Latest / Movie Meltdown / Shift It with Max Neace

Transcript

Shift It with Max Neace · Movie Meltdown

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: My name is Brad Dourif and I'm listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and parental discretion is advised.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: this time around we have a very special guest as
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: we're joined by director Max Nies. So when I started
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: putting this discussion together I I found it interesting because
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Max is from around here originally, so I started thinking
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: back on my early days as a movie geek growing
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: up here, and there have definitely been a lot of
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: changes in the industry and the world as a whole
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: since then. So I wanted to address that with Max
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and see what it was like for him coming up
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: in a slightly different circumstance, both creatively and professionally, and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: then see how he decided to officially get involved in
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the film industry. And then eventually we're going to discuss
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Max's latest movie, Shift. which I have seen, it's extremely
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: well done, and a lot of fun. So if you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet, you should definitely seek it out.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: But there's no point in me going on more about
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Max or the movie now, because that's what we're about
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: to do. So let's get right to it as we
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: focus on director Max Niece.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Focus!
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Focus!
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Let me start at the beginning, only because it's a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: leading question. I know where we're going, probably. But where
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: were you born?
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I was born in New Albany, Indiana.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: All right. Yeah. We're truthfully half of the people I
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: work with on the show. Oh, really? From and still
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: live a lot of them. So yeah, I'm Louisville-based and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: have been most of my life, but I've lived over here.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So yeah, it's... I love coming back.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I live in LA now, but I'm from here originally.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: That's what I thought you'd said, more or less. So
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I wondered how much, because that's kind of, I'll wait
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to get to that in a minute. But I'll start
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: at the very beginning. So as a kid growing up
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in this area, what was it that you were sort
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: of drawn to artistically? Was it initially film or was
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it kind of everything or what were you doing as
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: a kid?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: I watched, my parents used to take me to the
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: movies probably to alleviate themselves from me just being annoying. Uh,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: so I watched, but I used to watch a lot
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: of movies, but actually my first like for a, I
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: guess into just creativity and art was through comic strips
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: like Garfield and Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes and things
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Those are all still pretty awesome.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I've come back to so many of those over like.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: They're still fantastic.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Peanuts is genius. Yeah. And Garfield all of a sudden,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: but maybe because of the new movie that I have avoided.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Chris Pratt. But anyway, I was going back and thinking
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of how many of the animated specials and the books
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: that I had, and I was just like, there's some
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: solid stuff to Garfield, man. Yeah.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: No, Garfield to me was hands down my favorite when
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I was growing up. And Calvin Hobbes, of course, is amazing.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: But I started to make my own comic books from
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: there with a friend of mine through grade school. And
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: we still have them bound and colored and drawn.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I kind of went down. I came up with at
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: least one superhero of my own making. Oh, nice. That
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: was a rip off of somebody else. You don't realize
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that as a kid, like you're just like, yeah, just
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: like he does. And then later you're like, Oh, just
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: like he did. You don't realize how much you're stealing
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: as a child.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: It's true. Yeah.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: So what was yours? Was yours more of a, like
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Sunday comic style or? Yeah.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Sunday comics, just like three or four panels. And then
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: the comics started to get a little bit longer as
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: I got older. And, uh, like seventh, eighth grade, high school.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So it is the roots of storytelling, though. You're already
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: mapping out a very specific way to tell a story. Yes.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: The roots are there.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Which was fun.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was a blast to do. I actually
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: had a really good teacher cause I started with plagiarism
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: too and stole from peanuts.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: We don't know any better. Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And she was reading one and she was like, uh,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: I think she recognized it and she was like, you
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: should make your own stuff. And I was like, Oh,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I never even thought to do that.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to think up original. Encourage your kids to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: do that. Please. Original thoughts. Yes. Yeah. So, um, I mean,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I guess then, uh, at least leading towards the movie stuff,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: what type of stuff were you watching growing up?
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Mostly horror movies and blockbusters, probably.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I'm on both of those. I've seen more blockbusters than
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I probably need.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And don't badmouth them as much as a lot of people, truthfully.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, most of them were just a good time.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: They were there to have fun. Yeah, exactly. You can
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: deconstruct them if you want, but at the end of
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: the day, while it's fun to do that with some movies,
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: sometimes it's nice to just sit down and watch Twister
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: and not think about anything.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Just don't listen to the dialogue. But the effects at
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the time were blowing your mind.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: There's a cow, for God's sake. It's amazing. Just, yeah,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: that dialogue. Poor Jean Dubas. It can be tough.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: But my mom used to show me old horror movies
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: when I was a kid. That was kind of what
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: really got me into it.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Horror is definitely, even, when I think back, again, this
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: is a long time ago, and we'll get to that later, too.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: But this was a long time ago, and I watched
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: whatever I wanted. And it was a lot of horror
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: now that I think about it. And I'm like, if
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I were parenting, I don't know that I'd be okay
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: with the kind of stuff that I watched.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: But I didn't care, so I watched a lot of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: horror movies. And it set in early, and it's still
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: one of the things I love the most now. It's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: just the whole history of horror as a whole, and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: then just the weird, almost... rules of the sub-genre itself
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: that are unwritten and yet every geek knows them so
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you have to yeah it's it's so much fun as
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: its own little like horror world yes totally well so
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: i guess at what point did you realize see i've
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: i've played this game too and i guess it's twofold
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: number one when did you realize that making movies was
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a career Because I think we don't even realize it
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: as a kid, much like the comic strips. You're just,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: this is in my life, and I watch it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: And I.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But, yeah, there's a point when you're like, oh, wait,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: somebody does this.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: That's a good question. I'm not sure. I guess I
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: was probably... When Watchmen came out, maybe. I'm a huge
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: comic book fan of Watchmen, and I think the movie
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: has an even better ending than the comic book does.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I thought that at the time. I didn't... I hadn't
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: read the graphic novel originally. And I think the first
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: time I experienced it as a whole was that movie.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: And then afterwards hearing everybody talking about it, wait, what
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: was the original?
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's functionally so much. It just is solid.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: The logic is great.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: The logic is so much better in the movie.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: As much as I now question a lot of that
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: filmmaker's decisions. A lot.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, but Watchmen was peak.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Again, it's just well done. It's, Certainly of his style,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: but story-wise, it does a pretty good job telling that story.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: It's big, and it was breaking records at the time.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: It was number one in the world for box office,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: and comic books, movies were kind of really just starting
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: to take off, I think.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: That era of them, I mean, what led to what
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they are now, basically. You had your Superman and Batman,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: but they were like little peaks, and Watchmen was kind
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of right at that beginning when they're just like, oh,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: we can kind of do it. And yeah, I think
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it's special effects kicked in.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: You look at old Spider-Man and they're just throwing ropes
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: at each other. You kind of need a level of
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: special effects to be able to do a lot of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: those superhero movies.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I think it wasn't until that era that you could, oh,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: we can.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: Do this now.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly. I think just the fact that I started
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: to pay attention to box office more. It kind of
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: showed that movies were making money and that's how you
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: could make a movie that could make money too.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So did that factor in as like, oh, not
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: only is this a possibility, but it could be a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: useful thing in the long run.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. I used to make YouTube videos with
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: my friends a lot. And as we just got more
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: and more into it, they're all unwatchable. But it was
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: fun to start putting stories together in that way that
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: were visual and editing and just trying to figure out
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: exactly how you could do something on absolutely no budget whatsoever,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: which is like a camcorder and six friends. And we
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: relied a lot on imagination, which I think is weird
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: to say. When you watch them, like I never watch
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: them back, but some of my friends will. And they'll
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: be like, oh yeah, you guys just like wanted the
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: audience to see what you were seeing. And it just
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: wasn't there on screen.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Well, that's, yeah, I mean, that's the difference. And that's
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: kind of where I knew I was wanting to go
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: because it is... sort of a gap in when I
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: go back to because I was a dumb kid from
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: this area that loved movies. And like there was a
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: time when I kind of thought that's where I wanted
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to go. And there was no road.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, your only option, if you go back, because
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: this was technically, again, a long time ago, pre-internet. So, like,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: there was no communication with the outside world.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: So, your only option was, well, chuck everything, move to LA, and, like,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: go live on an underpass.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: I guess.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And maybe you'll get lucky and not get stabbed. And you'll,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: you know, catch on and get a movie job. So,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a bad idea. And so... At
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the time, literally, like there was, I remember there was
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: me getting like out of school and being like, okay,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to do this. But the best, again,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you're like reading newspapers. I don't know if you kids
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: know what the hell those are. But reading newspapers and like, oh,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: they're shooting something here in this place off, you know,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I'd have to drive for a half hour to figure
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: out where they're even shooting that day. So there were
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like one or two like extra jobs. Those were actually
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: kind of fun. And then like the closest I ever
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: found was I literally was like over an hour drive,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I think, to do a PA job on a super
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: low budget movie. Only one person have I run into
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: on the Internet now that acknowledges like I don't think
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: it ever came out. I've never seen anything of it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: But then one day one guy was posting pictures. I
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, my God, I was on that shoot.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: What the hell is that movie? I never saw it happen.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that was the closest thing to there being anything.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And even that was such an ordeal. That was a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: weird shoot altogether. So I, after that, I really didn't
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: even see much else. And so like it all sort
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of died and so did I, and I got a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: real job and life went on. So it's like, I,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of avenues. So now I, you know,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: post by the time I started doing this, the whole
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: world has changed the, you know, the internet has been around,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: but it, also hit sort of a new level in
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the last 15 years that like, by the time YouTube hit,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, you can do whatever you want now.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Like it doesn't really matter where you live. It doesn't
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: really matter who, you know, you, can find your way
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: with you know mostly the help of the internet now.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: So it's a good excuse to be creative from.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah from your end how different an experience was it
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: because as you said you were already shooting stuff for
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: youtube before you even knew for sure that's what you
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: wanted to do so like once you got to that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: point of like okay now how do i turn this
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: into like a actual job let alone a career.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah you know i i was lucky my dad knew
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: a couple people that were in the local industry um
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: and so he introduced me to them when i was
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: in high school And there's still mentors to me, a
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: lot of them to this day that are still in
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: the game. So as I started to kind of grow
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: up and think about college and just moving on and
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: what I wanted to do, I knew some people that
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: had made films and knew how to at least get
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: on set and work on set. So that was sort
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: of how it all started. It was just kind of
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: a connection of a connection.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Definitely did not happen. yeah right the closest i found
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: again this was me trying to find things back then
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and there was nothing i was thinking today i was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like there was somebody that my mom knew that she
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: got his number that he worked in lighting in this
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: area yeah back then when we didn't shoot anything right
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: so it was like again he had a probably a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: handful of jobs the whole year and like eventually i
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: got his number and called him and his um his
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: advice to me he's like oh you're out of school
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Go back to school. Get yourself a real job. Essentially,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he told me. So I'm like, thanks.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: There's my mentorship.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: Thanks, guys.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So again, it's so different when there wasn't. Because I
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: wonder that far back, I was thinking, I was like,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: is it just because he didn't want anybody else in
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the industry really? We're the only ones doing this job.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Don't start doing it. You're not taking jobs from me.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I only get four a year.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Now that the incentives here, there's a lot of, there's
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of movies that shoot here.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's amazing in the last even 10 years,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: how much that's like tenfold. 100%.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: It is crazy. So, but yeah, so I mean, you, you,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: it is so different now that like, there's so much
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: stuff that everybody kind of knows somebody shooting something. That's true.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: That you can almost find, again, not tons of big
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: budget stuff in the area, but sometimes there are like,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you never know. Yeah. But yeah, it's amazing how much
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that's changed just in the last 10 years.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. Was there one specific one that
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: sort of got the ball rolling in that department?
