Latest / Movie Meltdown / 235: Focus on Flyover

Transcript

235: Focus on Flyover · Movie Meltdown

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, hello, this is Kentucky Riley. You're listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Picture Association of America.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised.
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: It's showtime, folks.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the show.
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Kilowatts of power.
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: I got an idea for a movie. Doesn't everybody?
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Looks like I'm running late again. As it waits, it's
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: all concrete. Keep the beat. Always somewhere to go.
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: Nowhere to be.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I'm looking for my fire over the stairs. Those backyards
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: and great lakes.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I gotta take it easy now.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio The red ones and blue ones
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: are places that I know Look up the way you've gone,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: the way.
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: You've been away from I'm in a flower.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Stand I've found I'm in a flower stand I'm proud.
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I'm Brian, and this week we will be coming to
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: you live via digital recording from Flyover Film Fest here
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: in Louisville. Yes, this is the fifth annual Flyover Film Fest,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: and we have been there every year. We actually kicked
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: off the show that same year, and we've covered Flyover every.
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: Year since then.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: And it's an amazing festival, I have to say. Especially for,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: you know, a city like ours, it's pretty impressive. Basically,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: the goal of Flyover Film Fest is to put together
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: a high-quality film program And they never disappoint. Each year
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: they continue to line up amazing films and to actually
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: bring in some of the hottest indie directors working today.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: So it's something I've been glad to be a part
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: of and kind of proud of what they've put together
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: every year. So speaking of those directors that were here
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: for the festival, that's actually what we'll be focusing on
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: this episode.
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: The indie director.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I started a running series called Focus years back that
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: specifically featured film directors. So this week we'll be talking
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: to three different indie film directors, and then eventually we'll
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: get to their latest film, the one that was showing
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: at the festival this past week, and we'll learn more
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: about those projects and how they got involved with them
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: and the process it took to put them together. So
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: first up is director David Lowery, a man who's been
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: working in the industry for years now as both a
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: director and as an editor for other people's films.
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: But this year he.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Released Ain't Somebody Saints, a film that's been getting a
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: lot of buzz around. It stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: and it has sort of a western theme to it,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: sort of a subtle 70s period setting. It's an interesting film,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: but I'll let David tell you more about it. I'm
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: usually kind of fascinated with how everything gets started with people.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: So I guess to go way back, what do you
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: remember being sort of your first real love of movies
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: or your first real exposure to filmmaking?
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: It was Star Wars.
• 5:18
  Speaker 6: That was what.
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: Gave me a love of movies as an audience member.
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: And then around the time I was five or six,
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: my parents got me a book on how Star Wars
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: was made, like a children's guide to filmmaking through the
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: lens of how they made the first Star Wars movie.
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: And that was, you know, that hooked me. That was it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: That's all there is to that story is that that
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: hooked me.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting just because that was kind of mine. too, actually.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: And once you get in, especially once you start bringing
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: them in with people in the indie scene, they'll pick
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: very obscure movies and stuff. But yeah, that one, it's
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: kind of good to hear a sort of a mainstream one,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: but it was pretty artistic for its time and was
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: doing different things that people hadn't done at that point
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: in time.
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, looking back on it now, it's
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: like there's a great, you know, populist movie that has
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: artistic integrity to it. And that's what you look for
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: in any movie, whether it's, you know, an art film
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: or a summer blockbusters, you want it to have integrity and, and,
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: and to have a director with a perspective and a,
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: a vision and a point of view. And then that
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: movie had that. And I think that's why, you know,
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: for folks of our generation, that's why it's, it spoke
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: so loudly.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: I guess at what point did it change and not
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: just being a love of movies, but you knew that
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: you wanted to make movies and, Was it, I guess,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: more of a little bit older into that?
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: No, I mean, I was seven years old when I
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: told a friend, I was like, I think I'm going
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: to make some movies. That's what I want to do.
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: I want to make a movie. And that's all I've
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: been doing ever since then.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Did you actually start making stuff that young?
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: I didn't have a camcorder, but I had a friend
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: of my dad's had one. And when he would come
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: on vacation to visit us in Texas, he would bring
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: it with him. So there was, you know, the once
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: or twice a year that, I was actually able to
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: have access to a video camera and would plan movies
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: all year long for those rare occasions, and then we'd
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: make them, and they were always science fiction or Indiana
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: Jones ripoffs or whatever, and I wrote and built the
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: props and did all the special effects and did that
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: for many films I never even had the chance to shoot,
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: but that was part of the fun of it was
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: building all the stuff that would go into it, and
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: so you learn a lot from everything.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Somewhere there needs to be a film project where they
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: just start compiling all the Raiders of the Lost Ark
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: knockoffs that little kids did. Because it seems like an
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: entire generation was fueled off of that one too. Every
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: kid wanted to do that. Again, I guess it speaks
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: well of those films.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: I do like, I think, and I guess correct me
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: if I'm wrong, but I had seen... Something that you'd
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: said that a very big piece of your style of
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: directing is trusting your instincts. Is that the case?
• 8:12
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it is.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's something that I've kind of resigned myself
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: to relying on more than anything else because it's ultimately
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: the one thing I know I can trust.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: And then I guess once you get in there, is
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: it one of those that like you have everything mapped
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: out or do you just kind of have an idea
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: and go with it once you're on set?
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: It's a little bit of both. You know, Any film production,
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: especially one once you start spending a little bit more money,
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: needs to have a plan and needs to have some
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: degree of forethought put into it because otherwise you'll just
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: start spending money and running out of it. When you're
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: making a movie for no money at all, you can
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: kind of wing it a little bit more because there's
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: nothing to lose. But as soon as you have a
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: budget and people who are keeping track of that budget,
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: you really do need to have a plan and show
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: what your intentions are from the outset so that they
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: are able to, you know, help you execute that because
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: it is something that, you know, there's people whose jobs
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: on a movie set is making sure that you are
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: getting what you want to, you know, and if you
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: don't let them know what you want, they're unable to
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: help you. That being said, there are times in the
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: set where what you thought you wanted turns out not
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: to be the case or where you have an idea
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: that you never imagined having, And those are the times
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: where I think it's important to have the flexibility to
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: follow those intuitions or those instincts or those random ideas
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: that just present themselves because sometimes they result in the
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: moments that really make the movie or that elevate the
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: movie beyond what initially was it going to be. And
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: I always am trying to remind people when I'm working
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: with them that, regardless of... the plan that we have
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: set forth to make, we're always going to, you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: allow for those serendipitous little discoveries to, you know, to
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: flower to the extent that they need to. Because otherwise,
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: you know, you might be just ignoring something that would
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: make your movie truly special. And that's something I never
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: want to do. And so sometimes you just see something
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: or you hear something or you get an idea and
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: you know on a very instinctual level that that is
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: something that belongs to this movie. And it's something that's
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: never occurred to you before, but you need to get it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: And creating the infrastructure to allow yourself to have the
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: flexibility to follow those fleeting moments or fleeting ideas, that's
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: important to me.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's something not every director can do. Sometimes
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: they get so rigid in their plan that you kind
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: of lose that creativity along the way.
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: It's definitely, you know, it's hard. It's something that I realized,
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: you know, on this movie more. I mean, I was
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: a huge learning curve because my last movie was so small.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: It was one of those movies where you could just
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: do whatever because you weren't spending any money and there's
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: nothing at risk. And with this one, there was a
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: lot at stake. And we had, you know, once we
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: stopped shooting, we couldn't afford to keep shooting. So we
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: couldn't add days.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: We couldn't.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: You know, if I decided to add something to the schedule,
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: it definitely had an impact on everything else. And so
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: it was, it's a, it's a tough thing to sort
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: of work into your production plan. And I totally get
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: why rigidity is an easy course to take when you're
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: making a film, because it just, you know, if you
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: have a certain number of shots you're going to get
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: each day and you go in there and get those shots,
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: it's like, okay, great. But For me, the real fun
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: of filmmaking comes from the things you don't expect and
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: the moments where that rigidity falls away and reveals something else.
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: And that's what I'm always hoping to accomplish on set,
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: in the editing room, in the writing, everywhere. And to
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: ignore the possibility of that is a shame and it's
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: a missed opportunity for me. And so I always try
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: to accommodate for it.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned working with limited budgets and I guess
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: it's changed a little as you've gone on. How much
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: does that factor in when you're putting these projects together
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: or how much has it changed as you've gone on?
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, what I like to say is that as
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: soon as you distill any particular moment down to yourself,
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: the actors and the camera, it doesn't really matter what
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: the budget is. And that's true. At the same time,
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: what I said earlier about how, you know, if you
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: reach day 28 of your 28 day shooting schedule and
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: you haven't gotten everything, you're not going to get it
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: all because when you have a certain amount of money, um,
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: as we did with this film, it actually constrains you
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: to a certain extent because each day of shooting costs
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: a certain amount. And the budget is so tight that
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: you know that you're not going to be able to
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: add another day on. I mean, time is the one
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: thing people always want more of on films and it's
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: because it really is so constrained. And, and so you really,
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: you know, on the one hand are doing things exactly
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: the way you've always done them. And in my case,
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: I made a $ 12, 000 movie and then I made this
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: movie for a little bit over 3 million. And, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: you just, you know, you walk past all the trucks
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: and all the crew members and, and, and it really
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: comes down to you and the cinematographer and the actors.
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: But at the same time, you also are always keeping
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: in mind the fact that there's an entire machine that
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: is enabling you to achieve what it is you want,
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: and that if you throw the wrong sort of monkey
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: wrench into those works, it's going to stop dead, and
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: you're not going to get what you ultimately need to
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: make the movie work. So you're having to balance it all.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Did you shoot this? This was actually on film, right?
• 13:59
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: I think I'd seen you were trying to find older equipment.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: You wanted a not high-tech look for this film?
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we wanted it to feel old-fashioned and antiquated in
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: the best possible way. And so shooting on film was
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: the first step, and that was something we had to
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: fight for because on a budget, you know, if you
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: look at a movie in 1997 or even 2001, no
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: one would bat an eye if it was shot on film.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: At this point... the Bond company will be like, well,
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: why do you need to shoot on film? Why don't
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: you shoot on digital? And so we had to fight
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: for it, which was unfortunate, but we won that fight.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: And then beyond that, it was a matter to achieve
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: the look we wanted. It was a matter of a
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: lot of testing. We did some camera tests, really testing
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: the exposure and how the film was processed and how you,
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: you know, the degree to which we could underexpose the
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: image and then pull that exposure out without sacrificing, you know,
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: the grain structure of the film stock we had chosen,
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: and then also using no modern lighting equipment. We didn't
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: use any fluorescents, no Kino Flows. It was all old
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: movie lights and tungsten bulbs that were, you know, often
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: just household bulbs that were, you know, left bare with
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: a shade over them. And you can see them in
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: the frame. A lot of the scenes, like in Scarrett
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: Schaub and Ruth's house, are lit almost exclusively with the
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: practicals that are in those scenes.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And that was.
