Latest / Next Act with Jeff Ornstein / Jonathan Geffner - Writer, Executive Producer & Lead Actor, The Dummy Detective

Transcript

Jonathan Geffner - Writer, Executive Producer & Lead Actor, The Dummy Detective · Next Act with Jeff Ornstein

• 0:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Hi everyone, and welcome to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 0:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I am Jeff, and on this show we celebrate people on the cusp of greatness.
• 0:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Those building on past successes in some of the curious and inventive and sometimes unexpected ways they have achieved those, and stepping into moments that could define their legacy.
• 0:21
  Jeff Ornstein: We'll talk about current projects, lessons learned, and the extraordinary opportunities ahead.
• 0:26
  Jeff Ornstein: So the best is yet to come.
• 0:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Jonathan Gefner is a multi-talented writer, actor, and producer, known for his award-winning web series Trillo and Suede, and his new feature film, The Dummy Detective, which is on Amazon Prime.
• 0:42
  Jeff Ornstein: He combines ventriloquism, music, and absurdist comedy to create unforgettable stories that have captivated audiences around the world.
• 0:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Welcome, Jonathan.
• 0:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Thank you, Jeff.
• 0:53
  Jeff Ornstein: It's great to be here with you.
• 0:54
  Jeff Ornstein: Good.
• 0:55
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, I gotta say, all transparency, you are our first ventriloquist con comedian that we've had on.
• 1:03
  Jeff Ornstein: And it is, I've seen your work and you do a brilliant job.
• 1:06
  Jeff Ornstein: So before we get into like some of the more specifics, just so the audience can understand, how did you get into that and when did you start practicing it?
• 1:14
  Jonathan Geffner: Because you're flawless.
• 1:15
  Jonathan Geffner: Oh, thank you.
• 1:16
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, long story.
• 1:18
  Jonathan Geffner: I've done a lot of things in my life, various roots, but I wound up becoming a ventriloquist as my main career for most of my adult life.
• 1:26
  Jonathan Geffner: But I was not a child ventriloquist.
• 1:29
  Jonathan Geffner: I loved ventriloquism because as a kid I saw the Paul Winchell Jerry Mahoney hour, and there's several permutations of the Paul Winchell show.
• 1:38
  Jonathan Geffner: He was a famous ventriloquist back then, the 50s and 60s was when he was famous.
• 1:43
  Jonathan Geffner: But famous fickle, when probably most young people don't know that name anymore, Paul Winchell.
• 1:48
  Jonathan Geffner: But he was my inspiration, but sort of retroactively, because I was a young man when I became a ventriloquist, and that was a moment of inspiration.
• 1:56
  Jonathan Geffner: I was walking in Manhattan in Central Park, Columbus Circle, and I saw a ventriloquist street performer.
• 2:03
  Jonathan Geffner: First time I've I'd ever seen a live ventriloquist performance, and I was so balled over, I was so inspired, it was an epiphany, really, that moment that this is what I need to do.
• 2:14
  Jonathan Geffner: And that day was very momentous because I had just decided to drop out of NYU.
• 2:21
  Jonathan Geffner: I had begun a doctoral program for piano.
• 2:24
  Jonathan Geffner: I was a serious pianist when I was young, off and on, but had dabbled with, made some attempts to become a concert pianist, was encouraged by some people to pursue that, but that's a very difficult road in and of itself because the competition is so fierce.
• 2:41
  Jonathan Geffner: But anyway, that's what I was doing at that point.
• 2:44
  Jonathan Geffner: I just dropped out.
• 2:45
  Jonathan Geffner: I was very depressed walking sort of aimlessly around the city because I I was making eking out a living, not making much of a living, eking out by teaching piano lessons, doing some accompaniment for other instrumentalists and singers like that, and also teaching Yiddish, because I was I'm fluent in Yiddish and have a degree in that from Queen's College, CUNY, City University, New York.
• 3:08
  Jonathan Geffner: And so teaching that, teaching some Hebrew.
• 3:11
  Jonathan Geffner: So between that, Yiddish translating to improv comedy.
• 3:16
  Jonathan Geffner: I would already begun doing some improv comedy, but making very little money from that and not making much from anything, but cobbling together something.
• 3:24
  Jonathan Geffner: But that's the place I felt like I was sort of hitting rock bottom, not knowing what to do.
