Speaker 1: Oh gee is boot.
Speaker 2: It's showtime. People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 2: hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 1: In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3: Don it off.
Speaker 4: You bought your sister hooker. I love you.
Speaker 1: You're not full of shit.
Speaker 3: And when you're out there, remember you are a goddamn
Speaker 3: fucking machine.
Speaker 1: I got the milk of.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a shotgun or exploding round.
Speaker 4: But this is handmade, like someone carved into the back
Speaker 4: of his head.
Speaker 2: Our job is to intervene before such things happen. Let's
Speaker 2: just go find Liam.
Speaker 1: What about my bike?
Speaker 2: I think you did.
Speaker 1: There's a dead guy. That guy we fuck, he's dead.
Speaker 1: Sleep with me?
Speaker 2: The signature about homo?
Speaker 4: Did you do it?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: You're fun dude.
Speaker 4: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 4: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 4: with writer director Alex Phillips. He is the force behind
Speaker 4: the new film Anything That Moves, which is currently playing
Speaker 4: at film festivals around the world. I don't really want
Speaker 4: to talk about what this movie is about, because it
Speaker 4: is very interesting and something that really should be seen
Speaker 4: to be experienced. So if you have a chance to
Speaker 4: see anything that moves, definitely do so. Thank you so
Speaker 4: much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Alex,
Speaker 4: tell me a little bit about how you got interested
Speaker 4: in filmmaking.
Speaker 1: I was really obsessed with watching movies at a very
Speaker 1: young age. I remember seeing going in Cleveland, Ohio. I
Speaker 1: remember going and seeing like at a giant movie palace,
Speaker 1: this seventy millimeter series they did, The Bridge Over River,
Speaker 1: Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and I remember obsessively watching
Speaker 1: Lawrence of Arabia like over and over on VHS. And
Speaker 1: then when I got a little older, I got a camera,
Speaker 1: just like a little DV camera and made a lot
Speaker 1: of trailers with my friends. We would make these trailers
Speaker 1: for these movies that didn't exist and never have existed,
Speaker 1: just coming soon, the Cretan or something. We'd make these
Speaker 1: weird horror movies and action movies that never came to light,
Speaker 1: but we'd make these little trailers for them. I was
Speaker 1: always obsessed with that and just watching a lot of movies,
Speaker 1: and then I got into playwriting. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of theater as well. I did theater in college. I
Speaker 1: did some like clown stuff, some fringe festival stuff, and
Speaker 1: I staged my first play that I wrote, and no
Speaker 1: I didn't direct it, I starred in it. It was
Speaker 1: one of my few acting roles, is called gun Club.
Speaker 1: And then that took me to Northwestern, where then I started.
Speaker 1: I used their cage, their equipment cage, because my undergrad
Speaker 1: didn't really have any equipment. And then I just ran
Speaker 1: a luck with camera gear and started, yeah, directing my
Speaker 1: own writing because a lot of people would read my
Speaker 1: scripts and be like, what the hell are you? What
Speaker 1: do you want from me? And then I was like,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what I want. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I need you. And then I just started making shorts
Speaker 1: and ballooned from there.
Speaker 4: This might be a little unfair because I probably should
Speaker 4: be the one that explains what your esthetic is when
Speaker 4: it comes to the intro for this particular episode. But
Speaker 4: can you explain your aesthetic to the people listening at home?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, I love every and any opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: about my work, So to be able to explain myself,
Speaker 1: I would I relish at the opportunity the way that
Speaker 1: I talk about myself on Vimeo is that I took
Speaker 1: too much acid and now I have paranoid sexual nightmares.
