the company, and we our investment would be sweat
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  equity, the effort we put into making the film. And so then we
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  put together this business plan that would that listed movies that we thought were similar
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  to our film, and we did research on Okay, what is the low
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  end that these investors can expect to make? So we did some research on
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  similar movies that hadn't done so well, and how much money did they make,
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  how much money did they spend? What's the high end, you know?
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  And of course at that point what we were all pointing to the high
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  end was the Blair Witch Project, which has been made for like, you
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  know, sixty grand and made one hundred million dollars, you know, And
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  of course you fill it with caveats like it's unlikely that the film will achieve
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  that kind of success, and your money is at risk and you could lose
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  everything, and you keep saying that over and over again. We'll be right
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  back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
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  To protect yourself legally. But at the same time, you have to paint
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  a Rosie picture or else why would anybody invest in your moving And what is
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  it about our film? What elements of our film make it likely to succeed?
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  So, okay, zombies were hot, so it was a zombie film.
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  We would guarantee that we would get at least one named star in the
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  film. It would be shot in twelve days on one hundred and fifty thousand
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  dollars, so the financial risk were very low compared to the potential rewards,
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  things like that. And basically, we did some research online and we talked
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  to other people who had done this before, and there are business plans out
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  there that you can get a look at, and we synthesize the best elements
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  from a bunch of different business plans that we looked at, and we got
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  distribution charts from the Hollywood Reporter and from what is a box office Mojo and
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  a bunch of these other things to show how similar films had performed. We
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  put together a budget, We put together a cast list of the kind of
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  actors we thought we would be able to get for the money we had.
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  We put together a schedule of how the investors could expect to see things proceeds.
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  So, okay, once all the money is in, it'll take this
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  long to prepare and cast the film, and this long to shoot it,
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  and this long to do post. And from the time it's finished in post
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  until the time it's out on DVD, we'll take about this long. And
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  once it's out on DVD, how long do we expect it to take to
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  recoup its money? And then, of course there was the business side of
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  all. The way we structured it was that all funds that came in from
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  sales of the film would go to the investors first. We wouldn't get anything
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  until the investors had recouped one hundred and ten percent of their investment. So
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  that was sort of their protection that we weren't sort of going to run off
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  with the money or anything. The investors had the rights to audit the books,
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  things like that, so we set it up to protect the investors as
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  much as possible to give them first position. Ah actually was second position,
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  after any debts that the film might have incurred, And did you have a
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  distribution model in place at that point. We did not have a distributor signed.
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  We had a couple of distributors at that point that we had individually worked
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  with before, I had experience with before, and so we mentioned them and
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  said that the film will be taken to these distributors and to others. At
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  the time, we felt like we could probably get a better deal on the
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  distribution end if we didn't pre sign with an investor. In retrospect, that
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  was probably a mistake, but we felt that any investor looking at our script
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  and our little package with filmmakers who were essentially unknown, would not give us
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  a very good deal, but that if we went out and made a really
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  good movie, then we could command a higher price in retrospect. It probably
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  would have been safer. It probably would have been better to take the safer
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  deal and make a deal upfront. We did have a couple of distributors who
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  expressed some interest upfront, and that would have at least guaranteed a certain a
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  certain minimum income for the film. Right now, can you talk about what
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  it feels like as a director to walk onto the set for the first time.
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  I mean, I know you had directed other things, but this was
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  probably the biggest thing you had directed at that point. Right I'm not sure
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  it wasn't necessarily the biggest. It was the first film where I essentially had
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  creative control, and so that was a big deal for me. And it
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  was certain the first film that I was solely responsible for from beginning to end.
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  And it was interesting because in my position, I'd been telling people for
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  years and years that I was a great film director, but really had no
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  way to prove it. You know, it was just you got to take
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  my word for this. I can see it in my head. I know
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  what you know, I know what it's going to be like, it'll be
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  great, you'll see and so in a way, when things didn't go terribly
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  wrong in the first hour of shooting, it was just sort of a great
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  vindication for me. That shoot actually ended up being probably to this day,
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  the best film set I've ever been on. I spent a lot of time
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  putting the crew together and interviewing people, and people were getting paid, you
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  know crap. I think most people were making one hundred bucks a day.
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  But I spent a lot of time interviewing people and making sure we had people
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  who were going to be really excited about doing it. Everybody was essentially moving
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  up a step or getting their their break, getting into the business at the
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  entry level, or you know, like the cinematographers or people who had not
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  shot features before. But it shot really good short to really good music videos.
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  That was a kind of people we were looking at. Costume designers had
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  only been an assisting costume designer things like that, so everybody was looking at
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  this film as a really good opportunity for them, even though they weren't making
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  much money. So we had we had really good spirit on the set.
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  Everybody got along really well. There was a great sense of community and we
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  were all just really working hard to make this thing the best it could be.
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  And so my experience on the set as a director, there's an hour
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  of sheer terror at the beginning of the shoot, where, oh God,
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  do I know what I'm doing? Is everything going to fall apart? Are
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  all the pieces in place? Or is this going to be an utter disaster?
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  And once you get past that, and for me actually that that's kind
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  of a daily thing. I mean, I've directed several features now, and
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  every morning I feel the same way until the first shot is in the camp
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  and then everything is fine. But that that shoot, that it was just
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  a wonderful sense of vindication. It's like, finally I was doing what I
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  was supposed to be. You know, this proved nut. It was less
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  about proving to other people, and it became a confirmation to me that what
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  I've been saying all these years was actually right, and that this was what
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  I was meant to do, and that here was a place where I was
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  at home and I didn't have to count ow to people who didn't know what
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  the hell they were talking about, and I didn't have to support somebody else's
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  vision. I was doing what I was supposed to do and it was working,
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  and so that was a very powerful sort of reaffirmation for me. And
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  then when the shoot went so well and everybody got along so well, and
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  despite doing it on an utterly insane schedule, everything worked out. It was
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  It was just the most wonderful, wonderful thing. And to this day,
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  I'm very proud of that film. I mean, you know, it's a
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  low budget zombie horror comedy and it's it's silly, and it's you know,
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  it doesn't look like a million bucks, but I'm really proud of it for
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  what it was. I think it was a great film, and I will
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  put that up against Shaun of the Dead or Zombie Land any day. It
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  doesn't it doesn't have it doesn't have quite the production value of Zombieland, but
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  I think the characters are just as engaging, if not more so. I
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  think the story carries you along. Very few people have really seen it,
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  but the comments that we see on the various internet forums when people actually do
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  watch it, I'd say ninety five percent of them really really get into it.
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  All the comments we've had have been very positive. So it was it
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  was a great experience from the beginning. Then except for the fact that it
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  hasn't turned a profit yet. Now, as a Spielberg fan, how was
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  it? Was it kind of cool working with c Thomas Howe. Did you
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  ever like talk to him about what it was like working on ET or anything
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  like that. Yeah, yeah, we uh, we had a few conversations
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  about that. He had. Tommy has stories about everything because he's not only
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  has he been in the business since he was a kid, but his father
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  and even his grandfather, I think we're both in the business as stuntmen.
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  So he grew up in Hollywood and he has a lot of great stories.
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  And I remember one that he was talking about was that Spielberg had a trailer
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  on the set that was filled with pinball machines and video games and stuff,
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  and so so you know, in between shots, the kids were all in
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  there and it was basically like their own portable arcade and they just had a
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  blast playing games while the crew was, you know, setting up the next
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  shot. When you get on a set, who are the people that you're
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  really relying on that you kind of lean on throughout the day? Right?
