Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 345: Audience•Ology- Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret To Make Money with Kevin Goetz

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BPS 345: Audience•Ology- Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret To Make Money with Kevin Goetz · 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 ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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  Episode number three forty five. Making movies is a chance to live many
• 0:19
  lives. Robert Altman broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we
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  really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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  showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
• 0:33
  screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to
• 0:40
  another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.
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  Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now. Unlike
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  other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project
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  you are and the goals of the project you are, so we actually break
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  it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film, market, and
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  studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that's used to
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  reading tempole movies when your movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand
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  dollars, and we wanted to focus on that at Bulletproof script Coverage, our
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  readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO,
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  Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many
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  more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers,
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  head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys, today on
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  the show we have author an og test screener, Kevin gets Now. Kevin
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  has been doing test screenings for Hollywood on all the major motion pictures that come
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  out of the studio system for the last thirty five years. He has been
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  front row for every almost every major movie blockbuster before anyone ever gets to see
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  it. And he's written a new book called Audience Allology, and there he
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  explains what the audience is looking for all his experience about story, about how
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  the audience changes ideas in the movie when they watch it, and what makes
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  a very profitable film, and the audience is the one that knows, according
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  to Kevin. So, Kevin and I had this fantastic conversation about the business
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  where it was test screenings, where the business is going, how it's shifted
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  from theatrical more into streaming and so so much more. So, without any
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  further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Kevin gets I'd like to welcome to
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  the show, Kevin gets Hey you Kevin Hey. I'm well Alex. Thanks
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  for having me. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You
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  are, as they say, an og in the test screening space of figuring
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  out what the audience loves and wants and more importantly, what they're willing to
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  pay money for. Yeah, you've been doing this for do it for a
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  couple of years now. I've been doing it for quite a long time.
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  Thirty five years, that's it. Wow, So you've seen a few things
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  along the way, I'm sure. Oh boy. Yeah. If these walls
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  could talk, as they say, well, I'll ask questions and you could
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  tell stories that you can say on air, and then after we stop recording,
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  you can tell me all the stories you can't Seeah, I'll share you
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  on your private line and I'll give you the real stories. So first and
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  firm was how did you get into this line of work? How did you
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  get interested in the film industry in general? You know, I've always been
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  interested in film, but I was always I always like to say sort of
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  my DNA was being in show business. I was a child actor. It
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  was in my blood. I always knew that this was what I was supposed
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  to do. I was a dancer, I was a singer, was what
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  we call a triple threat if you're from the Broadway scene, and made my
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  living doing a lot of commercials, TV commercials and theater around the New York
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  area. So that's that's what I did until I went to Mason Gross School
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  of the Arts at Rutgers, which is one of the best acting conservatories in
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  the country, and I studied with Bill Esper the Meisner technique, and that
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  was a four year conservatory. Graduated, went to New York and started working
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  up pretty regularly, sort of begin to get began to get like burnt out
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  in my early twenties, and I'm like, this is not going to be
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  a good thing if I, you know, unless I really unless I really
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  commit to giving up control, if you will, and allowing others to decide
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  my fate. I love and still love the art of acting and the craft
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  of it and the uncovering a character and all of that. But what I
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  found was I had a business sense on the other side. Of my brain
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  that needed to be nurtured. So when I was seventeen, I started my
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  first business. So I had an entrepreneurial business sensibility and combined with the creative
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  and the artistic sensibility. So it kind of was the way for me to
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  I had to listen to both voices, and it was kind of a way
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  for me to find the right path. And it turned out that I got
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  a survival job when I came to California to work as an actor, because
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  my residuals were drying up. I had done aut play for four and five
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  months, so you know, you don't get paid that much in the theater,
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  and so I needed to do some odd jobs. And one of them
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  was working at a place called NRG National Research Group, and it was doing
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  these test screenings. I had no idea what that meant. And it was
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  about thirty five thirty six years ago, and I was sort of plucked out
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  of the chorus, if you will, by the principles of the company because
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  they saw a potential in me. I suppose and and and I began to
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  pull or coordinate focus groups, like pick the people to be in the focus
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  groups after the screening and then within two years I was trained to be a
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  moderator, and he didn't really know what that was, the art of it.
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  I didn't really know much about marketing at the time, and it was
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  all sort of learned in the field, you know, out there at What
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  was really interesting Alex is that when I would moderate in the beginning, I
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  would actually play the role of a moderator like I would I would I would
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  give myself an objective. You know, you need to get as much information
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  as you possibly can. That's your objective in your scene that you're about to
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  do. And you're a great listener, you've got to you know, my
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  actions if you're an actor, you know what that means. My actions were,
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  you know, really to gain as much information as I can, to
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  prove to you know, real real active active verbs, which are the act
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  the way the actor sort of creates behavior. And that's how I got through
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  them, and I was successful at it. And suddenly, well, I
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  wouldn't say suddenly, I would say slowly, actually, I began to realize
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  that, you know, sort of I was. There was an art to
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  this, you know, there was there was a way of probing, there
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  was a way of leading the witness. I had to sort of learn those
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  things, and I took all sorts of sorts of courses in terms of other
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  moderators, and I joined the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, which is sort of
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  the leading moderators, and I would take workshops and things, and I learned
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  conjarret it projective techniques in different kinds of ways to to engage with people behind
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  two way mirror, you know, the so forth. And then I became,
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  I guess, one of the most requested moderators talking thirty years ago,
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  twenty five years ago. And then I was also a hyphen it, you
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  know. I also still had my hand in acting. And then I moved
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  into producing and I began to produce at my own theater in nineteen ninety uh
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  and then which I ran for five years as the artistic director and producer up
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  in San Luis obispo Is the professional theater called Central Coast Repertory Theater. And
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  then I started doing movies and television movies in particular. And then I made
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  one and got a lot of acclaim and we won an Emmy Award for it
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  called Wild Irish, and I really began to speak the film language in a
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  different way. So now I had my moderating on the one side, and
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  knew how to get into and talk to directors and producers about their movie.
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  But you know what was interesting, and I think this was my competitive edge,
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  was that I am an artist and I understand the and have a tremendous
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  respect for filmmakers. I have a tremendous respect for the artists and people in
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  our field who have to sort of put their babies, you know, and
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  give birth to these children that are their creative beings, and they really take
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  on a life of their own, and they're so invested. Filmmakers are so
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  invested. And so when I have and I call it the privilege to work
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  on a movie, I really feel there's a responsibility I have to represent the
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  audience and the best way possible to give filmmakers the best information they can possibly
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  get. This is a long way of saying that my journey was all meant
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  to be. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
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  now back to the show. It's all the perfect path, if you will.
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  So I talk about in my book Audienceology, which I know that you've
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  read, and we're trying to say nice things about at least I think that's
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  what you said. Yes, I talk about finding your and A and D.
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  So you could start in one thing in life and think it's the absolute
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  thing that you're supposed to be doing, and then you have a skill set
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  that also is really pretty strong, and you get to a point and if
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  you're lucky enough as I was, to find great mentors and marry those two
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  passions and find your and you will actually flourish in a more complete way.
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  That's profound because so many of us as filmmakers start off like I need to
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  be Steven Spielberg. How many people and I'm the next Steven Spielberg. I
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  teach it film schools several several times a year, and all the major film
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  schools around the country, and I shifted few many right exactly. But then
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  as you start going through the path, and this is only from someone like
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  myself who's been doing this for close to thirty years as well, you get
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  to that place where you're like, well, I'm not going to be Stephen
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  because there's only one Stephen. So then we're like, well, as I
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  could do this, by the way, and there's only one Alex, correctly,
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  and when you can realize right that there's only one Alex, and Alex
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  is extraordinary in his own way. Stephen can't be Alex, correct then you
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  And that takes a lot of courage and confidence to live in your own skin
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  comfortably. And it took me years to get there. It happened overnight,
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  right, and you can relate to that right absolutely present. It took me
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  forever to finally understand who I was feel comfort blow my skin, and that
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  and that you're talking about is so important because it's just like, well,
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  I could be a director, and I could also maybe own a post production
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  company and exactly, and then I could also right and so and right and
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  have a podcast at but but but all of these things bring you to the
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  perfect place where you're supposed to be in life if you really lean into your
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  gifts, not sit on them and wait in a room for someone to call.
