Speaker 1: Oh g is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They want clothed soda, pop popcorn in no monsters.
Speaker 1: In the Projection Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2: Got it off? Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode
Speaker 2: of the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On
Speaker 2: this episode, I'm talking about the movie for Lock. That's
Speaker 2: f O R E l O c K. It's not
Speaker 2: the fourth in a film series about locks. It is
Speaker 2: a brand new movie directed and written by Caleb Alexander Smith,
Speaker 2: and it stars David Crumhol as well as mister Smith.
Speaker 2: It is all about a naive fitness enthusiast who looks
Speaker 2: a lot like a particular superhero who ends up getting
Speaker 2: a job over on Hollywood Boulevard and all kinds of
Speaker 2: wackiness follows. It is making the rounds at festivals. There
Speaker 2: is not really a poster or even a trailer for
Speaker 2: this one, and as those rolled out, I will definitely
Speaker 2: be updating folks on where they can see Forlock. I
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun with this and I was
Speaker 2: super happy to talk with mister Smith. And especially mister Crumholtz,
Speaker 2: because I've been watching him since he was in Adam's
Speaker 2: Family Values, so kind of watched him grow up through
Speaker 2: the magic of the movies. Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 2: and I hope you enjoy this interview. Mister Smith, I'm
Speaker 2: not that familiar with your work. Can you tell me
Speaker 2: a little bit more about how you got involved in
Speaker 2: filmmaking and especially how you came to be a writer director.
Speaker 5: I moved to Los Angeles after college, where I studied film,
Speaker 5: and I was very much my intention to be a
Speaker 5: writer and director, and when I landed in LA what
Speaker 5: actually got going a little bit more was acting. So
Speaker 5: I've acted on a lot of TV stuff, Network TV stuff,
Speaker 5: but all the while I was pursuing writing and directing.
Speaker 5: I co wrote and directed the micro budget film here
Speaker 5: nine years ago that made a little micro splash, but
Speaker 5: that did get me representation, and I optioned some scripts,
Speaker 5: sold some things, got very close to a few projects
Speaker 5: before Forelock. Actually, it does seem like I'm new to
Speaker 5: the scene, and I am in a way as a
Speaker 5: writer director, but also I've been pursuing it for a
Speaker 5: very long time.
Speaker 2: And how did you mister Crumholtz meet.
Speaker 5: He was the right person for the role of Randy.
Speaker 5: And when the first time we met was over Zoom
Speaker 5: after we sent him the script and within the first
Speaker 5: five minutes of talking to him about the story in
Speaker 5: the project, it.
Speaker 3: Was obvious that this is the guy.
Speaker 5: But despite the fact that he lives in New Jersey
Speaker 5: now and I'm from New Jersey, we hadn't actually met
Speaker 5: before this project.
Speaker 2: How did Black get going, where did the idea come from,
Speaker 2: and how did it actually get made.
Speaker 5: I was in La New to La. Like many people,
Speaker 5: I needed a side hustle and a side gig. And
Speaker 5: what people kept saying to me, mostly ironic, although some not,
Speaker 5: was well, you look just like Superman. You should put
Speaker 5: on spandex, go to Hollywood Boulevard and take pictures of
Speaker 5: the Taurus and get tips. And that idea stuck in
Speaker 5: my crawl for a very long time, and I was
Speaker 5: as I was writing other projects and things were some
Speaker 5: things were selling, some things weren't. I had this idea
Speaker 5: over time that I was holding back a little bit
Speaker 5: and I wasn't writing something personal, and I wanted to
Speaker 5: do something that was based off of my own experiences.
Speaker 5: So that's when I wrote Forelock about this guy who
Speaker 5: it's a flip of me where he doesn't want anything
Speaker 5: to do with movies. He moves out to be a
Speaker 5: personal trainer and he falls into this kind of bizarro
Speaker 5: entertainment world.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Started the production company with my wife and we got
Speaker 5: very lucky, frankly to have the steam going and the
Speaker 5: financing and everything. Fortunately, everyone really connected with the script
Speaker 5: and the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what did you think of the script the
Speaker 2: first time we saw it.
