Latest / onefjef / Indie Films, Hollywood & Steering the Ship with Jon Sherman

Transcript

Indie Films, Hollywood & Steering the Ship with Jon Sherman · onefjef

• 0:01
  Was there ever a point during shooting this where you were
• 0:03
  just like, I'm in over my head?
• 0:04
  100%. 100%. And it was, it was going very smoothly until one day where
• 0:09
  things just started to go wrong.
• 0:10
  And I kind of just went and just sat in a corner and I just
• 0:14
  started like getting really upset.
• 0:17
  And I was actually really fortunate that there was a really sweet.
• 0:20
  Union Grip who came up to me, or maybe it was the gaffer, and he's
• 0:24
  like, John, whatever you're going through, you can't show it to the crew.
• 0:28
  Like you have to be in charge.
• 0:30
  And I was just like, thank you.
• 0:31
  That is really kind of you.
• 0:32
  That's the best advice you could ever get.
• 0:33
  Yeah.
• 0:33
  Yeah.
• 0:34
  Yeah.
• 0:34
  It was really sweet.
• 0:35
  You gotta steer the ship.
• 0:35
  You gotta steer the ship.
• 0:36
  This is episode 46 of onefjef.
• 0:40
  46 leans into that in between, slightly unsettled energy.
• 0:44
  In numerology it reduces to one, pointing to endings that quietly
• 0:47
  turn into beginnings, like a reset you didn't fully choose.
• 0:51
  It carries this tension between structure and care, control and letting go, and even
• 0:55
  shows up in the body as 46 chromosomes.
• 0:58
  Your entire inheritance baked in.
• 1:01
  It's not a milestone number, it's the moment just before one when
• 1:05
  something is shifting under the surface but hasn't revealed itself yet.
• 1:09
  Hola de nuevo, mis amigos.
• 1:11
  Que tal?
• 1:13
  I'm in my sixth week living here in Mexico City and this abnormal life
• 1:18
  is starting to feel somewhat normal.
• 1:21
  As normal as possible, at any rate.
• 1:24
  I think it's safe to say that my guest today is one of the most
• 1:26
  accomplished filmmakers in Columbus, Ohio, and he's currently in the
• 1:30
  midst of shooting his new feature film, which I am very excited to see.
• 1:34
  His name is John Sherman, is an American writer director known for indie romantic
• 1:39
  comedies in the late 90s and early 2000s.
• 1:42
  His film I'm with Lucy helped him break into the indie film world with a sharp
• 1:46
  character driven take on relationships.
• 1:48
  And a notably strong cast.
• 1:50
  Beyond directing, he's worked with major production companies and
• 1:54
  later shifted toward education.
• 1:55
  He's now a film professor at Kenyon College, where he teaches and mentors
• 1:59
  the next generation of filmmakers.
• 2:01
  We talk about how we don't remember exactly how we met in
• 2:05
  this episode, but since recording it, I did remember, actually.
• 2:10
  I'd heard about Jon through some other film people in town.
• 2:12
  So I sent him a friend request or whatever it's called on LinkedIn.
• 2:17
  We met for beers at this beer garden called Gamut.
• 2:21
  That was in 2022.
• 2:23
  And since that first meeting, Jon and I have become good friends and
• 2:27
  actually spoke to his class at Kenyon about filmmaking a few years ago,
• 2:30
  which made me feel strangely legit.
• 2:33
  Having Jon on this podcast was in part an excuse to hear about his whole
• 2:38
  journey from indie filmmaking in New York to being a film professor in
• 2:43
  Ohio and all the stuff in between.
• 2:46
  And it's a good story, albeit a painful one as most filmmaking stories often are.
• 2:51
  But John's still doing it, and I admire that.
• 2:54
  Because as you'll hear in this conversation, filmmaking is
• 2:57
  hard and complicated work.
• 2:59
  But he's still doing it.
• 3:01
  I'd be remiss if I did not mention my Patreon page, which
• 3:04
  is at Patreon.com/onefjef.
• 3:07
  Please go there.
• 3:07
  Please go there now and sign up.
• 3:10
  Help support this independent podcast, which takes a significant
• 3:14
  amount of time and effort to produce and edit and everything else.
• 3:18
  And you'll also get access to some wonderful bonus content, some photos,
• 3:21
  videos, other episodes that haven't been released to the public and
• 3:24
  early access to the CDMX Dispatch episodes, which are about my strange
• 3:29
  existence here in Mexico City.
• 3:31
  Only five dollars a month, which is so little, if you really think about it.
• 3:35
  I found five dollars on the street.
• 3:37
  No, I didn't because I'm in Mexico.
• 3:39
  But if I was in the United States and I found five dollars on the street, I'd be
• 3:43
  like, Oh, what am I going to do with this?
• 3:44
  I guess I'll just throw it away.
• 3:46
  Oh, I can sign up and support this independent podcast
• 3:50
  with this five dollars.
• 3:51
  Oh, well then I'll do that instead.
• 3:54
  And if you already do subscribe to the Patreon page, then thank you.
• 3:57
  Thank you.
• 3:58
  Thank you so much.
• 4:00
  I really appreciate you.
• 4:01
  I appreciate your continued support and your existence.
• 4:04
  On this planet.
• 4:06
  This is the last of the episodes that I recorded before I left Columbus, and
• 4:10
  it couldn't be with a better human.
• 4:12
  I'm hoping that when he finishes shooting his film, he'll come directly to Mexico
• 4:15
  City for some much needed downtime.
• 4:18
  And tacos, of course.
• 4:21
  As always, thank you for listening.
• 4:24
  Thank you for being here.
• 4:26
  Here's my conversation with John Sherman.
• 4:33
  John, thanks for coming in, uh, to the old onefjef podcast.
• 4:37
  I know John from the film gathering, right?
• 4:40
  I think we met before that, but I don't know exactly.
• 4:43
  Yeah, whom or how yeah, I kind of had that same thought but I have no idea where it
• 4:47
  would have been or how but Somehow you got my number and got in touch, right?
• 4:53
  Right.
• 4:53
  I don't know but now it's the film gathering thing and then Yeah on
• 4:57
  and on and on so forth and so on and then I went and Spoke to your
• 5:01
  students gave them some great advice.
• 5:02
  I thought that was awesome.
• 5:03
  They're all going to be very rich now Uh, this is the good advice.
• 5:07
  Um, but thanks for thanks for coming in and you're teaching at Kenyon.
• 5:10
  You're a film teacher at Kenyon Yeah, i'm a film professor at Kenyon college, right?
• 5:14
  I've been teaching there.
• 5:15
  16th year No kidding, which is never something that I thought I would do.
• 5:22
  That's crazy You Yeah.
• 5:24
  Where were you born?
• 5:25
  Where'd you grow up?
• 5:26
  I mean, I was born in Illinois because my dad was in law school, but the
• 5:30
  intent was always to get back to New York City, where everyone was from.
• 5:34
  So When my dad finished law school, they packed us up in a car.
• 5:38
  Like, I love talking to them about this story because there were
• 5:43
  obviously no like car seats then.
• 5:45
  They like had me in a little crib in the back, terribly dangerous,
• 5:48
  just rolling around in the backseat, driving from Illinois to New York.
• 5:52
  So I, I, I mean, I consider myself a native New Yorker, but
• 5:54
  in fact, I was not born there.
• 5:56
  So you grew up in New York, basically.
• 5:57
  Yeah, I'm a real New York City kid.
• 5:59
  Which part of New York did you grow up in?
• 6:00
  I grew up in Manhattan, so I grew up, um, uh, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper, like
• 6:06
  the last Oh, you lived in Stuyvesant Town?
• 6:08
  Yeah, the last of the middle class housing that you don't really see anymore.
• 6:12
  Yeah.
• 6:13
  And, um, you know, we, when I was born, we lived in Stuyvesant Town,
• 6:17
  and then we moved to Peter And my parents, everyone, my grandparents
• 6:20
  were all, like, first generation.
• 6:22
  They all came off the boat.
• 6:23
  Europe and my parents were first generation college and You know, they
• 6:29
  didn't have much money and stuyvesantown was great because and peter cooper We
• 6:34
  had a two bedroom apartment That I can remember had a view of the east river.
• 6:39
  I'm sure yeah.
• 6:39
  Yeah, and it was six hundred dollars a month but we had a divider my my
• 6:44
  sister and I were like My sister's two years younger and uh, this is like You
• 6:52
  That's probably the late seventies.
• 6:53
  Yeah.
• 6:53
  And we had like a modular divider in between the room.
• 6:57
  Right, right.
• 6:57
  And finally my mom convinced my dad that that was unacceptable.
• 7:01
  Right.
• 7:02
  To our way to raise children.
• 7:03
  Right, right, right.
• 7:04
  And they bought an apartment.
• 7:05
  Like we were like the Jeffersons.
• 7:06
  We moved on up to 57th and first.
• 7:09
  Oh.
• 7:10
  And they still live there.
• 7:11
  Wow.
• 7:12
  And I can remember my dad saying.
• 7:14
  Like, like it was a three bedroom apartment and he was like, 300, 000?
• 7:19
  That is so much money.
• 7:20
  We can't ever.
• 7:22
  300 grand for an apartment on 50th 57th?
• 7:24
  Yeah.
• 7:25
  He's like, we can't afford that.
• 7:26
  We'll never be able to afford it.
• 7:27
  And my mom convinced him.
• 7:29
  And that's one of the best investments they've ever made.
• 7:32
  You know, you basically like, like a chimpanzee could make money
• 7:36
  in New York state real estate.
• 7:37
  New York real estate.
• 7:38
  Back in the day.
• 7:39
  Back in the day, yeah.
• 7:41
  If anybody was smart enough to know that it was going to come back.
• 7:43
  I mean, we, we were, we weren't making an investment.
• 7:46
  We were just living there.
• 7:47
  Right, right, right, right.
• 7:47
  But, you know, it turned out to be, it's not a, it's not a great place
• 7:51
  to grow up in the sense that like there's honking outside until three
• 7:55
  in the morning because that's where you go onto the 59th street bridge.
• 7:59
  Right, that's probably why it was cheaper.
• 8:01
  Yeah, yeah, you know, I went to private school in Manhattan in in the Bronx
• 8:05
  Actually a school called Horace Mann that you may have heard of because there was
• 8:09
  a number of scandals associated with it But you know, so I saw the documentary.
• 8:13
  Yeah Yeah so I always had imposter syndrome because we had just moved to
• 8:17
  57th Street and like my friends all lived on Park Avenue and they were
• 8:20
  all really really wealthy and So like I was a poor kid compared to these.
• 8:25
  How did your parents afford Horace Mann?
• 8:27
  You know, my dad was a corporate lawyer and they could afford it.
• 8:29
  Oh, alright, so they had money.
• 8:30
  Yeah, they had money, but it was, it was a big deal for them, you know,
• 8:34
  because they didn't grow up that way.
• 8:35
  They grew up in Brooklyn, and like, to go to private school was unusual.
• 8:40
  But I mean, you don't want to go to a Like a public school in Manhattan.
• 8:44
  I could have you know, there's I mean It's not like it isn't that like now
• 8:48
  There are all these sort of schools within a school and charter schools,
• 8:51
  but back then it would have been a different choice But they decided
• 8:55
  that I should go to Horace Mann.
• 8:57
  What kind of a student were you?
• 8:58
  Were you like a cool kid?
• 8:59
  Were you a nerdy?
• 8:59
  Were you like in the film then?
• 9:01
  No, I went to school with some really really smart kids.
• 9:04
  Sure.
• 9:05
  The way I ended up sort of distinguishing myself was I
• 9:09
  started getting really into music.
• 9:11
  Okay.
• 9:12
  And like a lot of new wave bands and it was a, it was a crazy time
• 9:16
  where like all these bands from England would play like every Friday
• 9:20
  night at a club called The Ritz.
• 9:22
  Huh.
• 9:23
  And my friends and I would go and see like I saw the first
• 9:25
  ever American show of The Smiths.
• 9:29
  Huh.
• 9:29
  Like I met my best friend and my producer online At not online,
• 9:33
  like in line on the internet.
• 9:34
  Right in line.
• 9:34
  Right, exactly.
• 9:35
  In Ohio, we call it in line in, in New York they call it online,
• 9:39
  which I've never cared for.
• 9:39
  Never for.
• 9:40
  That is a really funny thing.
• 9:41
  I never really thought about that.
• 9:42
  It's true.
• 9:42
  It drives me a little crazy.
• 9:43
  'cause you're not literally standing on the line, you're
• 9:45
  in, you're in physical line.
• 9:47
  Yeah.
• 9:47
  But New York City.
• 9:48
  Yeah.
• 9:48
  Yeah.
• 9:49
  So my, my friends and I, we, we got there.
• 9:52
  Two in the afternoon for an Echo and the Bunnymen concert, and he ended up
• 9:57
  being my closest friend and producer.
• 10:00
  Back in the day, and we've known each other now, I guess, like 40 years.
• 10:03
  Your friend who you met in line at Echo and the Bunnymen.
• 10:05
  Exactly.
• 10:06
  That's Tim Peral.
• 10:07
  Shout out to Tim.
• 10:08
  So you were the guy at Horace Mann who knew, uh, All the,
• 10:11
  uh, the cool, the cool bands.
• 10:13
  Right.
• 10:13
  And that sort of distinguished me from the other kids who just wanted to go and
• 10:16
  make money and become lawyers and doctors.
• 10:18
  I see.
• 10:19
  Yeah.
• 10:19
  So at what point did film start to be like, Oh, Oh, uh, was it a while?
• 10:25
  So yeah, it was a while.
• 10:26
  So basically I went to Wesleyan in Connecticut.
• 10:30
  Okay.
• 10:30
  I don't know if you're familiar with that school.
• 10:31
  But.
• 10:32
  But, uh, Wesleyan has an amazing film program.
• 10:35
  And I was actually into music then, but there, I had a friend on my
• 10:40
  floor of my dorm who said, I'm going to go talk to this film professor.
• 10:45
  We were first year students.
• 10:46
  Yeah, and if you want to be in film, you have to talk to her now because
• 10:50
  there's a two year or A year, I think it was a waitlist to get into her classes.
• 10:54
  So I was like, yeah, that sounds good So I went with him and talked
• 10:58
  to this woman and got into her film classes and at that point I was only
• 11:02
  interested in like the European directors like Godard, Bergman, I used to go.
• 11:06
  Right, very pretentious.
• 11:07
  Yeah, pretentious.
• 11:08
  I mean, it was just, I didn't think much of American films, you know, I didn't
• 11:12
  know about classic American cinema.
• 11:13
  So I can still vividly remember going to a theater on 8th Avenue that was
• 11:19
  showing a triple feature of Pasolini and I was like the only person in
• 11:23
  there that wasn't like homeless, like just getting warm from the cold.
• 11:28
  And like those days, I mean, That was a great time to be able to do that.
• 11:32
  You know, those, those things don't exist anymore, right?
• 11:34
  Sad closed.
• 11:35
  Yeah.
• 11:36
  Yeah, I'm sad for film students.
• 11:37
  I feel like movie theaters are gradually going to start disappearing because I just
• 11:42
  the business model doesn't seem to be I mean the Netflix deal And all that it's
• 11:46
  all just a death knell for these theaters.
• 11:48
  It's unfortunate So you just took a film class and would it ever have
• 11:52
  occurred to you to go into film before?
• 11:54
  Absolutely not.
