Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 745: Screenwriting & Hollywood in the Times of COVID with Greg Gertmenian

Transcript

IFH 745: Screenwriting & Hollywood in the Times of COVID with Greg Gertmenian · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
• 0:08
  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle
• 0:14
  Podcast, Episode number seven forty five and God help you if you use voiceover
• 0:19
  in your work, my friends, God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy
• 0:22
  writing. Any idiot can write voiceover narration to explain thoughts of a character.
• 0:27
  Robert McKee adaptation broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film
• 0:34
  Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie
• 0:38
  filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex
• 0:42
  Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast.
• 0:47
  I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise
• 0:51
  of the Film Entrepreneur. How to turn your independent film into a profitable business.
• 0:56
  It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with films
• 1:00
  from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them.
• 1:04
  The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of
• 1:10
  making money with your film is broken and there needs to be a change.
• 1:14
  The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In
• 1:19
  Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break down how to actually make money with
• 1:23
  your film projects and show you how to turn your indie film into a profitable
• 1:27
  business. With case studies examining successes and failures. This book shows you the
• 1:33
  step by step method to turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're
• 1:38
  making a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content,
• 1:42
  the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success. The book is available
• 1:46
  in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to order
• 1:51
  it, just head over to www. Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's
• 1:55
  film bizbook dot com. Well, guys, today on the show, I
• 2:00
  wanted to bring on someone who is inside of the industry listening to what's going
• 2:07
  on in Hollywood right now during this insane upside down time that we live in,
• 2:12
  which is the COVID nineteen pandemic. And today on the show we have
• 2:19
  head of story Analysis and Film Development at Slated Greg Germanium and Greg and I
• 2:25
  talk a lot about how the industry is pivoting and trying to survive this pandemic,
• 2:34
  and how screenwriters can better position themselves for the new Hollywood post COVID.
• 2:39
  This is going to be with us for quite some time. It is going
• 2:43
  to change our industry in ways that we can't see right now. But I
• 2:47
  promise you that Hollywood and the way Hollywood does business is changing now and will
• 2:53
  be unrecognizable in the next six months to a year and on. So Greg
• 3:00
  and I really do a deep dive into what's going on right now in the
• 3:05
  industry and how we can help screenwriters better position themselves for the future. So,
• 3:08
  without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Greg girt Maniam.
• 3:15
  I like to welcome to the show, Greg girt Manian. How you doing,
• 3:17
  my friend good Man, How are you good? Thanks for having it,
• 3:22
  Thanks for having me on the show. Thank you for you being on
• 3:24
  the show. I appreciate you coming on and talking all things about the film
• 3:30
  industry and this crazy time that we're living in right now. Indeed, yeah,
• 3:35
  it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. There's lots to talk about.
• 3:37
  Yeah, absolutely, So before we get started, how did you get
• 3:39
  into the business in the first place. Oh, that's a good question.
• 3:44
  So I did films. I focused on film and comedy in school when I
• 3:51
  was in college at USC and I wasn't a film major, but all my
• 3:54
  friends were, and so that got me into the business of sketch comedy,
• 4:00
  directing sketch comedy, writing it, performing it, doing some stand up And
• 4:05
  shortly after, you know, graduating, you realize no one's gonna make it
• 4:11
  and invite you. You got to make it yourself. So that started me
• 4:14
  on the path of making stuff. And I had some success with some short
• 4:18
  films out of school, and then joined my brother's management company which he started
• 4:24
  for new feature screenwriters. And so I sort of cut my teeth at his
• 4:30
  shingle, helping him discover writers and sign them and then send them out and
• 4:35
  get options and writing assignments and sales. And that company was sort of the
• 4:42
  basis for the company that we would later found in twenty twelve called spec Scout,
• 4:46
  which was sort of the path, the career path that I'm on today
• 4:51
  with you know, discovering new writers, the script score and the underlying technology
• 4:58
  there great and you work now for Slated or work with Slated indeed, Yeah,
• 5:02
  yeah, very So we'll get into Slated in a little bit. That's
• 5:05
  one of the reasons why I want to have you on the show because I'm
• 5:08
  really curious about Slated and what they do. But because of your work with
• 5:12
  Slated and with Spec and Spec Scout before then, I mean, you have
• 5:16
  your ear to the grindstone pretty much about the industry. So you're reading the
• 5:20
  trades and you're talking to people, and you have a lot of information that
• 5:24
  many of us outside of the industry might not have because you just have access.
• 5:29
  Obviously, Covid has thrown the largest monkey wrench I've ever seen in the
• 5:35
  history of the industry, which is a fairly large statement to say. I've
• 5:40
  been in the business for twenty five plus years. In my time, I've
• 5:43
  never seen anything, and just being a student of history of our industry,
• 5:48
  I just never seen anything like this. What I mean, what are you
• 5:54
  hearing like? I mean, obviously every day, you know, as of
• 5:58
  this recording, we don't know what's happening right now. As we're recording,
• 6:01
  we're quote unquote opening up as the cases are flying up around the country and
• 6:08
  even here in Los Angeles. Nobody knows what's gonna happen in a month,
• 6:13
  in a week. So what are you hearing from executives, from financiers,
• 6:17
  from distributors, from talent, you know, what's the word? Yeah,
• 6:23
  I think everyone is generally pretty eager to set dates in the near future when
• 6:29
  stuff is going to hopefully resume and get back to normal. I'm much less
• 6:33
  optimistic than that, just because we have, you know, so many countries
• 6:38
  that are ahead of us in the curve, and we've seen that they've opened
• 6:41
  back up and then had to pull back, So you know, generally we're
• 6:45
  seeing I think there was an announcement today that movie theaters in Los Angeles and
• 6:48
  New York are expecting to open back up in mid July, and I don't
• 6:57
  I'm not optimistic as well. Yeah, I think so. I think that
• 7:00
  you know, I've spoken to because that slated we work. You know,
• 7:04
  we're working on sixty films at any given time, and all of them have
• 7:08
  different production schedules and they're all trying to make their day right. So I've
• 7:12
  heard different filmmakers approach this differently, but I think that the conventional wisdom right
• 7:16
  now is that we're going to open back up for a little period of time
• 7:21
  during which production is going to follow pretty strict guidelines to try to keep sets
• 7:28
  small, to try to keep people in the respective corners of the set doing
• 7:30
  their respective duties. The unions have signed off on certain protocols with regard to
• 7:35
  that sort of limited COVID mitigated production. But then we know, like every
• 7:44
  other country, that there's probably going to be a resurgence. And from what
• 7:47
  I'm hearing, I think the resurgence is expected to be a few months later,
• 7:51
  maybe perhaps sometime in November or September. And that's obviously not a tested
• 7:57
  statement, but as far as you know whisper through the grape vine, I
• 8:01
  think the senses we're going to get, we're going to get in the game
• 8:03
  for a few months. People are going to try to do their COVID safe
• 8:05
  friendly productions. You know, we certainly have some films that are more contained
• 8:13
  that have you know, could be made with tiny cruz that are planning to
• 8:16
  shoot in that frame of time. And then if and when stuff starts to
• 8:22
  hit the fan again, then we'll, you know, we'll have to pull
• 8:24
  back into just accordingly. But I know that there are some universities out there
• 8:28
  who are planning to go back just in session on schedule in August and try
• 8:35
  to wrap a little early before the resurgence of COVID happened. So I don't
• 8:43
  know if we're following their lead or what, but I think filmmakers are eager
• 8:46
  to get done what they can while they can, given we might all be
• 8:50
  back on ice in a period of a few more months. Yeah, I
• 8:52
  mean, I'm even less optimistic than that. I think right now, just
• 8:56
  looking at the numbers and what people are talking, I'm like, you know,
• 9:00
  I think we're fifty percent capacity already in LA with ICU beds, and
• 9:03
  it's growing every day because of the because of the protesting, because of all
• 9:07
  that stuff that we didn't that wasn't even a part of the crazy that we
• 9:11
  have to deal with in twenty twenty, and now all of a sudden,
• 9:15
  we have that thrown in. So that's a complete new monkey wrench in this
• 9:20
  normal, somewhat normal, unnormal timeline that you were even talking about. So
• 9:24
  I'm I don't see theaters opening up in July. I just don't. And
• 9:30
  if I do, how much like if Tenant opens up Nolan's Tenant opens up
• 9:35
  July fifteenth. Well, yes, there'll be a handful of people will go
• 9:39
  out. Is it gonna have one hundred and fifty million dollar opening? I
• 9:43
  doubt it. I don't think there's enough theaters nor enough people who are willing
• 9:46
  to go to the theater to go see it. It's unfortunate because I want
• 9:48
  to see that movie in the theater. I want to see it in imax.
• 9:54
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 10:00
  to the show. But how it's such a strange world we're living, and
• 10:07
  like I'm trying to think, like, how like we have no blockbuster summer.
• 10:11
  This is the first since seventy whatever, seventy five when Jaws came out.
• 10:16
  This is the first non blockbuster summer. That's insane, it is,
• 10:20
  Yeah, and who among those filmmakers want to be the first guinea pigs to
• 10:24
  try out opening in a theater that can only be filled to have capacity or
• 10:28
  whatever. If you're lucky, Yeah, if you're lucky. And then also,
• 10:31
  like, wouldn't it be interesting, Like let's say Tenant does open up
• 10:35
  and it has one hundred million dollar opening and a lot of people go to
• 10:39
  see it. Then all of a sudden, two weeks later, the tenant
• 10:41
  wave comes in from people contracting it from I mean, it happened in Memorial
• 10:48
  Day. So now we're feeling what happened in Memorial Day. Two weeks later
• 10:52
  we're shu We're feeling the after effects of that and all this other stuff.
• 10:56
  So it's just it's fascinating to see and we're hearing in the industry in general,
• 11:03
  what do you what opportunities do you see for filmmakers and screenwriters post COVID,
• 11:09
  Because I think the industry is going to change irreparably. It will never
• 11:13
  go back to where it was. I don't think sets are going to go
• 11:16
  back to the way they were any even in the next two three years.
• 11:20
  I think it's gonna It's like certain things are going to just change. Would
• 11:24
  you agree. I'm hearing a lot of that, and I haven't accepted it
• 11:28
  in my heart yet yet, mean neither, but but it stands to reason.