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Stu Pollard, for sure. He was actually, he's the guy
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: who runs Flyover Film Festival.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I'm familiar with him, but you should probably tell other people.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a producer and a filmmaker. He's directed a
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: number of movies himself. He's produced even more. Uh, he
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: was in LA for a long time and right after
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I graduated high school, I actually drove out there with
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: a friend and he kind of toured USC for us
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: and showed us everything that was out there. He was
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: always kind of easy to talk to and broach subjects
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: with whenever I was working on my first scripts or
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I don't, maybe not professional movies, but at least short
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: films that we wanted to take more seriously.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Um, and he was always very helpful doing that, but he,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: he's been a really great guy to know, um, in
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: and around town. and through really my entire filmmaking career,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: which has been nice.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we've built a little network again in
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: that last 10 or 15 years when it started becoming
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a different thing. Yeah. They have sort of crafted it
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: into what it has become now too. Cause I feel
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: like if you would have ignored it, like it wouldn't
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: necessarily be the way it is, especially before they pushed
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: for the tax cuts and benefits and all of that.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like that's definitely been a bonus, but,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: but just creating a little community has been, I think,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a big help for everybody that is involved.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I know that recently, nowadays he's been in
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Kentucky more and more trying to do more for the
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: film community here. And he has some, he has some
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: great people around him too.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You can at least do stuff now. Cause I know again,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: one of the ones years ago we had, we had
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: a guy on that I've known for years and he
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: actually worked. He's the only person, but it was years
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: after I, I even thought it was an option. He
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: worked as a set dresser, but he lived here. And
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: every six or eight weeks, he'd drive back out or
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: fly out to LA and get his jobs and get
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: enough to keep insurance going and get him enough money
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to get through till the next time. Yeah. So he
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: lived here, but like every job he had, he went
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to LA for because- Even when they started to get
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: projects here, they didn't pay anything compared.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: To what he was about.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Because he was working on studio movies in LA. So
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: he was making real money.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, different world.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, when you're working on major studio, he would
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: get a quote from somebody here and be like, I
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: can't even. Compared to what I'm doing, I can't do that. Right.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's slowly starting to change too. But yeah,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: even for a while, you had to even go to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: LA to even have a. Sort of a part-time career
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: doing anything.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: So as far as, I mean, from the beginning, you
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: were already writing and starting with short films. Was that,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: did you plan on writing or directing or was it
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: always both?
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Writing has always been what I've been most interested in. Directing,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: at least for YouTube and my friends, was just like
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: sort of a means to an end to get something made.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: I didn't even really think of it as directing. We
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: were just kind of pointing at the camera.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You stand up there and stop talking and wait until
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I tell you.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And most of the time, you know, sometimes they would,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: sometimes they wouldn't. And sometimes that stuff was better than
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: when you were trying to actually direct them. But then
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: when I got into, I went to school in Xavier
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: in Ohio for a year and then I got into
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: NYU for film school. And I went, I moved up
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: to New York and that was when Really, I got
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: like the true crash course in how movies are put together.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: And from there, it was like writing and producing was
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: what I was always doing.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So even from then, producing also seemed like something that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: was really interesting.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: It was kind of a mean soon in there because
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: a lot like I was a second year as my
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: first year. So a lot of the filmmakers there had
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: sort of already made their groups of clicks and they
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: were making stuff together. But no one wanted to produce
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: anyone's things. They just wanted to either write, direct or DP.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: And that was pretty much it. And since there weren't
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: really producers, the easiest way to infiltrate other filmmakers was
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: just to produce their short films for class.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: You need a guy.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I am a guy. Let's do this.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: And that was kind of it. It just snowballed from there.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah. So as far as writing, what do you find?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know kind of just based on what
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you've discussed, what you're drawn to, what is sort of
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the most challenging part of writing? taking on a new
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: idea for you.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Um it's mostly outlining i think outlining is what i
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: spend once i actually start writing i always write an
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: outline first and that's what takes the longest because it's
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: more it's more prose than it is like writing a
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: screenplay where screenplay is just bullet points of things that
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: hopefully happen on screen uh so really you get the
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: kernel of an idea whatever it may be and then
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: you just start to really just hammer out the beats
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: and write it in a creative way that isn't yet
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: a screenplay to.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: The point of note cards idea. I know that's sort
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of the easy version of that for some people, but
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: not everyone.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: I do the eight sequence breakdown, which I have found
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: to be incredibly helpful, which I was taught in school.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: And it's basically, you just break up the acts into
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: a certain number of, into eight sequences. And from there
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: you have sort of like you establish the world, you
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: lock in the predicament, which starts the story. And then
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: you sort of have your first obstacle and, The midpoint,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: which normally parallels the end of the film. You have
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: a subplot. The ultimate climax, which leads to the third act.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: And then you have a twist, and then the actual
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: conclusion of the movie.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's just that easy, folks. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: It takes some time, but I find it to be
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: a great way to break it down. eight sequence structure
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: that is.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Important so is there do you find in doing because
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: now you're doing at least three different between directing writing
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: producing is there a different skill set that you need
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: for each one or do you just kind of approach
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: them all as this is what i need to get.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Done um i think the producing mindset helps with the
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: other two But I will say since Shift, the movie
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: that was in flyover, that was the first feature that
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: I directed. And I hadn't directed a short in a
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: very long time. Writing sort of comes most natural to
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: me where it's just like, oh, this is the story.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: Let's try to hammer it out and get it to
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: where we want it to be. Producing is one of
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: the most practical mindsets I think you just need to have.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: And you're just like, okay, what do we actually need
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: now to put a script together?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: What do I have to get done?
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's check all these boxes and just make sure
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: that we can actually get out there and shoot what
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: we need to shoot. And directing is the most difficult.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of empathy for directors now where
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: I'm on set with them.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Because you are just, everyone's asking you questions and you
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: don't always know what the answer to it is going
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: to be, but you are, you know, the creative director
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: behind the movie.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: So people have to rely on you to a certain
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: extent to be able to say, you know, we want
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: the camera to move this way or that way. And
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: then you also need to be able to rely on
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: your department heads to kind of pick up the slack
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: creatively where you maybe are not the strongest, whether it
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: be Blinn's choice or... Should it be daytime or nighttime?
