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BPS 305: How I Made $193M Off My Micro-Budget Film with Oren Peli · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three oh five. Happiness is found when you stop
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  comparing yourself to other people. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
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  Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
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  to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
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  host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
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  Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the
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  kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so
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  we actually break it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film,
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  market, and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader
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  that used to reading tempol movies when your movie is going to be done for
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  one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script
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  Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WM, NBC,
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  HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and
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  many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by
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  professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay. Dot Com enjoyed this
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  episode with guest host Scott McMahon. Today's episode is a rebroadcast of a past
• 1:40
  episode in which I interview the creator of Paranormal Activity or in Pelly. Halloween
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  is around the corner, So I thought I polished this interview off and share
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  with you again. But what I love about this interview is how we're able
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  to go step by step of what had to happen in order to make Paranormal
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  Activity the success it became. You've probably heard the story how or Paralormal Activity
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  for fifteen thousand dollars and then sold it to Paramount and how it became a
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  massive hit. Well, you probably don't know is all the emotions that went
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  into this roller coaster ride and so many things having to line up in order
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  for it to become a global phenomenon. You know, sometimes luck plays a
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  factor, and you're going to hear that in this episode. And I'm titling
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  this episode. Imagine making one ninety three million dollars off your micro budget film.
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  Just let that sit with you for a moment. Yeah, it's the
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  dream. I'm sure we've all had a dream scenario like that. Now you
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  get to hear the blow by blow steps of what that actually feels like when
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  Orange shares his story with us. Now, I'm not sure if this will
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  ever happen again, but who knows, it could happen to you. I
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  mean, your film could be the next paranormal activity. Anything is possible.
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  So sit back and enjoy this rebroadcast of my interview with Orn Pelllly here on
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  the Film Trooper podcast. Well, it's been a very long time since you
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  and I bumped into each other. Yeah, quite a bit. Yeah,
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  I think honest gosh, you know, I think really honestly, last time,
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  we kind of just I mean, we always would see each other at
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  like the events or the parties, but we really only worked together briefly on
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  like one of the basketball games at Sony, and you were the only I'm
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  gonna say this is really interesting because you were the only person that would help
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  us because I was working in the cinematics department and we're having problems with the
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  video player, I think for PlayStation two, because it was fairly new.
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  You know how Sony would have like their proprietary code on top of whatever code
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  was normal, but they we were having a really difficult time trying to get
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  the movie player to work on PlayStation two, and we were trying to figure
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  out the specs that we had to create the pre rereder movies for and you
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  were the only person, the only programmer that was so kind enough and willing
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  enough to like work out all the kinks and made the major breakthrough for us.
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  So I just want to say, hey, way back then, I
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  just want to say thank you, no problem. But to be honest,
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  I don't even really remember that. I'm not even sure what you sure it
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  was me? And not to maybe a mirror well, I mean it could
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  have been. It could have been me. It was. We're talking probably
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  like fifteen to twenty years ago, right, has it been that long?
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  Good? God? Yeah, I mean it's I was. I was there
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  ninety six when I started, and so this you're right right about fifteen years
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  I think almost Yeah, Yeah, I started in ninety seven and then I
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  started with any Feel Extreme with the Mirror, so it probably was for one
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  of those in either in ninety seven or ninety eight, so a long time
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  ago. Oh my god, Oh I feel old now. Yeah. Well,
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  you know what's interesting, Yeah, because both of you and a Mirror
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  are very kind to spend time helping us out, and that was really cool
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  and it's it's interesting. The reason I kind of brought the A Little Story
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  up is sort of just to also get reacquainted, but for this particular podcast
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  that I do for film Trooper, which is the whole resources designed to try
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  to help filmmakers become entrepreneurs in this new day and age. You know of
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  people just basically living that like the four hour workweek type thing and just trying
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  to apply online entrepreneurship, marketing and business and try to give that information over
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  to independent filmmakers as as everything keeps changing so rapidly. But anyhow, what
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  I like to do is take people through sort of the general hero's journey and
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  what you just gave or what we just shared there was what I call your
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  save the Cat moment, you know, little Blake Snyder screenwriting book, and
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  you know that concept, like your character has to have like a save the
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  cat moment within like the first five minutes or something, so the audience can
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  say, yes, I like this character, or I can relate to this
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  character, and I will follow this character all the way through the end.
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  Well that was to me. That's that's me sharing your say of the cap
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  moment, which is just showing that during a time where nobody else was helping
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  us, you did. So. Thank you, no problem. So let
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  me ask you. So another book this I like to pair it up the
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  classic story book or story by Robert McKee. He talks about the inciting incident
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  and do you remember like one movie when you were younger that made that had
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  an effect on you. That doesn't have to be related to paranormal activity or
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  a horror film. It could be something completely different. But do you have
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  like a like a memory like that. I mean, there have been a
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  lot of movies that it had, you know, a tremendous impact on me,
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  specifically related to paranormal activity. I would say as a kid, it
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  was The Exorcist that you know totally traumatized me. And later on Blair Witch
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  projects which we can talk about or when it comes to you know, the
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  mechanics of low budget, but there will be a lot of movie events that
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  are you know, kind of ingrained in my movie memory as a kid,
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  like you know, going to see Star Wars for the first time and it
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  Indiana Jones, you know, all those kind of movies that defined our childhoods
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  had a tremendous impact. But also you know, I would like to watch
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  as soon as the video rental became available in Israel, which was more probably
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  in the mid to late eighties, then I just watched massive quantities of movies
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  then, and I believe that I got something, a little something out of
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  every movie, whether good or bad. So it's kind of like sometimes just
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  being exposed to the sheer volume of movies and cinemas and different styles of directing,
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  its storytelling, and sort of like you know, gives you a mess
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  amount of knowledge or you know, sort of like secondhand experience sort of as
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  you're watching a movie and you're trying to figure out, like why would the
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  director do such and such and such, why would they cut here, or
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  they're sort of kind of like in programming terms, reverse engineering something, which
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  is how I learned programming by looking at at these people code and you know,
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  then tweaking it and learning from it. So that was, in a
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  way my approach to filmmaking, just watching as many movies as I can,
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  and of course later when DVDs became available, I would watch you know,
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  the director of commentaries and behind the scenes and just try to get into the
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  head of the filmmaker and figure out, you know, why they did what
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  they did. Yeah, definitely. Hey, so let me ask you what
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  was This is a really weird question, but do you remember the day that
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  you your family got a VCR and what that was like to be able to
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  rent movies in your own home. Was it an exciting event? It was
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  more gradual than that. We got a VCR really early on, and we
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  were one of the first on our blow. We actually, when I was
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  a kid, we won the lottery in Israel. Not the big price of
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  millions of dollars. It was more like five numbers out of six or something
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  like that, so it was probably, I'm guessing, in two days dollars
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  the equivalent of you know, twenty or thirty thousand dollars, which was not
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  life changing, but very nice. So we we splurged on a few things
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  and one of them was a VCR. But we were ahead of the time.
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  Back then there were no you know, video rental places in Israel,
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  so we could use it to record shows of TV. But it wasn't until
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  many years later that slowly, you know, video rental places became available and
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  they would have very limited selection, and you know, over the years it
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  kind of grew. So it wasn't like one day we have a VCR and
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  suddenly we have access to hundreds of movies. It was a multi year process.
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  Interesting. Yeah, I'm just fascinated because you know, I grew up
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  in San Diego. Actually, we'll be right back after a word from our
• 9:58
  sponsor and now back to the show. So my experience with Suburbia and the
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  first VCR and the camera, like the camera that was detached from the VCR,
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  that was like our first gig. And you know, obviously the first
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  thing that we did was, you know, my younger brother and my older
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  brother we would make a film acting like we were punching each other. That
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  was like our first film. That's a good way to start. Oh man,
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  I got some good little footage of Adam when he's little. Yeah,
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  but in our case, I mean, I even before VCR. You know,
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  before video rental, I would still go to the movies, probably like
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  every Friday. That would be like the thing that you know, me and
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  my friends would do almost every Friday. We would go and you know,
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  check out the latest film. So even even before a rental, you know,
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  it was still you know, a large part of my life. Very
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  cool, very cool. So yeah, so we have your save the cap
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  moment, we have your inciting incident. Let me ask you, so when
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  you start making normal activity, I know that I'm not going to rehash sort
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  of all the details that you've gone over before, because I'm going to actually
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  point everybody to a lot of these past interviews that you've done so everybody can
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  get the full story. I am actually interested. Did you had you always
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  thought that you wanted to become a filmmaker when you started doing paranoma activity or
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  was this something more like kind of like a shits and giggles like, you
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  know, I don't know, I kind of just want to make something.
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  It was a little different. It was, as I said, you know,
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  I always loved, you know, movies, but growing up in Israel's
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  making film was not something that seemed like, you know, within my grasp.
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  There was no real filmmaking industry in Israel, and so I always imagined,
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  to be a filmmaker, you need to go to film school and then
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  you know, spend many years there and work your way up through the industry
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  and maybe then one day you're lucky and you'll be able to beg and studio
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  to give you millions of dollars and you can make a film. Or maybe
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  you need to have connections. So I didn't even entertain the thought of becoming
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  involved in filmmaking. I thought I would just being a film fan. And
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  then I got into programming and I was doing pretty well, so I had
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  a comfortable you know living and I wasn't going to throw it all the way
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  to to start, you know, being an intern in you know, in
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  the film industry. Then I saw the Blair Witch project, which totally changed
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  my concept and my thought because you know, it's like, wow, anyone
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  can just buy video camera and run around and make a film. And then
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  I started looking into other filmmakers that started the way that way, like you
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  know, Robert Rodriguez and and there An Arnovski and Christopher Nolan and all of
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  these filmmakers started by making a no budget or you know, like a ten
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  thousand dollars film. In most of these cases, their first film wasn't a
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  huge hit, but it's definitely opened the door for them to get to bigger
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  and bigger films. So after I saw the Blair Which project, and I
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  kind of realized there may be another way I can get into the industry through
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  the back door, and you know, through a shortcut. I said to
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  myself, Well, if I ever have an idea for a film and I
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  think that I have the ability to make it, you know, sure,
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  why not? So when I made up the decision to make Paranormal Activity,
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  I was thinking, first of all, who knows, maybe it will become
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  the next Blur Which project, and if that will be the case, they
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  will change my life. I can quit my job that by then I really
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  really hated. And so I figured, you know, at least during the
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  time that I'm working on the movie, I'll have the hoop that will keep
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  me going, that maybe something will happen. They'll keep it driving me.
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  And if you know, worst case scenario, the movie turns out horrible and
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  I never sell it, then you know what, then made a shitty movie
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  that's still kind of cool. How many people can say they made a city
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  movie. And I figured, I'll allocate a budget of ten thousand dollars,
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  and you know, I can live with losing ten thousand dollars for you know,
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  having a hobby, you know, for a year or two. A
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  lot of people spend much more than that on hobbies that don't have any you
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  know, prospects of generating any income. So I figured it's a ten thousand
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  dollars gamble. It ended up being fifteen thousand because you know, like many
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  movies, it went over budget. But I figured it out for ten thousand
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  dollars. Either I kept myself busy for a year or two and made a
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  movie, or who knows if if the star is aligned and with some luck
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  and timing and you know, if the movie turns out right, who knows,
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  maybe maybe it will be a lefe changing event. So it was a
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  little bit of both. I kind of had to keep myself balanced and realistic
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  that the odds are against me, but can't lose sight of, you know,
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  the big dream. So you're definitely there. You've always had this sort
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  of artistic spirit then, because most artists or filmmakers or anybody who has a
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  need to express artistically. They're almost like cursed, Like you know what I
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  mean, They're always going to need to do something creative, expressive no matter
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  what. So you've I'm assuming that's what you've always had, that itch,
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  so like you like you were calculating it, but you're also saying, you
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  know what, I'm gonna have to just do this anyway. That's a part
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  of it. And I think part of it might have been with where I
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  was career wise, because at the early stages of my career there's been a
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  lot of room for a what I'm talking about career, I'm talking about programming.