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  That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about putting yourself out
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  there, but recognizing all these wonderful things that you have, finding those and
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  or ends and realizing them, you know, And and that takes a certain
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  degree of courage, I think, and self assurance, right, and just
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  like yourself that you start off as an actor, but you your skill set
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  as an actor lent itself so beautifully into your to your other career the end
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  of test greetings and understanding the audience and so on. It was kind of
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  like with me, I was like, I wanted to be a director,
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  but I also had a skill set in post production. So I owned a
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  post production company and I became an editor, and I became a colorist and
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  that post supervisor and all of that while I was directing. So then together
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  I became much more powerful because it's a director on jobs, I could package
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  all of it together. I'm like, yeah, i'll do I'll edit for
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  free. That's on the practical side, But think about what you knew as
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  a director that many directors don't know how to say. Oh if I do
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  this, oh my gosh, it's going to cost me a ton in posts
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  because I'm going to have to find this where other people say fix it and
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  posts or the famous expression that we hear from many many indie filmmakers is we'll
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  do it in post. We'll fix it in post. But you know,
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  and you probably saved yourself countless hours and money by having the skill set of
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  post production exactly. And even when I'm doing this as a podcaster, understanding
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  how to talk my skill sets as a director has helped me to talk and
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  have engaging conversations, raw conversations with my guests, and then all the technical
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  stuff of the behind the scenes stuff. I was able to launch like this
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  because I had twenty years of post production experience, and I'm like a podcast.
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  I could do a podcast in my sleep, uh, you know,
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  comparably to you know, finishing fifty movies in my in my day and so
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  on and so forth. So it was just a really but I love that
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  concept of the and I've never heard it put that way before. It's and
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  I hope people listening don't get caught because they get so caught up and you're
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  like, if you would have just said, I'm only going to be an
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  actor, I'm going to hold on tight to just that, and I'm not
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  gonna shift, I'm not gonna pivot, I'm not gonna move and not allow
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  it to unfold in the way it's had to unfold for best, you know,
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  the best. Another example, excuse me, another example that I have
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  is when I was an actor. You know, there was so much personal
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  investment that you would put out every time you went on an audition. Jesus.
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  When I was producing, I would hold the auditions obviously as the artistic
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  director and the producer of the theater. And my advice every actor who's trying
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  really hard to get the job is to sit in casting sessions a casting session,
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  and you will come to realize very quickly why some people get the job,
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  but mostly why you don't get the job, and so much of it
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  is not something that you're doing. You may give the best reading, but
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  somebody is already cast is a redhead, and the kid is a really dark
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  paired child, and so you realize that that doesn't go with the redhead,
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  and you're already committed to the red head, so you know, you got
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  to adjust it. So all of those things that if you actually understood the
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  process would make you more effective, and that goes for anything. As you
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  were saying, in your case it was post production. In my case,
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  you know it was it was entrepreneurial ship, like really leaning into that and
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  saying, hey, you're good at this, You're good at business. You
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  know, as I run a research company in one of my probably least strong
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  skills is statistics. I've learned how to get by, how to speak about
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  means and mediums, all that stuff. But I have great statisticians that I
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  hire that make me look really good. I know my deficits, and that's
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  another superpower is to know what you're not good at and not be It's not
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  modesty or immodesty. It's just like, know what you're not good at and
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  then kind of acknowledge it and try to fix it with somebody else or some
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  other person's gift or superpower. It's not going to be yours. There's so
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  many things I recognize that I do well, and there's so many other things
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  I realize that I'm subpar. I just am and I don't pathologize it.
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  I simply recognize it and say I'm going to fill those those holes. But
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  you are also comfortable in your own skin. And that's when you're comfortable in
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  your own skin, the ego is a little bit more tamed when it comes
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  to that, hopefully where you can identify those things and go like, I
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  can't stand audio, say to this day, still can't deal with audio.
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  I'm a visual guy, and in post production I always just sent it off
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  to the audio guy. I'm like, here, here the stems mixed for
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  me. Send me a stereo track back, or send me the stems back
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  and I'll put it in and I'll deliver it. But I you know,
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  sometimes I would send something and I would say something like, you send me
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  a mono track. I'm like, I don't, I can't tell I can't
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  hear model from stereo. I don't what you talk about. Like it's just
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  completely my kryptonite. It always has been from everything I've ever done. But
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  I understood that, and I, you know, didn't try to do it
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  myself. I did. I outsourced it. I understood that. That's definitely
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  not why I always loved when I made movies. I always love the mixes.
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  Oh yeah, I love being in the mixes. I just don't like
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  doing that. Oh gotcha, gotcha. But I always love the mixes because
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  I I always loved sort of understanding how much you can really in that post
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  production process. And in fact, screenings are really a part of the post
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  production process, particularly with the studios. But we work on more independent movies
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  than probably studio movies in our total arsenal every year. Just there's so many
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  more movies that people don't even know about. There's three movies opening this weekend,
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  and you know, I'd like to know how many of your listeners even
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  you know, know what they are. They probably don't know any movie coming
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  out on their radar except ant Man, which is in like, you know,
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  three three, four weeks there. There's a reason that you know that
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  the screenings have become so important in that post production process because they do inform
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  often, you know, the word of man out right of how your movie
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  is going to really perform in the marketplace. So it's it's a very important
• 19:07
  measure to understand before you know, you embark on, you know, the
• 19:11
  release. So let me ask you, because I'm gonna play devil's advocate here
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  because I'm assuming there's some filmmakers out there going, well, why do we
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  care about the audience? This is art? I am an artist. An
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  artist, you know, you don't paint Lily's van Go didn't paint lilies for
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  an art for the audience. He built a painted it for himself. So
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  to be the devil's advocate, why should filmmakers care about what the audience thinks
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  in today's world? Understanding that if it's an independent film versus a studio,
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  studio two hundred million dollars, a hundred million dollars, big things at stake.
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  Get that. But as far as the indie world is concerned, why
• 19:45
  should they care. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
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  and now back to the show. Well, that's saying that Steven Spielberg or
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  whatever a studio is not an artist exactly number one who all test their movies.
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  All the great test their movies and have throughout movie done. In other
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  words, since the beginning of movies, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold
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  Lloyd all took their sequences up to Hollywood Boulevard and tested them. Great filmmakers
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  throughout history, great moguls, etc. Tested their movies and that has not
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  changed. I find a person that doesn't do that, is doesn't have a
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  respect for the art form. The art form is not a painting, it's
• 20:38
  not a novel, it is not a singular vision. It takes many crafts,
• 20:45
  people and artists to put to make a movie. And I told that.
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  Ang Lee and I had a bit of an exchange. It's in the
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  book, my book where you know he said, you know, Picasso never
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  tested his paintings and I said, Picasso's supplies cost about five cents and if
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  he didn't like what he did, he could put it in the back of
• 21:11
  his closet. But you've just been handed one hundred million dollars to make your
• 21:15
  movie by people who absolutely have a stake in this financial stake and creative steak.
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  I mean, the you know, a studio. Studio executives are not
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  some empty suits. They're awfully talented people, many of whom were filmmakers,
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  many of whom come from a very serious development background, and they have lived
• 21:40
  and experienced, you know, how to structure a movie, and the success
• 21:45
  is the failures, et cetera, all throughout their lives, and to not
• 21:52
  include them as part of the process is disrespectful, I believe, not to
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  mention the fact that there are great, you know, cinematographers that have really
• 22:04
  been the star of many movies that I've worked on, and have saved many
• 22:08
  movies for the editors. As you well know, an editor can be so
• 22:15
  impactful and can help or herd a movie, you know, tremendously. You
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  know, I have a podcast it's called Don't Kill the Messenger, and and
• 22:23
  I just interviewed two editors and I wanted the editors on there. One was
• 22:30
  Billy Goldenberg and who won the Oscar for Argo, and the other is David
• 22:37
  Rosenbloom, who was nominated for Oscar for Insider, and there's I mean great.
