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IFH 715: How To Become A Professional Screenwriter w/ Brooks Elms · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Filmhustle Podcast, Episode number seven fifteen. The way I see it, If
• 0:17
  you want the rainbow, you're gonna have to put up with the rain.
• 0:20
  Dolly Park Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle
• 0:26
  Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker
• 0:31
  in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:37
  Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I
• 0:39
  am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
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  the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's
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  available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to
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  order it, just head over to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's
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  film bizbook dot com. Today on the show, we have Brooks Elms Now.
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  Brooks is a very interesting guy. He's a screenwriter, he's a director.
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  He's written twenty five plus screenplays, dozen of them on assignment. He's
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  a script doctor. But in many ways he's the screenwriter whisperer. That's what
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  I like to call him, because he helps not only screenwriters but filmmakers get
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  back and touch with their creative flow, which is that zone, that place
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  that we all as creatives strive to get to and we get to it every
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  once in a while. Some filmmakers and screenwriters live there, like Eric Roth,
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  for God's sakes, and so many Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino and so
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  many other screenwriters and filmmakers that I can list off here who just kind of
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  like stay there, are able to tap into it every single time they are
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  doing work for decades. But most of us only get in there occasionally.
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  And what Brooks does is he helps you find how you can get in there
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  and tap in there and stay within that world when you're creating. It was
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  a really fascinating conversation and I think it's going to be very instructive to all
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  the members of the tribes. So, without any further ado, please enjoy
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  my conversation with Brooks Elms. I'd like to welcome the show Brooks Elms.
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  How you doing, Brooks. I'm great, I'm excited to be here.
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  Thank you so much for being on the show man. I truly appreciate it.
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  Yeah, you reached out to me a little while ago. I think
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  you heard me that I was going to write a screenplay and you're like,
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  hey, if you need any help, man, I'll coach you through it.
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  I'll do I was like, I appreciate that, by the way,
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  thank you so much. I don't even know when I'm going to start writing
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  this thing, but but I'll let you know. Yeah, it was one
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  of the many things that interested me about you because you got on my radar,
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  like like maybe ten years ago through a mutual friend Scott who did this
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  podcast Film Trooper of course and Scott, yeah, friend of the show.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's awesome. And it was funny because he
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  kept going, oh, yeah, there's this guy Alex Ferrari, and like,
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  who is this guy? I was like all jealous, like who is
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  this guy? Who is this Alex guy? I looked up and like,
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  man, this guy's bringing it, you know. And so I've watched how
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  like you know, you you always helping in the filmmakers, and then it's
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  just kind of snowballus. Only now you're like the Amazon of helping in they
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  filmmagers. It's amazing, that's awesome. I might steal that the Amazon of
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  healthy filmmakers. You're welcome, You're welcome to it. I actually you can
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  you can use that one. I came up with the tagline for the Blacklist
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  dot com where where screenwriters meet filmmakers or something like that. They sent out
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  their beta and they had some terrible, you know line. I was like,
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  this is awful here, you should do something like this blah blah blah,
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  and they go, oh, that's great, We're gonna use it,
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  so you're welcome to it. Awesome. I do marketing stuff too, so
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  it comes comes naturally. So how did you start in the business, man,
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  oh man. I started making movies with my friends back in high school,
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  and it was just so much fun. I my friend I was like
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  fifteen years old, and my yeah noise back there. I got started.
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  I was fifteen years old and my friends came up and said, Hey,
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  we're making a kung fu movie. You want to you want to do it?
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  I was like, oh, hell yeah, that sounds great. So
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  we made that movie and and then we made another one. We made another
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  one. We showed our friends and they were laughing their asses off, and
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  I was like, oh my god. I was so completely and utterly hooked
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  and bite. And that was in high school. And I probably made fifty
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  short film experiments before I even got to mu film schools because it was just
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  it was intoxicating and I loved it. You know, you know how that
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  is so uh the disease, the diseases, I call it the disease.
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  Yes, you get bitten by the bug and you can't get rid of it.
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  It's done. It's with you for life. It is. It is.
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  Yeah, I concerm us a recovering independent filmmaker now recovering. I love
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  that one too. I'm a recovering independent filmmaker. It is. I'm always
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  recovering it always. Yeah, We're always constantly recovering and then and then and
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  then we and then of course then of course we fall off the wagon because
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  we because we go and see you know, we watch a Kubrick film,
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  where we watch a Nolan film and you're like, gott, I gotta go
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  back and dot, gotta, I gotta make another movie. It's it's the
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  weird. We're we're very weird creatures, filmmakers and screenwriters. There's very strange
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  in the in the world of all creatives, because it's just such a I
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  don't think there's many other forms. Screenwriters are different. But filmmakers need a
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  team, need to gather the troops, need to get the carnies together.
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  To put the tent up, to put put on the show. Uh.
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  It is unlike any other art form. Not a writer, not a painter,
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  even a musician could do something alone if they want to. They could
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  be a singer songwriter and do their own thing. Uh. For us,
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  it's it's just weird. We gotta convince other people to jump on crazy train
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  with us as an independent. There there was a moment. So after I
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  graduate at NYU Film School that summer I made my first feature, and I
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  was it was it was about this, Uh was based loosely on on the
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  I played on the MYU soccer team, and and the movie was about how
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  our team was like perfectly average. They weren't a great team, they weren't
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  a terrible team. We're really good at drinking after games. Right, So
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  I made this movie that was okay about about the soccer team. And I
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  was four or five days into the shoot and we were doing these soccer sequences.
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  So there was like thirty forty people on set. I'm twenty two years
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  old. I don't really know what the hell I'm doing, but I went
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  around. I looked around. I was like, oh my god, this
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  is the best thing ever. But it was, It's just and that's that.
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  It's just I guess it's like, you know, that love for movies
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  and then the love for creation kind of come together when when you're directing.
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  Yeah, when you're on set. I love being on set. Set is
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  one of the my favorite places to be. Uh, And we get to
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  do it so rarely, you know, unless you're Ridley Scott who's working twenty
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  four seven every day and he's on set every week. It's it's a tough
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  It's it's tough because as an artist, you only get to actually produce your
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  art handful of times really, unless you're doing commercials or doing something else.
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  But like as a feature director, if you're lucky once a year, and
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  that's a that's an insanity. If not, you're working every couple of years.
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  If you're lucky, as it's getting a project off the ground, get
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  in the financing, get it's a weird art form, and then you're depressed
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  every the rest of the time. And is it is it like you when
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  when we when you go off set and it's the last day of shoot,
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  I always I'm like depressed, like I'm going at the post. So it
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  gives me something to look forward to but when on the day of I'm like,
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  this family, these Carnies are my family I've been with for a few
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  weeks now, and it's like this whole it's just it's we're such weird creatures.
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  It's intense. It's absolutely intense because it's just it's such a hurricane of
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  intention and hope and dedication and awesomeness. And then it just goes, well,
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  there's a void when it's done and it's and then and then after post
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  it's worse. Yeah, now you're just like, oh, I got I
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  got nothing to do now except like hope the distributor is going to send me
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  a check. Well, I actually loved the marketing side even when so that
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  film that I made when I was twenty two, when we finally finished it,
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  I took it on like a college tour on the East Coast could be
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  so much fun. I did that. I like, we showed it because
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  it was a collegey movie, and we showed it. I showed it a
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  bunch of different colleges along the East Coast, and we did like a month
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  long screening event in an off off Broadway space in New York that I called
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  the New York City Guerrilla Cinema. So from the jump, I've always loved
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  the marketing and promotion side as much as I love the creation side as I
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  do. As you know, as I do, I love I love the
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  marketing promotion side. It gets me jazzed up a big time. Now,
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  you worked with a lot of screenwriters, and you know you consult and you
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  coach, and you help screenwriters break through their own crap as we all have
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  our own walls we have to go through. We'll be right back after a
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  word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Why do you
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  think scream? Why do most screenplays fail? In your opinion? Uh?
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  Because they well a, we have to define how they fail, right,
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  there's there's failing for story my own yeah, story. Well, so ultimately
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  like if if I mean because, because let's take off the subjectivity, right,
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  because what might be a failure for me might be my favorite or vice
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  versa. Right, So let's taken out apart. So let's say it's not
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  even by the by the writer's own standards, it actually didn't hit the mark
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  generally you're talking about. It's it's hero goal conflict. The hero probably wasn't
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  as defined as it could be, the goal probably wasn't as compelling as it
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  could be. Uh, and then the stakes, the conflict was it wasn't
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  quite right. Now do you when you start writing, do you write with
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  starting with character with plot? Either I start with concept. Basically concept would
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  be more plot esque, I guess kind of if I had to, if
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  if I had to squeeze one, I don't know. I think concept kind
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  of bridges them both, right, because a great concept will have people kind
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  of you know, you can say in a sentence and it'll sort of crack
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  open people's mind. They'll go, oh ay, that sounds I get.
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  I get a lot of the stuff that's happening there, and it's really compelling.
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  Oftentimes there's a bit of an irony in there that helps you sort of
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  unlock that sort of magic and you can do great work, especially if you're
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  a good director or you have a good director to do your stuff with a
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  sort of not a great concept, right, But like when you start with
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  a great concept, everything else gets easier because of that quality of the foundation.
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  So talk to me about theme, because I think that's also another where
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  another place where a lot of screenplays and stories fail is they have no no,
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  no compass, and the theme is that compass and they just they you
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  see it all the time. You watch some of these movies and you're just
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  like, there's no theme here. There's there's just like, oh, look
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  there's a bunch of people fighting, or there's a bunch of action or scares.
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  But like when you look when you study like a horror movie specifically,
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  you study a Halloween, you study you know, Exorcist, that the storytelling
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  is so solid that the scares are just bonus, as opposed to films that
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  just focus on the scares and not the thing. And there's that theme underneath
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  it that really is the backbone. What can you tell me about that?
