Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 719: Directing ACTION in the World of John Wick for Television with Albert Hughes

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IFH 719: Directing ACTION in the World of John Wick for Television with Albert Hughes · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Filmhustle Podcast, Episode number seven nineteen. Consider this a courtesy John Wick Broadcasting
• 0:22
  from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where
• 0:26
  we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles
• 0:30
  of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
• 0:36
  Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble
• 0:39
  host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur
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  How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than
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  ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory film distributors
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  ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds are
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  stacked against the indie filmmaker. The oldest tribution model of making money with your
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  independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the
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  ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to order it, just
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  head over to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com.
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  Well, guys, today on the show, I welcome back the record
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  holder for the longest episode in the history of the show, Mister Albert Hughes.
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  Now Albert if you don't know who he is, is the director of
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  classic films like Menace to Society, Dead Presidents from Hell with Johnny Depp,
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  Book of Eli, and the new John Wick spinoff series The Continental. Now,
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  Albert and I sat down and discussed his approach to The Continental, What's
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  going on in Hollywood today, and so much more. Albert is one of
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  my all time favorite guests to have on the show. So, without any
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  further ado, please enjoy my entertaining conversation with Albert Hughes. I'd like to
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  welcome back to the show returning champion Albert Hughes. How you doing, Albert?
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  So apparently we still have the record. We still have the record?
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  Brother. It was that it was during the COVID times. You were stuck
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  in Amsterdam, literally stuck in a room somewhere by yourself, and I think
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  I was the only beacon of hope for a conversation about film for you.
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  They sat there and spoke for three and a half hours, four hours,
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  and and it just kept going. And we were we were on Skype.
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  It was even again even gotten to Zoom yet we were on Skype's Skype.
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  It was it was what Skype? Wow? Ever hear about Skype anymore?
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  I didn't move over to Zoom yet because I was one of the last holdouts
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  on the sky So it was I don't have it. I still have the
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  app. Do you still have the app? I can't know because I got
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  the new computer and it doesn't now like I couldn't record anymore. It's a
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  old thing. But man, well that that's an epic conversation we had.
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  Man, it's been one of the most downloaded episodes we ever had. And
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  then, of course when I heard about you, when I heard about it
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  in the press, I emails you right away. I said, hey,
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  man, congraduation. I cannot wait to see what you do in the world
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  of John Wick. Uh and uh and you did not disappoint my friend.
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  I have seen it, and it is, oh, thank you. It
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  is uh. Like I was telling you before, it's so nice to see
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  a director direct in television. Uh, not not crabbing on anybody else's style,
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  but that you can see a very distinct a point, like the point
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  of view when you're working. And it's like those things that you and I
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  grew up with in the eighties and the nineties are like these time the directors
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  who like you know, put the cameras, move the cameras, the POV
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  shots. It's like, oh, look at that. That's nice, you
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  know, I you know, it's also it's a new world now where you
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  know, back in the eighties and nineties when we were growing up too,
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  it's like the film directors, film writers, producers kind of looked down on
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  tvvre stream there was no streaming back then. But and now, like the
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  best writing, the best acting, and some of the best directors are coming
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  to those formats. And I mean Netflix owns half the best directors in town
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  right now. You know, literally, they're just literally but the movies.
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  But you know what, it's really interesting because I've heard this from a lot
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  of people's like a lot of the independent filmmakers who would have been an independent
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  film in the nineties and the early two thousands are not going to television because
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  that's the only place they can actually make a living because there is no real
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  output from market. The market place doesn't open. It's not as open as
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  it used to be for independent film as it used to yeah, nineties.
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  It's it's it's like the Marvel movies, the Ten Poles, the ips.
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  They've squeezed out mom and pop movies or the midst side. These are the
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  genre movies. You know, like Bloemhouse is doing well with their movies,
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  the Horror Gants, Jason's, But Jason's got the sweetest deal in Hollywood.
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  I mean you kidding me, Like I thought what I talked to him on
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  the show, it was like, dude, you're like, you're doing like
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  ten million, fifteen million dollars movies being distributed about universal, like widely,
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  Like that's the sweetest deal in use. Yeah, and some of those movies
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  they are only five million dollars and they have these sweet dealals for everybody involved.
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  And he has a really good business model and it's really not only sensible,
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  but very kind through the town involved. You know, he's one of
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  the few guys out there that that's doing something like that. We actually share
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  the same accountant and I did work with them on Good Lord Bird because his
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  company produced that. Yeah, but it's a new day in time. And
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  that's what strange is like with this series, The Continental. It wasn't set
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  up like a typical TV schedule ten episodes or eight episodes, where you're rolling
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  into the next episode with your cast and crew, bringing in another director,
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  guest directors, and then you know, sometimes those episodic TV shows have that
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  lull in the middle where they're trying to save money. You can tell her
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  fill her episodes. And we've talked about me and you. I do distinctly
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  remember talking about Last Time and our marathon run. David Fincher and the one
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  thing if you look at what David Fincher did with Mine Hunter, and you
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  look at whatever the show runners are. I got to look up who the
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  show runners are on handmates tell there's a very consistent style and quality control going
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  on with those shows. Both shows could have been shown in the theater and
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  you would have known none the difference between whether it was a TV show or
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  a movie or one hour episode. But it all came down to quality control.
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  And then there's other like really nuanced details like what I learned. The
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  difference between TV and feature filmmaking is TV's a writer's meeting him as you know,
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  right, and features are a director's medium. So when traditionally the writer's
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  medium has been going on, it it's less about style and tone of the
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  meson saying as you know you learn in film school, and more about close
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  up close ups, close ups, up close ups, white shots and then
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  close up yes. And that they still were to this day they are still
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  think that way and they're slowly coming out of it. I'm talking about at
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  the executive level, when you start getting notes, well where's the close up
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  for that shot? It's like, well, people have these big screens now,
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  you don't need that close up anymore. So then the cinema like,
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  I give this, it's a bad good analogy. I don't know. It's
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  like a guy's on the phone with his girlfriend. She's breaking up with him,
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  and he's very lonely, right, and you see it as a close
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  up shot because the writers are leaning on their dialogue and film, you learn
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  the master is like, tell the story and the shot to go really wide
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  and have them really tiny in the corner, talking and looking small, and
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  only so the SHOT's telling you he's lonely and isolated and being broken up with
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  and so is the dialogue. But you don't necessarily need to close up in
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  his face at this moment, right. That's the difference. But there's a
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  benefit to TV and what they do because I've been studying, like I consume
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  a lot of few like Succession and all those shows, you know, and
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  they button the scenes with close ups and the characters wheels are spinning and it
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  takes you into the next scene. You're like, I wonder what they're thinking,
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  or you might project on what they're thinking. And that's a very useful
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  thing to learn from TV because cinema doesn't feature the filmmaking doesn't really do that.
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  Yeah, so there's right now. Also, there's this thing where it's
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  like, if I'm making something or another feature guys making something, I don't
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  want to change my style because it's a TV show. I don't want to
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  do more copisodes. I want to respect the audience is going to read that
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  shot correctly, especially considering that the TV sizes have changed, you know,
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  so we still all have a lot of adjusting to do, especially on the
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  executive in studio network side, to welcome those filmmakers into the TV space for
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  what they do without constantly pounding them about close up Chino. I would agree
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  with you on that. And when I was watching this, I was noticing,
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  I mean, it's this is basically there are like three movies these episodes.
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  There's just three standalone movies with like Paley and like Cliffhangers essentially or like
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  the next there's another episode in this think it's it's serialized in that sense in
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  this mini series that you've put together with Continental. But the man, I
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  gotta statement, the budget, the production value on this thing must have been
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  pretty impressive. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
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  now back to the show. I mean, we all seen the Continental in
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  John Wick, right, and we've seen it, we've done but this is
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  John Wick in the seventies, which is a great decade to tune this in.
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  By the way, the it was me I I mean, come on,
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  I mean, it's as fun as you can get. Just to blame
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  that in that era were shooting. But the visual effects. I was noticing
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  how the visual effects and the depth of it, the world creation that you
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  did for the Continental? What was that? How did you approach doing it
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  like that? And I mean I assumed there was a decent budget for this,
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  but this is not one hundred million dollars two hundred million dollars show.
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  But it looks like yeah, it looks like that. And we'll get into
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  the action sequels in a minute, because that's a whole other story. Okay,
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  well, maybe it's tu I was gonna hit on it earlier, but
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  I forgot it when I was talking about TV schedules. And now they roll
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  all into the next thing and there's no prep time for the guest directors.
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  We only had one guest director, Charlotte Branston's been around forever, very capable,
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  but it's even very difficult for them to maintain the style, and it's
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  a very hard thing to do to quality control the tone and the look and
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  all that stuff. But one of the reasons I did it, there's several
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  reasons why I did it. One was when I looked at the way they
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  laid it out. It was like a fourteen week prep leading into episode one,
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  four weeks prep leading into episode two, four weeks prep leading into episode
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  three, each thirty five days a piece. That is not normal for TV.
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  That's not a normal schedule, that's not even normal prep for a movie
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  like twelve weeks ten twelve weeks is normal. But they see that, Yeah,
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  but they see that fourteen is helping the overall too, you know,
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  you're not just servicing one. So that was the first thing that raised and
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  eyebrobably go oh, they're someone was smart. They're trying to ensure quality here,
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  you know, with a guy like me, don't give me prep,
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  you know, because I'll use it. A lot of directors as you know,
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  don't use it, you know, and don't you know, you know,
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  parlay that into some real security and quality basically. And then there's the
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  other thing of the wicked film producer who's talked to me first, because I
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  wasn't sure I wanted to do it. I didn't know if I wanted to
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  play in another man or a woman's sandbox. But they talked to me about
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  it, and I was considering something else, and I go, I just
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  want to have fun. Man. The COVID thing was really weighing on me,
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  as you know, and I think the audience wants to have fun.
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  I don't want to do this social issue stuff anymore. Like I've done it.
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  I'll go back to it maybe, but right now I have fun watching
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  those movies. Why not? Basically right? And that was a real mode.
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  Oh and then you had me at seventies, like you just said earlier,
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  you had me with the seventies, right, that's the era I grew
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  up in and I was born in. I have a white mother who's listening
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  to Pink Floyd, up black father who's listening to James Brown. And I'm
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  finally able to explore the mother's side of my upbringing. You know, the
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  father's side has been tapped into greatly from the past movies with fantastic R and
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  B and hip hop and stuff. But now it's like Pink Floyd. It's
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  my favorite band of all time. No, one would suspect that even some
• 13:00
  of my closest friends wouldn't know that that is, I don't care what band
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  you bring up. You start bringing up led Zeppe and the Beatles, I
• 13:05
  don't want to hear it. Pink Foith, my guys, they're my guys.