Speaker 6: I never read anything like it, and right away I thought,
Speaker 6: this is wildly unpredictable. Didn't really know where it was heading,
Speaker 6: and that's always a relief. There were no he didn't
Speaker 6: tip the nose or tip the hat or any kind
Speaker 6: of clue as to where this was heading. And then
Speaker 6: all the way till the very very end of the film,
Speaker 6: it's oh okay. And I love that the film didn't
Speaker 6: satisfy any trope that has been long established with films
Speaker 6: like these. Does the mystery get solved or does it deepen?
Speaker 6: Or it didn't matter there is this is a comedy, mystery,
Speaker 6: romp adventure action thing, and I and it's a high
Speaker 6: ybrid thing and it's beautiful. I also just felt the
Speaker 6: writing was just super honest and also very informed from
Speaker 6: a very relatable place of resent towards Hollywood, towards Los Angeles,
Speaker 6: towards big business corporations. I felt it was just very
Speaker 6: honest and brutally honest about all that, and so it
Speaker 6: was a breath of fresh air. I was charmed by it.
Speaker 6: It was quirky and weird and out there, and I
Speaker 6: was also I don't get opportunities to play roles like
Speaker 6: this very often bold scheming, lying, cheating guys who are
Speaker 6: fun to watch because they're headed for the inevitable crash.
Speaker 6: And I really jumped up the chance to play a
Speaker 6: role like this, and his voice was so succinct in
Speaker 6: what Caleb broke, it was a no brainer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how was that kind of finding your inner ratz
Speaker 2: ol Rizzo to play next to Joe buck here.
Speaker 6: He's always been there. It's been in my grab bag
Speaker 6: for a while, and I've brought versions of that out
Speaker 6: into other characters where I felt it wasn't egregious to do,
Speaker 6: but this one was just like the full on there's nothing.
Speaker 6: There was no rules, There are no rules, and that
Speaker 6: was the other thing was Caleb as a director was
Speaker 6: kind enough to give me a lot of rope to
Speaker 6: just play with just how deviant and dvs Randy was.
Speaker 6: And it wasn't something that I had to invent, but
Speaker 6: it was something I got the chance to really expand
Speaker 6: on and it was a lot of fun, A lot
Speaker 6: of fun.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, was there a lot of
Speaker 2: room for play as far as the characters that you
Speaker 2: guys are playing or were you pretty strict to the script?
Speaker 6: I think both, wouldn't you say? The movie doesn't have
Speaker 6: to be two and a half hours long, though, and
Speaker 6: there is a longer edit of this film that has
Speaker 6: all those playful things. But ultimately, what you're seeing is
Speaker 6: mostly what was written, with the exception of a couple moments.
Speaker 2: And obviously you've written, you've produced, You've done a lot
Speaker 2: of things. You know, I can't tell you just acting
Speaker 2: because again, your career spans decades now, which is wonderful.
Speaker 2: But how is that for you playing the role of
Speaker 2: both executive producer and one of the stars of the felt.
Speaker 6: I'm so grateful that they said yes when I said, Hey,
Speaker 6: I want to produce this thing too. I want to
Speaker 6: be hands on, had a sense it might be needed.
Speaker 6: I'm at a point. It's the strangest thing. Man, I'm
Speaker 6: at a point where I do find myself sometimes being
Speaker 6: the most experienced person on a set in terms of filmmaking,
Speaker 6: and sometimes by far. I knew this was Caleb's first film.
Speaker 6: I knew or first film as a solo director. I
Speaker 6: knew that there were a lot of people experiencing their
Speaker 6: first go at indie filmmaking, gorilla filmmaking, if you will.
Speaker 6: And so I've had experience doing all those things, and
Speaker 6: I've seen things go wrong, and I've seen miracles happen,
Speaker 6: and I would have been frustrated to not be able
Speaker 6: to share that those experiences, share the knowledge that I've
Speaker 6: gained from those experiences of the stuff, what to do,
Speaker 6: what not to do, And they were kind enough to listen,
Speaker 6: and I loved I love producing. Producing is like party planning.
