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BPS 354: Making Money in Niche Filmmaking with Adam Schomer · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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  Episode number three fifty four. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless,
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  like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the
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  cup. If you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
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  You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow
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  or it can crash. Be water, my friend, Be water. Bruce
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  Leie broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be
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  working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the
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  craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
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  And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
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  the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host Alex fro Now. Today's
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  show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services,
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  Bulletproof script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are and the
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  goals of the project you are. So we actually break it down by three
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  categories, micro budget, indie film, market, and studio film. There's
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  no reason to get coverage from a reader that's used to reading temp pole movies
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  when your movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and
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  we wanted to focus on that At Bulletproof Script Coverage, our readers have worked
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  Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if
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  you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over
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  to covermiscreenplay dot com. In the world that we live in today, as
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  independent filmmakers, we're always looking for new ways to actually make money with our
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  films. And in my book Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I talk about
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  the power of the niche audience. It is the future of independent filmmaking.
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  It's not even the future, it is what is needed today for you as
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  an independent filmmaker to make money with your films, with your content that you're
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  creating. And today's guest is the personification of that we have on the show
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  today, writer director, and documentarian Adam Schomer. Now Adam produced and released
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  the incredibly successful documentary Heel, which became the number one iTunes best seller and
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  a Netflix hit. He partnered with the self help powerhouse Hey House to create
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  Heel Summits to generate more revenue with the film. He also wrote and directed
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  The Road to Dharma, a ten episode television series following a mystic Yogi into
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  the Himalayas with his students. He also spearheaded the summit release for the Netflix
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  hit and number one iTunes bestseller Fantastic Fung Guy, and so so much more.
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  Adam and I discuss his business strategies on how he's releasing his films,
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  why he creates the kind of content that he creates, how he's able to
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  tap into his niches audience and where they go, and how he's able to
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  sell product to them and provide services to them and help them on their own
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  life's journey, and so so much more so, without any further Ado,
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  please enjoy my conversation with Adam Schomer, I like to welcome to the show,
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  Adam Schomer. How you doing, Adam great, nice to be here,
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  Elex. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Brother.
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  I truly appreciate it, Like I was telling you earlier. I feel like
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  I know you because you have been one of the stars in two of your
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  projects that I've watched, and I feel like I already know you, just
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  been watching hours and hours and hours of you. I love that. I
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  love that you've watched it. Number one. That's awesome. And yeah,
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  you have a little insight into a really powerful, crazy journey a couple that
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  I've been on. So that's cool that you know. I've got to share
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  that with you without you know being there in person. Yeah, exactly,
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  exactly. So so first and foremost, bro, why did you want to
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  get into this insanity that is the film industry? Great? Never did you
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  know? Didn't have the aspirations as a kid. Never never Maybe like you
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  know, Billy Shutzl, my neighbor, used to make videos with his guinea
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  pigs, like stop motion weird, like guinea pigs Saving the Day. I
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  want to see those movies, by the way, I want to see those.
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  I kind of do it too. I remember like he would make a
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  theater and like show these things, So back then I think I wanted to
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  do that, but no, no real aspirations, and then kind of fell
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  into it in my late twenties where I was born at a corporate job and
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  decided to do stand up comedy just and it was the craziest, kind of
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  most nerve wracking thing. And then that pivoted into the improv comedy, which
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  I found to be the yoga of comedy. And that's then I stuck with
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  that. I said, this was really cool because not only the fund of
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  meeting people, but it's got those yoga principles right release, be with the
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  moment, yes, and like athletics, and I had been a semi pro
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  soccer player, so it was kind of my next athletic venture. And that
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  led me into writing and all that kind of stuff. So I was writing
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  more and writing comedy and eventually that you know, I won't go along,
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  but eventually that brought me to LA and I just kept wanting to push it,
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  you know, just go to the next level. Okay, write screenplays,
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  be in a film, get myselch card, you know, improv.
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  And I was always producing my own stuff when it came to improv as well,
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  because you know, no one's just going to hand you stage time.
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  Even in Detroit where I grew up, it was a cool community. Everyone
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  was very nice and it was a good community, but you still had to
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  kind of create your own opportunities to be on stage. So I think that
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  producer and has started there, and then once to LA it pivoted. I
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  think when I won't talk too much. But once I went to India,
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  then I came back and decided, you know, I'm going to focus on
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  the writing and producing, because as you know, acting is a pretty a
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  tough world, you know, even tougher than I would say, even like
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  producing writing, directing, I mean, acting is really acting acting is at
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  In my opinion, acting is probably the hardest part of our business with writers
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  right next next door, and then directors come in after that. But actors
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  is like thirty thirty rejections a day. Yeah, Writers is you know,
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  maybe twenty rejections a month. Yeah, directors in the powerlessness of not like
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  really being able to create your own stuff, correct, I was like,
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  Okay, that's not gonna work for me. And I was already producing my
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  own like you know, little webisode as in a kid's show. And then
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  an you know who you've seen a non and had on your other show when
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  I was in India my third time there, said hey, do you want
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  to do this motorcycle ride into the Himalayas over the highest road in the world,
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  and I'm like, this guy's gonna kill me. You know that.
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  In my By the way, I can see your face in the dock.
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  You're just like I just you were terrified. So let's give everyone a little
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  bit of context. So your this was your first movie, right, this
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  is your first doctor. Yeah, first doc in the first feature. Yeah.
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  So it's called the Highest Pass and it's about tell everybody what it's about.
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  Yeah, I mean, in essence, it's about it's facing death,
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  right, facing death and finding freedom. So facing our fears and finding love,
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  not that we have to get over fear per se, but just be
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  able to move through it. And then the context is a journey over the
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  highest road in the world, eighteen thousand feet on motorcycles. My teacher or
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  my guru has a prophecy he'll die in his late twenties, he's that age.
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  It says he'll die in an accident in his data chart, and he
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  asks one of his students, me, if I want to go, and
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  I've never written a motorcycles and I say yes, of course. It's my
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  guru and Himalayas and you just do it. So I willed myself to say
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  yes. At that moment, I remember like making my lips move while in
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  the background my head is thinking he's trying to kill me to you know,
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  take on his prophecy. I'm the sacrificial lamb heres you know, the writer's
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  brain, the writer's brain is a horrible thing to have. It's time,
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  right, you know, you just can'tat with every bad story. And I'm
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  like, wow, I could write a lot of movies about this because it's
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  so evil. Uh So that then, uh then I went up. We
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  went out and I was like, you know, let's make some invite other
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  people and let's make a documentary. And and to be honest, only wanted
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  to do it if we could do it well. Not not not that a
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  handicam or shooting an iPhone is not well, but it's the Himalayas and it's
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  India, and I really wanted great cinematography. And so we you know,
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  it's like, okay, we're gonna do it if we raise money. We're
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  gonna raise money for it. And so I went out and raised money and
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  found a great DP that had experience with motorcycles, and back then it was
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  like the cannon five d uh was like the thing and and uh it served
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  us really well on that trip. I mean to have like a DP sometimes
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  one time, like riding a bike with one hand and filming with the other.
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  At one point we can get into that layer. But I was so
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  I was able to. I saw that movie and I saw the series that
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  you did afterwards about it, which we'll talk about in a minute. But
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  what I found fascinating about the movie is, you know, I've you know,
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  many people on the show know that I have another show called Next Level
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  Soul, which is all about spirituality and asking the big questions about life,
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  personal growth, health and all that kind of stuff. And I've had the
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  pleasure of talking to an non uh your guru on that And it was just
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  released this I think it was this week or last week. I forgot and
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  it was this week I think I released. It just came out. It
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  just came out this week. And it is fascinating to talk to someone who
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  you know in many ways as a spiritual master and having a conversation with him
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  and talking to him about life and about your spiritual journey and about just everything
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  was really beautiful and eye opening. And I'll put a link to the in
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  the show notes for that for that episode. But then I reached out to
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  you. I'm like, well, I got to have Adam on the show.
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  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
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  to the show. Because you know, he's a filmmaker and he's been doing
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  and you're not only just like I shot a little documentary. You've been doing
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  it consistently over for over a decade now and doing it at a high level.
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  You're doing really great work, and you're doing award winning work and and
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  and movies that many of us have seen and heard of and been on Netflix
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  and so on and so forth. So going back to the highest pass the
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  insanity of the environment as a producer because you didn't direct that one, so
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  you produced that one. Yeah, I mean co directed, co directed,
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  although credit wise it's not listed. So that's a whole story. Wrote it,
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  wrote it, co directed, co produced. I figured I figured there
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  was a story behind that, because like he's directed everything since what what happened
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  here? But it was I got strong arm and post production you know where
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  she didn't. Of course you did. Of course you did it, because
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  we're what We're making a movie about spirituality and in the Quest for enlightenment,
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  and yet my ego says I must have full credit. So correct, I
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  got kicked out of the office for three weeks once, you know, like
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  fin yeah, it's exactly exactly. So that's that's a great, holly,
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  great Hollywood story for filmmakers. And to understand that that, look, it
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  happens. It happened to me when we first started. It happens. It's
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  amazing the egos that are in this business. It's fascinating. And I remember,
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  you know, I was consulting with a non in terms of like,
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  how do I deal with this? This is a spiritual movie. I'm in
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  post and like, this is crazy. He's like, look, you have
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  to look at the good parts of someone. They they had the intent,
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  they saw that you know, we should produce this thing. This is a
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  great thing. You know they had that enough there, But not everybody's perfect.
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  So on some level, you're dealing with a five year old, you
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  really are, and like you have to approach it that way, and would
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  you try to explain yourself to a five year old? No, you just
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  kind of maneuver in some ways around the five year old, and then you
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  know that's it. It basically just keep it simple, and I get in
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  the film. He's like that, just keep it simple. You're dealing with
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  the five year old, and move on and do what you can and make
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  the movie. Yeah, that's a fascinating way to approach it, because I
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  believe me, I've I've dealt with many five year olds in this business,
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  many many, many of them over the years. So how did you So,
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  how did you shoot in that intense environment? Man? Like, it's
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  it's insane, it's insane, and for a first, first film like to
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  be we were twenty one people total, meaning the seven riders, bussing on
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  and crew, you know, three cars, seven bikes, no scouting.
