Latest / Kyle Meredith With... / Gill Holland on Indie Film, Louisville, and Making the Impossible Happen

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Gill Holland on Indie Film, Louisville, and Making the Impossible Happen · Kyle Meredith With...

0:00
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[SPEAKER_03]: And welcome to another edition of Kyle Manith with, it's the interview series presented by WFPK at WFPK.org, consequence and the consequence podcast network.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So of course we've had some great guests drop them by lately including the cast of Shrinking Jessica Williams, Krista Miller, Ted McGinley, Michael Yury talking about season three.
1:11
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1:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's me, Kyle Meredith.
1:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Today, I get to take it all the way back to Louisville to talk to my friend, film producer Gill Holland.
2:01
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, he's going to trace a nearly 30-year career
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[SPEAKER_03]: from early Sundance, Breakthroughs like Hurricane Streets, Documentaries, such as Flow for Love of Water, the Beloved Big Star Dock that you can see on HBO, plus Cult Favorites like Greg the Bunny, remember to Greg the Bunny back on Fox way back in the day, so Gil's gonna dig into what a producer actually does.
2:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Why rejection is basically part of the job description how the 90s indie boom cracked Hollywood right open And why that spirit might be poised for a comeback in the age of streaming an AI and along the way He's gonna explain why Louisville became his home How can Tucky keeps finding its way into his work and what's next including new projects with Sarah Silverman and Bonnie Prince Billy
2:54
[SPEAKER_03]: All that and more as we discuss the Louisville film scene, it's Kyle Meredith with Gil Holland.
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks Kyle, I'm stoked to be here.
3:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, I've known each other for quite a few years now, and when I brought this up and said that I think I might want you as my first guest, you somewhat casually mentioned that you might have more film credits than any other person in Kentucky.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I have been working on movies for almost 30 years, and if you work on like five films a year for 30 years, you somehow you get to 150, it just kind of happens.
3:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
3:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So, let's tell people exactly what you do though, what do you consider your job title?
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's funny because in Louisville and most Kentucky people may not even know I'm really a filmmaker, but in New York City everybody knows how to do stuff like New Lou and Arnold County.
3:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm only seen as a film producer so you know a producer is the person who finds the script first person on project find the script find the director raises the money hires the crew cast and then you know kind of overseas with the editor, you know the editing the post production and then the marketing distribution and
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the first person on a project and the last person, you know, I'm still working on films that were made 20 years ago still trying to, you know, monetize them and get them out in the world.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that true?
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like flow for love of water, is a documentary about globalization and privatization of water, which was at Sundance in 05 and played it all over the world and has only gotten more relevant post, you know, Flint, Michigan, you know.
4:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I do hear about that.
4:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes when I'm talking with filmmakers anyway, especially like the documentary world, sometimes with writers, you know, you'll hear something like, well, I started pitching this, you know, 20 years ago when it's taken till now to get it made, but rarely do you hear actually someone say, like, well, it's there and I'm still working on it.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, we had a happy surprise when our documentary about the band Big Star, all of a sudden HBO Max was like, we won a license at, and that was kind of like out of the blue.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, great.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We're very excited about that.
5:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Which by the way, that Big Star, I mean, that's definitely one hour listeners here.
5:10
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll have seen, we talk about that on, I mean, that you're a part of that, you know, and you have so many credits.
5:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That one's on my list though, that's one of those, so it's like, geez, you worked on the Big Star movie.
5:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, it started because we were at South by Southwest when at the week that Alex Shelton died.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we were like, oh my gosh, we got to put together a tribute band and I just worked on a film that Michael Stipe, I produced a film called Spring Forward.
5:35
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... with some other folks in michael stipe is the exact producer and so are the are in some of the uh... mic mills i think was there from rm and so they were put together tribute band and we were i found my director i was like we need to film this we need to make a documentary about us young and then you know five years later we had a big start out you know it involved and i don't think any of the footage from that south by south of us tribute show ended up in the final uh... picture but it's a beautiful little documentary
5:59
[SPEAKER_03]: and it's an important part of their story now, too.
6:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you see Mike Mills when he comes into town?
