Speaker 1: You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is Jason Kleeberg from The Force five podcast,
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Speaker 3: Are listening now, Hello there, and welcome back. What is
Speaker 3: this place?
Speaker 4: As connected?
Speaker 3: Disconnected? It's connected that reach the number that has been disconnected.
Speaker 3: Hello there, welcome back to the disconnected. I am here
Speaker 3: with somebody I've wanted to talk to for the longest
Speaker 3: time ever, with Liz Purchell. Liz, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me a longtime listener, first time caller.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you amazing, I mean longtime listener of yours
Speaker 3: as well. For those that don't know, Liz is a
Speaker 3: film programmer, writer, film historian, and now curator of Muscle Distribution. Congrats,
Speaker 3: big month for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think Muscle officially launched around March
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty five, so it is I think basically
Speaker 4: a year, even though it had been like a couple
Speaker 4: months before. That was when I started putting everything together.
Speaker 4: But like March feels like the beginning.
Speaker 3: So and what all behind the scenes has been happening
Speaker 3: since March of twenty five.
Speaker 4: Way too much, all at the same time, because it's
Speaker 4: just me and I'm a workaholic, which is a good
Speaker 4: thing but also a bad thing.
Speaker 3: So maybe we need to talk after this and share
Speaker 3: some trade secrets because god, same, exactly the same that's
Speaker 3: been happening with me for the last year. Anyways, it's
Speaker 3: a big month castration movie up for sale today on
Speaker 3: the Vineger Center website. Undoubtedly, by the time that we've
Speaker 3: revealed this, it's probably sold like hotcakes, because this is
Speaker 3: a movie that people have been like eagerly anticipating that.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like a ground swell behind this movie
Speaker 3: right now? I do?
Speaker 4: Actually, I mean it's felt really, I mean, it hasn't
Speaker 4: been a surprise, but it also has been a surprise.
Speaker 4: I mean I was in La back in January for
Speaker 4: a pair of screenings that we did at Brain Debt Studios,
Speaker 4: and both of those were sold out, which kind of
Speaker 4: we figured was going to happen, But like, the audience
Speaker 4: felt very different than the audience I've been at the
Speaker 4: once before that, and it feels like it's breaking out
Speaker 4: into kind of like the more mainstream cinephile sphere, and
Speaker 4: so I'm just along for the ride and fascinating to
Speaker 4: see where it goes from here.
Speaker 3: The feedback I've heard, which is weird because I don't
Speaker 3: normally hear a lot about the screenings of Brain did,
Speaker 3: but I had multiple people tell me that it was
Speaker 3: like an electron city in the air at these screenings,
Speaker 3: Like it was i don't know, like more than just
Speaker 3: an event, like a genuine feeling of like camaraderie behind
Speaker 3: a movement, which is so cool to hear, and I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm thrilled. I'm glad that it's getting this attention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is it's funny to say all that for
Speaker 4: a movie that's four and a half hours, and.
Speaker 3: That's part one, by the way. Yeah, Part two is
Speaker 3: five hours, so yeah, and you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: to say about the Crest Castration movie. But I mean
Speaker 3: the first thing is it's it's an audacious film in
Speaker 3: multiple ways. The length is like the last on the
Speaker 3: list of audacious things about it. But for anybody that
Speaker 3: knows you, that's not a surprise to be associated with
Speaker 3: that type of movie. I mean, the type of films
Speaker 3: that you program, the type of films that you champion,
Speaker 3: are that way. So why why those types of films?
Speaker 3: Why why is that the type of s number that
Speaker 3: you love?
Speaker 4: I mean, for me, I think it's just I always
Speaker 4: want to see something that I haven't seen before, or
Speaker 4: I want to see work that provocative or transgressive, or
Speaker 4: you know, isn't just the same things that everyone's watching
Speaker 4: and talking about all the time. And I don't know,
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe maybe I get bored a little easier,
Speaker 4: or I just I just always want to see something
Speaker 4: that excites me. And I think Luis Ward the filmmaker
Speaker 4: is just flat out like a genius. And working with
Speaker 4: her on the movie and getting more and more involved
Speaker 4: with it. After Part one, which I just came on
Speaker 4: to distribute it, and then part starting with Part two,
Speaker 4: I've been much more involved with it. Has been like
Speaker 4: one of the most exciting and fulfilling projects I've ever
Speaker 4: been involved with in my entire life. So the funny
Speaker 4: thing is is that when I was kind of getting
Speaker 4: everything with Muscle, you know, formulated, and coming up with
Speaker 4: like ideas for it, I think people mostly know me
Speaker 4: for queer cinema, which is, you know, one of my
Speaker 4: big passions. But I didn't want the label to just
Speaker 4: be like a queer label or you know, any specific
Speaker 4: kind of thing, and so I kind of lashed onto
Speaker 4: like the phrase like scrappy misfit films, which I think
Speaker 4: kind of encompasses a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 4: Think over the past couple of months, like I've been
Speaker 4: half jokingly saying to friends that the tagline for Muscles actually, uh,
Speaker 4: freaks only, which, now that I have some very respectable
Speaker 4: films in the catalog, I don't know if I should
Speaker 4: be using freaks only, but I want to use freaks
Speaker 4: only for it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Well, I mean, if anybody were to look
Speaker 3: at any of the things that you've programmed, which they
Speaker 3: can on your website, you've got a really robust and
Speaker 3: up to date By the way, congrats that that is
Speaker 3: really difficult to keep it a website, very up to date,
Speaker 3: very good on the on due diligent there. The type
Speaker 3: of films that you are programming are I mean, first
Speaker 3: of all, all of them by themselves very hard to
Speaker 3: like put in a box because they're all so different.
Speaker 3: But when you look at the list, you're kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense that these are all grouped together in
Speaker 3: this way. You've programmed with the Austin Film Society, You've
Speaker 3: programmed with Nighthawk, You've programmed with the IFC Center in
Speaker 3: New York with Almo draft House. Where where did film
Speaker 3: programming start for you?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the first actual programming I ever
Speaker 4: got to really do was Christ and Malawson Found, which
Speaker 4: is a monthly series that I've been doing at the
Speaker 4: Austin Film Society since I mean basically shortly after COVID.
Speaker 4: I mean COVID. COVID didn't end, but when COVID kind
Speaker 4: of loosened up a little bit in theaters re opening.
Speaker 4: I had wanted to program for many, many years before that,
Speaker 4: and just never really had opportunities apart from just doing
Speaker 4: like some guest spots at AFS or Alma draft House,
Speaker 4: both in Austin, where I was living at the time,
Speaker 4: And I mean, once I had the the AFS series,
Speaker 4: it just kind of grew and grew in Snowball Snowball
Speaker 4: from there, and yeah, I mean it's it's really a
Speaker 4: big passion of mine. And the fun thing is that
Speaker 4: I I view the distribution stuff that I've been doing
Speaker 4: for the past years kind of like the Galaxy Brain,
Speaker 4: like the next level of that.
Speaker 3: So it is film programming, curating for people that don't
Speaker 3: have to be in one place. So that's super helpful.
Speaker 3: Why film programming, then, what do you personally get out
Speaker 3: of it?
Speaker 4: I mean, for me, I think part of it is that,
Speaker 4: like I grew up in Tampa, Florida, not recommended, which
Speaker 4: was a place where I was always interested in film.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of other passions. I was video
Speaker 4: games and all sorts of other things, but like I
Speaker 4: never lived somewhere growing up that had like a strong
Speaker 4: repertory scene. Like in order for me to go see
Speaker 4: the kinds of movies I wanted to see, I'd have
Speaker 4: to drive ninety minutes Orlando to go to the enz
Speaker 4: and or go to other cities just to like see
Speaker 4: a movie. And so for me, It was this combination
Speaker 4: of sharing things that I'm interested in and that I
Speaker 4: would want to see as like an audience member, but
Speaker 4: also to be able to bring that to other people who,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe you're bored with what's going on otherwise.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've always kind of I've kind of viewed
Speaker 4: myself and my work as kind of doing what other
Speaker 4: people aren't and trying to fill in gaps that are
Speaker 4: being alive.
Speaker 3: The films that you've programmed, are there any that you
Speaker 3: look back on now and say, holy shit, I did that?
Speaker 3: Like I was able to bring this movie to an audience.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think one of the ones that I'm
Speaker 4: really really proud of was last year. I don't remember
Speaker 4: when it was, it might have been like March or April.