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  I had never shot in India. We're going over crazy roads. It's so
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  how do I deal with? I mean, first part of the environment to
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  deal with is the fact that you might die every day, you know.
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  So that's really when comparing producing and death, it was death was the main
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  focus, you know, like, oh, I'm in the film, right,
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  I'm riding first and foremost is like how about I survive and let's hope
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  everybody else survives. So that that was the most chounty thing for me was
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  riding and then producing. To be honest, like, I was calling on
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  great people right and directing. It was like, Okay, I leaned on
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  my DP a lot. You know, when I came to the shot.
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  I know what I like, but I'm like, show me what you think
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  would be good here awesome. I like it too. Let's move forward,
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  you know, keep it very simple. Lean on your people that know what
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  they're doing. I came from a story background, so I knew what I
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  wanted story wise, But god, I mean packing up and moving, no
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  scouting, just shooting, you know. Huge credit to the DP, huge
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  credit to the whole crew of just like winging it like a documentary. It
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  is, okay, let's go ahead of the let's go ahead of the bikers
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  by half hours. In one car ahead, they find a spot they think
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  is great, and we all get a shot as we go by, you
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  know that kind of stuff now and then we would say, hey, can
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  we turn around and do that entrance again and have everybody ride into this,
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  you know, lunch place. But for the most most part, you get
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  what you get. And I mean it was twenty one days. Jesus.
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  It was scary as hell, and and you know, sleep was at a
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  total minimum. I remember the first because in the first few days you're in
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  the flat, you're in the hills, and then you come to where you
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  see the Himalayas, and this is where Tang passed the first pass right,
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  and it's called Pilot of Dead Bodies is what Rotang is translated as. So
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  again the story, the writer's mind is like what And so you know,
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  you're doing research on the internet is not helpful because Pilot dead Bodies and you're
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  thinking, I'm going right off the cliff. And that's that. But and
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  before that, I remember like, oh my god, like what fight with
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  my co producer. We leave at five am, so I slept probably two
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  hours before we're about to go into the Himalayas. And it's again, it's
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  just like okay, so be it right, some Chai Alex and some coffee
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  and put on your masks and your gloves because it's freezing, and off we
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  go and h and as you've seen in the movie that that whole moment was
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  tough because we made a decision where the roads really weren't quite open yet before
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  right and started into the Himalayas at that point. So it was it was
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  scary. Yeah, you guys were going on basically basically at the seat of
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  your pants, you know, literally and figuratively, because you were just shooting.
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  So I was watching. As I was watching this, I'm like,
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  this is insane. This is an insane kind of doc to be the same
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  movie, and I see what they're going through. I've been at twelve thousand
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  feet I think at one point in somewhere in Colorado, and it was in
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  summer, so it wasn't freezing. Was still probably like sixty when it was
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  like one hundred down down down at the bottom. But and I've been to
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  uh Park City a whole bunch, and so I understand that the oxygen to
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  deparate, but I can't even comprehend traveling at up to eighteen thousand feet and
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  one of our crew went down, like we had to send him home.
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  Yeah, no, it'll hurt, they'll kill you. Yeah, that was
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  one of the you know, my audio engineer he helped get it produced,
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  good friend from Michigan, and he it was great because he was telling me
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  what audio equipment he needed, you know and stuff. So I'm trying to
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  source it in India and I could not find an eight channel mixer anywhere except
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  Mumbai and then maybe my second DP would bring it from And then I call
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  him. I'm like, do you really need eight channel? He's like,
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  oh no, He's like I just he had never actually been in the field.
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  He told me later he was just going by to see that his pants
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  because he was more sound mixed in the back, you know, in the
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  studio. So here I am searching for equipment that he was kind of like,
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  yeah, that's industry standard. I'm like, I couldn't find it anywhere
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  in India. So we compromised, of course, but he had ended up
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  coming a little a few days late. So I had a second audio engineer
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  from India, and that kid begged to come on the trip with us.
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  After seeing like the prep, He's like, can I just help in any
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  way? Like let me be with a non let me be with you guys.
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  This is a trip of a lifetime. So we brought him. It's
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  a good thing we did because Andy, my audio engineer, when we were
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  up at the sixteen thousand foot pass and we did this part of the film
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  where we went up and check the pass out talk to the generals, and
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  the general say, no, it's closed for two weeks, right, they're
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  like this passes closed or snow, And if you watch the film, you'll
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  see we end up like carrying bikes over snow and it's crazy. But during
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  that little pre pre meeting, Andy, my sound engineer, went down hard
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  with altitude sickness and we had to send him home the next day. And
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  so thankfully we had the second audio engineer guy, yeah, backup guy,
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  and did his best. And that's kind of the craziness of a filming,
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  Like we got lucky, you know, and Andy got lucky that he wasn't
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  hurt per se. But you never know who's going to have audio. It
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  doesn't al two sickness. He could be in great shape. And yeah,
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  it doesn't matter what shape you're in. They'll it'll bring anybody to their knees.
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  It's it's just a weird. We all had it at some point.
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  We all had it at some point, and then when you get down to
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  like eleven thousand feet, you're like, oh my god, this is amazing.
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  I can breathe, you know, and take a moment. Compared to
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  sleeping at fifteen when you hadn't climatized. It's hard. It's really difficult.
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  It just if you haven't acclimatized. Wow, that's insane. So that so
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  with that film you released it, you went theatrical with that as well,
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  right, we did. Yeah, we were lucky enough to win some wards
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  at festivals and distribution company said, let's take it theatrical. We took it
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  theatrical here in LA and went on to Netflix right after that. Also back
• 18:40
  when Netflix was a little different. It was a little it was a little
• 18:42
  starting, a little startup in fact. Then now did you get any that
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  was your first experience with distribution. Yeah, absolutely, So I have a
• 18:53
  distributor and see what happens, and what happened well, I mean, you
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  know, thankfully the theatrical was good, meaning it we had to run here
• 19:02
  in Santa Monica and in LA and people saw it, and we got to
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  write up in La Times like a full page right up, which hasn't happened
• 19:10
  since on any film I've done. Like, we found a reporter that somehow
• 19:14
  was into it, Susanne Carpenter, and got what would be like a forty
• 19:18
  thousand dollars ad kind of wow, you know in essence, because it was
• 19:22
  just like a full, huge photo and great article so people came out and
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  saw it, and a lot of people actually from that then went on the
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  Road to Dharma. They saw the film, saw us in a Q and
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  A and said, if you do this again, tell us, and so
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  we did. And when that's when we filmed the Road to Dharma series,
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  and a lot of those people from seeing that film then came into the next
• 19:41
  series. And we could talk about that later, but it did. It
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  did well in the theater, and it got on Netflix and all that.
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  You know, I mean, financially for the investors, no, not so
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  much, but and the you know, the distributors did their thing where they
• 19:52
  come up with expenses and all that. We'll be right back after a word
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  from our sponsor, and now back to the show. No, shouldn't stop
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  it. So I learned a little bit out. Yeah, I just I
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  always like asking I always like asking these questions because I can never stop reiterating
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  this fact is that this Hollywood accounting is always Hollywood. It's just the way
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  they do business. It's just the way the industry has done business. And
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  it's in many ways. I don't even think people who do it, these
• 20:29
  distributors who do it, think they're bad guys. I think they just it's
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  just inherent in the system, the way the system is built. They're just
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  like, yeah, we're gonna give you an MG. Maybe back then you
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  might have gotten an MG. So you got an not even MG, right,
• 20:44
  so yeah yeah, but then the oh you made ten thousand this month,
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  but we had eleven thousand. It's inexpenses. What are those expenses?
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  I can't tell you. So those kind of things. I was curious about,
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  how if that was your case as well? Now this was they weren't
• 21:00
  you know, Cinemlily where they weren't like horrible by any means, but okay,
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  you know they were still cool and they you know, they even believe
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  it. Again, it's like the good part where they believed in it and
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  they took it theatrical. You go, okay, man as the first film,
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  like you celebrate your wins and then you take the take the learning on
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  the shoulder and go okay, that's fine. And so then the second the
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  series wrote to Dharma, which just got released in when twenty twenty got released,
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  but you shot it in when we did. We shot it in twenty
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  twelve, to be honest, So you shout it to that so It took
• 21:33
  eight years for that to come out, and that was because the tune fine
• 21:38
  financing or couldn't get the thing, you know, funded financing. Basically,
• 21:44
  you shot a scoop. I don't usually tell anyone your podcast as the scoop
• 21:47
  on we have the scoop. I appreciate that. I don't think it's gonna
• 21:49
  hurt and I don't think anyone cares outside of people like you and me,
• 21:53
  no one, no one watching it, like, oh, this has been
• 21:56
  shot eight years ago. I can't watch this. No, you can't tell
• 21:59
  it. Don't. You're in the Himalayas with bikes that look like they're from
• 22:03
  the fifties anyway, so everyone's jacked up with all sorts of motorcycle gear.
• 22:08
  No one can tell. And you're going into towns that don't have any technology
• 22:11
  anyway, so you have no idea if it's twenty twelve for twenty twenty,
• 22:17
  honestly, that's for sure. And it's shot well enough where you're you're in
• 22:19
  there and you have a feeling of like you're part of the journey. That's
• 22:22
  a good thing. There's an authenticness of like you're in it with us.