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  And then the heartache of having to give that song to episode two,
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  which is a you know, an episode. I supervised and finished them the
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  post on, but I didn't direct it, you know. And it was
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  Kirk Walward, the show runner, H and my friend, my very good
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  buddy now my partner, and this who He was struggling with that scene because
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  we just couldn't find the right score for it, and we couldn't find the
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  right and he came up with that choice, and I go, man,
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  that's one of my favorite songs, like Welcome to the Machine. So it
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  was it was he that picked it, and he picked a few others that
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  I was because sometimes the needle drops you like I'm pretty I'm pretty good at
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  it, like seventy percent, but when I'm bad, I'm really bad.
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  It's really off, you know, And once you put it against picture,
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  you're like, what was I think? And I thought this thing would work.
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  And he's the one that came with Black Sabbat at the end of episode
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  one, which was in this attitude. Kirk came with that because originally I
• 14:05
  put it in more of an upbeat kind of it's kind of a punk reggae
• 14:09
  it's called murder. It's a woman singing murder. Oh, murder, you
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  know. And I thought, oh, this is such a downer episode at
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  the end because something tragic happens. I want the audience and leave for a
• 14:20
  week because I knew it was going to be a weekly show. I want
• 14:24
  them not to leave to down and you kept working on me. It's like,
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  Alur, it's not right, it's not right. I'm like okay.
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  And then he brought this Sabbath track and I go, oh, that's that.
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  That's screaming revenge and anger. So yeah, I got me andrewed a
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  bit there. But yeah, you know, but that's the thing. You
• 14:41
  gotta try things before you say noble but no. When you were seeing it
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  and I know the scene and I know the ending of that episode, I'm
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  going, no, it would have not worked. It's just like I'm already
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  playing in my head. I'm like, no, it's not I tried it.
• 14:52
  I tried it the first two seconds like you need anger, you need
• 14:56
  revenge, you need vengeance, and that's what that song. Energy of that
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  song came out without question. I mean, listen, you know John Wick
• 15:03
  has created and a bunch of movies a world that is unprecedented really in cinema
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  history. There is nothing like John Wick. There's just nothing like John Wick
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  and what Kiano did and what the creators did and the actions and stuff.
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  When you stepped into this world to play, like you said, I'm another
• 15:22
  man sandbox, did you feel any pressure of like I got it, man,
• 15:26
  this better bring the heat. Because John every single there hasn't been a
• 15:31
  week John Wick film, in my opinion, everyone has been like like this
• 15:35
  last one. I saw it in the theater. I was like, this
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  is guys, It's really like banas it was. It's it's like so much
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  action that you can't even I'm like, how many years. It's like almost
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  like a almost a kickback that John wou style hard boiled team. That's oh,
• 15:54
  somebody was bringing this. No no, no, Like a friend reached
• 15:58
  out to me yesterday was like he didn't know I made this and accidentally watched
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  and then you could recognize it was my style. So he looked at the
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  credits again and then he messaged me and he goes, it just reminds me
• 16:07
  of us watching John wo in the night we were. I go, well,
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  that's where Chad partially he has a smagest board of influences. And some
• 16:15
  would be shocked to know that not the John Woo park, but the Bob
• 16:18
  Fosse and musical part He's into musical and dance numbers. And when you talk
• 16:23
  to Chad, he'll talk about all these influences. You know, Korean cinema,
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  two of course, Japanese cinema. Some of the same things overlap with
• 16:30
  both of us. But I my favorite John Wick of the four is three.
• 16:34
  Three just tickled me pink like it's when you when you talk to the
• 16:38
  hardcore John Wick fan, they don't they don't care for three. They love
• 16:42
  one. I think their order is now it maybe one or four, but
• 16:47
  they really have a saucepopp for one. It's one, four, two,
• 16:51
  three. Mine's in a completely different ordered mine three, one, two,
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  four and four. Still I love It's solid. It's crazy like they do
• 17:03
  up the game. There's just weaknesses I have for three, because they reminded
• 17:07
  me of being a twelve year old watching any Jones, like that knife fight
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  and then that I don't know, a museum of knives. Like I thought
• 17:14
  it couldn't get any better, and just kept getting better and better. And
• 17:15
  then it ended with the guys acts in the head. I go, oh
• 17:18
  my god, this is the sword fight and on the motorcycles, which is
• 17:22
  from The Villainous, the Korean movie I believe, but again it was awesome.
• 17:27
  And then oh, could have ever thought the smack of horse's ass to
• 17:32
  kick a guy in the face. Like, so there's all and then there's
• 17:34
  the dogs, the Halleyberry Dogs stuff like. So it was speaking to the
• 17:37
  twelve year old boy and me where the difference with four was? I thought
• 17:41
  four in the end, it took me a while realize was more of a
• 17:45
  spiritual movie. It is. It came up were spiritual. Yeah, it's
• 17:48
  though it's one of the most I didn't expect that one of the most violent
• 17:52
  picks I've seen. I sit them on quite some time, but it's it's
• 17:56
  crap. But I also saw it with green screen. Yeah, I saw
• 17:59
  it though early cut where the arc they triumph. You couldn't even see the
• 18:03
  structure. When they were doing that, you couldn't see what happened to the
• 18:06
  continental. I was watching a lot of blue screen, you know, it's
• 18:08
  like a three and a half hour cut I watched at first. So when
• 18:11
  I saw in the cinemas, I was shocked at, like how good the
• 18:15
  vffs were, Like that arc did they triumph thing? Like how there was
• 18:18
  no there was no no arc? Did they triumph there? They did shoot
• 18:22
  it in light R and do all those things right, but how how realistic
• 18:26
  those vfs were, Like I didn't know what that scene would become. Thought
• 18:30
  I thought they shot it there. I thought they shot it there. Personally,
• 18:33
  I said, now that you told me down like I thought they shot
• 18:34
  they did a fantastic job because I couldn't tell. Yeah, well, those
• 18:37
  establishers, you know, and even in the establishers, if you look closer,
• 18:41
  you can tell that there's digital car or. It's not not that it's
• 18:44
  badly done, it's just that the speed they're going in that traffic unless you're
• 18:48
  impossible locked down all of Paris, it's impossible, you know, And of
• 18:52
  course we know how these things are constructed, you and I, so we're
• 18:56
  able to know even if it's really great vffs, what the what's going on?
• 19:02
  You know, yeah, I know I thought they might have locked up,
• 19:04
  you know, you know, from one o'clock to four o'clock in the
• 19:07
  morning something like that, because it was just looks so so good. And
• 19:11
  going back to John who though, I mean, you go back to those
• 19:14
  kids, the killer hard boiled that is ballet with guns, and then Wick
• 19:18
  is just taking it to a whole o the other place, which then brings
• 19:22
  me to but no one know what's gonna say just before we get up with
• 19:27
  John Woo. The big difference between then and now is that John Wound didn't
• 19:32
  have those air guns that you can put up to somebody's face and see the
• 19:34
  recoil and hear a little sound that's so safe you can literally put up your
• 19:37
  eyeball. You know. He was using real muzzle flashes. Stunt men.
• 19:41
  They were getting hurt all the time because their regulations out there for protections aren't
• 19:45
  the same in China at the time, like just running through stuntmen, right,
• 19:49
  he was shooting for a hundred days and more. Like you know,
• 19:53
  John Wood was going all balls to the walls without all the stuff that we
• 19:57
  have the tools we have nowadays, we'll be right back after a word from
• 20:02
  our sponsor and now back to the show. And then you have someone like
• 20:11
  chaste Hellski who comes from that stunt background, who specializes in that, and
• 20:15
  then he's found this perfect match with Kiano in that kind of world, and
• 20:21
  it's like a parallel universe, which is what's l freeing about doing the show.
• 20:23
  The Continental is like, you know, when I started checking up a
• 20:26
  list of why I should do something like that, this one of it was
• 20:30
  like, well, my brain is gonna be free just to have fun,
• 20:33
  now, so what's that gonna be like? I didn't have any idea that
• 20:36
  I would have the most fun in my life on a set or in post
• 20:38
  or in prep. It was like an experience I'll never forget. Well.
• 20:44
  Well, then going into the action, I mean, when I was watching
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  the episodes, I was like, my god, it's just like John Wick
• 20:49
  level action movie level action. So that this is it's not like if you're
• 20:55
  tuning in to see The Continental and expecting like TV versions of John Wick act
• 21:00
  it is not. It is you could the same guys. It's you could
• 21:03
  take it out and put it right into one hundred million dollars two hundred million
• 21:07
  dollar movie and it would fit perfect. That was so, I was like,
• 21:11
  man, it's ball. It was the same man, it's the same
• 21:14
  guys. It's a company that Chad owns with a David Leech called eighty seven
• 21:18
  to eleven and some of the same people that were in some of the Jaguin
• 21:22
  films are part of the Stunt Team two and Lauronel Stowell, the coordinator and
• 21:26
  action director was it's from that that the eighty seven eleven Camp two and Chad
• 21:33
  had to bless the person that was being chosen for that basically before we started.
• 21:38
  And then they go and do this thing called stunt Bizz, which is
• 21:41
  wonderful. You get to see everything beforehand and make adjustments, and they do
• 21:45
  this really cool thing the New School of stunt men do, which is first
• 21:48
  of all, they show you the stuff the old school never showed you anything,
• 21:52
  right. They also make use of the environment, and if the environment's
• 21:56
  not cool enough, we may rewrite where we're where this fight's gonna take place.
• 22:00
  And it's interesting, I'm telling you because there's one scene in episode three
• 22:04
  that's particularly cater to your audience in no way It's like when we talked in
• 22:08
  the past about when you have no money, what do you do with it?
• 22:11
  Right? So Kirk had written this scene with this character Lou of a
• 22:15
  black woman's being followed by this detective Mayhew, and it was going to end
• 22:21
  up in this fight between the both of them and the streets. I said,
• 22:23
  you know what I've always wanted to do, Kirk, a fighting the
• 22:26
  phone booths. You ever heard that expression of fighting the phone is like,
• 22:29
  yeah, I've heard it, or sometimes a box are announced, or like
• 22:32
  they're just blowing each other in the corner, blowing each other in the corner,
• 22:36
  hitting each other, you know, taking blows in the corner. You
• 22:41
  know there's they've all skill has gone out of the window. They're just it's
• 22:45
  again its street the street fight. Yeah, it's a street fight. Yeah,
• 22:48
  the street fight in close proximity. It's it's a It was like watching
• 22:52
  a fighting a phone booth. So I said, we need to do this
• 22:56
  for two reasons. One, I think it'll be cool because we can use
• 22:59
  the phone booth the environment phone. Two, this could be a lesson to
• 23:02
  people with no money in film school, Like I want this scene to be
• 23:06
  the kind of scene where they look at it and go, you see,
• 23:07
  you can do something interesting without scope and still tell the story and move on
• 23:12
  and play play on kind of. I don't know what the what that's an
• 23:17
  analogy, I guess, or a metaphor play on something like that. Yeah,
• 23:21
  we did have the budget to do what we wanted. I didn't feel
• 23:25
  the pinch in anyway. Like you can give me ten million dollars, I'm
• 23:26
  not going to feel the pinch. I'll design the movie to the budget.