• 22:42
  These are two really really terrific, terrific editors, and we talked very
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  much about the alchemy of what makes a movie successful. So if and I
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  want to qualify this, if a director has raised their own money I wrote
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  the movie, is producing it and directing it, and is what we used
• 23:04
  to call the O toour true OH tour. Yeah, you want to make
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  it and you don't care about the financial repercussions or how to leverage your art,
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  your asset if you will go with God. But that's not ninety nine
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  point nine percent of how any movie is done or constructed. I still think
• 23:27
  if you are an O tour, you should include the audience in the discussion
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  because who are you making this for. Any purest filmmaker says they're making a
• 23:37
  movie for the big screen, okay, But if you're making it for the
• 23:41
  big screen, that implies that you want an audience to see it. And
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  if you are going in that direction, getting feedback, getting how things land
• 23:53
  at the very least is at least giving you an indication of what to expect.
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  And I like to say, and I've said it a bunch of times,
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  if somebody hunks at you on a freeway, you know, you know,
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  you're an asshole. I'm sorry, they're an asshole. If somebody hunks
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  at you on a freeway, single person, they're an asshole. But if
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  five people are hunting at you on the freeway, you're the asshole, right
• 24:22
  right, And so you can choose. If everybody is saying your ending is
• 24:30
  bumming me out in a way that is betraying what came before it. You
• 24:33
  can have sad endings. That's not the issue, but it's just not working.
• 24:37
  It's just not satisfying emotionally or intellectually. Or your movie is like so
• 24:45
  long in the middle, it goes on forever, and I disengage. That
• 24:48
  is just not a good thing. And if everyone's telling you that, you
• 24:52
  can choose not to listen if you paid for yourself and all. But if
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  you haven't, then you want to hear them and say, okay, well,
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  and I do you know. Ron Howard says it best, Alex,
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  He really does. He says look, I get to I get to find
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  my script. Okay, I get to cast it the way I want to.
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  I develop it the way I want to first, then I cast it,
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  then I shoot it my way, then I edit it with my editor,
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  and then I show it to an audience. And at that point I
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  have to give my child sort of send them to nursery school if you will,
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  or to you know, And that's really painful, hard to do,
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  right, you know, Oh my gosh, they're really becoming a person.
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  And it's when the rubber hits the road and you have to choose at that
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  point whether to turn off or listen. And in my experience in thirty five
• 25:48
  years, the great filmmakers and the most successful ones listen. They listen to
• 25:53
  the audience. They don't necessarily make all the changes in audience to make,
• 26:00
  but they listen and try to address why they're saying what they're saying. Just
• 26:07
  because someone says that scene doesn't belong may not be the answer to the fix
• 26:12
  by removing that scene. It may be something leading up to it, I
• 26:15
  often say, And filmmakers on your podcast are going to agree with this completely.
• 26:21
  When there's ending problems, and there often are in many movies. As
• 26:23
  we know, it's the most important thing that a moviegoer is left or a
• 26:29
  movie viewer we're saying now because somebody are on streaming, are left with.
• 26:33
  Therefore, you want your ending to land in a certain way, and if
• 26:37
  you if you can, you know, sort of get that right, then
• 26:47
  you can change potentially the DNA and the trajectory of your of your of your
• 26:55
  picture. Now, there was a very famous example that i've It was so
• 27:03
  famous that it reached the public knowledge, which was Fatal Attraction. How that
• 27:07
  movie was completely changed by the screening and I saw the original ending and it
• 27:12
  was a bummer and it did not it didn't. It completely failed the more
• 27:18
  that we saw. So what I was going to say that before we get
• 27:19
  into Fail Attraction to finish the point I was just making is that often the
• 27:26
  ending is not the issue. It's Act one that's the issue. And because
• 27:33
  Act one was not set up correctly, this is a very common they You
• 27:37
  can't just fix an ending. Often sometimes you can sometimes in a comedy,
• 27:41
  particularly there's a or in Fidel Attraction and Fail Attraction that we shot it.
• 27:47
  But what you have to look at in Fatal Attraction is how did it become
• 27:49
  so successful in the new ending, because what they set up was this guy,
• 27:56
  Michael Douglas, who was eventually a good guy who screwed up and had
• 28:02
  an affair with another woman, but it was a one night thing and she
• 28:08
  didn't think so blind close obviously, Ann Archer, the wife was ready at
• 28:17
  by the end of the movie to forgive him, so, in other words,
• 28:18
  he was on a path that clearly was felt like he was wanting to
• 28:23
  redeem himself and do the right thing, but she wouldn't let it go,
• 28:27
  so he you know. But what happened was because they set that up.
• 28:33
  I think the audience was really bummed out that it became about Alex Sorry the
• 28:37
  character, and the character sort of took her own life at the end of
• 28:44
  the movie, which was kind of, in many people's view from a satisfaction
• 28:48
  standpoint, a cop out for right and not having emotionally feeling like he the
• 29:00
  the lead Michael Douglass would get his proper come up and the wife, of
• 29:03
  course, didn't get any come upance. And so the audience spoke in loudly
• 29:12
  and very much so in their scores in their ratings that the ending was not
• 29:19
  working so what they did is they went back and realized the setup that they
• 29:26
  had done needed to pay off right right. They were ramping it up,
• 29:30
  they were it up, and then you just dropped the ball at the end.
• 29:34
  You're exactly And you could feel by the way in the room when you
• 29:37
  were in the room for that movie, you could feel the air being sucked
• 29:41
  out of the room. It was amazing. The focus groups afterwards, I
• 29:45
  would say, uh, so, how many of you liked the movie?
• 29:49
  Every hand goes up well with their ratings. Their ratings were like six excellent,
• 29:56
  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 30:03
  to the show, ten very good, four good, no fares or pores.
• 30:11
  But because of that muted excellent, people were not definitely recommending it.
• 30:18
  They were only probably recommending it. So there is a correlation between the definite
• 30:22
  recommend and how well your movies multiple it's going opening weekend multiple is going to
• 30:27
  be right. So in other words, if your movie opens to ten million
• 30:32
  and you do it three times multiple, that means you've done thirty million or
• 30:34
  will do thirty million at the box office. So there's a correlation between that
• 30:37
  word of mouth and the box office multiple and so we don't want to torture
• 30:41
  filmmakers. What we want to do is say there are real financial implications that
• 30:45
  can be garnered, you know, and gleaned from this. So in the
• 30:49
  case of that, it was a muted, definite recommend response and the movie
• 30:55
  would have probably if not for this new ending done. I don't know that
• 31:00
  decent box of decent box office. Yeah, because it was. It was
• 31:03
  a very fine movie and good stars and all that stuff. Yeah, they
• 31:07
  made the decision reluctantly excuse me, reluctantly by many to shoot me. When
• 31:15
  I say many. Glenn and Adrian Lyne were against it, Michael was for
• 31:21
  it. Different people have told me this, so I'm speaking from other people's
• 31:26
  uh recounting of this. Uh and so uh they all acquiesced and they shot
• 31:33
  this amazing, suspenseful, Oh it was beautiful bath room and then some because
• 31:45
  it was like a twist on a twist, and now people talk about it
• 31:48
  as the fatal attraction ending. And for any filmmaker, I don't watch that
• 31:52
  movie, but to see the movie if you haven't seen it, because now
• 31:55
  several years have gone by, so many of the younger people maybe haven't seen
• 31:57
  it. You must see it. And and so this thing where you know,
• 32:00
  I don't want I don't want to ruin it, but I will tell
• 32:04
  you that it's Michael Douglas gets redemption, Glenn Close gets which she deserves.
• 32:10
  The wife gets redemption or you know, not retribution. I didn't mean redemption
• 32:16
  Michael. This guy does get redemption sort of, but there's and he gets
• 32:21
  some come up, and he does get some come up and as well with
• 32:24
  that ending, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, the audience cheers, the
• 32:30
  scores come up I don't know, twenty thirty points, and the movie does
• 32:37
  it. It's a huge, huge, you know, she's on the cover
• 32:39
  of Time magazine. It was a cultural it was it was in the zeitgeist.
