Special Report: Sell Out (2025)

Oh, gee is boot It should die? People say good money to see this movie.

When they go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.

Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Got it off.

That, Yeah, what's wrong?

What if my next book is not good or witty and has no commentary and just kind of repeats itself.

I'm not inspired. I don't think I have anything funny to say. It's horrible. I'm a little anxious.

I've just been in a.

Funk in your gutter.

No, she's pooping or really, I'm just having trouble writing.

Unless it's obstructing your colon.

I don't know that I can help.

Oh, you should call me for a beer if you wanted to ask.

I know.

Ten am New York Times interview. I think coming here was a terrible idea.

I mean, when did coffee shops become people's second home.

This guy's doing me a favor.

A favor I think said he wanted to do this.

Just don't ramble. One pm.

Drop off Lily at ex wife's and I think you would agree that it's not my week. Danny, how's the book coming horrible man, I believe in you won't good.

I'll see you lave okay bye, We just abs are not realistic when it managed to give up for abs like that is not even worth it. Four pm.

Call my sister back. It's a lot to ask me to come in.

This is your sister's wedding.

Get your ass here.

Okay, so I I get your first wedding.

I'm married for love, then sex, and now I'm marrying for money.

Is there a world in which that's not considered selling out.

Any bink one and only?

What an honor to have you back.

In our humble little too okay topic I have you don't know?

I love you girl.

It's tooid you think he's a little stressed about the state of the world.

I'm pro good, pro good, and it's I won't live for life.

You say you want to try?

It all feels like I'm on a fast moving train run straight off the tracks.

Sounds like a classic rock song.

There ain't no nothing.

I feel like my writing might never be the same again, you know, And it kind of feels like it's one of the sacred things I have.

We need more sacred things.

In this world.

There no nothing.

I typically am wonder to ride the waves of the universe, you know, But sometimes I feel like you just.

Got to say no so you can catch the next big one. Do you remember my idea about the Old Man and the.

Sea, the book The Old Man in the Sea.

No, no, no no, It tips its hat a little bit to the old man. The Old Man, right, old Man. It's in English.

I can't adapt.

I'm just throwing truth bombs, all right.

Whether or not you accept that, that's entirely up to you.

Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Josh and Nick Holden. They are the writers and directors of the new film Sellout. It is currently making its way around the festival circuit. I had a great time talking with the Holden brothers, and I hope you have a great time listening to this interview. Normally I would ask a couple of filmmakers that come on to

Nick got here first on the planet, and then I came seventeen months later. We were born in Los Angeles. Our mom was out there studying acting, and then she quit, gave it up to raise us, and then moved back to Louisiana, that's where she was from, and then we grew up there, and then moved to Austin whenever we were out of high school, and then been in Austin ever since. I went to film school at ut eventually, and then Nick went to Saint Ed's. So we've been

Tell me about that writing process. How do you guys collaborate on that stuff.

We're used to be in.

The garage and write every line together.

We've gotten wiser over the years.

Now we usually like to out try to come up with a bunch of ideas and then I'll pitch them all to Josh and which road do we or That's how we started. Now we have so many scripts we've done together that we can when we're thinking of something, we are referencing one of the scripts. So a lot of times we'll take stuff from scripts in our news scripts.

Now, once we decide on a.

Route, I'll try to do some preliminary work, talk to him, he'll do some stuff, and then get in a room and just do note cards and a beach and get it up on the board, use it first act, second A and B and third act, and then from there we get that really work and then we'll do like an outline for that.

Read the outline and the beaching. The alle need to take about a.

Month and a half and then it's about a good month and a half to knock out a draft and then he reads it and then we sit in the same room and we just go through it page by page, rereading stuff out loud.

So it's a good almost six month process. Yeah, and that sell out.

We were still figuring out our process when we wrote that, But that's basically similar how we did it, but I feel like it's a little more honed in.

Now, how did the Golden rut come about?

We've been writing a lot of scripts, but all of them would require bigger budgets to make, and we just got to a point where he said, okay, we need to make a film. We need to make a feature, and we need to make something that is a low budget. It was like thirty grand or so, and then that we could shoot and pull off and just practice our craft to see, okay, we want to make all these big scripts we've written, but.

Can we pull it off?

Kind of things.

That was the first one where it was like, all right, us attempting to make a film really for our friends and family, in some ways our closest immediate community, and we learned a lot. We learned so much.

You're backed up against the wall a little desperate, been saying we were going to make a film forever. We're like, okay, it's nice to have some wisdom, to be able to have some and we're like, who could we give any advice to because we were like twenty seven twenty oh, we could tell our twenty year old self what not to do. Let's make a film about trying to make it as an actor in dating, and that was.