• 23:30
  You can give me five, I'll design the movie to the budget. But
• 23:33
  what I always aspire to from the first movie is you give me two point
• 23:36
  five, I want to make it a little like seven. You give me
• 23:37
  ten, I want to make it atle like twenty. And there's little tricks
• 23:41
  to do that we talked about in the last time we talked about. But
• 23:45
  people should know we each budget had pretty much the same budget as a first
• 23:48
  John Wake movie. It wasn't any lower, wasn't any higher. Yeah.
• 23:56
  And the thing is too is like when I was watching this again, I
• 23:59
  said, this, you some of those tricks to get more, you know,
• 24:00
  bang for your buck, because it definitely looks more bang for your book
• 24:04
  without question, not speaking of stunt guys. This is my I love I
• 24:07
  love stunt guys. I was working on my on on a project. I
• 24:11
  was working with a twenty four stunt team twenty key for Southerlands show back in
• 24:17
  the Day. And is it just me or are all of them absolutely nuts?
• 24:26
  They are? The old school guys are different type of nuts the new
• 24:29
  school guys. Right, they are different type of nuts. They all are
• 24:33
  like, go ahead, sorry, no, It's like I heard like when
• 24:37
  when I would go listen, I needed to do this. I needed to
• 24:38
  do a gainer here and I needed to do a flip. They're like,
• 24:41
  but can I jump off the second story? Like, no, I don't
• 24:44
  need the seconds. We're good here on the first let no, no,
• 24:47
  no, but I could do the second story. I'm like, I'm good.
• 24:49
  They're like no, but look at I'm like guys and it was not
• 24:52
  a total for all of them would always take it to eleven as they say
• 24:57
  A Spottlers. Yeah, they're they're adrenaline, adrenaline John Bekaise, you know,
• 25:03
  and they're like fighter pilots. They're in this whole other mode, you
• 25:07
  know, and they they I recall from the pass and it has moved to
• 25:11
  the new school. They have this slovakor this kind of arrogance, and they
• 25:14
  need that arrogance in their job, you know, but sometimes you can misread
• 25:18
  the arrogance and not see the person basically right. And they're they're very interesting,
• 25:25
  especially in new school guys that come out of eighty seven eleven, because
• 25:26
  they always overdesigned, like you're talking about that in a way, they want
• 25:30
  to give you more. The stunt guys never want to give you less,
• 25:33
  and you actually always have to talk a stunt person down like no, no,
• 25:37
  no, dude, we don't really don't. But also you're the runk
• 25:40
  stunt guy or a girl. Yeah. But also the dirty little the dirty
• 25:44
  little secret, the dirty little secret is the more times they do that stunt,
• 25:48
  but they keep getting pay bumps. Yeah, depending on how dangerous the
• 25:52
  stunt is, they keep getting these crazy pay bumps. You know. I
• 25:56
  didn't know that until for years ago. I found that out. I'm like,
• 25:59
  really, that's why they're so eager to do another, Like they're lipping
• 26:02
  to the third take, like yeah, let's go, let's go, let's
• 26:04
  go ahead, let's let's go again. I mean, I can only imagine
• 26:07
  let's with the with the stunt team that you had on the Continental. These
• 26:11
  guys, I mean, there has to be I mean, I know the
• 26:12
  professionals, but there's got to be some some damage man damage on these guys.
• 26:17
  The body could only take so much. Even as a professionals. You
• 26:22
  can only throw them down the stairs so many times, right, I mean
• 26:27
  seriously, at a certain point, even if they know how to fall in,
• 26:30
  then they got the gear on and at a certain point you just got
• 26:33
  a god god bless Yeah. And they and the differences too is that they
• 26:40
  have to train our actors, like that's what the Wig fan base wants is
• 26:42
  to see their actors doing it. And we had this interesting story one day
• 26:48
  when the chess Elaine is an actress who played lou and there the brother of
• 26:51
  Myles Hubert Ponti Sho is the actor's name, but that chess was. You
• 26:56
  know, she's a very sweet woman and she doesn't like buy Islands really and
• 27:00
  they're training her and she accidentally hits a stunt guy and rehearsal, Hey,
• 27:03
  you know, we're not shooting. They're in their warehouse doing this, and
• 27:07
  she's really emotional about it. She's really been been out of shape about it,
• 27:10
  and I'm like, no, no, this this happens all the time,
• 27:12
  like, don't don't worry. And we were all a little worried about
• 27:15
  her, like is she ever ever gonna be able to like just get over
• 27:18
  this? And she did. And you've seen you've seen the al Camino fight
• 27:22
  with her in the back of an al camino on episode two. I think,
• 27:25
  yeah, you've seen the whole series, right, I've seen I've seen
• 27:27
  most of the series. I haven't seen all of it yet, I've seen
• 27:30
  most of it. Oh shit, you gotta get the three man. We
• 27:33
  should, Okay, so we gotta come back with Kirk. You come back
• 27:36
  with Kurt that I've seen the first two. I've not seen the third one
• 27:40
  yet because I have a family all the third the third one goes I know,
• 27:45
  the third one goes off the rails. But but she is an episode
• 27:48
  two in the back of an al camino, like kicking a bunch of people's
• 27:49
  asses, right, see, and then she basically blossom, yeah, blossom
• 27:53
  you know. But wait, I gotta pause for episode three preparing because it's
• 27:59
  gonna feel like you a very deceptive. It starts out like, oh,
• 28:03
  this is kind of starting out like the others. You know, it's normally
• 28:06
  paced, and then it just takes this right turn and it just goes NonStop
• 28:10
  for fifty eight minutes. So so you were trying to you were trying to
• 28:12
  John look for it basically just this non stop Well it was. It was
• 28:17
  a hybrid because Chad has this thing he does. It's wonderful is that because
• 28:23
  he has a two or two and a half hour movie, doesn't have to
• 28:26
  tell a three act structure and induce too many new characters. Then you have
• 28:30
  Keano and the audience knows what he can do. You can wallow in a
• 28:33
  twenty minute set piece. I can't really because I have a story to tell.
• 28:37
  I also don't want to bore the audience, you know, I'm very
• 28:41
  much into not having action fatigue happen. So it's deceptive in episode three because
• 28:45
  there're modules of action seemingly taking place in one set piece, which is inside
• 28:49
  the hotel. It's a rate. I mean, it's pretty obvious at this
• 28:52
  point. It's a rate. You know that Winston has to take power from
• 28:56
  this hotel and a revenge story, right, so it feels like one continuous
• 29:02
  action scene and it actually isn't. It's one continuous raid that uh, it's
• 29:07
  the way to affect your rain is as you're watching a lot of action because
• 29:12
  it jumps around to different locations within the hotel and different group members doing different
• 29:18
  things. But it's relentless, not in the same way as reletless. As
• 29:23
  you get the art today triumph, and then you get the dragon's breath scene
• 29:26
  from the above angle in the building, and then you get the steps,
• 29:32
  then you get the steps. Like you put those three back to back.
• 29:34
  That's like forty five minutes straight of NonStop action. You know, it's it's
• 29:38
  a lot. It's it's a lot. Now I gotta ask you, man,
• 29:41
  because there's a there's a special actor who play who's in this in the
• 29:45
  show, mister mel Gibson, how do you work with not only a legend
• 29:52
  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the
• 30:00
  show, but arguably one of the better directors of his generation, because he
• 30:06
  is a really good director as well. How was it to work with him?
• 30:11
  Yeah, he's he's he's a pro. And once you get to three
• 30:17
  you'll see he goes off the hinges, you know, and you know the
• 30:21
  process of working with him you've seen in the past like he does. He's
• 30:23
  very passionate like Ransom or a Braveheart or Road who is my favorite and that's
• 30:29
  why we wanted him. Yeah, Hacksall is as a director is he makes
• 30:34
  you believe in what he's doing in the movie. If he's playing the character,
• 30:38
  you believe right. What I found was interesting is that he those zingers
• 30:44
  and one liners, that's him. He likes playing with words from Leaf,
• 30:47
  the Weapon movies. That is him. That's what he comes with. That's
• 30:49
  how his brain works. And he plays naive on the set and doesn't look
• 30:53
  back and look at everything and like what lends you using you know? And
• 30:56
  he acts like he doesn't know. He knows it, and he's watching everything
• 31:00
  a hawk, and he doesn't go to his trailer, which it's a great
• 31:03
  thing to have with an actor, is like they're not slowing you down.
