Hello, This is Chris Haskell from They Live by Film. For those that don't know us, Adam Zach and I we built a podcast over the last two years that's a combination of film discussion from three very different perspectives, as well as industry interviews with the leaders in Boutique, Blu Ray, and four Kade community. We started with dev Crocodile, but over time we've been lucky enough to speak with Aero Video, Severn, Mondo, Macabre, Vinegar Syndrome,
Radiant Syndicator, most of the OCN partner labels. It's been a blast. You can find us wherever you podcast and also actually recently as part of someone's favorite production podcast network. We hope to see you online. Hello there, and welcome back to the Disconnected. I'm here with Damien Lahy, who is a filmmaker that you're probably going to be hearing quite a bit about over these next couple of months after this Severn summer sale and everything that is happening
with them. Damien, thank you so much for choosing to do this. Well, thanks a lot for having me Ryan, I really appreciate it. I'm ready to mix it up and talk, you know, all things I'm just looking forward to going down memory lane with my you know, with my own journey over the years, I'm going to be dating myself. So everybody listening and this should know that that's going to be coming as we talk about my own kind of relationship with physical media, you know, movies over the
uh over the last couple of decades. Yeah, one of the big things is while you're listening to this, you might hear some audio quirks and I might have some extra editing on this episode because you happen to be in Karachi. Can you tell me what you're doing over there right now? Yeah, So I'm in Karachi, Pakistan right now. I'm actually going to be doing some spots for UNISAF and I'm doing that in conjunction with a university here.
I'm doing that in conjunction with the university here. So I got a grant, et cetera. So that's what I'm doing here. It is incredibly hot, as you can imagine. I've been complaining about how humid it is here in Missouri, but I can't imagine Pakistan in the middle of summer is super comfortable. Right now, Yeah, it's been brutal. It's been brutal with being over in Pakistan. What is some of the things that has been challenging
other than the heat for you getting used to everything over there. Well, first off, I want to talk about a glowing positive, and that is Karachi has possibly the best food that I've ever had in my life. Any and everything you've heard about Karachi cuisine being the best on the planet is absolutely true. There's not even there's every meal I'm blown away, there is no I mean, it's almost like I'm without words when it comes to how good the food is here, you know. I mean, I've had the best
fried chicken of my life. I've had the best smash burgers of my life. I've had like every time that I have a meal, it's like it's it's like, you know, magic. So I want to just put over the cuisine here like nobody's business. And they also have this thing called food Panda. Okay, so food Panda. You know how we have like the Uber eats in the door dash. Yeah, well for like a fraction of the cost, but like twenty times the efficiency, you can literally get anything
and everything delivered like within an hour. I'm just food too, But like you know, appliances, you know, whatever you might need. Obviously, there's been some in regard to I mean, this is an entirely different culture. Like this is not you know, going to Paris. This is not going to London, you know what I mean? This is this is definitely a this is a very different culture. Karachi is so so some of the I would say, I mean, obviously I'm working in conjunction with the university.
You know, nobody should visit here unless they're in some sort of official capacity, you know. So, but everybody here has been been been very nice. There's just been the only if I'm being honest, the only the only kind of hiccups there's ben have been just in some of the language barrier in regards to some of the housing stuff. Right, So, getting back into it, we've got a lot to talk about. Obviously you mentioned physical media. Uh could you could you just overall? What what's your history with
film? Did you did you grow up loving film? Well, I'm gonna take this opportunity Ryan to shine a huge spotlight on video magic in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Now, without which I would not have the knowledge, the passion that I have today for movies. That place was like film school before I went to film school. Now, look, at the end of the day, it all begins with the with with the genuine you know, the interest for it right right. And then pretty much anybody that's into movies or
that's that gets into music or literature. You know, they if they find themselves into something, what do they do. They pick up a biography, right and you know, they read a biography on the subject and that's gonna you know, talk about the influences of that person, and that's going to lead them down other roads, you know, and et cetera, et cetera.
You know, like I remember the first Bob Doing biography that I read Behind the Shades when I was like in middle school, and that opened me up to the beats and all sorts of stuff, you know what I mean. So it's like that with with movies as well. But you know, Video Magic. Video Magic was amazing because they had everything from Kurrasawa, Fellini,
you know, meat Balls movies. You know, they had all the eighties raunchy comedies, they had all the foreign stuff and Tony One, you know, they had they had you know, they had all the new releases of the day. But they also had you know, they had lots of horror movies. And then of course once once you got older into like junior and you know, you were like a senior in high school, you know, you'd go to the back where they had the like seventies exploitation, exploitation
stuff, you know, amazing. So but that video store. Like so, I was always like a raging cinephile from a very young age. Loved movies. And you know I would go through phases right where I would you know, watch like I'd watch like like a Woody Allen movie, and I'd want to watch all of his movies or Alfred Hitchcock, you know what I mean, things like that. Yeah, of course, and you know a
lot of us are that generation. You're my age, right, Uh, I'm mid thirties, all right, Well I'm ten years older than you. So like for a common thing for our generation was that, like the parents restricted the R rated movies pretty heavily, so like you weren't allowed to watch like many of us weren't allowed to watch R rated movies. And then you know we could only watch them if they were if they were on television where
they had all the bad stuff cut out, right. So, but like once you got into once you got into middle school, you know, the parents pretty much gave up on that and they, you know, they'd go to the video store with the kids, and you know, because you know, you're at that age where the kids are all wanting to do sleepovers and stuff, and they want to watch horror movies or they want to watch raunchy R rated you know, comedies because they want to see topless chicks or or
whatever, you know what I mean. And I mean a lot of people, you know, a lot of people don't understand that about those movies then. But that was a you know, you didn't have the internet. You didn't have the Internet with tons of like graphic sexual content that you could access for free twenty four hours a day of course, right, you know what
I mean. Like like when when you would get into high school, you would have like you know, some kids would steal like porno tapes from their like dads and you know pass it around, right Like that was like finding magazines buried in the forest or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ryan,
you are spot on. So so you know that was the So that was how like that was like marketable, right, like that made that drew audiences to those movies was that they promised that kind of you know, those those kind of thrills, you know what I mean, of course, and you know, being kids that didn't have access to that, you know that that was definitely a draw of some of those movies, you know what I
mean. I mean, it wasn't the only thing. We also want to watch good movies, but that was certainly, you know, a thing, and so so we started, you know, we would you know, once we you know, video video Magic had all those like Eye of the Eagle, those cheesy action movies by that Santiago guy that Tarantino loves. I mean, it had all the like full cheek gates of hell, you know what I mean, It had all like uh and you know, Beyond the Darkness
by Joe Diamado. You know, so once we got into that stuff in like middle school, and I actually wrote an entire article about the first time that we all had a sleepover, and like we we we rented Beyond the Darkness, not knowing anything about it and not having seen anything like that in our lives. Like we just we just sat there in complete silence, like staring at at the screen but after that, and by the way, for
all those listening, Severn has a great addition of that available. But yes, yes, and so that pretty much started the like floodgates, right. So then you would have like sleepovers and they had a theme. Right, So we would have friends over and we'd have barbecue and we'd watch like three you know, we'd watched the Texas Chainsaw massacre movies, right, or or we'd we we'd rent all the like Dead Stalker movies and have a Chinese feast,
you know what I mean. And and so that was kind of and you know Dawn of the Dead, right, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, those were huge. Oh yeah. And keep in mind though that like when when we were watching like a Dawn of the Dead then like you couldn't tell like like right now everybody recognizes Dawn of the Dead as a classic American movie, like not just a great horror movie, like it's
a classic movie, but like noe, like parents didn't believe that. I mean, like I mean, like you would get pushed back if you tried to, like legitimately say Dawn of the Dead was a great movie because it wasn't recognized as one you know what I mean, like even by critics, you know, and so but that led to when later when I was in high school, you know, Suspiria, the letterbox version of Suspiria was on the new releases display at Video Magic, right, And I had never heard
of that movie, and to be honest, like I didn't think it looked that interesting on the cover. But letterbox videos were such a rare thing then, and especially to rent a letterbox video, right, you know what I mean. I mean, so I had to get it. And that was like a life changer, you know, because because keep in mind at that point, you know, video collecting, like I was on the Columbia House tip. You know, yep, yep, Columbia House Baby, you know
it. I was on the Columbia House Tip. And and you know, like my main thing had been like collecting all the marks the Brothers movies nice, you know, and I had like a bunch of money python, and you know, I had a bunch of like, you know, the kind of standard stuff and like the only like letterbox movie I had that was two
thousand and one of Space Odyssey one. And if I remember though, I'm pretty sure Spartacus was letterboxed and I had some ben her set where like the chariot race scene was letterbox even though the rest wasn't, which I thought was like so cheesy. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like that's the lame. It's like some of those films nowadays. Let's switch to imax aspect ratio just for a couple of scenes and then go back right right, So I mean, you know, but but you couldn't. You couldn't tell,
like people didn't understand. People were were ignorant about the formats back then.
So like if you went to somebody's house and they had a laser disc player, like kids would make fun of that as a cheaper format, you know what I mean, you didn't know we had, you know, and so but you know you had to go to you know, keep in mind that, like you had to go to these video stores and rent these movies, like to discover like Once One a Time in America is a great movie that it is, right, I mean, you weren't going to find I mean,
but you know a video Magic had, you know, the foreign stuff, you know, had Zang's movie, you know, had had you know, all sorts of stuff like that. You know, I remember renting Judo from there? You know the scent of green papaya, you know what I mean, germinal? You know that that that World War two variation they did of Lame Miser Rob. Do you remember that? I think so, yeah,
what that was. I'm trying to think of about what year that was because my family, for some reason was not huge on musicals, but my dad loved Lame miss and I swear I've seen probably every iteration growing up, and so that one's a drama, that one's a World War to drama with no singing, right right, Yes, that story was just something that spoke to him for some reason. But that's a weird tangent with video magic. One thing that a lot of people don't really hit on nowadays that we've lost
with this video store era. I got to ask about your person because most of us that grew up in that era, we had at least one person that you were maybe not like close friends with, but they would be the clerk at these video stores that would be like, hey, Damian, I know you, I know you, like, we just got this in and I think you're gonna love it. And it's something that we have crucially lost in twenty twenty four, because nowadays we're relying on algorithms and hoping that Netflix
does this right for people, and the world is so different that you're not going to be able to discover some of these classics that you're bringing up that when you were thirteen years old and finding foundational films for you in your home video store. Where are we going to get that sort of an opportunity for the future generations. Well, here's the thing is that you know a lot
of it. You know, my guide was Video Movie Guides. Yeah, you know, but there were a couple the owner and the manager of Video Magic. We're definitely helpful in me, you know, pointing out stuff to me, you know what I mean, like, oh man, you're on our geno kick. We got the Church in you know what I mean.
I remember that specifically and going to getting the church, you know, but a lot of times I would just you know, once I saw Suspiria, you know, I went ahead and went to the video of the movie guide and looked up his name and saw all the movies that he directed, and then went to the video store and tried to find him. And actually, what's funny is that you know, we've got to mention, of course phenomena
in there. But what's funny though, is that the first video store that we ever frequented as a family in Manchester, the Connecticut only had one poster in the entire store. And it was a mega poster, like a huge like you know, like the ones that were like double the size of a normal twenty seven by forty. It was this mega poster for Creepers. And I used to tell my my parents that it was like, you know that
it was like really scary. I thought it was scary. And years later, when I, you know, after I started getting into our geno, after I saw Suspiria and you know, Demons and you know, I started digging through his filmography and Creepers was at the store and I saw the box and I was like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen this artwork since that video store in Connecticut all those years ago. So that was wild.
And that's that's a crazy movie. And it's very it's very borderlines on silly, and but it's it's a aged extremely well because it ventures into that like gonzo territory, but it still has that artistic style to it. So again you know, you know, we we had mentioned the the Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds book by mainly mcdone. I hope that I pronounced that name correctly talking about just that very very unique stylish tone, that combination of elements,
that wild alchemy that only our Geno could kind of create. And the the same with Sam Peg and Paw. I consider Peg and Paw and our Geno kind of very similar, you know what I mean, They had very much like signature. They had very signature styles that when they came together just in that way, like it couldn't be duplicated, and they had a hard time
duplicating it themselves, you know what I mean. But but uh, when you look at our Geno's films and just that you know that run right of like good to great films, like he has very many like so if you have like bird with a crystal plumage, you have like Cato nine tails, right, you have Profundo Rosso, you have a Sisteria, you have Phenomena, you have Tenna Bray, you have Opera, you know what I mean.
I've never been a big fan of Inferno, but but a lot of a lot of people consider that as part of his like you know, his like great run, you know, and then you had, you know,
his segment of Two Evil Eyes, which is very good. And then so that's like that's like a very so when when when you were so when when you were our generation, you know, getting into our geno before you know, the kind of like fall off in quality, like like I mean you were you were coming into our geno and it was literally just you were picking up on just this fantastic run where it was like almost the majority of his filmography was like what was like awesome, you know, and again it was
either good too, like great you know. And actually, speaking speaking of I know Severin did a release of it. I'm not sure if David Gregory sent it to me in a gift package. I think he did, But I still to this day have not seen Four Flies on Great Velvet. Yeah, I have not seen Like that's one that really disappeared. There was a
lot of that going on. Like Okay, like I saw, like, you know, when I was about eleven years old and I had never seen a Kliniesud movie and like Two Meals for Sister Sarah came on HBO one afternoon, right and I was like I was like, oh my God, Like, I've never seen anybody this fucking cool in my life. Like I mean, it was just like, I mean, it was like jaw dropping.
I was just like, I can't believe that this guy is that Like, like you know, like before I was like Harrison Ford, you know what I mean, because like our generation was obsessed with him and it was a big deal. Whenever he had a movie coming out and stuff, it was huge. A lot of people today will never understand what a huge deal Harrison
Ford was. But like, you know, but again, so then you know, you've got Clint Eastwood, right, and then you know, but with somebody like him, you know, you would be going to the video store in renting the movies that they weren't playing on cable, right, right. So, like what a lot of people don't understand is how much commercial cable raised people in regards to their their film education. Oh yeah, right.
