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IFH 878: Why Most Screenwriters NEVER Finish Their Scripts with John Paxton Jr. · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFH Podcast Network.
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  Speaker 2: For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork.com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, episode number 878.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You try to do it, and you do it honestly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't control people's responses, really.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Edgar Wright.
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  Speaker 2: Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood, it's the Indie
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  Speaker 2: Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
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  Speaker 2: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
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  Speaker 2: the film biz.
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  Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is
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  Speaker 3: sponsored by Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, how to turn your
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  Speaker 3: independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than
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• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Dave Bullis.
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  Speaker 4: On to my guest today, John Paxton Jr. John Paxton Jr.
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  Speaker 4: is a writer and director known for Rebecca's Window, Mary's Laughter,
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: 800-lb Gorilla, and the web series Atlantic City Chronicles, which
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  Speaker 4: has just completed its second season. The Atlantic City Chronicles
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  Speaker 4: actually has over several million views worldwide. And John takes
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  Speaker 4: us through not only his writing process, which we do
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  Speaker 4: talk mainly about, but we also do talk about his
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  Speaker 4: process of creating this web series and growing up in
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  Speaker 4: Atlantic City and what it really means to him. And,
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  Speaker 4: you know, honestly, we go for about an hour and
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  Speaker 4: a half or maybe a little less give or take,
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  Speaker 4: but I think you're really going to enjoy this show.
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  Speaker 4: So without further ado, here is John Paxton Jr.
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  Speaker 5: Kind of cathartic. I could kind of remove myself from
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  Speaker 5: some aspects of social media. Um, because I felt the
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  Speaker 5: draw on my writing was, it was kind of like
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  Speaker 5: competing with that.
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  Speaker 5: And I'd rather
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  Speaker 5: you see it. So instead of me saying, Hey, I'm
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  Speaker 5: doing this, I'm just going to do it. You know
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  Speaker 5: what I mean?
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  Speaker 6: So.
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  Speaker 4: Very true. You know, I had on the writer of
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  Speaker 4: The Martian, Andy Weir, and that's what he actually mentioned
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  Speaker 4: as well, because he said, you know, if you tell
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  Speaker 4: people you're actually writing a novel or a screenplay, he
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  Speaker 4: said that that takes up so much energy that you
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: have no energy now to actually write the screenplay or
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: the novel because you're always telling people about it. You're
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  Speaker 4: telling people on social media, you know, you're telling people
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  Speaker 4: in person. And that's one of the things he was
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: telling people was he said, if you're working on something,
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  Speaker 4: don't mention it until it's done and ready to go
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  Speaker 4: out or, or, you know, it's done and you know,
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  Speaker 4: it's going to be coming out in a couple of months.
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  Speaker 4: And that way you can, then you can spend all
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  Speaker 4: that energy talking about it and promoting and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah. That is exactly. It's funny that you say that.
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  Speaker 5: Cause that is exactly it. There's so much, um, you know,
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  Speaker 5: now that is, you know, and I'm a little bit different,
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  Speaker 5: I think then, um, some other folks in terms of
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  Speaker 5: everything is show me. I shouldn't say everything. I don't
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  Speaker 5: want to make gross generalizations, but there's so much flooding
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  Speaker 5: of product, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. It's just
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  Speaker 5: like this massive vomit of stuff. So how can anyone
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  Speaker 5: see anything of clutter and all of that stuff, right?
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  Speaker 5: So people are just always flooding stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.
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  Speaker 5: And so I felt that a lot of that noise,
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  Speaker 5: I didn't want to mix in anymore. You know what
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  Speaker 5: I mean? You really do. The gentleman that you mentioned,
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  Speaker 5: it really does. It takes so much. Um, it does
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  Speaker 5: take a lot of energy because every, we're all insane
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  Speaker 5: to be, um, swimming extreme sometimes with this kind of
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  Speaker 5: crazy business. It takes its toll. It takes a part
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  Speaker 5: of you. It takes, um, you know, a great, great chore.
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  Speaker 5: One of my, my best friends, uh, he says, it's
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  Speaker 5: like pulling a boat up a mountain, you know, when
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  Speaker 5: you're writing. Um, so with all that, then trying to
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  Speaker 5: separate yourself through the noise, it's, it's an awesome task.
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  Speaker 5: So step away from the noise and you get and
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  Speaker 5: achieve that silence and that stillness and it's in that
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  Speaker 5: that you can exist and then really pen something that
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  Speaker 5: you feel proud of and then you can put the
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  Speaker 5: you know motion behind that and get a good product
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  Speaker 5: out there and then hope that when you dive back
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  Speaker 5: into the noise because your product has been you know
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  Speaker 5: kind of crafted in that meticulous way that each and
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  Speaker 5: every writer or each and every director you hope takes
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  Speaker 5: in their craft it'll rise above the noise you know
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  Speaker 5: so that's kind of been um kind of been my
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  Speaker 5: thing so i'm glad i'm not too crazy because somebody
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  Speaker 5: else seems to be doing the same thing it's pretty.
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  Speaker 4: Cool yeah i that that's something i've noticed more of
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  Speaker 4: is is writers tend to just take a break, at
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  Speaker 4: least from social media. Like, for instance, I have a
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  Speaker 4: program I use called Anti-Social. And if I'm going to
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  Speaker 4: use my laptop or my desktop to actually write anything,
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  Speaker 4: what I do is I fire up this program. It's
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  Speaker 4: called Anti-Social. And what I can do is it allows
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  Speaker 4: me to set which websites I want to block. So
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  Speaker 4: if I want to block Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and it
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  Speaker 4: can set how long you want that to be blocked for.
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  Speaker 4: So that way, I can block it for an hour, two,
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  Speaker 4: four hours, however many hours. And then if I ever
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  Speaker 4: try to access those during that time period, I just
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  Speaker 4: get this error message. And the only way to actually
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  Speaker 4: stop it is either you have to go all the
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  Speaker 4: way to the set time or you have to reset
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  Speaker 4: your computer to get it to go off. So you
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  Speaker 4: have to go through a whole heck of a lot
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  Speaker 4: of trouble just to access like a Twitter or Facebook
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  Speaker 4: or something like that.
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  Speaker 5: Wow, that's pretty cool. What's that called?
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  Speaker 4: It's called antisocial.
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  Speaker 5: Antisocial. I have to remember that. And that's the thing,
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  Speaker 5: because people do, whether it be inadvertent or not, the
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  Speaker 5: writing process, no one knows when you're actually trying to
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  Speaker 5: craft and people just want to catch up. And then
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  Speaker 5: I call it pulling the parachute. When you're stuck, what
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  Speaker 5: do you do? You'll jump on those distractions. You'll dive.
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  Speaker 5: It will just take you out of that space that
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  Speaker 5: you have to fight to stay in and really just
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  Speaker 5: synthesize where you want to go with what you're working
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  Speaker 5: on at that time. Yeah, man. I'm going to have
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  Speaker 5: to check that out. Definitely going to check that out.
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  Speaker 4: It's a great program. And I'll link to that, everyone,
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  Speaker 4: you know, in the show notes as well. Because I
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: always include these show notes because, you know, whenever I
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  Speaker 4: do these episodes, the guests and I always talk about
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  Speaker 4: so much stuff that I always have to have like
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  Speaker 4: a pen and a paper right next to me as
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: well just to copy it down or remember to put
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: in the show notes. Because there's always, you know, there's
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  Speaker 4: always movies or books or software. You know, I know
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  Speaker 4: it can get a little, it can get a lot
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  Speaker 4: of info being thrown at people listening to this. John,
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  Speaker 4: I wanted to ask, you know, since we're talking about this,
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  Speaker 4: your writing process, you know, so how exactly do you write?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, do you use a pen and paper or,
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  Speaker 4: you know, do you maybe just use like an iPad
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  Speaker 4: or something like that? So, you know, could you take
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  Speaker 4: us through your writing process?
