Season 5 Episode 21: PLAGA ZOMBIE AMERICAN INVASION creators Garry Medeiros and Walter Rivero

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more
amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
There are some questions I'd like to ask you.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Low Budget Rebels.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Past. I don't tell me you're taking all this seriously.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Low Budget
Rebels podcast. I'm your host Josh Stifter, and this week
I talked to Plaga Zombie American Invasion director and producer duo.
Gary Maderos is the director and Walter Rivero is the producer,

(00:55):
and they both were kind enough to join me on
the show to talk about this batshit crazy and fun
movie that I literally you'll hear on the episode, like
I'm kind of gushing over it because I never get
to watch a movie the day before, like the night before,
make popcorn and do some so a lot of times
it's podcasts. I'll either watch the movie a few days
before or a week before, or I'm literally like scrambling

(01:16):
hours before to watch the movie because you know, the
podcast comes up quick or whatever. But this time I
had the opportunity to actually sit down and watch it,
and then immediately following the episode, they sent me over
their short film The Evil Unleashed, but you can watch
on YouTube. Go check out The Evil Unleashed and the
movie Ploga Zombie American Invasion. And since recording this conversation,

(01:40):
I went and watched a couple of the Plaga Zombie movies.
I'd seen the first one and I kind of watched
a little bit of it again to catch up. But
I didn't even know that there were sequels, or if
I did. It was just like I sort of knew
they were out there, but never had taken the time
to really watch them. So I watched a few of
them since then. It's just it's such a fun concept
to take something so camp solow budget and then run

(02:04):
with it as another low budget filmmaker. So I was
incredibly impressed by the perseverance of Gary to get this done,
and he talks about it in the episode. It's really
fantastic to hear how something like that comes together. We
always assume and we come to conclusions of how these
things get made, but when you are on the outside,

(02:27):
it's nice to hear how they come together. And I
think there's a really cool concept here for those of
you out there who are thinking about making a movie
but don't necessarily have an idea, but you have followed
the indie scene, you know, the movies that are out there,
and the potential of doing a sequel or a remake
or reimagining or building off of something. I mean, a

(02:48):
lot of my Greywood's plot is literally built off of
the old movies I would watch and wanting to do
my own take on the ed Wood projects. And The
Good Exorcist was very much based on these, like R
rated movies I would see Midday on a Sunday afternoon
after church, and they were obviously are rated, but then
had been edited down to be this PG bastardization. And

(03:11):
that's kind of what I wanted to do, is to
make this low budget, low rent PG version of horror
that would have played on nineteen ninety three television Midday
while I drew as a kid, and I still have
this like deep seated hope that kid, there are kids
out there who are stumbling onto The Good Exorcist. In fact,

(03:33):
there are, slowly but surely. My kid has told me
that people friends of his or people online have watched
it and enjoyed the movie. So that's you know, it's
cool when you hear that kind of stuff, and as
a filmmaker, you don't know who your audience is going
to be, and you hope that it slowly finds people.
So but Gary and Walter were absolutely fantastic guests. I

(03:55):
had such a great time on this conversation or having
this commonation with them, and being able to watch their
movie right before made it extra special for me. All Right,
I gotta get side of way patroon dot com slash
Flush Studios. That is where you can listen to this
podcast ad free. The number of listeners has gone up.
In fact, people have like reached out to me recently.

(04:17):
I got a really wonderful email this morning or text
message this morning. What do you the fuck do you
call them? Instagram DM Someone slid into my DMS and
gave me this really really just beautiful message saying like
they're an editor. They stumbled onto the podcast. They had
listened a little bit before but never really gave it
the time, and then just recently had started listening a

(04:38):
lot and it sort of gave them inspiration in a
time where they were sort of down on the creation process.
This is a person who when they messaged me, I
really hope that you continue to make movies, and I
would love to have you on the show sometime if
you if you finish a feature, or if you have
a subject that comes together with what I'm doing. I'm

(05:02):
looking for new guests for next season already as I
wrap up, I only have a few more episodes of
this season, and then next season I get to do
something completely different and I'm very excited about and I'll
get to talk to different types of filmmakers, whether that's editors,
coloriss performers, actors, people behind the scenes, directors still but
with very specific topics such as pre production or crowdfunding.

(05:24):
It's going to be a very different show, and I'm
excited about next season. So if you have ideas for
things you would like me to talk about, let me know,
send me a message, slip into my DMS, or head
over to Patreon and leave a comment. Patreon dot com
slash Flush Studios. You subscribe for one dollar, five dollars,
ten dollars a month, whatever you can give. It helps
me continue to make this stuff. I'm going into production

(05:45):
on my new movie, Get That Dick. We're actually filming tonight,
tonight or tomorrow night. I know that sounds really rough,
but it's just me and my son. We're getting some
b roll and shooting his first sequence. That's him all alone.
It's going to depend on if we do some things
with the family tonight or if if we do them tomorrow.
So yeah, we're gonna be filming that. And I actually
just bought new lenses. I bought the same lenses that

(06:08):
uh we filmed Dennis Kolo used for Little Luchen The
Big Deal. I really love these lenses he filmed with,
and I decided to pick myself up a pack of them.
But they were not cheap necessarily, and that comes out
of my pocket. I don't have, you know, anyone handing
me money to make this stuff. It all comes out
of my own pocket or through the Patreon so you know,

(06:32):
I make a few dollars a month that I'm able
to save and slowly but surely build Flush Studios into
what I hope it will be, and that is through
Patreon dot com slash Flush Studios. I mean, if you
want to just donate as well, you're welcome to help
me buy lenses and lights and shit. I need to
make this fucking movie. But if not, Patreon dot com

(06:54):
slash flush Studios. All Right, without further ado, I'm gonna
get to the point. This was a great episode. I
hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed
having it. This is Plaga Zombie American Invasion director Gary
Maderos and producer, writer, actor Walter Reveretta. Okay, so I

(07:21):
want to start this by saying, last night I made
myself a big bowl of popcorn and sat down at
my projection screen and did like a straight up, full on,
like drive in theater style watch of Plagua Zombie American Invasion.
And I had a blast, Like it was so much fun.

(07:46):
And I assume the intention was with this film, we'll
go back. My questions tend to be sort of about,
like retrospectively, what got you into the industry, into where
you got? But I got to ask this guy up
so into the movie?

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Now?

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Was I vaguely know of the original films? They're very,
very low budget raw. Was the intention to take that
sort of concept, go a little bit like Killer Clowns
from Outer Space style? Crazy fun? Like? What was the
impetus for this film?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah? Basically I was a fan of the original ones.
I remember I found out about it from a Fangoria
article they did on the Mutant Zone, and you know,
when Facebook came out, I was like, wait a minute,
like maybe they're on Facebook. So I reached out to
the filmmakers and I ended up starting a friendship with Harnan,

(08:39):
one of the original directors, and then Pablo who was
another director from the originals. So we became friends. And
when Ash Versus Evil Dead was coming out, I told
them like, now that they're bringing back the Evil Dead,
you know, I'll have to do like a remake. I
think it was right around the same time, like they

(09:00):
were talking either making a part four, I think it's
before actually the series. I was like, they make a
part four, I'll do the remake, you know. And then
Hernan was like, hey, yeah, if you want to do
a remake of it, go ahead, you know. And then
that's how it started. And I was like, well, I
didn't want to do a remake because like their characters
were so iconic, you know, Like I was like, I

(09:22):
don't want to try to redo it. So we ended
up making like a continuation of their storyline. So it
was kind of like this takes place in America where
that took place supposedly it's not really, but you know
down Latin the area, down South America. Yeah, so we

(09:43):
just like, all right, let's let's make it the universe
of the original where like the original characters still exist,
you know, and it's just now it's happening here in
a small city in New Bedford and so often. I
was in the second movie when I was younger, in
my twenties. Yeah, he was actually in mutant zone.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Yeah, And I had no idea who Gary was at all.
And then like a couple of years later, my friends
from the original one, I was saying, you know, there's
a guy who wants to make a pa in America.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
You want to talk to him about it.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
I'm like, okay, And then I got on board, and
now you know, I was Cobra was a bunch of
zombies and you know, ended up producing whatever trying to
get that movie out.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
So I love it. That's so fun. I mean here,
the crazy thing is, it's not like a it's not
a film that everyone it's not a series that everyone knows.
It's not something that like, you know, everyone has their
dream of making the next fucking Star War, you know
what I'm saying, Like everyone wants to be on the
big project. I remember when I was on Rebel with
out a crew the there was a day where the

(10:47):
producers were asking all of the filmmakers and everyone who
was working on stuff like what's your dream project? And
everyone wanted to work on a Star War at the time,
or everyone wanted to make the next alien movie or
whatever the fuck. And I was working on the movie
The Good Extorcist, and I was like, my dream project
is to make The Good Extorsist too, And they'd be like,
shut the fuck up, what's the real thing you want
to do? And I'm like, no, really, like I don't.

