Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 681: From Indie Filmmaker to $1 Billion Sale to Disney with Michael Gallagher

Transcript

IFH 681: From Indie Filmmaker to $1 Billion Sale to Disney with Michael Gallagher · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
• 0:08
  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six eighty one. Film entrepreneurship is living a
• 0:18
  few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend
• 0:22
  the rest of your life like most people can't. Mongo Wilder broadcasting from the
• 0:28
  back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show
• 0:33
  you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the
• 0:37
  film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to
• 0:42
  another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host,
• 0:46
  Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur. How
• 0:50
  to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever
• 0:55
  before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping
• 0:59
  them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds are stacked
• 1:03
  against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with your film
• 1:08
  is broken and there needs to be a change. The future of independent filmmaking
• 1:12
  is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur,
• 1:18
  I break down how to actually make money with your film projects and show
• 1:22
  you how to turn your indie film into a profitable business. With case studies
• 1:26
  examining successes and failures. This book shows you the step by step method to
• 1:32
  turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film,
• 1:36
  series, or any other kind of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will
• 1:40
  set you up for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook,
• 1:45
  and of course audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over
• 1:49
  to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now
• 1:56
  today on the show, we have filmmaker film entrepreneur Michael Gallagher. Michael is
• 2:04
  one of the co founders of Makers Studios. And if you guys aren't familiar
• 2:07
  with who Maker Studios is, it is the studio that I was sold for
• 2:12
  Disney for one billion dollars give or take one hundred million dollars here or there,
• 2:17
  and they were basically one of the first YouTube studios, and we're going
• 2:23
  to go all into how he was able to help create Maker Studios and a
• 2:28
  few years later was able to sell it to Disney and the scene amount of
• 2:32
  money, and from there he was able to create the YouTube sensation films The
• 2:38
  Thinning and Internet Famous, And now he has his brand new film called Funny
• 2:45
  Story, and we discuss how he's getting it out there, he got distribution,
• 2:50
  how he got screwed over by distribution companies early on his careism, earlier
• 2:57
  of his feature films, and we also talk a little bit about how he's
• 3:00
  doing some guerrilla marketing on how to get the word out on Funny Story,
• 3:04
  and all his tactics on how he's been able to get this film out so
• 3:08
  much so then when he reached out to me, I knew about his film
• 3:14
  purely because of his guerrilla marketing style and what he was doing that most independent
• 3:19
  filmmakers aren't doing. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with
• 3:23
  Michael Gallagher, I like to welcome to the show Michael Gallagher Man, how
• 3:28
  you doing, brother, doing well? How are you? Thanks for having
• 3:31
  me, Thank you for having thank you for being on the show man,
• 3:34
  I truly appreciate it. Man, When you guys reached out to me,
• 3:38
  I was like super excited to talk to you because I've known of your work
• 3:42
  in the past, and you're unlike any other guests I've had on the show
• 3:46
  because of your history with the Internet and with YouTube and the new wave of
• 3:52
  entertainment that has kind of moved in. So before we jump into all of
• 3:54
  that, first and foremost, how did you I'm afraid to ask because you're
• 3:59
  a little bit younger vintage than I am, But how did you get into
• 4:03
  the business, Because but like I was five years old, I shot three
• 4:08
  features. I'm like, shut up, just shut up, that's so funny.
• 4:14
  Well, I'm from San Diego. I'm thirty, so I was born
• 4:17
  in nineteen eighty eight. So yes, But growing up, you know,
• 4:20
  I was always in love with, you know, storytelling, indie film.
• 4:26
  You know, I read you know, Rebel Without a Crew when I was
• 4:29
  like, I don't know, probably thirteen or something, and so I kind
• 4:31
  of just started getting like obsessed with that sort of like nineties indie film movement
• 4:35
  of like Tarantino and Proto Riguez and Kevin Smith of like these guys that were
• 4:40
  just like going off and somehow making a movie. But then as I got
• 4:44
  older, I started noticing that like the path of those guys, as soon
• 4:48
  as they did it, that doesn't exist anymore. It's like sundance, that
• 4:51
  whole thing that changes as soon as someone like gets in the door, that
• 4:56
  door shuts, and now you got to find a window or a crawl space
• 5:00
  something to get into the industry. So I was just I kind of kept
• 5:02
  an open mind, and you know, I was a little daunted of like
• 5:04
  how do you make feature films? And so I just started, you know,
• 5:09
  as a kid, just doing short films. I would, you know,
• 5:12
  with my teachers, try and pitch doing a video project instead of having
• 5:16
  to you know, write a book report or something. So like even in
• 5:19
  school, like fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, like even really
• 5:23
  young like that, I was editing on iMovie and just kind of you know,
• 5:27
  taking my dad's cam quarter and just going out and shooting stuff. You
• 5:31
  know, none of it was good, let's start there. None of it
• 5:34
  was actually good. It shouldn't be, yeah, But I started taking it
• 5:41
  more seriously. And then in high school, my parents I was like begging
• 5:45
  my parents, like I got to go to some kind of film school,
• 5:47
  film camp, whatever I can find. And there was this thing at the
• 5:49
  New York Film Academy in Burbank that they had a high school summer film program.
• 5:56
  So I went to that at fourteen and shot sixteen milimeter film and cast
• 6:00
  SAG actors. And I was just like hooked. Like I'm not a drug
• 6:04
  person, but that was my drug. I was like, all right,
• 6:06
  I'm fourteen, I can cast SAG actors. Game on, Let's do this.
• 6:11
  So then from like then on in high school in San Diego, cap
• 6:14
  putting out you know, actors, access notices and like casting SAG actors and
• 6:18
  running auditions at like Double Tree conference rooms, and you know, I'm just
• 6:23
  being this like ambitious film kit. And then I would submit to the local
• 6:26
  film festivals and you know, just try and get better and you know,
• 6:29
  do forty eight hour film contest. Like I was just all I'm just all
• 6:31
  in and just trying to figure it out. And then you know, eventually
• 6:34
  that led to, you know, when YouTube came along, and in the
• 6:38
  Partner program, I saw that people were able to just make whatever they want,
• 6:42
  put it on YouTube and actually get paid for it and get seen to
• 6:44
  get an audience, and it seemed, you know, I was kind of
• 6:47
  doing that with these shorts, like not spending a lot of money, just
• 6:50
  putting it out there, and I was honing my skills. I thought,
• 6:53
  okay, well what if I could take the filmmaking side and apply it to
• 6:56
  this new media kind of concept. And that's how I started a totally sketch
• 7:00
  and I just started making weekly sketch comedy videos, you know, on a
• 7:01
  whim like that, you know, it took off, no, Which is
• 7:05
  which is the funny thing that you say is that you you were you saw
• 7:09
  that wave in the nineties. I mean you were very young, obviously,
• 7:12
  but you saw that whole concept of the nineties. By the times you started
• 7:15
  to really figure it out that that party was over, so you realize that
• 7:18
  that wasn't the way to go. I, on the other hand, took
• 7:20
  twenty years to learn that lesson and thought that it was the nineties all over
• 7:24
  again. I was trying to do the exact same thing that Robert did and
• 7:27
  Kevin and Quinton and all those guys. And it took me a long time
• 7:30
  to figure that out because and this is and this is my truth. I
• 7:34
  don't know if you know about this or not. But in two thousand and
• 7:36
  five, I was on YouTube. I was put posting tutorials on how to
• 7:42
  make films on YouTube in two thousand and five, before anybody had even thought
• 7:46
  of doing anything like that. And then of course I said, I said,
• 7:50
  and you could look, they're still up on YouTube. It's like thirteen.
• 7:53
  Yeah, they're they're ten years old or something like that. I looked
• 7:55
  them up the other day. I'm like, oh, my really bad compression,
• 7:58
  because YouTube was horriblely compressed back then. And then I and I just
• 8:01
  said to myself, I don't know if you've ever run across this. I'm
• 8:03
  a real filmmaker. I don't I don't put stuff on YouTube. I don't
• 8:09
  teach other filmmakers at him. That's not why I went to film school.
• 8:13
  I'm I'm on a tour and I'm definitely classy, a classes sort of system
• 8:18
  of like Vimeo YouTube, and at that time, Vimeo was like the classy
• 8:22
  place for all film, all filmmaker short films, and YouTube was sort of
• 8:28
  like a you know, like a loud party. That was right, But
• 8:33
  I just wish I would have just stayed on because I would have literally owned
• 8:37
  the entire space of making showing you how to make movies at that point,
• 8:41
  can you imagine if I would have just made content all that time it was
• 8:46
  would have been insane. But I'm all right now you don't know, but
• 8:48
  yeah, but still, but still, I'm still a very angry and bitter
• 8:52
  filmmaker. But uh, but what I find fascinating is that you were very
• 8:56
  open minded to this new medium. And I think so any filmmakers, even
• 9:01
  in today's world, they're not open minded. They stick to their like,
• 9:03
  oh, I'm only going to do this or I'm only going to do that.
• 9:05
  And you said, well, wait a minute, that's not working anymore.
• 9:09
  This is the new thing. Kind of like when guys jumped on vine.
• 9:11
  When vine was a thing, there was a small window of opportunity there.
• 9:15
  There was a small window of opportunity to when YouTube, like you can
• 9:16
  make an obscene amount of money on YouTube. When the partner program started things
• 9:20
  like that, that window closed. Now it's like you got to work a
• 9:24
  lot harder to make remotely that much money. Is that correct? Yeah,
• 9:28
  these things like exactly what you're saying. There's like a short window as something's
• 9:33
  kind of new and exciting and untested, and the people that get in in
• 9:37
  that moment and just give it, they're all Sometimes they succeed, and then
• 9:41
  as soon as they've succeeded, big business comes in and says, wait a
• 9:46
  minute, like we can't just let anybody to do this. Wait, wait,
• 9:50
  who made a million dollars? Who did what? And then all of
• 9:52
  a sudden they just start buying everything up and then close the doors and then
• 9:56
  no one can get in because it's all corporations now. And then it's like
• 10:00
  you got to find a new wild wild West to like go in and and
• 10:03
  go make your mark. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 10:11
  and now back to the show. You know it's it's yeah because because
• 10:16
  in the nineties it was the indie films were the Wild wall West, Sundance
• 10:20
  and those kind of things were the Wallah West, and then then it turned
• 10:22
  into other things, and then eventually YouTube, and now it's streaming and being
• 10:26
  on streaming shows and things like that, which you have experienced on as well.
• 10:31
  And I'm curious to see what the future, I mean lies right now
• 10:33
  because there's so much competition. Even when you started, there wasn't as much
• 10:37
  competition. You know, there really weren't that many filmmakers on YouTube. Like
• 10:41
  I think I'm like a crop of like five people. Maybe when did you
• 10:46
  when did you? When did you start on YouTube? But you on YouTube
• 10:50
  two thousand and nine, so it was like the beginning of two thousand and
• 10:52
  nine, so you right before the Partner program had like just started, and
• 10:56
  so it was like right around the time like Freddie Wong, Yeah, I
• 10:58
  was about I say a rocket jump, Yeah yeah, rocket jump pre rocket
• 11:01
  jump pretty long. And then um, you know Julian Smith, who's you
• 11:05
  know, great comedian and also he would just film and edit and do everything
• 11:09
  behind the scenes and um, but most of the people on YouTube at that
• 11:15
  time were personalities that were just literally broadcasting themselves. They were just you know,
• 11:20
  turning on a webcam, you know, dressing up like Sarah Palin or
• 11:24
  Obama or whatever. Was Yeah, it's like anything that was kind of like
• 11:28
  to get the clicks, and they would you know, they would do comedy,
• 11:33
  but it was sort of unpolished, un you know presented. Uh and
• 11:37
  and what I saw was, Okay, there's all this talent, like this
• 11:41
  is a big talent pool, but there's not really anyone guiding that talent,
• 11:45
  and so I thought my contribution could be, well, what if I bring
• 11:48
  like the filmmaking I've been you know, honing on my short films and music
• 11:52
  videos and local commercials. What if I brought that to the talent that's on
• 11:56
  YouTube and so literally, when I first started totally sketch, I would do,
• 12:01
  you know, sketches with actors and things that I would cast, just
• 12:03
  like I was doing in San Diego. What I would also do is send
• 12:07
  out emails to the top YouTubers at the time and say, Hey, you
• 12:11
  don't know me, but here's here's my body of works. I had my
• 12:15
  short films on Vimeo. I had, you know that looked nice? Yeah,
• 12:20
  And I said like, look here's my work that I've done. Here's
• 12:22
  this new channel. I would love to produce for you a free sketch,
• 12:26
  a music video, parody or whatever. Let me handle all of the production.
