Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 418: Drugs, Sex and Higher Love with Slamdance Winner Hasan Oswald

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BPS 418: Drugs, Sex and Higher Love with Slamdance Winner Hasan Oswald · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
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  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four eighteen.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: The best education in film is to make one.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Stanley Cooper broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: when we really should be working on that next draft.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: screenplay bulletproof.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now.
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  Speaker 2: Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
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  Speaker 2: on the kind of project you are and the goals
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  Speaker 2: of the project you are. So we actually break down
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  Speaker 2: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Now, Guys,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: today on the show, we have filmmaker Hassan Osweld and
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Hassan won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's slam
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Dance Film Festival with his first feature film, Higher Love Now.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Hassan's story is extremely inspirational because he took a page
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: out of Robert Rodriguez's book Rebel Without a Crew and
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: sold his plays to help finance his film. It is
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a very touching and gut wrenching film. So in this episode,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Hassan and I talk about how he made his film,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: all the journeys and craziness that happened while he was
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: making his film, what it was like to win the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: slam Dance Film Festival and get the Grand Jury Prize there,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and how the industry reacted to him winning that festival,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: and how it helped him get his film out into
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the world. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: conversation with Hassan oswald I'd like to welcome to the show,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Hassan oswald Man. Thank you so much for being on
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: the show.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Brother of course, Alex, longtime fan. Thanks for having me.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Oh Man, thank you for being on the show.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: And you are the first filmmaker that I am interviewing
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: from not only the other side of the world.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: But can you tell the audience where you're at right now?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Sir?
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: Sure, I'm in northern Iraq, the Kurdish region of Iraq, vacationing, vacation, vacationing.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: It's really beautiful at time of year. It's one hundred
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: and five at sunrise, it's peak.
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  Speaker 4: It's awesome.
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  Speaker 5: No, I'm working on my next project and I've been
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: working on on and off for the last year, and it
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: came back in February for what was supposed to be
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: a three week wrap trip and going on four months
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: with really no end in sight. Is all the airports
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: are shut, all the borders are shut. So yeah, that's
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: where I'm calling from.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: You're like, you're basically trapped in a hotel bag Dad,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: if you will, you can check it.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: You can check in, but you just can't check out.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: You can't check out.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: So before we get to your movie, it's your movie.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: How did you enter the business?
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: Man? How I got in?
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: So I actually my film background is very I'm definitely
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: a new face in the business. I went to something,
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: I know if you've heard it as a Waldorf school, it's
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: kind of like Montessori based. Yeah, so I went to
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: Waller School in upstate New York, just right outside the city. Actually,
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: and you've actually you're not about to watch movies, no media.
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: So my whole childhood I watched very few movies. We
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: didn't have a TV in our house, and when we
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: finally got one, I remember I used to when my
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: parents were out, I used to watch TV and then
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: I'd put an ice pack on the TV because they
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: would come home and feel it to see if I'd
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: been watching TV. So that's that's how little exposure I
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: had to movies. So I wasn't this movie buff who
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Had.
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: A camera, his dad's camera and he learned how to
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: edit on TWVCR. That wasn't me, I remember, I was.
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: I was about to watch one movie a month, and
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: we used to go to this video store, giant video
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: that was before like Hollywood video.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: Mom and pop owned.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: Little place, and every time I'd go in there with
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: these big ideas and I'm going to watch this new movie,
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: and nine times out of ten I'd come home with
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: water World. And I have no idea why, but water
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: World was my was my go to and I just
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: absolutely loved it and I still and I still love it.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: So I didn't have any kind of a background in film.
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: I would go to Costco and had all the TVs
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: lined up, and my mom would go shopping and I'd
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: get my TV in there. Uh, and I was So
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: it was really a precious, precious, fin finite resource for me.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: So I didn't have that background.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: And after I went to school at Villanova, studied creative
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: I was an English major, but studied creative writing and
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: had some journalism, uh journalism minor or concentration. And so
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: I always had an interest in storytelling. I wrote a
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: good bit of novel, novella, short story, that kind of stuff.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: Never any screenwriting, but it's always fascinated with storytelling and
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: h when I graduated, I had no idea what I
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: was gonna do. I applied and was accepted to work
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: on a cat ranch in Australia.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: They still have these.
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: You can still be a cowboy in Australia a million
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: cattle ranches.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: And then my visa got.
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: Messed up, so kind of on a whim, I moved
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: to Thailand to become an English teacher. I just had
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: no idea what I wanted to do, and there goes,
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: Here's blair Witch time.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: So I had no idea.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: So so for people living, yeah, for people listening, since
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: he's in Iraq, there are power sword surges or outages
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: every every yeah, so every few minutes. But everything is
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: on a jenny, so we won't lose his connection.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: But if you're watching, he will go blair Witch exactly.
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: So only my favaits is lit off about every fifteen minutes.
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: So yes, So in Thailand I.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Went to be an English teacher.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: So I wanted to do this kind of European gap year.
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: I'd spent a lot of time abroad as a child,
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: and I wanted to do this kind of gap year
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: and find out what I was doing.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Really film, I still film was not a big part
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: of my life.
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: I you know, I loved and loved love actually, like
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: up until.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Then, I was certainly not watching, certainly.
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: Not watching old classics if it was in the theater,
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: if it was.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: You're not sitting there watching like Corosawa and Scorse who
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: who Who Away.
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: So we as a teacher in Thailand, we would take
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: a lot of trips and I mean it was just
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: it was an incredible life. We lived there and we
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: had a GoPro and so we would film everything. And
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: this is right about the time where you could get
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: ten eighty on I think.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: I had an android.
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: Uh so really in your pocket you had a bunch
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: of good resources for pretty cheap. And so all my
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: friends had these GoPros and cameras, and so we take trips,
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: weekend trips to Vietnam, bus trips to Lao, and we'd
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: just gathered to and then at the end we were like,
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: all right, what are we going to do with this?
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: And so I was like, all right, I think I
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: can do this on iMovie.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: I can do something. So I just I remember I
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: laid a track down.
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: It was movie Play, which is gotta be the most overused.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Most sampled album in history.
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: Yes, and it was glorious. So it was that that
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: paradise song from.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: This the Beach it's in my head right now.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I don't have the rights to it, and I can't
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: play it on the show, but I have it in
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: my head, sir.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: So The Beach, the film The Beach with Leo Uh,
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: that was the soundtrack, so that's why we used it.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: And I remember I remember cutting to the music and
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: loving it, like I thought, this is really cool. I
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: mean it was trash footage, I mean trash, but we
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: liked it. It was we were creating something. So we
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: were just doing that on the side and teaching. I
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: still had no I had given up my journalism roots
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: as well. I was through and through an English teacher
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: I had.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: I fell in.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: I was teaching second grades in grade and I fell
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: in love with my class. So I thought I got
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: I applied and got accepted to Columbia to do my
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: master's in education. I was going to come back to
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: New York City and become an English teacher, and that
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: was my career. About a year and a half in,
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: we were set to renew our contracts and instead, my
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: friends and I we quit or didn't renew our contracts
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: and just traveled throughout the region. We tried to go
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: by train from Southeast Asia all the way to Europe,
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: so there's trains all the way up, and then we
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: took the Trans Siberian across and we recorded the whole thing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: When I got back to your up, I had a
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: bunch of new footage.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: And I edited.
