Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 376: How to Make Money in TODAY's Indie Film with Jon Erwin

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BPS 376: How to Make Money in TODAY's Indie Film with Jon Erwin · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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  Episode number three seventy six. A dream without the process is a nightmare.
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  Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should
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  be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
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  the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
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  And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode
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  of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now,
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  today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script
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  coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are
• 0:57
  and the goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down
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  by three categories, micro budget, indie film, market and studio film.
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  There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that's used to reading tempole movies
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  when your movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars. And
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  we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script Coverage, our readers have
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  worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney,
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  Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So
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  if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on
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  over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys, today on the show we
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  have one of the most successful independent film producers slash directors working in the business
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  today. We have on the show producer and director John Irwin of the Irwin
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  Brothers. If you remember, we also had his brother on Andrew a few
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  a bunch of episodes ago promoting and talking about American Underdog, with which was
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  also an independent film that did extremely well. And John and I had a
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  deep conversation about what makes him successful, him and his brother successful in the
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  crazy world of independent film. And it is exactly what I've been saying since
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  I wrote my book Rise of the Film Entrepreneur. It is about the niche.
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  The riches are in the niches, and John and Andrew both understand their
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  audience, how to get to their audience and to create product or films that
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  serve that audience. We go deep and how they did it, how they're
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  continuing to do it, and where they're going to be going in the future,
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  and where this whole business is going to be going from his opinion.
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  So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with John Irwin.
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  I like to welcome to the show, John Irwin. How you doing,
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  John? I'm good man. You've already had my brother on so set the
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  bar low. You know, you've had the You've had the suave, friendly
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  brother on the you know, like mad scientist brother. I think he calls
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  me anyway, So but thanks for having me on that. Yeah, yeah,
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  I've had Andy. I had Andy on when you guys were promoting American
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  Underdog, which I love that film. And after I watched that film,
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  I went back and I just went through your catalog because I was so impressed
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  with how that film was put together story wise. I was like, man,
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  there's something here. And then I went and then I'd heard of your
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  other films I hadn't seen, you know, I Still Believe and can you
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  Imagine and all those kind of films, and my wife and I just sat
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  there and binged them. All. Man, you guys are doing some really
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  Yeah, you guys are doing some really good Yeah. I'm seriously, you
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  guys are doing some really good stuff. So when your new film Jesus Revolution
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  came up, I was like, oh, I gotta have I gotta have
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  John on. You know, if I had the one, I gotta have
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  the other one on and then both of you on, and I will be
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  we'll do it together. Right now, we're dividing and conquering. You know,
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  we do so much grass roots marketing. But I'm glad you enjoyed the
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  film. I mean, ultimately, it's a privilege. I mean, it's
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  a privileged to entertain people like it's I just think that the business of entertainment
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  is so hard, and you know, sometimes sucks on a certain level because
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  it's so higher competitive. You know, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of
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  just how cool it is to get to do what we do. You know,
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  And anytime that you can have you can sort of see something in your
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  mind or feel it deeply in your soul, write it on a piece of
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  paper, and then hundreds of people come around you to make that thing real.
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  And you're you're sitting there with an audience and they're they're they're they're moved
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  by it, and they're watching it as if it were real. It's like
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  magic, it's like dreaming while away. And it is a privilege to do
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  this, and I'm grateful for the audience to supporting the work enough to let
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  us do this for a living. And this is a job that you should
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  like work another job, like behind a death for years and years and years,
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  save up some money and just blow it all getting to do this.
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  So the fact that we get paid at all for this is really really cool.
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  It's a it's a miracle that anything gets made. It's a miracle that
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  any gets made. And that isn't fascinating that as as an artist, we
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  are the artist that spends the least amount of time doing the art, which
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  is the days on set are so few and far between. It's mostly revving
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  up to get the damn thing made, writing and getting it produced, trying
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  to raise money, do all that stuff. Then you spend, if you're
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  lucky, thirty to sixty days. If you're lucky. Yeah, I was,
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  I'm trying to name so I was talking to you, but having said
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  that, now I'm going to I'm talking to Mel Gibson about his movie Hackshaw
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  Ridch is a very good movie. You know. It's the director's question,
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  like, I was like, how many days did you have to shoot it?
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  And he was like, man, you know, they didn't quite have
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  their money together. I had to shoot that movie in fifty eight days shooting.
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  I'm like, I would shoot two movies now, and he's like,
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  well, on break Part we had eighty five. I'm like, I would
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  shoot three movies. So I've never had more than thirty days to shoot a
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  movie. And uh, and and there's there's magic to that, though,
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  I think we're absence of the absence of limitation is the death of creativity.
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  Like there's magic to being in a corner, back into a corner, feeling
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  panicked, you know, and and uh and not being able to second guess
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  your instincts. But but yeah, you're right. You prep for months,
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  you shoot for just this small time, you know, and it's like summer
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  camp, and then it's over, and then you then you edit it for
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  months, and then you market it for months, and so you're right.
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  The actual making of the theme of the thing and the overall process is very
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  very short. And if you want to really get crazy, if you remember
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  John wu on the Killer. He had one hundred and seventy days. Oh,
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  come on, what do you do? What do you do? You
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  show you and you're like, okay, there's a good day. You basically
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  shoot those insane action sequences until your heart's content. Like that's how he was
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  able to make The Killer and Hard Boiled. He had like a one hundred
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  and forty and eighty day. That's insane, man, That's that's insane.
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  That's yeah. Maybe so I have no idea. I don't I don't even
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  know. I don't know I would I wouldn't know what to do. I
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  would have no clue how to even show up for a day's work. We're
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  going to shoot. It happened, guys. We're going to shoot. Yeah,
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  shoot is lying. I'm gonna get it eighteen different ways than we're done.
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  Yeah, it's uh. You know what's funny though, is is for
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  the independent filmmakers out there. I think for me when we used to do
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  music videos, you know, our career started in sports television, a lot
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  about our age, lot about my sweecom cameraman, and uh, somebody got
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  sick randomly, and then my dad bought us a camera, started making stuff
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  and it's like that Malcolm Gladwell ten thousand hour rule uh uh kicked in.
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  Just you know, I really think what we do is, to your point,
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  much more of a business than it is an art form. It's the
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  symphony of art. And it's also much more of a craft than it is
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  an art form, and it's it combines of ours. But a craft is
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  something you'd sort of like just get better and better at every day, you
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  know, and in sort of an inerative process. It's sort of like you
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  against you, and it's a quest to just improve and slowly but surely seek
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  to master your craft. But you know, way back in the day,
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  we would make all kinds of music videos. That was sort of our grind,
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  and we would do a bunch of them, like four or five a
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  month and for like five hundred bucks, like five hundred bucks thousand. Well
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  that's the thing. We'll know. What happened is it was after Napster and
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  so Andy and I came into Nashville and the whole industry was like, there
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  are no more three hundred thousand dollars music videos. What are we going to
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  do? Well? And we were like, someone's going to pay us fifteen
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  thousand dollars to do a music video, Let's do all of them, you
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  know, and so we just we just you know, and so we But
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  it was this process. But what I realized is whenever we were on the
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  random occasion that we had all the money in the world and there were you
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  know, it just becomes decisions by committee and there were twelve execs there and
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  all that stuff, there was a magic lost whenever. Like the way we
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  would do it is like Andy would prep up music video and so I would
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  show up to his set and I hadn't even heard the song, and then
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  he would show up to my set and he had. We would just sort
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  of leap frog, and there was just always a magic when we never quite
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  had enough and time or money. And there's something too, the strain of
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  having to solve problems creatively in an environment that's full of pressure that you can't
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  second guess your instincts. It's terrible for your health and you know, mental
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  sanity, but it really is good for the work. And so I'm a
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  huge fan of even like on the movie that you mentioned, American Underdog that
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  went from a forty six day schedule pre COVID to a thirty day schedule post
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  COVID because we had to cut a third of the budget out to keep it
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  greenlit. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
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  back to the show. And I don't think that that the other movie would
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  have been better. And a lot of a lot of the things that we
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  came up with, like using the real footage of the game, you know,
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  which and an editorial really did well. We couldn't choreograph near as much
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  stuff, so we choreographed what we could exactly as it happened in the real
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  game, and then that way we could use the actual game footage. But
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  and so there was a lot of articles, a lot of people saying that
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  was a great artistic choice, and I'm like, that wasn't an artistic choice.
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  That was a production limitation, you know. And so I think you
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  just find great ideas when you're constrained. Right. It's like It's Jaws is
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  the classic example of that. Right, Yeah, the Shark doesn't work.
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  Okay, I guess we're gonna don't show it. We're not going to show
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  the shark as much. And it kind of worked out for that that I
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  forgot the guy's name. One that one did well. I don't even know
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  that guy's name. Did he do anything else after? Now? That one
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  that was a fifty day shooting schedule, Jaws was they went one hundred and
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  fifty days. They went. But what not his fault? You met?
