It's the Movie Crypt! And welcome to another edition of the Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. We are recording this episode. Get that. on Monday, May 5th, 2025, and it's going to run in like... four days for early access people on this coming Monday. This is the most like topical we've been in probably like a year, maybe more than that, because of all of the recording lots of episodes in advance to cover while I was gone shooting and all that other stuff.
But I can tell you the episode that runs the week after this one was recorded on April 24th. So we usually do our best to try to time these with the release of certain projects that the guests might be talking about. In this case, Daniel Del Purgatorio's film Marshmallow just finished its theatrical run and it will be hitting VOD early June.
kind of safely bet that anyone who's listening to this if they didn't see it at a festival like panic fest which is where i first heard about the film you might have missed the film and there's nothing wrong with that this was a very limited run but I can almost guarantee by the end of the year, everyone's going to be talking about this movie. This is going to be one of those films that
just gets into the public consciousness. It's a word-of-mouth movie, very much like Freaky Tales that I've been professing from the heavens, which we're going to have the directors of that on very soon, which also had a pretty... shitty theatrical release if you will but anything getting any type of theatrical release at all in this day and age is a wonderful thing that's the that's the thing that we want to stress is that
There are so many great movies out there that aren't getting the theatrical experience or the release. Or they are, but no one knows it's there. That has no reflection on the quality of the film whatsoever. I think people know that now. I think 25 years ago, if your movie was, quote, straight to video, there's something that's not that great. So you used to say that, where it's like, oh yeah, 20 years ago.
that's our movies kind of that's kind of scary you had more of a theatrical release than i did but yeah but back in back 20 years ago the full you know 25 million it was like pulling up to the chinese and everything 100 Which theaters? We're not really sure. It might be there. I don't know. And if you want to advertise it, go for it. But we're good.
um yeah anyway this movie i i don't say this often and as with anything the disclaimer is only you know your own children and what you want them to see so you should always watch it first and decide But I think... this is a great movie for those of you who are horror fans who have kids who are maybe just starting to become curious about it maybe they like stranger things or
You know, they're reading Goosebumps or whatever it might be. We talk about The Gateway. Yeah, this is a great, I'd say Monster Squad-esque. minus monsters, and a little bit darker. And Sleepaway Camp-esque, minus the Minus the dick. Minus Felissa Rose's dick. So should we do this? Should we get to it? Let's do it. Okay, so let's go back all the way to, well, about a month ago or five weeks ago. Becca and I are at PanicFest.
and it's going great, and we're a little bit hungover. It's Saturday morning, and we're walking through our hotel. There's all these little kids walking around they're all walking around with these very bright yellow shirts That's a marshmallow on it. We're going what the fuck is this?
Then we realize, wait a second, this must be for this particular movie that is playing at Panic Fest. We do the cursory, we're like, oh, you guys here for the movie? And they're like, oh my god, we're so excited. And we're like, it's going to be great. And then throughout the day, we see these groups of people walking around all over the Screenland Armor, all around the near vicinity.
with all these shirts on and then we see this dude in a white suit while like stalking around as well we're like what the hell is going on well We made the mistake of not going to the screening of Marshmello, but once it came out, there was a... siege of people talking about how great this fucking movie was and we started getting FOMO and Adam Roberts was like you missed it and we're like I'm sorry and
I was a little embarrassed to talk to our guest afterwards because I saw him across the way getting, you know, basically verbally fellated by everybody in the audience at that point. And then it wins best film, best director. And I go, I need to talk to this dude right away. Thank you. What did you have for breakfast? Oh, I had a delightful
egg sandwich from a place down the street at this really nice little cafe. That doesn't matter what the fuck we're talking about. We should have seen the movie. So... This gentleman is the writer, the director. He's the mastermind behind Marshmallow. He also comes from visual effects. This is his first official feature after doing a bunch of shorts and music videos please welcome to the movie crypt Daniel
I'm going to screw this up. Daniel Purgatorio. That was so perfect. That was great. No one ever gets it right. So let's take the victory while we can. We'll take the victory. Wait, did you make a mistake though? Did you write this as well? I did not. I did not write it. Andy, no. So I came on, yeah, and Andy, who had wrote the film, did a beautiful job, and we sort of worked together, and I brought a bit of my aesthetic into it.
Okay, so there was a director's pass involved, okay? There was a director's pass. No, not always. Not always, but here... Obviously, there was a lot of love, a lot of passion that went into this film. And after the movie got into Panic Fest and was continuously doing... I reached out to you to be like, hey, so what's going on with the movie? And you're like, it's coming out in theaters this weekend. I'm like, what the fuck? Holy shit.
And then immediately, I was talking to Cargill, and he's like, I gotta see this! And then I sent it to him, and he was like, that's awesome! And this is one of those movies. that is going to benefit greatly from word of mouth. It's going to benefit immensely from once it comes home. As we all know, the theatrical experience is a little bit difficult these days, especially for genre films, unless you have $30 million in marketing and you have a 24 behind you.
But this movie is special in the fact that it is so homegrown and so much made with. passion and probably every dollar is on screen and corbin bernson probably got didn't get paid by the way corbin bernson's in this movie holy Yeah, I want to go back before we get into because this conversation for all of you that are listening and you're going, what the fuck is marshmallow? It is this wonderful.
slasher, sleepaway camp horror with a very subversive twisty edge and we're not going to get into any spoilers.
