Season 5 Episode 13: MY FRIEND MOLLY Filmmakers The Farx Brothers

Even with the busy holiday weekend, I was able to chat with two indie filmmakers who've made some interesting movies and are looking to take them out to theaters and try a new model of low-budget film distribution.

While they're called The Farx Brothers, you'll find out early in this episode that they are not actually brothers. Nick and Kyle are two Minnesota based filmmakers creating short form movies and proof of concept videos. We discuss their background, how they each bring different ideas and style to the projects they make, and new ideas about how they want to distribute their films this year.

They also discuss four walling, new projects, and working in the industry versus having a day job outside of filmmaking.

This and much more!

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
You are listening to the if Hpodcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and
screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com. There are some questions
I'd like to ask you low BudgetRebels past. I don't tell me you're

(00:26):
taking all this seriously. Hello,and welcome to another Low Budget Rebels podcast
episode. I'm your host, JoshStifter, and this week I talked to
interesting dudes. They are from MinneapolisSt. Paul area, the Twin Cities

(00:49):
area, and I don't know howwe actually met, but I you know,
I don't know if we cross pathsat some time while I was there
in the community, but they reachedout to me. They go by the
name the Farks Brothers, even thoughthey are not brothers, as they admit
right away in the episode, andKyle and Nick and they have generally I

(01:14):
have feature filmmakers. I don't havea lot of short film creators, but
they sent me a handful of theseshort films, which, like I talk
about in this episode, weren't veryshort. They were like almost like pitches
and pilots for TV shows. Therewas one called My Friend Molly that's forty
three minutes, and one called hitchList that was like thirty minutes as well,

(01:36):
and when I talked to I talkedto Kyle about it. He mentioned
the fact that these were they weremostly making these short films to try to
pitch as bite size proof of conceptsand you know, getting something sold.
They're finding people interested in helping producethem as bigger projects. Then it was

(02:00):
and that's sort of where the conversationgoes. But they had so much more
to talk about, including, youknow, their podcast and just how what
what the community is like in Minnesota. We sort of went on a rant
about that a bit. We alsodiscussed four walling and getting your projects out

(02:21):
there, some of the ideas theyhave for what they're going to do over
the next you know, six monthsto a year, and I think they
have some really great ideas that alot of indie filmmakers, like I told
them at the end of the episode, I would love to hear how everything
goes this year, what they findout, because I do think that that
kind of grassroots thinking, hunting foryour audience, finding ways to get them

(02:45):
in theaters watching your projects. That'shuge right now, and it's an experience
going to the theater is still anexperience and I loved what they talked about,
So that's in this episode. Onething I wanted to bring up is
the Patreon patri on dot com slashFlush Studios. That's where you can hear
these podcasts ad free. It's whereyou can get all the behind the scenes

(03:06):
from my movies. You know,I don't really do not all of them.
There are some stuff. There issome stuff on the Blu Ray for
The Good Exorcist that you can onlyget on the Troma Blu Ray, but
a lot of that stuff is onmy Patreon as well. And if you
are interested in supporting Flush Studios andseeing my new low budget feature come together

(03:27):
along with some of these bigger projectsas they actually go into production, make
sure to head over to patreon dotcom slash Flush Studios. It helps a
lot. It's a dollar a month, you can pay annually however you want,
but it helps support Flush Studios andhelps us keep the lights on all
right, Without further ado, hereis my conversation with the lovely Farks brothers.

(03:53):
Kyle and Nick. Tell me aboutwhat you do, what got you
into low budget indie film and whatwhat kind of projects you've been working on
not having any money is what gotme into no budget. Yeah, right,
like all of us, like,but how what was what was the
impetus for? Like I got topick up a camera and try making something.

(04:17):
Yeah, I don't know. Forme, it goes back to childhood
like wait, like single digit ages, and then just kind of going from
there and figuring out, well,okay, it's it's not gonna look like
a movie if I use this homevideo camera. What do I need to
make it look like a movie?You know, and then having the motivation
to learn based on those wants,and then just kind of yeah, it's

(04:41):
kind of going from there. Reallyjust kind of snowballed from there, and
then of course finding other people tomake movies with because when I was a
kid, no one else wanted toput in the work to like make the
movie. We did. We didit, But like you know, it's
the it's kind of a lot ofarm twisting, so you're doing a lot

(05:02):
of the heavy lifting of doing theactual workflow that goes into producing content,
which is what we called it inthe nineties. I also, Nick and
I aren't actually brothers, but wewould like to be referred to as the
Farks. Brothers. I love itour own, Yes, thank you,
thank you for Josh. Can Iask you off off the cuff? Why

(05:26):
do you love that? Because Nickfights me on having a brand, because
it's having a brand a legit likeit legitimate. It does something so goofy
and different that I think it Itinstantly captured my imagination because that's what I
assumed was happening. When I sawseparate names like I had to go down
the rabbit hole of figuring out whatwas going on and hunt online through IMDb,

(05:50):
and I'm like, these guys can'tbe brothers. I'm adopted, so
I don't know my real biological Theydon't, like you say, real bological.
I don't know my biological origins,which sounds super dirty. But I

(06:11):
also my cinema origins were similar tomy fake brothers here in that I was
the one more enthusiastic about doing thevideo projects in middle school and high school
and performing in church, in schooland various things. So I would even
help my friends in high school dotheir video projects for say civil history class

(06:35):
where you had to create a video. I remember helping my white friends create
an MLK video for a history class. It involved someone having their back to
camera and pretending like they were givingus speech and then getting the actual speech
from the internet and playing it overthat. And that was really impressive in
the early two thousands to do thatsort of thing, That's awesome. So

(07:00):
then what how what was the movefrom that? You know, what were
some of the earliest shorts you weremaking or was it shorts that you practiced
with? Did you decide to takeit more legit and move on to film
school? Was what was the nextmove? Well? There before beauty?
Is that to me? Okay,It's always interesting when I'm talking with two

(07:24):
people because I don't know if Ishould like pass the baton to a person
at a time or let them fightit out. I'm letting you guys just
fight it out. I didn't makea short until film school, in like
I went from like two thousand andnine to like twenty eleven, because what
I did as a kid was basicallywould just like I couldn't edit at first.

(07:48):
I had no way to edit.Digital editing was not real. I
was gonna ask is that because itwasn't digital and you didn't have means to
like actual like I had the duelingVHS players where I could hook up two
VCRs and record onto two and thatwas sort of move when I was like
nine ten years old figuring that out. Yeah, like that was an option,

(08:09):
but I was never happy with likeif you stopped it, you'd get
the little squiggly uh mono like yeah, whatever, the kind of pink and
blue line through the thing. Likeeventually I started like using the local cable
access stuff. They had tape totape and like something about their system like

(08:30):
you could lay down a shot fromone tape to the other and not have
it do that because there's equipment islike I don't know how many tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars at thetime. So that was but it was
still tough. Like I did onething that way and it's terrible. I
would never want to go back tothat. So prior to that, it

(08:50):
was just like popping in the twohour tape and eight milimeter camcorder. I
mean like, oh, we're justgonna fill this up. We don't have
a script, We're just gonna keeptrack used like a kitchen timer because the
camera back then this is like acamera from nineteen eighty seven. It didn't
have I didn't tell you how muchtape was left, so you had to
like we're keeping track on a kitchentimer that counting that counts down from two

(09:13):
hours to keep track of how muchtime is left on that tape, and
just film scenes that are somewhat related, you know, until the tape filled
up, and then dub it allin one pass to a VHS tape and
that was it. That's what That'swhat the process was very early on.
And then so they were all likefeature length, so like I could I

(09:35):
could be like, yeah, Imade a future when I was twelve,
Like, no, you you filledup a two hour, eight millimeters CAMRA
order tape a few times, that'samazing. Yeah, we did the same
thing. Yeah, me and myfriends we would do the same thing where
you just film and film and filmand film, and you'd be like I
made a movie, but it wasreally like just randomness through a whole dhss.

