October 14, 2025 • 49 mins
This week John Wesley Downey interviews Tim Thomson, an independent filmmaker, film editor and post production supervisor, and creative artist. Tim is also active in supporting and doing design work in the local theater community, including the Catastrophic Theater. The podcast takes a turn this week toward less mainstream filmmaking and a fun ride it was. Turns out VHS films from the 80s and 90s, especially scifi and horror and new distribution and restoration of some of this DIY filmmaking is underway with companies such as Vinegar Syndrome. Tim and John talked about film's enduring popularity and reach, including mainstream, independent and fringe. Tim talked about his excitement that a film he made on the streets of Houston in 1992 with a rag tag team of film enthusiasts, as well as his writings about PROJECT OMICRON. A wide ranging discussion with a seasoned filmmaker and creator well worth the time of anyone who wants to hear the latest on alternative filmmaking. Tim's day job is with Staging solutions where he is Creative Director.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome back. It's the Movie Show on nine to
fifty KPRC. I'm your host, John Wesley Downey. We're here
every Sunday night at eight o'clock. And of course you
can not only hear us on the radio, but we're
on the nine to fifty KPRC website on a stream,
and you can hear us on the iHeartRadio app, which
you can get anywhere on the planet. I'm told, so
(00:21):
you can't get away from us. If you can access
any of those three sources. You can hear the Movie
Show here every week, and we do all kinds of things.
And this week we're going to welcome to our microphone,
Tim Thompson. Tim, I don't even know where to begin
to try to define who and what you are, because
you've done so many things. I think the first and
(00:42):
simplest description would be to say that you're a filmmaker
and a creative person. And how long have you been
involved in film, video or creativity?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Oh gosh, Well, first of all, thank you John for
talking to me pretty much from the I was one
of those quintessential sort of seventies kids whose parents had
a super eight film camera, and so I would I
started off at a very early age, making very small
(01:14):
movies on Super eight, like you know, stop motion clay
monster movies or fake Kung Fu movies or whatever I
could think of, none of which developed properly. But from
the beginning I was just entranced with the fact that
people made movies and I love that and I wanted
to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I see, and this has manifested itself in many different
ways in your life. And also you've been very very
involved in theater. What have you done in that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I have been very lucky to have gotten involved in
the Houston theater scene, and this goes back to the
late nineties, doing video and sound design for a number
of theaters. Also, I'm a core artist with the Catastrophic
Theater and I've been working for them for a twenty
years now.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, so a little bit of everything. And you dabbled
in music at some point, didn't you.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
We had a very strange, abstract electronic musical project in
the late nineties, like everyone did then, Cold Drop Frame.
As you do, as you do, as you did, we
took computers and we made a lot of beats and
odd noises.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Part of the reason I'm adding Tim to our guest
list here is to we mainly concentrate on mainstream and
independent things, but Tim's a little outside of that in
his primary interest, and we're going to be delving into that.
But before we do, we're going to play the Desert
Island Movie Quiz, which we do with a lot of
(02:42):
people around here, and it's a lot of fun. The
audience is very familiar with and it's pretty simple. If
you knew you were going to be stuck on a
desert island for five years, he had something to play
media on, and you had a power supply, what three
feature films would you take with you to access during
your time that you're stuck on that island? Just to
(03:03):
give me the one give them to me one at
a time.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Okay, goodness. Well, I'm gonna preface this by saying this
is really hard for me because my favorite movies at
any point are the last two I've just seen and
the one that I'm really looking forward to seeing. Okay,
and so don't I don't have a lot of hierarchy
that I think about, but I did give your your
question a lot of thought, and so here are my
(03:28):
weird answers. The first one is going to be Video.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Drome, a David Cronenberg film.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yes, it's to me, it's the er text of cinema
and the idea of shared hallucination. Uh, and I'm just
endlessly fascinated with it. So I think that is among
many movies, but probably at the top of the ones
that I never get tired of watching.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, I'm familiar with the movie, But for somebody that's
never heard of Videodrome, if you had to give it
a one sentence, what's the log line on video Drum?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What is the log line on video Drum? An unscrupulous
cable television promoter discovers an illicit channel that deals with
human misery and tries to use it to gain television viewership,
and finds himself upon in an unwitting game of psychological warfare.
(04:27):
How's that twisty? What I love about it is and
if you've seen it, you'll get it, And if you
haven't seen it, it'll intrigue you. You never understand the
exact moment when his percept, the main character's perception tips
from reality to hallucination, and so you as a viewer,
(04:49):
are drawn into at what point you are also hallucinating.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Did SCTV spoof this movie with a skit about somebody
these heads blowing up?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Real good?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Is this the one where that happens?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Golly, that might have been scanners.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I think scanners. I have the wrong Cronenberg.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
But those folks at SETV are as clever as Cronenberg.
Well they're Canadian, Canadians Canadians. So anyway, so we've managed
to work. We've already mentioned too David Cronenberg movies in here,
and we're barely gotten started. Okay, so number one Videodrome,
quite an interesting movie. Number two, what would that be?
I'm gonna have to go with Seven Samurai.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
The Seven Samurai.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah wow, because it is a tract for how to
live and employ one's craft.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
For somebody who doesn't know it. The Seven Samurai is
one of the most uh iconic movies in the history
of cinema, and it is, boy talk about much imitated.
Uh and uh, it's just it's from a Curra Curasawa.
A quick note, I went I first heard of a
(06:06):
Cura Curasawa from reading George Lucas interviews in the seventies.
He kept referring to you know who's influenced you the most,
and he goes, well, of course, a Cira Crossawa. I'd
never heard of a cure a Curasawa. So a friend
of mine called me and says, hey, I understand you're
getting into a Curri Curasawa. Was sudden. One of his movies,
Raschamon is showing at the Museum of Fine Arts that downtown.
(06:31):
You want to go see it? And it was it
was like a Sunday night, seven o'clock and I went
fifty year old Japanese movie, black and white English subtitles.
There won't be anybody there yet, let's go. And so
I'm thinking we're getting there. It's like six fifty five,
and I said, well, this would be a cake walk.
(06:52):
There won't be anybody there. We walk in, they don't
even have two seats together. We had to see this
at different parts of the theater. And I'm looking around
and going, I think other people have heard of this
curisefl two. But the Seventh Samurai for people that don't know,
American cinema has just stolen from it left and right.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, of course, of course, and not just and not
just stolen from that, but many Corosawa things in fact,
well we'll talk later. But I've stolen from Chrosawa too.
But the Seventh Samurai is special because it it's kind
of a philosophy of life. It's to me, it is
the exemplar of the idea that you are born to
(07:38):
do a craft, and your craft should be technically excellent
and in the service of other people. And it just
kind of humbles you to spend three hours with these
people being so I don't want to say driven, but devoted, riveting.
(07:59):
It's philosophic and I when I saw it a as
a young teenager, it was like, that's how you live,
that's how you that's how you do a thing.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It's it's it's a lot of things, unless you say
it is a very influential movie and it's a piece
of global filmmaking that uh well, we're still talking about
it all these years later. Yeah, and people still watch
it and learn from it. Okay, uh seven seven I
enjoy This comes up over and over again when I
(08:31):
have people in to do this is the variety we've
gone from Videodrome to the Seventh Samurai. Okay, And what
what's bringing up the rear here? Tim?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
So this was really hard for me. I want to know.
I want you to know I took took your game seriously,
and I had to think about what would be the
other slice of this pie that I would endlessly be
able to enjoy over this time. And there are a
(09:03):
certain number of movies that just make me laugh. However
many times I watch them, and it's really hard for
me to put one above all of the others. So
I'm hoping you're gonna let me have an asterisk here,
but just to throw you off on the diversity thing,
my third choice is The Hudsucker Proxy.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, a Cohen Brothers movie. Yeah, and how many? All right?
How many times have you seen it? Tim?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Probably about twelve times? Not excessively, I mean, okay, So
there are a number of other things here, Like I
could have said Scrooged, which I just cannot stop watching.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
It's a little sour, I just.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I love it so much. I could have also said
a movie that not very many people watch a lot.
I guess the early eighties Robin Williams Walter Mathow film
The Survivors.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I haven't even heard of that one.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But these are movies that just make me laugh.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Okay, all right, So we've got Video Drum, The Seven
Samurai and Hudsucker Proxy, and I doubt that those three
films have ever been in the same sentence together in
the history of mankind, but diversity to be sure. Anyway,
we're going to continue our discussion with Tim Thompson and
(10:27):
explore a little bit more about some of the background
of not only movies that he's made and been interested
in in the past, and there's one sitting right here
on my desk that he worked on called No Resistance.