• 11:55
  And then you took a class and you're like, oh Yeah, this is an amazing
• 11:59
  thing, and a couple years ahead of me, uh, Joss Whedon was in that class, the
• 12:04
  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Michael Bay was also in the class ahead of me.
• 12:08
  Fuck yeah, bro.
• 12:09
  Exactly.
• 12:10
  I mean, you should have seen the student film that that guy made.
• 12:12
  I'm sure, I'm sure.
• 12:13
  It was cranes and everything.
• 12:14
  Did you ever see, like, the behind the scenes?
• 12:15
  There's, like, on a DVD of a behind the scenes of him directing, and, like,
• 12:18
  he's up on a, like, a giant podium, and he's going, and they're like,
• 12:21
  action, and he's like, blow that up!
• 12:23
  It's just like, and then he cut.
• 12:26
  He's, he's the best job ever.
• 12:28
  Yeah.
• 12:29
  He's, but you know, he always knew what he wanted to be.
• 12:32
  And that's more than I can say for myself.
• 12:33
  I suppose the most people can say for themselves.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:35
  He was that.
• 12:36
  And Joss too, like he knew, like he made a student, like we were all making
• 12:40
  pretentious black and white movies and Joss made a vampire movie and he knew.
• 12:44
  That, so he was always, and that's, I mean, that's a lot of
• 12:48
  the secret to their success, is they knew what they wanted to be.
• 12:51
  Right.
• 12:52
  And connections, but we won't even get, go there.
• 12:54
  Right, and perhaps rich parents.
• 12:56
  Yeah, money, it's a combination of money and having parents in the film business.
• 13:00
  I don't think Michael did, but Joss did.
• 13:01
  I think the money, having people with money, having, it is a big, big arbiter
• 13:07
  of who can make it in the film industry.
• 13:10
  There's certainly examples of people who have not, but like, most of them.
• 13:13
  It's the money, but it's also the confidence to think
• 13:16
  like you can be a director.
• 13:17
  Sure.
• 13:18
  And a lot of them sometimes it It really helps to be able to have people
• 13:23
  in your family that have done it that make you feel It's such a small
• 13:26
  little country all the people right?
• 13:29
  So you get introduced to all the people and that's how you get.
• 13:31
  Yeah.
• 13:31
  Yeah, because otherwise you're like How am I ever gonna get
• 13:33
  into this business, you know?
• 13:34
  Yeah, you wonder how much talent though is out there that just hasn't been able
• 13:38
  to be certainly there's some famous like some Some talented children of directors
• 13:43
  that have made some amazing films.
• 13:44
  Sofia Coppola, but like yeah for every Sofia Coppola I wonder how many other
• 13:48
  people People that were that just didn't have any money, you know, I mean now as
• 13:52
  a teacher I see it Yeah, you know and I see I see the talent and but they don't
• 13:57
  a lot of students Just don't have that belief or that drive that will take them.
• 14:01
  You just have to be relentless, right?
• 14:03
  right, you know and frankly like i'm not sure what it would what it takes
• 14:07
  to to succeed as a as like a as like a director in the film industry in
• 14:11
  these in this day and age, but I I don't imagine it's Fun necessarily.
• 14:15
  No You Yeah, it's not fun.
• 14:17
  You ended up majoring in film.
• 14:19
  At Wesleyan.
• 14:20
  At Wesleyan.
• 14:21
  And, uh, what kind of films did you want to make, or what kind of film did
• 14:23
  you make for your, like, thesis film?
• 14:25
  Yeah, my thesis film was really, I was very influenced by Tarkovsky.
• 14:29
  I, so I, I spent a junior year in Paris studying film, and
• 14:34
  it was most, and semiotics.
• 14:36
  Um, there were classes in French.
• 14:38
  Uh huh.
• 14:38
  And they were ridiculous.
• 14:40
  We spent like an entire semester in one class just analyzing the credits
• 14:45
  of Godard's A Woman is a Woman.
• 14:47
  Most pretentious fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
• 14:50
  I know, I just love it so much.
• 14:51
  But at a certain point, I was just like How do you analyze the credits?
• 14:56
  What's, what's in the credits of A Woman?
• 14:57
  There's a lot of references to other filmmakers and to No kidding.
• 15:00
  Yeah, if you watch the movie, I can explain it to you.
• 15:03
  We can do that sometime.
• 15:04
  We'll do that in a different episode of the podcast.
• 15:06
  Yeah.
• 15:06
  So like Literally he would just, the teacher would just explain.
• 15:10
  But that was better than the other teacher who was like a Hitchcock expert but just
• 15:14
  ended up like chasing this one woman who was a friend of mine around the projector.
• 15:18
  . Isn't that like trying to like kiss her ? So like so great.
• 15:23
  So perfect.
• 15:23
  But at a certain point I just like film right there.
• 15:25
  Film right?
• 15:25
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:26
  At a certain point I just checked out.
• 15:27
  'cause at.
• 15:29
  I don't know if you've ever been in Paris, but there's, you know, so like
• 15:33
  there are movie theaters that are playing classic American cinema all
• 15:36
  the time and Tarkovsky all the time.
• 15:40
  So at a certain point, I was like, I'm kind of done with these classes.
• 15:42
  I'm just going to go to the movies.
• 15:44
  And that really was my film school.
• 15:46
  More than anything else, just going.
• 15:48
  Going to the movies.
• 15:49
  Um, Solaris, uh, or like, uh, like, what was the other one?
• 15:53
  The Mirror is my nostalgia of the two that really made me want to make movies.
• 15:57
  Stalker is this other weird one.
• 15:59
  That's, I couldn't get through that.
• 16:00
  They're tough, you know.
• 16:02
  Um, Solaris, I remember the film.
• 16:05
  Burnt in the projector and no one was sure if the movie was really done or not
• 16:09
  people were just confused And didn't know whether they should leave but I loved
• 16:14
  it like every bit of it and my sister came to visit me and I made her I Made
• 16:18
  her sit through the mirror and she was just looking at me like you asshole.
• 16:21
  I'm never going to a movie with you Yeah, you pretentious fuck.
• 16:23
  Yeah.
• 16:23
  Yeah.
• 16:24
  Yeah.
• 16:24
  I've been there.
• 16:25
  Uh They did the burning the film joke in gremlins 2 as well.
• 16:29
  Do you remember that and when I think hulk hogan comes out?
• 16:31
  Anyway, it's it's well worn.
• 16:33
  Yeah Gremlins 2 is actually a pretty good film.
• 16:35
  I just watched it again recently.
• 16:36
  So, what was your final film of your, your graduating film?
• 16:43
  At Westland?
• 16:43
  It was, oh my god, it was so pretentious.
• 16:46
  It was so I mean, it sounds like Black and white.
• 16:48
  Nobody's surprised.
• 16:49
  I mean, Tarkovsky, black and white.
• 16:51
  Yeah.
• 16:51
  I loved it though.
• 16:52
  I mean, I had every image.
• 16:54
  Is it out there still?
• 16:55
  Can we You know, this is a sad thing because I've just, the actress who was
• 16:59
  in the film is a friend of mine now.
• 17:02
  I've met her.
• 17:04
  Sort of re met her and she wants a copy of it and I went to look and I had like
• 17:11
  a one inch videotape of it that I don't know where it's gone and It's tough.
• 17:17
  I don't know.
• 17:18
  It's lost.
• 17:18
  It's a lost film Like I've just been reading this really great novel about
• 17:22
  GW pops called the director that you should recognize You should read it.
• 17:26
  It's fantastic.
• 17:27
  But he had a lost film.
• 17:28
  His masterpiece was lost.
• 17:29
  So I like to think that my masterpiece is lost.
• 17:31
  Right, right.
• 17:32
  Was it a good film, do you think?
• 17:34
  No, but like it had some really pretty images.
• 17:36
  It won some prizes in film, like the Chicago Film Festival.
• 17:41
  Yeah, it was, it was really pretentious.
• 17:43
  What was it called?
• 17:45
  I can't even, it's too pretentious.
• 17:46
  No, you've got to tell me what it's called.
• 17:47
  Catherine in the Enclave.
• 17:49
  Okay, and what was the plot of it?
• 17:51
  Plot!
• 17:53
  Just a quick summary.
• 17:54
  It's about a woman in a relationship who is trapped in
• 17:56
  her memories and just visual.
• 17:58
  Right, right.
• 17:59
  It's very Tarkovsky, very, you know, kind of dream like.
• 18:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:03
  Yeah, yeah.
• 18:03
  Like, I just remember a lot of a shot of, like, the beginning shot
• 18:06
  is like a coffee cup shaking.
• 18:08
  But, you know, it's funny, like, um, a friend of mine who did the
• 18:13
  music, he just sent me Like he had all the demos from it, we listened.
• 18:18
  It was really, you know, you don't realize like a lot of people work on these things
• 18:22
  with you and they have their own memories, you know, it's, it is what it is.
• 18:26
  And it's, yeah, no, I have the same kind of thing with my thesis.
• 18:29
  So a lot of people have a lot of memories of that.
• 18:31
  Yeah.
• 18:31
  Yeah.
• 18:32
  So it's not, I mean, it's a team sport.
• 18:34
  It is, it is.
• 18:34
  You know, and Becky Connor still talks about it.
• 18:37
  Like, you know, the actress, like, oh, that was a wonderful thing I was in.
• 18:41
  It was just like, what was the budget for this thing?
• 18:42
  Do you remember?
• 18:43
  You know, their thesis film.
• 18:44
  So they gave us the camera and it was just the budget for the film and developing it.
• 18:48
  Oh, I mean, I still spent like 20 grand on my thesis film,
• 18:52
  even though we got cameras.
• 18:53
  So that's more of like a graduate school thing.
• 18:56
  Oh yeah, right.
• 18:56
  Fair enough.
• 18:57
  You know, and I did that at Columbia.
• 18:58
  So I went to Columbia afterwards.
• 19:00
  Way too much money.
• 19:01
  That's when you spent the too much money on the thesis.
• 19:03
  Oh my god.
• 19:04
  And what was the thesis film there?
• 19:05
  At Columbia?
• 19:06
  Yeah.
• 19:07
  It was a script, because I knew that I wanted to make my own feature, so
• 19:10
  I just wrote the screenplay for it.
• 19:12
  Okay.
• 19:13
  And what was that screenplay?
• 19:14
  It was called Till Christmas, but it ended up, the distributor changed
• 19:18
  the title of it to Breathing Room.
• 19:20
  So I wrote that as my thesis at Columbia.
• 19:24
  How was Columbia?
• 19:27
  I don't know.
• 19:28
  I mean, I almost, thank God I didn't drop, I almost dropped out.
• 19:32
  I was so That was a master's program?
• 19:34
  It was a master's program, but if I hadn't finished that degree, that MFA,
• 19:38
  I wouldn't have been able to teach.
• 19:39
  So I just, thank God I stuck it out.
• 19:41
  I don't know why I stuck it out, because I hated it.
• 19:43
  Because you knew.
• 19:44
  Well, you know, now it's different.
• 19:46
  Now they've been able to hire all these great directing teachers.
• 19:51
  You know, you have people that made films, that won prizes at Sundance, that can't.
• 19:57
  Make features all the time, you know, these people that can't necessarily
• 20:01
  have a directing career are now teaching at Columbia So it's different now
• 20:06
  and people, you know, it's much more structured It wasn't the way that wasn't
• 20:10
  the case and I actually love the fact that it wasn't structured Because I
• 20:14
  could kind of do whatever I wanted.
• 20:15
  I started off as a directing major changed to a screenwriting major But
• 20:19
  I mean, you know, I went to college Wesleyan with really successful people.
• 20:23
  And at Columbia, my best friends were Bob Pulcini and Shari Berman, who did
• 20:28
  American Splendor and now do a lot of TV.
• 20:31
  Jim Mangold, who you probably know was in my class.
• 20:35
  Uh, Kim Pierce was in the class below me, really amazing
• 20:38
  director, did Boys Don't Cry.
• 20:40
  So there were a lot of people there that just really willed
• 20:44
  themselves to success, you know.
• 20:46
  But again, In graduate school, like no career planning, no helping, right.
• 20:52
  You know, it's just, it's just, you're on your own.
• 20:54
  You just have to make a will yourself to make some movies.
• 20:57
  Yeah.
• 20:58
  Yeah.
• 20:58
  You get to make movies, but like there wasn't even a set.
• 21:01
  Program at that point like how many how many people were in the program?
• 21:05
  Oh, I have a funny story about it So B. Lush Foreman was the head of
• 21:09
  the program then which was amazing There was probably 30 or 40 people
• 21:14
  in our class, which was way too much.
• 21:15
  There should have been like 10 You know, that's way too many
• 21:17
  filmmakers to graduate for the price.
• 21:19
  Yeah.
• 21:20
  Yeah, but but here's a funny story Milos had brought over a A lot of
• 21:24
  his friends from the Czech Republic, which was Czechoslovakia then.
• 21:28
  So he brought this guy named Vojta Jasny, who did a movie that, it
• 21:32
  won Cannes in like maybe 1966, 67.
• 21:36
  But he didn't really teach so much as he just kind of pontificated.
• 21:40
  But there was a famous story.
• 21:42
  Uh, the year before me where he told his class, New York is about cows.
• 21:49
  I want you to go out and film cows to me.
• 21:52
  And so literally people like went to like Pennsylvania for cows
• 21:56
  and of course he meant chaos.
• 21:59
  Right, right, right.
• 22:01
  That old, that old, that old misunderstanding.
• 22:03
  So, but he, I mean, he inspired us, you know, but it was not, I
• 22:08
  wouldn't call it a program per se.
• 22:10
  Right.
• 22:11
  I had a, uh, Eastern European teacher as well in film school and
• 22:15
  it was the same kind of a vibe.
• 22:16
  And he was a huge director where he came from, but we never,
• 22:19
  nobody, we didn't always know.
• 22:20
  He liked me a lot though, because I made weird, I think I
• 22:22
  made pretentious films as well.
• 22:24
  Sure.
• 22:24
  I mean, that's what you do in film school is you make pretentious films.
• 22:27
  You should.
• 22:27
  Pretentious, right, yeah.
• 22:28
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:29
  That's your chance to make your pretentious film.
• 22:30
  I know, like if you, I don't trust you if you go in and make
• 22:33
  a romantic comedy for Netflix.
• 22:34
  Right, that's what they wanted me to do at SCAD though.
• 22:36
  They kind of wanted me and everybody to make like these
• 22:38
  very kind of bland, anyway.
• 22:40
  It's an art school, I mean, shame on them.
• 22:43
  So In Colombia, is there, is there a love life?
• 22:46
  Do you, are you, are you dating women?
• 22:48
  Are you, are you?
• 22:50
  That's such a funny question.
• 22:52
  I love that.
• 22:53
  There were women.
• 22:54
  I, yeah, I had, I was dating one of my fellow film students.
• 22:57
  She's from Belgium.
• 22:57
  Nice, nice.
• 22:58
  So, but she dropped out after the first year because her funding, uh,
• 23:03
  yeah, that's too bad, was pulled.
• 23:04
  Yeah.
• 23:05
  So.
• 23:05
  Do you know where she is now?
• 23:06
  Yeah, yeah, I see, I saw, I just saw her when I went to, she lives in
• 23:09
  Brussels still, she writes novels.
• 23:12
  I just saw her when I went to Antwerp, we had an amazing reunion.
• 23:15
  Wow.
• 23:16
  I don't, I keep in touch with people, that is my, kind of my great skill.
• 23:19
  Yeah, you're really good at that, I've noticed that.
