Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 315: Hercules, Hollywood Accounting and Indie Films with Kevin Sorbo

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BPS 315: Hercules, Hollywood Accounting and Indie Films with Kevin Sorbo · 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 IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three fifteen. If you do what you've always done,
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you'll get what you've always gotten. Tony Robbins broadcasting from a dark,
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windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft.
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It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while
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teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex
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Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I
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am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
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Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually
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focuses on the kind of project you are in the goals of the project you
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are, so we actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie
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film, market, and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from
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a reader that used to reading tempole movies when your movie is going to be
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Now. Today's guest is legendary, literally legendary because it is actor, writer,
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director, and producer Kevin Soerbo. Kevin was the star of one of
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the most watched shows in the world in the mid nineties called Hercules The Legendary
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Journeys. During that time, he accepted his first leading role in a fantasy
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action feature call The Conqueror, who was Conan's Father, for Universal Studios.
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He also helped spin off zena Warrior Princess, and has worked on just so
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many movies over the years. It's quite quite impressive. I even got to
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work with Kevin on a film called Abel's Field, where I was a colorist
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and post production supervisor years ago. In this conversation, we talk about what
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he looks for as an actor in independent films because he's one of the most
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sought after indie film actors out there, what it was like to be one
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of the biggest stars in the world during his Hercules and Andromeda series days,
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and a very interesting look inside the vicious world that is Hollywood. We discussed
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how he was a victim of Hollywood accounting and was never paid the back and
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promised to him on Hercules the Legendary Journeys. This was an eye opening conversation
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with Kevin and I cannot wait to share it with you guys. So without
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any further ado, please enjoy my eye opening and entertaining conversation with Kevin Sorbo.
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I like to welcome to the show. Kevin Sorbo. How are you
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doing, Kevin? I'm good. How you doing? Alex good? My
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friend? Thank you so much for coming on the show man. It's it's
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I'm a I'm a fan and and believe it or not, we've worked together
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beyond that. You didn't even know, but I actually worked on two of
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your films, one of them being Able's Field, where I was the colorist
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and the post supervisor. Wow, Unable to Field. I love that movie.
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That movie deserved the theatrical You know, it's weird with these independent movies.
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It's uh yeah, it's I could have draw It's about p and A,
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it's about word of mouth. But you know, we got a big
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battle. We're battling the Hollywood giant studios. But that's a really good movie.
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It was a fun it was a fun movie. Love the director,
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I love the producer. They did get picked up by Sony eventually, so
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I know that I know it did at least get some sort of good release.
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And then I worked on another movie. I forgot it was. It
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was you in the jungle fighting a monster of some sort. I forgot the
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name of it. This is years ago. Um, And I was a
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colorist on that one as well. I was in Louisiana, the Louisiana,
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Louisiana, being in the jungle fighting a monster. It sounds like Hercules,
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but I shot that for seven No, No, it was not. It
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was definitely not Hercules. It was another movie. I'll find it. I
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was actually looking it up before our interview. I'm like, I couldn't find
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in my I got a lot of people, I got a lot of credits
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in my things. I was just kind of looking like where it is?
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And I know they changed the name afterwards in any way. But but I've
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so I have you on I've had you on my demo reel for a while
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back in the day when I was when I was color grading um. But
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but I was a fan of your since the beginning. But let me let
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me start off the interview with how did you get into the business. I'm
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a really small town in Minnesota, about seven thousand people in it. We're
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about twenty five miles west of Minneapolis. It's called Mound, Minnesota's on the
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beautiful shores of Lake Minnetonka. And so get the name lake, I think
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Minnetonka. We were home to Tonka Toys. That was the industry in my
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little town, employed, like you know, twenty five percent of the population
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there. But we went to the Gutthrie Theater and the gut Thrie Theater is
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a very famous theater in Minneapolis and back. A lot of actors out of
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Broadway start there. A lot of things start there before they moved like Lion
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Came, for instance, was there before they moved it to Broadway. So
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we went, eleven years old, we went to see The Merchant of Venice.
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It was this field trip with my elementary school I was eleven. I
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don't know what the hell they were saying because it was Shakespeare, but I
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was mesmerized by it all. And you know, the way home to my
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mom has said, you know, I'm not be an actor, and she
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said, is that right? She goes, well, that's nice, dear,
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and uh, you know, I kept it quiet because you know,
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being a Thespian where I came from, we made fun of those people in
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the drama class. I was a jock. I was a football, basketball,
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baseball guy. So I had to hide in that closet, so to
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speak, until I got into college, where I had double major in business,
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but I took a minor in drama. So I but I you know,
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Minnieappolis really offered a lot of great things for me because a lot of
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people don't realize that Minnesota. Minneapolis is headquartered National and Chorus to three M,
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Honeywell, Pillsbury, General Mills, Target, Best Buy. So all
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these companies based on there did all their commercials back in the day there.
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So I got that all important screen Actors Guild, carp I do and commercials
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all through college. That that's when I was. I was when I was
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in Florida, uh. You know, the actors I worked with, they
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were just just dying to get onto to get that sad card, and that's
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how. And many of them got them just by doing that commercial. Like,
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oh my god, I'm SAG eligible now because I got this this commercial.
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So it is. It is a hustle being an actor, there is
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no, no, no doubt about it. Look, I had a double
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major marketing advertising. I tell people I market and advertised myself because you are
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your own product in this industry, you know, and you got to get
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out there. And most of the time I tell people I want to get
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the business. They go, what's to like? And I go, I'll
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get ready for you know, a lot of doors being slammed in your face
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because rejection is the main thing of Hollywood. So you know, it's some
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matters getting out there, getting out there. I remember I did a lot
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of commercials. I'm one of the few guys I know that I'd befriended when
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I moved out there, because I don't know anybody. I already had the
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SADE card. I already had the commercial agent because I sent my reel out
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to the commercial agents, said I, you know, found out about and
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they all signed me because you know, I had a good reel already.
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I already had like forty commercials on there, and so they knew my face
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from commercials, so that wasn't a problem. I never had a working on
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the job. Between nineteen eighty six and nineteen ninety two, I shot over
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a hundred commercials. Wow, you were an actual working actor. I was
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a working actor. And in between that was you know, it enabled me
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to do the really good acting classes I started. I studied with Roy London
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for instance. You know Roy Roy that class alone. I had Matthew Perry's
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in that class. Me Brad pitt was in that class with me, Charlotte
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Ross. I mean, I'm some really good people that went on to do
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obviously had really good careers. So it enabled me to study and not have
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to like miss things because of work or something like that. And I remember
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my commercial agent at one time I called up because you know, once you
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started to know people, Hey man, there's one for there's one for Coca
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Cola. Here about that one, you know, And so I'd call my
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agent all the time, Hey what about this one? And my commercial agents
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said to me one time, it's Kevin, I got one hundred other clients,
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you know, And I said, how do I give a crap about
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your other clients? Do you think they care about me? My match was,
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let me have the opportunity to be rejected. That's what I said.
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Let me at least go in there. I'm willing to drive and this craphole
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traffic of Los Angeles to do, you know, and wait an hour before
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they see me for my two minute little audition scene. Let me have the
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chance to get turned down. I mean, I treated it like a business.
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I really pounded the pavement, now you know, you know. I
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mean, I've I've been directed for a long time, and I've I've obviously
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done a lot of auditions, and we as filmmakers get a tremendous amount of
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rejection, but it pales in comparison to the immense amount of rejection that actors
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have to deal with on a day. I mean, sometimes being rejected four,
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five, six times a day if they get to that many auditions.
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How do you deal How did you deal with rejection? Because I'm assuming,
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yeah, you were a working actor, but I'm assuming for those hundred so
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commercials you probably went out for two thousand of them. Oh sure, I
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lived on Santa Monica right Nocean Park Boulevard is right in the Venice border.
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And to deal with rejection, I went and pumped iron every day at Gold's
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gym and biked and either biked or rollerbladed down in Manhattan back every day.
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Otherwise I think I would have gone postal on people. You really have I
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think we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back
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to the show. And I think being that jock I used to be that
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outlet was amazing for me and uh and I needed it. I needed it.