But we're going to talk about a resurgence recently and
an interest in old formats and old movies from the
eighties and nineties which has become a thing. It's kind
(10:49):
of hip and cool now. I know some twenty somethings
that have educated me on the fact that an old
VHS movie can now be worth quite a lot to
people on a Friday or Saturday night that want a
pizza and want to freak out. Absolutely, we're talking with
Tim Thompson. He's a local Houston fixture in the arts.
(11:10):
He's with the Catastrophic Theater and has worked in lots
of theater and done independent filmmaking and has participated and
you've been participated in the forty eight hour Film Challenge
before we have.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, many times, we have absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
For people that don't know it, that are as I
call them civilians. In the independent filmmaking world, there's a
thing called the forty eight hour Film Challenge where a
group of filmmakers are given a task of filming a movie,
a little short film in forty eight hours, and then
there's a competition to see who made the best one.
(11:46):
And it's quite a popular thing, been going on for
quite a while. Let's let's sort of dive in here
and what is this? What is this wave of interest
slightly in VHS movies and some of the obscure movies
from the nineties do it yourself movies VHS.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Or dv Yeah, the shot on video era, it's endlessly
fascinating to me. So when we were kids back in
the day, I mean, I'm a child of the VHS era. Obviously,
I'm a child of the seventies. So I remember if
(12:29):
I wanted to try to collect or see as many
movies as possible in the eighties, I had to read
the TV guide every week and then set my VCR
to record things late at night. As the broadcasters would
let them free, right.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Do you realize how archaic this sounds to somebody who's twenty.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I absolutely do. But there's a point, and we'll come back,
we'll share back to it. And then, of course the
era of the video store, which or the video rental path,
which is I think a lot of people have a
nostalgia for those of us who were there, and I
think there's also a kind of a retro nostalgia for
(13:12):
it right now for people who weren't there yet and
kind of missed that part but are now discovering what
that meant for us when the world of cinema opened up.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Is it possible to be nostalgic for an era you
didn't live through.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I think so, and I would guarantee you either the
Dutch or the Danish have a specific word for it,
but I don't know what it would be. Also, what
happened in the eighties and then especially in the nineties
is that because video technology became more and more accessible,
(13:45):
regular folks who didn't have access to the Hollywood system
more expensive film cameras could make their own features on
their own using camquarders, and so the shot on video
era includes a number of things that happened in the
earlier part of the eighties, but especially from like nineteen
eighty eight to two thousand, there was this plethora of
(14:12):
people making movies all over the country, all over the world.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And this is before the Internet.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And before the Internet exactly, and that's an interesting slice
to it. Where people would just go out and make
their own movies with their own equipment and just hack
them together. It was very diy. I was very punk,
as very homemade, and a lot of these features would
(14:38):
go on to get some recognition. We we would you'd
be able to sell your own VHS through film magazines,
film threat, alternative cinema. People would trade them and swap
them and we were part of that. In the nineties,
we made a couple of VHS features and we would
(15:02):
also meet other people who were also doing the same things.
So I also did special effects digital effects in the
late nineties for guys who were making their own movies
in New York or in LA.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So it was almost like an underground network.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, barely underground, right at surface level.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Okay. I want to interject here because when you hear
of people like Steven Spielberg who started out doing Super eight,
and because there was an era there earlier where Super
eight was what a lot of people did something similar
on this, and then you have this eruption in the
eighties of VHS and so forth. It's the same impulse.
(15:44):
It's people that love film saying I want to do
that too, and it's like it can't be denied. It's
like it's got to pop up somewhere. And it's not
about necessarily making a million bucks or getting it down
to the sixteen theater, you know, mall theater. It's about
(16:04):
doing it for the for the reason you should always
try to do art, which is for your own satisfaction
and to see if you can do it, and to
have fun with it and the communal experience, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, there was there was. There was a rallying cry then,
and I think there is also a rallying cry now,
which is make movies with your friends. If you like movies,
go out make movies with your friends. And that's what
we did. The thing about the nineties is not everyone
had access to the acquisition and the editing, so there
(16:40):
are a lot of lost features, just regional things made
by people all over the country, but they are now
being rediscovered, and so companies like VHS Hitfest and Saturn's Core,
they're digging up out of people's basements these old nineties
(17:04):
forgotten feature films in there rebringing them out to the
new generation via blu.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Ray and I have understood that part and parcel with this.
Some friends of mine that are really into horror, who
are below the age of thirty tell me that the
hottest thing around right now is VHS horror movies. Oh yeah,
because they're so gritty and raw, and that the very
fact that they're not as slick as maybe something shot
(17:33):
today is what makes them even scarier and more interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Hmm. I think that there's something tactile about pushing a
tape in and running it that, especially for horror people,
they're going to feel like, oh, we've crossed a threshold.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Now, you know. I remember one of the stupidest things
I ever said to somebody. It was somewhere in the
eighties and nineties, when we were really starting to get
a lot of behind the scenes documentaries on how big
features were made. I said to somebody, if they keep
(18:11):
showing people how it's all done, people are going to
lose interest in movies, and a friend of mine said, oh, no,
it's the opposite, John, You're wrong. It's going to make
people want to do it themselves. And this is one
occasion when I could not have been more wrong. It
seems as though boy Andy Warhol should have said that
(18:34):
not only does everybody want to get fifteen minutes of
fame in the future, everybody wants to be a movie
maker in the future. And now, of course the technology
lets us do this.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So I think it was in the early nineties where
Francis Ford Coppola said, just wait twenty years, the next
Oscar winning film is going to be made by a
twelve year old with their own cam corder.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Right. You know, I've always felt like this independent spirit
of wanting to make movies, whether it's the eighties, nineties onward,
that whatever technology it's the it's definitely the equivalent of
kids watching the Beatles or punk rock and wanting to
(19:15):
and it's like, I'm going to do that in my
garage if that's the best I can do.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean so in nineteen
ninety two, I had moved to Houston three years prior,
and we had made a bunch of short films and
we said, well, now it's time to we want to
make a full feature, and my creative partner, David Rains,
(19:41):
envisioned this idea of a sort of a William Gibson
inspired punk, street level skateboard video, neuromancer slash noir film.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And how many hyphens can you work in?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I'll tell you. We stole all the cyberpunk stuff, but
we fashioned the entire film after Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett,
which then was later kind of fashioned into Yojimbo. And
in ninety two we shot over the summer, we shot
an entire feature called No Resistance and on the streets
of Houston, on the streets of Houston with a lot
(20:20):
of punk and experimental musicians and whoever else we could
grab off the couch. We finished editing it in ninety
four and it got some level of notoriety through mail
order and through festivals, and then just a couple of
(20:40):
years ago, the folks at Saturn's Corps that are part
of the Vinegar Syndrome group came to me and said,
we distribution, it's a distribution company, Yeah, we want to
re release it, And so we made a special Blu
ray where we got all the old materials and we
upresed it HD and made a wonderful Blu ray out
(21:03):
of it, and it again. It was it was kind
of the generation behind ours that wanted all of that
nineties stuff resurrected. And it's beautiful to see. And they're
pulling all kinds of weird, weird things out of the woodwork,
beautiful films that nobody's ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I think as much as I love mainstream films and
as much as I mean, I have issues with the
corporations that make them, but as much as I love
those and I love the classic films, there is something
about the personal film that's done at a level where
you don't have any money and where you're just trying
(21:46):
to kind of get through it. And this may be
a little early in the game for what we are
talking about, but to me, the most shining example of
that that there's ever been a head. Here's a guy living,
starving to death for five years making this incredibly weird movie,
(22:07):
and yet it is incredibly personal and it's pretty damn
well made. The sound design is unbelieve If you've never
seen David Lynch's eraser Head. Some of you are gonna
hate it, some of you are gonna love it, but
I can guarantee you you're never gonna forget it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean so I mean the biggest.
I mean, obviously, there are a couple of examples from
the seventies of that lynch Is outshines almost all of them.
But even back then you had to understand how film
worked and stock costs money, and there was there was
(22:48):
still a lot of barriers so that they got that
done in the seventies. And there are other great examples
like Jubilee is another great seventies movie that you don't
understand how that even got made. And then so of
course when cam Quarters came along, people were gonna jump
(23:11):
on that bandwagon to an even greater degree, not to
you know, not to incredible success. There's a lot of
you know, bad movie making out there, but they are
so heartfelt that you can't help but have an enthusiasm
for them.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's that's the thing about it is. It's if art
can't be personal, what is it? You know, it's got
to have that quality to it. And it is interesting
that to pull a theme out of what we've been
talking about for about the past fifteen minutes. It's fascinating
(23:47):
to me that as our technology, certainly the digital technology.
