IFH 857: The Untold Story of ECW’s Rise & Fall with John Philapavage

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight
fifty seven. Cinema Should make You forget You're sitting in
a theater, Roman Polanski.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
Film Hustle Podcast, where we showed you how to survive
and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I am your humble.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for
independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory
film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who
prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker.

(00:59):
The old distribution model of making money with your film
is broken, and there needs to be a change the
future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the
film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break
down how to actually make money with your film projects
and show you how to turn your indie film into
a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and failures.

(01:23):
This book shows you the step by step method to
turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making
a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content,
the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success.
The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook.
If you want to order it, just head over to

(01:43):
www dot filmbizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com.
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Shooting me today is John Philipavage. John is the co
director and producer of bourb Wire City, the unoff rized
story of Extreme Championship Wrestling. John, how are you?

Speaker 4 (02:05):
I am well? Thank you for having me man, Oh
my pleasure.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
The last time we saw each other was at the
premiere of Barbara City.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Correct and full disclosure, because he gave me an awesome
I wasn't positive I had met Dave, and I probably
had like a conversation with him, but as he noted
to me, I was running around like completely overwhelmed, trying
to like help run that show. So I thought that
I that I met Dave, but I did ask him
off there if I met Dave. Yes, that would be

(02:35):
April of what twenty thirteen? We did that, so almost
two and a half years there. Yeah, talk to you.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, I do remember that. And believe me, John, I've
been there, man. I know how it is. You know,
you go into, you go into you know, you're doing
these events and it's just like everything blurs together of
people and events and time and everything. It just sort
of all go messages together.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
That whole night was shut. It was a culmination of
like thirteen years of work. And I not like I
shouldn't even say it like that. It was, you know,
got the idea. In February of two thousand, started making notes.
I was working with Kevin, the other co director who
worked with me on this project. I mean he's a
childhood friend of mine. We were working together at a

(03:20):
car wash and I started, I think I wrote four
names down and I said, hey, would you do this
for me? And Originally it was like I wanted to
write a book because I was a writer, and we
did you know, quote unquote boy was videography. We were like,
you know, even in two thousand, I would have been
I would have just turned what nineteen that month, Actually
I was nineteen when I had the idea. I wrote

(03:41):
four names down. I don't even know that we interviewed
any of those four people. Actually I think one. I
think one actually, and yes, this So thirteen years later
and certain years and one month later or two months later,
we finish it, and like everybody that I ever know
was there, plus all these amazing people I met through
the raising fund your cake starter, including yourself, And then

(04:03):
I had to, like, you know, it was so dili.
I had to like help run the thing I was
telling you off there that I said to somebody like, Okay,
we have to do the Q and A. So I
need to find these people and like let them in.
I told them to come to this door and like
who's getting the cheesecakes? And one of the other people said, well,
I have to do this, and the other person said, well,
I've got to do this techt thing. And so I

(04:23):
had to run down to Tony Luke and get the
cheese steaks that we had promised the people for to
do a Q and A with me, So I didn't
get to have an ego moment and feel like a start.
I had to go get cheesecakes and give them to
people and answer your questions. But it was at the
point is it was like an amazing night that I

(04:44):
never thought that we would get to that point and
that was a big deal, and like you always want
to do more stuff, but it is one of those
things where you go, if I could just do this
one thing for the in public, I'm not for the public,
because really, I mean, let's be honest, you're doing a lot.
It's for yourself. You have an urge within yourself that
you have to do. But it's amazing to get not

(05:06):
just a validation, it's the buy in from people. So
just meeting all these people i'd like yourself that had
interacted with online who showed up for it, and they
seemed like almost like they knew me and they were
proud of me because they had interacted with me so
much over these months. But that was like this really
cool feeling, you know, to do able to do that.
But yeah, it's that whole night is like both I

(05:28):
have memories of it and it's also this blur. Well,
I just remember downloading somebody's I think it was The
Torches for a wrestling torch. Just for those of you
who listening to this who don't know wrestling, that is
one of the major publications going back to the Ladies
for Wrestling. They did both both men, Wade Killer and

(05:48):
Bruce Mitchell appeared in the film, and they did like
a two hour and fifteen minute they like a review
of the film and kind of a talk about history
and different things. And I dropped my friend Gene off
around I think two five in the morning and I
drove back to the Lehigh Valleys listening to that and
that for some reason, that memory of just being by
myself and being like satisfied that I completed something, it's

(06:10):
something that like it's that solitary thing that fixed with you,
you know.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, well, you know, John, I heard a story that
on the set of Quentin Tarantino's last film, he had
to get cheese steaks for for everybody. So don't feel bad.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Oh, I'd like to have his career, I'll tell you that.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
So you know, Jenna. I always usually start off with
the same question for everybody, and that question is could
you just give us a little more about your background
and you know how you got started in the doing film.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
Sure. I let's see, I was born in eighty one
and I ended up very quickly living in all In Town, Pennsylvania,
which for you wrestling fans who are off the history geeks,
I grew up like three blocks from ag Hall, which
is where w w W which is now WWE used

(07:02):
to stay to television. In fact, my first wrestling show
ever was in I think nineteen ninety, like September of
ninety at aghol And the reason I'm going on about
this is because through an alleyway, which it was like
half a block away, there was an alleyway that kind
of ended right near my row home yard. Through that alleywhey,

(07:24):
if you went directly from my yard through that path,
was a house that we nicknamed the Cariden Mansion. And
that's because when I was two, my mom took me
on a walk, and when you're two, like, you can't
go very far. So we went around the block and
there was a little boy playing in a plastic swimming
pool that was blue and then had alligators on it,
and I thought that was the coolest and I said, Mom,

(07:45):
I don't want to play with that kid. But I
was like early timid, so I probably hid behind her,
and luckily Joline Kevin's mom was outside and my mom
talked to her and I ended up meeting this gentleman,
Kevin Karenen when I was two, and that's in my
creative partner I'm kin and uh so it's we just
passed July. I met him in July to thirty four

(08:07):
and now thirty two years that we've been attached to
each other in one way or the other. So, yeah,
we got in here, but we were doing creative projects
when we were kids. We used to make movies with
with those over the shoulder VHS cameras. Yeah, yeah, Well
Kevin's dead ball. Kev's dad til he's like, I'm actually

(08:33):
sitting in their property right now. He's like the second
father to me that they they not only helped kind
of raise me, but they still they still kind of
take care of me even now and look out for
me when we do holidays. A lot of times I
go to their house at least spend two hours with them.
Pretty much every holiday, regardless of whether keV or his

(08:53):
sister Emila are in town. Our studio, like I said,
is on their property. And I don't mean to make
it like they're rich. By the way, when people hear
me say this, they always think that TV family has
a ton of money. They bought when we were six
they bought this dilapidated old like farmhouse property, like it
was just a mesh and there was like this building

(09:16):
that like in real people's friends would have been condemned.
It just wasn't like a public, public building. There was
a spring house because there used to be a natural
spring on the bottom. And I remember being told very
specifically you were not allowed to go in there because
if you opened the door at the top, there was
nothing there. But there was no four And I remember

(09:37):
being sixteen and keV took me out there, and I
didn't know. I hadn't really been spending time around his house,
so I didn't know. And I remember, even at sixteen,
you know you're near adulthood. I remember saying them like
like like, you know, we're not supposed to be going here,
Like it was weird to me that he was taking
me there because he's not a mischievous guy, and he
opened the door and like his dad had completely referred

(10:00):
the ship.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
This day's like a dy handyman who like always had
a side project for a weekends and stuff, and he
completely changed it into this like cool like it reminds
me of like Lord of the Rings, like like the
kind of place that you like, the secret world you
fall into. And it was like the place where he'd
go to write children's stories. I'd smoke his pipe because

(10:31):
he used to smoke the pipe at the time. And
we took that shit over right away.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Dad.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
They spent in ours if we were sixteen. You know,
we're going on almost twenty years and I am sitting
in it right now, and I love this place. So
this is where we started making Kate to Tate VHS,
VHS editing on VTRs, you know that stuff. Oh yeah,
you would do that. We made a comic book when
we were ninety four ish, nineteen ninety four ninety three.

(11:00):
We were really into making comic books, and I checked
one of my uncles into getting us like a computer program,
which seemed amazing at the time. I'm sure now if
you looked at it, it would look like like MS
a first version of MS Paint, you know. So we
had a comic book. We used to make videos with
the whole family. They'd let us write it and kind

(11:21):
of direct it, and then they would just kind of
push us nudgets and directions, and then we started just
making like silly short films. And I convinced Chev to
do the barb Wire City project just because I had
a fascination with the UC Arena in wrestling in general.
And now this poor guy who has never ever you know,

(11:44):
paid for a ticket for wrestling, and never I was
forced to watch it when he was a teenager. It
was far more about wrestling than the average, you know,
the rank and file wrestling fan who is at an
obsessive fan. So I guess I'm sorry for that. But
at the same time, it's fun because now I can
do wrestling jokes with him and he gets it so so.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
But basically, you know, I can imagine when you actually
sat down, you know, with Kevin and actually like put
on wrestling for the first time, I could imagine his
response probably would have been something like, what the hell
are we watching.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
He was always he was never kind of sending about it.
He would put his foot down here and there. I
remember there was like a WCW pay per view in
the early nineties is one of the ones where they
were working with New Japan. Someone was like from the
Tokyo Dome and like anything that was from a foreign
culture was fascinating when the any kid, I just thought

(12:39):
foreign cultures were so interesting because they weren't my daily life.
And I remember I got him like watching stuff on
Saturday mornings when I'd sleep over and then we'd wake
up early, and like he wouldn't tell me like turn
that crap ofll or this or that, and he can
make comments about stuff. So like I was always trying
to manipulating him into being a fan flight a friend
because I didn't have a wrestling pread for years and

(13:03):
it was, you know, it was like especially by the
early nineties, like it was uncool again. It was like
you you were a loser if you watched it. And
I kept watching, So I did keep it quiet, Dave.
I couldn't tell people, so Kevin oure knew, so I
was always trying to manipulate him into so I tried
to get him to like buy the tape review and
that's when he was just like, I'm not a fan
of this, and no, you'll sit in a room if

(13:24):
you watch it. I'll be nice to know. And then
slowly but surely I got him to do this project
and over the expanse of thirteen years off and on.
You know, now I get a kick out of the
fact that like he's he's friendly with Mike Johnson, the
wrestling reporter, so like he'll uh Ken has this gimmick

(13:45):
where he texts me random things where he pretends his
blog is called The Outsider, and the gimmick is that
it's a person who doesn't really understand wrestling and isn't
a hand but reports on it. So anything that Mike
puts on his feed, he just like makes a joke
of it and packs it to me. So hopefully Mike
doesn't listen to it, or Kevin I'll be in trouble.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
Well you know, you know, it's funny you mentioned that
there's that thing kfabnews dot com that I always The
first time I saw it, I was like, what the
hell is this? Have you seen that?

Speaker 4 (14:18):
You know? Who showed that to me?

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Who?