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And I also played. I had six years. I was in three
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basketball leagues, so I was I was playing basketball three times. We had
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one in Pasadena, one in the north Ridge, and one in Beverly Hill.
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So I was playing hoops all the time. So I was always physically
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staying active to burn off that frustration, because yeah, it's it's absolutely frustrating
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to say the least. I got down the last two guys for Lois and
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Clark, who was Dean Kane and myself. Dean's a very dear friend of
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mine. He's a great guy, and we bothed. Our auditions are screen
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test with Terry Hatcher who already had the role, and that night my manager
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calls she got the role, Kevin. That was when Lower Mar Studios used
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to be in Warner Brothers. There gone now, but I think Les Moonvez
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was the president there before he moved to CBS. So they called me you
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got the role. I got excited. We went and party and then the
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next day, yeah, how they changed our mind to going Dean King and
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the absolute high high highs of acting low low lows. It's it's a very
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frustrating business. But ultimately three months later I did book the role of Hercules,
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and as I love to tell Dean, my show went for seven seasons
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down in New Zealand around the world one hundred and seven six countries, became
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the most watched TV show in the world. And you got cant after three
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seasons. I'm okay. Rather it all worked out for everybody. For me,
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Deans are great. I've done a couple of movies together and we got
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another one we want to do together next year. We're trying to raise money
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for right now. Now, what is the one thing you wish you would
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have known when you started in the business. I wasn't surprised how political it
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is. I wasn't surprised how crazy it is, you know, because I
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knew enough about it, and even just in the commercial world in a smaller
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place like Minneapolis Saint Paul, which really isn't that small. It's pretty big,
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pretty big around there too. But um, I just I had a
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hard dealing with the backstaff, and they came from your own agents and your
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own managers that you found out about later. I remember one time I was
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in talking with my commercial agent, a good buddy of mine, and I
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just finished golfing, and I stopped by and say, Hey, what's going
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on? Blah blah blah, And right next to me, I heard the
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booker from my buddy say, oh, Court, No, Court's out of
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town right now. But I got a much better person for the role anyway.
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And I stood up and I said, I just got off the I
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just got off the golf course with Court. I busted him and I told,
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this happens all the time. It's it's it's amazing to me. And
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also, you know when when you signed I got very lucky at two series
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Hercules and Andromeda, so I twelve straight. There's a two series. I
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had the lead in him and both of them one win seven years, one
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win five years, and the percentage of you get in a second season is
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very rare. So um. But the amazing thing is how corrupt the industry
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is, because you've heard it before. The creative accounting they ad it.
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They admit to it. A backend deal on your series or movie means you're
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going to take it in the back end as really about it comes back great,
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that's actually a really great term. I spent nine years of my lawsuit
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from my back end on Hercules with Andromeda and ultimately end up getting throwing out
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and I find out that the judge behind it all was in the back pocket
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of the studio already the whole time. And my man I had really I
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had really big entertainment lawyers, big big ones that had handled like the big
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name actors out there, and they said to me, well, you know,
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you know, I said, why, why can't they just be honest?
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And he said, wow, it's a price of doing business. Really,
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the price of the business is trying to screw you over. When Titanic
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was the first movie to make a billion dollars back in one nineteen ninety seven,
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yea Arnold Schwartzener gets up in front of an audience a two billion people
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around the world and says, here's the movie. Even the studio won't be
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able to hide the profits in. And you got a lot of nervous laughter
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from those first ten rows of all the big wigs that run the whole freaking
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world. You know. But it's amazing to me how corrupt the industry is.
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And it's and it's pretty open about it, you know. Oh,
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and it's It's something I've been yelling and screaming up from the top of the
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lungs trying to warn filmmakers about because and I've seen it, like you know,
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you know, working on posts for such a long time, on films
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like Abel's Field and things like that. I hear it from the producers.
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I hear what's going on with distribution and the Hollywood accounting and all of that
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kind of it's I remember I had a conversation with a distribute on a film
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of mine and he actually told me, he goes, well, you I
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was asking him, why is the check so small? Or where is this
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check coming from? Or like I gotta check, you know, like but
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where no reporting? I didn't know what it was from. I'm like,
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thank you for this little money, But I like, what is it?
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And he's like, what are you complaining about? You gotta check. Most
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filmmakers don't even get a check. So non chalant about it. It was
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just like it was just like I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee.
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It was so nonchalant. I was like, oh my god, this is
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completely in te wrenched informative. If you get into a second season, a
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third season or TV series, press me. They're making money, and they're
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making big money. And behind closed doors, they will each admit it.
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I golfed with these guys and they sit there and go, yeah, it
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is kind of what goes on in the business. But he goes, oh
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yeah, I made money in that right away. But you know, certain
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people get paid and other people don't get paid because you got to play that
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Hollywood game. And I'm not a very good player at this stupid game.
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I'm not a big fan of it. I'm not a Hollywood guy. But
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I love being on the set. I love making movies. I love doing
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TV series. I you know, it's I still get very excited when I'm
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working. I love doing it, and I'm gonna hopefully, you know,
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Thank God for independent movies. I'm still able to keep our career going now
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with them with Hercules. How did you get involved with Hercules? Because if
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I'm not mistaken, to start off with some it was like movies first,
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right, and then it turned into a series. Yeah, we did five
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to our movies for when when my agent called me on this one, I
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kept I'm not as smaller. I'm sixty three, you know, and back
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then I waited around two twenty five. I'm too ten now because I'm getting
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older. It's hard to keep the muscle mass. Still working out every day
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though. But uh, when I got the call, I thought, all
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right, you know, I mean I'm athletic, I played sports, you
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know, I work out all the time. I left waits all time.
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But I told him, God, they're gonna want some you know, two
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hundred and eighty pounds, no neck, you know bodybuilder. Times said No,
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what they're looking for is a guy that looks like he's an NFL quarterback
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or maybe a decathlon guy. And I said, okay, that's interesting.
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So I read the read the sides that went in a red Ford at Universal.
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About a week and a half later, they call me back in again.
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Another week, and alf they call me back in again. Another week.
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They call me in seven times over like two and a half months.
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Wow. And on the very last time, big building there at right off
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of the the one on one that Universal. Yeah, you're you know,
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you get the big tower hole and the big black towers in the highway.
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I call it. I call it the building where actors go to die.
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But um, I went I went there. I was down to the last
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three guys, and Sam Ramy was our executive producer. So I get in
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there. I'm on the stage and then must have had There's like thirty people
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in there. They're all whoever's gonna make this decision for this TV series.
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There's all the men and women that have all the power and at Universal to
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decide what TV shows get picked up and which one's don't. Right. So
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I got on stage and I said, you know, you guys have brought
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me in here a lot. I appreciate it. I signed the contract because
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now you're down the last three, they're gonna make it this second. So
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we signed that five and a half year contract in case it goes more than
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more than one, you know, turns into something more. And I said,
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you guys, never give me any direction here. Is there some way
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you want me to do this? And you know, I'm looking at mister
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Ramy and says, no, we like what you're doing. Just keep doing
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what you're doing. So I read, I read again with the with the
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actress, and then they said that's great, that's great. Okay. Um
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Sam hits the woman. Next she goes, she goes, oh, yeah,
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I need you. I have to ask you to take your shirt off
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please, right, and if you watch a show. I was in good
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shape. Took my shirt off and there was a you know a few audible
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oh my sort of a gasp. And then, being the smart ass that
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I am, I said, well, I'm a lot bigger out of my
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clothes. So um Sam says to me. Ramy says, so, if
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you get the role Kevin, would you be willing to, you know,
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shave your stomach and chest. I'm not like Robin Williams, like seven inches
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of growth, but I got a little man cover there and uh and uh
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he said would you be willing to shave it? And I went, oh,
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I'm sorry. I thought you wanted a man for this role. And
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I started walking off the stage. I got I got a big laugh at
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me, and I said thank you all. I left and the next day
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I flew to Vancouver on my Chicklers series, the commission. So the third
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day on the set, like somebody on one of the pas come up,
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Oh, you have to call your managers. I'll call my manager, Beverly
18:55
Dean. And Beverley says, you got the role. You're gonna be a
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Hercules the You're gonna do five Tar movies or going down to New Zealand and
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blah blah blash. She's very she was all excited. I walked back on
19:04
the set and I looked at checklist and I said, I don't want any
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crap from you. I'm half got them. So so I went. I
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went. I went down there. Actually for the next two months, I
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pumped a little hard to put another five pounds of muscle on, and I
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trained with Douglas Wang. Douglas Wang was one of Bruce Lee's original students.
