Latest / Next Act with Jeff Ornstein / Luke Tennie & Noam Shapiro — Actors, Filmmakers & Co-Founders, Dirty Coffee Pictures

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Luke Tennie & Noam Shapiro — Actors, Filmmakers & Co-Founders, Dirty Coffee Pictures · Next Act with Jeff Ornstein

• 0:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Hi everyone, and welcome to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 0:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I am Jeff, and on this show we celebrate people on the cusp of greatness.
• 0:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Those building on past excesses in some of the curious and inventive and sometimes unexpected ways they have achieved those and stepping into moments that could define their legacy.
• 0:21
  Jeff Ornstein: We'll talk about current projects, lessons learned, and the extraordinary opportunities ahead.
• 0:27
  Jeff Ornstein: So the best is yet to come.
• 0:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Today's guests are Noam Shapiro and Luke Tenny, actors, filmmakers, and the co-founders of Dirty Coffee Pictures.
• 0:36
  Jeff Ornstein: Together they've built award-winning original films like Jade while continuing to grow successful acting careers across television and film, proving that sometimes the best opportunities come from creating your own.
• 0:47
  Jeff Ornstein: Gentlemen, welcome.
• 0:49
  Jeff Ornstein: It's nice to have you.
• 0:50
  Noam Shapiro: Thanks for having us.
• 0:51
  Noam Shapiro: Thanks very much.
• 0:52
  Noam Shapiro: Glad to be here.
• 0:53
  Jeff Ornstein: It's our pleasure.
• 0:54
  Jeff Ornstein: You're our first tag team podcast interview, so I'm I'm excited where the dynamics may go.
• 0:59
  Jeff Ornstein: So, first of all, I mean you've got tremendous credentials.
• 1:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be really impressed about all the different productions you've taken place in.
• 1:10
  Jeff Ornstein: The Kill Room, Marvelous Mrs.
• 1:12
  Jeff Ornstein: Mazel, Lady in the Lake, The Equalizer, PowerBook 2.
• 1:15
  Jeff Ornstein: It goes on, The Pit, CSI, Vegas, Players.
• 1:18
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, you guys have got it going on.
• 1:20
  Jeff Ornstein: What I want to learn a little bit, at least initially, is I want to hear the little bit of the genesis of Dirty Coffee Pictures and why you felt it was important for you guys to get that up and running.
• 1:32
  Noam Shapiro: Well, I mean, I always like to start this portion off talking about how when I was in college, I swore I was the hardest working dude.
• 1:39
  Noam Shapiro: Anytime somebody stayed late, I stayed later.
• 1:42
  Noam Shapiro: Anytime somebody went in off book, I went in off booker.
• 1:46
  Noam Shapiro: Just always trying to do the absolute most work I can.
• 1:51
  Noam Shapiro: And then I met Noam and realized that'll never be me.
• 1:55
  Noam Shapiro: It will never be me.
• 1:56
  Noam Shapiro: Because whatever he's on, I'm not I'm not doing all of that.
• 2:00
  Noam Shapiro: However, I became immensely inspired by his drive, his ethic, and his sheer approach to excellence became a magnet, and I was just drawn in to who this guy was.
• 2:14
  Noam Shapiro: I remember after we met, it was kind of like we've always been friends.
• 2:18
  Noam Shapiro: And then becoming collaborators soon after that was just kind of an eventuality.
• 2:24
  Noam Shapiro: It wasn't much of a decision, it was more like an essential sort of necessity that we needed to come to the conclusion.
• 2:31
  Noam Shapiro: If we don't make stuff, we're wasting our friendship.
• 2:34
  Noam Shapiro: We're wasting the fact that we know each other.
• 2:36
  Noam Shapiro: So that's kind of how it started off in college.
• 2:39
  Noam Shapiro: But then I'll let Noam take it away at the conception of dirty coffee.
• 2:43
  Noam Shapiro: No, it's funny, Jeff, you asked, like, how did we start it?
• 2:46
  Noam Shapiro: And I'm like, I don't even remember.
• 2:48
  Noam Shapiro: I think it was just an excuse to no, I think Luke, you said it perfectly.
• 2:52
  Noam Shapiro: It's like, it was an excuse to keep not keep being friends because we were gonna keep being friends, but I think the thing that I like doing with Luke the most is making stuff.
• 3:03
  Noam Shapiro: So it was an excuse to keep making stuff as friends.
• 3:07
  Noam Shapiro: And I initially approached him about doing a project that wasn't jade that eventually got scrapped due to COVID reasons, but we were very quick to say, what is the next thing?
• 3:19
  Noam Shapiro: And even while we're making jade, we're kind of like, Well, what's the feature?
• 3:23
  Noam Shapiro: What's this?
• 3:23
  Noam Shapiro: What's that?
• 3:24
  Noam Shapiro: And so we're always I don't think there's a world in which the two of us don't create stuff together.
• 3:31
  Noam Shapiro: We just we fill in each other's blanks.