Speaker 4: I did a screening of Indy Warhol's Lamore at Anthology
Speaker 4: Film Archives in New York. And that's a film that's
Speaker 4: never been released on home video, it's not widely circulating online,
Speaker 4: it hasn't played theatrically in the US at least in
Speaker 4: maybe three or three or four decades. And that was
Speaker 4: something that was coordinated between me and Brian Block, who
Speaker 4: does a lot of work with the Paul Morrissey Estate,
Speaker 4: and with Vinegar Syndrome and with MoMA. It was four
Speaker 4: different people all coming together to try to do a
Speaker 4: single screening as like a tribute to Paul Morrissey who
Speaker 4: had passed not too long or not too long before that.
Speaker 4: And it was a funny thing where like I had
Speaker 4: seen like a bootleg version of the movie that had
Speaker 4: been passed to me, and I never really thought it
Speaker 4: was one of Warholer Morrissey's better works, right, But then
Speaker 4: seeing it with like a sold out crowd of people
Speaker 4: who like no one had seen it before. In that audience,
Speaker 4: it suddenly actually became like one of the one of
Speaker 4: their best movies. It really really works with the crowd.
Speaker 4: And so for me, I guess I also kind of
Speaker 4: view programming as like performing these psychological experiments on audiences
Speaker 4: of I might not like this when I watch it
Speaker 4: by myself, but like, you know, if I can get
Speaker 4: twenty thirty, forty fifty one hundred people in a room,
Speaker 4: how will they react to it? I mean, so like
Speaker 4: the weird Wednesday stuff. I've been doing it at Alamo and
Speaker 4: Brooklyn has been a lot of that of I don't
Speaker 4: really love this movie, but how will this play with
Speaker 4: an audience and out of work?
Speaker 3: Is because I've never had a chance to program like
Speaker 3: that at a theater, because I've always lived far away
Speaker 3: from any decent theater. Is is does it feel insular
Speaker 3: to do programming like that? Do you get a lot
Speaker 3: of personal one on one feedback or is it mostly
Speaker 3: just like standing in the room and listening to what
Speaker 3: people say after?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's the great thing about Letterbox
Speaker 4: is that, like I'm at this point, I'm so conditioned
Speaker 4: to like when I get home or when the screening
Speaker 4: gets out, just checking out there or I mean, I
Speaker 4: I love just talking to people after screenings in the
Speaker 4: in the lobby or outside, or I think a great
Speaker 4: thing about New York because everything is all about walking.
Speaker 4: It's going to a bar with people after the movie
Speaker 4: and talking with them and seeing what they thought. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean that's that's also a big part of it. It
Speaker 4: is a social thing, even though it is also for
Speaker 4: me a work thing.
Speaker 3: Are you in New York now permanently? So? How how
Speaker 3: is life different now from from Tampa to New York?
Speaker 3: For you?
Speaker 4: There was there was there's like a dew tour, So
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: In campus in the middle. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was in Tampa. Then I moved to Austin,
Speaker 4: got a job at a class at a public radio
Speaker 4: station out there because I wanted to be closer to
Speaker 4: the film scene there, because I knew there was a
Speaker 4: film scene in Austin, and kind of got there right
Speaker 4: in the wake of Me Too, which was really great,
Speaker 4: by the way. Yeah, I mean I miss I missed
Speaker 4: certain things that I'm glad that I missed, but also
Speaker 4: like I feel like I kind of got the last
Speaker 4: couple of good years in Austin because COVID really changed
Speaker 4: everything in that city. It's like when things started reopening,
Speaker 4: It's like the two video stores both closed, the Alamo
Speaker 4: Draft House downtown UH closed and was bought by Joe
Speaker 4: Rogan and became like his anti woke comedy club, and
Speaker 4: the vibes were just like slowly shifting, and so things
Speaker 4: things that were feeling really dire, especially like the last
Speaker 4: year that I was there, when it felt like just
Speaker 4: about every trans person I knew in the city was
Speaker 4: like slowly evacuating. And then of course at the end
Speaker 4: of like twenty twenty three, I did that myself, and
Speaker 4: so New York has been very different, and I think
Speaker 4: it's been hard in some ways, but it's also been
Speaker 4: really good in other ways. And I just love the
Speaker 4: film scene here, and I love how excited people are
Speaker 4: about seeing things and doing things. And I think professionally
Speaker 4: for me too, it's great to just be surrounded by
Speaker 4: so many of my peers and people who also work
Speaker 4: in distribution their home video or theatrical or whatever.
Speaker 3: The amount of resources alone has to be kind of
Speaker 3: like a miracle living there, I imagine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's great because I think when
Speaker 4: you're living in like a city, even like Austin, and
Speaker 4: you're doing all this kind of work that is very insular,
Speaker 4: sometimes it becomes very easy to take it personally or
Speaker 4: feel like you're the only one going through certain things
Speaker 4: or struggling with this or having trouble with that. And
Speaker 4: so to actually have like a really strong support group
Speaker 4: in person into you know, hanging out with people who
Speaker 4: do lots of bonus feature stuff, or hanging out with
Speaker 4: people who have their own labels and you know, have
Speaker 4: that kind of social venting element too, it's been just
Speaker 4: really really helpful and really good. And also, I mean,
Speaker 4: I think a big reason why I like doing this
Speaker 4: kind of work is because I like the people generally,
Speaker 4: and so it's great to have have it be a
Speaker 4: little more social even though it is still work.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll get to all of muscle in a little bit,
Speaker 3: but one of the big things that you've done over
Speaker 3: the years too is contribute to discs and home video stuff.
Speaker 3: Obviously we're tap dancing around that quite a bit, but
Speaker 3: you've done stuff for Connie and Vinegar Syndrome and Altered
Speaker 3: Innocence and Severin and Dark Star and Imprint and tons
Speaker 3: of labels, like so many that can't even be named
Speaker 3: because you and I are similar, Like we'll break out
Speaker 3: with everybody. What was the first disc you were on.
Speaker 4: I think the first thing I ever did was Sometimes
Speaker 4: Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things, which was a thing for
Speaker 4: Agvahich of course is based out of Austin, and they
Speaker 4: were getting ready to do their Blu Ray release of
Speaker 4: that and they won the new commentary track and Brett Berg,
Speaker 4: who lives in la I knew he was a big
Speaker 4: fan of that movie, and I think he or Joe
Speaker 4: or someone there suggested bringing me in to do the
Speaker 4: commentary with Brett, and that was like pretty early in COVID,
Speaker 4: and that was the first thing I did for them,
Speaker 4: and that kind of led to me starting to suggest
Speaker 4: ideas for leaf for releases for them. So like one
Speaker 4: of the first things that I pitched them was the
Speaker 4: films of the Gay Girls Writing Club, which had been
Speaker 4: a passion and like an obsession of mine for a
Speaker 4: number of years. I'd seen I'd heard about them just
Speaker 4: through my research into like early course cinema history. And
Speaker 4: then I think it was Scarecrow Video teamed up with
Speaker 4: some like local Seattle preservation non profit to digitize a
Speaker 4: bunch of tapes in their collection, and they had something
Speaker 4: weird releases of some of those movies, and so those
Speaker 4: randomly showed up online one day and I was able
Speaker 4: to see them that way. And then when I found
Speaker 4: out that the UCLA Film and Television Archive actually had
Speaker 4: the only surviving prints, like, I pitched that as a
Speaker 4: release and became a whole thing, And so that was
Speaker 4: kind of Those two were kind of my entry way
Speaker 4: into doing the disk stuff. And then I soon found
Speaker 4: myself working with Frank and Altered Innocence and doing some
Speaker 4: stuff with Vinegar Syndrome and Severn and just slowly kind
Speaker 4: of going all over the place with it.
Speaker 3: The releases that have come out that are, you know,
Speaker 3: focused on even just the queer side of cinema from
Speaker 3: Altered Innocence being important vs. Getting their hand and at
Speaker 3: least a handful of them, AGFA championing some of the
Speaker 3: biggest ones, Severn doing a couple. I am. I'm so
Speaker 3: relieved to see the way that these are welcomed, like improving.
Speaker 3: It seems like over time, as it felt that way
Speaker 3: for you also, I think so.
Speaker 4: I mean I think for me it's like I try
Speaker 4: not to get too sappy, but I do have this
Speaker 4: sort of field of dreams mentality with this sort of
Speaker 4: thing where it's like, if it's availab people will watch it.
