#186 - Nick Salazar - Round 3 — Building a Feature Film at Home: The Game of Life - Stupid Questions with Seth Hill

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
How's it going everyone? Welcome back to another edition
of the Stupid Questions podcast.Today in the Power, we're going
to be talking with Nick Salazar.This is his round three
interview. He's the founder of Tri Rig and
a number of other things, but heis also a newly inducted member
and to the filmmaking world because he made a full length
feature film called The Game of Life and he allowed me to screen

(00:20):
it privately ahead of time to beable to talk about it.
Make sure to check up the show notes if you want to see a
preview to that film before we dive into this conversation.
But Nick is really great guy, a super deep thinker, very
talented in a number of ways. So check out the show notes for
the trailer for his YouTube. Also go check out Tri Ridge
stuff if you're in the triathlonworld because they make some
pretty cool, amazing, just different pieces that make our

(00:44):
bike super dynamic. So make sure to go check that
out. But really appreciate Nick for
coming on and wanted to thank him for that.
Before we jump into the podcast,though, I just want to say thank
you so much for being here. Check out the show notes for
links to the trailer, like I said, for links to all of the
stuff that Nick is involved with.
And also, we're going to be having episode #200 come up here
soon and would really appreciateit if you guys could give me

(01:06):
some ideas for things that you think would be good to do for
that episode as a momentum in time.
Yeah, thank you guys so much. Really appreciate you being here
again. And without further ado, I want
to introduce you to Nick Salazar.
I asked you this question beforebut I had to re ask it again.
Your camera is actually like in front of your monitor.

(01:27):
You're looking at it and then the screen is behind it.
Is that how you you get through with this really good eye
contact thing? No, I, I don't have a super good
teleprompter setup right now. You can do that kind of thing,
but I don't have it set up. I just look into the camera and
then if I want to look at your face, I go like over here or
something. OK.
Yeah. It that I so I since you told me

(01:49):
that, I do remember you telling me that now and I have tried to
especially in like intro and outro, like actually look at the
camera, but it's so hard for me to like actually connect.
So you have a good skill that you've lived.
With thank you, I appreciate it.How you doing man?
So good. Yeah, it's it's really cool to
get to do the Seth Hill hat trick.

(02:10):
This is my third time talking toyou.
Bring it on man, Happy to make it happen, yeah?
Yeah, it's a real privilege. Thank you.
Yeah, dude, thanks for coming on.
Are you excited about? What are all you excited about?
Obviously the film. We're going to talk about this,
the game of life. I have actually a list of
questions as I watched it and went through things that

(02:30):
hopefully you've never had questions too, but outside of
the movie too, like what's goingon in life.
Wait, wait. First I got to ask, when did you
watch? When did you finish it?
I literally finished it like right before this.
I here's what happened yesterday.
I watched an hour of it and thenI watched the final 30 minutes
today. OK, All right, cool.
So I'm pretty fresh. Yeah, So where'd you stop

(02:54):
yesterday? I stopped yesterday, right when
you and I might forget her name.The blonde girlfriend, Jenny.
Yeah. You guys were talking on the
edge of the bed, I think, with the the skeleton key, and you
were like kind of talking to theaudience, talking to her.
And then you were about to go tothe Ocularium.
Cool store. Yeah.
Cool. And then finished it from here.
Yeah. Awesome.

(03:16):
Yeah, No, life's going well. We got, you know, we have a
really full house here. My wife and I, you know,
together we're a little blended family.
We have 6 kids total. So it's like 8 people when
everyone's here. Yeah, not all of them live here
anymore somewhere are off in college and in their own
apartments and whatnot. But everybody's always going
through some kind of milestone. We have, you know, a kid who is

(03:41):
in high school and recently started high school, another one
who just started middle school, another one who is in preschool
for the very first time, and then a first grader.
And so they're all going throughthese different milestones and
sort of like growing in their own way.
It's it's pretty cool. Yeah.
Everybody has their own little thing.
So. Yeah, it's, it's always a bit of

(04:04):
a wild party. But for me personally, like on
the personal side, the biggest thing is, you know, the movie or
I guess it's a combination of personal and professional.
But yeah, in terms of what I'm doing, it's it's been a kind of
a wild ride. I mean, it was something the
whole family was involved with in some way and they could all

(04:27):
just see how excited Dad was about this project.
And I think I mentioned to you last time, we filmed a bunch of
the movie, most of it in the house.
You know, we converted our basement into a set.
We converted our master bedroom into a set for some scenes.
And you know, everybody got to help sort of dress the sets or

(04:50):
had some kind of input one way or another.
And they were all just so super excited.
So we had, like, a private family screening of the movie a
few weeks ago. That was like the first time
anyone had seen the completed thing other than me and my wife.
But yeah, that it's just been a crazy, crazy run.

(05:11):
And so now it's finally the phase of trying to figure out
how to let the world see this movie.
So which is a whole other like can of worms.
Yeah, no kidding. Well, it's also cool.
So I recently listened to a a podcast I think it was with Joe
Rogan and what is his name from 2 1/2 men.

(05:33):
Charlie Sheen, He's everywhere right now.
Have you, Have you? Did you listen to that episode
with him and Joe? I didn't see the Joe Rogan 1.
OK, so it was really interestingbecause he talked about being on
the set of Apocalypse Now, like his father was directing that
film and hearing you talk about your kids being near and around
the film set during the same time.
It just, it kind of sparked a little bit of interest in me
like, Oh yeah. Like, I can only imagine what it

(05:55):
would mean to a child to be around dad who's super creative
and bent on like, getting this thing out there, telling a
story, all of the back and forth.
So I guess my question is, how many of your kids you think are
going to grow up to be film people?
I don't know. My daughter has, my oldest
biological daughter has been interested in drama since she

(06:19):
was very little and she's reallyinto musicals and plays and
that's kind of been something she's known from a very young
age and is almost always enrolled in some kind of play.
Like they have them year round where we are.
There's a couple of really good organizations that do it either
through a school or through likean independent place.

(06:41):
So she's super interested in that and she loves, I think kind
of like the singing, dancing, showman side of it.
But recently she started writingher own little story called The
Pound, about two dogs, which arefamily pets and kind of like
taking little short clips on an iPhone and trying to string them

(07:05):
together with the software there.
So she may have some kind of interest there, although I'm not
sure how strong strongly her interest is divided between the
acting and performative side of things, which I think is common
to young kids. And definitely, you know, I, I
was that way when I was young and she's that way versus the

(07:28):
storytelling side of things, which sounds like the same thing
maybe to the uninitiated, but isa different sort of category.
You know, it's like, do you havean interest in writing and
creating a story so that other people can see it versus do you
want them seeing you? I guess it is sort of the
difference there. So I wish, yeah, I wish that

(07:51):
there was a way actually. So on that topic of whenever you
read a book that requires a lot of especially like fantasy and
stuff, if you're thinking like Chronicles in our near Lord of
the Rings, everyone before they've seen the movie has like
this picture in their minds eye.And I wish that there was a way
to project all of those and makean aggregate of what people
actually like thought of, saw, heard in their mind.
Like, it's such a fascinating thing, the imagination.

(08:13):
I mean, and that's the privilegeof being a filmmaker is that you
get to have your vision projected for others.
And I, I love that part of it, like the fact that what I'm
thinking of and what I'm imagining, I can make come to
the screen and have other peoplewatch.
And I don't know, like, I think it's so popular to say that film

(08:36):
adaptations of books never do justice to the source material.
And what you imagined in your mind is always so much better
than whatever the filmmaker was able to put in front of you.
And I, I bristle at that reaction because I adore movies
and I love watching movies. And as I've gotten into the
creative process of making them myself, I've only fallen in love

(08:56):
with them more. So like, you know, you watch it
or it, you know, chapters one and two, the two different
movies, I think they're just masterpieces, right?
And they're just wonderful movies.
And the book is a different experience.
But trying to say 1 is better than the other is like saying
that a good meal is better than,you know, a trip to Paris or

(09:22):
whatever. Yeah, they're different.
I mean, they're different storytelling mediums.
And like, I happen to love movies.
And, you know, maybe a better example is like Harry Potter,
'cause there's so many of them. And then there were so many
different film makers involved. There were several different
directors for the 8 Harry Potterfilms.
I think the films are fantastic.And I've read all 8, all seven

(09:46):
books multiple times by myself and to my children.
And like, I don't know, I, I don't, I don't have the feeling
like, oh, the book is always better.
It's like movies are incredible and they do something so
different. There's, there's, you know, you
never get to hear a soundtrack while you're reading a book.
You never get to hear a sound effect like that kind of thing.