• 11:35
  I think that makes sense. So what are the opportunities for filmmakers and
• 11:39
  screenwriters in this new post world and this opportunities that are presenting themselves now that
• 11:45
  there might be that. I always tell people that there's doors that are opening
• 11:48
  that would have been closed before because of COVID. So COVID is closing other
• 11:54
  doors that normally we never had access to, but might be opening other opportunities
• 11:56
  up, which, like any crisis does. Yeah, well, you know,
• 12:01
  in the first place, there was an incredible shortage of new content,
• 12:05
  right, So what we saw first we saw in the first three weeks of
• 12:11
  this and we're going on over three months now, which is hard to believe.
• 12:13
  But in the first few weeks we saw people go a little bit quiet
• 12:18
  as they were bracing themselves to figure out, like, what was the size
• 12:20
  and scope of this thing. And then, at least on our side,
• 12:26
  because being you know, being an online platform, we deal with people all
• 12:28
  over the world, and so on our side, we saw business start to
• 12:33
  resume normally. Our projects have been getting a lot of interest. We've been
• 12:37
  getting offers on projects. We didn't see money fall out of projects, we
• 12:41
  didn't see distribution fallout of projects. Things seemed normal, and then they seemed
• 12:46
  almost to increase in intensity. That demand for good projects increased as streamers,
• 12:54
  distributors, buyers realized we're not going to be getting any new content for a
• 12:58
  while. So there was a period of time, and I think we're still
• 13:01
  in it where if you had a completely film, if you have a film
• 13:05
  and post, you're in demand more than you would have been prior to COVID,
• 13:11
  And we're definitely seeing some films that are in post that are getting pretty
• 13:16
  great offers. I don't know would have been as rich before COVID happened,
• 13:22
  So that's sort of the first opportunity. I think if you're a filmmaker with
• 13:24
  a film and post, you're sitting pretty Aside from that, I think that
• 13:30
  people are definitely rethinking how they film things. I think the contained sort of
• 13:35
  subgenre of stuff is interesting for a whole different reason, and necessity is the
• 13:41
  mother of invention. In this case, I think, you know, you
• 13:43
  don't necessarily it doesn't necessarily have to be contained thriller, if someone trying to
• 13:46
  get out of freezer or what have you. You know, there's a lot
• 13:48
  of We've seen a lot of very interesting, sort of high concept stuff that
• 13:52
  takes place in small space, and if you can do that and make it
• 13:56
  feel organic, then that could end up being a pretty cool movie. So
• 13:58
  I think I think figuring out how to shoot those tiny skeleton crew films is
• 14:03
  an opportunity. I've already seen movies. There will be movies selling. It
• 14:07
  can just next week that are you know, COVID romances, quarantine romances,
• 14:13
  films that got entirely you know, on their computer screen, over Skype and
• 14:18
  and through other screen technology. So you know, maybe that'll give rise to
• 14:22
  some of that. I hear, I hear the grown in response to hyper
• 14:28
  you know, hyper topical. You know, it's just like the last thing
• 14:31
  I want to see is a movie about what I'm dealing with twenty four to
• 14:37
  seven. I want to escape, So I get sent. I get sent.
• 14:41
  I mean, do you have any many quarantine shorts I've been sent like,
• 14:46
  oh my god, They're just being sent to me left the right because
• 14:48
  filmmakers, you know, think that they're the cool we're gonna we're gonna be
• 14:52
  this is the thing that's gonna blow me up. This is the thing that's
• 14:54
  gonna get me. I'm gonna do this through. Nobody else in the world's
• 14:56
  going to do a quarantine short because I've someone else to stop shooting. So
• 15:01
  they're just trying to figure that out. And then I get I'm like,
• 15:03
  guys, I don't want to watch a short about now. I just turned
• 15:07
  on the news and I'm just ough too much. It's too much. So
• 15:13
  I'm really curious about this kind of sub this subgenre which I think it's going
• 15:16
  to become a subgenre of filmmaking, which is this kind of quarantine thing.
• 15:22
  It might be a short lived, it might be a short lived movement.
• 15:26
  Maybe you know, one of these more established filmmakers might go down the like
• 15:31
  I would love to see like a Michael Mann quarantine film or or David Fincher
• 15:35
  Quarantine film like that would be a very interesting in the hands of masters like
• 15:41
  that, to see what that genre would be like. Yeah, precisely in
• 15:45
  the hands of masters and not opportunists for sure. But yeah, I mean,
• 15:50
  as far as the appetite of buyers, studios, distributors, and investors,
• 15:56
  they're all still looking for the same stuff they were looking for in my
• 16:00
  from my from where I sit. They still want you know, cool concepts,
• 16:03
  they still want visual stories, they still want diverse stories. And so
• 16:10
  I don't know that we should be changing up our whole game plan. It's
• 16:12
  more just a matter of, you know, trying to figure out how we
• 16:15
  can accomplish those same objectives in these circumstances, and if not, then how
• 16:19
  can we be ready to knock it out of the park the moment that we
• 16:22
  are able to go back to work. And I think, you know,
• 16:26
  one of the unfortunate things is that when it's over, it won't really be
• 16:27
  over, because not only will there be production restrictions, but there's going to
• 16:33
  be a mad dash for all of those tax credits, all those crews in
• 16:37
  all of those regions, and it's you know, I can only imagine how
• 16:41
  difficult it's going to be to fight for space as everyone is trying to schedule
• 16:45
  all of that delayed production. It's going to be it's going to be a
• 16:48
  mad rush because there's a limited amount of states that have tax rebates or countries
• 16:53
  that have tax rebates and crew and everyone's just sitting on the sidelines and like
• 16:59
  everyone so everyone almost to play ball at the same time. And talent,
• 17:02
  Yeah, exactly exactly. It's like, if you're making an offer to an
• 17:06
  actor right now, they can presume they may be free. But what happens
• 17:10
  when the studios make those same demands and production opens back up. Who are
• 17:12
  they going to prioritize? So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see it's
• 17:18
  good. Such a mess. Yeah, it is such a mess. It's
• 17:22
  it's it's it's it's very interesting to just sit in the sidelines and kind of
• 17:26
  watch what's going on, because it's like every day you really don't know.
• 17:30
  And you just mentioned the Can Film the Can Market and the festival. That's
• 17:34
  different, so that's like, not it's happening, but it's virtually happening.
• 17:38
  So I have, you know, I have a bunch of distributor friends of
• 17:41
  mine who are at the Virtual Can with a virtual booth, and I'm dying
• 17:47
  to hear how that goes. What are you hearing about this? I mean?
• 17:51
  And the thing it's way overdue. Let's just put that. I think
• 17:53
  the virtual film market is way overdue. But something like this it was probably
• 18:00
  going to take another five to ten years before CAN or AFM decided to do
• 18:06
  something like this, but now they're forced to. So what are you hearing
• 18:10
  about that? So I think on the whole people are generally sort of excited
• 18:15
  about it. They are, you know, Can has put a put a
• 18:19
  lot of effort into trying to recreate the experience of the physical market as much
• 18:25
  as they possibly can, and I think everybody really appreciates that, really commends
• 18:29
  them for that. And for the most part, we've seen sales companies that
• 18:33
  are just looking to proceed with businesses normal. They are building up their slates
• 18:37
  right now, they're grabbing up their final acquisitions so that they can announce what
• 18:41
  films are going to be selling, and they're booking the calendar of virtual screenings
• 18:45
  and virtual meetings. And I have heard some relief and appreciation express on the
• 18:51
  part of some sales companies to say, you know, it's better in a
• 18:53
  couple of ways. One, you know, I'm not going to get ambushed
• 18:57
  by somebody just walking into my booth that didn't have an appointment and doesn't have
• 19:00
  you know, can't buy a film, can't buy a film in a given
• 19:03
  territory. They have more control over their schedule and can be more efficient that
• 19:07
  way. But number two, also when they do a screening, yes it's
• 19:11
  virtual, but they have the ability to book that sort of virtual theater.
• 19:17
  Beyond what if that small physical, physical screening room can can accommodate, so
• 19:22
  you could potentially have you know, hundreds of people tuning in for a really
• 19:25
  exciting screening virtually. That wouldn't all have been able to make that same time
• 19:30
  at the physical market. So there are upsides. Oh, there's a lot
• 19:33
  of upsides have about cost. I don't have to fly, I mean,
• 19:37
  don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind going to can, right, I
• 19:40
  mean, that's one of the nice things about it. It's you know,
• 19:41
  you go to can. But but for a lot of these distributors and sales
• 19:45
  agents and buyers, it's just like it's it's an excess. It's not cheap.
• 19:52
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 19:59
  the show. Right, Yeah, it's not it's not cheap. And if
• 20:03
  you're not prepared to turn it into a vacation, then you end up just
• 20:06
  sort of running around not even appreciating what the scene around you. The south
• 20:11
  of France, yes, exactly. So uh yeah, So I think there's
• 20:18
  definitely some upsides, and I'm hopeful that the films that we have at the
• 20:22
  market this year are gonna are going to do to do well because at the
• 20:26
  end of the day, the buyers still need content and new content. The
• 20:30
  levels of new content are getting lower and lower. So I heard I heard
• 20:33
  from through the grapevine that Netflix, because everyone that's kind of like this the
• 20:38
  gold standard and streaming at this point that Netflix. I heard from multiple sources
• 20:47
  that they're like, oh, Netflix is we're out of and they're they'll buy
• 20:49
  anything because they're buying this and that. And I heard two different, tooth
• 20:52
  different things from about Netflix. One, the studios when this thing happened,
• 20:56
  they unloaded a ton of content on the movies at a discount because they needed
• 21:03
  revenue. Because movies stopped like a lot of you know, if you don't
• 21:07
  have Disney Plus or if you don't have HBO Max, the revenue started to
• 21:11
  slow down, so they started dumping a lot of product on and I started
• 21:15
  seeing like Paramount movies and other big studio movies from like ten fifteen years ago
• 21:19
  on there. So that was one thing. And second, I heard that
• 21:22
  Netflix basically had enough in the pipeline to last for two and a half three
• 21:27
  years comfortably without having to buy another piece of content. So what do you
• 21:33
  hear. I'd love to hear what you're hearing about that, And just in
• 21:36
  the streaming ecosystem in general. As far as insight into Netflix, I don't
• 21:45
  have any more insight than that. I think all of that makes sense generally.
