The Movie Crypt! And welcome to another edition of The Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. We recorded this episode on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, and it's going to come out like... a month from now. So by now, you've already heard the good news that Yorkethon9 has dates, official dates. Hopefully they haven't changed by the time this airs. but Yorkethon9 is going to be happening Friday, July 25th. Is that right?
July 25th through Sunday, July 27th. Now, those of you who have been part of this podcast for 12 years, maybe a little less, whatever it might be. Yorkie-thon used to be the Movie Crypt's annual 48-hour live marathon to benefit Save Yorkie Rescue. And then around year four... We finally changed the name to Yorkethon. But then after year six, I believe we stopped doing 48 hours straight. We got old. Because the whole thing was we would stay on the air for 48 hours live.
guests coming around the clock all night long through the morning. Total endurance test. Yes. The slogan was, we're staying awake so they don't get put to sleep. Man, we really rode that one for way too long. We did. And then both of us had... health episodes after year six. So the 48 hour marathon is now a 24 hour marathon.
with breaks so uh yorkython 9 will be coming up again friday july 25th it is all live yes we will repurpose some moments that we will release afterwards but the whole point in us doing this every year is to raise money to save dogs to date we've raised at some point we have to do the actual math because here's the problem the orcithon when we sign off we always announce a number But then over the next 48 hours, so much more comes in. But at this point, we've raised...
let's say just under $300,000 and saved countless dogs with our friends at Save Yorkie Rescue. Every year we have to go through this where someone's like, well, we're just Yorkies. Well, as you know, our third... co-host here. Arwen is a Yorkshire Terrier. She was a rescue. Both Joe and I have always rescued dogs. Rocco was a rescue. Bonsai was a rescue. So it's just... our way of doing something with the platform we have to do some good. But Yorkie Thon is always such a great time.
There's always new guests who've never been on the show before. There's live music. There's comedy. There's going to be a script reading, which by the time this episode airs, I'm... hoping we have it locked down but usually the script that we read is either something that you know about but that never got made or it's something that's you know, like the back of your hand, but we are able to get our hands on the first draft and you can see how different the movie was. One of the...
God, there's so many good cases of that. But when we read the first draft of Back to the Future and our friend Dave Parker always coordinates and directs these live readings and he puts these great casts together to read the script out loud. But also there was Chris Columbus's first draft of Gremlins that we did. The Goonies, which was so different. So we have a...
Great one planned for this year. We would say what it is right now, but again, there's still time. So we want to make sure nothing's going to change. But for updates about Yorkie Thon, just go to patreon.com slash the movie crypt. Any updates. post about Yorkethon will be just free for everybody to see on there. You don't need to be a Patreon member, but if you're not a Patreon member, it's just a dollar a month. That's like the...
bare minimum and you get the full version of every episode every Monday. You can see who the guests are that are going to be coming on the show, ask them questions, all that stuff. So I think that's all the housekeeping we have for now. And you're supporting us too. Yes. Oh yeah, that's true. Please support us. That's true. Or we're just going to start getting a ton of sponsors and every 10 minutes make you listen to commercials for Tommy John.
Boxer shorts. I think that's what Tommy John is. Jimmy John's subs. Oh, yeah. Jimmy John's and simply safe. Oh, great. They're on every podcast. So there you go. All right. Yeah. Yorkethon 9, July 25th through 27th. Usually what we do is four hours the first night, and then we do 10 hours on Saturday, 10 hours on Sunday. Again, more information will be available soon, or you can always go to Patreon. dot com slash the movie crypt.
and check out any updates that we have. Normally Arwen would give hints at who the guests are going to be or what events we're going to be doing. Most people in the audience prefer the surprise of not knowing who's coming on next. But Arwen will give out hints usually. Unfortunately, like the rest of us, Arwen has not been active on Twitter in quite some time. So we'll have to see if she'll come out of Twitter retirement. Ooh, Twitter retirement.
had kind of had it with that platform anyway uh let's get to our Yes. Before we before we roll in with our director friends, Ryan and Anna, who directed the amazing movie Freaky Tales that I'm going to go into length in our next.
part where we're going to cut to that. I do want to correct something. The street date for the late night video edition of Freaky Tales, because you're sitting there going, how can I see Freaky Tales? And trust me, by the time that we finish this episode, you're going to definitely want to see it if you haven't seen it or watch it again.
From a VHS copy that's going to actually it's a Blu-ray, but it's in a VHS box. It's called the Late Night Video Edition of Freaky Tales. And that streets on June 3rd. I had said 7th, but it's actually the day after this rolls. Wednesday, June 3rd. And you can get that at Lionsgate Limited. That's lionsgatelimited.com. You can get your copy for only
$29.99. And it comes with some amazing fucking bargain. That's a bargain. It comes with some great special features. It's in a clamshell. You can't go wrong. It comes with stickers, too. But it's got a commentary, some bloopers. and also a documentary on the making of the film. And trust me, when you finish the movie for the first time, or if you've seen it again, you're going to want to know how every bit of this movie was made, some of which we go into...
Right now. Also in the probably final like 30 minutes of this conversation. Great questions from you guys in viewer mail. Yeah, really, really good viewer mail. And we get into an honest conversation about the release of the film. Because you're probably saying to yourself, why didn't I see this movie? Well, there's some reasons, yeah. But overall, great conversations with Ryan and Anna, which we're going to throw to right now. Freaky.
