Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three eighty one.
Speaker 2: The scariest moment is always just before you start. Steven
Speaker 2: King broadcasting from a dark, windowless.
Speaker 1: Room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
Speaker 1: that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
Speaker 1: the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
Speaker 1: to make your screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 2: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
Speaker 2: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host,
Speaker 2: Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now.
Speaker 2: Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
Speaker 2: on the kind of project you are and the goals
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Speaker 2: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys,
Speaker 2: today on the show, we have returning champion Shane Stanley. Now,
Speaker 2: many of you know Shane as an instructor over at
Speaker 2: IFH Academy where he has some best selling webinars and
Speaker 2: courses about casting stars and working under COVID protocols and
Speaker 2: many other things. But today we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: his new project called Double Threat, and Shane and I
Speaker 2: discuss how he was able to pull off a micro
Speaker 2: budget action film with some bankable names in the middle
Speaker 2: of COVID and how is he able to take that
Speaker 2: micro budget film and have worldwide distribution. It is a
Speaker 2: fascinating episode, guy, So without any further ado, please enjoy
Speaker 2: my conversation with Shane Stanley. I like to welcome back
Speaker 2: to the show returning champion Shane Stanley.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Shae, I am doing great, Alex, thanks
Speaker 3: for having me mad It's great to see you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming back on the show.
Speaker 1: Brother.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming back. And you and I have
Speaker 2: been working together for a little while. We've got a
Speaker 2: couple of courses up on IFH Academy. We got your
Speaker 2: book about what they don't teach you at film School
Speaker 2: up on IFH Books, and maybe in the next few
Speaker 2: weeks we're going to be releasing a few chapters of
Speaker 2: that book for free, so everyone can get to get
Speaker 2: a taste of your genius. But in what's inside that
Speaker 2: book that will hopefully save a lot of filmmakers' lives.
Speaker 2: Today we're here to sit right here now one right there?
Speaker 2: What what el Mardo don't exactly so, but so today
Speaker 2: we're here to talk about your new film, Double Threat.
Speaker 2: But I just want to get into weeds a little
Speaker 2: bit about filmmaking and about where where how you can
Speaker 2: put this thing together, the realities of what's going on
Speaker 2: from financing to distribution and so on. So but first, man,
Speaker 2: can you tell a little bit about yourself. The people
Speaker 2: who did not listen to your first interview with me.
Speaker 3: Well, absolutely, you know I grew up in the industry,
Speaker 3: I actually became a working actor at nine months old.
Speaker 3: My father was a working actor. We were at a
Speaker 3: barbecue and there was a guy kind of looking at
Speaker 3: me from across the backyard, and my dad's very protective,
Speaker 3: so you just walked right up to the guy goes,
Speaker 3: I don't like the way you're looking at my kid.
Speaker 3: What's your jam? And he said, oh, no, no, I'm a
Speaker 3: commercial director. I'm doing a new campaign for Century twenty one.
Speaker 3: It's this real estate company and I need a baby,
Speaker 3: and your kid's been sitting there quiet and kirked up
Speaker 3: and well behaved, and we can't find a kid. It
Speaker 3: doesn't scream. So Luxury Shari became this working kid baby
Speaker 3: actor till I was, you know, in fourth, fifth, sixth grade.
Speaker 3: But during that time, my father got out of acting
Speaker 3: and became a working documentary and educational filmmaker. So he
Speaker 3: had the flatbeds, the movieolas, the splicers, and sixteen millimeters cameras,
Speaker 3: and so through very young age, I started playing around
Speaker 3: on those cameras and splicers and movieolas, and he just
Speaker 3: started working and working and working, and he was doing
Speaker 3: everything at such a low budget. He was literally calling
Speaker 3: on me to work in the camera department, the editing department.
Speaker 3: So I grew up in and around the business that way,
Speaker 3: and as I got older, around the time I was
Speaker 3: in high school, he finally got his big break and
Speaker 3: it was on a film that you know he did
Speaker 3: with Michael Landon that I was very very much a
Speaker 3: part of, and that changed our lives. And we started
Speaker 3: making these, you know, a television series of Movie of
Speaker 3: the Weeks for about nine years, which spawned into Retire Gang,
Speaker 3: which was the remake of one of our mow documentaries.
Speaker 3: And I started going down the path of working in
Speaker 3: a television network and studio system, and I just I
Speaker 3: didn't like development. I didn't like meetings. I didn't like
Speaker 3: talking about movies getting made. I wanted to make movies.
Speaker 3: And when I probably about twelve thirteen years ago, after
Speaker 3: my fifteen hundred meeting at one of the networks, the
Speaker 3: head of the network called me into his office and said,
Speaker 3: let's talk, and we put our feet up on his
Speaker 3: coffee table. He poured us a glass of scotch, and
Speaker 3: he said, it's obvious you're unhappy with this process. You're
Speaker 3: a filmmaker. Get out of here, go make movies and
Speaker 3: so I got five hundred dollars together and made a
Speaker 3: pilot for you know, a forty five minute pilot which
Speaker 3: did more for my career as a filmmaker than any
Speaker 3: of my resume previously. And I've been on that path
Speaker 3: ever since, and it's been it's been quite a right.
Speaker 2: It has been served without question. You have made a
Speaker 2: bunch of independent films over the years, and I know
Speaker 2: that you know a couple of things that you should
Speaker 2: avoid in regards to making independent film, Like, what are
Speaker 2: a few things that make your independent film look cheap?
Speaker 2: Look low budget? Could you make high quality, high looking
Speaker 2: budget films at low budgets? But I've seen them too, man,
Speaker 2: I even worked on a few of them when I
Speaker 2: was coming up as a colorist and an editor. Where
Speaker 2: you look at the stuff, You're like, dude, why did
Speaker 2: you just god, why did you shoot against the white wall?
Speaker 3: Why did you get your aunt to play a big
Speaker 3: role in your movie?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Me, you know, look, let's put story aside. Every busher
Speaker 3: out and says, oh my god, it's all about the script. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the story is important, but let's talk about the look
Speaker 3: and production value of films. For me, there's five elements
Speaker 3: and no specific order your cinematograph. He's got to know
Speaker 3: his craft. You have to get actors that are that.
Speaker 3: I hate to keep using the term of know their craft.
Speaker 3: And and a lot of new filmmcacing well, I don't
Speaker 3: know any working actors. That's okay, go to local acting classes,
Speaker 3: call colleges. There are a lot of actors amongst us
Speaker 3: that we don't think about. But most of the time
Speaker 3: they're calling their friends, their girlfriends, their aunt, their mom,
Speaker 3: their dad, their neighbor to star in their movies. And
Speaker 3: it just sinks the ship. And there's no reason you
Speaker 3: can't be working with talent. I think that another thing
Speaker 3: is so important is location. So many people just shoot
Speaker 3: in their backyard, their garage, their house. People want to
Speaker 3: experience new things, and for me, everything is about location
Speaker 3: and making something look big. Another element is the editing.
Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely key. An editor can can sink
Speaker 3: or swim a film and a heartbeat. And the other
Speaker 3: one is sound production sound. I've been fortunate on my
Speaker 3: last nine films to work with a guy I haven't
Speaker 3: add to d R one line, with the exception of
Speaker 3: we did a scene in a car and we had
Speaker 3: to we knew we weren't going to get it because
Speaker 3: of where we were driving in the organic nature. I
Speaker 3: wanted this shot in and we shot it with the
Speaker 3: camera trays, and the soundman said, just go get this
Speaker 3: as scratch. We'll we'll get them in the trailer doing
Speaker 3: it later. And that's you have to have a great
Speaker 3: sound man, a good editor, good cinematographer, good actors, and
Speaker 3: good locations. I think if you have those five things,
Speaker 3: you have already stepped your game so far up that
Speaker 3: you're going to separate yourself, you know. I always it
Speaker 3: separates the sheet from the goats.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the other other thing I would
Speaker 2: add to that is to just when you frame things,
Speaker 2: just frame it with a little bit of scope, a
Speaker 2: little bit of a depth in a shot. So like
Speaker 2: so many times I see shots where, oh guy, look,
Speaker 2: they shot two people talking against a white wall. There's
Speaker 2: nothing interesting in that, and at all shoot at all window,
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 3: Spout it out the window, go outside, you know, go
Speaker 3: go to a uh, you know, a set of tract
Speaker 3: houses on a day they're not doing the trash, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know, put a long lessons on that thing,
Speaker 3: and just get some depth and some open you know,
Speaker 3: and just that's just it is. Most of the student
Speaker 3: films were indie films that I look at and I
Speaker 3: know you and I have talked about this. They shoot
Speaker 3: it up against the white wall, or they shoot it
Speaker 3: in a garage or a bedroom, and these things could
Speaker 3: just be taken outside or put into some new area.
Speaker 3: And our job as storytellers is to take an audience
Speaker 3: to either a place they've never been, a place they
Speaker 3: are afraid to go, a place that they want to go,
Speaker 3: or something they didn't exist. And I think every time
Speaker 3: we set something up, you need to think that way.
Speaker 2: See, yeah, no question. And i'd love because in your
Speaker 2: new movie Double Threat, there's a scene that you know
Speaker 2: you're talking about. People want to be taken to a
Speaker 2: new place, things you haven't seen before. We'll be right
Speaker 2: back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
Speaker 2: to the show. I haven't seen a woman on horseback
Speaker 2: with a bow and arrow chasing down a car ever
Speaker 2: that I.
Speaker 3: Can remember without a spunk, Double exactly.
Speaker 2: Then looked like a stud up. So we'll get into
Speaker 2: how you shot that in a little bit. But that
Speaker 2: was just like something You're just like, hey, something I
Speaker 2: don't see every day. That's that's interesting. So adding little
Speaker 2: elements like that of something you're just like, I've never
Speaker 2: seen that before adds a tremendous amount of value to
Speaker 2: your project.
Speaker 3: It's gotten a lot of mileage. And also, you know,
Speaker 3: Danielle c Ryan is the actor you're referring to. Danielle
Speaker 3: had one mandate and and she produced the film with
Speaker 3: me as no stunt doubles. I can do anything that
Speaker 3: you need me to do. And you know there's a
Speaker 3: three and a half minute fight scene in that film
Speaker 3: that one double. She rehearsed it with doctor Haim and
Speaker 3: the other guys for one day on her day off.
Speaker 3: They showed up, we knocked it out, and you know
Speaker 3: that was the thing. You know, we shot that in
Speaker 3: the heart of the pandemic. We filled it November December
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty, and we lost nine locations. Going back
Speaker 3: to locations, we had nine locations committed to the film.
Speaker 3: That one after another dropped out during production. And we
Speaker 3: had a friend with a film ranch who just said, dude,
Speaker 3: here are the keys, lock yourselves up on the hill
Speaker 3: and go do what you gotta do. And so we
Speaker 3: were very limited. I had that I had a warehouse,
Speaker 3: I had a hot dog stand, and we had my
Speaker 3: cousin's cabin and Big Bear. Those were the only locations
Speaker 3: we had. And I would have loved to have shot
Speaker 3: that film all over the world, but we couldn't because
Speaker 3: of COVID. So taking what we were talking about a
Speaker 3: second ago is, yeah, is how do we make this interesting.
