Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 334: Directing ACTION in the World of John Wick for Television with Albert Hughes

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BPS 334: Directing ACTION in the World of John Wick for Television with Albert Hughes · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three thirty four. Consider this a courtesy John Wick
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  broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working
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  on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft
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  and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And
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  here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the
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  Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now,
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  today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage
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  services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are in
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  the goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down by
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  three categories micro budget, indie film, market and studio film. There's no
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  reason to get coverage from a reader that used to reading tempole movies when your
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  movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and we wanted
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  Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you
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  need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to
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  cover my screenplay dot com. Well, guys, today on the show,
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  I welcome back the record holder for the longest episode in the history of the
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  show, mister Albert Hughes. Now Albert, if you don't know who he
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  is, is the director of classic films like Menace to Society, Dead,
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  Presidents from Hell with Johnny Depp, Book of Eli, and the new John
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  Wick spinoff series The Continental. Now, Albert and I sat down and discussed
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  his approach to The Continental, What's going on in Hollywood today, and so
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  so much more. Albert is one of my all time favorite guests to have
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  on the show. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my entertaining
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  conversation with Albert Hughes. I'd like to welcome back to the show returning champion,
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  Albert Hughes. How you doing, Albert? So apparently we still have
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  the record. We still have the record, brother, It was that it
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  was during the COVID times. You were stuck in amsterdamn literally stuck in a
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  room somewhere by yourself, and I think I was the only beacon of hope
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  for a conversation about film for you. Well, they sat there and spoke
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  for three and a half hours, four hours, and and it just kept
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  going. And we were we were on Skype. It was either again even
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  gotten to Zoom yet. We were on Skype's Skype. It was it was
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  what Skype, because I ever hear about Skype anymore. I didn't move over
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  to Zoom yet because I was one of the last holdouts on the scutt So
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  it was don't have it? I still have the app? Do you still
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  have the app? I can't know because I got the new computer and it
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  doesn't now I couldn't record anymore. It's a old thing. But man,
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  well that that's an epic conversation we had. Man, it's been one of
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  the most downloaded episodes we ever had. And then, of course when I
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  heard about you, when I heard about it in the press, I emails
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  you right away. I said, hey, man, congraduation. I cannot
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  wait to see what you do in the world of John wick Uh and uh,
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  and you did not disappoint my friend. I have seen it and it
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  is oh, thank you, it is Uh. Like I was telling you
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  before, it's so nice to see a director direct in television. Uh,
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  not not crabbing on anybody else's style, but that you can see a very
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  distinct a point like the point of view when you're working. And it's like
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  those things that you and I grew up with in the eighties and the nineties,
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  or like these time the directors who like you know, put the cameras,
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  move the cameras, the POV shots. It's like, oh, look
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  at that. That's nice, you know, I you know, it's also
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  it's a new world now where you know, back in the eighties and nineties
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  when we were growing up too, it's like the film directors, film writers,
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  producers kind of looked down on TV. There was no streaming back then.
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  But and now like the best writing, the best acting, and some
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  of the best directors are coming to those formats. And I mean Netflix owns
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  half the best directors in town right now. You know, literally they're just
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  literally but the movies. But you know what, it's interesting because I've heard
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  this from a lot of people's like a lot of the independent filmmakers who would
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  have been an independent film in the nineties and the early two thousands are not
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  going to television because that's the only place they can actually make a living.
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  Because there is no real output from market. The market place doesn't open.
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  It's not as open as it used to be for independent film as it used
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  to yeah, nineties, it's it's it's like the Marvel movies, the Ten
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  Poles, the ips. They've squeezed out mom and pop movies, or the
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  midst sides movies or the genre movies. You know, like Bloemhouse is doing
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  well with their movies, the horror Gont Jason's. But Jason's got the sweetest
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  deal in Hollywood. I mean you kidding me? Like I thought when I
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  talked him on the show, it was like, dude, you're like you're
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  doing like ten million, fifteen million dollars movies being distributed about universal, like
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  widely, Like that's the sweetest deal in these Yeah, and some of those
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  movies are only five million dollars, you know, And they have these sweet
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  dealals for everybody involved. And he has a really good business model and it's
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  really not only sensible but very kind to the talent involved. You know,
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  he's one of the few guys out there that that's doing something like that.
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  We actually share the same accountant and I did work with them on on Good
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  Lord Bird because his company produced that. Yeah, but it's a new day
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  in time. And that's what strange is like with this series, The Continental.
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  It wasn't set up like a typical TV schedule ten episodes or eight episodes,
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  where you're rolling into the next episode with your cast and crew, bringing
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  in another director, guest directors, and then you know, sometimes those episodic
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  TV shows have that lull in the middle whe they're trying to save money.
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  You can tell are filler episodes. And we've talked about me and you.
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  I do distinctly remember talking about Last Time and our marathon run David Fincher.
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  And the one thing if you look at what David Fincher did with Mine Hunter,
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  and you look at whatever the show runners are, I got to look
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  up who the show runners are on handmates tell there's a very consistent style and
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  quality control going on with those shows. Both shows could have been shown in
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  a theater and you would have known none. The difference between whether it was
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  a TV show or a movie or one hour episode. But it all came
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  down to quality control. And then there's other like really nuanced details like what
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  I learned. The difference between TV and feature filmmaking is TV's or writers meeting
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  him as you know, right, and features are a director's media. So
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  when traditionally the writer's meeting has been going on, it's less about style and
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  tone of the Mazzon saying, as you know you learn in film school and
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  more about close up close ups, close ups up, close up white shots
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  and then close up yes. And then they still were to this day they
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  are still think that way and they're slowly coming out of it. I'm talking
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  about at the executive level. When you start getting notes, well where's the
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  close up for that shot, It's like, well, people have these big
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  screens now, you don't need that close up anymore. So then the cinema
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  like, I give this, it's a bad good analogy. I don't know.
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  It's like a guy's on the phone with his girlfriend. She's breaking up
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  with him and he's very lonely, right, And TV you see it as
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  a close up shot because the writers are laying on their dialogue, and film
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  you learn or the masters like tell the story and the shot to go really
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  wide and have them really tiny in the corner, talking and looking small and
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  only so the SHOT's telling you he's lonely and isolated and being broken up with
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  and so is the dialogue. But you don't necessarily need a it's up in
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  its face at this moment. Right, that's the difference. But there's a
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  benefit to TV and what they do because I've been studying, like I consume
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  a lot of few like Succession and all those shows, you know, and
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  they button the scenes with close ups and the characters wheels are spinning, and
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  it takes you into the next scene. You're like, I wonder what they're
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  thinking, or you might project on what they're thinking. And that's a very
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  useful thing to learn from TV because cinema doesn't feature the filmmaking doesn't really do
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  that. Yeah, so there's right now. Also there's this thing where it's
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  like, if I'm making something or another feature guys making something, I don't
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  want to change my style because it's a TV show. I don't want to
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  do more coopsos. I want to respect the audience is going to read that
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  shot correctly, especially considering that the TV sizes have changed, you know,
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  so we still all have a lot of adjusting to do, especially on the
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  executive and studio network site, to welcome those filmmakers into the TV space for
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  what they do without constantly pounding them about close up. You know, I
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  would agree with you on that. And when I was watching this, I
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  was noticing, I mean, it's this is basically there are like three movies,
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  uh these episodes. There's just three standalone movies with like Pale you know,
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  like cliffhangers essentially, or like the next there's another episode in this think
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  it's it's serialized in that sense in this mini series that you've put together with
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  Continental. But the man, I gotta statement, the budget, the production
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  value on this thing must have been pretty impressive because the I mean, we
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  all seen the Continental and John Wick, right, and we've seen it done.
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  But this is John Wick in the seventies, which is a great decade
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  to tune this in. By the way, the it was, I mean,
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  i mean, come on, I mean, it's as fun as you
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  can get. To blame that in that era we're shooting. But the visual
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  effects, I was noticing the how the visual effects will be right back after
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  a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show and the depth
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  of it. The world creation that you did for the Continental, What was
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  that? How did you approach doing it like that? And I mean,
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  I assumed there was a decent budget for this, but this is not one
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  hundred million dollars two hundred million dollars show. But it looks like yeah,
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  it looks like that. And we'll get into the action sequels in a minute,
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  because that's a whole other story. Okay, well, maybe it's a
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  uly. I was going to hit on it earlier, but I forgot it
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  when I was talking about TV schedules and how they roll all into the next
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  thing. There's no prep time for the guest directors. We only had one
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  guest director, Charlotte Branston's been around forever, very capable, but it's even
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  very difficult for them to maintain the style and it's a very hard thing to
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  do to quality control the tone and the look and all that stuff. But
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  one of the reasons I did it, there's several reasons why I did it.
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  One was when I looked at the way they laid it out, it
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  was like a fourteen week prep leading into episode one four weeks prep leading in
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  episode two, four weeks prep leading to the episode three. Each thirty five
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  days a piece. That is not normal for TV. That's not a normal
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  schedule, that's not even normal prep for a movie like twelve weeks ten twelve
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  weeks is normal, not to say, but they see that. Yeah,
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  but they see that fourteen is helping the overall too, you know, you're
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  not just servicing one. So that was the first thing that raised and eye
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  probably go oh, there, someone was smart. They're trying to ensure quality
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  here, you know, with a guy like me. Don't give me prep,
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  you know, because I'll use it. A lot of directors as you
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  know, don't use it, you know, and don't you know, you
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  know, parlay that into some real security and quality basically. And then there's
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  the other thing of the wig film producers talk to me first, because I
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  wasn't sure I wanted to do it. I didn't know if I wanted to
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  play in another man or woman's sandbox. But they they talked to me about
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  it, and I was considering something else, and I go, I just
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  want to have fine. Man. The COVID thing was really weighing on me,
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  as you know, and I think the audience wants to have fun.
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  I don't want to this social issue stuff anymore. Like I've done it.
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  I'll go back to it maybe, but right now I have fun watching those
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  movies. Why not? Basically right? And that was a real mode.