(11:09):
That concept to me is so like it's so foreign
and out there. But finding something like I want to
do a remake of something like there was this Charlton
Heston movie called The Naked Jungle. It was about killer
like giant killer ants or this like plague of ants
that comes in and I'm like, I've always wanted to
do that. I watched it when I was like twelve

(11:29):
because I thought maybe i'd see some tits. Turns out
I didn't at all. Up Naked Jungle is like a
PG movie, and but I'm like, that's what I want
to do. I don't have any aspirations that so for
you to take something where you go to like a
project that has potential to actually be a part of,
especially something as like fun and frenetic as that series.

(11:51):
I've only seen the first one, but from what I
what I gather, they're very they're similar to kind of
what you're you're doing, that frantic, fun energy of what
you can do with horror.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, exactly, And it's kind of like what really sparked
my interest in filmmaking. It was Evil Did Too was
really the catalyst of me starting to make movies because
it was we rented it for one of my friend's
birthday parties. This is like, you know, back in nineteen
I want to say, like ninety or something. It was. Yeah,
we rented like a stack of like horror movies to watch,

(12:26):
you know. The one was like The Grim Reaper and
we popped that in and we're like, all right, that
was kind of cheesy. Then we threw an Evil Dead Too,
and it just was like blew us away. We're just
like laughing, and like I never knew you could like
use the camera the way they did and Evil Did Too.
You know, it was like the way it was so
kinetic and it was almost like its own character and
how it moved, and you know, I fell in love

(12:47):
with like the whole stud I think everyone did at
that time. It's like, whoa, you can make movies this way,
you know. So it was really got me interested in
actually taking it serious and becoming a filmmaker.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, I mean I I Evil Dead too was one
of there's two great points here, because I do think
that this is a lost art in and of itself.
The literal going into a place and renting movies where
the posters on the walls of like a fucking franchise
like Blockbuster. We're still like Evil Dead two silence of

(13:19):
the Lambs, like the stuff you'd see on the walls.
You're just like they were amazing. The Jason goes to
Hell poster, like I remember that, like I could. I
could visually see exactly where it was on the wall
at I mean, I didn't go to a Blockbuster. I
went to like a mom and pop style movie rental
place when I was a kid. But it's called like
Hollywood Video, but had nothing to do with any Hollywood

(13:40):
video franchise. It's literally like they were just some mom
and Pop in Minnesota were just like, let's open a
rental place.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
We were actually talking about that yesterday. We're like one
of the actresses in a movie and he's like, you know,
if I could do this for a living, I would
be happy, you know, yes, And I was like, well,
you know. The sad thing is like back in the
day when they had rental stores, it was like it
was actually you could make him a living off of
it because you'd make a little budget movie, get a

(14:07):
cool breaking poster art, and you know, you could you
could sell it to all these rental stores and make
like a you know, a decent living off of it.
You wouldn't you wouldn't be rich, but you had a
decent living, you know. But now with all the streaming digital,
it's just not you know, the market's not there anymore.
So it makes it a lot harder for us, a
little indie guys to make any real money, you.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Know, for sure. Man. I mean I grew up on
you know, the Trauma and Full Moon features and all
of the like low budget stuff. That was the stuff
I was watching as a kid and reading, you know,
like Don Coscarelli's book or any of these books on
or any of these guys talk about even like Lloyd
Kaufman talking about it, it's like that model is dead.

(14:50):
You can't like make a bunch of even the Roger
Corman concept. It just doesn't work now. And it's kind
of sad. But you know, at the same time, like
I'm talking to a lot of these low budget filming
like yourself, you guys are making this movie that I'm
I sat down yesterday and watched and had a fucking
blast watching it. And it's not like there's no other
place to see that. And it's one of the reasons

(15:11):
why I do this podcast is because it's an opportunity
to actually reach out to people, talk to them, but
like learn about their movie in a way that I
maybe never would have seen it if I didn't do
something like this. Yeah, and I think it is a
bit of a it's a lost art, but also a
I think it's still out there. I think it still exists.
It just sucks that you can't make a living doing
it consistently. Yeah. Well, I guess that leads to the

(15:35):
question of what got you? Well, like, what were the
earliest moment? Is evil Dead? Obviously you said Evil Dead too,
but what were some of the other movies or some
of the other experiences of like picking up a camera
for the first time that made you go, I want
to make movies. I got to do this.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Actually started off like how I started doing it. It's
a kind of like a funny story. But back in
the day, I think this is like nineteen eighty seven,
maybe even eighty six, used to be a show called
Muppet Babies. Yeah, so I used to I watched an
episode and it was like in the episode, the the

(16:11):
Muppets got the nanny or whatever I used to take
care of them, gave them like a cinemay eight camera,
like an eight millimeter camera, and they made a film together,
you know. And I was just like, hey, my mother
has an eight millimeter camera. Maybe we can do this,
you know. So I went to my buddies.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
I'm like, hey, you.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Want to make a movie, We'll shoot it on this camera.
And then my buddy was like, wait a minute, my
dad owns a VHS he just bought it. It's a
bridge VHS camera, you know, And that was like new
at the time, Like oh, yeah, let's say you know.
So that's kind of how it started. And like we
would come home from school and just pick up the
VHS camera just make these ridiculous you know, shot on

(16:47):
home videos of us. You know, I don't know bo me.
Did you guys?

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Did you get permission to use the camera? Were you
just taking it and run with it?

Speaker 2 (16:58):
We pretty much like took it and ran with it.
But like his dad, my friend's dad was really cool,
so he didn't really care, you know, as long as
we didn't break it.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, that's my dad was very much the like, stop
wasting my tapes. These are for home videos, and I
would like sneak them and I would like literally fast
forward like seven minutes into the video and then start
filming our stuff because I didn't want my dad to
like play it and see at the beginning that we
had been using the tapes.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, so, Walter, do you have any I just flipped around,
like you know, and do stuff with my friends like
when were kids, and it didn't come over my house,
I'd be dresed up as Batman.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
I'm like, all right, today we're gonna do your Alfred
wearing glasses.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
And you're my mate. He's like okay, making British accents
and shit like it was. It was just playing I
like I like to play.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, it's pretend and I think as kids, when you can,
you could, you know, before we could get the video camera,
playing for ten was, you know, like playing with your
Ninja turtle toys, playing with whatever. And we have like drawing,
were drawn to creating stuff that's outside of our world.
But then when you can play it back and see
it kind of happen on video, it's like, Wow, this

(18:08):
is a whole nother level. We're like there was like
an instant retrospection of being like remember when we did
that seven minutes ago and that was awesome.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
What were some of the movies that made you go
like I want to make besides Evil Dead two? Evil
Though two is a great example because I think it
was the first one that kind of hit. It was
low budget, but it was bigger budget than Evil Dead one.
It had a two, so there was like a weird
comfort to it, even though it was essentially a remake
for the first half of the movie, so you could
come into it and be like, I know, I get
what's happening here. And it had that like Sam Raimi's

(18:43):
stamp on. It was so strong that it was like
the first time a lot of us who were interested
in filmmaking could go like, you know, I can see
the director in this movie. I could see like no
one else is doing fourteen millimeters Dutch angles or cameras
like pushing in super quick or dollying out or just

(19:03):
literally running around with the camera like that was something
we never saw. So that's a great example. Were there
any others that were just like especially like when you
hit that spot where you went, Okay, we're not just
going to be doing this with my buddy's dad's camera.
I want to do this for real. Were there any
movies that hit you amde you go, I want to
do this?