(10:07):
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's super interesting. Well, so with any form of
artistry, there's this artist dilemma where you are trying to
create something and you know, especially when you're newer
into something, I would imagine like you have this vision, but
using all of your skills, the tools, the people, the writing,
whatever. I'm sure there's a million
things that go into that I'm noteven aware of.
But putting those all together to culminate into when you look

(10:30):
at the picture and you say, oh, like that's, that's it.
I guess 2 questions. Do you think it exists where
people of directors or watch a film at the end be like that?
Was it perfectly 100%? And how close did you get in
this experience of like, I mean,a full length feature film, hour
and a half, That's like tons of opportunities to meet that.

(10:50):
Yeah, I, I doubt that anyone hasever finished a film thinking
that there is nothing they couldimprove or do better.
And certainly there's so much about the game of life that
could be improved. Like every time I'm watching it
and scrutinizing it on a really high level, there's stuff that I

(11:10):
feel I could change. I think the the biggest example
of that is like that the overallaudio needs, you know, more
tender love and care than I had time or ability to give it.
We were coming up on festival deadlines where I needed to
submit the film by date X and, you know, I had to get the thing

(11:31):
done. But there's stuff in there that,
you know, isn't perfect yet. As I look at the film as a
whole, I'm so unbelievably happyand proud of it and happy with
it because it's like making thismovie was by far the largest

(11:51):
professional and creative endeavor that I've ever
undertaken. Like the biggest single lift and
also the most rewarding and fulfilling of my life by a long
shot. And I'm talking like
professional and creative. I'm not, you know, comparing
those personal things like getting married and having a
child and those things as a professional creative endeavor,

(12:13):
easily the best thing ever. And when I look at it, it's
like, wow, that there's a movie there.
It has a beginning, a middle andend.
And people can watch it and it'sa story.
And it's like, I, I don't have any illusions that it's like the
best film ever made, or I don't.I don't think I see it as better
than it is. In fact, I don't even know if

(12:34):
it's good because I'm too close to it, but I know that it is a
movie and I'm just delighted with it for what it is.
But there's so much that could be improved.
And if I was making the movie from scratch today, I'm sure
most of the decisions would be different.
But that doesn't even mean that all of them would be better,
because sometimes you just have a little accident and it happens

(12:56):
a certain way and that's beautiful.
But you know, it would be a different movie if I remade it,
But I don't even know, you know,if it would be better or worse
or whatever. But yeah, no one, no one ever
makes their perfect movie. But I don't, I don't think I
could love it anymore 'cause it's like it's my first movie.

(13:17):
The experience was great. All the people were just
unbelievably wonderful. Like there's not a single person
I worked with on set that was disappointing in any way.
Everybody gave their all. They gave me so much trust and
it it was just unbelievably wonderful.
So I I can't say enough good things about the experience.

(13:39):
Yeah, that's phenomenal. Well, a couple of questions.
Short one first, how long was the period from?
Like, OK, I have decided I'm going to start making this film
and then the completion of it. Like how long was that period?
So I think it was mid to late 2023 when I thought, hey, maybe
I'll start writing a script and.That's like when I start talking

(14:04):
to you, I think, or you you you had a pieces of a script or you
maybe had finished most. Of it, yeah.
So sometime in 2023 I started and now we're towards the end of
2025 S 2 years basically, yeah. That's a long time.
So during that period of time you have a lots of opportunity
to work on things. A lot of things that like

(14:25):
visually, I don't think we actually get to see audio, I
guess like scripting and things like that, like we hear it.
But the things that stood out tome, honestly, I think for this
film were maybe just because whoI am and I'm not really a film
critic, but the really small detailed things like the visual
effects of the skeleton key whenyou hold it certain ways and the
screen flares will kind of rotate in an auspicious if it

(14:47):
was the right word to wait, right word to use.
Like it was just very like tantalizing.
It's like, oh, that that must have taken a lot of work to
actually figure out how to do that.
Or just the different visual effects that you were able to
throw in there. But like a lot of these little
things. My question is, how much what,
what, which of those things did you like, obsess over the most
that like, you got hung up on me, like I got to get this

(15:08):
right? I don't think there's any one
thing that I was even able to spend all that much time on.
There's so much of the film thatwas just like, you know, we have
to go from A to B to C, you know, probably, you know, like
one of the things that you wouldthink had an inordinate amount

(15:29):
of time spent on it was the color of the bedspread in the
psych ward, right? It's like this very shocking
royal blue, like a very vibrant royal blue.
We bought and returned probably like 8 different sets of
comforters as we were going through that.
So, you know, I would like really scrutinize them on Amazon

(15:52):
and like, you know, do I like the stitching pattern on that
one, that one, you know, that one.
I don't like the hem. It's like this funny shape and
then, you know, going back and forth on that.
That one probably took a long time.
But then again, that was just like, you know, a little time on
Amazon and then you wait for thething and then you, you know, go
through that cycle again. So well, I got really good at
repacking the comforters becausewe would just like put them on

(16:14):
the bed. No one would touch them and then
we just like put them back in and return.
Cardboard back in there? Yeah, Zip them up.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that kind of thing.
So I think because I tried as much as I could to budget that
kind of obsessive time where it would, you know, make the most
difference on screen, right? As stupid as the color of a

(16:34):
bedspread is, those bedspreads are on on film for like 15
minutes, right? And I was particular about the
color palette of the film. So the first 10 minutes of the
film or so are in the protagonist apartments.
It's all yellows, greens and Browns.
And if you look at still frames of that part of the movie,
they're all those colors. Then the psych ward is the next,

(16:57):
you know, 50 pages of the scriptor so, about an hour of film, 50
minutes or so. It's all whites, Blues and
Grays. And so we we have this kind of
deliberate color theme. He starts sort of on earth in
the mundane. I'm trying to follow to some
extent loosely, the hero's journey as articulated by guys
like Joseph Campbell or a more modern example that people might

(17:17):
know is Dan Harmon and his storycircle.
He's the guy one of the Co creators of Rick and Morty.
So it's this idea our protagonist starts in his
mundane zone of familiarity, goes to somewhere unfamiliar
and, you know, has a quest, you know, get something that he
desires, maybe loses something or pays a great price for what
he wants, a justice to this new place, you know, and comes first

(17:38):
full circle, eventually ends up back in his zone of comfort
again. But we had those sort of earthly
colors to begin with. Then the psych ward to some
extent represents like an ascentinto the sky.
It's all these like sky colors, peace, you know, maybe, you
know, it's almost as if he's died and gone to heaven.
That's not what's happening withthe plot, but that's sort of the

(18:00):
color idea there. And then after the psych ward,
he goes to Las Vegas. And so the colors we chose for
that were these Reds, golds and blacks.
So it's like very dark red, sometimes some gold colors in
there. And then the very end of the
film has kind of an epilogue. And, you know, thematically the

(18:24):
idea was, you know, you start ina story with a thesis and then
you present its antithesis. And then at the end you have
some kind of a synthesis. And so visually, I tried to
represent that by kind of showing all the colors.
So there's a bunch of sort of rainbow effects that happened
towards the very end of the film.
Jack is in front of Jenny, there's a bunch of rainbow

(18:45):
colors happening. And then we see them in their
apartment. Jack has come full circle.
He's in his apartment and there's a a couple of rainbow
pieces of art on the wall. And so the idea is that it's
kind of a synthesis of the ideasand the journey he's gone on and
the the ideas that he's learned sort of throughout the process.
And so a very, very long answer to your question.

(19:07):
I would obsess if I could over things that would make a visual
impact. So like those stupid comforters,
I spent a bunch of time trying to figure that out.
But. Or like the sound of the
skeleton key. I spent a bit of time on that
sound because you hear it so much.
It's like in the background, youknow, doing its little thing.