• 21:48
  They are a company that has telegraphed to the world like, look,
• 21:52
  we got this, We're good, We're doing fine, Tiger King two is
• 21:56
  coming, don't worry, that's right, And so that wouldn't surprise me.
• 22:03
  And I think, I mean, just from a consumer standpoint, right we're
• 22:07
  all sitting at home dipping into those television shows and titles that we've been meaning
• 22:11
  to watch for a long time. I'm not at the bottom of my list
• 22:15
  by a means, So you know, if that's any indication, then Netflix
• 22:18
  must be telling the truth. And yet I think the shiny new titles with
• 22:25
  twenty twenty dates on them are exciting for people. And I also know,
• 22:30
  and as I'm sure you know you've seen this as well, that the number
• 22:33
  of entrants in the streaming platform space is not decreasing. There are more people
• 22:40
  that are looking to do you know, sports centric content streaming platforms and comedy
• 22:45
  centric content streaming platforms, and all of those platforms still need content. So
• 22:51
  you know, there's more places than ever to sell stuff to. And if
• 22:53
  you're a buyer right now or distributor right now, you have to be aggressively
• 22:59
  looking because everybody can be Netflix, and it's and so and not everybody can
• 23:03
  buy studio content at a discount can afford that. So yeah, so I
• 23:10
  think if there is a net effect of this, even though filmmakers are a
• 23:14
  little they're restricted with regards to what they can do right now, I do
• 23:18
  think that that it has become much more of a seller's market because because of
• 23:23
  the dearth of new content now with packaging of films, how do you how
• 23:30
  how can an indie filmmaker package of film in today's world? Like there was
• 23:36
  a set way to do it in you know January? Now, what are
• 23:41
  financers looking for? How do you package it? Do you have any tips
• 23:45
  on you know, filmmakers trying to get projects off the ground now and scripts
• 23:49
  off the ground with you know, attached talent in one way, shape or
• 23:52
  form. Uh yeah, so packaging and I have really appreciated the conversations that
• 24:00
  you've had on your show about how to approach sales and packaging from an independent
• 24:06
  film standpoint. I think that that is one thing that independent filmmakers overlook quite
• 24:11
  often. They have a sense of indie film as being this very early model
• 24:15
  of you know, Kevin Smith Ken your friend, yeah right right, And
• 24:22
  and that is just isn't the case anymore. It you know, in today's
• 24:26
  market, you really need to build some value for your budget. That's not
• 24:30
  to say that if you you know, film a if you make a film
• 24:33
  on a twenty five thousand dollars budget and no one's in it and your execution
• 24:37
  is superlative, that you can't find a home for it. But generally speaking,
• 24:41
  you know, you're going to need to be thinking about what recognizable faces
• 24:45
  you can put in your film, and that directly impacts how much money you
• 24:49
  get to make your film to the extent that you're you're trying to ask other
• 24:52
  people for investment. So I've appreciated you sort of fore grounding that conversation on
• 25:00
  this show, because that's that's that's one of the things that you know,
• 25:03
  when we have thousands of filmmakers coming to us, to the extent they understand
• 25:07
  that it makes the whole rest of the process a lot easier, and it
• 25:11
  makes those films a lot easier to help. So I think, you know,
• 25:15
  first and foremost, I think it's it's critical to just understand building value
• 25:19
  for the price of your film, for the price of your budget. And
• 25:23
  and you know, I've seen people be successful at it all different kinds of
• 25:26
  ways. You know, obviously, if you have a personal connection to to
• 25:32
  a star who trusts you, that's great. If you have a track record
• 25:37
  that makes people feel at ease, even better, that's the best, arguably
• 25:41
  the best way to go about it. And you know, we've also seen
• 25:45
  people to great effect use casting directors. If the script is very compelling,
• 25:51
  if you're a director with a short or a past film who's proven that you
• 25:53
  can really create a good product, then having a reputable casting director send your
• 26:00
  script out to targeted talent can go a long way. And so those are
• 26:04
  the ways that we've seen film sort of self package up without the aid of
• 26:08
  a big agency. And then of course, if you can be an indie
• 26:12
  film who works with CIA or UTA or Wmeme, and if they rep you
• 26:18
  and they really believe in the project, then of course they can unleash a
• 26:19
  whole roster of really valuable talent who can take your film to the next level.
• 26:23
  So there are many different ways to do it. Of course, what
• 26:29
  you just sort of have to look at what is your network, what do
• 26:32
  you have at your disposal, how strong is the script, what's your track
• 26:36
  record? And then try to calculate, you know, what the best approach
• 26:38
  would be, how do you get one of the three big talent agencies to
• 26:45
  really look at your script, look at your package, look at yourself as
• 26:49
  a filmmaker and or screenwriter producer. However, what are some tips to kind
• 26:55
  of get in because I mean, everybody is trying to get the CIA or
• 26:57
  WME, and you know, it's kind of like, oh, well,
• 27:00
  I'm wrapped by and I've heard that term so many times, like, oh
• 27:03
  my film is repped over at CIA. I'm like, and it's been in
• 27:07
  development for ten years. It means nothing. But but if you're but if
• 27:11
  you're serious and you get momentum and you actually get in there, how do
• 27:15
  you do that? Yeah? So I think what I think in those cases,
• 27:19
  the films are trying to convey that that one of the agencies has agreed
• 27:26
  to sell domestic for them in the event that there's anything to sell, which
• 27:32
  isn't totally meaning less. Maybe it's not actionable right now? Right well,
• 27:37
  no, like that I understand. But what I was referring to is,
• 27:38
  like I've heard filmmakers because as you know, filmmakers sometimes stretch the truth,
• 27:44
  not often, sometimes stretch the truth when it comes to their projects. Not
• 27:47
  often, not often, it's very rare when that happens. But when they
• 27:51
  do stretch it, they're like, oh, yeah, my film, this
• 27:52
  project is repped by CIA so, or it is repped by WME so.
• 27:57
  Yeah, so let's say yeah, let's say fifty percent of the time that's
• 28:02
  real. And then when it is real, it's generally like what you're talking
• 28:06
  about, or that they have they rep the director and now they're taking on
• 28:10
  the whole project. So now they're going to package the whole film with their
• 28:12
  talent and they're and that's that's generally the way it is, but sometimes it's
• 28:18
  it's a stretch. So how do you if you're not repped by these companies,
• 28:23
  how would you approach a CIA? Do you come in with financing?
• 28:27
  Do you come in with maybe attached talent or I mean, because I mean,
• 28:30
  if you just show up with a script and a dream, it's the
• 28:33
  lottery ticket at that point, if I'm not mistaken. If with no representation,
• 28:37
  yeah, I think nobody really wants to read a script. Shocking in
• 28:42
  Hollywood that nobody wants to read a script, wants it They all have so
• 28:47
  many scripts to read, and if your script is not you know, even
• 28:51
  if your script is incredible, and I'm sure you had this experience, you
• 28:56
  know you people have said scripts and you're like, this is one of the
• 28:59
  better scripts I read this year, and it's still impossible to get anybody to
• 29:02
  care. You know. I really think that one of the sort of secret
• 29:07
  weapons that filmmakers can use if you want to be you know, if you
• 29:11
  want to be making features at a high level, you kind of have to
• 29:14
  put your money where your mouth is and do a proof of concept or a
• 29:17
  short that proves that you are an exceptionally talented director or producer. Less true
• 29:25
  for writers, I think unfortunately, writers in the position that they you know,
• 29:29
  a short is not necessarily the best representation of their work, so they
• 29:33
  have to just write incredible specs that get you on page one. But if
• 29:37
  you're director or a producer, you know, I don't understand the logic of
• 29:42
  hoping someone's going to give you five million dollars for your first feature, or
• 29:47
  do you haven't tried it, you know, if you haven't proven you can
• 29:48
  do it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 29:56
  now back to the show. Right, And those directors that really do put
• 30:02
  their money where their mouth is and they go out there and they book a
• 30:04
  you know, a location for three days or whatever, and they create an
• 30:10
  incredible high concept genre short or proof of concept. Those people tend to get
• 30:17
  traction if the short is good because it's so easy to send a short out
• 30:21
  and have somebody click on it for no other reason, because we're curious to
• 30:23
  know if you're really as good as you say you are. So as far
• 30:29
  as like batting average, getting a good response from agents or from anyone who
• 30:33
  can help you based off of a cold outreach, I think a killer proof
• 30:37
  of concept or short is the best way to go. Would you? And
• 30:42
  this is a little bit of a disheartening comment, but I've read some amazing,
• 30:48
  amazing scripts. It's like when you read them, you're just like,
• 30:51
  how is this not an Oscar winning thing? Like it's And I've read them
• 30:55
  multiple times from not unknown screenwriters, from very well known screenwriters who have major
• 31:02
  track records, and yet they can't get financed or they can't get it packaged,
• 31:08
  and it kind of dawned. I mean, this is years ago when
• 31:11
  I first came, just came like, oh, it's not about how good
• 31:14
  it is, unfortunately, it's about a bunch of different things hitting at the
• 31:21
  right time. So the right script that attracts the right producer, or the
• 31:25
  right director, or the right talent in the scope of where we are in
• 31:27
  the zeitgeist of Hollywood at that moment, that perfect storm is what propels a
• 31:33
  certain project off the ground, where a year earlier it wouldn't go, or
• 31:37
  a year later it wouldn't go. Is that a fair statement. Yeah,
• 31:41
  I think that there are so many movies like that that took ten years to
• 31:45
  get made for a reason. You know, there are projects that have come
• 31:52
  to us years ago that had a different cast and a different producer right,
• 31:56
  and they weren't able to get off the ground. I don't note that the
• 32:00
  script was as good as it was, you know, twenty drafts later,
• 32:02
  I can't say, but it took that project going through multiple permutations before it
• 32:08
  hit one that really conveyed value to the person reviewing it. So I think
• 32:15
  that part of it is just the process of you know, there's a lot
• 32:17
  of content out there, and so to calibrate a film just right so that
• 32:22
  it sounds exciting, it feels like the most exciting version of itself. Sometimes
• 32:25
  unfortunately that just takes time, and most of it does have to do with
• 32:30
  the team and the talent. So, you know, I think at least
• 32:35
  from you know, we have twenty three hundred investor companies that we're servicing through
• 32:38
  Slated, and so we have a lot of experience getting a sense of what
• 32:45
  they respond to and what they don't. Package projects are always more interesting,
• 32:50
  and I think that one of the reasons for that is not only can you
• 32:52
  run numbers on a package project and figure out like how safe your investment is
• 32:57
  relatively speaking, but you can just envision what the film is a little more
• 33:01
  clearly. When you know who's going to be in it, and who's directing
• 33:04
  it and who's producing it. It becomes less of a concept, less of
• 33:07
  a sort of a theory, and more of an actual product. So it's
• 33:12
  less it's kind of like less heavy lifting at that point, because if you
• 33:15
  have a script, you've got to start lifting a lot because you've got to
• 33:19
  then package it and do it, and you've got to really put a lot
• 33:22
  of energy in it. But if someone brings you a package script, like
• 33:24
  here's the talent, here's the director, here's some finance like and that just
• 33:29
  sets everything. It sets you apart. And it's not that the quality of
• 33:32
  the script that setting you apart, it's the whole pack is the setting you
• 33:37
  apart? Is that fair totally? And I think that that gets to that
• 33:40
  actually gets to a distinction that's really important, I think, between independent filmmakers
• 33:45
  and the studio system, which is that in the studio system, you can
• 33:51
  write an incredible set spec and sell it for three quarter of a million dollars,
• 33:54
  right, you know, and then in that case, someone's literally just
• 33:58
  giving you money for gotten that far. In independent film, it does it
• 34:02
  never works that way because the money is usually just the money. There are
• 34:07
  EPs that can sometimes be active, but for the most part, they're going
• 34:10
  to look at your script and say, what am I writing a check for?
