Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 696: How I Wrote Birdman with Oscar® Winner Alexander Dinelaris

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IFH 696: How I Wrote Birdman with Oscar® Winner Alexander Dinelaris · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six ninety six. Writing is easy. All
• 0:18
  you have to do is sit at a typewriter and bleed. Ernest Hemingway broadcasting
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  from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where
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  we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles
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  of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble
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  host Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur.
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  How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than
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  over to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com.
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  Well, guys, today on the show we have Oscar winning screenwriter Alex Villanaris,
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  and Alex is one of the creative forces behind the remarkable Oscar winning film
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  Birdman. Now, Alex and I sit down and have a very deep conversation
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  about what it was like coming up, how he turned down working on some
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  very big movies with some big directors, where he almost got ousted by his
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  agency, how he got his agency in the first place, and what happened
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  when he was asked to be a writer on Birdman and so much more.
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  This is a inspiring and educational conversation. So sit back, relax, and
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  enjoy my conversation with Alex Delaris. I'd like to welcome to the show,
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  Alex Delaris. How you doing, Alex? I'm doing well. How are
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  you? I'm doing great? My friend? Well, first off, great
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  name. I'd like the first name. It it works. I think I
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  think it means leader of men if you look at That's what my mother used
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  to tell me. Yeah, from Alexander, the great thing. Of course
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  your mother would tell you that because you're Latino, and that's what my mother
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  would tell me as well. That's right, that's right, I tell you.
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  It's a really funny thing. Right now. So you know my relationship
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  with my dear friend and my director, Alesando Nati Tou calls me, never
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  calls me, Alex always calls me Tokayo her namesake, right. And then
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  I was producing films with the two directors that are now developing films. We're
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  talking about this later anyway. One of them is her name is Alex from
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  Chicago. Right now, I'm doing a Colombian I'm producing this Colombian artist film.
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  Her name is Alessandra and her director is Alejandra Mahia. So every time
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  we're on the call, you're like, which Ali, Alex three, Alex
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  two seven, Alex is? We have no idea who's who? And growing
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  up I couldn't meet one Alex, but now they're everywhere. I know they
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  weren't as popular back then. But listen, man, thank you so much
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  for coming on the show. I've been a fan of your work and what
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  you've been doing outside of obviously Birdman and other things you've done as well.
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  But my first question to you, sir, is how and why did you
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  want to get into this insane insanity that is the film industry. I mean
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  I sort of backed into it a little bit. I grew up in this
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  tiny little town called East Rockaway, Long Island, and I had a movie
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  theater across the street from me, one of those big old movie there is
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  called the Criterion, and it was one of those ones back because I'm I'm
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  I'm old now, so I'm talking about like late seventies, and it would
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  one movie theater, big curtain balcony. They played one movie. If it
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  was good, they played it for six months if people were coming like it'd
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  never changed. And my house wasn't the greatest place for me to hang out
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  in. So I used to sneak across the street and just sneak in the
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  movie theater and watch movies all day. And that's when I fell in love
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  with movies. So I was like ten years old, and I was watching
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  movies like Cramer Versus Cramer and you know, Great Santini and Justice for All.
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  These were all my favorite movies. They haven't Rocky Too and stuff like
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  that, but I was watching anything that was there. So um. Then
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  in high school, I fell in love with theater, and for one second
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  I was going to be a theater actor. And then one second later I
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  knew I wanted to direct theater. So then I studied theater and I had
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  a weird life. Man Like I had a weird life. I didn't.
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  I had some tough times, but I found myself in a little university in
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  North Miami called Barry University. Oh yeah, I know very well, you
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  know Barry. There you go. Well, I was at Barry for two
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  years and then I came back to New York because again I was a total
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  mess. But I was studying theater, and I was in the restaurant business
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  because I had to make a living. And one day I wrote a script
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  for a friend and somebody saw it and liked it. And next thing I
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  knew people wanted me to write instead of do anything else. And it was
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  easier to do when I was working in the restaurant business, because you could
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  get home at two in the morning. Right. You couldn't get home at
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  two in the morning and direct anything, you know what I mean, I
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  couldn't for the time off. And then my script's just got Danny Aello is
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  actually my fairy godfather. I don't know if you know. Danny rest in
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  peace, Danny the unbelievable actor from Do the Right Thing and Moonstruck. And
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  Danny got a play of mine and fell in love with it and said,
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  who the hell are you? I need to work with you. And we
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  did a bunch of readings and he was like my fairy godfather. And then
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  he got me to Johnny Planko, who's a very famous manager who handled like
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  Lauren McCall on, Peter o'tool and as he asked, yeah, I mean
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  more like Anthony Quinn. Paul Schrader. Now I mean, it's amazing.
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  And Johnny, because I was doing a play with Danny who represented, said
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  do you want a manager? I was like you, he said yeah.
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  I said, you're the only person I would be the only person on your
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  client list that I didn't know. And he said, nonetheless, I think
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  you're going to be good, and he signed me. Got me to Cia,
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  Cia, got me Alejandro Alexandrinati dou and I did Beautiful together, the
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  first the bar dem movie. I wrote a fool draft of that before I
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  eased out, and then we got Birdman and the rest is history four films
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  and then the rest of my film stuff. But I've done plays and Broadway
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  and stuff as well. That's how I got there. That's how you got
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  THEMIT. So it's it's interesting because so many so many people listening right now
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  are still, you know, working in the restaurant business trying to get their
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  scripts made. But you were also in New York at the time, right,
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  So it was a little difference. Kind of like I always tell people,
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  if you want to get hit by a car, you got to go
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  where the traffic is. That's far enough. Yeah, and New York and
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  LA are kind of those two places. Would you agree, I would agree.
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  I mean eventually you have to find your way there, because if you're
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  going to creep up into a writer's room or if you're you know, you
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  can write scripts from anywhere and submit them. And but yeah, better that
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  you're mingling, meeting somebody sees your stuff. Of course, your your analogy
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  is right. Yeah, and it's interesting that it's it's this this business in
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  general, there's oh, you always need to have like a Donny Brasco style
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  person, not an Italian. But I'm saying a person who vouches is for
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  you to give you some sort of credibility to open a door. Like Danniello
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  was your guy, was your fairy god, you know father essentially he was
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  the one and when people said, oh, if Danny's looking at him,
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  he must be so he's just need one person to open that creaked that door
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  open. And then your talent. I think that's an interesting point because those
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  those people that you say that might be listening, all of you out there
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  that might be listening that are that are trying to get there or still work
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  in a restaurant business, which I did for twenty four years. By the
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  way, I wasn't a successful writers. I was almost forty so um.
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  But there's also so we don't jump straight to Danny I Yellow because you canna
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  be listening to this going like, yo, how the hell do I mean
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  Danny I Yellow? That's the problem. But that's not how it happens either,
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  right. How how that happened was I wrote a play. I did
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  that play in a staged reading. Somebody in the reading was a friend of
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  my friend who was an agent, like commercial agent, a guy named Doug
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  Keston from Paradigm. Amazing commercial agent. Amazing guy goes to the He loved
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  the play and at the time, the actor that I had in the part
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  was going out, but he loved the place how much. He's like,
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  can I help you, you know, find somebody. I was like,
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  oh my god, that man at the time. By the way, I'm
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  living in a eight foot by five foot room in Brooklyn eating Chinese food for
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  five days, you know what I mean? Like terrible. And he calls
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  me up a few days later and says, how would you feel about Danny
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  Iello? I'm like, were you crazy? Like that was right? Like,
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  well, let's get it to him. And there's a funny story without
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  that I won't go into it, but my point was it wasn't just oh,
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  hi, here's that Danny Iello. Of course, because it was doing
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  a little reading of a play in a little place where a bunch of friends.
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  Somebody was there, he said, I liked it. So it's not
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  just you know, it's about how you build relationships, how you network.
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  And this gets back to your go into traffic is the more people you know,
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  if you're doing good work, somebody notices, tell somebody else, and
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  then you get to Danny Illo, which gets you through the fence to whatever
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  happens next. So there is a you know what I mean? Yeah,
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  absolutely, I agree with you one ten percent. We'll be right back after
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  a from our sponsor and now back to the show. The point is that,
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  yeah, you have to just do work because you didn't write You didn't
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  write that first script thinking that you were going to get someone like a Daniella
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  to open a door for you. You were just doing the work. But
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  I have to ask you, man, and this is something I think a
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  lot of people listening would would identify with, how did you keep going until?
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  I mean all those years you said, twenty four years in the restaurant
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  business. What kept you going following the dream of being a writer and a
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  director. I mean, but I let it die. It was never a
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  writer. It was always I just wanted to direct theater, you know.
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  I never thought I would be a writer. I didn't plan on it,
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  so I let it die. I was very dysfunctional. I grew up in
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  a house that was no good. I was drinking too much booze when I
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  was too young. I lived on the street for a couple of months in
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  New York City, like it was a mess man. I couldn't have my
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  lights on. You know. It was bad. But I always loved it,
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  right. I love theater, I loved stories. I love film always.
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  And then I got into the restaurant business. What happens is you sort
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  of get numb because when you have enough to pay your bills and it just
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  gets to enough, then you you're so depressed that you're not doing what you
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  love to do that you finish work at the restaurant at one, and then
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  you drink your face off till four, you know, and then you rise
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  some repeat for about what turns into two days to ten years, you know.