I just shot a movie that you know all about
on six K and we have AI coming, and yet
there's this huge wave of interest in movies that were
made with these crude technical standards. It's like the more
(24:10):
advanced we get, the more we want to go inside
and know what was important to somebody in their movie
on a very personal basis. To make I think a
lot of time is just to make a statement. I
want to do this, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think the backlash to any thoughts about what AI
may or may not be is the idea of authenticity.
I think we're gonna in the wake of anything can
be possible by technology, You're going to start to see
things prized for the fact that they are authentic and handmade.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know. I just I'm really curious to
see where it goes. It's the dichotomy of it super
advanced technology. No, I'd rather watch an old nineties film
made on me just because it's more interesting, you know,
because you can, you know, you can with the technology
(25:06):
we've got, you can perfect things to a level that's
almost absurd. But that's not what you want art for
I was. I've been reading quite a bit about There's
there's huge books about it, about the recording techniques that
George Martin and the Beatles used. One of the things
I was fascinated to find was that even though they're
(25:28):
the most conversially successful band in the world, Paul McCartney
and Martin and a lot of these guys have said, oh,
by the way, there's all kinds of mistakes in there.
We left them in because we thought they were cool.
Most people don't notice them, but we like the fact
that we left men that they could have corrected some
of them. They didn't care. They wanted it because you know,
(25:49):
it's not personal.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
And look look what George Harrison did. He founded handmade Films.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Handmade perfect, absolutelysolutely perfect, and we have him to thank
for several great films like Life of Brian and Everything.
You know, there's you know, one of the most popular
bands at the end of the eighties was the Traveling
Willberry's with all of these superstars, and yet if you
(26:19):
watch the thirty minute documentary on how it came together,
it was very personal. It was almost accidental. It wasn't
like some executive dictated a memo and said, get these
guys together, we'll make some bucks. It was, hey, you
want to come over and do this, And that to
me is just it's fascinating. Where do you think this
(26:41):
is going? Tell you what. Let's take a break. We're
talking with Tim Thompson, an independent filmmaker and creative artist
here locally, and we're talking about all We're really all
over the map, but that's fine because this is the
movie show we talk about. We talk about all movies.
We talk about new movies, we talk about every genre.
We talk about Marvel, fatigu is, we now call it everything.
(27:02):
We're doing a little bit of off the beaten path tonight,
talking about indie films and talking about some of the
new interest in older films that were made by just folks,
not necessarily you know, the Spielbergs or the Kubricks or
the big people, but by people who just watched all
those movies and said I want to do it too,
(27:23):
and they used what they had in the in the
eighties and nineties, and a lot of it was horror,
a lot of it was very avant garde. And yet
in this age of technological advance where you can now
shoot in eight K and where you can do amazing
things technologically. People are unearthing and having a hunger for
things that were shot in a simpler era. And that's
(27:46):
what Tim and I are talking about tonight. The whole
thing just fascinates me. How that what I'd love. Maybe
somebody will do a psychological study of it sometime on
why we want that fast.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It continues to fascinate me too, because I never thought
I never thought that anybody would dredge up No Resistance
after twenty five years, but they came to us, you know.
They there's a thrill of finding the lost gem. I'm
not saying No Resistance as a gem by any means,
(28:20):
but there's a there's a thrill in and these people
have been collecting those handmade VHS's for decades. It's like
the thrill of the hunt.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Also, right, you know, right, I'm wondering at some of
the if it hasn't already started, I'm sure it will eventually.
You know, we have so many different kinds of cosplay
conventions and sci fi fantasy, horror conventions and everything where
obviously all of the big commercial stuff is but I'll
(28:53):
bet somebody, somebody at some of those have some booths
where you can get by old stuff, and I'll bet
there's a more market for it, isn't there?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Oh, definitely, Well so, Vinegar Syndrome is just one of
a number of different distributors who are really committed to
reviving old film. They have an extensive film restoration lab.
They work with a number of different sub distributors to
find old film reels and reconstruct these drive in classics
(29:26):
and all over the country, although for some reason New
Jersey seems to be way ahead of the curve of
everywhere else.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Why not, That's where movie making originated, with mister Edison
chasing people around.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Absolutely, there's the whole idea of reviving drive ins and
having whole drive in nights where they show old period
you know, period seventies drive in fair and they also
serve as conventions with cosplay and booths and activities and contests.
(30:00):
It's an amazing scene, it really is. A couple of.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Months ago, I had a guy on the show here
who has set up a drive in theater in Pearland
and he's had to move it around the city a
couple of times, and he began it in Austin. But
I was asking him, you know, that's great. How's it going.
He says it's very healthy. You know. He said there's
(30:26):
challenges with it, but he says, but people show up
on Friday and Saturday nights.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
The gorgeous the I wonder if that's the same guy
that had the one in Shiner, like about ten or
fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Probably I think he's a little maybe too young to
have been that guy. Anyway, I was just amazed. It's
one more thing where you think, how many this art form,
how many different ways are there for people to appreciate it.
It's kind of an amazing thing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
A couple of weeks ago, we were in Burlington, Vermont,
and there's a beautiful four screen drive in movie theater there.
We went and saw Superman. There really twenty bucks to
get the car in, and you're sitting in the midst
of this big drive in complex and you see the
shafts of moving motion picture light hitting all the screens
(31:17):
and there's the concession stand in the middle, and it
was a gorgeous summer night, and it was like, I
remember what this was.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's God. You just almost brought a tear
to my I can remember going as a kid to
the drive in with my parents. I mean, I remember
one time we went and saw a Goldfinger and which
was for a little kid. That was probably a bit much,
but I enjoyed it. I certainly remember it. And I
(31:49):
can remember my dad. There used to be a theater
here called the Village Theater in Houston. It was over
on University Boulevard near Rice.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
When I moved to Houston, building was still there, but
it was a toy store.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, but that building. During the early sixties, my dad
worked a lot of part time jobs in addition to
his regular job, and he worked at that theater on
weekends and he would take me over there, and I
can remember as a very young kid seeing twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea and Hatari the John Wayne movie
(32:25):
there and everything, and I remember. Those memories are so
embedded in me, and I've wondered many times now, I wonder,
is that where I got the bug to, you know,
because I got to spend time with my dad at
his job at a time when he didn't have much
time with me, but we and we bonded over those movies.
(32:46):
I think every person has maybe not every person, but
I know a lot of guys will say, I'll never
forget the time I went and saw the first Star
Wars movie with my dad, whether it's Star Wars or
whether it was in an earlier era, and maybe it
was a John Wayne movie or who knows, whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
It was, but you know what it was with me
and my dad, which what was that Night of the
Living Dead?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Night of the Living Dead? Those horror movies? Bruce Lee,
Who could forget some of those? I mean, uh, there's
something that movies, like popular songs, become intertwined with our
social life and who we are as a person, and
they they're really they can mean everything to us, you know. Yes,
(33:39):
I remember once in a I was in a gym
and I said this. There was a guy that came
in every week and he was in perfect shape, and
I said, dude, I don't know where do you get
the motivation to look like that? And he looked at
me and very casually he said Rocky four, he said,
he said, Dolf Lunger and the stallone, you know, and
he said, like is the most manner of effect thing
(34:01):
in the world. He goes, I'm aiming for Rocky for
and as a movie guy, I went, there's the influence.
It's everywhere, and it's a fascinating thing the way movies
have affected it. I'm wondering what our movies are going
to be like fifty years from now. So do you
have any movie project? Well, you know, let's go ahead
(34:21):
and talk a little bit about something you're involved with
called Well, I visited the YouTube channel tonight. It's called
the Ghost Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Ghost Show Press is a It's a small publishing concern
that wants to continually put out works of let's film journalism,
a sense, essays and writing about genre, film and popular culture.
(34:53):
Small grassroots effort. It's funded by Kickstarter. They have created
a series of books called Everyone Everybody's Gone to the
Movies where they just get a number of real people
to write real articles. No AI involved about various skyes
of film history, right yeah. I learned about them with
(35:17):
their second book, which was called Subversive Sci Fi, and
I went Subversive sci Fi, I want a piece of
this right up and helped fund that book, and since
then I've been writing essays for them. So I hope
you'll appreciate the third volume, which was called Fantastic Flops
(35:40):
I wrote an essay about Skycaptain in the World of Tomorrow,
which is another one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For those that don't know, that was a very very
artfully done movie, not a live action movie, but beautiful.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It was one of the first, not the first, but
one of the first sort of virtually made movies, but
you know, with real people, actual actors, just made up backgrounds.