• 3:28
  Jonathan Geffner: But I had that moment where I saw the ventriloquist and I figured I felt that is it.
• 3:33
  Jonathan Geffner: I have to do that.
• 3:34
  Jonathan Geffner: I made it my business to obsessively practice ventriloquism until very quickly I got the basic skills down, but developed an act over time.
• 3:44
  Jonathan Geffner: Of course, got better over time.
• 3:45
  Jonathan Geffner: But I was already performing as my main career within a year.
• 3:50
  Jonathan Geffner: That was my main career.
• 3:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, I mean, I'm a little speechless because you thought that earning a living as a classic pianist was a little too dicey, so you decided to go the safe route and be a ventilatist.
• 4:03
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah.
• 4:04
  Jeff Ornstein: It is ironic sounding.
• 4:05
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, you know what it shows, and it's something that's been echoed by a lot of the other guests we've had on the show, that if you got a passion, nothing else matters.
• 4:14
  Jonathan Geffner: That's the key to it.
• 4:15
  Jonathan Geffner: The passion, because I had such a passion and inspiration to do that, it felt like just the right fit for uh talents that I had, latent talents, to throw into that, that it became something which felt and then I actualized that it was actually realistic and as funny as that sounds, and as unlikely as that would be, that I found stability with an income through ventriloquism of all things.
• 4:43
  Jeff Ornstein: It's a little remarkable, but it's a testimony to your talent.
• 4:46
  Jeff Ornstein: So before we move on, though, here they're your parents were thinking they're gonna have a classical pianist in their home and he's gonna be playing Carnegie Hall and invited to England to perform for the Queen.
• 4:57
  Jeff Ornstein: And then you come home one day and you say, I'm gonna be a ventriloquist, Ma.
• 5:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Were they happy for you or were they surprised?
• 5:05
  Jeff Ornstein: Or what was their reaction?
• 5:07
  Jonathan Geffner: My parents thought it was another mishigas.
• 5:11
  Jonathan Geffner: I'm gonna use a Yiddish word because I just speak Yiddish and teach it, which I've done on the side through the years too.
• 5:17
  Jonathan Geffner: But that means craziness, another one of your crazy ventures.
• 5:22
  Jonathan Geffner: They weren't too convinced that I'm gonna make a living out of it.
• 5:26
  Jonathan Geffner: But my father, to his credit, though, was very supportive because when he saw how passionately I was practicing this and getting involved in it, he was all for helping me and he helped me go or travel around to shows like to help me bring my equipment and set up shows and even do some mailings for me and stuff like that for publicity.
• 5:46
  Jonathan Geffner: So really he was very good.
• 5:48
  Jonathan Geffner: But I was hell-bent on doing it one way or the other.
• 5:51
  Jonathan Geffner: Right.
• 5:52
  Jeff Ornstein: And I'll tell you the reason why I act it, asked it, because that was the facata story.
• 5:57
  Jeff Ornstein: I said that right, I don't know.
• 5:58
  Jeff Ornstein: Is because the other thing that comes into play when people are thinking about their next act or how they're gonna take the jump and really pursue a passion, is there a support network there?
• 6:08
  Jeff Ornstein: And it's so key for people to say, I can do this, and I know I've got my parents, my husband, my wife, my children, my whomever behind me to help me get through the challenging times, for which, of course, we all have them.
• 6:22
  Jeff Ornstein: So God bless your dad.
• 6:24
  Jeff Ornstein: He sounds like a great guy.
• 6:26
  Jeff Ornstein: And my father always wanted me to be a painter, and I was like, That's great, Dad, except for when I want to pay my rent, you know.
• 6:32
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, I want to understand a little bit.
• 6:34
  Jeff Ornstein: I I know you're a writer, creator, and executive producer and lead actor for the dummy detective.
• 6:40
  Jeff Ornstein: I'm assuming that you played sort of the same roles for Trillo and Suede.
• 6:45
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, I created the Trillo and Suede characters way back in the 1990s, like the late 1990s.
• 6:52
  Jonathan Geffner: There's the concept of an alternate universe of that combines film noir and ventriloquism.
• 6:59
  Jonathan Geffner: So these are detective characters, a detective slash ventriloquist and his wooden partner, Trillo and Suede.
• 7:06
  Jonathan Geffner: Suede is sitting right here in the house.