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: A very deliberate and very conscientious choice of trying to
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: find the type of light that would not feel modern.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: And we really were very stringent with our approach to
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: not just alighting with the composition and to everything, to
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: make it feel as true to the period as possible,
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: not just in terms of the costumes and production design,
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: but into the way the movie was manufactured.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, it looks amazing. Not just the lighting, but
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: just overall the cinematography and how you shot it. Back
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: to digital. Are you okay with using that at some
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: point if it fits the movie?
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I love digital. And digital is my comfort zone
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: because I grew up using it. And that's what I
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: learned how to make films on. And I can operate
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: a RED camera and know how to do it. Whereas
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: with 35 millimeter, I don't. This is the first thing
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: I've shot on 35. And I don't know. I mean,
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: I I kind of know how to load it and
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: I know how to get an exposure, but I'm not
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: a master of it by any means. And so there's
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: a bit of a mystery to the technology. Whereas with
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: the red, I can just pick it up and I
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: can shoot the movie myself and know what I'm doing.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: Not to say I'm a great cinematographer, but I just
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: know how the equipment works. So it really, for me,
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: comes down to just what the project needs or what
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: the story needs and what the tone of the movie
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: is going to be. And yeah, And I don't know
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: if I'll have, you know, film is going away. And
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: for better or worse, I don't feel that it's a
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: huge tragedy. I feel it's sad. It's not a huge tragedy.
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: It doesn't kill me. If I had to shoot the
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: rest of the movies that I make for the rest
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: of my life on digital, that wouldn't be a bad thing.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: But I like at the moment having the option. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: if I have another film I want to make that
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: feels that it needs to be shot on film... And again,
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: it's a very innate, very gut-level thing that suggests that
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: more than a practical path of reasoning. I hope that
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: I'm able to do that, and I hope that the technology,
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: the film is still being manufactured, and the processing still
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: is able to take place, and that we can rent
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: the cameras, because who knows how long it'll last.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you never know with that whole situation at this point.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Into other technical stuff, you've done... a lot of work
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: as an editor over the years, even on a lot
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: of other people's projects. Actually, we had Amy Simons on
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: last year, who's amazing. But yeah, like her, No Shine,
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: and then Upstream Color. I guess I wanted to ask,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: what is it that you bring to the table as
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: an editor you feel that's different than most other people,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: that they would want to bring you in to do
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: the editing on their movies?
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: You know, I can't really... I'm a horrible salesperson. I
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: can't pitch myself. I do feel that editing is my
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: strong suit and hopefully the work that I've done speaks
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: for itself. And certainly I never pursued it. I never
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: went out and had a reel and was sending the
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: reel around. I just took the work as it came
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: to me. And that being said, I do feel that that's,
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: you know, whatever talent I have as a filmmaker largely
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: comes from the editorial side more than anything else. Working
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: with actors is something I'm still learning to do and
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: where to put the camera is something I know I
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: can get better at. And editing is something I can
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: get better at too, but it's something where I feel
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: confident that I'm really good at it. And I think,
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: you know, when I look at a bunch of raw footage,
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: I just kind of have an intuitive idea of how
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: it should be put together. And that's something that I
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: can't really describe or analyze. Someone could, or maybe I could,
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: but I just feel like I remember cutting my first
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: documentary a couple of years ago and just, there's more
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: footage for documentary than there would be for a narrative film.
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: There's just so much. And I was able to look
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: at it really quickly and just be like, well, here's
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: how this will fit together with this. And this will
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: go here and this will go there. And that pretty
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: much was what the movie wound up being. And, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: it was the right, they were all the right choices. And, and,
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: and that's not to say that I instantly limit myself
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: to a certain perspective, but I just have an idea
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: of how a movie can fit together and what it
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: needs to be based on what has been shot. And
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: I can understand what a director's intuition is and what
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: they want to achieve out of something based on what
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: they've shot. And that's really something that I wouldn't say
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: if I hadn't cut a bunch of movies that the
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: directors were happy with.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Well, and then moving into directing your own, is it
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: something that you just want to shoot a bunch of
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: coverage and know that you can fix it later, or
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: do you have that mindset going in that you know
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: specifically what you want to shoot extra coverage of, or
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: you have it all kind of framed out as an
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: editor as you're shooting?
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: It's the latter for sure, but at the same time,
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: I'm sort of schizophrenic as a director, and sometimes I'm
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: imagining the movie as this fluid, fleeting sort of montage-y
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: you know, slipstream of a cinematic event. And other times I,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: I imagine it being a very rigid and formalist experience.
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: And I'm talking specifically about Anthem Body Saints. And that
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: is something that, you know, you shoot each movie with,
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: you know, a certain idea of how it's going to
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: be put together. And for me, sometimes I'm thinking about
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: two different, two or three or four different styles of
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: how it might be put together. Ultimately, I definitely go
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: with one of those and stick to it. But at
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: the same time, I'm always like, you know, as I'm
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: shooting a scene, I'll imagine like, well, then I could
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: just cut away to this, this, and this, and this,
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: and it would flower into something else. And those are
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: tantalizing paths to pursue. And there's things that are, you know,
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: things about the different, modes of filmmaking that appeal to
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: me and that I always want to sort of like
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: honor all of them and, and indulge in all of them.
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: But ultimately when you're on the set with the actors
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: and the DP, you kind of are just, you know,
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: you have a very strong feeling that the camera needs
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: to go like right here and it needs to go
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: right there because of the last shot was right over here.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: And you can try to cut that together a number
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: of different ways, but there's probably one or two ways
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: that needs to go with this film in particular. I,
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: had an idea that the first 15 minutes would be
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: very fluid and very quick and very, there'd be a
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: lot of content that would, would happen in a very
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: short period of time. And then it would just stop
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: and the whole movie would just slow to a halt
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: and it would continue at a very measured pace from
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: there for on out.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: And, you.
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: Know, in the editing process, we went through a lot
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: of different, you know, we went down a lot of
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: different paths and we tried a lot of different things
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: and ultimately we wound up exactly with that, with a
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: movie that has a very fluid and very, ephemeral and
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: very speedy first act and not even the first act
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: like the first half of an act and then at
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: that point it just stops and and the pace changes
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: and that was what I had written into the script
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: and that's what I had planned on while we're shooting
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: and even though I went down all these other followed
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: all these other wild herrings uh throughout post that's ultimately
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: what we wound.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Up with and then just I guess like you'd said
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: going from previous films that were like twelve thousand dollars
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: to now trying to bring in, you know, Casey Affleck
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: and Rudy Maher. How did that even come about, I guess,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: to go from one, to kind of jump from one
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: level to the next, bringing in, you know, pretty recognizable actors?
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: It just happened very quickly and very naturally. And one
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: of the things that I've always been determined to do
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: in my career as a filmmaker is to never wait
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: for money or for stars, or oftentimes they're tied together
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: because I don't want to be a filmmaker who has
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: spent five or 10 years trying to get one movie
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: off the ground. I would rather make a movie a
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: year on a much smaller scale. And so I'd made St. Nick,
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: which was my $ 12, 000 movie. And then I made Pioneer,
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: which was my short film. And then in the meantime,
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: I'd written this and it was like thinking this is
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: going to be my next film. And I set a
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: start date for it. And I think that's one of
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: the most important things you can do as a filmmaker
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: is just say, this is when I'm going to start
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: making this movie. This is when we're going to start shooting.
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: And in the case of Ain't Nobody Saints, we did
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: not hit that start date. But the only reason we
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: didn't hit it was because having set it, a certain
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: amount of momentum was accrued. And that momentum turned into
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: the classic snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger. And
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: that brought with it more money than we had anticipated.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: And the attention of, you know, talent agents who wanted
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: to send it to their clients and their clients were
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. And so that was, it was, it,
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: it all happened very naturally, but you know, it wasn't a,
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: that wasn't the, um, they weren't the cart. The movie
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: was the cart and, uh, and ultimately casting them and
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: getting the financing happened at the same time. And that
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: was the, the horse that pulled it. at the speed
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: that it happened that, but you know, we were, we
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: were going to make it one way or the other.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: It didn't really matter. And having that sort of attitude,
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: I think is very helpful.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: And I guess what was their collaboration process as far
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: as working with that cast?
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: I mean, I lucked into, again, just having actors who
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: are just cool people to hang out with. And you
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: always want to just work with people who you would
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: want to, you know, get together with after work or
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: hang out with on the weekends and, and people who
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: make work feel like it's not work and, and, I
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: don't expect that to be the case with every actor
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: I ever work with, but certainly in this film, that
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: was the situation. We were just, you know, we all
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: became really good friends and just would get together on
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: the weekends and have potlucks. It was a blast.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I guess the only other thing is just how should
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: people go look for this movie or what's the process
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: now as far as it getting out into the world?
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: The movie opens in New York and L.A. on August 16th.
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: And then it will be expanding over the next two
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: weeks pretty widely. And it's going to play all over
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: the country, all over the world. It opens in France
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: and the UK the following month. And so it'll be
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: out there. And it'll also be on VOD by September.
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: I don't even know how VOD works because I don't
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: have it in my home. But if you know how
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: it works, you'll be able to find it as of
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: September 1st, I believe. But it's a movie we made
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: for the big screen. So if you look in the
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: newspaper and see that it's playing, I would recommend seeing
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: it on the big screen because that's how we would
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: love for you to see it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: How do you feel about the new home video options,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: all the VOD stuff?
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's great because people who wouldn't normally get
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: to see it might get to see it. That being said, I,
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: you know, I don't own it. I don't have a
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: TV that can have it. So I don't even have
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: an opinion on it. I watch things on iTunes. I'm
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: happy when movies come out that are on iTunes that
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: aren't in the theater near me because I live in
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: Dallas and sometimes we don't get movies at the same
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: time period that other people do and.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: You know I.
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: Appreciate it and I like it at the same time
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: I go see movies at the theater if I can
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: and I cherish that experience and I value that experience
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: and I make films to be enjoyed under those circumstances
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: and so I hope that people who have VOD who
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: don't have the ability to go see the film at
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: the theater will watch it via whatever platform they can.
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: I hope that if it is opening in a theater
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: near you that you go see it on the big
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: screen because that is honestly the best place to see it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: Well, thanks for.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Talking to me. Thank you.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, the time is.
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: Now, the time is here.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Now's the time to abide a cheer.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: The place you like where the price is right.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Well, look in here, you'll dig this site.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: The moment's handy for a piece of candy. Just name
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: your brand, they're all so grand.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, what do you.
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: Think of a nice cool drink?
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  Speaker 7: Tweet Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds.
