The Movie Crypt! And welcome to another edition of The Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. And Happy New Year! Yay! Yay, woo! Yeah, this episode is going to drop Can we stop saying Happy New Year and say Fuck you 2024? No, because I think every year It's basically that. This year deliberately gets a big old FU, I would say. I know there's been some good things. Let's keep it positive. Let's keep it positive. We're recording this on November 20th.
2024 so a lot could still happen in these remaining five or six weeks but i guess uh we'll we'll wait and see as you know by now we have been recording so many new episodes that are being released later because I, at this point, I am... I might already be gone. If not, I'm leaving in like the next 10 days to go shoot a new film. And so you guys will still have a new episode every single week while I'm gone. Although it sounds like there's going to be a few.
that maybe are just you. Which is all right. In fact, the episode that's going to air next week was actually recorded yesterday. Yeah. Well, you'll hear in the intro for next week why I wasn't there. But that's the first episode. In 605 episodes.
No, that's not true. There's one other one with Mark Duplass. But the thing with that one was it wasn't scheduled or anything. It just happened. Because he was here. You still weren't there. True, true, true. You missed out. But then again, that was different because we had three games. guests right and so next week next week's episode that you guys are going to hear that's like I was supposed to be here and then something happened that you're going to hear about
It's something very good that happened that you're going to hear about in next week's intro. This episode is kind of long. The last, I'd say, 30 minutes, especially, so... Just don't listen to what I'm gonna say here for those of you who still don't subscribe to patreon and only get the first hour Fucking fantastic like when we get into the usual like final question about like how do you not give up? They really yeah, like we really got into some in-depth shit, but also
Yeah, and then Francesco had a question for us, which spawned a very interesting conversation. Big shocker that we had some long-winded answers. Yeah, but... But you'll really like it. Tales from the Void is currently on Screenbox, and it's also available in Canada. Sorry, what's the name of the place that's available in Canada? Screenbooks? No.
They'll tell you all about it in this episode. And we'll be coming soon to Europe. In fact, by the time this airs, you might already have some news about that. But it's an anthology show. Every story is different from the last. Most of these stories came from the No Sleep community.
It's really cool. It's really unique. Joe did the pilot episode. It's fantastic. Something a little different than the normal anthologies that have been kind of out there for the last couple of years. Because a lot of times when you think of anthologies... they're a little bit more, um, not tongue in cheek, but.
They allow for levity where one of the things that I really loved about working on the show is that these are very dark and very serious at times. And they can be sinister. They could be mean. They could be cautionary. They atmospheric. but not a lot of tongue-in-cheekness to it, and I think that's what makes it stand out from a lot of other anthologies. The amount of directors that they got, aside from myself, the talent pool they got behind it, and Francesco and John, as they'll tell you.
you have been pushing this boulder uphill for years so the fact that yeah you know what for 2024 for us might have sucked for them they had an entire show come out and they've been going to festivals they've been pushing the you know out the
good word for Tales from the Void, to the world. They've been going around the world, so they've been having a pretty good year, so I shouldn't be poo-pooing on 24. 2024 was the year of Tales from the Void for those guys, and I'm very, very happy for them. Well said. Okay, so our next guests are some talented folk that I've known for, God, it feels like years now, but we actually met in the flesh last year when I was up in a beautiful...
I say that with quotes, Sault Ste. Marie, or as I like to call it, meth town, where we were making the anthology tales from the void. These two guys were the, the creative masterminds behind it. And I don't know why the hell they brought me up there, but we're going to. find out right now uh please welcome to the movie crypt francesco loschiavo did i get it right yes and john thomas kelly
Thanks for having us on this. Anybody who's listening who went like, what the fuck did Adam say fairly? It's because before we were talking about movies. Yes. And how did you say fairly? First of all, Forelli. How often do I mispronounce something and how often do you? That doesn't matter. That's not important to the context. One time I mispronounce something. And I'm going to take full advantage of pointing every finger at you. Like, how the fuck do you fuck up?
But Forelli for fairly. I don't do that. They're well-known filmmakers, but it's not like they're Steven Spellberg for fuck's sake. All right. We're already off and off for a good start. Guys, how are you doing? Great. How you guys doing? Well, you know, all things considered, we're doing pretty well. You guys are just coming off of what seems to be a whirlwind. festival tour for Tales from the Void, which doesn't happen all the time for shows like this. Anthologies, even just like...
as they like to call it long, you know, like short form content in episodic form. What what's what's been the festival trail been like for you guys? It's been a lot of fun. I feel like John and I have been on a plane every other week. I'm pretty exhausted. I think we just finished and we're having our last one tonight at Blood in the Snow, actually.
But we were at, keep me honest here, John, we were at Panic Fest. We were at Fantasia. We went to Grim Fest in Manchester. We were at Film Quest. We were at... Vancouver Horror Show, Brooklyn Horror Show, Blood in the Snow, and then we had a couple local homecoming ones in Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie.
Yeah, Terror in the Bay, right? And Sault Ste. Marie. Terror in the Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. Sault Ste. Marie filmed us. So we did all the northern tours as well. But I think there was like a week period where we flew England. Then we split up and did Vancouver and Brooklyn. And then we're back in Windsor and then in Utah over like two weeks. So it was been a lot of flights, but it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. So before we get into the show itself now.