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Kevin? I see that's pretty much kind of where he
got the gimmick called though, like I believe his idea,
Like I'm sure it existed, but Kevin wouldn't know. He
didn't spend his free time usually, like I think one
of the people he said yes to on Facebook when
we he had a lot of people trying to Facebook

(14:42):
friend him during the film because I was everywhere and
I was saying his name everywhere because I did do
all the media he would. He did I think two
interviews and I think they were both with Mike Johnson
because we're friendly with Mike. Through making the film, he
became friendly with Mike and so Mike we kind of

(15:03):
pressed him into it and they were both like in
person because he would just stay alone it if it
was on the phone, but like Mike was there and
had his like at Adam, I'm like, can I do this?
But yeah, he was finally getting on the set of this. Yeah.
I only know about it because I guess he saw
it because one of the fans he said yes to
on Facebook was posting stuff and he kind of went

(15:25):
down the rabbit hole one day and when we got
to the studio to work on something else like this,
is after Barblar City. He he showed this to me
and I was just like, is that you got that
idea or something? And he's like no, but it's the
same thing. I think I'm just going to steal their ideas,
like joking. But yes, I'm aware of it because because
he's the one who showed it to me. Oddly enough, Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Know who showed up to me was the Blue Minie.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
And I love Bryan, Yeah, I hear the rest man
in the world. And I'm sorry, like I always call
him Brian, and I'm not sure I know in wrestling
there's like, uh, it's it's weird because like it's Brian's
a personal friend of mine and I'm not going to
call him by by you know, no offense to him.
I'm not going to call him by like a pretend
name because he's my friend. Like I've been to his house,

(16:13):
you know what I mean. We've gone on like road
trips together, you know, for conventions and stuff, like he's
the best man in the world.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
I'm sorry, I just have to say that you don't
call him like hey, mister meanie, Like like you know,
you don't say hey, mister meanie, or should I call
you Blue, I E.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Well, I don't. I don't remember my first I'm sure
my first conversation with him, like I would call him
whatever he wanted, and then at some point I just
had a conversation. I think he introduced himself as like Brian,
like I think I did somewhere in there, like post
interviewing him when he reached out to me when we
started the Kickstarter thing. We just had a conversation and

(16:49):
I'm called him by it. He never like said anything
about it. And finally, just because I'm me and I'm
super detail oriented and I want people to be comfortable
with everything I said to him, Like is that you know?
Is that okay? Like I just feel weird calling like
an actual friend of mine by this this name. But
if you think it's like disrespectful, because within your industry,
you know, it's kind of like this thing where some

(17:10):
guys you might be really good friends or the guy
who is a heel in a company and if you're
if you're if he gets your contact to sit in
the front row, he kind of expects you to boo him.
You know. In fact, he wants you to really give
it to him because that's his job, you know, so
he'd be asking me to do something like that, I would,
but you know, fortunately I became friends with the guy

(17:31):
who's like never going to be a heel in any
room he ever steps into, so I don't have to
worry about things like that.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, you know. Just as a little side story. Uh,
one time when I when I was helping King Kong
Bundy uh and uh, a friend of mine was training
under him at when he was in wrestling school, and
I would come and I'd help set up like the
chairs and stuff like that. And then then he was like, hey,
he helps up the ring and I was like sure,
you know, I'll help out. It was for free whatever.

(17:59):
So finally they came to me one day and they said,
we want you want to do an angle where uh
this this like this heel attacks a fan. So my
so this is where my friend was going to be
a fan next to me.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
So here's the thing. Okay, so we're sitting next to
each other, my friend and myself, and one of their
heels is coming out and he says that and he
cheats to win. Right. So my friend like, now now
he has all his friends of family there and he
didn't tell anybody about except for me. Now, I was
going to want in on this. So he gets up
and he yells, that's bullshit, you're a cheating motherfucker, because

(18:37):
he says blah blah blah. So he ended lped getting
into a brawl with this heel and I have turned
and his fiance and everything are looking at him like
what the fuck is going on here? And it was
just I couldn't stop fucking laughing, and they ended up,
you know, scuffling in the ring. It's true, he broke
it up this and that, but uh, it was just
it was hilarious. I I don't know. I'm sorry that

(19:00):
story really have much to what we were talking about.
But I thought, by the.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
Way, this is primarily a filmmaking podcast, right, yes, most
of your listenership have no idea what we're talking about
right now.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
They probably tuned out already. They probably heard me talk about,
you know, wrestling by now they're like, oh, well, well
we'll come back next week, Dave.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
But but no, but this is I'm such a channel danger.
Well that's that's great. Those are circumstances. What are you
gonna do?

Speaker 3 (19:30):
You know, they're gonna hear me talking about King Kong
Bundy mean like, oh, well he did work Richard Pryor
at one point, so maybe Dave is a point yere
but you know this is this is film centric, you know.
But I mean we're you know, we're talking about the
documentary and you know, uh, it just happens to be
about wrestling. So I just want to show that a story,
you know. Uh, personally, I think a lot of viewers
love this because I actually have requests to do more

(19:53):
things about documentaries. So uh.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, I'm a bag man.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
We'll be right back for a word from our sponsor

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, so I know people will we'll definitely be interested
in this. And you know, so I wanted to ask
you is, you know, as we talked about your documentary
Barbari City, you know, how did you go about finally
starting to put this all together? You know, in those
initial stages, meaning like, you know, how did you get
started putting together? Like, Okay, I have a list of
people I want to talk to. Did you know how

(20:28):
did you start going about you know, reaching out to
these people.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
Okay, let's see here. I am not good with brevity,
so I'm going to try to condense this because it
is a thirteen year story. Let's wait, at least I
can sort of spin of tail at first, like I said,
I think I said this on the podcast and not
when we were talking beforehand. I had a list of
like four people like I wanted to write a book

(20:56):
about my like almost like a hunter s Tom and
ask like fan journal going to the arena and why
it was important to people, like it was a cultural thing.
And I've always been fascinated with sociology. And I was
one of those people. When I was finally old enough
too and I got my license, I would go to
the In fact, the first two times I went to
the arena, like my aunt drunk me, there was like

(21:17):
two or three friends I just wanted to go to badly.
I didn't get I was one of the people who
didn't get their license right away. I don't know, it's
weird now for me to like think back why. I
just think it was just I just probably figured I'm
my parents, They're not gonna like let me try a
par and I don't have money, so like why theother.
So it wasn't until I was eighteen that I could
drive myself down and regardless we would just stand in

(21:41):
line outside and like, I know, it's a status thing
to sit ring side, and you don't have to show
up until five minutes before the show. And you know
this guy and like John Bailey, the straw hat guy,
takes tickets, so you go on the side door and
give him a hug and all that stuff. And that's
not wet and cool. And I'm sure if I had
that option back then, I would have taken it. I

(22:02):
eventually ended up taking an option actually, as I think
of it, but at the time I thought it was
really neat to get in a car at ten in
the morning, take the long way, so to speak, get
down there around you know, eleven thirty noon, and be
part of this kind of like carnival outside, especially in

(22:23):
the later days. By the time I started driving down
with friends in later ninety nine is when I actually
started driving down, the people were already lined up, like
I like we would show up. The one time I
think we got there by like eleven thirty, we were
nowhere near the first people in line outside of the arena.
We were probably the thirtieth people in line, frankly, and

(22:47):
I saw some crazy things in that line, you know,
I think maybe only one or two things. The very
final ECW Arena show, I actually stood by myself and
I had a camera and I shot footage, and I
think maybe a total of ten seconds made it into
the film proper when we released it. And one of

(23:11):
the scenes is actually like what I'm thinking of, which
is that like people in line set fire to a
bunch of like cardboard and discarded wood, because in that
there's kind of this mythology about that area. It's really
not a rough area. Like if you go a block
like it's it literally is under ninety five and it's

(23:32):
in kind of like this industrial kind of dead end,
which is kind of commercial, low rent commercial space and
industrial park ish stuff for a block or two. But
if you go to the other side of ninety five,
those are old ethnic neighborhoods. And I spent a lot
of time in that area walking around shooting footage in

(23:53):
two thousand, two thousand and one, two thousand and six,
and then in the year before the film, he had
like carnivals in the summer. There's the kind of neighborhoods
that's still like get permits to close off roads and
like rank those moon bounces and like have vendors. Like
it's one of those neighborhoods where everybody kind of knows

(24:15):
everybody and they all know a guy who does something,
so you can get these kind of things, probably for free.
And it's not rough, Like I wouldn't die. I have
a nephew, it's nine. I'd take came and walk around
that neighborhood, you know, But on show nights, I wouldn't
have taken I wouldn't have taken into Swanson and written
the street. I'll tell you that, you know, was a

(24:37):
memory I was thinking of, was these these like set
stuff on fire and then we're chanting stuff. And I
think partially that made me in the film. There was
another where some underage kid was drinking like a handle
of hard liquor all day and then he was out
of his head and like slumped down against the posts
and people were voyeuristically watching him, and then he threw

(25:00):
up on himself and just sat there and people were
chanting things, and it was both entertaining and bizarre, and
now that I'm older, kind of disgusting of people, but
still something that probably should be kind of documented. There's
a good side in the bedside all those things, and
I think we definitely kind of touched on that in
the film. If anything, my sadness is in not being

(25:22):
able to break it through to more to more non
wrestling chance, because there's such like you even joked about,
like there are people who probably turned off the podcast
because they're like, oh, they're tryingly not wrestling, and this
guided a wrestling thing. You probably, Yeah, there's still this
meme that, like Dana White brought it up this week.
You know, people who watch wrestling must not know it's

(25:43):
quote unquote fake, which is a horrible word for it.
It's kind of a senses, I think, and I think
that's where the emotional major creation comes. I just don't
think fans articulate it well because they get emotional. But
it's this idea that you must be so dumb and
low rent. You you know, it's nineteen thirty and you've
been conned by the carnival that comes through during the summer,

(26:07):
and that's not really it, you know. But unfortunately as
a bad name, so we weren't able accept on very
very small moral victories to break it through to people
who just were fascinated by sociological events and niche culture,
which in my own opinion, misunderstood, and that's really what
the film was about. You know. I had some very

(26:30):
combative interviews, I think when I promoted this the second
time around. The first time around was kickstarter or raise money,
and you had to go as a wrestling circuit is
where I kind of had to go, you know, so
you try to intellectualize and talk about whatever, but you
also have to be like, yeah, oh, your favorites will

(26:50):
be here and all this stuff, and you're not lying.
It's just you're playing your audience. And I think by
the time it came out and I would read reviews,
we got a lot of positive reviews, but all the
knocks would be like, really to me, fanboyish, wrestling centric critiques,

(27:13):
for which I think is a generous word considering what
these people expressed up. But that made me sad because
I realized that the film was being completely viewed or
ninety to ninety five percent being viewed through the prison
for wrestling and for wrestling releases, and I think there
was a massive difference between what we did and say,

(27:34):
what WWE you would put out and call a quote
unquote documentary or what you know, even like high spots
or are at video. You know, I get messages like
how come this is like this because our video did this,
And I'm thinking, like, no offense to Rob because obviously
the licensed footage from him, and like I have a
sign relationship with Rob Feinstein, who the owner and operator

(27:57):
of our video. But like that either rest he's the
guys who does wrestling, you know, and I don't. I
don't mean to say that directively, but in comparison, when
you're comparing like a documentary to like shoot interviews, that
was really my beef. You know, sorry, I'm jumping so
far ahead and like your questions, Yeah, that's something that

(28:19):
was like so so these interviews like became sort of
combative for me, Like it became kind of like this
intellectual battle to to make my point without being like
a condescending dick to people because I just I didn't
have any more patience for like one interview was like

(28:41):
the question wasn't I would get these questions that weren't
questions from these wrestling podcasts that were like the Dudley's
in in ECW. And now they've already seen my films,
so they've seen this sort of take to task the
idea that Paul Hayman allowed to get out of control,
and you know, the Dudleys would just go out there
and bake fans and it would result sometimes and you know,

(29:02):
at the low level, it would result in like, yes,
a lot of heat, but a lot of it was
just creating an atmosphere that was kind of uncomfortable, unsafe
for anybody who wasn't like a male in their early
twenties who wanted to get drunk and like get crazy
and then it's worst. It was like physical violence, you know.
But the question will be like Dudley's NCW was pretty crazy,

(29:24):
right where do you think it was crazier? Where Dudley's
crazier and sillier and like the Elks Lodge. And for
the whole premise of the question, it's not even like
a really good question. It's more like tell me how
awesome it was that you guys did this? And I
don't know that it was awesome, that's the thing, you know, Like,
I don't I think it was you know, not even

(29:46):
specifically the Dudley's, but the things that they were doing
I didn't think were necessarily good for them. I think
it built on the cold fishness it built on the mythology.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Will be right back after a word from our sponsor

Speaker 4 (30:09):
But I don't think that it helped them. Obviously, it
didn't help them in the long run, you know. And
I don't think it would be done and well certainly
wouldn't be done today because of the standards of the
lakes people's use it. But also I don't think Paul
Hayman would do it even if those standards didn't exist.
I think he would have realized and put the brakes on.
One thing I do believe when Paul Hayman has done
interviews and you know, is for some reason Steve Ustin

(30:32):
like really liked our film and anybody will sort of
even passively related to BCW he asks about. And I
also drove off the road the one morning when I
downloaded the podcast to listen to him talk to Hayman
because to this day one of the most fascinating people
that I would ever research or would ever cover in