Until much later because we did it's gonna be hard to not talk about this movie without spoiling a little bit So what we're gonna do is we're gonna wet your whistle a little bit and then by the time we get to like the last third then we'll start to get into spoiler territory that's where you can pause the film or pause this go watch the movie eventually come back and then you'll be like holy shit because it's going to be tough not to because this is one of those movies that
You think you know what you're getting, and then you get something else. And that was the reaction that we were getting when we were sitting outside in the lobby at the Screenland Armor. People who had walked in kind of thinking they knew what they were going to get walked out completely changed in terms of what they ended up seeing and what you delivered. So let's go back a little bit.
Dan, when was the first time that you were, I guess, really interested in making movies, being part of the movie telling craft? Where did it start for you? Yeah, I think, you know, when I was young, I feel like every, you know, filmmaker and or horror filmmaker says the same kind of thing. But, you know, I was young. My dad loved movies. He loved horror movies. and I stole a VHS tape of his when my parents went out when I was like nine and it had
Mad Max on it. It had Friday the 13th Part 2 and it had Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And that was like the first time that I watched obviously three movies that were totally not appropriate for my age.
it was the first time that I kind of felt like very like I felt something different in watching a movie you know from the typical stuff that I was watching right where I was like oh I didn't know that you could feel like this watching films and that really excited me in a way that I was like I want to do that And, you know, I at the time and still, but, you know, at the time I was really big into drawing. I loved art. So I went to school for illustration.
And when I was in school, I was like, OK, I want to go to grad school for filmmaking. And I actually got a job offer in my last year of school. to do animation and so i was like okay well i could pay to go to school and learn or i could just sort of jump in and get paid and learn And so I decided to, you know, jump in get paid and you know learn and essentially I started working in commercial dabbling and like film stuff on the side and it wasn't until like maybe 2000
2011 give or take like me and my buddies we all just said hey let's start you know like actually making our own film now that we have you know we know people with gear and we we can you know sort of do this stuff And that's what we made our first short together. And it just really opened the door creatively, I think, for a lot of us.
where we were like okay fuck we just we just want to do this like on a fairly regular basis as much as we can and and that was it you know for me like from 2011 when we did it to now it's like i try to do it as much as i can and you know more than anything it's because it's fun doing shit cool shit with your friends right and it's seeing all these groups of people coming together and working on, you know, to hit a specific goal, right, or a specific vision.
And, you know, even if the product at the end isn't great, you had a good time with your friends and you've learned and you've grown in some capacity, whether it's in the filmmaking world or as a personal thing or a mental thing.
And that's, I think, what's sort of addicting, you know? So I love how you... casually breezed over uh one of the credits that you have with which is the watchman animated mini movie tales from the black freighter which was the thing that all of us As Watchmen fans and Alan Moore fans and Dave Gibbons fans, We're simply wanting
When we saw Watchmen and then there was like when Zack was kind of teasing that there was going to be a Tales from the Black Freighter because if you know the comic, that was like the sub story that like every time you saw the little black kid at the newsstand, you'd see him. read the comic and you'd be like holy shit and then when they play the movie you go well i kind of guess i i got why they wouldn't put that in But you were one of the directors of that.
animated short. I mean, would you consider it a short, or would you, like, because it was more of, like, a special feature on, like, the Blu-ray when it came out, right? Yeah, so when we like when that landed it was a short because it was 30 minutes right but it was like its own standalone companion piece and they were going to release it or they did release it as like a, you know, short film with some extra stuff. And then ultimately the goal was that they were going to cut it into Zach's film.
as like an ultimate edition. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And that would get like an additional like theatrical release. And I think what happened was like Zach, film was so long that they didn't want to add 30 more minutes on top of his cut. So they did like a second release of it where it was put in and then they did like the ultimate like DVD release or Blu-ray and DVD release where they put it into the cut as well.
how did you how did you wind up getting that game yeah dude that's fucking like that that like when when it finally came out because i'm such a huge fan of that comic That was huge for us as fans to see that. Yeah. And to have Gerard Butler and Jared Harris and Cam Clark and Bridget Hoffman, like, like, like Lori Triel, like, All these people, these amazing actors, and you're working with them. How did that happen?
Yeah, this is like a total nerd story. Well, guess what? You're in the right fucking place. Yeah, no, I was going to say, I'm talking to fellow nerds, so I get it. Yeah, so when, you know, obviously I grew up, as I said, I loved art, you know, and illustration and all of that stuff. And, you know, my uncle got me huge into comics and more so like the EC, like horror comics. Watchmen was a huge one that I loved.
We were out at Warner Brothers, me and one of the execs that I work with for another project. And we were talking to somebody over at Warner Brothers about this other project. And he left his office to go get something or whatever. And I looked on his desk and I saw there was a copy of a script for the Black Freighter. And, you know, at the time, Zach was shooting, he was shooting in Vancouver, I believe he was shooting the Watchmen stuff.
And so he came back and I was like, hey, you know, not to sound like a nosy asshole, but are you guys making the Black Freighter? Like, is that a thing? And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, we're kind of sending it off. It's just going to be this little extra thing that, you know. pops up when the Watchmen film comes out. I was like, OK, cool. So we left that meeting. We got back.
