Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 735: Getting in the Door Screenwriting for Netflix with Alan Trezza

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IFH 735: Getting in the Door Screenwriting for Netflix with Alan Trezza · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle
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Podcast, Episode number seven thirty five. Write garbage as long as you edit
0:19
brilliantly. CJ. Cherry Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the
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Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as
0:30
an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host,
0:34
Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle
0:39
Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored
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by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into a profitable
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business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with
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their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey
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upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution
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model of making money with your film is broken, and there needs to be
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a change. The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film
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If you're making a feature film, series, or any other kind of
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book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you
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want to order it, just head over to www. Dot filmbiz book dot
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com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now, Guys, today on the
1:52
show, we have writer producer Alan Tranza. Now. Alan is the writer
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of the net Flick's film We Summoned the Darkness. He also wrote a film
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called Barry the X which was directed by the legendary Joe Dante and many many
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others, and Alan and I sat down to have a very candid conversation on
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his journey through Hollywood, what it's taken for him to get to where he
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is today, the ups, the downs, and so many knowledge bombs dropped
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in this episode, So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with
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Alan Treza. I like to welcome to the show, Alan Tresaid, and
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Alan, I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. Allen's thank
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you so much for coming on the show. Man. I appreciate. I
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appreciate you coming on, and you reached out to me that you've been listening
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to a couple of episodes recently and gotten hooked, so I appreciate that.
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Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, it's actually funny. It was the episode with
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Carrie Woods that really sort of got me thinking about my crazy journey becoming a
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writer and a cell maker and a producer, because my first internship during my
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senior year of college was actually for Woods Entertainment, which was Carrie Woods's company.
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So it just really got me thinking about the old days and the crazy
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journey that I've been on. So yeah, and then ever since then,
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I've just been listening to all the past podcasts, and like I said,
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I read your book Shooting for the Mob, which I thought was one of
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the most true accounts of trying to get a movie made, and just been
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a fan ever since. I really appreciate that. Man. Yeah. I
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some people after they read that book, or while they're reading it, they
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call me up and like, I don't know if you're going to make it.
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I'm like, I made it. I trust man made it through definitely
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did. Yeah. Yeah, you made a positive out of a big negative,
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which is a lot of a lot of what it takes to make it
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in this industry, because there's more negatives than there are positives. But if
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you can change those negatives into a positive, then you're on the right track.
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So why God, screen ners, did you want to get into this
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insanity that is the film industry? Sir? Why? Well, because when
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I was eleven years old, I saw a clockwork orange and for most time,
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well stuff for a second, eleven years old, you saw a clockworker
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eleven years old? Yes, I did. Your parents are your parents are
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awesome? My parents did not know about that. It was a big secret
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for many, many years. But I saw that movie and for most people
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that that can also be seen as a negative. But I turned it into
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a positive because it made me realize that films were not just about special effects
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and jokes. Films were a way of communicating ideas and thoughts. And taking
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chances and asking tough questions. And it was really an eye opener, as
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you can imagine have been an eleven year old and seeing that film, I
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mean just just the first ten minutes, and I just said to myself,
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how did this come into existence? Who's responsible for this? And of course
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it was Stanley Kubrick. So I would go to the library and pull every
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book on him and then go through his entire over. You know, Barry
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Linden in two thousand and one, The Space Odyssey and The Shining and each
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and every film was more experimental, different than the last, constantly pushing boundaries
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and in a way perfect. He made perfect films. In my opinion,
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they can't improve upon them. They're the best versions of those stories. And
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ever since then, I've sort of been infatuated with films and making movies,
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and that's what led me on this journey. So how did you get into
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this insanity? Well? Yeah, you know, I'm from Long Island.
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It's about as far away from Hollywood as as as you can possibly get.
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But I went to college in New York City at Fordham University and took every
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film course possible. My weekends were spent with the Super eight camera and making
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movies with classmates, and then also, like I said, you know,
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getting an internship for Woods Entertainment and working for Carrie Woods, who at the
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time was one of the most incredible producers. He was responsible for Night Shyamalan's
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first movie. You know, Scott Rosenberg's first scripts he produced. He produced
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Scream Copland, James Mangold's movie. So I really wanted to learn, you
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know, what it was like to get in on the ground floor, and
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working for Woods was incredible. Upon graduating, Carrie's VP gave me a list
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of names of executives in Hollywood because I was really thinking about making a move
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out here where I am currently, and the top name on the list was
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Robbie Brenner. Robbie Brenner was an executive at Miramax Films at the time,
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and flew out here with a one way ticket, stayed on a few couches,
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and eventually got an interview with Robbie and got the job to be her
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assistant. And the first script that Robbie gave me, and this is in
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the late nineties, I think this is nineteen ninety nine. The first script
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that Robbie gave me to read and cover was the Dallas Buyers Club and she
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said, read this, Alan, I'm going to make this one day.
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Flash forward to twenty fourteen, it's the Oscars and she's nominated for Best Picture.
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And Robbie told me a very valuable lesson. She said, this business
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is all about passion. If you have passion for material, if you have
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passion for filmmaking and films, you're going to make it. And she's been
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an incredible mentor. Now she's running the film division at Mattel and she's in
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London making Barbie right now with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. So that's what
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sort of got me started. And I was on an executive path for a
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long time. I was a development executive for Drew Barrymore at Flower Films,
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which was incredible. And one day I get a call and it's Robbie again
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saying that Tony and Ridley Scott are looking for a development executive. I said,
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great, good luck finding one for them. She goes, no,
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I'm calling because you're the guy. And I was like, well, I've
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kind of been hanging out with Drew for a while, you know, working
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on some rom coms and stuff. She goes, no, no, no,
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no, one loves some movies like you. They love movies. You
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love movies. You have that in common. It's hard to find out here.