6:03
[SPEAKER_03]: He's here like if you're from the baseball project that we're on a tiger, not too long ago.
6:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, good gang there.
6:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's go back to the beginning there.
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: How did you get into the business?
6:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, how did you end up here?
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, we'll grow it up in Davidson, North Carolina, not a lot to do, but and so movies were a big escapeist, a way to travel the world, Z4 in language films, you know, collect stamps and coins, kind of thing, and my dad was a big film buff.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I went to college, I wanted to do any film studies class, there was two, and then when I went to law school, I was like, I really want to just do something else, but I went to worked in a law firm in Paris France, and one of the clients was a film producer, and I was like, oh my god, people make movies, I'd never met a film producer.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So then I went to New York, it started interning in a film company.
6:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Could have been a lawyer.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I, yes, I was basically a glorified paralegal because I'd never took the, like, the French bar.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you know, the film around here in this industry instead, it's, it's fun.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, that was early mid-90s when Hindi film was really starting to disrupt the Hollywood system, and so it was a very exciting time.
7:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And I, I did want to talk about that because, because that is like, there are a few points in Hollywood history where that gets to happen.
7:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And when we talk about the 90s indie boom, you know, names come up, of course, the easy ones like Link Ladder and Kevin Smith, and was a brother's big mullin, it burns, like things like that, like, I'd love for you to talk about that era just a little bit, like, how did that happen?
7:35
[SPEAKER_03]: that we got to that spot that really allowed you to kind of find your footing, right?
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I would go back to John Casavetti's who I think really kind of started it making movies with his friends, 16 millimeter cheap and then early nineties you did have the the link ladders, the slackers, the Jim Jarmooshes,
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that was kind of a new definition of independent film like we were working outside the studio system.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the studios had the hate A and the 70s made all those amazing movies, 80s that started feeling like bloated.
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're like, we could work independently of the studio system, but dependently on all our friends and we can
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: work with the actors, but we can everybody can share in the profit if the film is successful.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll disrupt the creative accounting that the Hollywood studios use to try not to actually share any profit.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have something to say, and we were also taking a path of the foreign language film, which would show edgeier content, gay content, and indie films can do that because you
8:46
[SPEAKER_01]: show new interesting stories queer cinema was a big part of it uh and then when the digital revolution happened in the late nineties then all of a sudden there was a great democratization of the storymaking process because in the old days you know to get access to a 35 millimeter camera
9:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You either had to be rich or go to an amazing film school, which costs money, and so there's like lots of white dudes making movies who maybe don't have that important of a story to tell, and then with digital video, all of a sudden floodgates open, and now filmmaking is just an art form, like writing a book, or making a painting.
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You can literally make a feature film when you're self on it.
9:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and we'll be right back right after this.
9:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith with Gill Holland.
9:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I've hoped because there's still a great independent film's being made right now.
9:35
[SPEAKER_03]: There's still not exactly being seen or celebrated maybe in the same way that they were in that 90s moment that we're talking about.
9:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But it feels like we could be getting to that point, especially with the big, the big consolidations that's happening with streaming.
9:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, everybody's hearing about Netflix and Warner and all of that.
9:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
9:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel optimistic that there's something that all the big guys are going to be arguing over here and it's just going to allow for this other thing to happen.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I also have a theory.
10:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously, like,
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: you know independent film we made we made we made the change there now lots of actors doing interesting stuff taking risks working for scale on a low-budget film because they believe in it and hope it's going to have a you know successful critical life and then festival life and then distribution life you know look at sentimental value which is a pretty small Norwegian movie and
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also think with AI, you know, all these Marvel films are going to be able to be made by, you know, four English majors who are really good at writing prompts.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you pay some famous actors for their likeness and they don't even have to show up and you can make a whole Marvel film with like four people in probably two weeks for not very much money.
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: but like indie film like we don't even use CGI right so we will I think indie film and like actors theater live theater just like sports like you know chatbots can't do those things so I think indie film is actually gonna come back in an interesting way distribution is always the challenge because you know people are used to getting free music and music is often the cold the canary in the coal mine for the film industry as bandwidth you know
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: you know how Napster, you know, initially destroyed the music industry and then Spotify has resurrected it as the bandwidth for transmitting, you know.
