Director Alister Grierson: Surviving the Film Industry, Bloody Hell & Working with Hollywood Giants

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You can run, but you can die from the class
hardcast haunting you from the Emerald Isle. Your host, Aaron
Doyle takes you on a journey to the depths of
horror with exclusive interviews, horror news, reviews and more. Tickets Please,
you were about to under the theater of the man.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy the show fast, Welcome to the show. It's a
pleasure to have you on. How are you doing today.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'm doing good. Well, thank you sir. It's a pleasure
to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm excited to get into this and I always like
to go back to the start. Can you remember your
first exposure to I suppose movies in general, as like
an audience member, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Very much so. So. My father was a powered in
the Air Force and when I was about twelve, for
eleven turning twelve, we moved to an Air Force base
in western Sydney and we lived on base for about
four years and there wasn't much to do. There was
a swimming pool there, so we swam all the time

(01:06):
for the football fields stuff like that. But there was
a cinema and it was it was sort of fascinating.
It was this beautiful, old classic old, big cinema, standalone building,
strange enough set in the middle of the of the
drive that you drove up when you came into the
into the base, and they played all the contemporary movies,
they had retrospectives, they had everything was amazing for an

(01:28):
air force base. I didn't realize at the time. I
was assumed, you know, I took it off from granted,
of course, there must have been I suspect some very
you know, avid film lovers who were who would have
been air force people, you know, emmen or whatever, who
loved film and and you could see anything. Now I didn't.

(01:52):
I didn't have any cinema education and at that time
didn't have any interested in it at all. I'm not
sure I was interested in much more than girls and
maybe sneaking a cigarette behind the done is at school
or something. But we used to go in the end.
It was sort of like when you're stuck in a
place like that. We used to go to the cinema
at least twice a week, I reckon, you know, and

(02:15):
we saw everything, everything that came through, and probably stuff
that we shouldn't have seen. I just simply remember, so
I would have I must have been twelve, and it's
a stuck in my mind and it probably affected me
more than I should have seen Carpenters the thing when
I was twelve and walking back from the cinema and

(02:37):
just being absolutely terrified. I having never seen that sort
of transmutation stuff. If you know, it's kind of funny
you look at it now and it's really interesting actually,
and I'd recommend if you're interested to watch some of
those I'm not really into it, but you know, you
have those videos where you watch people watching and see
some contemporary people watching the thing because all the prosthetic

(03:00):
all real, and everything's in camera. There's no there's no
digital visual effects whatsoever. So they just did this incredible
if I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. You know,
it's just and it's gross and so surprising. And if
you if you remember the first scene where the spoilers people,
but the the the the the husky dog's face like that,

(03:25):
it's like, well, you know, when you're like twelve years old,
going holy shit, and then you're ye all that crazy stuff.
But with you know, I saw some wonderful, wonderful films
Blade Runner, which which subsequently became probably my favorite film.
Althought the time, I was a bit like, it's not
as fun as Star Wars, but I wasn't there twelve,

(03:46):
you know. So yeah, I had this sort of very
strange cinema education where we watch everything from you know,
the soft porn and stuff, and it's the eighties as well,
and I feel kind of terribly blessed, you know, because
it's all film prints, it's all projected on film. Films
shot on film, you know, and so after projections, wasn't
some of the stuff that shoot, you know, full Gate

(04:07):
Super sixteen, And then the projectionist has to actually provide
the letterbox, you know, and if they're not onto it,
you can actually see. I went to a projection I
remember watching Actual was years later by the same idea,
you know, and you actually see the actors walking around
slippers and going, why are they wearing slippers? That's really weird,
you know, and then you realize it's because they haven't
put the letter box up in the projection. And I

(04:31):
don't know, as a sort of a cinema you know, purist,
I suppose I just love love all that shit and
the sound. Sorry I'm going on a bit here, forgive me.
Just just jump in if you get.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
It was something you said there about, you know, the
practical effects or something like the thing, and it's something
I'm I'm kind of fascinated by.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Now.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I don't know if you feel this from a I
suppose both the professional and an audience standpoint, but I
feel like people are maybe turning a little bit of
a corner again where they seem to be really appreciating
like practical in camera effects.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Again.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Over while they can be great, sometimes like watching a
movie that's just all CG, can kind of take you
out of the experience a little bit, And I feel
like people are starting to, like you said, I've seen
so many videos on YouTube channels with millions of followers
where people go back and rewatch some of those movies

(05:26):
and they seem to be blown away by the fact that, oh,
this is all real in camera.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Mm hmm, yeah, very much. Up. I think I would
argue that really fundamentally, it's not about digital effects or prosthetics,
whatever it is. It's just about truth. So if you're
trying to tell something in a truthful spice, as soon
as the audience member guys it's not there, and they're
drawn out of that moment you know, then you've kind
of lost them. So you know, I was watching the

(05:52):
other night I watched I think it was just one
three the way television. I think we're stimming the it's
one of the one of the new Star Trek ones,
but the first of the new series done by you know,
Josh was a Josh Win or what and and I
was going, this is really cool, Like it's really good cinema.
And I think it's the best one that he made.

(06:14):
And even though there's a lot of digital effects, of
course there have to be, you still kind of accept
that it doesn't become about the visual effects. They're just
sitting there in the background. It's about it's about the drama.
It's about the setup and the presentation and the performances
and those things that fundamentally is driving everything. And I
think I think it's when you see when things sit back,
I mean, I'm in a good good comparison might be

(06:36):
by way of example, the first Guardians of the Galaxy
versus the second guards and got into the Garcia, and
for me a lot, I really enjoyed the first time
that became one of our family sort of favorites because
it's all about character and story and fun and being
silly and you know, and then the second one was
sort of it felt very contrived and suddenly the contrivances,

(06:58):
you know, I was like, hey, we can see back.
And spent fifty million dollars on doing all this, you know,
great technical stuff and it doesn't work. And interesting enough,
I did a rewrite on a on a film last
year which hasn't been made and I don't think it will,
and it was really interesting. It came to me and
it was a sort of a ghost story Western and
you know, I wasn't huge on the script, but I

(07:20):
was great on that, on the concept, and I mean
it was one of the tricky balances of trying to
work out you know, you're you're only when you're work
in a genre space. The hardest part is you never
really get much money to play with. You know. It's
rare that a studio is going to deal with a
genre piece unless it's already a kind of a known property.
So and I haven't unfortunately entered that exalted you know

(07:46):
world yet, so I'm sort of working with small budgets.
And anyway, they wanted to make this thing in Australia,
but set in Mexico and America and the South part
of North America, and you know, it's a road movie
with bad guys on horses. Ultimately that sort of evolves
into a creature feature, and that was one of my
big pictures with the guys. And in fact, if I

(08:07):
have to show you the look book that I kind
of whipped up for and was like, it was literally
using those John Carpenter pictures from the Things going If
You're going to Go, you know, because because one of
the characters that was this sort of very beautiful female
who actually was this hideous creature underneath, it sort of
comes out and I was like, we've got to do
that in camera. I think if you try to do

(08:28):
it digitally, it's going to feel wrong. But there's something
about that analogue nature of shooting it in camera and
the actor is interacting with it and you've got the
fake blood spraying everywhere and splattering on the lens and
getting on the other actors and all that kind of stuff,
you know, and you can light it in a way,

(08:49):
and so it's tangible and real. And so there's the
newsy thing. I mean, when you go back and watch
the thing now knowing what's coming up. You can kind
of see it, you know, they look a bit rubbery figures,
you know, you know, I know all that kind of stuff.
But at the time when you're seeing it initially, particularly
as I say, I shot on film and screened on
film with the sound, you know, you know all that

(09:12):
wonderful stuff. It's incredibly compelling in the space that it is,
you know, as a creature feature. Think so anyway, again,
I'm crapping on it, forgive me, but I think it's
fundamentally your responsibility, depending on the film you're making, your
responsibility is truthfulness. And when the audience can see through
the facade, then I think you've lost them.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
It's funny because out of all the conversations I've had,
I don't think I've ever heard anyone explain it that way,
which is really interesting because now that you mention it,
like the weekend I went, I don't know if I
don't know if it's the same over there. I think
a lot of regions are doing it where they have.
I think is it the twenty fifth, I don't know

(09:54):
what year it came out. It's some anniversary of the
Revenge of the sit twenty years so.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
I said that to my wife yesterday. Yeah, bliw me
why because wait, it was just an anecdotic shy And
I went and sort at the cinema and just past that,
I was laughing through the whole thing and got in
big trouble from the people around. It's the same, so silly,
but anyway, Yeah, and it's funny.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
That you mentioned about CG effects and stuff like that.
So I went to see it on on Saturday, and
while I was there, I was kind of laughing to
myself because I was like, isn't it funny? How like
most people accept this movie for what it is, And
I only realized, I think, upon rewatching it again a
second time in a cinema. I was like, this entire

(10:37):
thing basically is CG, and I can clearly tell that,
but everybody kind of accepts it. But then sometimes I
think the audience flips it and goes on, well, I
don't like that movie because it's CG. And it's like,
but this one is okay, I'll accept, you know, Star
Wars or whatever. And I think it probably does lead
to what you said about, you know, that kind of

(11:00):
true aspect rather than practical versus you know, computer generated.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
I think absolutely for sure, and it's got to be
a mix of everything. I'm attached to a picture which
we're hoping to be making soon actually in Malta, and
it's a thriller, a kind of a survival thriller thing.
It's a simple movie. But the tricky part is again
dealing with budget. But a large portion of it's going
to have to be shot in the green screen environment
by the nature of because we just because it's set

(11:28):
basically in cable cars suspended above a ravine, you know,
with a river and jungle and all this stuff, and
it's like, well, we can't get the actors into that
environment obviously. And it's funny. I was actually watching Mission
Impossible last night, gone, they can do it, you know
they could. They would probably just go, you know what,
We'll just build a cable car system and we'll do
it in Thailand or something and spend one hundred million bucks.

(11:50):
But if you've got ten million dollars, you can't do that.
So so you're kind of going, well, how do we
how do we do it? And it has to be
safe for the it has to be safe for the
stunt people too. There's a lot of gags in this
and even getting an actor you know, three meters above
the ground becomes a technical issue, you know, like I say, tissue.
You'll probably have to have the actor, well not probably,

(12:13):
you will definitely have to have the actor you know,
strapped into a safety line type system, which you know,
sometimes if they're kind of if it's done well, it
can be invisible. But other times, you know, it'll be
seen and it has to be painted out. So then
suddenly an incomera shop becomes digital shot because you're you're
just getting rid of the thing. But it's like, well, okay,

(12:33):
so now I've got an actor three meters high standing
on top of this cable car. I've got two actors
standing on two cable cars, and they're kind of having
a face off against each other, and they're in it.
There they're you know, seventy meters above hypothetically according to it,
you know, fifty meters above the ground or above the
river in a jungle with wind and fog and all

(12:54):
these things going on. So well, how do I how
do you do it? And really, you know, so we're
at the moment sort of trying to work out will
exactly how the answer to that question, how do we
do it. And we've come up with some interesting sort
of ideas about trying to and particularly shooting this in
Malta when it's set in a jungle and as you

(13:14):
may be aware, there are no jungles in Malta, funnily enough,
so so going well, what how would this work? So
so then it's like, well, what about if if the
cable car system, you know, as it goes through this ravine,
has to on one side is a cliff that falls away,
so that at the appropriate point it can kind of

(13:34):
you know, stop or park itself in front of the cliff,
and that way I can be working in an environment
where you know, a lot of my coverage, I've got
the cliff in the background. But if I come home,
then I can green screen out or mat it or
you know, rott a scope, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, so you have to deal with you kind

(13:55):
of you're kind of forced to deal with what you
have to deal with in a way, it's part of
the business. I suppose it's not. You know, if you
were if you were stating Spuberg, you just say this
is how we're doing it, and come on, okay, how much,
of course, and this is what we'll do. You can
do it that way, but I think the rest of
us have.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
To Yeah, don't have that like unlimited budget. From from
an audience standpoint, you know, people probably have no concept
of this. I think a lot of people would assume, Okay,
you're based on Australia. Maybe the studio or the company
that you're shooting a movie for is based in the States, maybe,

(14:33):
let's say. And then you know, you mentioned Malta, and
a lot of people go, oh, but does that not
make Okay, you're gotta make a movie with a jungle,
but you're going to Malta, there's no jungle, and now
you've got to bring all these people together?

Speaker 4 (14:47):
And is that not more money?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
And like I see that a lot where there's been
a lot more pictures shot in Ireland in the last
like five ten years, and a lot of them. I
guess the the landscape doesn't lend the concept. And I
was always fascinated by how does that make sense? The
way would we come to Ireland if it is literally
like the polar opposite of way I suppose in Layman's times,

(15:11):
HOWE could you explain that to? You know, an audience
member who is kind of fascinated by those decisions.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
It's just money, it's it's it's fundamentally, it's it's a
it's a production system that's chasing tax breaks, so and
it's very very competitive. So Malta has one tax system
that set up, Australia has another, and you look at
the pros and cons of dealing with what you're doing.
In our situation, we've got a production company that's been

(15:41):
working very successfully out of Malta, so they've got all
relationships in place in terms of the people they're working with,
the teams they're working with, the government officials that they
work with to get access to the to the rebates,
et cetera, et cetera. So from their point of view,
they're thinking, well, we've got a big slight here, so
this becomes just one of another film that we're doing.
You know, like everything, I mean, filmmaking is the art

(16:03):
of illusion. So we'll end up having a second unit
that goes to Thailand and Malaysia or wherever it's going
to be, and we'll get coverage and you know that
we can use to support what we're shooting. But fundamentally,
you know, when you kind of sit down and work
out what's the cheapest way to do something and what
and what the what's the best benefit from that? Money wise,

(16:26):
it's all money. It's always always money. Unless again, you know,
you if you're a producer, director, you know, if you're
Ridley Scott, you can just go no, no, we're shooting
it in well it's interesting enough. I mean even Ridley
it's sort of like he shoots a lot of stuff
in Eastern Europe example, because again the same thing, it's like,
how do I turn I've got sixty million US dollars,

(16:47):
but how do I need one hundred and twenty for
the vision? Well, what do I do?

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Well, if I go to you know, Bulgary, it seems
to be a big one.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Bulgaria exactly. Bulgaria is a great example. I go to Bulgaria,
then my sixty million becomes you know, ninety million plus
they've got a tax just through the exchange. Right then
I've got to you know, I can get another thirty million.
In Australia, for example, some of the governments that the
state governments here throw money at the big productions. Bas
does his films, he Baslerman, you know, does big films

(17:18):
he did. Elvis was his last one he did. And
I think the state government, I don't know, I'll get
in trouble because I don't know exactly the numbers, but
you know, tens of millions of dollars just kind of
gifted to the production on top of all the various
tax breaks and the payroll tax bas and the rebates
and so on and so forth. You know, so it's

(17:39):
very competitive. And I made a film in America, in Ohio,
and it was this Canadian story, strangely enough, Canadian boxing story.
And you know, when they're setting it up, it's like, oh,
we'll shoot this in Vancouver or Toronto or wherever. And
then about a week, you know, a couple of weeks really,

(17:59):
I think the plane ticket. I mean, so before I
got on the plane to fly over there, they're like,
and we've decided to shoot in a high and I
was sort of like, okay, but what about all the
bits of Canada, the kind of part of the story. Well,
you know, we'll have to well, right, we'll just rework
the script and we'll set it in America and sort
of like but it was based on a true story
about a Canadian seek boxer, then I had to be

(18:21):
set in America anyway. And look, and I'm just I mean,
the truth is I'm a slut, I'm a whore. I'll
do anything for money. And so you know, if they
say it's we're in America now, then that's that's where
we are.