I was like talking to this exec friend of mine. I was like, Hey, we should totally do a pitch for this. And he's like, I was going to say the same thing. So I like got all of my buddies at my office and we all sat down and we talked about it and we just had. bunch of people like doing cool shit like we were doing tons of sketches and storyboards and little animation tests and
We just put a cool package together. And so we then flew back out and we met up with this guy and we said like, hey, we know that you didn't ask for this, but we just had a lot of fun and we're all such huge Watchmen fans. And we shared the presentation and he was like, holy shit, this is fucking cool. I want to send you guys up to go meet with Zach right now because I want him to see this.
so we then essentially left from that meeting i think like the next day and we went up to where they were shooting um and we presented it and then we got the gig which was awesome jesus wow So if you had not gone to that meeting and just casually glazed over and glanced at the fucking desk and seen that comic there, you would have never even thought of that. That's fucking amazing.
Yeah, crazy. It was, it was, again, like we were familiar. Like I, you know, like I said, all us nerds knew that they were making Watchmen, which was fucking awesome. Like we were all stoked about that. And, um yeah it was just cool that this you know this dude happened to have that copy there if he didn't have that nothing nothing would have happened you know what i mean and i think you know like
Like you guys know, this industry is all about enthusiasm and excitement and passion for what you do. And that goes further than anything else, right? And I think that... He saw how much myself and the team were excited about it and everything we put into it. I think that was exciting, you know what I mean? Like, oh, wow, these random people from, you know, left field came in with this great little presentation and, you know, and all these tests because they were like...
excited. That's what it takes sometimes when you see like when Certain projects like that they usually get farmed out to companies or becomes a bake-off in a way where they go to a bunch of different companies and they just kind of go, all right, show us what you got. And a deck gets made or maybe a couple tests. But when anybody sees the kind of passion that goes into something like that kind of presentation where you can tell it was made with love.
It was made with reverence for what Dave and Alan had done. And they're fans. I mean, that's essentially how Zach got Watchmen, obviously, was he was a fucking fan. And everyone glommed on that and realized, well, that's the kind of person we want. Yes, it was long, but that's what Watchmen had to be. And I wanted to ask, what came first? Did you, um...
Were you doing all of the animations first and then the actors like Gerard and Gerard came in? Or did they record those first? And if so, were you in those sessions as well? Because those were great performances too. Yeah, yeah, all the animation, like storyboards and all the reels were put together first, and then from there...
the voice, all the voice talent came in. And I think that early on when we were doing all the boards and we were like starting to cut the rails, Zach was like, Obviously, he has a relationship with Gerard, so he was wanting to bring him in. And so we kind of like heard the people that they were talking about bringing and it just worked really, really well. And so, yeah, I was like, they did one day where he was doing stuff. I was there for the next day.
And then we were like sort of going back and forth. I think at the time too, I was traveling. To work with the animation team, like myself and co-director, we were in Korea, South Korea, for a good chunk of time working with the team that was doing all of the animation, which was great because it was like... you know when we were doing this no not many people were doing like traditional animation anymore at the time it was like everybody
like at Disney and all these companies were, you know, doing all this great animation, traditional animation, then it kind of fell into more of that 3D world. And so it was,
hard when we were looking to find a team of people that could draw on paper, literally draw on paper and do animation like that. And we ended up partnering with a really great or hired a really great company in South Korea who had done a lot of really cool stuff that I loved and that I was a fan of and it was cool because they were using papers and pencils and coloring stuff like the traditional way.
and so like we were traveling a lot too so when we were like sort of finishing up the animation like the voice stuff was kind of happening and and then that all got you know once we got into like sound design and final mix and music and all of that stuff it sort of all came together Two things. First, I'm really glad you just kind of shined a light on how few companies are still doing the traditional 2D animation. We did an animated episode of our sitcom years ago.
And Six Point Harness did the animation, but originally the vision was Hanna-Barbera, making it look like Scooby-Doo, which they did the best they could on a very meager budget. But other than this presentation, which blew them away, did they then ask to see other animation samples that you had directed to know? you understood the process completely, that you could work with talent, or did they just trust you off of that presentation?
Yeah, it was a combination because I was working at a studio, right? So the studio that I was with, they were doing traditional animation, like 3D animation stuff, not traditional 3D animation. And so they had finished a whole... bunch of it a bunch of stuff and also they had a relationship with warner brothers on a bunch of other projects so i think that really helped that they're feeling comfortable with us to do that.
which was cool. But also, as a company, we had never done traditional 2D animation stuff before. My co-director, he had worked on a lot of really great stuff and traditional stuff back in the day. They, I think, you know, we put a whole, like, pipeline workflow presentation together to sort of explain the process and how we were going to work.
how the team that we were bringing in to do the traditional animation was going to work within our pipeline and our structure. And I think everyone felt pretty comfortable with the process.
um so but yeah it was definitely you know a lot leaned on the relationship that my studio had with you know with warner brothers in the past so When it came to Watchmen, one of the things that I think all of us, when you're dealing with an IP in one form or another, you're gonna get, and boy, now more than ever, you're always gonna get a lot of opinions and uh you know with watchman i remember you know there was you know there was a lot of heat on on zach when he did 300 that he was very
Slavish and very dedicated to capturing what Frank was doing with that comic and, well, that graphic novel. And then when jumping into Watchmen, I remember every time that he went to Comic-Con and they would show one of those little... teasers or whatever and everybody would just be like holy shit
this is exactly what we always wanted. Because years ago, when they were talking about Terry Gilliam directing Watchmen in the 80s, and you go, well, what would that look like? Whereas Zach coming from a commercial... where he is delivering boards, essentially. He is taking the exact images and creating them into live action. And the same thing with... With Black Freighter, you have Dave's very particular art.
