October 27, 2025 • 23 mins
Buckle up for one of the wildest rides of the year—Mike talks with Alex Phillips, the audacious filmmaker behind Anything That Moves, a gleefully transgressive, genre-bending erotic thriller that skids into the underbelly of Chicago’s gig-economy sex trade and emerges with something unexpectedly sincere. Phillips bridges the sleaze of 1970s exploitation with the high-concept perversity of modern indie cinema: a bike-courier/sex-worker named Liam (Hal Baum) pedals through the city delivering more than sandwiches—and soon finds himself tangled in a serial-killer conspiracy that feels equal parts giallo and queer pop nightmare.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh gee is boot.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's showtime. People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Don it off.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
You bought your sister hooker. I love you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
You're not full of shit.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And when you're out there, remember you are a goddamn
fucking machine.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I got the milk of.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
First.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I thought it was a shotgun or exploding round.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
But this is handmade, like someone carved into the back
of his head.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Our job is to intervene before such things happen. Let's
just go find Liam.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
What about my bike?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I think you did.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
There's a dead guy. That guy we fuck, he's dead.
Sleep with me?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The signature about homo?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Man?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
You're fun dude.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
with writer director Alex Phillips. He is the force behind
the new film Anything That Moves, which is currently playing
at film festivals around the world. I don't really want
to talk about what this movie is about, because it
(02:10):
is very interesting and something that really should be seen
to be experienced. So if you have a chance to
see anything that moves, definitely do so. Thank you so
much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Alex,
tell me a little bit about how you got interested
in filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I was really obsessed with watching movies at a very
young age. I remember seeing going in Cleveland, Ohio. I
remember going and seeing like at a giant movie palace,
this seventy millimeter series they did, The Bridge Over River,
Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and I remember obsessively watching
Lawrence of Arabia like over and over on VHS. And
(02:50):
then when I got a little older, I got a camera,
just like a little DV camera and made a lot
of trailers with my friends. We would make these trailers
for these movies that didn't exist and never have existed,
just coming soon, the Cretan or something. We'd make these
weird horror movies and action movies that never came to light,
(03:14):
but we'd make these little trailers for them. I was
always obsessed with that and just watching a lot of movies,
and then I got into playwriting. I did a lot
of theater as well. I did theater in college. I
did some like clown stuff, some fringe festival stuff, and
I staged my first play that I wrote, and no
I didn't direct it, I starred in it. It was
(03:36):
one of my few acting roles, is called gun Club.
And then that took me to Northwestern, where then I started.
I used their cage, their equipment cage, because my undergrad
didn't really have any equipment. And then I just ran
a luck with camera gear and started, yeah, directing my
(03:57):
own writing because a lot of people would read my
scripts and be like, what the hell are you? What
do you want from me? And then I was like,
I know exactly what I want. I don't know why
I need you. And then I just started making shorts
and ballooned from there.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
This might be a little unfair because I probably should
be the one that explains what your esthetic is when
it comes to the intro for this particular episode. But
can you explain your aesthetic to the people listening at home?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Sure? Yeah, I love every and any opportunity to talk
about my work, So to be able to explain myself,
I would I relish at the opportunity the way that
I talk about myself on Vimeo is that I took
too much acid and now I have paranoid sexual nightmares.
I really like expressionistic filmmaking, like I believe in film
(04:46):
as a visual medium, but I'm also like passionate about
writing books and plays and all that stuff. So I
try to like marry those two forms of storytelling to
create a Dionesian effect with the budgets that I am
(05:07):
allowed to be playing around with, so creating access to
instill and evoke emotion in the viewer. And yeah, I
also creating like a sort of uncanny tone that's somewhere
between like funny and scary or at all at the
same time.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I am definitely familiar with your last film, All Jacked
Up and Full of Worms. Can you talk a little
bit about that? And was that your first feature?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, that was my first feature. That one was about
these two dudes. They have concurrence storylines, and then they
collide and they get addicted to these hollocinogenic worms. They
kind of take them on this horrific, kind of funny
but also totally fucked up journey of I guess a
(05:59):
little bit of self discovery and a little bit of
just worm discovery. It's like a love story about two
bros and also about worms and finding family in the
self destruction.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I hate this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Where do your ideas come from?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, that's a terrible question. I like dealing with the personal,
like my own life experiences, but I don't really like
realism very much. I don't actually think that's the most
empathetic way to access or present your own life experiences
or what you go through. I think that by like
(06:43):
just depicting stuff in a dream or using genre in
different types, different modes to access the personal, I think
that's a better way to get deeper into stuff and
also make it more relatable to an audience.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
What was your inspiration for anything that Moves?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Anything that Moves came from the root of the idea
came from when I was like twenty two twenty four.