Speaker 4: And the reason why a lot of these films just
Speaker 4: aren't as well known as they should be is because
Speaker 4: they've been out of circulation forever many years, like the
Speaker 4: one I always point to was so an Delicious and
Speaker 4: now Arbelos's release A Funeral Parate of Roses, which yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean that was a film.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: It was fascinating, like when I was starting to really
Speaker 4: dive into my research and finding out that that movie
Speaker 4: was actually playing in the US, like in the late sixties,
Speaker 4: early seventies, and then continuing to play like festivals even
Speaker 4: into like the nineties. But because it had never had
Speaker 4: like a home video release or hadn't been like theatrically
Speaker 4: re released, it's just like some like no one knew
Speaker 4: about it, like no one younger than the age of
Speaker 4: like fifty knew about it, right, And so to watch
Speaker 4: as that movie has like very quickly become like a
Speaker 4: canonical trans film, I think really kind of gave me
Speaker 4: this sort of idealism about you know, accessibility and canonization
Speaker 4: and how these things become you know, more well known
Speaker 4: or how you know, how people take inspiration from them
Speaker 4: once they were actually able to see them. And so
Speaker 4: it's great that more labels have been able to start
Speaker 4: releasing more obscure queer films, and you know, kind of
Speaker 4: seeing that sort of cycle play itself out over and
Speaker 4: over and over again.
Speaker 3: I especially with Frank over at Altered Innocence, I'm always
Speaker 3: amazed that he has been able to capture so much
Speaker 3: of like the pillars of queer history, which is kind
Speaker 3: of wild, like everything from coming out to taxi to
Speaker 3: the toilets. I think you're on that one too that
Speaker 3: he just put out right. That's I'm always amazed and
Speaker 3: just it's so cool to have them under one roof.
Speaker 3: And I know for a lot of people that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean much, but to see him continuously get big title,
Speaker 3: big title, big title, and I'm just amazed. Frank is
Speaker 3: just a wonderful person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Pranks one of my favorite people. And he's been
Speaker 4: so helpful too with all the muscle stuff. And it's
Speaker 4: even though I'm kind of treading on similar ground, it's
Speaker 4: not like a competition thing. It's everyone's uplifting everyone. So
Speaker 4: it's been great to continue working with him on stuff.
Speaker 4: And I see him when I'm in LA and so yeah.
Speaker 3: I approached Frank the same way when we were starting
Speaker 3: to do things, and he's just he's so willing to
Speaker 3: be open and transparent and say, yeah, I fucked this up,
Speaker 3: Please don't fuck that up, or here's the easy way
Speaker 3: to solve that, and it's just like every single time
Speaker 3: it's been exactly correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's been the encore wizard for me. Nice I'm
Speaker 4: trying to teach myself discothering, which has been a process.
Speaker 3: Oh, discothering is crazy, so with altered innocence, and AGFA.
Speaker 3: Are there are there titles that that you've been a
Speaker 3: part of that you feel like more people need to
Speaker 3: get some eyes on, because I would love to hear
Speaker 3: that from a very personal perspective.
Speaker 4: I mean, the one the ones that I've been really, really,
Speaker 4: really passionate about and proud of, I think I've kind
Speaker 4: of found their audiences. I mean, like the the Fred
Speaker 4: Hallsted films have been a big one because those who
Speaker 4: are also you know, it was impossible to see the
Speaker 4: complete version of those untilal MoMA restored them and then
Speaker 4: Frank released them. And then like the crazy thing about
Speaker 4: that was that was the first full disc that I
Speaker 4: ever produced, and it was a thing where I had
Speaker 4: been trying. I'd been working on digitizing like the only
Speaker 4: surviving eight millimeter loops from Halsted's second feature, Trucket, which
Speaker 4: was like a lost film, and then we went through
Speaker 4: the pain of doing that, even though it was just
Speaker 4: like twenty minutes of the complete movie. And then like
Speaker 4: a week before the deadline, a VHS bootleg randomly popped
Speaker 4: up on eBay. Bought it. Sight and Scene had my
Speaker 4: friend Josh, who runs a record label called Dark Untry's
Speaker 4: Records in San Francisco. He went and picked it up
Speaker 4: physically in person, drove it to a video lap to
Speaker 4: get it digitized, and we got it in and on
Speaker 4: that disc literally like the last couple of days before.
Speaker 4: Like it absolutely had to do location. And like that's
Speaker 4: something I'm still very proud of because I think that
Speaker 4: film really complicates and also enhances Hallsteed's legacy in a
Speaker 4: couple of different ways. And yeah, so I'm really proud
Speaker 4: of that. And then I mean, I think one of
Speaker 4: the other big ones is Scarecrow in the Gardener Cucumbers,
Speaker 4: the Hollywood Lawn movie. Yes, was something that the Academy
Speaker 4: had restored a couple of years ago and they'd done
Speaker 4: a few screens of it, and then it was just
Speaker 4: kind of sitting there and didn't have any distribution. And
Speaker 4: when I came into Agphone when I was working there
Speaker 4: for about a year and a half, that was like
Speaker 4: my number one, like we have to go after this,
Speaker 4: we have to get this. And seeing how that's another
Speaker 4: one that has also become this kind of quick instant,
Speaker 4: you know, standby of transfilm programming and you know, the
Speaker 4: transfilm canon or whatever has been just really really exciting.
Speaker 3: That was one of the big ones that I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention at the end here because it was one
Speaker 3: of those titles where it gets mentioned that it was
Speaker 3: up for pre order, and I heard so many people go,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I never imagine this was possible. And
Speaker 3: so the the victory as a producer and as AGFA
Speaker 3: to be able to say we got it and finally
Speaker 3: have that agreement in your hand has to be immense. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, and the film, the film is great, and
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's funny because it's another one where
Speaker 4: it's It was kind of like a psychological experiment for
Speaker 4: me because a friend of mine, through a museum that
Speaker 4: he was working with on a project, had like a
Speaker 4: terrible looking at VHS bootleg of that movie, which was
Speaker 4: never released on home video, was unseeable, was not lost,
Speaker 4: and so like he and I watched it together one
Speaker 4: night when I was visiting New York, and I was like,
Speaker 4: you know, Holly's great in this, Tally Brown is great
Speaker 4: in this, but the movie's not very funny. It kind
Speaker 4: of sucks. It's a shame, it's whatever. And then when
Speaker 4: when we found out about the restoration being available like
Speaker 4: a year later, my friend Larr Jimenez, who does Weird
Speaker 4: Wednesday at the Alma draft House in Brooklyn. He he,
Speaker 4: I pitched. I pitched the idea of doing a screening
Speaker 4: of the Restoration with and just kind of as an
Speaker 4: experiment to see, like how would this play with an
Speaker 4: audience and how does the restoration look? Because like I
Speaker 4: hadn't even seen it, and like we I think we
Speaker 4: sold out that screening and it was like rapturous. People
Speaker 4: like went crazy for it, and it was a thing
Speaker 4: where I was all right, yeah, we have to do this.
Speaker 4: It's a great, great movie, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So to think of that being I mean great word
Speaker 3: to think of that being rapturous with the crowd, I
Speaker 3: can't imagine. And not to mention Brooklyn like the best
Speaker 3: place possible to play that film with the crowd, well.
Speaker 4: Even I mean the crazier thing is that that was
Speaker 4: when I was in Texas, So that was in Austin. Actually,
Speaker 4: oh that movie playing in the middle.
Speaker 3: Oh you said, Laird, that's right, I forgot he's there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's incredible. God, yeah, that's it was such a great release.
Speaker 3: And the art turned out amazing on that and really
Speaker 3: captures what that film is. And God, just solid, solid
Speaker 3: package overall. Glad you were able to be a part
Speaker 3: of that one. Okay, some muscle, Uh where what is
Speaker 3: the genesis of muscle? How did this come to be?
Speaker 4: I mean it was a thing where, you know, I
Speaker 4: was saying that there was this kind of transaxitus happening
Speaker 4: in Texas. I was living in Austin. I'd been working
Speaker 4: at ACA for almost a year at the time, and
Speaker 4: it became very obvious that like me and my partner
Speaker 4: needed to get out of Texas, and so we moved
Speaker 4: to New York and then unfortunately things didn't wind up
Speaker 4: working out, and so it was a thing where I
Speaker 4: was suddenly at a point where I needed to figure
Speaker 4: out what to do with my life and with the future.
Speaker 4: And I was getting coffee with joe Yannick from Yellowvale
Speaker 4: one day and he was just like, well, why don't
Speaker 4: you start your own distribution company? And I've been thinking
Speaker 4: about it like a little bit, but like it just
Speaker 4: seemed like such an unattainable thing to me, and that
Speaker 4: kind of gave me the little oomph that I needed
Speaker 4: to really seriously pursue it. And then so I think
Speaker 4: that would have been maybe April or like March or
Speaker 4: April of twenty twenty four, and then we launched officially
Speaker 4: in March twenty two, twenty five, and so it was
Speaker 4: a year of getting stuff together. It was kind of
Speaker 4: figuring things out. It was kind of trying to put
Speaker 4: together like a launch slate, Like I didn't want to
Speaker 4: just launch with one thing, so I was pursuing multiple things.