So you may have heard me talk about Panic Fest a couple of weeks back, arguably one of our favorite festivals. Adam and I have both attended. And in the last couple of years, Becca and I have done our secret screenings, which are always fun. But one of the I guess one of the things that Panic Fest likes to do while I'm there is to go, hey, could you do a Q&A for one of the films? And I'm like, well, you flew me out and you're.
paying for my grilled cheese sandwiches, so why not? And when they told me about the fact that Freaky Tales was playing there, I was so excited because this was a movie that I've been tracking since it premiered at Sundance a year earlier. And then I watched the movie and immediately within 10 minutes, I was like, I need to see this with an audience immediately. And.
The best way to describe this movie, if you haven't already heard about it, and I've talked about it ad nauseum on the show, is what if Canon Films... In 1987, hired Alex Cox to direct Pulp Fiction. If there was ever an elevator pitch that I would think was more succinct, I don't think so. But then.
even better was when we actually sat down to watch the movie on that Saturday, hungover as hell at the, at the screen Lynn armor. I, you know, like that, that old adage, when people would say like, it tore the roof off. The screen lane armor had no roof left after that movie. It was so loud in there that actually the screener, the screening room.
next to us was complaining that we were too loud because they were in the wrong screen clearly they were in the wrong screening and then we had an epic Q&A with our guests today and you may know their films from Let's see. Half Nelson. And it's kind of a funny story. A ton of TV stuff like Billions and Masters of the Air. A little indie film called Captain Marvel. And now they have freaky tales. Please welcome to the movie crypt. Ryan.
and Ada Bowden. Yay! Thanks, Pat. Nice intro. Thanks so much. Great intro. By the way, wait, before you wait, wait, the Canon Films, Alex Cox, Pulp Fiction. That combo package was fantastic. That's perfect. But the thing is, now, again, anybody who's listening to this is going, what's Freaky Tales? Just stop what you're doing, pause, and we're going to talk about, because this is coming out in lieu of the...
The very special edition VHS box adorned Blu-ray set that's called like the late night Friday night edition that's coming out, I believe, exclusively through Lionsgate. It should be out now as of the drop of this episode.
stop what you're doing watch the trailer because the trailer feels like it's something that you would have seen like right before Death Wish 4 you know like and and that to me that's my jam like that's that's my everything at this point and yet it played So well with an audience that might not have been into exploitation back in the 80s because it's also this beautiful love letter to Oakland and to Too Short and to Sleepy Floyd and Basketball and to, you know.
printing the legend, if you will. And all the movies that are in the marquee that like, you know, for example, we have, let's see a creep show too. And raising Arizona and lost boys. You know, it is a celebration of cinema that I don't think. we get as much anymore because sometimes you know investors producers studios they're like you know is the audience going to be too are they going to think that this is too much of an inside joke and i felt like seeing it with that audience on that saturday
And every single time that I would tell someone since, because it's one of those back pocket movies where you go like, holy shit, wait, but have you seen, you know, well, you know, sinners is great and everything, but have you seen freaky tales? And. how many times I've had people like I was working at this one studio a couple of weeks ago and I must've told like four or five people. And then they went to the AMC at city walk, saw it and came back and went.
What the fuck, man? Why didn't I fucking know about this movie? But we'll get into all that. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you guys about, because I'm going to probably repeat some of the questions that I had at our Q&A.
But specifically in terms of how you guys met as filmmakers, because, you know, sometimes people... you know sit there and go like well who did what you know like in terms of directing or writing or or a little bit of both when you guys are collaborating what is your general um i guess approach to directing when you're doing it as a team.
Well, we pretty much do everything together. It kind of all starts with like the writing and the prep and kind of getting on the same page together. And since we've written something together, we've... Pretty much decided, like, what is the heart of this story and what's the heart of this movie. And then while we're prepping, we're shot listing together and like deciding on the locations together and getting excited about how we're going to shoot it and casting together.
and like coming up with the design of what it is together and talking to our DP and our, you know, our different heads of department. And really, you know, designing like what is the vibe of this and building it. And then. So we're on set. It's like we have all of that beneath us, like this big kind of, you know.
This structure beneath us that we've built together. And so when it comes to being on set and you're making those like snap judgments of like, oh, you know, quickly, you know, this the shirt that you decided on, you know, in prep.
doesn't fit for some reason or isn't available so we need to like make a quick decision about a t-shirt that somebody's going to wear or we need to make a quick decision about this or that then it's like those little things that you need to make snap judgments about it's like we've already kind of like built this kind of this understanding between us about the movie is and then like those little things like we can kind of either one of us can just like
pick or choose and like make a quick decision about um and then when it comes to talking to actors it's usually one or the other of us and i find that you know in prep and in rehearsals we pretty quickly figure out like which one of us has, you know, that relationship with an actor.
Very often one of us will just like gravitate more towards one actor or another. Or sometimes it's just, you know, we both have like an equally close relationship with an actor, but it's just one of us like understand. the note that we want to give more so but it's usually just one of us going up to talk to an actor at a time um and yeah
That's it. That's it. We do it all together. That's the formula. There you go. And this started for the two of you back in film school, your working relationship? Yeah, we were both in New York. I transferred into NYU for two years undergrad, and Anna was already up at Columbia. Wait, so you guys were a different school? Anna, you're from Newton, right? I am, yeah. That's where I grew up. I'm from Holliston.