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  Yeah, that's it's an interesting question. So theme is tricky because it's it's
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  it's it's a gravitational center point, and yet it's kind of ephemeral. I
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  mean, if we kind of hold it too hard, it kind of slips
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  our fingers and it's and it gets more confusing, right, one helpful way
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  that feels kind of concrete with theme because for me, theme is like you
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  know, crime pays or crime doesn't pay, or lung conquers all or or
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  we'll talk about shawshank At sometimes which hope versus despair. Right, So,
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  but like a very sort of grounded, concrete way of thinking about it is
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  really sort of your your characters misbehavior and then their behavior. So they start
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  out here with some sort of obstacle and problem and they're doing it the wrong
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  way, right, And this is an expression of our own life, like
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  we've had. We all have life challenges, and when we're in the more
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  human side of ourselves, we're not meeting our challenge, and well, we're
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  running away from something where cowardly, we're gluttonous, or we're doing something some
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  sort of misbehavior. And our screenplays are a metaphor for this real thing going
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  on in us. If they're really great, it's some sort of metaphor for
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  something we did and we did it kind of the wrong way, and the
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  script is about how we learned to do it the right way through painful trial
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  and error. Your theme is a word that kind of speaks to that transformation.
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  So in particular with your idea of shooting for the mob. Right when
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  you were talking about her, I was watching your Your Awesome episode five h
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  one, and I was and I was listening to it. I was like,
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  oh, it was interesting, so if because my understanding where you're at
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  it is it's like, you know, you've written a book, and you
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  know and at some point you want to do it, and maybe you even
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  have some great tune writers that might be helpful, but you're kind of like,
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  I'm not sure kind of where to start, to my mind, because
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  that's sort of like my specialties I help. I take I take a writer
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  and I clarified their superpower and I walk with them step by step on how
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  to completely powerfully realize it. And what's exciting to me about at least where
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  you are with your stories. Your theme is always is already so night and
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  clear. It's like it's about as you know, and I haven't read the
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  book. I'm just basically on the concept. It's about an independent filmmaker that
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  that is so you know, urgent to make his movie, that he ends
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  up doing it the wrong way, getting in bed with the wrong people,
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  and then realizing he can't do that right. So that it to me thematically,
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  you're in a really good place, and a lot of times, especially
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  independent filmmakers, they don't have a theme that's so clean and simple. So
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  to my mind, structuring your story. Even again, having read the book,
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  I'm sure it's probably pretty good because I know you and you know I
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  know what you're doing. But like, just based on a conceptual thing what's
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  going to make a good film, I can already see a potential for how
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  you could structure that thematically and really powerfully. Just because your theme is so
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  good, well, I appreciate that. That for me is a tough conversation
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  just because it's it's such a It took me so long to get the courage
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  to just even write the book, and the emotions that were attached to that
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  story, and you know, it was real life, and I literally,
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  you know, was crying through some chapters as I wrote it because I was
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  like going back to the darkest times of my life. But I felt they
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  needed to get out there to help other filmmakers and other not only filmmakers,
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  anybody in a tough situation that they can't get they think they can't get out
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  of, but they can. But for me, it's just tough to even
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  think about starting to write it again, going back to that place mentally,
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  going at to that to that world. I don't mind directing it, and
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  that's actually what it's A precondition of anybody who wants to make the movie with
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  me is that I have to have I have to direct, and my DP
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  has to be the DP because he was Boris in the movie and that was
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  in the book. And that's it. Uh, those are the only two.
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  That's it. That's all I needed. But I don't know. I
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  think I might be too close to it, but I will. I have
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  to. I'll figure that out next year. When I became in that process,
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  I could. I could help you out offline, just really quickly in
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  terms of how to because the stuff I started doing first, I like,
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  I want to screenplay award at NYU, doing this very personal senior thesis film,
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  right, And it was about how the previous summer I brought my girlfriend
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  home to my hometown and like she and my best friend didn't get along.
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  So it was a very personal film about my best friend. I had to
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  choose between my best friend and my girlfriend, right, and it was very
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  raw because it just happened. And then and then the first feature I made
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  was about my friends on the soccer team and how I was frustrated with the
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  coach and blah blah blah. So and then when I broke through to the
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  next level and started really selling scripts. I was able to take my superpower
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  as a guy that could write grounded characters and tension and then put it into
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  a genre that was just more accessible. It was like, I wrote this
• 17:11
  alien invasion movie that was very gritty and grounded, and it felt like it
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  felt like a shooter event or a terrorist attack. But it just kept unfolding
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  from there into being this alien invasion and it did. It did really well.
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  So anyway, So and I work with writers who were working with all
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  sorts of deep personal issues. So one of my specialties is figuring out how
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  that, because we have to coming from that personal place, is exactly what's
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  going to make that movie really great, Alex. And yet you're right,
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  if you're too close to it, it just triggers too much stuff because you
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  lived it and you wrote about it all. And it's and it's tough to
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  make a move because the book is one thing, But to make a movie,
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  it has to change this. Characters are going to be added storapelines and
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  plots are going to be added that that have to be there to make it
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  into a movie or else. And that's the thing that it's hard for me
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  to even comforhand, well that's not the way it happened. And even even
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  if I even if I don't, even if on a conscious level I say
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  no, no, I'm gonna let that go. On a subconscious level,
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  it's gonna it's gonna red, it's gonna read it's ugly head. So and
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  here, well, here's and here's how would advise you or somebody in that
• 18:15
  situation, right, because it happens a lot. The key is that will
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  unlock it is thinking of it as the same but different of something else.
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  So, for example, the last script that I sold, it's a father
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  and son's story, and I basically ripped off the form of Cramer versus Kramer.
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  Right, so Cramers Kramer Dustin Hoffman nineteen eighty is a workaholic admin.
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  The last guy that that is actually a good father. Meryl Street, having
• 18:45
  a nervous breakdown, takes off and goes, you gotta you gotta watch our
• 18:48
  kid. He's like, what you know? So he has to learn painfully
• 18:52
  how to be a dad. And then at midpoint she's like, Okay,
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  I've had my breakdown. I want to come back and take custody. He
• 18:56
  goes who whoa, WHOA. Now I like being a dad, so then
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  it's them fighting, right. So I took that basic pattern, right,
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  and I swapped out everything, all the characters all the same, And I
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  wrote this script called The Art of the Knockout that's going into production next year,
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  and it's about this bare knuckle brawler that travels around the circus in the
• 19:18
  nineteen twenties. He fathered this kid eight years ago. They didn't even know
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  about that kid's mom dies and they stick him, and so the last guy
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  that should be a dad, this bare knuckle brawler, is stuck watching this
• 19:29
  kid. He hates it. He tried to get rid of the kid.
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  It's awful, and then slowly learns to actually really love being a father,
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  and that has to fight to keep him at the end. Right. So
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  it's the same but different. And when that got set up and I was
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  getting notes, none of the notes were on the structure structure perfect. The
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  only notes where they had a couple ideas and how to raise the mistakes and
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  this and that. So my invitation to you or anybody like you that has
• 19:49
  something based on personal experience. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 19:55
  sponsor and now back to the show. See if it helps, it'll help
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  you devoting to sort of differentiate it from what actually happened and thinking of it
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  as a movie. And if once you think of it as a movie,
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  Oh, and it doesn't have to be the same genre. Oh, it's
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  kind of like such and such or this or that. And then once you
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  think of it as that, and then you used what actually happened in the
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  book about it as a buffet of elements to serve the vehicle of the story.
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  Now you're just making it more accessible. Now you might not want to
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  do all that stuff. End the end of filmmaking, we could do whatever
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  how we want, right, So so you've got to do it the way
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  you want most importantly, and if you want to lean into what Hollywood does
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  best in terms of concept and structure, that would be my invitation. Find
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  a form of a story that you can kind of use it because you don't
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  because here's the other thing that happens, Alex. I kind of I liken
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  it to people that put like a triangle wheel on a car, right,
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  really creative, But that car is not going to go anywhere because it's not
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  going to run. So what I say is don't be creative. Round wheels,
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  big wheels, small wheels fine, but round wheels, and then once
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  we know it goes, then get creative. And so for me, for
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  you, I think the most accessible and powerful version of what actually happened in
• 21:14
  sort of vision would probably be something like that. Pick a movie that you
• 21:18
  love and that has and get the round wheels from that and then swap it
• 21:23
  out and make it completely personal to you and to me, that's a way
• 21:29
  of being completely one hundred percent authentic to that theme and the feelings, because
• 21:33
  that's what we really care about. But the actual move the story that comes
• 21:37
  out, you know, is something's exactly what happened, and some things that
• 21:41
  are just there to serve the new truth of your metaphor. That makes sense,
• 21:45
  Yeah, it makes it makes all the sense in the world. You
• 21:47
  said something that was really interesting, and I think it's a lesson that we
• 21:49
  can can we pass on to the listeners is the you took Cramer versus Cramer
• 21:56
  structure and swapped it out. There's so many screenwriters working screenwriters who do that
• 22:02
  all the time, that they'll take a movie, their favorite movie, and
• 22:06
  they'll swap out the theme. They'll they'll swap out the conversation, they swap
• 22:10
  out everything, characters. It's not like they're stealing anything. Sometimes sometimes it
• 22:14
  isn't. I'm going to give you an example of what it was. But
• 22:18
  but but but you can use that structure because that hard work has been laid
• 22:22
  out. It's kind of like already having a blueprint and you're putting up new
• 22:26
  walls, you're dressing it differently, you're putting new finishes on. But it's
• 22:30
  the structure that's been sound and it works already, and it's been proven to
• 22:33
  work, and that's something that a lot of a lot of especially and again
• 22:38
  it's also a good starting point too. If you start looking at a movie
• 22:41
  and you break down their scenes and you're like, Okay, I'm gonna replace
• 22:44
  this scene with this scene and this scene with this scene, and I'm just
• 22:45
  going to literally copy the blueprint of that. That's a good starting point to
• 22:52
  get the juices flowing. And it could shift a bit as you go.
• 22:55
  It's not going to be exact, but the basic foundation is is is the
• 23:00
  same. And I found that to be really really valuable. I always look
• 23:04
  at movies like what movie do I want this to be? At? Like
• 23:07
  and It doesn't have to be the same genre. It could be completely different.