We probably talked about this in the intro. And if you were aware of this show, thanks to my involvement in the first episode, we've been talking a little bit about the fact that the show is comprised of stories. stories that came from the no sleep community. And, and all these various stories were adapted by you guys and then directed by a wide variety of, of filmmakers like, like myself, the Adams family who we've had on before.
Let's see, Maddie, sorry, Marie Ligo, and then Francesco, you directed three episodes. So doing these festivals...
What was it like trying to, I guess, curate which episodes would go for which festival? Well, I think we wanted to make sure that all the episodes got seen and that we... we had them program like at least two to three apps a big thing for us was like we didn't want to get put in the shorts block and wanted to be treated like a tv show because it's a little bit unfair to go up against you know like first-time filmmakers when we have like you know
reasonable budget tv show um so that was a consideration and then to be honest with you like we didn't have a single programmer pick the same episodes and that's kind of the beauty of the show it's um every episode is so different that people like um different things so that was that was kind of the fun part about it was seeing what they picked and
We actually didn't have any situations where we had to like adjust the lineup because people were picking the same ones. It was different at almost every festival. Yeah. No one ever asked our opinion of which ones we wanted played. It was very much programmer taste. so did they watch all of them most of them did some of them wanted like premiere status and stuff so we had to like negotiate all that but like
Grimfest watched all six, program three. Oh, I forgot. We didn't get to go, but South by Southwest Sydney played all six in a block in Australia, which was really cool. um and yeah like the even we split up brooklyn and um and vancouver and they played three ups each and there was only i think one overlapping
on the same weekend. So it kind of worked out really well that like everyone who wanted a premier status kind of got it. But that was the only thing we had to figure out is like when was stuff airing and were they going to get it before it goes to air? so before we get into the the show's genesis itself because i i kind of um i first heard about the show i knew about the no sleep podcast but uh the the show actually came into my orbit
God, way back in 2021, when you guys first sent the pitch deck to me, and I was kind of like, yeah, kids, tell me when the check clears and tell me where to be. And obviously... It took years to put this thing together. But between the two of you, since you guys were both very much, you know, like the creative forces behind it, give me each of you like a, give me a short form version of.
what got you to tales from the void? Because, you know, you guys have both been working in the industry, but I want to find out like, how did, how did you kind of start being interested in filmmaking in short form or long form? And then like, then we'll finally kind of. bring it all together by finding out how did you both meet? Sure. Maybe I can take John, how we came up with the show, and then you can give our origin story. Our origin story? Yeah, that works.
yeah so you start with the show yeah cool um yeah so the the show basically uh how do i how do i put this i i kind of grew up on like goosebumps and are you afraid of the dark and we have this show in canada freaky stories and i used to watch these like short form anthologies every night kind of before bed as a kid and uh i for years like back to like like 2011 when the no sleep forum started would read short stories online. And I kind of felt like it was filling a void. No pun intended.
hey uh of like what i kind of grew up on so i used to read like four to five no sleeps a night before i went to bed and you know my wife would always get pissed at me because sometimes i wouldn't be able to sleep if i got like a really messed up one And I remember like reading an article that said like, I think it was like Ryan Reynolds company had like acquired a multi-part.
um story from no sleep to be a tv show and then i think spielberg's company picked up spire in the woods and they all were buying like the multi-chapter um stories but no one was picking up the short stories and i had said to john like i don't know why no one is picking up these short stories because i think they're fantastic Channel Zero did some stuff with creepypasta but it wasn't quite solely from no sleep.
So we, I kind of went on like a journey of like curating a bunch of the episodes and spent like two years reading, um, no sleeps. And, you know, we're talking with the no sleep podcast, but the idea was like. I wanted to make a snackable short series that celebrates the breadth and depth of the horror genre because there's so many different things you can do with it, but have it be short.
and kind of snackable. Cause I, I love cabinet of curiosities and black mirror and a lot of these anthologies that are out today, but, um, it's like a full movie commitment right for each one of those episodes and then you know we're big fans of creep show as well and love your work on that show um but that kind of leans a little more in some instances like horror comedy and a little more
yeah and camp right so we tried to do i think we put this in the the you know the director's brief is like we're not doing camp and we're going to try to just almost make like a dark drama with horror elements in it where like the subject matter is just like super messed up which is kind of what internet horror is so speaking of that though of internet horror and maybe you're
probably like just about to get to this but sure with things like creepy pasta or no sleep there were lots of stories on there where nobody took credit for it so yeah like The one of the most famous ones, of course, is the Russian sleep experiment, which is kind of like a bunch of different stories put together. There's been so many different versions of that. There's been like shorts that people made online or whatever. But when you were doing this.
Did all the stories that you were interested in Was there an easy way to contact the person who actually wrote it Or even know who wrote it? It was very complicated. That was part of my like two-year curation journey was to find the authors.
um some of them were famous writers that you know like rebecca clingle went on to write for haunting and hill house and works in mike planigan's camp um so those were easy to find but some of them were like you know i found a um grayson who like wrote a paragraph in you know a couple paragraphs i should say in in high school um when he was going through a a breakup and wrote an abortion story
um that he thought was a metaphor for his relationship and uh yeah like that we adapted that into um you know an episode and it became one of the most popular ones so like a lot of it was like i would call internet forensics a little bit where i'd like look at a username and then figure out okay based on their common history they might be from this state and then you find their name and it's you know john brown you look up every john brown
there so some of them were difficult to find uh i would say most of them were you know had a big following online so we were able to to find them but um that was kind of the funny part is that were there any that you were interested in and became dead ends because you had no idea who to contact to have the rights to to develop we had two yeah we had two we had one that um got optioned um for
uh, which I'm gonna call it, uh, channel zero, um, which is the, the stairs in the woods story. And then we had another no sleep author who was quite prolific pass away.