Where that came from.

Yeah, yeah, and then we just ended up both acting in ourselves because we were That's what we found so far as we've never had really a budget to get a lead actor for a feature, because all right, we know both of us will show up every day for as long as it takes.

To keep on it.

Where did sellout come from? Where did the idea come from?

I think it came from a few ideas at once, but some of it being in COVID being locked up, the attention of the country, it felt so just like it was about to burst.

And also COVID is just the end of the world. There was time to that, we had little.

Babies, and then being a parent, and then also yeah, just like our childhood, our friends in Louisiana and being different on the same such a different page politically, but that being in the news so much and it being so amped up, but then when you see each other, it's not quite as amped up, is maybe it feels like in the news, So it's like you're not quite as divided as they make it out to be.

So trying to just come to terms with all.

Of that, And it's a lot, it's a lot of ideas in the script. It's a lot of different things we're touching on.

We were also we had been researching and writing the feature for the ninety one governor's race in Louisiana when

I'm curious as first how you balanced being in front of the camera so much with being one of the writer directors, and how do you work with your brother. It was a lot of prep.

That's why we did a whole ten minute tone piece so we could just me and him shooting it, edding it, cutting it, really figure out exactly what we want to do, come up with a strategy, and then it's a lot of lines that I'm saying, So I feel like I just memorize the lines and then play with the actors while I'm doing that, but lean on him to do the overall direction and to lean on the camera. Then we'll divvy up little things like I do a lot of the wardrobe. I like to do the wardrobe stuff.

Partner like that.

But I think we found Benny together before we started shooting.

I was really nervous to play the role.

And that's why we did so much test shooting to where everyone was like, yes, you got to do this, this is great, this is great. So then it was we could focus on other stuff. He'll be sat with the camera. I'll be talking the actors, rehearsing with them, running lines, making them comfortable, like dividing and stuff.

And we learned so much on our first feature because we're both in front of the camera.

I was only living bront of the camera a couple of days though, which was Niger.

Yeah, and we had a small indie crew and it was on sticks and you know, it was just moving slow. And on this one we thought, okay, we found the tone six or seven days into shooting The Golden Rush, and we thought, all right, we don't want to do that again. So we spent the time on this one shooting that tone piece where we found the tone ahead of time that we could show the actors everyone knows

Obviously, you have one of your main actress there all of the time whenever you need them. But tell me about the rest of your cast. How did they come together?

Over the years, we've got in the Austin film scene and we just have Jimmy Gonza's old friend being in the scene.

We've really maintained.

Relationships with people and hung out with them all. So we were writing a lot of roles for him, and then when the time came, it was like, hey, do you all want to do some We send the teachers, like let's do this. And we didn't know Adrian Plocki, but our friend did and she was into the project and she had some free time. So it was really just a cool and we did take our time and really waited patiently to cast. We really were like, hey, let's just wait the perfect person comes.

And Sarah Dowling. We got Sarah. She's a local casting agent. For a while, she helped us a lot.

On my side cast members. We wrote the part with Stephanie Hunt and stuff like that.

Jimmy and Gabe I had seen the teaser and reached out and said, word my part. So we were like, oh, we got a part for you. Bill Wise, we've worked with a Ton. We had an O series with him called The gil Webshow where he was like a kind of belligerent drunk who didn't know who he was interviewing, and he was interviewing musicians.

And we love working with Bill. He's so funny.

So we always worked with Bill and our mom. We casted our mom as the mom and Nick's daughter as the daughter.

That was pretty good.

Yeah, Nick, your character is neurotic and you are channeling a little Albert Brooks for me, some of those earlier Albert Brooks. How do you get yourself in that headspace of just that continual self doubting, kind of manic state.

Oh, I just picked up the newspaper, watch a little news for a few minutes, and I read a lot of political history, Like I'll just I like to read a lot of times I breakfast, all these different politicals. So I just tried to get myself in that headspace. And it's not hard, especially at that particular time.

I imagine even today you could probably get in that headspace pretty easily.

Now, I feel like right now and all the pressures of you know, stuff is just easy to spin out.

It's a fun role to play. Actually, that's a fun, fun character.

What were some of your biggest challenges making this movie, because I know making an independent film is not easy.

I think they're raising the money was really hard because when we moved to Austin, we didn't We just started hanging out with all these really cool artists. They were all waiting tables and just man, these are the coolest people. We had come from Louisiana and they're really one as many artists that we knew. So we're just hanging out with those people. And then we was like, oh, we need to raise some money. Oh, we don't really know very many wealthy people, much less cool wealthy people.