• 3:34
  Jeff Ornstein: That's fantastic.
• 3:35
  Noam Shapiro: So when you were in school, were you studying performance or were you storytellers or we went to the American Musical Dramatic Academy and we went in New York, and then Luke went on and graduated in LA.
• 3:46
  Noam Shapiro: I just kind of went off and started auditioning in New York, but it was strictly an acting school.
• 3:54
  Noam Shapiro: We had one two-week writing seminar with our teacher, Jason Shayett.
• 3:58
  Noam Shapiro: But other than that, we were not trained as directors, as writers, anything.
• 4:03
  Noam Shapiro: That just came from, I think my training as a writer came from reading scripts and acting and just acquiring.
• 4:10
  Noam Shapiro: And I think Luke, you can speak on this, but just acquiring taste and going, this is what I like.
• 4:15
  Noam Shapiro: And if you read enough plays and screenplays, I feel like you kind of know how to write one.
• 4:21
  Noam Shapiro: Right.
• 4:21
  Noam Shapiro: Much like Noam, mine kind of started through auditioning.
• 4:25
  Noam Shapiro: So, like that was when I started auditioning in 2016, and I remember that first summer.
• 4:30
  Noam Shapiro: I graduated in June.
• 4:31
  Noam Shapiro: And by the time August came around, I had already done like 50 auditions.
• 4:35
  Noam Shapiro: And when I do auditions, I don't just like read the sides, I read the entire screenplay or teleplay.
• 4:39
  Noam Shapiro: I make sure I know what's going on.
• 4:41
  Noam Shapiro: So I just read 50 screenplays in like summer, and I remember being like, Yeah, I was like, Yeah, I can do that.
• 4:50
  Noam Shapiro: Like, you can't even get to it where you see enough typos and you see enough weird plot rewrites, like over the course of a callback where you go, Oh, well, I remember a couple times I would make like a shift in an audition, and then I would see that shift show up in the callback, and I wouldn't go, Oh, they stole that from my audition.
• 5:07
  Noam Shapiro: No, they don't care about that.
• 5:08
  Noam Shapiro: We all came to the same conclusion about how to story in a more responsible way.
• 5:13
  Noam Shapiro: And then I was like, I'm writing already, and by the time Noam hit me up, it was just again an eventuality.
• 5:20
  Jeff Ornstein: But even so, there are technical aspects about filmmaking, like directing and production, like what a nightmare that must be.
• 5:28
  Jeff Ornstein: Coordination.
• 5:28
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, is one of you super organized and and the other one's got the knife from behind the camera?
• 5:35
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah, you got it.
• 5:36
  Noam Shapiro: Like, and if you could guess too, like we both are good at everything that we both do.
• 5:41
  Noam Shapiro: However, we both have moments where we excel in certain categories and moments where the other person take the lead.
• 5:48
  Noam Shapiro: So, me, it's like I could say stuff nice and get people, I can I could get people to take a note in a much more like I guess friendly way.
• 5:57
  Noam Shapiro: Whereas Noam, this dude, he's from New York.
• 6:00
  Noam Shapiro: He's gonna say it, how we're gonna say it.
• 6:01
  Noam Shapiro: I'm from the south, I can bless your heart.
• 6:03
  Noam Shapiro: You feel me?
• 6:04
  Noam Shapiro: But then when it comes to like the the nitty-gritty of actually making the movie, this dude, Noam, will think of everything that we need.
• 6:13
  Noam Shapiro: Talking about Jade, like a week before we actually shot, it occurred to him for us to do our short the way we needed to.
• 6:20
  Noam Shapiro: We would have needed to have an actor on set to read the narrator while we were performing.
• 6:25
  Noam Shapiro: So we would need an actor with chemistry to come and perform with us so we could nail the short.
• 6:30
  Noam Shapiro: Not the PA, right?
• 6:33
  Noam Shapiro: Not no, we need an actor and somebody who would pay separately, and then we both think of the same dude, an incredible actor named Andres Montejo.
• 6:41
  Noam Shapiro: He's gonna be a star, he's from Costa Rica.
• 6:43
  Noam Shapiro: His voice sounds like Antonio Banderas, he's incredible, and he was our narrator on set.
• 6:48
  Noam Shapiro: So the reason why we have chemistry with the narrator is because Noam had the foresight to think to hire an actor so that we could handle our project the way that we wanted to, right?
• 6:57
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, the my producers listed Jade as your as Judy Coffee's picture's debut debut project.
• 7:04
  Jeff Ornstein: Was it the debut project, or were there other tips?
• 7:07
  Jeff Ornstein: So this was it out of the gate.
• 7:09
  Jeff Ornstein: You kind of really hit the nail on the head.
• 7:11
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean Jade was made a pretty strong mark for itself.
• 7:15
  Noam Shapiro: I think at the end of the day, we just assembled the team that we knew would make the best picture.
• 7:21
  Noam Shapiro: So I think we can give ourselves credit for assembling that team.