• 7:07
  Jonathan Geffner: I noticed that.
• 7:08
  Jonathan Geffner: Yeah.
• 7:09
  Jonathan Geffner: That's Ezra to his side there.
• 7:11
  Jonathan Geffner: And both of them are in the movie, but primarily Suede, my detective partner.
• 7:16
  Jonathan Geffner: And so these characters were a whole venture of in the direction of production of things that are produced.
• 7:25
  Jonathan Geffner: I wanted to do movies and the TV series.
• 7:28
  Jonathan Geffner: I had tried to, I wanted to go in that direction.
• 7:31
  Jonathan Geffner: But eventually I did the web series.
• 7:33
  Jonathan Geffner: I eventually did produce two short films, all featuring Trulo and Suede, and now culminating in finally, after many years, and law I could tell long stories about all the near misses of how I almost got these feature films.
• 7:48
  Jonathan Geffner: Finally, the dummy detective, a feature film.
• 7:50
  Jonathan Geffner: But all the time, that was kind of a separate venture from performing, because as a performer, Ventriloquist, I rarely use Suede and I rarely perform in character.
• 8:01
  Jonathan Geffner: I mean, I'm out of costume, but I usually dress like him.
• 8:04
  Jonathan Geffner: We're twins.
• 8:05
  Jonathan Geffner: So I have kind of the dichotomy in there that to earn a living to do shows, I have a number of characters.
• 8:12
  Jonathan Geffner: In every show, I have four or five characters, sometimes more, because altogether I have about a dozen different puppet characters, and so I use a few of them in every show, but not suede.
• 8:22
  Jonathan Geffner: That's a sort of separate thing from the live shows.
• 8:25
  Jonathan Geffner: But it was the thing that I was most intensely interested in pursuing, or to sort of break out of the mold, to break out of the box, think out of the box with doing something different that hasn't been done before.
• 8:37
  Jonathan Geffner: That's why I was intent on pursuing the Trillo and Suede concept and universe, but to make a living, because there was no immediate money in doing any of that type of produced stuff.
• 8:48
  Jonathan Geffner: So I got on the stage with my various other partners.
• 8:52
  Jeff Ornstein: All right, so who writes these?
• 8:54
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, I know you're a writer, but do you have co-writers that work with you?
• 8:58
  Jeff Ornstein: Because the episodes I saw, I was cracking up and so well performed.
• 9:02
  Jeff Ornstein: I also have to say, kudos to your casting agent.
• 9:06
  Jonathan Geffner: Yes, thank you.
• 9:06
  Jonathan Geffner: All me.
• 9:07
  Jonathan Geffner: I've written everything I've ever performed.
• 9:10
  Jonathan Geffner: That means all the shows that I do for different kinds of audiences.
• 9:13
  Jonathan Geffner: I have different shows, different scripts that I've written, and for my short films and for the web series and the dummy detective feature film, it's all on the Soul Rider.
• 9:26
  Jeff Ornstein: And what we've also heard from some of our other guests is that you develop a community.
• 9:31
  Jeff Ornstein: You'll find actors or writers or directors that you enjoy working with, and sure enough, you finish a project a couple weeks or months later, your phone rings, it's the same folks, we're getting together, we're doing this project.
• 9:43
  Jeff Ornstein: Where are your actors coming from?
• 9:45
  Jeff Ornstein: Are these artisans that you know for a long time and that you're reworking roles for them frequently?
• 9:51
  Jeff Ornstein: Or where do you find your talent?
• 9:54
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, the first short film that I produced it was Oxford Park, and that was in England back in 2005.
• 10:02
  Jonathan Geffner: So that was cast by my partner in that production, who led a small production company called Farnum Films.
• 10:11
  Jonathan Geffner: And so he did the casting.
• 10:13
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, I mean, I helped also by you know giving my input in it, but uh primarily relying on him because it was local UK talent for that.
• 10:20
  Jonathan Geffner: Then going ahead to oh, was it more recent years that when I did the the web series 2021-2022, I believe those were the years around then.
• 10:32
  Jonathan Geffner: So there were 10 episodes in each season that I did, and that was a casting call in New York City, just local talent, and there's a lot of talent in New York City in backstage, and also I forgot the name, there's another one, the breakdown, something breakdown, they're casting.