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So four months of interviews later, I was working at Scott Free with
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Pony and Ridley, you know, my heroes, and that was an incredible
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full experience. But all the while I kind of wanted to make my own
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stories and write my own sort of tie tales and movies. So one day
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I had the idea to write a short film about a guy who his ex
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girlfriend comes back as a zombie and can't get rid of her, can't kill
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her, so what's he to do? And that turned into a short film
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called Bearing the X, which played out a few and a few years after
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that ended up getting made as a feature film directed by another one of my
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heroes, Joe Dante. So I guess that's where gom me started. Yeah,
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well, and we'll get We're definitely going to dive into buried with the
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exes. I'm really interested in that story. But I didn't know that you
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worked with Ridley and Tony, So I have to ask, what is it
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like working with those legends? You know? You know, Tony, you
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know, rests his soul was. He literally changed action movies. The moment
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he made Top Gun, all action movies changed. And then a few years
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later Michael Bay showed up with The Rock and Bad Boys, and then all
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action films chased to get. But Tony was one of those guys that just
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even to the very end, he was more experimental than any of his younger
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contemporaries. I mean, you look at Domino, you look at on fire
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Man on Fire. He was doing things that nobody else had the balls to
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do. I mean he was he was on the edge creatively and also technically.
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We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
10:07
to the show. Just stuff they was doing with the film. So what
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was it like working with Tony and then obviously really is yeah, yeah,
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Ridley changed the game and the sci fi field as well as the epics.
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What was it like? You would not know from being in a room with
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them that they were the legends that they are, that's to say, the
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most down to earth, the most jovial, the most approachable people. You
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can imagine. It's so much so that I had to like at times remind
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myself, oh my God, I'm across the table from the guy who made
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Blade Runner or across the table from the guy who made Crimson Tide. I
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remember one day, you know, and they were just they like, like
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Robbie told me, they just loved movies. So they would come into my
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office at various time just to talk about movies and hey, did you see
11:03
this or what have you seen that you liked? And we would just kind
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of go on and on and on, and every once in a while after
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be like, oh my god, that's really Scott talking to me. Because
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they're just so so down to earth and they were so cool, And one
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of the greatest compliments I can give them is, you know, they were
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very close, but you could not get more different in terms of their art,
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right, you know. I mean most people are sort of you know,
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carbon copies of their siblings and stuff like that, but you could not
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get more different than than Tony and Rid. But they were each incredible at
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what they did and just so funny and so witty, but always always strive
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for perfection. They always strive for perfection, but at the same time tried
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to have a good time during that that that mission that they were after.
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Were there any creative lessons you learned as ours, How they worked, how
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they broke down a script, what they they looked at at story, how
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they I'm assuming you were there from the script point all the way to when
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you saw something actually get produced, and how it might have changed along the
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line looking through their lenses. What are those things that you learned there?
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Yeah, with Tony. With Tony it was a lot about character, his
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character. Character. Character. Character. First, if you can fall in
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love with the character, we'll be along for the ride. The character's journey
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is the story. Ridley, of course, is more of the world builder,
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so he was very interested in the world and the mili you and the
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setting and the time period and tons of research had to go into to robin
12:37
Hood and to Gladiator and getting all those details correct. If you had to
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handle on the world, you had to handle on the story. And with
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h With Tony, it was more about character character. So that's that's sort
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of what I learned from both of them, and trying to merge the two
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in order to make something new, truly remarkable. When you started working that
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first job as an assistant, what are some of the lessons that you pulled
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out of there? About just the business in general. What are those things
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that that they don't tell you about in film school that they you know,
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the hard knocks, the shrapnel as I call it, that you get.
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What are those things that you got in that first job. Relationships are everything.
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You cannot meet enough people. Your rolodex cannot be big enough. Every
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moment you're not at the desk should be a moment spent having lunch with someone
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new, cocktails with someone new, dinner with someone new, or you know,
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going on a hike with someone that you hadn't met prior, or someone
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who's a friend of so and so's. So your network can never be fast
13:46
enough or large enough. It really is a business built on relationships and then
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again perseverance. You know a lot of the people that were coming up back
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then, who were now you know, very big stars now in the filmmaking
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world and the producing world, were people that just hustled. I mean they
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were just constantly constantly pushing that mountain, that rock up that mountain, you
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know, the Sissifus example, just constantly constantly doing it. And then you
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know, again the passion, the people with the passion for it, the
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people who when you when they got on the phone and they were pitching you
14:24
something. They weren't like car salesmen. They were really really in love with
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what the script that they had or the idea that they wanted to give you.
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So those were the main main lessons you mentioned. Networking and building relationships,
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which is such a such a crucial part of our business and I've discovered
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that years ago. How do you do it properly? In your opinion?
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Because I found so many young writers, young filmmakers, young actors, they
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walk up to someone like you or me at a party and they just start
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like, Hey, read my script, Hey do this for me? Hey
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can you connected to this guy? I mean, you have no idea how
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many emails I get on a daily basis after Like someone comes on my show
15:05
and they're like, hey, can you send this script to John le Gazambo.
