IFH 776: Crafting Comedy Without Limits: The Indie Spirit Behind Chasing Molly with Shelley Pack & Josh Sutherland
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You are listening to the IFH Podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork.com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, episode number 776. Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. Louis L'Amour.

Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood, it's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, how to turn your independent film into a profitable business.

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- Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Dave Boulis. - If it wasn't quality content, you won't see it. And we weren't forced to water down any of the comedy, which was just so liberating to be able to create something that you just find genuinely funny without any restrictions.

Right, right. And that's awesome. And that's – there's no test audiences, nothing like that. But – and Josh, just how did you get started in the whole visual effects side and behind the camera side of things? Man, yeah.

Yeah, I like to tell people I've been making movies forever. You know, I was definitely the kid who took their parents' camcorder, and luckily enough, my parents were very supportive of that and let me, you know, use our VHS VCR to edit some movies and make some mistakes growing up, make some small short films and stuff like that. And, yeah,

I went to film school at the University of Texas and after that kind of made my way out to the West Coast and I've been kind of grinding in the industry ever since then. And, you know, super glad to have supportive parents, right, who kind of encouraged that no matter what I wanted to do.

I will say a funny, kind of a cool little story is when I was 10 years old, I still remember my uncle taking me and my brother to see The Matrix. And he told us, he's like, hey, guys, don't tell your mom about you taking this R-rated movie, but I want you guys to see it because they spent two years learning Kung Fu just to, you know, before they even started making the movie, just so they could do it right. And I remember seeing that movie, being a 10-year-old, and it blowing my mind. And I

I feel like ever since then, Ford, it was definitely something I was like, this is what I want to do. And, you know, I was lucky enough to get an internship with a company called Captivate Entertainment right out of college. And my main goal was like, I want an internship on the lot. I want an internship on the lot somewhere. And their office at the time happened to be on the lot at Universal. And so, you know, being...

Fresh in the industry, just out of school, and getting to go on to the Universal lot every day was really awesome and really eye-opening. And once I finished that up,

I got a – my first big kind of gig in the industry was I got to be a set PA on a movie called Skyline. If anyone remembers that movie, it was about aliens sucking people out of the sky. And, you know, I ended up being on set for that whole run. And, you know, it was the visual effects company that actually made and produced that movie for me.

And they were like, hey, do you want to be, you know, in the office? You're really great on set. And I was like, hey, a steady paycheck. Yeah, let's let's try that. That sounds good. And so I ended up started working for them. And literally, you know, through that experience.

I feel like I've done every crew position under the sun, right? Like from key set PA to VFX editing to then, um, you know, first AC to, um, camera operator to location, sound mixer to colorist to, um, producing to directing. And so just literally ever since then, um,

working my way up and just cutting my teeth literally like I said learning every crew position you can and that led me to obviously wanted to create and direct my own projects and like Shelly said we kind of came together to make a short film called a dash old journey through autism and ever since that project I knew me and Shelly were gonna get together get along really well because

We finished that short film and literally every, you know, two weeks I'd kind of get an email or I'd get a message saying, hey, from Shelly being like, the movie, it's playing. We got into this such and such little fest and it's playing in Turkey. And then I get another one saying, like, it's playing in Turkey.

you know, like London and then it's playing in Russia and it's playing all over. And I, I think that that little short film probably screened in probably like 35 countries by now, but it's Shelly literally would just keep sending it and sending it out everywhere. And that only not that, uh,

not only prove to me that she'll just go to the end of the earth for her projects, but she's not going to take no for an answer. We're getting that thing seen by as many people no matter what, and we'll do whatever we have to do to make that happen. And so ever since then, we basically have teamed up, and we're like, what do we really want to do? And we have another comedic property that we've had some investors fall through after we've packaged it a couple times,

And so, yeah, literally chasing Molly became something that we were like, hey, what can...

we make ourselves that nobody, no matter what can tell, can tell us we can't do this. Right. Um, I'm lucky enough to have a nice cinema camera package and, uh, some really nice sound gear. And I was always been like, we have the tools, we have the tools at our disposal to do something here ourselves if we have to. And, um, we kind of sat together, made that, made the script, excuse me, the script and the story and, um, just, uh,

to figure it out that we we're gonna try to do this one ourselves and and i will say filmmaking is a team sport where you see all those you're sitting in a movie and you see all those names scrolling by on the credits and you're like how many people worked on this this is insane or you're sitting here for 10 minutes right for that little bonus scene at the very end and there's a very good reason for that it's because filmmaking is a huge huge team sport and so um

it's almost impossible to do something yourself. And so I'm just so happy with what Chasing Molly has become. And even though we did most of the legwork ourselves, there's no way we could have done this without calling in all of our favors and all the help of so many tremendous people, crew, friends, actors, and the list goes on and on. And so we're just super happy to have it finally out to the world.

Yeah, I think it's good. Oh, sorry, Dave. Go ahead. No, no, no problem, Shelly. I was just going to make a quick joke with Josh. You know, whenever you can tell after you screen a movie if you run into a filmmaker because they'll always ask you one question. And that question is not whether they like the movie, not, you know, this or that. They'll ask you, Josh, just one question, and that is, what did you shoot that on? Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right? It's like...

