¶ Chat About Animation and Film Industry
cheers , cheers . Welcome to the afternoon punk morning coffee edition . I'm mike golden hi matt conrad who do we have with us today ?
oh , peter lapeniotis , perfect , yeah nice to meet you , so in the , in the spirit of morning coffee edition .
I'll let you know I'm here in front of my halloween shrine at home . I don't know if you can see , peter , but we have the zombie deer in the spirit of morning coffee edition . I'll let you know I'm here in front of my Halloween shrine at home . I don't know if you can see Peter , but we have the zombie deer in the back here .
Oh , that's the deer picture . You were talking about the glowing eyes .
So we repurposed an old Ikea painting my partner and I and we put some lights in its eyes and put some blood around to make it look scary . The kids didn't like it . We thought they thought it'd be fun , but they were like , ew , why'd you do that ?
And then , uh , for drinks , I'm having a hot toddy jd shore , uh , rum , a little nova scotia maple syrup , matt , look at that buddy . Oh , there you go , and uh and I just use a little tea . And uh and uh lemon there , right ? So what are you doing , matt ?
I'm at my folks place , hence we were talking earlier about the terrible hockey team in the background . But what's the better Canadian brunch drink other than a Caesar ? So I'm drinking a Caesar a little extra spicy . Perfect , Peter . What ?
are you having ? I'm having a coffee , nice , and last minute threw in some Baileys . Really quick to join the team .
Awesome . Well , thank you so much for joining us . I mean , the reason we're here to talk today is your zombie movie is coming out , I think October 22nd on the Hollywood Suite package . Right , that's Hollywood Suite done just Canada-wide , If you want to check out the show .
So , zombie movie this is your first live action feature , right , Like you've had a pretty crazy career 30 years , I think , now in the industry from going and a bit of a transition from animation to film is . Is that correct ?
That is totally correct . Yeah , yeah , animation for yeah , since 93 , graduating from Sheridan college in Oakville . Oh okay , yeah , yeah , yeah . So you know , at that time there weren't many schools , so it was like those . There were two schools , it was Concordia and Sheridan , if you wanted to do animation .
So yeah , I got out in 93 and then the industry was hopping . Then so yeah , I got a job in the States and animated on a bunch of stuff down there .
One of your first big pictures was Casper that Matt and I both watched Casper , yeah . And we loved it right , Like I was . That was one of the rewatch movies , as when we were young , you'd watch Casper 46 times in a row no way . Oh yeah , that was a huge vhs replay movie in our house .
Yeah , yeah , so , and then you actually went to work on one of my very favorite like childhood films toy story . Yeah , uh , as an animator , and the best toy story toy story 2 toy story 2 yeah yeah , it , probably , it probably .
It's tough to say the original obviously was really good , but , like some people say , toy story 2 yeah , yeah , it , probably , it probably . It's tough to say the original obviously was really good , but , like some people say , toy story 2 was , you know , the better of all of them .
So I think it was the empire strikes back of the toy story film . Yeah , yeah , well said , every one of them , yeah it is .
I'm not bragging about it but honest to god , it was like I just was lucky to step into that situation when they were working on it and I came in and animated on it and I remember they showed us um , I don't know if you guys know what storyboards are , storyboard reels ? Right , where the before ? Because it's very expensive .
You can't do the whole movie and see it , so you do it before in in pre-production , you set it all up , you draw it all out and you put the voices in and the music and all that and we watched it , just that and I was going am I working on this ? this is incredible , like especially with the you got a friend and me at the end .
When the the who was it ? It comes out , it was or not . Some the the jazz singer comes out , does the big randy no , frank , it wasn't randy newman , it's a randy newman song , but I forget who's the guy . Anyway , it was a Tony Bennett type of guy does the big song and dance at the end .
And I remember this is like turning to my buddy Steve and just going man , we are . What is this ? What ? Are we like , yeah , it was , it was mind blowing .
How much , how much more challenging was computer animation back then ? Like you worked on Casper and that movie . What's crazy about that movie is I watched it with , uh , my kid .
Now I watched it maybe three years ago , four years ago , and what I had to say about the animation is it holds up right oh really , yeah , well , yeah the movie looks like casper and his friends look , and in most of the scenes still very grounded in the film . Like I mean , and that seems like a trickier thing today than it was .