• 12:31
  You you would just be the talent in it, and in doing so,
• 12:35
  maybe you could also then be on my channel and we could do a
• 12:37
  sketch or something together, collaborate. So I was just like giving like,
• 12:39
  hey, you want a free sketch, you want a free music video.
• 12:43
  I wasn't asking anything of them other than can I give you, you know,
• 12:46
  can I give you my services? And that approach worked really well.
• 12:52
  Yeah, yeah, because people would see my work and they saw, oh,
• 12:54
  it's not you know, this isn't like po dunk, Like this actually
• 12:58
  looks good. You know, Oh, this short film played at a bunch
• 13:00
  of festivals, or you know this music video. Maybe I've seen that music
• 13:03
  video online, and so I just started getting you know, it was collaborating.
• 13:07
  And the first person I collaborated with was this YouTuber Alpha Cat, who
• 13:11
  was the premier Obama impersonator on YouTube. And he was like the guy like
• 13:16
  he was doing all these um it was you know, Beyonce sort of spoofs,
• 13:22
  so you know, like as Obama, and it was really funny.
• 13:24
  But he didn't have like a producer director behind the scenes, and so we
• 13:28
  produced this whole music video for him that and I wrote, you know,
• 13:31
  the first draft of the parody, but it was Jamie Fox is Blaming on
• 13:35
  the alcohol. It was called Blame It on the Economy, and it was
• 13:39
  about like the economic crisis that we were going through. And he was like,
• 13:41
  oh, well, let's just get all my pals in and so he
• 13:43
  called Lisa Nova, who did Sarah Palin at the time. I called my
• 13:48
  buddy Richard Bryan to play Joe Biden and we just did this crazy music video
• 13:52
  but it looked legit and it actually got picked up and they showed it on
• 13:54
  the view because it was such a like viral video at that time. But
• 13:58
  from there that that kind of helped explode me on the YouTube scene. So
• 14:03
  then everybody saw that video in the community and said, whoa, who is
• 14:05
  this guy? Like, we need to hire him to bring bring him in
• 14:09
  and so he can just sort of bring that filmmaking style to what we're doing.
• 14:13
  And then that's kind of, you know, that's how I got in
• 14:15
  in the club, so to speak. So again for everyone listening, take
• 14:18
  some notes here. You offered your services for free because you were smart enough
• 14:22
  to provide about provide service and be a value to people who you are trying
• 14:26
  to connect with and to work with in one way, shape or form.
• 14:31
  And all you had to offer at the moment was I've got some skills,
• 14:35
  I've got some production, i got something that you don't have. I'm not
• 14:37
  asking for anything in return, just let me work with you. And it
• 14:39
  worked out. It worked out. For it fairly okay for you? Uh
• 14:43
  yeah, well it was. It was funny because just like in high school,
• 14:46
  anytime I had any money, if I made any money, if I
• 14:50
  you know, form like Grandma gave me like a check for one hundred bucks
• 14:52
  or something for you know, birthday, it's like any money I would get,
• 14:58
  I would put it into film equipment. So at the time, I
• 15:00
  like saved up. I got an HVX, you know, I got a
• 15:03
  you know, Panasonic HVX. At the time, it was like a big
• 15:05
  deal. Oh yeah. And then I really saved up and you know,
• 15:09
  like summer jobs and doing like short films and such. I got a Keno
• 15:15
  flow kit. I got two four banks just rocking. You're like a pimping
• 15:20
  your pimp. Can you can you imagine that time of a time of YouTube
• 15:24
  to show up with like an HVX and a Keno kit. It was like
• 15:28
  literally showing up with it like a fricking steady cam and a Panavision camera for
• 15:33
  like full thirty five on the student film back in the eighties. I mean
• 15:37
  seriously, yeah, yeah. So I was like I had a pretty you
• 15:41
  know, robust because I had like an air I had a three point area
• 15:43
  lighting kit and that was used that I ran into the ground and then I
• 15:50
  had the Keno flows. So within my setup for the shorts and things I
• 15:54
  was doing, I could like pretty much any scene as long as there were
• 15:56
  you know, no more than like five people in a frame. So but
• 16:00
  and it would look really good. So it kind of helped set things apart
• 16:03
  because lighting is such an important part of filmmaking and there's kind of elevating that
• 16:07
  sort of HD look. But but yeah, that that really helped, just
• 16:12
  because people would see and I was calling it favors left and right. You
• 16:15
  know, kids, I went to film school with friends that I met at
• 16:18
  parties that you know, it's a DP, someone who in sound, and
• 16:21
  I would try and pay people as much as they could. But in the
• 16:22
  early days, it's like you don't have money, so you're just calling favors.
• 16:26
  You're you're finding collaborative, excited people around you that want to participate.
• 16:30
  And that's what I did in the early days of YouTube. And then as
• 16:33
  it you know, kind of spread, I still kept that mentality of keeping
• 16:37
  it small, keeping it low budget, because you know, you can make
• 16:41
  money doing YouTube, but the more money you spend doing it just the less
• 16:45
  money you can make because there's sort of a sort of a cap on the
• 16:48
  whole thing. At that time, at least, yeah, there wasn't you
• 16:51
  were there wasn't the millionaires weren't being made just yet on YouTube. It was
• 16:55
  it was pre pre millionaire days at that point. Yeah, but but yeah,
• 17:00
  it didn't very very true. Now, you also came up with a
• 17:03
  fairly and that cool idea called Maker Studios. If I'm not mistake, you're
• 17:07
  one of the co founders of Maker Studios. So yeah, I'm one of
• 17:10
  the co founders of Maker Studios. But it wasn't my original idea. It
• 17:14
  was actually so from that music video shoot that I did with Alphaquet So Lisa
• 17:18
  Nova came and Danny Zappen was her boyfriend at the time, and her brother
• 17:22
  Ben Donovan. They both the three of them all came to the shoot and
• 17:26
  they saw what I was doing and they said, oh, well, we
• 17:29
  got to talk to this kid, because we're about to start a company and
• 17:33
  we need some filmmakers to be a part of it because we right now we
• 17:36
  have the talent. What they had been doing is they had been going out
• 17:38
  and they had this idea of creating sort of like the Saturday Night Live of
• 17:41
  YouTube, Like what if we got the top you know, performers and put
• 17:47
  them all together and made a super channel, and then we all promoted that
• 17:49
  super channel and you know, got it to a million subscribers in like a
• 17:53
  day, and then what if from there we got brand deals and we kind
• 17:56
  of just helped get everyone paid. And that was sort of the concept of
• 18:00
  an early day. It wasn't even called maker that I didn't even have a
• 18:03
  name for it, and so they I remember going to Starbucks over in Venice
• 18:07
  with Danny after that shoot and he's like, Yeah, we're gonna do this
• 18:11
  thing. We're gonna we're gonna mess. We're gonna disrupt the whole industry.
• 18:14
  And he's just like, you know, wearing like clothes from Target, like
• 18:18
  drinking a coffee, saying like, yeah, I got I got all the
• 18:21
  top YouTubers involved, and it's gonna be great. Like you in like you're
• 18:23
  gonna gona dedicate the next year to this thing, man, and I you
• 18:27
  know, it sounded good, but it also sounded like maybe a Ponzi scheme.
• 18:33
  Maybe maybe I'm gonna be selling microwaves door to door in like a week.
• 18:37
  I have no idea. I mean, it was just like you know
• 18:41
  sometimes people are all talk and you have no idea in this business, I
• 18:44
  can't see a none of this business, no stopping. But but I vetted
• 18:51
  him out and I talked to some people around him, and it seemed legit
• 18:53
  and it seemed like he did have these people. So I agreed. I
• 18:56
  said, Okay, I'm in, you know, I will, I will
• 18:59
  come on. Because they didn't have any money, it didn't have, you
• 19:00
  know, much to start. It was like, we're all gonna just donate
• 19:03
  our time, We're gonna we're gonna come in and invest in ourselves and collaborate
• 19:07
  on this thing. And so it was really like if if we're not all
• 19:10
  part of this, not all lock lock step, it's not gonna happen.
• 19:12
  And I showed up and I remember going to their house and it was,
• 19:17
  you know, it was all the top people on YouTube at that time,
• 19:19
  which you know, this is two thousand and nine, so it's like Phil
• 19:22
  DeFranco, Shay Carl Shane Dawson, Dave Days, Uh, Lisa Nova Uh,
• 19:30
  they're they're more. But at CASSIMG, it was like all the people
• 19:33
  that had like hundreds of thousands, if not over a million subscribers at that
• 19:37
  time and getting millions of views on every video. So it was like,
• 19:40
  oh my god, I'm with the illuminati of YouTube, and I'm like,
• 19:44
  me and Danny are like the only filmmakers on this thing. Everyone else is
• 19:48
  out there on on camera talent, and you know, and we want to
• 19:52
  like, okay, kids, play nice, let's all come together, let's
• 19:53
  come up with the name. Let's figure out what our videos are going to
• 19:56
  because we're we were just making sketches. We want to start piling and putting
• 20:00
  them out there. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 20:08
  and now back to the show. And so that was really the beginning of
• 20:12
  what Maker was. But from that process, you had so many cooks in
• 20:15
  the kitchen and you had so much creative you know, kind of like top
• 20:19
  talent for the medium, that it was really difficult to get everyone to agree
• 20:25
  on what was comedy, what was the funniest thing to do, what was
• 20:30
  our style and taste? And so some people had r rated senses of humor,
• 20:33
  some people were really family oriented, and so it was just a lot
• 20:37
  of debating of what are we even going to make and from that kind of
• 20:41
  creative friction came this idea of, well, rather than all of us doing
• 20:47
  one channel, what if we empower each creator and give them the resources and
• 20:52
  tools and support them for whatever they want to make rather than force everyone to
• 20:56
  work together. And that's really what Maker became, is like, how do
• 21:00
  we empower the creators to go off and make whatever they want? Because you
• 21:04
  know, all these people are just in their bedrooms kind of doing their thing.
• 21:07
  And if we gave him a crew, if we gave them, you
• 21:11
  know, a production budget, if we gave them you know, resources,
• 21:14
  locations, producer, you know, we could really up everything. And so
• 21:18
  that was kind of the model, and it just took off because all the
• 21:21
  top creators they wanted to make cool looking ship and so that's you know that
• 21:26
  that spread and then it was like, hey, everybody whoever wants to join,
• 21:29
  and just kept scaling up from there and getting attention in Hollywood, etc.
• 21:33
  So yeah, I mean this is still in the time. So Maker
• 21:34
  Studios started in what like twenty ten, two nine. It was it was
• 21:40
  too that because I started totally Sketch in March of two thousand and nine and
• 21:45
  Maker started July. I think it was like, yeah, July fourth,
• 21:49
  so that that's a pretty quick, pretty quick. You didn't spend a whole
• 21:53
  lot of time grinding it on YouTube before things started up. More you mad
• 21:59
  you are. We like to call that the right place at the right time.
• 22:03
  It's kind of like Michael Gladwell's book Outliers. It's like you have you
• 22:07
  read that book? Oh, I love that book. Yeah, it's it's
• 22:10
  it's it's kind of like everyone's like, oh, it's they're they're perfect,
• 22:14
  their geniuses. They never have to do anything. No, they were born
• 22:15
  at the right place at the right time, and they had the right skills
• 22:18
  when they showed up, like run Robert Rodriguez shows up in ninety one with
• 22:21
  al Mariachi. You can't show up now with al Mariachi because he'll never he
• 22:25
  would never even be seen, no one would even know who he was.
• 22:27
  So it was all about those specific timing and you, man, you hit
• 22:30
  it. You were close though you were you were only about three month window.
• 22:36
  This could have passed you right by. Dude, this could have passed
• 22:38
  you right by. I just want you to be aware of I want you
• 22:41
  to be aware how close you came. Oh no, I'm its hashtag blasted.
• 22:48
  So you start two thousand and nine and then and then at that point,
• 22:51
  YouTube is still fairly much of a oh what the heck is that thing?
• 22:55
  No One at the time everyone thought we were nuts. Everyone thought the
• 22:57
  company it was like, what you're gonna start, You're gonna double down on
• 23:00
  YouTube. Everyone thoughts you're doubling down on the internet streaming thing Netflix whatever.
• 23:08
  So yeah, it's kind of like when Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix
• 23:11
  for fifty million bucks and they said, now we're good. We're good.
• 23:15
  We're good. We've got these rentals things. We're good. Yeah, brick
• 23:18
  and mortar is the way to go. That's the future. This internet thinks
• 23:21
  a fad. Uh So, so Hollywood, when did Hollywood start taking notice?