• 22:26
  It's good like that exactly, so you shot the series. I wanted to
• 22:30
  ask you because since you released it recently, and I think it might have
• 22:32
  been for the best. Honestly, I think if you would have released it
• 22:36
  in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, there wasn't as big of
• 22:40
  a market for doc series as there is now. So I wanted to hear
• 22:44
  your experience as a documentarian. Do you see more doc series being more valuable
• 22:51
  in the marketplace or a doc by itself that's a great I mean we all
• 22:56
  see more doc series in general, more docks in general. And I think
• 22:59
  the other part of the market that is, like like your podcast spirituality has
• 23:03
  grown right oh huge, there is. There's more of a market for people
• 23:06
  that might be on the edge, you know, the average guy that maybe
• 23:10
  comes across and said or the wife says, hey watch this. And because
• 23:14
  you know, women tend to be eighty percent of the yogi community, so
• 23:18
  to speak, and so they sometimes bring guys into enlightening. I don't know
• 23:21
  about you. I look fantastic for you the pants, but that's just it
• 23:25
  should say Lemon, it should say I have I have litla lemons on right
• 23:27
  now, right absolutely, the socks. Just the socks, just the socks.
• 23:34
  Jo the spanks, just the spanks, the spanks. You know,
• 23:40
  you know it's on video to what we're doing here, so where we're what
• 23:44
  we're doing, what we're the doc series? Doc series? Yeah, doc
• 23:47
  series, Yeah, I think more valuable. I know me personally, I
• 23:52
  found more value in wanting to tell more of the story, more of people's
• 23:55
  stories, more of the wisdom of what goes on there. We're going to
• 23:57
  more depth. And you know, there's a certain pacing with a feature doc,
• 24:00
  feature length doc that you have to keep up. And that's great and
• 24:06
  all much not of my catwalk a I but yeah, I can't say,
• 24:11
  let's say, you know, for the filmmakers out there making an independent series,
• 24:17
  if there's more value, meaning like it's easier to sell that or make
• 24:19
  money on it, I think that's incredibly hard what what I've done. And
• 24:22
  your last guest was talking about it too, that she did an independent series,
• 24:27
  not a doc series, but narrative series. And I think it's a
• 24:30
  strange way to go. Not many people do it and then to sell afterwards.
• 24:34
  But I think inherently on a meeting level, it's incredibly valuable. I'm
• 24:40
  still waiting for some of the big boys to kind of come along and say,
• 24:42
  hey, this is great, or maybe I have to do a season
• 24:45
  two in a season three before one of the big boys says, okay,
• 24:48
  everyone's ready for this now, all right. So I hope that kind of
• 24:52
  answers your question. Yeah, it is hard to say, because I've I've
• 24:56
  seen people be very successful with doc series. I mean, docs right now
• 25:02
  are extremely valuable and they have been now probably for the last decade, and
• 25:04
  they've been growing in popularity, and I've talked about them heavily in my book
• 25:10
  about finding Niche Audience System. If you make a doc about a niche audience,
• 25:14
  whether that is plant based, diets, spirituality, surfing, skateboarding,
• 25:18
  whatever it is, there's a built in audience that you can target much easier
• 25:23
  than a broad spectrum narrative. And docs have been getting more and more.
• 25:27
  But I've been noticing there's been more docs series on Netflix and on Hulu and
• 25:33
  on these other places where they will do a series because inherently there's just more
• 25:37
  value, there's more content for them to read. So that's when I wrote
• 25:41
  the Dharma, I'm like, oh, that makes all the sense in the
• 25:42
  world, because that's a story you could easily tell in a series. You
• 25:45
  have more than enough content story to fill. That's why when I saw and
• 25:52
  I was lucky, I saw wrote a dharma first, then I went back
• 25:55
  and saw the highest pass and I was like, okay, So they went
• 26:00
  they've shot that, and then they obviously went, you know, ten years
• 26:03
  later, I said, why it's wait long to releast the series. But
• 26:07
  I enjoyed the series much more because you get I mean, you're taking the
• 26:12
  motorcycle trip up to the Himalayas with a yogi. I mean that's more than
• 26:18
  ninety minutes, man, I mean, you can't do it so so much,
• 26:22
  so much to see so much under the history, even though we don't
• 26:26
  go too much into history, but the teachings. You have all these characters,
• 26:29
  right, yeah, everyone's finding their own demons and trying to find their
• 26:32
  egos, and they're all they're all trying to tell themselves stories of why they
• 26:34
  shouldn't do this. And I thought there'd be more yoga in this retreat and
• 26:37
  all this kind of all this kind all this guy like yoga is stretching,
• 26:41
  and I's like, yoga is not stretching. You know, if you want
• 26:45
  stretching in a massage, go to a spot. You know. He's like,
• 26:48
  heay out of here. You come here to transcend and that's what you've
• 26:52
  come for. It's like, sweet, you know that's a good It's to
• 26:55
  remind people yoga is not the studio thing. No, it's not. It's
• 26:57
  it's the It's one of the benefits of yoga is the physical. But it's
• 27:03
  yoga was never built as you know. Yogis weren't running around in the lulu
• 27:07
  lemon, you know, back in the day. You know, they were
• 27:10
  as a form of transcending spiritually. And I just love him. He's like,
• 27:14
  I'm here to challenge you at every step of the way. I was
• 27:15
  like, oh, this is great. So you've got built in conflict.
• 27:18
  You've got built in conflict, which is so wonderful. But you were able
• 27:22
  to build out this whole story. And then how did that go? How
• 27:25
  did how did selling that the series go? Yeah? I mean it is
• 27:29
  a long journey right since we built it, filmed it in twenty twelve and
• 27:32
  raised enough money to go shoot it on a shoe string, so to speak.
• 27:37
  And I was hoping that when I came back I'd be able to put
• 27:41
  a sizzle together and go out to some of these networks and say, hey,
• 27:42
  look, I have the footage already of it's here. You don't even
• 27:45
  have to buy into the idea. I already shot it. So this was
• 27:48
  my thinking, was no problem, right, I'll go shoot it, come
• 27:53
  back and they'll have no choice but to be like, oh, of course,
• 27:56
  we'll give you the money to finish it. That didn't work, so
• 28:00
  I couldn't get anyone to bite on that. And then a year after year
• 28:04
  goes and I start I was making Heel. I got brought in to produce
• 28:08
  Heel. And while I was producing Heel, we had like a couple of
• 28:14
  week break on something. I decided, you guy, said you know what,
• 28:15
  I'm gonna go brush up and learn premiere full on, and did so
• 28:19
  on my vacation and then started editing the first two episodes, episode one and
• 28:25
  two, of the Rhododerama. While I think that, yeah, the whole
• 28:30
  end of post and distribution, which is a crazy time for a documentary film,
• 28:33
  I was also editing two episodes. I was really pushing myself to make
• 28:38
  sure Rotadama is ready when Heel is done, so that you know that's a
• 28:42
  lesson to people. Sometimes you gotta work your ass off on the side right
• 28:47
  to be ready. And so when and I think, to be honest,
• 28:51
  I mean, I'm really glad that I had some time as a filmmaker to
• 28:53
  grow in between and be able to like show my vision a bit better and
• 29:00
  to make those first two episodes to be able to show somebody this is what
• 29:03
  I'm talking about, you know, this is the style. I want to
• 29:06
  be able to mix it being entertaining and character driven but also have that spirit
• 29:10
  there. And I'm not putting a nond on a pedestal as his guru.
• 29:11
  I'm trying to make them approachable and if you resonate with what he says,
• 29:15
  great, But this isn't a movie of a series about a guru and how
• 29:18
  to follow him. No, it's about people seeking freedom and our demons.
• 29:22
  Like you said, So I really wanted to get that across, and maybe
• 29:25
  that was holding back, you know, holding some us back with some of
• 29:27
  the networks. It's like, you know, we can't go that spiritual yet,
• 29:32
  but you know it's still like a reality and authentic reality show in many
• 29:37
  ways, so there's danger. So then yeah, an invest i showed an
• 29:41
  investor a couple episodes, and actually it was more like a friend that I
• 29:45
  didn't know had the ability to invest. And he pulled me aside and he's
• 29:49
  like, I want to talk to you about the road of Dharma. I
• 29:52
  want to invest. Like when does that happen? We'll be right back after
• 29:56
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. All the
• 30:04
  time, it happens all the time, all the time, all the time.
• 30:08
  Money is easy to get into business, don't you know that? Right?
• 30:12
  It crazy? No, it happened on the highest pass at one point
• 30:15
  too, because we were all the way through posts and we know we needed
• 30:17
  a second cut. And I was at an event and uh it was a
• 30:22
  Cornell like event. I went to Cornell University and one of one of my
• 30:25
  buddies says, hey, I'm looking to invest in film, which which right,
• 30:30
  in normal scenarios you would go, you don't want to do that,
• 30:33
  No, no, And he's like, I just want to learn. I
• 30:36
  just want to learn a little bit, you know, all perfect. And
• 30:40
  I said, well, I'm at a great place, less risk because it's
• 30:41
  already kind of done and you can see. And so he threw in some
• 30:45
  money you know, and that was the universe given a little nudges. So
• 30:48
  it's it's helped out on the way in its own timing to use some Wulu
• 30:52
  language. But uh so we have we got an investor there, and then
• 30:56
  I got another investor. We all to you know, finish the series on
• 30:59
  our own and and take it out on our own digitally and still be able
• 31:03
  to keep pitching it to networks. We still do to this day, keep
• 31:06
  keep pitching it internationally to different places, like we're signing with a network in
• 31:10
  Germany, signing with a signed with a network in Brazil, talking to a
• 31:12
  network in France. We'reuan Gaia as well. And and then I had I
• 31:18
  had to get a little creative and I even create a course around the Yeah,
• 31:22
  I saw that. I saw the course on an On's website. So
• 31:25
  that was a really interesting is it's like you read my book, It's exactly
• 31:29
  what I say. It's like you create the product and then create other ancillary
• 31:33
  products that generate more revenue than the movie. Exhibition of the movie is because
• 31:37
  the future of the future of our business is not ninety nine rentals. It's
• 31:44
  courses, it's workshops, it's other businesses. As other services wrapped around things
• 31:49
  that can serve that audience, that that niche audience. So for you it
• 31:52
  be the spiritual audience. And and also I knew from I knew from Heal
• 31:56
  that things like like an online summit or an online course, you can access
• 32:02
  other people's audiences for those things more than you can a film. So I
• 32:07
  could say to he I could say to Greg Braiden people I knew well,
• 32:10
  and say, you can be an affiliate of this course. You can make
• 32:14
  fifty percent revenue if you promote it to your people and you know there's something
• 32:19
  free. They get to watch the free, free episodes, and it's something
• 32:21
  you believe in, you know, and we know each other. So then
• 32:23
  okay, now you're getting someone personally blasting and now you're reaching five hundred thousand
• 32:28
  people or a million people personally with a course. And even if they don't
• 32:32
  bite the course, they might try the free episodes or they might then go
• 32:36
  find the series and you got some advertising and it's a win win. They
• 32:39
  made money, your list grows too. And anyway, so that's another thing
• 32:44
  you can't do as easily with just a film. Yeah, And so it
• 32:49
  brings me into the next movie Heal, which I saw Heal before I saw
• 32:54
  Rota Dharma or The Highest Pass, so I'd watched too, just Pierre because
• 32:59
  I was interested in the concept of the movie the doc and it was down
• 33:01
  my wheelhouse. I was like, oh, let me watch it. So
• 33:04
  I watched. I really enjoyed the film. I knew a lot of the
• 33:06
  people inside, uh inside the film, like you know that the people you
• 33:09
  that that are you interview and stuff? Yeah, yeah, all those guys
• 33:14
  and yeah, I've just known all of them and I've read their books and
• 33:17
  things like that. But he was I remember Heal being I met one of
• 33:22
  the other producers at a summit once I forgot the name of the producer,
• 33:25
  but one of the other producers I met, and it was just at the
• 33:28
  brink of the Netflix deal, and I just remember that. I was like,
• 33:32
  this is actually doing. It's doing. It's getting a lot of attention.