Speaker 4: And you know, like throughout that entire process, like everyone
Speaker 4: I talked to was so helpful and so forthcoming and
Speaker 4: so excited and so wanting to help. And so like
Speaker 4: Eryl and Pearl at Connie, we're a big help. Frank
Speaker 4: get altered in this sense was a big help. David
Speaker 4: Marriott at Arbolus and Canadian International was a big help.
Speaker 4: Jonathan Hertzberg at Fund said he was a big help.
Speaker 4: It was a thing where like I don't see any
Speaker 4: of these other companies as competition. It's just all people,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of working together but also not working
Speaker 4: together to try to do cool stuff. And so you know,
Speaker 4: it's it started. It launched in March to twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: and now a year later, it feels like there's a
Speaker 4: lot of momentum and a lot of exciting things that
Speaker 4: I'm really proud about already, and it's it seems like
Speaker 4: it's actually like sustainable, and so it's exciting to me.
Speaker 3: So March of twenty twenty six is the first physical release,
Speaker 3: and so for everybody that has somehow flown under the
Speaker 3: radar and not been able to hear what has been
Speaker 3: happening publicly for Muscles since March of twenty five.
Speaker 4: Sure, I mean I think a big part of it
Speaker 4: has been I never wanted the company to just be
Speaker 4: like a boutique blue ray label. I wanted it to
Speaker 4: be kind of a larger distribution company, which of course
Speaker 4: is kind of what you're doing with town On now too.
Speaker 4: Because like as much as I love home video, I mean,
Speaker 4: when I was living in Tampa, it was it was
Speaker 4: like the God send to me. It was how I
Speaker 4: saw all this stuff. Yeah, but I think the home
Speaker 4: video world is kind of very insular in because it
Speaker 4: is so totally collector centric. It's, you know, I want
Speaker 4: these films to kind of get out there as big
Speaker 4: as they can, and for me, theatrical and also digital
Speaker 4: or kind of the the big ways of getting you know,
Speaker 4: hype built around things. And so part of the reason
Speaker 4: why it's been this like long slow process before doing
Speaker 4: any disks. Is because I wanted to focus on theatrical
Speaker 4: part of it was because we were going to launch
Speaker 4: the disc line with some other project that hasn't been
Speaker 4: announced yet that's kind of had some delays that I'm
Speaker 4: excited about. But it has been kind of a slow
Speaker 4: thing and because just wanting to try to, you know,
Speaker 4: do things the best I could, honestly, and so, you know,
Speaker 4: the good thing is that it's launched now and I
Speaker 4: have a backlog. Of the bad thing is I have
Speaker 4: a backlog, and I have all these other titles that
Speaker 4: like I've released or I've been working on and things
Speaker 4: that are I was kind of hoping to have out
Speaker 4: by now, but now we're going to be kind of
Speaker 4: trickling out. And so I mean, if you go on
Speaker 4: Muscle's website and go to the page for our specific films,
Speaker 4: that get pretty basically lets you know what's coming. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm re releasing all the films of Wakefield Pool on
Speaker 4: Blu Ray, including his video work which hasn't been available
Speaker 4: too much. I have this Australian film from the early
Speaker 4: eighties called Going Down, doing the first ever release of Door,
Speaker 4: Switchman's Dildo Heaven, which is a masterpiece and a really
Speaker 4: fun film. Working on a lot of really deeply obscure
Speaker 4: things connected to Easy TV, which was West Hollywood based
Speaker 4: video collective from the eighties and nineties, and so it's
Speaker 4: really it's been really fulfilling because it's a way for
Speaker 4: me to kind of follow my passions and to really
Speaker 4: just go all in in that sort of freaks only
Speaker 4: way and actually have it come together and makes sense.
Speaker 4: And I think the thing that's been really cool with
Speaker 4: it is that even though I didn't want it to
Speaker 4: be one specific kind of thing, and I don't think
Speaker 4: it is all one beside laying, I think these kind
Speaker 4: of through lines have naturally developed between all the different things.
Speaker 4: I mean, doing all this stuff about like early video
Speaker 4: from the eighties and now doing stration movie and a
Speaker 4: couple other like new dio y queer and trance movies
Speaker 4: that are being shot on like ancient video equipment or
Speaker 4: right now. Another another big thing for me is that
Speaker 4: I handle theatrical for distropics and also all of Vinegar
Speaker 4: Syndrome's hardcore catalog and thanks to some of the pink
Speaker 4: film studios that Vinegar Syndrome has been working with in Japan.
Speaker 4: I've been also handling theatrical on all the films that
Speaker 4: they've been restoring to, and so I've got this massive
Speaker 4: catalog of like theatrical sex films, and that also ties
Speaker 4: in with some of the stuff that I am actually
Speaker 4: fully releasing myself and I have all the rights for.
Speaker 4: And so the other the other, the one other, like
Speaker 4: massive thing that I don't think we've really publicly said
Speaker 4: too much about yet is that Muscle is also taking
Speaker 4: over theatrical for Elaine Mays Mikey and Nikki this year,
Speaker 4: and so Elaine May Door, Swishman.
Speaker 3: Wakefield Pool Cool. Yeah, I want to see a double
Speaker 3: feature of Mikey and Nikki and Vju.
Speaker 4: Now they're both movies about mail bonding and friendships exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it works very very much. Uh, the the I guess,
Speaker 3: like fraught rollout is not necessarily unheard of with a
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff. So it's uh, first off, empathies,
Speaker 3: A lot of that stuff is a problem and things
Speaker 3: come up and we all kind of not account on that.
Speaker 3: But it also, I mean, it rings so true with
Speaker 3: a lot of what I felt when I was doing
Speaker 3: some of this stuff, because I mean, let's just speak
Speaker 3: flat out blunt with everybody listening. It is really fucking
Speaker 3: hard to do all of this at the same time.
Speaker 3: It is really hard to be focusing on theatrical physical
Speaker 3: media and then not to fully pivot the conversation. But
Speaker 3: one of the big things I wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: that we could talk about you got fucking Gestration movie
Speaker 3: up on the Letterbox Video Stories. That was huge. Congrats
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 4: I mean, we were kind of shocked when we got
Speaker 4: the email, but like, I'm very thrilled by it. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it just goes to show that there's a
Speaker 4: demand for four and a half hour long trans mumblecore. Ye,
Speaker 4: why epics?
Speaker 3: Oh the adjectives. I mean, not that we need to
Speaker 3: go into numbers. But first off, that had to have
Speaker 3: been huge for you. But how like a in a
Speaker 3: nebulous way, how did that do? Like was it incredibly successful?
Speaker 3: Do you feel like Letterbox was very happy with it?
Speaker 4: We At the time that we're recording this, I have
Speaker 4: not gotten the first statement yet, but I will say
Speaker 4: that it's been really exciting because, like you know, I
Speaker 4: hate how much I'm constantly checking Letterbox for like titles
Speaker 4: and reviews and seeing how things are going. But like
Speaker 4: now every single time I open up like the Letterbox
Speaker 4: Stapp and I go to the Castration movie pages for that,
Speaker 4: there's at least one or two or three or four
Speaker 4: new reviews. And it's funny because like we've had the film,
Speaker 4: the two films be available on like multiple platforms. Luis
Speaker 4: the director has had them on her gum Road page
Speaker 4: from the get go. I have them on the Muscle
Speaker 4: Vimeo vo D page, and now they're on the Letterbox
Speaker 4: Video Store. And so even though there's different ways of
Speaker 4: seeing them, and you know, some of them you can
Speaker 4: buy them, some of them you can only rent them.
Speaker 4: You know, we weren't sure if a lot of people
Speaker 4: were going to go for the Letterbox once because of that,
Speaker 4: but like I keep seeing reviews that are tagged with
Speaker 4: Letterbox Video Store or seeing people mention it in their reviews,
Speaker 4: and I think people just want to see things however
Speaker 4: is most convenient to them, and so it's been really
Speaker 4: exciting to you know, have something like Letterbox be behind
Speaker 4: this you know, insane stupid project that we've been working on.