I remember from the animation that like there was, it kind of reminded me of, um, just animation. So I remember spawn, remember the HBO. It had a very like, anime adjacent, you know, quality to it, you know, which I love. I love that, that look of it. And, you know, no matter what you're never gonna please anybody you know like you're not gonna please everybody but it felt like people were really happy with that
What was your reaction when people started watching it and seeing it? And did you feel like you, I guess, did it justice in the court of public opinion? You know, it's really interesting because you're right, because Zach, when he was filming the movie, like that dude walked around with that graphic novel rolled up in his back pocket the entire time.
Jesus Christ, that must have been a huge back pocket. You know what I mean? He knew that source material inside and out and wanted to honor it, which was cool. And so when we got the call that we landed the gig... I remember being like super super excited and then like I think I got home that night and I was like fuck it happens to everybody no matter if you have a big project small project you have the moment of yes and then like 30 seconds to about 30 minutes after that it's
Because the pressure just immediately jumps on. Yeah, and we knew right out of the gate, no matter what we do, we could animate the frame one-to-one and 50 of the people wouldn't be happy with it like that's just what it is you know what i mean so um there was like that moment where i was i i kind of got hit like everybody does and i was like oh and you know at the end of the day i was like well you know we're just gonna do like if
Zach is happy. And, you know, we worked with Dave too, which was awesome. Like that was like a dream. Wow. Holy shit. yeah so we were like present we presented a lot of different looks like here's like some styles here's some approaches and you know him and zach they were they leaned they're like oh we like this which was cool so I felt that when we got into it, I was like, awesome. Dave feels good about this. Zach feels good about this. Like,
that's, I feel that I've done my job and, you know, that's all that matters to me at this point. And then, you know, I, we just wanted to do something that we had to fill in the blanks, right? Like, so there was we got the the comic or the graphic novel and we like cut the pages out and we cut it and we like put it on a wall and we're like all right there's a lot of holes here how does this like tie to the script and we just wanted to make sure that all the stuff that we filled in
would line up with what you know dave and alan had put in the original source material and then on top of that we were while we were trying to work to make a short film we knew that it had to like tie into how zach was shooting stuff so we were like looking at the dailies of the stuff that he was shooting at the at the newsstand making sure that our moments would like in this in the actual script and then in the reels would tie to where he's at in the film so there's a lot of like
different pieces. There's like the public. aspect of it of making sure you're doing something they're happy with doing something that ties to what Alan and Dave had done and then doing something that also works with what Zach is doing now so we were kind of like juggling all of these different pieces which was Which was interesting and I think probably a little bit why we, Dave also wanted to lean a little bit further away from what the original art was.
And, you know, like I said earlier, my reference was definitely more old school, like EC horror stuff, which obviously... is what Dave was inspired by too from the source.
so yeah it was it was it was interesting you know it was really really fun as it's harder now i think and you just mentioned that because of how um everybody has a voice now you know because of the internet and all of that stuff so we were you know at that stage but not as as hard as it is now I think you know Well, jumping ahead, because obviously there were years of...
short films where you were doing so many different things and a lot of the visual effects uh stuff yeah visual effects but then when how did marshmallow happen were you offered the script or was it something you were able to read and then
you put it together with you directing it because one of the things I'm so impressed with with this film is as a first time feature director you tackled a project that was mainly children like real children not 18 19 year olds playing children and almost everything was night for night The only thing missing was a bunch of dogs. Yeah, if you had animals in it, cats specifically. If we would have had animals, we would have checked all three of the boxes that they tell you never to check.
Yeah. So, you know, honestly, back in the day, like I mentioned, we were doing short films and I had done a film in 2015, I think. and we were playing at a festival and at the festival I met uh warner who's our producer and he had a feature um that was playing and our short was opening for the feature and um i remember being like fuck like My film is going to play in front of this short. It's totally not going to go over well.
And I remember Warner was telling me, it's like, oh, I was thinking, man, the short just played. Our film's not going to go over well. But we hit it off at the end. Afterwards, we met, we talked, we just connected. The director of that film, we connected as well, and we had just been in touch. You know, I had done some effects work on some of their films and they sent me a script in the end of 2022 and said, you know, Warner was like, hey, I got this script.
It's really cool. It's fun. Take a read. I think it falls in the Danny aesthetic is what he said. And I said, okay. So I read through. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is really great. I love it. And so I got on a call with him and Andy, the writer, and I sort of just presented my take on it, like what I would bring to the party, so to speak. And they both seem to like my approach. It was like a couple of months later.