Definitely the question. You know who is in the industry or not, right, by what they're asking. And it's pretty apparent that this one was definitely a labor of love. I'll say that. We shot on 4K camera, red. See, I'm learning all of this. You know, it was a kind of a perfect shot.

marriage, so to speak, because Josh could do everything behind the camera. And then I had built, you know, kind of a repertoire of comedians that I've been performing with for years and, you know, making content. And basically we could come together the two sides. So all the comedians you'll see in the movie are all, you know, personal friends I've, I've worked with before. Um,

And so when you ask them, hey, can you do one day, you'd be doing me a huge favor. They'd be like, yeah, I'm going to need you to do this project for me. You know, you kind of like, OK, well, no problem. And then getting like Felicia Day. She's a friend from, you know, everyone's like, how did you get her? You know, we perform together. We used to do improv together. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Dear kids, thank you for all your holiday joy. And thank you for reminding us that December is our favorite month, too.

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So when I asked her to do this and she read the script, she wanted to give her time. I say donate because no one made this movie because we paid them. So it was almost like a donate. You felt like a donation, like I should be writing them like a tax write-off for making the movie. But everyone did it because they felt they loved the project.

They fell in love with the story. They liked the script. Um, and we just, what started as the two of us picking off whatever we could, then it snowballed as we started to get bigger and bigger talent on set. And, you know, when we got Kurt, uh, Kurt Angles, this big wrestler guy, for those of you guys who don't know, um,

That was a cold call. We did not. I definitely was not one of my comedy friends and we did not know him at all. So they're someone who fell in love with the project because he had no reason, you know, to to fly, have us fly him out from, you know, Pittsburgh to come out to Los Angeles to make an independent film.

So we were very fortunate that we had something that also attracted people to it. Go ahead, Josh. Well, I was going to say, yeah, I mean, we definitely, like, I've been lucky enough, thank God, through...

that visual effects company a lot of other jobs just to be under a plethora of projects right in the last 10 years from everything from San Andreas to you know huge multi-million blockbuster movies being on set for those and seeing how they operate first hands to super independent shoestring productions to music videos and commercials and everything under the Sun right so I get to see a lot of how it works and how it's supposed to happen and I

you know, this film was not made like a traditional, you know, feature film, like 30 to 60 days back to back. Right. So we kind of knew that going in that we can't have a traditional shooting schedule. We can't have a bunch of the traditional, uh,

or crew positions that generally exist on a big feature film set. And so we structured our shooting schedule and the way we knew we were going to pick it off and sat in pre-production and planned all this out very meticulously so that

it would put us in a situation to win. So when Shelley, you know, would go then to reach out to some of these people who are her friends to do us these favors, you know, what's the one thing that a big actor or, you know, a celebrity has the least of in the most? And that's, frankly, it's time, right? And so we knew that if we could...

structure the shooting to where we could reach out to them and be like hey we're not going to have any ADR there's no chance this is going to go into more days basically we're going to shoot you out in one day we're not going to you know there's not a lot of company moves on this day blah blah blah there's no chance of overtime it basically would put us in a situation to win so we we knew um that we we were doing that and so when we reached out to a lot of people

We definitely got a lot of, you know, answers. And it's not just a simple like, no, sorry, I'm booked or I can't give you four days. You know, just a lot of those stipulations. We kind of we kind of set ourselves up to win.

You know, I like that. That's a very good explanation or a very good quote, too, is, you know, we're setting ourselves up to win. And also the pitch to, you know, different people, you know, is about time. You're absolutely right. That's the absolute that's the number one thing that a lot of them don't have anything that don't have a lot of.

And even when they do have time, it's meticulously planned out. They're constantly getting hit with pitches. They're constantly getting scripts sent to them. And they're constantly getting their agent going, hey, you got to do this or don't do that. So whenever they do actually commit to a project, they don't have a lot of time for the next one starts.

For sure. And as Shelly said, I mean, you know, luckily she's friends with a lot of the comedians in the film, but Kurt was a complete cold call. And it was super cool when we were sitting discussing Mr. Black and I was like, I really want like a big, muscly type, over-the-top personality to play this. And we were kind of like, what about professional wrestlers? And we were kind of feeling some out some other professional wrestlers. And Shelly was like, what about Kurt Angle? And I literally kind of had a laugh out loud moment as I was like, I don't know if he'd be into this afternoon.

for knowing what some of the lines that we've been writing and talking about on the page and uh you know we're like what do we have to lose right and that's kind of been the whole model for the whole movie is like why not what do we have to lose so we sent him the script he actually read it he actually liked it a few days later we were in touch with his agents um i will say i know his agent has probably told him not to do it uh he wanted to do it anyway and so um

Like Shelly said too, right? Like he would come out, we, we, we worked it out. He's locked in the movie. We, our crew is bigger. We ballooned up that day. We had to do locations and, and it's just, uh, it was super cool. It definitely, um, has been like that. It's just the projects and like literally just like the little engine that could just steam rolling out of control basically. So, so what were some of the other wrestlers that you, you were considering just, just, just for conversation?

I mean, yeah, go ahead, Chyla. I don't know anything about wrestling. Like, I used to watch GLOW, you know, and so, like, I don't... To me, I wasn't intimidated about reaching out to anybody. So I was just on social media, just like... It wasn't like, oh, I've got to get this guy, The Rock, John Cena. You know, I...

No plan. I mean, it was literally like, we need this. So I'm like, okay. And I just kept like, you know, it went down that Twitter wormhole where it's like, you should follow so-and-so. I was like, I should follow them. And then I just...

reaching out and Kurt was far, I mean, we had some people that were like, okay, but they were wrestlers. I, I, I'm not even going to throw anyone under the bus. Let's just, you know, like my dad was like, I remember Johnny dumbbells, you know, like that guy.