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  Oh and then you had me at seventies, like you just said earlier,
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  you had me with the seventies, right, that's the era I grew up
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  in and I was born in. I have a white mother who's listening to
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  Pink Floyd, up black father who's listening to know James Brown. And I'm
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  finally able to explore the mother's side of my upbringing. You know, the
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  father's side has been tapped into greatly from the past movies with fantastic R and
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  B and hip hop and stuff. But now it's like Pink Floyd is my
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  favorite band of all time. No one would suspect that, even some of
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  my closest friends wouldn't know that. That is, I don't care what band
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  you bring up. You start bringing up led Zeppe and the Beatles, I
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  don't want to hear it. Poy my guys, they're my guys. And
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  then the heartache of having to give that song to episode two, which is
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  a you know, an episode. I supervised and finished them the post on,
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  but I didn't direct it, you know. And it was Kirk Walward,
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  the show runner and my friend, my very good buddy now my partner,
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  and this who He was struggling with that scene because we just couldn't find
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  the right score for it, and we couldn't find the right and he came
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  up with that choice, and I go, man, that's one of my
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  favorite songs, like Welcome to the Machine. So it was it was he
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  that picked it, and he picked a few others that I was because sometimes
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  it needle drops you like I'm pretty, I'm pretty good at it, like
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  seventy percent, but when I'm bad, I'm really bad. It's really off,
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  you know. And once you put it against picture, you're like,
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  what was I think? And I thought this thing would work. And he's
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  the one that came with Black Sabbath at the end of episode one, which
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  was this attitude. Kirk came with that because originally I put it in more
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  of an upbeat kind of it's kind of a punk reggae. It's called murder.
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  It's a woman singing murder, Oh murder. You know, and I
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  thought, oh, this is such a downer episode at the end because something
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  tragic happens. I want the ice and leave for a week because I knew
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  it was going to be a weekly show. I want them not to leave
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  to down and you kept working on me. It's like, Alard, it's
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  not right, it's not right. I'm like okay. And then he brought
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  this Sabbath track and I go, oh, that's that. That's screaming revenge
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  and anger. So yeah, I got me andrew the bit there. But
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  yeah, you know, but that's the thing. You gotta try things before
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  you say noble but no. When you were seeing it and I know the
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  scene and I know the ending of that episode, I'm going, no,
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  it would have not worked. It's just like I'm already playing in my head.
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  I'm like, no, it's not I tried it. I tried it
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  the first three seconds like, you need anger, you need revenge, you
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  need vengeance. And that's what that song, the energy of that song came
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  out without question. I mean, listen, you know John Wick has created
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  and a bunch of movies a world that is unprecedented really in cinema history.
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  There's nothing like John Wick there's just nothing like John Wick and what Kiano did
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  and what the creators did and the actions and stuff. When you stepped into
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  this world to play, like you said in Another Man Sandbox, did you
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  feel any pressure of like I got it, man, this better bring the
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  heat because John every single there hasn't been a week John Wick film, in
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  my opinion, everyone has been like, dude, like this last one.
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  I saw it in the theater. I was like, this is guys,
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  it's really like you can bananas. It was. It's it's like so much
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  action that you can't even I'm like, how many years. It's like almost
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  like almost a kickback to John Woo style Hard Boil that team that's still Oh
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  somebody was bringing this up. No, No, Like like a friend reached
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  out to me yesterday, was like he didn't know I made this and accidentally
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  watched and then you could recognize it was my style. So he looked at
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  the credits again and then he messaged me and he goes, it just reminds
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  me of us watching John Woo in the night we were I go, well,
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  that's where ched Marshal. He has the smorgest ward of influences, and
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  some would be shocked to know that not the John Woopar but the Bob Fosse
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  and musical part. He's into musical and dance numbers. And when you talk
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  to Chad, he'll talk about all these influences. You know, Korean cinema,
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  two of course, Japanese cinema. Some of the same things the overlap
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  with both of us. But I my favorite john Wick of the four is
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  three. Three just tickled me pink like it's when you When you talk to
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  the hardcore John Wick fans, they don't they don't care for three. They
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  love one. I think their order is now it maybe one or four,
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  but they really have a saucepopper one. It's one, four, two,
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  three. Mine's in a completely different ordered mind. Three, one, two,
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  four, and four. Still I love it's it's solid, it's crazy
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  like they do up the game. There's just weaknesses I have for three because
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  they reminded me of being a twelve year old watching Eni Jones, like that
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  knife fight and that that I don't a Museum of knives. Like I thought
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  it couldn't get any better, it just kept getting better and better, and
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  then it ended with the guys acts and had I go oh, my god,
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  this is the sword fight and on the motorcycles, which was from The
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  Villainous, the Korean movie, I believe, but again it was awesome.
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  And then who could have ever thought the smack of horse's ass to kick a
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  guy in the face. Like, so there's all and then there's the dogs,
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  the Halleyberry dog stuff like. So it was speaking to the twelve year
• 17:21
  old boy and me where the difference with four was? I thought four in
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  the end when it took me a while to realize was more of a spiritual
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  movie. It is, it came up were spiritual. Yeah, it's though
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  it's one of the most I didn't expect that one of the most violent picks
• 17:33
  I've seen on cinema quite some time. But it's it's correct. But I
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  also saw it with green screen. Yeah, I saw it though early cut
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  where the art day triumph you couldn't even see the structure when they were doing
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  that. You couldn't see what happened to the continental. I was watching a
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  lot of blue screen, you know. It was like a three and a
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  half hour cut I watched at first. So when I saw in the cinemas,
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  I was shocked at, like how good the VFX were like that art
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  did they triumph thing? Like how there was no there was no no arc
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  that they triumph there. They did shoot it in light R and do all
• 18:04
  those things right, but how how realistic those vfs were, Like I didn't
• 18:10
  know what that scene would become. Oh, I thought I thought they shot
• 18:12
  it there. I thought they shot it there. Personally, I said,
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  now that you told me down like I thought they shot They did a fantastic
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  job then, because I couldn't tell. Yeah, well, there's establishers,
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  you know, and even in the establishers, if you look closer, you
• 18:22
  can tell that there's digital car or. It's not not that it's badly done.
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  It's just that the speeds are going in that traffic. Unless you're impossible
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  locked down all of Paris, it's impossible, you know. And of course
• 18:34
  we know how these things are constructed, you and I, so we're able
• 18:37
  to know, even if it's really great vffects, what the what's going on?
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  You know? Yeah, I know I thought they made have locked up
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  you know, you know, from one o'clock to four o'clock in the morning
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  something like that, because it was just looks so so good, and going
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  back to John wu though. I mean you go back to those kids,
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  the killer hard boiled, that is ballet with guns, and and Wick is
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  just taking it to a whole other place, which then brings me to but
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  no one, I's gonna say, just before we get off with John Woo.
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  The big difference between then and now is that John Wound didn't have those
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  air guns that you can put up to somebody's face and see the recoil and
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  hear a little sound that's so safe you can literally put up your eyeball.
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  You know. He was using real muzzle flashes. Stunt man. They were
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  getting hurt all the time because our regulations out there for protections aren't the same
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  in China at the time, like just running through stuntmen, right, he
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  was shooting for a hundred days and more. Like you know, John Wood
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  was going all balls to the walls without all the stuff that we have the
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  tools we have nowadays. And then you have someone like chaste Helski who comes
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  from that stunt background, who specializes in that, and then he's found this
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  perfect match with Kiano in that kind of world, and it's like a parallel
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  universe, which is what's fraying about doing the show. The Continental is like,
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  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
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  to the show. You know, when I started checking up a list of
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  why I should do something like that, this one of it was like,
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  well, my brain is gonna be free just to have fun, now,
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  so what's that gonna be Like. I didn't have any idea that I would
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  have the most fun in my life on a set or in post or in
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  prep. It was like an experience I'll never forget. Well, well,
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  the going into the action. I mean, when I was watching the episodes,
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  I was like, my god, it's just like John Wick level action
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  movie level action. So that this is it's not like if you're tuning in
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  to see The Continental and expecting like TV versions of John Wick action, it
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  is not. It is you could the same guy. It's you could take
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  it out and put it right into one hundred million dollars two hundred million dollar
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  movie and it would fit perfectly. That was so I was like, man,
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  it's ball. It was the same man. It's the same guys.
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  It's a company that Chad owned with a David Leech called eighty seven to eleven,
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  and some of the same people that were in some of the Jaguin films
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  are part of the Stunt Team two and Laarnel Stowell the coordinator and action directors
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  from the eighty seven eleven Camp two and Chad had to bless the person that
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  was being chosen for that basically before we started. And then they go and
• 21:21
  do this thing called stunt Bizz, which is wonderful. You get to see
• 21:23
  everything beforehand and make adjustments, and they do this really cool thing the New
• 21:26
  School of stunt men do, which is first of all, they show you
• 21:30
  to stuff. The old school never showed you anything, right. They also
• 21:33
  make use of the environment, and if the environment it's not cool enough,
• 21:37
  we may rewrite where we're where this fight's going to take place. And it's
• 21:41
  interesting, I'm telling you because there's one scene in episode three that's particularly cater
• 21:48
  to your audience in a way. It's like when we talked in the past
• 21:51
  about when you have no money, what do you do with it? Right?
• 21:53
  So Kirk had written this scene where this character Lou, a black woman's
• 21:56
  being followed by this detect to Mayhew and it was going to end up in
• 22:02
  this like fight between the both of them in the streets. I said,
• 22:04
  you know what I've always wanted to do Kirk of fighting the phone booze.
• 22:07
  You ever heard that expression of fighting phone was like, yeah, I've heard
• 22:10
  it, or sometimes a box or announced or like they're just blowing each other
• 22:15
  in the corner, blowing each other in the corner, hitting each other,
• 22:18
  you know, you know, taking blows in the corner. You know,
• 22:22
  there's they've all skill has gone out of the window. They're just it's again
• 22:26
  it's the street fights. The street fight. Yeah, it's a street fight.
• 22:27
  Yeah, the street fight in in close proximity. It's it's a It
• 22:33
  was like watching a fighting a phone booth. So I said, we need
• 22:36
  to do this for two reasons. One, I think it'll be cool because
• 22:38
  we can use the phone booth the environment of phone booth too. This could
• 22:41
  be a lesson to people with no money in film school, Like I want
• 22:45
  this scene to be the kind of scene where they look at it and go,
• 22:48
  you see, you can do something interesting without scope and still tell the
• 22:52
  story and move on and play play on kind of I don't know what the
• 22:56
  what that's an analogy, I guess, or a metaphor play in something like
• 23:02
  that. Yeah, we did have the budget to do what we wanted.
• 23:04
  I didn't feel the pinch in anyway. Like you can give me ten million
• 23:07
  dollars, I'm not going to fill a pinch. I'll design the movie to
• 23:10
  the budget. You can give me five, I'll design the movie to the
• 23:12
  budget. But what I always aspired to from the first movie is you give
• 23:17
  me two point five, I want to make it a little like seven.