11:34
[SPEAKER_01]: audio visual images.
11:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I movies has shrunk so much.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at how music everybody thinks music should be free.
11:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm a little worried at some point everybody thinks movies should be free or just $10 a month.
11:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you got to get on to Netflix.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's hard because they have the gatekeepers.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
11:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Because when you know a lot of the times if I'm looking for something that might fall in this category that we're talking about.
11:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Like my first thought is that probably means I need to go to prime or apple and rent it, you know, from there.
12:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it is very hard.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Netflix, in the past, Netflix would actually license a lot of independent content, but now they are making so much of their own content.
12:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is much harder to get a film on to Netflix.
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and in the old days, Amazon Prime would take pretty much any indie film that played major festivals.
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They've gotten a little harder to, to always get
12:28
[SPEAKER_01]: to platform your film.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So then, you're looking at Hulu and all these other places and Roku and Tobi and movie and you know there's all these places but how do you drive people there?
12:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
12:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So how's that going for you?
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it's always a challenge.
12:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always psyched when somebody sees one of our films and how am I always like, where did you see it?
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm always so curious like, because you know, you can't keep track of where it's playing.
12:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And then film hub is another place where people can kind of upload their own content and then they're responsible for driving their own eyeballs.
13:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, and looking back here because I do want to hit on some of these because again, what an incredible list of films that you've been a part of, uh, headed all the way back to the beginning, there are two titles that I think we should start with, but uh, hurricane streets, right, and this was, did you say this is your first film?
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, I got super lucky.
13:20
[SPEAKER_01]: My first film was, I, I started a, a short film distribution, I guess company, but really, I was stealing an idea from the Paris Review, which was a great, you know, is the great compilation of short literature, short stories.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, why isn't there, like, a compilation of great short films?
13:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started Senate last.
13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I met this young director, named Morgan Freeman, not the actor of Oregon, Jay Freeman.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But we did get good seeding at restaurants when we would use his name to reserve tables and I distributed his short film and I thought he was super talented and then I said you know And then when somebody's people kept saying guilty should be a producer you know everybody you're you know You're honest you get stuff done So I was like sure I'll try to be a producer.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like yeah, I remember that one guy in Paris.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't seem that smart I'm guy
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: probably as smart as he as maybe I could be a producer.
14:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And Morgan had introduced me to one person who's feeling like he'd never get off the ground and then Morgan was like, what about this one?
14:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, well, this is great.
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And we literally, and it was an East Village story with these kids and Brendan Sexton, the third was going to be in it who had just done welcome to the Dollhouse.
14:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I know it's Warren from Empire Records.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's right.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Morgan, I literally got together and we put all our credit cards out on a table and we were like, we could shoot in our apartments, we in New York City, you can shoot for free on the street.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were like, we can shoot in the streets, we can shoot on my roof, we can shoot in my apartment.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had like 10 grand worth of capacity on my credit cards, he had like 10 grand on his credit cards.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we basically kind of greenlit ourselves, we were like, we'll shoot on 16-millimeter super-8 if we have to.
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once you greenlight yourself, then people start getting phomo translate in the station.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we actually got an up money to shoot 35 millimeter.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were insanely lucky to get into science.
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And then go, and we were the first film ever to win three prizes at science.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And sold the DMGM.
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of the few indie films that sold to a major studio.
15:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And when we were talking about that era and everything, because I was thinking of like Miramax, like places like that that was really kind to some of those
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But I loved it because you sent me an email about that and you said and it's life's been downhill ever since Life has been downhill ever since because you know you don't realize how hard you know I've had so many films are detected from Sundance since then and you know I'm lucky to have I don't know like 14 films that have played there, but
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: three times this, you know, independent filmmaking is about rejection, because, you know, you want an actor to be in it, they reject you, you want an investor to invest in it, they reject you.
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to shoot in this location, they reject you.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to apply to something that's they reject you.
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You want, you know, 20, you know, Fox to buy your film, or Netflix to buy your film, they reject you.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to have some thick skin.