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like just like random things like that.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: And it can be overwhelming.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: It becomes when you're a more effective director is knowing
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: when to hand stuff off to people that you know
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: it better.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: And I think a good producer is a great delegator.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: And they know when they need to step in and
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: handle something. But if you let your departments do their job,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: most people are good at their job. That's why you
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: hire them to be in the position. And they will
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: do the right thing. Sometimes there are issues that come
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: up that you need to handle. but it's so practical
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: in that way. And with directing, it's more, you've been
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: handed the tools and you just have to find the
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: right way to use them to kind of put the
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: movie together.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Well, and I always say this with bigger directors, at
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the point, you know, still working in indie film, I
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: think looking at that you get so much more creative
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: work out of people that are working with limited resources.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Of course, yeah.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: So you see somebody who's got a billion dollars to
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: work with and like, it's just like, There's no, nobody
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: tells them no. And there are no no's because you
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: can technically fix whatever you want. Yeah. Even after the
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: fact to some extent. But like when you have no
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: budget and it's like you see some of the most
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: creative work and I'm just like, it's amazing that like.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: it almost works in reverse. Like when you should have
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: all this stuff at your disposal, it doesn't matter because
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: then you're old and lazy and you just make crap.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: But not always. There's some people still challenging themselves. But
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's like you look back at those early works
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: just when they were hungry and they were just like,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the stuff that they make is so impressive. And yeah,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I feel like you get so much more out of
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a situation that you're sort of working with boundaries.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: And yeah, it's sort of tragic that the even I
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: think a lot of filmmakers today, a lot of people
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: that I see, they try to make these really polished
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: a 24 looking movies and the, like the rough early
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: type of cinema is so much fun to watch from
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: the seventies and the eighties and the sixties. Like those
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: movies are unbelievable.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So creative. Yeah. That's, we were just one of the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: episodes where we discussed a movie. We were talking about Alice,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: sweet Alice. There's that there. And I was going into it.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I was like, there's that shot where it's like, they,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: they're throwing a dummy out of a window and like,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: they're looking at it going, this looks like a dummy
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: falling out of a window. So they find a way
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: to get just enough of it that you see it falling,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: cut away.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: They're like, if you see it hit the ground, it's
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: going to look terrible. So there's a mirror laying on
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the ground. They're shooting the reflection into the mirror of
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the dummy falling so you can barely see it. The actor,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: as it hits, they add in the noise after the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: fact and he throws himself into frame and it's actually him,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: not a dummy. I was just like, that is the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: most impressive scenario. Oh, and it's because everything looked like crap.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Otherwise it's like they found the best way because it
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: was the only way that it didn't look terrible.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: And yet it's, and it looks, and it's awesome because
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: of it. It's so visceral. And you're like, Oh man,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: that really happened.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You don't question it. It was like, Oh, she
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: just threw that dude out a window. And like, had
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: they shot it the way that anybody, I mean, at
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: this point they just pay a million dollars or, stuntman
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: to go do it and you do like oh that's
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: not a dummy at all hope that guy didn't die.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: I'll read about in deadline tomorrow but the.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's like there is something to just being creative
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: because it's the only way it's gonna work.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So it's true yeah which is fun i mean and
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: something to be said about editing i think editing is
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: the best process of filmmaking yeah people i know so
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: many people that loathe it but like that's where you
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: make the movie when it comes to sound and color
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: and how you're creatively fixing the stuff that does look
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: bad and is not working, and you try to make
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: it as good as possible, that's where you actually make
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: the movie at the.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: End of the day.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're shooting just the raw materials. So if
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: you put it out like that, it's a big old mess.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: You're just going to see the same scene over and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: over and over again.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: The fine-tuning is the editing. So, yeah, it makes a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: huge difference. So much fun. So as we're, I guess,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: heading towards shift, I guess we can't, in our earlier influences...
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: You didn't mention Hitchcock, but I'm assuming it's in there. Oh,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: I'm a big Hitchcock fan. Rear Window, especially, if you
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: ever see Shift, it's the movie. It's a take on
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Rear Window.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I love Hitchcock in general. I'm trying to
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: work my way. He's in so many movies. Oh, my gosh.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: But there's those handful that I still will go back to,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and maybe the most is Rear Window. I mean, everybody
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: loves Vertigo, and Psycho is a masterpiece, but I can't.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: keep going back to rear window. And I I've gone
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: back and seen in the theater and like, it's just
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: such an amazing undertaking and like this whole concept that
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: he came up with. And I was thinking it's funny
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: at looking towards what you end up doing because I've
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: seen other people try to do a version of this. Yeah.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And I've said this before too. I was like, it's, it's,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: there's only a handful of movies that just the movie
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and its own title are becomes a description of a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: sub sub genre right it's like to this day you
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: have to give credit for die hard because everything that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: came after it was die hard on a boat die
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: hard in a ski resort you know like everything became
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: where can we take this idea and cram it into
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: a new setting and call it another movie yep and
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: rear window is one of those it's a handful of
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: things that are like that but there's so many people
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that are like okay we'll find a way to make
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: sure our person is in this spot and they're stuck here.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, we're going to have a little
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: voyeurism kick in and they might want to watch this.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's interesting how much that concept as a
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: whole is just sort of fascinated people enough that everybody
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: wants to come back to.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Well, like, I mean, not to sound so pretentious, but
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: voyeurism is basically what filmmaking is. Like it's just exactly that.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: You're just watching people do stuff and like people do
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: it now all the time with TV shows and everything. So,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: There's a reason that watching someone watch something is that interesting.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: And even when you get on TikTok or YouTube and
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: people have unboxing videos or you're watching streamers and stuff,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: it's similar to watching sports in a lot of ways
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: where you're just watching other people do something that you
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: like to do. It's such a weird, I don't know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: cyclical concept that I think is a lot of fun.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I think it's the end of days.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I think it's hilarious. It just makes perfect sense to
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: me that you would want to watch somebody do that.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not a gamer. I worked with a guy that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Every minute of the day, if he was still, his
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: phone was, it was like on a holster. It would
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: be out, and he's watching somebody play a video game. Yeah.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: People love that.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: They do.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: And I just, I sat there just in disbelief. I
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: was like, wait. It's one thing if you want to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: play a game, but to watch somebody, and like, it's
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a mess. It's huge. Twitch makes a fortune.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, I'm alone, I guess, because I
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: don't get it, but... More power to you.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: I'm a big Magic the Gathering fan, and I still
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: play in person with my buddies quite often. And I
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: watch YouTube videos of people playing Magic all the time
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: because it's just like it's a hobby. It's fun to
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: watch people do, and it's a good time.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: That's so crazy. Well, it's just weird, and it shows
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like even when we think we've got it down as
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to what the quote-unquote entertainment industry is, like it'll take
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a hard left. And like you couldn't have seen these
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: things coming. 20 years ago, you would have explained to
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: somebody what people are into now. They wouldn't even know
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: what the hell you're doing. It's so out of concept
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: of what you could even do, let alone make a
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: career out of it. There are people that just have
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: channels that do just that and make a fortune off
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: It's awesome.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: I think it's great. I think it's amazing.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I support it. I don't get it most of the time.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I like dorks talking about stuff videos. I watch those.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: But again, that's what I do. So that doesn't surprise me.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: It's the weirder ones for me. And I'm just like, wait,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you're doing what? Right. Unboxing a Barbie. I mean, okay.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: That's too part of the reason to get back to
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Hitchcock that he is such an interesting filmmaker because like
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: some of his movies might seem dated now, but it's
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: because people have twisted them and twisted them to death.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Like Psycho is one of the first movies that has
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: like a true character switch where there's, you think someone's
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: the main character and then it turns out that there's
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: a completely different main character.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: That you're going to follow. Another one of those that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: they constantly do. Like in that, in Alice Sweet Alice,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: they like, They're referring to the dad as the Janet
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Leigh of the movie. Yeah. Because he's midway in, spoilers,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: but midway in, it changes direction all of a sudden.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I guess we're not following that anymore.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Goodbye, new friends.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So yeah, even that basic idea has now been taken
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: in play. So maybe, I don't know, there's a handful
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: of directors that get that done with them but maybe
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: hitchcock the most just because he also yeah became so
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: well known he was the most back in the day
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: you're like most people couldn't have named a film director
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: except hitchcock probably right yeah So it's like even now
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you're hard pressed to find somebody that doesn't say, oh, Spielberg. Like,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: so most people don't know directors in regular life anyway.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But like Hitchcock was so mainstream, they gave him his
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: own TV show that he didn't direct. He just showed
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: up every week and was like, I got to say what?