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  And I did everything that was to do in a restaurant from washing dishes
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  and peeling shrimp to owning one, which you know in general, managing all
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  that stuff. But one day I just quit it. Two thousand or something,
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  I just quit it and ran to Florida. But then I said I'm
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  going to try it. So I wrote the plays and then it worked.
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  So I didn't keep the dream alive in the middle. I just envied the
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  dream and it was really depress same time for me, um and still to
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  this day when i'm you know, I swear to God like this is my
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  house, this is my office, as my man cave down here because you
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  have a drum set back there. So oh yeah, I was gonna say
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  this is a very love Yeah, all my Yankees baseballs are there? Is
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  that a golden globe back there? Yeah? I think, yeah, of
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  course. And there's no night. There's no night that I don't or morning
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  that I don't wake up and come down here and go what the hell happened?
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  Like I I wake up every day like I mean it, like super
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  grateful like like that. But it's crazy, you know how I got from
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  there to here, and that for anybody listening like that, like there is
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  a road. It just takes. The road is the road, you know,
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  and I think people get to scars everybody. Oh, you do things,
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  you submit it. Yeah, but you know, agents aren't reading your
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  ship and you're not studying them straight to a studio like it seems impossible,
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  but it is. Like you said about doing the work by having friends,
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  read, about opening up your circles to people who are more in the business,
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  and your talent hopefully will naturally float you up, you know, toward
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  the top um if you if you network enough and give your stuff enough and
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  have good soul and help other people. And you know, I believe that
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  I'm living proof of the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. Yeah,
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  it's it's it's a beautiful I love what you're saying. It's actually really
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  beautiful because it's there's so much hardship trying to get into this business. It
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  is, it is absolutely brutal. Son't arguably the most difficult business in the
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  world to crack into. Really it's yours. You could be a brain surgeon
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  faster, honestly, Yeah, or more directly, that's true. Absolutely,
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  Yeah, there's there's no question because there is no path. And I love
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  when you said the path is the path. The journey is the journey,
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  and it's different for every single person. No one else is going to write
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  a play who than a friend, season than an Agencys and then it gets
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  to a Danny, a yellow caliber actor who then opens a door for you
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  then get you. Nobody's gonna that. And my biggest mistake growing, you
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  know, coming up in the businesses, I just started seeing everybody else's I
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  was like, Oh, that's how Robert Rodriguez did it, Well, maybe
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  that's what I should do, or that's how Kevin Smith did it, because
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  I came up in the nineties, so it's just like, yeah, and
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  then it never works. Yeah, he had stories about him give him blood
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  and raising the money you would be direct any filmmakers I've talked to it was
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  like, yeah, I gave blood too, And I'm like, how'd that
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  work out for you? Bro, I'm still hustling, man. I'm like,
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  that was his God, that's his bad. So you got to find
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  that path for yourself, I think is the big thing. So you finally
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  get to to Cia, you get to to meet but yeah, but at
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  the time, but when you met Alejandro, was Alejandro Alejandre yet or was
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  he just jumming up? He had just finished No, he had just got
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  won the Golden Globe and was nominated for all the Oscars from Babbel. Oh,
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  that's right, the Babbel. He did better do bad. Also,
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  he was already out of Hunter. He was already out the babble. He
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  did his first three movies with an unbelievably talented writer named Yehima Yaga, who
• 15:01
  did Amos Perros, Tony One, Graham's and Battle Right. And then those
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  guys have parted ways and he was looking for another writer. And this agent
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  in New York from CIA, who Johnny Plant Danny and By introduced to Johnny.
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  Johnny submitted my stuff to CIA. At CIA, there was a theater
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  agent named Olivier Saltan, who's still my agent, one of my best friends.
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  Um and Olivier fell in love with my play Still Life and Crazy because
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  Alejandra, I think we've just moved from Paradigm to CIA, I believe.
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  And he was looking and he had parted ways with Giermon and he was looking
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  for writers and CIA since he was a new client, and he was,
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  you know, just on babbling. He's you know, up and coming as
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  one of the biggest directors, and they sent him a pile of scripts.
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  And the way Alejandro told my story was like he read through a million scripts
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  and called Cia. He was like, it's not working. I can't find
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  it. Went through the bottom of his pile and there was my play,
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  not a not a movie script of my play still Life, and he read
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  it. And they called up you know, his people, Cea and say,
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  who the hell's that guy? I need to talk to that guy?
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  And they called me in New York City. I'll never forget. I was
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  in my sweatpants, eating a TV dinner off a trade with my wife,
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  watching the Yankees played Toronto Blue Jays. I'll never forget it. And I
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  got a phone call. It's like, is this Alessander And I said yeah.
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  He said, this is ale I read your place still Life. It's
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  full of blood. I want to drink your blood. That was literally the
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  first thing that mother said to me. Ever, that's what he said.
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  And my wife was swooning because she thought he was so gorgeous. She's like,
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  oh, and I'm like, what is happening right now? He's like,
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  can you come to it late tomorrow? I got on a day I'm
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  plane. That was a Tuesday night. I got on a plane the next
• 16:41
  day and the next night he and I were having dinner discussing what would become
• 16:45
  the film Beautiful. Two days later he called my agents and he's like,
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  I want Alex. He's my writer, and I joined him in Spain and
• 16:52
  we broke Beautiful. Dude, it's crazy, bro, that's insane. They
• 16:56
  saying, these are the kindest stories that are heard about in the in the
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  in the back alleys of Hollywood. And you're like, this is what happened.
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  This is you. It happened for you too. And they'll say these
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  kind of stories. But that's such an Literally, the universe was guiding you.
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  There's just no question. There's no other explanation, there's no makes no
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  sense. And make it a pile of scraps from all these imagine the famous
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  screenwriters that were in the pile. And then he picks out a play at
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  the bottom by play from New York. Yeah, I remember, story's done
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  to me. I forget who was are we calling the story? He's like,
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  like they eat told Like I forget who it was. Somebody high up
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  and see one of the you know, owner Kevin or Brian or something,
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  and he was like, uh, you know, Alex, I found my
• 17:44
  writer Alex. They were like, oh my god, that's amazing. Why
• 17:47
  didn't we think of it? It's a perfect, you know marriage. And
• 17:49
  then they called New York and like, who the hell is Alex? And
• 17:55
  they were like always a playwright, Olivia has and like get them on the
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  phone. He needs to get on a plane. And I was like,
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  that's that's how that's how that went. And did you ever did you ever
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  see the movie The Big Picture with Kevin Bacon? Yeah, it was It's
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  kind of had a little bit of that vibe too. Who is who's this
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  guy? He's the highest guy in town. We need to hold him.
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  Yeah, nobody knew me. I was brand new. So all right,
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  so you fly out? Do you fly out of Spain to meet out the
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  hund start working? I flew from New York to La okay, oh to
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  la And then well when you started to work with with Alejandro, Yeah,
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  as as a collaboration, Well, first of all, when you went to
• 18:30
  meet him that night, dude, what is that like? Bro? How
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  do you like? I can't even tell you the joy of it, Like,
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  I'm I'm a schmuck. I'm not going any money, um, but
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  I get out there. He picks me up for dinner in his car.
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  We go to this Italian restaurant that we still go to now. It's a
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  little outdoor place like not. It doesn't look super fancy, but it's really
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  good. The food's great. He loves it, and they're letting him smoke
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  out on the patio, which in La you can imagine, Oh good.
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  But we're we immediately hit it off, right, so we're like three bottles
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  of wine in and ale handra I don't know if you remember the movie Beautiful,
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  but Alejandro like it, gets up from the table and he's like no.
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  And then we're on the water. I don't going to see you looked
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  up dead body floating like eyes looking at your dead body, and there's everybody
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  eating right around us in their restaurant. When you get so passionate, and
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  he just starts doing this another dead body, and the whole all of a
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  sudden, like a grave yard in the water, And I was just I
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  loved every minute. But you can just picture the people nearby going, how
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  is that? La La? It's just all and we yeah, we thought
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  on about our first day. Yeah, oh, that's amazing. And so
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  let me ask you working with someone like Alejandro, who said, oh,
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  heusly a genius, He's an absolute genius. We'll be right back after a
• 19:45
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. What are some
• 19:55
  of the lessons you learned as a writer working with him, specifically on that
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  first project, and then we'll get to Birdman. Well, the first project
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  was amazing because here I am in this whirlwind that I go to Spain,
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  to Barcelona where that movie takes place, and it's about street people, um
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  African immigrants who sell the purses and the video tapes like a big part of
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  the story. And the story is how he added out of them, has
• 20:18
  two kids and he's dying and he has no place to leave them. His
• 20:22
  wife is sort of bipolar, and he doesn't have family, and he doesn't
• 20:26
  have money, and this whole thing it's so sad. What do I do
• 20:30
  with this? What do I do with these kids? Um? So we
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  went to Barcelona for a week or two, We did the research, we
• 20:37
  interviewed, we went to the little apartments of these people and how hard they
• 20:41
  work and how tough they live. It was really uh. And then saw
• 20:45
  sites and you know, you sort of got what we what we needed.