• 23:11
  Perfect example of a movie that we all know that started one of the
• 23:15
  biggest franchises in the world. Point Break, Point Break, wonderful film,
• 23:22
  love It, one of the best action movies of the nineties. Keanu Reeves
• 23:26
  and all of his glory, pastor Patrick Swayze and all of his glory.
• 23:29
  It is basically was stolen one hundred percent. It's Fast and Furious. The
• 23:33
  first Fast and Furious is Point Break. Look at us. If you look
• 23:37
  at it and analyze it, Fast and Furious one is the it's actually the
• 23:42
  just switched out surfers for cars. That was the only difference. It's the
• 23:48
  only difference in the movie. It's the exact same movie. It's like it's
• 23:52
  nut surfers and it's the same thing. And then it falls. Another interesting
• 23:57
  example of that, I in the the script that they just finished now,
• 24:02
  I was using the model of Dead Poet Society. A mentor comes in,
• 24:06
  it gets really overly influenced, it goes to a tragic place, but then
• 24:08
  they still celebrate the mentor at the end, right. And I was telling
• 24:11
  people when I was getting notes, I go, yeah, yeah, this
• 24:15
  is kind of like Dead Poet Society order, and people would read it and
• 24:18
  go there, nothing likes dead Poets Siety. What the hell are you talking
• 24:19
  about? So I had been so creative pass where the round and I knew
• 24:25
  it was a screenwriter. No, it was exactly. It was exactly that
• 24:26
  pattern. Those were the exact same round wheels. But they couldn't tell because
• 24:30
  I made it one hundred percent authentic to me and my characters, despite the
• 24:34
  fact that it had a rock solid foundation. So that's I think the key
• 24:37
  for you is that if you find a way of telling an aspect of what
• 24:41
  happened that feels like really beautifully in harmony with one of your favorite movies sort
• 24:48
  of patterns. Dude, that to me, I could see you just amazingly
• 24:52
  telling that story in a really powerful way. I appreciate that. Well,
• 24:56
  we'll see, we'll see. I got a couple of things I gotta do
• 24:57
  this year. And the broader thing for everybody is, like anybody anybody who's
• 25:03
  doing memoir, right, something that's that's starting from a really personal place,
• 25:07
  it's tricky if we're too close to it, right, So this is a
• 25:10
  game of getting a real healthy distance. It's great that you're writing what you
• 25:14
  know, because it's going to resonate with authenticity. The game is to put
• 25:18
  it in a package that's more accessible to more people, depending on whatever audience
• 25:22
  size you want to serve. It's fine to do something obscure if that's really
• 25:25
  where your heart is, but if you want to do something that's really bigger
• 25:27
  and breaks through over the bigger audience, they're looking for a cleaner, foundational
• 25:32
  package, and you can do that just by sort of, you know,
• 25:36
  understanding how the same but different works in terms of concept. Now, you
• 25:40
  mentioned Shawshank, which everyone listening to the show knows my love for Shawshank,
• 25:45
  and anytime we get to talk about Shawshank and analyzing and breaking it down,
• 25:48
  I think it's a it's a benefit to every listener. I love to hear
• 25:53
  your thoughts on Shawshank and what Shawshank can teach us as writers, as storytellers,
• 25:59
  and the brilliant of what Frank Draban did with a short A short story
• 26:03
  from Stephen King arguably still the worst title in movie history, Shawshank Redemption.
• 26:10
  It's it's absolutely horrendous title for marketing. I'd love the title, and it
• 26:15
  makes all the sense in the world, but try to market that movie and
• 26:18
  they couldn't. Terrible marketing decision. But what do you call it? Though?
• 26:26
  But let me ask, what do you call it? If you can't
• 26:29
  call it it's a redemption movie, But what do you call it? No?
• 26:32
  You, it's about hope you basically not and obviously not like hope this
• 26:36
  or hope that, but like something that evokes hope. I would love to
• 26:41
  bring storm a really good title for that because I guarantee you, look,
• 26:44
  you can't do worse than that title. Right, Yeah, it's pretty boudible.
• 26:47
  It's like one of the worst titles that I still remember it was nominated
• 26:48
  for. It was nominated for Best Picture, didn't win anything. I think
• 26:52
  it was nominated for Best screen front I think it had to be nominated for
• 26:56
  Best Screenwriting. It might have been. It might have been. He got
• 26:59
  like it got like three or four Oscar nominations, like some acting I think.
• 27:03
  I think I think it and it's initial released. I don't think it
• 27:04
  did very well. I think it didn't bomb, but it kind of just
• 27:07
  limped along and then it got some awards and it got another bump, but
• 27:11
  then it really picked up. I think in the home video doing after Yeah
• 27:15
  home video, and then it then became number one on IMDb. It beat
• 27:18
  The cod Father as the best movie most the love the movie of all time.
• 27:22
  That's right, that's right, So okay, So here here's here's my
• 27:26
  thoughts on the number one takeaway for anybody listening, because I know these were
• 27:30
  all fellow storytellers, is if you're laughing to like the movie, especially if
• 27:36
  you love it. The best takeaway is really theme because the way they talk
• 27:41
  about hope versus despair is so beautiful and so powerful and so clean and simple.
• 27:45
  Again, a lot of times with theme it gets heavy, it's really
• 27:48
  hard to kind of track, but with Shawshank it's so damn clear and compelling,
• 27:53
  but not like batting you over the head of the head with it,
• 27:56
  but but really easy to track. So and what you have is a really
• 28:00
  interesting dynamic of the way it's structured. So you have Read played by Morgan
• 28:06
  Freeman, who I would characterize as actually the protagonist, even though Tim Robbins
• 28:14
  Andy Dufraine is driving the narrative. So it's unusual. Usually are almost always
• 28:18
  our protagonist drives the narrative, but in this case I would call Read the
• 28:22
  protagonist because he changes in the end, he goes from despair. Look,
• 28:26
  you can't use hope in this place. Hope will get you killed. You
• 28:29
  have to despair. You have to be cynical about life. And then slowly
• 28:33
  he sees Andy like an f and freight train getting beat up and raped and
• 28:37
  all these terrible things happen over and over again, and he's a freight train
• 28:41
  of hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and digs himself out and
• 28:45
  breaks out of with a breakout of prison with like a little rock hammer for
• 28:48
  like ten years. I mean, that's the most magnificent expression of hope you
• 28:52
  could possibly believe. And he finally makes it out, and I think it's
• 28:56
  such a triumphant expression of hope over despair, and we all feel both of
• 29:02
  them. But to me, thematically, it's so powerfully laid out, and
• 29:07
  I think that's why it resonates so deeply. Plus there's some charm in those
• 29:11
  characters, a warmth between that friendship between those two guys. But thematically it's
• 29:15
  a It's a great model to study if you're confused about theme, Oh this
• 29:19
  or that. The thing that's so fascinating about about Shawshank for me is that
• 29:23
  on paper, it's it's a horrible pitch. It's a horrible you know.
• 29:29
  You see the trailer, You're just like, it's about a prison, it's
• 29:33
  a prison movie. It's like it doesn't it does. Only once you experience
• 29:36
  it do you understand the depth of it. And I remember seeing that it
• 29:40
  was what ninety four, so I think it came out of ninety four.
• 29:44
  So I had just gotten out of high school a few years and I was
• 29:47
  with a bunch of knucklehead friends of mine who were not moviegoers, and they
• 29:51
  were touched. And when those guys were touched, I was like, Wow,
• 29:55
  this is this hit. This cut through everything. We'll be right back
• 30:00
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. At
• 30:10
  that time, I even felt it when I saw it in the theater.
• 30:11
  I was just like, wow, this is this is a different kind of
• 30:15
  film, and how yeah, it's It was a very different kind of film.
• 30:22
  And I always my analysis of the film has always been like why.
• 30:25
  I always ask the same question, why does it connect? Because we could
• 30:30
  all just pray for a connection with an audience like shaw Shank has, and
• 30:36
  and like what is it about that film because it's not obvious. It's not
• 30:40
  an like Rocky. We get why people connect with Rocky, we connect with
• 30:44
  why people connect with with Indiana Jones or or or Star Wars. We get
• 30:48
  it. But Shaw Shank, it's so under the radar on the surface,
• 30:52
  you can't what do you think there's here's You're gonna love this answer because it's
• 30:57
  clear as day to me why it connects and you can use that for your
• 31:00
  own story. It's because we feel despair. And the despair that I feel
• 31:07
  in my life as a you know, coddled white male in you know,
• 31:10
  in the richest country ever is still hurts and it's scary to me. And
• 31:15
  when I see a depiction of it like that, like you know, the
• 31:18
  guys in prison and the people are coming after him and he's his physical safeties
• 31:22
  is and he was wrongly imprisoned and all these things, all these terrible things,
• 31:26
  and if that guy can have hope in that place, holy crap,
• 31:30
  and then had it pay off by him actually getting out, because that hope
• 31:33
  paid off after like fifteen twenty years he was in. It wasn't like like
• 31:37
  a week. And to me, that speaks so deeply to all of us,
• 31:41
  because we all face, oftentimes in a daily basis, an aspect a
• 31:45
  sort of much lesser aspect, but an aspect of hope versus despair. Should
• 31:49
  I even get out of bed? You know? Sometimes you feel despair,
• 31:52
  you don't want to get a bed, but you have hope and you climb
• 31:55
  out or whatever. So but it's that to me, it's so universal in
• 32:00
  our own way, that sense of do we have hope, do we have
• 32:02
  an is there an opportunity for something to happen? And so like for your
• 32:07
  you know, your story about this guy who has this urgent hope that this
• 32:09
  movie is going to get made and he wants he's got this beautiful dream,
• 32:14
  and then he's in this despairing place where he's getting involved with these people that
• 32:16
  are that are difficult. So it's to me, what you love about Shawshank
• 32:22
  you can bring out cinematically, and what you love about your own movie.
• 32:27
  And in fact, when I work with people, that's exactly where I go
• 32:29
  to. So I have them list their favorite movies and we get into why
• 32:32
  they love them, Why Shawshank speaks so deeply to you? What does that
• 32:37
  hope versus despair really feel like? In your real life. And I again,
• 32:39
  I haven't read the book, but I promise you there are there are
• 32:45
  things that went on in your real life that you sort of associate with this
• 32:49
  idea of hope versus despaired that you also connect to Shawshank. And then what
• 32:52
  I do is I connect those things out so that when people write a movie
• 32:58
  that feel that has the same sort of pattern is Hollywood, but it's authentic
• 33:01
  in a way that's really deep and personal. That's when it crackles with authenticity.