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: We called it or I called it eighteen Countries in
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: eighteen minutes, and it was an eighteen minute.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: Video that went on Vimeo and it made the front page.
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: Or a front page I think the travel front page
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: of Reddit ten thousand years, I think, which was I
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: can't imagine. I still can't imagine. I can see people
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: watched it, and it's still one of my favorite things
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: I've ever created. It was the first thing I ever created,
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: and just the feedback from that and the kind of
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: the creative process that went into it, I just I
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: fell in love with I guess then editing, and I
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: still had no idea how to shoot.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: But because I taught myself.
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Editing through YouTube tutorials, just books, podcasts, I.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: Could edit. I just couldn't shoot it all.
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: But I knew I could teach myself to shoot, and
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: of course That's when I found rebble without a crew,
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: and I thought, oh wow.
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: Like this can be done.
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: And of course it was stupid travel videos, but those
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: travel videos turned into kind of my education, and so
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: I didn't go home when I got to Europe and
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: do my master's in education. I stayed in Barcelona and
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: started doing these freelance gigs totally fake it to you
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: make it. I remember, I connected. I remember I went
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: to different hostels and I'm still teaching part time at
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: an international school in Barcelona at this time to kind
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: of make ends meet. But I remember I went to
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: a hostel and I said, oh, I make these promo videos.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Can I do one for you?
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: Because each hospital in Barcelona have got a party night
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: and I don't know, so they said, sure, just send
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: over your reel.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: I was like, my what.
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: So I remember doing my first kind of franking cut off,
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: rip cut off of different people's videos on YouTube. Oh
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: I mean it was that will never see the later
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: day again. And so and then I did another kind
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: of similar thing to with. My friend had an apartment
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: complex he used to rent to students, and I remember
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: pulling my camera on a string across marble countertops.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: My pants my pan shot. So that was kind of
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: the genesis.
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: Of of how I got into film.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: And that's awesome.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now that's a really that's a that's I always
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: loved hearing these stories because everyone has a different path
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: in and obviously you found your path in kind of
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: mirandered around literally continents. I'm trying to figure to find
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: this out. So let's get to your film, Higher Love.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Tell me about Higher Love and how it came about.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: Sure, so, I guess. Just kind of a brief synopsis.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: It follows a man named Darryl Gant in Camden, New Jersey.
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: Darryl's a factory man from Camden and his long term
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: girlfriend Nanny or Denitza. She is a heroin addict on
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: the streets of Camden, and how she pays for that
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: habit through various while she lives and works the streets,
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: and she becomes pregnant, and so the first half of
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: the film follows his obstacles, his.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: Journey while every morning he.
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: Leaves, she she leaves the house, runs away to Camden,
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: and it's his journey to find her over two years,
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: and then once the baby is born, a different journey begins.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: So it's on the surface, it's.
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: This this search for the love of his life and
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: he as he tries to protect his unborn baby, but
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: also each obstacle that Darryl faces it it's kind of
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: an obstacle that a lot of these cities face. It's
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: not just Camden, it's you know, Flint, Michigan, Cleveland, these
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: post industrial cities that the American dream is kind of
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: crashed and burned in. So that's kind of what the
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: movie is about. And it came about kind of in
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: an interesting way. So if we backtrack a little bit,
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: I still was doing travel films, but they.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: Were kind of turning into uh more more interview based
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: we're doing.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: I remember they're getting darker and the people were filming
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: these travel films for We're like, we don't want to
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: listen to this Sri Lankan lady about losing our family
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: and the tsunami, Like we will, yeah, we wanna, we
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: want to. We want to hear about the best beaches
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: in Sri Lanka. So, uh already the disconnect was beginning.
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: Uh So, at the end of filming that travel show,
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: it was my now ex girlfriend and I we both
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: both things were coming to an end. Uh So it
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: was time to do something different, and so at the
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: end of that travel show, I went to Lesbos, Greece,
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: where the refugee So that's where the Syrian refugees where
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: they kept drowning in the Mediterranean doing that crossing into
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: Europe and their rafts, and so I went there with
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: more skills than I had and better cameras, but still
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: very new. And this was kind of my first documentary
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: and I made I joined a rescue squad there, the
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: ones who pulled the rafts and the people from the
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: from the ocean.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: So I joined a rescue squad there and did a fifteen.
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: Minute short and came back edited myself, colored it myself
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: figured out that color was a thing, So.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Why didn't do that?
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I thought, all right, here we go, like,
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: I have a fifteen minute doc This is good.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: I don't know, seven hundred views. Maybe it was.
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: It was that was going to be my big ticket
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: and I'm living, I'm out of money. I don't know
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: if this film thing is going to be you know,
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: if this is my way.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Right, But then you decided to go to do a
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: very not uplifting documentary in the streets of Camden.
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: Right, So well, how that came Obroun was maybe a
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: month after this film's publish.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: The Refugee film was published.
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: Stephen Fry tweets it, and then a few more Neil Gaiman, guy,
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: I mean the author tweets it, a few bigger names
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: tweets it, tweet it, and then I get, you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: one hundred thousand views under its views. And from that
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: so National Geographics saw that I saw a tweet and
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: they call me and I'm living in Boulder at the
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: time with my with my girlfriend, and they so Goldcrests
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: Films was contracted by Nacchio, So they're making a film
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: for Naccio and the director Nick Quested and Sebastian you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: they call me and or the assistant calls me and says, hey,
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: can you come do that?
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Can you the director would like to meet you? And
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: so I'm thinking, oh, great, this is an interview.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: So I get up, packed up, and then right before
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: I leave, I email them. I say, hey, just making
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: sure we're on for tomorrow and interviews in New York.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: So we're on for tomorrow. No response, so I'm like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: all right.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: I gotta go.
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: So I just fly to New York on miles get
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: out of the airport, go to the interview, go to
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: the interview spot, and I'm just thinking, like, I don't
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: think I have an interview, And so I go and
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: like five minutes before they respond to my email, they're like, yeah,
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: he's still planning on meeting you. And from there, within
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: a week we hit it off. And within a week
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: it was my first kind of film job ever. I
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: had ten thousand dollars taped to my chest heading across Turkey,
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: meeting with smugglers.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: I'm with the.
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: Director, he's teaching me all these things, all these cameras,
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: and so this is my first documentary, real documentary appearance,
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: and I just I fell in love with it, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: I came back and I continued working for them and
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: learned a lot of great stuff. But after about a
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: year it was time to move on. And that's where
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: I knew that I wanted the whole time, I knew
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: that I would eventually if I was going to fail.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: I was Gonnail big, So I knew I wanted to direct,
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: and my father's from Camden, New Jersey, where Hire Lovel
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: takes place.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: Got it and it was I had.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: No budget, I had sun saving some savings for my
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: time with on the Natio film. Camden's only a two
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: hour drive from New York because my family, my dad's family,
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: is all from there, they all still live in the
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: surrounding area. So I knew that all I was going
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: to have to pay for.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Was gas money.