Not a person anyone would really know. So, Kurt, I was like, what do you think of this guy? And Josh's mouth is on the floor. He's like, that's an option? I'm like, yeah. I got his manager. He's going to – so –

We made it happen. Like Josh said, you have to be really resourceful and meticulous with scheduling. None of our actors are on set sitting. You're there. You come camera ready. I mean, you know, like they said, we had bigger names on set. We had hair and makeup. But aside from that, just, you know, you come ready to go. You can be creative. I think that was also the lure to get a lot of these really talented comedians, you know,

There's a lot of things we do as actors to make money, you know, commercials and stuff like that. But this was an opportunity to kind of be as funny as you wanted to be without limits. So I have an improv background, and I knew that I would get certain improvisers that are going to nail their lines in the first take, maybe two, you know, maybe we need two for safety, and then we could improvise together. So you'll find the dialogue, like, you know, of course,

all the jokes are in there, which I'm thrilled about. But then there's also like really kind of genuine moments that seem organic. And it's probably because they, you know, we improvised it. Not every scene and not every character we could have do that, but the ones that, that, you know, you'll see Jim Cashman, who's Jamie on the progressive commercials, basically a national treasure. He's a, he's a groundlings friend of mine. So yeah,

I love working with him. We have a great chemistry. So I said, listen, I need you for, you know, I think we had him for two days, but we shot every single, I mean, we just had him going every minute.

you know, 10 pages a day, whatever we had to do. Um, and then you would find these really great moments where we could just improvise. And so I think it feels very different. It doesn't feel scripted and like, here comes a punchline or, Oh, this is gonna, you know, they're going to fall into that. I mean, it's, uh, it has to be the content and the writing, um, and the story that was King. We didn't have money for special, you know, huge, uh,

special effects or anything like that. So it had to be quality content. The script had to be good. And I think that's the great thing about independent films is that they're not made just because you have a bunch of celebrities in the movie or a big name attached or anything like that. Independent movies get made because

it's so powerful, the story, or it's so funny or something like that, that everyone jumps in to support it. Otherwise the movie doesn't take off. We know how fortunate we are. It's not lost on us. How many people have ideas and it's hard to get made. We've been there too. So it took a lot of years in production and doing on-camera and off-camera stuff to be able to get to the point where we could tackle the feature. Yeah.

Right, right. And, you know, it's a good point too, Shelly, is, you know, even when you do have like everything kind of lined up, even like, you know, in some of these, you know, huge multi-million dollar productions, you know, things fall through all the time, you know, for whatever reason. And we've all been there in one way or another where you're a part of a production and maybe as an actor or you're, you know, either...

whether it's even your project or, you know, you've kind of been there where these different projects all just fall through for a number of reasons. And Josh even was alluding to that too. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. Dear kids, thank you for all your holiday joy. And thank you for reminding us that December is our favorite month too.

Find something that brings out the kid in you at the Lexus December to Remember sales event. Get offers on select vehicles. Lease the 2025 RX350 Premium all-wheel drive for $519 a month for 36 months with $49.99 due at signing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. Call 1-800-USA-LEXUS for important lease offer and pricing details. Not all customers will qualify. Offer available in Eastern area only in January 6, 2025. And now, back to the show.

Just, you know, things just always sort of, you know, something happens and it kind of creates a domino effect. But, you know, just in Chasing Molly, so Shelly, when you were writing this, you know, did you kind of have this in mind? You know, you didn't want to write something into the script that was going to be almost impossible to get?

Yeah. So this was made, was written like we're going to make it. So when we were we'd have the story and Josh would be like, OK, when you have 90 pages written, we're going to start shooting. And so when I was writing it, he attempted to do we would do like my character and like one or two other characters. So we knew that. And then we would try and not get I was trying not write locations that that we couldn't get.

But if we did need to get one, we said, you know what, we would really need a pawn shop scene. So I had to get a pawn shop and, you know, start hitting the pavement. Everyone says no. Everyone says no. And you find the one and it happens to be the best pawn. I mean, with the most stuff, most random stuff you've ever seen. Another funny production story. So we get this pawn shop.

We can't afford to like rent it out, close it down. So it's open for business as we're trying to get a clean scene. So we have this like these two women that were in there like, oh, what a great Sagittarius ornament. You're a Sagittarius, aren't you? I mean, the small talk, picking up everything, looking at it with a magnifying glass. They didn't buy anything, but they wasted an hour of our time. And I'm looking at the light.

The sun's going down. We're like my, my comedian Fred is like quiet on the set. He's not, he's not part of the crew. You know what I mean? So it's like, it didn't get more independent, but then when you pull it off and you get the last thing before the sun goes down or you get me finally walking into the pawn shop and we get it, I mean the victories, you know, the struggles and the hurdles might be bigger, but then so are the victories, right?

So you would get so excited to be able to pull something like that off. Never again. No closed locations. Non-closed locations. Never again. We looked at Joy for about two hours in front of our scene and we're having a do-si-do around shooting this scene around her basically because she would not leave the store. It was crazy.