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  And can you imagine? That's his first big like he did Sugar Hairline Express,
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  he did Dual. We're talking about Steven spionwork everybody if you don't know,
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  and then and then you And this is his first kind of big studio
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  based on a best selling book. And he's like, I'm never going to
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  work again. I'm never going to work again. He's like, he's yeah,
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  he thought he was gonna get fired every day and his credit. Water
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  is horrible. Anytime you introduce water in any substantive way to to to our
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  industry, nature in general, nature in general, but water has specifically because
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  you got rain, got cold, you got the water, you can't move
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  everything just and it doesn't. It doesn't do what it even, it doesn't
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  do what you wanted to do. It doesn't. Boy does it look good?
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  Boy does it look good? I think in this movie that we just
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  did Jesus Revolution. There's a whole sequence in the rain and and and there's
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  also some underwater dive tank work and uh for this sort of dream sequence and
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  and uh I remember talking to a Keys cinematographer and I'm like, yeah,
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  I think we do the sequence in you know, a couple hours or whatever.
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  This conversation in the rain. He was like six hours later. I
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  was like, you were totally right at Keith, and uh, but you
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  know, we do have this thing that we say, uh, pain is
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  temporary, film is forever, you know, and I do believe in that,
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  like go for difficult, go for go for difficult, no question,
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  and because it's just better. So John, I mean, we just kind
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  of ran off because because a lot of people don't know who you you you
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  and and we we went on it. We just we just went because you
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  know, we just we just went off on theire audience probably. So tell
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  me tell me how you and your brother got You said you got into the
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  business by music videos. But your your first kind of after I'm not mistaken.
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  Your first narrative was October Baby or one of your first Yeah, it
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  was October and that was a completely indie film back then. How did you
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  raise the money for that? How did you, you know, get that
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  off the ground wasn't an easy film, you know, subject matter. Oh
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  yeah, yeah, when I start there, you know, looking back,
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  well, you know, basically we were you know, we we started as
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  sports Caramon when I was fifteen, and then we you know, when we
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  started, we were a service company. Really found our footing doing music videos
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  and commercials. And then I went to but you know, from the South,
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  born and raised in Birmingham out and you know, obviously, you know,
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  our faith has always been a huge part of our life and community and
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  upbringing and and and then you know, it's just around the time that all
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  all of this sort of new thing of faith based films was sort of emerging
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  post Passion of Christ, and Sony was doing faith based films and and so
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  I went to direct second Unit on a faith based film called Courageous in Georgia
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  and real cinerela story. This church was making these movies and Sony was funding
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  them, and they were doing like thirty million in the box office, and
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  you know, they were tiny films, like one to two million movies,
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  so it was amazing, and so I went down there to work on those
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  films. They want to do a police drama with car chases and action sequences
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  and like churches, making movies and car chases should never be combined. You
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  know, people will die. And so I was hired to sort of go
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  in and with professionals and take go far away from the set and do the
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  stomp work and do the action sequences, which I love. And the director
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  of that movie asked the question that you know, it doesn't really matter.
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  I think what your beliefs are is a great question to ask. He's like,
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  you know, you're trying to understand you, like, like what's your
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  purpose and the purpose of your work? Like why do you do what you
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  do? And I think a lot of us focus on what we do.
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  Very few of us focus on why we do what we do. And I
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  couldn't stop thinking about the question, Like I couldn't the whole time I was
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  working on film. I was like I couldn't stop thinking about it. And
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  that led to sort of the fusion of a career and a calling and the
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  idea of of joining the fray and jumping in on values based, faith based
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  entertainment, uh, you know, Heartland type stuff. And I remember we
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  were doing a film with Sean Aston and he said, I see you guys
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  as frontiersmen and pioneers. And I said, thank you, Sean, that's
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  high phraise. He's like, you know, most frontiersmen die on the frontier,
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  and and I'm like, well, the the name roads after us,
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  and the and the the trail will be paved. But what I learned was
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  it's such a it's such a privilege to be a part of anything that's emerging.
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  You know, most industries are. It's like the cement to the foundation
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  has hardened. So to be able to to make your mark on anything that's
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  emerging right in front of you is first of all, completely out of your
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  control. It's a factor of timing. So that's like technology in the seventies,
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  you know, in you know, computers, or or even that group
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  of directors like Spielberg and Scorsese and Lucas and Coppola and de Palm and all
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  those guys inventing the modern blockbuster. Like you just have to sort of catch
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  lightning in a bottle. So it's cool to to be a part of something,
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  you know, And so that led to a completely different business to finally
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  answer your question, which is which is going from a service company to an
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  intellectual properties company and starting raising money for for you know, our own films,
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  and October Baby was first. We had to raise eight hundred thousand dollars
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  to get the production of that movie made, and then we had to raise
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  the marketing as well. And the first quarter million, in no joke,
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  was from my grandmother, who I kept getting to remind that she had been
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  filmed. And then the second quarter million was from a surgeon named Jim who
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  we had filmed like one hundred and fifty of his orthopedic trauma cases. And
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  and so it's just you have to be very pragmatic. You got to get
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  really good at solving problems. And I think the thing that we didn't realize
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  was that that really helped us was that, you know, you really have
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  to think whalistically about a business, and uh, in entertainment we don't.
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  So we think so much about the product and then but we don't think about
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  how to market and distribute the product. And so as a filmmaker, a
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  lot of times it's like you're you're climbing a mountain and you get to the
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  top of the mountain and you know, you think that you've summoned at Everest
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  or something, and actually the fog clears and there's a mountain ahead of you
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  that's twice as tall, and and that's marketing and distribution, and so it
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  was very it was, it was, it was, it was. It
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  was good fortune at the time that we couldn't get a distributor for the film
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  and had to then go raise another three and a half million, which is
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  this category of money that we print in advertising called P and A to get
• 17:40
  the movie released. And then you know, you're throwing up in a in
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  a trash can on Thursday night because you've you've bet you know, your your
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  grandmother and everyone else's money that you know, and you know, you're thinking,
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  you know, it's funny, as you know, we make theatrical movies
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  and so you know, it's it's it's a it's a rare part of our
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  business that on a Friday, by about noon, you know, if the
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  last two years of your life were worth anything at all, it's like an
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  election, and I've experienced all sides of it, and it's a thrill.
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  But luckily the film went well and it cracked the top ten, and everyone
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  made money, thank god, including my grandmother made a film for Sony called
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  Mom's Night Out. Try to you know, I think one of the biggest
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  things that I would recommend is just like, if you can combine two things,
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  eventually you'll win. And those two things are just maybe call it grit
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  or just pain tolerance or endurance, perseverance. If you can perseverance, if
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  you can combine that with curiosity, eventually you'll win. Like if you can
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  just have a higher tolerance to pain and just keep going, like it's going
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  to take longer than anything. But if you keep going but you're not learning
• 18:52
  anything, then you're just gonna repeat your mistakes over and over again. There's
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  a lot of people like that. But if you have a level of tenacity
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  and perseverance and you match that with just being a student and learning all the
• 19:03
  time and trying to understand how things work, eventually you'll you'll catch your moment.
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  And for for me, I became obsessed with the interrelated disciplines of our
• 19:15
  industry that a lot of people resent, Like if you're a writer and director
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  in our industry, it's like, oh, the marketing people or the finance
• 19:22
  people. But what I learned is all these things are sort of inextricably linked,
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  you know. Uh, the high concept and script is essential to the
• 19:30
  marketing campaign and and the movie itself and its budget is essential to the overall
• 19:37
  p and l of the of the enterprise. And and so what I think
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  really helped me was the ability to think holistically and understand and just by by
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  by by virtue of having to being able to look sort of And I like
• 19:52
  the name of your book, the film film Entrepreneur. That's such a cool
• 19:57
  term. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
• 20:07
  back to the show. To try to really have the mindset or first and
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  foremost and then let your creativity funnel through that. I think it's a much
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  better way to be successful in our industry. Well, I mean, that's
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  the thing that the reason I wrote the book is because so many filmmakers and
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  I've been doing this now eight years, and I've been doing my business.
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  I've been doing the filmmakssry. We're almost thirty, so I've seen and played
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  in so many different sandboxes over the course of my career. But I keep
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  seeing filmmakers make the same mistakes. They just they they just like they're stuck
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  in the nineties. They think they're going to make a movie, go to
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  sun Dance and someone's going to come down from Mount Hollywood, write them a
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  check and then they're making a Marvel movie Like that's that's their idea of success.
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  But you know, you and I both know that that's not the reality.
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  Doesn't happen. Yeah, the marketplace, the marketplace isn't what it was
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  in the nineties. A movie like Slacker could find a could find its footing,
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  film like Clerks could find its footing in the nineties because there was the
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  new vhe the videos, that whole home entertainment safety net, you know,
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  so you can lose money at the time theatrically and then pick it up in
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  home entertainment, and the theatrical window was enough of a billboard to justify the
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  spend even if you lost a lot of money because home entertainment was so lucrative.