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  Speaker 5: Sure, sure. I'm a bit, you know, I'm a bit
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  Speaker 5: of a throwback. I keep a notebook with me at
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  Speaker 5: all times. Wherever I go, I'm a big, big people watcher.
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  Speaker 5: And so, obviously, back when I was going through college
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  Speaker 5: and stuff like that, we didn't have all of the
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  Speaker 5: technology that we have now. And so it was a notebook.
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  Speaker 5: It was a little flip book. And, you know, now
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  Speaker 5: I actually have gotten back to an actual, like, large
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  Speaker 5: size notebook. And I will just, ideas come, dialogue pops
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  Speaker 5: in my head, scenes, you know, they just, you lose
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  Speaker 5: them if you don't.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
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  Speaker 5: I also used to walk around with a little mini
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  Speaker 5: tape recorder and speak into that. I say most writers
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  Speaker 5: are schizophrenic. We're just undiagnosed. Uh, in the sense that
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  Speaker 5: you're carrying on all of these conversations and context that
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: don't exist. So you're hearing these voices, man, you got
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  Speaker 5: to put them down. Um, and I think that's the
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: beauty of, of, of writers. When we put them down,
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  Speaker 5: that's our medication. That's how we can still that, you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: because otherwise, uh, it'd be look a little odd if
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: we continually were walking around talking to ourselves. Um, Huge, huge, huge, huge,
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: huge music fan of pretty much everything. And sometimes when
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: I'm in a rough spot, I'll throw the headphones on
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  Speaker 5: and we'll just listen to the music and the music
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: sets the mood. So for me, I'm a big character person.
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  Speaker 5: When I try to develop a backstory or a life
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: story or the why, which is the quintessential question of
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: what we do, And everything. I try to think of
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: what kind of music. Would this person listen to. And
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: so I'll dig. Sometimes I'll spend hours. Just listening to
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: the music. To put me in the mood. Of what
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: that character. Was thinking. Or what he said. Or she said.
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: Or how she feels. And how the music makes me feel.
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  Speaker 5: And it's one of my biggest keys. to getting through
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  Speaker 5: writer's block, just getting right on to a different emotion,
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: setting myself apart from different characters so that the voices
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: do sound distinct as opposed to one of the trappings
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: I think most folks get caught in is all the
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: characters sound the same. They all have the same punchline.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: They all come in at the same beat with something witty.
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: And so the discordance that you need in the writing,
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  Speaker 5: I sample through music. But yeah, I write down. There's
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: things that I just constantly jot down. One of my
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: favorite apps, however, that I do use still, it is
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: the Selfish program. They've been very good to me. I
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: was one of their beta testers when they first when
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: they first kicked off and I've stayed with them since
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: you know a lot of people are final draft and
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: I've done both and I find that there are enough
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  Speaker 5: nuances in the focus program that I can manipulate to
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  Speaker 5: get out a solid final draft Hollywood ready screenplay but
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: they've added so many other pieces they've added novel they've
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: added other templates in there I did a comic book,
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: which was cool. So for me, you'll never find me
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  Speaker 5: without a notebook. If you do, then I'm speaking into
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: my phone. If I'm not speaking into my phone, I'm
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  Speaker 5: listening to music, trying to put myself... I guess I'm
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: more of a method writer. I like method actors. I'm
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: a method writer. And I really... When I'm in that zone,
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: and it's crazy because your mood, you know, if I'm
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: writing something that's angry, then you will sense that energy
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: from me. You know, I'm kind of in a space
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: now where I've been working on something that, you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to get into the mindset of an older
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: male character that, hasn't seen the fruition of his life
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: the way he thought it would be and you know
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: has a family and is trying to wade through how
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: do I stay committed to this family but finally find
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: this happiness that's been elusive to me so me if
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: like if you were to see me today you might
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: say man John's kind of down and that's really not
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: it I've just spent three days in the mindset of
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: this character arc that I'm working through. So anything that
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: I could suggest to anyone starting out, no cards, you
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: just write everything, watch people, which is huge, you know,
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: mall diners, obviously being, you know, college, college campuses. If
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: you want to see what youth is, you have to
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: go there. If you want to see what a, huge
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: party looks like you gotta immerse yourself in that you
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: gotta get there and see it and smell it and
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: it has to be visceral or you're gonna fall short
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: you can watch somebody's representation of that or you can
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: experience it which gives your pen a whole lot more
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: strength so um that's really really it in a nutshell
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: baby by um ivy balls like i used to go
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: when I very, very, very first started with everything, I stood,
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: you know, with a photographer. And I say that through
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: men's teeth because we all started out as photographers, I believe.
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: But I'd hopped a train in New York and I'd
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: just go in the city and shoot, man. And so
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: I could see the things and develop my, like, you know,
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: I was developing my pictures and they sucked. But I
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: had the raw emotion. So then I'd write what I
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: saw and I started putting generalizations and then got specific
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: and then got down to, you know, why I have
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: the shoelaces that I have and the boat shoes and
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: why I'm wearing boat shoes is because I couldn't afford
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: them when I was a kid. You know, I mean,
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: you have to put those small, distinctive layers in Because
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: then when you are actually going to direct an actor
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: who's going to bring your word or your screenplay to life,
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: that's what you want. They want to know all of that.
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: And I think over the years, that's what allowed me.
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: I've been blessed with talented people who, when we have
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: that dialogue and I can talk to them about where
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: I want them to go and why I want them
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: to go there. they always feel full. And then, of course,
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: let them go and work on what their ability is
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: and what they bring to it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: You know, I took a course one time and the
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: instructor actually did mention, you know, he said, when you actually,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: when everyone gets a screenplay, you know, the director wants
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: to pull out this The producers want to pull out
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: how much money each scene is going to be, how
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: much money, who could we get to play this role?
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Set designers want to pull out, okay, what could we
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: do to add to the set design? What could we
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: do to add to the color palette of this film? And,
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: of course, the actors, they want a role to play
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: that is just unbelievable. There was a story he told.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: that Jeffrey Rush, after he read a screenplay, he got
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: to page five and he closed it and he told
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: his agent, he said, I have to be in this movie.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: He goes, no matter what, I want to be in
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: this movie. And the screenplay, I think it may have
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: been Shakespeare in Love.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: Now, I don't know.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: I've never actually seen Shakespeare in Love, so I'm not
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: sure how good the movie ended up being. But just
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: by the fifth page, you know, he, you know, Jeffrey
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: Rush wanted to be in that film. So, you know, when,
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: when you say, you know, method writing, I totally understand
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: that because, you know, that's what, you know, these actors,
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: you know, that's what they pull from is they want
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: to see what nuances they can bring to the character.
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: You know, and another instance of that is, is Denzel Washington, because,
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: you know, somebody else pointed out, you know, he tends
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: to do a lot of similar roles, but he does
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: that on purpose because he, he does things like, a
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: lot of the characters he tends to play are guys
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: close to retirement, but they always have a hidden past
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: to them. And so a couple of his past films
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: have had that same sort of nuance to it. So again,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: that's a great point to bring up because anybody who's
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: writing that type of, anyone who's writing a screenplay that
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: could have Denzel Washington in it or whomever, those little
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: nuances are what's really going to really attract that actor
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: in the first place. And, I mean, and, you know,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: any more, it seems like that's pretty much the, you know,
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: one of the only ways to get movies made is,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: you know, who's in it and, you know, what's my role?