So just a few towns over. Oh, so this is good. See, he always gives me shit where it's like, and I care about every video store and pizza place. So don't worry. That was, that was, that was it. All right. It's just which Duncan's you guys all, you know, frequented. We came from the same place. That's all. But, you know, considering that, you know, Ryan, you went to Tisch and you went to undergrad, which.
You know, the fallacy that people had, and I don't know if it was the same because we're about the same age. But when I was waitlisted at NYU and ended up going to Syracuse. I justified that with going like because I would start to hear stories. I would hear freaky tales, if you will, of how the workflow was at Tisch where a lot of times when you were going to the undergraduate, if you didn't have that. perfect script since it was done almost by a committee.
uh you wouldn't even be able to make a short because maybe your script wasn't very strong or it didn't get picked or somehow and i had a couple friends who graduated around the same time as you did there who were like well you know I became a fantastic boom op because I didn't know how to, you know, like my script didn't get through. Um, but for you, what, and this is actually for both of you. Um, what was your film?
school experience like and how did you guys meet uh kind of in the middle like so since you know Anna you were at Columbia up you know uptown and uh and ryan was downtown did you meet in times square and go fuck this this is the perfect symbiosis here we we've got the the perfect tag team 40 seconds I will say that's the first movie theater experience we had together was in Times Square seeing The Virgin Suicides, right? Wow. Wait, did you go to the Virgin Megastore one?
Oh, with the theater that's underneath the door? I don't think it was that theater. I think it was the AMC that's closer to that. Film school for me was a little weird. I transferred in. I was already a straight-up film nerd. uh i transferred in living in new york alone for the first time um so all that was a little awkward i loved new york though i loved being in new york and um i made some i made some pretty good friends at that time and um
What can I say? I mean, it was it was just it was all a little bit weird. And afterwards, I think the problem with film school or NYU, maybe specifically at that time, I don't know if it's changed a long time ago, is that.
we all were there thinking we were like film all tours you know we were gonna be we were gonna be directors after we left school especially in like the the mid 90s when oh yeah the floodgates were open where you're like all i gotta do is drop some blood and someone's gonna be gonna give me seven thousand bucks to make a short and i make a music video and then um david yeah it's just like yeah no but then you find yourself you know working six day weeks
16 hours a day as a PA on some indie feature where you're like locking up a parking lot, like not even on set. How did I? How did we get? Yeah, that was that was a hard reentry into the real world after film school. And so, yeah, it took some adjustment to and some. Some luck meeting Anna, actually. All of that sort of came together in the years following. But yeah, Anna did take a... What was your deal, Anna? You took like a summer...
I was a few years behind him in undergrad. I was at Columbia. They didn't really have a filmmaking program there for undergrad. There's a film studies program. It was a film studies and English. major and um because i wanted to get a little experience in filmmaking i took a summer class doing sight and sound at nyu and that's where i met ryan he was
He had just graduated and was like checking out splicers at the edit desk. Oh, splicers. I miss them. I don't. Really? No, I don't miss them. I miss it. I really do. Damn it. Now we're really aging ourselves, Ryan. Yeah. So, yeah, he checked me out of Splicer and then we started hanging out and he. I guess hired me as a PA on a short film where he was an AD and, and the rest is history. Yeah. Is there.
Oh, sorry. Fun part about that time that was like when we're meeting each other and like just talking movies. And it was like, I think the first movie that I ever sat down and insisted you watch, I'm like, well, you haven't seen bad Lieutenant. Oh my God. Yes. Okay. This is, this is where, this is what I was going to ask because it's usually those, it's those back pocket litmus test.
movies where you're like you're feeling someone out you know like seeing like you know can i have a conversation with them in a line at the angelica film center and you know maybe i'll throw out this obscure maybe somewhat obscure abel ferrara movie that I saw here at the Angelica and see if they're into it. I saw Bad Lieutenant at the Angelica and the whole time some dude was laughing behind us the entire time. We're bad lieutenant, like guffawing like it was a Farrelly Brothers movie.
As the movie ended, we're walking out, you know, the music is playing. He's shot, you know, in front of Madison Square Garden. And, you know, the forever my darling part comes on. We're walking up. It was fucking Harvey Keitel. He was laughing at his own fucking movie. Oh my God. You're kidding me. Nope. I shit you not because that night he was going to be on SNL. So it was a Saturday early afternoon screening and we're like.
don't you have SNL to do? He's like, yeah, you know, like that's how he goes to relax is to go to fucking Angelica film center and watch his own penis. Like, all right, you know, whatever floats your boat, dude. But now, so Ryan, you used like some. Something like Bad Lieutenant. Anna, did you have a movie that you threw out at Ryan to be like, but have you seen? Did I? Did I do that? Was it like Harold and Maude?
Ooh. You go from bad lieutenant to Harold. That's a great double peach. Yes, it is, actually. I'd seen it. I think I'd seen it, but I was like, it's been a while. Like, let's remind me. Yeah. So I think I was. Cause that was more my vibe, you know?
like you need to have those movies though to connect with other people because you know that that's one of the beauties of cinema is that they are kind of communication starters and if you can get someone in really engaged or you can be engaged by like well you know the the way that abel ferrari used that handheld camera the way he hadn't you know in you know king of new york or something like that and you go yeah holy shit and then in harold
The way that Hal Ashby shot a lot of those zooms when he's pulling back through the car. And you immediately start to build this bond. Do you guys remember the first movie that you saw together?
besides for the first time version suicides and i mentioned but i feel like the first like the the summer we met was 1999 which was a great year for movies i'd seen magnolia like four times in the theater right and i know that that was like a polarizing movie with the frogs and everything but i was just so mesmerized by it and i think anna had seen it too and liked it but wait did you not like it at all anna I really liked it, but then I felt like the frogs were a fuck you.
my emotional response to it because it took me out of the movie and you were like no the frogs the frogs aren't a fuck you and and we got into like kind of an argument about it And then I met Paul Thomas Anderson. I was trying to tell him about it. This is like last year.