Speaker 6: It's like putting together a wedding where you're very concerned
Speaker 6: about what your guests are going to think. It's not
Speaker 6: so much about what the host wants, it's what ultimately,
Speaker 6: it's what the guests are going to walk away with.
Speaker 6: And I love that attack. It's a lot of fun
Speaker 6: and a natural fit for me, so just grateful to
Speaker 6: have had the opportunity.
Speaker 2: How was it for you? Being the writer, the director
Speaker 2: and in front of the camera for what fifty sixty
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the time, that must have been a
Speaker 2: little difficult.
Speaker 5: It was made more difficult by the spandex. Part of
Speaker 5: the joke of the script is keeping this poor guy
Speaker 5: in that suit as long as possible. And I was
Speaker 5: obviously talking a lot on set. I was losing my
Speaker 5: voice sometimes overhydrating, had to go to the bathroom. It
Speaker 5: was a whole thing of undoing the zipper, redoing the
Speaker 5: mic every single time. So it had its practical difficulties,
Speaker 5: but ultimately, anyone who gets the opportunity I did is
Speaker 5: extremely fortunate to tell a story that is very personal.
Speaker 5: It's not based on me, really, The character is quite
Speaker 5: different from me, but it's still it's a very personal
Speaker 5: story that no one else was going to make. No
Speaker 5: one else was going to write it or direct it.
Speaker 5: So I tried to have fun with it. It's not
Speaker 5: always fun sometimes, like David said, it's filmmaking, and indie
Speaker 5: filmmaking particularly is difficult because of the time constraints. And
Speaker 5: we did have a pretty healthy budget actually by indie standards,
Speaker 5: but it's still difficult and shooting in LA can be
Speaker 5: a little bit of a nightmare, which is extremely sad,
Speaker 5: but that is the truth of the matter. Besides for
Speaker 5: the tax incentive and all that kind of stuff, there's
Speaker 5: a whole other smorty sportive issues around that. We dealt
Speaker 5: with some of those and we got through it. David's
Speaker 5: leadership was key. We had people like ROBERTA. Schaeffer, who
Speaker 5: is our director of photography, who's done everything from all
Speaker 5: the Mark Forster movies like Monstrous Ball and Stranger in Fiction.
Speaker 5: He's done a James Bond movie, all the Christopher Guest
Speaker 5: movies that we love, like Best in Show. He was
Speaker 5: also great to have to be able to lean on
Speaker 5: him and for him to be able to say, oh, Caleb,
Speaker 5: this is a great idea, or Caleb, we can't actually
Speaker 5: do this one. It's teamwork. Filmmaking is very collaborative. It
Speaker 5: has to be that way, and fortunately I had people
Speaker 5: who believed in the vision but were also able to
Speaker 5: disagree when the time came, because those times do come.
Speaker 3: One pitched in and I'm really pleased with the result.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit more about your crew. You
Speaker 2: mentioned your DP, and I'm curious how the rest of
Speaker 2: your folks came together.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like you hired the department heads and
Speaker 5: then let them do their thing. Roberto hired Jim Planette,
Speaker 5: who is a very famous scaffer, one of the few
Speaker 5: famous scaffers probably gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Jim Planett.
Speaker 5: He's done everything from et to Braveheart to Ocean's eleven.
Speaker 5: He's in his mid eighties, his energy level is off
Speaker 5: the charts. He's an incredible resource. And not kidding.
Speaker 3: When I say he had more energy than I did
Speaker 3: on our overnight shoots.
Speaker 5: He truly did. So we were really spoiled with an
Speaker 5: incredible crew. For me, it was just talking to department heads,
Speaker 5: making a choice and then letting them do their thing.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about the post process
Speaker 2: on this The.
Speaker 5: Post process was interesting because I had my first child
Speaker 5: in the.
Speaker 3: Middle of it.
Speaker 5: Actually, so I made I had a cut in the movie.