Speaker 3: Let's put a girl on horseback shooting a bow and
Speaker 3: arrow hitting a moving target, which he actually did. Let's
Speaker 3: get car chases, let's have fun with this, Let's do
Speaker 3: a Let's go to the airport and steal a plane
Speaker 3: and have Matthew Lawrence started up and take off. I mean,
Speaker 3: we had no stunt doubles in this film, and that
Speaker 3: was kind of our That's awesome.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Now, in another interview, I heard you talk
Speaker 2: about the eleven minute rule that filmmakers and screenwriters should follow.
Speaker 2: What is the eleven minute rule?
Speaker 3: I will I will tell you something funny. I got
Speaker 3: a lot of heats to that. I was doing an
Speaker 3: interview and before we started, you know, I just said, casually,
Speaker 3: I said, I think there's an eleven minute rule. And
Speaker 3: I learned this from sales agents that you know, when
Speaker 3: you make as storytellers and must we're Spielberg or you know,
Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan, whethery're gonna sit for two hours before you
Speaker 3: get to the point. I've learned when you're making an
Speaker 3: indie film, especially in the climate of streaming and three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand channels at your fingertips, you better let your
Speaker 3: audience know what's going on with Then. I've heard from
Speaker 3: sales agents and distributors. They've been beating it in my
Speaker 3: head for the last six or seven years. You've got
Speaker 3: eleven minutes to get to the point where there were
Speaker 3: out there they're gonna You're gonna lose them. And I
Speaker 3: mentioned this on another interview, and I got crucified for
Speaker 3: saying that, And of course it was all the people
Speaker 3: that have never made a movie before, who have never
Speaker 3: sold the film. And I learned it by having movies
Speaker 3: that were building and developing characters, with sales agent saying
Speaker 3: you've got to take three or four minutes out of
Speaker 3: your movie. You've got to get to it by ten
Speaker 3: eleven minutes. Dude, if you don't, we're not going to
Speaker 3: get a sale. So you know, everybody likes to develop
Speaker 3: backstory character, and you know, all the you know all
Speaker 3: the officionados out there that have their rules that they
Speaker 3: believe they need to follow, and they crucified me, which
Speaker 3: is bind. Everybody's entitled to an opinion. But what was
Speaker 3: really funny is I am actually a work for hire
Speaker 3: as a director on a studio film right now that
Speaker 3: starts in August. I was hired by a studio to
Speaker 3: direct a film. And what was so funny is we
Speaker 3: have our first meeting and they wanted me to read
Speaker 3: the script and they never saw the interview. They don't
Speaker 3: care about any of the stuff if I do outside
Speaker 3: of what they need me for. And one of the
Speaker 3: executives actually said to me, there is an eleven minute
Speaker 3: rule that we need to follow. This stript doesn't do it.
Speaker 3: It gets into about thirteen or fourteen minutes where we
Speaker 3: finally know what the hell's going on. We need you
Speaker 3: to as a director to do a director polish and
Speaker 3: get us to this eleven minute point. And I said
Speaker 3: to him, and where did you hear about this rule?
Speaker 3: And they said, it's just a rule. Follow it. But
Speaker 3: I've never heard of the term eleven minute rule a time.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I coined the phrase like Richard you know,
Speaker 3: like that wonderful comedian that said he coined the lunch
Speaker 3: from help or the something from help. I had never
Speaker 3: heard the term. It was brought up in the interview.
Speaker 3: But I have found, especially in the independent world, when
Speaker 3: you're hustling and you're trying to sell your stuff, if
Speaker 3: your audience doesn't know what the hell's going on and
Speaker 3: what the journey is going to be. Of course, surprises
Speaker 3: down on the road are good, but they don't know
Speaker 3: what the whole setup is and who the players are.
Speaker 3: By ten eleven minutes, man, good luck, good luck.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. And this is the difference with
Speaker 2: a lot of filmmakers don't understand that in the eighties, nineties,
Speaker 2: even the early two thousands, people would go to a theater,
Speaker 2: they sit down, or in the eighties and nineties, they
Speaker 2: would rent a movie, they've paid for it, they're gonna
Speaker 2: watch it hooked, you're hooked. But in today's world, you're
Speaker 2: flipping and flip and flip and flipping, flipping, and there
Speaker 2: is tens of millions of pieces of content for you
Speaker 2: to consume, and movies and television and entertainment for you
Speaker 2: to watch. That I'd argue it's like much faster than
Speaker 2: eleven minutes, because it is for me. I'll sit there
Speaker 2: and I'll start watching something and man, like, we were
Speaker 2: watching the show. What was it? I forgot the name
Speaker 2: of the show, but it was supposedly a really good show.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's like a new HBO show. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to name the show. But we're watching this new
Speaker 2: HBO show and it was like a drama and we're
Speaker 2: just sitting there going, I'm like, what this is so slow?
Speaker 2: My wife and I just like eight minutes in, We're like,
Speaker 2: I can't great cast, scene, cast, great writers. I just
Speaker 2: it just took too long for me to get into it.
Speaker 2: I was just like, if this is the pace of
Speaker 2: the show, then I'm not going to be able to
Speaker 2: keep going with it. So I just started watching Mayor
Speaker 2: of Kingston.
Speaker 3: How do you like You?
Speaker 2: I'm in the middle of.
Speaker 4: It right now.
Speaker 3: Some of the I saw the whole I saw it.
Speaker 3: Talk about Jeremy Renner's show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Taylor Taylor Sheridan show. Taylor's absolutely loved it.
Speaker 3: It's got you know, look, you could pick apart any series,
Speaker 3: wouldn't we all love to be done. Sure, Taylor's got
Speaker 3: it going on right now. I'll tell you something that
Speaker 3: the last two episodes, it's a two part episode. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm a cutter at heart. I'm an editor at Hart.
Speaker 3: Is the best cutting. There's a scene in the prison yard.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to ruin it for you. It's the
Speaker 3: best editing I've ever seen on television. And it's terrible.
Speaker 3: I thought I always thought Braveheart's battle scenes were the
Speaker 3: best cut I had every It's comparable to the Brave
Speaker 3: Heart stuff. I was just I rewatched the episodes just
Speaker 3: for the cutting it was. I love the show and
Speaker 3: I hope.
Speaker 2: So so yeah. I think they're definitely bringing it back.
Speaker 2: But Mayor of Kingston is for everybody not listening is
Speaker 2: a show by Taylor Sheridan, who is right now the
Speaker 2: most the busiest human being in Hollywood, has I think.
Speaker 3: Eleven shows in the pipeline, every Yellowstone, He's got.
Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty two, and then there's like four or five
Speaker 2: other ones that I just the one with Celester Stallan's
Speaker 2: coming out like everybody in the in the country, in
Speaker 2: the world wants to work with him. So he's got
Speaker 2: like I think, literally, I'm not exaggerated about e loved
Speaker 2: shows running.
Speaker 3: What's really cool, if I can interject, is donal Odlivieri,
Speaker 3: who co starts and co stars in Double Threat that failed.
Speaker 3: What we're talking about. She was in eighteen eighty three
Speaker 3: and they loved her so much. She is going to
Speaker 3: be in Yellowstone this year. She's I mean the whole season.
Speaker 3: I mean, how cool is that. I'm so proud of her. Well,
Speaker 3: I'm allowed to say that because that news broke two
Speaker 3: days ago.
Speaker 2: All the w that's awesome music. But the reason why
Speaker 2: I bring that show up is because the first pilot.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there watching the pilot of that, the first episode,
Speaker 2: I'm just going, it's so tight, Yep, it's so in.
Speaker 2: I'm so I'm so in. And then there's a twist
Speaker 2: in this in the pilot which we won't tell you about,
Speaker 2: and you're just like, what that done? You're hooked for
Speaker 2: the series because of what they did in the pot
Speaker 2: one of the best pilots I've seen in a while in.
Speaker 3: A while, and Taylor is so good at those fights.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you, going back to what you said a
Speaker 3: second ago, that is so key. When we were making
Speaker 3: movies up until probably ten years ago, you got them
Speaker 3: in the theater. They were hooked. They weren't going anywhere.
Speaker 3: They paid for the DVD or the VHS, they weren't
Speaker 3: going anywhere. Now the problem is is the distractions the phone.
Speaker 3: So even if they're streaming your show, this is going off.
Speaker 3: They've got a tablet, they got a kid crying. There's
Speaker 3: so you have to make your show look like they
Speaker 3: can't blink. And that was the point of the whole
Speaker 3: eleven minute rule is. And I'd learned it the hard
Speaker 3: way because when we did Break Even Look love it
Speaker 3: or hate it, that film had more potholes in it
Speaker 3: than a poorly paved road. But the problem was we
Speaker 3: took twenty minutes out, which left those holes so we
Speaker 3: could make our deals. That was the problem, and that
Speaker 3: eleven minute rule. That was what everybody said, is it
Speaker 3: takes you twenty one minutes to get to the damn point.
Speaker 3: We don't know what the kids are doing until seventeen
Speaker 3: minutes in. Once we hit that eleven minute point, everything changed.
Speaker 3: I thought the movie suffered greatly for it in plots
Speaker 3: and story, and that's unfortunate, but it made the deals
Speaker 3: when you talk about business, and and that was where
Speaker 3: that was coming from you.
Speaker 2: Know what, and and and then we'll get off the
Speaker 2: tailor train for a second because it's just like just
Speaker 2: such a fan of Tailor's. Oh he's so he so
Speaker 2: must see TV for my wife and I that when
Speaker 2: a new season of Yellowstone is up, my kids, no
Speaker 2: are you guys, it's Yellowstone night. Okay, we won't we
Speaker 2: won't knock on the door because if they knock on
Speaker 2: the door while Yellowstone's on, they know they're gonna get it.
Speaker 2: So anytime they walk it but like, so yellow and
Speaker 2: now we're like, it's Mayor of Kingstoon. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: not don't want to hear anything for an hour. Go away,
Speaker 2: go away?
Speaker 3: Ye have the houses on fire? I don't care.
Speaker 2: There's a fire extinguisher under the under the saying just
Speaker 2: deal with it. We'll be right back after a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor. And now back to the show. But
Speaker 2: that's Taylor. That's the kind of writing that that Taylor does,
Speaker 2: the kind of filmmaking he does with his shows, and
Speaker 2: that is he is. He is a writer and a
Speaker 2: creator for this moment in time, and probably the best
Speaker 2: he is probably arguably one of the best writers in
Speaker 2: television right now arguably also I mean Zacario, Jesus Christ. Oh,
Speaker 2: I mean Jimmy, I mean all his movies where I
Speaker 2: mean Hella high Water.
Speaker 3: You're just like, oh, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was watching an interview about him the other day,
Speaker 2: I think it was a CBS or something like that,
Speaker 2: and then where he's like, yeah, after twenty years of
Speaker 2: you know, being number eleven on the call sheet, someone
Speaker 2: said you should write. And the first thing he wrote
Speaker 2: was the pilot of Mayor of Kingstyle. And then after
Speaker 2: he wrote it, he goes, damn, man, I wish I
Speaker 2: would have been doing this fifteen years ago. He was
Speaker 2: just never wrote before that, and he never he just
Speaker 2: and then he just kept going and he said, which
Speaker 2: is the best. He's like, I do movies because to
Speaker 2: report my horse habit.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's what I think. Why he even dons hit
Speaker 3: it off still, Well, it is because you know she
Speaker 3: she lives on like this huge ranch and she is
Speaker 3: she is all about the horses. And I remember when
Speaker 3: we were working together on Double Threat, she was like,
Speaker 3: I really want to do a film with you with horses,
Speaker 3: maybe a Western we should do that. It's like okay,
Speaker 3: And then we wrapped Double dreatch. She got eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: three and she goes, ah, I found my Phil Baker,
Speaker 3: who's got the horses. Shane thinks.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Shane, I'm gonna compete with this.