• 33:37
  The doc got a lot of attention. So tell me the story of
• 33:39
  Heal and what with the movies about generally, But then how you were it
• 33:45
  because it kind of almost hit it almost kind of was the fork over knives
• 33:52
  of that of that movement. If you're anyone who doesn't know what fork over
• 33:54
  nives. This is what it was, basically the I think the first documentary
• 33:59
  that really talked about plant based diets, and it exploded and built multimillion dollar
• 34:06
  businesses around it. I think a magazine even, oh, magazine, food
• 34:09
  products. I mean it's built. They've done fantastic off of that doc and
• 34:15
  Heal I feel is that for its niche in the space. So can you
• 34:17
  talk a little bit about what it is? Yeah, and thank you for
• 34:21
  watching it and thank you for speaking so highly of it. So where do
• 34:25
  we want to start? I mean heal in general. What it is is
• 34:28
  a film about really that we have the power within the heal and that through
• 34:32
  our emotions, through stress, through our thoughts, that we have a bigger
• 34:37
  part to play in our healing than just giving our power away necessarily to medicine
• 34:42
  or to a doctor or to any healer, to be honest. So it
• 34:45
  ends up being a we hope, a very integrative film, not super wou
• 34:52
  saying it's only emotional. We're just saying that's part of the puzzle and that
• 34:54
  it should be talked about. And that's what I like about the film is
• 34:58
  saying, let's open up our perception a bit in terms of healing and realize
• 35:04
  that thoughts do play apart, emotions, support plays apart. Your life purpose
• 35:09
  might play apart, and you might need to move or change something into relationships
• 35:14
  to help your body get out of a stress mode so they can do its
• 35:16
  thing and help heal your disease. And you also might need to change your
• 35:19
  diet, you might need to do chemo, and you might need to do
• 35:21
  some other things right. But it's part of it, and we wanted to
• 35:24
  just dive into that, and we use a lot of experts. We use
• 35:28
  a couple of stories. One of the stories isn't a happy ending. I
• 35:30
  like that about the films. It's chronic illness and it's a damn tough space
• 35:35
  and she doesn't know what's wrong and she's not really willing to make the changes.
• 35:38
  And the system, as we talk about, the film system not necessarily
• 35:43
  set up right or distributors just do their thing. Our health system isn't set
• 35:46
  up exactly correctly to support the mind body healing. You know, it's not
• 35:52
  there to help you pay for that stuff. So resources is an issue.
• 35:55
  You say, oh, why don't you all just change this in your life?
• 35:59
  Well, I'm just trying to survive, and so that's stuff we continually
• 36:04
  look at and then heal. We realized after the film there was more we
• 36:07
  could offer for the audience. So the film did amazing. We you know,
• 36:10
  if you want to talk strategy in terms of what we did distribution,
• 36:14
  I can, yeah, please please, because it's helpful and I've used it
• 36:17
  with some films afterwards when they've come to me, and I usually don't consult.
• 36:21
  It's not like my job, but when something falls into a niche that
• 36:24
  I've done and I feel I can help them and they're primed for it and
• 36:28
  I like the film, it's like, okay, you know, let's do
• 36:30
  it. So we realized, of course we needed an audience, Like you've
• 36:34
  talked about before we release. You can't wait until you're releasing. So as
• 36:37
  soon as we started a film, we started building a fan base and with
• 36:40
  a website and getting emails out there and attracting people to the film. So
• 36:46
  by the time we launched, I think we had fifty thousand person email list,
• 36:51
  which isn't huge, but you know what it's it's not a joke either.
• 36:54
  That's a huge email list for a movie that had nothing at the beginning.
• 36:58
  That's a that's a fairly massive email list, and that's how big this
• 37:01
  audience is. That tells you fodel emes of how big this audience is,
• 37:07
  right right, healing in general, you know, people are I don't know
• 37:10
  about you. Something hurts on me right now. It's a little behave you
• 37:15
  know, my ankles is hurting because it's about to rain. So there you
• 37:17
  go. There's always someone that we're all hurt. As you get older,
• 37:21
  something hurts. So hey, who's the audience? Everyone who's in pain from
• 37:25
  people who are you know, on the brink of death because of a chronic
• 37:29
  illness. To my hip hurts. And it's not like it goes away,
• 37:35
  you know, like meaning meaning it takes a new audience every year. No
• 37:38
  meaning like oh no, yeah, the audience. Yeah, the audience doesn't
• 37:40
  shrink. They don't it's gonna be shrinking. It's only growing and awhen and
• 37:45
  like we've been out five years I think, and you know, build twelve
• 37:50
  million minutes a month on Prime. You know, like people who are still
• 37:53
  in the charts in the UK and Germany when it comes to digital sales,
• 37:58
  people are still people are looking for people are looking for Yeah, one of
• 38:02
  my good buddies I play soccer, was like, hey, I watched I
• 38:05
  finally watched the movie. He I'm like, thanks for the support, you
• 38:07
  know, five years later, but he's like it's great. So people on
• 38:10
  their own time come to these things anyway. So distribution wise, back to
• 38:15
  that fifty thousand, we built the audience we knew we needed to do that.
• 38:19
  Did your self distribute or did you go through a distributor? We did
• 38:21
  a hybrid type thing. And this is something again. By the time I
• 38:23
  was working with Heel Kelly, it's Kelly Gores. His film. Kelly Kelly
• 38:29
  came up with it. She's the director. She brought me into produce,
• 38:30
  and I'm very thankful that she did because now we're like co producing partners and
• 38:36
  great relationship. And so she knew she had done like a horror flick kind
• 38:42
  of before, and you know, so she knew the problems and distribution and
• 38:45
  what a distributor does you We both knew that. So that was cool,
• 38:49
  and so we're gonna do anything in our power to not be in their power.
• 38:53
  So I knew from the beginning, let's build an audience before and so
• 38:58
  that we could go out. You know independently and have somebody to support us.
• 39:01
  We knew there was an organic audience of emails, so we knew it
• 39:05
  people that wanted they personally said, I want you to have my email,
• 39:08
  keep me posted. Okay, they'll probably buy, you know, they'll probably
• 39:13
  jump in in terms of all that growing. And you know, we went
• 39:17
  to a festival that we knew was our audience and we were opening night there
• 39:21
  and there were seven hundred people and so our investors also got to see that
• 39:24
  and then see, oh wow, there's an audience here and it's palpable,
• 39:30
  and that helped them put a little bit more money for independent distribution. So
• 39:35
  in terms of strategy, what we did, we decided to do like theatrical
• 39:38
  on our own and screenings on our own. So we brought in a screening
• 39:43
  guy to handle the small screenings and get people talking about it out there.
• 39:46
  And do you know, that's what do you call organic press for us,
• 39:50
  because some church in Iowa that's going to do a screening is going to tell
• 39:54
  their people about it. Okay, one hundred people show up, but you
• 39:58
  know a thousand people got heard about. We'll be right back after a word
• 40:02
  from our sponsor and now back to the show and heard about heal and maybe
• 40:12
  it's on the radar next time they see it or hear about or someone.
• 40:15
  You know, how it is right, you have to talk about it,
• 40:16
  talk about it, talk, but finally you watched it. So we did
• 40:20
  a lot of those screenings, probably a hunter. We did a bunch in
• 40:22
  Australia. Definitely made a little money there, but you know, sometimes it's
• 40:25
  just break even with the screenings and all that. That's great. Definitely made
• 40:29
  a little money in the screenings, broke even on theatrical and we came out
• 40:32
  and I think eight eight to ten cities, you know, hired a consultant
• 40:37
  to help us do that. So I was like the point man, brought
• 40:40
  in the screening guy, brought in the theatrical guy. And then for digital
• 40:44
  we signed with what's called ten ninety one, you know, a distribution company.
• 40:47
  Day back then they were the Orchard. Yeah, yeah, and now
• 40:52
  they're ten ninety one and they've had a lot of success digitally, come out
• 40:54
  with some spiritual films, some alien film, niche films, biking films,
• 40:59
  so they they knew and we had we we structured a good deal with them.
• 41:01
  To be honest, and they supported us and gave us a little bit
• 41:05
  of money for the trailer and all this other stuff that we didn't want to
• 41:07
  dump a lot into, and so we we also then planned it, like
• 41:12
  Kelly and I neither of us wanted to do this long protracted distribution cycle of
• 41:16
  like let's do screenings for a year, you know, like the film Awake
• 41:22
  with Yoga Nanda did, and we're like, we don't want to do that.