And then I was trying to tell him about how the first summer me and you met, like we got into an argument about Magnolia and he was like, wait, so which one of you didn't like it? I'm like, neither one of us didn't like it, but. But fuck you too. I think Anna was telling a story and then panicked when she realized she was on the wrong side telling Paul Thomas Anderson that she was the one that didn't like the movie.
Yeah, well, that I had questions about the frogs. And what did he answer the question? Well, I mean, God, how many times he's probably had to answer about those fucking frogs. I remember seeing it, too, the first time in like, I think it was like Lincoln Center.
like that the same exact moment you would think that the musical sequence that happened right before it would have been what people would turn people off there were walkouts when the frog showed up like it was that big a swing but at that point in the movie So much shit has happened that it's like, really, you're not into it at this point. The one of the mechanical effects.
The supervisors on the first hatchet, Luke Carlucci, like I knew he had done the spinning room in Nightmare on Elm Street, but it was like the second day on set. He was showing. videos or photos i think and he's like yeah this is how we did the frogs and magnolia i'm like you did the frogs and magnolia like i was so impressed but you could tell there are other people like yeah why the fuck were the frogs there yeah
But but you know what? I think that's that's the thing that we love about certain movies, certain filmmakers that they can.
create these big swings and they can allow the audience to like if you envelop them in great character and you know some great thematics you know freaky tales takes you on a ride and you know by the time you get to the sleepy floyd massacre at the end i'm not going to give too much away here but there's a certain moment that i remember being in the theater at panic fest and there is a
clearly physics defying moment towards the end and the crowd cheered. But if you had had that maybe in the beginning of the film, I think someone might've gone like, oh, too broad. You know, it's like that was a bit much. But by the end, you cared so much about him and what he went through. You were like, rip every motherfucker apart, kill all Nazis, destroy them all. You know, even if you have to punch holes through dudes.
make them explode like John Cassavetes in a fucking De Palma movie. Just fucking do it, you know, but you need to have. character. You need to have people that you like, you care about, you know, when did you realize that you could co co direct because co writing is one thing, but co directing, especially knowing that.
those first couple of sets that you guys stepped on as co-directors that the crew is probably watching extra carefully being like oh here we go like one of them's gonna say this the other one's gonna say that then there's gonna we're gonna have to wait well there's a discussion like it's an art
and the the people that can do i've co-directed one film before and while it went totally fine i just i wouldn't do that again but there's a pressure that comes with directing that's different from everybody else involved because as much as it's a collaborative effort everybody is crucial to pulling it off, the pressure of whether this thing succeeds and connects or doesn't really falls on your shoulders. When did you guys realize that you could do that together?
Well, so I think there was, and Anna can jump in here too, there was an organic evolution to it. It wasn't like, hey, all right, here we go. We're going to step on a set together and now we're directing. And so I got I finished school and Anna was still in her final like year at Columbia. And so she was still making these shorts that I was.
She was asking for my input on and we were helping each other. I was helping her with her short. She was still directing it, but we were helping each other out. And then she got out of school and we were still interested in working in that way. So we. Which is different from getting on a set and directing actors, telling them to say words, setting up specific shots. We were following a subject around New York City, and so it really lent itself to both of us.
doing that together. We made another documentary in Cuba after that, which was a little bit longer, longer form. And then still, though, still the first movie, Half Nelson. we we decided it wasn't it wasn't a dga film so it's a film by ryan and anna but it's i directed that and there was no confusion about it like i definitely directed that that movie i'm credited as the director uh
And then Sugar, our next movie, Anna spoke Spanish way better than I did. And there's a large component of that movie that's in Spanish. So we said... Let's do this one together like we did the documentaries, even though this is a scripted feature film situation. Let's direct together. And I think that...
It just felt natural and organic. And it felt very similar to how we had been working, especially since Anna was going up and communicating with the actors more clearly in Spanish, the Spanish speaking actors. It just lent itself to it. And we decided to just. Keep going in that direction. And let me know, Anna, if anything's wrong there. Yeah, that's pretty much how it did. Anna's properly vetted it. Yes, all true. I was curious because like.
At the time, Ryan, when you did Half Nelson, were you DGA? No, no. And that's another thing. Like that's, that's sort of how we were able to like, for those who don't know, like DJ has a rule in most cases, even if you're a sibling, you have to get vetted on this, um, that they don't.
allow co-directors so there have been times like i remember years ago when uh what was it um rodriguez quit the dga because he wanted to co-direct with um frank miller on sin city and they made a big deal about that but for the most part they try to you know make it very clear who the director is which you know what is I'd say a little unfair, you know, like if you feel like this, this team is the team that's going to elicit the best voice and the most succinct voice.
and get the job done, go for it. You know? But I was just always curious about that. Like if that was ever an issue, are you guys DGA now? Oh yeah. Yeah. For a lot for ever since everything after sugar, we've been DGA on. Oh, so for like, it's kind of a funny story onwards, right? Right. Did you ever have any pushback from them? I wouldn't say there was pushback. Do you want to take this one, Anna? I mean, go ahead, jump in.
