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Behind The Film: Cold War in Philly with Joe Amodei · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Indie Film Weekly, Behind the Film.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Glenn Reynolds.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Jason Connell.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going behind Cold War in Philly, Flyers vs.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Russia, 1976, about the day the Philadelphia Flyers faced the Soviet Red Army team.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: The players revisit a game that became much bigger than hockey.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what grabbed me is that Philadelphia was suddenly the team everyone else needed to root for.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: These were the so-called Broad Street bullies.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't used to being anybody else's good guys.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: And the players are still very funny about it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: They'll describe this enormous moment in hockey history that immediately explain why their teammates' goal wasn't quite as impressive as he remembers.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: And 50 years later, nobody's getting away with anything.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let's meet Joe Amade and go behind Cold War in Philly.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Joe, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Every film starts somewhere.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Where did Cold War in Philly start for you?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: And first, thank you for having me on this podcast.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've been listening for ages now, so it's kind of an honor to do this with a friend.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've spent the last 25 years of my career in the distribution business.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: I own a company called Virgil Films.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: We distribute movies.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them we actually partner up with Glenn on.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And but when I graduated high school, I went to college for film.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to make my own film.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Though the distribution business kind of got in the way, and I made a living doing that.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: So finally, you know, you get older and you know you say to yourself, if I'm going to do this, I better do it now.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to do a Philadelphia-centric film.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been a Philadelphia Flyers fan from the days they won the Stanley Gupp 50 years ago.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that group of players called the Broad Street Bullies have been icons and heroes of mine since I was a kid.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: I happened to be at a Flyers alumni event that a lot of those players had attended, and the war in Ukraine had just broken out, maybe three weeks into the war.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I was having a conversation with one of the players that had a family in the Ukraine and also had played this game against the Russian Red Army 50 years ago.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we started talking, and a light bulb went off in my head.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: No one's ever made a movie about this weekend, which was a huge weekend, in Philadelphia, where the Russian Red Army hockey team, known as the greatest hockey team in the world, came into Philadelphia after playing nine other teams through an exhibition series that the NHL had set up and had pretty much handedly beat most of those teams.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of embarrassing for the NHL.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we were looked at as the saviors, save the world from communism.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: If we lose the game, Russians continue to be known as the greatest hockey team.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: And before that, they were like the most hated team, right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they were they were and we were hated.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then suddenly you're North America's last hope.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: We were hated.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: We played a very rough style of game.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't invent fighting and hockey, but we mastered it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Won two Stanley Cups.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we were hated.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: But as the players will tell you, as much as we were hated all around the league, every single game that they played outside of Philadelphia, they sold out.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: So they were going to Toronto, they'd sell out.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: They were going to Buffalo, they'd sell out.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: So the owners kind of loved the fact that when the Flyers came to town, everybody would sell out.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, for one day, they were loved by the league.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Even Clarence Campbell, the head of the league, came into the locker room and said, Boys, we need you in pure Broad Street bullies manner.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: They said, We don't need you.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Get the hell out of our locker room, you know.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because he didn't like us either.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: So so yeah, there was a lot going on.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: There was the political aspect, there was the sports aspect.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: The owner of the team, Ed Snyder, was Jewish and was involved in some organizations helping Jews escape from Russia.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the Cold War is still going on.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: So he hated the Russians.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: So the team didn't like him.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we're Philadelphians, we didn't like the Russians either.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a pretty big game.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Shown 250 million people around the world watching this game.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea is you make a film using some uh shots of the game, but having the players tell their own version, have the players tell the story of that weekend.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was very, very fortunate that most of the players were still alive, as opposed to the Russians, where there's only two alive and living in Moscow.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I was able to get access to every single player that played that game that was still alive, with the exception of one, Mel Bridgeman, who was very, very sick, who actually passed away during the making of the film.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, and and on top of that, the luck continued where all but two of the players I was able to interview in Philadelphia.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, travel-wise, for my budget, you know, I had to go to Vancouver to get one player and Northern Canada to get another.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: But other than that, I was driving to the interviews, doing the job and coming home that night.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Everything kind of fell into place on this film.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it worked out.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: We showed the film in Philadelphia.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: We premiered it in May.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And since then, we've been doing theatrical screenings all around the Delaware County, the Philadelphia area.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them have been selling out.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the film is now available on Amazon and YouTube and Apple.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: So if you don't live in Philadelphia or you can't make two screenings, you can go online and watch the film.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's amazing, Joe.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But let's go back a second.