IFH 795: Balancing Hollywood Productions and Indie Passion Projects with Jamie Buckner
01:11:42 Share

today's show is sponsored by next level souls ascension conference our first ever in-person live event happening march 28th through the 30th in austin texas join us for two transformative days of spiritual awakening featuring world-renowned speakers like james van praag kyle cease and sarah landon plus live channeling sessions

sound bath guided meditations and much much more don't miss your chance to connect with like-minded souls expand your consciousness and awaken your higher self now tickets are selling fast so visit nextlevelsoul.com forward slash ascension to learn more and secure your spot today

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 795. Your dream doesn't have an expiration date. Take a deep breath and try again. K.T. Witton.

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.

It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films. From predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them, the odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken and there needs to be a change.

The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the filmtrepreneur. In Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, I break down how to actually make money with your film projects and show you how to turn your indie film into a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and failures...

This book shows you the step-by-step method to turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content, the Filmtrepreneur Method will set you up for success. The book is available in paperback, e-book, and of course, audiobook.

If you want to order it, just head over to www.FilmBizBook.com. That's FilmBizBook.com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Dave Bullis. What do you do if you have a movie, if you make a movie, and you find out that a very famous filmmaker also has the movie of the exact same title coming out at the same time you do? Well, that's what we're going to find out, aren't we?

In this next episode, I have a filmmaker who comes to us from Louisville, Kentucky. He lives in New York now. He has worked with some of the biggest directors of all time. He's worked as a production manager, production coordinator. He's worked as a PA. He's worked his way up. And he's also made his own movie. And we talk about how he found time to actually write this thing as he's going to all these different productions. And what did he learn by reading all these scripts and all this other good stuff? So sit back.

Jamie Buckner

Yeah, I was going to say, many, few, you know, really, what's a number? What's a number of how many years ago? Yes, so there are many short and long versions of this, but so effectively...

I, back in high school, sort of came to this revelation, well, I guess it was kind of early college, trying to figure out a college major, basically. I started as an art major, thinking like, okay, I like to draw, maybe I could, I kind of wanted to draw comics for a little while. Didn't really, tried that for a little bit, found out that wasn't for me, and was like, all right, maybe I'll be a music major. I love making music. I've been playing bass and guitar for a while. I mean, like,

the actual like mathematics of music and like learn to read it and learn the theory and all that sort of stuff. Got into that. That wasn't for me. Thought I was going to be architect for a while. Thought I'd kind of dabbled in so many different things and it just sort of dawned on me at one point. I think it was just mid-conversation with a friend about how

how I had always been really into movies just as of just a thing you know just like I was like the guy that people talk to about movies I was like really into particular directors and particular types of genres and like all these things like I was just one of those kids back in the 90s that was just you know I'm sure you count yourself amongst this number that was just like one of the you're like oh yeah the movie guy that's Jamie you'll talk to Jamie I'll tell you all about like

you know, whatever different Spielberg, you know, Tarantino coming around at the time, you know, like down to, you know, like I was getting into Sturges and like Truffaut and stuff like that, like whatever, just all of the like early days, like film nerd stuff. And it sort of dawned on me at a certain point that all of these things that I'd been dabbling in, that I was sort of interested in from a creative, creative way of looking at things, um,

all sort of came together in this one medium. All sort of were just like, you know, storyboarding is drawing, you know, music is heavily involved in, you know, even photography. It just basically everything that I really sort of wanted to do but didn't want to hard commit to one or the other all sort of came together in this one thing that I already loved. So...

I went to Northern Kentucky University up by Cincinnati, which did not have a film program, but what did have a terrific theater program and had what is now known as an informatics e-media program. But back in the day, when I was going there, it was just a radio and television communications program. Took all of the film-ish, movie-ish classes that I could, screenwriting, playwriting, all that sort of stuff as well.

Sort of made the best of what was available there and read a lot of books on my own, screenwriting books, production books, film theory books, et cetera, so on. And one day as I was working in a sunglass hut in downtown Cincinnati, I saw in the Tower Place Mall that I was working in, there was a flyer for people to come to a certain hotel on a certain day to be extras in the movie Seabiscuit.

This horse racing movie that was shooting down in Lexington. So I go, turns out I fit the costume parameters, which is really all you needed to do to be a part of that. And I went and was an extra in the movie Seabiscuit in freezing cold November of 2002, I believe. And maybe three, I think it was 2002. Yeah.

But I got down there, I slept on the floor of my friend's dorm room at Eastern Kentucky University, and I bugged the holy hell out of all of the production people down there until they would give me the time of day. I made just enough friends to make some more friends from there, to make some more friends from there.

Started working as a camera person, camera PA, as I was also moonlighting as a school teacher during the day at my old high school. Worked on an indie project for a director that is also from Louisville who's a good friend of mine now, who we've actually worked on several other projects together. So on and so forth. Did as many projects as I could in Kentucky. Ultimately decided to move to New York versus LA. Came up to New York. Worked on my first production up here, which was this

that was a remake of The Honeymooners called The Honeymooners with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer, I believe. But that was a few weeks. It was my first job. My foot was in the door up here in New York. That happened to be happening in the same building as the production office for War of the Worlds. They called downstairs and were like, do you have any PAs that are not terrible? Luckily, they threw my name in there. I worked on War of the Worlds for a little while. I have some cool stories from that. That was fun.

office uptown for the new martin scorsese movie the departed calls same question do you have any pas that aren't awful and they're like yeah this kid's not terrible we dig him he's kind of fun to be around and he doesn't screw things up too bad so i end up working on the departed for almost a year uh and then another warner brothers movie comes after that called august rush so we stay in the same office we work on that and i'm now in with this team and we roll on from another production to another production and then i you know and

The resume kind of speaks for itself from there. It just becomes this, you work with enough people and they get jobs and they call and see what you're doing and you go and you bounce onto that and you bounce onto that. All the while, I was still working on my own things and shooting music videos for friends' bands between jobs and

Doing little shorts when I could, doing those silly little like make a movie in a weekend, 48 hour projects. And all that time working on this rewriting, rewriting, reworking, planning for Split, my first feature, which we just put out last August. So that is sort of the, I'm sure I missed some things, but that is basically the trajectory of how I got here.