So when she walked in, did she like look at the camera, look at you, Josh, and just kind of like blank, didn't like put two and two together? It was the craziest thing because she literally would be like looking at rings in the same like cabinet glass shelf counter that we're shooting at. And I'm like, you don't see all these lights. You don't see this boom mic or the camera. And like was oblivious to it for literally about 45 minutes and then was like, oh, are you guys making?

"Are you making something here? Is this a school product?" And we're like, "We've been here for about an hour." Trying to shoot through your head. - I'm about to buy all of these things for you and just give it to you because I need to believe. - Yeah, what do you want? - What do you want? - We'll buy it for you. - We'll buy it for you. It's on us. Should I go, "Are you making something?"

So, you know, I think something interesting you also said, Dave, was like how projects fall through. You do one small piece of it. So Josh and I, we had to have the attitude that since we are like steamrolling this whole thing, we're also really attached to every part. So every edit, we're the ones watching it. All the ADR, we're the ones listening to it. So there wasn't, we're very attached. So in the same way, we were never going to let this movie fail.

not be made or not get put out there, which is something because we were wearing so many hats while making it.

Yeah, and I just want to speak a little bit to, you know, kind of cool filmmaking knowledge here about, Shelley was saying, we would like, you know, talk and discuss scenes, right? And we'd be like, where do we want the story to go from here? And so we definitely, you know, structure the story so that we could make it ourselves. And when I say that, I want to, you know, I mean like, okay, well, we obviously, we live in LA, so we're going to set the story in LA. Let's

Let's we know we can't shoot 30 to 40 days back to back because we don't have money to do this two months straight. So we're just going to pick it off like, you know, nights, weekends, just every time we can shoot. And so how do we do that? Right. Well, we can't really then have continuity or scripting on set because we're switching all these days up.

So let's just make it like a run the gauntlet story where it happens like in a night, a day and a night. And that, and that kind of basically, like I keep saying, it put us in a situation of when, right? So we're spread out over a bunch of different days or weeks. When you show up to set, you're kind of wearing the same wardrobe that you wore in most of the scenes. It kind of eliminates needing wardrobe person on set. It eliminates having to have the continuity person to figure out what you were wearing or which way you turned out of this door and stuff like that. And so,

So we definitely structured it so that we could pull that off. Yeah, and that's such a great idea to do that is kind of, you know, figure out what you have and kind of build around that rather than, you know, vice versa. But, you know, even when you do that, you kind of hit obstacles. So I wanted to ask, you know, what was the hardest thing to get out of the whole production of Chasing Molly? Ooh. I think Oregon being the Kurt...

where we had to literally, you know, it had to be so precisely planned out because we had this guy who's so big and who's used to like really nice sets. So we had to really, I think, I think that pulling off the end with Kurt was probably the hardest thing.

the hardest day for, for me personally, it was probably just the whole post-production. Post-production was the hardest part. Just because I'll say like, you know, I'm lucky enough to know a lot of people in the industry. Right. And you're kind of like continuously helping other people. And I, you know, like I said, filmmaking is a team sport. So that way you're just stacking all these favors. Right. So you can call them in when you need them and post-production, you know, we had some, um,

Big, big, big people work on it in post, but you're not paying them enough to where it's like, hey, this is a there's a hard deadline, right? Like I'm paying you X amount of dollars. It's due on this day. It's kind of like, hey, I know you're working your main job and doing this on your free time for me personally. Please finish as soon as you can.

So, post-production kind of dragged on because of that, and it's just the nature of the beast. But basically, that was the hardest part, in my opinion, was getting that done. And as well as I said, the Kurt day was definitely our biggest day. And when I say biggest day, it's still pretty small, relatively, in terms of big sets. I mean, we probably had 20 people on set for that day.

But, you know, just a cool story of how, like, you know, the stars aligning for our movie was basically we had this really cool location that we actually shot out and made it look like three locations. But we were...

We were there and it's like a back lot place, shout out Reyes RV, where they kind of rent and also store RVs in this parking lot in this huge back lot area. We shot in their office, in their attic, in their back lot, inside their studio, and all over. Anyway, we're going to have Kurt there, Kurt Engel, and they happen to just rent Star Wagons. We're

he's going to show up, we're having this big set day and they're like, oh, we'll just plug in this puppet generator and turn on one of these star wagons. And so he shows up and he has a star wagon and his makeup's in there waiting and all that to the nines and it just looks way more slicker than it really is, right? Something like that. Also another that reminds me, so in post, we

wanted this really cool special effects shot and it involved Kurt and in order to track it we needed like a model of his head. Well...

that's not easily obtainable. I mean, and we can't be like, can you put your head in this mold? It would really help like make this shot look great. So Josh and I are scouring, scouring. He ends up finding a guy who made a video game of Kurt and had his exact head dimensions that we needed. And he's like, I don't know if I even have this. Sure enough, he had it and we, you know, got it from him. So like,

Again, the shot looks amazing. Josh has these connections with people who have worked on X-Men and Avengers and everything like that. And they're working on our movie. And then we're, they're like, well, to make this look really cool, it would be really great if we had this. We're like the dimensions of Kurt's head. How are we going to get that?