• 32:44
  Yeah, there's no question that's right. And that was absolutely because audiences
• 32:47
  spoke, and it's why it's such a great and known example. But there's
• 32:52
  so many. I mean, I work on I think I've done over five
• 32:55
  or six thousand movies in my in my career titles and most of them have
• 33:01
  some kind of change. Well, let me ask you, because this is
• 33:05
  another legendary one airplane which is I think before your time, it was before
• 33:08
  my airplane in an eighty. I came in the late eighties, right,
• 33:13
  So from what I heard that Airplane had the worst, uh, the worst
• 33:19
  possible scores in the history of the studio at the time. And they're like,
• 33:22
  oh my god, this is gonna bomb. We can't fix this because
• 33:27
  there's no fixing Airplane. You can't change the scene and change Airplane. It's
• 33:30
  all a giant airplane movie. You can't change it. And then it comes
• 33:36
  out and it's a monster hit. And from what I heard was that people
• 33:40
  at that time were embarrassed to say that they liked it because it was so
• 33:45
  silly, and there hadn't been something that's silly up to that point in that
• 33:50
  way before. Because if you watch Airplane today, you're just like, this
• 33:52
  is amazing. Are you talking about the real the one with Karen Black where
• 33:59
  you have the comedy, the comedy, the comedy comedy. Well, there
• 34:02
  was an airport. No, there was airport. I'm talking about Airplane,
• 34:07
  right, people know, yeah? Yeah, I mean that introduced an entire
• 34:14
  genre that had never the spoof, that had never really existed, and so
• 34:20
  there was no precedent for it. Right. So that's another reason why probably
• 34:22
  it didn't score well is that people didn't know where to put it, had
• 34:25
  to classify it, loofy. I remember working on the naked guns. Oh
• 34:31
  god, yeah, I did every one of them. And I mean from
• 34:35
  nuns falling down the stairs. Oh yeah, yeah, it just nice beaver,
• 34:38
  yeah, so funny and uh and people just lost it. And but
• 34:47
  they were they were coming in with an expectation and so exactly so you needed
• 34:54
  to deliver on that claim. So each one had to like surpass the one
• 34:58
  before it, which times as successful as you know, and sometimes not when
• 35:01
  you get to sequels. But uh, and that's only increased that that when
• 35:07
  I as IP has taken more of a front seat and sort of the notion
• 35:12
  of the big idea, it became like the central focus of what drove people
• 35:15
  to theaters. Uh, you know, the the Uh you had to satisfy
• 35:23
  you had a more of a if you were a studio you're a filmmaker,
• 35:30
  more of a responsibility to give the audience what they wanted right without without question.
• 35:37
  Now, how can you not test that? How could I mean,
• 35:38
  how could you not Exactly? I kind of have a reverence for the audience.
• 35:45
  When I call the audio audience can be ten people or it could be
• 35:49
  a million people just the word audience. And that's why the book is called
• 35:54
  Audienceology, because I kind of have become an advocate for the people and the
• 36:02
  people one person doesn't necessarily change the world, but the you know, wisdom
• 36:10
  of crowds, as they say, it's a phrase and books that are out
• 36:14
  on that, there's validity to that. And it's that whole thing about the
• 36:17
  hunting on the freeway. It's like you want to you want to listen to
• 36:22
  what the general consensus is. It doesn't mean you dumb it down. It
• 36:28
  means that you say, okay, if all of these people are saying that,
• 36:31
  how can I figure out? So a lot of my time is spent
• 36:35
  helping the filmmakers figure out what is going beneath the surface, you know,
• 36:40
  And that is also part of the art, I guess of what I do,
• 36:45
  which is going back to my acting roots of understanding a character and peeling
• 36:51
  back the onion to get to those layers underneath the character, to be able
• 36:55
  to bring that asset to filmmakers and say, well, here's what I think
• 37:00
  they're really saying. This is the subtext here as opposed to, you know,
• 37:05
  change your ending it's a comedy needs more comedy, you know, like
• 37:07
  those things are unhelpful majority of the top. What was in all your five
• 37:14
  thousand plus screenings that you've done over the course of your career. I've done
• 37:17
  twenty thousand plus the titles titles. No, I mean that because just so
• 37:22
  you know, I mean I'm literally out almost every night. Well not anymore,
• 37:28
  not anymore. I mean I have a battery of folks that do this
• 37:31
  wording. Yeah, but with all the experience, it's me, Yes,
• 37:37
  what's the worst. What's the worst screening experience you've ever went through that you
• 37:40
  can say publicly, Well, the movie screened well, Borelely, the filmmaker
• 37:45
  didn't expect. My worst experiences were on the with the audience didn't see which
• 37:52
  they were. They were logistical nightmares where an entire audience was cancer by my
• 38:00
  people by accident because we were over confirmed, and uh, everyone flew in
• 38:07
  from London and from it was in New York and from LA The expense that
• 38:14
  went into just showing up and a major, major, big movie, a
• 38:20
  huge blockbuster, and there was like there were like forty people the only forty
• 38:25
  people who didn't get the message that it was canceled. And the reason that
• 38:29
  they canceled is because we were so over confirmed that we went back to cancel
• 38:35
  certain folks so that we wouldn't have a mad scene, a you know,
• 38:37
  like a mob scene, a mad mad dash. So for the weapon of
• 38:40
  the biggest blockbusters of its day, Yeah, four people show forty people show
• 38:45
  up. Forty people show up, and within forty minutes we got about two
• 38:52
  hundred and eighty people from the mall to come by. I said, no
• 38:57
  matter any means, and the things scored so well. There just no science
• 39:04
  to it though. But it was one of the worst nights in my career.
• 39:07
  And I recently had one where, you know, we have digital devices,
• 39:10
  and the digital devices that we use to collect the data, we had
• 39:15
  a connectivity issue and it was a nightmare and fair enough, you know,
• 39:22
  so, but we are now, we're ready, We have ways to you
• 39:23
  know, we have paper and pencil standing by in case there's that issue,
• 39:27
  so we're able to get the data. But it is so unnerving. So
• 39:30
  those are the things that I really remember as far as a movie is concerned.
• 39:37
  There are some that are just misses. There are just some that you
• 39:42
  tested and there's complete and utter rejection doesn't happen often. It never happens with
• 39:49
  a studio. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 39:58
  now back to the show. It's just wouldn't happen anymore with the studio because
• 40:02
  the stakes are so high and so many people have touched it. It's never
• 40:07
  an unmitigated disaster. These are usually independent movies that just for whatever reason were
• 40:16
  not executed well and and had marketing assets that just were like nonexistent, you
• 40:25
  know, because there was nothing to hang your hat on. So you had
• 40:29
  not no marketability and you had no playability, and so what do you say.
• 40:34
  You come out and you just say, you know you and you know
• 40:37
  they spent way too much on the movie, so you're like, sorry,
• 40:44
  those are those are really tough because you feel for these people and sure somebody
• 40:49
  is going to be losing a lot of money, and the director, if
• 40:52
  they didn't invest their own money, will have reputational damage and it's it's just
• 40:58
  a bug. Well, it was kind of like that movie Batgirl that Warner
• 41:01
  Brothers shell recently, Like I've never heard of that before. Yeah, I
• 41:07
  know, how bad is that movie that they can't just dump it on HBO
• 41:09
  backs like I don't get that. We you don't. Yeah, well I
• 41:15
  don't know the particulars of that. But if I were a guessing man,
• 41:19
  I didn't work on that killer movie. Another company did. But my guess
• 41:24
  is, first of all, I heard that it wasn't that bad number one?
• 41:29
  How bad can it be? Like you what they've how bad they've released
• 41:31
  show Girls, they've released some why I know, but you have to also
• 41:37
  what I would be asking myself is is it down political brand? Their most
• 41:44
  important asset, one of their five most important assets in the arsenal that Batman?
• 41:49
  Does it hurt the brand? Does it hurt DC? That's an issue
• 41:52
  that I can't really speak about. But they released cat but they can release
• 41:57
  Catwoman for God's sake. I know how many years ago? Is it?
• 42:00
  That was a while ago? Yeah, the Batman wasn't as big, A
• 42:02
  wasn't DC then, So now you can compare the two. Look I'm about
• 42:07
  fixing things. I would take a different approach, missus aslov Is has his
• 42:15
  own financial sort of agenda, which is I respect, how could you not?