• 10:49
  Jonathan Geffner: So open calls, we got audition tapes to start with, and then narrowed it down to in-person callbacks, where we eventually cast people, and then so having done the web series first, then the year after that I did Casa Noir, which is my 22-minute short film parody of the famous iconic 1942 movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart.
• 11:14
  Jonathan Geffner: And that's one of my favorite movies, and so it's a both a sort of parody and also tribute to that, which I shot in black and white to to keep it uh as close to the original.
• 11:24
  Jonathan Geffner: So and then so I used some of the same actors who I had used in the web series, but I also did a casting call for a couple of the couple of the roles there.
• 11:33
  Jonathan Geffner: And then it was another casting call for the feature film for the dummy detective, because I needed certain characters that I was looking for particular ones.
• 11:41
  Jonathan Geffner: And in fact, one of the main characters, one of my co-stars, is Sean Young, who plays the innkeeper, which is a major role, lead role.
• 11:50
  Jonathan Geffner: Harriet Hubbard is the character's name.
• 11:53
  Jonathan Geffner: And she was not for my casting call because she is a famous actress who older people, maybe our generation will probably know her.
• 12:02
  Jonathan Geffner: Most younger people don't know the name, probably because fame is very fickle, but she was a big star in the 1980s and 90s.
• 12:10
  Jonathan Geffner: Then she kind of disappeared from acting for a number of years and from movies, and so it was through a mutual friend.
• 12:17
  Jonathan Geffner: Actually, it was through Deborah Twiss, who I cast to be the femme fatale, my other leading role.
• 12:23
  Jonathan Geffner: The redhead?
• 12:25
  Jonathan Geffner: Yes, the redhead.
• 12:26
  Jonathan Geffner: So I cast an impression.
• 12:28
  Jonathan Geffner: Yeah.
• 12:29
  Jonathan Geffner: And since I hadn't cast the other role yet, as soon as I cast Deborah, she said, Did you cast Harriet Hubbard yet?
• 12:37
  Jonathan Geffner: And I said, No, still looking.
• 12:38
  Jonathan Geffner: I actually wasn't happy with the casting call so far.
• 12:41
  Jonathan Geffner: I was thinking, what else I'm gonna do?
• 12:43
  Jonathan Geffner: And she said, Well, I might be able to get Sean Young for that.
• 12:45
  Jonathan Geffner: Would you like her?
• 12:46
  Jonathan Geffner: Yeah, I think that was she'd be great.
• 12:48
  Jonathan Geffner: And it's be because she's a personal friend.
• 12:50
  Jonathan Geffner: They were personal friends from other movies.
• 12:52
  Jonathan Geffner: They are acting on some in some other movie or a couple movies together.
• 12:55
  Jonathan Geffner: So anyway, she sent the script to her.
• 12:57
  Jonathan Geffner: I wouldn't have had access otherwise or ever thought of Sean Young, but got a call shortly after that from Sean on the phone saying I read the script, I love the script, I'd love to do this.
• 13:07
  Jonathan Geffner: And I won't charge much either because I had this is a shoestring budget in the budget.
• 13:12
  Jonathan Geffner: She knew she's that so she was willing to do it for a very low fee that I could work out in the budget, and that's how I got Sean Young.
• 13:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, I mean, I asked because I was wondering if it's like to quote Costa Blanca, round up the usual suspects, or you're no, you're gonna like open up the gates and say, guys, here are the characters we've got, because your characters are so colorful.
• 13:32
  Jeff Ornstein: I think anyone who's seen any of the episodes or may see them after this podcast would say, That looks like fun.
• 13:37
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, that's what I kept saying.
• 13:39
  Jeff Ornstein: I had a smile on my face whenever I was watching them, so that looks like fun.
• 13:42
  Jeff Ornstein: I want to be part of that cast.
• 13:43
  Jeff Ornstein: So these are both the non-union and union roles, or how does that work?
• 13:49
  Jonathan Geffner: It was non-union.
• 13:50
  Jonathan Geffner: Everything was non-union.
• 13:52
  Jonathan Geffner: For the the movie, though, the dummy detective, the feature film, we had some SAG actors, sag meaning union.
• 14:00
  Jonathan Geffner: Obviously, Sean Young is union, and so ever twist.