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  Well, for me, the main collaborator on a film is the is the
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  cinematographer, to me, that's that's the most important working relationship on a film
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  for a director. The other one, of course, is the first the
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  first AD, because he's the one who really runs the show. A lot
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  of young directors from films coming out of film school or just you know,
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  people who want to want to make movies, they don't realize just the extent
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  to which they are not in charge. The director, especially a good director,
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  if he knows what he's doing, he will allow the first AD to
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  do his job. And his job is running the set. And you know,
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  you need to have your vision, you need to know what you're doing
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  and what's coming next. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 20:03
  and now back to the show and be able to express that clearly. But
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  the first AD is the one who's really sort of directing the troops. And
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  if he's good at his job, if or she is good at If the
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  first AD is good at his or her job, it frees up the director
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  to not have to worry about a lot of that stuff and to focus on
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  working with the cinematographer and working with the actors, and those for me,
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  those are the key relationships. The cinematographer is going to be translating your vision
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  onto the screen, so you have to have a good relationship with your DP.
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  For me that I've always started working with my DP at the very earliest
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  stage that I can. I'd like to have my DP in the room when
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  we're doing storyboards if I'm doing storyboards. In fact, for me, the
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  best situation is if my DP is also an artist and can do the storyboards
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  himself. So we'll sit in a room and we'll go through the script and
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  I'll lock out my vision and what I think the shots will be, and
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  I'll describe them to him, and maybe i'll draw stick figures, and then
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  if the DP can draw, he will do storyboards because I can't draw to
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  save my life. So I'll draw a stick figure of what the shots should
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  be, and then he'll look at it and go what the fuck is that?
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  And I will explain it to him and he's say, oh, yeah,
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  I don't look like this, and he'll draw it out, or we'll
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  have a storyboard artist in the room with us who will draw it out.
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  And then maybe the DP will make a suggestion, well, what if we
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  DiPT it from this slightly different angle, or what if we move the camera
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  here. I like to collaborate with my DP as much as I can,
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  so that really the way the film looks becomes kind of a shared vision.
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  And that way, when we get on the set, I don't need to
• 21:53
  explain anything. He knows exactly what it's supposed to look like, exactly where
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  the camera's supposed to go, exactly where he wants the lights to go,
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  so I don't need to worry about explaining that to him. All we'll need
• 22:07
  to do is adjust for you know, those situations where the location or the
• 22:12
  set requires that something be changed from what our original plan was, and then
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  we'll figure that out together, and then he can worry about all that,
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  and I can go work with the actors on their performance and they're blocking and
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  so forth. So for me, the most important relationship is between the director
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  and the DP. Then between the director and the AD that's got to be
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  a working relationship. You're not too concerned about a creative relationship there, but
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  you've got to be able to get along and he's got to be able to
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  understand the way you work. If there's friction between the director and the first
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  a D, things tend not to work very well. And I've experienced both
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  of those where I've had really great relationships with my ad and not so great
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  relationships, and life is a whole lot better than the director in the idea
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  get along. And then the other key, the other key relationship on a
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  set, And this was something that maybe surprised me a bit in the early
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  days, was the relationship between the director and the star, especially in these
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  low budget films where you have just one name actor, and that actor has
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  a lot more a lot more cloud on set than some directors might like because
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  probably he's the reason your film got funded, and he's the reason your film
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  is gonna get distributed, and he knows that. So having a good relationship
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  with your star where you're both working towards the same vision is really crucial because
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  if you get on if you come into it with different visions and he is
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  pushing to get it his way and you're pushing to get it yours, and
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  he has a certain level of control because you know you can't physically make him
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  do something he doesn't want to do, that that can become an awkward situation
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  too. So making sure that you and your star are on the same wavelength
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  and that you both see at least his character the same way can be very
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  helpful, and the star can become a great ally too, because on a
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  low budget indie film where you're trying to shoot the film in ten or twelve
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  or fifteen or reason twenty days, you really don't have time to do the
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  kind of dramatic work with the actors that you'd like to do, and so
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  your star, if he really understands his role and you guys are on the
• 24:41
  same page with it, he can then become a very helpful force for working
• 24:48
  with the other actors as well, because one would expect in an indie film,
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  especially in a B movie, where you tend to be casting someone in
• 24:57
  the lead who has probably already had a career and has been doing it for
• 25:03
  a while, because those are the people who will sell a low budget moving
• 25:07
  Did you ever find yourself maybe overdirecting or doing things that they didn't really need
• 25:11
  you to do, or did you learn no, Just the opposite, in
• 25:14
  fact, is that you can actually do less because they know what they're doing,
• 25:18
  and they can also pass along their experience and their their years of wisdom
• 25:23
  to the less experienced members of the cast. Because on a low budget indie
• 25:27
  film, You're probably going to have a lot of actors who haven't done this
• 25:32
  as much, right, and so having a good relationship with your star he
• 25:36
  can sort of carry some of that burden for you, and he can talk
• 25:40
  to some of the actors about what they're doing and the little the little techniques
• 25:44
  of acting that he's picked up in his years of experience that will help them
• 25:48
  do what you need them to do, you know, And you've you've got
• 25:52
  to You've got to balance that by making sure that everybody in stands it,
• 25:56
  understands that you're in charge. And a good star, uh gets that,
• 26:03
  and he won't question you publicly. You know. I had a moment at
• 26:07
  a moment on one of my films where you know, now I don't even
• 26:11
  remember what it was, but it was it was a case of the star
• 26:15
  sort of questioned something, you know, and I took him aside. And
• 26:19
  he was a guy who who you know, made dozens of films and it
• 26:23
  had a very successful TV series, and I had to take him aside and
• 26:27
  say, look, you know, we can we can talk about this as
• 26:33
  much as you want. If you don't like what I'm doing, we can
• 26:36
  we can work it out together, but you can't question me in front of
• 26:38
  the rest of the cast and crew. And he was like, you're absolutely
• 26:42
  right. I apologize for that. And then when you were shot and we
• 26:47
  had a very good and yeah, we we were literally out in the middle
• 26:56
  of the jungle and we did not have a stunt coordinator on that film,
• 26:59
  and Adrian Paul kind of took over that role for us, and he would
• 27:03
  help the other actors with the physical stuff that they needed to do thanks to
• 27:08
  all his experience, you know, on Highlander, mainly because you know,
• 27:12
  he spent several years doing endless fight scenes and stuff, so he was really
• 27:18
  good at that, and he was able to help the other actors in ways
• 27:23
  that I probably would not have been able to. And even if I had
• 27:27
  been able to, I certainly wouldn't have had the time because there's so many
• 27:30
  things. I've often said that directing a feature film is probably the most all
• 27:37
  encompassing, intense experience that a human being can have, short of going to
• 27:42
  war. There are so many things that you have to keep in your head,
• 27:47
  so many things going on at any one moment aren't doing what I need,
• 27:49
  and I would have had to go back and talk to them and there
• 27:52
  would would have cost more time. But actually my star was talking to them
• 27:57
  and was bringing them along. And especially if you're working with if you're doing
• 28:02
  an action movie, as most of the might have been, and your star
• 28:04
  is someone who's done a lot of action work before, then he can also
• 28:08
  be very helpful with the physical stuff. Both see Thomas Howe on Mutant Vampire
• 28:15
  Zombies and also Adrian Paul who is my star in AE. You know,
• 28:21
  they both had a lot of action experience and so they would they would help
• 28:25
  the other actors. Okay, here's how you here's how you might want to
• 28:29
  run through this scene. Yeah, we're running through the jungle. Well,
• 28:33
  how are we going to make sure we don't trip and fall over this?
• 28:36
  You know? Vine here, there's a lot going on, And it's a
• 28:41
  funny thing to think about how much time it takes to simply be able to
• 28:48
  run through a patch of jungle. This is something you don't think about when
• 28:51
  you're watching an action film, But simply being able to run through the jungle
• 28:56
  for a hundred feet without tripping on something thing is harder than you might think.