So, like the reason that like Kurt Russell is so well known to people from all walks of life is that, like he was literally the king of commercial television, like it for decades. Like the thing when I was in when I was in sixth grade, the thing was on TV every week, you know what I mean, like he had so many movies in rotation like that, it was like the thing. And he had this terrible movie
with Robin Williams that even got a lot of play. The mean season was on like every other week, and then you know, and then he had what was that Overboard was on every other week on you know, Board was always on, and then you had you know, Executive Decision is like the is like one of the biggest smash hits on commercial television ever, you know what I mean. And then and then break down like you can find like I mean, to this day those movies like if you're flipping through the channels,
you will find them, you know what I mean. Like Kurt Russell was just like the king of commercial television, and so many of his movies were we were played and then ones that got played out got replaced by new ones. And he was never a big guy at the box office, Like he wasn't lighting up at the box office. But like kids loved Big Trouble in Little China. You Little China on TNT probably forty five times in my life. Yeah, yeah, like you know, like but you know how
Mark Singer had beast Master. Oh yeah, that was like the biggest like
like cable TV hit of all time. Well, like Kurt Russell had like eight beast Masters, you know what I'm saying, So like yeah, yeah, so like so so Kurt Russell had this huge like shelf life because like I remember years later people would be would would say, you know, oh man, they were like, you know, Kurt Russell's a lucky guy because like his movies don't do so hot at the box office, and I'm like, yeah, but like they're absolutely they're like smash hits on commercial like television,
Like we can't escape Kurt Russell on TV, you know. And so so like with guys like that, you know, you would go to the video store and rent the ones that weren't readily available on TV. So like for example, Clint Eastwood, you would have to go to the video store to rent Hockey Talk Man, Right, you would have to go to the video store and rent Bird. You'd have to go to the videos store in rent you know, tightrope. Right, So like you would like fill in
in in those gaps, you know. And so but when I saw when I saw you know, Terror at the opera, Right, we're gonna where we're gonna tie this back to the Argeno thing. But I first, I do have been and aside about something because they release, you know, they release for like Demons and and you know Zombie by Luccio Fulgi. They release a new box set for these movies like every six months. You know what I mean? And I will say this about Demons is that shortly after I
saw Suspiria. This is like a pet Peeve story. Shortly after I saw Suspiria, I was at I had a friend spend the night, and we went to the mall. My mom took us stood to the mall and we went to sun Coast Video. Okay, and which is where I you know, I got a lot of my stuff, especially in college. Film school is when I got more stuff from Sun Coast Video. But Sun Coast Video
had a movie called Demons, and it had this. It said Dario Argenno presents Demons, and it had this suspended in air illustration of a demon hand holding an entire film audience in it classic. It's one of the best covers for a movie I've ever seen, and a fucking poster for a horror movie.
And they don't use it on any of these The releases, they use this tacky shot of like of like the people coming through the fog, yeah, or they used the like the image of that stupid looking demon head, which it actually works within that context of the movie, but it doesn't work as the cover of the thing, not at all. And I'm like,
I'm like, how come you can't get that artwork? And here's what's funny, Ryan, is that, like I don't I don't know why I get like this, but like I've actually like not, I've not purchased it because it doesn't have that artwork because it like bugs me, you know what I mean. Yeah, And then and then I was kind of bothered when I think I think was it era? And by the way, Errow do wonderful stuff. Okay, I'm not dragging anybody. Arrow do wonderful stuff. I've
got a lot of their discs, okay. But when they did that that release where they like paired the second one with it, right, because because they were kind of like, you know, we know which one's gonna be moving units, right, So they tried to get you to get They tried to get they tried to get you to get that second one along along with it. I was like I don't think so, but but so anyway,
so that was actually my second my second Dariel Argenta. Now I don't know if you I don't know if you know this though, but again because you're you're younger than me, but like, you know, I started to get really into his films, right, and you know, I picked up Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds by Maitland McDonough, and you know, I you know, I saw Tear at the Opera unsane. You know, Kennebray was unsane on video and and but here's the deal, though, is that, you
know, I started getting really into them. And I would sometimes spend the s in Connecticut with my grandmother and she knew Cato nine Tails interesting. And the reason is that, you know, Cato nine Tales was great PG.
You know, it was in public domain and it starred Carl Maldon, who was like huge with that generation, right, like he was super big with The Murder She wrote generation because he had multiple movies that appealed to that generation that like he didn't necessarily star in, but he co starred in and they were always on TV for that older generation, and he had like this huge
run. I forget what I want to say American Express. It's something like that American Express or Travelers checks like commercials, right, and so so Cato nine Tails actually got a lot of television play, like my grandmother had had had had seen that one like a couple of times. And but and for for years though once the like video you know, once like video like selling
kind of like reached a crescendo. I can't tell you the amount of times that I would be at the at CBS or like Walgreens, or I would be at the uh the grocery store, you know, and they'd have like all those like like long like standard play whatever, those standard play like cheap VHS tapes for like five bucks. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, and Cato Cato nine Tales would would be in there like all the time. Uh well, but I will try to share this with the viewers.
I just found something I want to share with you. Somebody mocked up a fake Aero cover for Demons. Look at that, Yes, thank you Ryan that whoever did that props to you, Like that's the set. Hey, I would have bought that with Demons too, right without without blinking twice, I would have bought that and I would have been cool with them, you know, slide some demons too on me. I would have been cool with
it if they had had that artwork. That's one of my Yeah, yeah maybe maybe, well maybe in six months when they released another box set for it. Yeah, you know what I mean. Well, I mean that's a good transition too. With all these films that we grew up loving, how how are you feeling seeing some of these literally like better presented than they've ever been seen before. Are there any that have really blown your mind over the last couple of years? You know what. I'm so glad you asked
me this question. Here's the bottom line. Okay, a lot of people are gonna bristle when I say this. The best way a movie will ever look to you is the first time you watched it and fell in love with it. I love you so much pursuing that that is such a perfect response.
You know, I can't tell you the amount of I mean, you know, you know, even if you had like a big TV when you were my when you were coming up in my age, if you had a bigger TV or like a larger one, it wasn't large enough to really do any movie justice, right, but like you know and so, but like when I was in film school, man and I had like when I was in film school and in my dorm move when I had a thirteen is is
TV that had a VCR. You know, I can't tell you the amount of movies that I watched that you know, that's the best, that's the best way that I've ever seen them. And then when I walk away from it, Ryan like I, when I look back on them, I see them as looking great. So I went so like years later, when I watched like a restored version, all I say to myself is, you know what, that's definitely I bet not how it looked when I first saw it, but in my memories afterwards, that's how I saw it as wow,
you know what I mean. So I so when I see when I say, I'm so glad you touched been on this, because when I see people say stuff like you know, you know, when I see posts, you know, our social media and you know the cinemaniacs, and some of them say say stuff like you know, you know, when I can say with absolute certainty that you have not seen this movie before, you know what I mean, Like you can't say you've seen this movie, nless you get this
new version of it, you know what I mean. And when I see stuff like that, I just, you know, I gotta be honest, Ryan, I kind of roll my eyes like I don't see it. You know, I don't see it. And especially you know when it's you know, when it's when it's Demons two, you know what I mean. And look, it's really it's really it's really hard to get a film made.
So you know, it's really hard to get a film made. So I respect anybody that can get over it then in this business, But I don't see how, you know, like like if I was to watch a restored and remastered version of some of these movies that you know, it's going to be like a whole different story for me. It just isn't, you know.
It's just not from where I'm coming from. You know. The only thing I think is really changed by some of these is when the first time you saw it was, oh, I'm not trying to speak for you, but one of those awful VHS payments scams where a lot of the time you couldn't even see two thirds of the movie, right, Like I agree with again, though, the first time I watched The Exorcist when I was young, and a perfect example of what I'm talking about in regard to the best
time that you first fall fell in love with a movie is, you know, is the best time that you'll ever see it is. I'm going to go back with this one and years ago in Connecticut, I was probably nine years old, and we went to my parents had these friends and we went to their house. It was Jenny Rizzo's house. She was the same age
as me. And while while while the adults, while the parents all hung out, hung out and played cards and you know, did whatever upstairs, Jenny and I were downstairs in the basement with the lights off, and we watched The Warriors all right, And nothing will ever equal that experience, that viewing of that film. And you know, we were in the Connecticut, so that was the New York that we kind of knew, you know, and kind of heard, you know, whispers about how New York could be
dangerous. Nothing will replicate that first time seeing that movie under those circumstances. And that's a movie that I resisted revisiting because I didn't want that memory of it spoiled, that feeling it gave me, like I was there, like I was there on some late night you know, adventure in the city, you know, with no parents, you know, nobody, just being young and wild. And I finally years later got like the director's cut of that
that had this like cartoon stuff added to it. Of course, you're not going to recreate the memory, right, that great memory of seeing that movie the first time, the comic book stuff in there. I didn't think that helped the movie. And that's something about these kind of releases, whether they're
by a boutique or by the studio. The director's cut thing. You know, obviously you have you have the you have the famous director's cut like Once by a Time in America, right, which absolutely you know that has a huge backstory behind it, you know, and you know obviously the director's cut is superior, you know, But then you have other examples where it's not so superior. And I think an example of that, for example is Manama
Dais. I don't think that director's cut is better than the theatrical and in some cases I don't appreciate it when the director's cut is the only thing that's
available, you know what I mean. Obviously, you know, you have things where the David Fincher approved assembly of Alien three, while not one hundred percent finished, I find that to be a far superior movie than what the studio released, even though I've always kind of enjoyed that film more more than others have, you know, but I don't I don't think that all the time the director's cut has been is unimprovement, or or rather the uncut version.
So here's another thing, just to just to take this back, just to use an example of the Colt and horror stuff, since that's kind of what we've been talking about here. The Night Evelyn Came from the Grave is a perfect example of this, is that the I grew up the version of that that I saw, and there's been a bazillion different cuts of that movie, but I saw a very tight, you know, version of that movie that was probably like that was that was about five to seven minutes shorter,
and it was a much tighter film. It was a really enjoyable gothic horror Italian thing that was a twist on the Giallo. It was very unique, set, very much set itself apart from a lot of that stuff that was being made. That was more, you know, just a lot of movies
that were copying The Bird with the crystal plumage kind of deal. And you know, I when Aero released that uncut version, I got it, and you know, I watched it and I'm sorry, like, I mean, look, I appreciate you know, I appreciate naked naked women as much as the next guy. But all that additional footage just made it a soggyar slower
movie. Like it didn't improve it. And I remember, you know, mentioning that on a on a thread with some other cinemaniacs when we were talking about that you know, release, and a lot of other folks jumped in and they were like, yeah, I prefer the like tighter cut version that I saw, you know. So it's not always you know, these these director's cuts, like The Warrior, The Warriors, the Night Everyone Came from
the Grave. You know, I'm a dais, you know some of some of these there's a good reason why some things we were cut out of them. So I I I prefer I prefer that for academic reasons, if there's a director's cut, you and have a director's cut, and then you should also have the option of seeing the theatrical cut, especially when there's no like controversy where it's like this is the version that you were meant to see. Man if it's literally just the novelty of oh, here's the director's cut before
he approved the theatrical version, which was the successful version. The way they they position it in that context, in my opinion, you know, matters, And I just think that, Look, look, obviously, when it's a movie like Amadaeis, which is a stone cold classic, I don't I don't know if if this is the same for you, but like that was a substitute teacher's favorite when I was growing up, because you know what I mean, like every substitute teacher you know, you know, would go ahead
and put in Amadais for the students. You know, it was either Amedeis or it was those Edgar Allan Poe Roger Corman productions, you know what I mean. But you know, I think that, and I'm not sure if that said I have if I have a menomidaeis has the has the theatrical as well, But I think that, you know, the option should always be there unless for some crazy reason it's it's you know, the director has this vendetta and it's like I never want the theatrical version shown. I just want
my directors cut out very as soon as possible. And I would have I would have liked to have seen on the Night Evelyn Came from the Grave disc. I would have liked to have seen one of the shorter versions because like like me and some other peers were talking about, you know what, so it didn't have the more exploitive, you know, sexual stuff in it. All right, it was a tighter, better movie in our opinion. They didn't just make those cuts because it was nudity. They also made those cuts
because it made it a better film. And I mean Colligula is I mean, that's that is something that in my opinion, like I've seen I've seen some version of it that was released years ago on a video and for those that are for those that found that a fascinating story, like the production of it and all of that, I'm glad that that's available, you know, and especially it's good. I read an interview with the lead actor McDowell, right, and he was, you know, he was talking about how how
glad he was to finally see that. So I'm I'm really glad that that's available for you know, for those folks, you know what I mean, Like, I like, that's a that's a phenomenon that I never, like, you know, really lashed into. But for for fans of that, I'm certainly glad it's available because it does have a lot of fans. Look, there's some movies that are actually better. And I was actually having this conversation with a buddy of mine the other day who has seen the same version
of this movie that I did. We're talking about Caddie Shack and Nice, and he was in that I can that's like, you know, top twenty five comedies of all time for me easily. But I was like the television version, the edited television version that that cuts out a couple scenes that are just not funny, Like, is the better, tighter version of the movie?