Speaker 4 (18:36):
Is that in any way?

Speaker 2 (18:37):
And well, I would assume you know the goal, as
you mentioned earlier about I don't know if it is
everybody's goal to get to that stage. You know what,
you can be eSPI Alburg or whoever, and you can
just kind of have I suppose unlimited fonds to a
degree and just be like, yeah, well this is the
vision I have, this is the story I want to do,
and we can just do it that and there's no

(18:58):
real concern about having to go one way or the other.
But is there is there a part of you that
enjoys that kind of and when we say lawer budget, like,
I mean there's still a lot of money on the
line book in the sense of that more kind of
gritty like we have to figure out things. We have
a lot of different I suppose you know, walls that

(19:21):
you have to get over and things to figure out
and Okay, we we can't do this, maybe we'll do that.
I have to change this. Do you enjoy that type
of filmmaking?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
I do enjoy that aspect of that question, Like I'm
a sort of a natural problem solver. One thing I
know that. So the biggest film I've made was a
thirty million dollar film, and James Cameron produced that. And
what I discovered and Universal Pictures with a distributor in
America and producers, and what's interesting that I discovered is

(19:53):
even when you're working in a bigger space, their expectations
about what we would deliver for that thirty million dollars was,
you know, if we give you thirty we expect an
eighty million dollar film. So so you're you're actually doing
the same thing. You're always fighting a budget and talking
to James about it. You know, it's always a ship fight,

(20:16):
even with you know, his avatars as Silent. That's where
I met him on the set of Avatar when they
were recruiting that for that picture, and I flew out
there and second unit an Avatar and that was an
amazing experience, and I was sort of watching him work,
and of course you marvel at it because there's there
was a whole different thing going on there, because not
only was it three D, they were working with these

(20:38):
virtual systems and you know, all sorts of stuff in
ways that I had ever done before, and I mean
just technologically groundbreaking. So so sort of seeing that first
hand was like Jesus, you know, what's going on here?
And then dealing with all the problems that came with
that too, I mean, it was it was massive. I
haven't been to the to the set of his last

(21:00):
the World one that they're doing now, which I imagine
is even bigger, you know, just more moving parts, more people.
But I know from him just talking to him, it's
just always a shot fight. There's never enough, never enough money,
never enough time. And if he's one like Jim, you know,
I mean he he I mean the stories I'd hear
about him shooting at the time, I mean he was.
He was shooting pickups on that movie, like, you know,

(21:21):
weeks before it was released and driving everyone insane's it
can imagine because it's just a perfectionist and he just
you know, if you can, if you shoot, if I
can just get a bit tired on, you know, I
can just the light on. That's not quite right. Off,
you know, all of that stuff. I mean, he's absolutely
perfectionists and possibly mildly bonkers. So it's sort of interesting.

(21:43):
It doesn't I don't think it ever changes. You just
have a bigger and you have and then what comes
with that too in more stresses, more pressures, the expectations,
you know. I mean, there's a real whirlwind experience for me.
There's a move called Sanctum, which is this sort of
action adventure cave diving movie survival Siller, and you know,
you you, you know, it was an incredible adventure for

(22:06):
me going the film before that was a three million
dollar war movie. And then suddenly you get invited to
make this picture and it's like, oh wow. And you know,
in the premieres on Hollywood Boulevard or the Chinese Man Theater,
you know, and you're you're staying at the Four Seasons
in Beverly Hills and as you walk outside to have
a fag, and you know, and Baratzi you're calling your
name from the from the driveway and you're like, I've

(22:28):
made it. I'm in holyood. You know, all this sort
of stuff, having that experience, But then also you know,
the film opens on the Friday night, they look at
the numbers on the Saturday morning go oh yeah, this
is what you'll take, and kick you out of the
hotel Sunday morning. And then and then you're back in

(22:50):
your shitty rental accommodation and you beat up rental car
and you're back to reality and you've you know, you've
made a film that's that's just another film. You know,
it's not gonna win Oscars and it's not gonna make
a billion dollars. And so you know, you you're you,
you're you know, you're you're in You're in that the

(23:11):
reality of that world. We should have come home. Yeah,
I've got I've got gone sideways on that. Forgive me,
You're fine.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
It's it's it's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
And just to hear you mention that, because I was
going to bring up Sanctum obviously, and just your experience
and you know, looking back at it now and it's interesting.
I always love to hear I guess the and I
know the audience too as well, that the real version
of you know, how this business works. It's not all
because a lot of people would assume. I remember when
Sanctum released here and it was like you know, we

(23:44):
were first starting to get like Trea Dy cinemas and
tree D screens and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
It was like this big fucking event and.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Everybody was like, Wow, I see this movie and it's
going to be crazy.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
It just it felt so huge, and then like to
hear you say like yeah, you know, you're the guy
for a weekend, and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah,
whatever next. It's like with something else coming out next week,
whatever cee elis or bye, you know, and you're supposed
to just go away kind of to a degree.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
And I've heard that before.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And I actually seen an interview recently with Rob Zombie
where he talked about when he remade Halloween, and he
tells a story I think it's on how he Mandel's podcast,
and he said, you know, the morning that the movie
came out, he got a phone call from Harvey Weinstein
at like ten am and he was like, see, Rob,

(24:35):
I told you it's a fucking disaster. It's not going
to make any money. The projections are awful, blah blah.
And he was like and then like six hours later,
I get a phone call and they're telling me I'm
a genius and we have to shoot two more sequels
and we have to this and do that, and he
was like, and then by Monday it was like nobody
was answering the phone anymore.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, man, that's what it is. It's a rollercousta and
it's super stressed, you know, meeting Jim and going to
Avatar and the said in New Zealand and you know,
it was just so thrilling. And then you know, we worked.
I worked with the producer Andrew on the on the
script for you know, six six months, and the writer

(25:16):
John and you know, we really had a singing. And
then we moved my family to Queensland, a part of
me from from where we were at the time in
Melbourne and in Sydney. Sorry, then you live like a gypsy.
I don't know where I'm from anymore. And and we're
ready to go and we start production and then you know,

(25:37):
the producer, one of the American producers, came in one
day to my office and said, look, we're going to
shut a thing down. There's an issue, there's an legal issue.
We're going to sort out the IP and blah blah.
So then we went on a hiatus for a year.
Not quite a year, about ten months. I eight of
nine months. And and hiatus. When a producer says the

(25:58):
word a hiatus to you usually means dead.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
It's done, not to cut you after. But what happens
to you in those ten months? Like what are you
expected to do? Just sit and wait and see what happens.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Well, that's a very good question. And I didn't know
myself because this was the first. This is the first
for me, you know, we'd move the family. It's like
it's one of those hard things. It's sort of it's
very hard to kind of for me to go out
and get jobs. For example, like what what do I do?
I can only actually do one thing, which is really
directing moves cool beers. I used to work in a

(26:29):
pub for years when I was at union and stuff
like that. Poor beers of direct movies. It's like they're
kind of you know. And and so we were like, well,
I just had a lot of faith that because Jim
was involved and I knew the tenacity of the Australian
producer that it was going to happen. I had a
lot of faith. I just had to hang in there

(26:51):
and they'll get it back on track and sure enough
they did. So I just spent the time as productively
as I could just preparing the picture. So I actually
taught so for a whole bunch of things which I
still use today. For example, I can do a really
basic three D modeling in an app called sketch Up,
which you might be familiar with it, so people often
use it to It's a Google product, the Story products.

(27:18):
People do things like build, you know, I mean the
crazy people build like, you know, a version of the
coliseum for example, and they can geo located onto the
onto Google Earth and stuff like that. But they've got
this amazing facility to now you can kind of download
animation apps and various things and use so that I
could actually build little animatics and go so for our

(27:41):
major set piece stunt sequences, I actually designed, you know,
and built myself, you know, like a fly through the
whole cave system and and little animatics of the whole
of all of our major set pieces. I mean they're
pretty crap, but they are good in a way that
as a conversation started with your team, you know, with
your whether it be the DP or the designer or

(28:03):
the producers or whoever, that you kind of go, oh,
this is this is how I see it. You know,
we're going to be here and here's there, and that's
going to go like that, and the space looks a
bit like this, and and blah blah blah and and
pre viz and you know, all that concept stuff is
just like hugely important. The bigger the film is, the
more important. Even the small films, it's fintally important. Like

(28:25):
the thing I'm doing at the moment now, I'm working
with the concept artists and storyboard artists just so that
we can sit down in pre production and go, these
are the green screens, these are in camera, this is
how we do this, and so you have a you
have a battle plan. But also it means you can
budget properly. So even on the on the big massive lies,
the bigger they are, and I can guarantee you Avatar.

(28:46):
I don't have to guarantee because I know it's sort
of like those movies when you spend a couple hundred
million bucks on a movie to make them an Avatar's case,
God knows how much that costs. They're going to spend
ten million dollars an R and D on the picture. Basically,
you know you're going to spend it, you know, five
million dollars over two years creating basically shooting the picture

(29:11):
so that everyone knows what the camera is doing, where
it is, what even the lenses you know what I mean,
it is not and guarantee your gym is not improvising
on the day going oh do I use the thirty
five or the fifty? You know, does the camera here?
Is it there? My handhole in this? Or it's sort
of like, I mean, you think it all through. And
you know, he's a genuine natural filmmaker, so he would

(29:32):
be intuitively working with what's in front of him like
a good ruggy player. But it's planned out to the frame,
you know, and that's what you're trying to do. Again,
I've forgotten how I went down this.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Path when you mentioned, you know, having the bonds of
a year, and I suppose, you know, you could you
could have taken the the route of like you know,
I'm I'm on this big picture and yeah, let me
just I'll just chaill or whatever, and you know you
said kind of I suppose really digging into all the

(30:11):
different aspects and and kind of self teach and stuff
like that, and Jim feels like somebody like that as well,
who is quite curious creatively in all aspects. Would you
say that's a huge key to I.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
Don't know, evolve and and kind of.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
I don't want to say stay in relevant, but like
that that curiosity to always like, you know, want to
know more and.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Like the need for more.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
I think so, I think definitely for me. I mean,
obviously everyone's different. Every film, like is different. And sometimes
look at people's staff and I marvel at some people's
films and guy, where did that come from? How did
you even think like that? You know? And you know,
and when you look at some technical stuff too. It
really bugs me when I go and watch a movie
and I go, hell, did you do that? You know?

(30:58):
And then you have to kind of work it all
back with the guy. Okay, maybe all that sort of stuff.
And there's some people who were you know. Yeah, I
think I think I'm a sort of interesting I mean,
I'm learning all the time as a filmmaker. And I

(31:18):
still don't think I'm I've made my kind of opus
yet I hope not. I think I'm I think that's
still ahead of me. Now. It's not worth getting up
in the morning if I didn't think. So I don't
quite know what it is. I've got a film that
I really want to make, which is a comedy thriller
but set in a kind of a horror environment, so
in a lot of ways similar to Bloody Hell. But

(31:39):
it's a really fascinating kind of existential psychological study. It's
sort of it's it's got a sort of a a
Yungian kind of thing bubbling underneath and all sorts of
strange and bizarre shit that I think would make a
really great movie. It's just I'm finding really how to
convince other people that will which is an approject that

(32:00):
came to me out of out of Canada, from Bloody Hill.
So so, you know, I don't think i'm quite the
filmmaker that I want to be. Some filmmakers. I think
I'm really lucky that, you know, you know, because I
would love to do more drama than I'm doing just
straight drama, you know, straight historical drama for example. You know,

(32:24):
I love men Ridley and Spielberg. I'm a classical sort
of stylist, so I like those classical style, you know,
the older guys, a bit older school, I suppose, and
I'd love to be able to stretch out a little more.
I mean, have we said that. I've been lucky enough.
I've made a couple of war movies. I've had a
sports movie, action adventure movie, you know, and that sort

(32:44):
of comedy horror. All my shorts were comedies. But I'd
love to do a bit more straight drama, you know.
And and I love sometimes the sensibility of people, which
is very different to me. I don't imagine them being
technically interested. For example, Yeah, you know, I was looking

(33:07):
at He's a Canadian who passed away recently, wonderful director
you twin peaks, David lyn David Lynch, and he's a
really fascinating character because he's there's not I think any
portion of his brain devoted to analytics, you know. I

(33:27):
think it's like, you know, it's he's no, there's no right,
there's no left side. Is the left side of this maths?
You know, and it's he's just pure kind of moment,
you know. And I was watching when he passed. I
got a bit obsessed by him, and I was sort
of watching a lot of videos and you know, and
I saw a really interesting one which I thought was

(33:49):
was indicative and it was him having an argument with
his producers and I don't know where this footage came from,
and he was getting really angry with him because because that,
you know, like as producers do, they're like, well, look,
we've only two days in Toronto and you've only got
one day in this location. We've only got half a
day to shoot you know, these two scenes. And he's like,
and he's just getting absolutely irate because he's trying to

(34:09):
explain to them. You don't understand, like, I need time
because it's when you were in the space and with
the actors and time it's not a consequence and you
don't have those pressures on you. That's when the magic happens.
That was those were his words. That's when the magic happens.
And I thought that's really interesting, you know. And that's

(34:30):
so David Lynch too, because there's some very strange quality
to his movies that you it's very hard to put
your finger on. It's like Malik, you know, it's that
kind of you know, or Russian filmmaker name escape me,
You'll come to me, and it's and it's they have

(34:53):
that magic ability of Takowski. You know, they can sit
in the space and somehow the relationship of time in
reality to the temporal changes that happen being recorded through
the cn OI and all this kind of stuff. You know,
I'm going back to film schooling, you know what I'm
talking about. And there's an intangible and so in a way,

(35:19):
those guys like your Lynchers plan for the intangibles, you know,
and that if they're not accorded the opportunity for the intangibles,
then they're just recording shit, you know. And this is
the battle, and this is the real battle. For me
working in my space too, it's the same, very very
different because we're sort of I'm much more driven by
visual narrative and the efficacy of how limited I need

(35:45):
to be able to hold someone's attention and the and
the speed with which things have to move in order
to kind of do that. There's sort of a different
competing eye, is there. But I kind of envy that idea.
I kind of like the idea. I'm not sure if
I'd be good at it, but I like the idea of,

(36:06):
you know, being able to do a Takowski and just
do that, you know, just to be able to sit
He loves to just sit there to the point you
kind of got of a fox.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's mean.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Really okay, that's.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
I think as well. It's probably underplayed the definitely like
the mental, emotional, and maybe I would imagine eventually the
physical toll it takes to be a filmmaker.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
I mean, the idea of.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
You know, it's it's essentially freelance. There's no real you know,
it's not like someone talks to me like about the
quote unquote the golden era of Hollywood where they would
sign somebody. They would say, oh, Alistair wuld liked your
couple of pictures whatever, We're going to give you five
picture deal with us, or an actor would get a

(37:03):
you know, a three picture deal or whatever, and they
were signed to the studio and you were kind of,
at least for a certain amount of time, unless anything
went wildly wrong, you were kind of guaranteed.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Okay, well, I know this is kind of where I'm at.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Whereas asides from all the creative aspects, I suppose you
guys have all this other shit to worry about. Where
you know, you mentioned convincing people about a script that
you're really passionate about, and then the skill of having
to be able to pitch that and kind of convey
your idea to somebody maybe who's not as creatively minded,

(37:38):
who's thinking about analytics, who's thinking about the financial side,
or you know, their why will be completely different from
your why.