Didn't do very well successfully, but it's a favorite. And
then I also I wrote an article in the book
after that about Brandon Cronenberg's anti viral about what Brandon
(36:21):
Cronenberg David Cronenberg's son movie in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
My god, he's multiplying.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Oh yeah, oh no, he's got more. There's also Caitlin
Cronenberg who made a great movie two years ago called
Humane Do I highly recommend. And so it's still going on.
So the latest volume is just launched on Kickstarter. It's
called Subversive Sci Fi Evolved and thirty people have written
(36:52):
articles about various subversive sci fi films for this volume,
and we're going to see if you know, the public
still wants to see these works of journalism be put out.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well. The good thing about this kind of kind of
thing is that it brings attention to these films and
it becomes a cycle. You know, by the way yours is.
I read some of Omicron, which is for those of
you who don't know, it's an early sixties film.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
No, no, is it a Project Omicron was made in
nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay, wait a minute, why am I thinking early sixties?
I don't know where that came from. Anyway, what about Omicron?
So why did you choose to write about it?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
So this is another one of these resurrected shot on
video rarities from the nineties. In nineteen ninety nine, Project
Omicron was finally completed the five and a half year
journey of a bunch of then high school kids in Venice, Florida,
(38:00):
who started off making a science fiction feature film that
they wanted to be their own Outer Limits episode. So
it was done as a sort of a mid sixties,
very engineering space age Outer Limits episode. But because they
(38:23):
grew with it over five and a half years, it
became well, let's just say, they discovered surrealism and they
discovered David Lynch.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Okay, I can totally relate to all that. I think
maybe that's why I was thinking early sixties, because that's
when in my own mind when I was reading about it,
it did mention limits.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's very sear.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
People that listening that are have never heard of the
Outer Limits.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It was.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
It was the.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
It was the.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Stepsister to Twilight Zone in the early sixties, and I
loved it much as Twilight Zone. Oh and I remember
the man with the glass hand and all of those.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Oh man Harlan Ellison wrote that episode, right, Yeah, So
it's very it has Okay, so imagine how weird it
is that that now on Blu Ray, a company VHS
Hitfest has resurrected the work that these fifteen to eighteen
(39:25):
year old kids made in Florida in the late nineties
who wanted to make an Outer Limits episode. So it's
in black and white, but it was shot on home
DV cameras and as they grew as people and my
as filmmakers, talks about kind of the personal journey they
went through. Jared Whittam in particular, who is the writer
(39:49):
and director of it. It started off as kids kind
of having fun theater, kids, you know, making their own sets,
making a movie.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Hey, kids, let's go down to the barn and put
on a show.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, But then five years later they had come out
the other side through Discordianism and some other thought processes,
and they discovered the work of David Lynch and other people,
and they created what you can see in real time
when you watch this movie. Their minds evolved to a
(40:24):
pure expression of surrealism that is astounding to watch. And
up until earlier this year, when this treasure was resurrected
from home tapes, no one had ever seen it.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It's called and it's called Omicron, and you decided to
write on.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
It for the book project Omicron.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Project om absolutely because it.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is subversive science fiction in the most meaningful way possible.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Okay, all right. The name of the Kickstarter project.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It is Ghost Show Press Subversive Science Fiction Evolved and
it just launched last week.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
All right. They've already raised about half their money. If
you want to give a contribution to some of these
writers who are shedding light on some of these amazing films,
and that's something that you might want to check out.
And their YouTube channel is called.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Ghost Ghost Show Press or ghost Show Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
It's amazing just how big the film world is. You know.
I've been reflecting a lot lately, on Robert Redford. How
interesting it is that at one point he was the
most inside of Hollywood insiders, the very embodiment of a
Hollywood movie star, and yet as time went on he
(41:49):
became the seed and the guiding force for opening up
independent film. Who would have thought, you know, I mean,
what I'm getting at is that it's strange how the
medium of film seems to have an endless number of
tentacles that can go out into the world, to different cultures,
to different socioeconomic groups, with all these different genres, all
(42:14):
this different technology, and it's still healthy and growing. And
you know, people say, you know, people swore that. Let's say,
as I recall, okay, in the late forties, as TV
came in, people were convinced that having TVs in your
home would mean nobody would ever go see a movie.
So that's what was Cinema is dead. And then in
(42:34):
the fifties they tried to create the biggest screens possible.
And then just when it looked like at the end
of the sixties, like the bottom was going to fall
out of the movie industry, the new kids came along.
Spielberg's Corsese, Brian de Palmer, Lucas, all these people revitalized
it all over again. Then the video store was going
(42:57):
to kill the movie business, and then eventually COVID was
going to kill the movie business because nobody could go
to the theater and they release what was it, Top
Gun Maverick and it makes a billion dollars at the theater, right,
you know? It was it was almost like was Susica.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
I met David Brown, who produced Jaws and The Sting
and a few good men, and this was when he
was very late in life, and he wrote a book
and I said, I said, what's the one thing you've
learned about movies? And he says, if when you make
what the audience wants, they'll show up. He says, It's
(43:38):
not much more complicated than that. He says, if they're
not showing up, you ain't putting what on the what
they want on the screen.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah. Yeah, even now, we still love to go to
the theater and see film.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And communal experience.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Even yeah, even some of the you know, dumbest or
you know, most disposable stuff. It's been amazing that the
audiences are having so much fun reacting to what's on
the screen. It's palpable. It's not going away.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
You know. I last week on the show, I had
a discussion with my guest and we talked about the
fact that Hollywood never does anything original anymore. And we
were talking about it's either prequels or sequels, or spin
offs or spinoffs or spinoffs or remakes, or an animated
film made into a live action movie, or a live
(44:32):
action movie made into an animated film, and we're just bitching, bitching,
bitching about this. And then I said, you know, one
of the few original movies that came out this year
was Weapons, and he and I both liked it, and
he goes, hey, you know, I hear they're making a
prequel about it, and I went and we both realized,
(44:52):
like the tail, the snake eating its own tail, we
just spent all that time criticizing it, and there we go.
It's like, yeah, but I want to go that one.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
There's been a lot of great movies this year, so
I mean, it's still going strong. Obviously, there's a huge
amount of commercial stuff that gets shoveled around, and I'm
a fan of some of that, but you know, the
form is going strong. There's room for everything. Okay, I'm
holding a copy of your feature, your nineteen ninety two
features shot here in Houston, Yes, with a ragtag band
(45:26):
of arts. It's called No Resistance, a lunatic fringe production.
If somebody wanted to get their hands on a copy
of that, where would they go? They would go to
Vinegar Syndrome. Vinegar Vinegar Syndrome dot com, one of like
six or seven really great distributors of physical media content
(45:50):
where they're not just throwing out what's the latest, but
they're actually really reviving, restoring and building libraries of old
archive material.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Cool. All ends of the movie business are live and kicking,
all right, Tim, I really enjoyed having you on.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
My guest has been Tim Thompson. He's a filmmaker and
creative artist and theater aficionado.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
And and we're collaborating. Can can we say sure that
I'm collaborating with you on your film right now?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's right. I was actually going to save that for
the future, but we will go ahead and mention it. Well, No, Tim,
and I have. Tim has graciously come to my rescue
to help edit a movie that that I shot, and
I am very grateful for that. And you know, one
(46:50):
of the things, well, I can stretch this a little bit.
One of the things that Tim and I have discussed
is the fact that when you're making a movie with
minimal resources and money, it can take a long time
to finish. And there are so many stories of how
(47:11):
how long it can take to do a movie. And
I'm just the latest person to go through it. That
took David Lynch five years to do a Racer Head.
You know, I even run an interview with Spielberg at
the time he did Lincoln, and he and somebody said,
how long it take you to do it? He went
about ten or eleven years, and he said, and the
(47:32):
reaction he says, no, it didn't take ten or eleven
years to shoot once. It took ten or eleven years
to figure out what we were going to shoot because
this man's life was so extraordinary. We couldn't figure out
which how to do it, how to slice it out?
What do we do? And they finally focused on the
thirteenth Amendment. And he said, but it took forever. We
(47:54):
wrote draft after draft after draft, and I'm thinking, gee,
even he goes through sometimes lengthy pross says it's trying
to get something made, and that seems to be part
and parcel of movie making.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
And I think that's healthy too, because when you live
with something for a long time, it helps you hone it.
You know, you can take the time to figure out
what it needs to be or discover new avenues or whatever. Yeah, No,
Resistance took probably took six years. It took a year
to kind of figure out where we wanted to go,
and it took a year to write, and it took
(48:30):
a year to shoot, and it took two years to post.