• 7:25
  Noam Shapiro: But at the end of the day, like you said, I think you said, Well, you're trained as actors, so how did you know what to do when you're behind the camera?
• 7:34
  Noam Shapiro: Well, you get people who know what they're doing behind the camera.
• 7:38
  Noam Shapiro: You know, like at the end of the day, Luke and I know how to communicate our vision, right?
• 7:43
  Noam Shapiro: We know how to write shots into the script and basically say, this is what we want it to look like, this is what we want it to sound like, this is what we want the essence of the film to feel like.
• 7:53
  Noam Shapiro: But then it's about hiring the people with the technical know-how to light it, to record sound, and to eventually get behind the camera and make everything happen.
• 8:05
  Noam Shapiro: And so I think I just want to give those people credit as well.
• 8:08
  Noam Shapiro: Like Robert Manning Jr.
• 8:10
  Noam Shapiro: was our director, and he made sure that we were at ease on set in that we could just focus, you know, we we essentially gave him the alley oop, and that way he could focus on dunking the ball at the end of the day, and we could just focus on being actors.
• 8:27
  Jeff Ornstein: Now, I know I have found this to be true, and other folks, guests on the show, that you find a community, and a lot of times you keep kind of gravitating back toward the same director.
• 8:37
  Jeff Ornstein: You like working with them, there's chemistry, certain actors, the performances they get you, you know, they get where you want to go.
• 8:43
  Jeff Ornstein: Is this an ensemble that you think you you might reassemble to do another another production?
• 8:49
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah, 100%.
• 8:49
  Noam Shapiro: I mean, I'm literally meeting with Rob next week to talk about something.
• 8:53
  Noam Shapiro: So we also, Rob, and I should mention Rob got me, I'm a teacher as well at Amda, and Rob essentially got me my teaching job.
• 9:02
  Noam Shapiro: And so I'm co-teaching with him next week.
• 9:05
  Noam Shapiro: So we're constantly still working together.
• 9:08
  Noam Shapiro: And even if it's not like an immediate project, he's always someone that I'll reach out to if I have like if I want feedback on a script or something like that.
• 9:16
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, right, right, which is great.
• 9:18
  Jeff Ornstein: And you know, the a lot of our listeners need to hear that there are challenges, financial challenges, time restraints, family restraints, geographical restraints.
• 9:27
  Jeff Ornstein: But what helps make it kind of work, even if in light of those, are a support network, whether it's a husband or a wife or a best friend who can kind of like help you guys have each other, so you're super lucky, but yet you've even got others like this fellow Rob.
• 9:43
  Jeff Ornstein: So I'd like to ask you, Noam, in my notes here, they've given me it says you're drawn to characters who are misunderstood or overlooked.
• 9:51
  Jeff Ornstein: Can you expand on that a little?
• 9:53
  Noam Shapiro: This might be a chicken and the egg kind of thing, because I just started getting cast that way.
• 9:59
  Noam Shapiro: So I don't know if I went into acting thinking that, but you've talked to me for 10 minutes, you know that I'm not a complete psychopath, but I often get cast as Luca's laughing.
• 10:13
  Noam Shapiro: I often get cast as characters where I will have to either say no because I go, that's not something I'm comfortable with.
• 10:23
  Noam Shapiro: But nine times out of 10, or more than likely 99 times out of a hundred, I'm the lawyer for the character.
• 10:29
  Noam Shapiro: And that's something we were taught in school, right?
• 10:31
  Noam Shapiro: If the character is written in a way that is not stereotypical and represents what I think of as a living, breathing, truthful human being, then it's my job as the actor to not judge the character but justify their actions.
• 10:44
  Noam Shapiro: So that comes into place when I get an audition, and that comes into place when I book the role to eventually say it is my job to honor the character's truth, and it is the audience's job to then pass judgment.
• 10:59
  Noam Shapiro: That's not even my job.
• 11:00
  Noam Shapiro: It is my job to make sure that that character is played truthfully and not stereotypically, so that I can represent humanity.
• 11:09
  Noam Shapiro: And the last thing I'll say on that is when I teach, one of the things I always tell actors, because I ask actors, I say, what do you think one of the most important skills of being an actor is?
• 11:20
  Noam Shapiro: And what I usually come to is empathy, meaning the more people you can find empathy for, meaning the people who you would probably hate in real life, the more range can grow as an actor.
• 11:33
  Noam Shapiro: Because the more we start judging everyone, it's gonna become hard to play those characters if you hold so much hate in your heart.
• 11:40
  Noam Shapiro: And rather than being able to find standing for those people.
• 11:44
  Jeff Ornstein: Excellent point.
• 11:45
  Jeff Ornstein: Because if you're judging them, you know, you're gonna be you're gonna be reticent to open up your heart to say, well, why is that person like that?
• 11:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Luke, how about you?
• 11:53
  Jeff Ornstein: Do you are you finding that do you get typecast sometimes if Noam's taking all the psychopaths?
• 11:58
  Jeff Ornstein: Are you getting just the Romeos?