Speaker 4 (37:47):
And then obviously all.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
The personal stuff in the background, where it's like, Okay,
well you know we're making this movie, I'm getting X
amount of money, and then I'm not sure when the
next project is going to pick up and having to
for all that is that something that just it just
takes trial by fire to kind of get used to
that little bit of maybe that small bit of uncertainty

(38:11):
or like not knowing where the cards will fall.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Well, you've kind of describe my life. I wouldn't recommend
it to anyone. You've got to have a fairly strong,
you know, probably delusional. It would be the best delusional, egotistical,
you know, stature or something. I don't know. It's not

(38:38):
it's not easy. It's really hard. It's true, You're absolutely right.
It's look, I mean, some people you know, you know
is there's definitely the luck if you talented, like if
you are not trying to talk anyone down or whatever,
who get those great opportunities and you know, like a
Basloment for example, you know who I think is a

(38:59):
really great impresario, and I'm not sure what he's arrangements are,
but he essentially has a deal. So it's a bit
all my old school, you know it. Certainly I have
the first look arrangements, and certainly I suspect studios of
funding his development costs, you know, so that he so,
which is a big deal, so it doesn't have to
worry about pulling beers at the pub. You know, I

(39:27):
don't really have I don't really have an answer beyond
saying that, yeah, it's it's pretty scary and life comes
at you fast, and and you know, we're in a
situation at the moment where you know, I've been attached
to a project for over six months and they've been
paying me to actually be attached to the project, but
I'm not doing it. So I'm in that same situation

(39:48):
where well I can't I'm kind of hooked. I'm sort
of on the hook, but I can't go actually earn
money anywhere else. So I mean, I'm developing the picture,
and I'm working on screenplay and working with concept artists
and stuff like that, and that's great, but if you know,
when this movie is done, I'll be back starting again

(40:09):
from scratch. You know, trying to get continuity of work
is really is really hard. It's really tricky, and I've
never really succeeded doing it, and that I'd always thought
that I'd be able to go and go do a
film and then do some television, some advertising, you know,
documentary or whatever it is, and then and then the
next film and that way kind of like, you know,

(40:29):
but the environment has changed so much. It's actually really
hard to move between spaces the way that it used
to be much easier. And advertising guys tend to do
all of the TVCs and advertising agencies or production companies
aren't interested in outsiders coming in because they've got their guys.
You know. It's the same with those the advertising guys.

(40:50):
It's usually very hard for them to get into filmmaking
or television because you know, it's the same kind of thing.
It's like, well, you know, you're a TVC guy, can
you do you know, doing thirty seconds? Is? I think,
can you do ninety minutes? You know? And some of
them do very successfully obviously, I don't know, it's just
I'm not sure you know what I'm saying here. It's
just like, yeah, it's it's tough. It's like it's been

(41:12):
really tough. I'm not going to lie to you. And
you know, I don't have a house. I can't imagine
having a mortgage on fifty five. You know, we do, Okay,
I've sent my kids to a really nice school and
it just finished and has been accepted into the National
Acting Academy, which is nice, although I was like, I'm

(41:33):
much preferring to be an engineer than an actor, but there,
what do you do when you're predisposed towards a certain thing.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I don't know if you've had a chance to see
Sinners that came out recently Brain Cooglers.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
No, I haven't, but I've been reading a little about it,
So tell me about it. I don't really know much
about it.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah, well, like I've seen it. I did enjoy.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
It wasn't what I expected, but it was more kind
of fascinated body. Just to kind of follow on from
what you said in the fact that I think, I
don't know if this is that big of a deal
because obviously, like I'm not in the business of filmmaking,
so it's a little bit lost on me to a degree.
But I see everyone putting a lot of a lot
of stock in the deal that Ryan Coogler managed to

(42:15):
get out of Warner Brothers, where ownership reverts back to
him after twenty years I think, or twenty five years,
and he gets a first dollar return. So something like
does he make money before the studio recoups what they
get or something like that, And like everyone's making a
big deal of it.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
Is that a good thing for.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
And I don't know if it's just sensationalist headlines where
they're saying, like, you know, Hollywood executs are shook by
the fact that he got this deal, and he came
out now and said.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Look, I understand this is a kind of a once off.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
I'll probably never get this again, especially for like an
original idea. This is probably never going to happen again.
But like, does that help out the.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
Filmmakers?

Speaker 3 (42:59):
I'll look, I honestly don't know, because I'm just not
I'm not across what that is. I mean, it's really hard.
I don't even know the background to the film, who's
paying for it, or what the budget was, so I
can't even tell you that I assumed it was an
independent film, but i'm because it's his complex. So if
you've made an independent film, then normally what you're doing

(43:20):
is you'll have a producer from a region who'll cobble
together the budget, usually in a sort of almost like
a co production, but getting pre sales from regions to
get the money together, and then the multipliers through whatever
tax rebates they can get. So if you can work
out how to turn for example, you know, so in Australia,

(43:42):
for example, you know, if I can get three million
dollars of pre sales on a project and something like
I'm attached to a sci fi picture here and it's
about a twelve million dollar budget, and the producer is
convinced that he can get about four million US. We're
not going to say twelve to twlve million Australia. So
about formula in US in pre sales. Because of the

(44:03):
of the of the nature. It's a creature feature sci fi,
it has sort of tech elements, action adventure elements, survival elements.
Obviously there's going to have to be star attached or
stars to sort of to bet up the kind of value.
But he reckons he can get the pre sales on it.
That pretty much combined with the rebates that we get

(44:26):
through the national tax system, plus the kind of in
kind co investment from the state bodies that we shoot
it in, that we can get that money together without
any equity. So that's actually so you can actually finance
a picture based on pre sales alone, not actually any equity,

(44:48):
so you don't need elin must to go, Hey, here's
ten million dollars going to make your picture. Okay. So however,
all of that, that whole system is this sort of
house of car You know, you've got all of these
balls in the air, and as soon as one ball
disappears because the pre sale and Czechoslovakia falls over, then
suddenly you're you know, five hundred thousand dollars short in

(45:10):
your budget. And then Thylane gets nervous, and you know,
and Germany and all this sort of stuff. To be
with me two sex from my son is calling me
from Sydney. Anyway, it's a house of cards. Whereas a studio,

(45:30):
the whole structure is different. If they go, he's ten
million dollars to make your picture, then really you can
convert that ten million dollars into twenty million dollars by
just keeping on shooting, because once they're in, they're all in.
And this is the great lesson that I learned from
James Cameron. In a way, although he has a very
bad reputation for being a kind of irresponsible filmmaker, he's

(45:50):
actually a very responsible filmmaker. He's just very ambitious and
very as a giant vision and a perfectionist. But he
was very much like look, mate, it's very different for
me making my picture. I had a line in the
sound I could not get one more dollar out of
it because all the deals tying up the territories and
investments and the distribution deals and so on and so forth.

(46:13):
You can't add equity into a picture. But in a
studio picture you can because the studio is providing the
equity so they can keep, you know, spending it. How
how you kind of get the dollars at the end
of that, I don't know, and i'd be i'd find it.
I don't know enough of the background of the filmmaker
to know how you could get leverage for it. I mean,
he might have great representation and great lawyers. I just

(46:36):
can't imagine how off the page any studio executive would
go you know, oh that's you know, that film's a winner,
you know, or or because no one knows it's you know,
the history of film is the history of people have
had an opportunity to make to invest in something and go, well,
I don't know, whatever it might be good, might not

(46:56):
be good. You know. George Lucas, by way of example,
to talking a Revenge of the Sith or whatever it is.
You know, no one believed at all in any of
that stuff, so he was able to then leverage their
lack of belief to get ownership. Nowadays, though they're so savvy,
the studios, I just don't know. I just don't know

(47:17):
they're range. I mean I had on Sanctum, I had
I had multiple deals with producers including Gym, to get
small fractions of stuff. And even though the film, the
film had a lot of money. But I'm here to
tell you, you know, it's it's not in my pocket.
It's it's in the pockets of those that put it

(47:40):
all together.

Speaker 4 (47:40):
Yeah, I think people assume that's that.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
So I was just when you were talking there, I
was just having that look so supposedly, and this is
the online version, so it's obviously, like you know, I
don't know if the true late somewhere in this, but.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
He had been working on the picture.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
It was in development through his own production company, Proximity Meat,
with Michael B.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
Jordan was cast as a lead role.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
He was using that supposedly as like a barter in
tool because he's a big name. Then Sony, Warner Brothers,
and Universal were in a bating war to acquire all rights.
They were looking for a budget of ninety million to
make the movie, and then supposedly those three companies were

(48:26):
that interested in that. In exchange for agreeing to it,
Warner Brothers gave Coogler first dollar gross, which is when
the filmmaker receives a percentage of the gross box office
revenue starting from the film's first day of relase release.

(48:47):
This is a sharing in the revenue from ticket sales,
and they don't wait until the studio turns a profit first,
so it's from the day it comes out.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
He gets never heard that, even James Cameron doesn't have
that deal.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
So he got that.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
He got final Cup privilege, and he gets ownership of
the film twenty five years after its release, all of
which was granted by Warner Brothers, who offered him ninety
million dollars budget in return.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Look, there there's a whole bunch of figures that you're
throwing me to blow my mind. I mean the fact
that it's a ninety million dollar film. Again, I know
nothing about the filmmaker. I don't know about Michael Jordan
said the basketball different. I don't understand how anyone can
spend ninety million dollars in a film. And again I
know nothing of the film and I haven't seen it.
So you might be able to tell me that if

(49:35):
there's ninety million dollars worth of film up there. But
that alone is bizarre because his fee for directing the
film would have been several and producing it and writing
it or whatever it is would have been millions and
millions of dollars anyway, let alone getting The only thing
I can think of is that people sitting around going
for a ninety million dollar film to make a profit,

(49:57):
it's going to have to turn over three hundred million dollars,
probably in North America. Forget about the rest of the world,
because you sell off the rest of the world. Again
with that nine what the studio is and what its
arrangements are. But so when you when you got. There
are very few films that my three hundred million dollars.
I mean, you've got to release on three thousand screens

(50:18):
and stuff like that in North America. It's interesting enough
that kind of because it's an African American film.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, and it's strange as well, because you know, they give
them the idea it's kind of like horror mixed with
it like folklore, and it's setting like the Jim Crow
era in America, and you know, he's coming with the
background of the Creed movies and Black Panther, which is
kind of like, right, a little bit of a strange
like it seems like a little bit of a like,

(50:45):
you know, let's trush it at the wall. Let's just
hope this works out. Now, I know, so far it's
made one hundred and twenty two million in North America
and one hundred and sixty two million globally. I don't
know if that's like good, yeah, per se like everyone's
seems to be staying it's great. I did enjoy it,
but it just seems wild to me that somehow somebody
managed to agree and say, yeah, we'll give you all that.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
I think, well, I would think of it in these terms,
and it it's interesting because of course I hadn't made
the connection. Sorry were the Creed movies and nice hit?
So you know, first of you've got that, you know,
that black weekend, that opening weekend. Like I think basically
the only people who can open movies now are black
movie stars, and even Will Smith has sort of gone,
but that's still a thing. And if you can open

(51:28):
big in America, you can do big numbers. So that's
a big deal. And that whole Creed thing, I would say,
and this is what I was where I was going,
is that Hollywood is a lot like New York. It's America,
but a lot like New York. It's a market town.
And so what happens is people just get this heat

(51:49):
and it's like a buying frenzy on Wall Street. It's
like this is the hot stock, you know, And there
mightn't be any logic or reason to it, but suddenly
the phones ring and it's like it's my mate, Oh,
everyone's all in. If I can you know Washington, you know,
you know, And then suddenly it creates its momentum, and
I suspect he's been able to engineer that around the

(52:10):
hype of you know, I'm this guy. You look, and
I've got you know, this actor attached, and we're going
to do this, and this is how it's going to work.
And I'd just say he's created a kind of a
big energy around it, and people see him as a
as a winner and want to back him, and so
that's how it's kind of like and and you can
see that. And this is this weird thing about corporation.
It's completely outside of my experience, so I can only

(52:33):
guess and do it anecdotally, but I can easily see
boards sitting around and going, well, we can't let Warner
Brothers have this, we can't let Universal have you know,
it's kind of like we need to have this. What's
our tent pole for you know, for winter? You know,
what are we releasing in what are we now April? Like,
what's what are we competing with? Well, well, we've got

(52:54):
the Rocky seventy two, and we've got this coming out,
and we've got a Star Wars eighty five. Well, okay,
you know this is sort of counterprogramming against the thing
we got black, you know, and then just that energy,
and he's obviously built that hype, Like I've really noticed
for example, in my x feed, how much coverage you

(53:15):
know that is obviously astroturfing about it all, but it's
sort of like it did. I suspect that the filmmakers
have been very, very, very savvy from the bottom floor
setting the whole thing up. I mean truly. I mean
I'm a trigued to see it, but I'm not really
I get the feeling I'll be very disappointed, Yeah, because

(53:39):
I'm usually disappointed.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
And that's kind of what I think.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
The only reason I probably wasn't is because they had
seen it rate when it came out, and everybody hadn't
been like shitting on about it as much yet, and
like since then everyone's been going crazy.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
But I think he might be right.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
There's a degree of that, And you know, it's it's
that thing that was well I think studios like to do.
I think it's like, you know, we've got, like, you know,
we've got our movie with like nearly an all black cast,
and like it throws back to like, you know, African
American culture and there's like Irish folklore in there, and
we've got all these different like yeah, it's it's yeah,

(54:14):
it's it's.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Kind of American Irish people.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Yeah, it's it's a really like weird mix of but
I think maybe they might have, like I don't know,
like cashed in on that kind of like culture thing
and like obviously maybe the studio saw something and that went,
you know what, actually this will this will work really
well in American.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
I don't know. I the studios have been wrong so
many times. They've been wrong more times than right in
the last you know, twenty years and getting worse, you know,
as we know with the death of Disney and you know,
you're Kennedy's and all those people who's been driving those
studio things into the ground. I don't think they know anything.
I think the strange thing is because the risk averts fundamentally,

(54:58):
it's driven by fear of failure, not desire for success.
So there's there's a whole different sort of mentality. And
I think, you know, if you're an executive, if you're
fighting always to keep your job and and to climb
the greasy pole, so you always you always aspire to
your boss's job, so you do everything you can to

(55:21):
undermine them and make you look good in them look bad.
I mean, I mean, it's it's a really dog eat
Dog kind of nasty, nasty place.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Do you think, like, you know, going forward, where where
will that creativity live?

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Is it indie kind of indie space as in you know,
like I seen a book recently, as in a bookshop,
and I seen them it was like the Death of
the Action movie Star or whatever, and I just read
the back of the book and it's a kind of
a concept that ever he thought of, you know, I remember,
you know, even in the nineties, people would see movies

(56:01):
because of the action star, whether it be Swarzenegger or
you know, somebody like Van dam or Jackie Chan or something.
And we don't really have that now, like you have okay,
we've got the rock and outside of that, like I
don't know if there's any massive amount of and even
at that it's like you know, Fast and Furious ten,
it's like I'm not sure at what point, like we
kind of stop cashing in on the IP. But that again,

(56:23):
it probably ties into that risk of ours, like well,
you know what, it's probably better to put like fifty
million into Fast and Furious ten than it is to
put you know, twenty five million into an original or
you know a new concept. But like where where do
you think that that creative like that? I don't know
if I want to call it like the golden the

(56:45):
golden era of filmmaking lives is it?

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Is it indie indie space?