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  But that was a twenty thirty year bubble, you know, and unfortunately
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  it's changed. The other thing that the reason you got to stay curious is
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  we are in an industry that is rapidly changing, and so you know,
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  that's one of the I think the problems with film schools is if you're out
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  of the industry for four years, it's a different industry. And certainly COVID
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  has actually accelerated that change. And so what COVID did, and my contrarian
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  point of view is that COVID's COVID is gonna end up reshaping our industry very
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  similar town naps or reshape music. And what it's going to do is it
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  just it's going to pull forward about a decade of change into a more constricted
• 22:07
  window and it's going to take a lot of time for the now. Having
• 22:08
  said that, if you can sort of skate where the puck's going to be,
• 22:11
  as Wayne Gretsky said, there's enormous opportunities opening up, but you got
• 22:15
  to sort of let go of the past and really be hyper curious about the
• 22:18
  future and so learning to me being curious and learning, And I'm giving you
• 22:23
  an example of what you just said. We did our second film, our
• 22:26
  first film to five million, our second to ten was very profitable. Then
• 22:30
  we found our voice with a film called Woodlawn. We we you know they
• 22:33
  say a filmmaker finds their story and tells it over and over again, and
• 22:36
  are we found inspirational true stories? And that's just like our Niche spent raise
• 22:41
  all the money for the film raised about third of the p and A did
• 22:44
  the wrong deals, didn't basically make as much money as we hope. We're
• 22:48
  about fifteen in box office really needed to do twenty. And that was the
• 22:53
  first time I didn't get all the money back to the investors. We had
• 22:56
  like this perfect batting average up tilled in with the films in the back of
• 22:57
  entries, and we really I couldn't sleep at night. I just I hate
• 23:02
  to lose. It's like my philosophy is like, either either we win or
• 23:04
  let's just play again. Let's just whatever it is, ping pong, whatever
• 23:07
  you know, go go get it. So and so what we did is
• 23:12
  we actually, to me, a huge part of success is just learning to
• 23:18
  fail correctly and mindfully, and failure, in my opinion, is the great
• 23:23
  teacher if you'll let it be. And so with Woodlawn, we stopped and
• 23:29
  for five months, we studied it, We asked questions, and we did
• 23:33
  something that I don't know why more people don't do. We solicited a ton
• 23:37
  of criticism from people, like, if we're going to be an industry that
• 23:40
  has this whole category of people called critics that and we're going to read all
• 23:44
  those things obsessively, why not solicit criticism from people that actually care about you
• 23:48
  and want the best for you. So we went out to all of our
• 23:51
  friends and people in the campaign outside the campaign, what did we do wrong?
• 23:56
  How can we do better? What can we learn from this? And
• 24:00
  it ended up with this one hundred and seventy page you know, post mortem
• 24:06
  slash Jerry maguire manifesto, you know, And we saw insights the market,
• 24:12
  we saw a new business model, and that was the playbook that led to
• 24:17
  I Can Only Imagine, and I Can Only Imagine was built to break even
• 24:19
  at fifteen million in box office. It did that in its first two days,
• 24:22
  first three days, and it did so everything between that and the eighty
• 24:27
  six million in box office that it did and becoming number one in the Penn
• 24:30
  Film of the Year was margin. But that would have never happened if we
• 24:33
  hadn't failed number one, and we hadn't failed correctly number two and really learned
• 24:38
  we didn't make a better movie. We actually spent less on the movie with
• 24:41
  Imagine. We actually implemented a better business model and a much more innovative business
• 24:48
  model, and that's what led to the success of the movie. And we
• 24:52
  also learned a lot about what people wanted, and so I would just say
• 24:56
  that you have to embrace and what I found is the titans of our industry.
• 25:00
  Steven Spielberg, you know, we were just talking about he is as
• 25:03
  good a businessman, oh as he is an artist and filmmaker. He's produced
• 25:07
  more films than he's directed. He is incredibly shrewd on the business. So
• 25:14
  is Tom Hanks, and so it was Matt day Man. So it's been
• 25:17
  afflet like, like, we think of these people's artists, but they're also
• 25:19
  really astute business people, and you have to hold both together and you have
• 25:26
  to value both, and you have to see the interrelatedness of both. And
• 25:32
  I think what keeps a lot of filmmakers back is they have this sort of
• 25:36
  almost elitist resentment that we're in a business and we're selling products to people right,
• 25:42
  you know, and they have to buy them. You know. It's
• 25:45
  it's so annoying. It's annoyed again why I wrote the book because it was
• 25:48
  so annoying that nobody's thinking outside the box. No one's thinking that this is
• 25:52
  a product. Look, it's art, dude. If you want to go
• 25:56
  make art in the backyard. My friend Knock yourself up. But the second
• 25:59
  you take grandma's to undred fifty thousand dollars, you better figure out a way
• 26:02
  to get grandma's money back. I mean, it's entertainment. It's not our
• 26:07
  it's entertainment. It's a symphony of art to create it. But there's a
• 26:11
  nobility. I think it was John Laster that said the nobility of entertainment,
• 26:15
  you know, the idea that you know, we provide a service. And
• 26:19
  by the way, and I just believe we're in a service business. Like
• 26:22
  one of the things that we say is is not about us. It's about
• 26:26
  the people sitting in the seats and the experience they're having. And that's it.
• 26:30
  And you got to get out of the way of that. And and
• 26:33
  so to me, it's about entertaining an audience. It's about loving an audience.
• 26:36
  It's about getting getting to know an audience and serving that audience well.
• 26:41
  And the people that have really done well in sort of other niche sectors like
• 26:48
  Jason Blam has become a good friend. And the way he thinks and the
• 26:52
  way he talks about the audience and entertaining the audience and the way he places
• 27:00
  you know, j Ellis is this friend of mine, and he was one
• 27:03
  of the pilots in Top Gun. He talked about every day. Tom Cruise
• 27:07
  showed up and just said, this is a privilege. What we do is
• 27:10
  a privilege. How can we exceed the expectations of the audience. So I
• 27:12
  found the really great people in our industry are much more service oriented than they
• 27:18
  are sort of selfish about their ego, about their precious ego and their their
• 27:23
  sort of artistic expression. And the greats in our industry are much more about
• 27:27
  let's entertain the audience, like that's the noble thing to do. Is people
• 27:30
  are paying money. They're paying they're they're paying in their time. They're buying
• 27:34
  plopforn that's more expensive than anywhere else on the earth. They're paying basically the
• 27:38
  same price for my movie as they are for Avatar that costs like a So
• 27:48
  the attitude that I need to have is like, I'm going to do everything
• 27:49
  I can to entertain you and to uplift you and to give you a great
• 27:56
  experience in the movie theater. And then if I've done that, well,
• 27:59
  maybe I can also tell you what I believe and what I hope will enrich
• 28:03
  your life as well. But I just the more you apply a mindset that
• 28:08
  is not common and certainly not taught in business in film school, but a
• 28:14
  mindset of the pragmatism of business and a mindset of service uh and and entertainment
• 28:21
  uh. The more the more you win in this industry. That's what I've
• 28:23
  found. And I think a lot of what the attitude that comes out of
• 28:26
  you know that that's they expected from filmmakers, is actually opposite of what will
• 28:32
  actually get you to the top of the industry. Well, let me ask
• 28:34
  you this because I'm really curious to hear your position on this. You know,
• 28:37
  the theatrical business model has changed dramatically since COVID. It was already on
• 28:41
  the downwards slope. We were all, we all saw it all. And
• 28:45
  like you said, a decade worth of change has been compacted in two or
• 28:49
  three years, and the theatrical business is hurting, There's no question about it.
• 28:53
  Last time I went to a theater, and I've said last last year,
• 28:56
  there was only two movies that I went to the theater that I actually
• 28:59
  went and paid money to go see, which was Top Gun and Avatar.
• 29:03
  And those are the only two because those are the only two that I felt
• 29:06
  that deserved a theatrical experience for my from my point of view, for me
• 29:10
  to get out of the house and go and all that. There are other
• 29:12
  deserving movies, but you know, for me to the kids, all that
• 29:17
  stuff. You know how it is. But your films are interesting because you're
• 29:21
  servicing an audience that doesn't get serviced often and definitely not serviced well often.
• 29:29
  So it's again goes back to that my book, which is the future of
• 29:33
  filmmaking is niche filmmaking. Finding an audience. That's good news. Yeah,
• 29:38
  finding an audience and serving that audience, like you said, you want to
• 29:42
  serve them. It's a privilege. So your audience is faith based and and
• 29:48
  specifically not only faith based, but the subgenre of you know, true stories
• 29:52
  that are that's kind of like where you found your your you're really your your
• 29:56
  magic, your secret sauce. If you will. We'll be right back after
• 30:02
  a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. But so it
• 30:11
  was so interesting because I just moved from LA to Austin and it's a very
• 30:15
  different. I love Austin, Love Austin. It's amazing. But I you
• 30:19
  know, when I go to the theater, or I passed by the theater.