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  There was a lot of room for creativity. There would be small,
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  efficient teams and like you know, like we've mentioned before, the first projects
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  that I worked on it's only with a mirror and it felt extreme. And
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  then there was another project that ended up not being released it was just me
• 15:56
  in the mirror. And then later on with Omar, so we were small
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  and it's one of us had a large set of responsibility but also a large
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  set of you know, creativity. And then in the later years at Sony,
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  you know, you are one of twenty to thirty programmers and your responsibility
• 16:17
  is very limited and basically just like you know, a code monkey, and
• 16:22
  there just wasn't any real city section in doing what I was doing. So
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  in that sense, you're probably right that making the film's satisfied a need that
• 16:33
  a head that I could not fulfill in my boring day job. It's interesting
• 16:37
  that you said that. I mean our days at Sony when we first started,
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  it was sort of like a mini startup. We were away from the
• 16:44
  main headquarters up in Foster City and being in San Diego, and I can
• 16:48
  attest as well. It was fun. I mean I was being able to
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  I was just making videos and then working with the Cinematic group at that point.
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  But things just got big, like by time PlayStation two halfway through and
• 17:02
  buy them. The sort of the urgency and rush of PlayStation three UM kind
• 17:07
  of imploded the company because it just got so big in corporate um that it
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  did become stifling. For sure. This was interesting. I was over at
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  the cinematic apartment across the way from you guys in the building across the street,
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  and we had access to like all this amazing equipment and all these people
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  that I worked with would always talk about like we gotta make a movie.
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  We gotta make we got all this stuff, We're gonna make a movie.
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  I think I was laughing, like I have all this access and I don't
• 17:32
  have a story to tell, and like and then like I would I would
• 17:34
  like write a bunch of scripts. But knowing production wise, I'm like,
• 17:38
  I just made a fucking one hundred million dollars film. I go like it.
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  It was like this creative block of like I have not been able to
• 17:45
  like come up with a story that I could just make like you did,
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  which you did a great job of just reverse engineering and saying, you know,
• 17:52
  I can make this. I can take the ten thousand you know,
• 17:56
  invested into this project because they can't ask what like ten thousand in general?
• 18:02
  What did that cover? Obviously you paid the actors, which is fantastic.
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  Yeah, the the actors didn't really get much. That wasn't a significant part
• 18:14
  of the project. Of the budget. Most of it was just equipment.
• 18:18
  The camera was, you know, over two thousand dollars. I bought a
• 18:22
  state of the art editing PC and some software. I think the PC alone
• 18:26
  was over three thousand dollars, and then all these accessories for the for the
• 18:30
  camera that was still you know when when hyde of cameras use tapes, so
• 18:34
  I bought I don't like seventy tapes or even more, and extra batteries and
• 18:41
  lenses and microphone. So all that stuff eded up, and then there was
• 18:47
  a lot of little miscellaneous stuff, like you know, when I did the
• 18:49
  casting additions to pay a few hundred dollars here and there for the for the
• 18:56
  theater that I would rent. So there was just a lot of little things
• 19:03
  here and there that ended up to be honest, I didn't really keep a
• 19:07
  very meticulous budget. I didn't really keep track of many of the smaller things.
• 19:15
  So when it said ten thousand dollars, it's an estimate. It wouldn't
• 19:18
  be way more or way and less. I think my original estimate was about
• 19:22
  eleven thousand, and then after we did some more reshuits it went up to
• 19:26
  a fifteen thousand, so it would be in that area. Maybe it's sixteen,
• 19:30
  maybe it's thirteen. I'm not really sure, but it's around there.
• 19:33
  That makes sense because at the time I remember, like when all the editing
• 19:38
  equipment that came down because we were using like Avid, we were using Media
• 19:44
  one hundred, we were using these, you know, twenty five one hundred
• 19:47
  thousand dollars machines over at the cinematic department, and then final cut came in,
• 19:52
  and then Sony Vegas came in after that, which is the software base
• 19:56
  that just plumb at the cost the DV cameras came out of nowhere. We'll
• 20:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 20:07
  show. And I remember just freaking out. I can't believe you could actually
• 20:12
  buy all this gear for a ten grand, which is pretty much what you
• 20:15
  bought what you paid for at that particular time in the state of things.
• 20:22
  So you finish, I'm gonna just crossover like really quick gloss over the making
• 20:26
  of paramorm Activity. Like I said, I'll point other people to other links
• 20:30
  that you interviews that you've done that give a little bit more detail. So
• 20:33
  you finish Paramlenormal Activity. Likes orre your first cut? Who did you show
• 20:37
  it to? Who was like the first like friends and family? I got
• 20:40
  a chance to see it well the first people? Who's so a really really
• 20:45
  rough assembly which had like missing scenes and visual as sex when completely done and
• 20:51
  audio makes like just the rough throwing together her of scenes to just show yeah,
• 20:56
  we have somewhere in there, we have a movie that was a mirror
• 21:00
  and my girlfriend at the time, Tony, who were part of the crew,
• 21:06
  so they were the first people who saw the first cut and then sertainly
• 21:11
  there after I when it was a little bit more polish, but not much,
• 21:15
  I showed it to my next door neighbors who who and not the whole
• 21:22
  family showed up, but it was the father, Tom and his son Brian,
• 21:26
  and his son was seventeen at the time, and he's like, he's
• 21:30
  a wrestler right now. I mean this was back then. Now he's a
• 21:34
  fighter pilot, so not like a wimpy guy. He told me later that
• 21:40
  he had nightmares for Dave. So I'm like, huh, maybe maybe I'm
• 21:42
  onto something that is so cool. You know what's so cool knowing that a
• 21:48
  mirror they are working with you at Sony was also sort of in on this,
• 21:51
  and I assume you kind of kept us under wraps, like because I
• 21:55
  don't think nobody knew at Sony. This is just something private, right,
• 21:59
  Yeah. I didn't tell a single person. I mean, my neighbors didn't
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  know, none of my friends knowing it's Sonny that really, the only people
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  who knew were the people that were directly involved in the making of the film.
• 22:11
  I didn't tell a single person, hey, guess what, I'm going
• 22:15
  to make a film. It's gonna be so cool. And the only other
• 22:18
  people that knew were my parents, and again not because I wanted to tell
• 22:22
  them. I would have kept them in the dark as well, but they
• 22:23
  came to visit me like a month before we were suiting, so there was
• 22:29
  no way for me to hide the fact that, you know, the house
• 22:32
  looks different than we're I'm doing you know, tests and dealing with all the
• 22:37
  kind of stuff. So I had no choice and I had to tell them
• 22:38
  that's amazing. I love it. So okay, so we're going to ask
• 22:42
  forward. So you finished, the film gets polished, it gets finished,
• 22:45
  and you have a small group of close friends and you know, neighbors and
• 22:48
  family you've seen it and it kind of gives you. I'm assuming, what
• 22:52
  was that emotion like just getting like sort of that first pass or going holy
• 22:56
  did you get like a moment of like holy shit, I just made something.
• 23:00
  It was more Again, I would say it was more gradual than that,
• 23:06
  because at every point when I would saw the movie. I started showing
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  it too, as if it got more polished, to larger groups of people.
• 23:14
  And at the beginning they were just friends and and also sorted to Katie
• 23:18
  and Mika, and all the feedwack that I got was pretty positive. I
• 23:22
  would say probably Katie and Nika were the most critical. They were never happy
• 23:27
  with their own performances and would say, you know, we could do better,
• 23:32
  and I'm I'm like, what are you talking about? This is great,
• 23:34
  So they were like, there is self critical And then I would start
• 23:38
  it to friends and you know, they would say, oh, this is
• 23:41
  great, this is really scary, and I would be like, are they
• 23:44
  really thinking that or they're just being polite. So so then I started holding
• 23:51
  screenings through a friend of mine, Alex, and I asked him to invite
• 23:57
  his friends that don't know me, and we didn't say that I directed the
• 24:02
  movie. I would. I just said I'm one of the producers, so
• 24:04
  you know, I don't care if you like it or not, be honest,
• 24:07
  And I actually gave them questionnaires that they can feel anonymously. And so
• 24:11
  there would be groups of you know, ten, fifteen, maybe twenty people
• 24:14
  who would watch the movie. And first of all, I would watch their
• 24:17
  honest reactions when there's like a scary moment, and I would see, you
• 24:19
  know, like a guy and a girl holding their hands really tight and getting
• 24:22
  totally into it and jumping with something scary happens. I know that something is
• 24:26
  working. If I see people just sitting there kind of bored and disengaged,
• 24:30
  I know, you know, this part of the movie as a problem.
• 24:33
  And then I would also listen to the feedback, and when the feedback stayed
• 24:36
  mostly positive, I kind of slowly after every screening, I started feeling more
• 24:41
  and more confident. But I would say, if you're looking for like one
• 24:45
  moment where I said to myself, holy shit, this could be the real
• 24:51
  deal, then that would be at the Screamfest screening, when I watched the
• 24:56
  movie in an audience of you know, people and hearing them scream like you
• 25:02
  know, and reacting the way that evans and people react before, and seeing
• 25:07
  you know, the reviews that came there were just a few, a few
• 25:11
  reviews, but they were very encouraging. So from that point and I'm like,
• 25:15
  Okay, maybe this is the real deal, and maybe I should get
• 25:18
  serious about, you know, releasing it. You know, theatrically. Okay,
• 25:22
  I got to back up just a little bit before we getting screen fast.
• 25:25
  So your friend Alex was just like local San Diego theaters that you were
• 25:29
  just like was it theaters or just like a somebody's home if somebody's home.
• 25:33
  Okay, So you just did that and that was really cool? How cool
• 25:36
  was that for anybody who was part of that just hanging out? They were
• 25:38
  part of cinematic history saying, you know, I was there at the house
• 25:42
  when they showed that. Anyway, so you got some confidence. Just I
• 25:48
  don't want to just skip over how you got the screen fast, because I
• 25:51
  understand from what I gathered you did your homework. You said, I got
• 25:55
  to get sales agents, producers, reps. And did you just start cold
• 26:00
  mailing to a directory of like agencies and sales agents and um or did you
• 26:06
  Did you go that route first before you did a sort of your own film
• 26:10
  festival submissions? Yes, because I realized that, you know, I kind
• 26:15
  of I know my strength and weaknesses, and I knew that I know nothing
• 26:19
  about the film industry and how it works. So I started just you know,
• 26:22
  reading on the on the internet how to sell your movie, and you
• 26:26
  know, just trying to get information, and what people were saying is that
• 26:30
  you know, if you're going to try to do it on your own,
• 26:32
  you're going to make a lot of irreversible mistakes. So you need someone to
• 26:34
  guide you through the shark infested waters of Hollywood, and you need a lawyer,
• 26:41
  producer's representative, or an agency. I'm like, okay, sounds good
• 26:44
  to me. That's exactly what I'm looking for, someone experienced to guide me
• 26:48
  through this. So I tried contacting a few agencies, and it's basically like
• 26:53
  you know, you call them and they're like, you get the main switchboard
• 26:57
  and I would be like, yeah, I'd like to talk to I wanted
• 27:00
  your film sales department. They're like, are you a client? Like no,
• 27:03
  what you referred to here by client? No, Well then there's no
• 27:07
  one for you to talk to. Thank you bye. And then I tried
• 27:12
  contacting a few I saw I found some article from Sentence or something about you
• 27:18
  know, the top players in the indie film sales world or something like that.