• 14:03
  Jonathan Geffner: But they got, I forgot what the technical term, maybe you know, in the industry when you get micro budget.
• 14:09
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, it was micro budget, but it was the term for sag when they give and make an exception.
• 14:14
  Jonathan Geffner: Like you can apply like a waiver.
• 14:16
  Jonathan Geffner: A waiver, yeah.
• 14:17
  Jonathan Geffner: I got a waiver.
• 14:17
  Jonathan Geffner: So I made some other term, but basically that's what is a waiver.
• 14:21
  Jonathan Geffner: So Sean is able to get a waiver, and Deborah, I think one other person was union, and so you know, they got waivers, permission to uh to act uh in a non-union movie, which they normally wouldn't.
• 14:33
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, I think anyone who saw in the films would say, I'm gonna answer one of those because I just it looks like the cast is having a ball.
• 14:38
  Jeff Ornstein: And I'd want to just get into also the film noir, because it's really well done.
• 14:44
  Jeff Ornstein: Is that like something like in your household growing up that was on the TV all the time, and you knew that was gonna be your genre when you started crafting films?
• 14:54
  Jonathan Geffner: No, it wasn't really childhood influence.
• 14:56
  Jonathan Geffner: Humor was because my my father loved Laurel and Hardy in particular.
• 15:01
  Jonathan Geffner: We used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy films, but also we watched the Three Stooges and the Marx brothers whenever we happened to get on TV, because back then there was no internet when cable was before pre-cable dinosaur days and stuff.
• 15:14
  Jonathan Geffner: But on the regular TV channels, occasionally we'd see these.
• 15:17
  Jonathan Geffner: So I used to watch comedies of various sorts with him.
• 15:21
  Jonathan Geffner: And so that was part of my influence for wanting to get into comedy, but not film noir.
• 15:27
  Jonathan Geffner: That was something as a young man, or maybe even teenager, I began to get interested to watch some of those old detective movies.
• 15:35
  Jonathan Geffner: I mentioned Humphrey Bogart being my favorite among them, but there are a lot of others.
• 15:40
  Jonathan Geffner: The old black and white, dreary and the shadowy world of film noir.
• 15:44
  Jonathan Geffner: There was always something that appealed to me once I became sort of aware of it.
• 15:48
  Jonathan Geffner: So I love that genre.
• 15:50
  Jonathan Geffner: And then when I became a ventriloquist a few years later, then I started to think about how can I create my own thing that takes place in that kind of a world, a neo-noir world.
• 16:00
  Jonathan Geffner: Right.
• 16:00
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, it's a perfect fit.
• 16:01
  Jeff Ornstein: The detective and the I almost said dummy, and I don't know if that's an insulting phrase in your industry.
• 16:07
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, it's okay with me.
• 16:09
  Jonathan Geffner: There are some ventriloquists who are sensitive about that.
• 16:11
  Jonathan Geffner: So the puppets, or the technical term is ventriloquial figures.
• 16:16
  Jonathan Geffner: Between us, dummies is fine, puppets are fine.
• 16:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, sorry.
• 16:20
  Jeff Ornstein: I gotta keep up with something.
• 16:22
  Jeff Ornstein: I want to be PC.
• 16:23
  Jeff Ornstein: So you've done the piano, you've taught people languages, you've created this skill that very few people can master.
• 16:31
  Jeff Ornstein: I'm sorry, I uh you said it came too quickly.
• 16:33
  Jeff Ornstein: I don't think that's a common story.
• 16:34
  Jeff Ornstein: And now you've written these series and you're lending your hand with directing and producing.
• 16:40
  Jeff Ornstein: Is all of it equally creatively fulfilling?
• 16:43
  Jeff Ornstein: Or do you is there if you could just do one of them, which one would knock the others off the pedestals?
• 16:48
  Jeff Ornstein: Or is that not true?
• 16:50
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, in a perfect world for me, uh I would continue to do feature films and I would do a TV series.
• 17:01
  Jonathan Geffner: And what I would do is I would write of as much as I could, depending on how much I'm doing and how fast things are being produced, but I'd be the writer or the primary writer, and I would be the performer as playing the role of Trillo.
• 17:16
  Jonathan Geffner: I would not be doing any of the producing or directing because that is so draining and it's so hard to do everything.
• 17:25
  Jonathan Geffner: I did hire directors for these things, but I was really kind of co-director.