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: So that's pretty much, you know, I'm starting to ramble here, John.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: No, no, no.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: I think I had a point in there somewhere.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: No, it is. It's funny because, you know, when you
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: segue to, you want to, Who's in it? And what's
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: my role? So if I could work from there, who's
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: in it and what's my role? That's the struggle of
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: a lot of endings.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: And then even when you get to the next level,
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: if you get to the next level, and I always
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: say when and not if, because I think if you
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: set your mind to doing something, you can accomplish it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: If you don't move the needle from the people you
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: were working with when you first started. I mean, when
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: we all first got out there and we had friends
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: and cousins and, you know, Hey, you want to be
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: in a movie? And, you know, I look back at
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: some of my early stuff and I'm like, wow, you know,
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: how did we, how did we call this filmmaking? But
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: you move the needle, right? So you, you look at
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: who you developed and what did you develop? And, It's
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: the technical skill and the acumen. With writing, this is
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: going to sound crazy. I do less writing until it's
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: time to write. And what I mean by that is
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: there are things that I will turn down if people
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: will approach me and ask me to do it. I'm like, no.
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: Because I find that some, you know, when I taught,
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: I taught filmmaking for several years at Rutgers University in between,
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: you know, doing other things.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: You'll never run out of ideas.
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: Maybe when you're first trying to bud, and this is
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: just me, this is solely me, when you're first trying
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: to get out of it, you got to write through
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: the nonsense. You got to write through the first mistakes
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: you're going to make, that everybody makes. Same thing with
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: the wrecking. The first issues you're going to make. I mean, hell,
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: I still make mistakes. I think there's no one who
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: doesn't still make mistakes. But when you're writing in the
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: first process, yeah, you know, bang out 10 pages, bang
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: out 20 pages, evolve to 50 pages, get to 100,
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: trend back to 90. Can you get to 120? Go
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: back to 80. All of those things. But you put
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: so much material and you churn through The bad portion,
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: when you finally get down to, as I say, evolve
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: to that next step, you're not going to write a
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: ton of things until it's time to write. I have
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: hashed out many, many, many ideas and storylines through my
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: brain and through my processes. Get to an end and say, nope,
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: that's not going to work. That might take me six
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: or seven weeks to do. I'm not going to write
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: that and then say, wow, you know what? This really
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: isn't going to go anywhere. Because now that six or
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: seven weeks might turn to six and seven months. So
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: I think there's a point of kind of going back
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: to what I said earlier with so much noise that
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: gets out there, right? Everyone wants to push things out
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: and do this and do that. Sometimes you have to
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: actually visualize and go through the whole thing, all the
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: twists and turns. And if it sticks with you, then
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: you start to put it down. Because getting to that
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: point where you want to say to someone, hey, this
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: is a role for Denzel Washington, or this is a
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: role for someone of that caliber, or Jeffrey Rush, who
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: fell in love in the first five pages. they will know,
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: you know, this person has crafted and tailored this for
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: an actor. You know, not to get out there. You know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: it's kind of weird, David. Like there's some people, what
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: they or why they go out to put products out,
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: you know, why they put a screenplay out. Again, you know,
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: silence the noise in your brain, you know, silence the voices,
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: but you know, when you put something that is really
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: solid and sound and you've vetted it through, you know,
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: different folks, like I have a, the same process. I
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: have a group of readers who I've, you know, had
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: kind of tutor me for a long time and, One
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: of them, I'm not a big name dropper, but one
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: of them is Earl Lex. As I say, I don't
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: name drop and I'm not a lot of people that
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: know who he is, but he's been my most constant
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: guy because of who he's been and where he's been
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: in the world and what he had, you know, the
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: pulse of and what he could green light. But with Earl,
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: you know, too, it's the, hey, Send me something that's solid.
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: And I can put X character to this. And I
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: can put X actor to that X character. And all
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: screenplays don't get read. You know that. But when you
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: get into the process of when you've taken that step
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: to that next level that everyone wants to do, sometimes
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: you got to hold it. Sometimes you got to sit still.
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: Because you do want to find the right actor that
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: is going to catch some fire for the project and
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: take it to the next level. Ultimately, everything we want
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: to get seen. There's never been a better opportunity than
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: today in terms of marketing or getting a project out
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: to have it be seen. The money is the last
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: piece a writer should really concern himself with. Because if
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: you say, I want to be a writer or a
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: screenwriter or a filmmaker because I want to make lots
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: of money and have it be cool, boy, you should
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: pick something else. Because it doesn't happen overnight. Sometimes it
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: doesn't happen for people. you know, someone will write a
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: great project and then they'll go and get, you know,
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: Jim Jacobs, who used to do some theater every once
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: in a while. That, that all of a sudden, you know,
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: you're going to create this brand new actor and break that.
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: I'm not a naysayer. I'm not saying it can't happen.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: I'm saying it doesn't always happen that way anymore. Um,
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: You want to give people a break, but at the
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: same time, you got to make sure you found the
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: right person who can be involved in the mix of
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: breaking someone new and also some of the tried and
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: true folks that have been successful at it. And that's
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: how I think you know, you can really move ahead.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: Walter Groggins comes to mind. And did you see the
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: Hateful Eight with Clinton? Did you see Hateful Eight?
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I did.
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: Okay. I don't know what you thought about it, but
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: Walt is a guy that popped in my head because
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: I love what he did for FX. You know, first
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: on The Shield and then The name is escaping me
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: right now. With Raylan Gibbons. Justice. That's it. Yes. Yes.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: Justified.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: That's it. Justified. Justified. That's it. Loved him. And he was,
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: you know, he did some moonlighting even on Sons of Anarchy,
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: which I thought was kind of interesting. But his work
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: on The Shield was where I fell in love with
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: that guy and his ability. Because he made you believe
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: who he was. And then Justified, completely different, but he
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: made you believe who he was. And then to see him,
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: you know, in The Hateful Eight, it wasn't far from Justified.
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: But man, you know, when it came to performance in there,
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: you know, Samuel L. Samuel L., everybody, you know, I mean,
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: for whatever people will say about him and will say
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: about Clinton Tarantino, like him or not, you know, as
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: a black male myself, I laugh until I cry at
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: certain parts of the, you know, of the film because,
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: hey man, he's just telling it what he thinks it
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: was like. But Walt, really was just profound to me.
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: And again, you wouldn't have gotten that if you watched
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: The Shield.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And now, back to the show.
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: You know, and that's where you, that's kind of, you know,
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: it's a little long-winded way of me saying, here's a
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: proven actor, small screen, you know, had some supporting roles,
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: and then, boom, he's up there with stars. And there's
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: no doubt in my mind, he's going to continue that arc.
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: So now, you know, we're talking, what, 2007, almost 2005, 2006, 2007,
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: you know, look how many years. And then what was
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: he doing before that? So he's a guy who back then,
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: I'm like, man, I can't wait to work with this guy.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: He's a guy I can flip in. He's a guy
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: that I can grab. And there you see, you know,
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: in terms of the independent guru that he is, somebody
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: else was walking him too, right? So, it really does
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: come down to role, suitability, the proper mix of, you know,
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: finding talent and putting all of that together. My partner, Mike,
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: who you know, and I, we're just having this conversation
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: because we've done fairly well again. Mike was the producer
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: on my most recent web series. And he's been there,
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: you know, long days, long nights, jumping the hurdles with me.