Speaker 3: Well that and Letterboxed, you know, for anybody that's not
Speaker 3: associated with it. This is going to sound weird, but
Speaker 3: letterbox itself is like a culture. There is a culture
Speaker 3: of Letterbox. It is in a way, like a movement
Speaker 3: of people that love film that love I don't know,
Speaker 3: this very sinophile focused social media that's not social media
Speaker 3: in weird ways. So it's just to be able to
Speaker 3: get a film like this to infiltrate that is such
Speaker 3: a cool movement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I very genuinely think that Letterbox is kind
Speaker 4: of like one of the greatest tools for film discovery.
Speaker 4: I don't really like using the word discovery for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: but like it's a way for people to find things
Speaker 4: that they haven't heard about. And I think one example
Speaker 4: that's been really kind of confusing but also great to
Speaker 4: me is this movie Highway Hypnosis that I've been working
Speaker 4: on for basically a year now, and just like not
Speaker 4: to detour too much, but like that was something where
Speaker 4: I was doing all this work with easy TV, and
Speaker 4: I'd heard about this movie Highway Hypnosis, which was supposed
Speaker 4: to be kind of like an experimental feature about the
Speaker 4: Freeway Killer, which was not one but three gay serial
Speaker 4: killers that were like doing horrible things in the early
Speaker 4: eighties and you know, I knew about this director who
Speaker 4: had never done much outside of Easy TV and was
Speaker 4: very obscure and had no way of seeing the movie.
Speaker 4: Thought it was thought it was lost. And then we
Speaker 4: were actually able to get in touch with him, and he's,
Speaker 4: you know, an incredible guy, and we've you know, become
Speaker 4: really good friends, and I'm working on all his work now.
Speaker 4: But we did a one off screening of that with
Speaker 4: James Robert Baker's Blonde Death at Brain Dead about a
Speaker 4: year ago, which was fun because like the two movies
Speaker 4: were paired together when they initially played at Easy TV.
Speaker 4: But it turns out that Ken the Highway Ypnosis and
Speaker 4: Jim Blonde Death were both best friends for decades and
Speaker 4: so it was really meaningful to like have those two
Speaker 4: back together. And literally this movie that nobody had ever
Speaker 4: heard of that is like the most obtuse. It's like
Speaker 4: an hour long landscape strobe flicker, tiny little bit of horror,
Speaker 4: but mostly just like an ambient movie. It's something that
Speaker 4: should not have like a cult fall, but like now
Speaker 4: it has like a genuine cult following, Like within a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks of that that that Brain Dead screening,
Speaker 4: like someone from Australia reached out to me wanting to
Speaker 4: book a screening of its Sight Unseen, and now it's
Speaker 4: played I think at least a dozen cities we had.
Speaker 4: We did a big screening at the Music Box in
Speaker 4: Chicago and the Big House there. Yes had to sold
Speaker 4: out screening at Anthology in New York. And you know,
Speaker 4: like for me, I think with distribution, I do, I
Speaker 4: take it very seriously and I feel like there's a
Speaker 4: responsibility like on my part or you know, there's part
Speaker 4: to do the best by the films and the filmmakers
Speaker 4: as possible, and so like that's what's really rewarding to
Speaker 4: me is being able to have these things kind of
Speaker 4: finally have their moment, you know, decades decades late, but
Speaker 4: still have them. And I think a letterbox is a
Speaker 4: really big part of that. And I think that's been
Speaker 4: kind of also pushing this Castration movie momentum, which has
Speaker 4: been great well, and I.
Speaker 3: Mean Castration getting you know, the Brain Dead screening is
Speaker 3: a lot the letterbox reviews, the gosh, the you know,
Speaker 3: people like podcast appearances and the way that everybody is
Speaker 3: just out there saying like listen, if you don't know Louise,
Speaker 3: you have to see these films, you have to share
Speaker 3: and like the story of the Gum Road and everybody
Speaker 3: like get on there as soon as possible. It is
Speaker 3: I don't know, It's one of those things like if
Speaker 3: you if you're not on the train, you better freaking
Speaker 3: hop on like as soon as possible, because this is
Speaker 3: a thing and you want to be a part of it,
Speaker 3: and that alone can take this crazy places, especially for
Speaker 3: a film like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I mean the funny thing about it too
Speaker 4: that we didn't really get into is that when I
Speaker 4: was kind of formulating the idea from Muscle, like from
Speaker 4: the get go, it was only going to be a
Speaker 4: repertory label. I only cared about you know, I love
Speaker 4: a lot of new films, but like my my big
Speaker 4: passion is older films and restorations and re releases and
Speaker 4: all that. And it was just like Louise coming into
Speaker 4: town again like last March for the first New York
Speaker 4: screenings of it, and then us getting launched one day
Speaker 4: and her saying, hey, do you want to distribute the
Speaker 4: movie and me saying sure, of course. That like Muscle
Speaker 4: suddenly became like a distributor of new films too, and
Speaker 4: you know, now I'm working with Henry Hanson, who's a
Speaker 4: Chicago transfilmmaker, and I'm working with some other people, and
Speaker 4: now suddenly I'm kind of have this new niche of
Speaker 4: these of this very very underground queer DIY wave that's
Speaker 4: kind of bubbling up under the surface. That's been really exciting.
Speaker 4: And so you know, it's stuff that other companies might
Speaker 4: not pay attention to, but I think people are and
Speaker 4: it's exciting to watch that grow.
Speaker 3: So if they they being general consumers, are looking at
Speaker 3: your catalog, what do you want them to feel? Muscle is.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's unavoidable. It's unavoidable. Castration Movie, Dildo Heaven.
Speaker 4: That's That's what I've been saying, is I've been saying
Speaker 4: that Muscle is the house that Castration Movie and Dildo
Speaker 4: Heaven built.
Speaker 3: Oh man, uh, this is uh, this is gonna do
Speaker 3: very well.
Speaker 4: You eat your heart out. I have BUILDO have an
Speaker 4: in castration move here you wish?
Speaker 3: I mean that that alone is fun and important and
Speaker 3: exciting and transgressive and word I mean even that, like
Speaker 3: the word transgressive is overused for so many of these things.
Speaker 3: But the films that you have genuinely like the classic
Speaker 3: definition of transgressive. I'm so stoked to see how people
Speaker 3: are going to respond to these sort of things. But
Speaker 3: now you've got accessibility for the physical side through OCN,
Speaker 3: So so why choose OCN? And I'm assuming the obvious
Speaker 3: answer is because you're so infiltrated already.
Speaker 4: I mean, for me it was it made sense as
Speaker 4: someone just starting out. And of course Jerbin and I
Speaker 4: have been good friends for many, many years, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I love so many of the people over at Vinegar
Speaker 4: Syndrome MINOC and I mean, my my personal film collection
Speaker 4: is on deposit in the archive, and working with like
Speaker 4: Oscar and Lindsay has been like a dream. And so
Speaker 4: for me it's to have more opportunities to work with
Speaker 4: people who I really admire and respect, and you know,
Speaker 4: and also of course I go see and has its
Speaker 4: built in fan base, and I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 4: maybe my my releases aren't going to be the exact
Speaker 4: sort of cup of tea for people who are only
Speaker 4: buying like tank Girl or whatever. But my hope is
Speaker 4: that people will see these things and want to take
Speaker 4: a chance on them. And also because I am strongly
Speaker 4: focusing on theatrical and digital, you know, we'll have a
Speaker 4: way to see them instead of having to blind buy
Speaker 4: something for twenty eight bucks or thirty bucks or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, and tank Girl, as we're looking back, I mean,
Speaker 3: tank Girl fits in a lot better with a lot
Speaker 3: of these films than a lot of the other stuff
Speaker 3: that Vinenger Ciners put out.
Speaker 4: And I didn't essay for that one, so I didn't
Speaker 4: mean that in disparaging.
Speaker 3: There's no Sidekicks, that's for sure. Sidekicks is much more
Speaker 3: male focused than many of these other titles. But yeah,
Speaker 3: to have to have the option to go through OCEN
Speaker 3: and get I mean just that sentence alone, to get
Speaker 3: Tank Girl and Castration Movie in one order is fucking
Speaker 3: insane to get that from one company. And it's it's
Speaker 3: so cool that the opportunity for that is there and
Speaker 3: somebody might just take a chance because they see it there.
Speaker 3: And what I used the word earlier, but what an
Speaker 3: audacious first choice for a disc And now this is
Speaker 3: a two disc release, right.
Speaker 4: M hm, And I think learning a big learning learning lesson.
Speaker 4: Don't do an extremely ambitious two disc release for your
Speaker 4: first release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Signing, Signing four and a half hour films, So
Speaker 3: a great, great choice for that first title.