• 27:25
  So I just started contacting a few of them, and in a few
• 27:29
  cases there were nice enough to return my emails and return my calls and actually
• 27:33
  said yes, sure, you know, send your DVD, will check it
• 27:37
  out. In most cases I never heard back from them. In one or
• 27:40
  two cases, people said, yeah, that's that's an interesting little movie,
• 27:44
  but we just think it would be really hard to sell it, so we're
• 27:48
  not interested. So at that point, I'm like, okay, well,
• 27:52
  I gotta figure out a different strategy. How long did this take? Was
• 27:55
  just over a couple of months, you know, just because it's not like,
• 27:59
  you know, when you started to submit it. You know, this
• 28:00
  is still at a full time job. So I'm assuming that you were just,
• 28:03
  you know, like you said, gradually peacemailing this out. Yeah,
• 28:07
  it was over parts of a few months. But I kind of fairly quickly
• 28:12
  got the idea that it's not going to be too easy. So I already,
• 28:18
  in parallel started researching festivals and started submitting to a few of them.
• 28:23
  But I figured, you know, I'll still prefer to have the because you
• 28:27
  know, you can submit to a festival and if you get accepted, you
• 28:30
  can still back out of it later on. So I wanted to kind of
• 28:33
  I didn't want it to just sit around and do nothing while I'm waiting to
• 28:37
  the potential producers reps to contact me. So at the same time, I
• 28:44
  was contacting some festivals and doing a lot of research, but which of the
• 28:47
  upcoming festivals could be the best fit and I would have the best odds of
• 28:52
  getting getting accepted in And so both were doing both things were happening at about
• 28:57
  the same time. I see. So the story goes that somehow somebody in
• 29:03
  the CIA mail room I don't I forgot his name, was eager, ambitious,
• 29:10
  found your film and brought it to the screen Fest or he was working
• 29:14
  at the screen Fest Festival. I don't know all the details of that,
• 29:18
  but um, what was like sort of that that first main break after you
• 29:21
  were submitting everything. Yeah, So I submitted the film to many festivals,
• 29:26
  including the San Diego Film Festival, which I thought, you know, I'm
• 29:30
  definitely going to get into that one here. I'm a local San Diego filmmaker
• 29:33
  and the movie was shot in San Diego, and they want to promote local
• 29:36
  filmmakers. Nope, oh my god, Oh my god. Yeah. And
• 29:41
  and basically all the other festivals that I tried, I don't even remember which
• 29:45
  ones were there. Maybe Mill Valley and they, you know, not necessarily
• 29:51
  like the bigger ones. Maybe I tried Toronto and got rejected. But yeah,
• 29:56
  there was a guy that was working for screen Fest. We'll be right
• 30:03
  back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show and at
• 30:11
  the mail room of CIA. His name is Kiriel Baru, weird name,
• 30:15
  but very cool guy. And he saw the movie at the screen Fest when
• 30:21
  I submitted it, and he brought it to the attention of Rachel Belovski,
• 30:25
  the head of screen Fest, and at the same time to the attention of
• 30:29
  agents at CIA from what I understand, and no one at CIA actually watched
• 30:34
  it until after the movie won an awards at the screwing Fest. But he
• 30:40
  was sort of like responsible for both, you know, introducing the movie to
• 30:44
  CIA and to screen Fest. So if it weren't for him, you know,
• 30:47
  who knows where I would be. So that was just like completely because
• 30:51
  you did submit it to screen Fest and he was just there. So that
• 30:53
  was almost like so, when what kind of call did you get, like
• 30:57
  an email or call or at the screen Fest after you want, like you
• 31:00
  won the award that did a Carrel come up to you? I don't even
• 31:07
  remember exactly, maybe maybe a met him because once the movie was selected into
• 31:15
  screen Fest, and then I became, you know, much more involved with
• 31:17
  them and you know, as far as how to promote the film. So
• 31:21
  I spent a lot of time dealing with him. I think I kind of
• 31:23
  think at that point he might have not been as involved with screen Fest.
• 31:26
  I think he might have been more involved in the screening process. And then
• 31:30
  he was more full time at CIA. So I don't even remember exactly when
• 31:34
  it was, but at some point, yeah, we met him and he
• 31:37
  told me that, you know, he saw the movie and he loved it
• 31:38
  and he gave it to CIA and two and to Rachel. So but I
• 31:45
  honestly don't remember exactly when that was. Okay, so this is amazing.
• 31:49
  So you you're going through your emotions, you're working full time job, You're
• 31:53
  you're doing um and I know believing. I know what the climate was like
• 31:56
  at Sony where you're just like, I gotta get out. But anyway,
• 32:00
  the so, so you're you're doing this and you're and you're submitting, you're
• 32:06
  getting rejected. You're like, this is crazy because um, I never wavered
• 32:09
  because you're obviously you're you're still paying the fifty forty dollars you know, submission
• 32:15
  fees, just hoping that something breaks. Um, you get in at screen
• 32:21
  Fest. What was that feeling like when you got Was that the first and
• 32:23
  only exception to US festival that you got into. Yes, screw Fist was
• 32:30
  the first one, and until we got some heat as a result of Screwfist
• 32:37
  after that when I sat with CIA, then later on I think a few
• 32:44
  other festivals accepted us, or maybe I'm wrong, because then we got accepted
• 32:52
  a couple of months later to slammed Ins. After it was announced that we're
• 32:55
  slammed In. Then saddly, I'm flooded with requests from festivals all over the
• 33:00
  country and all over the world to you know, be part of to submit
• 33:04
  to that festival, or sometimes they would even say you don't need to submit,
• 33:07
  you were just in if you want to. And at that point I
• 33:10
  was thinking, Hey, we're gonna make it sell it, so I'm then
• 33:14
  so I don't need any more festivals. But yeah, at that point is
• 33:19
  scrim was the first and the only one that showed any interest. That's fascinating.
• 33:22
  Okay, So what was your emotions like when you got a call from
• 33:25
  CIA. I mean, because that's sort of that's sort of like a big
• 33:29
  piece of the puzzle here. So what what what was going on or did
• 33:32
  you got like did you have like a little celebration with your girlfriend and friends
• 33:37
  at the time. Well, that was a weird experience. I remember the
• 33:40
  exact well, actually I don't remember the exactly date, but I think it
• 33:45
  was like October twenty second of two thousand and seven or something like that,
• 33:52
  and that was the that was the day. That's the last real big fires
• 33:58
  happening in San Diego, somber so so, just to put it in contact,
• 34:04
  the night before I come back from La after the movie won, you
• 34:09
  know, on an honorary mentioned and Katie won Best Actress, and I'm making
• 34:14
  a lot of contacts and all these you know, distributors are giving me their
• 34:17
  business cards, and people tell me this is going to be the next Blur,
• 34:21
  which I'm on cloud nine. I'm like, holy crap, this this,
• 34:24
  this is really happening. The next morning, at six am, I
• 34:28
  get a call from my neighbor. We're getting evacuated their fires. Get out
• 34:31
  of here. And I only took one thing with me. I didn't take
• 34:37
  toothbrush, even though everything was already packed, because I had, you know,
• 34:42
  my overnight bag for from La the day before, and I only took
• 34:46
  one thing, my external hard drive that head a backup of all the footage.
• 34:53
  That's so yeah, And then I thinking like, holy shit, I
• 35:00
  hope the house doesn't burn down, because then if I want to do resuits,
• 35:04
  that's going to be a big problem. Oh my god, all these
• 35:06
  things are running through your head. I remember that those are gnarly fires.
• 35:08
  So I remember us getting evacuated like four in the morning. We were living
• 35:14
  over a black mountain near a forest ranch, and we had to get down
• 35:17
  to my brother's house in Encinitas, and then it's the smoke and stuff is
• 35:22
  just getting intense. So we made calls and actually jetted up to Marina del
• 35:28
  Rey, where we had friends that we stayed with for two three days.
• 35:31
  Two days, I think, and then we're just yeah, you know,
• 35:36
  it looked like the entire southern California which is burning right to the coast,
• 35:39
  and we had no you had no idea for two three days whether on your
• 35:43
  house was up or not. Yeah. Yeah. So so at the same
• 35:46
  time, I'm beginning to get a flood of emails from different distributors who are
• 35:52
  telling me, hey, please send us a screener. I'm like, wow,
• 35:55
  an actual real distributor wants to see my movie. And I can't burn
• 36:00
  the DVD because I don't I'm not buying my computer. I mean, I
• 36:04
  have all the footage for backup, but it's not set up to actually,
• 36:06
  you know, burn a copy. So I'm not getting really stressed. But
• 36:08
  anyway, that's A day later on, I get a call from Martin Spencer
• 36:14
  at SA. So I get a call, Hi, a Martin Spencer from
• 36:16
  SA. We'd like to talk to you. And at this point I'm already
• 36:20
  like, okay, this is good news. If c A is calling me,
• 36:22
  it's not to tell me, hey, we just wanted to call it.
• 36:23
  Let you know, your movie sucks. So I'm like playing it cool
• 36:28
  and this, you know guy with you know, British accent, like this,
• 36:32
  you know, very gentlemanly guy is asking me all this time, I
• 36:36
  saw your movie and it's awesome and it scared the shit out of me,
• 36:38
  and tell me how how how did you do this? And I tell him
• 36:43
  how did you do that? And I'm telling him that what was your budget?
• 36:45
  And I say it was fifteen at fifteen million. I'm like, no,
• 36:50
  fifteen thousand and he's and he keeps asking me all these questions and then
• 36:54
  he goes there's like a long wait and he's like who are you? Like
• 37:00
  where did you come from? And I laughed, and you know, I
• 37:04
  told him, you know, I'm just a video game programmer. I'm trying
• 37:07
  to do this on the side. And he's like, well, why don't
• 37:10
  you come up to la and and let's meet. So I think that weekend,
• 37:15
  yeah, I think I couldn't. You couldn't really drive up, but
• 37:21
  I think roads were closed and I was south of the fires. I staying
• 37:25
  with the mirror, so there wasn't really an easy way to do go No,
• 37:29
  I'm like, I'm kind of stuck in San Diego until the fires are
• 37:30
  done. So we went to I went to see him over the weekend after
• 37:37
  the whole fire situation was cleared, and he's like, yeah, would you
• 37:40
  like to sign up with? Say like, yeah, that which is,
• 37:49
  by the way, is you know. I now have a lot of people
• 37:52
  asking me questions like, you know, how do I find an agent and
• 37:54
  how do I sign up with an agency? And from my experience, usually
• 37:58
  you don't find them. They've find you if you just called call an agency,
• 38:01
  You're not going to find anyone to talk to. But when you make
• 38:05
  something you know worthy, they'll they'll find you. Yeah, I mean obviously,
• 38:10
  so you're you know, you're floored if I'm guessing right, So that
• 38:15
  the fires kind of take everything out of commission. You drive up. Um.
• 38:19
  Now, so what I gather is that the agency started to submit or
• 38:25
  represent you, so they were became your voice piece for all these distribution companies
• 38:31
  and production companies. That's correct. Yes, Now this is where it gets
• 38:38
  a little you know, the whole process of of prontal motivity hit like so
• 38:42
  many ups and downs. So this is where I'm thinking, like, you
• 38:45
  know, awesome, you know, this is the next logical step on the
• 38:47
  way to theatrical distribution. And we're not getting any offers for theatrical distribution.