(09:58):
Yeah yeah yeah, so yeah wejust did that. And then yeah,
so I didn't end up doing ashort and getting like making quality stuff
until well in my twenties, Iwhen I was in you know, film
school, and then yeah, wellthen that led me into like doing the
corporate video stuff as a job andthen that was kind of just my thing

(10:20):
for a while. So well,it still is, but it was a
few years before finding people like namelyKyle, like a group to work with
on a regular basis, consistent basisto actually make stuff. You consider ourselves
a gang. Yeah, like wejump you in with tattoos and hardcore beatings.

(10:48):
Had a very good gang. Youjust beat on each other. We
have the we can't show you becauseit would be offensive. I also did
that in my I would part ofthe fake origin story of the Farks Brothers
is that I went away from thefamily as a young boy to a rural

(11:09):
area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and I did the same thing with
my friend's video camera. My myfamily wasn't as rich as my original family,
Nick's family that had a video camerabecause you were using each other of
nineteen eighty seven cam quorder, rightNick, Yeah, yeah, I think

(11:30):
I was using Drew Hackneys camcorder,which might have been from the nineties,
so suck it and we would dostuff in his backyard. I remember doing
that maybe a couple of times.But I was like the weird friend that
would say, hey, you guyshaven't seen this movie. Let's all get
together in this basement and watch it, because we live in places with snow

(11:52):
where that's something you could do insteadof be outside in nice weather sometimes totally
okay, So speaking to the tothe snow and the weather. Are you
both from Minneapolis? I am fromI'm from Burnstow suburb of Minneapolis, so
yeah, basically, And I'm fromthe up of Michigan. You're from the

(12:16):
Upper Peninsula. You're from the upof Michigan. And then are you in
the the Twin Cities area? Now? Are you still in Michigan? Yeah?
Nick and I live about ten minutesor ten to fifteen minutes from each
other. I'm in Minneapolis proper.My wife works for NPS, so sweet.
We have to live in the cityproper. That's not an actual requirement,

(12:37):
but she wanted that, so woohoo. And I didn't move from a
rural area to live in a suburb. I think suburbs are worse than rural
areas. Yeah, I'm, Imean, I'm from I'm from the burbs
of Minneapolis, like I'm I'm.I had a house in Crystal for ten
years or eleven years, and I'mfrom you know, the Coon Rapids areas

(13:01):
where I grew up, spent timein Forest Lake, Wyoming area. Like
I'm all from all over in Minnesota. So when I went to a private
high school in au Claire, Wisconsin, so I yeah, so that that's
the time that they lost me.Was for the only time I didn't live
in Minnesota until I moved to Atlantawas my four years of high school.

(13:22):
I was in a private high school. Yeah. So yeah, so like
we did the whole live in thedorm straight up, like you know,
a hundred dudes all living in adorm together with basically no parental supervision besides
one dorm supervisor type of situation.And that's where I started making movies,

(13:45):
which all my all my listeners alreadyhave heard that. Like I mean I
made them as a kid with thewith the guys who I went to this
high school with. We grew upsuper Christian, and I would make these
crazy, like jackass ripoffs in thedorm with you know, dudes running around,
you know, just being morons.And then graduated high school and was

(14:05):
like, I'm going to go intothe seminary and be a pastor, and
then just decided, oh, Idon't believe in God or any of this.
I'm fucking out and ditched all ofit and then went and made movies
and realized, like, that's whatI love to do from the beginning,
was making movies. So that's whatI do. But if I found it
interesting, Nick, how you Iactually listen to you Guys' first episode,
first two episodes of the podcast,oh no, and maybe three. I

(14:28):
listened to a hand I listened toa handful of episodes. I can't remember
if I jumped around or if Ijust stuck to the first three. Whatever,
I listened to it. Jump aroundaround. Go to the newest episodes.
You're hearing this in the future,Go to the newest ones. That's
the Oh yeah, I'm just tellingyour listeners, like, don't go to
our for like the first episode,we din't even put on YouTube because it's

(14:48):
like, uh, we're just wedon't really want to do a podcast.
But Nick was like, hey,what if we did a podcast because we
were arguing about something. Basically,we're about Jurassic Yeah, which is the
first episode. Jurassic World episode isthe first episode. That's the one I
was about to bring efforts. Yeah, I'm sorry I would talk about it

(15:11):
in the episode that Nick is youhave a job in editing or I don't
remember exactly how it was put thatyour what your position is, but it's
it's a similar thing for me.It's a similar situation where I basically work
a full time job to support myfamily while making movies on the side,
and any like income I make offof podcasting or film my indie films,

(15:37):
I just put it back into thefilms and make the next thing. And
that's been sort of this like cycleof my life for the last twenty years.
It's just been like if I canmake a little bit extra money from
you know, like a bonus,if I get a bonus at work.
My wife has just come to termswith the fact that that will very likely
not go towards paying bills or renovationson the house. It will go towards

(15:58):
the movies, just sort of theway it goes. So I was just
I'm curious what your perspective is,because you know, there aren't I think
there aren't a lot of people whoare open to talk about the fact that
we while doing the low budget stuffwhile working, we also are while making
our art, we're also you knowworking in this industry. Yeah, I

(16:21):
mean, yeah, now that Ithink, I mean, I think you're
right. I haven't thought about itthat much, but now that I think
about it, like, there areplenty of people who like, oh,
I'm there, I do this onfilm or I do that on film,
And I'm not knocking them. I'mjust I'm just knowing, Like we're in
Minnesota. You must have a job, you must have a day job.

(16:44):
I have a job. I'm justbecause you're not telling me willfully, You're
just telling me you're a director.Yeah, So I'm not going to ask
you, well, what have Iseen, because I probably you know,
I don't. Everyone's everyone's operating onyou know, on a you know,
everyone's trying right right, most peopleare in trying mode. And I'm not

(17:06):
there to be like, well,you work a day job, though,
don't you Like I find it commendable, Like when I heard you guys talking
about it, I found it extremelycommendable and something that I don't hear about
very often. And I'm very openabout it, Like I'll stay straight up.
I mean, I was on areality show where I had to go
make a movie for seven thousand dollarswith Robert Rodriguez on that show, I

(17:30):
openly talked about like I'm leaving myjob to go do this, and it
was a very you know, andI work, I support my family,
I'm the bread winner for lack ofa better term, and like, but
it's all in editing. So Ifound that interesting because i've you know,
like you said it. Being inMinnesota, I talked to a lot of
filmmakers from Minnesota, and as youget to know them, you find out

(17:52):
what their position is, how theymake their money, what they do outside
of just film, and some ofthem have fascinating stories, although they never
talk about them. Like I haveone friend who works for the airport,
and the reason he works for theairport or worked for the airport, the
reason he worked for the airport wasbecause he got discounted flights so he could
go to film festivals with his movieson discounted flights. So he would make

(18:14):
these short films and then go toevery single festival because it cost him next
to nothing. Which is the onething that keeps most of us from going
to every festival is the fact thatit gets extremely expensive. Yeah, we
are in it for the money,to be clear, and we were hoping
this would lead us give the moneyby being on this so I can count

(18:41):
myself as the odd man out.I work in corporate sales. I am
not in the filmmaking industry. Nineto five. I would I was in
a bar at one point. Ineed to admit to which one and why
or when I was there. Butsomeone asked me what do you do?
And I looked at them straight inthe face and said W two or ten