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: I had a strong enough backing in editing and filming
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: and producing.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: That well, I didn't have a choice.
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: I had to wear all all the hats. But I
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: knew that I could make this movie. And Camden kind
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: of had this throughout my life, just from my dad's
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: background there.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: I've kind of had this.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: Morbid curiosity with that city and cities like it, as
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: you mentioned, like the post industrial decline, the empty factories.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: It's America's most dangerous city or one of them for
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: the last decade. So I thought, you know, this is
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: a story that needs to be told now.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: So what was the budget of this film? If you
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: don't want me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: Asking, The budget was less than zero, okay, So to
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: start it was.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: I knew that a camera and a dream basically a camera.
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: And a dream, So I knew I was going to
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: have to do everything to start, at least before I
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: could kind of show people that this was a project
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: worth investing in, This was a project worth joining.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: So I had some savings.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: As I mentioned, we'll be right back after a word
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: But I would so there are still expenses, just food,
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: although my uncle was amazing with that.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: He's an associate producer on it in the film. He
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: took great care of me.
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: But there's still food, there's still gas, there's still there's
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: a lot of stuff to go into it. And so
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: to make ends meet, there is a lot of tricks
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: that I used to start.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: I knew right away I could sell my blood.
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: So I sold my blood plasma twice a week, fifty
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: bucks a pop.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: And that was more than enough to make ends meet,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: to get going.
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: And then and then I needed a drone, and then
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: I needed another lens, zoom lens, and then I needed
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: other things.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: So we would.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: It's it's not a lot of blood, but it's a
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: lot of blood.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: So we're out of blood. The blood he's literally bank.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: He literally sucked the blood out of me to make this.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: The foot out of me.
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: Yes, So the next step was I figured out that
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: and I had nothing to edit. Four CA I made
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: the mistake of filming, and well it turned out fine,
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: but I couldn't edit four cam my laptop, so I
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: needed a new laptop. So what I would do was,
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: and this is frowned upon, but I would go to
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: Apple and I'd buy their best system and then i'd
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: edit for thirty days straight, twenty nine days straight, and
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: then I would return the system because there was no
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: reef stocking fee, there was no anything right, and so
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: that's how I was doing the edit. And then I
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: would the next thirty days when I didn't have an
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: editing system and I didn't want the local Apple store
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: to become wary, I would shoot that whole time the
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: next month.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: So what I would do, You go thirty on, thirty on.
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: And then the next thirty on was for lenses. Do
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: the same thing for lenses, camera body steady cams at
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: best Buy twenty nine day rental for free.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: So that's how I was. That's how I had an
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: amazing kit. You know, top of the line stuff.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: Rented, and I know, you know it skirts the bounds
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: of ethicacy, but you know.
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: Look, sometimes you've got to as a as a as
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: the as the the glorious AXLEFOLI once said, sometimes you've
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: got to fracture an occasional law, and.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Uh, you don't break it. It just kind of bended
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: a bit.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: And look, you are working within those guidelines. Look, when
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: you're starting out, you do what you gotta do to
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: make it happen. You're not the first person I've ever
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: heard that did the best buy deal. I'm sure people
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: listening now they're like, wait a minute, you could do
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: what a best Buy. I'm like, yes, you can go
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to best Buy, buy the best camera you want and
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: use it for thirty days.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: I did not think about app Don't drop it, Yeah,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: don't drop.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: It, don't scuff it. It's got to be it's got
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: to be pristine because they will check. But if you're good,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: you've got a hell of a kid. I never thought
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: about Apple because I've never There was no Apple computers
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: when I was coming up anyway, not like that that
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: there was no Apple stores. Let's say, so that's interesting,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: so that you would edit and what did you edit
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: in just out of here, like Final Cut or Vinci.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I learned.
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: I learned in Thailand on iMovie, and then I taught
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: myself Final Cut, Final Cut ten and then quickly moved
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: into Premiere because I remember I was back in the
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: studio one day and they were like, what are you
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: using Final Cut? I was like, what am I using
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: final Cut? I have no I still don't know what
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: I prefer what's better. But now, yeah, we did the
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: whole edit in in Premiere.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's that's amazing.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: So so you would you would edit one month, the
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: go shoot footage for another month, then go back and
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: buy another laptop and edit for the next thirty days.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: How long did you keep this up?
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Too long?
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: And we used to use different credit cards. We used
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: to use like I'd borrow my mom's credit card and
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: then and venmo her the money and then she when
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: she'd get the money, would turn on her account, and
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: then we'd use my uncle's credit It was.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: It was bad.
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: So I mean I probably did that on an offer
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: about eight months.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's amazing.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: So probably four rentals from each I like that.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I like the rentals. I love that.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I love that you've now just automatically just called it
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: a rental even though it is absolutely not a rental.
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: But yes, yes, the zero budget rental geeses.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: No, well, I mean look like I said, sometimes you
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: gotta do what you gotta do to make it happen,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: and and it's it's it.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: It worked, it worked. Did you keep any of it
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: ever or is it all gone?
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: No?
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: So, I mean we we eventually kept once we brought
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: on a little bit of money, we kept stuff that
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: I'm still using. And but it also, I mean it
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: really caught. I think having zero that zero budget kind
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: of made the movie what it was. We were going
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: to there are other we would go to. If you
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: go to eBay eBay YouTube, you can learn how to
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: make a one dollar two dollars a rig with PVC piping.
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, and so we learned all that stuff too.
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: We would do buy all our stuff after market on eBay.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: It would take you know, four weeks to get there
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: from from China, so we could never have anything that
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: we really needed.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: But so we use those tricks also.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: And then yeah, once we found out kind of our
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: go to kit essentials, we kept those.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: I got a laptop that could handle four K.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: And so while we were coming up, we were, you know,
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: playing with some ethical boundaries, but we eventually got on
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: the straight and narrow and did it the right way.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Look, I mean, I'm assuming you know who wanted to
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: hurt sog Is of course.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you heard that story of him with the
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: with the.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: Papers, Yeah, yeah, with forgrinks.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he literally forged his papers to get when the
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: police came to where he was shooting. He forged papers
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: proving that he was able to shoot there.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: You do what you gotta do.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: You know, as long as you're not hurting anybody or
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: literally stealing literally stealing.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you do what you gotta do.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And we did a lot of that stuff too.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: I mean, Werner Vanner was one of my original inspirations,
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: So yeah, we copied a lot of that stuff with
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: just fake it to you make it. And if they're
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: going to assume something going into a shoot, you know,
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: I guess I didn't tell him I was with HBO.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: But if they're gonna call me the HBO boys, I
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: didn't say it, someone else said it. So like we
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: we faked it till we made it with a lot
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: of those tricks.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Did you have an HBO shirt? Answer?