And that was another one that we lost some of the stories from that. So yeah, there were a couple that got away, but I would say everyone outside of like extenuating circumstances, we got every story that we wanted. John, I think like... i don't think there was a single one we didn't get that we were interested in just it just took some time yeah yeah exactly and like not every one that we got we got to make right like there was challenges with you know um actually
production and you know some of that sort of stuff but like yeah in terms of getting the rights and i think the other thing that's helped too adam when you kind of go back and look at some of the original creepypastas is the
Stuff that previously was uncredited, people have kind of like figured out who wrote what just through like internet sleuthing, similar to what Francesca was talking about. Like I know an early creepypasta that was like amazing that was for a long time uncredited was like the Dianea house.
Um, but like, since, you know, in recent years, people have figured out it was actually an early Eric Heisser story, right. Pre arrival and all that stuff. So like, I think, um, you know, you can kind of internet slew thing has figured out a lot of that now these days. How did you guys start working together? Because I've known both of you kind of in tandem for years. And everyone's journey is different. Adam and I met.
in the backyard of some guy named spooky dan's house and everyone's like creative journey kind of leads up to a certain point that's a crossroads and you know obviously the show was born from that Did you guys, like, what's the origin story for how you two met? Yeah, so that one's a good one. So, like, historically, like, I was... kind of doing screenwriting kind of on my own and was like working, you know, very like small amount of, you know, projects like little indie stuff here and there.
Um, but Francesco actually found a bunch of stuff that I'd written on trigger street, which was like a screenwriting, like peer review site that was run by Kevin Spacey, uh, at the time scandal noted, but, um, And he kind of reached out and was, I think he'd read like a comedy script I'd written and like maybe one or two horror things I'd done. And it was like, hey, like I'm, you know, trying to put together an indie horror movie.
That's kind of in like a low budget framework, which you kind of have anything that would take place, you know, in a cabin in the woods. Kind of completely separate from that, I'd been writing Cabin in the Woods horror movies on my own for like a solid year at that point, just like...
trying to like find the way to kind of crack that nut because I had a buddy who separately had his own cabin in the woods. And I was like, well, I can't get any traction on getting my own stuff made. I can at least kind of convince him to let me go up and fill up in his place. Turns out I, you know. trusted Francesco a lot more than my own instincts with this stuff and I'm happy I did because you know ultimately I kind of sent him a bunch of these single location thrillers
we kind of landed on one that felt like a good fit and we made a movie. You know, I think the line that Francesco gave me beforehand was, he was like, look, I... I can't promise you that you're going to be rich and I can't promise you it's going to be good, but I can promise you we're going to make the movie.
which was exactly kind of what I was looking for. Cause up to that point, I was like, like selling things, you're getting a little bit of money here or there, but like, I wasn't getting anything made, which was incredibly disappointing and empty. But then I think what. The reason we still work together today is that movie was a bit of a disaster in a lot of ways. And like a lot of things didn't quite.
you know, maybe the train went off the tracks. I'll put it that way. But I think Francesco and I were both pretty aligned throughout the process of like, Oh, like. This is going wrong for about 16 different reasons. And these are probably the 16 different reasons. And we kind of learned through the craziness of that production that we have similar sensibilities and a similar way of like liking to do things. And we kind of came out of that and we're like, okay, like that.
Maybe it wasn't great, but our sensibilities line up and we should maybe partner together again on something. Like one thing that I think is so important when it comes to creative partnerships like that is trying to establish like a workflow.
When you guys are putting together, like whether it's this project or the many other projects that you have, do you guys have a particular, or did you find or develop that particular workflow? Like someone does the outline where the other one fills in the gaps or someone works during the. morning you know everyone's got like a routine
What would you describe your routine as? Because I saw a little bit of it with Tales from the Void between all the different back and forths over the years with the different drafts that would come up and when we were doing it to pre-production and even like notes and post-production.
production i kind of saw rhythms there but um can you guys pinpoint what your own rhythm is i think we kind of figured it out on the show if i'm honest because like i don't know how you feel about this john but like yeah like we hadn't done six you know mini feature films uh at the same time while show running and trying to direct so like we we learned a lot on this one so i don't know if this is the right way to do things but i feel like when we write
uh we always kind of collab on an outline hey john like i would say that's the first thing is if we don't agree on the outline um that's going to be problematic and then we typically split up either one of us is writing the script on our own or we're doing it together and we'll like divide up scenes but tend to align on like characters voices but like the main thing is that we both agree on the outline and we put in the work on that up front.
And then I think what we kind of figured out on the show is John and I had a pretty good sense of like what the show is from both of us writing it together.
but uh john was kind of my eyes and ears while i was directing basically show running and then i was on set with you guys and the other directors um i think we had some challenges about john's amount of time he's allowed to be on set as an american um so i kind of covered the other directors and john helped me out while i was directing and then um i feel like we treat you john as like fresh eyes on post
where I spent a lot of time. I kind of like post-supervised at the show. And I know, Joe, we did lots of meetings on VFX together. And then John's kind of quietly behind the scenes.
my fresh eyes because i i feel like you get so close to it that you can't see it objectively um so that was kind of some of the ways we worked together on the show i'm presenting you out to that john yeah the fresh eyes on post is is for sure yeah because it's the uh the fun thing of like well have we tried this it's like yeah john we've we've tried that you weren't there for the eight hours you know what if something like that comes up then it's like
It's always that thing that happens in test screenings where if one person doesn't like a particular scene, a particular character or whatever, you go, all right, well, that could be chalked up as subjective taste or whatever. But if more than one person always brings up something, then you have to kind of hone in and go. Okay. Maybe there's something amiss here, or maybe that's something that we can address. So like, if anything.