Yeah, I see. I'm actually looking at your IMDB right now. And like you were a production coordinator on John Wick Chapter 2. I actually had the writer of John Wick 1 and 2, Derek Holstead, on the podcast before. He's like the coolest guy on the planet. He found out me and one of our coworkers on that was from Kentucky, and he bought us –

A bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon that I had somehow never seen – I'd never seen this size available, this size of bottle. And we somehow managed to go through almost all of it over the course of late nights in that office. But no, Derek is the coolest guy too. He would just like –

I'm just some random schmo working on the production. He has no reason to be sitting there and shooting the breeze with us until the wee hours of the night. But we would just talk about movies, and I think we talked about the Twilight Zone in particular episodes we loved for like two hours one night. He's just – what a rad guy that Derek is, right? I've got to go back and listen to that episode. I didn't realize you had him on. That's cool. Yeah, really, really cool guy. And I got introduced to him through another writer friend of ours,

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. And, uh, I was like, this guy's not going to say yes to come down and show them with me. And he was like, yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, of course he will. Yeah. He's great. Yeah. Uh, fantastic guy. And I'm actually really glad to the John wick, both one and two were box office hits as well as critical hits. Cause I, I love to see when good things happen to good people. Oh,

Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. You always, you always, you know, you always want that to be the case. Like, and it's funny, I've seen, I've seen it go all different sorts of directions where the people, you know, and again, on this, in the spirit of positivity, I won't necessarily name names and people who aren't such great salt of the earth people like your Derek Kolstad's of the world, uh, have success and you're kind of like, all right, that's going to perpetuate some bad behavior. Or I've also seen some people that are really, really terrific. Like,

Just really great, really fun, really talented people, and then everybody's tank. And that's a bummer to see, too. So yeah, when the optimum scenario happens, and it's just really good people make really good work, and it's really successful, that's what we're all hoping for, of course.

Yeah, absolutely. And just going back to your career, as you worked on as crew for all these films – again, I'm looking at your IMDb – how did you find the time to actually sit down and write Splix? I mean, I know it started off as a short film before you made it into a feature. So back in 2010, when you made this short –

what, you know, how did you find the time between all these, uh, these jobs, you know, cause it seems like you're going from job to job, you know, production and production. So how did you find the time to actually sit down and write, write this out? You know, you just kind of have to, um, the original script I, I I've had sort of with me for a while. Um, like from when I first started, uh, working in production basically. And it's really just been a matter of like,

You just have to – if what you want to do is be creative and you don't want to – because it's really easy to get stuck. I could –

Just completely just rest on my laurels, keep working and keep doing what I do well. And just, you know, and I'll eventually, you know, you know, just keep production managing, supervising and things and line producing smaller things. And then I'm line producing bigger things. And then I'm on to, you know, I could do that. And next thing you know, I'll blink. I'm 60 years old and I'm doing really well, but not exactly what I want to be doing. So if you really want to

And it's just really easy to get stuck in any particular discipline. You know, like there's people who get stuck in the camera department who would rather be, you know, writing or directing or whatever. And that's not a terrible transition. But like there are people, you know, that end up being key grips or gaffers that feel like they can't make the transition because the money gets good at a certain point and they just kind of keep working or art department locations. You know, you can you kind of there's so many different little specific disciplines that are super important to various productions. Yeah.

and you don't want to make light of any of those at all. But if it's not where your heart is 100%, you just kind of always have to find the time when you can without compromising your day-to-day work. I just always prioritize finding the time whenever I could to go back and do a little rewriting or go back and do a little prep work of trying to figure out where locations would be. And we're talking about over the course of years and years and talking to different –

and talking to different writers helping give me notes and, you know, producers talking about how, like, you know, how do you raise money for these things? How do you set up a, you know, a small corporate, you know, because you end up being a small business basically when you make a movie. Not even basically. You are a small business. You have to basically teach yourself how to be an entrepreneur in a very sort of tweaked way. But, yeah.

you really I just I just kind of made the time you know like if I if we got done shooting early on a production and like I had a few hours left in the office and everybody was like oh quitting time I'm going to happy hour I would you know be like all right guys great just you know leave one light on I'm gonna stay here for five or six hours and you know like pound away on my script or like you know I also would work on other scripts to sort of like you

get a fresh eye on a different story and sort of think outside of the bowling rom-com box and go and do a script contest and write a horror movie in 10 pages. And then that would somehow inform a joke somewhere within... So you really just sort of have to always...

And the creative muscle, I like to think, and there's much wiser people that can probably say it much better than me, but I think the creative muscle and the energy that you put into it

are just very important and it has to be constant because it's like a muscle. It's exactly what it is. It will atrophy if you don't exercise it regularly. So as far as how I did it, basically every moment that I can find free that... You also have to find time for rest too. I'm not just completely 24-7. You've got to be wise enough to know when to take a break when you're actually burning a candle at both ends and you're compromising...

other parts of your life or you're compromising the creativity or you're compromising the paycheck job, you know, and none of those things can happen. So you just have to be very keenly aware of, of how important rest is with all this as well. But whenever I had an opportunity, I'd be writing or talking to people about raising money or, you know, talking to actors or talking a little, little bit of this, a little bit of that. And then it finally came to a point where I thought, okay, if we're going to do this,

let's take the first seven or eight pages, I forget what it was, of the script. Let's do what I think I'd heard other people do before at that point. And I was like, I think we're going to have to do a Kickstarter to raise enough money to start raising money. Because I knew it would cost a little money to get a lawyer, to start a company, to get a couple wheels rolling, to then be able to go out and actually raise private equity. So I was like, I think I want to do a Kickstarter to raise money in order to start raising real money.

In order to do that, I would like to do what I started referring. People called it a sizzle reel. I hate the term sizzle reel because it's just not what this was. And people kept referring to it as that. And I get the place of a sizzle reel.

I don't even know if people say that anymore, but it just drove me crazy. I don't know. Go ahead. It's called proof of concept now. Okay, see, that's what I started calling it, not even knowing anyone called that. So that's funny because I was just like, this will be like my proof of concept piece. This will be my, hey, we're going to make a bowling rom-com. Oh, does that sound silly? Yeah.

well, I don't think it's completely silly. Here's exactly what I have in mind so that you can put in front of like a potential investor or an actor. This is what I have in mind. So we shot that two days over a weekend in Queens. I still stand that I think I'm the only person ever to shoot Queens for Kentucky. Um, so we shot this in like a double decker bowling alley way out in Queens with, uh,

It's so funny. That short, just... The cast that we got for that short is now all super famous, which is hilarious. So... But it was... So there was just this killer group of people called in all these favors. Like, one of the top ADs in New York is just a buddy of mine. I was like, hey, you wouldn't come do this on a weekend, would you? He's like, yeah, I'm free. Whatever. It's fine. And it's like when you shoot something in New York or you shoot something in L.A., people... You know...

It's oddly... Not odd at all, actually, come to think of it. It's just... It's easier to get top crew, top cast. Not that there's not amazing people all over the country, and specifically in Kentucky, we had a great group. But as far as...

These people that are living, eating, breathing the industry and doing it on a more visible national and global scale, these people live in New York and LA, and if you're shooting in New York or LA, they're much more ready to just be like, yeah, cool, can I just hop on the subway and get there? Fine, yeah, I'll be there. Whatever, it's no big deal. You can pay me whatever you can. It's fine. It gets a little trickier when you're like, hey, can you come to three weeks for Kentucky and I'll put you in a hotel and...