• 33:06
  So that makes sense that it makes it makes perfect sense. I mean,
• 33:08
  I've always come I've always had a I've said this on the show before,
• 33:12
  but I think the analogy of Shawshank and and Andy Dufrane's journey is what
• 33:19
  connects with people because you feel you are Andy Defrane, and in many ways,
• 33:24
  many of us in the world, depending on where you live in the
• 33:29
  world, at one point or another, feel imprisoned, feel like the that
• 33:35
  the universe is doing is wrongly beating you, attacking you. Bad things are
• 33:44
  happening to you, and you're innocent, and you're innocent of these bad things.
• 33:51
  And then not only does he have hope to fight through all of that,
• 33:54
  but he literally crawls through a mile of shit. Then he literally gets
• 34:02
  out of that is cleanse from the gods of the ship. Literally the shit
• 34:07
  is coming off of him. He's taking the old clothes off of him,
• 34:13
  putting on a new suit, living the life that he has been dreaming about
• 34:19
  for fifteen years. And then on top of it all, he gets revenge,
• 34:24
  the sweetest revenge on his jailers, and he literally lives on a freaking
• 34:30
  paradise. And that's but that's why I think it feels so for me.
• 34:36
  For me, I mean, let's not get into the psychoanalysis of Alex Ferrari
• 34:42
  for a second. If anybody cares for me. When I saw that movie,
• 34:45
  I didn't feel it as much as I felt it years later, where
• 34:49
  I hadn't been beat up by the business yet as much I had been beat
• 34:52
  up I had. I think when I saw Shawshank, I hadn't had the
• 34:55
  thing with the mop had happened to me yet it was years away. So
• 35:00
  years later that movie took another meaning for me because of all the abuse that
• 35:06
  the business has given me and failures that I've had that are like, why
• 35:09
  is this happening to me? Why can't I get the opportunity, Why can't
• 35:13
  someone open the door for me? Why can't I have my pick axe and
• 35:17
  to knock into some doors? And I felt imprisoned in my own set.
• 35:21
  So there was a lot of that going on, and I think that's one
• 35:23
  of those things that when people watch it, they identify with. So that's
• 35:29
  exactly it. Right. So the metaphor of being in prison and even getting
• 35:31
  the end and crawling through the ship and all that stuff is a really good
• 35:36
  metaphor for how so many people feel about their life, how we psychologically process
• 35:39
  our life. And so when you do that your own version of that,
• 35:43
  which is really great because like most people don't experience prison, most people don't
• 35:46
  experience running with the mob, so it's a really beautiful exaggerated metaphor for most
• 35:52
  people. Plus, you've got this hero with this beautiful, innocent, sweet
• 35:55
  dream, it wants to be a filmmaker, right, So it's you know,
• 36:00
  the key is in sort of the takeaway I would invite for you to
• 36:04
  take it is just look at how much every scene there's conflict and conflict and
• 36:07
  conflict and conflict. So that allows us to feel like it's earned so much
• 36:10
  when it comes a lot of scripts. You talked about some main things that
• 36:15
  sort of trip people up in terms of a great screenplay. A lot of
• 36:17
  times the conflict isn't strong enough. They take it a little too easy.
• 36:22
  I mean, especially in Act to B when things that's when, like Blake
• 36:25
  Snyder would say, things are this is when bad guys close in, things
• 36:29
  can get much harder. A lot of screenwriters take their foot off the gas
• 36:31
  and we feel bad because we love our hero and it's hard for them.
• 36:35
  But now we need to burn their house down. We need to because the
• 36:38
  more we torture them in Act to be, the more powerfully they can rise
• 36:44
  from the act, from the ashes in Act three and be the hero they
• 36:47
  were meant to be. Without a good villain, you don't have conflict without
• 36:51
  a good villain. You can't have a hero be a hero. And that
• 36:54
  is as simple as that. And the balance is not to make the villain
• 37:00
  too powerful that that that the hero has no chance. Well, well I
• 37:05
  would say, I would say it is make the guy as absolute powerful as
• 37:09
  you can without losing plausibility. Right, that's what I'm not gonna win.
• 37:14
  And it's stupid, right right, And that's own verse Godzilla. Then it's
• 37:17
  it's a it's a decent fight, right right exactly, And you know,
• 37:21
  you want to make you know, Darth Vader's Darth Vader, you know,
• 37:23
  and you want you want to hand an elector to be hand a elector.
• 37:27
  But there's a chance like Apollo versus Rocky, which is I mean that there's
• 37:32
  not many movies from the seventies that still resonate to this day and in the
• 37:37
  way that they do. You know, like I could, I could show
• 37:38
  that to a twenty year old now and they'll be like, yeah, it
• 37:42
  looks a little dated, but I get it, and the music and all
• 37:44
  that stuff. But THEO and Apollo and the thing that was so brilliant about
• 37:49
  Rocky the first Rocky is that Rocky didn't have any aspirations to beat Apollo.
• 37:57
  That was the brilliant move in Stallone's script. He didn't want to beat him,
• 38:02
  He just wanted to stay with him. Was so too. I'll letmit
• 38:07
  jump in two things that I love about that as an example. So two
• 38:09
  things. One is one of my favorites is the double refusal of the call.
• 38:15
  So he gets the opportunity to fight the champ and he goes no,
• 38:20
  no, no, I'm just a bomb. I can't do it right.
• 38:22
  And then Mick comes so he basically says no, it first right. And
• 38:24
  then Mick comes over and goes, dude, I can train champions. I
• 38:29
  can train you, you know, and he goes, no, no,
• 38:30
  no, no, I don't want so the double over because the refusal of
• 38:32
  a call is always a wonderful moment in Act one, and they do it
• 38:36
  twice powerfully. Then to your point, at the end of act two,
• 38:42
  to my mind, I remember correctly, he once he committed answered the call
• 38:46
  and commits, then he's like, Okay, I'm going to take on and
• 38:50
  to be the champ. And at the end of act two he's studying the
• 38:52
  tape over and overground and goes, I can't beat him. He's not dark
• 38:55
  Knight of the Souls thing. I can't beat that guy. But to your
• 38:59
  point, if I can go the distance, if I can hold my own,
• 39:01
  then I have the real win, which is my redemption in my dignity.
• 39:07
  That gives me chills. Speak it's probably all want. I mean,
• 39:09
  it's it's spawned what eight movies now or something like that. We're still every
• 39:15
  time we're like Okay, I'm gonna watch another one. I'm gonna watch I'm
• 39:17
  gonna watch it again. I could watch Rocky one, three, four,
• 39:22
  bol six and all the threds. Not a fan of Rocky two. I
• 39:25
  don't mind Rocky two as much. I don't mind Rocky two. But five
• 39:30
  is we should not discuss five. Five is not to be discussed. It
• 39:34
  just goes right from four to Rocky Balboa with that's the way, and that's
• 39:37
  actually the way he did it. I think I think even Stallone's like,
• 39:39
  yeah, I don't know what I was doing back then, but the thing
• 39:44
  that was And for everyone listening, if you if you analyze Rocky, there
• 39:47
  literally could not be a villain like Apollo. There is absolutely no credible chance
• 39:54
  that Rocky Balboa should even be in the same room with him, let alone
• 39:59
  in the with him. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:07
  and now back to the show. And as the movie goes on,
• 40:13
  you start seeing, well, wait a minute, he's cracking ribs of of
• 40:16
  of cows you're giving He's got a shot now, is does it? Candy?
• 40:22
  Candy possibly beat the Titan. It's like the it's the mortal going after
• 40:27
  the Titan. It's insane. It's a wonderful thing. It really is wonderful.
• 40:30
  I hadn't thought about it to just the way you said it there.
• 40:32
  But but what lovely about that construction is at the beginning, Rocky is such
• 40:38
  at a low point in his life. He's so severely feeling self doubt and
• 40:44
  just hates himself. And it's just and what is the opposite of that Apollo
• 40:46
  Creed perfect everything just as confident, everything's the best. So it's the beautiful
• 40:53
  mirror of each other, which is a metaphor for us. And part of
• 40:58
  us always feels that despair, part of us feels at that power, right,
• 41:00
  And the movie really beautifully, you know, earns step by step to
• 41:05
  the point where the part of us that feels despair finds redemption in actually not
• 41:10
  even beating the beating the world champ, but just holding his own against the
• 41:15
  champ. It's beautiful and the way, and I love the way you were
• 41:17
  saying the analysis of like, he's the mirror image. So he's the champ,
• 41:21
  he's perfect, he's got everything. Rocky's got nothing, he's got self
• 41:24
  doubt. So their opposite, their mirror opposites of each other. Which is
• 41:28
  exactly what a villain and a hero should be, his mirror opposites. But
• 41:30
  as the movie continues, and this is the brilliance of what stallone did,
• 41:35
  the characters start getting closer together thematically. He starts to lose his confidence a
• 41:40
  bit, he starts to gain it a bit, till at the end of
• 41:44
  the movie they're even, they're even. Rocky has gone the distance with the
• 41:51
  Champ. The Champs now had a lost the fight or honestly lost the fight
• 41:55
  to Rocky because he allowed a bomb to quote unquote to hold them off and
• 42:00
  survive against the Champ. So when Rocky two starts, they're starting on even
• 42:06
  keel. Yeah, that's the brilliant And it's just such a brilliant way of
• 42:09
  looking at it. And you look at that now, it's it's just it's
• 42:13
  been stolen a million times. I mean, how many times have we've seen
• 42:15
  Rocky. It's let's Star Wars. That's right, that's right. Well yeah,
• 42:20
  and and if they steal it in the right way, like we've been
• 42:23
  talking about the right amount of the same but different, it's amazing. And
• 42:27
  that's the tricky thing. Like when I do my own stuff and I work
• 42:30
  with other people. It's really about dialing in the same amount of the same
• 42:34
  bit different or the right amount, because if it's too familiar then it's like
• 42:37
  boring, and if it's too different then it's like weird. Right, So
• 42:39
  you want familiar enough and fresh enough, you know, the same but different.