• 23:18
  You give me ten, I want to make it a little like twenty.
• 23:21
  And there's little tricks to do that we talked about in the last time we
• 23:23
  talked about. But people should know we each budget had pretty much the same
• 23:29
  budget as of first John Wake movie. It wasn't any lower, wasn't any
• 23:34
  higher. Yeah, And and the thing is too, is like when I
• 23:38
  was watching this again, I said, this, you use some of those
• 23:41
  tricks to get more, you know, bang for your buck, because it
• 23:44
  definitely looks more bang for your buck without question. Not speaking of stunt guys,
• 23:48
  this is my I love I love stunt guys. I was working on
• 23:51
  my on a project that was working with a twenty four stunt team, the
• 23:55
  twenty key for souther Ones show back in the day. And is it just
• 24:00
  me or are all of them absolutely nuts. They are. The old school
• 24:08
  guys are different type of nuts the New school guys. Right, they're different
• 24:11
  type of nuts. They all are like go ahead, sorry, no,
• 24:17
  It's like I heard like when when I would go listen, I needed to
• 24:19
  do this. I needed to do a gainer here and I needed to do
• 24:22
  flip. They're like, but can I jump off the second story? Like
• 24:25
  no, I don't need the seconds. We're good here on the first Like
• 24:26
  no, no, no, but I could do the second story. I'm
• 24:30
  like, I'm good. They're like, no, but look at it.
• 24:32
  I'm like, guys, and it was not just the first All of them
• 24:36
  would always take it to eleven as they say a spotler. Yeah, they're
• 24:41
  they're adrenaline adrenaline John because you know, and they're like fighter pilots hearing this
• 24:47
  whole other mode, you know, and they they I recall from the pass
• 24:51
  and it has moved to the New school. They have this slovigor, this
• 24:53
  kind of arrogance, and they need that arrogance in their job, you know.
• 24:57
  But sometimes you can misread the air again and not see the person basically
• 25:02
  right. And they're they're very interesting, especially in New school guys that come
• 25:07
  out of Baby seven eleven because they always overdesigned, like you're talking about that,
• 25:10
  in a way, they want to give you more. The stunt guys
• 25:12
  never want to give you less. And you actually always have to talk a
• 25:15
  stunt person down like no, no, no, dude, we don't really
• 25:18
  don't. But also you're the wrong stunt guy or a girl. Yeah.
• 25:22
  But also the dirty little the dirty little secret, the dirty little secret is
• 25:26
  the more times they do that stunt, they keep getting pay bumps. Yeah,
• 25:32
  depending on how dangerous the stunt is, the ship getting these crazy pay
• 25:36
  bumps. You know. I didn't know that until four years ago. I
• 25:38
  found that out. I'm like, really, Oh, that's why they're so
• 25:41
  eager to do another, Like they're limping to the third take, like yeah,
• 25:44
  let's go, let's go, let's go ahead, let's let's go again.
• 25:48
  I mean, I can't imagine, let's with the with the stunt team
• 25:49
  that you had on the Continental, these guys, I mean, there has
• 25:52
  to be I mean, I know the professionals, but there's got to be
• 25:55
  some some damage, man damage on these guys. The body, it only
• 25:59
  takes so much, even as a professional, it's so many takeable. You
• 26:03
  could only throw them down the stairs so many times, right, I mean
• 26:08
  seriously, at a certain point, even if they know how to fall in
• 26:11
  and if they got the gear on and at a certain point, you just
• 26:14
  got a god god bless Yeah. And they and the differences too, is
• 26:19
  that they have to train our actors. Like that's what the Wig fan base
• 26:23
  wants is to see their actors doing it. And we had this interesting story
• 26:27
  one day when the chess Elaine is an actress who played lou and they're the
• 26:32
  brother of Myles Hubert Ponti. Jo is the actor's name, but it Jess
• 26:37
  was. You know, she's a very sweet woman and she doesn't like violence
• 26:41
  really, and they're training her and she accidentally hits a stunt guy and rehearsal
• 26:45
  you know, we're not shooting. They're in their warehouse doing this, and
• 26:48
  she's really emotional about it. She's really been been out of shape about it.
• 26:51
  And I'm like, no, no, this this happens all the time,
• 26:53
  like, don't don't worry. And we were all a little worried about
• 26:56
  her, like is she ever ever gonna be able to like just get over
• 26:59
  this? And she did. And you see, you've seen the al Camino
• 27:02
  fight with her in the back of an al Camino on episode two. I
• 27:04
  think, yeah, you've seen the whole series, right, Okay, I
• 27:07
  seen I've seen most of the series. I haven't seen all of it yet,
• 27:11
  I've seen most of it. Oh shit, you gotta get the three
• 27:14
  man. We should Okay, so we gotta come back with Kirk. You
• 27:17
  come back with Kurt. All that I've seen the first two, I've not
• 27:19
  seen the third one yet because I have a family all the third the third
• 27:23
  one goes I know, the third one goes off the rails. But but
• 27:27
  she is an episode two in the back of an al Camino, like kicking
• 27:30
  a bunch of people's asses, right, you see, and then she basically
• 27:33
  blossom, Yeah, blossom you know. But wait, I gotta pause for
• 27:37
  episode three preparing because it's gonna feel like to you a very deceptive It starts
• 27:42
  out like, oh, this is kind of starting out like the others,
• 27:45
  you know, it's normally paced, and then it just takes this right turn
• 27:49
  and it just goes non stop for fifty eight minutes. So so you were
• 27:52
  trying to you were trying to John Wick for it basically just this non stop
• 27:56
  well it was it was a hybrid because Chad has this thing he does that's
• 28:00
  wonderful. Is that because he has a two or two and a half hour
• 28:06
  movie and doesn't have to tell a three act structure and too many new characters.
• 28:10
  Then you have Kiano and the audience knows what he can do. You
• 28:12
  can wallow in a twenty minute set piece. I can't really because I have
• 28:18
  a story to tell. I also don't want to bore the audience, you
• 28:21
  know, I'm very much into not having action fatigue happen. So it's deceptive
• 28:25
  an episode three because there're modules of action seemingly taking place in one set piece,
• 28:30
  which is inside the hotel. It's a rate. I mean, it's
• 28:33
  pretty obvious at this point. It's a rate. You know that Winston has
• 28:36
  to take power from this hotel and a revenge story, right, so it
• 28:41
  feels like one continuous action scene, and it actually isn't. It's one continuous
• 28:47
  raid. That The way to affects your rain is you're watching a lot of
• 28:52
  action because it jumps around to different locations within the hotel and different group members
• 28:59
  doing different things. But it's relentless, not in the same way as letless
• 29:03
  as you get the art today triumph, and then you get the dragon's breath
• 29:07
  scene from the above angle in the building, and then you get the steps,
• 29:12
  then you get the steps. Like you put those three back to back.
• 29:15
  That's like forty five minutes straight of NonStop action. You know, it's
• 29:19
  gets a lot. It's it's a lot. Now. I gotta ask you,
• 29:22
  man, because there's a there's a special actor who play who's in this
• 29:26
  in this show, mister mel Gibson, how do you work with not only
• 29:30
  a legend but arguably one of the better directors of his generation because he is
• 29:37
  a really good director as well. How was it to work with him?
• 29:41
  Yeah, he's he's he's a pro. And once you get to three,
• 29:47
  you'll see he goes off the hinges. You know, we'll be right back
• 29:52
  after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. And you
• 30:02
  know the process of working with him, you've seen in the past like he
• 30:04
  does he's very passionate, like Ransom or Braveheart or Road who is my favorite
• 30:10
  and that's why we wanted him. Yeah, hacks all is as a director
• 30:14
  is he makes you believe in what he's doing in the movie. If he's
• 30:18
  playing the character, you believe right. What I found was interesting is that
• 30:23
  he those zingers and one liners, that's him. He likes playing with words
• 30:26
  from Leaf, the Weapon movies. That is him. That's what he comes
• 30:30
  with, that's how his brain works. And he plays naive on the set
• 30:33
  and doesn't look back and look at everything and like what lends you using you
• 30:37
  know? And he acts like he doesn't know. He knows it, and
• 30:40
  he's watching everything like a hawk, and he doesn't go to his trailer,
• 30:42
  which it's a great thing to have with an actor, is that they're not
• 30:45
  slowing you down. He's very much I think he said it one day.
• 30:49
  He goes, I'm a good soldier, and he is. And he's highly
• 30:53
  intelligent on both sides of the camera. And it was just a fun like
• 30:59
  we had fun with the whole cast because I have some people in here,
• 31:03
  like Adam Shapiro, who's open a pretzel business during COVID and it's all the
• 31:08
  rage in Hollywood right now. It's Sheappy pretzels a who's a one liner,
• 31:12
  walking, one liner zinger comedy act. You know that I work with a
• 31:17
  past. There's few people I work with in the past that have this thing
• 31:18
  that I was dealing with with mel too, Like they just want to go
• 31:22
  on the set and half fun and they don't want to cause problems. They
• 31:25
  don't want any headaches, they don't want any drama. And those are my
• 31:26
  favorite kind of people. So he's cut from that cloth. And I've been
• 31:30
  here for forty years. How professional he is on the set and it's exactly
• 31:33
  what I saw. That's beautiful. Man. Now, when you when you
• 31:37
  walk into an action sequence like that, as a director, these are not
• 31:42
  simple, not simple sequences by any stretching, right, It's not like,
• 31:45
  hey, punch, punch, punch, the movement the camera. How would
• 31:49
  you how do you approach doing this? I know you've seen it a little
• 31:52
  bit of previous, but like if you're if you're talking to a young directors
• 31:56
  who are trying to get into action, how do you approach like some of
• 32:02
  those scenes like that in the in the first episode, the stair sequence,
• 32:07
  going down the stairs with him Will he looked like Keyana by the way he
• 32:10
  I mean, he was on point, the main actor, the main character,
• 32:15
  yeah, less training though he only had three weeks. Well he but
• 32:17
  he looked like I'm like, this guy looks like John I mean in the
• 32:21
  movie he looks like John Wick. I was like, oh man, he's
• 32:23
  like John Wick style. That's how good he is. And we are nodding
• 32:27
  to that. Yeah obviously, yeah, because he's just he was so good.
• 32:30
  It reminded me so much of John or of Keyana doing that. How
• 32:34
  do you approach that kind of scene as a director? Well, I was
• 32:38
  very lucky because of the built in nature of eighty seven eleven in Larnell Is.