Whatever they're like, oh, I don't know my kids are in school or I got this other thing going on Whereas if it's just down the street, you know, they're much more they're much more game for it So yeah, so in that short we've got like Tommy Sadowski who's now on life in pieces and like, you know It's just got his feet kicked up in CBS heaven And you know Keith Powell who was on 30 Rock Mike Chernus who you know, we saw an orange is the new black like just amazing But so yeah, so we did the short and

And then – oh, my God. I totally forgot the question. Listen to me rambling. What was your – Well, I was just about how you found time to actually write in between jobs. Oh, yeah. Did you see how off topic I got on that? I –

I don't know, man. I don't really have a great answer for it. It's just you just kind of have to find it. You just have to make the time. And you touched on something too that a previous guest, James Altucher, he touched on this as well. And creativity is – he calls it a muscle. He calls it his idea muscle of coming up with these ideas. And he's like that's what happens. It atrophies if you don't use it. And so when you were saying that, I'm like that's exactly the way he puts it as well.

Yeah, I mean, it's just one of those things. And I feel it sometimes. Well, it's also one of those things where if you're going to be in this industry, how do I say this in like a positive way? Because it's it's it is a positive thing. But saying it and when I've said it previously, it kind of doesn't sound terribly positive. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

you sort of have to be crazy. You sort of have to be a little bit obsessed and stubborn and just in order to do this business, in order to live and eat and breathe it and just have it be what you do. And it took me a few years to get to the point to where finally, like I was just like, this is what I do. I am a filmmaker. I am a storyteller. I am a

movie, TV, you know, new media, like whatever. Like I, I've, I've lost, I have no other bankable skills. I'm literally, this is just what I do. Um, and, and in order to sort of be in it to that level, you kind of have to have no other options because there are certainly days when I have say like specifically on like certain productions, if like some nightmare thing happens with like an actor or producers travel or like,

you know, is something bad happens on set with a piece of equipment is any number of things that I could tell you probably a hundred stories. Like, you know, I'm, I'm living the dream. I do what I love for a living, but there's just like anything else. Like there's, you know, there's crappy days where I'm like, man, I wish I could just work at a call center and go home at five 30 every day. And like,

go to happy hours and just like have a nice, happy little life. Still live in Kentucky. Just live down the street from my parents. Go to like, you know, like I kind of, there's part of me certainly at times that are just like, wouldn't life just be easier if I would be okay doing not all of this? And the answer is, yeah, maybe, but I just, I internally don't, I, if I was not doing this and when it's not,

this exhaustive, sometimes insane, you know, often being asked to pull off the impossible. If I wasn't doing this production thing, if I wasn't doing the storytelling thing,

And this is including, you know, my like day job production work on like other bigger productions and my own work. You know, like I barely left my apartment yesterday. I finally had to leave and go outside and walk the dog at 10 30 PM because I'd been stuck in here writing my next writing this next script all day yesterday. I woke up at eight o'clock in the morning and I was just here like a shut in just all day. Um, and it's, you just kind of have to have a little bit of,

You just got to be a little bit off, but in all the right ways, you know? And, and it's, and it's, um, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but there's certainly times where I'm just like, Oh, why can't I just go and work at like, why can't my, my dad worked at like a GE assembly line for 30, 40 years in Kentucky, like making washing machines. You know what? He's perfectly happy. Now he's retired. He watches Westerns all day, goes on long walks, uh,

I just – I can't even picture myself ever retiring. People are like, what are you going to do when you retire? And I'm like, who retires from making movies? We're all like blessed with this opportunity to do this. I'll probably do this until they like –

drag me lifeless off of the set somewhere. Like, I don't know why I would ever retire from it. I just like, it's, I'm doing it, but if you're not doing it because you love it, then, then you're legitimately a crazy person. Cause go do something else. It is, it is hard. You know,

I stay away from the word heart. People, this always comes up when people are talking about, Oh, how'd you raise money for the movie? And you know, people, Oh, raising money is the hardest part. Raising money is hard. I don't like to call anything that we do. And I just slipped up on my own, on my own advice there. I hate calling anything that we do hard because you know, digging ditches is hard. Uh,

You know, working in the coal mines is hard. Construction work is hard. You know, working in the heat, not having a job and living in a third world country. You know, that stuff is all hard. What we do is we're blessed to be able to like,

you know, to do what we do for a living. You know, I show up to work and there's like a truck full of catering that will make me whatever I want. I stay away from the word hard with anything that we do. But it's, but the hours are tough. And the,

Sometimes the conditions are not ideal. So if you can be doing anything, and I've spoken to some college classes. I've told them, what would you recommend? Whatever. There's always the basic questions. I'm like, if you think you can do anything else, if there is a world in which you do not have the internal drive where you absolutely have to be doing this with all of who you are, you should 100% just go do that because it's going to be easier again. Yeah.

easy or whatever, you know what I'm saying? It's going to be... It's going to lead to sort of a emotionally and sort of... Is spiritually the right word? If you're not going to be happy...

putting in what has to be put in to work in this industry, then just don't do it. Don't put yourself through it because it can be, it can be, it can be pretty, it can be pretty brutal to a degree. Just, you know, it's mostly just about the hours and the, and the expectations of like when people expect you to be available for them.

to certain degrees. And again, that's, and sometimes when I'm working in production, that's just people that are creative types that I'm just like, no, I get it. Listen, especially since I left doing regular production, you know, regular, like sort of like my normal production stuff and went and made the feature. I'm like,

Well, listen, I get it. Then I was that guy. And I was never calling people at 3 o'clock in the morning and being like, we need to change everything. But I got it. I was like, listen, the creative end of it and the production end of it feed into each other and definitely overlap in a lot of ways. But they also are – you're sort of serving different masters to a degree. But ultimately not. You're also serving the story. You're serving what goes on the screen. But –

Anyway, again, I'm all over the place. It's all good, Jamie. I tend to have that effect on people. Uh-huh. You're like a therapist. You're just giving me the opportunity to ramble. Honestly, if you go back and listen to episodes, one out of every two guests will say, Dave, I

I don't know why, but every time I come on your podcast, I just start rambling or I go in these other directions. And I said, no, I have that effect on people, the longer answers and stuff like that. I think it's a great thing, actually. So, I mean, it becomes a stream of consciousness, you know, and it's good. I think it is.