Right? And I know and years later and I must have seen that movie, like you know, I would I would wear out that, you know, because back then we taped a lot of movies off television, and I must have worn I must have worn that friggin thing out like that in my tape with Okay, here's something for everybody. I'm almost ashamed to admit this, Ryan, I have seen Dirty Harry the Enforcer over like thirty five
times. How is that fucking possible? So anyway, so anyway, So but that version of Caddy Shack and then when I like years later, when I got it on like DVD and I watched it and it had these scenes added, right, it's completely different movie. It wasn't different. It wasn't it wasn't different. I mean it was a little bit different, but it was worse because like these like two scenes. The dookie scene in the swimming
pool is completely not funny. It's so badly done. And the the television version doesn't have that scene in the in the in the movie, not not because it's obscene, but for like you know, for like length and commercial reasons, right right, And but like there's another scene too, But the movie is a better movie without those scenes. But it's great because I was
actually I was talking to somebody like, you know, time Flies. I think it was like two years ago, but somebody else on a thread was like, yeah, the commercial television version, the edit is actually better than the than the movie. So there's there's stuff like that too. And we're gonna talk about that with the thing. Because when I first saw the thing, the version that I saw because that movie was on you know, like
as we discussed, that movie got a lot of TV play. Oh yeah, but but that that movie, the version that I sew right after the scene with McCready and what's his name the other guy. Yeah, when McCready and Childs have their little like eerie kind of discussion to see like maybe one of them is the thing, right right? Well, the TV version that I first saw after that scene, there's a shot of the next morning and a dog, like the same dog from the beginning of the movie, is
running away through the snow. Yeah. Have you ever seen that version? I may again, just like you, I've seen it so many times. It sounds familiar, but they all sort of run together over the So that but that version didn't get as many as many screenings as other versions of the film. Like John Carpenter changed his mind. But you know as well, because we're talking about physical media and film and all this, you know, and we're talking about John Carpenter, you know that like he actually like shot
stuff for the TV version of the Halloween of Halloween. Oh yeah, right, so like you when you would buy these and that kind of like leads to some some issues because if you think it's a better movie with those scenes, you're kind of screwed because they weren't shot to seamlessly be placed in the actual movie. So when you get like a special edition of Halloween, like, you can't watch the movie with them in it, with those TV scenes
in the movie. You have to watch them separately. Right. Oh yeah, So anyway, and we don't get those copies licensed for home video for anything. Some of these boutiques have been able to do it, but it seems like, excuse me, it seems like a lot of the studios are anti going down that path because usually they have to get everybody's sign off. But man, so many of us, like you were saying, we grew
up with these very specific versions. And I don't know about you, but I there's so many things I watched so many times, or like burn CDs in that era of our lives that we were burning everything to CDs. I just have this mindset where at a certain movie follows another movie because I watched them back to back on a homemade VHS nine hundred times or a blood CD. If I hear one song in my mind, the next song is one that I had on a CD that I made when I was fifteen years old,
and I listened to four thousand times. And so those those those tracks are like intrinsically linked for a lot of us. No, absolutely, absolutely, that's a good point. You know. I still remember, you know, the like uh, you know what, like Little Big Man was on one of one of those tapes that I had from television that I watched bazillion times, you know. And but when when you got into physical media, when you got into movies later on down the road right into I'm talking about
the like late nineties. So the late nineties, Ryan, is when there was a lot of remastered widescreen stuff being released, Okay, finally, and what happened was that a lot of companies too were realizing that this cult horror market was huge. There was a lot of money there. Okay, like there's not a lot of you know it. I'm sure for the studios it stings a little bit. But you know there's you know, Oscar winning dramas that can't sell as much as Friday the Thirteenth Part four and haven't been able
to sell as well as Friday the Thirteenth Part four for decades. Right, So you have this kind of you have this kind of strange karma right where you have like you know, like Paramount, for example, was subsidizing all these A list celebrity dramas that flopped with the profits they made from Star Trek and Friday the Thirteenth, which they were embarrassed by and didn't think were cool
because they couldn't walk a red carpet with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Right, but all the you know, Jack Nicholson is one of my favorite actors, love love Big Jack. But all these years later, you know what would you know? Are I mean it like the It fused with Jodie Foster? And do you see that lighting it up on the boutique label circuit? No, not at all. None of those movies can even get a release because you know, the audience that they made them for doesn't buy movies,
right, you know what I mean? So, so what I find interesting is in look, obviously these boutique labels are doing are doing pretty good, you know Keino. Look, Look, I just want to say something about Keno Lorber in particular, and I love Keno. I got a lot of of their movies. Okay, but I you know, I will say this is that a lot of these studio flops with a list actors and actresses with
them that are being released. You know, look, there's a lot of there's a lot of cats that are getting a paycheck, you know, working on these releases, doing audio commentaries, you know, trying to reevaluate them as like unappreciated masterpieces, right. And look, sometimes the critics get it wrong, and as time passes, you know, films are reevaluated and they're legitimately like classics, like the thing, right, but the thing is the
exception, not the rule. You know, some of those some of those movies, if you like the actors, they're they're good one and done novelty watches. But ninety nine percent of the time, I got to say, the critics, the critics got it right the first time. They were one star or two st star movies at best then and there are one star and two star movies now. Love John the Blushi, right, what a great development backstory it has. But at the end of the day, The Continental
Divide is just not a great movie. It's just not that hot, you know what I mean. And you know, lots of talented people were kind of like on the outskirts of it developing it. But you know, and as much as John you know, Blushi fans with you know, god, you know, it would be great if there was another classic to add to the cannon, you know what I mean, Like, it's just it's it's
not you know, it's just not. And look again, everybody involved involved in that movie talented people, right, but sometimes even the talented people, you get them all together, that doesn't they're gonna come up short, you
know when it happens. And there's a lot of duds released by some of these boutique labels, and there's you know a lot of people that are working on these things and doing these things, trying to push narratives about the quality of these movies, you know, and I just I just don't think they're being critical enough. I also feel that way about you know, I'm surrounded by cinemaniacs that blind by tons of movies from these boutique labels that do like
these exploitation and horror movies. And I've seen most of these movies right right Because when I was in when I first started going to film school, video stores were going out of business, and so I bought I would buy all these like horror collections, from these you know, from these going out of business sales for yeah yeah, and we're we're we're gonna get more and into
that after I make this point. But you know, I see a lot of cinemoniacs, you know that like pride themselves I being critics, and you know, not all of them do, but many of them do. But I you know, they're they're blind buying a lot of these exploitation like horror movies, right oh yeah, And like I could you know, I could
count. Actually I don't even think I've seen three times one of them say this movie stank, Like this was a blind buy and this movie stank, you know what I mean, Like everyone like they blind by all these movies and magically everyone that they're just like, oh it was great, so much fun. Yahd yah dah dah. And I'm like, you know, when I'm looking at that, I'm like, you know, you've either coincidentally, just as you know, are very lucky and blind bought bangers every time,
or you're not being honest about the movies you're watching, you know. And I think sometimes there's some of that going on. I can't argue with that.
One thing I will say, though, is I know that a lot of younger people that have gotten into film later than a lot of us did growing up, are discovering what is modern cinema, and when you compare a lot of the even the schlock from the seventies and eighties, a lot of it is just more entertaining than most of what they're seeing either in theaters or the more likely situation is what these streamers are spitting out, which is usually
very low quality, and film to look pretty much exactly the same, I swear. I think I've read that Netflix has a requirement for what specific cameras and lenses to you, so that they all look exactly like a very similar aesthetic. At least. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, Ryan.
I think that young I think young folks. I mean, there's there's that intrinsic like sweet spot right with some of that schlocky stuff, in that it's unintentionally funny y, right, So they're doing the MST three K thing during you know, and when when when you're talking about the modern the modern genre
stuff doesn't do that. It's either postmodern and in on the joke and intentionally funny right, or it's more of like it's more like artsy and it's so slick and produced, yep, that like if it's bad, it's not like hokey enough to like make fun of it. It's just kind of like this super slick and polished, dull thing. And and I do want to say though again, but I'm an independent film you know, so I get it.
It's really hard to make movies. And so nothing against the folks making these movies because it takes a lot to get in the position to make them. But they they don't have that kind of how do I say it, They're not so inane that people can make fun make a good time of it because it's lame. Does that makes sense? Like they're they're they're they're just way too polished. They got way too much money behind them. They're way too like I said, they're way too slick. So that's the genre stuff.
Now, there's a lot of good genre stuff being made, but you're not going to have something like you're just not gonna have like something like the the eighties or seventies kind of booms, you know what I mean. And you know what, that's fine, because you shouldn't try to go back and replicate that stuff and we're out. We're obviously Ryan's going to have to get into that discussion because the nostalgia, the nostalgia wanking is like out of control,
you know. And and again, like I think that there's a certain, a certain burden of responsibility that has to be on the press that covers these things, right, right, Like every time a horror movie is set in the eighties, the press and the critics act like it's a new fresh thing. Like how can like, I like, like, at this point, if something comes out and it's a horror movie, horror movie set in the eighties, like you at least have to acknowledge how done to death that
is? Like you can't approach it like, whoa, this is so fresh and it's got such you know, the eighty style. You know, it's just such a novelty that we're visiting the eighties, you know what I mean? There's nothing novel about going back and doing the eighties at this point,
wouldn't you say? Well that? And I still argue that probably eighty five percent plus of those movies that are set in the eighties are only doing that so they don't have to write themselves out of cell phones, because with most of these films, if somebody at a cell phone, the whole the whole movie ends after like three minutes, right right, And and you know that's you know, it's funny you mentioned that. I am so glad you mentioned
that, Ryan, because my mom has this habit, right. My mom is the best, by the way, my mom is the best, one of the best moms ever. But my mom has this habit where when we're watching old movies and she'll say, well, you know, if they just if they just you know, had a cell phone, it would be but if they could, if they could just get online. And I'm like, this movie is like set in nineteen seventy five, you know what I mean,
Like like this movie doesn't take place in the future. Like maybe if maybe if this you know, detective movie, you know, Like like she made that comment during The French Connection. I was like, I was like, Mom, the French Connection isn't a movie trying to front like it's set in twenty eighteen. Like The French Connection is a movie made in the seventies,
you know what I mean. So anyway, but I'm glad you made that comment though about the cell phones, and I'm also you know, there's also the trend, right, So, like I think that I thought Super eight was probably one of the best in terms of the eighties thing. I watched one of the I watched one of the seasons of Stranger Things, which I thought was really, really good. I don't want anyone to think that I didn't like the subsequent seasons. For me personally, season one was all
I needed, Like I had no desire to find out. I was perfectly fine with Season one. That was a good one and done for me. I loved it, and I just didn't want to watch it anymore. But I thought they did a wonderful job of capturing what it was like a movie that didn't was it, I thought? And I think they set it in the eighties just to cash in on Stranger Things, and that story works better within the context of the fifties. I still think it. Part one set
in the eighties was still very good, was still good. But I think that it would have it would have been great if it had been said in the fifties, because a lot of it just didn't work being said in the eighties. And you know, that's an odd that that's an odd property when you think about it, Ryan, because you know, because it was one of the high points first for Stephen King, you know, in the nineties, Like Stephen King has not been afraid to put his name on some clunker
film properties, right, you know what I mean? Like he's he's I mean and trust me, he is a guy that is, you know, an absolute giant in the industry, a creative giant. He puts over new talent all the time. I love that about him. He he loves classic rock, he loves taking his generation to task for tanking the country and taking you know, tanking the planet. I think he's you know, he's spot on when it comes to you know, trends and where the industry is going.
I think he's great all right. But you know, there's a lot and I mean a lot of a very very very questionable film and TV mini series based on Stephen king work. Absolutely and it the original mini series was one of those, like real like was like a big right spot. That was probably his biggest Definitely, would you say that next to Toby Hooper's The
Stand, that's like his next best one. I mean Salem's Lot, Salem's Lot, I would say it, But what's funny about those movies is that both both dropped the ball on the second half of the story, right, And the weird part about the modern one dropping the ball on the second half of the story is that that one had all the money in the world.
Oh yeah, So like the reason that like it part two of the like original mini series, the reason that it came to such an abrupt conclusion because they like ran out of money, you know what I mean, Like they were like, we got no money left, like we just got you gotta do what we gotta do, you know what I mean. And all the star power in that new one too, yeah, yeah, and they kind of and they really I mean, look, I thought, and here's what was really missing, is that is that the you know, some of the
best performances by John Ritter, Annette Benning. I mean, they just had really good chemistry, the adults and the originally hit part two, and the chemistry was really weird in this new one in the second part of it.
But again, you know, the first part I thought was was really solid and and you know, I still get what everybody was going for, and it just kind of goes to show again how you know, how difficult making movies is even when you have on that your disposal, even when you have those stars that were one hundred percent on board and on the heels of the first part being a mega hit. And of course, one thing I want to say, and you know, I'm not just saying this because I'm on
you know, I'm on the podcast with you. But it's you know, it's guys like you. It's websites and YouTube channels like yours that are you know, keeping physical media alive, you know, constantly keeping people abreast of what's new, what's being released, what's being reissued, what's special about those reissues, and you know the articles and all of that. You know that
you all do to keep it out there. You know, I just want to, you know, give you guys credit, give credit where where credits due, because a lot of the industry, a lot of this boutique, you know, film Blu ray four K box sets, that industry, you guys really keep it alive. So I just wanted to acknowledge that, you
know. But anyway, what's your next question. Well, let's let's take some of that track and go back to Argenta with this, because I think most people would agree Argento's name has been on some clunkers, but what most would say is his last masterpiece happens to be my favorite Argento. Why don't you tell us how you feel about Dargento's Opera? Well, that movie again, that was kind of a saw Suspiria. I saw Demons, which he produced, Lamberto Bava directed, and then I rented This is when I was
in high school. This is in high school now, so and then I saw Kennon Bray, I saw Unsane, which is called Unsane, and then I saw Opera and then Two Evil Eyes I that one I rented. I'm talking about what I rented at the time. I've since seen all of them at that time, and I think and Bird with the crystal plumage, because that was in one of the They had that one in those old school like big plastic VHS cases, right that one, and so I saw. I
actually saw Opera. Terror at the Opera was called at the time, but I saw that the same weekend that I watched Antonioni's The Passenger. The Passenger is is top fifty of all time for me. That's an amazing movie. But what's interesting is that I saw Terror at the Opera afterwards, and I was like, you know what, I was like, Christina, Christina Marcella should have been in Passenger. I was like, she would have been awesome in that movie. Yeah, you know. But anyway, so I thought
that movie. I thought Opera was awesome. I thought that was actually I didn't think it was as good as Suspiria, but I thought it was like the the second best one of his that I that I saw, you know, and around this time I saw The Church as well. Even that was by the Schelle Swavey and I also had So here's here's the thing about our geno in those movies. So back then, have you heard of video search
of Miami in Midnight Video? I think I have, actually, so back then, and you know you've heard of the Psychotronic Film Guide and all that those magazines, But like you would have to go to Barnes and Noble and Borders bookstore and stuff and find these like you know, Borderline one step away from d i y, like cult in like euro Film right right right,
and Midnight Video was one of these. I mean, I don't know how the guy got got away with it, but you could purchase this little catalog and that was really diy at Barnes and Noble and Borders and all it was was all these movies and they were like not available for commercial like they weren't available commercially in the US, right, but they were like you know, director's cuts of this, European cuts of this, like struck from the thirty
five millimeter, you know what I mean. Like it was bootleg stuff, and that's how you had to get a lot of these movies then, yeah, you know, like like especially you know, the Jess Franco and the Joe Diamato and there was a lot of Asian stuff. But they had all these different cuts of stuff, like stuff like Martin By you know, George Romero, you know, and uh another color of Vanella, that other obscure
Romero flick. But anyway, I ordered, I ordered the director's cut of Profundo Rosso deep Red from Midnight Video Beautiful mom My Mom gave me your credit card to like use, and it was like thirty five bucks, Ryan, and that then that was expensive compared to thirty that was a lot of money back then. It's a lot of money now, it's really a lot of money now. It's it will always be a lot of money, but but
especially when when you're young, so it shows up. And it was like the quality was like standard play quality, right, and it had the time code running at the bottom. And I remember it being funny because the write up and looking back on it, I'm sure all the people that ordered from this guy like knew the kind of quality they were going to get. But for them it was worth it, you know what I mean, Like for
them it was worth it. But anyway, I remember like telling the guy or like, you know, I was like, has time code running at the bottom, and blah blah blah blah blah, and like he he refunded the money and was like, I'm never doing business with you again. Oh so I returned it. Though I returned it, and but he set a note back saying, don't do business with us again, you know what I mean. But I was and but so anyway, so I had seen that, and then so Opera Tear at the Opera was just so great and it
had that I loved the existential ending, you know. And I don't want to get into the movie itself too much because we're talking about physical media. So I and in regard to Opera, I later got the anchor bay DBD that had the movie on one disc and the soundtrack on in another. I had that that package that that everybody cherishes because up until this new Severin release that's coming out, that was, you know, the only way you could
get that, you know. But I when I was in film school, like I was, I, well, you know, his Internet was finally a thing and there were like Dario Argeno websites and stuff, and I did a huge presentation of Dario Argenno. I mean, he's He's one of my main guys. Okay, I just want to get that out of the way. So like nice So like Felleeny Peck and paw ur Gento, George Miller and like Robert Altman are probably my like man like my like personal faves.
That's the guys that like really really get me going because like I mean, you got to realize man again kind of like the the like saying and some of those other movies I mentioned being playing every week on commercial television. You could not escape the Mad Max movies right right, like if you wanted to, you know, Mad Max the Road Warrior were on every week, and
because it was more kid friendly, Thunderdome was on extra screenings. You know, a lot of people don't understan stand because there's you know, Furiosa came out. A lot of people don't understand that the Mad Max movie that has the most pop culture imprint and one of the biggest pop culture imprints of any
movie is Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, even though it's the weakest one. Oh yeah, no, Like very few movies in history, are as referenced in so many different ways and influence so many different things like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I still hope that Furiosa coming out has inspired so many people to come
back and watch all of them from the beginning. And we've got recent releases of all of them too, so they're out there and available, and if you've never seen all of them, man, that's a journey to go on. Yeah, I mean, Road Warriors top fifty of all time for me, you know what I mean, easily. But anyway, so going back
to going back to our jento. So by the time that I got that set though, all right, you know, things were starting to my interest in and appreciation of dariy r Jenna was starting to was starting to get dinged, you know, in a little bit you mentioned he hasn't made a good
movie in a long time. So we're just gonna go ahead and talk about that now because it's the around the same time that I got that opera set, you know, is that some of these movies, man, Like I remember when I watched The Card Player, that was pretty much it for me.