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I'm like not no, right, Look, that's not the way the
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world works. Can you explain to them how you should actually build and actually
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network and how to build authentic relationships? Yeah? Well, to go back
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to Carrie Woods, I got that internship from a cold call. I had
15:26
actually seen screen at a test screening and said this is going to change genre
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movies. Who's involved in this? Okay, Wes, I know about Wes
15:37
Kevin Williamson, this up and coming screenwriter, but who's the person who kind
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of made the movie? Who produced it? And I saw that it was
15:45
Carrie Woods. I can't remember how I got the number, but he just
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so happened to have had an office in Chelsea, you know, not too
15:54
far from Fordham University, where I was going to school. And I found
15:56
that number like cold called, and I just think there was something in my
16:00
voice that was very honest, that I was very you know, very passionate
16:06
about this business and I wanted to be a part of it. And I
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think that that's something that you can't fake. And whenever I'm approached by someone
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and I can sense that passion and I can sense that authenticity, then I'm
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more than likely to you know, engage. And then, as I said,
16:25
it's the sort of they used car salesman mentality, or the people who
16:29
sort of want to be in it for alternate reasons, they're going to have
16:32
a more difficult time because we can sense that we have very good sort of
16:37
BS detectors, right, So if they come at you being honest and true
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and just authentic and saying, look, I know you don't know me,
16:48
but I really want to do this. It's been my dream and I've been
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writing scripts for X number of years. I think this one is the one
16:56
which you please read it. That's different than so this is my first script,
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but it's incredible and it's a masterpiece. And I'm going to be Kubrick
17:04
one day and Aaronovsky it wants to produce my first movie. And I've got
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Cia calling me, and I've also got you know, icm calling me.
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It's kind of like, right, who are you going to trust? More
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So, if you're authentic, if you're honest, and if you're respectful to
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you know, respect people's times, respect people you know, and their privacy,
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I think you're going to be Okay, you said something really important there.
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I want to kind of dig into a little bit authenticity, not only
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the authenticity of when you're trying to pitch, not pitch somebody, but trying
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to build a relationship, how to be truly authentic and being of service to
17:41
that person. But do you believe that the reason for the people who succeed
17:48
in our business is because of their own authenticity? Ridley and Tony were authentic
17:52
to who they were. They were not trying to be anybody else. Carrie
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Woods was not trying to be anybody else. You have not tried to be
17:59
anybody else. That is the secret sauce that kind of sets us all apart
18:02
from everybody else, because if we all try to be Quentin Tarantino, it's
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not going to work out. Yeah, there was already one Quentin Tarantina.
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It does a pretty good job, that's right. Well, Look, the
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best example I can give you is a personal example. I've been writing scripts
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for many, many, many years, and I've sold a few. The
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two that I've had made so far were the ones I thought no one would
18:27
be interested in. They were the ones only I was interested in. Okay,
18:33
you know a comedy about a guy whose ex girlfriend comes back as a
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zombie that was written before The Walking Dead was the number one show on TV
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that was written before Zombie Land, that was written before World War Z.
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I wrote that because it was a story that I had that I wanted to
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see, and if I couldn't see it, at least it'd be there on
18:53
paper, and if I wanted to see it, I could read it and
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picture it in my head. That one got me my second film, We
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sum in the Darkness, takes place in the eighties. It's about heavy metal
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and the satanic panic. That was written before Stranger Things, that was written
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before the whole eighties. Wait. I simply sat down and wanted to write
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a movie. I wanted to see a movie that was personal to me.
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I grew up in the eighties. I was in a heavy metal band.
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I had a lot of people thinking that I was a Satanist because I listened
19:22
to King Diamond, and I wanted to write a story about that. That
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ended up getting made. The other scripts that I sold, I sold scripts
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to Paramount, I sold scripts to Miramax. Those are on the shelves somewhere.
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They're commercial, for sure, and they ended up getting at studios.
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But as I said, it's the ones that were more personal to me that
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there was just some driving force behind them, and other people got on board
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and we pushed that mountain up that hill and we got those movies made.
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So I think there's something to be said about that. So let's talk about
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Yeah. First, that first film Buried with the X. You made that
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bearing the X. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
20:03
And now back to the show. That was a short that you made first,
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right, So you produce a short, how do you get the short,
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yeah, to a feature, which so many people listening have tried to
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do that myself included, by the way, trying to make short films to
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get an act to get a shot at the feature. So you didn't just
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get a feature, you also got it directed by a legend, by the
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legendary Joe Dante. So what was the story from the short to the feature
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and getting Joe involved? Okay? Cool? So the short something I'm extremely
20:38
proud of. I directed it, I was one of the producers on it.
20:41
I wrote it. We had a fantastic cast. The lead was John
20:45
Francis Daily from Fikes and Geeks fame now a very very famous writer director.
20:52
He's directed, he's directing The Dungeons and Dragons right now with Chris Pine.
20:57
And one of the other lead it was Daniel Harris from the Halloween franchise.
21:03
You know, one of my favorite actresses growing up, because I love those
21:07
movies so much. But I had made that film just by calling in favors,
21:12
as I said, everyone I knew, everyone I had met along the
21:15
way at every company I worked with. I ended up getting it shot on
21:21
the Paramount Genesis camera, which was incredible camera at the time. Yeah,
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my DP had a great relationship with Panavision, and yeah, we got the
21:33
Panavision Genesis for a weekend, just kind of checked it out and was like,
21:37
I'll bring this back on Monday. Gave it back on Monday. But
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yeah, that got made. It was fifteen minutes and played at a number
21:45
of festivals. I think people really liked the tone, the energy, and
21:48
of course the cast was pretty cool and recognizable. We played at Comic Con
21:53
and several other festivals. But the first step was really adapting it in to
22:00
a feature. I wasn't going to give it to an agent and say here's
22:03
why short, make a feature of it. They needed sort of like a
22:07
proof of concept. They needed a script. So before doing that, I
22:11
sat down and I had to kind of break apart that fifteen minute short and
22:15
say, okay, what's the story here, where's the ninety minute version of
22:19
this movie? And a lot of changes had to take place, you know,
22:23
in a lot of ways. I had to kind of forget the short
22:26
and start from scratch. But you know, after about three or four months
22:29
of writing, I came up with a ninety minute screenplay that I gave to
22:34
a bunch of friends and they were very honest with me, and they said,
22:37
this is actually really really funny. I laughed at almost every page.