Speaker 2 (19:22):
I would say for me, if it was first out,
I was like seven years old. I used to watch
Martin and Lewis films. Used to used to have like
marathons on Saturdays, Saturday mornings, so that kind of got me.
I first I wanted to be like a comedian, you know,
funny and uh you know. Then I also end up
watching Halloween two. They they showed it uncut on TV

(19:46):
back in like back in the day used to be
this chance this old station Dutch channel fifty six and
on Saturday nights at ten pm, they would show uncut, unedited,
you know films. So I stayed up one night and
I think I was like seven years old and stayed
on the couch all night because I was terrified to

(20:07):
go back to bed because I thought, you know, Michael
MIAs was waiting for me. So that that feeling, you know,
got me hooked on horror films. So I just took
like kind of the I've always had, like that comedic
side and the horror side, and that's kind of how
what molded me to you know, the films I make.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Now where you are now for sure?

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, I don't know me. I guess all horror from
day one.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
You know.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
I saw Evil Dead when I was like ten or
something like that.

Speaker 4 (20:35):
I don't even know, like I was, you know, watching
because I had like adult friends, like in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
So they were like, oh, we rented this crazy movie.
You want to watch it. I'm like sure.

Speaker 4 (20:43):
So I got into that. And then one of my
favorite movies is Escaped from New York.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
So Russell was my as if you couldn't tell by his.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Character, and yeah, exactly exactly, I love it. I mean
Escape from New York was the first R rated movie
I showed my kids. I was just like, this is
It's just the perfect example of like good story, good
set pieces, fun character, is cheesy enough to be enjoyable
for a kid, but also and like fast paced enough

(21:13):
but also like adult, like it's it shows you what
you can do in an R rated film. So I
showed let that to my kids, probably too young, but
they have. My kids also now censor themselves from what
Dad shows them where I'm like, you guys want to
watch the thing and they're like, do we want to
watch the thing?

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Dad?

Speaker 3 (21:31):
We actually did watch the Thing Popped Away, because we
watched it last night or two nights ago.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
So I remember reading a comment it was like a
couple of years ago, like when the movie came out,
some guy posted like I finally got to see Kurt
Russell kill zombies. I'm like, oh that was like for me,
that was like, wow, kill zombies in a zombie movie.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, it's from like I have kids too, and you know,
I really I let them watch hard films, And I
mean my own exception is like you know, like the if,
it's like when you start getting into like the nudity
and the yeah, yeah, you know that's my limits, but
like stuff like the thing you know, Nightmare on Elm Street.

(22:14):
You know, they they used to love it so and
the thing was they would be you know, they're used
to it, so you know, they'd have friends come over
at twelve years old and they're like, oh, I can't
watch this my parents so let me to you know,
they're like terrified to see it, and my kid's like, wow,
what's the big deals just Freddy Krueger.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, That's the thing we've had recently with my kids
is my kids have grown up in a filmmaking house,
so they like know the fact that it's all fake,
Like this is all fake. I mean, and I love
fake blood. I use so much fake blood in my movies.
I'm gross in movies, totally fine. The second I see
blood in real life, I pass out. I can't handle it.
Like I am total whimp with all that stuff in reality,

(22:54):
but in movies, like I want to see it all.
And so my kids are the same way now at
this point where they're like running around making little movies
on their own. And we had one of my oldest
had a friend come over the other day and they
were making this movie and they showed it to the mom,
and the mom was she's very anti gun, anti you know,
any of that stuff. And of course the kids are

(23:14):
running ound with little fake plastic guns, and I don't
think twice about it, and then I'm like, oh shit,
I guess I can't let them do that. I didn't
think about the fact that other parents are spasis. I'm kidding,
I'm kidding. Whatever. So let's jump into when you got
in into like making the films. Because the only movie

(23:35):
I've seen is like a zombie. I haven't seen you
did a movie before that. What was like the process
of getting to making the first features?

Speaker 2 (23:44):
The first feature I pretty much liked self financed it myself.
It was a slasher film. I shot it in two
thousand and it kind of went from It took me
like seven years to finish it, just because they pretty
much did everything on my own. You know.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
I saw the credits of Plega and I was like
Jesus Man, like, I did the same thing on Greywood's
plot and The Good Exorcist did a ton of visual effects.
Myself edited both of them myself, all that stuff. I
was just watching the credits and like watching Plega, going
like this is a visual effects shot. This is a
visual effects Every shot is a visual effects shot. Every

(24:22):
single shot has something in it. And then I see
the effects and it's like a handful of you did
stuff for and I'm like, oh my god, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
It was me. And luckily, like halfway through doing them,
I got a buddy from Argentina Tas. He came in
and helped me with a bunch of stuff. It wasn't
for him, I'd probably still be editing what it was
it was.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
The first movie was called The Terror Factor, correct.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, yeah, that was a that was my slasher, you know,
my first attempt at a feature length film.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I mean it's you got to learn from somewhere. I
think that there's this faux concept and I've talked to
a lot of little budget filmmakers about this of like
your first movie has to be the thing you're recognized for,
your masterpiece. This old fucking nineties concept that's completely gone.
Like we now have to work our asses off to
learn what works, what kind of directors we are, how

(25:17):
we make stuff. So I totally think that that's did
you do shorts before that or did you just go
right into The Terror Factor?

Speaker 2 (25:24):
I was pretty much like home movies with Friends, I
did like a I guess it was like an hour
long film that was like the closest I did to
a feature before The Terror Factor, and I would The
shorts were more like with my Friends, so I don't
I don't do many shorts. We actually did one my

(25:46):
probably like my first official like the short we did
last what text one and I got.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Like for those of you listening we had earlier, there
was like a thumbs down and up to It's like
random stuff on the screen. I have nothing to do
with it.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
People watching his live now right if you give signs
as it do something, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
I don't know's I've never seen that before, so I
have no idea.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
What Dek was like talking about the first film. Oh yeah,
the short film. First sure we actually did was I
had a buddy from a local filmmaker that did a festival,
a short film festival, horror short film festival. It was
the first one and he had reached down. He was like, hey,
do you guys have anything you want to show at
the short film? I was like, you want to show plaga.

(26:37):
He's like no, Unfortunately it's only short film, so it
has to be under fifteen minutes. So I called him up.
I was like, hey, I want to just you want
to just make a short film, you know, And it
was literally like we had three weeks to get it done.
So we shot in like three days. I edited it,
sent it to our buddy who does energy you know

(27:00):
that does that does the musical score, and he scored it,
like I think he didn't. Yeah, three days and you
know it was We were really pleased to how it
came out, you know.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
And it's on YouTube if you want to watch it.
It's called The Evil Unleashed.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
That's awesome. I mean, those projects are they're great for
learning and enjoying the experience because, let's be honest, the
feature films are fun. Don't get me wrong. I love it.
I love being on him, I love doing them. But
it takes a certain amount of fucking stupidity to get
those done. Like it's just it's ridiculous doing something for
three weeks. It's enjoyable, right like that.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
I think that's that was the thing. I was like
always like, if I'm gonna do something, it's gonna be
a feature. But that like, we did that short film.
We had fun and it was like almost it was
like you know how quickly we put it out, and
you know, there was like no really big stress if
he finished it. We finished it, you know, if we didn't,
it wasn't like, oh you know that I was worried

(27:59):
about it.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
So it was fun. We got to like test out
new ideas and you know what I'm saying, like, uh,
it was it was definitely a good experience. I was
like I would do more of these now, you know,
because it was like we got it done in three
weeks opposed to working two three years on something, you know,
and like, like you said, make it a feature is dumb.
It's like when we first started making doing Sinse of

(28:23):
the Double, we started like at the end of April
is when we first started shooting, and where like next
week is our final week pretty much of a principal photography.
And uh, it's just like in the beginning, it just
seems that hill seems so high and you're just like,
there's no way I'm going to finish this film, you know,

(28:46):
like it seems like so so massive that you'll never
reach the top of that hill. And it's it's like
you just got to take one step at a time
and you know, every every week, just keep keep keep
at it and climbing, and and soon enough you start
seeing the peak, you know, and you're like, oh, we're
almost there. Let's get this thing done. You know.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
No, I think that's a great metaphor too, because of
the fact that I don't know how you guys work.
I don't know if this is true, but I think
for a lot of filmmakers it is where when you
start the process, like as you're concepting everything, it's easy
to see what the goal is. It's like running a
marathon or climbing a mountain. You're going, you gotta You're
gonna get to the top, like that's the goal. And