(19:03):
ninety nine. He said, whatthe hell are you talking about? And
I was like, well, doyou not do your frigid taxes? And
my goal is to make my tenninety nine over my W two And that's
a challenge, but it's one wherewhen you can take in revenue as you've
described from working in entertainment, thenyou can put on your taxes that you

(19:32):
spent money against that revenue. Andfrom what I understand of the tax code,
as long as you make a dollarthree years out of five, doesn't
matter how much you lose in thoseother two years. There's no rule.
You have to be good at businessin the United States of America. So
we're actually going to try to changeour revenue stream in the coming I guess

(19:56):
an them by doing four walling.Have you heard the term four walling?
I have four John, Yeah,yeah, yeah, for sure. I
mean we've done four walling before.But explain to the audience what that is
you have. You seem like youreally got it, so I'll let you
hit it. So you know howyou're in a room right now, or

(20:18):
you're in a car, Nick farks, if you look to the front,
you look to the back, andthe right and left, there are four
walls there. So find a roomyou can show your thing in and charge
tickets for it, and that's revenue. So it will probably cost you money
to advertise, to get people intothat room, and possibly to rent that

(20:41):
room. Our theory of the caseas it stands today is that in twenty
twenty four, there is a dearthof film product going into the market because
of the necessary labor action of adouble union strike last year, and a
lot of studios are holding back moviesuntil twenty twenty five. So if we

(21:02):
approach some of these distribution locations whatwe're formerly called theaters, but we're going
to be open to creativity here andsay hey, we'd like to come for
one night, get your screen,do a five o'clock at seven o'clock and
a nine o'clock show where we openwith two comedians. We each do five
to seven minutes. That gives usfifteen minutes right there. Because I'm a

(21:27):
professional MC and that's how I bringmoney into our company. We have two
separate LLC's. Nick also works separatelyfrom his nine to five and brings money
into his separate LLC, while wealso own assets between our two LLCs.
So we want to bring more moneyinto a new LLC that we'd formed together

(21:52):
for distribution and go around outside ofthe Twin Cities area to like within a
two hour radius. So think likeRochester, think Dluthe, think eu Claire.
Those are all great. Like thoseare bigger cities than the one I
grew up in in Upper Peninsula,Michigan. And they have people there that

(22:15):
maybe in the fall or spring.Hey, there's not a good movie coming
out this weekend, so I wouldbe interested in this because it'll be live
performance, independent film. You can'tjust go watch anywhere, and then the
filmmakers will be there. So ifyou want to throw tomatoes or ask a
point of questions, you have theopportunity afterwards. That's our theory of the

(22:36):
case that we're pursuing and what we'rehoping to talk about on distribution platforms like
yours. Yeah, I love this. So my friend and I just did
a four wall sort of experience wherehe rented out the Plaza Theater in Atlanta
is like kind of a Landmark theater, but they do more. They do

(22:56):
a lot of events because it's kindof an older theater, and so a
lot of what they do is likethey do drag shows once a week,
or they do rocky horror shows,or they're playing the room next week,
like that kind of stuff. Andhe rented it out and played his low
budget movie called Old Man Slaughter,and he played that and he introded it

(23:18):
with a short film he and Ihad made together. I made my first
Super eight short film last year,and I did the whole thing legit because
I've always wanted to work on Supereight. So I did a Super eight
film which was a pain in theass, but it came out. It's
an artsy, fartsy, really funlittle thing and looked amazing on a big
screen. My god, Super eightlooks so gorgeous on a big screen.

(23:40):
But he just invited people and beingin that room. It wasn't It wouldn't
have mattered if the movie was amazing, terrible, whatever it was. People
just liked being at an event,being at something different and unique and like,
it's not just one of these socialmedia ze guys pictures or like for

(24:00):
you know whatever. It's something uniqueand different. You don't get to see
some random dude super eight short filmfollowed by a no budget comedy like p
I movie like that just doesn't happenvery you know, you just don't get
to do that. So the peoplewho were there, they didn't care.
They wanted to be there for inexperience. And that's I mean, what you're

(24:22):
talking about is exactly that. AndI think it is a It's a really
great time to be trying things likethat because people haven't experimented with film a
whole lot as of recent the pastfew years, it's been very like,
I mean, do you you guysknow what z Fest is? You're from
Minnesota? Have you wait? What'sz Fest? Tell us all about it?

(24:45):
Josh, you don't know it doesn'tknow what's that? Nick? I
was gonna say, Nick doesn't knowwhat zest? Do you know? What?
Do you know? Looking. Kyle'sjoking, we've done it since twenty
seventeen, I think, Okay,so I've yeah, okay, I did
it for a few years. Iwon like a bunch of awards one year

(25:07):
for a short animation I did calledTen Things You Learned in the First Year
of Being a Dad, And thenI did some animation for Do you guys
know who Andy Hunt is? Yeah? We know Hunt? Yeah, so
Andy. I worked on a bunchof Andy Hunt stuff too, because he
and I were co workers back inthe day. So at no. I

(25:30):
was before I was at a Christianmedia company in Minneapolis and that was like,
oh yeah, it was an animationdirector. Yeah. So I was
an animation director there and Andy wasa director as well, and we worked
together on a handful of projects,and we say for in fact, I
did he when he was working onhis last movie. He called me randomly,

(25:51):
like right before the movie was comingout, and he's like, hey,
man, you were in like agrindcore or metal band, right.
I was like yeah. He's like, I need the song that a dude
drives up to a house and hiscar is blaring some music. I have
no money, Can I have oneof your songs and I was like,
fuck, yes, that's amazing.So I think I'm listed in the credits

(26:11):
of well Andy's last movie, InfernalMachine. Yeah, I'm in the credits
somewhere in that because of that.We watched that. We watched that what
a year and a half ago whenit came out on Yeah. Yeah.
So there's like a scene where likesome delivery guy drives up in a car
and he's like blaring like some grindcoresong. That's my music playing in the

(26:34):
Like it's so you never know,it doesn't sound like anything. It's just
like ambiguous, loud, angry,crappy music, and that's that's my stuff.
That Andy was just like, Ican't afford to hire anyone to do
this, can you please? AndI was like hell yeah, man,
of course. And so yeah,so long story short Z Fest that's one

(26:56):
of those event things was for mein the day, like when I was
making my shorts and learning how tolike do this in my early days,
my early twenties, trying to figureout what kind of films am I going
to make? And it was likethat first it was the first few Z
Fests. I think we were inlike the third, one, fourth,

(27:17):
one, and I think mine wonmaybe the fifth or something like that.
I won fourth place and best somethingI don't remember. I have my award
something. They have a best oftop ten. Yeah, I was like
a top ten and then I wonlike most I don't know. It was
like because it was animation. Itwas like the award that no one else
could have won because it was justlike some random thing. So anyway to

(27:41):
me, like we're the people thatstarted. John and Margie are the people
whose last name starts with Z.I'm not going to pretend to it.
I can pronounce it right now.Sorry, Johnny, Marjorie. I love
you guys. Uh and Adam Coltruns in. I'm assuming you know those
folks. Yeah, oh yeah,they're all awesome. Yeah. Adam is
great, like one of the oneof the nicest dudes in the world.