• 31:07
  He's very much I think he said it one day, he goes, I'm
• 31:08
  a good soldier, and he is. And he's highly intelligent on both sides
• 31:14
  of the camera. And it was just fun, Like we had fun with
• 31:18
  the whole cast because I have some people in here, like Adam Shapiro,
• 31:23
  who's opened a pretzel business during COVID and it's all the rage in Hollywood right
• 31:29
  now. It's Chappie Pretzels, a who's a one liner walking, one liner
• 31:33
  singer, comedy act. You know that I work with a past. There's
• 31:36
  few people are working with in the past that have this thing that I was
• 31:38
  dealing with with melt too, Like they just want to go on the set
• 31:41
  and have fun and they don't want to cause problems. They don't want any
• 31:44
  headaches, they don't want any drama. And those are my favorite kind of
• 31:45
  people. So he's cut from that cloth. And I've been here for forty
• 31:49
  years. How professional he is on the set, and it's exactly what I
• 31:53
  saw. That's beautiful. Man. Now, when you when you walk into
• 31:57
  an action sequence like that, as a director, these are not simple,
• 32:02
  not simple sequences by any stretch in the man. It's not like, hey,
• 32:06
  punch, punch, punch, the movement the camera. How would you
• 32:09
  how do you approach doing this? I know you've seen it a little bit
• 32:13
  of previous, but like if you're if you're talking to young directors who are
• 32:16
  trying to get into action, how do you approach like some of those scenes
• 32:22
  like that in the in the first episode the stair sequence going down the stairs
• 32:27
  with him Will he looked like Kano by the way he I mean, he
• 32:30
  was on point, the main actor, the main character. Yeah, less
• 32:34
  training though he only had three weeks. Well he but he looked like,
• 32:37
  I'm like, this guy looks like John I mean in the movie he looked
• 32:40
  like John Wick. I was like, oh man, he's like John Wick
• 32:44
  style. That's how good he is. And we are nodding too that yeah,
• 32:46
  obviously yeah, because he's just he was so good. It reminded me
• 32:50
  so much of John or of Keanu doing that. How do you approach that
• 32:53
  kind of scene as a director? Well, I was very lucky because of
• 32:59
  the built in nature of eighty seven eleven in Larnell Is. You would think
• 33:06
  you would have to stress about it. If it's a younger filmmaker and you
• 33:08
  don't have a great stunt team, you're in trouball. If you have a
• 33:12
  great stunt team, what I do with them? As I say, I've
• 33:15
  learned in the years, it's like, and I think we discussed it before,
• 33:20
  it's like, sometimes let professionals be professionals. If you're trusting, don't
• 33:27
  get in their way. Let them do their job and then stir the pot
• 33:29
  every once in a while. I'll have my bullet points of once and for
• 33:32
  that sequence, what I wanted was very overall in a general sense, was
• 33:37
  Jackie Chan's use of objects and how playful he is with them. So he's
• 33:44
  Frankie's carrying a chest with the point press in it, and I kept saying,
• 33:49
  and it was bullet points written down, and I will talk to Larnell.
• 33:51
  I want him to throw it at somebody so that distracts them and they
• 33:54
  can shoot it. That's very Jackie Chance. That's also very chests to hell
• 33:58
  Ski too and John. It very much fits in that world. But I
• 34:01
  remember firsteeing it with Jackie Chan. It's a playful playfulness with chairs, with
• 34:06
  objects and stuff like that. And then we would talk about the sequence and
• 34:10
  they would design it and then we start making adjustments. Now. A lot
• 34:15
  of times the struggle between me and Larnell, a healthy, really healthy struggle
• 34:19
  and debate creatively, was how long he was going The scene is a one
• 34:22
  page as one minute, and give me one minute. He would turn in
• 34:25
  six minutes. Right. I'm like, Larnell, you're killing me over here,
• 34:29
  right, So there's this would constantly going on. And that's part of
• 34:31
  the Wick way of being trained in stunts is like they do explore fully right.
• 34:37
  So in that staircase sequence you're talking about, I cut out a whole
• 34:40
  floor of violence. There's a whole two sets of stairs that I cut out
• 34:45
  because I felt like it was undercutting the gag before and the gag after.
• 34:49
  And sometimes we have too much of something, it just undercuts itself because you
• 34:53
  can't focus on the peaks and valleys basically, And so that was even in
• 34:58
  a phone booth fight. The phone booth fight was really long when I first
• 35:00
  got it. You'll see this really fantastic fight between these two women and episode
• 35:07
  three on a roof on the roof of the Continental. And when I first
• 35:10
  got it, it was long. And I told my editor, like,
• 35:14
  let's maybe cut back to somebody else and then cut back to this, and
• 35:17
  he just looked at me and said, no, this is Wick. This
• 35:21
  is Wick world. You don't you know it's a cut away. We're gonna
• 35:22
  stay in it. And I think him And that's what a good editor does
• 35:25
  too, is like when you're insecure as a director, they just say stop.
• 35:30
  No. They did it like the scene. You've seen it, because
• 35:32
  you haven't made it to three. You saw the Adjudicator scene where Hensman's beating
• 35:37
  down that guy, and then that atrium. Right, So when I get
• 35:42
  the first cut of that, because I love my offline, sounds would be
• 35:45
  great, they put great sounds, and so it was pretty much the same
• 35:50
  thing in an offline. It was brutal and how many times he was punching
• 35:52
  them in the opening, And I said, Ron Ron Rose is my editor.
• 35:54
  I mean, he's a genius, like a run I think maybe there's
• 35:59
  too many punches on this guy's face, and the studio or the network is
• 36:01
  gonna say something, and I kind of agree, maybe it's a little too
• 36:05
  much. It goes dude, dude, it's it's the wick. It's the
• 36:07
  Wick roll. There's there's no such thing as too many punches. And I'm
• 36:12
  like, Okay, well, we'll just keep it in for now and see
• 36:14
  if they say anything. Right, they never said anything. And then I
• 36:16
  watched John Wait four and when he's when he's punching Killer in the face to
• 36:21
  get his tooth, like, it's about the same number of punches. But
• 36:25
  again it's Keanu. Keano has such a soft spot for the audience said he
• 36:30
  can pretty much get away with anything except killing an animal, right, I
• 36:35
  mean you can fall out of four stories, land on the limo, and
• 36:37
  limp away four times in the movie continuously. Yeah, continue and then fall
• 36:44
  down forty flights up stairs, get up, brush it off, and you
• 36:46
  just like get shut off a building, get shut off a building by Winston,
• 36:51
  fall falling an awning, and then on the concrete. Yep, sure,
• 36:54
  why not? Yeah, Yeah, it's Scanna. Of course it's it's
• 36:58
  Scannon. Now with that said, So, with that said, did you
• 37:00
  have any Easter eggs laid out throughout this episode? These episodes of for John
• 37:06
  Wicks, there is the John Wick Easter egg for the hardcore fans, there's
• 37:12
  the casual Easter eggs, and then there's the nineteen seventies Easter eggs, like
• 37:15
  let's go and reverse, so nineteen seventies Easter eggs. En picks up Frankie
• 37:21
  after the staircase shootout. That's an exact replica of Travis Bickles taxi from Taxi
• 37:24
  Driver. I remember saw episode two, episode two. If you're noticed the
• 37:30
  laden episode two, a star skinning Hutch car appears red with that Nike white
• 37:36
  Swish whatever that is episode three, right before that phone We've beat done I
• 37:42
  told you about, there's the Warriors from the movie Warriors. There's the hearse
• 37:45
  with a graffiti all over it. Right then you have the obvious John Wick
• 37:50
  kind of easter eggs that are quite obvious, whether it's what they what we're
• 37:54
  doing with the coins, what some of the rules are with some of the
• 37:58
  changes of the rules are then the deep ones, like an episode one when
• 38:01
  Winston gets the id to get idea to go to the theater to see that
• 38:05
  old decrepit theater where he finds his brother. The scene before that, he's
• 38:10
  at a stoplighting. He looks at a poster and it's a Marilyn Monroe movie
• 38:15
  and the name of the movie is be Seeing You, which is from Wick
• 38:19
  film two. And I think the Death the Death woman, I forgot her
• 38:24
  name. She's she would constantly signed to him be seeing You, and he
• 38:29
  would signed back after he killed her, be seeing You. So that's the
• 38:31
  title of the Marilyn Monroe movie. Because they wouldn't give us the rights to
• 38:35
  gentlemen prefer to blonds as a title, And that triggers a memory, and
• 38:39
  then that line recalls again in episode of three of the show, and also
• 38:44
  the Adjudicator's license plate. She has a car we revealing episode three, but
• 38:47
  her license plate is a line from the adjudicator in film three show filthy Right.
• 38:54
  So there's a bunch of them that Kirk, the show runner, he
• 39:00
  itemized them all because Peacock Marketing and Amazon Marketing wanted it for their you know,
• 39:07
  that's a really smart thing of them to do. They wanted it to
• 39:10
  use it for marketing, and I forget until I see it, like,
• 39:14
  oh god, there's that. There's that. There's a bunch of them in
• 39:15
  there. So that's really interesting. So that was kind of part of the
• 39:19
  plan all. I mean, yeah, I give you once in a while
• 39:21
  you'll throw stuff in, but this was like really thought out, like where
• 39:24
  are you going to throw? Yeah, it was more coming from me and
• 39:29
  Kirk being fans of the movie. It wasn't any mandate. There wasn't even
• 39:31
  they didn't even tip us off from the film side what happens in john Wick
• 39:36
  four. Although I saw it early in posts for this, they weren't doing
• 39:39
  that and it was so free in a way. They weren't doing what Disney
• 39:42
  or Marvel would do, which is like they have these particular mandates. You
• 39:45
  have to have to choose the show to not to the future. We love
• 39:50
  that we could reverse engineer and know what well the first three films were.
• 39:54
  We knew what that was, and they just kind of trusted us. We'll
• 40:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 40:07
  show. I don't know why, but they did, and me and Kirk
• 40:12
  would just break down those movies and say, well, that would be funny
• 40:15
  if we can put that in there. And it's always fun to put Easter
• 40:17
  eggs. I think Easter eggs, like, even if you're just doing a
• 40:20
  normal movie that has no reference to anything IP related, to put Easter eggs
• 40:24
  in there, nodding to other movies. It's always a fun thing. And
• 40:28
  in episode three you'll get the famous one you have to really watch out for
• 40:32
  from my favorite movie of all time, in that comboy, I'm walking over
• 40:36
  here. You know, Yeah, of course that was a complete fluke when
• 40:40
  that happened. Well, now did you hear there's two different versions of that
• 40:44
  story now that that was not really that I know is that it was a
• 40:50
  real cap a real cab almost ran over Dustin Offman, He's like, that's
• 40:54
  that was the story. What's the story? Now? They're the counter story
• 40:58
  that is actually believable because we know what goes on. They would have had
• 41:01
  to get a release from that guy that uses his likeness, the cab driver,
• 41:07
  because you clearly see his face, and they would never have wanted to
• 41:10
  put the actors in that much peril walking across the street secretly recording. And
• 41:16
  the lineup dialogue I heard is actually written that the ad lib maybe the line
• 41:22
  after where he talks about that could be a good insurance scam too. I
• 41:27
  saw the story that broke it all down, and I go, hmm,
• 41:29
  that's interesting because for years people have thought this, but we got to hear
• 41:31
  it from Dustin's mouth, I guess. I mean, and and he's gonna
• 41:36
  tell the truth at this point the game. He's just gonna want to live
• 41:37
  there exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean it was the sixties.
• 41:42
  It was the sixties. I almost think it was sixteen. Sixty eight was
• 41:45
  shot. Sixty eight was shot, So it was the sixties. Would they
• 41:49
  need to release Yeah, but it wasn't a public environment, so maybe that's
• 41:52
  true. That's true. You can kind of get the documentary, but he
• 41:57
  could because it wasn't a public street technically, you don't need I mean,
• 42:01
  and it was just a different once and they were doing that thing back then
• 42:05
  We're within New York when they were shooting inside of a van with like the
• 42:07
  tinted glass to get shots like that. Oh yeah, like yeah, and
• 42:12
  without permits and just like running around sometimes because it was just kind of it
• 42:15
  was guerrilla filmmaking. It was kind of the beginning and then the beginning,
• 42:20
  but it was like when they started to really start, the indie vibe started,
• 42:23
  like I think The Night Cowboy really kind of started that. A little
• 42:25
  easy easy rider and now and obviously Raging Bowl and all that kind of stuff.