• 23:21
  You're really, uh, you are a, a people, uh, a people beaver.
• 23:24
  Gatherer.
• 23:24
  Yeah.
• 23:25
  Yeah.
• 23:25
  That's, I've learned that that is my great talent.
• 23:27
  And you remember names like nobody's business, it's kind of incredible,
• 23:31
  but, uh, well done on that.
• 23:33
  Yeah.
• 23:33
  I, I just enjoy, like, I was just.
• 23:35
  Doing this and I just enjoy like getting people together and making
• 23:40
  having them work together and make connections Yeah, I do too.
• 23:43
  I just don't like the networking at Like film festivals.
• 23:49
  I mean I got better at it, but it was always so awkward It's always some
• 23:52
  guy who's talking about cameras like the nuke and always that guy's talking
• 23:56
  about cameras and asking people what camera they use Or you're doing this
• 24:00
  where you're talking to them and they just and you see the person looking
• 24:03
  around To see who else they can talk to because you're clearly boring them.
• 24:06
  I mean that's the film business.
• 24:07
  I fucking hate that shit so much.
• 24:08
  Fucking disgusting.
• 24:09
  Yeah.
• 24:09
  Anyway.
• 24:10
  So you have the script you want to get made you get out of film school I had to
• 24:13
  learn how to make an independent film.
• 24:15
  It wasn't just about writing it So I worked I went to college with
• 24:20
  Daisy Mayer who did party girl.
• 24:22
  Okay, so I worked on that I did all the locations for her.
• 24:25
  Oh cool.
• 24:25
  And then I was the unit production manager.
• 24:27
  I mean Parker Posey.
• 24:28
  I sure did Yeah, she's cool as she seems like she is Yeah, she was actually much
• 24:33
  nicer than you would expect her to be.
• 24:35
  I would expect her to be nice.
• 24:36
  Still a star from that moment.
• 24:38
  Yeah.
• 24:38
  Working on that movie kind of taught me like, how do you go about making
• 24:42
  an independent film in New York?
• 24:44
  Mm. Then I did my own, but we had to raise the money.
• 24:47
  That was hard.
• 24:48
  Your first feature film is called, what was it called?
• 24:50
  It was Christmas.
• 24:51
  Something changed.
• 24:51
  Well, it was called Till Christmas.
• 24:52
  Right.
• 24:52
  So I wrote it with a friend of mine.
• 24:54
  Again, still friends with him.
• 24:55
  Right.
• 24:56
  Um, he had a relationship that.
• 24:59
  He and his girlfriend said, we're going to break up at Thanksgiving and we're
• 25:02
  not going to talk until Christmas and see if we still want to be together.
• 25:07
  So I thought, well, that's a nice structure.
• 25:09
  Like it's all set between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 25:11
  So it's kind of a New York Christmas movie.
• 25:13
  And we got it in the can for about 125, 000.
• 25:18
  Wow.
• 25:18
  And then there was one investor on 16, 16.
• 25:22
  Yeah.
• 25:22
  The hard and wonderful part of it.
• 25:24
  It was like, we couldn't finish it.
• 25:25
  So we got in the can for that.
• 25:27
  But I had a friend from college whose dad had, uh, was about to go
• 25:31
  into prison for savings and loan.
• 25:35
  And had to get rid of his money and he ended up putting
• 25:39
  another 125, 000 into the movie.
• 25:41
  Thanks Jimmy Maynard for whatever.
• 25:43
  Yeah, right.
• 25:44
  To help his son to get into the film business, which didn't do that, but
• 25:48
  like we were just really fortunate to be able to have that to finish it.
• 25:52
  So the budget was like 250, 000.
• 25:56
  Ah, that's hilarious.
• 25:57
  I think everyone on the film was paid like 250, 000 a week.
• 26:00
  Oh, all right.
• 26:00
  So, yeah.
• 26:02
  There was a great moment, my first rehearsal with, I got all these
• 26:06
  wonderful theater actors from New York, just really talented.
• 26:10
  And we were in rehearsal and I realized.
• 26:13
  I really didn't learn in Columbia how to talk to actors and how to, and
• 26:17
  they, they kind of ran circles around me and it was really, it was a really
• 26:21
  stressful and humiliating experience because the movie starts off with this
• 26:25
  dinner scene with all these actors.
• 26:28
  And I was like, how do I do this?
• 26:31
  How do I get this thing on its feet?
• 26:34
  And I learned to get out of the way.
• 26:36
  Uh huh.
• 26:37
  I was really like I really didn't know what I was doing right after film
• 26:40
  school, you know, that's crazy Yeah, and I really learned later How to work
• 26:46
  with actors and that's the one thing that film school should teach is how to
• 26:50
  work with actors and they just didn't Do yeah, I did I grew up in the theater.
• 26:54
  So I kind of got that already.
• 26:56
  That was the good thing I was I think I was good at was playing actors, but
• 27:00
  you were you taught it in grad school?
• 27:02
  No, that was definitely not I don't remember having a class
• 27:05
  about dealing with Unless it was an elective that I didn't take, but no.
• 27:09
  I missed that one.
• 27:10
  But then I had, my best friend at the time was in my thesis, so it was kind of
• 27:13
  a, you know, who I grew up acting with.
• 27:15
  Right.
• 27:15
  So it was already in.
• 27:16
  So how do you, how did the film, how did it go?
• 27:20
  So another really fun story.
• 27:22
  I was just telling it, My wife about this story too.
• 27:24
  It's just like, these things kind of come out, it's like trauma later.
• 27:28
  Tim, they do, they do, they really do.
• 27:31
  It's just like, why do these memories come out the way they do?
• 27:34
  So Tim Perel, who is the producer of the film, one of his internships,
• 27:38
  he was working for a guy named John Pearson, who's a legendary sales agent,
• 27:42
  who, he wrote a book called Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, because
• 27:46
  he sold Spike Lee's first movie, Michael Moore's first movie, Slacker.
• 27:51
  And Yeah, so he had a huge reputation.
• 27:54
  So his idea was to take 15 minutes of the film and show it to distributors
• 28:01
  and try to sell it that way.
• 28:03
  And we had.
• 28:04
  two screenings and The Brothers McMullen had just come out and it
• 28:09
  was a big hit for Fox Searchlight.
• 28:10
  Yeah, so it was like the first big indie Indie indie.
• 28:14
  Yeah.
• 28:14
  Yeah so the guy who was the head of Fox Searchlight was there and he he
• 28:18
  we showed him 15 minutes of the film and We thought he was gonna buy it
• 28:22
  and it was gonna be like his next the next great independent, right?
• 28:25
  Success and we also showed it to this company called fine line.
• 28:29
  And that was new lines art film division.
• 28:32
  Okay, and In that 15 minutes of footage, we had one scene.
• 28:37
  It was a breakup scene.
• 28:38
  It was in a hallway.
• 28:39
  And because so much of the movie had been shot, it was romantic comedy, because
• 28:44
  so much of it had been shot in close up, we did that whole scene in a long shot.
• 28:48
  And we had, we included it.
• 28:50
  I thought it was a beautiful scene, but we included it in
• 28:53
  that first 15 minutes of footage.
• 28:55
  And the guy who was the head of fine line, we were watching the movie
• 28:58
  and we were in the back, we were in a screening room, and he screamed
• 29:02
  out, you have coverage for this?
• 29:03
  And I screamed back, no, it was an artistic decision.
• 29:08
  And then later when they didn't buy it, he said, we're just afraid
• 29:15
  there are more artistic decisions in your movie, which is great.
• 29:19
  The guy who's the head of Searchlight, he told us he was gonna, we showed
• 29:24
  it to him on a Friday, and we told, he told us he was gonna buy it,
• 29:27
  and we were so excited, and he then changed his mind over the weekend.
• 29:32
  He just got nervous.
• 29:32
  Oh, what a fucking horrible industry.
• 29:34
  What a horrible, horrible industry.
• 29:36
  You know?
• 29:36
  It's not hard.
• 29:37
  There's, a lot of jobs are hard.
• 29:40
  The film industry is horrible.
• 29:42
  It'll break your heart.
• 29:43
  It's horrible.
• 29:43
  Every time.
• 29:44
  You know?
• 29:44
  And again, a lot of industries will break your heart.
• 29:47
  The film industry Just media in general.
• 29:50
  It's all, I mean, I could go politics too.
• 29:53
  That's awful as well.
• 29:54
  Yeah.
• 29:55
  There's a lot of things that are horrible, but the film industry, I feel like
• 29:57
  it's a particular kind of Of horrible.
• 30:00
  Yeah.
• 30:01
  It's unfortunate what's happened.
• 30:03
  'cause it makes me not wanna make films.
• 30:05
  It's, I dunno, like you really have to want to do it.
• 30:08
  I've learned how to deal with it on my own terms.
• 30:10
  But yeah, I mean I have, there's more stories like
• 30:13
  this if you wanna get into it.
• 30:14
  So did you sell that film?
• 30:15
  We did.
• 30:16
  So what happened was John Pearson had a first look deal with Miramax at the time.
• 30:21
  Okay.
• 30:22
  And Harvey Weinstein watched it.
• 30:24
  So you had to fuck Harvey Weinstein.
• 30:26
  I mean, I can't even tell you, like, the stories of just watching Harvey
• 30:31
  Weinstein in action, you know.
• 30:34
  I sat in a bunch of rooms with him.
• 30:35
  What, like flirting with people?
• 30:36
  No, he was just, he was just such a strong personality.
• 30:40
  I just remember him screaming to his assistant, Ira!
• 30:43
  Cigarettes!
• 30:43
  Ira!
• 30:44
  And, you know, my friends Bob and Sherry worked really closely with
• 30:47
  him because they did the nanny diaries and they stood up to him.
• 30:50
  But I never really got the chance because he, he, Didn't want the movie.
• 30:55
  He was clearly not, he said, I'll take it, but we will, we need to be the first,
• 31:00
  the last money in and first money out.
• 31:02
  And we just didn't, we knew he didn't really want it.
• 31:04
  So he wasn't going to, right.
• 31:06
  So, we sold it instead to a small distributor called Arrow Films that they
• 31:11
  had done a bunch of movies that have come out, but they never paid us the advance,
• 31:14
  so we ended up having to sue them.
• 31:16
  But This is just one example after another about how horrible the film industry is.
• 31:22
  Yeah.
• 31:22
  You know, John didn't really know what to do with the movie, and I,
• 31:26
  one of Shamus, who Legendary writer and producer Um, he was my produce.
• 31:34
  He was the producing teacher at columbia and I ran into him on long island on the
• 31:37
  beach This is like very film industry.
• 31:39
  Yeah, and we bonded over the fact that we both had psoriasis And he ended up coming
• 31:46
  on as the sales agent in the end He's like, I think I can sell this movie better
• 31:50
  than john and john pearson didn't take it.
• 31:52
  Well, of course not.
• 31:53
  Yeah And, and he helped us, they helped us sell it to this company Arrow, but
• 32:01
  it was a brutal thing because we had to take it to, we thought the only way
• 32:06
  to get this movie sold is to get it to Sundance and we were told that we were in.
• 32:11
  And at the last minute they changed their mind and they didn't take it.
• 32:14
  They're allowed to do that back then?
• 32:16
  It was a different time, but I think it still goes on in a way that I
• 32:20
  think that you and I are not party to how these decisions get made,
• 32:26
  but with people that are important.
• 32:29
  Producers, distributors, they let them into the process and they
• 32:33
  have a different pipeline to this.
• 32:36
  So they told us it was in, and then it wasn't in all of a sudden.
• 32:40
  And that was, that was brutal because, yeah.
• 32:43
  And I remember Tim saying like, I feel like a failure and I was just like, Tim,
• 32:47
  it's the same movie it was, you know, like don't take it too seriously, but it
• 32:51
  was, it was hard because that was the end.
• 32:53
  We knew that we thought that was the end of it ever getting sold to a big
• 32:57
  distributor and you know, it probably was.
• 33:00
  I mean you actually did sell it at a certain point.
• 33:02
  Yeah, and did you get money back?
• 33:04
  Did it go in the theaters or anything?
• 33:05
  It was in the theaters, but we didn't get money back.
• 33:07
  That's, that's the story of my life.
• 33:09
  You know, it's like, the film industry.
• 33:11
  Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it was, they guaranteed us going into like 25 markets
• 33:15
  and, you know, it played at the Angelica for a week and then they tried to expand
• 33:21
  it wide and the reviews were like, the New York Times really liked it, but the
• 33:25
  other reviews were kind of so so and it went to Philadelphia and a bunch of
• 33:29
  other places and it just didn't, You know as as these things do it just didn't
• 33:33
  really make any money But you fucking made a movie that played at the Angelica.
• 33:37
  Yeah, so that's pretty sweet It was pretty great because the place that we actually
• 33:41
  ended up selling it was at the market in Cannes Mm hmm, and it was the same year
• 33:45
  that secrets and lies came out and won the Palme d'Or This was like very like
• 33:51
  indie indie film breakout years Yeah.
• 33:54
  And I don't like, I'm not going to bore you with my stories of,
• 33:57
  you know, like five of us going to the Cannes film festival and like
• 34:00
  sleeping on the floor of a hotel room.
• 34:02
  But it was pretty cool that like, we were just in the market
• 34:06
  selling our movie and we sold it.
• 34:07
  We sold it to Australia and Germany and a bunch of other places then, because
• 34:11
  it was really the reputation of good machine, you know, selling a film.
• 34:15
  And, but like Secrets and Lies won the Palme d'Or and then, you know,
• 34:18
  There we were at the Angelica later, like in the same multiplex of Secrets
• 34:22
  and Lies, and that was a pretty, that's pretty cool Yeah, but then the
• 34:25
  next minute like the film business will do something to humiliate you.
• 34:28
  Oh, yeah No, I mean you've already given me like five ten examples of
• 34:31
  the film industry being horrible.
• 34:33
  Yeah.
• 34:33
  Yeah, but the subway sound going over Or going under the Angelica
• 34:37
  was always that that's the one right with the subway goes under.
• 34:40
  Yeah, it does.
• 34:40
  Yeah, I always loved that Yeah, that was the pinnacle back in the day.
• 34:44
  It kind of still is but Now streaming has destroyed that but at that
• 34:49
  point that was the pinnacle of success like being in the Angelica.
• 34:52
  Oh, really the Angelica?
• 34:53
  Absolutely.
• 34:53
  Huh?
• 34:54
  I always thought that was kind of a like it's kind of a crappy theater.
• 34:58
  It's not like a great theater It was the it was the and kind of still is like
• 35:02
  the big art house Yeah, I'm a New York City and yeah, you know that and like
• 35:07
  in LA would be I'm not sure which one.
• 35:10
  I mean the Cedar Lee in Cleveland and the Cedar Lee in Cleveland?
• 35:12
  That comes later.
• 35:13
  When you have an indie success, like, it's the rare indie success
• 35:17
  that will play all over the country.
• 35:19
  Right.
• 35:19
  But like, you know, Slacker or one of those movies.
• 35:22
  But back then it was so different.
• 35:24
  Like, a Slacker now.
• 35:26
  Oh, I wouldn't.
• 35:26
  I wonder what it would look like.
• 35:27
  I mean, I'm thinking it would get out there, but it wouldn't do anything.
• 35:30
  Like, it was just such a strange film.
• 35:32
  Yeah, it's true.
• 35:33
  I mean there was no plot, so.
• 35:35
  I mean, but then you look at Slacker and you look at his career and you say,
• 35:37
  okay, that guy was really talented.