(28:03):
He has kept many people, Ijoke, from committing suicide. I imagine
the Twin Cities from you know,getting to make their movie and having a
purpose in making a movie and knowingthat it's actually going to show two people.
That keeps you relevant here, likehey, I will work on your
Zfest movie because people actually see thisat some point in a theater and even

(28:26):
if it sucks to some degree,I might look good. Yeah, well
that's beautful. My brother just puton some lighting and dramatic proud. I
love it. That's awesome. It'svery like I'm motivating. Sorry, I

(28:47):
said it's lighting motivated, and Ididn't Josh, you were going to say
something, No, I was.I was waiting for his response if it's
motivated, because if if it is, it you Nick, you're dead,
Like you're not going to make itout of this podcast alive because the motivation
motivated. The motivation is that youshadow and behind you something is going to
creep up, Like inevitably something isabout to creep up. Yeah. I

(29:14):
love that. So the z Festthe fact that you know, I don't
get to talk to a lot ofpeople who would actually know what z Fest
is, but a lot of peopledo know. They have their local forty
eight hour festival or their local festivalall around the country that is the same
thing, where there is this there'sthis community that comes together and you know
your thing. Whether it sucks,whether it rocks, it doesn't matter.

(29:34):
It's going to play in front ofpeople and you get to learn. And
those to me were like pivotal momentsin my career of learning, which is
why I tell everyone who's like debatingdoing this, I'm like, do one
of those shitty festival. Not thatZ Fest is shitty, but do one
of those like smaller things where you'renot making some big epic feature. You're

(29:55):
making like a short that you knowhas a specific audience of filmmaking. Who's
going to be seeing it. Yeah, everyone's gotten something out of a forty
eight by having the opportunity to atleast spend a weekend doing this thing that
unless you lived on the coasts oryou know, Atlanta recently, you probably

(30:17):
wouldn't have seen as a career pathbecause the technology to do it in our
lifetime, at the beginning of ourlifetime was very cost prohibitive, especially when
it was on film or tape.Now that it's digital, that isn't the
same problem. So I yeah,I know exactly what you mean when you
say, do one of these festivalswhere the outcome doesn't have to be something

(30:40):
more than seven minutes or particularly good, because just having some quality like oh,
hey, I didn't know that personcould act, or oh I didn't
realize you would take to editing orI didn't realize that, you know,
crafts could do that to make somethinglook real, and just I think approaching

(31:02):
those festivals with I just want totry this. And then even Taikawa Titi
did forty eight's in New Zealand.But New Zealand has a lot more public
funding to get into the filmed artsthan the United States does per capita.
So I went to school for economics, so I'm irritating at most parties.

(31:29):
Nick, did you have a thoughtthere? Yeah? I'm sorry. I
was waiting for Nick because I waslike, you look like you had a
thought and to build, Oh,go ahead, what would I be building?
Like the value of the value ofthe small? You hate forty eight?
But I was about to joke,how when we ever we start,
like when we're going into one ofthese shorts, I think it helps us

(31:53):
build better processes around making a filmpiece of content better. And every time
we'll have like a weekly meeting goinginto hey, we know we're gonna shoot
something, And I'll start every meetingas the more business person, Nix,
more of the engineer technical person.I'll go, so, Nick, what

(32:13):
did you plan for this meeting?And every time what are you talking about?
I don't plan anything this meeting.I'm here to tell you what's not
gonna work. Is that accurate?Nick? Yeah? Yeah, I think
that's good. I think you guyshave a good like like team happen in
then of like that's how Dan andI are too. I have you know,
my producer best friend works on everything. We write everything together. I'm

(32:37):
very like, let's just go wecan let's pick up a camera and go
film it today, Like we cando this, Let's make something, and
he's very like, but what wewhat are we gonna do? Like,
let's think this through, let's bepragmatic about this and like actually plan properly.
And then then sometimes the opposite happenswhere he's like, dude, if

(32:58):
we don't film this, we're nevergonna film And I'm like, okay,
so I'm gonna start scheduling then,and I'm just like go, go go,
I start doing storyboards, I startjust doing something. I have to
be doing something, and he,you know, motivates me in that way.
I have found doing this podcast forI've been doing it for five seasons
now, for ten years at thispoint, basically I've been doing podcasting for

(33:20):
my entire life. I just lovedoing podcasts. I love talking to people,
so I've been doing them for forever. But this is my fifth season
of this show, just talking withlow budget filmmakers, And the one thing
I've really learned talking to low budgetfilmmakers are the ones who are truly thinking
about the next step and are makingstuff like pretty continuously. They're a team.

(33:43):
They have someone with them who iskind of, you know, egging
them on to go, but alsothen keeping them in a box, scheduling,
figuring things out, talking it through. It's a you know, they
you're able to build off of someoneelse. Have you guys found that?
I think so? Yeah, Ithink that. Wouldn't it be awesome if

(34:07):
you said the opposite, If you'relike no, And this right now is
when I'm gonna say it, likeI don't want to work with you anymore.
Click. This is how we breakup. We did break up at
the end of episode six of thepodcast, which just came out today,
but episode seven comes out Sunday.So yeah, I programmed I sorry,
this is how Nick's finding out.I banked some of the episodes from the

(34:29):
one that ended abruptly so that Iknew we'd have like I knew I could.
I knew the next one would becoming like three days later, and
then the one you send me thatwe recorded yesterday, I'll program for Wednesday
or Thursday, and we'll be rightback on track to a weekly podcast.
I love it. Aside from that, Josh, to your point, I

(34:52):
was hired for a job about tenyears ago by a consultant for a company
that I like to refer to himas Hobie Lee knob Some of those names
are accurate to him, and hesaid that every company needs an accelerator and
a governor, Like the governor onan engine is the one that keeps it

(35:13):
from going too fast, and theaccelerator is the gas. You know,
I am very much the gas mostof the time. But then every once
in a while, old Nick Farkscomes in with something like, what if
we just recorded a podcast? Yeah, because we were arguing. I think
we were arguing about drastic seventh,wasn't it. Yeah, that's what it
was. Basically we rehashed a lotof them the first podcast episode. Yeah,

(35:39):
and now we're trying to use thepodcast as a business meeting to be
like, okay, so we're actuallygoing to do this four walling thing,
how do we figure that out?And then let's I'm not going to use
the words you use, Josh,I'm gonna say we're gonna dick ourselves into
having this happen, because when youtalked about scheduling, it's like, oh,

(36:00):
well, if I go talk toour nucleus of people that are around
us, that are you know,the person who does production design who was
also directed, or somebody who's actedwith us that's going to direct the next
one, or somebody who you know, if I start talking to people and
it like gets to the point thatother people are excited and going, Okay,

(36:21):
well we're going to do this,So now we've got to do this
right. And then Nick, we'reall humans, so we're social creatures,
and even my brother Nick can bedicked into making something and we just have
I sometimes vacuum into corners, likeon this last one where we didn't have
enough time. There's never enough time, there's never enough money. But this

(36:43):
last one specifically didn't have enough timebecause of a COVID thing, so we
got delayed and to finish time wewere shooting. We were shooting with four
children too, that's true, oneof them a baby, a two year
old, and no, I don'thate, but I just don't like them

(37:04):
make movies with them, no kids, no animals. That's so funny because
I'm literally, I'm literally writing ascript right now, a feature script for
my son to be in. Buthe has been He's been awesome in everything
I've put him in so far.So he's done well for my low budget
filmmaking. But I totally could seethat. In fact, we worked with

(37:28):
a kid on the last one.We made a short called Little Luca and
the Big Deal in Minnesota actually,and I flew back and we filmed it
in where were we saying, CloudArea and and then we filmed it in
Saint Paul at the at this wrestlingarena, and I played Little Luca.