Speaker 3: I can't complete like Whatie Harrelson an uh in decent proposal.
Speaker 3: It's like he's got the big yacht. That is, I
Speaker 3: can't compete.
Speaker 2: I can't convey with the just us gout make it.
Speaker 3: Offering me some old vintage guitars. That's it.
Speaker 2: And you know that he's doing so Taylor's doing so
Speaker 2: well that he bought he's a co owner now of
Speaker 2: the four sixes ranch.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he bought. He bought for everyone know the
Speaker 2: four Six's ranch is the largest ranch in America. I
Speaker 2: think it's it's two hundred and seventy five miles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's seventy five square miles or some something insane.
Speaker 2: It's he he owns, and he owns he's a part
Speaker 2: owner of it. Now that'll be I think two hundred
Speaker 2: million or something like that is something crazy.
Speaker 3: Must be nice publish. I'm just trying to put gas
Speaker 3: in the car.
Speaker 2: Hence why I move Why I moved to Austin, Sir.
Speaker 3: War Man, smart man.
Speaker 2: Now, another thing I wanted to ask you about Man,
Speaker 2: is titles, the title of your movie, and how important
Speaker 2: the title of your movie is. And a lot of
Speaker 2: filmmakers think about it as a creative choice, and it is.
Speaker 2: But a movie like one of the greatest movies ever made,
Speaker 2: worst title ever for a film? What movie is it?
Speaker 2: Greatest movie you ever remember? One of the greatest movie
Speaker 2: ever made in the nineties, worst title in the history
Speaker 2: of cinema.
Speaker 3: Well, I know, I know. It was a well for me.
Speaker 3: It was the best selling book with Shashank Redemption.
Speaker 2: It's a horrible, horrible thing.
Speaker 3: I think will tell you a funny story about that movie,
Speaker 3: not leting people know, but.
Speaker 4: Go for it.
Speaker 2: I's such a good story.
Speaker 3: When we first started doing redire Gang, we got that
Speaker 3: film got acquired by Sony in ninety two ninety three,
Speaker 3: so we spent a lot of years at the studio
Speaker 3: and without naming names. Uh, you know, when you're in
Speaker 3: the studio system, they'll they'll invite you to screenings, premieres
Speaker 3: and little private showings. And I'll never forget being invited
Speaker 3: to a private showing of a film that the head
Speaker 3: of production at Sony Calton said we want you guys,
Speaker 3: you and your dad and mom to come to see
Speaker 3: this film. So we went and it was it was
Speaker 3: Shawshank Redemption, and it was brilliant. It was like I
Speaker 3: did the lights came up. I turned to the gentleman
Speaker 3: who invited us and I say, is one of the
Speaker 3: best films I've ever seen. He said, we're not that
Speaker 3: excited about it. We don't know, he said, we're kind
Speaker 3: of nervous about it. It's a little picture. We may yeah,
Speaker 3: And I just I didn't know it was based on
Speaker 3: a Stephen King movie because I actually saw it without credit.
Speaker 3: That's what really I saw it, and I just said
Speaker 3: to him, I said, my only suggestion is changed the title.
Speaker 3: And everybody looked at me like I just took a
Speaker 3: turn on this in the corner of the ring and
Speaker 3: they were like, you realize that's a Stephen King novel
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I just don't think.
Speaker 2: It's not a novel. It was a short It was
Speaker 2: a novela it's a short story inside it's a novella.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't like it you could change the damn
Speaker 2: title And it wasn't actually the name of the title
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: They first saw the title, and now I think everybody's
Speaker 3: it's ingrained in our head.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but now it's in shosh It was horrible, horrible.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about the importance of titles in
Speaker 2: the marketing and selling of your film? I can.
Speaker 3: I the first time I ever got introduced to the
Speaker 3: importance of the title. I was fortunate enough when I was.
Speaker 3: I was running Charlie Sheen's production company from ninety I
Speaker 3: think it was ninety six to ninety nine, and we
Speaker 3: were doing a lot of projects back then, and we
Speaker 3: got involved with Abbie Lerner, who's you know, Abby's become
Speaker 3: one of the most prolific independent filmmakers of you know,
Speaker 3: content in the world. And we were doing a film
Speaker 3: and the title was The Pharaoh Prophecies. It was kind
Speaker 3: of this really cool psychological thriller, and they greenlit the
Speaker 3: film and it changed. But Abby said to me in
Speaker 3: a meeting, I'll never forget it. We didn't have He
Speaker 3: called and said we need to have a meeting. We
Speaker 3: didn't have Skype, we didn't email. We drove to Abby's office.
Speaker 3: He said, we're having a round table meeting about Tiden
Speaker 3: and he said the title stops. I don't understand it.
Speaker 3: But most importantly, it does not translate foreign. He said,
Speaker 3: on a good day, eighteen percent of our money will
Speaker 3: come from domestic. It's all about foreign. And I never
Speaker 3: forgot that. So I was literally in the bathroom. I
Speaker 3: grabbed an old I was getting ready to go to
Speaker 3: the meeting, and I was looking at an old issue
Speaker 3: of Metal Edge magazine and the drummer for Poison. They're
Speaker 3: friends of mine. Yes, Ricky Rockett was wearing a shirt
Speaker 3: that said no Code of Conduct. So I went to
Speaker 3: the meeting about two hours later, sitting there at obvious
Speaker 3: streaming about how horrible the title is, and I finally said,
Speaker 3: what about no code of conduct? And everybody stopped. He
Speaker 3: wrote it down. He made a phone call. He said,
Speaker 3: that is brilliant. He said, you're good at titles. You're
Speaker 3: a crappy writer, but you're good at titles. So I
Speaker 3: said to him later as we became friendly, he said,
Speaker 3: you know, and this was in our video days, but
Speaker 3: I tell people this now. He said, when people go
Speaker 3: to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, they start at new releases.
Speaker 3: They're at alphabetical order. You have to think about by
Speaker 3: the time they get to m they've made their selection,
Speaker 3: he said, So always try to think of titles before
Speaker 3: m but good two word titles that have translation globally.
Speaker 3: So for me, I realized in making movies, especially in
Speaker 3: the last few years. You know, we have we have
Speaker 3: titles like break even, we have titles like night Trade,
Speaker 3: we have titles like double threat, you know, things like that.
Speaker 3: And for me, it's about let's get a catchy title
Speaker 3: that we say on a daily basis or a regular like, well,
Speaker 3: we hear it, it's a familiar term. And for me
Speaker 3: it's it's it's really important to catch people's eye that
Speaker 3: know nothing about you as a filmmaker. They may not
Speaker 3: know your actors or what your film's about, or you
Speaker 3: don't have the publicity money to make it a household name.
Speaker 3: How can you do that? And that's all the studio
Speaker 3: system was doing and repeat sequels, prequels and remakes was
Speaker 3: let's get rebrand what people know. So as an indie filmmaker,
Speaker 3: I think it's important to come up with really cool
Speaker 3: titles that people are familiar with subconsciously that will help
Speaker 3: just do a little bit of a built in branding
Speaker 3: for your film. And that's that's where that comes from.
Speaker 3: But as a I can't work on a film until
Speaker 3: I have a cool title. I just I never could.
Speaker 2: It's so I actually when I was working in coming
Speaker 2: up doing deliveries for a film for films, I was
Speaker 2: working with the distributor and there was a tidal little
Speaker 2: movie and let's say it's called by Train. All right,
Speaker 2: let's for lack of it's called by Trains for it.
Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, it's too they can't he can't make
Speaker 2: that work. Yeah, we need to be in the top
Speaker 2: of the catalog.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So for him, he was looking at it from AFM standpoint,
Speaker 2: from the American film market standpoint where distributors and buyers
Speaker 2: are looking at the catalog, and it starts at A.
Speaker 2: So he renamed the movie a night train.
Speaker 3: Smart because they're not going to make it night train.
Speaker 3: Comma a in the catalogs to the A night train
Speaker 3: a night train.
Speaker 2: So, and I'm using that as a really horrible example,
Speaker 2: but it's exactly what he did. He just took it
Speaker 2: and just made a just threw an a in front
Speaker 2: of it, and you're just like, but that doesn't sound
Speaker 2: that great, And he's like it's going to sell. So
Speaker 2: there's and this is the thing man, and I know,
Speaker 2: I know you and I both kind of fall in
Speaker 2: the same in the same boat in this in regards
Speaker 2: to art versus commerce, where filmmakers where creatives. We want
Speaker 2: to tell a cool story, we want to be doing
Speaker 2: what we'd love to do. But then you've got to
Speaker 2: make money in order to keep this train going, no
Speaker 2: pun intended. They keep this. You got to keep this
Speaker 2: thing going. So there are going to be sacrifices at
Speaker 2: this level when you're at the studio level where the
Speaker 2: whole other or if you're in the art world, our
Speaker 2: art art film level where you don't care. Like I
Speaker 2: made a movie called On the Corner of Ego and Desire.
Speaker 2: It's not something I was afm was not my strength,
Speaker 2: not my point. It wasn't like buyers are going to
Speaker 2: buy this. I made the movie for three grand and
Speaker 2: it's fun. It was just for fun and I was
Speaker 2: going to sell it to my audience and I made
Speaker 2: money with it all and we're all said and done.
Speaker 2: But it was an art piece. It was an art piece.
Speaker 2: So there's art films and then there is a studio
Speaker 2: world where rules are completely different. They're completely skeared whatever
Speaker 2: they want. But in the indie you know, the grinding
Speaker 2: indie world and the trenches if you will, you've got
Speaker 2: to balance art and commerce. And you just said that
Speaker 2: you could have cut out twenty minutes of your movie
Speaker 2: or else you wouldn't have gotten deals. Now you could
Speaker 2: have stuck to your guns as an artist and said,
Speaker 2: you know what, this is my vision. I'm not moving forward.
Speaker 2: And that movie wouldn't have made money, you wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been able to make the next one. Is that a
Speaker 2: fair statement?
Speaker 3: And that's and that's just said. I say in my book,
Speaker 3: I remind people, you know, I look at every film
Speaker 3: we make is a gift.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Every opportunity we have. I look, I compared to a
Speaker 3: trip to the moon, and how many people have been
Speaker 3: to the moon twice? I don't think many. And I
Speaker 3: just say, look, if you just want to make a movie,
Speaker 3: go make the movie you want to make. But if
Speaker 3: you want to have a career as a filmmaker, there
Speaker 3: are sacrifices and things that you have to change to
Speaker 3: get there. I mean, I've had films that people said
Speaker 3: are brilliant. They've won, you know, one hundred awards at
Speaker 3: really prestigious festivals, premiered it can, and then the buyer
Speaker 3: buys it it can, says great, we need to take
Speaker 3: out five minutes, we need to do this, we need
Speaker 3: to switch this. We don't like this actor, we want
Speaker 3: you to reshoot that. But that's what got me here.
Speaker 3: I am at fifty plus years old now and I'm
Speaker 3: making a couple of films a year, and I'm very
Speaker 3: pleased to say pretty much my way because I've learned
Speaker 3: how to play the game and it is commised. You're
Speaker 3: going back to what you said about title real quick.
Speaker 3: The original title to Night Train was actual blow and smoke,
Speaker 3: because it's a film about speed. It's about you know,
Speaker 3: car racing and all motorcycles and all this smoke.