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Oh yes, and we went sixth day, Oh great guy, we went.
19:26
He he developed thing called the White Lotus kung Fu method or whatever it
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was, but he taught me all kinds of weapon. We worked like eight
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hours a day for five days a week for two months, I go to
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New Zealand, who do the book opposite me to play Zeus but Anthony Quinn.
19:41
So I get a whole year working with Anthony Quinn. And if your
19:45
listeners don't know he has a shame on you, yes, well please everyone
19:48
just google Anthony Quinn. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
20:00
out back to the show. People need in this industry, they need to
20:03
get schooled on the people that were there before us. And this is the
20:08
guy that was nominated for six Academy Awards, he won twice. So it
20:14
was halfway through the third movie where something happened on the set with Michael Hurst,
20:18
who played my Sidekickiolas and co crew lapped up, just cracked up.
20:23
And I looked at them because we had we add lived in the show not
20:26
to make writers mad, but we would add lib stuff and they could take
20:29
take it off they wanted to. But I looked at Michael, I said,
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that's what this show is going to get picked up as a series.
20:33
He goes and things, so I said yeah, because there's nothing like it
20:36
on TV right now. There's nothing like this. It has this biggest scope
20:40
with a cinematography and his New Zealand. It was beautiful, the wardrobes,
20:44
we had, the fight scenes that we did, the monsters that we had,
20:47
and sure enough, by the end of the movie the third movie,
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Universal said, we love what we see. We haven't released anything yet.
20:53
We're still cutting the first three movies, but you're gonna stay down. They
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we're gonna make this a TV series. And so by our season three,
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not only did we spin off the female sort of Hercules version with zena Warrior
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princess. That same season. You know how Hollywood is, Something's hot,
21:11
they all copied. Sheena came out another another female thing, Robin Hood,
21:18
Tarzan's Sinbad Conan, all these other shows came out to sort of copy of
21:22
what we were doing. And by season three we did pass Baywatch as the
21:25
most watched TV show in the world, which is pretty cool. That's amazing.
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And you guys were shooting in New Zealand before was in Vogue. It
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was before Lord. It was it was before the Lord the Rings right right
21:33
before Lord. Peter Jackson used to come on the set the Seal of Cruise
21:37
developing. Because we shot from nineteen ninety three through the end of nineteen ninety
21:40
nine. I was down there for seven years and we had Peter would come
21:44
on a sealer cruise developing, because all during that decade he was writing all
21:48
three movies of Lord of the Rings. And when we wrapped, he took
21:52
eighty percent of my crew. He took all the stunt guys, he took
21:55
our camera team. We took well, John mahalffy and Peter McCaffrey. The
22:00
camera guys were just amazing that John mahalf he ended up doing second unit directing
22:04
and all those things, plus all the Spider Man movies after that. But
22:07
Nila Dixon won the Academy Award for Best Wardrobe for Lord of the Rings.
22:11
I always told him my crew, I said, you know, it's ridiculous
22:15
that if they don't want to nominate us for a Golden Globe and Emmy,
22:18
fine for acting whatever like that, but to not look at us for cinematography.
22:22
There's nothing on TV that looked as beautiful as this show and for our
22:25
wardrobe. And I was sort of like, Okay. She ended up winning
22:27
the Academy Award for the wardrobe on Lord of the Rings. She should have
22:30
got a Gold Glober Emmy and my show because the wardrobe on my show and
22:33
Zeno was amazing, and our stunt guys were just incredible as well. So
22:37
I don't know, it's it's the politics of the business once again, because
22:41
we were a first run syndicated show. We weren't a network show, so
22:45
they just like they didn't want to pay attention to it is even though we
22:48
had high ratings and most shows on networks and it was. It was funny
22:51
because I really never heard of Maybe you can tell me if this happened before,
22:55
but the studio doing a five movie like deal first then to see then
23:03
roll it into a series. Had that been done before. Well, here's
23:06
here's why that happened. It's called the Action pack wheel, where they had
23:10
they had four other shows doing movies. We were the only ones that did
23:12
five movies because they loved what the show looked like. The other ones at
23:15
four you had Tech Wars that Chapman was producing. You had Midnight Run where
23:18
they took that movie that Charles Groden and DeNiro did, which such a great
23:22
movie. Had they had bj and the Bear, and they had Banishing Son,
23:27
this this karate thing. Okay, so we were the only one that
23:33
it was funny because Sid Sheinberg was was the president of Universe at the time,
23:38
and I remember it was like it was around season three and I was
23:41
back home at the Universal Christmas party and he comes up to me. He
23:45
says, you know, I gotta be ansked with you. When they came
23:47
up with the Action Wheel, we just figured Hercules will be the first to
23:51
go, and you're the only one that's still around, so shows you how
23:53
much they don't know. It's just like throwing spaghetti against the bloody wall and
23:57
see what sticks. But you know, it's it's it's it's it's funny.
24:03
How What no. I was gonna say is if back in the seventies they
24:07
had McMillan and Wife and McCloud and they had all these these these two hour
24:11
rotating shows that we're going there like every Wednesday night, and I think that's
24:15
what they're trying to copy in with his Action Pack. But it just didn't.
24:18
It just didn't take off. I don't I don't know what happened to
24:21
tech Wars and why that didn't work, but we were the only ones that
24:23
end up surviving, which is great. I mean, to be fair,
24:26
I mean, on paper, it does not sound like if you if you
24:27
would sell well, you know, we're gonna do tech wars, We're gonna
24:30
do and we're gonna do Hercules Like Hercules is one of those stories that has
24:33
just obviously been beaten to death forever because it's just it's one of the older
24:38
stories around. But yet you couldn't quantify the magic of the chemistry of what
24:44
you did and what the writers did with the directing team, production team everything.
24:48
It's just that whole soup is not on the paper. Yeah. Well,
24:52
you know, I think a lot of is do what with Sam Ramy's
24:55
brand now too, you know. I mean they love the quirky humor and
24:59
break in the Fourth War all like Gilligan's Island or something. I mean,
25:02
you know, every time I haven't turned my head, they put a big
25:04
sound effect on, you know, in the in the fight scenes. I
25:07
love doing the fight scenes. You know. We did three every episode basically,
25:11
and Peter Bell or stunt choreographer, would let me work with I mean
25:15
we would sit there and we shot like eight to ten day episodes. So
25:19
I was down in New Zealand ten months a year. That was home for
25:22
me for seven years. So when we were not shooting up fight scene that
25:26
day, we'd still be rehearsing. I'd go in and block a scene.
25:30
Then I'd go, you know, fifty meters away with the stunt guys to
25:33
rehearse what the next you know, fight scene is going to be. And
25:36
we all try to put in funny stuff like if I would throw a guy
25:40
a hundred meters and he lands, you only put a wire eg on.
25:41
I mean he lands in a cow pie and passu somewhere. And then I
25:45
kicked a sword out of one guy's hand and flies through the air wells made
25:48
sure as that flies through the air, make sure that guy's getting back up,
25:52
and that sword hits some in the back of the head and knocks them
25:53
back in the coalpine the whole thing. You know, in a bar fight,
25:56
I throw a guy out the bar, you know, through the wall,
25:59
and then cut up body of his you know, you know that the
26:02
whole in the walls, his cut up body. And fans love that stuff.