• 20:48
  And then he said make it your own, you know, now make it
• 20:51
  your own, and I went back. I moved to Barcelona for about a
• 20:55
  month. My wife is my best partner, um my wife, Nila,
• 20:59
  and she was like, just go because I wanted to be there, so
• 21:02
  about the streets in Barcelona. So I lived there and I just typed it
• 21:03
  out and I handed it to Alejandro and he said to me like, this
• 21:08
  is not what I wanted. And I was like, I thought he was
• 21:11
  kidding at first, and he was like no, this all of a sudden
• 21:15
  he said it's sad. And I was like, oh shit, like he
• 21:18
  means this. And we did all the work together. We talked about it
• 21:21
  like I didn't, and he said, I'm gonna go to Mexico and gonna
• 21:22
  write a few scenes and then I'll send them to you and you'll see more
• 21:25
  of the tone. And I was like, oh my god, it's for
• 21:26
  real. And I remember sitting on a couch and I gotta admit I was.
• 21:30
  I was crying like I would be. My wife was just you know,
• 21:33
  and I was just so sad, not only because it was all a
• 21:37
  handro but because like I felt strongly about what I had done. No,
• 21:41
  no, the story. Um and then he sent me some scenes and I
• 21:47
  realized, oh no, I'm not I liked him, we liked each other
• 21:52
  so much, and I'm like, I can't write that story. So I
• 21:56
  talked to Nila, I talked to my agents, and then finally one night,
• 22:00
  I got on the phone with Allahanda and I was like, brother,
• 22:03
  I can't write this. You're a genius and this movie is going to be
• 22:07
  amazing, but I'm not your guy, and I'll make it worse because I
• 22:14
  don't believe that. That isn't my understanding and I'm too close after a month
• 22:19
  with these people that I wrote, but you can use everything I wrote and
• 22:25
  I'm sorry. He's like, well, you know, get him and I
• 22:26
  used to hammer it out and I'm like, yeah, if I thought we
• 22:29
  were close, but we're not close, and I'm just going to hurt your
• 22:33
  movie. And it was funny because Ada was the only guy that understood,
• 22:37
  like I remember the night. I think he'll recount it the same way.
• 22:40
  We both was really sad about it. We were like we knew it was
• 22:44
  strictly about the work, and he respected that and I respected him so much,
• 22:48
  and I and that was it, and I didn't talk to him again
• 22:52
  until he was going to do the premiere, which was not a premiere screening
• 22:56
  at the Solo House in New York, and he invited me, and I
• 22:59
  was so nervous. I brought my friend Olivier, my agent, just to
• 23:02
  hold his leg because I was so nervous. And everybody was there, like
• 23:04
  Julian Schnabel was there, and I was fun. So I was there and
• 23:10
  I watched the movie and a lot of the stuff for the father and the
• 23:12
  kids stuff was still had my stuff and spirit in it, and so that
• 23:18
  relieved me a little bit. And then the other stuff was the other stuff.
• 23:22
  Um. And he was so nice about it, and we have lunch
• 23:26
  the next day and he said, what did you think it's like? One
• 23:30
  am I supposed to say? I was like, it's a beautiful movie.
• 23:33
  I still stand where I stood before. I think when it focuses on this
• 23:37
  thing, it's I feel more of that. When it doesn't, I sort
• 23:41
  of don't. But and you know, like my reps and people stopped talking
• 23:45
  to me for a little while because they thought, here's here's this new guy,
• 23:48
  and he's a vain, crazy, difficult, and I was none of
• 23:53
  those things. But they didn't know that. Alejandro knew that. And sorry
• 23:57
  to make this story longer than it should, but so I resigned from the
• 24:02
  film. I'm the first name on special credits. I remember sitting with my
• 24:06
  friend Brad Frying and watching and clip of Javiet on the Oscars that year,
• 24:11
  and I standing my buddy Brad, who was an actor, who standing right
• 24:14
  next thing I'll never forget, and they were showing the clip of Yet because
• 24:17
  he was nominated for Best Actor for that, and I said, look at
• 24:19
  that, Brad. I said, that's the closest I'm never going to get
• 24:22
  to an Academy Award right there, like that thing. And Brad was like,
• 24:26
  get a whiskey, like I was. I was screwed. I'm buying.
• 24:30
  Yeah. And then so at my agents, you know, we're not
• 24:36
  pleased, and understandably, but they didn't hear the whole story. And then
• 24:40
  I went to I used to write in Puerto Rico. I used to write
• 24:41
  on the West Coast and Sabello whenever I went to go write, and I
• 24:45
  was working on a musical of the Bodyguard of all things, the Lawrence kazd
• 24:48
  In movie. And I was doing a musical for England and I got there
• 24:52
  and I got a call from Alejandro and he said, to Gayo, he
• 24:56
  said, I have an idea. It's a comedy, dark comedy in one
• 25:00
  take, and I want you to write it with me. And I said,
• 25:04
  man, nothing would make me happier. We have unfinished business and I
• 25:08
  would love that. And he said, do you mind because the guy who
• 25:11
  the guys who replaced me were Nico and Armando on Beautiful. They're the ones
• 25:15
  who are credit with Ala Handro. He's like, do you mind if I
• 25:18
  bring this guy Nico in with me? And I was like, miss mother,
• 25:21
  Yeah, sure, what am I saying? No? Um? But
• 25:25
  you know, then I got a call from my age and who was like,
• 25:26
  hey, I heard you. Yeah, of course, of course it's
• 25:32
  understudy. It's understand buddy, pal Yeah I heard, Yeah, I heard
• 25:37
  you had a kid two years ago. Um. But like I said,
• 25:41
  I understand it, I really do. Um. So then we flew to
• 25:44
  New York. I met Nico and it took Niko and I one day to
• 25:48
  become brothers. And then Nico and I were writing Birdman um and then Armando
• 25:53
  came in and was doing album the story and Ala Handro you know, had
• 25:56
  the idea and and sorry, and that's that's how that happened. I thought
• 26:02
  I turned that off. That's how that happened in the craziest, in the
• 26:07
  craziest way, we ended up working on Birdman and that's how that story went.
• 26:14
  So I guess I risked everything I didn't mean to. I still I
• 26:18
  don't know. If I went back in time now, I probably wouldn't have
• 26:21
  done it again. And my wife was a champ for standing by my side,
• 26:23
  as was my age in Olivier. Because you imagine how crazy that sounds.
• 26:29
  Well yeah, you know, I mean, you man, that's I
• 26:33
  mean, brother man. That is a hell of a story because you just
• 26:36
  you get your shot with arguably, you know, one of the greatest directors
• 26:40
  of his time, of his generation, and everyone knew he was going in
• 26:45
  that direction without question. And you decide to have in Hollywood integrity, as
• 26:52
  I put it out in quote integrity for the story like it sounds insane Hollywood
• 27:00
  talk, this is a Hollywood thing. Well how my agents looked at it,
• 27:02
  But the hunter understood where you were going with it, respected and respected
• 27:07
  it because you're right, because a Hollywood director that would have a Hollywood writer
• 27:12
  who might have not had the same sensibility as you, would have been like,
• 27:15
  this is my shot. I'm gonna bammer it out with him, and
• 27:18
  it might have made the film worst. But you outed up, you said
• 27:21
  this is not I probably should have, um, but I did. I
• 27:25
  just respected him so much, and I was like, I'm not going to
• 27:27
  get in the way of this genius, like I'm gonna write that badly.
• 27:30
  I'm gonna write that badly, and this is my first shot. And and
• 27:34
  you know, like I said, I don't. I don't know if I
• 27:37
  do the same thing again today. I'd like to think I would. Um.
• 27:41
  I was making no money at the time when I quit, you know,
• 27:45
  as making two plays off Broadway, New York, which pays you all
• 27:48
  about twenty five thirty thousand dollars in total in some of the biggest off Broadway
• 27:52
  theaters New York, by the way. Um, and they still you know,
• 27:55
  there's no money in it. And you know, my wife was making
• 27:59
  all the money at that time. Time. She calls me her startup.