• 12:00
  Jeff Ornstein: What's your experience been with the casting agent?
• 12:04
  Noam Shapiro: Um the best friend, the trustworthy, the honest, sincere, which is hilarious to me because despite these being qualities that a lot of people would perceive as like noble, upright qualities, as an actor, you do look at a part like that and kind of go, uh man.
• 12:22
  Noam Shapiro: But I wanted a I wanted to be a little crazy, you know, like this just a thing for actors.
• 12:27
  Noam Shapiro: You know, nobody looks at Hamlet and goes, Oh, hey, yeah, I can't wait to play this well-adjusted young man.
• 12:33
  Noam Shapiro: That's been my literal bread and butter.
• 12:36
  Noam Shapiro: I have been able to feed my children because people think that this is a trustworthy face, and I ain't gonna argue with them.
• 12:44
  Noam Shapiro: I'm gonna take that check and send them online.
• 12:46
  Noam Shapiro: That being said, though, I'll never outsource my artistic fulfillment from acting.
• 12:53
  Noam Shapiro: I can't do it.
• 12:54
  Noam Shapiro: I I cannot expect to feel artistic fulfillment and playing these parts that other people are using me to like be a gear or a cog in the machine for.
• 13:04
  Noam Shapiro: That's not to criticize those parts.
• 13:06
  Noam Shapiro: I take them very seriously, and I make sure when I play them, they're never one note, and I always have several dimensions.
• 13:12
  Noam Shapiro: It's the only way I can do it, have fun.
• 13:14
  Noam Shapiro: I'm still trying to have fun.
• 13:16
  Noam Shapiro: We are doing make-believe.
• 13:17
  Noam Shapiro: We're playing dress up, that's what we're doing.
• 13:19
  Noam Shapiro: But for me, when I want to feel that artistic fulfillment, it comes to creation.
• 13:24
  Noam Shapiro: So, apart like Jade, which is this guy, obviously, Freddie looks like he messed up.
• 13:29
  Noam Shapiro: Some some part of this looks like he earned wherever he's at, which isn't quite the character I'll get cashed when I walk into a casting director's room, but it's what I know will be the thing that will help me feed not just my kids, but like my ambitions in the future when I begin to produce other films and write screenplays that end up doing the obsession in the back rooms thing.
• 13:52
  Noam Shapiro: Like, that's for the future.
• 13:53
  Noam Shapiro: I'm sowing the seeds for my future and creating parts for me that do not fit me into a certain type, despite that type really helping me pay.
• 14:02
  Luke Tennie: You I mean, I could see as the the guy who saved the day at the end of Get Out, the loyal friend just shows up in the top card.
• 14:09
  Luke Tennie: That's always what I'm getting cast as.
• 14:11
  Noam Shapiro: However, my my ambition is to be, I'm trying to be Kaluya in there at that really dark, downtrodden thing.
• 14:19
  Noam Shapiro: I'm trying to do that.
• 14:20
  Noam Shapiro: MBJ centers, I'm trying to do that.
• 14:22
  Noam Shapiro: Winston Duke in Black Panther, not T'Challa, shout out Chadwick.
• 14:26
  Noam Shapiro: I love T'Challa, but I think the part that would be more interesting for me is that Mbaku, the guy who challenges the regime, the guy who who's always got some bone to pick.
• 14:35
  Noam Shapiro: Those are the parts I gotta write for myself to be able to feel fulfilled.
• 14:38
  Noam Shapiro: So I won't expect that fulfillment from someone else.
• 14:41
  Noam Shapiro: I'll be grateful for their part and play it the way they wrote it.
• 14:45
  Noam Shapiro: But if I want to do that stuff that's gonna really make me excited, I gotta make it.
• 14:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 14:51
  Jeff Ornstein: I got a lot of dad roles for a long time.
• 14:54
  Jeff Ornstein: I was also the oldest student at Stella for when I was there for four or five years.
• 14:58
  Jeff Ornstein: And I was every kind of dad, a ghost dad, an alcoholic dad, a writer dad, an absentee dad, a born-again dad, you name it.
• 15:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I was that dad.
• 15:06
  Jeff Ornstein: And I kept asking my coach, you know, can I be like the bad boy once?
• 15:09
  Jeff Ornstein: You know, like, can I like hit someone or be alcoholic and you know, just mean?
• 15:14
  Jeff Ornstein: He's like, you'll get what I give you.
• 15:16
  Jeff Ornstein: And that was the last time I approached him about casting.
• 15:20
  Jeff Ornstein: So what the roles will come and you do the best of what you got given when you're given it.
• 15:24
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, so Noam, you know, you've got a pension for the the forlorn, the overlooked, the misunderstood, and Luca, you've got your eye on the prize for some more multi-dimensional characters, but what kind of films would you be like super psyched for dirty coffee pictures to be known for as a film production house?
• 15:44
  Jeff Ornstein: Is there a kind of genre that you'd love to nail?
• 15:46
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, no one take it away.
• 15:49
  Noam Shapiro: Uh yeah.