• 42:45
  Did you see the movie Warrior? I did? Yeah, yeah,
• 42:47
  the MMA might. I absolutely love Warrior. I think it's a master master
• 42:52
  work. It's easily the best MMA movie. And there's been a few other
• 42:55
  MA movies, but they're nothing that, nothing that hooked. But the thing
• 43:00
  that was so brilliant about Warrior, and because it's a Rocky it's kind of
• 43:06
  a Rocky esque there's and they even mentioned Rocky in the movie, which is
• 43:08
  great, Hey rock Oh, well, you know you're gonna bring Mickey that.
• 43:15
  But that the emotion I remember seeing that in theater. I was bawling
• 43:17
  at the end. I was absolutely bawling. My wife and I was sitting
• 43:22
  there and I was absolutely just like sniffles boogers coming out. I was balling.
• 43:27
  I connected so well because of the emotional connection with the brothers and the
• 43:31
  and the dad. But it was just such a brilliantly constructed story and then
• 43:37
  Tom Hardy was you know it was it was amazing, It was amazing.
• 43:42
  Sorry went off on a tantent there, but no, this is great.
• 43:45
  My next project did like it's a fight film, so I love like a
• 43:49
  Raging Bull is my favorite fight film. I mean and Raging Bull, But
• 43:52
  like, can you look at something like Reggie Bull and you just go,
• 43:54
  well, why do I even bother me? Movies? Sometimes sometimes you make
• 44:00
  it. It's like watching you know, you walk in and you see the
• 44:02
  Systean's chapel and you're like, well, le should just drop the brush right
• 44:06
  now. It's it's been done. But the thing is, it's not.
• 44:09
  It's it's never been done to your what you can bring to the table and
• 44:14
  never underestimate that power. Not that you're going to be better, but there's
• 44:17
  something inside you that Martin Scorsese doesn't have, and vice versa. Yeah,
• 44:22
  no, that's exactly right, exactly right. One of my favorite stories about
• 44:24
  Raging Bull is is that I heard that when they went to get this thing
• 44:30
  set up in a studio, you know, Denia is in there with with
• 44:34
  Marty and and they're talking, and you know, the studio exacts like you
• 44:37
  know, I know this thing, this guys, this character, he's kind
• 44:39
  of like a cockroach and Denira goes, no, he's not. That was
• 44:45
  it. It was just like and it was that and it was that conviction
• 44:49
  and that non judgment of this is a human being and I'm called the plan
• 44:53
  and that he's just he was a force of an actor playing a force of
• 44:57
  a man. And it was to me, it was like, yeah,
• 45:00
  that's why that movie is so good. The guy is really in a lot
• 45:04
  of ways. He's a terrible husband, a terrible brother, a terrible he's
• 45:07
  what makes him amazing in the ring, makes him terrible in his personal relationships,
• 45:10
  which you know is a metaphor that lots of people can do. But
• 45:15
  like Scorsese and Schrader and de Niro all we're so uh devoted to the authenticity
• 45:22
  of that character and those relationships that they didn't judge them, and that made
• 45:25
  it so compelling because we all have those parts in ourselves that go too far
• 45:30
  in this way or that way. Yeah, there's no no question. And
• 45:32
  sometimes you you like to wallow in the dark areas of your life and you
• 45:39
  rarely wallow into good I mean sometimes you do, but it's it's you have
• 45:43
  to learn. I know you have to learn. It's it's a skill for
• 45:49
  sure. So that's actually one of the other things I do in my own
• 45:52
  life, and when I help writers, we practice wallowing in the good stuff
• 45:55
  because it makes it more you know how it's a marathon, right, and
• 46:00
  it's easier, it's less challenging to run the marathon when when we have more
• 46:05
  good, good feelings more often. So this this flow state. I'm an
• 46:09
  absolute uh champion of getting people into the flow state, staying in the flow
• 46:15
  state as long as possible when they get bumped out, getting them back in
• 46:20
  because it feels better and be you get better results because it's more sustainable than
• 46:25
  than sort of cynicism. Yeah, can I talk a little bit about that
• 46:29
  flow state for a minute, because it's it's an interesting thing I've I've I've
• 46:32
  brought this up on on on multiple shows that I host, because it's I
• 46:37
  always find it fascinating when I when I talk to you know, some of
• 46:40
  these you know, Oscar winning or legendary writers or something like that, and
• 46:45
  I go, how how do you tap into that? Because you know,
• 46:51
  like when you're writing Forrest Gump, there's something going on like you're you're tapping
• 46:57
  into something else, and then and and and it's always there's the one offs
• 47:00
  that do that one great script and they never they never can reach that height
• 47:05
  again, that's one thing, and they were just able to get in there
• 47:07
  for a second and then they left. But then there's the people that just
• 47:10
  hold that career and they just hit boom and boom and boom and boom,
• 47:16
  and you're just like, how do you continuously connect to that state? And
• 47:21
  what is that state? And where where is that coming from? I was
• 47:24
  always a bigger like who's the man behind the who's the man or the woman
• 47:28
  behind the curtain sending you this information? Because I always feel that as writers
• 47:31
  were just conduits. We're conduits of something coming in. I think Spielberg said
• 47:37
  this that he's like, ideas float around the universe and they pop into your
• 47:42
  head, and if you don't do something about it, someone else will pick
• 47:45
  it up and you might get the first crack at it. And that's why
• 47:46
  he's always so like it was it was at him, No, it's Prince,
• 47:52
  Prince. I at talking to somebody who worked with Prince, and Prince
• 47:55
  would call at three o'clock in the morning to his like a singer and like
• 48:01
  a musician, like, hey, what are you doing? Like, I
• 48:05
  don't know, Princes, three o'clock in the morning, what do you what
• 48:07
  do you need? It's like, uh, do you want to do?
• 48:08
  You want to come in and record? I'm like, it's it's three o'clock
• 48:12
  in the morning. Can can I wait four or five hours? And he's
• 48:14
  like, no, If I don't get this, Michael Jackson's gonna get it,
• 48:19
  and I want to record at first. Great it's it's a great story,
• 48:22
  but that's a true story. It's fascinating that you went to a musician
• 48:25
  because the examples that pop into my mind right away are are from a few
• 48:30
  different musicians because they just hear it. So one of them was Chris Martin
• 48:35
  in an interview and they're talking about one of shows and you just see it.
• 48:37
  He goes it was like he was in a listening state. He just
• 48:42
  said it just I was listening and it came through or it came to me.
• 48:45
  Paul McCartney was like one of one of his best songs. He woke
• 48:49
  up in the morning, he heard the song in his head and he was
• 48:51
  like, oh yeah, who, yeah, who sings this one. Who's
• 48:52
  this and he kind of like, I'm not I've never heard that one.
• 48:55
  He's like, no, this one. Oh, he realized, oh nobody,
• 48:58
  it was me. I don't want so it's this thing. It's it's
• 49:00
  it's a state of listening as opposed to like leaning forward I'm writing my story.
• 49:05
  It's I'm listening to the universe in this flow state, and that's when
• 49:08
  we get to the height of our creativity. The same thing with Bob Dylan.
• 49:12
  I listened to an old interview with him a couple days ago, and
• 49:15
  then it was like in the interview, it was a sixty minutes interview and
• 49:17
  he's like, you said we were blown in the wind in ten minutes I
• 49:21
  think it was, yeah, And it was like and I was looking at
• 49:24
  him and it was the same energy I saw around the other two. Same
• 49:28
  thing with Prince He and he was like, well, how'd you do it?
• 49:30
  And you just see him It's almost like he's radio tuning. You just
• 49:32
  see him going here. And he was like, yeah, it just it
• 49:36
  just came to him. He opened up in a way and it came through.
• 49:38
  And then he also didn't He also said in the same thing is like,
• 49:42
  I haven't been able to get to that quite flow state channel. That
• 49:45
  channel again, I can't. I can't tune into that channel again, That's
• 49:47
  what he said. But but to the people that are musicians or filmmakers or
• 49:52
  whatever that are able to sort of sustain optimal creative flow over decades, we'll
• 49:59
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 50:06
  show. They have a repeatable process of getting into that listening mode, a
• 50:13
  way of sort of opening up and being soft. And you, I'm sure
• 50:15
  you know how you've spoken to all these amazing people, and I'm sure you
• 50:19
  see there's almost a lightness of energy when you talk to those people that are
• 50:22
  really hitting out on that level, at least when they're doing their thing.
• 50:25
  It'll open and it'll flo and then you don't know where the hell you're You're
• 50:30
  almost like a stenographer. It's like, oh, I didn't even write this,
• 50:31
  there's it's coming through me, through me in service to the audience.
• 50:35
  And so that's one of my as a coach, it's one of my favorite
• 50:37
  things to do is make choices in my relationship when I'm listening to somebody to
• 50:42
  induce that flow state really deeply and as often as possible. And then when
• 50:47
  they show up on a call and they're they're having a tough day or whatever,
• 50:52
  I make choices that kind of just nudge them slightly up or give them
• 50:55
  really a whold space. I listen to them and let them unfold into that
• 51:00
  flow state so that they optimize their creativity. I love it. It's no,
• 51:04
  it's amazing. I've actually felt that in and editing. I've done that
• 51:07
  a lot. Like you feel the flow of the cuts and you just and
• 51:10
  then all of a sudden you're like, I've been sitting here for six hours.
• 51:15
  That's the state. That's how you know. Yeah. But with my
• 51:20
  books, my two books that I've written, both of them, I'll go
• 51:23
  back to and I'm like, who wrote this? Because it's just channeled through
• 51:28
  me? It really. I mean, yes, I obviously shooting for them
• 51:30
  is my story, but the words of putting the story together, I would
• 51:36
  just write, and then I would go back and read it. I'm like,
• 51:38
  who wrote this? Like, I see same thing with Rise with the
• 51:40
  film Entrepreneur, which is a it's a more of a nonfiction, it's actually
• 51:45
  a nonfiction book, instructional book. Even then I'm like the concepts and stuff.