26:04
And it was it was corny, it was cheesy, but it was
26:07
done that wayne purpose, because we knew with a show like this, we
26:11
gotta we want people laugh with us and not laugh at It worked, Yeah,
26:15
it's a very You had to do a little tongue in cheek. I
26:18
mean, you know, if you would have done it dead serious, I
26:21
think it probably would have not. I said, tongue firmly planted in cheek
26:25
when I talked about so and so. And to go back to what you
26:29
were saying earlier, you had to actually fight for back end participation on all
26:33
that all that stuff for her. Believe it or not, they after seven
26:37
years they were going to do seasons eight, nine and ten. Right,
26:40
I got approached by Magel Rodenberry, Jane Rombery's widow, to do the first
26:44
show ever created by Gene Rodberry after the original Star Trek series back in nineteen
26:49
sixty nine. It wasn't Star Trek, it wasn't an Enterprise, wasn't the
26:52
the next Generation. It was actually Andromeda, and my captain, Captain Dillon
26:57
Hunt, was the first captain ever created of Captain Kirk. So she came
27:00
to me and said, boom, they gave me a They gave me a
27:04
two year guarantee forty four episode pay or play if the show the even go,
27:11
They're going to pay me for forty four episodes. Holy wow, at
27:15
a salary that I was being offered for season eight on Hercules per episode.
27:19
It was it was it was a mafia deal, too good to turn down.
27:23
And I'm a Star Treks fan to begin with. And Versal wasn't that
27:26
mad about it because they owned the sci Fi channel anyway, so I was
27:30
like, I was still part of that family. But because I didn't sign
27:34
eight, nine and ten, I think it was like a screw you to
27:37
me. And it's it's amazing what they will do to juggle the books.
27:44
You know, they said, they said, oh, we lost so much
27:45
money in the show. What don't you lost money? I knew they were
27:48
making money by season two, season three, they're making big money. But
27:52
they can say whatever they want. And if they own the court systems,
27:53
they don't. I mean, it's amazing to me how corrupt the system is,
27:59
and and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. I know guys that
28:03
did other series that didn't get paid on their back end either. I knew
28:07
James Garner. I used to golf with the late James Garner and I was
28:10
a big fan of Rockford Files. He had to fight thirteen years or first
28:15
back end deal thirteen years. Oh we didn't make any Rockford file. It's
28:19
it's unbelievable what these guys do. And it's it's they say, oh,
28:23
it's just part of doing business. Well no, it's not. Just be
28:26
honest, but there's no honesty and integrity. It's gone, you know,
28:29
and it's it's that in the battle. So I never got paid my back
28:33
in Oh my god, that's insane. They had Sam Rami and Rob Tapper's
28:40
contracts down there during the negotiations. During the moderation, mine's next to theirs.
28:45
My lawyer says, their definitions are identical, and you paid those guys.
28:48
One lawyer from that studio said, well, it all depends how you
28:52
want to define the word definition. And that's when I said to the moderator,
28:57
we better go to a different rooms right now because I'm about to go
29:00
across the table and probably do something that's going to hurt this guy. So
29:06
wow, amazing what they'll do. So, you know, and I'm a
29:11
Midwest guy, to me, a handshag shakes as good as a contract.
29:14
But you know, you see, you'll see how thick the contracts are in
29:17
Hollywood with all the double talk, and you know, it's like it's like
29:21
Washington, DC. Right what they five thousand page bill the other day and
29:25
they say he got six ors to read it. Yeah, yeah, they
29:27
yeah, they do that constantly all the time. They do stuff like that.
29:30
It's so then, But if you would have played ball and gotten seven,
29:33
eight and nine signed, uh, that might have been different for you,
29:36
is what they're saying. Who knows? Who knows? I don't think.
29:40
I don't think it would have been a difference. I know guys that
29:42
didn't get paid in their back in the other shows that won't name them,
29:45
but they came back and said, hey, we want to do a movie
29:47
out of this, and they said forget it, and then they got paid
29:49
their back in all of a sudden to do so. When when So basically,
29:52
if they want something from you, you can give them more money somewhere
29:56
else. Generally they they'll play ball, like the Rockwood File thing is insane.
30:00
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
30:07
to the show. That's insane. Rock Pfire was a huge I mean within
30:11
the thirteen seasons. Thirteen seasons. I don't win thirteen seasons. But he
30:15
took them three teen years to fight it. Oh yeah, I think I
30:18
think they got seven years out of a ray. It's just sorry, I'm
30:21
sorry exactly, but still thirteen years before he got paid and he did finally
30:26
get paid, he finally got paid. Gee, you know how much money
30:30
did they make on the money they owed him for over those thirteen years?
30:33
Oh, of course, of course. No, it's it's it's it is.
30:37
It is, it is, it is, it's it's aren't you happy
30:40
you're in a business. It's it's amazing. You know. It's not the
30:47
city of angels, it's a city of broken dream But no, no questions.
30:49
Business that I think you'll agree. It doesn't matter what side of the
30:53
camera on. Yeah, it's a business you want to be involved in,
30:57
especially if and the more I've figured this out in my in my tenure in
31:03
the business, is the more control you have over the product, the distribution,
31:07
the creation yourself, the better chance you have to actually get paid.
31:12
Well that's what I'm doing my own stuff now, you know. But I
31:15
mean, I don't think anybody gets in the business and say it like an
31:18
actor, well, I didn't really want to be an actor. Just sort
31:21
of happened, okay, right, Zac the supermodel to say I never really
31:23
want to be a model. Yeah, you were just a hot babe that
31:26
everybody was gawking at all the time. But I don't know. Somebody took
31:30
my picture and paid me ten thousand dollars an hour, So I'm like,
31:33
why not? Why not? Okay, I believe that. Now, can
31:40
you explain something because I mean, obviously, Hercules and Andromeda, you have
31:44
fans, you have really passionate sci fi fans, and what can you tell
31:51
explain to people what it's like to actually be at comic con and and to
31:56
meet your fans. Because I've been on both sides of the table been I've
32:00
been getting the autograph and I've also given the autograph, and it is a
32:02
really interesting experience. Can you and I can only imagine what it's like for
32:07
someone like you. So can you explain that to people? You know,
32:09
it makes a difference if the show is current as well. I mean I
32:14
still do comic cons. I still get invited a lot of them. I
32:15
mean this year sucked. Of course, I had about I pick out about
32:19
eight a year, even though I probably get invited worldwide to maybe thirty.
32:22
I picked Okay, I've never been there. I want to do that one
32:25
again. That was good. But Hercules and Andromeda are still out there,
32:29
and there's still fans out there with it. But when it's current, it's
32:34
more rabid, it's more insane. Because I'm there as Hercules. I come
32:37
back for my two months and I'm back home in the States before I head
32:40
back down for the next season. And so I still got the long hair,
32:44
I still got the you know the look, and you sit across the
32:46
table and people are they're they're nervous, they're shaking. Yeah, they're shaking,
32:51
They're scared. I've had a couple of women faint at the table.
32:54
It's crazy. But but now, because it's like those people now are in
33:01
their thirties, they're the age I was when I filmed it, during my
33:06
seven years of my thirties, and now they got kids, so they're showing
33:09
it to their kids, and there's more. It's just kind of a nostalgic
33:14
thing for them now to see me and meet with me. But their kids
33:16
are the ones who so open eyes. But I love doing them. I
33:21
have a blast doing them. I'm a golf nuts, so I'll golf every
33:24
con I go to. I find a course, so I'll let me tee
33:28
off at seven in the morning. I golf fast. I'll do eighteen holes
33:30
in less than two hours. And I go to the con and hang out
33:34
and we go to dinner with some of the other actors, like going to
33:36
dinner with Chat and there was just a just a hoop. Man. The
33:39
bands will come up to me during dinner and I'm cool about it. I'm
33:44
chatterings like he won't take any of them. Man, He's just like he
33:47
goes, Okay, do you want to talk to me, come to condo
33:51
or something, you know, And I sort of get that to him because
33:53
I've been I've been sleeping on an airplane. I've had people wake me up.
33:59
No, I mean, hey, I'm sleeping, and hey, can
34:02
I get a picture of Are you kidding? No? But most people,
34:10
most people are really cool. You get the people that hate you too.
34:14
I mean when I got married, I had female fans, right, and
34:16
I hope people watch your show now, So they got they got mad I
34:21
got married. I guess they thought if they sent me a picture of them
34:23
in a bra or something, I ended up marrying them. I don't write
34:27
it was it was that dream that hope that he's not married yet. So
34:30
there's still hope that I might just maybe, but I don't. I don't
34:35
know. But most fans are pretty cool. I gotta say most most people,
34:37
especially now with the movies. I do a lot of family friendly movies,
34:40
like Abel's Field. With the movies, I call it with a good
34:44
message in there and stuff. So, um, I know I've lost some
34:46
fans with that. You know, I'm heavy on Twitter and social media and
34:50
I posted truth and like Jack Nicholson says, you can't handle the truth,
34:53
and a lot of people can't. They don't want to hear the truth.