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still stuck on this Red Army thing.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea this even happened.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn put it on my radar, you know, growing up Miracle on Ice, 1980 Olympics.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the big hockey moment for me and so many people in America.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, were there a lot of those players in the 80 Olympics, the Soviet Red Army team in the 76 game?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, most of them were the same.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's really interesting.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons I wanted to make the film was that I wanted to pay one last respect to the these guys, these Broad Street bullies, because they're all they're getting older.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted them to have a document for their kids and their grandkids that they could have for the rest of their lives.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I was able to do that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: But the other reason that I wanted to make this film is that, as you just said, nobody knows this game even happened.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: They don't remember because you know Miracle on Ice has overshadowed everything, as it probably should.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we were a bunch of professional hockey players, Miracle on Ice was a bunch of college kids that beat the same team.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: What's interesting, though, is the goalie for Rush's name, uh Trekyak, he was considered the greatest goalie of all time.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Without him playing the game against us, most people believe we would have scored 10, 12 goals.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: He played the uh Miracle on Ice game, but for some unknown reason, they pulled him after one period.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most people believe if he would have stayed in that game, Americans, USA would not have won that game.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of interesting things that happened.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Cherkek went on to come to the United States, get a job with the NHL in Toronto, and was living a very nice life.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is when, you know, there was a lot of kumbaya between us and Russia.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is the Gorbachev years.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then the war broke out, and he had to go home.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so he went home.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where he's been ever since.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it's also interesting that all but two of the Russian players who played the game are gone.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I and we believe that's because it's just the lifestyle that they have over there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: They weren't rich, you know, they were part of the Red Army, you know, it was kind of a military thing, so it wasn't even like they were making huge salaries or anything like that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, they had won all the gold medals, they had won a lot of the world's world cups.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: They had dominated, dominated hockey for years until this time in 1976 when things started to change.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: The coach was also um he admired the Soviet hockey a lot and studied the other coach, uh Tarasov.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Did you know that before making the film?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: No, I did not.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I did not.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: I did not know that he had a relationship with him, and I also didn't know that they, you know, he flew to Russia, not just for this game, but because he admired uh him so much.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: He flew to Russia and spent time with him, even though they didn't speak the same language, but they both liked vodka.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: He studied the way they played, and then he was able to come up with his own game plan on how to fight them and how to stop him from coming across the blue line, and he did, and it worked.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Would it have worked forever?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Would it have worked in a four-game, three-game series, or a seven-game series?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not, but you know, they Russia's took to the ice and didn't know what the hell was going on.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: They couldn't pass the blue line.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: We had our guys standing there waiting for him.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: So they were forced to shoot the puck in, and that's not their style of play.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we we overwhelmed them.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then the big storyline behind the movie is 11 minutes into the game, one of our players, Ed Van Imp, puts a hit on their best player, and he goes down and doesn't get back up for a couple minutes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's no penalty called, and the Russians quit.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: They leave the ice.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And again, that 250 million people watching, they're off the ice for about 12, 13 minutes.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: They realize they're told that they're not going to get paid, and they come back, and we that's when we really start, you know, scoring goals.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: And how do you decide to present different accounts of that footage?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's different interpretations, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, we have one player that says, well, you know, it might have been a bad hit, but the other players are like, ah, you know, he ran into his elbow with his head.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've always not so different.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've always uh looked at that hit.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, listen, I'm from Philadelphia, it was a good hit.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, simple as that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's simple as that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was a good hit.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: But when the players really talk about it, they say, you know, yeah, they left the ice because of the hit, but they I think they also left the ice because they didn't experience or they didn't expect they didn't expect the Flyers to be outplaying him as much as they were outplaying him.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And at that point, it's still zero-zero.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's no goal scored at that point.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: But they were so frustrated at that juncture that I think when Eddie, Eddie Van Imp put that hit on, they gave him an excuse.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they had done things like this before.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: The Russian players were kind of dirty.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: They were kind of, you know, they would do things on the ice to intimidate the other teams.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, none of that was talked about.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: But we knew that they were like that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they were also on the road a lot.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: They lose in the States in the Miracle on Ice on the Road.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is on the road.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're not playing in Russia, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: They are the road dogs coming in here.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: They came back years later, and I don't think we beat them again.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: We might have beat them once or twice, but no, they came back and they beat the Flyers.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: So this was that, like Miracle on Ice.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: This was that one day.