Speaker 5: I felt pretty good about it. I stepped away to
Speaker 5: be there for the birth of my son and be
Speaker 5: there for those first several months, and when I came
Speaker 5: back to the movie, it was like I just had
Speaker 5: this whole new perspective on cutting, and that's where David
Speaker 5: came in and the editing booth helped out try to
Speaker 5: show the movie to a lot of different people. We
Speaker 5: took our time with it because we didn't have any
Speaker 5: external deadline, so we were able to really test it
Speaker 5: out over and over. And the response so far has
Speaker 5: been pretty positive about the movie, and I think a
Speaker 5: big part of that is the fact that we were
Speaker 5: able to take some time in post production and really
Speaker 5: get it right.
Speaker 2: The jokes are really tight, and I was curious if
Speaker 2: you had many test screenings in order to get that
Speaker 2: material so tight and so well worked out.
Speaker 3: There were a few, like official kind of things that
Speaker 3: we did, but a lot of it.
Speaker 5: Was just having new groups of people every weekend to
Speaker 5: my house to watch the movie, people who hadn't seen
Speaker 5: who knew nothing about it, and just gauging their reaction.
Speaker 5: We do that on Saturday, and then in the next
Speaker 5: week editing have a different group come in the following
Speaker 5: Saturday get their reactions. So it was just a lot
Speaker 5: of that, and I think for a comedy it's necessary
Speaker 5: because it is so much about the rhythm and about
Speaker 5: trying to cut extraneous things when necessary, but also knowing
Speaker 5: when to let a moment be a moment.
Speaker 3: But there's no such thing.
Speaker 5: As perfection with this kind of thing, but it's an
Speaker 5: intuitive led process. And yes, we were thank you to
Speaker 5: everyone out there who saw a cut of the movie
Speaker 5: and weighed in.
Speaker 2: Have you had your premiere?
Speaker 5: Yep, yep. We premiered in Austin at the Austin Film Fest.
Speaker 5: We were opening night and it was a raucous response.
Speaker 5: This is probably the best way to describe it. I'm
Speaker 5: just very grateful and humbled by the response in the room,
Speaker 5: the response afterwards. We're starting to get the early reviews
Speaker 5: and that kind of thing, and it's been awesome letterboxing,
Speaker 5: the funny quips that people have about the movie. Someone
Speaker 5: commented this is a big himbo movie, which I really
Speaker 5: liked that comment actually, because it is so Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: we had a premiere. We have some more stuff upcoming
Speaker 5: as well. That's in the works. Hopefully we'll be able
Speaker 5: to announce soon.
Speaker 2: What was it like for you guys to see this
Speaker 2: with an audience for the first.
Speaker 6: It speaks to the communal experience of theater viewing that
Speaker 6: seems to be lost. But the wonderful thing about more
Speaker 6: comedies being made, right. We were in this dry spell
Speaker 6: of comedies for a very long time. Certainly studios stop
Speaker 6: making comedies, and they seem to be making more now
Speaker 6: they're reinventing it. And that's kind of the nature of comedy, right,
Speaker 6: Like there's some bumps in the road of what's funny,
Speaker 6: what works, what doesn't. But I think comedy is you
Speaker 6: want to You don't want to laugh.
Speaker 2: In your head.
Speaker 6: If you laugh in your house alone, does anyone and
Speaker 6: no one's around.
Speaker 3: To hear you laugh?
Speaker 6: Did you really laugh? Whereas in a theater it's this communal,
Speaker 6: joyful experience. And so so it's nice to see a
Speaker 6: comedy in theaters, and it's nice to be in that
Speaker 6: comedy and watch people laugh at my work, and you know,
Speaker 6: it's a bit of a party. And so it was great.
Speaker 6: It was a great feeling. You worry about these things, right,
Speaker 6: they're your little baby. You pour your heart and soul
Speaker 6: into a very sort of precious egg, right that you
Speaker 6: can't drop, and you got to be really gentle with
Speaker 6: and so you worry, like, how is the egg going
Speaker 6: to play? And is it going to come out scrambled
Speaker 6: or is it still going to be intact, and our
Speaker 6: little egg was really beautifully received. Everybody got everything like
Speaker 6: no one missed a beat, and everyone was surprised by
Speaker 6: the twists and turns, and everyone was very engaged from
Speaker 6: the beginning to the end. It's exactly what you want,
Speaker 6: So couldn't have gone better.