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• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Tweaked Audio. Sounds better.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: So thank you to David for sitting down to talk
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: with me. It was very nice to meet him among
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: the things I did at Flyover this past week. Another
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: of which I wanted to mention was I also saw
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: the film I Used to Be Darker. It's the third
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: film from indie director Matthew Porterfield, who had previously brought
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: us films like Putty Hill and Hamilton. Matthew unfortunately couldn't
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: be at the festival, but as it turns out, I
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: myself had a lot to say about this movie. So
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: I wrote a review of it, and it's on the
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Movie Meltdown website. If you haven't been paying attention to
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: the site, you need to go check it out.
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: We've been posting a lot.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Of really interesting written reviews from a lot of different writers.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Aside from myself, we've got a few of our cast
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: members from the show that are writing some. Alan in
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: particular has written several. And then we're also branching out
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: in the written work to bring in new people and
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: different perspectives. So Dave from Tower of Technobabble has actually
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: been writing quite a few great reviews for us lately,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: including a new series that's a lot of fun, so
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: you'll have to go check that out. And I'm also
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: working on lining up some more new writers, so I
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: really want to get a good group of people, sort
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: of a collective of people interested in film, all writing
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: for the site and bringing their own distinct opinions. just
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: to sort of mix things up and offer another different
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: aspect from.
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: The audio shows.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: So head to MovieMeltdown.com and look for the Written Reviews
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: tab at the top of the page, and then click
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: on it and see what we have for you. There's
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: a lot of different types of movies and genres, so
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: I think you'll find something there that you're interested in.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: And definitely go check out my piece on I Used
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: to Be Darker that I saw this past week, mostly
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: because I feel like I need to help.
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: Spread the word about that movie.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: So go to MovieMeltdown.com and check it out. So next
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: up is director Gillian Schlesinger. And aside from talking to her,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: we'll also be talking about one of my new favorite
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: people in the world, Laura Decker. But we'll get to
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Laura in a minute. Jillian is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker that's
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: actually worked for years on the on-air programming and doing
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: promotional campaigns for pretty big operations like the Sundance Channel
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: and AMC and BBC America. But this was kind of
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: her first entry into the filmmaking. Her directorial debut is
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Maiden Trip. And you've probably heard the news story years ago.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: Even if you don't know much about this film, you
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: probably heard the actual story that kicked it off and
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: did the same thing that she originally heard. It was
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: Laura Decker, who is at the time actually a 13-year-old girl,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and she was fighting with Dutch authorities because she wanted to...
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: do a solo trip around the world. She was a
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: sailor and she was trained and she wanted to, you know,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: it was actually also became a, you know, she would
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: be the youngest person to ever sail around the world solo.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: And that became sort of a factor too. It was
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: just sort of a challenge to do that. And she
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: felt she was up to the challenge and the government
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: stepped in and started trying to tell her she couldn't
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: do it and started trying to take her away from
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: her parents.
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: They didn't feel the parents.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Were, you know, capable of taking care of her if
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: they were going to let her do this, so it
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: became this whole big legal battle, and eventually the legal
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: end of it sort of works itself out, and that
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: doesn't really become the focus of the movie. The movie
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: kicks in when she turns 14, and she actually embarks
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: on this journey, and going around the world in this
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: little boat is a two-year journey, and she is alone
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: on a boat for two years. And Jillian gave her
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: a camera and said, you know, you shoot the stuff
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: on the boat when you're there by yourself. And then
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: she also met her at different ports along the way
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: and shot other footage and then pieced it all together
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: and put together this amazing documentary about Laura and her
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: trip around the world. Yeah, it's it's a great documentary.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: And even more than that, like Laura is an amazing
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: person to watch. Like it is it's It is an
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: inspiring tale, and I don't really get involved in those usually,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: you know? It's like I don't fall for that inspiring
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: documentary kind of thing very often, but Laura is just
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: so charming, and she just sort of wins you over
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: as this great kid that is also, on top of that,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: so smart and driven and determined, and it's just amazing
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: to watch. So if nothing else, seek out the film
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Maiden Trip, and now we'll just talk to Jillian. I
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: guess usually I'll go right into it with more of
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: like the general, what were your influences like early on,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: like growing up as far as like film or whatever
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: you were into.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: Oh, interesting.
• 34:14
  Speaker 7: In relation to this particular film?
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: In general, but then I guess you can go down
• 34:18
  Speaker 6: that path.
• 34:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, gosh. I was, I guess, well, I was really
• 34:24
  Speaker 7: into storytelling in sort of all forms. Making up stories,
• 34:30
  Speaker 7: writing plays, a lot of visual art, just different. I
• 34:36
  Speaker 7: was really interested in finding kind of like different ways
• 34:39
  Speaker 7: to tell stories. I even, like in college, I was
• 34:43
  Speaker 7: really into furniture building. And I feel like there's... there's
• 34:50
  Speaker 7: sort of an inherent narrative in a, in a piece
• 34:52
  Speaker 7: of furniture and, and, you know, the stories that kind
• 34:55
  Speaker 7: of become associated with that as, as it ages and,
• 35:00
  Speaker 7: and goes through different places. And I was very interested
• 35:02
  Speaker 7: in that aspect of, of furniture and kind of like
• 35:05
  Speaker 7: how it holds stories. So I think, you know, everything
• 35:08
  Speaker 7: that I did always came from a place of telling
• 35:11
  Speaker 7: stories and, and loving stories and even kind of like
• 35:15
  Speaker 7: seeing my own life in terms of, of, film narrative.
• 35:20
  Speaker 7: And I just watched a ton of movies. My parents
• 35:24
  Speaker 7: were both really into movies and totally different movies. They
• 35:28
  Speaker 7: didn't like any movies in common. So I was really
• 35:31
  Speaker 7: exposed to a lot of early silent films and comedy.
• 35:42
  Speaker 7: And then also just kind of like Hollywood cinema from
• 35:48
  Speaker 7: I guess like the forties onward. Um, and yeah, there
• 35:54
  Speaker 7: was a movie, uh, they don't really have video stores anymore,
• 35:57
  Speaker 7: but there was a video store in my town that had, um,
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: a $ 5.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Yay.
• 36:02
  Speaker 7: Uh, one video store.
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: I know they're few and far.
• 36:05
  Speaker 7: Between, but, um, There was a video store in my
• 36:09
  Speaker 7: town where you could rent five movies for $ 5 for
• 36:12
  Speaker 7: five days. And I did that.
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: I think we had one of those back then.
• 36:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah. Like more than I'm willing to admit. I watched
• 36:18
  Speaker 7: so many movies and I just loved it. And when,
• 36:21
  Speaker 7: you know, movies were, were my escape. I loved to
• 36:23
  Speaker 7: go to movie theaters alone. And so it was always
• 36:26
  Speaker 7: something that I wanted to be involved in. And I
• 36:30
  Speaker 7: felt like growing up, there's no, or at least where
• 36:34
  Speaker 7: I was growing up in Santa Cruz, I didn't, I
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: didn't really see a clear path to that. It seemed
• 36:39
  Speaker 7: like a really impractical pipe dream. It didn't seem like
• 36:42
  Speaker 7: something that people could actually do. And it wasn't until
• 36:46
  Speaker 7: I was in my twenties and I was working within
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: the film and television industry, but not directing my own
• 36:55
  Speaker 7: films that, that, you know, I began to kind of,
• 36:59
  Speaker 7: as I, as I got closer to the world where
• 37:02
  Speaker 7: that was happening, it became easier and easier for me
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: to imagine that, just going out and making a film
• 37:10
  Speaker 7: and what was involved in that. And at a certain point,
• 37:15
  Speaker 7: I came across this story and felt really ready to
• 37:19
  Speaker 7: do that. I felt like I had learned a lot
• 37:22
  Speaker 7: working on a lot of TV commission documentaries in different
• 37:26
  Speaker 7: capacities and at different parts of the process and then
• 37:29
  Speaker 7: worked on a few independent documentaries. So I had learned
• 37:32
  Speaker 7: about fundraising and, and grant writing and all the stuff
• 37:35
  Speaker 7: that you need to, you know, actually get the money to,
• 37:38
  Speaker 7: to make it happen. Um, so, which can be fun
• 37:42
  Speaker 7: if you, you know, I, I don't find it that
• 37:45
  Speaker 7: fun all the time, but, um, I try to not
• 37:48
  Speaker 7: find it miserable cause I feel like it works out,
• 37:51
  Speaker 7: but you know, like the outcomes are better when you're
• 37:54
  Speaker 7: enjoying whatever, you know, whatever part of the process it is.
• 37:57
  Speaker 7: So I really try to find some joy in every
• 37:59
  Speaker 7: part of the process, but, um, But yeah, I felt
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: prepared to kind of take that risk and try something
• 38:07
  Speaker 7: that I had never done before. And it seemed like
• 38:12
  Speaker 7: this was just a story that meant a lot to me.
• 38:16
  Speaker 7: And I really wanted to work with Laura to tell
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: her story and bring that to life for people to
• 38:24
  Speaker 7: see it.
• 38:25
  Speaker 6: That's a huge undertaking, though. Especially not directing at that point. Like,
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: you know.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: To see a girl that's like hundreds of miles away
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: from you and going through this whole ordeal and be like, okay,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: I'm going to take that on.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: That's a lot.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: That's impressive that somehow. So how did you then get
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: in touch with her and then how did you convince
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: her that you were the one to do it?
• 38:49
  Speaker 7: Well, it's interesting. You know, in response to what you
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: were saying just a second ago, I kind of felt
• 38:56
  Speaker 7: like I didn't realize quite how crazy it was. I
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: think the same way.
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: It's in your best interest, probably.
• 39:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it is. I think when you take on something
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: like that, especially something that you hold sort of deeply
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: in your soul and you feel like you have to
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: do it, I think there's a great moment in the
• 39:18
  Speaker 7: film when Laura gets to the Canary Islands and it's
• 39:23
  Speaker 7: the first stop on her trip and she's saying it
• 39:27
  Speaker 7: was a dream to one day get as far as
• 39:31
  Speaker 7: the Canary Islands, and it's just the beginning of her trip,
• 39:34
  Speaker 7: and suddenly she realizes she has the entire world ahead
• 39:38
  Speaker 7: of her. I feel like I had moments like that
• 39:41
  Speaker 7: in the beginning of making the film, where you're sort
• 39:44
  Speaker 7: of like, yeah, I'm going to go do this thing,
• 39:46
  Speaker 7: and it's not that you regret it, you just begin
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: to realize... once you've already started it, how big it is.