• 30:23
  What was one of the posters. I saw Jesus Revolution. Oh great,
• 30:27
  yeah, we're again. But that was but I saw that months ago,
• 30:33
  months ago, I saw that in the theater. I would have probably
• 30:36
  not seen that in LA probably not because it's not the demographic quote unquote of
• 30:41
  this film. This is a heartland, center of the country kind of film.
• 30:48
  And but that audience shows up, They show up to the theaters,
• 30:52
  they do that. So it's a lesson that I hope everyone listening is about.
• 30:56
  Is one an audience will show up for Top Gun because it was an
• 31:03
  amazing experience and would go see it in imax today there's such an amazing experience.
• 31:07
  But if there's something that touches their emotional nerves, that's what we'll get
• 31:12
  people out of seats. But with that said, what do you feel about
• 31:18
  where the Puck's going to be in three or four or five years, Because
• 31:22
  theaters are starting to drop more and more screens are just going away. I've
• 31:26
  seen them just close the shop. So how is your business model going to
• 31:30
  work? Differently? As you might still you probably have a longer life theatrically
• 31:33
  than most filmmakers, but at a certain point. Yeah, I think it's
• 31:37
  you know, yeah, well, it's interesting that it's a great question.
• 31:41
  It's one of the questions to ask is what's the future of the theatrical experience
• 31:45
  in theatrical window. I do study it obsessively. NRG has put out some
• 31:52
  really good reports on Trend's post COVID I really short. The short answer is,
• 32:00
  I think that theatrical window will absolutely endure, but it's just going to
• 32:05
  be different, and I think it's gonna look a lot more like Broadway then
• 32:10
  then than what we had before. COVID and I could literally talk for hours
• 32:16
  about until like Steve Carrell and Crazy Stupid Love, you want to like roll
• 32:22
  out of a moving car, like, oh my gosh, I'm done with
• 32:23
  this. I'm a nerd for this stuff. But but but I'll say I'll
• 32:28
  say this, here's the question to ask for every independent filmmaker. If you're
• 32:32
  asking the question, which I think traps Us, is this a good movie,
• 32:37
  therefore it deserves the theatrical experience? That's the wrong question. The best
• 32:42
  thing that I wrote down that I think is way more true now that even
• 32:45
  when I wrote it in that post mortem to Woodlawne is I wrote down,
• 32:50
  this is no longer a movie business. This is a brand driven event business,
• 32:54
  and that's what it is. So Avatar is a brand, you know,
• 33:00
  Top Guns a brand, and it's an event. It's a social event,
• 33:02
  and we need those things and we need to go see them. The
• 33:05
  thing is, we just need fewer of them and we want them to be
• 33:07
  bigger, and there's just there's not everything post COVID coinciding with the streaming war.
• 33:14
  We don't need a lot of categories of films outside of our home.
• 33:17
  So if you can be one of the things that works outside the home,
• 33:21
  you actually make a lot more money. Right now, Like Avatar is sitting
• 33:24
  on top of the box office number one for was it six weeks? Seven
• 33:28
  weeks? Like that's not a good indicator for most of the industry. That
• 33:32
  means that we're all just going to go see Avatar and Avatar is going to
• 33:35
  play forever like a show on Broadway like Le Mez or you know whatever,
• 33:39
  and Top Guns the same way. Uh, And so what does that mean
• 33:44
  for all of us? And yeah, Blum's doing it, Megan did great,
• 33:46
  you know, and and things will work, but less works. So
• 33:50
  the real question, the real question to ask yourself with evaluating a movie for
• 33:55
  a theatrical opportunity is can I, like I think my Got Live at Samuel
• 34:01
  Goldwin, who's true to my first film? One of the great old Titan
• 34:05
  executives of the industry said, he always asked, you know, is it
• 34:09
  a good movie? Not the right question? Is it a great movie for
• 34:13
  an audience? How many of them are there? And do I know how
• 34:15
  to talk to them? And so the real question is can I make this
• 34:20
  as an event for an audience? If the answer to that is yet,
• 34:23
  then you have a theatrical shot. Okay, then you ask how large is
• 34:28
  that audience? And do I know how to talk to them? And then
• 34:30
  you actually reverse engineer the economics to that end. And so what I've learned
• 34:37
  is I'm still alive in this business number one, by the grace of God.
• 34:40
  But secondly, it's much more about mitigating risk and modeling a downside than
• 34:45
  it is betting for an upside. So like with Imagine, we built it
• 34:49
  to break even in our prior film film's box office fifteen million. The film
• 34:54
  that I'm doing right now, Jesus Revolution, I feel that it's an event
• 34:58
  for our core audience. I think people are going to to show up for
• 35:00
  it. I don't know, talk to me in three weeks. We're having
• 35:01
  stuff that might be wrong. But I really do feel like I really do
• 35:05
  feel like it's an event and it's like a social event, and that's why
• 35:07
  we're putting it in theaters and really going for it. But it still has
• 35:10
  a very achievable break even. And so to me, it's really about reverse
• 35:15
  engineering outcomes and protecting a downside and so and letting. Instead of saying what
• 35:23
  does this movie cost? That's the wrong question, say what's the business model
• 35:29
  of this what do we think it could achieve? And you know, if
• 35:34
  we don't know if it's theatrical, but it might be, well, then
• 35:37
  making it a cost where the product is malleable and you can probably create a
• 35:39
  marketplace around it and flip it to a streamer at a profit, but still
• 35:45
  test it for theatrical. You get over a certain budget where it sort of
• 35:47
  has to go theatrical. So so I think it's just about really thinking about
• 35:53
  the audience and and I think the theatrical question will become is this an event
• 35:58
  for the audience? If you can say with a straight face, this is
• 36:01
  an event for an audience of people that I know, release it in theaters,
• 36:06
  that's gonna still work. If it's not. If it's not a social
• 36:09
  event, and typically a social event that's undergirded by a brand, then uh,
• 36:16
  you're going to really struggle in today's environment releasing it in theaters. Well,
• 36:20
  I mean the brand. I mean, you guys put it right in
• 36:22
  the title, Jesus, that's the brand. Arguably what great marketing by the
• 36:28
  way, Jesus is people great great marketing over the years. Yeah, well
• 36:31
  we'll see Jesus. Jesus has done well. But what the point is,
• 36:37
  Yeah, but I didn't You didn't hide it. And that's why I was
• 36:42
  so impressed about it, because a lot of people would be scared, they
• 36:45
  would change it to something else. But to put the word Jesus, that
• 36:47
  Jesus is a trigger word for a lot of people. It has nothing to
• 36:51
  do with poor Jesus, but it's a trigger word for a lot of people.
• 36:53
  And you decided to put it right out there because you know who your
• 36:58
  audience is. And yeah, God, God bless you for that, brother.
• 37:01
  I mean seriously, like, well, also, you know what I
• 37:04
  what I want to make your movies that I don't care who you are or
• 37:07
  what you believe. I'm going to try to make a movie that you love.
• 37:10
  But I've found it's actually better instead of trying to make a million people
• 37:16
  like you. Yep, just find the one hundred people that absolutely love you
• 37:22
  and build a relationship with them and super serve them and then let there let
• 37:25
  them be your voice to the masters, and just trust that those people are
• 37:31
  indicative of some level of the population, you know, and there's more of
• 37:36
  them. And so with Jesus Revolution, you know, it'll be very interesting
• 37:38
  to see what happens because we don't have near as much you know, advertising
• 37:42
  money as we did with American Underdog, but we've taken the time to go
• 37:47
  all over the country and really connect the film to the audience and it's leaders
• 37:51
  and and and you know, there's there's just a there's a message behind the
• 37:53
  movie and it's a I love the movie. It's a fun movie. It's
• 37:57
  you'll make you laugh and cry. I think performance is really good. It's
• 38:00
  kind of like my almost famous or some like you know ode to a Cameron
• 38:05
  Crow film. You know, oh, I could tell that I could see
• 38:07
  that by the I could definitely say that what if Picasso said good artist,
• 38:09
  copy, great artist steel Cameron Crever listens to this, I'm sorry, but
• 38:15
  you know, but it's sort of is in that spirit. And the cool
• 38:17
  thing I think about it is, I didn't name the movie. Time Magazine
• 38:21
  named the movie. So this is a cover of Time magazine from nineteen seventy
• 38:24
  one at a very similar time, and there was this psychedelic sort of Jesus
• 38:30
  on the cover and and with this ten page spread that was so incredibly optimistic
• 38:37
  and hopeful, and it just said Jesus Revolution and it was this sweeping hippie
• 38:43
  revival that was going on all of America. So the good news is there's
• 38:46
  a historical context. Time magazine called it this, and we're just telling the
• 38:50
  story that cover. And you know what's fascinating after I watched the movie.