(30:53):
any way. I think that I'll be eighty and I'll
still he'll still be top three at worst off and
brought Barbara City to him and he said that he
had never seen it, which man may not be true,
but that's kind of irrelevant to me. What's more relevant
is that he said, you know, people always talk about
the hay and kool Aid and all this. He's like,

(31:13):
nobody drank the kool aid more than me, and you know,
we kept amping up things because part of the question,
to Austin's credit, was about like, you know, the violence,
the way we covered the violence, and if he thought,
looking back it was necessary to go over the top,
you know, did it hurt things in the long run.
And his answer I thought was actually really honest for him,

(31:35):
not that he's a liar, but I think he knows
how to speak to an audience, you know what I mean.
I think there's portions of truth and there's portions of
of manipulation in anything he says. But he did say, like,
you know, everybody blames me, but I was the one drinking,
like it's my money. I was throwing all this money
at this thing. And I believe him, you know, I
believe and I've talked to a lot of people that

(31:56):
are you know, that have been close to him, are
still closer than you would have become very similar to
early on our ah had it existed here, you know,
it wouldn't have been a carbon copy of it, but
that's the way he saw the landscape going. And it
also would have had a much bigger nick commercial arts

(32:17):
clings to it. He saw that coming. I mean, I
still see that guy as a visionary. If I had
millions and millions of dollars and I wanted to do
something in the pro wrestling genre or you know, or
some version of that, I would be throwing money at
Paul him and to join me.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, you know, when East W was in its death rows,
I remember he was talking about bringing in guys like Spanky,
Brian who was Brian Kendrick, Guys like CM Punk he
actually had, yeah, Loki he had. He actually was talking
about these guys before anybody had a clue who the
hell these guys were. And this isn't just him saying this,

(32:57):
because they all brought this up too, that they were like, hey,
you know, Paul Hayman. One guy who I know Again,
I'm sorry going to a little off topic here. One
guy who I always wondered why he was in the
c W was mad Man Pondo. But that's the whole
you know that I that's always something I'm always like
you know, I don't get why he because he was
wrestling in the nineties. Uh yeah, and you know a

(33:21):
couple of always wondering, you know, why he didn't go
to E C W so even just for a tryout match.
But anyway, but you know, but you know with the
way that's like I said, change, you know, I I know.
You know in Japan they have a league that is
similar to that. I think it's Pancrease. Uh No, it's
not Pancrease, is it. Uh well, it's because they do
because they do like K one fights, and they do

(33:43):
some of like mixed martial arts, and they also have
for wrestling bouts and I can't remember the name of
the the company right now the top of my head.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
Do you know what I know that those existed? Well,
Pat Pancreas was the first. Uh pure mm.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
A, yeah, that's yeah. As soon as I said I
know I was wrong, I'm wrong a lot on this podcast.
By the way, John, just so you know that's okay,
I'll tell you my audience knows not to believe a
word I say about anything.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
Well, they basically there's there there were several promotions and
I don't even know that they really exist in the
form you're talking about now, but that there were a
bunch like Mma and for wrestling in Japan, even even
in the seventies before Nime like really truly existed. Like Antonio,
you could always bring in people and then smarten them

(34:33):
up to quote unquote the business, like Muhamma Ali is
the most famous example, and he didn't actually want to
lose to Anocchi, which is why they ended up having
this horrible uh fight in Pinocchio in seventy six. But
like that whole mixed martial arts thing was a gimmick
that Pinocchi did because he had been to Brazil and
trained jiu jitsu. But his goal was to make it

(34:55):
so that pro wrestling was a fighting discipline, almost as
like work. Okay, I'm trying, I should speak for the
rest of the audience. He wanted to be part of storyline.
That is the simplest way to put it. Was the
idea that pro wrestling itself was a fighting discipline in
the way we think of karate or jiu jitsu or

(35:17):
something like that. And he would bring these guys in
and pay them a lot of money to lose to him.
These authentic people with him their discipline to further the
idea with his fan base that pro wrestling was a
better fighting art. And that's really how us he started anyway,
who was like the boxer versus the wrestler or you
know this guy. You know this guy does this versus

(35:40):
tackle on no guy. So yeah, I mean that's always
been interestlined in Japan. You know, that's what Pride was.
People look at Pride, which is an MMA organization that
was huge in Japan, and they romanticize it. But like
if you go back, it's like a lot of pro
wrestling stuff or for wrestlers fighting NMA fights, some of
the finishes were like somewhat manipulated, you know. So yeah,

(36:02):
that's that's existence.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, and as you know, just as a side note,
you know, guys like Sakaraba, you know, his whole style
when he fought in Pride was Japanese professional wrestling. Like
when everyone had their you know, they would say like
their name, their weight age or weight and the style.
His style was Japanese professional wrestling. And that's and that's
when he was the Gracie Hunter.

Speaker 4 (36:26):
Yeah, I mean, and there's a guy who comes from
u w FI. There were all these like splinter groups.
They splintered off. Here's a little d kid stryf hit
you and your your listeners. In the eighties, there were
all these like groups of people who trained in the
New Japan Gojo who then would be lower card guys,
and then they'd split. The group of them would splinter off,
and they started like the u w S, and there

(36:46):
was a second UWS, and then there was the u
w FI, which is something Universal Wrestling blah blah blah International,
and they were like early stages of warp shoots. Some
of the slights would kind of be like real fight
ish thing where they knew to finish, but they didn't
care how it got there, and some of it was

(37:06):
just a mimic. And the idea was like, we're realer
than pro wrestling, like those guys are phony, but we're
real kind of a thing. And that's where Saka Rabit
came from. And he would bounce in and out of
New Japan and then he decided to be a straight
up shoot fighter and you know, pride to them. I mean,
look at the first title existed, because I think there's
how do you stayed last week Tanaka or something. There's

(37:29):
a wrestler. Uh No Kio, I'm I'm butchering you now,
I'm there. There's somebody yelling at their iPod right now.
There's a gentleman who was who was in the E
W s I and and it was their champion, and
then he had some big fights with when they were
falling apart. He had title matches with the Great Muda

(37:50):
at a Tokyo don't and then another one at least
one more with Hashimoto, who was another new japan star
in the nineties, and then his and then the first
Pride was him and he was essentially just a for
a wrestler who pretended to be a shooter, you know,
and he had he had rudimentary skills for the times
Turtle that he wasn't like you know, Sokaraba. And the

(38:11):
first Pride was him versus one of the Grazies who
trounced him by the way, and the big comeback with Sokaraba,
you know, he was a Grazi owner. He was defending
the honor for wrestling. That would the quote unquote storyline
of the legitimate shoot promotion, you know, so they they
would blur lines too, even though they were they were
a Shoot promotion in the way that pro wrestling would

(38:32):
blur lines and work fights.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, I know who you're talking about. It's uh pronounced no,
you know, yeah, yeah, it's Takata, but it's the first
name is like Noboo Keys Takato. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Takata,
you know. And uh, I know, yeah, I know exactly
what you mean. But uh but yeah, and you know,
that's when you know, all those promotions started, and I remember,

(38:57):
you know a lot of guys just sorted coming up
at it, you know, through the ranks of Pride too,
and you know, uh, that's we really to me, that
was the last time where you really saw somebody like
the fighters who really knew what they were doing. And
when I here's what I mean by that. They they
all had one style, meaning like soccer rob had you

(39:18):
have professional wrestling. Mirco crow Cop was a kickboxer, you know,
Igorovov Chansion, you know, he just did heavy boxing stuff
like that. Uh, they didn't you didn't see like the
UFC now everyone sort of high has a hybrid style
where everyone does. You know, day one is Brazilian jiu jitsu,
the next day is so muay Thai. You sort of
get a jack of all trades and a master of
nothing straining like that while in Pride. I mean you

(39:43):
really could just tell just by the way the guy
worked that, uh, the way the guy fought, the way
he moved, you know, whether he was like a gracie
guy or if he was a stand up fighter. I mean,
it's just I really wish you would go back to that.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
We'll be right back after a word from our spon
answer and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
In a lot of ways, and you're watching some of
the Japanese fights now, uh, there it still is that
way because there's dream right now.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
And there's a guy that I, you know, absolutely love
to watch, and that is of course I wonder I
just blanked out on his name. That is, I forgot
his name, but I post I will post it in
the show notes. I promise I lest I can remember
it quickly, but I don't think I can so. But

(40:37):
you know, back to you know your You're you know
everything with you know you and in Barboar City. You know,
this documentary was about the subculture of of v c
W and and all the crazy things and professional wrestling,
and people call it fake, but you know, their injuries
are all real, and you know, you've got guys being paralyzed,
You've got some people, you know, bleeding, and then they
requires you know, real stitches.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
It's just an irrelevant argue to me because it's it's like,
it's like if I really liked the show Sopranos and
you kept telling me, and I would get like really
into the storyline and we were having a discussion and
you're like, you know, you know, it's fake job. You know,
they're not really mobsters, they're like fake. I'd be like, yeah,

(41:19):
I know, the actors. I'm really into the show, the presentation,
it's the way it's world building. They built it built
a world correctly. The narrative is good, and like that,
I mean, you're doing a good job. You're giving the
answer that a lot of like intelligent people give. But
I even think that is almost too much of humoring
these people who say these kinds of things, because what

(41:40):
they're inferring is that you're what they would call in
wrestling mark, which is kind of an offensive term for
wrestling fans. It's like the dal heard in the weird Wads.
Certainly not to that degree, but it's derivative is from
the carnivals where and I've heard different stories about like
like like kind of the mythologizing of the term. I

(42:04):
think Dutch Mantel in the late nineties used to do
a blog I read where he said he had always
been told that when a carnival would come into town,
they'd have a guy who went around and acted as
though he was like poor and homeless and needed food,
and it's you know, somebody was nice enough to give
him food. He would mark with like chalk or something.

(42:27):
He's marking a very subtle X in front of the
be to the house or the front walk. And what
that meant was not that they were a mark, but
that's what the term became, but it meant these people
are willing that they'll kind of fall for your story
kind of a thing, so you can go house to
house and get food or something like that. You know,

(42:48):
there was some sort of like manipulation there with him
that I'm kind of forgetting about. But that's one of
the old lives tales that it's probably not true, but
it is a great story. The point being is that
mark is this negative term meaning that you're a fool.
That is where it came from when you're when you
when wrestling people call and it's not nearly as prevalent

(43:08):
because it's completely different. It's an entertainment industry now, but
even even in the late nineties and acw l TW
is like the last territory you know, because it wrestling
needs to be in a territory system, and it wasn't
a national thing, and there was some old school things,
as they say, interrestling to it, and like calling somebody

(43:28):
a mark is really like saying that they're a dumb
person who believes that you're you know that you're ball
to Mahony and you hit people with chairs in your
daily life and you're not John Reckner and you don't
have like a day chop or something, you know, or
a cad or a wife. You know, there's a logical
sea monster who only comes out every third Saturday to

(43:50):
the CW Arena and tries to kill somebody for real.
And I believe you that kind of.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
Thing you're telling me, Balsahony does not actually walk around
blong fired any people with chairs.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Well now, all moaning might, but but it's another story entirely.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, Like the one guy who I actually could seriously
see living his gimmick twenty four to seven is new Jack.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
I think there's some validity to that. In a sense.
He's crazy, but he's crazy like a fox. I was
very impressed by him. He did his interview with me.
Now I've told this story before, but you have a
very different audience, and it's been at least two years.
I was very nervous about interviewing Jack, And originally we
were going to get him when we shot all the
footage at the Extreme Reunion, which was in a reunion

(44:40):
of a lot of the ECW guys, and they were
going to do a show. What was it at the
point that they did the show, It was like thirteen
years or twelve years after it had shut down, something
like that, and we had a room at the hotel
that they were all staying and we were grabbing people
into it interviews in our motel room across the hall.