16:07
[SPEAKER_03]: yeah well and you know you talk about the parallels in music i mean nine times out of ten it's that debut album everybody still talks about you know and then then you start to know whatever but but that's almost not a fair comparison when i look at some of these other titles right here
16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I got lucky too, because then my second film, Dear Jesse, was a documentary, and Tim was like, I've never done documentary, I've barely done one feature, but when he told me the premise, I was like, that's an amazing premise for a film, and that was his special relationship with Jesse Helms as a gay North Carolina writer, director, who's being represented in the Senate.
16:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I had the guy who calls him the son of Satan.
16:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesse was notoriously homophobic, North Carolina Senator, and
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, Matthew Shepard was in their Jesse, and then we got HBO then bought that and was not many for an Emmy.
16:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had kind of two kind of bigish ones out of the box, and then it's been harder.
17:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Well then, let's see, Sweetland.
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a big winner right there.
17:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Sweetland won the Spirit Award.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Sweetland, I pretty sure got rejected from Sundance, and then won the Spirit Award for Best Furch feature.
17:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like one of the programmers was like, you should have submitted that Sundance, and I was like, I'm pretty sure I did!
17:20
[SPEAKER_03]: That's usually the way those conversations were.
17:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was fun because I was Ned Bany.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I did two films with Kentucky.
17:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I noticed that.
17:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I noticed that.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Two films with the actor Cedar guy.
17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And he loves Kentucky, and we talked to you, you know, it was fun.
17:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll be right back right after this.
17:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Middith with Gill Holland Desert Blue, what a great cast on it.
17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was Kate Hudson's first starring role, right?
17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I saw her last week in, or at the Gotham Awards, sorry, I guess a month ago, in New York, had not seen her in like 25 years.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for song song Blue, and I'm dying to see that film.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's so great.
17:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, she's going to be a huge star.
17:55
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom called me just yesterday to tell me she just got out of the theater, seeing song some blue and it's the best thing that she's seen forever.
18:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's supposed to be great.
18:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
18:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But that cast that does her blue and then adventures the power, of course, most people note as the air-draming movie, which I remember right that that started as a documentary that went into a movie.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that how it happened?
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Or was it just the movie?
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean there what there is a famous documentary about hair drumming.
18:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember if this if that came before after our film, but yeah, unfortunately, our, the adventure's power also played Sundance, but it was in the midnight category.
18:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And the director, I don't remember this, so I'll say allegedly, but the director says we had some technical difficulties.
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The movie didn't start to one.
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: He says Harvey Weinstein showed up drunk left 15 minutes into it and then all
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: and so everybody says it was like the clunker that was dead on arrival.
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really good movie.
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Jane Lynch before, you know, Glee made her famous, Adrian Grignier, you know, who's the star of Entourage at the time, which was the biggest TV show.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a fun, it's a fun, it's a good movie.
19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Our goal is super talented filmmaker.
19:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
19:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Sort of.
19:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We see the trailer.
19:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, it's, it's got that Napoleon dynamite-esqueness to it.
19:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was one where I was like, this is going to be a huge head.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was basically kind of a financial bomb.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just like, it's so weird.
19:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Filmmaking is just, it's not, it's not necessarily good business.
19:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It is definitely a good art, sometimes.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, when you get lucky, the art and business come together,
19:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's the great question about all of this, like why do you continue to put yourself through it?
19:37
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's not, you know, because they say it's like the line that people say most, I think in this business, it's impossible to make a movie, right?
19:44
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the line.
19:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It's impossible to make a movie.
19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you can make a movie,
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: like you've gone beyond.
19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, play well with others, team up with tons of people, you know, I see people in LA who sell scripts for 10 years and still haven't gotten one movie made.
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I do low budget films, I know my sandbox, I want to work with first timers that I can, that need the, you know, time talent treasure, whatever I can bring to the table or with my connections.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm not trying to make the next, you know, Gallaudet Guardians of the Galaxy.
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to make a low budget film that we can raise the money for and get made and kind of help start some careers.
20:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: lately, because I'm looking, let's see here, hazard, unknown country, even night shift, like a lot of these characters are in bed spots.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's funny.