When you, when we applied to the DGA, we applied as a team. And when you apply as a team, you need to go to a committee and like pass a test kind of. What's the test? You want this shot, but wider. What length size? 15. Nope. All of the above. 10. Now it's a fisheye. How does that go? Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, no, it's not that kind of a test.
thank god person woman man camera no no it's more of like a it's more of like a test about how committed you are as a team as work to working as a team and What happens if you are on set as a team? And, you know, there are you want to work quickly and you have two cameras. Can you but you only need one camera per shot. Can you separate those two cameras and each each one of you?
work as director, get two separate shots? Is that okay? You know, things like that. I want to make sure, the essence is that there's no advantage that a studio can work. by having two directors over one director, meaning can you do twice as fast? Can you separate the scenes? Right. And oh, yeah, movie simultaneously. Right. Like, so that would be a problem. And of course, that's not how we work. And that's not how I think any directing team would work. But.
Those are the kind of questions that they are trying to vet. If one of you gets sick, you're not supposed to continue working.
that you that they can't go to set you're not supposed to continue working so um there are certain questions like that that they answer and then also you're not supposed to ever direct solo um if you've gotten into the dga as a team so it's it's they have very strict rules around it but great health care so kind of works out um i uh i was always curious because i know when
captain marvel was announced and you guys came on board because everyone like especially in the advent of the last like in the in the early, early aughts when you would have a filmmaker who comes out with a Sundance indie, you know, kind of little sleeper darling. And the next thing you know, they're doing a Jurassic Park movie. You try to kind of.
connect the dots, especially all the Marvel fans going like, how did they get here? And when you look at your filmography, you know it's kind of a funny story i think was at least for me between that and half nelson was really where you guys came on the radar but i remember seeing mississippi grind and i still think that that is very much your color of money like not just in terms of like the kind of genre, but also how, even though Color of Money was considered a, you know, box office success.
For some reason, it's always kind of forgotten as one of Scorsese's better films of the 80s because it was a one for them, you know, in terms of, you know. the fact that it was a vehicle for Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. And I remember seeing Mississippi grind and going, fuck man, like this movie is so dynamic. And you know, the chemistry between Ryan and Ben, that was the first time that you worked with Ben Mendelsohn, right?
Yes. He's so fucking good in that movie. I really wish that he and Tim Blake Nelson made a movie where they were brothers. It could still happen. It could totally still happen. But when, you know, between you looking at that and then looking at, you know, a lot of the TV stuff, because.
after funny story you know you know you guys were doing a lot of tv like looking and the unfair and billions and first off i do want to ask what was your transition like going from, cause I know you also did like in treatment, what was your transition like going from, or did you feel that you had to adjust your style at all going from features to TV?
um did you find that that like being a hard adjustment or was that something that was pretty easy for you guys it was interesting so the first two movies half nelson and sugar were non-dga And they were very directorial sort of driven movies. And then, but like, because they're non DGA, we were getting paid at the time felt like a good living, but it was, it was not a way that you couldn't sustain a living.
Making movies like that. And so in treatment was the first opportunity to do television. And it was it was fantastic. It was it was just that was what I joined the DGA in coming off of that. and um yeah i mean it i i think you just have to orient yourself into like this is no longer your your baby that's what i was going to ask like that first time of all right so we directed on set and we got to do a pass at an edit but now we hand it over
And we see it when it airs. Like, what was that like having already directed your own, your own stuff? Totally fine. Totally fine. Because. I mean, I think it might be hard for some directors, but for us, and I'll just clarify one thing. Sugar hadn't come out yet, and that was our first co-directing movie. So it made it.
It was non-DGA. So I was the one that got the phone call as the director who had done Half Nelson. So I directed that alone. The DGA and... didn't have an issue with that at the time because of the way you know because sugar hadn't been released yet so i was doing that alone and then um and then there was a whole lot of there was a whole string of of issues that we had with the dga to get anna and i
able to direct together again in television which which would probably take up another hour of your time that process which was bizarre surreal kafka-esque you might say but um Yeah, I think that just what's fun about directing television and when we were doing it together, I'll just skip past the entreatment part is that we were able to like for billions, for instance, we we wouldn't.
we wouldn't write a show like that we don't write dialogue quite like that and it's just it's just fun to jump into somebody else's sandbox and work with those actors and jump off you know do your cut and then jump off and then go back to writing your own movie again you know so i i think doing television for for us has been um a fun process also really helps pay the bills
oh god yeah definitely um so but from there obviously with the machine that captain marvel was and just that what a huge movie that was I'm sure you guys have talked ad nauseum about it. But when you look back at that movie, is there anything...
that you could say, maybe it was as simple as like, well, you know, that's where we really got to kind of play with, you know, big sets, big effects and stuff like that. What was your biggest takeaway from doing Captain Marvel? Could have been just dealing with the... fans. But when you look back at Captain Marvel, like what was your feeling as like a kind of like the post-mortem to that?