Like when they were when they were doing that scene where they're playing the computer game on their laptops while on the train tracks, I was that's for me as a as a film viewer, as a film lover, and watching one of my one of the work for my heroes, like I was visible, like depressed, Like I was like I can't, like I can't with
this. It's understandable, you know. And and that for me, like really like that was kind of the the end of me following his work closely, you know, because I'm not a I don't care what it is. I don't care. You know. I'm a huge Bob Doing fan. I'm a huge Bruce Ringsteen fan. I'm a huge you know, I'm a huge
fan of all these filmmakers like I just mentioned. But you know what, I'm not an uncritical, unquestioning loyalist like if they're if they're doing stuff that I don't like, or if they're if they're if they're doing shoddy stuff, and they do shoddy stuff consecutively for a long time, like I eventually just kind of back away, you know, and you know, films like like it started pretty much like I had Trauma on video, you know, you know, and Trauma was kind of the beginning of the end. Was that
Trauma was the one right after Opera, right eighty nine. Now he did two Evil Eyes, Oh well, yes he did. He did two Evil Eyes and you know, he like saved face with that because everybody agreed that, like his segment was really creative and really good, and it actually is really good. But there's and that was at a that was at a we were at an era where all those kind of like heavy hitters in the horror
scene were like really starting to falter. Yep, you know what I mean, because you needed you needed the postmodern humor to save it because they were taking themselves too seriously and they were making too many bad movies and too many bad movies were also starting to flood the like video on demand mark, I mean, the straight to video market. You remember that of course, yeah, that did a lot of damage to the genre, to the reputation of
the genre. But a lot of those big heavy hitters like Carpenter, Toby Hooper, you know, Stephen King, you know, during that time, they were really struggling. So you know, once you got into so he did Two Evil Eyes, they needed Trauma and I owned those on video. Like by that point, I had a pretty big video collection going, you
know what I mean. And but that was once you got into you know, Phantom of the Opera and you got into The Stendel Syndrome which was released by Trauma, you know, like it just started to It was kind of like being a Bob Dylan fan in the in the nineties. Yeah, and
you know when when you were before were Dylan's huge renaissance. And I was telling some students of mine this last year, I was like, there was a period of time where like people would look at you weird if you said you were Bob Dyllard fan, because he had just run his reputation into the ground so bad in the eighties in the early nineties that I mean he was, I mean, he his his renaissance, his his late period renaissance,
his history making light period renaissance a lot of people. You know, that's been going on for so long now that people don't remember that he had that huge, really fallow period, right, Yeah, but that's what that's what kind of started happening with with with Dario Argento, right, was there was
this kind of like period there where people were rediscovering his work. Right, So our generation was was was really big on kind of rediscovering, was kind of red discovering heck and paw Leoni and our Gento, right and like John Wu Like our generation kind of really you know, brought those guys up, and the genera the generation after us brought like Tarkowski and a lot of that
stuff to the table, you know what I mean. But but you also have to keep in mind that everybody wants to every generation wants to find, wants to discover their own their own guys, right, their own you know, men or women of the arts, right, whether it's music or cinema, what have you. You know, So like you've got to look at the context. Ryan, It's because I'm getting fired up now, you can't stop me. So you got to look at you got to look at the
context. So like when all of us were like coming up, you know, we were we were just rediscovering and bringing Joorge Romero into the spotlight and giving him the shine, our Geno into the spotlight, giving him the shine, you know, Carpenter, you know we were getting you know, Cronenberg
Leoni once upon a time in America. You know, That's what our generation of movie lovers were kind of, you know, in Peg and Paul, we were bringing those guys up, you know, and reevaluating some of their movies, you know, as being legit classics, and then bringing up movies like you know, like George Romero's Martin and you know, you know Kennebray and Tara at the Operat just our Geno period Suspiria that a lot of people
didn't know about that movie at all, you know what I mean. And then you know, Sam Pegin pop like bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Cross of Iron. You know. But but like we didn't, we didn't like we saw like a Luccio Fulci and those other guys like Umberto Lenzi and stuff, like we saw those guys is just cheap copycats, to be honest, well, and speaking before you say the next sentence, as we're recording this Happy Birthday to Lucio Fulci right right, and you know, Luccio
Filocci is one of those I just want to say this. I'm I'm a personal fan, big fan of Don't Don't Torture a Duck Wing. I think that's a I think that's a far, a far smarter movie than people give it credit for. It's very it's a very prescient film about small town tribalism and uh, you know, fear of the other and things like that. That's a very good movie. And look, anybody that can again, anybody that that consistently makes movies finds a way to consistently make movies power toolm okay
exactly. So the guy definitely was doing something right. But our generation, you know of movie made of cinemaniacs that that we're bringing those guys up,
like like, we didn't give those guys a lot of credit. It was the generations like afterwards, right, because it was people were kind of people got tired of hearing about how great Dariel Argenno and John Carpenter was, so they started you know, digging deep into full Chi and in Berto Lenzi and and things like that, and you know, to be honest, you know, I don't. You know, I used to have the ten box set with the post cards of The Beyond, you know what I mean. And
I just want to say this to anybody listening to this day. The audio commentary by the by the lead actor and actress for The Beyond is the best audio commentary that I've ever heard. It's so much fun. They have so much fun with it. So so but but like those Luccio Fulci and for me, I don't I don't see him as the visionary that a lot of other people do. Like for for example, again, context is everything.
You know, me and my friends watched you know, we discovered Dawn of the Dead when you know, during a sleepover in middle school, and we're like, oh my gosh, like this is just like amazing, this epic friggin film. You know. A couple of weeks later, we watched Zombie and we were just like, oh, this is kind of a knockoff of that. It has some cool like gore stuff, but it's not as good, you know what I mean. So like and like I still I still
see it as kind of that way. You know. Obviously, there's a lot of people that really love that film because it gets a you know, a six disc box set that comes out every eight months. But you know,
that was kind of how that happened. And like in Berto Lenzi is now like this big guy, you know, working on a couple of right now, actually right right, and Umburdo Lenzi is somebody that became you know, more reevaluated and and for me personally when I watched those like I watched Bird with the Crystal Plumage for the first time, and I watched a lot of Diallo movies, and I watch a lot of cinemaniacs on social media talk
about these movies. And I watched Bird with the Crystal Plumage for the first time last year the Aarow Blue, so they did a wonderful job on and I watched that and I was like, I don't see how you can even compare any of those other movies to this movie, right, like, every component of this movie is clearly superior to all those all those knockoffs that I keep seeing them, you know, in feeds, being like being like, I think this one was better than Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and you
know, and and I'm like I kind of think they're just being caddy because you know, I just watched it, and I'm like, I'm like, they don't like, this is clearly a master work of this form. Did you, per Argento, did you go back and watch Dark Glasses now that that's come out? Okay, I have not seen Dark Glasses. I watched the I watched the movie that had all the lawsuits going on with Adrian Brodie. No, yallo, I watched I watched that movie that you know made
those those headlines here. I saw, you want to know a funny story about Jerry Rgeno actually is that? And this is kind of a low point in his legacy, and I felt bad for this, Like when he was shopping around Dracula to get finishing funds. Yeah, his company accidentally had the full version of the movie without the fully rendered effects on YouTube public and they didn't even like no, yikes. And I came across I forget if I came across it or somebody sent it to me, but it was like a
sales production company of the movie. Yeah, and I was like, I was like, I was like, yikes. I mean, not only not only are the you know, the quality of the films this way but this is just kind of like really sloppy like professionalism, you know what I mean, like change people's perception of the film. No matter like if they had retooled some things and made it a competent film, Uh, it wouldn't mattered.
Public discourse would have tanked it already, right right, And and you know, and then you're into you know, and and look, I understand there's a lot of I understand there's a lot of fans, right, I understand there's a lot of fans out there. And look those that are those that are completests right right, and need you know, like appreciate a three disc version of the Stendel Syndrome or you know, I mean the one of the ones that have you have you seen? Oh my gosh, have you
seen the wa the wax Mask? Oh that's another one Severn put out. I did, right, I believe right when they released it. I think that was my first time. That is, I actually got that one on a I rented that one from Netflix years back. But that is one of those like it's like a Demon's or a you know, the Church. It's a movie he produced and it's like his for his effects guy. It's like his effects guy's directorial debut, Sergio Sibilti. Yeah, yeah, that's a
wild movie. Is a one time watch. Well that in a Fulci and Argento helped write that one, I believe. Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a wild movie. I'm not going to give spoilers, but that's a wild movie. And you know, you know, going back to going back to Severin for a second there, you know how I had mentioned that, you know, I had ordered, not ordered, but I had bought a bunch of videos from those stores that were going out of business when I went
to film school. So yeah, like you said, I got I'm super cheap, right, you know, this is like a dollar a piece. No, no, no, I think it was like five for ten bucks, like two bucks apiece, you know. And you know I'm getting the you know, I'm scouring for the cheap thrills, the horror stuff so we can hang out in my door. We're over and we can do shots and drink and have fun with these movies. You know. But there were some and there were some winners in there, a lot of them all all be
honest. I didn't think we're worth two dollars, right, you know, like they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Between Vinegar Syndrome and Severn, I see some of those films, you know, and these remastered super duper collectors additions for like thirty five to fifty dollars. Hey, power to them. But some of the some of the winners from that group, I'm not going to name those titles, but some of the winners.
Some of the ones that were really fun from from from those batches of movies that I bought was, you know, Burial Ground, which was awesome. Severin has a great version of that, you know, Cocaine Wars was another fun one. Doctor Butcher m d. Was a fun one, and Death Warmed Up, you know, and you know, one of the coolest things, you know, growing up, my my generation grew up with, you know, Cinemax After Dark and Laura Gemzer was like the first Cinemax after Dark
star that almost all of us were exposed to. Oh yeah, right, So, so a lot of us, you know, grew up seeing those Black Emmanuel movies, you know. So and Severn has that huge Black Emmanuel box that of the aailable Laura Gemzer is absolutely amazing. So you know, I just want to put a big you know, put a big spotlight on several not just that they're you know, releasing my movie Sybil. Like Silver,
they're releasing Opera. But you know they've got some other, you know, great discs that I've been lucky to get to get a hold of. I would definitely throw in there. You know, Out of the Blue was a big film that I discovered in film school. They were great berth of that. You know, Man, I grew up a huge Pink Floyd fan, and before When the Wind Blows was only something you hurt, you read about in Pink Floyd biographies. And they've got that movie. They got threads
right, So they got some really cool stuff. And they have my third favorite Jaws movie, the Unofficial Jaws Five Cruel Jobs. Yes, they uh all this love. This is the perfect time to transition too, simple like Silver and Opera together because these are now, at least for me, going to be intrinsically linked, because you you pulled off the impossible in multiple ways. Let's let's first of all talk about simple like Silver. How how did
this movie come about for you? Well? Here here, here's what happened, Ryan, is that I when I was in film school, and I had mentioned how the Internet was just kind of starting and day our gendo sites and things like that, and you know, I was a big fan and I would look up This was before I got kind of you know, I got kind of burnout on them, right, but I would, you know, I would look up you know, the actresses and the people involved,
and you know, Christina Barcelic was like impossible to you know, find anything out about, right, Like you couldn't find anything out about her, right and outside of her having this like studio a studio in Madrid, there was nothing you could find about Christina Marcelic. Now, over time, you know, occasionally because I was, you know, still I'm a huge movie geek.
I was still plug into that cold horror stuff. You know, I would do searches or kind of poke around, and it just became this thing that she was like the holy grail of cult actresses that like no one could get a hold of. Okay, And I think you remember me mentioning that
opera to two disc that I got. That was probably when when when those kind of like extra DVDs of the cult and horror stuff was coming out, and like everybody under the sun was participating, you know, in these things when they were having like the costume designer and stuff and like the property massacre and the key rip and you know, and and you know, when when that set came out, I was like, you know, it's really weird
that Christina Marcelic isn't involved in this. You know. Yeah. But you know, by that time, though, you know, there were lists online of like, you know, top ten director actress feuds of all time, and like she was on there with our gento, on like multiple lists, and you know, so I was like, Okay, I can, I can you know, I can put the pieces of the puzzle together there, right, dude. Right. So I was, you know, I was meanwhile doing a you know, I was working as a screenwriter. I was
making independent films, you know what I mean. And I had just got done doing some short films and I had some specs scripts that were ping pong and around how around Ben Hollywood, and I had gotten hired to write a script for I had gotten hired to rewrite a script by Lucas Foster. Lucas Foster is a producer who he produced or more Bush. He produced Mister and Missus, Mister and Missus Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Joe Lee, and he had also produced Man on Fire by Tony Scott. I think he did
another couple of Tony Scott movies too. But I was hired to rewrite this this movie for him, And actually I was originally hired based on another specscript I had written. I was hired to rewrite a character so they could get Mel Gibson to be in this thing. Interesting and what I did though, I got the script and the script was like, you know, to steal a line from a pecand foot pof film was like a crazy woman's quilt. And I was like, you know, I was like, getting Mel Gibson
isn't going to solve this is this project's problems. I was like, you know, this script has some serious issues, and I like broke you know, I broke it down and they were like impressed, so they hired me to do a full, a full rewrite of it. The reason I'm telling this story is because I used the money that I got for that to make simple like silk oh wow. Yeah. And actually the project I can't really
get into. The director that I was working for is a little bit of a it's a he's kind of a name, but he had his only other movie was one of the most notorious and night these box office flops of all time. And I can I can say from working with the guy that there's a reason that that movie was a flop. And there's also a reason of very good reasons why he hadn't made a movie since then, you feel me?