(29:29):
so you start thinking about like you're almost thinking about
how am I gonna get down the mountain when I
get to the top, versus like how much fucking work
it is to get to the top, you know what
I'm saying. So, like we start having those conversations where
it's like what film festivals should we go to? What
do you how do you think we'll do distribution? Who
do you think is going to be interested? What's our audience?
Who are we marketing to? And you haven't even fucking

(29:49):
started and so like you set all of these things
and then as you get like a quarter of the
way into the process, like all of that has to
go away, all of that, all of those expectits. You
just got to go like, oh, that's right, I'm gonna
die climbing this mountain if I start thinking about that anymore.
And that's kind of like the humor of the process

(30:09):
is like at a certain point, you just do go like, oh,
what what's today's goal? Like that's all I can think about.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
And that's exactly how we did. It. Was like, you know,
he would tell me, how are we going to do this?
How are we going to get And I'm like, I
don't even want to think about, you know, the week after.
I just want to focus on what we have to
do this week. And that's that's how I kept my sanity.
Was like, this is my job for this week. I
gotta just get this part done and I'll worry about

(30:35):
the rest, you know, as the next shoot comes, I'll
worry about that little chunk, and we just keep moving,
keep taking that extra step, get forward.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yeah, man, the past and the future are the biggest foes,
like for me, and it could because I consistently will
look back as I'm working on a project and be like,
I've been working on this for two years, Like what's
the fucking point anymore? Like two years of my life
has been put into this thing, and then you look
at the future and you're like, what am I even
gonna do with it when it's done? Like what is

(31:07):
this anymore to me? But if you can look at
today and tomorrow and be like what can I do
right now? It gets done like that has That was
with Greywood's plot. That's the only thing that kept me
going at any point was just like what can I
do right now?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
We also watched that film. Yeah, I mean, Walter, we
really enjoyed it, so good job.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Uh you know twilight Zone kind of vibes to it.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, cool, thanks man, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's I mean,
it was fun because watching Play a Zombie like, well,
they're completely different movies. There was a lot in them
where I'm like, oh my god, Like they're doing all
the visual effects themselves. There's a lot of like similar
editing techniques. There's a certain energy that I felt where
I'm like, this is my kind of movie because it
is that you know, low budget but with fuck like

(31:58):
heart behind it, and like really I could tell you
guys put in the time that I know I put
in as well. And that's the kind of thing that
I really respect. When I watch stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
You're big on v you do all your VFX too, right,
so you you.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Them, Oh yeah, I understand. Man. When I was watching,
I'm just like, oh my god, I can see the
lighting effects that we're added here. I can see the
every little tiny thing that ninety percent of the people
aren't going to notice, and I'm just like, holy shit,
that's a lot.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Even stuff that people don't think there's any VFX. It's like,
this is the zombies, like the makeup would start running
on them, and you know, you see it skin. It's
like that that totally makes you takes you out of
the film for me anyway, Like you know, and he's
the worst. Like if he started a little tiny piece
of skin, He's like, no, no, I can see a little
skin there. You gotta get rid of that, so you
go in, particularly with a mask. I would sit with.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
Him editing for like six years and you know, just
give him call fee or whatever because I.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Don't know how I'm Yeah, this is the promoter or whatever,
try to get shipped and then act. He's the.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
But you're the and you're the second. You're the second
set of eyes. Like that's Daniel. For me, Daniel is
the second set of eyes. He's the guy who plays
Doug gray Woods. He's my producer, co writer, big beard. Yeah,
he is my second set of eyes. But I can't
tell you how many times we've been like at the
finish line and he's like, you know what I noticed?
And I'm like, that is ten hours of work. Dan,

(33:23):
We're like sending to a festival in seven I can't
get this done. And he's like, you know what would
make the movie better. I'm like I'm already doing it.
God damn it. Like those kind of things, and I
think those people are important. So Walter as as like,
you're essentially the second set of eyes, the producer like
a big, a big part of the process. What how

(33:46):
for you does it feel to like be in the
shoes that you're in, be the second set of eyes,
be the person who has to go like I see this.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
I Mean sometimes it's tedious, like you know, like I'll
go to people at work. I work at the airport,
and you got thousands of people that work with you,
and I'm like, dude, I'm making a movie next week.
You know, we need money and would you like to
and I'll get your name in the credits and I'll
give you like a bottle of wine from Argentina.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
How about that I can Yeah, yeah, I got you.
You know. So it's fun for me.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
It's like I'm on the hunts, you know, for like
stuff or like we needed a barn for instance, and
I have a friend who has a barn, so I
called her up and I'm like, hey, can can use
your barn and she's like yeah, cool. You know, we
had another producer trying to get a bond for us,
but it didn't work out. So I was like, you
know what, let me. So it's not like I became
a producer because I wanted to be. It's just because
it just so happens.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
The necessity of the creative process. And that's how Daniel
was the same way. He was just the guy who
was friends with me and I couldn't take a camera
out of my hand, and then he ended up being
the guy who on our new project, Little Lucha in
the Big Deal, we made the short film last year.
I was just like, dude, you're gonna be producer on
this find us locations and found like beautiful locations. But
then watching him, like having known him my entire life

(34:57):
and then watching him in this like different element of
having the like kiss ass at the wrestling at the
gym that we were at with the wrestling rig, I'm like, oh,
look at that, you're a producer. I love it. But
it's like he would never be the ass kisser in
the past to be like, thank you guys so much
for having us, you know, like you know, budget is tight.
I know we had said seven hundred dollars, what are

(35:17):
you guys thinking? And the dude was literally like, you
know what, guys, it's been so much fun. You're sawt
of the way. How about five hundred? Like they literally
like we're taking down the amount that we had to
pay just based on Dan kissing as I'm like, that's
a producer.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah, and I think that's like so important too. Is
like Walter Will just like kind of pushes me along too,
you know what I mean. It's like I don't know
with you, it's probably the same way like you were saying, like,
you know, if they watch something like, oh, you know
this part here, like we get to a point where
we're just like, all right, it's good.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
It's good.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
They're like, nah, I don't know. This part is like
and you get mad, but it's like at the same time,
you're like, you have fucking right.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
Guy, exactly. Yes. I remember watching the movie with my
wife for the first time Greywood's plot and she was like,
I don't believe that. And this is when like we're done,
the movie's done, we're watching it. She's like, I don't
believe that he would be willing to do what he does.
My character would be willing to do what he does
because of this guy. I don't think he likes him enough.

(36:19):
And I'm like racking my brain, like what does that mean?
That means nothing. That's literally like you're giving me zero
to go on here. And I just like it. But
it was like burned into my brain that something was missing,
and it just like clicked in the night. I'm like, oh,
and I wrote that whole scene. It's like the dinner
scene where he's sitting knocking at the table and we
were supposed to we had already submitted to a film festival.

(36:41):
We were supposed to be in it in like three weeks,
and I called Daniels, like, I wrote a scene, we
gotta go film it. He found us a location, like
in an instant. It was the basement of the furniture
store he was working part time at for like some
extra money. We just snuck in there. We wrote it,
we filmed it. I used score from the entire rest
of the movie, so that score, like literal really is
just like chunks from the rest of a movie. And

(37:02):
we filmed it just me, Dan and my buddy Strauss
in an evening. I edited, we cut it, We sent
it to that film festival like two weeks later, and like,
but it was because I hated that. I hate it,
But it's my favorite scene in the movie now because
of that, the fact that I was willing to go
do it. I think that's the beautiful thing about making
the kind of low budget films we're making is we

(37:23):
have that ability to do that. Like if I did
that on a bigger budget movie or even on like
a production shoot, there there's no way if I was like, Hey,
I have this really great idea, they'd be like, no,
you've spent the budget on production.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Serious, Yeah, what's his name there students Fielberg, No, with
the Justice League remaked, Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Oh the Zach Snyder like.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
If you have a studio, if you're loaded and you
have a studio in your backyard, Yeah, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
I could do it.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
True.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
That was the Rodriguez thing too, like him with his
with his like especially his later movies. He made that
Alita Battle Angel set in his backyard so he could
use it for like three other movies.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
I saw, like, you know it was I think it was.
It was like a document documentary on I don't know
if it was Desperado from Deillon, and it showed his
like his studio, excuse me, his ranch and his studio,
and I was just like, oh my god, that's like
my dream house.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Dude. I got to live on that studio for like
three weeks and or for like two months, and it
was like amazing, You're just like it's it changed my
life in the in the sense of like now I'm
a hoarder and I don't have the fucking airport to
keep my ship in. But like seeing all this stuff
Robert kept throughout the years, I'm like, oh my god,