Like John being able, like if John's saying something again, that would mean like, okay, maybe we need to look at that sort of thing. Maybe it's not the director going, I know what I want. It's my vision, you know, which, which to be fair, and we'll get to this in a second when we talk about the directors, you guys were. incredibly
I guess I don't even want to say the word lenient. You were very respectful to not just the original stories, but to each director's like vision. And it totally shows. I think that's one of the benefits to doing an anthology style. project is you can do that as opposed to like an episode of a sitcom or a drama where it all has to feel kind of the same to the audience. I had a question about.
putting together the financing for something like this. Cause at the time we're recording this, people can watch the series on screen box. Hopefully by the time this episode is airing, because this is going to come out around New Year's, there might even be some announcements about international and other things and other places where people can see it. But when you're putting together something that is.
technically a tv series for lack of a better term um did you already at least in canada did you have a network or because this is starting to become a little bit more common with with holliston when we did it which i believe is still probably to this day the only independent
multi-camera sitcom that's out there um but we knew that fear net would take it but that was really kind of it we still involved them with season one because we wanted it to be something that they were going to be happy about airing, but it was.
my company aeroscope that ended up producing it so we had to get private equity which in that case they knew how much the network and home video were willing to pay for it so it wasn't really much of a gamble unless we completely fucked it all up um which i don't think we did but um but still it's usually when you're talking about something that is in the tv space a network in a studio
Make that together the studios usually financing at the network has agreed to air it and they're very involved from day one But this sounds like something that was done outside the box Yeah, it was very much indie spirit outside the system. And I think I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who does television outside the system. So kudos to you guys on Halston because it's so rare.
in tv i was i was just listening to duplass talk on a podcast recently about his uh the creep show tapes and he was like explaining the model and i was like that's kind of what we did I was like, wow, we were like a little bit ahead of our time. Why is no one else doing it?
Why do you think no one else is doing it? Because look at movies. Independent movies get made and acquired. Why is there not more in the TV space like that? Because I figured by now, what we did would have been the model, especially with all these streaming services, and they would just be...
grabbing stuff left and right that were made outside the system and they're ready to go well i think there's i think there's a couple things so when i when i go through what we did to finance it some of it becomes clear i think the two challenges is there's There's just way less streamers, right? And like way less networks than there are opportunities for film.
we were fortunate that we got into a lot of festivals but i think if you're not a horror show you might not have a circuit to go to with the television show so it's tough to get eyeballs on it it's tough to get all those accolades and then yeah, you need at least one partner at the beginning to get financing and then you can kind of sell the other places. But like where this thing came to life for us was like, we didn't have any private equity at all.
when we went to production. We went a little over budget and had a very small private equity partner come in and kind of help us out for like not even 5% of the overall budget of the show. But the way we funded it was we got two grants in Canada, which is probably about 30 to 40% of our budget, which is why we had to film in beautiful Sault Ste. Marie.
um and then we we also uh we also uh you get tax credits to film in Canada and then we sold it to super channel in Canada as well on like a you know a spec concept um and then yeah that was kind of the the funding plan we had some post-production equity and some producer investments um but yeah we basically cobbled it together and the idea was to you know
I effectively do it as like a proof of concept to show that there's an audience for this type of content online. And we're hoping to go bigger if we get another season. But I think the grant programs in Canada are quite unique. We were given quite a bit of money to film in Sault Ste. Marie and had to spend double the money up there to be able to get the grant funding. And then the really interesting thing is we got web series funding in Canada. So it was released as like a...
a cut down version for a web series release in Canada. And then we expanded it with the after the show interviews with the writers to make it a full TV length in the States. So there was some like. tricky things we had to do that like affected the format to actually unlock um the grant funding which i'm not sure if we'd do it again like that if we if we get another season but yeah it was kind of like
cobbling together whatever pieces we could to appease all the funding bodies in Canada. And then, you know, when Screenbox came in, that was kind of the final piece, but we pretty much came to them with... I don't know, I would say 75, 80% of the budget in place and just needed a partner. See, I'm now on the creative side. I'm curious about how... You guys, because when you presented the deck to me back in 2021, and at this point...
Anybody who comes up with a deck and a presentation the way that you guys had it, where you even had like the you would shot the proof of concept with the black square, which was the episode that I ultimately did. it was like it was really enticing it was just a you know can this actually be done on an indie like on an indie level and the The thing that I was curious about with the six episodes that you had was how.
they were going to be presented to the potential directors. So aside from myself, what was it about the particular directors that you guys went out to like, you know, like Maddie or like the, you know, the Adams? what were you guys looking for? And cause I remember specifically when you guys came to me, I thought it was mistake because I distinctly remember the no sleep podcast because, um,
Back in the G4 days, we covered a lot of those no sleep things on like either Attack of the Show or Blair Butler talked about them. And I remember them like. Like when we would read them, they would always be kind of a dour, dark affair. And at that point, you know, most of my efforts, I guess, have been a little bit more on the lighter side or like a little more, not tongue in cheek, but just a little more irreverent.