Oh yeah? And but Lucas Foster, while we were working on this, he was developing the More Bius movie for like Marvel sony Right, Okay, so like things had gotten we're definitely getting code read with the director. But I wanted to look good for Lucas Foster so he could bring me on board the more the Marvel training, you know what I mean. I wanted to be on you know, in one of those writing groups. Like I
didn't even want a credit. I just wanted to be in one of those writing groups so I could get some of that Marvel money, right yep. And so I was like trying to be a good citizen and like, you know, impress him with how much you know, patience I had dealing with this whack job. But then Lucas Foster wound up getting tired of the guy
and just like left the project like after like after paying me. He had he had like a falling out with the with the director, right, and then the director though wanted wanted like me and him to like forge ahead like on our own, and I was like, I was like, I think I've had enough, you know what I mean. I was like, I was like, now that Lucas Foster and you know, the Marvel train just left, just left the like station, and uh, you know, I
don't think I'm putting up with you any further. So anyway, so I had just I had just done a short film in Los Angeles with some people that I had been working with, and I had kind of I had kind of given some second chances to some folks that I I shouldn't have and that's on me. And at the same time, the thirtieth anniversary of Opera was happening, right, and I said, man, you know what I'm going
to do. I'm gonna I'm going to track down Christina Marcelic, you know, because I saw it was Scorpion Scorpion announce this set right for Opera and I was like, all right, I was like this is absurd. I was like, you either get Christina or you don't, period like that's the juice, that's what missing. You got, that's what's missing. You've got the publicist on here, like nobody would you don't. You don't get the
publicist to do an interview if you've got Christina Marcecellic, right right. So I was like, all right, so I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna find her. I'm gonna make this my thing. So I went ahead and I actually did contact Scorpion to see if they had reached out to her, and they
had. They just assumed that she didn't care. And what their thing was, and what their whole point was was that if Anchor Bay couldn't get her to do it, then there was no reason to make the effort because Anchor Bay had Their whole point was Anchor Bay has millions, and if those millions didn't get her to do it, then it just you know what I mean,
Like it was just best to like leave it alone. And my whole thing was, well, you know, I was smart enough to know that if I did manage to track down Christina, I definitely wasn't going to be approaching her with a horror out here, right, you know, what I mean, like that wasn't gonna fly. Because one of the reasons a lot of these actresses that are affiliated with these horror films stay out of the limelight is because they get tracked down by crazy psycho horror movie fans. That is
a fact. That is a fact. They attract stalkers, right, famous example being an Adrian King from Friday the thirteen. Yep. Right, she went into hiding for how many years, like a decade? Oh yeah, so, you know, so anyway, I started poking around and I actually I found some you know, some some some students that had had attended her acting studio, and I started to kind of, you know, piece piece
the story together a little bit. And but luckily, while I'm gonna cut to the chase, luckily after I was, you know, doing a bunch of fruitless searching. Jane Spencer, who is who is a independent filmmaker, activist, very good friend of mine. She did she she directed Little Noises in a very cool indie called The Ninth Cloud. If anybody can track it down on streaming. The Ninth Cloud's a very cool movie. But she was
Facebook friends with Blanca. Oh wow, Christina's sister, and I was like, you know, that can either mean something or it cannot mean something, right, Like I'm I'm Facebook friends with some people I know wouldn't give you the time of day if I message him, you know what I mean. So so, but Jane had actually auditioned Blanca for like a role for one of her films, for a film she had made, so they had a relationship. Nice. So I sent Blanca. I sent Blanka a message to
give to Christina and that was that. Life went on. And then six months later, at like four o'clock in the morning, I got a message from Blanca saying, Christina wants to talk to you. Wow. Yeah, just from one message, that's impressive. Yeah, because I sent, you
know, a pitch and and and stuff like that. I really wanted to make it clear it wasn't going to be some I made it clear it wasn't going to be about opera and it wasn't going to be a horror film, right, you know, because at that time Christina wasn't talking about wasn't you know, going there, right, that just was something that she talked about. So anyway, the so not only did I I tracked down Christina, you know, when I talked to her on the phone. She was very
funny, she was very polite, She's very professional. Right. I just want to say this to anybody listening, is that I have seen more people. I have seen more people throw away their careers in this business because they can't maintain prompt professional correspondence. Oh my gosh. Yes, that is such an obvious thing to people like us. But man, I just the way
that some of these people speak, it's crazy, absolutely absolutely. And I you know, and Christina Marcelic, even if she's not in the best of moods, she will message me back within forty eight hours, all right, So she gets the work, right, she gets priority. Yeah, and she gets the respect because she's able to communicate and stay in touch as a
professional, right. And that is what like. She is a sixty year old woman, and I am surrounded by you know, actors and actresses half her age that can't be friggin bothered to respond to simple communication through email in a timely manner, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, So so guess what she'll get the opportunities, you know. Now, that's not to say there's not you know, flare ups from time time to time or bumps you know in the road. This is of course, this is this is
a stressful business. You know what I mean, This is a stressful business. But but what's great is that Christina is very mischievous and had a very self deprecating sense of humor. And she had a friend Carmen that also that that she wanted to work with her, that came on board as a co producer of the film. Carmen also, it's just very funny, very funny.
So you had the right personalities for this project because I not only got Christina, Christina hadn't acted in like twenty five years, Okay, yeah, So not only did I convince her to do the project, but I convinced her, you know that, I mean to come over to the United States and do the film incognito, wandering around Saint Augustine, pretending we were tourists, and she was down with that, right. And on that note, I really want to say, before you continue with that, that I was
completely taken by your photography of Saint Augustine. There is something about this. I mean not to just heap praises on everything that I could say about you right now, but every single shot was breathtaking and felt like a completely different world. And some of that is, you know, this stark black and white photography, but a lot of it is just the shot choice was immaculate in this film. Ryan, thank you so much for saying that. I
really appreciate it. One of my one of the main goals of the film was to have a was for the film to be almost entirely comprised of money shots of bangers, well welcome, thank you, thank you. And we shot a lot of footage. We shot, you know, a documentary about a footage, and I gave you know, the editing and the cinematography. I actually gave those credits. I mean, but even though I did both, I gave the credits to two friends of mine from high school that I
used to talk their years off about Dario and our geno films. But they they both passed away when they were They both passed away when they were young, so I kind of did that to give them a nod, and also because I don't think it's cool to have your name a thousand times in the cress, right, right. But but so I really appreciate you. I really appreciate you saying that, because that was definitely the intention and this this project had it all in regard to the experience. I mean, we had
so much fun. Christina Carmen and myself had so much fun going out there in Saint Augustine and having you know, each day we ate at a new place that was great, you know, just wandering around and doing all of this. I mean it's very You are not going to find a lot of people that are that are going to be willing to do that, right right, you know what I mean, you are not going to find a lot
of people willing to do that. And every day that was one of those experiences that every day going out there, I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this well. And every layer of this story makes it a little more unbelievable. So for those that haven't seen it yet, it's it's not just this, you know, amazing story that Christina comes out of retirement to
do this. It's that it's a unique film that they's not normal dialogue and it's not from a filmmaker that's established that has you know, pages and pages of IMDb credits that everybody knows that they're coming out just for this opportunity to work with. It's clearly that she believed in this project. And when you look at the story itself, especially that first act, with the way that she speaks, there's there's so much just genuine emotion and empathy in the message
that she's giving in that part. It's I'm so glad that you were able to get her for this. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much Ryan for saying that too, because you know, you want to look like Christina wanted to look good, right, and she also though I didn't want the responsibility of like having to you know, carry an entire film, you know what I mean, And that's why it really, you know, worked because it's for those that haven't seen it, it's like a tripkick, so it's
like three interweaving little, you know, stories. And we also wanted to do something that was that was playful, that was kind of winking at the audience a bit in regards to you know, ourt House Cinema, you know, I had because we didn't want a laborious kind of thing, and we had, you know, and I I want to give props too while I'm on here. Christina and Carmen were absolutely fantastic. But Susannah Nelson, who played the girl was absolute so much fun too, and so was the boy.
Yeah, you know, everybody involved in that was was great, especially because you know when once you're shooting in the summer and you're in Florida, You've got so many hours of daytime, right, so like you can go out early, you can shoot for four hours, You're can have a great lunch somewhere and then shoot for a couple more hours and then go home.
You know, that was a that was a near in terms of Look, man, I've I've produced some movies where it's been it's been tough going, you know what I mean, And this was one of them where look, you know, there were there was a lot that could have gone wrong, you know what I mean, Like, there was a lot that could have
gone wrong. Yeah, everything went right. And I always tell people to a certain degree about filmmaking is that, you know, like anything, it's a numbers game, you know, like you have to look at here, you have to look at the best in this business. Right, So look at the best in this business. Run Look how many of them have many bad films? Oh yeah, And that's when they have every resource at their
disposal. But you've got to crunch it down so if you're doing things on a small level like I am, right, and you have to and you keep doing things, and every time you do something, you're doing something different, right, you know, the numbers are going to catch up with you, like like you're you're just not going to smash it every time. Of course not, you know, so be so so getting a having an experience like that, and especially with and Christina taking that chance on me was absolutely
uh was absolutely uh life changing. But here's what's here's what segues into the opera thing. So Christina wasn't she wasn't talking about opera at all, right, like during the shoot, like I kind of like I kind of mentioned it at one point and she like gave me a look and kind of a
short answer. And I mean, when Christina doesn't want to do something, I mean, you're you're gonna know and I and I want to say say this though about this one shot we did, is that we were doing a lot of like steady cam stuff, right, and I referenced Jack Nicholson from The Shining you know, and she goes, oh, and she did. There's a scene where Jack Nicholson's walking down the hall and The Shining and he's talking to people, right, And she did his entire choreography from that,
like mimicked it. And I was like, wow, that's wild. And so that's that's that's just an example. Maybe she was just a great collaborator. She was just a really good collaborator. I couldn't ask for anyone better for that. And now, but like I said, we didn't talk about opera at all. But on the last day when she was about to leave, we had you know, we had such a great experience. I was like, all right, I'm going to test the waters. Yeah, And
I brought a couple of Scorpion Opera blues for her to autograph. I brought three, one for a buddy of mine who had done some work on the film, and then for you know, two friends that I knew that are big our geno fans, like they would love that because she's never autographed, right, never autographed anything, and she went ahead and did it. Wow. So anyway, you know, the pandemic hits. I'm not going to
get into all that pandemic hits. I cut the film. We decided it's best to release it, you know, to to press and stuff during the pandemic, which turned out to be a great, you know, great strategy for it. We got we had some feelers from some festivals that I have connections with from prior projects. But look, the film turned out better than we had hoped and was opening all the doors for me that it needed to.
And I'm at an age Ryan where look man like like if if if I don't need, if I don't need the festival slot, like I'm gonna let somebody else have it. Like I've been ping ponging around the festival circuit long enough. And I'm at an age too where I'm not comfortable taking away
slots from younger talent, you know what I mean. Like I'm not you know, I'm not big time or anything, but I'm here, you know, I'm like, you know, doing rewrite work for Lucas Foster to finance like little independent films, like you know, I don't need to also be like taking away film festival slots from struggling independent filmmakers, right, you know
what I mean, I don't, Like, I'm just not. So I went ahead and you know, told those festivals, I was like we're fine, Like we're we're we're in good shape with this, you know, And then, but around this time I was still speaking with We actually went to Spain. So I went to Spain and prepped another project with Christina during the pandemic. Yeah, with Sean Harwell, who's a buddy mine, who wrote Eastbound and Down, that HBO show Nice and red Oaks and the campaign with
Will Ferrell. Yeah he was yeah, we we we wrote this like surreal, like post apocalyptic kind of thing. And Jane Spencer, Jane Spencer who I mentioned she was going to be working on it too, And I went to Spain to Madrid and for like no money. It was towards the tail end of the pandemic when I went, but I bought the tickets months before, so it was like nothing. So I had this glorious hotel in downtown Madrid and the flight and it was like for like and I was there for
like twelve days. I mean, it was so cheap, It's like you know, I mean, it was ridiculous. So I went there and we did costume, hair tests, rehearsals, location scouting and all of that in Madrid, and that that project wound up. I'm not going to get it into detail, but basically Omnikron and the stock market route of that year, like Scared Away the small money, right, but the full room morg is actually I wrote a full breakdown of that of developing that project, including the
last version of the script Sean and I worked on. And that's going to be if it isn't by the time this is published, like that's going to be in room RG. Oh wow nice. Yeah. Yeah, so that's
a big blow by blow on that. But anyway, but after that, Christina reached out to me, Like I was talking to Christina about something else, and she had mentioned participating in this Stereo our Geno doc, you know, and she had been asked, and I was kind of telling her that, like she should do that, you know what I mean, that it's time to you know, enough time has passed, you know. And I didn't get into it with her really, but she went ahead and participated in
the ur Geno doc. Which you know. What's funny is that I've been in contact with the filmmakers of that documentary about something else that I can't get into right now, but I still haven't actually seen it. And I guess the reason why I haven't seen it is because how can you how can it not be a fucking series. Yeah, like everything that's spent his life, that's that's a lot to go into. I mean, I mean, you know, the Dario Argena has revolutionized the business, has revolutionized the horror genre
on three separate occasions. Oh yeah, Bird with the Grizzal Plumage with Brofundo Rosso and then Suspiria like bam, bam bam, you know what I mean. Yeah, and he has multiple I mean there there's you could do an episode on each movie, and you want to know something, you could do an episode on each of the Turkeys too, and it was still be fascinating because there's a lot to learn from when things go wrong, like and trust me, I've done I've done projects where things have gotten really really wrong,
you know what I mean? And you know, so that was kind of so that documentary came out and it was like it's what it's like an hour and fifty minutes or an hour and forty five minutes, right, I was like, how is this like the documentaries that I was watching on Dario r Jeno? Right, the ones on video that came out all those years ago
were like ninety minutes. This is this is twenty minutes longer and covers three more decades, like how it's shorter of the mind in your conversation already, right right, I mean, but I already checked the length Ryan, for how long your podcast go. So I'm going to be going for a little bit here. So you've got some You've got some some some long running times on your podcast. So I'm taking advantage of all of it. Ryan, You're got you hostage. So she went ahead and did that, and then
once once she did that, I was like, okay. I was like, I was like, all right, you know, so she's open to
that. And then around the same time I was, you know, started speaking to Severing about releasing simple like silver and you know David Gregory who runs severin, you know, he he liked the film a lot, and he was also mentioned that they were gonna this is like two years ago, like this has been a long time, and as that there was going to be an opera four K coming out, and I said, you know, well, why don't I get you know, why don't I see if I can
get Christina to do an audio commentary and then do on camera and interviews, because that's you know, that's what a future set of opera has to have like, it has to have that, you know, for it to break away from the pack, even if it is a great four K transfer, you know what I mean, it's just that's just like a glance, it's
just missing. You gotta have that. And I want to take a moment here and give a shout out to Alicia Lopez, who is somebody that is a friend, is an assistant and a translator who's been working with Christina and myself for the last few years on these projects. I mean, she's done translation of the simple like Silver script for Christina. She translated the night Ow Will Only Brings Twice script for Christina, the one that we shot in Madrid.
So I got to give her a big shout out for helping coordinate all this, okay, and you know it was it was one of those things where you know, you had to have We needed Christina, you know, and Christina was down to do it, you know what I mean. And she had a wonderful time. She did audio commentary to the on camera and interviews. I want to give a shout out to Alberto as well, who
is Severn's liaison in Madrid. And then Angel who is the program director of SIGIS, did the auto common audio commentary with Christina, you know, and she you know, it was just very important to all of us that it be and and and you know, there was you know, there was some back in, you know, obviously, some back and forth, and a
couple logistical things needed to be ironed out, a couple of hiccups. And but you know, when you're working, here's the thing, when you pad your time, you can iron and iron out all that stuff and deal with it as it happens a lot better, right, and like, and we had been chiseling away at this for like a while so that when things came up they were we could address them, you know what I mean. And and anyway, it went ahead and got done and I had Christina had a
wonderful time with Angel the program director of SIGIS. So they are so when they went ahead and released the details of this set, I had no idea that it was going to be that expansive. Okay, now, as somebody who's just from the outside looking in, Ryan like, I have not watched
opera in years. Despite all of this, working with Christina for years on multiple projects and organizing some of this stuff like I myself haven't watched opera in forever when I had her autograph some like Scorpion Blues, like I didn't have one for myself, you know what I mean. So I haven't seen opera
in forever. But what so outside looking in when I look at that set, you know, Christina Marcelic, you know, both audio commentary and on camera and interviews, and the standalone disc of the soundtrack, just like that Anchor Bay release we discussed earlier. So the Dario our general materials, sorry, Dario, our general materials, the Christina Marcelic materials and the disc those
are like as somebody just from the outside looking in, right. So now, as far as the definitive version of the film and just making sure that you have everything that's ever been and can be in a set like that, it definitely has has all of that in it, you know what I mean.