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And after that it was just the search for money. Of course, of
22:48
course we tried going out to studios and there was some interest because at the
22:52
time. This was at the time when like the studios had like their sort
22:56
of their many kind of genre divisions of their companies. I think like Paramount
23:02
had one, Fox had one. Yeah, Paramount advantage, right, and
23:06
thoughts of Atomic I remember Fox of Yeah. Yeah. They were kind of
23:11
close on it. They because I mean, you know, it was could
23:14
be made for you know, a good good budget and with genre and you
23:18
know, comedic. So yeah, it picked all the boxes. But at
23:23
the end of the day they ended up passing. So we tried the studio
23:26
route, passed again. It's the passion to try to get it made that
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made me say, okay, make this independently. You know a lot of
23:34
your favorite movies are the independent films, and you know, out of Sun
23:37
Dance and other festivals, maybe this one could be yours. So went to
23:42
every AFM, which is the American Film Market, which is in Santa Monica,
23:48
California, once a year for about a week, people from all over
23:52
the globe get together and they sell their movies and stuff like that. So
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I'd sneak in there because a badge is like four hundred dollars or something,
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so I'm kind of sneaking or just try to mingle with people. And eventually,
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thankfully, I did meet some producers, Carl Efinson and Kyle Tequila.
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They had a company and they were based out of Texas, and they really
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believed in it, and they were getting a company together and thought that this
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could be made for a price. And they came on board, and soon
24:25
thereafter got the Joe's hands. I was meeting with Joe Dante, you know.
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The next day. Couldn't believe it. I screwed up the first two
24:34
minutes of the meeting because I sat down and they said, I have to
24:37
tell you, I was thirteen years old when I saw the howling and you
24:42
could just see Joe and be like, oh God, thanks a lot for
24:45
that. It like that I saw under a far he goes. Thanks for
24:53
making me feel old, I said, no, I didn't mean it like
24:56
that. It didn't mean like that. I meant as the best werewolf transformation
24:59
I'd ever seen, even better than John Landis's American wearwop in London. Since
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then, you know, that was years and years ago. We're still friends
25:06
and we still email each other and he's he's just an incredible human being.
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But yeah, it was. It was many many years of just as I
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said, networking, going places, meeting new people, who's got money,
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who's interested in a zombie pick? This, this and that, and then
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finally I remember, you know, the movie had some starts and then stops,
25:29
and then starts and then stops. And then when I thought the movies,
25:32
uh, when I thought the movie was was basically dead and gone,
25:37
World War Ze came out and ended up being the highest grossing film of Brad
25:41
Pitt's career. And the next day we got a call from some financers who
25:45
said, we hear you got a zombie pick. When can you get started?
25:48
And we were like, uh, yesterday, and they said go,
25:52
and we were shooting that movie. And that's how that happened. So between
25:57
the moment that you finished a short to the I mean you started production,
26:00
you ask your questions. Uh, conservatively five, I would say conservatively far.
26:10
So this is the question I have to ask you, man, And
26:11
this is such an important question because so many of us have to go through
26:15
this. How did you get through those five years? How did you get
26:19
the energy to continue to push this boulder up a hill with no no indication
26:29
per se that it was actually going to get to its destination. You had,
26:33
you had Joe Dante. Great, that's awesome. You know, you
26:36
had some elements to get the thing going. But even after a first year
26:41
or two, you're just like, Okay, this is going to happen.
26:44
Like, how psychologically? How did you get through it? You know?
26:48
I I mentor a lot of kind of young up and coming screenwriters because I
26:52
want them to learn the lessons that took me sometimes years to learn. I
26:56
want them to learn and you know, in an instant to save them a
27:00
lot of the hardships. The hardest part about making a movie is finding an
27:06
idea that you fall in love with. That's the hardest part, okay,
27:11
And if you have that, you're already on your way because in a lot
27:17
of ways, it's like a marriage. There's gonna be some good years.
27:21
There's gonna be some bad years, but if you truly love that idea,
27:23
you're gonna stick with it. And that's the best analogy I can give you.
27:29
Look, if it was an idea that I wasn't truly in head over
27:33
heels in love with, we wouldn't be talking about this movie right now,
27:36
right. But it was a movie. It was an idea that I truly
27:40
loved, And like with any relationship, there's going to be incredible highs and
27:45
devastating lows, and it's just a matter of sticking by with you know,
27:49
the person that you fell in love with or the idea you fell in love
27:52
with. There's something there that keeps you going okay, and that's the idea.