And then we deliver it to them because we found this guy who made a video game and had his exact dimension, stuff like that, to be able to – the stars had to align for that to happen. Yeah, for the people who want to know, like, the technicalities. And like I said, like, I'm lucky enough to know some extremely professional people. And so, exactly, my buddies who work on these huge, huge visual effects movies, you know, and they're used to –

getting all the proper things right like if you're gonna do something 3d to someone's head you really need like a a model uh so that you can map those animations and all all that on top of that and so the guys you know unfortunately they're like hey is there any way we can get a head model of kurt and i'm just like guys this is not that movie right like i i don't even know what

if that's physically impossible. And me and Shelly are literally like, do we fly to Pittsburgh and then have to get Kurt another day? And this is kind of how, like we just talked about, we sold the movie on not bothering you ever again, right? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. So we're like, how do we figure this out? And I'm scouring messaging boards and lo and behold, happened to stumble upon a guy that worked on

on the WWE Raw, one of the PlayStation or Xbox movies, like 10 years before that, maybe even earlier. And he's like, I did Kurt's. He happened to do the modeling for Kurt in that game. And he's like, I think I have his head model just chilling on my machine. Let me check. And like a week later,

I literally have a head model of Kurt Angle and send that over to our 3D guy and our VFX team and they're shocked. It's just another story of the stars aligning for us.

Well, you know, just to play devil's advocate, what if that didn't exist? Like, was there like a plan B or a plan like C or D that like, if that didn't exist, like what you would have done instead? Well, as we were saying, we're like, do we fly? Because there's some really cool, you know, apps

and ways to get scans. And I've worked in VFX a long time, and I definitely know what's needed to get that properly. And it was just going to be like, man, we're going to have to bother Kurt to go get it. Or frankly, you know, it's just more time and energy

unfortunately for the VFX guy or just have to make that shot look really good and spend more hours and work on it to make it all work with the geometry of his face without having that is very very difficult and so the short answer is no the other option is to not have it and so it's kind of just crazy that we did

There'd be lots of things like that where there'd be something like I had to have, like we were really looking for like almost like a theme song for chasing Molly. And I fell in love with this song. It was a fat boy slim song. It's like, okay, I'm not a singer, but it goes like back once again for the renegade master, deep for damage, a power to the people. I'm like, Josh, I need this. It's like, you're, you're crazy. What do you mean? You're crazy.

Well, it turns out Fatboy Slim, it's not his. He licensed it from this other guy. I find that guy and we end up buying the hook. And then we were able to make this really cool song. We find someone else and pay them to mix it. So now we have this like song that's, you know, our own.

We own the rights to it, but it's also familiar to so many people who listen to that Fatboy Slim song. And everyone's like, how did you get that Fatboy Slim song? We're like, we didn't. We bought the hook that everyone remembers, and it's a totally different song. Fatboy Slim song is okay. I'm just kidding. Yeah.

You know, of course, I'm a fan of the song or I wouldn't have wanted to get the hook. But stuff like that where it's either we really needed this, like I felt like we needed it or wanted it and we had to go get it no matter what. And there's always a way. You just find a way. I mean, that is filmmaking. Or you have to leave it. We shot one scene that was so dark.

We couldn't fix it. It could not be fixed. So you'll never see it. But if we could, if it was something we really felt like we wanted, we'd have to find a way to make it happen. And when it is just the two of you, you make it happen. There is no one else. It has to be you or...

you know, you don't have a choice. And just like I was saying earlier, right, Shelly not taking no for an answer. I mean, it's just like she said, like we have to have it. We're going to find a way to get it. And if it either takes us, you know, whether we find it tomorrow or it takes us 10 days, like two weeks, we're going to just keep pushing until we get what we need.

It kind of reminds me of a funny story. When I was shooting my student film, quote-unquote, it was with a bunch of friends. I kind of broke all the rules and the first thing I ever shot was a feature film. It was my student film and it had – it was a bunch of friends and myself making a movie. My one friend who was actually the star of the movie –

just vanished for the summer. Like we couldn't, he wouldn't like, he, he, he did one of those things where he's just like, I'm so tired of making this damn thing. And I'm like, dude, we're almost done. And he was like, I can't, I can't, I, I just don't want to make it anymore. And he just kind of vanished for that summer. So I sat down with my friend and we were talking about how we're going to do this. And he's like, well, what if you find a guy who,

who looks like our main actor and we just try to act like that's him and we just kind of finish it that way and he's like you know they used to do it for different movies and you just kind of get a guy that looks exactly this it looks similar and you kind of shoot it differently so I actually went on a site and I found a guy who did look like him and

And I started to talk to this guy. I was like, yeah, you look just like my friend. And the site was called UglyNewYorkModels.com. And I handed it to him. That's a true site. I swear to God. And it was a site dedicated to people who have like exotic looks. You know what I mean? Or like they have like these different types of looks.

But the one looked just like my friend. And I actually was going to bring him down from New York here to Philadelphia. And my friend actually ended up coming back in at the same time. And I said, did you see what you made me do? I said, I had to scour a modeling website. And he looked at it and was like, ugly New York models. And I went, yeah, this is what you said. This is what you brought me to. This is your fault. You did this. Yeah.

That's so good. Well, he thought it was – No, actually, a funny – yeah, I was going to say a funny story like that, like what we were going to do. So there's a part of Chasing Molly that features the grapefruit technique. If you're not familiar with it, Google it. Not in front of your kids. Josh shows me this video, and I'm like, this is the most disgusting, random thing I've ever seen. Yeah.

We need to have it in our movie. We need this. So we need this. So we're going to recreate it. We're going to go on out. We had people auditioning for this grapefruit technique. You know, I was going to like work with someone. I work in my other job, not even an actress, but I was like, would you do this? She's like, yeah, I'll do it. Well, we end up finding the woman who made the video. We got her.