• 41:23
  They were super successful at Yeah, I met them because of The Highest
• 41:30
  Pass way back right, Yeah, I would imagine you guys as Paths Cross.
• 41:34
  They've been on the show and been on my show like three times.
• 41:37
  Alright. I love them and I love what they did with that film.
• 41:40
  It's amazing. They actually are a case study in my book as well.
• 41:45
  So Peter came. We were They wanted to see Michael Mullura, who's the
• 41:47
  composer of The Highest Pass. They wanted to hear his work. So I
• 41:50
  showed him a cut of the film and they're like, an, this is
• 41:52
  so cool, like and then I ended up bringing Peter in to help edit
• 41:55
  like the second cut, so we became buddies and uh and I love his
• 41:59
  story and they're great, and then I gave them some footage for Awake from
• 42:02
  the Highest Path to use in the film, which is just like an Ananda
• 42:06
  is in Awake. I don't know if you know that, I'm not.
• 42:07
  I think he might. I think I might have seen him in a Wake.
• 42:09
  You're absolutely right, that's actually, of course I saw him in Awake.
• 42:13
  Yeah, yeah, So it becomes kind of like a small little you
• 42:15
  know, a nice little family and I mean just an honor to have some
• 42:19
  of a footage from one of my films with Yoga Nanda in that film.
• 42:22
  Anyway, so back to the heel distribution thing, we decided let's not do
• 42:27
  the long thing like Awake, Let's do condensed. So we pushed theatrical screenings
• 42:30
  and digital as close together as possible. So we came out in October in
• 42:36
  theaters and then by December fifth were out on digital. And of course we
• 42:42
  had to do all that, you know, independently when it comes to theatrical
• 42:45
  and all that, so that we could have control of all of our dates.
• 42:49
  And just want to just stop you for there for a second. So
• 42:51
  from people listening the reason why Awake, which is a documentary about the spiritual
• 42:57
  master Yoga Nanda did their law they're long theatrical and screenings was because they had
• 43:05
  direct co production or relationship with Yogananda's organization, which basically had access to every
• 43:14
  Yogananda disciple around the world. So it would be foolish not to stretch that
• 43:21
  out as much as you could because it was just such a such a built
• 43:23
  in audience that they made. They did very well. He used up millions
• 43:29
  and they did really really really well. So but for you hard hard to
• 43:32
  replicate, part very difficult to replicate. I think uh uh Hiroy Krishna,
• 43:38
  Harry Krishna, they tried to do something similar but didn't have the same great
• 43:44
  film. So I love that film, but didn't have the same access to
• 43:46
  that because they literally just like touch a button and they can talk to everybody.
• 43:51
  So with heel from my perspective, look listening to what you're saying,
• 43:54
  it's an audience, but it is not a dedicated It's not like people who
• 43:58
  are just like, you know, really religiously about this. It's a much
• 44:01
  broader, diluted audience. So what your tech, your your strategy makes much
• 44:07
  much more sense. Yeah, we built that audience, built the email list
• 44:10
  and got everyone excited for Okay, if you can't see in theaters, not
• 44:14
  your you're not in one of the main cities, don't worry about or you
• 44:16
  didn't get a small screening in your area. It's coming December fifth on digital
• 44:21
  and DVD, even to DVD. And what did you do on DVD?
• 44:24
  By the way, did we made like one hundred and fifty grand on DVD?
• 44:28
  Of course you did, because people, what year was this, twenty
• 44:30
  seventeen, twenty seven, the end of seventeen, so call it twenty eighteen,
• 44:35
  right, Still id DVDs still sell people, don't listed People still buy
• 44:42
  DVDs. If you are to screening and you loved the movie and you had
• 44:45
  a DVD with some bonus stuff in it, somebody would buy it. We
• 44:50
  could, I mean, I guess we could believe it, but we couldn't.
• 44:52
  But you know, a little older audience is a little more has the
• 44:55
  illness and they're still with DVD at that point. And it's so correct and
• 45:00
  that was cool to see that. And we did really well on digital when
• 45:05
  we came out, and our goal was to be honest. Ten ninety one,
• 45:08
  the Orchard had already pitched Netflix, and the Netflix had said no to
• 45:13
  the to the film. Okay, they did. This was in the fall
• 45:15
  before we came out theatrically and all that. Uh. Then we come out
• 45:19
  theatrically and do this big push and we hit number one on iTunes in terms
• 45:23
  of the charts and stayed there for a few weeks in documentary or in documentary.
• 45:30
  In doc document yeah, I mean going you know, competing with everyone
• 45:32
  else almost impossible. But still the number number one doctor is no easy hard
• 45:38
  to do. But then to stay there because usually we stayed for a few
• 45:42
  weeks and then in the in the top three for about three months, so
• 45:45
  we had like the staying power. And then we went back to Netflix and
• 45:50
  said, you know, the distribuer is like, look, people like this
• 45:52
  thing. It's making money. It's you know, you should really reconsider it.
• 45:55
  And then and then they did come up with a two year deal.
• 45:59
  And it wasn't it wasn't anything great, to be honest, but it was
• 46:02
  it was for us to it was more about exposure. Of course. Of
• 46:07
  course most of our money was made on just digital sales really, so most
• 46:10
  of the money was done still into untransactional but this movie, because I always
• 46:16
  tell people Transactional is dead generally speaking. But but the difference is that your
• 46:23
  topic. Someone will rent it for three ninety nine. Some will buy it
• 46:29
  for nine ninety nine if you have extra bonuses or extra interviews on it because
• 46:31
  it's such a there's something I'm like, I want to heal myself. I'm
• 46:36
  gonna spend three ninety nine. It's a horror movie. Well wait till I
• 46:40
  find it somewhere else. It's a thousand other horror movies, but there is
• 46:44
  no other healing documentary. So you have this really special place. And that's
• 46:49
  why that makes sense for transactional. And I'm glad that you actually waited.
• 46:52
  Yeah, I'm glad you actually waited for Netflix. So if you would have
• 46:54
  gotten that Netflix the first deal, you wouldn't have made as much money.
• 46:58
  Yeah, I mean days said to be honest, you know, right,
• 47:01
  And so my strategy for some other people is like, well, if if
• 47:04
  you can't turn the dial, show them that you can by trying to get
• 47:07
  yourself the number one iTunes right, which is hard in itself, Or just
• 47:12
  show them there's an audience by selling and who knows, you might not even
• 47:15
  want to be on Netflix, but or go on Prime or even though Prime
• 47:19
  has gotten a little crazy with what they let on there with docs right by
• 47:22
  the way, Prime Prime dropped recently, so after Netflix, we went on
• 47:25
  to Prime, which then is just by minute and they're paying you by minute,
• 47:31
  and that ended up being very lucrative. Also, you know, people
• 47:35
  are you would probably be at the you'd probably at the higher end of that
• 47:37
  minute per minute because there's a range of a penny to twelve cents or something
• 47:42
  like that. Yeah, yeah, you would probably higher seven maybe since we
• 47:46
  were making per minute, and that's great. At one point, you know,
• 47:50
  I don't mind sharing this stud At one point we were making there was
• 47:52
  like twelve million minutes a month basically is what recently then Prime and it's big,
• 47:58
  you know, like shove off of docs, right, they dropped us
• 48:02
  in the UK, dropped us in Canada, dropped us in France, like
• 48:06
  geez, you know, like what's up? You know, what's up?
• 48:09
  And then suddenly during COVID they dropped us in the US and so we had
• 48:15
  our distributor asked them. He's like, he's like, they don't even tell
• 48:20
  me why. I've never had them overturn it. With all the docs that
• 48:25
  have they've taken off of ours and with heal for some reason, like a
• 48:29
  week two weeks later, they put it back on. So something clicked in
• 48:32
  their head, like why why do we randomly take this off? You know,
• 48:36
  Oh, it's alternative health and we're in COVID and that's dangerous to us.
• 48:39
  Who knows why they turned it off. You know, there's nothing about
• 48:42
  COVID in there. Obviously, it's pre COVID, and even so, I
• 48:45
  think people should be able to talk. You know, it's a little strange
• 48:49
  out there. That's a whole other topic. But distribution wise, you know,
• 48:52
  Netflix a little you know, a little chunk, but the awareness with
• 48:54
  Netflix went crazy, and then we pivoted to Prime after and that's helped a
• 48:58
  ton and still trands. Actually, you know, people still buy it transaction.
• 49:01
  But he is a you know, kind of an anomaly. Like we're
• 49:05
  talking about people are always sick and they're looking for resources and they're motivated,
• 49:08
  and we think it's a very balanced film. It's not too wu so so
• 49:12
  it hasn't brought audience, which is what we wanted. That's awesome. And
• 49:15
  then you also like started building out other product lines and services around Heel,
• 49:20
  which I found fascinating as well. So you had a I think a book
• 49:22
  came out. Uh you know, yeah, Kelly, so she has a
• 49:27
  book based on it. So now you're leveraging the audience of the people who've
• 49:31
  seen the movie. They're like, oh, the heal the book is out,
• 49:32
  I'll buy it, like I bought the I bought Awake the book.