(38:46):
I can't get rid of anything.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Now yeah, Oh yeah, well I watched I watched the
show you were on, and uh it was cool when
you're like in the studio and you just see like
all the memorabilia from like from Justice on. It had
like the gun, the cock gun thing that cut the pops.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, it's all over the place. I would run around,
like messing around with shit from Spy Kids, like behind.
Remember when I finally when we premiered the movie The
Good Exorcist Itself by I brought my friends over to Troublemaker.
We all were hanging out there and I had access.
I probably shouldn't say this, but fuck it. I had
access to like the whole room because it was a

(39:23):
party that was happening and everyone was drinking, so I
could like no one was like watching what I was doing,
So I ran my friends around him, like check out
this the gun from Spy Kids. Check out this the
guitar from Desperado, like all of his cool stuff, and
he's got that Robert has that huge mural from the
end of that painting from the end of From Dust

(39:45):
Till Dawn on his wall. It's like the last shot
of the movie, and it's so cool. It's massive. You know,
you know, like the old movies when they would use
the big painting for visual effect, the.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Met paint they would put in the actual shot as
at panting Bag.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah, so that the big one. When you see the
whole like Aztec Ruin at the end of From Dust
Till Dawn he has it hanging and then you see
it like in person, looking at it close up in
all these tiny little details, You're just like, I want
a mad painting.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
I want one, give me one.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
We did something similar with the you know, the part
where they knew where the thing gets split and you
see the heroes like leaving Ye made like the cliff
out of like what was it two by four with
mud and stuff, and then yeah, and we made like
he put like a little tube and the thing to
make it look like the drainage system.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
Sweet. So there are a lot of cool like details
like that in the movie that I really enjoyed. You know,
there's a lot of like I mean, there's an incredible
amount of special effects. One of the things I really
wanted to ask was locations to me, is it's a
character that I think a lot of independent filmmakers are,
you know they Yeah, you lack it. It's hard to

(41:02):
get They're expensive finding a place to shoot, and then
especially if you're making a horror movie and you're gonna
be spraying blood all over the place, like God forbid
you ruin Grandma's house. Like that's the thing, Like it's
hard to find these locations. But you guys were moving
all over the place. There was incredible amount of locations,
tons of like apartments, blood splashing on stuff. I was

(41:22):
watching them trying to go like where did they how
did they use this? What did they do? What was
the trick? What was the shot? Like? What where were
they like cutting corners or finding ways to work around it?
And I noticed some but others I'm like what how
did they do this? What was it like to find
the locations and figure out where you were gonna film stuff?

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Well, first, the apartments was actually one of the act
the actor that played one of the the guy that
gets disintegrated, one of the the agent presidential administrator that
gets incinerated by the aliens. He he worked for a
hospital and they where they have a bunch of warehouses
where they keep like all their furniture and you know,

(42:03):
they warehouse everything from the TVs to monitors, to all
kinds of stuff, and you had this massive warehouse and
we were like, oh, we're trying to find apartments to
film in, and he's like, oh, I got a you know,
I got a huge warehouse you guys can use and
if you want to build a set in there. So,
like the apartments to the Heroes, they were all one set,

(42:24):
and we basically built this one set room with a kitchen,
and then we would shoot, you know, one one of
the heroes apartments, repaint it. And we had like furniture,
all kinds of stuff already there, so we just we
would change everything around, bring new furniture in, you know,
change the the refrigerators. They had refrigerators there. They had

(42:46):
like everything you can think of, plants, they had pictures,
you know. So we had like a whole studio almost
to ourselves, and we would just repaint it. All right,
we're done with this one. Let's let's redo it to
Nash's apartment, you know. And each character had their own color,
like and had a yellow room. He had a yellow shirt.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
It's like the Power Ranger is a type of I
love that.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Man. I'm jealous as hell the concept of having that
at your disposal is amazing. And I think here's the thing.
I think a lot of people do have that ability.
They just don't know they have it. You have, you know,
up your dad has a large garage that you can
use for a day and build a set in, but like,
you just don't. It's hard to think about things in
that way. Sometimes.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
That same guy actually saved us on this movie because
we needed a location like a wooded area, and we
you know, we were actually gonna try to do a
gorilla style and go into like these woods near school,
and he was like, hey man, I got woods in
the back of my arm. And it was the same
guy that gave us the warehouse. You know. It's just
like you saved us again. Thank you, thank you. Yeah,

(43:50):
that's last night.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
So we have a long night with the building, the fire, campfire,
all that stuff, you know, Like he lets us just
be there, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Screaming, fuck you bitch, I'm gonna get you. And it's
like telling the neighbors don't worry, they're making a movie.
When he comes down, he smokes us a guy and
watches us for a few I love that. That's amazing.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
He's also an actor in the movie, so he's gonna
be in the in the beginning of the movie.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Yes, I find that one of the best things you
can do for location is just allow people to watch
like it just totally. Like every single location we've found
that's been great. If we're just like, hey, come come
check it out. You can be a part of it,
whether they're in it or not. You know, it depends
on the person and what's happening. Most of the time
they don't want to. They're just like, no, I just

(44:36):
want to see the process and be like, feel like
I'm a part of something. And I can't tell you
how many times that has led to them being like,
come on back anytime. And we get to use locations
over and over. And the cool thing about the Woods
is I learned on Greywood's plot, like every angle is
a new piece of location. Yes, like lating it different

(44:59):
every like Greywood's plot looks like a massive piece of land.
And we filmed at two different spots. The cabin stuff
was all at a cousin's house and then all of
the stuff with them, like walking through the Woods was
at my sister's house. But my sister only has like
a couple of acres. But we were just like turn
the camera. We'd film it in the seasonal change of Minnesota,

(45:20):
like every piece, like the leaves would start to fall,
and we'd be like, let's film again, Like now it's
a different part of the woods where the leaves are
all dead. No one knows, like no one has ever
been like how did it go from spring at the
beginning of the movie to winter at the end. And
the movie is only supposed to take place over like
a week one day. Yeah, it's like it's like, my
the movie does not take place over a long time,

(45:41):
but it literally shows every season throughout the movie because
it took me a year to film it. So no,
but in number one black and White and number two
it's a horror movie. No one even thinks about it.
No one cares. So I think that yeah, those tricks
of like finding those kind of locations, but building a set, well,
I think the other thing is a lot of people
fear that they won't be able to do it. Did

(46:03):
you guys actually like build the three walls and create
the whole?

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, it was basically it was. It was three walls
and then we built it was almost like a middle
wall where the door was so Basically there was like
a structure that was maybe about I would say, like
ten feet so it was the door and just enough
to have like you know, frame them answering the door

(46:28):
with a picture on either side, and it was open
on the other sides. And it was really kind of
challenging because it was like, you know, you'd want to
do a certain shot like down and looking up or something.
You couldn't do particular shots because you would reveal that there's.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
No ce there's no ceiling, yeah, exactly, you can't.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
You can't aim it a certain way because then you're
see in like the there's no there's no wall there.
It's just an open warehouse, you know. So it does
it does post some challenges, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
We built it was kind of like we built like
four feet away from the wall where we put the windows,
you know, so if we actually got a shot from
I know, there's one of the characters that is like
looking out the window. So he left us enough room
to be able to get his shut looking out the window,
you know, and super imposing on an actual building, you know,
to make it look click. It was an actual place.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
That's awesome. So for a movie like this, and we
can move on to Sins of the Devil as well.
I'm curious what the writing process is like for you all.
This movie is very play a zombie is very There's
a lot happening. There's a variety of elements. There's comedy,
there's very zany comedy, but there's also like dialogue driven comedy.