• 34:14
  And who am I writing it to? And yet, you know,
• 34:15
  there are still a lot of independent filmmakers that maybe also exist in the studio
• 34:20
  system but want to make their own film, and they're hoping that they'll be
• 34:22
  an investor who comes along and writes them the check so that they can cast
• 34:25
  and make offers and hire people. But in independent film it just doesn't work
• 34:30
  that way. They're really expecting you know, the money is the capital is
• 34:32
  really expecting you to build it first so that it becomes an investable product.
• 34:38
  But even within this, so then the studio system too. I mean,
• 34:42
  if you have a package, it helps. If you have if you have
• 34:46
  talent, if you have even some financing you know, from outside sources,
• 34:52
  that helps as well. Correct, absolutely absolutely, And we saw that in
• 34:55
  TV too, you know, with this boom of serialized con And I'm not
• 35:00
  a TV agent, so I can only speak to the conversations I've had with
• 35:02
  them, but what I started to observe is that whereas before, you know,
• 35:08
  you might be able to take out a really strong pilot or really strong
• 35:13
  pitch and sell shows more and more and more and more over the past five
• 35:17
  or six years, you're really having to take out the whole the whole package,
• 35:22
  and pitch the whole package before someone will consider buying your show. So
• 35:25
  that space has gotten a lot more competitive and a lot more talent driven than
• 35:30
  it had been before. So you got to your point, Alex, I
• 35:32
  think, yes, the package matters also in the studio world as well.
• 35:37
  And now, and let's talk about TV and films, because I mean studios
• 35:40
  in general. I mean, there has been a massive shift in the studio
• 35:45
  system. And I consider the studio system basically the top six or seven you
• 35:49
  know majors that are you know, and then there's some outliers that work within
• 35:52
  that, you know, the mini majors, if you will. But the
• 35:55
  majors that have shifted their entire business model too based reboots, you know,
• 36:02
  franchises, the you know, the films of the eighties and nineties that they're
• 36:07
  rebooting would never be made today, Like they're not making those films today.
• 36:12
  Can you imagine the Goonies being made in a studio system today like that that
• 36:16
  would never exist? Or Gremlins or any of these amazing eighties and nineties Ghostbusters?
• 36:22
  Can you imagine Ghostbusters like as an original pitch now? Would be very
• 36:25
  interesting? So, you know, so I see that there is also a
• 36:30
  limited window as far as how many of these films are being produced a year.
• 36:35
  At the studio level. They're not making thirty movies, the studios not
• 36:37
  making thirty movies a year. They're making ten at the big at at Disney's
• 36:43
  what made what like twelve movies last year at the studio level. And then
• 36:47
  Warners is probably around the eighth to ten twelve before they were making thirty or
• 36:52
  forty movies a year, and they were at different budget ranges and everything.
• 36:54
  So there is a certain limit of funds and opportunity now in the studio theatrical
• 37:01
  space, but in the television and serialized space it is wide open and there's
• 37:07
  so much more opportunity there. And also now the straight to the made for
• 37:15
  TV movie market, if you will back if I should date myself, you
• 37:19
  know, the movie of the week kind of movies which are now direct to
• 37:22
  Netflix, you know, or direct to HBO Max, or originals original Hulu
• 37:27
  films that are at a much lower budget. Where do you think screenwriters and
• 37:32
  filmmakers in general should be focusing their energy. Should they be going for that
• 37:37
  home run hit of like I'm going to do the next fifty million, hundred
• 37:39
  million dollar movie, or should I start trying to get into serialized works,
• 37:44
  trying to get into these lower budget direct originals for Netflix, Hulu, HBO,
• 37:50
  Max, Disney, Peacock and so on. Yeah, that's a good
• 37:53
  question. I think that the streamers always want content, and that feels like
• 38:00
  it could have been theatrical. So I don't think writing that kind of content,
• 38:06
  big concepts, you know, high concept. I don't think that's going
• 38:08
  out of style anytime soon. And if you have and if you have a
• 38:13
  knack for it, I mean I ultimately, when you know, a lot
• 38:15
  of our business is talking to writers, and I think so much of the
• 38:21
  ancillary screenwriter industry fixates on this idea of like writing something marketable, writing something
• 38:30
  that can sell. And while I think there is some wisdom to that,
• 38:35
  generally my advice to writers is to figure out what kind of writer you are,
• 38:39
  what your brand is. You may want to write every genre, but
• 38:43
  what genre you know? In which genres do you really excel and in which
• 38:47
  genres does your work feel really authentic and is it really resonating with people?
• 38:52
  And if you figure out what that is for you, then you can sort
• 38:55
  of figure out how to do the slightly more commercial version of that that maybe
• 39:00
  puts you in the conversation, you know, for us, for sending us
• 39:05
  back out to studio buyers, et cetera. But but yeah, I don't
• 39:09
  know that. Uh. I think that's where you kind of have to start
• 39:14
  and see where that leads you. And some people find themselves in the position
• 39:16
  of writing, you know, they're really good at comedies and unfortunately that's not
• 39:21
  you know, that's not that's not a firebrand genre for what was I'm sorry
• 39:25
  you broke up? What was that genre again? Oh? You know,
• 39:29
  indie dramedies is like so much. It's a tough one. It's it's you
• 39:34
  might be really really good at that, and yet it's it's really tough without
• 39:37
  a hook to get anybody excited about that. So but but you know,
• 39:42
  I think, you know, you have to figure out what your voice is
• 39:45
  as a writer and then try to innovate within that space and figure out what
• 39:47
  the commercial version of that is. We'll be right back after a word from
• 39:52
  our sponsor and now back to the show. But do they have a better
• 40:02
  shot at getting in a writer's room getting into a series, now, is
• 40:07
  it? I mean, I think there's just by the math, there's more
• 40:09
  opportunity, correct, Yeah, I think so, yeah, I think so.
• 40:14
  I mean, I don't I don't work as much on the TV side,
• 40:16
  but I'm but I definitely have had a lot of friends who are writers
• 40:21
  and who were you know, coming out of school or coming out of MFA
• 40:23
  programs that have gotten snapped up into some really great writers room rooms, and
• 40:29
  they're excelling because they were incredibly talented. But I think that, you know,
• 40:32
  writers rooms are really intent on diversifying right now. I think that's that's
• 40:37
  critically important. And there's just also just so much, so many more of
• 40:40
  them, and I've seen all kinds of opportunities open up for my friends,
• 40:45
  who I think prior to that, you know, serialized streaming boom maybe would
• 40:50
  have had would have had to wait a little longer before those first worsts opened.
• 40:53
  Do you think that this this mad gold rush that's been happening now probably
• 40:59
  for the last five five years or so in regards to content, So many
• 41:02
  streaming platforms are opening up so much common I mean, this is I mean,
• 41:06
  people are buying I think they bought South Park for aroun one hundred billion
• 41:09
  dollars or something like one hundred million dollars, and Simpsons, you know,
• 41:13
  and obviously Fox was purchased by Disney and Friends. How much does Friends get
• 41:17
  two hundred million dollars or something like that, two hundred fifty million dollars or
• 41:21
  something like that. It's insane, But they're buying content just they're just absorbing
• 41:25
  as much content as they can and they're creating as much content. Do you
• 41:30
  feel that there's a bubble here? Like, kind I kind of see a
• 41:35
  bubble forming because this is not sustainable. This pace cannot sustain for twenty years,
• 41:42
  and our economy right now is definitely not in the greatest space. And
• 41:45
  I still feel that we're nowhere near the worst of where the economy will eventually
• 41:51
  drop to. So I know we all want content, we all want to
• 41:54
  see this, but there's how many of these streaming services can actually survive?
• 41:59
  How how much money is there? Like what do you think? I just
• 42:02
  you know, I don't want to put you in a bed in the corner,
• 42:06
  but I'm just asking, like, what do you think? Do you
• 42:07
  think this is going to end? Or is this going to pop? Yeah,
• 42:10
  you know, as long as we're making you know, as long as
• 42:14
  I'm allowed to make grand predictions that could shit entirely, absolutely absolutely, that's
• 42:19
  why we're here, sir, Then yes, then emphatically, yes, we're
• 42:22
  in a bubble. And now I think I mean yes something time, I
• 42:25
  do think we are in a little bit of a bubble because I think of
• 42:28
  the phase of growth that we're in as an industry is one in which there's
• 42:32
  been a new there's been a new media, there's a new playing field that's
• 42:36
  been you know that we're all playing on. And the streamers are just glad.