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, it goes with the territory. If you're not a
patient person, filmmaking is probably not for you anyway. Thanks
to Tim Thompson for being on the show and exploring
some new territory here with me. By the way, if
you want to check out our Facebook page for a
true film fan, that's where we sometimes alert you to
what's coming up on the show and also sometimes throw
(48:55):
in some movie trivia there. And of course there's always
the podcast version of this that you can get on
the iHeartMedia app. Thanks for listening. I'm John Wesley Downey
and the Movie Show. We'll return next week on nine
point fifty KPRC
And welcome back. It's the Movie Show on nine to
fifty KPRC. I'm your host, John Wesley Downey. We're here
every Sunday night at eight o'clock. And of course you
can not only hear us on the radio, but we're
on the nine to fifty KPRC website on a stream,
and you can hear us on the iHeartRadio app, which
you can get anywhere on the planet. I'm told, so
(00:21):
you can't get away from us. If you can access
any of those three sources. You can hear the Movie
Show here every week, and we do all kinds of things.
And this week we're going to welcome to our microphone,
Tim Thompson. Tim, I don't even know where to begin
to try to define who and what you are, because
you've done so many things. I think the first and
(00:42):
simplest description would be to say that you're a filmmaker
and a creative person. And how long have you been
involved in film, video or creativity?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Oh gosh, Well, first of all, thank you John for
talking to me pretty much from the I was one
of those quintessential sort of seventies kids whose parents had
a super eight film camera, and so I would I
started off at a very early age, making very small
(01:14):
movies on Super eight, like you know, stop motion clay
monster movies or fake Kung Fu movies or whatever I
could think of, none of which developed properly. But from
the beginning I was just entranced with the fact that
people made movies and I love that and I wanted
to be a part of it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I see, and this has manifested itself in many different
ways in your life. And also you've been very very
involved in theater. What have you done in that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I have been very lucky to have gotten involved in
the Houston theater scene, and this goes back to the
late nineties, doing video and sound design for a number
of theaters. Also, I'm a core artist with the Catastrophic
Theater and I've been working for them for a twenty
years now.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, so a little bit of everything. And you dabbled
in music at some point, didn't you.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
We had a very strange, abstract electronic musical project in
the late nineties, like everyone did then, Cold Drop Frame.
As you do, as you do, as you did, we
took computers and we made a lot of beats and
odd noises.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Part of the reason I'm adding Tim to our guest
list here is to we mainly concentrate on mainstream and
independent things, but Tim's a little outside of that in
his primary interest, and we're going to be delving into that.
But before we do, we're going to play the Desert
Island Movie Quiz, which we do with a lot of
(02:42):
people around here, and it's a lot of fun. The
audience is very familiar with and it's pretty simple. If
you knew you were going to be stuck on a
desert island for five years, he had something to play
media on, and you had a power supply, what three
feature films would you take with you to access during
your time that you're stuck on that island? Just to
(03:03):
give me the one give them to me one at
a time.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Okay, goodness. Well, I'm gonna preface this by saying this
is really hard for me because my favorite movies at
any point are the last two I've just seen and
the one that I'm really looking forward to seeing. Okay,
and so don't I don't have a lot of hierarchy
that I think about, but I did give your your
question a lot of thought, and so here are my
(03:28):
weird answers. The first one is going to be Video.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Drome, a David Cronenberg film.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yes, it's to me, it's the er text of cinema
and the idea of shared hallucination. Uh, and I'm just
endlessly fascinated with it. So I think that is among
many movies, but probably at the top of the ones
that I never get tired of watching.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, I'm familiar with the movie, But for somebody that's
never heard of Videodrome, if you had to give it
a one sentence, what's the log line on video Drum?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What is the log line on video Drum? An unscrupulous
cable television promoter discovers an illicit channel that deals with
human misery and tries to use it to gain television viewership,
and finds himself upon in an unwitting game of psychological warfare.
(04:27):
How's that twisty? What I love about it is and
if you've seen it, you'll get it, And if you
haven't seen it, it'll intrigue you. You never understand the
exact moment when his percept, the main character's perception tips
from reality to hallucination, and so you as a viewer,
(04:49):
are drawn into at what point you are also hallucinating.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Did SCTV spoof this movie with a skit about somebody
these heads blowing up?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Real good?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Is this the one where that happens?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Golly, that might have been scanners.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I think scanners. I have the wrong Cronenberg.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
But those folks at SETV are as clever as Cronenberg.
Well they're Canadian, Canadians Canadians. So anyway, so we've managed
to work. We've already mentioned too David Cronenberg movies in here,
and we're barely gotten started. Okay, so number one Videodrome,
quite an interesting movie. Number two, what would that be?
I'm gonna have to go with Seven Samurai.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
The Seven Samurai.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah wow, because it is a tract for how to
live and employ one's craft.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
For somebody who doesn't know it. The Seven Samurai is
one of the most uh iconic movies in the history
of cinema, and it is, boy talk about much imitated.
Uh and uh, it's just it's from a Curra Curasawa.
A quick note, I went I first heard of a
(06:06):
Cura Curasawa from reading George Lucas interviews in the seventies.
He kept referring to you know who's influenced you the most,
and he goes, well, of course, a Cira Crossawa. I'd
never heard of a cure a Curasawa. So a friend
of mine called me and says, hey, I understand you're
getting into a Curri Curasawa. Was sudden. One of his movies,
Raschamon is showing at the Museum of Fine Arts that downtown.
(06:31):
You want to go see it? And it was it
was like a Sunday night, seven o'clock and I went
fifty year old Japanese movie, black and white English subtitles.
There won't be anybody there yet, let's go. And so
I'm thinking we're getting there. It's like six fifty five,
and I said, well, this would be a cake walk.
(06:52):
There won't be anybody there. We walk in, they don't
even have two seats together. We had to see this
at different parts of the theater. And I'm looking around
and going, I think other people have heard of this
curisefl two. But the Seventh Samurai for people that don't know,
American cinema has just stolen from it left and right.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, of course, of course, and not just and not
just stolen from that, but many Corosawa things in fact,
well we'll talk later. But I've stolen from Chrosawa too.
But the Seventh Samurai is special because it it's kind
of a philosophy of life. It's to me, it is
the exemplar of the idea that you are born to
(07:38):
do a craft, and your craft should be technically excellent
and in the service of other people. And it just
kind of humbles you to spend three hours with these
people being so I don't want to say driven, but devoted, riveting.
(07:59):
It's philosophic and I when I saw it a as
a young teenager, it was like, that's how you live,
that's how you that's how you do a thing.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It's it's it's a lot of things, unless you say
it is a very influential movie and it's a piece
of global filmmaking that uh well, we're still talking about
it all these years later. Yeah, and people still watch
it and learn from it. Okay, uh seven seven I
enjoy This comes up over and over again when I
(08:31):
have people in to do this is the variety we've
gone from Videodrome to the Seventh Samurai. Okay, And what
what's bringing up the rear here? Tim?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
So this was really hard for me. I want to know.
I want you to know I took took your game seriously,
and I had to think about what would be the
other slice of this pie that I would endlessly be
able to enjoy over this time. And there are a
(09:03):
certain number of movies that just make me laugh. However
many times I watch them, and it's really hard for
me to put one above all of the others. So
I'm hoping you're gonna let me have an asterisk here,
but just to throw you off on the diversity thing,
my third choice is The Hudsucker Proxy.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, a Cohen Brothers movie. Yeah, and how many? All right?
How many times have you seen it? Tim?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Probably about twelve times? Not excessively, I mean, okay, So
there are a number of other things here, Like I
could have said Scrooged, which I just cannot stop watching.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
It's a little sour, I just.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I love it so much. I could have also said
a movie that not very many people watch a lot.
I guess the early eighties Robin Williams Walter Mathow film
The Survivors.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I haven't even heard of that one.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But these are movies that just make me laugh.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Okay, all right, So we've got Video Drum, The Seven
Samurai and Hudsucker Proxy, and I doubt that those three
films have ever been in the same sentence together in
the history of mankind, but diversity to be sure. Anyway,
we're going to continue our discussion with Tim Thompson and
(10:27):
explore a little bit more about some of the background
of not only movies that he's made and been interested
in in the past, and there's one sitting right here
on my desk that he worked on called No Resistance.
But we're going to talk about a resurgence recently and
an interest in old formats and old movies from the
eighties and nineties which has become a thing. It's kind
(10:49):
of hip and cool now. I know some twenty somethings
that have educated me on the fact that an old
VHS movie can now be worth quite a lot to
people on a Friday or Saturday night that want a
pizza and want to freak out. Absolutely, we're talking with
Tim Thompson. He's a local Houston fixture in the arts.