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in Philly, because there are certain things that we cover in the film that happened on Saturday before the game, but yeah, this is that one weekend that you know the Broad Street bullies save the NHL.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of the NHL, how did you get access to things?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know making a movie with NFL or MLB, it's not easy.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: No one wants to give you that license or that opportunity.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: How did you do that as a filmmaker?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: So the games owned by NBC, Comcast, and the Flyers, which are all one company these days, Comcast owns the Flyers.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to Comcast and they're a partner in the film.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: They have a nice chunk of the film.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: I did have to get some rights from the NHL, and that wasn't hard.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, it took a while, but you know, most of the other footage was fair use, and you know, a lot of the footage is the pictures and stuff, all came from the Flyers archives.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I sat down at the arena at the well, well, it's now called Xfinity, but it was the Wells Fargo Arena, all the way down.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: I used to call it the belly of the arena.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: They would put me in this room, bring all the footage in.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: I had two or three old video VCRs to watch all the footage because I had to go through hours and hours.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I would sit and walk outside, and that's where all the Zambonis were.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it was pretty cool.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I spent countless hours going through all the footage that they gave me because they would give me a tape with two hours on it, and maybe I used a minute out of that two hours.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I probably went through two or three hundred tapes to find the footage that we ended up using.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But it was also, I mean, this was a passion, and I love the team and I love the game.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, it was pure joy.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it really was.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I kept on telling, I keep on telling myself, and I still tell myself, if I do make another film, it's not gonna be this easy.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love that it was VHS.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't digitized.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, here's some VHS, some grainy footage.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: VHS and three-quarter inch tape, and it was, yeah, it was don't put it near a magnet because we'll lose it.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, here you go.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was just gonna ask about this the story about exchanging the Kennedy half dollars for the Soviet pens, which leads to the being confiscated, and then there's the trip for the cheesesteaks.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: How did you find that account?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: How did you decide where it belonged?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that gentleman, Lou Nolan, his name is yeah, Lou Nolan has been the public address speaker at the stadium.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: So he's the one that you know who scores the goals and time out and for 50 years, 50 some years.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's been there forever.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: So he did the game, you know.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I I called him and said, Hey, I want you, I want you to be in my movie.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he said yes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And he just started telling these stories out of the clear blue.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: People had heard the cheesesteak story before, obviously, but no one had ever heard the the coins.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really weird because even when he took them for the cheesesteaks, it was a bunch of guys in suits, and hockey players all always wore suits back then, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: So he didn't know, you know, they're all young guys, some of them could have been KGB.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: They know that KGB was there, but they didn't know who they were.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: The Russians kept on referring to them as the doctors, but they never did anything as far as medical is concerned.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I can imagine putting a bunch of uh players in 1976, height of the cold war, on a bus to take them to get cheesesteaks in the middle of South Philadelphia.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Any of them could have just ran.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And you run one block and you're gone.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is not in the movie.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Back then, the big mall, shopping mall in the Philadelphia area was in New Jersey, Cherry Hill Mall.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was the first like baked baked mall.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they took them there to buy blue jeans.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: They all wanted to buy blue jeans, they couldn't get them, they couldn't get them at home.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and another story, because you can't, you know, you can't, this is for all this will be for the DVD extra features.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, special features.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when they the game's over and they noticed, you know, some of the players wanted to go over to the Russian locker room just to, you know, say thank you and goodbye.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: And they got there and they were gone.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: So what had happened was they were just leaving and they didn't shower.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if they were leaving the locker room and they all had like greasy hair that they had combed back, and then they realized this is sad, that the Russian players had taken all the soap and all the towels out of the locker room, shoved them in their in their gym bags and split.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, soap or towels.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: They said they lived such a different life in Russia than we're used to here.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: That they took all that stuff, they didn't even come with the normal amount of sticks and pads that they needed.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: They had to get flyers had to give them equipment because they didn't have enough equipment to put it on.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Joe, you're such a fan of the team, and now you're taking on this project to make a documentary about it, and now you're sitting down with these players who you've looked up to your whole life.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Being a fan of the team was a little bit being a super fan of the team, going into making this film, knowing that I was going to interview men that were just superheroes.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Pick your favorite local sports hero where you live.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's who I'm about to interview.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: But you try to be professional about it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: But I will tell I'll tell you one quick story.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we had about five interviews set to take place at the where the flyers, the flyers' offices is the best way to say it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the interviews was a gentleman by the name of Bobby Clark, who's the flyer.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: He's the biggest flyer of all time.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: We had a schedule for one at nine, 10, 11, and Bobby Clark was supposed to be at noon.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the guys that I was interviewing before Bobby Clark, everything was all set up, but Bobby's the big one.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's about two minutes to nine.