• 42:42
  They're battling for dominance right now. So they're spending wildly inflated numbers amounts
• 42:49
  for properties that they know are going to draw the most eyes with, you
• 42:53
  know, under the threat that maybe not all of them will survive into the
• 42:58
  next phase of this growth. And I think I think that that, unfortunately,
• 43:04
  that is a strategy that they have to pursue because they make damn well,
• 43:07
  what's that to compete? Right, right? And so yeah, so
• 43:13
  I think that the prices will naturally settle as as people realize that there's probably
• 43:20
  room for all of these streaming services. Maybe one or two will get knocked
• 43:23
  off, but you know, for the most part, I'm seeing people toggle
• 43:27
  between their Disney Pluses and their Hulus and their Amazons and their Netflixes with no
• 43:31
  problem. So so I think the prices will naturally settle after this initial sort
• 43:37
  of elbowing people out of the way phase you resolves. But you know,
• 43:43
  beyond that, I can't I couldn't say, I mean, looking at it,
• 43:45
  looking at history again. I mean, in the early nineties there was
• 43:49
  this indie the indie boom where they were buying I mean, and if you
• 43:52
  got into Sundance you got a million dollar deal. It was just like it
• 43:55
  was like they were spar And then it felt like almost every month there was
• 44:00
  a new Kevin Smith, John Singlet and Spike Lee, Robert Rodriguez, Richard
• 44:04
  Lincoln, I mean, Seva Starbrook. There was this every month. There
• 44:07
  almost seemed like new, this new kind of Cinderella story. And then the
• 44:12
  studios all said, wait a minute, there's money in indies. Let's all
• 44:15
  put up indie shingles. So there's Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage and all this,
• 44:19
  the Fox Searchlight. But then it's it popped. It popped. Towards
• 44:23
  the end of the decade, it started to pop, and then it started
• 44:27
  to fizzle out. And I have a feeling that that's kind of that's a
• 44:30
  smaller skill because what's going on now is massive comparatively, right, right.
• 44:37
  Yeah, things will certainly settle and it will be interesting. It will be
• 44:40
  interesting to see how the curation of content for all those streamers ends up arranging
• 44:49
  itself. I think, you know, at our company, that's That's a
• 44:52
  big part of our business model, right is we're aggregating independent filmmakers and their
• 44:57
  projects from all over the world. We're taking the ones, and then we're
• 45:00
  helping them get packaged, finance and sold. The demand for content has never
• 45:05
  been higher, So I think there's going to be more of a demand for
• 45:09
  companies, production companies, you know, talented producers, but also companies like
• 45:13
  ours who filter out the great projects and can curate those for the buyers so
• 45:19
  that they don't have to roll up their sleeves and get in the muck out
• 45:22
  there and sort through the unsolicited submissions of the film of the film world.
• 45:25
  So god, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of that,
• 45:30
  Yeah, on a completed film level, on a script level. Do you
• 45:35
  remember the time where it was just like there was too many scripts? Then
• 45:38
  now there's too many finished films out there, Like there's literally finished films that
• 45:45
  never see the light of day. Ever, It's true, it's amazing.
• 45:49
  It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, And I think that's something that we also see
• 45:53
  quite a bit of is that filmmakers get into this state of paralysis after this
• 46:00
  where they're working on post you know, for months and months and sometimes years
• 46:05
  at a time, and I think they're almost You can get a little fear
• 46:07
  of failure that if I finally say it's done and if I take it out,
• 46:12
  you know, maybe it won't sell, or maybe it won't sell for
• 46:15
  the amount that I hoped. And yet you know what they don't realize And
• 46:19
  it sounds hyperbolic to say this, and yet it's so so so true.
• 46:22
  Is that, you know, as my partner at Slated J on the finance
• 46:25
  team always says, from the minute that you wrap your film, the clock
• 46:29
  starts to tick on the value of your movie. And if you're not getting
• 46:32
  a cut, and if you're not getting in conversations with sales companies, and
• 46:35
  if you're not getting out to the market asap, then your film's value is
• 46:40
  going to start to die and your film is going to get less and less
• 46:44
  relevant. And in many cases, people just they miss one of the market
• 46:46
  cycles, they miss a couple of them, and then they're just out of
• 46:50
  the game entirely, or god forbid if they don't if they don't time it
• 46:54
  right and say they submit to festival, because that's what everybody wants to do,
• 46:59
  first into festivals, and then maybe you have a festival premiere, well
• 47:02
  then that becomes effectively a release data source, that becomes a dat upon which
• 47:07
  and now it's really now how you've accelerated that. So I think, yeah,
• 47:12
  absolutely. I mean, the piece of advice that I have for filmmakers
• 47:15
  who do have a film and post is to get a cut that you can
• 47:20
  share and then start to think about who's going to sell the movie, whether
• 47:23
  that's a big agency who's handling domestic and maybe international, or whether that is
• 47:29
  a sales company that you really trust. Think about who that partner is going
• 47:32
  to be before you start really nearly submitting to festivals, because festivals simply do
• 47:37
  not have the bandwidth to look at every submission that they get, So you
• 47:43
  can have a fantastic film and they may never find out. And you know,
• 47:49
  not to throw sling mud at any festival in particular, but it's simply
• 47:52
  a numbers problem. So you know, you're much likelier to get a festival
• 47:57
  premiere a festival debut if you have somebody submitting your film to them who has
• 48:02
  a reputation with that festival, whether that is someone yeah yeah, or a
• 48:08
  producer's rep or a sales company who does a lot of business or an agent.
• 48:13
  You know, that makes all the difference in the world. So that's
• 48:15
  my number one piece of advice when the filmmakers come to us with the film
• 48:19
  and post is like, don't just start submitting to festivals. Get a sales
• 48:22
  strategy in place, get a partner. Have that partner make the submissions.
• 48:25
  You're going to go much further, trust me, And then that partner can
• 48:29
  can use the festival as as part of an overall strategy to debut your film
• 48:34
  to the world and then use the next market as sort of a launch,
• 48:37
  a launch for your film in sales. No, do you which you said
• 48:42
  you brought up festivals? Do you? I've been saying this for a while.
• 48:45
  Festivals don't have the power that they used to. This is not nineteen
• 48:49
  ninety two anymore. There's a handful that means anything to the bottom line.
• 48:54
  We're talking about five maybe six in the world that means anything to the bottom
• 49:00
  line. From your experience working with distribution companies and buyers, and you know,
• 49:07
  other than the look it's super cool, we all want to get into
• 49:09
  Sundance. She's the pretty girl that we all want to get it. You
• 49:12
  know, a date with there's no doubt about that Can South By Tribeca,
• 49:17
  Toronto. We all want to go there, and it's fun, it's a
• 49:20
  cultural event, it's red carpet, and there could be some business to be
• 49:23
  done at those festivals. But generally speaking, it's first of all, it's
• 49:28
  not a guarantee anymore. Before it was a guarantee like you get in Sundance.
• 49:30
  It's sold, someone's gonna buy it, but that doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 49:35
  What are your feelings about festivals as a general statement from the buyer's perspective
• 49:39
  distributions perspective, do they really mean anything? I mean, I mean,
• 49:45
  of course Sundance on a certain kind of film makes all the sense in the
• 49:49
  world, But even then it's still not as much as it used to.
• 49:54
  I mean, am I wrong me? What do you think we'll be right
• 49:59
  back after a while from our sponsor and now back to the show. I
• 50:07
  agree, No, I agree that it's not a guarantee anymore. For sure,
• 50:10
  I do still feel that the handful of festivals that you named Sundance,
• 50:15
  South By, Tribeca, can Toronto, they still do really matter as far
• 50:22
  as your ability to introduce your film to the world and jumpstart the sales process.
• 50:29
  So you know, I'm sure there are there. And then there's another
• 50:31
  tier festivals below them that still help with sales. They still have some prestige,
• 50:36
  but they may not be you know, as as fancy and shiny as
• 50:40
  those others. But I still think that they make an incredible impact on your
• 50:44
  ability to get the film sold and distributed. But there is only a handful
• 50:50
  period, like even even first and second tier. We're talking twenty twenty five
• 50:53
  film festivals or in the world. That really mean a whole lot. And
• 50:57
  I feel that so many filmmakers lose so much time submitting to all of these,
• 51:04
  right, that is so true. That is so true. And then
• 51:07
  they, you know, the film the filmmakers then try to use you know,
• 51:12
  I'm gonna name I'm gonna accidentally name a real film festival by trying to
• 51:15
  come up with a fictional one, So I don't want to try, so
• 51:19
  I always I always use I always use moose Jaw, the International moose Jaw
• 51:22
  Film Festival. I don't think that's a real festival. Good, but you
• 51:25
  can just use the or the Uptown Downtown Film Festival. Sure, so the
• 51:30
  Uptown Downtown Film Festival it's a perfect, it's the perfect. I'm going to
• 51:32
  use those from now on. People are going to start thinking it's real.
• 51:35
  It's going to be have a life of its own. Yeah, So that
• 51:39
  that you know, there's there's thousands of those. There's I feel like there's
• 51:43
  a new one every week. And the same thing goes for screenwriting competitions too,
• 51:46
  And I think maybe that is a misconception, that that the that the
• 51:52
  belief is that if someone has validated your film, then it's more valuable.
• 51:57
  And yet if that's somebody is an unknown screenplay competition or film festival, it
• 52:04
  actually does does damage. And particularly if you got like third place in the
• 52:08
  in the Uptown Downtown Film Festival, it's like you weren't even good enough for
• 52:13
  for Uptown Downtown. I want what I want to talk to that guy.
• 52:19
  I want to talk to that gal whoever shot that I want to I want
• 52:22
  to talk to whoever won Uptown Downtown. You got grand jury at Uptown Downtown
• 52:29
  exactly, so you know, and of course I can relate to having been
• 52:35
  on the creative side. The idea that somebody is saying, look you did
• 52:37
  a good job, that is that that's all people want to hear when they
• 52:40
  finished making something, and likely like, if you're still looking at it as
• 52:45
  a business, you have to be strategic about who you let put their laurels
• 52:50
  on your poster. No, well that sounded cool, that sounded kind of
• 52:53
  dirty. I don't know why. It's like, you don't let someone else's
• 52:55
  laurels on your poster. Not during COVID, I know, absolutely not,
• 53:01
  absolutely not. You need to you need to wipe that down with some alcohol.
