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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four fifteen.
Speaker 1: When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit. Rober
Speaker 1: Rodriguez broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when
Speaker 1: we really should be working on that next draft.
Speaker 2: It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
Speaker 2: business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
Speaker 2: screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
Speaker 1: host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
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Speaker 1: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: today on the show, we have Oscar winning producer Cassian
Speaker 1: Ellis and Cassian is an indie film icon to say
Speaker 1: the least. He has produced over one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: feature films in his career that include the two Oscar winners,
Speaker 1: Dallas Buyers Club and Lee Daniels The Butler. Cassie and
Speaker 1: I had a very frank, in raw conversation on what
Speaker 1: it takes to be an independent producer, what it was
Speaker 1: like finally getting up and winning some Oscars for all
Speaker 1: the work he has done over the years, and so
Speaker 1: much more so, without any further ado, please enjoy my
Speaker 1: conversation with Cassie and Ellis. I like to welcome to
Speaker 1: the show, Cassie and Ellis. How you doing, Cassian, I'm
Speaker 1: doing great. Alex, thank you, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show my friend. I know you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of producing seventy five movies this year alone.
Speaker 3: You know, I keep myself busy, which is good. You know.
Speaker 3: I literally wrapped a movie about eight days ago on
Speaker 3: Saturday in Kentucky and then started shooting another one three
Speaker 3: days later on Tuesday here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So you are you do the indie muscle?
Speaker 3: I do? I really do. You got to keep hustling,
Speaker 3: You got to keep trying. You know, you can't give up.
Speaker 3: It's a very difficult thing to make a movie happen.
Speaker 3: But I you know, I'm very drive.
Speaker 1: It, no doubt. I saw your filmography, for God's sake.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been doing it for a while and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, before you get started, thank you
Speaker 1: for making some amazing films in the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: while I was working at the video store. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I was like, oh, I remember that one.
Speaker 1: I remember that this.
Speaker 3: Were the days of Blockbuster. You know, you can go
Speaker 3: down there and go over the racks and look at
Speaker 3: all the ones that that that had multiple copies and
Speaker 3: that a bunch of them were at You could tell
Speaker 3: the success and failure of each one. They were stalking
Speaker 3: and how many that were rented that particular movement. It
Speaker 3: was a different time. You know, the video stars were
Speaker 3: pretty much buying almost anything any and you could just
Speaker 3: make a movie, you know, for three or four hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars and which I you know, did exploitation movies
Speaker 3: and sell them off to cut to companies here in
Speaker 3: America that were looking to try to stop those video shelves.
Speaker 3: And it was a great business real oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and and those vhss were like retail was
Speaker 1: like seventy nine ninety nine.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: It was insane. I mean it was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I always tell people, you have no idea how much
Speaker 1: money you could have was being made in the eighties.
Speaker 3: In the ninth you know, it was interesting. You know,
Speaker 3: I got I got one of the first Beta Max machines.
Speaker 3: So you know, that was because I decided that that
Speaker 3: it was easier to get the Beta max tapes because
Speaker 3: you know, the video stores they would suck some Beta
Speaker 3: Max and some more. Hr very few people that had
Speaker 3: Beta Max machines, but I thought I get one because
Speaker 3: the quality was slightly better at the beginning anyway, and
Speaker 3: then and then I you know, wouldn't have a problem
Speaker 3: being able to write whatever I wanted to see. And
Speaker 3: that's just the share ease of it, being able to
Speaker 3: take a movie home and watch. How people didn't realize
Speaker 3: how incredible that experience was because now, of course, you
Speaker 3: could go online anything you want to see it, see it,
Speaker 3: you know, three seconds later it's up on your screen.
Speaker 3: But that wasn't the case in the in the eighties.
Speaker 3: You know that you really had to get see movies
Speaker 3: in the movie theater and then occasionally they would play
Speaker 3: on network televisi. But you, the advent of the film
Speaker 3: rental business, you know, the the getting getting vh getting
Speaker 3: VHS tapes and beta maxes of movies was incredible. So
Speaker 3: I mean there were literally companies like Restaurant, they were
Speaker 3: just putting out hundreds of hundreds of titles and people
Speaker 3: can yeah, Canon Full Moon, all of them. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: just were making money handover fist on these things and
Speaker 3: and making you know, Tromer loved him, you know, the
Speaker 3: Lloyd's the greatest. You know, I'm always I've always been
Speaker 3: a big admirer of his. But you know, those films
Speaker 3: were horrific, and but people rented.
Speaker 1: Them and he's the first one to say it too.
Speaker 1: I know what he was doing and I was and he's,
Speaker 1: by the way, he's one of the most intelligent people
Speaker 1: ever had on the show.
Speaker 3: And I was the New York Film Film commissioner. You know,
Speaker 3: he's he's a lovely, lovely guy. You know. I always
Speaker 3: would love when ISAs I can. You know, we'd have
Speaker 3: an office on the colosette with the window looking down
Speaker 3: on the cosette and see the Toxic Avenger and the
Speaker 3: whole kind of parade of of his characters going down
Speaker 3: the street. You know, you look at it. God, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, I'm surprised that no one's actually made the
Speaker 3: tox Adventure yet into kind of studio level kind of.
Speaker 1: Action friends like a real like, a real.
Speaker 3: Like I said, a marble ye vers talk.
Speaker 1: You know what's so fascinating. I always tell people that
Speaker 1: in the eighties, you literally if you finished a movie,
Speaker 1: you made money. If you just if you were able
Speaker 1: to finish it, it didn't matter.
Speaker 3: I said. One picture called The Invisible Maniac, and I
Speaker 3: did it with a friend of mine called Adam Rifkin,
Speaker 3: and we both were like talking to each other, and
Speaker 3: we were both completely broke and I said, dude, we
Speaker 3: just need to go out and make a movie, and
Speaker 3: we just need to make something really cheap, and I'll
Speaker 3: get the money quickly for it, and then we'll just
Speaker 3: turn it around. We'll make a bunch of money out
Speaker 3: of it if we can shoot it fast. He goes, well,
Speaker 3: I've got a great idea. I go was that, he goes,
Speaker 3: and he was using the pseudonym of Rif Coogan because
Speaker 3: he didn't, you know, he wanted to have you know,
Speaker 3: he wanted to have a real careers movie maker. And
Speaker 3: we did some films together, thought back in the Chase,
Speaker 3: for example. But you know, he he he said, I
Speaker 3: got this great idea for a movie. It's called The
Speaker 3: Invisible Maniac and it's it's it's kind of an homage
Speaker 3: to the Invisible man And but you know, it's like
Speaker 3: a guy who's janitor in high school go in visibll
Speaker 3: sealed the girls taking that close up in the in
Speaker 3: the in the locker rooms. And the beauty of it
Speaker 3: is we only need to start for a day because
Speaker 3: he's invisible for the rest of the picture. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's brilliant. And we were shooting it
Speaker 3: eleven days later, and we shot the whole movie in
Speaker 3: twelve days. And I was joking around with him the
Speaker 3: other day because it was still president and I said,
Speaker 3: you know, do you remember the last day of shooting,
Speaker 3: we were shooting in this place that was like it
Speaker 3: was at the bottom of Laurel Canyon and Ventura and
Speaker 3: it's now some kind of Korean university, but at the
Speaker 3: time it was like a it was it was like
Speaker 3: a university campus, a small one, and it was being
Speaker 3: used by some foreign university as a staging point in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles for for you know, students that were taking
Speaker 3: the year off, so they had it looked like classrooms
Speaker 3: in there. And on the last night day of shooting,
Speaker 3: we shot for eighteen hours straight, which you know, if
Speaker 3: you make films, you no, that's pretty gnarlly to be
Speaker 3: going for eighteen hours. You know that as each hour
Speaker 3: winds past the twelve hour mark, you're doing less and
Speaker 3: less because everybody's just exhausted and they can't even like
Speaker 3: function anymore. And it's a diminishing return because you're not
Speaker 3: getting that many shots. And the six hours later that
Speaker 3: you've been shooting, and it was our last night, like,
Speaker 3: let's you've got to keep going and get these shots.
Speaker 3: And I said to him, do you remember that the
Speaker 3: last thing? You? I just remember you standing in the
Speaker 3: hallway and there's like the scene where they pulled the
Speaker 3: fire along and you would like, okay, was that shot
Speaker 3: in focus? There was the guy? Cameron was like yes,
Speaker 3: because was it in English? He goes, yes, all right, fine,
Speaker 3: that's you know, good, We're moving on. And that was literally,
Speaker 3: you know, it was it. It was hilarious. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a different kind of filmmaking in those days.
Speaker 3: You know. Really I learned how to make films actually
Speaker 3: in that period? Is that really? So?
Speaker 1: I don't mean interrupted, but is that where you got
Speaker 1: you start? How did you actually get started in this
Speaker 1: in this business?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it sounds kind of privileged, but I
Speaker 3: when I was about ten years old, my mother met
Speaker 3: an American movie producer was in a lot of making
Speaker 3: a film with Warren Beatty called Kaleidoscope. His name was
Speaker 3: Ali Casser, and they fell madly in love and moved
Speaker 3: in together, had two more children. I had two brothers already,
Speaker 3: and then they had two more, my little brother and sister,
Speaker 3: and and they so from from ten years old we
Speaker 3: were suddenly thrown from very normal sorry about that, from
Speaker 3: a very normal existence into this movie existence. We come
Speaker 3: to California and we would see movie stars and meet
Speaker 3: movie stars, go to film sets, and you know, he
Speaker 3: was making films with you know me Missouri Breaks with
Speaker 3: Jack Nixon and Marlon Brando. He you know, did Harper
Speaker 3: with Paul Newman.