• 15:50
  Noam Shapiro: Um uh so I'm currently writing what is going to be our feature film debut.
• 15:58
  Noam Shapiro: It's called The Death of Darien King.
• 16:01
  Noam Shapiro: And in my mind, it pays homage to the types of films that I loved growing up, which are 1970s New York films like The Taking of Pelham 123 or Night of the Triggler or things like that.
• 16:18
  Noam Shapiro: Movies in which New York was actually the main character.
• 16:22
  Noam Shapiro: And so a lot of people have asked us like what, or asked me what the aesthetic of Dirty Coffee is.
• 16:30
  Noam Shapiro: And I don't know if we could nail it down to one thing, but I do know that it was birthed out of this sort of New York filmmaker's mentality.
• 16:40
  Noam Shapiro: And I've always idolized those filmmakers who came after the collapse of the studio system, like Lauren Scorsese and the kinds of films that they made because they were very ballsy with their choices and sort of just paying homage to that.
• 16:54
  Noam Shapiro: So it's a psychological thriller, it's fun, it's entertaining, and it's character-driven.
• 17:00
  Noam Shapiro: And it's sort of combining all of those elements.
• 17:03
  Noam Shapiro: That being said, I'm sure that we're gonna make lots of different types of films in the future, but where I start from is that sort of 1970s DIY aesthetic where directors went out and shot stuff and they didn't give an F.
• 17:19
  Noam Shapiro: I didn't know if we could curse on here.
• 17:21
  Jeff Ornstein: So, but yeah, you can do whatever you want.
• 17:24
  Jeff Ornstein: As I said, your podcast.
• 17:25
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, but so that's so I hope that gives you some insight into into kind of I mean New York's a great character because it's she's strong, she's powerful, she's nefarious, she's sad, she's tough.
• 17:38
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, you know, New York is a great character, and it can be woven so beautifully into the lives of the people who inhabit her.
• 17:47
  Jeff Ornstein: So yeah, I'm all for it.
• 17:49
  Jeff Ornstein: I think it sounds like a great story.
• 17:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Are you new?
• 17:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Are you both New Yorkers?
• 17:52
  Noam Shapiro: I'm a New Yorker.
• 17:53
  Noam Shapiro: Luke lived here during Amda, but yeah, I actually grew up in the South.
• 17:57
  Noam Shapiro: I don't know what it is though.
• 17:58
  Noam Shapiro: Like, I I've always kind of gotten those vibes from New Yorkers.
• 18:02
  Noam Shapiro: A lot of them are like, so where you from?
• 18:04
  Noam Shapiro: And they expect me to say a borough.
• 18:06
  Noam Shapiro: But I think that happens that happens a lot with people who kind of have like a similar taste, I guess, and and what Noam kind of touched on is like it's one of those things where those examples that he shared are exactly what we're trying to create.
• 18:21
  Noam Shapiro: But at the same time, it's like you know when you see it.
• 18:23
  Noam Shapiro: You know, it's like it's dirty coffee, man.
• 18:26
  Noam Shapiro: It's like there's grounds at the at the bottom of that cup, but somehow it just makes that coffee so much better.
• 18:32
  Noam Shapiro: It's one of those things that we're gonna continue to describe as we create our films.
• 18:37
  Noam Shapiro: But I can't wait for y'all to see Darien King.
• 18:40
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah, I would say the aesthetic is in the name too, like dirty coffee.
• 18:43
  Noam Shapiro: Like it's like you kind of hear it, you know.
• 18:47
  Jeff Ornstein: I wrote a short story once called The Pickle Jar, because I used to love to drink the pickle juice, and at the bottom of the pickle jar were all the little cloves of peppercorns and so on and so forth, and then you got to chew them, and my roommates all thought I was crazy, but it was sort of a metaphor for going through the sweet and the bitterness of life and then getting down to the good stuff, which is really sweet and really better seasoned everywhere.
• 19:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, it's seasoned, exactly.
• 19:13
  Jeff Ornstein: So you speak about your craft with a lot of emotional realism, the both of you, you know, like it's there's no rom-coms in you.
• 19:22
  Jeff Ornstein: I don't see that.
• 19:23
  Jeff Ornstein: So, what is it, in your opinions, both as actors or as directors, that makes a performance really click to you that makes it feel like that's so genuine and authentic, you know, it couldn't have been executed better.
• 19:38
  Noam Shapiro: I think Luke and I are going to approach this question with polar opposite answers, but that's just my prediction.
• 19:43
  Noam Shapiro: Luke, you should go first, but I alright, bet.
• 19:46
  Noam Shapiro: For me, there's one thing off rip that I refer to as like the buy-it factor.
• 19:50
  Noam Shapiro: You know, it's like uh let me use an example, like Deep Water Horizon.
• 19:54
  Noam Shapiro: I don't know if anyone remembers this movie, but Dylan O'Brien plays like uh he's on screen for like 15 and a half minutes in this two-hour Mark Wahl picture.