34:55
They want to believe whatever whatever fed them on the end, because if it's
35:00
on the internet, it must be true. Well, I mean that's the
35:01
law. I mean, that's the laws, and I mean, if it's
35:05
on the Internet, it has to be true. Um. Now, there
35:07
was a movie that you did call call the Conqueror. U. Can you
35:12
talk a little bit about that, because it seemed to me that that was
35:15
in the middle of the Hercules, you know, fire in the firestorm,
35:17
but in the hurricane that was Hercules and it was a universal project. So
35:22
I think they were kind of, if I please correct me, they were
35:24
kind of grooming you for something at that point. Can you talk a little
35:28
bit about Cole? Uh? Yeah, I mean Rachaela de Laurentis called me
35:32
up, and she's Dino's daughter, and she worked on the first she Prus,
35:37
I think the first, I think all three of the Conan movies.
35:40
Conan Call was Conan's father, and the books and also in the comic books.
35:45
And they sent me the script and I knew it was in that vein
35:49
of Hercules, but it was much more violent, much more sexual, and
35:52
they were worried about me offending my Hercules fans. I was not. I
35:58
wanted to do the way the script was written, which was much darker than
36:00
what we ultimately shot. But they took the they made that our movie a
36:05
PG. Thirteen and a kind of a light PG thirteen. Really we had
36:08
a lot of humor in there as well, which I love humor and everything
36:10
I want I want. I love the humor and all that stuff. But
36:15
yeah, they were kind of grooming me to sort of take over, not
36:16
really take over Arnold, but do the next thing, because I had another
36:21
movie right after that that I was supposed to start filming as well, but
36:23
that fell apart because of an illness that I suffered, but it was a
36:30
bummer that I wasn't able to continue with it. But col was fun.
36:34
It did okay. They opened on Labor Day weekend, which is just stupid.
36:37
And I knew it was stupid, but I said, I told my
36:38
manager, I said, we got to fight this. This is dumb.
36:42
I mean, I know what the numbers are. People have gone to movies
36:44
all summer long, and now Labor Day weekend is most schools have been opened
36:47
for a week or two and people are done going to movies. And I
36:52
said, this is a Thanksgiving movie, please wait, and they wouldn't.
36:54
Universal wouldn't listen. And so the movie did okay. It's done very well
36:59
and runs in DVD sales. And because every time I go in autograph shows
37:02
comic con shows, I get at least thirty or forty people come up to
37:07
having an autograph the DVD, so I know it's out there and people like
37:08
it. And that's funny. You just mentioned it because I was at the
37:12
gym just yesterday with my son here and there's two people came up and they
37:15
brought that up. What cracks me up? As I did the last season
37:19
of the OC and I'll meet these these women, they're college girls. Oh
37:22
I loved you on the OC so I got you know, two hundred and
37:24
fifty episodes mean Hercules and Andromeda. They know nothing about that, but they
37:28
know those eight episodes on the It must be I mean, as an actor
37:35
with such a fan base, and I mean, you've done so much in
37:37
your career. I mean, can you just we talked a little bit about
37:40
it earlier, but for people to understand what it's like to kind of walk
37:44
in your shoes, like when you walk out in the public, you know,
37:47
you do get recognized. And because I mean Hercules was, like you
37:52
said, one of the biggest shows in the world, and I'm assuming this
37:54
is worldwide. I'm sure you probably have stories that you were somewhere in Europe
37:58
one day and and people just walk up to you like Hercules and where they
38:02
go Hercules, you know Eddie Murphy exactly. Um, But but how what
38:09
is that like? Because I mean, I don't I'm never going to have
38:13
that experience. I'm just curious if you, if you could share a little
38:15
bit of that. People, Like I said, people are people are really
38:17
nice about it. Last year I had three comic cons in Row in Europe
38:21
one week and after the other. I looked at my wife and I said,
38:23
I got three three teenage kids, two boys and a girl, and
38:27
I said, let's take the kids. Let's go spend a month in Europe.
38:29
Thank god it wasn't this year, because I all would have been canceled.
38:31
So I was a year and a half ago already. So I had
38:36
one in Um, one in Vienna, one in Munich, and one up
38:39
in Brussels. And so when I when I graduated college, I went to
38:45
Europe to spend three months. I end up living in Europe for three and
38:47
a half years. So before I moved to LA I stayed in Europe.
38:52
I was with an agent in Milan, agent up in Munich, in Zurich
38:55
and u and Hamburg, London. So I shot a bunch of commercials when
39:01
I was in Europe as well. So I love being there. It made
39:06
me grow up as a twenty two year old kid. It made me grow
39:08
up. And really I'm in a different country, different language, different culture,
39:12
and it was really good for me to do it. I mean,
39:14
it's a different world over there now, but it was it was great back
39:15
then. So to take the kids back there was amazing. And to go
39:21
back and walk through the old I lived in Munich for like a year and
39:23
a half, to walk back my old neighborhood and go out wherever we went
39:28
out, you know, it was like, oh my gosh, it's Hercules
39:30
or Andromed. It was always. It was all all of that in every
39:34
city we went to outside of the comic con. Of course, the comic
39:37
con brings in those crowds. But just walk in the streets. It happens
39:39
every day. I mean, of course, now I get to wear a
39:42
mask when I'm walking around, but give yourselves and we can breathe our own,
39:46
you know, carbon monoxide, which is great. But we'll be right
39:52
back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. But
40:04
it happens every day through airports and hotels. But what's interesting now, most
40:07
of the time it's about my family friendly movies like what If God's Not Dad?
40:13
Let to be like Abel's Field. It's those kind of movies that people
40:15
stop me now more than anything else, which is pretty pretty amazing. That's
40:20
awesome, man, that's really awesome. Now, when you're working with a
40:22
director, what do you look for in a director? When when you're working
40:27
with one. I want him to let me do whatever the hell I want.
40:30
But I know, all stop it, just let me do me,
40:37
you know. It's uh. I of the progress. I do love blocking.
40:45
I want to go out there and and I like to rehearse for the
40:47
actors off off. You know, when your guys are setting up lights.
40:51
Some actors want to do some some don't. They want to be more spontaneous
40:53
with it, something like that. It's fine, everybody's got this sort of
40:57
little approach at things. But I want the words to be secondary, right.
41:00
I want to be in them. I want to be in there with
41:02
the miser and technique. I'm working off you, you're working off me.
41:07
But like I said earlier, I like, if there's any chance for humor
41:12
in there, I want to throw in humor. So I talked to the
41:14
writers all the time. On the Hercules, we were always three scripts.
41:16
I hadn't so in between setups two, I'd be on you know, on
41:20
the set phone, calling back to La because the writers were in La.
41:22
They went with us there, and I say, hey, I'm looking at
41:24
you know this episode we're shooting in three weeks. I don't get this or
41:28
I love this part here, can we expand on that? So I'm always
41:30
open to work with the writers. I'm always open to work with the directors.
41:35
In all the years I've been involved in business, I think it's only
41:37
a handful of directors that were really kind of a pain in the ass that
41:39
were just tough to deal with. And it was thosen't just me, it
41:43
was with everybody. But for the most part, I've been very fortunate.
41:45
And even all the actors I've worked with, there was only one person all
41:50
years in Hercules. I'm not going to name his name, that was really
41:53
a pain in the butt when he came down the guest star on the show,
41:55
and he was paining the butt for everybody and dangerous, dangerous in the
42:00
fight scene, you know, And that's why actors think that. Look,
42:02
I'm a good athlete. I knowing him, and I'm good at fight scenes.
42:07
And all the fight scenes I did in Hercules, which would be I
42:08
don't know, hundreds and hundreds of them, I only hid one stunt.
42:13
I physically hurt him, and it was because he went past his mark when
42:16
I'm throwing elbow behind me, because I'm throwing an elbow without looking as I'm
42:20
fighting guys up here, and he went two feet past his mark and I
42:23
busted his nose. I mean it was blood. His eyes were blue,
42:29
and I'm Cliff, I'm sorry. It's my fault, man with my faults,
42:31
and was walking away from me. But I felt horrible about it.