• 32:46
  You would think you would have to stress about it. If it's a
• 32:47
  younger filmmaker and you don't have a great stunt team, you're in trouball.
• 32:52
  If you have a great stunt team, would I do with them? As
• 32:54
  I say, I've learned in the years, it's like and I think we
• 33:00
  discussed it before, It's like, sometimes let professionals be professionals. If you're
• 33:06
  trusting, don't get in their way, let them do their job, and
• 33:08
  then stir the pot every once in a while. I'll have my bullet points
• 33:12
  at once and for that sequence, what I wanted was very overall in a
• 33:16
  general sense was Jackie Chan's use of objects and how playful he is with them.
• 33:23
  So he's Frankie's carrying a chest with the point press in it, and
• 33:28
  I kept saying, and it was bullet points written down, and I will
• 33:30
  talk to Larnell. I want him to throw it at somebody so that distracts
• 33:35
  them and they could shoot it. That's very Jackie Chan. That's also very
• 33:37
  chest to hell Sky too and John Wick. It very much fits in that
• 33:42
  world. But I remember first seeing it with Jackie Chan. It's a playful
• 33:45
  playfulness with chairs, with objects and stuff like that. And then we would
• 33:51
  talk about the sequence and they would design it and then we start adjust making
• 33:54
  adjustments. Now a lot of times a struggle between me and Larnell, a
• 33:58
  healthy, really healthy struggle and debate creatively, was how long he was going
• 34:02
  The scene is a one page, that's one minute. You give me one
• 34:06
  minute. He would turn in six minutes, right. They'm like, Lornell,
• 34:08
  you're killing me over here. Right. So there's this would constantly going
• 34:12
  on. And that's part of the Wick way of being trained in stunts is
• 34:15
  like they do explore it fully. Right. So in that staircase sequence you're
• 34:20
  talking about, I cut out a whole floor of violence. There's a whole
• 34:23
  two sets of stairs that I cut out because I felt like it was undercutting
• 34:28
  the gag before and the gag after. And sometimes you have too much of
• 34:31
  something, it just undercuts itself because you can't focus on the peaks and valleys
• 34:37
  basically, And so that was even in the phone booth fight. The phone
• 34:39
  booth fight was really long when I first got it. You'll see this really
• 34:45
  fantastic fight between these two women and episode three on a roof, on the
• 34:50
  roof of the Continental. And when I first got it, it was long,
• 34:53
  and I told my editor, like, let's maybe cut back to somebody
• 34:57
  else and then cut back to this, and he just looked at me,
• 35:00
  said, no, this is Wick, this is Wick world. You don't
• 35:02
  you know it's a cut away. We're gonna stay in it. And I
• 35:05
  thank him. And that's what a good editor does too, is like when
• 35:07
  you're insecure as a director, they just say stop. No. They did
• 35:13
  like the scene. You've seen it because you haven't made it to three.
• 35:15
  You saw the Adjudicator scene where Enhanceman's beating down that guy and then that atrium,
• 35:21
  right, So when I get the first cut of that, because I
• 35:23
  love my offline, sounds would be great, they put great sounds. And
• 35:29
  so it was pretty much the same thing in an offline. It was brutal
• 35:31
  and how many times he was punching them in the opening, And I said,
• 35:35
  Ron Ron Rose is my editor. I mean, he's a genius.
• 35:37
  Like a run I think maybe there's too many punches on this guy's face,
• 35:42
  and the studio, the network's gonna say something, and I kind of agree,
• 35:45
  maybe it's a little too much. It goes dude, dude, it's
• 35:49
  it's the Wick, it's the Wick roll. There's there's no such thing as
• 35:51
  too many punches. And I'm like, Okay, well, we'll just keep
• 35:53
  it in for now and see if they say anything. Right, they never
• 35:57
  said anything. And then I watched John Wick four and when he when he's
• 36:00
  punching Killer in the Faith to get his tooth, like, it's about the
• 36:04
  same number of punches. But again, it's Keanu. Keano's such a soft
• 36:08
  spot for the audience. Said he can pretty much get away with anything except
• 36:14
  killing an animal, right. I mean, you can fall out of four
• 36:16
  stories, land on a limo, and limp away four times in the movie
• 36:22
  continuously. Yeah, continue and then fall down forty flights up stairs, get
• 36:27
  up, brush it off, and you just like get shut off a building
• 36:30
  get shut off a building by Winston fall falling an awning and then on the
• 36:34
  concrete. YEP, sure why not? Yeah, yeah, it's Kenna.
• 36:37
  Of course it's it's Scannon. Now with that said, so with that said,
• 36:42
  did you have any Easter eggs? Lay it out throughout this episode?
• 36:45
  These episodes of for John Wicks, there is the John Wick Easter egg for
• 36:51
  the hardcore fans, there's the casual Easter eggs, and then there's a nineteen
• 36:55
  seventies Easter eggs Like let's go and reverse, so nineteen seventies Easter eggs.
• 37:00
  En picks up Frankie after the staircase shootout. That's an exact replica of Travis
• 37:05
  Bickles taxi from Taxi Driver. Remember episode two, episode two. If you're
• 37:10
  noticed a laden Episode two, a star skinning Hutch car appears red with that
• 37:15
  Nike white swish whatever that is. Episode three, right before that phone we've
• 37:22
  beat down I told you about, there's the Warriors from the movie Warriors.
• 37:25
  There's the hearse with a graffiti all over it. Right, then you have
• 37:30
  the obvious John Wick kind of Easter eggs that are quite obvious. Whether it's
• 37:35
  what they we're doing with the coins, what some of the rules are,
• 37:37
  what some of the changes of the rules are. Then the deeper ones,
• 37:40
  like an episode one when Winston gets the ide get idead to go to the
• 37:44
  theater to see that old decrepit theater where he finds his brother. The scene
• 37:51
  before that, he's at a stoplighting. He looks at a poster and it's
• 37:54
  a Marilyn Monroe movie and the name of the movie is be Seeing You,
• 37:59
  which is from Wick film two. And I think the the death the death
• 38:04
  of woman. I forgot her name. She's she would constantly signed to him
• 38:08
  be seeing You, and he would signed back after he killed her, be
• 38:10
  seeing You. So that's the title of the Marian mar Row movie because they
• 38:15
  wouldn't give us the rights to gentlemen prefer prefers blonds as a title, and
• 38:19
  that triggers a memory, and then that line recalls again in episode of three
• 38:23
  of the show. And also the Adjudicator's license plate. She has a car
• 38:28
  we revealing episode three, but her license plate is a line from The Adjudicator
• 38:31
  and film three show Filthy Right. So there's a bunch of them that and
• 38:38
  Kirk, the show runner, he itemized them all because Peacock Marketing and Amazon
• 38:45
  Marketing wanted it for their you know, that's a really smart thing of them
• 38:50
  to do. They wanted it to use it for marketing, and I forget
• 38:53
  until I see it, like, oh god, there's that. There's that.
• 38:55
  There's a bunch of them in there. So that's really interesting. So
• 38:59
  that was kind of part of the plan all. I mean, yeah,
• 39:00
  i'll give you once in a while you'll throw stuff in, but this was
• 39:04
  like really thought out, like where are you going to throw? Yeah,
• 39:07
  it was more coming from me and Kirk being fans of the movie. It
• 39:10
  wasn't any mandate. There wasn't even they didn't even tip us off from the
• 39:15
  film side what happens in john Wick four. Although I saw it early in
• 39:19
  posts for this, they weren't doing that and it was so free in a
• 39:22
  way. They weren't doing what Disney or Marvel would do, which is like
• 39:24
  they have these particular mandates you have to have to choose the show to not
• 39:29
  to the future. We love that we could reverse engineer and know what we
• 39:34
  well, the first three films were we knew what that was, and they
• 39:37
  just kind of trusted us. I don't know why, but they did,
• 39:40
  and me and Kirk would just break down those movies and say, well,
• 39:44
  that would be funny if we can put that in there. And it's always
• 39:46
  fun to put Easter eggs. I think Easter eggs, like, even if
• 39:50
  you're just doing a normal movie that has no reference to anything IP related,
• 39:54
  to put Easter eggs in there. Nodding too other movies. It's always a
• 39:58
  fun thing. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 40:06
  now back to the show. And in episode three you'll get the famous one.
• 40:12
  You have to really watch out for it from my favorite movie of all
• 40:15
  time, in that comboy, I'm Walking over here. You know, Yeah,
• 40:17
  of course that was a complete fluke when that happened. Well, now
• 40:22
  did you hear there's two different versions of that story now that that was not
• 40:25
  really that I know is that it was a real cat, a real cab
• 40:31
  almost ran over Dustin Offman, He's like, that's that was the story.
• 40:36
  What's the story? Now? They're the counter story that is actually believable because
• 40:40
  we know what goes on. They would have had to get a release from
• 40:44
  that guy that uses his likeness the cab driver, because you clearly see his
• 40:49
  face and they would never have wanted to put the actors in that much peril
• 40:52
  walking across the street secretly recording. And the lineup dialogue I heard is actually
• 41:00
  written that the ad lib maybe the line after where he talks about that could
• 41:05
  be a good insurance scam too. I saw the story that broke it all
• 41:08
  down, and I go, oh, that's interesting because for years people have
• 41:10
  thought this, but we got to hear it from Dustin's mouth, I guess,
• 41:15
  I mean, And and he's gonna tell the truth at this point the
• 41:17
  game. He's just going might want to live there exactly. I mean,
• 41:21
  yeah, I mean, it was the sixties. It was the sixties.
• 41:22
  I almost thinking it was sixteen. Sixty eight was shot. Sixty eight was
• 41:27
  shot, so it was the sixties. Would they need the release? Yeah,
• 41:30
  But it wasn't a public environment, so maybe that's true. That's true.
• 41:35
  You can kind of get that documentary, But he could because it wasn't
• 41:37
  a public street technically, you don't need I mean, and it was just
• 41:43
  a different once. And they were doing that thing back then where within New
• 41:45
  York where they were shooting inside of a van with like the tinted glass to
• 41:49
  get shots like that. Oh yeah, like yeah, and without permits and
• 41:52
  just like running around sometimes because it was just kind of it was guerrilla filmmaking.
• 41:57
  It was kind of the beginning and then the beginning. But it was
• 42:00
  like when they started to really start, the indie vibe started like nothing.