• 35:39
  Right, and you say, right, and you also say, what has
• 35:41
  Slacker done to film in general?
• 35:43
  Like, that opened, like, the whole thing up.
• 35:45
  I saw that and I was like, are you kidding me?
• 35:47
  You can do this?
• 35:48
  Yeah, exactly.
• 35:49
  Yeah.
• 35:49
  I mean, the guy, he's brilliant.
• 35:51
  He still talks about, you know, now you see him on Instagram
• 35:54
  talking about Tarkovsky and you're just like, thank God, man.
• 35:58
  Yeah, that uh, I mean he was the before sunset series or whatever it was.
• 36:01
  Sunrise.
• 36:02
  Yeah, but that's Slacker, you know without without John Pearson I don't know
• 36:07
  that that movie gets in the theaters.
• 36:08
  Yeah, I have no idea even installed that movie to anybody.
• 36:11
  Yeah, John did it Yeah, you know he made independent film.
• 36:14
  He made that niche by selling those movies.
• 36:18
  So So, you make the first film, you sell the first film, you don't make
• 36:21
  any money, it's eh, it's okay, it plays in the Angelica, yadda yadda yadda.
• 36:25
  Most people would have given up and gone to law school, as my
• 36:27
  wife at the time told me to do.
• 36:30
  Oh, when did you get married in here?
• 36:31
  When would you Oh yeah, we got married somewhere in there,
• 36:35
  I don't Where'd you meet her?
• 36:37
  We met at a party.
• 36:38
  Oh, okay.
• 36:38
  In East Village.
• 36:39
  Right, what did she do?
• 36:40
  She's a great person.
• 36:41
  She works in public health, she still does.
• 36:43
  Oh, wow, alright.
• 36:44
  Yeah, it's hard.
• 36:45
  I don't know that you can have a relationship and be a film, independent
• 36:48
  film director at the same time.
• 36:50
  I would say that it's impossible.
• 36:52
  I look at, I look at the really successful people and they
• 36:56
  were not able to manage it.
• 36:57
  Yeah, I think any, even not film, just any celebrity kind of thing at all.
• 37:02
  I don't know how they managed to maintain a relationship.
• 37:04
  And we had kids.
• 37:06
  I mean, well, I didn't have, my son was born in 99.
• 37:08
  And you're how old when your son's born?
• 37:13
  33? Okay.
• 37:14
  And I think I was like one of the first people in my friend circle
• 37:17
  to have kids, which is crazy.
• 37:18
  That is crazy.
• 37:19
  Well, New York though.
• 37:20
  Yeah, people waited, people worried about their careers, you know?
• 37:24
  Yeah, that's why I miss New York because I didn't feel like I was obligated
• 37:27
  to have children and marry somebody when I didn't live in New York, but
• 37:31
  here it feels like you're obligated.
• 37:33
  It's yeah, for sure.
• 37:34
  It's one of the rules.
• 37:35
  Yeah.
• 37:35
  So that was 97 And I'm trying to think Okay, so then after that it was hard,
• 37:43
  you know, I got the rights to I don't know if you know the book The Mysteries
• 37:46
  of Pittsburgh Oh, yeah, the Michael Chabon novel So I had the rights to
• 37:49
  that for a while and I thought I was that was going to be my next film Wow,
• 37:53
  you got on Chabon in the early days.
• 37:55
  Yeah, I had to I Had to woo him to get him, get the rights.
• 37:59
  Jason Schwartzman was attached to it.
• 38:01
  He wasn't famous yet.
• 38:01
  Oh, wow.
• 38:02
  Yeah.
• 38:03
  And the, and the people that were financing it didn't, didn't want him.
• 38:06
  They said he wasn't handsome enough, so that movie didn't get done.
• 38:10
  And there were a couple others that I was close on and I had, um, A
• 38:15
  friend in New York who is a writer said a friend of mine wrote a script.
• 38:18
  It's great.
• 38:19
  You should read it Um, it was called six blind men at the time and it was kind
• 38:23
  of like a romantic comedy That was also a thriller So, you know that a woman's
• 38:27
  getting married at the beginning of the movie and you don't know she's been
• 38:30
  on six blind dates over the past year and you see in sort of bits and pieces
• 38:34
  and you Kind of have to guess which one she oh, I see she marries clever.
• 38:38
  Yeah, it was very clever scripts and tim Showed it to a
• 38:43
  producer at Gaumont in France.
• 38:45
  They were interested in that, but it started like a three year development
• 38:48
  process to get that movie made.
• 38:50
  It was a very long, again, no money.
• 38:53
  You don't get paid.
• 38:53
  Yeah, you know, so here I am like having my first kid and it's like
• 38:57
  a really complicated pregnancy and my poor, my poor, at the time.
• 39:01
  Working in public health.
• 39:02
  To deal with it.
• 39:03
  And it was just like, and she's just like, are you going to make some money soon?
• 39:06
  And then you sign this contract to get paid a lot of money.
• 39:09
  And thankfully that one did get made and I actually got paid a bunch of money on it.
• 39:14
  It's called I'm with Lucy and it has a great cast.
• 39:16
  We were making it right before there was a Screen Actors Guild strike.
• 39:20
  Okay.
• 39:20
  So a lot of actors wanted to work.
• 39:23
  And so it has Monica Potter.
• 39:25
  I remember flying to Cleveland.
• 39:26
  I was like, well, Monica lives in Cleveland, still does.
• 39:28
  Oh, does she really?
• 39:29
  Yeah, flying from New York to Cleveland to get her to be in the movie.
• 39:32
  And then when she said yes, then it was kind of a jigsaw
• 39:35
  puzzle of getting the cast.
• 39:36
  But it has kind of an amazing cast for an independent film.
• 39:39
  It's, uh, Gael Garcia Bernal and Henry Thomas and, um, John Hanna.
• 39:44
  And I'm gonna forget people.
• 39:46
  I apologize.
• 39:47
  David Boreanaz, Julie Christie.
• 39:49
  They're not gonna listen to this podcast.
• 39:50
  Julie Christie, that's one.
• 39:51
  Yeah, we've had to, Tim and I flew to LA to meet with Julie Christie.
• 39:54
  She's like, why do you want me to be in this movie?
• 39:56
  I was like, because you're Julie Christie.
• 39:57
  And you're just the hired director for this?
• 39:59
  Well, technically, but like I developed the project.
• 40:02
  We brought it to that.
• 40:04
  You're getting paid for this, though.
• 40:06
  Only when you only get paid when the movie goes into production.
• 40:08
  So for three years, I didn't get any money.
• 40:10
  And then when it went into production, how much money did you get?
• 40:12
  That that time, 250, 000, which seemed like so much fucking money.
• 40:16
  Fuck yeah, dude.
• 40:17
  Yeah.
• 40:17
  Yeah.
• 40:17
  Yeah.
• 40:17
  I was really psyched.
• 40:19
  Right.
• 40:19
  You get one check.
• 40:20
  No, you get like, it comes in like four payments.
• 40:22
  Oh, but I had, I just, you know, gave it to my agent at the time.
• 40:26
  I had a really, he was a prestige agent, but he didn't actually like do anything.
• 40:31
  How'd you get the, how'd you get the agent?
• 40:32
  The agent watched.
• 40:33
  Okay.
• 40:36
  And he, you know, it was good.
• 40:37
  He, he, he set me up with a lot of Hollywood meetings.
• 40:40
  Right.
• 40:41
  And the thing about Hollywood that, or LA, let's call it, like
• 40:44
  that would just break your heart.
• 40:45
  It's like you go and you have these meetings, they're called generals.
• 40:47
  Yeah.
• 40:48
  Where you just go and talk to people and they just say like, yeah, they're
• 40:51
  like, what's your next project?
• 40:52
  Oh, we want to do that.
• 40:53
  And you leave that airport thinking, oh, I'm going to have five jobs.
• 40:57
  And of course, nothing ever materializes.
• 40:58
  They're yes men, they're yes people.
• 41:00
  Yeah, they just want to be, they just want to make sure
• 41:02
  that they get your next script.
• 41:03
  As long as, yeah, they got to make, get your fingers in
• 41:06
  as many people as possible.
• 41:07
  And one of them will become famous.
• 41:09
  Exactly.
• 41:09
  And then you'll.
• 41:10
  That's their job.
• 41:10
  It's really, it's awful.
• 41:12
  It's not fine.
• 41:12
  It's awful.
• 41:13
  Well, but for them.
• 41:14
  You understand why they do what they do.
• 41:16
  Right.
• 41:16
  But not, but if you go into that, not knowing that that's the case, you
• 41:19
  just like Someone has to tell you.
• 41:20
  Fucking bullshit.
• 41:21
  Yeah.
• 41:21
  Someone has to tell you.
• 41:22
  Um, so it's really up to you.
• 41:24
  You gotta, you gotta drive the train.
• 41:25
  You gotta get your own projects.
• 41:27
  And that's what we did.
• 41:27
  Right.
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:29
  Right.
• 41:29
  So, so that movie should have been a three million dollar, two or three
• 41:34
  million dollar quirky romantic comedy, but Gaumont decided it was a 10 million
• 41:38
  dollar movie and they were gonna, they wanted to make a studio romantic comedy.
• 41:42
  But just because you pay that doesn't mean.
• 41:45
  Right.
• 41:46
  So it ended up being like about six million above the line.
• 41:49
  So what can you do with six million dollars in a film?
• 41:53
  Like, like, what is that?
• 41:55
  I mean, I have no idea what that kind of money, I mean, I made my
• 41:57
  Sundance film for five hundred dollars, so I really have no idea.
• 42:01
  But when you're confronted with, like, this is the biggest budget thing at
• 42:04
  this point you've made, so what are you spending most of the money on?
• 42:07
  I mean, above the, you've got, you pay, you pay the salaries, right?
• 42:10
  Yeah, so the salaries are taking up most of the money, right?
• 42:13
  So, so basically when Gaumont's making the movie, like, Like, Monica's agent
• 42:18
  at CAA says, Monica's quote is 1.
• 42:20
  25 million and they pay it.
• 42:22
  And they were morons for paying, for paying that.
• 42:25
  They should have sent She got 1.
• 42:27
  25 million?
• 42:28
  So that's already a tenth, more than a tenth of your whole Yeah.
• 42:31
  And she told me afterwards, like when we were drinking one night,
• 42:34
  she's like, I would have done this movie for 50, you know.
• 42:36
  And you don't tell me that now, I don't, I don't blame her.
• 42:39
  I, the agents, they just, you know, that's their jobs, the most money.
• 42:43
  And they think, Oh, we're in the big time.
• 42:45
  We're in France, you know, we're paying full pay, right.
• 42:49
  That we're paying the quote of the actors.
• 42:51
  Like everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do.
• 42:53
  Yeah.
• 42:54
  But it's unfortunate that most of the.
• 42:56
  It's money most of the time.
• 42:57
  It's always money.
• 42:59
  Yeah.
• 42:59
  Well, no, I mean, I think sometimes it's, you know, You were trying to make a
• 43:01
  great movie like it you weren't doing it for the money You were doing you wanted
• 43:04
  to make a great piece of art, right?
• 43:06
  Yeah, but the agents once they get of course underneath is the money
• 43:10
  and it's unfortunate that that's anyway It's an expensive endeavor and
• 43:14
  filmmaking is filmmaking is so much so expensive and so complicated The
• 43:18
  lesson that I learned is that You don't make the movie for the moat.
• 43:22
  I mean, it was a different time, but you just, I mean, I wouldn't have said.
• 43:27
  No to that money and I'd be an idiot to say no, right?
• 43:31
  But you make the movie for the budget that it should like you have to think
• 43:34
  about the back ends and how you're gonna sell It yeah, you know, they thought
• 43:37
  they were gonna sell it to studios But studios said sure it's 10 million
• 43:42
  dollars, but we're gonna have to spend 25 million to release this in theaters
• 43:45
  Yeah, that's too big an investment.
• 43:46
  So in the end, they just sold it to Sony And Sony paid, I don't know what
• 43:52
  it was at the time, but they just released it on DVD and, and cable.
• 43:56
  Oh, it went straight to DVD.
• 43:57
  Yeah, it was brutal, brutal.
• 43:59
  Poor Monica, she just, it was, it was gonna be, it was gonna make her career.
• 44:03
  And mine too, obviously.
• 44:05
  Right.
• 44:05
  So, I mean, it's a good movie.
• 44:07
  You know, you can watch it.
• 44:08
  It's on Tubi.
• 44:09
  It's a very sweet, romantic comedy.
• 44:11
  There are things I would have done differently and things that I had to do
• 44:14
  because it was France and they wanted a certain, certain things in the script.
• 44:18
  You know, the first 30 minutes of it was a rough, was rough going.
• 44:22
  Cause you're explaining a bunch of things that the, they said the European
• 44:25
  audience needed, which of course they didn't, but, um, Was there ever a
• 44:30
  point during shooting this where you were just like, one day you're like,
• 44:33
  I am in on, I'm in over my head.
• 44:34
  A hundred percent.
• 44:35
  A hundred percent.
• 44:36
  With a big union boost.
• 44:36
  I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
• 44:38
  Yeah.
• 44:38
  And it was, it was going very smoothly until one day where things just started
• 44:42
  to go wrong and I kind of just went and just sat in a corner and I just
• 44:47
  started like getting really upset and I was actually really fortunate.
• 44:51
  There was a really sweet, uh, Union Grip, who came up to me, or maybe
• 44:56
  he's the gaffer, and he's like, John, whatever you're going through,
• 45:00
  you can't show it to the crew.
• 45:01
  Like you have to be in charge and you have to show.
• 45:04
  And I was just like, thank you.
• 45:05
  That is really good.
• 45:06
  That's the best advice you could ever get.
• 45:07
  Yeah.
• 45:08
  Yeah.
• 45:08
  Yeah.
• 45:08
  It was really sweet.
• 45:09
  You got to steer the ship.
• 45:10
  You got to steer the ship.
• 45:11
  When it's Union, like, like around lunchtime, the producers start
• 45:15
  gathering around you, around the monitor and start rushing you because
• 45:18
  you're about to go into double time.
• 45:20
  And I didn't know any of that stuff.
• 45:22
  And we got a DP, like, that we shouldn't have hired, he was a total jerk, and we
• 45:28
  should have hired somebody else, but we had, we heard a rumor that she was slow,
• 45:32
  and it was just, the stuff is so stupid.
• 45:35
  Such a horrid, ridiculous industry.
• 45:37
  Ridiculous.
• 45:37
  You just want to make a fucking movie.
• 45:38
  That's why I did everything with nobody, I did like five people.
• 45:41
  How many people were you in charge of?
• 45:43
  How many people were on this crew?
• 45:43
  A hundred at least.
• 45:44
  A hundred people?
• 45:46
  Good lord, I can't even imagine.
• 45:47
  Yeah.
• 45:48
  Yeah.
• 45:48
  I can't even imagine.
• 45:50
  Yeah.
• 45:50
  It was hard.
• 45:51
  It was just, you just gotta go into it and just be in charge.
• 45:54
  But there were days where I just, I really didn't know what I was doing.
• 45:58
  Well, see, that's the thing.
• 45:58
  I've often don't know what I'm doing when I'm making films, but I've
• 46:00
  oftentimes, like I just work with people that I feel like they know what
• 46:04
  I want and they know what they're doing.
• 46:06
  So if I get to a point where I don't know what I'm doing, I can just turn
• 46:09
  to my friend who's the DP or whoever, and be like, what are we doing here?