(37:49):
My friend Scarlett from Rebel Without aCrew, she played the Big Deal and
we're just like down in our luckwrestlers. Anyway, long story short,
we had a kid on that setand she actually she was very good and
very professional. But they do comewith certain responsibilities as adults to take care
of and it can be challenging,especially when you're trying to get a movie
finished. I remember five years agowhen we started working with kid, well,

(38:16):
that wasn't the first time we workedwith the kid, or it's our
second time for z Fest, becauseit's an easy way to win a z
Fest award is if you had usedto be an easy way to win an
award at z Fest was by workingwith a kid because most people wouldn't put
kids in their movies. So thesecond time we're doing it, it was
like, Oh, we can't fuckingswear on this sweat God damn it,
because there's kids here. She hadheard all the swears before. But I

(38:38):
think the real issue was that wehad a baby on this last one,
and you can't reason with the baby. The baby's crying. Oh, we're
not using this take, so wejust have to get wait till the baby
stops crying. I would do alot of Tim Allening with the baby.
Oh I know, w okay Awu is very specific. That's Tim.

(39:00):
He does do it. Okay,Yes, that is Tim Allen. Sorry,
he's from Michigan, so I holdhim close to my heart. Also
a coke dealer, so I don'thold him that close. Also a coke
dealer. Looks like it's back forme. That's Simpsons Tim Allen with Tim
Allen on The Simpsons. Yes,on The Simpsons, they have that scene

(39:21):
where it's like that he's flipping throughthe Homer's flipping through TV or something.
I can't remember, it's Homer.But then it cuts to like Tim Allen
like on a lawnmower, and helike backs over Wilson and then he's like,
oh, I just killed Wilson.Looks like it's back to prison for
me. Oh yes, okay,yeah, because I watch I was introduced

(39:43):
to home improvement in The Simpsons aroundthe same time when I was like eleven
or five or something like that,and I, okay, weird diversion.
But are you guys keeping I knowNick's not, but are you watching recent
Simpsons? Josh, I have notbeen watching recent Simpsons. I keep meaning
too because I I hear so manygood things recently, but I have not
been watching. So I'm I'm probablygoing to start watching some of the new

(40:07):
seasons. I approached the Simpsons likeI approach est and now it's the same
thing as the NFL. Your teamis going to have a couple of good
games, a couple of great games. Most of the games, you know,
there'll be some good plays, butyou know, I'm not looking for
The Simpsons to always be what Inostalgically hold, but specifically these last like

(40:31):
month of episodes have been wildly depressing. Oh yeah, because that's what I've
heard. Oh you've heard that.You've heard this because like my wife and
I watched two in a row afterwatching a depressing sitcom of something else,
and we were like, well,the Simpsons won't be depressing, and then
it was. It was super depressing. And I mean, I know the
episode with Larry was that his nameLarry who dies? Like yeah, and

(40:59):
yes, there's apparently a whole thing. I haven't seen it yet, but
I'm gonna check it out well.And I mean that's true to the Simpsons
because I remember seeing like the Shinningas a kid, and like, I
guess that's not depressing, that's scary, but it's I liked adult themes in
my cartoons, and I get thesense from my kid, Like how old
your kids the sun you mentioned earlier, I have an eleven year old and

(41:22):
an eight year old. Oh thoseare you can you can screw around?
They understand joking in jokes. Ohyeah, oh yeah, they're like,
I mean the eleven year old islike he's eighteen. Kids these days know
everything like he's. He's he knowseverything, but he's He has been in
a bunch of my shorts since hewas little, and in my features for

(41:43):
that matter, and like my noweight year old he was. He helped
me with visual effects on a shortfilm I did like five years ago.
He there's like a behind the scenesvideo of him helping me do this whole
like pumpkin Guts over Glass. Ilike set out the sheet of glass and
then I cut out of green screenthe name of the movie and then poured

(42:04):
pumpkin guts on it. So it'skind of like the thing intro, where
like how they burned the garbage bagto make the whole like the thing appear.
I did it like that, exceptgreen screen over sheeted glass, put
the camera under the glass, andthen put pumpkin guts all over it.
While my I don't know, hewas probably three at the time. My
three year old ran around and helpedme. Like I'll post it in the

(42:30):
next couple of days, I'm sure, but if if you follow me on
social media, I'll post it justso you could see it. But it's
pretty adorable watching a little little littleboy run around as his dad tries to
make shitty monster movies. Yeah,I think it's good for them to see
that, Like the what are youreight and eleven year old into? Like

(42:52):
do they know what they want togo to school to study after the school
they're in currently? Well, theygo They actually got when we moved to
Atlanta, they got into a actingschool and or like a it's it's an
art school. It's the cab ElementarySchool of the Arts. And my oldest
had to do like a full tryoutfor it, and he like had to

(43:15):
like give this whole big monologue thathe memorized and he said it and he
actually that the short that the PumpkinGuts are and he was in that.
It was the short wed Daniel andI film during COVID because you couldn't do
anything. You could only work withthe people in your bubble. So it
was like me, my kid andDaniel were willing to get together to film

(43:36):
something with masks on and kind ofsocial distance while we did, and we
filmed this like evil Pumpkins short filmcalled the First of November, and my
son memorized like huge chunks of monologue, this whole like spiel that I animated
and then we I sent it tosome festivals and he actually won like Best
Actor awards because, like you said, with ze fest if you put your

(43:59):
kid in somethingeople aren't not going tovote for the kid, and people voted
for the kid and he just averagedhimself up to the top and won Best
Actor Award. So anyway, longstory, short days. My kids are
obsessed with art. They love drawingcomics, they love making animation. They're
into all of the stuff I'm into, which is cool, but you're I'm
also like, man, I hadto work so much fucking harder to learn

(44:22):
this shit than you guys do.Like I had no YouTube, I didn't
have all of this, like camerasand animation software. Everything's so accessible to
them. But you know, I'mlike, shit, if I can uh
like Robert Downey junior this, orI can Robert Downey senior this, and
one of these kids can make itbig and do a bunch of Yeah,

(44:47):
my kids can do a bunch ofblow in their late teens into early twenties
and then have a massively successful careerlater. That sounds awesome. Yeah,
maybe the I mean the drew baremore of their age and go to the
same AA meetings and I was watchingThe Player. That's what Tim Robbins and

(45:08):
mash director directed that, and someonein there sarcastica. Peter Gallagher from The
OC is like, Hey, I'mgoing to go to an AA meeting and
Tim Robbins is like, oh,I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were.
Now. Its like, I'm not, I just that's where all the
deals happen, you know. Sothat movie was made so like it was

(45:29):
civical thirty years ago. Yeah,I have not seen that movie in a
long time. I watched it rightbefore The Fall guy because it was on
the saf D Brothers Top ten Movies. Gotcha, Yeah, of course,
and it was like, well,it's Bond Max, so I can just
watch this real quick. And Iwas into it. I love it,

(45:49):
and it worked really well with TheFall because you know, it's a behind
the scenes Hollywood thing. That's cool. This is totally unrelated, but just
going back to old movies. I'mwriting a script right now that's about like
this private investigator that has to takecare of this shitty kid. That's the
script that I'm doing, like lowbudget movie I'm doing with my son.