You know , in some movies like that I've always just been surprised . Like I mean , what was the ? What was the approach to the animation in that movie , the ?
thing was the supervisors from that were the guys who did Jurassic Park a year earlier . Oh , ok , so it was industrial light magic . So this was they put their best people on it . Um , because spielberg was producing it , he wasn't directing it .
Brad sibling was the director and uh , yeah , they put a lot of people on it and everyone was really excited with the uh cg thing . So we had , like dennis murin from Star Wars fame and he's supervising it , so it had a lot of heft behind it . So the production really had a lot of support .
So everything we were doing was like state of the art at the time . So I think the work that you are complimenting was because of that . I think it's just like when you , when you , when you throw enough , enough effort at something , it could actually look really good uh so yeah , I , I'm happy to hear that you think it still holds up .
I haven't seen in a long time I think so .
I mean when you , when you think back and you look at , like , how the ghosts were done and all that , that's a movie that could easily be made today and I don't know if the animation , honestly , would be any better today than it would be like then .
It would have been back then because , I mean , the ghosts and everything in the animation were done quite well , like you know , fairly , you know , for for the type of film that it is , right , it's not a horror movie , right ?
So I mean for the , the type of film that it is , you're not trying to make it actual , like you know , ghostly , scary , um , so I don't , I don't know if the animation would be any better today , to be quite honest with you , and this is , you know , 30 years ago I mean the methodology would be the same .
I mean , animation hasn't changed in the last 100 years . I mean the , the way you approach it is is the same the process of thinking about a shot , animating uh , something that's dead , you know like you know someone who's in the industry , like you know , you'd be able to know this a little better than I .
But as a consumer , sometimes I watch a movie and you know I'm sitting there thinking , like you know , this is 2024 , or whenever you know I watch the movie and sometimes the cgi is just can be so campy that you're just kind of like where are we ?
Like I've seen , you know I've seen movies in the 90s that just look more realistic and more believable than what I'm watching right now .
So I guess I guess what I'm kind of approaching , I guess is when I think of the animation , like I believe a little bit more the Casper movie , because it's supposed to be a little cartoony , because it's supposed to be for a younger audience , but it also doesn't look bad , it doesn't look campy , right Versus .
Sometimes you see things where it's just kind of like that was supposed to look real and it didn't . You know what I mean .
Yeah , there's a lot more places doing it now . Yeah , there's a lot more like . There's a lot more guys in their basements , there's a lot . You farm stuff out to places and you know where . Sometimes the people in the country don't know the material they're working with and it's you know . And stuff has gotten cheaper .
So these things are going to happen , things are going to look . You know , the spectrum is much larger now . Before it was like you know , cg was like , you know , that little top tier stuff where now it's , it's so prevalent that it can look from the worst to the best .
Now , uh , but , you know , I it's funny now with ai coming in and and I don't know how , if there are people are utilizing that as well . But that could be an issue . Could be either good or bad as well . So , yeah , just a wide gamut now of of quality .
It's all over the place , but do you know if , like um , the demand for animators are still there , like it was maybe 30 years ago , like when you started , or do you say like it's still is ? It oversaturated at this point ? Or is automation taking people's jobs , or what do you think ?
I wasn't expecting these cool questions . I thought we were just going to get drunk .
No , Matt and I drank all night talking .
We're doing that too . Just joking , I'll give you better answers . No , yeah , it's funny because being a director you have the spare not spare time but between the projects you need to fill in to make some money .
So I take teaching gigs and the amount of animators are that come into a class might be 15 , right , or maybe 16 , but the amount of classes there are now it's all over the world , like I mean again , like I said in the beginning when I said that sheridan and concordia were the only two schools you know teaching animation and sheridan being the only one schools
teaching animation and Sheridan being the only one teaching the Disney style , the nine old men stuff . Now it's everywhere . I mean , walk down the street , there's a course being taught . I mean I'm sure where you guys are and I think there's some great studios where you guys are where there's schools . Yeah , I mean , there's a burgeoning industry in the . East .
Also we have a big one here like HFX . They do like Inspector , gadget and Care Bears .
Exactly exactly , and I know there was always a strong 2D traditional way of animating out there as well , but now it's , the CG is everywhere . You could take a course in Manitoba . It's like there's it's everywhere , guys , so I mean it's wide all over the world right .