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Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: You know it made multiple films with Richard Burton and
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Taylor. So you know that we met all these
Speaker 3: mega movie stars, you know, as kids, and so from
Speaker 3: the by the time I was fifteen, I was desperate
Speaker 3: to do it. I really wanted to do what he
Speaker 3: was doing. You know, one day I'm gonna be like Elliott,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna wake up at two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 3: and yell at people in California on the phone from London.
Speaker 3: And but I don't, ye know, I'm not that person
Speaker 3: he was.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 3: He was quite a yeller. And but he he made
Speaker 3: like sixteen movies or something like that, which I just
Speaker 3: thought was a credible number of movies. You know, I've
Speaker 3: actually finally not made almost twice as many, right, he
Speaker 3: made some really good movies. He made some really good movies,
Speaker 3: and so I would watch. You know, he knew by
Speaker 3: the time I was fifteen or sixteen that I was
Speaker 3: really interested in what he was doing. And I'm not
Speaker 3: sure that I would do this, but he would let
Speaker 3: me go to meetings with him. He was saying, he
Speaker 3: shut up to sit in the corner, and you can
Speaker 3: listen to what I'm saying. I listened to him hustling
Speaker 3: people for money, and so I kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: I understood what the what the game was. And then
Speaker 3: and then, you know, during my vacations, he'd make me
Speaker 3: go work, you know, for a very early age on
Speaker 3: the sets, basically getting tea and making copies of scripts
Speaker 3: and things like that, like really menial jobs. But it
Speaker 3: was good because it was you know, I got exposure
Speaker 3: to have films were being made and see the directors
Speaker 3: working with the actors, and you know, that was that
Speaker 3: was an incredible thing. And then you know, I went
Speaker 3: to college, but I dropped that parents were purious in
Speaker 3: California after I worked on a movie called The Dogs
Speaker 3: of War and had a bit of money and said
Speaker 3: I was staying California. So I get a job, got
Speaker 3: a job, worked for a company called film Waves, which
Speaker 3: was you know, had a success with with a movie
Speaker 3: called Dress to Kill Brandon, the Farmer movie, and and
Speaker 3: and then they all went belly up, ended up being
Speaker 3: sold to a Ryan Pitchers. But by that point, by
Speaker 3: the time I was twenty two or twenty three, my
Speaker 3: stepfather and I had had a rebrush lump and he said, listen,
Speaker 3: why did you come up with an idea of a movie?
Speaker 3: And we'll do it together. And I said, I've got
Speaker 3: a great idea. I just saw this movie called Fast
Speaker 3: Times at Ridgemont High, and I think the idea of
Speaker 3: taking the character Spacoli, the you know, the short pen
Speaker 3: thing and the guy with the pizza and taking that
Speaker 3: kind of superde kind of crazy thing and putting him
Speaker 3: into Oxford University would be a funny fish out of
Speaker 3: waters story. He said, I love that. Let's do it.
Speaker 3: And we developed the script with a guy called Robert
Speaker 3: Baris Bot Bars and uh, and then we made it
Speaker 3: called auxin Blues and brob Love. And it wasn't quite
Speaker 3: what I had in mind, but you know, it was
Speaker 3: more romantic question with the story, and I thought it
Speaker 3: was going to be kind of more kind of wacky,
Speaker 3: funny comedy, but it was. It was a charming movie.
Speaker 3: And he sold it for a lot of money and
Speaker 3: I didn't make any money out of it, which he said,
Speaker 3: but if you make a lot of money at that's
Speaker 3: at this point in your life, you'll never have any
Speaker 3: appreciation of it later. And it was a great lesson
Speaker 3: life lesson.
Speaker 1: So you made you made a lot of film. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you were born into this and you
Speaker 1: we're just ready to roll.
Speaker 3: I was. I mean like a child of an athlete,
Speaker 3: you know, I was ready to do it.
Speaker 1: So then what is it? Because this is the biggest
Speaker 1: question I get from producers? How do you get money?
Speaker 1: How does it change? The difference between raising money in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties versus today's marketplace, which is so
Speaker 1: vastly different.
Speaker 3: Here's the crazy part of it. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: it never changes and it's the same. It's the same.
Speaker 3: Thing is the faces changed, but the the but the
Speaker 3: you know, the posture of the studios for me, the
Speaker 3: faces changed. You know, there's different buyers, different people, different names,
Speaker 3: different companies, different whatever, but the same basic tenant is
Speaker 3: still true, which is that you got to have the package.
Speaker 3: You got to have the script, you got to have
Speaker 3: the idea, you got to have the director, you got
Speaker 3: to have some of the actors, and the money. You know.
Speaker 3: I'm always a great believer that if you you know,
Speaker 3: I I'm crazy. You know, I'm a I'm a complete gambler.
Speaker 3: I find things that I want to do. And I
Speaker 3: just had to start this and I just said about
Speaker 3: it and say, Okay, I'm going to make the movie
Speaker 3: somehow or other, you know, when the chips are down,
Speaker 3: somehow or other, figure it out. And I'm also a
Speaker 3: great believer in making movies for what I can raise,
Speaker 3: meaning that you know, I could say to myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is five million dollar budget, but all I can
Speaker 3: do is raise three million dollars for it. That's the
Speaker 3: best offers that I've got on the table. And I
Speaker 3: got attach credit for you know, half a million dollars.
Speaker 3: So I got to figure out if I could meet
Speaker 3: this actual movie for three and a half million dollars
Speaker 3: instead of five million dollars. So I'm a great believer
Speaker 3: in making films. I know there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: in our business. They get caught up in the idea
Speaker 3: of like, I got to have my seven point three
Speaker 3: two three million dollars.
Speaker 1: Can't make it for a penny less, And you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, come on.
Speaker 3: That's a joke. And you know that that was that
Speaker 3: was a skill set because I have I had a
Speaker 3: whole career in the middle at William Marks. When I
Speaker 3: went around there, the Independent Film Division, just out of
Speaker 3: the blue, they hired me to come and run it
Speaker 3: for them fifteen years. And that's why I was so
Speaker 3: successful for them, is because my mindset as a producer,
Speaker 3: which I brought to the agent, and part of it
Speaker 3: was totally different from anybody else inside the agency. You know,
Speaker 3: they would go, well, my client says, he's got this
Speaker 3: budget for five point three million dollars and he has
Speaker 3: to have five point three million dollars or the film's
Speaker 3: not going to be made. And I'm like, I'm in
Speaker 3: touch with me. Let's meet, let's go over this, let's
Speaker 3: figure it out. And we would go over it together
Speaker 3: and we ended up making some of the greatest inpendent
Speaker 3: films ever made because we weren't worried about the budgets.
Speaker 3: Who were worried about, you know, the quality. Of course,
Speaker 3: you want to make sure that you're not compromising the
Speaker 3: quality of the films. But you know, the cost of
Speaker 3: a movie is relative, and you know, I've seen films
Speaker 3: that cost thirty million dollars that look like absolute garbage
Speaker 3: and seeing films that made that were made for three
Speaker 3: million dollars that look incredible. So it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: the relative costs of films, you know, to their quality
Speaker 3: is not necessarily the perfect ratio.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you the whole, the whole chicken
Speaker 1: and egg thing, which is like, you need the package,
Speaker 1: but you need the money to get the package, and
Speaker 1: you can't get the package without the money unless you
Speaker 1: are someone like yourself who has relationships and you have
Speaker 1: a track record, and you might be able to put things.
Speaker 1: You know, you call up somebody like, oh it's Gossie
Speaker 1: and this is going to go. This is a serious dude.
Speaker 1: But for young producers coming up who might not have
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty films under their belt, how would
Speaker 1: you go about trying to package a film to raise
Speaker 1: money and vice versa.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I always tell people that you know,
Speaker 3: if you know, partner up with somebody who does know
Speaker 3: what they're doing, because you know, the business is about relationships,
Speaker 3: is about how you meet people and how you get
Speaker 3: to know people, how you meet the agents, how you
Speaker 3: meet the people that are making decisions, how you get
Speaker 3: to you know somehow, or the meat actors. You know,
Speaker 3: I've always tried to be very friendly towards the actors
Speaker 3: that I'm working with and hope I'll get to work
Speaker 3: with them again. A good example is Garrett Headlin too.
Speaker 3: I just finished a movie with like mad And while
Speaker 3: we were doing My Band, and just hit it off
Speaker 3: with them right away. He's such a great actor. He
Speaker 3: really is incredible. And uh, and we've tried for three
Speaker 3: and a half years, four years to find another picture
Speaker 3: that we want to do together, and finally found one,
Speaker 3: Desperation Broad, which is a shot. As I said, we
Speaker 3: wrapped it about eight days ago. But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's keep those relationships intact with the people that you're
Speaker 3: working with. You know, if you look through through my
Speaker 3: my biop you'll see that I've worked with lots of
Speaker 3: people multiple times. You know. The trick is is to
Speaker 3: is to keep those relationships going and then as far
Speaker 3: as the financing is concerned, you know, there is keep
Speaker 3: your aid to the grapd as. I said, find somebody
Speaker 3: who actually doesn't know what they to partner out with them,
Speaker 3: because only fifty percent of a film that is actually
Speaker 3: going to go is a lot better than one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of something that's nothing. And you know, so you know,
Speaker 3: people go, I don't want to give away a piece
Speaker 3: of my movie to somebody else, and they all they
Speaker 3: did was make the introduction to the But you know what, honestly,
Speaker 3: if that was the thing that triggered the movie, that
Speaker 3: it's with it. And then at least you have a
Speaker 3: movie under your belt. And so when you call up
Speaker 3: an agent I produced blah blah movie, you actually have
Speaker 3: a movie you've produced, as opposed to saying look I've
Speaker 3: never made a movie before, but I've got this great
Speaker 3: script and I want to make this film. An agent
Speaker 3: so are like, oh yeah, please, all right, everyone's got
Speaker 3: a great script. You know. I can't tell you how
Speaker 3: many times people called me up and said, I've got
Speaker 3: this fantastic script. It's going to win a bunch of Oscars.