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: And we feel very confident. You know, the numbers are scoured,
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: which is great. You know, having the first season, I
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: did very well. And then being able to get that
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: audience back and then even more people through whatever challenges
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: and time and space that we had. But now, you know,
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: he's been asking me kind of like, hey, you know,
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: we're going to move on. this next phase, and that's
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: where we are in the discussion. It's like, okay, now
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: it's time to pull in someone with a little bit
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: more of a billing mixed with all these great other
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: people that we've discovered along the way.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I was talking to Mike about your series,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: The Atlantic City Chronicles, You know, I know you just wrapped,
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: you know, season two. And, you know, congratulations, by the way. And,
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: you know, Mike has said nothing but great things about it.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Just to take one step back, I did want to mention,
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: there is one thing that you said that is so true.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: And it's about, you know, writing ideas, you know. Just to,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: you know, while I'm thinking of it, not to take
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: us too far back. But when you were talking about,
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: you know, writing an idea, you know, there was a
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: blog post I was reading. about, you know, about that, about,
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: you know, this guy would always get pitched ideas because
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: of where he worked for William Morris Endeavor. So, you know,
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: whenever he would meet somebody new, they would always say
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: to him, you know, hey, Chris, I have this great
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: idea for a movie. And he used to be polite
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: and he would just listen. He would nod and he would,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: you know, drink or, you know, take a sip of
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: his drink and, you know, nod. And then at the end,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: you know, and what he does now is he just
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: basically cuts him off and says, What you have isn't
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: a movie idea. He's like, you just have some weird,
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: vague concept of something that could possibly one day be
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: a movie. He's like, you know, just having a sentence like,
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: you know, well, this woman loses her husband. So she
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: decides to go on a revenge kick. Okay. You know, that's,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: you know, what is, you know, that's not a log line.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: You know, it's certainly not like, you know, that's certainly not,
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: you know, anything else we can really pull from it. And,
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: you know, that's sort of like, you know, what you mentioned,
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: because I see a lot of writers, they tend to
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: have a lot of ideas and there's not really a
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: lot behind those ideas. Because, I mean, I get sent
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: screenplays all the time. And what I've learned from reading
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: some of those, some of the screenplays I read, some
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: I don't. But what I've learned from reading some of
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: those is I can tell. from page one. If you
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: are a professional writer or an amateur writer or if
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: this is your first screenplay, sometimes, you know, if I'm
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: intrigued enough by, you know, some kind of logline, you know,
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: I'll read a little more. But usually by page 20,
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: I'm usually like, okay, this isn't that good. Like, for instance,
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: this scene is from The Godfather. You know, I'll flip
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: a couple more pages. Okay, this is a scene from Casino.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: And you know what I mean? And it's just like,
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: they're just sort of puzzling this together. And, and that's
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: sort of, you know, just to give you another example,
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: you know, I had somebody send me this great one
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: sheet and I actually, I actually asked them about it.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: And they said to me, they actually said, well, Dave,
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: the scene doesn't actually happen in the movie. It's just
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: for the poster. And I said, wait a minute, you
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: have this great, you have this great artwork and and
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: it actually is intriguing and it tells you the whole
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: movie in this one poster. It actually really did. And
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: I said, and, but you don't have anything like that
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: in the movie. And they go, no. And I said, well,
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: maybe you should put this in the movie. You know,
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: I think it would actually help you. And, um, maybe
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: they did. I haven't heard back from him. That was
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: last year around, you know, probably, probably March or April
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: last year when I, when I was talking to these people. And, uh,
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: Maybe they went off and they rewrote it, but it's
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: just funny sometimes when you see new writers and they
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: sort of get an idea and they don't extract the
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: idea enough. They just sort of get these very big,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: broad strokes of an idea, like a woman out for revenge,
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: but they don't really know how to connect the dots,
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: if you know what I mean.
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: There are no railroad ties. It's just two rails. And
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: a lot of people will, you get far. You know,
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: if you throw down some rails and you put a
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: train on it and you start the train, you'll go.
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: But eventually, the rails come loose. And that's because you
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: didn't put the ties down. And like you said, that's
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: where I was talking about before you go back, you
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: must go through your ideas. I mean, I've made as
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: a person that likes twists and turns, that's kind of
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: my thing. I'm a little cerebral. I like you to
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: think a little bit before, um, I hit you with
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: a bunch of, you know, deviation or action or whatever
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: the case may be. I want you to, you know,
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: I always enjoyed sitting there saying, I'm going to figure
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: this out. You know, you have some people who sit
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: down and they just want to be entertained. Um, but
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: I go through all of that and I'm like, nah,
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: that twist won't work. No, that, you know, but at
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: the same time, I'm still building that. I'm still building
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: that railroad track because that's the only way you get
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: from one station to the next. And it's not, you know,
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, again, pulling a boat up a mountain, man,
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: you have to do it. You have to take the time.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: You have to really hone in and, and, uh, go
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: through all the processes because, and that still doesn't make
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: it good. I mean, not everybody did, you know, did
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: my stuff, you know what I mean? And I'm okay
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: with that. I've done, I've done well in my life and,
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: and hopefully we'll continue to do that. Um, but, uh,
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: you know, I, again, not to, like you say, not
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: to go too far back, um, just with what's available today. It,
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: cool that people can go out and make stuff. But
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: where's it going to get seen? If it has no,
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: you know, like to use your example, a woman helping
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: on revenge, why? That's my first question. Why? What's she
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: angry about? If you didn't have that discussion... And if it's, well,
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: her husband died. That's not enough motivating factors because most
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: women don't usually act out in violent ways. If you
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: know the psychology of how serial killers or revenge killing works,
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: that's not how it works. So what else was under
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: the surface? And that's where I think good writers become
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: great writers is when they go under the water and
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: there's death.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Um, you know, and,
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: you know, just to, you know, as we talk about
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: the hateful eight, you know, one thing that I find
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: that Tarantino does is he builds tension and the way he, he, um,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: the payoff to that tension is something completely unexpected.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: And, and I mean, I mean, you can see that in,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: you know, not so much in Reservoir Dogs, nothing comes
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: to mind, but like Pulp Fiction, you know, when Travolta
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: and Samuel L. Jackson are driving and they accidentally shoot Marvin.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: that was completely unexpected. Like in Kill Bill, when Pam
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: Greer shoots at Uma Thurman through the cereal box, and
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: the cereal box is called Kaboom. And I don't want
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: to spoil Hateful Eight for anybody. I'm not going to
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: mention that. But just to mention, I do have a
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: blog post coming about the Hateful Eight where I'm just
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: going to dissect the whole movie. So just listening to this,
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: just a cheap plug for that. But that's going to
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: be next week. But yeah, you know, Tarantino is very
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: good at doing that. And that's one of the things
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: that I've learned, too, is, you know, just watching movies.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: And dissecting them myself, you know, just writing down, you know, okay,
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: so what is the inciting incident? Okay, so what is,
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: when are they finally locked in? You know, okay, so
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: when is, you know, what is the goal for this character?
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: You know, what is the theme here? You know, what
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: is this scene about? Just doing that, and I mean,
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: you'll learn a lot about writing just by doing that. And,
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: you know, doing that for both movies that you, you know,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: you can watch right now, like pulling one off a shelf,
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: or even finding something like, For instance, the 2016 Blacklist
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: just got released. You know, finding those scripts and just seeing,
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: you know, because I don't know if you saw, John,
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: but the number one script on the Blacklist this year
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: was called Bubbles, which is about Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: or monkey, Bubbles, and it's his point of view seeing
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: Michael Jackson's life.
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: See, that's dope, man. That's dope right there. Because, I mean,
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: think about that. You know, and that has to, you know,
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: you're talking circa 84 to 89 when Bumbles was around.
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: You know what I mean? And that was Mike Jack Apex.