I remember you even saying in our first meeting that you were considering me doing the... the uh into the into the unknown and i was like man that one is fucking serious like why me so when when you were putting together like your wish list of directors and after you know david fincher and luca guadagnino all they all passed
How did you come to this particular group? I was quite an organic process, if I'm honest. I think we were intro'd, Joe, through the exchange and had seen a bunch of your work. your interpretation of our pitch deck was like spot on. I think John and I got off the call and we're like, you know this guy gets exactly what we're trying to do um personally like i was terrified to approach the black square episode i hadn't done um a short or anything with that much vfx
And I thought it was the most ambitious of the whole series. So we thought you were kind of the best man for the job, given your kind of experience. And you had mentioned that you wanted to do sci-fi. And I think this was a bit before. suitable flesh and uh we just our whole thing was like i want to be the show that takes great directors and gives them a chance to play you know in a sandbox that maybe they haven't they haven't done yet or try something new like our whole thing was like
we want to be the show that like isn't giving a ton of notes and just gives you know cool kind of horror directors a chance to have fun and it felt like you understood the show and uh we're excited about tackling that story so that was a natural fit and then Maybe, John, you can speak to how we got Marty and Tricia and the team there. But with the Adams, Aaron Coons had introduced us to them. We had seen Hellbender in the DPU dig, and we're big fans of there.
um of their work and uh funny enough they had actually read the no sleep story and were familiar with it and wanted to do betsy the doll and they brought it up in our first meeting And I don't even know if they like fully knew that we like had the rights to that story at the time. And it just seemed like a natural fit because to me that was like a dark fantasy in the woods and like half of their movies take place in the woods.
um so it just felt like something that would that would fit perfectly so i don't know to me it was like it what story are you excited about and how can we help you tell the best story possible i think that's why the show was so much fun I don't know if you want to tell the Marty story, which is an interesting one, John. For sure. Yeah. And I think like, so the episode of Carrie, which is kind of like a female body autonomy episode is like the one episode that neither Francesco nor I wrote.
For like obvious reasons. We were like, you probably shouldn't have two guys telling a story about abortion. But so what we did was we actually, you know. We were introduced to Trisha through like a mutual friend, Trisha Lee, who was the writer on that one. She's been on the blacklist a few times. We really dug a script of hers called Good Chance. That's like quite good.
believe is in development somewhere right now um and we kind of approached her with the story and like the way we had been talking about that story previously is we were like oh like it can be like about a evil cult trying to like summon a demon baby or it can be you know aliens and they're trying to like use this woman as a vessel for an alien baby like species or something and we approach her with the story and she was like yeah it could just be real
It was like, ah, that's why you're here. So. Like she was a really natural fit to write that episode and she absolutely fucking crushed it. And then with Marit, we were actually introduced to Marit by the exchange because she had some stuff that she'd been doing with them. Um, and she had just, she was just coming off black as night for Blumhouse for like their, um, yeah, the Amazon series. And like, that was a fucking dope movie.
I just from like some of the background, like those Blumhouse movies are shot really, really quick. And like, it's a really brutal, what I would describe as like almost like a TV schedule, right? Like you got to like really make your days and it's really hard.
um so like it was somebody who was doing horror had just done something on like a super tight budget which we kind of knew at that point like was going to be the universe we were living in and had created something that was quite cool with it And then obviously when we met with her, she immediately got what we were trying to do. She understood the material like implicitly and kind of had a really good take on it. So it was kind of a natural fit.
I think that's a good point. I was just going to say, I think that's a good point too, John, is I think a big consideration that maybe we wouldn't normally admit is like, we picked people that we thought could roll with the punches. and i think uh we have we tried to have like a no no divas on set sort of role and i think all the directors we had you guys fucked up with me jesus yeah no you were great it was like it was honestly like
The episodes deserved five days of shooting, but we only had four. And I think for my last episode, I only had three. And a big thing was like, can people pull this off with a tight?
with a tight budget and the fact that you know the adams shoot all their own stuff you know joe you had done a bunch of stuff on creep show and i think hearing all the the production kind of stuff you guys dealt with there and still pulled off an amazing series um that was kind of inspiring and then you know marty had done uh phobias as well john which was a very tight tight shoot anthology so it was also people that like we we knew could work with the resources we had
When it comes to the actual production itself, we've been kind of dancing around the whole Sault Ste. Marie stuff, and even just how you guys got it off the ground. Because again, this was one of those, and this happens all the time, where...
Uh, producer or writers they'll come to a director or you know if it's an ODA or if there's any interest and they'll just say like okay we're you know we're thinking Q4 of next year or you know like maybe sometime in the second half of you know X year or whatever and a lot of times as i have someone who has been there before it can become really um it can be very disenfranchising when you like
put your, you stack your deck on like, Oh man, next year is going to be tales from the void. I can't wait. And then it doesn't happen. Or then it just gets pushed. And sometimes you just kind of go, Oh, I guess that's not going to happen. You just kind of let it go. And one of the things that I was so. I admired about you guys so much is that you had so much tenacity and you never gave up on this project.
you know, considering the pandemic, obviously, and, you know, obviously through years of trying to get it off the ground. And one of the things that I remember you guys saying, and it's pretty evident too, that. kind of kick things into high gear was bringing in uh paper street and uh and aaron and cameron how did you guys get involved with those guys because i know that because i you know cameron
Cameron Burns was an active member on my set. And Aaron, I know, was, you know, attached to all the we've had Aaron on the show before. And, you know, he's one of those producers that just very much has his hand kind of like Dave Lawson, where he's just. Everybody's production has him involved in some form or another, but he really does help a lot of indie filmmakers get things either off the ground or to the place where you're actually shooting. How did you guys hook up with them?