(11:10):
He's with the Catastrophic Theater and has worked in lots
of theater and done independent filmmaking and has participated and
you've been participated in the forty eight hour Film Challenge
before we have.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, many times, we have absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
For people that don't know it, that are as I
call them civilians. In the independent filmmaking world, there's a
thing called the forty eight hour Film Challenge where a
group of filmmakers are given a task of filming a movie,
a little short film in forty eight hours, and then
there's a competition to see who made the best one.
(11:46):
And it's quite a popular thing, been going on for
quite a while. Let's let's sort of dive in here
and what is this? What is this wave of interest
slightly in VHS movies and some of the obscure movies
from the nineties do it yourself movies VHS.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Or dv Yeah, the shot on video era, it's endlessly
fascinating to me. So when we were kids back in
the day, I mean, I'm a child of the VHS era. Obviously,
I'm a child of the seventies. So I remember if
(12:29):
I wanted to try to collect or see as many
movies as possible in the eighties, I had to read
the TV guide every week and then set my VCR
to record things late at night. As the broadcasters would
let them free, right.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Do you realize how archaic this sounds to somebody who's twenty.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I absolutely do. But there's a point, and we'll come back,
we'll share back to it. And then, of course the
era of the video store, which or the video rental path,
which is I think a lot of people have a
nostalgia for those of us who were there, and I
think there's also a kind of a retro nostalgia for
(13:12):
it right now for people who weren't there yet and
kind of missed that part but are now discovering what
that meant for us when the world of cinema opened up.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Is it possible to be nostalgic for an era you
didn't live through.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I think so, and I would guarantee you either the
Dutch or the Danish have a specific word for it,
but I don't know what it would be. Also, what
happened in the eighties and then especially in the nineties
is that because video technology became more and more accessible,
(13:45):
regular folks who didn't have access to the Hollywood system
more expensive film cameras could make their own features on
their own using camquarders, and so the shot on video
era includes a number of things that happened in the
earlier part of the eighties, but especially from like nineteen
eighty eight to two thousand, there was this plethora of
(14:12):
people making movies all over the country, all over the world.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And this is before the Internet.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And before the Internet exactly, and that's an interesting slice
to it. Where people would just go out and make
their own movies with their own equipment and just hack
them together. It was very diy. I was very punk,
as very homemade, and a lot of these features would
(14:38):
go on to get some recognition. We we would you'd
be able to sell your own VHS through film magazines,
film threat, alternative cinema. People would trade them and swap
them and we were part of that. In the nineties,
we made a couple of VHS features and we would
(15:02):
also meet other people who were also doing the same things.
So I also did special effects digital effects in the
late nineties for guys who were making their own movies
in New York or in LA.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So it was almost like an underground network.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, barely underground, right at surface level.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Okay. I want to interject here because when you hear
of people like Steven Spielberg who started out doing Super eight,
and because there was an era there earlier where Super
eight was what a lot of people did something similar
on this, and then you have this eruption in the
eighties of VHS and so forth. It's the same impulse.
(15:44):
It's people that love film saying I want to do
that too, and it's like it can't be denied. It's
like it's got to pop up somewhere. And it's not
about necessarily making a million bucks or getting it down
to the sixteen theater, you know, mall theater. It's about
(16:04):
doing it for the for the reason you should always
try to do art, which is for your own satisfaction
and to see if you can do it, and to
have fun with it and the communal experience, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, there was there was. There was a rallying cry then,
and I think there is also a rallying cry now,
which is make movies with your friends. If you like movies,
go out make movies with your friends. And that's what
we did. The thing about the nineties is not everyone
had access to the acquisition and the editing, so there
(16:40):
are a lot of lost features, just regional things made
by people all over the country, but they are now
being rediscovered, and so companies like VHS Hitfest and Saturn's Core,
they're digging up out of people's basements these old nineties
(17:04):
forgotten feature films in there rebringing them out to the
new generation via blu.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Ray and I have understood that part and parcel with this.
Some friends of mine that are really into horror, who
are below the age of thirty tell me that the
hottest thing around right now is VHS horror movies. Oh yeah,
because they're so gritty and raw, and that the very
fact that they're not as slick as maybe something shot
(17:33):
today is what makes them even scarier and more interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Hmm. I think that there's something tactile about pushing a
tape in and running it that, especially for horror people,
they're going to feel like, oh, we've crossed a threshold.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Now, you know. I remember one of the stupidest things
I ever said to somebody. It was somewhere in the
eighties and nineties, when we were really starting to get
a lot of behind the scenes documentaries on how big
features were made. I said to somebody, if they keep
(18:11):
showing people how it's all done, people are going to
lose interest in movies, and a friend of mine said, oh, no,
it's the opposite, John, You're wrong. It's going to make
people want to do it themselves. And this is one
occasion when I could not have been more wrong. It
seems as though boy Andy Warhol should have said that
(18:34):
not only does everybody want to get fifteen minutes of
fame in the future, everybody wants to be a movie
maker in the future. And now, of course the technology
lets us do this.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So I think it was in the early nineties where
Francis Ford Coppola said, just wait twenty years, the next
Oscar winning film is going to be made by a
twelve year old with their own cam corder.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Right. You know, I've always felt like this independent spirit
of wanting to make movies, whether it's the eighties, nineties onward,
that whatever technology it's the it's definitely the equivalent of
kids watching the Beatles or punk rock and wanting to
(19:15):
and it's like, I'm going to do that in my
garage if that's the best I can do.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean so in nineteen
ninety two, I had moved to Houston three years prior,
and we had made a bunch of short films and
we said, well, now it's time to we want to
make a full feature, and my creative partner, David Rains,
(19:41):
envisioned this idea of a sort of a William Gibson
inspired punk, street level skateboard video, neuromancer slash noir film.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And how many hyphens can you work in?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I'll tell you. We stole all the cyberpunk stuff, but
we fashioned the entire film after Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett,
which then was later kind of fashioned into Yojimbo. And
in ninety two we shot over the summer, we shot
an entire feature called No Resistance and on the streets
of Houston, on the streets of Houston with a lot
(20:20):
of punk and experimental musicians and whoever else we could
grab off the couch. We finished editing it in ninety
four and it got some level of notoriety through mail
order and through festivals, and then just a couple of
(20:40):
years ago, the folks at Saturn's Corps that are part
of the Vinegar Syndrome group came to me and said,
we distribution, it's a distribution company, Yeah, we want to
re release it, And so we made a special Blu
ray where we got all the old materials and we
upresed it HD and made a wonderful Blu ray out
(21:03):
of it, and it again. It was it was kind
of the generation behind ours that wanted all of that
nineties stuff resurrected. And it's beautiful to see. And they're
pulling all kinds of weird, weird things out of the woodwork,
beautiful films that nobody's ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I think as much as I love mainstream films and
as much as I mean, I have issues with the
corporations that make them, but as much as I love
those and I love the classic films, there is something
about the personal film that's done at a level where
you don't have any money and where you're just trying
(21:46):
to kind of get through it. And this may be
a little early in the game for what we are
talking about, but to me, the most shining example of
that that there's ever been a head. Here's a guy living,
starving to death for five years making this incredibly weird movie,
(22:07):
and yet it is incredibly personal and it's pretty damn
well made. The sound design is unbelieve If you've never
seen David Lynch's eraser Head. Some of you are gonna
hate it, some of you are gonna love it, but
I can guarantee you you're never gonna forget it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean so I mean the biggest.
I mean, obviously, there are a couple of examples from
the seventies of that lynch Is outshines almost all of them.
But even back then you had to understand how film
worked and stock costs money, and there was there was
(22:48):
still a lot of barriers so that they got that
done in the seventies. And there are other great examples
like Jubilee is another great seventies movie that you don't
understand how that even got made. And then so of
course when cam Quarters came along, people were gonna jump
(23:11):
on that bandwagon to an even greater degree, not to
you know, not to incredible success. There's a lot of
you know, bad movie making out there, but they are
so heartfelt that you can't help but have an enthusiasm
for them.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's that's the thing about it is. It's if art
can't be personal, what is it? You know, it's got
to have that quality to it. And it is interesting
that to pull a theme out of what we've been
talking about for about the past fifteen minutes. It's fascinating
(23:47):
to me that as our technology, certainly the digital technology.
I just shot a movie that you know all about
on six K and we have AI coming, and yet
there's this huge wave of interest in movies that were
made with these crude technical standards. It's like the more
(24:10):
advanced we get, the more we want to go inside
and know what was important to somebody in their movie
on a very personal basis. To make I think a
lot of time is just to make a statement. I
want to do this, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think the backlash to any thoughts about what AI
may or may not be is the idea of authenticity.