Speaker 1: I really like expressionistic filmmaking, like I believe in film
Speaker 1: as a visual medium, but I'm also like passionate about
Speaker 1: writing books and plays and all that stuff. So I
Speaker 1: try to like marry those two forms of storytelling to
Speaker 1: create a Dionesian effect with the budgets that I am
Speaker 1: allowed to be playing around with, so creating access to
Speaker 1: instill and evoke emotion in the viewer. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: also creating like a sort of uncanny tone that's somewhere
Speaker 1: between like funny and scary or at all at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 4: I am definitely familiar with your last film, All Jacked
Speaker 4: Up and Full of Worms. Can you talk a little
Speaker 4: bit about that? And was that your first feature?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my first feature. That one was about
Speaker 1: these two dudes. They have concurrence storylines, and then they
Speaker 1: collide and they get addicted to these hollocinogenic worms. They
Speaker 1: kind of take them on this horrific, kind of funny
Speaker 1: but also totally fucked up journey of I guess a
Speaker 1: little bit of self discovery and a little bit of
Speaker 1: just worm discovery. It's like a love story about two
Speaker 1: bros and also about worms and finding family in the
Speaker 1: self destruction.
Speaker 4: I hate this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Speaker 4: Where do your ideas come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a terrible question. I like dealing with the personal,
Speaker 1: like my own life experiences, but I don't really like
Speaker 1: realism very much. I don't actually think that's the most
Speaker 1: empathetic way to access or present your own life experiences
Speaker 1: or what you go through. I think that by like
Speaker 1: just depicting stuff in a dream or using genre in
Speaker 1: different types, different modes to access the personal, I think
Speaker 1: that's a better way to get deeper into stuff and
Speaker 1: also make it more relatable to an audience.
Speaker 4: What was your inspiration for anything that Moves?
Speaker 1: Anything that Moves came from the root of the idea
Speaker 1: came from when I was like twenty two twenty four.
Speaker 1: I was a bike delivery guy, and I was going
Speaker 1: through a little bit of a tough time personally, but
Speaker 1: I and so I was feeling like really like weird
Speaker 1: and outside of the world. But I also was delivering
Speaker 1: these sandwiches to these shut in people all around the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and I was their only point of contact to the
Speaker 1: outside world sometimes, and they were very excited to see
Speaker 1: me in different capacities. Sometimes they would actually like proposition
Speaker 1: me or hit on me and try to kiss me sometimes,
Speaker 1: and all I'm doing is delivering them was sandwich. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. It gave me a pretty strange outlook
Speaker 1: on the world, and I wanted to capture the anxiety
Speaker 1: of that, and then also the kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: there was something a little bit fantastical about being objectified
Speaker 1: by these people too, where it's, oh, they loved me,
Speaker 1: even for no reason. So I wanted to, yeah, to
Speaker 1: capitalize on that life experience a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: take it from there, pull in a lot of movie references,
Speaker 1: pull in different ways of telling that story, and bring
Speaker 1: in love, monogamy and just the tenderness of love and relationships.
Speaker 1: And then also there's a little bit of a paranoia
Speaker 1: and horror to it as well, And I wanted to
Speaker 1: create a world that accommodated all of that.
Speaker 4: How do you find your actors, because they're doing some
Speaker 4: really outrageous things that I'm curious how you get people
Speaker 4: to agree to go along with you.
Speaker 1: I find people who are either my friends or friends
Speaker 1: of friends, mostly people who either know my work or
Speaker 1: come from like a trusted recommended person, so that it's
Speaker 1: not that crazy of an ask by the time that
Speaker 1: they're reading the script. I try to present what I'm
Speaker 1: looking for upfront, also be like, there's going to be
Speaker 1: sex and nudity and violence in this movie, and we're
Speaker 1: at a low budget, and I think it's good to
Speaker 1: have these personal relationships too, in this trust so that
Speaker 1: there's better communication and better empathy on set because we're
Speaker 1: working twelve sometimes more hours a day, and so if
Speaker 1: there is already that pre established ease of communication, it
Speaker 1: makes it a safer environment and that also makes people
Speaker 1: more adventurous at the same time because there's that trust
Speaker 1: there already. There were a couple of people that I
Speaker 1: reached out to that I didn't have those relationships with,
Speaker 1: like Gingerlin Allen or Nina Hartley. They're in anything that moves,
Speaker 1: but they are extremely experienced, especially in sex scenes. And
Speaker 1: then they also they've been on camp. I'm wrong so
Speaker 1: much that they really do have this like star power ability.