• 23:26
  And when did you guys start making some like serious money because you started.
• 23:30
  I mean it is looking back, it's a fairly genius move. It's
• 23:33
  insane at the time, and that's generally the way all these movements start.
• 23:36
  When you look at it at the time to like, you were insane streaming
• 23:38
  movies over the internet. Who's gonna what? It seems to say. Now
• 23:42
  you look at and going, well, that was genius. So you guys
• 23:45
  had a small a small version of that, well not that small, but
• 23:48
  a version of that in the YouTube community where you double down on YouTube,
• 23:52
  which I would have told you the same thing, like, you guys are
• 23:55
  nuts, like no one's watching. Um, but it it seemed to work
• 24:00
  out for people like Gary V and those other guys who just kept making videos
• 24:03
  and nobody was watching. But one day someone watched and it kept going.
• 24:08
  So this this small time. So you start building building this up, and
• 24:11
  you start building up the accounts, and you start kind of like, I
• 24:15
  can't say it would be like an agency, would it? Like are you
• 24:18
  represent resenting them? It's what kind of what would you call it? It
• 24:23
  was? The term was multi channel network, and so it was the first
• 24:27
  it was the first idea of well, what if you know, each person
• 24:32
  would own their YouTube channel. I mean they already you already have a split
• 24:36
  with YouTube if you're doing ads with them, and so what maker would do
• 24:40
  was it would kind of represent your channel. So rather than represent you as
• 24:45
  a you know, talent, it would say, okay, your channel,
• 24:47
  we're going to help sell premium ads on this channel by talking to advertisers.
• 24:51
  If we get a brand deal that fits, you know, like let's say,
• 24:53
  you know, any film hustle if you were part of Maker, be
• 24:56
  like, okay, we want we got this, you know, film company,
• 24:59
  or a big movie that's coming out as an indie movie that Fox Searchlights
• 25:03
  releasing, and what if we partner with you so you can you know,
• 25:07
  do something with the filmmakers didn't get paid to do it, and so it
• 25:10
  was like they were kind of brokering those deals sort of like what an ad
• 25:12
  agency would do. YE think multiple things. It was providing production resources,
• 25:18
  it was kind of serving as an ad agency, and then also make it
• 25:21
  being a content sort of you know how Netflix or a lot of places like
• 25:26
  they'll acquire things, but then they'll also you know, provide the resources or
• 25:30
  I mean they had full production studio, they had equipment, they had uh,
• 25:33
  you know everything at Maker for you know, especially DIY stuff. It
• 25:37
  was DIY, but also for DIY plus where they'd give you like a three
• 25:41
  person crew or a five person crew or something to go out and shoot YouTube
• 25:45
  videos. That's insane. And how long did it take before Hollywood start taking
• 25:48
  notice? Pretty quick? I think um, within the like before the end
• 25:53
  of the first year. I think we were raising um, like some BC
• 25:57
  money and you know, kind of big. Yeah, I know, it
• 26:02
  just started, it just started growing. And then people were leaving their jobs
• 26:04
  at you know kind of whether it was a big tech company or you know,
• 26:10
  a film studio. They were coming in like all of a sudden,
• 26:12
  we were having executives that were just had been at you know, Disney or
• 26:18
  they had been at war Z. Yeah, and everyone all of a sudden
• 26:22
  is just like, yeah, no, I want to work at Maker.
• 26:23
  That's the hot new thing. So and you guys were right, you were
• 26:26
  in the middle of the storm. I mean, that's that's amazing. It's
• 26:30
  amazing like you guys were and there was nobody around you. There was no
• 26:33
  competition, there was nothing that even was close to what you guys were doing
• 26:36
  at the time. The only Yeah, things start popping up pretty quick thereafter.
• 26:41
  So and it's always it's hard to say, like what the first thing.
• 26:45
  I think Maker might have been the first multi channel network that had really
• 26:48
  had done this. And then very soon around that time was Awesomeness TV,
• 26:52
  which if you remember, Yeah, they focused on like kind of more specifically
• 26:59
  teen oriented content because they really were trying to get bought by like a Nickelodeon
• 27:03
  or you know, a Disney channel or something like. They wanted content that
• 27:07
  was safe, like kind of age appropriate, and Maker was a little bit
• 27:11
  wild less of you know, we're not going to censor you. Whatever you
• 27:14
  want to do, that's your thing. And of course that attracted all the
• 27:17
  talent because it was exactly, he has no censorship and we're not going to
• 27:21
  try and control you. Yeah, you can do. You can just continue
• 27:22
  what you're doing, and we're going to empower you. And so I think
• 27:26
  I think that model really appealed to, you know, the every level of
• 27:30
  YouTube or top bottom whatever. And yeah, in twenty fourteen is when Disney
• 27:36
  came in and yeah, I heard, I heard, Yeah, I heard
• 27:37
  something about that there was a small company called Disney the desire to buy you
• 27:41
  guys. And it was no, it wasn't in the news at all at
• 27:44
  the time. But if I do remember correctly, and I don't like to
• 27:48
  talk money on the show, but it's pretty publicly known that the Maker Studios
• 27:52
  was purchased for four hundred and fifty million cash and then with a performance bonus
• 27:57
  up to an almost a billion. Is that is that accurate? Yeah?
• 28:02
  Yeah, exactly. And I don't know how much is public of like where
• 28:03
  it landed or whatever, but I think those are in the ballpark for sure.
• 28:07
  Yeah, that's not a bad deal for you know, young guys who
• 28:11
  just kind of like got the HVX two hundred and the Airy Kid out and
• 28:17
  and you know shot with some YouTubers. That's you know that that that should
• 28:21
  that definitely sent you know, shock waves through the industry. I remember when
• 28:25
  that happened. It was about a year before I launched any film Hustle.
• 28:29
  I launched the film was on twenty fifteen. Yeah, and when I heard
• 28:32
  that, I was like, wow, this this you and I sound like
• 28:34
  an old fart, but like, oh yeah, this YouTube thing's really kind
• 28:37
  of starting to blow up. Now. I should have stayed on there,
• 28:41
  like what was I thinking? Um, but that that I have to ask
• 28:45
  you, man, what was that like? Man? You were like,
• 28:48
  you know, when Disney's like, okay, here's a check, and I'm
• 28:52
  not going to ask you know, percentages or anything like that, but you
• 28:53
  obviously did fairly okay being one of the co founders of it. So what
• 28:57
  was that they like? As a filmmaker, man, like, you know,
• 29:00
  you Disney is buying you, but at a very yeah, very good
• 29:06
  rate, a good rate if you don't mind. Yeah, no, it
• 29:08
  was. It was pretty outrageous. Um. Well, it's interesting because we
• 29:11
  started in two thousand and nine, and I had been like day to day
• 29:15
  with the company until about twenty eleven. Like, you know, about twenty
• 29:21
  eleven, I was like, they're kind of making you know, helping everyone
• 29:23
  making videos, you know, kind of working on different you know, branded
• 29:27
  content and interact I was doing a lot of interactive actually, and so but
• 29:33
  my my day to day wasn't really it didn't really go on beyond twenty eleven.
• 29:37
  I was still my channel to I know, eventually brought my channel totally
• 29:40
  sketch into the network and then you know, would work on you know as
• 29:42
  a director for hire for them and kind of consulting and things. But I
• 29:47
  wasn't really in the thick of it. So it was fun to actually see
• 29:51
  every time I would go there, it was like, oh, we're going
• 29:52
  to a new office. Oh we got a sound stage. Oh we got
• 29:56
  a whole block of offices. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 30:02
  sponsor, and now back to the show. And then it's like and then
• 30:10
  you're you're you're trying to make your YouTube videos there and all of a sudden
• 30:14
  it's like, hey, James Franko's in today. It's like hey Snoop Dog,
• 30:18
  He's gonna shoot four videos and it's like wait, what what's right?
• 30:23
  And then I was, you know, they because I was you know,
• 30:26
  very film or a filmmaker oriented. Um, they would you know, they
• 30:30
  partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival. I remember meeting with like, uh,
• 30:34
  you know, I remember they flew us out there too for you know,
• 30:37
  doing promotion and kind of cross promoting Tribeca, and they were like, oh,
• 30:41
  do you want to do you know, we want to do like a
• 30:44
  forty eight hour like film thing at Tribeca. Do you want to make a
• 30:47
  forty hour film? And Tribeca I said sure, Like oh is like a
• 30:49
  bunch of groups like no, just you and so you'll just do it and
• 30:53
  we'll have the full support of the festival and then we're gonna screen at the
• 30:56
  festival and it's like oh okay, And so I don't know, I'm like
• 31:00
  twenty three, twenty two years old, and like we're running around New York
• 31:04
  and literally like they had like Robert DeNiro make a video being like okay,
• 31:08
  Michael, here's your you know, here are the things you're gonna do in
• 31:11
  your forty eight hour video. And it's like, what what the fuck is
• 31:12
  going on? Like it was just you know, this is a small group
• 31:17
  of friends in a Venice apartment and now it's like they somehow got Robert DeNiro
• 31:22
  roped into this thing like talking to me like, can you image I can
• 31:26
  imagine? Can you imagine that conversation with Robert like it could like it just
• 31:29
  like, all right, so we're gonna do this thing with these guys called
• 31:30
  Maker Studio. They're on YouTube, and like you've got to there has to
• 31:33
  be a moment when Robert DeNiro goes, what is YouTube? What is the
• 31:37
  school? What's going on? I don't understand this. He's like, Bobby,
• 31:41
  Bobby's you gotta do this. Just trust me. These guys are big.
• 31:45
  Just get on the camera and I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure.
• 31:48
  He's like, all right, who's this guy's name? Michael? Michael?
• 31:49
  All right, Michael, I know it was it just kind of it
• 31:55
  felt really surreal. So it was sort of like, you know, just
• 31:57
  kind of had to accept it. Like ADUs certain point I'd let go of
• 32:01
  you know how rass happened and just started to say, okay, yeah,
• 32:05
  all right, and we're gonna and we're gonna roll with it. We're gonna
• 32:08
  roll with it. Yeah. And but definitely, you know, uh and
• 32:12
  and just to be clear, I don't have like one hundred million dollars or
• 32:15
  saying I didn't I didn't like come out like a bandit and own an I
• 32:19
  don't own like Johnny Depp level islands and things. You know, there's no
• 32:23
  that. But I definitely I definitely benefited from the sale, as did everyone
• 32:29
  who was a part of it. And the great thing about it was it
• 32:34
  it one. It set us up in the industry, as you know,
• 32:37
  look at these guys. They they bet on themselves. They went out there
• 32:40
  and invested in in this, uh this kind of idea that nobody really thought
• 32:45
  would be anything, and look at it now. And so it just sort
• 32:47
  of gave you that sort of like creative capital to then go out and say,
• 32:51
  oh, I want to make a film, I want to do this.
• 32:52
  You know, you just caught people's attention a little bit more because you
• 32:57
  had sort of a proof of concept of saying, we started this from nothing
• 33:00
  and look where it got to, you know, moving forward, whether it's
• 33:04
  just you know, you want to do a look web series, you want
• 33:06
  to do a movie, you want to do something, it's you know,
• 33:07
  people take notice because it just did so well. So yeah, kind of
• 33:13
  like that's the biggest thing that I've taken away from the whole experience. I
• 33:16
  feel like Maker was kind of like the Google or the Facebook of the film
• 33:20
  industry was like this little startup that kind of shook things up, and it
• 33:23
  was kind of leading the way into a new technology or a new space within
• 33:28
  the industry that nobody else saw coming. Kind of like you know when Facebook
• 33:31
  came in and did their thing, or Google came in, like, oh,
• 33:35
  we're going to do a search engine. Oh right, yeah, search
• 33:37
  engine shure like everybody else, Like I like Alta Vista and like Ghosts got
• 33:39
  it, and then of course it turned into what it did. And similarly
• 33:44
  to you guys, you were kind of like the Google of the film is
• 33:47
  an industry in a sense because it was all Internet based and it was a
• 33:51
  bunch of crazy kids somewhere doing some crazy stuff and it all turned out until
• 33:55
  finally the big boys finally took notice, but that also sent the message to
• 33:59
  the the whole industry. Is like, when someone like Disney does spend that
• 34:04
  kind of money on a company that's outside the norm, it's sent to the
• 34:07
  industry, Hey, this is where we're going. This is the future.
• 34:12
  This is not you know, this is not a joke because we're not spending
• 34:15
  this kind of money on a little bit of a fad, if you will.