• 51:49
  I know all of them, but like who put I don't remember writing
• 51:52
  that, I don't remember writing this, Like how who wrote like this is
• 51:55
  good? So here's here's a really interesting thing. So one of the reasons
• 52:01
  I love one of the things I did about Shawshank Shawshank redemption. I made
• 52:06
  this video about how you can read Shawshank redemption as a law of attraction story.
• 52:10
  Right, So law of attraction is this idea that you basically, however
• 52:15
  you show up, you will attract the energy of how you show up.
• 52:17
  So if you show up feeling successful, you attract success in general. Right.
• 52:22
  That's a lot of other parts to it. But I did a video
• 52:23
  where I was showing you sort of walking through Shawshank with that lens of law
• 52:30
  of attraction. So instead of hope versus despair, it was sort of attracting
• 52:34
  versus sort of repelling. But it's significant in this context because when when because
• 52:42
  some of those law of attraction to people that when they're talking they actually say
• 52:45
  they're channeling and they're saying it's coming from some people say aliens or some people
• 52:49
  say spirits, right, and look they might be I don't have that personal
• 52:52
  experience. But from my perspective, exactly what you said. It's like you
• 52:57
  felt like it almost wasn't coming from you. And so when some of those
• 53:00
  law of attraction people talk about it, they believe literally it's not coming from
• 53:05
  them. And who cares because it puts them in a state of them being
• 53:08
  able to say, I'm spreading more joy, I'm helping people better, I'm
• 53:14
  coming up with really deep, powerful ideas more often more consistently. So to
• 53:19
  my mind, I don't give a crap how you're talking about it, whether
• 53:22
  it's aliens or spirits or just like you or I see it as just sort
• 53:24
  of the muse or creativity, and it comes through if you're getting to those
• 53:29
  really beautiful, powerful ideas and a flow state, great, that's what matters.
• 53:32
  Yeah, And I'm always fascinated about where creativity comes from, you know,
• 53:37
  I've been fascinated by this, so why I always I love asking some
• 53:40
  of these heavy hitters that come on the show of like how do you do
• 53:44
  it? Like? How where does it come from? And I I was
• 53:49
  interviewing on another show Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden Wool and
• 53:54
  what a great conversation that was, and when I was talking to him,
• 53:59
  I was I asked him, I'm like, man, what does it feel
• 54:00
  like being in Wimbley Stadium with ninety thousand people? Like what? Like,
• 54:07
  I'm never gonna get that. I don't. I don't, I don't.
• 54:09
  I don't think anytime soon ninety thousand people are going to show up to hear
• 54:13
  me talk. So maybe one day, I don't know, but that's not
• 54:15
  happening right now, so not many of us are ever going to feel that.
• 54:20
  I'm like, what does that feel like? And then when you're singing,
• 54:24
  where does that come from? Because it's it's one thing to sing and
• 54:28
  then there's another thing to perform at a level like that, regardless if you
• 54:32
  like his music is irrelevant irrelevant, And he's like, he goes, oh,
• 54:37
  it's not me. It just comes through me. I'm gonna complete.
• 54:45
  I don't even I don't even know where I'm at when I'm on stage almost
• 54:51
  so it's flying through me. And then I go, well, how do
• 54:54
  you get off that train? Like when you're on it? He's like,
• 54:59
  oh, I have I have a whole routine after the show, because like,
• 55:02
  how like the high of ninety thousand, that energy coming towards you,
• 55:08
  like as as screenwriters and filmmakers, we don't get that. The closest we
• 55:12
  get to that is that audience in a movie theater or at a festival.
• 55:15
  That's the that's the closest we get to it. And that's really intense.
• 55:20
  It's oh god, if you have I've had been that. I've been in
• 55:22
  that room when that standing ovations and people asking you questions and all that attention
• 55:27
  and all that stuff, and that's a hot, explosive energy. Now it
• 55:31
  is someone like but can you imagine ninety thousand, Like Paul McCartney like,
• 55:35
  how if I ever got a chance to talk to Palm? I'm like,
• 55:38
  how, Like, how is it? How do you live? As Paul
• 55:43
  McCarty like, how you know, being the most most famous human being on
• 55:47
  the planet. Here's a great little Paul if you look at the clip of
• 55:52
  when he was doing a carpool karaoke with who's that guy, doesn't James James
• 55:58
  Gordon? James Gordon. Yeah, there's a really beautiful exchange and it speaks
• 56:01
  to this idea of that lightness of energy where they're they're talking and uh and
• 56:07
  he's going while you know, this is amazing my dad who died if he
• 56:10
  knew that I was talking to you right now. And then Paul McCartney goes,
• 56:15
  he is, he's listening, and there was again there was this this
• 56:20
  lightness and other worldliness of how he's able to open to something and uh and
• 56:25
  Davi Cortman started crying. And that's it and we we our jobs as storytellers
• 56:30
  is to elicit emotion really deeply. And when we can get into sort of
• 56:35
  this open, sort of flowing, ephemeral sort of spiritual state, those ideas
• 56:42
  flow and we're able to elicit motion much more deeply. And so there's a
• 56:45
  craft to sort of inducing it more often. And if you sort of make
• 56:51
  those choices, and there's things like meditation are all sorts of different things,
• 56:53
  but like whatever your sort of process is, to find your own way and
• 56:59
  to make that really the priority. Like my priority is I get up and
• 57:01
  I find that flow state, and from that flow state, all these other
• 57:05
  good things happen. As opposed to my job is to write a screenplay or
• 57:08
  to cross this next milestone or whatever. Those are too concrete and they put
• 57:12
  you down too sort of earthy, which you really want if you're being in
• 57:16
  the creative, a professional creative, to find a way into that floaty,
• 57:20
  day dreamy state as consistently, as deeply as possible, because that's where your
• 57:24
  best ideas are going to come. You know what's funny talking about light energy.
• 57:30
  You know, when I talk to some of these some of these amazing
• 57:34
  creatives, the ones that are the like that are at the top of their
• 57:38
  game, almost all of them had an extremely light energy. They weren't heavy.
• 57:45
  They weren't heavy. Then there's very accomplished writers and filmmakers who have talked
• 57:51
  to who who it seems like they almost grind it out. They almost like
• 57:57
  by pure force are being and creating amazing things. But it's their own physical
• 58:04
  almost their own will that's pushing them. Where someone like Paul McCartney could just
• 58:08
  go, hey, Jude, hey dude, here here's my theory on that.
• 58:15
  I love that you brought it up. My theory is the grinders are
• 58:19
  succeeding despite the grind. Correct that it's the flow is what works for everybody.
• 58:24
  Some people are able to more easily flow. Other people have to grind
• 58:29
  it out and haven't learned to sort of soften the grind part, and they're
• 58:32
  so good and so talented. There's they're succeeding despite that sort of effort,
• 58:37
  grinding, hard work, kind of constipated energy. You want to let that
• 58:40
  thing flow, and that's the thing, and that's a constipated Energies are great
• 58:45
  word to use because you know, and we talked a little bit about this
• 58:47
  before we started recording, but like someone like Spielberg, he has a very
• 58:52
  light energy to him and everybody. And I've talked to a ton of people
• 58:55
  who've worked with him, and I've hear stories on air and for air about
• 59:00
  mister Spielberg and you just go, I understand, I get, I get,
• 59:05
  I get why he's Steven Spielberg. And you've heard that same I've heard
• 59:07
  that same exact thing. That it's not that you talk to him and there's
• 59:10
  a there's at once a normalcy. He's totally normal and totally infatuated with the
• 59:15
  process at the same time. And that's that and that's that sort of light
• 59:20
  light balance. It it's yeah, it's amazing, it's and he makes it
• 59:22
  sustainable. That's why he's able to hit in multiple decades because he's able to
• 59:27
  put himself in that flow state so deeply, so consistently, in so many
• 59:30
  different variables and variations, because you're it is a shark infested business, right,
• 59:37
  So can I It's one thing for you and I to kind of have
• 59:38
  a cool conversation about flow here, But can I keep that flow going ay
• 59:43
  when I'm writing and be when I'm on meetings and see when I'm in all
• 59:46
  you know what I mean. And the more places in your life you can
• 59:50
  turn up that volume of that flow state and be in there, the more
• 59:52
  success you have. And to me, somebody like Spielberg is mastering here.
• 59:58
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the
• 1:00:05
  show and you but you, but I think also the thing that stops us
• 1:00:09
  from doing that is just the the for lack of a better term, the
• 1:00:16
  crap that is surrounding us in living life, the crap that Andy the Frames
• 1:00:22
  goes through like literally, it's it's this heavy ship that's been thrown onto us.
• 1:00:28
  And that could be childhood, stuff, that could be anger, that
• 1:00:31
  can be you know, an envy, that could be ego. All of
• 1:00:35
  that is holding us down. But if you can shed it, shed it,
• 1:00:43
  shut it off, that's when you can become lighter and open up to
• 1:00:45
  these other areas. And here's and here's how to how to help you shift
• 1:00:49
  that. Who put that ship on me? A lot of people say,
• 1:00:53
  oh, it was my parents, this ter that. No, no,
• 1:00:55
  no, I put it on myself, maybe because my parents were modeling it
• 1:01:00
  or whatever happened to my thing. But the powerful thing is I created that
• 1:01:06
  reality as a kid. I created how I responded to that. I'm creating
• 1:01:09
  my reality now. So if I if I have a shitty reality, I
• 1:01:15
  have the power to create a little less shitty reality, less shitty, less
• 1:01:19
  shitty, and then eventually really magical, amazing reality. It's us owning our
• 1:01:23
  own perceptual system. It's got to be based on objective reality, right There's
• 1:01:30
  there's definitely a consistent reality outside of our subjectivity. But we have a tremendous
• 1:01:36
  ability to choose how we respond to objective reality. And that's where that real
• 1:01:43
  power comes in our life. I'll tell you from my point of view.