Speaker 3: Everyone says that that moviees are gonna win Oscars. How
Speaker 3: many films actually do win oscar It's very few, you know,
Speaker 3: certainly not the ones that there's any really a few
Speaker 3: that came to me that the people pitching that way
Speaker 3: and they ended up winning or be nominated for oscripts
Speaker 3: and so, you know, but that is the drink. That's
Speaker 3: what everybody's looking for. It's there's that golden ticket somehow
Speaker 3: or other. The film that they make, it's going to
Speaker 3: be the one that makes it scores that the the
Speaker 3: what you have to do is keep at it, keep
Speaker 3: making movies, keep doing it because each film that you
Speaker 3: make is another incredible learning curve. And I'm still learning
Speaker 3: and it's you know, many many many movies later, and
Speaker 3: things continue to happen to me that I wasn't expecting
Speaker 3: to be hit with. But I'm very you know, that's
Speaker 3: the other thing for me, is I'm very sad.
Speaker 1: About it all. Oh I can tell I can say
Speaker 1: I can sense your energy already just by talking to you.
Speaker 1: You are a chilled producer. I've talked. I've worked in
Speaker 1: the business for thirty years. I've worked as a director,
Speaker 1: and I've worked with many producers, and I've spoken to
Speaker 1: many producers, and you could tell pretty quickly that you're
Speaker 1: not the guy who's going to be on set yelling.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's moments, but generally speaking that's not the thing,
Speaker 1: and that's the good sign of a good producer. But
Speaker 1: I have to ask you, though, agents, that's one of
Speaker 1: the these not roadblocks, gatekeepers, the gatekeepers of actors. So
Speaker 1: many young producers have problems just getting through. Any tips
Speaker 1: on how to approach an agent of an actor or
Speaker 1: a director or even a writer when you're a young producer.
Speaker 3: Well, interesting thing. As I said, I was an agent.
Speaker 3: I worked to William Morris for fifteen years, so I
Speaker 3: got to work see the inner working City agency very
Speaker 3: closely because I was, you know, as the head of
Speaker 3: a department, so you know, be in the apartment, have meetings.
Speaker 3: I would be involved in a lot of the decision
Speaker 3: making in terms of what was going on inside the agency.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
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Speaker 3: I was, and I was working on you know, twenty
Speaker 3: five movies a year, a lot of films. Anything that
Speaker 3: was not a studio one hundred percent of studio movie
Speaker 3: was something that I would work on of meaning that
Speaker 3: if there was a studio film but it was partially
Speaker 3: financed by independent film financing, by some big company that
Speaker 3: was going to co finance with the studio. They would
Speaker 3: bring me in to help to help figure out how
Speaker 3: to make those deals. So I really did watch the
Speaker 3: whole way that the agencies operated inside the studio filmmaking
Speaker 3: business and also inside the independent film making business, you know,
Speaker 3: and I hope actually that I've influenced quite a bit
Speaker 3: the way the agencies now operate inside the independent film space,
Speaker 3: because they are basically copied the formula that I came
Speaker 3: up with of how to do it. But you know,
Speaker 3: some projects would come from people that you didn't know
Speaker 3: or had never heard heard of, but somehow or rather
Speaker 3: they got that script in front of somebody. Now they
Speaker 3: maybe they met somebody in a bar or a restaurant,
Speaker 3: and they've given the script to an actor. An actor
Speaker 3: read it and said, oh, it's pretty good. I'd like
Speaker 3: to do this. And then the first thing they do
Speaker 3: is call the agents say, look, I don't know this agent,
Speaker 3: this producer from Adam, but the script was actually pretty good.
Speaker 3: I'd like to do it, or I'd be interested in
Speaker 3: doing it. So there was there were lots of different
Speaker 3: ways that people would get into the game. Another one
Speaker 3: was that they would make friends at parties with agents assistants,
Speaker 3: and the agent's assistant would read the script and say
Speaker 3: to that boss, I read the script. That's really good.
Speaker 3: You know, look, all the agents really want is to
Speaker 3: make great movies. Now that doesn't always happen, and our
Speaker 3: business has changed so much now that it's fact, it's
Speaker 3: it's read. The great movies are being made the mostly
Speaker 3: a studio factory pictures that are some copy of another
Speaker 3: picture that's already been done, or a sequel or a
Speaker 3: prequel or another but that they brought the rights to
Speaker 3: using the meta verse of that or the universe of
Speaker 3: that character to spin off a bunch of garbage that
Speaker 3: it looks the same as the one that you just saw.
Speaker 3: But you know, the great and the great movies that
Speaker 3: are being made are being made within the independent film
Speaker 3: sector and in the international independent film sector. And uh
Speaker 3: and so that you know again that was trying to
Speaker 3: get those scripts in front of directors. Directches would would
Speaker 3: meet people in the most random ways to redescript and
Speaker 3: go yeah, I like that. So I would say, don't
Speaker 3: give up again. Try to find somebody who does know
Speaker 3: people that is that you are sympathetic with and that
Speaker 3: or somebody go with and that you guys you know
Speaker 3: or women team up together to make something come together.
Speaker 3: It all comes down to the same thing always. It's
Speaker 3: been that. It's been the golden rule from the day
Speaker 3: I started. It's about the screenplay. If you've got a
Speaker 3: great piece of material, I'm a great believer that that movie,
Speaker 3: that script will somehow or rather find its way into
Speaker 3: the hands of the right people to be made. Because
Speaker 3: there's so few scripts that are out there that are
Speaker 3: really fantastic. And and if if your script, your friend
Speaker 3: who wrote it, you have a fantastic piece of material,
Speaker 3: then you know, then you've got a chance. You got
Speaker 3: a chance that a director will read of the interest,
Speaker 3: You got a chance to an active reader of be interested.
Speaker 3: You got a chance that other producers would read it
Speaker 3: and say, we'd like to be involved, the financing company
Speaker 3: would like to be involved. You know, there are many
Speaker 3: when you have something that feels like it's a movie
Speaker 3: and it's a real movie, a lot of people will
Speaker 3: appear out of the woodwork. Pop will help get the thumba.
Speaker 1: Now, I'd love to hear your point of view on this,
Speaker 1: because the film independent film space specifically and and cinemaon
Speaker 1: in general, has been devalued so dramatically by the streamers,
Speaker 1: where now on Amazon you're getting fractions of a penny
Speaker 1: for an hour long play. And and you know, in
Speaker 1: the and we were talking about the video store days,
Speaker 1: there was a value there. There was a value went
Speaker 1: to the theater. Then you would maybe you know, rent
Speaker 1: it or it was a seventy nine ninety nine product
Speaker 1: that you would give the video stores then sell through.
Speaker 1: There was still a twenty dollars value there. Then a
Speaker 1: rental was too, so there was and then it just
Speaker 1: kept getting diminished, diminished, diminished. Even when Tivad showed up
Speaker 1: on iTunes, it was still kind of the model of
Speaker 1: the rentals. But now films are you know, almost almost
Speaker 1: doesn't have the value. It's the same thing that happened
Speaker 1: to music. Before it was an album, then it was
Speaker 1: a single. And now you know, Beyonce is not making
Speaker 1: a whole lot of money on Spotify. Not that I'm
Speaker 1: she's hurting, but you know that the idea is it's
Speaker 1: the devaluization of art. How can a producer in today's world,
Speaker 1: you know, without the connections like maybe you have with
Speaker 1: output deals and maybe pre sales and things like that
Speaker 1: that are automatic make money with an independent film, especially
Speaker 1: in this in the genres that you'd like to play
Speaker 1: in dramas well.
Speaker 3: That's a very good question, and I, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: struggled through it every day because you know, I see
Speaker 3: the market changing constantly. You know. Part of the problem
Speaker 3: with the streaming companies is that they're making all these series,
Speaker 3: so it's just so much material. It's appearing, this new
Speaker 3: material that's appearing every week or every month on their
Speaker 3: platforms that are endless. You know, there's eight hours of
Speaker 3: this and ten hours of that. Six hours you know.
Speaker 3: So and also with recognizable movie stars because you know,
Speaker 3: during that COVID period when when a lot of films
Speaker 3: weren't being made, there was a lot of streaming platforms
Speaker 3: that were making television shows and they were hiring bona
Speaker 3: fide movie stars. You know, the mayor of East East
Speaker 3: Way or whatever it was. The one Weld Go with
Speaker 3: with Kate Winsley was like a movie, but it was
Speaker 3: fantastic for six hours, eight hours a movie really good.