Speaker 2: Right away I thought of I thought it was a
Speaker 2: weed movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so at first was a weed, then there
Speaker 3: was blowing smoke up your ass. And then I literally said,
Speaker 3: as a joke, I said, well, the the treatment title
Speaker 3: was night Train, and everybody's like, well, that's your title,
Speaker 3: night train. The truck is actually your third star in
Speaker 3: the movie. That's the brand. That's plus you got the
Speaker 3: Guns Roses song that was real familiar, uh popular, So
Speaker 3: it's again it goes back to that subtle branding. So yeah,
Speaker 3: we scrapped Blow and Smoke even though that was the
Speaker 3: working title, but it was always meant to be Night Training.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Now I want to ask you how did
Speaker 2: you get double Thread off the ground? You know? And
Speaker 2: especially how did you get that? You know? How did
Speaker 2: you just I mean, obviously you came up with the idea,
Speaker 2: you wrote it correct, No, no, no, C J.
Speaker 3: Waller, It didn't easiest story. So we were in September
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty. We had all been on lockdown for
Speaker 3: six seven months. I was sitting in my home office
Speaker 3: and I literally said, Okay, it's September, coming into the
Speaker 3: fourth quarter. We can look in a rearview mirror and
Speaker 3: say twenty twenty kicked our ass and lock this down,
Speaker 3: or we can we can turn around and make it
Speaker 3: our bitch. I said, I am not going down without
Speaker 3: a fight. A friend of mine called me. It was
Speaker 3: one of my dearest friends in the world. He said, hey,
Speaker 3: I got fifty grand burning a hole in my pocket.
Speaker 3: Can you do something with it? And I said sure,
Speaker 3: So I called up CJ and I said, I got
Speaker 3: a Fred who just shimmidted fifty grand. I know it's nothing.
Speaker 3: I got the cameras for free. I know I can
Speaker 3: get the locations for free. The actors will just put
Speaker 3: it under an experimental be able to get decent actor.
Speaker 3: Somebody will come out and playlist. We'll get a crew
Speaker 3: of eight. Let's just go do it. So we talked
Speaker 3: to Danielle and her manager at the time, Kurt, and
Speaker 3: we all agreed to go make this movie. CJ had
Speaker 3: a subscript in six days, and on the sixth day
Speaker 3: of Christmas, I Truelove called me and said, yeah, my
Speaker 3: wife said no, you're not in a fifty grade. So
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, okay. So I actually was having
Speaker 3: lunch the next day with one of my dearest friends
Speaker 3: in the world, and it was when they were starting
Speaker 3: to let people in restaurants if they were outside on streets,
Speaker 3: and we sat down and he just said, you know,
Speaker 3: I told you I'd never get involved in your industry.
Speaker 3: Is a very successful man in his own business. He said,
Speaker 3: I'm concerned about you and your friends. You haven't been
Speaker 3: out of the house in seven months. He said, what
Speaker 3: is the cheapest you can make a movie for, like
Speaker 3: Bare Bones with the COVID protocols. I don't want you
Speaker 3: to get shut down. So I teamed back to him
Speaker 3: later that day and said, I'd broken down what we
Speaker 3: were going to do. Here's what COVID's going to cost.
Speaker 3: Let's put a little pat in there, let's do it right,
Speaker 3: let's do it through SAG, let's do it pay everybody.
Speaker 3: Here's the number. And he said, I want you to
Speaker 3: get out of the house and go make a movie.
Speaker 3: And within two months from concept too, that's a wrap.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, that's an insane turn around for a movie
Speaker 2: at endsize.
Speaker 3: And now the best part of the story is not
Speaker 3: I had two assisted editors on the film who sadly
Speaker 3: lost parents, grandparents, and brothers and sisters to COVID. Though
Speaker 3: I had all the four K or five K footage sitting,
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anybody because Hollywood had started to open
Speaker 3: and we had no money going in. It took me
Speaker 3: six months to get the pictures trans coded, saw Daily's
Speaker 3: proxies and cut because everybody was back to work and
Speaker 3: making good money and we didn't have post money going in.
Speaker 3: And I literally had to ship a hard drive, a
Speaker 3: twenty four terabyte hard drive to Cairo, Egypt. There was
Speaker 3: a gentleman, God love him. He heard we were in need.
Speaker 3: He reached out and said, I am stuck in Egypt.
Speaker 3: I flew here before the pandemic with my wife. We
Speaker 3: cannot leave. We're on lockdown. If you trust me, I
Speaker 3: will deliver you need. And I literally FedEx to Cairo
Speaker 3: a twenty four terribinted high drive in a month later.
Speaker 3: He set it back with everything done and we were.
Speaker 2: Able to affordably. I'm assuming.
Speaker 3: He did it for like lunch, a screen credit, and
Speaker 3: a new friend, I mean the guy. I couldn't have
Speaker 3: done it without him, and he had no post money.
Speaker 3: We put it all into the shoot and COVID forty
Speaker 3: grand went to COVID on that film. We detested over
Speaker 3: four hundred times, not one positive. We had a couple
Speaker 3: of COVID officers at all the pp E stuff you needed.
Speaker 3: I mean it was. It was unbelievable. What went to
Speaker 3: COVID like a huge choke movie went to COVID.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's it.
Speaker 3: So we posted it for nothing. I mean my DP
Speaker 3: Joel Laogan colored it because he wanted to color a film.
Speaker 3: He said, I'd like to try coloring a film, and
Speaker 3: I said, well, I have no money here, and these
Speaker 3: are the things.
Speaker 2: And when you're when you're working at this budget level,
Speaker 2: you gotta do what you gotta do to make it happen.
Speaker 3: Is not just, and it was just. It was it
Speaker 3: was a fraction of what we had been used to.
Speaker 3: And then you add COVID on top of it, and
Speaker 3: then the fact that when we weren't posts, everybody was
Speaker 3: back to work. I was calling people that were friends
Speaker 3: of friends that were looking for work the week before
Speaker 3: in destitute, living in a box. And as we all know,
Speaker 3: Hollywood went crazy. And I would call people in like
Speaker 3: colorists that would say yeah, I'll do it for like
Speaker 3: five that they were like, dude, you can't even afford me.
Speaker 3: I'm backed up for six months. Don't even bother me.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get anybody to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. And I was getting calls left and
Speaker 2: right to do color, and I just like, I'm retired.
Speaker 2: I'm retired. I'm a podcaster, sir, I don't color. I'm choke.
Speaker 3: I Actually they had a friend and Chris Rossiter, he's
Speaker 3: one of my dearest friends. I love Chris. He's an
Speaker 3: incredible cinematography teacher at LACC. Chris is a very good colorist,
Speaker 3: and he had been on lockdown, so he had actually
Speaker 3: offered when we went into this. He goes, if you
Speaker 3: ever forget in a jam, and he had colored let
Speaker 3: me know, I'll color it for you for lunch and
Speaker 3: you know a couple of favors. And I said great.
Speaker 3: But the problem was it took us four and a
Speaker 3: half months to get it transcoded sinct. So by the
Speaker 3: time I got the film back and Frank Reynolds and
Speaker 3: I started cutting the film, Chris was already back teaching,
Speaker 3: working full time again, so I lost that window and
Speaker 3: it was like starting and thank god, it's like he said,
Speaker 3: he'd color it.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty, it's it's it's insane thing we do.
Speaker 2: I don't even know why we do it. Honestly, it's
Speaker 2: it's insanity.
Speaker 3: I quite now.
Speaker 2: You've obviously been able to raise money from investors over
Speaker 2: the years to get your movies and projects off the ground.
Speaker 2: What are a few reasons why investors want to invest
Speaker 2: in our in our industry, in your project specifically, what
Speaker 2: are a few things that we can kind of know
Speaker 2: on how to you know, angle our pitches or you know,
Speaker 2: just angle what we're trying to do with them.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a great question and I have found,
Speaker 3: you know, I think for filmmakers for many years it
Speaker 3: was getting rich people that wanted to rub albums with celebrities.
Speaker 3: Those days are over. It's it's about relationships. And people
Speaker 3: don't like here this, especially the young ones coming up
Speaker 3: who are of that instant satisfaction get it when you
Speaker 3: want it age of picking up the phone and ordering
Speaker 3: something from Amazon and having it or being able to
Speaker 3: text somebody you can't reach. And I talk about it
Speaker 3: in my book, Alex. The key thing is relationships. The
Speaker 3: people that have invested in me over the years, with
Speaker 3: the exception of one maybe two times in thirty years,
Speaker 3: were people that I had known for decades, most in
Speaker 3: which said never never talk to me about investing in film.
Speaker 3: I will never do it. It's and everybody wants to hear.
Speaker 3: It's going to a cocktail party and meeting a rich
Speaker 3: guy who wants to rebelbows with, as they say, and
Speaker 3: the player, which will be Goldberg and make, you know,
Speaker 3: write a check. And that's not how it works. It's
Speaker 3: about building trust. They want to know that they can
Speaker 3: trust you. You have to treat their money like it's
Speaker 3: your own. For me, many times it was working for
Speaker 3: these people in side hustle jobs, or they had a
Speaker 3: need and they needed something handled professionally that they didn't
Speaker 3: know who to call on. So they called on me
Speaker 3: and said I need something done for my business. Nobody's available,
Speaker 3: So it would turn into me doing a three month
Speaker 3: job for them that they look back and said, this
Speaker 3: guy didn't fail me. He did what nobody else could
Speaker 3: do and he delivered, and this is how he's conducting
Speaker 3: them self. It was business I want in and that's
Speaker 3: what he came for me. And with the exception of
Speaker 3: running into two or three people in the course of
Speaker 3: thirty years that said, hey, I want to be in
Speaker 3: the business. I like what you do. Here's a check.
Speaker 3: It's been about deep seated, long lasting friendships that were
Speaker 3: never built on maybe one day they'll write at check
Speaker 3: for a movie, and that I think is the hardest
Speaker 3: thing to translate to people. You'll always meet people that
Speaker 3: say I know somebody that may be interested, or I'm
Speaker 3: a hedge fund manager, I know people, or my favorite
Speaker 3: is is. You know, I have clients that are deep,
Speaker 3: deep pockets and they're interested in getting in the industry,
Speaker 3: and you know, put a proposal together. I think pitch decks,
Speaker 3: and I talk about this a lot. I think pitch
Speaker 3: decks have to be reality checks for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Pitch decks, especially for filmmakers who haven't done it. They
Speaker 3: they they put these figures together that are so methodic.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like great mythology how they put you know,
Speaker 3: maybe back in the old date blockbuster in Hollywood video
Speaker 3: of these things they have worked, but it's a new
Speaker 3: day and age. The MG's are tiny if you get
Speaker 3: them at all. I always remind the filmmakers you've got
Speaker 3: fifty four territories in over one hundred and seventy countries
Speaker 3: that potentially could buy your film. Quit making movies for
Speaker 3: instagrammer and carpet moments, and think globally, not locally when
Speaker 3: it comes to building. Amen, they stop putting dead affleck
Speaker 3: and you know, gal Gado and your pitch check, it's
Speaker 3: not going to happen. And you know all you're doing
Speaker 3: as I talk about is all you're doing is disappointing
Speaker 3: your potential investor. Why would you go in with these
Speaker 3: names to try to lure them? And then before you've
Speaker 3: even started shooting the movie, Hey you got some b
Speaker 3: rate actor that nobody knows. No disrespect to them, but
Speaker 3: it sure doesn't add up to Galcado and Ben Affleck.