• 38:52
  It's not a it's not a preachy movie. It's actually I love the trailer
• 38:57
  because it's not like, you know, if you don't believe in Jesus or
• 39:00
  you don't believe in and that, you could still enjoy this film because it's
• 39:04
  just a great story of transformation, of people searching for themselves and finding you
• 39:09
  know, the divine within themselves and divine within groups of people, opening up
• 39:14
  doors that are shut, discrimination against people just because of the way they look.
• 39:19
  There's so many themes in this film that I absolutely loved and connected with.
• 39:22
  It's not like a beat you beat you over the head with a Bible
• 39:25
  conversation. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination. It really
• 39:30
  is a wonderful film that almost anybody can enjoy. I'm glad you said,
• 39:34
  man, so that's what we were trying for, And I'm so glad to
• 39:36
  hear you say that we we basically that's that was exactly the intent. You
• 39:43
  know, I wanted to make a movie. I just think the narrower the
• 39:46
  focus, the wider the appeal. And that's why I think Jason Blum does
• 39:50
  that really well. Oh yeah, something specific, really well. But I
• 39:52
  took my daughter and Megan and really enjoyed it, you know, And we'll
• 39:58
  be right back after a word from our our sponsor, and now back to
• 40:05
  the show. And so, you know, I think that what we're doing
• 40:12
  is we understand who we are in the audience that we serve, and we're
• 40:15
  unapologetic and unafraid of telling stories that we love that we hope other people are
• 40:21
  going to love too. And with this story, what's been interesting about it
• 40:24
  is because it is set in the world of the church in the seventies,
• 40:29
  but people that don't believe or have any sort of religious affiliation at all love
• 40:35
  and appreciate the movie because they see it as sort of a modern day allegory
• 40:38
  of loving the other. So basically the story is the sort of square pastor
• 40:44
  dared by his daughter, opens his church to this group of hippies that at
• 40:50
  the time weren't allowed to become the church. Like the at the time,
• 40:53
  it was like, you know, for a hippie to go to church,
• 40:55
  it was like go home, get a job, take a bath, cut
• 40:59
  your hair, joint society. Now maybe you can come to church. And
• 41:02
  he just let him in and there was this hippie street preacher named Lonnie Frisbee.
• 41:07
  It was like a nitro glissering moment, and that sparked this nation wide
• 41:10
  awakening. So there's a ton of natural humor in it because these groups of
• 41:14
  people are so different. But that theme of like opening your heart and your
• 41:19
  mind and literally your doors to a group of people that society would say you
• 41:23
  can't hang out with that society would say is a polar opposite point of view
• 41:29
  than you, and actually learning to love each other and joining together in something
• 41:36
  that seems to play really strong and really relevant to today's sort of just this
• 41:42
  situation that we're in as a country, you know, no matter what people
• 41:46
  believe, and so it's cool to be able to do something really specific,
• 41:50
  but it also plays as a broader sort of motivational allegory, you know.
• 41:53
  And you know what's wonderful about what you and Andy your brother do with your
• 41:58
  films is that you have this beautiful balancing act that you do with all of
• 42:02
  your films that you put just enough in to serve the core audience, but
• 42:08
  you put just enough in that someone outside of your core audience could enjoy it,
• 42:14
  like I can only imagine it was you man, you nailed it right
• 42:16
  down the middle for your core audience. But when you're watching it, anyone
• 42:21
  can enjoy that film. Anyone can enjoy American Underdog like you don't have to.
• 42:24
  I'm glad here you say that's the goal. I mean a lot of
• 42:29
  times, it's like it's fun to be able to test contrarian opinions, like
• 42:32
  opinions that maybe other people don't share. And my opinion about Christianity is it's
• 42:40
  not divisive, it's not you know, there's this verse in the Bible that
• 42:47
  says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, piece patients, kindness,
• 42:52
  goodness, and then it says against these things there is no law.
• 42:55
  And my opinion is when you portray those things correctly, like who was going
• 43:00
  to say, we don't need more love, joy, peace and patience and
• 43:04
  kindness with each other and goodness and society like like, we need these things
• 43:07
  today. And I think if you just let the story do the work,
• 43:12
  you know, trust the audience's you know abilities, and you don't have to
• 43:17
  beat them over the head. And and I think that just choose stories that
• 43:22
  you feel are powerful in life changing and tell them to the best of your
• 43:25
  ability. I think that that's just a better way to do it. And
• 43:29
  I think if you do it right, these stories can be inviting and inspiring
• 43:32
  no matter what belief you have. And I don't think anyone should ever feel
• 43:37
  alienated or driven away or ostracized by Christianity. I just think that that's that's
• 43:44
  unfortunate and one of the things that I would hope changes, you know,
• 43:46
  over the next decade is this is this is just this is good stuff for
• 43:51
  everybody, and those are the stories that we want to tell. And I
• 43:53
  think when you just really portray and infuse the virtues of Christianity in ways that
• 44:00
  are really entertaining in stories, you know, they're things that are universally needed
• 44:05
  and things that we who doesn't love a good redemption story, you know,
• 44:08
  I mean absolutely, And I mean it's very progressive what you're saying, you
• 44:14
  know, and it shouldn't be, but it is, and in a wonderful
• 44:17
  in a wonderful way, because your point of view on your faith is not
• 44:22
  you know. And this is a weird thing because I lived in the bubble
• 44:27
  of Los Angeles for thirteen years and then when I moved to Austin, I
• 44:31
  just saw things a little bit differently. It's really interesting to see. And
• 44:35
  by the way, Austin not the most conservative situation in textas the imagination.
• 44:43
  This is what it's all the crazies and all the weirdos, you know,
• 44:45
  keep Austin weirdest and it's a wonderful city. But I just start seeing things
• 44:51
  a little bit differently. On the way, I'm like, oh, okay,
• 44:53
  this makes sense now, and it's I'd love this. I'd love what
• 44:58
  you guys are trying to do because you are trying to bring to the two
• 45:01
  sides whatever those together, because that's what we should be doing regardless. You
• 45:07
  know, you and I both grew up at a time where we both could
• 45:09
  you know, believe different things and still have a beer or still have a
• 45:14
  conversation absolutely, like you know, like like are you kidding me? My
• 45:17
  father and me have completely different points of view on life, you know,
• 45:22
  and uncles and you know, all that kind of stuff in the family.
• 45:24
  But you know, we still get together, we still love each other,
• 45:28
  We still you know it. You know, it's it sounds like such a
• 45:32
  cliche, but yeah, love really is the answer, you know. And
• 45:37
  in the sense of like, you know, when you think of like uh
• 45:40
  uh, you know, there is so much more that unifies us and things
• 45:50
  to agree on and then then divides us, and I think there's just this
• 45:53
  gap of fear in the middle, and uh And I for me, you
• 45:59
  know, I had the good fortune of being born and raised in like the
• 46:02
  buckle of the Bible Belt, Birmingham, Alabama, but very quickly at the
• 46:06
  age of fifteen, traveling outside of it because I was working for ESPN and
• 46:09
  then in marketing the films. You know, I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
• 46:14
  I commute to and work in Los Angeles. It's spent about half a
• 46:16
  week or a week of the month or whatever there. We market these films
• 46:22
  everywhere. I have traveled the continental of the United States. Man, and
• 46:25
  you just realize that there's a lot that binds us together, and there's a
• 46:30
  lot to have a bureauver and talk about and celebrate. And when you just
• 46:35
  boil things down to their themes and their values, there is a lot of
• 46:37
  values that we agree on. And so I think as a as a Christian,
• 46:43
  what I've realized is, man, actually there's a hunger for this stuff
• 46:45
  beyond belief, you know, in terms of like beyond what people believe.
• 46:49
  I think if you sit down and watch some things that are really well made.