• 39:53
  Speaker 7: And that's a great moment to realize that because if you,
• 39:56
  Speaker 7: you know, it's possible that if you realized that before
• 39:59
  Speaker 7: you did it, you might not do it. And I
• 40:01
  Speaker 7: don't think that would have happened. I mean, that certainly
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: wouldn't have happened in Laura's case. And I don't think
• 40:05
  Speaker 7: it would have happened in my case, but I think that's,
• 40:07
  Speaker 7: that's part of the magic of it that I never,
• 40:09
  Speaker 7: I never really questioned it. I just felt like I
• 40:13
  Speaker 7: really want to do this. And this is something that
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: I believe in really strongly and, And I just have
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: to communicate that as clearly and passionately as I can
• 40:25
  Speaker 7: to Laura. And that if it's kind of meant to
• 40:29
  Speaker 7: be this collaboration that I want it to be, then
• 40:31
  Speaker 7: that will happen. And so I prepared a proposal and
• 40:36
  Speaker 7: sent her a letter. And she responded... And, you know,
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: she told me that she gets a lot of things
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: for books and movies and all kinds of things. And
• 40:47
  Speaker 7: I think there was something, you know, about the fact
• 40:49
  Speaker 7: that I was doing something that I'd never done before
• 40:51
  Speaker 7: and that I was approaching her as a peer and
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: as a creative collaborator and not just as someone that
• 41:01
  Speaker 7: I wanted to make a film about, but that somebody
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: that I really wanted to work with and like tell
• 41:06
  Speaker 7: her story and in her voice and on her terms.
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: And I don't think that she had been approached that way.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Well, that's, it's funny that you mentioned that moment in
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: the film, cause that is sort of amazing in a
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: way because it's both because it like literally she is
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: sitting there and she, the, you know, the world is
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: in front of her, but she's also, you know, a
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: 14 year old girl with the, and she really is
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: like embarking on this journey of a lifetime. And so the, yeah,
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: the fact that that exists on both levels in your
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: movie is.
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: Kind of awesome.
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I like that aspect of that.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Well, then once you get into that situation and she's
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: decided to come on board and you start, I mean,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: because that's even when I remember hearing about it, it's
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: like you have to be sort of concerned for, I mean,
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: even if it were anybody going out there, but let alone,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: you know, she was 13 when she started that process. So,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, at that point, how... how worried do
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: you start to become and then how much more so
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: does it get as you, you know, get to know
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: her a little better?
• 42:08
  Speaker 7: Um, well, it was interesting. So, you know, it was
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: kind of the more that I got to know her
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: and the more that I sort of understood what her
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: sailing skills were and, and her capabilities and understood more
• 42:19
  Speaker 7: about her trip. I actually didn't really worry about her because,
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: you know, she's, she was sailing alone since she was
• 42:26
  Speaker 7: six years old. Um, she had spent the first five
• 42:32
  Speaker 7: years of her life at sea. The sea was such
• 42:35
  Speaker 7: a huge part of her life. And it was really
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: clear to me from early on that something that's very
• 42:41
  Speaker 7: remote for most of us, which is the open sea,
• 42:45
  Speaker 7: is very familiar and very, you know, that's her home.
• 42:49
  Speaker 7: That's her place. That's where she feels safe and in control.
• 42:53
  Speaker 7: And it's so hard for so many of us to
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: relate to because we you know, you see movies like
• 42:57
  Speaker 7: the perfect storm and, and white squall and you think, Oh, you.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Know, you're just going to die.
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: That's what the layman kind of thing.
• 43:06
  Speaker 7: You know, there's a really being at sea is really
• 43:10
  Speaker 7: challenging and really difficult and there are tons of risks. Um,
• 43:15
  Speaker 7: but you know, to the extent that, that you're able
• 43:19
  Speaker 7: to sort of plan for whatever happens and, and be
• 43:23
  Speaker 7: as careful as possible. I mean, she really went to
• 43:26
  Speaker 7: every length to, to prepare herself properly for this trip. Um,
• 43:31
  Speaker 7: and I think, you know, for that reason, I didn't really,
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: I didn't have as many concerns as I expected to
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: have in just thinking about it in the abstract. And, uh,
• 43:42
  Speaker 7: and it's interesting just on a personal level, as we
• 43:45
  Speaker 7: became closer, I never really, um, had any concerns while
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: she was at sea on her own. Um, but you know,
• 43:54
  Speaker 7: in some ports, some ports were, uh, you know, I'd.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: Be scared to wander around there, let alone her.
• 44:02
  Speaker 7: Um, you know, there were, there were definitely some places where, um,
• 44:07
  Speaker 7: where it's not ideal, you know, to be, to be alone,
• 44:11
  Speaker 7: whether you're a 14 year old girl or like, or anyone, anyone.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:14
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's not like an age or gender thing. It's
• 44:17
  Speaker 7: just sort of.
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: It's a scary world.
• 44:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah, and anything can happen. But then again, if you
• 44:22
  Speaker 7: sort of... You can kind of live your life in
• 44:25
  Speaker 7: fear or you can live your life courageously because the
• 44:27
  Speaker 7: reality is anything can happen at any moment, no matter
• 44:31
  Speaker 7: what you're doing. And if you have this thing that
• 44:35
  Speaker 7: you want to do, and those risks are things that
• 44:40
  Speaker 7: you're willing to take, I think... I have a lot
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: of respect for people who live that way because I think,
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: you know, living your life in fear, you're much more
• 44:50
  Speaker 7: likely to regret not doing the things that you really
• 44:52
  Speaker 7: wanted to do.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I do see your perspective now. It's funny, when
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I saw the trailer, it was one of those, like,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, God. Like, I really, like, I
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: started to worry about her. Having seen the movie now,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I don't... Like, she is the most competent sailor. She
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: is the most driven person.
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: Like, again, I... I agree with you.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Like I, at that point, I don't really feel like
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: I would be worried about her anymore because she's, she's
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: in control of everything that goes on in her life.
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: It's kind of amazing.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah. One of the moments that I love most that,
• 45:23
  Speaker 7: that illustrates that is, is when that, that storm comes
• 45:28
  Speaker 7: in the Atlantic ocean. And I think as, you know,
• 45:31
  Speaker 7: kind of the average viewer you're looking at, water hitting
• 45:35
  Speaker 7: the ocean and these kind of like scarier darker skies
• 45:38
  Speaker 7: and you're like oh crap what's about to happen and
• 45:40
  Speaker 7: then she's having a blast and she's like so excited
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: about the rain and she gets a shower in and
• 45:46
  Speaker 7: it's just like I think that was when I first
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: came across this story and people had such strong things
• 45:53
  Speaker 7: to say about it in every direction I The thing
• 45:56
  Speaker 7: that I found so fascinating was that people were really
• 45:58
  Speaker 7: kind of imposing their own experience onto her experience. And
• 46:02
  Speaker 7: the thing that I found so interesting about her was
• 46:06
  Speaker 7: that her reality was so, so remote that it was
• 46:09
  Speaker 7: impossible for people to even fathom. And I think that
• 46:13
  Speaker 7: moment is kind of like a perfect example of this
• 46:16
  Speaker 7: thing where you're sort of like, brought into her reality
• 46:20
  Speaker 7: and and you sort of understand that like this is
• 46:22
  Speaker 7: a person who experiences the world in a totally different way.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah in a focused way like it it's amazing as
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: young as she was how like together she was and
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: how like to have that specific a goal and to
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: have that drive to do it is yeah it was
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: kind of amazing to look at it's.
• 46:40
  Speaker 7: She's a remarkable person like to have yeah just she's
• 46:43
  Speaker 7: got she's got quite a head on her shoulders and
• 46:45
  Speaker 7: she's really um I think also very wise, like sort
• 46:49
  Speaker 7: of a, an old, she's an old soul for sure.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: Well, and this being a documentary, it's really a different
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: one for you, I guess, because you're also handing the
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: camera to your subject. So you're, you're sort of relying
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: on her to shoot the footage. But then I also
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: was wondering what, then you're meeting her along the way
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: at like different stops. Then how much control do you
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: try to take when you, when you get to that
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: point with her? Like, Because you're still sort of keeping
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: in mind you're trying to at least contain some sort
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: of narrative or you're planning for when you're editing. So
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: it's like, how much do you sort of try to
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: still have a little bit of control?
• 47:26
  Speaker 7: I actually, that's a great question. I actually don't plan
• 47:29
  Speaker 7: and I don't try to control. And that's what I
• 47:31
  Speaker 7: love about, I mean, people have so many different approaches
• 47:34
  Speaker 7: to documentary. And I really, you know, I think they're
• 47:38
  Speaker 7: all interesting. But the thing that draws me to this
• 47:41
  Speaker 7: medium is is the idea of just going out and
• 47:45
  Speaker 7: capturing something like just giving her the camera and having
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: her sort of use it organically the way that she
• 47:51
  Speaker 7: wants to use it. And like when we would meet
• 47:52
  Speaker 7: her on land, you know, we would just do whatever
• 47:55
  Speaker 7: we were doing and, and happen to shoot it. And,
• 47:59
  Speaker 7: and I would probably treat different projects differently, but, but
• 48:04
  Speaker 7: the spirit of this was such that, you know, I
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: had a, a very specific, uh, time period and, and subject.
• 48:13
  Speaker 7: And for me, it was really about just following what
• 48:16
  Speaker 7: was happening organically. And it was also, it was also
• 48:19
  Speaker 7: what worked for Laura. Like, I think the thing that
• 48:21
  Speaker 7: worked about our process was that I didn't tell her
• 48:24
  Speaker 7: what to do or where to stand or to, you know,
• 48:27
  Speaker 7: walk down that dock again. Um, if I missed something
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: shooting it, you know, then it doesn't exist.
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: It wasn't important.
• 48:35
  Speaker 7: It kept me on my toes. And, uh, you know, and,
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: and we were just sort of like always rolling and,
• 48:42
  Speaker 7: and sometimes we weren't. And, you know, that stuff, that
• 48:44
  Speaker 7: stuff isn't there. I mean, there are amazing things that
• 48:46
  Speaker 7: happened on camera. There are amazing things that happened off camera.
• 48:49
  Speaker 7: Sometimes I think about moments that are so important to
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: the film, like, like in the flag store, you know, that,
• 48:57
  Speaker 7: that was barely being shot. And, and it's so crucial
• 49:03
  Speaker 7: to the film. And I think about how many moments
• 49:06
  Speaker 7: there were like that, Or that could have been that moment,
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: you know, had I not shot that or had I
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: shot something else. And it's just, you know, the fun
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: thing for us, I think, in post-production was going through
• 49:19
  Speaker 7: all of this stuff and then finding what is the
• 49:23
  Speaker 7: narrative that naturally exists in this footage that we didn't
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: really do much to, to have any control over. And
• 49:29
  Speaker 7: I think that was that, I mean, I loved the
• 49:33
  Speaker 7: production process, but the creative excitement and like the, the
• 49:38
  Speaker 7: part that I really, you know, sort of like love
• 49:41
  Speaker 7: the most is that process of going through everything and
• 49:47
  Speaker 7: discovering a story that you've experienced, but you don't know
• 49:51
  Speaker 7: actually what it is until you look at the footage
• 49:55
  Speaker 7: and find it.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: What I think was most amazing was what I didn't
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: know was coming, which I guess you would have to do,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: but like that you're not just experiencing this journey, the
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: specific timeframe that you're doing this trip on, But also
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: you're like watching this part of her life. And I mean,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: that's that's a pretty huge time in anybody's life when
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: you're 13.