• 1:01:47
  You know, coming up, I was an angry and bitter guy because I
• 1:01:52
  felt that it was just I wasn't getting that. First of all, in
• 1:01:54
  my twenties, I'm like, why hasn't anyone recognized my genius. I mean,
• 1:01:58
  obviously, why I don't they don't they understand? Don't they understand who
• 1:02:01
  I am? I mean, come on? And so when that didn't,
• 1:02:06
  So when you didn't become Steven Spielberg or our generation Robert Rodriguez, because he
• 1:02:10
  was the one that kind of like that was the bad that was the glottery
• 1:02:13
  ticket for our generation, no question. So you're like, if we're not
• 1:02:16
  Tarantino or Robert or link Letter or Smith or any of the guys that came
• 1:02:21
  up in the nineties, we have failed. So when I couldn't get to
• 1:02:24
  that place, or for whatever reason, the universe didn't open up that that
• 1:02:29
  those opportunities, I became extremely angry, extremely bitter, and that completely stifles
• 1:02:34
  any sort of creativity. Its stifles everything. The moment I launched indie film
• 1:02:40
  Hustle and let go of all that anger and started to give and started to
• 1:02:47
  be of service and start my energy became lighter. Don't get me wrong,
• 1:02:52
  I ain't perfect. I'm definitely not Gandhi, but but I noticed it.
• 1:02:59
  And this is something us old farts can talk about. As you get older,
• 1:03:04
  you start seeing these things some people never learn in a lifetime. But
• 1:03:07
  I started seeing that energy and then that's when things start. Then I made
• 1:03:10
  my first feature, Then I made my second feature, Then I wrote my
• 1:03:13
  books. Then doors that were shut to me all my life, doors that
• 1:03:17
  would I would have killed to talk get into, are wide open now.
• 1:03:22
  So it was. It's really interesting. And if you look at some of
• 1:03:24
  the and I don't want to get religious, but if you look at some
• 1:03:29
  of the spiritual leaders, even some spiritual like a Gandhi, sure sure there
• 1:03:34
  they are not a heavy energy there. There's a very light lightness to it.
• 1:03:38
  And I don't want to get food full about it. But when we
• 1:03:40
  say light energy, it's kind of like this. You feel it when you
• 1:03:44
  meet somebody. People feel like when you meet somebody, you just like I
• 1:03:49
  gotta take a shower, or oh my god, I want to be around
• 1:03:52
  them, like I don't know if you've ever been in a room with a
• 1:03:53
  movie star before, you know, when you when you meet a movie star
• 1:04:00
  who's a real, real movie star, not a fallen star, not a
• 1:04:03
  star up and coming, a movie star, and when you're in the room
• 1:04:08
  with them, you'll go, oh, I get it. They don't say
• 1:04:11
  a word, and you just get that energy from them. You're like,
• 1:04:15
  oh, it's it's that it factor that they talk about, and it absolutely
• 1:04:18
  is an energetic thing. They're one way or another able to sort of sort
• 1:04:24
  of show up with a certain type of energy that just is different than the
• 1:04:30
  way most people can do it. And it part of it's there's an authenticity
• 1:04:34
  to it, and it's sort of probably a lack of attachment to it.
• 1:04:38
  I mean, there's a qualities of how you sort of sort of facilitate that
• 1:04:41
  in yourself. But you're right, they have a politician. I had a
• 1:04:44
  friend that met Bill Clinton. He was at some show, like at the
• 1:04:46
  met and he said, man, after he walked on stage, and he
• 1:04:50
  said, he literally had never seen somebody that like literally look like a million
• 1:04:54
  bucks. There was just an aura of energy. And he's not like an
• 1:04:57
  energy guy, but he was like, that dude had this And that's the
• 1:05:00
  thing. It's like you just and obviously if you're president, there's a lot
• 1:05:02
  of stuff going on, right But in terms of like, I mean,
• 1:05:05
  that's a need, but like, but movie stars have and what's great about
• 1:05:09
  everybody that's listening, it's not anybody can do it. Every all of us
• 1:05:13
  can be you know, we all are limited by what our own sort of
• 1:05:15
  biology at least, but we can be at the max of our own ability
• 1:05:21
  by looking into these in your own way, what sort of spiritual shifts or
• 1:05:26
  energetic shifts. There's things I promise you you can do, and the return
• 1:05:30
  on that investment, it's so phenomenally better for your joy. And as you
• 1:05:35
  do that inside job and make those shifts, everything else is better. You
• 1:05:39
  write better stories, you have better relationships. It all happens, but it's
• 1:05:43
  got to start inside first. Like if you don't do that and you win
• 1:05:46
  the Oscar and whatever, you still feel miserable and sometimes you feel even more
• 1:05:49
  of a fraud because you haven't got the inside job worked out. Oh yeah,
• 1:05:54
  and I've seen I've spoken to people like that that one on Oscar and
• 1:05:58
  I'm like, so, what's it like afterwards? You're like, I feel
• 1:06:01
  worse sometimes, you know, it was cool that night, but then afterwards
• 1:06:05
  then what Then it lasts for a little bit and then tart the heartbreaking and
• 1:06:11
  you gotta gotta get back up there again, like and then it's like this,
• 1:06:14
  it's like winning the super Bowl, Like, yeah, well that's that
• 1:06:17
  was where I was going. One of My favorite stories around this is Phil
• 1:06:20
  Jackson's before he like after the Bulls, I think right when he started coaching
• 1:06:26
  the Lakers, he wrote this book called Sacred Hoops and he and he talked
• 1:06:29
  about when he has a player won the NBA Championships for the Knicks and they
• 1:06:32
  went to like tavern hmgreen and Robert Redford was there and Dustin Hoffman was there,
• 1:06:36
  and he was like, oh, my whole life was like man to
• 1:06:39
  win an NBA championship and I'm here and he felt empty. Ethan felt empty
• 1:06:45
  and he was like, what the hell? And it was because he was
• 1:06:49
  what most people do. He was saying, the outcome defines who I am,
• 1:06:55
  as opposed to I'm just I'm just a soul that's expressing myself and my
• 1:06:59
  my my sort of purpose on life is to be happy, is to be
• 1:07:01
  in this flow state and then from there, I'm a great athlete or great
• 1:07:04
  this or great whatever. And he and for him, it was a real
• 1:07:09
  threshold moment that he was supposed to be the happiest point in his life and
• 1:07:13
  he wasn't. And it was a big part of his spiritual journey saying no,
• 1:07:16
  no, it's every day I show up there every day. I chop
• 1:07:18
  wood, I carry water, I show up and find my state of happiness
• 1:07:23
  and serve this to people. I love that story for you is that you
• 1:07:26
  found that that that place from I'm kind of a victim things that are happening
• 1:07:30
  to me to no, no, I'm going to take ownership in my life.
• 1:07:32
  You knew so much about independent film and you started helping people this way
• 1:07:36
  and that way and the other way, and that spiraled you up and up
• 1:07:40
  and up and up. And you can see it. Your your energy really
• 1:07:43
  shines in a way that's different now than it was ten years ago. It's
• 1:07:46
  really awesome. I appreciate that. I truly appreciate that. The one other
• 1:07:50
  area that we all go through, and we're talking, we've talked about a
• 1:07:54
  little bit is failure. And we all have had those those those blocks,
• 1:07:58
  those things, you know, things not working out the way you go through.
• 1:08:00
  How do you approach failure in the business? Uh? And you know,
• 1:08:03
  because that script didn't get picked up, they didn't sell that script,
• 1:08:08
  I couldn't get the money for the movie. That's that actor dropped out or
• 1:08:12
  a million things that could have happened me with my shooting for the mob.
• 1:08:15
  I literally got as close as to hanging out with Batman at his house,
• 1:08:20
  and I mean that's as close as you're going to get literally other than being
• 1:08:25
  on set and then it getting yanked from you, and that through me in
• 1:08:28
  a two year depression and all of that kind of stuff. So how do
• 1:08:31
  you break through these because we all go through it, and it doesn't matter
• 1:08:34
  what level you're at. I mean, Spielberg still goes through it, you
• 1:08:38
  know, all of them do. Yeah, they go through their own versions
• 1:08:40
  of failure obviously, But how do you get through it? It's exactly what
• 1:08:44
  I just said. It's it's prioritizing flow, state and joy and service above
• 1:08:48
  all, right, because when we can be you know, and it's it's
• 1:08:53
  and it's a practice, right, and I'm really really good at it,
• 1:08:56
  and I still stumble with it, right, But when my priority is I'm
• 1:09:00
  going to show up and I'm going to find you know, authentically, you
• 1:09:03
  can't just be like DS, you know, head in the clouds. Whatever.
• 1:09:06
  You have to sort of be in your body and be of spirit.
• 1:09:11
  Right, is the balance of those things. And when you can do that
• 1:09:15
  legitimately with authenticity differentiated from outcome, that's when you know you're nailing it.
• 1:09:21
  And so the outcome could be deal goes through good or deal goes through bad.
• 1:09:26
  You can be got to be differentiated from either. One. Could be
• 1:09:29
  a health crisis, relationship crisis, business, it's all the same thing.
• 1:09:31
  All those things. You will be happy to the extent those things are secondary
• 1:09:36
  to your number one priority is I show up and I'm an open human being
• 1:09:41
  and I'm existing and I'm trying to help other people. And that's again,
• 1:09:46
  it takes practice. But anybody listening to this, if this sounds like,
• 1:09:49
  oh, you don't want there's some truth in it, find your way to
• 1:09:53
  practice because you can do it. And I promise you the more you practice
• 1:09:56
  this in your own way and own style, the dividends are amazing. We'll
• 1:10:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 1:10:10
  And then happens once you get the once you get the inside job shifted,
• 1:10:14
  that everything else out in your life, Your relationship are going to get
• 1:10:16
  better. Business is getting better. You're just not because you know how it
• 1:10:19
  works in Hollywood. So you can't be desperate and you can't be boring.