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Is that.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: Per Se?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: That HBO hat that you bought it that the souvenir
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: shopped in downtown Manhattan.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, not per Se yeah.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Look look, I mean, look, I can tell you stories
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: and stuff I did and when I was coming up.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think I've told this story on this
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: show before. But when my first edit reel was based
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: off of raw footage that I got from a from
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: a European group of filmmakers that came into my commercial
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: house that I was in Miami, and I grabbed all
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: their footage and I re edited. This was insane, like
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: million dollar budget footage. Re edited it all slapped the
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Nike Nike logo at the end of it, and I
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: cut together five or six reels and then I quit
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: and I went out with that reel and people were
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: like they assumed that I was that guy. When they asked,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I would go, no, no, no, that's just a spec spot.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: But if they didn't ask, there.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: You go yes exactly.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: You know, it's if you assume that's up to you,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: you know, it's uh, like I always say, asked for forgiveness,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: not for.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: Permission, yes, shoot, shoot first, ask later.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, as my entire in my entire last film.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Was exactly yes, exactly.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: So all right, so you've sold plasma, you have you
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: have skirted the line of of the return policies over
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: at Apple and Best Buy for eight months, and and
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: then you've gotten you finally got some money together. And
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: then how did you remember you saying to me that
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: you kind of Mariachid camed in a little bit in
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the sense that you became very well known in the area.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about how you
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: kind of started having almost free reigned in that in
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: that town.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So, I think having no money helped us in
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: a bunch of ways. Like, for example, I mentioned that
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: we didn't have a zoo, I didn't have a zoom lens.
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: I was filming everything with a fixed lens, and so
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: there are some really great shots where we wouldn't have gotten.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: And I had this incredible access to my characters, and
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: I would be that I had to be. I was
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: a foot away from them, and it lends this kind
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: of like raw, this pure veritale almost that I wouldn't
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: have gotten if I could afford a zoom lens.
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: I had to go in within a foot of all
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: my characters.
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: And I think that kind of was the case in
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: one way or another with a lot of these things.
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: I didn't have a producer, I didn't have anybody. So
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: I had to go to Camden, which is, you know,
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: it's one of the most dangerous cities in America, and
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: I was terrified, and I had to go knock on
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: doors and meet these characters where they were. So I
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: would go, you know, I'd start out, I'd go to town
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: meetings and kind of find out who the town leaders
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: were and the different advocacy groups, and then I would
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: branch out to I would go knock on.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: The doors of.
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: Where known drug houses, but I would be with one
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: of those town advocates, so they would kind of give
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: me an ounce of credibility.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show. It's like Donny Braska.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: They were Donny brascoing you like, he's a good guy.
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: That's fine, he's a good guy exactly, he's the HBO guy.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, trust him, got the sure.
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: So they, I mean, they really appreciated that Camden has
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: been a drive by, yesid drive by city, but also
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: a drive past the city, a flyover city. One of
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: the first titles for our film, actually for a long
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: time it was titled below the Brine. It's it's after
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: a poem by Walt Whitman, who's actually from Camden, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: it's about this world that exists below the brine, below
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: the surface of the ocean that nobody ever sees. But
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: there's life down there, there's heartbreak down there's society down there,
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: and that's Camden.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: They you know, they build.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: The retaining Walldon Highway so you can't see into it.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: No one goes into this place. No one talks to
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: these people and learns their stories. So when I was
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: knocking on doors just because I had to, I didn't have.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: A producer, they really appreciated that. And so like, how
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: did you?
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: How did you?
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Because I mean from watching portions of the film, like
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: they're doing not only illegal things that you and but
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: they're allowing you to come in film this some of
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: it's extremely personal and yeah, I mean there's characters who
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: are high on screen. There are characters who are pregnant
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: and high, and there's there's so many like how did
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: you get them to agree to do this?
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: Like what what.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Was in it for them for them to be able
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: to allow such access to their lives?
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and yeah, A portion of why they did that
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: always comes down to an aspect of the people want
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: to be on TV. You know, the second camera turns on,
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: no matter what any one says, it changes the dynamic.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: However, I think.
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: Because I went and met them where they were, talked
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: to them first, and really I didn't just come in
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: for a weekend and film a bunch.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: Of people shooting up.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: I knew them became really entrenched in their lives night
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: after night, day after day. They respected that I wanted
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: to and this is how I approached it. I wanted
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: to tell their story, the story of Camden, the story
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: of this opioid epidemic. I wanted them to tell it,
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: so I wanted to see it through their eyes.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: And they right away kind of were open to that.
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: And one of the first scenes in the motel, where
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: our pregnant character is injecting, was my first kind of
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: realization of what trust and what access they had given me,
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: and that carried for the next year and a half.
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: And after that motel scene, I received a very angry
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: phone call from who turned out to be the protagonist
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: of the film, Darryl, about filming with his pregnant drug
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: addicted wife long term girlfriend, and he.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: Was very angry. He said meet me the next day.
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: I thought the film's over, maybe in my life is over.
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: And he basically just he pulled up. He said, listen,
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: let me tell you my side of the story. And
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: so that's where we learned his side of the story.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: Every morning he wakes up, he goes to search for Nannie.
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: He's trying to save his unborn child. And so when
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: he said, let me tell you my side of the story,
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: I think that's why I was so embraced by Camden Nights,
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: because nobody's given these cities a second look.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: No one's you know, no one, no one ever.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: Stops to say, oh, you're living on the streets in
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: on Heroin Highway as they call it, in America's most
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: dangerous on one of America's most dangerous cities.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: You know, how did you get here? What went wrong?
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: People think? You know? Who is right?
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: Mind says I want to give up everything, lose my kids,
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: my house, my car. I want to give that all
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: up and live in a gutter for fifteen ten years.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: If I'm lucky. No one stopped to ask the question
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: of how they got there. They just treat them, you know,
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: as animals almost, And so that trust was kind of
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: achieved right from the beginning of me even coming into
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: their doorstep, and then they just gave me the permission
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: almost to give the means the agency to tell their
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: own story.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: That's fascinating.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: You're right, these stories are a little too few and
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: far between, and a lot of the stuff that's going
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: on right now back here in the States that you
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: have been safely in Iraq avoiding, which is Corona and
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: what's going on with the death of George Floyd. I
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: think that's one of the reasons why these there is
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: such uprising here now. It's because it's because of stories
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: like this that that these these people have been handicapped
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: from the moment they were you know, they were evicted
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: from their womb, their mother's womb. Yes, yes, you know,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: there's no doubt about it. And these stories are so
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: so important and that's why it's so much more beautiful
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: on the way how you did it, which like if
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: you told me like, yeah, yeah, we had like two
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: three hundred thousand, we had an Alexa, we shot with
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: cook lenses, we had a full rig.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't You can't make this movie like that. You
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: need to You need to go to Best Buy an
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Apple and do what you did.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: It goes the whole story. Now, now this is your
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: first feature, right, this was your first feature.