I was a bike delivery guy, and I was going
through a little bit of a tough time personally, but
I and so I was feeling like really like weird
and outside of the world. But I also was delivering
(07:25):
these sandwiches to these shut in people all around the neighborhood,
and I was their only point of contact to the
outside world sometimes, and they were very excited to see
me in different capacities. Sometimes they would actually like proposition
me or hit on me and try to kiss me sometimes,
and all I'm doing is delivering them was sandwich. But
(07:49):
I don't know. It gave me a pretty strange outlook
on the world, and I wanted to capture the anxiety
of that, and then also the kind of I don't know,
there was something a little bit fantastical about being objectified
by these people too, where it's, oh, they loved me,
even for no reason. So I wanted to, yeah, to
(08:11):
capitalize on that life experience a little bit, and then
take it from there, pull in a lot of movie references,
pull in different ways of telling that story, and bring
in love, monogamy and just the tenderness of love and relationships.
And then also there's a little bit of a paranoia
(08:34):
and horror to it as well, And I wanted to
create a world that accommodated all of that.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
How do you find your actors, because they're doing some
really outrageous things that I'm curious how you get people
to agree to go along with you.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I find people who are either my friends or friends
of friends, mostly people who either know my work or
come from like a trusted recommended person, so that it's
not that crazy of an ask by the time that
they're reading the script. I try to present what I'm
(09:10):
looking for upfront, also be like, there's going to be
sex and nudity and violence in this movie, and we're
at a low budget, and I think it's good to
have these personal relationships too, in this trust so that
there's better communication and better empathy on set because we're
working twelve sometimes more hours a day, and so if
(09:32):
there is already that pre established ease of communication, it
makes it a safer environment and that also makes people
more adventurous at the same time because there's that trust
there already. There were a couple of people that I
reached out to that I didn't have those relationships with,
like Gingerlin Allen or Nina Hartley. They're in anything that moves,
(09:53):
but they are extremely experienced, especially in sex scenes. And
then they also they've been on camp. I'm wrong so
much that they really do have this like star power ability.
They're like amazing actors, which I don't think people generally
would recognize from like adult film. The adult film world,
(10:17):
but they really do. There's a reason that they were
stars in the adult world because they really do have
that star quality.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I've talked a little bit about the expressionistic filmmaking. I
could definitely see it a lot in that scene with
those close ups, those really extreme close ups of their faces.
I can't imagine how this is going to hit an
audiencing that on the big screen.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, I'm really really excited. Obviously, it hasn't premiered a
Fantasia yet at the time of this recording, so I'm
really excited. But it hasn't really been presented for any
audience whatsoever. It's been in the editing cave for a
long time. So I'm really excited to see what audiences like,
what they react to I don't know, and just to
(10:59):
get it out in the world. I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
When did you actually shoot this and how long did
it take to shoot?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We shot it in the summer of twenty twenty three,
I think I think that's right. It took us like
twenty one days of principal photography and then a couple
days of pickups after a lot of editing. The pickups
were pretty minimal, so this one shot doesn't work, and
(11:25):
it's necessary to make this scene make sense. We got
to grab this insert type of thing.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
And then each said it was a long post process.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, the post process was pretty long, just because I
ran out of editing money for the budget and had
to cut it myself and had to work along the
side of editing. And then also just I really wanted
to do production justice because we really nailed a lot
of cool moves. We were really shooting for blocking and
(11:57):
shooting to move the camera around, to move the actors around,
and not do traditional coverage necessarily, not like shot reverse,
not just like picking up all these little pieces to
put together and posts necessarily, so like getting the timing
with like a camera move to fit the pacing of
the film and really get the language down. Shaping stuff
(12:21):
in production takes a lot of trust with the post process,
if that makes any sense. The way that you pace
the scene out when you're shooting will dictate the pacing
of the entire movie if you're going to try to
do everything in one or two pieces.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Who is your cinematographer on list?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
His name is Hunter Zimney. He's from New York and
did an amazing job. I loved working with him. One
of the coolest things that we were able to come
up with, and we did it on set basically are
one of our gaffers, this guy John jadeer Kowski. He
had this jim We were using a doorway dolly, which
(13:03):
is just like an old school dolly, and then he
had this like cheap jib arm and then we put
that on top of the dolly. Like on day one,
all of a sudden we had this sort of makeshift
crane chapman thing, like a much fancier device. Like the
way to get these moves would be really expensive if
(13:23):
we were getting the quote unquote proper equipment, but it
allowed us to get in really close and then sweep
move away from people, and get like a wide shot
all in the same move. And just like working with Hunter,
working with Connor and John and this amazing team with
people who just are down to experiment and roll with
stuff and commit fully, just totally commit to this visual language.