• 46:52
  But you know, so we had a decade of the anti hereau very
• 46:57
  good versions of that. But if you've been Game of Thrones, House Cards,
• 47:00
  breaking bad, you just it's hard to believe in anything, let alone
• 47:05
  yourself. And I think people are craving a sense of meaning and purpose and
• 47:12
  values, and so there's sort of a return. So yeah, has Christianity
• 47:15
  been weaponized and counterfeit, absolutely, But that's just what we do as people,
• 47:22
  whether it's politics or religion or whatever, all religions, by the way,
• 47:24
  almost all religions. But I would say that, you know, it
• 47:28
  says something about the source, because you only ever really weaponize something that's intrinsically
• 47:32
  powerful, and you only counterfeit something that's intrinsically valuable. So of course the
• 47:37
  crazies are going to use this thing to their own purposes, and there's going
• 47:40
  to be televangelists and there's going to be rogue people. But I think the
• 47:45
  thing that its source is is beautiful and meaningful and powerful. And whether you
• 47:51
  believe it to be absolutely true like I do and I find great meaning from
• 47:57
  that, or whether you're like Thomas Jefferson, who Inless League cut all of
• 48:00
  the references to the divinity of Christ out of a Bible. It's called the
• 48:06
  Thomas Jeffer's Bible. The reason he did that is he said he didn't really
• 48:09
  believe in the divinity or questioned it, but he thought the teachings of Jesus
• 48:15
  were the greatest moral reset in the history of the world. You know,
• 48:17
  and I agree with them, and so what it's just good stuff. It's
• 48:22
  you know, loving your neighbor, going the extra mile, turning the cheek,
• 48:27
  you know, being known by how you love people like these are things
• 48:30
  that if we reintroduce to society, society would be better for it. And
• 48:34
  I think that the best way to do that is through stories. And so
• 48:37
  what we want to do is we want to tell stories that that certainly resonate
• 48:42
  with our core audience, with that heartland audience, and super serve them,
• 48:47
  but also are just hopefully entertaining and applicable to to whoever wonders in the theater.
• 48:55
  But what we want to do first and foremost is entertained. We're entertainers
• 48:59
  first, and I hope there is nothing like being in an audience of people
• 49:02
  and hearing them laugh and cry and cheer at a movie. And I've never
• 49:07
  seen a movie like Jesus Revolution. We've really screened it far and wide in
• 49:12
  early lane caps let us have shown it to a lot of people, and
• 49:15
  you know, I've not ever been a part of the movie where people are
• 49:19
  cheering during the film at certain points. And that's a wonderful experience. And
• 49:23
  it's so it's wonderful to connect with the core audience like that. You know
• 49:28
  what you're saying is true, because I've noticed that as well in some of
• 49:31
  the other work that I do and other shows that I do, that people
• 49:36
  are starving for this kind of message, these positive messages, these positive stories,
• 49:43
  these things that are that fill you up. And look, I love
• 49:46
  Breaking Bad. I thought Breaking Bad was one of the great the most perfect
• 49:51
  last hours of television ever ever, ever made another question, and other than
• 49:54
  maybe two episodes of the entire series, except the fly episode drove me nuts.
• 50:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 50:07
  to the show. Other than that, the whole series was almost perfection.
• 50:14
  It really was. As as as as an arts as an art piece,
• 50:19
  it was beautiful. But at the end you don't feel really uplifted by by
• 50:22
  what Walter White has been doing. You know, it's been entertaining as hell.
• 50:28
  But then you watch something like Shawshank, which is one of my favorite
• 50:30
  films of all time, and that's right, that's exactly the difference. Yeah,
• 50:34
  and then and you look at Shawshank and if you look at IMDb,
• 50:37
  it overtook The Godfather as the most is the best film ever made? How
• 50:43
  and why? And I've said this and I've talked to Oscar winning screenwriters about
• 50:47
  this. I've talked to every story analyst about this. I've talked to filmmakers
• 50:51
  about this, and like, what is it about that film that's connected with
• 50:55
  so many people from every walk of life since its release? And it's the
• 51:00
  worst name in film history, worst name in film history. On paper,
• 51:06
  it is not a particularly great story, you know, It's like, oh,
• 51:10
  it's a it's a prison tough story. It's a tough story too,
• 51:14
  Yeah, but it's it's not a it's not a particularly like innovative story on
• 51:20
  the surface. But what Frank Darebat was able to do with that movie has
• 51:25
  connected so deeply with people who, you know, people who think Steven Seagal
• 51:30
  is the greatest actor of all time. Love shotshack. Yeah, No,
• 51:34
  it transcends man. And I'll tell you what it is at its essence.
• 51:39
  Uh, you know, I loved I love to think about and find the
• 51:44
  essence of things. There's this great book, Man Search for Meaning by Victor
• 51:47
  Frankel. This guy that was in several you know, uh, survived the
• 51:53
  Holocaust, his family didn't and a psychologist, was in several camps, came
• 51:59
  out and finished the work that he beaten began before, which led to one
• 52:02
  of the great psychology books ever written, which has been Social Meaning. And
• 52:07
  he had this incredible optimism even though of all he'd been through. And his
• 52:12
  take was that he came on this thing. Logo therapy is the Greek word
• 52:15
  for me, and logo theory. I don't know how to say. It's
• 52:16
  a Greek word for meaning. And his point was that actually pleasure wasn't sort
• 52:21
  of the end all like Freud. You know. His point was that actually
• 52:25
  the quest is to find a sense of meaning and purpose to your life.
• 52:30
  That is what everyone's looking for. So if you talk about the function of
• 52:34
  a storyteller, whether that's a movie or a play or sitting around a campfire,
• 52:39
  the function of a storyteller in society is to try to take all this
• 52:43
  nonsense and all these things that don't connect and you know, and fit them
• 52:47
  together to bring a sense of order and meaning and purpose. So the stories
• 52:52
  that I think transcend. You know, when Reyna Wallace writes that line every
• 53:00
  man dies, not every man really lives. In the middle of a brilliant
• 53:02
  film brave Heart. But that's meaning and purpose. And I think it's actually
• 53:07
  the power of that theme that makes that movie transcend, not its genre.
• 53:12
  I think it's the theme of living from your heart and living from your soul,
• 53:15
  you know, and living from your passion. And Shawshank's the same way.
• 53:21
  Hard movie, but brilliant material in terms of meaning and purpose. And
• 53:24
  so I think when we did I can only imagine he took barteside and just
• 53:29
  as what is the essence of like, what do people how does this dude
• 53:32
  that looks like you no offense write this multi platinum juggernaut independent artists? Not
• 53:37
  you. I'm talking about Bart. You look great anyway, so and so
• 53:42
  does Bart now but anyway, But the idea of you know, how does
• 53:45
  how does you know? He's just an everyman? You know? I'm saying,
• 53:47
  like there's anything you know? And he was in every Man with an
• 53:52
  everyman band that was you know, independent from Texas. How do you write
• 53:55
  this multi platinum juggernaut? I just said, what do people feel when they
• 54:00
  hear the song? And because I got to match that with the movie,
• 54:04
  whether people know it or not, they're gonna want to feel the same way.
• 54:07
  And he said you know, it's a rush of hope. That's what
• 54:08
  they feel. And so we sort of we sort of engineered the whole movie
• 54:13
  around that same experience. And I just feel like people need a rush of
• 54:16
  hope right now. They need a sense of like, my life matters,
• 54:20
  there's meaning to life, there's some sort of destiny, there's some sort of
• 54:22
  purpose here, and and and I and I and I need sort of I
• 54:29
  need to go out of a theater feeling hopeful and feeling like I matter and
• 54:35
  life is worth living. And I think that as great as Breaking Bad is,
• 54:38
  as great as Game of Thrones as except for the last season, please
• 54:43
  remake it. You know, you know, you you have the opposite.
• 54:49
  After you watch those things, you just sort of feel this sense of it's
• 54:55
  me versus everyone else hopelessness, you know, and it's survival at all cost.
• 55:00
  And I think that's seeked into our society a little bit. And I
• 55:02
  honestly think that the aggregate entertainment is one of the reasons why we're at each
• 55:07
  other's throats, you know, because if you watch Game of Thrones and how
• 55:12
  starts Breaking Bad on all those other things, it's like, Okay, there's
• 55:15
  one law I gotta live and you got to die, and that's it.
• 55:17
  You know, it's me versus everybody. And I think that's gotten into society
• 55:21
  a little bit. And I actually think, you know, what we say
• 55:22
  is the world needs a little more Capra in it since of Frank Capra.
• 55:25
  You know, it's a wonderful life and things like that, a little optimism,
• 55:30
  a little hope, and I think that there's room in the market for
• 55:32
  it. Do you think that, because I think there's going to come a
• 55:36
  pull. I do think there's going to come a point in the next decade
• 55:39
  that there's going to be a runaway hit, like a Juggernaut hit. And
• 55:45
  it's not gonna be one. There's going to be a series of them that
• 55:47
  are and you guys are probably going to be behind one or two of them
• 55:50
  at least, But that's going to connect with the majority of people looking for
• 55:57
  that rush of hope, and they're going to go, oh, wait a
• 56:00
  minute, maybe we shouldn't remake another Star Wars or another Marvel show, and
• 56:06
  maybe we should start putting some money into this. Do you think that will
• 56:08
  ever happen within the studios because they always go where the money goes, even
• 56:13
  after past think everything is cyclical. I think everything is cyclical, and everything
• 56:17
  is counterprogramming. And I think one of the reasons I can only imagine worked
• 56:22
  was there was an article before it came out the Deadline wrote it said,
• 56:27
  like the music biopic is dead, Like these films don't work anymore. The
• 56:30
  point is we sort of were at the front end of the reemergence of a
• 56:36
  dormant genre. Now you think like Elvis and the Star is Born, and
• 56:39
  you know, but I mean Rhapsody and all these music like one right after
• 56:44
  the other. This is now a re established genre. So it's actually a
• 56:46
  little more risky. One of the real hard things about filmmaking is an independent
• 56:54
  filmmaking, especially, is that the way to win with independence film is our
• 57:01
  minds are differential engines. Meaning there's a great marketing book Seth Godin's book Purple
• 57:07
  Cow, where his whole thesis is that if you see a cow, you
• 57:10
  know, take a photo of a cow. You don't tweet a cow.