• 34:19
  Yeah, Well, all the film studios I think reached a point where
• 34:22
  they weren't investing in digital you know, they weren't investing in online content,
• 34:28
  but they were seeing like, hey, on our sheets every month or year,
• 34:32
  like quarter, we're looking and seeing how much we're spending on digital advertising.
• 34:37
  We're seeing how much we are spending on a company like Maker to promote
• 34:40
  our stuff. Wouldn't it make sense for us to have our own digital shingle
• 34:45
  here so we don't have to pay somebody else, Like shouldn't shouldn't we already
• 34:49
  have that? Like why are we paying them to tell? Like they're making
• 34:52
  it just it was some kind of confusing loop for them, and so they
• 34:57
  I think they ran the numbers and they said, well, how much would
• 34:59
  it cost? For us to start our own and they ran those numbers and
• 35:01
  said, okay, it's going to cost billions. What if we just acquire
• 35:07
  these companies that have been doing it independently that seemed to have success, and
• 35:09
  then we will just absorb all their knowledge, what they've learned, their tactics,
• 35:15
  their crew, and we'll go from there. And so that's what happened.
• 35:17
  And then you saw that with Makers out with Awesomeness and Full Screen,
• 35:21
  a bunch of other places, and that each studio kind of was eyeing the
• 35:24
  different media companies and just sort of plucking them up and saying, okay,
• 35:28
  now we have our branch. And that's I think that's what really sparked.
• 35:31
  It was was that move of the eyeballs, especially like the you know,
• 35:36
  the eighteen to twenty four and teenager demographic. Like everyone, you know what,
• 35:39
  they weren't watching TV anymore, they were just watching YouTube. They were
• 35:43
  just addicted to online content, and so they needed to be in the game
• 35:46
  so to just market their movies if nothing else, right, And it's kind
• 35:51
  of like what Netflix did for the business. Well, now everybody has a
• 35:53
  streaming service coming out. You know, I own a streaming service. I
• 35:57
  have my own streaming service. You know. It was all because of Netflix
• 36:01
  and they opened up the doors and now everybody's like, wait a minute,
• 36:04
  we gotta jump on this train. This is kind of where the future is
• 36:07
  going to be. So and now, how did you parlay, you know,
• 36:10
  from Maker into the into the world of like legit directing. Yeah,
• 36:16
  and I don't say I don't mean that in a derogatory statement at all.
• 36:20
  No, you know what I mean by legit, like like true India tour
• 36:23
  filmmaker, if you will, kind of like the guys you you were looking
• 36:27
  up to when you were coming up, like Robert Rodriguez is and stuff.
• 36:30
  You know, how did you turn from you know, making sketch comedies on
• 36:31
  YouTube to like, hey, I'm you know, I did The Thin,
• 36:35
  the Thinning and the whole you know, the whole series and another movie that
• 36:38
  you just came out with, Funny Story, and all these kind of real
• 36:42
  legit films with like budgets and like actors. I know, I keep full
• 36:47
  on them. I don't know how what happened was when we were at Maker,
• 36:52
  I really you know, we've been doing sketches for a few years.
• 36:55
  It was like, yeah, twenty ten and I really wanted to do you
• 37:00
  know, I wanted to figure out how how am I going to make a
• 37:01
  feature? How am I going to get in? And I would meet with
• 37:05
  people and he would say, oh, it's great that you've done sketches and
• 37:07
  had some millions of views, and that didn't really matter they you know,
• 37:10
  I was like, oh, where's the proof of concept of the first speech?
• 37:14
  You've done it? Why haven't you done a first feature? Already?
• 37:16
  Show it to us and then we'll talk. So I was like, okay,
• 37:20
  it says a chicken in the egg. Yeah, I know, how
• 37:23
  do I get the job? I don't have the movie if I don't have
• 37:25
  the job, and then how am I gonna make the money. And so
• 37:29
  at that point, you know, I lived pretty frugally. I was just
• 37:31
  saving up and I had a lot of success with Totally Sketch and Maker and
• 37:35
  just you know, everything was kind of going with brand deals, and you
• 37:37
  know, there's paying a ton of money for doing you know, a couple
• 37:40
  of days worth of work, and so I was just saving all this money.
• 37:44
  I'm not going on vacation on doing anything with it. I'm just saving
• 37:46
  it. And so at a certain point at Maker this guy, Glasgow Phillips,
• 37:51
  who had written on South Park and a bunch of other cool things.
• 37:54
  He on spec wrote this idea for what became Smiley, which was a horror
• 38:00
  film that I was my first feature that I directed, and he wrote it
• 38:04
  as an idea of, well, what if we take our resources at Maker
• 38:07
  and just rather than just do a bunch of YouTube videos, we spend you
• 38:09
  know, three weeks and go shoot a feature. Why don't we do that?
• 38:14
  And Maker was interested at the time, and they said, okay,
• 38:16
  well Gallagher can directed, and so all of a sudden, I'm like attached
• 38:21
  to direct a movie. I'm super excited. And you know, because I
• 38:23
  just at that point it wasn't about oh, I have this really personal story
• 38:28
  I gotta tell it was I gotta make my first feature. I want.
• 38:30
  I wanted to make the movie more than it mattered what the exact movie was,
• 38:35
  like. I wanted to just show what I could do and just get
• 38:38
  out there and just you know, start playing on in the big leagues and
• 38:42
  playing in the field and making something, you know, feature length. And
• 38:46
  so what happened was Maker almost did it, and then they didn't, and
• 38:51
  then they said, you know, we're really focused on, you know,
• 38:53
  the short form. But if you guys want to go off and find the
• 38:55
  money for this thing, go for it. And so then I became obsessed
• 39:00
  with just getting Smiley made, and so we'd go around and we started pitching
• 39:04
  it and doing that whole thing, and we had some interest from places,
• 39:07
  but they were like, wait, you want to cast YouTube stars in this
• 39:09
  movie. You want to cast people who have millions of fans online to come
• 39:14
  see a movie like good luck, Like we don't see it. Oh,
• 39:15
  the people don't see anything. I mean, like you would think that you're
• 39:19
  part of Maker Studios, which was crazy in the first place. And they're
• 39:22
  like, hey, guys, we have another idea. You don't listen to
• 39:23
  that. And I'm assuming the budget wasn't one hundred million, so like why
• 39:28
  wouldn't you take that chance? No, I know, we were like we
• 39:31
  can do this for you know, not like by your standards nothing, but
• 39:35
  you know, like a couple hundred thousand dollars max, Like we can do
• 39:37
  the whole thing. It's gonna be great. Everyone's signed on, you know,
• 39:40
  And yeah, it was just sort of crickets. Like people were like,
• 39:45
  I don't know, hasn't been done, hasn't been proven yet, and
• 39:46
  so we said, all right, assholes, we're just gonna call make this
• 39:51
  movie. And so literally at that point, I my producer, Michael Wormser,
• 39:54
  who had worked at Makers had a production he had gone off from.
• 39:58
  Then we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back
• 40:07
  to the show. And we had just been like dedicated to this movie.
• 40:10
  And I said, okay, worms are, if we're going to make this
• 40:15
  thing independently, what's the lowest number we can do it for, like,
• 40:17
  you know, get the movie in the can, Like, what's the number.
• 40:21
  So he crunched the numbers and did it. And I think at the
• 40:23
  time he's like, I think we can get it in the can for like
• 40:25
  one hundred and twenty thousand if everyone's getting paid and you know, we're shooting
• 40:30
  in fifteen days and the whole thing. And I said, okay, that's
• 40:34
  all the money I have green lit. Let's go. And so so then
• 40:37
  from then on we just went and made the movie just you know, self
• 40:40
  funded. We didn't look for any more money. We just you know,
• 40:44
  said, okay, this is the resource we got, Let's get this thing
• 40:45
  in the can, let's shoot it and so so it was just kind of
• 40:50
  a you know, a mad rush in twenty eleven in the summer to just
• 40:52
  go make this movie. And so we did. We shot at fifteen days.
• 40:57
  You know, we brought on the best crew we could. We just
• 41:00
  you know, kind of went out and made it. And from there the
• 41:04
  movie. We then raised a little bit more money for post and then you
• 41:07
  know, for the release, because what ended up happening is we partnered with
• 41:09
  AMC Independent, which they have this, uh, this great program where they
• 41:15
  will release your film theatrically if you can provide the marketing and if they liked
• 41:20
  the movie. And so what we did was we presented this whole plan to
• 41:22
  them with YouTube stars, with everything, and we said, we're going to
• 41:25
  go promote this thing. We're gonna you know, we want as many theaters
• 41:28
  as you can give us, and we will get it out there. And
• 41:30
  look at how many impressions we can get from videos from trailers because our trailer
• 41:35
  went out. We put our trailer out like after we shot the movie in
• 41:37
  November, and it's got like a million views in a day, and then
• 41:39
  after that it was like ten million views in a week. And now it's
• 41:43
  I think at like forty million views or something crazy, and so it was
• 41:45
  just like it kept exploding, and so Hollywood started calling and people were just
• 41:50
  freaking out, being like what is this movie? How can we never heard
• 41:52
  of it? There's a horror movie like YouTube start like you know, So
• 41:55
  then that really just kind of became weakend for the industry and saying like,
• 42:00
  bo's Michael Gallagher, what what you made a movie? I don't understand were
• 42:06
  at And You're like, I was in your office six months ago. Ass
• 42:12
  literally literally we were doing that and so yeah, so then we so,
• 42:15
  but we did it all independent. So that was really my film school was
• 42:19
  was taking Smiley from the development process through production, through post and then through
• 42:23
  marketing, distributing um and getting it out there. And we did a twenty
• 42:28
  eight screen theatrical release through AMC Independent and it was in fourteen markets and uh
• 42:34
  and then yeah it came and then we sold territories at you know, AFM
• 42:37
  through our sales agent and you know, it's played theatrically and like Italy and
• 42:43
  the Philippines and Japan, and it was just like this this kind of crazy
• 42:47
  indie phenomenon, like it's surprising how well the movie did, like how far
• 42:52
  it got out there, because even today, like around Halloween time, if
• 42:55
  you go like on Instagram and go hashtag Smiley, people in Argentina are dressing
• 43:01
  up as Smiley, like still like from last year. It's like thousands of
• 43:06
  people I keep seeing every year, like people sending me photos and things of
• 43:09
  just the reach of this this character. It was quite crazy. And this
• 43:14
  was just a really small indie for me for under two hundred thousand dollars,
• 43:16
  so it's it was pretty wild. So did you have any other that helped
• 43:22
  prove that as an indie filmmaker we can still have a big impact. You
• 43:25
  don't necessarily need you know, big budget and you know, huge stars like
• 43:29
  you can. You can work with the team you have around you and really,
• 43:31
  you know, explode it out. Did you have any other ancillary revenue
• 43:36
  streams for that movie, like T shirt hats, other things like that.
• 43:38
  Did you have any merch at the time? We should have. We didn't
• 43:45
  left money on the table, sir, left money on the table. Yeah,
• 43:46
  definitely money on the table. But the movie did great and people saw
• 43:52
  it, and you know, even though it wasn't like and it's funny because
• 43:54
  even though it got out so far. I still I didn't do everything independent,
• 44:00
  and I really should have because what happened is my domestic distributor that I
• 44:04
  brought on for home video and stuff they screwed us. Oh shocking, I
• 44:08
  can And just when we're calling them on it, they go bankrupt. So
• 44:15
  I've never heard of a story like that. It doesn't happen. It doesn't
• 44:19
  happen. It's never happened before. But you know, and so there's like
• 44:22
  there's some heartbreaking lessons and things you learn along the way of like, oh,
• 44:27
  we did all the work, we got the muscle out there, and
• 44:29
  then just at the finish line, you know, someone is like, thank
• 44:31
  you so much, and well we'll take it from here. Did you did
• 44:37
  you have did you have a clause that if they go bankrupt, the rights
• 44:40
  to go back to you? You didn't. Was there a clause in there?
• 44:44
  Now? I know we're a few years away, we're gonna get it
• 44:46
  back, so it's a communica oya, okay, yeah, because it's a
• 44:49
  thing, all right, So you'll get it back eventually. Yeah, yeah,
• 44:52
  so it'll be all right. But still, but that process, the
• 44:55
  good, the bad, the ugly of making your own movie and distributing it
• 44:59
  and doing everything that that has those lessons I'm still learning because because even with
• 45:05
  my new movie Funny Story, it almost feels like that was my It's my
• 45:09
  first feature, because because what I did was I told a personal story.
• 45:13
  It was something I had to tell, and I did it with friends,
• 45:15
  and I did it as small as I could, just like with Smiley.