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's my first feature. It's only the second on
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: my second credit. So I worked on that National Geographic film.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: So I was really I'm still, of course learning everything
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: as I go. But that was my film school that year,
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: a year and half in Camden.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: That was my film school.
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: You'll see, I mean, if you look at our Instagram,
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: you'll see some funny things of a first time director.
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: But also there's so many stories of I had no
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: idea what was what I was.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: Doing at the beginning.
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: Especially you'll notice things in the film if you watch
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: it with a close eye that I can point out
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: after you watch it it's a first time filmmaker if
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: But we did do an amazing They did an amazing
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: job of saving a lot in post and it looks incredible.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: But there's some funny things that I learned the hard way.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: But did you But the question is did you wear
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: a director hat or a director T shirt?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: No? I just carried the chair around and just.
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: You know, like that that gift where the guy just
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: unfolds the chair and straight stairs everywhere went.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: I had my director's chair on.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I always make a joke because when I was first
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: coming up, I had the director hat and a director
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: t shirt on, because that's what just a pompous film.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: Student would do.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: So anytime I see a director walk on set with
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: a director shirt on, I'm like, oh God, oh no,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: this is not going well.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: This is not going to go well.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: And every single time that's ever happened, I've never been disappointed.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Let's just put it that way.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: So you submit your films all these film festivals, right,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: and not only did you get it into slam Dance,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: but you also got some interest from south By this
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: of this last year. So can you tell me what
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: happened between slam Dance and south By? And then how
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: did it actually? How did it all work out?
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: Sure?
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: So we we really I'm not the only young filmmaker
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: on this team. It's really an inexperienced team of four
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: people probably still is.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: Which I love. And now we're actually really good.
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: So we really didn't really even though what we were
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: doing going to festival season either.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: So we got into.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: Slam Dance that was our first Well, first we got
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: rejected by Sundance obviously, and then I yes, exactly. It
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: was our first uh uh, you.
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: Know, welcome to the Welcome to the show.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: And then we got into slam By, which we were
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: really blown away. And for those we were unfamiliar, I
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: was unfamiliar. But it happens the same exact week, the
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: same time as Sundance. So actually, if you say it
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: fast enough, uh yeah. And honestly, a lot of people
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: think so we post on social media and a lot
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: of my university friends, Uh, they just assume I wants Sundance,
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: and there's no I'm not gonna correct them again.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: It's yeah, we're who want Sundance.
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: So we got into slam Dance and it was just
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: it was an incredible, incredible week, but we had so
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: Sundance slam Dance. Uh. Deadline to accept was right around
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: the same time that south By their deadline was for
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: their notification deadline was and in our minds, my mind
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: at least, I would lean toward not anymore, of course,
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: but I was going to lean toward our premiere at
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: south By just it has the big name and just
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: as the first time filmmaker, I just was going by
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: the name.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: So there was disagreement within the group.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: Eventually we decided we're going to premiere at slam Dance.
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: We ended up not getting into south By. So we're
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: at these parties and everything, and we're retelling the story and.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: How we chose to premiere at slam Dance. And it
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: turned out that.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: Through various programmers, I guess and I'm not one hundred
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: percent sure on this.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: But the rumors on the street, the rumors on the street, the.
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: Rumors on the street that south By does not take
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: kindly to slam Dance.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: and now back to the.
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: Show, especially if you're wanting to choose between the two.
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: And we had gotten kind of a cryptic.
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: Email from south By that before we got the rejection email,
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: and so they knew we were choosing between the two.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: And we chose slam Dance and didn't end up being
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: accepted to south By, which turned out.
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: So we won Grandeur a slam Dance. So it's amazing
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: the best choice. Uh.
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: And then a week after we come home, COVID hits
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: and south By is the first one to go.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: So it really was the right the right decision.
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it all worked out at the end.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Now what was your what was your Sundance slash slam
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: dance Park City experience?
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Like because you were you were like a fresh sh
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: off the boat.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: This is your first movie, You've never been your first
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: film festival.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, right like this is yeah.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: I didn't even, I couldn't even.
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: I wasn't exactly sure what I knew what a film
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: festival was. Obviously, I thought of it more as like
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: a market. And then my only background is the Entourage
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: episode which I watched, you know again, right before I left, right,
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: and I'm this, I'm a director, I'm going to a
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: major film festival. I'm picturing a lot of Entourage stuff.
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: And there was a lot of Entourage stuff. I mean,
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: we amazing parties. Yeah, we had a great PR team
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: that hooked us up. We went to like the Scenetic party.
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: We went to the HBO HBO party.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Of course, obviously because you're Thebo guys.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: So we had a great time. It was you know,
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: the hot tubs, the late nights. It was amazing.
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: But then there was also the side, So that was
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: the Entourage side. And then your film comes to mind
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: at the corner of ego and desire. So these for
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: those unfamiliar, you shouldn't be. It's a great movie, go
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: watch it. But it's three young filmmakers go to Sundance
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: to try to pitch their film and everything kind of
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: falls apart.
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: And so we had a lot of those moments too.
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: We you know, we're just first time everything, and I
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: didn't and I just didn't know anything.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of mistakes made. You know, what's
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: a sales agent? You need one.
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: We went in very very green, exciting, but dumb, excited
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: and greed. So it was a brilliant mix of the
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: entrage episode and your film and your film you no.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And I mean I've been there, as you know if
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I've been at slam and Sundance many many times over
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: the years, and slam Dance is an experience, and I
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: love slam Dance as you can see. I have my
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I represent the Slam Dance shirt all the time. I
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: do love them.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: I always found myself even though.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: I was rejected from slam Dance, and I'll call them
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: out all the time because Dan co owner, co founder
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: was in it and I still got reached Dan. Yeah,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: but to be fair, I think I said the word
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: sun Dance like fifty thousand times in the movie, so
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: they probably didn't want to promote Sundance so much.
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: You should have gone with slam dance.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: We were talking about that earlier, were like, you know,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: maybe I would have just said slam dance, slam dance,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: slam dance. Oh, they would have accepted it in a heartbeat.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: But of course we always go for the for the
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: girl that.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Doesn't want us.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, the hot girl that teases us constantly, that is
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: that's the relationship with ninety nine point nine percent of
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: every filmmaker ever, independent filmmaker ever.
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: And then we keep saying that, so south By was
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: the hot girl that didn't want us, and then it
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: got canceled. So every time we don't get one and
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: we're like, well, that hot girl is about to go
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: down because it's gonna get canceled, and it keeps happening.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, God knows what's going to happen in
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: the future. You know, I'm still in the in the
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: camp of I don't think Sundance is going to happen
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one in not the same way. I can't,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: you know, I can't even imagine it happening. But we'll see,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: but you won, so you won South.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: Excuse me, you you you excuse me. You want slam dance.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: You won the jury. The grand jury prices slam dance.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: So that's a big that's a big.
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: We were just uh, it was really just a dream.
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: It was I'll never forget when they call her name
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: like it was. I mean, i blacked out just from
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: the adrenaline. I'm not even sure what I ran out there.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: I'll never look at what what that acceptance speech was.