Like I mean , I , I can take things up . Matt and I are looking at doing our very first project and I was talking to him about it last week and he's talking to him about and then the place is going to be all lit on fire right and burned to the ground and he's like okay , dude , how are you going to do that ? yeah , do it .
You can't burn a bar down to the ground , right . I mean I would love to do that , you can do it . You can't burn a bar down to the ground , right .
I mean , I would love to do that . That would be hilarious and awesome and fun .
Well , I mean last night , the other day , I started looking on YouTube , started watching to see how it's done . 22 minutes front to back people will show you fantastic ways to burn a bar to digital technology right , and these guys guys like you said doing it in their basement man and it looks pretty darn good .
Right , a lot of the mike and I here we're actually taking some , some filmmaker classes right now , actually , so just trying to learn some stuff . We're jumping into a coin yeah , look .
No , I love it . You know
¶ Directing Animated Features
the . The best way to do it , guys , uh , is to like get a shot of yourselves going . Oh my god , the barn's on fire get some stock footage of a barn on fire . Have somebody throwing red light on your faces going whoa , it's really going up .
Like you could do it that way . That's the cheapest way to do it . That's the cheapest way .
But you know , if it's a good movie , that stuff works . The audience doesn't even care . Sometimes they're going . As long as I'm buying , the story doesn't have to be .
You guys in the in there , you know getting the horses out and throwing water we , we just had a director last week and she basically had , uh like it was a vigilante type uh person . She was going out to avenge uh folks that were uh treating uh uh hypocritical hipsters , right uh , they were pretending to be feminists but were actually manipulative monsters .
It was a great premise for a movie hilarious yeah , so it's like . So she's a , she's like on a vigilante character , but because of the constraints of film , there's no um , she couldn't have any violence in it . Where they actually physically went and harmed a director or director , that happens . Then it was a really cool . It's still . It still works .
The movie still absolutely works because it kind of cuts off and your imagination does the rest Right .
Yeah , man , you know , it's like I found that with parameters , when you've got restrictions , your imagination has to work harder . As a director , I'm saying as a filmmaker . And when you guys will discover this , like when you're doing your film , you'll see like , hey , we're not , we don't have the money to do that .
So well , let's think how do we get the same idea across ? It's almost like finding another word in a sentence when you're talking like you know , I can't use that word , I'll use this word . Uh , it's the same thing , but the effect . As long as the effect is the same , that's all that matters . In other words , the story is all that matters .
The effect is really kind of just there for thrills . It's not , you know , it doesn't .
Well , there's something there's something to be said , too , about kind of letting the imagination this is the other thing we talked about is letting , letting the , the viewer's imagination , take over can sometimes be better than showing it to them themselves , right , that that can be definitely be better , right , and it's uh , you know , it's just .
This is the great thing about art , is you leave it up to the interpretation of the person who's receiving that . You know the art , right ? So , yeah , there's lots of things you can do about that , which I think is really good .
It's always good to hear from people in the industry and give us certain tips , and , you know , we just got to get out there and try some things and fail at some things and learn from that , right .
Yeah , yeah , it makes me want to jump to like . So , after you've done all this stuff with Toy Story and Disney , another movie that I've watched of yours already , the Nut Job , because you know I have a 12 year old , so the Nut Job came out at a perfect time , right ? So I heard that movie .
I watched it once and heard it about 13 times , if you know what I mean , right ? But the kids love to rewatch movies . So , like , what was it like directing your first animated feature ? Like shifting gears from just being on the , on the , on the story and and writing and working on these characters to actually directing the whole thing ?
Like , how does that work on an animated feature ?
oh , wow , oh wow , uh , it's yeah . Well , I did a short film , first called surly squirrel . It's on youtube , you can check it out , surly squirrel , it's like 12 minutes long and I did that . That was my first directorial um , you know , attempt . And then it got moved to being turned into a movie .
And you know , before the movie starts to go , there's all that writing . You do , guys , you know the storyboarding and writing and you keep working on the story , keep making it better or worse , uh , you know , but you just keep moving forward and the thing for me was just like the stamina required to just get through it .