• 29:03
  And so having somebody with a certain level of experience at that kind of
• 29:07
  thing, how do I slide down this hillside without falling over and breaking my
• 29:12
  ankle? That that can be very helpful, especially when you don't have a
• 29:17
  huge stunt team, you know, working with everybody on one of these films.
• 29:22
  You're you're lucky if you have a stunt coordinator at all, much less
• 29:26
  a whole stunt team to work with each of your ten different actors in a
• 29:30
  scene that are you were responsible for. That it can really get overwhelming,
• 29:34
  and you tend to develop a tunnel vision to a certain extent. And I
• 29:41
  know it happens for me that I am totally focused on the moment we're putting
• 29:45
  in front of the camera, and if somebody asked me about another moment in
• 29:49
  the film, I'm like, what, huh, there, there's another moment.
• 29:55
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 30:02
  the show, and I'll have to like make a physical, conscious effort to
• 30:08
  change my focus and think about this other thing that needs to be addressed.
• 30:12
  Yeah. So on Ae we were out in the middle of the jungle in
• 30:15
  Costa Rica. There's very little film infrastructure there, and what there is is
• 30:19
  based in the capital of San Jose. So the people there are San Jose's
• 30:26
  just a city like La people there have no more experience working in the jungle
• 30:32
  than anybody here would. So even our quote unquote local crew was still out
• 30:37
  of their element. So yeah, Adrian was very very helpful on that production
• 30:42
  and it was it was great working with it. Now, why was the
• 30:45
  decision made to shoot in Costa Rica? Is that just because the screenplay or
• 30:49
  was there some sort of financial incentive for shooting there? That was actually a
• 30:56
  weird, a weird situation. That decision was made the partners at the Asylum
• 31:02
  that was an asylum film, and they had shot several films in Beliez,
• 31:07
  which honestly is where I expected to shoot the film, but they wanted a
• 31:11
  different look because most of their jungle films had been shot in Beliezed, and
• 31:15
  so they started looking around at different places where we could shoot a jungle film.
• 31:22
  And we were talking about the Dominican Republic too, and we were talking
• 31:26
  about Puerto Rico, and I was kind of interested in Puerto Rico because I
• 31:32
  had another project, an indie project that I'd been developing that I thought we
• 31:37
  would probably shoot in Puerto Rico because it needed both jungle and a Spanish colonial
• 31:42
  city, and so you got both of those in Puerto Rico. Plus they
• 31:47
  speak English. Plus it's close to you asked you know there are no import
• 31:49
  restrictions or I think because it's part of the US and it's so close by
• 31:53
  playing that you could fly equipment in and stuff. So Puerto Rico was interesting
• 31:57
  to me. But they decided that Puerto Rico was probably going to be too
• 32:02
  expensive, and I think there were union issues there too, so they were
• 32:07
  looking at Dominican Republic, and then Panama got into the mix, and then
• 32:12
  finally the decision to shoot in Costa Rica. Oddly enough, was made for
• 32:17
  two reasons. One was that one of the partners at the Asylum, his
• 32:23
  father I think, owns a house in Costa Rica, and so somehow that
• 32:29
  made it better. I guess they just had a connection there. And then
• 32:32
  they got in touch with a local production company in Costa Rica who kind of
• 32:37
  sold them on shooting there. And as it turns out, it might have
• 32:42
  been a mistake because it turns out that Costa Rica is not an inexpensive place,
• 32:46
  and we were there during prime tourist season and there was no local crew
• 32:51
  in the jungle. So even the quote unquote local crew we were hiring all
• 32:57
  had to be transported from Santos. They all had to be put up in
• 33:00
  hotels. You know, normally think, well, we're going to hire a
• 33:04
  local crew, they'll just be living at home and they'll come to the set
• 33:07
  every day. But it wasn't like that. So the expense of shooting in
• 33:13
  Costa Rica and everything's very expensive there. It's not. It's not this third
• 33:16
  world, you know, a country where you can hire a labor for ten
• 33:20
  cents an hour or something. What little film production there is there was mostly
• 33:27
  TV commercials and an actual Costa Rican television programs, so they were all used
• 33:34
  to working sort of a normal day in a studio setting and getting paid decent
• 33:39
  rates. And we were coming in with this crazy low budget film that was
• 33:44
  going to be shot out in the middle of the jungle, and we wanted
• 33:45
  people to work for what to them was very little, and so it was
• 33:52
  Costa Rica actually was a wonderful place, but from a production standpoint, it
• 33:57
  actually kind of worked against us and it ended up costing a lot more than
• 34:00
  anybody expected. But it was beautiful. When you're shooting in the jungle.
• 34:05
  How do you scout out locations? Do you just kind of say, okay,
• 34:07
  well here's a river and we can shoot it like this, I mean,
• 34:10
  is there are you shooting it kind of in the same area or do
• 34:14
  you do you have like a location manager there that's dealing with that sort of
• 34:17
  thing. Yeah, it's funny. We didn't have an actual location scout.
• 34:22
  We hired a tour guide who basically took people, just tourists on tours,
• 34:29
  and we hired him to show us all these places, you know, And
• 34:32
  so during preproduction he took us around. We needed a waterfall, we needed
• 34:36
  a river, we need a dense jungle, we needed an open clearing.
• 34:40
  So he took us around to a bunch of waterfalls and rivers and things like
• 34:45
  that that he knew about. But yeah, we all we had to get
• 34:49
  it all in one basic area because we couldn't afford time wise or money wise
• 34:54
  to be traveling all around the country. And we were fortunate we found this.
• 35:00
  I guess it was a plantation. I guess it was a I'm sure
• 35:04
  it was a coconut plantation. I forget what they were growing there, but
• 35:07
  there was this plantation where a part of it was cultivated, and then part
• 35:10
  of it was just wild jungle, and they happen to have a cave which
• 35:15
  we needed, and there was a river on their property, and so we
• 35:17
  talked to the owners of this land and we were able to end up shooting
• 35:22
  about eighty percent of the film on this one plot of land where we had
• 35:28
  most of the things we needed. And that really saved us because before we
• 35:31
  found that we were going to be moving around constantly, and that would have
• 35:36
  just cost way too much time getting to new locations each day and setting up
• 35:40
  all over again. And you know, the producers kept saying, well,
• 35:45
  it's it's a jungle country, just pull over to the side of the road
• 35:46
  and shoot. And it was like, no, you can't do that.
• 35:51
  For one thing, at the side of the road that the jungle was so
• 35:52
  dense that you literally couldn't get into it. You would have had to hack
• 35:57
  your way in with a machette. You know, you want you want the
• 36:00
  actors to appear to be running through dense jungle, but it's virtually impossible to
• 36:06
  get your equipment in and shoot that way. So you need a place with
• 36:09
  paths and roads and and and dirt trails and stuff where you can get to
• 36:15
  places that look like they're in the middle of the jungle but are actually easily
• 36:21
  accessible, and you know where where are fifty people going to sit down and
• 36:24
  have lunch on their break and how are you going to run electricity in?
• 36:28
  And where are you going to lay dolly track and all this stuff. So
• 36:31
  shooting in dense jungle is pretty tricky, but we were lucky in it.
• 36:36
  We found a lot of beautiful locations very close to each other. But the
• 36:40
  days where we had to move and go to a different location, like we
• 36:44
  did for the waterfall, it was it was pretty hairy. And finding all
• 36:50
  these things because they were they were widely spaced, was was tricky too,
• 36:54
  but it all worked out. Was your DP working with like big five K
• 37:00
  lights and things like that outside or did you try to use mostly natural light
• 37:02
  when you could, No, it was mostly it was mostly natural light.