And they're like, hey, we got the funding. Let's go start doing some location scouting. And I was like, oh, shit. OK. This is happening. Oh, fuck. Yeah. We went and did location scouting. And we found our place that we loved and then literally liked. two months later we started shooting like it was really really really fast really quick were you wrapped before the strike then or did this Yeah, we hit it. We started filming. We were about to film right when the writer's strike happened.
so so that was june of 23 holy shit yeah yeah so we literally the writer strike happened and i remember talking to andy and he's like hey good luck you know i i'm not going to be there of course and i said okay so we you know, went and did prep and, you know, I had to like kind of fine tune the script based on the location, you know, how it goes.
and do all of that stuff, which is good though because it sort of tied together with what I was going to be shooting and how I was going to shoot stuff and what we can make and so on and so forth. And then we... got out of the chute. and we started putting it together and then the actor the actor strike happened like at the back end of of us like in the post oh my god so
We were sort of sandwiched between those two. The only positive of that was by the time we finished the film, all of that stuff was done. So everybody was able to kind of get behind the project and help promote it. you know we didn't really have a big rush you know we we shot it all and we started to kind of like piece it together and then like
In 2020, at the end of 2023 or 24, we were like, started to come up with a game plan and we're like, okay, let's get this thing done. And we, yeah, just sort of pushed.
Panic Fest was, it actually worked because i got a call and they're like oh hey they want to do a theatrical run a limited theatrical run for the film and i was like oh shit okay we gotta get get this movie finished then and at the same time they were like hey we should like look at you know maybe premiering at a festival or you know something
And let's find what's available before our theatrical premiere. And we were looking and Panic Fest obviously was there. And I would not have a better fucking opening like, like for the buzz. That was perfect perfect perfect venue
It worked out amazing because I had a few shorts that I've played there over the years, but I had never been to Panic Fest. But all I see are these fucking... photos of this goddamn festival of how amazing it looks and i was like oh my god if i could get into panic fest that would be like huge and so i remember submitting it and um
And it was like coming up to like, you know, when they were going to announce stuff and I'm like, this is a bummer. We didn't get in. I haven't heard anything. And then we got the we.
you know got the email that said we got it and i was like oh shit i was like thrilled and then also then you know how it goes it's like okay you got to finish the film you gotta make all your dcps you gotta do your qc and then you get sick to your stomach but you're like now people are going to see the movie so yeah
So I think our most of our audience understands this by now, but whenever filmmakers talk about production usually starts with you know well how many days did you have but what's important for people to understand is even when you have what sounds like a high number of days depending on what you're doing sometimes those aren't
That's not really the number of days. Are we talking about kid days? Yeah. It could be anything from your two hours into shooting and suddenly weather comes in that shuts you down for the rest of the day. You don't get that day back. But when you're shooting at night, which I don't know what time of year you filmed in, but almost always it's the wrong time of year to be shooting outside at night because nights are shorter, but then when you bring in a cast of children.
that drastically changes everything. And let's say it was like a 30-day shoot. I'm sure that's not what it was, but it's more like 22 days, actually, because you can only shoot with them for so long. There's so many rules, and that's all I kept thinking watching this. fuck this had to be so hard this had to be so hard this schedule must have been so fucking hard so it's your your first feature you know the material well you've done a whole bunch of other stuff you're super prepared
Then what like what was the first like rude awakening to oh shit? This is gonna be quicker than I thought yeah i think it was the same thing like the black fritter story i'm like oh awesome great this is moving and then that it hit i'm like oh shit i'm making a movie with all kids at night was it your first ad who kind of
that actually happened like at my house like i was in my i was like sitting there and my wife's like what's wrong i'm like i'm fucking making a movie with all kids and it's all the whole fucking script is at night or like Half of the script is at night. I'm like, oh, man. And yeah, you nailed it on the head. We shot for 18 days. And kids, as you know, can only shoot a certain amount of hours a day.
and some of the kit more than let's say all of the kids actually when we started were still in school so there was that aspect which you know they have to have teachers on set And then the way that their day is broken down, their short day is broken down already. It's broken even more based on the learning, which is very important.
And then we were shooting right when summer was just starting to happen. Like it wasn't fully summer yet. And so it was getting dark at 930 at night and the kids on weekdays, during school can only shoot until 10 o'clock oh god yeah no like they were there was so much like the scheduling every day like i when i when i shoot probably similar to you guys but when i shoot i'm like give me what i'm doing for that day
in the morning and we'll solve it all then and then i'll think about tomorrow on tomorrow so every morning it was like cool here's what we're doing outside you know you do a basic schedule but outside of that you get together in the morning you're like okay how are we going to break the day up to
cover everything and we were gonna have to do some day for night stuff and shoot all our interior night things for a whole scene looking one way and then go shoot other stuff and then come back at night to shoot the reverse like there's a lot of
jumping around based on when the kids were available. And then on the weekends, like Friday and Saturday, they could shoot until I believe 11 o'clock. So, you know, I think it was 11. Yeah, 11. So our day with start later on those days because we knew that we had them for a little bit longer yeah you know so yeah there was a lot of stuff and then it's a very physical film um
More so it's physical because they're younger. Most of the actors are younger. And there's lots of water. There was some stunt work. There were some effects. There's a lot of pieces. That stuff is already time consuming in itself, but then it's like,
amped up when you have kids that can only shoot for a certain amount of takes because we're going to run out of time. You know what I mean? I want to get into the casting because the casting of this I've worked with kids before, you've worked with kids before, and There are kids out there that can... kind of come across a little theatrical, you know.
you know tv commercial-esque you know the kind of kids that they always make fun of i always think of that scene in um pv's big adventure where it's like i was ready since call you know it's like it's amazing how kids can switch on like that but sometimes it doesn't come off very natural and um who was it was it max uh Max, was Malysis? Max Malysis. The entire cast was great. Max, in particular, was like, holy shit. The whole cast was absolutely fantastic.