• 46:12
  We gotta figure something out.
• 46:13
  Yeah.
• 46:13
  And he will be like, yeah, we, we, we, we got it.
• 46:15
  But like, yeah.
• 46:16
  If you get from that level to like the level that you're talking
• 46:19
  about, that's where it gets to.
• 46:21
  You don't know these people.
• 46:22
  You're just, yeah.
• 46:23
  Yeah.
• 46:24
  I don't think I would enjoy that.
• 46:25
  No, it was hard.
• 46:26
  Like I needed a mentor.
• 46:27
  Like, you know, so Hal Ramis was in the movie and he was kind of a
• 46:30
  little bit of a mentor to me, but.
• 46:34
  He just was like, man, that's a nice looking shot.
• 46:36
  That is a nice.
• 46:37
  And he really made me feel good.
• 46:39
  That's helpful.
• 46:39
  Yeah, definitely.
• 46:40
  But there were other times where I would just felt really alone.
• 46:44
  And I was just like, I need somebody to say to me, like, you need to.
• 46:48
  Shot list and this in a way that's doable.
• 46:51
  Yeah, and I just didn't I just didn't know right It's crazy that I mean for myself
• 46:56
  to that all the film school still and you're thrown into a film situation And
• 47:00
  you and it's like you got to learn it all over again or learn it for the first time.
• 47:03
  Yeah So and Tim also told me afterwards he Tim's amazing producer.
• 47:09
  He told me afterwards like I They want like before the movie even
• 47:12
  started not nothing to do because once the movie started like we thought
• 47:15
  it was gonna be brilliant Right.
• 47:17
  Well because it seemed like because we had like Anthony LaPaglia and he was
• 47:19
  such a good actor You have to think it's gonna be brilliant because it was going
• 47:22
  really well, right, you know, and But he told me like They tried, they were
• 47:28
  going to fire you like five times in pre production just to get somebody else.
• 47:31
  And I was just like, uh, that's always great.
• 47:33
  He told you that afterwards.
• 47:35
  Cause he's a great guy and a really good, he just protected me.
• 47:38
  So then this movie goes straight to DVD and, uh, and then what happened then?
• 47:42
  What are we, what are we doing next?
• 47:44
  We're still in New York.
• 47:45
  It's still in New York.
• 47:46
  Where are we in Brooklyn?
• 47:47
  Where do we live in Brooklyn?
• 47:48
  We live in Park Slope.
• 47:49
  Oh, what part of Park Slope?
• 47:49
  Whereabouts?
• 47:50
  Union and 8th Avenue.
• 47:51
  Oh, okay.
• 47:52
  I was at 7th and 9th.
• 47:53
  Oh, okay.
• 47:54
  And then I was South Slope.
• 47:56
  Eh, 7th and 9th.
• 47:57
  It's not South Slope anymore.
• 47:59
  Well, at the time it was.
• 48:00
  You're like by the F. Yeah.
• 48:02
  And I was by the 2 3.
• 48:03
  I was right above the F, yeah.
• 48:05
  That was prime park slope over there.
• 48:07
  It is.
• 48:07
  I was just there.
• 48:08
  It's really happening.
• 48:09
  Yeah, it's very nice now Yeah, so you need to make another
• 48:12
  you want to make another movie.
• 48:14
  You got to make more money.
• 48:15
  So what do you do now?
• 48:17
  Mm hmm.
• 48:18
  So you have two kids now?
• 48:19
  No, Alex was born in 1999.
• 48:20
  I had one kid.
• 48:21
  Okay good.
• 48:21
  Olivia was born in 2003 Okay.
• 48:24
  So it played in Europe.
• 48:25
  It was, you know.
• 48:26
  Okay.
• 48:26
  So it did play in Europe, but it did straight to DVD in the US.
• 48:28
  Okay.
• 48:29
  But I signed with ICM, who they were a big agency at the time.
• 48:33
  And they were like, yeah, don't worry.
• 48:35
  We're going to get you a directing for hire job.
• 48:37
  So at that point I was like, okay, I'll be a studio director.
• 48:42
  So I then started to interview for jobs and I learned very quickly that.
• 48:48
  Nobody cares how you're going to direct a movie.
• 48:50
  They just want to know how you're gonna fix their shitty horrible script So it
• 48:56
  was really a hard lesson to learn right, you know And no one told me and you just
• 49:01
  have to go in there and like do a dog and pony show Like but why are they making
• 49:05
  the movie if it's a terrible script?
• 49:08
  You just, you just described Hollywood.
• 49:11
  Okay.
• 49:11
  I think that you just, just literally, right, right, right.
• 49:14
  I mean, that's the only part that controls the script, right?
• 49:17
  Cause once they say yes.
• 49:19
  Then it's out of their hands.
• 49:21
  But why even say if the script isn't good don't say yes Like
• 49:24
  I just it's just so ridiculous.
• 49:26
  Have you been to the movies recently?
• 49:27
  Right, well you probably haven't yeah, they were all bad and they're all bad
• 49:34
  in development and you know You just your job is to fix their script So I had
• 49:39
  friends from college The Weitz brothers.
• 49:42
  So Paul Weitz was my friend from Westland and he had directed
• 49:46
  American Pie and hit it really, really big with his brother, Chris.
• 49:50
  And.
• 49:51
  I don't know how I got a hold of the script.
• 49:53
  I think it was through a different producer, but I
• 49:56
  was attached to this movie.
• 49:57
  It would have been a brilliant independent film that they were going to produce.
• 50:01
  And this is before American Pie or after?
• 50:03
  It was after American Pie.
• 50:05
  They had just done About a Boy.
• 50:07
  Okay, so this is relevant to the story because they made that movie for working
• 50:11
  title So I was up for all these directing jobs these horrible movies and I wasn't
• 50:16
  getting them and but there was one movie And I was right at that point.
• 50:20
  I was like, I don't think I can do this anymore.
• 50:22
  This is just really hard this is brutal and you know, I had to two kids at that
• 50:28
  point and I was trying to just make a living and I They sent me a script that
• 50:33
  was a teen movie that Working Title Films was making and I was like, you
• 50:37
  know, I think I can fix this one, even though it was, it was a weird story.
• 50:41
  It was about, um, a girl in Malibu who gets into trouble and gets sent
• 50:47
  to a boarding school in England.
• 50:49
  Okay.
• 50:49
  But the ace in the hole that I had was that the White's brothers
• 50:54
  had just made this movie for, they just made about a boy for Working
• 50:57
  Title and they called the head.
• 50:59
  The head producer at Working Title and said, hey, you
• 51:02
  should hire John to do this.
• 51:03
  And I just, I interviewed really well for that movie.
• 51:06
  It's all who you know.
• 51:07
  And it's also, yeah, it is all you know.
• 51:09
  But at that point, I also flew myself out to LA to meet with them in a room.
• 51:13
  I knew that that was the only way I was gonna get the job.
• 51:16
  Yeah.
• 51:16
  And not do it over the phone.
• 51:17
  It was before Zoom, obviously.
• 51:19
  Right.
• 51:19
  And somehow I got that job.
• 51:21
  And it was a big deal, you know, and that one that was crazy because we needed to
• 51:27
  discover somebody It was we needed like the 16 year old girl and I met every Young
• 51:33
  actress in Hollywood in a room with them.
• 51:36
  Like it was just crazy.
• 51:37
  And they were trying to decide who to hire.
• 51:39
  And just like long story short, like what ended up happening was
• 51:43
  we had narrowed down to a couple of actresses that were going to be in
• 51:46
  it and we were scanning locations.
• 51:49
  We were, we were probably three months out from shooting the movie and we were
• 51:54
  going to hire somebody to be in it.
• 51:56
  We were going to be in London for a year doing post because of the tax credits.
• 52:00
  So got my kid.
• 52:02
  Or at least Alex was old enough to go to school in London and the movie fell apart.
• 52:06
  And that was just, that was, and they did it in the worst way possible.
• 52:11
  When I got the job, it was so hard to get the job.
• 52:13
  I was told this is a go movie and it turns out that the head of the
• 52:17
  studio hadn't really approved it.
• 52:19
  So they told me, They said, you need to go out there and convince her
• 52:24
  you're going to make this movie.
• 52:26
  And I put together a whole, like it was before like pitch decks, but I
• 52:30
  did pitch decks, all those things.
• 52:31
  And they called me right when I was about to get on the plane or like a few hours
• 52:34
  before I was about to get on the plane.
• 52:36
  They were like, don't get on the plane.
• 52:37
  And what I found out was they decided they were going to make a different movie
• 52:40
  and they put this one in turnarounds and it was brutal because I had bought
• 52:45
  a house and I like, and I was right.
• 52:46
  Cause like, I was like, Oh, you know, they told me like, Oh,
• 52:49
  you're going to direct this one.
• 52:50
  But.
• 52:50
  You'll do the next movie with Tom Cruise.
• 52:51
  How much were they gonna give you for this one?
• 52:53
  350, 000. Okay.
• 52:55
  But again, like you don't get that until the movie starts shooting.
• 52:58
  So they give you a 10, 000 development fee, 5, 000 at the
• 53:02
  front and 5, 000 at the end.
• 53:03
  But they were flying me out because it was DGA rules and I was about to join the DGA.
• 53:07
  So I was flying first class.
• 53:08
  All the time.
• 53:09
  That's fun.
• 53:10
  Tell it.
• 53:10
  Yeah.
• 53:10
  Fun.
• 53:11
  And staying at fancy hotels, but like, I wasn't making any money
• 53:14
  and like, I couldn't enjoy it.
• 53:15
  I was just like, yeah, you can't, you know, it's not, it's all anxiety.
• 53:20
  It's all anxiety because I'm like, how am I going to get this movie made?
• 53:23
  And right.
• 53:24
  Like, probably could have taken advantage of that situation, being
• 53:27
  in LA and being a director and like, meeting all these actresses.
• 53:30
  Right, right.
• 53:31
  These stories are so interesting to me, because you don't hear stories like
• 53:33
  this, and I think that a lot of people's impression of the film industry is not,
• 53:37
  they don't understand what it really, how dark and twisted it really is.
• 53:41
  And uh, I'm impressed that you continued to give it a go even after the first
• 53:47
  one because you you know You've seen the darkest parts of the film industry
• 53:51
  and you know, yeah, I mean well done, sir Well, so we maintained your dignity.
• 53:56
  Well, I'll tell you this.
• 53:58
  You never did suck anybody's dick for this That's good, that's good.
• 54:03
  I never slept somebody had that no one asked me I mean they were
• 54:07
  tight I mean there's I've I've Cool.
• 54:10
  Was there a story that you got, was there an actress who was trying to So my friend
• 54:14
  Federico and I from, from Wesleyan, we had a pitch that we developed because it
• 54:18
  was based on Federico's father in law's in the, the, uh, Italian film industry.
• 54:23
  Okay.
• 54:23
  And we watched this movie and we just thought it was so funny.
• 54:27
  It was, and you, again, so politically incorrect now, but basically it
• 54:30
  was the story of a therapist.
• 54:33
  He finds out his wifey is having an affair.
• 54:34
  Okay.
• 54:35
  And it turns out she's having an affair with one of his
• 54:39
  patients who he knows is gay.
• 54:43
  So his job is to bring this guy out of the closet to break up the
• 54:47
  relationship, which you can't, but like, At a certain time, like, every
• 54:51
  gay agent in Hollywood got so mad at us.
• 54:54
  Sure, sure.
• 54:55
  But, like, it was fucking funny.
• 54:56
  Which is every agent in Hollywood.
• 54:57
  Federico was a brilliant writer.
• 54:59
  Right.
• 54:59
  And he actually was the one who wrote the script.
• 55:01
  And it was so funny.
• 55:03
  It would have been such a good movie.
• 55:04
  It would have been like a Billy Wilder movie.
• 55:06
  Right, right.
• 55:06
  But in a different time.
• 55:07
  Right.
• 55:07
  You could see it being made in, like, 1950.
• 55:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:10
  Wrong time.
• 55:10
  But, like, we were just right on the edge there.
• 55:13
  Yeah.
• 55:13
  You know?
• 55:15
  And I remember going into a meeting with a gay producer and like, we were
• 55:20
  going to the studio to, cause you have to, first you pitch it to a producer
• 55:23
  and then you pitch it to the studio.
• 55:24
  And the producer said to us like, Oh, we're all gay here.
• 55:27
  We can, and Federico and I didn't correct him.
• 55:29
  It's like, how low are you going to be like, to just pretend like you're
• 55:32
  gay because the producer tells you, like, it just, that was a moment.
• 55:38
  We're all just like we're all going selling my soul.
• 55:41
  I mean a lot of them were gay.
• 55:42
  So let's I mean, yeah There's a lot of closeted Hollywood.
• 55:46
  Well, these guys at least like most gay producers were totally offended
• 55:50
  by this idea But this guy thought it was the funniest thing in the world
• 55:53
  And I kind of think that that guy was the one that was right he was and they
• 55:56
  should have made the film Absolute.
• 55:57
  Todd Solens Got it.
• 55:58
  Would've been a huge hit, right?
• 55:59
  Todd Solans got films made for in, in, in the nineties that
• 56:02
  were completely inappropriate.
• 56:03
  Yeah, but that was dark.
• 56:04
  Like this was funny.
• 56:05
  Yeah.
• 56:05
  You know, think Pat Pat's the King Kong.
• 56:08
  He's gotta get this guy outta the closet.
• 56:09
  And literally like, so what ends up happening is the guy headss up falling
• 56:13
  in love with his therapist transference.
• 56:15
  You know, it was fucking brilliant.
• 56:18
  . That movie would've been a huge hit.
• 56:19
  That was the one that was truly the one that got away.
• 56:22
  What was that one called?
• 56:23
  This one Hurt a bit.
• 56:24
  Which I thought was the fucking funniest title.
• 56:27
  That is a good title.
• 56:28
  But that's Federico, he's brilliant.
• 56:29
  That is a good title.
• 56:31
  Um, so, So what happens next?
• 56:35
  At what point are you like, I gotta move, I gotta get a job.
• 56:38
  Yeah, so the movie falls apart.
• 56:41
  I have to sell the house in LA.
• 56:43
  That was brutal.
• 56:44
  Brutal.
• 56:45
  Humiliating.
• 56:45
  Nice house.
• 56:46
  Beautiful craftsman house, 1910.
• 56:49
  Uh, Larchmont Village.
• 56:50
  The thing about LA that I learned is that unlike New York, you're always on.
• 56:56
  So like you go to a dinner party and everyone's gauging like
• 56:59
  where you fit on the totem pole.
• 57:01
  The hierarchy.
• 57:02
  Right.
• 57:02
  So like when I was there for the Working Title movie, Everyone wanted
• 57:08
  to kiss my ass because I was up high.
• 57:09
  Right.
• 57:10
  But I'd also been there when I was low and no one wanted to
• 57:12
  talk to me and I was like, Right.
• 57:14
  You people suck.
• 57:15
  I'll say I did feel that a little bit when I got, I got the short
• 57:18
  film into Sundance, like, I'm sure that was a thrilling experience.
• 57:21
  More people came to my parties for a while.
• 57:23
  Yeah.
• 57:23
  And then people started dropping off.
• 57:26
  You better have a really strong sense of yourself because it's not about you.
• 57:29
  I know, no, it's whatever, it was years ago.
• 57:32
  So, at what point are we, Do we get the job offer?
• 57:36
  Are we trying to look for?