• 28:00
  Now to this day, Oh that's a great I love that. Yeah,
• 28:04
  she does. But she stood by me. But yeah, Alejandro knew what
• 28:08
  I was saying, and I was saying, I'm not going to get in
• 28:11
  the way of your vision of this of this film, and nobody else got
• 28:15
  it. But he got it and then came right back to me. And
• 28:18
  now we've done four together. We're still doing stuff together where brothers um,
• 28:22
  I love him. Um. So it just worked out, man, It
• 28:27
  definitely worked out the way it's supposed to work out for you. And it's
• 28:30
  the thing that's great about it is looking in from the inside out. From
• 28:33
  outside in it's insanity, but from the inside out it makes all the sense
• 28:36
  in the world. It looking back, yes, looking back, looking back
• 28:42
  when you're in it, not so much. Now I have to tell you
• 28:47
  about bird Man. Man. I was that year I I I heard about
• 28:51
  bird Man, and obviously it looked it looked really interesting, and I was
• 28:55
  a fan of Alejandrew and I watched it and I'll never forget my first impression
• 29:00
  to Man. I turned to my wife and I said, Oh, my
• 29:03
  god, that's what a director is. I haven't seen a director direct,
• 29:07
  really direct and had such a clear vision in such a long time. And
• 29:12
  that's not a slight on any other director just at that moment. His vision
• 29:17
  was so vivid for that film, and it just was like he took you
• 29:22
  by the nose and carried you through the entire movie and the performances and the
• 29:26
  one shot. And I'm like, what is going on when you're writing that
• 29:32
  with him? It's insane story? Yeah, everything is a little bit like
• 29:37
  it's insane. The characters are all over the place, meaning that like,
• 29:41
  there's so many different things going on in that story. How did you keep
• 29:45
  it all? That's I guess that's why you needed three four writers on We'll
• 29:49
  kind of keep it all in check. I would tell me, we'll be
• 29:53
  right back after a word from our sponsor out back to the show. Alejandra
• 30:03
  had a strong vision of what it was. He had a very strong vision,
• 30:08
  and Armando as a director as well, and a very good one at
• 30:11
  that. They tend to be story guys. I mean, Alejander's generating a
• 30:18
  story, and Nico and I are the sort of writing guys like how do
• 30:22
  we make that? How do we put that into you know, Exterory or
• 30:26
  Saint James Theater, New York City. I think, like I said,
• 30:32
  Nico and I had became inseparable, and we were finishing each other's thoughts,
• 30:36
  and we're two very different kind of writers. Like I don't know if you
• 30:38
  thought Nico has a really quirky great film called John and the Hole. That
• 30:42
  was just it was in the Stupid Bright in the Pandemic. But he's Nico
• 30:49
  is a an absurdist at heart. He's an abstractionist, and I'm dialog action,
• 31:00
  conflict and together it was that's what bird Man is. Right. Either
• 31:04
  you have Michael Keaton and Emma Stone and you're not important, blah blah blah,
• 31:07
  get used to it, or you have him meeting maloone ego and I
• 31:11
  don't know, this play is chasing me around with a tiny habra hidden meeting
• 31:15
  balls or bird Man flying, And that's Niko. And the two of us
• 31:18
  just loved each other's styles, even though we don't write in each other's styles.
• 31:22
  So we would laugh, you know. Um so I think speaking for
• 31:26
  myself, I mean, I know, Alejandro, I'm gonna you know,
• 31:30
  I'll tell you a million ways why all hundred is a genius. But speaking
• 31:34
  for myself in this particular style played right into my strength as a playwright.
• 31:40
  Right, of course, dialogue scenes, clever, keeps moving. It's not
• 31:45
  elliptical. M For me, it was like going home, you know,
• 31:51
  to to my plays and I love that. Um So I focused on that.
• 32:00
  Nico focused on the more esoteric, and Alejandro is a master of both.
• 32:07
  He's a master of the fifty fifty and two people in a room going
• 32:09
  at each other, and he's a master of the visual, epic sweep move.
• 32:16
  But I think the best thing I can say about my partner Alejandro is
• 32:23
  that his guts just don't lie to him. He knows in a way,
• 32:30
  like when he and Chivo that our DPM, when him and Chievo are standing
• 32:36
  there and working it out, you just sit back and I don't know what
• 32:42
  to say. You you you, You just sit with your mouth shut and
• 32:45
  watch. It's it's a stunning thing to see happen. Their instincts are so
• 32:52
  pure and have adrenaline in them by all by themselves. And that's what for
• 32:58
  me the best Birdman, Birdman to you was what Good Fellaws was to me
• 33:02
  When I saw it just pull yanked you into this world and then you're in
• 33:07
  this world and you you just don't get out of it. It's just trap
• 33:09
  it and go and I feel like Alejandro outside of the riding. I'm just
• 33:14
  talking about his direction. Did that like Birdman? When you like it or
• 33:15
  love it and people love it and people hate it, like, I get
• 33:19
  both, I really do um. But for the people who love it,
• 33:22
  I think it feels like that you got pulled into this ride and it's dark
• 33:24
  and it moves and you just don't know what's happening. It doesn't feel familiar
• 33:29
  in a way, which is, you know, really lovely, I think,
• 33:30
  and rare and rare these days and rare. Yeah. I thought that
• 33:34
  last year about that about Everything Everywhere, which wasn't my favorite film, but
• 33:37
  I certainly loved it. But it felt like, oh shit, yes,
• 33:40
  right, two rocks or boulders are speaking to each other. That's perfections?
• 33:45
  Are those hot dog hands? Why sing? Get to the bagel? We're
• 33:51
  good? No, no, that's and don't even get me stopping. I
• 33:53
  had the boys on the Daniels on before they were the Daniels, and and
• 33:59
  just hear the story of how that. I'm like, you guys are insane.
• 34:01
  It's insane said that movies. And it was so wonderful. It was
• 34:05
  such a wonderful film as well. Yeah, and you know, speaking of
• 34:07
  Chivo, I mean Chivo had a run there of three three Oscars in a
• 34:13
  row, not not a bad run. And then Ale Handro had backed the
• 34:19
  back Oscars for Best Director, which I don't know if that has that happened
• 34:23
  before. It has I think once or twice before. I remember. It's
• 34:27
  a rare. It's a rarity. It's definitely not something that happens often.
• 34:31
  Um working when when you're saying this this thing, when you're watching Chivo and
• 34:37
  a hundred working on set and they just know that they trust their gut,
• 34:39
  it sounds to me like they're just that thing that we all, all the
• 34:43
  creatives, all of creatives do when we try to connect to the ether,
• 34:46
  to connect to the source of whatever creativity is. It seems that they have
• 34:52
  a very strong connection to it and they trust it implicitly, like they just
• 34:58
  because a lot of times it's a or as a director you second guess you're
• 35:02
  kind of like, oh, maybe maybe not. It sounds like these guys
• 35:05
  are like it's like watching the Beatles writing a song and those documentaries just like
• 35:09
  they're just they're firing on all cylinders. Yes, that's that's I've been in
• 35:14
  the room. I mean, I've been privileged to be in the room.
• 35:16
  It's crazy, and I think I want to be clear because I you know,
• 35:20
  I know, and I've been friendly with with you know, Alexandro Alfonso,
• 35:24
  Guietimo del Toro, giebo Um. I'll say this, if the world's
• 35:31
  still around in fifty years, they're gonna be full chapters in film books about
• 35:37
  that these three guys in that period of time, and they make very different
• 35:43
  movies, but they all come from the same place. This is what they'll
• 35:46
  where they're gonna call Mexican. The Mexican cinema of the odds. Is this
• 35:55
  passionate like it's not the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson or the genius of the
• 36:06
  Cohens, which are the first massive geniuses. But the difference in style with
• 36:13
  the Mexicans for me is this lead by the gut, balls out. The
• 36:21
  mistakes are part of the you know, like I watched Todd's movie with Kate
• 36:27
  h tar Oh. Yeah, it's it's it's perfection. It's it's it's I
• 36:32
  don't mean the story or I just mean it's constructed in a way that's so
• 36:37
  perfect Um and it's super wonderful. Our guys aren't like that. They're even
• 36:47
  when it's choreographed to an inch of its life, the mistakes are part of
• 36:51
  the joy of it. The car chase, Famous car Chase and City of
• 36:53
  men Uh, you know, the guierron Is sequence and Pans labyrinth that that
• 37:00
  keeps cutting back and forth, like they just do things, and it's the
• 37:04
  totality of their instinct that is what's right, not the perfection of what they're
• 37:09
  doing. Their stuff is pretty unbelievable, but you know what I mean,
• 37:14
  And I think that's what that's what this moment and those guys have in common,
• 37:17
  this instinct, like you said, this this this barometer that just it
• 37:22
  just takes them the right way and or it takes them somewhere right. I
• 37:27
  mean you look at get Off or you get Off. Yeah, look at
• 37:30
  Getmo stuff. I mean it's so Getmo like. There's just no there's no
• 37:36
  one else on the planet hope to make a film like no like, and
• 37:38
  those are the best kind of film filmmakers are. You can't see anyone else
• 37:45
  making your avatar, regardless, you can't see you can't see anyone else making
• 37:49
  et like. You just can't see that it's not possible. It's the DNA
• 37:53
  is so mixed in that, you know, theyn't make it like like Over
• 38:00
  couldn't make a Good Fellas, but it's not going to be Marty's Good Fellas,
• 38:04
  no, you know, and Marty could have made Jaws, right,
• 38:07
  it's just not going to be the same. That's right, That's right.
• 38:12
  Working with Alejandra now on so many projects, what is that the biggest lesson
• 38:16
  you've learned as a writer working with him? He has a he has a
• 38:25
  a bullshit meter where you can write something really really great, you know,
• 38:32
  and you know writers, we usually hate ninety percent of what we write,
• 38:36
  but you'll find something to say, oh, that's that's really great, and
• 38:38
  he's like, yeah, it's it's really good, really good. I'm not
• 38:42
  going to use it, um because I can do that whole thing you just
• 38:45
  did if I just do this with the Cameron door there. But it's great,
• 38:50
  nice idea. What else do we have? And you're like, I
• 38:52
  just I spent three weeks what are you talking about? And then you're watching
• 38:57
  you're like, yep, yep, he was right. They have an amazing
• 39:01
  way to get past an amazing It's again, it's his truth meet or he
• 39:07
  just he just knows if it feels, you know, right or wrong,
• 39:12
  or whether it's an image or a line. He just he has an you
• 39:15
  know what he comes from music like Ale Hander is very much from music.