• 37:07
  In fact, one of the interesting things was we had this scene inside the
• 37:12
  cave that was supposed to be lit by glow stick you know, these chemical
• 37:16
  light sticks, and at a certain point we decided to just light it with
• 37:22
  glow sticks, and we bought the brightest glow sticks you could find, and
• 37:27
  we wrapped a bunch of them together, and we actually shot one scene where
• 37:30
  they're walking through this dark cave lit entirely by glow sticks, with people holding
• 37:35
  them near their face and stuff. So that was kind of cool, you
• 37:37
  know. No, we had we had a very minimal lighting kit and we
• 37:40
  were really only using it. I mean, you know, he'd set up
• 37:45
  a backlight occasionally, but we were in the jug. When we were outside
• 37:47
  in the jungle, we were mostly using available lighting because it was a matter
• 37:52
  of well, where are you going to run power from? Can we get
• 37:54
  a generator into this place we were there? There were there were days were
• 38:00
  the only way to reach where we were shooting was in a four wheel druct
• 38:04
  pickup truck. There was no way to get a grip truck there, so
• 38:08
  transporting a lot of equipment just what wouldn't have been practical. So a lot
• 38:13
  of that film, the vast majority of that film was shot with available light
• 38:16
  and reflectors, and every once in a while we'd set up a couple of
• 38:22
  couple of lights here and there, and then inside the cave where we needed
• 38:27
  actual light. That was that was one day where we brought in a generator
• 38:31
  and we had to do a real lighting setup. And then there was some
• 38:36
  stuff that we actually shot in the city. You know, there were sets
• 38:38
  and buildings and so forth, and those we had lighting, but that you
• 38:44
  know, we weren't in the jungle there. We were in a controllable situation.
• 38:47
  Now, can you talk for a second about how you developed a relationship
• 38:51
  with the Asylum and how you first met David Lott and those guys. That
• 38:55
  was a very slow process and it wasn't intentional. I met the Lapp before
• 39:00
  the Asylum existed. Basically, I had had a day job that I won't
• 39:05
  even mention what I was doing because it's so embarrassing. But while I was
• 39:08
  there, I made friends with this woman who was a talent manager, and
• 39:15
  she knew David. I don't really know how she knew David, but she
• 39:19
  knew David Latt. They were friends, and so eventually she introduced me to
• 39:22
  him and we started talking and nothing came of that. This is actually,
• 39:29
  I think one of the most important lessons for somebody coming out to Hollywood to
• 39:32
  try and get into the business is to just meet as many people as you
• 39:37
  can, because you never know what's going to turn into a great connection.
• 39:43
  So I met David Latt, and I just knew him. He was just
• 39:46
  somebody I knew, and we would talk every once in a while when we
• 39:51
  were visiting with our mutual friend. I didn't really time with him on my
• 39:54
  own per se. I mean, my girlfriend and I were invited to his
• 39:58
  wedding. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
• 40:07
  back to the show, you know. And on on and off over the
• 40:13
  years we'd be in contact. Um, maybe we'd go to parties, the
• 40:17
  same parties occasionally because we had mutual friends. I ended up a friend who
• 40:22
  introduced us ran a co ed softball team, and David's wife played on the
• 40:28
  team and I played on the team, so so jud we were just in
• 40:31
  contact on and off for years. And when the Asylum started, I think
• 40:37
  it was called something else. They were actually doing art house films, you
• 40:42
  know, and I talked to him on occasion about trying to get something going,
• 40:45
  and it never really amounted too much, and I guess I was just
• 40:50
  oh, that that friend of Donna's who wants to be a director, right,
• 40:55
  and and so I don't think he really took me terribly seriously. But
• 41:00
  then once I made the Zombie film, and I could actually show him something.
• 41:02
  I could say, here, look at this, I can do what
• 41:06
  I've been saying I could do. And he looked at it, and there
• 41:09
  was a movie proving that I could do what I said I could do,
• 41:13
  and he couldn't sort of ignore that anymore. And by then the Asylum had
• 41:16
  sort of become this low budget film factory where they were churning movies out in
• 41:22
  large numbers, and they had plans to expand and make even more films,
• 41:24
  and they had just hired a new director of development to guide that process when
• 41:30
  I made the zombie film, and he said, okay, that's pretty good.
• 41:34
  I will put you in touch with my director of development, and you
• 41:38
  know, when he puts out a call to writers for script ideas, you'll
• 41:43
  be on the list. And so we went through a few different scenarios where
• 41:47
  I got an email from the director of development saying, hey, we need
• 41:52
  some ideas based on this this concept, you know. And there were a
• 41:58
  few where I pitched idea, is that nothing ever came of it. And
• 42:01
  then finally there was they were going to do a knockoff of Fast and the
• 42:07
  Furious five, I guess, and I was into cars, and street racing
• 42:12
  and so forth, and so I pitched him my idea and they went with
• 42:15
  it, and it just sort of we developed a relationship from there and I
• 42:21
  wrote that that first script for them. I wrote that in ten days because
• 42:25
  we spent a while talking about the story, and by the time they finally
• 42:30
  approved what the story was going to be, they called me into the office
• 42:34
  and say they said, okay, we want you to write this for us,
• 42:37
  but we need to script in twelve days. And I was like,
• 42:42
  I've never written a script in less than two months before, but okay.
• 42:47
  And what's worse is that it was right before Christmas. For some reason,
• 42:51
  I always seemed to be writing scripts for The Asylum right before Christmas, and
• 42:54
  I had a Christmas party plan and so I lost a day and a half
• 43:00
  two days shopping and getting ready for this party. So I really had to
• 43:04
  write that script for two hundred miles per hour in ten days. But I
• 43:08
  did it, and I got it to them and it was what they needed.
• 43:15
  And that led to another and another, and eventually to this this sort
• 43:21
  of insane moment where they said, okay, we want you to write a
• 43:24
  movie called Sharknado. What's your process when you begin writing, do you try
• 43:31
  to outline everything before you ever start writing? Or do you I mean,
• 43:36
  what do you do before you actually start working on the screenplay. It depends
• 43:40
  on the situation, because if I'm writing on assignment for somebody, then I'm
• 43:45
  gonna be having to fulfill their needs. The Asylum has a very specific process.
• 43:53
  They start with a one sentence log line that they will provide usually,
• 44:00
  and they'll ask for a one variety of one paragraph pitches that would fulfill this
• 44:07
  concept. And then they'll pick one of those one paragraphs and they'll say,
• 44:09
  okay, now write a one page story with a clear eight acts structure.
• 44:15
  So I'll write a one page story and then they'll give you notes on that,
• 44:21
  and once they're happy with the way the one page goes, they'll say,
• 44:24
  okay, now write us a three page outline with more detail and break
• 44:30
  it up into the eight acts for a TV movie. Because most of their
• 44:35
  stuff, you know that they're hoping they can sell it to sci fi or
• 44:38
  whatever, so it needs a TV movie structure of eight acts. And so
• 44:44
  then you do this three page outline for them, and then when there'll be
• 44:46
  notes on that, and then they'll finally approve that, and then you go
• 44:50
  to script. So that's the way I have to work for that. When
• 44:53
  I'm doing a spec project, I prefer not to do that. What I
• 44:59
  generally do on a spec project is I'll have a basic idea of what the
• 45:04
  story is going to be, so I'll probably have that one paragraph idea,
• 45:08
  and then I'll go to an outline format, where what I do is I
• 45:14
  make up a sheet with lines labeled one through ninety, and each one of
• 45:19
  those lines should correspond to a scene, on the general assumption that it'll be
• 45:24
  about one scene per page. So I've got ninety scenes, and usually the
• 45:30
  opening of the film will just be in my head because that's the the impetus
• 45:36
  for the story, and so I'll fill out, you know, the first
• 45:38
  one, two, three, four or five ten lines with a one sentence
• 45:44
  description of what is that scene. And then usually if you know what your
• 45:49
  story is, you know what your beginning is, you probably have an idea
• 45:52
  how you want it to end. So I'll go in and I'll plug in,
• 45:55
  Okay, what's the climax of the film, and that'll be like or
• 46:00
  eighty five, eighty six, eighty seven, and then okay, what's the
• 46:04
  turnaround in the middle, and so somewhere in the middle, and this will
• 46:07
  be less precise where it goes. I'll say, Okay, now this happens,
• 46:12
  you know, and maybe there'll be a couple of intermediary moments. And
• 46:15
  so I'll have this one sheet of ninety lines where there's a bunch filled out
• 46:21
  at the top and there are a few interspersed in the middle. Okay,
• 46:23
  I know this kind of thing has to happen somewhere in here, and then
• 46:28
  there'll be more detail towards the end. And on a spec script, I'll
• 46:31
  just start writing the script then, and usually as I start writing, more
• 46:37
  ideas will come to me to fill in those blank lines in the middle.