Speaker 3: So you know, they are making and competing in the
Speaker 3: independent film circuit because they're making films, they're making television
Speaker 3: shows that look like independent movies, and so yeah, it's
Speaker 3: getting harder. But again, I don't want to give up
Speaker 3: because I've believe in what I'm doing. I don't want
Speaker 3: to give up and just say, okay, it's all over
Speaker 3: the streaming companies that just making you know, independent movies
Speaker 3: that look like in the end of movies are eight
Speaker 3: hours long. That's okay. You know, you know, you just
Speaker 3: got again keep making something that turns out to be
Speaker 3: really good. And I just made a pitchure called Robots
Speaker 3: that is a comedy futuristic romantic comedy with a wonderful
Speaker 3: British comedian called Jack Whitehall and a fact is American
Speaker 3: actress Chylean Woodley. It was directed by Anne Hines and
Speaker 3: Casper Christiansen. He's Casper's the sort of Larry David Denmark
Speaker 3: his long running show called Clan that he writes, directs
Speaker 3: and stars and it is a kind of a Larry
Speaker 3: David Danish David and Ann Hines is Stasha Baron Cohone's guy.
Speaker 3: He's been writing with him since Sally g He's written
Speaker 3: everything and was not ready for Academy Awards for four
Speaker 3: at one and two and the movie's fantastic, and I
Speaker 3: think it has a chance to really work. And it's
Speaker 3: been acquired by one of the one of the top
Speaker 3: independent film distribution companies. I can't say who yet because
Speaker 3: they haven't made lass on it. But that movie has
Speaker 3: a shot. That movie has a real shot, and it
Speaker 3: has a shot to continue to have sequels and prequels
Speaker 3: for it, because the funny, funny idea. And so you know,
Speaker 3: he gotta you got to keep keep plugging away.
Speaker 1: And and there's no easy answer, is there?
Speaker 3: No? There isn't you know. I I just made a
Speaker 3: pitt called Desperation wrote as I said, I wanted to
Speaker 3: work with Garrett Hadlin. I've been very involved in gender
Speaker 3: politics over the last few you know, several years, programs
Speaker 3: that promote female directors and female writers. One with a Blacklist,
Speaker 3: one one that I set up myself with Christine Michael,
Speaker 3: and that how my partners in cool a Rising uh
Speaker 3: and we we bring uh the directors that you know,
Speaker 3: female directors that out of colleges across the country to
Speaker 3: some instrumental ships. So this picture of Desperation Road is
Speaker 3: directed by a woman. I've worked on one movie with her.
Speaker 3: It was Tiny six hundred thousand dollars movie that was incredible,
Speaker 3: and I put her into this or wanted her to
Speaker 3: direct it, and we assembled a great cast for it.
Speaker 3: You know, how do we make money from that? I'm
Speaker 3: not sure because we haven't really made any money from
Speaker 3: it yet, any of us. But we will because it's
Speaker 3: going to turn out to be a good movie. And
Speaker 3: you know, we will work for lim money upfront, but
Speaker 3: we all gambled on it. So you know, that's the
Speaker 3: other part of it is that you know, if you're
Speaker 3: coming into this business because you're going to make some
Speaker 3: huge score, don't chase the money. Money ain't going to
Speaker 3: be there. You got to chase a great product. And
Speaker 3: if you grit make a product, I hate to use
Speaker 3: that way, it's not a product. So that's how the
Speaker 3: studio is a few movies. But if you make great movies,
Speaker 3: the money will come to you somehow or other. I
Speaker 3: really do believe that. And you know it may not
Speaker 3: be on that movie, but it'll come on the next one.
Speaker 3: And you know, you've got to try to keep making
Speaker 3: something great because you know, if you're just coming to
Speaker 3: like make some huge score, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: You know, you might get lucky, but it's not certainly
Speaker 3: not in pendent film business, not gonna make some huge
Speaker 3: score up front and make a big score at the
Speaker 3: back end if it works, if it turns out to
Speaker 3: a good film.
Speaker 1: So you're speaking of the back end, which is you know,
Speaker 1: that's the long running joke, like you know, have you
Speaker 1: ever made any money off off a point?
Speaker 3: And and.
Speaker 1: It's one of the it's one of those things. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to.
Speaker 3: Ask you that the studios most created part of the
Speaker 3: studios in their accounting departments.
Speaker 1: Oh brilliant, Which brings me to my next question. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that every movie that you've ever made has been
Speaker 1: sold to a reputable distributor who get your payments and
Speaker 1: reports on time every time, and you've been paid all.
Speaker 1: He's choking ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: I am, So how do you deal with that?
Speaker 1: Over about it? Yeah? I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't. I'm not trying to work for the back ends,
Speaker 3: although on some films I have gotten big back liken
Speaker 3: on the Butler, you know, it's huge, but that.
Speaker 1: Was a bit that was a studio film, though, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, it was it was Weinstein's.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 1: and now back to the show. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: released that it was really spiky, but.
Speaker 3: Now bankruptcy and I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 3: with that, of course, but you know, the movie is
Speaker 3: a really good movie, and it was. It was so
Speaker 3: successful it was hard to hide it all, although they
Speaker 3: did that best and uh, but you know they it was.
Speaker 3: It was made as an in pad of movies. So
Speaker 3: when we made the deal with them, it was a
Speaker 3: very aggressive deal for us, by I like to take
Speaker 3: some credit for that because I know what I'm doing
Speaker 3: in that area, and we made an extremely aggressive deal
Speaker 3: for the people that are invested in it, and they
Speaker 3: all made a lot of money out of which I
Speaker 3: am very happy about it. But yeah, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not in the game of like waiting for the back ends.
Speaker 3: I hope that they'll come, but that's not necessarily the
Speaker 3: way that I think about making films. I think about
Speaker 3: making a film for X and selling it for Y,
Speaker 3: which is more than what it costs. And that's the
Speaker 3: way we try to make move money from the films
Speaker 3: that we're making and the penophons that we're making. So
Speaker 3: it's not it's not about back end. It's necessarily orth that.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it comes to that you can't sell the movie
Speaker 3: for anything, you know, close to what you really wanted.
Speaker 3: So you make some deal where you can progress it
Speaker 3: back in and you hope that the movie performs. But
Speaker 3: you know, as you said, the business is constantly evolving,
Speaker 3: is changing. You know, the day and date, which was
Speaker 3: at one point it was unknown, you know, was never
Speaker 3: wasn't being used at all, is now become the norm.
Speaker 3: You know. One of the first, one of the first
Speaker 3: movies that ever was a success on the day and
Speaker 3: date release was a movie I did call Margin Call
Speaker 3: And which was a wonderful picture. At the time, we
Speaker 3: were sort of pressing like, oh my god, it's not
Speaker 3: gonna be great for the movie because we're going to
Speaker 3: come out of day and date on it. And then
Speaker 3: you know, uh, we got very lucky because two weeks
Speaker 3: before the film got released that way Wall Street, you know,
Speaker 3: the whole kind of Wall Street whatever that thing was called.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, they were all like, you know, if you
Speaker 3: want to know what what that whole thing is about,
Speaker 3: you got to see this movie because it explains it
Speaker 3: very well. And uh and so, yeah, there was a
Speaker 3: huge success, and after that a lot of people started
Speaker 3: using the d platform. Now it's the norm for andependent
Speaker 3: films because you know, they realized that if you're going
Speaker 3: to spend a bunch of advertising on the film, you
Speaker 3: might as well get it into many different acts to
Speaker 3: the consumer and as many different ways as you can
Speaker 3: imagine what you're spending the advertising and so and so
Speaker 3: that that's become the normal because in the past, within
Speaker 3: the old days, old days, you know, in the eighties
Speaker 3: and nineties and the early two thousands, you know, you
Speaker 3: release the movie independently, it played for six weeks, then
Speaker 3: you release it on DVD, and then you spend a
Speaker 3: bunch more money from the DVD release, and then you would,
Speaker 3: you know, do the pay television and then Sony, you know,
Speaker 3: Showtime or HBO or ever bought that window would do
Speaker 3: a bunch of advertising for the film on their platforms. So,
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's all changed. People will realize that that,
Speaker 3: you know, why are we spending all this money three
Speaker 3: different buckets, spending money on promoting a film. You might
Speaker 3: as well just spend it all in one go and
Speaker 3: put it into every single hand that we can find,
Speaker 3: whether it's on a movie screen at home, on that computer,
Speaker 3: or on the television screen, or in the DVDs at
Speaker 3: red Box and the supermarket. Might as well get it
Speaker 3: all out at the same time and get people buying
Speaker 3: as many copies of that movie as you possibly can
Speaker 3: all in one go.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the Butler, that year wasn't a bad
Speaker 1: year for you, because I see another movie came out
Speaker 1: that You're Dallas Buyers Club, which on paper seems like
Speaker 1: a very successful, wildly well known. Like it doesn't as
Speaker 1: a pitch, you know, it's not a feel good movie,
Speaker 1: but it's a fantastic film. And I know I heard
Speaker 1: the script had been bumping around for what a decade
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, it was a movie I was
Speaker 3: desperately I loved. I thought it was absolutely incredible when
Speaker 3: I first read it. I was an agent at that time.
Speaker 3: I worked on a tiny film called Everything Put Together
Speaker 3: with a guy called Mark Foster, and then Foster and
Speaker 3: I had gotten to be friends, even though I didn't
Speaker 3: represent him, and we worked on his second pitcher, Monster's Ball,
Speaker 3: and which then became a huge success. And it was
Speaker 3: a little budget movie a little budget movie, but it
Speaker 3: became halle Berry won the Oscar for it. And then
Speaker 3: I said to him, Mark, well come on, what's the
Speaker 3: next one. And he goes, well, I just read the
Speaker 3: script that's Incredibles called Dallas by its book, and I
Speaker 3: read I was like, well, this is a really good script.