(13:48):
Just experiment, but do it with total authority. It's really fun.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
It was great that move on camera really pays off.
I can really feel the dynamism of everything that's going
on on screen, and so many times with an independent
film you lock it down, maybe get a tilt, maybe
a pan, but that's about it. But here I just
was so immersed in this world with that moving camera.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We were really trying to be cowboys with it. Once
we figured out the visual language too, Like Hunter was
like really just living it. And there's a lot of
really cool stuff where the movie camera is moving really
subtly with an actor's performance, where you know, like it'll
be like pushing in a little bit or just pulling
(14:37):
out a little bit with their words, with what their
performance is doing. And that's just the kind of shit
that you can't micromanage. It's not something that you can
tell someone to do, and that's I'm really happy to
have worked with them to see that kind of before.
It's really cool.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I know, making an independent film is one of the
toughest things that there is to do. Spout some of
the challenges that faced you.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
We did so much. There's so many locations, there's gore,
there's sex, there's like we said, these camera moves and
we shot on film. All these different things that we
managed to pull off with a pretty small budget. Was
really cool. Shooting this movie. We did so much, but
(15:24):
also so much easier than shooting my first all jacked
up in full of worms. Like having the support from
Missing Link which is Eddie Linker and Vinegar Syndrome just
made it a breeze. At least for me what I'm
used to Making a movie is absolutely not easy. I
think it probably is the hardest art form. I don't
(15:46):
know the other ones well enough, but just the man
hours that go into it, it's just a crazy art form.
I think we did the impossible that it felt great
doing it. When you shoot digitally, you're always thinking about
post production. You're thinking about like where are we going
to lift a shadow or what kind of colors are
we going to dial in? And when you shoot on film,
(16:07):
it's what with your eye is also what the camera
sees and what the actors see. The world building is
everyone kind of buys into it. The entire environment you're
shooting on looks like what the movie is going to
look like. It creates this effect on set that kind
of gets everyone, all the actors and producers and everyone
(16:30):
there like to buy in on the movie. And when
you hit record, you can hear the film moving and
it creates this yeah, like I said, the total commitment.
So it's pretty cool. Yeah, and then also you can
see what the negatives are with film or not negatives. Honestly,
I love this. Like we sent the film out and
(16:52):
when it got scanned, it got scratched. There's this sequence
of the beach where you see these crazy scratches. But
I love it. I honestly think, like you'll watch a
Tarantino movie like death Proof or something like that, where
he's messing with these film effects. We didn't have to
make it up. It's the grunge is there. The real
(17:16):
things are there. And then I think it really augments
the craziness of that scene and it makes it more fantastical.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
What did you actually cut on?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I used Adobe Premiere. It's a program, it's a tool.
It works. I lived a lot in it for a
long time, and yeah, I don't know. I really like editing.
I grew to love it during this process.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
What's your day job?
Speaker 1 (17:40):
My day job right now. I have a million day jobs,
but my one right now is I've been working at
this post house doing assistant editing work for like commercials
and stuff. But I've also I've taught, I did a
little bit of sound recording, I did some grant writing,
I did a lot of I've done a lot of
different things. I worked as a projectionist for a while.
(18:01):
I pick up whatever I can to keep it going,
and then also what can give me enough time to
write and direct movies and get them out in the world.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
When you're doing your editing, are you sending rough cuts
to friends to get feedback or is this all just you?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
No aspect of filmmaking is just the director. I don't know.
Maybe Stanley Kubrick is primo a tour who is the
all seeing I I definitely spend a long ass time
in front of the computer talking to myself, for sure,
But I definitely but I needed someone else to look
(18:41):
at it and tell me I'm not crazy. I have
all my producers, Spencer, LeAnn Georgia. I would bounce stuff
off of them. I did a couple of feedback screenings.