Speaker 1: They're like amazing actors, which I don't think people generally
Speaker 1: would recognize from like adult film. The adult film world,
Speaker 1: but they really do. There's a reason that they were
Speaker 1: stars in the adult world because they really do have
Speaker 1: that star quality.
Speaker 4: I've talked a little bit about the expressionistic filmmaking. I
Speaker 4: could definitely see it a lot in that scene with
Speaker 4: those close ups, those really extreme close ups of their faces.
Speaker 4: I can't imagine how this is going to hit an
Speaker 4: audiencing that on the big screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really really excited. Obviously, it hasn't premiered a
Speaker 1: Fantasia yet at the time of this recording, so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited. But it hasn't really been presented for any
Speaker 1: audience whatsoever. It's been in the editing cave for a
Speaker 1: long time. So I'm really excited to see what audiences like,
Speaker 1: what they react to I don't know, and just to
Speaker 1: get it out in the world. I'm excited.
Speaker 4: When did you actually shoot this and how long did
Speaker 4: it take to shoot?
Speaker 1: We shot it in the summer of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's right. It took us like
Speaker 1: twenty one days of principal photography and then a couple
Speaker 1: days of pickups after a lot of editing. The pickups
Speaker 1: were pretty minimal, so this one shot doesn't work, and
Speaker 1: it's necessary to make this scene make sense. We got
Speaker 1: to grab this insert type of thing.
Speaker 4: And then each said it was a long post process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the post process was pretty long, just because I
Speaker 1: ran out of editing money for the budget and had
Speaker 1: to cut it myself and had to work along the
Speaker 1: side of editing. And then also just I really wanted
Speaker 1: to do production justice because we really nailed a lot
Speaker 1: of cool moves. We were really shooting for blocking and
Speaker 1: shooting to move the camera around, to move the actors around,
Speaker 1: and not do traditional coverage necessarily, not like shot reverse,
Speaker 1: not just like picking up all these little pieces to
Speaker 1: put together and posts necessarily, so like getting the timing
Speaker 1: with like a camera move to fit the pacing of
Speaker 1: the film and really get the language down. Shaping stuff
Speaker 1: in production takes a lot of trust with the post process,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. The way that you pace
Speaker 1: the scene out when you're shooting will dictate the pacing
Speaker 1: of the entire movie if you're going to try to
Speaker 1: do everything in one or two pieces.
Speaker 4: Who is your cinematographer on list?
Speaker 1: His name is Hunter Zimney. He's from New York and
Speaker 1: did an amazing job. I loved working with him. One
Speaker 1: of the coolest things that we were able to come
Speaker 1: up with, and we did it on set basically are
Speaker 1: one of our gaffers, this guy John jadeer Kowski. He
Speaker 1: had this jim We were using a doorway dolly, which
Speaker 1: is just like an old school dolly, and then he
Speaker 1: had this like cheap jib arm and then we put
Speaker 1: that on top of the dolly. Like on day one,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we had this sort of makeshift
Speaker 1: crane chapman thing, like a much fancier device. Like the
Speaker 1: way to get these moves would be really expensive if
Speaker 1: we were getting the quote unquote proper equipment, but it
Speaker 1: allowed us to get in really close and then sweep
Speaker 1: move away from people, and get like a wide shot
Speaker 1: all in the same move. And just like working with Hunter,
Speaker 1: working with Connor and John and this amazing team with
Speaker 1: people who just are down to experiment and roll with
Speaker 1: stuff and commit fully, just totally commit to this visual language.
Speaker 1: Just experiment, but do it with total authority. It's really fun.