27:56
So if anyone's having writer's block or or you know, don't doesn't have
28:02
the energy to sort of get up and keep going, odds are there not
28:04
truly head over heels in love with the idea. But this was an idea
28:08
that I was in love with, so I stuck with it. So were
28:12
you on set most of the time when you were making that film every single
28:17
day, and Joe was incredibly collaborative. So all right, So question number
28:22
one, there's always that day that the whole world is coming crashing down around
28:27
you. How did you see? How did you if it was something that
28:30
happened to you, or was something that happened to the production or to Joe,
28:34
And how did that person or that situation, how did you get through
28:37
to the other side of that? Well, thankfully, how I got through,
28:42
how we all got through was Joe. He was the captain of the
28:47
chef, and the captain cannot show nervousness, anxiousness, anger, or any
28:53
type of anxiety or doubt. And Joe never did. And I remember was
29:00
on day two, which is usually on day two that I found from you
29:03
know, the two movies that I've made, that's kind of it's gonna dictate
29:07
where your movie is kind of going day two. You know, they want
29:11
there's a lot of excitement, there's energy. You know, day two you're
29:14
kind of like more into it, but you're starting to kind of see where
29:18
some of the cracks might be. So day when day two came along,
29:22
I remember one of the producers came rolling up in a giant escalade and came
29:30
and said that they wanted to talk to Joe, and I said, oh,
29:33
here we go. Gulp, And up until that time. You know,
29:37
they had, like happens to most independent films, they had slashed our
29:41
budget a pretty good amount, and we could only shoot with one camera,
29:45
and we only had twenty days to shoot the film. So twenty days,
29:52
one camera, two cameras would be ideal, right, so you can get
29:56
more coverage, you know, half the time. We'll be right back after
30:00
a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. By one
30:10
camera twenty days. I said, okay, this thing's going to look like
30:14
clerks. Unfortunately, what are you gonna do? Right? You can only
30:18
put it down on sticks and shoot and then kind of you can't get too
30:22
creative, right. And I also think they like got rid of our steady
30:25
cam. I think they got rid of some DOLLI tracks. What a point
30:30
of doing this? Then? If you can't me, come on, great,
30:33
we're all here, we're all the parties here, let's all get let's
30:36
just do it right. Well, they just needed to flash and burn.
30:38
So then day two comes around and you know, one of the producers comes
30:44
and and escalade and wants to talk to Joe, and I said, here
30:47
it is. You know, he probably saw the daily says everything looks really
30:49
static and what the heck are you guys doing? And I'm going to cut
30:53
more. You know, I'm gonna cut your days. So he asked to
30:57
talk to Joe and they go in the corner and I see Joe talking to
31:02
this producer and the producer's kind of waving his hands like this, like going
31:04
like that. I said, oh boy, oh boy. He's asking why
31:08
the footage looks so ecstatic and blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then
31:14
about two minutes later, the producer shakes Joe's hand, waves goodbye, gets
31:18
in the escalade, and drives away. And then I said, I went
31:22
to Joe. I said, what's going on? Is everything okay? He
31:25
goes, yeah, yeah. He says, the footage looks amazing. He
31:29
says, I'm making a two and a half million dollar movie look like a
31:32
five million dollar movie. And how do I get it to look like a
31:34
ten million dollar movie? And I said, give me another camera, give
31:38
me a steady cam, and give me some Dolly tracks. He goes,
31:41
cool, you got it. And then the next day we had our The
31:45
next day we had our steady cam, and we had our DOLLI track,
31:48
and we had our B camera. So yeah, that's isn't that the way
31:52
it works? It's just so fascinating. That's just the word like wait,
31:56
find god, producer's financ here sometimes strategy absolutely that what was you know working
32:02
with Joe? What was the biggest lesson you took away from just is just
32:07
working with someone like that. It's such a close you know, such a
32:08
close collaborative way, best idea WHIMS. That's that's the best lesson. Doesn't
32:15
matter if it comes from a PA Craft Services, the a D script supervisor,
32:21
best idea WIMS. So keep it an open set, you know,
32:27
encourage collaboration, encourage freedom with the words, with the script, with the
32:32
story. You'll never know what you might find. The document. The script
32:37
is a is a is a fluid document. So what's funny is when I'm
32:43
when I was shooting Bearing and when I was shooting we summ in the darkness.
32:45
Uh, the person who asked for the most changes to the script was
32:51
actually me because I was seeing how the actors were portraying the characters, and
32:57
I was seeing what they were bringing to it, and I wanted to bring
32:59
out more of it. So I would constantly be changing dialogue and pages and
33:02
have new pages because, as I said that the movie takes a life of
33:07
its own. It's not on one hundred and twenty pages or ninety pages of
33:10
paper anymore. It's now flesh and blood, so you have to adapt to
33:15
that. And yeah, that's that's what I learned from Joe. Now,
33:19
how did you get your next film off the ground? Which also sounds like
33:23
like you said on paper, you had other ones much more commercial. How
33:28
did this one get produced? Right? So with it's called we Some in
33:32
the Darkness Again, I wanted to write something that could be made so minimal
33:38
locations, not a lot of effects, but with really hopefully good characters,
33:45
good story, and you know, some good twists, and ended up writing
33:51
with Some in the Darkness the same thing. It was an idea that I
33:53
fell in love with. It was something I really wanted to say, come
33:57
to fruition. So then I started to reach out to some producers that I
34:01
had met along the way. The first person I called was a producer named
34:07
Christian Armagida, who was a very very big genre fan worked on a ton
34:12
of genre movies, and I said, I think I think this guy might
34:16
be the right person. I think he might see what I'm trying to do
34:20
here because it was very specific. It was a very kind of specific genre,
34:23
specific tone, specific time period. Again, like I said, this,
34:28
this is before Stranger Things. It was before eight The eighties were super
34:30
cool. And I remember we had lunch one day and he walked in wearing
34:37
a Faith No More T shirt and I said, Okay, that's cool.
34:40
I dig them. And we just had a great talk for about two hours
34:44
and it was kind of like an informal job interview in a way, you
34:47
know, because I didn't bring up the script right away. It was only
34:51
like in the last ten minutes. I said, well, I've got something
34:53
and it's a little weird, it's a little strange, it's a little unique,
34:57
but here it is. And he said, I think that sounds really
34:59
cool. And two days I sent them the script and two days later he
35:04
said, I'd like to talk to you about this. I think I think
35:07
he got selting. So we worked on it together a little bit. He
35:10
helped develop it definitely, and then he sent it out to his network of
35:16
people. It ended up getting on the Blood List, not the Blacklist.