Speaker 3: Bot it's very risky, risky because it was batty and
Speaker 3: that ten years you know, it's not fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: Twenty years ago, it was still very you know, A's
Speaker 3: was still very much a risky subject matter. And so
Speaker 3: we I said, listen, you need to get a real
Speaker 3: movie star for this. He goes like, who I go,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like Brad Pitt. Two weeks later he
Speaker 3: comes back to Brad Piston to do it. And this
Speaker 3: is a long story, but I won't go into it
Speaker 3: because I tell this story a few times. But basically,
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt and his team sold us script to the Universal.
Speaker 3: They developed it for ten years, nothing happened, and then
Speaker 3: there's a rule came into place at Universal that that
Speaker 3: if a film isn't made for ten years, the writer
Speaker 3: has the right to get the script back for a
Speaker 3: year and see if they could set it up elsewhere
Speaker 3: because they don't want the writers to never have a
Speaker 3: shot to get that movie made. And so the script
Speaker 3: came back to the original writers. And I was making
Speaker 3: a movie called The Paperboy with Matthew McConaughey and I
Speaker 3: didn't know him, so I was chatting him up and
Speaker 3: I was like, if you found your next picture, goes yeah,
Speaker 3: I have I go what is it now? This is
Speaker 3: ten years later. He goes to film call the Dallas
Speaker 3: Briers Club and I'm like fuck, and I pulled a producer.
Speaker 3: Sorry my bad language. I closed producer Robbie Brenner. She
Speaker 3: was a friend. I checked in with her over the years.
Speaker 3: She's like, yeah, I was going to do it, ran
Speaker 3: God's thing. I think, then it's going to be the
Speaker 3: guy that you know, this director that he wants to
Speaker 3: do with. And it never happened, you know, and Universal
Speaker 3: developed like five different versions of the script, one point
Speaker 3: thing just developing it as the cops who are chasing them,
Speaker 3: which is ridiculous. And I said, I said, Robbie, what's
Speaker 3: happening When she said, I've got this great director call
Speaker 3: Chan Mattevallet, and he's going to do it and we're
Speaker 3: shooting in Canada. We raised all the money and sent
Speaker 3: me eight million dollars film and you know, we're going
Speaker 3: to do it. And I was like, I said, bum back,
Speaker 3: because I really wanted to do that script. I love
Speaker 3: I loved it. And then, as luck would have it,
Speaker 3: about three months later, the agent who had worked with
Speaker 3: me on The Butler called me up and said, you
Speaker 3: can't believe this. I go what she said, The Dallas
Speaker 3: Bias Club just fell apart. The people in Canada were
Speaker 3: financing capt finance it, and you know, and so this
Speaker 3: this is also a famous stories out in the Wrap.
Speaker 3: I've written this as a story. So you go on
Speaker 3: to the Wrap to find how I raised money five
Speaker 3: days that they basically told me I had five days
Speaker 3: to come up with the money. Both forget it and
Speaker 3: I did the money in five days for the Thumb,
Speaker 3: which was insane, but I you know, I got I
Speaker 3: was making a movie called eight then Buddy Saints with
Speaker 3: David Lowry, and I got that crew that was there
Speaker 3: at in Louisiana to stay on and go go to
Speaker 3: it straight to New Orleans. And you know, we said
Speaker 3: that we we shot that whole picture of New Orleans
Speaker 3: and there was all set in Texas and I, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a fabulous Matthew Conney and Jared Letter are fabulous,
Speaker 3: you know. Interesting enough on that picture, Jean mart you
Speaker 3: know who's he tragically died last year. He wanted to
Speaker 3: use this guy, Ezra Miller to play the part that
Speaker 3: Jared about playing, and I was nervous because I don't
Speaker 3: really live who was from. I said, please, let's use
Speaker 3: Jared Letter. I've worked on a picture with him before
Speaker 3: and I was a huge fan of his. And uh,
Speaker 3: you know the U and I and the director said, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't won, and there was a lot of having
Speaker 3: and horror. But in the end I set up a
Speaker 3: zoom because Jared was touring, we couldn't do it meet
Speaker 3: face to face with Jean Mott, so he came onto
Speaker 3: the zoom in full costume and at the end shot
Speaker 3: Jean and at the end Jean matt was like, yeah, fine, okay,
Speaker 3: And he won the Oscar, which is you know incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so did Matthew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that movie was something very dear in
Speaker 3: near to me. And I, you know, I got to
Speaker 3: work with Jim Seamus, who Brand Focused at that time,
Speaker 3: and you know, it was it was a who I
Speaker 3: have a big admirer of is he produced some of
Speaker 3: the greatest films in the end films ever in the
Speaker 3: prior ten years, and he was running focused at that point.
Speaker 3: He got the movie and you know, it was it was,
Speaker 3: it was. It worked that That's the beauty of that picture.
Speaker 3: It worked.
Speaker 1: So after doing so many projects. I mean, as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: I think, no matter what you do, there's always that
Speaker 1: day on set that the entire world is coming crashing
Speaker 1: down around you and you feel like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to be able to make
Speaker 1: it through today. What was that day for you on
Speaker 1: any of your projects and how did you overcome it?
Speaker 3: I have every day every single movie that I worked on,
Speaker 3: of course everything, every single day that I'm shooting, it's like,
Speaker 3: how are we going to make the state? How are
Speaker 3: we going to make the state? You know film I
Speaker 3: just finished. We shot the movie in sixteen days. Now
Speaker 3: that that was kind of a record except insane. That
Speaker 3: means the shooting six pages a day, and you know,
Speaker 3: it was the any way that we could figure out
Speaker 3: how to actually get the movie made with the money
Speaker 3: that we had. You know, each day is like a nightmare,
Speaker 3: and then you're worrying the whole time, is anybody going
Speaker 3: to get COVID's it going to get shut down? On
Speaker 3: a movie two summers ago with Aaronet cart Or eighteen
Speaker 3: months ago called Rumbels Through the Dark turned out to
Speaker 3: be a fabulous movie with these two young directors brothers
Speaker 3: who wrote it, directed it, co directed it. But on
Speaker 3: the fourth day of shooting, this was the height of COVID.
Speaker 3: They had twenty two cases on the set. The movie
Speaker 3: got shut down for two weeks. Everybody split. You know,
Speaker 3: it was quite hairy trying to get everybody and come back.
Speaker 3: You know, that took a lot of negotiation with all
Speaker 3: the various parties, included the actors, and we didn't start
Speaker 3: shooting again until about six weeks later.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which was, you know, nightmarish, and the movie turned
Speaker 3: out to be fantastic. For the story behind the making
Speaker 3: of it was very difficult. So, yeah, every single movie
Speaker 3: there's some kind of story. Everyone's got the war stories
Speaker 3: of what they went through. Oh yeah, multiple war stories
Speaker 3: from all of them. But I you know, I'm a
Speaker 3: sucker for films. So I keep doing it, you know,
Speaker 3: keep I keep pushing this. I want to do it,
Speaker 3: and I kind of you know my family. I have
Speaker 3: two daughters, you both want to be in the movie business.
Speaker 3: And I old this one and I just produced a
Speaker 3: movie together with Bella Thorne this summer. They they tell
Speaker 3: people that I actually thrive on the disasters, that that
Speaker 3: I look forward to the disasters on the shops because
Speaker 3: that's where I really come into my own. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's necessarily true, but I am very,
Speaker 3: very good in those disastrous situations in terms of trying
Speaker 3: to stay calm, figure out what the what what we
Speaker 3: should actually do. And since I'm extremely experienced, I've seen
Speaker 3: a lot of it. You know, think that touch one.
Speaker 3: I've never actually killed anybody on a set, you know,
Speaker 3: that's the west case scenario. But the people have been injured,
Speaker 3: you know, it's the filmmaking can be dangerous sometimes, but
Speaker 3: it's uh, but they recovered fine. You know. It's it's
Speaker 3: not easy making with helps and it's not easy making.
Speaker 1: But how do you deal with the stress?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: I mean this, it's so stress when you've made.
Speaker 3: So many well, like I said, I you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'm allowed to say this. In the
Speaker 3: early part of my career, before I became an eage
Speaker 3: ice spent a lot of week.
Speaker 1: It's twenty twenty two. Yeah, you could say that I
Speaker 1: was you know.
Speaker 3: I get very you know, I get stone when there
Speaker 3: was a disaster, which I realized later on probably wasn't
Speaker 3: a good idea because it wasn't necessarily Oh, I've got
Speaker 3: a great idea, Let's do this. You know, I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 3: but no, it is very, very stressful, very stressful. As
Speaker 3: I've gotten older, I've realized that that there is going
Speaker 3: to be enormous, amassive stress all the time. And you know,
Speaker 3: the film I did with Bella Thorne that I was
Speaker 3: mentioning that my daughter produced, we were three weeks out.
Speaker 3: I was prepping the movie with my own money, and
Speaker 3: we still didn't have the male star for the film,
Speaker 3: and the distribution company that was by the film said, look,
Speaker 3: I think we're out of ideas that people are put
Speaker 3: in this movie. So I went back to one of
Speaker 3: the ideas that they had had prior to sad note
Speaker 3: of me, Ryan Philippe, and I called him up and
Speaker 3: I said and I know him really well, and I said, right,
Speaker 3: you have to do this for me. I'm going to
Speaker 3: pay a lot of money for five days. Got to
Speaker 3: come and do this. And I know you want to
Speaker 3: direct this other film. I'm aware of the horror pitch.