Speaker 3: So your investor's going to look at that go well,
Speaker 3: why did you present this? And you're ending up with that.
Speaker 2: And let's not even talk about projections and you know,
Speaker 2: busting out Blair Witch Project and paranormal activity.
Speaker 3: If it's sling Mad and Napole and Diner Behind and
Speaker 3: El Mariachi, Oh my god. I always tell people, look
Speaker 3: at Luve Me and Amazing Once, these little films that
Speaker 3: were made for a half a million dollars a feat
Speaker 3: back Once.
Speaker 2: Yeah Once is a great one. Yeah Once is a
Speaker 2: great example.
Speaker 3: And I told me it's like, look if I'd like
Speaker 3: to think that US filmmakers are smart enough to be
Speaker 3: creative beings and should have some business sense, And what
Speaker 3: frustrates me is I see them. Look if if you're
Speaker 3: a potential investor and somebody came to you and said, dude,
Speaker 3: I need one hundred grand. We can build by this
Speaker 3: house and flip it in six months and make it
Speaker 3: thirty million bucks. Are you going to get that guy
Speaker 3: one hundred grand? Probably not. But if the guy came
Speaker 3: to and said I need a undergrand, it's going to
Speaker 3: take us ten months to to remodel, and probably in
Speaker 3: the next two to three years we can sell that
Speaker 3: house for two hundred and fifty to three hundred grand.
Speaker 3: Is that something you'd be interested in? You may actually
Speaker 3: listen to them. And that's what filmmakers forget. And remember
Speaker 3: when you're going to somebody with a lot of money
Speaker 3: or the potential to finance your dream, chances are they
Speaker 3: smarter than you are, and they have people in their
Speaker 3: camp that earn a living protecting them from people like us.
Speaker 3: And you have to lay it out. It's like you know,
Speaker 3: I learned at a very young age, don't don't bs
Speaker 3: and build this picture of total fantasy. Go in with
Speaker 3: the mindset as you're going to get a base hit,
Speaker 3: an occasion old double if you ever get a grand
Speaker 3: slam Hallelijah. But that can't be what you're selling because
Speaker 3: it's lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, if you're always if you're if
Speaker 2: you only look at the home runs and not the
Speaker 2: not the bunts and the singles. And that's when most
Speaker 2: and that's what most filmmakers do. They look at the
Speaker 2: best case scenario. They never look at the worst case
Speaker 2: scenario or the general like it's one out of a
Speaker 2: a thousand one or out of ten thousand, you know,
Speaker 2: do that kind of big kind of money that blows
Speaker 2: out the once is and the and the I mean
Speaker 2: paranormal activities once in it once a decade, you know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but how many millions did Paramount put into that movie? Seven?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I and I know, and I know the
Speaker 2: guys who I mean who worked on that.
Speaker 3: You know, and people at Paramount who acquired.
Speaker 2: It, right exactly, so we know I knew the stories
Speaker 2: behind it, Like oh yeah, they pumped a ton of
Speaker 2: cash into this. It wasn't like it's like Mariachi, Like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, it was a seven thousand dollars movie that
Speaker 2: made three million of the box office. Like yeah, well,
Speaker 2: you know, they did spend a little bit of money
Speaker 2: remastering it. They put a little money into marketing, you know,
Speaker 2: but that's that that's not that doesn't serve the narrative.
Speaker 2: It doesn't serve.
Speaker 3: Wow, it doesn't. And I think the these of those
Speaker 3: sling blades and Napoleon Dynamites, because there were the Merrimaxes
Speaker 3: and the Hollywood videos and blockbuster outlets that these little
Speaker 3: gems found found life and they flourished, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, man, I can't even think we haven't had
Speaker 2: anything like that happened, Like a movie out of nowhere
Speaker 2: with no stars.
Speaker 3: Well nowhere not not. The deal was already done. Let's
Speaker 3: send it to Sundance, will announce it like.
Speaker 2: Literally nowhere, no no talent in the in the movie
Speaker 2: or like barely any no bankable stars, no, nothing like
Speaker 2: a Napoleon Dynamite style like that goes off and makes
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars or Brothers McMullen. Yeah, that went on
Speaker 2: to thirty million dollars with nobody, like literally nobody, nobody.
Speaker 3: It was a sting project practically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just put that thing together those I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's even possible today, And that in
Speaker 2: the way it was then because the marketplace was different.
Speaker 2: There was a marketplace for indie films, and that's the
Speaker 2: big thing that a lot of people don't understand is
Speaker 2: there was in the nineties an infrastructure being built for
Speaker 2: independent films. The DVD market was huge. There were still
Speaker 2: hollyw with videos and blockbusters are running around. You know,
Speaker 2: Rick when he was on the show Rick link Letter,
Speaker 2: when he was talking about Slacker, He's like, the reason
Speaker 2: why Slacker found the bomb made money is because there
Speaker 2: was an infrastructure starting to be built in the early nineties.
Speaker 2: There were indie movies in the eighties. There was really
Speaker 2: you know, great art you know, independent filmmakers that make
Speaker 2: great films in the eighties and in the seventies, but
Speaker 2: there wasn't the infrastructure to make money with him. The
Speaker 2: easy writer was like the you know, and it's still
Speaker 2: Jack frickin Nicholson and Dennis Hopper in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: back then and that was considered indie. But there were
Speaker 2: still independent filmmakers making movies back then, but there wasn't
Speaker 2: the infrastructure. So in the nineties there was this groundswell
Speaker 2: of of of places you could put movies and actually
Speaker 2: make money. Art house theaters, every studio had an indie
Speaker 2: armed araboun advantage, you know, Fox two thousands, all of those,
Speaker 2: all of those things were around for that and that's
Speaker 2: where that's all kind of gone away. There's only a
Speaker 2: handful of those left Fox search Light or it's just
Speaker 2: just search Light Films now and Sony Picture Classics. And
Speaker 2: now they're not doing indies, they're doing big budget you know,
Speaker 2: with big stars. Yeah, like under ten million, Yeah, stars
Speaker 2: under ten millions. That's that's the.
Speaker 3: Globally different animal. And we don't have You know, It's
Speaker 3: funny is because I have a lot of friends in
Speaker 3: the music industry, and when Napster and file sharing became
Speaker 3: really big, I remember I went to a friend's house
Speaker 3: who had had a record release party, and he played
Speaker 3: some of the songs that he had on his record
Speaker 3: and I and he had a lot of success, and
Speaker 3: I remember saying, dude, this is this is huge. And
Speaker 3: he said to me, he said, let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: He said, music is free. He said, now, music is free.
Speaker 3: We don't make our money on music. We make money
Speaker 3: on touring. And he said, I'm worried about your industry
Speaker 3: because you guys don't tour. And I thought, oh, that
Speaker 3: was interesting. And as I look now, we're kind of
Speaker 3: so many of us are giving our these two streaming
Speaker 3: platforms for nothing, and we don't have an after party
Speaker 3: to keep people excited. Like an artist can go out.
Speaker 3: They can do an album in their home studio, may
Speaker 3: cost them a few grand, and they put it out
Speaker 3: and they get a few singles on it that circulate
Speaker 3: on iTunes or YouTube. But they're giving that out and
Speaker 3: we're all sharing the links to it to friends, so
Speaker 3: they're really not getting a lot of money on it.
Speaker 3: But they can go out and tour and make fifty
Speaker 3: sixty eighty one hundred grand at night for three or
Speaker 3: four months. That's their follow What do we have and
Speaker 3: don't I don't know the answer to that, but it's
Speaker 3: something I think about.
Speaker 2: Well. I do have the answers in that book Rise
Speaker 2: of the Film to Producer, where you create multiple revenue
Speaker 2: streams and product lines based on your movie. Now, it
Speaker 2: doesn't work for every kind of movie, every kind of story,
Speaker 2: but if you design it around that, it is a possibility.
Speaker 2: And there are examples of filmmakers giving the movie away
Speaker 2: as a loss leader to bring them into their funnels
Speaker 2: to make money other ways. And I feel that on
Speaker 2: the I feel that that's really the future of independent filmmaking.
Speaker 2: I do truly believe.
Speaker 3: And you are a Trailblazer with that and have always
Speaker 3: been really good at marketing and building a brand when
Speaker 3: you're when you're you don't have the brands such as
Speaker 3: you know, I F H, Academy or whatever you can build.
Speaker 3: It's in you're just you're going from film to film
Speaker 3: to film film.
Speaker 2: It's often it's just it's a it's a different way
Speaker 2: of looking at films. So like, I can't I don't
Speaker 2: think that you know, you're not going to be selling
Speaker 2: double threat T shirts generally speaking, it's not that kind
Speaker 2: of hold on, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm
Speaker 2: sorry you are going to be selling double making covid
Speaker 2: art pitch.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm not selling them. It was already I know
Speaker 3: designed it and kerk.
Speaker 2: Had, which is that's amazing, that's amazing. But generally, but
Speaker 2: generally speaking, like not every movie is set up for
Speaker 2: a film entrepreneur model, But as a filmmaker you and go, Okay,
Speaker 2: how can I build a sustainable business if I like
Speaker 2: a certain genre? Can I build a brand around horror
Speaker 2: movies like Bloom, like Blumhouse? Can you build a brand
Speaker 2: around action movies and like really branded so people know that?
Speaker 2: Is it possible? Yeah, it's I'm not saying it's easy,
Speaker 2: but it's pure.
Speaker 3: I mean, for us, it's it's kind of taking the
Speaker 3: hell Needham approach of the seventies and early eighties, if
Speaker 3: that's Canniball run and flipping it where we're putting the
Speaker 3: women in the driver's seat and the guys are writing Shotgun.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of what we've been doing these last
Speaker 3: three or four years, and it's been really exciting. It's like,
Speaker 3: but you're right, it's like we had break even during
Speaker 3: the pandemic. Shot Double Threat. I've already shot Night Train
Speaker 3: prepping another film, but here I am promoting Double Threat,
Speaker 3: but I'm already thinking about Night Train and how we're
Speaker 3: gonna market that. I mean, it's it's it's constant and
Speaker 3: you work together a little bit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I know, I don't. Now I have to
Speaker 2: ask you. On the casting side, yeap. Double Threat I
Speaker 2: mean has a great cast. You know Matt Lawrence and
Speaker 2: you know I worked with them before. You love all
Speaker 2: the Lawrence boys are great. I love it. We'll be
Speaker 2: right back after a word from our sponsor and now
Speaker 2: back to the show.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be with him Friday. I love that.
Speaker 2: Now tell him please tell mat I said hi, Austin.
Speaker 2: Austin and Austin and I say hi. I did a
Speaker 2: little work with him a little while ago. But but
Speaker 2: generally speaking, nobody in your movie is this giant, bankable star.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so they didn't have like, you know that
Speaker 2: bringing huge money in, but they're good actors and that's great.
Speaker 2: So how did you get this is the movie itself,
Speaker 2: the genre and the trailer and what you've put together
Speaker 2: is that the star that helps sell the film?