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Will that end up overtime maybe, you know, getting bigger
and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
Well, I think it always is any why. I mean,
it's now coincidence that usually if someone has a big
indie hit, they get picked up by a studio and
quite often then it ends disastrously. You know that the
independent filmmaker then's making the two hundred million dollar Star
Wars movie, but they're not equipped to deal with that world.

(57:15):
And ultimately the world they're dealing with is the film
is being made by the board and committees of people
in the corporation and I've only had a kind of
a limited taste to that, but I can't imagine what
to be like at that level. So so the indie
staff drives everything, you know. I mean, the challenge is

(57:44):
the challenges and it has always been thus so maybe
it hasn't changed, but I think it is getting harder.
It's just getting it's just getting more and more expensive
to make movies. Like it's just ridiculous now how expensive
it is. And so so then things start coming in,
like AI starts getting used as ways to try to

(58:05):
save money. So then that starts to introduced a whole
bunch of other ideas around, you know, stories and narratives
and things like that, and where really genuine good work
comes from. I assume my guess is in the future,
things like you know a lot of these sort of
American police detective style, you know, freeware series. That's what

(58:33):
I'm thinking of. You know, you know what I'm talking about.
You know, what's the one that has the music that
ju jump, you know, Laura in order so Laura in
order you can just get an AI can just write
the script on that so and then probably you know,

(58:55):
it might have a human kind of influencing it to
put in the appropriately politically correct you know, yes, give
it the parameter real exactly, you know. And but then
the AI spits out the script and then the AI
just actually casts it and shoots it and does it
itself because kind of because it's all it's it's so

(59:17):
driven by it's it's structural kind of conceit. You know,
there's no it's they're so undramatic that they're really kind
of there's shows that play in the background in people's lounge,
and I can't imagine anyone sitting down and going, oh,
we've good, let's watch Laura and Orda and sitting down
and quick finish dinner and a cup of tea and

(59:38):
watching and learning forward and going well. So, so that
kind of stuff I assume machines will do in humans. Unfortunately,
a lot of them will happily consume it. And that
opens up all sorts of inwsing questions about you know,

(59:59):
m hm, not mind control, but you know what was
a little looking for, you know, propaganda and influence and
all of those sorts of things which exists now anyway,
but that they will be a fascinating thing is who
controls the machines controls the people. Wow, I'm going sideways now,
but independent films. So therefore, I think it's going to

(01:00:20):
be hopefully be able to hold truths. And this is
sort of going back to this original idea about digital
versus analog. The truth is analogue, I think, and I
think that's what people will come back to. Wouldn't even
surprise me if people started shooting on film again as

(01:00:40):
a way of kind of actively separating themselves from the
digital space because they want to be truthful. They're trying
to say I'm being truthful. Maybe maybe not. I mean,
we know some filmmakers sort of still try to do that,
Tarantino and so on. But his you know, and it's
really interesting, really interesting question. And I don't really know

(01:01:02):
the answer how it's going to evolve, you know, but
I think I think that fundamentally as humans, how we
we have a fundamental desire to need truthful narratives because
it's the only way that we can process the world
that we live in, I think, without just losing our ship.

(01:01:24):
In really simple terms, it's like it's like a mental
health thing going. You know, I need to hear the
story about you know, Zotic who killed the Yak and
then drank the blood and and got stronger and therefore
saved his family from the ordering you know, Nulas, and

(01:01:45):
and and and and so as the Zatic clan has
been rightfully elevated to a high status because we should
aspire to, you know, living as warriors in order to
live as a people, you know, like or whatever it is,
you know what I'm saying, sort of like I think
so narrative functions in this way that prepares us to
live and prepares us to die, which is probably the

(01:02:07):
most important function in a really interesting way. So, yeah,
analog is the truth. And obviously this is my son
who's as I say, it's just gone off to drama school.
I'm actually a big believer that in the future, I
think theater is going to become more and more important
as a space because in the future, everything you see

(01:02:28):
on your screen is going to be lying to you,
and so you're going to have to be working out
what's truthful. Now, you can actively buy into the lie
because you're going to go and see a fictional film
or whatever it is. But when what you're being told
is truthful turns out to be a lie, and you
lose all trust in institutions in the medium. Where do

(01:02:50):
you find truth? Where you find it in an analog space,
actually in a physical space in the theater with other
humans telling a story, and you're actually having a moment
with them in that physical space. It's an analog space.
And so that and that was part of my thing
and thinking, well, you know, maybe there is a future
in acting because it's not just this you purely the

(01:03:12):
world is actually the analog things. And and it wouldn't
surprise me at all if we start to see more
and more story telling and certainly something I'd love to do.
It's just tricky that that balance of just having to work,
having to pay bills, having to survive, with your desire
to do the things that you want to do. But
I'd love to be doing a lot more analogy, you know,

(01:03:33):
And I try to. I try to do everything in
camera as much as I can. Something like Bloody Hell,
which I did. You know, the characters limb is missing,
and it's sort of like, well, you have to rely
on a digital solution, but but fundamentally that's only anesthetic,
you know what I mean. You don't want people drawn
to that. It's about the character's dilemma and how he

(01:03:53):
solves problems and deals with his situation, how that effects
and changes him. And so again I've just been crapping
you get a champion.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
No, it's it's it's great, It's fascinating, and and the
kind of every every time you say something, I'm like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
But I wonder I wonder about that, and I wonder
about this. Is it difficult? You know? From that standpoint,
both professionally and personally. I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
That weird dynamic between having a lot of those thoughts
and desires and wants visions, I guess, so to speak.
And then also, like you said, there's a degree of
like the machine the system, and it's like the you know,
you get a phone call tomorrow and it's like, oh,

(01:04:39):
your Warner Brothers wants you to shoot a picture and
it's something that you're not that interested in, but they're
going to give you a couple of million dollars blah blah,
but you're going to be all those things you're super
passionate about, need to go on the sideline for X
amount of time and whatever. Is that a weird bad
because I know some people out there might say, oh,

(01:05:00):
you know, I would never do that. I would only
shoot what what I love and blah blah blah. And
it's funny again, I've heard robs on we talk about this,
where you know, it was like people always give me
shit about my my movies and stuff like that, and
I would love to always make what I love to make.
But also, you know, I remade Halloween because the number

(01:05:20):
on the bottom line was huge. And I also have
to live and they need security. And you know, a
lot of times my music career is not so great,
a lot of times my film career is not so great,
and I've still got a mortgage, i still got you know,
all this other shit going on that no one cares
about only me. Is that like a difficult I suppose

(01:05:40):
space to be in. It's like the trade off between
you know, reality and then the delusion.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
To me. To me, it's not a difficult space because
I don't really have a choice, Like I would love
to be making have much more freedom to do personal stuff,
but I don't know, I have to be driven by
So you try to be have those things bubbling in
a way, and then when you get a chance, you know,
you get to do them. But no, man, you've got

(01:06:11):
to you've got to live where we've all got to
kind of work. I tell the understand what he's talking about.
It it's sort of like, you know, I mean, it's
not selling out like who else sells out? You know
what I mean? Like you don't think of a do
you do you think of a I don't know, like
a plumber selling out? Oh you're only doing high rises,
You're not doing suburban owns like I don't know, well

(01:06:33):
vice versa, I don't know, like I don't uh you know,
I mean, I want to keep what you were saying,
I'll get off at a couple of million dollars. I'm there, Yeah,
I was there at Hello, are you kidding me? I've
never I've never got a paycheck anywhere vaguely in that
sort of space. So does that mean is that me

(01:07:08):
or you? Or is it just the system?

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
The system or back now?

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
I'm not sure. When I lost your last I was
like saying what I what I aspire to is just
just to work, like I just I really love making movies,
like I really and it's hard to explain to people,
like why why I love it so much? But it's
it's very rewarding and and I love collaborating with really

(01:07:36):
good people. It's often really hard, like ridiculously hard. There's
often just numb skulls and really bad humans as there
isn't any line of work, you know, and you battle
through all that ship it's very intense, it's very foree,
but it's very rewarding, you know, and sitting when you
can sit in the edit sweat and you make a
scene work it's it's hard to explain. It's actually like

(01:07:58):
it's religious. It's like it's religious, you know. And I
love that. And regardless of this space, whether it be
an action movie or sport movie or straight drama, you know,
I love it. So I would happily not make a
sent if I could just work all the time, you know.

(01:08:18):
But my frustration is I don't work as much as
I want to work. That's my frustration. So my personal
ambition is to really is to be able to just
work more, not necessarily make a ton of money. That
would be nice, So I don't really I don't really
have that the luxury of that trade off. After we

(01:08:39):
made a Sanctum, I was in a situation where I
was sort of life. I didn't know what to do
because my wife had just had a baby, which had
a baby. We made the first picture and we were
just like, do we want to live in America and
raise our kids, you know, in America? And we just
decided that we didn't want to do that, so we
stayed here. That's here in the background, so don't come

(01:09:01):
through the door. Sorry, that's the ghost in the background.
We wanted to say. In Australia and look, and it's
probably it cost me a lot in terms of my
career for a better term, But in terms of lifestyle,
I mean, if you'd called me during the day, I

(01:09:23):
could show you. I'm living on the Gold Coast. We
live on the beach. Were literally the whole of our
north and east view out our windows is the is
the Pacific Ocean. And we couldn't afford that lifestyle anywhere else.
And so we feel very lucky and very blessed to
be able to do that. And I don't have to

(01:09:45):
grow my kid doesn't have to grow up.

Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
In La you know, surrounded by madness.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
Madness and la people and stuff. You know. Yeah, I
don't know. I don't know. I just although I would
love to, I'm blind. Why you told me The Badger
and that film was nine million backs, because I'm going
to be It's because.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
And you know what, I've been hearing this more and
more where people are like, well, because I you know,
I as I'm sure most of the listeners were always
of the belief that if you're a filmmaker, a writer,
any sort of creative you're into film, TV, anything like that,
the goal would be oh yeah, well, you know you

(01:10:29):
do what you got to do where you are, and
then when the phone picks up, if you got the
opportunity to go to the States or especially go to LA,
that's just where you have to be.

Speaker 4 (01:10:38):
And that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
And the amount of people now that I talk to
in LA that are like, no, man, no, I should
have never came here. And if I had have known
things would pan out the way they did, I would
have stayed where I was, or I would have went
and lived in Florida, or I would have went back home,
or I would have stayed in the UK, and I
would have just when projects came up, I can go
to the States and we can work, or go to

(01:10:59):
Canada and do it and then go back home. Do
you feel like that that's definitely becoming more of a
like a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
I think so. I think so. I mean so when
I made Sanctum, it really the sort of zoom era
didn't exist, you know, and there was there was still
sort of you know, a video conferencing stuff, but as
a cultural kind of idea, it was still very much
it had to be face to face. So there was
that sort of sense that you had to be in

(01:11:28):
the room. If you're an actor in particular. I think
you've got to be in the room. You've got to
be because actors have to. Yeah, it's fascinating because of
course that they want to get TV and screenwork, so
it's actually what they look like on screen. But but
being in the room is the most important thing for
an actor because the really good ones just have this
just glowing with you know, charisma, and it's really hard

(01:11:54):
to put your finger on unless you're in the room
with them, although sometimes it's sometimes I once was casting
a cast. I had a chance to cast one of
the you know, one of the lesser Thaws, and which
wanted Chris is Crystal is Chris though what's the other one? Right?

(01:12:23):
You have me on that one the less the lesser thought,
but of a fully lesser thought, not the not the
kind of you know, dime store thort. It's been a
harsh hope answer. He was in the Hunger Games, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
So?

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
He was?

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
So we we had yeah Christmas Thor.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Yes, AND's young. He was. He was the one who
was Myles. So he's not coming back to me in
my machine brain. We I did a test with him
over the wasn't it would have been Skype I think,
in fact, to take might have incentiment coming when I
was making Sanctum and it was really interesting and I

(01:13:09):
was like, and he did this stuff, and I was like, wow,
that that kid is just fantastic. Well he is just
oozing with movie star. It's like he is a real thing.
You know, it's hard, hard to explain. It's like it's
a look, it's a feeling, it's a tone, it's it's
really weird when you see it, and it's this magical thing.

(01:13:31):
The problem was it wasn't right for my character, because
we needed a character who was not fully formed, who
was this sort of kid who was trying to find
his way, because the whole point of the story in
a way was that he matures through the process, whereas
if you cast someone who's already there, there's nowhere to go.
That was my feeling in retrospect. Probably wasn't a good idea.

(01:13:55):
But but you know, you don't know shit in this stuff.
Uh what am I telling you? Where am I going?
I'm just saying stuff now, it's random living in La
doing things. There was a reason for that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Yeah, we're just talking about the concept of you know,
not having to do it out as much anymore in
the zoom.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
The digital culture. Yeah, well so now there's like there's
no question. Now there's a difference. I mean, all of
my meetings are sort of zooms and all that sort
of stuff. It's not I don't think that's an issue.
I mean, having said that, I think doing time, being
in the room is important. And I haven't been at
LA for several years now. I haven't been doing the
kind of pitching. I've been caught up with really just

(01:14:40):
getting my kids through school and and all that sort
of stuff the last four years. And the virus so
we had we were about to we were about to
emigrate to Canada because my wife is Canadian, and so
I got my working papers and it was sort of
like we're going to Canada and that way I can
kind of commute to LA from Vancouver. That was the concept.

(01:15:01):
And then the virus came and shut everything down and
we weren't allowed to leave the country. So we ended
up moving to Queensland, which, if your viewers know, he's
sort of like Northeast Australia, you know, very tropical, as
opposed to w from Melbourne, which is sort of much
more English, I suppose. For one of the better terms
sort of cold, cold, and damp. So that's that's sort

(01:15:23):
of how we got here. But so I've sort of
been locked down for the last six years. But I'm
sort of hoping now that he's finished school and this
new picture coming up is going to give an opportunity
to get back to LA and actually start to get
in the door and actually be able to pitch, you know,
to actually pitch face to face some stuff to produce
US and execs and that kind of stuff, and build

(01:15:45):
a bit more energy around that and get you know,
I mean, I used to be represented by C A A,
which is a big, you know, American agency. But again
it's sort of if you're not if you're not in
LA and able to do those face to face as
it sort of loses its momentum. So I'm hoping to
rein figure out that the next year or so.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
How difficult is that, you know, the idea of pitching
that comes up a lot and it kind of gets
glassed over people say, you know, oh, pitch, yeah, and
and I think a lot of people don't actually realize
the concept of having to pitch. And then I suppose
maybe in person versus on zoom, like you mentioned earlier,
making something like a look book.

Speaker 4 (01:16:29):
I think a lot of people think when you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Pitch, you just go in and say, hey, remember me,
I'm the guy that made this movie, that movie, this movie,
and I want to make a zombie war movie. And
then they go, oh, great, perfect as, no problem, we'll
just sign the check off figure. And you know the difficulties,
I guess I've having to be able to convey that
idea and essentially convince somebody on first mating this idea.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
I've never heard of just one person, like tens of people,
that's the thing. And look, even you're Ridley Scott's and
Basil Uman's and you know whoever, everyone, you still have
to be pitching. You still have to be bringing people
with you, convincing people that what you're doing is the
right thing. And you can never do enough. You know,
they want to see a singular vision around something. I mean, look,

(01:17:19):
you hear all sorts of stories, and certainly in the
looser days, and it still probably happens. I'm sure people
just turn up and go, hey, I'm Ridley Scott, give
me twenty million dollars. I'm going to go and make
this comedy about a cricketer in the south of France. Okay,
for twenty million bucks, that'll be fine. But fundamentally you

(01:17:39):
have to be that's there's no doubt that. In a way,
I never really kind of understood this when I sort
of signed on to be a director. You actually have
to be a writer first. You have to be writing.
You have to own your own IP one way or another,
whether it's a script or an outline or a story
or one page, you know, or you employ someone to

(01:18:00):
those things that you own the IP, but you're developing
it and you're taking to people and you're creating that
vision around what it is. The hardest thing about it,
seems to me and the older I get, is it's
such a dynamic cultural environment, you know, so that as

(01:18:21):
soon as you think you've got your finger on what
is cool, what's in you know, what people want to see,
it changes, you know, and suddenly you know, there's a
hit out of nowhere, and say, what's that about. Another
thing that's really hard too is the fragmentation in the marketplace.