• 53:07
  But so I suggest. Sometimes when I'm consulting with filmmakers and I look
• 53:14
  at the film and I go, look, I think this film might have
• 53:15
  a chance, and even the might have a chance at any of the twenty
• 53:20
  five film festivals. Sometimes I'll go, why don't you just put some fuelers
• 53:23
  out at real distribution companies and real real buyers and see what happens, Because
• 53:30
  what's the end game here is the endgame prestige. Then go down the festival
• 53:35
  circuit. Have fun to spend two years running the festival circuit, but understand
• 53:39
  that financially that is not going to be good for your film if you run
• 53:45
  fit. I've seen festivals on the I've seen films on the festival circuit for
• 53:49
  two years, just and they play sixty film features. And then at that
• 53:54
  point I'm like, nobody, I don't care if you have sixty laurels,
• 53:59
  right, they're all up to downtown, it doesn't matter. But your ego
• 54:05
  is very well inflated after all of that. So what's the endgame? Being
• 54:10
  honest, yeah, I think I think that that can potentially be an approach.
• 54:17
  You know, if you if you are a filmmaker with relationships at those
• 54:22
  distributors, then I think that that's well advised. If you're not, then
• 54:24
  I would encourage you to partner with a producer or a sales company who does
• 54:30
  because we've seen cases where films have finished their film, maybe they festivals made,
• 54:36
  and festivals maybe they didn't. They then queried a bunch of buyers and
• 54:42
  they got sort of de facto passes, not because anyone actually ever looked at
• 54:46
  the film, but because they said no, go away on solicited submission,
• 54:49
  we don't know you. And then that becomes difficult for a sales company that
• 54:53
  comes on board and tries to sell the film in earnest because you have to
• 54:57
  then navigate well, was this an actual past that anybody actually look at it?
• 55:00
  Of course, the answer is normally know, but in most cases that
• 55:04
  becomes a conversation that you don't want to have to have. So I would
• 55:07
  say, you know, sales companies for all the flak that they get,
• 55:12
  for all the sales companies out there that may may you know, may be
• 55:15
  more bottom feeding type companies. Predatory predatory is what I like to call the
• 55:20
  preditor predatory Perhaps, yeah, but there are still a lot of sales companies
• 55:23
  out there that they make a living selling movies and being transparent with filmmakers,
• 55:28
  and they have reputations, and so I really do think that they can be
• 55:31
  that link that unlocks a distributor taking you seriously, a festival, taking you
• 55:37
  seriously, and making sure that you're you're managing that process carefully and strategically.
• 55:44
  Do you think that from your experience, because I I've spoken spoken at nauseum
• 55:49
  about this in regards to the distribute the traditional distribution space where we're at right
• 55:52
  now. I've been yelling from the top of the top of the hill that
• 55:57
  Rome is burning, especially in the D space, not talking studio space,
• 56:01
  though I do I do feel that those walls are starting to crumble a bit
• 56:05
  too under its own weight. But the traditional distribution model is kind of starting
• 56:13
  to fall apart because what was once cash cows are not no longer there,
• 56:17
  and they literally from month to month, year to year, don't know where
• 56:22
  their money is gonna come from. Like before, it was pretty stable,
• 56:25
  like you know, you had VHS, well, we're good with VHS.
• 56:29
  We had cable deals, we had pay TV, free TV. Then DVD
• 56:32
  showed up, and then just everybody was like the Great Gaspian like money was
• 56:37
  flying everywhere. You could just release Sniper seven and it was already you already
• 56:42
  made three million bucks on DVD. But those days are all gone, and
• 56:45
  streaming is not paying what DVD was. So I've and I've spoken to I've
• 56:50
  been at AFM, I've spoken to multiple distributors that I literally asked him,
• 56:53
  I go, you really don't know where you're gonna get your money, are
• 56:58
  you? And They're like, no, Our main, our main strategy is
• 57:00
  to acquire as many films as we can at no money upfront, for as
• 57:06
  long as we can keep them in our library, so then we can negotiate
• 57:08
  with a streaming service to sell the library off to them and see if we
• 57:12
  can make any money with them at all TVOD is pretty much dying, if
• 57:15
  not dead. SVOD is if you can get a deal, great, and
• 57:20
  AVOD is where the money is currently, but it's still nowhere near DVD money.
• 57:24
  So that's at at the lowest level of independent film. We're talking you
• 57:30
  know, ten thousand dollars movies, up to even up to a million dollar
• 57:34
  to two million dollar movies, some of the movies. I'm sure you're working
• 57:37
  on our much higher levels, and that's a whole other ecosystem. What is
• 57:39
  your feeling about the future of the model in general? And feel free to
• 57:45
  say, Alex, I take the fifth on this. I'll take a partial
• 57:51
  fifth. I mean everything you're saying rings true. I think that that packaging
• 57:55
  and bundling these titles together and selling them is definitely a line of business for
• 58:00
  sales companies. The MG has gone away, and in some ways that is
• 58:06
  a good thing because you know of the whole fallacy that that the MG was
• 58:13
  truly a minimum guarantee, which of course it isn't. It's usually it's a
• 58:15
  maximum guarantee, right, it's a maximum guarantee that end they didn't They weren't
• 58:20
  clear about the active exactly, So you know that and so I'm actually in
• 58:25
  favor of sales companies not paying mgs to acquire the content themselves, because then
• 58:31
  they really have to take the film out and we get to see in a
• 58:35
  sales cycle or two how well they're able to actually sell sell the movie and
• 58:39
  and there and there, you know, their ability to make money depends on
• 58:43
  that performance. So yeah, I don't miss the I don't miss the MG
• 58:49
  from sales companies. I think a no MG model is certainly okay. And
• 58:52
  then they really just have to perform. If that if they perform, if
• 58:57
  they can perform sometimes and not even it's not even in their power. If
• 59:00
  they can or can, that depends on the marketplace. It's that's true in
• 59:05
  their defense, that's true. And yet I think a good sales company has
• 59:09
  really strong relationships with buyers. They know exactly what that buyer is looking for
• 59:14
  in advance at the market, or they at least have a sense of it,
• 59:16
  and they know what where their cash cows are. I mean, it's
• 59:21
  it's not a surprise. And I'm sure I know you've talked about this as
• 59:23
  well, that there's certain genres that have more inherent sales value your respect of
• 59:29
  cast. So you know, we can rely on that to some extent.
• 59:32
  If you have made an action film and executed it exceedingly well, then there
• 59:37
  will be some buyers for that, and cast helps a great deal. So
• 59:43
  so yeah, I think they you know, they don't have full control,
• 59:45
  but a good sales company is going to have a better sense of what they
• 59:51
  can do with the given film and hopefully get closer to hitting their numbers.
• 59:54
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:00:01
  the show. Now, in the world that we're living in right now,
• 1:00:07
  something that I never thought would happen has happened, which is the international market
• 1:00:14
  has shut off basically because of COVID and then the Hollywood system. This is
• 1:00:20
  where I said that the weight of the system is kind of falling on against
• 1:00:23
  itself. When you make a two hundred million plus dollar movie, which is
• 1:00:29
  the norm now, and then you spend another two hundred or plus more to
• 1:00:32
  market it, that kind of movie without an international component can't sustain itself,
• 1:00:40
  you know. I mean, obviously there's the marvels of the world, but
• 1:00:43
  can you make a two hundred million dollar movie without the international marketplace in the
• 1:00:47
  way it is now and I don't know. I'm not sure in the next
• 1:00:52
  year or two is that marketplace even going to you know, within this next
• 1:00:55
  year or two, how much of that marketplace is even available to US?
• 1:00:59
  So can Bond survive without an international Can Black Widow? Can Wonder Woman?
• 1:01:07
  Can they? I don't think their model is built on domestic only because now
• 1:01:10
  we're not the biggest market China. I think China. Am I wrong?
• 1:01:14
  In China is the biggest market? Now? Are we still the biggest?
• 1:01:16
  I'm not sure We're close. But that's the other thing China. China shut
• 1:01:21
  down all their movie theaters when COVID hit, So you're like, you know,
• 1:01:24
  Mulan is sitting in limbo. So it's you know, can the studios
• 1:01:30
  system's business model work without an international component? And how does that adjust these
• 1:01:38
  events style films that are basically the norm now in the studio system. I
• 1:01:45
  don't see how it can. I don't see how you can make a two
• 1:01:46
  hundred million dollar movie without the ability to sell it outside of the US.
• 1:01:52
  I don't see how that that's possible. But I don't think international markets are
• 1:01:58
  going away. I think again at shandpoint right, But yeah, I think
• 1:02:02
  that is that product is built specifically at that budget level because they're planning theatrical
• 1:02:09
  across the world, and then all of the you know, all of the
• 1:02:13
  ancillary revenue streams that come downstream from that. Yeah. Well yeah, so
• 1:02:17
  that brings a good point theatrical. We didn't have touched on theatrical in this
• 1:02:22
  conversation. I mean, theatricals taking a pretty big hit right now. And
• 1:02:25
  I'm I'm a fan of the movie theater. I love it. I want
• 1:02:29
  if I could go every day, I would. I grew up in the
• 1:02:31
  generation as you did that we the movie theater. You're not a filmmaker quote
• 1:02:36
  unquote unless your movie's in the theater kind of thing. But this is really
• 1:02:42
  taken. I mean, the movie theater's industry has taken a hit, not
• 1:02:44
  only here in the US but around the world. And now that people are
• 1:02:47
  becoming more accustomed to staying at home and it's absorbing it. I'm sure people
• 1:02:52
  are going to want to come back out to the theaters. But are the
• 1:02:54
  numbers going to be back to where they were? How long will the numbers
• 1:02:57
  be able to get back to the war and they were going in a down
• 1:03:00
  trajectory pre COVID. So again that same question, does this model work without
• 1:03:06
  a theatrical component, not only theatrically but internationally but domestically, And because there's
• 1:03:12
  no way you're releasing a two hudred million dollar movie off of streaming and I
• 1:03:15
  know what, trolls made a hundred million bucks. Yeah, that's nice,
• 1:03:19
  that's great. Let's throw a bond up there, Let's throw a Marvel movie
• 1:03:22
  up there, and let's get some real numbers to see. Are people going
• 1:03:23
  to spend four hundred million dollars? I think they can because Mike Tyson fights
• 1:03:29
  back in the day, they would gross three four hundred million dollars on a
• 1:03:31
  weekend. They I mean they did. I mean it is possible. And
• 1:03:37
  that was with table vod, you know, and what was this all those
• 1:03:42
  big fights. I mean they would gross three four hundred million dollars in a
• 1:03:45
  night, So it is possible. It was great, right, it is
• 1:03:47
  insane. That's why I like, you know, what's this all? God?
• 1:03:50
  Who's like that greatest undefeated middle eight? God? I can't believe.