(19:28):
Yeah. Yeah.
So I wanted it to, you know, sound a certain way.
And so I spent as much time as Icould as I had on things like
that. But so many of the decisions
that you might think, oh, he obsessed over that.
It was just like I have to get this done and move on to the
next thing. Yeah, it's super interesting to
me because I I don't know how big your team was, but I'm

(19:49):
assuming it wasn't at like astronomically large.
So you had to be scrappy and puta lot of time and effort of
multiple people into multiple different hat wearing
activities. But it's fascinating to me
because this concept of like thethe small little things that
like the comfort of color or theangle of a frame for those who
aren't trained for these certainthings, like they can invoke a

(20:10):
certain emotion or a thought or feeling.
But it's interesting because as a as a viewer, and I think of a
movie like. Excuse me, Lord of the Rings,
for example, there was such an enormous amounts of detail and I
got to go to the Hobbiton thing in New Zealand and I started to
realize like, wow, there were somany details that were placed
that I really did that I just kind of glossed over, didn't
even take in. But it's the summation of all of

(20:31):
those things that really, I think makes the impact.
But oftentimes there's no way for the audience to truly, I
think, thank the director or thank the writer for that
because they don't pick up on them.
So I would, I would struggle to know what I'd probably get lost
in the weeds. I feel like of like, oh, what do
I actually do? Like what's too much?
What's too little? Yeah.
And I mean, there's a there's, there's part of those decisions

(20:54):
that, you know, you hope it makes a difference to the
audience, even if only on a subconscious level.
And some of these things, you know, maybe never make their way
to an audience, but they do maketheir way into the people making
the film, right? Like maybe they make a
difference for us as we make it.Maybe that changes some
performances or performance decisions.

(21:17):
You know, I've heard stories of people dressing sets where the
set decorator will like, leave anote in a drawer that, like the
character might have written, you know, like an old shopping
list or something that wound up in the junk drawer.
No one sees it on camera. Maybe, you know, no one ever
even sees it. But like, they like that it's
there, you know? So like you were mentioning some

(21:41):
of the lens flares like the skeleton key evokes on camera,
that was part of some important decisions.
So I did a lot of research on lenses into this movie.
I really love cinema lenses and the differences between them.
And the front half of the movie is made with these very clean
spherical lenses that are very good at accurate reproduction.

(22:05):
The colors will be very much as they were in real life.
And there's not a lot of what are called, you know, defects.
You know, you shine a bright light into the lens, you'll just
see a light. It won't wash out your image.
The back half of the movie is shot on some very wild
anamorphic lenses that really evoke films of the past.

(22:26):
And so if you shine a light intothose lenses, you get these wild
blue flares with all kinds of different elements.
And, you know, sometimes they'reassociated with science fiction
for that reason. Like the lenses I shot on are
very similar to some legendary lenses called the Panavision C
series anamorphic. They were very famously used on

(22:47):
films like Star Wars, among hundreds and hundreds of other
films. But, you know, that sort of
aesthetic of those blue lines and those crazy little orbs
dancing around was something that I loved.
And so, you know, when you shinethe lights of the skeleton key
into the camera, they're going to do some funky things.
And so that was all natural, I mean natural at the lens.

(23:08):
I was going to ask that because even with some of the like the
sun, the hitting the angle of I guess the lens whenever you were
standing outside of the ward getting ready to go to Vegas and
like that kind of stuff, I was like, oh, is that added in there
or is that legit or? That was actually from the
spherical lenses. I'm glad you noticed that one,
the little rainbow that kind of arcs over or like, yeah, those

(23:30):
those were from the sphericals just because of where we were
standing and then the fact that we allowed it.
So like, you know, sometimes if a flare comes in and you don't
want it, you get out of matte box and you sort of cover the
lens like this with a little like a hat brim kind of a thing
to prevent the flare from occurring.
But I loved it and I thought it was actually nicely

(23:50):
representative of the point where we are.
We're in the journey. But yeah, a lot of those, those
were optical and in camera, but they did come with a bit of
decision making and thought behind them.
But I'm, I'm glad you noticed them.
But I think, you know, half the time no one would ever notice.
And, you know, hopefully people don't.

(24:11):
There are scenes, for example, Jack sits down and has a
telephone call with the doctor from the psych ward, right?
We switch back and forth quite abit between those very clean
spherical lenses and those very wild aberrant anamorphic lenses.
Yeah, I did notice that. Oh, OK, you did.

(24:33):
I do, yeah, because I remember Iit's yeah.
And sometimes like you'd use themore like wide lenses and then
it would go to like a normal back to when you and Jen you're
talking and then like super wideor whatever that is called.
I don't know the technical jargon, but yeah, I did notice
those in the, it was in the in the bar or the wherever that
place was. He was taking the phone call,
right? Well, the phone call is in the

(24:58):
the hotel suite, the bar scene between him and Jenny.
Those are all that's all on spherical actually.
It's just sometimes we're using,you know, a longer lens to have
a close up of her face and sometimes a wider lens to see
two people. No, no, no, that's all good.
I mean, I think the idea is thatthe audience isn't going to be
sitting there wondering what lenses did you use or whatever,

(25:20):
or like, oh, is this, you know, the people who make films think
about those things as they watchmovies.
But hopefully it just looks goodand you're just following the
story, right? Hopefully you don't really pick
apart those things. I mean, sometimes you see
something and you're like, oh, that's cool what that skeleton
key is doing. But you assumed it was a visual
effect. And in fact, it was optical.

(25:42):
But either way, I think you got the idea that it was to sort of
evoke a little sense of mystery or fantasy surrounding this
object. That's that's important to the
film. But do you wanna, do you want me
to send you like little stills to like put over some of this
part when we're talking, or do you want to just leave that out?

(26:02):
Sure. Yeah, You can send them to me.
Will I do a good job of adding them in?
AI and me kind of work together,so we'll see if I can throw them
in. Yeah.
But that would be really good. Yeah.
Yeah. One question I did want to ask
that. So I was expecting, for whatever
reason, when I was watching it or I wasn't expecting or I was
wondering if at the end you weregoing to like just wake up back
in the bathtub or something. Because.

(26:24):
And here's why I thought that. So you start out with the box
cutter, like that's what slit the wrist, and then you go
through that. And then this guy, man, I'm so
sorry. That's right.
What is the gentleman's name? I'm sorry, I don't remember his
name. Who was?
Eddie, probably, yeah. You know, we may not want to
divulge too much of the plot. OK.

(26:46):
OK. So we won't do that.
You can ask about why, but maybejust don't say divulge your
whole plot reasoning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The question has an important answer that I can talk about,
which is that? OK.
So I don't know if we want to cut things where we talk about
plot details, where you mention his stated profession or I

(27:07):
mentioned that line. But I can do that for you.
OK, cool, cool. So I'll just pick up from here.
So you asked a question related to the end of the film that
we're not going to talk about the exact details of.
But your question was whether certain elements of the film are
meant to evoke some sort of questions or doubts about the

(27:28):
reality of the film. And the answer to that is yes,
absolutely. So there are at least two or
three valid ways to interpret the events of the film as seen
on camera. So our point of view character
is almost always Jack. It's always Jack, really.
He's the audience substitute. It's a very first person movie.

(27:49):
And in fact, Jack talks directlyto the camera for a lot of the
film, but he's not necessarily areliable narrator.
And, you know, there are a lot of elements in the film where
the veracity of what was shown on screen is called into
question. And sometimes we'll see multiple
explanations for an event, both of which cannot be true.

(28:09):
So there are a few different ways to read the full plot of
the film, and an explicit answeris not necessarily given.
Not because I think, you know, it's cute to just leave the
audience in mystery, but becausethat's part of the idea of the
story. So Jack is someone who suffers

(28:31):
from mental health problems thatare not ever explicitly
specified. It may be severe clinical
depression. It may be, you know,
derealization disorder. It may be dissociative identity
disorder. It may be depression not not
otherwise specified or some other things.
There are several things within the DSM that would fit.