Speaker 3: You know what it was? It It basically was the
Speaker 3: fact that we've got this lovely girl, Daniels Ryan, who's
Speaker 3: five foot two, soaking wet with a full moon, and
Speaker 3: he does all our own stunts and she's actually a
Speaker 3: really good actress. She's actually the star of Night Train,
Speaker 3: and we you know, that film was so different. We
Speaker 3: got really blessed with DONALDA. Biery and Matthew Lawrence and
Speaker 3: Kevin Joy. You know, it was somebody that one of
Speaker 3: the producers found and had known and he was great.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was it was like, look, we know
Speaker 3: what we're dealing with. I mean, before we had cast
Speaker 3: some of the people that we did, we were making
Speaker 3: calls to so really respectable, bankable quote unquote names, and
Speaker 3: we didn't even get past the hi, how you doing,
Speaker 3: we're doing a film, and they said, dude, call us
Speaker 3: back when COVID's over. Because if they were bankable and
Speaker 3: they had that kind of scratch, they didn't need to work.
Speaker 3: They weren't coming out of the house. And no disrespect
Speaker 3: to who we did get, because they've all had tremendous
Speaker 3: careers and to do it very well. But what was
Speaker 3: really cool is Donald le Biery had called her agent
Speaker 3: three days before we called her, and she said, I
Speaker 3: know there are some crazy sum bitches out there that
Speaker 3: are mavericks that are thumb in her nose to locking
Speaker 3: themselves in the house anymore. Find me somebody respectable who's
Speaker 3: making a movie. So when we called Don's age, then
Speaker 3: she said, oh my god, Don just called me two
Speaker 3: days ago saying find something. And the problem is that
Speaker 3: there aren't many people out there making movies. So we
Speaker 3: got really lucky. Similar with Matthew Lawrence. Matthew had been
Speaker 3: tired of being locked up for six seven months, and
Speaker 3: as a filmmaker and producer at heart, and he was
Speaker 3: all about getting out and making art, and so we
Speaker 3: got really fortunate. I wouldn't trade one actor in that
Speaker 3: film for anybody in the world. I couldn't be more
Speaker 3: proud of that cast. But for us, you know, for
Speaker 3: me and I it's it's Look, when you're working an
Speaker 3: indie film, you're not going to go get the A listers.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget when I was doing my film at Sony,
Speaker 3: when we when we were simmering down, they said, hey,
Speaker 3: anything you get attached with Vince Vaughn, you have a
Speaker 3: go picture. And that tells you the power that an
Speaker 3: actor may have.
Speaker 2: It is tours.
Speaker 3: Well, when you're making films for half a million dollars,
Speaker 3: you don't get those kind of actors. So what I
Speaker 3: always try to do, when I talk about it in
Speaker 3: the book extensively, is get actors that people are familiar with.
Speaker 3: They may not be writing the biggest wave today, but
Speaker 3: at one point in your career they were. Or think
Speaker 3: globally again, it's like, I know Matthew Lawrence has done this,
Speaker 3: as Doubtfire has done Boynet's World. I look at somebody
Speaker 3: like don Oliverery, who was in you know, A House
Speaker 3: of Cards and all her House of lives forgive me
Speaker 3: and heroes. These shows are being syndicated in the one
Speaker 3: hundred countries right now. So just because we may not
Speaker 3: recognize the name or face immediately, does it mean globally
Speaker 3: as Lauren on TV three or four times a day
Speaker 3: and they're still stars And that's how I cast my ess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's a really smart way of going
Speaker 2: about it, because they might not look like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't look like somebody I know, or does isn't
Speaker 2: that well what has she done? Was she a big
Speaker 2: star in a show for eight seasons or did they
Speaker 2: do some other big studio movies at one point? And
Speaker 2: their name is still people recognize or see their face
Speaker 2: and they recognize it. If the budget level, it depends
Speaker 2: on the budget level. So you know, if your budget
Speaker 2: level is starting to go to three, four, five, six million,
Speaker 2: and you have to get bankable names to be responsible
Speaker 2: to the investors.
Speaker 3: If you're making a five million dollar film, you better
Speaker 3: allocate two million dollars large to one or two stars
Speaker 3: to justify what you're spending. You have to wait and
Speaker 3: trust me, I have this discussion with buyers, distributors and
Speaker 3: other filmmakers. I got a lot of friends with a
Speaker 3: lot of five million dollar movies. They can't even get
Speaker 3: looked at because they this cast it. And that's Scarrett.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you there was a movie I worked on
Speaker 2: years ago. I did, I did all the post on it,
Speaker 2: finished it up, had no stars in it. They went
Speaker 2: out to the marketplace. Everyone said, sorry, you had nobody
Speaker 2: in it. If I know it's a sci fi action thing,
Speaker 2: don't care. Went back. He raised another fifty sixty grand,
Speaker 2: one hundred grand something like that, got two stars. I
Speaker 2: think he got like one of the guys from Stargate,
Speaker 2: the show Stargate and it's a sci fi thing, And
Speaker 2: he got Michael Madson for a day each shot him out,
Speaker 2: re edited the movie, reasserted the new scenes. He came
Speaker 2: back to me like eight months later he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: can we redo the movie? Like what do you what
Speaker 2: do you to do? I think, oh, okay, we did that.
Speaker 2: He packaged it, put him on the cover, went back
Speaker 2: to the marketplace and they said we'll take it.
Speaker 3: I will tell you I had a friend of years
Speaker 3: ago who did a film. He spent five hundred thousand
Speaker 3: of his own money on it, shot it in thirty
Speaker 3: five millimeter and couldn't get it looked at. It was
Speaker 3: just it was his friends and locals in another state,
Speaker 3: and he brought it to California and it wasn't a
Speaker 3: bad film. It just didn't have anybody in it. And
Speaker 3: it was the exact same story. Somebody said, if you
Speaker 3: can put a star or two in a scene and
Speaker 3: reshoot a scene or two, you may get somewhere. I know,
Speaker 3: to date this film is generated over four million dollars
Speaker 3: for him because he just went out and got he
Speaker 3: We literally went into a studio and shot one actor,
Speaker 3: replaced an actor from another scene when a known actor
Speaker 3: paid him, you know, probably fifteen twenty grand for the day.
Speaker 3: Did anyone about another cameo for a guy to play
Speaker 3: an arresting officer. To date, that film has made over
Speaker 3: four million dollars for him. And this was a film
Speaker 3: that nobody looked at for eighteen months. They were just like, dude,
Speaker 3: I don't even see it. Nobody wanted it.
Speaker 2: And that's the importance of a bankable a bankable name.
Speaker 2: So and again, it's not and I've said this so
Speaker 2: many times on the show, and I think I have
Speaker 2: to say it again for people to understand it's not
Speaker 2: out of reach for to shoot somebody out in a
Speaker 2: day fifteen ten five grand a day, ten grand a day,
Speaker 2: twenty grand a day for an eight or ten hour day.
Speaker 2: Is you're going to get that money back tenfold if
Speaker 2: you're smart. And it's so important, and filmmakers just don't
Speaker 2: think they can one. They don't have the confidence to
Speaker 2: think that they can get it done. But I've just
Speaker 2: seen it. I'm working with people right now, some clients
Speaker 2: that are doing it currently, and they're going out to
Speaker 2: the talent. They're like, here's how much I have. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's do this. Let's do that. Great. I need you
Speaker 2: for five hours words five hours to shoot out scenes
Speaker 2: for this movie. Can you do it? And I worked
Speaker 2: on a movie that had Sean Patrick Finnery from Boondogs
Speaker 2: and then the young Indiana Jones and a million other things. Right,
Speaker 2: so they do so brilliant They shot him out one
Speaker 2: day because that's the whole movie. He's in the entire movie.
Speaker 2: He's not just in one scene.
Speaker 3: They peppered him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they peppered him throughout the movie. She's in
Speaker 2: like six or seven scenes, but they're all in the
Speaker 2: same place. In other words, he's the cop that they
Speaker 2: come back to like to meet with and they always
Speaker 2: meet it at the parking garage. So they just shot
Speaker 2: the parking garage shirt, changed your shirt, spread to the
Speaker 2: hitter and and and he dropped him in and he
Speaker 2: was the sun and he's on the cover. So and
Speaker 2: they shout him out for a day and then and
Speaker 2: then you've got him. Now you've got them marketable movie.
Speaker 2: And that's the that's the way filmmakers need to think,
Speaker 2: especially in a commerce based film art house. Different conversation.
Speaker 3: And you know what, let me let me cap that
Speaker 3: by saying, I have somebody that was brought to my
Speaker 3: life a couple of years ago who shot a film
Speaker 3: with three a list well known stars and couldn't get
Speaker 3: anybody to look at the film. And it was content.
Speaker 3: It was content and that was heartbreaking because this guy
Speaker 3: actually spent a million and a half dollars.
Speaker 2: Well what was the content? What was the wrong with
Speaker 2: the content?
Speaker 3: Well, there's you know, there's two rules in a movie.
Speaker 3: Don't kill a kid and don't kick a dog anymore, right,
Speaker 3: and he.
Speaker 2: Killed the kid and killed the dog.
Speaker 3: Well, they killed the kid and kicked the dog, and
Speaker 3: and that was it's like, dude, But it was also
Speaker 3: involving such assault to a child.
Speaker 4: That's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, well you not,
Speaker 4: I mean no not these actors who have, like two
Speaker 4: of the actors generated over three billion in the box
Speaker 4: office on their work, and they agreed to do this
Speaker 4: and you wasted this bullet and they can't even get
Speaker 4: it looked at because it's it's based on a true
Speaker 4: story everybody knows.
Speaker 3: And they're like, yeah, no, we touched a knotty.
Speaker 2: Might as well throw some religion and politics and there,
Speaker 2: if you will, at detective the might as well love that.
Speaker 2: Oh let's talk about religion and politics. Well we're ont it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's oh my god, that's so heartbreaking, but
Speaker 2: that one. But that's the kind of stuff that happens
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey we got the cast. We missed we missed
Speaker 3: the content. Hey we got the content, we didn't get cast.
Speaker 3: I just think, is indie rats, we have to we
Speaker 3: have to think again. And you say it so rightly.
Speaker 3: Is commerce business and and and art? And and how
Speaker 3: do you find that? And it's it's it's about you know.
Speaker 3: I remember I had a film that that had the
Speaker 3: green light before the E seven crash, which Thank god
Speaker 3: it didn't happen, because it was, it would have been miscast.
Speaker 3: We had a lot of angless actors getting at one
Speaker 3: of the big agencies packaging it, and they had some
Speaker 3: serious cats wanting to get on board. And I was
Speaker 3: adamant about the lead being an unknown. I was adamant
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Because of her meager world in the script, I didn't
Speaker 3: want somebody looking at like Jennifer Anderson and a good girl.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she makes a million dollars an episode to
Speaker 3: think I'm about skinning knocked on the door. Oh no, kids,
Speaker 3: is you know when you're watching this girl who works
Speaker 3: in a mini mart who supposedly broke but it's it's
Speaker 3: headline news everywhere that the stars of Friends are making
Speaker 3: a million dollars to the episode. I didn't want that.
Speaker 3: I didn't want that to taint it. So I was
Speaker 3: adamant about in a note and I remember ahead of
Speaker 3: a studio brought me into his office and he said,
Speaker 3: you're you're dating a grave. You have a film that
Speaker 3: you have everybody clamoring to do. That is bakable and respectable.
Speaker 3: Yet you want to hang it out on a note
Speaker 3: you're never going to get this movie pass go And
Speaker 3: he was right. He was right.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you, then, how did you get
Speaker 2: distribution for this? How? What is the distribution? How are
Speaker 2: you all for? Bratt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was really you know, look, it was really simple.