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: By the time she's done, she's like 16.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: And that's a huge change. So you're almost watching her
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: grow into an adult in the middle of this amazing story.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: You know, so it's it is kind of amazing watching her.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: like dealing with her father at that age, because she's
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: still just being a teenager. Like she's, she's going through
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: this crazy circumstance, but at the same time, she's doing
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: exactly what all teenagers do. That, that, that was probably
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite things is, is that that was
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: taking place simultaneously with the, with the journey that she
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: was going on. Yeah.
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: I mean, that, that was definitely, I mean, that was
• 50:49
  Speaker 7: something that, uh, that really got me excited about making
• 50:54
  Speaker 7: the film because it's a time period in life that
• 50:56
  Speaker 7: I find so fascinating and, Um, you know, I've always
• 51:00
  Speaker 7: loved films that focused on people that age because I
• 51:04
  Speaker 7: think it is a very, it's such a, a complicated and,
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: and challenging, but also amazing time of so much change.
• 51:12
  Speaker 7: And it's very universal. It's sort of like, what's so
• 51:15
  Speaker 7: cool about Laura's story is that here she is doing
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: this amazingly, you know, it's, it's this extraordinary sort of
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: otherworldly feat, but yet there's something so universal about the
• 51:30
  Speaker 7: growing up part of it that anyone can relate to.
• 51:34
  Speaker 7: And I think that's, what's so beautiful about that time
• 51:36
  Speaker 7: period is that we all sort of go through the
• 51:39
  Speaker 7: same growing pains and watching her grow up over, you know,
• 51:43
  Speaker 7: I knew her and why, and I knew her as
• 51:46
  Speaker 7: a film character, you know, like watched her grow up
• 51:49
  Speaker 7: on film for two years. And, I remember shooting her
• 51:53
  Speaker 7: rival in St. Martin and how emotional it was. And
• 51:57
  Speaker 7: a couple of the people who had helped shoot, we actually,
• 52:00
  Speaker 7: because it was such a big event, usually it was either,
• 52:03
  Speaker 7: it was just me and one other person. And at
• 52:06
  Speaker 7: that stop, we had three people all together, which is
• 52:10
  Speaker 7: still a very small group. But we were all standing there,
• 52:15
  Speaker 7: you know, holding cameras with tears in our eyes because
• 52:18
  Speaker 7: it was just, you know, to, to know someone and,
• 52:23
  Speaker 7: and live with them that closely, both as, uh, you know,
• 52:28
  Speaker 7: a film character and then to have met her in the,
• 52:32
  Speaker 7: in the seven ports where, um, where we stopped to film, um,
• 52:38
  Speaker 7: you know, it was just, it was, it was really remarkable.
• 52:41
  Speaker 7: It was, you know, very, uh, spectacular experience.
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: It was a huge part of your life coming to
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: an end then too. So that's, yeah, that's, that's a
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: lot to deal with. Yeah, for sure.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Um, I did want to ask at the end, what
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: was the total amount of shooting that you had done
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: as far as like, I guess hours or how, how
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: are you even keeping track?
• 53:01
  Speaker 7: Um, yeah, hours, uh, between, uh, what she shot on, um,
• 53:07
  Speaker 7: she had a camcorder and then some mounted cameras on
• 53:10
  Speaker 7: the boat and what we shot when we met her
• 53:13
  Speaker 7: those times in ports. Um, I think we had a
• 53:16
  Speaker 7: little over a hundred hours, which is actually, I mean,
• 53:19
  Speaker 7: it felt like a lot, but, um, in talking to, uh,
• 53:22
  Speaker 7: you know, other filmmakers who have shown their films at
• 53:26
  Speaker 7: the same festivals, I think we're in the lower end,
• 53:29
  Speaker 7: you know, now shooting on video in particular. Um, and with,
• 53:34
  Speaker 7: you know, drive space being so much cheaper than it
• 53:37
  Speaker 7: used to be. Um, a lot of people had like
• 53:41
  Speaker 7: four or 500 hours.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: The hoop dreams nightmare.
• 53:45
  Speaker 7: Yeah. I can't imagine just logistically and financially how I
• 53:50
  Speaker 7: ever would have been able to cope with that, particularly
• 53:52
  Speaker 7: with like, it actually worked out well that, that especially
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: as the trip went on, Laura kind of like shot
• 53:58
  Speaker 7: more selectively.
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 54:00
  Speaker 7: And that really helped us. I mean, I think in
• 54:03
  Speaker 7: post it would have been really brutal to have to
• 54:06
  Speaker 7: spend more money on translations and, you know, to spend
• 54:10
  Speaker 7: more time logging. It was kind of, that was another
• 54:13
  Speaker 7: cool creative challenge and, you know, an aspect of kind
• 54:16
  Speaker 7: of like, giving up control is that you know you
• 54:19
  Speaker 7: you just sort of you find the story with the
• 54:22
  Speaker 7: amount of material that you have and you know we
• 54:24
  Speaker 7: didn't always have uh every single day of an ocean
• 54:28
  Speaker 7: you know a 40 day ocean passage but um but
• 54:32
  Speaker 7: putting it together from what we did have you know
• 54:34
  Speaker 7: obviously you can't show all 40 days anyway in a
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: film yeah so it kind of worked out well that
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: um we just had these really wonderful moments and and
• 54:42
  Speaker 7: i think as laura began to shoot more selectively she
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: also was shooting such great stuff that it was almost
• 54:47
  Speaker 7: like there were no bad takes. She was just very efficient.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she does have a style.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: All her own, and yet she also knows how to
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: capture herself really well. Yeah.
• 55:00
  Speaker 7: She got more playful with the camera, too, as she went,
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: which I thought was really cool. Her relationship with the
• 55:05
  Speaker 7: camera was something I found really interesting in the way that,
• 55:08
  Speaker 7: you know, I think especially... In the Indian Ocean and
• 55:12
  Speaker 7: in the last Atlantic passage, you know, where she sets
• 55:15
  Speaker 7: up the camera and does the Christmas dance and the
• 55:17
  Speaker 7: stuff where she's just kind of, like, goofing around with
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: the camera. Or she'll just, you know, set up the
• 55:21
  Speaker 7: camera and, like, sit there and eat pasta for, like, hours.
• 55:26
  Speaker 7: It's almost like this amazing sort of, like, experimental performance art.
• 55:32
  Speaker 7: It's so cool. Yeah, and it's funny because in the
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: first passage, she does much more kind of, like, traditional...
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: video diary type stuff. And it's so cool to see
• 55:43
  Speaker 7: that evolve. It's almost like her style is evolving as
• 55:46
  Speaker 7: a filmmaker, which, which I found very, very cool to hold.
• 55:51
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: Two years of day in, day out training, I guess she,
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: she developed. Yeah.
• 55:57
  Speaker 7: We'll see what happens in her next film.
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: That'll be interesting to see.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: Where she goes.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess, I think you said you, you don't
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: even have, Anything else lined up at this point? You're
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: still just getting this one out to people?
• 56:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I have a lot of projects that I'm thinking about,
• 56:11
  Speaker 7: but I'm not at the point where I'm ready to
• 56:16
  Speaker 7: talk about any of that. Like, I want to kind
• 56:18
  Speaker 7: of wait to sort of see which thing I'm going
• 56:21
  Speaker 7: to do next, and then I'll start to talk about
• 56:23
  Speaker 7: it all the time. But for now, just trying to
• 56:26
  Speaker 7: get Maiden Trip out into the world and have a
• 56:29
  Speaker 7: lot of people see it and talk about it.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: I'm all for spreading the word because Laura's kind of
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: my new hero.
• 56:35
  Speaker 7: Yay.
• 56:35
  Speaker 6: She's pretty amazing.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: So I'm, yeah, she's, she's an amazing person. So I
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: guess we all kind of take something from that story,
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: watching her and watching what you put together.
• 56:45
  Speaker 6: So it's, I don't know.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Did you take anything different knowing her in the real
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: world than I guess the rest of us will?
• 56:52
  Speaker 7: Actually, you know what I find so cool is that, um,
• 56:56
  Speaker 7: I was sitting, I mean, I had a really cool
• 56:58
  Speaker 7: job at, uh, Sundance channel. It was not a bad job. Um,
• 57:02
  Speaker 7: But I was sitting in my cubicle when I came
• 57:04
  Speaker 7: across this article about Laura. And I was reading this
• 57:08
  Speaker 7: and I was like, this is a 13-year-old girl fighting
• 57:11
  Speaker 7: a government to pursue her dream. Like, what am I
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: doing not pursuing mine?
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: And it was just weird how those.
• 57:19
  Speaker 7: Things aligned and how just reading this article, you know,
• 57:23
  Speaker 7: not right away, but kind of ultimately inspired me. to
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: leave that, uh, that job and start doing the same
• 57:32
  Speaker 7: work freelance so that I would have more freedom to
• 57:35
  Speaker 7: pursue this project. And, and one of the things that
• 57:38
  Speaker 7: I found so cool is that the film has had
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: that effect on people. So it was like, it was,
• 57:47
  Speaker 7: it's just kind of this like strange, awesome thing that,
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: that Laura has been able to kind of have this
• 57:54
  Speaker 7: impact on, that that has sort of multiplied as a
• 57:58
  Speaker 7: result of the film like i was just you know
• 58:01
  Speaker 7: one person sitting reading this article being like man i
• 58:04
  Speaker 7: have to like go do something yeah and and then
• 58:08
  Speaker 7: so many people have come up after the film and
• 58:10
  Speaker 7: uh at south by southwest this one girl was like
• 58:14
  Speaker 7: don't tell my boss he's over there but after i
• 58:17
  Speaker 7: saw your film i called my boyfriend and i was
• 58:20
  Speaker 7: like we're both quitting our jobs and doing something awesome
• 58:23
  Speaker 7: and i just you know i think that's a great
• 58:26
  Speaker 7: Life is short, and I think if a movie can
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: make anybody want to quit their job and go do
• 58:31
  Speaker 7: something awesome, that is awesome.
• 58:34
  Speaker 6: It does.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's an inspiring story, and you've done a
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: great job putting it together.
• 58:39
  Speaker 7: Well, thank you.
• 58:40
  Speaker 6: If nothing else, tell people where to go find it.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, gosh.
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: What's the best way to get a hold of it,
• 58:45
  Speaker 6: now and in the near future?
• 58:46
  Speaker 7: The best way is to follow the film on Facebook,
• 58:49
  Speaker 7: because we're going to have a lot of exciting updates
• 58:52
  Speaker 7: about the distribution of the film coming out really soon.
• 58:55
  Speaker 7: And that is where to find them all because our
• 58:58
  Speaker 7: website is really simple.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: And Facebook rules the world.