42:36
And I know, I you know, I've heard stories of Steven Seagal hurting
42:38
guys all the time on the set, and I said, don't do that.
42:43
We found their actors, their egos why I can do this, And
42:46
I agree with Harrison Ford where he said I don't like fighting actors because I'm
42:51
doing her all the time and these guys are not. But their egos why
42:53
I can do this. And that's the time I would tell my stunt guy
42:57
Sam, come on in, you're taking over for this one, you know,
43:00
because it just wasn't worth it for me to get hurt, because I
43:01
got hurt enough on that show just doing stuff the way it was. And
43:06
you know, that was my ego that wanted me to do my stunt,
43:08
my own stunts. But I just had fun doing it. I love doing
43:12
it. And now and I know you mean, you've you've worked on every
43:16
scope of production from you know, indie indie budgets to multimillion dollar budgets.
43:23
How do you deal as an actor with difficult production environments? Because I've been,
43:29
I've been, I've involved in different production environments when I'm not the director.
43:32
But and I just I just watched to see how and I can only
43:36
imagine, Like, on the production side is tough enough, But if you're
43:38
the actor in front of the camera and you're the star, how do you
43:43
deal with you know, not to say incompetence, but maybe you know ego
43:47
things like that. What do you do as an actor? Especially? It
43:51
also depends, I guess where you are in your career at that point too
43:53
well, I think the best thing to do when you reach those points um
43:57
which thankful for me to have didn't have it a lot and the creative spanned
44:00
thirty five years. Now you take those people aside. One on one.
44:04
I don't like making. I don't like one. I don't never want to
44:07
embarrass people in front of the crew. I don't want to to me.
44:09
I like, I don't care if I'm acting or if I'm directing on it.
44:14
I like to have a fun set and I love to work fast.
44:19
I believe in Clint Eastwood's mentality. You know, you're an actor, you
44:22
come and prepared. You're on the camera team, you come and prepared.
44:27
Clint does two takes and they move on one if it's if it's if he's
44:30
happy with it, you know, And he's used to people coming in and
44:34
I'll whisper to directors and a lot of these younger directors think, you know,
44:37
old Hollywood, you gotta work sixteen hour days, you know, and
44:39
I'll whisper in their ears. Oh by the way, Clint Eastwood does eight
44:43
hour days and makes Academy Award nominated movies. Okay, just saying, I'm
44:46
just throwing it out there. You know, there's so much wasted time on
44:51
the set, and I act. I act like an assistant. First ad,
44:57
you have the first ad, but then you got me and I walk
45:00
on set and go, what are we waiting for? What's going on?
45:02
You know, just get get going. And on Andromeda we kept a much
45:07
Hercules was longer days only because of the locations and action to action always takes
45:14
a little touch. And Dromeda we rarely went out, even though you know,
45:16
Stargate was just filming down the road from us where their studio was but
45:21
every time Stargate was always outside, but every planet looked like Vancouver, you
45:24
know, just beautiful trees like that, so we rarely went outside. We
45:29
did a lot of green screen. We kept it. We had two two
45:32
big studios that we had my Ship and one we had the Eureka Morrow and
45:37
another one and we did a lot of green screen and we worked that show
45:42
hercules, including drive time and lifting weights every day. I was seventeen to
45:47
eighteen hours door to door. It was a brutal schedule. Wow, Andromeda
45:52
was twelve hours door to door. If I if they picked me up at
45:55
six, I'm home at six. My crew loved me because that crew had
45:59
just come off Files and David Dicovney moved X Files down to LA for the
46:04
last season or two or something. We created a big stirt. He was
46:07
like, I'm done with Vancouver, and I loved Vancouver by the way,
46:09
But anyway, my crew loved me because in most one hour shows, by
46:15
your call time at five am in the morning on Monday by Friday, because
46:21
those twelve hour turnarounds, you're looking at a five o'clock in the afternoon start
46:25
and you shoot till eight or nine Saturday morning. We wrapped virtually every single
46:30
day between five and seven pm every day. My crew was going home every
46:36
day and having dinner with their family, and they loved me for it after
46:38
coming off the hell hall that they had on the hours they had on X
46:43
Files. So it can be done. And my latest movie, Miracle Needs
46:46
Texas, which will be in theaters next summer. I don't know if you
46:50
can really see that post back, we can. I directed it. We
46:54
got lugassa junior. We got John Rasselberg was great. We got Tyler Maine.
47:00
The WWF fans know what Tyler Maine is. He's sixth Dude, but
47:04
he's also saber Tooth and all the X Men movies. Um, it's a
47:07
great, wonderful movie set in nineteen thirty. So people look for that when
47:10
that when that does come out, Miracle in these Texas next spring, but
47:15
that one, Um, we wrapped every day between ten and twelve hours of
47:20
shooting at the at the most we were outside at a ranch. Most of
47:23
the time. We shot in the same location that they shot Revenant, where
47:27
they shot Unforgiven, when they shot Lonesome Dove and Open Range with Kevin Costners.
47:30
So it was a great location and the people, the crew we had
47:35
was phenomenal, and uh, there's no reason that you can't, you know,
47:38
shoot twelve hour days max. There's just no reason. You just gotta
47:42
get people moving and keep things going. I like an a D. I
47:45
want to I don't want to beat the jerk on the set. That's my
47:46
AD's job. I needed a D who's tough and on top of things,
47:52
and he's got to be he's got to be the bad cop. I'll be
47:55
the good cop. But I've always trusted in everybody that I hired for their
48:00
departments, from hair and makeup to wardrobe to camera, that you're hired because
48:04
you know your job better than I do, which of course they do.
48:07
So you know, I may have ideas, but I want I want it
48:09
to be as cornies that sounds. I want to be a collaborative effort,
48:13
which it should be. You know, if you're a bird's eye view of
48:15
a set, I don't care what kind of movie does independent, big budget
48:19
of movie. As you know, it's uh, I call it organized chaos.
48:24
You know, It's just it's crazy with all the people running around,
48:28
and here are people coming up and doing this person and camera guys, lighting
48:30
guys and all of a sudden and action and then it just becomes that scene
48:37
once and cut and then it goes back into organized chaos again. It's the
48:40
second year, you'll everyone rushes in. It's like this. It's it's like
48:45
it's like all the ants took a break and then oh we found a dead
48:47
animal. The names run the dead. So so so how do you How
48:53
do you like directing now? I mean, I mean, did you direct
48:55
any Hercules episodes? Started directing on Hercules? Yeah, I've I've I've been
49:00
DGA now for twenty twenty four years and Pete sagged Rover over thirty five years,
49:07
so um, yeah, I mean it's uh, I love it.
49:10
Um. I think a very good at at keeping separate the acting part in
49:20
the director art. When I'm in the scene, because I'm in I'm in
49:22
the movies, I direct as well. I will. I will leave it
49:25
over to my my first ad to do the action and cut. Um.
49:31
I don't know. I I like to. I love to film rehearsals because
49:36
there's some wonderful things that happened. I do. I love it. If
49:38
I can I do it? How many times been a set when the director
49:42
didn't film, I said, I go just shoot it, you know what,
49:44
digital come on, and then got that we'll be right back after a
49:51
word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Get it on
49:59
film, get a film, because and one thing that bugs more than anything
50:05
is if an actor screws up in a line, even if it's me,
50:08
don't cut that that. It shuts the energy down right away. It just
50:13
shuts it down, you know. And we in very few directors did that
50:16
on Andromeda, which is great. You know you screw now go again,
50:21
go go, keep going boom, and I just kept back into that mode
50:22
and go again, given the give me the leading line, whatever it may
50:25
be, but keep keep that energy going because a lot of times in the
50:29
DP goes, wait, I just got to fix the light. You know,
50:30
that's fifteen minutes. They always have to fix a light. Well you
50:37
know what I think it. I think it for every for every department that
50:43
a friend of mine who who is an editor, says, you can never
50:46
ever stop editing. You just got to find a place to finally stop.
50:51
Yeah, oh yeah, you never. A movie's never finished, it's abandoned.