• 38:53
  We're getting a decent offers for direct video and VD for amounts that you know,
• 39:00
  at the time would have been very nice for me, you know,
• 39:04
  it would be like, you know, two three, four hundred thousand dollars,
• 39:07
  nothing to choose that. But at that point, it's already kind of
• 39:10
  set in my mind that no, you know, this has to be theatrical
• 39:14
  distribution or nothing. So I keep rejecting these offers and Cia is telling me,
• 39:19
  listen, you know, it's great effort, and you know we're going
• 39:22
  to get you nicely directing jobs and you're going to be you know, we're
• 39:25
  gonna work on getting you a great career. This will be your business card
• 39:31
  that will open doors for you. But this kind of a movie doesn't really
• 39:36
  you know, doesn't really work for the distribution. Once every ten or twenty
• 39:42
  years there's something like a Blair Which project, but you know the odds are
• 39:45
  against you. So take one of these direct to video deals and let's move
• 39:49
  on. And I'm just being stubborn and I keep saying no, no,
• 39:52
  no, and no. And then we get accepted into slam DNS. We'll
• 39:59
  be right back. Throw a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 40:05
  the show. So I'm thinking, well, maybe that's the missing piece.
• 40:12
  Maybe it's slimmed Ins. The real buyers will be there at the real studios
• 40:16
  and we'll make a sealed in. So I'm saying definitely no deal until after
• 40:21
  we see what happens. It's slimmed insh my god. So let me ask
• 40:23
  you emotionally or just your conviction, what was it that made you feel like
• 40:29
  no, no, no, no. Something about this tells me I can
• 40:32
  make it happen on a theatrical release, because, like I said, like
• 40:36
  you said, a lot of people in the position will be like, hey,
• 40:38
  I can't believe I just made this for me. I'd be like,
• 40:40
  oh, I just made this little film and you want to buy it for
• 40:44
  two hundred four thousand, Okay, done? Whatever, you know, But
• 40:47
  something about it? What was it that held your conviction? I mean it
• 40:52
  was many things. It was like, you know, some of the reviews
• 40:55
  that we got to screen fast when people when people would say, you know,
• 41:00
  is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. And different reviewers like
• 41:05
  Steve Barton, who's a local San Diego guy who runs at the Dread Central,
• 41:07
  kept telling me this is going to be the next Blood, which,
• 41:10
  mark my words, the image of your bedroom is going to be in the
• 41:14
  cinematical lexicon of history. Like you know, he's like, this is going
• 41:17
  to be theatrical, don't budge, And you know, seeing the audience's reaction
• 41:22
  at the screen Fest screening, and then when I came back to screen Fest
• 41:28
  a week later for the awards ceremony, a lot of people that saw the
• 41:32
  movie a week earlier would come up to me and say, you know,
• 41:36
  I've had nightmares this entire week. No other movie affected me this way.
• 41:40
  And I'm like, are they just trying to kiss masks for no reason?
• 41:44
  Because there's no real reason to kiss masks? I mean nobody, or are
• 41:47
  they being sincere? But you know, you hear it so many times you
• 41:51
  start believing in it, and ultimately it was I would never forgive myself if
• 42:00
  I took one of those deals for three hundred four hunder thousand dollars and moved
• 42:05
  on and then found out later that some big studio that just never got the
• 42:10
  opportunity to see the film before I made a deal would have said, hey,
• 42:15
  we would have loved to distribute this movie and make it the next Blur,
• 42:17
  which too bad, you already went to the DVID roots and now it's
• 42:21
  too late. And if that happened, I would have never forgiven myself for
• 42:24
  not seeing this through. That is amazing to have a foresight to and maybe
• 42:31
  something deep down inside you and to just hold your ground, as well as
• 42:37
  listening to your audience, which is what everybody's you know, teaching in the
• 42:42
  any type of business startup space, which is like, you know, really
• 42:45
  really listened to your audience and then and and move accordingly from that. So
• 42:52
  all this stuff happens. Um, did you submit to slam Dance on your
• 42:55
  own or was that something that was submitted after you time? C C A.
• 43:02
  I submitted it on my own. I submitted to slam Dance and Subdance
• 43:07
  and probably a few others right after or maybe even right before a screen fest.
• 43:15
  I don't remember the exact timeline, but I believe I submitted it on
• 43:20
  my own. So if I'm if I dealing with the timing correct is that
• 43:23
  so it gets accepted a screen fest in Los Angeles h September October, and
• 43:30
  then, um, you know slam Dance has got to make their decision well
• 43:34
  before January. So did you get noticed like in November or something? Yes,
• 43:39
  it was probably around in November. So I'm guessing do you think screen
• 43:46
  fest had something to do with it or was it total coincidence? It's might
• 43:52
  have m if I remember correctly. I hope I'm not messing up the timeline.
• 44:00
  But I think that I submitted to slam then right after screen Fest,
• 44:07
  and because I kind of remember that when that when I submitted it to them,
• 44:10
  I included like a printed piece of paper with quotes from some of the
• 44:15
  reviews. So if that was the case, it probably was after screen Fest.
• 44:22
  And I think that the fact that there was some sort of a prior,
• 44:27
  you know, like when you when you get one of ten thousand submissions
• 44:30
  and one of them has already won an award and already has great reviews,
• 44:34
  maybe there's a higher likelihood the screen the festival screeners will pay more attention to
• 44:40
  it. So yeah, so I think it probably was right after screen Fest.
• 44:46
  It's kind of funny because at this point you have like an agent,
• 44:50
  like like the top agency, and you're still doing all the stuff yourself,
• 44:53
  and you get in and they're like, oh, hey, good job.
• 44:58
  I mean I did did you have to do that? I mean, you
• 45:02
  can't count on anyone else, no one's going to care, but you like,
• 45:07
  like you, I mean when before that was actually before a CIA,
• 45:10
  but you know, to promote the movie for screen Fest, I actually cut
• 45:15
  a thirty second trailer and rent it on TV in you know, on the
• 45:21
  some Warner cable stations in La you know, come see the movie and you
• 45:24
  know, put a little trailer with the date, so just for that one
• 45:28
  screening, because I wanted to make sure that people hear about it and that
• 45:30
  the theater is going to be full. And I stood on you know,
• 45:35
  street corners in LA. I would drive up to LA with flyers that I
• 45:37
  designed and printed and would run after people on the street. Do you like
• 45:42
  horror movies? Come check out this movie and we'll give them a little,
• 45:44
  you know, postcard with the date and you know, a little screenshot from
• 45:49
  the movie. So at the end of the day, I mean, you
• 45:51
  can't you know, you need to delegate as much as you can, but
• 45:59
  you you know, you need to do some of the work to yourself because
• 46:02
  some things will not get done unless you do that. Now, do you
• 46:06
  have any help or were you running solo when you were driving up prior to
• 46:09
  screen fests happening? I was doing that on my own, okay. And
• 46:14
  by the way, genius idea buying local ads because they're not that expensive.
• 46:20
  I think at the time it costs me, I think about a thousand or
• 46:24
  fifteen hundred dollars to run like sixty spots. You know what. Amazing,
• 46:30
  just amazing and well earned. So you get all the stuff coming and you
• 46:36
  had your meeting. Now, guessing you're still working full time, were you
• 46:43
  just like taking personal days as you were driving up from San Diego to Los
• 46:45
  Angeles? Yeah, I'm sure. You know, we used to get like
• 46:50
  a lot of time off and you never have a chance to use any of
• 46:53
  it. But takin a few days here and there was no big deal and
• 46:57
  it didn't really take a lot of time off for vacations, so you know,
• 47:00
  I was still probably maxed out on my pitio times, right right,
• 47:05
  God, I remember that. So okay, so this is all happening.
• 47:07
  So you're getting slam dance. Um, what was your strategy plan or did
• 47:12
  you have a team at this particular time to see a help you develop a
• 47:15
  team of some sort um to like what was the marketing strategy, promotional strategy
• 47:22
  to take full advantage of the slam dance opportunity. So by then there was
• 47:28
  a guy specifically I had, you know, my agent that was kind of
• 47:31
  like my agent for my career, for me personally, and there was another
• 47:36
  agent that was kind of the sales agent for the movie. So it was
• 47:39
  his responsibility to sell, to try to sell the film. At that point,
• 47:44
  I also hooked up with the two producers that had access to kind of
• 47:50
  like the higher level people than the VP of acquisitions that could get directly today
• 47:58
  you know, presidents of studios then and you know, directly get the DVD
• 48:01
  to the hands of Harvey Weinstein and those kind of people. Was just Mason
• 48:06
  and Stephen. So at that point I was confident that you know, at
• 48:14
  least one person, I don't need a bidding war, just need one person
• 48:16
  to see the movie and recognize the potential. And you know, luck you
• 48:21
  always hear the stories about people who go to sentence and sell the movie for
• 48:25
  a million bucks and the movie gets out there and becomes a hit. So
• 48:29
  that's what you know, I was convinced was going to happen. Wow,
• 48:32
  that's amazing. Now the producers that you had was this at this particular time,
• 48:37
  was this Jason Blum and Stephen kind of I'm blanking his last name,
• 48:44
  Yeah, yeah, those were the guys. So they had come in at
• 48:46
  a pretty much the same time. CEA came up and Z that correct around
• 48:50
  the same time, No, a little bit later, and my agent would
• 48:54
  send the DVD because they didn't really believe at this time that it's worth spending
• 49:01
  too much effort trying to get theatrical distribution for it. They said, hey,
• 49:06
  you know, we tried, we got rejected by the studios. So
• 49:08
  let's say get one of those VOD deals or DVD deals and try to get
• 49:13
  you your next gig. So they sent out the DVD of a Partner of
• 49:16
  Activity as a as a directing sample to producer to say, hey, there's
• 49:22
  this new kid in town. Check out this movie, and if you have
• 49:23
  another project that you think he might be a good candidate to direct, then
• 49:28
  you know, keep him in mind. So when it got to Stephen and
• 49:30
  Jason, they loved the movie, that's the potential. And then I met
• 49:37
  them and decided they wanted to come on board to help sell the film.
• 49:40
  So were the only ones who contacted you, yea, Now, at what
• 49:45
  point was it was it like immediately you're like I get you guys, or
• 49:50
  they get you. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 49:58
  And now back to the show. Because I heard the story about how Jason,
• 50:04
  when he was working I think Artisan at the time or something, he
• 50:07
  missed the opportunity to be part of Blair Witch and he never wanted to miss
• 50:12
  that opportunity again or that's the sort of the legend that's out there. Yeah,
• 50:16
  he was working for a for Harvey Wednesday and at the time. Okay,
• 50:22
  so so he's now he's on his own and he's working with Stephen.
• 50:24
  He's got those old connections. They come on board. Jason sees what you
• 50:30
  have, and you guys are lining up because they're like, you both see
• 50:32
  the potential of this being the next player. Which and so now you're at
• 50:37
  slam Dance and he's able to reach out to his connections and like you said,
• 50:43
  get above the VPV acquisitions and go from there. So did they help
• 50:47
  develop a strategy of how you were going to tackle slam Dance. Well,
• 50:52
  the first strategy was that we're going to read, We're going to tweak the
• 50:58
  movie a little bit, gets it a little leaner, cuts I don't know,
• 51:01
  seven eight minutes from it, and then we can reintroduce it even before
• 51:07
  slam dens and tell, you know, tell all these studies in town.
• 51:10
  We have a new version. We know that you saw paranormal activity. Now
• 51:14
  we have a new, better, leaner, scarier version of paranormal activity.