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: We have our interviewer, interviewee all mic'd up.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're ready to start filming.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: And in the background, I see Bobby Clark walk in the building.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, he's not supposed to be here until noon.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the gentleman who I was interviewing, a gentleman by the name of Steve Coates, said, Well, you know, if Bobby's here, you might want to do Bobby now.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: So he got up and left the room and came back in about a minute later.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Said, Bobby's Bobby wants to do the interview now.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, mentally, I'm not prepared for Bobby Clark because again, he's the big one.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: He's the De Niro of the Flyers.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I know within a minute he's going to be sitting in front of me.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to get my cards and everything.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to be fanboy.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's the last thing I want.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Within a minute, he had put me so at ease in his mannerisms and the way he answered my first question that it all that the fanboy just went out.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: It just, you know, it just disappeared.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was able to conduct a really good interview.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: The very last interview we did was with our famous goalie, Bernie Perant, who did not play the game, who unfortunately passed away a little while after we did this interview.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And my cameraman and editor is a goalie.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: He plays hockey three, four times a week.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So for him, just being in the same room with this guy was something.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the same for me.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we kind of we look back at that interview, we were definitely fanboys during part of that interview.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: But it was it turned out to be okay.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: I kept on telling myself how much of a privilege it was for me to even be doing this at this stage of my life and at this stage of my career.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, I've been doing I've been in the business for a very long time and have been successful at it, even though it's an up and down business.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: But being successful means we're still here.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're still doing it.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: And to have the privilege of making the first film I ever directed to be with these guys and this team, there's nothing I I can say negative about it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And even the players, people have asked me who was nice and who wasn't nice.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Every one of them was nicer than the next.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some of them had food waiting for us when we got there or cooked us lunch afterwards or spent time after the interview with us, and it was just a good time.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, I know number two is not going to be as easy.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, and then you finish the film, and then you have to distribute it, and distribution is very hard these days.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's very hard these days, and this film is no exception.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's the life of the film from today on.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And when do you put it up on Tubi?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And when do you do it with the, you know, all these different things that we do with all of our other films?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you hope it works.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is the type of business that we're in, is not, you know, you make all your money the first two weeks of release, you make all your money the first two years of release.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's a long tail of revenue that you have to make sure that you grab, but it takes a while.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So now it's back to normal.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: I was struck by there's a decent amount of humor in the film.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just a historical snapshot.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the commercials you included, the Canada Dry, the little pencil hockey sticks, that whole section.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: And the players can be very funny, especially when they're taking a little credit away from each other.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Did the humor become part of how you promoted the film at all?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: The uh YouTube uh videos that we've put up or the Facebook videos that we've put up.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I know Tim is my partner, Tim, has created a bunch of reels that he puts up.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's always, I'd say 90% of the time, it's the funny stuff.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh huh.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's the humor.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: The guys are funny.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that because I never met these.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: I had met one of them a couple times, but they're funny.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And when they're together, they're really funny.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And you're right, it is just picking up on each other.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: There is a love between them that even though it's been 50 years since this game and since they won the cups, there is a love between them that is so obvious.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes they argue just like if just like you do with your own brother or your own sister.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: But there's this passion between them that is pretty special.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And the alumni itself is led by a former player Brad Marsh, and he does a great job of keeping them all together and putting on a lot a lot of different events and a lot of stuff for philanthropic reasons.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: They raise money for all different types of things.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: They're really amazing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, you and I have spent a lot of time trying to get independent film scene.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so you mentioned screenings.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: What did you personally do to make the screenings feel like an event that someone like needed to attend you know that night?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had a player do a QA afterwards.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, good.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I had two.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to say it was easy.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to make this all sound like it was all easy because I did have a lot of sleepless nights and all the things that filmmakers go through.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: But these guys are in their 70s, they're retired, they're sitting around, and they walk into a movie theater, watch this movie, get standing ovations, and people stand in line for their autographs and pictures.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, that's not happening to these guys on a daily basis.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: So they're just living it, loving it.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't hard to get them to do it when we were selling out.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, again, these guys played 50 years ago.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: But we have packed houses of people in flyers jewelry season.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: They remember.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: They remember where they were when the rushing game was played.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: They remember where they were when we won the Stanley Cups.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that love from the fans is so huge still here in Philadelphia.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: I tend to think that the love for the Broad Street Bullies almost supersedes those Stanley, those Super Bowl wins, and the Phillies winning the World Series.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, these guys made you know$25,000 a year.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't get rich out of playing this sport.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: They played the sport because they loved it.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Not that our baseball players and football players don't love the sport, but they're also making a lot of dough, a lot of cash.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, these guys didn't make that kind of cake.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's two brothers on the team, Jim Watson and Joe Watson.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: And someone in one of the QA said, What did you do during the summer in the early days?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And they said they went home.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: They went home to Canada and got jobs for the summer.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's crazy.