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, so hazard, we shot up in her own county, and then we have two other movies that shot in her own county last summer, so they're coming down the pike.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm excited about that, just getting more business eco tourism to Kentucky's Appalachia, because I feel like we have an amazing story to tell
20:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Hollywood has often told the negative stereotypes of our Appalachian heritage without seeing all the amazing stories we have.
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sometimes, you know, the unknown country, you know, Lily Gladstone, the second movie I worked on with her and, you know, that one was an amazing story because there's, there was not much of a script, it was like we're going to have, you know, this amazing native American actress touring the country after trump gets elected and.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: and, you know, the film's called the Unknown Country.
21:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I literally, I met them at a kind of a pitch thing and I was like, I'm in, this is going to be amazing.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it was going to be an art total art project.
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, then she gets an RNA for the Oscar with Martin Scorskezi and flowers at the Kale Moon.
21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden, the film that was the total art project is now selling all over the world.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, we might not lose all our money, which would be amazing.
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny, rising tide lifts all ships, right?
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it right there.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's why I love indie film, because you also, you don't have to cast somebody to get the money, you know, if you have a story and you can, whether it be non-profit donations or crowdfunding or, you know, creating an LLC and selling you little units in it, somehow you get it made, and then it hopefully it finds its life.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can really work with some people who are now, you know, so many people now, I can't afford to work with anymore,
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, no, that's when you call in the favor like you remember I was there at the beginning there uh, speaking at the beginning there was one I missed and I know I'm jumping around a lot, but Greg the bunny Greg the bunny.
22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Greg the bunny.
22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: What tell me the story of Greg the bunny?
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So Greg the bunny so my great friend Kevin Chenoy called me and he had just finished work in business school and wanted to get in the film business and I was like, I don't have any money He's like, no, I'll work whatever
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, after six months, I'm like, okay, you're my partner now.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And his little brother was in why you, Spencer, and his two best friends, Sean Baker, and Dan Milano, and they were doing this goofy little puppet show called Greg the Bunny, and it was awesome.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh my God, this is so good.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was something called Metro TV in New York, and it was like a cable access.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, man, we could really do something with this.
23:11
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys are clever.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I pitched IFC independent film channel.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: They were looking for a late night host for this TV, to present these classic films.
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, what if it was Greg the Bonnie?
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Sean Baker, so Kevin and I were basically Sean Baker's first man at, you know, co-managers, they had a little, we created a little company with them called Monkeys with checkbooks.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And they created all these parodies of classic movies, whether it's Jim Jarmoos or Stanley Kubrick, or Spike Lee, I mean, like the, the IFC Greg the Bunny Show is one of the funniest things you will ever see if you can find them online.
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, everybody was like, oh, this shows great.
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So then we cobbled together the two seasons, I think, of IFC into like a four minute pitch and found some big Hollywood showrunners and sold to show to Fox.
24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, had 13 episodes on air and it started among it.
24:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Eugene Levy played Gill, so that was a little complicated on set sometimes.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sarah Silverman, it was kind of her first big,
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: like network show.
24:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a really good show.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not as funny as I have seen because we had a little more creative license to be disrespectful, maybe two corporate brands that might, you know, not be advertising on I have seen, but might be advertising on Fox or it gets a little bit, and you're still working with Sarah Silverman.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Sarah Silverman, we actually just shot a film in Louisville that Sarah Silverman is the
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't even know if it's on IMDB, but word will start getting out that she was here for a month and it's going to be a good film.
24:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, apparently you didn't sign the non-descript right there.
24:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You could still say that part, which brings us up to the present.
25:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So what else, what else are you working on right now?
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: right so you know we had a fun fall we had a documentary we sat in rural North Carolina called Freeman vines a short knock they got Oscar qualified so we did a full Oscar campaign we did not make the final 15 shortlist but it was really fun and learned a lot and oh there's a lot of lobbying and
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: money that goes into these Oscar campaigns, even for a short documentary.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's, and we just got an army for a NAACP image award for that film and it played a lot of festival.
25:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's been really kind of gratifying.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We got a music-related narrative feature that start shooting in Louisville next week with our very own Will Older Bunny Prince Billy.