That was about two years to make that um , and looking back on it as my first , I always go uh , you know , I would , I'd love to fix that , love to fix that or that kind of works . Um , yeah , yeah , in terms of looking back on that , guys , that was like night 2014 , 2013 . So about two to 11 to two four , 2014 is when , uh , I worked on it .
So it's been a while , but , yeah , it was . It was . It was a lot of heavy lifting , a lot of , again , stamina . It's just a matter of like keeping your your , keeping your mental wits about you at all times . You know there's stuff coming at you every two seconds that I wasn't used to .
But , eventually , slowly , you know , you start trusting your own instincts and knowing what's right . But there's a lot of times where you question yourself and that's something I don't do anymore as much , but before it was kind of like am I doing the right thing here ? So , yeah , that was .
The big process for me is like dealing with all those departments , all those people .
I mean , if you watch the credits on that , it's just like this endless stream of names . You had characters like Liam Neeson in that film , I believe . Right , liam Neeson was in it , sorry Will .
Arnett , will Arnett .
Will Arnett .
They were telling me don't hire Will Arnett . They were saying don't hire him . And I was thinking to myself the guy's Canadian . He's fantastically funny and I thought he's perfect One of the funniest guys , but at the time he had only done what is it ? Arrested .
Development , but he did a great role . I loved him in Arrested .
Development . Of course he was hilarious .
I love him in that show .
Hilarious , and it wasn't the character of Surly , but I could see in his voice he had this gruff voice . Anyway , they didn't want to use him , but now he's Batman and he's Batman , he's got this . Yeah , he's fantastic . He's Lego Batman . He's Lego Batman .
Are you face to face with , like the voice actors ?
Yeah , I was there with Liam and stuff . Yeah , yeah , I hung out with them .
I'm always curious about that .
Well , the way it works is like you come in , you meet the actor , you discuss the role . They ask questions . Liam was really nice , like , of course , great guy . But what I discovered with Liam was that , you know , with these consummate professional actors , they literally they don't listen to anyone else in the room , they just hone in on you .
If you're the director , they hone right in on you . And I'm going this is Liam Neeson talking to me . But when he zeroed in on me , I was so like , oh okay , well , this is my job , it's work . Now . It's not . This is my job . It's not , it's work now . It's not . This is liam neeson , this is a job . I'm like talking to an actor and I'm trying .
He's asking me about , like you know , telling him . Well , you know he can't see the room , but you know there's a chair here , there's the character you're talking to . The character is about two feet away from you . This is happening and you're feeling this . This is what happened prior , this is what's going to happen .
So you discuss all these parts of the story to him and uh , yeah , he was .
He was so professional so professional with his head there in the space exactly , and let him go , and let him go especially with the , with the good actors like the big ones like I always , I'm gonna stand back , I'm not .
There's no way I'm gonna sit there . Can you just ? You know you might go in and say can can you tweak that , because ? They want to hear some direction . They don't want to say just let me go crazy here , but they want some corralling .
A guy like Liam Neeson who's done so much for decades . The guy's been in some incredible , incredible movies , oscar-winning movies and then everything down to one of my favorite things he did was in a Ted too . He did that little scene with the uh , the lucky charms or the tricks . The tricks are for kids or things , yeah .
He does , the Irish guy I know .
Yeah . And he was like are you sure no one's going to follow me ? And he was like are you sure no one's going to follow me ? And he's like I won't forget what you've done for me today .
And like he so he is funnier than you think , oh , hilarious . And what's makes him funny is he's so dry . I mean , I know he's not funny and a nut job , but after the recording I remember talking to him and saying action movie thing . No one's believing it . I want to start doing comedy . And I'm like is he joking ? He's like comedy that's the place to be .
It's amazing . Ricky Gervais and I we had a lot of fun and he just kept talking about comedy and how action movies are pathetic and stupid and nobody's buying me jumping out of a helicopter he says , meanwhile they made three Taken movies because the know it was so amazing . but yeah , yeah he , they made money right .
So , yeah , you can't escape that once it starts making money you know I'm a big advanced for comedies .
When it , whenever any actor crosses over the line to comedy , I think it's one of the hardest places to be and I absolutely love it , right ?
I mean , I love it when you come through and that's like it's like de niro the best , best , it's one of my favorite actors . Like he's one of the best dramatic actors .
¶ Child-Friendly Horror Film Discussion
And then he goes into a comedy and I'm busting up laughing oh yeah , yeah , like midnight run is one of the funniest move .