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: I'll tell you that Alex was not good.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: It was it was.
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: Ft mouth, it was bad, but it was Yeah, it
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: was just it was a dream contrue Uh, win that
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: and then we So that was our first festival to
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: you know, the first festival, one of the first festivals
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: of the year, and.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: So from that we got waiver.
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: Waivers to you know, maybe everywhere, and it was so
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: strange being contacted to show your film.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: So we just we just this weekend we did.
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: Our European premiere at Crackout in Poland, which is an
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: amazing festival. Yeah, and we were I think one or
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: if not the only North American film selected for competition.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: Uh. And it was online, which was a new experience.
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: But so that was right off of we actually got
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: the news about krackout right after the Grand Jury win.
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: And then also we were accepted this past week. Uh sorry,
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: we were in this past week in Brooklyn where we
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: won Best New Director and Spirit Award for for a
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: documentary feature. And so that Grand Jury win just yeah,
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: that snowball into everything. And we have a bunch of
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: festivals coming up that are either going to go online
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: or be canceled.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: So I want, so I want to clear exactly who
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: knows what's going to happen.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: So I want, I want to be real clear.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: So I want to bring this and you've been listening
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: to my podcast now for a while and everyone who's
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: listening automatically, but he won slam Dance, like he won
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: the Grand Jury Prize at slam Dance. So so when
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: the when the trucks of money came, did they just
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: did they unload by the palette or did they just
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: dump it all on your front yard?
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: How does that work?
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: They just they delivered it in their hands a little bit.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: Oh a little, little by little.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: Just like a little fourteen the fourteen quarters.
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: The fourteen the fourteenth quarters that they gave you.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: I want I want people to just understand that just
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: because you win the grand Jury prize at a major
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: festival like Slam Dance, it does not mean that you
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: automatically get checks.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: It's not nineteen ninety four anymore.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: No, uh.
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: And we had that kind of uh lotto ticket dream,
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: and I will stick by that. It is important to
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: have a dream that dreams, but it's also it's also
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: important and I'm so happy I didn't have any money,
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: so I actually had to build up technical skills along
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: the way while maintaining that lot of ticket dream. So yeah,
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: when when we won Grand Jury, I thought, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: here comes HBO again again, here comes uh, here comes
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: the big.
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: Deal like Netflix, Netflix, and we did.
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and we got all those calls and uh, it's
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: a lot less money than you would think, a lot
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: less money to any deal, any offer that.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: You would think.
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: There's no truckloads of money coming, and we found that
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: out pretty quickly.
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: However, I will say that.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: It not only did it open up doors further festivals,
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: which is really really important for a young team such
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: as ours.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: And I know festivals. I learned this the hard ware festivals.
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: You know, they don't we can win the grand jury,
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: and still that's not going to move the needle on
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: a higher. You can win three grand juries, it's not
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: gonna move the needle on a higher. It doesn't make
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: sense like people like your movie, but it's not gonna
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: move the needle on your your your distribution. So festivals
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: really aren't gonna do much for that. We found that out,
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: but it really did. These festivals are great for myself
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: and the team. Even so, I'm in Iraq filming now
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: and we have some really big names attached to this film.
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: This is my second film I'm directing, and that's all
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: from i'd say ninety from these festival wins. It lends credibility,
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: so no, they were not. We're gonna be lucky, in
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: all honesty right now to break even even though our
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: budget was so so we kept it so low and
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: down the road.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: Hopefully we're turning it. We're working on.
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: A narrative version as well, so hopefully that will drive
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: interest that way as well. But it pays off in
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: ways such as now I'm over here filming, as I
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: like to call it, my real directorial debut, since I
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: actually know what I'm doing now and I couldn't have
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: done that. I couldn't have attached these names to it
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: without that grand jury wind.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's that's the thing.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Filmmakers need to understand that the film festivals, especially if
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: you're a new filmmaker.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, my film festivals are the best. Like, yeah, you
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: gotta go and do the red carpet and do the
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: parties and meet other people. It's amazing. It's wonderful.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Take you know, go to those seminars, go to those workshops,
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: you know, meet people, network, it's great for all that.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Obviously that's been put on hold right now for the
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: next foreseeable future because of COVID, but when it comes back,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: it's still a wonderful experience to go through. But I
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: am just constantly beating my audience over the head that
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: it is not nineteen ninety four anymore. This is not
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: what it was. They don't have the same kind of
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: poll as they did before, so, but they do have
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: a place in the ecosystem without question. And I would
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: have killed to go through your experience, Like I've never
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: gone through that experience. Like come, I've been to hundreds
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: of festivals and won wards and all that kind of stuff,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: but I've never won a grand jury prize at slam
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: d Ask nor have ever been.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, at slam Dance.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show, or it's accepted into
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: slam Dance. But that's amazing, dude, that's an amazing story
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: and I'm glad that that you did it the way
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: you did it. And you're trying to get this story
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: told and get it out there, and it's not over yet.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: The story is still continue. You still got to figure
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: out how you're going to make money back with this.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: With hype of distribution deal you're going to finally land
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: on if you're going to self distribute. There's a lot
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: of different avenues you can go down.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: Yep. So yeah, definitely, it's Yeah, it's exciting.
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: It's still very exciting, and mistakes still will be made,
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: but at least there is going to be we have
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: more people on the team who know what they're doing,
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: a celld agent, good pr good good everything, so mistakes
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: will be made and it's it's still a learning curve.
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: But yeah, it was definitely a great experience.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Awesome, man. I'm gonna ask you a few questions.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: All the guests, what advice would you give a filmmaker
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: wanting to break into the business today. Obviously, go to
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Best Buy an Apple and do your trick.
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: But besides that, Yeah, so I guess for advice for
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: someone who did it like myself with no zero film
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: background besides water World.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: Uh and uh as an English teacher.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: By the way, side note, I did have the screenwriter
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: of water World on the show, but we never he
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: had done a documentary. I had never talked to him
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: about water World once.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: But I found out later a failure. It's a complete failure.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I have to I have to get him back Peter.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: I have to get Peter back on just to talk
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: about water World. But yes, I found out later after
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I interviewed him because we were just focused on his
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: documentary that I did. But yes, so water World is
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: like your godfather. It's kind of like your Star Wars.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: It is my godfather.
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: Yes, So I guess advice for a real, real new
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: I was an English teacher, so I had my baseline
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: was zero.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: So for someone and you can.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: Right now as a brand new filmmaker, I mean you
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: can buy amazing four K, you know, five D or
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: a seven S. You know, you can get those bodies
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: for how to use for a thousand right now, even
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: if you don't want to do the return trick, you
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: can film four K amazing four K in your cell
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: phone as everyone knows so.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: To look like a Panasonic GH four. You can get
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: that used for like four and fifty.
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: Bucks yep, yep, And then you can also learn how
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: to You can learn everything. And so not only did
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: I learn the three different editing software is just on YouTube.
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: But still when I have a problem, you know, I
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: was trying to figure out how to pin a graphic
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: in Premiere the other day, and I just googled those
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: words how to pin da da da in Premiere, and
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: there's fifty tutorials how to do it. So really all
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: the resources are right there.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: The gear for the.