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: You know, it's funny that you mention Michael Jackson. There's
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: a lot of friends and not everyone, I'm sure, has
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: been involved in a group text, right? Where you can't
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: get out of it. I'm in the group text from hell.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: Love them. They're all my brothers. Some of them are androids.
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: And so most of us are eyes on. You can't
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: get rid of it because even if you delete it,
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: if one more person texts, it all comes back. But
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: there's a picture of Michael Jackson with two white doves
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: holding a pair of tighty-whities up with glasses and a
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: purple shirt. And I tell you, it's like that's our
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: go-to picture for when someone's kind of crazy. but in
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: command of their crazy, it's the funniest thing. Kind of
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: a deviation, but again, I can only imagine what that
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: chimpanzee saw. I can only imagine what he saw and experienced.
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: As they say, Michael used to like his drinks, man.
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: He used to like his drinks. Being in Sadly, you know,
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: not to joke about an icon, but to be in that,
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: to be him, but exist in all of that isolation. Yeah. Crazy, man. Crazy.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: There's always, there's always two icons that always seem to be,
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: you know, we're still fascinated by, you know, one we're
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: talking about Michael Jackson and the other one is Elvis.
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: And it's, and it's just, you know, they're, they're, you know, lives.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: They grew up in completely different places, but towards the end,
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, it was almost similar because they both had,
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: you know, millions of dollars surrounded by tons and tons
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: of people, but they were, but they're, they were all
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: by themselves, you know? Uh, and they, they, you know,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: they self-medicated, um, they were both genius and musical geniuses
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: and it's just, and they both died in very odd circumstances. Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: Icarus, man, too close to the sun.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Well, you know, not to get
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: too much onto Elvis and Michael Jackson. Right, right. But
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: I don't want to take away from you, John. I
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: know we were talking about Atlantic City Chronicles before I
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: got us completely sidetracked again. But, you know, you just
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: completed season two. So I wanted to ask, you know,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: where did you come up with the idea for Atlantic
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: City Chronicles? And when did you decide to actually make
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: it a series?
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: Well, originally it started out as a feature. And, you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: stop me if I get a little bit long-winded here
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: because I can do that. Sorry to the listeners, but
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: I grew up in Iron City. I'm a child of
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: what I call the casino era. So I grew up
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: when the boom was in play. You know, the heyday,
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: the boom. the Donald Trump, the fights with Mike Tyson, the...
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: Never will forget seeing, at the time, the Philadelphia my
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: boss was Nicky Scarfo. And I'll never forget walking through
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: this place called Duptown and seeing, you know, these monsters,
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: cowboy boots, man... You know, some cat had on snakeskin
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: shoes and these big hats, and they literally lit up
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: the town. You know, they were shooting at each other. And,
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: you know, as a kid, you just saw it. You know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: you saw the mob. A lot of people, I think,
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: have a misrepresentation, and I don't glorify it. the mafia
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: at all. There was... There's a time people would say, well,
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: you know, Blacks and Italians didn't get along. Not in
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Atlantic City. That was actually the opposite. There was no...
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: You know, there were no issues like that. I mean, his...
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: Nicky Scarfo's son and my sister were very close. So
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: I knew and saw and grew up around all of that.
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: And so... I guess the roots... of that, I started
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: pinning a, uh, kind of like a King of New
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: York because it had that.
• 46:10
  Speaker 7: Kind of feel at first, you know, an old master
• 46:14
  Speaker 7: who was facing some real time that would have put
• 46:18
  Speaker 7: him away for good, uh, decided that.
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: He was going to make a major shakeup and, Of course,
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: things had to evolve because Atlantic City is a melting pot.
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of unity in the separation down there.
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: And so you have a huge Latino population and an
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: Asian population and a black population and a shrinking Italian
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: population and a shrinking Jewish population, but they're still there.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: And so you have all these other elemental pieces and
• 46:54
  Speaker 5: you have the outer tavern. The original screenplay was most
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: people drive into L.A. City, they come off the expressway.
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: And it was a couple in a car sitting at
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: a light, the light that usually catches you right there.
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: And the woman in the car looks to the side
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: and says, I wonder what used to happen at that tavern.
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: And that's how it started. It launched back into all
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: of these colorful characters. Well, I didn't want to do
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: a period. I decided that that would have been too
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: much of a labor of love. I'd rather flash it
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: ahead to almost present day and beyond. So I started
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: breaking it down and wanted to be episodic. I wanted
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: to try my hand at that and this would be
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: the best way to do so. And so I did that. And, uh,
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: you know, it's interesting. You mentioned casino, one of the actual, uh,
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: members of the hole in the wall game, whose name
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: is Ernie Davino. Um, they were the basis of that film. Uh,
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: Ernie and I wrote a book together, um, a couple
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: years back after I met him. And he was, you know,
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: you've now, you know, old little grandfatherly looking guy. You
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: would never, never to look at Ernie until you look
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: at his hand, think that he was, you know, this
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: crazy mobster from Las Vegas. So I had him, you know,
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: and kind of had, and has a lot of time
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: with him in his second life, you know, which is,
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: he's not into any of that. And, You know, he's
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: just a grandfather who's living in Cliffside Park now. But
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: I also grew up directly under the shadow of Midget Moley,
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: who in Atlantic City and ultimately on the East Coast
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: was one of the biggest drug dealers. Out flamboyant, white cars,
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: had a gold bejeweled crown. So these kind of figures
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: were always swirling around my youth. My father and mother
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: kept me away from all of that. No drugs, no
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: bad habits, but I saw the fruit of all of
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: those seeds planted. And so you know, Atlantic City Chronicles
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: originally was birthed out of that. I had, there's a
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: friend of mine who used to come down to Atlantic
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: City and gamble a lot and then went into the
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: military to kind of straighten himself out.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And now, back to the show.
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: Then when he came home, He didn't come home the
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: same man that he left at. And, you know, I
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: wanted to... No one wants to be caught anything directly,
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: you know, other than, you know, if you do that,
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: you're basically doing an after-school special. So the way that
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: I could kind of shed some light on our veterans
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: who are fighting wars for us and aren't necessarily, you know,
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: I don't want to sound too political, but they aren't
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: the senator, you know, sons and daughters that are doing
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: these things. They are the folks who probably couldn't afford
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: to go any other way. I wanted to bring some
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: attention to post-traumatic stress disorder, and so I developed that story, uh,
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: inside of the Lion City Chronicle. And, you know, the
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: basic premise of you have a Marine, you send them
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: to war, and you don't know who you're fighting. And
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: then when you do feel any comfort or whatever, you're
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: losing friends. And then you come home and there's no job.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: And then especially you put that in a Lion City
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: that was a dying economy. Um, What do you put
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: down on your resume that you were in Afghanistan? So
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: what else would you do? What else can you do?
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: And there's the book that I spent a lot of
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: time reading over and over. I was fascinated, Vietnam, Vietnam War.
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: But there was a book called Bloods. It was also
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: about the African-American experience of Vietnam. And, you know, even
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: our Vietnam vets, when they came home, what did they have?
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: What opportunities were there? And I don't know whether it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: because we lost, you know, even though we don't say that,
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: or there was such strife around what we were doing
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: there and everything else, but that had nothing to do
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: with the men and women who fought there. coming home
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: and having to deal with reacclimation, you know, reacclimation is huge. And, uh,
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: so I wanted to really, you know, tackle that. And
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: of course I put some of the other parts to it,
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: you know, the salacious parts. I mean, there's a huge
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: issue with homelessness. Um, you know, people will drive, they're
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: mentally ill. people into Atlantic City and drop them off
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: because they know that there's a structure there to take
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: care of them but some of them don't go inside
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: so then now you got that element you know you
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: compress all of that into a depressed city with people
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: who live there and I just felt it would it
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: would give people something to bite into and kind of
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: see my fictional Atlantic City And, you know, we ran
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: away with it. The first season was an arousing success.