Learning so much about so many different elements that we had never really had the opportunity to work with before and learning from the. People who are working at the top of their game. So it felt a little bit like getting to go to, you know, grad school and VFX and stunt work and. And storyboarding and pre-vising and, you know, action and all that while actually working towards like our own vision. on a movie that we were ostensibly writing and directing along with a bunch of other writers.
who were very important in that process. And that was, you know, I think the best part about it for me and something that. we got to take with us. I have to ask, because as a former employee of Blockbuster Video myself, that slow push in on Blockbuster Video felt felt like homecoming, if you will. Was that like when you guys came in? Like, and, you know, this kind of brings me back to.
one other question I'm going to have on this, but when you guys came in on that, was the nineties always a factor just because of the timeline that they had with captain Marvel, because there, there was a reverence for the nineties. Cause you know, back in 2019, It still didn't feel like the 90s were cool yet.
uh now obviously like you know the 90s is becoming the new 80s and uh and video stores and all that you know that culture is coming back in a big way um how much did you guys infuse the 90s into the storyline and into the kind of language of the movie from the jump? Was that part of it like before you guys even stepped in or how did that kind of evolve? At the time we were hired, they were a bunch of ingredients on a table.
right and they were like it's in the 90s we've got brie larson playing captain marvel we're gonna have a younger nick fury that we're introducing and he's gonna have two eyes And we're going to have scrolls in this movie. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck a scroll is. Is that like a title card thing? I don't know. And so, yeah, it was just kind of like, here's all the junk on the table.
Go give us a script. And so we were like, all right. It was like that scene in Apollo 13 when they're like, all right, this is all the stuff they've got up there. They lay it all out on the table and shit like that. And Ed Harris's barking orders. Exactly. So that was, again, another fun way to work. That's not like there might be some directors, writer directors who are horrified by that kind of.
But we were just like, let's fucking do it. Let's figure out how to save those astronauts up there. Let's make this script. So yeah, there were a number of ingredients. And then the 90s was one of them. Well, the blockbuster video stuff, I remember watching it going, here's someone who used to work at a blockbuster video. They definitely know what it's like to fucking live in that culture. My first job was at this little mom and pop video store, right? Little space.
i i sat there during the day watching movies all day one a customer would come in and i would jump scare i was like shocked i was like oh my god what are you and and then the weekends it got busy but they didn't I was only there a year because they went out of business because there was a Blockbuster down the street. So I went and worked for the Blockbuster, which is a completely different experience. Oh, yeah.
I was there for the movies again, of course, but it was just not a place that really celebrated movies, ironically. I remember a customer coming in and returning the R-rated version, the edited version of Bad Lieutenant. Back to Bad Lieutenant, complaining that- Heavily, heavily edited. Where the hell is Harvey Keitel's dick? This is not the movie I watched. I'm like, I don't know why you came here, man. You're at the wrong place.
Uh, I, I will say like, uh, I have rented that version of the movie before at blockbuster too. Uh, one of the things that I loved about working there, cause I, I did the same thing. I worked at a mom and pop, then worked at blockbuster and then, um, worked at a video store in long Island. That was like considered like the best video store because it had like all the European films and all the weird shit.
But one of the things that was so much fun about working at Blockbuster was if you are even just a semblance of a movie nerd, because I don't know if this was the way it was for you, like with your fellow employees, but. 90% of the people who work at Blockbuster don't know a fucking thing about movies at all. You know, so like when they could be like, excuse me, Scream 2 isn't in. And most of the employees would be like.
I don't know what to fucking tell you, pal, you know, where I'd be like, well, have you seen the prowler or Friday the 13th part four? And to get everyone to go away from the, like the wall of new releases and go into the library section. That's. That's why I got employee of the month three months in a row because I kept pushing all those library titles. But we're renting your, your staff picks.
fuck yeah well no we didn't have staff picks at uh blockbuster blockbuster didn't know they took they did in the beginning they did but after a while i think people because people were putting weird shit like reanimator up on the wall with all the new releases they're like why
is reanimator up on the wall with this and from beyond and, and why is phantasm two there? You know, like, yeah, they weren't into that. Jumping back, uh, forward again to freaky tales when we were just discussing like film language. One of the things that is really hard about being a filmmaker watching movies is it's just really hard to shut off the how many days did they have for that? How did they afford that? It's near impossible. but some of the needle drops.
that you guys had in this movie i mean like sly and the family stone which i don't know if it's still the case but that was the first catalog of music that michael jackson bought really yeah oh like that's how he became so so rich was buying up catalogs everyone knows about the beatles but then when for whom the bell tolls drops and i was just like they got a metallica song because i i watched a screener
I paused it on the mixtape. See, I did the same thing and I fucked up at the Q&A. I'm like, well, when did you get Master of Puppets? Because Master of Puppets was on the mixtape. Yeah. And then I'm up there going like, and then you have Master of Puppets and someone in the back is like, for whom the bell tolls, asshole. And like the way it's cut and like it had to be that song. Yeah. So was it difficult to get? Because you don't.