(46:10):
But so anyway, long, Likethe movie I decided to watch in reference
to this was a movie called TheClient. Like it's like a oh yeah
with nursing Ford right now it's TommyLee Jones and Susan Sarrandon and yeah,
but it's I was just like Iwas watching it just like, man,

(46:30):
the nineties is such a time formovies where it's just like that's the simplest.
It's like so simple yet so Idon't know, just interesting every movie
right now or like, at leastfrom my perspective, a lot of movies
have to take their genre very seriously. So if you're a drama, you're
a drama. If you're an action, you're an action. But The Client

(46:54):
is just like one minute it's action, the next minute it's making you laugh.
The next minute it's straight up likecourtroom drama. Like what the fuck
was going on with this script?But I love it? So Okay,
So before I know this movie,we don't have a what's that? I

(47:15):
know? I watched this movie inthe nineties. I was trying to determine
if it was based on a JohnGrisham book. But I know I've seen
because it's like a guy isn't bradrenfro in. That is that the one
that brad Renfrow is in. Yeah, brad renfro In, his acting debut,

(47:37):
was based on from ninety three.I know. I saw this and
it's like the cast is awesome becausethere's like William H. Macy shows up
as a doctor randomly, who's justlike a throwaway performance. I'm like,
that's William H. Macy. Whatthe ship's he doing here? But it's
like pre far ago, I assume, like pre Hala blowing up or yeah,

(47:58):
two years before. Yeah, soit's pre he hasn't blown up yet
and he's just showing up as arandom doctor for ten seconds. It's so
great. Well, just because youblow up in a you know, Coen
Brothers movie, doesn't mean Michael Stolbergisn't still you know, doing Broadways.
That's true. That's true, AndI fucking love that guy, Like he's

(48:19):
awesome in everything he's in. Hewas my wife and I just finished the
Brian Cranston New Orleans Judge Show.I wish I could remember the name.
But on the topic of you know, a John Grisham nineties movie. Yeah,
okay, so before we before wewrap this up because we don't have
a ton of time left. Wehaven't got to like the real meat of

(48:42):
what you guys do, Like tellme about your shorts and like, well,
the reason why I wanted to haveyou on the show is because you
guys are doing a very interesting thingwhere I saw too. You sent me
two of your shorts, and Ieven suffer to call one of them a
short. It's like almost forty fivefifty minutes long. Like it was not,
Ah, it was not a smallshort, and so I found it

(49:07):
fascinating though, because you guys aretrying something that is kind of unique where
you're making proof of concepts and likeyou're talking about four walling them now,
so you're trying to get them seen. You're trying to like build to something
bigger. What has this been likeand what we're what? How have you
got to the place where you're at? What's been awful? Just so that

(49:29):
that we get that out of theway. It is, it's awful,
But thank you for watching. Iassume you're referring to a hitch list and
my friend Molly, which is fortythree minutes. My friend Molly was the
Yeah, forty three minutes. Yeah, it was not a short, though,
I mean it was a it waslike a it was like a pilot

(49:50):
for a show. Nick had totake that it's not a short, it's
not a feature. Yeah, it'sjust sweet. I wrote it and like,
this is how long it is.Actually the script was like thirty pages,
thirty something, low thirties, andthen it just you know, became
a forty three minute beast. Butyeah, that's a lesson I've learned.

(50:13):
My script for The Good Exorcist,which was the one I did for Rebel
Without a Crew, was it wassixty five pages when I sent it to
Robert, and so sixty five pagesin theory should be one hundred and five
minutes, but or an hour andfive minutes. But I knew it wasn't

(50:34):
going to be, I know,based on my shorts, where it's like
if it's three pages, it's sixminutes. Like I knew it would be
longer. And my shooting script wassixty nine pages, easy to remember,
and it's eighty I mean I hadto cut it down. It was like
one hundred minutes until I cut itdown to eighty five. Yeah, so

(50:55):
the minute a page concept doesn't reallystand. We'll be saying, oh,
I think like we're both trying toget to what our zenith would be.
I think Nick's zenith would be asa writer and or director. He's open
to either and being told that someonecould be better than him in one of

(51:17):
those two things. I don't thinkyou should live your life that way.
But he does like thriller in horrormovies for like a twenty four and he'd
maybe cheat with Neon or something likethat. Like, am I right,
Nick, that you want to makeheady thriller horror movies? Like it doesn't
have to be a horror like myFriend Molly. I'd show that to my

(51:38):
mom, and it's not. It'snot a horror movie in the sense of
something that would have said. Andactually my dad liked that one, which
surprised me. Yeah, well,I mean, like the script, the
feature script I'm working on is aI wouldn't call it an adaptation of that
film. It's it's called it's juggling. Two titles. One might be my

(51:58):
Friend Molly. There's a different typealter and title for it. I wouldn't
call it. It's got the sameseed of a concept, not even this,
not even that's the same, butlike that, that's gonna be more.
It's like heavy enough to be atwenty four or neon, but then
it does turn into like Slasher,and you know, please balancing that like

(52:20):
this could please a mainstream crowd whowants to go see you know, the
same people who'd go see Scream maybewould you know, hopefully see this,
but with enough stuff under the surfacewhere it's like it gives people who are
looking for a little bit more stuffto chew on. That makes sense.
So oh, Josh has said that, I think that makes sense. Oh

(52:44):
yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean in as much sense as
I'm I'm a writer. I haveto pitch all the time. I have
to try to figure out, likehow to explain these things and know that
they sometimes are tough to explain becausethey're being written. You're coming up with
them, figuring it out as yougo. But I think that makes sense.
I think it's you like, that'sme trying to explain a script that's

(53:09):
about a girl who wakes up withan abscessed tooth and has to go to
her dealer because it's Christmas Eve.And this is the script that I'm pitching
now for three points, like alot of money I'm just gonna say a
lot of money and dollars and fiftycents and I and but it's just like

(53:30):
pitching these concepts where it's so difficultto actually figure out, like what how
do I say this in the mostsuccinct way or how how do explain it
in a succinct way when I knowwhat it really is? But no,
I think that's great. I thinkthe concept of taking something like my friend
Molly, which is forty three minutesand you know it's it's it's a it's

(53:53):
a pretty big thing, but you'velearned so much. I assume working on
a project like that that now youcould take it and build figure out what
the maybe nugget of ideas in itis to make into something bigger and like
what worked what didn't work for you. I think a lot of people think
that they did something and then they'relike I did this. I can't go

(54:15):
back to it where I'm like,man Hitchcock made the Man who knew too
much twice, like you can dowhatever you want. He knew enough,
he didn't know enough the first time, and he figured it out more on
the second one. Exactly. Yeah, And legally speaking, it gives him
change. It gives us chain oftitle between the script that exists is different

(54:38):
than any other script that exists,because it's chain of title to an existing
piece of IP that is the shortform content, the TV pilot, the
forty three minute piece of content thatis my friend Molly. And that's probably
what, well not probably, that'swhat we're going to put as like the
center jewel in our four Walling forHorror in the Fall, Like our goal

(55:02):
is to do four Walling in theFall, and we have shorts that we
have four five. We think thatwe put four z fest length shorts in
front of my friend Molly. Andthen you're up to thirty ish minutes plus
forty minutes. That's seventy minutes.So if you do fifteen minutes a comedy

(55:23):
in front, now you're already ateighty five minutes. You come afterwards and
do fifteen minutes of questions and that'sone hundred minutes change over the audience.
And I'm sorry, clearly, I'mthe business person. I went to school
finance and economics. Nick went toMCTC to actually learn real skills. You

(55:43):
smiled there. I was just givingthe audience time to laugh. So I'm
constantly like, go, go,go, let's get to the next thing
of and like Molly's been done foryears, right years. Twenty nineteen September
nineteen is when we premiered that.I think I told you charging tickets that's

(56:07):
right? Yeah, yeah, that'sawesome. I think that that's a really
based on my recent experience of doingthat with my short and my Buddy's relatively
short feature, but then doing aQ and A afterwards in the way it
all played, I think it's agreat model. I truly think that that's

(56:28):
something that could be I mean,it's still going to be challenging, obviously,
like getting people getting asses and seatsisn't ever easy convincing people that they
should leave their home when they haveNetflix there to just binge bullshit on all
day. Like it's tough to makethem go, like I want to get
up and go, But then theylike, if you can do it,
They get there and they realize howfun it is to be out and doing

(56:51):
something. What if you were watchingNetflix, I mean you could after the
episode go hey, what the fuckwas that about? To Nick? Yeah,
who is such a damic personality?Then sorry Nick? And just so
we're clear. That's why you're doingall these podcasts because for filmmaker Q and
AS, you'll have to be infront of people answering questions. But we'll
soften the audience with comedians that we'refriends with already locally. And you know,