So it doesn't you know, when I was talking to David Gregory, I said, hey man, we were on a zoom call, and I said, hey man, you know I've been seeing a lot of people posting these like end of the or these like these best of the Year, you know, Blu ray box sets and top ten lists Blu ray discs, and
I was like, I want this to be one of those. I want this to be a contender, absolutely, And man, man this five disc set that he put together and you know, all all the people that that that worked on it, Like, all all I did was assist in arrange for Christina to be involved, and I kind of mapped out how to go about that, you know, with the audio commentary on camera and interviews. But uh, I you know, I had no you know, I had no involvement in the rest of it. I didn't know exactly what they were
doing. So but it is absolutely epic and I think it certainly, Uh you know, I don't even have a four K player Ryan, and I certainly don't have one in the packaging band. But it is certainly is certainly going to be an epic set. And what did you think when you saw those? I mean, it's your favorite our Geno film, you said, so was it everything that you were hoping for or what are your thoughts?
I? Yeah, I'm thrilled. This is one that I had been in talks with Severn to potentially work on last year and the disc just ended up being so overloaded. There was literally no room to add us, so we respectfully about out, but it's it is the type of presentation for somebody's favorite film that makes you go nothing will ever be able to top this. This literally has everything you could want. It is something that appeals to, you
know, the Dario Argento fans. It appeals to the people that are into rare films because this is not a film like we were talking about earlier. This is one that gets a ton of re release. This has been sort of difficult to get on HD in a good release and other than that scorpion disc, this is going to be what most modern collectors are going to have their eyes on because it is everything, which is just a gift. When you love the film like this, that's a great way of putting it.
That's a great way of putting it. And that's that's interesting to hear about you were you were looking at working on it. I had no idea. I had no idea, So that's definitely that's definitely a new one for me. I gotta be honest. I'll always be transparent about what I don't know.
I am not you know, I don't know one hundred percent how the boutique release business works like, I do know that the rights come in in bundles, so I know that he has like a few of the obviously he got the rights all at once, I assume for all of these or is that how that works? Uh? Sometimes it depends on where they're getting them. It could be from a producer or from a studio and from obviously they've been working on opera for quite some time, and yeah, it sometimes it's
bundles there. There there are some boutique labels that will flat out refuse to take bundles and they'll say, no, it were only coming after the movie we want. We're not going to put out the stuff that you're throwing in. Well, I got it, I know. For I'm glad you mentioned that because I know for a fact that that Keino definitely doesn't have that deal.
I know, I know for a fact that that some of these studios that when when Keno Larber says, hey, we want that we want to do a release of say Elmer Gantry, right, Elmer Gentry with Burt Langcaster, I know for a fact the studio says, if you want that one, you got to take all the Burt lang Caster movies. These are the
nine films with it. Yeah, yeah, because they they definitely because you could tell, like when they there was that one Roger Moore movie that they wanted that they hyped, and they wound up getting the other seven Roger Moore movies and they were literally selling them for like six dollars within two months. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, crazy sad. I don't know if you read this. Keno lober in twenty twenty three released almost two
hundred and fifty releases, not films, but releases. So many of those were box sets even Yeah, I mean, I look, I'm a big fan of Keino. I've got a lot of their Look, I've got a lot of their discs. I know, I was, you know, talking a little bit earlier about you know, kind of the big studio flops with the A list names. You know what I mean, Some of those I can do without because I you know, but they do a lot of good stuff. You know, I really liked a lot and I have a lot
of their Their releases is rare Ro Video. I thought rare Ro were awesome. They wound up, they got into I think they're out of business. They got into some I know, the pandemic really did a number on them, and they were having some issues with getting you know, discs to people in a timely manner towards the end of that pandemic year. But they were I mean, they were always good to me. I got a lot of great stuff from their sales, like excellent stuff, you know. I got
I got that that general what what is it? General Rovero by Rosalini, I got the I got the Fellini a clown set they did, yep, you know I was. I got the Long Hair of Death, which is really underrated Gothic Halloween Haunter. There's a couple other ones. I don't have them in front of me, but I was a big fan of Rare Ro Video. I was really sad to actually see them go out of business.
Well they're maybe a bit of a surprise, not out of business. They are not releasing as much in the US, but now they're partnered with Radiance out of the UK as like really distribution partner, and so they're getting better releases in the UK than they had in the US. Even they're getting booklet essays, they're getting new special features, they're getting four K remasters on some of these films that they've done before, and now they look better than they
ever have on home video. And yeah, they're they're actually, they're not doing a lot. They're not prolific or anything, but they're still putting out a good we'll say, probably averaging three or four year Nice. Nice. That's good to hear. Man, that's good to hear because I really liked their I really like their I think there's an Antonioni film of theirs I picked up with no no no, I've got their version of The Conformist. Yep, that's another one that they Uh, I think they just redid that too.
I love their version of the Conformist. And I also had Shoot First, Die Later. I bought that and I bought that just because I want to use that as my as the title of my biography one day. Yeah. November three, RaRo re released The Conformist through Keno Lber Actually, and uh, it's got a brand new four K Master and it is supposed to look great, so the so yeah, so I'm excited to hear that.
I still love Look, I love re Ro. I want to you know, I want to give David Gregory again some props, Like during the process of me working with him on simple like silver and also you know, arranging some stuff for opera. I mean, he definitely he hooked me up with some copies, you know. He hooked me up with some blues, you know. And what's what's ironic though, is that I received all of them like literally like a couple of weeks before I had to move to Pakistan.
So I've got everything in I've got everything in storage, right, They're all in storage. So I've got to like I've got you know, the the Church said, and I've got you know, Cemetery Man, which you know, I I love Cemetery Man. That's great horror movies. But I haven't watched. And I've got Santa Sangray. He sent me and Threads, which is a huge blind spot for me. I've actually I've never seen Threads.
Oh wow, bind spot for four. Yeah, yeah, he's he sent me that Beyond the Darkness of course, Burial Ground, you know, kind of those those hits for me. Yeah, I didn't sting them for a Jaws five Cruel Jaws and uh, I actually I got from Mondo Macabre. There's another from Mondo Macabre. I got another. I got one of the
Black Emmanuel Films. Oh, uh, Manuel in America. Yes, I got that from Mondo Micabre and then I actually, about two years before their box set, Severin had Emmanuel and the Lost Cannibals, Yes, and I bought that, So I already have those two, So I'm not you know, I you know, I didn't feel like I needed to get the box you know, right, The box set is one of the most impressive physical
media releases ever. The fact that they were able to just bring those together, it really speaks to how passionate Tale Deanie and David Gregory and Andrew Purtado and all these people are on lost film and rare film and really preserving They just literally the love of the cinema behind it, because these, let's be honest, the Black Commanuel films are not for everybody. But the fact that
we have them all together is astonishing. Agree with you, and you know they're there, they're you know, they're kind of a cult absolutely a cult label, you know what I mean, So that's it's appropriate for them, you know what I mean, I mean it, I mean, it would be weird if like Paramount released that. Yeah, you know what I mean. I mean, They're just not I do want to see the cover art they choose to go with some of these black commnuel films. Though I got
another. I actually got Monda Micabre Symptoms, which is a great look nice. Yeah, I like that one. I'm not sure if I got anything else from Monda Macabre besides those two films, though they're they're one of my favorites. Their motto is the wild side of World Cinema, and I gotta be honest, I feel like I can trust their curation. It seems like everything that they do is just speaking to this random itch that I have in cinema, and Monta Micabro just happens to scratch it. It's so odd.
Every single film has been super enjoyable from them. I mean, I think they do. I mean they kind of like fall between the cracks a little bit. Like I think that absolutely. I think it's kind of I think there's definitely a little bit of a scramble for what you know, isn't being scarfed up by arrow vinegar syndrome or severing right vinegar syndrome. I've definitely I've got I've got some titles from from from Vinegar Syndrome, Vinegar Syndrome more than
the others, primarily has the kind of movies. You know, I've seen most of them mm hm. But a lot of Vinegar Syndrome's catalog are are the ones that I wouldn't be interested in seeing again, right, you know what I'm saying, Like, not the they're they're the ones that I looked at and said that one wasn't worth two bucks, you know what I mean when I was like buying them all from from that video store. Now that's not to say I don't have some really good discs from them. I got,
you know, sweet Sweetbacks, badass Sound from Vinegar Syndrome. I got what was the Patty Hurst by Paul Schrader I got from them. I screwed up up and got there. I think, did Vinegar Syndrome do that graduation day? They did? Yes, Okay, I got that. And then but I also I screwed up and got Dolly Dearest, and I meant to get I thought it was Dolls. I confuse it with Dolls, which is an old fave of mine. Yeah, and I got Dolly Dearest instead, which wasn't so hot, but I mean it was still you know, it
was still fun. But I made a mistake. That might be one that I like give away later. Dolls is out now from Aero Video actually as part of the a new box that they did last year. Oh they did
that Empire Empire Pictures box set. Yeah. So so right now, I've got, like I've got a good selection of stuff that I've gotten from Vinegar Syndrome, right, that I've got from Arrow, that I've got from Severin, and that I've got from Kenolorber and that I have from Criterion, right, and they're you know, along with the rest of my of my movies. Okay, they're in storage. But even when I leave, when I leave here, I am not until I get through and watch X amount of
those. I'm not buying anymore. Like I gotta have an embargo, like I've got I've got to watch them, you know what I mean. And and trust me, I still look, I still you know, check into Vinegar Syndrome's website. Look, they're very passionate, they do great work. It's just you know, a lot, you know, the the titles aren't necessarily once for me, but hey, I still keep an eye on them. I keep an eye on Monda Macabro, keep an eye on all of them. Now I want to end. I want to end this discussion by
talking about, you know, the future of physical media. Okay, please, because I want to. I want to get your take on this, because you're more the expert here, and you know I'm somebody that you know, big VHS collector. Then when I started to get really big into DVDs, I actually during a time I went back to Columbia House to like stock up my DVD collect Amazing. I went back to that well, you know, because you can get like great stuff, you get like cries and whispers,
you can get all sical stuff through Columbia House to a point. But so when I started really doing that, I let a girlfriend of mine and her boyfriend have my old VHS collection. Oh wow, And actually that girl is Lindsey's Sims. She's no longer with the guy, but her son is the kid in simple like silver wo yeah and so but but but here's the deal is that I gave it to them because they were going to like watch all the cool stuff and then they were going to donate it to a library,
which is what I was going to do. So so then I had the DVDs. Now here's what happened is that I was building that up and then between some moves and you know, roommates and ex girlfriends, like, I lost quite a bit of DVDs. Yeah. So then you know, Blu Ray came out right, and you know, people felt a certain way
about Blu Ray after getting acclimated to DVDs. Right of course, now you might remember the like Fateful Christmas where they just cried, they cried uncle and said, okay, we're going to lower all the Blu Ray players and Blu Rays to the same prices as DVDs to get you all to buy yep,
okay, everything sad was amazing. Yeah. So so here's what happened though, is that, you know, I kind of went through this phase where like I was like bitter at the DVDs I had lost, So I like wasn't buying anymore, right, No, But then I was like, look, I'm an active filmmaker, I teach I mean, this is silly, you know what I mean. So I started, you know, I started buying us DVDs okay, yeah, for cheap, you know, because you can buy DVDs for two bucks from you know, bookstores and stuff. And
then I started getting in and getting into Blu rays. Now, while I was finally getting into Blu rays, years down the road, a bunch of other people were starting to pay attention to how much was being available on Blu Ray and also started buying Blu rays. Right. Yeah, then the rug got pulled out from under us and they released four G twenty sixteen, and they they really went all in on it during the pandemic, Yes, they did, which didn't take off Blu rays sold or well, here's the thing,
here's the thing. A couple of things happened, right, and I want your take on it's a couple of things happened one. I mean, especially with a lot of these kind of movies. We've been talking about the cold in my horror stuff. I mean, you literally has had box sets come out in Christmas for movies, and then it was January and you were announcing a new four K boxet that was going to be out in three months.
Right now, Now, that's a little chintzy that I mean, not not chintzy, but that's a little you know, that's a little that that can be seen as kind of tacky, right, But but it's kind of like like it took a long time for people to finally come around to Blu ray, right, And as soon as that happens, four K is the thing that you're going to push and try to tell everybody that Blu rays are like has been technology and they need to get four k's right. Yeah.
And then at the same time, Vinyl has a resurgence to end all resurgencies. And at the same exact time that happens, the economy is plunged into a state where people only have one physical media thing they're going to be buying yep, and four K isn't it. It's Vinyl Records, right, So where do you what do you think about the about about that trend? I mean as somebody who's like really like this is your specialty, what's your What do you think about the future of four K? What do you think about
going back to the same group? I mean, how do you see it sustaining? Its something? There's there's a lot there. First off, Vinyl has fallen off like crazy. These last six months have seen a decline for everything. Are you still collecting any music? I have my list? So like a bunch of people, like you know, with the Vinyl thing. Here's what's funny is that I actually true and true story. This past summer, I got hired by the production coordinator of Merge Records to write a pilot
in series Bible about the Vinyl resurgence. Wow that started. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually still an active and and development. And that was actually one of the funnest That was one of the most fun shrewining writing assignments that I've ever had. But I I'm glad you mentioned glad you
asked me point blank about where I was about buying music. So, like a lot of people, and I think I'm going to give you the answer you want to hear, right, Like a lot of people, like a lot of people, I got back into vinyl kind of around the pandemic, right right. I kind of wanted I kind of wanted to rebuy what I had, you know, when I was in high school, but you know,
instead of CD, have it on vinyl. Right. Oh yeah, So I had I had a you know, I I deviated from the list a couple of times, but I've kind of gone through the list and now I'm you know, not really buying them anymore. Just you know, you know what I mean, Like, I mean, there's only there's only so much I can. You know, I I pretty much replicate I did what
everybody did. I replicated what I wanted to replicate. I I, you know, got some you know, I got the nostalgia high if we you know, I I bought some things that I didn't plan on buying, like
everybody did as well, you know what I mean. And now it's kind of like, you know, kind of like the blu rays right that I have, Like now's in time where it's like, Okay, now I've got to you know, I'm putting the brakes on buying, and I need to, you know, put the pedal to the metal on appreciating what I bought, right, So continue, Well, so, yeah, the last six months, the economy has gotten to a point where nothing is sustainable for any
of us as consumers. I mean, even when you're doubting groceries, you can't really make vinyl a priority if you're going to live, I guess. So, yeah, Vinyl has fallen, and you know, the story behind it that you're talking about is one of the most fascinating things to cover for the last decade or so, because there was you know, there was almost nothing, and then some bands were doing it to be cool, and it
was doing well for them on tour and stuff like that. And then we got to a point where old soundtracks and scores are getting released and selling out on day one, like within within hours, and suddenly the entire vinyl industry is in a thirteen to sixteen month delay for production, and we've not seen things like that happening, and so a lot of people just jumping on vinyl.
We have lots of these smaller boutique vinyl companies that pop up out of nowhere and suddenly they're not selling, which is sad obviously if you jump into that business and it's not doing well for you. But then if you're comparing of that to the Blu Ray side, somethings feel the same, but something well, yes, of course, and some things feel very different. Somethings feel very the same. Some of the outcries from people definitely feels the same.