• 42:22
  I mean, it's really difficult decisions and that he has to has to
• 42:25
  has to undertake. But The fact is is that was part of the that
• 42:32
  was part of the casual It was a casualty of that makes so you know,
• 42:38
  as a researcher, I've fixed through audience reaction so many movies and I
• 42:49
  would love to have taken a stab at it. My guess is I heard
• 42:52
  that they probably needed to reshoot a bunch, So are you going to spend
• 42:57
  exactly are you going to spend more money? I mean, like World War
• 42:59
  Zone, they reshot oh a ton, maybe a quarter of the movie,
• 43:06
  and it was a big hit, huge, So I do think that it's
• 43:09
  a It's a tough thing to look at, and until we are in the
• 43:15
  we are in the shoes of of of David Zaslov, or of the executives
• 43:21
  at Warreners who made that decision, it's really hard to just say, why
• 43:24
  would why did they do it? I'm sure there was a compelling reason to
• 43:28
  do it, if not more than a compelling reason, because it's unheard of.
• 43:32
  Really, it's the film of that time. It's kind of unheard of.
• 43:36
  It's kind of unheard. The shell of it was one hundred million dollars
• 43:38
  at least something like that. I don't know, I don't know what it
• 43:40
  was, but but yeah, something big and and you know, you also
• 43:45
  don't want the reputational damage which it did. It did get a lot of
• 43:52
  flack for it, and I'm sure that was weighed in the equation. And
• 43:55
  it's just it's a lows the decision, no matter how it how it comes
• 43:59
  about, it's a it's a it is loseless. It's kind of it is
• 44:01
  it kind of is there's kind it is and yet it was done. You
• 44:06
  know. Now this is a question I'm I really wanting to hear your opinion
• 44:09
  on because you've been working in the business for so long, and obviously in
• 44:15
  the thirty plus years you've been working for this, you've seen the business change.
• 44:19
  You know, you went through the VHS days, the DVD days,
• 44:22
  and now the streamer days, box Locus days, you know, and then
• 44:27
  yeah mail days, yeah, all those Yeah, and you know, when
• 44:30
  you know, Arnod Schwarzenegger just shows up printing in a telephone book and hits
• 44:32
  a twenty million dollar opening. I remember these days. But the theater experience
• 44:38
  seems to be not only taking a hit, but is it going the way
• 44:44
  of blockbuster video Like in the next ten to fifteen years, are there just
• 44:47
  going to be less screens because the theatrical experience, you know, and don't
• 44:52
  get me wrong, where a movie shows up like Top Gun or Avatar,
• 44:55
  but those are the only two experiences that can the only two movies that can
• 44:59
  think of right way that everybody went out to go see. What do you
• 45:04
  believe is going to happen? And where do you think this is all going?
• 45:07
  In the theatrical experience? Because I grew up in the theatrical experience.
• 45:09
  I love movies. You obviously grew up in that time parents. There's nothing
• 45:13
  like being in a mean obviously you just had thirty years, sir, you
• 45:16
  like twenty five. You just said thirty on years. That's why things that
• 45:23
  God answer you. Look, I set myself right up of that one.
• 45:27
  You look fantastic, sir. No, But but seriously, we both you
• 45:30
  know, kind of grew up with in that field. So there's nothing like
• 45:34
  the theatrical experience. But this new generation didn't grow up with it. What
• 45:38
  do you think, Yeah, well, I think that it's uh, it's
• 45:44
  never coming back to the way it was. And I just think it's not
• 45:50
  an indictment on movies. It's not an indictment on the particular movie. Uh,
• 45:57
  necessarily, I'll explain that in a minute. It's more of an indictment,
• 46:02
  if you will, on consumer behavior and new generations, with the replacement
• 46:09
  of movies as a prime source of entertainment with television and gaming, with social
• 46:16
  media and short form entertainment. Gen zs are really and half of millennials are
• 46:23
  really I wouldn't say rejecting the theatrical experience. They just don't care about it
• 46:30
  in the same way that you and I did because there was a nostalgic quality
• 46:36
  to it. There was a romanticism. There's something about being in a theater
• 46:42
  that excites us because we grew up with it, so we have different memories
• 46:47
  and so forth. The younger generation just doesn't feel that. So as people
• 46:53
  age out and age up, there's going to be less attendance in terms of
• 47:01
  a wide variety of movies in a theater. Three things happened that have never
• 47:06
  occurred at the same time, right, which is this notion of choice,
• 47:12
  so much choice, the notion of price. The price is just too damn
• 47:20
  expensive to not be selective about what you're going to see and convenience, you
• 47:27
  know, it takes what about forty minutes on average. I think it's thirty
• 47:32
  eight forty minutes to decide what movie and get in a car to go to,
• 47:37
  Like that's the average, as opposed to like sixteen or seventeen minutes to
• 47:39
  choose a movie through streaming and be at home. You can buy five or
• 47:46
  six streaming services for the cost of a family of four going to one movie
• 47:51
  with concessions in parking, et cetera. You can't compare the value proposition.
• 47:58
  However, people still like going to the movies. They also like going out
• 48:05
  of the house. Occasionally, movies will become more of a product of like
• 48:12
  a show or a concert, and what that means is an experience. So
• 48:16
  if you don't have a movie that has some kind of experiential component to it,
• 48:28
  elevated fun, elevated fun, elevated that means a horror movie that is,
• 48:36
  oh, it's just really kick ass, a comedy that still comedies have
• 48:40
  not really come back, and I'm not sure they will. There will be
• 48:46
  a comedy that just does so well, you know, like if there's something
• 48:50
  about Mary crazy rich Asians. Remember how that's not me that's stuck in But
• 48:54
  that was pre pandemic too. So that's the other thing, and that that,
• 48:58
  but no one expected it to do the blockbuster business. There will be
• 49:01
  one because there's always one. There's one. Like like just when everyone said
• 49:06
  romantic comedies are dead, you know, Ticket to Paradise comes in and sort
• 49:08
  of works. And then just when they said dramas are dead, you know,
• 49:14
  a man called Auto comes in and works. But it doesn't work that
• 49:19
  well, they were right, but they're not. I mean, it does
• 49:23
  make a point, or can prove a point, that there is an audience
• 49:27
  that will still go, but it's far less. So really this as the
• 49:30
  population grows, actually more people will go to movies, but we'll see such
• 49:40
  fewer movies, fewer titles. So what you just said is one hundred percent
• 49:45
  right. Now. I have a theater and a screening in my house,
• 49:49
  so I watch everything on a big screen and it's with Dolby and the whole
• 49:52
  thing, and I'm very blessed to have that. We'll be right back after
• 49:58
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So I
• 50:06
  never need to go to a theater. And I spent my life working on
• 50:09
  movies in theaters, but I left my house to see Avatar. You know
• 50:15
  I was of cozy. Of course I took my house to see Top Gun.
• 50:22
  Yes I did, if you chose. I did not leave my house
• 50:27
  for anything else. You and me are the exact same. Only two movies
• 50:31
  I've seen in a theater other than maybe press screenings or something like that.
• 50:36
  No, I'm not talking about work. No, No, that's different because
• 50:39
  I went I just saw a Man from Auto and things like that, but
• 50:42
  theatrically. But for me to get out go pay tickets, it was Top
• 50:45
  Gun because I was like, I have to go see Top Gun because that's
• 50:47
  an experience. And I go. It's Avatar, because it's Avatar, and
• 50:52
  it's James Cameron Possible in a theater. I will probably see Mission Impossible to
• 50:57
  Oppenheimer in a theater, you know your wraps. Literally that's probably another.
• 51:00
  But again these are even though it's a drama quote, but it's Nolan trailer
• 51:06
  and I was Snolan. It's Nolan, it's Christopher Nolan. It's not being
• 51:09
  theatrical. It's going to be an experience. But the Fableman's I'm not gonna
• 51:14
  go see that in the theaters. I want to see it, and it's
• 51:16
  I'm looking forward wonderful, but I'm looking forward to it. You know what's
• 51:21
  so interesting. There's a great filmmaker. And I'm not being cheeky. I
• 51:28
  really don't remember, uh when I say a great filmmaker, a very popular
• 51:32
  filmmaker, a very well well known filmmaker. And but I forgot that which
• 51:37
  one it is. But said this quote, which is my favorite movie of
• 51:40
  all time is Jobs, and I have never seen it in a movie theater.