• 59:03
  Speaker 7: Exactly. And our website is almost never updated. And we
• 59:07
  Speaker 7: really do try to regularly update We're actually pretty good
• 59:10
  Speaker 7: about updating the Facebook, especially with important information, like when
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: it's coming out digitally, theatrically, TV. That stuff will all
• 59:19
  Speaker 7: get posted.
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: So go like it.
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 59:21
  Speaker 6: And thanks for talking to me.
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Dave, I do not get superheroes.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, I don't get you. What don't you get?
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: Tower bot here.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Well, the meatbags were going to say that if you're
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: a geek and like podcasts, then you could try Tower
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: of Technobabble at www.toweroftechnobabble.com. Then this started. Well, it's up
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: to you. I'm gonna get my taser and put a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: stop to this.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Towerbot out. Okay, monkeys.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 8: It's nap time.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: This is Amy Simons, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: That was me melting down.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: It's part of your problem, you know.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: You haven't seen enough movies.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: on with the show.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: And thank you to Jillian for talking to me.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: Um, we hung out.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: Briefly there the last day of the fest and she
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: seems like a really great person. And, um, I look
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: forward to seeing what she has in store for us
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: in the future. So like she said, go on Facebook,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: like their page, um, help spread the word, help support
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: it because you know, it's, it's stuff like that that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: really makes a difference with indie films. You know, it's there, there's,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: there's such a fight to get made. There's such a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: fight to get out there and get distribution and just
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: get to people. They rely on word of mouth to
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: make it work. So it's, yeah, it really does make
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: a difference when you guys take an interest in these
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: films and then tell other people about them. So, support
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: all the films and the filmmakers that we're talking to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: this week. And now, last but certainly not least, we're
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: going to talk with director Calvin Lee Reeder. So if
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Laura Decker is one of my new favorite people that
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: I haven't actually met, Calvin Reeder is one of my
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: favorite people that I have met. After our interview, Calvin
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: and I hung out for quite a bit over the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: next day and a half. I mean, there's a lot
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: of loitering around that goes on when you're at one
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: of these events or covering one of these events, and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: Usually for me, I'm just sort of standing there loitering
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: around by myself. It's what happens when you end up
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: sort of covering this or trying to set up specific
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: interviews or waiting for movies or whatever you're doing. There's
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: just a lot of standing around. And I guess that
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: was Calvin's situation as well. I mean, he was at
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: this one by himself, so we just sort.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: Of loitered around together.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: And he's a fascinating guy. I mean, we talked a
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: lot about music, about movies, obviously. But then also just
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: his situation of having to deal with weird press and
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: with hostile critics. I mean, he's a very original kind
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: of director, and that sort of unconventional behavior seems to
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: bring a lot of responses from people, you know? He
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: seems like he's put up with a lot of stuff
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: that other filmmakers don't necessarily, and I think it's just
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: because he's got such a different take on filmmaking, and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: he puts together such original movies that, like, some people
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: just don't know how to take it, and I think
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: he's dealt with a lot of weird responses from people.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: But his films seem to make an impact on people,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: both positive and negative, it would seem. And it sounds
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: like he's okay with that, you know?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: A movie that gets a.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Response out of you is probably better than just about
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: any other movie out there. You know, good, bad, or otherwise,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: it just, if you can make an impact on the audience,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: that's what you set out to do. And Calvin's current movie,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: The Rambler, will more than likely get a response out
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: of you. It's been getting a lot of talk this
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: past year, but if you aren't familiar with it, it
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: stars Dermot Mulroney as the Rambler himself, who goes on
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: a mysterious journey that, if I remember from the screening,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: Calvin said he likes to refer to it as more
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: of an odyssey. And having seen the movie, that sounds
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: about right. The film also stars Lindsay Pulsifer, who you
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: may know from True Blood or Justified or a lot
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: of other pretty big roles. But she's also been featured
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: in just about everything that Calvin has shot, which may
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: or may not have something to do with the fact
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: that she's also his girlfriend. All that, and she's a
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: great actress. But I specifically mention that only because I'll
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: address the dynamic of working with someone you're otherwise involved with,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: so just so you know that going in when we
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: go down that road. But otherwise, I think it's best
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: to just let him speak for himself. So with that,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: we will talk with Calvin. Alright, we're going to start
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: at the very beginning. When you were a kid, what
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: was it that you liked to watch first off?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 8: You know, I wasn't a big movie kid, but I
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 8: definitely loved the film Labyrinth.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 5: Oh, nice.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 8: I loved the film Cat's Eye. And I loved the
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 8: part in Indiana Jones, I believe it's the Temple of Doom,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 8: where they remove the heart and replace it with a stone.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: I did not care for the film, but I always
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 8: just fast forwarded to that part.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: Nice.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 8: So I watched the hell out of that. And I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 8: was a skater kid, so I watched a lot of
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 8: skate videos.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: We have one of those on the show, actually. He
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: reminisces about those all the time.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's funny.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: There's the stuff that sort of you attach yourself to.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: My end. I had a similar one, only it was
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: with Indy in the first one with the melting face.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: That scarred me for life.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 8: It's a good effect.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: I think it's why I'm here today.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: But I guess at what point did you actually start
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: crossing over and wanting to make... Was it on like
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: a VHS, like a videotape? Or how did you get
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: into making something on film?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 8: Well, I guess that's a little complicated. I guess I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 8: started making movies... or when we got a video camera
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 8: in like 92, just like everybody else. But I was
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 8: really far from taking it seriously in any kind of
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 8: a way. And then, you know, after junior high, I
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: didn't even think about it one time. And then after
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 8: high school, I pretty much threw away my future and
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 8: got into the construction business because that's all that would
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 8: have me. And then after a couple of years of
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 8: digging ditches and playing rock and roll, it just occurred
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 8: to me that I should really try to make movies
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 8: because I have all these ideas and I suppose I
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 8: had some type of understanding of independent film I had
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 8: been exposed to it to some degree probably more than
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 8: most people and I just thought well it seems hard
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 8: but nothing's worse than digging ditches.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: In the rain the world needs ditch diggers.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Too yeah did you I mean did you say you
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: were exposed to it was there like a good community
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: going in your area or just you found it yourself.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 8: I think I found out through my buddy Nathan Conrad,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 8: who ended up being in my early films. He was
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 8: always a guy that turned me on to music when
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: I was younger, and it was fitting that he turned
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: me on to film as well. He turned me on
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 8: to early Danny Boyle. But we also would go to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 8: this great video store, which I assume is something like
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: the one here in Louisville, and that's called Wild and
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 8: Wooly here.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: Wild and Wooly, yeah.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 8: In Seattle, we had our version of that, which was
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 8: called Scarecrow Video.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: I know of it.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: There's a handful of them now. You know they're pretty
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: impressive if they've made their name. Number one, if they're
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: still around at this point. But if they've made their
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: name nationwide, there's only about four or five that I
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: know across the nation.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: Absolutely. And that was one of them. And it just had,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 8: you know, I think they called it the psychotronic section.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I know that.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: We have one of those too, yeah.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: And at the time, that's the only thing I was
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 8: interested in watching. So that definitely helped shape that. But
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 8: I was, you know, 21 at that point.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I had....
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 8: Long given up my hopes of VHS glory, and just
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 8: out of sort of complete banal doom, I decided I
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 8: was going to try to do something with this existence
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 8: of mine.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: We're all kind of working on that, aren't we? So
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: was that at the point when Jerk Beast came about?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: I didn't know where to go with that one. What
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: can you tell us about Jerk Beast?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 8: Well, I can tell you, first of all, Jerk Beast
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 8: is the second feature that me and Brady Hall made.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 8: Right around that time I was describing, we made a
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 8: film on 16mm called Polterchrist. And I met Brady Hall
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 8: because he had a 16mm camera and he had long
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 8: hair and a beard like Jesus. And I had had
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 8: this idea to make a film called Polterchrist, but I
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 8: didn't know what it was going.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: To be about.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: He had the camera, he had the look, we hatched
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 8: a plan, we made the worst movie ever made.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: That's a bold statement.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 6: It is.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 8: And we cut it by hand and it exists on
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 8: like two VHS copies. While we were making Polterchrist, he
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: had this unholy pile of trash in his front room
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 8: that kept forming into what would become the jerk beast
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 8: one day. And it was just a pile of sticks
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 8: and plastic. There was football pads and paper mache. And
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 8: one day it was a monster face. And he said,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 8: we're going to do a public access show and I'm
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 8: going to wear that thing.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: Did he make it into a monster face or you
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: just started to see a monster face?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 8: It was a little bit of both. I do not
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 8: know he knew exactly what he was sculpting. And then
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 8: I think he just, it came together and he's like, oh,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 8: I can make this a face. And if I put
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 8: football pads on, I can put it over myself. And
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 8: he became the jerk beast. which is just this, Brady's
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 8: already tall, but when he puts on the jerk beast costume,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 8: he's probably six foot eight. And he's the most witty
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: insulter I've ever met in my life. So he can just,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: he can really go at you. So we hosted a
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 8: public access show where we fielded calls and I was
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 8: horrible at it. And my partner, Brian, was just a
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 8: little bit better than me. None of us could hold
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 8: a candle to jerk beast.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: And I don't know.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 8: It was weird. We became local celebrities for a minute.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 8: And like, I was a forklift driver at that point.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: So I would take the bus and people would stop
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 8: me on the way to work. And we're like, didn't
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 8: I see you on public access? And they would always
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 8: remind me how bad I was at it and how
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 8: great he was at it. We took that as actually
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 8: mostly good news and decided to turn jerk beast into
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 8: a feature film on 16 millimeters. Cause we'd already had
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 8: the practice with polter Christ.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: Very nice.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: Jerk beast is only slightly better than polter Christ. Uh,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 8: But by the time we finished it, the home editing
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 8: system Premiere became available for, like, an affordable amount. Whereas
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 8: when we were cutting Polterchrist, you had to have $ 10, 000
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 8: to have access to, like, Avid. So we cut that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 8: thing by hand. So the post of Jerkpiece went a
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 8: lot quicker.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 8: Got a little distro deal, traveled to England a little
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 8: bit with it. People still request the Jerk Beast band.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 8: This gets very confusing. There's a television show, a movie,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 8: and a band within the movie. The band is called
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 8: Steaming Wolf Penis. That band got booked on two UK tours.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 8: independent of the film, got booked at South by Southwest,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 8: independent of the film, because trust me, the movie never
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 8: played South by Southwest.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: Were you involved in the band?