It makes you a good interviewer is what I think. Oh, thank you very much, Jamie. I appreciate that. And as we talk about screenwriting, I wanted to ask, when you were working on all these other different productions, I'm sure at one point or another you got to read the screenplay. Did that have a lot of effect on you of how to actually write screenplays? Because you're actually seeing movies. I mean, you're beyond a reader at that point because now –

You're actually, you know, hey, these movies are actually in production right now. So there has to be something valid about this screenplay. Did you ever get a chance to read the screenplays? And if so, you know, what did you take away from them? Oh, I mean, I it's funny. I've worked with some people on productions that, you know, I'll be like, oh, and then did you read this in the script? And I read them immediately, sometimes before I even start.

Um, I, it's one of the first things I asked when asked for when I'm even considering doing a project, uh, be like, well, let me see the script. And if, you know, if, if it makes sense and speaks to me, not meanwhile, go back and look at my resume. They haven't all been me being really choosy about the, uh, the content, but, um, but I try to be, I do try to, I do try to make sure that I, um,

it's something that I enjoy work. I would enjoy working on. So yeah, I read the screenplays every time I have worked with people that don't know, because there's certain disciplines within the making of like a movie or TV show where you don't necessarily have to read like every screen show up to set. People tell you what to do. It gets done. You go home, whatever. Um, which is certain, certain crew positions. But with mine, um,

As I've progressed sort of up the proverbial ladder there, I find it crucial to read the screenplay. And I mean, it's funny to me, it has definitely affected my writing. One of the first scripts I read that really affected me, and specifically really affected Split, is I had the opportunity to work on Elizabethtown.

Which was Cameron Crowe, which is one of my, still is, say what you will, about his recent missteps, we might call them. But I love the guy. I think he's a master. I think he's great. The Showtime show roadies that he did, it was not perfect, but I enjoyed it. But so I got to work on Elizabethtown. I was so young at that point, too. I was so...

just over the moon that one of my favorites, probably at the time my favorite writer-director was coming to my town to make a movie and it was amazing. And I got to work on it and he was super cool and I have all these great stories from it. But I got to read that script and I, it was just this revelation of just like, wow, this is good writing. And I can't explain what it was about it. It was just the way it flowed, the way it felt like...

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. It felt like Cameron Crowe is a director that I knew him to be just because I had seen his movies was speaking directly to me, like was talking to me about the movie he was going to make as I was reading the script and I could hear the characters and they were right in front of me. And it was just like this incredible experience where I was like, Oh, this is good writing. It's,

And then that was also a very interesting learning experience because say what you will about that movie, it did not quite turn out to be as good of as a movie as I thought the screenplay was. Um,

I worked on a movie called the business trip at certain point. And I guess it ended up being a Vince Vaughn movie on finished business. I think they changed the title to that script. I read it on the train up to Boston as I was going to work on that movie. And I was laughing out loud like a crazy person. And it was one of the funniest things I'd ever read.

Somehow the movie came out, and it's like they had tried to take all the funny out of it. I don't know what happened in between, and I was there. I don't know if that's editorial. I don't know if that's – I don't know. And it was a great group of people working on it. It was a great group of actors. I don't – it was very strange, but that movie –

I think that's the opinion held roundly about it, is that it just was not exactly an A-plus effort from most of the people involved, which is very funny because the script, the jokes were very tight. It was a very funny thing. I was like, this could be the next Hangover. This is going to be really funny. And then...

There it went. But yeah, I always – and I read them a little differently now, especially from a production standpoint. I'll be reading through it, and I'll just start clocking annoying production things. Oh, house on fire. Okay. Oh, there's some kids. All right. Dogs, birds. That's annoying. Okay. Oh, glass breaking. Just like little things.

You sort of read them differently. It's like when you make, you know this experience too, when you make them or when you work in this for a living, you're an annoying person to watch a movie with. My wife's brother actually at one point we left, I forget what movie we were seeing, so my brother-in-law, we were walking out of something, we started talking about the movie, me and Elizabeth, my wife, he said to me, I always think I like a movie until I hear you guys talk about it.

So, but yeah, no, I, it affected my writing and has affected my writing immensely over time just because I think, and again, I haven't, you know, and I want to write and I want to be, you know, all I'm saying is like, I'm not this like hugely accomplished screenwriter at this point. I have written a lot and I do really enjoy writing. And I actually, that's probably my favorite. I don't know. I say that's my favorite of the disciplines and it's the most rewarding to me, but then I'll get on a set.

Or I'll see something that I've done and I'm like, oh, maybe directing. But I like directing stuff I wrote so one feeds to the other. Whatever. But it's – I think that in order to – I think it's about 50-50, honestly. Like in order for you to be a good writer, you have to constantly be writing. But you also have to constantly be reading the kind of work you want to be writing. It's kind of like making – it's like directing as well. Like if you want to make movies or you want to make TV, you can't just –

create in a vacuum, you know, you should be watching quality work as well and not necessarily mimicking that, but learning from that. You know what, who was, who, who are we attributing this quote to now? I forget who exactly said it, but what does the artist create and geniuses steal, you know, Picasso. Yeah, there you go. So it's, um, you're not necessarily, um,

you're not necessarily reading or watching things to be able to imitate them, but, but you're going to pull these sort of universal ideas and truths out of them and, and sort of recreate them in your own way. You know, like, I mean, take, you know, split the bowling movie we did, like it is a very by the numbers, romantic comedy, but it was very important to me to, you know, spin the genre a little bit. Um,

Not the least of which by making it a bullying movie. But there are a couple other little points where it was just kind of like – I don't know. I won't bore you with that right in this particular instance. But it's like – yeah, the screenwriting, being able to read the work –

especially like you're saying at the point where it's like this is production ready this is the script you're going to go actually make reading that work constantly over all these years has 100% I think improved my screenwriting and it also you know it also makes it

that much more like frustrating or interesting, whatever, when you're working on something and you're just kind of like, this isn't that good. Like, I don't understand why this got picked to be made versus X, Y, or Z blacklist script or like so-and-so other script that is like just sitting on the shelf. You know, like why is this happening versus all of these other things that I know exist in the world? Um,

But yeah, no, I mean, I don't know all that, all that in a very long way to say, yes, I read the scripts. Yes. I feel like I get, I'm very privileged to be able to have access to that material from a production to production for sure.

Yeah, it's true. Whenever you're making something and you want to see what else is out there, and now because of the environment we live in, you can go online. There's screenplay resources all over the place. You want to read the screenplay for whatever, there's a good chance it's out there. And I've read screenplays for unproduced movies. I've read screenplays for produced movies, all sorts of that stuff. Oh, did you just hear that update? What happened?

Okay, cool. I had a chime just come on my screen on my desktop. It was like, oh, you have a Java update. Sorry about that. Oh, no, that's okay. I didn't care. You should insert it in post. You should make it some big annoying thing. No, I didn't hear anything at all. It'll be like that bird crow from Citizen Kane where all of a sudden it was just going off and blah.