• 49:37
  I didn't even know exactly I saw the Awake book. It was just like
• 49:42
  the movie companion of the book. I'm like, I'm such a fan of
• 49:44
  that movie. I was like, I bought it. And then Peter was
• 49:46
  like seeing it in the background of my show with my show, He's like,
• 49:49
  that's that's amazing. I'm like, yeah, so it's great. So
• 49:52
  you have the book. But then you also did something which was really interesting,
• 49:54
  the summits. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and
• 50:04
  now back to the show. So can you can you go into the summits
• 50:07
  a little bit? What is the how you were able to partner with a
• 50:12
  very big self help publishing company, and if you don't mind talking about the
• 50:16
  financials of that, not details, but just general Yeah. Yeah, because
• 50:22
  it is fascinating and it's it's something that jumped out to me as we're making
• 50:25
  it, where we're like, we have these interviews that are an hour an
• 50:30
  hour and a half with these top experts. Chopra just spends a braid and
• 50:36
  Anthony William medical medium, who's very huge now and was just kind of growing
• 50:39
  at the time. What are we going to do with these interviews? We
• 50:44
  should do something, And so I was we were super busy, of course
• 50:47
  with the film, but I was whispering to Kelly, like we should put
• 50:51
  these together and sell them in some way or put them for people that want
• 50:54
  the deep information. So we were considering doing it on our own, and
• 50:59
  then and you know, we just thought, well, a lot of these
• 51:02
  people are hay House authors, you know, a lot of these you know,
• 51:07
  let's approach k House and see if they want to do something together,
• 51:09
  because they would have an audience too, and that could be helpful. So
• 51:13
  we just called them up and had a meeting, sat there, you know,
• 51:16
  with the CEO down in San Diego, and he's super nice, like,
• 51:20
  this sounds great, Let's do it. You know. It's like,
• 51:22
  yeah, it's a win win, fifty to fifty. Cool, let's put
• 51:27
  them out there. And they had their strategies of like affiliate partners and all
• 51:30
  that we had all the footage, they had the marketing team to be able
• 51:34
  to make it happen and get it out there. They had that system and
• 51:37
  that's you know, we just had to really delivering support and make sure it
• 51:39
  was in our brand that they didn't you know, make it to hay House,
• 51:44
  that it still had the heel ethos to it, and that's something we
• 51:46
  wanted to keep. And it's a great partnership. I mean, we love
• 51:50
  hay House and we end up doing a summ At two and a summ At
• 51:52
  three, and I mean the summits financially did fantastic. So are those are
• 51:57
  those based on old interviews that you shot for the movie or did you have
• 52:00
  new stuff come in for the For the first summit, we took all the
• 52:02
  interviews from the film and I don't think we added anything new because we had
• 52:07
  eighteen that we filmed. Maybe we did. And so that first summit did
• 52:14
  amazing, and you know, the great byproduct that came out summer of twenty
• 52:17
  eighteen after the film was out. But then we walked away with an email
• 52:21
  list that was about three hundred thousand people right, and so you're talking dirty.
• 52:27
  You're talking dirty to me now, sir, talk. I mean they
• 52:30
  were blown away. We were the best, We did the best their summits
• 52:34
  that year. They were blown away. We were blown away. Financially,
• 52:37
  I won't go into the details, very very well, the summits alone that
• 52:40
  we've done have more than covered the budget of the film. And that makes
• 52:45
  you kind of think and you go, oh my god. You know,
• 52:47
  like you put all this effort into editing a film, and you could have
• 52:52
  shot eighteen interviews and not edited anything and put a summer, but you needed
• 52:57
  the film to create the buzz. And the film really is the entry point.
• 53:01
  It's and here we are though in twenty twenty two, and there's a
• 53:05
  lot more summits and it's a little more saturated now, So like does that
• 53:07
  yeah, it is, It is work. It is a little bit more
• 53:10
  saturated. But still, if you've got an audience and you've got a topic,
• 53:14
  people will I'll cut through all of that. And it's literally exactly what
• 53:19
  I was writing about in my book Rise of the Film Entrepreneur. It's like
• 53:22
  the movie becomes a giant trailer, a giant a giant marketing pieces and I
• 53:29
  said in the book, even give the movie away for free, right right,
• 53:34
  because it's all about driving people to I don't care about three ninety nine
• 53:37
  for a rental or nine ninety nine for you to buy the movie. I
• 53:39
  care you to buy the summit that's going to be one hundred dollars, or
• 53:45
  it will be a couple hundred bucks, or you or my services or my
• 53:47
  consulting, or my books or my other things that have big, bigger,
• 53:52
  you know, interesting you know, financial interest in as opposed to the movie
• 53:55
  that I might have a distribution deal that I don't, as we talked about
• 53:59
  my not get all the money because of expensives and all that stuff. But
• 54:01
  they don't take money away from summits. They don't take money away from book,
• 54:05
  they don't take money away from services or other things that you can provide.
• 54:08
  It's fascinating and that you leveraged the people inside of the movies audiences by
• 54:15
  making them partners with an affiliate program. Yes is the future. It's I
• 54:20
  mean, why wouldn't you, Why wouldn't they If they like the product,
• 54:22
  they'll they'll push it out for them. It's not that hard. And they
• 54:25
  just make they make money and they help their audience, so it is a
• 54:30
  win win. It's a wonderful ecosystem. It truly is a wonderful ecosystem.
• 54:34
  And there's a podcast and niche yeah, yeah, and there's a pod where
• 54:38
  there's a podcast. Now we did thirty eight episodes of the podcast. We
• 54:40
  did three summits, and you know, and internationally, like we pushed that
• 54:45
  summit out in Germany and France and it's still going. You still go and
• 54:49
  we have great partners over there we work with and yeah, in a podcast.
• 54:53
  What else did we do the podcast? We've we've we have thirty eight
• 54:59
  episodes, going to start up again probably in July. We've taken a little
• 55:02
  pause and now we're developing series and gonna and to go out with a series
• 55:07
  hopefully like a like a like a like a ten episode series or eight episodes
• 55:10
  like a premium doc series. That's that's always been kind of in the back
• 55:14
  of our minds. It's just been again like timing and we think like now
• 55:16
  is a good time. I'm just saying, guys, this is I mean,
• 55:21
  it's everything I've been saying for years. It's it's so brilliant. If
• 55:25
  I would be writing the book right now, you'd be a case study.
• 55:28
  And maybe in the second edition I'll put you guys in as a case study
• 55:30
  because it's just it's so brilliantly done. But this is the future for independent
• 55:36
  filmmakers. And and you've done I mean, you've been down the road so
• 55:37
  much already. You know, you've done a ton of work. You know
• 55:42
  how hard it is to sell a movie and how to make it, to
• 55:44
  make money with a movie. Yeah, And the future is I keep saying,
• 55:49
  is you have to be that entrepreneurial filmmaker that takes control, creates other
• 55:53
  products, creates other services, creates other revenue streams off of the film you're
• 55:59
  doing. And you can't do it with narrative. I've seen it. I
• 56:00
  have many examples of it. But doc seems to be so much easier because
• 56:06
  the audience is right, like, they just want it. It's a different
• 56:09
  audience. That means that makes sense, the audience, the niche, and
• 56:14
  and also usually the passion behind a doc. Somebody that's doing it has some
• 56:17
  expertise in that topic or passion. And I mean you got to have that
• 56:22
  right if you're gonna stick with something and make it big and brand like you
• 56:24
  have to be into cycling if you're going to do a cycling movie or right
• 56:29
  Road Dharma leg motorcycling in the MLAs I'm into yogic thought, I'm into freedom.
• 56:34
  Freedom is important to me and wisdom is important. I can't write a
• 56:37
  course on freedom to go along with the if I'm not into that. You
• 56:40
  know, you're like this, Yogi's out of his mind. He's trying to
• 56:44
  kill me. Like if you wouldn't have been in the vibe with the story,
• 56:49
  you can't. So you have to be something that's true to you as
• 56:51
  a filmmaker or that interests you as a filmmaker, because you're gonna be with
• 56:55
  this for a while for a while. You know. We can't American everything
• 57:00
  to be like hey, let's market the hell if you don't have any passion
• 57:02
  for you, absolutely won't happen or won't work. Like I'm looking at some
• 57:07
  other films. I'm like, like the Polygon that we did, Like there's
• 57:10
  not much we could have. I mean, that's about nuclear testing in Kazakhs
• 57:14
  stamp and like it's very small ditch, the small knit. No, it's
• 57:19
  still a film. You need to get women in the White Buffalo. We
• 57:22
  just released Tuesday, which is about Native American women and the history of Native
• 57:27
  Americans and really the wisdom of the matriarch that's coming through Now. Could there
• 57:34
  be some other ancillary products or maybe summit? Yeah, maybe, but the
• 57:37
  main pushes like, let's just get some awareness of this thing going. But
• 57:40
  Deborah who directed it, she's been working her bun off for years and her
• 57:45
  ancillary thing, to be honest, is photographs because she's a photographer. She
• 57:47
  has some amazing photographs of this that she sells for you know, big pieces
• 57:52
  and big money. So you know, that's her passion, that's what she's
• 57:55
  good at. That's what she's gonna do along with the film. Yeah,
• 58:00
  and I imagine that with that. I I was going to ask you about
• 58:02
  that film because I know it just came out this week, Women in the
• 58:07
  White Buffalo. That is, you know, talking on a market research audience
• 58:13
  base. There is an audience for this film in Native Native Americans. Many
• 58:17
  Native American Americans around the country would be very interested in probably some in overseas,
• 58:23
  you know, people who are interested in in some but this is your
• 58:27
  this is your market. So could you do a summit with interviewing showing the
• 58:32
  full interviews. Absolutely, you know, is it as big of an audience
• 58:37
  as Heel? Probably not, but it's still an audience, and it's bigger
• 58:43
  than nuclear testing. It's like, that's a that's a passion project, that's
• 58:50
  like I want to get this, get this out there. And that's fine
• 58:52
  too. But when you make a movie like Heel or other projects, they
• 58:58
  give you the freedom to do whatever you want. If you want to make
• 59:01
  a small little movie that's really just about getting it out there for people and
• 59:05
  doing the best, that's fine too. Everyone always, filmmakers, I always
• 59:08
  find to think that like you've got to make one hundred million dollars to be
• 59:10
  a success. No, no, not at all. It's most most movies,
• 59:16
  most filmmakers. Ninety nine point nine percent of filmmakers don't make a hundred
• 59:21
  million dollars. You know. I always tell people, if you made a
• 59:24
  movie for fifty thousand dollars and you made one hundred thousand dollars, man,
• 59:28
  you are a success. You know. If you happen to make quarter million
• 59:32
  dollars, fantastic. Now you can go finance another movie, live for a
• 59:36
  little while while you keep going forward to doing it and redefine success a little.