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: He's such an interesting guy. I mean, even Vertigo is
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: like almost a supernatural movie for a while. Like, I
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: think there might be a ghost, which is amazing.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I question it. still i've seen it so many times
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: i'm just like oh this part's pretty spooky i don't
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: know it is one of those again while we're on
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: hitchcock it is funny because for something that he's always
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: sort of adjacent to horror yeah but it's like it's
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: he never really did supernatural no he never everything was
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: always real people murdering people or just somebody trying to
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: get money and like it's always some sort of real
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: world thing He still shoots it very other way. Again,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I'm a huge Rebecca fan. Even he doesn't like Rebecca.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: But I like, it's so at moments super, yeah, I agree.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's a masterpiece. But even he was so
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: busy fighting with producers, he didn't like it. But yeah,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, that has so many elements that are like, Okay.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure she's a ghost. Like she's just right
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: there in the room with you.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I always forget too, how funny Hitchcock movies are, especially
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: rear window. Like rear window is a riot through that
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: entire watch. Like it's funny the entire time. And he
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: has that great quote where someone was like, when are
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: you going to direct a comedy? Cause comedies were so big.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: And he said, all my movies are comedies. And like,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: I think that is one of the greatest filmmaker quotes
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: of all time, because I try to instill that in
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that I work on, where if
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: you aren't making people laugh to a certain extent, There's
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: almost no reason to be watching the movie. Like it
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: can be sad and heavy, but you should also be
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: having a good time while all that's going on.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: It's yeah. I mean, anything that takes itself so seriously,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: like after a while is grueling. Yeah. Like, so I mean,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: and I feel like it makes the drama part of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it hit harder. Like if you're enjoying yourself with this character. Yep.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: you're going to be concerned that they're about to die later.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Whereas you're just like, oh, this pain in the ass.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: Finally.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Sweet relief. Can we kill him quickly?
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Get this over with.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: I love that about movies when you can start to
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: care for someone so much because they're just fun to watch.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: And then the rug's kind of pulled out from under
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: you and you're put into a completely different situation. Like
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: regular people in an elevated filmic situation is a hilarious
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: concept to me. And it's just this like, I think
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: what so many people imagine their lives are all the time,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: that it's just when you do see a really good
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: movie where that is happening, it's so much fun to watch.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Lifeboat. Yeah, right. That's another one. I've seen them bastardize
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: that idea like 10 times.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Over the years.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: We're going to put them all in here. That's like
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: even the one that became, they give credit for Rio
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Bravo for containing everyone so that we can rip it
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: off and be like, oh, it's like Night of the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Living Dead, or it's like Assault on Precinct 13, but
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: it's like Lifeboat's doing that in a really small spot.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: So it's still like that idea just keeps getting used
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: over and over again.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: So how daunting is it to take on something like
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: that for yourself when you're coming up with this concept?
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was harder when we were really getting started
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: than it was... Getting into Shift and writing the script
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: was fun, and since screenwriting to me is the most
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: fun part, and I enjoy doing it, it's not something
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: that I think is laborious and hard to get through.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: A day on set can be very difficult. So once
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: we had the script, it was mostly finding the players,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: like our director of photography and our production designer, producers, actors,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: all that stuff. That was when it really gets to
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: be difficult, and it's hard to wrap your head around
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: how many people... really work on a movie to make
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: even as simple of a concept of shift, which is
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: it all takes place in one room for the most part.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: And there's these monitors that are playing outside of the
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: room where you're kind of getting the story, but even
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: just designing the room itself and the monitors was a
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: daunting task with a lot of that. We needed a
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: lot of creative people to do. And I had produced
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: a couple of movies before that. So I, I already
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: knew kind of top-down what I was doing, but once
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: you get into the director's chair, you have to start
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: relying on a lot of people to do stuff.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Definitely where I was going to end up. So I
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: guess we certainly won't go into spoiler territory, but I
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: guess to give people the basic idea of instead of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: looking out in your back patio area, instead what if
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: you worked at a storage facility, which I have a
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: storage unit because I'm a hoarder. And I've spent a
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: lot of time with those and they're like kind of fascinating.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: They're weird little places.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Like I, after a while, there was one time when
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I was just moving and I had stuff going there
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and I spent so much time there and it was
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: kind of soothing because usually everybody's gone. So it is
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: interesting once you get into this movie because usually it's
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: just you and occasionally some other weirdo will walk by.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: But for the most part, it's just you and it's
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: quiet and there's hallways and everything's locked. So it's just
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: you in a hallway.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Lights are turning on and off.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Whatever weird stuff you're putting in there. And then you
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: close it and lock it. So God forbid nobody sees
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: whatever you've got in there. It's a weird scenario. So
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: once it was thrown out that that was out, I
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'm kind of on board already.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Because I'm fascinated by these little weird worlds anyway.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're so strange. A buddy of mine actually, he
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: broached the subject with me initially. And we would just
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: go to storage facilities and sneak in. And just like
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: walk up and down the hallways. And they're all the
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: same for the most part, but like they're weird places.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: And you get turned around in them and you're lost
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: to a certain extent. It's a little maze, but they're
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: spooky spots.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: You get to pick your color palette. Yes. The line
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that has an orange theme.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: But I've seen the other one that moved in down
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the streets all green.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Some have red. There's just strange, strange places.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: So then that's the other, again, even watching, and this
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: may be a credit to you. Even watching it, I'm like,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: because then the idea is he's in front of the
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: monitors all day, so that's our window out into the world,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: only we're watching everything that's going on through these monitors.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: So watching the movie, I'm sort of caught up in that,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and it's a fascinating old thing. Once again, you're watching
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: somebody else watching the thing, so the voyeurism in layers.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: And I'm just watching it immersed in what's going on
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: on screen. It's only afterward, when you started talking about it,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh God, you had to shoot all
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the things on the screens that he's watching, and on
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: top of that, have them playing as he's watching in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the right order, in the right time. It's overwhelming. So
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I guess, again, we've given at least the basic setup
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of it, but I guess you can elaborate on how
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: ridiculous a process that had to be.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a whole song and dance. And I
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: owe so much to our director of photography, Robert Altman.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: It's Robert Altman's son, Bobby Altman. Yeah, it was wild.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: He is a great guy and he read the script.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: He liked the script and was getting into kind of
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: the indie world when he was coming from the TV
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: world for most of his career. So he was like,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: let's put this weird movie together. And he introduced us
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: to our co-producer, this guy named Ben Betts, who did
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of the old Star Trek stuff and messed
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: around with a lot of monitors. And when we showed
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: him the script, he was like, I think we can
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: do this. And it's set in the 90s, so everything
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: had to be a little dated. And he was like,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: I actually have a warehouse of all these monitors. And
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: he sort of pitched to us how we would do it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Because when we started to really think about it creatively
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: outside of it just being a script, it was like, oh, God.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: It's overwhelming.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were like, oh, God, we actually have to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: shoot what happens on the monitors. Like, we can't just
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: use our imagination and pretend that that's what's happening. So
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: we actually had a couple test days in an actual
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: storage unit facility, which became our hero location, where... we
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: just shot people walking up and down hallways and then
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: we were cutting it together. And there was a flicker
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: issue too, where these old monitors weren't matching with the
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: frame rate of our camera and it hurt your eyes
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: to watch them. And the whole movie takes place on these.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: And that weird thing of trying to shoot a TV
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: gets messed up. So you've got to find the way
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: to make that possible. Yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: And Ben had this, this device. I don't remember what
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: it was exactly, but it basically changed the frame rate.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: We would send in the footage from our camera and,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: through this little box and then through the box it
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: would change the frame rate of everything we shot it
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: in and out the tv would come at 24 frames
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: per second so that when we were looking at it
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: it was like it was it equalized and it looked
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: like you were just looking at a regular tv screen
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: so that was the initial oh this is madness like
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: this is crazy and then there are nine monitors and
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: the script there were 12 and we decided that this
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: is too much let's cut three of them out of
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: there So we cut it down to nine and we
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: had to shoot them three at a time because we
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: shot the monitor footage on A7Ss and then our actual
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: cinema camera was an ARRI Mini. And so then we
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: would shoot three at a time. There's the lobby that
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: they enter in, which was disconnected from monitors two and three.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: So the actors would walk in the lobby and they
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: would run upstairs and then they would walk through two
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: and three. And then another day we shot Four, five, six.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: And they would walk through that. And there was a
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: little puddle on monitor five that gets bigger as the
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: movie progresses.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: It's never really explained, is it?