Speaker 4: It was great that move on camera really pays off.
Speaker 4: I can really feel the dynamism of everything that's going
Speaker 4: on on screen, and so many times with an independent
Speaker 4: film you lock it down, maybe get a tilt, maybe
Speaker 4: a pan, but that's about it. But here I just
Speaker 4: was so immersed in this world with that moving camera.
Speaker 1: We were really trying to be cowboys with it. Once
Speaker 1: we figured out the visual language too, Like Hunter was
Speaker 1: like really just living it. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool stuff where the movie camera is moving really
Speaker 1: subtly with an actor's performance, where you know, like it'll
Speaker 1: be like pushing in a little bit or just pulling
Speaker 1: out a little bit with their words, with what their
Speaker 1: performance is doing. And that's just the kind of shit
Speaker 1: that you can't micromanage. It's not something that you can
Speaker 1: tell someone to do, and that's I'm really happy to
Speaker 1: have worked with them to see that kind of before.
Speaker 1: It's really cool.
Speaker 4: I know, making an independent film is one of the
Speaker 4: toughest things that there is to do. Spout some of
Speaker 4: the challenges that faced you.
Speaker 1: We did so much. There's so many locations, there's gore,
Speaker 1: there's sex, there's like we said, these camera moves and
Speaker 1: we shot on film. All these different things that we
Speaker 1: managed to pull off with a pretty small budget. Was
Speaker 1: really cool. Shooting this movie. We did so much, but
Speaker 1: also so much easier than shooting my first all jacked
Speaker 1: up in full of worms. Like having the support from
Speaker 1: Missing Link which is Eddie Linker and Vinegar Syndrome just
Speaker 1: made it a breeze. At least for me what I'm
Speaker 1: used to Making a movie is absolutely not easy. I
Speaker 1: think it probably is the hardest art form. I don't
Speaker 1: know the other ones well enough, but just the man
Speaker 1: hours that go into it, it's just a crazy art form.
Speaker 1: I think we did the impossible that it felt great
Speaker 1: doing it. When you shoot digitally, you're always thinking about
Speaker 1: post production. You're thinking about like where are we going
Speaker 1: to lift a shadow or what kind of colors are
Speaker 1: we going to dial in? And when you shoot on film,
Speaker 1: it's what with your eye is also what the camera
Speaker 1: sees and what the actors see. The world building is
Speaker 1: everyone kind of buys into it. The entire environment you're
Speaker 1: shooting on looks like what the movie is going to
Speaker 1: look like. It creates this effect on set that kind
Speaker 1: of gets everyone, all the actors and producers and everyone
Speaker 1: there like to buy in on the movie. And when
Speaker 1: you hit record, you can hear the film moving and
Speaker 1: it creates this yeah, like I said, the total commitment.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool. Yeah, and then also you can
Speaker 1: see what the negatives are with film or not negatives. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I love this. Like we sent the film out and
Speaker 1: when it got scanned, it got scratched. There's this sequence
Speaker 1: of the beach where you see these crazy scratches. But
Speaker 1: I love it. I honestly think, like you'll watch a
Speaker 1: Tarantino movie like death Proof or something like that, where
Speaker 1: he's messing with these film effects. We didn't have to
Speaker 1: make it up. It's the grunge is there. The real
Speaker 1: things are there. And then I think it really augments
Speaker 1: the craziness of that scene and it makes it more fantastical.
Speaker 4: What did you actually cut on?
Speaker 1: I used Adobe Premiere. It's a program, it's a tool.
Speaker 1: It works. I lived a lot in it for a
Speaker 1: long time, and yeah, I don't know. I really like editing.
Speaker 1: I grew to love it during this process.
Speaker 4: What's your day job?
Speaker 1: My day job right now. I have a million day jobs,
Speaker 1: but my one right now is I've been working at
Speaker 1: this post house doing assistant editing work for like commercials
Speaker 1: and stuff. But I've also I've taught, I did a
Speaker 1: little bit of sound recording, I did some grant writing,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of I've done a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. I worked as a projectionist for a while.