(28:53):
The journey that he goes on is sort of one of not only
confronting and accepting the fact that he has problems, but
learning how to be happy regardless, to be happy with
whatever the reality of his situation is.
And so the, the truth of the story is not as important as the

(29:15):
truth of Jack's emotional journey and where he winds up at
the end. In the beginning of the movie,
he's a very unhappy person and he states so explicitly.
By the end of the movie, he seems much, much happier.
And whether or not he's completely insane or whether
what you see is exactly what happened, the point is that he
has come to a place of acceptance that that may be

(29:36):
important for all of us. So I, I don't like to be really
explicit on the version of events that I like because I
want to kind of let people look at that and sort of pick apart
that message however they want to.
With that idea. It's that it's more about Jack

(29:56):
accepting his life and his fate and where he is, then trying to
figure out what about it is exactly true.
Yeah, when you were writing thisand then planning out this film,
I think we talked about this previously.
I can't remember if it was on the podcast or not, but like
there's a level of allegory or similarity with like things that
you have been through in the past or have not.

(30:18):
So however deep you want to go, what level like what, what
themes of the movie were actual reality for you and your life
that you wanted to kind of put into this story?
And because I can see like you had yourself be the lead actor,
I think for an obvious reason other than just you could have
probably could have hired someone else, but you had
experience in these areas. So how many of those areas were

(30:40):
things that you like truly went through and experienced, and how
did you decide what to put into the film and what not to?
Yeah. I mean, the way that I tend to
say this is that the film is 100% fiction, but it's also more
or less 100% autobiography, you know?
So none of the exact events of the film happened in my life,

(31:01):
but all of them are sort of emotionally true in some way,
and some of them may be factually true to 1° or another.
I think maybe the biggest, the the most poignant emotional
truth is that Jack starts out ina relationship that looks sort

(31:28):
of ordinary and healthy and, youknow, involves ordinary
struggles with, you know, reasonable motivations.
But he hates it and he's not happy there.
And by the end of the film, he winds up with someone that maybe
is healthy or maybe suffers fromsignificant delusions of her

(31:50):
own. But the point is he's much
happier in that relationship, and he finds something that's
much stronger with someone who might be nuts herself.
So I think he says that at some point.
I think one of the lines is, isn't that great?
She's as nuts as I am. And he says something like that

(32:11):
a couple of times. And so maybe maybe that's one of
the more poignant truths is like, right.
So mental health and those themes were very, very important
to me because not only have theybeen important aspects of my
life, but they've been importantaspects of relationships that
I've been in or maybe am in, or maybe they're just past
relationships. I don't want to go too deep into

(32:33):
that. But the idea that we accept one
another for who we are and not for an idealized perfection that
we have in our heads, I think isreally important.
So, or at least that was really important for me.
And the relationship I find myself in now is very much

(32:55):
rooted in that concept that we're, we're OK with one another
being crazy. And not only are we OK with
that, but that's something that makes our relationship stronger.
Because I think, at least in my experience, if there's one
person who feels like they're great and the other person has

(33:18):
real big problems, that's alwaysgoing to be, you know, a source
of conflict. Like I'm always trying to fix
you. You're not to the level that I'd
like you to be at. You know that that's tough.
Two people that can say, oh, we each have these significant
problems. And when you're struggling with
some of yours, I'll help you. And when I'm struggling with
some of mine, you'll help me. I mean, it sounds so basic and

(33:43):
almost like a truism, but it wassignificant in my life.
And so that that made its way into the film.
Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought that up because I think that
more people hopefully can realize that, that it's not just
a truism like most people do view that whether we're honest
with ourselves or not. And sometimes we're blinded by
the fact that we do view people that way.
I'll just speak personally like I've been married for over 8 1/2

(34:05):
going on 8 1/2 years now and thank you very much.
Over the past like year and a half, honestly, man, it's been
similar to where deep down, so I'll say this, when I was really
young, I used to have this very real belief that when I played
soccer, I was like, if I just had ten other of me, we'd have
the perfect soccer team. And that belief and mentality

(34:26):
carried all the way through marriage to where I realized
even kind of subconsciously, I was like, yeah, I'm really the
one carrying this relationship. But, you know, she's a little
crazy, but I can fix her whatever.
And I'll just kind of do that. And once I started to like, come
and make that shift through somepretty candid and raw
conversations and start to like,one thing I've recently been
saying to my wife for the past few months is like, I realized

(34:47):
how wise you actually are because for a while, I didn't
view that. And it takes, it takes some work
to get in, in longevity in a relationship, I think, to get to
that point to where you can actually start to say that.
So it's such a cool theme that you were able to pull out in the
film. Yeah.
I mean, I think sometimes that can be, you know, a long journey
in a particular relationship. And I think sometimes it's like

(35:08):
a long journey in life, but it can come at the beginning of a
relationship. So my wife, my wife and I, we
met on a first date. We just met through one of the
online dating apps. But we were supposed to just,
you know, get an appetizer somewhere or something.
We ended up sitting there for 2 1/2 hours.
That's awesome. By the end of that meeting, each

(35:30):
of us kind of knew the whole like life story baggage and all
of the other because it was like, yeah, here's here's the
three things that, you know, I had that failed in my last
relationship. Here's how I'm crazy, here's my
problems. And so we kind of went through
the litany of it right then and it was super potent.

(35:51):
And so that I mean, that I. We've been together almost 10
years. And thank you.
Thank you. Yeah, we married, I think not
quite as not as long as you. So our 8th anniversary will be
this coming January. But yeah, that's remained a

(36:13):
super important. I think bedrock of our
relationship is just the acknowledgement of our own
imperfections in both directions.
But, you know, there's so much more happiness comes from it, I
think, you know. How old are you?
I think I asked you this before,but.
I'm about to turn 42. Yeah.

(36:34):
So like you, yeah, you had I started a relationship now or
even the probably two years ago,I think that I would have
probably approached it with a lot more of that candid, just
radical honesty. Because I think the older we
get, we start to realize like I don't, I don't get time for BS.
Yeah, it's just Yeah. Here's my book.
Here's my diseases. Take what you want, and if you
like me, cool. Then we'll move forward, yeah.

(36:56):
Yeah. And I mean, also just being
honest about what you want. I think when we're younger,
we're so reluctant to just be like, here's what I'm looking
for and are you that I don't want you to pretend otherwise
because we just hope like maybe if I just pretend to be the
thing that this person wants, then, you know, Yeah.

(37:16):
And like, maybe I'll, I'll sort of be able to sort of yank over
the things that I want. Yeah.
I mean, you see somebody, you, you instantly have these hopes
and aspirations of what they might be like.
It's so easy to project the fantasy of like, here's what our
perfect relationship could be, but it's like that that doesn't

(37:37):
exist. And like, the more you can know
about the reality of it, sooner the better, right?
If you're like, here's the threethings that are so important to
me. And then they're like, well,
here's the three that are important to me.
And like, you know, you kind of see where they match up or not.
But yeah, more of the film is has a connection to reality than

(37:59):
you would guess. But it's it's all fiction.
But there's a lot of it that's really, really true.
Why, if I can I say the name of the program?
Program. Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure.
So why did you name it Babylon? Oh, I don't know.
I think it just sounded cool. And it's like, it's like ancient

(38:24):
city of, you know, all peoples and debaucheries or something
like that. It's not necessarily to be
connected to history, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. I'm just looking up the, the
actual definition. I was like, I'm sure I had
something in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It it, that's not meant to be super significant necessarily,

(38:49):
but. Your subconscious coming through
man. I'm talking about sure, Yeah,
yeah. Well, so I view everything in
more of like a religious contextor like a Christian worldview.
So like that's why I pointed that out.
I was just curious. And if there's nothing, that's
fine. But also at the end you had a
this phrase when you're talking with the doctor Steve, I

(39:12):
believe, and he is kind of you guys are having this monologue
where this like I'm learning this lesson of kind of self
acceptance. I don't want to say too much.
Is this saying the plot again? That's OK.
No, thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. So like this level of self
acceptance and kind of letting the chips fall where they may.
There were variables that were placed there that things

(39:35):
decisions were made and this is how it is.
And you got to kind of live withyourself and move forward and in
the best way possible in the present.
But you said this really interesting phrase where you're
kind of viewing everything from an external lens and it's kind
of like starting to close in. And then you say this phrase,
it's just I am. And I thought that was an
interesting phrase rather than it's just me or it's who I am.