Speaker 3: Knew we knew domestically that we would be looking at
Speaker 3: a VOD situation. We didn't we didn't have our own
Speaker 3: farts on this one. We didn't, you know, have any
Speaker 3: delusions of grandeur. It was this fun, little dirt movie
Speaker 3: we made with our friends and kicked ass and took
Speaker 3: no prisoners and it is what it is. And so
Speaker 3: it was one of those things where it was about
Speaker 3: partnering with somebody who captured the vision. We wanted a
Speaker 3: woman run company to be behind the film, because we
Speaker 3: are women driven in our storytelling. And VMI has got
Speaker 3: a wonderful group that runs that company, and they happen
Speaker 3: to be some wonderful, lovely ladies, and they saw it
Speaker 3: and they just fell in love with it. They just
Speaker 3: loved the idea of a woman out there kicking ass,
Speaker 3: riding a horse bear back and shooting somebody with a
Speaker 3: bow and arrow, you know, having the fight scenes that
Speaker 3: she does, and it just was one of those things,
Speaker 3: Alex where for us a lot of times, it's not
Speaker 3: about the dollars up front, it's about what is the
Speaker 3: passion and commitment someone who's going to have to put
Speaker 3: product out That was most important and fortunately for us,
Speaker 3: you know, the film is new, so it went to
Speaker 3: can piggybacking with Night Train and we're starting to sell
Speaker 3: up the globe now, which is really exciting because it
Speaker 3: is a fun action comedy without slapstick comedy that sometimes
Speaker 3: doesn't translate for in it's physical comedy and you can
Speaker 3: always do well with that. So it's it's got the
Speaker 3: combination of some fun action sex, horses, fights, airplanes and pins,
Speaker 3: some love and you know road type movies. So we're
Speaker 3: starting to see that it's translating very well across the
Speaker 3: globe here.
Speaker 2: You've already started selling out different territories.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think we got twelve thirteen territories since Canna.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's really it's a really good I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, talking about Germany, China or not. I'm sorry
Speaker 3: not eat service, no no, no, Japan, South Korea, Germany,
Speaker 3: you know, South America. I mean it's like I looked
Speaker 3: at something that came about yesterday I was like, God, dang,
Speaker 3: it seems like starting to lose. This is exciting. So
Speaker 3: the UK. Yeah, and that's just based on us just
Speaker 3: going out there with a cool trailer and some fun art. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I'll address it. You know, we came out a week after,
Speaker 3: two weeks after the tragedy in Olbie, and that was
Speaker 3: a big problem because we had already started putting out
Speaker 3: the artwork and that was something that we all, you know,
Speaker 3: realized that that's something that in hindsight, we wish you
Speaker 3: would have not you know, you don't know what you
Speaker 3: don't know going in, but you know, having your star
Speaker 3: with an AAR fifteen on the poster a week after
Speaker 3: that tragedy is not the best marketing tool. But the
Speaker 3: horse was already out of the barnet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's the thing too, Like there's just elements
Speaker 2: and there's variables in filmmaking that you just don't know.
Speaker 2: It could be good or bad, something like what you
Speaker 2: just said. Obviously it's an egg of light. But then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden your star gets picked up and
Speaker 2: is like going to be the New World movie. And
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden you're like, oh wait a minute,
Speaker 2: now this property is worth a lot more because our
Speaker 2: star is going to be on a big show where
Speaker 2: a big so you just these are variables you just
Speaker 2: can't plan for. So you kind of got out the
Speaker 2: roll with it and see unfortunately and what happens.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately there's the gunplay in the movie is minimal
Speaker 3: and it's all justified. Good guys versus bad guys. It's
Speaker 3: not anything like.
Speaker 2: No, no, norexsit.
Speaker 3: But you can't for some did it well?
Speaker 2: The Stranger Things I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, Remember Stranger Things right?
Speaker 2: Remember Stranger Things right? The New Stranger Things eries, the
Speaker 2: play opening, the opening sequence, they like literally put a
Speaker 2: thing on, like hey, this might be a problem. The
Speaker 2: opening of of Obi wan Kenobi, same thing, they're like,
Speaker 2: this might you know they made those They made those
Speaker 2: shows years, like a year ago.
Speaker 3: Okayprett in November December twenty the kyart was done seven
Speaker 3: months ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks exactly.
Speaker 3: We knew it was coming out in June of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. I made two movies since that. It was
Speaker 3: like out of side, out of mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is what it is. So you just have
Speaker 2: to kind of, you know, roll with the roll with
Speaker 2: the punches in that set. I want you to discuss
Speaker 2: something for me. Can you please debunk the myth of
Speaker 2: streamers and the that there's so much money to be
Speaker 2: made by in the bed they're buying. Netflix is buying
Speaker 2: movies from independent filmmakers left and right. They're writing checks like.
Speaker 3: They are writing See they are writing checks.
Speaker 2: Not to us, but not to us.
Speaker 3: Let me playing something. I will give you two examples.
Speaker 3: I have a friend who is a very very respected
Speaker 3: filmmaker that made an independent film for eight hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars they made back when Netflix and spending. They made
Speaker 3: a deal with Netflix for two hundred and fifty grand.
Speaker 3: Once it went on Netflix, nobody will, nobody else would
Speaker 3: look at it because oh you're on Netflix. By so
Speaker 3: it made an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars movie
Speaker 3: made back to fifty but Netflix haste. I think over
Speaker 3: the course of two years. They pay it in quarterly installments.
Speaker 3: Plus you've got your twenty percent sales commission fee. So
Speaker 3: and they're deliverables, which A're gonna cost you more because
Speaker 3: they're not in a standard deliverable, so you may see
Speaker 3: out of that two fifty, they may see it one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy five thousand dollars over the course of
Speaker 3: two years. And then I have a friend, I got
Speaker 3: to be careful how we talk about this. He had
Speaker 3: a number one show on Netflix during the pandemic. He's
Speaker 3: made nothing and is pitching on a regular basis to
Speaker 3: them and other streamers to hopefully get another movie made.
Speaker 3: And he had a number one hit on Netflix during
Speaker 3: the pandemic, and he's like, dude, it barely covered the
Speaker 3: cost of deliverables.
Speaker 2: And that's that's the and that's the thing, and that's
Speaker 2: the thing. I want people to hear it because everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you gotta get a Netflix again.
Speaker 3: Definitely waited.
Speaker 2: Look I got on my first one got on Hulu,
Speaker 2: which is an insanity. How my five thousand dollars movie
Speaker 2: got picked up by Hulu. That's great, it was, but
Speaker 2: it was a different time. It was.
Speaker 3: It was probably six seven years ago when Hulu.
Speaker 2: Was it was it was twenty twenty seventeen. Okay, it
Speaker 2: was twenty seventeen, so it was twenty seventeen, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I also sold it to China. So there, that's
Speaker 2: how old that is. So because Johanna was bying at that.
Speaker 3: Point, Yeah, that door was closed.
Speaker 2: That door was closed right now, but that door was open.
Speaker 2: And I made good money on both of those. It
Speaker 2: was both of those sales. It was great, but it's
Speaker 2: not what And by the way, if I didn't make
Speaker 2: a five thousand dollar movie, that Hulu deal wouldn't have
Speaker 2: really been made a whole lot of sense. But because
Speaker 2: I made a five thousand dollars movie, it was like,
Speaker 2: of course, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: A lot in the process, which is what we talked
Speaker 3: about earlier in my backright of doing that five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars forty five minute pilot that did more for my
Speaker 3: career than anything, than anything than I don't And you're right.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing is I always it's like so
Speaker 3: funny when I talk to people, whether they are people
Speaker 3: not in the business or people coming. I mentioned to
Speaker 3: deal with Netflix. You deal with Netflix. It's like, no, no.
Speaker 2: But that's it. But that's it. But that's a little
Speaker 2: secret for everybody who's not in the know. Everyone thinks
Speaker 2: that like, oh, you've got to be on the major streams.
Speaker 2: Amazon's not buying anything, and if you get on HBO Max,
Speaker 2: you've got to have some major star power. And I've
Speaker 2: spoken to filmmakers who have their films bought, but then
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, but you have this guy who's in
Speaker 2: a Marvel movie, who's the lead in a Marvel movie,
Speaker 2: who's about to explode in the movie. That's probably one
Speaker 2: of the reasons. And it also covered a bunch of
Speaker 2: other boxes that they wanted to chick off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I get that, And again it goes back
Speaker 3: to how you package market and cast and content in
Speaker 3: what you're putting together. As we talked about before, but
Speaker 3: the streaming world, especially in North America, is very tough.
Speaker 3: That's why I always tell filmmakers think about your cast
Speaker 3: and think global and realize you're making a movie for
Speaker 3: fifty four territories at one hundred and something countries that
Speaker 3: potentially can buy because you know, I think the average
Speaker 3: is what eighteen to twenty two percent of a film's
Speaker 3: revenue comes from North America, but when you're an indie
Speaker 3: rad it could be as little as four to six percent.
Speaker 3: And that's something to remember, and that means that there
Speaker 3: still are parts of the world that are buying brick
Speaker 3: and mortar video, DVD, Blu ray. It's still out there
Speaker 3: and there are small theaters around the country or I'm
Speaker 3: forgiving not the country around the world that'll badly put
Speaker 3: your movies in there. It does, it does exist. It's
Speaker 3: just it's not here and it's not sexy. You know, wegain.
Speaker 3: It's why I was saying earlier is stop making your
Speaker 3: movies for Instagram likes. That's not It's not all about
Speaker 3: the bullshit red carpet that you've put up on the
Speaker 3: side to proceed a boulevard that's duct taped by your
Speaker 3: buddy to try to get people. That's not why we're
Speaker 3: making movies. It's a business. Think global. Get your head
Speaker 3: out of the San Fernando Valley in West LA and
Speaker 3: start thinking about the world. And that's what I try
Speaker 3: to impress upon your filmmakers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I understand exactly what you're talking because I
Speaker 2: lived in for thirteen years, so I know exactly what
Speaker 2: you're talking about. But a lot of filmmakers who even
Speaker 2: if they're not in LA, they think that that's making
Speaker 2: it and they're turning to like, you gotta look at it. God,
Speaker 2: I mean, walk around afm man. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
Speaker 2: the show, and you can see who are the real
Speaker 2: filmmakers who are making money. Yeah, I don't care if
Speaker 2: the movies are good or not. That's not that's not
Speaker 2: the question. Here's that's all making money.
Speaker 3: Are you making money?
Speaker 2: Are you making money? And then you, as a filmmaker,
Speaker 2: whoever's listening out there, you have to ask yourself the question,
Speaker 2: what kind of films do you want to make? Do
Speaker 2: you want to make films that is a personal piece,
Speaker 2: a backyard a backyard film if you will, that's personal
Speaker 2: to you. Do that and make it for as cheap
Speaker 2: as possible and understand its art and hopefully you can
Speaker 2: make maybe some money back maybe somewhere. Go on the festival, church,
Speaker 2: see what happens. You rolling the dice of that. But
Speaker 2: that's not a business. That's our, that's our And as.
Speaker 3: My brother, as my brother reminds, you want to be
Speaker 3: an artist, go paint in the park on Saturday. That's
Speaker 3: his motto.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, go exactly. But if you want to make
Speaker 2: a business, and you want to do what you love
Speaker 2: to do and do it consistently, for a decade or two.
Speaker 2: You have to think of commerce. You have to think
Speaker 2: of the business. If you don't, you're not It's not
Speaker 2: gonna make it. Man. And you know, that's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why most people don't even build careers in
Speaker 2: this business, because they have delusions of grandeur, delusions of
Speaker 2: what they think is supposed to happen. But they don't
Speaker 2: look at the reality of what is as opposed to
Speaker 2: what they want it to be.