• 42:05
  The Night Cowboy really kind of started that little easy easy rider and now and
• 42:08
  obviously Raging Bowl and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it was
• 42:14
  I'm curious if you talked to dust next time you talked to Dustin, let
• 42:19
  me know, I'll hit them up. He's in my rolodotic stunk exactly so
• 42:24
  coming from a collar back. I was at the colors for a long time
• 42:28
  as well and had a post house. I was looking at the approach to
• 42:32
  the color grading on this what'd you shoot this song? By the way,
• 42:36
  general, what camera it was? The airy forgot which model X, whatever
• 42:40
  the fuck it was. It was the same lenses it looked, but we
• 42:45
  it was degraded. It was degraded it because we got the nineteen fifties lenses.
• 42:52
  I may have talked to you about this before from kind of vision that
• 42:54
  no dps want to use anymore because their sold. They literally had to dust
• 42:58
  them all. When I was doing Lord Bird and they have all these imperfections
• 43:01
  and anomalies in them, right, and they are They were built for MGM
• 43:08
  by path or path A. Path A and MGM were somehow involved, right,
• 43:14
  They hadn't been used in years. And I had Dan Sasaki, who
• 43:16
  was a lens guru over at Panevision who services all the top dps, and
• 43:22
  I just went in one day without my DP because my DP was in a
• 43:25
  different city, and I said, just give me the funkiest lenses you got.
• 43:30
  Just think of anything wild that nobody wants to touch, even if it's
• 43:32
  cracked, just bring it. And then we started testing them out and I
• 43:36
  picked this set. And later I found out because I said I would like
• 43:38
  a list of the films these were shot on or yeah, And it took
• 43:44
  them actually months to get me the list. It was like a list of
• 43:45
  two hundred films. But the three films that stood out to me were Doctor
• 43:50
  Shivago, Cool Hand, Luke, and The Graduate. So you watching the
• 43:55
  Continental, you're actually seeing through the same exact lenses that shot those three classic
• 44:01
  films. Right now, I could have shot with a red an Airy or
• 44:07
  Sony and I don't think you truly could know the difference because we're not only
• 44:10
  doing that, we're also deciding a lot. We're Maxine Gervais, who is
• 44:15
  my color as I spoke to you about last time, who's done all my
• 44:19
  projects dating back to Book of Eli, which we talk about that. She's
• 44:22
  fantastic, she's an artist. She's my partner on every project. Like,
• 44:28
  there is no DP director relationship without her, that tray. If that trifecta
• 44:31
  doesn't work, if the DP comes in and doesn't get along with her,
• 44:35
  I can't hire him because she's she's my partner in this, you know.
• 44:40
  So she goes in and we start doing the grain thing again. We start
• 44:45
  we don't do that that film grain that when they license out, which is
• 44:47
  bullshit. You know, it's like a scam. There's complete scam. It's
• 44:52
  a scam. Okay, she scan, she's they've scanned every film stock imaginable
• 44:58
  from the past. Okay for grain. And then she does the thing and
• 45:01
  I don't know the technical tarms for it, but there's different layers of color
• 45:06
  registration and mids highlights and you know more than I on this thing, right,
• 45:09
  and how brain interacts with the mids and the highlights and the blacks,
• 45:13
  and she goes in and there's different layers to and degrees to it, and
• 45:17
  sometimes we lay in. We do the stuff where we try to have the
• 45:21
  imperfection, so like one close up maybe grainier than the other one, or
• 45:24
  the white shots are a little more grainy than the medium shots, so we
• 45:30
  checkerboard the grain. We picked the degrees of brain ten, twenty or thirty
• 45:34
  or forty percent, and our base level, let's say, be twenty throughout
• 45:37
  the whole show, and then we sometimes go to ten and go to forty.
• 45:42
  And it's a subconscious thing where you when you're watching it, you feel
• 45:45
  a little bit of inconsistency that reminds you of analog. And so there was
• 45:51
  a lot of things she did that she's a genius colorist basically, like she's
• 45:58
  like she's going to be bad. Said that she's like the rain Man of
• 46:00
  colorists because I tease her about certain things. There's a compliment, but I
• 46:07
  could see where she could go, Hey man, yeah, but I tease
• 46:08
  her about. We meet her like people come into our color sections and they
• 46:13
  see us big ring because she's so sensitive because she's an artist and she just
• 46:16
  goes hard to get it right. And sometimes I'll just say something just to
• 46:21
  fuck with her. But they think that me and Maxine are fighting, and
• 46:25
  we're not really fighting. We love each other and we're never mad at each
• 46:29
  other, never, right it she'll pick she'll pick on me, and I'll
• 46:31
  pick on her, and she'll say something like okay. So there's a transition.
• 46:36
  I know you wouldn't notice. It's like I like sometimes self conscious transition.
• 46:39
  So it's tilting up from the beat down the judicator and goes this atrim
• 46:44
  yellow circlesitions into a yellow light. Right. Oh, I love that well,
• 46:47
  I love that shot. Yeah, that's what I was talking about.
• 46:50
  That was of the shots I was talking about what I said about directors.
• 46:52
  Absolutely, yeah, So with her like E really in prep, I'll put
• 46:55
  in a shot list. I'll put a magazine dissolved, which is a customer
• 47:00
  mice dissolved. You know how that works. You're pulling different image up on
• 47:02
  the second on the B side and you get the customized disissolved. I said,
• 47:07
  I put So I'll put in the shot list, and it's for the
• 47:08
  editor too, because he has my shot list. So then we magazine dissolved
• 47:13
  by putting in quotation to the next scene and it said it's a yoo white
• 47:15
  dad. I didn't know. I didn't explain it to my editor what a
• 47:20
  magazine dissolve was because him and his assistant were busy online thinking it's a technical
• 47:23
  term from Hollywood. They can and I said, no, no, no,
• 47:27
  it's my colors who does these fantastic kind of creative dissolve Because that was
• 47:31
  one like one session we were snapping at each other on Alpha about as.
• 47:37
  I said, Okay, Maxine, I need like a forty eight frame dissolve
• 47:39
  here, and she just snickered at me and goes, oh, you want
• 47:43
  to dissolve here? I thought you wanted something more creative. And I'm like,
• 47:47
  well, sometimes a normal dissolve it marks you know, that's her,
• 47:53
  that's her. That's amazing that they thought that was like a special term,
• 47:58
  because, to be fair, in holl there there's always since the beginning of
• 48:01
  time, there's all these weird names for certain things, you know, a
• 48:05
  stinger fifty two or scream yeah, will exactly, and the people like a
• 48:12
  magazine dissolved. Where's the magazine that? Yeah? Well, now you know
• 48:16
  from your show indie film Hustle, a magazine dissolved it is a custom dissolved.
• 48:22
  From henceforth, Yes, from henceforth, they will be called the maxxine.
• 48:28
  It dissolved. I gotta ask you, man, Look, I mean,
• 48:31
  you and I are a couple of old dogs. We've been We've got
• 48:35
  a couple of bit of shrapnel under our belt. And you know, when
• 48:38
  you and I talk is so much fun because we're talking cinema and talking about
• 48:44
  what we you know, our generation kind of grew up with. I don't
• 48:47
  see that coming up behind us, man, I mean there are some where
• 48:52
  do you think fifty I mean, are they going to be doing you know
• 48:55
  this kind of like what you just explained with the grain, Like, are
• 49:01
  they going to be doing that in forty or fifty years? Man? Is
• 49:05
  it? What do you think? Well, it's it's the TikTok generation now
• 49:10
  right, the generation that's born. I mean, a lot of after us
• 49:15
  are just a little bit out for us. We were, we were there
• 49:17
  from the analog to digital. We saw that. I'm so happy we were
• 49:22
  that. We know the different between film it's the bridge generation. It's the
• 49:25
  bridge generation. Yeah, yeah, And we know the difference between digital editing
• 49:30
  and film editing, you know, and it's so I'm so grateful that we
• 49:36
  got to see that there's something interesting going on. And this is a subtle
• 49:39
  or conversation or a more nuanced one about this generation. It's like they're seeing
• 49:44
  like, let's say, a movies on the theater and they didn't put film
• 49:46
  graining and they didn't do this, and it's very clean. It's a Marvel
• 49:50
  movie and it's very everything's very clean. It's very digital. It's still somehow
• 49:54
  does feel like film because of twenty four frames, because the shutter. We'll
• 50:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 50:07
  show. Motion blur and depth of field depending on how you use it,
• 50:14
  those three things we talked about before, right, that do convey the sense
• 50:16
  of cinema. And it took a while for digital get there because of those
• 50:20
  three things in image quality. Right, But if you actually play a piece
• 50:23
  of film, you go, WHOA, Well this is completely oh god,
• 50:30
  And even me and you have been been fulled into thinking this looks like film,
• 50:35
  would actually know there's a whole other thing going on. There's registration problems,
• 50:39
  there's scratches, there's done print, there's all this sort of project project.
• 50:44
  The print of Lawrence of Arabia and project digitally project the print of a
• 50:50
  Marvel movie. And you tell me if there's a difference in these, it's
• 50:53
  an analog. It's an analog quality. Now, now I'm going to parse
• 50:57
  this argument out different Like I think you and I talked about this before.
• 51:00
  I really don't get off on this whole film purist shit that a group of
• 51:06
  filmmakers and are big filmmakers about. I think it's fucking bullshit. It's nostalgia.
• 51:12
  It makes no sense. And excuse me, excuse me for saying this.
• 51:15
  It's a bunch of white man who are nostalgic. Okay. They need
• 51:19
  to stop going against the winds of They need to stop going against the winds
• 51:22
  of change and start help building windmills. Okay. And when I see a
• 51:27
  bunch of nostalgic old timers, it triggers me as a biracial guy. Do
• 51:34
  you start getting too nostalgic? That goes down a dangerous road. Okay,
• 51:37
  Let's just take all these let's take all the I know I'm being harsh there,
• 51:42
  okay, but let's take all these tools available to us and tell the
• 51:45
  stories we need to tell. Like some of them don't believe in d I
• 51:47
  some are I didn't have any VFX in this movie. I don't give a
• 51:51
  fuck, or are talking overly too much about IMAX, Like I don't give
• 51:54
  a shit. Is it good? That's all that the audience cares about.