• 39:21
  Um. I think he was when I was in the restaurant business. I
• 39:23
  think he was a dj um. But music means a lot to him and
• 39:27
  that's how he I think that's his paradigm. He sees everything as this sort
• 39:35
  of rhythm and music, and whether it's time for a dissonant note or harmony,
• 39:40
  he'll he'll he'll know sort of joy. But that's that's what it feels
• 39:44
  like. Um. And he's he's taught me to lean more on, like
• 39:49
  stop being so polished and stop saying everything, say what's get down to the
• 39:53
  center of it. And he's made me better. We'll be right back after
• 39:58
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. I mean
• 40:06
  he made me better instantly with Birdman, and even seems beautiful that you know
• 40:12
  that that survived. He just makes me better now. I always like asking
• 40:17
  this question from people who've won Oscars, What was it like being in the
• 40:22
  center of the storm that was Birdman? The whole pomp and circumstance. You're
• 40:28
  going into award shoft to award show and everyone's you're the best, You're the
• 40:31
  greatest. This destroys most most people. It does in Hollywood, We've seen
• 40:36
  that a thousand times. Um, how did you deal with being in the
• 40:39
  middle of this whole hurricane? Essentially it's the eye of the storm essentially.
• 40:45
  Well, I think I think the greatest thing about being a screenwriter is that
• 40:51
  nobody knows who you are. That you have to tell some It was funny.
• 40:55
  I was at a funeral my great answers like one hundred and seven years,
• 40:59
  ol, God bless her, and I was there funeral and somebody I
• 41:00
  hadn't seen in twenty years, my army inside of the family came up to
• 41:05
  me at the funeral. I was like, oh my god, you're famous.
• 41:07
  I said, I'm not. Things like you're famous. We saw you
• 41:09
  in the oscard and I said, I'm nothing. I said, what's your
• 41:12
  favorite movie that you ever saw in your whole life? And she said Shawshank
• 41:16
  Redemption And I said who wrote it? She had? I said what's your
• 41:22
  second favorite? Castle Blanc. I was like, who wrote it? Like
• 41:25
  nobody, not like only movie people you know what I mean. So screenwriters,
• 41:30
  you get you're under the radar. Plus there was me, Nico Armando,
• 41:34
  like we were all sneaking on the Alejandro. You know, everybody's looking
• 41:37
  for him as the director, as the author naturally, So it wasn't that
• 41:40
  great. So we had the joy of being able to be part of it
• 41:45
  and still be able to enjoy it with our wives and like we had a
• 41:47
  ball at the Golden Globes. We were getting drunk at the table. We
• 41:50
  had a we had a ball, like the whole time. We just had
• 41:53
  a ball because it wasn't it wasn't real. You know, we weren't under
• 41:58
  any pressure at all. So it was fine, Like I was there,
• 42:02
  I'll show you. I don't know if I can go get it for you,
• 42:05
  but it's a start. No please goo gook at it all right,
• 42:08
  all the if you if you go, if you go to UM whatever YouTube
• 42:17
  wherever you watch the you know, Birdman winning Best Picture or whatever. We
• 42:22
  had one screenplay, amazing Alejandro had one director TiVo one UM. We were
• 42:30
  hoping Michael would win. I'm still sum yeah, but so we had done
• 42:35
  our thing and then best picture, so the best picture you win and everybody
• 42:37
  goes up on stage. So now we're up there with Emma and Ed Norton
• 42:42
  and you know, all the fame. I'm like, nobody's looking at me,
• 42:44
  like Arnon milschen Um, Jim's Cootschab all the great producer Um. And
• 42:49
  I'm standing up there. I'm like, well, literally nobody at home or
• 42:52
  in this theater is looking at me. So you can see it in the
• 42:55
  YouTube video. I reach into my pocket and I take out my own and
• 43:00
  I just go like, I don't aim. I just go like this and
• 43:02
  I, you know, turn that camera really fat one click. I put
• 43:06
  it right back in my pocket. I'm like, I probably got you know,
• 43:08
  somebody's feet, but I had to try it. Well. The picture
• 43:12
  that came out on my phone was this, wow, oh my god,
• 43:20
  everyone who's listening, you gotta go on to YouTube and look at this.
• 43:22
  Well and that is amazing. Is holding the oscar and the god light that's
• 43:29
  coming right down, and there was like Jared Leto and Clint Eastwood and my
• 43:34
  wife is here in front of Harvey Weinstein and on a wind tower in the
• 43:37
  Red Dread. Oh good, but I got that? Did you give that
• 43:40
  to? I'm assuming you gave that Tala Hunter. I didn't give it to
• 43:43
  anybody. He asked me for it. I was like, nope, that's
• 43:45
  mine. You want to visit it, come to my house. But it
• 43:51
  was a wonderful moment of an example of like I was just enjoying it.
• 43:54
  I was just and there's yeah, yeah, it's so amazing. Man.
• 44:00
  I would show you some other stuff if this was if we were on the
• 44:02
  video, because there's a video of my friends who all gathered in New York
• 44:06
  City in a basement, fifty of my best friends. Yeah, and when
• 44:08
  we win. That's the only thing that ever made me cry that year.
• 44:13
  Was they sent me that that night at four in the morning or whatever.
• 44:15
  Oh, there's a video of them nervous and then these Eddie Murphy says bergman
• 44:20
  and they I mean erupt and cry and laugh and they had won it and
• 44:25
  they'd be so emotional. Um. It's still one of my favorite moments.
• 44:30
  My god brother, that's that's it was fun. It was. It's fun.
• 44:35
  Now after you win the Oscar, then of course everybody in town you're
• 44:38
  wanted. You're an Oscar winner. Now you're yeah, you're an Oscar winning
• 44:42
  screenwriter. Everybody how did the town treat you different? Did it differently it?
• 44:46
  Did it treat you the same? I mean, you're ready, You're
• 44:49
  not a kid, so you I think you can handle whatever comes your way
• 44:52
  a bit better than if you were jointy and gotten that. Yeah. And
• 44:57
  I also lived through you know, not so great time. So I'm,
• 45:00
  like I said, I'm generally grateful. Um. Yeah, things change,
• 45:05
  you know. Uh, the job has become different. You make your agent's
• 45:07
  job easier because they can go out and say, you know, um,
• 45:14
  it wasn't There were four of us credited on the film, so you know.
• 45:20
  Um, but yeah, author started coming differently. And then once I
• 45:23
  got on zooms with people they understood who I or in person means they understood
• 45:29
  who I was. Then it definitely created more work. Obviously a little bit
• 45:31
  more money. Um, and I don't have to pitch stuff as much anymore.
• 45:38
  I can if it's personal. But the biggest advantage is people come to
• 45:43
  you and say, hey, how about this? And you know, I
• 45:45
  tend to want to work with with like young not young, but new filmmakers
• 45:52
  makes me happy. Like I just did Carmen, which is out now with
• 45:54
  Benjaminip Yet that was his first feature and he has an amazing eye. And
• 46:00
  with Resident with Renee, I'm doing the Puerto Rico film, um because I
• 46:04
  love the still searching for it. And then occasionally I'll do the you know,
• 46:07
  don't allow you talking about doing something else now, but I'll do the
• 46:12
  other ones as well. Um, but I get now, it's more I
• 46:15
  get to a little more ability to choose what I want to do and not
• 46:20
  have to hustle as it were. Um, you know as much as I
• 46:23
  used to, Thank God, because I'm fifty five, so I don't have
• 46:25
  the energy for it. Brother, he's telling me about him. Man,
• 46:29
  it's getting tough out here to hustle, keep keep that hustle going. When
• 46:34
  when you wake up and you hear things popping a greeky and you're like,
• 46:36
  oh, oh hell yeah to the bathroom. So this so the startup paid
• 46:44
  off for your wife essentially? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's smart.
• 46:47
  She's all the smart one. Yeah, my my wife was. My wife
• 46:52
  called me the uh not an investment, but not an endowment, but uh
• 47:00
  he's some sort of financial instrument that pays off years later. Yeah I knew,
• 47:05
  yeah exactly. It's just like, oh, it's finally starting to payoff.
• 47:07
  It's like it's only taken like, yeah, it's a long term investment.
• 47:09
  This one this was how old are you? I'm forty eight? Are
• 47:15
  you forty eight? Forty? Baby? In the baby you and I walked
• 47:20
  over the same dead body, sir, okay, so please and Alejandra was
• 47:24
  shooting them like and then so. So you worked also as a co producer
• 47:32
  on the Revenue, which is again another man. I mean, he was
• 47:37
  just nailing these things back to back back. I was just like, what
• 47:42
  is what is this man on? And can I get some like? It
• 47:45
  was remarkable you worked as a co produce. I'm assuming you helped a little
• 47:49
  bit on the back end of the writing or polishing or I help with the
• 47:52
  story a little bit and we help. We had advised on on that sort
• 47:54
  of thing, and and we're close to him when he when he needed us.
• 47:58
  Um during that period, Um would you want set? Nico went to
• 48:02
  set. I was in New York. I was working on my musical and
• 48:07
  I was working with get Him on something at the time, so I didn't
• 48:09
  get to go, but um Nico went um and it was crazy, all
• 48:15
  the stories and I would get I would get the phone calls um. But
• 48:19
  that's just another example of those two mania. I don't think he'll ever do
• 48:22
  that that. I mean, he just did Barter, which is insane,
• 48:24
  But like Revenue was like three hours of light. They're using all natural light
• 48:30
  four degrees. They want, you know, they gotta go to Patagonia,
• 48:34
  you know, going, you know, methoding his way like a madman,
• 48:38
  like he wanted to live it all, Like he ate it up and lived
• 48:43
  that. I mean, I'm so glad he won for that because he was
• 48:47
  he literally was going to kill himself until they gave him an oscar. For
• 48:50
  God's sake, someone to kill himself in Revenue, I mean, he might
• 48:53
  as well have. It was in the freezing water. He's eating buffalo liver.