My son and I just can't stop watching . We love it so funny . Yeah , he's hilarious how old is your son Right now . He's 18 .
Oh , cool Any interest in the family business .
Yeah , let's not get into this , he's going into film studies . I tried talking about it . I tried telling him don't do it , buddy , don't do it . But he wants to do it .
Let's see good for him and why not , lots of life to live , so whatever oh yeah , yeah , he's young enough let's see . So okay , we should probably talk about zombie town , we're sure zombie town .
Yeah , yeah , okay so zombie town , like if I could give you my interpretation of it . Actually , like you know , watching it this morning , um , this movie brought me back to like grade four , grade five , that's exactly that's it you don't have to say anymore , because that's exactly what the intention is .
It's not meant to be your goosebump guy , right , yeah , goosebump guy loved rl stein . This was almost like snl meets rl stein novels , like snl meets goosebumps , because I mean you have chevy chase , you have dan akroyd in there , I like that .
You kind of threw a couple canadian in there , like give the what's his face from the kids in the hall , things like that , like you know . So there's a couple of them , yeah , they have . So there's like some canadian nods in there , uh , which I liked , um , but honestly it was like snl meets um , you know , meets uh goosebumps with .
Yeah , it honestly it brought me back to being grade four , grade five again , well , that's that's the biggest .
That's the biggest compliment , because that's the idea . We were like my co-writer and I always said it's like we're not making a movie for teenagers , we're not making a right yeah you know it's not scream , it's not , it's even , it's . It's an entryway , gateway film for for a 10 year old to get into horror films and say , oh , zombies , okay , I get it .
You know we can't have and if you noticed in the movie we don't have any brain eating . We don't have any of that stuff .
But we had to come up with some kind of you know , you know soul sucking that yes you know like um , with that whole disney magic thing with the lights and but we had to come up with some kind of soul-sucking yes , with that whole Disney magic thing with the lights and all that .
So it's really a young 9 to 11-year-old kid's idea of what a horror film can be that is friendly enough to watch with your folks . I don't even think we have any swearing in it .
I don't think so either , yeah .
I don't think we did . I think the producer said to me he goes go ahead and swear and I had swearing going on , but then we cut it out . It's Even . I felt I didn't need it .
The lines can be blurred A little bit sometimes With these things , right . Like , I mean , I have a three year old and he's really into superheroes and everything and we were watching .
We were watching A Green Lantern movie , green light , a green lantern movie that we saw on , uh , one of the streaming things , right , and we were watching it and uh , you know , obviously it's green lantern , so there's some you know it's cartoon , but it's violence a little bit and all that stuff .
And my wife asked me she's like , are you sure this is good for him ? I'm like it's probably a , you know , maybe punching a little bit of above his weight class , but he likes the superheroes , whatever .
And I was like , but I was like , probably not much more , because I mean I watched spider-man and x-men when I was , like , you know , seven years old or something , right , yeah .
But then all of a sudden at one point they uh , I think one of the characters calls someone a bastard in it and I was kind of like , um , okay , maybe maybe this isn't for who I thought it was gonna be for ? is it a kid's movie or a tv show ? It's , it was a . It was a hour and 15 minute long .
Uh , green lantern origin story for , like sinestro right yeah , yeah , it's , yeah , it's yeah it's .
Yeah , it's a tricky spot to be in with the kids , like you know . Yeah , I mean , yeah , my son saw stuff that maybe he should my daughter's watching stuff way above her age too so so is mine .
We just watch , yeah , like we watch the exorcist .
We've seen all the oh , whoa , how old's your kid . He's big in horror . 12 , 12 . Yeah , I was probably 12 when I saw it , 12 or 13 , I think I was .
I was like eight or nine when I saw the exorcist oh I had . I had a cousin , older cousin , who was like three and a half years older than me and he was like let's watch it . We were in his basement and he was like let's watch the exorcist . And I was like sure . So I kind of experienced a lot of things at the same time he did so I kind of .
I kind of punched a bunch of my above my weight class at times we watched the original carry the other week and I forgot all about the like nude scene , like at the beginning of that movie beginning , yeah , yeah it's like the longest nude scene of all time . Longest nude scene uncomfortable watch with your stepdaughter .