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 8: I was the singer.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, nice.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we had songs like Looks Like Chocolate, Tastes Like Shit.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 8: What was the other one? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Hamster.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 8: That was a big hit.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: I think I know these bands.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: These were all, these were all our hits. Um, and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 8: actually up until about two years ago, clubs from, you know,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: Texas to Seattle were trying to get us to come
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: out and play. reunion tour and we just couldn't muster
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 8: the whatever it took nice and the jerk beast head
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 8: has now been shredded by rats and brady posted it
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 8: on facebook the other day and it caused a public
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 8: outpour of both support of the destruction of jerk beast
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 8: and pure sadness of the destruction which sums it all up.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: That's yeah that's that's rough man it should have been
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: and it's rugged they still make a planet hollywood they
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: should have put it in.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: There Yeah, it is, yeah.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 8: It's a little piece of cinema history.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess at what point did it cross over
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: into you, I guess, graduating up to the short films
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: and putting a little more into it?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 8: You know, I remember right after Jerk Beast, there was
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 8: dark days because, you know, we didn't think we'd made
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 8: a masterpiece, but we thought we'd have done a little
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 8: better than what happened. And I was trying to hatch
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 8: a new plan, and Brady was trying to hatch a
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: new plan, And Brady did get funding for his next
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: film pretty quickly after that, and I did not. So
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 8: I went ahead and made some short films, and Brady helped.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: And I helped him on his feature, so there was
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 8: no bad blood. We're still friends. That's kind of what
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: it was. I saw Brady moving forward, and I was like, well,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 8: I've got to move forward in my own way. And
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: that's what it was. And what it turned out to
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 8: be was as much fun as me and Brady had,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 8: ultimately we were super different, and it became pretty clear
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 8: when we started doing our own stuff.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: I guess.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: Just to get into the short of the Rambler, what
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: was the concept at that point?
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 8: Oh, so the concept of the Rambler, you know, it
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 8: comes from a very simple place for me. I'm a
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 8: huge fan of the American troubadours of the West. I mean,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 8: I'm a Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Townes Van Zandt,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 8: Guy Clark, you know, Jerry Jeff Walker, you name it.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 6: I love it.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 8: That's my biggest artistic inspiration. And I'm a little bit
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: of a songster, but nothing like those guys. And I
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 8: just love that, and I love the journey it would
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 8: take for a guy like Bob Dylan to end up
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 8: writing Desolation Row.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 8: I think Bob Dylan is America's greatest living surrealist. And
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 8: that stuff just affects me in that way, and I'm
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 8: not a great songwriter, but I do try. And I'm
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 8: able to get across a lot more using the film medium.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 8: And since I have such a penchant for the strange
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 8: and the aggressive, I guess, when it comes to film,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: I kind of took that aesthetic and then just the
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 8: things I've been building with Jerk Beast, Polter Christ, and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 8: all the strangeness that we'd always been cultivating and kind
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 8: of put it into that stuff that I loved. And
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 8: that came to be the Rambler Shorts.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 6: So you were.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: Inspired by the music end of it, but not so
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: much like the Western, because that's such a huge genre
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: in movies, not as much by that.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 8: No, I didn't even start watching that stuff until after
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 8: we made The Ramblers short, and then I decided, well,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 8: if we're going to do this sort of Western-style thing,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 8: I guess I should find my favorite kind of Westerns
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 8: to figure out how to capture it. Now, I had
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 8: seen El Topo, of course. So I decided to kind
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 8: of delve into the acid Western, and what I found
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: was movies like Z for Zachariah, The Hired Hand, Monty
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 8: Hellman's The Shooting, Monty Hellman's Ride the Whirlwind. Those kind
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 8: of helped me find it aesthetically.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: So then, by the time you were done with that,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: you already kind of knew you wanted to do something
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: more with it than the short?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it was right around the time we
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: finished it, I had made three shorts at that point
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 8: following Jerk Beast, and I thought I might be ready
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 8: for another feature.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: So I guess put that on hold, so then you
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: actually make your feature film. So what were you trying
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: to do when you make?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 8: The Oregonian?
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, there we go.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: So I guess going into that, did you sort of put,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: Were you just sort of putting the other idea on
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: hold and moving forward with an entirely new concept?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah, that's exactly what it was. The Rambler proved to
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 8: be a very difficult thing to fund because it's a
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 8: bigger movie and a stranger movie than most people are
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 8: willing to fund these days. You know, I wish that
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 8: wasn't true anymore. I wish we still lived in a
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 8: time when movies like Repo Man were getting funded and
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: Videodrome and, you know, I could list off many, I'm
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 8: sure you know, but... It just seems like those kind
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 8: of movies are no longer being funded. And although Repo
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 8: Man isn't technically an indie, it sure feels like one.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: It's pretty strange for a studio picture.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 8: Yeah. It's a little disheartening that that doesn't really exist anymore.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 8: So I decided to make a micro-budget thing that I
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 8: thought I could get my own... self across, and, and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 8: that was a film called The Oregonian, and it stars, uh,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: Lindsay Pulsifer, and honestly, what happened is I just had a,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 8: I had a dream, and, uh, and I didn't dream
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 8: the entire narrative in the film, and some people would
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 8: argue that it is not a narrative film, but I
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 8: would argue that it is one, and I had a
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 8: dream for a lot of it, and a lot of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 8: it was just a feeling in a place I was
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 8: trying to recapture, and it was a strong enough deal
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 8: to where I wrote a script, and, you know, I
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 8: met Stephen Chart, who's here at the festival, and, um,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 8: and Christian Palmer, who starred in his film. They're both
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 8: my producers of The Oregonian. And then we just kind
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 8: of went crazy. I used to work at a film lab,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 8: so we got all kinds of free and cheap stuff
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: and just made The Oregonian.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: And, well, at that point, you'd already been working with
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: Lindsay a long time.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: Was it, I mean, she's sort of your go-to for
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: your female lead.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: Absolutely.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: Can you get away from it?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: Like, do you want to try to work in other
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: people or is it, would it be awkward at this
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: point trying to like work with someone else?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 8: It wouldn't be awkward. I would definitely say so far
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 8: she has been my Monica Vitti where, you know, I
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 8: just see her and I actually don't think she's very,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: too far off of what Monica Vitti had to offer.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 8: If you think about it, like such a vulnerable presence
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 8: who can also totally bring it when she needs to.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 8: And I think that might be what Antonioni saw in
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 8: her So I saw that in Lindsey and still see
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: it in Lindsey. But we are always trying to incorporate
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 8: new people. She's not the lead of the Rambler. It's
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 8: a whole new guy that we had never met. but
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 8: he fit right in and then you know maybe the
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 8: next one down the line we find a new gal
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 8: and Lindsay might play more of a supporting role at
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 8: this point it's all very amorphous it's hard to know.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: Is it well again because she's had such a successful
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: career on her own is it weird watching her Maybe
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: not in the relationship aspect, but as a professional, do
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: you watch her do interesting things with other directors, and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: you're like, hey, wait a minute. Does that bring out
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: some sort of weird jealousy of, hey, wait, no, I
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: wanted to do something like that.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 8: No, none of the directors she's worked with, even on
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: True Blood, even come close to as strange as I am.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 8: But I have noted, like, you know, she gets really
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: excited when I show her my stuff, and she's like,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 8: I love your movies because... stuff happens in them in
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 8: all these indies where I'm always reading, you know, nothing
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 8: happens in them and they're boring and I couldn't agree more.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: And then occasionally she'll get really excited about a script
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 8: or she'll take a job where, you know, nothing happens
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 8: in this fucking movie. Do you really like those boring movies?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 8: You're just putting me on here. Do I feel better
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 8: about myself? So maybe that happens.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: I just took this one just to make you feel better.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: I took this really boring job just so yours will
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: look a little better when we make it.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: Well then, I guess to get into the big version
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: of The Rambler, how did you get Dermot?
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 8: Dermot came on through my friend, David Gordon Green, the director.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: David was aware that I was trying to make this
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 8: film for everyone. He's been a helpful guy to me
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 8: and a lot of people in the festival circuit that are,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 8: you know, a few rungs below him. He's always out
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: there trying to make interesting films happen. So he put
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 8: in the call to Dermot, who he'd worked with on Undertow.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 8: And we got the script to Dermot and his agent.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 8: And I felt like within that day we were rolling
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 8: and it was crazy because it had been a five-year period.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: That's yeah that's huge and he's he's an interesting choice
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: I guess in general just because he's had such an
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: interesting career like he there was a time when it
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: was like he was poised to be leading man like
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: he could have gone like that you know taking those
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: roles from the big A-list guys and Something just sort
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: of happened, and he ended up always being kind of
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: the friend or the side character. So to watch him
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: sort of come into his own in one of these
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: kind of movies, it's kind of interesting. So I guess,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: what was it like bringing him in and then directing
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: him in a role kind of like that for him?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 8: Well, I couldn't have been luckier to get a guy
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 8: like that, because he's such a pro. He's been in
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 8: so many movies. He understands... sometimes more than the gaffer
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 8: and we had a great fucking gaffer but like uh
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 8: you know he just he just understands things it's like
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 8: even if he overhears what lens size he'll roughly know
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 8: based on his mark what what's what he'll know where
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 8: he's so good but he's not a prick at all
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 8: he's the coolest guy and if he sees that maybe
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 8: something has gotten past me or something like that because
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 8: i'm you know relatively inexperienced compared to him he he
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 8: won't be a dick he'll just tell me like hey
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 8: man maybe uh Maybe check this out over here. I'm like,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 8: thank you. Don't tell anyone.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: That's cool. He's as cool as it gets.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 8: I was really, really lucky to have him, and I
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 8: certainly hope to work with him again. Very cool.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: I guess, what were you trying to do with this
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: one now? Once you could take it to a bigger scope,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: what were you trying to do that was different from
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: the short?
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 8: Well, I think the short just really scratched the surface
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 8: of the mystery that I was looking for. The short
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 8: did a nice job of sort of exposing the audience
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 8: to the Western vibe I was trying to get across.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 8: So we did that right, but it was so small,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 8: and I wanted a nice expansive mystery with a lot
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 8: more angles. So the feature covers everything I was ever
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 8: looking to do.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: And then I guess looking past this, what do you
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: have now? other bigger projects in mind or do you
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: want to return to some of the other stuff you've
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: done in the past?
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 8: I have, uh, yeah, I have some big stuff in
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 8: mind and, it may come to pass and it may not. Um,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 8: at this point in time, I'd like to push for
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 8: that bigger stuff. If three or four years come down,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 8: that bigger stuff doesn't hit. I might be right back
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 8: to that smaller stuff, which I'd be happy to do.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 8: It doesn't feel like a defeat.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: It's just, you got to strike while the iron's hot.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: You got to do it. Yeah. Um, well, you've, you've,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: Got some interesting taste. I wanted to throw it out there.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: What kind of stuff have you been watching?
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: New or old?
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: What type of stuff do you watch on your own?