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: You know, it went worldwide. Very happy. A lot of
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: hard work. And, you know, it's kind of a little
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: bit more, I don't like to use the term urban,
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: but it had that feel. But I had written four
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: seasons of the show. So I took that original script
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: and broke it into what equated to season one and
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: a half, and then wrote the other parts to that
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: and just continued building. You know, I was lucky that
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: we could get season two going and met Mike on
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: season one in a different capacity. You know, he and
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: I just hit it off. And, you know, it was
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: kind of some learning on the job for him because
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: he had it. done the level of stuff that I
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: was asking him to do, but I knew he could
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: do it. And it was kind of like a perfect
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: marriage because, you know, again, the right energy, the right people,
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: you know, the right type of determination, he can do anything. Um,
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: but we got season two done and, uh, everyone wanted
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: more and longer, you know, they're not typical webisode, uh,
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: like four or five minutes. These were virtually, um, all
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: short films, you know, so I laugh with them. I'm like,
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: you realize some people spend one year shooting a short
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: film of, you know, 18 minutes and we did 14
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: in two years. So with, you know, some episodes being
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: 30 minutes long, but we're really proud of it. And,
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: you know, there's, there's some, unfortunately on the indie scale,
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: you have to take some shortcuts and make some, some changes.
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: We had such a large cast in season two because
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: I wanted to, again, develop all of those characters. I mean,
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: Langston is a place full of characters. You really are
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: looking for somewhere to go and see and watch exuberance
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: and the agony of defeat all in the same place.
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: Watch somebody gamble for six or seven hours. you know,
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: and try to realize, you know, we used to, when
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: I was growing up, there was a lot of old people,
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: a lot, a lot of buses that would roll in. And, yes,
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: some people enjoyed it, but you could see the disease, man.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: You could see the sickness that takes older people. The
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: desperate nature, you know, the I'm up, I'm up, I'm up,
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: I'm up. Okay, let me walk away. No, no, I can't.
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: I'm going to win even more and lose everything. I'll
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: never forget, I was actually working in Showboat, which is
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: now closed. Man, a group of Asian people would band
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: together and pool all their money, and then they'd ride
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: the bus down, and there was like 15 or 20
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: people waiting in the bus station, and they gave all
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: their money to the one guy. And Dave, he lost.
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: And I hate to laugh, but I could see it.
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: Because at that time, I remember walking through the bus station.
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: And I don't know what he said, because he spoke in,
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: I believe it was like a Cantonese. And they were sleeping.
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: And they sat up. And man, they just rushed him.
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: That it's like to have the weight and the fate
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: of whatever fortune they were hoping to make. that's something
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: that stuck with me. I don't, it's never left because
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: that's really what it is. It's, it's, it's the hopes
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: and dreams and 1.6 mile town, man. So, you know,
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: it was, it's been great to put some, what I,
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: what I feel for memorable characters. And I sneak in
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: my ideas and my stance on how things have played out.
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: You know, I think, yeah, we have to feel a
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: little bit better by some of our veterans who are
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: coming home. You know, my parents grew up in Vietnam
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: was going on and now I'm growing in the time
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: where all my kids are growing in the time where
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: we've been in Afghanistan and, you know, people are coming
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: home and they're coming home without the promise of a
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: better home that they left. So, you know, I can
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: talk about that, and then it sounds like an after-school special,
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: or I can give you that inside of Atlantic City.
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: And so that's what I did.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: And, you know, you mentioned, you know, the dreams of,
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: you know, on a single throw of the dice. And,
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: you know, that is, I've seen that too. and it's
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: just unbelievable, you know, some of the, some of the
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: huge bets that people will make on a single bet,
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: you know, and, you know, we, we always, we always
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: think it's going to be us, but, you know, I,
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: you know, I too have, you know, even even around
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: here in philly you know um you know i've seen
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: people you know bet you know huge amounts of money
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: and they just lose and it looks like you know
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: i mean you're thinking to yourself my god is this
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: guy going to make it home or is he just
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: going to you know drive you know drive his car
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: off a bridge i mean it just looks like you
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: know Uh, it looks like, I mean, he probably, you know,
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: and again, you mentioned the, you know, the elderly community
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: I've seen, you know, uh, I've seen that too. You know,
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: people just, they're betting everything and, you know, you're wondering,
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: is this their rent money or, you know, can they
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: afford to even lose this money or, you know, you know,
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: what are they doing? And, you know, um, you know, but, but,
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: you know, again, you said, you know, you wanted to
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: put that in Atlantic City Chronicles and, you know, I,
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: I think that's, that's really, you know, great. Cause when
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: you can send a message, when you can build a.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Theme, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: And now, back to the show.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: And you can do that by entertaining people and being
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: a storyteller, you know, that works out a lot better
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: than just, you know, than just directly telling them. You know,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: and that's where I think, that's where good writers can
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: thrive because if they can put that in the subtext
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: and they can, you know, drive this with the whole
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: story and everything, It really has a lot more impact
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: that way.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: One of the things that's been the best is I've had,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: you know, a good handful of bets who watch the show.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: You know, people I've never met, never, you know, said
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: a word to. Just like, hey, man, thanks. You guys
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: did a great job. Thanks. And that is, that's it. Now, again,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: you know, there's a lot of things that I tackle
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: in there. but I don't want to be preaching, and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: I'm not preaching. It's just, hey, you know, damn, I
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: didn't see that. I didn't catch that. And we're getting
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: to that point, you know. We're trying to decide if
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: the future is the next move before three. And my
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: self-imposed social media blackout right now. that's kind of where
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: I'm at. You know, I've been, I've been working on
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: something now, uh, that has just not gone away. So
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: it's been, it's been actually two years, you know, a
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: year of thinking through it and now gone on a year, uh,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: almost of writing it. So I'm really feeling like it's, it's,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: you know, the audience of my type of storytelling is there. Um,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: the proper attention has now been garnered and it's time
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: to get back to, you know, not telling everything episodically,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: even though, again, I love the Latin City Chronicles. It's
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: my home. I have a love-hate with my home because
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: of some of the aforementioned reasons with, you know, there's
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: some shortcomings and a lot of people lost a lot
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: down there. I was just fortunate, you know, blessed to
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: have good parents and, you know, a good support system
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: and great teachers who shepherded me out and Rutgers University
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: enveloped me and I never left. But not everybody was
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: so lucky. And I guess I kind of, in my
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: own way, equate that to, you know, somebody going into
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: the military and, hey, I'm going to be able to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: go to college and, You know, that's going to be
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: paid for. And yes, that, and again, I, you know,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: the military is the way to go for some people,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: but just do right by them when they come home.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: You know, and that's very important to me because I've
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: seen directly, you know, some people, it's just not been right.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: They're not right. They're not healthy. It's too long of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: a time period for them to be able to be
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: put in a better situation and get the help that
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: they need. So we've got to do a bit better job,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: and I'm no politician, so I'm speaking definitely from an
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: armchair quarterback, but I know that if somebody who served
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: the country been in combat and done and given up
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: their time, shouldn't come home and be hungry or stuck
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: or hopeless or not getting the proper attention to help
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: them live the rest of their life for whatever life
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: or part of them that they left somewhere else.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I concur, John. There's a lot of veterans groups
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: out there And also film projects out there that are
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: dealing with PTSD. I actually know of at least two
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: off the top of my head that have, one was
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: a documentary, and I think the other one may have
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: been a feature, but both were doing PTSD, and I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: know both gained a lot of traction, and they both
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: connect with a lot of veterans groups to discuss the issue.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: And I think now more of it is coming into...