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: It's leaking. It's a thing. It's happening in this terrible place.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: And our art team was like, why? I was directing
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: a puddle for a day of the movie. And they
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: were like, I don't want to make the puddle bigger.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: And I was like, I swear it'll play. like we
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: just have to get.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Through it it's sad i was concerned i was like
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: that's gonna get in somebody's life exactly yeah it's a
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: big deal they're just walking right over it i'm like
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: it's amazing how you guys should be worried about this puddle.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah hal tries to tell tom get rid of the
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: puddle and then uh we had and then the final
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: day we shot seven eight nine which are the final
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: three monitors and like and then we had to edit
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: all that footage together over a day when we did
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: a pre light day. And then when we actually got
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: into our set build where the room itself is, um,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: I think most of the crew by that point had
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: no concept of what we were making because we were shooting.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Which is for the best. Cause they wouldn't have showed up.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: We were shooting dis like dis not continuous order, moving
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: people around, changing so much wardrobe with no sound. So
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: like we weren't, we, we put in sound later in
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: post-production to make the world feel a little bit bigger.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: And they were like, Oh my God, what is this
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: ridiculous indie film that we're working on? And then when
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: we hit play the first time and we called action
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: monitor and we tracked this movement, you could feel the whole,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: you know, to use a pun, shift in the crew
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: that was like, oh, like we see what this is.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: This is a real thing.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right. There was a method to the madness. And
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: it was really gratifying to get to that point because
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: it was complicated. And the effect turned out well. I
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: don't think people questioned it at all. They're like, oh,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: this is what's happening. And the song and dance of
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: it can be lost. So thank you for asking the
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: question because we were like, We were like, oh, my God,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: this was so complicated. And we do pull it off,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: I think, in a pretty interesting way that when after
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: the fact, when I'm talking to people after screenings or
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: when I was showing early cuts to people, they were like, oh,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: it was cool that you just like continuously did all that.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: And people were actually walking through the monitors. They were a.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Week before we shot that.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Um yeah it was it was a lot it was
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: a lot of monitor footage and i mean it was
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: it was an interesting production process.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I mean the only thing more complicated can you see
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: trying to build a set where they would actually leave
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and go through the monitors in.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: The right order oh man we huge would that have
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: to be oh we just have to loop and run
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: back yeah we discussed it and it it was we
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: we just couldn't figure it out logistically didn't make we
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: didn't have enough money or time to like really break
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: that down So we decided to make it as hard
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: on ourselves as we possibly could.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Well, and the part that was the most, like, again,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: not even, like, it worked in the movie, but I'm
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: in real world going, okay, these don't even go in
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: order as you're watching. Like, it bounces back from one
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to the next. I'm just like, that makes it so much,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: but realistic, because I'm like, you can't imagine in that Again,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: it's a rundown place, so it's not like they put
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: this in as a state-of-the-art thing. They've gone out, they've
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: replaced them, this camera doesn't work. So it would be
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: this big hodgepodge of nonsense and electronics, and it would
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: be just like that. So I was like, oh, points
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: for being so accurate, but it's even more maddening on
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: your end. It doesn't even go in order from one
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: screen to the next. Insanity.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Amazing that that even happened at all, let alone... Works
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: as well as it does, and it does. Yeah, thank you.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was definitely always the baby of the movie,
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: where it was like, the movie, the story itself is.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: It's a pretty straightforward movie at the end of the day,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: but the monitors were like, oh, this is what makes
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: it a more unique viewing experience through it. And obviously,
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: Rear Window being the inspiration, it was like, how can
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: we make it feel as seamless as it possibly can?
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: It doesn't tell you where it's going either, which I
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: kind of liked, because... even like probably two thirds of
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: the way in, I'm like, this could take a really
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: different turn that you just don't know. Like there's several
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: options that could be happening here and you just don't
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: know what's coming. And it's so rare that you still
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: find that like in something that, especially you're taking from
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: something that everybody knows so well, but it's still left
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: in such a specific undisclosed way that like you've got
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: them sort of on the line for so long of like, okay,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: we're watching something. what are we going to end up
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: with here? Like what, what could happen once we get
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: to the end of this maze?
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Literally.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, in one room, we definitely tried to
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: find the best way to string people along for as
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: long as we could. And it was, it's really just art.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: It's similar to a play where characters show up, but
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: they don't always show up together. So there's, there's a
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: very small cast of characters that really kind of impact
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: directly impact the story at least. And they interact with
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: our lead separately to one another. So you never really
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: get a sense of how they know each other.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: And it turned out to be effective, I think, at
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: least from an audience perspective, because they can try to
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: deduce what's happening, but they don't necessarily have all the
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: context they need.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: You don't really, yeah. You don't know where it's going. Well,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: while we're on the lead, how did we get to Connor? Because...
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: It's impressive. What he's doing is impressive.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: So Connor McGill is a legend. He's a close friend
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: of mine. When I moved to Los Angeles, and after
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: a couple years of being there, he moved in with
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: another friend of ours. And then Connor and I ended
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: up becoming way closer than that other friend that we knew.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: And as I started to work on the script, Connor
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: is this guy who basically just rises to the occasion.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: And we've been in situations where we've both been kind
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: of fish out of water or we're not necessarily comfortable
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: with the people that we're around, but we know that
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: we have to interact with them and be human beings.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: That's tough right there.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: It's true.
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: And Connor is really great at rising to the occasion
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: in social situations. And he's a filmmaker in his own right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: He was just on The Accountant 2. I think I'm
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: allowed to say that. And he works on some bigger
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: movies in the production office. And I just asked him,
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: I was like, hey, if I write this movie for you,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: would you star in it? And he was like, yeah,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: because I knew that he would essentially rise to the occasion.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: I knew he could do it.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: But not really an actor previously?
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Not at all. His parents are thespians. They're on the stage.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: But he had never really acted himself. More of a writer,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: more of a director. And he said he would do
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: it if he liked the script. So I wrote the
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: script and he was into the script. He was like,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: I think this would be a blast. And then when
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: it started to become more real, we had a little
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: bit of financing. We knew we were going to actually
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: shoot the movie. It wasn't just going to be a
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: dream of ours.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, damn.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Now we have to really do this. Yeah.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: And then everything became hard. We had a couple of
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: casting directors who were great and helped us find a
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: lot of our supporting characters. But they thought we could
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: get more of a name for Tom, the character. And
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: so I talked to Connor, and he was like, I'll
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: just become a producer on the movie, and we'll find
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: a better lead.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Which is also, like, not only a good friend, but, like,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: looking out for the best interest of the movie. Exactly, yeah.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Taking the ego out of it.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: It was, yeah.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Pretty impressive.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: So Connor McGill and then G. Gonzalez, who was a
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: producer from the beginning all the way to the end,
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: he's delivering the movie for distribution now. Him and Connor
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: basically started to put the movie together behind the scenes.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: And we ended up casting this other young actor who
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: had been in a couple things, but was kind of
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: more on the rise than he was an actual name.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: And he was a great actor. We were excited to
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: work with him. I think the movie, Connor has a
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: little bit of a goofier disposition to Tom, which is
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: how it's written. And the other guy that we replaced
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: him with had a more serious disposition.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: And the movie would have been, I think, very different
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: at the end of it.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: This is your Eric Stoltz in your Back to the Future.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: This is not going to work at all.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: And so we go all the way up. We go
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: through all of pre-production. I land on set in our
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: storage facility place. Day one, I get out of my car,
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: shut my trunk. I'll never forget it. And I get
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: a call from our actor. And he's like, hey, man.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: And he went to Peru for a wedding. And this
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: was like kind of towards the tail end of the
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: last big kind of COVID push. And he was like, hey,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: I got COVID at the wedding. Do you think we
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: can push production? And we have no money. And we're like, no,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: like everyone's here working. We can't like lose the day.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: We're on the clock now.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: So I'm like, you have to call the producers. I
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: don't really know what we're going to do. And I
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: run over to Connor, who's on the phone with the actor.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: And he's like, hey, yeah, I understand that you have COVID.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: We'll figure it out, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, hey, Connor.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: And Connor puts him on mute. I'm like, do you
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: want to star in this movie again? And Connor was like, absolutely.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: And I was like, great, go get in wardrobe. And
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: he unmuted himself and he was like, hey, you got
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: to call G. I've got to go do something else.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: I hung up the phone.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Try not to die. See you later, bye.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: And then we had a hotel down the street where
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: we were shuttling our actors when they had to do
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: costume changes and everything. And so he just got in
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: a wardrobe and... He became the lead, and he does great.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think he's a great part of the movie.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: I think he's fantastic.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what kind of prep work
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: he would need to do, really, to be that guy.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Because I'm assuming he's not far from that guy.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's more put together than Tom is, for sure.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Tom is definitely sort of a loose cannon when it
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: comes to some stuff. But I did, I mean, I
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: based it to an extent. You base everyone, I think
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: every character, to an extent on people you've interacted with.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: And since I was writing it for Connor, there was
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: a little bit of like a lilt, and it was
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: there for him to play around with. But they're definitely
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: not the same person. I can't stress it enough. You'd
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: hate me if I said that they were.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Well, again, from the good end, he's so likable as
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: a character, so points to him. But that's sort of
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: what sells so much of this character. It's like, again,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: if you didn't care about him, you'd be like, Who cares?