35:21
The Blacklist is you know, the list of Hollywood's you know, favorite unproduced
35:24
scripts. The Blood List is the year end list of unproduced genre scripts that
35:30
people really love. So it ended up on there, which ended up getting
35:34
it more reads, and we just started to put this movie together little by
35:38
little. We needed some extra help in terms of the financing, so I
35:44
called up the producer of my last film. I called up Kyle Tequila and
35:47
I said, Kyle, you know, I know how hard you worked on
35:51
Bearying the X. I know how like when the going got really rough,
35:54
that you just put it all out there. You just risked everything to get
35:59
this thing going. Would you do the same thing for this? And and
36:04
he said, he goes, all right, if if I read it and
36:07
if I like it, I'm all in. I said, well that's why
36:09
I'm calling you. So he read it, he liked it, and sure
36:13
enough he was all in. So we had this little team now, Christian,
36:16
Kyle and myself, and then the search for a director began and that
36:22
that took a lot long time, whereas with Bearing the X, Joe Dante
36:25
was pretty quick to come on board. We went through I think about five
36:30
directors that's including a directing team, so that's two. So ultimately, again
36:37
a lot of high's lot of lows. You know, you're working with a
36:38
director one day for several several months, only to have their managers call you
36:45
up and say, yeah, they just got offered a film at Universal and
36:49
it's shooting next month. He's going to have to drop out. Needless to
36:52
say, that film at Universal never got made. So and we would say
36:58
that, we would say is it real, and managers said yes, it's
37:00
a hundred percent real, and film ever got made, But we still lost
37:04
the director as a result. And then finally when we're again, just when
37:08
we thought the movie was done and over, it was. It was just
37:13
before Christmas break, I think it was twenty seventeen, just before Christmas break,
37:19
and Kyle and Christian call me and they said, we saw a movie
37:23
called Life Friend Dahmer. I said, I know that one. It played
37:27
at sun Dance. It's really really quite amazing. It's it's about Jeffrey Dahmer
37:30
but when he was in high school, told from the eyes of this best
37:34
friend. And I said, yeah, that movie is actually kind of amazing.
37:38
We've been looking at these genre filmmakers, like these kind of genre film
37:43
festival kind of guys who were making a big splash. But here was like
37:46
a real, like art house filmmaker, a real sort of character driven filmmaker.
37:52
His name was Mark Myers, and they said, well, good luck
37:54
getting him because he makes like real movies. He's like, we're looking for
37:59
like a genre on genre film. He said, no, he likes it.
38:01
And I got on the phone again. It was just before Christmas.
38:07
Within five minutes, Mark says, I dig the script. You know what
38:12
it reminds me of. It reminds me of a clockwork orange. And then
38:17
yeah, I remember we were all in separate parts of the world. I
38:22
mean, Mark is a New York City based and I'm in the valley in
38:28
California. Kyle, I think, is in West Feelis And I remember texting
38:32
Kyle and Christian holy shit. And again it was the passion in Mark's voice.
38:39
It was the authenticity. At the end of that call, I said,
38:43
Mark, you and I will make this movie together, and he goes,
38:45
yeah, cool, let's make a movie. Less than a year later,
38:51
we were in Manitoba, Canada making the movies. That's amazing. Now,
38:55
how So from that point, because this was done independently, how did
38:59
you get to Netflix? Because that's another journey I'm assuming as well. Yeah,
39:02
so thankfully Mark directed the hell out of the film. We had an
39:07
incredible cast, Alexandra de Dario, Maddy Hassen, Johnny Knoxville. Amazing cast,
39:15
incredible production, incredible acting. Just Mark made such a fantastic movie that
39:23
really struck a chord with people, and we ended up getting a deal with
39:29
a film distribution company, Saban Films, and they were the ones responsible for
39:35
getting it released all over the world and on Netflix. It was supposed to
39:39
have a very nice theatrical run. However, it was slated for a theatrical
39:45
run in April twenty twenty, just when the pandemic hit. And I remember
39:51
we got a review from Owen Gleieberman at Variety of fantastic review. We'll be
39:57
right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
40:06
And he said, the only sad thing about this is that this this
40:10
will get a theatrical review. And if anything is meant to be played in
40:15
a with an audience of raucous film goers, it's this movie. So that
40:20
that was the other parte. But who knows, you know, it could
40:22
still play on the midnight circuit, you know, somewhere down the line as
40:27
a cult movie. Is there anything that you wish someone would have told you
40:31
at the beginning of your career, just that it's going to be ten times
40:40
harder than you thought it would be, and that you'd work ten times harder
40:45
than you thought you ever would. And not all hard work is rewarded a
40:54
lot of the times. A lot of the times the reward a lot of
40:59
the times has to come from the work itself. Right, So, as
41:05
you said, so what kept me through, you know, what got me
41:07
through the years of trying to make Burying the X or we Some in the
41:10
Darkness? It was well, I had this document, and I had this
41:14
script, and I remember Christian would say like sometimes he would just read it,
41:19
just to read it because it would make him smile. You know.