I would send it off to other filmmaker friends or
other editors just to see what they say. At the
beginning of the edit of this, I worked with this guy,
(19:03):
Troy Lewis, who also cut all jacked up and full
of worms with me, and so he was a great
resource for a while. And so there was there were
like people that I leaned on to to be like,
Oh this is working. Are absolutely not working. This is terrible.
I really need that. I think everybody does.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Yeah, I know your premiere is a Fantasia. But have
you had a chance to watch this with like cast
and crew or anything yet?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
No, I haven't. I've showed it to a couple people
more on the crew side, I haven't showed it to cast. No. Yeah,
this is gonna be a lot of people's first time
seeing it who worked on the film, and so I'm
really excited for them to check it out too, especially
with the big audience, especially on thirty five. We did
a thirty five millimeter print, so it's gonna be It's great,
(19:52):
really great. I'm excited to hear what they say.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Did you do a premiere of All Jacked Up at
Fantasia as well?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yes? Okay, yeah nice. Yeah, it's a good home.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, I was gonna say it's like a homecoming for you.
Is there a good place for people to keep up
with you in the film? Online?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Vinegar Syndrome is doing a great job posting stuff. There's
also I just started Instagram. Paid for the movie which
is at ATM Underscore movie ATM meaning anything that moves,
and so you can follow the movie on there. I'll
keep posting stuff, and once we move into distribution and
like theatrical stuff and physical media and all that stuff,
(20:30):
there's gonna be more stuff growing. I know Gindre Lynn
will be at Fantasia, so I'll post some stuff and
she'll be like signing things, and there's gonna be a
bit interes syndrome booth. So we're gonna try to like
get people out to see the movie and keep the
announcements coming.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Alex, thank you so much for your time. This is great,
finally getting to meet you.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Don't want to happen. I suthing.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Let it all red w my something And if you
don't want to know nothing, I still know nothing.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It don't mean nothing. But if you wanna don't have
a thing, let me tell you. I don't lie wout everything.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
My father.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh no, when I do, let my.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Say six thousands remember FLA say then.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
About I love a job?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
What's our fall?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
Let on your sister and it wi my man and
side with my little I d alive, look at I
want to side And that's loud it's.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Whip and alley.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
It's not too.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Stop by a money, not even fuck you.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
I'm un to go the cards and I'm wanting to
do the cart.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I go long a home, feeling short a part.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I got the guinea strain. What's looking.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Thin and.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
In the twin.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
IM fuck anything that news, not even fuck you, and
I fuck you too.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I'm fud anything to move said
Oh gee is boot.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's showtime. People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Don it off.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
You bought your sister hooker. I love you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
You're not full of shit.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And when you're out there, remember you are a goddamn
fucking machine.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I got the milk of.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
First.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I thought it was a shotgun or exploding round.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
But this is handmade, like someone carved into the back
of his head.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Our job is to intervene before such things happen. Let's
just go find Liam.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
What about my bike?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I think you did.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
There's a dead guy. That guy we fuck, he's dead.
Sleep with me?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The signature about homo?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Man?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
You're fun dude.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
with writer director Alex Phillips. He is the force behind
the new film Anything That Moves, which is currently playing
at film festivals around the world. I don't really want
to talk about what this movie is about, because it
(02:10):
is very interesting and something that really should be seen
to be experienced. So if you have a chance to
see anything that moves, definitely do so. Thank you so
much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Alex,
tell me a little bit about how you got interested
in filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I was really obsessed with watching movies at a very
young age. I remember seeing going in Cleveland, Ohio. I
remember going and seeing like at a giant movie palace,
this seventy millimeter series they did, The Bridge Over River,
Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and I remember obsessively watching
Lawrence of Arabia like over and over on VHS. And
(02:50):
then when I got a little older, I got a camera,
just like a little DV camera and made a lot
of trailers with my friends. We would make these trailers
for these movies that didn't exist and never have existed,
just coming soon, the Cretan or something. We'd make these
weird horror movies and action movies that never came to light,
(03:14):
but we'd make these little trailers for them. I was
always obsessed with that and just watching a lot of movies,
and then I got into playwriting. I did a lot
of theater as well. I did theater in college. I
did some like clown stuff, some fringe festival stuff, and
I staged my first play that I wrote, and no
I didn't direct it, I starred in it. It was
(03:36):
one of my few acting roles, is called gun Club.
And then that took me to Northwestern, where then I started.