I think we're gonna in the wake of anything can
be possible by technology, You're going to start to see
things prized for the fact that they are authentic and handmade.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know. I just I'm really curious to
see where it goes. It's the dichotomy of it super
advanced technology. No, I'd rather watch an old nineties film
made on me just because it's more interesting, you know,
because you can, you know, you can with the technology
(25:06):
we've got, you can perfect things to a level that's
almost absurd. But that's not what you want art for
I was. I've been reading quite a bit about There's
there's huge books about it, about the recording techniques that
George Martin and the Beatles used. One of the things
I was fascinated to find was that even though they're
(25:28):
the most conversially successful band in the world, Paul McCartney
and Martin and a lot of these guys have said, oh,
by the way, there's all kinds of mistakes in there.
We left them in because we thought they were cool.
Most people don't notice them, but we like the fact
that we left men that they could have corrected some
of them. They didn't care. They wanted it because you know,
(25:49):
it's not personal.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
And look look what George Harrison did. He founded handmade Films.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Handmade perfect, absolutelysolutely perfect, and we have him to thank
for several great films like Life of Brian and Everything.
You know, there's you know, one of the most popular
bands at the end of the eighties was the Traveling
Willberry's with all of these superstars, and yet if you
(26:19):
watch the thirty minute documentary on how it came together,
it was very personal. It was almost accidental. It wasn't
like some executive dictated a memo and said, get these
guys together, we'll make some bucks. It was, hey, you
want to come over and do this, And that to
me is just it's fascinating. Where do you think this
(26:41):
is going? Tell you what. Let's take a break. We're
talking with Tim Thompson, an independent filmmaker and creative artist
here locally, and we're talking about all We're really all
over the map, but that's fine because this is the
movie show we talk about. We talk about all movies.
We talk about new movies, we talk about every genre.
We talk about Marvel, fatigu is, we now call it everything.
(27:02):
We're doing a little bit of off the beaten path tonight,
talking about indie films and talking about some of the
new interest in older films that were made by just folks,
not necessarily you know, the Spielbergs or the Kubricks or
the big people, but by people who just watched all
those movies and said I want to do it too,
(27:23):
and they used what they had in the in the
eighties and nineties, and a lot of it was horror,
a lot of it was very avant garde. And yet
in this age of technological advance where you can now
shoot in eight K and where you can do amazing
things technologically. People are unearthing and having a hunger for
things that were shot in a simpler era. And that's
(27:46):
what Tim and I are talking about tonight. The whole
thing just fascinates me. How that what I'd love. Maybe
somebody will do a psychological study of it sometime on
why we want that fast.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It continues to fascinate me too, because I never thought
I never thought that anybody would dredge up No Resistance
after twenty five years, but they came to us, you know.
They there's a thrill of finding the lost gem. I'm
not saying No Resistance as a gem by any means,
(28:20):
but there's a there's a thrill in and these people
have been collecting those handmade VHS's for decades. It's like
the thrill of the hunt.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Also, right, you know, right, I'm wondering at some of
the if it hasn't already started, I'm sure it will eventually.
You know, we have so many different kinds of cosplay
conventions and sci fi fantasy, horror conventions and everything where
obviously all of the big commercial stuff is but I'll
(28:53):
bet somebody, somebody at some of those have some booths
where you can get by old stuff, and I'll bet
there's a more market for it, isn't there?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Oh, definitely, Well so, Vinegar Syndrome is just one of
a number of different distributors who are really committed to
reviving old film. They have an extensive film restoration lab.
They work with a number of different sub distributors to
find old film reels and reconstruct these drive in classics
(29:26):
and all over the country, although for some reason New
Jersey seems to be way ahead of the curve of
everywhere else.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Why not, That's where movie making originated, with mister Edison
chasing people around.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Absolutely, there's the whole idea of reviving drive ins and
having whole drive in nights where they show old period
you know, period seventies drive in fair and they also
serve as conventions with cosplay and booths and activities and contests.
(30:00):
It's an amazing scene, it really is. A couple of.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Months ago, I had a guy on the show here
who has set up a drive in theater in Pearland
and he's had to move it around the city a
couple of times, and he began it in Austin. But
I was asking him, you know, that's great. How's it going.
He says it's very healthy. You know. He said there's
(30:26):
challenges with it, but he says, but people show up
on Friday and Saturday nights.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
The gorgeous the I wonder if that's the same guy
that had the one in Shiner, like about ten or
fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Probably I think he's a little maybe too young to
have been that guy. Anyway, I was just amazed. It's
one more thing where you think, how many this art form,
how many different ways are there for people to appreciate it.
It's kind of an amazing thing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
A couple of weeks ago, we were in Burlington, Vermont,
and there's a beautiful four screen drive in movie theater there.
We went and saw Superman. There really twenty bucks to
get the car in, and you're sitting in the midst
of this big drive in complex and you see the
shafts of moving motion picture light hitting all the screens
(31:17):
and there's the concession stand in the middle, and it
was a gorgeous summer night, and it was like, I
remember what this was.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's God. You just almost brought a tear
to my I can remember going as a kid to
the drive in with my parents. I mean, I remember
one time we went and saw a Goldfinger and which
was for a little kid. That was probably a bit much,
but I enjoyed it. I certainly remember it. And I
(31:49):
can remember my dad. There used to be a theater
here called the Village Theater in Houston. It was over
on University Boulevard near Rice.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
When I moved to Houston, building was still there, but
it was a toy store.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, but that building. During the early sixties, my dad
worked a lot of part time jobs in addition to
his regular job, and he worked at that theater on
weekends and he would take me over there, and I
can remember as a very young kid seeing twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea and Hatari the John Wayne movie
(32:25):
there and everything, and I remember. Those memories are so
embedded in me, and I've wondered many times now, I wonder,
is that where I got the bug to, you know,
because I got to spend time with my dad at
his job at a time when he didn't have much
time with me, but we and we bonded over those movies.
(32:46):
I think every person has maybe not every person, but
I know a lot of guys will say, I'll never
forget the time I went and saw the first Star
Wars movie with my dad, whether it's Star Wars or
whether it was in an earlier era, and maybe it
was a John Wayne movie or who knows, whatever.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
It was, but you know what it was with me
and my dad, which what was that Night of the
Living Dead?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Night of the Living Dead? Those horror movies? Bruce Lee,
Who could forget some of those? I mean, uh, there's
something that movies, like popular songs, become intertwined with our
social life and who we are as a person, and
they they're really they can mean everything to us, you know. Yes,
(33:39):
I remember once in a I was in a gym
and I said this. There was a guy that came
in every week and he was in perfect shape, and
I said, dude, I don't know where do you get
the motivation to look like that? And he looked at
me and very casually he said Rocky four, he said,
he said, Dolf Lunger and the stallone, you know, and
he said, like is the most manner of effect thing
(34:01):
in the world. He goes, I'm aiming for Rocky for
and as a movie guy, I went, there's the influence.
It's everywhere, and it's a fascinating thing the way movies
have affected it. I'm wondering what our movies are going
to be like fifty years from now. So do you
have any movie project? Well, you know, let's go ahead
(34:21):
and talk a little bit about something you're involved with
called Well, I visited the YouTube channel tonight. It's called
the Ghost Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Ghost Show Press is a It's a small publishing concern
that wants to continually put out works of let's film journalism,
a sense, essays and writing about genre, film and popular culture.
(34:53):
Small grassroots effort. It's funded by Kickstarter. They have created
a series of books called Everyone Everybody's Gone to the
Movies where they just get a number of real people
to write real articles. No AI involved about various skyes
of film history, right yeah. I learned about them with
(35:17):
their second book, which was called Subversive Sci Fi, and
I went Subversive sci Fi, I want a piece of
this right up and helped fund that book, and since
then I've been writing essays for them. So I hope
you'll appreciate the third volume, which was called Fantastic Flops
(35:40):
I wrote an essay about Skycaptain in the World of Tomorrow,
which is another one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For those that don't know, that was a very very
artfully done movie, not a live action movie, but beautiful.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It was one of the first, not the first, but
one of the first sort of virtually made movies, but
you know, with real people, actual actors, just made up backgrounds.
Didn't do very well successfully, but it's a favorite. And
then I also I wrote an article in the book
after that about Brandon Cronenberg's anti viral about what Brandon
(36:21):
Cronenberg David Cronenberg's son movie in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
My god, he's multiplying.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Oh yeah, oh no, he's got more. There's also Caitlin
Cronenberg who made a great movie two years ago called
Humane Do I highly recommend. And so it's still going on.