(01:18:42):
So you know, when I was a kid, you know,
going to the cinema of the raft Bass, you know,
telling about that, you know, there's a movie called Gallipoli
made by Peter Weir, which is an Australian war movie.
It's a big influence on me, and it ran in
Australia for twelve months. It ran in Australia for twelve

(01:19:02):
months at one movie in nineteen eighty two or something.
You know, it was a beloved movie and all those
sorts of things. But nowadays, if you can get six weeks,
you're a miracle worker, you know. I mean, these are
some of these big two hundred million dollar American studio pictures.
Ten poles only get six weeks, you know, six weeks
on your two and a half thousand screens and then

(01:19:24):
and then maybe you know, another four weeks as they
as they drop because they've got so much content coming
online and it's all about that opening weekend and all
about that. You know. Again, I've lost my way. How
do we start down this path?

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
I don't That was probably my fault because I kept
adding bits under the questions.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
Looking forward.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Then I get like you, so you mentioned, you know,
having to have that what the futures can. Yeah, and
you you mentioned something about you know, having to be
a wraider and that was something and that I was.
I wanted to ask earlier about pitching, like how important
has that become to you?

Speaker 4 (01:20:07):
Two?

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
Also, and I've heard this a lot as well, where
people are like you know what, I actually realized that
I needed to have that in my tool belt to
be able to to write, or like you said, at
least work with somebody and and own the IP to
a degree, not to.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
A degree, you have to full stop. So this is
my advice to anyone who wants to be a filmmaker,
as a producer or director. You have to you have
to own the I P. You have to. So so
if you can't option something, so if you don't have
the money to option something that someone else is doing
and therefore earning the IP, you have to create it yourself.

(01:20:49):
That that's kind of it. There's there's there's no you
don't have any choice because I mean to look and
of course there are exceptions, you know, there's always exceptions,
But no one is going to ask you to direct
that movie written by someone else when you've never directed
a movie before. Even if you've got a really nice
short about you know you made made you know, your

(01:21:10):
high school graduating shorter or your university graduating short or
whatever it is, it's just not going to happen because
because of the risk factors. So if I'm going to
spend you know, ten million dollars on a picture, why
am I going to hire you to do it? Who've
never never directed a picture? When I've got to say,
Alista Grisson, you know who wants a job, I'll get
him to do it. He's made six feature films. Yeah,

(01:21:33):
and they're good and they make money, and he has
an audience, and so so I'll get him because that
just that takes the risk off me. Plus it makes
it easier for me to go to the marketplace. And
here's the other thing that people don't quite understand. So
so in my situation, what happens is producers contact me
and say, because I'm mostly a gun for height, and say,

(01:21:53):
I've got this project you're interested in in looking at yep,
great center through read the script, Okay, yep, I'm interested.
What's the next stage? Right? Well, then you know we
need to We can do some rewrits, you can work
with the writer, you know, or it can be greater
or it is it. We can take its market. But
the point is the producers are just trying to put
together a team of people that they can then go
to the marketplace and say, right, here's the poster. You know,

(01:22:17):
it's got Jack the Ripper in the shadows, and it's
got a knife tripping with blood, and there's the title
over there, and then it's got the picture of the
you know, insert movie star to a sure that we
can afford for our five million dollar film, ten million
dollar film, whatever it is. Here's the poster. And so
then straight away I can see, you know, conceptually go

(01:22:40):
okay in the market that we live in now, when
people basically there's going to be a streaming show, it's
probably never going to be theatrical, depending on the tax
arrangements behind the creational it's on Australia, for example, you
have to have a theatrical release in order to get
access to the rebak whole the discussion. Here's the poster,

(01:23:00):
here are the colors, here's the font, here's the actor.
All right? Is that actor attached? Not yet? Okay? Buck off?
All right, So that's get on the phone to the agent. Right,
We've got some interesting so this is the producer will go,
We've been talking to you know, such and such sales
agent and they're really interested in this, probably got this
great project. It's about Jack the Ripper, and you know,
but just like a contemporary spin and look, here's the poster,

(01:23:23):
and we'd really love to get you know, Jeremy Blogs,
you know, to be our guy, you know, and they'll
be like, great, fantastic, what's what's the offer? And you go,
you know, well, you know, if he gets attached, it'll
be you know, we'll pay him X amount, because they'll
be like, no, no, bugger off. You know, you need

(01:23:45):
to offer a pay or play. So now you're in
this sort of catch twenty two of going, I need
to get that guy attached in order to get the
sales agent in order to get the pre sale, to
get the money to pay the actor. And if the
movie doesn't get up, he gets paid anyway, so the
balls will start launching in the air and which slide

(01:24:07):
did I tell? And all the kind of bullshit like
so it's an incredibly difficult thing to do. So the
thing then is, if you're a newcomer to all of this,
it's about owning as much of it as you can
because you'll always be elbowed out if people can because

(01:24:30):
it's about risk management. It's about being risk adverse. So
getting started is the hardest thing. You'll almost have to
write and own your first script and that gives you
the leverage to direct it if people believe that you
have a vision to do it. I don't know, man,
it's like it's so hard. I kind of it took
me a long time, like, you know, a long time.

(01:24:52):
And I'd actually made you know, seven films before I
went to film before I went to film school, and
then I made another set films at film school, short films,
all the varying budgets and formats and genre is mainly
sort of comedies. And then the bizarre thing was my

(01:25:16):
brother walked. There's a very famous place in New Guinea
where Australian is fort the Japanese called Kakoda, And it's
become almost like a spiritual journey for Australians of a
certain type to kind of go to New Guinea and
sort of walk along the track and through the jungle
and go to all the various battlefields and you know,

(01:25:38):
all that sort of stuff, similar to some things in
Europe and so on, obviously, which Australians do too. Of course,
they all as I did, as a teenager walk through
Belgium and France and then end up in Gallipoli and
all these kind of amazing places are part of definitive
moments in Australian history. And he walked this track and
I'd never heard I'd never heard of this Kakoda campaign before.

(01:26:02):
So then I and he wrote me these amazing little
diary entries about his experiences walking on the track and
stuff like that and some historical details. So then I
started to dig into it, and then I became a
fascinator by it. Ended up buying you know, everything ever
written about the campaign in Australia at that time. This
is twenty years ago now, and I was just like,

(01:26:22):
I've never heard of this. I read I bet no
one in Australia has ever heard of this, really, you know,
if I've never heard of it. So I thought, well,
then someone should make a movie about it. So I thought,
well that should be me. So then I was like, okay,
well how do I do this because no one's going
to give me the money I need to make the

(01:26:43):
real movie. I need fifty million bucks like minimum to
do this big you know, sort of big war epic
thing and whatever the story is going to be but
to you know, to capture all of this stuff because
there's so many, so many moving parts to it all.
And then I was like, well, it's just not going
to happen because I've never made a movie before. But
someone might give me a million bucks. I might be

(01:27:03):
able to get a million bucks, so I've can come
up with a story that kind of captures the essence
of what I think the experience was about. And this
is kind of how I ended up in this kind
of genre space in a strange way. So I was
sort of like, well, the model became a combination of movies,

(01:27:26):
but mostly Predator for lots of reasons. But basically, you
get a small group of guys that are in the
jungle and they're being hunted by a superior kind of
fighting force, you know, and this is a true reflection
of the Australian experience when you had these young militia
guys who had never been in war, never been trained,

(01:27:48):
who shouldn't have been there were fighting this very heavily trained,
very experienced, very vicious Japanese military force and totally outnumbed
literally outnumber tender one. And and so you had a
bunch of these kids who were shit scared but tenacious
and courageous, and you know, I display at all of

(01:28:09):
these amazing skills that we kind of you know, I
mean in a very traditional mashal way, I don't know,
whatever it's, you know, kind of go that's cool. And
so that was the story. I thought, So I'll do Predator,
but instead of being an alien, it's the Japanese and
we never see them, so I don't have to spend
any money. We never see them because it's the predator
hiding in the jungle and our guys are getting picked

(01:28:30):
off one by one and sort of battling with disease
and fatigue and the psychological ramifications of all of this,
and you know, and then I'm trying to have some
little subploody things going on, and that way, worst case scenario,
me and a bunch of mates can go up to
the bush, get a couple of credit cards, get we'll

(01:28:51):
shoot it on buddy high eight handicam, get a couple
of guys, you know what I mean. And that that
was the vision. But then what we discovered was or
what I discovered was this, So as you sort of
take the vision to someone who has access to money.
They go, that's fucking great, let's do that, but let's
not do it for a million dollars. We'll do it
for two. And then the next guys are like, I,
we'll do it for three, the next guys, you know,

(01:29:12):
we'll do it for four. And in the end, I
think it was about three point six, which in twenty
years ago was you know, a bit more money than
it is now. But anyway, so anyway, I hope that's useful.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
I love that concept of and I think it's something
that maybe has been a little bit lost in more
modern times of reverse engineering. The idea so rather than
I think a lot of modern day society is very
trow away, so like you know, a roadblock comes up
and they go, oh, well, I guess fuck this. Then
that that's that fuck. I can never try and do that.

(01:29:49):
But the idea of like you said, you know, originally
in your head, the vision starts off as this, you know,
fifty million dollar war epic, like this amazing story, and
you've got all these different shots, and then having to go, okay,
well I can't do that, that's just not possible. So
right where can I go? Okay, I can make it
for a million. Okay, but what if we don't see them?
So there's another thing that I've kind of you know,

(01:30:11):
drawn the lines that I have been having to work
kind of backwards in a way to make it possible
at all, like versus just being like, oh, well, I
want I have this idea. I wish I could make it,
but it's going to cost fifty million. Oh well, just
forget about it and just never make it. I think
nowadays people are maybe a little bit more inclined to go, oh,
you know, it's just not possible. It can't be done.

(01:30:32):
There's no way to like possibly do this.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
I don't know, I mean to me in my experience time,
that is filmmaking. Yeah, filmmaking is compromised for start to finish,
and it's trying to compromise the least amount that you
can and you're constantly solving problems. As part of what
says stimulating about it is, you know, I'll never forget
the very first day my very first big film, and

(01:31:00):
you know, the first idea or whoever it was, right
is driving me to the location and we're shooting this
river and you know, out in a jungle somewhere, and
the first thing is you turn up and you see
all the trucks and this and the circuits. We're called
the circuits. It's like in the grips trucks and the
gathers trucks and all the support trucks, make up costume,

(01:31:21):
you know, and it's all there, and you're like going, wow,
you know, I created this, like I started this madness
and all of these people are here because of me,
and that's really kind of exciting. So then you turn
up and you go and then you start doing your
day's work, and then suddenly you go, oh, we're shooting

(01:31:41):
in a jungle. It's actually really quite difficult to shoot
in a jungle because there are things like snakes and
spiders and holes and rocks and trees and things that
want to grab you. And so things start to slow
down and moving a light over there, and that's right,
and it's actually with a complex and technical And then
at about just after lunch where shooting a scene, and

(01:32:02):
the first ad came to me and I said, and
I suspect he always knew this was going to happen
but kept it a secret from me. He just basically said,
we don't have time today to shoot scene whatever was
twenty five or whatever it was. We can't shoot Seen
twenty five and we're never coming back to this location
and it's the only location you can shoot that scene.
And I was kind of devastated. I was sort of like,

(01:32:23):
fuck what And then and then you realize, so, well,
you've got no choice. You go, Okay, So Seen twenty
five it's page and a half. All right, So that's
that's about ninety seconds of material. What do I need
from that scene? What's that scene about? Well, there's like
two beats in that scene that really fundamentally manner. I mean,

(01:32:46):
there might be some other beats, but they kind of
just dig a bit deeper on character stuff that you've
already established. But I need I need that beat, that
bit of information there, and I need that thing about
that character because that's going to play out, you know,
in this scene later on, So I need to know that. Okay,
So I've got these two things, So so how can
I if I take those two things out of the scene.

(01:33:07):
Where can I put those two things so that the
audience still gets that information and the narrative still works?
And then you kind of, you know, you go, oh,
you know what I could put that one in Seeing
fourteen and that bit in Seeing You Know twenty, and
I'll gift that bit of dialogue to this other character
or whatever it is. And then suddenly, you know, you

(01:33:28):
realize that you're just in this sort of nothing is
written in stone. Everything's dynamic. You know, if you if
you understand fundamentally what it is that you're trying to do,
you know, you know you can pull pages from the
script and adjust and deal with it. I think some
filmmakers can't. I think a lot of filmmakers, and I
know when I was in my early sort of filmmaking

(01:33:49):
with my shorts, you know, you get so you get
you can't. When someone goes, we can't do that, and
you go.

Speaker 5 (01:33:55):
Oh you can't. What do you mean you can't do it?
It's like the whole thing's fark. It's like it's never
going to work. We go, you know, and then but
you realize later you're always dynamic like that, You're always learning, organic, changing.
I think if you understand fundamentally the kind of core
elements of what it is in the storytelling that you're doing,

(01:34:21):
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:34:23):
You can do it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
Yeah again, yeah, And I think that's important for people
to hear as well, you know, because there's a lot
of aspiring writers, filmmakers, creatives that and I will say
the younger generation we are inclined to when there's are
all blocks drawn up, you kind of do that the
I think the first port of call is to be like, Wow,
the whole thing is fucked and I can't I can't

(01:34:44):
do any of it un fucked, and you kind of
focus on that one soul thing, like you said, rather
than breaking it down and going okay, right, I can't
do that.

Speaker 4 (01:34:52):
Is there anything I can squeeze out of this and
move on?

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
I had a really great I had a couple of
really great teachers at film school, and one of the
was a guy called Les Parrot who was a cinematographer teacher,
and his big thing was how do you turn the
negative into a positive? And he would just constantly go
on about it, and you don't really know when to
be kind of there. That's just part of filmmaking. No,
there's no question. Initially enough, someone else a film I

(01:35:21):
think it was a film director who was talking about
this the other day, talking about in their life. You know,
it might have been an actor. You're talking about, how
do you turn Michael Kaine, in fact, it was was
talking about turning negatives into positives, and he's like, it's
a life rule is that when shit goes down, you
have to try to work a way to reframe it,
rethink it, and reprocess it and and turn that negative

(01:35:45):
as best as you can into a positive. Otherwise you're
not going to kind of survive, you know, I think
in life, yeah, there's just there's there's too many, you know,
little little nasty little traps there that can kind of
catch you up. So filmmaking is the same. So it's
been there's a couple of moments I'm very proud of

(01:36:05):
in that film and dealing with that, and there's another
moment later and to me, in my own kind of
egotistical way, I really felt like, ah, I'm I can
do this. And that there was another scene where we're
shooting and there was it was in this sort of can,
very narrow ravine and we're shooting in it, and then
the storm came in and there was ship going everywhere

(01:36:28):
and water pouring off the rocks, and the actors were
down the bottom. And so the first thing he said, no,
I'm pulling the g it's too dangerous. We can't shoot.
It's like, you know, just like you know, time is
just so you know, the only thing you've got, you know.
And so we all went back to the unit. And
the unit was a series of tents basically you know,

(01:36:51):
out in the jungle. And I'm there and go fuck it.
So I said to the I said to the props
guys and the and the the greenary guys, just get me.
Build me in the in the mess tent where we're
eating dinner. And at that time we're middle of the night,
because we're shooting nights. It was it was our lunch,
our dinner. It was like, just broom, you know, half

(01:37:13):
a dozen of these tables, and build me a jungle
in the tent, and I'm going to just keep shooting.
And so I actually got the actors into this jungle
that we built in this very small area, like no
bigger than you know, three or four meter square. But
I could shoot close ups. I could get on one
hundred MILLI lens you know, and get them, you know,
and get and box them up in the frame and

(01:37:36):
get them sort of crawling through the sort of foliage
in the jungle. And that way I could keep turning
over through lunch and actually keep you keep shooting the picture.
And the first thing he got kind ofly pissed off
of me because he wanted to call it a hold
on the thing, and I was just like, but I can,
but I can. I can shoot this part of it.
I can shoot this much of the page, and then
we can deal with whatever the the ramifications of this afterwards.