• 17:29
  Jonathan Geffner: But I would just leave it to some if I have somebody who I really trusted and relied on the judgment and all, but may let him or her do it.
• 17:38
  Jonathan Geffner: And so I could just focus on my role and I would first love to write it and then shoot it and not have to worry about production or marketing.
• 17:47
  Jonathan Geffner: Oh, that's the biggest thing I would love to never have to do.
• 17:50
  Jonathan Geffner: Marketing.
• 17:51
  Jonathan Geffner: I'm not good at that.
• 17:53
  Jonathan Geffner: I that's not my strength, but I've had to market myself just as a performer all these years.
• 17:57
  Jonathan Geffner: I've never a manager or I've worked with agents once in a while, but but not primarily.
• 18:02
  Jonathan Geffner: But primarily, I've just booked myself.
• 18:04
  Jonathan Geffner: Luckily, most of my shows after a certain number of years in the business are just word of mouth.
• 18:08
  Jonathan Geffner: Right.
• 18:09
  Jonathan Geffner: Of course.
• 18:09
  Jonathan Geffner: I don't have to do that much marketing, but I had to initially, and I still have done some marketing through through the years, but I always hated that.
• 18:17
  Jonathan Geffner: I hate I hated selling myself, pitching myself, bargaining with people, and but I had to do it.
• 18:22
  Jonathan Geffner: So, anyway, to answer your question, I would love to never do any marketing, never doing any producing.
• 18:27
  Jonathan Geffner: Just write and perform and shoot.
• 18:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, so I hear you.
• 18:31
  Jeff Ornstein: Marketing is not easy, it's a hump you got to get over.
• 18:33
  Jeff Ornstein: And sometimes if you get over, then it doesn't make a difference.
• 18:35
  Jeff Ornstein: But it's something that if you could check it off your list, I completely agree.
• 18:38
  Jeff Ornstein: We had a little talk before the show about the shift in attitudes and sensibilities per each generation.
• 18:45
  Jeff Ornstein: And I think you've had, if I recall you you mentioned you had 20 episodes of Trello and Swaede, and but you'd love to do a TV show.
• 18:53
  Jeff Ornstein: What traits, because they're real strong personalities, at least from what I've seen, what traits do you think could you foresee having them morph and become more like or less like they are now if they were to go on a TV show and they were in your living rooms for five, six years in a row?
• 19:13
  Jonathan Geffner: Oh, okay.
• 19:14
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, at this point, I'll settle for one year, one season.
• 19:17
  Jonathan Geffner: But still, I think of the characters, all my puppet partners of uh being fairly constant in their characters by now, but I'm sure over time there would need to be character arcs, as you're alluding to, I think, that people change.
• 19:34
  Jonathan Geffner: So the thing that comes to my mind is mainly a mellowing out.
• 19:39
  Jonathan Geffner: Because I think that Suede in particular, who would be the my primary partner, he's a very intense guy.
• 19:46
  Jonathan Geffner: He's very confident and kind of hard-hitting, a little kind of hard-edged, but I I see his character arc mainly as becoming more nuanced and mellowing out over time.
• 19:59
  Jeff Ornstein: All right.
• 20:00
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, since the boys are there, can we meet them?
• 20:03
  Jonathan Geffner: Oh, sure.
• 20:04
  Jonathan Geffner: The leading man.
• 20:06
  Jonathan Geffner: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Jonathan Geffner: So this is Suede.
• 20:10
  Jonathan Geffner: Again, set here, he usually wears a fedora as I usually do when I'm in costume.
• 20:16
  Jonathan Geffner: So there you go.
• 20:18
  Jeff Ornstein: How's your day going, Suede?
• 20:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Oh, it's great now that I can meet you.
• 20:22
  Jeff Ornstein: You look very comfortable behind the camera.
• 20:27
  Jeff Ornstein: Oh, I I'm used to it by now.
• 20:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, I would say so.
• 20:30
  Jeff Ornstein: So, what's it like working with Jonathan?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Well, he's kind of the pain in the toughest.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: No, no, I'm just kidding.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I'm half kidding, but half we do get tired of each other like all partners after a certain amount of time.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: It's uh it's inevitable.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: But we we have a certain uh je ne sais quoi, you know, this feeling of the connection.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: We don't even have to verbalize a lot of stuff.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: We know what we're thinking, we can second guess each other, finish each other's sentences.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So it's a kind of a symbiotic and neurotic relationship.