• 51:59
  Is it good? I feel was shotting an iPhone like Tangerine. It doesn't
• 52:01
  matter. Is it good? But to answer the larger thing you're talking about,
• 52:07
  it's like we're in the world with everything's getting drowned out by too many
• 52:13
  voices on the internet, and like you know that because you have to find
• 52:15
  your niche and all that stuff. So film guys saw him a film in
• 52:20
  history. It's gotta kind of die away with the new generation, and they're
• 52:24
  gonna be talking about the films from our generation as being you know, they're
• 52:30
  gonna be talking it's not really our genera. Theyren't be talking about Marvel movies
• 52:34
  like like as if it's a Lawrence of Arabia. That's what's crazy. But
• 52:37
  you know what Quinn said this really quick. I saw an interview with Quinton
• 52:40
  and he said, this is really interesting. He said he saw he had
• 52:43
  a conversation with the sixteen year old and he's like, yeah, I was
• 52:45
  four years old when iron Man came out and he goes for that kid that
• 52:50
  is Citizen Kane, that is you know, Lawrence of a Rain and iron
• 52:54
  Man. It's a good movie. Iron Man is a great movie. Iron
• 52:58
  Man is a fantastic film. But the point is that that is I mean,
• 53:01
  if you talk to John Favor, he's not gonna like, yeah,
• 53:04
  it's as good as Lars of Arabia, or is as good as you know
• 53:06
  all these It's not good. It's a classic in the in that genre without
• 53:09
  question. But well it's also like it's just like when me or you were
• 53:14
  younger, did you remember. I'm sure you went through the stage where you
• 53:16
  were the certain age. I don't know. Want to watch a black and
• 53:19
  white film when you're twelve white it's old, like diffent watch it and then
• 53:23
  you're not older and you're like, oh, but here's what happened during COVID.
• 53:29
  I gotta tell you about what happens because I've been to film school,
• 53:30
  I got film books, and I've read and I watched a lot of stuff.
• 53:34
  I have the Criterion Channel, and I started deep diving in the thirties
• 53:37
  and being really fascinated by the fact that the technique of opticals and camera movement
• 53:45
  and lighting was at an apex in the thirties, and I'm like, well,
• 53:47
  why is this? Like thirties and forties, fifties and started to slow
• 53:51
  down by the sixties was out unless it was a very special director like Hitchcock,
• 53:54
  right, or David Lean or something like that. But the thirties,
• 54:00
  Kubrick, But the thirties had transitions and moves like I've never seen before,
• 54:05
  right, And I go, what is this? And I started thinking about
• 54:08
  it. I go, whoa nineteen thirty, nineteen twenty seven, twenty seven,
• 54:12
  twenty eight. Sound came in. Before sound, they had to rely
• 54:15
  strictly on the visuals, so they were well flexed in the visual and opticals.
• 54:20
  Right. You look at Metropolis and the optical multi layer opticals, okay,
• 54:23
  and the framing in that. Oh, So they started leaning more towards
• 54:27
  dialogue and now da da da, they started going away from technique of the
• 54:31
  visual. And that was an epiphany I came to. I don't know if
• 54:36
  it's correct a film theory, but an epiphany I came through this last year
• 54:38
  because I've been deep diving on thirties films and I'm like, oh my god,
• 54:44
  I'm so embarrassed that I thought that we can out steal them. You
• 54:49
  know, it's like, no, you can't. Creativity. It's creativity.
• 54:52
  It doesn't age, you know. I mean you look at they look at
• 54:55
  something like seven Samurai or you look at you know, any of course Ay
• 55:00
  cour Sawa films at rashamanor all of those. You just started looking you like,
• 55:05
  oh, okay, yeah, I just I just okay, I got
• 55:09
  I got it what they're doing it at a time when there was no video
• 55:12
  monitors. They couldn't even Sergio Leone didn't have a video monitor with those close
• 55:16
  ups. Bro, watch I Am Cuba? Are you kidding me? Watch
• 55:21
  that movie I Am Cuba? And you're just sitting there like, who never
• 55:25
  heard of these filmmakers doing stuff with like five thousand pound cameras that look like
• 55:30
  they're doing it with an iPhone. They're you know, putting things on girt,
• 55:35
  on on wires and putting them in the middle of the street while there's
• 55:37
  a revolution, Go like, what is going on? And that was what
• 55:43
  six the sixties. It was in the sixties of him, I mistaken it
• 55:47
  was and it was hidden into Yeah, that's what's amazing about those films,
• 55:52
  Like it was much tougher, much heavier equipment, Like you're saying, right,
• 55:57
  communication They didn't even have a walkie talkie, he said in early cinema.
• 56:01
  Right, they didn't have crack we'll control they They didn't have a lot
• 56:06
  of things. It was a lot tougher. And then you had to get
• 56:08
  printed scripts, do everything by phone. There's no digitally sending the print or
• 56:14
  a script to someone across town to read it right away. It's it's amazing.
• 56:17
  It's like it just shows you something like put those people nowadays, Oh,
• 56:22
  they're running circles around all of us. I mean, can they already
• 56:25
  wore But let's say, can you imagine Kubrick with today's technology? Can you
• 56:30
  imagine Hitchcock? Wonder? I'm so that's that's that's a fascinating thing you just
• 56:35
  said, Like what what Hitchcock and Kubrick embrace digital or what they do like
• 56:39
  these other handful of directors who don't know I'm only gonna shooting film, which
• 56:45
  well, I thought I was gonna be one of those guys in film school.
• 56:46
  I was like, I'll never leave film, Like I'll never leave film
• 56:49
  no, man, we talked about it before. It's like, I love
• 56:52
  the control of digital. I love knowing I sleep at night. I got
• 56:54
  it right. You don't have to wait the next day to you roll the
• 56:59
  dice. Oh was the gate? Was there a hair at the gate?
• 57:00
  Oh? Was there the great monitor? You can see you can put your
• 57:04
  lut on there. You can see how the set and the customs react to
• 57:07
  it. Like, no, I'm not into the mystery dog. Forget that.
• 57:12
  I agreed, but you got But the thing is that both you and
• 57:15
  I had the opportunity to shoot thirty five, to shoot sixteen, to shoot
• 57:19
  super eight, to play with those things, you know, to do cross
• 57:22
  processing in the lab, to get image, get image saturation with the load.
• 57:28
  And I am the stalgic about I am the stalgic about it. In
• 57:30
  one way, I like to emulate it. I like the look of it.
• 57:36
  It doesn't mean I want to use that tool that get the look.
• 57:37
  I want to use this tool that gets the look. You know, because
• 57:40
  this tool gives me greater comfort and control, and I can even do my
• 57:44
  blow ups and repose and stabilizations much more. Not easier, It just there's
• 57:51
  another word for it. It comes down to quality and control, and people
• 57:55
  can debate this thing about you know, you hear different people say that thirty
• 58:00
  five millimeters a K or ten K, and then you're hearing another DP tell
• 58:04
  me, no, it's nothing better than ten eighty. It's pixels versus the
• 58:07
  grain depending on the stock you pick. You know, so you know at
• 58:10
  a certain point you're human eye. After four K, it's not even didn't
• 58:16
  okay, dare dare the audience member to know the difference? You know,
• 58:21
  you really can't tell the difference. I mean then now there's a little bit
• 58:23
  difference with the h I forget what's called with the color GRADINGHDR. H HDR
• 58:29
  you get a little bit more color. I did. We did a past
• 58:31
  and it's a trip, man, dude, it's a trip. They bring
• 58:35
  it two monitors and they're coloring my Maxine's coloring the standard one. I forgot
• 58:39
  what red seven or nine or whatever it is, right, and then HDR
• 58:44
  and depending on your TV screen, you can get the HDR version of the
• 58:47
  continental Right. At first, I'm like, well, I didn't understand what
• 58:51
  I know what HDR is. You know how it grabs the highlights in the
• 58:53
  mids and lows and it balance it out basically in your phone. I know
• 58:57
  what it is in theory, but when I'm looking at this image that's HDR
• 59:00
  looks more contrasting, it me, it's popping more. I I didn't think
• 59:04
  that's what HR was. But there's something going on there that I actually preferred
• 59:07
  that over the rect seven oh nine or whatever. If I'm term you like
• 59:15
  that quite. But but your whole filmography is that you like poppy stuff.
• 59:19
  Dude, Like, look at back a little book of your contract. Yeah.
• 59:23
  Yeah, yeah, you're crunching, you're crunching the blacks, you're popping
• 59:27
  the highlights, You're making things a little bit poppier. That's my style to
• 59:30
  love. But the difference is if you I don't know what time type of
• 59:35
  the TV you're watching, I'm assuming you have a huge TV. You're watching
• 59:37
  the show and the laptop. Okay, yeah, just goes watching it on
• 59:42
  this last night? It was great. Yeah. The difference is that a
• 59:45
  problem? I shouldn't watch it? No, no, no, no,
• 59:49
  we're talking. We're just talking about that generation getting ready for it and we
• 59:52
  all we by the way, it's funny, but we all do have to
• 59:53
  be aware of that, right. But like if you look at the lighting
• 59:58
  style. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
• 1:00:07
  back to the show. Of episode one and two, I chose this really
• 1:00:13
  young DP, really dope. He's a hippie dude, long hair from Norway,
• 1:00:16
  right speak man, just an artist, right, but he's more into
• 1:00:21
  ambient light, you know, fill the wrong little smoke and not hard light,
• 1:00:25
  soft light. And I started learning along the way that I actually love
• 1:00:29
  the way it looks. It's not what I've done with in the pastor talking
• 1:00:32
  about contrasts, it's harder to do contrast with lying style like that. It's
• 1:00:36
  you're seeing lighting. So what I learned during the show was when you couple
• 1:00:43
  that with these old lenses, it can get dangerous. You have to watch
• 1:00:45
  happen, right. I get to the third episode with Peter Deming shoots it,
• 1:00:51
  who I've worked with on from Hell and a bunch of other stuff old
• 1:00:53
  time. He's been around, He's done Austin Powers, he's done the Scream
• 1:00:57
  series, he's done Lost Highway with David Mulhall and Drive. He's been around.
• 1:01:00
  So at a certain point we're shooting and I can't wait for you to
• 1:01:04
  see three. We're shooting. He just goes Howard trying to introduce a little
• 1:01:08
  hard light here, and I didn't know what he meant, right, because
• 1:01:12
  I do have him my style guide in no air lighting. This that shadows
• 1:01:15
  silhouettes, and you need hard lighting for that kind of stuff usually. Okay,
• 1:01:20
  So we wrap the whole thing and I see him at the premiere and
• 1:01:22
  I'm talking to him and I said, I know what you mean. Now
• 1:01:25
  moving forward, we have to be careful with these lenses. I love what
• 1:01:28
  they've done for the show because they fucket it up with that kind of more
• 1:01:30
  diffused look. But moving forward with this, I want to use more hard
• 1:01:36
  light. And I now know what you were saying that day. Peter,
• 1:01:38
  Like, thank you, basically right, because this is why. Actually,
• 1:01:43
  when you see episode three, you'll see what Peter Demming did with those lenses.