• 59:39
  Now, we all have to as you interviewed ann On Nons in both
• 59:43
  worlds. Right, he studied economics at the university, and he's a guru.
• 59:46
  Right, I studied with masters in the Himalayans. Both. We have
• 59:51
  to be able to survive. You can't deny the fact that we need money
• 59:53
  and we need We're in the society and we need to play in this society.
• 59:57
  It's not time to go in the caves. We'll be right back after
• 1:00:00
  a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. But but at
• 1:00:10
  the same time, we want to do stuff that's meaningful. So you know,
• 1:00:15
  we got to do something like if we can redefine success meaning Okay,
• 1:00:19
  yes, we have to be able to support selves. But could see how
• 1:00:22
  about a teacher that had a few students like learn and grow out of their
• 1:00:25
  shell that year and like what a success they had. A few kids really
• 1:00:30
  get something from that teacher and go on and they really inspired their life.
• 1:00:32
  Okay, A few people watch Women in the White Buffalo or watch Road to
• 1:00:36
  Dharama. A lot of people watch Road to Dharma or do the course and
• 1:00:39
  they're like, I'm going to India, man, and it's like cool.
• 1:00:42
  Now, is it reached three million people? No, but like fifteen hundred
• 1:00:45
  people have taken the course, and you know, have a one hundred or
• 1:00:49
  two hunderd those said I'm going to India now sweet, Like I might have
• 1:00:52
  changed somebody's life and that's successful, Like I got to share my story and
• 1:00:55
  push somebody else to do the same. To me, it's like exactly so,
• 1:01:00
  And you have to define success for yourself. And I know for a
• 1:01:02
  long time, I define success of you know, I have to be the
• 1:01:06
  biggest director in the world since to define success. And I was very angry
• 1:01:09
  for such a long time about that and very depressed. And I think a
• 1:01:13
  lot of filmmakers and screenwriters and actors, all of them go through the same
• 1:01:16
  process because they are like we all got to be Spielberg or Nolan or Fincher
• 1:01:21
  or James Cameron, and like, dude, there's only there's only one of
• 1:01:24
  those and their anomalies. They are masters, they are it's just not to
• 1:01:30
  be for psychosis. It's a recipe for sadness and pain. Exactly so.
• 1:01:34
  I when I started the show seven years ago, I started to redefine what
• 1:01:37
  success was to me. I'm like, oh, I get to do what
• 1:01:39
  I do every day. I get to talk to people like yourself and share
• 1:01:44
  this information and help other people and be of service to my community. And
• 1:01:46
  I'm like, that makes that makes me happy, And and then I can
• 1:01:50
  go off and make my little movies when I want to go make them with
• 1:01:52
  that really caring if they make a tremendous amount of money. Though they all
• 1:01:55
  have been very profitable and they all have done well, that's not my concern
• 1:02:00
  per se. You know, it's not like I need to make money on
• 1:02:04
  this film in order to eat. No, I've built another infrastructure that allows
• 1:02:08
  me to go off and do whatever I want. That's or for your identity,
• 1:02:12
  Like your identity is not so wrapped in it, it's not anymore,
• 1:02:15
  absolutely not. Yeah, it's utiful, that's beautiful. So that's what I
• 1:02:17
  try to teach here at the on the show, and try to really have
• 1:02:21
  people understand what success is for them and really define it for themselves, because
• 1:02:25
  if not, you will you will go mad, and you will absolutely go
• 1:02:30
  mad. And this business is tough enough. It's just it's brutal enough without
• 1:02:36
  you having to to like, oh god, I'm twenty three. I didn't
• 1:02:40
  make Citizen Kane yet like Orson, wells, oh, I'm twenty seven.
• 1:02:44
  I haven't made Jaws yet. Like Spielberg, I'm like, are you out
• 1:02:47
  of your mind? Yeah? Stop? I stopped watching reading a lot of
• 1:02:52
  the Trades or you know, it's not like I don't read them, but
• 1:02:54
  and watching a lot of award shows because it's like, it can't be the
• 1:03:00
  focus. It can't be like I have to you know, it has to
• 1:03:04
  be like, no, how do we define it for ourselves, the success
• 1:03:07
  and how do we have this internal dial of gratitude and what we're doing in
• 1:03:09
  our life? And you know, America tries to really throw other ideas down
• 1:03:15
  your throat. I mean that's part I think why we're both here on alex
• 1:03:17
  Is because we're changing that culture in some ways of saying, let's give a
• 1:03:22
  meaning in a different way to our lives and to media and maybe not keep
• 1:03:25
  throwing the same stories of success down people's throat, like once you get this
• 1:03:30
  and the girl on that, then you're happy. No, you know it
• 1:03:34
  sounds cliche now, but it's really still out there, you know, and
• 1:03:37
  it's really still a story motif all the time. I mean, because like
• 1:03:42
  I tell people all the time. Hollywood is fantastic about selling the sizzle,
• 1:03:45
  but they suck at selling the steak. And that's what that's all about.
• 1:03:50
  And I always and I've said this a ton of times on the show,
• 1:03:52
  so everyone please forgive me, but I'll say it against Adam hasn't heard this.
• 1:03:55
  The greatest analogy for Hollywood is going down to Hollywood Boulevard. And I
• 1:04:00
  don't know if you've been down in Hollywood Boulward, I'm sure you have.
• 1:04:02
  It is assesspool. But on Oscar night it looks like, oh my god,
• 1:04:09
  it's Hollywood glitz and glamour, and look at the staircase and look at
• 1:04:12
  this and look at the stars. But the second the award shows over,
• 1:04:15
  they take up the red carpet and the drug needles are still down in the
• 1:04:18
  alley. So it's just but that is the perfect analogy of what Hollywood is
• 1:04:25
  because they show something, but what's really going on behind the scenes is probably
• 1:04:28
  not what they're showing. And that's what they've built that they've done since they
• 1:04:30
  started the industry. But people get caught up in that, in that mentality
• 1:04:34
  of sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, and I need this, this, this
• 1:04:38
  and this, and I'll be happy when this happens. You can't be happy
• 1:04:43
  when this happened, because life is not a destination. It is a journey.
• 1:04:46
  And I've talked to Oscar winners, and I've talked to Emmy winners,
• 1:04:49
  and I've talked to very successful people who've reached the top of that quote unquote
• 1:04:53
  mountain top. And then they go, now what, And a lot of
• 1:04:57
  them get depressed because they've been working all their life this Oscar and they get
• 1:05:00
  the Oscar to like I don't know what to do now, like where do
• 1:05:03
  I go from here? Because they haven't enjoyed the journey up to the top
• 1:05:06
  highest paths. They were just the highest paths. And then when they're just
• 1:05:11
  like, I don't write, I don't understand what I do. That's why
• 1:05:15
  I did that movie first. You know, Oh I see, it's the
• 1:05:17
  journey. Okay, it's the journey city. It's all part of the plan.
• 1:05:20
  It was all part of the plan the entire time. I'm sure I
• 1:05:25
  don't. I'm gonna ask you if you're gonna do the I'm gonna do the
• 1:05:27
  hardest question, you know, hardest film I could possibly do. First,
• 1:05:30
  I would teach me everything, so that I can then have a same career,
• 1:05:33
  uh filmmaking, because I'm assuming heel not so difficult comparatively, No,
• 1:05:40
  comparatively, No, you know, no, not no life threatening moments,
• 1:05:45
  right, you know, you just know. We go to a house,
• 1:05:46
  we go to the lights up, we shoot some stuff. But I'll tell
• 1:05:50
  you, you know, the adventure is like, oh, what's the adventure?
• 1:05:55
  The people that are going through the healing are yes, they're the ones
• 1:05:58
  you know, not me as filmmaker, but we're watching them and like it
• 1:06:00
  is everything when you're sick, it's every Oh so does you know as much
• 1:06:04
  as I love adventure, it has a little bit in the film, but
• 1:06:08
  no, for me as a filmmaker, not as not as crazy Road to
• 1:06:10
  Dharma. Yeah, I'm still at risk again, even though I know how
• 1:06:13
  to ride a motorcycle. You know, And this is the insanity of filmmakers.
• 1:06:16
  You're still thinking about trying to do a second third season one day of
• 1:06:19
  Road to Dara because you're insane. We all are, because normal human beings
• 1:06:27
  wouldn't do that twice. Film it twice and then go, you know,
• 1:06:31
  I think I could do this two or three more times. I was just
• 1:06:34
  in India with a non right and I was like, well, are you
• 1:06:36
  open to because it always starts from are you open and letting us walk film?
• 1:06:41
  Because he's going to do this no matter what with people. It's authentic,
• 1:06:44
  it's not for the show. Can I come along and film the next
• 1:06:47
  one? And he said yes, so we're you know, we're talking when
• 1:06:49
  in twenty twenty three we can do it again. And then I have the
• 1:06:54
  filmmaker crazy mind. It's like like I said earlier, you know, once
• 1:06:57
  we've done season two and three, then Netflix wake up and go, okay,
• 1:07:00
  we'll take all these That's still the little psycho delusion. This is the
• 1:07:03
  delusion of filmmakers. We're absolutely delusional because and look, it's so funny that
• 1:07:11
  you like, you're not a newbie at this dude. This is like I
• 1:07:14
  hear that kind of talk from like someone who's just like, you know,
• 1:07:15
  I'm just gonna do this and this, and then Hollywood will notice me or
• 1:07:18
  Netflix will notice pople you still have that mentality even after over a decade.
• 1:07:24
  Just like you know, I think if I do three or more four more
• 1:07:26
  seasons, I think Netflix will folly take notice. And I do believe it.