It's a really good story there. It's funny that you're saying about us just continuing to push the rock up the hill because it's kind of what led us there. um you know we were we met i think joe what three four years before we went to production on this and uh this thing died a thousand deaths like like along the way and my kind of approach with with the show was just like
I'm not going to stop until I can look myself in the mirror and say I did everything I could to try to get it made. So what happened was we had done sales pitches to the... To the big, all the big networks and had had like some interesting conversations with Fangoria and like a couple other players. But I always get weary when you have a big sales team and all these people that are excited.
But then the number of people on the list is getting smaller and smaller. Yeah. And I could see it coming because I've been there before where like, you know, I had a project that was with WME and there was all this excitement and we had a. We had a Netflix fire in the crowd at our premiere. And then as soon as Netflix isn't interested, they just disappear.
um so we like i could see it coming and i was like okay i need to go into like overdrive here to figure out how to get this thing made and i i literally made a list of like i think it was like 300 companies and i just started cold calling and emailing and emailing and chasing people and i eventually ended up on a call with a couple you know financiers and a producer and aaron was invited to the call
And he phoned me directly after and was like, you have something really great here. And he had read it and was super passionate about it. And we had Screambox kind of reviewing it at the time. And they had worked with Aaron before. I think his endorsement helped a little bit, you know, getting it across the line. But they kind of... uh came in at the i think it was like the same week that i met aaron
And Aaron Koontz, I always say, like, although he wasn't there on set, his presence was always felt. And he kind of saved our ass because I had never showrun before. And he was someone I spoke.
on the phone with probably two to three times a week for the last year and he just always you know gave great advice on how to run the show and you know what i what i need to do and is like as stupid as like telling me what the onboarding pack needs to look like for the directors and i you know just didn't have the experience in it right
um like i know what i what i wanted to create but i didn't know the level of complexity of a production like this like john and i were used to doing you know 15 maybe 10 people three location features like this thing was 45 or 40 locations and like we flew up 80 people to sue saint marie i think one day on set we had 120 people working for us so it was just um the scale of it was overwhelming and like had we not
got Paper Street on board. I'm not sure we would have pulled it off. Also, Barkley Mod, our producing partner from Heroes and Ghosts out of Toronto, is a huge part of this as well. So he... He got us all the cinematographers, the post-production houses, Red Lab, Rolling Pictures. So everyone loves Marty and Scott, our DPs. We don't get that caliber of crew without Barkley as well.
Um, so yeah, like Barkley and Aaron were instrumental in getting this thing made. And I think, um, there was, there was definitely days on set where. Like we'd looked around and was like, we don't make our day today if we don't have these guys. And we just had an amazing, amazing team. So yeah, that was, that was a big part of the pulling off.
Well, and I think too, like there's kind of like an adage you hear sometimes in this industry where people are like, oh, fake it till you make it. But like, it's kind of bullshit. I think the reason why Francesco and I, I guess something that's important to us is like, we're willing to admit. When like, we don't know something for our heads. That's the sign of a good director. Like that's why you have all these people. And I've seen so many people make the mistake of.
I don't know if it's just an insecurity, but they're so afraid not even just to ask, wait, so what is the best way to do this? If we want to do this, to do this. What's your suggestion here? And then use the suggestion. But there's some who feel like if they, God forbid, take a suggestion or some advice that now. it got away from them it's not theirs anymore or they're weak and it's like do you really think like James Cameron or George Lucas or like
whenever you go back and you look at the makings of the people that they relied on to move technology forward for them to achieve that vision. It's yeah, that's, I'm just happy that you said that because it's something we bring up on here all the time. It's. doesn't mean you're any less at what you do when you actually do what you're supposed to do, which is lean on this whole group of people that you assembled because they're good at what they do.
Oh yeah. And that was a big part of the conversation with Aaron too, is it was like, well, you know, I mean, Francesco created this show. And, you know, Francesco and I were where the goal was to co-show run it. But like neither of us have run a TV show before. And like, frankly, neither of us have worked at a budget level like this before.
So part of the convo with Aaron was he was like, well, I'm going to send two of my guys up to Sault Ste. Marie with you. And it was Cameron Burns and then Chris Ball as well. Chris Ball's out of Vancouver. He does some stuff kind of in the... you know, Western coast of Canada. And, you know, they kind of were the set experience.
like on set right so joe for your episode cam burns was there every single day like when the adams were shooting their episode chris ball was with them but they would kind of rotate and having their just like genuinely like collectively probably 40 something years of experience on film sets was just super instrumental and just making sure that like the train stayed on the track, so to speak. And we would have, we would have fucked it up so bad if it wasn't for them. Cause like, yeah.
I did not realize the amount of problems they were shielding me from when I was directing. And then I would get off set and have, you know, four days, excuse me. And they would go, you know, here's everything we need a decision on. And it's like they would just keep the entire thing running while we were shooting. All right. I.