50:54
Yeah, okay, we're done. You know, because you sit in
51:00
at the editing room and thank god, it's just as quick as it is
51:01
today what it used to be. Cut face world. But still if you
51:06
get in there and you could get glassy eyed after a while, you know,
51:08
it's just like trust me, I know, trust I definitely know what
51:13
I will do when I get my first directors cut in is I will bring
51:17
over about ten buddies of mine, friends of mine in the industry and let
51:22
them watch it and get their thoughts on it. I think it's a smart
51:25
and I think every director read throughs important. Every writer read throughs important writer
51:30
scripts because writers are there and they are three in the morning and they're writing
51:35
and writing writing, and then they get too close to it and there can
51:37
be such major holes in people's scripts that they can't see anymore. You get
51:42
bunch of get a bunch of actors that you know as a writer to read
51:45
it out loud, and you can hear it out loud and you'll go oh,
51:47
okay, yeah, and make your notes during that. I think it's
51:50
important. That's that's amazing. It's very it's very very true. Yeah.
51:54
I mean a lot of times when I tell writers as well, like read
51:58
the dialogue that's you're writing because it might read well, but when someone says
52:02
it not so much. Those part those part writers take the most abuse,
52:07
and they got the hardest job. They do the hardest job. You know,
52:10
how do you find a great trip? I mean, I mean been
52:13
on the set many times and I've been guilty of it too, where the
52:15
actor goes, who wrote this crap? It feels so bad writers, you
52:21
know, and actors take enough abuse the way it is. But yeah,
52:24
it's it's it's a tough job. I wrote one episode of Hercules and we
52:28
shot it, but I'll never do it again. It's just it's way too
52:30
much work for me. And how and by the way, I mean,
52:32
you've done so many projects, how do you pick projects? Because I'm assuming
52:36
you're getting bombarded with opportunities all the time. You know. It's funny on
52:39
on LinkedIn, um Kevin sorbo dot net where people can go get a hold
52:44
of me as well. I get I get ten fifteen scripts a day sent
52:49
I mean a week sent to me, don't and I got to type the
52:52
sent thing over again. I'm only looking for funded projects right now because I've
52:57
got you know, I've whittled down down to about twenty that I want to
53:02
do, and it was twenty five, but I've done five of those so
53:05
far. The hardest thing is finding funding, of course, it's so frustrating
53:09
to find money for independent movies. And independent movies are fine with Avengers,
53:15
fine with the Pirates of the Caribbean, fight with this. You know,
53:16
all these action movies that cost three hundred million bucks and they'll spend one hundred
53:21
million dollars promoting it, so they're on every they're trailers and every football and
53:24
basketball game and every whatever, and where I'm doing movies that are three four
53:29
million dollars. People think that's a lot of money. That's like the catering
53:31
budget on Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean seriously. And I do movies
53:37
that have that aren't filled with violence and hate and angers. That seems the
53:40
only thing coming out of Hollywood right now are these movies that have such a
53:45
negative viewpoint and just and everything's gonna be weird and just offbeat. And I
53:51
like to do movies that people can go to and go like a blind Side
53:54
movie or Green Book, which was awesome movie, and a soul Surfer,
54:00
and movies that have a positive message movies that characters. I can never be
54:05
Hercules in real life. You'll never be Iron Man, okay, but we
54:08
can be the characters that we see on What made me fall over with acting
54:12
was my mom. I sit with her when I was a kid watching Carrie
54:15
Grant and Katherine Heppern and Spencer Tracy and and you know, all these wonderful
54:20
actors there in that golden age, and I love these movies and with with
54:24
with a humor and whatever that was in there. I just said, that's
54:28
you know. I see actors that never seen Costa Blanca, These young kids,
54:30
you've never seen Costa Blanca. You've never seen you know, Lawrence of
54:35
Arabia, all these great old these movies that were just Matt ten Commandments.
54:38
And there's so many massive movies out there, and people that get in this
54:43
business I think need to get more educated on the history of the business as
54:47
well. I think this is important. I mean I was I was doing
54:51
a color session years ago with one of the hottest music video directors in the
54:54
world at the time, and I'm color grading this and I'm working on this
54:58
project, like, hey, do you want a little blade run here?
55:00
And he's like, what's that? And I'm like, wow, I'm like,
55:04
you're a music video director and you haven't studied Ridley Scott, probably one
55:07
of the greatest commercial and visual storytellers of all time. He's like, no,
55:13
I'm like, I need to stop the session right now. We're gonna
55:15
go. I'm gonna grab my blue ray We're gonna watch the scene. And
55:17
I'm like, I was like, are you kidding me? And I was
55:21
the old fogy in the room and I was like thirty something, Yeah,
55:25
it was, it was, It's it's insane. I just want to touch
55:30
back really quickly when you're getting all these scripts because I want to do you
55:32
a service. So everyone listening, because I know a lot of people are
55:36
going to try to probably reach out to you because they're all filmmakers and everybody
55:38
wants to get their projects done. A lot of times when there and I
55:44
try to tell people not to do this, they'll reach out to, you
55:46
know, actors of your statute and with your credibility, your bank ability,
55:50
and they'll go, hey, here's my script. I need a letter of
55:53
intent to go help find money. Can you explain why that is something?
56:00
Do you do letters of intent? Is it is that something. I mean,
56:04
if I read the script. I give scripts twenty pages. If the
56:07
twenty page I'll hold my interest, then I'll keep reading it. It doesn't,
56:09
I'll move on. But I'll do a lot of intent. Only now
56:15
if it really has my interests, because almost all these movies coming with no
56:17
money attached to it, right, and there's and it's and it's frustrating.
56:21
But if it's a role that really hits me after twenty pages, then I'm
56:24
interested. I mean, look, I got three movies in the can right
56:27
now, one of these Miracle in these Texas. They're going to be in
56:30
theaters next year. Hopefully we'll get past his COVID ridiculousness that shutting down the
56:34
world. Running people's lives. Um. I got a new TV series called
56:37
The pot Wins Um. It's like a last man standing Tim Allen series.
56:42
We have shot eight We shot eight episodes this past Juline, August and beautiful
56:46
San Bernardino and it was Barry Boston plays my dad and it's it's hilarious.
56:52
It's very very funny stuff. We'll see what happens with that. We did,
56:57
like I said, we did eight episode. Was that independent? It's
57:00
independent it's independent, but Netflix is interested in Fox is interested right now,
57:04
so we'll see what happens with that. But then I've got four movies lined
57:07
up for next year already, one of them on directing as well. We
57:10
just got funded for that one. We raised a four point two million.
57:14
But I'd see it's like every two years I'm able to raise his money.
57:17
I want to be able to two of these movies a year. It's tough
57:20
out there, guys, and I know people come to me saying, well,
57:22
I got a nice little independent movie. That's a good you know.
57:24
I call them actors movies. I'm gonna backtracks is a little bit. When
57:27
I look for movies now, I want to look from movies that move people
57:30
like you said that, like Soul Surfer, like Blindside, like like Green
57:34
Book, which I thought was amazing, big importance, incredible enough, Like
57:37
I love doing movies like that that people go, I know, guys like
57:40
that, or I can relate to that, make you laugh, make you
57:44
cry, movies that have hope in them. You know, we lost.
57:45
We have so much anger and hate in that world right now, and device
57:49
in this. I want to do movies that hopefully we'll pull people together and
57:52
you know, have a good message in there for anybody and everybody looking for
57:54
something good because I think I think most people are. I just think the
57:58
media loves to perpetuate the anger and hate right now. I think most people
58:01
are good people. And you know, we just got to find a place
58:05
where, you know, we can do movies that get made. And I
58:08
need very wealthy people. I do a lot of charity. I do a
58:12
lot of charity golf events. I mean, very wealthy guys, and they
58:16
can spend nine million dollars, you know, promoting some candidate for governor or
58:21
president that doesn't get elected, and they're going going that nine million bucks.
58:24
I could have made two or three really good movies that would be out there
58:28
forever because that candidate, you ward, is backing. No one remember who
58:31
that is anymore. So it's weird. It's it's weird where we got to
58:36
fight for the culture now, I think more than anything else. And that's
58:38
kind of the movies. I want to do movies with a positive message.