• 42:31
  But yeah, it was I'm curious if you talk to dust next time
• 42:36
  you talk to Dustin, let me know, I'll hit them up. He's
• 42:39
  in my rolodotic stunk exactly. So coming from a collar back. I was
• 42:45
  at the colors for a long time as well, and had a post house.
• 42:50
  I was looking at the approach to the color grading on this what'd you
• 42:53
  shoot this song? By the way, general, what camera it was?
• 42:58
  The airy forgot which model d X, whatever the fuck it was? The
• 43:02
  same lenses it looked, but we it was degraded. It was degraded it
• 43:07
  because we got the nineteen fifties lenses. I may have talked to you about
• 43:12
  this before from Kind Division, that no dps want to use anymore because they're
• 43:15
  sold. They literally had to dust them off when I was doing good Lord
• 43:19
  Bird. And they have all these imperfections and anomalies in them, right,
• 43:22
  and they they are They were built for MGM by path or path A path
• 43:30
  A and MGM or somehow involved. Right, they hadn't been used in years.
• 43:35
  And I had Dan Sasaki, who was a lens guru over at pand
• 43:37
  Division who services all the top dps, and I just went in one day
• 43:43
  without my DP because my DP was in a different city, and I said,
• 43:46
  just give me the funkiest lenses you got. Just think of anything wild
• 43:50
  that nobody wants to touch, even if it's cracked, just bring it.
• 43:53
  And then we started testing them out and I picked this set. And later
• 43:57
  I found out because I said I would like a list of the films these
• 44:00
  were shot on or yeah, and it took them actually months to get me
• 44:05
  the list. It was like a list of two hundred films but the three
• 44:07
  films that stood out to me were Doctor Shivago, Cool Hand, Luke,
• 44:12
  and The Graduate. So you watching the Continental, you're actually seeing through the
• 44:19
  same exact lenses that shot those three classic films. Right now, I could
• 44:23
  have shot with Red an Airy or Sony, and I don't think you truly
• 44:28
  could know the difference because we're not only doing that, we're also deciding a
• 44:32
  lot. We're Maxine Gervai, who was my colors I spoke to you about
• 44:37
  last time, who's on all my projects dating back to Book of Eli,
• 44:39
  which we talked about that. She's fantastic, she's an artist. She's my
• 44:45
  partner on every project. Like there is no DP director relationship without her.
• 44:50
  That if that trifecta doesn't work, if the DP comes in and doesn't get
• 44:53
  along with her, I can't hire him because she's she's my partner in this,
• 44:59
  you know. So she goes in and we start doing the grain thing
• 45:02
  again. We start we don't do that film grain that when they license out,
• 45:07
  which is bullshit. You know, it's a scam. Scam, it's
• 45:12
  a scam. Okay, she scan, she's they've scanned every film stock imaginable
• 45:17
  from the past okay for grain, and then she does the thing and I
• 45:22
  don't know the technical tarms for it, but there's different layers of color registration
• 45:25
  and mids, highlights, and you know more than I on this thing,
• 45:29
  right, and how brain interacts with the mids and the highlights and the blacks.
• 45:32
  And she goes in and there's different layers to and degrees to it,
• 45:37
  and sometimes we lay in. We do the stuff where we try to have
• 45:40
  the imperfection, so like one close up maybe grainier than the other one,
• 45:45
  or the white shots are a little more grainy than the medium shots, so
• 45:49
  we checkerboard the grain. We picked the degrees of brain ten twenty or thirty
• 45:53
  or forty percent, and our base level, let's say, be twenty throughout
• 45:58
  the whole show, and then we something to go to ten and go to
• 46:00
  forty. And it's a subconscious thing where you when you're watching it, you
• 46:05
  feel a little bit of inconsistency that reminds you of analog. And so there
• 46:10
  was a lot of things she did that she's a genius colorist, basically,
• 46:16
  like she's like she's going to be mad. I said that she's like the
• 46:20
  rain Man of colorists, because I tease her above a certain things. There's
• 46:24
  a compliment, but I could see where she could go. Hey man,
• 46:28
  Yeah, but I tease her about we meet her like people come into our
• 46:30
  color sections and they see us bickering because she's so sensitive, because she's an
• 46:36
  artist, and she just goes hard to get it right. And sometimes I'll
• 46:39
  just say something just to fuck with her. But they think that me and
• 46:44
  Maxine are fighting, and we're not really fighting. We love each other and
• 46:46
  we're never mad at each other. Never right its it. She'll pick she'll
• 46:51
  pick on me, and I'll pick on her, and she'll say something like
• 46:53
  okay. So there's a transition. I know you wouldn't notice. It's like
• 46:57
  I like sometimes self conscious transitions. So it's tilting up from the beat down
• 47:01
  the judicator and goes this ahrim yellow circle appreciations into a yellow light. Right.
• 47:07
  Oh I love that well, I love that shot. Yeah, that's
• 47:08
  what I was talking about. That was both of the shots I was talking
• 47:10
  about what I said about directors. Absolutely. Yeah, So with her,
• 47:14
  like early in prep, I'll putting a shot list, I'll put a magazine
• 47:17
  dissolve, which is a customized dissolve. You know how that works. You're
• 47:21
  pulling different image up on the second on the B side, and you get
• 47:24
  the customized disissolved. I said, I put so, I'll put in a
• 47:28
  shot list, and it's for the editor too, because he has my shot
• 47:30
  list. So then we maxazine dissolved by putting in quotation to the next scene
• 47:34
  and it said it's a yellow light DA. I didn't know. I didn't
• 47:37
  explain it to my editor what a magazine dissolve was because him and his assistant
• 47:40
  were busy online thinking it's a technical term from Hollywood. They can and I
• 47:45
  said, no, no, no, it's my colors who does these fantastic
• 47:50
  kind of creative dissolves. Because that was one like one session we were snapping
• 47:53
  at each other on Alpha about as I said, Okay, Maxine, I
• 47:58
  need like a forty eight frame dissolved here, and she just snickered at me
• 48:00
  and goes, oh, you want to dissolve here. I thought you wanted
• 48:04
  something more creative, and I'm like, well, sometimes a normal dissolved it
• 48:12
  marks you know, just that's her. That's her. That's amazing that they
• 48:15
  thought that was like a special tip, because to be fair, in Hollywood,
• 48:19
  there there's always since the beginning of time. There's all these weird names
• 48:22
  for certain things, you know, a stinger or a fifty two or will
• 48:28
  Helm scream Yeah, will exactly. And the people like a magazine dissolved,
• 48:31
  where's the maxazine dissolved? Yeah? Well, now you know from your show
• 48:37
  Indie film Hustle, a magazine dissolved as a custom, dissolved. From henceforth,
• 48:44
  yes, from henceforth they will be called the Maxine it dissolved. I
• 48:49
  gotta ask you, man, Look, I mean, you and I are
• 48:52
  a couple of old dogs. We've been We've got a couple a bit of
• 48:54
  shrapnel under our belt. And you know, when you and I talk is
• 49:00
  so much fun because we're talking cinema and talking about what we you know,
• 49:04
  our generation kind of grew up with. I don't see that coming up behind
• 49:08
  us, man, I mean there are some where do you think fifty I
• 49:14
  mean, are they going to be doing you know this kind of like were
• 49:17
  you just explained with the grain, Like, are they going to be doing
• 49:22
  that in forty or fifty years? Man? Is it? What do you
• 49:25
  think? Well? It's the TikTok generation now right, the generation that's born.
• 49:34
  I mean a lot of after us are just a little bit out for
• 49:36
  us. We were, we were there from the analog to digital. We
• 49:39
  saw that. I'm so happy we were that. We know the different between
• 49:43
  film. It's the bridge generation. It's the bridge generation. Yeah, yeah,
• 49:46
  and we know the difference between digital editing and film editing. And you
• 49:51
  know, it's so I'm so grateful that we got to see that. We'll
• 49:58
  be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 50:07
  There's something interesting going on. And this is a subtle or conversation or
• 50:10
  a more nuanced one about this generation. It's like they're seeing like, let's
• 50:15
  say, a movies on the theater and they didn't put film gaming and they
• 50:17
  didn't do this. And it's very clean. It's a Marvel movie and it's
• 50:21
  very everything's very clean. It's very digital. It's still somehow does feel like
• 50:25
  film because of twenty four frames, because the shutter, motion blur, and
• 50:31
  depth of field depending on how you use it, those three things we talked
• 50:35
  about before, right, that do convey the sense of cinema, And it
• 50:37
  took a while for digital get there because of those three things in image quality,
• 50:42
  right, but if you actually play a piece of film, you go,
• 50:45
  WHOA, Well, this is completely oh god, and even me and
• 50:51
  you have been been fulled into thinking this looks like film would actually know it.
• 50:57
  There's a whole other thing going on. There's redstration problems, there's scratches,
• 51:00
  there's done print, there's all this Project Project the print of Lawrence of
• 51:05
  Arabia and Project digitally Project the print of a Marble movie. And you tell
• 51:10
  me if there's a difference in these. It's an analog. It's an analog
• 51:15
  quality. Now now I'm going to parse this argument out different. Like I
• 51:19
  think you and I talked about this before. I really don't get off on
• 51:22
  this whole film purist shit that group of filmmakers and are big filmmakers about.
• 51:28
  I think it's fucking bullshit. It's nostalgia. It makes no sense. And
• 51:34
  excuse me, excuse me for saying this. It's a bunch of white man
• 51:37
  who are nostalgic. Okay. They need to stop going against the winds of
• 51:40
  They need to stop going against the winds of change and start help building windmills.
• 51:45
  Okay. And when I see a bunch of nostalgic old timers, it
• 51:50
  triggers me as a biracial guy do you start getting too nostalgic. That goes
• 51:54
  down a dangerous road. Okay, let's just take all these let's take all
• 52:00
  the I know I'm being harsh there, Okay, but let's take all these
• 52:02
  tools available to us and tell the stories we need to tell. Like some
• 52:07
  of them don't believe in d I some are I didn't have any vffcs in
• 52:09
  this movie. I don't give a fuck, Or are talking overly too much
• 52:14
  about IMAX, Like I don't give a shit. Is it good? That's
• 52:17
  all that the audience cares about. Is it good? If it was shotting
• 52:20
  an iPhone like Tangerine, it doesn't matter. Is it good? But to
• 52:24
  answer the larger thing you're talking about, it's like we're in the world with
• 52:30
  everything's getting drowned out by too many voices on the Internet, and like you
• 52:35
  know that because you have to find your niche and all that stuff. So
• 52:38
  film guys on about film in history, it's gotta kind of die away with
• 52:44
  the new generation, and they're gonna be talking about the films from our generation
• 52:47
  as being you know, they're gonna be talking it's not really our genera.