Speaker 4: But I mean, the thing, the thing I love about
Speaker 4: Louis Luis Ward the director, is that she has her
Speaker 4: own vision, and like, I just throw myself behind it
Speaker 4: full force because I believe her and I trust her.
Speaker 4: And so when she decides that she wants to split
Speaker 4: the movie over both discs, even though we could probably
Speaker 4: get it all on one, it's like.
Speaker 3: Sure, of course, inion I get it.
Speaker 4: But it's funny because like the disc it had, like
Speaker 4: the first disc ends with the ten minute intermission and
Speaker 4: then it says insert this too, so people will be
Speaker 4: sitting there for ten minutes watching the intermission and I
Speaker 4: then have to put the other disc in.
Speaker 3: The I mean, speaking of the discs, when you when
Speaker 3: you launch the disc itself, the this is such a
Speaker 3: nerdy thing. I'm so sorry when you launched the disc.
Speaker 3: The muscle introduction is so nostalgic and has no reason
Speaker 3: to be because there's no nostalgia for muscle. It's not
Speaker 3: something that's been around for forty years. How did you
Speaker 3: choose it? It's incredible.
Speaker 4: I mean, for me, it's kind of I kind of
Speaker 4: wanted to do something that was kind of playing with
Speaker 4: the past in different ways. I mean, the initial concept
Speaker 4: was to do something on analog video for like my
Speaker 4: video titles and something on like sixteen milimeters or eight
Speaker 4: milimeter for my film titles.
Speaker 3: It's cool.
Speaker 4: And the fun thing about being in New York, of course,
Speaker 4: is that there's so many people here, and there is
Speaker 4: this kind of weird sub scene of the trans scene
Speaker 4: here that's all about like analog video and analog photography,
Speaker 4: and like, I know, like multiple video artists out here.
Speaker 4: And so I went to one of my friend Janey,
Speaker 4: and said, you know, what would you be up to
Speaker 4: do a bumper for this? And she she went all in,
Speaker 4: all in on it. And my hope is to eventually
Speaker 4: rephotograph that off of a crt Onto film and then
Speaker 4: have that be like the alternate version of it. It'll
Speaker 4: kind of look like one of the films where it's
Speaker 4: him shooting the TV with the camera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is incredible. That is such a fun choice.
Speaker 3: And then to make that like the nostalgia for the
Speaker 3: format the nostalgia for the actual content of it. That's
Speaker 3: such a cool idea. Man, that's well done. Just seeing
Speaker 3: that for the first time, I was like, this is
Speaker 3: gonna be so perfect. I was so in from moment
Speaker 3: one You've made some great choices.
Speaker 4: And then Louise kind of I mean, the fun thing
Speaker 4: about working with Louis too is that she's been involved
Speaker 4: in like underground film for over a decade, so she
Speaker 4: has a lot of like disc authoring experience from just
Speaker 4: working on her own movies. And so she did the
Speaker 4: menu designed for Castration Movie. She did the encoding and
Speaker 4: the authoring and all that, and so she did something
Speaker 4: that's kind of similar to another major label that I
Speaker 4: think should eventually pick up Castration Movie once it's all done.
Speaker 4: Not gonna name the label, but it's a kind of
Speaker 4: riffing off of their design.
Speaker 3: The menu itself is very close, but I love it
Speaker 3: and I hope people pick up on that because it
Speaker 3: is clean, it's easy to read, it's enticing, and it
Speaker 3: really draws you into like the making of and everything
Speaker 3: else that's on the disc.
Speaker 4: I think the one thing I was disappointing is we wanted,
Speaker 4: if we could, we would have had the disc be
Speaker 4: a flipper disc, just simply go for the circle like
Speaker 4: two thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah later, God, yeah, that would have been fun.
Speaker 4: That would be I mean, just to like jump way
Speaker 4: way back when you were asking about like things that
Speaker 4: I was proud of with like the production work. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think one of my other favorite things was working
Speaker 4: with Frank and Vera Drew on the People's joker at
Speaker 4: Blu Ray Solids. I threw out the idea of why
Speaker 4: don't we make this like an annoying early two thousand
Speaker 4: DVD and have the video of her telling people to
Speaker 4: like hurry up and choose an option, And she shot
Speaker 4: that like fifteen minute long video that plays in the
Speaker 4: background of that.
Speaker 3: I think I talked about it on my show, but
Speaker 3: I put that in and I let it sit there
Speaker 3: for a minute, and the thing it reminded me of
Speaker 3: I think it was, this is so dumb. I think
Speaker 3: it was Shrek two that it like berated you when
Speaker 3: the DVD was in there, and my sister used to
Speaker 3: watch that movie all the time, and yeah, hilarious. I
Speaker 3: bring back fun menu designs everybody. It is so great.
Speaker 4: The amount of times have been to like a walk
Speaker 4: in clinic and just like the Finding Nemo DVD menu
Speaker 4: has just been playing in a loop waiting.
Speaker 3: Incredible. Okay, So getting back to Castration movie, for those
Speaker 3: that have not seen it, we probably shouldn't lay out
Speaker 3: what exactly is castration movie and why should people take
Speaker 3: a chance on it today?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think people should take a chance on
Speaker 4: it because I mean, I will say the one thing
Speaker 4: is that it's four and a half hours long and
Speaker 4: we're not charging more for it, and so.
Speaker 3: That's a hell of a chance to take. By the way,
Speaker 3: four and a half hours.
Speaker 4: It is the most movie, as Louise has been describing it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just a movie that's unlike anything else that's being
Speaker 4: made today. It is four and a half hours long,
Speaker 4: underground DIY, insane cringe comedy, but also a very emotional
Speaker 4: indie epic that was entirely shot with Louise's childhood high
Speaker 4: eight video camera. It is very long, but I think
Speaker 4: it runs very It goes by very fast, and also
Speaker 4: I think once you watch it, the length makes sense.
Speaker 4: There's a reason for it. It's you're supposed to really
Speaker 4: just sink in and get to know these different characters.
Speaker 4: And I also think just the way that Luis has
Speaker 4: been making it has been really unlike anything else I've
Speaker 4: ever seen. And the first one was maybe a little
Speaker 4: more conventionally shot, but like I was very involved with
Speaker 4: the second one, which is five hours long, and that
Speaker 4: one was a one where not a single scene was
Speaker 4: shot more than once. There was no written out script.
Speaker 4: Everything was kind of workshopped with each of the actors,
Speaker 4: like in advance of doing the one and only take
Speaker 4: of each scene, where we would kind of workshop, you know,
Speaker 4: at this point, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen,
Speaker 4: camera is going to move here, this is going to happen.
Speaker 4: And then, of course, because she's such a talented director,
Speaker 4: she would tell certain actors certain things, or give them
Speaker 4: secret knowledge that other people weren't supposed to know, or
Speaker 4: find ways to kind of mess things up in a
Speaker 4: very purposeful way. And so the movies have this very
Speaker 4: electric energy to them that is just truly unlike anything
Speaker 4: I've ever seen. And also I know that trans stuff
Speaker 4: has a very small audience, of course, but I think
Speaker 4: SIS audiences we'll get a lot out of it too.
Speaker 4: And a lot of the people who have been coming
Speaker 4: out to the recent screenings have been like SIS people
Speaker 4: and more like normal Cinophiles, and they've been really really
Speaker 4: getting into it too. And so it really is just
Speaker 4: like a modern of epic life. And it's an ongoing project,
Speaker 4: and we released Part two exactly two months after we
Speaker 4: shot it in September, and then the first chapter of
Speaker 4: Part three is premiering at BFI Flair in London this month,
Speaker 4: and then the full version of Part three, which is
Speaker 4: also going to be somewhere around five hours, is premiered
Speaker 4: later this year, and so there's five parts.
Speaker 3: So wow. Well I can't wait until we can in
Speaker 3: three years pick up the the like ten disc box
Speaker 3: set from Muscle to get all of them together, and
Speaker 3: then hopefully that other company that can be flattered with
Speaker 3: the menu designs can put them.
Speaker 4: It's already longer than the Decalogue and The Human Condition,
Speaker 4: so why not they need a longer movie.
Speaker 3: And it's like a modern companion piece to a couple
Speaker 3: of the in kind of a couple of ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, God, this is this is so cool. I mean,
Speaker 3: just watching your involvement increase over the years, watching the
Speaker 3: amount of Liz out in the world increase in a
Speaker 3: way that is meaningful to you and to the overall
Speaker 3: film society, whether that be in Texas or New York,
Speaker 3: has just been great. And now curating for the masses,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a big growth period. What's next for you?