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: into the mainstream. And now I think a lot of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: these politicians, you know, have to take this into effect
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: or take this into account about, you know, there is
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: a problem that needs to be solved. And it's, you know,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: but yeah, you know, and I, you know, I should
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: probably reach out to those filmmakers and, you know, get
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: them on the show. I haven't talked to them in
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: a while, but when I, I mean, this is probably
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: about a year and a half ago, but when I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: did speak to them, you know, they were, you know,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: constantly making new contacts about that because, you know, They
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: found out that it was a lot more to it
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: than even they thought when they first started. There was
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: a lot more people affected than even they thought. So, yeah,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a very important issue. And, you know,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: and again, you were able to put that into the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: Atlantic City Chronicles and, you know, telling that story. You know, again,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: it makes it even more powerful. It makes it even
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: more powerful message and more powerful impact.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: Well, we were, you know, we were out there doing
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: it early. So I'm glad, you know. Sometimes the first
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: doesn't get, you know, but if somebody saw it and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: that spurned them on to go and do more or
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 5: investigate more or, you know, put a couple dollars in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: a can somewhere, then, you know, that's it. But we
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: try to entertain them as well.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then You know, that's sort of the first
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: rule of entertainment, right, John? You have to be entertaining.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: That's the first rule.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: That's it. Otherwise, it's like, what am I doing? Why
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: did I do this? Why did I pick this? So
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: a lot of... Yeah, exactly.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: They were like.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: A lot of.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and people have a lot... People have a lot
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: of options nowadays, too. So, you know, they've got Redbox, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, everything,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: And, you know, speaking of which, you know, uh, just
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: as a quick side note here, uh, do you know
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: Walmart who owns voodoo? They're going to start getting into
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: their own, uh, original content business, um, to emulate what Amazon, Netflix,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: all Hulu, all of them are doing now.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: It's interesting. Uh, I had, you know, the man of
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: a million ideas, but one of the biggest things back
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: when Netflix was on the horizon, um, Content. And again,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: it's all going to shake itself out. And again, it's
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: still easier than ever to get people to see. Because
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: one of the biggest things as a filmmaker originally was, man, first,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: how do I pay for this? Then how do I
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: get people to see it? So technology has allowed people
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: to make more and to get people to see more.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: But my footnote to that is This is not a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: game for the weak. And this is not a game
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: about money. The money comes with the quality. And with
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: all these multiple means of, you know, I mean, you
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: can monetize anything, right? You can put things on YouTube
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: and monetize that. I mean, we get hit all the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: time about monetizing our site because of how much traffic
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: that we get. And My thing was, I just want
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: people to see it right now. You know, I'm not
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: living hand to mouth. And it's not about fame and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: it's not about money. It's about being a storyteller. And
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: now the other stuff will come. The other stuff will
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: come because you want to make sure that you can show, hey,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: I can bring an audience. I can put, you know,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: I can grasp an audience and hold them. which between
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: one and two, I think was about a year and
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: some change. And we still are doing very well. But
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: I also respect the technology. Like our website, it's very
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: mobile friendly. You know, it's designed to play on iPods
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: and handhelds. And, you know, you can still blow it
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: up and throw it on a projection screen or a TV.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: And I think that's where, you know, being one of
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 5: the first folks out there at that kind of game,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: it's going to be amazing, you know, how it all
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: eventually shakes out. There's a lot of saturation and I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: think the people, again, who can learn to rise above
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: the noise and navigate through the noise will land good
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: projects where they can monetize them and pay their bills
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: and live life. And some of us will get lucky
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: enough to be able to put people in to work
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: and put people in places where they can then take
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: the fruits of what they want to work on and
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: get out there. So that's what we're doing also for
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: 2016 and looking for.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: Hey, you know, you ran the festival circuit and then
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: what did you do after that? You didn't know what
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: to do because you didn't think. But here's a place where,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: you know, I mean, Vimeo has you. You can't, there's
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 5: so many different places, but we want to be a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: little bit of a hub. That's the name of my company, Freebird.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: You know, we have different people who work with us,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: but we all have the same net. And that's the
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: goal is to, you know, when you come on to
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: Freebird Media and you check us out, You'll see stuff
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: from me, stuff from Mike, stuff from people we don't know,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 5: stuff from John, you know, stuff from... You want to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: watch something? You want to see something? You want to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 5: see something that's got some quality? You want to see
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 5: some real, true indie work? Hey, come on, check us out.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: And that's what we want to grow into. And, you know,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: without being suffocated by the noise. Because a lot of
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: people say, oh, man, why don't you just go with YouTube?
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 5: And why don't you just go with this and that?
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: You know how much YouTube stuff is uploaded every single moment?
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: How do you divide out the noise? I have to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: actually have people come to my website. They're coming to
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: my website for our product. That is the litmus test
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 5: for us. That's how we know. That's how we know
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: what we're doing is good work. Because they're not only coming,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: they're telling other people who are also coming. It gives
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 5: us an opportunity to kind of own our own stuff.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 5: I think everybody wants to be the king of their castle.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I concur. Jason Brubaker, who I've on the show before,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: That's something we were talking about before was two things.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: One was when you do get a movie made, where
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: do you put it? Do you put it on your
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: own website? Are you going to try to get it
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: in theaters? Are you going to try to sell it
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: to Netflix? Are you going to try to throw a
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: Hail Mary pass and get it into Sundance and something
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: like that? And the other thing is, how are you
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: going to build an audience to see this movie? And,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: you know, those two things, you know, were something we
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: were going back and forth about. And, you know, it
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: is very, very eye opening because there's a lot of
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: filmmakers who still think that, hey, listen, you know, they're
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: they're basically their business plan is, hey, listen, I'm going
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: to I need you to give me a million dollars
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: and we're going to take this movie to Sundance. Some
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: distributor is going to.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: Buy it for three.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: You'll get your million back plus, you know, a percentage
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: based upon contracts and we'll keep the rest. I mean,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: that's a wonderful, wonderful story. And, you know, is it
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 4: grounded in reality? No, because it only happens to, you know, 1%.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: I actually had one guy on the podcast who actually
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: that happened to. And he actually did. He actually got
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: his movie picked up at Sundance. And I mean, now
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: he's getting offers left and right. And that was Sean Baker,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: who did, who was a writer, and director of Tangerine, um,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: which is actually on Netflix right now. And, and, uh,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, that movie went like, you know, as soon
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: as it debuted at Sundance, it was, it was off
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: like a rocket, but, um, but you know, for, for
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: other movies though, there needs to be more of a
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: grounded plan. Um, there always needs to be a backup plan.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: There always needs to be, um, some other way that
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: you can use this, use this, uh, movie or, or
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: series or, Uh, anything, but I mean, that's what I'm
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: doing right now is John, you know, I'm putting a
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: ton of stuff now on my own website, you know, davebulls.com
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: because I want to make sure that, you know, people
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: can see some of the stuff I've been working on
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: for years that maybe appeared on somebody else's blog or
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: maybe it was just, you know, I put it here,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: but now I'm just, you know, now I'm like, you
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: know what, why not? Why not just put this all
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: my own site? You know, maybe somebody will like it.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, and it's a whole, you know, very variation
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: of stuff, like a graphic novel I've been working on.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: It's all done. Um, I mean, I mean, the first