• 46:40
  So probably by the time I've finished the script, I've also finished the outline,
• 46:45
  and I'll be able to move things around. I don't do the index
• 46:50
  cards like a lot of film schools teacher, and I know a lot of
• 46:53
  writers. Do you just let the structure come out. I like this.
• 46:58
  I like this outline because I want the structure in front of me. I
• 47:00
  want to physically see it all in sort of one gaze, one glance,
• 47:07
  So it's having it fit on one sheet of paper or sometimes two sheets of
• 47:12
  paper taped together. I like to be able to see the structure of the
• 47:15
  film in front of me. Do you have any basis? Did you just
• 47:21
  kind of feel out the structure or do you have like beats that you like
• 47:24
  to hit by specific points? I mean, I hate to say something like
• 47:27
  save the Cat or whatever, but you know anything like that that you ever
• 47:30
  use if you're in a bind and you can't really figure out what's going to
• 47:36
  go somewhere. No, I've never read say of the Cat. I've never
• 47:38
  read True Bee. I've never read any of these screenwriting guys. In fact,
• 47:45
  it's funny because I've been talking to a film school about possibly teaching a
• 47:50
  class for them, and I want to teach a directing class, but because
• 47:52
  of Shark Nado, of course it's to their advantage to have me teach a
• 47:57
  screenwriting class. And I keep telling them I don't know anything about screening.
• 48:00
  I just sort of do this instinctively, So no, I don't really do
• 48:06
  that. I just get an idea, and then I'll get an idea of
• 48:10
  who the characters are, at least who the main characters are, and then
• 48:14
  I just sort of watch what they do and I write it down. Do
• 48:17
  you have any tricks for characters? Are like, how do you keep characters
• 48:21
  consistent and really developed your characters? I really don't know how to articulate how
• 48:25
  I do that. It's just I mean, I just put myself. Maybe
• 48:30
  I'll put myself in the head of the weed character and try and put myself
• 48:37
  in that place and say, Okay, what would I do if I were
• 48:39
  this person in this situation? And then for the bad guy, I'll think,
• 48:44
  Okay, what wouldn't I do? I don't know. I really have
• 48:49
  never analyzed. It's it's a much more organic process for me. I mean,
• 48:53
  I could tell you how I direct a film, but how I actually
• 48:57
  write one of these scripts. It's it's just sort of a thing that happens,
• 49:01
  you know. And there are certain rules. I mean, obviously you
• 49:05
  know that you have to establish all your characters and the impetus for the story.
• 49:13
  All has to happen within the first twenty pages. I'm preferably within the
• 49:16
  first ten. There needs to be some action in the opening. At some
• 49:22
  point in those first twenty pages, the hero makes a decision that propels you
• 49:27
  into the story, or propels the hero into the story, the dilemma has
• 49:31
  to be presented to the hero and then he has to make a decision as
• 49:35
  to what to do and that changes his world. Somewhere in the middle,
• 49:38
  there has to be a turnaround where suddenly things aren't going to go the way
• 49:45
  the hero had hoped they were going to go. And then as you get
• 49:49
  towards the three quarter point in the story, you know that there generally needs
• 49:53
  to be an all is lost moment where it looks like everybody's going to die.
• 50:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 50:07
  to the show, and then that propels you into your action finale where the
• 50:13
  hero does something and saves the day. That's about us as close to a
• 50:19
  formal structure as I really get, and then it's just a matter of what
• 50:24
  happens. And now again, when I'm writing for The Asylum and they have
• 50:28
  this very strict aida act structure, that's a bit different because I know that
• 50:32
  each act is going to be about twelve minutes long. The first act will
• 50:37
  be a bit longer, and the last act will be a bit shorter,
• 50:39
  and in each of those acts there has to be an action beat, so
• 50:45
  that that needs to be fulfilled in the outline stage. So you're writing for
• 50:49
  commercials or is it like is that the breakup? Well, they don't want
• 50:53
  you to write for hard commercial breaks, although on Shardnado two I started doing
• 51:00
  that because Sci Fi when they air these movies will often put the brakes someplace
• 51:07
  other than where you thought they were going to go. But they still want
• 51:09
  it structured, so that every twelve minutes there's there's an action beat and sort
• 51:15
  of a mini climax, and then each one would get progressively bigger until you
• 51:21
  reach the act. So yeah, you do, especially for the ones that
• 51:24
  they know are going to Sci Fi, you do have to delineate your act
• 51:30
  and they all need to be about the right length, you know, So
• 51:34
  maybe one act could be a bit shorter, or maybe you could have a
• 51:36
  ten minute act if you have somewhere else in an act that's fourteen or fifteen
• 51:40
  minutes. But that's about a structured as I guess. Now, when you
• 51:44
  wrote Apocalypse Earth, did you eat that write that about the same time as
• 51:47
  Shartnado, Yes, and and it should it should be noted that it was
• 51:52
  not called Apocalypse Earth when I wrote it. It was just called AE and
• 51:57
  there were a variety of things that AE was going to stand for, and
• 52:02
  basically when people asked me what did it stand for? I said almost everything.
• 52:07
  Apocalypse Earth was actually a tag that was added on during post production by
• 52:10
  the Asylum, and at first they were going to call it Alpha Earth,
• 52:15
  and I was like, no, we can't call it Alpha Earth. That
• 52:16
  gives away the twist at the end. So Apocalypse Earth. Somehow I thought,
• 52:21
  well, there's this big apocalypse in the opening theme, so if we
• 52:23
  call it Apocalypse Earth and people see that, maybe they won't be looking for
• 52:28
  the twist later on. But yes, I was Let's see, how how
• 52:30
  did that go. They came to me. I was talking It was after
• 52:35
  American Warships, and we were talking about what my next project for them was
• 52:38
  going to be, and we were talking about a giant monster movie that they
• 52:44
  wanted, and so at first I agreed to do this giant monster movie.
• 52:50
  No, that's not how it work. We were talking about what we were
• 52:52
  going to do and we were still tossing around ideas and they came to me
• 52:55
  and they said, we want you to write a movie called Shark Storm,
• 53:00
  and that just didn't sound very appealing to me. It seemed like Shark Storm.