• 1:03:54
  I can't remember him, the ball small guy, he beat Paqiao, he
• 1:03:58
  beat everybody. I'm not I don't know, Okay, so that guy,
• 1:04:02
  I can't believe the name's forgetting me. People are yelling at the podcast right
• 1:04:05
  now that gets him. It's him. I'm like, I'm sorry, please
• 1:04:08
  forgive me. But that guy would walk away with a hundred million bucks for
• 1:04:11
  the night, or Tyson back in the day, he would walk away with
• 1:04:14
  one hundred million dollars a night. But so it is possible. But what
• 1:04:18
  do you think, what do you think. I think it's possible. I
• 1:04:23
  think it's going to continue, and I think we'll start building budgets for the
• 1:04:28
  ideal scenario of one hundred million dollar troll streaming release as opposed to the ideal
• 1:04:31
  scenario of a billion dollar you know, global theatrical release. So so you
• 1:04:36
  make the movie for twenty five million instead of one hundred million. Well that's
• 1:04:40
  you know, it seems we can figure that out, especially with you know,
• 1:04:43
  technology continuously advancing the cost of the cg is. I imagine getting more
• 1:04:47
  and more manager and the Mandalorian with the with the with the technology that they
• 1:04:51
  do with the Mandalorian, the volume, Oh my god, that's incredible.
• 1:04:57
  That I think is one of the futures of the industry. To save us
• 1:05:00
  from COVID like have a very condensed but yet a twelve hour sunset. It's
• 1:05:05
  insane. Yeah, it is very cool. I saw that that promotional video
• 1:05:10
  and that behind the scenes video, and I think that's such a good point.
• 1:05:13
  I'm sure they're doing all kinds of marketing right now and around that technology
• 1:05:15
  because it's it's those kind of things that are going to allow us to make
• 1:05:19
  theatrical type experiences on smaller budgets. But the idea of a two hundred million
• 1:05:26
  dollar movie to begin with is hard to wrap your mind around. And that's
• 1:05:32
  on the lower end because you start looking at some of these bigger Marvel films
• 1:05:35
  that they pushed three hundred million, you know they'll to three three fifty,
• 1:05:40
  you know, I mean, no one, I don't even know what Avatar
• 1:05:42
  back ten years ago costs. I can only imagine what it's costing James Cameron
• 1:05:47
  with an open checkbook is very dangerous. But you know, how does you
• 1:05:54
  know, how does Avatar work? Like? You know, coming out these
• 1:05:57
  next four is the four four Avatars that he's making. It's really interesting to
• 1:06:01
  see. It's going to be a complete shift of the industry. I think
• 1:06:04
  you're right, you're going to have to adjust budgets accordingly, and it's doable.
• 1:06:10
  Like Mandalorian was much more affordable than it should have been, right right,
• 1:06:16
  Yeah, it couldn't have been done without that technology, I think.
• 1:06:21
  So. Yeah, it looked fantastic, So hopefully we get to see some
• 1:06:25
  more of that. Now, tell me about Slaton. We've kind of been
• 1:06:29
  talking about Slaated a little bit here and there. So what is slated?
• 1:06:31
  How does it work? How do you hope filmmakers and screenwriters? Tell me
• 1:06:34
  what you do? Sure? Yeah, So Slaated is a marketplace for filmmakers
• 1:06:41
  to take the projects and develop them, package them, finance them, sell
• 1:06:45
  them, get them distribution. So we have fifty thousand members. It began
• 1:06:50
  as an invite only film finance network in twenty twelve, so people had to
• 1:06:57
  be vouched for in order to join. All films were personally approved by our
• 1:07:00
  team before they could list, and we had a small community of investors that
• 1:07:05
  had some some oversight in the beginning, which has become much more stringent now
• 1:07:10
  that it's an open network. But today, yeah, we're fifty thousand members.
• 1:07:14
  I think something like eighty percent of our of sun Dance movies last year
• 1:07:18
  were made by slated members. Two thirds of OSCAR nominated movies last year were
• 1:07:23
  made by slaved members, and we've had films list on the platform that including
• 1:07:29
  you know, Uncut Gems or Loving Vincent that were sort of Loving Vincent was
• 1:07:32
  nominated for an OSCAR. Uncut Gems should have been I should have won several
• 1:07:38
  Oscars. I mean, come on. So, so yeah, it's a
• 1:07:42
  you know, it is a It is a vibrant marketplace of filmmakers and fantastic
• 1:07:45
  projects that are coming from all over the world, and the platform itself serves
• 1:07:48
  to evaluate those projects and then help them get linked up with wherever they whatever
• 1:07:55
  they need based on where they are on their in their process. So that's
• 1:07:59
  what that's what our team does, the team that I'm part of now the
• 1:08:01
  screenwriters submit their their scripts there. How does that work? Yes, yeah,
• 1:08:06
  so you can list your project and not get any evaluation of your script
• 1:08:12
  or any financial projections, and then you can hope to match with a producer
• 1:08:16
  or a sales company based on your logline and your poster and the value of
• 1:08:20
  you and your track record. That's a thing you can do. Generally speaking,
• 1:08:26
  we advise that people make use of the analytics that are available. The
• 1:08:30
  script score is critically important, and the financial analysis is also pretty important too.
• 1:08:34
  If you're hoping to attract the investors that we discussed are looking for projects
• 1:08:40
  that have some demonstrable value and some clarity there. So yeah, so you
• 1:08:45
  can list a project and have it not the score. But what we advise
• 1:08:50
  is that you list your project, you submit your script to our team,
• 1:08:54
  you have our team review it, and then the analytics that we provide you
• 1:08:57
  give you more of a presence on the site, more exposure on the site,
• 1:09:00
  and you're able to match with all those higher end investors, producers,
• 1:09:04
  sales companies who have said, look, I only want to be messaged or
• 1:09:10
  matched with people whose projects have been reviewed and who've scored above a certain threshold.
• 1:09:15
  So we use the analytics to enhance the matching. So but you do
• 1:09:19
  you work with treatments or is only scripts or do work It's like, here's
• 1:09:23
  the idea of I have this person attached to write the script, I have
• 1:09:26
  this director attached. I might even have some talent attached. Can you package
• 1:09:30
  a deal like that and then maybe look for development funds things like that.
• 1:09:33
  Totally, Yeah, totally, So there's three sort of key metrics. There's
• 1:09:39
  the team score. So if you list your film, you don't submit your
• 1:09:42
  script, you don't run financial projections, then there's just going to be a
• 1:09:45
  score based on who's making the film. So if you're a director and you've
• 1:09:48
  made six movies before, you'll have a score, and people who are looking
• 1:09:54
  for projects with elevated teams will find you. We'll be right back after a
• 1:09:59
  word for our sponsor, and now back to the show. If you choose
• 1:10:09
  to submit your screenplay, it should be a completed screenplay. Sure, we
• 1:10:13
  are taking completed scripts. We are taking completed movies, and we're going to
• 1:10:17
  start taking completed documentaries as well. And when I say completed, I mean
• 1:10:20
  a rough cut is fine, picture lock cut is fine. And for that
• 1:10:26
  process, it's always the same with every project, and we've done it for
• 1:10:30
  ten thousand projects to date, which is that we remove the cover page from
• 1:10:33
  the script and we hand it to our development staff and we have three different
• 1:10:36
  members of our development staff read the script and respond to a set of questions
• 1:10:42
  independently. So that returns US one hundred point script score on a scale from
• 1:10:46
  one to one hundred, but it's really more on a scale from sixty to
• 1:10:50
  ninety because that's where most the scores fall, and that score indicates sort of
• 1:10:56
  how far in your development process you are, how close you are to being
• 1:10:59
  ready to being matched to a producer, or how close you are to being
• 1:11:02
  ready to effectively shoot. So, if the way our system is designed with
• 1:11:08
  three readers reviewing every project, if one person gives it a recommend then the
• 1:11:14
  project will qualify for matching with almost everybody on the platform, even if the
• 1:11:18
  other two readers are passing. And now is it work like? So it's
• 1:11:23
  a market It's kind of like a once you get past, it's kind of
• 1:11:25
  like a marketplace. So then it goes up on the boards, let's say,
• 1:11:28
  and then everyone has access to seeing what that is, and then people
• 1:11:31
  contact the producers of that project or the owners of that project. Yeah,
• 1:11:35
  more or less. The matching is really sophisticated in that it's focused on what
• 1:11:42
  you, as a member ALEX have said you want to see. So if
• 1:11:45
  you've told Slated via your profile, I only want to see projects with script
• 1:11:49
  course above seventy and or I only want to see projects who have an attachment
• 1:11:55
  that is X or higher, then those are the only projects you are going
• 1:11:59
  to match with, and every Monday morning, you're going to get a digest
• 1:12:01
  that shows you the projects that you match with, And for any project that
• 1:12:05
  is a match to you, they'll now be allowed to message you because their
• 1:12:09
  project matches that criteria. So if at any point an investor or producer wants
• 1:12:15
  to receive fewer matches, they can dial up the script score threshold, or
• 1:12:17
  they can dial up their team score threshold and get more targeted matches, or
• 1:12:23
  they can say I only want stuff at this stage, at the packaging stage
• 1:12:26
  or development stage or something like that. That kind to bring it in right,
• 1:12:30
  very very interesting. That's a pretty cool, uh, pretty cool situation
• 1:12:32
  you got going on. I man, I love it, I really really
• 1:12:35
  love it because we you know, the global component of it is probably the
• 1:12:40
  most exciting because we have filmmakers that are submitting from Canada, from Egypt,
• 1:12:45
  from Mongolia who have truly come up with these incredible stories, incredible screenplays,
• 1:12:51
  and you know, you may or may not be surprised. Some of them
• 1:12:55
  have a very firm grip on how to build value, how to package their
• 1:12:59
  movie for their territory. And so we're coming across films that I just never
• 1:13:01
  would have conceived of because because none of them are my experience, but also
• 1:13:06
  films that I just never would have known existed that are beautiful, you know,
• 1:13:11
  sometimes heartbreaking stories, either at the script stage or at the postage.