(39:59):
Like the I am phrase has a lot of like biblical context or
religious context. Did you do that on purpose?
So I'm not trying to signify that Jack thinks he's God, if
that's the question. He, he's not speaking to Moses
through a burning Bush, but thatpart of the movie is it's, it's

(40:20):
combining a couple of different concepts. 1 was radical
acceptance. Like you said, it's sort of this
is used in lots of psychiatric or therapeutic settings for
people to have ruminations of any kind or, or dealing with
lots of different kinds of difficulties.
It's a way to think about the fact that basically nothing that

(40:40):
has already happened can change.So there's lots of ways to think
about the concept of radical acceptance, like everything
that's happened has LED up to this present moment.
You know, if if I drop a glass onto the ground, the result will
be that the glass has shattered,right?

(41:01):
And that's the perfect consequence of that action.
And so it's like accepting or understanding that the world as
we see it right now is the perfect result of everything
that has come before. So that's the concept of radical
acceptance. The second concept is, and we
talked a little bit about this, I think last time I was with
you, is non dualism or the idea that sort of consciousness or

(41:29):
awareness is a, the fundamental building block of reality.
And so this isn't a therapeutic concept.
This is more of a philosophical one.
But I, I sneak it in with the psychiatrist in a way that I
think is not totally unfair. You know, a psychiatrist isn't
going to really guide you spiritually, but I don't think

(41:50):
it's, it's completely unfair Here Jack is, you know,
ruminating on his decisions and his problems and all that.
And so the psychiatrist asks himto sort of like think about what
is at the core of himself. And so the the I am is actually
an answer to the psychiatrist's question of, well, if you think

(42:15):
you're your brain, the brain is a machine that reports thoughts,
feelings and sensations. What does the brain report
thoughts, feelings and sensations to?
Jack's response is it's just, it's just me.
I just, I am that. That's exactly how the line
goes. It's just me.

(42:38):
I just I am. So his answer is I am the one
that the brain reports things to.
So another way to say that is like, I am aware, I am
conscious. It's just, it's me, you know, I
don't know, there's like I'm notany of these things.
I'm not necessarily my body or my foot or my relationship to
this person or this sport that Ilove doing.

(43:00):
Like I'm not any of those things.
So the the idea, I guess from a therapeutic perspective is to
understand you don't have to identify with any particular
thing to be whole or to understand yourself as a
complete individual, that you'realready complete and whole just
as you are. And I don't object to the idea

(43:24):
that that's maybe going to introduce some confusion with
religious texts. Or isn't that God's voice?
Doesn't God only have the, you know, the right to claim this?
I am that I am thing like I'm OKwith that confusion if if people

(43:44):
want to worry about that or think about what that means.
Well, I'm offended so. Perfect, perfect.
No, it's so interesting you say that, especially on the topic of
consciousness and a little bit of spirituality in there.
But when he's, you know, saying who, where, who does?
Where does all that report to? If you were to ask someone to
point to their consciousness or like, where are you inside of

(44:07):
all this? Usually we'd point kind of like
right here, usually right behindthe eyes, which is so
fascinating to me because obviously that's where our brain
is. But I really think it has to do
with, like, these eyes, like if we maybe I'd never asked a blind
person that actually, it would be a fascinating question to ask
a blind person point to yourself.
Yeah. Why is that?

(44:28):
I want you to impart some wisdomupon me, Nick.
That's a fascinating question. At the beginning of the film,
Jack is lamenting the fact that he's been put in the psych ward,
and he talks about this idea that each of us is sitting in a
movie theater watching a film through our eyes that only we
can see. I think we're so strongly

(44:51):
connected to our audio visual. I bet a blind person would.
I don't think they'd point to their ears.
I don't think they'd point to their eyes.
Maybe they'd point to their head.
But I bet you the stronger connections to like, their
physicality or their other senses, you know, maybe they do

(45:14):
something like this, put their hand on their chest.
You know, that's one of the reasons I love movies so much is
that they so deeply represent our lived experience of
perception. We get only two of the senses,
but they're so powerful, those two, sight and sound, you get so

(45:39):
much out of it. You can get a sense of space,
you can get a sense of motion. You can get so much drama and
feeling out of those things. You know, like little things
like a tiny soundtrack queue canjust tell you here's what you're
supposed to feel right now or here's what I, I'd hope I would
like you to feel in this moment.So I think the answer to your

(46:03):
question is that we're so strongly associated with those
senses that that's why we point there.
And some of this content that we're talking about, these
themes in the movie are trying to point out that we are not
that that that's really an illusion, but it is a very
powerful 1, you know, like. Yeah, I don't know.

(46:34):
Now you can, you can say what you want and I may even
disagree, but it's interesting on that.
And maybe this will spark the next piece of your thought.
But with this world that we livein now with artificial
intelligence, large language models, Neuralink is now
implanted stuff in people's brains where like they can move
a cursor on a screen, you know, you can.
We're figuring out what what synapses fire in the brain and

(46:55):
where are those nerve endings being touched up here to be able
to, to create that sensation, whether it's sight, smell,
taste, touch, whatever hearing. If we if this continues down
this path, it will not be too long of a future eye, the eye
foresee to where you could be completely plugged into this.
And then really you're kind of living in almost like the matrix
where you can create a total lived experience without

(47:19):
actually physically doing anything.
But then the argument becomes what is physical?
So, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's a fascinating concept
because it really does call intoquestion a lot of the religious
and spiritual understanding of what consciousness is, of what
experiences faith is, because itkind of intertwines with all of

(47:41):
these very complex transducers that we find on our body that
allow us to experience, quote, UN quote, whatever reality is.
Does that make sense? What's the biggest question you
think it's going to come up or the biggest challenge that it
that it will present to your current beliefs?
To my current beliefs, I don't I'm pretty cemented in

(48:02):
understanding why I believe whatI believe.
I've had like I've shared some crazy experiences with you, but
I've had multiple things where it is just really overwhelmingly
apparent to me that like if there is a spiritual battle,
there is whatever you want to call it, whether you call it
God, whether you call it Yeshua,whether you call it whatever
language you want or whatever religion.
There is this struggle for kind of good and evil because, you

(48:24):
know, when you're talking about the hero's journey, it is
impossible. I feel like, to have a good film
or like any film that doesn't follow that very specific
trajectory of, you know, everything, everything we know
is there's good versus bad. I am going out, I'm going to try
to battle this bad and then comeback around to a place of

(48:44):
comfort. I feel like that that story is
like just it's as old as time and it will always exist.
And I think that it points to a higher thing that like there's
this great controversy. So for me, what is it going to
call into question? I don't think it's going to call
into question anything more thanour where we put our what we put
our faith and belief in. Because if I can try to simulate
that for an individual, if I canplug them into a system, give

(49:07):
them sight to give them a taste,give them a smell, I hear
whatever. I don't know, I haven't truly
thought thought this all the waythrough.
So that's a really good question.
And I don't think I have a fullycondensed answer to where I can
even articulate kind of what's going on in my brain.
But yeah, how would you answer that question?
Is there will it cost anything? Any kind of a question in your

(49:29):
mind? No, I mean, not in terms of
like, you know, Oh my gosh, how do we perceive reality now that
we can simulate it? Not really.
I think so much of the conversation around AI is kind
of red herring or super overblown.

(49:51):
Like, yeah, it's amazing what kind of images and things you
can do with it. But I don't know.
So far I haven't seen like anything that makes me want to

(50:13):
like, go consume AI content. A. 100%.
It's cool. It's really interesting, but we
keep hearing that it's going to replace all these things.
And so far, I haven't seen any of these things that I'm like,
that's a show I'm going to watch, you know, so.
Yeah, the consciousness aspect of a human experience.