• 57:13
  You've seen a cow. They're all cows, they all say, But my
• 57:15
  gosh, if that cow was purple, you know, Oh my gosh,
• 57:20
  there's a purple cow. You know, So I'm gonna tweet that, you
• 57:24
  know. So my point is that you really have to have the courage and
• 57:29
  conviction that if something is entertaining and meaningful to you, it'll be entertaining and
• 57:34
  meaningful to other people. There's more of you. And I remember what I
• 57:37
  can only imagine. We had done all this research, and we had seen
• 57:39
  a gap in the market, and then we had seen the need for a
• 57:44
  brand. And I knew that I love that song, and everybody I knew
• 57:47
  love that song, and so in the core community. But every studio told
• 57:52
  us no. One executive studio said, you know, you know, I
• 57:57
  think there's eighteen thousand people that would watch this movie, and that's that's it.
• 58:00
  That's the total audience. This will never work. But we just went
• 58:04
  forward with a conviction. But because we went forward with a conviction, we
• 58:06
  owned it because nobody would, nobody would take a risk on it, and
• 58:10
  we and we benefited from that. And so I think you have to be
• 58:14
  willing to be different, you know, and you have to be willing to
• 58:21
  to take it take bets on things that you feel deeply. And you know,
• 58:25
  I think when you listen to the stories of like Star Wars or Jaws
• 58:30
  or one of the great one of the great blocks of our industry in that
• 58:35
  three hour Empire of Dreams documentary is the chairman of twentieth Century Fox came to
• 58:42
  Alan Ladd Junior, who was who was the chairman most Visure Group and said
• 58:46
  it was in post production, said shut down this Star Wars, this Star
• 58:51
  Wars thing. It's an embarrassment to the studio. And Alan lad Junior,
• 58:54
  not having seen a frame of the film, said I've seen it. It's
• 58:57
  the greatest movie ever made. It's one of the greatest bloods in the history
• 59:00
  of our industry. But the point is that's how weird Star Wars was to
• 59:07
  everyone that was looking at it, you know, and they were the studio
• 59:10
  was sending notes like the Wookie should have pants, why does the Wooie not,
• 59:14
  and like stupid, Like really, the point is that the studio business
• 59:20
  is a rear view business, and they only the thing is like, hey,
• 59:22
  we want something totally original, that's just like something else that made a
• 59:25
  billion dollars last year. Like that's just the way they think. And so
• 59:29
  it takes a level of conviction, and it takes a level of as an
• 59:34
  independent filmmaker, extraordinary belief and I actually think a lot of independent filmmakers have
• 59:40
  like they want to stay above that, like, well, I have work
• 59:43
  on this thing and you know it's gonna be good. You actually have to
• 59:45
  have an attitude of like, I love this. I know there's people that
• 59:50
  love this. I'm trying to make it the best I can. But I'm
• 59:52
  telling you there's an audience for this, and you have to have a level
• 59:54
  of conviction in yourself. Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:00:05
  and now back to the show. And then the thing that you're creating
• 1:00:09
  that is uncommon to will it through the system and to get money for it,
• 1:00:14
  and then to will it into existence and that and that's I think missing
• 1:00:17
  a lot in independent film, you know. And I think the one thing
• 1:00:20
  that we can kind of summarize from this conversation is is independent filmmakers, you
• 1:00:24
  need to not just make a movie that tickles your own fancy. It has
• 1:00:29
  to do a little bit of that, but you have to find out if
• 1:00:31
  there's an audience for it. And don't say horror movies. A lot of
• 1:00:35
  people like horror movies. That's that's too big, which is again going back
• 1:00:39
  to my book, It's about Niching down and Niching down to the point where
• 1:00:44
  like, what is an audience that will enjoy this movie? And I can
• 1:00:49
  talk to which is what you're that what that executive said, Can you reach
• 1:00:52
  that audience with the money and the resources and the abilities that you have,
• 1:00:58
  And if you can come back buying those two, then you have a potential,
• 1:01:01
  not a guarantee, a potential for success. But the biggest thing is
• 1:01:06
  that I'm going to make an action movie because people like action movies. You're
• 1:01:07
  done, You're done. Well. You know what's interesting about that is I
• 1:01:10
  think one of the one of the real secrets to that. If you want
• 1:01:15
  to know, like a key that sort of unlocks it, It's summarized in
• 1:01:19
  the word disdain. And what I mean by that, that's what I really
• 1:01:22
  bonded with Jason blam Over was the any audience that feels distained, right,
• 1:01:29
  He felt like twenty years ago, the horror audience felt disdain, Like the
• 1:01:32
  studios were like they don't care, Like just murder a bunch of people doesn't
• 1:01:37
  have to be good. And the audience felt that. And you know,
• 1:01:40
  I've learned in therapy and should do it a little more. You know,
• 1:01:44
  the primary needs of people are not to be agreed with you have to agree
• 1:01:46
  with them. People just want to feel seen and heard and understood. And
• 1:01:52
  and you know, identifying, oh, people like horror movies, it's like,
• 1:01:58
  well now, it's like, well nope, yeah, they like horror
• 1:02:00
  movies. And guess who saw that before? No one else did, Jason
• 1:02:02
  Blum, and now he's dominated and then oplize the market. So you have
• 1:02:06
  like a one in one thousandth chance of competing with him. What you really
• 1:02:12
  have to see and have the courage to to to embrace is an underserved audience
• 1:02:20
  that that that is being disdained by the industry, and you have to be
• 1:02:24
  willing to understand that instead of trying to be cool at cocktail parties in LA.
• 1:02:30
  You know what makes you cool at cocktail parties in LA, winning,
• 1:02:34
  So go win with an audience and then you know, and focus on just
• 1:02:37
  loving an audience. And so, for me, the faith audience is one
• 1:02:40
  of those groups that you know, they're being called things like again, it's
• 1:02:45
  not a political affiliation, but it's seen that way in LA and so they're
• 1:02:49
  being called things like deplorable and so. And there's also this stigma of poor
• 1:02:53
  quality, and we're talking to an investor. His daughter was there, and
• 1:02:57
  I said, you want to know the you want to know the opportunity and
• 1:03:00
  the problem in faith, it's the same thing. He said, sure.
• 1:03:02
  I turned to his daughter and said, let's play rapid word association game.
• 1:03:07
  I'm just going to say something. Just respond. She said okay, and
• 1:03:08
  I said Christian movies and she goes do And I'm like, in one syllable,
• 1:03:12
  she just described the problem and the opportunity, like if you fix that.
• 1:03:16
  So for a lot of people, they don't want to be associated with
• 1:03:17
  it. I would rather go write at it like Jason Blung went right at
• 1:03:21
  it with horror and say, Okay, we hear you. We hear that
• 1:03:25
  there's a quality problem and it's also a lack of authenticity and you're underserved and
• 1:03:30
  you're disdained by whatever you're getting. We're gonna we're going to fix that on
• 1:03:32
  your behalf. That's the business opportunity. So you really, you know,
• 1:03:36
  whether that's crunchy role think about it, vix Plus is just having huge growth
• 1:03:42
  right now, or or or Blum doing something mister beast on you to beat
• 1:03:51
  Yeah, getting to know, developing a relationship, nurturing a relationship with an
• 1:03:55
  audience that's underserved that no one else sees valuing yet that or no one has
• 1:04:01
  the courage to really give them what they want, or an audience that you
• 1:04:08
  understand and are representing in a unique way like a movie like Crazy Rich Asians
• 1:04:13
  or whatever. Having the courage to do that instead of like, have the
• 1:04:16
  courage to be unique. Conformity is not the way forward in our industry.
• 1:04:21
  Everyone in LA looks the same, has the same specscript in their back pocket,
• 1:04:29
  you know, wants to talk about themselves, you know, and so
• 1:04:33
  it's homogenized. And so to me, the courage to be different is the
• 1:04:39
  way forward. And the people like Tyler Perry or Jason or people that are
• 1:04:43
  you know, interacted with, they have way more success by differentiating, and
• 1:04:47
  the narrow the focus is the wider they appeal. And so it's just have
• 1:04:50
  the courage and conviction to do something that you really believe in, that you
• 1:04:54
  want, in need, and that you're connected to an audience that wants,
• 1:04:58
  wants and needs, and be willing to be un popular while you do it
• 1:05:01
  because you'll be popular when it works. And and uh, and that's just
• 1:05:04
  a different, a different way to think in a different way forward. But
• 1:05:08
  if you if you identify, if you're just in the rearview mirror in life,
• 1:05:12
  you know, oh the audience action films work, Yeah, and everyone
• 1:05:15
  knows that, and that's why it's a saturation that's impossible. You have to
• 1:05:19
  be the one that says, hey, this will work, and everyone says
• 1:05:23
  you're crazy and weird for years, all of a sudden, all of them.