58:42
And you also have a book out right, I got I have a book
58:45
that came out called True True Strength, that came out about eight years ago.
58:49
I finally wrote the follow up called True Faith, True Strength was born
58:52
out of Us. And in the season five and Hercules, I was having
58:55
all kinds of problems with my left arm and my shoulder and my fingers or
59:00
cold and Numa company was going on. I came back to do promotional work
59:02
on I was on Letterman Leano doing all the talk shows for Call the Conqueror.
59:07
So I went to see my doctor and Beverly Hills there and he found
59:12
a lump way up here before they could do a buy option. Don't thank
59:15
god they didn't. Ended up being an aneurism that had been spitting blood clots
59:20
down my arm for months. While it opened up, sent hundreds of class
59:22
of my arm and unfortunately four class of my brain. I suffered four strokes.
59:27
Oh my god, So I spent. I had another action movie I
59:30
was going to be doing, and I couldn't do it because I couldn't walk
59:31
anymore. So I had learned to walk and balance over the next four months.
59:35
Again, it took me three years to fully recover. If you watch
59:37
the last two seasons of Hercules, you can see I lost about fifteen pounds
59:40
of muscle because I wasn't able to work out the way I was working out
59:44
before, and I went from an eighteen hour door to door day to about
59:46
a three hour door to door over those two years of slowly building myself back
59:51
up to about ten hours a day, but it took me three full years
59:53
to recover from it. In True Strength, people IM going to Kevin Sobo
59:57
dot net and get an autographed copy. We'll be right back after a word
1:00:01
from our sponsor, and now back to the show. It opened a door
1:00:09
for me I thought I'd never been doing, which is speaking events I do
1:00:12
about I've had all twelve speaking events your canceled because of COVID. I've been
1:00:16
two in the last month. Fortunately went back in my home state of Minnesota,
1:00:20
and I just did one up in um in Dallas. I was in
1:00:24
Dallas last week, so it's starting to open up again slowly. But it's
1:00:29
really about true strength. Is sort of planned words because in Hercules had a
1:00:32
lot of stunt guys making me look like a stud, right, So I
1:00:36
couldn't beat up those guys in real life. So for me, it's like
1:00:40
you got to find your own true strength because everybody's got a story, everybody's
1:00:44
gonna have a roadblock in their life. No matter what age you're at that
1:00:46
you've got to find out what am I gonna do? Am I gonna blame
1:00:50
God, family, friends, everybody else? Realities, you got to look
1:00:52
in the mirror and say, Okay, it happened to me. What am
1:00:54
I going to do about it now? And you've got to find your own
1:00:57
way to get back to living a life again instead of blaming and crying and
1:01:00
whining about it. Amen? Brother, Amen? Uh? And then I'm
1:01:05
gonna ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests, what advice would
1:01:07
you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today? Go for an
1:01:13
intern? Intern, I mean, don't get paid, guard the heck with
1:01:15
it, get yourself in the set. You know, I tell people all
1:01:17
the time I got when I first My first acting coach is Bill Trailer at
1:01:22
the Law Studios and they're in la As White. Peggy Fiery had died just
1:01:25
the year before in a car accident. But he taught me so much in
1:01:31
terms of just sticking with it and going for it. But interning is just
1:01:36
a way to get yourself on a set. He told me to keep doing
1:01:39
the commercials I'm doing. He says, because you're putting in miles you're getting
1:01:43
in front of the camera. Some commercials I talked in other ones I didn't.
1:01:46
I gotta be on a beach with the beautiful girl and bikinis selling you
1:01:50
know, orange juice or whatever. You know. But you're on that set
1:01:52
and you're doing stuff. I remember an actor in that class kind of made
1:01:55
fun of you know, a real actor. You're doing commercials. Well,
1:01:59
I got a hot eight one night. He's my waiter, okay, because
1:02:02
I don't have to wait tables. I got money to be able to go
1:02:06
out and have a meal do commercials. I'm telling you one thing. Number
1:02:09
one, you get your side card, and number number two, you'll make
1:02:14
money. The first two years on Hercules, I made less money than I
1:02:17
did the previous three years that I made on commercial residuals, because I would
1:02:22
at any given time, I could have fifteen checks a day coming in,
1:02:25
whether it was ten dollars or a thousand dollars, but I would rip over
1:02:30
whenever a check while I'm watching Monday night football, going this is awesome,
1:02:31
you know, and there's money in there, but there's also a chance for
1:02:36
you to do the things you want to do to furtherier career, and so
1:02:38
I tell people, get on the set and intern at any position. Watch
1:02:43
what people do. Learn that way. Kevin Costner did that at Raleigh Studios.
1:02:46
He learned what Okay, this is what the carpenters guys are doing.
1:02:50
This is what the camera guys are doing. Do you think he's a good
1:02:52
director. Yeah, I think he's damn good director and a damn good actor.
1:02:55
Hey yeah, absolutely. Now what is the lesson that took you the
1:02:59
longest to learn, whether in the film business or in life. Um,
1:03:06
I think patience more than anything else. I'm a very impatient person to what
1:03:10
I did learn earlier. That's that's that's kind of ties in with patients as
1:03:15
as as a positive thing against the negative of patients is failure. I used
1:03:21
to caddy at this private country club in Minneapolis, very wealthy guys. Mostly
1:03:25
guys I cared were between thirty and seventy. Okay, they're all successful guys,
1:03:30
all the money. And I would ask them, you know, here
1:03:31
I am as an eighteen nineteen year old kid carrying double bags, is walking
1:03:36
in a fairway. How do you become successful? They all said, Kevin,
1:03:38
Oh, I failed, and then I failed again, and then I
1:03:42
failed again, and then I kept failing. He said, failure is a
1:03:45
positive thing, not a negative thing. You've got to you've gotta get rid
1:03:46
of all the bad stuff, but take the positive stuff and dragged that along
1:03:50
with you, because that's what I learned getting out to Hollywood with all those
1:03:53
doors being slammed in your face. Because as I told you, as an
1:03:57
actor, all you're too young, you're too old, you're too fat,
1:03:59
you too skinny, or two whatever, there's always reasons they want to get
1:04:02
rid of you. So I just I looked at that as a positive thing.
1:04:06
I said, I know every actor they get in their car and they're
1:04:11
chewing on their steering wheel when they're driving the four or five. Why hell
1:04:14
did I say it that way? Why didn't I do it this way?
1:04:16
I got to the point I just get in the car and said I did
1:04:20
best they could. They don't pick me, it's their loss. And that
1:04:23
changed a lot for me, just being a lot more positive about it.
1:04:27
Very cool. And last question, what are three of your favorite films of
1:04:30
all time? I already named one of them, Casa Blanca, No question
1:04:33
about that one. Yes. Jeremiah Johnson. Jeremiah Johnson and then it's it's
1:04:42
a tough one because there's so many great ones in there, but I'm gonna
1:04:46
take Hud. It's an earlier Paul Believable. I the reason I want to
1:04:51
be an actor. Where Paul Newman, Robert Redford, I've met Redford.
1:04:55
Newman passed away, but I have a letter from Paul Newman that's on my
1:04:59
wall in my office and it was great supportive letter and how he you know,
1:05:04
it was a fan of what stuff I've done, and it was just
1:05:09
it was just pretty cool. But of course, Butchcasting, Sundance, Kidding,
1:05:12
the Sting are pretty darn good too. They're not bad. They're not
1:05:14
bad films. They're not bad films. They're not bad at all. Kevin
1:05:16
Man, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and this crazy,
1:05:19
crazy time that we're in, and I appreciate you everything you've done in
1:05:24
your career and a lot of joy that you've brought to a lot of people
1:05:27
over the years as well with all the parts you've done. So thank you
1:05:30
again, my friend and Sae safe travels. I want to thank Kevin for
1:05:34
coming on the show and sharing his adventures in Hollywood. Thank you so much
1:05:42
Kevin. If you want to get links to anything we talked about in this
1:05:44
episode, including how to reach out to Kevin on his official site and check
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out other things that he is doing, head over to the show notes at
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any film huzzle dot com. Forward Slash three fifteen. Thank you so much
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for listening, guys, As always, keep on writing no matter what.
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I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at
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Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.