(01:38:00):
If I'm going to get rid of rid of the
rest of the scene, or if I'm going to pick
up the saying another location, at least I've got this stuff.
And that's what we did, you know, and so and
the actors were, and there of those really exciting moments
when you know, the actors like yeah, you know, and
they're pumped and primed and they're into it, and the
crew and everyone's into it, you know, and you're doing
this stuff and super cool, and I was I was like, yeah,

(01:38:20):
let's be proud of me. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Is that something as well that's important? I have one
or two more questions before I let you go. Is
that something else that's like important? Do you think to
a degree that everybody is kind of I guess as
excited as each other about what they're doing like are
as passionate in a sense, I find sometimes that it
really comes across, you know, when I look at something

(01:38:45):
on screen, I feel like I can tell the difference
between something that people actually cared about working on versus
just being like, yeah, I'm the action guy or whatever
I'm supposed to be, blah blah, here's my lines, and
even sometimes say it was shot it seems very uninspired,
Versus I can tell even if people say, oh, well,
I didn't really like that movie. I feel like you

(01:39:06):
can tell a lot of difference in when it's made
by a filmmaker who actually cares.

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
For me. It is personally just because I don't want
to live my life and you hear these terrible stories
about dictorial directors or producers or whatever, or actors worst
and just make everyone's life a nightmare without making names,

(01:39:34):
and I don't want to. I don't want to live
my life like that. I want people to really dig
what I'm doing and what I was very fortunate with
my first movie because it was an Australian historical kind
of war movie. People were naturally motivated to kind of
want to do their best. I think, you know, I'm
really sort of inspired by the story and wanted to
participate in. And you're doing all the things you've got.

(01:39:55):
We don't have much money, but when we're battling a
whole bunch of stuff and you know, and I think
I think mainly we had you know, the cast and
crew had a really great time. That shows in the
final film. For me, anyway, the usually thing from I
discovered and anecdotally because I don't really know because I've
never had this experience. I've heard stories of films where

(01:40:20):
they were just the most miserable experience of all time
for cast or crew or both. You know, that are
masterpieces that are recognized as you know that some of
the greatest films ever made by people. When you're going
to go and we're saying the industry if it was
if it's kind of easy, it's going to be shit.
You know, it's like it's almost like conflict and tension

(01:40:45):
creates its own dynamic, you know. I mean, I'm not
I'm not. I don't know the answer to that. I mean,
I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood, for example, I don't know,
he's really chilldred and he just wants his sets to
be peaceful and Carmen. Most of his film a really terrific.
So I would love to do class for us. So

(01:41:06):
I don't know, it's interesting. I mean, I've I've worked
I've worked with an actor big movies, the biggest movies
that I've worked with on my little boxing film, and
I was and it was one of those weird situations
where you're making a zero budget. It's the smallest budget
film I've ever made. And and then this guy turns
up and his fee is sucking up I think literally

(01:41:27):
half the budget of the film, you know, and he's
only going to work four days. I've got to shoot
and he's on like fifty pages. I've got to shoot
fifty pages of material in four days. It's insane. And
then and then go back and reshoot the movie without
him and stand ins and levels and all that sort

(01:41:48):
of stuff. You know, this is this is a standard,
this is a standard thing. I mean, that's that's absolutely
the extreme end of things. But you know, and here's
an asshole. I mean, and maybe he's bought the right
to be an So I don't know, it's I don't sure.
I'm not sure if he knows he's an asshole. But
it's sort of like his ego and vanity and strangeness

(01:42:09):
is so outside the realms of recognizing that there are
other people in the room with him.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
It's funny, Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that person because
so recently he was on the UK version of Big Brother.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
I think, I think yeah, And I.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
Think he pulled like one of the biggest fees that
they've ever paid somebody, and he was kicked off the show.
And like he was nearly kicked off the show, I
think after twenty four hours, and then like refused to
after sign all whatever contracts. I don't really buy into
all that bullshit reality TV stuff, but it kind of
feeds into what you're saying about. You know, signs all
the contracts, obviously, agrees to whatever needs to be done,

(01:42:48):
gets in there, does everything the opposite of what he's
been asked to do. He nearly gets kicked off, says
some very questionable things about other people in there, nearly
starts a fight with some guy. He says more questionable things,
has like half the house like crying and like in uproar,
and then ends up getting kicked off the show. And
I think he's actually suing Channel four in the UK

(01:43:11):
now because they said whatever weather contracts are rigged up.
If you get yeah, if you get taken away, you
only like if they'd have to take you off the
show for breaking rules or saying things that you were
asked not to say. So I think he's actually trying
to sue them now for the money because they said
they're only going to pay half and stuff. So it
kind of feeds into obviously nothing has changed.

Speaker 3 (01:43:33):
Look at it's a really it's a really fascinating experience
and there's a whole we could do a whole other
show on this person from the experience of making that
movie because it was fascinating and some hysterically funny stories.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Does that just come with the territory to a degree
like of being somebody of that I don't know, like
you said, for better or for worse, with that status level,
maybe there's a level of like, I don't know, disconnection
from what could reality to be.

Speaker 4 (01:44:03):
Like, Yeah, I'm just like in a different I.

Speaker 3 (01:44:06):
Think there's no question it's really interesting and again it's
very hard sort of not known names, but I was
talking to Dave, David Michaw David Michow. Yes, he's made
some really great movies, Animal, Animal, Kingdom, and my favorite movie,
which is The King. Isn't The King? You know with
with Chamalay Shameale, Shamela bing Bong, Timothy chamaleyeh, you've seen

(01:44:31):
that film. If you haven't seen that film, you have
to say, it's just it's magnificence in it's one of
my favorite films of all films. Anyway. So and and
we we bumped into each other accidentally. Wont going to
that anyway. I was talk about So here's he's worked
with some of these really crazy guys. And on one

(01:44:52):
picture and The King, by way of example, there's two
guys who were who are supremely crazy and but but
incredible talents and amazing actors, you know, and who just
inhabit what they're doing, which is obviously part of their

(01:45:13):
weirdness and craziness. And in the end he was just
like and and we're talking about this, and he was like, well,
it is the price, Like, it is the price when
when you want those guys, if you're trying to make
something and it's gonna and it needs to have that magic,
you've got to have the magic guys, and the magic

(01:45:34):
guys sometimes fucking crazy, you know, and maybe that's why
they're magic, you know. And this person who was in
my film that we're talking about, I can't let me
just I'll do one quick how to the full anecdote? God,
I can't. But but the shortest, the shortest version of

(01:45:56):
is there was a scene. There's like a one page scene,
so like one minute scene, and it's the classic, you know,
he is the kind of the mentor, and he's got
to teach the young buck, you know, pull your head
in and get your shit together and believe in yourself
or whatever it is. And you know, and so it
was basically one page monologue, you know, and I sort

(01:46:17):
of designed a system where, you know, it's so hard
to explain. He refused to do the dialogue as written
in the script. Of course, so he was improvising the
whole movie, which makes it very hard for the other
actors who are not improvising the whole movie. That's a
whole other story. As I say, So, what I decided was,

(01:46:38):
I'll write the I'll write the monologue down on giant
pieces of cardboard and put it on the ground. And
this is a a boxing at a boxing gymnazing, you know,
a boxing ring, so if I'm shooting from over here,
he can be over there. The pieces of the piece

(01:46:59):
of cover the ground, he can see the text and
then just sort of, you know, riff on. Anyway, it's
a longer story that involves a dog called Number One,
and he comes in and improvises and eight minutes he

(01:47:23):
basically improvises for eight minutes a monologue about himself basically,
and and me and the DP. We're in the where
in the kind of explained. He's kicked everyone out of
the space. He doesn't want anyone in there, so it's
just me and the DP and the cameraman and the
boom swinging, you know, and the other actor. And he's

(01:47:45):
just going for eight minutes. And the trouble is, it's
like all of the all of the camera moves and
that I had blocked and planned and the thing and
how I wanted to construct the scene was just thrown
out the window. This one minute scene. He's doing an
eight minute monologue and at the end of it was
just sort of like, I mean, me and the DP,
we lost our minds by that point, you know, it's

(01:48:07):
laughing hysterically now hidden in our little tent. You know. Anyway,
he leaves at the end of it, you know, imperiously,
and you know, we kind of give him a clap,
you know, and just going, oh god, so how do
I deal with this amens? Anyway, we got out of

(01:48:28):
the film and we cut it up. And the trouble
is the infuriating party is the thing that angers me
the most about it is he's just got He's just
got this magic quality, you know, and it's just and
the camera even though he's he doesn't look like a
normal person anymore. You know, He's just has this zing

(01:48:51):
and spark and belief and maybe because he's completely insane,
I don't know. And so we cut. I was able
to cut the eight minutes down to three and you know,
it's this great scene. I mean, it's not what the
same was meant to be. We have to adjust that
bunch of things, and you know, I mean there's there's

(01:49:13):
a harm. The simple point of the story, forgive me
for going on, is is some of these guys have
the magic dust, you know, and that and I think
in the end the industry praise on this magic. You know,
it's just sort of a cocaine yeah, you know, and
if you can get if you can get your hands
on that, and it's just there, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:49:34):
It's Yeah, it's fascinating, And even even in a reality
based show, you could tell like I think I think
it came out afterwards that like Big Brother had like
their biggest ratings in like however many years, and it
was all based around the episodes that he was on
at the start and and all this stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:49:52):
And I suppose there's there's a and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:49:55):
Like I was like, I've seen some of the clips
that the show, and I was like, is he acting
right now?

Speaker 4 (01:49:58):
It was just like how the lou he is?

Speaker 2 (01:50:00):
Like it seemed like he was, Yeah, it's weird because
like he was he was given these like monologues to
people that he just berated like five minutes before, and
he's like telling him about like his life and everything
he went through, and like the level of like, you know,
I'm not I'm not in our reality anymore. I've been
taken so far out of it by like the system

(01:50:22):
and the studio and and you kind of look at
him and you go, you know what, I actually kind
of feel sorry for Like he's like he's like an alien.
And then like five minutes later, he's just doing something
like just pure lunacy, and I'm like, I don't know
which part of this is like you or not you.

Speaker 3 (01:50:40):
I have think there is, Yeah, just just quicking on
that he's not he's I don't know. It's interesting to
me because he was when I was a kid, and
he was the biggest movie star in the world. That
was kind of all part of the weirdness of being

(01:51:01):
associated with it, you know, And he has this magic
sort of quality. I don't think he's once you've once
he entered into the zone of being this sort of superstar,
then I think the narcissism that's inherent in him, I
think becomes pathologized. Yeah, and so he's not a normal
person anymore. That's that's my takeing. Yeah, it's like he's inside.

(01:51:25):
He was living in a car, you know, very recently
until he.

Speaker 2 (01:51:29):
Got Yeah, very bizarre and like even when they even
when he shows up on the show and again I'm
like I'm there looking at going like someone told him
to do this, as he knows this what's going to
get on the screen time, but like like they all
have double beds or whatever, and then he's like, no,
I don't sleep in a bed. I'm going to sleep
on the couch and on this like weird like sofa
thing with like no pillows, and.

Speaker 4 (01:51:50):
And like the guy, like, you know, he's he's a
pretty big guy.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
This is a small like two seater thing, and he's
like bent up in this thing, and he's like has
this like weird tale old scarf thing that he carries
around that he puts over his head. And it's just
like loads are just really bizarre choices, and I'm like,
I don't know if you're just like completely mentally just
fucking gone, or like this is some weird act that's
like trying to draw people in to look at it.

Speaker 3 (01:52:17):
Both of the above perponance like it's just fucking weird.

Speaker 2 (01:52:24):
Just before, I have two quick fire things before I
let you go on, And I did want to touch
on on Bloody Hell because I don't know what your,
you know, perception is of it now, but a movie
that's really well regarded by the horror community in particular,
I think we're huge fans of like that crossover between
like kind of comedy and horror, and they can be

(01:52:45):
done when they're done, like Bloody Hell was, they're like really.

Speaker 4 (01:52:49):
Well received by the community.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
How was working on their project? View and have you
felt any of that? I guess since like The Love
That's Gotten.