And another like huge score, Josh and I finally find, you know, this is our Moby Dick. We finally find her and we go back and forth, back and forth. And she ends up, we buy the footage. So you actually, the footage you see in the movie is from that actual video. Yeah.

So it was another huge, well, what would you have done? We would have, you know, figured out a way, got an actress to recreate it. You do what you have to do, but we, you know, when you have that kind of ingenuity and that won't take no for an answer, you end up, we found her, we got her. And she agreed to do it. So it's just was a huge, huge,

Yet we also got this guy on set, Scar, who plays the, you know, Hispanic gang leader. Again, this guy I didn't know. He wasn't a comedy friend of mine. But I start scouring YouTube and I find these videos called Cholo's Try.

And there are these viral videos about, you know, I guess a group of cholos and they try all these different like stereotypical white people things. It's very, very funny. And I see this guy. He's got tattoos on his face, on his neck, on his hands, on his toes. I don't know where else he had them.

And I'm like, this is him. This is the guy. So then I have to find him. Dave, his name is not Scar. I don't know how to burst your bubble on this. That was not his given name. So I have to find who he is, where he is. Thankfully, we live in a day of social media and you can, you know, someone's just like a Twitter follower away from finding him. And I find him.

And he agrees to do our movie. So we're like, yeah, just one day. You're going to come out. It'll be really, really fun. And we pitch it like that. And we shoot him out six, seven scenes back to back in one day. He was really actually a very nice guy, a super zen cholo. And it worked out great for us. But again, it's like we had to be really resourceful. We didn't have a casting director who had money and had casting sessions. Yeah.

If we wanted to get big talent, we had to find them. Stuff like that. So I think the product ends up being really unique because of the way it was done, the non-traditional way.

They're not like, oh, this actor's been da-da-da-da. He's on our roster. We have to get him booked on something. So we'll cast him in this movie. It was like, no, we just cast the best people we knew. And if we didn't have them, we would fine them. So we had to be really resourceful. But I think the product really paid off in the end.

Yeah. And, you know, that's, you know, one of the key things here is, you know, making independent movies is calling the different people, not actually relying on a casting agent because like having casting sessions, it's something I've learned, too, is having casting sessions and a casting agent and everything. It just adds a lot of money that that, you know, when you look at it, unless you actually have budgeted that at the get go and, you know, you could spend that money elsewhere. You know what I mean?

For sure. I mean, frankly, we just couldn't afford to have it. There's been a lot of, you know, exactly casting sessions or rehearsals. And frankly, I mean, we didn't presale any territories. This movie didn't have distribution going into it, anything like that. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

And so, you know, Scar, who does these viral Cholo's Tribe videos, you know, we were trying to pad the movie, you know, any role that was open with someone who had a big social media following. That way, if we did, you know, at the end of the day, have to self-distribute this, we knew when the actors were at least blasting it out that they would have some sort of audience already built in just in case, right? Because...

That was the biggest thing. You finish this thing, this long, arduous task that put all this work into it. It really could have been like when we were sending it out, just, hey, good job, guys. Here's a pat on the back. Keep trying to make movies. We luckily had more than a few offers on it and put us –

Yeah, and put us in a great situation. And I like that name, by the way, that Shelly came up with, the Zen Cholo. Yeah. I think that's kind of like a sequel movie for him that you should make at some point. For sure. Yeah.

Well, he actually – like he's helping me with certain social media things, and I'm just like, well, what if we did this? What if we did this? And he's like, Shelly, you're overthinking it. The movie's hilarious. I was like, you're right, Scar. I am overthinking it. The movie is hilarious. And I'm just like – he put me like – I was just like, thank you, Scar. He's like this Buddha. So it really – it was cool because we have people –

who are in the movie, again, not for a huge paycheck, so they're not locked in their trailer demanding brown rice and sushi. It's people who are...

You know, they love it because they love being in projects that they're proud of. So they knew at the end of the day it'd be something they're happy with. And we made it a cool experience. So it wasn't like, you know, big lights and big trailers and catering and all this stuff. But you got to be part of a project that was completely different and you got to be creative and have fun and not be like, you know, tied down with certain obligations from, you know, corporate and stuff like that.

I think Josh and I, we both come with making things where it had to be commercial or had to be appropriate for TV or stuff like that. And it was really fun and liberating getting to make a movie that's not appropriate for anyone. It was really fun.

Really felt good to be able to do that. Definitely not appropriate for everyone, especially my mother, right? I just want to say, sorry, Mom, I apologize. This is not the movie that she wanted me to be my directorial debut, but this is just how the cookie crumbles. So she's...

She's very supportive, but she's like, what about that Dashiell movie about Dashiell journey through autism? That was the one she loved. We're like, we love that one too. We still love that one. Well, if she sees it, you can be like, well, hey, mom, listen, Scar is a really good guy in there. He's a Zen Cholo. He's a Zen Cholo, mom. They love

I love it, but yeah, just not the one she would have me make. But I will say, one of the coolest feelings in the world ever was getting that photo of my parents in Texas holding my DVD up and sending me a selfie that they ordered that Blu-ray on Best Buy. It makes you feel really good.