• 20:03
  Noam Shapiro: But every time I see him, he just looked like he worked on an oil rig.
• 20:06
  Noam Shapiro: And movies about people who work on an oil rig.
• 20:08
  Noam Shapiro: And when I see Dylan O'Brien in that movie, he looked like he worked there.
• 20:12
  Noam Shapiro: When I watch suits on TV and I see Donna, when I see Donna say something really quippy, the first thing I think to myself is she looked like an assistant at a New York law firm.
• 20:22
  Noam Shapiro: I I buy it, but then beyond that, the thing I I'm just so drawn to is subtlety in performance, like trusting that what you've built is enough.
• 20:33
  Noam Shapiro: It's like people who who may have built a huge backstory or whatever, and then they refine it and they're not trying to show us how different the character is from them, but we know another example here would be a Sam Rockwell, a Michael Stolbarg.
• 20:49
  Noam Shapiro: I'm gonna say Lakeith Stanfield, I'm gonna go say Viola Davis.
• 20:52
  Noam Shapiro: I mean, she's good at everything, but if you watch, especially her early work, like one of the first things I can remember seeing Viola Davison is actually an old movie called Kate and Leopold.
• 21:03
  Noam Shapiro: She plays a New York cop, and she just look like a cop.
• 21:07
  Noam Shapiro: She doesn't look like a star.
• 21:09
  Noam Shapiro: Her job is not to be a star, her job is to be a cop, and that's why now she's a star.
• 21:15
  Noam Shapiro: You feel what I'm saying?
• 21:17
  Noam Shapiro: So I tend to keep my eye out for a lot of these performers who aren't trying to like be the number one on the call sheet, but you know they will based on the work that they're doing for themselves.
• 21:28
  Noam Shapiro: Bob Odenkirk, like I could keep going, I can keep finding subtle performers, and you'll know that flavor that really moves me, that speaks to me.
• 21:35
  Noam Shapiro: I just think a lot of times we praise the moments of yelling, crying, or the really hilarious moments.
• 21:43
  Noam Shapiro: But sometimes we forget that the waiter who comes by and takes the order without being some this is my moment, deserves their flowers too for being the waiter who's just picking up the taking the order or busting the tank.
• 21:59
  Noam Shapiro: For me, that's
• 22:00
  Jeff Ornstein: From and there have been plenty of you know Academy Award-winning performances where this the characters have been on on film 15, 10, 11 minutes, you know, quality, not quantity.
• 22:09
  Noam Shapiro: Maherschaler in that movie was breathtaking.
• 22:12
  Noam Shapiro: He just looked like he and that dude isn't from Florida.
• 22:15
  Noam Shapiro: I'm from Florida.
• 22:16
  Noam Shapiro: That was a Florida dude.
• 22:17
  Noam Shapiro: I've seen 30 of those on the street at at Florida when I was living in Florida.
• 22:21
  Noam Shapiro: So it's like it's just the authenticity that people bring when they trust that they are enough without trying to showcase how much acting they can do.
• 22:30
  Luke Tennie: Even Willem.
• 22:32
  Jeff Ornstein: Right, in the smallest amount of time.
• 22:33
  Jeff Ornstein: Grab their 10 minutes.
• 22:34
  Noam Shapiro: These people pay very close attention and seem to me as though they're not concerned with being a star, they're concerned with telling the truth, which is the kind of performer that I want to be.
• 22:45
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 22:45
  Jeff Ornstein: I know him.
• 22:46
  Jeff Ornstein: You said you're going to be the polar opposite, are you?
• 22:48
  Jeff Ornstein: That's what keeps you guys together.
• 22:50
  Noam Shapiro: No, Luke, you gave kind of an unexpected answer.
• 22:53
  Noam Shapiro: So it won't be polar opposite.
• 22:54
  Noam Shapiro: I think it'll be a few degrees.
• 22:56
  Noam Shapiro: Well, I actually agree with everything Luke said.
• 22:59
  Noam Shapiro: And if you don't know, Luke and I can sit in a room and talk about process for 17 and a half hours.
• 23:06
  Noam Shapiro: So I'll talk a little bit about that, which is that my process in terms of accessing, I forget the word you use, but for lack of a better word, just real, right?
• 23:17
  Noam Shapiro: Meaning that when we see it, we go, that's the cop, that's the, you know.
• 23:22
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah, I said buy it factor.
• 23:23
  Noam Shapiro: Buy it factor, right?
• 23:25
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah.
• 23:25
  Noam Shapiro: So my process for accessing that, I think that has shifted and sort of morphed over the years.
• 23:31
  Noam Shapiro: And now Luke's on multiple TV shows right now, and we talk a lot about this.
• 23:36
  Noam Shapiro: And one of the things about TV shows is that you have to prepare a lot in very little time.
• 23:44
  Noam Shapiro: Now, Luke, he's able to do that, I think, because he's known the character for a while.
• 23:49
  Noam Shapiro: So when you know the character, you know how they would react.
• 23:53
  Noam Shapiro: But I think with me, it's about as taking it as slowly as possible in the amount of time that I have.