• 57:37
  So my son, bless his heart, he's diagnosed with type 1 diabetes
• 57:42
  when he's like 8 years old.
• 57:43
  Okay.
• 57:43
  And he proceeds to, again, just like he's acting out, he's angry, I don't blame
• 57:49
  him, like getting diagnosed with a disease where you have to take insulin every day.
• 57:53
  Yeah.
• 57:53
  He proceeds to get himself kicked out of three different schools in New York
• 57:56
  City in a year, public and private.
• 57:59
  I'm not working at the time, my wife is working and she wants to be the one taking
• 58:03
  care of him and I'm taking care of it.
• 58:04
  And I was like, I need to get a job, and I need to, and I can, you know,
• 58:09
  I can probably teach because I have an MFA, and I think of film this way.
• 58:14
  And you've had experiences that give you credibility to, you know.
• 58:18
  Exactly, and I taught at Columbia, my alma mater, first semester, which
• 58:21
  was unfortunate that I was doing that when I was making a TV movie for
• 58:25
  Oxygen, so I did a really poor job, and they should not have hired me.
• 58:29
  I didn't see the TV movie from Oxygen.
• 58:31
  No, nor should you.
• 58:32
  No, I'm excited to see it, though.
• 58:33
  What was it called?
• 58:34
  It's called My Sexiest Mistake.
• 58:36
  It's literally, it wasn't my title.
• 58:38
  It's based on a romance novel.
• 58:42
  We changed it.
• 58:42
  Of course it was.
• 58:43
  We changed it into something that was a little more What did you change it to?
• 58:46
  No, we changed the whole story.
• 58:48
  Oh, the story, not the title.
• 58:49
  The title remained the title, because that was a book that
• 58:52
  Right, right, right, right.
• 58:53
  How much you get paid for that oxygen thing?
• 58:54
  50, 000, which is pretty useful in a time.
• 58:57
  For like what, a week or two of shooting?
• 58:59
  It was, no, it was more like three weeks with a little prep.
• 59:01
  Three weeks?
• 59:02
  That's, yeah, it was good money.
• 59:03
  See the thing is with films, if you, when the money comes, it comes in a big chunk.
• 59:06
  That's it.
• 59:07
  And that's the problem.
• 59:08
  That's it.
• 59:08
  Yeah.
• 59:09
  Yeah, that's it.
• 59:10
  And I, but I had an agent at the time.
• 59:11
  And then for taxes.
• 59:12
  You gotta pay the agent and pay the manager.
• 59:14
  It was a manager I had.
• 59:16
  Right.
• 59:17
  So you've already lost 30 percent of whatever year.
• 59:19
  It's 10%, 10 percent and then 5 percent to your lawyer.
• 59:21
  Right.
• 59:22
  So you're already paying 25 percent off the top in taxes.
• 59:24
  So you're not making that much yet.
• 59:26
  I mean, that's the thing about Hollywood is there's always people
• 59:28
  who will take part of your salary.
• 59:30
  With their hands sticking out.
• 59:30
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 59:32
  So at that point I was like, I can teach, I need a teaching job and
• 59:35
  thank God for Kenyon college that they That was the only one you applied
• 59:39
  to or did you apply to a bunch?
• 59:39
  No, I applied to a bunch and you won't, like, I'm, I'm sort of mentoring
• 59:43
  a filmmaker right now who's really amazing filmmaker, who's having
• 59:47
  trouble getting a teaching job.
• 59:48
  And she's just like, I don't understand why I can't get a teaching job.
• 59:51
  I've made two features.
• 59:52
  And I'm like, there's politics and so many other issues.
• 59:58
  Like, it's interesting going from this, the politics of filmmaking to the
• 1:00:03
  politics of, of, of higher education.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah, right.
• 1:00:07
  Well, you know, as a film professor, I only have an MFA,
• 1:00:12
  so that's the terminal degree.
• 1:00:13
  So that's only a two year degree compared to everybody else that has a PhD. So
• 1:00:17
  there's really very little pressure on you to be, they just think of you
• 1:00:20
  as like a, Dumb as a sack of bricks.
• 1:00:22
  Oh, that's fun, which is fine.
• 1:00:24
  But then they're jealous too.
• 1:00:25
  They don't expect much They don't expect much and they're jealous because of
• 1:00:29
  course all the students want to take your classes because it's film, right?
• 1:00:32
  I'll take academia a hundred times out of a hundred as opposed to the film
• 1:00:35
  business Well, I would too because you've had the same job for 17 years.
• 1:00:38
  So that's already people are better people.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah for sure Yeah, smarter people better smarter people better human beings, but
• 1:00:45
  there's still money and people Backbiting and all these kind of things involved.
• 1:00:48
  The politics in academia are hysterical.
• 1:00:49
  So you say things like, I've heard you say this a lot, I feel so fortunate
• 1:00:54
  to be working for Kenyon, which I don't disagree with, but do you feel
• 1:00:59
  like that's a thing, I don't mean to go too deep here, but like, do you
• 1:01:02
  feel like that's a thing that's maybe like keeping you from a life change?
• 1:01:06
  Like that you feel fortunate to be there so that that's your, in a
• 1:01:09
  way you're like, oh I'm fortunate to be here so I shouldn't, Yes.
• 1:01:12
  You know?
• 1:01:12
  Yes.
• 1:01:12
  It's 17 years, John.
• 1:01:13
  It's a long time.
• 1:01:14
  It's a really long time.
• 1:01:15
  That's my life now, you know.
• 1:01:16
  So, you know, I was complimenting you before we started talking
• 1:01:22
  on air about I recorded that.
• 1:01:24
  Oh, you did?
• 1:01:25
  Great.
• 1:01:25
  Well, you should, you should use it because it's really good.
• 1:01:27
  You're like, I don't want to ever get too comfortable.
• 1:01:29
  And I, I think of myself that way too.
• 1:01:32
  I crave change when I feel like things are getting stale.
• 1:01:35
  I get it.
• 1:01:36
  But you have to understand that like being a Kenyan allowed, not only did
• 1:01:40
  it give me health insurance, but my kids could go to school for free.
• 1:01:44
  Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  So my job.
• 1:01:45
  It's a fucking Kenyan.
• 1:01:46
  Exactly.
• 1:01:47
  So my job was to stay in this job to get them through school.
• 1:01:50
  Right.
• 1:01:50
  Alex started there and he ended up here.
• 1:01:52
  Not because he was there during COVID.
• 1:01:54
  He ended up transferring to Ohio State.
• 1:01:56
  Olivia went there.
• 1:01:57
  So literally my job was just to get them through.
• 1:01:59
  Well, not your job is done.
• 1:02:01
  Right.
• 1:02:01
  So now I don't know what's going to happen.
• 1:02:02
  I mean, luckily it's at a time when like academia is kind of falling apart anyway.
• 1:02:06
  So come to Mexico city, John.
• 1:02:07
  I know I was like, but now your wife is an artist.
• 1:02:10
  I love it.
• 1:02:11
  I know.
• 1:02:11
  I know.
• 1:02:12
  And well, she, She really felt like, with Mexico, she felt like, hmm, this is weird.
• 1:02:17
  I don't know if you feel this.
• 1:02:18
  I don't know if you're going to move to like, Roma Norte, or
• 1:02:21
  Condesa, or one of those names.
• 1:02:22
  Yeah, the tourist triangle, yeah.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah, she felt like, ooh, I feel weird being white here,
• 1:02:26
  and like, having this life.
• 1:02:27
  Oh, yeah, no, I get that.
• 1:02:29
  Like, there's a lot, I even, there's even anti gringo graffiti now.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah, no, I saw it, there were protests.
• 1:02:33
  There's actually, definitely a sentiment.
• 1:02:34
  Yes, that's definitely a part of my thought, but frankly, like, my experience
• 1:02:38
  in Mexico City, like, certainly you see it, but I have not felt that.
• 1:02:42
  I agree.
• 1:02:43
  I felt good vibes from people all over the place.
• 1:02:46
  Yeah, it's a city of 20 million people.
• 1:02:48
  They're happier there.
• 1:02:49
  And the vibes are better and people are just nice and like Patricia who's the
• 1:02:54
  woman I'm dating friends with whatever we'll call it She she completely lives
• 1:02:59
  in Condesa, which is arguably the nicest neighborhood in Mexico City That's
• 1:03:02
  where I want to live and she has a nice apartment and she pays very little
• 1:03:06
  like 600 a month Oh, she works she's in a non profit Like an international
• 1:03:10
  non profit, um, but she makes Mexican money because that's how they pay.
• 1:03:13
  When you're an international company, they pay you the money that you get, you know.
• 1:03:17
  But she's pissed off about it because the person upstairs moved out and
• 1:03:20
  she wanted to move into the upstairs place and then the rent, the landlord
• 1:03:23
  raised the rent a ton because he can.
• 1:03:25
  This is the problem in Europe too, like when I was in Barcelona, I was
• 1:03:27
  just in Portugal, it's just like When you have these people moving
• 1:03:32
  into, it just distorts the economy.
• 1:03:34
  It's like international gentrification.
• 1:03:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:36
  And the people who are from there can't afford to live there anymore.
• 1:03:39
  And this is, this is the way the world is going to go.
• 1:03:42
  I mean, it's just like, as people need to flee this country.
• 1:03:45
  It's ironic that Donald Trump is kicking all the Mexicans, trying
• 1:03:48
  to kick all the Mexicans out.
• 1:03:49
  You're going there.
• 1:03:51
  And I'm going there.
• 1:03:53
  But I don't know, because I feel like, well, there's a benefit to, I
• 1:03:55
  mean, it's not as if there's not a benefit to these countries to have.
• 1:04:00
  People with a lot of money coming there because like the businesses
• 1:04:03
  and it's commerce and all that so it's a very difficult Line to walk I
• 1:04:07
  think for the like with the mayor of Mexico City who's a woman as well.
• 1:04:11
  Yeah, she does a good job It's an amazing city.
• 1:04:14
  Oh, it is.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah, it's having a moment too The weather's good.
• 1:04:18
  I mean, you're, the weather's wonderful.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah, because you're so high.
• 1:04:21
  Pollution sucks, but you know, pollution is a problem.
• 1:04:23
  Um, water.
• 1:04:24
  I mean, there's natural resources are an issue.
• 1:04:26
  That too.
• 1:04:27
  And the, and the city sinking and there's earthquakes and all the things.
• 1:04:29
  Yeah, sure.
• 1:04:30
  Yeah.
• 1:04:31
  But you know, that's exciting.
• 1:04:32
  It's more exciting.
• 1:04:33
  Uh, I don't look, at least it'll be more exciting than being here.
• 1:04:35
  Yeah, no, I mean, I was just, I was like ready to move to Porto when I
• 1:04:39
  was in Portugal, but then I think of my kids and I, it's, it's evolving.
• 1:04:44
  You know, they don't care.
• 1:04:46
  They'll be fine.
• 1:04:47
  Just do it.
• 1:04:47
  Your kids will be fine.
• 1:04:48
  I know.
• 1:04:49
  They'll probably be happy if you left.
• 1:04:51
  They can come visit.
• 1:04:52
  Right.
• 1:04:52
  Exactly.
• 1:04:53
  Exactly.
• 1:04:54
  When I travel, I'm like, Oh, I love Mexico City.
• 1:04:56
  Oh, I love San Sebastian in Spain.
• 1:04:58
  I could live there.
• 1:04:58
  Oh, I could live in Port.
• 1:04:59
  I really have to think about like the language and all that.
• 1:05:02
  Like, I'm sure learning Spanish is a big thing.
• 1:05:04
  I barely know it.
• 1:05:05
  Yeah.
• 1:05:05
  Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  I mean, you definitely are gonna, I mean, you'll get really good at it.
• 1:05:08
  I'll get better at it.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  One would hope.
• 1:05:10
  Are you taking a class?
• 1:05:11
  Are you deciding to?
• 1:05:12
  Uh, I haven't had a chance.
• 1:05:13
  I've got so many things that I'm doing right now that it's a little overwhelming.
• 1:05:16
  Like I'm literally, I started driving an Uber for money because I can't get a job.
• 1:05:20
  So I started just getting a little extra money with Uber.
• 1:05:22
  And that's been interesting.
• 1:05:23
  It's more like an experiment.
• 1:05:24
  Like, I'm always in Ubers, like not always, but you
• 1:05:27
  know, you're in Ubers a lot.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  To be on their side of that is an interesting experience.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah.
• 1:05:31
  Uh, nobody tips, by the way.
• 1:05:32
  Nobody tips.
• 1:05:34
  Oh, I've gotten like two tips and I've done like 15 rides, I think.
• 1:05:38
  Like zero?
• 1:05:38
  Zero.
• 1:05:39
  Yeah, nobody tips.
• 1:05:40
  That's disgraceful.
• 1:05:41
  It really is.
• 1:05:42
  It really is.
• 1:05:43
  I tip every time.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  No, I was just, in Portugal they use Bolt, which is, it's so cheap there.
• 1:05:49
  And I was just, I was 25%.
• 1:05:51
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Plus also you feel so guilty being an American now because you know,
• 1:05:55
  your country is so horrible that.
• 1:05:57
  I do not.
• 1:05:58
  Feel guilty about being an American.
• 1:05:59
  I feel like people can should should sympathize with me because I'm an
• 1:06:03
  American because this is not my choice Yeah, I think we've lost
• 1:06:07
  they they don't understand anymore.
• 1:06:09
  I got a certain the first the first Trump administration They definitely
• 1:06:12
  said I understand you're not one of the 50 percent that voted for him.
• 1:06:16
  Now.
• 1:06:16
  They're just like fuck you Hey, I work for the Lincoln Project.
• 1:06:19
  I tried to help I made them funny videos about Donald Trump and they
• 1:06:22
  didn't work at all Yeah, you just make fun of it made all the money You Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Where are they now?
• 1:06:28
  Yeah.
• 1:06:28
  They're irrelevant.
• 1:06:29
  Completely.
• 1:06:30
  They really are.
• 1:06:30
  But they're still pulling in the money from the liberals.
• 1:06:33
  Well, but back then it actually felt like some Republicans were
• 1:06:36
  actually making the choice.
• 1:06:38
  It did.
• 1:06:38
  It did.
• 1:06:38
  But now they're useless.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  And that's actually And that's actually And that's actually a
• 1:06:46
  big part of the reason I'm Like, that's not even a big part.
• 1:06:48
  I would say a half of the political thing is half.
• 1:06:51
  Because it's bad vibes.
• 1:06:53
  Things are going to get so bad.
• 1:06:55
  And I'm I don't need to be a part of this.
• 1:06:57
  I'm going to be do video content for a cartel in Mexico.
• 1:07:00
  That's what I'm going to do.
• 1:07:01
  I'm going to do some kick ass fucking videos.
• 1:07:03
  I'm going to sizzle reel.
• 1:07:05
  You guys need a sizzle reel?
• 1:07:05
  They do.
• 1:07:06
  They just need some good PR.
• 1:07:07
  They need a good sizzle reel.
• 1:07:08
  So obviously, Jef made that TikTok for the cartels.
• 1:07:11
  Did you see that sizzle reel?
• 1:07:11
  That was awesome.
• 1:07:12
  Jef's running that cartel's TikTok.
• 1:07:13
  Well, seriously, they just need, you know, it's that thing like sports washing,
• 1:07:16
  they call it, you know, in terms of like, you could do that for them too.
• 1:07:20
  Running that cartel's TikTok.
• 1:07:22
  That's a great idea.