And, you know, that's kind of ties in with the next question I had too is, you know, you mentioned, you know, having the different actors with social media followings. When the movie, because the movie's on, you know, out right now, it's on all the different sites. What,

So when they started to actually mention the film, did you see a correlation? I'm always interested in that type of stuff where when they mention it, when they link it, etc., do you see a spike in interest to people talking to you online, whether it be on Twitter, Instagram, etc.? And do you actually see a direct correlation between that? Yeah, so you have to be pretty –

You have to search it out. I mean, point blank, no bullshit. Like, when you sell that movie, you know, to the distribution company, it's technically not yours anymore, right? It's theirs. And so we don't get a lot of numbers of how the movie's actually doing. You know, they come out quarterly. And so you kind of, it's kind of like a wait and see of, like, how many is it really selling? Right.

what you're talking about is when you see someone in the film share it or you see all these other actors retweet and reshare or post a trailer and then the best part is mainly seeing how many people reshare those because you get to see that and see all the comments. It's just every time someone's

you know, we're literally, it's not a separate PR firm or separate team of social media people managing these accounts like the Twitter, the Facebook, the Instagram. So when someone asks us or we see the shares or whatever, we get to see all that and we see all the comments. And so it's not so much of seeing like,

um a direct correlation in uh in the numbers of the units but it's basically seeing like the shares and then reading all the comments i mean that's the best thing for me in the world right is like whether it's a hater or someone who loved the movie just the fact that someone out there took the time to watch the movie and then not only that but get on their computer and type up and say something about it just makes me feel super um special

I mean, I love, first of all, we disagree on the fact if someone writes something mean, whether we should comment and clap back, as they say. But the best feeling, like Josh said, like, we are the PR team. So when you hear a comment where it's like, I've been hearing about this movie, I got to watch it. I was like, what? He's been hearing about the movie? You know, we're like...

weighing in on each comment, but it's great to hear like someone you don't know, it's not a friend or family, 'cause you kind of like, even when your friend, it's an acquaintance says they love it, you're like, "Do you really love it?" But then a total stranger is like, "Really well done, hilarious." I was like, "Oh my." It's because we're so attached to it, it wasn't just we did one part, I didn't just act, Josh didn't just direct.

you feel like exponentially more proud because of the fact that you, this is something that literally you made, you feel like you made by hand. You're so attached to it. So it's, it's crazy to see other people that you don't know that have watched it without you telling them about it. So they, you know, I'm like, Oh, it's working. The PR is working.

You know, but when Kurt tweets out something, it's it's huge. I mean, he's got a huge social media following. But like Josh said, we don't know the numbers. So we just put our heads down and we just keep going as if the movie could be doing extremely well or it could be friends and family. But it doesn't matter. Either way, we push just as hard.

And I think that's also the mentality is that no matter what or how you think it's going, you keep your head down and you keep working. You keep doing podcasts. You keep reaching out and networking. It's another thing that we're getting into that we didn't really know ahead of time how to do it. But you find out. You start swimming. You figure it out. And now we're really getting going on networking.

networking with people who will really love the film. And so it's, it's nice to see that people are appreciating the comedy and, and really are liking it. When someone says they're like fangirling out when they're talking to me, I'm like, what? Just me. You know what I mean? But it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a cool feeling.

Yeah, and just to kind of – as we're talking about casting and everything else, one of the reasons I was asking that question is I was a part of – I was kind of like a consulting producer for a movie a few years ago and that topic actually came up.

And the reason was, was because they wanted to cast these kind of like, I guess the word would be Instagram models. I guess that's kind of, and they wanted to cast them in the movie because why? Well, hey, they've got this huge social media following each and they were just wondering all about this. And when it came time to present them with a contract, they both were like,

Iffy about actually mentioning the project and this and that. And, you know, they wanted to see it before they mentioned it and blah, blah, blah. So...

With my little voice, I was like, is this really worth it, everybody? Right. You don't know. It's a gamble. And I was like, are their followers even going to really care about them in a movie because they really follow them to – because they're doing Instagram stuff. You know what I mean? They're Instagram – they're posing on Instagram. You know what I mean? So I always – that whole correlation there. Yeah.

Oh, and by the way, in case anybody wants to know, they did end up casting the Instagram models. They did not mention the project at all. Oh, no. Yep. And they had to keep like tapping them on the shoulder like, hey, could you mention it? Like, you know, it's kind of contractually obligated to do it. Yeah.

Never mentioned it. And that was a whole point of contention there. And a lot of the producers were fighting with each other. But again, because when they had the last meeting, I was like, you know, I kind of said, you know, is it really going to be worth it either way? But it was two other producers who were like, you know, one was like adamant that they had to be cast. The other one was like kind of siding with me. It was like, is this really, you know, what's the point?

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. But yeah, you know, that type of stuff happens. You know what I mean? So, yeah, you don't know. I mean, they're not, you know, like I said, we couldn't be like, not only are you going to do this movie for basically no money, but we also need you to like then promote it. Right. So we would never risk like the part.

for like, you know, the women risk the acting for like a social media following. So for example, we have a, you know, a Maxim model that has a million followers, Tiffany Stanley, she's a cover Maxim model, but we cast her in a model role where her being a model, you know, we set her up to win too. Um, so, um,

You know, she's got a huge following. We don't know if she's going to tweet or say anything. But at the same time, that's why it's like, well, either way, whether she does or doesn't, we need someone who's going to be good for the part. We would never compromise the part.

or the movie because someone had a social media following because we had tons of people that we were like okay should we get this person they've got x amount of followers is it worth it you know we went back and forth and our round table is just josh and i so we have to be unanimous and usually it is if we both you know if one agrees and disagrees then we find it's not the right thing anyway so we're both always like oh yeah we have to do this or no it's not worth it

So we definitely had to make those decisions and no one is obligated to. We didn't have anyone who said we absolutely will. Basically being fortunate combined with like really hard work and dedication. We wouldn't have jumped into production had Josh and I not been experienced, you know, me in front of the camera, him behind the camera.