And I will say one thing that you mentioned of a company putting out a Blu Ray and then a few months later putting out a four K, there are not very many documented times in history of that happening in a way that feels actually insulting to me. At least there are sometimes where I would
almost say it was close. But from the fact that I've been able to speak to most of these companies and get insight on what they were doing, most of them are at a position where they were not transitioning to four K. So when they made that choice, it was not an employee to get people to buy Blu ray and then buy four K later. It was not
sustainable for them to make the choice to do four K then. And then things changed, some prices went down, some of the market outcries because of studio releases were like, well, these four k's look great, I would love to see that from your stuff, and people started demanding it. And now we're at a position where we're seeing that bubble burst a little bit like
we did in Vinyl. So, especially on social media, you'll see a lot of these people say I'm not buying this release unless it's in four K, which is one of the most insanely ignorant comments that you can make about these releases, primarily for the reason that these films to put them out.
If you jump from Blu Ray to four K for a small boutique company, the prices could jump as much as three times just for an upgrade to four K U h D. And when you're looking at pricing those for consumers, you're looking at maybe a five dollars increase from from Blue Ray to four K that you can get away with, even though it costs astronomically more to put
them out. And so if you're here's my question, here's my question, Ryan, is that and and and and that's actually I didn't I'm glad you're telling me there about that, about how much they can charge per what goes into it, because that that is something that I didn't know prior to this conversation. So what I'm saying is that the people that were not are not centophiles, right, right, like at pretty average people that aren't cinephiles,
right, they finally got into Blu ray right like they didn't. They were turned off by the original Blu Ray thing right after DVD. It took them years to finally get start buying some Blu rays and get a Blu Ray player, right, and then all of a sudden you have four K not long after that. Do you think a lot of those people are, like said, are diving into four K or are they just like I'm just gonna you know, whatever I can stream Top Gun Maverick is going to be on TV
anyway. I mean, do you see them jumping into four K. Here's the thing I think you mentioned one of the things that's the biggest part of the argument here, and that is the hardware. So most TVs that are for sale now for the average consumer are four K. When you walk into even like Walmart, every single panel that you see for sale hanging up on the wall is a four K panel. So most people at this point, if you've bought a new TV since since twenty seventeen ish, probably most people
were buying four K TVs since then if you were upgrading now. The hard part is the opposite side. Four K players are not as prolific as they were for Blu Ray. But then on top of that, the Blu Ray players weren't as prolific as they were for DVD, and then on top of that those weren't as prolific as they were for vhs. So the fact that this funnel keeps getting smaller and smaller, you're making it so people can't dive in. And the only reason that we have as many people in four K
as we do. Probably is because of the newest generation of video game consoles, the PlayStation five and the Xbox series actally that support four K discs, which I'm going to be honest and hopefully this isn't a price for anybody listening. If you're watching these four K discs on a game console, those are optimized for a completely different version. You were not even seeing four K movies at the rate that you would be if you had a proper like, decent
quality four K player with a well calibrated TV. Is it better or not? No, it is not better. It is actually sometimes significantly worse. Oh oh so, so if you're playing the far I didn't know any of this. This is great. I'm glad. I'm glad I saved this question towards the end. Yeah, so, if you're if you're just putting your four K movie into the video game console and you're gonna watch it, it's it doesn't look very good. It doesn't look as good, it doesn't look
as good as it could. And so one of the problems here is that somebody that's sitting there at home, and maybe they were still into physical media, they're watching it and they go, well, this isn't that impressive? Why would I go all in on four K discs? Because when I see these, they're twenty five dollars at Walmart and the DVDs are only eleven. I remember liking DVDs and this four K is kind of underwhelming to me. So if it's less than half the price, why would they go all in.
We're not incentivizing them to do that. We're not incentivizing them to be all in on physical media now. The only thing that might be doing it nowadays is the economy has gotten so bad that we are seeing the price of streaming explode. We're seeing licensing for titles run out, and suddenly people that are used to streaming can't watch their favorite TV show that they've watched every single
night for the last five years on Netflix. Now it's not on Netflix, and they have to go pay eleven dollars a month for some other service if they want that as well. Well, let me ask you a question about that. Let me ask you a question about that. And because that was something that just transpired during these last strikes, right, because a lot of what a lot of what we're talking about, there's no like black and white reason, right, for for things being with the other there there's a lot
of things that contribute right to their overall conditions. But you know, you had these strikes happen, right, these writers strikes. Okay, and then you know Netflix and Hulu arbitrarily with no advertising as like a new release, put up like sitcoms from the eighties and nineties with no advertising, no advertising. They they put up Moonlighting. Yep, that no, no, no young person has ever heard of, not at all, and young people made
it a hit just because they made it like the new release. And then well, what was that show on on Netflix that also ran that became like twenty times as big a hit as it ever was on TV? Oh like Suits? Yes, Suits was all of a sudden like the hottest thing.
So so after they did that, right, and I mean after they did that, I mean it's kind of like makes the strike look weird, yeah, because then they're doing the math, and then they're also realizing that there's more like there's more content, right, Like we've been talking about niche kind of things right, right, but there's more content available of all different shapes
and sizes and quality and genre. You know, nobody could ever watch it in a lifetime of course, so them them generating new content, right is not only just like is pretty much only too, it's only for the new niche, right, and literally just creating a jobs program because because now they've realized that technically they don't have to generate new content like they're generating new content
because they want to as opposed to needing to. They've probably realized that they could take some movies on Netflix and Amazon that just washed up there, that have like a list stars that like no one watched. They could go ahead and put together a trailer and release it in theater and make it we're you know, put it in theaters and make some money, make it look like
the greatest thing ever. And now Netflix owns a theater in La somewhere right, right, and and so and so all all of these things play into each other, right, And I think that, look, I think that you have you have a market, and you have a market right like a nishmar market with this cult and horror stuff, right, And so what you have to look at there is, okay, is like with the economy being the way that it is, right, with a competing right, a competing
product, which Vinyl was let's be honest, Vinyl to the out of DVD and Blu ray and four K sales and toy sales. Right, so you have to look at like is our is this customer? Like there's always gonna be There's always gonna be the uber fans of any kind of niche cult thing, right that have money, right, Like, like there's the lawyers and doctors that are that that are big nerds in their spare time. Right,
Yeah, they're gonna go ahead and buy the new thing whenever. Literally yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, They're gonna buy all of it, you know what I mean? So, but is the this is you know, a lot of the a lot of the people that find a comfort in that genre, find comfort in meeting their heroes and conventions and all of these things. I mean a lot of a lot of these people are not upper class, right you know? So do you like is is? So there's that element
to it. So also you combine you know the fact that I see that most of these boat boutique labels love just dumping their stuff on to be for free, like free all year long, for like for years running. You know what I mean? The part behind the scenes to be is one of the only streaming services that actually kind of returns decent money. Well, that's
that's good. That's good to know. But but but what I'm saying is is that that that's also that also for for somebody that's dealing with the economy, when they're weighing out whether they should buy the new four K release of you know, House by the Cemetery, right, they might say to themselves, well, I got the Blue Underground whatever set and it's also available on Toby and things are tight right now, right, you know what I mean?
So, how do you see that impacting these these these boutique genre cole and horror labels or or or are they impervious to it? Tell me, I don't. They're certainly not impervious to it. I think we're at a very dangerous tipping point. Actually we are. I did a cursory count. This is certainly not gospel or me saying it as a fact, but I tried to count every single active boutique Blu Ray company in the world a couple months ago, and wow, just going off of if they had at least
one new release in the previous six or eight months. I don't remember the number that I used, I got up to almost one hundred and fifty different companies, not just labels that are like you know, Vinegar Syndrome has like five different labels that they put stuff out on with their VSAs VSUS, But Vinegar Syndrome is a whole one company. And if you count all of the active labels that have done at least one title, more than one hundred and
fifty labels most likely in the entire world. And that, to be frank is too many. In the market that we're in, we we are not seeing sales occur at the rate that we were in even in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, because I mean, let's be honest. Back then, you know, houses were getting stimulus checks a couple times, right and right. I mean, folks were encouraged to like spend money on that kind of
stuff to keep the economy going. And many people that you know, saw an explosion of sales thought that that would continue in the near future because all of these brand new fans physical media. Yeah, it did continue for a little bit, but then it was not impervious because the economy continued to tank and people had to make that tough choice and let's be honest here. This
is the entertainment industry. This is not the survival industry. So this is unfortunately gonna have to be one of the things that have to go if you're worrying about paying for clothes for your kids, or paying for gas to get to work, to be able to afford groceries for your family. And I don't know about everybody else, but for me, my grocery bills have almost
doubled in the last two years. Literally, it's crazy. It's crazy, Ryan, And I'm really glad that you summed it up that way as well, Like that was a great way of explaining it, you know, and I think I think that you know. And we saw that also with the theater component last year, right like last year saw this complete anomaly of huge, huge swaths of people that rarely go to the movie they went to the movies last year last summer because it was like the ind thing to do.
And what when they did that. I read a news article about when they when everybody was like going to the movies like vinyl and uh toy and like DVD and Blu ray and four K sales dipped, yep, because people don't have the disposable income for multiple, multiple like hobbies, if that's the word that you want to use, you know what I mean, they just don't have the financial bandwidth to you know, kind of keep all these all these
markets going, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, so I mean and of course we haven't even haven't even touched on, you know, the implosion of comic books, because that's you know, that's a whole nother discussion. But that plays into it, right of course, another kind of that's a that's another kind of that's another kind of you know a lot of the people that are into vinyl and comic books and movies, they all they're all kind of the same, even though some might be more into one than another.
Right. That's again that's a great way of putting it. So everything is is impacted, you know, so anyway, man like, that's really a great way. Did you have any more questions for me? This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you having me. We we've covered it all well. One thing that we didn't that I've I've really wanted to hear about is the choice to film simple uh on a on an iPhone? I mean, that's that. This is okay, This is great because back
then it actually was. Now it's not right. The the iPhones now are all considered the professional grade cameras exactly. The iPhone X was the first iPhone that had the capability to shoot professional grade industry you know, what's considered professional by the industry standards. iPhone X was the first one that could do that, but with asterisks only under certain conditions exact. Okay, So I had to do I had to do a lot of tests. So I did a
lot of tests before we shot. And there were oh man, I mean there were there was like this this this buttery wavy thing. It would do sometimes in conjunction with like this gimbal thing we bought. I mean there were. There was some trial and error that I needed to get out of the way before Christie and it came over. Now here's the thing. Christina and Carmen did not know we were shooting this on an iPhone. I shot footage and had a buddy of mine who cut some of my pieces, Craig moorehead.
He put together like a really nice black and white sizzle reel that I showed Christina and Carmen when they first and arrived now being her being her first like project in a long time, and I kind of build the whole like I kind of framed the whole thing as a working vacation. You know, Christina really didn't want a lot of other people around regardless, right, so
that also like benefited why she was cool. And look, once they saw the like sizzle reel, they were really excited and but yeah, so that was the decision. But also here's the thing is that I also looked at shooting with day oh man. I forget the name of the camera. It was a DSLR. A buddy of mine in Los Angeles had it and he
was going to like let me have it for the shoot. And I played with a similar camera in town that somebody let me use, but it wasn't going to have the running gun capability, right, So I see, at the end of the day, the iPhones have the run and gun. I mean, the auto focus is to die for. It's great. So like when you're having some of these DSLRs and stuff like, and you want to get this like great, these great shots, you got to like you need
another person, like it's like a production. But the other thing was that was that with the iPhone X if I played around with it and I made sure that I could get great professional footage, you know. Allso so it worked in regard to us looking like we were tourists, because Saint Augustine is
loaded with people walking around with cameras. Like I mean, there were plenty of times when people would ask me and Christina and Carmen to take pictures of them while we were shooting Wow, And Christina called it karma, that it was our karmic responsibility to take pictures of them because we were like wandering around getting away with murders. I just like making a movie, you know what I mean, under everybody's noses, you know. So so that was the
that was the the impetus for that. Now, if you remember earlier I talked about how we shot like a documentary's worth of footage. Oh yeah, some of that was because of the iPhone footage didn't look so good, you know, because like the iPhone X like died inside like interiors that was like
really touch, like really touch and go with the iPhone X interesting. So so a lot of so like and and when when that camera came out, like people in the industry that were getting really nervous about the iPhone technology that was like the that was the main thing that they would point out was that like, well, when you know you you can't use it for interiors, like like they were like really like relieved at that, you know what I
mean, Like that was going to like like like Apple wasn't going to like solve that problem as soon as they could, you know. But but so a lot of the interior footage, a lot of the interior footage had to go like just didn't It looked like crap. And we actually there was some stuff that we shot and then went back and and reshot it was too grainy. So you remember, do you remember a shot of her in a wax
museum. Oh of course, yeah. Yeah. So there's there's a promo shot of her in the wax Museum, but it's not actually in the movie, but in the movie. The first day we shot at the wax museum, the footage was like grainy, I mean, it was too sandy. And there was another shot interior at a museum where it was the same way, and we went back out and we and we re shot some stuff. Interesting. There's there's there's a probably one I think it was only one shot.
It looked like I think it was made to look like a crane shot, but it was probably a drone or something like that. Yeah, is that how you guys pulled that one off with the drone? So there's about there's six shots in the movie that are that are stock that were purchased that were like stock shots. So like a local, a local cinematographer, god, what's his name, He had a couple of them that like we could get from them that we used for for Saint Augustine, and then I found
a couple other ones that I used for some transition shots. But we had a guy come out with a drone and he did the shots of Christina walking on the beach with a chair at the chair so beautiful. Yeah, yeah,
so that guy. So, so that drone shot was actually one that we shot that the other there there's there's an aerial shot of the bridge we to Saint Augustine that that shot, and there's another like boom like almost like a crane shot in downtown Saint Augustine that was from a local cinematographer and we went ahead and purchased those from them. And then there were like three other shots that I used from a I use from like one of those like Pond
five or something, and I just want to put it out there. Man, those those sites are awesome and they are in great asset to filmmakers. They save filmmakers money while putting money into other filmmaker's pockets. They are a great resource. So I will take this moment as we wrap this up then to not not to you know, say that ideas are not what make things happen, but to point out to any PLD anybody that it feels like they have a good idea, you just got to go out there and do it.
I mean filming with an iPhone X in a town like Saint Augustine and using stock footage for something that you might be able to, you know, enhance your vision a little better. It just takes the initiative to get it done. And in a film like this that's in a way fairly experimental, and now we're seeing a boutique physical media release for something that you created. I mean, congratulations to you, sir. This is this is a huge accomplishment. I'm so happy with you. The movie itself is great, but
just everything that you were able to pour into this. It's magical. Well, thank you, thank you so much. And I do want to add on what you just said, is that, you know, in this in this business now, you know, in the year twenty twenty four, is that like you have to keep pushing the boulder up the hill. Oh yeah, you know, you have to keep creating content like this professionally. This me me going ahead and doing this, you know, while I was you
know, developing and working on other projects and such. I mean, this was this was you know, something that really opened additional doors for me. You know, it still opens door the door doors for me, like I do, you know, I do short films and stuff like that while I'm you know, ping pong and scripts around you know, in Hollywood whatever.