(47:45):
But then there's also like you know, U gross out
effect comedy. There's a lot of different things happening. So
what was the I'm watching movie like this? It always
makes me curious what the writing process is like.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
That one was, uh, we wrote with it was me
and my my ax at the time, but she would
do a lot of the type in and you know,
throw out ideas and you know, uh, the script. I
don't know if this is happens to you, but it's
like you start off with the script that you write,
and then as you film and it's like there's no
way we're going to get this all done, so now

(48:18):
you have to start like reworking the film and like
changing aspects of it because it's like, there's no way
we can do this scene. So but how can we
we we make this scene without having it this gringdo scene,
you know, like change it a little bit, and uh
you know, and that's how it happened. Like the beginning
scene where it was showed like Nash with the girl

(48:40):
giving him a herd the necklace, there was supposed to
be this huge gross out scene where the zombies. Yeah,
it was supposed to be in a party, so it
changed already from the party. But the actual day of filming,
it took us so long to set up and the
actors that did all their makeup, they're ready to film,
and then it took us a long time to finish
the car scene. So there was supposed to be this

(49:01):
whole scene where one of the zombs they hold him
down and one of the zombies they come, they bring
him in and have him really like throw up on Nash.
You know. They's supposed to be like this whole crazy
scene happening. And then the actors was like, oh, we
two of them are like we have to leave, actually
you know, don't. We can't stay any longer. And they're like,
all right, well, how can we get this done in like,

(49:23):
you know, thirty minutes, you punched him, you smell him,
their heads together and it's just like you know, as
your film and you just you have to kind of
adapt and you know, be willing to to not stay
married to one shot, you know. Like sometimes I think
that's where a lot of people fail at making a films,

(49:43):
Like they can't they can't adapt to the moment and
that they're so focused on getting what they want and
sometimes you have to like pick and choose your battles
and be like, all right, I'm not gonna be able
to finish this if I go this way. I'm going
to have to change some of these ideas around on
the spot, you know.

Speaker 4 (50:01):
So, like we also started picking up a crew members
as we went along, like, hey, I'm a zombie, but
do you need a hand doing this? Like it just started,
you know, Like we don't have like a giant crew,
like even with the Sins, Like it's people that you know,
dedicating their.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Time to help, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
No, I mean on big movies that's legally not possible,
Like you can't touch equipment that you aren't that you're
not in that part of the crew. And it's one
of the benefits we have is like I mean, if
you watch Rebel without a crew, there's constantly moments where
Brittany is picking up a boom mic or Avery is
running a special effect or like everyone just did everything,

(50:43):
And there are a lot of moments where I would
literally be like, hey, guys, go do something so that
I can go set up to break the rules, Like
because the reality show element of it, we had to
follow certain stupid fucking rules. So they'd be like, you
can't climb a ladder more than two steps, and I'd
be like, yeah, literally, that was a fucking real I

(51:04):
couldn't wear sandals. I wear sandals all the time. It's
sort of my hippie thing I do. And I got
in trouble for wearing sandals on set, like they're like,
you gotta put shoes on, and so I made a
so I didn't make I asked Avery. I'm like, hey, man,
can you run and get me shoes and socks? Once
once I had an argument with the producers about how
stupid that is and how that has nothing to do

(51:25):
with independent filmmaking and whatnot. Avery went and got me
shoes and socks.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yeah, it's safe to conser it. Yeah, it's like, you're
supposed to have shoes on so you don't stub a toe.
I guess I don't know whatever reason. And so because
we were technically still union based on the reality show,
not based on my movie, but like all of that stuff,
so I had Avery go get me shoes and socks.
So if you watch Rebel, there's like a whole chunk
of it where I'm wearing rainbow socks with shorts because

(51:55):
Avery came back with fucking rainbow socks for some reason,
which I don't even think we're mine. I don't know
he got them, but I just wore them and was like,
screw it, I'm going with the rainbow socks for this,
I guess. But this adapting concept is so true, and
one of the biggest jokes I get, or one of
the biggest things I get, is everyone makes fun of
me for that moment and Rebel without a Crew where
I'm like, oh my god, these trees. What am I

(52:18):
gonna do with these trees? And if like, from the outside,
it seems so stupid, like it's such a silly thing
to say, but the reality was I had written a
scene where all of the plants were supposed to be dead,
and Avery's character Stanley was supposed to be watering dead
plants like that was my joke, and I easily could
have stayed married to this stupid joke and been like,

(52:38):
I don't know, I can't, I can't film here. There's
a giant living tree here. And instead I was just like,
oh fuck it, that joke's not even that funny to
begin with. It's a random like thing. Let's just instead
have him watering the tree way too long and way awkwardly.
So just adapting and changing. And I think our egos
as artists suck because they make us not want to

(52:59):
change things. But we have to like let that go.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Yeah, and that's that scene where we get have time
you wanted to give up the next day? Oh yeah, yeah,
that's almost almost. It's easy. It's easy to get overwhelmed.
It's like, especially you're a director, so you probably I
don't know if you feel this way too. It's like
any day you show up on set, you like it's
just riddled with like anxiety and stress and it's like

(53:25):
it's such a horrible feeling. Yeah it is. And then
at the end of the day, you know when when
you're not doing something, yeah, yeah, you miss it. You're like,
what am I gonna do now? I gottay, So it's
it's the weirdest thing. But it's like when you're on
set and it's like it's it's easy to get overwhelmed
and you just want to crawl up into a little
ball and hide somewhere, you know, and you can't. You

(53:48):
just gotta, you gotta, you gotta get out of that
mindset and just be like focused on the job. And
like he was saying, unplug his zombie. We had shot
literally for like, you know, fourteen hours straight. I think
I didn't sleep because my brain was so wired. Oh yeah,
and maybe passed out for like an hour. So I
was like almost at my breaking point, and I was

(54:10):
just like I can't, we can't do this. This is
just too overwhelming, you know. And we did the junk
yard scene and I was just like, you know, I'm sorry,
We're not able to make this movie. I'm done, you know, sorry,
I let you guys down and stuff, you know, And
he kind of had to give me like a pep talk,
and he's like, well, you know what if we just

(54:31):
take this element out, you know, out of the film,
like don't even worry about that, like just eliminate that
and like, you know, do this other scene instead. And
you know, and then I was just like that might work,
you know, and then you started really thinking. You go
home and you get a good night's sleep first of all,
I recommend, and then come back to it with a
fresh mind and you know, figure figure it out.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
You know, Yeah, this is go for it.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (54:59):
Were you gonna say something? So no?

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I said it worked. The scene actually worked in our favor.
You know. It's the scene where we're walking through the.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
And we get these guys are like, hey, hey, get
out of here, you know, and then I shoot him
in the head. Basically it was supposed to be them
hog tie in us having this whole big conversation with us,
smacking us around, you know.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yeah, there's there's supposed to be survivalists. Yeah, and there
was this huge scene with them and like we couldn't
figure out how to how to get it done, and
he was just like, hey, why not just shoot him
in the head And that's the end of the scene.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
And it's great. No. Yeah, And sometimes I think you
got to put your take yourself outside of what you
want to see and just think about, like, well, what
is the audience going to see and what can we
get done? Because either there if either we're gonna get
rid of this and they're not gonna see anything, or
we figure it out and show them something that they're
still going to enjoy seeing.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
And that's bes stuff happens all the time. I think
it's one of those. Yeah, I mean it happens all
the time on big movies. I've worked on massive movie
sets where I see them making Copper literally talking to
Robert Rodriguez on Elite a Battle Angel. He's talking about
compromises he makes on a two hundred million dollar movie,
and I'm like, oh, it never changes, It never fucking changes.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
And a lot of times it's literally about just like, well,
what can we do right now? Is going back? Like
every day is climbing the mountain literally every day, Like
you get there and you're just like, I don't have
the energy to do this. I have, I can't fucking
make it. You see it on Rebel without a Crew,
there's that moment where I'm just like, I don't know
a fucking movie I making. I'm done with this, And
it's it's funny because in this show, I'm just like,

(56:33):
I'm so fucking tired. I don't want to do this anymore.
But the reality was I woke up, had coughed up
blood in the shower, had bronchitis, was super sick. And
I called my wife and I'm like, I can't. I
literally can't. I I am like the most energetic person
and I'm like constantly moving and people make fun of
me for how much I move, and I like couldn't move.