You're starting to hear Metallica in more and more movies. Remember in fucking old school with Master of Puppets, what a big deal that was. When the fucking van drives in. Yeah, they got a Metallica song. But what was that process like for you guys? Oh, well. it so i don't know where to begin on the music like i we put together a playlist along before we like when we were writing the movies and all of the music that we had on that playlist it not all of it but like
Everything in the movie was from that playlist. So the end of the story is a very happy end of the story that we got all of the music we wanted for the movie. Shockingly. miraculously it was a it was a winding twisting road to get there but man we're like that's
Joe, you asked if there was a film print of the movie, and I was like, I can't, we can never ask Lionsgate for the money to make a film print of this movie because we begged. We begged so hard. We cajoled. We did everything we could to get the music.
yeah we wanted for this movie but tim armstrong was a big part of it too like we we got tim armstrong on board of the movie from rancid and he's in the movie too i didn't even notice him until the second time i'm like holy fuck they actually got tim holy shit Yeah. And I think he texted, he texted Lars from Metallica and was like, dude, they, they, they use fucking for whom the bell toll is so cool in this movie. You got to check this out.
and so look we it wasn't still wasn't a cheap song i don't know i mean maybe he cut us a little bit of a deal on it it was still an expensive song but um
you know, it wasn't a problem to get it. It's just usually producers will be like, yeah, that would be cool. Wouldn't it find something that sounds just like it? Yeah. Like it's just, we're not spending the money on that. We're just not. So it's just, I mean, Obviously a Marvel movie is totally different, but something like this, it just seems like there would have been roadblocks and there would have been moments where you didn't think...
you had it. But I mean, that, like that, that moment, especially there's a bunch of moments in the movie where I wish I'd seen it with an audience. Oh my God. That must've just like, dude, like really one of, and I'm going to.
go to my grave thing like that what that screening at panic fest was one of the best screenings i'd ever been in because that crowd was so clicked in i mean it's the perfect crowd for that type of movie it's a genre crowd you know they're we're willing to you know kind of roll with the big swings that the movie has whether it's the fractured time frame or the genre tone jumping and stuff but all right if we're going to go into freaky tales we're fucking going in yes all right so it's it's post
captain marvel um you know i know you guys were doing masters of the air which were oh my god that show fucking amazing would like every day that i'd come in when that show was first dropping he's like you gotta fucking watch his show holy shit because we'd all you know know been fans of band of brothers and the pacific and all the other stuff that playtone was doing and when you get into masters you know it's
it's all the things that I remember watching the Pacific going, God, I would love to see some more like dog fights and stuff. And Jesus Christ. I just wish that show could have been released theatrically. I know. See it on a huge screen like that. Just so well done. But like after.
After Captain Marvel, I know you guys had Miss America, but how did Freaky Tales kind of gestate? Was this something, because I know, Ryan, you grew up in the Oakland area. Was this something that was always in your back pocket of like... If I'm ever going to cash in a one for us, this is going to be the one. How did this idea come to fruition? Did you have to pitch Anna on it? Was this something that you guys have been talking about forever?
yeah yeah all of the above it's it it is something i have been thinking about for a long time um i had been pitching anna on various versions of a movie called freaky tales set in the 80s oakland uh none of them were particularly um good and she let me know um so yeah i think that
Right around 2020 that we hit the pandemic, Anna had her second child. And I was really just meditating a lot on freaky tales. And I think that's when the chapter, breaking it into the chapter so that we could really stuff. Everything into it was what opened it up creatively.
And I pitched her on that version, and that's the one. She was like, yeah, cool. I think this sounds good. And so we sent it out. We started having meetings on it. We got Too Short on board. We found producing partners at Macro.
um and then we went and made masters of the air and um while while they continued the producers continued to try to set the movie up and um masters of the air was great great experience so many wonderful actors on that and i mean you want to you want to add any color to that um not in particular i mean yeah
I don't want a monologue here. We're a directing team here. So I feel like when I'm starting to tell the story, I'm like, oh, am I talking too much? But obviously with Playtone, you guys working together on Masters, obviously got and you know i don't want to give away one of the greatest cameos of all time uh but
It definitely obviously influenced a certain part of Freaky Tales. I'm so glad I didn't know that cameo was coming, that nobody spoiled it for me. Oh, again, being in the theater when you start to go, man, you know, everyone's talking about this, this and that. It's kind of like in the conversation in the background. And then you hear a voice and you go, get the fuck out of here. And then it happens and you're like, get off. Like the whole crowd just goes fucking ape shit.
Um, but like that's that that's what we yearn for is to have those moments where like the crowd goes wild and when did they go wild um but i i want to go back to just the stories because i and i think i i asked this at the q a too Which was the story that came first? Because we have all these fractured chapters with all these different storylines that interconnect in really, really cool ways, all kind of revolving around a movie theater.
Which was the one that kind of, I guess, birthed everything else and then spawned from there? It's interesting question. And I can't remember what I said before, but I don't know what the truth. It was really smart. It sounded awesome. The legend of sleepy Floyd title. within the Freaky Tales umbrella was something that was there for a very long time because of that game.
The real game where Sleepy Floyd went off against the Lakers. And I and I was like, well, if we're going to make a movie called Freaky Tales and we're going to have something in it involving the legend of Sleepy Floyd, we've got to justify that title. Right. So what would the legend? of sleepy floyd be it can't just be about a basketball player having a great game and i and i think that's where
I was like, okay, wait, what if, what if this happened? And this is the end of the movie. And then we kind of worked backwards. And so what are the other tales going to be? You know, we knew too short we're going to have to be a part of it. And I think that that for Anna, it really opened up when the danger zone, when we focused in on the ladies component of that story, because.
Anna likes to say, you know, hearing the lyrics of Too Short as a 30-something year old woman is very different from being an adolescent boy. Oh, yeah. Very different. Very different.
but that that whole rap battle scene that again that was another one that like being in a crowd and and feeling everyone in the audience feeling like they were in the club too going like oh you know like when when shit went down uh that was so exciting you know and then that that kind of feeling is something that you get when you go to a club like that or you get when you go to a cinema and people are like
clearly invested. How long did it take for you guys to kind of put the script together? Yeah, no, go ahead. I mean, I think that you vomited out a first draft pretty quickly from what I can gather because, you know, I still had a very young baby when I got that. first drop in my inbox, but it was a very short script. And I think it, it only has three. Was it too short?