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 8: What kind of stuff do I watch? I watch it all.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 8: There's not a style of movie I don't like. But
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 8: if I were to do a curation here, I'd probably
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 8: show The Hustler. I'd probably show Fernando Arabal's I Will
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 8: Walk Like a Crazy Horse. I'd probably show Don't Look Now.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 8: I'd probably show Alex Cox's Walker. I like movies, man.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 8: There's not a type of movie I don't like. I
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 8: like movies that have good writing and interesting characters and
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 8: good places. I don't think that makes me different from
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 8: anybody else.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: Not anybody who knows what's going on. There's a lot
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: of boring people.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 8: That's true.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: They keep watching those boring indie movies.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 6: Oh, I know, man.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 8: And the critics sometimes. My God. You know, I don't know.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 8: Sorry to go off on this, but I'm going to
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 8: say this on your show. For all the complaining in
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 8: our circles that we hear about how big-budget Hollywood movies
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 8: have gotten out of control with their pretty faces and
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 8: big explosions and blah, blah, blah and Iron Man suits.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 8: Why did the indie world get so self-righteous? Because it
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 8: has become so fucking indie where movies where absolutely nothing
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 8: happens get all the press and they're looked at as genius.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 8: To the point where if Repo Man arrived today, nobody
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 8: would fucking know it. Because if there's a version of
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 8: Emilio out there in Emilio's level when he made Repo Man,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 8: he wouldn't be famous enough for it to break through
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 8: to the mainstream. And if it played Sundance, it probably
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 8: would go really well. But by the time it got to,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 8: you know, the flyover festival six months later, it might
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 8: be completely overlooked because it's just too weird and they
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 8: don't know how to categorize it. Yeah, you could be
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 8: looking at something like Repo Man that changed cinema history.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: It's, I mean, it is like, it's like a different
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: side of that same coin. Like the way that they
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: market the big budget movies and the way that they
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: hype the big budget movies still happens with the indie movies.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: It's just like they take such a different approach and
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: sometimes a very self-righteous approach. And yeah, so it's... Such.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 8: A self-righteous approach. All these self-appointed experts, like with just
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 8: saying that they know what this filmmaker was thinking. For sure.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 8: And they know who their influences are. So this is
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 8: not worth your time. But this is precious and beautiful.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 8: And it doesn't matter that nothing happens and you won't
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 8: ever remember that you saw it. Because it doesn't make
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 8: any mistakes and we're going to write nice things about it.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 8: There's no gamble anymore. And there used to be so
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 8: much gamble.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: It's a very different world on every end. It's a
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: different scene with the filmmakers. It's a different scene with
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: critics at this point. It's very different now.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's wild. I mean, I feel fortunate to be
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 8: a part of it. You know, I could describe to
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 8: you where I started and all that. So I'm happy
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 8: just to have a different trajectory from, you know, digging
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 8: ditches in the rain. Don't get me wrong. I don't
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 8: mean to sound like an ingrate. I just had to
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 8: get that off my chest because I don't necessarily think
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 8: that Hollywood's the bad guy. I sometimes think it's... People.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: Can make really interesting things with a huge budget. It's
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: how you go about it. If you're talented, hopefully you
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: find a way to do it, even with people throwing
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: millions of dollars at you. I don't think that's the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: dividing line. I think it's just people who want to
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: be creative and want to do something interesting.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 8: I mean, I haven't obviously ever made a big budget movie,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 8: but I've made a no-budget movie versus a some-budget movie,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 8: and it's like.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 8: When the camera's rolling it's no different yeah it's like
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 8: you have to accomplish what you set out to do so.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: Shooting the same movie in your head it's just how
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: much money you're throwing at it along the way but.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 8: Yeah and honestly when you're in it um a lot
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 8: of times it isn't the money thing you're thinking about
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 8: it's the time thing and obviously time is money you
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 8: know but you're thinking more in minutes than dollars like
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 8: how many hours can i Can I shoot this? How
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 8: much coverage can I get?
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: How many takes?
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 8: Blah, blah, blah.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: It's very deep.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: From that angle. I guess, what do you want to
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: tell people to do as far as this movie to
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: find the Rambler? I mean, how do you find a Rambler, really?
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 6: Where do they need to go?
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: As far as like, is it still just going to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: be hitting the film festival circuit?
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's going to be out June 25th through Anchor Bay.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 8: It's playing in, if you happen to be in LA,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 8: it's playing in LA. If you happen to be in Houston,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 8: it's playing in Houston. If you happen to be in Seattle,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 8: it'll be playing there the 28th. But before the 28th,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 8: Anchor Bay is putting it out on all the Blu-ray, VOD,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 8: DVD on June 25th. So you can have it in
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 8: your home. I wish we had a bigger release kind
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 8: of thing, but that's just kind of how indie's gone.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: All of them now like especially for home video release
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: there's nothing anymore like it it gets maybe two weeks
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: at the theaters and then a month and a half
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: later it shows up on blu-ray and nobody really pays
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: attention when it comes out then so it's yeah it's Again,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: such a different system now. Even than it was a
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: couple of years ago, it's massively different.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 6: It's weird.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 8: Physical media has to be specialized for it to work.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 8: And indie film is found on VODs at home. And
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 8: it's not such a bad thing. My only wish is
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 8: that people had better sound at home.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 8: Because everyone's listening through their shitty little TV speakers and
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 8: they don't even know their shitty little TV speakers.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: For the mass people, yeah. I mean, everybody that's super
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: hardcore has probably upgraded and gotten something. But yeah, that's
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: a small percentage compared to most people.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 8: But how many people go to Best Buy when they
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 8: get their whatever bonus and then they go and buy
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 8: that $ 900 television and don't give a fuck about the sound?
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: Most people like that such doesn't even like affect their
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: thinking you know it's just like even it wasn't until
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: like dolby kicked in really before even professional and people
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: started worrying about it a lot of times so it
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: was like it's only in these last you know couple
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: of generations that even people that knew what they were
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: talking about paid attention to it so Yeah, it's still
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: just so far behind on regular people.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 8: I'm not asking regular people to get like a 5.1.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 8: Just a normal stereo system with the spectrum and everything
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 8: you need to hear the dialogue and the sound design
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 8: and the music properly.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: Especially now. I mean, they do bother to make it
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: right when you get, especially on Blu-ray at this point.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: It doesn't take much to get just a basic system
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: that probably would take care of that.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 8: You'll sink right into it. I mean, if you have
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 8: the space for a surround sound, that's cool, but it's
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 8: not mandatory. Just try a little bit. Those TV speakers
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 8: are disposable.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. So there you go.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 6: Go get yourself a new audio system.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: Is there a website or anything for people to go
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: find out more about?
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 8: I have my own website, calvinleyreader.com.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 8: And I update it periodically, and you can reach me
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 8: there if you want to.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: Sounds good. All right.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: I think that is all we have.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 6: Thanks, man.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 3: Thank you. So thank you to Calvin for sitting down
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: and talking with me and for putting up with me
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: for the next day.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 8: And a half.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 6: It was a lot of fun. I really liked.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: just sort of hanging out with him and talking with him,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: and he's a great guy. If you see him at
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: one of these festivals, you know, if you like what
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: he does, go up and tell him, because like I said,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: he probably gets a lot of people that don't get
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: his movies. I mean, if you're not familiar with it,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: if you haven't seen the trailer, or, I mean, it's
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: a very surreal film, you know, and not everybody gets that,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: not everybody enjoys that.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: I really liked it.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: Like, I was thrilled with it, and I think why
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: I thought it was so great was not only that
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: it was surreal. I sort of knew that was coming
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: when I went in. What I didn't know was that
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: the attitude that it takes is so great because it,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: it also doesn't take itself too seriously. I mean, most
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: films like that, they're just so heavy and they're so
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: just self-serious in the way that they present themselves. And
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: this one is almost a comedy. And like we were,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: we were talking about that at one point. It's like,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: He felt like, you know, I heard him talking with
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: a fan who came up to him and was just
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: really excited about it. And we were talking about how
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: it's like he said, I don't know that I could
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: market it that way. You know, you can't just tell
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: people that it's a comedy because it is so surreal
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: and because it does have all these horrific elements to
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: it that you couldn't just present it to people as
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: a comedy because they would.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Really lose it.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: You know, they would just catch them so off guard.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: So I guess it's better to present it the other way.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: But at the same time, it it's so funny. Like,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: I genuinely laughed at it so much more than most
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: traditional comedies out there now. Like, it just has such
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: a fun sense of humor while at the same time
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: being visually amazing and having these great segments and great performances.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: And all that sort of wrapped up in this really
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: unconventional story.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 6: And that's great.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: And you don't see that all that often. So if
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: you go to a festival and you see it and
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: you like the movie, go tell him. Because I think
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: he's dealt with a lot of people who don't get
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: his movies.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 6: So If you enjoy it, go up and tell them.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: And more than that, tell other people to go check
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: it out.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 6: Again, talk about it on the internet.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: Just spread the word because I think that makes a
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: difference with films like this. So once again, thank you
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: to Calvin for talking with me. And hopefully we'll work
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: him in somewhere down the line. He's a lot of fun.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: I'd love to have him come sit in for a
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: whole episode or just sort of put something together with
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: him in the future. So we'll see what we can
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: do with that. Otherwise, we're wrapping it up here. I
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: do want to say a big thank you to Ryan.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: Ryan has been putting together the Flyover Film Festival since
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: the beginning. Since that first year, I saw him frantically
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: running around the first Flyover Film Festival, and it continued all.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 6: The way up through this year.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: So he is, this is sort of his project, as
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: far as I know. He's sort of been the driving
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: force behind it since the beginning and and definitely has
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: been there to orchestrate everything along the way and bringing
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: the directors in and also knows the technical end of
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: it and was was I was watching him back there
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: dealing with you know the projector and, and I was
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: asking him questions about the screen and, you know, they
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: brought in a new and better screen to, you know,
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: make this festival better. So he's involved in every aspect
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: of this and, and does an amazing job. So I
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: just want to say a big thank you to Ryan
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: for number one, putting this together and for letting me
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: hang around and be part of it. You know, what
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: little I had to do with it this year, I was,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: I was glad to be part of it. So thank
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: you to Ryan and also to Zach. Zach sort of
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: stepped up this year and, and was, co-programming with him
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: and was helping with all the guests and helping orchestrate
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: everything alongside him so zach also did a wonderful job
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: this year between the two of them they put together
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: a terrific festival so look for it in the future
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: uh go to flyoverfilmfestival.com and uh see what they've got
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: in the works for next time around because it's it's
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: a great film fest and uh It's different when you're
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: in LA and you're in the element there and you've got,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: you know, huge festivals that are going on like Sundance
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: and stuff going on in Austin and all these other
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: ones that have this huge following. But to be out
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: here in the middle of the country and like fighting
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: to put together something that's really this interesting and artistic
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: and brings in amazing, talented people. It's a lot to
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: deal with, you know, and it's much harder to do
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: when you don't have, you know, all that stuff at
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: your fingertips that you really have to go out of
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: your way to pull all this together. And they've done
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: that year after year and did a great job this year.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: So thank you once again to everybody at Flyover Film
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: Fest and go to flyoverfilmfestival.com. Check out next year. Otherwise,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: that about does it. We will return next week. Same
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 7: I think that was my favorite interview ever. I'm not
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 7: just saying that either. That was the most pleasant conversation
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 7: that I've had about this.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 6: Talk hard!