(56:53):
I physically couldn't do it. And I called my wife.
I was like, I'm fucking quitting the show. There are
two days before we were supposed to be done, and
it was so it was so bad that she called
Daniel and was like, he is going to quit. He's
not not as normal over a dramatic self. He's done.
You need to fix this. And Daniel called me and
was like, hey, man, go take an hour and run

(57:15):
to Spirit Halloween, buy some fake blood. Just fucking enjoy
yourself for an hour. I did totally change my day.
I came back and Daniel and I sprayed some blood.
We did the Teddy Bear killing scene and all that stuff,
and we just had some fun and we're like, fuck it,
if we're not gonna make a movie. Like I changed
my mindset where I was like, I have to be here.
I can't go home. The reality show was going to

(57:37):
force me to stay for two more days. I can
fuck around and kill a teddy bear or I can
go home. And I killed the teddy bear and the
rest of the day we just had a total blast.
The two of us just hung out, filmed all of
the all my favorite shots in the movie were filmed
in that day, and then the last day we filmed
the final stuff we had to get before we were done.
But it was just like, let's do one thing. Let's

(57:59):
do one thing thing. That's all you have to do
is one thing, and then the second thing happens, and
the third thing happens. You keep going. But just do
that one thing and you can keep going. Okay, So
tell me about Sins of the Devil. What's happening because
people can go see Plago Zombie now, but I'm very
curious after seeing it what this is and what to expect.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Okay, So Sins of the Devils, you're gonna be a
lot different from Plaga Zambie. Actually it's it's more of
a serious tone. So it's kind of I would say,
Rosemary's Baby Devil's Yeah, the Devil's Rejects kind of it's
probably the best way to explain it. But it's about

(58:40):
a cult and you know, they they show up stalking
this stocking this young lady and her friends, and you know,
you know, you find out through the movie why they're there,
you know, the purpose of the reason why they're they're
they're after her, but you know, and it's kind of
like it focuses on the cult family and also Ashley

(59:05):
and her friends. She's this it's her eighteenth birthday, and
then like her and her friends having some drinks and
have a little party at her house. So you kind
of we we focus on the two different aspects of
the two families. You know, you get the kids and
then you got this cult, this dysfunctional family.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
So I know, I know you you told me that
you've been working out, you've been filming stuff. How has
the process changed, Like what have you learned from Plagua
that has completely changed or that you're doing different on.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
This project, different hours film. Yeah, we have to overdo it.
That's that's one of the biggest things.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
Like, oh that's interesting.

Speaker 5 (59:48):
Yeah, we had like we thought we would be like
we're gonna get everything this this this this done, and
like we we just got like a small little snippet,
you know, and we knew like, don't bite off more
than you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Can jew you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
Yeah, that's the best advice. Truly, scheduling is the real
way to make a movie. It's literally scheduling and if
you think it's gonna take an hour, give yourself two
and a half, like for real. It's one of the
things I've learned is like I would rather over book
myself and be able to like spend a little time

(01:00:21):
working on something else. Shoot. Some pickups do something like
there's never too much time in a shot or or
a scene to be filmed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
On a movie set. It's like it's so insane, like
it's almost comical on what will go wrong. It's it's
like it never it could be completely silent, and then
as soon as you're about to hit record and who
Mike is ready, all of a sudden, somebody's starting up
there freaking lawnmow.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
Yes literally happened. U Graywood's plot literally happened. We fucking
talked to the neighbors and we were like my sister
we were filming in her yard. When she talked to
the neighbors. She's like, they're gonna be filming Wednesday from
two to seven, Like it's just gonna be a five
hour shoot this day. We get out there at one thirty,
We set up, we're early, we're making sure everything's right.

(01:01:09):
I go to roll camera and it's like a fucking
dialogue moment. It's like that moment between Keith and I
where he's like, I don't want to do this anymore, man,
Like this isn't fun, Like why are we doing this shit?
It's like super heartfelt and fucking A lawnmower starts up
in the background. I'm like, wow, how of all the
times to mow?

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And you know that they're just starting, so it's gonna
take them a little while to finish it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
And it got They've got two acres because they're out
in the fucking middle of nowhere, Minnesota, so they have
a huge plot of land. So I'm like, we're fucked.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
What happened to us was we film on the weekends?
Is we all have jobs and stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01:46):
Every fucking weekend that we planned rained, Yeah, one day
every like, not during the week, we're.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Filming this weekend rain. Yeah, we're not filming this weekend,
no rain, like it was like weather.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
We'll do it because it's so true. It's so true.
When we were I went to Minnesota to film uh
Little Lucha in the big Deal in April, and it
got it was crazy mild winter, like not that much snow,
not that cold. Got there it was fucking eighty degrees.

(01:02:19):
On the drive to the location, it was so hot
and we didn't have any ac in the car and
we got We're all sweat and it was miserable. Drove
two hours to location, got there, filmed. The first day
was really warm. It started to rain in the evening
and then we got drove all the way two hours
back home. We had to film there two days. Second

(01:02:40):
day we start heading back. It's getting chilly, it's getting
real cold, and we film all day. We're heading back
and the fucking rain is freezing. So we have this
like treacherous drive back. But we also had gotten rain.
And Scarlett who was the plays the she was co
director co star with me in it. She has this
like big wig and we're all like terrified of the

(01:03:01):
wig getting ruined because the wig has to be at
the wrestling match that's at the beginning of the movie,
so the wig can't get ruined. So like the diva
of the movie was the wig, Like that literally was
the thing that became the diva. And then we wake
up on the third day to go to the wrestling
ring and there's like a foot of snow. So we
went from eighty degrees sweating our asses off to a
foot of snow and no one can make it to

(01:03:24):
the wrestling ring that day because there's too much snow.
I'm like, how, of all of the weekends to choose
to film, why do we choose the weekend that went
from eighty to twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, you literally can't rate it. It's like it's it's unbelievable. Yeah,
and it's always ready ready and slate. You know, it's
like scenes since of the double scene Nate take three click, yeah,
and you're like sitting there, all right, let's wait, just
wait one second, is he doing laps around the block?

(01:03:54):
What's going on? We were able to pull it off.
We only have one technically one more shoots, so we
didn't bang it out in since April till now.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
So well, you know the week as guys, I'm super
excited after watching Plague, I am very excited to see
what you guys do next. I know it's gonna be different,
but I know it's still gonna have your stamp on it.
So I'm very excited to see where can people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Oh no, I was gonna say, there's always gonna be
like a little element of comedy in there. You know,
we're gonna give you something that for the most part,
it's more of a serious tone.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Yeah, we got like young actors and stuff like in
the twenties and stuff. They look like they're eighteen. So
and then we got us crazy guys playing like the Cult.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
And just look, you know, I still have fun with
the camera. But the Plague Zombie was literally probably a
ninety percent of that movie was handheld, you know, to
give like that that kinectic U you know, uh, gorilla
style look to it, and if it was like a
VFX shirt and I needed to put it on a

(01:04:54):
tripod just for the sake of, you know, making sanity.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
When you have to like yep, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
So this one is more methodical and you know, visually, yeah,
it's like a camera and stay steady in mooths, you know,
so smoothly, and yeah, I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
I'm super excited to see it, and I can't wait
to have you back on when it's done, for like,
I need you guys to come back and talk about
it because I'm very excited to after when I'm able
to watch it, to talk about the differences, because I
think that I can relate in as much as like
The Good Exorcist was such a massive change from Greywood's plot,

(01:05:30):
which is such a massive change from everything I'm working
on now, from literally like you talking about the change
from like being more of a you know, comedy zany
almost like a living cartoon of a movie, to doing
something more serious. I very much felt that as I
moved from The Good Exorcist to gray Woods plot, and
it actually taught me like, oh, I don't know if

(01:05:52):
I necessarily want to be just in the horror genre
or like working in this, I actually found that I
wanted to do some action comedy, Like I very much
love action comedy, and that's like something that I wanted
to work and so I started writing scripts in that world.
So going from something so's a andy, going like I'm
gonna make like a call to horror film.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Yeah, well that's a good point too, because I remember
I went to go to a book signing, Bruce Campbell
book signing, and he did like a little Q and
A beforehand, and there was a guy that asked him
the questions like what would be your advice for a
horror filmmaker, And Bruce was like, well, for Starners, I

(01:06:32):
wouldn't call yourself a horror filmmaker. I call yourself a filmmaker.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
I would encourage you to, like, go out and make
a comedy, go out and make a romance. He's like,
that's how you become an, you know, a well rounded filmmaker.
If you understand these different styles and genres, it'll make
you a better horror filmmaker at the end of it,
you know. And I really took that time, and I'm like,
that makes a lot of sense, because horror comedy kind

(01:06:58):
of go hand in hand, you know. If you have
to know how to make sometimes you want to make
somebody cry, you know, you have to learn that that skill,
you know, So it is it is good to dip
your toe in different genres and it'll make you a
more well grounded filmmaker at the end of it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
You know. I saw this interview with Jason Siegel recently
where he said he was working on Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
He was writing the script and he went to jud
Appetite and was like, what do you have any like
suggestions for writing this to make it funnier and make
it work, and Jutt Appetitle was like, don't write a comedy.
Write a drama because the funny. You're naturally funny. You

(01:07:36):
can do funny, but what your movie is gonna lack
is any character or any depth or any reason. So
write it as a drama and then let the comedy
unfold on its own. And that I took that to
heart where I'm like, oh yeah, man, I know I
love blood and guts and nastiness that's gonna come Like
those things are gonna happen in my movies. I also

(01:07:56):
know that I love improv on set, I love zaniness,
I love silly. We'll find funny. But what I struggle
with is like figuring out my full arc, like where
does this story begin and where does it end? And
how do I like make sure that the story is
something that's compelling all the way through. And so that's
been It's just everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and

(01:08:18):
figuring out like what's your strength and what's your weakness.
Dive into your weakness. Do that because then you're going
to learn the most and the strengths are going to
come naturally as you progress.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Yeah, this has been so fun. I cannot wait to
have you back. Where can people follow you? Guys follow?
Do you have a website? Where can people see Plug
a Zombie all that stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Go for it?