But I'm putting that sound effect in. And it started with only three chapters. And it was the Pedro's character was... part of the story but he he didn't have his own um chapter yet and it's kind of like a connecting element um and i think that as we you know then After, you know, he kind of threw the first version at me, we started kind of talking back and forth. And I think that's when it the idea.
started to gestate we started to really understand this was like a story about underdogs like that all of these um chapters were about underdogs and um and like the kind of these underdogs, you know, having these really exciting, you know, porn fun movie wins you know and um and that's and that's when we also just like fell in love with the pedro character and started to like
pull his story out and like build it into its own kind of underdog story. And and that and then it, you know, and then as we. you know, developed it and wrote and rewrote it. It was another few months of doing that before we started to send it out to producers and like share it with people. And what's fun about what we had was like, obviously I was writing something out of a passion for a place and time like Oakland and that focused on music.
and sports and culture. And then by adding that, that final chapter, which we squeezed in as a third chapter, we really got to like, then throw in the love for movies themselves. And I think that's what, what was the final ingredient. That's honestly when. that marquee came up and you can just like i remember like peeking around people going like is that an ishtar poster like it's raising arizona like holy shit um how hard was it to get all those posters was that an easy thing to clear
Well, a lot of our production designer could speak more to that. But we just like make sure it's on set. We ended up like having to choose. a bunch of like the the titles based on what was clear those are the best fucking meetings i swear to god like when you can sit there and go up with chud too but the chud in holliston really yeah because i'd asked for chud And then Travis was like, I can't get you Chud, but we can get you Chud too. How do you feel about Chud Teasner? I'm like.
All right, Chud 2 it is. Really quick, as a diatribe, Ryan, when you were at NYU, were you there when I think the guy who was the head of the film department was the director of Chud 2? David Irving. Yeah. When, when they were doing a tour, they were showing us around. I think it was just like in like late 93 or whatever. And they're, no, no, it was early 94. And then we're walking around and you know, they're showing all these.
film posters and there's raging bull and there's do the right thing and then where the fuck is judd 2 doing on the wall well that's our you know our head of film production i'm like okay
All right. He was great. I don't know if he's still there, but he was fantastic while I was there. Speaking of videos and all that, there's a major component of the film that takes place in, or major... scene uh that takes place in the video store and again like the the this movie is such a celebration of movies big small b movie a movie c movie and everything in between
I think the three times that I've seen it, I'm trying to pick out all of the movies that are there. What was like, were you guys excited to fill the frame? Cause like whenever we. when like shoot in a video store or like even a marquee or something like that, you go, all right, there's a shelf in the foreground that's right under the frame.
What movies am I going to put in there? Because you know that there's going to be someone who's going to be like, oh, I see the road warrior there. Oh, look, there's From Beyond. How important was that for you guys to make sure that all the influences or who knows, maybe it was just the props department just.
popping stuff up. No, it was incredibly important and stressful for a lot of, because it was like day one shoot. Right. And, and there's so many, we had limited VHS tapes to like to fill that room. And. we you know there's some that are at chest level and there's some that are deep background and we were like and some of them are post 1987 like we couldn't fill that room with the prior to 1987 so it was it was a challenge to just go through there and like
props to the the team for like getting them all there but like they were not set up in any kind of like sexy way and so i spent a lot of a lot of time before the shoot the day of the shoot when i wanted to do other things trying to arrange those vhs tapes but there were
There is a shot of the character we call Antonio. He's never referenced as Antonio in the movie, but he's the guy who's trying to blow up Clint, Pedro Pascal's character. And he's standing there and he's really concentrating hard and his eyes begin to glow green. He starts to do the scanners.
you're doing the scanners thing and in the script we say and i've never we've never written something like this in a script before but it says note to set dressing there must be prominently displayed vhs cases of scanners and reanimator in the shop And that's where the green comes from.
it's funny when we were at panic fest someone came up to me and said did you totally notice they use the glowing green from reanimator i'm like oh yeah yes i did that's not just the green the whole font itself coming out of the tv is the straight up reanimator font Uh, since, um, he's having a moment or he's been having a moment for a couple of years, uh, you know, Pedro Pascal, it's, it's again, it's because the movie has come out.
right now and pedro is in pretty much everything this is another one of those things where people go like the fuck did a pedro pascal movie get under my nose you know like he's he's in everything now um what how like how did you guys get
One thing that I was curious about, too, because this happens a lot when you're dealing with production, is the time commitment. Because, you know, with Freaky Tales... one of the benefits and i'm sure maybe this came up maybe it didn't when you were making your offers but when you can say you're not running a show yeah you're only there for you're only like we only we can shoot you out in five days and sometimes that's how you get actors they go like
Oh, oh shit. Okay. Like, yeah, I could, I could spend a week in Oakland or whatever, instead of wait, how long do you need me? Six weeks. Was that ever a factor in getting like Pedro and Ben? I mean, obviously you had a relationship with Ben, but how did Pedro's involvement come about? To hear the rest of this episode, go to patreon.com slash themoviecrypt. For only $1 a month, you'll get every new episode every Monday downloaded right to your podcast app of choice.