• 53:06
  Okay, well there's been a lot of movies about sharks and storms and
• 53:10
  you know it, just why would we need this that it didn't appeal to
• 53:15
  me? So I said no, and we kept talking about about other projects
• 53:22
  and uh, and we started talking about this giant monster movie that they wanted
• 53:25
  to do, which I guess was going to be a mockbuster of Pacific Wrin
• 53:30
  and so I started working on that in sort of a vague concept form,
• 53:36
  and then they came back to me and they said, Okay, what we
• 53:39
  really want you to do is Sharknado. And I said, what does sharks
• 53:45
  have to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? And they said no,
• 53:49
  no, no, not Sharknado. Sharknado a tornado full of sharks. And
• 53:55
  I said, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. That makes a
• 53:58
  lot more sense, and if I can write it that way, then sure,
• 54:02
  I'd love to do that. Because the Asylum tends to play all their
• 54:07
  movies completely straight. They don't like, they don't like to stray into forest
• 54:14
  or comedy unless it's a comedy, which personally I have always take an issue
• 54:19
  with because I think, if you're going to make a low budget movie,
• 54:22
  and you know it's going to be low budget and it's going to look kind
• 54:24
  of cheap, then it's better to get the audience laughing with you than at
• 54:29
  you. That was certainly the approach I took with Mutant Vampire Zombies from the
• 54:34
  hood. And so when they said Sharknado, I was a little concerned that
• 54:37
  they would want to play it completely straight. And I just didn't see how
• 54:40
  you could take a movie called Sharknado and play it completely straight. And they
• 54:46
  said, no, we understand it's called Sharknado. There's going to be a
• 54:50
  certain tongue in cheek element to it. And so with that comforting thought,
• 54:55
  I agreed to do it. And originally I was supposed to direct it,
• 55:00
  and so I guess this was This would have been the summer of two thousand
• 55:05
  and twelve, and so the outlining process went pretty smoothly, and then the
• 55:10
  script writing, the first draft went very smoothly, and it was done in
• 55:15
  a relatively quick period of time, and there weren't a lot of notes,
• 55:20
  and it was just done, and I was going to direct it, except
• 55:24
  that I'd felt a little burned on American Warships because I thought i'd what we
• 55:30
  had done on set was really was really a good movie. And then I
• 55:36
  thought the visual effects, which we'd really been depending on, kind of let
• 55:40
  us down. And if i'd known their process a bit better that that was
• 55:45
  the first film I directed for the Assaunt, and if i'd really sort of
• 55:49
  known a bit better what we were going to be dealing with, maybe I
• 55:53
  wouldn't have left the film so dependent on the visual effects. And so I
• 55:59
  was looking at the script I'd written for Sharknado and thinking, there's just no
• 56:04
  way. There's just no way that this can be done on the kind of
• 56:07
  budget they're talking about. At least I don't see how to do it.
• 56:09
  I could do it for twenty million, maybe I could do it for ten
• 56:13
  million. It's really one hundred million dollars film. And so I sort of
• 56:19
  shied away from directing it because I didn't want to be in that position again,
• 56:24
  because even though the script had this tongue in cheek element to it,
• 56:30
  I still I didn't want to be unintentionally bad. You know, the stuff
• 56:36
  that was going to be cheesy had to be where I intended it to be
• 56:39
  cheesy. I didn't want to be in a position where I just didn't have
• 56:44
  what I needed to make it the way I wanted it to look. And
• 56:46
  at the same time, I had been getting utterly enthralled with Game of Thrones,
• 56:53
  and I had this sort of craving to create a whole world. And
• 57:00
  I've always been a science fiction guy. So I went into the director of
• 57:06
  development and I said, look, you know, we've got this Sharknado,
• 57:09
  and I'm supposed to direct it. But truth is, what I really want
• 57:13
  to do is make a movie where I can create a whole world and have
• 57:17
  a society in it and just sort of build something from the ground up,
• 57:22
  whole alternate reality. And he said, well, we've got this project that
• 57:30
  It's the one sentence description is a group of refugees from Earth have to survive
• 57:36
  on a hostile alien planet. And that just said it perfect to me.
• 57:39
  But I said, yes, I'll do that, and so I started writing
• 57:43
  that and that would have been I guess September of twenty twelve, and so
• 57:47
  I wrote AE. And as that writing process was going along, they scheduled
• 57:54
  the shoots of AE and Sharknado for exam Actually the same time they were both
• 58:00
  going to shoot in January, and so I was forced to choose. And
• 58:06
  at that point I decided to do AE and I wanted to do this science
• 58:10
  fiction film in the jungle, and so I said, you know, I
• 58:14
  respectfully withdraw from Shark Nado. I hope somebody else makes it work, and
• 58:22
  I'm going to go off to Costa Rica and shoot my science fiction movie.
• 58:25
  And in retrospect, I don't know if that was the stupidest thing I've ever
• 58:29
  done or not. You know, because if I had written and directed Shark
• 58:34
  Nado, then I would be the one getting all the attention for it,
• 58:37
  and maybe I'd be hailed as this great genius, whereas now Anthony and I
• 58:45
  are splitting the attention for it. But at the same time, you know,
• 58:51
  you wonder maybe things went the way they were supposed to go, and
• 58:57
  maybe it wouldn't have worked if I'd directed it. Who knows if if something
• 59:00
  Anthony did, you know, and dealing with not having the resources he needed
• 59:07
  to properly create this this insane situation that I had written. You know that
• 59:15
  it could well be that that is what endeared it to people. So maybe
• 59:20
  things worked out for the best. And I'm getting the attention from Sharknado.
• 59:22
  But I also have this this serious science fiction film that I can point to
• 59:28
  and say, see, I can do that too. Now, when you
• 59:30
  saw Sharknado, was it pretty much kind of how you had envidgeted or is
• 59:34
  it very different from your idea? Well, Anthony didn't want me to see
• 59:38
  it until it was done. It was funny because we met for the first
• 59:42
  time in the editing room. We were sharing an editing suite. I was
• 59:46
  cutting AE at the same time he was cutting Sharknado. And I was in
• 59:52
  there working with my editor and this guy walks in and he walks up to
• 59:54
  me and he says, I want to punch you. We'll be right back
• 1:00:01
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And
• 1:00:09
  I didn't know who he was. And I said, okay, why and
• 1:00:14
  he said, I directed Shargnado. I said, oh, well, then
• 1:00:17
  you have every right to write Aunty, that makes sense. And so that
• 1:00:24
  was the beginning of what has become a great friendship. But he didn't want
• 1:00:29
  me to see it until it was done, so I didn't actually see I
• 1:00:32
  mean, while we were editing, you know, I would look over my
• 1:00:36
  shoulder because we were sharing this editing suite, and so I would occasionally look
• 1:00:40
  over my shoulder to see what had become of my words, and some of
• 1:00:45
  it looked right, and some of it was like, what the hell is
• 1:00:47
  that? You know, because there was a car chase, and I didn't
• 1:00:52
  write a car chase. What was that about? You know? And obviously
• 1:00:55
  they didn't have the wherewithal for it to be raining comes and lee in every
• 1:01:00
  shot, and for Los Angeles to be filling up with water, which was
• 1:01:02
  this giant disaster that I'd written. So when I finally thought I saw it
• 1:01:07
  with the public along with everybody else, I was just at home watching it
• 1:01:10
  on TV. There wasn't a premiere or anything at the at the asylum when
• 1:01:15
  things been the it wasn't. What happened out here is we get the East
• 1:01:21
  Coast Sci Fi feed and then there's the re airing for the West Coast.
• 1:01:25
  So the plan was the people were just going to watch the East Coast feed,
• 1:01:31
  you know, wherever they were, and then we were all going to
• 1:01:34
  get together to watch the West Coast feed at a party. But then,
• 1:01:39
  you know, during the initial broadcast, this whole thing started happening. On
• 1:01:45
  Twitter, and it just just sort of became insane, And so I was
• 1:01:49
  on the computer and I was corresponding with people and tweeting and getting phone calls
• 1:01:54
  for people saying can you believe what's happening and all this stuff. And so
• 1:01:59
  then I had to run out at the last minute to go to the party
• 1:02:02
  for the second airing, and I got I guess it was going to start
• 1:02:07
  at nine o'clock here, and I got in the car and I got on
• 1:02:10
  the freeway and for some reason, I guess there's been an accident or something,
• 1:02:15
  but the fruler was at a dead standstill. And after about twenty minutes
• 1:02:22
  of this and realizing I'd already missed the beginning, I just gave up and
• 1:02:25
  went home and got back on Twitter and got back on Facebook and email,
• 1:02:30
  where the world was still blowing up. Very strange things were happening, and
• 1:02:36
  I was corresponding with Damon Lindelofen, and I was starting to get requests for
• 1:02:38
  interviews, and it was just sort of the most surreal night of my life.