• 1:01:46
  He's still within the same style of lighting. But he he's like,
• 1:01:50
  we're creeping into we're not using handheld. I got out of handheld because I'm
• 1:01:53
  actually not a fan of it. I think me and you talked about it
• 1:01:55
  before. It's not control to me. It works in the John Wick or
• 1:02:00
  for certain things, and Chasta Helski does it wonderfully because he's not doing it
• 1:02:04
  in that pault Paul green Grass style. Chaste Helki is more. It's almost
• 1:02:07
  it's almost a steadicam the way they use it for piano. You know,
• 1:02:10
  we went a little bit more raw with a staircase scene because it's the seventies.
• 1:02:15
  You can get away with a throwback handheld look, you know. But
• 1:02:19
  you'll see if you go from episode one, two and three, there is
• 1:02:23
  not one handheld shot in three. There's a little in two, and there's
• 1:02:28
  a few Dutch tilts in there that I had to adjust and put in because
• 1:02:30
  I'm not into big into Dutch tails, but that was that director's thing,
• 1:02:35
  and you know, I had to just the other episodes because of it.
• 1:02:38
  So I was able to go put a Dutch tailed in one. That's what's
• 1:02:42
  great about TV. You can go, oh, well, that director did
• 1:02:44
  that. It's not necessarily in my style guide, but I can course correct
• 1:02:46
  this a little bit for the audience, you know. You know, it's
• 1:02:50
  it's interesting I shot with the Super Bowl tars back in the day on a
• 1:02:55
  red for the same reason you shot with the airy and these older it dude.
• 1:03:00
  Super Bowl tars were like dirty from the forties, very hard. Like
• 1:03:05
  the thing was like I forgot last home made him. I don't know who
• 1:03:07
  made them, but anyway, like they gave it a funky look because the
• 1:03:10
  red had this hard edge digital thing. Harry, Yeah, yeah, the
• 1:03:16
  very the older ones had really hard edges. And I'm like, I can't,
• 1:03:21
  I can't. I need something to soften it up. But then you
• 1:03:23
  start throwing a little ambiance and there a little a little smoke in there.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah you get by the way, the Red used to eat up smoke.
• 1:03:30
  Did you notice, Oh yeah, yeah, the first chest we did,
• 1:03:32
  it was like film registering film. The Red would just eat it up and
• 1:03:36
  make it go away in a way like you had to see the room more
• 1:03:38
  for a red, right exactly. Then when you start, when you know
• 1:03:42
  how it is just smoke, like the Tony Scott stuff, Like when you
• 1:03:44
  start Tony Scott enging it up a little bit. It's hard, man,
• 1:03:47
  It's hard to control the light. It's hard to and then and you try
• 1:03:51
  to match it for cuts, get it, dude, I mean you always
• 1:03:55
  you always run into that problem. But if you if you have a good
• 1:03:59
  stage, that's the only way to control it. Yeah, that's the only
• 1:04:01
  way but you know what I want to do. Yeah, no, yeah,
• 1:04:05
  you definitely have to have a good what do you call it's the effects
• 1:04:09
  guys, the set effects guys that do it. The DP and gaffer to
• 1:04:13
  keep their eye on it, the camera operators keep his eye on it,
• 1:04:15
  the director has to keep his eye on it, and everybody's like checking the
• 1:04:18
  levels. And now you can reference the other shot now, thank god.
• 1:04:21
  But back in the day you could you couldn't do that. But it's interesting
• 1:04:26
  because Peter does some of that you're talking about. You'll see in episode three
• 1:04:30
  when you get there. There's a lot of the shaft lighting come starting to
• 1:04:31
  point into it early on. Yeah, that's why I want to bring Kirk.
• 1:04:38
  Well, I want to bring Kirk back because if you'll have us,
• 1:04:40
  if you'll have us, and we could do because we're lining up episode three.
• 1:04:43
  There's a lot of screenings going on for episode three with Collider, and
• 1:04:46
  you know, there's other screens going on around town and they're actually you know,
• 1:04:51
  hopefully this thing in Hollyway will be over soon, you know, I'm
• 1:04:56
  praying and everybody will be able to meet the actors in the others. But
• 1:05:01
  for Kirk and I to come talk to you about three because I think you're
• 1:05:05
  you're going to see a lot of stuff in there that we grew we grew
• 1:05:09
  up, we grew up on nice. Well, of course you're of course
• 1:05:15
  you're welcome, sir, anytime, and I'd love to talk to Kurt as
• 1:05:16
  well. I have to ask you this one question, man, what was
• 1:05:19
  the toughest day on set? How did you overcome it? Then? Oh,
• 1:05:23
  jeez, man, you have to pray this is this is why we
• 1:05:26
  went three and a half hours generation where well, cod no, well,
• 1:05:30
  we'll still start wrapping it up soon. I just it was still wrapping it
• 1:05:33
  up. But I no, I mean, you hit me with something that
• 1:05:35
  I gotta say is like you saw it because you you you've seen the first
• 1:05:40
  episode. It was the toughest shoot day of my life. As that party
• 1:05:44
  scene that appears to be a winner, but we stitched together three shots and
• 1:05:47
  the issue was, and I don't want to come off on kind here,
• 1:05:50
  I'm gonna say, I'm gonna try to thread the needle here. If you're
• 1:05:55
  conducting an orchestra and one instruments out of place, you know you you have
• 1:06:00
  to have a little talk with the flute player. And if the instruments still
• 1:06:03
  out of place. You might have to think about replacing the flute player.
• 1:06:06
  Well, we had the flute player and the violinist was out of tune,
• 1:06:12
  and I saw some early signs of it, and that the shot was way
• 1:06:16
  more challenging than it had to be. Okay, because if you correctly planet,
• 1:06:23
  you get your your extras and pods. You know you're dealing with animals,
• 1:06:26
  you know you're dealing with aralists. You're dealing with a lot of things
• 1:06:28
  that shot. You're hiding things, you're revealing things you need the whole And
• 1:06:33
  that's what I love about it One Or. That's what I told the crew
• 1:06:35
  out and Budapest, and they were wonderful, by the way, had nothing
• 1:06:39
  to do with the Hungarian crew because they were fucking fantastic. Okay. It
• 1:06:42
  was either an American or British I'm talking about, okay, and they're supposed
• 1:06:45
  to be fantastic. What I said is what I love about one Or is
• 1:06:49
  is you can get a lot done quickly. That's one thing you have.
• 1:06:53
  The aesthetic thing is another thing, which you know about right the thing.
• 1:06:57
  The other thing it does that most people don't give another way too is No,
• 1:07:02
  one hasn't escaped, not the actor, not wardrobe, not hair,
• 1:07:06
  not makeup. Everybody's exposed, not the grips. Everybody's exposed. Okay,
• 1:07:12
  So they get to this heightened sense of they go into fighter pilot mode because
• 1:07:15
  they don't want to be the weak link. And if you drop a warner
• 1:07:19
  on them every other day or every day, a mini one or a long
• 1:07:23
  runner, you know you don't have to do it a lot. You're just
• 1:07:25
  doing it to save time on a certain section of the scene or whatever.
• 1:07:29
  Your crew gets into fighter pilot mode because they don't want to be the weak
• 1:07:32
  link, and they all super They are super focused. Not if you do
• 1:07:35
  coverage, they start to unFocus because they know that you can cut a round
• 1:07:40
  a mistake, if an equipment piece drops, if an actor flows a line,
• 1:07:45
  if hair and makeup don't get the hair out of a nine time,
• 1:07:47
  they'll let the take continue. So it does this wonderful thing mentally to the
• 1:07:53
  crew. And so I have this scene that you're asking the question about,
• 1:07:56
  and by the end of it, it just felt like I went ten rounds
• 1:07:59
  with Mike Tyson because I didn't have I had the proper support of eighty percent
• 1:08:03
  of the crew. Of ninety percent of the crew, that ten percent really
• 1:08:06
  really affected the day on what shouldn't have been an easy shot, but what
• 1:08:12
  should have been a normal one or one day if it was properly done by
• 1:08:19
  everybody being at their best. But again, this is what post is for.
• 1:08:24
  This is what why repo, why stabilize, why building hidden cuts,
• 1:08:30
  and this is why people you know sometimes like there's some filmmakers I'll take swipe
• 1:08:34
  at other filmmakers that's not a real one er. Well, it doesn't matter.
• 1:08:39
  It's for the audience to have the impression you're doing something in real time.
• 1:08:44
  The audience doesn't know that just because you know that jackass doesn't mean it's
• 1:08:48
  not about how you do it. It's about the result basically, you know.
• 1:08:53
  So, yeah, tough, the toughest day of my career. You
• 1:08:56
  could say the same thing about rope. That's not a real water I'm like,
• 1:09:00
  okay, but it's hitchcock and he was doing it in seven cuts.
• 1:09:01
  Shut the hell up. Yeah, yeah, I mean, come on,
• 1:09:05
  shut the hellup. No, that's just I mean, he still has the
• 1:09:09
  record. He kind of still has the record if you think about it,
• 1:09:12
  because it's per real during film. He has the record. Oh no,
• 1:09:15
  I won't touched him. Yeah, no, what I mean? He was
• 1:09:16
  insane? It was insane. But we can. We've done the three hours
• 1:09:20
  on Hitchcock alone. So I want to ask you a few questions that I
• 1:09:25
  ask all the guests. See how if they've changed the bit since last you
• 1:09:28
  were here. What advice would you give? What advice would you give a
• 1:09:32
  filmmaker trying to break into day's business. I remember my last answer. I
• 1:09:40
  think it had to do with talent, and sometimes you can develop your talent,
• 1:09:45
  but you have to know if you have the talent for what you're trying
• 1:09:46
  to do. If you if you're saying filmmaker by director, you mean director,
• 1:09:50
  not writer, not cameraman, filmmaker. We'll be right back after a
• 1:09:57
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Recognize if you
• 1:10:06
  have talent early. If you do, keep going. If you don't,
• 1:10:10
  and you have to be honest with yourself, get out of the way,
• 1:10:12
  is what I said in the last podcast, because you're wasting space for people
• 1:10:15
  who need that space. Right There's plenty of other jobs in this business that
• 1:10:17
  you can do. I'm breaking into the business. I think I would say,
• 1:10:23
  just keep shooting no matter who's watching. If it's just your mom or
• 1:10:27
  you and a room alone, that's all I do. In Prague, I
• 1:10:30
  have two hundred and fifty shorts, so nobody's ever seen. Yeah, I
• 1:10:34
  see the couple. Oh I cut I said it up to you, like,
• 1:10:38
  those are the ones I make available to my friends, like a handful
• 1:10:40
  of I think five or ten, right, I don't, I don't know.