• 22:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, Joe, I know this is a Philadelphia Flyers movie.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're a hometown guy, and this is, you know, you're tried and true.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't just local.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is America, NHL, which most teams are in the US now.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what has it been like when you've screened this movie elsewhere outside of people like me who didn't know the story but they gravitate to it?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's that experience been like?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I haven't had that experience.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, 100% honest.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: The theatrical rights to film are only in the Philadelphia area.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I will tell you, on the distribution side, I have sold well over 125 sports-oriented tapes throughout my career.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: When I was at USA, we had the rights to all four leagues.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we did all the hockey teams.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing with Polygram.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: As much as I would love to say that a city-centric sports tape sells outside of the team area, it just doesn't.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that that would probably be my biggest fights with the teams.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't you promoting, you know, my Philadelphia Phillies tape in Pittsburgh?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd say, because they hate you.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, they just don't sell.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: So so I did get permission.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And we did, some guy from Boston called up and said, I want to show the film.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Some very small little theater in Boston, Lexington, Massachusetts.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Okay, you can you can show it there.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's no big deal.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I got permission.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And he showed it last week.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: I got the box office report.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think nine people showed up.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small theater, though.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's right.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: They filmed The Fighter, the movie The Fighter had a scene there.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I lived in Lexington for a year or so.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if you talked to those nine people on the way out, I think they would have appreciated the video.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And what's also interesting is yesterday I went to see um Primetime.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: There was less than nine people in that theater.
• 24:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's sad.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm hoping, because I do agree with you, this film, yeah, it's about the flowers, but it's also a historical document about much, much more than just the game.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm hoping that people realize that all across the country and go to Amazon to rent it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or next year when I come out with the DVD, if there is anybody else out there that has it, still has DVD players, they buy it because we will be making a the DVD, will be a collector's item.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: We'll have all kinds of stuff on it that that no one knows.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: I can definitely say that I don't hardly do anything about the flyers.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: I even had to look up hey, how good are the flyers?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Only to see that they have one since you know for a long time.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: So long-suffering fan.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't even really watch hockey that I tune in for hockey for the Olympics, the Stanley Cup.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: I watch the finals.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's you know, and like, oh, that's who's good this year.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I found the film fascinating and thank you extremely enjoyable.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: There's humor to it and such great characters.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think it should appeal to a wide audience if if we can if you can get there somehow.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, these podcasts help.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, it's a different world, as you know, Glenn.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not easy to get the word out that your film is even available because there's just nowhere to mark it anymore.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about things like this.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the the best thing about it is, you know, whether I'm doing a podcast today or I'm doing one three months from now, I can say, go see the film, it's available.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: And we treat all of our films like that.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's always street date as far as I'm concerned.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, again, it's a tough business, and we're in it because we love it, I think.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there's always a new film coming to view to watch and to put out.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we've been doing this for a very long time.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Glenn and I did not have any gray whatsoever when we first met in the industry.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Glenn, I think I've known you for 25 years.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Just about.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a long time.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is a long time.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe, that is amazing.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot wait to promote it more on this episode.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: But now we're gonna segue into something completely different.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's more about you and the theatrical experience.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: We like to call it quick cuts.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Glenn, please tell him more.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so you spent years getting movies into distribution, into theaters.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: So let's find out what happens once you actually sit down in a theater.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ready.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Popcorn or candy?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Candy.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, what if candy, what kind?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Raisinets.