(50:38):
I was talking with Nick Goldstein yesterday.
I don't know if you know who he is, but he heads up the podcast
with that triathlon life. But he's also like a Grammy
winner music producer and we were talking about just like AI
and music. So you know, when he goes and
play something to to kind of have this channeling of emotion
of an experience onto the keys like that without words, even

(51:00):
that can be communicated to another person to feel a usually
like a sense of sadness or whatever emotion that you're
trying to evoke. But I think really when it comes
to it with art and art, artificial intelligence, it will
never be able to replace that truly because it's the human
element, The little slight imperfections that I think make
things beautiful like new music artists, visual artists over

(51:24):
time. It's like every so often,
however many decades someone comes along that just kind of
upends the system. And because AI is only built on
everything that is in the past that we have written down, or
it's a visual ones and zeros, whatever, like it's all based on
what we've already done. So anything new to be created is
like that can only come from a human.

(51:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think it'll get good at mimicking imperfections
or, or whatever else. But yeah, so far we haven't seen
AI that's really good at coming up with a new idea.
Just as you say, it's only it can only mimic or improvise what
already exists. So far, I haven't seen anything
that I'm like, yeah, that is, that's really new or that really

(52:08):
adds something. It's so far I haven't seen
anything that's really additive,just sort of, you know, a mimic
of so. But yeah, I wonder what people
will think about that. We keep hearing so much about
how we're going to have artificial consciousness or does

(52:29):
it even already exist? Is ChatGPT conscious?
And I think that's kind of the silliest thing ever.
It's like, I think I heard another analogy of this.
It's like, you know, you, you would no more expect ChatGPT to
be conscious than you would write down a story on a computer

(52:51):
about the experience of drinkinga lot of water and having a very
full bladder and then suddenly expect the computer to urinate,
right? Those are different things.
No matter what ChatGPT is, it's a series of ones and zeros, and
so far we have no understanding of consciousness as simply being
a series of ones and zeros. Yeah, that is that is such a a

(53:15):
endless and tenacious pursuit. I feel like of a lot of the tech
realm just from the different lecture series that I've kind of
tried to listen to and, you know, heard Peter Teal is yeah,
he he did you hear about this? He did this five or four or five
part lecture Series A couple of weeks ago on the biblical
Antichrist and how AI would usher that in and like the mark

(53:37):
of the beast. And I was like, that seems
really strange for someone coming from your field.
So it's like there's this complete and utter obsession
with, I think to try to create aGod or a type of, you know, they
say AGII mean really what they're saying is God like,
cause 'cause when people interact now with Chad, GBT or
all these things, I feel like they're looking to ask it

(53:59):
questions as if they would ask someone who is truly
knowledgeable on the subject. And because it's so confident in
its words, it's like, oh, well, that must be true.
That's scary. I mean, it will get better and
better, right? But like, the fact that it's a
good repository of information still doesn't make it conscious
or still doesn't make it an entity, right?

(54:20):
It's like it's a tool, you know,just as Wikipedia is a really
great source of information, a is will, I think, do better and
better at helping us understand things or acting as repositories
of information. But.
Driving a car. Sure, yeah.
I still don't think they're a person or, you know, conscious
but. Yeah, yeah.

(54:41):
Fascinating. Who knows?
So not to get too far off that Ilove this topic so I can talk
about it forever. But on your film, what is your
what is your great desire from this?
Like what are you hoping happensmost?
Is it launching you to a new point to be able to do this full
time? Is it you did it and like,

(55:02):
that's great. And that's kind of all you were
looking out of it. But we're like, what are you
trying? What are you would what would
look like a success in your mindor what would you really like to
see happen from the release of this film and going into your
future? I would love to get to keep
making movies. And I think whether or not it
has a wide release or no releaseat all, I I think it's already

(55:25):
doing that right. It's already proven to me that I
can write a story, put it together and shoot it.
So, you know, yeah, I would loveto work on larger productions.
I I would love to have the opportunity to work with bigger
tools and bigger crews and bigger budgets.

(55:48):
But even if I never get to make a film larger than The Game of
Life, it was still just such an unbelievably fulfilling
experience that I would just do it like this again and again if
I could. I mean, doing it the way that I
did has tremendous benefits as well as constraints.
But I, you know, at the end of the day, got to be in charge of

(56:12):
the whole thing. I wasn't, excuse me, I wasn't
beholden to any financiers or studios or executive producers
or partners or anyone else otherthan myself and my and my wife.
But yeah, yeah. And so that's just such a
tremendous privilege that very few film makers ever get.

(56:34):
It's like me at the very, very bottom, and it's like
Christopher Nolan at the very, very top.
You know, he has his own constraints.
I have my own constraints. But there's a lot of freedom at
those two sides. And everybody in the middle is
working on some variation of those two.
You know, my constraints start disappearing and Christopher
Nolan's constraints start appearing.
But the greatest freedom is at those two levels where you

(56:57):
either have nobody talking to you or you're so good that they
all listen to you. So, you know, would I love to be
Christopher Nolan at his position one day?
Absolutely. But for now, I just, I just
loved doing this. So I'm working on other scripts
and other ideas and we'll see, you know, I may try and just

(57:19):
make something else bootstrappedlike we did here, or I may try
and shop these things around, you know, let's see how the film
does at festivals. If people say hey, this is a
decent movie, then maybe you know someone will be willing to
invest in my next project if I pitch it the right way.
Yeah. How do you measure the success

(57:40):
of a film like at at your level?Is it mass consensus?
Is it the right person sees it and they see something in you
that maybe others didn't see? Like what it what?
What determines that? I think for this movie in
particular it was success was watching it for the first time

(58:00):
with the the two private screenings we've had so far.
We're just a family screening and then a crew screening and
just watching it with those two very small audiences for me was
the measure of success already. It was a complete film.
It went from start to finish. Nobody, you know, finished the

(58:21):
movie and was like, wait, is this is it done?
Like what about whatever. Like, you know, it made sense as
a story. It was a complete thing from
start to finish. So for me, that was the success
of this project was it's done. There's so many other places it
could go, right? You know, there's, you know, all
kinds of distribution that I'm interested in, You know, how

(58:43):
many people will see it? Will people like it?
What will people say about it? Those are like just icing on the
cake at this point because it really was, you know, walking
the journey and getting to figure out, you know, I learned
so much throughout the process. And I'm, I'm so happy with the
finished product that I, I don'tthink there's a lot that could

(59:05):
take me down. So like, you know, if XY or Z
doesn't happen, it's still a success of a film.
But there's, you know, there's other places it could go from
now. Yeah.
Is it useful for you like in those screenings obviously you
want them to see it cuz they were a part of that and your
family like you really like them.
But in terms of like the crew and and the family screening, at

(59:28):
this point in the journey of getting it released, is there
even any, is there value to you and getting direct critical,
positive and negative feedback like you found?
Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
Definitely. And even the people who were
here the most, like the crew that spent the most time here,
still only had a fractional understanding of the film

(59:50):
because, you know, they were here for our shooting days and
they'd seen the script. But most of them don't, like,
read through all of it, particularly the crew.
They're kind of just, like, moreworried about what is their task
on the day. And so most of the people who
saw the film really had no idea what the story was.
And so there was a lot of genuine reaction in those

(01:00:13):
screenings. Like I just kind of stood in the
yeah, yeah, yeah, It was amazing.
Like, I just stood in the back and watched.
And like, there were moments that I wasn't expecting to get a
reaction that like, got a huge, you know, burst of emotion from
the people sitting in the room. Other moments I thought, oh,
maybe this will be, you know, a bigger deal.
And then it wasn't. But yeah, that was, that was

(01:00:37):
huge. It was really, really helpful.
So I would love to, you know, see this film screened in front
of a large audience and see whatthe reaction is.
I think that's the dream of every filmmaker to just kind of
like sit back and see what people think of it.
I think those premieres are, aregenerally big, big events for
the filmmaker. Cuz you've, you know, taken took

(01:00:59):
three years baking this cake andnow somebody's going to eat it
for the first time. So we'll see.
You know, I really hope that I one of the four festivals that I
submitted to grants us the privilege of getting to screen
there. I think that would be really,
really cool. So, yeah, you know, as much as I

(01:01:23):
say, like I'm already happy and that film's already success in
my mind, I think that would be areally, really nice thing to
happen. I would love to see it screen at
Sundance and listen to the reactions of of the people in
the audience. Yeah.
When is Sundance Film Festival? So it's at the end of January.
We've yeah, we've submitted the film and then they'll make their

(01:01:45):
decisions. I think they send out letters at
the beginning of December and the other festivals make
decisions around those same time.
So I've, I've submitted to four.There are dozens, probably
hundreds of different film festivals across the country and
the world, but I've submitted tofour for now.