(45:05):
We kept hearing this person from yelling and he was funny.
Like Rob Finstein, who I met and mentioned before, does
this thing called shoot interviews, which is kind of a
dying thing because of this podcast, because of what we're
doing now. Back in the late nineties, he didn't create it,
but he was one of the people who figured out
how to monetize it, and it was before referring was

(45:28):
very very open as far as the gentleman wrestling talking
as themselves the person and talking about their experiences. He
would film that and he would put it out on
PHF taps and so he was actually doing one across
the hall and the person yelling and carrying on was
Jerome dung Aka knew Jack, and we put in a

(45:51):
call to somebody working with us who putting a call
to Jack to get him across the hall to sit
with us for thirty minutes. And he wanted to know
how much we paid, and now we didn't pay for
a single interview, so at that time he didn't want
to do it. And then through some connections and I maginations,
we ended up sitting down with him at one of

(46:12):
these Extreme whatever that promotion became. They changed their name
Extreme Rising that with it, and he did the interview
with me was a machete on his lap and it
was very I could Kevin did not feel terribly comfortable
while shooting this, and I part of the gifts of

(46:34):
Jerome Young is that he's very charming, but he never
wants you to fully feel comfortable. That's part of the
control and the power of what he wants out of
those situations. And so I pretty early on said, I
pointed to the machete on his lap and said, so
is that for me? I forget exactly what I said.
I'm nervous. I'm sure when I said it, and hopefully

(46:56):
I pulled it off well enough, basically like, hey, is
that for me? It is? This goes bad? And he
just gave me the crazy eyes and then smiled, and
I actually put me at ease because it was one
of those things where I was like, he knows what
he's doing, you know what I mean, He's not he's
not here to mess with civilians, so to speak. Keen quotes,

(47:17):
and we had the best interview, and in fact, like
I think ime a DVD, we actually put an extra
like eight four it's not even even fourteen minutes of
like outtakes of stuff he talked about so much stuff
that had nothing to do with our narrative but was
so entertaining, and we put it on there. He is
by far the person that non wrestling fans come to
me and say I found him so funny, so entertaining,

(47:39):
so charming, and all these things are true, and then
I would say we finished. He signed the release with
no trouble, and he made a joke going like, you
were nervous until I signed this, you know, making it
you know officially we could use it. And we shook hands,
we chatted, we were packing up, and then he literally
assault did a fellow wrestler in front of us, and

(48:02):
it scared the shit out of me. And it was
because you just see that visceral, real violence in front
of you. It's it's different, you know. I think at
times we become desensitized, especially when we see it through
a TV and things like that. You know, violence is
an interesting thing to me because, like, I love MMA.
I used to work briefly for about a year year

(48:23):
and a half, I worked, you know, part time for
an MMA website O seven, and we used to go,
we got press passes and I would be media at
rainside and do live blogging and stuff like that. And
it's kind of that same feeling. Watch MMA on TV
and guys get knocked out and they're like, oh wow,
that was great, and he's there live like you know,
feet or media row. Generally these things is like ten

(48:47):
to fifteen feet away. It sits right there at cage side,
and you get like these like light heavyweights heavyweights in
the ring and they hit each other. You feel the
vibrations as them. They're that kick like out fifteen feet away.
A new cringe is very visceral and real, and in
that moment you go like, oh, wow, that hurts. That

(49:10):
doesn't just hurt. That could kill somebody. It's done wrong,
you know, like that it's something different, And that's kind
of what I felt with Jack, Like that's he's crazy,
like a fox, is the best way to put it.
He knows exactly what he's doing at all times, and
the trick is to chart you but also make you
slink if this guy might do something.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah, so why did he assault it on the wrestler.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
That's the whole story, you know what, I don't even
know that I can tell it. I'll give you like
the cheap version because the truth is that it was
very detailed and I used to be able to tell it.
But this happened like three years ago and I don't
remember exactly there was a problem. Okay, so the other

(49:54):
this isn't like non it's not common knowledge, but it's
not like I'm not telling secret.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
Show out of school. There has been a problem between
you Jack and Ball from Pony, who we had mentioned
before at the first reunion show, and this was the
second one now in like Junie, I think, and they
had gone back and forth and there was all this stuff,

(50:31):
and like in fact, when I got to the building,
I ran into somebody who's like, are you interviewing Jack today?
And I said yeah, and they said, oh, you better
watch out. He has a generally no yeah it was
he said he's going to kill Balls, and I kind
of smirked and stead of like, oh yeah. But see,
I think I really think that Jack was working. And

(50:51):
again I have to explain this for people who't understand.
I think this is the weird thing about wrestling. Part
of Jack's income over the last decade because he pretty
much can't get a job with the wrestling in his
street shrinking, his style going out of vogue and him

(51:11):
this kind of pede and nutty guy. It's hard for
him to get work with in wrestling, and part of
his income was derived from doing shoot interviews. And he's
smart like I said, so Jack knows to do a
shoot interview and have people buy it, and therefore make
yourself a commodity that can demand you know, two grand

(51:32):
or four grand or whatever you were getting paid for
just sitting down and telling stories for three hours on
one day. You've got to have stories. So if you
do a lot of shooting interviews, you run out of
stories and people don't want to buy it anymore. And
I think that Jack likes creating hysteria so that he
would be more marketable. That's part of that whole Carney

(51:54):
thing that that wrestler persona, and I really leave that Jack.

Speaker 5 (52:02):
I had a conversation with him earlier in that week
where it seemed we were we met in person because
he was in town in Philly and it was for
a bit.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
We both had to be somewhere for different reasons, and
we ended up being around each other for about two
hours and talking for about almost one of them. I
would say I did most of my talking with him,
and my impression is that he knew that he didn't
really have a problem with John Reckner the person or

(52:39):
Balls Mahoney the character in real life, but he was
creating one and if he pushed hard enough, Balls would
say something that would lead to their being more kind
of hysteria around it. This is how goofy wrestler is.
I think that he was creating a situation like investling Collins.

(53:01):
They would call it me, uh, working angle, but in
real life he was kind of creating this storyline in
real life and not. And I don't think Baldsmhony knew
that he was part of a fake story, you know
what I mean. So apparently, and I don't even think
that this was true. But I was told, well, you know,

(53:22):
Balls is Balis Mahoney is in the building already. I said, oh, okay,
so this is really going to be a thing. He's like,
oh yeah. Ball showed me he's got like a little
gun or something in his bag. And I'm like, so
I was on edge, you know what I mean. And
uh and then he walked up to him and Balls
might have said like two words like I said, like,
Balls tried to talk to him, and this wasn't listen.

(53:45):
Other than myself and Kennedy, there was nobody in this
room that was a fan or something. You know. It's
this is like Stevie Richards was in the room, John Finnigan.
It was a people I was friendly with. Actually, you
know John Fennigan's there. It was an old referee for
easy W and he's worked a lot of other places.
He wasn't trying to fool fans to make money in

(54:07):
that way in that room, but he was for real, Like,
it's so weird the psychology of these especially I don't
feel like the newer wrestlers that that's the thing. They
see it as entertainment. They all grew up on WWE
and they want to be good corporate citizens and apply
their trade for the most part, or do it for

(54:29):
the art, you know what I mean. The journeyman who
who will get a lot of buzz on the internet,
they do it kind of for their art and because
they love it. And in some cases it is because
they don't want to grow up. Because you get to
be his angel of the Baldi's there for me from
later to ACW said to me, He's like, it's like
you're always in high school and every weekends like a
high school party. You know, you never have to leave.

(54:51):
I think that's all these factors doing me this kind
of right. And then after a while, you don't know
what else to do this is it's not a transferable skill.
Pretending artfully to beat somebody up isn't something that you
can go across the street and say, hey, I would
like to sell cars for you, or you know, I
would like to fit in cubicle and do tech support
for your tech company. So in this case, Jack created

(55:15):
something and I guess Balls kind of sell for it,
and that's all he needed. And he just walked up
to him and punched him in the face a million times.
And to Balls noone's credit, he never tried to strike Jack,
which is you know, from somebody hitching in the face,
you know, it's he just besetted himself and covering up
and kept trying to talk sense to him, you know

(55:38):
what I mean. And I will admit that I'm the
person who finally said, you know, this is going on
way too long, and I ran and got one of
the promoters and I got out of security and they
ran in and clapped them.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Well, that is a hell of a story. I could definitely,
you know, I remember seeing something about that a couple
of years ago. Were Balls and knew Jack had a
problem with one another.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
Postscripted by the way, they did do a shoot interview
with Rob Seinstein, Yes, afterwards, and I've never seen the
whole thing, but from what I saw, by that point,
everybody was included in wink wink, I mean Rob did this.
I don't know. I haven't talked to Robin quite a while,
but Rob sworded me even after it was shot. Oh

(56:27):
it was retail and we got an off duty police officer,
and I was kind of shocked because he either he
was trying to quote unquote work me as they say
in wrestling, which is like, uh, do the whole fake thing,
do the live thing, or or he just really believed
it was real and he pissed away money on an
them Discover cap to do security for them. You know,

(56:49):
I by that point, I don't think that I think
everybody knew what was going on, sort of saying but they.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Made their money, yeah, and uh, you know that whole thing.
They know. This whole story kind of reminds me of,
you know, some of the obstacles that you'll face. We're
making a movie, but these are some of the obstacles
you face, you know, making this documentary. As you thought
that some of your your the people you're interviewing, were
going yourself some of your subjects. You know, we're going

(57:14):
to assault you at any time, particularly new Jack.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
Yes or lie to me. That was another thing. There's
a lot of We had so many theoretical slash I.
I hate to use this word because it's it's used
in a dirty way, which kind of sucks. Intellectual U
debates and uh, what would what would you call it?
We would watch footage and there'd be three people saying

(57:41):
three different things and we would have to talk about
And it's also dealing, especially you're dealing with something where
people within that industry they interchange truth and the real
world with what they call working, which is they have
their own term for lying. It's go working. It's okay
if you flat out lives somebody, even like your wife

(58:01):
or your best friend, if you're working now, and if
it was lying, that's horrible, you know, But if you
work somebody, that's theay. So we would have these debates
where you'd sit at the editing bay, but to almost
finally like kind of like shy and look at each
other and he has some return and saying like do
we know that so and so thinks there whether he
believes this or do we know this? To be true,

(58:22):
because now I'm going to go to wrestling guy, so
I have to talk about the backstory of these things.
And like what I've learned through research and a lot
of this game was knowing all the stuff. You know,
I did a lot when we when we decided to
finally do this and finish it, I spent two months

(58:43):
diving back into every piece and notes and then every
every like I mentioned the newsletters before, I read every
newsletter saying about ECW at that time, I would call
journalists and I'd have off the record chats about sayings.
And I gets murky too, because the journalists on buddies

(59:03):
and they have different masters they're serving within, like any
reporter has sources in that industry that they are trying
to protect and that might be personal friends, and they
all have different perceptions about sayings, and so it can
be a mess. It's untangled, you know, I like, you don't
have to worry about There are a lot of times

(59:25):
when I interviewed somebody and they'd say something and I'd
either my first you know, cynical thought was as well,
they're lying to me, well this is great, and then
you know I'd lost the tape again. And I think,
you know, I'd put all the pieces together, and you know,
they probably think what days they're saying it's true now,
but I think of it, it's not. I know, it's
not that they don't know, you know what I mean. Like,
look in the movie bal in the Hoon, he thought

(59:46):
that ECW is being restructured. You know, I was. I
was barely twenty when I did that interview with him,
and I had the legal documentation of the filing of
chapter eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
And you can see it in the film. We're talking
about it and he's like, oh, hey, you chapter elen restructuring. Yeah,
there's a lot that you don't know that I can't say.
And what are you supposed to say to that guy, like,
you know, no offense. But I'm pretty cont you know,
even being twenty, I was relatively well connected at the time.
Obviously I'm doing this project, you know, so I knew

(01:00:32):
what the score was on that. But obviously his head
had been filled by you know, not only wanting to
believe these things, because who wants to lose what they
consider their dream job? But he also probably had people
telling him just hold on, just hold on. You know,
I got that a lot from people, even well, you know,
twelve years after the fact, when interviewing people, you know,

(01:00:53):
I have a whole role of people saying they just
wanted to be talking not only about wanting to believe,
but talking about their emotions, either if they went to
the last show and know of nowhere that they that
they did, or several months later, when Paul Hayman, the
owner of the CW, walked on to w w e's
live broadcast to do every Monday, which is wrong. That's

(01:01:15):
a big topic with people, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Yeah, and you know again, you know, for for all
the listeners out there, you know what John is talking
about is you know, for anyone making a documentary, you know,
he had to worry about, you know, not the obstacles
of you know, someone's gonna sult him, but also you know,
people would actually lie. And you know, I have had
other people who've done documentaries about different subjects, and you

(01:01:40):
know that's some of the things that they have to
worry about too, is mainly that. And Gladys brought up John,
is are people telling the truth? Because this is you know,
sometimes it's basically like the truth according to them, if
you know what I mean, there's an old saying and uh,
I forget who said it, but you know there's uh,

(01:02:00):
there's three versions of the truth. There's your version, my version,
and the truth or what really happened. And I mean,
you know, and you know you took you know, you
just said, you know you took over what twelve thirteen
years to get all this documentary footage and put it
all together and actually make it. I mean, so you
you were in this little long haul to make this documentary.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
Yeah. So I mean, And I'm always quick to state
just because I'm like an obsessively factual person and I
don't like, I don't really like the mythologize any what
I do at all, you know what I mean? Because
I feel that flying and that Tony and I always
think like, well, if you go with this year, you
get to get trapped in a high one day. You know,
we weren't working every day for thirteen years. We were

(01:02:44):
working a lot in two thousand, a ton in two
thousand and one, a little bit in two thousand and two.
Then it sat on the shelf and then I think,
oh five, we worked for like half a year on
it and sat on the shelf, and like during this period,
there would still be times where, like you know, somebody
would call me and go, he's pulling him an email.
Do you want to talk to him blah blah blah
blah blah, or here do you want to talk to sell?