• 51:17
  Come check it out. So around Christmas, I think it was a CIA
• 51:22
  organized a couple of screenings and we invited a lot of the upper level,
• 51:28
  maybe not necessarily studio heads some of them, but the upper level executives to
• 51:34
  watch the new version of the film, and some didn't show up. Some
• 51:37
  did show up, but there were there were no sales. So we're like,
• 51:43
  okay, well that was a good try. Let's let's, you know,
• 51:45
  wait for slam Dens and then we'll really go for the for the top
• 51:50
  dogs at its studio. I say so, then you so, um was
• 51:55
  the paramount deal Dreamwork deal like almost after Slams, after the response and stuff.
• 52:02
  It was on the table before. This is kind of like how it
• 52:07
  played out the very first time that Jason saw the film, after Stephen saw
• 52:14
  it first and told Jason, you gotta check it out. So Jason organized
• 52:17
  a little movie night at his place and invited a friend of his, Ashley
• 52:23
  Brooks, who was then working at the DreamWorks, just because she loves horror
• 52:29
  movies. That DreamWorks doesn't really do acquisitions. They only developed their own original
• 52:32
  material, so there wasn't and he hasn't even seen the movie himself, so
• 52:37
  he wasn't trying to sell her anything, but it was just like, Hey,
• 52:39
  come check out this weird little horror film, because you like horror movies.
• 52:44
  So she saw the movie and she became obsessed with it, and she
• 52:47
  gave a copy to her boss, Adam Goodman, who was the president of
• 52:52
  productions at DreamWorks, and she kept bugging him, you gotta see it,
• 52:57
  you gotta see it. And I think it took a while before he eventually
• 53:00
  saw it, probably a few weeks, but then when he saw it,
• 53:04
  he loved it. And then they were like, okay, so what do
• 53:07
  we do with it. We're not going to bite and release it, and
• 53:10
  you know, we don't do acquisitions in general. We're definitely not going to
• 53:13
  release this crappy, little, you know, weird looking home video thing.
• 53:16
  So they came up with a proposal of doing a remake with real quote unquote
• 53:25
  actors and with the real budget, and they're gonna let me direct it,
• 53:31
  and I said, I'm not interested. You know, I love this version
• 53:35
  of the movie. I don't want to do a new version. I don't
• 53:37
  need a bigger budget. I didn't feel I was constrained by the budget with
• 53:39
  this film, and I definitely don't want to recognizable actors because it will take
• 53:44
  away from the whole authenticity of the found footage premise. So and this version
• 53:49
  of the film works for whatever reason. You know, it kind of hits
• 53:52
  that magic formula. And if you do a remake, you don't know if
• 53:55
  it's gonna work or not. So I'm like, you know, this is
• 53:58
  this is it, this is the movie. I feel like, let's let's
• 54:00
  talk about releasing it, but I don't want to do a new version.
• 54:05
  So they kind of kept becoming more and more interested in the film, in
• 54:08
  the remake idea, And as we went to slam Dens and got rejected for
• 54:15
  the third time by every studio in town, really the only options we had
• 54:19
  was either taking one of those direct to DVD options or going with the DreamWorks
• 54:23
  and doing the remake thing. Interesting, So let me ask you. So
• 54:29
  you're there, You're you're holding strong in your line, and your conviction was
• 54:32
  Jason and Steven behind you on your decision of like in your vision of making
• 54:37
  sure that like let's do this, or was ever You're looking at you like,
• 54:40
  are you crazy? Like your this is your first film. You're up
• 54:45
  here, people are giving you these this is an offer, this is an
• 54:49
  opportunity. That type of thing, or how how alone were you or how
• 54:54
  supportive were you on this decision of like let's just hold our let's hold hold
• 54:58
  our ground and try to get out that theatrical release as as well. I
• 55:02
  think in slam Dens everyone was kind of hopeful that something will happen. Maybe
• 55:09
  mean more than everyone else, but I think we were all kind of hoping
• 55:14
  that, you know, we will be able to make a sell. And
• 55:17
  I think the rest of my team was less dismissive of the drain works offered
• 55:24
  than I was. I just wouldn't even entertain the thought of doing a remake,
• 55:30
  and everyone else was like, well, it's you know, directing movie
• 55:31
  for Steven Spielberg is not the worst thing in the world. You know,
• 55:36
  some people wait a long time for that kind of an opportunity. But I'm
• 55:39
  like, okay, not not not doing your remake. So I wasn't I
• 55:43
  wasn't even entertaining entertaining the idea. I was just like rejecting it without even
• 55:47
  you know, thinking about it. So we all said, Okay, let's
• 55:51
  let's wait until slam Dens and then then we'll regroup and and say, you
• 55:54
  know, what's the next move and I'm like cool, because you know,
• 55:59
  I was ready, We're going to say at slam Dance. So I didn't
• 56:01
  think that the DreamWorks orfer will even become relevant. That's amazing. So then
• 56:07
  you have your ear group after slam Dance. Um, at what point did
• 56:13
  I Paramount come in or because I know that DreamWorks and Paramount like you said,
• 56:16
  Um, they were Paramount was handling distribution for dream Works. But then
• 56:21
  the economy was really at this point, this is twenty two thousand and eight,
• 56:24
  right, so that's when I started to implode, just you know,
• 56:29
  worldwide the economy. Um, at what point did they get involved? Right
• 56:34
  like right after slam Dance. Well, basically on my airport ride from this
• 56:40
  after a philobic from Sulta City to San Diego with no sale on the right
• 56:46
  from from the airport to my house, I had one of those reality check
• 56:52
  phone calls with my entire team, my attorney, my agents, my producers,
• 56:57
  and they were like, look, we tried three times to sell the
• 57:00
  movie. Three times everyone in town passed on it. The only real option
• 57:04
  that we have is DreamWorks. And we know that you don't like the ideal
• 57:07
  of remake, but it's really the best deal that we have, And ultimately,
• 57:13
  there are a couple of things that convinced me to consider the DreamWorks deal.
• 57:19
  One is that we really didn't have any any other opportunity. And the
• 57:27
  one other reason, by the way, that I didn't want to consider the
• 57:29
  DreamWorks deal at all is I didn't want to replace the actors because I saw
• 57:32
  that Katie and Mica did a fantastic job. They're the reason that the movie
• 57:37
  worked, and I thought it would be extraordinarily unfair for them to just get
• 57:42
  dismissed and replaced by you know, other actors, and it would be really
• 57:47
  unfair if if people didn't get to see, you know, what a great
• 57:51
  job they did. So the deal with the DreamWorks was that on the if
• 57:57
  the movie gets done and gets made and then released on a DVD, part
• 58:01
  of the DVD release will include the original version with Katy and Mika. So
• 58:07
  I thought, you know, if if Katy and Mika are okay with that,
• 58:12
  I'll consider it. That And the other thing was that before we move
• 58:17
  forward on the remake, we can make the deal, but before we actually
• 58:21
  get started with pre production, we had we make it screening for the DreamWorks
• 58:29
  and all the you know, top executives of DreamWorks, everyone basically except for
• 58:35
  Steven Spielberg, We'll have to be there. And we thought that, you
• 58:38
  know, maybe if they because you know, all the executives of DreamWorks,
• 58:43
  they've seen the movie, you know, on a DVD player in their office
• 58:45
  or at home, and we wanted them to sit with an audience. So,
• 58:51
  I even though we made the deal for the remake, I still haven't
• 58:55
  given up on the offiction. I haven't even really attended any meetings to talk
• 59:00
  with potential writers or anything like that. I'm still I'm still on the track
• 59:04
  of the CIS is probably still going to happen because they're gonna watch the movie
• 59:08
  how it plays with a real audience, and then they're going to change their
• 59:12
  mind. So who who got that going? Like saying, okay, let's
• 59:15
  we got some time here, let's let's set up a screening for the executives.
• 59:20
  I'm assuming it was in Los Angeles, And how did you round up
• 59:23
  the kids or the midnight you know, college kids or something like that to
• 59:28
  be part of that audience. That it was part of the deal, So
• 59:31
  there was a lot of time. We weren't going to start shooting right away.
• 59:35
  So you start, you know, developing the movie and interview writers.
• 59:37
  So the deal was that before we sign a writer, we have to do
• 59:42
  with test screening. So I think it was in let's see, slim Din's
• 59:45
  was in the middle of January. I think the test screen was in March,
• 59:50
  probably the March Rapper, so a couple of months later, and it
• 59:53
  was just a regular test screening. I think energy We'll be right back after
• 1:00:00
  a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. You know,
• 1:00:08
  did there standard recruitment and you know when when people stand up side of
• 1:00:14
  fitters and say, hey, would you like to come to a free movie
• 1:00:16
  screening? Okay? And so it was exactly one of it does. And
• 1:00:21
  I think it was in either Pasadena or Glendale and and yeah, and that's
• 1:00:27
  when when he told sany okay. So then they saw the reaction because it's
• 1:00:31
  the proofs in the pudding there. It is the audience reacting. Um,
• 1:00:36
  so this is March and stuff. And like so I'm assuming again you are
• 1:00:39
  bouncing from San Diego to Los Angeles all the time, and I'm assuming that
• 1:00:45
  sometimes this was like last moment, like last minute, so you would have
• 1:00:47
  to arrange not being at work once in a while, which usually is not
• 1:00:53
  a problem. The really tricky one was slam Dens because that's in January and
• 1:00:59
  that's when you know, we're in crunch mode for the MLB game, right,
• 1:01:04
  So I was current on my task, I wasn't behind. And I
• 1:01:07
  told by my superiors there that I need some time off and they're like,
• 1:01:13
  is it, Oh, is it like a medical emergency? Is it a
• 1:01:15
  family emergency. I'm like no, They're like, well, is it,
• 1:01:20
  well, then what is it? I'm like, none of your business.
• 1:01:23
  It's because I didn't want to lie to them and invent some sort of you
• 1:01:27
  know, family medical emergency. But I just want to tell them. And
• 1:01:30
  I told him, look, I know what I need to do, and
• 1:01:31
  I know that I can't get it done, and I'm ahead of schedule,
• 1:01:35
  and I'm only going to take a few days off, so don't give me
• 1:01:37
  a hard time. And they were really really pissed, but they ended up
• 1:01:40
  giving me, you know, a few days off. But yeah, there
• 1:01:44
  was some of the time it wasn't the problem to take you know, a
• 1:01:45
  few days here and there. It's interesting, Yeah, I remember hearing this
• 1:01:49
  um back then. I mean, and now you know, a mirror is
• 1:01:52
  there still, right, So he's the only one knows. I'm right,
• 1:01:55
  every right. That's awesome. Okay, so you're you're bouncing back and forth.
• 1:02:00
  You're you're managing your full time job. The pressures of game development definitely
• 1:02:06
  when we talk about crunch time, which is almost like like you know,
• 1:02:09
  seventeen hour lockdown until like the game gets pushed out, um, which is
• 1:02:14
  insane about the video game industry and the video visual effects industry or anything.
• 1:02:19
  So now you're up there and it's it's going going well. UM, So
• 1:02:23
  I'm going to kind of fast for a little bit. To what point does
• 1:02:27
  the strategy of like let's release this at a few um cities in the midnight
• 1:02:31
  screening to um to generate the buzz, Like, um, where you involved
• 1:02:37
  with those meetings or how did the marketing department come into all that stuff?