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: three issues are done. Um, it's just other stuff, you know,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: other stuff like that, but I've been, you know, putting on, but, um, but, but,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: you know, just, just to make sure that, you know, all,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: all of, cause you know, one of the things I
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: always recommend too is, is getting your own website. You know, um,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: I wanted to make sure I had, you know, davebullis.com
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: so that way I could put that flag in the
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: ground and say, you know, this is mine. And that way,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: you know, you make the rules on your own website.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? And, and, Because if we
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: build all of our empire, so to speak, on Facebook
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: or on Twitter or on Pinterest or on YouTube, they
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: can change their rules at any second. And they don't
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: owe anybody an explanation. And that's the problem. For instance, YouTube.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: You mentioned YouTube. There's a lot of YouTubers... who ended
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: up complaining because YouTube changes an algorithm or they change
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: a subscription package. All of a sudden now, they're losing
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 5: Yep. Absolutely. And without any... I mean, think about it.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 5: And again, like I said, as a lover of music.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 5: And I believe people should be paid for what they do.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 5: That goes without saying. but think of how many times,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: like with the new content license, right? You work on
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 5: a piece and you want to give an homage to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 5: this old 70s song, Sweet Surrender. And you, you know,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: you watched the Quentin Tarantino movie and you really freaking
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 5: work your butt off to hit this piece. And you're like,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: I love it. And people say, dude, I love it.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: And you're, you know, you're, giving all the props in
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 5: the world to Tim Buckley and Sweet Surrender and you
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: put it up and then boom, this shit is not
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: working because it has, you know what I mean? It's like, hey,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 5: you know, that's different because over there you're monetizing. Your
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: own website, you don't have to. Not right away. You know,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: one of the coolest people I ever met, Moby. And
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 5: now he runs Moby Gratis. He's giving away thematic music.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: Just wants you to honor what you do. If you're
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: working on an indie project, Moby Gratis is one of
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 5: the best places you can go to get music. But
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 5: if you turn around and sell it, then you pay
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: Moby what Moby's worth. Or you pay him a percent.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 5: You know what I mean? What better way? I mean,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: like I said, one of the coolest dudes. Eccentric. You know,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: but that's so cool. And there's so many different ways
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 5: that this is going to sound almost Cyrus-like from the Warriors, man.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 5: If everybody got out of the noise game and listened
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: to what you just said, put my flag in the ground,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: control my destiny, you'll look for similar and like-minded people
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 5: that you can work with, too. And instead of a
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: lonely battle, because film is a lonely battle, writing is
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 5: a lonely battle, it's, you know, how many times, David,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 5: have you done something and people are like, oh man,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 5: that was cool, that was awesome, what you gonna do next? What?
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 5: I just, I just got done doing this. What am
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 5: I gonna do next? Can I breathe?
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: Can I breathe in a.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 5: Minute before I do something else? Because that's how things are.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 5: But when you have a, A consortium of like-minded people
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 5: that are willing to help you plant your flag. Like
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: you having me on your show. You're helping us. You know?
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 5: We help people. That's where the power shifts. Because now
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 5: your audience is my audience. My audience becomes your audience.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 5: You're taking that away from having to worry about law.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 5: Netflix is gonna cut your royalty check for $ 5. 55.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 6: And you spent three years and some change of your
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 6: life and, you know, $ 150, 000.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 5: SAG behind fees and $ 750, 000 and just production costs overall
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 5: and you got out of royalty check for $ 5, 055, 000. Hey,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: something's not right with that. you know, but you, that's
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: why I say it's not a, not a, it's not
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: a game for the week. Um, but with, you know,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, you're just a cool, cool. I mean, we,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, I don't even know how long we've been
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 5: talking and I feel like we could talk forever. That's
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 5: the type of people that I've loved to work with
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 5: in the last, you know, 20 or so years I've
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 5: been doing that, you know, uh, You want good people.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: You know, I mean, I started out as a still
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 5: photographer on set of the movie Kids. You know what
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 5: I mean? Like rocking out with a bunch of skater kids. And,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 5: you know, you flash forward ahead. And that was just
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: a happenstance. You know, you're on the train with a camera.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 5: And someone's like, yo, you want to come take some
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 5: pictures of me skating?
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: And now, back to the show.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, we've gotten away, you know, from that stuff. And,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: you know, Mike calls me a modern-day hippie, I think,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 5: a little bit, because that's my thing. Like, I want
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 5: to see other people succeed. And if their success and
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 5: achievement overrides my own, that's okay, because you're part of
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 5: their story. And that's the whole thing, right? Why do
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 5: we write stories? We all want to live on, man.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 5: We want to live on beyond what we put down
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: on that piece of paper. That's us. Everything that you
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 5: put into it, you put in the part of you.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 5: And that lives beyond you. Celluloid doesn't die.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: That is a very good way to put it, John.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: And I agree. We could talk all night. Um, cause
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: I can just tell you, we were talking for about, uh,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: you know, like one hour, 18 minutes right now. Um,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: cause I have, I have a timer right in front
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: of me on the, on the recorder. And, um, you know,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: and I, I think, you know, uh, this is probably
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: a very good place, you know, to end this, this conversation. Um,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: cause I know we, we've talked about a myriad of
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: things and, um, I know some people who are, who
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: are listening to this are probably like, my God, uh,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: the show notes, but, uh, In closing, John, you know, uh,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: where can people find you at online?
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: Uh, so you can check us out at freebirdmg.com. That's freebirdmarygrace.com.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 5: And the series is there both season one and two. Uh,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 5: we're going to have some more stuff popping up there
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: very soon. Uh, I've done a bunch of other things
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 5: that I think may make their way there. They lived
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 5: in their own space before and, uh, One of the
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 5: things that's kind of caught some traction, again, I mentioned
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 5: Ernie DeVino. There's some interest in, you know, he's still
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 5: kicking around. And we did a documentary on him with
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 5: my first company years ago. And, you know, old guy
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 5: still got a story to tell. He's one of the
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 5: most fascinating people I've ever been around. So, you know,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 5: we may be doing some stuff. in that arena very,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 5: very soon. Uh, other than that, man, you know, as
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 5: I said, I'm Johnny filmmaker online, Twitter. That's, that's probably
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 5: more where I am, uh, in that space. And yeah,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 5: you know, we're, we're there. We're viable. We have a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 5: Facebook and all of that free bird media. So you
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 5: are so inclined to check that out.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 7: Cool.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 5: And, uh, you know, hopefully we, uh, get to cross
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 5: paths with the more viewers and some new, new folks
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: who are kind of into that genre of things. And
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: we'll be bringing you some more stuff very, very soon.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Very cool. John, uh, John Paxson, Jr. I want to
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: say thanks again for coming on the show. Uh, this
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: was a blast and, uh, you know, I, I look
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: forward to, you know, hearing more about Atlantic city Chronicles
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: and all your future work. And, uh, You know, anytime
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 4: you ever want to come back on, please feel free.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 5: Hey, thank you for having me, and I definitely will.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: And thanks again for doing this. You know, I love
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 5: the show. I've been listening to it. Mike was kind
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 5: of getting me up to speed. So you're doing a
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 5: great thing, man, giving people a platform and an opportunity. Again,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 5: you're planting your flag in other places, and that's commendable, brother.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 5: Appreciate it.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, thank you, John. I try.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 5: All right, Dave.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: Wish you the best, John, and take care, buddy.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 5: All right, you too.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: Talk to you. Thank you. Talk to you soon, buddy.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: Take care.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: a great job on this episode.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: about in this episode, head over to the show notes.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: At IndieFilmHustle.com forward slash 878.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: And if you haven't already, please head over to FilmmakingPodcast.com, subscribe,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: and leave a good review for the show.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: again so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: hustle going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at IndieFilmHustle.com.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: That's I-N-D-I-E-F-I-L-M-H-U-S-T-L-E.com.