• 45:17
  But but Smiley wasn't a personal story. It was like it was almost like
• 45:21
  I hired myself for a job. It was like I saw an opportunity and
• 45:25
  I took the opportunity and tried to make it the best and the biggest it
• 45:30
  could. But it wasn't It didn't have any personal connection to me. It
• 45:32
  felt like I I felt like multiple people, like I'm I'm I'm the financier
• 45:37
  hiring the director who was then going to produce it, and then going to
• 45:40
  distribute it. So it was like I had different hats on all the time.
• 45:44
  You were fighting with yourself constantly. Yeah, exactly. But but in
• 45:47
  terms of like a creative thing, it's like, I'm really proud of the
• 45:50
  movie and what we've done with it, but in terms of what I can
• 45:52
  do as a storyteller and and the kind of movies that I want to make.
• 45:55
  It's it didn't really line up with that. And I think people saw
• 45:59
  that when you know, they write reviews or you know whatever, but we
• 46:04
  can't control that aspect of it. You know, you kind of just do
• 46:06
  things and put it out there. But but that's the other thing. I
• 46:08
  think people thought we had a huge budget for Smiley because it got we had
• 46:13
  billboards in Times Square, we had you know kind of promotion all around Los
• 46:16
  Angeles and you know, big release. But it was just it was Michael
• 46:20
  Worms and I was like these you know, two little producers just going out
• 46:22
  and you know, calling Clear Channel and saying, hey, can we get
• 46:25
  a billboard? Hey, we have no money, what can we do?
• 46:29
  And then people were just you know wanting to help because they thought it was
• 46:30
  a cool idea and why not. And they had the inventory. So we
• 46:35
  were able to make a pretty big splash with with you know, a couple
• 46:37
  of pennies and then and then you started making some films directly for YouTube bread
• 46:42
  as well, like the Finning. Yeah, so the Thinning came about an
• 46:45
  interesting way because post Smiley, I had all these you know, I was
• 46:50
  repped it, you know, I'm still repped a UTA and h you know,
• 46:53
  Management three sixty and all these great places because they had seen Smiley and
• 46:58
  they'd seen the trailer and all the kind of ruck as we were creating,
• 47:00
  and they said, Okay, we want to bet on this guy. So
• 47:04
  they put me in rooms with every studio, all these production companies, and
• 47:07
  they're like, what do you want to do next? And I'm like,
• 47:08
  I'm exhausted, I have no idea. What do you guys got And they're
• 47:13
  like, all right, well, why don't you go write a script and
• 47:15
  then call us? So I was like, okay, that's another lesson learned.
• 47:19
  Always have your next thing ready, three things, next three things?
• 47:22
  Right, yeah, next three things. Definitely you're gonna have options because they
• 47:28
  won't like the first one, but they might like the third one. You
• 47:30
  never know, and you're not going to get back in that room again easily.
• 47:32
  It's not that easy yet. So I, you know, had that
• 47:36
  water bottle tour of meeting with everybody without a movie, well, without a
• 47:40
  project. Yeah, basically, yeah, nothing to pitch. It's highly wood
• 47:45
  masturbation, like we like to call it. Yeah, I got a lot
• 47:47
  of free waters. It was great. And then but from that I learned,
• 47:52
  Okay, it's not about me coming over and seeing what they have.
• 47:55
  They want to see what I got. I'm the generator. So okay,
• 47:59
  that's how as a filmmaker you need to look at these things. And so
• 48:01
  what I did was I spent the next couple of years just head down writing.
• 48:07
  And so I enlisted Steve Green, who's my best friend, and we
• 48:09
  had been doing all these sketches and writing you know, comedy bits. I
• 48:13
  said, hey, let's write movies. We could figure it out. And
• 48:16
  so because I never really i'd never finished a feature from scratch with Smiley,
• 48:22
  I came on it and did some rewrites, some polishes and kind of adjusted
• 48:25
  some things. But it wasn't I didn't start. It didn't start and end
• 48:29
  with me. And so that was a new process. So Steve and I
• 48:31
  just kind of like head down wrote every read every screenwriting book there is,
• 48:36
  and we just started going. And so everyone was saying, you know,
• 48:38
  maybe write something, you know, maybe right from a personal place. So
• 48:42
  the first thing we wrote was Internet Famous, which was a parody of all
• 48:45
  these YouTube stars and the ego trip and the ridiculousness of the YouTube world.
• 48:51
  So we wrote that as like a mockumentary comedy, kind of like a best
• 48:53
  in show in Tone or spinal Tap, and uh yeah, and everyone was
• 48:58
  really excited about that. So we partnered with Lake Sure and they financed the
• 49:01
  movie through their Off the Dock, which was their digital division, and they
• 49:05
  said, okay, well, what you did with Smile, let's try and
• 49:07
  do that with Internet famous, but do it with YouTube stars making fun of
• 49:10
  themselves and at a comedy. It's all lining up. So then we just
• 49:14
  kind of we but now it's a story that it's like I have some basis
• 49:17
  in that because I generated the thing, and so we we put this great
• 49:22
  cast together and we went out and shot it and then Netflix bought it and
• 49:27
  so it's out on Netflix now, and that was that was cool. That
• 49:30
  budget was under a million, but it was but it was definitely a huge
• 49:34
  step up from where had gone before. And then at the same time,
• 49:37
  when we were writing all those scripts, like you said to have three projects
• 49:39
  ready, we had written five scripts and we took out you know, we
• 49:44
  were taking them out and seeing what the agents were responding to. And the
• 49:46
  other one we wrote was The Thinning, which was you know, the Sopient
• 49:49
  team thriller, and so we came up the idea for that. It was
• 49:52
  sort of like a what if, what if we created a Hunger Games event
• 49:55
  but for YouTube. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:04
  and now back to the show. What if we created like this big kind
• 50:09
  of spectacle that but it was really just aimed to never come out in theaters,
• 50:15
  but just like be an event on the Internet, because most people they
• 50:17
  were just dumping things that they couldn't get distribution on the Internet as opposed to
• 50:22
  like, what did you make a spectacle for the Internet? And so we
• 50:23
  thought that would be cool, and so we pitched that around and then Legendary
• 50:28
  they had started a digital division and they loved the script and so and it
• 50:31
  was funny because when I met with them, they were only interested in series.
• 50:36
  And then there had been like one or two other like digital movies that
• 50:37
  came out post Smiley that started getting like good press that like, oh,
• 50:42
  they're making money, they can do this. As soon as they heard that
• 50:44
  they can make money making features for the Internet, all of a sudden,
• 50:46
  our phone rang oh well, of course, because they made because it's like,
• 50:50
  oh, how much is it? How much do you need that's coffee
• 50:52
  Bunny, sure here exactly. So we went off and got to make The
• 50:58
  Thinning with Legendary and then they sold it to YouTube read at the time,
• 51:02
  which was I think they had just started that as like a premium content division
• 51:07
  and uh. And then it became like the biggest movie that they had ever
• 51:10
  you know, the biggest show or anything that they had ever released, like
• 51:14
  in terms of viewership. Could just explode it and so immediately they green let
• 51:16
  a sequel. So we did Sinning the New World Order, and you know,
• 51:20
  it was just kind of like all of a sudden, you know,
• 51:22
  all this hard work and like putting your head down writing, it's like,
• 51:25
  oh, now we're just making movies every you know, it's like we were
• 51:29
  doing like two movies every other year. It was like just oh my god,
• 51:31
  we're doing two a year, like going from zero to a thousand.
• 51:35
  It's crazy, right, but it was fun. I mean, it's it's
• 51:38
  been a kind of a wild process to go from having everyone question you and
• 51:45
  kind of like not understand what you're going for, to then everyone calling and
• 51:49
  saying like how do we work with you? How you know, sending scripts,
• 51:52
  sending digital stars, over being like, can you put them in a
• 51:54
  movie? You know, we got we got three hundred thousand dollars. Can
• 51:59
  we make a movie this kid? It's like what, I don't, that's
• 52:02
  not really how you make a movie. But all they do, they trust
• 52:07
  me, they do make movies just like that. I know. I had
• 52:12
  to turn some of those down, you know what. You know what's funny
• 52:14
  because I'm looking I'm looking forward in the future, and you're gonna be one
• 52:17
  day sixty and you're gonna look back and you're gonna be like, yeah,
• 52:21
  I was there, you do when it started? Yeah? And I was
• 52:24
  just like yeah, And you tell these stories and people were like, do
• 52:27
  you mean there was a world when there was no video on the internet?
• 52:30
  Like is that a world I would want to live in? I don't understand
• 52:34
  one day. Your generations very interesting, Like our generation, my generations Gen
• 52:38
  X are like we're the in between ers. Were like we had one foot
• 52:42
  in the old and one foot in the news, so like we were around
• 52:44
  before the Internet, but we definitely were there when it popped. And you
• 52:49
  have no idea, like you said you were born in eighty eight. I
• 52:51
  was walking, I was going into high school in eighty eight. So there's
• 52:54
  a slight different, slight difference in perspective, but it's fascinating. That's why
• 52:59
  I loved talking to young filmmakers like yourself, especially once I've had a lot
• 53:02
  of a lot of success in what they're doing, because I'm always fascinated with
• 53:07
  stories like how these different windows that open up, and then how you leverage
• 53:13
  that window to take it to the next step and so on, which brings
• 53:15
  me to your new movie Funny Story that I've actually been seeing billboards all around
• 53:21
  town. I've been like as I drive by, and I'm like like,
• 53:22
  and that's why when it came through, I was like, oh, Funny
• 53:24
  Story, Yeah, that's that movie. I keep seeing everywhere on like every
• 53:29
  sick and bust thing I see is there. So I don't know who's your
• 53:34
  marketing and PR people, but they're doing a good job spending that money because
• 53:37
  it's out there, no question. So because this one looks more serious,
• 53:40
  it does. It looks a lot more serious. It's not smiley, it's
• 53:45
  definitely not it's the famous. It's it's definitely a little bit more like a
• 53:50
  serious filmmaker. So tell me a little bit about that. Well, I
• 53:53
  think after doing I don't know. I guess it was like four or five
• 53:58
  of these kind of YouTube these sort of digital features. UM. I was
• 54:02
  known as the digital guy, and so I could get into any room,
• 54:06
  if you know, as long as it was starting someone with X amount of
• 54:07
  followers. You know, I was up for that job. And that was
• 54:13
  interesting. It's a good place to be, it's a great place to be.
• 54:15
  But also there's a frustration because I didn't. I never intended for that
• 54:20
  to become, you know, sort of the branded digital guy. I wanted
• 54:23
  to be more, you know, just a filmmaker amongst all filmmakers, and
• 54:29
  I was just working in the specific medium and kind of trying to break open
• 54:31
  this this area that we thought, um that we thought needed to be open.
• 54:37
  And so with funny story, it was kind of a going back to,
• 54:43
  you know, the filmmakers that I grew up on and the people that
• 54:45
  inspired me to first start UM and try and tell a movie and try and
• 54:49
  tell a story that didn't require the you know, you have to have cast
• 54:53
  somebody that has X amount of followers that you know, has has this many
• 54:58
  Instagram things, and it's like this, it's not about the result. I
• 55:02
  want to do something that wasn't result oriented. That was really just we're gonna
• 55:07
  go make this because we're all passionate about the story and the characters and and
• 55:09
  I want to show as a filmmak what I can do. And so that
• 55:13
  was the that was the spirit of making funny stories. So um To wrote
• 55:17
  this movie, and I was really inspired by like the Duplas Brothers and Joe
• 55:21
  Swanberg and these guys that were just like going off. You know, they
• 55:22
  call it mumblecore or whatever, but it's like go off without really a script,
• 55:27
  maybe just an outline, and we're just gonna go, you know,
• 55:29
  make this. That's how I made I made my first two features. I
• 55:32
  love this, yeah, which is which is great. And so I started
• 55:36
  with, okay, well what can I do? You know, I need
• 55:38
  limited location. I started thinking back to like you know, the YouTube days
• 55:43
  off, Like how do I just go off and make something right? And
• 55:45
  so I was like looking at all the resources I had and the people I
• 55:49
  knew, and I started writing parts for to the people around me and really
• 55:52
  talented actors that I had kind of gotten the pleasure to work with, and
• 55:55
  putting this thing together. I outlined you know, full feet, Sure it
• 56:00
  was like maybe thirty pages. It was like a script that just didn't have
• 56:02
  any dialogue. It was a scriment. It's a technical term of scriptment.