• 1:02:42
  So we skipped I didn't finish answering the previous question about how ParaMed It became
• 1:02:46
  involved. So we make a deal with the DreamWorks to release the movie in
• 1:02:52
  a fall of two thousand and eight, and we have a deal. I'm
• 1:02:55
  like, holy shit, this is it. We made it. I have
• 1:02:59
  a studio releasing my movie, and that's when DreamWorks and Paramounts started having problems
• 1:03:06
  at a much much higher level. I know some personality conflicts between some Redstone
• 1:03:12
  and Jeffrey Cattenberg. I don't even know what it was, but whatever it
• 1:03:15
  was, they said, you know what, we're no one who are going
• 1:03:17
  to be working together. We are no longer going to be distributing your movies
• 1:03:22
  Sea and then some people, some of the executives at the DreamWorks left to
• 1:03:30
  work at Paramount, including Adam Goodman and Ashley Brooks, who worked like the
• 1:03:36
  champions for the movie, and there was sort of like a custody split DreamWorks
• 1:03:43
  and Paramount. I'm imagining them sitting all in one being conference room with a
• 1:03:47
  list of you know, all the movies that dev in Development is saying,
• 1:03:51
  Okay, we'll take this, you can have this one. We'll take this
• 1:03:52
  one, you can have this one, and they kind of divided the loot
• 1:03:57
  of you know which projects that they had about to be released during development,
• 1:04:00
  and Adam and Ashley took paramounal activity with them to Paramount. So now we're
• 1:04:06
  basically starting again from score one because at Paramount, no one gives a crap
• 1:04:10
  about my little home video looking film. They're dealing with Mission Impossible and Transformers
• 1:04:15
  and Star Trek. You know who has time for my movie. So it
• 1:04:19
  was probably about a year of nothing happening. I think a year. Yeah,
• 1:04:27
  yeah, it was from the summer of two thousand and eight until the
• 1:04:30
  summer of two thousand and nine, where I'm just sitting and wondering what's going
• 1:04:33
  to happen, And I keep bugging my agent at CIA, and they're like,
• 1:04:36
  well, there's going to be a meeting at Paramount in two weeks when
• 1:04:40
  they're gonna talk about the your movie. I'm like, okay, okay,
• 1:04:44
  good, excellent. Two weeks. Second waights, two weeks, two weeks
• 1:04:45
  go by. Check with my agents, Well, well what happened at the
• 1:04:48
  meeting. The meeting got canceled. They're gonna have it in two weeks.
• 1:04:53
  Okay, I can wait. Two more weeks. Two more weeks go by,
• 1:04:56
  Well, the meeting happened and they talked about it and they haven't reached
• 1:04:59
  any conclusion. They're going to talk about it again in a month and just
• 1:05:01
  months after months, and you know, I'm just going insane. At that
• 1:05:06
  time, there was a little hit on the movie. But now we're kind
• 1:05:10
  of stuck at Paramount. I can't stick it anywhere else. So I'm just
• 1:05:13
  sitting there and the movie is is, you know, held in limbo,
• 1:05:16
  and you know, there's like a sense of helplessness. There's nothing I can
• 1:05:20
  do, just sit and wait. Yeah, I was curious. So you
• 1:05:26
  went from a high like this is like March twenty eight or something. You're
• 1:05:30
  with DreamWorks, You're gonna get the distribution deal. I'm sure you're celebrating with
• 1:05:34
  friends and family, just something like you know, almost like out of a
• 1:05:40
  body experience. I can't believe this is actually happening. And then, like
• 1:05:44
  you said, a year almost a year later, I mean, watching this
• 1:05:46
  thing sort of slowly eroad when you hear about the split, and so at
• 1:05:54
  what point, I mean, you're still working at a Sony then, right,
• 1:05:57
  and you're still just you know doing this. Uh you know probably I
• 1:06:01
  don't know where your headspace is or emotional space. How did you manage all
• 1:06:05
  that stuff within the year of limbo like that? I mean it sucked.
• 1:06:10
  It sucked a big time because you know, it sounds like you know,
• 1:06:13
  something was dangled run in front of me, and now it's kind of yank
• 1:06:15
  to wait and I couldn't lose faith that we've done this far and it got
• 1:06:20
  this close and it's not going to happen. So I knew it was going
• 1:06:24
  to happen one way or another, but it was it was pretty maddening to
• 1:06:30
  have to you know, wait for it, and and you know, definitely,
• 1:06:33
  you know, still working at Sunny at the time was becoming less and
• 1:06:38
  less exciting. Yeah, I can imagine. I'm sure you're you're, you're
• 1:06:43
  mentally you're very almost sort of checked out because like if something is dangled in
• 1:06:46
  front of you, I mean, this is like, this is the dream.
• 1:06:49
  This is like the ultimate dream of any filmmaker. Like what what happened
• 1:06:54
  to you? Um and what you what's transpired is is what everybody young and
• 1:07:00
  old filmmaker dreams of. And to hear this, you know, more detailed
• 1:07:04
  and emotional ride of this journey is just revealing to say, Okay, so
• 1:07:10
  you have this month, I'm sorry, this year. So what point did
• 1:07:15
  it? When did the light happen? When did something just break where you
• 1:07:17
  were able to you know, finally know that you know, maybe you got
• 1:07:21
  the check in the mail or something that happened. Well, there were several
• 1:07:26
  stages. The first one was on my birthday in two thousand and nine,
• 1:07:31
  and I keep joking with my agent and my producers, like, Okay,
• 1:07:35
  today's my birthday. This will be a good time for some good news.
• 1:07:40
  And it was a Friday, and nothing happens. And at the very on
• 1:07:44
  the end of the day, it's like six thirty or seven, I get
• 1:07:47
  forwarded in emails from an article on Deadline. It would be the subject happy
• 1:07:53
  Birthday. And the article is that a couple of the higher upset Paramount Jessica
• 1:08:00
  fired and Adam Goodman just got promoted from president of production to president of Paramount.
• 1:08:05
  Oh my god. And the next day, the next morning, on
• 1:08:11
  Saturday, my agent forwards me an email that he got from Adam Goodman and
• 1:08:15
  the email says two words paranormal activity. I'm like, okay, this is
• 1:08:21
  all good now now things, can you know pick up again. I I'm
• 1:08:26
  living through this with you right now. I mean I can. I'm just
• 1:08:29
  hearing your stories, but I can imagine your birthday and hearing that anyway,
• 1:08:31
  keep going, this is fabulous. So after that things happened really quickly.
• 1:08:36
  The next week we set up a test screening for the you know, everyone
• 1:08:43
  is Paramount, their marketing department, device chairman. And again the idea is
• 1:08:46
  that, you know, once everyone sees how the movie plays with an audience,
• 1:08:49
  they'll get on board. And so a week or two later we had
• 1:08:54
  the test screening. It went great, you know, and then our Mount
• 1:09:00
  is like, okay, awesome, we'll release it. We're not going to
• 1:09:02
  put any money behind it. So basically you have to figure out where to
• 1:09:06
  release it for free. And the good news was that the Paramount didn't have
• 1:09:14
  any movie coming out that fall at all. I don't remember what it was,
• 1:09:18
  but from June until like November or something like that, they didn't have
• 1:09:25
  a single film or their slate, so the entire marketing department could focus just
• 1:09:30
  on paranormal Activity and how to come up with, you know, cheap and
• 1:09:34
  smart and creative ideas to get publicity for the film without actually spending any money.
• 1:09:41
  I think the original P and A budget was about seven hundredth k so,
• 1:09:45
  which is like nothing for a release of a film. Usually it's you
• 1:09:48
  know, more like a twenty or thirty millions. We'll be right back after
• 1:09:53
  a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. So that's how
• 1:10:03
  they come up with the ideas of you know, the demand it and they
• 1:10:06
  limited the mitnag screenings and a lot of the kind of stuff where they could
• 1:10:11
  get a lot of free publicity and a lot of mileage out of you know,
• 1:10:15
  very little cash. And it wasn't until after the films started because you
• 1:10:21
  know, becoming successful in the screenings that they agreed. Okay, now we
• 1:10:26
  can pour you know, real resources into the marketing. This is this is
• 1:10:32
  fascinating because this is like you said, it's like almost stars and lining up.
• 1:10:38
  But like, what were those sort of meetings like when now you have
• 1:10:42
  almost like all apparent amounts marketing um brainpower, but no money power behind it.
• 1:10:48
  So do you just have this brain power creative power to go? Okay,
• 1:10:51
  let's do in the same spirit of Paranormal activity the movie, which is,
• 1:10:56
  let's made for you know nothing using the sources in front of you.
• 1:11:00
  Now the marketing has been done the same way. How involved or how creative
• 1:11:04
  does like your producing partners Jason Blum and and forgiving again Steven's last name,
• 1:11:10
  how do you Schnyder Snyder? Thank you. I wrote it, I've scribbled
• 1:11:14
  it here and I can't even read my own handwriting. So how involved was
• 1:11:17
  that group with sort of like the marketing decisions or in contributions and things like
• 1:11:25
  that. I mean, I wish I could take more credit for, you
• 1:11:30
  know, the marketing, but I would say that that was all a paramount,
• 1:11:34
  specifically the Paramount Interactive Marketing headed by Amy Powell at the time, and
• 1:11:41
  a lot of other great people there. But it was really them. I
• 1:11:44
  mean, they kept us involved in what's going on, but demanded and the
• 1:11:48
  Bunis screening is and all the kind of stuff that came from them, and
• 1:11:51
  you know, we might have had some ideas here and there to add,
• 1:11:56
  but it was really all them. So I can't take any credit for it.
• 1:11:59
  But every thing that they presented we loved. We thought it made perfect
• 1:12:03
  sense to not make it feel it We felt like that this approach could actually
• 1:12:09
  work to our advantage. It's a very similar approach to what exactly worked for
• 1:12:14
  Black, which project starts small, and at that point I had confidence that
• 1:12:17
  the word of mouth, will you know, help get the movie a lot
• 1:12:21
  of awareness and recognition and to kind of keep a sense of you know,
• 1:12:26
  defense are discovering this film. It's not pushed on them by a big studio.
• 1:12:31
  It's just being discovered, you know, by the ground roots level.
• 1:12:36
  So we when Paramount tool us, you know, this is what we're planning
• 1:12:40
  on doing. We're like, we love it. That's genius, you know,
• 1:12:43
  keep going amazing. So what are you doing during this time? I
• 1:12:46
  mean, you know you're not like living paranormal activity twenty four seven? Obviously
• 1:12:50
  you have a job. Were you already at what point did they have you
• 1:12:56
  start working on other projects or or you know, creatively, what what are
• 1:13:00
  you doing spending your time or you know, on the in the year that
• 1:13:03
  this was on this roller coaster, Well, during the time I was until
• 1:13:10
  until right about the time that's a we did a test screening. I was
• 1:13:15
  still working at Sonny and then I actually ended up getting fired right before the
• 1:13:19
  test screening. I didn't want to go there, but I wanted to get
• 1:13:23
  there eventually even I heard the story was like okay, so yeah, Orne
• 1:13:28
  just kept taking personal days left and right, left and right, and he
• 1:13:30
  wouldn't tell anybody where he was going, but just kept, you know,
• 1:13:33
  just not being there. And they were during crunch crunch time, and then
• 1:13:38
  and then somehow they found out exactly what he was doing. Like he had
• 1:13:41
  this movie and he was doing all these festivals or screenings and then they fired
• 1:13:45
  him. And then like the next day, paranormal activity blows up and you're
• 1:13:49
  a Hollywood legend. And so hearing that story from like my brother and some
• 1:13:55
  other people, I was just like amazing. I was just like just because
• 1:14:00
  um, I was like let go from Sony fired, um, and the
• 1:14:03
  beginning of seven when like everybody was getting fired. So anyway, it was
• 1:14:10
  I vicariously lived through you going thank you, thank you for doing being able
• 1:14:15
  to succeed in that way. Oh thanks. It wasn't as as as as
• 1:14:21
  as you described it. They found out about the movie in June. I'm
• 1:14:28
  sorry in January, and I wasn't fired until June. To fire someone,
• 1:14:32
  you have to go through the process. First of all, they wanted me
• 1:14:34
  to finish, you know, at the release of MLB, so they weren't
• 1:14:38
  gonna you know, even mentioned the possibility of fire when they still needed me.