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: First time is available. So if you're a brand new filmmaker,
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: just kind of.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: Do what I did.
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: Just get a camera and go do it. Now, keep
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: your expensive expence as low, so choose a story. Everyone
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: wants to tell a story that you know really really
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: moves them, but meet in the middle. Do one that
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: you care about that's also doable. So I, you know,
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: I stayed with family, I could drive to and from Camden.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I would say just kind of go do it, and.
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: There is this kind of I don't know how to
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: say it not there's a hierarchy in film and a
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: lot of the older generation, especially if you get into
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: these editing houses that have been around for a while,
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: they're gonna want you to pay your dues.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: And I ran in that a lot. I was told after.
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: I guess two months that I had to pay my
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: dues before and I quote, I was allowed to sit
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: at the big boys table who said this like, sorry,
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: this was the job I was working.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: I won't say names, but.
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: Basically, you're getting to you're you're getting way ahead of
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: your pay grade with your I was bringing story ideas.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: I was I.
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: Wanted to really go, go go, and I was in
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: my in uh in reality, I was, you know, assistant
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: to the assistant to the assistant editor coffee coffee getter.
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: So I was basically told to go and I had skilled,
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: I had, I really knew what I was doing.
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: So I was told and I quote, uh, you're not
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: you can't say at the big boys table yet. So
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: I've kind of carried that with me forever. I think
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: that this pay your dues thing is nonsense. I think
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: you can go do it. You if you can. If
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: you don't have that thousand dollars, that five hundred dollars
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: to get the camera, go do that.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Go sell your plasma. You go sell plasma, say.
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: About your blood plasma. If you really want to learn,
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: you can learn on YouTube. So there's kind of.
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: Not that many excuses why you can't go do it.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: And I want to just add something to that. That's excellent.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I agree that there is the old system of you
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: have to pay your dues in order to play that game.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: If you want to play that game, you've got to
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: pay your dues. If you want to play in those
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: in other people's sandboxes. Yeah, but then what you did
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: is you still paid your dues, but you paid your
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: dues in your own sandbox, creating it on your own
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: project and learning along the way yourself. So you, no
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: matter what, you're going to have to pay your dues
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: one way, shape or form. But I would much rather
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: learn it in my own world that I control and
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: I have all the power in and it's my own
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: big boy table, then playing in someone else's sandbox.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: At the beginning.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I.
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: Read a great quote somewhere it said film scorer. Sorry,
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: film school has never been more expensive, and film gear,
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: film gear has never been cheaper.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: So use that. And the reason these kind of.
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: Pay your dues hierarchies are starting to shake is because
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: anyone can kind of go out and make a film
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: right now. I just went out and made a film,
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: So I understand that they kind of want to hold
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: on to this control they have. But as you said,
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: go play in your own sandbox and make that sandbox
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: something and you can be at the big boys table
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: after not that much not that much time.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: I mean you won, you won the Grand Jury Prizes,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: sime Dance with your very first film, sir. So, I mean,
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: if that's not the big boy table, I know there's
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: guys and gals who've been working fifteen to twenty years
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: who've never gotten that opportunity. So yeah, there's something to
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: be said about that. Now, what is the lesson that
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: took you the longest to learn, whether in the film
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: business or in life.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I guess, and I'm still definitely definitely learning,
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: especially during this lockdown. There is a lot of time
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: to do a lot of stuff. You don't waste that time.
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: I so when I was wrapping up my time at
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: this post house, I knew I wanted to go and
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: direct something. But also at the same time, I was,
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: you know, physically addicted to every app on my phone.
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: I went out three times a week in Manhattan. I
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: just wasted time. I was buried in things that weren't
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: going to benefit this dream I had to direct.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: And I realized.
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: I realized that, and so I moved out of my
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: Harlem apartment Airbn beat it because somehow you can make
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: a lot of money doing that, move back in with
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: my parents, and I remember the first few times, and
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: this is that age. So I'm thirty one now, so
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: I guess two or three years ago I was too
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: old to be living back with my parents. But I
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: knew that I had to fund I had to save
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: up a little money to go do this.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: When I eventually left the post house.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: So and I remember when guests would come over, family friends,
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: i'd you know, not come out because I was so
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: embarrassed you.
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: Back at home. But I kind of retreated from everything.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: I gave up.
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: I gave up actually alcohol and partying for a year.
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: I deleted all the apps in my phone, barely ever
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: use my phone.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: And that might not sound like a lot, but.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: You'll be surprised if you look at that screen time thing,
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: how much time you waste. So I had so much
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: time to dedicate toward screenwriting books, every movie that I
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: missed out of watching because I wasn't allowed to have
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: a TV, and I can now watch them with a
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: critical eye, and I could. I mean, I just learn
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: podcasts like yours, all the no film school type websites.
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: I just absorbed everything, everything, everything, and within not too
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: long I had enough skills to head to Camden. So
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: I guess, and I'm still learning it. And this, this
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: lockdown has made it extra The issue is even more
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: magnified because there just is so much time on my hands.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Lockdown in Iraq, but that's.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: The name of your next two move, Lockdown in Iraq.
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So I guess the lesson is that there is
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: enough time to make this happen. Whatever that dream, that
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: end goal is for you, there is enough time in
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: the day to.
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: Make that happen. There are going to be some sacrifices.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Are a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: the show.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: But if you're as long as you're not wasting time.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: There is time to get this stuff done now.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: And last question, what are the three favorite films of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: your of all time?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: Besides water World? Obviously is one?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: So oh yeah, water World's one A and one B.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: Let's see three favorite movies of all time.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: Okay, there's a Swedish movie called Let the Right One In? Yes,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: pre movie, yes, oh it is absolutely. I don't like
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: I don't like vampire movies. I don't like horror. Do
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: not watch the trailer if you want to watch this movie,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: because you'll never You'll never turn it on. Uh, the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 5: trailer is nothing like the movie. But yeah, Let the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: Right One In is definitely top three. And also, don't
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: watch the American version. It's good, but not nearly as
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: good as the Swedish version. Let's see the Lives of others.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: The German film Fantastic Film District nine.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: That really I love the idea.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: So I love documentary obviously, but I'm actually starting to
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: move into narrative. I mentioned I wrote a screenplay for
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: Higher Love, and that's moving forward, and so I really
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: love the idea of mocumentary, bridging the gap between what's
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: what's narrative, what's documentary?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: And so.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: Yet District nine is definitely definitely up there for me,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: and I guess a close close fourth.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: You were never really here is great.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: I just saw that with Phoenix, really dark film.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a that's a top four for your
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: top three.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: And I forgot one other question I have to ask
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: you because you're such a water World fan. Have you
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: been to the water World ride at Universal?
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: No?