• 56:07
  Yes out there, thank you. Yes. So I wrote a scriptment,
• 56:09
  yes, and it was the whole movie, but I had no dialogue,
• 56:13
  and I try. I was like, you know, it was a little
• 56:15
  cocky because I had made some other movies and I'm like, okay, I
• 56:16
  think I didn't get funded off of scriptment. It can't be that hard.
• 56:21
  And everyone was like, no dialogue. Interesting, and your last name was
• 56:24
  that du plus not gonna work fundy. Have you never done this before?
• 56:28
  I don't know. I don't know about this. And then so then they
• 56:31
  started making me kind of question it, and I was like, shit,
• 56:34
  maybe I should maybe I should add some dialogue to this thing. Maybe,
• 56:38
  And so I started, I said, And then I started thinking about,
• 56:40
  well, if I really go and do this on the budget, then I
• 56:44
  think I could just go off and make it. I think it's it's too
• 56:49
  much money where I want to risk the idea of maybe I don't have the
• 56:52
  answer because I think it is sort of like jumping out of an airplane without
• 56:58
  without the dialogue, because you really have to try and everyone around you and
• 57:00
  I just got cold feet honestly about trying to do that. And I still
• 57:05
  want to do it someday, but at that time I was like, I
• 57:07
  don't think I'm ready to do no dialogue scriptment, go make it. It
• 57:12
  takes a certain amount of ball ster, It does truly take a certain amount
• 57:15
  of balls to do that. So my balls were up in my body and
• 57:17
  saying I dropped it. So then I called Steve Green. I was like,
• 57:25
  Steve, I had a scriptment I want to turn into a script.
• 57:30
  Let's let's do this. And so we we powered together. I think it
• 57:34
  was like four or five days of just like twelve hour sessions of us just
• 57:38
  locked in a room, just you know, acting it out, writing dialogue,
• 57:43
  making each other crack up. And then and then I had the full
• 57:45
  script and then it was like a nineties something page script, and we went
• 57:49
  off and I just cast people that I had either worked with before or I
• 57:52
  met with that I knew were just going to be passionate about this thing.
• 57:55
  The crew, everybody, everyone got paid, but it was from the spear
• 58:00
  of we don't know what's going to happen with this thing. We're just gonna
• 58:01
  go and do it. And that set is the best set experience I've ever
• 58:07
  had because everyone was there for the right reason. I never actually felt that
• 58:10
  before with everything else they've done. There may have been a few people who
• 58:14
  are really excited about a project, but at a certain level, like your
• 58:19
  your crew, your cast, like they're making a lot of stuff, it's
• 58:22
  hard to get that genuine enthusiasm of like this, we're doing this because we
• 58:28
  love it. We love making movies, we love we love this story.
• 58:30
  And that set, it felt like everyone was there for the right reason.
• 58:34
  They had this spirit and this excitement and it just, I don't know,
• 58:37
  it just it shows in the movie, I think. And so we went
• 58:42
  out and we submitted to film festivals and last year, yeah, we've been
• 58:45
  touring with the film. It got into the slam Dance Film Festival and they're
• 58:49
  beyond category because I'd already done more than it was my first feature. And
• 58:52
  so from there it kind of like all the film festivals were reaching out and
• 58:58
  then we just kind of poured with it for the last year and so it
• 59:00
  played, you know, like in one crazy awards at like the breck and
• 59:04
  Ridge Film Festival and Woods Hole and uh what Washington West. I mean,
• 59:09
  there's just like a million, like these regional film festivals that just the movie
• 59:14
  was really resonating with audiences, and you know, we were like it would
• 59:19
  play at places and then they'd add screenings, it would sell out, and
• 59:22
  it was just like there was this weird buzz about the movie just you know,
• 59:25
  within these communities. We weren't really promoting it. It didn't have any
• 59:29
  there wasn't much to promote on a film festival circuit. You know, you
• 59:31
  can put flyers up in things, but but we didn't even really do that.
• 59:35
  It was just word of mouth. So it was kind of spreading and
• 59:37
  other film festivals were asking us to play. And then this last year we
• 59:42
  got it out with Blue Fox Entertainment and we did a few screen theatrical day
• 59:46
  and date with vod and such, and uh, yeah, the movie's just
• 59:51
  you know, it's gotten great reviews. It's just been really warmly received,
• 59:54
  and it's you know, it's this little movie that we went off and made
• 59:58
  that you know, we didn't have a marketing muscle behind it. We'll be
• 1:00:01
  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:00:10
  And so I all I did was you know the advertising you've seen,
• 1:00:15
  that's just me calling up places I did with Smiley saying like, hey,
• 1:00:17
  we made another indie. Do you have any inventory? What do you got?
• 1:00:22
  Like what kind of deal? And so you know, we just call
• 1:00:23
  these places up and then you know, got billboards and got you know,
• 1:00:28
  bus benches and all that kind of stuff. Can I ask you, I
• 1:00:30
  don't know if you if you're able to tell me this or not, but
• 1:00:32
  what are those things kind of costs? I have no idea what a bus
• 1:00:36
  bench costs or or like those like I've always seen them and you always think
• 1:00:39
  they're like these like fifty thousands, like a crazy expensive, Like is it
• 1:00:44
  is it literally affordable to do that, like if you have a little bit
• 1:00:46
  of money, If you have a little bit of money, it is affordable.
• 1:00:50
  Yeah, I think I don't have the exact numbers offhand, but I
• 1:00:52
  do know that, you know, we negotiated with the companies and just you
• 1:00:57
  know, we said, look, we're not you know, Lionsgate were or
• 1:01:00
  a small indie you know movie coming out. So if there's inventory that you
• 1:01:02
  have or if there's a deal, you can cut us, like let us
• 1:01:05
  know because we'd love to consider, you know, working with you guys.
• 1:01:08
  And so I think for bus benches, I think the company we went with
• 1:01:12
  they do a minimum of ten, and so you have to get ten of
• 1:01:15
  them. But per unit, they're not crazy expense. It's like three hundred
• 1:01:17
  dollars or something per bench. So I think like three thousand around three thousand.
• 1:01:22
  I think you can get ten benches in LA for a month, for
• 1:01:25
  a month, for four weeks. That's the same, right, It's insane.
• 1:01:30
  Oh, guys, anyone who listening, you're gonna start seeing indie film
• 1:01:34
  hustle banners all over Los Angeles. I'm just saying, you're gonna be like,
• 1:01:39
  is that is that a podcast with a bus bench? Like? Is
• 1:01:43
  that a thing? I'm like, Oh, yeah, it's gonna be a
• 1:01:45
  thing. That's the thing. Is Like, I don't know. I guess
• 1:01:50
  I was never afraid of like just trying to google something or looking and just
• 1:01:53
  asking yeah, because the worst thing that's gonna happen is they're gonna say,
• 1:01:55
  now get lost. And I've had that happen to me and that's okay.
• 1:02:00
  And it's like there's a few outdoor advertising companies that are not filmmaker friendly and
• 1:02:05
  that's okay. But then there's other ones that say, you know, you
• 1:02:07
  have a connection with somebody and you tell them your story and they want to
• 1:02:12
  help you. I mean, people want to help each other. It's just
• 1:02:14
  we so rarely are we offering our help to others? Are we asking?
• 1:02:17
  It's hard to even ask for help sometimes. But if you if you can
• 1:02:22
  be willing to accept whatever the answer is, then you might be surprised by
• 1:02:25
  people because I don't know, there's there's other passionate filmmakers out there. Maybe
• 1:02:30
  I have a desk job at a marketing you know, and an ad agency,
• 1:02:31
  and they're like, yeah, I want to help you in La be
• 1:02:35
  in that position someday in La Never. I can't believe that. What I
• 1:02:39
  find fascinating is that you are known for being online, being on YouTube,
• 1:02:45
  understanding online marketing, understanding online branding, and yet you use legacy advertising methods
• 1:02:53
  as part of your whole overall you know plan, Why do you what kind
• 1:02:58
  of return? What do you think you get from these kinds? Like what
• 1:03:00
  it makes more sense to spend those three thousand dollars on you know, focused
• 1:03:05
  Facebook ads or YouTube ads as opposed to are you going to get a better
• 1:03:08
  ROY on that than bus benches? Look, bus benches are cool as hell
• 1:03:12
  and I'm seriously thinking of getting suff but um, but on an ROY standpoint,
• 1:03:16
  like what is it really going to do? Well? There's there's different
• 1:03:22
  ways to think about it. If you're just concerned about ROI or just like
• 1:03:27
  the kind of money you're going to make, you know, from sales,
• 1:03:30
  I don't know that outdoor there's like a one to one of you know,
• 1:03:35
  a bus bench equals as many downloads or rent. Of course, of course,
• 1:03:40
  I do have a theory about advertising and about selling something, which is
• 1:03:45
  that if I haven't heard of it, if I haven't seen it out in
• 1:03:49
  the wild, then it's harder for me to as a consumer just to watch
• 1:03:54
  a movie, to listen to a song and stuff like I need to,
• 1:03:58
  I need to have been in I need to. I've almost been bombarded by
• 1:04:01
  it in three different ways, Like if I saw it out in public,
• 1:04:04
  I saw the pre roll ad on YouTube, and then I see it on
• 1:04:08
  Apple TV on you know, as like a premium movie. Then it's like,
• 1:04:12
  oh, I've seen this before, and then I'm going to check it
• 1:04:14
  out as opposed to something like I've never seen all of a sudden, it's
• 1:04:16
  just on iTunes or it's just on Amazon. I think it's a harder.
• 1:04:20
  It's a harder purchase for me to just go and blind and just search around
• 1:04:26
  to see what's out. Whereas if I have the impression I've seen the key
• 1:04:31
  art a few different times and especially different mediums, I think really hell like
• 1:04:35
  even and I really toyed with this, and I think next time I'll do
• 1:04:39
  it. Is um, you know, getting pre roles on podcasts because so
• 1:04:43
  many people are listening to podcasts and they're in your ear. I'm available.
• 1:04:46
  I'm available, sir, I'm available. You let me know how you want
• 1:04:50
  to cut that deal. Will make that work? I mean it's like and
• 1:04:55
  it's like, oh, in your ear, you're hearing Funny Story May twenty
• 1:04:58
  fourth on you know, in theaters and on demand, and then you're seeing
• 1:05:00
  it and then it's like now you're on Apple TV and it's like, oh,
• 1:05:01
  I've been told it, I watched it, I saw a trailer,
• 1:05:04
  and now the movie is trending or whatever, it's in recent discoveries. Now
• 1:05:10
  I'm going to watch it. You know what this funny thing is though?
• 1:05:12
  What your theory is this exactly happened because it happened to me because when your
• 1:05:16
  poster showed up in my email box, I said, oh, that's that
• 1:05:20
  movie that I saw on the bus bench around the corner, and it added
• 1:05:25
  a sense before I even knew who you were like and got and delved into
• 1:05:28
  who you are in your backstory, I automatically associated, oh, this is
• 1:05:32
  a real movie, purely because of the legacy, the legacy marketing that you
• 1:05:39
  were using, Like, because I know the impression in my mind is a
• 1:05:43
  YouTube is not going to cost nearly as much as a bunch a bus bench.
• 1:05:46
  Ye, not nearly as much as a billboard, for God's sake.
• 1:05:49
  That's like, that's what the studios do. So you already for your small
• 1:05:54
  little indie movie. You've already put yourself in the box with the studios because
• 1:05:59
  of that specific moves. So it is working. It worked on me.
• 1:06:02
  Uh that was that was That was the first time I because honestly I was
• 1:06:05
  like, oh, yeah, this and I saw that post, I'm like,
• 1:06:08
  oh, let me dig in a little bit, because I get but
• 1:06:10
  barted with request to be on the show all the time. But when I
• 1:06:13
  saw that, it stopped me, and then I was like, oh,
• 1:06:15
  let me dig in and let me investigate Who's who's Michael Galla. I'm like,
• 1:06:19
  okay, okay, fine, this makes a lot of sense now.
• 1:06:23
  But it was the it was the initial. But honestly, it was the
• 1:06:25
  initial m looking up and and it's not one billboard by the way, I've
• 1:06:29
  seen it like three four times all around, all around la. So it
• 1:06:32
  works, it works. That's good. I'm glad. I'm glad it's working.
• 1:06:36
  And yeah, just so you know, it's not like, oh,
• 1:06:38
  we hired some big company do this. It's like, no, it's it's
• 1:06:40
  me. It's me making phone calls. Like it's not still hustling. It's
• 1:06:45
  still hustling, you know, thinking to that point. I don't know.