And you you really, if you want to stay sane in this business, like, you've got to produce some things yourself, you know, or or you're gonna be you know the I think the last time that I heard it was like ninety seven percent of projects that are developed like never get made right. So you know, you have to a lot of people be home extremely bitter. A lot of people become extremely bitter in this business. And you know, if they're especially if they're gambling on you know, being in that
three percent, and chances are that's not going to happen. Right, you wouldn't go to You wouldn't go to Vegas with those odds. You know, there's there's no reason to bet your happiness on it. And with the with the democratization of technology, you know, it's if there's no excuse to not make a proof of concept short for a script you have, there's no there's no excuse to not go out and make something to put out on social media. Like I do short films that I've I've done short films that have been
proof of concept pieces. I've done short films that have been for the festival circuit. I've done short films that are just to like, you know, to put out on Facebook, you know, during some holidays like Halloween and and you know, Christmas for you know my my like Facebook, cinemadiacs and friends or whatever. You just you just have to produce, you know, you have to produce content in this environment, you know what I mean. And I just you know, And one other thing that I want to wanted
to talk about about the production was the score by David Wingo. It's so perfect. It flows with every scene amazingly. And here's here's a great story behind that is that I knew I knew David from from years back. And of course he you know, he he did the score for that show Barry on HBO. But he also, you know, did a bunch of stuff for David Gordon Green, right, and you know, like Manglehorn, and he did Jeff Nichols stuff like Take Shelter and the Upcoming Bike Rider, and
you know, David Wingo has done a lot stuff. And I reached out to him and he said, he said he was busy, and he said he you know, he really loved the like still I sent him a bunch of stills and he goes, Man, I really like this, but I'm really busy right now, he goes, But you know what, he goes, I did a score for something like when I was just starting out years ago, this film that didn't go anywhere. It was this little like documentary and he goes, he goes, and I've got the rights back to it.
And it's always bugged me that it couldn't be used for something h And he sent me that score. And let me tell you something, if we had spent a million dollars. We could not have gotten a score that was more perfect for that film in every way that was That was absolutely uncanny, the way that that happened. And you know, if something else for you is that, you know, years back, we've been talking about Dario Argeno, but years back, I actually did some consulting work on David Gordon Green's
proposed remake of Suspiria. Oh boy, yeah, the the the aborted remake of Suspiria. I actually worked. I worked on that for nine for only nine days, with the guy that had The guy that had was was working off the script was an old buddy of mine from film school. But I actually we went back and forth on that for about nine days as he was getting the latest draft of the script together for whatever the production company was, you know, in Rome. It wound up not happening, but I thought
you would you might find that interesting, very interesting. I mean, there's so much that has changed in that side of the industry as well. I mean, the films that were being made even ten years ago aren't able to get funding nowadays. And it's it's sad, and I'm happy that some people
are finally starting to talk about it. Like we had that quote from the Oscars this year of instead of you know, a two hundred million dollar movie, let's make ten twenty million dollar movies or whatever the exact quote was, It's so important that we focus on things like that. And I mean the issue with that is that they do make those movies, but they don't get any advertising, and they just show up on one of these streaming platforms and
they have a list talent yep. Like there's so many twenty to forty million dollar movies that just like wash up. And here's the issue with that. And I was talking to somebody about this the other day, is that we have you know, take Adam Driver and Liam Hemsworth right, like you know the guy that played Thor, like that guy, super talented guy, seems genuine, you know, nice guy. Like his movies outside of Thor and Marvel don't draw a dime, like they're bombs, Like they're flops, like
Adam Driver's movies are almost unanimously flops. And you have you have this bizarre system where where pre sales in getting financing these actors are like getting movies in greenlit. But it doesn't mean anything to audiences when they're actually released, right, So like Adam Driver and Liam Liam, the Hemsworth can can get can just go from from box office flop to box office flop, and they can
get additional projects financed on pre sales. But then when the films are actually released, they don't make any money, right, like in actual reality outside of that bubble when they when they're advertised, right or when they show up on Netflix, people aren't watching them, you know what I mean, Like, I guess Hemsworth have those extraction movies that did all right on Netflix, but you have a The reason I'm telling this story is that you have an
industry that's in complete turmoil, right where all the things that like used to work don't work, and it seems like things are like are like running counter
to what reality actually is. And the reason that's happening is because like they're doing what should on paper work, because that's what's worked in the past, right, you know, like like oh, we have a big name actor, we make a big movie, you know, And so you'll you'll see articles where people acknowledge things like oh, man, you know, there aren't any movie stars anymore, Like they say that, but they don't act on that reality right away, you know what I mean, Like they're still making
movies as if there are movie stars, but these movie stars aren't drawing, not at all, you know. And again sometimes the movies aren't very good, but many times the movies are very good. Right, But it does they just don't mean anything, you know what I mean? So I think so so and so I think when when you see and I'm using that right, like extreme examples are great for it for educational purposes. I'm using that example as kind of you know, what's going on in the entire industry right
now. How we just talked a little bit ago about how, you know, with no advertising whatsoever, like Hulu and Netflix put up suits and you know, moon Lighting and they absolutely exploded, right And like meanwhile, you've got like a thirty to forty million dollar movie with Benedicte, cumber Patch that shows up on Amazon Prime and no one watches it. You know what I mean? This is so so so there's there's a lot of just you know, you know, what's what's right is left and what's left is right going
on? You know. So so even though people and I am one of them, right, that will talk about the the wild incompetence that runs rampant in Hollywood, right right. I do sympathize. I do sympathize because there are genuine people in the business that are genuinely trying to navigate this peril time, perilous time. I do sympathize with them when literally every aspect about the business is completely doing a three sisters three sixty and going against everything they've been
taught or experienced for decades. It's depressing. That's the big thing is for a lot of people. It takes It takes the wind out of your sales. For anything that you're working on, it takes the wind out of your sales. And I'm going to finish up here in five minutes. It takes the wind. It takes the wind out of your sales. To in my opinion, okay, this is the easiest time to make movies. It's the worst time to make money making movies, right, and so can people scratch
the itch? Yes, that's a big win because of the democratization that we we we talked about, you know what I mean, because the technology is available to everybody. I don't want to dwell on that, but that's that's one part of it. Now we're getting really good movies. We're still getting good cinema. Okay, overall, all right, there's there's some you know, the best quality television ever has has been being made. There's also lots of really bad stuff being made. Okay, I'm not going to say there's
no, but there's always been a lot of bad stuff being made. Okay, Yeah, there's there's a lot of good stuff being made. Now there's going to be peaks and valleys, right when when when you have turbulent times, the valleys are always going to seem worse, right, the valleys are always going to seem worse, especially when you're in an era where everybody's commenting on everything in real time, you know what I mean. And that was
social media. Everyone's a critic too, and you hear opinions no matter how how hard. Everybody's a critic. And look, nobody anybody that gets up and here's here's another thing. Like you've got these cottage industries of these people that get up every morning and look for a reason as to why, you know, Kathleen Kennedy ruined their life, you know what I mean, They lost their job and their wife divorced them because Ray, right, Ray happened
in Star Wars, you know. And I just think that stuff is when I when I look at the big when when you look at the big picture, there's I mean, there's a lot to like talk about with you know, Disney and Marvel and Star Wars and all that. But at the end of the day, like I I grew up in a Disney valley. I grew up when every movie Disney put out was crap. Their TV show was a joke, and the theme the theme Parks was all they had going on
until The Little Mermaid sparked an entire renaissance. Right. I was also there when after you know, Pocahontas and like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, after the Renaissance period like ended. I was there when everybody was like, you know, you know, declaring Disney dead when that happened, right. And I was there when Toy Story came out and revolutionized Disney all over again.
Like here's the thing, Disney just had one of the biggest epic runs in the history of entertainment, right, And look, they were due for a downturn, you know. And and and that's a whole nother discussion you have, you know, death by a thousand cuts whatever. But what I'm getting at is that there are peaks and valleys in the business, and the valleys just seem exacerbated due to all the other you know, elements that are going on right now in the in the world, you know what I mean,
socio politically, socio economically. Right, yeah, And but but you know Disney, Disney making crappy movies back to back, like that's not like some historical anomalynis right. We have plenty evidence of of Disney making stinkers, you know what I mean. And look they got they got super greedy after a huge run where they could do no wrong. You know, they started believing
their own hype. Right. We've seen that happen before, right, and you know things that everything that rises must converge, you know, it happens is part of the like the like circle of life, you know what I mean. Oh yeah, so, I mean, but again, that's that's gonna that's gonna turn around. Didn't they just have some huge like hit over the weekend with Inside Out to or something did very well. Right, They've got X Men in Deadpool coming, I mean things are gonna you know,
things are going to turn are going to turn around there. You know, I think we've had I want to end on a positive note here, because we have in streaming. You know, you can say what you want about Netflix, you can say what you want about Amazon, about Hulu, but we have more access to high quality international programming from all around the world than we've ever had, you know what I mean, Like there is so much there. There is in documentaries. I mean, there is so much high,
high quality programming available. Now what I am a little concerned about, and hey, maybe may maybe this works to your business's advantage, is that, you know, the one thing that Amazon, well Amazon's actually pretty good at this, but Netflix is atrocious and Hulu doesn't want to push it. But you know, you don't have in terms of the older movies, they're
kind of like whacking. But you know, does that work to Kino, Lorber and all these boutique labels benefit that the like streamers don't offer these old movies. I mean, yeah, maybe I got Just a few months ago, I had my first in person in my house interview with a minor celebrity, and one of the things we talked about was he walked in and was just astonished that I had so many physical media releases, and he said,
well, how many of these are on streaming? And he was just completely baffled when I said, honestly, maybe thirty five to forty percent of them are on streaming right now. And he was like, oh really, And I had to explain, like, yeah, a lot of these are films. People just you know, they're not Sam peckinpod, They're not a clinie would film, and so because of that, they get sort of relegated to the to the back seat, and they're they're not you know, focused on
for licensing, and therefore boutiques put them out. They sell decently there, but at the same time, it is a niche of a niche, and so if a boutique can sell it to fifteen hundred people, maybe that's a smash success for them. But if it was on streaming and even three times that to say, forty five hundred people watch that that is a massive failure, right right, And I mean I think that is you know, I think that is is somewhere where the boutique labels could could pick up slack.
But again, you know, more about those numbers than I do, but you know, there you can certainly. I think the sweet spot was a few years ago when we had on demand. Yeah, I think on demand on Comcast was the sweet spot because, you know, young kids wanting to get into movies that had the hunger. They could just pick up the controller and say Jack Nicholson and you would have like seven movies that choose from. You could say Woody Allen, you could have like twenty movies that choose from.
You know what I mean. You could literally pick a name out of a hat and you would have a wide selection to choose from. That's the closest to the digital version of the video Magic Video Store that I talked about at the beginning of the conversation that I've that I've experienced in the modern age. I think that and local libraries, I think are some of the best ways that we could have this type of conversation because we don't talk about libraries
enough. Yeah, local libraries have really good selections. When I was I'm
glad you mentioned that. When I was living in a studio, man, I love that studio and down in downtown Jacksonville's the walking distance from the library, and you know, I was finding some great stuff in there to fill the gaps, you know, not just to fill the gaps, but also you know, they would get fit physical copies of you know, classics, more obscure stuff, foreign stuff, lots of foreign stuff, lots of BBC series, not the not the poorly produced BBC series from the sixties and seventies,
but the more modern produced ones. You know what I'm talking about. We definitely know what I'm talking about there. But you know, I mean I use the library to you know, revisit black Adder, you know, I you know, so, I mean, the the public library is a
great spot. But you know what like having you know, people got to have the hunger, right and that's one thing that we can't expect from people is to have the same hunger that that we do, because it's a passion for us, you know what I mean, it's a passion for us. You know, I think that those that want to find it will find it
between all the all the streaming platforms. But you know, there's more people than ever before that are watching for in movies and foreign produced content because of Netflix, Amazon, in Hulu than ever before, dude, ever before, easily, So I give them props for that. You know, they did more to bring to make world cinema something that was commonplace. They did more than any film festival, than any Academy Awards show, any Golden Globe show,
any entertainment magazine ever. Did you know people that I never in a million years would would hear saying, oh, I'm watching this new South Korean show. You know what I mean? People have all walks of life that aren't even cinephiles. They watch shows, you know, procedurals, you know, they watched like those you know how in like you know, France and
Belgium and Poland. They they'll they'll they'll produce those like limited uh series that you know are like, you know, somebody gets killed and blah blah blah blah blah, the procedurals, you know what I mean, Like like like people watch those that are just you know, regular, regular average Joe's and Jane's that you know, could care less about this entire discussion we've had, and they're you know, they're ingesting the you know, content from all these
different countries, from all these different cultures. So I mean, I want to end on a on a positive note talking about about that and you know, and the the fact that the these boutique labels and then you know these this physical media is you know, fills in fills in some much so much need needed gaps. But you know, there's obviously a lot of turbulence and and a lot of w whirlwinds, I mean headwinds in the world today that are going to be impacting you know, not just you know, not just
this, but also you know, all all sorts of things. And I certainly want to I want to thank you for having me on there. This has been a dynamite conversation. I know you're going to have to edit it. I hope I didn't give you give you too much work to do in that regard, but hey, I have been on fire, my man. Start talking about movies the way that the way that we have and sparks will fly. Amen. Yeah, this has been an incredible conversation, Damien.
I would love to have you back on someday. The editing, it's don't worry about it's my favorite thing, especially when I get to hear some of your waxing poetic Again, as we were talking about leaving on a high note, please remember seven Slate for the sale We've got a couple of titles with Dami's hands all over it. We've got opera that you know, Christina was in, Christina now is on the special features for the first time in literally
decades. And then we of course have the other one that is a little more personal for you, simple like Silver, which again I will say, watched, loved, beautiful looking. If you're into any sort of experimental cinema, this is probably going to be one for you. It's one of those that leaves you with a lot of questions, a lot of thoughts. It will linger with you after you watch it, and just congratulations. It's it's a really well done film, and I'm honored to have been able to speak
with you about it. Thank thank you, the you know, the great reviews we got for it were deeply appreciated. And that also has an audio commentary track by me and as an audio commentary track by Christina Marceli perfect. I appreciate your time and we'll let you get back to enjoying your evening in Pakistan there sir, all right, and hey Brian, if you find time tonight watch a good movie. I will do my best. Everybody listening do
the same all right later. If you're looking for more horror outside of the mainstream, look no further than Unsung Horrors, a podcast about underseen horror movies. I'm Lance and I'm Erica. Every other week we'll cover a horror movie with fewer than one thousand views on Letterboxed. We'll even give you double feature recommendations to pair with the movies we discuss, from gothic to shot on video, from slashers to comedies, from Giallo to jay horror. We'll cover all
the subgenres. So join us as we unearth these hitten gyms of horror. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All at Unsung Horrors, available wherever you listen to podcasts and part of the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network. Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one big thing that you could do to help the show, and that is to leave a rating and review on the podcast service of your choice. Thank you me No.
Hello, This is Matt and Emily from Scarecrow Video in Seattle, Washington. Did you know that we have the largest video collection in the world. We have over one hundred and forty six thousand titles and growing. That's over three times more than Netflix, Amazon Max, and Hulu combined. Plus a Scarecrow now offers rent by mail service throughout the US, so check out Scarecrow video
dot org for details. You can catch Emily and I or Matt and I if that was going to be you saying that on our biweekly YouTube show, Viva Physical Media for video recommendations and so much more. Za by e