(01:03:04):
And sell and this and that, And then I think
once we made the decision in late January early February
of twenty twelve, at that point it became an every day,
twelve hours a day thing until not just the premieter,
like I'd say, until probably July July of that year,

(01:03:25):
every day, because that's because the thing that you know,
there's so many things to worry about. Like you talk
about documentary, he's like another thing you stress about his releases. Well,
this person said release. Oh, this person walked in. I
had one shot during the Balls and I see the
same people keep coming up. It's so goofy you think
this film was like so super Bowls Maloney's entry. During

(01:03:46):
my initial interview with Balls Mahoney in Virginia in two
thousand and one, a gentleman named Rob Van dam Well
that's his wrestler name, walked in purposely, in fact, walk
into the shot to say hi to Ball and to
say some stuff to the camera, and then you know,
follow that up by like, if you want to use this,
you need her relief. He need a talk to my agent.

(01:04:08):
He had no idea. Had I already spoken in the
age of the month before to try to get him,
because the time he was a hot commodity. I think
he ended up in the ww's wee within you know
by the summertime, and yeah, ins agent wanted like two
grand to sit down and talk to him. He just
thought it was this dude, impossible for these people to
wrap their head around the idea that anybody outside of

(01:04:29):
the wrestling world would want to to talk to these people.
And in the wrestling world you get paid for it
because they're shooting reviews. Like now that's broken down again,
but especially at that time, and it didn't help that
I had been a wrestling fan and that was that
was another pitfall too. How much do I tell these
people in pre interview stock Not only would I make
the call and we confirm everything, but I like to

(01:04:51):
talk to my subjects because I'm kind of a belief that,
like I'm in charge of the room like Kevin would
Tom and he would do all the tack and he
would film it, and then I would allow him the
co creative process. You know, whatever is on my end,
he has feedback on whatever is on his, and I
have some saying. So during the interview, I would I
would he would just interrupt here and there if he

(01:05:13):
thought I missed something, or if I would turn in
and say do you have anything? At this point I
think he may or may not ask. But in the room,
before you even turn the camazon, these people are picking
your brain and trying to see what your quote unquote
angle is because they come from a world where everybody
has an angle on screen and off. So then I
learned very quickly to minimize the fact that I was

(01:05:34):
a fan, because they view fans as the lowest common denominator,
you know what I mean, kind of the way people
argue the WWE promotes to their fans. They're thinking of
the dumbest yokel who doesn't understand anything and needs complete
expository dialogue and very simplistic angles with no kind of
like real shades of gray. That's kind of how I

(01:05:57):
felt a lot of wrestlers viewed fans, and it was
my job to control my perception. I felt to get
the interviews and to continue dialogues and get people to
send and releases. And I'm not saying why to people,
but I just mean by the time we came back

(01:06:17):
to when I was a lot older and I knew
how to like present myself where it is, I'm I
think I did an okay job when I was like
eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one years old, but I would
get very nervous and I didn't always know how to
answer a lot of questions about things, you know, And
by that time I knew that we didn't come back
to it because I was a wrestling fan, and I
always thought that's something that I think. There was a

(01:06:40):
big push in my interviews too, was like, without asking me,
they I was being presented on radio interviews and podcasts
as like a super fan, and they thought that helped
because in their mind it was awesome that a fan
was doing this and this was some kind of love
letter to youw And that's not what it was at all.

(01:07:01):
My job is a filmmaker, was to document the truth,
which was hard to get at. Some people would say, well,
what is this is this just like an attack piece,
or is this like they basically want to know they're
the paradigms they kind of set up, you know. Was
it's either a something that's relatively promotional where they can lie,

(01:07:22):
where they can just you know, make up their own reality,
or be I must be trying to get it all
all things negative and bury them because they're martyr That
was part of the cw fanship with that. You were
you were part of a revolution, you were part of
something very like guttural and duy, and you were a family,
and anybody against you there was a martyrdom about them,

(01:07:44):
and that was you know, it was, Well, look at
the term revolution and what it really means, you know
what I mean. It's people kind of getting together almost
like a what do they call that, a flash mob
of sorts, and doing something about a regime. It's usually
political and involved countries and wars, and it's it's about

(01:08:07):
a regime that you think is wrong, you know what
I mean. There's all these ideological things that are attached
to it. But basically that's what I had to penetrate,
you know what I mean. So it's like at least
the regular documentary if I was documenting I don't know,
an interesting guy who I don't know, like made billions
off of popsicle sticks and then disappeared, and I had

(01:08:28):
the one interview with him at least, like when I'm
interviewing his family and everybody else, and I finally do
an interview with him, but so not gonna. I don't
think they're necessarily going to go into it thinking that
I am a bad guy, you know what I mean,
or thinking that they need to feel me out, you
know what I mean. And everybody either like was questionable

(01:08:52):
of us or didn't want to do it at first,
and all these things, And like the funny thing was
a lot of these people would be interviewed by me,
and I don't know. I think it's almost be theo
cristical to say that they respected me. I think that's
the kid probably, But it's not like somebody said, I
really respect you. And even if they did, I'd be like, well,
you're a wrestler, So I don't know if that's true,
because you'll just say things. Maybe you only editing you

(01:09:15):
favorably because you just thought of something you said in
like the fortieth minute that you probably shouldn't have said,
but I do. But the one thing that came out
of it was a lot of referrals, a lot of
are you know, jumping through to get everybody who was
one person liking us after the interview and saying that
we were fair and that we were thorough, and that

(01:09:36):
we were that we presented ourselves well and wanting the
project to succeed in therefore calling other people and saying, hey,
I'm bouncing for us essentially say hey, these guys are
doing this documentary. And I think we were also very
lucky because when we started we were just young enough
and dumb enough to be likable.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show, and.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
Not a threat, and at the same time professional professional
enough to get in the room with these people. Yeah,
which is was like perfect. We lucked out because if
they thought we were just super fancy'd had nothing to
do with us. But if they thought we were like
real Journali's well, the first thing you thought, especially when
we started, the first thing you thought was, oh, what

(01:10:31):
this is going to be? Is this real or fake?
And just an attack piece about how disgusting it is?
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
Yeah, and you know, I know exactly what you're just saying,
and you know that that is also something you know
that's important, is you know, how you matured as a
filmmaker and how you use an interviewer when you were
going from you know, obviously when you're interviewing them f
when you were twenty to a few years later. But
you know, you know a lot of what were saying
there is so important because when another you know, some

(01:11:01):
we alres trying to make a documentary, they always wonder
how likely is it I'll be able to get to
these people, because eventually, you know, you're going to have to,
you know, talk to me. If you want to do
a documentary on the Beach Boys, for instance, at some
point you're going to have to sit down with them
and talk about them. Otherwise it's just sort of this
piece that sort of is about them now, you know

(01:11:22):
what I mean, not with them, but about them.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
I don't know then do they want they want a
piece of the action financially, do they want creative control?
There's all these things. Yeah, I mean we talked about
that even after after Barbara City is like, oh, what's
the next project, And when we took a little time
to decompress and run the business aspects of it, and
then you come up with ideas and they need right away.
I always think in terms of like logistics in the filmmaker,
because one are the other big things licensing, not just

(01:11:49):
thinking people. This kind of releases the licensing. So somebody
would say something an idea. Kevin and I had been
a stuio kicking around ideas, and I don't know, maybe
he'd say something and trying to think of maybe he
never said this, but I'm making this up. He'd say
that comic book writer that was really hot a decade ago, Bendish.

(01:12:10):
I forget, I forget his fun in but I'm just
gonna use him. So right away, Well, if you're going
to do a documentary about Bendis, and you know under
the premise like well he changed the way comic books
are it, okay, Well, first you have to prove if
that's true or not. That's not really my genre. It's
just kind of something that preferly was. You know, I
had friends that would tell me about him. Well right away,

(01:12:31):
it's like, okay, well what did he raised to where
did he grow to be? Well? He writes like half
of Marble's market books. Okay. Well, now that's a problem
because you can't do a good Vendish documentary unless you
get Marble on board, because you're going to need to
show the stuff she drew or that he wrote, right,

(01:12:52):
and that's in that's a marble thing. Well, who wrots marble? Oh? Disney? Okay,
now you're dealing with Disney? How you deal with Disney?
Know what I mean? Like, those are the kind of
things we'd have to talk about and think about it.
And logistics, Oh well, where did he live? Okay? Well,
who are the main players you'd also want to interview? Well,
you do two months of research and you come back
and you go, like these ten people, where do they live? California, Florida, Arizona. Well, okay,

(01:13:17):
now your cost just went up obscenely because you've got
to get them to say yes, and you have to
have a few days in all these things you need
dominoes to fall. That was a big thing, A huge
thing for us very early on was getting Todd Gordon.
I remember I would love him on the phone all
the time, and when I lived in Philly, I or
do the University of the Arts with Kemp and his

(01:13:40):
jewelry shop, was maybe a mile away, and I would
walk there like once a week and bug him and
it's like this nineteen year old kid, and he'd say, well,
who do you have? And I remember saying them like
the three interviews we had at the time, and like
my marquee dad was like John Bailey, the straw hat guy, who,
for those of you who don't know, was a guy
who sat in the front row of every CW Arena
show from the beginning and he was just part of

(01:14:02):
He was emblematic of the fans, you know. And he said,
only John, you seem like a really nice kid, and
I respect that, like you just you don't want to
give up, but you know, my time is really precious.
And I've only ever done one other interview since I
left UCW and Todd, by the way, in case, I
picked Burry the lead on this is a sounder and
the original owner of u c W. And he basically

(01:14:25):
said to me, like, I don't know that I have
time to do a doctor an interview where the only
other guy participating is like the straw hat guy. And
thankfully I said okay. And I didn't know what to
say to that, and I called him back and I
pledged to him. I pleaded with him rather and I said, Todd,
you know, I get where you're coming from. I totally do.

(01:14:48):
You're that worsen though when other people last whof you have,
I'm going to say, Todd Gordon and then we go
from there, like, just give me a chance. And we
didn't have all of our stuff to othern't necessarily like
it was just so wide at that time, so my
questions for like five pages instead of like a one sheet.
And he sat through two and a half hours of us,

(01:15:09):
you know, doing a stupid interview, and he made calls
for us to his credit. You know, that's the kind
of stuff that that's the stuff you work about, getting
these people Domino's following dealing with Disney, you know, And
for us, a lot of it was did you know,
did Paul talk to you to Paul Haym and talk
to you Well, no, well I don't know if I
talks with Paul didn't And those a lot of these

(01:15:30):
people came back and apologized to me once we get
it and said, I'm sorry. You know, I was worried
about you know, my where I was going to go
after you should w and you know I didn't want
to offend Paul and this and that in case, you
know jobs, because he was tied in with WWE, which
is the biggest, you know, pro wrestling company in the world,
kind of monolithic now and and some of them even

(01:15:52):
as ed up doing interviews with us after the fact.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Have you ever seen Escape Room tomorrow Land?