• 1:13:15
  So the idea that we can be a portal for those filmmakers and get them
• 1:13:19
  straight to the person that they need to be talking to in a matter of
• 1:13:24
  weeks or months, that is that is really exciting because the film industry at
• 1:13:28
  large is very scattered, very disorganized. You know, people depend on shows
• 1:13:32
  like yours to help them make sense of it all, and so we pride
• 1:13:35
  ourselves on being another one of those sort of spirit guides that can help assess
• 1:13:41
  you where you stand, figure out what you need, and get you to
• 1:13:44
  the right place. I'd like spirit guide. I think that's good. Hashtag
• 1:13:46
  spirit guide. It's very very nice, very cool man, very cool.
• 1:13:53
  All right, So I'm gonna ask a few questions, ask all my guests,
• 1:13:56
  what advice would you give a filmmaker and or screenwriter wanting to break into
• 1:14:00
  the business today. So for a screenwriter, right right, right, right
• 1:14:04
  right, I think that competitions, if you're focusing on the top three or
• 1:14:10
  four are fantastic. You know, obviously submit your script to Slated and get
• 1:14:14
  it scored. You're going to get twenty pages of feedback in a script score
• 1:14:16
  from people who are working in the industry and have read a thousand scripts each,
• 1:14:20
  so that's really high value. And then I'm here to answer your questions
• 1:14:23
  about your coverage. So if you have a script, that's where I'd start.
• 1:14:26
  But there are also screenplay competitions like the Nickel like page, like the
• 1:14:30
  ones that roadmap Writers or Tracking Board does. Those are all great companies,
• 1:14:33
  and I recommend that a new writer try all of those avenues. It cannot
• 1:14:39
  hurt if you get traction with any of them. It can be meaningful and
• 1:14:42
  allow you to take your project to the next step. If you're a new
• 1:14:45
  filmmaker, yeah, then you should try to meet somebody who's more experienced than
• 1:14:48
  you and not hire people that are less experienced than you to help you pack
• 1:14:53
  the film, develop the film, and take that project to the next step.
• 1:14:57
  And also listard we will help you. And what is the lesson that
• 1:15:01
  took you the longest to learn, whether in the film business or in life.
• 1:15:06
  You asked this to all your guests, every single one that is the
• 1:15:11
  Oprah question. That's the Oprah question. Yeah, it's it's the lesson that
• 1:15:15
  I learned longest. What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn,
• 1:15:20
  whether in the business or in life. Man, that is a tough
• 1:15:27
  one. It's hard enough to get super existential on that. Jeez, that's
• 1:15:31
  intense. I think I'm going to try to keep it film related. Otherwise
• 1:15:35
  if we'll have a crying session, it'll be a thing. We don't get
• 1:15:39
  it there. I do therapy for free on the show all the time.
• 1:15:43
  It's fine. Yeah, you know, I think that, you know,
• 1:15:48
  I think that the film industry can be a big, scary place, and
• 1:15:53
  I think that when you think about agents or investors, you think of these
• 1:15:58
  sort of faceless people that are are really intimidating and really cutthroat. And the
• 1:16:02
  fact is that there is a really healthy part of the film industry, independent
• 1:16:08
  or studio system, that is here because they love stories and they're here for
• 1:16:14
  the right reason. So I think, you know, I think authenticity focusing
• 1:16:18
  on authenticity and you know, making stories that really resonate for you and building
• 1:16:23
  around that, you know, not being blind to the business aspect of it.
• 1:16:27
  But you know, realizing that if you do make something that is incredibly
• 1:16:30
  powerful or tells a story that's true for a lot of people, and then
• 1:16:33
  you also build value that there are going to be people who are passionate and
• 1:16:38
  excited about that. And yes, it may take time, but I think
• 1:16:42
  don't make it a foregone conclusion that everyone is cynical out there, because I
• 1:16:46
  think there are a lot of companies out there that are looking to be part
• 1:16:49
  of something meaningful and if you've created that, then you can be part of
• 1:16:55
  that that dream for everyone. I you know, if I could tag onto
• 1:16:59
  that, because I found that, you know, doing my rounds in Hollywood
• 1:17:02
  so much as I've done in the years. You know, yes, they
• 1:17:06
  are these these gods that we have on Mount Hollywood, you know, the
• 1:17:10
  Spielberg's and the Nolans and these kind of guys. But at the end of
• 1:17:14
  the day, they're all human. Everyone's human. Everyone you meet is human.
• 1:17:16
  Yet some have more egos. Some are our you know, our asses,
• 1:17:20
  some are not. Some are very sweet, some Americans, but they're
• 1:17:24
  human beings and you get all all shirks. But I found, honestly,
• 1:17:28
  once you break through that first layer, if you're a professional and are providing
• 1:17:31
  value to the person you're talking to, They're going to reciprocate and they're going
• 1:17:35
  to be open to it. It's the what can you do for me?
• 1:17:40
  I want you to read my script? I want you to give me money
• 1:17:43
  like that energy. Of course you're gonna you're gonna get like dude, just
• 1:17:46
  back off, right. And the best advice I ever heard from anything,
• 1:17:49
  like, what's the best advice to be in the film business? That don't
• 1:17:51
  be a dick? Right, It's that the best, like the best advice
• 1:17:57
  ever, right, right? Yeah. I think people have this concept the
• 1:18:00
  film industry as being really cutthroat and cynical, and then they try to adapt
• 1:18:03
  a version of themselves that can handle that, and I think that's the exact
• 1:18:08
  wrong way to go. I think you described it exactly correct, that just
• 1:18:13
  don't be a dick. And in mind that there are there are nice people
• 1:18:16
  out there who, you know, if you have built something valuable, would
• 1:18:20
  be interested to have discussion. That's the key value. If you can provide
• 1:18:25
  value in whatever way, shape or form, that's going to open the door
• 1:18:28
  much quicker than peen a dick. And now the toughest question of all three
• 1:18:34
  of your three of your favorite films of all time. Oh, no,
• 1:18:39
  my gosh, Okay, okay, recent film so when I was a kid
• 1:18:44
  growing up, and it's problematic for a number of reasons today, but I
• 1:18:46
  loved and people hate this film. But I love Forrest Gump. I think
• 1:18:50
  Forest Gump. I mean, I love Look, I love Forest Gump.
• 1:18:53
  I think Forrest Gump is fantastic. If it's on, I'll watch it.
• 1:18:56
  Do I think that it should have beaten pulp fiction, as is the relevance
• 1:19:00
  of what it was that like in the history of cinema. Yeah, but
• 1:19:05
  it was fantastic. Yeah, it's so much fun for scup I love.
• 1:19:11
  It's hard to choose the top films, but in the past few years,
• 1:19:15
  I've loved films like I loved Room. I think about Room a lot for
• 1:19:20
  its structure and what it was able to accomplish with relatively not the Room,
• 1:19:26
  not the Room, but Room, not Tommy Wissou's Room. I love them
• 1:19:30
  both. I think I think my top three are Room, the Room,
• 1:19:33
  and I think that's I think that's everyone who's everyone who's listened to the show
• 1:19:41
  knows my affinity for The Room and how genius of the film that is,
• 1:19:45
  and how there's very few films that can transcend from so bad too Oh my
• 1:19:53
  god, I love it. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:19:58
  sponsor, and now back to the show. I've yet to watch Cats,
• 1:20:06
  though, I haven't heard that from Cats. I just here. It's just,
• 1:20:12
  yeah, you can't be self aware when you're making the Nothing. You
• 1:20:16
  can't. You must have zero self awareness. That is the key to success
• 1:20:20
  in making the Room. Yeah, you can, Like, if you and
• 1:20:24
  I sat down like we're gonna make a room kind of film, it's done.
• 1:20:28
  It's dead from the beginning. You have to be completely I'm like,
• 1:20:32
  no, but if you have to be completely unaware of how ridiculous or that
• 1:20:40
  is, it's exactly the room. Showgirls is another one that's just amazing.
• 1:20:45
  Remember show Showgirls is a huge fan base, huge fan base. Oh my
• 1:20:49
  god, they're just they're releasing a documentary on it right now of how it's
• 1:20:55
  transcended itself. Now and you can watch show Girls. It's not the Room,
• 1:20:59
  it's thinks the Room, because that's just a a hole. I mean,
• 1:21:01
  that wasn't a you know, it's not Paul Verhoven, for God's sakes,
• 1:21:04
  directing it, but you watched, you watched it's so beautifully bad.
• 1:21:10
  There's like beautifully bed and then there's just masterpieces. The room is a masterpiece
• 1:21:14
  of He uses the same stock footage three times, Like, just watch it,
• 1:21:20
  but you can't watch Do you ever watch the room alone? Don't do
• 1:21:24
  that. The Room has to be watched with a group of people. That's
• 1:21:27
  the only way to properly enjoy the room. It's like Rocky horror. You
• 1:21:30
  should not watch it alone. That's agreed. Agreed. Yeah, Now where
• 1:21:34
  can people? Where can people find you? And Slated and the work you
• 1:21:39
  do? Uh, you know, Come visit us at slated dot com.
• 1:21:42
  Sign up, it takes two seconds, it's free, and then you can
• 1:21:45
  chat with us via our little chat bubble at the bottom right corner. There's
• 1:21:47
  a little orange dot. Click on that and you'll be talking to one of
• 1:21:50
  us in no time at all. So wherever you are, we'll be able
• 1:21:54
  to help you get set up. Greg. It has been an absolute pleasure
• 1:21:58
  having you in your show. Man. Thank you for dropping all the knowledge
• 1:22:00
  bombs and the inside knowledge bombs on the industry today. So thanks brother oh
• 1:22:04
  Man, not at all. Yeah, really nice to chat with you.
• 1:22:06
  Alex and I hope we get to chat against So. If we can learn
• 1:22:11
  one thing from this episode, it is that you shouldn't watch the Room alone.
• 1:22:15
  It's just weird. Guys, just don't do it. I want to
• 1:22:19
  thank Greg for coming on the show and dropping those knowledge bombs on the Bulletproof
• 1:22:24
  Screenwriting Tribe. Thank you so much. Greg. If you want to get
• 1:22:27
  links to anything we talked about in this episode, as well as contact information
• 1:22:30
  for what he does at slated, head over to the show notes at innifilmuscle
• 1:22:34
  dot com Forward slash seven forty five, and if you have it already,
• 1:22:38
  please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave a good review
• 1:22:44
  for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank
• 1:22:46
  you again so much for listening. Guys, as always, keep that hustle
• 1:22:49
  going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk
• 1:22:53
  to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at indiefilm
• 1:22:57
  hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F I L M h
• 1:23:00
  U S T l E dot com.