• 1:10:44
  What do you go? You practice your craft and the most important thing,
• 1:10:48
  it's like I don't say this enough. It's like you have to be
• 1:10:51
  willing to do it when nobody's watching and still love it. If you love
• 1:10:56
  it when nobody's watching, you got yourself plan. Beautiful, beautiful answer,
• 1:11:02
  sir. That should be a T shirt. I'm just saying, right under
• 1:11:06
  a hustle brother, that was like a T shirt. Albert. If you
• 1:11:11
  can go back in time and talk to little Albert, what advice would you
• 1:11:15
  give him? All? Right, now, this is a new answer.
• 1:11:19
  I know. I think this is a new answer any question. The new
• 1:11:23
  answer is when you're young, you think wisdom or being wise is goes hand
• 1:11:28
  in hand with being smart. It actually doesn't. I think wisdom means to
• 1:11:32
  me, I don't know. The literal definition means to me, you learn
• 1:11:35
  from the past and you adjust, and that makes you smart enough. You're
• 1:11:42
  smart enough to adjust, let's say, and you collect enough enough of these
• 1:11:45
  experiences that you know what to do quite clearly in the future. And I
• 1:11:49
  would tell my younger self to go easy on myself and to not take it
• 1:11:55
  so hard. That this is part of the process of trying to become wiser
• 1:12:00
  in this job or this position. And then you cannot rush that. You
• 1:12:04
  can't rush wisdom. Wisdom takes time. You can rush talent a lot.
• 1:12:11
  Like you've seen some flash in the pan boxers, lawyers, filmmakers, writers,
• 1:12:16
  entertainers, filmmaker that you've seen them like woof super talented, but they
• 1:12:21
  don't have the wisdom yet. But they're still super talent and they can rush
• 1:12:26
  their talent. You know, what is the lesson that took the longest to
• 1:12:30
  learn, whether in the film business or in life up patience? You know,
• 1:12:35
  answer, you know, like yeah, but you know, like we
• 1:12:40
  we you have to herd and wait. But that thing I think we talked
• 1:12:43
  about last time, it's like, don't get involved in every argument. It
• 1:12:45
  takes place in front of you that has to do with your film. It's
• 1:12:48
  a waste of time. Let those people figure it out, and you know,
• 1:12:51
  poke in proud a little bit and kind of have a I've learned how
• 1:12:56
  to do this. I'm never good because I think I have a little bit
• 1:12:58
  of an od problem, as I wasn't good at tuning out the room when
• 1:13:01
  you're in a conference room and people are talking, because sometimes you'll have your
• 1:13:04
  production designer and prop guy now on the same page and they may be arguing
• 1:13:09
  up with the side or the picture car guy might be arguing with somebody else,
• 1:13:13
  and you think it's an unhealthy thing to see an argument, but it's
• 1:13:15
  quite healthy, and if you get involved in it, it's going to stress
• 1:13:19
  you out and you're not gonna be able to use your job. They're there
• 1:13:21
  to help you, and they're there to do their jobs professionally, and just
• 1:13:27
  because they're creatively arguing about something, it doesn't mean you need to get involved
• 1:13:31
  because that can tax you. And what you need to do is have a
• 1:13:33
  way of just making it noise and then if you hear a trigger word where
• 1:13:36
  you need to get in a stir the pot one direction you do that,
• 1:13:40
  but generally stay out of it, because the best idea usually comes out when
• 1:13:45
  the creative crew starts having a healthy debate. Very good, and of course
• 1:13:50
  the toughest of all the questions, three of your favorite films of all time?
• 1:13:56
  Did I answer this one before? Yeah, we talked about one.
• 1:13:59
  I remember. Yeah, they remain the same. Okay, Midnight Cowboys number
• 1:14:02
  one for a lot of reasons. Taxi Driver got not knocked out at the
• 1:14:08
  number one position long ago by Taxi Driver was there forever. Okay, it's
• 1:14:14
  Midnight Cowboy, It's Man Bites Dog is second, and Taxi Driver is third.
• 1:14:18
  That's what we were because there's very few people who know that freaking film,
• 1:14:24
  and it is oh amazing. You had a run me and you had
• 1:14:30
  a run on it. We went on a run about it, okay,
• 1:14:31
  because it's so inside baseball too. It is such a christ look at the
• 1:14:36
  film. It is. But if you look at the film, there's no
• 1:14:41
  reason at faith value of somebody looking at my list should believe that should be
• 1:14:45
  number two over Taxi Driver. And the reason it's forget all the stuff that
• 1:14:49
  me and you know, and I'll finish with this. It's for the reason
• 1:14:54
  is it's the only film and the history of me watching films that made me
• 1:14:59
  question in my own moral compass. I was okay with a bunch of shit
• 1:15:05
  and that film into that one scene and then I walked out and I draw
• 1:15:09
  the line there. And then I got an Criterion laser and I watched the
• 1:15:12
  rest of them. I go, oh my god, it's not the film,
• 1:15:15
  it's me. This is a statement about me. And that's far more
• 1:15:19
  important than watching a mentally deranged taxi driver done well by my hero Squorsece.
• 1:15:27
  A film that that shakes you like that and rejiggered and by the way Minnick
• 1:15:30
  Cowboy did the same. It made me question a lot of things about growing
• 1:15:35
  up and what I saw with my mom and my dad. And you know
• 1:15:40
  what's you know, you know there's a debate between me and my daughter about
• 1:15:43
  whether they're two heterosexual men in love or whether they're repressed homosexuals that form a
• 1:15:47
  bond. Let's say, okay, and you can have that debate. And
• 1:15:50
  I finally found the answer and I was wrong. So that that film is
• 1:15:56
  just special to me because a foreigner made it from England, John Messenger came
• 1:16:00
  to New York. And it also blows my mind that this lunatic what's his
• 1:16:05
  name of the actor, right wing lunatic John Boyd, Like he's gone,
• 1:16:11
  Yeah, he's gone so far, like almost almost into Nazi territory because my
• 1:16:15
  daughter walking in with her dog right now, I'm moving the camera with go
• 1:16:17
  ahead, yeah, because me and him go along a little. No,
• 1:16:24
  It's like I couldn't. I couldn't believe that John Boyd would do. You
• 1:16:28
  have to be liberal minded and open minded to do that type of felt,
• 1:16:31
  you know, So that that shocked me. Oh and Deliverance. He the
• 1:16:38
  Deliverance too. I gotta watch it again, I do. No, I
• 1:16:41
  gotta watch that film again because I haven't seen this in my childhood, and
• 1:16:45
  that says a lot about you. And that says a lot about you that
• 1:16:47
  you saw Deliverance in your child Well. Pairs took me to inappropriate movies back
• 1:16:55
  then. There was also only so many Disney films playing in the theater,
• 1:16:58
  so there was it was Deliverance nothing. My dad took me. My dad
• 1:17:01
  took me to see all that jazz, and I distinctly remember the nudity and
• 1:17:05
  the open heart surgery. And I recently saw it again and went on a
• 1:17:08
  bob Fosse run and it's exactly as I remember, except for the nudity.
• 1:17:13
  When you're a kid gets amplified, you're like, oh my god, you
• 1:17:15
  know it's a but that's a fantastic film. And so it's cabaret like a
• 1:17:19
  deep dive from him and he's he's just amazing, Albert. It is a
• 1:17:26
  pleasure And as always talking to you, Where can people find and watch your
• 1:17:30
  new Opus the Continental? It's on Peacock The premiere episode was last Friday,
• 1:17:36
  the twenty second, I believe, and I'm Jettick right. That was episode
• 1:17:41
  one. Episode two is on the twenty ninth Friday, the twenty ninth.
• 1:17:46
  Episode three is October the sixth and a Friday. And get to episode three,
• 1:17:49
  everybody, because it's building. That's it's all building towards how Winston gets
• 1:17:54
  that hotel, and then it builds to an explosion. And I'm telling everybody
• 1:17:58
  that I'm gonna see Alex again. And with Kirk Ward our show running to
• 1:18:01
  this episode three in the near future, very near future, I can't wait
• 1:18:06
  to have you back. And the last question is there another are we going
• 1:18:11
  to keep expanding this john Wick world that's up to like lions Gate into producers.
• 1:18:15
  I have no idea. It's so good. It's a wonderful world.
• 1:18:19
  You know, you can go so many different directions with so many different crazy
• 1:18:24
  characters. I suspect they will. They have the Army of Ballerina coming out
• 1:18:29
  next year, and it feels like it's ready made for it. Plus it's
• 1:18:34
  fresh. It's not a superhero. I P. You know, So it's
• 1:18:39
  whether I'm exactly and whether that's what's He pointed out something I've never heard before.
• 1:18:45
  It's an adult I never it's an adult PG thirteen. I P or
• 1:18:49
  PG. There's never adult ips out there. Really like this should be a
• 1:18:56
  taxi driver, right, like they should do another Like what, let's go
• 1:19:00
  into that. But that's fascinating. That's fascinating. I think, like whether
• 1:19:03
  I'm involved or not, it doesn't matter. I'm just a fan of the
• 1:19:08
  show that we did. I'm a fan of the movies, and they keep
• 1:19:11
  making them and they're good. I'll keep watching them. Brou As always,
• 1:19:14
  thank you for coming on. We can keep going, and I wish we
• 1:19:17
  could, but we're going to come back with Kurt and we have a part
• 1:19:19
  two. We have a part two. We'll have a Part two, Gay,
• 1:19:23
  my pleasure is always my friend. Thank you so much, you too.
• 1:19:28
  I want to thank Albert so much for coming on the show and sharing
• 1:19:30
  his knowledge and experience and stories with all of us. If you want to
• 1:19:35
  get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the
• 1:19:38
  show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford Slash three thirty four. Thank
• 1:19:43
  you so much for listening, and as always, keep on writing no matter
• 1:19:46
  what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting
• 1:19:50
  podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.