I used their cage, their equipment cage, because my undergrad
didn't really have any equipment. And then I just ran
a luck with camera gear and started, yeah, directing my
(03:57):
own writing because a lot of people would read my
scripts and be like, what the hell are you? What
do you want from me? And then I was like,
I know exactly what I want. I don't know why
I need you. And then I just started making shorts
and ballooned from there.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
This might be a little unfair because I probably should
be the one that explains what your esthetic is when
it comes to the intro for this particular episode. But
can you explain your aesthetic to the people listening at home?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Sure? Yeah, I love every and any opportunity to talk
about my work, So to be able to explain myself,
I would I relish at the opportunity the way that
I talk about myself on Vimeo is that I took
too much acid and now I have paranoid sexual nightmares.
I really like expressionistic filmmaking, like I believe in film
(04:46):
as a visual medium, but I'm also like passionate about
writing books and plays and all that stuff. So I
try to like marry those two forms of storytelling to
create a Dionesian effect with the budgets that I am
(05:07):
allowed to be playing around with, so creating access to
instill and evoke emotion in the viewer. And yeah, I
also creating like a sort of uncanny tone that's somewhere
between like funny and scary or at all at the
same time.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I am definitely familiar with your last film, All Jacked
Up and Full of Worms. Can you talk a little
bit about that? And was that your first feature?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, that was my first feature. That one was about
these two dudes. They have concurrence storylines, and then they
collide and they get addicted to these hollocinogenic worms. They
kind of take them on this horrific, kind of funny
but also totally fucked up journey of I guess a
(05:59):
little bit of self discovery and a little bit of
just worm discovery. It's like a love story about two
bros and also about worms and finding family in the
self destruction.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I hate this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Where do your ideas come from?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, that's a terrible question. I like dealing with the personal,
like my own life experiences, but I don't really like
realism very much. I don't actually think that's the most
empathetic way to access or present your own life experiences
or what you go through. I think that by like
(06:43):
just depicting stuff in a dream or using genre in
different types, different modes to access the personal, I think
that's a better way to get deeper into stuff and
also make it more relatable to an audience.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
What was your inspiration for anything that Moves?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Anything that Moves came from the root of the idea
came from when I was like twenty two twenty four.
I was a bike delivery guy, and I was going
through a little bit of a tough time personally, but
I and so I was feeling like really like weird
and outside of the world. But I also was delivering
(07:25):
these sandwiches to these shut in people all around the neighborhood,
and I was their only point of contact to the
outside world sometimes, and they were very excited to see
me in different capacities. Sometimes they would actually like proposition
me or hit on me and try to kiss me sometimes,
and all I'm doing is delivering them was sandwich. But
(07:49):
I don't know. It gave me a pretty strange outlook
on the world, and I wanted to capture the anxiety
of that, and then also the kind of I don't know,
there was something a little bit fantastical about being objectified
by these people too, where it's, oh, they loved me,
even for no reason. So I wanted to, yeah, to
(08:11):
capitalize on that life experience a little bit, and then
take it from there, pull in a lot of movie references,
pull in different ways of telling that story, and bring
in love, monogamy and just the tenderness of love and relationships.
And then also there's a little bit of a paranoia
(08:34):
and horror to it as well, And I wanted to
create a world that accommodated all of that.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
How do you find your actors, because they're doing some
really outrageous things that I'm curious how you get people
to agree to go along with you.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I find people who are either my friends or friends
of friends, mostly people who either know my work or
come from like a trusted recommended person, so that it's
not that crazy of an ask by the time that
they're reading the script. I try to present what I'm
(09:10):
looking for upfront, also be like, there's going to be
sex and nudity and violence in this movie, and we're
at a low budget, and I think it's good to
have these personal relationships too, in this trust so that
there's better communication and better empathy on set because we're
working twelve sometimes more hours a day, and so if
(09:32):
there is already that pre established ease of communication, it
makes it a safer environment and that also makes people
more adventurous at the same time because there's that trust
there already. There were a couple of people that I
reached out to that I didn't have those relationships with,
like Gingerlin Allen or Nina Hartley. They're in anything that moves,
(09:53):
but they are extremely experienced, especially in sex scenes. And
then they also they've been on camp. I'm wrong so
much that they really do have this like star power ability.
They're like amazing actors, which I don't think people generally
would recognize from like adult film. The adult film world,
(10:17):
but they really do. There's a reason that they were
stars in the adult world because they really do have
that star quality.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I've talked a little bit about the expressionistic filmmaking. I
could definitely see it a lot in that scene with
those close ups, those really extreme close ups of their faces.