So the latest volume is just launched on Kickstarter. It's
called Subversive Sci Fi Evolved and thirty people have written
(36:52):
articles about various subversive sci fi films for this volume,
and we're going to see if you know, the public
still wants to see these works of journalism be put out.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well. The good thing about this kind of kind of
thing is that it brings attention to these films and
it becomes a cycle. You know, by the way yours is.
I read some of Omicron, which is for those of
you who don't know, it's an early sixties film.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
No, no, is it a Project Omicron was made in
nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay, wait a minute, why am I thinking early sixties?
I don't know where that came from. Anyway, what about Omicron?
So why did you choose to write about it?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
So this is another one of these resurrected shot on
video rarities from the nineties. In nineteen ninety nine, Project
Omicron was finally completed the five and a half year
journey of a bunch of then high school kids in Venice, Florida,
(38:00):
who started off making a science fiction feature film that
they wanted to be their own Outer Limits episode. So
it was done as a sort of a mid sixties,
very engineering space age Outer Limits episode. But because they
(38:23):
grew with it over five and a half years, it
became well, let's just say, they discovered surrealism and they
discovered David Lynch.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Okay, I can totally relate to all that. I think
maybe that's why I was thinking early sixties, because that's
when in my own mind when I was reading about it,
it did mention limits.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's very sear.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
People that listening that are have never heard of the
Outer Limits.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It was.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
It was the.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
It was the.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Stepsister to Twilight Zone in the early sixties, and I
loved it much as Twilight Zone. Oh and I remember
the man with the glass hand and all of those.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Oh man Harlan Ellison wrote that episode, right, Yeah, So
it's very it has Okay, so imagine how weird it
is that that now on Blu Ray, a company VHS
Hitfest has resurrected the work that these fifteen to eighteen
(39:25):
year old kids made in Florida in the late nineties
who wanted to make an Outer Limits episode. So it's
in black and white, but it was shot on home
DV cameras and as they grew as people and my
as filmmakers, talks about kind of the personal journey they
went through. Jared Whittam in particular, who is the writer
(39:49):
and director of it. It started off as kids kind
of having fun theater, kids, you know, making their own sets,
making a movie.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Hey, kids, let's go down to the barn and put
on a show.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, But then five years later they had come out
the other side through Discordianism and some other thought processes,
and they discovered the work of David Lynch and other people,
and they created what you can see in real time
when you watch this movie. Their minds evolved to a
(40:24):
pure expression of surrealism that is astounding to watch. And
up until earlier this year, when this treasure was resurrected
from home tapes, no one had ever seen it.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It's called and it's called Omicron, and you decided to
write on.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
It for the book project Omicron.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Project om absolutely because it.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is subversive science fiction in the most meaningful way possible.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Okay, all right. The name of the Kickstarter project.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It is Ghost Show Press Subversive Science Fiction Evolved and
it just launched last week.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
All right. They've already raised about half their money. If
you want to give a contribution to some of these
writers who are shedding light on some of these amazing films,
and that's something that you might want to check out.
And their YouTube channel is called.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Ghost Ghost Show Press or ghost Show Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
It's amazing just how big the film world is. You know.
I've been reflecting a lot lately, on Robert Redford. How
interesting it is that at one point he was the
most inside of Hollywood insiders, the very embodiment of a
Hollywood movie star, and yet as time went on he
(41:49):
became the seed and the guiding force for opening up
independent film. Who would have thought, you know, I mean,
what I'm getting at is that it's strange how the
medium of film seems to have an endless number of
tentacles that can go out into the world, to different cultures,
to different socioeconomic groups, with all these different genres, all
(42:14):
this different technology, and it's still healthy and growing. And
you know, people say, you know, people swore that. Let's say,
as I recall, okay, in the late forties, as TV
came in, people were convinced that having TVs in your
home would mean nobody would ever go see a movie.
So that's what was Cinema is dead. And then in
(42:34):
the fifties they tried to create the biggest screens possible.
And then just when it looked like at the end
of the sixties, like the bottom was going to fall
out of the movie industry, the new kids came along.
Spielberg's Corsese, Brian de Palmer, Lucas, all these people revitalized
it all over again. Then the video store was going
(42:57):
to kill the movie business, and then eventually COVID was
going to kill the movie business because nobody could go
to the theater and they release what was it, Top
Gun Maverick and it makes a billion dollars at the theater, right,
you know? It was it was almost like was Susica.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
I met David Brown, who produced Jaws and The Sting
and a few good men, and this was when he
was very late in life, and he wrote a book
and I said, I said, what's the one thing you've
learned about movies? And he says, if when you make
what the audience wants, they'll show up. He says, It's
(43:38):
not much more complicated than that. He says, if they're
not showing up, you ain't putting what on the what
they want on the screen.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah. Yeah, even now, we still love to go to
the theater and see film.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
And communal experience.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Even yeah, even some of the you know, dumbest or
you know, most disposable stuff. It's been amazing that the
audiences are having so much fun reacting to what's on
the screen. It's palpable. It's not going away.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
You know. I last week on the show, I had
a discussion with my guest and we talked about the
fact that Hollywood never does anything original anymore. And we
were talking about it's either prequels or sequels, or spin
offs or spinoffs or spinoffs or remakes, or an animated
film made into a live action movie, or a live
(44:32):
action movie made into an animated film, and we're just bitching, bitching,
bitching about this. And then I said, you know, one
of the few original movies that came out this year
was Weapons, and he and I both liked it, and
he goes, hey, you know, I hear they're making a
prequel about it, and I went and we both realized,
(44:52):
like the tail, the snake eating its own tail, we
just spent all that time criticizing it, and there we go.
It's like, yeah, but I want to go that one.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
There's been a lot of great movies this year, so
I mean, it's still going strong. Obviously, there's a huge
amount of commercial stuff that gets shoveled around, and I'm
a fan of some of that, but you know, the
form is going strong. There's room for everything. Okay, I'm
holding a copy of your feature, your nineteen ninety two
features shot here in Houston, Yes, with a ragtag band
(45:26):
of arts. It's called No Resistance, a lunatic fringe production.
If somebody wanted to get their hands on a copy
of that, where would they go? They would go to
Vinegar Syndrome. Vinegar Vinegar Syndrome dot com, one of like
six or seven really great distributors of physical media content
(45:50):
where they're not just throwing out what's the latest, but
they're actually really reviving, restoring and building libraries of old
archive material.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Cool. All ends of the movie business are live and kicking,
all right, Tim, I really enjoyed having you on.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
My guest has been Tim Thompson. He's a filmmaker and
creative artist and theater aficionado.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
And and we're collaborating. Can can we say sure that
I'm collaborating with you on your film right now?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's right. I was actually going to save that for
the future, but we will go ahead and mention it. Well, No, Tim,
and I have. Tim has graciously come to my rescue
to help edit a movie that that I shot, and
I am very grateful for that. And you know, one
(46:50):
of the things, well, I can stretch this a little bit.
One of the things that Tim and I have discussed
is the fact that when you're making a movie with
minimal resources and money, it can take a long time
to finish. And there are so many stories of how
(47:11):
how long it can take to do a movie. And
I'm just the latest person to go through it. That
took David Lynch five years to do a Racer Head.
You know, I even run an interview with Spielberg at
the time he did Lincoln, and he and somebody said,
how long it take you to do it? He went
about ten or eleven years, and he said, and the
(47:32):
reaction he says, no, it didn't take ten or eleven
years to shoot once. It took ten or eleven years
to figure out what we were going to shoot because
this man's life was so extraordinary. We couldn't figure out
which how to do it, how to slice it out?
What do we do? And they finally focused on the
thirteenth Amendment. And he said, but it took forever. We
(47:54):
wrote draft after draft after draft, and I'm thinking, gee,
even he goes through sometimes lengthy pross says it's trying
to get something made, and that seems to be part
and parcel of movie making.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
And I think that's healthy too, because when you live
with something for a long time, it helps you hone it.
You know, you can take the time to figure out
what it needs to be or discover new avenues or whatever. Yeah, No,
Resistance took probably took six years. It took a year
to kind of figure out where we wanted to go,
and it took a year to write, and it took
(48:30):
a year to shoot, and it took two years to post.
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, it goes with the territory. If you're not a
patient person, filmmaking is probably not for you anyway. Thanks
to Tim Thompson for being on the show and exploring
some new territory here with me. By the way, if
you want to check out our Facebook page for a
true film fan, that's where we sometimes alert you to
what's coming up on the show and also sometimes throw
(48:55):
in some movie trivia there. And of course there's always
the podcast version of this that you can get on
the iHeartMedia app. Thanks for listening. I'm John Wesley Downey
and the Movie Show. We'll return next week on nine
point fifty KPRC
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