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Go get stabbed in an alley somewhere behind the place.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Whatever's out back that door.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be happening.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Could be happening. But yeah, once you get into this
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: and he's just such a dork that you love him.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, well, now I don't want this
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: guy to die. What's going to happen now? So he's
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: super likable, which helps it.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, he did a great job. I mean, we had
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: a lot of fun working on it together. And especially
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: the first... We shot some of the more difficult scenes
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: earlier on. And he... was playing it a little more serious.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: And eventually I was just like, you just like be
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: yourself and to be a little goofier play around with
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: it like there's a great one of my favorite lines
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: in the movie that never gets a big laugh but
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: I think it's very funny is when he's interacting with
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: one of the characters and she's like you're not gonna
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: tell him what's going on are you and he's like
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: your son because there's this whole thing and just his
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: disconnect of like what's actually happening Is great, and that's
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: sort of what Tom is at the end of the day. Like,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: he doesn't have the context of the whole situation either.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: He's just trying to figure it out.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: It is fun. He's at least a beat behind of
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: what she's got the whole thing going. He's just like, wait, what? Yeah, right.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that makes such a difference that he's there
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to sort of take you on that journey, and you
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: want to go because he's such a likable character. Mm-hmm.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So that, I think, is a huge plus, too, is
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: just trying to find somebody to build your movie around.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: It's funny that day of, you ended up with him again.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Day one, yeah. All signs pointed to Tom. Or to Connor,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: for sure.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: It was good.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: And then I guess Sean O'Brien is kind of essential.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, as the character, at least.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: He's a weird dynamic, too, because he's almost... I think
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I did work with that guy one time.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: He's in everything.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: But just know the character too. It's like the guy
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: he's playing, I'm like, I think I worked with somebody
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: that was almost that guy.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: It's true, yeah.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: He plays it pretty realistically as just your random dude
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: working a job.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Yep, exactly.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: He's got that now.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: He was a lot of fun to work with. I
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: worked with him on another short film that we're in
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: post on now, but Sean and I have become pretty
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: close after the fact. He was a great addition. Whenever
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: he Whenever our producer G found him, it was kind
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: of like, okay, this guy's definitely Hal, and he's what
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: we need.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I guess most of the other details I don't want
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: to go into to ruin anything. The other aspect that
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: even watching it did occur to me, and then I
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: was like, well, from your end of it, I wanted
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: to see how difficult this was. There's a good amount
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: of music in it. From the business end of it,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: how much of an ordeal is it to get everything
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: and clear everything and make sure this works and yeah
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: afford everything more than anything these.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: Days we we knew yeah we knew that we wanted
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: it to be at least there's some needle drops throughout
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: and as we were in the editing process we kind
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: of it kind of ballooned and we started to do
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: more and more and our composer is also uh crystal
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: grooms mangano is her name she uh also does a
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: lot of music licensing so we would reach out to
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: her and we'd be like hey we want to use
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: the song in this scene can you help us clear
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: it and she'd be like yeah that's fine, and would
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: roll her eyes because we just kept asking her for
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: these ridiculous songs to be added.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Some of them were very recognizable, so I was like,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: that could get pricey.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they were expensive to an extent, but we
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: were prepared for some of it, and some of it
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: we weren't, and some songs we just couldn't get. It
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: was a lot of just moving music around until we
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: found stuff that fit, and the soundtrack ended up becoming
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: kind of vital to the movie, I think, to a
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: certain extent. It helps contextualize some things, and some songs
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: come back as like actual story rather than just being
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: kind of a song in the film to make it
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: sound cool and get people into it. Um, but it
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: was a lot of just, it was a song and dance,
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: like a lot of it where we were like, we
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: let's use this song. And then like rainy days and
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Mondays was in there before the mamas and the papas
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: was in there with their song Monday, Monday and like
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: rainy days and Mondays from the carpenters killed it. And
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: we loved it being in there, but the carpenters, uh,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: whoever owns them, Sony or whoever doesn't license their music anymore.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: They just don't let it happen.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: It's been a thing for a long time now because
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I know that killed that superstar movie.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Because I had a copy of that.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Even though it didn't ever get released because of that
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: very reason.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I think the brother was still around at that point.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: It was so long ago. But yeah, somewhere there's a
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: VHS I have of Superstar.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: That is amazing. It is a great... Because it's so
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: hard to find. It pops up on YouTube.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: It's so... Well, it's so... Like, they just were all in. Like,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: it's such a ridiculous concept. If you don't know, they
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: built an entire movie out of Barbies. Yep. Sets, props,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: like everything. It is a full-fledged movie. With Barbies.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: And that director's big time now. He does a lot
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: of big stuff.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: It's an impressive feat. So yeah, I was most impressed
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: with that. And then I think that's the reason I
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: heard about it. It's like, oh yeah, and he's not
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: going to let that happen.
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: Nope.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: He's totally killing the music options.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Prince also doesn't let any of his music or cover
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: be licensed for the most part.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I know he was always super hardcore. I feel like
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: it lacks the little when they ever took over Paisley Park.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Because he also hated YouTube.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: And I noticed you could not find anything. I swear,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: like a week after he was gone, I could find
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: whatever he ever... There's all kinds of weird bootlegs out there.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: And I was like, so obviously all he has to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: do is die. You guys will let whatever happen. So
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's happy about that now. But I
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: don't know about licensing.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: He's spinning. I mean, we tried to license a cover,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: a Bengals cover of one of his songs. And they
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: said no. It was because of the Prince Estate.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Other than Manic Monday.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: Uh it was i think it was manic okay but he.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Wrote that i think so i was like that's third
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: yeah there was so many that other people covered that
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: he wrote that sometimes you don't even realize.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah but it really uh my editor and i we
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: worked on shifts were so long because there were a
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: lot of different moving parts to it and the sag
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: strikes were happening too at the time so there wasn't
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: a lot of other stuff going on and we were
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: like well no one's asking for shift yet so let's
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: just keep editing it and trying to make it as
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: good as we can and we messed around with music
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: i mean forever you've.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Got a lot of potholes thrown covid and strikes.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: And it was brutal it was a brutal we did
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: we had a lot of um issues i would say
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: but at the end of the day we're proud of
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: the movie and we think it's fun to watch especially
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: with an audience so uh it was all for the
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: better at the end of.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: The day definitely when i saw that extra local i
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: saw that slant in there.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah oh amazing yeah Yep, Slint slides in.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Where they at least cut you a deal. Like, look,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: we're from this same area. Come on, man.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we definitely dropped a little bit on them, and
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: they were like, okay, whatever. What's the movie?
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: We all have real jobs now.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: This isn't our thing.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: I'm more of a Rodan man.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: We will literally give you a paycheck.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Slint is legendary in these parts, and the one that
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: broke through nationally. Anytime I hear somebody talk about stuff
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: from our music scene, that's the one they reference. I'm like,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: are you not listening to Rodan? squirrel bait come on
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: so yeah i i thought the music factors in so
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: well because i think you even said in q a
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: like if you're just sitting in a quiet room staring
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: at monitors like you kind of need something to break
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: this up a little.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: Bit oh for sure and i i mean the first
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: cut we we sent out a cut to probably 50
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: people that was the first watchable cut of the movie
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: watchable in quotations and like overwhelmingly the notes were, there
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: was no music. The monitors were silent. I mean, this
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: movie was like the most patient thing you'd ever seen.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: And there, and the movie now is like pretty goofy
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: and a little bit livelier. And everyone was like, look,
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: it's interesting. There's something here, but this is the, like
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: one of the most boring things.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: That I've ever seen.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: And we were like, okay, fair enough. So we took
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: that to heart to an extent and then just kept
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: rebuilding the movie. And we were, we would disassemble scenes.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Then we'd rebuild them. We disassemble scenes, we rebuild them.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: Until we got to this like just kind of fun
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: equilibrium of the movie always wanted to be a comedy
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: and to an extent. And I resisted it for a
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: while because in my head it was a little bit
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: of a thriller, but I can't get out of my
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: own way when it comes to jokes sometimes because there's
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: a lot of gags in the movie for sure. And
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: then once we started to lean into the humor of it,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: it was like, oh, this is what Shift is. And
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: it's like you should be having a good time while
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: you're watching it. It shouldn't be this like dreadful movie.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: that you're trying to get through.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: It works on both because i think it's still super
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: effective as a thriller and like i said because you
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: also don't know what's coming like there is some sort
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: of weird feeling of dread of where we're heading down
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: there but yeah you don't know exactly what's going to
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: be there so it's.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Definitely not the happiest movie in the world but um
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: you know hopefully everyone has a good time when they
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: get a chance to check it out do we want.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: To address the chair We can. Again, it's hard to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: describe if you haven't seen the movie, but I guess
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: just so you know what you're getting yourself into, maybe
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: we should introduce one of the larger characters in the movie.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: It's true. Yeah, Grace Kelly, if you've seen Rear Window,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: you'll get the reference.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: If it wasn't already obvious, just throw that right out.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, we just drop it in. Yeah, there is a
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: chair in the movie. It's Tom's only companion through the
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: whole thing, and she speaks through subtitles through pretty much
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: the entire movie. um and she she was an evolution
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: because in the script she's written into the script um
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: she exists as a character but in the script it's
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: like grace kelly at squeak and then in parentheses it
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: would say like sardonic or angry or funny and then
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: like that was just.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Gonna be like specific sounds yeah he's working with r2d2
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: now right some of them are gonna sound different and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get them you.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: Know the mood the wilhelm scream was in the movie
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: at one point uh for grace kelly and then we
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: took it out because we thought it was too much
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: but um we so as we got into the actual
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: edit and we we shot a lot with grace kelly
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: but there was definitely something missing from people just accepting
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: that a chair is alive if it's not necessarily talking
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: and like there's still maybe you know maybe he's just
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: talking to the chair but other characters either way other
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: characters do address her and are aware of what she's
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: up to um so once we got into the edit
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: and we just got more and more into it her
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: lines were pretty bland to start they would just be
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: like hi tom whatever you know I love Chinese. I
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: think that one saved in from the beginning. But as
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: we leaned more and more into the comedy of things
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: and maybe the absurd, maybe the Lynchian side of it,
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: it was like, oh, well, let's just keep working on
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: Grace Kelly. And what other shots of her do we have?