• 51:46
  Isn't that anything? I've never seen Jaws in this movie theater. This
• 51:52
  notion of you have to see things in a movie theater is just not the
• 51:55
  case. And and if it were the case, the Academy of which I'm
• 52:00
  a member, would you know, make it mandatory that people have to see
• 52:05
  movies in a theater. It's just unrealistic and it's just not true. I
• 52:09
  don't get any less enjoyment from ninety percent of most movies because I've seen them
• 52:19
  on a big screen. Forget my screening, but I'm talking about like a
• 52:23
  big screen. Of any of us have with in flat screen now, well
• 52:27
  just having a seventy two inch it's in and you have a lot of people,
• 52:30
  a lot of my friends have these sound packages that are really cool in
• 52:36
  their rooms that are surround sound, etc. And they really emulate the experience.
• 52:42
  And many theaters have gone the wrong direction in a way and have tried
• 52:46
  to emulate the living room as a way to ingratiate the consumer and bring them
• 52:53
  in. So they have these great reclining seats and the screens have gotten smaller.
• 52:58
  You're right. It's like as the theaters have condensed, they're the experience
• 53:02
  to make it more elite or you know, like food service and homes have
• 53:09
  gotten bigger and will get bigger. You know. The Consumer Electronics show shows
• 53:15
  walls of screen, Like walls of screen in your home. It will end
• 53:19
  up being a feature like marble floors and granite It's it's recal like thor Reco
• 53:24
  had that, Like they just turned them off. But I'm saying I would
• 53:25
  say exactly, but I would say you'll be You'll say, like I'd like
• 53:30
  the full screen in the game wreck room or the den uh and the sound
• 53:35
  package as well also in the master So you're gonna have like a wall screen
• 53:39
  and it'll be part of the feature of the buildings built ins, you know
• 53:44
  what I mean. So this is gonna happen so everything points to there's going
• 53:52
  to be there has to be condensing, reduction of screens. I mean,
• 53:57
  Regal just filed for bankruptcy. As you know, they're closing one of my
• 54:01
  favorite theaters in Los Angeles, which is Sherman Oaks. They're closing Sherman.
• 54:07
  Yeah. Wow, were you in l A. Yeah, I've been.
• 54:10
  I wasn't only for thirteen years. Yeah, So this is that's my theater
• 54:15
  that I go to. Or Burbank, that's an age, the Burbank.
• 54:20
  I lived in Burbank, so that was my AMC was the bag and they
• 54:22
  always had the test screeny guys off front always, Oh well we do.
• 54:27
  I'm there probably once a week, I think every day, always always.
• 54:30
  There is every second home I liket like I own a second home in Burbank
• 54:35
  at the theater. I'm there a lot, and it's just a it's a
• 54:38
  lot of people like it. It's a It's a very good testing location because
• 54:44
  it is ethnically racially diverse. It has a level of sophistication but also sort
• 54:52
  of working class folks. You know, does that, regular regular people,
• 54:57
  regular Burbank dude that does that. And there's a there's also you get a
• 55:01
  mixture of you know, uh, education, which is really nice. So
• 55:07
  as far as testing, it emulates a lot of pockets in the United States,
• 55:09
  so it's a good it's a good testing ground. So it is like
• 55:13
  the block in Orange County or Long Beach. Uh, those are really important
• 55:16
  in the LA area. Well, let me ask you, then, with
• 55:21
  all this conversation of theatrical, where does that leave you in the work that
• 55:24
  you do? Do you still do test screenings for things that are going to
• 55:28
  streaming? And how is that? How does that work? Well, it
• 55:32
  speaks to our conversation that we had at the beginning of the podcast, which
• 55:37
  is people are going to it's important to get your the the opinions of folks.
• 55:45
  Whether it is what the platform agnostic. In other words, it's whether
• 55:52
  it is on a streamer, debuting on a streamer, or debuting in a
• 55:57
  theater. That word of mouth is going to dictate how how strongly the movie
• 56:07
  will perform. And streamers want and report now on drops as well. They
• 56:15
  want to make the best version of itself they possibly can. And when I
• 56:20
  say the best version, I mean the one that appeals to the widest,
• 56:23
  widest number of folks, and that is a very important determination. So all
• 56:29
  of the streamers are my clients. And even though may I say now my
• 56:35
  biggest clients, and I will say this, I also during the pandemic,
• 56:38
  we went into triage mode at screen Engine ASI, which is my company,
• 56:44
  we went into triage mode and we came up with we invented a synchronous that
• 56:50
  means in real time screening platform for two to three hundred people that you,
• 56:55
  as a filmmaker, can stay in your home and watch people watching your movie
• 57:00
  at once. So that's where it's gone, and well a lot of it
• 57:05
  did go there, but many people still are holding onto this notion of looking
• 57:09
  at a movie in a theater. So half our business is on the small
• 57:14
  screen and half our business is still on the big screen. And we've only
• 57:16
  increased exponentially because as content increases, so does our business. Because, as
• 57:24
  you're saying, and it's a really good point, just because something is not
• 57:29
  theatrical is not an indictment on your movie. Yet you need the same results.
• 57:35
  You need strong word of mouth. You want to have good critics ratings,
• 57:40
  you want to have audience scores so that your subscribers, if it's a
• 57:45
  streamer, are satisfied, like, these are important things to know and understand,
• 57:51
  and unless you engage with the audience, how the hell are you going
• 57:53
  to know that? Well, doesn't the streamers have an immense amount of data
• 57:59
  that the studios just do not have, in the sense of the algorithm and
• 58:02
  what people are watching and when they're coming off. I mean, they know
• 58:06
  so many data points on a movie. That's one of the reasons why,
• 58:08
  from what I understand, Adam Sandler keeps getting those one hundred million dollar deals
• 58:14
  at Netflix because their data states people watch it, people you know, click
• 58:19
  on it, people continue to enjoy his kind of humor, his kind of
• 58:22
  films, where most of us are like, but how is Adam keep getting
• 58:25
  all these kinds He's a silly film A lot of his movies are silly and
• 58:29
  comical when he's not doing this dramatic stuff. But we're like, wow,
• 58:31
  he's still going. Why is that the doing? And they do have clearly
• 58:35
  they have more many more data points and metrics than the studios are able to.
• 58:40
  But you know, like we have a productal post track. So every
• 58:45
  week screen Engine ASI is in partnership with the comScore and it's the exit poll
• 58:51
  currency. Everyone subscribes to the product, and we gauge reaction to studio movies
• 58:58
  and who actually showed up, so we can tell you the actual audience demography
• 59:04
  and how they rated it in those individual groups. So they're not without data.
• 59:08
  But it's definitely less sophisticated, of course than the streamers are able to
• 59:14
  to have. But you know, theatrical is a big bet business, right
• 59:20
  You're you're spending big dollars, but there's no question that those marketing dollars at
• 59:28
  create a movie getting into the zeitgeist that a streaming movie simply doesn't do.
• 59:36
  And I believe increases the value of the IP even if it's not as successful
• 59:43
  in its theatrical run. The sort of the good will, if you will,
• 59:46
  or the the the nature of the of the of the asset takes on
• 59:53
  a more important you know, life will be right back after a word from
• 1:00:00
  our sponsor and now back to the show. Then, if it doesn't have
• 1:00:10
  a campaign behind it, it feels hasmogravitas, it feels like it's a bigger
• 1:00:15
  thing. So with that comes the positive of what I just said, but
• 1:00:22
  it also comes with tremendous risk because you have to make that much more money
• 1:00:27
  to make back the p DNA and that the P and A is could be
• 1:00:32
  significant, you know on movies, and you know you have to sort of
• 1:00:37
  double down. It's kind of like you're when you talk about back Girl.