• 1:07:30
  I and I absolutely in my heart believe it because like, oh no,
• 1:07:32
  this spiritual audience is growing and it'll have and if not, you know,
• 1:07:36
  so it got me to go keep doing it absolutely, and you know,
• 1:07:41
  I just love It's like it's my baby, wrote a Diarmas. I
• 1:07:44
  just oh, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I tell everybody to it.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, I know, of course, and something you else will pay the
• 1:07:49
  bills. You know, something else will be And I'll just keep doing that
• 1:07:51
  because we're carneies. That we're carne's where all we are is carnies and we
• 1:07:58
  just are insane or we're so we're circus folk. So we're circus folk.
• 1:08:02
  That's basically what we are. I've said that so many times. It's so
• 1:08:05
  true. We are circus for we put up a tent, we put on
• 1:08:09
  a show, and then we leave the town and we go onto the next
• 1:08:12
  town. It's the same thing if a film sets, the exact same thing,
• 1:08:15
  and the and the people on the crew very entertaining people, very very
• 1:08:20
  entertaining, very unique people that you meet along along your journey. But it
• 1:08:25
  is a beauty. I call it the beautiful sickness. That's what it is.
• 1:08:28
  Being a filmmaker, being a creative. It is a beautiful sickness because
• 1:08:30
  it's a sickness you can't get rid of, you can't so fun. Yeah,
• 1:08:34
  you want to teach, you know, it's to want to teach and
• 1:08:36
  you share and maybe yeah, yeah, you as a documental as a documentary.
• 1:08:43
  Yet there's a you know, I notice a little bit in me that's
• 1:08:45
  that like my own subconscious that wants to be heard. You know that maybe
• 1:08:49
  I wasn't heard enough as a kid. Okay, I see that part,
• 1:08:53
  and let's not operate from that part. Uh. And then the other part
• 1:08:57
  is like the natural teacher I taught soccer ever and you know, the natural
• 1:09:00
  teacher that has found a format to do that. You know that is called
• 1:09:04
  film and entertainment and adventure. And I get to hopefully share in that way
• 1:09:09
  too. And I don't stop teaching, like I teach yoga on the beach
• 1:09:12
  to my friends and stuff. So like that stretching. It's all about stretching
• 1:09:15
  though really, and like you know, I often remind myself in terms of
• 1:09:20
  life skills, like if I had the oscar and a million dollars, would
• 1:09:25
  I still be here at the beach doing yoga with my friend. Absolutely Would
• 1:09:28
  I still be eating here? Absolutely? Well, I still be you know,
• 1:09:30
  like, would you go back on the road to dharma? Of course
• 1:09:35
  I would. I would still be doing everything I'm doing. So like,
• 1:09:38
  I better not wait to be happy, because it's gonna be the same.
• 1:09:41
  Actually, there's just going to be maybe a couple more projects going or more
• 1:09:45
  money or blah blah, and so you just you have to kind of wipe
• 1:09:47
  away the bs in the mind. You have to absolutely listen. I'm gonna
• 1:09:53
  ask you a few questions, ask on guests, what advice would you give
• 1:09:57
  a filmmaker trying to break into the business today. We'll be right back after
• 1:10:01
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. You know,
• 1:10:14
  I don't because I don't see it as breaking into the business. It's
• 1:10:18
  it's larceny. It's larceny, sir, it's larsny. This business is larscnity.
• 1:10:25
  We have to break our way in or make it or make it.
• 1:10:29
  I just here's what I did when I first got to LA And this might
• 1:10:31
  work for people and might not. I I went to things and did things
• 1:10:36
  that I like to do, so that I made friends with people that I
• 1:10:40
  liked so that I didn't network for the sake of networking, so that the
• 1:10:43
  people I'm close with, I'm actually close with, and there had a core
• 1:10:47
  and still do now have a core group of people that I actually trust.
• 1:10:51
  And maybe it's a little different because it's the dock world and consciousness world.
• 1:10:56
  But the consciousness world can be as crazy as Hollywood, you know. I
• 1:10:59
  mean, your first movie, I need, I need full credit as a
• 1:11:02
  director, right, exactly, exactly done, and there's plenty of stuff.
• 1:11:09
  And so maybe that's my advice is to be yourself in the in the lifestyle
• 1:11:14
  way and then that way you have a core people support system as you're going
• 1:11:18
  through hard things that you actually call friends, and that way you're not pushing
• 1:11:25
  so hard to network, you know, and if you're going to something like
• 1:11:28
  an event, it's something you might actually connect with someone with, you know.
• 1:11:32
  So that that's my only bit of advice, because the way I did
• 1:11:35
  is so strange and absurd that it's not gonna go to Andy to find a
• 1:11:40
  guru and make a movie like, it's not gonna work, definitely, And
• 1:11:43
  that's been done, be done, It's been done already. It's been done.
• 1:11:46
  No day now it's total. Now, what is the lesson that took
• 1:11:49
  you the longest to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
• 1:11:55
  Yeah, let's let's talk about recent then. What's been going on in my
• 1:11:59
  head is is that you know, these this propensity for us to look back
• 1:12:05
  at a conversation and want to redo it right. Doubt, we'll call that
• 1:12:08
  doubt to change the way what I said, what I did, or the
• 1:12:15
  thoughts that project in the future, I'm going to do this and that still
• 1:12:18
  even my last time in India was just looking at where that's all coming from,
• 1:12:23
  and I decided just to re engineer all that. So that lesson was
• 1:12:27
  if I'm engineering the future or engineering what I should have said in the past,
• 1:12:31
  what needs to be re engineered is right now. So let's flip the
• 1:12:35
  engineering on now and say, Okay, what is it I'm feeling that's making
• 1:12:39
  me have those thoughts, Oh, I'm feeling some lack or something in So
• 1:12:45
  let's use that engineering mind of redoing future in past and look and engineer that
• 1:12:49
  feeling and say, what's going on in there? And can I shift my
• 1:12:53
  perspective to to break it open now? Rather than this false story making of
• 1:12:59
  the past in the future, and of course I've known that through awareness and
• 1:13:03
  meditation for years, but to really use the wording of engineering and just say
• 1:13:09
  I'm going to engineer the moment and look deeply at the feeling when those thoughts
• 1:13:13
  come up is just really hitting hard right now, and I think that's super,
• 1:13:16
  super helpful to not get lost in our minds. And three of your
• 1:13:20
  favorite films of all time. Yeah, I saw you asked this and I
• 1:13:25
  have two at least that I logged in. Life is beautiful because I just
• 1:13:30
  be careful. That ability to help someone else, right, and that to
• 1:13:34
  bring us out of our own suffering in some way is really it can speak
• 1:13:38
  to us all. When you heal other people or help other people, it
• 1:13:40
  does lift you up. The Princess Bride because it got me through college,
• 1:13:46
  you know, just memorizing my taman Montoya and my father to die and then
• 1:13:55
  my third I hadn't figured it out. So let's just see what comes into
• 1:14:00
  my consciousness right now? What? Okay, Well, I guess Star Wars
• 1:14:04
  would have to be in there because it pushed me to want a Yoda in
• 1:14:09
  my life. And that's you know, Ann, my guru. I think
• 1:14:14
  we all growing up want it. I think I even say that in the
• 1:14:16
  highest past, like we all look Yoda, I mean you're speaking to I
• 1:14:23
  have a life sized Yoda right there. He was a show. I have
• 1:14:26
  life size Yoda right there. I have a little Yoda right here. So
• 1:14:30
  I have a baby Yoda right here. The bobblehead. If people are you
• 1:14:38
  just have a bobblehead, a bobblehead baby Yoda over there, and a full
• 1:14:43
  sized baby Yoda above me. So I'm a Yoda fan. But you're right,
• 1:14:46
  we all want someone wise to guide us through this insanity that we call
• 1:14:54
  life, because it is we're all trying to figure it out from the moment
• 1:14:58
  we come out and we're slapped in the bus and we start crying, you
• 1:15:00
  know, we're just like trying to figure this out. And having someone who
• 1:15:04
  can answer questions for you, someone who's maybe been understands things that you don't
• 1:15:10
  understand at maybe a much deeper level that you don't understand, is something I
• 1:15:13
  think we all long for in one way, shape or form, whether that
• 1:15:15
  be your parents, whether that be a guru, whether that be a you
• 1:15:18
  know, a friend, whoever, We're all looking for that in one way,
• 1:15:23
  shape or form, and some of us have the ability to do it
• 1:15:26
  ourselves, to be our own internal gurus and learn just by life, and
• 1:15:30
  life is the guru that teaches you, unfortunately for better and worse sometimes.
• 1:15:35
  But but listen, Adam. But it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you,
• 1:15:40
  man. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to my
• 1:15:42
  audience. Man, I truly appreciate it, and I recommend everybody watch all
• 1:15:46
  of your films, even Polygon. It's not as depressing as it sounds,
• 1:15:53
  but it needs to be seeing No. Thank thank you man. Thanks for
• 1:15:56
  this podcast, for having a non nonge sharing the soul that you're sharing on
• 1:16:00
  the next level soul. Yeah, appreciate Thatch just sharing your heart on this
• 1:16:02
  podcast. Good thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. It's such a
• 1:16:06
  cool journey. And the next one I'm working on. I can't talk about
• 1:16:10
  this doc, but it hasn't built in audience, and of course I'm giving
• 1:16:15
  it a consciousness and a meaning to it. So, like you know,
• 1:16:17
  we're starting to find how to do this, how to sneak in the good
• 1:16:21
  messages into something that's commercially viable, and I'm excited to talk about that once
• 1:16:27
  it comes out, but again, thank you so much. This is awesome.
• 1:16:29
  Thank you, my friend. I want to thank Adam so much for
• 1:16:32
  coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Tribe today. Thank
• 1:16:38
  you so much, Adam. If you want to get links to anything we
• 1:16:40
  spoke about in this episode, including how to watch some amazing documentaries and work
• 1:16:45
  that Adam has done, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot
• 1:16:48
  TV forward slash three fifty four. Thank you so much for listening. Guys,
• 1:16:51
  As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you
• 1:16:55
  soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast of Group Screenwriting dot t
• 1:17:00
  v. Mm hmm