• 24:01
  Noam Shapiro: And for me, that what that looks like is taking lots of walks, right?
• 24:06
  Noam Shapiro: Maybe talking to myself, finding something to latch onto so that when I say the words and I when I behave, I don't feel that I'm bullshitting.
• 24:17
  Noam Shapiro: So that I'm I know that I'm playing pretend.
• 24:19
  Noam Shapiro: We all know this.
• 24:20
  Noam Shapiro: I'm not.
• 24:21
  Noam Shapiro: There's been maybe two, three times in my entire 12 years of acting that I've forgotten that I'm acting.
• 24:30
  Noam Shapiro: Right?
• 24:31
  Noam Shapiro: There's always like 5% that goes, okay, I know there's an audience there, or I know there's a camera there.
• 24:37
  Noam Shapiro: There's only a few times, and often those have been an acting class when the space is very safe.
• 24:43
  Noam Shapiro: So other than that, for me, it's about filling in as many of those blanks as possible so that when the camera does start rolling or when the curtain does come up, that I'm literally only paying attention to the other person.
• 24:59
  Noam Shapiro: I don't have to, I'm often cast as characters with dialects.
• 25:05
  Noam Shapiro: And the last thing I should be thinking about when the camera starts rolling is how do I say the words in the dialect?
• 25:12
  Noam Shapiro: Meaning I better be able to improvise in that dialect.
• 25:16
  Noam Shapiro: That's how well I need to know it.
• 25:17
  Noam Shapiro: If my character walks differently, I can't think about how they walk while I'm walking.
• 25:23
  Noam Shapiro: That work has to already be done.
• 25:26
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 25:26
  Jeff Ornstein: That's got to all be organic.
• 25:28
  Noam Shapiro: And one of the main weaknesses I see in teaching that young actors have, which I had as well, and it's something that takes time to trust and get over, is that you do all of the intellectual work, the script analysis, all of that stuff.
• 25:41
  Noam Shapiro: But you can't then do that when the camera's rolling.
• 25:44
  Noam Shapiro: You can't do script analysis on set.
• 25:47
  Noam Shapiro: On set, you have to just play tennis.
• 25:50
  Noam Shapiro: You just back forth, back, forth, back, forth.
• 25:53
  Noam Shapiro: So I think most of acting is being able to do that work and just let it the fuck go.
• 25:59
  Jeff Ornstein: Tell me this, because we've had other guests on.
• 26:01
  Jeff Ornstein: They talk about, you know, there are no parts out there for me.
• 26:04
  Jeff Ornstein: I'm not, I'm not getting up for the right parts.
• 26:06
  Jeff Ornstein: And they were advised, then write your own and start your own.
• 26:10
  Jeff Ornstein: So was any of that sort of feeling of frustration or that the limitations were placed upon you play into creating dirty coffee, or was dirty coffee just an explosion of like, I gotta, I gotta do this, you know, I gotta get it out there.
• 26:24
  Noam Shapiro: It was definitely more of the second one, like the explosion of we just have to create.
• 26:28
  Noam Shapiro: Yeah.
• 26:28
  Noam Shapiro: But for me, I came to the same conclusion that these other people had through getting work.
• 26:34
  Noam Shapiro: Uh, a little bit of what I touched on earlier, which is like I'm getting work, but I'm not playing any of the characters I thought I would be playing.
• 26:40
  Noam Shapiro: I'm playing these really easy going dude.
• 26:43
  Noam Shapiro: You know, when I was in college, I was playing like I played Macbeth, like uh these twisted characters, and I remember playing Oedipus, and there was just so much opportunity there for me to play characters where I got spoiled.
• 26:55
  Noam Shapiro: And then I went out and played these characters that were very, at least on the surface, milk toast.
• 27:01
  Noam Shapiro: It was my job to make sure that they didn't appear that way.
• 27:04
  Noam Shapiro: In the TV show I was on about assassins, out of all of the assassins at the school, for assassins, I played the pacifist.
• 27:14
  Noam Shapiro: Like, you know what I mean?
• 27:16
  Noam Shapiro: It's like, and it was my job to figure out like how's this dichotomy gonna work?
• 27:20
  Noam Shapiro: And then it's really fun for me because I'm trained and I know how to create an enjoyable process for me.
• 27:26
  Noam Shapiro: But the reality for me was I need to make sure that I create my own work, otherwise, I won't feel artistically fulfilled.
• 27:33
  Noam Shapiro: I have no problem going to work and playing the same character on three different shows, which is what I'm doing right now.
• 27:39
  Noam Shapiro: It's shrinking is Luke with PTSD, the pit is Luke with a doctor's degree, and Abbott is Luke at 22.
• 27:47
  Noam Shapiro: Like literally, just Luke at 22.
• 27:50
  Noam Shapiro: It's like I have no problem doing that because the fulfillment that I gain from creating my own work is charging that.