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: And I actually was this is gonna sound I remember
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: when I was talking about don't waste time and you'll
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: have a lot of time. I was wasting a lot
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: of time the other day and was researching water World
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: because I mean, it's actually you know it, it deserves
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: a laugh or two at its expense. But there's a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: lot of people who really do deep dives on the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: internet about this.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, don't don't question, no question. Yeah, I mean it
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: just let's be clear real quick about water World. And
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: this is a topic I haven't talked about in all
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: of my episodes that never water World has never come up.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: But water World is honestly, yes, you absolutely can laugh
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: at it.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: There's definitely things you can laugh about it without question.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: But it was a fairly successful film.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: It is done.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: It did really actually did well box office wise. It
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: launched two rides at both Universal Parks. It has a
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: lot of merch that it's sold like quietly, It's it's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: not cats.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: Let's just put it that way.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: It's not as bad as like cats, you know, it's
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: or anything like that. It's it's not Showgirls, because Showgirls
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: is a perfect film obviously, but yeah, but but so
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: people might make fun of it. But it's not as
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it's not as a cologne. It's not as
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: bad as The Postman. Now, if you watch The Postman,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: that is a horrendous piece of film.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: Right, And it's certain wi World certainly did well at
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: my local videos rental.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: Story, Oh yes, rented like crazy.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: And I also, I mean, I I think everyone carries
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: this kind of For example, I don't think six months ago,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: a year, I would be on a podcast admitting to h.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: Loving water World or I guess basically, I.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: Think everyone carries this kind of imposter syndrome that they
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: feel like they don't belong. And I certainly felt and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: feel to an extent that I don't belong. And I
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: think it's natural for all humans in that way, but
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: especially in the film industry.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: Especially in artistic endeavors.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: And so while we're laughing about water World, I don't
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: think I would have talked about it that.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: I loved it.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: I would have made up something, you know, to make
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: me sound like I knew what I was talking about.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: I don't seven Samurai seven, Samurai taxi.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: Driver, taxi driver this, you know, these black and white casablanca.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: I just you know, I would have gone that.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: Route because I think this imposter syndrome is is really real,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: and it still.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: Is really real for me.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: But I think that no one, really everyone's got it.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: You just got to kind of remember that. Uh you
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: got to remember that not only in this kind of
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: gorilla indie filmmaking, especially documentary filmmaking, where you know, I.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: Really didn't belong. So I guess now I've along a
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: little more than that.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: But it look like at the end of the day,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: we all have that imposter syndrome. I think we all
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: have it at a certain level, different levels of it.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I even you know, speaking to some of
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: these big giant directors and writers, they have it, you know,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: and they have billion dollar movies behind them and they
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: still have it.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: So it's in all of us.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: But I think as you get older, you start becoming
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: a little bit more comfortable in your skin. So I
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: have no problem saying that The Room is a fantastic
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: film and I would watch it, not by myself, ever,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: but with a group of people.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: That Showgirls is.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Great again not I could probably watch show Girls by
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: itself because it's it transcends how good it is. There's
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: a new documentary out about it, by the way, I
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: don't know if you know that there's a Showgirls documentary
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: that they just broke down what Showgirls is. And I'm like,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: I still haven't seen Cats, but I'm actually dying to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: watch it because and something is that bad it will
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: eventually transcend itself.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: Yes, it's a more bid curiosity for the same reason
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: I went to Camden.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: Cats and Canada. We can't connect those two. I don't
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: know how we connect those two. But you haven't. So
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: you haven't gone to the water World ride yet?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: No, So yes, I have not gone to the water
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: World ride yet. And I actually just assumed what I
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: was saying. I was doing a deep dive, and before that,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: I just assumed, why would that still be open?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: Oh it's everywhere, of course, Yeah.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: It's still open. Yeah, so that's definitely on the on
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: the bucket list.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: I saw it in LA and I saw it at
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: Florida when I was in Orlando back in the day
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: as well, so it's still there. It's actually a fantastic show.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: I have to say, it's a fantastic show.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: You.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: I think you will enjoy it even more than most.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: Definitely for sure.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: And then where can people find you find about more
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: of a Higher Love and what your other project's going
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, so I guess the best way to find
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: So for Higher Love, that's the feature documentary. It's Higher
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: Love Film on Instagram, and then higherlovefilm dot com we
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: post all of our screenings. We have a bunch of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: festivals coming up the next yeah six months at least
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: a bunch of festivals that will be online, which actually
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: makes it more accessible for a lot of viewers around
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: the world. So yeah, Hire Love Film the website and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: the Instagram, and then if you just go to the Instagram,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: you can under the info that's you can find me
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: under the director Hassan O that's my Instagram handle. And
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: then for the film I'm working on now, that'll be
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: it's just briefly it follows a certain sect of the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: Iraqi population is Yazdi. It's an ancient religion and there's
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: still after so Isis was brutal to everyone in the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: region in two thousand, during their reign of terror around
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 5: twenty fourteen, but especially brutal to this sect of Uzds, and.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: They took.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: Three to six thousand of them as slaves, and two
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: to three thousand of those are still missing and in
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: ice ices captivity and no one's really doing anything.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: So I've embedded with.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: A group of rescuers and smugglers trying to get those
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: those mostly women and children back, and because of the
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: sensitivity of the material, we cannot as of yet put
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: anything social media wise, but we are approaching that point
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: where we can so well. Definitely if you follow the
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: other page, the Higher Love page, or my personal Instagram,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: which I'd love I'd love to I love connecting with
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: fellow filmmakers, especially.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: Members of the tribe.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: I'd love to start dialogues on my first on Instagram page.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: So yeah, we'll update that with my current project as well.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: Hassan Man, it has been an adventure talking to you.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: It's been a very inspiring story. I'd love hearing these
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: kind of stories, man, I really really do, because anytime
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: I hear someone hustling and hustling without any understanding of
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: what they were doing, it's even better. And that you
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: at the end of that it wasn't a disaster and
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: you actually created a fantastic film is a rarity.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: So what you have done is no small feet, my friend.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Seriously, So congratulations on all your success, and that stay safe
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: in Iraq until you get back here, because here in
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: the States we're much safer than it is in Iraq.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: Obviously we're good in COVID. There are no riots. That's
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: all fake news. Don't worry.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: And now to the show, right, I'll bide my time
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 5: to get back, don't worry. And also else, I wanted
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: to thank you not only for having me on, but
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: just what you do is incredible.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: I don't think thank you.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: I don't know if I'm here without your podcast coming
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: on seen in twenty fifteen, which is the same time
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: I came onto the scene. And you know, there's great,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 5: great resources out there, of which you know you're one
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: of the best. So I'm proud to call myself one
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: of the tribe, and I don't think this, this hustle
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: would have would have happened without Indie hustle.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you. I truly appreciate that, and I'll pay you
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: later for that. So thank you.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: All right, sounds good out.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Hassan for coming on the show
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: and just sharing his story on his new film Higher
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: Love and hopefully inspiring a few members of the tribe
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: out there to go out and make their own film.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: about in this episode, head over to the show notes
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: Bulletproof Screenwriting dot TV. Forward slash for eighteen. Thank you
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: so much for listening to guys, as always, keep on
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: writing no matter what.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.