(01:02:05):
Each one has its own little likerequirements and expenses and
things. So we're just taking it slow,
you know, step at a time. How many films do you think get
submitted to like Sundance for example, and then how many like?
What's the acceptance rate of such a?
Yeah, perfect question. My understanding is that last
year almost 10,000 films were submitted and about 200 were

(01:02:25):
screened. So a 5% acceptance rate or 95%
get rejected. Yeah.
You know, so it's either, you know, a, a, a wing and a prayer
or overconfidence, or maybe maybe we're just the right film.

(01:02:46):
I I've circulated some things toprofessionals that I know in the
industry and most of the feedback was really good.
You know, one person said, you know, this is better than 99% of
what does get screened at festivals.
So you'll be fine. You know, someone, there's a
cinematographer who's worked on like $200 million plus projects

(01:03:09):
who said to me like, this is amazing.
I am in awe of this accomplishment.
You're going to do great. And he's not only worked on
those larger projects, but also done some smaller ones himself,
budgeted on his own dime that then he sort of did the same
rigmarole of festivals and screenings and whatever.
And so he had really encouragingthings to say.

(01:03:29):
But it's awesome. We'll see.
We'll see, Yeah. It's, it's so interesting to me,
like how I don't know much aboutthe industry.
I have limited experience obviously in creating like
anything of like a film that could be considered a film or a
story. I've done plenty of documentary
kind of stuff. But to, to give something a

(01:03:50):
feeling of let's just say 1/2 billion dollar budget film.
Is it does that come mostly justfrom the money or does that come
from more of the technique and directing?
Cause you know, I've heard of some like small films.
I was using Napoleon Diamond forexample, because it's when I
know like really small budget. It's really funny, really unique

(01:04:10):
in its own, but it did really well.
But it had like this specific feeling that it carried with it
those feelings. Like do you have or understand
or know like the formulas or what it takes to give a project
like a film a specific feeling where it looks, feels, sounds
like, oh, that was a high budgetfilm.
Like is it just money or is it more of the director element you

(01:04:31):
think? Obviously it's a combination,
but I'm curious. I mean, film is an intensely
collaborative art form, and I made the game of life on a very,
very small group of people, right?
So a ton of the tasks like I undertook myself, and so

(01:04:56):
wherever The Game of Life falls short in terms of production
value is because I just decided to bootstrap and do it myself.
And you know, that's what happens.
I think the more people you can get on board who are really
competent professionals, the more likely a film will have the

(01:05:17):
degree of Polish that I think that you're talking about,
right. So a more recent example might
be a Nora, which won best picture last year and was made
for about $6 million and had a pretty small crew, but pretty
small crew and pretty small budget will still have several
100 people in the credits, right.
When you, when you watch those credits and it's everything, you

(01:05:40):
know, it's, it's hundreds of people working really hard at a
really high level to create something good.
And I don't know how many credits there are on Napoleon
Dynamite, but it's definitely more than like 20 people, which
is what you find at the end of the game of life.
So I don't think there's a shortcut or a formula.

(01:06:00):
It's like lots of people workingreally hard at a high level at,
you know, to make it beautiful. Similar with like starting a
business, I feel like you and you obviously know about this,
but like you have to receive a level of buy in from people to
get not just what you're paying them for or whatever the
exchange is, but to like give beyond that.

(01:06:20):
Did you find it difficult or easy to get that?
Same like in the film, I would imagine you'd need to get a
level of belief and, and buy in for this, for this idea that
you're trying to the story you're trying to tell.
It was, it was there. Were there similarities at all?
For sure, yes. And so I think, you know, it was
a little bit of a snowball and the the production of the film

(01:06:42):
was built with exactly that ideain mind.
So the first 10 pages or so of the film all take place in one
little location. It's the part Jack's apartment.
And it's just, it just happens between Jack and Ellen, his
girlfriend. So I was like, OK, I can, I can
make that as if it was like a little short film.
And so I did all the casting andset design and production prep,

(01:07:08):
just filming that. And so cast an actress, Brittany
Shanka, she played Ellen. She was great, you know, had a
couple of people behind the camera and a grip.
We set things up and you know, I, you know, then it comes down
to like your leadership of thesepeople and getting that buy in,
like you said, from that group. So it's telling all these people

(01:07:30):
what we're working on. We're doing this.
We're going to film this part ofthe movie.
Then we're going to take a breakwhile I do more production prep
and then we're going to go on tothe next part of the movie.
And, you know, helping people understand what it is that
you're trying to accomplish. The vision that you have for the
movie, the story you're trying to tell, why you think it's
important and why you think whatyou guys are doing even on this

(01:07:52):
little small rinky dink set is going to be important and
beautiful at the end of the day.So we do that.
That's like, you know, 1 little snowball that we that we have
and we make those 10 minutes. Now I start doing production
prep for the rest of the movie, getting those sets ready,
casting for those roles that we need, finding schedules, finding

(01:08:14):
locations, figuring out how we're going to do all this
stuff. And in addition, while that prep
is happening, what we have is the 1st 10 minutes now cut and
edited with soundtrack and soundeffects that I can show to these
people. Hey, now you, you know, Natalie
Lockets wants to play Jenny and Art Razzo who plays Eddie.

(01:08:36):
I can show them. Here's what we've done.
Here's the direction we're going.
And those first 10 minutes are kind of like a proof of concept.
This is sort of the look of the film.
This is the production value that we can do.
And so even on our very small budget movie, again, we're going
to try and do something important and beautiful
together. And so that first piece really
helps with the buy in for the later pieces.

(01:08:58):
And so we shot the film in threesections.
It was those first 10 minutes and then we shot 14 days
straight, which is crazy. It's like mostly unheard of for
a movie to go that many days in a row.
And then we took a month or two off and then shot 7 more days.

(01:09:18):
So it was 24 days total for the film.
But you know, we had those little breaks which helped with
that buy in and then especially,you know, after we had shot the
14 day block, which was super intense.
And it's it wasn't the same intensity for everyone because
people were coming in and out astheir availability had allowed
and what scenes they were in andwhatnot.

(01:09:40):
I think it was just myself and one other crew member who were
there all 14 days. He was actually there 13 of the
14 but. You win.
He had, I mean, he had that's, that's The thing is like
scheduling conflicts that that block was really difficult
because everybody had different availability.

(01:10:01):
It's, you know, it was 20 different people, you know, 30
different scenes that we were shooting on 14 days and
everybody, you know, and different characters are in
different scenes together. So you have to let, it's just
like hacking away at a spreadsheet to figure this stuff
out. But after that mess, you know, I
I sent dailies to the cast and crew every day, like when we had

(01:10:25):
finished each day's work, it's like, OK, here's pictures of
what we did today from the cameras perspective, like
little, little still frames fromwhat the movie would eventually
become that, you know, really helps with that buy in that
you're talking about. So by the time we came to the
last day block, everybody was just like, you know, fully
bought in, super excited. Not that anyone was holding

(01:10:46):
anything back at the beginning, but it's just like the
excitement builds. So I think it's yeah, it again,
my super, super long, long, longwinded answer to your good
question is that it's just sort of those thank you those those
ordinary leadership things, you know, you know, showing people
the mission, what you want to accomplish, showing them how

(01:11:07):
much you believe in it and you know, it just people can't help
but to be inspired, but. Yeah, it takes courage to do
that too, and I can only imagineyou probably didn't sleep a
whole ton. But those hours were really
restful, you know? I was like.
Just like deep sleep, immediately.
Yeah, no, man, it's, it's so great because, well, shoot, lost

(01:11:33):
my train of thought, but it was it, it was such a privilege like
that. Everyone.
Yeah, I figured out it's the that old saying that people say,
like the whole world stands aside for the man who knows
where he's going. It's like nobody, nobody wants

(01:11:54):
to jump on board to a movie thatyou hope to make, no matter how
cool you make it sound. But it's gonna.
Be we're going there. People will, you know, do
anything for a movie that you are making that they can see
with their own eyes. So yeah, it was, it was awesome.
No, everybody was insanely, insanely cool and helpful.