• 27:57
  Noam Shapiro: So I don't need to go to set and then butt heads with the director and fight with this person on how I believe the character should be played, just so I could feel a little bit of more fulfillment.
• 28:07
  Noam Shapiro: That's not necessary for me because I'm doing it at home.
• 28:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 28:10
  Jeff Ornstein: And that shit gets old quickly.
• 28:12
  Jeff Ornstein: Not a great way to make friends and influence people.
• 28:15
  Noam Shapiro: Come home, take it out on Norm.
• 28:16
  Noam Shapiro: Well, that's what's cool about Norm is instead of, yeah, as an example though, instead of me taking it out on him, I take it out with him.
• 28:24
  Noam Shapiro: And then we can be right, exactly.
• 28:26
  Noam Shapiro: That well feels fulfilled, you know.
• 28:28
  Noam Shapiro: It and it's an incredible opportunity.
• 28:30
  Noam Shapiro: Like whether you're not getting work or you are, and it's not quite the characters you want to play, the answer is still create your own work.
• 28:37
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 28:37
  Jeff Ornstein: So all right, gentlemen, we've gone grossly over time, which I knew we would because you guys had a lot to say and I had a lot of questions asked.
• 28:44
  Jeff Ornstein: So I guess the one last question I would like to ask is you studied acting, but now you're definitely wearing a lot of different hats.
• 28:51
  Jeff Ornstein: Of course, with the goal to continue acting, but did any one of those other hats, whether it's directing or producing or whatever, production design or costume, any of them surprise you that you're getting quite a lot of fulfillment out, or is it just sort of nature's way of saying I was just meant to be in this industry?
• 29:09
  Noam Shapiro: I'll go ahead, which is I feel like especially like the past six months or so, I felt like I'm 85% a writer.
• 29:19
  Noam Shapiro: And it's lonely, it's isolating, and I just can't get enough of it.
• 29:25
  Noam Shapiro: It gives me so much pleasure to just look at a blank page and then just create everything from that.
• 29:32
  Noam Shapiro: It's so much, you have to have so much patience because looking at the last few things that I've done, both plays and films, the process from having nothing to having the final script is about it could be half a year, it could be a few months, it could be half a year.
• 29:52
  Noam Shapiro: And it's like this drug that I feel that I just feel so fulfilled once it's done.
• 29:59
  Noam Shapiro: And then of course, it takes years more to make the thing.
• 30:02
  Noam Shapiro: And it's like I'll talk about Jade.
• 30:05
  Noam Shapiro: I mean, Jade took we didn't know what we were doing at all, we learned everything on the fly.
• 30:11
  Noam Shapiro: We taught ourselves how to edit, essentially.
• 30:13
  Noam Shapiro: Like we edited a 15-minute film in a year that an editor would have done in maybe a week and a half, and I regret none of it because gave us those skills.
• 30:27
  Noam Shapiro: And so I hope this is answering your question, but I think I think the more things I step into, and I'm dabbling with directing now as well, it all feeds the umbrella of storytelling, whether acting, whether you're writing, whether you're screwing a light bulb in, you're helping tell that story.
• 30:48
  Noam Shapiro: And so that's really the thing to keep in mind.
• 30:50
  Noam Shapiro: And I think going back to what you said, Luke, I think that's why you're so good at playing those parts that might not necessarily be the lead, because you understand your role within the story.
• 31:02
  Noam Shapiro: So if you always put the story first and foremost, whether you're the gaffer, the PA, the lead actor, or the cop saying freeze police, you're always going to be, I think, servicing the project in the best way possible.
• 31:16
  Noam Shapiro: So I'm excited to see where it goes.
• 31:18
  Noam Shapiro: But for now, I think writing and acting are sort of like in tandem, and I love them both.
• 31:25
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, you see, I think I gotta wrap this up, but I think that also that's something that a lot of the listeners are gonna take from this.
• 31:30
  Jeff Ornstein: I have a passion for acting, but I've also thought about this, thought about this, and and hey, you know, these skills overlap, they complement one another, and you can morph.
• 31:38
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, it probably maybe came as a bit of a surprise to you what a drug writing has been.
• 31:43
  Jeff Ornstein: It's like this completely nirvana state you said that you've been into.
• 31:47
  Jeff Ornstein: I can see why you guys are a team because you're very complimentary to one another.
• 31:51
  Jeff Ornstein: And I'd like to ask when you've got another project and you're getting ready to release it, or you've just released it, call back our producers and we could have you back on, and you can tell us about the journey that it took you to get that one to the screen, and we'd love to air it and talk about it.
• 32:05
  Jeff Ornstein: Run it by our listeners.
• 32:07
  Noam Shapiro: Thanks very much.
• 32:07
  Noam Shapiro: We're very grateful for that.
• 32:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for tuning in to Next Dack with Jeff Orenstein.
• 32:13
  Jeff Ornstein: Follow, subscribe, and stay connected to your favorite socials at www.nextpodcast.com.
• 32:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Keep chasting your next act.
• 32:22
  Jeff Ornstein: The best is yet to come.