• 1:00:42
  So if you know, if Backgirl was something that was going to go theatrical,
• 1:00:47
  they'd have to spend how much to get people one hundred, one hundred
• 1:00:51
  and fifty or something like that being simply probably somewhere between my guess is somewhere
• 1:00:54
  between seventy five and one hundred worldwide to get that movie, uh, you
• 1:01:00
  know, properly placed, et cetera. So you have to then say where
• 1:01:05
  does one cut their losses? And that is what more and more people will
• 1:01:08
  probably be doing. But cutting your losses usually means then taking a loss,
• 1:01:15
  but going on a streamer, not investing in the P and A. But
• 1:01:17
  if streamers don't want the movie, or if you think you might do damage
• 1:01:22
  to your overall brand, there may be compelling business reason to do it.
• 1:01:27
  And so yeah, it's it's it's fairly interesting. Now can you talk about
• 1:01:34
  your new film, Audienceology in a film book? Audienceology? Well, it's
• 1:01:37
  been being made into a film. Now I'm joking, storry tops and bread
• 1:01:42
  fit. It's amazing. First of all, my book doesn't. It's a
• 1:01:45
  year old already, but it's it's been a best seller Simon and Schuster.
• 1:01:49
  I'm pretty thrilled about it in its category. May I add, it's not
• 1:01:52
  like New York Times. You know, we've sold two million copies, but
• 1:01:54
  it is gotten really great feedback and press and critical response, and I couldn't
• 1:02:02
  be more proud of it. I worked on it with my with my co
• 1:02:07
  author Darlene Hayman, for like twelve years, and so it was interviews,
• 1:02:13
  interviews, interviews, and then finding the right voice and structure. And and
• 1:02:19
  because it was as successful as it has been and it's now in paperback,
• 1:02:24
  Simon and Schuster gave me a second book, which I'm writing right now with
• 1:02:28
  my co author, Bob Levin, and that is called had a Score in
• 1:02:31
  Hollywood. And that book is a great title. Thank you so much.
• 1:02:36
  I know, if I don't come up with a good title, you know,
• 1:02:37
  you know, that's not that's not good. That's not good, consider
• 1:02:43
  it having having been tested, et cetera, et cetera. But what I
• 1:02:46
  was going to say was that book is about getting to the green light,
• 1:02:52
  and what does it take to get to the green light, what's the alchemy
• 1:02:55
  and what goes through people who are in that position to give it the yes,
• 1:03:01
  What did they go through, what are they feeling? How much audience
• 1:03:05
  response do they use? How much should they use? And so we take
• 1:03:08
  on that debate a little bit as well. So I think it's going to
• 1:03:10
  be a fun, fun read, but I have no idea when I'm going
• 1:03:15
  to finish it, because we're about halfway through. We love where it's going,
• 1:03:20
  so does the publisher. But I'm running a business. I am doing.
• 1:03:24
  Oh I'm doing, you know. And I think, by the way,
• 1:03:29
  I think a lot of people who do actually listen to yours would like
• 1:03:32
  my podcast. If I can do a shameless plug, sure, of course.
• 1:03:37
  Don't Kill the Messenger it's called, which Don't Kill the Messenger came about
• 1:03:40
  because that was originally gonna be the title of Audienceology, And it's interesting that
• 1:03:47
  was my title for a long time, so I was kind of married to
• 1:03:50
  it, and it basically the publisher at Simon Schuster thought it was maybe a
• 1:03:55
  little too self serving, and let's put it on the audience, which is
• 1:03:59
  what it's all about and in I don't know, maybe fifteen years ago,
• 1:04:02
  Patrick Goldstein did a feature on the calendar cover of the Calendar section and the
• 1:04:08
  LA Times and he dubbed me the Doctor of Audienceology. And when I brought
• 1:04:14
  that up in the book, they said, you know, we love this
• 1:04:15
  idea of and that's how audienceology came to be, and it really has kind
• 1:04:18
  of taken on a life of its own in terms of the possibilities and so
• 1:04:24
  forth, maybe doing a TV show and around it and all that. In
• 1:04:28
  any event, don't kill the messenger is what it means. It's I'm coming
• 1:04:33
  in to deliver the news of the audience. You know, don't beat me
• 1:04:39
  up. It's the easiest thing to do is to is to pick on the
• 1:04:44
  guy who's uh, who asked to give you the truth and or tell you
• 1:04:48
  the truth. And so it's been a sticky title. I kind of based
• 1:04:54
  the podcast on the notion of people have an interest in like yours your podcast,
• 1:05:01
  people have an interest in movies. There some war stories of screening experiences,
• 1:05:09
  but getting into individuals who have made an impact continue to make an impact
• 1:05:15
  and how that affects kind of as you said, the post production and in
• 1:05:18
  particular screening process. Now my last question to you is what is the craziest,
• 1:05:24
  most entertaining, insane screening event that you could talk about publicly. I
• 1:05:30
  think the one that pops in my head, well two of them pop into
• 1:05:33
  my head. Borat, Oh my god, what was the like the original
• 1:05:39
  Borat, the original Borhead screening which was in Marina del Rey. Remember,
• 1:05:43
  no one really some people knew the alerg character. Yeah, but they didn't
• 1:05:46
  have Sasha Baron Cohne. Really he he did this movie, It will you
• 1:05:53
  never saw anything like it. And people were pissing in their pants at our
• 1:05:57
  house to say it. I mean, I died. You know the wave
• 1:06:00
  like the wave they do a ballgames they were doing that. One guy got
• 1:06:05
  up from he was sitting like in the fifth row to the screen. He
• 1:06:10
  got up and ran up and down the aisle with his arms and people were
• 1:06:13
  just laughing at that because he couldn't contain himself. When the tea bagging scene
• 1:06:17
  happened, Oh no, no, just was it was? It was people
• 1:06:21
  were just out of their minds and so it scored hugely and it was a
• 1:06:27
  great It was one of those magic moments of your experience. Something in of
• 1:06:32
  culture, you know what I mean. And the other thing another one was
• 1:06:35
  like was something about Mary. Oh yeah. Another one like that when Ben
• 1:06:40
  when Ben Stiller comes out with the with the hair gel camera Diaz, camera
• 1:06:47
  Diaz has she has because of his sorry no she yeah, she comes out
• 1:06:53
  with it because this thing his manhood was going to say, but uh.
• 1:07:01
  And with the zipper, oh, the zipp And when the dog flies out
• 1:07:05
  the window with Lynn Shay, I mean, see you're if you see Alex
• 1:07:12
  yeah. Because those imagine being in that first screening and not knowing that that
• 1:07:16
  was what it was. It was just crazy and people. It was one
• 1:07:20
  of those, and I've had many of those, the first screening of Forrest
• 1:07:26
  Gump, the first screening of Titanic, Oh my god, what was the
• 1:07:30
  Titanic screening? Love? It was. People went nuts because it was one
• 1:07:33
  of those. It was. I compare it in the book to the Gum
• 1:07:36
  with the wind screening that is alleged to have happened. It did happen.
• 1:07:41
  I spoke to Samuel Golden before he passed away about it, because he had
• 1:07:44
  talked directly to Darryl Darryl and not Darryl david O Selznick, and Uh,
• 1:07:50
  essentially it was we we got the executives to Minneapolis. No one knew what
• 1:07:58
  we were going to see. Fox Tom Sherrick arranged it. So people just
• 1:08:01
  showed up at the airport private jet and we were flown to to Minneapolis,
• 1:08:06
  and Jim Cameron was there already trying to set up lights and for the question,
• 1:08:12
  you know, and arranging things. And I said, this is not
• 1:08:15
  Great Expectations, which is what we were told. We were in a sea
• 1:08:18
  that was a fake title, so people thought they were going to see Great
• 1:08:21
  Expectations. And when I when I mentioned that, actually I don't think I
• 1:08:29
  mentioned the title. What happened was I said, I'm so glad you're here,
• 1:08:31
  and they're like, what is it? What is it? And then
• 1:08:32
  all of a sudden, the water then comes up and that water image,
• 1:08:40
  and people thought it was a trailer at first, and then it said Titanic
• 1:08:45
  and people were like, ooh, it was one of those. And because
• 1:08:49
  because because at the time, for everyone listening, everyone was bashing Titanic because
• 1:08:54
  it's never going to work the world's biggest flop is how were you going?