I can't imagine how this is going to hit an
audiencing that on the big screen.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, I'm really really excited. Obviously, it hasn't premiered a
Fantasia yet at the time of this recording, so I'm
really excited. But it hasn't really been presented for any
audience whatsoever. It's been in the editing cave for a
long time. So I'm really excited to see what audiences like,
what they react to I don't know, and just to
(10:59):
get it out in the world. I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
When did you actually shoot this and how long did
it take to shoot?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We shot it in the summer of twenty twenty three,
I think I think that's right. It took us like
twenty one days of principal photography and then a couple
days of pickups after a lot of editing. The pickups
were pretty minimal, so this one shot doesn't work, and
(11:25):
it's necessary to make this scene make sense. We got
to grab this insert type of thing.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
And then each said it was a long post process.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, the post process was pretty long, just because I
ran out of editing money for the budget and had
to cut it myself and had to work along the
side of editing. And then also just I really wanted
to do production justice because we really nailed a lot
of cool moves. We were really shooting for blocking and
(11:57):
shooting to move the camera around, to move the actors around,
and not do traditional coverage necessarily, not like shot reverse,
not just like picking up all these little pieces to
put together and posts necessarily, so like getting the timing
with like a camera move to fit the pacing of
the film and really get the language down. Shaping stuff
(12:21):
in production takes a lot of trust with the post process,
if that makes any sense. The way that you pace
the scene out when you're shooting will dictate the pacing
of the entire movie if you're going to try to
do everything in one or two pieces.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Who is your cinematographer on list?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
His name is Hunter Zimney. He's from New York and
did an amazing job. I loved working with him. One
of the coolest things that we were able to come
up with, and we did it on set basically are
one of our gaffers, this guy John jadeer Kowski. He
had this jim We were using a doorway dolly, which
(13:03):
is just like an old school dolly, and then he
had this like cheap jib arm and then we put
that on top of the dolly. Like on day one,
all of a sudden we had this sort of makeshift
crane chapman thing, like a much fancier device. Like the
way to get these moves would be really expensive if
(13:23):
we were getting the quote unquote proper equipment, but it
allowed us to get in really close and then sweep
move away from people, and get like a wide shot
all in the same move. And just like working with Hunter,
working with Connor and John and this amazing team with
people who just are down to experiment and roll with
stuff and commit fully, just totally commit to this visual language.
(13:48):
Just experiment, but do it with total authority. It's really fun.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
It was great that move on camera really pays off.
I can really feel the dynamism of everything that's going
on on screen, and so many times with an independent
film you lock it down, maybe get a tilt, maybe
a pan, but that's about it. But here I just
was so immersed in this world with that moving camera.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We were really trying to be cowboys with it. Once
we figured out the visual language too, Like Hunter was
like really just living it. And there's a lot of
really cool stuff where the movie camera is moving really
subtly with an actor's performance, where you know, like it'll
be like pushing in a little bit or just pulling
(14:37):
out a little bit with their words, with what their
performance is doing. And that's just the kind of shit
that you can't micromanage. It's not something that you can
tell someone to do, and that's I'm really happy to
have worked with them to see that kind of before.
It's really cool.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I know, making an independent film is one of the
toughest things that there is to do. Spout some of
the challenges that faced you.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
We did so much. There's so many locations, there's gore,
there's sex, there's like we said, these camera moves and
we shot on film. All these different things that we
managed to pull off with a pretty small budget. Was
really cool. Shooting this movie. We did so much, but
(15:24):
also so much easier than shooting my first all jacked
up in full of worms. Like having the support from
Missing Link which is Eddie Linker and Vinegar Syndrome just
made it a breeze. At least for me what I'm
used to Making a movie is absolutely not easy. I
think it probably is the hardest art form. I don't
(15:46):
know the other ones well enough, but just the man
hours that go into it, it's just a crazy art form.
I think we did the impossible that it felt great
doing it. When you shoot digitally, you're always thinking about
post production. You're thinking about like where are we going
to lift a shadow or what kind of colors are
we going to dial in? And when you shoot on film,
(16:07):
it's what with your eye is also what the camera
sees and what the actors see. The world building is
everyone kind of buys into it. The entire environment you're
shooting on looks like what the movie is going to
look like. It creates this effect on set that kind
of gets everyone, all the actors and producers and everyone
(16:30):
there like to buy in on the movie. And when
you hit record, you can hear the film moving and
it creates this yeah, like I said, the total commitment.