• 21:03
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, so I have to ask you if you weren't an actor or a detective, what would you be?
• 21:08
  Jeff Ornstein: Have you ever dreamed to ever be dreamed being anything else?
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'd be a writer.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Because I I already write a lot of our stuff.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: You do?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean okay, look.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Jonathan here has this illusion that he's written everything.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: He kind of conveniently forgets that I'm the main writer of what we do.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: But uh, we'll let you remember it the way you'd like.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 21:32
  Jeff Ornstein: Zen quite like he gave you a great compliment before you came on.
• 21:35
  Jeff Ornstein: He said you were intense and focused and had a laser beam kind of approach to things.
• 21:41
  Jeff Ornstein: So happy to have met you.
• 21:44
  Jeff Ornstein: I can't wait to see what trouble or whatever predicaments you get into the next time, if that's the word.
• 21:50
  Jeff Ornstein: I loved your work that I was able to see so far.
• 21:53
  Jeff Ornstein: I want to see more of it.
• 21:54
  Jeff Ornstein: And Jonathan, if you come up with a new project coming out in the future, I hope you'll call us up, come back up, tell us a little bit about it.
• 22:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Maybe we'll run a clip and let the listeners get a little inside scoop as to where you're taking it.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I'd be happy to.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And so would I.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: By the way, Jeff, all the listeners, the viewers out there, if you want to watch a lot of the stuff that we've done, the two short films, Oxford Park, and then also Casa Noir, you mentioned that.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And also the web series.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: That's all three for everybody to watch on the YouTube channel.
• 22:26
  Jonathan Geffner: The Dummy Detective movie is the name of our YouTube channel.
• 22:29
  Jonathan Geffner: All that stuff is up there for free now, plus hundreds of other videos.
• 22:32
  Jonathan Geffner: Little stuff, little videos too.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: But the uh in the the movie, the main thing now, recently released the dummy detective, the feature film.
• 22:40
  Jonathan Geffner: That is available on on Amazon.
• 22:43
  Jonathan Geffner: That's Amazon Prime Video and Tubi.
• 22:46
  Jonathan Geffner: Tubi free on Tubi as well, free with ads.
• 22:49
  Jonathan Geffner: Amazon Prime, free with subscription, except in the U.S.
• 22:52
  Jonathan Geffner: Well, yeah, in the U.S., right now, currently it's rental or purchase on Amazon Prime.
• 22:57
  Jonathan Geffner: In other countries, it's free with subscription.
• 23:00
  Jonathan Geffner: Don't know who knows what Amazon does.
• 23:02
  Jonathan Geffner: That's their marketing decision.
• 23:03
  Jonathan Geffner: But it's also on Plex TV in 130 countries.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So no matter where you're listening or watching this right now, you can watch our movie on Flex TV.
• 23:14
  Jonathan Geffner: Yeah, just go there.
• 23:15
  Jonathan Geffner: Another option.
• 23:16
  Jonathan Geffner: We've got several other channels.
• 23:18
  Jonathan Geffner: Oh, last thing I'll tell you, every most important place to go for everybody, the dummy detective movie.com.
• 23:23
  Jonathan Geffner: That's the Lanceide.
• 23:25
  Jonathan Geffner: It has all the links to all this stuff.
• 23:27
  Jonathan Geffner: All the channels are linked right there.
• 23:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Excellent.
• 23:30
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, and I encourage everyone who's listening to tune in because I had a great time when I spent doing a little of my research on Jonathan, and it was very entertaining.
• 23:39
  Jeff Ornstein: I loved every second.
• 23:40
  Jeff Ornstein: So, gentlemen, I wish you have a good day.
• 23:43
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for joining us, and I hope you'll give us a call when something else is percolating.
• 23:47
  Jeff Ornstein: Absolutely.
• 23:48
  Jeff Ornstein: Thank you, Jeff.
• 23:49
  Jeff Ornstein: So you're welcome.
• 23:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for tuning in to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 23:53
  Jeff Ornstein: Follow, subscribe, and stay connected to your favorite socials at www.nextdackpodcast.com.
• 24:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Keep chasing your next act.
• 24:03
  Jeff Ornstein: The best is yet to come.