Speaker 3: If you're interested in directing, I will make that movie.
Speaker 3: You just got to come and do this movie with me.
Speaker 3: And he can't say the film. So you know that
Speaker 3: that that was a very stressful situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's they don't tell you that in
Speaker 1: film school. I mean the amount of stress that you
Speaker 1: do on one movie, but you are doing You've made,
Speaker 1: you continuously made four, five, six, I'm working on.
Speaker 3: Between four and six a year, which is literally shooting
Speaker 3: a movie every two months. And uh, and the stress
Speaker 3: levels are very high.
Speaker 1: And then I mean you got a system. You got
Speaker 1: a system. I'm assuming, Well, it's.
Speaker 3: Kind of you know, then you're you know, while you're
Speaker 3: shooting the films, you're actually delivering the ones that you've
Speaker 3: already just made, ones that you're editing, the ones you
Speaker 3: just made, delivering the ones that you made like six
Speaker 3: months before. You know, it's a it's a constant stream,
Speaker 3: you know. And one friend who said that it's like
Speaker 3: an assembly line for you, and you know that might
Speaker 3: be true to that too.
Speaker 1: Do you have a core group of collaborators that you've
Speaker 1: been using on post houses?
Speaker 3: And yeah, you know what with everybody? So I figured
Speaker 3: out which ones are the good guys, guys, you know,
Speaker 3: I I have a I do have a support system.
Speaker 3: They don't work for me, but they still work with
Speaker 3: me if I find the right things to work with
Speaker 3: them on. And so each film is like mission impossible.
Speaker 3: It's like picking the right people for each things you've
Speaker 3: been you know, if you accept, if you choose to
Speaker 3: accept this mission to come with me. And I have
Speaker 3: great line producers that I work with. I'm now working
Speaker 3: with the best line producer I've ever worked. It's Italian
Speaker 3: and women and I've I've never worked with somebody so good.
Speaker 3: And she is hilarious to me because she's a chainsmoker.
Speaker 3: And I feel like I'm in a an Italian seventies movie.
Speaker 3: When I'm around here all the time.
Speaker 1: Is gonna pop out in a second.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So I feel like I'm in the in
Speaker 3: a spaghetti western, you know, and which I love, you know,
Speaker 3: because making it a bet of films is God. There's
Speaker 3: there's a history to it, you know, there is a
Speaker 3: real history to it, and it makes me think about
Speaker 3: the history of what we're doing. You know, there were
Speaker 3: some incredible filmmakers that have been behind me, and there'll
Speaker 3: be some incredib filmmakers in front of me. You know,
Speaker 3: I want to make films. People say, well, what do
Speaker 3: you want to do, And it's hard to say, I
Speaker 3: want to do this kind of movie. I want to
Speaker 3: do something that I haven't done before. I want to
Speaker 3: do something that I feel like will actually outlive me later,
Speaker 3: you know, like Butler and Dallas will be films that
Speaker 3: will be talked about a long time after I'm gone.
Speaker 3: And that makes me excited because that means that somehow
Speaker 3: or other did something that actually become became part of
Speaker 3: the zeitgeist as opposed to just being another title. You know,
Speaker 3: you can switch on your pay per view, which I'm
Speaker 3: sure you do and a lot of people do, and
Speaker 3: you scroll down the films that are available, the new
Speaker 3: titles that are out this week, and you click on
Speaker 3: the one that you want to see. You know, you
Speaker 3: want to you don't want to just be part of
Speaker 3: the cannon fodder. You want to be the one that
Speaker 3: people like, oh man, I'd like to watch that movie again.
Speaker 3: You know, ten years later or five years later. Those
Speaker 3: are the films you want to be making. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't do it every time, it's very rare, but
Speaker 3: that you do do it. I mean that year that
Speaker 3: you're talking about was incredible because Custner I worked on
Speaker 3: anything body says. You know, it was like it was
Speaker 3: like the year of living dangerously for me. I literally
Speaker 3: kept throwing sevens. It was incredible. It was, you know, fabulous,
Speaker 3: fabulous year. They didn't come along that often, but when
Speaker 3: they do, you got to enjoy the right. And you know,
Speaker 3: My band was that kind of year for me too.
Speaker 3: When we made My Band, you know, I got nominated
Speaker 3: for three Academy Awards Netflix Sport. It was one of
Speaker 3: the first acquisitions as an Awards worn the picture for them.
Speaker 3: They were willing to spend a lot of money on
Speaker 3: it because they never had a film that they wanted
Speaker 3: to mostly uscars before. They treated us like I've never
Speaker 3: been treated in my entire life. I mean literally being
Speaker 3: picked up by limos every night, take it to the
Speaker 3: screening in the first class flights to London, and the
Speaker 3: like it was. It was fabulous because as an independent filmmaker,
Speaker 3: I go coach.
Speaker 1: You know, I always wait a minute, do you mean
Speaker 1: to tell me that independent filmmakers aren't just loaded with
Speaker 1: cash all the time?
Speaker 3: No? Are you kidding? Mean this? Listen, if I really
Speaker 3: want to make some real money, I'd be doing something else.
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 1: I always tell people like how it was that the
Speaker 1: old joke, how do how do you become a millionaire
Speaker 1: in the film business? Start with a billion?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so true. That's that that that that's not
Speaker 3: You don't go into it for the money. You go
Speaker 3: into it for the love and and you hope that
Speaker 3: the money will come along during the way.
Speaker 1: Path. So another question I'd love to hit your perspective elements.
Speaker 1: What do you look for in a film director when
Speaker 1: you're packaging the project? What are some of the elements?
Speaker 3: Okay, well, first of all, you got to have seen
Speaker 3: that films that they've already made. You've got to understand
Speaker 3: what it is that there that they're there, their vision,
Speaker 3: you know what, what what are they capable of? And
Speaker 3: then you've got to listen very closely. You listen really
Speaker 3: closely when they come to tell me what they're going
Speaker 3: to do, because you know, I can tell in five
Speaker 3: minutes if they have no idea what they're doing, and
Speaker 3: I can tell them five minutes if they're going to
Speaker 3: make something great. Uh. If I like the material, I
Speaker 3: like the way they're talking about it, and I like
Speaker 3: the way that that that they're you know, that they're
Speaker 3: thinking about it, and the actors that they kind of
Speaker 3: want to work with, you know, the way that they
Speaker 3: want to make it, where they want to shoot it.
Speaker 3: All those things. Those are all kind of secondary on
Speaker 3: some levels. It's got to be a bad understanding their
Speaker 3: passion and understanding their ability to deliver what they're saying
Speaker 3: that they're going to deliver by watching what they've done already.
Speaker 3: So I think that's that's what I'm looking for directors
Speaker 3: all the time. It's not necessarily then, of course, there
Speaker 3: are directors that that I hear about or like to
Speaker 3: work with, made multiple films, and I hear something negative,
Speaker 3: something pause. I don't really care about any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: My own experiences with people are totally different from other
Speaker 3: people's experiences with them. I run a very different kind
Speaker 3: of shift from a lot of other producers, and I
Speaker 3: think that's why some of these filmmakers gravitate towards me. Now,
Speaker 3: as I've gotten older, I tend to find that there's
Speaker 3: a lot of young directors coming up because you know,
Speaker 3: they're the ones that want to work with me. You know,
Speaker 3: the guys that are big star directors have a career,
Speaker 3: they don't you know, they can pick up the phone book.
Speaker 3: It's that I'm going to make this and you know,
Speaker 3: Quentin Tarantina. They don't need me to make pictures with
Speaker 3: the producer, movie so the film director. So I mainly
Speaker 3: been working withever the last few years. Are the ones
Speaker 3: that are coming up that really need me. All the
Speaker 3: older ones who can who are struggling and uh and
Speaker 3: need some energy behind them to figure out how to
Speaker 3: change that careers and start over. So that that tends
Speaker 3: to be the types of directors. And I'll work with
Speaker 3: as I said, I'll work with any level of director.
Speaker 3: I just got to make sure that I understand what
Speaker 3: it is that they're going to do and that we're
Speaker 3: on the same page.
Speaker 1: Now, if you could go back to your younger self
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this journey as a Prome producer,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 3: Can tell by the way, this is a good one.
Speaker 3: I can think, what.
Speaker 1: Would you what's the one thing you would say, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, did you not go for a hell
Speaker 1: of a ride? But this just watch out for this
Speaker 1: one thing. We'll be right back after a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and now back to the show. Wow, a
Speaker 1: really good question, Thank you.
Speaker 3: No, sure, I you know, I'm not sure what the
Speaker 3: answer is to that, because, you know, I don't think
Speaker 3: that I would want to alter the way that I
Speaker 3: approached any of the films that I worked on by
Speaker 3: having some hindsight to what I what I learned later on.
Speaker 3: I think that each film, this might sound like a
Speaker 3: pad answer, but it's really not. Each film I learned
Speaker 3: something new about myself. I learned something about my own abilities.
Speaker 3: I learned something about my persistence, I learned something about
Speaker 3: my my my my taste level. Each film is really
Speaker 3: something that pushed me into thinking a different way. And I,
Speaker 3: you know, so I don't think I would have necessarily
Speaker 3: want to go back and say, hey, watch after this,
Speaker 3: don't do that. You know.