I went to I made the fucking mistake. God damn it. I went to IMDb to to get the list of all the credits and just to kind of go through each of the episodes because you you had done I've seen all the episodes and Francesco. you've directed three of the episodes really quick. John, did you, were you ever interested in directing an episode or was it, was Francesco being an asshole and you say, no, none, none for you.
No, I'm not. I'm not actually super interested in directing. I'm one of those weirdos who I really, really enjoy the process of writing. There's elements of producing I really enjoy. don't love directing. I much prefer to like work with a director who kind of shares my sensibilities because I just think they're going to do a better job and the final product on screen is going to look better. So with Francesco, you know, we share a very similar sensibility.
So it just, you know, at no point was I interested. I've directed stuff before. Don't love how it looks. John has no patience for post-production, basically. Yeah, that too. Which rules him out. He's the patience of a saint when it comes to screenwriting, but post, it's a completely different volume. uh so what i was saying before when i was like before i got kind of thrown off by going like yeah why didn't john do any episodes was i made the mistake
Because one of the things that was really humbling to me about you guys coming to me about doing this was, you know, like you were talking about me doing the pilot. And there is a certain amount of. respectability when it comes to the pilot director. Maybe not as much now, but because back in the day when you had pilot directors like, you know, David Nutter.
I'm trying to remember Clark Johnson who did like the shield and stuff. These were guys different time though, because they were setting, they had one episode, but that was what the whole show had to be. And then it had to emulate things. It's a little different because each episode is going to be sure. But then when I see the.
marketing material for this and it says like from joe lynch director of wrong turn two and some other shit and then the other directors i'm like whoa holy shit okay that's interesting like i guess i'm a marketing point but then i go on imdb and I look at all the fucking scores and you know episode 2 is 6.4 episode 3 is 6.0 episode 4 is 6.8 and my episode is 4.6 like I now I'm sitting here going fuck I failed okay well
Tell you what, look up any sitcom. See, these guys are sitting there going like, oh shit, they found out. No, look up any sitcom. I think, well... It's the later episodes where everyone starts saying, oh, then the show. No, because then they were into the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also would say I wouldn't take too much stock in IMDB reviews. Exactly. Who cares?
Well, the amount of spelling mistakes you see in the user reviews, you're like, I'm going to really struggle to take this person seriously. My favorite are the Amazon reviews that people leave on movies because it'll be like, item arrived late, one star. You know, just skipped one star. And it's like, well, how does that count towards the actual movie? What the fuck? Yeah, it's you can't. You can't. No, I know that. I know. I know. But, you know, I will say.
One of the things that I was really, I appreciated was the fact that I was, you gave me the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone because in most cases. My sensibilities, as you probably noticed when we were on set, even when things were getting incredibly tense, like when one of our actors, you know, hurt their hand and we're like, well, how the fuck are we going to do this major moment in the scene? Oh, God. Yeah, and we can't even throw him through the...
The square. And we figured it out. We made it work. You threw him anyway. What's that? You threw him anyway. Well, we took him from his legs and threw him. That was easy. But it's just, even when times get tough, I do my best to... use levity to um to kind of diffuse the situation and sometimes i feel like i do that in my own work you know creep show was for all intents and purposes at least some of the episodes um
levity was always a not a crutch but it was a good way of of me to you know balance things out because i grew up in an era where you had movies like reanimator and evil dead 2 and there was an equal balance of comedy and horror it's kind of together steaks but also those um uh i guess uh tension breakers. Whereas here there was like into the unknown, which if you haven't seen it is, you know, concerns this mysterious black square that pops up in a tenement.
um kind of commonplace and everybody around it tries to figure out what the hell they're going to do and it it was always from the first time that you and the three of us talked I think we like immediately we all agreed. It's like, it's not about the black square. It's about the people. And it's about, and that's like, that's classic Rod Serling. That's classic, like Stephen King's, the mist that, you know.
that pressure cooker situation that is a reflection on the culture and the people that are in that situation, not about the supernatural element that either kind of brings them together or divides them. And, you know, like I can look back at that. Experience and go like, I'm so glad that I didn't have to rely on my old bag of tricks, if you will, you know, to be able to get away with some.
darker shit and we went through we went through some dark fucking times on that episode not in the production but just in some of the stuff that we were covering with what joe was just saying um the fact that the story it's really about Excuse me, the people and how they react to this thing in the writing of that episode. Did it ever concern you that there is no like clear answer? Given to the audience because when I watched the episode I was like that was fucking great. I loved it
What happened at the end? Because I don't really know if I understand. But you don't need to. No. To enjoy it. To me, that was the point. And I think that's a bad joke because I adopted that one. i feel like you know you mentioned imdb scores i i don't think general audiences love the ambiguity that's and that's what i was getting to like not at all yeah why there's that lower score because the average person especially somebody who reviews shit on imd
If you're asking them to think, good luck. Sorry, IMDb users, but it's true. It's also the most complex, I think, thematically.
um there's also you know some stuff about there were questions online about like could could you would you have not done all the experiments on the square like right when you saw it and i i think like you know we could have written it exactly how people would behave um but it kind of like i feel like audiences are kind of missing the point with the metaphor and it wasn't a documentary and it wasn't a documentary like like and it's been funny because like we we've noticed if people get
you know to the second or the third episode they get a way less ambiguous ending and then people you know like the show um but the funny thing was my um so i'll tell you a story joe of like how how this is kind of panning out my uh I watched it with my family, and my brother and his wife didn't seem like they liked the episode, didn't seem like they got it. And my brother phoned me the next day, and he goes,
You know, I was talking to my wife on the ride home and she explained that like it wasn't about the square. It was about the people were what you were supposed to be afraid of.