Speaker 4: You think I mean, for me, it's just further digging
Speaker 4: into my own obsessions and my passions and doing the
Speaker 4: things that I want to do and trying to make
Speaker 4: it financially sustainable, which I think it already kind of is.
Speaker 4: You know, I think the thing maybe people don't realize
Speaker 4: about this sort of maybe not the industry as a whole,
Speaker 4: but like this subsection of the industry is that nobody's
Speaker 4: getting rich off this stuff. It's all we're all we're
Speaker 4: all fighting for crumbs, and so just getting to a
Speaker 4: place where I have enough crumbs so that I can
Speaker 4: like fully devote everything to it is kind of the
Speaker 4: goal and also have like a life beyond just working
Speaker 4: every single day, every single night. But it feels very attainable,
Speaker 4: and it's you know, been really it's been really exciting
Speaker 4: and something I'm very proud of that I haven't really
Speaker 4: had to make any sort of concessions. Really, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not going after things that I think are overly palatable.
Speaker 4: I'm following, following my whims and doing the things that
Speaker 4: make me excited, and so far the audiences have turned
Speaker 4: out for them, and that's been really really great.
Speaker 3: Well, and this is a pretty rare opportunity to find
Speaker 3: two people that are both kind of entering this in
Speaker 3: a very unique and interesting modern way and taking a
Speaker 3: pretty big risk. How do you personally feel about the
Speaker 3: future of all this, Because you know, the Crumb's idea
Speaker 3: is terrifying, but in lots of ways, I feel like
Speaker 3: there's a lot more potential on the horizon.
Speaker 4: I think there is.
Speaker 3: I just think.
Speaker 4: For me, I guess I'm really curious about the future
Speaker 4: of the home video side of things. And I know
Speaker 4: I'm on a home video centric show, and I don't
Speaker 4: want to be negative or anything, but but for me,
Speaker 4: like the thing that excites me most is theatrical just
Speaker 4: because it is such a tangible, you know, in person,
Speaker 4: connective thing. Whereas when I'm doing stuffer, Blu Ray or
Speaker 4: UHD or whatever, I'm just kind of throwing it out
Speaker 4: into the world and then don't really know if people
Speaker 4: like it or if it's doing good or if it's
Speaker 4: bad or I mean, that was kind of always my
Speaker 4: thing when I was really doing a lot of bonus features,
Speaker 4: was I would never really hear about, you know, like
Speaker 4: the common terriors or people like the essays or this
Speaker 4: or the that, and I mean the fun thing about
Speaker 4: being in New York too, because there is such a
Speaker 4: film scene here, Like I actually hear from random people
Speaker 4: all the time that they liked the commentary that I
Speaker 4: did for russ Meyer's Up, or the commentary that I
Speaker 4: did for Factory Girl, of all things. And so it's
Speaker 4: been really it's been cool to see that stuff actually,
Speaker 4: you know, have a meaning for people, and that people
Speaker 4: like it. It's just for me. Theatrical is exciting because
Speaker 4: it is really the way that these sort of revivals
Speaker 4: begin and that then carries over to the Blu ray well.
Speaker 3: And still theatrically still the best way to see all
Speaker 3: of these movies. I mean, well, there's I shouldn't say
Speaker 3: all there's a handful of movies that have been very
Speaker 3: focused on the home video side, and we all know
Speaker 3: some of those things. But most movies in a group
Speaker 3: in a theater, super dark room. That is the best
Speaker 3: way to see these Let them wash over you, let
Speaker 3: you you know, no phones, fucking Alamo, don't don't change
Speaker 3: this process or all these other things. That's the way
Speaker 3: to watch these films. Even it's one of those things
Speaker 3: where you should be lost in that world for four
Speaker 3: and a half hours and lived there.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will say the funny thing too with
Speaker 4: like cat Strition movie, kind of going back to the
Speaker 4: whole psychological experiment thing, was that, like I before, before
Speaker 4: I signed on to a distribute it, like I had
Speaker 4: watched it like on Vimeo by myself, and I liked
Speaker 4: it a lot, But it was you watch it by
Speaker 4: yourself and it just makes you want to like claw
Speaker 4: your skin off because it's so the cringe. It's it's
Speaker 4: so cringey in a good way. It makes you feel
Speaker 4: uncomfortable seeing these people say these things and do these things.
Speaker 4: It's yep, it makes you feel bad. But then when
Speaker 4: you watch it with more than one person, and especially
Speaker 4: if you see it in the theater with like a
Speaker 4: big crowd, like it is like one of the funniest
Speaker 4: comedies I think of recent memory, like the especially the
Speaker 4: first chapter in Cell Superman, which is about basically the
Speaker 4: making of an inceel, and so some of the scenes
Speaker 4: in that are just so insanely funny. Like I remember,
Speaker 4: I think it was maybe a day or two after
Speaker 4: I agreed to distribute it, I went to one of
Speaker 4: the screenings that Luis was doing at the Roxy here
Speaker 4: in New York and I sat next to Joannick and
Speaker 4: he was like one of the very few SIS people
Speaker 4: in the audience and just listening to him like laughing,
Speaker 4: from like moment one to like moment four hours and
Speaker 4: thirty minutes later, I was like, Okay, there's an audience here.
Speaker 3: I got this well well and full circle him being
Speaker 3: the one that urging you to distribute to begin with,
Speaker 3: that's gonna be pretty cool. I mean, Joe and his
Speaker 3: hair are great people haircut, I haven't seen it then.
Speaker 3: I wish I could see Joe in person, but god,
Speaker 3: the last time I talked to him, man, his hair
Speaker 3: was ninety percent of the screen when I interviewed him.
Speaker 3: But I mean, yellow Veil is kind of the perfect
Speaker 3: example of one of these things they have exploded to be,
Speaker 3: you know, a a not just a distributor, but like
Speaker 3: a group that people are seeking out, a group of
Speaker 3: people that people want to be involved with, that people
Speaker 3: want that you know, excited to have associated with their name.
Speaker 3: And I could easily see this in you know, a
Speaker 3: very short period of time. Somebody's saying, muscle is the
Speaker 3: only place for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, already happening in a fun way.
Speaker 3: Look at that Liz, anything else that I should bring
Speaker 3: up that I have not yet. You got a Criterion
Speaker 3: thing this month, you want to talk about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean one of the things I'm excited about
Speaker 4: right now is that I've been in the middle for
Speaker 4: I think since maybe October, doing a very slow release
Speaker 4: of seven films by German lesbian filmmaker Monica Troit. Film
Speaker 4: was like Seduction The Corel Woman, which starts udo Kier
Speaker 4: Virgin Machine, which is like a really great controversial lesbian
Speaker 4: comedy from the late eighties, My Father Is Coming, which
Speaker 4: is like a New York comedy starring any Sprinkle, And
Speaker 4: then a couple documentaries she made in the nineties and
Speaker 4: two thousands, like Gender Knots and Female Misbehavior. Those are
Speaker 4: films that, you know, kind of like what we've been
Speaker 4: talking about this whole time. They were actually pretty big
Speaker 4: in the nineties and the eighties when they were first
Speaker 4: coming out, like even beyond just like the queer film
Speaker 4: festival scene. They were like on the odd indie film scene, right,
Speaker 4: and then they've just been kind of out of like
Speaker 4: widespread circulation in North America for you know, well over
Speaker 4: a decade. Like I wanted to I wanted to program
Speaker 4: them for many years, but I could never actually get
Speaker 4: a screening together. And so now I'm distributing seven of
Speaker 4: those films through Muscle and bringing them back out and
Speaker 4: beginning this month March, those seven films are on the
Speaker 4: Criterion Channel, I think for like the next year or two.
Speaker 4: And so I'm really excited for people to see them
Speaker 4: because I think they're really incredibly fun, incredibly transgressive, incredibly
Speaker 4: ahead of their time, films that you know, not enough
Speaker 4: people have seen, and especially with Udo kir recently passing unfortunately,
Speaker 4: like seeing him get cucked for eighty minutes in Seduction
Speaker 4: to cot Woman is just so great. It's like the
Speaker 4: lesbian version of Fosspnder's Corral. It's maybe better than that movie.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, and we're still doing screenings of those.
Speaker 4: I think they're going to be coming to the Music
Speaker 4: Box in Chicago fairly soon after this comes out. And yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I'm very excited to help get her work back out
Speaker 4: there again because I think the films are so good.