Speaker 1: I I think that you know, maybe I maybe.
Speaker 3: You know I people say, well, you know, you made psychocop, infvisial,
Speaker 3: mediac some of these other small pictures when you were
Speaker 3: starting at I don't regret them, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: embarrassing on my my resume, but I don't regret them
Speaker 3: at all, because, you know what, I learned how to
Speaker 3: make films that way, and it was actionable learning curve.
Speaker 3: You know, to make a film for three hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars is insane, actually, but I learned how to do
Speaker 3: it and it taught me much and it was such
Speaker 3: a great learning curve for me later when I became
Speaker 3: an agent, to be able to talk to filmmakers about
Speaker 3: how to make their films, as opposed to just being
Speaker 3: an agent saying, Okay, here's the descripe, here's a budgets
Speaker 3: or whatever, try to set it up. I actually can
Speaker 3: get into it. You know. One of the filmmakers that
Speaker 3: I got to work with quite a bit of Willie
Speaker 3: Morris was Gus Matzam, and he taught me how to
Speaker 3: talk to directors, talk to artists. You know, I talked
Speaker 3: to a lot of directors, I mean a lot of movies,
Speaker 3: but he actually taught me how to how to deal
Speaker 3: with an artist, which was incredible and one of the greatest,
Speaker 3: uh going back to school ever and I was being
Speaker 3: paid to do it, which was incredible. But we worked
Speaker 3: on We worked on Elephant, which you know, won the
Speaker 3: pump Door. You know, we worked on the last days,
Speaker 3: we worked on in Paradise Park. Worked on Jerry, which
Speaker 3: you know, I love. People think I'm saying, but I
Speaker 3: love that movie. It's like it's that experience. You know,
Speaker 3: he melt, He's he's a brilliant dude and one of
Speaker 3: the best directors out there. Uh And I got to
Speaker 3: spend five you know, movies with with him, which was
Speaker 3: a longer period of time. I was seeing that make
Speaker 3: five movies in five years, and I really learned how
Speaker 3: to how to talk to him and learn how to
Speaker 3: gain his confidence and uh and and be able to
Speaker 3: to understand where his mind was coming from. Valuable lesson
Speaker 3: for me later with other directors. Valuable.
Speaker 1: Now, now I'm gonna ask you a few questions to
Speaker 1: ask all my guests. What advice would you give a
Speaker 1: filmmaker trying to break into the business today.
Speaker 3: Don't give up? You know, look, if you really want
Speaker 3: to do it, don't give up. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 3: that's the best advice give me. You know, it seems
Speaker 3: daunting that a lot of these things seem insubatable. Ago,
Speaker 3: I got a script I really want to make that
Speaker 3: nobody wants to do with me. I mean, any can
Speaker 3: be made for any amount of money. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a question of how much going to compromise on it.
Speaker 3: You know, you can make films fifty thousand dollars. I
Speaker 3: mean Tangerine is incredible movie that we made for twenty
Speaker 3: five past dollars. You know that on an ipune you
Speaker 3: can you know that guy show Bak. It's brilliant, and
Speaker 3: you know you have to you don't have to be
Speaker 3: limit the way you think. If you really are an artist,
Speaker 3: you can do anything, and you can create anything as
Speaker 3: a piece of art. You know, whether people appreciate the
Speaker 3: movie on the other end, you know that's that's that
Speaker 3: remains to be seen. But you shouldn't be limited by
Speaker 3: the Somebody told me you have to get three million
Speaker 3: dollars to make this film to get the start in it.
Speaker 3: You know that that should You know, all those filmmakers
Speaker 3: that we all love and admire, they all started somewhere.
Speaker 3: They all had to break into the business somehow or other.
Speaker 3: They all wrote a script, mainly wrote scripts or developed
Speaker 3: scripts that they attach themselves to that somehow or other,
Speaker 3: some producer somewhere introduce them some other producer and somehow
Speaker 3: or other got the money to make the film. You know,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't give up if you've got something great,
Speaker 3: it's probably gonna happen. And and so I wouldn't I
Speaker 3: wouldn't be you know, you can't give up your day job, obviously,
Speaker 3: but you've got to keep your eye on the price,
Speaker 3: which is to get my movie made. Even if you
Speaker 3: make a little short and it ends up playing in
Speaker 3: a film festival somewhere that you made for five thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: that might find you an agent that might get get
Speaker 3: you get people interested in your work. I mean, I
Speaker 3: I there are great agents who sign directors that I
Speaker 3: mean that I know they'd sign them from choice and
Speaker 3: and have turned out to have incredible careers. So you know,
Speaker 3: there's so many routes in. You can't be limited by
Speaker 3: your your fear of it. You got to be you've
Speaker 3: got to be very aggressive about yourself and trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how you're going to make it. And uh,
Speaker 3: and that means just making stuff because you know you're
Speaker 3: not really a filmmaker. Unless you're making films and you've
Speaker 3: got to get out there and make stuff and show
Speaker 3: people what you can do, because one thing will lead
Speaker 3: to another. I promise you.
Speaker 1: Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest
Speaker 1: to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know. I'm constantly still learning, So
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've learned any particular lessons other
Speaker 3: than I I I guess that that's a good question too.
Speaker 3: I don't know when you come up with these things.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for a few years, brother, I
Speaker 1: think I think.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I that I'm constantly surprises me, honestly,
Speaker 3: is that the lack of the loyalty in our business. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know. And that's that's the sad part of it.
Speaker 3: You know that they're people that I've helped get their
Speaker 3: careers going, who like yeah, Cassie, who you know. But
Speaker 3: I you know, it's it's it's a lung business. And
Speaker 3: sometimes I get back with them, you know, when they
Speaker 3: need me again. But I you know, I've that that
Speaker 3: was that that was a good lesson. Early in my career,
Speaker 3: some of the people I was working with and ended
Speaker 3: up having like huge careers outside of me. You know,
Speaker 3: Raddy Harrington I did Jack's Back with, got to make Roadhouse.
Speaker 3: John mctinnan, who I did No Mats with his first picture.
Speaker 3: These were both first movies. Ended up going straight from
Speaker 3: my film to Predator and then to Die Hard, And
Speaker 3: you know, it was like Cassie who Now they did
Speaker 3: come back into my life later, is that I was
Speaker 3: in a position where could actually help them. But uh,
Speaker 3: but you know that that that that's the things I
Speaker 3: did think. You can sit there and go, well, if
Speaker 3: I discover all these people they're all gonna stick with me,
Speaker 3: They're probably not. You know, they're everyone, everyone some type
Speaker 3: of stepping stone to each other. And you know that
Speaker 3: that that was a hard lesson I've learned. But I
Speaker 3: accepted that that's part of the game, and that that
Speaker 3: not I'm not sitting there going God, why didn't they
Speaker 3: come back to me the next movie with me? You know,
Speaker 3: I got to go down to the next one.
Speaker 1: What did you learn from your biggest failure.
Speaker 3: To dust yourself off? You know, I mean, that's that
Speaker 3: that is the real thing, you know. I Funnily enough,
Speaker 3: we had such high expectations for the Chase. You know,
Speaker 3: we sold that picture to the twentieth Century Box. I
Speaker 3: remember it, and Charlie Sheen was a huge star at
Speaker 3: that time, Christy Swanson, who I knew because my brother
Speaker 3: dated or Carrie, and we thought that picture was going
Speaker 3: to be a hit, and then we went you know,
Speaker 3: the head of the studio or the head of distribution
Speaker 3: of the studio, Lovely Man, invited us over to sit
Speaker 3: there on Friday night and listen to the first returns
Speaker 3: coming in from all the different offices around the country,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't working. And he told us he knew
Speaker 3: it wasn't going to but he said, I wanted to
Speaker 3: be here with you guys, and you know that my
Speaker 3: only young partner. We were both in our late twenties
Speaker 3: at that point. It was a big deal for us
Speaker 3: because we finally made a studio level thump, and he said,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be here with you, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to tell you that, you know, it's just about getting
Speaker 3: up to the bat. You got to keep swaying because
Speaker 3: one day you're going to just hit it out of
Speaker 3: the park. And I'm tearing up thinking about it now,
Speaker 3: because he you know, he really, really really really helped
Speaker 3: me at that moment because it could have been just
Speaker 3: down in the dumps for months after. I wasn't like
Speaker 3: what he's right, I'm going to get back up.
Speaker 1: He was he was a human being. He was a
Speaker 1: human being, which is not which you don't get often
Speaker 1: in this business.
Speaker 3: No, and uh, you know he he that was. That
Speaker 3: was a good life lesson to he. And he was
Speaker 3: you know, I'm trying to remember his name totally, like
Speaker 3: this is what happens when we get older. But he was.
Speaker 3: He was a lovely man and very good at his job.
Speaker 3: And he you know, he told us took us down
Speaker 3: in the corridor and he goes, boys, not all movies
Speaker 3: what bat Most of them don't. But you just got
Speaker 3: to keep swinging. And you know what's crazy about it
Speaker 3: is that movie has continued to have a big life
Speaker 3: and and and whenever I mentioned and people.
Speaker 1: Like I love that the trace. I remember the day
Speaker 1: of course, and.
Speaker 3: You know I had a crazy idea on that picture,
Speaker 3: which just the you know, the red hot chli chili
Speaker 3: peppers were huge at that point, and I was like,
Speaker 3: why do we get the redout chili peppers? You know,
Speaker 3: we have like crazy out of the Body Experience Get
Speaker 3: the Red Out Chili Peppers, and I called that manager.