• 1:02:45
  Well, you know, for the so for the first twenty to thirty
• 1:02:46
  minutes of Shardnado, I was sitting there going what that's not that's not what
• 1:02:52
  I know. Wait what But after that, after about the first thirty minutes,
• 1:02:57
  it settles down to be basically the way I wrote it. I mean,
• 1:03:00
  it doesn't look like what I saw in my head, because I still
• 1:03:04
  had this huge disaster movie los Angeles is filling up with water kind of thing,
• 1:03:10
  you know, as the background. I to me, it was a
• 1:03:15
  it was a two layer thing. There was this realistic disaster movie going on
• 1:03:20
  where Los Angeles is flooding, and then on top of that, there was
• 1:03:23
  this ridiculous element of sharks falling from the sky. And so obviously the realism
• 1:03:30
  of the disaster scenario was not achievable on the budget they had. And so
• 1:03:36
  I can't say that it looked the way I saw it in my head when
• 1:03:40
  I wrote it, except for certain moments where where it really did. But
• 1:03:46
  on the whole, you know, I was a little frustrated that they couldn't
• 1:03:52
  really achieve that kind of level of destruction and disaster, but still that they
• 1:04:00
  kept to my script from from about the twenty or thirty minute point on,
• 1:04:06
  and I was no longer going Wait, I didn't write that. Anthony changed
• 1:04:11
  a fair amount in the opening do you think they carried off the tone that
• 1:04:15
  you had, the kind of comic tone, but not like the actors took
• 1:04:18
  it seriously, but they were within a world that was kind of yeah,
• 1:04:23
  you know, chaotic or absurd in a way. Yeah, I mean that
• 1:04:26
  that the tone was what I intended. The production value was where it wasn't
• 1:04:32
  what I had envisioned. But one of the reasons that I ended up not
• 1:04:36
  directing it was because I knew there was no way to achieve what I had
• 1:04:40
  in my head. So I think it all worked out for the best.
• 1:04:43
  Now you guys went back and making Sharkonado two, was the process completely different
• 1:04:48
  now that you had had all this success with the first one? Yes,
• 1:04:56
  it was. It was interesting because the first one, nobody paid any attention
• 1:05:01
  to me the outlining story, outlining process. You know, there there were
• 1:05:06
  a few notes, and then it was like, okay, go ahead write
• 1:05:10
  it. And then the first draft of the script the Asylum had a few
• 1:05:14
  notes which I addressed. Then sci Fi had a few notes, and then
• 1:05:17
  it was done and you know, nobody thought anything of it. It was
• 1:05:21
  just this ridiculous little movie. By the second one, of course, that
• 1:05:25
  had become this phenomena, and so everybody had their eyes on it, and
• 1:05:30
  every little thing that I did was being examined by you know, half a
• 1:05:35
  dozen different people who all had to have input on it. So it was
• 1:05:40
  it was a much more political process getting the second script done, and of
• 1:05:45
  course there was a lot more writing on it because the first one nobody thought
• 1:05:49
  anything of it, and the second one suddenly suddenly it was going to become
• 1:05:55
  this franchise if we didn't screw it up. So there was there was a
• 1:05:59
  lot more pressure, there was a lot more eyes on and the whole process
• 1:06:01
  took a lot longer getting the script done. Now, what does it feel
• 1:06:06
  like when all of a sudden people are, you know, noticing you and
• 1:06:11
  wanting to interview you, and you know, you get all this recognition.
• 1:06:14
  How does that feel? Is it a good feeling or is it kind of
• 1:06:16
  does it give you anxiety or no? Well, the only anxiety has actually
• 1:06:21
  has happened in the last couple of months, whereas somehow my home address got
• 1:06:27
  out on the internet, I guess, and so I've been getting fan mail
• 1:06:30
  at home and that's a little disturbing, you know. Unfortunately, it's all
• 1:06:36
  been good. There haven't been any death threats or anything, but the fact
• 1:06:41
  that somehow my address got out there, that that makes me a little bit
• 1:06:44
  anxious. Other than that, it's it's just been wonderful, you know.
• 1:06:46
  I mean, I came out to Hollywood expecting to be the next Steven Spielberg
• 1:06:50
  and imagining something like this, but imagining it happening twenty years ago. And
• 1:06:58
  so after years of struggling in anonymity. While I still hope for a level
• 1:07:04
  of success and public appreciation, I'm not sure I necessarily expected it anymore.
• 1:07:12
  So when when it finally started happening, it's just been wonderful. But I
• 1:07:16
  had been, you know, sort of preparing myself for this kind of career,
• 1:07:23
  you know, for twenty odd years. So I think if it had
• 1:07:26
  actually happened when I was that young, when I first came out here,
• 1:07:30
  I probably would have messed with my head. I think the years of struggling
• 1:07:35
  have allowed me to stay a lot more grounded during this whole process and just
• 1:07:41
  sort of take it for what it is and enjoy it and not let myself
• 1:07:45
  get too carried away with it all. But you know, it's a wonderful
• 1:07:49
  thing. You go to these conventions, and lining up to get your autograph
• 1:07:56
  and telling you how much they loved the movie and what fun they had with
• 1:07:59
  it, and little kids too. I remember at Comic Con, not this
• 1:08:04
  last summer, but the year before, after the first movie had just come
• 1:08:08
  out. I walked on too, walked onto the floor at Comic Con the
• 1:08:13
  first night I got there and it was about to close. I'd gotten there
• 1:08:15
  really late because there was traffic or I don't remember what it was, but
• 1:08:19
  I got there late. So I just figured i'd take a quick walk around
• 1:08:24
  the convention floor. And I'm walking through these tables of displays and stuff,
• 1:08:29
  and the very first little snippet of a conversation I hear as I'm walking past
• 1:08:33
  somebody, is this guy saying yeah, and then he dives into the shark
• 1:08:39
  and then he cuts his way out. And that was literally the first thing
• 1:08:42
  I heard as I walked through the convention floor at Comic Con. And that
• 1:08:46
  was just surreal. And then the next day, we were doing this poster
• 1:08:51
  signing, and you know, we'd been signing pretty consistently for like half an
• 1:08:58
  hour, and I was of surprise that people were still coming, and so
• 1:09:01
  I took a break and I went out to look for the line to see
• 1:09:04
  where all these people were coming from, and I couldn't find the line.
• 1:09:09
  All I saw was the big crowd of people filling the hall, and then
• 1:09:14
  I realized that was our line, and they were actually lined up out the
• 1:09:17
  door to get these posters side. And mind you, I and and Tara
• 1:09:21
  weren't even there. It was me and Anthony and Jason Simmons and one other
• 1:09:30
  cast member I think, so the big stars weren't even there, and we
• 1:09:33
  have a line out the door of people to get their Sharknado posters side,
• 1:09:38
  and it was just like, Wow, what is going on here? This
• 1:09:42
  is amazing. And then this mother came up with a little girl and must
• 1:09:45
  have been about I don't know, six or seven, and she was dancing
• 1:09:48
  around and going Sharknadou was jack Nado as she was spinning around encircled, And
• 1:09:55
  it's just been a remarkable experience. You right back after a word from our
• 1:10:00
  sponsor and now back to the show, and it's just so it's just really
• 1:10:11
  wonderful to see that people have gotten into him like this and have embraced it
• 1:10:15
  in the spirit that we intended. Just a wonderful feeling well, it's funny
• 1:10:20
  because my son's completely obsessed with tornadoes right now, and his favorite movie is
• 1:10:26
  Twister. He's six years old. And last night I had a Sharknado on,
• 1:10:30
  you know, doing a little bit of research, and I was like,
• 1:10:32
  son, this is a tornado, but a tornado with sharks in it,
• 1:10:35
  and he just about lost his mind. And that was the first thing
• 1:10:41
  he said. This morning, He's like, Dad, can we watch Sharknado?