And they put that in there to wake up the audiences. That was like their shock. That's so funny. I didn't know that. Yeah, one of the producers was like, I feel like this is going on a little long. So Orson Welles put that in there. That's so funny. I've often – this is apropos of nothing. I always have my phone on vibrate, but just because, you know, whatever, being on sets and everything, I just am afraid. But if I ever were to actually have a ringtone, I really want to find the Wilhelm scream.

and just have that be my ringtone. Just that, like, you know, like the Star Wars when the stormtrooper gets hit, that, like, that movie trope that the sound people always put in there, like, wah! There's actually a good Wilhelm Scream YouTube cut. Oh, yeah, all of them, right? Yeah, yeah. It's so good. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, it's funny. Do you remember ringback tones? I know now we're going in a weird direction, but do you remember ringback tones?

Yeah, I do. Totally. I always thought if you had a ringback tone, what if you just had something like the Wilhelm scream or something that's completely ridiculous? Just went over and over again. Yeah, and the person's like, God damn, answer your phone. That would be great. Yeah, I guess those went away. I love it. Yeah, that's so funny. You're taking me – I just listened to the last episode too, and it was –

It was very funny. You and, oh my God, I forgot the guy's name. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Talking about, uh, old video stores is like, yeah, we remember old video stores. I'm like, there's an old video store in my movie guys. The old video stores are still around. Like that video store we shot in is still in Louisville, Kentucky. Um,

Um, but you talking about all the screenplay sources online too, makes me think of when I first moved to New York and there was still like the tables of like people in Times Square would just like set up with like a folding table and it would just be like printed copies of like, Hey, do you want to read Citizen Kane? I've got it with a purple cover here for $20, you know, and you'd go and like peruse the like pile of printed out scripts.

And that was 2004. Like, the internet existed. It just, you know, whatever. You're right. It's totally funny. Any script that you want to read, produced, unproduced, you know. And we go through on...

On John Wick 2, we had a code name and there was all this security, all these different watermarking. The intense amount of technology and security that has to go into just keeping these things from...

keeping the wrong people from getting a hold of these things and just popping them up on the line because it's so easy for just like one person to just be like hey here's a script for the new John Wick movie and just zip it up online really quick so there's so much from a production standpoint we have to like so many hoops we have to jump through just to keep you know from random yay who's like getting a hold of a copy and just throwing it up onto one of those sites

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. That's what happened in Tarantino with Hateful Eight. He gave the script out to somebody and then somebody else was like, hey, look at this Tarantino script. And they photocopied it and put it up online. Yeah, yeah. It's a whole other operation. I know I have a bunch of friends, because we're here in New York and all of these Marvel Netflix shows come through here. And the amount of security, it's...

it blows your mind how much security goes into just every little marble production. It's like, they are probably the most intense about it, um, for good reason, obviously, but they are, uh, yeah, they're, it's, you know, it's a whole new world. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.

And even like somebody's I feel like I had a friend work on one of the Transformers movies and they were down to just like, yeah, we watermark. And we also on like a certain page within the draft will change one letter in a different spot on that same page for every person that gets a script.

I'm like, seriously? Is that a real? I still don't know if that's a real thing. I don't even know how you would do that from a logistical standpoint. But yeah, people are crazy about the security, man. But that would blow a movie, honestly. Or certain TV shows, too. It's like everybody. I also though, part of me finds it to be a little bit too much sometimes because it's kind of like, listen, what percentage of your audience is

is for like a TV show or a movie or whatever, what percentage of that audience is going to be like, oh my goodness, the script is online. I'm going to go read that script. I don't know how much of the general public is actually reading screenplays. But yeah, I don't know. I think what they're afraid of is the sort of like,

you know, nerd sites, so to speak, like me. But like, I mean, if I read a screenplay, I wouldn't be like, Hey, here's all the things. I think a lot of these sites that they're afraid of that read screenplays, we'll talk about them. And then all of a sudden, you know, someone's watching a YouTube video, like, you know, you know, John Smith, who's not going to read the screenplay, but he's watching this YouTube video and they're just talking about it. And now he's like, yeah, that's fair. That's why I think that,

they've sort of become locked down. A friend of mine and I were joking, I think it was actually Michael K. Snyder, and we were joking around that the next big thing in film is going to be a department created just called Film Security, where there's going to be...

Literally, somebody who's in charge or our team in charge of scripts, everything else, and be like, everybody else does their own thing now, and we'll be the ones in charge of handing out the scripts, getting them back at the end of the day, protecting the Wi-Fi, all that good stuff. Oh, that's – listen. There are things – there are productions that have that. There are productions that have that. We –

I work on a show called Billions and several other shows around New York that I know of. There's all kinds of little sub-departments that didn't exist that exist now. We have an entire green department. We have a green, quote unquote, but an eco-minded department that goes from set to set and makes sure that all of our trash is separated into recyclables and compost and all of those things. They're tracking the carbon footprint of the entire production. How many

People stayed in hotel rooms that are how many square feet for how many nights and who traveled on what planes. It's intense. And then down to

What I'm surprised hasn't started happening is that you have to hire like a social media person on every production. You know, someone who is specifically in charge of, you know, like, hey, keep our Instagram, Twitter and, you know, Snapchat, whatever up like during production so that anybody who cares to follow it can go follow it. You know that there's so many just the technology and the way that people are consuming content.

The pace at which people are consuming and the volume at which they're consuming, it's just changing everything. So yeah, departments are just going to keep popping up until we just have everything covered. There's just going to be thousands of people working on every little TV show, which is only going to be good for people in my position because it just means more work.

So all good things. Yeah. And, and also I wanted to mention too, I, when I was talking to Mike, uh, about, about the video stores that were gone, I was just meaning like stuff like blockbuster, Hollywood video, those guys. I mean, the small mom and pop places. I actually, there's one right up the street from me. Uh, it's about 30 minutes away, but yeah, I know there's still places here and there and I'm glad they're still open, honestly, because, uh,

Honestly, those are the places that – like Quentin Tarantino, he worked at a local video store and stuff like that. And I love just – honestly, I'm actually starting to go the other way, Jamie, with a lot of things. Like I used to be in love with Amazon and how easy it was. Now I'm just like I'd rather just go out now to a little mom and pop place and buy whatever the hell I'm looking for.