• 1:08:59
  It's even how can you make a movie about that? Titanic. We all
• 1:09:00
  know the ending and all of this stuff very good. Oh I remember all
• 1:09:05
  of that because they were just killing Jim over the Bill's expensive movie ever made,
• 1:09:10
  and so that was that was crazy. That was crazy. And I
• 1:09:17
  also remember, Oh, there was a great story of us recruiting I remember
• 1:09:25
  it was I think it was the first toy story, and but we recruited
• 1:09:30
  it under something. It wasn't Benji, but it was something like Lastly,
• 1:09:34
  something like last Year Bank, and we recruited the movie with this, and
• 1:09:39
  then we get up to announce the name. It wasn't me, but another
• 1:09:43
  colleague got up to announce the name of the movie, and people were like,
• 1:09:46
  oooh, because they'd ever heard a toy story. We'll be right back
• 1:09:53
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And
• 1:10:00
  by the end of it, a new franchise was born, and people were
• 1:10:05
  like, Benji, who Lassie, what ye? Because imagine imagine seeing toy
• 1:10:12
  story for the first time when nothing had ever that's been released like that before.
• 1:10:16
  I can't even imagine. I know. So you've got all these great,
• 1:10:19
  great stories first people audiences discovering these great magic and I think you were
• 1:10:29
  saying that there's going to be a comedy that's going to break through again,
• 1:10:30
  something like Borat if anyone has the balls to make a film, because I
• 1:10:35
  remember watching Blazing Saddles when I when I was working at the video store.
• 1:10:41
  When I was a young man, I worked at a video store that I
• 1:10:44
  worked. That's where I in five years, five years my mom and pop
• 1:10:48
  in Florida. I was in New York City and I was the weekend manager.
• 1:10:56
  I was, I was, I was a manager. I was a
• 1:10:58
  manager of So talk about finding your end. As I realized the owner was
• 1:11:03
  just Blockbuster was soon to open a year later. But it was before Blockbuster
• 1:11:08
  and I put a business plan together and I said, I want to buy
• 1:11:10
  your business. And guess what he fired me what he felt threatened. I
• 1:11:15
  was twenty one years old. He felt threatened, and I was dumbfounded.
• 1:11:21
  It was the greatest thing ever. And a year later he was out of
• 1:11:24
  business because Blockbuster went on seventy ninth Street and it was like done, dude.
• 1:11:28
  All those mom and pops, as you know, went out of business.
• 1:11:30
  Done. They were done. But I was. I remember watching Blazing
• 1:11:32
  Saddles because those are times I was watching. So we did when we said
• 1:11:35
  we would put movies on while we were we had to reshrink wrap our movies.
• 1:11:41
  Obviously, obviously I did the same thing New knew. Right, Yeah,
• 1:11:45
  when you're going to resell the used ones, you reshrink, ramped them,
• 1:11:47
  put them out of course, of course. Uh yeah. I used
• 1:11:50
  to play Nintendo in the back and watch movies up front. So I'm watching
• 1:11:53
  Blazing Sound and I went to the X rated section here and there. I
• 1:11:57
  didn't a lot. Our city did not allow pornography of Florida, so it
• 1:12:02
  was that area. There was like a couple couple of Fort Lardo for Larerdale
• 1:12:08
  for whatever reason, that's more aggressive than a lot of the It did not
• 1:12:11
  allow it. But like if you went to another city you could, but
• 1:12:14
  for whatever. So I never had that joy, uh as a young man.
• 1:12:19
  But I'm watching Blazing Saddle. I've ever seen Debbie does Dallas. I'm
• 1:12:23
  just gonna tell you, well, I mean, you don't know what you're
• 1:12:25
  missing. Listen, people find a way. But uh, before there was
• 1:12:30
  the internet either way, which we tested now I'm joking, which we tested
• 1:12:33
  and that one. But watching Blazing Saddles, I said, this movie will
• 1:12:41
  never be there's nothing that will ever come out as like Ballsy as this film,
• 1:12:46
  Like it was just first of all, that movie could never come out
• 1:12:49
  today like as a as a it just in the culture, in the climate
• 1:12:53
  that we have today, would never be able to come out today. But
• 1:12:56
  when Borat showed up, I was just like, how did this sneak through
• 1:13:00
  the guard gate? Like, how in God's green Earth did they do it?
• 1:13:04
  And then when they released the during I think it was pandemic or twenty
• 1:13:06
  twenty one, here is a sequel, I'm like, or twenty twenty whenever
• 1:13:10
  he released it, and we worked on that. Really, I'm like,
• 1:13:13
  thank god, Sasha wrote a really really nice quote for the back of my
• 1:13:17
  book, and we worked. I did all the War second one too,
• 1:13:21
  and beyond so much fun. And I just interviewed on my podcast Monica Levinson,
• 1:13:27
  who produced it, and she talks about, you know, if you
• 1:13:30
  want to hear it, her being arrested and how that all worked and how
• 1:13:34
  they get releases and stuff. That was pretty cool, how they were able
• 1:13:39
  to do stuff like but but but you know, and not to go off
• 1:13:42
  too far off the training for a second, but what Sasha does his life
• 1:13:46
  is threatened like the stuff that he would do. It was like life threatening
• 1:13:50
  situations he put himself in for our comedy, like Jerry's know that that concert
• 1:13:56
  we talk about the concert, you know that concert, Yeah, in the
• 1:13:59
  second in the second one, and you saw that they were trying to tip
• 1:14:02
  over the ambulance that he was being taken. He was genuinely dear, fearful.
• 1:14:08
  I mean you could see it. He's he just he might have jumped.
• 1:14:12
  He just might have gone too far, Like he just might have just
• 1:14:15
  just a little bit, might have gone too far. Because that's some suchy
• 1:14:18
  not for me either, but but for his safety, he might have gone
• 1:14:23
  safety. Well yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Well, the
• 1:14:25
  whole thing is based on this authenticity, and so it's just amazing to me.
• 1:14:30
  Also what people will do and sign away I know, oh yeah,
• 1:14:35
  after Boar, After Boar I came out, there was like lawsuits trying to
• 1:14:39
  like I did well, like I mean because they signed the release because they
• 1:14:42
  didn't know, you know, like some of the stories he went into and
• 1:14:45
  some of the things he did, and people signed the releases and they're like
• 1:14:47
  no, no, it's like that whole dinner, that whole dinner scene where
• 1:14:50
  he comes back with a sack. Oh, don't give me, don't get
• 1:14:54
  me straight. I literally, when I watched the second one, I fell
• 1:14:58
  off my chair during the movie. Oh god, forget what scene it was.
• 1:15:01
  I literally fell off my chair. I was in the deserts and palm
• 1:15:05
  spreeds doing it remotely on this platform the Virtue works plat Yeah, yeah,
• 1:15:11
  and sadly, I'm like laughing so hard. And I was on a small
• 1:15:16
  chair and I I just I told myself back and I fell off, and
• 1:15:21
  they're like, where do you go? Yeah? Last lad, it's great,
• 1:15:28
  he's at it. Yeah, Oh my god, Kivid. Where can
• 1:15:30
  people find out more about you and the work that you're doing, sir?
• 1:15:33
  Well, my social media is Kevin Gets. That's g O E. T
• 1:15:38
  Z. Yeah, Kevin Gets three sixty and I'm on all the social media
• 1:15:43
  platforms. And the book is called Audienceology. Uh, it's on Amazon.
• 1:15:47
  It's there's a you can get it the I read it as well, and
• 1:15:50
  then also the podcast called Don't Kill the Messenger and that's also just Google that
• 1:15:58
  it's on all the different platforms. Kevin. I appreciate your contribution to film
• 1:16:02
  history over the last thirty years. My friend. Seriously, here's such a
• 1:16:05
  pleasure, and you're such a wealth of knowledge, and it's a gisure to
• 1:16:10
  talk to someone who is in the know and really gets it. You have
• 1:16:13
  great enthusiasm, great enthusiasm. I appreciate you very much, my friend.
• 1:16:16
  Thank you again, Thank you so much. I want to thank Kevin so
• 1:16:21
  much for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the tribe today.
• 1:16:25
  Thank you so much, Kevin. If you want to get links to
• 1:16:27
  anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at
• 1:16:30
  Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash three forty five. Thank you so much
• 1:16:34
  for listening. Guys, As always, keep on writing no matter what.
• 1:16:38
  I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at
• 1:16:43
  Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.