• 52:52
  They're gon't be talking about Marvel movies like like as if it's a Lawrence of
• 52:55
  Arabia, that's what's crazy. But you know what Quinn said this really quick.
• 53:00
  I saw an interview with Quinton and he said, this is really interesting.
• 53:01
  He said he saw he had a conversation with the sixteen year old and
• 53:05
  he's like, yeah, I was four years old when Iron Man came out
• 53:07
  and he goes for that kid that is Citizen Kane, that is you know,
• 53:14
  Lawrence of a Rate and now your man. It's a good movie.
• 53:16
  Iron Man is a great movie. Iron Man is a fantastic film. But
• 53:20
  the point is that that is I mean, if you talk to John Favor,
• 53:22
  he's not gonna like, yeah, it's as good as Laws of Arabia
• 53:24
  or is as good as you know all these It's not a good it's a
• 53:28
  classic in the in that genre, without question. But well it's also like
• 53:32
  it's just like when me or you were younger, did you remember, I'm
• 53:36
  sure you went through the stage where you were the certain age. I don't
• 53:37
  know. Want to watch a black and white film when you're twelve, Oh
• 53:40
  white it's old, like diverent watch it. And then you're not older and
• 53:45
  you're like, oh, but here's what happened during COVID. I gotta tell
• 53:49
  you about what happens because I've been to film school. I got film books,
• 53:52
  and I read and I watched a lot of stuff. I have the
• 53:53
  Criterion Channel, and I started deep diving in the thirties and being really fascinated
• 54:00
  by the fact that the technique of opticals and camera movement and lighting was at
• 54:06
  an apex in the thirties. And I'm like, well, why is this?
• 54:08
  Like thirties and forties, fifties and started to slow down by the sixties,
• 54:12
  was out unless it was a very special director like Hitchcock, right,
• 54:15
  or David Lean or something like that. But the thirties, Kubrick, but
• 54:21
  the thirties had transitions and moves like I've never seen before, right, And
• 54:25
  I go, what is this? And I started thinking about it. I
• 54:29
  go, whoa nineteen thirty, nineteen twenty seven, twenty seven, twenty eight.
• 54:32
  Sound came in. Before sound, they had to rely strictly on the
• 54:37
  visuals, so they were well flexed in the visual and opticals. Right,
• 54:39
  you look at Metropolis and the optical multi layer opticals, okay, and the
• 54:45
  framing in that. Oh, So they started leaning more towards dialogue and now
• 54:49
  da da da, they started going away from technique of the visual. And
• 54:53
  that was an epiphany I came to. I don't know if it's correct a
• 54:57
  film theory, but an epiphany I came through this last year because I'm deep
• 55:00
  diving on thirties films and I'm like, oh my god, I'm so embarrassed
• 55:06
  that I thought that we can out scal them. You know, it's like,
• 55:09
  no, you can't. Creativity is creativity. It doesn't age, you
• 55:14
  know. I mean you look at you look at something like seven Samurai,
• 55:17
  or you look at you know, any of the Conquar Sawa films, at
• 55:21
  murashimanor all of those. You just started looking. You're like, oh,
• 55:25
  okay, yeah, I just I just okay, I got I got it.
• 55:30
  But they're doing it at a time when there was no video monitors.
• 55:32
  They couldn't even Sergio Leone didn't have a video monitor with those close ups.
• 55:37
  Bro, watch I Am Cuba? Are you kidding me? Watch that movie?
• 55:40
  I Am Cuba? And you're just sitting there like, who never heard
• 55:45
  of these filmmakers doing stuff with like five thousand pound cameras that look like they're
• 55:51
  doing it with an iPhone. They're you know, putting things on girt,
• 55:54
  on on wires and putting them in the middle of the street while there's a
• 55:58
  revolution. Goo, what is going on? And that was what the sixties.
• 56:04
  It was in the sixties of Him My Mistakes, it was and it
• 56:07
  was hidden. Yeah, that's amazing thing. It's like, that's what's amazing
• 56:12
  about those films is like it was much tougher, much heavier equipment, Like
• 56:15
  you're saying, right, communication they didn't even have walkie talkie early cinema,
• 56:22
  right, they didn't have crack well control, they they didn't have a lot
• 56:25
  of things. It was a lot tougher. And then you had to get
• 56:29
  printed scripts, do everything by phone. There's no digitally sending the print or
• 56:34
  script to well someone across town to read it right away. It's it's amazing.
• 56:38
  It's like it just shows you something like put those people nowadays, Oh,
• 56:43
  they're running circles around all of us. I mean, can you they
• 56:45
  already wore But let's say, can you imagine Kubrick with today's technology? Can
• 56:50
  you imagine Hitchcock wonder? I'm so that's that's a that's a fascinating thing.
• 56:54
  You just said like, what what Hitchcock and Kubrick embrace digital or what they
• 57:00
  like these other handful of directors who don't know, I'm only gonna shooting film,
• 57:04
  which well, I thought I was gonna be one of those guys in
• 57:06
  film school. I was I'll never leave film, like I'll never leave film.
• 57:08
  No, man, we talked about it before. It's like, I
• 57:10
  love the control of digital. I love knowing I can sleep at night.
• 57:15
  I got it right. You don't have to wait the next day to Oh
• 57:19
  you roll the dice? Oh was the gate? Was there a hair at
• 57:21
  the gate? Oh? Was there? The great monitor? You can see
• 57:23
  you can put your lut on there. You can see how the setting,
• 57:25
  the customs react to it. Like, no, I'm not into the mystery
• 57:30
  dog. Forget that. K agreed, but you got But the thing is
• 57:34
  that both you and I had the opportunity to shoot thirty five, to shoot
• 57:37
  sixteen, to shoot super eight, to play with those things you know,
• 57:43
  to do cross processing in the lab, to get image, get image saturation
• 57:47
  with the load. And I am the stalgic about I am the staljack about
• 57:51
  it. In one way, I like to emulate it. I like the
• 57:54
  look of it. It doesn't mean I want to use that tool to get
• 57:57
  the look. I want to use this tool to get the look, you
• 58:00
  know, because this tool gives me greater comfort and control, and I can
• 58:04
  even do my blow ups and repose and stabilizations much more, not easier.
• 58:09
  It just there's another word for it. It comes down to quality and control.
• 58:15
  And people can debate this thing about you know, you hear different people
• 58:19
  say that thirty five millimeters a K or ten K, and then you're hearing
• 58:22
  another DP tell me, no, it's nothing better than ten eighty. It's
• 58:25
  pixels versus grain depending on the stock you pick. You know, so you
• 58:30
  know, at a certain point you're human eye. After four K, it's
• 58:34
  not even didn't okay, I dare dare the audience member to know the difference.
• 58:39
  You know, you really can't tell the difference. I mean then now
• 58:43
  there's a little bit difference with the H I forget what's called with the color
• 58:45
  grading DR. Yah HDR. You get a little bit more color. I
• 58:50
  did. We did a past and it's a trip, man, dude,
• 58:53
  it's a trip. They bring it two monitors and they're coloring my Maxine's coloring
• 58:59
  the andred one. I forgot what rec seven o nine or whatever it is,
• 59:02
  and then ahtr and depending on your TV screen, you can get the
• 59:07
  HDR version of the Continental. Right at first, I'm like, well,
• 59:09
  I didn't understand what. I know what HDR is. You know how it
• 59:13
  grabs the highlights in the mids and lows and it balance it out basically in
• 59:15
  your phone. I know what it is in theory. But when I'm looking
• 59:19
  at this image that's HR looks more contrasted. I mean, it's popping more.
• 59:22
  I go. I didn't think that's what HDR was. But there's something
• 59:25
  going on there that I actually preferred that over the rec. Seven oh nine
• 59:30
  or whatever. If I'm term you like that quite fascinating. But but your
• 59:37
  whole filmography is that you like poppy stuff. Dude, Like, look at
• 59:39
  back a little book of your contrast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're
• 59:45
  crunching, you're crudging the blocks, you're popping the highlights, You're making things
• 59:49
  a little bit poppier. That's my style to love. But the difference is
• 59:52
  if you I don't know what time type of the TV you're watching, I'm
• 59:55
  assuming you have a huge TV. You're watching the one and not the laptop
• 1:00:00
  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:00:07
  the show. Yeah, just goes watching it on this last night, it
• 1:00:13
  was great. Yeah, the difference is that a problem? I shouldn't watch
• 1:00:17
  it lest No, no, no, no, we're talking. We're just
• 1:00:20
  talking about that generation get ready for it. And we all we by the
• 1:00:22
  way, it's funny, but we all do have to be aware of that,
• 1:00:24
  right. But like, if you look at the lighting style of episode
• 1:00:30
  one and two, I chose this really young VP, really dope. He's
• 1:00:35
  a hippie dude, long hair from Norway, right, sweet man, just
• 1:00:38
  an artist, right, but he's more into ambient light, you know,
• 1:00:43
  fill the wrong little smoke and not hard light, soft light. And I
• 1:00:46
  started learning along the way that I actually love the way it looks. It's
• 1:00:51
  not what I've done with in the pastor talking about contrasts, it's harder to
• 1:00:53
  do contrast with lying style like that. It's you're seeing lighting. So what
• 1:01:00
  I learned during the show was when you couple that with these old lenses,
• 1:01:05
  they can get dangerous. You have to watch happen, right, So I
• 1:01:07
  get to the third episode with Peter Deming shoots it, who I've worked with
• 1:01:12
  them from Hell and a bunch of other stuff old time. He's been around.
• 1:01:15
  He's done Austin Powers, he's done the Scream series, he's done Lost
• 1:01:19
  Highway with David Lynns Mulhall and Drive. He's been around. So at a
• 1:01:22
  certain point, we're shooting and I can't wait for you to see three.