I, yeah, I'm, you know, it's, I go back and forth because it's just so, obviously it's easy. It's amazing.

to do Amazon, to order things online. And, you know, and listen, again, I'm in New York city. We like, I barely even leave the apartment sometimes cause the food will come to me at three in the morning if I want it to any, whatever cuisine I like. Um, so the ease is terrific, but I know exactly what you're saying. And I think I've reached a little bit of fatigue with it as well. I recently started really buckling down on ordering comics online. Um,

because I have a great little spot right down the street from me that's like a little indie comic shop that sells a lot of zines and sort of interesting, more highly curated sort of titles. But then I hop on the train and I get into Union Square and I've got my little local comic shop here that has just everything under the sun. And I...

spent a good few years just ordering like, you know, like, Oh, the new saga is out or other than a walking dead or what? And I would just order it on Amazon. And now, you know, I've really, I've really kind of changed my tone. I'm just like, why am I, it's right there. I should just go down the street, support these local businesses. So yeah, no, I, I totally get that. And I think, and I think that's a thing that, that we're all probably going to start experiencing and it's only going to be good for those little mom and pop businesses to

I just, you know, brick and mortar stores. You want to talk about a tangent? I could go off about how I'm just convinced we're all going to be living the movie WALL-E within the next like 10 years. But, you know, we all just fight the good fight best we can. But no, I'm totally on your on track with that. Same as you.

Yeah, I know Mark Zuckerberg. He announced his plan to sort of do away with the smartphone, and it's all about AR mixed with a little bit of VR, mixed with a little bit of AI. And it's just like, honestly, I don't think that maybe if we baby step this out, but I think if you were to try to radically just

change things overnight, like with an AR, VR, AI combo, like I think what he's trying to do, where it's like, you know, because there's also a company that's trying to get rid of computers as we know them, and it's just going to become that, an augmented reality system where you're just kind of like moving parts around. I'm just like,

yeah, that might be good, but, you know, I don't know how long that's going to take for everyone to actually transition. I mean, my God, they just killed 56K modems in this country a while ago, right? I mean, or an analog cable signal, so... Man, there's still... Listen, there's still people all over, you know, not necessarily a ton of people on the coast, but there's people all over, you know, the middle of this country that still have dial-up internet. You know, like, it's...

I don't know, man. I don't think that's, I even have, I have guys on set. I have guys that work on set still that I'll be like, Oh yeah, I'll email you a call sheet. No, no, I don't email. You're gonna have to print me one. Like, who are you? How do you not have the email?

But these people still exist. So I think that, you know, the Zuckerbergs of the world and, you know, Elon Musk and like everybody's technology, everyone is just sort of stuck in this loop of like it always has to keep going at this exponential rate that it's been going. And I'm not saying it needs to slow down, but I think like I have a lot of thoughts about VR that I just am convinced are

a lot of people are really hitching their wagons to the VR thing. And I don't necessarily, I'm personally in this, I don't know. It's hard to, when you, when you're speaking from your own personal position, like,

you know, it's hard to say like, you know, maybe the kids will be really into VR. I don't think, I don't know. But I, as a person sitting at my age and what I do for a living, I do not ever think I am going to watch a movie specifically made or a television show or anything like that, that is specifically made for VR. I just, I just don't,

know that that content is ever going to catch on for me or people like me. I just don't think about it. But that being said, I do think that there are very...

incredible and there's a lot of potential for VR in a lot of ways because so I was out at Sundance not this year but the past year and I got somehow or another got looped in with like the ILM people and they were doing a VR like demonstration I was like alright well let me see what this is all about it's ILM I'll see so I put on the helmet and whatever and all of a sudden I'm on Tatooine and there's BB-8 and it was great it was the coolest thing ever

And they were like, well, we do other movies too. And then all of a sudden I was walking around with a velociraptor and I was like, all right, this is actually too real. Stop. I'm actually scared. Quit it. There's a velociraptor in my face. And I was just like, okay, cool. That was a fun trick, guys. Thanks. And they were like, well, you work in movies, right? Yeah, I mean, that's sort of my thing. They were like, all right, well, let's talk about some practical implications. So then they flip it over to

It was some production. I don't know if it was for an actual production or something that they just sort of mocked up. But basically, if you're going to go if you're working on a movie and you're going to build, say, like in a however many hundred thousand foot warehouse, a huge spaceship or you're going to build a mansion set or something like that.

VR, they started showing me these schematics for these sets, but they actually had built the sets out entirely in VR so that you could put a camera in a certain camera position, see exactly what your shot was going to be on your fake set that hadn't been built yet, so that you could have every idea about every potential shot in your movie on this set that was completely not even existent yet.

just through VR so that you wouldn't spend any money at all being like, oh no, actually that doesn't quite work. We're going to have to rebuild her. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Oh, the, the, the measurements aren't quite, you do all of your pre-planning in VR and then you, you know, it's the whole like measure twice, cut once thing you've measured, uh,

a million times digitally, and then just go out and build the thing and everything's going to go exactly as planned. You know, and I'm sure that's not exactly how it works, but like that kind of thing is a practical application that I think, and you think about that, like you can do that before you build a hospital. You can do that before you, like that's the real world stuff that I think VR is going to be huge for. I don't think VR is going to be

a huge storytelling medium in the way that people are sort of hitching their wagon to, if that makes sense. Yeah, I concur. I just, I, I think that VR is going to be a lot like what 3d was where you, you know, the glasses and then they had to watch it. You got to get the 3d TV and 3d, you know, blu-ray. And, and honestly, I've all the friends that I have who are huge into movies, the movie going experience at the movies every weekend. Um,

only one of them actually went out and actually bought something like that. And he, and he has a ton of disposable income where he can actually buy stuff like that. Cause like, honestly, even if I had like a ton of extra money, I don't even think I'd buy that. And it was just, and you know, I, I,

I just, that same way I feel about VR. I just would rather, you know, have a better story. And plus I don't feel like having my eyeballs burned out every which way I keep turning. Cause like smartphone screens are bad enough. And it's just like, I don't need to be staring at another screen for 12 hours, 14 hours a day.

Yeah.

I think they realize, too, like the Elon Musk's and the Zuckerberg's. It's going to be a lot of trial and error because, I mean, Elon Musk is the CEO of three different companies. And I guarantee you, I honestly sometimes I think that he even knows he's overreaching. And I think he just keeps doing it for, you know, just because he either because he can or maybe he just thinks, you know, if he throws up enough Hail Marys, one of them has to pass. Right.

Right, right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And Hey, you know what? These are the people, these are the people in large part, giving us a lot of this great stuff that, you know, listen, I am, look at what we're doing right now. I am sitting in New York city. You were sitting in Philadelphia. We, I am speaking into the air in my apartment and we are going to digitally project this to the world at some point. Like, you know, it's where it's the whole Louis C.K. Actually, this is the email signature in my, uh,

when I send an email that says sent from space because of this whole Louis C.K. bit where he's talking about some guy yelling into his phone on the... Or he's yelling about the internet working on an airplane or something. He's just like, give it a second. It is going to space. Just give it half a second. He's like...