• 1:06:47
  I haven't gotten to that point where I'm like, oh, I have a
• 1:06:49
  whole staff and everyone's just doing everything. It's like, no, I'm still
• 1:06:53
  I'm looking at I'm creating marketing assets, I'm cutting trailers. Did you make
• 1:06:58
  the poster? Did you make the poster? I didn't make the poster,
• 1:07:00
  but I you know, I know my limits. I suppose that's what I'm
• 1:07:04
  saying it is, and I suppose it was good. But the bus benches
• 1:07:08
  I did make, so I took the key art and then I remixed the
• 1:07:11
  elements. I can do that, you know what I mean. So it's
• 1:07:14
  like I can. I still want to. You know, I saw that
• 1:07:15
  indie film Spirit in me. I'm like, I'm just gonna go and do
• 1:07:18
  this. That's great, man, that's awesome. And now I wanted to
• 1:07:23
  ask you something in regards to this whole influencer phenomenon which is basically going on
• 1:07:27
  right now and it has been going on for many years. Do you think
• 1:07:30
  that this is gonna be like in twenty years, are we going to talk
• 1:07:31
  about influencers anymore? Like do you think there's a window that's gonna close there?
• 1:07:35
  I mean, I think the window to be an influencer is it's tighter
• 1:07:39
  now than it was five years ago. On YouTube, on Instagram, on
• 1:07:43
  Facebook. You know, they're specific places where certain people are making their name.
• 1:07:46
  Remember all the guys at Vine and girls at Vine. They were like,
• 1:07:49
  I'm a huge Vine person. Well Vine's gone, and then you're just
• 1:07:53
  like, oh, let's just post them all on YouTube and see what happens.
• 1:07:56
  Like it's like, yeah, so do you what do you think?
• 1:07:59
  Yeah? Do you think you know, from your I'd love to hear your
• 1:08:00
  perspective. Where do you think this influencer phenomenon is like influence marketing, which
• 1:08:04
  is you know, you guys kind of one of these one of the first
• 1:08:08
  people to actually do influencer marketing and now it's become a thing. What do
• 1:08:12
  you think and I was going to pan out in the future. Yeah,
• 1:08:15
  I think you see someone like Dwayne the Rock Johnson, you know, and
• 1:08:21
  I think we're not far off from him just releasing his own movies on his
• 1:08:26
  own app or something, you know where, because you have somebody who is
• 1:08:30
  just a brand and it doesn't matter he's doing Fallers on HBO or if he's
• 1:08:35
  in you know, Jumanji or something. It's like at a certain point when
• 1:08:39
  he hankes enough money, he doesn't need the studio. Yeah, and so
• 1:08:44
  you have a brand, and it's like if you like Dwayne the Rock Johnson,
• 1:08:46
  like you just you either subscribe to his app or it's like he can
• 1:08:50
  just market directly to his fans. And so I think the follower kind of
• 1:08:55
  concept on all these different social media platforms, I think it might collapse into
• 1:08:59
  an app or something like that where every everyone just has a base and then
• 1:09:03
  they're just you know, providing content to that base and they can sell fun
• 1:09:06
  and whether it's Kim Kardashian or you know, uh Als Ferrari or whoever.
• 1:09:13
  First of all, stop putting my name in the same sense as with Dwayne
• 1:09:16
  the Rock Johnson or god forbid Kim k but please please stop it. I've
• 1:09:24
  got you, I've got you, fool sir. But you know what I'm
• 1:09:28
  saying. But it doesn't you know, it doesn't matter what your brand is.
• 1:09:31
  But I think each person, what influencers are they are a brand and
• 1:09:35
  what do they sell. It's themselves, It's it's something about them. And
• 1:09:40
  some people, you could argue, have talents. Some people don't, and
• 1:09:43
  they're just personalities, but they can attract people and whether and it could be
• 1:09:47
  from from anything. But I think the collapsing of the different platforms will happen
• 1:09:54
  at some point, and I think it'll take someone And it could be you
• 1:09:58
  know, you have these traditional folks like Tom Cruise or something. We'll be
• 1:10:02
  right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 1:10:13
  Or it could be you know, you know, some kid on YouTube with
• 1:10:15
  the you know just doing this whole thing, and it's like we learned that,
• 1:10:18
  like, okay, all of a sudden, beauty pie has his whole
• 1:10:21
  little empire off his app and he's making forty million dollars a month or something,
• 1:10:26
  and everyone's like wait what And then it'll take something like that happening where
• 1:10:30
  then everyone jumps in and that's not it's not that far off, far off
• 1:10:33
  at all. Yeah, I mean, I got I mean, I literally
• 1:10:36
  have a streaming service which is an app which you download. I'm not making
• 1:10:42
  forty million a month. Let everybody know that, I'm not even close to
• 1:10:45
  there's many zeros. I'm even close to that many zeros, trust me.
• 1:10:48
  But it is it is at a certain point that is something where I think,
• 1:10:51
  like I think I think someone like Tom Cruise, who was a little
• 1:10:55
  bit more traditional as far as his age and where he came from. I
• 1:10:59
  don't think he's he's not on the He's just not there. But I think
• 1:11:01
  the Rock is that hybrid. He's the guy who came up. He's like
• 1:11:04
  them biddle, he's in the middle. He's like, I'm before the but
• 1:11:08
  I'm embracing it and I'm built for this medium. And he is he's built
• 1:11:13
  for the medium where the young and the older following him and that's who you
• 1:11:16
  need. Yeah, he's yeah, he's like he is, right, He's
• 1:11:25
  like literally like on the set of Bad Boys three with like the guy who
• 1:11:28
  did um bel Air that that that great, great trailer for Belair, Like
• 1:11:32
  if they you saw that, right, Oh, it's so great. It's
• 1:11:34
  so great for everyone imagining. Yeah, it's like the dark, dawn and
• 1:11:40
  dirty like Eminem style eight mile style of Prince Prince of Belair and it's so
• 1:11:45
  freaking good. And you got Will Smith like talking to that filmmaker on a
• 1:11:49
  balcony in Miami. He's just like, hey man, where you're like,
• 1:11:53
  are you vlogging? Will Smith? Are you really are you vlogging? Will
• 1:11:57
  Smith? He's a weekly blogger, Yeah he is, he is, and
• 1:12:00
  he does these motivational things. He's yeah, so like he saw it.
• 1:12:03
  He saw it. He's like, oh, I gotta jump on this.
• 1:12:05
  This is this is where it's going to be. And he can leverage his
• 1:12:09
  traditional fame to a platform like that where people like me would follow him and
• 1:12:14
  young, younger people who watch the genie will follow him. Yeah exactly.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah, I think I think We're going to see more of that in the
• 1:12:25
  future. Um, and whether that's people jumping onto pre existing platforms and just
• 1:12:29
  utilizing their celebrity to kind of bring people in. But I do think,
• 1:12:33
  you know, with the subscription models and the apps and things, I think
• 1:12:38
  we're kind of getting to a place where if they could have it all under
• 1:12:41
  one hub, and you know, Apples trying to do that, Apples trying
• 1:12:44
  to do the Apples trying to do that, and I think it'll take a
• 1:12:46
  really big personality to just triple down on themselves and do it. Who has
• 1:12:50
  the capital um And maybe it's a company investing in the rock industries just like
• 1:12:57
  doing it that way. I don't know, but I think but he's called
• 1:13:00
  seven Bucks, so because he has seven seven bucks he started yea. So
• 1:13:06
  no, Um, this is fashionate. And I have to ask this question
• 1:13:10
  because I think people would hurt me if I didn't ask this question. Do
• 1:13:13
  you have any advice on building a YouTube channel? It's the day's world,
• 1:13:16
  in today's world, not in nineteen in two thousand and nine. In today's
• 1:13:21
  world. That's a good question. Um. Well, I think there's there's
• 1:13:26
  things that you probably heard that I think still apply, which is you got
• 1:13:30
  to come up with a brand, whether that's yourself or if you're a gamer,
• 1:13:34
  you know gaming, or if it's indie film, it's tips um,
• 1:13:38
  be consistent to whatever your brand is. Because so when you go to the
• 1:13:42
  grocery store and you want orange juice, if you take an orange juice container
• 1:13:45
  and there's milk in, it doesn't matter how good the milk is. People
• 1:13:48
  want orange juice. Like in terms of branding, like, I think that's
• 1:13:53
  really important for YouTube, Like you think of it like a product that you're
• 1:13:56
  selling, and it's you, it's your story, it's you know, your
• 1:13:59
  your films, your content, and so if you create that brand, be
• 1:14:02
  then set a schedule and be consistent. Set schedule like live or die by
• 1:14:06
  that schedule. So if it's weekly, if it's daily, just do something
• 1:14:10
  manageable that you can commit to. And before you launch. I would stockpile
• 1:14:15
  at least a month so that way you're not like, you know, if
• 1:14:17
  something comes up, then you're not screwed or you know, having to be
• 1:14:20
  like, hey's you guys, sorry I couldn't post this week, Like I
• 1:14:25
  don't think people watching that. Just do it, you know, just like
• 1:14:28
  commit to it and do it and then and then also, don't be afraid
• 1:14:31
  to collaborate with people who are similar to you. Don't be like, oh,
• 1:14:35
  everyone's competition. It's like, I wouldn't think of everyone as competition and
• 1:14:40
  think of them more as your peers and collaborators. And there's maybe a way
• 1:14:44
  that you can provide value to them. So in the same way that I
• 1:14:46
  was just cold reaching out to the personalities and saying like, hey, let
• 1:14:50
  me make you a star of your own, you know, video creation that
• 1:14:54
  I will produce for you. Whatever you can provide. If you have audio
• 1:14:58
  equipment, and you notice somebody who's doing a podcast doesn't have audio equipment or
• 1:15:01
  that they should, they should have that maybe you could offer to you know,
• 1:15:05
  let him use your studio or whatever. I mean, there's a million
• 1:15:08
  different ways you could think about this stuff of what you can provide to people,
• 1:15:12
  whether that's in person, whether that's you know, just shouting him out.
• 1:15:15
  Um, there's a million different ways. But I think offering value in
• 1:15:18
  exchange for collaborating is always a good way to go. And yeah, and
• 1:15:24
  then I think I think just being consistent in doing those things. I think
• 1:15:27
  that's like the groundwork because it's hard to give advice when you don't have like
• 1:15:32
  a specific Uh, it's a very it's a very broad. But like you
• 1:15:36
  look at something like Gary v who was he was arguably one of the godfathers
• 1:15:42
  of the internet streaming space because he was there before YouTube and he and for
• 1:15:46
  people who don't know who Gary vander Chuck is, please look him up.
• 1:15:48
  I've mentioned him on the show before. He's he's doing okay for himself now.