(57:16):
I'm talking about panning Chris, I'llget it. I'm throwing down what
you're I'm picking up what you're throwingdown. I like the idea of you
throwing him under the bus for notbeing able to talk in a Q and
A. Well, I don't wantto imply I again, I am a

(57:40):
professional MC and that's how I bringsome of my revenue, entertainment revenue in.
So it's I recognize that fear ofpublic speaking is something that is valid
and lots of people have I don'tbecause I was hurt as a child or
something. I don't know, sobeing and like just to be exposed about
this, I actually work as awedding DJ. Did you really watch a

(58:02):
hitch list? A hitch list?I shouldn't slur the name of one thing.
Yep, thank you for watching that. So, like, just to
give a contrast between Nick Wants tobe an A twenty four horror director.
I want to be a showrunner forlike an FX comedy. Yeah, not

(58:22):
exactly the same things, but differentor close enough that we we understand each
other, but our goals are slightlydifferent totally. I think that's great.
I mean, here's the thing,like from It's you don't have to be
the same person and have the sameideas and be able to work together on
each other's projects. This is somethingthat Dan and I have fought with our

(58:45):
entire lives because I am far moreinterested in putting blood and guts on the
screen and he's far more interested injust making people laugh at stupid stuff.
And then we'll start working on aproject and all of a sudden it switches
where I'm like, oh, onthis one, I just want to make
people laugh and Dan's like, wejust spent like three years learning how to

(59:07):
make blood and guts and do gorystuff, and now you're just making people
laugh. Like it's this back andforth we've had. But I found that
like the fact that we aren't settledin one place, the two of us,
and we're always kind of like changing, like figuring out what the next
thing is. It's been fun forus to learn, like what is our
style? What do we want todo? And then you know, we

(59:30):
kind of shock each other where Danwill all of a sudden write something where
I'm expecting him to take the scriptand make it really funny. And I
saw that Dan taking the script andI'm expecting him to write jokes, and
all of a sudden he writes somethingcompletely messed up like I would write.
And then I take the script andmake something funny that he's he wouldn't expect,

(59:53):
like the kind of jokes. Soand he'll text me like, oh
my god, that was like Idid not see that coming. And that
kind of back and forth of shockingeach other is kind of where our scripts
come from. So having having polarizingideas of what you want to do can
be extremely happy scissor it up shockingscissors. What you can't see to those

(01:00:19):
listening is Kyle is doing the shockerand then scissoring his shockers. No,
I think we've gotten through a similarprocess of scissor shockering each other when we
write together, because we usually wedon't co write things, but we started
doing that, Like on our cfestfor this year, that was the challenge
is Okay, I've got an idea. You are always rewriting the scripts that

(01:00:45):
I get other people to write basedon general Nick, Nick, why did
you laugh? Nick? Explain thatto Josh. It's true because you Rea
and I. I don't think I'veever disagreed with any of your rewrites.
I've sometimes disagreed with some of youroriginal pieces, but never your rewrites.

(01:01:07):
Yeah, that's amazing, and yeah, that's not an insult to any of
the you know, original writers whohave originated material for us. It's just
that there may be writers in thisway or that way. Whereas Nick is
a visual composition person, so he'sbringing the No, I've actually shot and
edited things, so when I'm readingthe script, I need to be able

(01:01:29):
to go, this is gonna work. Yeah, I can see this actually
playing visually on screen, which youknow, that's It's been a big part
of our learning process as well,is like we'll write jokes into the script
that it's like, it's never itdoesn't play on screen. It's not going
to be funny on screen. It'sfunny in word form and learning. And
for us, that's great for ourscripts. We're making ourselves low budget movies.

(01:01:52):
You can do that. You canjust make each other laugh in the
script and it works just fine.It's not going to add any value to
your movie, but it's fine forthe person to read. What it does
do is when you send it toproducers, they're like, why is this
in here? Because it's funny onpage, but it is never gonna work
and you should know better. Wejust can't help ourselves sometimes. And it's

(01:02:13):
been fun on these new low onthe new low budget stuff to be able
to like do that again, gettingstepping away from the scripts that have to
be seen by people outside of Danand I okay, so you're gonna be
doing this four wall thing. Youguys have a bunch of stuff I don't
I mean, did you send thisto me privately? When you sent me
my friend Molly in a hitch list? Were they private or are they available?

(01:02:36):
Can people? Where? Can peoplesee your stuff? As basically where
I'm getting too of this? Ohwell, hopefully we'll be coming to a
city near you in the Upper Midwestbecause we're Upper Midwest filmmakers and our hope
in dream is that the state ofMinnesota flourishes, just like the famous communists

(01:02:57):
said, you know, you wanta thousand flowers to blue or whatever.
We want you know, a lotof people to succeed in Minnesota. So
we're specifically focusing on four walling inMinnesota or excuse me, within like two
hours of the Twin Cities, sothat could include o' claire. I have
no problem driving three and a halfhours to des Moine if it was like
and I'm doing a symbol with myhands now and I'm saying worth it.

(01:03:22):
But the money, well, yeah, I mean, if we could,
if we could figure out a wayto get one hundred people to come to
a show, and we you know, we can pay the comedians enough to
give up their time, and that'llmean they can't be in the Twin Cities
Funniest Person race in the next afterthat, because they'll have been paid to

(01:03:45):
do stand up comedy. But Ithink there are worse things in life.
Nick, did you know that?He didn't know that. I didn't know
that. You've never even heard ofTwin Cities Funniest Person, have you?
Well? You did go out withonce? Yeah, yeah, that's right,
I've heard of that. Yeah,my wife sent them up once.
I'm not going to say more thanthat, but that's fine with a stand

(01:04:09):
up comedian. She wasn't to standup at the pine. It doesn't.
I think she had done some ofthat. She I think she hears that's
fine. I'm sorry. We'll letJosh cut in here with them. One
of the biting journalism questions. Ihave no, No, that's it now,

(01:04:30):
you guys, just tell people wherethey can hear your podcast, where
they can find your stuff Movie Baterswith the Farks Brothers, Spotify and YouTube.
Movie Baters with the Farks Brothers,I think is the We're just doing
the podcast as a way to putout fast, cheap content regularly. We're
considering making webisodes for one of ourshorts because we wrote a feature against that

(01:04:56):
short, and we got some advicein addition to four Walling that just do
webisodes. Buy I p do episodes, do things that can be bought.
And I am a whore and wantto be bought. Nick, are you
a whore? Yeah? I meanyeah. If someone wants to take the
script off our hands when I'm donewith it, I'll and and they can

(01:05:19):
they can get the three to fivemillion budget for it, then I'll let
them. Oh for Molly, yeah, you don't want to let you got
to keep your a project close tothe close to the vest made of other
concepts as series ideas, movies likethe Puppet King movie that I'm sure John
has a script for that someone couldbuy against our you know I p of

(01:05:43):
the Puppet King then yeah, orthe concept of having a horror movies that
are then followed by documentaries as ahalf hour series. Like we're willing to
sell that concept, but we've youknow, coined it already by having it
produced in fest or having it acceptedto festivals means that we're the ones with
that IP intellectual property to sell?Is that other works? Josh, you're

(01:06:10):
more professional than we are, youtell us, I mean that's sort of
yeah, that's how it works,kind of like you are. I I
mean, I haven't seen it.I don't know exactly what you're talking about
because I haven't seen everything. No, of course you haven't. I'm just
saying like we're I wouldn't sell thehit the hitch List idea and walk away