You're like oh fuck , Hold the sheet , Hold the sheet .
I'm watching it with her and her mom . I'm like I'm basically I'm sitting on a chair , like the chair to the right of the couch , and I just basically turned the chair around the entire time myself . I'm like , all right , you guys enjoy this .
I'll be back in a second . I paused . We're going to fast forward through this . Honey , I think this is kind of boring . I like doing that one . It's like , yeah , this is boring , they're just talking .
But honestly Zombie Town seems pretty safe for pretty much all ages yeah .
That's the key . Yeah's , that's safe for a lot of people to watch , and I think akroyd was excited about that too , because he wanted his kids in the film right , yes , yeah , I mean I'm a huge dan akroyd fan .
I mean he's a ghostbuster , so I love that , right , oh yeah yeah , oh yeah , dan is yeah , yeah , your heart .
I know it's like I couldn't believe it when he look I , I , I was , I was taken out to to talk to him to get him interested in the film , and I just thought to myself , even if he says , no , I don't care the fact that I just was in the same room with this guy is all I cared about .
I was just like I just want to be in the same room with him , just meet him , talk to him for like 10 minutes and like I am this set for life . And I did not expect him to say yes .
He was like well there , and I mean , he's a big supernatural guy anyway , and that's how we .
That's how we baited him that's how I baited him yeah , yeah I knew it because you know he's a big ghost guy he loves , I mean he's like well , I saw that you uh a couple nods , like you know .
People may not know it , especially the kids , but there's a couple , there's a little . I know I noticed a few nods to him in the movie because I saw his little crystal , crystal skull vodka . Well , that was on purpose yeah , that was me .
That was me . Then I'm going hey , dan , I'll put . I'll put in as many of your crystal skulls as you want , and he just loves that yes , because I bet he did oh yeah , I was sticking them in everywhere , yeah .
So I mean that's obviously , if anyone who's listening doesn't know , he is the one who owns Crystal Skull Vodka and that is based off of the same Crystal Skull of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull like those theories and all that stuff .
So yeah , For him it's not a theory . To him it's not a theory .
For him it's real .
Let's do him on joe rogan sometime , if you ever get a chance to watch acro I've seen that one .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , it's fantastic , yeah , oh it's incredible episode , yeah so , yeah , I'm a big fan of him .
So as soon as I saw that , as soon as I saw he was in it , I was like , okay , I'm pretty excited to see this and then , and then chevy Chase is in it . And I was not , to be completely honest , not a huge like 1980s Chevy Chase fan , but what won me over with Chevy Chase was community Love .
Yes , and he was so good at it .
Yeah , so good at it .
Yeah , so good at it .
So I can ask you back to you on the director's chair . So you went from animated to oh to live action . Yeah , yeah , what was that transition like ? Did you find like it was like infinite more challenges , or was it easier in a sense ? Like , how did you feel about that transition ?
Look , I'll put it to you this ? way , like I said , I came
¶ Intense Experience
off . I directed two animated feature films before Zombie Town and I will tell you that directing Zombie Town , which was basically four weeks long , was four weeks only shooting time . And that shooting time was I'm not joking guys the hardest gig I've ever had in my entire life . The hardest I've never been , so inundated with like questions and intensity .
Look , I don't know Other live action directors might say , oh , it's nothing for me . That was like , and I mean , I've worked as a janitor , I've done stock boy , I've been a waiter I'm talking I've been in the armed force reserve at Fort York I this was the hardest job , guys , like super hard , like like you're .
It was a night shoot too , so we'd start at like four or five in the afternoon , shoot all night , and you'd be going home at six let me put it to this way , and I know we're running out of time here but uh , they said to me you need a driver to drive your home . Right , and all the other things I directed , I always drive myself home .
I'd be like , what's the problem ? Why would I need a driver to drive me home ? The reason they have a driver to drive you home is because you are so spent and I don't know . It's almost as if , like , you've taken like a huge concoction of drugs or alcohol and you're so messed up .
But it's all from the sheer , uh , intensity of the of the directorial experience that you're just like this , being driven back . You cannot drive it's . It's totally , totally true . I was gonna say so it's probably an insurance stipulation .
We're insurance guys . So they probably said , hey , you know , we don't want anyone on the way back ? Exactly so this must have been long , like yeah , you were saying like so from like five until six . So you're doing like 13 hour overnight shooting , 14 hour shoots , yeah , yeah , yeah .