So then we were like, oh, damn, we need to learn how to raise some money.

So that's been a long time of trying to build networks and then finding the really cool people that have some money that are into the arts.

That was super hard.

And then the editing was we didn't have much money for posts, so we're just juggling so many different jobs, editing trying to be patient because we were like I feel like there's this film plays differently a different huh.

We felt like right after the election, like all.

Last Spring went a really great time to put it out. So just try to be patient and just trying to really take our time. There's such a tendency to want to rush to finish the film for a festival, and my kind of mentors have said, don't ever do that. Get the film right, and so there is that tendency of oh, we should get it out as soon as we can. Also, we need jobs, so the quicker we get to film in the festival, maybe we could get some other jobs.

So there is that teb is like just being patient.

Lear need to just stay real patient and get the film right because it lives on forever.

I think that was the hardest part. Yeah, I think fundraising is the hardest part.

It's challenging in that we were raising money as we were shooting, and as we're locking in cast, we didn't have a solid crew or all over our locatients to me and Jennifer and Morgan and Nick were in Jennifer's kitchen trying to schedule all the actors traveling and the locations, and we didn't even have the budget fully raised yet couple days in shooting, so it was scary, but it was also one of those things where it was like, man, if we wouldn't have done that and we didn't just

And it ended up working out.

Were you shooting this piece meal weekends, evenings, that kind of stuff, where did you actually have a full block of shooting time.

We were doing a lot of piece mealing, and we would shoot some days we just do two hours of shooting, and it's just because sometimes it was just two people crew or something, and then other days, once things started to roll and once we raised more of the money to shoot the film, then we started scheduling and did certainly maybe I don't know how many days we did, but then we scheduled some proper days shot along And did.

You guys edit this yourself or did you have somebody helping?

We have an editor with us, Michael Green, and Michael was there from the beginning. Nick and I created the tone and the pacing, and then we divvied up scenes with Michael and created an assembly together which was about a three hour assembly. Yeah, and we said, no one

A good probably two years to.

Do because also because we were doing the music with our friend Mario Mattioli, and we would do that at my house here every like Wednesday night because he is a job so I filled two hours every Wednesday night we'd work on the music, and we were just had to chip away as because we were also doing production work and jobs.

And stuff like that and have kids.

And so yeah.

I was going to ask if you guys had seen this with then audience, but it sounds like that was a really valuable part to cut this down and really hone that to what we end up seeing today.

We did a couple of test screenings really helped because there was a lot to whittle down.

And I find too with test screenings it's so helpful to watch with an audience because you just get your blinders on after a while and you don't even need feedback. You just watch it with them and you're like, Okay, I can see where this is dragging, where that's not working. Have you just feeling in the room with them. It helps so much.

When did you guys have your premiere or is that yet to come?

We had the premiere Thursday, October twenty third, terrific screening, terrific audience. People really loved it, and then we'll have a screening October thirtieth at the Galaxy seventh I think. Then next we'll play Lone Star November fifth at six pm in Fort Worth and then we'll play Lafay at Louisiana November fifteenth at two thirty pm.

So those are the next two screens we have coming up.

Audience Austin definitely really seemed to love the film, so it'll be nice to interesting to play in some other places.

Too. I'm excited.

Yeah, I'll be nice going back to the hometown.

Yeah, I see what people think. They're all messaging, they're all excited. And then we're gonna try to get a New York screen. We're talking to some vessels in New York and LA and talking to some sales agents and hopefully distributed next spring.

Is there a good place for people to keep up with you guys in the movie on Instagram?

We're at Sellout movie and then also the brothers holding, so brothers with an S and then holding that's a pretty good place for us. We usually keeping at least definitely someone's keeping the sellout page going, and then we'll try to repost as much as we can.

Nick and Josh, thank you so much for your time.

Guys.

This was great, Mike, thanks for doing that.

Thanks great.

Well. Then a use be yours come from my own back.

Show me boy.

We men around so many years. I'm good and give them above.

Losch.

I'm going this well, my wa John, something I can big song. Look at my dollar ju I mean.

To say, look at.

My shufing up?

So why is so.

Well given to my share?

Why is so well?

Mean?

Simply what you like.

I don't know, man, I'm aware sin.

Now where it's not out of.

Your coffee door is open? Now, what will say somewhere why it's so well well mean time you get to myself like a so, why it's so Where we'll pay

Yeah,