Speaker 3: And here's another thing that I really try to remind
Speaker 3: a lot of up and covers about. Is this world
Speaker 3: we're living in now. You know, everybody talks about how
Speaker 3: why is time going so fast? Well, it's simple. It's
Speaker 3: because we can't keep up with the news. By the
Speaker 3: time something it's like tragic. You look at this shooting
Speaker 3: in Buffalo, by the time it dust settled on not
Speaker 3: there was another one at a church here in Anaheim.
Speaker 3: Then there was the big school shooting. There was five
Speaker 3: that following week. My point is, think about how fast
Speaker 3: the news we move from from thing to thing to thing.
Speaker 3: It's worse in film. When your buddy is putting up
Speaker 3: a trailer of their movie, their buddies are already looking
Speaker 3: at five other trailers and by the time you've set
Speaker 3: it out once, it's already buried and it's really hard
Speaker 3: to get the traction. You you, really, the traction is
Speaker 3: not something that we have anymore. It uhould be. You know,
Speaker 3: back up until five years ago, you put a trailer
Speaker 3: on Facebook or YouTube. Man, that thing got tons of hits.
Speaker 3: People were emailing you about it for weeks or months.
Speaker 3: You get, you get you know, two or three hundred,
Speaker 3: maybe a thousand likes in a couple of days. They
Speaker 3: can't see the movie. They're just buried with everything else.
Speaker 3: They come home and it's like, oh, honey, The Boys
Speaker 3: is back on, or Stranger Things is back on, or
Speaker 3: you know, you guys found a new tailor shared in
Speaker 3: film or something. It's like you is indie filmmakers. You
Speaker 3: can't keep up with the machine that is spoon feeding
Speaker 3: the world with tens of millions of dollars on P
Speaker 3: and A. So you have to think globally and where
Speaker 3: is your phone going to stick?
Speaker 2: Right exactly and then again back to the film. Entrepreneur
Speaker 2: method is focusing on a niche hellers. It helps with
Speaker 2: cutting through the noise if you can, if you can
Speaker 2: attach to an emotional niche that you're into, then you
Speaker 2: have a much better fighting chance because there's you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how many surf movies they are made
Speaker 2: every day, but or how many skateboarding movies are made
Speaker 2: every day. It's not a huge genre, but it's a
Speaker 2: huge market and there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: looking for those, you know. I remember when Gleaning the
Speaker 2: Cube came out, Remember Gleaning the Cube back of the eighties,
Speaker 2: like late eighties, I think it was eighty nine. Was
Speaker 2: Christian Slater or rad with the BMX bike movie. This
Speaker 2: guy re released.
Speaker 3: Sower Takes All for Motocross in the eighties. That's a
Speaker 3: hubid film that's unwatchable.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. But those movies focused on a niche audience,
Speaker 2: and everybody was like, oh my god, did you see
Speaker 2: Gleaning the Cube? It's a skateboarding movie? Or that you
Speaker 2: can you can make noise with an independent film with
Speaker 2: no bud and even no marketing money. In a niche,
Speaker 2: you have a chance, you have a fighting chance to
Speaker 2: cut through the noise.
Speaker 3: Well, especially in a niche like you're talking about, like
Speaker 3: you imagine getting on all the Facebook skateboarding BMX Facebook
Speaker 3: groups yeah. I mean, like, I'm a big motocross guy.
Speaker 3: You know, it was my life for thirty forty years.
Speaker 3: And that's like I belong to these these little pages
Speaker 3: on Facebook and there's like three hundred thousand members and
Speaker 3: that's one of twelve that I'm a member of. And
Speaker 3: then you go there's twenty thousand, ere one hundred thousand era.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if you did a little niche movie
Speaker 3: for skateboarder BMX and that group got behind it, what
Speaker 3: damage you can do? You gotta think that's Burke. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's how you have this thing.
Speaker 2: But that's how then I've used multiple examples of that
Speaker 2: in my book because it's exactly how you do it.
Speaker 2: It's the only it's the only weapon we have as
Speaker 2: independent filmmakers to really compete against the big boys, because
Speaker 2: I use the example all the time. There was a
Speaker 2: documentary about vegan athletes that I saw, the one with
Speaker 2: Schwartzenegger's and yeah, it was a game, Game changes right,
Speaker 2: and I was dying to see it. And no matter
Speaker 2: what was around any big Hollywood movie, any billions of
Speaker 2: dollars that they spend in advertising, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's nice. I want to see this. It cut through
Speaker 2: all marketing. I'll get to your billions, I'll get to
Speaker 2: the next of the Bond film.
Speaker 3: I need to see this film.
Speaker 2: This is the first on my list because I had
Speaker 2: an emotional attachment to see that. I wanted to see that.
Speaker 2: So if you could do that as a filmmakers, it's
Speaker 2: a lot easier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's smart.
Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna ask you a few questions, sir, I
Speaker 2: asked all of my guests, Oh, what advice would you
Speaker 2: give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today.
Speaker 3: My advice to filmmakers trying to break into the business
Speaker 3: today is first, make, nurture, harvest relationships, whether you're meeting
Speaker 3: a sound guy on a shoot or you're meeting a
Speaker 3: hair and makeup girl on a shoot. My film family
Speaker 3: runs longer than twenty five thirty years with a lot
Speaker 3: of us, and those are because of relationships that were made.
Speaker 3: And I say that, are my hair and makeup team
Speaker 3: or my sound guy writing the checks to finance my movies? No,
Speaker 3: but they'd got my back and I couldn't do it
Speaker 3: without them. So I think the most important thing is
Speaker 3: besides shooting and screwing a lot of the things up
Speaker 3: and making yourself better. Relationships for me are almost number one.
Speaker 2: What did you learn from your biggest failure?
Speaker 3: What I learned from my biggest failure was you have
Speaker 3: to keep up with the times. I think our biggest
Speaker 3: financial failure was a film that never got out of
Speaker 3: the gate when everybody was going to high depth in
Speaker 3: video listening to certain decision makers that were adamant about
Speaker 3: shooting on film. It raised the price of the film
Speaker 3: for hundred thousand dollars more than it should have been,
Speaker 3: which put us more in the whole and it was
Speaker 3: That's what I learned is that you were never going
Speaker 3: to crawl away out and that was kind of a
Speaker 3: thing in Boogie Nights, if you remember, with p videotape
Speaker 3: Man videotape. And I've known a lot of distributors over
Speaker 3: the years that were always behind the ball when it
Speaker 3: went from going from film to video video to dv
Speaker 3: DVD to Blu ray. And that was the one thing
Speaker 3: I learned is this really good FELM never saw the
Speaker 3: light of a day because it was just buried in
Speaker 3: financial woe because they just they made and I was
Speaker 3: part of the above the line decisions on that, and
Speaker 3: I should have fought harder.
Speaker 2: What is the lesson that to keep the longest to learn,
Speaker 2: whether in the film industry or in life.
Speaker 3: If you want loyalty, you get a dog. I mean
Speaker 3: it's true when you're when you're when you're hot, you're
Speaker 3: hot when you're not. You know, know, your phone does spring.
Speaker 3: And the people that you would consider, you know, your
Speaker 3: brothers at arms or your your you know, the people
Speaker 3: are the foxhole. It's it's loyalty in this industry. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's very very, very rare.
Speaker 2: And it's it's tough. It's tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean that's that's just it.
Speaker 2: Instance.
Speaker 3: You know, I get attached to people a little more
Speaker 3: than I should emotionally because I believe I find somebody
Speaker 3: of like mind. And and then again I go back
Speaker 3: to you want loyalty, you get a dog.
Speaker 2: You, sir, are a nice guy who has been beaten
Speaker 2: up by the business that had shrapnel along the way.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming, I'm assuming thirty years ago you were much
Speaker 2: nicer and less cynical than you are now.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean I was definitely less cynical.
Speaker 3: Sure at the stars, the.
Speaker 2: Stars were still in the eye. The sparkle was still
Speaker 2: in the eye.
Speaker 3: I still had I was still youthful exuberance and excitement.
Speaker 3: And like the late great Dicky Fox, I clap my
Speaker 3: hands and I say, it's gonna be a great day day. Ok,
Speaker 3: here we go again.
Speaker 2: And three of your favorite films of all time, the
Speaker 2: films that impacted my life the most Sideways.
Speaker 3: I love that film. But but growing up in Jerry Maguire.
Speaker 3: But growing up it was the Black Stallion, it was
Speaker 3: Cherry's and it was on Golden Pond. Those are films
Speaker 3: that my father showed me when I was about eight
Speaker 3: or nine years old that made me fall in love
Speaker 3: with the idea of filmmaking.
Speaker 2: And there you go?
Speaker 3: And where is why they still play it today?
Speaker 2: And where can people find a double threat and find
Speaker 2: out more about you and what you're doing?
Speaker 3: Sir, oh bless you well? Double Threat is available on
Speaker 3: Amazon Prime. But news is like fifteen or twenty different platforms,
Speaker 3: and I'm sorry to say, I don't know off the
Speaker 3: top of my tongue. They're easy to find. It's on Xbox,
Speaker 3: It's on you know, Google.
Speaker 2: Play double just at double threatned Google and double for.
Speaker 3: Storry, Daniel c Ryan, Donald of Vieri, Matthew Lawrence directed
Speaker 3: by yours truly you'll find it. Yeah, you could go
Speaker 3: to what you Don't Learn in fell School dot com.
Speaker 3: That's the website for my book, which has a lot
Speaker 3: of information if you if you care and you want
Speaker 3: to go to my website, it's Shane'sfamily dot Net. It'll
Speaker 3: take you wherever you need to go. And that's it.
Speaker 3: That's how you find me, and that's what I'm up to.
Speaker 2: And if you guys want to check out his book
Speaker 2: on audiobook, yes, always. You could always head over to
Speaker 2: Indie film Hustle dot com and and do a search
Speaker 2: there for it, or go to audible and it's it's
Speaker 2: on audible right and it's and it's it's a bestseller.
Speaker 2: People love it and it's it's good. And of course
Speaker 2: if you want to check out Rise of the Film Entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: it's not too far either. You can check those out.
Speaker 2: It's a good double book. If you get both those books,
Speaker 2: you're going to be in good shape. Sir.
Speaker 3: I'm just giving great shit. You were gonna be in
Speaker 3: great shape.
Speaker 2: You get both those books, those are going to be
Speaker 2: that's a film school right in itself, sir uh say, man,
Speaker 2: I think so much for coming on the show, but
Speaker 2: it's always a good talking to you man, and continue
Speaker 2: success and keep keep that hustle going.
Speaker 3: Brother, Hey Alex, thanks for having me, Thanks everybody for
Speaker 3: check it out, and just just keep filming. Just keep filming, guys,
Speaker 3: it'll it'll. Eventually, you'll find your way, you'll find your voice.
Speaker 3: Just keep doing what you do. You'll get there.
Speaker 2: I want to thank Shane so much for coming on
Speaker 2: the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Tribe today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Shane. If you want to get
Speaker 2: links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including
Speaker 2: how to access his amazing webinars on ifh Academy, all
Speaker 2: you need to do is head over to Bulletproof Screenwriting
Speaker 2: dot tv Forward slash three eighty one. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening to guys as always, keep on writing
Speaker 2: no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
Speaker 1: dot tv.