• 1:14:43
  But after we released the movie, then they put me on the PIP,
• 1:14:45
  the Performance Improvement Plan, which is the way of you know, getting
• 1:14:48
  you fired. So I knew I was, I knew I was on the
• 1:14:51
  way out. Anyways, they gave me a six task to do in two
• 1:14:56
  months, and five of them were reasonable and I got most of it the
• 1:15:00
  right away. The other one was totally unreasonable. There was one program or
• 1:15:05
  they spent several months trying to implemented it and it failed. And there was
• 1:15:12
  a team, the technology group, several people there were tried to implement it
• 1:15:15
  over a course of a few months and they couldn't do it. So they
• 1:15:18
  were trying to get me to do it, and I told them this is
• 1:15:21
  unreasonable. It can't be done. No one's been able to do it.
• 1:15:25
  And by the way, now with the benefit of hindsight, even five years
• 1:15:30
  after I've been six years however long it's been since I've been fired, and
• 1:15:35
  no one has still implemented it. So it's obviously they just set me up
• 1:15:40
  to fail. So during the time I took some time off, I still
• 1:15:45
  had probably forty or forty five vacation days accumulated, so it's not like I
• 1:15:49
  didn't have times off. But then they started playing games with me and didn't
• 1:15:53
  want to give me time off. I'm like, well, I'm going to
• 1:15:55
  take it off anyways, and then they fired me. Oh my gosh,
• 1:15:58
  so did you get a deal already in place from your team, Like I
• 1:16:03
  mean, did you have or did they or give you like some cash in
• 1:16:05
  the bank, or did you not see anything from Paramoun activity until it was
• 1:16:08
  released or something. I don't thinkain in details, but I was just curious
• 1:16:11
  for just kind of living again. Vicarius is saying, like, I've got
• 1:16:15
  this whole time job. I got to keep going until I know that steal
• 1:16:17
  is set in place, or I didn't get anything from Paramount until after the
• 1:16:23
  movie was released theatrically and blew up. But I don't remember the exact timeline.
• 1:16:30
  I don't remember if it was while I was still It's Sonny. I'm
• 1:16:32
  pretty sure it wasn't. I'm sure it was after I was already done with
• 1:16:36
  Sonny. But money started trickling in from the foreign sales deals that we did,
• 1:16:42
  so there was a little bit coming in before the movie was released theatrically
• 1:16:46
  in the US. Okay, So how was it emotionally being fired? Was
• 1:16:51
  it like almost like a relief, like a like, Okay, I'm free
• 1:16:56
  and so you can focus on the movie or was it still dressful? There
• 1:17:00
  wasn't much to focus on at that point. It was out of my hands,
• 1:17:03
  and you know, it was all up to paramount, so there wasn't
• 1:17:06
  much for me to do. But to a certain point, it was the
• 1:17:12
  sense of relief. I mean, I knew that I knew they were firing
• 1:17:15
  me one way or another, so it was like, okay, you know,
• 1:17:17
  I knew it was coming, so I just hit the you know,
• 1:17:23
  figured I'll have a long vacation until the movie gets out. So again,
• 1:17:27
  like during this time where there's this discussions about other projects they wanted you work
• 1:17:30
  on, like that Jason and Stephen wants you to work on or was it
• 1:17:34
  just all one hundred percent paranormal activity. Well let's let's for this particular interview,
• 1:17:41
  let's limit the discussion on Toman paranormal activity. Oh yeah, we hear.
• 1:17:45
  Sorry, I didn't mean to get you into any other projects, nothing
• 1:17:49
  specific, because I know that your policy about talking about stuff that you're working
• 1:17:54
  on you don't get into and I didn't mean to get into that. I
• 1:17:56
  was just mostly I was mostly keenly where like um that there was projects like
• 1:18:00
  that, there was other stuff you did, and you don't have to tell
• 1:18:02
  me specifically. I'm just curious, like, you know, how you deal
• 1:18:05
  with your time off between these you know, waiting for that big release.
• 1:18:10
  Yeah, there was definitely discussions, and you know, my agent would send
• 1:18:14
  me scripts every once in a while to read. So yeah, I would
• 1:18:17
  try to find ways to to keep myself occupied. Okay, okay, cool,
• 1:18:23
  that's all I needed to know. Sorry, buddy, no problem,
• 1:18:26
  no problem. So yeah, so then parademic activity happens. I mean,
• 1:18:29
  it wasn't too much longer after being let go at Sony that the thing blows
• 1:18:33
  up, right, I remember kind of trying to see the time frame here.
• 1:18:39
  Yeah, I think the first screenings started in me too late September and
• 1:18:45
  it kind of blew up in October from what I remember. Yeahs is October
• 1:18:50
  oh nine or is it ten or nine? Okay or nine? So there
• 1:18:55
  it is, Chris so Halloween time fall. And then, um, you're
• 1:19:00
  still in San Diego, you're Sanego base. Um your experience living in San
• 1:19:05
  Diego and always driving to LA, did you always feel like you can decompress
• 1:19:10
  from the La bubble because you know, La it's just like this weird vortex
• 1:19:13
  of like, uh like hype on like on the highest level. And then
• 1:19:17
  you know, getting out of the city kind of mentally you're able to get
• 1:19:21
  a perspective. I don't know if you had that same experience or feeling.
• 1:19:26
  I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel that way now now.
• 1:19:30
  I spend most of my time in LA and when I go down to San
• 1:19:32
  Diego, part of it is to kind of mentally check out and relax because
• 1:19:36
  San Diego is, even though it's only, you know, one hundred miles
• 1:19:41
  away, it could be, you know, a world away from from Hollywood.
• 1:19:45
  It's a very different atmosphere. It's very mellow, very chill, you
• 1:19:49
  know, very cool vibe to it as opposed to kind of the craziness of
• 1:19:53
  LA, which is both good and bad. We'll be right back after a
• 1:19:58
  word from our sponsor and now back to the show. At the time,
• 1:20:06
  though, I'm feeling like okay, So now I'm pretty much transitioning for my
• 1:20:12
  old life in San Diego, and I needed to be in LA more to
• 1:20:15
  you know, be involved with Even though you know, it was out of
• 1:20:18
  my hands and Paramount was in charge of things, there would still be occasional
• 1:20:24
  reasons for me to come up to a late for meetings of that kind of
• 1:20:27
  stuff. So it felt a little like a little bit of a handicap that
• 1:20:31
  every time I have to drive up and drive down and figure out where to
• 1:20:35
  stay, and you know, a lot of time I would stay at Jason's
• 1:20:40
  the guesthouse, which you know, saved money on hotel bills, but it
• 1:20:44
  was still a hassle. I didn't have like my own place. So after
• 1:20:47
  a while I ended up renting a place in La so I can just be
• 1:20:49
  there. And because otherwise I always felt like I'm out of the loop,
• 1:20:54
  you know, being in San Diego interesting, So I'm going to kind of
• 1:20:59
  passwords. So you see the stuff developing, and you know, and it's
• 1:21:02
  becoming a hit, and it's you're getting pressed. I'm assuming you're gonna you're
• 1:21:05
  getting calls and doing the interviews and all this stuff starts happening. Um,
• 1:21:13
  do you even have time to catch your breath of like when it's when it's
• 1:21:15
  all just like all this heat comes on you. Not much. It was
• 1:21:19
  a pretty crazy period of time. And you know, I'm doing publicity when
• 1:21:25
  the movie gets released and I'm getting flown around the world, which is both
• 1:21:30
  you know, exhausting and sun So it was definitely a crazy, insane period
• 1:21:35
  of my life. And how long did it last like, so we're talking
• 1:21:40
  about like October too, I was probably like in January anyway. So we
• 1:21:45
  were talking about, so you've had this this your world when of your life
• 1:21:50
  just got flipped flipped around with this success and seeing it for real that the
• 1:21:56
  movies out in the theaters and you're being whipped around to city and views and
• 1:22:00
  and all this type of stuff. What was the support system like with your
• 1:22:04
  friends and family just you know, was was there like a moment like just
• 1:22:09
  a private like, oh my gosh, you know, this is it,
• 1:22:12
  this is it, it's happening. It's happening, and then all of a
• 1:22:14
  sudden, then it's his work. No, it was all good. I
• 1:22:18
  mean everyone was, you know, stoked for me, and you know,
• 1:22:21
  my parents are proud of me, and you know, it's all good.
• 1:22:25
  And I'm financially secured so I don't have to worry about working. It's sunny
• 1:22:30
  or anywhere else ever again. So I'm like, this is good, awesome,
• 1:22:34
  I made it. You know, I want delitery. You did,
• 1:22:38
  hey for the second time. You got your VCR in a second time.
• 1:22:42
  Let me ask you at what point. I don't want the details, but
• 1:22:45
  just sort of the emotional ride when you I don't know, maybe like a
• 1:22:48
  large sump of payout was given to you where you realize, oh my gosh,
• 1:22:54
  like you said that. You now you're at this place where I don't
• 1:22:58
  have to work, worry about working at so me and doing crunch time anymore.
• 1:23:01
  I am a Hollywood director and I had this chunk of change that my
• 1:23:06
  life has changed. Liked, was there like a moment like that or a
• 1:23:10
  private moment or did it happen gradually? Again, I mean it's gradually because
• 1:23:15
  I knew how much I was going to make based on the performance of the
• 1:23:18
  movie in the Boox office. So every week that it does better and better,
• 1:23:24
  I'm thinking, you know, in my head, you know, chuching,
• 1:23:27
  and then you know later we actually get the check. So I knew
• 1:23:31
  how much money was was gonna be due. But yeah, I mean,
• 1:23:36
  it was definitely nice to actually have it in my hand and in my best
• 1:23:40
  account. But I knew throughout the process that you know, I knew exactly
• 1:23:45
  what I was going to get amazing and now that this is crazy. So
• 1:23:50
  now you had this moment and it's here and you are part You're part of
• 1:23:57
  Hollywood history. I mean this is historic and everything now for the last seven
• 1:24:00
  years. So we'll we'll reference back to you know Blair, which paranormal activity
• 1:24:05
  and with the franchise, and I don't necessarily, you know, we have
• 1:24:10
  to get into all that stuff. I just try to wrap it up here
• 1:24:13
  because you've you've taken us to this journey, which is something that I know
• 1:24:16
  myself and my audience would love to hear, and I thank you and so
• 1:24:20
  much for sharing that with us. Um So just kind of wrap it up
• 1:24:26
  of like this is your hero's journey. You know, you went from a
• 1:24:30
  kid from Israel and then all the way you know, worked your way through
• 1:24:35
  in the video game world in America and then became a film director and a
• 1:24:42
  legendary one and that and that respect and a successful one. But even with
• 1:24:45
  all that that kind of stuff, Now, what is sort of like the
• 1:24:51
  one important thing that you realize just about life, like no matter like all
• 1:24:56
  this kind of stuff, like, is they're like an advice they can give
• 1:24:59
  somebody no matter or where they are in their life of just you know,
• 1:25:02
  if you're you know, like some kid walking by, like to give them
• 1:25:05
  this one bit of advice. I mean I took a very specific route that
• 1:25:13
  worked for me, it's a minute work for everyone else. There are definitely
• 1:25:18
  many other ways of doing well in the industry. So I'm not saying that,
• 1:25:24
  you know, my advice is good for everyone. But I've always been
• 1:25:29
  kind of a do it yourself kind of guy. I've never really liked schools.