Speaker 2: You're talking about seeing comedies in the theater, which I
Speaker 2: completely agree with your feed off of that energy. The
Speaker 2: last must see in a theater movie that I saw
Speaker 2: also had you in it, which was Oppenheimer. Talk about
Speaker 2: a difference of scope and scale between Oppenheimer and Forelock.
Speaker 3: But mon and tone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, nothing funny about that movie. I'm an eighties kid, right,
Speaker 6: So it was two movies a weekend with my dad,
Speaker 6: who didn't know what else to do with me. He
Speaker 6: had customy custody if me on the weekends, and he would.
Speaker 6: He was like, let's see whatever's out. He took me
Speaker 6: to some crazy movies, nothing too scary and nothing too violent.
Speaker 6: But I saw pretty much every eighties comedy, and I
Speaker 6: just that is such a romantic thing and the it
Speaker 6: shouldn't be nostalgic. It should still be happening and developing
Speaker 6: and evolving now, whether it be because of the pandemic
Speaker 6: or for whatever reason, we've sidetracked into home viewing and streaming,
Speaker 6: and it isn't the same. It is not the same.
Speaker 6: And movies are made to be seen in a movie theater.
Speaker 6: Certainly with Caleb with making this film, writing this script,
Speaker 6: having Roberto Schaeffer and Jim Plannett shoot and light this thing,
Speaker 6: this was meant to be seen in a movie theater,
Speaker 6: and it plays beautifully at home. Sure, movies are meant
Speaker 6: to be seen on a large screen with people around you.
Speaker 6: The movie's funnier if you can if you're not laughing alone.
Speaker 2: When you're talking about nostalgia, and there are elements of
Speaker 2: forelocks that really speak to me as far as screwball comedy.
Speaker 2: So much of the scene in the house, that big
Speaker 2: set piece of the house. He's upstairs, you're downstairs, you're outside,
Speaker 2: he's up all those different things so remind me of
Speaker 2: some of our better screwballs that we have back in
Speaker 2: the thirties and forties. So again I applaud that so much.
Speaker 5: Thank you for picking up on that. That is something
Speaker 5: a lot of people understand them Cowboy jumping off point
Speaker 5: and the sting is in there, and some things from
Speaker 5: the seventies. But I love Lubitsch. I love Billy Wilder,
Speaker 5: especially my dog is named Billy Wilder. I love the
Speaker 5: energy of Screwball. I think that it is it, you know.
Speaker 5: I know the Cohens have some of that in there
Speaker 5: in especially the first half of their career, and I
Speaker 5: love it. I love the idea of just being mad
Speaker 5: cap and raising up the hilarity and the absurdity all
Speaker 5: the way as high as you can in the scale
Speaker 5: and just then letting it fly. I didn't want to
Speaker 5: be too cool for school with this movie and hold back.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to let it be zany. And I
Speaker 5: think that's reflected in the colors and like the bold
Speaker 5: saturation and these primary red blues and yellows, and I
Speaker 5: think it's reflected in the setups and the payoffs and
Speaker 5: in the performances too. And one of the funniest lines
Speaker 5: in the movie is in the bathroom of that house,
Speaker 5: and it's a line with Randy in the bathroom. He
Speaker 5: has some activity in there, and I'm not going to
Speaker 5: spoil it, but it's something that Dave just came up
Speaker 5: with on the spot. And there's another moment leading into
Speaker 5: the chase scene that it was something that just before
Speaker 5: we rolled cameras.
Speaker 3: It was a line I gave to Dave, and.
Speaker 5: I think we had a lot of it is built
Speaker 5: into the script. But when you're in that spirit of play,
Speaker 5: I think you open yourself up to hopefully mining the
Speaker 5: material to even greater depths. So yes, I love the
Speaker 5: films of the thirties and forties, and if there's just
Speaker 5: a little bit of that energy, and for Lock, I'm
Speaker 5: very proud.
Speaker 3: No, you can't be wilder.