41:22
So a lot of the times the reward comes out of the work itself,
41:25
or the reward comes from you know, I got a piece of fan art
41:30
about three or four weeks ago from someone who had seeing me Some in the
41:34
Darkness, and they just loved it so much that they drew like a mock
41:38
poster of it and gave it to me. And that's that's an incredible thing,
41:44
you know. So not all, not the rewards won't come in the
41:46
way that you expect them to, but their rewards there just have to know
41:51
how to recognize them. Isn't it interesting that most people in general, but
41:57
specifically in the film industry, they worked towards goal and if they don't get
42:00
the goal, they're unhappy. But the majority of people in the film industry
42:07
don't get to their goals were not the goals that they set out. Maybe
42:10
other goals, maybe other situations, maybe other opportunities, but generally speaking,
42:15
all of us, I think at one point another said, if we're going
42:16
to be Steven Spielberg, we're gonna be Stanley Kuper, we're gonna be Eric
42:21
Roth, We're going to be whoever that person is that you idolize. We
42:27
generally almost always never get to that place, but we get to wherever we're
42:30
supposed to be. But so much of our journey is depressing many times because
42:39
we don't focus on the journey. We focus on the destination. And if
42:44
you would have focused on the destination with these two projects, you wouldn't have
42:47
made it. You were actually focused on like just the enjoyment of well,
42:53
I would even say the enjoyment. But the process is that a fair statement
43:00
or percent. Yeah, yeah, it was the Like I said, I
43:04
wrote the movies that I wanted to see, and even if I didn't get
43:07
to see them on the big screen or on a sixty inch flat screen,
43:12
they still existed in my mind and on paper. Now, I'm gonna ask
43:16
you a few questions, ask on my guests, what advice would you give
43:20
a screenwriter or filmmaker trying to break into the business today. Okay, for
43:25
screenwriters, find that idea that you fall head over heels in love with.
43:31
Don't chase the marketplace, okay, don't try to be the next you know.
43:38
Don't try to write the next Marvel movie. Okay they they've already got
43:43
the next five years of Marvel movies already lined up. And if you really
43:46
think about it, if you really think about it, look at who Kevin
43:50
Figy's hiring to write and direct these Marvel movies. Is he direct is he
43:54
hiring the big tent pole folks, the people who have made those one hundred
44:00
three hundred four hundred five hundred million dollar grossing movies, Or is he hiring
44:04
someone like Taika Watit, Is he hiring someone like James Gunn he's hiring people
44:09
with unique and original voices. Okay, that's the trick. Find your voice.
44:16
Okay. If you have something to say and only you can say it,
44:22
and you have an idea and you're the only person that can execute that
44:24
idea, that's what you should do, okay, because that's how you'll get
44:29
noticed. That's how you'll get a meeting, you know, at Marvel or
44:32
any other place, because they've got all the big action guys, they've got
44:37
all the big dialogue guys, or the next Tarantinos and stuff, But what
44:40
they're really looking for is a unique, original voice who could take a property
44:45
like four and bring it whole new life right, or take up properly like
44:50
the Guardians of the Galaxy and just completely up end, you know, that
44:54
whole franchise. So that that's my advice for screenwriters. Chase the marketplace.
45:00
Work on your voice. You know, when you're talking to friends, when
45:05
your friends are like, you're you're you're so funny because only you do this
45:08
or you think this way. Okay, what is it that that that that
45:15
gives you your voice? What is it that your friends are constantly entertained by?
45:20
That's your voice? Work on it? Find it, take chances,
45:22
don't worry about selling, okay. And then for filmmakers out there again,
45:28
it's it's the network of people. It's about getting seen by as many people
45:31
as possible. Okay, always produce, find your find your you know,
45:37
I I say a lot of the times making a movie, it's kind of
45:40
like forming a cult. Okay, you have a you have a document,
45:45
you have words written on paper that people believe in, that people trust in,
45:49
and then the the cabal grows larger and larger and larger, and then
45:54
before you know what, money is being spent. Okay, and then at
45:58
the end of the day, every one gathers in a room to see what
46:02
the document has produced. Right. It's almost kind of like a cult or
46:07
a religion. Right. So find that team, find that team of people
46:09
that you trust, like when I found Christian and Kyle and you know the
46:14
other people that I work with, and you'll be on your way. Isn't
46:17
it funny though? When you watch you know, when you watch Guardians of
46:21
the Galaxy or thor the third one, they you know, Guardians of the
46:27
Galaxy was one of the oddest properties Marvel owned. They were kind of like
46:32
in the bargain bin of comic books. I remember them when I was collecting
46:37
comics. I was just like, walk it Ray cool? What? And
46:40
he turned it into a huge franchise. And then Thor was pretty much kind
46:45
of like almost a third tier character behind all the other ones. The first
46:51
two movies did eh, you know, but then he's now one of the
46:53
favorites because of this humor that you bring. And I'm dying to see the
46:58
new one, Love and Thunder. It's it looks amazing. Uh. But
47:01
it was because of that unique voice. I hope people listening understand those those
47:07
two James Gunn and Uh TAKEI. I can never say his name, tak
47:13
Uh. They both are so authentic to who they are. That's what made
47:19
them. That's what made the pop, that's what got them these jobs.
47:21
That's what got them the success that they've gotten. They didn't try to be
47:25
anybody else. Yeah, but the and and their highest grossing films, which
47:30
are I think still today, Infinity War and Endgame were directed by the Russo
47:36
brothers, who were directing episodes of Community okay and Arrested Development. Okay.
47:42
They didn't go and hire the guy who you know whose last movie was a
47:45
huge hit at the box office. They they hired according to voice and according
47:51
to perspective and a point of view and something unique, right, and and
47:54
they just I mean, and the only time they've they've broken that rule one
48:00
in a blue moon, where like with Sam Raimi with uh which but he
48:02
also but Sam hasn't done anything big in a while, right, And Sam
48:08
has one of the most unique points of view in how in Hollywood history honestly
48:15
so. But they gave someone like him every toolbox, every tool in the
48:20
toolbox, and he's like, this is great. I want to keep working
48:22
like this. And the best parts of those of that film, you know,
48:27
and even the reviewers and audiences agreed, were the Sam raimie more right,
48:31
the things that made oh that's Sam. Sam brought that in. Yes,
48:37
Like I said, remember in Spider Man two, there was that horror
48:40
movie in the middle Doc Hawk was coming off. It was literally a horror
48:46
movie in the middle of it, and we're like, where did this come
48:51
from? Is so beautifully? That was aw Now? Now, what is
48:54
the lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film industry
48:59
or in life. The longest to learn in the film industry or in life.