• 1:15:53
  But he created that wine Channel's Wine Wine Library TV thing, and he
• 1:15:57
  would just every week just do these wine tasting videos like what's what's a good
• 1:16:01
  wine with Oreos, what's a good wine with this? And he did it
• 1:16:04
  for like I think, like two years, with like barely anyone watching because
• 1:16:09
  nobody was online. And then one day Conan O'Brien called because when they like,
• 1:16:13
  hey, we need a wine expert, and they looked them up and
• 1:16:15
  he was the only guy, and they said, well, he's got two
• 1:16:17
  hundred episodes. He must know what he's doing. And then the rest as
• 1:16:20
  the rest, as they say, is history. And that's why a lot
• 1:16:23
  of people ask me about my podcast and like, how do you, like,
• 1:16:26
  how'd you get there? I'm like, dude, like I got three
• 1:16:28
  hundred and twenty as of this recording, I think like three hundred and twenty
• 1:16:31
  something episodes. And I'm like, it's because I did two podcasts a week
• 1:16:34
  because I'm psychotic and I just kept and I just every week every really well,
• 1:16:41
  it's because you you kept consistent, but more importantly, because you started
• 1:16:44
  a lot of people don't even yes. Yes. As as as a quote,
• 1:16:47
  I says like the best the best write, I think it was like
• 1:16:50
  the best writing, the best writing you never did is better than the worst
• 1:16:56
  writing. You know, the best writing you did is the worst writing you
• 1:17:00
  never did, or something along those likes. You know what I'm trying to
• 1:17:00
  say, Yeah it, get up and do it. Yeah Yeah. And
• 1:17:04
  I think Mark Duplas has a quote it's like the eighty percent rule because he's
• 1:17:08
  a perfectionist, and I know a lot of people are perfectionists and they're like,
• 1:17:11
  I can't start something else as perfect. He has an eighty percent rule
• 1:17:14
  that you know, if it's eighty percent there, and it's like, oh,
• 1:17:16
  there might be like this twenty percent fuck up, It's okay, just
• 1:17:19
  like accept it, say eighty percent is good enough and go because I don't
• 1:17:24
  know if you'll ever get to one hundred percent. I don't. I never
• 1:17:26
  feel like anything I've ever done is one hundred percent. And that's like perfection
• 1:17:30
  is I think unattainable, but eighty percent is attainable, So it helps sometimes
• 1:17:35
  in a pinch. Yeah, And I think eighty percent or perfectionist. I
• 1:17:40
  think a lot of it is just as as a cloak for fear. You're
• 1:17:43
  just afraid of moving. You just that's a great excuse. I'm like,
• 1:17:45
  oh, it's not perfect. I gotta go. Oh, I need that
• 1:17:47
  red camera. I can't shoot. I can't shoot with that without a red
• 1:17:50
  camera. I know I need this actor or I need this much money to
• 1:17:54
  make this movie. You don't have these illnesses. You just went out and
• 1:17:58
  said like, hey, I'm gonna go make stuff and I'm gonna go do
• 1:18:00
  stuff. And I'm sure that the videos that you guys were doing at Maker
• 1:18:02
  Studios are not one hundred percent. They're not. They just like, let's
• 1:18:08
  no, but they're definitely not. But like if you look even at the
• 1:18:11
  mark Tu Plus, you look a puffy chair. He just went out with
• 1:18:14
  a camera and he just shot and he's like it was I don't even think
• 1:18:16
  it was at eighty percent. I think that movie was like at a forty
• 1:18:18
  or fifty percent. When he started, He's like, let's just go make
• 1:18:21
  something, But yet he made something. I always tell people there was something
• 1:18:25
  there, there was something there. There's something there. But at least you
• 1:18:28
  gotta just go out and try it, and if you fail, you fail,
• 1:18:31
  just do it at a love budget. And I can speak as someone
• 1:18:33
  who's gone out you know, it's like that whole like lived life in the
• 1:18:36
  arena. You know, it's like, don't be afraid to like go out
• 1:18:40
  there and just you know, get attacked and have tomatoes thrown at you and
• 1:18:44
  get stabbed. Every once in a while, I've had I think every mean
• 1:18:47
  thing has ever been said to me and every bad thing's ever happened. So
• 1:18:51
  I can tell you I bounced back. So it's gonna be okay, You're
• 1:18:55
  gonna be all right. Now. I'm gonna ask you a few questions,
• 1:18:57
  ask all of my guests. If you don't mind, do you still some
• 1:19:00
  time? Yeah? Alright, cool. What advice would you give a filmmaker
• 1:19:03
  wanting to break into the business today? The advice I would give for a
• 1:19:09
  filmmaker breaking into the business today is to do something that you're passionate about.
• 1:19:15
  Don't worry about the results. Talk about something that you care about and put
• 1:19:18
  it out into the world and things will be Things will be good. Now,
• 1:19:24
  can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or
• 1:19:28
  career? I would say Robert Rodriguez is Rebel without a Crew, definitely.
• 1:19:34
  I read that book like ten times. So good. It's like this great
• 1:19:38
  diary of his time in you know, doing like lab research and like trying
• 1:19:44
  to like fund his movie, and he was like doing like all these experiments
• 1:19:46
  of food and things, and he's like going off and like how he made
• 1:19:49
  El Mariachi and then the whole process of taking it to Hollywood and then getting
• 1:19:54
  funding and then just kind of going off to the races. We'll be right
• 1:19:58
  back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. And
• 1:20:06
  it's a really it's a really cool book. And even though that path doesn't
• 1:20:11
  necessarily exist for us now, it's a great way to see like the hudspa
• 1:20:15
  that somebody has in their early stages of like just gotta go off and go
• 1:20:19
  make it with the resources you have around you. The locations, the people,
• 1:20:23
  and you know, tell your story. Have you read Have you ever
• 1:20:26
  read his second book about the making the making of his second movie, road
• 1:20:30
  Racers. I haven't now, so if you can find a copy, because
• 1:20:34
  I had a copy, I sold it because it's so damn expensive. Now
• 1:20:39
  there, it's rare because they pulled it off the because I think his agents
• 1:20:43
  pulled it off the market. Because so this is why it happened. Just
• 1:20:47
  a little bit of knowledge about this. I'm a huge Robert fans. I'd
• 1:20:51
  go deep with It's about his second movie, road Racers, which was like
• 1:20:55
  a I think a Showtime or Cinemax movie. Right before he did he did
• 1:21:00
  Desperado. They wanted to give him something else to kind of, you know,
• 1:21:02
  cut his teeth on. And it's his entire experience working with a film
• 1:21:06
  crew, like a professional film crew. And he hated it because he was
• 1:21:10
  like, they're like, he's talking crap about the DPS, talking crap about
• 1:21:14
  everybody. He's just like laying in on everybody. These guys are because it's
• 1:21:17
  his diary. Again, it's the same process as Rebel without a crew,
• 1:21:21
  but for this and he's like, I just trying to get on my wheelchair
• 1:21:24
  and push, but no one wants to push me, like do my dollar
• 1:21:27
  shots and the like what do you do? That's not how we do things.
• 1:21:30
  He had a horrible time with that. But I read that book.
• 1:21:31
  I did get it took me like six months of waiting. But it's available
• 1:21:34
  Amazon. It's like one hundred and some dollars now if you want to buy,
• 1:21:36
  it's a paperback. But it's so it's so good, so good.
• 1:21:42
  Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether
• 1:21:45
  in the film business or in life. Yeah, I think lesson the lesson
• 1:21:49
  I learned that took the longest. That's interesting, I would say. I
• 1:21:57
  would say that you know through the process of making things that you never really
• 1:22:03
  know how to make something until you've made it. And then once you like,
• 1:22:06
  let's say you've film, Like as soon as I'm finished making a film,
• 1:22:10
  I'm like, now I want to start because now I know. Now
• 1:22:13
  I know that helps you go and that is still the next one. Stuff.
• 1:22:16
  Yeah, and then then you have to apply it to the next one.
• 1:22:19
  But unfortunately, I like those lessons would be so great if you could
• 1:22:21
  then start from your endpoint to just go back in time. Have that Groundhog
• 1:22:27
  Day sort of device and then just go start again, because I always feel
• 1:22:30
  like it takes making a movie to learn how to make that Movieum, and
• 1:22:34
  each one is unique and special in that way. But but you try and
• 1:22:38
  take whatever lessons you can and apply it to the next one is as best
• 1:22:41
  as possible, you know. Spielberg's Spielberg still learning. He still says like
• 1:22:45
  on every movie, I learned something new. So if Stevens still at learning,
• 1:22:47
  were probably if we're all still learning now, what is the biggest fear
• 1:22:53
  you had to overcome in making your first features or your or your first work
• 1:22:58
  in general? MM, I think my first fear is my first fear is
• 1:23:04
  not it's not finding collaborators that want to collaborate or want to listen to you
• 1:23:11
  being steamrolled by others, you know, because I started was young, and
• 1:23:16
  so when I was on side of my first feature, I was the youngest
• 1:23:20
  person on set, like younger than the PA's and so I was staken.
• 1:23:27
  I nobody knew who the hell I was, and so it was just I
• 1:23:30
  don't know, it was like the feeling of like being a fraud. I
• 1:23:32
  had to get over that imposter syndrome. Yeah, um yeah. I had
• 1:23:35
  to get over this imposter syndrome of like, I what am I doing here?
• 1:23:40
  Why how come I'm the director? Like this shouldn't happen, and and
• 1:23:45
  so I had to get I had to find that confidence in myself to say,
• 1:23:47
  no, I should be here and this is why. And then that
• 1:23:50
  that's just made like and it's not yelling at people or being rude or doing
• 1:23:55
  anything to like throw around your power. It's more of just like an internal
• 1:23:59
  thing. And so that that took me a few projects to really get down
• 1:24:03
  being confident in what you're doing, the story you're telling, and how you're
• 1:24:05
  going to do it. Because then if anyone comes up with an idea or
• 1:24:09
  questioned you on something, it's not like, oh, they're attacking me,
• 1:24:12
  because that's that's like an insecure way to think about it. It's more now
• 1:24:15
  they want to understand it, so they're asking you a question. And then
• 1:24:18
  if you're confident in yourself, then you can you can always be able to
• 1:24:21
  articulate that to any crew member. So it's having the confidence of in yourself
• 1:24:27
  of what you're doing. M Yeah. By the way, I used to
• 1:24:30
  be the youngest guy in the crew too, so enjoy it. Well,
• 1:24:33
  lesser should sailed already. I see everybody on set now and they're like texting,
• 1:24:41
  like hey, what's going on, And they're like, oh yeah,
• 1:24:43
  and then they say something it sounds like diberish and it's like, oh,
• 1:24:45
  you're talking about some some app I've never heard of some I'm an old man
• 1:24:51
  like it was saying earlier, Like you're like, oh god on YouTube back
• 1:24:55
  in the day. I tell you exactly. Now, this is the toughest
• 1:25:00
  question of all three of your favorite films of all time? Oh my god.
• 1:25:03
  All right, well I'll just say the ones that come to the top
• 1:25:05
  of perfect all right. So there's uh big Globowski. Yes, that's very
• 1:25:15
  high up. Um. I think the next one I'm gonna say is ed
• 1:25:20
  Wood So much, dude. I saw that in the theater when it came
• 1:25:26
  out, and I was like crying, not because it was funny, because
• 1:25:30
  I was in pain for ed as a director. Oh, every director,
• 1:25:33
  every director should watch that movie. It's so beautiful, it's so good.
• 1:25:38
  And then another one that I love that doesn't get a lot of love,
• 1:25:41
  and that's why I'm gonna mention it is Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and
• 1:25:44
  it's Sydney Lamette's last movie. Oh yes, sorry, Keithan Hawk, Philip
• 1:25:48
  Seymour Hoffman, Marissa Tomay, Albert Finney. Incredible movie. Oh my god,
• 1:25:53
  it's so badass. Michael Shannon's and everyone's in it, and the acting
• 1:25:57
  is incredible. The filmmaking, it's like it's so aggressive. He's like eighty
• 1:26:01
  something years old doing in this movie. And it feels like a like a
• 1:26:04
  really badass indie director went off and made their first gritty crime movie. It's
• 1:26:11
  so cool. I don't know what happened. I think it was a distribution
• 1:26:13
  thing. It just didn't get a lot of love. But that movie is
• 1:26:16
  great and I recommend it to anyone. Did you read his book Making Movies?
• 1:26:20
  Oh? Yeah, yeah, I read that before making anything. It's
• 1:26:23
  so good. It's such a good book. I read that too. I
• 1:26:26
  was like, oh my god, you're in there with him. You're like
• 1:26:29
  they're going through it with him. It's so awesome. Now, where can
• 1:26:32
  people find a funny story and find people and find more about you? Yeah,
• 1:26:38
  so you go to funny storymovie dot com. But it's also available on
• 1:26:42
  Apple, TV, Amazon, feel able to rent or buy and you know,
• 1:26:45
  Spectrum on Demand, all that kind of stuff, and then you can
• 1:26:49
  find me at totally sketch on Twitter, Instagram. Yeah, I'm not that
• 1:26:56
  hard to find. Just look at the dumb face, Michael Man. It
• 1:27:00
  has been an absolute pleasure talking to you, man, and it's been great
• 1:27:03
  getting into the history of YouTube, almost like you're you're like a historian,
• 1:27:09
  sir, of the of the of that movement. It's it's great and it
• 1:27:13
  really is great. I had I had one of the co founders of um
• 1:27:16
  of Rocket Jump in as well and we talked about their days. But you
• 1:27:20
  have a very unique perspective on it all. And again there if everyone listening.
• 1:27:26
  There isn't just one way to do it anymore. Like before there was
• 1:27:29
  just one way to make it in this business. Now there's thousands of ways,
• 1:27:32
  which is scary but exciting at the same time, and you have definitely
• 1:27:36
  proof of that, sir. So thank you for sharing your knowledge bombs with
• 1:27:40
  the tribe today. No, thank you, Alex. It's a pleasure to
• 1:27:43
  be your honor. Thank you. I want to thank Michael so much for
• 1:27:47
  being on the show. I really really appreciate him coming on and being so
• 1:27:50
  transparent and honest about his failings, his successes, and everything in between.
• 1:27:57
  So thank you Michael, very very much. If you want to get links
• 1:28:00
  to anything we discussed in this episode, just head over to the show notes
• 1:28:02
  at indifilm hustle dot com for it Slash six eighty one. Thank you so
• 1:28:06
  much for listening. Guys. As always, keep that hulso going, keep
• 1:28:10
  that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:28:14
  Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie Film Hustle dot
• 1:28:17
  com. That's I N D I E F I L M h ustl dot com