(01:06:35):
from it because you know, yourfirst deal is youre going to be your
first deal. And what's mostly likelygoing to happen is, hey, you
wrote the script. Great, wewant to give you money for this,
and then we want you to goaway. Yeah, I mean that's kind
of it sometimes. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of it. I mean
you're not far from the truth thatthere's that. But there's also this element
of like right now, there's alot of asking the question what do you

(01:06:59):
want from the there's a lot ofsending things to people and they're going like
what do you want to get outof this? And if you don't give
them the answer they want, theyjust instantly walk away because there's so much
So it's like trying to play thisgame of like what do you want me
to say? What? Do?What? What are we doing here?
What? Playing that dance? ButOh, an irritating piece of advice I

(01:07:19):
got was have every project that youown the ip of either let it be
a movie or a TV show,because look at The Gentleman, that was
a movie and now it's a TVshow. Oh God. Or look at
thir site. It was a movieand now it's going to be a TV
show. Or look at Mission Impossible, it was a TV show and now
it's a movie. Anything, anythingtransition between one meeting and the other,

(01:07:43):
that is information or that is asuggestion. I don't know if that's how
it works. If it's that easy. But for me it has not been
that easy. It has not beenyou have an ip it can be a
movie or a show. You're great. It's been more of do you want
to be a TV show or amovie and you say movie and they go,
oh, we're only looking for TVshows sorry, bye slam door.

(01:08:06):
Or you're looking for themitted series notseries. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Okay, great, so check outthe podcast everyone, check out. Are
any of the shorts available? Canpeople watch them? You guys have a
YouTube channel, Yeah, search JKProductions the Foot and that'll probably be the

(01:08:30):
easiest way to reach us. Okay, awesome. Social media, because we
don't have everything on YouTube. Wedon't put things on YouTube that we're planning
on four walling. Yes, sowe've taken some things off of YouTube that
we had previously gone like, ohwell, because we don't make things for
YouTube and watching on your phone.We originally made it. Z Fest is
a Hey, you're making this forpeople to come to a theater and watch,

(01:08:54):
and you want to give them afast time. So the best way
to see this thing is in amovie theater. The second best way to
see it is on a big assTV at your house with good fidelity,
because Nick constantly complains when I showmy movies on YouTube in my garage,
like this looks like shit. Yeah, they do look like shit. That
looks like shit too, though notjust YouTube. Sorry, Josh, you're

(01:09:17):
trying to end this. We're badat that. We can't say goodbye.
This is the Midwestern good bye.God, Oh, trust me I have
I'm I mean, I'm from theMidwest. I was there for thirty six
years. I am very Midwest andthe Midwest goodbye. In fact, well,
I get mocked because I don't havethe Midwest goodbye. I just leave
without saying anything because I Irish goodbye. But it's just because I grew up

(01:09:41):
in the Midwest and I know thatif you start saying goodbye, it's never
gonna end. So instead I'm justlike, I'm just gonna hide and I'm
gonna peace out through the back door. No one's gonna see me go,
and then I text. We livein the air of texting, so I
can just say, oh, bythe way, goodbye, Thank you guys
so much for co on the show. And I really would love it if

(01:10:01):
you guys do this four wall thingand you come out the other side and
you have information, contact me becauseI want to have you back on the
show to talk about how it went, what you learned, and just a
lot of it's just out of morebig curiosity because of the experiences I've had,
and I want to do the samething. I truly am like hoping
to do sort of a four wallsituation with my movies as soon as they

(01:10:27):
leave their distribution that they're in thatI can't do that with them. Once
I get that back and can actuallygo take them out, I'm like,
I think people will come out andsee them in a theater. I don't
think people want the Blu Rays orto watch them on to be right now.
I think I would be much betterserved. And I'm not going to
make jack shit for money. Ifthey're on to be I'll make a lot

(01:10:47):
more if I can four wall itsomewhere, get ticket sales and sell T
shirts like that's the way I makeI've made money in the past is like
T shirt sales. The punk rockmentality has always been like good Exorcists came
out. I saw it, youcould you guys can see. But everyone
who who knows this no or everyonewho listens to this and knows my movies,

(01:11:08):
knows the Good Exorcist poster. Isold T shirts of that that.
It's still the most money I've madeon any part of filmmaking. Was T
shirt sales for that, and Idid it as a pre sale. I
didn't lose a dime on it.I just made profit because I pre sold
everything. If you got them,you got them. And I sold enough

(01:11:28):
of them that I made a goodlittle chunk of change off of them.
But in indie filmmaking, like anychunk of change is fucking awesome, it
never happens. So I was veryproud of figuring out that, figuring out
what's that we saw T shirts?I sold T shirts of that that that
good Exorcist thing. I did likefour I did uh four color prints of

(01:11:54):
them, really high quality, andI had just been coming off of Rebel
without a crew the series, sowe had like a small fan base that
bought the shirts and we made somegood money off of it. And that's
it's all about figuring out, likewhat your what people will spend their money
on with you in that moment.And I think the four Wall idea with

(01:12:14):
your guys's movies could be a greatway to do it, and I'm sure
it's gonna be a lot of work, but I can't wait to hear how
it goes. So please let meknow when you do that, like later
this year or early twenty twenty five, when you've come out the other end
of it, tell me how itwent, because I would love to have
you back on the show to talkabout it totally. That's how he's getting
us to go, Nick, isthat he wants to come back, so

(01:12:38):
we yeah, go, Now we'regoing to go to come back. I
got to go to come back.Go do it and then come back,
and I until then, I willcontinue to listen to your podcast. Thank
you guys so much for coming onthe show, Thank you for having me.
Thank you. Oh what a lovelychat that was. I had a

(01:12:58):
really great time talking with those guys. And I have a few more episodes
of this podcast set to record overthe next couple of weeks, and then
there will be a little break beforeI come back with season six where I'm
gonna try something completely different and I'msuper excited about it. So with that
being said, I truly appreciate theamazing feedback I've received from the last few

(01:13:19):
episodes and through all of season five. It means a lot that people are
listening, that you're checking out theshow, and make sure to head over
to wherever you listen to this andgive us a review, follow it,
like it, do whatever you cando to spread the word, And if
there's any topics that you would likeme to talk about, any guests you'd

(01:13:42):
like me to have on make sureto head over to any of the social
media's at Josh Stifter on Twitter orx I'm on Facebook as Josh Stifter at
Flush Studios on Instagram. Any ofthese places are great ways to get in
contact with me about what you'd liketo hear, things that you'd be interested
in hearing about, or let meknow about guests that you'd like me to

(01:14:04):
have on all right, Patreon,dot com, slash Flush Studios. That's
where you can get the show withoutany interruptions or ads. It is the
way I support what I do andsupport this art, the filmmaking, the
behind the scenes stuff, the podcastcomics, all of that stuff. The
only way I can make the contentthat I make is through people supporting it

(01:14:29):
on Patreon and through the people whodig it. So thank you, so
much to everyone who is on thePatreon and has subscribed. There's a few
people who are being really cool aboutfollowing along with this new movie that I'm
writing. I posted a video acouple of weeks ago of the first week
of working on that, and thenof course this week a bunch of stuff
came up. But I've been filmingthese little vlogs and I hope to release

(01:14:49):
them every couple of weeks as likea way that you can watch my movie,
my next low budget film get made. So head on over to patreon
dot com, slash Flo Studios andyou can watch the Flush Patreon filmmaking project
play out in video form, inblogs and all that stuff. It's really
gonna be a fun time and ithas been great so far. So all

(01:15:11):
right, thank you everyone for listening, thanks for tuning in, keep kicking
ass, keep making the art youwant to make, and as always,
stay reporters. Low Budget Rebels isbrought to you by the indie film Hustle
Network, recorded at Flush Studios headquartersin Tropical Atlanta. Produced by the film
daddy Josh Stifter. Bla bla blaboo