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
I never finished it. Yeah, that's the gorilla, the one,
you know, very stylistic gorilla filmmaking in Disneyland, Yes, or
Disney was the disney Land and Disney World. It was
one of them. Yeah, they went in and they Yeah,
that's fascinating, that whole story.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Yeah. I actually saw that one day on a whim
and I was just blown away by for a couple
of reasons. First off, I got it, you know, it
was kind of David Lynchion. I understand what that was
going for the other part of it was I had
to look up to see what did Disney think of this? Uh,
And there's a fascinating story behind it, but I you know,

(01:16:40):
I will link to that in the show notes though everybody,
but there's just a lot of moving parts and Disney
did find out about it, and but you know, I
don't want to take I don't want to take away
from your story.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
John, Well, that's quite nice of you. That's battling land.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
I don't want to start to might you know'll escape
from tomorrow. But you know one thing I wanted to
ask you about. You know you ran a successful Kickstarter
for this fine by saying, so, you know what, what
sort of tips could you sort of give that you
that you could give to any any people out there?
But who are I think I'm making a documentary and
putting it up for crowdfunding.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
I have a big caveat to this. I may have
I might have more, but off the top of my head,
my biggest one is I ran the campaign from mid
August THI mid September of twenty twelve, So basically we're
coming up on the anniversary is three year anniversary of
running that campaign. I don't know what the perception uh

(01:17:40):
and for as bad if you don't want to call
it a Kickstarter is now. I know there was a
lot of pushback from some people the idea that you're
giving away free money to people, and I know that
some people on Kickstarter have famously burned people. The one
that the one that I saw that always sticks with me.
And this was thankfully well after we had made film,

(01:18:00):
or a year after. There was a guy who like, yes,
he was writing like trade paperback novels, I think that
was it anyways, something printed and he collected all the
money he actually made them, but he was doing everything
by himself, and he was a bit of a temperamental
art arts he does. And then is the problem is
like you're dealing both the beauty and the horror of

(01:18:21):
it is you're dealing with artists most of the time
that some of this stuff is just pure commercialism, sure
on a low level, but like I mean, dealing with us,
I'm not I know that this is another kind of
like intellectual. This is another dirty word artist. I never
wanted to be an artist when I was younger. I
wanted to be in the entertainment business, you know. That's

(01:18:42):
how I look at it. And what's funny is most people,
when the teenagers, they want to be artsy and then
they kind of quote unquote sellout and they just want
to be they understand how business works, and they're willing
to make concessions to be in the industry of their choice.
And they know reality of that, and it happened in
the opposite way for me because I wanted to be

(01:19:04):
an entertainer. It was funny, like you know, I would
joke with keV when we got older, like I was
more vocal about it, but he went along with it,
and I think he admitted to me at one point
he didn't feel this way too. When we were like
you know, sixteen through like twenty four. We wanted to
be not literally rock stars like musicians. We wanted to

(01:19:27):
be rock stars who make films. We wanted to be
media presences, you know what I mean. That was part
of it. And we didn't want to just make crap, sure,
but we wanted to be personality first and foremost, I think,
and what changed in both of us, especially me, more
me than him, was that I really became more of

(01:19:48):
an artist. And I think people are embarrassed to say
things like that because they think it sounds pretentious. There's
this whole clichet around it, and a lot of times
I think people are afraid of it because.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
When you call yourself that, I think they think it
in first, like that you're successful, that your art is valid,
and that your art is something really deep, you know,
it's really it's just something that a normal person might
not understanding. And that's just not true. That's not fair.
You don't have to have commercial successes to be artsy

(01:20:33):
or think like an artist, so to speak. And that's
something I slowly came to grips with. That's just kind
of how I am. You know, they tend to be
I'm not a money person. Geez, guys, I've given we
have Nobody shoots yourself in the foot or drops things
on principle more than getting Yarnet and I and we

(01:20:53):
have a real far less money to show for it.
And in some cases it was when it came down
to it, it was about like, I don't want to
do something and look back in five years and be like, well,
I did that for money, you know, because that's what
is that. That's a prostitute, you know what I mean,
There's one thing like that. I like, Look, we all
have to work gay jobs a lot of the time,

(01:21:15):
most of us do. That's when I have to be
a prostitute. You know, I don't want to do it
with something that I feel passionate about. So you know that. Yeah,
I'm sorry you get off on the whole thing. So
my point is that artist, and thank you for sitting
through this study of day. I really do enjoy doing

(01:21:37):
these things and just talking to people, you know what
I mean, Like, I hope I don't come up with
somebody who's in love with their own voice, because I
just I love the back and forth and the sharing
and all this stuff. I'm talking about these experiences. Yeah,
you would ask a buck kick Starter. You're dealing with
temperamental artists a lot of the time, and that can
be troubling. And the biggest thing. I always think of
this guy you're collecting all this money, He's doing everything

(01:21:57):
by himself and he got sick of and I've experienced
this too. Look, whenever you deal. I think that the
final tally for us was like four hundred and forty.
Some people gave us money. Maybe it was four hundred
and eighty one. There was just below five hundred. There's
five hundred separate entities giving you money. You know, most
of the I'm a person of person and they believe

(01:22:18):
in him enough that they gave you money or at
least your product is interesting to them. But the percentage
of them are just going to be crazy people. And
I don't literally mean crazy people like you know, they
would be in a mental institution. I mean that they don't.
They're just not the times. They have a lot of
social graces, and they're dealing with you through a computer anyway,

(01:22:39):
you know, so they can say whatever. So I guess
this guy was I've dealt with it too, But I
guess this guy could not deal with people going where
is this? I paid for this, I'm going to sue
you or something some such nonsense, you know, and some
people will probably, you know, I think the pressure probably
got to the guy just I'm sure some people were
just like, hey, man, give you money six months ago.

(01:23:01):
Where's the books?

Speaker 3 (01:23:02):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:23:04):
And so he puts up a video on Kickstarter of
himself yelling basically the people who paid for this and
burned and then chose video of him burning the first
like three hundred or something. Crazy. He threw them all
on the five He threw the first run of it

(01:23:24):
in a fire pit and started burning them and then threatened,
like a hostage situation, threatened to keep burning dressed if
he got any other messages, and said you'll get them
when you get them basically and stuff like that gave
like you know, artists on there like bad Breast. I
don't know that the Golden use has kind of been killed.
I know that in wrestling. I remember. I remember being

(01:23:45):
interviewed actually by Mike Johnson backstage at a show about
thirty and a half months before the premiere, and we
were talking about Kickstarter on and I think the video
is still on YouTube. I'm much fatter, I won't watch
it anymore. But he he asked me about kickslater and
I said I worried that that people were going to
kill the Golden Goose And the question was specific to

(01:24:06):
wrestling documentaries because there was a whole rational event at
the time, and I learned enough it too. Even people
would come up to me and ask me for advice
and they tell me their idea, and I'm just thinking, like,
you know, I don't know that I'm necessarily even a
filmmaker to this day, you know, in a true sense.
But I have some know how, and certainly Kevin Garridon

(01:24:27):
does too. And we accomplished a goal and we had
something behind it that was more than Ain't this cool?
And I was talking to people who seem like really
nice kids who I could just tell him, like, this
is going to be a disaster and this is going
to hurt anything going forward for wrestling documentaries. And I
don't know that that completely bored out, but I do

(01:24:49):
think that the fad kind of died down somewhat. I
think the biggest thing is to personalize it, to get
people that you're not selling your film necessarily or whatever
your artist endeavor is. You're selling that in tandem with
yourself and hopefully you find something like I was smart
enough to know that I had to appeal to the wrestling, internet, wrestling,

(01:25:11):
and news letter reading population. It was the only way
that I was going to get enough money to properly
fundish you know, all the licensing and all the other costs.
Budgeting is really important. You know, Oh, I'm jumping around it.
I launched again. Basically, when you give these interviews, you
have to talk about your real story and why you

(01:25:32):
care about this thing and why it's relevant, and you
have to convince people. And another thing is that this
is what we realized you're doing this is we should
have been pitching a pre order system. There's this idea
that you're getting pretty money to do something. Actually, we
screwed up our budget because the person who did our budget,
who you know, isn't myself Workamp And then I don't
want to even say the person's name because we have

(01:25:54):
no relation to them anymore. But he was another person
who was helping to produce this, and it's kind of
a deal with the devil thing after a while, and
I knew that deep down, but I didn't want to
fully deal with it, you know, because I needed this
to get done. I didn't want to die knowing like

(01:26:15):
every few years people would say, hey, man, whatever happened
to that documentership, Yeah, I never did it, you know,
I never completed it. I couldn't. I couldn't bear it.
So I had the opportunity and I had to be
talking me with But once I did, once you go
down that road, you know you're you're either all in
and you're not. And unfortunately we didn't have a proper
budget because not only is a pre order system like

(01:26:37):
it's basically like, hey, you give me money and to
complete the film and you'll get the film, but it's
also you got to give so many gifts that like
I think honestly, we probably spent like a third of
the budget on I mean that's not a completely factual figure,
but a two percentage of the budget went all the
gifts we had to give people because first of all,

(01:26:57):
even the film, even if you pledged just to at
the film, I had to plant the film myself, you
know what I mean, Like I had to send it
to disc makers and get it professionally done. There's a
there's cover er. I had to pay for that, you know,
mass production, mailing it out myself, you know. So then
you gotta deal with like camps dot com or or

(01:27:18):
the post office every day posters. Posters cost money. WHOA.
One of the things that made this possible was it
seems funny.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:27:30):
I haven't spoken publicly about this because I just haven't
done this. The gentleman who co hosts Rick Flair's podcast,
Conrad Thompson, he's really the person who made this possible
at the end of the day, because I was we
were down. We had used up twenty of our like
thirty days on kicks charter, and we still had it
was going to come down to the wire. If you

(01:27:51):
did the math on it, it was like, if we
incrementally average this much every day which we have been
we may or may not have this that the eleventh hour,
and a gentleman named Conrad Thompson saw it on I
believe Dave Meltzer's website, who is the author and editor
of a Wrestling Observer newsletter and website, and he gave

(01:28:14):
us I think four grands. I think is a good
amount of money. But here's the thing, because that that
at that level, I then had to go get a
wrestler and fly to him and give him a private
screening the week before, and that's costly.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
You know what this forget?

Speaker 4 (01:28:40):
For some reason, he really wanted Jane Douglas. Oh cool,
who's Troy Martin And it was really iron ansty he's
really neat. We flew down there, he had Conrad had
a beautiful home and real quick to wrap that up.
Once Conrad did this, it became obvious to everybody they're
going to make it. And that's the funniest thing. People

(01:29:02):
you realized it in hindsight, people weren't giving you money,
not because they didn't care about the film, but because
they weren't. They were a lot of people still to
this day, think that you don't gate money, and then
you never get it back, which isn't true. I never
and I also never had the others. Miss Filmer, is
that I handle your money, and I don't know if

(01:29:22):
it's exactly the same. But at that time, Amazon Payment,
which was a subsidiary of Amazon dot Com, they did
all the financial work for kickstarters and they take that's
the other thing. They take a percentage. Kickstarter digs a percentage.
Amazon takes a percentage, so off the top ten percent
go roughly get You don't get the money until you

(01:29:44):
don't see any money in your bank account until like
three weeks after this thing closes, if it't successful. But
because it was successful, because Conrad did that, rather it
exploded and we actually.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Got we'll be right back after a word from our
sponsor and now back to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:30:10):
More money than we had asked for, and thank god
we did, because every penny got spent. Man, because nobody
did a budget on what it would call what it
would cost to get Shane Douglas on board for that.
We were friendly with him, but he wasn't going to
take a weekend away from his family, his boys to
go to this place without you know, being flown there,

(01:30:34):
being you know, being put up at least in a hotel,
you know, and then we had to fly there because
I had to be there too, you know. And it
was a great experience, you know, Shane actually spent the
entire afternoon answering every question in Conrad and kran Conbat
and his family had probably the greatest shoot interview ever

(01:30:58):
in that you're it's an interactive shooting interview with a
real human being, who's not who's not being filmed and
therefore not playing up things and uh. And then we
all watched the movie together with Chaine and myself commenting
to Conrad almost like a live director's type before the
film even did used people. So it is a really

(01:31:18):
great experience, but it was a closely experienced had to
rent the arena, which is a story within itself. At arena,
we weren't didn't get that arena until two a month
and a half before the premiere. It was announced the
day we signed the deal. We did not think we
were getting that building up for the longest time, and
we were worried about where in Phila there was going

(01:31:40):
to be a career.