• 48:57
  Like. The guy's a maniac um and incredible actor. And I'm so
• 49:00
  glad they rewarded him. But that that was everybody just you know whatever,
• 49:06
  risking life and limb to make a film. And I think you can see
• 49:09
  it in the in the imagery. I think you can see it in the
• 49:12
  film. I mean the the the when I heard the stories coming out from
• 49:17
  the set, and I had a few friends of mine who worked here,
• 49:21
  and I would hear stories I'm like, this can't be like three hours of
• 49:24
  natural light. I mean, I know it's Achieva, and I mean Achieva,
• 49:29
  I trust, but Che's like it's crazy and it's great. What's the
• 49:32
  craziest story that you could share publicly that you heard? We'll talk about the
• 49:37
  non public heart the hard yeah, and the hard part is what we can
• 49:40
  say publicly. Um, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 49:52
  and now back to the show. Because I when I heard is that
• 49:57
  that he had there was a ringing of a bell or someth thing like that
• 50:00
  or a siren once a day to remind everybody what they were why they were
• 50:05
  doing that. Would say were doing something like that? I don't know.
• 50:08
  I'm trying to think of what because there's a lot of really good stories.
• 50:13
  Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, so I'm gonna
• 50:15
  I I yeah, I'm not. I'm gonna refrain from that question. Okay,
• 50:20
  well after you can tell it. But I'm telling you, I'm yeah.
• 50:27
  I'm gonna start a show one day and just record the things I get
• 50:30
  they stopped. That's their best stories ever. Man, That's gonna be the
• 50:36
  end of your no, no, I'll do that when I'm like ninety and
• 50:38
  everyone's dead already. Yeah, I'm dead. No, no, no,
• 50:44
  of course, of course there were a lot of crazy stories, and a
• 50:46
  lot of it had to do with you know, jumping into ice, cold
• 50:52
  rivers, people thermal doctors on set, um like how hard they how hard
• 50:57
  they pressed? Um all. All you have to think about is if we
• 51:02
  talk about that window of light, if you've got anybody here has ever listening,
• 51:06
  has ever made a film, and you think about how much a setup
• 51:08
  is and what it takes. And if you think about that sort of opening
• 51:12
  sequence of The Revenant, even in cuts, that that battle scene, even
• 51:16
  if you could contemplate it in cuts and try to understand how that was all
• 51:22
  orchestrated with within windows of time that would provide light, it would seem insurmountable.
• 51:30
  Like how they did it? I'm still not. I have no idea.
• 51:32
  It's it's yeah, it is is a masterpiece, to say the least.
• 51:37
  My friend. Now, you you have also been directing as well.
• 51:40
  You've directed, um features, you've directed, did you have a direct You've
• 51:45
  directed a future anywhere? I haven't directed my full in shorts directors, I
• 51:49
  directed a long short about thirty five minutes called In This Our Time, based
• 51:53
  on a play I wrote. I'm set up to direct, to direct my
• 51:58
  first feature, which is actually the adaptation of the play I told you Alajandra
• 52:01
  read to Find Me in the first Place, which is the play called Still
• 52:04
  Life. Yeah. We're just trying to tie up the actors. I have
• 52:09
  them, just the genius DP um, Luca Bigazzi who did and the young
• 52:17
  Pope I mean he's he's a monster, UM, and he read it and
• 52:22
  loved it and has has told me he wants to do it. I have
• 52:25
  a really great production designer, David Rockwell here in New York, who designs
• 52:29
  all of New York. Is a very New York piece. UM. And
• 52:31
  we're just trying to sew up the actors. We have the financing and God
• 52:37
  willing, I'll be able to announce something soon. Um next year, we'll
• 52:40
  finally, UM will finally shoot it. Now, from the experience you have
• 52:46
  had on set as a director, there's always that day that we all feel
• 52:51
  like the entire world coming crashing down around us. I'm assuming that was every
• 52:53
  second un Revenant, but yeah, yeah, UM, what was that day
• 52:59
  for you? And how did you overcome it? I think that was That
• 53:02
  was my first day. Um. I had some I had three excellent actors.
• 53:08
  We had a scene that was in a bar with two terrific actors and
• 53:14
  intimate scene dialogue, heavy, hard, And I had a DP who was
• 53:22
  excellent, UM who His name is Barry Marko Whitz. I'll say it.
• 53:27
  He's great. Um. He shot crazy Heart, shot thought the Apostle.
• 53:35
  Oh yeah, And he did this job for me for like, you know,
• 53:37
  eight dollars in a sandwich. Um, because he liked the script and
• 53:40
  he wanted to work together. He was he's a great guy. Um,
• 53:44
  but he's a big personality and he was on set and then I had these
• 53:46
  producers that were wandering around on set and I just didn't have control of it.
• 53:52
  And it was my first day on on any sort of feature, short
• 53:57
  or long. Uh a short film. But it was my first day and
• 54:04
  I didn't know how to stand up and how to take control, and things
• 54:09
  just spiraled one by one. People started in the vacuum in my absence.
• 54:15
  They started making decisions that were contradictory, and it was you know, it
• 54:19
  was a whole thing. And we got through it and we got a good.
• 54:22
  We got good takes out of it, thank god. But the next
• 54:25
  day, you know, I thought long and hard about it that night,
• 54:29
  and the next morning I got the whole set together and I said, whatever
• 54:32
  went wrong yesterday is all on me, but it's not happening again, and
• 54:37
  this is how it's going to go. And they responded. My whole crew
• 54:39
  was amazing, and they were I think they were grateful to hear it.
• 54:44
  So it really was a lesson for me because when I'm in directing theater,
• 54:47
  I'm entirely comfortable, but I think my self doubt about you know, I'm
• 54:52
  not going to talk to you. I don't understand the full ramification of a
• 54:57
  lens choice, Like I understand the basics, but I don't understand the full
• 55:00
  ramifications of it. And I felt like since I didn't, I wanted to
• 55:05
  defer. But then when you defer too much, it falls down around you.
• 55:08
  So I learned right away that you just want to be specific about Look,
• 55:13
  this should feel claustrophobic, this should feel like you can't escape the cage
• 55:17
  of this table, and then your cinematographer says, ah, okay, in
• 55:22
  that case, we're gonna use this and we're gonna and all of a sudden
• 55:24
  and they're lighting and they're like, now, now, now we have so
• 55:28
  Really, even if you don't know the specifics, as long as you know
• 55:32
  the action of the scene, the feeling of the scene, what you want
• 55:36
  from it, and you and you and you have good people and you explain
• 55:38
  that, uh, you find things get better. But my first day felt
• 55:42
  like a landslide getting away from me and it was a horrible, helpless feeling.
• 55:47
  Thank god, what is it is? It is? It's brutal,
• 55:51
  my friend. I'm trying to make you day. Yeah, that that that
• 55:55
  that dragon is just coming after you every second that comes down like going down
• 56:00
  ot. You gotta oh no, I can't go into OT. We can't
• 56:02
  afford no, no, no, no, no, no, it's it's
• 56:07
  it's brutal. Man. Now, I have to ask you, because I
• 56:09
  am of Cuban dissensor, yes, and I have to ask you what it
• 56:14
  was like working with the legendary Gloria. I mean, I mean Gloria and
• 56:21
  Emilio. I grew up in Miami. I remember when Miami stab machine hit
• 56:25
  dude. It was a phenomenon in eighty five eighty six. I try to
• 56:30
  explain to me, he was just a phenomenon and funny. Funny side note,
• 56:37
  My first job in Miami as an editor was for the director of all
• 56:44
  of those early music videos. Oh really like Rhythm's Gonna get You get on
• 56:49
  your feet. I'm not sure if he did the very I don't think he
• 56:52
  did, Um doctor Funga. I think he did Doctor. I don't think
• 56:55
  he did Gonga. But but he was there so he know and everybody who
• 57:00
  works Errol Errol um. Anyway, so it was growing up man like when
• 57:09
  Konga hit like it was a phenomenon. It was absolute phenomenon. Every every
• 57:15
  wedding in bar Mitzvah in the country is still part it was. That was
• 57:22
  a little crazy for me. Um all right. So by the way,
• 57:25
  for the record, you're talking about the Broadway musical. I wrote On your
• 57:30
  Feet for them, about their right story. And now you'll be happy to
• 57:34
  know that we're working on the film version now. Um, so that should
• 57:37
  be really fun. Um. It was amazing. I met them my friend
• 57:44
  Nick Scandelius, who's a producer for the Needleland Or Organization on Broadway. UM
• 57:47
  had seen them, had seen a reading The Bodyguard that I had written the
• 57:51
  other musical for the West End. And I guess you know, he knew
• 57:53
  I was Latino or half Latino, and and and he saw that I had
• 57:58
  done like what they called you musical with Whitney's music. He said, would
• 58:01
  come down to Miami, and I said, I don't think I'm gonna you
• 58:05
  know, I was busy and like, I don't think I'll be able to
• 58:06
  do it, and so just come down and talk to them, and they
• 58:08
  need to know what it's would be like. And I went down. I
• 58:10
  talked to them, and for me it was something else too, like you
• 58:14
  know, I grew up like I have a very sun. I mean,
• 58:16
  yes, I have a funny story about Gloria. Um, but um another
• 58:22
  I could tell. I could tell that one because we've talked about that story.