• 1:05:28
  That's how you know, right, that's what you tend to do.
• 1:05:30
  Titanic horrible idea, Avatar horrible idea. Right, if you listen to Peter
• 1:05:38
  Titanic most expensive movie at the time. On top of the most expensive movie,
• 1:05:43
  it was one hundred and ten million dollars extensive moon Time and he went
• 1:05:45
  one hundred ten million over budget. Yeah, so you know the story that
• 1:05:48
  we knew the ending for a story that we knew the ending of. So
• 1:05:53
  so to me, just I think, Look, if I can leave you
• 1:05:57
  with anything is do things that you really believe and and just match perseverance with
• 1:06:02
  curiosity and then also a level of courage in your decisions. You know,
• 1:06:06
  I would rather fail courageously than fail because I made a safe choice. You
• 1:06:13
  know and and do something that you really believe in, and have the courage
• 1:06:15
  to be different and have the courage to put a different voice out there,
• 1:06:17
  because I think that that's what people want, is is unique voices that represent
• 1:06:21
  unique audiences. Uh. That's one of the joys of the film world,
• 1:06:27
  as you get to go seeking through through someone else's eyes and so and so
• 1:06:31
  that's what I'll what I'll leave. Otherwise, the biggest thing is just to
• 1:06:34
  keep learning constantly and never ever ever quit. You know, success might be
• 1:06:39
  just around the corner. You never know. So, John, I'll ask
• 1:06:41
  you a few questions. Ask all my guests, what is the lesson that
• 1:06:44
  took you the longest to learn, whether in the film business or in life.
• 1:06:47
  Oh my gosh, what the question. I'm horrible at answering questions.
• 1:06:51
  Uh, you know, well, you know, I would actually say the
• 1:07:01
  value of failure. I think, yeah, I think that's what people don't
• 1:07:05
  under Failure is incredibly valuable and it's really the only path to success. And
• 1:07:13
  I think it's something that we all run from. But if we actually ran
• 1:07:16
  towards it and learn to sort of fail small and iterate, you know,
• 1:07:19
  I mean, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yes, some things
• 1:07:23
  do kill you, though you want to avoid those things. But if you
• 1:07:25
  can sort of fail and learn it, it's like Thomas Edison said, up
• 1:07:28
  not failed, I've just learned ten thousand ways not to make the light bulb.
• 1:07:31
  If you embrace failure as a part of your process, I think that
• 1:07:36
  that's the way to win. And it took me a long time to to
• 1:07:42
  It's a very vulnerable thing to be willing to fail so that you can learn
• 1:07:45
  how to win. And I think that took me the longest learn and the
• 1:07:48
  toughest question of all. Three of your favorite films of all time? Three
• 1:07:53
  of my favorite films of all time. I have this list of sort of
• 1:07:56
  films that I just think, No, first of all, there's no perfect
• 1:07:59
  film, uh. I think George Lucas said it. Best films are never
• 1:08:03
  complete, they're only abandoned. But but there are films that I think,
• 1:08:09
  for the moment in time in which they were created, are untouchable, like
• 1:08:14
  don't change a frame. So I think I'm trying to think of some of
• 1:08:17
  those. And then there's also just great films that that that I've seen,
• 1:08:23
  you know recently, but to me, Braveheart is still just like you can
• 1:08:27
  Suit for my soul. I just think that that's such a well made film
• 1:08:31
  that I just it just gets me, man, it just gets me every
• 1:08:35
  time. It's just so good. You know. I still think Saving Private
• 1:08:42
  Ryan Is is one of those things when he says earned this at the end,
• 1:08:46
  I'm just that's a summary of an entire generation and and and just incredible,
• 1:08:56
  you know. I think I think the King's speech is amazing. I
• 1:09:00
  think, gosh, I'm beyond three slum Dog Millionaire. Fellowship of the Ring
• 1:09:03
  was just one of the transcendent experiences I had in the theater, like,
• 1:09:08
  oh my gosh ah. And then I think some of the old ones.
• 1:09:13
  I think it's a wonderful life and ah, you know, uh, Casolanka,
• 1:09:20
  you know, I think it's a perfect movie. I've exceeded my I
• 1:09:26
  mean, i'd argue, what's your answer to that question? I mean,
• 1:09:29
  well, sew Shank is a perfect movie in my opinion, I mean,
• 1:09:30
  seas Shank is, it's a perfect I think Back to the Future is perfect.
• 1:09:34
  It's one of the greatest scripts ever made. It kind of is it
• 1:09:38
  is. It's the It is as perfect of a screenplay and perfect of an
• 1:09:41
  execution produced by Steven said there's no better there's no better producer than a director.
• 1:09:48
  And everyone said they was everyone said they were crazy, and it was
• 1:09:50
  only the Stephen that was able to push it through. And then they stopped
• 1:09:54
  two weeks after shooting with the wrong guy, like, yeah, we're going
• 1:09:56
  to redo these lists. Can you imagine We'll be right back after a word
• 1:10:00
  from our sponsor and now back to the show. Welcome to the film business.
• 1:10:12
  And Jaws is another perfect film. I mean that that movie, doesn't
• 1:10:15
  It just is perfect. Jaws is one of those things for the limitations,
• 1:10:21
  the limitations are what made it perfect for sure. I think. Look,
• 1:10:28
  I would put Top Gun Maverick up there as one of the best experiences I've
• 1:10:32
  had in the theater in a long long time. Man, I can't,
• 1:10:36
  man, it is such a good, good movie. And and it's yeah,
• 1:10:42
  there's nostalgia with that film with a question for guys like you and me,
• 1:10:45
  But it is just damn near perfect in what it was it aimed to
• 1:10:50
  do without question. And I mean I'd also put up The Matrix as almost
• 1:10:56
  as a perfect movie as well. The Matrix is a is one of the
• 1:11:00
  again it's it's as perfect as a movie gets by far. I think probably
• 1:11:04
  the filmmaker that I most trust now and I can't wait for Aniana Jones as
• 1:11:09
  James Mangle. I think that dude just fires every time. Like I thought,
• 1:11:14
  four versus Ferrari unbelievable. You know, Logan, I mean Logans transcended
• 1:11:20
  the genre, and again Logan is one of those where it transcends. You
• 1:11:25
  know, it's hyper violent, it's pretty, but that quest for meaning and
• 1:11:30
  purpose and transcendence is all uh right there. And then television, I just
• 1:11:35
  think, uh, I'm one of those. I know everyone's on it,
• 1:11:39
  but I think The Last of Us is great. I just think it's really
• 1:11:42
  hear, I hear that's good. But for me Yellowstone right now? Is
• 1:11:45
  any anything that tailors I haven't taken the Yellowstone trip like I haven't to you.
• 1:11:50
  It's on my lips writing I've ever seen on television it's so good.
• 1:11:56
  And then I think anything Vince. I think anything Vince Gilligan does is just
• 1:11:59
  like you. He's such a student of our industry and our care that just
• 1:12:02
  comes that Tarantino in that way. He just comes out his love and obsession
• 1:12:06
  of the of the craft comes out. So John, when can and when
• 1:12:12
  and where can we see Jesus Revolution. He's Revolution comes out Nation and Wife
• 1:12:15
  every twenty fourth in theaters everywhere. And thank you Cameron Crow for all the
• 1:12:19
  things that I stole. And I hope you enjoyed it the very same way.
• 1:12:23
  And and I think, I think, no matter what you believe,
• 1:12:26
  you really enjoy it. It's an enjoyable film. And and and go check
• 1:12:29
  it out in theaters. John, I can talk to you for hours.
• 1:12:30
  Brother. I appreciate you coming on man. Fine man. Likewise, you
• 1:12:34
  and your brother have to come. When you come down Austin, we got
• 1:12:36
  to go grab a beer man without questions. I love it. I'm there,
• 1:12:41
  I'm there pretty frequently, so let's do it. I appreciate you,
• 1:12:43
  love it. I want to thank John so much for coming on the show
• 1:12:46
  and sharing his journey and knowledge with all the tribe today. Thank you so
• 1:12:50
  so much. John. If you want to get links to anything we spoke
• 1:12:53
  about in this episode, including how to see his new film, Jesus Revolution,
• 1:12:57
  head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting forward slash three seventy six.
• 1:13:01
  Thank you so much for listening, guys, as always keep on writing
• 1:13:04
  no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:13:08
  Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting dot tv.