• 1:01:24
  We're shooting it. He just goes Howard trying to introduce a little hard light
• 1:01:30
  here, and I didn't know what he meant, right, because I do
• 1:01:32
  have in my style guide in no our lighting this that shadows silhouettes, and
• 1:01:37
  you need hard lighting for that kind of stuff usually. Okay, So we
• 1:01:40
  wrap the whole thing and I see him at the premiere and I'm talking to
• 1:01:43
  him and I said, I know what you mean. Now moving forward,
• 1:01:46
  we have to be careful with these lenses. I love what they've done for
• 1:01:49
  the show because they fucket it up with that kind of more diffused look.
• 1:01:52
  But moving forward with this, I want to use more hard light. And
• 1:01:57
  I now know what you were saying that, Dave, Peter like, thank
• 1:02:00
  cue basically right, because this is why. Actually when you see episode three,
• 1:02:04
  you'll see what Peter Demming did with those lenses. He's still within the
• 1:02:07
  same style of lighting, but he's he's like, we're creeping into we're not
• 1:02:12
  using handheld. I got out of handheld because I'm actually not a fan of
• 1:02:15
  it. I think me and you talked about it before. It's not control
• 1:02:17
  to me. It works in the John Wick world for certain things, and
• 1:02:21
  Chasta Helski does it wonderfully because he's not doing it in that pult Paul ring
• 1:02:24
  Grass style. Chaste Helki is more it's almost it's almost a steadicam the way
• 1:02:29
  they use it for Canto. You know, we went a little bit more
• 1:02:31
  raw with a staircase scene because it's the seventies. You can get away with
• 1:02:37
  a throwback handheld look, you know. But you'll see if you go from
• 1:02:39
  episode one, two and three, there is not one handheld shot in three.
• 1:02:45
  There's a little in two, and there's a few Dutch tilts in there
• 1:02:49
  that I had to adjust and put in because I'm not into big into Dutch
• 1:02:52
  tails. But that was that director's thing, and you know, I had
• 1:02:57
  to just the other episodes because of it, so I was able to go
• 1:03:00
  put a Dutch children one. That's what's great about TV. You can,
• 1:03:02
  oh, well, that director did that. It is not necessarily in my
• 1:03:05
  style guide, but I can course correct this a little bit for the audience,
• 1:03:07
  you know, you know, it's it's interesting. I shot with the
• 1:03:13
  Super Bowl tars back in the day on a red for the same reason you
• 1:03:17
  shot with the Arie and these older the super Bowl tars were like dirty from
• 1:03:22
  the forties, very hard. Like the thing was like I forgot last home
• 1:03:27
  made him. I don't know who made him, but anyway, like they
• 1:03:29
  gave it a funky look because the red had this hard edge digital thing.
• 1:03:35
  Arie. Yeah. Yeah, the very older ones had really hard edges,
• 1:03:39
  and I'm like, I can't, I can't. I need something to soften
• 1:03:43
  it up. But then you start throwing a little ambiance and there a little
• 1:03:45
  a little smoke in there. Yeah you get by the way, the red
• 1:03:49
  used to eat up smoke. Did you notice, Oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:52
  the first test we did it like register and film the red wood just eat
• 1:03:55
  it up and make it go away in a way like you had to seek
• 1:03:59
  the room more for a red, right exactly. Then when you start,
• 1:04:00
  when you know how it is to smoke, like the Tony Scott stuff,
• 1:04:03
  Like when you start Tony Scott enging it up a little bit. It's hard,
• 1:04:08
  man, It's hard to control the light. It's hard to then and
• 1:04:11
  you try to match it for cuts. You get it, dude, I
• 1:04:15
  mean you always, you always run into that problem. But if you if
• 1:04:17
  you have a good stage, that's the only way to control it. Yeah,
• 1:04:21
  that's the only way you have that. But you know what I want
• 1:04:24
  to do? Yeah, no, yeah, you definitely have to have a
• 1:04:27
  good what do you call it? It's the effects guys, the set effects
• 1:04:30
  guys that do it. The DP and gaffer have to keep their eye on
• 1:04:33
  it, the camera operators keep his eye in it, the director has to
• 1:04:36
  keep his eye in it, and everybody's like checking the levels. And now
• 1:04:40
  you can reference the other shot now, thank god. Like back in the
• 1:04:43
  day you could you couldn't do that. But it's interesting because Peter does some
• 1:04:46
  of that you're talking about. You'll see in episode three when you get there.
• 1:04:49
  There's a lot of the shaft lighting come starting to push into it early
• 1:04:54
  on. Yeah, yeah, that's why I want to bring Kirk. Well,
• 1:04:58
  I want to bring Kirk back because if you'll have us, if you'll
• 1:05:00
  have us, of course, and we could do because we're lining up episode
• 1:05:02
  three there's a lot of screenings going on for episode three with Collider, and
• 1:05:06
  you know, there's other screens going on around town, and they're actually,
• 1:05:11
  you know, hopefully this thing in Hollywood will be over soon. You know.
• 1:05:15
  I'm I'm praying and everybody would be able to meet the actors and the
• 1:05:20
  others. But for Kirk and I to come talk to you about three,
• 1:05:24
  because I think you're you're going to see a lot of stuff in there that
• 1:05:28
  we grew we grew up, we grew up on nice Well, of course
• 1:05:32
  you're of course You're welcome, sir anytime. And I'd love to talk to
• 1:05:36
  Kurti as well. I have to ask you this one question, man,
• 1:05:40
  What was the toughest day outset? How did you overcome it? Man?
• 1:05:43
  Oh, jeez, man, you have to pray. This is this is
• 1:05:45
  why we went three and a half hours generation where well, god, no,
• 1:05:49
  well we'll still start wrapping it up soon. I just we was still
• 1:05:54
  wrapping it up. But I no, I mean, you hit me with
• 1:05:56
  something that I gotta say is like you saw it because you you you you
• 1:05:59
  see in the first episode, it was the toughest shoot day of my life.
• 1:06:03
  As that party scene that appears to be a winner. But we stitched
• 1:06:06
  together three shots and the issue was, and I don't want to come off
• 1:06:11
  on kind here, I'm gonna say I'm gonna try to thread the needle here.
• 1:06:14
  If you're conducting an orchestra and one instruments out of place, you know
• 1:06:18
  you have to have a little talk with the flute player and if the instruments
• 1:06:24
  still out of place, you might have to think about replacing the flute player.
• 1:06:27
  Well, we had the flute player and the violinist was out of tune,
• 1:06:31
  and I saw some early signs of it, and that the shot was
• 1:06:36
  way more challenging than it had to be. Okay, because if you correctly
• 1:06:42
  planet, you get your your extras and pods. You know you're dealing with
• 1:06:45
  animals, you know you're dealing with air lists, You're dealing with a lot
• 1:06:47
  of things. In that shot. You're hiding things, you're revealing things you
• 1:06:54
  need the whole And that's what I love about a wonder That's what I told
• 1:06:56
  the crew and Budapest, and they were wonderful. By the way, had
• 1:06:59
  nothing to do with the Hungarian crew because they were fucking fantastic. Okay,
• 1:07:01
  it was either an American or British I'm talking about okay, and they're supposed
• 1:07:05
  to be fantastic. What I said is what I love about one or is
• 1:07:10
  is you can get a lot done quickly. That's one thing you have.
• 1:07:14
  The aesthetic thing is another thing, which you know about right the thing.
• 1:07:16
  The other thing it does that most people don't give enough way too, is
• 1:07:23
  no one hasn't escaped, not the actor, not wardrobe, not hair,
• 1:07:27
  not makeup. Everybody's exposed, not the grips. Everybody's exposed. Okay,
• 1:07:31
  So they get to this heightened sense of they go into fighter pilot mode because
• 1:07:35
  they don't want to be the weak link. And if you drop a warner
• 1:07:40
  on them every other day or every day, a mini one or a long
• 1:07:43
  runner, you know you don't have to do it a lot. You're just
• 1:07:45
  doing it to save time on a certain section of the scene or whatever.
• 1:07:48
  Your crew gets into fighter pilot mode because they don't want to be the weak
• 1:07:53
  link, and they all super they are super focused. Not if you do
• 1:07:56
  coverage, they start to unFocus because they know that you can cut a round
• 1:08:00
  a mistake, if an equipment piece of drops, if an actor flows a
• 1:08:04
  line, if hair and makeup, don't get the hair out of a nine
• 1:08:08
  time, they'll let the take continue. So it does this wonderful thing mentally
• 1:08:13
  to the crew. And so I have this scene that you're asking the question
• 1:08:15
  about, and by the end of it, it just felt like I went
• 1:08:17
  ten rounds with Mike Tyson because I didn't have I had the proper support of
• 1:08:23
  eighty percent of the crew, of ninety percent of the crew. That ten
• 1:08:26
  percent really really affected the day on what shouldn't have been an easy shot,
• 1:08:31
  but what should have been a normal one or one day if it was properly
• 1:08:39
  done by everybody being at their best. But again, this is what post
• 1:08:44
  is for. This is what why repo, why stabilize, why building hidden
• 1:08:49
  cuts, and this is why people you know sometimes like there's some filmmakers I'll
• 1:08:55
  take swipe out other filmmakers that's not a real one er. Well, it
• 1:08:58
  doesn't matter. If it's for the audience to have the impression you're doing something
• 1:09:02
  in real time, the audience doesn't know that just because you know that jackass
• 1:09:06
  doesn't mean it's not about how you do it. It's about the result,
• 1:09:12
  basically, you know. So, yeah, the toughest day of my career.
• 1:09:15
  You could say the same thing about rope. That's not a real water.
• 1:09:19
  I'm like, okay, but it's Hitchcock and he was doing it in
• 1:09:21
  seven cuts. Shut the hell up. Yeah yeah, I mean, come
• 1:09:26
  on, shut the hell no, that's just I mean, he still has
• 1:09:29
  the record. He kind of still has the record if you think about it,
• 1:09:31
  because it's per real during film he has the record. Oh no,
• 1:09:35
  I won't touch them. Yeah no, what I mean? He was insane,
• 1:09:38
  It was insane. But we can we done the three hours on Hitchcock
• 1:09:41
  alone. So I want to ask you a few questions that I ask all
• 1:09:45
  the guests. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 1:09:54
  now back to the show. See how if they've changed the bit since last
• 1:09:59
  you were here. What advice would you give? What advice would you give
• 1:10:02
  a filmmaker trying to break into day's business. I remember my last answer.
• 1:10:10
  I think it had to do with talent, And sometimes you can develop your
• 1:10:15
  talent, but you have to know if you have the talent for what you're
• 1:10:17
  trying to do. If you if you're saying filmmaker by director, you mean
• 1:10:20
  director, not writer, not cameraman. Filmmaker recognize if you have talent early.