• 58:25
  First of all, I love them and they're like family to me,
• 58:29
  like I love them um medio, the whole family, um um. Emily
• 58:37
  and Naive as well. UM. So I met her and you and they
• 58:42
  were talking about and I said, well, if it was me, I
• 58:44
  would tell the writer who's going to do this? And I would say this
• 58:47
  because I did all the research. I read their books, they sent me
• 58:50
  all the DVDs. I did the bio like, and I said, oh,
• 58:52
  and and if it was me, I would tell the writer. And
• 58:55
  somehow I got to the end of it and Glorier's like, you keep saying
• 58:57
  you're gonna tell the writer, but she's like, I want you to be
• 58:59
  the writer. And I was like, Gloria, I told Nick, I'm
• 59:01
  just not sure. I was doing revenue. I was helping with revenue at
• 59:04
  the time, I was doing some things. I was like, I'm just
• 59:07
  not and she's like, well, well, And by the time we were
• 59:08
  done, we're in the parking lot and Gloria is you know, she's not
• 59:12
  a very She's not giant in a in a hype manner. She's giant in
• 59:17
  other ways, in other ways and almost every other way. Her heart is
• 59:21
  giant, and her personality is giant, and her talent is giant. But
• 59:23
  she's shut. And I remember her in the parking lot of their offices in
• 59:29
  Miami looking up at me, and she's like, your mother's park Cuban,
• 59:34
  right. I was like, yeah, she just looked at me. Shot
• 59:36
  won't disappoint her. And I was like, Corneo, what do I do
• 59:43
  now? I was like, one I got to the airport, and I
• 59:45
  called my agent. I said, I think I'm doing the the stuff on
• 59:51
  musical and he was like really. I was like, I think I'm doing
• 59:52
  it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
• 1:00:01
  back to the show. Because the minute I told my mother I would have
• 1:00:06
  been done. No. No, that was a very mafioso style way.
• 1:00:09
  Oh she went full on me. She went full and thank god she did
• 1:00:14
  because it turned out to be one of my favorite experiences. We're still friends
• 1:00:16
  to this day. She's a beautiful human being. The story I tell,
• 1:00:22
  which is slightly embarrassing, Oh God, is that I went in to her.
• 1:00:25
  She hasn't in her house. She has this place she calls the lair,
• 1:00:29
  and she was just the one on the one on Star Island. Is
• 1:00:31
  that she used to live in yea, yeah, so a side house and
• 1:00:34
  has this loft and that's where all computers and stuff is. And she was
• 1:00:37
  doing this like blog this sort of and she invited me to be on to
• 1:00:40
  talk about on your Feet, so I went. We didn't know each other
• 1:00:43
  that well then and we were just talking and she was like, oh,
• 1:00:47
  we're talking about the musical and doing research and she's like, no, it's
• 1:00:52
  like this video of which videos did she show me? Like a music video
• 1:00:57
  that she did a music video? It was one of the Late Ones ballad.
• 1:01:00
  But she's in the white shirt with black you know, with the tight
• 1:01:05
  and I don't know what I was thinking because I'm fifty, but I looked
• 1:01:08
  at it and I was like, oh my god, I had the biggest
• 1:01:13
  crush on you, as if I just remembered. And then I realized,
• 1:01:15
  oh shit, I'm city with gloriouseste Like, I don't want to sound like
• 1:01:19
  a creep, like did you just say that out loud? You just I
• 1:01:22
  used to at it out loud with my mouth hole and right too her.
• 1:01:25
  I immediately must have turned like brick red and I was like, I don't
• 1:01:29
  mean that in the best. She's like, darling, I will take it
• 1:01:30
  anywhere I could get it. Like I was like, oh my, oh
• 1:01:34
  my god, I came right out of my mouth. I was looking at
• 1:01:36
  her, going, oh, I remember being like really attracted to you years.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah, in my teenage years, being really attracted to you, you
• 1:01:45
  and me both, brother, It's there's nothing, there's nothing, there's no
• 1:01:47
  shame, there's She was still going just now she's gorgeous. We had a
• 1:01:54
  ball, and God, did my mother ever win it all right because she
• 1:01:59
  got to go to all the from Ye, I think my mother has seen
• 1:02:00
  that show more than me and Gloria. I think it's possible, like my
• 1:02:04
  mother has seen that show, like it goes to Miami. She sees it.
• 1:02:07
  She went, they're playing a little little tiny theater, up and run.
• 1:02:10
  She went to listen, bro, listen, I was listen. I
• 1:02:14
  was when I was coming up in Miami. I was an editor and I
• 1:02:16
  was editing basically commercials and music videos and things every all the big stuff that
• 1:02:21
  was going on Don in Miami, and I got to work with. I
• 1:02:23
  did a lot of stuff for Univision and Telemundo and that kind of stuff too.
• 1:02:28
  And I did an I did one with cheat with Don Francisco. I
• 1:02:31
  did a commercial with Don Francisco from Yeah, Bro, if I tell you
• 1:02:36
  when I told my parents that I hadn't met Salo, I haven't met Don
• 1:02:40
  Francisco. I'm editing a commercial with Don Francisco. No, the entire Cuban
• 1:02:46
  family knew that, like, oh my god, Alex is famous. Yeah,
• 1:02:52
  Alex, it's fair. People in Havana knew that yeah, yeah,
• 1:02:57
  can imagine, Yeah, yeah, you can imagine when I brought my family
• 1:03:01
  back to you know, you can you imagine, Oh my god, that
• 1:03:06
  must have been like And she's the sweetest, like I can't even explain,
• 1:03:10
  I can't even explain it. She's so loving, she's such a good person.
• 1:03:15
  It didn't matter who you brought. Because when we were on Broadway in
• 1:03:17
  the Marquis Theater, there's this little it's very funny, there's this little room
• 1:03:22
  they put aside that they had a little bar, and Emilia would just be
• 1:03:23
  making you know, rum and cokes for me and him and I agree all
• 1:03:27
  like it was a party in that room. Um. That room the Gloria
• 1:03:31
  called the g spot by the way. Um that was her name. That
• 1:03:36
  was her name for the thing. She said, you know, mostly most
• 1:03:38
  men can't find it, so we'll be here on our own. Um.
• 1:03:42
  Wow, Gloria's joke. It was very funny. Um. But we used
• 1:03:45
  to stay there and it didn't matter. Like one time I had this lady
• 1:03:49
  who took care of our kids and and and she was a Caribbean, um,
• 1:03:55
  lady Doris. And she was just a gy enormous Gloria fan. And
• 1:04:00
  I was like I got it, so I brought her, and Gloria has
• 1:04:03
  a room full of important people, but she spends fifteen minutes of a thirty
• 1:04:11
  minute or twenty minute intermission talking to these two. And I'm like, this
• 1:04:15
  lady, that's how good this lady. And Amy is like they're just the
• 1:04:19
  most approachable, lovely human beings they ever wanted me. My father was telling
• 1:04:24
  me, like he used to see Gloria and Emilia like at like malls,
• 1:04:29
  trying to get there, like playing music before they like right, just trying
• 1:04:32
  to get themselves up off the ground. And they're like, yeah, oh
• 1:04:35
  yeah, we know, we've seen it. We saw them coming up.
• 1:04:38
  And then that's when Conga hit. Then they were playing weddings and barnments was
• 1:04:41
  in Miami while they were selling out arenas in South America. It was crazy,
• 1:04:46
  the story because it because they weren't famous here yet because they're famous.
• 1:04:50
  Yeah, you gotta see the You gotta see the either the shows when it
• 1:04:54
  comes by or the or I'll take you next time it's there. It comes
• 1:04:57
  around all the time. Oh my god, oh god, oh my god,
• 1:05:02
  you're kidding them. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions, ask
• 1:05:06
  all my guests, my friend, what advice would you have for a screenwriter
• 1:05:10
  trying to break into the business today, trying to make it worthwhile and not
• 1:05:17
  clich I think, don't don't try to write for somebody else, because most
• 1:05:30
  people out there are doing that. So if you write with your own personality,
• 1:05:35
  like your talent is your talent. Nobody knows how talent you are or
• 1:05:39
  aren't. Nobody knows. People will make choices on what they think your work
• 1:05:45
  is, but they just don't know. So the one thing I say is
• 1:05:47
  original voices tend to find their way through. The one advantage of screenwriter has
• 1:05:51
  that other disciplines of the arts don't have is if you write original, good
• 1:05:57
  scripts, solidly structured, good characters, solid dialogue. If you write that,
• 1:06:02
  you're gonna work. If you if you get anywhere near a door and
• 1:06:06
  get through it, you're gonna work. As opposed to an actor, you're
• 1:06:10
  like, well, you have that mole on your face. You're five to
• 1:06:13
  seven. I need five to eleven. You're you know, writers, It's
• 1:06:15
  like substance wins more than anything else. So be yourself as much as you
• 1:06:21
  can, because the minute you try to write, like what you think they
• 1:06:25
  want to hear. You have seven the other writers out of eighty doing the
• 1:06:29
  same thing, and nobody You'll never you can't stand out, and it won't
• 1:06:33
  matter because if that's not your talent, that's you imitating somebody else's talent.