49:07
I think that it would be. What I had said is the reward
49:10
is in the doing, not in the finished product. That took the lungs
49:16
because you know, you write something you love, you think it's going to
49:20
sell. Not all scripts sell, not all people see what you see.
49:25
Does that mean that the last three four months or a year were wasted?
49:31
No, hopefully not, because why because the next one will be better?
49:37
Right? Or you learn something along the way. You learned how to write
49:42
a character better, you learned how to write dialogue better, you learned how
49:45
to add subtext into your dialogue. So hopefully each script you do you learn
49:53
something from so that the next one's even better. We'll be right back after
49:59
a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Don't repeat
50:07
yourself. Don't say I'm going to write you know, the same thing all
50:12
over again. You'll never grow that way, you'll never get better that way,
50:15
and you'll never get noticed that way. And even if you are sold,
50:19
it doesn't mean it's going to be made into a movie because you got
50:22
that experience. You got experience as well. Yeah, yeah, a few
50:27
times, a few times, but hey, hey, listen, as long
50:30
as the check clears, We're all good. Eventually it did. Eventually,
50:36
eventually it arrived, and thankfully it did. Clear. Yeah, I mean,
50:39
I know so many screenwriters who whose IMDb might be short, but they've
50:45
been working NonStop for a decade or fifteen years script doctrin, working on projects
50:52
getting picked up. I mean, working with the biggest people in Hollywood.
50:55
Yet they just can't. I can't get that thing up, and they only
51:00
get maybe once or twice or three times in a decade. It's not easy
51:04
getting a movie made, especially now. I don't have to tell you,
51:09
sir, I know, I don't have to tell you this. What is
51:14
the biggest thing you learned from your biggest failure? And in the business,
51:21
the biggest thing going to learn from my biggest failure was trying to chase the
51:24
marketplace, trying to looking at deadline saying this movie just sold. I'm mad,
51:34
I'm angry. I can do that. Let me show them I can
51:37
do that. And then, as I said, you know, you wasted
51:40
six months because at the end of the day, A, that movie already
51:46
exists and already sold, you know, or that script already existed and already
51:51
sold, or B there's no passion in the writing, because it comes through.
51:57
It does come through. As I said, trust your voice, stick
52:00
with it. It was the moments when I wasn't trusting my voice, when
52:05
I was trying to be someone else, when I was trying to write something
52:07
else that I'm not good at. You stumble. You can't be an imposter.
52:14
So I would say, you know, I've written maybe two or three
52:16
scripts simply because I thought they would sell, and of course they didn't because
52:23
people saw right through it. So I would say that that would sort of
52:28
be the biggest lesson. And it's the like as I said earlier, it's
52:31
the ones that I thought wouldn't sell and the ones I thought no one would
52:37
like but I did like that ended up happening. And what are three of
52:43
your favorite films of all time? Hard one, but let's go with Clockwork
52:49
Orange, Let's go with Halloween, and let's go with Punch Drunk Love,
52:54
the heck of a Combo, My friend, Uh off the top, but
52:59
the one that I can see over and over and over again and find different
53:05
things in them each time. That's why I think I chose those three.
53:09
And they age, they're different every decade. That's what great art does as
53:15
you changed the art change. You watch Clockwork Orange at eleven and you watch
53:19
it as a fourty year old, two very different movies. Yeah. Yeah.
53:22
Punch un Glove came out two thousand and three, two thousand and four.
53:25
It's been quite a long time, and I saw that film twice in
53:30
a weekend because it just had such an impact on me. It was an
53:35
experimental film all the way through, from wardrobe, soundtrack casting, dialogue casting,
53:40
stunt casting, incredible stunt casting, and every experiment, every risk he
53:47
took paid off incredibly. And now other filmmakers can now benefit from that.
53:53
Other filmmakers can cast Sandler in a role where he isn't comedic all the time.
54:00
JJ can experiment now with lens flares because that film used lens flair as
54:06
an aesthetic sort of piece of it. People started hiring John Bryan to compose
54:10
their soundtracks because they heard the work that he did. I mean, I
54:15
was watching on some episodes of The Flight Attendant and that percussive soundtrack, that
54:22
sort of chaotic sort of drum beat. I said, that's punched from Love
54:25
right there, you know, And I remember sort of watching it maybe two
54:31
or three months ago. I'm like, I wonder if this thing holds up.
54:35
I wonder if it's still as amazing more than ever, more than ever,
54:39
this that film hold up and it still has the same impact on me
54:44
now that it did when I saw it in the theater back in I think
54:46
two thousand and four. Alt. It has been a pleasure talking to you,
54:51
my friend. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing
54:53
your journey with us. And hopefully somebody's listening has picked up a couple of
54:59
these nuggets. Hopefully won't be you know, have so many problems moving forward
55:04
in their journey. Hopefully they'll avoid some of these bitfalls that you and I
55:07
have come through over the years. So I appreciate you, my friend.
55:10
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Not problems, opportunities.
55:15
Thank you, my friend. Thank you. I want to thank Allan so
55:20
much for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Tribe today.
55:23
Thank you so much. Alan. If you want to get links to
55:25
anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at
55:30
any film uscle dot com forward slash seven thirty five. If you have it
55:32
already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave a
55:38
good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys.
55:42
Thank you again so much for listening. Guys, as always, keep
55:45
that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and
55:47
I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast
55:52
at Indie Film hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F I
55:55
L M h U S T l E dot com.