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: How can we make her feel like she's a bigger
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: part of the room? And ultimately, we had two editors
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: on the movie. One named... AJ Edwards, who is a
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: director and has made some really great indie films. And
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: he was staunchly against making Grace Kelly have subtitles. And
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: then Grant Vance, who is also from new Albany and
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: lives in LA. And we've been friends forever who ended
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: up finishing the movie. he is a little bit more
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: punk than maybe AJ is and was like, vehemently for
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Grace Kelly to speak and have subtitles. So as we
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: got into it and we, and I was working with
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Graham for so long, we just started to drop them
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: in and they were placeholders for a time just to
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: see if like, maybe we could feel if Grace Kelly
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: was alive, if we were to take them away. And
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: then we just kept building on it and building on it,
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: building on it. And there's some, I mean, there's some,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: big swings we take with Grace Kelly, for sure. One
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: in particular.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: Definitely.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: That, like, I think just makes the movie what it is.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: It's way more charming because of it. Without it, you
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: would be missing a layer of, or just a character
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: in general.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: What I was thinking, yeah, was there a version early
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: on that she wasn't a character?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: That it was just him sitting in a chair all day.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Since she was in the script, we were always aware
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: of her. It was fun for actors on set. Like,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: if we were resetting a scene, they'd be like, where
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: is Grace Kelly supposed to go? So, like, crew and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: people were like, addressing this chair as if she was
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: a real thing, because she is. And then there were
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: edits of the movie that she was less of a character.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: People would still acknowledge her from time to time, but
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: not in the way that it does when she's actually
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: speaking to them, quote unquote. So as we got into it,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: we just started to rebuild those scenes with people looking
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: at her and talking to her in more serious ways.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Was there ever a time she would potentially be done?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Actually there, there's a thinking that as I'm watching him,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: like I, it changes the mood because at some point
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: you have to question whether he's losing his mind.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: Exactly. It was too much. There was too much going
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: on with the music and phone calls and radio. There
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: was just like, there was too many sounds to make
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: her sound real, but she was French for a time
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: where like this French woman would speak and then the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: subtitles would appear. And we were like, Oh my God,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: like we're, we are losing our minds because we've been
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: in a room for so long working on it. It
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: was just too much. Uh, So ultimately we just decided
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: to go with the subtitles. But she was a lot
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: of fun to develop from the page throughout the editing
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: process because she really came to life in the editing
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: room rather than on screen. There's also a dance sequence
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: with her that did not make the final cut of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: the movie. And there's some gold in there somewhere, but
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: we decided that it wasn't worth writing.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: The special edition comes out later. Exactly, yes. Well, on
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: that note, I guess getting it out there is a
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: huge thing. I guess is the first step usually at this.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is kind of your first feature. Has
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: the first step just been festivals at this point?
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've played it a few now. CineQuest in San
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: Jose was probably our big indie fest, which was a
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: blast to go up there and play. And then it
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: was fun to come to Louisville and play Flyover. But
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: we actually just signed a distribution deal. So we're hopefully
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: at the end of the year, we'll have it out there.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: And it'll go to streaming. We won't have a theatrical run.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: That is one I was thinking earlier today. I was like,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: there used to be such a specific system at play.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: And if you go back far enough, even back to
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: like 50s, it's like you almost had different systems working.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: It's like you had your mainstream studios and then you
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: had guys that were okay, we know what we're making.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: We're making the handful of things that would be considered
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: indie knew that they were genre usually. So they're like,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: we're making this for drive-ins. We're making this for grindhouse.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Like they knew what they were doing and there was
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: a whole separate system of getting them out there that
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: way too. Yeah. And now it's like that all, I mean,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: drive-ins are almost completely dead. If you're, if you had
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: a grindhouse, maybe it's still an art house, but even
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: those are mostly gone.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: And it's hard to just get people out to real
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: theaters now as they're finding. It's true. So with this
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: all happening, I guess that's what I was wondering as
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: you're entering into this now. It's like, what do you
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: think of this whole system now that we're losing theatrical?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: We've got so many options streaming, but are they better? Like,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: is there a good side to this really? Because I
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: I do think there is one. I think the future
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: is self-distribution, which is as so many different avenues come up. One,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: for people to make movies, but then also... which is
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: a good thing. And then for people to release movies,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: which is also a good thing. The only negative side
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: of both is that there becomes such a sea of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: content that it's hard to figure out.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: It's so much. Yeah.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: How do you swim to the top? How do people
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: find your movie? What is that process? But like long
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: legs is a recent example. Obviously that was by neon,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: which is a huge company and they have a lot
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: of money behind them, but it was a grassroots campaign
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: They were like, get it to them to become that.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: And they're like, we are going to market the hell
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: out of this movie and people are going to go
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: see it. And they were right. And like, To me,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: I produced this movie called What We Do Next with
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: Mary Kay Poe, who's a local, and Chris Mangano, who
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: has been a mentor to me. I've worked with him
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: and his company. And it was directed by Steven Belber.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: And we kind of did the festival circuit. We had
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: Corey Stoll in it and Karen Pittman and Michelle Ventimiglia.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: We had a really good cast. We didn't really get
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: a lot of good bites from distribution companies. We had
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: a little bit of money left over in the bank,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: and we were like, well, how do we self distribute
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: a movie? What if we look at it with this one?
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: So we did. And it's actually not that hard to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: get movies into theaters.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: Um, it's, and it's not that.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Expensive, especially now that we don't have to make prints anymore. Right. Exactly.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: All you need is a digital copy.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: And most theaters are receptive to indie movies and they
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: want to screen them because they know that they're going
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: to make their money on Deadpool. But like, also it's
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: good for there. There's a, the people that go to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: the movies want to see a bunch of different movies.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: So like they, if they go, two Tuesdays in a
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: row and they've seen a blockbuster and they're over it,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: they're going to go see an indie movie probably is
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: what the next one's going to be. So like if
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: you can get it into a theater and then you
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: just need money for marketing. So, I mean, I think
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: if shift had more money and I was a little
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: bit more experienced maybe with distribution at that time, um,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: I would have held a third of the budget back
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: from actual production and just put it into marketing.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Promoted.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you just go on a small theatrical run.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: And then after you go on a theatrical run, you
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: can get some reviews and go to streaming because you
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: can prove that you made money, at least a little bit,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: even if it's just your mom going and buying a
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: ticket over and over and over again. But you can
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: show that to distributors or aggregators that are actually going
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: to get you on to sites, and then it's easier
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: for you to get a sale that way. And then again,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: it's easier for you to get a sale because you
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: prove that you already have an audience that's built in
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: that will tell people about it. So I think it's
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: a fascinating... time in the industry to try to take
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: advantage of it. Distribution is like the last curtain that
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: I think that is slowly being yanked back by independent filmmakers.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: And a lot of people don't know what the process is.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: And I've learned a lot about the process as I've
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: produced and self-distributed movie now. And then as a director,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: you kind of see what's out there for movies of
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: shift size and without huge name talent attached to them.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: And like, it's just, you, you have to prepare. like
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: you do in production that there's a life afterwards and
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: that you need to be able to spend money on it.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: So like at the end of the day, it's just
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: being smarter with how you spend your money. Don't put
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: all your eggs into production and try to get quote
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: unquote high production value when you can actually get high
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: marketing value. So people know that the movie exists because
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: you can spend $ 4 million on a movie and no
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: money on marketing and no one's probably ever going to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: see it. And it's just as like, so you might
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: as well spend $ 2 million on a movie and then
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: $ 2 million on a marketing campaign. So people know that
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: it exists.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: It is such a game at this point.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: It's wild.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Figuring it out.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I think even like this is maybe too deep
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: cut and I don't know if this is even real,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: but like search engine optimization, like so many, like if
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: you go on Variety or Deadline or The New Yorker
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: or whatever magazine you're going to read online, the same
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: article will shift to the top with a different title.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: And I don't know why people don't do that with
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: movies yet. Like to be honest, like if I get
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: people love titles of their movies and it becomes harder
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: to talk about something when it doesn't have a concretized title.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: But like if shift became the night shift or the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: late shift or, you know, purified drinking water or whatever
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: it's going to be. And it just like, but you
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: keep changing that every six months when your traffic goes
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: down or every four months. And it just jumps around.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Is this before it's released or once you've already.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: I think if you got a distributor that would be
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: interested in spending the money.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Even if you're not going to do that, just like teasing,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: like we might change the title.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: I just think it would be so interesting because so
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: many people, you just get more clicks. Like I think
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: it's an interesting idea. I have no idea if it
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: would work, but I think more people should try it.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I feel like, like we were saying with
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the people that go to the theater, I think now
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: we've just hit that, especially as we discussed the pandemic.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: I think post-pandemic, I think now it's just the people
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: that were hardcore movie fans that still want to go
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: out to the theater are still doing that.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: But all those casual people in the middle are just
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: kind of gone.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they just don't leave their house anymore.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: It slowly was declining before that. And then once that hit,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: they were just like, oh, we don't have to leave