So it's pretty cool. Yeah, and then also you can
see what the negatives are with film or not negatives. Honestly,
I love this. Like we sent the film out and
(16:52):
when it got scanned, it got scratched. There's this sequence
of the beach where you see these crazy scratches. But
I love it. I honestly think, like you'll watch a
Tarantino movie like death Proof or something like that, where
he's messing with these film effects. We didn't have to
make it up. It's the grunge is there. The real
(17:16):
things are there. And then I think it really augments
the craziness of that scene and it makes it more fantastical.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
What did you actually cut on?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I used Adobe Premiere. It's a program, it's a tool.
It works. I lived a lot in it for a
long time, and yeah, I don't know. I really like editing.
I grew to love it during this process.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
What's your day job?
Speaker 1 (17:40):
My day job right now. I have a million day jobs,
but my one right now is I've been working at
this post house doing assistant editing work for like commercials
and stuff. But I've also I've taught, I did a
little bit of sound recording, I did some grant writing,
I did a lot of I've done a lot of
different things. I worked as a projectionist for a while.
(18:01):
I pick up whatever I can to keep it going,
and then also what can give me enough time to
write and direct movies and get them out in the world.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
When you're doing your editing, are you sending rough cuts
to friends to get feedback or is this all just you?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
No aspect of filmmaking is just the director. I don't know.
Maybe Stanley Kubrick is primo a tour who is the
all seeing I I definitely spend a long ass time
in front of the computer talking to myself, for sure,
But I definitely but I needed someone else to look
(18:41):
at it and tell me I'm not crazy. I have
all my producers, Spencer, LeAnn Georgia. I would bounce stuff
off of them. I did a couple of feedback screenings.
I would send it off to other filmmaker friends or
other editors just to see what they say. At the
beginning of the edit of this, I worked with this guy,
(19:03):
Troy Lewis, who also cut all jacked up and full
of worms with me, and so he was a great
resource for a while. And so there was there were
like people that I leaned on to to be like,
Oh this is working. Are absolutely not working. This is terrible.
I really need that. I think everybody does.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Yeah, I know your premiere is a Fantasia. But have
you had a chance to watch this with like cast
and crew or anything yet?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
No, I haven't. I've showed it to a couple people
more on the crew side, I haven't showed it to cast. No. Yeah,
this is gonna be a lot of people's first time
seeing it who worked on the film, and so I'm
really excited for them to check it out too, especially
with the big audience, especially on thirty five. We did
a thirty five millimeter print, so it's gonna be It's great,
(19:52):
really great. I'm excited to hear what they say.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Did you do a premiere of All Jacked Up at
Fantasia as well?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yes? Okay, yeah nice. Yeah, it's a good home.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, I was gonna say it's like a homecoming for you.
Is there a good place for people to keep up
with you in the film? Online?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Vinegar Syndrome is doing a great job posting stuff. There's
also I just started Instagram. Paid for the movie which
is at ATM Underscore movie ATM meaning anything that moves,
and so you can follow the movie on there. I'll
keep posting stuff, and once we move into distribution and
like theatrical stuff and physical media and all that stuff,
(20:30):
there's gonna be more stuff growing. I know Gindre Lynn
will be at Fantasia, so I'll post some stuff and
she'll be like signing things, and there's gonna be a
bit interes syndrome booth. So we're gonna try to like
get people out to see the movie and keep the
announcements coming.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Alex, thank you so much for your time. This is great,
finally getting to meet you.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Don't want to happen. I suthing.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Let it all red w my something And if you
don't want to know nothing, I still know nothing.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It don't mean nothing. But if you wanna don't have
a thing, let me tell you. I don't lie wout everything.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
My father.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh no, when I do, let my.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Say six thousands remember FLA say then.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
About I love a job?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
What's our fall?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
Let on your sister and it wi my man and
side with my little I d alive, look at I
want to side And that's loud it's.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Whip and alley.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
It's not too.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Stop by a money, not even fuck you.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
I'm un to go the cards and I'm wanting to
do the cart.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I go long a home, feeling short a part.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I got the guinea strain. What's looking.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Thin and.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
In the twin.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
IM fuck anything that news, not even fuck you, and
I fuck you too.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I'm fud anything to move said
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