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
So we have instagrams. The Sins of the Devil one
is Sins of the Devil twenty four, the Plug a
Zombie one is Plug a Zombie four. Everything is four.
Then we have I guessed you on your personal one.
It's psychonic film. Yeah, psychonic film. Mine is Walter Cobra

(01:08:59):
with the k Rivero Cobra because of my character and
Plug a Zombie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
And then we everything on Facebook the same. You know
Plug a Zombie. Where the do So we're we're all
over the place. Just awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
And I think I watched I watched Plug a Zombie
last night on to B the end, So I recommend
checking it out because it is it's a really fun time.
It is a straight up I did it right. Put
it on a big screen like projector watch it with
watch it with popcorn and a beer and just enjoy
yourself because it is incredibly fun.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Yeah, we did that at a we did our premiere
at the church we filmed that, you know, at the
end of the movie when we did the premiere there,
because they have like a theater and the projector, and
there was.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
These old ladies that go to the church watching this,
eating popcorn and like, oh, this is so funny.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
And then at one point I'm the gay zombie and
they're like, oh my god, that's Walter, you know, because
I have like a mustache and I walk in and
I did a little you know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Yeah, because it's like the people you would never suspect
it would have a good time. Yeah, they were having
a good time. And that's what we love.

Speaker 4 (01:10:06):
We tell people we're not trying to do the Godfather here.
We're trying to make a fun movie that you can enjoy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
You know. You know, people are picking it apart because
of this, and that was just enjoyed. That's all, you know.
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
I think, I think you know, you either.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Get it or you don't. I've seen, you know, not
to bring up evil dead too, but it's like, you know,
my older brother was like, dude, this is the dumbest
freaking movie ever. Tell you, what do you like about this?

Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
So see you get it, you get you get camp,
or you don't get camp. Some people think like the
camp is because you don't know what you're doing, and
they don't understand it's like, that's the whole purpose of
what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
Exactly. I love it. Thank you guys so much for
coming on the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Show, and with a laugh, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
Oh, such incredible dudes. That was a really fun conversation
for me to have with them. I like I said,
I enjoyed them a lot. And it's so cheesy and
fun and campy and all in the best way possible,
I think, and shows what you can do with very
little but time and the energy and the will to
get it done. All right, So it's time for the

(01:11:13):
Flush Studios book Club. This is one of my favorite parts.
I don't think i've done this book yet. It's not
film related necessarily, but it's a book that I hated
when I first read it, talked about it a lot
over the next year, and have gone back to multiple
times to just find inspiration from it. Is called The

(01:11:33):
Creative Act, a way of Being with Rick Rubin. Now,
I got to write these down because I forget if
I've talked about these books, and I sort of just
grabbed them off my shelf, and I'm probably going to
repeatedly grab the same ones over again. But I don't
think I talked about The Creative Act a Way of
Being yet. And if you haven't read it or you
don't own it, I do highly recommend it. And here's

(01:11:56):
why I think it has a lot Here's what I
didn't like about it. First, it has a lot of
things where Rick Rubin is basically saying like, just go
do it, Just make the thing. That's great. I love that.
But Rick Rubin has a fuck load of money and
doesn't have to worry about all of the bullshit of
the day job and all the other stuff that comes
with life. And so good on you, Rick Rubin. But man,

(01:12:18):
it's not as easy sometimes for some of us to
get up here. I'm just gonna open the book and
jump to passage. Create an environment where you're free to
express what you're afraid to express. So I originally would
have looked at that and been like, fuck you, Rick Rubin.
That's maybe a little aggressive, but I did look at
it and there was a negativity where I'm like, yeah,
that would be great. I wish I had the way

(01:12:40):
to express myself in that sort of way. But since
disconnecting a little bit from it being Rick and thinking
about it from the concept of like, there's one passage
in here where he says something like I'm gonna paraphrase this,
but he says something like, don't consider yourself to be

(01:13:01):
consider yourself to be an artist. You're either an artist
or or not. A monk doesn't say, well, I kind
of am. You know, I'm a monk part time. I
do it here and there. Whatever, you're either you're either
an artist or you don't. It's not about the the
thing that you put out there. It's about the entire
expression of who you are. I love this concept because

(01:13:21):
I struggle with this. I have the worst case. I mean,
I have a terrible case of imposters syndrome that I
constantly have to get over it. One of the reasons
I do this podcast is to get over my imposter syndrome,
to talk to filmmakers, to feel like I'm an artist,
to feel like I'm creating. And I think a lot
of you would probably consider me a film director. I've
made multiple movies. But every day I wake up and

(01:13:43):
the first thing I think isn't like I'm a director,
it's literally like, who am I today? What am I doing?
What is my point of this day? Am I an editor?
Am I a fucking painter? Am I a whatever? And
it's hard for me to just go like, no, I'm
just the artist that I am. I'm just going to
go do this. And so that concept of you're either
a monk or you're not, there's no like in between.

(01:14:05):
You just are what you are. I love that and
this book has inspired me multiple times, and I think
that's what it's good for. It's good to use. I
don't know how many people are religious on here, but
as I'm not, but I was when I was growing
up and we had a book. I was a Lutheran
and we had a book called The Catechism, Martin Luther's

(01:14:26):
Small Catechism, and I used to We used to read
it every day. We would pick up art, we'd get
to school, we'd go into Bible class and we'd start
reading from Martin Luther's Small Catechism. And I find that
there's books that I have now that I have made
into my ritual books, books that I pick up, grab
read a passage and try to learn something from and

(01:14:48):
just consistently remind myself of The Catechism isn't that big
of a book, but we used it for years and
years and years. People literally use it their entire lives
to keep reaffirming themselves of their faith, religion, their beliefs,
all that shit. I do the same thing with some
books I've got, you know, Rebel without a crew of
the book I've gotten you know, cut handful of other ones,
but the Creative Act a way of being has become

(01:15:10):
one of those where I pick up, read a chapter
and go like, Okay, fucking needed that today, or how
can I use that? What can I take away from it?
So I highly recommend getting it, reading it through, using
it as a passage book here and there, and uh,
you know, part of you may think it's a pile
of shit, honestly, like I was there, but I think
it's a really interesting and fascinating book. Let me know

(01:15:33):
what you think of it, if you read it, if
you dig it, if you hated it, let me know,
speakpipe dot com slash low budget Rebels. You can go
there and leave me an audio message and join my
book club. That's how you join. You go leave me
an auto audio message on the book, whether it's a
book that you read from weeks before or book that
you read now. I would love to hear what you
thought of it, and then you can be a part

(01:15:55):
of the Flush Studios Low Budget Rebels book Club. All right, everybody,
thank you so much for listening. This has been a
fantastic episode and I appreciate everyone who's been listening. The
numbers have been going up and I that's fucking fascinating
and fun for me just to see that people are listening,
to get those messages from you all that you're listening.
All right, until next time, Hey, stay rebellious, keep kicking ass,

(01:16:19):
keep doing your thing, keep making that art that you
want to make, and as always, don't let you be
low folks. Low Budget Rebels is brought to you by
the indie film Hustle Network, recorded at Flush Studios headquarters
in tropical Atlanta, Produced by the film daddy Josh Stifter.

(01:16:39):
Bla bla bla boo,

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