• 1:06:39
  So I would say, try to be true to yourself. Hear your voice,
• 1:06:43
  don't fake it, and don't manipulate your characters, like, don't be
• 1:06:49
  objective to them. When when you're writing a scene. That was a big
• 1:06:53
  thing for me, well is put yourself in their place. Don't don't say
• 1:06:59
  he says to her. She says to him, don't look at it from
• 1:07:00
  out here. Take his point of view, hear her. Feel what you
• 1:07:04
  feel, right that, take her point of view, feel what you feel.
• 1:07:08
  You have to be a little bit of a method actor about it when
• 1:07:10
  you're writing scenes and dialogue, and then of course you know as much of
• 1:07:13
  Aristotle as you can digest is amazing, action, conflict, reverse, and
• 1:07:16
  you know, surprising, inevitability, and those things are crucial and you'd be
• 1:07:21
  shocked how many times you don't see them in a scene. When you ask
• 1:07:24
  a writer, well, who wants what from? Who has the action in
• 1:07:27
  the scene, and they well, and you're like, well, that's why
• 1:07:30
  it's not popping right there. So that's my best advice. Really. I
• 1:07:33
  think if you had a chance to go in a time machine and go back
• 1:07:36
  to time and talk to that little guy at the beginning of your life,
• 1:07:41
  what advice would you give him. I mean, hold on, hold on.
• 1:07:48
  I know how bad it is. I know you can't believe it,
• 1:07:54
  but this crazy thing is going to happen if you just keep holding on and
• 1:08:00
  um. And I would have said that to myself as a little kid,
• 1:08:02
  and I would have said that to myself as a teenager. And I would
• 1:08:04
  have said to myself at age twenty four, like when it was dark,
• 1:08:09
  just you just just hang on and keep believing, and keep being good to
• 1:08:14
  people, and keep it trying to be good to yourself. That's what I
• 1:08:17
  would have told him. And obviously, don't walk off a beautiful please,
• 1:08:21
  don't walk off a set with a famous director on your first film in Hollywood,
• 1:08:26
  pompous idiot. I would have said that too. What is the lesson
• 1:08:30
  that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film industry or in
• 1:08:32
  life. In life, I'm still learning it, which is to forgive myself
• 1:08:44
  I'm super hard on myself. My inner monologue is horrifying. I'm trying to
• 1:08:53
  fix that. You know, every day I have two little kids now,
• 1:08:56
  I have an eleven and twelve and a nine and Elena. Um, but
• 1:09:01
  I'm I've been terrible to myself and I need to I need to not be
• 1:09:10
  um. In the industry, it was be passionate, inspire people don't impress
• 1:09:23
  them, right, Sometimes we try to impress somebody, but you don't want
• 1:09:28
  to impress them. When I talk about somebody asking me about a film,
• 1:09:30
  I say, well, I would do it this way. I speak the
• 1:09:32
  same way I'm speaking to you. Now. I'm like, I will hear.
• 1:09:34
  I'm like Alajanda. Maybe that's why we got along, because that's how
• 1:09:38
  I describe scripts. So inspire people don't, don't try to impress them.
• 1:09:45
  And then finally I do have to say it. Um. Those simple Aristotelian
• 1:09:49
  principles have carried me so far, the idea of surprising the inevitable conclusions to
• 1:09:57
  beat scenes entire films. Holy shit, I can't believe that happened. Of
• 1:10:02
  course that happened. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:10:12
  and now back to the show, right that if I was paying attention,
• 1:10:16
  I would have known. And you think about your favorite sort of narratives,
• 1:10:19
  narrative films, and you're going to find that Pan's labyrinth, right. Holy
• 1:10:24
  shit, I can't believe she's doubt. Oh of course I wasn't you know
• 1:10:27
  everything from Usual Suspects to the Godfather to Birdman when he of course, Holy
• 1:10:32
  shit. Of course, if you were paying attention, I would You would
• 1:10:34
  have seen it. That rule carries you a long way if you can write
• 1:10:38
  cleverly into it. The thing I told you about manipulating your scenes, about
• 1:10:42
  being outside them when they talk, that's a big deal. And and action
• 1:10:45
  and conflict. So I don't think it's running behind the I'm not going to
• 1:10:50
  get up again. But there's this is all navy blue, because there's a
• 1:10:54
  movie screen in here. But behind the oscar and it's a navy blue cover
• 1:10:57
  is my poetics, Mystotle's poetics. I keep him right behind the oscar to
• 1:11:01
  remind myself that that thing has nothing to that's nothing but luck and the grace
• 1:11:06
  of God and a gift for my family. But what's behind that was what
• 1:11:13
  got me m I had a chance at that Lottery was that book that's behind
• 1:11:17
  it, and it meant it's changed. It changed my life. And I
• 1:11:20
  didn't start as a writer. I became one and and and that was it.
• 1:11:27
  And the hardest question of all, my friend, Three of your favorite
• 1:11:30
  films of all time? Oh god, um today today? No, they
• 1:11:36
  haven't changed in a long time. Okay. Amadeus, Oh the most forms
• 1:11:42
  Amadeus, good Fellas, Yeah, which I don't. I just remember seeing
• 1:11:47
  three times the first day it open. Then I didn't know what the hell
• 1:11:50
  was going on, and then it gets a little harder. Um, Godfather
• 1:11:56
  is ridiculous. Um. I love you know, I love Moonstruck, love
• 1:12:04
  me. It just makes my heart explode with envy for John the writer the
• 1:12:10
  cage. Oh yeah. The other things for the writers out there as well,
• 1:12:16
  is is is don't not get your stuff out there, even when,
• 1:12:20
  Like I'm a mentor in the Writer's Guilt program and I'm producing a film right
• 1:12:24
  now in New Mexico from a Colombian queer identifying writer director named Alessandra la Caraza.
• 1:12:30
  She was my one of my this is interesting and the Writers Guild Mentors
• 1:12:34
  program, I was a mentor. She wasn't my mentee but she was in
• 1:12:38
  the program and I told them in a group, there was about twenty of
• 1:12:42
  them, and I told them, I have a development company. So if
• 1:12:45
  you have a script that you're proud of and you want to send it to
• 1:12:47
  me, send it to me. Just make sure that it's your last draft,
• 1:12:50
  not your first for now. Make sure that there's no type pos that
• 1:12:55
  don't do any don't send me anything that tells me you were careless. But
• 1:12:58
  if you send it, it'll get read. And out of about fifteen or
• 1:13:02
  twenty of them, she was the only one, well either one or two,
• 1:13:09
  yeah, that sent it. Well, it turns out she's going to
• 1:13:12
  have a story like my story. Because right now they're in pre production in
• 1:13:16
  New Mexico. Residentists starring in her film. Uh Leslie Grace is starring in
• 1:13:23
  her film. She's directing it. It's a little budget, it's gonna be
• 1:13:26
  about two million. But it came because she had the balls to to have
• 1:13:31
  the script, be proud of it and said, then I read it,
• 1:13:33
  I was like, I love the script. I showed it to a bunch
• 1:13:35
  of people. They love the script, and now we're producing her first feature.
• 1:13:40
  That's an awesome So be brave you know, and don't don't be cynical,
• 1:13:45
  like be brave. And yeah you said you were surrounding yourself for other
• 1:13:48
  artists. Surround yourself with people. The more people, the more you have
• 1:13:51
  a chance to climb weird stairways. Alex, thank you so much for coming
• 1:13:58
  on the show. It has been such an honor and privilege and just hilarious
• 1:14:03
  talking to you, my friend. And I feel like if in trouble anyway,
• 1:14:08
  you know, those are the best interviews when I when I hear the
• 1:14:10
  guests, Oh god, I hope I didn't say something I shouldn't have said.
• 1:14:14
  That's always the best conversation. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. You
• 1:14:16
  won the Oscar. Ready, it's fine. I can retire, all right,
• 1:14:19
  you agree with that. You did. You're good because you All you
• 1:14:23
  gotta do is take when you rent is due. Just show them the oscar
• 1:14:26
  and they don't even charge you. That's the way it works, right,
• 1:14:28
  beat them with it. It's really he just killed them, bury them.
• 1:14:32
  Thank you. Thank you for not only being on the show, brother,
• 1:14:34
  for being an inspiration to so many writers out there, my friend. I
• 1:14:38
  appreciate you man, all right, brother, thank you. I want to
• 1:14:43
  thank Alex so much for coming on the show and sharing his journey and dropping
• 1:14:46
  his knowledge bombs on the tribe today. Thank you so much, Alex.
• 1:14:49
  If you want to get links to anything we spoke about on this episode,
• 1:14:51
  head over to the show notes at any filmuscle dot com forward slash six ninety
• 1:14:57
  six. If you haven't already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com,
• 1:15:01
  subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us
• 1:15:05
  out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys.
• 1:15:08
  As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, stay
• 1:15:12
  safe out there, and I'll talk too soon. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:15:15
  Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie film Hustle dot com. That's I N D
• 1:15:18
  I E F I L M h ustl dot com.