Now did you go like seven days a week for four weeks or did you take some ? No , we had the weekends off .
You did , okay . We had the weekends off , surprisingly enough , because of union rules , yes , yes , because they'd break you . I don't think I could survive if it was full seven , 24-7 . Yeah , it was five days , but those five days were grueling , grueling , grueling , grueling . I could go on and on about it , but it was incredible .
There were moments where it's like this is awesome and it's amazing , this is happening and I'm controlling a huge set of all these people , but at the same time , you're constantly worried about your budget schedule time producers sitting there , going like this the whole time , walking past you like the time .
So you're like , okay , well , I'm not gonna get this exactly the way I wanted , I just gotta go . Uh , so that's the difference between that and animation , and animation it's like stretched out over , like you know , a year and a half too , and this is like those two and a half years squashed into four weeks . But I'm not kidding .
All the arguments , all the discussions , all the meetings , all that .
So that's that's it in a nutshell are you jumping into another live action feature next , or are you looking at doing animation again ? What's next for you ?
I'll do either . I've got again like being a director . It's like these things sometimes they go , sometimes they don't right . So there's a bunch of things on the boilerplate right now . They're , they're ready to go , some are not .
So , yeah , some are live action , majority are animation , because uh yeah , yeah , so yeah well , yeah , well , before , before we , before we let you go , you start your movie zombie town with a with the RL Stein quote , and I figured I'd have to ask you because it talks about you know .
Basically the quote to paraphrase is you know if there , if , if zombies weren't real , there wouldn't be so many stories about them , right ? So does Peter think zombies are real ?
Of course not , but on film , on cinema , in cinema , they're real . Yeah , I don't know how to put it Like in terms of like . Cinematically speaking , it's like like they are the most , it's the most powerful image , like the idea of dead people walking , coming to come after you , especially the fact that they're slow .
listen , zombies are such a great image out of all the you know . Take away ghosts , because some people don't think ghosts are a threat . But of all of the supernatural threats that we face , zombies are probably one of the biggest and most real things that people worry about because literally , the expression is well , what do we do when the zombies come ?
Zombie apocalypse yeah , yeah , Right .
I don't know why that is the zombie is just a great movie idea is what it is .
I think apocalypse is an obsession as well . Post-apocalyptic world yes , fun what it is . I think apocalypse is an obsession as well . Post-apocalyptic world yes , one of the things to build ever , right , you know , that's a where the brain goes and it's just a fun place . You can do whatever you want , right , you can .
I was just watching , uh , mad max there the other night the new one . It was fantastic . Uh , what was the furiosa ? Furiosa , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , I liked it , I loved it I loved it .
It was great . I don't know why it's getting such a bad rap .
It was like I have no idea . I I watched it in two parts , but it was a longer movie and I was just I watched . It started too late at night , but I absolutely loved it from start to finish .
Hemsworth is amazing in that , yeah .
Yeah , he did a wicked job Right after you
¶ Paranormal Investigation and Belief
. Our next episode is Elliot Van Dusen . He's a paranormal investigator for Atlantic Canada , so he was an ex-RCMP officer . No way .
And yeah , now he spends he investigates the paranormal .
Yeah .
I'm writing this one down .
Yeah , so he's coming out on the 29th , so right after your show here . So we got a real nice theme going a paranormal . So do you yourself believe in ghosts ?
yes , I've had a couple weird things happen to me cool and aliens sure , yes all right awesome I had to play that over because you guys are official , like . So when I say this stuff , this is on the record so I gotta think it out , yeah .
Front page of the newspaper exactly honestly like this is awesome , peter , because this is really fitting into our halloween theme , so we were so happy to have you on here .
This has been awesome , like yeah , you guys are fantastic I love you guys I want to do this again with another movie , if I can , with with you guys .
you guys are absolutely so anytime man , let reach out direct , even if you want to call us and rant about somebody , we'll , we'll take it .
I would love to Any excuse to throw .
Yeah , yeah , and , and , and , if you , if you need a voice actor I thought about doing that when I was a kid there you go .
There you go , writing it down . Awesome , conrad All right , Peter .
All right fellas , All the best guys . You guys were fantastic . Appreciate it .