Speaker 3 (01:53:00):
Look, it was the best fun movie to make of
all the movies I made, without question. So Rob who
wrote the script, it's a long story of the sort
of how it sort of came to but it sort
of really fell into my lap and I read the
script and just went, I totally get this. It's a

(01:53:21):
little different. The final film is structurally different to how
it ended up. I always kind of thought, oh, there's
going to be some issues, possibly some issues here, but
I love the conceit. The sort of conceit was the
film started in the third act basically, and then it
resolved itself at the start of the third act was

(01:53:43):
the first act, and it was kind of like, it's
really interesting conceit, but it didn't quite call it off.
And once we sort of shot it and cut it together,
it was like, Oh, it's just really it's not quite
And I always sort of thought it's going to be
it's gonna be really hard. I'm not sure if that's
going to work, but you know the thing is that
should it and we can always unravel it and reconstruct

(01:54:07):
it and work out where it's all going to land.
That was that was my attitude. But the point was
that I had a voice. So his name man Rob Benjamin,
which I'm not sure if that's exactly his name. He's
the sort of mysterious fellow. The point was his script
just had a really strong voice. And it's really rare

(01:54:29):
when you read those scripts that you go, wow, there's
a really clear vision this about what it can be.
And I think that approached me. It's sort of interesting.
It sort of came to me this sort of American
Australian hybrid. And again it was because of my genre
background working out of Queensland, tax reasons and a whole
bunch of stuff about how do we finance the picture,

(01:54:51):
and the producer was able to go work, we do
it in a certain way, we can do it for
this kind of number, et cetera, et cetera, and he
was super busy in Queensland. It was like very hard
to get a crew together. And I was very lucky.
The original DP that I'd asked to get involved ended

(01:55:12):
up getting invited to go to Eastern Europe at earlier
to shoot a big shoe a big film, and so
he chose to do that. And then which is great
in a strange way, because then a guy called Brad
Shield fell into my lap. Who was this an amazing
DP who was the second unit you know, he would
consider himself this but his Mark Brown recently has been

(01:55:37):
working on these big films like you know, two hundred
million dollar Disney or whatever. You know, things like like
you know, a King Kong versus Godzilla thing, working in
the second unit. So he's doing these big action set pieces,
you know, as the second unit DP, and he was
really hungry, I think, to do a sort of a
smaller film and be the be the lighting man. And

(01:55:59):
so that was great, and his just a terrific guy
and funny and you know he's a surfer and very
Australian and all these things. And you know, we Ben
o'tool was already cast when I came on, and he's
just sublime. Like he's just superb in this thing, you know,

(01:56:21):
playing the two roles. And basically the conversations we had
in the pre way before we got to pre production,
we're like, you need to get cut because if anyone's
going to believe that your character can do what he does.
You need to be you need to have prison body.
That's what we kept talking about, any prison body. So
we got him onto a dietitian and a trainer and

(01:56:42):
he and his mate and that's another story too, is
another guy I'd work with. We needed a body double,
and I was like, We've got to get a body double.
But he needs to be able to act because because
Ben's going to be doing the two roles, and so
I need to be able to do reverse angles with
the same body type, but also an actor who can
work with him, you know, actually get a performance, not
I don't want to. I don't want to have just

(01:57:04):
a body there and like the script girl kind of
off screen just reading the lines, you know. And and
Ben had this mate who I'd worked before in another movie.
I'm now scrolling down trying to Josh Josh Brennan and
Josh went out. So Josh and Ben both worked out together,

(01:57:24):
went on the diet together, went on the workouse together,
and they got hard man that like they got super
hard super cut. It was. It was really cool. And
the Paul Barts is through the whole shoot. You know,
I've watched them eating boiled chicken breasts and all this
sort of stuff because they're super committed. And Ben was
just great, I mean, and just a great guy to
work with and just the positive energy. You know, we

(01:57:48):
just we just had a really great time, you know.
I mean we went a little over budget, and and
you know, but whatever there was, there's a whole bunch
of tricky things in there. The script had to talking
before about pulling pages down, changing scenes, adapting things. There's
a bunch of stuff that's not in the film, which

(01:58:09):
I really wish was in the film, but again structurally
could happen. There's like there's a really cool scene in
an internet cafe that never you know, there's a bunch
of scenes that never kind of made it, you know.
And also putting casts Trav Jack Meg Fraser's amazing. She

(01:58:30):
was just so you know, like like we cast really
wide net and she was just so super spot on,
and we got all the actors had to learn all
the finish you know, to do it, and we're super
into it. You know. Obviously we got do coaches and
stuff like that, and and so I think I think

(01:58:51):
what happened was we created an environment and it all
comes from Rob's script fundamentally, everything always always starts to script,
you know, and that was that it had a clear
vision about what it wanted to be, and then we
just kind of joined the dots and how to make
that happen and just create a really nice energy around

(01:59:11):
it and taking it super seriously. And this is there's
one of the interesting things about comedy. You know, as
soon as you start laughing at the jokes, you kind
of you're in trouble. You've got to you really have
to be very kind of serious about the comedy and
how all that sort of stuff works. It's you know,
and then it's there's a whole discovery process in the

(01:59:33):
editing as well. But Ben had I think a really great,
really great sense of timing with some of this stuff.
The great thing against the edit often you can kind
of just it's amazing how just a couple of frames
later in the cut elevates the gag, you know, and
it's pops you know, and all that stuff. But like

(01:59:53):
that's my spacemen. I love that shit, you know, and
doing with the you know, like I think like I
think we did a really great job with a very
limited budget in dealing with the CGI elements and not
just resorting to that. You know, we had all of
these very clever in camera techniques where you know, I
could get Ben to kind of double around Josh, you know,

(02:00:17):
and then reappear behind himself and stuff like that, and
then only have a very limited amount of CGI or
whatever it is, and trying to come up with this
technique and even just great things like the armor is
coming up with this great Jack the uncle character gets
a knife in the side of his head, like through
his ear at one point, and so the special effects people,

(02:00:43):
props people in Kurdes came up with this foam knife handle,
you know. So it's completely lightweight, like it weighs less
than the grammy or I mean, so that you can
it can actually just literally and they molded it to
fit into Jack's ear so that it just fit in
there so he could knife handle out. Made a phone

(02:01:08):
but look photo realistic kind of you know, and stuff
like that. You know, so and all of these great
solutions like like the golf ball rolling out of the
golf bag and then coming across the foot and side
and Ben rob sorry had been very specific in his
script about certain gags like the golf ball rolling across

(02:01:28):
the floor and revealing the fact that there's only one
foot and not two and stuff like that, and you know,
it was just it was just a script, just full
of energy, and I think we can't really well really,
I'm super proud of it. You know, there's a couple
of versions of the picture. You know, one day there
might be a director's cut. I just need to find

(02:01:50):
a couple of million bucks to do another version. But
a film I'm super proud of. I think. I think
Ben is a amazing I think Rob' script is incredible.
You know, all the casts just such a great experience
making and I'd love if every film could be that
experience it to be.

Speaker 2 (02:02:11):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely comes across on screen, and I
think that's definitely why the community probably got sold behind it.
And I think it's one of those ones that year
on year it's going to like continue to grow that
could follow on and I have yeah, I really do
think so.

Speaker 4 (02:02:28):
I have a couple of just for Ben.

Speaker 3 (02:02:30):
Sorry, just on that, just for Ben, because when I
was working with Ben, I was going, man, you're really good,
like you're really good, like like just oozing with talent
and charisma and all that sort of stuff, and so
totally committed, like I've never worked the nect before. Pretty
much for half that movie, Ben in Order, because because he's,

(02:02:51):
you know, in this distraught situation. He's hanging from this
rope and he's got a leg off and it's just
in this terrible situation. So before we do every take,
he'd get a paddle pops and stick it down his
throat to the point of vomity, and that would just
bring the blood up to his face, his eyeballs, and
he'd be like okay, and they would roll the camera.
He'd be like, you know, all this sort of shi

(02:03:12):
it is like, dude, you're you're you're committed. It was
like it was super cool, you know, And I would
love I just think he's a star. I honestly think
he's a superstar, and I'd love to see him. I'd
love to see him get more stuff. You know, it's
hard to break it. He did. He did a movie
in America with Biglow, Catherine Biglow, but it was a

(02:03:36):
big ensemble piece. I don't think he got He didn't
kind of quite pop. I think it's just not quite
hand the think and I really hope that this would
be the movie to pop him and I'd love to
see Meg. I love to seeing all of them just stuff.
I'm looking at all the names now in my second screen.
Meg's just she's just a sweet out. She's just the
young girl. She's just gorgeous, just a lovely, a lovely

(02:03:56):
person and super super talented and I love her to
see her do more stuff anyway. Sorry, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:04:03):
I know. It's like because it is.

Speaker 2 (02:04:04):
It's it's a great movie, and I think it comes
across and just hearing you talk so fondly about it,
I think that really conveys when you see the like
the finished movie will have a no context, and then
if you were to hear that afterwards, you're like, now
it makes sense why it felt so kind of lived
in and enjoyable, because there's real passion behind it. Do
you have anything that you would consider like a comfort

(02:04:28):
movie or something that you would find yourself rewatching. I
don't mean, like, you know, every year even, but like
maybe a movie or movies that stand out that you're like, yeah,
I do kind of revisit that more often than others.

Speaker 3 (02:04:46):
Oh, there's a batch of them, you know, and it's
so it's all very clectic, my son, you know, I
was a bit of a movie bath. And he you know,
has has a his list of films that we used
to watch over and over again, and influence from me,
and influence from his mother, who I'd met at film school,
you know. So it's a real kind of filmy family.
I suppose, you know, you know, Blade Runner for me

(02:05:12):
will always be just I think the original Blade Runner,
that is, the second one is not so bad, but
I don't know, there's something magical about it that's really
had to put your finger on it. So it's such
a weird accident of fate, you know, and it's again
a fascinating thing. That's That's one of those films we
were like talking about before where there was the tension
between the director and the actor's explosive, and yet they've

(02:05:37):
they've made this thing. You know. I'll watch Master and
Commander every year until the day I die. That's so
Peter Weir is probably my guy. Like when I go
if I could ever be a film director, I want
to be Peter Weir. But I'm a strange sort of hybrid.

(02:05:58):
I think, you know, John Carpenter come come, sort of
pit a Weir esque aspirant. I don't even know what
that what that even means. But you know, you know,
there's a bunch of really scot ones. But The Gladiators

(02:06:20):
my son's favorite movie, and it's one of your sort
of dad movies. You know, we were a bit sort
of on the nose, you know, I suppose what's my
wife calls them brown movies. We love brown movies, and uh,
you know, sure shan't redemption. I mean, there's they're all
very what's the what's the what's the term? You know,

(02:06:46):
masculine and brown and nostalgic and probably all the things
that aren't good art but kind of make you believe
that it's worthwhile existing the humans can be honorable.

Speaker 4 (02:07:02):
Mm hmmm, yeah, I get what I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:07:03):
You know that there's that there's a bigger, bigger powers
at work or something, you know, those kinds of things,
but it's coming out. You know, there's a whole bunch
of strange. Yeah, I'm shying my eyes with some of these.
I kind of think of that like a recent ones.

Speaker 2 (02:07:28):
Is it hard for you to turn off that creative brain?

Speaker 4 (02:07:33):
You know when when I know, like obviously when.

Speaker 2 (02:07:36):
You're knee deep in projects stuff, it's different. But like
you know, on a on a day to day basis,
is it is it difficult, Like I hear a lot
of times some filmmakers and creative sometimes like the the
difficulties with maybe you sit down for dinner, or you're
supposed to be on a date, or you're supposed to
be doing something, and it's like it's just that's in
the background and it's just constantly going, and you find

(02:07:57):
it kind of hard to detach from that.

Speaker 3 (02:08:03):
I think it's sort of built into who you are.
I mean, I'm sitting there thinking, I don't know how
other people live their lives, so I can't kind of comment,
if you know what I mean, about what people think
and what they do, and because it's sort of I
don't really think of myself as as creative. But it's
not until I sort of meet other people, but I realized, oh, okay,

(02:08:26):
I am actually a little bit different to you and
I suppose and how you're framing what you're seeing or
thinking about things or or something. I mean, I find it,
you know, it's just really stimulating to be thinking outside
the box. If that's what creative is, or finding ways
to do to do things. I mean, it is my

(02:08:47):
my my fundamental my So this project am I attached
to it at the moment. Part of my I get
anxiety about it is because I really want you want
it to be the best movie that you can do.
You want to do the best that you can and
I'm just constantly go oh God, we can't do it.
We don't have enough money to do that, And how
am I going to do that scene? How do I
get him from there to there? And you can't we

(02:09:08):
can't afford that. I can't do the grind and so
then and then I get really stressed and anxious about
trying to solve these problems, which are sort of a
combination of creative problems, come budget problems or whatever it is.
That's what gives me the sweats when I wake up
in the morning. I don't know how to do them

(02:09:29):
more than you know. I mean, I'm yeah, I don't know.
It's interesting. I don't Another weird thing about being a
director is you don't really meet many other directors, Like
I don't know what people do or how they do it. Like,
you don't go into other people's sets and hear them,

(02:09:49):
and people get really weird if you turn up on
their set. I've done it a few times of people.
They get really weird at out when you're kind of
you know, turn up on their set and you sort
of because I'm fascinated, like, how do you direct people?
You know? What? What do you say to people? How
do you deal with this issue? How do you you know,
what do you say to the to the lightning guy?

(02:10:11):
How do you set things up? And whenever I've tried
to have these conversations with other directors, everyone gets a
bit kind of because I think everyone's the same. I'd
be like, oh, I don't really know. I just kind
of just kind of do what I do. It's weird.
It's a weird business man. I don't recommend it to anyone.

(02:10:32):
You know. It's just easier ways to make a living,
that's for sure. Or pinion rolling. It's very stimulating, but
like it's.

Speaker 2 (02:10:40):
Yeah, yeah, the rest of us, Yeah, I can kind
of gather Yeah, for people you know who either have
followed or up into this point or maybe from listening
to this now I want to dive back in. Is
there a place that you could direct people like as
the best from maybe keeping up to date with what
you might have coming there?

Speaker 3 (02:11:02):
Ship Nay for me on the spot. Not really, I've
been terrible with like social media. I'm just terrible at
any of that stuff. And that may be a great
explanation to things when I'm hoping we get to make
this movie in Malta and I'm sort of adamant I'm
going to really try this time to get like a
social media person to do social media stuff. I don't

(02:11:26):
even know what it is. I don't know how it works,
so I'm just not so used to it. I must
sound like the most ridiculous fuddy.

Speaker 4 (02:11:34):
It's funny, you.

Speaker 2 (02:11:35):
Know, because I always ask this because I don't like
to assume, because obviously I've already, like you know, done
the researchers regards like an online presence or whatever. But
I don't like to assume in case somebody's like, well, no,
I'm actually I'm going to create a new page or
I'm going to make a website or whatever. And that's
why I always ask, and every time I get the
exact same response, which I think is kind of last

(02:11:59):
time people, because you know, the younger generation, like, what
do you mean you don't sit on social media all
day every day and post everything about your life and
what you had for dinner.

Speaker 3 (02:12:06):
Yes, well, here's a close up of the turd that
I just wanted got into that. So when I made
Sanctum and Universal was handling the picture of North America.
So so we're in America, we're doing all the publicity,
you know, which is you know, you're staying in the
hotel and you're doing all the what do they call it,

(02:12:26):
you know, you sit in a room and comes into
your room the press thing or a junket and anyway.
And then as part of that, they go, oh, well
we'll build a we'll create a Facebook page for in
a Twitter account now in those days, because we're going
back to twenty ten or something like that. So like
literally fifteen years ago I was I was like, literally

(02:12:47):
like what what's a Twitter account? And because it didn't
fifteen years ago, Twitter was it was this sort of
unknown thing. It was this sort of an emerging kind
of idea. And Facebook it was a bit more established
by then, but it still wasn't Even back then, it
still wasn't like being really you know, and if you

(02:13:09):
an old bastard like me, I was a bit like, ah,
don't I don't know what to say. I don't know
what to do. I'm not like goold like that, like
I can't. I can't walk around recording my life and
then sharing with people like I'm just not that's foreign
to me is an idea. So so anyway, and they
were like, no, no, no, you don't have to worry about it.
We'll get someone to do it for you. So I

(02:13:31):
was like, oh, okay, great, so that I didn't think
about it, And sure enough they had their publicity person
where they build these accounts and set it up and
during the whole thing did all this sort of stuff,
you know, and then about you know, a month after
the film was released or a couple of months or
whenever it was. Once it was out of cinemas, of course,
then they stopped doing any updates on the on any

(02:13:52):
of this. But of course they didn't give me. I
didn't even think about it because I was just not
so FORIGN didn't give me, Like the past word is
to access the accounts in my name. So there's actually
there's a Twitter account and a Facebook account in my
name that these guys set up that I can't access.
And I've actually written to the to the things, you know,

(02:14:13):
and going can you delete these because it's not. Actually, man,
I can't use my own name in the Twitter handle,
you know, which is kind of bizarre. So, I mean,
I have actually set up a new Twitter thing, but
it's mainly I'm so I need to have I didn't

(02:14:33):
know what to say. I'm just like, it's so foreign
to me. It's hard to explain. It so foreign to me,
the idea of publicizing my life, like, it's so dull.
I love making movies. I hope people really enjoy the movies,
but anything about my life is just tedious and awful
and no one wants to know.

Speaker 4 (02:14:49):
So, but you'd be surprised. You would be surprised.

Speaker 3 (02:14:56):
Maybe I don't know, but yeah, we will.

Speaker 4 (02:14:59):
We will with the links to some of the stuff
down below in the description. What before I asked them, well.