25:45
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, you know, if I want to put my friend Will in every movie that we do, it's always fun to sing him in movies too.
25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and Allison Russell, the great Grammy winner.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We love Allison Russell.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We love Allison Russell.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be starring in that.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And a couple of other names are not sure we can talk about yet, but yeah.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But music driven.
26:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Music driven.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about a musician having kind of a midlife crisis who had a hit.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: uh as a younger musician and going through maybe some mental it's a little unclear.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to talk too much about it because it's going to be exciting.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have maybe maybe Wild and plays an Obi-Wan Kenobi type character, but he's also very mysterious.
26:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope we can partner up on that whenever that gets released on here.
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and all the original songs, and it's a singer songwriter on Sonoblast, who is also an amazing filmmaker.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I met him first as a filmmaker, so it's kind of all coming together in this maybe.
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be good.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful.
26:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to wrap up, too, with the question, and now that I look at the question, I'm laughing because of what it is, but why Louisville?
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was a trailing spouse, and I'm still here, post-Amicable Divorce.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an amazing town.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a creative town.
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We have great locations.
27:00
[SPEAKER_01]: We have great tax incentive for films, buildings, or movies, so it's intellectual property, or real property.
27:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So in Louisville, I can be a developer, just like I'm a producer, and I find a property, which is like finding an intellectual property, which is a script, and then I
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: hire a director that's like hiring an architect and then you have a crew and you have a line item budget and you try to make it and not lose money and you know real states a better business per se but both of them you're telling stories and I like telling stories but you've just been such a big cheerleader for this town over these years.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an amazing town.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean after 10 years living in New York City
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've traveled, you know, my mom's from Norway, I lived in France and Spain in England.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen a lot of cities and after 10 years in New York, I started a kind of joke that I was auditioning cities.
27:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, where do you move after you have lived in New York City?
27:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And because of the vibrant art scene here,
27:52
[SPEAKER_01]: which, you know, I give Mayor Farnsley some credit for starting front for the arts, you know, look at like what Teddy Abrams is doing, look at what the new folks at Actress Theatre kind of bringing back, look at the history of the Humanifestible.
28:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We have amazing creative fabric and the capacity for creatives to live here and support themselves without having to work 80 hours a week.
28:15
[SPEAKER_01]: My creative friends in New York, I'm like, why do you still live there?
28:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, move here and really build your creative brand.
28:22
[SPEAKER_03]: That's your Jedi mind trick because so many people have moved here because you're Holland brought them here.
28:28
[SPEAKER_03]: You should move to Louisville and then they come and let's say, how did you come to Louisville?
28:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I know Gilles.
28:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, of course you do.
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the, yeah, but Louisville, I'm here with, you know, the Derby or Birbon and Beyond or whatever and then keep them here.
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, and I feel like it's really starting to happen.
28:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and Aia, you know, I do think Aia is going to hollow out a lot of the jobs in LA.
28:43
[SPEAKER_01]: but indie films gonna be good so we do need to get more people from L.A. New York to move here.
28:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I know that you can do it if anybody can and and and congratulations on it, you know, the whole career but also all of the upcoming stuff that you're a part of because again, if you can make a movie, you've already completed the impossible and you just keep making movies.
29:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So
29:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep working.
29:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm lucky to work with some amazing people and you know, it's the man is in the sandwich.
29:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just figure out how you can slot in and be helpful in some way to keep everything moving forward.
29:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I know.
29:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you so much for taking the time.
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Kyle.
29:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And my thanks to Gill Holland and to you for checking out the episode, hit that subscribe button before you get out of here.
29:24
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29:41
[SPEAKER_03]: After that, you can head over to WFPK.org, right to a show, Monday through Friday starting 6 PM Eastern, 4 hours of classics from the 80s and 90s, you get the best in new music and bonus interviews, lots of music and film news, one of my recent shows featured some classics and favorites from Weezer.
29:58
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30:20
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30:25
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30:28
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30:32
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30:34
[SPEAKER_03]: That does it for another edition I'm Kyle Meredith.
30:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll see you next time
30:51
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30:57
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