So like I'm always the first person to just be like, guys, we are living in the future. I talk to my – I talk to one of the three robots I have in my house and I ask that robot to turn the lights off when I go to sleep at night. I talk to my Amazon Echo thing and I say Echo bedroom light off and it goes off. And I genuinely – that has not –

stopped being cool. You know, I got a, I got a, I got a, I got a room with a vacuum's my floor. I got, you know, it's, you know, like whatever, like we were living in the Jetsons guys, it officially happened, you know? And it's funny, you know, like growing up around the same time, I think as I think we did, you know, everybody, Oh, flying cars, whatever guys flying, who needs flying cars? That just sounds dangerous and terrible to me. We're talking to robots in our house,

telling them to do things. And we have all of the world's information at our fingertips. No longer will you be at a bar being like, oh, and what was that movie with the one guy and the thing? You have that answer. Anyone can pull the computer out of their pocket and have that answer in 10 seconds. The future is now, and I, for one, just love it. And in large part, these are the guys who

are making this happen. Look, this is so funny. My echo, cause like Star Trek, we've, we've called her a computer. So every time I, yep, she just came on again. Sorry. Anyway. Um, but man, you know, it, it,

I try not to be like, all right, let's all slow down. It's all moving too quickly because I love it. I love all the cool technology that we're able to play with, especially within the storytelling space. Yeah, you know, it's all happening really fast. So it's like maybe instead of moving on to the next thing, let's try to –

perfect some of the things that we have. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, but that's, that's, that's, I feel like, I feel like we've covered about 20 different conversations for another time, but we'll just dive, we'll just dive into them all here. And I love that. Yeah. I do want to talk about split. I mean, you know, just sort of going back to split, I do want to say, you know, you shot your short film in 2010 and then in 2015 you actually made it into a feature film.

And, you know, again, because I know we were talking about so many different topics. I'm like, we actually should talk about Split. Well, that's what I'm telling you. That's what the great interview. You see somebody on like, you know, like a Stephen Colbert or like an old Letterman episode. And they'll just did the very end. They're like, oh, right. And your album. Let's talk. When's your album come out? But yeah, I mean, we did. Yeah, we did the short in 2010. We actually shot.

The movie in 2012 came out in August. I think it was August 2nd, 2016. It was about four years of post, which is what happens when you, you know, yeah, I'm sure it's been said on this podcast probably a hundred times, good, fast and cheap. You know, I wasn't going to sacrifice good. So, or I, I wasn't going to sacrifice good and I, and I couldn't sacrifice cheap. So fast went out the window. So we had a lot of people working on favors and,

You know, if you have somebody who's doing a lot of really great post-production work for you and then they're just like, hey, I have to go to Montreal to work on a movie that's going to pay me a lot of money and you're paying me none money, then I'm like, all right, cool. We'll just...

I'll do maybe some sound work over here with this other part. You know, you just kind of have to, so it took us a little while to get it out into the world. But, uh, so yeah, we were like in post-production movie ready to go, you know, for the most part and just sort of like having to get some other little pieces out. And then I saw, I think it was somebody just sent me a text or something with the trailer of like,

Coming soon from Mim Night Shyamalan. No, but you know what it was? It was a new story. It was like the announcement of the fact that he was going to make a movie called Split. And I was like, oh boy, what's this going to be? Um,

Should we change the title? And I'm like, no, it's our title. We were here first. What are you talking about? But yeah, so we came out in 2016 and it's been a fun little ride, man. It's still continuing. We are on, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, we are one of the movies you can watch for free as part of your Amazon Prime subscription. We are also available to rent or purchase on iTunes. We're on

This is actually something that's been amazing through the distribution process that I just... So much of it's new to me, but this particular part, they're like, okay, we're going to put you... So you're on iTunes. I'm like, okay, got it. Xbox. Oh, you can... Okay. I didn't know you could do that. Great. PlayStation. That one too. Great. Also, Vudu. It's okay. What's that? Oh, it's Walmart streaming service. Oh, well, okay. Cool. I just learned about... We're on probably, I want to say like 50 different platforms. I knew...

maybe three of them existed. So that's, uh, that's been a fun little ride. Um, but yeah, man, it's, it's, it's just good. You know, we, we just made a cute little movie. Uh, everything that I said from the beginning, I was like, listen, there's not enough bowling movies out there.

I like rom-coms. Let's make a bowling rom-com so that we're not doing the exact same movie people have seen a hundred times and we're having a little fun with it. And I, you know, I want people to go on like a date night or I want people's like folks to go or somebody to be able to take their kids, you know, probably around the age of 12 or 13 or older kids and just, you know, walk out of the movie and just say, well, that was cute.

all I was going for. We're not changing the world here. I'm not trying to make some sort of like huge, amazing message. I just want people to leave and say that was cute and then be like, you know what we haven't done in a while? Let's go bowling. So then people are going bowling. And that's really just what we set out to do and that's what I think we accomplished and it's been a lot of fun. And it's only been made a little bit more interesting by the fact that one of the most polarizing directors of a generation decided to make a

multiple personality serial killer movie on the same name. That's it. It's about where we are. Yeah. It's, uh, it is, again, as we were talking about in the, in the pre-interview, I actually, you know, um, it's just funny because about my friend who actually found split and was like, Oh, there's another movie out called split. Did you hear about this? And I said, I said, yeah, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.

I said, actually, I'm talking to the director. He looked at me so odd when I said, yeah, I'm actually talking to the director tomorrow. He goes, what? Yeah, are you screwing with me? Yeah, it's like, what? Because one of my friends was finally like, he goes, Dave, I'm just going to ask you if you've ever heard of these guys. He's like, you seem to know everybody. And I said, well, thank you. I try, but... Turns out. Turns out. That's so funny.

I had a coworker who, I guess it was back in like February or March, had went to go see the Shyamalan split. And as they were walking out, somebody was like, you know, I tried to find a stream of this online, but I got some stupid bowling movie. Have you had...

It's also – that's been interesting. It is what it is. But people who are going out to watch a horror movie that I guess on some sort of sites – again, things I'm not familiar with. But I think like Torrance or Street something, somewhere out in the world in a very popular place –

It seems that our movie has been, basically it's all of the artwork, all of the synopsis, everything completely out there in the world for, pretty early on it said split as if it were the Shyamalan split, but then you clicked on it and you got our movie. So we've gotten a ton of people

that were not happy about that happening so that's been it's been something but in fairness there have been here and there there have been plenty enough people that have just been like hey I found this totally wasn't the horror movie but it was pretty good

Great. Thanks guys. You know, but somewhere, somewhere, somewhere along the line on some sort of like back channel torrent, the put movies up for free place. We, those wires got crossed. Actually iTunes at one point, big, you know, awesome Apple. Listen, I'm all on the Apple train. I love them all. I have all their products. The hate at one point had, what was it? It was our movie. It was our movie.