Speaker 3 (01:31:41):
Actually, well, I'm sure wearing Philly is gonna be a career.

Speaker 4 (01:31:46):
No, a premiere where we were going to debut our film.
You know, so, I guess, be yourself, show your passion,
answer every question, have an answer for everything. Hopefully you
pick a topic that has a fan base where there
is media to promote to those people. Because imagine if
how I picked. If I did the best documentary offer

(01:32:10):
on checkers, which sounds silly, but I've seen some documentaries
honestly where I didn't know anything about the subject, but
I took the chance, and I said, this is amazing
and it doesn't matter if you're a fan of this
or that. And that's kind of a pitch for my
own film, Blah Blare City. I mean, it's not really
about wrestling, it's about it's about culture. It's about the culture.

(01:32:32):
It's a journey of people, and in this case, they
don't at the end of it. You know, Rocky doesn't win.
You know, they don't win. That's the crazy thing about it,
and like where are they now? And how has this
affected their lives?

Speaker 3 (01:32:44):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:32:46):
So yeah, I would sell all the things I just said,
plus budget correctly and realize that you were going to
have to pay, Realize ten percent is coming off the
top right away, and realize that you're gonna have to
pay for all these benefits that you're giving people so
that they will give you money. That's the crazy thing.
You're have ever done some many pledges. You're close to
your goal and yet sort of further away if you

(01:33:08):
don't budge it properly because they pledge. And I've never
done the math on it because I'm afraid too, and
now it's over and I don't have to. But there
are certain pledges where I'm sure at the end of
the day it was kind of like, well, we're giving
all that money back and I don't actually even remember
how much it costs to fly down and see Conrad
and to bring Shane and all that stuff. We probably

(01:33:31):
gave so much money back to Conrad at the end
of the day, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:33:36):
Yeah, you know. I mean. One of the things I've
i've you know, learned about in crowd funding campaigns from
doing them too, is the perks is you know, the
perks can get you. And we've had you know, other
filmmakers on here like Don Fields who spoke a lot
about that at craft Fund, and gurus like Eli Rigalatto
who would always talk about that too. So I mean
that's good, you know now, John, because if you do

(01:33:57):
another one at some point, you know, you have that
now to build that into the price points so you
can break the breakdown list. So you know, if it's
one hundred dollar perk, okay, well we're getting sixty dollars back.
That's sixty percent of the perk, and forty dollars goes
to the entire cost of making it, and you know,
stuff like you know, and I think that is invaluable
because I mean, everyone makes mistakes with their first crowdfunding campaign.

(01:34:18):
You know, I certainly did, and I know all people
have as well. But you know, and that that is
an amazing perk, by the way, is having somebody actually
fly down to watch the documentary, because that's suddenly you know,
if I had the extra money, that that would be
a perk that I would have looked at as well,
because that sounds the absolutely phenomenal, especially being able to
get the wrestler. I don't know if I would have
Pickeduring Douglas, though I may have actually picked, for the

(01:34:41):
hell of it, the Blue Mini, uh, because I think
he'd be a.

Speaker 4 (01:34:43):
Fine I was pushing at because it would have been
so much easier, and he was a personal friend of mine.
I pushed me because well, it's the one thing I
was scared to death of, Like what if they pick like,
you know, then I have to fly you check down there?
Like maybe I have to share a hotel room with
him for the cost. I don't know, you know, and
I will and I will, like you're young, but I
also who knows what's gonna happen, you know what I mean.

(01:35:04):
It's kind of like having that crazy friend you take
to a bar in you're early to mid twenties and
he's like, oh, Jimmy is Jimmy's a great guy. He's
a little like he plays it fast and loose sometimes
when all and you know, every third time Jimmy's starting
a fight, he walks up a few wastes and he's like,
hey man, that group of guys is giving me dirty look.
I'm gonna jump one of them. You got in my back?

(01:35:24):
You know. I have been in that situation with people
and then like, oh my god, Jimmy's become a liability,
Like I don't think we could call with Jimmy anymore.
That's what I was afraid of with with doing this,
So I was I had any conversation where I was like, Conrad,
don't you like the blue meaning? Isn't the blue meaning
the coolest? Talk about Jerry Lynn, you know who's really
cool and loves cats, Edie Richards loves cats. Let's all

(01:35:47):
hang out. But he picked Shane, and you know what,
it worked out great. I had a great time, and
I am forever thankful to Conrad, who is a really
fun cool guy.

Speaker 3 (01:35:58):
You don't what to be funny. If he had picked
someone like the Sandman, that.

Speaker 4 (01:36:03):
Would have been in trouble. Yes, that would have been.

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
I've actually been around the same one before in like
non wrestling, uh, you know, a non wrestling environment, and
he is the guy who was exactly the same.

Speaker 4 (01:36:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
So a lot of smokes like a chimney is you know?
Uh that this was like two thousand and four I
met him again. Uh but actually I heard recently that
he's completely clean and sober.

Speaker 4 (01:36:30):
Now that's really good because I know he a few
years ago had some trouble and lost a lot of
very long time friends who ended up kind of cutting
him off. I mean, this is what I was told.
I hearsay, but I have some very good sources, certain
people that are identifiable to him don't talk to him anymore,

(01:36:52):
or they didn't for her quite a period of time.
So that's the first time hearing that. I think that's
really great. I didn't have the greatest experience with him
in two thousand and one, but I will say, by
the end of this whole thing, you know, I've heard
all the horrible things about him. I've seen him be
a really trashy guy and say a lot of horrible things.

(01:37:14):
But having said that, my lasting memory of him, so
he died tomorrow. The story that I would tell is
I was at you know, filming at one of the
Extreme Reunion Extreme Rising shows, and I went out back
coincidentally enough to smoke because I have a horrible nicotine habit,
so the quip or don't start if you're listening to

(01:37:37):
it's been very hard to you know, going off and
on with that. So I went out to the car
to get away from the craziness of these shows and smoke,
and there was this old guy playing like softball or
like a whistleball with kids and in the part in
the adjacent parking lot, and I thought, well, that's weird
because we're kind of an industrial area but it's kind

(01:37:58):
of charming to me. And he just see he was
trying of like, hey, you go here and you do this,
and he's like, oh, don't worry about it, buddy, You'll
get the next one. And I'm listening to a voice
and I start hearing it, Patt Tyler, tell him back,
let it, let him back again, that voice, and I
realized that old man is that's hacked. It's Jim Fullington.

(01:38:18):
And I just founded such a great judgetaposition. And I
also found it charming in the sense that like the
real human being. The one thing that I've never heard
anyone say is that he wasn't good with his kids.
And I and I saw it there. You know, he
came in I think he I think he did it
for free that show. I think he did it as

(01:38:38):
a favorite of one of his old EACHW friends or
Shane or something. And he brought his kids and they
played with Wall. He did his one running everybody popped.
He drinks his beer, you know, Metallica plays and that
was his knight and he just did it to steel
friends and hang out and really he just well, you know,
he just spent time with his kids and he introduced
his to his crazy old family from the nineties. You know,

(01:39:02):
that's something that you know I can say about him. Yeah,
that is a positive.

Speaker 3 (01:39:07):
Well, you know, I have a funny story for you too.
He when I used to work at what was called
ev Games, which was I know, which was what was
GameStop before a GameStop became GameStop and EBE Games, so,
you know, and I was up in Broomall, Broomall, Pennsylvania,
and we're in this you know, and it's kind of
like an upscale shopping center. We were in. Well, one
day in two thousand and one, incomes the Sandman and

(01:39:30):
he's got his kid with him. It was Tyler, and
he's talking about buying a PlayStation or a PlayStation two
at that point. And my manager had no clue who
this guy was. And I'm like, oh my god, it's
the sixth I was like, what maybe to two thousand
and one. So I'm thinking, I'm like sixteen seventeen, and

(01:39:52):
I'm like, oh my god, it's the Sandman and I'm
trying to you know, and he's like, Yo, what's up, buddy, Yoo?
You got that VS. Two.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):

Speaker 4 (01:40:09):
Oh god, I hear'ds my voice exactly exactly, and.

Speaker 3 (01:40:13):
Uh and he and you know, I was like, yoh yeah, sure, buddying,
so you know, and uh, he ended up leaving. I
was like, oh my god, the same. I just came
in here and we saw a PS two and uh,
my manager's like, who was that guy? So I ended
up bringing in some VHS tapes of of E c W.
I showed him and he was laughing his ass off
at who he was, and he wanted to bring him

(01:40:35):
into the store to have a wrestling match with our
assistant manager, who was this obese guy who was just
the biggest curmudgeon. He had these like he had a
completely bald head. He had like these like bulbous moles.
He looked at the cartoon car. He looked like a
real life Homer Simpson, if you can imagine that. So
he said to him, Hey, I'm gonna we'll bring the

(01:40:56):
salmon in and you guys have a wrestling match here
in the store. And he wouldn't like, he wouldn't tell
me it was a joke. He was trying to get
him to believe it was real. And I just remember
finally the assistant manager flipped out, was like, no, I'm
not going to wrestle the Sandman in the middle of
the store, and it was like it just kind of
hit me like that was one of the things I'd
never thought I would hear in my life, was somebody

(01:41:18):
refusing to wrestle the fad Man in the middle of
a retail store. Just one of the funny members. They
have a sad Man and.

Speaker 4 (01:41:25):
Real quick because we'd buried to believe again for the
people are who are saints and have stuck with us,
there's a Sandman, the wrestling character real name Jim Fullington
also goes by Hack who was friends who was a
wrestler nearly nineties who carried around a ken Noo stick,
which is it was popular at the time because Michael

(01:41:45):
Fay got in trouble in Singapore. It was this kid.
He was this teenager who I forget what he did,
but they ended up he's guilty of a cry stray
painted those cars, okay, right, right right, and his punishment
was they would whack him down times with a quote
unquote Singapore cane. So the Samanimic which was originally that

(01:42:06):
he was a surfer, very miscastanic, he'd be he's maintained
beating the sand Man. But he was a guy who
would come out in like zoobap pants and then later
jeans once that's that when somebody told him that bad
was over, and he would come out with that and
a T shirt, drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette and
hitting people with this cane. This does not necessarily, that

(01:42:27):
does not necessarily sound like the rest thing you may
have grown up with, or even the rest when you
see today. It really worked in that environment. He became
a cold hero. A big thing with ECW, which you
could never do today, was the original music. They didn't
use generic music. They used hits that were identified that
you then identified with that person. And then you would

(01:42:47):
hear on a radio and they would be rock and
metal and they'd be hip hop and rap. In the
time when that was just now it's that's that's music.
Now hip hop is just part of music. It is
the dominant form of music, and rocks share in music
flips day after day. But at that time it was

(01:43:09):
like a very forward thinking thing to attach hip hop
to some of the acts. And Hayman was Paul Hayman,
the creative guy behind UCW and eventually the owner he
gave hand Sandman Enter Sandman by Metallica, which is a
pretty big there's one of their biggest kids ever. And

(01:43:31):
I hear that song to this day and I think
of it. And he would come out. Half of the
fun of him was this five minute entrance where he
the music would build up and he'd come out and
he started coming out in the audience and he would
drink a beer and then smash it over his head
and he'd actually cut himself to bleed from the beer
again from smashing it. And he would go up to

(01:43:51):
people and I saw a million videos of this as
I was going through the collection for the footage that
we used the VCW. He'd walk up to a kid
and go are you eighteen? It's kind of like the
worst version of a bouncer carding somebody ever. You walk
up and go are you eighteen? And the kid go yeah,
and then you go cool, and he would just dump
a beer down the guy's throat from like a very

(01:44:12):
high angle and it would get all over the kid's
face and then he high five people to this interactive experience.
And that's the Sam That's who we're that's the guy
who basically loves his gimmick that Dave and I just
talked about.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
My dad actually used to work in Wilmington and it
was were up the street from Hacks Bar and Grill,
and that is you know, I had friends who would
you know, because eventually wrestling shows started happening there. But
they said, you know, you could go in there and
there would be the same man just live in the
gimmick drinking stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:44:45):
I mean, you see the rock footage of our interview.
It took place in there, and he didn't seem to
understand that playing commercial music during our interview over the
loudspeaker of the bar would hinder the process, considering we
couldn't license this. Yeah, I'm sorry to continue, but yes
I know that bar because we went there and he
wanted to just do it at a random table in

(01:45:07):
his bar.