• 1:07:23
  Make a fortune.
• 1:07:24
  I just don't know how you reach out to them.
• 1:07:25
  And how you don't die at the end of the job.
• 1:07:27
  You just need to stay on their good side all the time.
• 1:07:30
  So as you know from watching all these mafia movies, you know that eventually
• 1:07:34
  you're going to live with the fishes.
• 1:07:36
  I don't think I'm going to leave that job alive.
• 1:07:37
  So that's the, yeah.
• 1:07:39
  So how do you stay on the right side?
• 1:07:40
  I don't think I want to do that.
• 1:07:42
  Yeah.
• 1:07:42
  That's pretty cool though.
• 1:07:43
  That's where the money is.
• 1:07:45
  Well, sure, sure.
• 1:07:46
  Although the funny thing is, you know, everybody, you tell them
• 1:07:48
  you're going to Mexico City, oh, aren't you worried about cartels?
• 1:07:50
  I have never, I mean, as far as I'm aware, you don't, I haven't seen it anywhere.
• 1:07:54
  Like, I mean, the northern, you know, the northern areas, for sure.
• 1:07:58
  But like, I haven't seen it at all.
• 1:08:00
  No, you wouldn't.
• 1:08:01
  And I've been in some sketchy areas, so.
• 1:08:03
  Of Mexico City?
• 1:08:04
  Somewhat, yeah.
• 1:08:04
  This is poor.
• 1:08:05
  You know, but I don't think, oh, there's certain areas.
• 1:08:08
  I mean the government is, you know that the cartels are infiltrated.
• 1:08:13
  I mean, sure.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  And you just have to, the whole thing, but it's not going to
• 1:08:16
  affect you on a daily basis.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  Unless I get the job doing the videos and then I'll be making bank.
• 1:08:21
  Then you're on the right side of it.
• 1:08:23
  Making muchos pesos.
• 1:08:26
  I know a little bit.
• 1:08:27
  Like, I mean, they just need some good social media.
• 1:08:30
  I agree.
• 1:08:30
  I agree.
• 1:08:31
  I could get their Instagram account going.
• 1:08:32
  Truth Social.
• 1:08:33
  What's the name of the cartel?
• 1:08:34
  The Sonoras or something?
• 1:08:35
  Yeah, there's a bunch of them.
• 1:08:37
  I don't know who's winning these days.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, I could do some really edgy content.
• 1:08:40
  But there's definitely certain Sinaloa that Sinaloa, yeah.
• 1:08:43
  Yeah, like certain areas you're told to not travel as Americans.
• 1:08:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:48
  And you'll be aware of that?
• 1:08:49
  No.
• 1:08:49
  You know, like another place that I took Go to a lot that I love
• 1:08:53
  that you should check out is Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast.
• 1:08:56
  I've heard this Yeah, it's a beautiful surfing town.
• 1:08:59
  And again, just full of tourists and it's safe and I never Felt endangered at all.
• 1:09:07
  I would walk at night down the beach from one part to the other.
• 1:09:10
  I never felt Like, no, I mean, they're very friendly.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, I'm getting out of here, but I don't blame you But I'm gonna miss it
• 1:09:17
  because you know Columbus is a fine town.
• 1:09:19
  It just needs to have is it though?
• 1:09:22
  Uh, I agree with you.
• 1:09:25
  I Mean, I have a nice life here, you know, I can drive.
• 1:09:28
  No, that's the thing.
• 1:09:30
  That's the thing.
• 1:09:30
  It's a very very comfortable there's I've come to this theory recently that
• 1:09:34
  there's like Towns that are like comfort zone towns and towns that are cities
• 1:09:39
  rather that are non comfort zone cities.
• 1:09:41
  New York.
• 1:09:41
  So like New York, LA There's cities that people don't live in not because they
• 1:09:45
  want to be comfortable But because they want to I don't know or have an exciting
• 1:09:49
  life whatever it is and there's cities that people go to just to be comfortable
• 1:09:54
  and get a house and have kids and have a wife and and and you know Yeah.
• 1:09:58
  Live there forever.
• 1:09:58
  Yeah.
• 1:09:59
  And Columbus is one of these cities.
• 1:10:01
  Most cities are like that.
• 1:10:02
  Cleveland, to a degree.
• 1:10:04
  Yeah.
• 1:10:04
  I've just not, I've never felt at home here.
• 1:10:06
  I think the stress of it, like, I think if you don't think of it as necessarily a
• 1:10:10
  permit, like you say, like, oh, I'm moving for two years and I'll see how it goes.
• 1:10:14
  I'll go for six months.
• 1:10:15
  Whatever it is, and that will lessen the stress of feeling
• 1:10:18
  like you're uprooting your life.
• 1:10:19
  I mean, you can only get a six month visa, so I can only go for
• 1:10:22
  I was going to ask about that.
• 1:10:23
  Right.
• 1:10:24
  I mean, I can eventually, if you have enough money, you can get, you know,
• 1:10:27
  temporary citizenship, which is, but I'm not even worried about that now.
• 1:10:30
  I'm just going for six months and then see how it goes and, um, go from there.
• 1:10:34
  But I just need to get, like, you know, I need to start moving.
• 1:10:38
  That's the thing.
• 1:10:38
  I need to move in order to get Change.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah, we'll see how it goes, but selling a lot of my belongings has
• 1:10:44
  really been great I I've really been rethinking the idea of possessions
• 1:10:48
  and why we collect all this crap and I don't even you know, yeah Yeah, great.
• 1:10:53
  So we'll see so we'll see so if you come back you would just have Fewer things.
• 1:10:58
  Very, very, very, very few things.
• 1:10:59
  Or I can just, I can buy things again.
• 1:11:01
  Like, I sold my piano.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah, what do you need?
• 1:11:03
  Exactly.
• 1:11:04
  Do I need, I have a box of DVDs up in the attic.
• 1:11:06
  Why?
• 1:11:07
  I can't throw them away because some of them, I'm like, but
• 1:11:09
  what if that's not on TV?
• 1:11:11
  And I can't.
• 1:11:12
  You're smart.
• 1:11:13
  I mean, to hold on to physical media is important because I, I
• 1:11:17
  own a lot of, well, I own a lot.
• 1:11:18
  First of all, you have the director's commentary on those, which is, look,
• 1:11:21
  I don't even have a DVD anymore.
• 1:11:22
  When's the last time you watched that?
• 1:11:24
  No.
• 1:11:24
  Exactly.
• 1:11:25
  You're right.
• 1:11:25
  Exactly.
• 1:11:26
  I've watched one DVD in four years of living here.
• 1:11:28
  I agree with you.
• 1:11:29
  But I hate the fact that like a lot of the movies that I use now for teaching, I
• 1:11:34
  own on Amazon and I don't really own them.
• 1:11:36
  I bought them.
• 1:11:37
  If they own them and they can take them away at any time.
• 1:11:38
  No, and this is the world we live in.
• 1:11:41
  But then you can just pirate them and you can get them back.
• 1:11:42
  I guess I could do that.
• 1:11:43
  I didn't think of it that way.
• 1:11:45
  It's a big change, but I think it's great.
• 1:11:48
  I mean, look, I've been here for now, since 2010.
• 1:11:53
  I've been involved in the film business or the film world.
• 1:11:59
  It's not a business.
• 1:12:00
  It's not possible to make a living in film here.
• 1:12:03
  There's a lot of young people that I adore.
• 1:12:06
  I feel bad.
• 1:12:07
  They, I adore them and, and they're making stuff and they're doing great.
• 1:12:10
  I do.
• 1:12:11
  And I bless their heart.
• 1:12:12
  You're not gonna, yeah.
• 1:12:13
  Yeah, but it's like, just do it.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  You know, and I, you can worry about the other stuff later.
• 1:12:18
  Do it while you can't, we don't have to worry about money.
• 1:12:21
  And yeah, you're gonna be footloose and fancy for it.
• 1:12:22
  Yeah, I mean, or you can get a job.
• 1:12:24
  And also be a filmmaker, but just don't think that you're
• 1:12:27
  going to make a living at it.
• 1:12:28
  Yeah, it's there's nobody or anywhere for that matter I don't think it's just here.
• 1:12:31
  I think that just the idea of making a living as a filmmaker in this world, I
• 1:12:35
  think is Increasingly almost impossible.
• 1:12:38
  Yeah, I mean having just made a film that is now on avod and I see Like
• 1:12:43
  you basically, it's the same thing as Spotify except we can't tour, like bands
• 1:12:47
  now make their money by touring and merch, which I don't think they even
• 1:12:50
  make very much, but we don't have that.
• 1:12:52
  So it's a very expensive hobby.
• 1:12:55
  I'm making a fortune from this podcast.
• 1:12:56
  A fortune.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah, you deserve it.
• 1:12:58
  You deserve it.
• 1:12:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:59
  I'm going to be a tycoon.
• 1:13:00
  Um, so you've been here for 17 years.
• 1:13:04
  I want to ask, when you realized you were going to move to
• 1:13:06
  Ohio, what was the thought?
• 1:13:08
  There.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah.
• 1:13:09
  I mean, I, New York City has a particular disdain for Ohio.
• 1:13:14
  They do.
• 1:13:14
  They really do.
• 1:13:16
  But you have to remember that I, my son was not in school at
• 1:13:20
  the time and I was so grateful.
• 1:13:22
  So we moved to Bexley and they were just like, yeah, bring him.
• 1:13:26
  It'll be fine.
• 1:13:26
  We'll take care of him.
• 1:13:28
  And God bless them.
• 1:13:29
  The first day, you know, he had school anxiety, like as one would have had
• 1:13:33
  to be kicked out of three schools.
• 1:13:35
  So try this in New York city.
• 1:13:36
  Like he went to school in Bexley and he refused to go into the building.
• 1:13:41
  So the.
• 1:13:43
  The guidance counselor, bless his heart, who's now a principal at
• 1:13:46
  another school, because he was so good.
• 1:13:47
  He said, Oh, just watch me get him in the building.
• 1:13:50
  He calls the Bexley police.
• 1:13:52
  He says, you stand over here, stay out of the way.
• 1:13:55
  He calls the police and the Bexley police, try this in New York, the
• 1:13:58
  Bexley police come and they're like, you're going into school, young man.
• 1:14:02
  And they frog march him.
• 1:14:05
  And he was so fucking pissed off, but don't you know, like he
• 1:14:08
  went back after that first day.
• 1:14:09
  He's like, it's fine, you know, and he had some issues going along, but
• 1:14:12
  like he made it through school here.
• 1:14:14
  Yeah, and God bless Ohio because I don't think he could have done that.
• 1:14:16
  There's great schools in Ohio.
• 1:14:17
  And I mean, not all of them, but yeah, New York schools we were looking at.
• 1:14:21
  Where these, you know, there's this whole like industry, it's a total scam.
• 1:14:25
  Oh my god, New York City.
• 1:14:26
  Where you pay 60, 000 a year and the board of ed pays you back
• 1:14:29
  because your student has special needs, you know, whatever it is.
• 1:14:33
  I just knew people who like literally rented a cheap apartment in Park
• 1:14:37
  Slope just so that their kids could go to the school in Park Slope.
• 1:14:39
  I mean, yeah, the fucking rabbi in Park Slope did that.
• 1:14:43
  I mean, it's like a man of God.
• 1:14:45
  Yeah.
• 1:14:45
  You know, like that shows you.
• 1:14:46
  I mean, do you blame him?
• 1:14:47
  I mean, you want to get a good education for your kids.
• 1:14:49
  Yeah.
• 1:14:50
  You know, like lying is, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:52
  Who cares?
• 1:14:53
  No, Columbus is a great place to raise kids.
• 1:14:55
  Um, for sure.
• 1:14:56
  Um, great schools, great libraries.
• 1:14:58
  Ohio has great libraries.
• 1:15:00
  Um, Go Buckeyes.
• 1:15:01
  I saw you read the thing about, no, no, I'm joking.
• 1:15:04
  Cause I think about your podcast about the M I crossing out of the M's.
• 1:15:08
  When I saw that too, I was like, what the hell is this?
• 1:15:11
  But you know, most people are not, or.
• 1:15:13
  Maybe most people are like that, but the people, there are
• 1:15:15
  plenty of people who are not.
• 1:15:16
  And I, I, I feel blessed to have found the people that are not.
• 1:15:20
  I certainly have too, but like that Ohio State thing, it
• 1:15:23
  kind of, It's the whole city.
• 1:15:26
  It's the identity of the city in a big manner.
• 1:15:29
  I mean after a loss, the city is like 9 11.
• 1:15:33
  Yeah, right.
• 1:15:34
  Yeah.
• 1:15:34
  It's when I go grocery shopping, but I'd be too.
• 1:15:37
  It's a real unusual I could say things but I don't want to, I don't want to,
• 1:15:41
  I don't want to anger my listeners.
• 1:15:42
  No, you don't want to burn it down on your way out.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah, I don't want to burn it down on my way out.
• 1:15:45
  Your millions of listeners will be pissed.
• 1:15:46
  Yeah, my millions of listeners will be very angry.
• 1:15:49
  But um, And I'm all for professional like sports.
• 1:15:52
  It's fine.
• 1:15:53
  Whatever.
• 1:15:53
  It, it's a nectar of the, I love the band, I love the marching band, whatever.
• 1:15:58
  I mean, I love the sound of a good marching band.
• 1:16:00
  I still have never watched an Ohio State football game from beginning to end.
• 1:16:03
  Will I ever, I absolutely have.
• 1:16:04
  Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Oh, you have?
• 1:16:05
  Oh mean I go to the hockey games.
• 1:16:06
  I watch football now.
• 1:16:06
  One, again, I've never gone to a hockey game, but I, I, I grew up in
• 1:16:09
  Cleveland, so there's a whole thing with the sports and so you have to,
• 1:16:13
  but I can kind of take it or leave it.
• 1:16:15
  But I do like the marching band.
• 1:16:17
  I used to listen to the marching band music in my headphones on the subway
• 1:16:21
  on the way to work at like seven in the morning or whatever, and I thought it was
• 1:16:23
  the funniest thing because it'd be like looking at people, everybody's miserable.
• 1:16:27
  And I'm just like, it made me laugh so hard.
• 1:16:32
  It cheered me up every day.
• 1:16:33
  I had no idea what a marching band was.
• 1:16:35
  I had no idea about any of this.
• 1:16:36
  Oh yeah, I had a film idea.
• 1:16:38
  Maybe, maybe you want to do this.
• 1:16:40
  A guy meets a girl at a bar, and they, and they, he gets, you know, they
• 1:16:44
  have a date or whatever, and they go back to his place, and he's really
• 1:16:48
  into marching band music, so they get high, and he's like, check this shit
• 1:16:51
  out, bap, bap, and she's like So is he like naked playing the trombone?
• 1:16:55
  Who knows, I mean, I don't know if he plays the instruments, but
• 1:16:57
  he's got like old bootlegs of Sousa, and he can only come when
• 1:17:02
  there's marching band music playing.
• 1:17:04
  There you go, dot the I. Right, right, that's that Italian
• 1:17:08
  guy, he would do that one.
• 1:17:09
  The Italian director with the story about the gay guy and the therapist.
• 1:17:14
  Oh, right.
• 1:17:14
  In his wheelhouse.
• 1:17:15
  Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  Yeah.
• 1:17:17
  I don't know what ever happened to that director.
• 1:17:19
  So, John, what's the plan?
• 1:17:22
  What's, uh, 17 years, your kids are getting grown up.