How did you find these kids? Was this one of those, like, You know, they were kind of locals or like, because obviously when you have people like, you know, Corbin and Paul Sauter, you know, like you had a cast that was not regional at all. It was obviously like there were some names in there.
But these kids were such fresh faces to the point where you go, God, I feel like we're seeing the first of a very long line of movies that these kids are going to be in because they're going to hopefully be exposed by this movie. How did you cast the film?
Yeah. So we, you know, we had a great casting director and I think early on, you know, Again, very similar to the process, but like got on a call and we just sort of talked about you know, what the film was, what I wanted to try to do, and how I wanted to sort of bring my aesthetic into it, so on and so forth. You know, they put out the call and got tons of people and they spent a decent amount of time sort of narrowing down and providing clusters for each of the roles for me.
And I would go through it. And honestly, like everybody that's cast in the film on Kidwise, like I saw their pictures. Before I even like watched their audition and I was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna be Morgan. This is gonna be Dirk. This is like I knew immediately just from looking at them. Sometimes that can backfire. The first time I went through the real casting process was on Stage Fighter short film that was like 22 locations in three days. It was fucking stupid.
There were so many like headshots that the producer and I had in front of us and we're like, this is definitely the guy. And then they come in and they don't look anything like that. They've already grown up. The good thing here in this case was like we were doing this all on Zoom, right? So I'm in Chicago.
and casting director is in LA with mostly everybody else that worked on the film. And so I would get like the link, right? And it would be, all right, here's all the roles for Morgan. And I would open it up and I would just start at the top.
as I was going through, I would look at a picture that was from casting. So I wasn't looking at like their headshot, which was good. So at least when I saw their picture, I knew what they were going to look like in the performance. But I just had, it was just, you have a feeling.
you're like oh okay i think that this is going to be this is what i was expecting and then i'd watch the performance and i'm like oh yeah this this kid nailed it like did exactly what i what i expected and the cool thing was a lot of the characters or the actors that we cast, they had some sort of connection to the role. Hugh, who plays Morgan, had a near drowning experience in real life. Oh, wow.
So he did the performance and was on screen, would just start crying in an emotional moment. And I was like, holy shit, that was tough. And then he would talk about it at the end, like, oh, this happened to me.
max malice for example like max is his character like that's him in real life like it was it was really crazy how you know we were able to not only cast people that looked the part but also sort of embodied a little bit of the character in themselves and you know casting is so hard it's like you're sitting there and you're you're judging people you know on either what the performance is how they're performing how they look based on what you need for the role and
It's even more difficult with kids because, you know, as I'm a dad, right, and I'm sitting here thinking about, you know, if these were my kids, like, how that would make me feel, right? Every kid that was there was awesome. They got up, they did it, they fucking nailed it, and maybe it wasn't relevant for what we needed for the film.
But it was kind of inspiring, you know? And I was inspired by looking at every kid audition for sure. And then really inspired when I... cast you know we were able to cast the kids that we did and something that was important too was after we found the talent that we liked we um i scheduled a call like a zoom call with all of the kids and i wanted to make sure everybody liked gelled and clicked and they felt comfortable with each other and they felt comfortable with me and I also
scheduled calls with all of their parents because i wanted the parents to know that who i was and what i wanted to do and i wanted them to feel comfortable with me so by the time we all got to set we all sort of had this relationship that was felt like a long like a long-term relationship you know what I mean like everyone sort of knew each other and we all felt comfortable and it really helped
the process and the expectations for everybody. And everybody was very comfortable talking to each other and felt very safe. And it was, like I said, it was fun you know what i mean and that that goes a long way i think in in any production the the the one of the i guess you could say like the secret weapons of this movie is the fact that the uh quote unquote the killer
Because every great slasher has their signature weapon, right? Jason's got his machete, and Freddy's got the claws, and Michael Myers has the butcher knife, and so on and so forth. Leatherface has the chainsaw. and This slasher has a cattle prop. And I thought, like, what a great way to subvert the idea. There's a lot of subversion in this movie, but this was such a great way to be able to get away with attacking these kids without necessarily killing them.
like there's I'll never forget the moment when Dirk has his like big hero moment and then right after you know like oh god damn it um was that always implemented into the script because i kept watching it going i wonder if there was a version of this where
The killer was doing something a little more, you know, visceral, if you will. And then that kind of changed. Was that always going to be his signature weapon? Yeah, that was always the intention. And I think that the original idea, Andy... the writer went to warn the producer and was like, hey, I got a really cool idea for a script. He's like, we're going to play up on the summer horror thing, right? But he goes, let's have the actual kids.
the little kids be the victims. So the killer is going to go around and attack the little kids, not the counselor.