Speaker 1: I pick up whatever I can to keep it going,
Speaker 1: and then also what can give me enough time to
Speaker 1: write and direct movies and get them out in the world.
Speaker 4: When you're doing your editing, are you sending rough cuts
Speaker 4: to friends to get feedback or is this all just you?
Speaker 1: No aspect of filmmaking is just the director. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe Stanley Kubrick is primo a tour who is the
Speaker 1: all seeing I I definitely spend a long ass time
Speaker 1: in front of the computer talking to myself, for sure,
Speaker 1: But I definitely but I needed someone else to look
Speaker 1: at it and tell me I'm not crazy. I have
Speaker 1: all my producers, Spencer, LeAnn Georgia. I would bounce stuff
Speaker 1: off of them. I did a couple of feedback screenings.
Speaker 1: I would send it off to other filmmaker friends or
Speaker 1: other editors just to see what they say. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of the edit of this, I worked with this guy,
Speaker 1: Troy Lewis, who also cut all jacked up and full
Speaker 1: of worms with me, and so he was a great
Speaker 1: resource for a while. And so there was there were
Speaker 1: like people that I leaned on to to be like,
Speaker 1: Oh this is working. Are absolutely not working. This is terrible.
Speaker 1: I really need that. I think everybody does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know your premiere is a Fantasia. But have
Speaker 4: you had a chance to watch this with like cast
Speaker 4: and crew or anything yet?
Speaker 1: No, I haven't. I've showed it to a couple people
Speaker 1: more on the crew side, I haven't showed it to cast. No. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a lot of people's first time
Speaker 1: seeing it who worked on the film, and so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited for them to check it out too, especially
Speaker 1: with the big audience, especially on thirty five. We did
Speaker 1: a thirty five millimeter print, so it's gonna be It's great,
Speaker 1: really great. I'm excited to hear what they say.
Speaker 4: Did you do a premiere of All Jacked Up at
Speaker 4: Fantasia as well?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, yeah nice. Yeah, it's a good home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say it's like a homecoming for you.
Speaker 4: Is there a good place for people to keep up
Speaker 4: with you in the film? Online?
Speaker 1: Vinegar Syndrome is doing a great job posting stuff. There's
Speaker 1: also I just started Instagram. Paid for the movie which
Speaker 1: is at ATM Underscore movie ATM meaning anything that moves,
Speaker 1: and so you can follow the movie on there. I'll
Speaker 1: keep posting stuff, and once we move into distribution and
Speaker 1: like theatrical stuff and physical media and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be more stuff growing. I know Gindre Lynn
Speaker 1: will be at Fantasia, so I'll post some stuff and
Speaker 1: she'll be like signing things, and there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: bit interes syndrome booth. So we're gonna try to like
Speaker 1: get people out to see the movie and keep the
Speaker 1: announcements coming.
Speaker 4: Alex, thank you so much for your time. This is great,
Speaker 4: finally getting to meet you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Don't want to happen. I suthing.
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Speaker 5: don't want to know nothing, I still know nothing.
Speaker 3: It don't mean nothing. But if you wanna don't have
Speaker 3: a thing, let me tell you. I don't lie wout everything.
Speaker 5: My father.
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Speaker 3: About I love a job?
Speaker 2: What's our fall?
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Speaker 3: Whip and alley.
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Speaker 2: Stop by a money, not even fuck you.
Speaker 5: I'm un to go the cards and I'm wanting to
Speaker 5: do the cart.
Speaker 2: I go long a home, feeling short a part.
Speaker 3: I got the guinea strain. What's looking.
Speaker 2: Thin and.
Speaker 3: In the twin.
Speaker 5: IM fuck anything that news, not even fuck you, and
Speaker 5: I fuck you too.
Speaker 2: I'm fud anything to move said