Speaker 3 (02:15:06):
If you can put a link to my I mean,
my website is just alistagrisson dot com. Like how exciting
is that? And you know, I mean you can see
some ship that I've done. I suppose is there, which
is really more a professional website than a than a
a fan website, I suppose, But I will, I promise
you this is because it is my big plan. Because

(02:15:27):
I've realized as we move forward into this next project,
I'm going to have a standalone kid who I will
exploit to the for Jesus, who will do all of
the social media posts on my behalf.

Speaker 2 (02:15:41):
Yeah, I think people love seeing and it's definitely got
more and more and more now you know some of
the behind the scenes. I've always been the one for
commentary tracks on on physical media, and I do think
that that's definitely like starting to come back. Even people
who I've noticed who I would consider part of just

(02:16:02):
like the the mainstream audience like friends and things like that.
We're not super into movies that have like watched movies
now went you know, I'd love to know what that
guy or how they done that or why they've done that.
And I think that's kind of coming back around full circle. Now,
what what is next for you?

Speaker 3 (02:16:20):
Then?

Speaker 2 (02:16:20):
Like what And I don't mean that in the sense
of like specific project, but I guess in your minds,
I you know, what is it that you feel like
you've still left to achieve? Is there something that sits
atop that list? Is like that I have to do
that before I'm happy.

Speaker 3 (02:16:40):
The two things that I want to do, I want
to do this movie that I mentioned before. It is
called The End. It's this very stronge existential comedy sit
in this genre type like you know, a cabin in
the woods kind of clichet, which is over deliberately, you know,
child And it's a really great performance piece and really

(02:17:04):
funny and I'm a real believer in it. I'm just
starting to hopefully build some mentionum around it. So I
want to do that because I think it's going to
be that's a real legacy thing for me, I hope,
because my vision for it is the soundtrack. I just
had this really strong thing that I want to do
with the music, and it's a sort of a riff

(02:17:27):
on filmmaking and psychology and being human and being alive
and films and it's you know, and it's crazy, and
it's got such a really strong voice. Again, It's it's
like when I say before about roberts Rob's script with

(02:17:50):
Bloody Hell. When when when you're read a script and
has a voice. And the guy who wrote this, guy
called Vladimir namescaped me. He's a Macedonian. It's a strange
So English is the second lane to this thing. It's
such a weird background to this is a whole other episode.
But the voice was so strong and so clear, it's like, Wow, Okay,

(02:18:12):
so I want to do that. That's like, that's a real,
a real must have to do before die. And I've
got another thing that I want to do. I want
to do and I call it the Great Big Film.
I don't really know what it is. It's a sci
fi concept and to riff on lost civilizations and aliens

(02:18:33):
and and a whole bunch of things. And I've come
up with a sort of a conceit to background it.
But the reason I want to do it is I
want to do I want to do a really big film,
like I think. I think when I kind of got
into this, the film I wanted to make was a
James Bond movie. Like that's the movie that I wanted

(02:18:54):
to make. Big, epic, international, you know, beautiful girls, big
movie stars, you know, the whole shebang, all sorts of
moving parts and the complexities around dealing with the men
and machines aspects which I find really stimulating. And making
Sanctum was like that too. When you work building these

(02:19:15):
environments and you're underwater, and you know, the producer insists
that you have to learn to become a cave diver
before you can make a movie, and all this kind
of madness. You know, people die on set, you know,
and it's like, not the actually died on set on
my set. There's a real tragedy around that picture because
the producer lost his life, the lead underwater woman died

(02:19:41):
in a cave shortly after the film was made. In
very similar sentences, it's just terrible and good people anyway.
I'm sure we're down that sidetrack. But but the men
and machines aspects of making big pictures with the appeals
to me. And so it's just something I'd love to do,
love to have that experience. You know. I'm a sort

(02:20:04):
of student dream when you read those stories about Hollywood
and the the madness of it all and the and
the ship fights between the studio executives and the head
of the studio and the crazy directors and the things,
and I want to be I want to have that experience.
And I mean I've had that experience, but only this car. Yeah,
I want to have it at this scar just just
for my own vanity, I think, you know, or conceit

(02:20:28):
or ego or whatever the whatever the thing is. But
that idea excites me. Just the crazy the craziness of
it all excites me.

Speaker 4 (02:20:38):
I love that strange business that.

Speaker 2 (02:20:41):
You still have that that like desire and passion. You
know that that that fire is the the kind of
bone and true. My final question then, is I guess
why why film?

Speaker 4 (02:20:55):
Why? Why that way? That medium or whatever you want
to call it?

Speaker 2 (02:21:03):
You know what, what does it mean to you? From
it can be from a personal standpoint or whatever. You know,
what was it that was like, that's the thing. That's
the way I want to, you know, see my visions out,
or that's the way I want to you know, show
myself to the world, or whatever it might be. Is
there a particular thing that you can speak to that's like, yeah,
that's that really encapsulates why.

Speaker 3 (02:21:28):
That's a really interesting question. And I haven't really delve
dipple into that myself as opposed to other mediums, because
I'm not naturally an artist. I don't think, like we're
talking about Dad Linch before, who is naturally an artist.
If film didn't exist, he would need to paint or draw,

(02:21:48):
or build or sculpt or, Like he's an artist in
that sense. There's some sort of in night desire to
do that, and I don't think I'm naturally dead. I
think I'm going to the story about living on the
raft base in the cinema and I think I think

(02:22:09):
that had a big effect on me. I mean, it's
a fundamental sort of point in my life that's sort
of digging too deep. But you know, you grew up
as an Air Force brat and I was backpacking as
an eighteen year old through Europe and I have a
very distinct memory. I was lying on my backpack with
my made of mind. We're at a train station in Spain,

(02:22:33):
bott of Goths. I think it was somewhere in the
northern central Spain, waiting for the train, and it's all
about waiting, and my mind drifted off and I started
writing this story in my head about a cat burglar,
you know, And I don't know where it came from,
what it was, and it just sort of found it
really kind of stimulating and sort of interesting and thinking, oh,

(02:22:54):
it's you know. But then the idea of being a
film director was so sort of foreign, like completely like
being an astronaut, like I don't know, like brain surgeon,
sort of like completely outside of the realms of possibility.
As a thing, and I'd actually originally wanted to be

(02:23:18):
because I grew up as an Air Force brat, as
I say, and so the only thing I was exposed
to we're aeroplanes. So I wanted to be a pilot.
And I applied to the Air Force and the Flying
Stream and they said, no, come back and reflag in
a couple of years when you're a bit older. And
that was sort of bit heartbreaking, and I was a

(02:23:40):
bit lost because I'd only ever thought about that one thing.
So I ended up at university and then, you know,
and even though I really enjoyed university and I discovered
a lot about myself. I think I discovered I was
smarter than I thought I was, Like I just I
just assumed I was pretty stupid. But at university I
actually kind of tried for the first time life and

(02:24:00):
discovered I, you know, I was You're not as stupid
as you thought you were. So that was an interesting breakthrough.
And then I started getting into and then you know,
at school and at university, we were super into Monty Python,
you know, and ob see all the films and that,
and then so we started to do these stage review shows,

(02:24:22):
you know, like footlights and stuff like that at Uni,
and then I was just like, you know what, I
was studying economics and I was like, I can't do this.
I need I should be a munty pithing guy. So
you know, why don't you become a film director and
do comedy movies? Like That's literally how stupid I was.

(02:24:44):
And and then then I actually ended up living in
Japan after that because I've been staying Japanese at university
as well. And then it's sort of solidified when I
was there and I was like, look, you've only got
one shot at this life. And you know, I don't
know what being an economist means, but you know, why

(02:25:04):
don't you have a crack at being a film director
because it might be fun? And so I did. And
it took ten years from about that thinking to actually
making my first movie. So it was a bit of
a mission. Well I'm so beginning to struy I'm telling
you my life's story and not actually about the difference.

Speaker 2 (02:25:22):
Well, I think that all plays into it, and you know,
it's something that I know I do and and a
lot of people listen kind of appreciate that reality behind
a lot of these stories where it's not just the
you know, because I think it's it's it's very easy
to be like, oh yeah, you know, I always just
knew I was a visionary and I just everything was great,
and I just you know, I live by the beach
in a mansion, and it's just everything is great, every day, sunshine,

(02:25:45):
everything is perfect. And you know, then obviously now people
I think are a lot more clued in for better
or for worse, with the likes of social media and
stuff that oh wait, that other person also feels like
I do, or you know, the aspiring filmmaker's listening, it's
going Okay, maybe it's not all doom and gloom, but
there is a degree of like great determination and sticking
the course.

Speaker 4 (02:26:05):
It's that thing I always talk about.

Speaker 2 (02:26:07):
People always say to me, oh, you mentioned that all
the time, you know, the ten the twenty year overnight success.

Speaker 3 (02:26:14):
Yes, it was very very much, very much like that,
and the there was there was definitely a point though,
and it was at university though, when it crystallized. And
I just watched a couple of films and I probably
and I don't encourage the children to do this, but
marijuana may have had something to do. And just when
you watch a couple of films, and Apocalypse Now was

(02:26:37):
one of them. Plador On of course, you know, but
Apocalypse Now, I distinctly remember just watching it and just
being a gape with the some of the conceptual stuff
inside it, and then when you realize that the medium

(02:26:59):
is not it's not just rambo, you know what I mean,
it's not ironically a lot of the movies that I'm
making are these sort of action you know that they
are kind of superficial but but really great movies, rich
with For Francis Copper his last movie as a dog,

(02:27:20):
but anyone, that's another discussion. I shouldn't say that, well Francis,
but but you know, a movie like that, and you go,
that's important, you know, that's that's important. If you can
if you can get some of those ideas across. I
don't know. I think that's that's the thing. When you're

(02:27:42):
exposed to art and it sort of matters, and people
are open to art mattering, you know, there's some I mean,
it's very hard. It's a very complicated world we'll live
in now. It's very hard to put your finger on
what matters. You know this, I think it's still fundamentals
except that we've just had this argument over the last
ten years about things that matter, you know, and I'm

(02:28:06):
still not sure where we're going to kind of end up.
But I think I think film is a way to
you know, explore some of those ideas about what matters
and influence people. I don't know the future is, because
it's really tricky. I think. I think cinema as a
theatrical experience is going to get smaller and smaller. And

(02:28:27):
we see that now we're getting more and more of
the smaller cinemas which are really more like lounge rooms,
you know, and streaming of course getting bigger and bigger.
I don't know, it'd be interesting to see.

Speaker 4 (02:28:43):
Yeah, yeah, it's useful. It's a weird concept. It's a
weird concepts.

Speaker 2 (02:28:52):
This has been fascinating for me, to be honest, just
from a personal standpoint, to be able to actually vainly
sit down, albeit virtual, and have this conversation with you.
And I know everybody listening will will also appreciate a
lot of the They're quite candid, you know. I like
that to a degree for as much as somebody as

(02:29:13):
comfortable with being kind of real and raw about things,
you know, and the story behind the filmmaker, I guess,
or the creative. So I do massively appreciate that. Als
for everybody listening, whether you're looking at this on YouTube, rumble,
you know, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever down below, we will

(02:29:35):
have a link to the website. And then obviously, you know,
keep an eye for potential social media.

Speaker 4 (02:29:43):
We may get some we may get some social media's
down the line, I.

Speaker 3 (02:29:46):
Should put a pie on because I on the website
where people can live comments and some I don't have that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:53):
Yeah, I maybe I should do that because I think
people are interested. But like I said, this has been fascinating.
It's I've taken up way more of your time than
I initially had intended to take up. To be honest
with I was like, okay, I have to be conscious
of other people's time.

Speaker 3 (02:30:08):
I've been working my way through a bottle of line.

Speaker 2 (02:30:10):
So I hope that made a little less painful. I
let you go and enjoy the rest that. Like I said, Astro,
it's been fantastic to chat. I would love to keep
in touch and maybe down the line, when or some
stuff that gets across the line, we could revisit and
have another chat.

Speaker 3 (02:30:26):
Yeah, please, do. I know, thanks for reaching out. It's
been great. I've been really boring. I do have the
tendency to probably become overly serious. I think of myself
as a serious person, but I think I, you know,
to to philosophical perhaps, I think go to what you're
saying before. I think. The thing is that people are

(02:30:46):
always selling. Yeah, I've always been terrible selling ship, you know,
particularly myself. And it's that kind of facad you know,
and I get it, like you like, if you're a filmmaker,
you're selling a product actually gonna be you know, we're
gonna you'll love it. It's the best thing you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (02:31:04):
I don't, but it's funny now, like that, the first
question always becomes because you know, I've done this for
a while, and like I would just put up the
chat or the interview or whatever, and the first thing
I would always get is straight away would be, oh,
where can I like follow this person? Where can I
see like what this person does or follow you know,

(02:31:24):
what's going on with them? And I'm like, and then
it started a dawna me. I was like, Okay, I
never actually asked that question of somebody obviously, you know,
somebody may have a project to promote or something in specific,
but I noticed it was like a reoccurring thing where
people were like, is there anywhere like online I can
like find out about this person and like see more
of their journey.

Speaker 4 (02:31:43):
And it kind of donned the me.

Speaker 2 (02:31:44):
I was like, Wow, people are like way more interested
in it, just not being a one off thing. They
discover a new filmmaker or whatever, and they're like, huh,
now I want to kind of have updates on now,
not to the degree of like, you know, what did
you have for lunch yesterday, but they seem to be
fascinated with like behind the scenes shots. I see like
Todd Masters special effects makeup artist. He posts a lot

(02:32:06):
of like little behind the scenes pictures from movies and
sets he was on and different projects he worked on
or whatever, and like it seems to be really well received.
And it could be from a movie from you know,
fifteen twenty years ago. Yeah, and people seem to love
that's all. It seems to be more of a thing.

Speaker 3 (02:32:24):
It's interesting and look, I don't know. I mean, I
do have an Instagram thing, which I just did because
my family had it and we could share Yeah, pietures
and stuff like that, and then it was I could
follow some of the guys who are friends who in
the business and stuff like that, but I don't like
I same like I have a Twitter account, but it's
under another name. I can't remember his name, so I

(02:32:46):
can follow stuff, but I don't. I don't post. Yeah,
I suppose the thing for me is to sort of
learn to post stuff. But at the moment, it just
feels like everything's you know, the stuff that I'm posting
is really acting to other people's comments or other people's shitterness.
But I think if i'm I think it's just one

(02:33:07):
of those things, like you know, if I'm making something
and I'm proud of it and I'm working on it,
then I feel like, oh well I can post that.
Yeah you know. Yeah, but if I'm do you know
what I mean, Like that's.

Speaker 4 (02:33:16):
One hundred percent get what to me? Like I said, Man,
it's been great.

Speaker 2 (02:33:20):
I do hope we can stay in touch, and I
would love to do this again when when some of
those projects get the get over the line, you can
talk about them properly. Maybe you can come back and
we can have a chat again.

Speaker 3 (02:33:31):
Yeah for sure, man, anytime, anytime. Great, nice to catch up.

Speaker 2 (02:33:34):
And like I said, for everybody listening, the link to
the website will be down below in the description, so
make sure and check that out. And yeah, like I said,
appreciate your time.

Speaker 3 (02:33:43):
Man.

Speaker 4 (02:33:44):
It's been great and I can wait to see what's next.

Speaker 3 (02:33:48):
All right, fantastic, Thanks mate, Thank you, thanks.

Speaker 1 (02:33:56):
For listening to another episode of Class Hard Guest doc
The CHC podcast at classharrorcast dot com at first Class Horror,
on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, or on Twitter at Class
Underscore Horror. The CHC podcast is hosted and produced by
Aaron Doyle and is an fcch production

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