And Warner was like, yeah, that sounds awesome. He goes, but no studio is going to want to do that. And so he wrote it and it is what it is like what you see as what he wrote but i think that um you know it's it's dark and it's dark enough where like i was working on the film and i was you know talking to my wife i'm like man this is i feel like this is like the most safe thing that I've worked on and my wife is like your movie is like you spend half of it like blasting and roasting kids
But it's tastefully done. If this had been a short version of this, it could have been an episode of Goosebumps. Absolutely. It's not gratuitous. violence and it's something I think little kids could watch this this is totally this is going to be a generations
Gateway horror movie because yeah, it's just dark and violent enough like Monster Squad. Yeah, like we were already at the time that it came out probably too early for us kids in the monster squad got fucking cattle prodded no yeah they were in actual danger yeah and so uh and that was the thing you know we we really leaned into that point like i remember like the whole thing is Okay, like Growing up is weird.
right like that's what we would say a lot when we were making it working on the script and all this stuff growing up is weird it's hard as hell Like, you guys understand this. Like, we're still growing up and still trying to find our place in the world, right? Dude, just the scene where he gets dropped off at camp. Oh. Everyone else seems to know each other. I don't know anybody. Every industry event, which I don't go to many anymore,
unless I can go with this guy and hide behind him. It doesn't matter if I've already met everyone in that room before. I always assume they don't remember me. Nobody wants to talk to me. Why am I here? This is so awkward. I just want to leave. How fast can I leave? And it's just, you know, it's in your own head, but it's all of us still feeling like that kid being dropped off for the first day of camp and not knowing him.
Yeah, that's absolutely it. And like, honestly, like, you know, what I said when we were starting to put it together. It's definitely felt to me like a gateway horror film where, yes, kids should watch it or can watch it. But because I think it hits for kids a certain way, right? And then 50% into the movie.
and then to the end it hits for adults a different way, right? And then there's that sort of that connection or that thread in the center of it where kids and adults sort of both experience the same thing so I think it has and that's why that they they didn't want to put they didn't want to raid it because they wanted to leave the door open to to pull kids that wanted to get scared and they wanted to have adults that could relate to some of the more
darker themes, you know, and the heavier themes. And I think that balance was really tough, but I, you know, personally, that's what I like about the film. And I remember reading it going like, fuck, this is fun. I would have loved to see this when I was little. And when I got to the end, I was like, that hit a whole different way because, you know, as being as a parent,
I can relate and feel a lot of this stuff. And then it added a different weight to the whole beginning of the movie. And it's funny because I've had people that have watched the film multiple times which is just an honor in general that somebody watched the movie once, but watched it multiple times, and they would say... This is a movie you have to see twice, it feels like, in a way. Yeah, lots of stuff hits differently.
when you see it the second time um and it weighs differently like your way that you you're you just have more weight on your shoulders at different points from after you watch it the first time i thought that was really cool that People had mentioned that to me, which was again, it was just an honor. So two more questions before we start to get into spoiler territory, which is perfect because this is where we start to veer into our like Patreon version of it where it's a little more extended.
I loved seeing Corbin and Paul in the film. How did they get involved? Was that just something that Tom, your casting director, proposed? This is the sort of script that You sit there and go, wait, so we're just like the secondary characters in a way to a bunch of kids? Is this one of the calls five? How did you get those guys involved? Yeah, so Paul was somebody that my one hour producer had worked with before. And so when we started breaking stuff down,
He was like, oh, you know, and like we can talk to somebody like blank blank blank or Paul, you know, Paul Sartre. I was like, oh, Paul, that would be awesome. Well, for those who don't know, from Broken Lizard, from Dooper Troopers, and Club Dread, who most people don't know, huge horror movie fan. He just wrote The Slashing of the Christ with Spencer from Ice Nine Kills.
so it's amazing yeah and he it was cool because this like you know i i always sold the the film to people when i was talking to the talent like hey like this is sort of like a meatballs start and then it goes into friday the 13th sleepaway camp then it goes into like black mirror twilight zone and um you know the big thing was we wanted to have some humor and we we wanted to very specifically hit
every trope that you're used to seeing in these films like that was important like that was like a very conscious decision that things were written and performed in a certain way to hit the tropes right obviously based on how the film goes And we love the idea of Paul. In talking with him, it was like, hey, you've got to be in meatballs territory, and then you've got to go to a different place.
And I think that was exciting for him to be able to sort of do something a little different than what he does with the Broken Lizard guy. Yes. You know what's funny? He, more than anyone else, was the perfect like character wasabi for the audience because you're watching the film for the first you know
two acts or whatever, and you're going like, oh, okay, so he's the goofy cam counselor that we've seen in a million movies and parodied in Wet Hot American Summer and movies like that. And then when things change, You you have to rely on certain actors who are going to be able to re acclimate to the tone shift And I got to admit, sometimes in movies, they don't, you know, like they're still playing in the first act.
And you're going like, no, no, no, like you got to play serious now or vice versa. And Paul, there's a moment. And again, we don't want to give too much away, but there's a moment in like the. lower levels of the uh of the camp where he just turns to someone and i go
that's a totally different dude. Or that's someone who is changing their intentions completely and it felt organic. And it's something that I don't think, I think when people start watching the movie, they're going to go, oh, the dude from Super Troopers. They're not going to see what's coming later on because Paul grounds it. Completely. And in such an effective way. And then with Corbin, I mean, it's fucking Corbin Bernson. It's the fucking dentist. And how was he to work with?