• 1:17:25
  Don't ask me that question.
• 1:17:26
  Oh my God.
• 1:17:26
  I'm asking you right now.
• 1:17:27
  So I'm, you know, I have a new feature that I'm going to do in April.
• 1:17:30
  Right.
• 1:17:30
  You're working on a feature.
• 1:17:31
  So that keeps me, so that's interesting.
• 1:17:33
  You know, like I spent, And I spent two years writing a script that was based on
• 1:17:40
  a true story about Nazi homeschoolers.
• 1:17:43
  Yeah, I remember you talking about it.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah, and I was like, I was, well, yeah, but I was like, this is so crazy.
• 1:17:48
  Can you believe this happened?
• 1:17:48
  And now it's completely mainstream.
• 1:17:50
  Like literally nobody, it was like a warning shot.
• 1:17:53
  That's funny.
• 1:17:53
  Literally nobody cared.
• 1:17:54
  Nazis?
• 1:17:55
  Oh, great.
• 1:17:56
  You know?
• 1:17:56
  That's funny.
• 1:17:56
  So I had to drop out.
• 1:17:57
  That ten years ago would have been yeah, yeah ten years ago Anytime,
• 1:18:01
  but that'll teach you to make a movie about current events You never should
• 1:18:04
  do that because right events will always surpass especially now Yeah,
• 1:18:08
  you couldn't make this stuff up.
• 1:18:09
  Like you couldn't create a character like just see united 93 I didn't.
• 1:18:14
  Oh.
• 1:18:14
  The Paul Greengrass movie.
• 1:18:15
  It's an amazing film.
• 1:18:16
  Paul Greengrass is one of my favorites.
• 1:18:17
  Anyway.
• 1:18:18
  Yeah.
• 1:18:18
  Go on.
• 1:18:19
  He could make, he could literally make reading a menu interesting with like
• 1:18:21
  his moving camera and the handhelds.
• 1:18:23
  He, he, he, he started that whole thing.
• 1:18:25
  Yeah.
• 1:18:25
  But, but 1993 is his, his, his best.
• 1:18:27
  It's, it's a masterpiece.
• 1:18:28
  Cause it's non actors.
• 1:18:29
  It's better than the Bourne one?
• 1:18:30
  It's so good.
• 1:18:31
  It's non actors and he had, but he had actual people who were working on 9 11.
• 1:18:36
  He shot them in the places where they worked.
• 1:18:38
  And had the thing playing out in real time.
• 1:18:41
  So it was all improv.
• 1:18:42
  So he's got it playing out in real time and they're reacting in real time to
• 1:18:45
  the things that are It's a good movie.
• 1:18:47
  That's amazing.
• 1:18:48
  It was in my wheelhouse.
• 1:18:48
  I should see that.
• 1:18:49
  I have the DVD if you want to borrow it.
• 1:18:51
  Oh, I'll take it from upstairs.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:53
  Before you leave.
• 1:18:53
  Gift me that one before you go.
• 1:18:55
  I'm not going to gift it to you.
• 1:18:56
  I'm going to take it.
• 1:18:57
  I'm going to go upstairs and steal it.
• 1:18:58
  I think it's only I don't think it's even 4K or I don't think it's even like HD.
• 1:19:02
  I don't need any K. like Yeah, no case.
• 1:19:04
  All right.
• 1:19:04
  No, but while you're having your goodbye party, I'm going to sneak upstairs.
• 1:19:07
  You might win it.
• 1:19:08
  You might win it at the party.
• 1:19:09
  Oh, is it door price?
• 1:19:10
  Oh, my God.
• 1:19:10
  The door prices are going to be impressive.
• 1:19:12
  I hope you like creamed corn.
• 1:19:16
  You got a lot of cans of that to give away?
• 1:19:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:18
  I accidentally bought some creamed corn and I've got to get rid of that.
• 1:19:21
  So John, you're making this movie.
• 1:19:24
  So this is interesting.
• 1:19:25
  And the movie you're making is about what?
• 1:19:26
  Last year at Kenyon, I. Went to this training of learning how to
• 1:19:31
  be, um, there's a lot of conflict in higher ed, as you can imagine.
• 1:19:36
  So we, we had this training about learning how to be a mediator.
• 1:19:39
  So I was the only male in, there were 30 people in the training of students
• 1:19:43
  and staff, and I was the only male, I was like, this is interesting.
• 1:19:46
  And it was very much like improv acting.
• 1:19:48
  I just, and I, I also happened to meet.
• 1:19:51
  Onefjefpod, Patreon, patreon.
• 1:19:55
  com, onefjefpod.
• 1:19:58
  com, onefjefpod.
• 1:20:01
  com, onefjefpod.
• 1:20:04
  com, onefjefpod.
• 1:20:07
  com.
• 1:20:09
  As an older person, I don't feel, I feel like I can write the story, but I don't
• 1:20:12
  feel like I can write the dialogue.
• 1:20:14
  And I've always wanted to work like in a Mike Lee style.
• 1:20:18
  So we did a workshop with a bunch of, we first, we cast it.
• 1:20:22
  And then we did a workshop with, we ended up casting up Cincinnati and
• 1:20:26
  Dayton actors, and we developed the screenplay through this workshop and.
• 1:20:31
  It usually takes me like two years to write a script and literally I've
• 1:20:35
  written it because of the workshop.
• 1:20:36
  I wrote this draft in a month.
• 1:20:38
  Love it.
• 1:20:39
  Yeah.
• 1:20:39
  Love improv.
• 1:20:39
  And I'm ready to go.
• 1:20:40
  Like all of a sudden I'm like, okay, here's, it's going to be a hundred
• 1:20:44
  thousand dollars and I'm not going to talk about how I financed it cause
• 1:20:47
  that's irrelevant, but you can guess.
• 1:20:50
  The retirement plan is lower.
• 1:20:52
  Right, right, right, right.
• 1:20:53
  But okay, whatever, and yeah, you got the 401k.
• 1:20:58
  I'm not your wife.
• 1:20:59
  Exactly, exactly.
• 1:21:01
  And I've got all these wonderful people that are going to be working on it.
• 1:21:06
  It's going to be great.
• 1:21:07
  The last two weeks in April.
• 1:21:08
  Yeah.
• 1:21:08
  So we're saying we're going to do it.
• 1:21:09
  No, I'm excited about it.
• 1:21:11
  Uh, the thing with improv stuff is that It'll feel so much more authentic.
• 1:21:15
  It'll feel lived in.
• 1:21:17
  Well, we, we, there is a script now.
• 1:21:19
  Of course, yeah.
• 1:21:20
  So we improv'd in a workshop, and then we went.
• 1:21:21
  But it'll still feel lived in, because the characters came from these people, right?
• 1:21:25
  So it's like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:28
  So we have to keep it fresh.
• 1:21:29
  That'll be the fun part of it.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah.
• 1:21:31
  So we're doing that in April, and then after that, I literally have no idea.
• 1:21:35
  Am I going to go back to teaching?
• 1:21:36
  Yes, in the fall.
• 1:21:38
  I don't understand higher education.
• 1:21:39
  I don't want to understand it.
• 1:21:41
  Um, I taught.
• 1:21:42
  It's CCAD or Columbus College of Art and Design for one semester.
• 1:21:45
  That's a highly dysfunctional place.
• 1:21:47
  Oh, are you kidding me?
• 1:21:48
  You don't say.
• 1:21:49
  I know you don't.
• 1:21:49
  Don't even get me started.
• 1:21:50
  I think it was voted the worst value of any education in the country.
• 1:21:53
  Oh, was it?
• 1:21:54
  Wow, John just shitting here on, John just going down.
• 1:21:57
  That is, it's this, it's in a statistic.
• 1:22:00
  It's not, I didn't have any.
• 1:22:01
  What, what, what was the firm that did this, uh, this, this statistic?
• 1:22:05
  I'm gonna say Challenger Gray.
• 1:22:06
  Because one of the, maybe the Hello Sunshine, I don't know.
• 1:22:10
  You know what Columbus does a lot?
• 1:22:11
  I'll fuss it on social media.
• 1:22:13
  Columbus is always referencing USA Today polls.
• 1:22:16
  Yes, second best coffee shop.
• 1:22:17
  Always.
• 1:22:17
  It's always like, the best city to do this.
• 1:22:19
  And I'm like, dude, it's USA Today, bro.
• 1:22:21
  That is a city with just an incredible inferiority complex.
• 1:22:24
  Level of desperation there.
• 1:22:25
  I've learned this from having Having been on the board of the Greater
• 1:22:29
  Columbus Arts Council, like, this is a city with a giant inferiority complex.
• 1:22:34
  We're okay.
• 1:22:35
  Really, we're good.
• 1:22:36
  We were on the USA Today again.
• 1:22:37
  Really, we're good.
• 1:22:38
  Yeah, we got the USA Today poll.
• 1:22:39
  People, we were voted 17th best in the country.
• 1:22:43
  Columbus, yeah.
• 1:22:44
  You just can't even make this stuff up.
• 1:22:45
  John, I'm getting out of here.
• 1:22:46
  You need to get out of here, too.
• 1:22:47
  Okay, this is great.
• 1:22:48
  This is really fun.
• 1:22:50
  I appreciate you coming on, John, but I do have a question before we finish, and
• 1:22:53
  it doesn't really connect to anything that we've really talked about, but what
• 1:22:57
  do you think happens when you die, John?
• 1:23:00
  I did hear you were going to ask this, it's, unfortunately it's
• 1:23:03
  nothing, it's just a big blackout.
• 1:23:04
  Is that really what you think?
• 1:23:05
  Yeah.
• 1:23:06
  Yeah.
• 1:23:06
  Because, what do you remember before you were born?
• 1:23:09
  I don't think it's about whether you, I mean, that's a good point,
• 1:23:12
  actually, but I don't think you necessarily need to remember anything.
• 1:23:15
  You think that there was something?
• 1:23:16
  I don't think it has to be memories.
• 1:23:17
  I don't know.
• 1:23:18
  I don't know.
• 1:23:19
  I think consciousness continues to, continues to exist.
• 1:23:22
  Okay.
• 1:23:23
  I don't, I think the physical body may go, but I think consciousness continues to go.
• 1:23:27
  Or at the very best I feel like maybe it's just like a continue,
• 1:23:30
  like a long dream that happens.
• 1:23:33
  Because there's, I've read books about People who have had near death
• 1:23:37
  experiences, and everybody says this on their podcast eventually at some point,
• 1:23:40
  I've read books about somebody who's had, I've got it, I should get like a buzzer.
• 1:23:43
  Bing!
• 1:23:44
  You did it.
• 1:23:45
  But I have read books about this, and the, the similarities are
• 1:23:49
  incredible, and the things that they've talked about are incredible.
• 1:23:52
  So they're, like, it makes me think that there's, God, that there's
• 1:23:54
  something, there's something.
• 1:23:56
  I got an article, In the BBC today, uh, my cousin sent it to me.
• 1:24:00
  It's about a mushroom that when people, if you don't cook it right, if you eat it
• 1:24:05
  kind of raw, it makes people hallucinate.
• 1:24:07
  Little people everywhere.
• 1:24:09
  Oh, like they even say to you when you go to like a hot pot in the country when you
• 1:24:13
  get this mushroom They're like cook it for 15 minutes or you'll see the little people
• 1:24:17
  and I was like, wow I gotta get some of this mushroom and in the whole article
• 1:24:22
  like you see they see people people all over their arms and their Legs, they
• 1:24:25
  see little people everywhere like elves.
• 1:24:27
  Yeah, so I want to get some of that I just have low expectations and if
• 1:24:30
  there's anything else It's all a bonus.
• 1:24:33
  Well, that's valid.
• 1:24:34
  I just, my, my job here is to just leave it all on the table.
• 1:24:37
  If you know from having, the way I travel, you know, I just go and
• 1:24:41
  I just leave it all on the table.
• 1:24:43
  I appreciate that about you.
• 1:24:44
  And I feel like that's what I'm doing in leaving, in leaving Columbus and not
• 1:24:47
  worrying about money and just doing it.
• 1:24:49
  Yeah, because if you're holding on too tight and you let go, the
• 1:24:54
  universe will take care of you.
• 1:24:55
  I do believe that in one way or another, but like, you don't know what's gonna be.
• 1:25:00
  You're gonna, I have no idea.
• 1:25:02
  I don't know who you're going to meet, what job you're going to do
• 1:25:05
  down there, but you never would have experienced it if you had stayed here.
• 1:25:08
  Remote work I'm trying to get.
• 1:25:09
  Whatever.
• 1:25:10
  But like, whatever happens.
• 1:25:13
  It's Better than what's going on here.
• 1:25:15
  Yeah, I'm not going to be bored and comfortable anymore.
• 1:25:17
  I'll be I'll be uncomfortable and living a something interesting,
• 1:25:22
  whatever that ends up being.
• 1:25:23
  There's a stupid little tattoo that I have on my right shoulder.
• 1:25:27
  Yeah.
• 1:25:27
  That's in Thai, that I got in Thailand because I went there to do kickboxing.
• 1:25:30
  Boxing and it just says, never afraid.
• 1:25:32
  And you just gotta go and just do something and just never be afraid.
• 1:25:35
  Indeed.
• 1:25:35
  And it probably actually says like, stupid white man, it probably does.
• 1:25:38
  And says, small Dick , small dick.
• 1:25:40
  Right, right.
• 1:25:42
  someone.
• 1:25:42
  They laughed at me.
• 1:25:43
  I showed it to some people in Thailand and they just laughed at me.
• 1:25:46
  They were just like, it's so small.
• 1:25:48
  Why don't you tell them to make it bigger?
• 1:25:50
  I've never, I'm not a tattoo guy.
• 1:25:53
  Anyway, John Sherman, so much for coming.
• 1:25:55
  I appreciate you.
• 1:25:56
  I'll miss you.
• 1:25:57
  And, uh, yeah, I'm sure we'll keep in touch because that's who you are.
• 1:26:01
  100 percent we're going to.
• 1:26:01
  Yeah, of course we are.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah.
• 1:26:03
  Thanks, buddy.
• 1:26:06
  And that was John Sherman.
• 1:26:09
  Thank you again, John, for coming in to my home or my former home.
• 1:26:14
  To talk to me for a couple hours.
• 1:26:16
  You can follow John on Instagram @theythemusfilm.
• 1:26:21
  That's @theythemusfilm.
• 1:26:24
  One word on Instagram.
• 1:26:26
  You can follow the podcast on Instagram @onefjefpod and on a bunch of other
• 1:26:32
  social media platforms that I don't really have the time or energy to list off,
• 1:26:36
  but you can look in the show notes for all of these things whenever you want.
• 1:26:41
  I have nothing else to say.
• 1:26:42
  I'm exhausted, and I am waiting for my
• 1:26:48
  Ooh, did you hear that?
• 1:26:50
  Food.
• 1:26:51
  Food?
• 1:26:51
  No, I'm waiting for my food.
• 1:26:53
  Yes, but that was thunder.
• 1:26:56
  Do you ever have a day when you wake up and your brain just
• 1:26:58
  doesn't want to cooperate with you?
• 1:27:00
  That's the kind of day I'm having.
• 1:27:02
  Anyway, I'm going to leave you today with a quote that I was
• 1:27:08
  reminded of on a podcast recently.
• 1:27:12
  And that is a quote by Ram Dass.
• 1:27:16
  And that quote is, We're all walking each other home.
• 1:27:22
  Very good, Jeffrey.