• 1:10:24
  Right, Uh, You're not boring. You're authentic and you and you,
• 1:10:27
  and you're not going to be desperate. If you differentiate from outcomes, then
• 1:10:30
  you become that cool kid in high school. It's like, oh, okay,
• 1:10:32
  all right, everything's fine, everything's great. And so wherever you are
• 1:10:35
  in your journey, if you have this energy of it's perfect the way it
• 1:10:39
  is now, it's ethan awesome, more good things are coming and I'm already
• 1:10:42
  here. Everybody wants to work with that guy. If you're the crankier one,
• 1:10:45
  then it's it gets sketchier. Yeah, And and the that energy of
• 1:10:51
  desks. I always joke about the desperation as a as a cologne. We
• 1:10:57
  all can smell it in the business. It's a it's a it's called desperation
• 1:11:00
  by a Calvin Klein, and we can and we can smell it a million
• 1:11:05
  and I and I know it because I used to wear a desperation quite often,
• 1:11:09
  especially when I first got to LA and you would meet one producer somewhere
• 1:11:14
  on a set and you'd be on them like white on rice, and you
• 1:11:16
  were just like, what can you do for me? How can you help
• 1:11:18
  me? And it is the wrong way of approaching it. And it's only
• 1:11:23
  afterwards where you just go when you sit back and you're like, hey,
• 1:11:27
  if it works out, great, if it doesn't, it's all good.
• 1:11:29
  If you got that kind of energy to if people want to work with that
• 1:11:31
  energy as much more so than somebody's like, I mean, meet me,
• 1:11:34
  I can't can't help can a desperation. It's horrible. And I don't know
• 1:11:39
  about you. I've only met a couple of desperate screenwriters in life. Not
• 1:11:42
  many, not many, never. It just it's rare to meet filmmakers or
• 1:11:46
  screenwriters who are desperate. Now I'm joking, I kid who I love,
• 1:11:51
  because we all have been there. We've all been that desperate person. And
• 1:11:57
  and if you can break through that, that's where that's why you see some
• 1:12:00
  people make it. And what's so interesting is screenwriters, what do you Who
• 1:12:04
  is a screenwriter? You imagine stuff, You imagine world, You imagine things.
• 1:12:08
  So screenwriters imagine this beautiful life for yourself, and again in an authentic
• 1:12:13
  way, not in a BS way, but like, look at the abundance
• 1:12:15
  in your life, the abundance of air, the abundance of like you're gonna
• 1:12:18
  eat today, problem, you're gonna have all these you have friends, There's
• 1:12:21
  so much you can frame legitimately again not BS, but like authentically frame your
• 1:12:27
  your life in abundance, no matter what's happening. And when you do that
• 1:12:31
  and using the same muscles that you write screenplays and you just imagine this grounded,
• 1:12:36
  beautiful, blissful life for yourself and frame it that way. There was
• 1:12:41
  the way it struck me A couple months ago. I was walking to Trader
• 1:12:45
  Joe's with my you know, fourteen year old son. We're going in there
• 1:12:48
  to you know, run an errand, and I had this really beautiful moment
• 1:12:53
  of going, oh, if I was like ten years or twenty years in
• 1:12:57
  the future thinking back to this moment, it would be so sort of romanticize
• 1:13:00
  and lovely. And then I was like, oh, but I can do
• 1:13:02
  that now. And so in that moment, totally mundane error and errand with
• 1:13:06
  my son, I romanticized that. And it was so beautiful just to be
• 1:13:11
  there as a as a dad with his son doing We did nothing, We
• 1:13:15
  picked up some let us for lunch or whatever, you know, but it
• 1:13:17
  was so beautiful and that ability for me to go, oh, I can
• 1:13:21
  frame my existence in a way that's really beautiful. In the way we might
• 1:13:25
  frame a shot as a as a director, or as is the way we
• 1:13:28
  frame a scene as a screenwriter, you could frame your own existence. And
• 1:13:30
  I'm telling you, guys, the more you do that, everything slowly up
• 1:13:35
  levels. And I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I ask all my
• 1:13:40
  guests, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn, Whether
• 1:13:44
  in the film business or in life, the longest to learn? Yeah,
• 1:13:51
  was was that the nowness? You know that I that I have the power
• 1:13:57
  to celebrate right now? What did you learn from your biggest failure? That
• 1:14:05
  it was not the failure, It was my response to the failure, and
• 1:14:12
  how I what I was talking to myself about what I said, you know,
• 1:14:15
  because I failed, that I'm not good enough or this enough or whatever.
• 1:14:18
  And as I got more familiar with that voice and kind of befriended that
• 1:14:23
  inner voice, than the failure became a really beautiful lesson. But in the
• 1:14:29
  moment that it happened, it didn't feel that way. And what are three
• 1:14:31
  screenplays every screenwriter should read? Oh? Your favorite three? Oh? Really?
• 1:14:39
  Yeah? Yeah? No, I hate one of the things. MYU
• 1:14:42
  film school, I had this one instructor that was like, oh, you
• 1:14:45
  have to watch this less movie, and I was like, you know what
• 1:14:46
  if you I'm never watching that movie. And it was a movie I would
• 1:14:49
  have liked, but I just I resented that he was telling me I should.
• 1:14:53
  So I'm of very much the mindset that whatever you personally want to to
• 1:15:00
  to read or watch, and just the amount that you want to watch it
• 1:15:04
  or read it is the ideal amount. So five minutes into Netflix you don't
• 1:15:09
  like it, turn it off. Five minutes into my screenplay, if you're
• 1:15:12
  reading it five pages you don't like it, put it down. I want
• 1:15:15
  you to put it down. I want you, guys, focus on what
• 1:15:17
  you love most by your personal perspective, because to me, that is the
• 1:15:23
  most powerful thing you can do for yourself. And where can people get a
• 1:15:27
  hold of you and find out what you're doing? Brooks Albums Coaching dot Com
• 1:15:31
  is my website for if you if you want to sort of explore working with
• 1:15:35
  me. And there's two main programs that I that I do. One is
• 1:15:39
  helping people develop a script, one is helping people get it sold. And
• 1:15:44
  uh and if if not me, I've I've mentors uh that I that I
• 1:15:46
  because I don't I don't do hourlies. Sometimes people want hourlies, and I
• 1:15:49
  have other people that that I basically refer them to. Although you are the
• 1:15:54
  guy to hire if for any sort of independent film stuff, I mean,
• 1:15:58
  guys telling you because here's here's the thing. I mean, let me plug
• 1:16:00
  you for a second, because he's got the Amazon of information for independent filmmakers.
• 1:16:06
  You've got writing, you've got everything, a lot of it's free,
• 1:16:10
  you got premium, You've got the whole damn thing. But I'm telling you,
• 1:16:13
  guys, you don't know what you don't know. So hire Alex for
• 1:16:16
  a couple hours and tell them I think I know this about making my next
• 1:16:20
  film, or I think I know this or that, and he will go,
• 1:16:24
  yeah, you're right here, you're this is correct, but this is
• 1:16:27
  you're totally off. And you'd rather get that in one hour from a master
• 1:16:30
  like Alex than go for years to figure it out for yourself and go,
• 1:16:34
  God damn it. Alex could have told me that last year, but I
• 1:16:36
  didn't figure it out. So hire somebody that knows at whatever budget you can,
• 1:16:41
  and I'm telling you that's going to speed up your game so much.
• 1:16:44
  I appreciate that wholeheartedly. For that. Plugs or I could tell you from
• 1:16:48
  my experience, coaching could save you. I've I've literally sometimes I've had someone
• 1:16:56
  give me an hour of their time and they hire me for an hour and
• 1:16:59
  I save them. He's like, you just saved me fifty thousand bucks.
• 1:17:01
  I'm like, because you didn't know. I mean, I know I've walked
• 1:17:04
  this path. Man, Hire someone who's walked the path. It doesn't have
• 1:17:09
  to be me. It could be anybody you feel comfortable with. But if
• 1:17:12
  they could, if you an hour or two talking to someone coaching, that
• 1:17:16
  could Oh my god, it's a scene what you can learn in an hour
• 1:17:20
  and sixty minutes on your story. It could save you six months. It
• 1:17:27
  could save you sixty thousand dollars. It could save you so much time talking
• 1:17:30
  to someone who's just walked. And they don't have to particularly be a master.
• 1:17:33
  They just have to be ahead of where you're at. It's exactly right.
• 1:17:38
  It's exactly right. It doesn't, you know, because some people will
• 1:17:41
  talk themselves out of getting that help because oh, I haven't heard of anything
• 1:17:45
  they've done, or this or that or blah blah blah. But it doesn't
• 1:17:46
  matter if the guy at Trader Joe's has a good idea to help you with
• 1:17:49
  your script or whatever. Hire him, dude, whoever can help you move
• 1:17:54
  one step forward is great, and you don't we don't know what. We
• 1:17:58
  don't know, so even if what happens, and this is never gonna happen,
• 1:18:00
  but even give you guys, hire Alex and he goes, dude,
• 1:18:03
  you got it. Awesome. Yeah, I'm not worried about this. Your
• 1:18:06
  idea is great. This is great, and he gives you no other tips
• 1:18:09
  other than dude, you are in great shape. That's like the best money
• 1:18:13
  but ever spend You're gonna have so much more confidence. It's so great.
• 1:18:15
  And of course that's not gonna happen. He's got all sorts of good ideas.
• 1:18:17
  But like that, feedback loop is really where we make the most progress
• 1:18:21
  as quickly as possible. So find some sort of mentor in some sort of
• 1:18:26
  way, and that's the fastest way forward. From you, guys Brooks,
• 1:18:28
  it has been a pleasure talking to you and my friend. I'm sure we'll
• 1:18:31
  have you back on the show in the future date, but thank you so
• 1:18:34
  much for all you do for screenwriters and filmmakers, and thanks for being on
• 1:18:38
  the show. Brother. I appreciate it completely, my honor and my pleasure.
• 1:18:42
  Really exciting. I want to thank Brooks so much for coming on the
• 1:18:45
  show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Trap today. Thank you so much,
• 1:18:49
  Brooks. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in
• 1:18:51
  this episode, including how to reach out to Brooks, head over to the
• 1:18:56
  show notes at any filmascle dot com forward slash seven fifteen, and if you
• 1:19:00
  have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and
• 1:19:04
  leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot,
• 1:19:09
  guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always,
• 1:19:12
  keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
• 1:19:15
  and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film
• 1:19:17
  Hustle podcast at Indie Film Hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
• 1:19:23
  F I L M hustl dot com.