Speaker 5: And I think Lubitsch is a lot of his stuff
Speaker 5: is less seen, but Nanatchka and all these things where
Speaker 5: it's about I like mix up humor.
Speaker 3: It's a really silly thing, but when it's pulled.
Speaker 5: Off so satisfying that if they think you're supposed to
Speaker 5: be acting, there actually why people get their wires crossed
Speaker 5: and there's confusion and it's silly stuff, but hopefully it
Speaker 5: does get our shared humanity and we're all a part
Speaker 5: of this human struggle together.
Speaker 2: We kind of pick up on David's egg metaphor from before.
Speaker 2: I know, the chicken is hatched, but now you have
Speaker 2: to nurture it. Now you have to get this movie
Speaker 2: out there, get more people seeing it. You talked about
Speaker 2: getting it out to different festival, different events and things.
Speaker 2: But past that, do you have your next idea? Do
Speaker 2: you know where you're going to go after this one?
Speaker 3: I'm always writing and I have something that I'm zeroing
Speaker 3: in on.
Speaker 5: I can't say too much about it because it's just
Speaker 5: at such a nascent stage, but yeah, we'll We're happy
Speaker 5: to be promoting Forelock. I think we're probably looking at
Speaker 5: some more festivals and doing it that way because we
Speaker 5: do love the audience ground swell and building this buzz.
Speaker 5: And then we would hope for it to be released
Speaker 5: next year, maybe next spring or so. We'll see about
Speaker 5: the details on that and then, yeah, the idea is
Speaker 5: to just get the band back together and make another one.
Speaker 2: David, how about yourself? I know you are always working.
Speaker 2: Where are you going to be up next?
Speaker 6: I'm in that Supergirl movie coming out June twenty sixth,
Speaker 6: twenty twenty six, six six six. That's going to be
Speaker 6: very exciting. I've never been in a superhero film before.
Speaker 6: I've only been this is not a superhero film, but
Speaker 6: it's just following me the whole Superman thing, and so now, yeah,
Speaker 6: I play Supergirl's father. I'm Zorel, brother of Joorrel. Bradley
Speaker 6: Cooper's brother has been established in the Superman film, which
Speaker 6: makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's very exciting.
Speaker 6: I got a couple other things, hopefully a horror film
Speaker 6: I made last year in eight twenty four Horror from
Speaker 6: cler will find its way to theaters, and a couple
Speaker 6: couple other things in the works. So it's plugging along
Speaker 6: as I've done for a long time, and I'm just
Speaker 6: super grateful to still be alive.
Speaker 2: Frankly, I'm glad you are as well. Gentlemen, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for your time today. This was so great
Speaker 2: talking with you. I'm very honored to make your acquaintance.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mike, Thank you, Mike, thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Fast a little speed, and Mollie, you're able to eat
Speaker 7: the tallest.
Speaker 6: People in a little single wound. A poor fool little
Speaker 6: local motive.
Speaker 2: I'm here, I'm.
Speaker 1: There, I'm ever awhell, I'm always around. Well, Hell me
Speaker 1: your Superman, getting your super on, little but ess out
Speaker 1: of tail, helpbody your Superman.
Speaker 2: On, my super cat.
Speaker 1: Take you long. I am wait, Jesus, uncle, step me
Speaker 1: go super Man.
Speaker 6: No damsel in the stress. Now shut the phone booth.
Speaker 6: And I will change for you.
Speaker 2: But he's like you dimple in the dress.
Speaker 6: Now he'll say it.
Speaker 7: But my name super Man, give a swer under the tail,
Speaker 7: super MANA take aver my super hair, take your hand,
Speaker 7: a hand Ma trees on a super.
Speaker 1: Wow that speed burn.
Speaker 4: Where you have to leave me able to leave my
Speaker 4: times coning on im A b that look, I'm here,
Speaker 4: I'm there, I'm getting way going.
Speaker 8: I'm the same my name Superman. I go shop ut
Speaker 8: fucking now chance I care no Superman, Dad, take one.
Speaker 1: Of my Superman call a super wait your man wake
Speaker 1: Caesars go, I'm no Superman.
Speaker 7: Transport. That was being a boy. Cheer my name