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