• 1:10:28
  If you do, keep going. If you don't, and you have
• 1:10:30
  to be honest with yourself, get out of the way, is what I
• 1:10:31
  said in the last podcast, because you're wasting space for people who need that
• 1:10:35
  space. Right, There's plenty of other jobs in this business that you can
• 1:10:39
  do. I'm breaking into the business. I think I would say, just
• 1:10:44
  keep shooting, no matter who's watching, if it's just your mom or you
• 1:10:46
  and a room alone, that's all I do in I have two hundred fifty
• 1:10:50
  shorts, so nobody's ever seen couple of them. A couple, Oh,
• 1:10:56
  I said it up to you, like those are the ones I make available
• 1:10:59
  to my friends, like a handful of I think five or ten? Right,
• 1:11:02
  I don't, I don't know. What do you go? Like?
• 1:11:05
  You practice your craft and the most important thing, it's like, I don't
• 1:11:10
  say this enough. It's like, you have to be willing to do it
• 1:11:12
  when nobody's watching and still love it. If you love it when nobody's watching,
• 1:11:17
  you got yourself a plan. Beautiful, beautiful answer, sir. That
• 1:11:23
  should be a T shirt. I'm just saying, right under a hustle,
• 1:11:28
  that was like a T shirt. Albert if you can go back in time
• 1:11:32
  and talk to little Albert, what advice would you give him? All right,
• 1:11:39
  now, this is a new answer, I know. I think this
• 1:11:41
  is a new answer question. The new answer is when you're young, you
• 1:11:45
  think wisdom or being wise is goes hand in hand with being smart. It
• 1:11:50
  actually doesn't. I think wisdom means to me, I don't know the literal
• 1:11:55
  definition means to me, you learn from the past and you adjust, and
• 1:12:00
  that makes you smart enough. You're smart enough to adjust, let's say,
• 1:12:03
  and you collect enough enough of these experiences that you know what to do quite
• 1:12:08
  clearly in the future. And I would tell my younger self to go easy
• 1:12:12
  on myself and to not take it so hard. That this is part of
• 1:12:16
  the process of trying to become wiser in this job or this position. And
• 1:12:23
  then you cannot rush that. You can't rush wisdom. Wisdom takes time.
• 1:12:28
  You can rush talent a lot, Like you've seen some flashing of pan boxers,
• 1:12:34
  lawyers, filmmakers, writers, entertainers, filmmaker that you've seen them like
• 1:12:40
  woof super talented, but they don't have the wisdom yet, but they're still
• 1:12:44
  super talent, and they can rush their talent you know, what is the
• 1:12:48
  lesson that took the longest to learn, whether in the film business or in
• 1:12:50
  life up patience? You know, answer, you know like yeah, but
• 1:12:59
  you like you have to hurt and wait. But the thing I think we
• 1:13:02
  talked about last time, it's like, don't get involved in every argument it
• 1:13:05
  takes place in front of you that has to do with your film. It's
• 1:13:09
  a waste of time. Let those people figure it out. And you know,
• 1:13:12
  poke in proud a little bit and kind of have a I've learned how
• 1:13:15
  to do this. I'm never good because I think I have a little bit
• 1:13:17
  of ANTD problem as I wasn't good at tuning out the room when you're in
• 1:13:21
  a conference room and people are talking, because sometimes you'll have your production designer
• 1:13:26
  and prop guy not on the same page and they may be arguing up to
• 1:13:29
  the side, or the picture car guy might be arguing with somebody else,
• 1:13:32
  and you think it's an unhealthy thing to see an argument, but it's quite
• 1:13:35
  healthy, and if you get involved in it, it's going to stress you
• 1:13:40
  out and you're not gonna be able to use your job. They're there to
• 1:13:42
  help you, and they're there to do their jobs. Professionally, and just
• 1:13:46
  because they're creatively arguing about something, it doesn't mean you need to get involved,
• 1:13:51
  because that can taxt you. And what you need to do is have
• 1:13:54
  a way of just making it noise. And then if you hear a trigger
• 1:13:57
  word where you need to get into stir the pot one direction, do that,
• 1:14:00
  but generally stay out of it because the best idea usually comes out when
• 1:14:04
  the creative crew starts having a healthy debate. Very good, and of course
• 1:14:11
  the toughest of all the questions, three of your favorite films of all time?
• 1:14:15
  Did I answer this one before? Yeah, we talked about one I
• 1:14:18
  remember. Yeah, they remained the same. Okay, Midnight Cowboys number one
• 1:14:24
  for a lot of reasons. Taxi Driver got not knocked out of the number
• 1:14:28
  one position long ago by Taxi Driver was there forever. Okay, it's Midnight
• 1:14:33
  Cowboy, It's Man Bites Dog is second, and Taxi Driver is third.
• 1:14:39
  That's what we remember because there's very few people who know that freaking film,
• 1:14:44
  and it is oh amazing. You had a run me and you had a
• 1:14:49
  run on it. We went on a run about it, okay, because
• 1:14:51
  it's so inside baseball too. It is such a christ look at the film.
• 1:14:58
  It is, but if you look at the there's no reason at faith
• 1:15:02
  value of somebody looked at my list should believe that should be number two of
• 1:15:06
  a taxi driver. And the reason it's forget all the stuff that me and
• 1:15:10
  you know, and I'll finish with this. It's for the reason is it's
• 1:15:15
  the only film and the history of me watching films that made me question my
• 1:15:19
  own moral compass. I was okay with a bunch of shitting that film into
• 1:15:26
  that one scene, and then I walked out. I draw the line there.
• 1:15:30
  And then I got a Criterion laser and I watched the rest of it,
• 1:15:32
  and I go, oh my god, it's not the film, it's
• 1:15:34
  me. This is a statement about me, and that's far more important than
• 1:15:40
  watching a mentally deranged taxi driver done well by my hero Scorsese, a film
• 1:15:46
  that shakes you like that and rejigger and by the way, Minnick Cowboy did
• 1:15:50
  the same. It made me question a lot of things about growing up and
• 1:15:56
  what I saw with my mom and my dad, and you know what's you
• 1:16:00
  know there. You know, there's a debate between me and my daughter about
• 1:16:02
  whether they're two heterosexual men in love or whether they're repressed homosexuals and that form
• 1:16:08
  a bond. Let's say okay, and you can have that debate. And
• 1:16:11
  I finally found the answer and I was wrong. So that that film is
• 1:16:15
  just special to me because a foreigner made it from England, John Schlessinger came
• 1:16:20
  to New York. And it also blows my mind that this lunatic what's his
• 1:16:26
  name, the actor, right wing lunatic Voyd, Like he's gone, yeah,
• 1:16:30
  he's gone so far, like almost almost into Nazi territory. Because my
• 1:16:34
  daughter walking in with her dog right now, I'm moving the camera with go
• 1:16:38
  ahead, yeah, because me and him go along a little. No,
• 1:16:44
  It's like I could I couldn't believe that John Boyd would do. You have
• 1:16:48
  to be liberal minded and open minded to do that type of filth, you
• 1:16:51
  know, So that that shocked me. Oh and Deliverance, he the Deliverance
• 1:16:58
  too. I gotta watch it again, I dude, No, I gotta
• 1:17:00
  watch that film again because I haven't seen this in my childhood and that says
• 1:17:05
  a lot about you. And that says a lot about you that you saw
• 1:17:09
  Deliverance in your child Well, parents took me to inappropriate movies back then.
• 1:17:15
  There was also only so many Disney films playing in the theater, so there
• 1:17:18
  was it was Deliverance or nothing. My dad took me. My dad took
• 1:17:21
  me to see all that jazz, and I distinctly remember the nudity and the
• 1:17:26
  open heart surgery. And I recently saw it again and went out of Bob
• 1:17:29
  Fosse run and it's exactly as I remember, except for the nudity. When
• 1:17:32
  you're a kid, it's amplified. You're like, oh my god, you
• 1:17:34
  know it's a but that's a fantastic film. And so it's cabaret like I
• 1:17:40
  did dive from him and he's He's just amazing, Albert. It is a
• 1:17:45
  pleasure and as always talking to you. Where can people find and watch your
• 1:17:50
  new Opus the Continental. It's on Peacock. The premiere episode was last Friday,
• 1:17:57
  the twenty second, I believe, but I'm jet right. That was
• 1:18:00
  episode one. Episode two is on the twenty ninth Friday to twenty ninth.
• 1:18:06
  Episode three is October the sixth and a Friday. And get to episode three,
• 1:18:11
  everybody, because it's building. That's it's all building towards how Winston gets
• 1:18:14
  that hotel, and then it builds to an explosion, and I'm telling everybody
• 1:18:17
  that I'm going to see Alex again with Kirk ward our show running to the
• 1:18:21
  Stuff episode three in the near future, very near future. I can't wait
• 1:18:27
  to have you back. And the last question is there another Are we going
• 1:18:30
  to keep expanding this John Wick world that's up to like lions Gate into producers.
• 1:18:35
  I have no idea. It's a wonderful world. You know, you
• 1:18:41
  can go so many different directions. It's so many different crazy characters. I
• 1:18:45
  suspect they will. They have the Army's Ballerini coming out next year, and
• 1:18:51
  it feels like it's ready made for it. Plus it's fresh. It's not
• 1:18:55
  a superhero. I P you know, so I whether exactly and whether that's
• 1:19:02
  what's He pointed out something I've never heard before. That's an adult ipe.
• 1:19:05
  Never it's an adult PG thirteen. I P or PG. There's never adult
• 1:19:12
  I pas out there really like this should be a taxi driver, right,
• 1:19:16
  pet, Like they should do another like what let's go into that. But
• 1:19:19
  that's fascinating, that's fascinating. I think like whether I'm involved or not,
• 1:19:25
  it doesn't matter. I'm just a fan of the show that we did.
• 1:19:29
  I'm a fan of the movies, and they keep making them and they're good.
• 1:19:31
  I'll keep watching them. Bruh as always, thank you for coming on.
• 1:19:35
  We can keep going and I wish we could, but we're going to
• 1:19:39
  come back with Kurr and we have a part two. We have a part
• 1:19:41
  two. We'll have a part two. Okay, My pleasure is always my
• 1:19:44
  friend. Thank you so much, you too. I want to thank Albert
• 1:19:48
  so much for coming on the show and sharing his knowledge and experience and stories
• 1:19:54
  with all of us. If you want to get links to anything we spoke
• 1:19:57
  about in this episode, head over to the show notes at film muscle dot
• 1:20:00
  com. Forward slash seven one nine. Thank you so much for listening to
• 1:20:04
  guys as always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay
• 1:20:09
  safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
• 1:20:12
  the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie film hustle dot com. That's I N
• 1:20:15
  D I E F I L M h ustl dot com.