It was where you went to find hours, but then down at the bottom, all of the trailers were for the Shyamalan movie. So it was like even iTunes had some of their wires crossed, which is – and again, and then apparently there's a third split movie that came out in 2016 that I – that is just apparently like a completely out there sort of –

mind screw of a movie that I also haven't, you know, that I, that I haven't seen, but I know exists. So, Hey, you know what? It's a very popular little five letter word. What can I say? We should sit down together. You, myself, M night Shyamalan and the other, and another guy from that third split. And we should, the four of us can compare all of them back and forth. Oh, I, what I wouldn't give, what I wouldn't give to just,

hear from anyone in the like Shyamalan camp to just say hey guys yes we know there's a bowling movie isn't that funny like just something like how many people how many people have taught how many people and I'll just go to my deathbed I'm sure wondering this how many people have gone up to M. Night Shyamalan and been like hey do you know there's a bowling movie called Spy? laughing

If it's happened once, it's enough to make my lifetime. That's really truly the case. You know what? I should tweet M. Night after this interview. I should tweet him about it.

Do it. And see, I mean, let's be honest. There's a 99.9% chance he's not going to respond to me because he's going to be like, wait a minute. Isn't this that weird guy? And that's how most people usually say, I remind people, isn't this that weird guy from that thing? Yeah.

I'd say there's also a 99.9% chance he doesn't run his own Twitter. So there's also that. Well, he actually does. Oh, does he? Yeah, it's all him. Oh, wow. Well, that's cool. That's like mad respect for him because there's so many people that spend so much time making it seem like it's them, but it's not actually. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. So that's actually really cool if that's legit him. That's great. Yeah, it's apparently because – I mean, obviously –

Just from other people, they've said, yeah, that's actually him doing it all. And then Kevin Smith, he does all his own, apparently. Because I had a friend of mine whose job, when he went out to L.A., his first job was actually running celebrity Twitter accounts.

And then like he would actually just to make sure it looks like them. So then he ended up doing stuff for like a couple adult film stars, like doing their social media. And he said he got so burned out because you can imagine like it was just a constant bunch of like weird, creepy guys going like, hey, I can't. Yeah, we have sex with me. It's like, oh, my God, I can't even imagine. I can't listen. I can't even imagine how tough it is to just be a woman on the Internet in general. But just oh, my goodness. Oh, no.

Yeah, I can imagine that would cause a person to burn out pretty quickly. Yeah, and he has a lot of other weird stories, which I won't go into right now. But, Jamie, we've been talking for about an hour and five minutes now. I know we were just talking about Split. Is there anything that we didn't get a chance to talk about that you wanted to talk about or anything you wanted to say to put a period at the end of this whole conversation?

Um, I mean, not necessarily. I would, you know, I think I got in all of my little plugs for the movie. I mean, that's really the...

The important thing is as far as like kind of, you know, and I think just as a person that comes and does any sort of podcast like your own, like I'm actually I'm having a great time talking. But yeah, I mean, anybody who's listening, if you're interested in seeing if you like romantic comedies, if you like bowling one or the other, especially both, please go see Split, not the M. Night Shyamalan movie. Yeah.

the world's first romantic bowling comedy. We are the easiest place to find all the play. All the ways we're available is just to go to derby city productions.com like Louisville, Kentucky, the, like the Kentucky Derby. So Derby city productions, plural.com. And that's, uh, you know, our trailers there and there's an Amazon button. If you want to watch it on Amazon, there's a, you know, Google play button, how it will pick your poison. It's all right there. Um,

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We're on both of those. It's just Facebook.com slash SplitTheMovie and Twitter.com slash SplitTheMovie. Make sure you put the the in there because if you just do Split Movie, you go right to Shyamalan. Which has probably led to the most hilarious Twitter conversations where people have sort of tagged us thinking they were tagging the Shyamalan movie, which I just...

Can't help but have somebody from our side respond to every time it happens. And it's also, I mean, there have been some pretty hilarious. There's specifically when it first, when the, the, the other split came out,

There was a guy who did a whole Facebook status update that somebody had sent me about how he enjoys a little herbal refreshment from time to time, this guy. And he...

got a little bit greened out, a little bit blazed out, sat down and thought he was watching a horror movie, and he just does this whole account of how he got point for point through our movie, thinking like, when is this guy going to turn and start kidnapping girls? When is he going to murder somebody? He gets through pretty much the whole movie, and then eventually he's like, wait a second.

James McAvoy is not in it. Like what's amazing to me about that is my name as the director is, I don't think you make it two, three minutes into the movie before you see that. And you know, like it says directed by not M night Shyamalan, uh,

in very clear print in the movie. And it just keeps happening. Maybe he thought that was another alter ego of the split. Oh, maybe. And he goes, oh, it's not M. Night Shyamalan directed this. It's his alter ego, Jamie Buckner. Yeah, that was my go-to when this first started happening. I was like, what a twist, right? Guys, it was a bullying movie the whole time. Yeah.

An old M. Night. He's always got some sort of twist in store for you. No, man, I think we've covered quite a bit. I don't think that there's...

No, I don't think, I mean, here's the thing, like with your podcast, the episodes I've listened to, it seems like a lot of your audience is going to be people wanting to get out there and sort of do it on their own or are doing it on their own or just, you know, all I, if I have maybe two cents worth of advice to offer, it's just, you know, there's all the reason in the world to get swayed away from doing it. But if you have what I was talking about earlier and you have that

that inability to do anything else and you just have to be telling stories and you have to be doing this, then don't let anyone stop you from doing it. It took us years and years to get this movie made and so much gotten away and so much, you know, tried to whatever, like there's, there's always hurdles. Just get out there,

start making something and by all means finish it because there are so many the most amazing stories to me are when people are like oh yeah i got on this movie and then we shot it and then this happened and then i got into post and then it just kind of never went anywhere and i'm like i do not know how anyone could ever get into that position like just put it out on youtube or something like you just get out there and have your story told there's too many ways for you to just

get your story out into the world these days. And it's just, it's too, everything is too readily available for you to have any excuse to not just be out there

telling your story. So get out there and do it. If, if, if this is the right space to just like throw that advice at anybody, but it seems like your, your listenership would probably appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. I, I completely, uh, I think this is the best, uh, best spot to put that in there. Yeah. And I'm, thank you for saying that. And I know exactly where you're coming from about people, uh,

you know, we, we get sort of stuck. I mean, I I've been there honestly, Jamie, but that's a whole nother story for another time. But, but everybody, everything Jamie and I talked about everything, all the trailers and all that will be in the show notes. Jamie Buckner. Thank you so much for coming on buddy. Absolutely, man. Thank you very much. Great talking with you. Great talking to you, Jamie. And listen, whatever you can do next, you know, let me know. And you know, I want to bring you back on. We'll talk about whatever you have coming out next. And cause I'd love to have you back. Oh, great. Yeah. I'd love to come back on for sure, man.

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 795. 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.