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: our house. This is awesome.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: It's true, yeah.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I think those are the ones that like,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: once a year they might come out for something that's
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: such a big ordeal. Yeah. They're like, Oh fine, I
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: guess I'll go see it. But like most of the
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: time they just, it's not even an option for some
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: people anymore. So it really has become like you're, you're
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: losing that. I don't think it'll ever really go away,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: but I think so much of the industry has switched
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: to streaming now that it's not really going back.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: So yeah, there will always be streaming and there will
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: always be theatrical. I don't think either one will go away.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: Nothing will go back to the way it was and
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: nothing will ever truly disappear. But there's a future for
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: indie movies. It's got to be up to the filmmakers
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: to decide what that is.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: And then figuring out the financials. Because, yeah, I still
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: see people complaining of, like, well, the theatrical run and
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: even physical media... which is a dying form in its
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: own right made so much more money than streaming versions
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: which i don't know how true that is for.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: You but like totally i had a movie it was
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: called don't tell a soul that was one of the
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: first movies that was the first movie i was a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: producer on And we had a DVD clause in our
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: contract and we made a good amount of money on
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: DVD sales. And that was pre-pandemic. And then when the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: pandemic hit, obviously it all changed. But I think you
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: look at the way people rent and buy movies now
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: on Amazon or Apple, whatever it's going to be. And
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: in the clause, it says that it's going to go
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: away eventually. Like eventually they won't have the rights to it.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: So you don't actually own the movie. It's a ridiculous concept.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: That's why I don't trust that. Again, old man that
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: I am, I bought a Blu-ray yesterday. I'm still buying
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: physical media.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: Because I'm a weird old person. I think physical media
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: will swing back and not in the powerhouse way that
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: it was in the 90s.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: It's just a collector's market.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: The people that have lodged Criterion already had it done,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: but now your vinegar syndrome kicked in. So even the
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: weirder movies have a physical media, but it's a physical
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: media that has new artwork that you've never seen before. 4,000
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: special features that you'll never get through. It is a package.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: And only geeks that love this specific movie are going
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: to buy it. But if you find enough of those geeks,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: you can do it with all these different movies.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: And people do support when they find something that they
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: like and they want to support it. People find their
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: tribes and they'll typically like it too. So you just
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: keep kind of moving through it and they'll buy a
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: dvd they'll buy a dvd pass around more people gonna
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: see it.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: That is one of the useful things as much as
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: i mean i love the internet but it's rooted in
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: evil but one of the good things is it again
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: it is such a network thing and like when you
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: find your people you communicate with them all through the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: internet so it's like when you're a bunch of movie
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: geeks talking about something on whatever media thing you're into
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: like you still end up talking about the same things
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: and then it's like oh i just bought this copy
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: of this and they're like oh that's out and then
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: they run out and buy it exactly yeah or immediately
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: buy it from amazon yeah more than likely.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: No one leaves their house please do go to the movies.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: But yeah well i guess in general um i guess
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: overall i also wanted to see because i like the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I was discussing earlier the weird scenarios I've gotten myself
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: in just doing this. I'm assuming just as many come
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: up when you're shooting a film. So I was like, overall,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I guess it could be shift or maybe if something else.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: But what's one of the weirder scenarios that you're shooting
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: or whatever portion of the timeline you're dealing with this
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: that you've gotten into and you're like, what the hell?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: How did I get myself to this point?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: As you're creating something. I, yeah, I mean, I'll definitely
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: talk about shift. I just, yesterday I was, I line
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: produced a feature that shot in Louisville for 20 days
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: and I wish I could talk about that one, but
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: I can't yet. Cause wow.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: That's where we're going is things you can't talk about.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: But that definitely, the movie that I was just on
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: is one of a kind. I've never read a script
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: like it. I've never been on a set like it.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: And it is, it's, it's gonna, people are going to
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: love it. Um, or they probably won't check it out,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: but it's like, it's.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: It's everything at this point.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: It's super unique. And our director was a first time director.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: He was great. Our producers were great established producers. So
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: I'm really excited to see how they put it all together. Um,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: with shift at least it was mostly for us. And
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: I talked about this a little bit, but when we
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: were in that storage facility shooting three cameras at a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: time and running through the movie takes place over months.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: And I think you see 12 days of four months.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: And so there were 12 wardrobe changes. So we were
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: just like, they would run through the monitors, they would
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: do their thing. And then they would go back to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: the hotel change and then they would come back and
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: do the next day. And like, so we had to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: keep track of all of this continuity. That is pretty good.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: Like we do a really good job of keeping it continuous,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: but like we got, that was when everyone was like,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, what are we doing? Because it was
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: really hot up in this, this third floor of a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: storage facility. No one wanted to be there by the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: third day. a lot of people were getting testy because
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: you're just in this dark room while it's so hot
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: outside because we were shooting everything uh as if it
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: was nighttime but it was daytime um and it was
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: just like that was one of the weirdest most uncomfortable
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: situations i had been in on a film just because
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: i was like i know it'll cut together but we
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: have to shoot it all or else then it really
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: won't work.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: We have to have everything yeah.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: And everyone around you is like This is nonsense. I
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: have no idea what I'm doing. And it was a
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: blast to see it all come together with the crew
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: for the first time because they were like, oh, we
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: get it. It is going to come together. So it's
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: really gratifying to be in those weird situations and then
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: people look at it and can objectively be like, oh,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: this is working.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: You're not crazy. You're a little crazy, but you were right.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: It did work.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that's most of it. Again, I was
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: going to say, what have you got coming up? But
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: is there anything coming up that you can actually discuss?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: Because usually it's not the case.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We just wrapped this movie that they're going to
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: start getting into post on in LA here soon. Actually,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: there's a post house in Louisville that's doing most of it,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: which is nice.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Again, it's a new world.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: It is a new world.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: And then....
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: Through the rest of this year, there's one movie that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: I'm producing that we're casting right now. And since we
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: don't have anyone officially attached, I can't talk about that.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: But that script we're going to shoot in Kentucky over
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: the fall. And we're really excited about it. We've developed
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: the script for a long time. I think it's more
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: of a drama. It is a drama as compared to Shift.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: It has some comedic bent to it. But this one's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: a much more quote-unquote serious film. And then after that,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: there's a slasher that's shooting around here that I might
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: be a part of. which I've never worked on a
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: straight slasher, so that would be fun.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: So yeah, there's a few, and then I have a
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: couple of my own scripts that I'm trying to see
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: if I can get out there in any kind of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: real way.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: Definitely.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: And then what is the best option if you want
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: to see Shift? What should people look for in the future?
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: We do have social media on Instagram, our Shift film.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: Let me make sure that's what it is. But follow
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: us if you do want to check it out, because
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: that'll be the easiest way to let people know, because
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: we should be coming out towards the end of this
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: year so once the movie is released check us out
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: on all the streaming services because right now we're still
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: on kind of our festival cycle our Instagram handle is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: shiftmovie2024 and it's the picture says shift so you really
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: can't miss it.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: So you can see where it's going to be as
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: far as festivals and then once you guys know for
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: sure where it's streaming you'll release that too yep alright
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: well everyone should check it out is it a lot
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: of fun so awesome All right, well, thank you for
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: talking with us today.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: All right, thank you once again to Max for joining
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: me and for giving us all a window into his
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: life and some details about his movie, Shift. Once again,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed the movie a lot, and you've just heard
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: several fun aspects to look forward to, so get out
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: there and find it. Whether it's at a film fest
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: or streaming, it's out there waiting for you, so go
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: check it out. Otherwise, that about does it. We will
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: return next time. Same geek feed. Thanks for listening.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: Well, if you see old Annie, better give her a lift,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: cause Annie's been working on a midnight shift. If Annie
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: puts her hair up on her head, paints him lips
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: a bright, bright red, wears that dress that fits real tight,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: starts staying out till the middle of the night, says
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: that her friend, give her a lift. Well, Annie's been
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: working on a midnight shift. If she acts a little funny,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: Seems a little strange. Start spending your money for brand
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: new things.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: Tells you that she wants to use the car. Never
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: explains what she wants it for.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: Brother, there just ain't no ifs. Cause Annie's been working
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: on a midnight shift.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 5: ¶ Well, early in the morning when the sun comes
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: up ¶ You look at old Annie and.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: She looks kind of rough ¶ You tell her, honey,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: get out of that bed ¶ She says, leave me alone,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: I'm just about dead ¶ Brother, there just ain't no
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: else ¶ Cause Annie's been working on a midnight shift
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: ¶ If you got a good mama that's staying at
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: home You better enjoy it cause it won't last long
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: When you think everything's alright She starts slipping round in
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: the middle of the night Brother, that just ain't no
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: ifs Cause Annie's been a-working on a midnight shift.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: Guitar solo How'd you find Grace Kelly?
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: Grace Kelly? That was actually harder than you would imagine.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: They had a lot of terrible chair options until we
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: found Grace Kelly, who was actually just in the parking
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: lot of the studio we were shooting in. And we
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: wheeled her in, and she was perfect.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: Talk hard!
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: This program is a proud member of the Battleship Pretension Fleet.