He was amazing like we He was, again, our casting director was like, you know, we talked about we wanted somebody for the grandfather because it needed to be a relatable character, right, that Morgan, our main character, can sort of have a connection with. And so he pulled a list of people. He's like, hey, here's some people that I was thinking about. And Corbin was on there and I was like, yep, let's see what he says. And he read the script and he liked it.
We met on set like he came to set. We got together right at the start and we just hit it off. And he's just such a sweet guy. He was down to do. whatever and you know what's interesting is like that character specifically is like He's a relatable.
character in the beginning right he's the grandfather but he needs to go into another place right as well and you know it like and it's in the trailer so this is not a spoiler but like you see him in some weird sets and he's like a different person, a different character altogether. Like everything that I envisioned for that stuff, for that character, for that sort of performance, Corbin just fucking, he pushed it even further and was crazier. And it was awesome because that, it could have.
It just wouldn't have the same impact if we would have possibly brought somebody else on to do it. So it's funny to see somebody like that be able to, again, sort of switch it to this nice, lovable person and to get sort of dark and menacing. Yeah, it was really, it was awesome. I loved Georgia Wiggum, who I never even realized was the daughter of Shea Wiggum. I had no fucking clue about that. She was in TED, you know, she's fucking great.
And she's very much like Paul and most of the other adult and, you know, counselor actors and actresses. This was something I was curious about because when it's self-tapes or even just offers, when you have twists and you know that the actors are all going to have to kind of adjust and re-acclimate their intentions and their tones, sometimes you don't get those.
Did you, when you were doing, you know, whether it was your casting director doing chemistry reads or they were just submitting self-tapes, was this mostly a self-tape sort of situation?
No, so we, yeah, we sent out sides, right? And I went through and I picked for each of the roles to... two or three scenes that's what i was curious about because you needed to because then you can't just do it i've had that happen before where like the the casting director sends out something in like one side and you're like, yeah, but I don't know if they can do the pathos.
And the dramatic stuff, like, yes, they can make the ha-has, but when shit hits the fan, are they going to be able to elicit the same? We dealt with that with Nights of Bad Astem, where a lot of the actors who are coming in, They were really funny. But then we're like, yeah, but it's not going to be funny anymore when people are dying. And we had to kind of sift through that. And Georgia has a moment too where
And when the audience sees the movie, they're going to know exactly what that moment is. Because you're like, oh, I love her so much. And you're like, oh, shit. Before we get into spoiler territory, one more thing.
because you were coming from a world of visual effects and animation, was there anything that those two, because when you're doing your first feature, I think all of us try to bring something from that like former world or from that experience that you had and whether it's shorts or music videos, you did a darkness video and you had all these visual effects experience, you had the animation experience too.
like we were talking to um i was talking to um miller and lord when they were going from animation into live action and they were talking about how that like doing 21 jump street Off of animation, they brought a certain skill set, and they were thinking more in the audio directing when it came to the actors, and then the visuals kind of came secondary. What was anything that you brought to the table?
from the directing side in live action on a feature, which was kind of new territory for you from the former disciplines that you had before. Well, that's a loaded question. I feel, you know, when I shoot live action stuff, I want to do everything practical. Like I actually... Granted, I do visual effects. I don't want to do any visual effects, if possible. And, you know, I...
Like every director, you have a place that you come from visually in terms of your aesthetic and things that you like. And I always knew when we were doing this film, I have a certain look. of what I like, you know, that I sort of gravitate towards. And that sort of encompasses everything from, you know, not only the visuals and performances, but from music and sound design.
And so I think like having played in animation, a lot of times in animation, you know, your animation is tough and it takes a long time and a lot of the... The visuals come from sound, right? Like, oh, we can't animate all of these extras or we can't animate this gigantic scene because we don't have the money or the time for it. So we're going to do it with sound design.
I think when I started doing more live action stuff, I was always thinking about sound when I was reading scripts or writing stuff or shooting stuff. And the same thing with music, because I love music. I've always loved music growing up from when I was a little, little kid to current.
i'm always listening to music and so like i'm always thinking about music when i'm filming stuff of like what's the emotion here and like you can film something very as you know you can film something very basic somebody looking at a camera and you can put 10 different you know music tracks under it and you you tell the people what to feel with this we knew that we wanted it to be like um relatable like you know that the growing up aspect of it needed to be relatable so we weren't trying to
trick people into feeling a certain way at the beginning of the film but we wanted to make it almost like a little bit more ethereal and and feel more like an experience more so than like a traditional like oh, this is an action scene, so we have to have these action cues and have to have these big hits.
And so I guess when we started, like when I read the script and I started breaking it down and I was thinking about what I wanted it to look like and some of the sets we were going to have to build.
and some of the gags we were going to have to do. I just sort of thought of all of those pieces kind of together and fortunately had just a great crew of people that were able to plus by a lot my initial ideas you know speaking of music you have an extremely popular song at the end and yeah Even though it was a We'll call it a cover, right? Still getting the mechanical license. Oh yeah. That song was that.
It's funny how that's the first thing that we're like, we can never really enjoy needle drops immediately going, what were the rights like? Holy shit, how did that go? How did they get them? It's been really hard to get them. So the mechanical license for What a Wonderful World, how did that? That was honestly the hardest part of the entire project because the rest of this episode. $1 a month. episode every Monday, downloaded right to your podcast.