Speaker 4: So we want Anthony and Flee to be in our movie.
Speaker 4: And they're like sure, great, what is it? And then
Speaker 4: we tell them and they're like, great, they're in. They're
Speaker 4: coming over, and they came and they were on the
Speaker 4: side and I got to meet these guys. It was fantastic.
Speaker 4: You know, you're only limited by your dreams.
Speaker 1: And last question, three of your favorite films of all time?
Speaker 3: Okay, wow, there there, they're really you know, there's a
Speaker 3: number of films that I of course, obviously my favorite
Speaker 3: movie of all time is two thousand and Oneter Space Audity,
Speaker 3: because you know, Kubrick was a friend of my families
Speaker 3: when I was a kid. We went to step while
Speaker 3: they were shooting that picture.
Speaker 1: No, when I first saw you were on the set
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one. Yes, we'll be right back
Speaker 1: after a word from our sponsor. And now back to
Speaker 1: the show. Oh my, you mean you saw the wheel
Speaker 1: and the whole Oh yeah, we saw the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Oh my, that's a whole podcast in its own.
Speaker 3: How they were shooting it, they were you know, the
Speaker 3: camera was on a was on a on a kind
Speaker 3: of a man spent around and made it feel like
Speaker 3: that they were inside and it was saddy Cebrick was
Speaker 3: a genius, okay as genius, And then we were too
Speaker 3: young to appreciate it actually, And then when I saw
Speaker 3: the film, I didn't understand it at all. But now
Speaker 3: as an adult, much later on, I was like, that
Speaker 3: is the total work of genius. And the man was
Speaker 3: an absolute genius when you think about it, like when
Speaker 3: the woman in the spaceship comes in and whatever, the
Speaker 3: kind of pan am which doesn't exist is the thing,
Speaker 3: but he's on it. He's on the the spaceship that's
Speaker 3: taking him to the middle planet before they go on
Speaker 3: to whether they've discovered the the talking rock. The she
Speaker 3: comes in and then she she walks in a circle,
Speaker 3: and then she comes back and comes into like the
Speaker 3: pod where they're they're sitting in their kind of airplane seats,
Speaker 3: you know, but it's really on a spaceship and his
Speaker 3: pen is like do you remember this flow of I
Speaker 3: did it and it puts it back into his pocket, right,
Speaker 3: all done on wires. But you know, all the all
Speaker 3: the things that were in that film. I don't think
Speaker 3: you can look at it and go, that's any worse
Speaker 3: than a lot of the big visual effects films much
Speaker 3: later on, you know, like the one with George uh
Speaker 3: was the name that was stuck in Space and George
Speaker 3: Cloney was in it. Yeah. There, you can't say that
Speaker 3: the visual effects of gravity were like one thousand times
Speaker 3: better than two thousand and one, because they're not. He
Speaker 3: he came up with all those incredible imagery that Doug
Speaker 3: Trumbull and and then you know the production design, like
Speaker 3: the paint where they would throw the paint into a
Speaker 3: huge pool with other types of paint and it would
Speaker 3: just explode like that, and then that's what it would
Speaker 3: look like on screen. You know, he was so ahead
Speaker 3: of his time and that film is an absolute way genius.
Speaker 3: Later on in the early seventies, I was at the
Speaker 3: camp Film festal because, as I said, my stepfather was
Speaker 3: the producer and we go to the Camp Fione Essel
Speaker 3: every year. He says, hey, I got I got a
Speaker 3: couple of tickets to this movie. I heard it's a
Speaker 3: total piece of shit. I don't want to see it.
Speaker 3: Why didn't you go ticket? And you go see the film?
Speaker 3: And I was like, what is it? He said, It's
Speaker 3: called Apocalypse now, but I heard it's awful, and so
Speaker 3: I went to see it. I literally sat there with
Speaker 3: my mouth hanging open for two hours. It's one of
Speaker 3: the greatest films ever made, the greatest war pictures ever made.
Speaker 3: And I literally came out of that movie there going
Speaker 3: holy shit. That is one of the greatest films I've
Speaker 3: ever seen, and it still is to this day. I'll
Speaker 3: watch that film everywhere over. I mean, I've seen the
Speaker 3: elongated version where they get to the French chateau along
Speaker 3: the river.
Speaker 1: It's not as good.
Speaker 3: The final version of his original version is the best
Speaker 3: version of that movie, and it's incredible. And you know,
Speaker 3: I know what I know, because I'm such a move
Speaker 3: a buff about eparisis how that picture was made. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, I uh, you know it was. It was
Speaker 3: insane what they went through. They went there for three
Speaker 3: months to make this movie. They ended up staying there
Speaker 3: for sixteen months the making of that film.
Speaker 1: Oh which part of the parts of darkness.
Speaker 3: Ye, my my friend George Chickenlooper, who sadly died later on,
Speaker 3: but we wiped on a number of films together when
Speaker 3: I was staged, and I loved him.
Speaker 1: But that documentary is that.
Speaker 3: The greatest line of any movie, of any film, documentary, feature,
Speaker 3: whatever ever, in any movie whatsoever, which is then when
Speaker 3: he finds out he's in a tenth in the middle
Speaker 3: of absolute jungle where there's no no connection to the
Speaker 3: outside well whatsoever, except for he's got a satellite phone.
Speaker 3: Marty Sheen has had a major heart attack and has
Speaker 3: been helicoptered out of the out of the camp, and
Speaker 3: nobody knows if he's alive or dead. He's he's on
Speaker 3: his way and he had a major heart attack. You
Speaker 3: know that Emilia and Charlie are good friends of mine,
Speaker 3: and they were there as kids, you know, watching their
Speaker 3: dad making that movie. It was very touch and go.
Speaker 3: They didn't know if he was going to survive. And
Speaker 3: you know, Joe their their uncle.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: The uncle came in and they shot over his shoulder
Speaker 3: because he had the same kind of body type as
Speaker 3: as Marty. So they used Joe to do a lot
Speaker 3: of this, you know, over the shoulders and do some
Speaker 3: scenes just keep shooting while they were waiting to see
Speaker 3: if Marty was going to recover. But as I said
Speaker 3: in the documentary, he's on the satellite bote to his
Speaker 3: office in California and he says to them and motherfuckers,
Speaker 3: he's not fucking dead until I say he's dead. That's
Speaker 3: the greatest line I've ever heard of. Anybody ever said.
Speaker 3: It's so brilliant.
Speaker 1: Oh, I guess Francis.
Speaker 3: And I told Francis that I love that line, and
Speaker 3: he's like, I don't you know what I mean. That
Speaker 3: was not a fun experience. That was that.
Speaker 1: And going back to the two thousand and one gag
Speaker 1: with a pen from what I remember, you know, studying
Speaker 1: that film, he did that on tape. It was clear
Speaker 1: tape that they stuck to depend on a piece of
Speaker 1: tape and you couldn't see it in the film, and
Speaker 1: she just plucked it right off and did it. To
Speaker 1: think that way, it is brilliant. So that's two A
Speaker 1: backlups now two thousand and one. What's the last one.
Speaker 3: I don't know. There are so many other films that
Speaker 3: I just look back at and go, I can't I
Speaker 3: love that picture. I love that picture. You know, I
Speaker 3: can't say those are the two main ones for me.
Speaker 3: You know, they they're so different from each other, but
Speaker 3: they really kind of resonated with me in a very
Speaker 3: special way. That's different. You know, there's a ton of
Speaker 3: other movies Eastwood Pictures. I love the Westerns, I love
Speaker 3: the spaghetti Westerns. I like that, you know. I love
Speaker 3: the a lot of those movies from the seventies Taxi Driver,
Speaker 3: you know, and then later on the Spielbug Pictures, the
Speaker 3: Close Encounters, whatever. But those are the two films that
Speaker 3: are that really set with me as an adult later on.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's really good movies that just solid, solid, good,
Speaker 3: rich all patients, Nasie.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of five thousand movies of producing them
Speaker 1: right now, so I do appreciate you taking the time
Speaker 1: to share doors. But thank you, my friend, and continue
Speaker 1: fighting the good fight and getting us these great movies
Speaker 1: and keep swinging at the bat. Brother, I appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Man. You keep swinging too. Man. It's as I say,
Speaker 3: as I'm looking at this thing behind you, it is hustling.
Speaker 3: You know, you are a hustler on some level if
Speaker 3: you're at raising money. You know, that's what hustles do,
Speaker 3: they try to raise money. It comes up with a
Speaker 3: negative connotation because people go, you know, if you're hustling,
Speaker 3: that means to trying to get money out of somebody,
Speaker 3: and you know it's not They're not going to get
Speaker 3: that money back. That's not true. I think every time
Speaker 3: I go out to try to raise money, my assumption
Speaker 3: is that it's a risk. But if I play, if
Speaker 3: I do it right, and if I make the right
Speaker 3: movie at the right budget level, I am going to
Speaker 3: get these people that money back. So my my my
Speaker 3: mindset is different. I'm constantly thinking, how do I get
Speaker 3: everybody's money back to them?
Speaker 1: You keep doing your thing, my friend. I appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Cassian so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show and sharing his journey and dropping his knowledge
Speaker 1: bombs on the tribe today. Thank you so much, Cassian.
Speaker 1: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
Speaker 1: about in this episode, head over to the show notes
Speaker 1: at Bulletproofscreenwriting dot tv. Forward slash four fifty. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, guys, As always, keep on writing
Speaker 1: no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
Speaker 2: dot tv.