You know, we wouldn't have just been like, let's make a movie. You know, we had both been really working and getting really good at our craft before we would jump into taking on a project like this. So we're really, really proud of the I mean, it's it's really a surreal feeling to have the project completed and then to have people like it. You're like, it's it's really amazing. I'm still kind of having an outer body experience about the whole thing.

Yeah, and it's always awesome when the movie's finally done and you actually get to see it. It's always that feeling of like, holy crap, this is actually possible. Oh my god, what the hell were we thinking? You know what I mean? It's like you finally get to the end. But it's funny, Shelley. For everyone listening, this is actually a redo of the –

I actually interviewed Shelly and Josh before, and this is a redo of that interview because the file became unusable. So they were so gracious to come back on, and it's just like I had a feeling of deja vu there, Shelly, because suddenly I lost you there for a second. I'm like, oh, no. Yeah.

When someone's calling me, I'm like, nobody is more important than me talking about this movie right now. So I apologize for that. But no, Josh and I, we're willing to do this next week if we have to. We know that this is going to be

goes. Like we've had plenty of things where they're like, well, we just, that's not usable, you know? Oh, I mean some scenes of the movie, right? Like we'd spend days going out and then we'd just get back and be like, man, we can't, I mean, a lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor and you got to separate yourself and, uh, realize like once you take off that director hat, you can't think about, Oh, how much time and money and energy went into shooting this and just have to be a pretty, pretty vicious in the editing room. And, and, uh,

Oh, man. There were so many jokes that I was like, you can't make this joke. He's like, Shelley, we'd have to reshoot this whole. I'm like, but it's such a good show. I mean, but you have to again. It's like, well, take off your, you know, writer, actress, you know, hat,

can't save every joke and be a producer and a producer say this isn't quality it's does not quality enough to be in your film you have to be really this is your baby so if it's not quality it needs to be cut and so many times I was just like ah

Man, I hate to lose that, but Josh is right. It does not look like, you know, it doesn't, it's not up to our standards. But it would be very difficult. And he would get real Edward Scissorhands in the end. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What happened there? You know? But in the end, like all my jokes that I liked got put back in. I'll just say that right now. It's not an I told you so moment, Dave. It's just a, you know, I was right. Yeah.

Which is a little worse than I told you so, I think. So, you know, just where can everyone find Chasing Molly at right now? Man, we are lucky enough to be on almost anywhere that you can stream a movie online. We are there. If you get a movie through your TV, Cox, Spectrum, Time Warner, basically everywhere except Dish, VOD, we are on, you know, Amazon, Spotify.

Prime, Fandango, Redbox, Vudu, just literally... Yeah, iTunes. Anywhere you can stream a movie or get a movie digitally, we're there. If you want a DVD or a Blu-ray, we're Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble. It's super cool. Literally almost everywhere. And I'm going to link to all this, everyone, in the show notes. And then...

Because I know all the things we talked about, too, I'm going to link as well in the show notes, everybody. And so, Josh and Shelly, just in closing, I know we've been talking for probably about, I guess, roughly 55 minutes now. Just in closing, is there any parting thoughts that you wanted to give to sort of put a period at the end of this whole conversation? Sure.

Sure, yeah. I mean, I just want to say first and foremost, thank you, Dave, for having us on. We sincerely appreciate it. And, you know, as I said, it's not lost on us how rare and special this is. You know, I know a lot of people and friends that can make a feature-length movie if they had to, but selling it is a whole other ballgame. And so we feel super special and just...

I hope everyone goes out and sees it and supports independent filmmaking and go check out Chasing Molly. Yeah, I just want to say also thank you so much, Dave, for having us on and supporting independent film.

We're really proud of Chasing Molly. It's something very, very different. It's comedy that, you know, you'll be very shocked, I think, at certain points. But, you know, I'm surprised by the people who are like quoting, you know, the movie back to me. It's a really cool feeling. And if you're looking for something different, like you haven't seen and you want to support independent film, you know, watch Chasing Molly. We really appreciate it. And where can people find you at online, Shelly?

Um, Shelly pack S H E L L E Y P A C K. Um, mainly chasing underscore Molly. I'd really, uh, let's keep it, let's keep it business right now. I'm just kidding. Uh, chasing underscore Molly. Um, so look for us on Twitter and on Facebook chasing Molly movie, um,

and Instagram chasing Molly movie. So, uh, definitely follow us to keep, uh, to keep posted and updated on where you can watch chasing Molly next. Yeah. And if you want to find anything I'm ever working on, I mainly post to Instagram. Uh, it's at Sutherland film and that's S U T H E R L A N D F I L M. Um, I'm lucky enough to be working on some pretty cool projects currently. And obviously me and Shelly have some more projects in the pipeline. And, uh, if you ever want to see any of that stuff, it's online there.

I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com forward slash 776. And if you haven't already, please head over to filmmakingpodcast.com. Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that hustle going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at IndieFilmHustle.com. That's I-N-D-I-E-F-I-L-M-H-U-S-T-L-E.com.