(01:12:14):
Yeah, that's awesome, man. Well, good work.
I I still don't think I even have a fraction of the
understanding of what it takes to do something like that.
Because as I'm thinking about the spreadsheets and the
scheduling alone for just honestly for five people, let
alone 20 for all that, like that's a that's a huge feat and
undertaking. I hope that you get accepted
into some film festivals and youkeep doing your passion.

(01:12:36):
Yeah, I've seen, I've watched some of your videos.
I'm not even into cinematographythat much, but I watched some of
your lens videos and I was like,oh, that's crazy.
I didn't know you could go that deep into something.
Yeah, I so I went to this schoolin Tennessee and they had a
school of visual art and design and they had some pretty heavy
hitters who came from like, Disney and whatnot.
But every time, so our department was right above them

(01:12:58):
in business, and I would walk down there and just go and
observe the animators and the cinematographers and the
sculptors and like all these people constantly.
And I have a lot of respect for that industry even though I'm
not super heavy in it. So good stuff, man.
It's pretty cool to witness it and get to question you on it.
What'd you think of the movie after having watched it?
What sort of feelings were you left with?

(01:13:20):
I was left with. That's a good question.
Was it fun? Did you have fun?
Were you? It was fun.
I liked some of the so I really liked the TV show Severance and
I felt like, I don't even know if you had any inspiration for
some of that, but even like someof the note cues, by the way,
the music really quick. I think you did all the music
right. Except for two cues, but yeah,

(01:13:42):
most of it. Yeah, but I saw those listed in
the YouTube stuff. But yeah, like, first of all, I
have to say that actually that'ssuper impressive because I've
tried my hand at making music and I consider myself a pretty
musical person on guitar and piano.
But to be able to sit down and do that, I know it takes a lot
of time. So I just forgot to affirm that
early on. Oh, it's so kind of you.

(01:14:02):
No, I really liked the the visual and the the sound aspects
of it. It obviously hit close to home
there in the beginning because of like the suicide aspect,
because my father committed suicide.
So I was wondering like, oh, didNick go through this like that
intense, like what part of thesewere most of his life?
So I think I was viewing it fromlike a heavy lens of like, I'm
going to be asking him questionsabout this.

(01:14:25):
So I need to really pay attention to the details.
So I think maybe honestly now thinking about it, that may have
robbed me from some of the experience of just like
expectations without expectations, not your fault.
I think if I ever did like a, a podcast where somebody makes
something and then I view it, I just kind of go in with
literally no thought of like, I'm going to write down a bunch
of questions. No, but it, it left me like

(01:14:47):
feeling like this is a really interesting story.
It made me realize and think pretty deeply about how fragile
our financial system is because I realized that governments have
these actual things, skeleton keys that can, you know, 'cause
I've, I've heard of stories of people breaking into Signal and
it's supposed to be like encrypted to the Max and all of

(01:15:07):
these other things. So I just realized, wow, that's
really fragile. So, yeah, I don't know if that
answers your question. It was fun as it got into it
more, I feel like it went from like this very serious tone to
like more fun and action. And you're talking to the camera
more directly from less of a like, oh, this is my girlfriend
to more of a, oh, wow. Like she actually I, we do see
eye to eye or like we're both crazy or like, so the tone was,

(01:15:30):
it was easy to follow. The story was good, thank you.
I I think, can I give it a rating please?
I think out of like 10 I'd probably give it like a six.
OK. Alright, does that.
How does that make you feel though?
Well, I don't know what your rating system is.
I don't know what your your favorite movies are.

(01:15:50):
My favorite movie of all time islike, actually, there's a couple
of them. The first one is, I think it's
called Job. It's Job or Steve Jobs.
Not the one with Ashton Kutcher.You know what I'm talking about.
You think you know the title of your favorite movie.
I know it's like so bad. It's because there's so many
movies that have been made aboutSteve Jobs.
All right, so so I'm not, I'm not as worried about your

(01:16:11):
ringing endorsement of a six if you can't even name the title.
It's. Steve Jobs Steve Jobs by.
Aaron Sorkin, I. Think so?
Yes, Aaron Sorkin. I like that one so much because
it really paints the picture of just like a mental battle that I
feel like I related to and then but just like pure fantasy type
movie. It's probably like Dune 1 and

(01:16:31):
Part 2, Lord of the Rings, just very heavily fantasy.
So yeah, but that's that's kind of what I'm comparing to.
I haven't watched a ton of independent films.
I did go to one movie screening like of a friend of mine, his
best friend from college had onethat they showed at a local
movie theater and I got to go and watch and experience that

(01:16:53):
and I think that this one was honestly better.
So that one got a screening. So hopefully yours gets as much
of that, but. No one from your audience is
going to watch this. 6 out of 10.
I know, hey, I'm just trying to be honest like that.
That's all right. 10 is like Christopher Nolan.
Like that would be unfair and I'd be lying.
I feel like, did people give you10 out of 10 or 9 out of 10/8

(01:17:15):
out of 10? I, I didn't ask people for
ratings. No, that's, that's all right.
Well. That's me sticking my foot in my
mouth for. You.
No, no, no, no. It's OK.
I I would much rather hear, hearyour honest feedback.
All right. I'd watch your future ones.
I'm curious to see what you go and do next.
I do really have, I say that with like with a, with a very

(01:17:38):
respectful heart because from the little work that I have had
in content creation, I've tried to think of even writing a good
story or script and I always getlike 30 minutes in and I'm like,
this is impossible. So my hat goes off to you for
doing it honestly. Thank you.
Yep. Yeah, people say that making a
movie is almost, it is extremelydifficult and making a good

(01:18:03):
movie is almost impossible. Yeah, so.
Yeah. Yeah, we'll see what happens.
Yeah, we'll see what happens forsure.
I'll make sure to link it in theshow notes.
Cool. If it is it going to be out then
like listed in the? Trailer.
Yeah. No, no, don't, don't link the
Screener that you saw that that has to stay private, Yeah.
We'll link the trailer. Yeah, you become ineligible for

(01:18:26):
festivals if anyone from the public has seen your film.
Yeah. You shouldn't have asked me to
do this, man. I'm about to blow the pot.
I'm about to send everybody to your private screening thing and
then just going to disqualify for you to get.
There. That's right.
That's right. Yeah.
No. Link them to the trailer.
Tell them to make a comment. For sure.
Awesome. Well, Nick, man, thank you so
much for taking the time and thank you see me to go through

(01:18:48):
and watch your stuff. That's first private screening
I've ever had the opportunity todo, so thank you.
I so appreciate it. Thank you, Seth.
Great conversation with Nick, always enjoyed talking to him.
He is a deep thinker and I feel like we can get on the same
wavelength to talk about a number of different things.
I definitely put my foot in my mouth in a few situations.
Talking about films because I forgot names.

(01:19:10):
I don't know, it's been a long week, especially actually a long
day, but I appreciate Nick beingpatient with me and having me.
You're just having me have the opportunity to have him on to
talk about that film. Obviously, it comes from a
pretty deep place and you put a ton of effort and work into it,
so I definitely would encourage you guys to go check it out.
I tend to be a harsh critic. I don't know if you heard me say
about the six out of ten thing, probably not an accurate

(01:19:32):
representation. Now that I'm thinking about it,
it's honestly probably more closer to like 7 1/2.
Yeah, Really good stuff. Really appreciate it.
Nick coming on, we were able to even talk a little bit off air
and just always appreciate the deep conversation that he's able
to bring to the table. So thanks for being here and I
will catch you guys in the next one.
Peace.

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#186 - Nick Salazar - Round 3 — Building a Feature Film at Home: The Game of Life

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#186 - Nick Salazar - Round 3 — Building a Feature Film at Home: The Game of Life