• 1:25:34
  I don't think going to school is, or atleast for me, it's
• 1:25:38
  not an efficient way of learning things. I learned things much better on my
• 1:25:42
  own or with friends at my own pace, and I believe in doing things
• 1:25:45
  yourself. I don't know if you know the story of the first entrepreneurial thing
• 1:25:51
  that I've done, which was when I was sixteen, I quit high school
• 1:25:56
  and wrote a paint program for the Commodore Amiga and then got it's sold in
• 1:26:00
  the US and and made, you know, pretty nice money for you know,
• 1:26:03
  a sixteen year old in Israel. So I kind of already had that
• 1:26:09
  a confidence when I did Paranormal Activity that yeah, it can't be done.
• 1:26:12
  Because when I told, you know, everyone in Israel when I was sixteen,
• 1:26:16
  I'm quitting high school because I'm going to write, you know, this
• 1:26:19
  piece of software, everyone was telling me that I'm crazy and who are you,
• 1:26:23
  this sixteen year old kid, going to sit in your bedroom, apartment,
• 1:26:28
  in your apartment bedroom and write, you know, software to compete with
• 1:26:31
  the big with the big companies in the US. And I'm like, yeah,
• 1:26:34
  why not? And everyone kept telling me that I'm crazy and I'm wasting
• 1:26:39
  my time and I'm throwing my life away, which is one of the reasons
• 1:26:41
  that when I did paranormal activity, I didn't tell anyone that I was doing
• 1:26:44
  it because I didn't need to hear anyone everyone telling me that I'm crazy and
• 1:26:47
  who are you to, you know, film a movie. You've never filmed
• 1:26:50
  anything before, so what makes you think you'll be able to compete with the
• 1:26:54
  studios? So I feel it's better to just not tell anyone. But that's
• 1:26:58
  that just kind of worked for me. Idea of you know, you have
• 1:27:01
  an idea in your head, you figure out how to do it. What
• 1:27:05
  you don't know how to do, you either learn or delegate to someone who
• 1:27:10
  does. There was you know, I tried to do almost everything in part
• 1:27:15
  of activity on my own with a mirror and my girlfriend. But as an
• 1:27:19
  example, one thing that I couldn't figure out how to do was makeup.
• 1:27:23
  I tried to do it on my own because I wanted to do everything on
• 1:27:25
  my own. So I went online and I bought all these makeup kids,
• 1:27:29
  and I tried to apply it all myself, and I just couldn't get it
• 1:27:31
  done. So I'm like, you know what I'm gonna have to, you
• 1:27:34
  know, get a makeup arties. So I found the makeup Arties and hired
• 1:27:38
  her for a day and she did a great job. So the point is
• 1:27:41
  you need to do You need to know what you can do and what you
• 1:27:44
  can't do, and kind of recognize your own weakness and strength. But at
• 1:27:47
  the end of the day, you need to really be stubborn and really have
• 1:27:51
  perseverance. And then it also takes a lot of luck and timing. If
• 1:27:57
  it weren't for you know, all the different things that happened the right way,
• 1:28:00
  with kil Baru watching the movie at screen Fest and giving it to Cia
• 1:28:06
  and Ashley Brooks being there, you know, doing the screening at Adjacents Us
• 1:28:11
  and all the different you know, things that had to happen at the right
• 1:28:15
  moment in time. It doesn't matter how great the movie would have been,
• 1:28:18
  it still wouldn't have happened. And sometimes even if all these things are,
• 1:28:24
  you know, falling the right place, there might be another reason that you
• 1:28:27
  know, things can get so there's never any guarantee, and you know,
• 1:28:31
  the best thing you can do is just keep trying and you know, be
• 1:28:38
  really diligent about the way you do things that make sure you're doing things as
• 1:28:41
  best as you can and hope for the best. But there's no real you
• 1:28:45
  know formula. I can only say, you know, this one I get
• 1:28:50
  lucky with. Yeah, it's but still well deserve. I had no idea
• 1:28:57
  that you were actually that. I mentioned your bio that you worked on like
• 1:29:00
  the Amiga Pain program, and I think actually my dad and I actually worked
• 1:29:03
  on that program years ago. But um, but I had no idea that
• 1:29:09
  that that's the entrepreneurial spirit you've had since sixteen. That's that's fascinating. That
• 1:29:13
  actually shows quite a bit of character and makeup of why you know, Paranormal
• 1:29:18
  Activity is such a success and it is a really fun fun film. So
• 1:29:25
  congratulations on that and the job job well done. Um I'm gonna wrap it
• 1:29:30
  up just because I've taken up way too much of your time and I just
• 1:29:32
  can't thank you enough. There's so many other questions. I know, um,
• 1:29:36
  like you know, I didn't really get into like just what that meeting
• 1:29:40
  was like with Spielberg, and you know when you first finally met him,
• 1:29:44
  you know, in person. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:29:47
  sponsor, and now back to the show and whether or not he you and
• 1:29:58
  he discu asked about anything about your your experience living in Israel or not,
• 1:30:03
  just because I know how involved he is with his Jewish faith and so on
• 1:30:10
  and the planet of Israel. So I was scarious about that kind of stuff
• 1:30:14
  too. And then I know that I have fans that would want to know
• 1:30:17
  just like kind of what your thoughts are about the future of the industry,
• 1:30:23
  especially with Spielberg and Lucas coming out talking a couple months ago about the implosion
• 1:30:26
  of the industry. But it sounds to me being that how you're ingrained with
• 1:30:32
  an entrepreneurial spirit, no matter what happens, you will figure it out.
• 1:30:36
  So yeah, I mean, that's a real fest about about Spielberg, just
• 1:30:42
  because it was a pretty surreal experience. I was probably like, the first
• 1:30:47
  really surreal experience was if we rewind back to the test screening that DreamWorks when
• 1:30:56
  we were still talking about the remake. So after the test screening, Adam
• 1:31:00
  Goodman and Stacy Snyder, who was the chairman of the DreamWorks, you know,
• 1:31:03
  we're at the lobby hanging out and they're saying, yes, you know,
• 1:31:06
  we'll release this movie. Forget about the remake. We just need to
• 1:31:12
  get the okay from Spielberg because you know, any movie that gets released by
• 1:31:15
  the Dreamwork he needs to personally okay. So I'm like, oh shit,
• 1:31:19
  okay, you know, back back to sitting and waiting. And a couple
• 1:31:24
  of days later, I get a call directly from Adam Goodman, which is
• 1:31:28
  already very unusual. Usually I would talk, you know, to everyone through
• 1:31:32
  my agent, through my producers. I would never get calls from any executives,
• 1:31:36
  much less the head of DreamWorks. And he's so I'm already kind of
• 1:31:41
  nervous on the call, and he's like, well, or, I wanted
• 1:31:44
  to let you know that we love the movie, and as you know,
• 1:31:46
  we wanted to have the okay from Spielberg. So he started watching the movie
• 1:31:51
  last night, and he stopped halfway through and like, and my heart sings.
• 1:31:58
  And then he continues after a deliver birt pause because he got too scared,
• 1:32:03
  and he finished watching the movie today and he loved it and we want
• 1:32:06
  to release it. So that was like the first surreal, really surreal moment
• 1:32:12
  that I'm like, oh my god, Steven Spielberg watched my movie. And
• 1:32:16
  I was kind of like in a state of shock for a few hours after
• 1:32:19
  that and immediately called Katie and Mica and you know, everyone else to tell
• 1:32:23
  them so. And then later when I met him, which was wild Paranormal
• 1:32:30
  Activity was in release, he couldn't have been nicer. He was just like
• 1:32:34
  this sweet, nice guy that loves movies, and we talked about movies that
• 1:32:40
  you know, we talked about Paranormal Activity, and we talked about his movies,
• 1:32:45
  and we did actually spend a lot of time talking about Israel and politics,
• 1:32:47
  and we're just having a friendly conversation and everyone's in, well, I
• 1:32:50
  need to like pinch myself, like, holy shit, I'm talking to Steven
• 1:32:54
  Spielberg, because you know, he was like so friendly that we're just having,
• 1:32:58
  you know, a nice flowing conversation, a whole bunch of stuff.
• 1:33:00
  So it was definitely a great meeting. Good god, how long was the
• 1:33:05
  meeting? Like an hour or a more? Probably more like know and a
• 1:33:10
  half to two overlunch kid for you, how I can't I'm just I just
• 1:33:15
  want to scream go or in congratulations. It's it's it's been a pleasure having
• 1:33:20
  an opportunity to work with you so many years ago and you showing us kindness
• 1:33:26
  and support and just enthusiasm for what we wanted to try to do, and
• 1:33:30
  then to see your story develop is inspirational. It's it's it was like when
• 1:33:34
  I heard about it, when I was following it, and you know,
• 1:33:36
  I know that my younger brothers uh was closer to you, so he was
• 1:33:40
  just filling in these things and I'm just and it was just so I don't
• 1:33:44
  know, it's just it's it's it's an uplifting So all the success is due
• 1:33:49
  to you. And keep going and maybe if I'll get another opportunity to do
• 1:33:53
  like a follow up interview, as you know, maybe another project comes up
• 1:33:56
  or something. But I can't thank you enough for your time today and just
• 1:34:00
  really kind of I honestly, I'm a fan of all these types of interviews,
• 1:34:03
  but I never hear anybody get into the nitty gritty like this, which
• 1:34:06
  is why I wanted to kind of go through it kind of step by step
• 1:34:10
  and get into the emotion stuff because you never hear about you always hear like
• 1:34:14
  the gloss over, like like you hear your gloss over, Like, oh,
• 1:34:16
  you know, he worked on this ami good program and then he then
• 1:34:18
  he made this little film and then he got this dispuch of deal and then
• 1:34:21
  they got this huge franchise. Like that's kind of like the gist of it,
• 1:34:26
  but like hearing what you had to go through and the emotional ride of
• 1:34:30
  it. Um, it's just impressive. Anyway. Well, maybe in a
• 1:34:33
  few years I can give you even more you know, juicy details you know,
• 1:34:43
  still can't talk about. But yeah, I'm definitely glad to help.
• 1:34:45
  Like I said, you know, I make Streiths. It's sony, especially
• 1:34:49
  the less he was was very miserable. There were so many Doocy people there,
• 1:34:53
  you know, like when the what shows like a Office Space or Silquin
• 1:34:57
  Valley, you know, the new ones from Mic Judge or Yes, the
• 1:35:00
  Obvious that they were like so many nasty characters that I recognize from you know,
• 1:35:04
  my own life. And I definitely remember you know you you and your
• 1:35:08
  brother are being the good guys, so very happy to help. Oh,
• 1:35:13
  thank you. So much, and I agree, like it's weird in a
• 1:35:15
  corporate world because when it gets stinky and and and illness, like it's weird,
• 1:35:20
  like just true colors if everybody sort of just reveals themselves and it's you
• 1:35:26
  can you can feel the stench, and it's it's a terrible place to go
• 1:35:29
  into when you know, sort of like that death of like eventually somebody or
• 1:35:32
  everybody or half the people are getting let go, you know. M anyway,
• 1:35:38
  But hey, well, thank you so much. Have a great Friday
• 1:35:41
  and a great um you know, this weekend, and I um, I'll
• 1:35:45
  pin you when this is up and I'll just i'll clean it up a little
• 1:35:48
  bit. But thank you, no problem, have a good weekend. Okay,
• 1:35:53
  Thanks Horren, bye bye. I want to thank Scott so much for
• 1:35:57
  doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links
• 1:36:00
  to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes
• 1:36:02
  at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv Forward slash three oh five. Thank you so much
• 1:36:06
  for listening to guys, as always, keep on writing no matter what.
• 1:36:11
  I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at
• 1:36:15
  Bulletproof screenwriting, dot tv,