• 1:10:43
  And I was like, after school, maybe it's, you know,
• 1:10:46
  pick a time. I'm sorry. So I had one more thing that you
• 1:10:53
  had mentioned something in an interview before that's kind of a different topic, and
• 1:10:56
  I just wanted to ask you this real quick and then let you go.
• 1:11:00
  You had said that if you could do things all over again, you would
• 1:11:03
  have made a feature film a lot earlier in your career, and I was
• 1:11:08
  wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that. Well, like
• 1:11:11
  I said, it had always been in the back of my mind that if
• 1:11:15
  I didn't succeed, if I didn't get where I wanted to go, Following
• 1:11:20
  the traditional route of trying to get a film, getting somebody to make a
• 1:11:26
  film, getting a production company or a studio, to hire me to make
• 1:11:29
  a film that eventually I was just going to have to raise the money and
• 1:11:32
  make my own. But I guess I kept putting off that moment because that
• 1:11:41
  reaching that decision sort of implied that I had failed up till then that nobody
• 1:11:46
  was going to hire me to make a movie, and so coming to accept
• 1:11:53
  that and saying Okay, I'm going to have to take matters into my own
• 1:11:56
  hands took longer than it probably should have. If I made that zombie movie
• 1:12:01
  five or ten years earlier, then the things that came as a result of
• 1:12:08
  it would have happened five or ten years earlier, and you know, hopefully
• 1:12:12
  I would be five or ten years further along in my career than I am
• 1:12:15
  now, because because everything that's happened, from making movies to The Asylum to
• 1:12:21
  the success of Shargnadom, all of it can be traced back to that zombie
• 1:12:26
  film where I proved that, yes, I can actually make a movie.
• 1:12:30
  So if I had, if I had done that sooner, then maybe I'd
• 1:12:33
  be further along now, and maybe I'd be making big studio films now,
• 1:12:38
  or at least maybe I would have spent an extra ten years doing what I
• 1:12:43
  wanted to do rather than just struggling to make a living. So I do
• 1:12:48
  sort of regret not having made that film earlier. The question arises, you
• 1:12:54
  know, would I have wouldn't have been as successful if I'd done it when
• 1:12:59
  I was younger and had less experience and less maturity. I don't know,
• 1:13:03
  there's no way to know. Of course, I think it would have.
• 1:13:08
  Don't you think technology also kinds of plays a role to a certain extent.
• 1:13:11
  I mean that that it's so much cheaper to Yeah, yeah, we were.
• 1:13:14
  We were able to make that film cheaper than if we'd shot it ten
• 1:13:19
  years earlier and had to shoot on film, actually even five years earlier,
• 1:13:24
  because we were we were sort of you know, we weren't the first indie
• 1:13:29
  film to shoot on HD, but it was still a relatively new thing and
• 1:13:32
  and so the technology was still actually sort of a question mark at that point.
• 1:13:36
  I remember we built a computer to edit it, and it's like,
• 1:13:41
  okay, what what does this computer need to be able to do? And
• 1:13:44
  ended up sending like five grand to build a computer, And now you could
• 1:13:46
  do it for you know, eight hundred on a laptop. So yeah,
• 1:13:50
  it probably would have been more expensive if we'd done it sooner. But at
• 1:13:57
  the same time, there was more money available because films were more expensive then,
• 1:14:03
  and part of the so called democratization of film that's come with the digital
• 1:14:09
  revolution, I think there's a little less respect for what it takes to make
• 1:14:13
  a movie now. People think, oh, well, anybody with a video
• 1:14:15
  camera can make a movie, and that's not true. And unfortunately, I
• 1:14:20
  think people think, oh, it's really cheap to make a movie now,
• 1:14:24
  and that's not true either. Certain elements have become less expensive. You don't
• 1:14:30
  have to process film stock, you don't have to buy film stock, you
• 1:14:32
  don't need to print your movie. At the end, renting a high end
• 1:14:36
  HD camera costs as much as renting you know, a pan of FLEXI used
• 1:14:42
  to do. So that hasn't changed so much. If you're really trying to
• 1:14:45
  do it at a professional level, Yes, you can go out and buy
• 1:14:48
  a cheap HD camera now. Hell, I mean, you know, there
• 1:14:53
  are phones that will shoot four K videos, but they still have crappy,
• 1:14:59
  little plastic lens. It's not like you're really going to be able to make
• 1:15:00
  a movie that looks like a movie on your camera phone. So yes,
• 1:15:05
  certain elements have gotten cheaper. You know, you don't need to rent an
• 1:15:10
  Avid anymore. You can do it on any home computer. You can edit
• 1:15:15
  a film. Now digital effects can be done on less sophisticated computers, but
• 1:15:21
  you still need the really good software and you still need people who know how
• 1:15:27
  to use it. And so the craft hasn't changed. It hasn't gotten any
• 1:15:30
  cheaper, but unfortunately people seem to think it has. And so, you
• 1:15:36
  know, it used to be that people in the film industry got paid pretty
• 1:15:42
  well, and part of that was the assumption that they had a craft that
• 1:15:47
  they had learned over many years that was a rare skill. And part of
• 1:15:55
  it was the fact that you're not going to be working fifty weeks a year,
• 1:16:00
  so you need to be paid enough when you are working to live,
• 1:16:02
  you know, in between projects. And one of the unfortunate things that's happened
• 1:16:06
  in recent years is people seem to have forgotten that these are still hard one,
• 1:16:13
  hard fought skills that take a lot of time to perfect and not just
• 1:16:17
  anybody with a computer and an iPhone can do it. You need to know
• 1:16:21
  what you're doing. But because of the technological advances, there's a changed perception.
• 1:16:29
  I think of what's involved here, and so people think that they shouldn't
• 1:16:34
  have to pay for all this stuff. So you see all these visual effects
• 1:16:38
  companies, you know, winning Oscars and then going out of business because they're
• 1:16:42
  forced to do things so cheaply. And you see people making films on their
• 1:16:46
  iPhone and then they get surprised when they can't sell the movie to a distributor.
• 1:16:51
  So it's it's been a double edged sword, I think. And yes,
• 1:16:58
  certain aspects of it are a bit cheap than it used to be,
• 1:17:00
  but costs like sets and feeding your crew and hiring actors and hiring crew and
• 1:17:10
  putting them up if you're in a different location, or building sets or finding
• 1:17:14
  locations and paying for none of the costs of this stuff have changed. Movies
• 1:17:18
  are expensive. It's very hard to make a good movie cheap. You know,
• 1:17:24
  every once in a while it can be done if you have a concept
• 1:17:26
  that lends itself to that, like you know the Blair Witch Project in or
• 1:17:30
  if you're making a movie about two people sitting at a table talking. But
• 1:17:35
  to make a popcorn movie still costs money, just because the cameras and the
• 1:17:42
  editing equipment are a bit cheaper now. It doesn't really change that. I
• 1:17:45
  want to thank Jason so much for doing such a great job on this episode.
• 1:17:48
  If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 1:17:51
  head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash
• 1:17:56
  eight. Thank you so much for listening to guys as always, keep on
• 1:17:59
  writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
• 1:18:02
  the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.