Speaker 3 (01:45:07):
Well, you know, when I was at the premiere of
Barbara City, I was laughing when someone actually said to
you during the Q and A. They said, oh, I
would just use a w F footage and told Vince
McMahon to go fuck himself. And I remember your reply was, well,
maybe you have a very good entertainment lawyer who was

(01:45:28):
a very expensive you know who's on you know a
family or is on the paper. But you know that
would be a hell of a lot of money to
pay to even sit down with them to talk about
using video footage.

Speaker 4 (01:45:39):
Oh I had people steal the movie online when I
would write them and say, hey, I'm the director, like
this is a really small thing that I hope, you know,
to make money just to reinvest in us. I'm not
trying to get you in trouble reporting or anything like
could you just not And they would be like, oh man,
I'm just trying to spread it. You know, you know

(01:45:59):
style people from doing this is so uneasy w or something,
And I'm like, what the fuck do I care? Like
there are are people who you will use anything to
justify what they do, but also be that again circling
all the way back. This is a big problem that
I had was just these wrestling wrestling fans, specifically all
these CW fans. They just don't get it. Like you said, like, oh,

(01:46:22):
I should just tell this giant worldwide global corporation that's
stock traded fu I'm using your footage like that. You
would have never even been into premiere, they would have
seen a season just just months before that, you know,
like I would, I would still be paying them today
if I did that. Oh and for to forget about today,

(01:46:44):
it's only been three years. I would be paying them
well into my eighties and then I wouldn't have had
the money and I'd probably end up in jail or something. Yeah,
you just can't do this kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:46:54):
Yeah, absolutely, And which is why whenever, whenever he said that,
you could just tell that he's the right experts based
on this pass. But but you know, John, I wanted
to ask you, you know, you know I've been talking
to you. I mean, we've been talking about two hours now.
I wanted to. I wanted to. I wanted to ask you, you know,
what what's next for John? You know what what are

(01:47:15):
you working on next?

Speaker 4 (01:47:17):
Oh, We're we're and it's pained me to say. We
are in a holding pattern right now. We managed making
enough money to really reinvest in ourselves, and we still
have a few things that we want, you know, production wise,
we want adopted. Like one of the things that you
should know, first of all, go to Barbara City dot com.
If you have not seen the documentary, you can download

(01:47:39):
it there there are no more DVDs left. I have
to build bug the guy who does our website, because
I just I don't look at these things because I
need it, and I'm you know, in a weird way.
It's like it was over for me the moment the
after party wrapped, and then I still had to deal
with it. And that's like the creator part of it,
you know what I mean, Like I had lived it,
I had accomplished it, you know. So I don't go

(01:47:59):
to our sheep because I know it's there. You know,
I need the movie, you know. But apparently I just
saw last week randomly, I wanted to see what the
website looked like, and there's still it just says DVDs
are sold out, and I'd say, like once a month,
I get an email from somebody saying, like when is
that going to be restocked, and like it's because not

(01:48:20):
everybody knows. Like insteady in late January and early February,
we did a kind of like growing out of business
kind of sale to liquid are DVD stocks. Because when
you have a normal life and like a day job
that you have to do in the real world, it's
really difficult to then like run home and like find
out what the orders are and you know, run to

(01:48:40):
the post office and send these things out and just
manage the business. You know. It was just it was
it was that time. So there there's a vo D there,
I shouldn't say a VOD, but a direct download rather
like brobr city dot com. You can purchase if you
want to see it. My point of bringing that up,
other than a shameless plug is, uh, it's insane and
their definition and a lot of it was shot on

(01:49:02):
a handicam in the early two thousand. You know, obviously
we wanted to upgrade a lot of stuff. Some of
it we did have, but it made no sense to
intersplice that into our film, Like it just would have
looked like a mess to me. And so obviously everything
has to be HD. And we wanted better sound, we
wanted better lighting, we wanted it, you know, we wanted

(01:49:22):
a lot of different things. And once we got near that,
we started talking about different projects and we finally settled
on one, and it was going to be about gentrification. Essentially,
it's going to be an urban renewal, which is like
the promotional press release version, because we're going through that

(01:49:43):
in the city I grew up in Mitches Allentown in
the Holy High Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, and we wanted
to really study it it does it work? Does it
not work? I mean there's a lot of things involving money.
I had worked down there during during you know, it's
still going on. It's like a thirty year past check.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:50:11):
And they built an arena. I mean, the arena was
supposed to draw all these businesses in and then draw
all the people who were in an economic state to
spend money down there and stimulate the economy. And all
of a sudden, you know, the dilapidated downtown area that
people are afraidy to go into will become this beautiful,
you know, almost tourist attraction that the locals spend money

(01:50:32):
in as well. And I just said, this is just
such a good story and we don't have to travel.
When we looked at all the boxes from what we
learned from making a documentary, he said, this is awesome.
It's in our backyard. We know some of the players,
we know the people that talk too, we know the journalists.
You know in some cases we knew them first person,
and I spent a week researching and I had a

(01:50:54):
long with three hour conversation on the phone with Kevin.
We had another one in person and then and we've
been shot some test footage. We went down for the
second event at the arena to interview people about if
they were excited about do you know what they thought
why this was good for the city. And I just
figured some there's gonna be some weird financial thing going

(01:51:16):
on here. It's like there's this special zone called the
Neighborhood Improvement Zone and the state just gives that money
back to the to the people who are developing the lands.
And I was just like, this is there guarantee their
money back? And we're talking millions of dollars And just
from working down there for a few months, I was like,
there's something about this. Who's who's watching this? Where's the oversight?

(01:51:41):
You know? And Kevin said like, look, you know he
was Kevin right now is in Alaska. He's in Alaska
for six months. He left mid June. We had we
both had to go to a wedding of a mutual friend,
and then a few days later I helped him up
and drove them down to the Philadelphia International Airport to

(01:52:03):
fly out. So he wanted to put the whole thing
on hold. He just said, there's no point in starting
this and then me leaving, and it's all being on
your back, especially because he's far more tech savvy with
the filmmaking. I'm the dreamer who puts the story together.
I'm a very capable editor, but I'm nowhere near kep,
you know. And he was just like, it's going to

(01:52:25):
be a mess. You have to get a replacement person,
and you're kind of running tech and running a creative
vision when you interview people or shoot footage, and so
we kind of put it on hold and maybe even
like won't do it kind of a thing. And then
like two weeks ago, maybe three, big headline article in
the local paper the FBI like readed the mayor, downtown

(01:52:47):
mayor's office and a bunch of other offices. And I
guess in reading this happened to or Lancaster. I forget.
And now a lot of people, including the main developer
who is making a cleary hour of money off of this,
or under investigation apparently by the FBI. I just I

(01:53:10):
from Afar. I emailed him the article and I just
wrote like, of course this would happen. You know, we
would have been when did we shoot test footage September?
And I did all my research. We would have been
pretty sicking of this by now. We would have almost
been a year in and we would have had the
contact and had everything, and we would be on the

(01:53:32):
ground kind of we were shooting as it happens kind
of a thing, and which is somehowing with Cabra. He
does not like sit down, interview, tell the past kind
of stuff. Actually, his favorite parts are the more active
parts at the reunion. In our documentary, we used a
reunion of these guys, as I mentioned before, kind of
his ten polls that we kept coming back to, bouncing

(01:53:52):
between the president of the past. That's his favorite stuff.
So he would have been in love with all of this,
and now it's all you know, something is going on
in that story that we kind of felt might be
an angle of it, and we're not covering it. So
that's a long way of saying like, hey, would you

(01:54:12):
have liked to have seen this? Don's been Yeah, well
we would have too, but right now we're in a
holding batter. I didn't manage to make a wonderful five
minute video for my nephew.

Speaker 3 (01:54:23):
Though for all of you concerned, Hey, you always got
to be creating John, That's right.

Speaker 4 (01:54:28):
Yeah, it was. It was an outlet and it was
a great way to we did it. Not only did
make it, you know, make my nephews feel important, but
also it was a great way to test out a
lot of new stuff we had and mess with because
it's something where you don't have to be perfect. You know,
a little kid doesn't care if something's washed out, or
if the lightstone or the mic, the mic doesn't work right,

(01:54:49):
or you're messing with the settings of your new you know,
HD camera or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:54:54):
Yeah, very true. Uh, you know, and you know, John,
I want to say, you know, thanks again for coming
on the show. I know, I you know, we've been
chatting about ECW and a lot of things that, you know, like,
I'm definitely gonna have the show notes filled by the way, everyone,
So if there's anything that John and I've talked about
that you're kind of like, what the hell was that?

(01:55:15):
Trust me, I'm going to put a ton of stuff
on the show notes because I have a lot of
notes in front of me, right now, John, where can
people find you out online?

Speaker 4 (01:55:23):
Oh? I'm kind of hiding from social media. I mean,
if you google my name, you find me. I don't
knew a lot of Facebook. I've been I've gotten back
into Twitter only it was a promotional thing that I
really listen you if you're still listening to it, you
know I can talk, you know, I may. I may
not be able to do one hundred and forty two characters.

(01:55:46):
So the Twitter thing is a little bit of a mess.
But you can find me on Twitter. I don't even
honestly don't know my handle. But if I there's only
two John phillipavages in the world, and one of them
is my dad, and he doesn't know how to work
with stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:55:58):
So.

Speaker 4 (01:56:01):
You'll find me.

Speaker 3 (01:56:01):
John's Twitter handle is at BWC film.

Speaker 4 (01:56:07):
Do you really can change that? By the way, I
don't want to know how to change it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:10):
You can change that?

Speaker 4 (01:56:11):
Okay? Good? Because like that was something that was literally
just created for the film, and now I just life
goes on. Like I don't appreciate you having me on
and it's fun to talk about this stuff, but like
I do have friends who do podcasts that they have
me on for different reasons, and then I was like,
do you come on and you can promote Barbware City.

(01:56:32):
And I'm like, can I just not be the barbarre
city guy, you know, for once? Can I just have
an opinion that's cheap balid because I'm me and maybe
I can present myself. Well, well, that's so.

Speaker 3 (01:56:42):
That's what I had. You want I want you to
I mean, it was more of how to create a
documentary in general, crowdfunding and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:56:49):
I wasn't throwing chad to you, but I do. I
do need to change that, so I'll have to talk
to you. I'll have to mesch you. I'm like forty
five minutes late to meet a friend who fluid from California.

Speaker 3 (01:56:59):
By well, ay, John, I want to say thank you
and please apologize to your friend for me, John Philipavic,
documentary filmmaker. John. It was a pleasure and honor, sir,
and I can't wait to see what you do in
the future.

Speaker 4 (01:57:12):
Thank you so much, Dad. I had so much fun
doing this. Man.

Speaker 3 (01:57:15):
Oh yeah, same here, buddy, and I will talk to
you very soon. Let's cut you out. Let's not make
it another like three years before we talk to each
other again.

Speaker 4 (01:57:22):
Definitely definitely all right.

Speaker 3 (01:57:25):
Take care John, you too, man, byebye.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
a great job on this episode. If you want to
get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
head over to the show notes at Indie film uscle
dot com forwards last eight fifty seven, and if you
have it already, please head over to filmmaking podcast dot com.
Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It
really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again

(01:57:49):
so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that
hustle going, keep that dream alive, stay safe out there,
and I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:57:56):
Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast Indie
Film Hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
F I L M h U S T L E
dot com.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}IFH 857: The Untold Story of ECW’s Rise & Fall with John Philapavage

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

IFH 857: The Untold Story of ECW’s Rise & Fall with John Philapavage

Hey Jonas!