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes poured into the popcorn.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, I love that with ME's.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love throwing it in there.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're our first raisinets answer so far.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely the first raisinets.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Isle seat or center seat.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: Isle seat.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Spoken like a true distributor.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: How many trailers are is too many.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: We can go on forever.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean commercials are a totally different answer, but matinee or late night screening.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: It would have to be matinee.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or even early morning.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: I just saw the Odyssey at eight o'clock in the morning a couple weeks ago.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was perfect.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's perfect, yeah.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: Favorite movie theater.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Favorite movie theater would probably be either now or growing up, like either.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there was a movie theater where I grew up called the Murban, M-E-R-B-E-N in Philadelphia that I could walk to as a kid.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I saw most of my first movies in the theater.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I still remember that theater, what it looked like.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's not obviously not there anymore.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: I remember what the seats were like.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: I remember what the bathrooms were like.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: I remember what the concession stand was like, and it's a very long time ago.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: But that would probably be they had raisinettes.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they definitely had raisinettes.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So what was the first movie you remember seeing in a theater, which might have been this theater?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's funny.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: No one's ever asked me this question on podcasts, and I always wondered why, because I remember the first movie I ever saw in a theater was a film called Moon Pilot, which was a Disney film about going to the moon, starred Tom Tryon.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: I remember there was a chimpanzee that was part of the film.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because remember that the first wow we had sent a chimpanzee up in space before we sent human beings.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was definitely Moon Pilot, and very close to that, I've actually, you know, because I don't know the exact dates, but the three stooges meet Hercules was also a film theatrically.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's a great question.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you asked it because when I see other podcasts and I ask, what's your first movie?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: and they say Jurassic Park.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Jurassic Park when they get that old.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Titanic.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what the heck?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Titanic, yeah, yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Moon Pilot.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Moon Pilot.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what's a movie you've seen the most times in the theater or just a bunch of times?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: Probably the Great Escape.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: I will I will travel and go see that.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: I just recently saw it first week of September, played at one of the theaters I go to all the time, and I went and saw it.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: Couldn't find anybody to go with me, but I went.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's probably the film that I've seen more on the screen than any other film.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that may be the answer to this next question, but we'll see.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: What was the last movie you saw in a theater?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yesterday I saw Primetime.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: And thumbs up or thumbs down?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was yesterday.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thumbs down.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was awesome, Joe.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the quick cuts.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have just one more question.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: So you spend much of your career helping filmmakers reach an audience.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: What do you understand about filmmakers now that you had to make this film to understand?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: That they always want more out of their distributors.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: They want their film to succeed so much because they have lived it for two, three, four, five years.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's been the major part of their life while they were making the film.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: So when it finally comes out, they want everything.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted to play theatrically and they wanted to make money, and they wanted to make money right away.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had to pull myself back and say, okay, okay, because you don't make money right away.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you do play theaters where nine people show up.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: You do get your first round of numbers, and they might not be as great as you want them to be that very first month, you know, because films sometimes take a while to gain notoriety to get people to know that they even exist.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: I have found myself, continue to find myself.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why isn't it happening?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Why isn't it this?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Why isn't it that?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so they don't, they lack the patience that I would want them to have.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's probably what I've learned the most.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't blame them at all.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Are you able to have that patience with yourself now that you're kind of filling both roles?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: I have no choice, but yeah.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: But again, I know I'm so lucky that I've been in the distribution business.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're not.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: So they don't know what to expect.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the and the other thing is that we what we try to do with Virgil is the expectations of what your film is going to do and when it's going to do, we make sure we talk about before we acquire the film in most cases.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I've tried not to go down that rabbit hole that I've seen a lot of filmmakers go down.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now I've come to realize how easy it is to go down that rabbit hole.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, Joe, I know we've talked about this in our conversation, but just to hammer it home, where can people see Cold War in Philly, Flyers versus Russia, 1976?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: They can see it on Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube TV.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably the main three places it's at.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect, Joe.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for taking us behind Cold War in Philly.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate it.