Speaker 3: Well, and I mean that means Boys in the Sand
Speaker 3: will be out soon, That means all these other things
Speaker 3: are finally going to be out there again for people
Speaker 3: to be able to see and rediscover in a way
Speaker 3: that they've never had a chance to before. So that's
Speaker 3: always cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's really exciting and meaningful and overwhelming and stressful,
Speaker 4: but I think the good mostly outweighs the bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah. With muscle, you've got the digital, you've got the theatrical,
Speaker 3: you've got the home video. If somebody wants to stay
Speaker 3: up to date on all of that, I assume social
Speaker 3: media and email list are the best way to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I have an email list which you can find
Speaker 4: at the website, which is muscle dash Distribution dot com.
Speaker 4: I would say Instagram is actually probably the best. There
Speaker 4: is a Facebook page that I just mostly cross posts
Speaker 4: because I don't know about anyone listening to this, but
Speaker 4: I'm actually trying to stay off of social media because
Speaker 4: I think it's just bad for people in general. But
Speaker 4: the needs to promote out way personal feelings.
Speaker 3: This is true, I hate it. But what is uh?
Speaker 3: And this might be a hard question to answer. What
Speaker 3: is if they just straight want to support muscle, not
Speaker 3: just follow, but support, what is the best way to
Speaker 3: support you? What is the thing that gets the most
Speaker 3: money in muscles pockets?
Speaker 4: I would say honestly, like, if you want to, if
Speaker 4: you like the kinds of films that are in the catalog,
Speaker 4: either the ones that I am fully distributing myself or
Speaker 4: the ones that I am helping with theatrical with for
Speaker 4: Distripis in Vinegar Syndrome and the Sato films, go to
Speaker 4: your local theater and tell them that you want to
Speaker 4: see them. I think sometimes with these very transgressive, very edgy,
Speaker 4: very obscure films, programmers just want to you know, I
Speaker 4: think they might want to show them, but they're nervous
Speaker 4: that people won't come out to them or that they
Speaker 4: won't have an audience for them, and so you know,
Speaker 4: maybe they're more drawn to just pick something from Janis
Speaker 4: Films or from some other massive catalog that they know
Speaker 4: is going to get you know, butts in the seats.
Speaker 4: So I think people going to the theaters and saying,
Speaker 4: you know, you should show Castration movie, or show Turtle Vision,
Speaker 4: or show Rewind or show Radley Metzger film, or show
Speaker 4: this or show that. I think you know a it's
Speaker 4: a way to get these films seen by bigger audiences
Speaker 4: and out there more. But it's also a way for
Speaker 4: people who are interested in programming to hopefully find those
Speaker 4: in roads to start doing it themselves. I think one
Speaker 4: of the things that's been really fun with castration movies
Speaker 4: specifically too, is that we have all these people who've
Speaker 4: never put on events any before, but who want to
Speaker 4: show the movie in their city or their town, and
Speaker 4: so they're organizing these like very DIY screetings. And because
Speaker 4: you know, for me it's all about the films, I'm
Speaker 4: very flexible on terms and up to just do splits
Speaker 4: or very very very low minimums, or just finding ways
Speaker 4: to make it so the films can be shown and
Speaker 4: so that they can hit their audience. And so I
Speaker 4: think theatrical is kind of the way, but also by
Speaker 4: the Blu ray and I might be launching a substack
Speaker 4: or a Patreon or something like that.
Speaker 3: So it's nice, very nice. Yeah, I'll be sure to
Speaker 3: link everything in the description below for everybody. But I mean,
Speaker 3: one thing that you just said is probably I think
Speaker 3: a great way to cap this conversation. Because all of
Speaker 3: your films that you are not even just your stuff,
Speaker 3: but the stuff that you're helping distribute theatrically for Vinnger
Speaker 3: Syndrome and destrip Picks, they all inherently are kind of
Speaker 3: event films. And that's easy to say about a four
Speaker 3: and a half hour movie. I get that, but even
Speaker 3: something like Turtle Vision, it's just not a movie you
Speaker 3: accidentally go to is probably the best way to say that.
Speaker 3: And so these these are kind of in a way
Speaker 3: risky films for some of these theaters to program, because
Speaker 3: if people are not into it, they're just not going
Speaker 3: to show up. They're not going to take a risk
Speaker 3: on a Sato film that's about rape. They're not gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, follow up on any of these movies and
Speaker 3: go this synopsis sounds enticing and just show up for that. Usually,
Speaker 3: so having you in your local areas say I want
Speaker 3: to see these films is probably quite meaningful to one
Speaker 3: of those local programmers.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, And I mean, like like I said, like
Speaker 4: it's funny to talk about films like this with the
Speaker 4: Field of Dreams, you know, if you show up the thing,
Speaker 4: but it's really true. I mean I think part of
Speaker 4: it too that we didn't really talk about it is that,
Speaker 4: like I've been programming hardcore films for you know, three,
Speaker 4: four or five years now at this point, I shown
Speaker 4: shown all the big ones that have been restored. I've
Speaker 4: shown a lot of gay ones that are very obscure,
Speaker 4: and audiences always turn out for them. I think audiences,
Speaker 4: especially younger yeah, you know, edgiar audiences really want to
Speaker 4: see this stuff and there's a really strong demand for it.
Speaker 4: I mean, last year I started an adult film series
Speaker 4: at Nighthawk here in New York called called skin Deep,
Speaker 4: and that was only going to be every other month.
Speaker 4: They didn't. They put it in the small theater, and
Speaker 4: then both of the first three screenings all sold out,
Speaker 4: and now it's a monthly thing that they're putting in
Speaker 4: the bigger house. And so people really do want to
Speaker 4: see this stuff. And you know, I think that's maybe
Speaker 4: the next frontier is stuff that never plays in theaters
Speaker 4: anymore but should be inside well.
Speaker 3: I mean for many of these smaller towns too, that
Speaker 3: have great art house theaters, places that are generally like
Speaker 3: forgotten entirely. We're talking like Oklahoma here in Kansas City,
Speaker 3: places in you know, small town Georgia that are not
Speaker 3: able to see a lot of these things. People are
Speaker 3: hungry for films like this, and to be able to
Speaker 3: get that crowd out there with other people that are
Speaker 3: like you is of I hate to use the word,
Speaker 3: but it's one of those one of those ways where
Speaker 3: it's you seeing it's manifesting your lifestyle in a way
Speaker 3: that we all sometimes just simply can't do or have
Speaker 3: not felt the freedom to be able to do. And
Speaker 3: so it is a way to see validation in some
Speaker 3: unique ways. And I really hope that is embraced by
Speaker 3: some of these smaller theaters and taking risk on because
Speaker 3: I think they'll be surprised that that people will want
Speaker 3: to see these a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I just look at what Harry Guero
Speaker 4: and Michael drum Bori have been doing with the Gap
Speaker 4: Theater in Pennsylvania were awesome. I had never even heard
Speaker 4: of wind Gap, Pennsylvania before the theater. I still don't
Speaker 4: know where wind Gap is. I don't know how far
Speaker 4: it is from Gurger Philly or where. But they're doing
Speaker 4: some of the most exciting repertory programming I can think of,
Speaker 4: and audiences are apparently coming out, and so you know,
Speaker 4: it's exciting. They did Asato double bill the other night
Speaker 4: and showing hardcore stuff all the time on film and
Speaker 4: just really just going for it and people want to
Speaker 4: see it.
Speaker 3: So I mean, they seem to be competing literally with
Speaker 3: like nubev, with people covering just their programming, people that
Speaker 3: are never going to show up at their theater, but
Speaker 3: just excited that the theater is doing it. That is,
Speaker 3: when you're doing it right, that's amazing. Yeah, Liz, this
Speaker 3: has been a credit. Thank you for doing this. I'd
Speaker 3: love to have you back after a few more releases
Speaker 3: and people can get excited about it, because this is
Speaker 3: one of those things where if you are not continuously
Speaker 3: talking about it, this is one of those I can't
Speaker 3: say genres. This is like a group of films that
Speaker 3: could easily be overlooked by people and not championed enough,
Speaker 3: and so it's something that I'm probably not going to
Speaker 3: shut up about. So so thank you for being amazing.
Speaker 4: Freaks Only again, it's got a good ring to it,
Speaker 4: I think, think I agree. The muscle shirt that says
Speaker 4: freaks only on the back, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I cannot wait to purchase it, and you know that
Speaker 3: I absolutely will. Thanks for everything. Go follow everything Muscle below,
Speaker 3: everything Liz below. And honestly, I hope to see the
Speaker 3: Patreon or substack happen because I will be signing up myself.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you, Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast.
Speaker 3: There's one big thing that you could do to help
Speaker 3: the show, and that is to leave a rating and
Speaker 3: review on the podcast service of your choice. Thank you.
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