and like and he kind of picked up on the metaphor of it and like you know the ambiguity of the ending and he was like that's so smart like i didn't get that watching it the first time and it's i feel like that's kind of part of it is i definitely got if you're looking Yeah, I definitely got that because it's when you take any any like square of society and then you throw something in that doesn't make sense or doesn't belong or shouldn't be there.
or that no one has an answer to and people i mean look i'm sure this wasn't what you had in mind when you wrote it but look at the way society reacted to the pandemic instead of being like holy shit, there's like a once in a generation illness going around. We all got to work together to figure this out. It just became you'll listen to the answer that you like best, it seemed. And so to see.
All it is is a black square that makes no sense. Why is it there? What's on the other side? You don't have to know all that. You're watching the way people are reacting to it. And that's why I liked it so much. Well, and that's, it's funny too, because like the original story when, you know, Harris is chucked into the black square, they kind of describe it as like seeing the worst of humanity in the square.
And it's left very ambiguous. So, you know, when adopting it, it was like, how do we make this like visually interesting without telling you or like beating you over the head with the metaphor of like what to think. So, yeah, like not. understanding or interpreting correctly what happens when he goes in the square was kind of the point. But I don't know, it's been interesting. It seems like it's been quite a polarizing episode.
People that don't like the ambiguity hate it, and some people love it. that aspect of it and kind of you know said it reminds them of old school twilight zone where you don't you don't always get all the answers no and it also sets the stage about it about the story yeah and that this is a show that you don't commonly see. This is something different.
Well, usually in anthology shows, and I know it because I did four episodes for Creepshow, is that it's not about ambiguity. It's about the twist. Yeah, there's a twist. There's always got to be that twist. Or an ending that either shocks you. or satisfies you or some sort of final boom. Nicotero put it very well where it always has to have the freeze frame moment.
you know like because you like even like it would always be like freeze frame and then it turns into the comic and stuff like that and usually it was always the freeze frame into like you know somebody scream like and then it would freeze frame classic creep show where
I tried to use the same formula or at least apply the same formula to this and you know the ending shot of void is not even a shot it's more sound effects and I remember being very very like adamant about like you have to cut off that scream at the end because it's that like that but that's not that's not a gotcha moment that's more of a we're gonna like we're gonna leave you feeling unsettled and that was the the running kind of concurrent
theme or like i guess sensory theme that i got through out the entire the entire show like um Plastic smile still freaks me out. Like that, that episode like really, really fucked with me, especially like when you do that kind of reveal moment, which I don't want to give away, but when you do kind of give that.
shit away it's like oh god and just kind of sends a shiver down your spine um to go back to the shooting sure this what every movie every short every tv show whatever it is you do there's always that one moment of oh my god everything's fucked like something just went so wrong that was beyond our control and now what do we do whether it's like
you're in the middle of shooting and suddenly the weather changes and there's rains or your set blows away, whatever it might be. What was that moment on, on making this series? How long do you have? i feel like while i was there for the what five days that i was there it felt like every day was like oh my god and then i would sit there and go how the fuck are the guys gonna and then they would they would always figure it out but okay what was what was a
moment the two for for me uh so we shot starlight first and uh we had an 11 page day and um the entire um stage sequence uh is 11 pages just to get through it that was 11 pages yeah and we're queuing lights and like you know trying to time spotlights and stuff And you just kind of realize after like two takes that like, okay, I'm going to get maybe eight takes total of this whole thing with all the stuff we have to queue up.
and it was just throwing my shot list out the window and being like okay we're just gonna grab as many moments as we can here
And that was just the realities of just not having enough bodies to cue all the lights and all the different effects we were trying to do. And then the big one on... fixed frequency which thank god it worked out i don't know if you guys seen that one yet but yeah of course when we when we do the pan over to the to the shed to reveal um you know uh i won't give it away but uh
one walking over to the shed to find something creepy inside it uh i think we had one take of that and we got it uh before we lost daylight and it was like i was literally not sleeping that night and i got up in the morning and didn't know if it was going to work. And we had my editor, Giorgio, living with me and John, and he was cutting overnight. And he literally woke me up in the morning and was like, you're okay, mate. Like, you got it.
like it works and we like watched it in the edit in the morning and i was just like thank god so it was just it was those moments where like you were out of time or out of light and i don't know if we have it or not um so those were the couple that like just
i don't know crushed me i'm sure john you have a couple more from other apps yeah there were a couple like behind the scenes ones like the um This is so like inside baseball too, but like our DGA union rep changed midway through the shoot and the person who had.
departed, had not onboarded the new person. So we essentially, yeah. So Francesco was directing and this was, this was one of the things we shielded you from, but like we essentially got an email that was like, we're going to shut the shoot down. through production. So that was, that was fun where I got to go off and kind of have a couple of conversations with the DGA and resend them 16 different documents. But like, that's not a fun email to get.
so that was definitely one and then just you know um ongoing tracking of the budget and you know where we were and and what was remaining and you know uh some of the You know, we ended up shooting the last episode of the series for a fraction of what the original five were shot for. And kind of just getting to that point and figuring out the way out of that was pretty terrifying.
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